From that day onward, under Persson’s instruction, I drifted through the history of humanity—
especially while immersing myself in the bloody tides of war.
He taught me many things.
The hidden history of mankind, the existence of other Perpetuals, Nessos—the man who would one day be called the Emperor—and even the nature of psykers and the vile Warp.
He gave me information and knowledge I had never possessed, and passed down to me the distilled essence of experience he had accumulated over countless years wandering battlefields.
Thanks to his advice, the potential of my overwhelming regeneration, resurrection, and spatial manipulation expanded dramatically.
My proficiency and skill grew at a truly exponential rate.
Because of that, the two of us could use my [Passage] to arrive anywhere in the world in an instant.
On top of that, I was researching a ridiculously overpowered combat technique: applying spatial manipulation to create one-way portals and rain unilateral attacks upon enemies before they could even react.
As they say, human history is the history of war. Ironically, technological progress becomes the weapon that kills the humans who created it.
Within that cruel cycle, the two of us silently followed behind Persson as he taught us.
...Why two of us, you ask?
Ah, introductions are overdue.
Let me introduce Alexei, the kid who saved me back when that old man misunderstood me and I was about to die to that creepy dagger.
Unlike the other refugees, Alexei was a child who had lost his entire family after being swept up in the war.
After I saved him from getting killed in the bombardment, perhaps he imprinted on me.
He refused to leave my side, clinging to me like a baby duck following its mother, so in the end, I decided to let him travel with us.
But Persson, who lived by the iron rule that Perpetuals should not form deep connections with humans, was far from pleased with the situation.
As time passed, one day—
while we were taking a brief rest in a desolate city caught in the middle of the East-West War, America’s second civil war, Persson called for me.
"Let’s talk for a moment."
"What is it?"
Persson opened his mouth heavily as he watched Alexei in the distance. By then, the child had grown into a tall, handsome young man with blond hair, and was gathering spoils in my stead.
"Noah, how long do you intend to keep that boy with you?"
"Well... that’s up to him. I’m not so coldhearted that I’d turn away someone who wants to stay with me. And as you can see, he does his work very diligently."
"...This is what I am trying to say, Noah. Perpetuals like us should not share bonds too deep with humans."
"Oh, not that again."
Seriously, there was a limit to his hypocrisy.
The man had built a lovely family for himself with a wife in the distant past, yet he was strict only with me.
I let Persson’s needless meddling go in one ear and out the other, then opened a [Passage] and headed over to Alexei.
How was I supposed to send away someone who had already become family...?
"Yo, Alex. Getting everything sorted?"
"Ah, Noah. As you can see, I picked out only the expensive equipment."
"Oooh, you’ve got good instincts, all right. This lot... should we sell it to Canada?"
"Yes, that would be a good choice. With the American Civil War still dragging on, Canada is investing heavily in its military strength as well."
"Mm, I knew it. Teach you one thing, and you understand ten."
I lightly patted Alexei’s ballistic helmet, then pulled out my smartphone to check my assets.
It was the result of following Persson around and receiving his instruction while, at the same time, sparing no massive capital investment to prepare for the future—because I knew all too well the horrific future that awaited this world.
At the moment, the American Civil War had sent global finance crashing across the board. Meanwhile, tangible assets—gold in particular—had soared.
I had read the signs of civil war in advance, sold every stock and coin I owned at their peak,
and steadily piled the vast quantities of gold I acquired from the battlefield into my own private hideaway space. As a result, my wealth had multiplied not merely tens of times, but hundreds.
I showed Alex my phone screen with a smug grin.
"Heh heh. See that?"
"Wow... stock prices have fallen a lot."
"But that makes this an excellent situation for us. Look at that overwhelming price of gold! Money! Whoo-hoo! We’re rich!"
Alexei burst out laughing when he saw me hopping around between the dead American soldiers.
"Haha, are you really that happy?"
"Of course. What I love second most after battlefields is... uh, our Alex. And after that, it’s amassing money."
"Haha! Isn’t that a little too materialistic?"
"No, no. It’s called desire. It is humanity’s essence. Desire is the foundation and fuel of growth. It is the very concept that led primitive humans to become the civilized people we are today!"
"There goes that bullshit philosophy of yours again."
"I’ll have you know it’s the truth of life."
For the record, I had urged Persson several times to try investing his assets too.
He had actually taken my advice and dabbled in stocks a few times.
