Thoughts, debuffs, and lenses.
First of all, I’d like to apologize for the delay in posting—especially for not giving any notice.
November was a shit month. My car’s transmission broke, my fridge broke, and the laptop I use to write broke. I’m writing this on my work laptop, in the little free time I have.
I spent more money this month than in the last six combined, probably. So I had to pick up overtime at work just to get the bills paid.
I’d also like to apologize for something else: I ended up telling a lie without meaning to. This chapter will not be the one where Devas goes to another world (P)(A)(T). The rewards turned out to be far more numerous than I expected, and creating something coherent—along with coherent reactions—took way more words than I thought it would.
I know that can be annoying to read, so I decided to do the following: I’ll post a chapter today, December 15th. The next one will be on the 17th, then the 19th, then the 21st, then the 22nd, then the 23rd, and one on Christmas Day, the 25th.
I already have four chapters finished. I’ll write the rest during this time.
So even though I technically lied, I think the payoff makes up for it. I’ll also update the chapter about Devas’s Status and items after I’m done showing all the rewards.
I think that’s everything I had to say. The next chapter comes out on the 17th.
Good night, everyone—and enjoy the read!
(P)(A)(T)/CalleumArtori.
[...]---[...]
The first thing I felt was the warmth of the sun on my skin.
The first thing I noticed was that the warmth was false.
I opened my eyes, finding myself staring at the ceiling of the beach house in my Spiritual Realm. The white paint, worn by the sea breeze, was faded and peeling in several places.
The window beside me was open; that was where the sunlight came through.
I hesitated. I stayed there for five, maybe six seconds. Then I rolled to the side, sitting at the edge of the bed.
“Always this childish body… Fragile, weak…” I muttered, looking at the small hands of the body I inhabited.
My past self, no more than eight years old.
Slowly, I raised my left arm: it was whole, untouched, not devoured by the void. I touched my left eye with the fingers of the same hand: it was there.
False — a projection of my mind. The wounds still existed in the real world.
I shook my head and finally stood up. The wood was rough beneath the soles of my feet. I left the room without bothering to close the door behind me.
I didn’t need to look around to find my way; the beach house was the same. The same hallway leading to two other rooms: my grandfather’s, empty, and my mother’s and “father’s,” where Salem slept.
I went down the stairs slowly, the wood creaking beneath me despite the little weight this body carried.
On the ground floor, I walked to the living room. I passed the sofa and went straight to the shelf in the right-hand corner, where a familiar picture frame lay face down.
I picked it up. The photo was simple: a happy family, an older man, a younger man, a young woman. Three people, four faces.
The black silhouette beside my mother’s image smiled at me.
I turned the frame toward the center of the room. Slowly, the Shadow Puppet crawled out of the picture, clutching the edges of the frame and pulling itself out in a grotesque motion.
It stood before me: tall, six-foot-three, with a mad grin, a single eye — the right one — its sclera black, pupil red, insane.
The image was a sharper reflection of what had truly happened; the damage here was not concealed.
It looked down at me, then slowly shrank until it became a distorted mirror of my current child self. I stared at it. It stared at me.
I stared at myself.
“This is fucking bizarre…” I said. It said.
We both said it at the same time.
“Desperate times, desperate measures,” I spoke after a moment of silence.
“I know. I am you. We know.” The shadow snapped back, its tone bitter: “And yet it didn’t matter. In the end, we were still protected…”
“Funny, isn’t it?…”
“No.”
Two sighs echoed. I nodded toward the door with my chin and started walking. Two sets of footsteps followed.
The ocean breeze was gentle. But the sun was strangely warm. The sand was soft beneath my feet.
I walked across the beach and sat just before the waves reached, letting the salty water wash over my feet.
At my left side, another “me” sat down.
We stayed silent. I gazed at the horizon; the Shadow Puppet looked at the sky. Neither of us spoke. Words weren’t needed.
And yet, I wanted to talk — even if only with myself, just to put my thoughts in order. After all, that was why I had pulled the shadow out of the frame.
“How many days has it been?” I asked, staring at the sea.
