Chapter 28 : A Path Without Regret

Rowan raised his eyes to meet Golden Clock's, his expression unwavering. Whatever she had hoped to accomplish by reminding him of the home he had left behind, it had done nothing to change his mind. He had listened to her, acknowledged the pain she described, and even admitted that he had no way of knowing whether his chosen path would lead anywhere worth reaching.

Yet none of that was enough to make him stop.

“I see no reason to abandon my path or give up on my dreams.”

He paused, then chuckled softly, as though the word dreams had stirred a distant memory.

“Yes, a dream. I still remember when I walked upon the earth. A few decades later, I was walking over mountains and rivers. Today, I walk among the heavens... and tomorrow, I'll walk above this world itself.”

A faint smile touched his lips. There was no boastfulness in his voice, only the quiet conviction of someone who had spent so long moving forward that he could scarcely imagine doing otherwise.

“I chose this path a long time ago. There's no turning back now.”

His gaze drifted toward the sky. Clouds passed above Sky Mountain, distant and unhurried, while sunlight bathed the garden in a tranquil glow. For a moment, he seemed to be looking beyond the heavens, toward something no one else could see.

“I carry the countless souls who have entrusted their loyalty to me. I'll keep moving forward until the very end.”

The Golden Clock broke her silence, regarding him with the reproachful expression of a teacher watching a stubborn student march toward a crumbling cliff.

“This is nothing but stubbornness, my disciple. It's not too late to turn back. Happiness is right there, within your reach, and all you have to do is stop pushing it away.”

Rowan burst into laughter. For a moment, it was difficult to tell whether he found her argument amusing or simply enjoyed the familiar frustration of their conversations.

“Yes... stubbornness. Pride. Vanity. Greed. Call it whatever you like.”

His laughter faded, leaving him with a calm, almost playful smile.

“But isn't life itself full of such things?”

He raised his pitcher for a sip, his attention wandering to a butterfly fluttering among the flowers.

“Like a butterfly that knows the flame will burn its wings, yet flies toward it anyway. Does that mean it doesn't understand the danger? Perhaps it simply wants to discover what lies beyond the light.”

His smile deepened slightly.

“What is the taste of life, after all, if we don't leave a little room for madness?”

He lowered his pitcher.

“But I won't give up.”

Golden Clock watched him in silence. She had heard people speak of death and loss with bitterness, with grief, and with the weary resignation of those who had suffered more than they could bear. Rowan spoke of them differently, as though they belonged to a distant life that had little to do with the man standing before her.

That troubled her more than his ambition ever could.

After a while, she finally spoke.

“Do you know what frightens me most about you, Rowan?”

He turned toward her, his familiar smile returning.

“Is it the possibility that you'll discover I'm actually a kind person and have to apologize for all those insults you've thrown at me?”

“I'm afraid you'll achieve everything you've ever wanted, only to find yourself standing alone at the summit. And by the time you realize what you've lost, you'll have climbed too far to turn back.”

Rowan's smile faltered.

It was a subtle change, no more than a tightening at the corner of his mouth, but Golden Clock noticed it. Her words had reached somewhere his usual composure could not entirely protect.

He gave her a mocking look, as though he could dismiss the thought simply by refusing to take it seriously.

“Hah... and then what? When I reach the summit, I'll have plenty of things worth celebrating.”

“I didn't ask what you'll have.”

“And I never said I'd celebrate alone.”

“But you didn't say you'd celebrate with anyone, either.”

Rowan sighed, then let out a short, humorless laugh.

“You really are an irritating creature.”

“And you're a terrible student. I spent decades trying to teach you how to live, only for you to use everything I taught you to find increasingly complicated ways to ruin your own life.”

“That's because you're a terrible teacher.”

“And you're an idiot.”

“An idiot who reached places no one else could.”

Golden Clock's expression hardened.

“And how many people had to pay the price?”

Rowan had no answer.

