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"I am filled with regret as tall as the mountains and as unfathomable as the sea,"
Jiontar's voice rippled outwards in a sad melody as he stood on one leg, at the very top floor of one of Aelthrie's buildings. His body was swaying precariously with the strong winds. His toes had already extended themselves beyond the concrete edge, preparing for his inevitable plummet into the silence of death.
An artificially-created flash of his entire life had engulfed him, reminding him of what had brought him to these lengths.
It all started with his obsession with Virion. That falling noble from the north had strength that was rarely seen in the world. His power grew at a rate that was terrifying, challenging the best of the best.
Virion stood at Rank 2, above both himself and Allyas de Nuantra. It had pulled his prestige down a notch and threatened his ability to stay in power.
His own family's behaviour changed when they learned that his place on the rankings had decreased. Although it was subtle, Jiontar knew exactly what they were doing.
He had to pull Virion down so that he could climb up. He had to do so no matter what. Or else, someone else in the family would take his place as the [ Nurtured ].
"But that was my mistake," Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes as he looked at the sprawling metropolis before him.
Everyone was going about their lives, uncaring for what he felt at this point in time.
The moment he challenged that girl who was always at Virion's side was the moment he regretted most. If he had not humiliated her in the middle of an arena, where many gazes pierced into their lives... If he had not challenged her to probe at Virion's reaction...
Then perhaps he wouldn't be a cripple.
The Phristines wouldn't have shunned him like this. They wouldn't have cut off all connections with him and left him to die.
"Oh, what a wonderful set of decisions!" Jiontar roared, his tone laced with a fistful of self-loathing and coated with sarcasm.
He could've done so much better. He could have focused on himself and cultivated his own strengths instead of trying to copy Lily, thinking that her path was the best one.
Perhaps he could have taken first place.
But no... He chose the wrong path. Now, there was no hope for him to advance. No hope for him to survive.
He did not even have a single desire for revenge for he knew his mistakes.
"All I can hope for... is a better next life."
Jiontar blinked away his tears as his body swayed. He began to fall.
Today, Jiontar of the Phristines would be no more.
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That was how Jiontar had originally met his end, and it was quite an impactful one. Aethercaller came under fire for allowing students to cripple each other in battle, and the Phristines are labelled as a family of cruel and cold-blooded people.
All of this would then be covered up by the two parties through a tournament with grand rewards. Then, Jiontar would be forgotten by the world, and his self-inflicted death would become a story that one would rarely spread.
A lot of things would be triggered by this tournament, but that would be a story for another time.
As for the aftermath of Jiontar's death... none of that would have anything to do with me. At least, for now.
I had the leisure of watching everything transpire. No one would notice Jiontar until later. After all, the area they chose to fight in was pretty remote. The only reason I was even present and aware of what was transpiring was due to the fact that I had been inside Vianthia, observing the movements of different people.
That aside, ever since I had forged Miana's Mana Core into a powerful tool, I had busied myself with creating the World's System—to the point that my growth had more or less halted, save for my ability to finally execute Moving Meditation. My stats did not move much from where they were during this past month, and I had been unable to kill people every night to feed Aventine.
I could only feed him a bit of blood every now and then.
Instead, when I was not working on the World's System, I had been stabilising my foundations. I used the regular fights to familiarize myself with my current build, fully utilising Moving Meditation to fuel my generous usage of Explosion.
When I was working on the World's System, I was a library regular. The number of books that I had borrowed with the credits I gained from the second-year students could fill several shelves.
The coding required for the World's System was worlds more immense than what I had done for Miana's Mana Core. It was taking me forever to scrounge through all the mana programs that existed, all so that I could find the correct ones.
Moreover, I had to invent more than half of the code that I was creating, thus taking quite a toll on my brain.
Nonetheless, my initial draft was close to completion. The fact that I did not sleep allowed me to spend much more time on work.
I already asked King to search for one of Thystaina's children. It would take a while for that girl to surface, but there was a chance that she would appear somewhere in this city before her original time of appearance.
Aelthrie was where she was hiding in the original story, after all.
Once I find her and convince her to help—which would be a headache in and of itself—then I could bring her to the Gaian Membrane to begin Operation: World's System.
"Weirdly enough, the easiest component to the World's System is going to be the left hemisphere of the human brain..." I shook my head.
Such a sentence would have been unthinkable when I was younger.
I sighed, for the original plot of my novel was being altered to no end, and the culprit was me, the author.