“I don’t know. We don’t know.” I answered, staring at the sky. “But it can’t have been too many. We just need to check the stream.”
“I know, but I don’t want to open the stream now…” Too many notifications waiting there.
The Shadow Puppet scoffed, amused. As amused as I was.
“Talking to yourself out loud.” My voice came distorted from within the Shadow Puppet — mocking. “How far has our loneliness gone?…”
“It’s not that bad,” I shot back immediately. “Think of it as me sorting through my thoughts.”
“Thinking out loud, inside our own mind, to ourselves.” The reply I gave myself. “Again, how did we end up here?”
It was funny, in a way. To me, at least. I knew that, to others, this scene would be unsettling — after all, I was talking to myself inside my own mind.
There weren’t two beings. There was only one, a single mind. Split, in a way, but whole. I was the Shadow Puppet, the Shadow Puppet was me. A part of me, at least.
“The worst part.”
“The best part.”
I didn’t know which mouth had spoken which line. I sighed.
“Ozma isn’t here,” the distorted voice of the Shadow Puppet said.
“Nor Tyrian. Ozma’s probably helping the others with something in the kingdom. Same with Jinn,” I answered.
“Most likely. Jinn can’t sit still for a moment. A charm of hers, we’d say.”
“Trauma from being imprisoned for millennia, probably.” I scooped up a handful of sand with my right hand and molded it with a thought into the shape of the Relic of Knowledge. “Gods will be gods, no matter the world…”
“Can we really blame them for being what they are?”
“Playing devil’s advocate now?” I snorted, tossing the sand sculpture to the Shadow Puppet.
“Maybe we are. It’s a role we’ve played for a while.” The shadow caught the sculpture and crushed it back into grains, which swirled above its left palm.
From the grains, the sand reshaped itself: first, an omega. Then a knot of three intertwined arcs, seamless, without beginning or end. Then, a winding curve with arms spinning to the same side, like a sun in rotation. Then, a circle surrounded by eight delicate, symmetrical petals.
Finally, a cross.
The Shadow Puppet tossed the cross to me. I caught it with my right hand.
“Yes, I can,” I replied.
“Hypocrite.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
“True.”
I let the sand cross crumble, the grains slipping between my fingers.
“The stream is still live. We didn’t turn it off before passing out. At least we think we passed out.” I looked at the sky. The Shadow Puppet at the sea. “The spiritual camera is off. Should we?”
“No.” I answered. “I need to handle many things, one at a time.”
“Leave the chat for last, then?”
“That, and the rewards from killing the eye.”
“They must be worried.” The shadow pointed out.
“Ozma and Jinn can check on me at any time. They probably already did while I was ‘asleep.’ That must have eased some of the chat’s worry.” I answered.
“Or made it worse, depending on how long we were ‘asleep’ without any change in our state.” The shadow retorted.
“Fair.” I shrugged.
I stayed quiet for a while. The sound of the waves filled the air. I dug my toes into the wet sand.
Behind us, Nero walked lazily toward us. The Nightmare blinked, almost confused, his gaze flicking between me and the Shadow Puppet. Then he went straight to the shadow, rubbing his face against its back.
“Traitor,” I muttered.
“I must be the prettier one,” the shadow teased.
“It’s resonance: shadow, madness, Nightmare.”
“We know that, and yet we’re still upset that something of our own creation chose us over ourselves.”
“Hearing it out loud, it sounds stupid.”
“We are, aren’t we?”
“I like to think I’m not.”
“Lying to others is one thing. Lying to yourself is ugly.”
“True… true…” I sighed.
How long had it been since I’d ‘spoken’ to myself like this? Letting my thoughts run free, rethink and reflect?…
Nero stopped rubbing against the Shadow Puppet’s back and came to me instead. I gently stroked the Nightmare’s head with my fingers, scratching behind his ears.
The purring of the Nightmare, along with the wind and the sound of the waves, were the only noises around us.
“We’re stalling.”
“I’m thinking. That’s different. I don’t know where to start,” I shot back.
“At the beginning. Always at the beginning.”
“There is no beginning.”
