Chapter 123 (1/2)

The Successor (2)

The simulation had predicted over 12 billion cycles of reincarnation.

I couldn’t understand its meaning, but ironically, I understood it at the same time.

I vividly remembered my life as Choi Seung-Hyun.

-Active Mana: 9/9

-Potential Mana: 1

If there was a mission to be cleared with that body, and if that was an arduous destiny, wouldn’t it have been challenging to achieve it with Choi Seung-Hyun’s body?

The chance to succeed must have been that slim.

I asked, suppressing the fear of not wanting to know the answer.

“How many times have I repeated my life as Choi Seung-Hyun before I possessed this body?”

The spirit replied in a monotonous mental wave.

– The Successor has experienced an average of 3,000 repetitions from a single reincarnation.

The figure that made me dizzy.

That meant I repeated my life about 3,000 times every time I was rebirthed as a new entity.

“But didn’t you say that my life before this, when I was born as a Roco-something, I only had 1,400 repetitions?”

– ‘Roco-Gerös,’ which took place just before the life as ‘Choi Seung-Hyun,’ was an exceptional case. As the successor mentioned, his life had only been repeated 1,453 times. It was because all conditions were favorable, and the capability of the reincarnated being was outstanding. On the other hand-

I felt nervous since I could guess what her next words would be.

– Choi Seung-Hyun’s life was also an exceptional case beyond the average, but the approach was different. You have repeated that life more than 10,000 times and still failed to achieve your destiny.

Ten thousand times.

If that was true-

Should I say it’s fortunate that all of those memories had been forgotten?

It reached the point where it could be considered lucky that the complete retention of memory that [The Successor’s Eyes] guaranteed could not be activated after death.

As if she read my mind, she continued.

– [The Successor’s Eye] remembers and retains everything seen by the eyes and does not forget anything you saw in that life until you die. The key and most important memory of it is deposited deep into the unconscious and passed on to the next cycle. The most significant advantage of infinite repetition is that the Successor repeats that life unconsciously and makes the right choice.

That meant that in Choi Seung-Hyun’s life, or even in the life I was living right at that moment, I was making the optimal choices.

But then…

“No, wait. You said that I make the most efficient choices! Then why did I trust Angelica in the past life?!”

It was the worst mistake that I had committed in my previous life!

– It was during the first cycle that the parasitic being appeared in Choi Seung-Hyun’s life. An extreme butterfly effect had been created because of a future-telling being’s future that lived in the same period as him. Even if you had made a different future from the previous life, it was repeatedly twisted in the wrong direction because of the future seer’s presence.

When referring to a future seer… There was only one I could think of.

It was talking about Han-Seol.

When I thought about it, I realized Angelica wasn’t present in the future that Han-Seol saw.

It was because that was a future where the original Seo Jin-Wook had turned into a demonic king.

Even if those minuscule factors changed a bit, it significantly differed the way things flowed.

– But Choi Seung-Hyun had no fighting capability. He could not stand the events and waves of byways that the seer created every cycle. Even if she was removed from the beginning through other means, Choi Seung-Hyun was so weak that he failed for another reason anyway.

I could imagine instances wherein my past life had indefinitely repeated.

– In the case of the last cycle, it seemed lucky that she had disappeared early on. Still, the parasitic entity horribly attacked you even though you had a superior defense skill against brainwashing.

Although Han-Seol disappeared from the stage since Angelica kidnapped her-

That time, she died because of Angelica.

– In the end, the countless aggregate of experiences in your subconsciousness determined that destiny couldn’t be achieved in that manner. New methods such as ‘possession’ being utilized in the recent cycle were prepared for such cases.

There was still a critical explanation missing in there.

But before I dug into that, I decided to ask about the keyword that bothered me.

“What in the world does that word ‘destiny’ mean?”

The spirit replied as if it had been waiting.

– You must know of the Sebrarian Empire, right?

Indeed.

The great empire that many species wandered for, desiring the remnants that were nothing but fragments of it.

The mysterious group took pride in their superior technologies that no civilization at the time could imitate.

-Didn’t you ever find it strange?

“…?”

– The reason why no other species today can even imitate the technology of a civilization that existed way back in the past?

“Because the system is involved?”

-That is correct. Then what is the system?

I wouldn’t know.

I silently stared, waiting for an answer.

– The Sebrarian Empire fell in the ultimate war.

It was a piece of information that I already knew.

– At the moment when all life forms of all dimensions faced destruction, the Emperor of the Empire thought he could not just stand by and watch the great civilization get entirely wiped out. They decided they had to leave seeds- a ‘successor’ who would inherit their knowledge and power to rebuild the empire.

“…’

– But even if they wanted to evacuate them to another dimension, there was no other dimension left. If that were possible, the people would have been evacuated first.

It matched the content that I read from the [Door of Hope]’s description.

– Hence, the Emperor decided that if no other place made evacuation possible, he would evacuate them to another timeline.

What?

– However, as material time travel accompanied by matter and volume required tremendous resources, it did not fit the picture that the Emperor was drawing. The Emperor evacuated only the soul of the successor to back into the past.

“Wait, that’s a bit different from the knowledge that other species living in the same timeline know…”

– Yes, indeed. They are all wrong. Although the system explanation describes Sebrarian Empire in the past tense, the exact timeframe is not mentioned.

That was indeed the case.