Zarek didn't react very much to these words. His mind had already put it together before the Hero got to that point in his words.
It seemed that the system messing around with time had allowed this to happen. Maybe this was a version of Zarek from his other lives, or maybe it was this one, or maybe it was exactly how it felt… becoming a pillar that fused them all together.
The Hero had specifically mentioned Pillars, actually. It was a bit complicated to describe, but from what Zarek understood, a Pillar was a person or thing that warped the timeline around them.
For example, when he killed that freshman back in the Temp Duplicate Godsfall Tear, he had been seamlessly plucked out of the timeline as though nothing at all had happened. Logically speaking, from a layman's understanding of time, that one disappearance should have changed everything that happened.
But, it didn't. As for why? It was because Zarek was present. He acted as an anchor on his own timeline, forcing things to bend back toward his direction.
After the freshman died, there was only one Pillar remaining, so unless the freshman decided to come back and challenge Zarek—something that would have been a truly foolish decision—nothing would change.
If something similar was happening here, then Zarek's Hero Spirit was likely the accumulation of all his life's achievements, a fusion of them all. It represented the pinnacle of what he was in all aspects, both path and future.
In this way, he had ironically slipped into a form of Hero that should have been extinct.
After the creation of the system, only Hero Spirits had been able to be awakened rather than True Heroes. Those Hero Spirits, in kind, had managed to allow even greater progress because the best of the Hero Candidates were able to take advantage of multiple Hero Spirits at once.
But now, Zarek… he might only have a single Hero Spirit, but that Hero Spirit was himself. He had stumbled onto becoming a True Hero by proxy.
Now, whether this was a good thing or bad thing… it was actually hard to say.
How did Zarek stack up to those True Heroes of the past? Was he among the strongest? Was he far weaker? Was this more of a nice pat on the back while in reality being a middle finger to his future ceiling? Was he forever capped by his own weakness?
After all, Zarek had ultimately died three different times.
Were there reasons for that? Sure there were. But ultimately it meant that the bottom line could be summarized in a single phrase.
There had been people on Earth that could threaten his life.
From what Zarek could tell about this outside world, though many of those so-called geniuses lacked real battle experience, their average potential was even faintly beyond the very best Earth had to offer.
Of course, that was just on average, and he was also specifically referring to the Demons. There were certainly those with far more potential than the Demons he had already met on Earth. But…
Zarek knew that there were two stronger Demons that he had yet to meet. In addition, the Demons he had met had generations that came before them, and generations that came before that.
How powerful were they? Did those generations have even stronger Demon-level geniuses?
And if those people were considered inferior to the Heroes of the past such that they could only use Hero Spirits rather than becoming True Heroes…
Then how much further behind was he for relying on a Hero Spirit that was just himself and himself alone?
It was because Zarek had thoughts like this that his first reaction wasn't excitement. Well, that and the fact he quite literally still didn't have a body.
However, he was still calm nonetheless.
Axiograft.
This Talent that he was chasing after, the very one he had planned out his life perfectly for, was now in his hands. The fact that he now had a Hero Spirit that seemed to allow him to tap into all the strength he had had in his previous lives was game-changing.
His original plan was to use Axiograft to slowly unlock the building blocks he had forged in previous lives, but now that didn't seem necessary. If he could successfully reconstruct his body, then his strength…
It would be on a completely different level.
However, even then, Zarek still wasn't excited. That was because he realized now the kind of trouble he had gotten himself into.
The Hero was certainly not the only one aware of all of this. The Hero Association certainly was as well… and he had made no attempts to hide his Rebirth status.
Even if he wasn't so bold with his words, just his experience in fighting and the way he had manipulated Time Godsfall would be a dead giveaway.
And if the story the Hero told was true, then the ones watching the ongoing Hero Trials probably already wanted nothing more than to put his head on a silver platter.Love this story? Show support at MV2LEMPYR.
'In an organization like that one, it's almost certainly split. There's probably a few people who want to lean into changes of the system more, and then there's another group that wants to follow the teachings of the Hero more closely…'
Just by experience alone, Zarek knew this had to be the case. Where there were humans—or, rather, humanoids—there would always be conflict and internal clashes.
Zarek also doubted that the Hero could directly communicate with them, and he also got the feeling that even if he could, he probably wouldn't. That was because from the tone of the Hero… he wasn't quite sure of Zarek either.
Ultimately, Zarek was in a love-hate relationship with the system. On the one hand, he was the holy grail creation of the system to this point. But on the other hand, if he chose to work with the Hero, he would be working to destroy the system and undo all of its hard work in the future.
To the system, there was no such thing as an apex creation. Once it formed one Zarek, it would immediately turn its attention to creating a being even better than Zarek. And then once it succeeded again, it would act again.
It would never be satisfied. That was why the creation of the Hero Spirits didn't end things even though the creations were stronger than the True Heroes of the past.
It was insatiable.
Clearly, because of the way it saw the timeline as one big mesh of things happening all at once, the system probably already knew that Zarek would inevitably act to try and stop it.
But by the same token, it probably needed Zarek to continue growing because that was its original directive. The system would probably never act directly in an attempt to kill Zarek, and it would continue to follow its own underlying rules, but that didn't mean it wouldn't throw everything it could at him nonetheless.
Zarek took a breath and exhaled, his thoughts having finally been completely organized.
"Alright. Thanks for the information. Any advice on how I'm going to reconstruct my body, then?"
The voice chuckled again. This Zarek was quite interesting to him. Usually, people would ask him what they could do for him. They might even be tripping all over themselves for advice. But Zarek was so very casual about it, and hardly even asked any clarifying questions.
"Reconstructing your body? Well, there's nothing you can really use to do that here unless you plan to use a Lurker as fodder."
"Sounds like a plan," Zarek said, even though he had still yet to figure out the logistics.
He hadn't come across a single Lurker despite being stuck here for months, and he didn't even know how to move if he didn't have a body. Honestly, he wasn't even sure if reconstruction was actually possible in the first place, it was just that he had to believe that it was. Otherwise, it was as good as accepting that he was going to die here and now.
"Hm… Well, the only advice I have for you is think of Core Harmony."
After the Hero said this, his presence was just gone. Zarek still got the feeling that he wasn't 100% sure of whether to stand with him or not. And… he honestly didn't seem to care much whether Zarek lived or died right now either.
For someone who could see all points of time at once, it was the most unsettling sort of reaction he could have had. Why would he act like this? Did he see a future where Zarek definitely died already?
These thoughts might have weighed someone else down, but though he was smart enough to think of it, Zarek casually tossed it all to the back of his thoughts without much of a care, his expression calm.
Where was he going to find a Lurker if he hadn't run into a single one all of this time?