author's word:『 』
『I thought to add more emotion』
Leo stood in the center of the stone chamber, the dust motes dancing like forgotten spirits in the single shaft of sunlight. The silence was a physical presence, thick and heavy with age. In his grasp, held within a carefully shaped pseudopod, was the bronze compass. Its needle, now alive, pointed with an unnerving steadiness into the deep, uncharted darkness of the forest. But for a moment, the compass was forgotten.
The revelation of his Adaptive Immortality had settled not with a bang, but with a deep, resonating hum in the core of his being. It was less of a discovery and more of an… acknowledgment. A truth he had always known, waiting for a name.
[So...] he thought, the process slow and deliberate in his mind. He wasn't grappling with the concept; he was fitting it into the empty spaces of his understanding, like the last piece of a puzzle he didn't know he was solving. [If something tries to burn me, and it works... it will never work again?]
[Correct.]
The simplicity of [Sage]'s response was its own form of profundity. It wasn't a complex magical theory. It was a statement of fact, as fundamental as gravity.
Leo's consciousness drifted back, not to a specific event, but to a collage of sensations. The Gloom Bruin's claws, a pressure that then became nothing. The Jackals' fangs, a sharpness that dissolved into a pleasant warmth. The Titan's world-ending footfall, a crushing weight that instead became a catalyst for an incredible transformation. And now, the shadow shards, a lethal surprise that was now just a memory of pretty, dissolving light.
He looked down at his own body, this form of shimmering, mineral-speckled jade. It was more than a body. It was a record. A living ledger of every single thing that had ever tried to unmake him. Each entry was a failure, and each failure made the ledger more absolute, more unassailable.
[If something tries to erase me from the world, and it works...] he continued, pushing the logic to its ultimate, terrifying conclusion. [I will come back, and it can never erase me again?]
[That is the functional principle.]
There was no pride in this realization. No triumphant swelling of ego. For Leo, it was a neutral fact, like learning the sky was above and the ground was below. But it carried a weight, a loneliness he couldn't name. He was a finished equation in a universe of variables. A constant. The concept of "threat" evaporated, replaced by the milder, more curious concept of "instruction." Every enemy was just a teacher with a single, fleeting lesson to impart.
This line of thought, this contemplation of his own immutable nature, stirred something else. A ghost of a feeling. A hollow space where something much more… personal… should have been. His past.
He tried to reach for it. What was before the forest? Before the oozing and the consuming?
Nothing.
It wasn't a locked door. It was a smooth, featureless wall. There were no handles, no keyholes, not even a scratch on its surface. He knew, with a certainty that felt implanted, that he had a past. He had a life. He had a death. But the contents were gone. He could feel the shape of the emptiness, the void where his memories should be, and it was this shape that hinted at what was missing.
A slow, heavy feeling seeped into him. It wasn't the sharp sting of sadness he might have once known. It was a profound, cosmic melancholy. He was eternal, but he was also… empty. He had all the time in the world, and nothing to fill it with but the present moment, a moment he was doomed to forget as soon as it became the past. He could remember the fact of the Titan, but the visceral fear, the adrenaline, the sheer scale of the conflict—it was fading, becoming a dry entry in his mental ledger: Assimilated Forest Titan. Gained Terrakinesis.
He was a library where all the books had their titles but the pages were blank.
[Sage?] he thought, the silent question hanging in the shared space of their mind.
[Yes?]
[Did I have… a family?]
The pause from [Sage] was longer this time. It was a silence that felt heavy, calculated. [Data pertaining to your existence prior to reincarnation is unavailable.]
It was the same smooth, featureless wall. He accepted it. What else could he do? The emptiness was a part of him now, as much as his jade-green form.
He pushed the melancholy aside. It was a useless feeling, like trying to hold water in his hands. It served no purpose for survival, and it didn't help him explore. The present was all he truly had.
His attention returned to the compass in his hand. He focused, channeling a tiny wisp of intent to make it float before him. He felt the corresponding drain, a minuscule dip in the vast ocean of his energy. It was like taking a single sip from a sea. And just as instantly, the sip was replaced. Energy trickled in from the air, from the latent magic of the ruin, from the sunbeam itself—a constant, quiet inflow that kept him perpetually, perfectly full. He was a self-sustaining system. A perpetual motion machine of a living being.
The compass needle pointed, unwavering. A direction. A purpose.
The heavy thoughts of his past and his nature receded, not forgotten, but filed away. They were truths, but they were not a path. This compass, this was a path.
[Let's see where it leads,] Leo thought, the simple curiosity a welcome antidote to the existential weight.
He didn't walk out of the ruin. He willed the earth at the chamber's rear wall to part. The stone didn't crumble; it flowed backward and to the sides like a parting curtain, creating a new, perfect archway that led directly into the deep woods, aligned exactly with the compass's bearing. He was no longer a traveler in the forest; he was its architect.
With the ancient compass hovering just ahead of him like a guiding star, Leo, the placid, amnesiac king of a forgotten ruin, stepped through the new doorway he had made. He left the chamber of dust and memories behind, following a pointer into the heart of the darkness, a single, simple goal now giving shape to his infinite, empty time.