Chapter 391: Lord Rain (2/2)

”You already know that. Why are you so dim?” The lich insulted. ”I'm questioning the praise she gave you,” it shook its head.

”She was here,” Arthur ignored him and sighed. ”I guess I kept her waiting for a long time,” he stood up from his spot, breaking the prison around him.

”Ho?” Lord Rain seemed surprised. ”You are more abnormal than she painted you to be. Are you sure that it's okay for you to exist?”

”What do you mean?” Arthur stared at him.

”Such an anomaly in the world, it can't go unpunished,” Lord Rain placed the plant down, tenderly as if fearing for it. ”I'm sure you have noticed it too, no? Responsibilities, disasters, and the so-called fate all rushing toward you.”

”Coincidences,”

”Of course, you would think so. We all fear being manipulated by a higher being. Why do you think atheists exist?” Lord Rain walked toward the door and opened it. ”Come, let's have a chat.”

”I need to leave,”

”You are exactly as that witch said you were: always in a hurry to do the next important thing. How about, for a change, trying to take a look around the present instead of the future?”

Arthur hesitated as he heard this. If it were something Gala wanted him to hear, he would listen to it. However, this lich was like a box full of truths he avoided, and the moment it opens its mouth, the world would be left in shambles.

”Believe me, this conversation is one you wouldn't want to miss,” Lord Rain promised, and Arthur nodded eventually before following after him.

The lich took him toward a flower bed with two rocks, a place that reminded Arthur of Master Ronin. Lord Rain sat on one of the two rocks and offered for Arthur to do the same.

”How did you know that I'm the one Gala talked about?”

”A hunch,”

”That's a lie,”

”It's the golden aura and the desire to be one with you,” Lord Rain's words send chills in Arthur's spiritual spine. ”There's a force that pulls everything toward you, no matter if it was a fortune or disaster.”

”Are you saying I'm the reason bad things happened around me?”

”Are you denying it?”

Arthur was silent as a locked memory, one he desperately held back, rose to the surface. The war that occurred because of his existence, The Outsider, in the trial of the holy crown. The Ilios Empire had a prophecy that when the outsider appears, the end is near.

The desperation to survive as an empire drove them to desperate measures, one of them being the plan to swallow up the Yalveran Union.

He was the reason the war started, and he was the reason that it ended. The massacre he unleashed on the soldiers of the Ilios Empire was fresh in his mind. The cries of the soldiers, their disintegrating bodies, and the tears they shed as they breathed their last.

”That's not all, isn't it?” Lord Rain seemed to know of things that Arthur didn't know. ”There are other disasters that happened to people close to you,”

”What are you trying to say, lich?”

”I want you to face the things you need to accept,” the lich said with a grin. ”That's what Gala wanted me to do, to make you accept the blood on your hands.”

”I'm not the reason,” Arthur shook his head as Ellen's face appeared in his mind. His feud with Tyrin, the Enders' pawn, was probably how the Enders got to her. Tyrin was one of the few who knew of his friendship with Ori.

”I know it's hard,” Lord Rain looked at his bony hands. ”There's so much that we can care about: your friends, your family, the people you need to protect. The world is full of suffering, and you are unable to contain it all. You are unable to keep thinking about it. That's why you ignore it, seal it away, and act as if you are nothing but a victim.”

As he heard the words, Arthur felt the boundaries protecting him breaking down. The words the lich said made the questions he ignored at night resurface, filling him with dread.

'Where is my family? Where are my friends? What happened to them? Is it because I failed? Why does it need to be me who grows stronger?' Arthur grabbed his head as his aura wavered.

”You need to do everything: you need to save the City of Shades, you need to save Guren, you need to help Dia, you need to kill Gala, you need to build Hidden City, and the list goes on.” Lord Rain kept mirroring him.

'Why am I the one who needs to be a savior when no one else bothered when I needed saving? Why does it always end with me being the one in the wrong?' Arthur felt as if he was being devoured.