But astonishingly, that old man Persson had luck and skill in financial matters—including stocks—that had gone beyond rock bottom and plunged straight into the abyss.
Every company he bought shares in either collapsed overnight or turned out to be a scam.
No wonder he had spent thousands of years doing nothing but soldiering day and night instead of trying to make money.
He was simply a man born with absolutely abysmal financial luck.
Alexei and I lived like family as we followed Persson from battlefield to battlefield.
And time passed mercilessly,
until a full eighty years had gone by.
Then, at last, the moment I had hoped would never come found me too.
*
Alexei, once a gallant young man who steadfastly followed me through battlefields,
now lay in a hospital bed, utterly aged and steeped in the aura of death.
The reason he had fallen like this was, naturally, the weight of time.
In other words, old age.
In contrast, I was a Perpetual. I looked exactly as I had that day in the past—not a single wrinkle, not aged at all.
"Noah..."
"Yeah... what is it? Are you thirsty? Want some water? Or maybe cola?"
"No... I believe the time has come."
At Alexei’s fading voice, I found myself whining like a child.
"No..."
"Noah."
"I said no."
"Noah..."
"Fuck this!! Hey, just... can’t you not die?! Huh? You... you said you’d spend your whole life repaying me! So why the fuck are you trying to leave, you bastard?!"
Hot tears fell mercilessly from my eyes, plopping onto the floor.
I could not even remember how long it had been since I had cried like this.
Our Alex quietly watched me make this disgraceful spectacle of myself. Then, holding the hand I was thrashing about on the bed, he gave me a warm smile filled with sorrow.
"Noah... I am so worried about you."
"Then don’t fucking die! Let’s go around together like we used to!"
"In your eternal life, you will keep being hurt by inevitable fate... and I find that so terribly pitiful..."
Tears ran through the deep wrinkles in Alexei’s face as he said those words.
"Then if you think I’m pitiful, don’t die...!"
Only then did the words Persson had once spoken return to me, carved deep into my bones.
"Perpetuals should not form deep connections with humans."
Those words were a warning meant to prevent monstrous Perpetuals from bringing harm upon mortal humanity.
But at the same time, they were cruel advice born of concern for the heart of the Perpetual who would be left behind alone, torn apart.
"Noah... please do not grieve too much. The children I leave behind will serve you wholeheartedly, so that you never feel my absence."
"No... I said no..."
"You are a twisted person in some ways. Your hands are cruel, yet you are strangely merciful. You longed for affection, and yet you gave it freely without restraint."
"Nngh...! Sob, Alex...!"
"Meeting you... made me... truly... happy..."
Leaving behind those final words, Alexei slowly drew his last breath.
Beeeeep—. Amid the indifferent sound of the heart monitor,
I clung to his body as its warmth faded, and wailed until it seemed the hospital room itself would collapse.
And so, amid anguished sobs, I sent away my first family.
*
Alexei’s funeral.
Our Alex had been white, but contrary to what he looked like, he had unexpectedly been a Buddhist.
He said he liked the Buddha’s teachings and Buddhist philosophy, or something like that.
So his funeral was held according to Buddhist rites.
Hah... the setting was a typical Western funeral, but instead of a priest or pastor, a bald monk was striking a wooden moktak and chanting sutras. It made an incredulous laugh escape me.
Leaning my back against a tree far away from the others,
I aimlessly bobbed my head to the steady sound of the moktak, then took a swig of the vodka in my hand.
Nice beat. Maybe I should become a Buddhist too while I’m at it?
As the burning alcohol slid down my throat, my mind grew slightly hazy, and for a fleeting moment, the wound of grief seemed to blur.
But it was nowhere near enough to completely conceal that enormous sense of loss.
"Our Alex... fuck... have a drink with me... get up and drink with meee... you ungrateful bastard..."
"You are a sorry sight."
I turned toward the familiar voice and saw Persson standing there, looking down at me with pity in his eyes.
"Ahh, you came, old man? Why are you only showing up now? I told you to visit him in the hospital, fuck... I kept texting you and trying to call... but you ignored every message, you bastard..."
"Noah... how long do you intend to go on like this?"
"What else am I supposed to do?! I have to grieve, you fucking bastard...! My family died!!!"
"..."
"You must feel so relieved, huh? The kid who was always such an eyesore to you finally died!"
"...Watch your words."
I violently hurled the bottle I was holding onto the ground and glared fiercely at Persson before me.
Crash! Glass scattered in every direction.
