The moment he noticed Skyler reaching toward the artifact, Max suddenly began shouting. His words were frantic and filled with desperation, leaving Skyler unable to understand what he was talking about.
"You... You’re still alive?!"
"Good... good!"
"Did you come here to restart time?"
"We can’t fail the trial! Everyone else is dead! I... I was the only one who made it here..."
His voice trembled as confusion and fear clouded his eyes as he lowered his head.
"But... I don’t understand. Everything feels unfamiliar. Everything has changed! The Eldoria I knew is gone... But how? Why?"
Skyler frowned and tilted his head back, his outstretched hand already reaching toward the Wheel of Time and activating its power.
"What?"
Max’s voice grew even louder, filled with panic and disbelief as he stared at him.
"You don’t remember?! Austin, Jenny, Monica, and the others didn’t either! I... I don’t understand what is happening!"
His breathing became uneven.
"We were only supposed to clear a trial! It was just a damn trial! So what is all this?!"
"I remember living once in the trial where you died due to the monsters... and then, after dying, I woke up in this life. Everyone else forgot that we were inside a trial!"
His voice cracked with desperation.
"Don’t tell me you forgot too... No. No, no, no—"
Before he could finish speaking, the space around them shattered, and time began to reverse. Max’s eyes dilated as they shifted abruptly toward Skyler’s outstretched hand, which had already activated the artifact.
Max’s gaze snapped to Skyler’s face.
Their eyes met, and Max shuddered.
Unlike a moment ago, when Skyler’s gaze had been merely indifferent toward him, it now held something far more terrifying.
He was even smiling. A smile that sent a chill through Max’s heart, making it feel as though he were staring at a demon.
Max opened his mouth, but only a single trembling word managed to escape his lips.
"You..."
Skyler chuckled in response.
The sound was so empty that it sent a shiver through the world around them.
Just as they both disappeared alongside the shattering world, Skyler whispered.
"You remember just this much, and you’re already breaking down. How laughable."
As he closed his eyes, he embraced the memories that had returned to him after Max revealed that they were inside a trial.
They were endless, yet among them, he also saw the little white creature he had once tried to create himself. It seemed he had failed to create her because she had already existed within the trial. They had simply never managed to cross paths.
He also saw the Spirit Princess who had died before his very eyes, along with the fragments of her broken soul that he had failed to find in time. He saw everything.
In the end, he wanted nothing more than to destroy the trial. She had also been one of the people it had created in this illusion, so why had her short life been so miserable?
Couldn’t she have lived a normal life?
He already knew that everything related to the Divine War within the trial had already come to pass. Which meant the woman in the illusion the trial created for them had long since died in the Divine War that had already taken place—and ended—in reality.
But he just couldn’t accept it.
Such a kind soul... yet this was her fate.
Being sacrificed by her own father to gain power and claim one of the 3,000 Thrones.
After speaking with the Spirit Queen, he already knew that even Riruru’s birth had been planned. It was all because the Head of the Angels had foreseen that the child born from him and the Spirit Queen would possess an ancient power called Aether, a power that had long since vanished after the Battle Royal came into existence. So, whoever sacrificed her soul to the Battle Royal would inherit that ancient power.
But his plans were disrupted.
Because her soul scattered.
Otherwise, he would have sacrificed his own daughter immediately after her birth.
Even if Skyler didn’t love her that deeply yet, his heart still ached. Her gaze, filled with so much love whenever she looked at him, still flashed in his mind. His heart wasn’t made of stone. How could he remain unaffected?
He wanted to at least change her fate in this never-ending illusion. To give her at least one life with a happy ending, even if the Riruru he met in the trial was nothing more than an illusion of a past that had already come to a sealed end in reality.
Skyler also wanted to torture the Head of the Angels and tear the man apart piece by piece until nothing recognizable remained.
And he wanted to do it in reality if he ever left the trial and found that man still alive.
To do that, Skyler made further changes to the trial, altering his own life so that even if he forgot everything, he would still walk the path where he would meet Riruru. With that, his consciousness faded into the darkness, and his memories were erased once more.
Just like Skyler expected, he forgot everything once again in his 62nd life.
It became his first reality again.
In that life, Skyler even accidentally found the Mythic Spirit Pool he had sworn never to search for and ended up attaining the Special Spirit Constitution in his next life.
Due to that, he also inherited the power of the Spirit Race and became partially Spirit.
But he didn’t remember.
Otherwise, he would have been furious enough to want to destroy his own body.
After that, as time passed, there were moments when Skyler would remember some of his past lifetimes, and moments when he wouldn’t remember even one.
Whenever Skyler remembered, he would happily try to alter the course of his life.
But a few events became constant throughout those numerous lifetimes.
He would meet Riruru.
He would gather all of her soul fragments.
Yet, in the end, no matter how much power Skyler had, he would still fail to protect her.
He would die at the hands of Max or the so-called good people within Max’s team.
He would be betrayed by those he trusted because the higher beings would deceive them with false promises, offering to save their planet in exchange for Skyler’s life.
In those muddled lifetimes, Skyler even gained a third pair of wings after Heaven sighed at his fate and began to pity him.
After obtaining the third pair of wings, whenever he awakened his race in a new life, he would inherit the powers of all the races he had awakened in his past lives.