How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 296

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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How to Survive as the Second Son of a Magic Family (296)

“…I promised. Yeah.”

Leo’s gaze remained downward, still pressing his forehead. He muttered as if talking to himself, then spoke in a clearer voice.

“I’ll tell you the truth. You can move through time, but I can’t.”

“…”

He said it more honestly and directly than I expected. Since it was a fact we both tacitly knew, he must have thought there was no reason to delay his answer any longer. Despite it being something I had guessed, contrary to my feelings, my body was stiffening rigidly.

“It’s as I said at first. I… don’t know what I did in the time you’ve passed through. Unless it’s something you experienced or time you spent together with me, memories don’t come to me, and even those can’t really be called my memories. They’re all just information extracted from your experiences. Information carved into my head in the form of knowledge.”

Leo paused briefly, caught his breath, and continued speaking.

“That’s not memory. It’s just information that ‘Lucas Ascanien experienced terrorism.’ The me you know probably did various activities at the Penthalon opening ceremony that day, right? What did I do?”

“…You warped the people sitting in the arena to Brandenburg New National Park. Before that, you watched the opening ceremony countdown with Elias.”

Leo fell silent, then smiled.

“I see. I remember giving you the warp coordinates for the New National Park and the spectator seats. No, I should say ‘I have the information.’ But I’m not sure about the rest. So I watched the opening ceremony countdown with Elias. It’s interesting that I moved the same way in the world that’s already disappeared as I did this time.”

“…”

“The reason I said those things at the end of that day was, honestly speaking, because of my greed.”

Greed.

He had said this before. Back then, he called it selfishness.

“Because the me you’ll meet next time won’t be the me who experienced terrorism with you, but the past me who knows nothing. The me you’ll meet won’t be the one who waited for death together with you and other friends in a world where 1.37 million people died. The me from that day can never be with you again no matter what I do, and the me you’ll return to after leaving behind the me who crossed the threshold between life and death with you that day will be the me who was peacefully sitting in my room looking at documents, not knowing what would happen. That…”

Leo’s voice gradually trembled and then cracked dryly. With his gaze downward, he muttered in a faint voice as if talking to himself.

“Must have been unpleasant to the me on the verge of death.”

“…”

“When I woke up and heard you say we should go to Bavaria, honestly, I was relieved. It was the current me, not some other me, who got to be with you. At the same time, if you turned back time once more in the future, I would be cut off from you moving forward. Like the me who died at the venue. And indeed, time was turned back after that, and I was cut off.”

Cut off.

This was Leo’s perspective on his own situation. I couldn’t imagine the fundamental anxiety he must have felt along with joy that day. Even though I thought I was mentally prepared, I wasn’t. Although I had anticipated that content, the truth spoken by the real Leo moving and living, not my simulation, in his language and his voice—the eyelids that blinked faster at certain words and the fingertips that trembled finely despite pressing on the desk—were areas I hadn’t prepared for and couldn’t prepare for.

It felt like standing in a tide that grabbed my legs and swept me away in the blink of an eye. Feeling the shock rolling in like waves, I looked at him.

“What would you think if I said I felt chosen by you that day?”

An empty voice that didn’t expect an answer spread with a self-abandoning sentiment. Leo’s voice reached me detached from my senses, as if coming from another dimension. The lighting in the reception room stung my eyes and dimmed.

While I was frozen like stone, Leo continued speaking calmly, as if finally uttering words that had circled in his mouth hundreds and thousands of times.

“Since it’s always been this way, there’s nothing particularly strange about it. In other words, for you, the time you turn back is continuous, but for me, it’s a moment that never truly happened, just fragmentary information coming from a completely different world. There’s no reason to feel sadness about that. It’s just that my emotions were heightened because I was on the verge of death, as I said before.”

I waved my hand to mean wait, but Leo shook his head slightly in refusal. His eyes were still directed downward. It felt like he was deliberately not pausing because if he stopped talking, he would definitely not want to say more to me.

“Do you know what happens when you turn back time? You stop breathing.”

“…”

“Even so, unlike what I perceived, you probably went back to the past rather than died. When I accepted your memory from Primrose Pass, I didn’t find death in your memory. At least you wouldn’t have had the sensation of death. That was somewhat comforting.”

Leo let out a laugh with no strength in it.

“And the moment I realize you’re not breathing, I open my eyes in a past moment as if someone had turned off a machine and turned it back on. But at that time, I don’t know what happened to me. If I was in Parliament at that past moment, I continue to vote in Parliament without knowing anything, and if I was at school, I similarly attend classes without knowing anything. Then…”

“…”

“When I meet you, information finally comes from you. That’s how I know I saw your end. I don’t know whether to call it lucky or unlucky, but there are often cases where I’m turned back separately without seeing the end.”

Such cases would be when I turned back time in places where Leo wasn’t present. The moments he witnessed my cardiac arrest would have been during the Abraham incident and the Penthalon terrorism incident, and those memories would have returned when he ‘met me,’ as he said—when he received my contact or saw my face.

And following ‘you stop breathing,’ there was ‘as if someone had turned off a machine and turned it back on.’

Doesn’t this smell like something I’ve experienced before?

When returning from extra chapters to reality, my body collapses in that spot. While I’m in reality, time in the extra chapter doesn’t flow, or if it does, it flows only for an instant. Then when I enter the extra chapter from reality again, I move as if I had collapsed and come back to life. The Human student who woke me up then said ‘I thought you were dead’ and ‘I heard a thud just now so I came to check.’

Then, does the past turned back through retry become a kind of extra chapter? If so, the past world would stop at that moment. Just like extra chapters don’t run without me.

