Hearing the General, Skyler lowered his gaze, his low voice tinged with bitterness.
"Yeah... You once taught someone who is gone how to hold himself together when he was forsaken—how to stand again on his own, how to walk alone without breaking, even when he had no one left by his side."
The old man went quiet, staring at Skyler with a puzzled, almost dazed expression. His gray eyes flickered as he muttered.
"Did I...? Ah, I don’t really remember."
Skyler smiled warily upon hearing him.
Of course he doesn’t remember.
How could he?
When all of that existed in a past life.
The level they were currently standing on was one of the places where Max and his team had sacrificed Skyler for the greater good—how laughable. The 15th level of the Battle Royal, like all the other levels, was a planet that had been enslaved by the God of Extinction. Its resources were snatched, all young people were enslaved. Ultimately, this planet, now filled with only old burdens, was abandoned. At last, it was integrated into the Battle Royal by the main system after being deemed useless by everyone.
General Ki watched Skyler for a moment. Then he shut his eyes as a surge of dread hit his entire being, followed by a wave of immense relief—relief that made him feel as if a calamitous future had been altered.
"You..."
He started, then fell silent once more. His hand moved on its own, doing something he had never done before—something that made his eyes widen in quiet disbelief.
Behind him, the massive door to the next level appeared, summoned by his own will.
Words slipped from his lips on its own.
"Why here again? Just go, leave... Don’t come back again and again. You pass."
Skyler froze for a second. Not just him—Zack beside him was frozen in shock as well. Zack could not fully grasp the main essence of the conversation that had just occurred between the old man and Skyler.
He felt as if he were standing on the edge of understanding something, yet couldn’t quite grasp what it meant. Charles, Austin, and Yuris Yu, even more clueless than him, were just standing there, dumbly listening.
The tense silence was broken when Skyler laughed, covering his eyes that had turned eerie. He was grateful to the old man. Yet after recalling the memories tied to him, he also hated him—hated him because, in the end, he had saved him to use him as well.
"You’re letting me go? This time, don’t you want me to save your people, your planet?"
General Ki watched him, his gaze flickering with a hint of understanding. He had lived long enough to acknowledge that entities—crazy enough to meddle with time—existed.
Normally, a weakling like the kid before him wouldn’t even be worthy of speaking to him. Yet, to his surprise, he found himself calmly conversing with Skyler. Not to mention that, just now, he had so easily accepted the fact that this weak kid had meddled with time.
He scoffed, his voice sharp and cold.
"I think I understand now. Just go. Saving my people—is that your responsibility? No. So don’t meddle in affairs that aren’t yours. You’re still just a kid, not even grown up. How do you expect to save anyone?"
Skyler smiled as he stared at him, but his face was strangely shadowed with gloom.
"You’re different from before."
For some reason, he began scratching his palm, something he had never done before.
He wondered why the old man behaved so differently from what he had remembered.
Even if those memories were incomplete, drawn from lives he had lived before many others, a person’s nature shouldn’t change just because time was reversed, right...? A scary thought flashed through his mind.
Something he buried immediately.
Skyler knew he could find the answer to every question if he wanted, but he didn’t dare. This time, it wasn’t because of the flimsy excuse that he believed the life he was living was the only real one. It was... because of a fear he had never admitted before—a fear that, if he truly discovered everything, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.
He sneered and returned to his usual self. The terrifying aura that had enveloped his body finally vanished, allowing Zack, who had gone rigid beside him, to relax. Skyler turned and walked toward the door behind the old man, muttering in a carefree tone.
"Then we will take our leave."
"I thank General Ki for his generosity."
He was the first to push the door open and leave, followed by Zack, Austin, Yuris, and Charles, all still reeling from what had just happened. Their minds were a whirlwind of questions. What about the challenge they were supposed to pass to leave this level?
What about the dangerous life-and-death battle against the old General...? Had it all been nonsense—some rumor spread by a fool—and the 15th level of the Battle Royal simply required nothing more than a few secret phrases that Skyler had spoken?
Yet, despite the chaos in their heads, they had no choice but to keep following Skyler.
After they all left, General Ki stared at the closed door, his gaze deep. For a moment, his vision blurred. Then, as he tapped into his power to secretly follow Skyler, he was met with a pair of pitch-black eyes staring straight at him from a sea of blood. Cold sweat instantly broke out on his back, and he shuddered at what he had just seen.
"It’s a miracle he looks human."
With a shake of his head, he withdrew his power and closed his eyes once more. The kid was a promising seedling to recruit, but dangerous. It was better to stay away from people like him. Compared to him, that Max guy who had crossed the 15th level a while back was far safer to take under his wing.
He muttered with a hint of curiosity.
"I wonder if they know each other."
"Hopefully not. Or it will be a disaster."