“Then we just need to make one. We’ve done it before…” The Shadow Puppet stood, walked into the water, sank up to its neck, and let itself float on the sea. “First: our current state. We’ll get confirmation if we open our status.”
“We didn’t open the gift the girls made for a reason, did we?” The voice that spoke was deranged. Even carried by the waves and distance, I could hear it clearly.
“I didn’t have the time.”
“An excuse we told ourselves. Not entirely a lie, but we know the truth.”
I sighed, conceding. “I know…”
“We never marked this date on any calendar.”
“But I always know when it’s close. I never forget…”
I sighed again and pulled my status screen in front of my face. As expected, a small number had changed. Along with it, a message:
[Age: 22 years]
[Happy Birthday, Streamer.]
Like it or not, I already knew.
Even if I never wrote the date down anywhere, I could always feel it coming. It was like a shiver slowly crawling up my spine — I could sense it.
Not exact, but I could tell, weeks ahead, more or less when the day would come.
“I thought it would be a day before or a few after the Blood Moon.” I stroked Nero’s head as he lay down on my lap. “I should’ve known better… what a joke.”
“We waited for our birthday to open the girls’ gift. But it seems the moon got jealous and gave us a greater gift.” The shadow mocked, sinking deeper into the water. “How long has it been since we arrived in Terraria…?”
I closed my eyes. Frustrated, irritated, angry. At that point, I couldn’t tell which.
“Nine, fucking, months…” I growled.
“Nine months since we arrived. The date lines up with our birthday. Two births.” The voice wasn’t muffled by the water, even as the Shadow Puppet sank deeper and deeper. “Coincidence, isn’t it?…”
I didn’t answer. I just stayed silent, still, thinking — not out loud like before — eyes closed.
The wind began to howl. The sun vanished as clouds gathered overhead. I felt the water fall on my skin. The sea grew restless. Something in the depths opened its eyes.
I stretched out my right hand and closed my fingers around nothing. I caught something.
The image was sharper here inside.
I rose to my feet and struck forward without thinking.
When I felt the sunlight return to my skin, I opened my eyes again.
The sea was calm. My hand was empty.
“The Stream, maybe?…” I muttered. “But it’s never acted against me before. Never gave me a reason to think otherwise…”
From my shadow, the Shadow Puppet emerged. It dropped onto the sand beside me, sprawling out.
“Did it never give us a reason, or did we just not want to think about it? After all, what good would it do to dwell on it if we couldn’t change anything? We arrived in Terraria as fragile as anyone else — even thinking of resisting the stream was pointless.”
“And I can’t even be sure that thought is mine…” I let myself fall back, lying down on the sand beside the shadow.
Nero climbed onto the Shadow Puppet’s chest, curling up. I laced my ten fingers together, resting my hands on my stomach.
“This whole situation reeks,” I started. “I don’t know which thought is mine and which is something pushed to guide me down a path toward a specific end…”
“Fuck… it’s Alaya again. Just like that Counter Force shit.”
“Exactly.” For the sake of human history’s continuity, Alaya used the Counter Force to guide mankind. This felt no different. “At least, if I’m being guided, whoever’s behind it doesn’t seem to have bad intentions.”
“Are we sure that thought is ours? Convenient, isn’t it?” The shadow mocked.
“I wouldn’t even be having these thoughts if whatever’s manipulating me didn’t want me to have them. That is, if something really is manipulating me. It could just be coincidence.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no…” The Shadow Puppet replied soon after. “Either way, we can’t change much right now, can we?…”
“Yeah…” I sighed. And even that, I wasn’t sure of… My head was still pounding, and this situation was only making it worse.
I pulled my status screen back up. This time, I focused on another section:
-//-
[Current Status: Evolving, Adapting, Headache (High), Mana Burn (High), Hyper Vitality (High), Starless (High-Extreme) (Suppressed), MoonBite (High-Extreme) (Suppressed), The Outer Foreigner Presence (High) (Suppressed), Nightwither (Pseudo-absolute) (Suppressed)]
-//-
…At this point, it would’ve been easier to list what I didn’t have. And nothing was below “High.” How funny…
Well, I was fucked. Let’s go one step at a time.