"Alexei may have been the kid I took in, but we were family who traveled together for a long time...! He was a comrade who risked his life and crossed battlefields with us!!! How can you be so heartless?!"
"That is why I told you."
"Ah, that bullshit about how ‘Perpetuals should not form deep connections with humans’? Fuck you, asshole. You had a woman and children yourself back in the day."
"..."
"When your wife and children died, did you fucking think, ‘Ah, I’m a Perpetual, so that was just a brief amusement’?"
"...I warned you in advance because I understand your grief better than anyone."
Deep sorrow lay on Persson’s face as he said that.
"So that means I should turn away from people, never form attachments, and live alone forever? That’s why you told me to abandon Alexei and leave him behind when he had nowhere to go."
"Yes."
Thud!!!
At that moment, Persson was struck by a fist that abruptly appeared from thin air, and he rolled pathetically across the ground.
I had opened space and thrown a punch through it.
Looking coldly down at Persson, sprawled on the ground with blood running from his mouth, I muttered in a voice full of rage.
"You... did you think I stayed quiet all this time because I knew nothing?"
"W-What...?"
"Did you think I didn’t know why you went out of your way to teach me and help me at your side?!"
"...So you knew."
Persson lowered his head.
As though a project he had worked painstakingly on for a long time had fallen apart.
"You were raising me as a weapon to stand against that absurdly powerful Perpetual named Nessos, because you were afraid he would lose his fucking mind someday and do something insane. I knew it all along."
"How... how did you know that?"
"Otherwise, why would you have taught me Enuncia? Why would you have handed that forbidden language over to me?!"
Perhaps because Olanius Persson, a Perpetual who had lived even longer than the Emperor, believed the Emperor to be the greatest and most dangerous symbol of arrogance—one that could lead humanity to ruin, a new threat to humanity in and of himself—
he had passed down to me, in their entirety, all the fragments of Enuncia that he had hidden and recorded away from the Emperor’s eyes.
Powerful words capable of altering realspace itself—Enuncia—were already grotesquely tattooed across my back.
"You used my loneliness and my heart to try and use me as a weapon."
"...Then would you be willing to become a weapon for humanity? Noah, you may not understand it yet, but... that man is truly dangerous."
"Hah...!"
With a hollow laugh, I lightly snapped my fingers.
Snap.
At once, dozens of small portals—black cracks in space—appeared around Persson, and sharp transparent blades rose from every direction.
It was an absolute crisis. If he moved even slightly, his entire body would be sliced apart.
"Say that kind of bullshit one more time, and I’ll tear you to pieces right where you stand."
"Noah..."
"At the very least, you should have mourned Alexei. At the very least... you should have come to see him once while he was dying!"
"..."
"Get lost. And never show your face in front of me again."
I pulled another bottle of vodka from a portal and began drinking again.
Persson watched me for a moment, then disappeared into the distance.
*
A month after I sent Alexei away.
Having barely escaped my grief, I stood face-to-face with the eleven men and women before me.
"O-oh... hello? You’re our Alex’s children... But why are there so many of you? I thought there would be, at most, three."
As I stood there sincerely flustered, a middle-aged woman who appeared to be the eldest among them stepped forward.
"For your sake, our father took three wives and diligently had children with them."
"...Hah, well. He was always popular with women. Wow... your mothers must have had it rough."
Alexei’s children had inherited his superior looks perfectly. Every one of them was a handsome man or beautiful woman with dazzling blond hair and blue eyes.
Even their features were identical as though stamped from the same mold, to the point that it was a little uncanny.
No, why the hell were that guy’s genes so strong?
As I stood there dazed, the woman at the front bowed deeply and swore an oath to me.
"In accordance with our father’s final will, the Yurick Family shall serve Noah forever."
"We shall serve you."
At her cry, all of Alexei’s children in the room bowed their heads in unison and swore absolute loyalty to me.
"Ahaha... r-right. Wow... that’s certainly reassuring."
Alex, it’s all good, but honestly, your children are a little overwhelming.
What the hell did you leave in your will to make them look at me like that?
Madness was practically overflowing from those clear eyes!
And so, together with Alexei’s descendants—
that is, the Yurick Family—I came to spend an unimaginably long time with them.
They would probably remain with me forever, until the day I came to an end.
Well, thanks to them, the emptiness in a corner of my heart was completely filled.
Until the very moment of his death, Alexei had left me with the greatest and most perfect gift.
Fine. I admit it.
You repaid your debt, kid.
Thank you.
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