That’s somewhat hopeful. Though I wonder if creating a world that doesn’t run without me can truly be called hopeful, at least regarding Leo’s fate, it avoided the worst outcome. Even so, it can’t be called the best, and it’s definitely the lesser evil.

But what if, by chance, the characteristics just happened to overlap? In other words, even if it’s a low possibility, what if I really died without realizing it and that world continues with time flowing as it is?

My head is complicated. Neither Leo nor I can be certain of anything. No one knows the abilities this system gives.

I looked down at the tablecloth and continued speaking.

“…The time of the world I erased by turning back doesn’t continue flowing.”

“Whether the time of the world you turned back really flows or not, only the me who has already passed would know. ‘I’ will continue not knowing. I’m just considering the possibilities.”

“Since when have you been considering this?”

“Since before I heard the truth from you, when I was speculating alone.”

“…Then from the beginning, you thought there was a possibility that only your time would continue flowing in the world where time was turned back. Knowing there was that possibility, how could you tell me to turn back time all this while? When you were captured by Abraham, you looked at me and said let’s meet in the past. And continuously after that…”

I had expected this. I had expected even this far. However, there’s a big difference between expecting and hearing it directly. I came to this place today with a solution, yet despite that, now that I had heard the story directly from his mouth, I had to try to maintain my composure. Leo seemed to be looking at me, perhaps because I showed an unexpected reaction.

I composed my voice and asked again.

“Why did you tell me to turn back time?”

“The scene I witnessed was so horrific that I couldn’t help it.”

I felt the illusion of the world before my eyes shaking in a place without heat haze. I looked at the person sitting in front of me. I couldn’t even properly tell what I was looking at.

“You would feel pain while I saved you and went back again. You ended up dying as the price for turning back time… I said that because I learned for the first time that day that your breathing stopped. And after that, because I realized that you don’t think you’re dying yourself, and that you actually live a continuous life without dying, I spoke considering your situation.”

“…”

“You don’t turn back time carelessly. Every moment was the result of agonizing for the best choice. Knowing that, what should I say to you as a friend?”

I didn’t answer. Then Leo stared at me and continued speaking.

“If you don’t turn it back, you can’t even create the best worldline. You need to be alive in some world. If I get swayed by my own vague anxiety and beg you not to use your ability, and you become unable to use your ability because of that? Then you would end completely dead. The possible world where you as an existence move forward would completely disappear. Now do you understand why I didn’t want to tell you?”

“Then you.”

I felt my head growing cold as I opened my mouth. You? ‘Because I realized that you actually live a continuous life without dying’? Then what about me? How should I accept that Leo lives a discontinuous life?

Even before I finished speaking, Leo firmly shook his head.

“My problem is uncertain. I definitely become a different being from the me you knew just before each time you turn back time, but that’s still Leonard Wittelsbach nonetheless. In a situation where I don’t even know whether I’m alive alone in the world you left or not, what do you think my best choice should be?”

“That’s nonsense. You’re clearly not regarding yourself as a continuous entity. Whether the past world I turned back disappears or not, that’s enough now. You think of yourself as a different you.”

Yes. I know.

Normally, the difference wouldn’t feel severe. But as Leo said, when facing major life events that could endanger my existence as a person, ‘I’ become severed at that event as a turning point. The me before the event happens becomes a different being from the me who faced the event. An irreversible river runs between me and me.

You can’t know this before experiencing it. Those who have never experienced it can’t even guess that the me from one hour before an event happens is like the me from a moment one hundred million light-years away.

This is what I felt from my life in 21st century Korea, and it’s the same in Leo’s situation.

I understand why Leo said it was a minor problem. Problems of concept easily become objects of misunderstanding. However, to me who can understand his sensation, it’s no longer minor. It’s also true that his mind can’t cross over continuously, and it’s a clear fact that he feels alienation toward his other self like toward a stranger.

Leonard Wittelsbach, who faced death 2 minutes and 30 seconds ahead with me at the Penthalon opening ceremony, is a different person from Leo in front of me who successfully handled the Penthalon terrorism, and he died there. I believed that we who crossed the river together would once again defy death together, but he was left there, and I returned with fragments left by Leonard Wittelsbach who ended that day and imposed them on the more innocent Leo from before crossing the river.

The result is, ‘What if I felt chosen by you that day?’

My mouth tastes bitter.

“Yes. I regard myself as a different person.”

Leo nodded calmly. His gaze was directed toward me.

“I was prepared and am preparing. It’s fine if you just change your perspective. Even assuming the worst-case scenario happens and I remain in the time I disappeared, since considering that possibility I mentioned earlier, I’ve been prepared for everything in dealing with you.”

“‘You’ haven’t experienced being left alone in that time.”

“Right. I haven’t experienced it. But so what? Are you worried I don’t know the pain because I haven’t experienced it?”

That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to grab the hem of his clothes and reverse what had already happened—it was just a belated soliloquy uttered from such feelings. I also know it’s meaningless to him who has completed all preparations alone.

After Leo said that, he erased his expression.

“I want you to forget.”

“…”

“Sometimes not knowing is medicine. If you hesitate to turn back time because of this, I’ll regret today for the rest of my life. I told you as you wanted, so now forget.”

“No.”

At my refusal, Leo slightly narrowed his eyes. Fatigue filled his face.

“If I was going to forget, I wouldn’t have asked in the first place.”

“…”

I understand that fatigue. However, I haven’t been pestering him to tell me for no reason. Not because of curiosity, not because of impatience at being unable to bear uncertainty, and certainly not because I take lightly the heavy responsibility he feels for my life. Not because I think we need to know everything about each other. It’s because if he was carrying the burden alone, I needed to share it.

And apart from the shock I received from hearing the facts from his mouth now, I’m confident I can lighten his burden.

I caught my breath and looked at Leo.

“What if I could go back to the past together with the current you?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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