Seeing the First Rargnes, a mix of nostalgia, sadness, and irreality hit him.
It first confirmed that he was facing a stranger, but it was a familiar stranger. A passive hatred was felt in his eyes, like in his body. He bent under the weight of the bundle of branches tied with ropes, his head standing low.
But Rargnes felt within him, in his weary and repetitive movements, without showing the slightest emotion, that the man must hate himself.
He regretted not coming to this place earlier and regretted even coming to this place.
He thought back to the voices of the Third, and a chill went up his back.
"So, is this what you've spent your life on?" Rargnes muttered.
He had hoped that the man had escaped, that he would be successful. It was a version he could have been, after all. He had faith in his capacities. He knew better than the others the right way. He had worked on that!
Maybe the First would have been like the ill, whipped victim that the 3rd Rargnes had met, escaping his fate, descending to a world, stacking energy, and who knows? Maybe he could have even been behind that mask.
Now, the dream shattered. He was, but like the others, lucky enough to have been born as a human and into such a fantastic world in a more or less peaceful era. The invaders had different thoughts because they would see death so often: a child of two would die before aging. Death structured their society.
'It should be live that structure it.' But then came the last, inevitable moment when, old, they felt what it felt like to die. Rargnes had imagined it young, in his bed, unable to sleep. He had feared he wouldn't wake up tomorrow. Then, he had lost the feeling because he needed to advance. It all came back to him, his own mortality, but now in a visual - something his body could understand.
And it did destabilize him.
The man was in his early fifties. He had gray hair, a body full of wounds, a tired back, grimacing as he carried heavy loads.What did he have left? A few years or decades to live? His body was bound to be stressed - so likely even less time.
For a moment, he understood why these people wanted slaves, it was not bad, nor good. It was just that they wanted to live properly.
'Should I truly kill the invaders? Gain energy? But...'
It was logical, of course. But the feeling before killing someone... he couldn't bear it.
Did power allow people to live long? It was a tool of nations, not of humans. A human was wonderful, not just a well-oiled machine. It was first a body, simply unable to be defined before his death and hardly even after.
It lived.
Like animals, they first felt the acts and adapted before they tried to adjust in advance. It was very effective for some things, less for others, because then, like a delay in a game, we had a delay in life - and that sucked.
Rargnes felt a wave of nausea. Was this what dreams and ambitions did to most men? Dreaming was a form of drug. This Rargnes, without alcohol, had replaced it with dreams, thoughts, imaginations of what would have happened if he had had something, if he freed himself, if... if anything.
He always imagined that fateful day, those fateful tutorial days. He imagined the Earthlings resisting, reunited with his family in a hard but united life, while the reality, his own world, the homes of his loved ones, were empty, their inhabitants deported or killed.
"I..." he squinted, looking. "I didn't want it to come to this."
It was a thought he didn't even want to formulate in his mind. This Rargnes had not been wrong, and Ragnes would have been the same person under the same circumstances.
Could this person be considered better than the third Rargnes? Certainly, he had not killed. Certainly, he had not fought. Certainly, he served society much more, but he had not fulfilled his obligation to himself.
Rargnes was like every man, the king of his inner empire, who had to fight for resources and longevity. He was only the chief and the president, taking care of the outside affairs, while his ministers, his cells, and every part of his body did their best so much better than him.
This made him think of the king and his prime minister. Who could really say whether the prime minister was not acting in the king's interest? But someone had to be blamed - it was the officials under a divine right monarchy.
And at the same time, could the king really be blamed? He was not the cause of all their ills; perhaps he did not even consider them. It was not so much his problem. It would cause him to lose his two most precious assets: time and energy.
Sengrar, next to him, looked at him and immediately adapted to the situation. It was as if the energy that Rargnes naturally radiated, his aura, was perceived by all those around him, who then adapted. Sengrar spoke in a low, hesitant voice:
"Rargnes? Who is that?"
"I... I think it's me, what I could have become."
Sengrar said no more, to Rargnes' surprise. What must this colossus who had the power he desired the most be thinking?
It felt good to speak without being judged, cried, or encouraged. Just to have a presence.
"You know," Rargnes said after a silence, with the sensations of the moment, without planning for the future. "when I say that, it's literal. It was the one - me? - from my first world."
Sengrar might have wondered if his story still held up, but he didn't seem to care.
"I... I wanted... I don't know what I wanted. But not that. It's a version of me that knows nothing. It's a version of me that I don't want to become but that I could become. I have... I have an even meaner version of myself who is in much better shape, is he right?"
He did not believe in natural good and evil. A full stomach could not understand an empty stomach. Was it a person's fault that their environment was the worst in the world?
For Rargnes, this was not to be taken as a reduction of pain but, on the contrary, as an even more severe punishment. For they were screwed. A person who wanted to harm him had to be killed by any means.
His third version proved to him that he was capable of it; his first version showed him the weakness of not killing. And yet, he vomited when Sengrar slained invaders. Could he really kill? Did he really need to?
This apocalypse was not one for the invaders. They were not all bad.
Rargnes stepped forward, and a goblin barked at him: "What are you doing here? Huh? Get out of here!"
He wondered how this goblin, who was always there in the voices heard from the third, was still alive. More than 20 years had passed, and the world had lasted for 16 years in his second life - longer than a goblin's lifespan.
"That slave there," he pointed to in the first Rargnes. "How much does he cost?"The goblin squinted. "What good will it do you? He's practically dead."
It was not a refusal. He could buy him. Goblins were gold addicts. Maybe he could pass his death off as too much work.
"I like him, but he seems in poor condition. I'd take him for a few pesos."
"How much?"
"Given his condition... as much as a girl."
"But he's an adult man! He's much stronger, has experience, and can even give birth to others if used properly."
They bargained. Rargnes got a price of 60% of the standard price of a male slave in his twenties, paying 10% more for the goblin. He couldn't help but be disgusted at the thought of bargaining for the life of a loved one
.The goblin went to get his master, explained the situation to him, and then came back, ordering the First Rargnes to leave.
He obeyed, looking stunned. His vision had deteriorated further. He needed to be close to the fourth Rargnes to freeze in his movements. He was the incarnation, the one who would save him.
The one he had imagined every day.