I checked the debuffs in order, the first three: Evolving, Adapting, and Headache.
-//-
[Mana Burn]
Type: Debuff/Buff
Description: A debuff/buff caused by an abnormal surge of mana over an extremely short period of time within an abnormally resilient body.
The drastic increase in mana usually makes the host body explode. But, if the body is tough enough, the mana compresses and accelerates its flow, heating both physically and metaphysically, scorching the body and the soul.
Duration: lasts until the body adapts to the increased mana.
[..]
Effects:
Scorches the afflicted body from within.Burns part of the soul (Aura).Hinders mana control.Hinders spell/ritual/magic casting.Severely hinders ice/cold-related spells/rituals/magic (Negated by: Bone Helm).Increases the potency of fire-related spells/rituals/magic.Increases the potency of Sun Breathing.
[..]
~ The excess of mana sears your body and mind ~
-//-
So that was one of the reasons for my headache. And why the sun here felt fucking hot…
Nothing truly serious. It would pass with time, as my body and soul adapted to the mana. At least that was one less thing to worry about.
The description for [Hyper Vitality (High)] was almost the same, only tied to vitality. Even the final line was similar: The excess of life sears your body and mind.
Again, something that would pass once I adapted. Using all the Life and Mana Crystals at once, instead of gradually, had its price…
The next curse on the list was:
-//-
[Starless: What were stars?…]
Type: Debuff/Curse (Suppressed by: [The Streamer], Dryad’s Blessing, [Echo Humanitatis])
Description: A debuff/curse caused by direct and prolonged exposure to the [Starless Sky] or anything born from it.
It infects the body and mind of the target with “Knowledge from Outside,” causing various kinds of ailments, diseases, and curses on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels. It interferes with the natural regeneration of both body and mana.
As the infection spreads, the debuff/curse slowly consumes the concept of “Star” in the mind, body, and spirit of the afflicted, erasing piece by piece any light they associate with the sky, leaving only an empty void without stars.
[..]
Effects:Infects body, mind, and soul with “Knowledge from Outside” (Partially negated by: [The Streamer], Dryad’s Blessing).
Severely reduces natural body regeneration (Partially negated by: [Echo Humanitatis], Hyper Vitality, Dryad’s Blessing).
Severely reduces natural mana regeneration (Fully negated by: [The Streamer], Mana Burn, Dryad’s Blessing).
Severely reduces natural Aura regeneration (Partially negated by: Shadowflame, [Mystery Devourer], [Echo Humanitatis], Dryad’s Blessing).
Severely reduces natural Spiritual Energy regeneration (Partially negated by: [A Fragile, Rotten, and Almost Dead Seed], [Divine Anathema], Dryad’s Blessing).
Severely reduces natural Nightmare Energy regeneration (Partially negated by: Shadow Puppet, Dryad’s Blessing).
Consumes the concept of “Star” within the mind/body/soul/spirit (Partially negated by: [The Streamer], Sun Breathing, Demon Slayer Mark (Sun), Dryad’s Blessing).
Abnormally cools the afflicted body (Fully negated by: Sun Breathing, Bone Helm, Dryad’s Blessing).
Causes visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations (Partially negated by: [The Streamer], Shadow Puppet, Dryad’s Blessing).
[..]
~ Those things in the sky are not stars… ~
-//-
What a lovely line, that last one. I loved it, really—like cancer.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor,” Shadow Puppet pointed out.
“And I’ve always loved using it. Funny, isn’t it?”
Seriously, this whole debuff was horrifying. Just reading the description gave me chills, and what it actually did was even worse. Everything about it was repulsive, and I wanted it gone.
Which meant that, since not a single effect it caused wasn’t already being suppressed by something else—and it was still labeled (High-Extreme)—it would take a while to fade.
At least it wasn’t (Pseudo-absolute) anymore, like I remembered it had been before.
I was also surprised to find out that the seed I got back in Remnant was protecting me. I had kind of forgotten about it, with all the chaos since I came back to Terraria.