For a moment, the garden seemed to fall silent around them. The leaves still swayed, and sunlight continued to spill across the flowers, but the ease of their banter had vanished. Neither of them could laugh away the question this time.

Eventually, Rowan spoke.

“You know as well as I do that this world's barrier won't hold those creatures beyond the heavens back forever. Time is running out, and sooner or later, I will break free from this prison.”

The Golden Clock sighed.

“You're still greedy, my disciple.”

“I prefer to call it determination.”

He met her gaze without hesitation.

“That determination has saved a world before. Or at least what remained of one. If you insist on giving it another name, call it a virtue.”

“Virtue? Don't make me laugh.”

Golden Clock's voice sharpened. Despite her small stature, there was something in her presence that made her seem far greater than she appeared.

“If you impose your will upon this world in your current state, you'll corrupt it. Your very existence will drag everyone around you into that corruption. Is that what you call virtue?”

Rowan made no attempt to deny it.

“Perhaps.”

He shrugged, as though the possibility required no elaborate defense.

“Perhaps I'll corrupt the world a little. But the living will survive, won't they?”

He tilted his head, regarding her almost casually.

“And what of it? Hasn't this world already been nearly destroyed by the Abyss Lord? Didn't it leave behind a distorted, corrupted world on the verge of collapse?”

Golden Clock stared at him.

“Are you talking about those monsters you insist on calling human? The ones you keep in your territory? What you're doing is no different from madness, my disciple.”

She wasn't speaking in the abstract. She meant the inhabitants of the Caldor Continent, the corrupted remnants of humanity left behind by one man's ambition.

Their existence was concealed beneath an illusion so complete that almost no one could perceive the truth.

In the natural cycle, the world consumed its own essence to give birth to new souls. Those who died returned to the cycle, while the strongest souls divided, giving rise to more. Those souls grew, multiplied, and eventually gave rise to others. In this way, the world continued to flourish.

But Rowan had taken those souls out of the cycle and trapped them within his private spiritual realm, where he drained the world's essence to fuel his own growth.

The inhabitants of Caldor knew nothing of it.

They were born, grew old, and lived out their lives believing themselves to be human. Even in death, they remained ignorant of the truth. Their memories felt real, their bodies seemed familiar, and the world unfolded around them according to the natural rhythms they had always known.

Children played. Adults went about their daily lives. Animals hunted, slept, and reproduced. None had any reason to suspect that their perception of reality had been distorted, or that their existence had become entangled with the fate of a man teetering on the brink of corruption.

Only those who reached the Origin realm could perceive what lay beneath the illusion. Everyone else saw themselves and one another as human because the deception allowed them to see nothing else.

They lived within a lie so complete that even death offered them no escape from it.

And Rowan, who knew the truth, had chosen to preserve their world rather than abandon it.

Golden Clock held his gaze, waiting for him to acknowledge the enormity of what he had done.

Instead, Rowan raised his pitcher and took another sip of his bitter drink. He let the taste linger before lowering it, his expression turning cold.

“What good is it to see nothing but a shell of flesh and bones?”

He paused, allowing the question to settle between them.

“A shell that will perish, decompose, and disappear, swallowed by time like everything that came before it.”

His eyes narrowed.

“The body isn't the truth, teacher.”

He spoke with the certainty of someone who had reached this conclusion long ago.

“Beauty lies in the soul. And the soul cannot be measured by what the eyes can see.”

Golden Clock lowered her gaze.

For a moment, she searched for words that might reach him, something he hadn't already considered. But the longer she contemplated his reasoning, the more painfully aware she became of the distance between the student she had once taught and the man standing before her now.

“You really have strayed from the right path...”

Her voice was quiet. The disappointment in it hurt more than anger would have.

“This is no different from a twisted, corrupted path. One that may eventually lead somewhere indistinguishable from evil itself.”

She drew a slow breath and looked at him again.

“Ah... perhaps this was my fault, too.”

Regret softened her expression.

“Perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention. Perhaps I let you walk too far down this road before I realized how far you'd gone.”

She hesitated.

“I'm sorry.”

The pitcher shattered in Rowan's hand.

The sharp crack tore through the garden's quiet. Fragments burst into the air, then disintegrated into fine particles before they could reach the ground.

Silence followed.

Rowan closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The mana around him stirred in response to his anger, but he forced it back under control. For several seconds, he remained motionless.

When he finally opened his eyes, his voice was calm.

Far too calm.

“Teacher...”

He paused, choosing his words with a care that seemed at odds with the violence of the moment before.

“If there's anything left of the relationship between us, then don't regret it. And don't apologize.”

His gaze remained fixed on her.

“My path may be right, or it may be twisted. Perhaps it's wrong altogether. But it's still my path. I'm the one who chose it, the one walking it, and the one who'll bear the consequences.”

His expression tightened.

“So don't insult my efforts or belittle my decisions. Damn it, this conversation is getting on my nerves.”

Golden Clock fell silent.

For once, she didn't argue or attempt to counter his words with another carefully constructed lecture. She simply watched him, unsettled by a reaction she hadn't expected.

Then, cautiously, she asked a question.

“Wait, my disciple... don't you ever regret choosing this path?”

Rowan didn't answer immediately.

Beside him, Liz listened more intently than before, her attention fixed on him.

Regret.

The word stirred memories he rarely allowed himself to examine.

Was he certain he'd made the right decision all those years ago? No. He had never possessed such certainty. Like anyone faced with a choice capable of changing the course of their life, he couldn't know whether another decision might have led to a better outcome. There were possibilities he'd abandoned, consequences he'd failed to foresee, and lives that had taken different turns because of his choices.

The past offered no explanations or guarantees. There was no way to test the life he might have lived had he chosen differently.

But that wasn't quite what Golden Clock had asked.

She wasn't asking whether his decision had been correct.

She was asking whether he regretted making it.

After a long silence, Rowan finally spoke.

“I regret nothing. Regret changes nothing. It's the desire to alter something that's already happened, a wish directed toward a past that no longer exists. No matter how desperately you reach for it, there's no path back.”

His gaze drifted toward the distant mountains.

“Still, when I look back on the road I've chosen, there are moments when hesitation threatens to suffocate me. Perhaps I'm wrong in your eyes. Perhaps my decision really was a mistake. But for those who chose to place their trust in me, it was the right decision.”

His expression hardened with quiet resolve.

“And for their sake, I'll keep moving forward. I won't turn around, and I won't let regret stop me, no matter how this journey ends.”

The Golden Clock regarded him for a moment.

“Taking souls out of the cycle of life and death and claiming them for yourself is a violation of the natural order. Is it any wonder this world despises you?”

Rowan let out a weary sigh.

“Criticism, criticism, and more criticism. It's always the same with you.”

He shook his head, irritation creeping back into his voice.

“But tell me, should we judge a path by its results or not? I've given those under my protection peace, freedom, and a decent life. Ignorance and forgetfulness have always been blessings for mortals, and what I'm doing goes far beyond anything you seem capable of imagining.”

His gaze sharpened.

“I'm trying to save a world that was destined to perish. This world has already reached the end of its life.”

“That's nonsense,” Golden Clock replied. “As long as there's still hope, I'll pursue it, regardless of the method.”

“Hah! Nonsense? Hope?”

Rowan's laughter held no warmth. He looked at her as though her words had dragged them back into an argument they'd been having for thousands of years, one neither had ever managed to win.

“Didn't your failure prove that my path was right? Five thousand years ago, your determination to save this world accomplished nothing except shortening the little time it had left.”

His voice grew colder.

“You tried to save it, and look at what happened. The world continued toward its end, and the disaster you wanted to prevent became something far worse.”

He paused, letting the silence settle between them.

“In the end, you were the ones who created the Abyss Lord.”