I slapped the sand and stood up, walking to the back of the beach house. Nero and Shadow Puppet didn’t follow, still lying on the shore.
Past the little garden Tyrian tended, I went to where I had planted the seed and knelt beside the mound of dirt. It looked exactly the same as when I planted it, except for one thing:
[Durability: 361684267512/1000000000000][Durability: 361684367512/1000000000000][Durability: 361684467512/1000000000000][Durability: 361684567512/1000000000000]
“…What the hell?” I muttered.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t checked the seed since I buried it, but those numbers looked a little insane, didn’t they? It hadn’t been regenerating one per second before.
Why had it jumped to a hundred thousand per second now?…
It didn’t take long for me to find the answer: Alalia.
I couldn’t feel much around my body—not without giving away that I was awake. But I could tell I was in the same room where I had spoken with Alalia before.
Her presence was unmistakable. It saturated everything. But I could still tell where her “real body” was: standing by the bed. And she hadn’t moved an inch since I regained consciousness… which was, honestly, kind of unsettling.
Obviously, she had taken it upon herself to guard me. Not just that, but to heal me as well—or at least, she was trying to.
I could feel her mana running through me: soft, gentle. Beyond healing me and suppressing the debuffs gnawing at me, it was also regenerating the seed’s durability.
…Which was a little concerning, if I’m being honest.
Not because it was bad—far from it—but because the number had already passed three hundred forty billion, and it was climbing at “only” a hundred thousand per second.
How long had I been asleep?…
I started doing the math in my head.
I didn’t know the exact number before the Blood Moon, but for simplicity’s sake, I assumed it was zero. If it was climbing at a hundred thousand per second, then to reach the current number would take around…
“Thirty-nine days…" My eyes went wide.
No way in hell I’d been out that long!
I yanked up the stream window so fast the letters blurred for a moment. My eyes shot straight to the calendar.
“Three days…” I exhaled, relieved. Incredibly relieved.
Holy fuck, I almost gave myself a heart attack…
I tossed the stream window aside without even glancing at the (CHAT). One thing at a time.
“The math doesn’t add up. We’re not that bad at numbers.” Shadow Puppet’s manic voice came from behind me. I didn’t need to turn to know he was carrying Nero in his arms. “Something made the durability grow faster. Any idea what?”
I stayed quiet, thinking.
It was a plant—or close enough. It needed water, soil, and sunlight to live and grow. In this case, water, soil, and sun were all the same thing: me.
“Mana Burn and Hyper Vitality are probably part of it,” I said out loud, before continuing: “The Demon Slayer Mark must have some role too. And on top of that…”
I glanced back toward the sea.
I could feel the sword in the depths. The only light in the abyss, waiting patiently for me to call it back into my hand.
“Creating something like Excalibur Asura changed a lot in here…” the shadow said, staring with its single eye in the same direction. “At this point, we can almost call the Spiritual Realm a Reality Marble, even if we can’t fully externalize it… but we don’t think that’s it. At least not completely, right?”
“Externalizing an inner world is different from what I did against ‘The Eye’…” I murmured.
During that fight with the wretched thing, I could literally feel the world itself being forcibly twisted. Not just the landscape—space, time, the very texture of reality was being overwritten as the presence of ‘The Eye’ consumed everything.
I would have been swallowed by it. I knew I would. Body, soul, mind… everything. My entire being knew that the world being rewritten over Terraria was utterly hostile to my existence.
So I matched it.
World for world. Eye for eye…
“…Alien for alien.” I hissed the words through my teeth as I stood up. “An alien system is an alien system, whether it’s made of crimson moonlight, orange mist, or crystal trees…”
“We are human,” Shadow Puppet stated.
“And that doesn’t change the fact that I’m an alien to literally everything and everyone that isn’t me,” I replied without thinking.
“Drowning in self-pity hasn’t been our style for a long time. We’ve already been through that phase. Don’t tell me we’re going back to drinking like a six-cylinder Opala?”
“Alcohol is too weak a poison for my body.” I tilted my chin, walking toward the beach. Shadow Puppet’s footsteps fell in beside me, keeping pace. “And I quit that for good a while back.”
“Oh, right. To set a good example.” The shadow laughed mockingly: “We slaughter thousands live with our own hands, but we avoid swearing out loud and quit drinking because kids are watching… how virtuous!”
I gave the shadow a sidelong glance. The smile on its face was as deranged as it was sarcastic.
“You’re fucking insufferable, and your existence pisses me off. You know that?”
“I am you.”
“And that says more about me than any line could.”
The way back to the shore was short.
I sat by the water’s edge, dug my feet into the wet sand, and pulled my status up again.
The debuffs MoonBite and The Outer Foreigner Presence were the same ones I already knew—except now they were on me, not someone else—and far more resistant to purging.
Everything resonated together like one massive painting: Starless was the black paint covering the canvas. MoonBite gave shape and color to the great full moon at the center. The Outer Foreigner Presence was the feeling the painting pressed onto anyone who looked at it.
At last, there was the canvas upon which this painting was being made:
-//-
[Nightwither: the night withers all things into the void]
Type: Debuff/Curse/Law (Suppressed by: [The Streamer], Dryad's Blessing, [Echo Humanitatis])
Description:Nightwither is the void’s declaration to nature. The night to the day. The proclamation of what comes from outside, upon what exists within.
Anything withered by Nightwither never returns to what it once was. When the void consumes, it is not only physical: it corrodes the soul and even the ‘memory’ the ‘world’ itself holds of what that being was.
The void consumes all things.
[..]
Effects:
Takes the physical concept of the withered part into the ‘void’. (Partially negated by: [Echo Humanitatis], Hyper Vitality, Dryad's Blessing).
Takes the ‘soul’ concept of the withered part into the ‘void’. (Partially negated by: [The Streamer], [Echo Humanitatis], Mana Burn, Dryad's Blessing).
Takes the ‘memory’ of the withered part into the ‘void’. (Fully negated by: [The Streamer]).
Takes the ‘history’ of the withered part into the ‘void’. (Fully negated by: [Echo Humanitatis]).
Takes the ‘world’ of the withered part into the ‘void’. (Fully negated by: [Echo Humanitatis]).
[..]
~ Dead, The Beast of the Abyss waits dreaming ~
-//-
The silence that filled the air after I finished reading was so absolute it felt like the sea and the wind themselves had frozen.
Maybe they had—everything here reacted to my emotions, after all.
Nothing moved. Nothing.
So I broke the silence.
“If memory serves, that last line is from one of H.P Lovecraft’s books, isn’t it?” The mad voice of the Shadow Puppet shattered the stillness.
“Not exactly…” I muttered back. “But I don’t think it makes a difference. Shit…”
I had suspected this for a while now, but that thing on the moon wasn’t just Terraria’s moon-thing, was it? It was the real one…
“One of that abomination’s titles on the moon is The Beast of the Abyss, isn’t it?… Should we kill ourselves now to avoid eternal torment at that thing’s hands, or wait a bit?”
“Neither. That thing is going to die.”
“Wow! Declaring the death of a fucking literal Outer God. Didn’t know we were that arrogant.” The shadow’s voice was somewhere between incredulous and mocking. “Shall I remind us of what we lost and what exactly we had to do just to kill the rotten, dead eye of that same being?”
“I said that thing will die, not that I’m the one who’s going to kill it. Stark and Rin are on the stream.” That was my answer.
“Oh, of course. Toss the Spider or the Fire Chicken into a fight with 'The Moon'. Brilliant strategy!” Nero tumbled out of the shadow’s lap as he began clapping enthusiastically. “Should we think up another apocalyptic creature to throw onto this bonfire of shit, or are those two enough?”
“For God’s sake, I hate you.”
“Once again, I am you.”
“I know…”
Closing my eyes, I let out a long, weary sigh while massaging my eyelids. I had a headache while being inside my own head. The whole situation was absurd…
“With our current condition properly laid out, and understanding that we’re essentially dealing with stage-four cancer—except it’s coming from outside the world—are we finally going to talk about that angler’s bullshit line?”
I opened my eyes, looked out at the sea, and said:
“The Guide Simon mentioned isn’t Dylan.”
“We never said it was. Simon said it was the angler of the previous generation, didn’t he? That implies a current one and a future one.”
“And many more before…” I sighed. "How did I miss that?"
“The title the NPCs carry, or the fact we never once analyzed one? We always found some excuse not to—whether to save SP or out of ‘privacy.’” The shadow scoffed, caustic. “Ha! Privacy. Hilarious… ‘The Moon’s’ trying to devour the planet and we’re worried about privacy.”
“Again, either something subtly manipulated us, or it was just coincidence, or…”
“…or it was me who stopped myself from doing it, for reasons I can’t even explain.” I finished the thought. My lips twisted into a self-deprecating smile. “Come to think of it, I never even analyzed the Pebble team, even when I was curing them of Brain Rot, did I?…”
“Nor did we analyze Simon’s earring. Would’ve cost us five minutes—less, really—but we kept making excuses…”
“Again, the question’s the same: why?” I looked upward.
The sky was a clear, bright blue, the sun shining high. It was a perfect summer day, if I had to call it something. Perfect, maybe. But the gray clouds gathering on the horizon told another story.
“If we go with the idea that it was us who stopped ourselves—and not some manipulation or coincidence—then we’ve got a few answers to consider. The most obvious one is instinct: something inside us thought analyzing one of the NPCs or Simon’s earring was bad and subtly stopped us.”
“Survival instinct…” I muttered under my breath, burying my feet deeper in the sand.
“Some people need to burn themselves to learn to stay away from the fire. We never got burned, did we?”
“Not unless I forced my hand into the fire on purpose…”
But the question still lingered, just in another form: why did my instinct stop me? Why did something inside me decide it was better to stay blind?
“Heh… in the end, we’re never really sure of anything, are we? Hasn’t it always been this way, forever?” The shadow sang, its voice echoing madly, before dissolving into the ground, vanishing, and returning to the photo it was cursed to haunt.
Silence fell over the scene again, this time lasting longer.
I must have sat there for a few minutes—less than ten—doing nothing. Just staring at the sea, shaping little sculptures of sand, then breaking them back into dust.
A few tiny castles the waves took away. I could’ve stopped them, but I didn’t bother.
I let the world act as it should, and I just played my part in it.
I rethought and thought again. The things I was certain of, the things I wasn’t. I thought about what I could think about, forced myself to think about what I didn’t want to think about.
I thought and rethought.
Why me? I’d asked myself that question hundreds of times.
Why, of all the people on this small, pale blue dot, me?
There were better people, worse people. People with sadder stories, happier stories. Men and women, children, the elderly. Out of all of them…
…why me?
In the end, the only answer I found was:
“I guess everything I ever believed in my whole life was nothing more than what I could see through these lenses.”
I closed my eyes, letting out a long breath through my mouth.
…And even that, I wasn’t sure of.
Then I opened my eyes back in Terraria.
[...]---[...]
Devas will say he’s not crazy. Everyone else will say he is. I won’t confirm anything.
Finally, about Devas’s “Forgetfulness” / “Lost Memories.” The whole “something he should know, but doesn’t.” I know this might irritate some people, so let me explain: it didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been there—literally—since chapter 2.
The reason why he “forgot” has been there since chapter 1.
I won’t say more than that to avoid spoilers.
I’ve also created an (OMAKE – NON-CANON). It already has two chapters up on (P)(A)(T).
It’s basically an omake where Devas isn’t the protagonist, but he is part of the story. The protagonist is a French girl who gets reincarnated and is invited to a Group Chat, where all the missions are horror-based—movies, TV shows, games, anything involving terror, horror, and mystery.
Devas is in this Group Chat as well. The reason he was invited, and what he’s actually doing there, will be explained in the OMAKE.
Here’s the title for you:
Title: After Reincarnating in a World Where Various TV Shows and Movies Are Real, I Was Invited to a Dimensional Group Chat, But One of the Other Members Is an Overpowered Protagonist Pretending to Be a Normal Guy for Some Unknown Reason!
Comedy!