Chapter 42 : What Remains of Elden

At the top of the Mage Tower, beyond the boundaries of the trial, the Golden Clock stood before an enormous black sphere resembling an egg waiting to hatch. After Elden had passed through the wooden door and it had closed behind him, the door had contracted, collapsed, and transformed into the sphere that now rested in its place without making a sound.

The Golden Clock had not moved since he disappeared.

The chamber remained quiet, disturbed only by the faint hum of the magical lamps. Their light reflected off the polished floor, while the enormous structure of the Central Mage Tower stood in solemn silence, as though whatever was happening in this room was too insignificant to warrant its attention.

I stood beside the Golden Clock and cast a brief glance toward the black sphere.

Every so often, I came to the Central Continent to check on the progress of the trial.

A hundred years had passed since Elden entered it.

At least, a hundred years had passed outside.

I had no reliable way of estimating how much time he had experienced within. Perhaps he had lived through countless years, or perhaps the number of lives he had experienced had already surpassed anything I could imagine. Time inside the trial did not follow the measurements we were accustomed to, and Elden's ordeal was hardly a series of experiences he could simply recall and move beyond.

I turned toward the Golden Clock.

"How long does it usually take?"

She did not answer immediately. Her eyes remained fixed on the black sphere, as though she were trying to sense something beyond my perception.

"That depends."

I frowned. "On what?"

"On the person who enters."

"That sounds suspiciously like you're avoiding the question."

"It is an answer."

"An utterly useless one."

She ignored my complaint, and her behavior gave me little encouragement to continue arguing. I looked back at the black sphere and folded my arms across my chest.

"Will he be able to return as he was?"

This time, the Golden Clock turned toward me. Her expression remained as inscrutable as ever.

"No."

I blinked.

"...What?"

"No one can experience the lives of every living being and emerge unchanged. Every life leaves its mark, and every experience reshapes one's understanding of existence. When Elden returns, he will have witnessed things that no ordinary being could comprehend, let alone experience firsthand."

I fell silent for a moment, trying to absorb her words.

Change itself was not what worried me. Anyone who lived long enough was bound to change, and Elden was no exception. But there was a difference between changing through the years one had lived and carrying within oneself the memories of countless lives, each with its own desires, fears, and sorrows, each with its own way of understanding the world.

"Then how can we be certain that the person who returns will still be Elden?"

The Golden Clock turned her gaze back toward the sphere.

"We can't."

Her answer was so simple that, for a moment, I found myself unable to respond.

She continued without hesitation. "The trial does not preserve the person who enters it. It reveals what remains of them after everything they experience."

I lowered my gaze slightly.

Elden had entered the trial because he wanted to become a Great Ruler. He had done so with confidence, determination, and an unshakable belief in his ability to endure whatever awaited him. He knew what he wanted, and he had been prepared to pay the price to obtain it.

But that same determination had been shaped by the life he had lived until now.

What would happen when that life became merely one among countless others? What would happen when the memories of humans, animals, and plants accumulated within his consciousness, alongside those of creatures whose very nature he could not imagine? Would his ambitions withstand the weight of all those experiences? Would his desire to surpass me remain as strong as before, or would he eventually discover that the thing he had pursued throughout his life was never as important as he had believed?

I stared at the black sphere for a long time before finally sighing.

"Come back in one piece, you arrogant bastard."

The words escaped before I could stop them.

The Golden Clock turned toward me.

I clicked my tongue, attempting to conceal the feelings I had revealed behind a familiar note of sarcasm.

"What? Someone has to make sure my junior brother doesn't forget who his senior brother is."

She did not respond.

For the briefest moment, however, I thought I saw a faint trace of guilt in her eyes.

I let it pass, but before I could leave, she spoke again.

"And what about the experiment you've been working on? Has studying the trial helped you?"

"More than you can imagine."

"Have you achieved what you wanted?"

I hesitated before answering.

"Not entirely. I still feel as though something is missing."

She raised her eyebrows but did not ask what I meant.

I had spent a considerable amount of time studying the trial, yet I still had not reached the result I was looking for. The problem was intriguing, to say the least, though I had no desire to discuss the details at that moment.

I turned my back on the black sphere.

There was nothing I could do for Elden at this stage. The trial belonged to him alone, and any interference from the outside would only disrupt an experience that no one else could undergo on his behalf.

Somewhere behind that black shell, my junior brother was experiencing a world far greater than either of us had ever imagined.

The being known as Elden opened his eyes in the darkness.

He saw nothing.

He could feel neither ground beneath him nor sky above him, and there was no body for him to move or air for him to breathe. There was no pain, no hunger, no fear, not even the familiar sensation of waiting that had accompanied him through some of his previous lives.

The darkness was absolute, but the absence of light was not what drew his attention most.

It was the stillness.

Elden remained immersed in that silence for a long time, allowing his memories to settle within him without trying to force them into a particular order or draw conclusions from them. The Will of the World did not appear to explain what had happened, nor did he hear a voice announcing the end of the trial or instructing him to proceed to the next stage.

There was only what remained with him.

The memories did not crowd his mind in the way one might expect after so many lifetimes. He no longer recalled each life as a separate story, beginning with birth and ending with death. Instead, the emotions that had accompanied those experiences had become part of his consciousness, each retaining its own character without remaining entirely isolated from the others.

He could recall the satisfaction of a farmer returning home after a long day of labor. He could also summon the hunger of a predator, its instinct to pursue prey, and the peculiar satisfaction it experienced upon feeding, without allowing those instincts to become desires that governed his present existence.

This understanding was not separate from his memories. As time passed, Elden began to realize that something fundamental had changed in his relationship with his own identity.

His former identity had not disappeared, and he had not forgotten that he was Elden Morven. Yet he no longer felt compelled to protect every memory of his own life from the countless experiences that had accumulated within him, as though allowing them to come too close might cause him to lose himself. His previous life was no longer the sole center around which every other existence had to revolve.

Elden Morven was still there.

However, his memories no longer seemed more important to him than those of the farmer or the physician. Nor did his former life feel more real than that of the rabbit who had lived beneath the trees, the grass that had spent its existence rooted in the earth, or the predator that had known the world only through hunger, scents, and movement.

He had not become those creatures again, but neither did he regard their existence as something entirely foreign to him.

He could remember them without losing himself in them.

Perhaps that was the first thing that distinguished his new state.

No matter how strong a person's will might be, it was not tested by pain alone, nor by the number of years they could endure. Something slowly eroded when a consciousness accumulated memories that did not belong to a single life, when desires that had once seemed absolute became merely a few among countless others, and when convictions upon which a person had relied for years became experiences no more inherently significant than those of the beings who had come before or after them.

Passing this trial was almost impossible.

The true distinction between success and failure was not whether someone broke down or endured. It was whether they could endure long enough to continue breaking apart, until they reached the point where endurance itself ceased to have meaning.

And yet, the outcome was not the same for everyone.

Success required a profound harmony between the soul and the world in which it existed. This was not a harmony based on superficial similarities, nor did it depend on possessing enough strength to resist the experiences imposed upon it. Rather, it required a kind of accord that allowed one's existence to absorb everything it encountered without losing its coherence. Without that harmony, the soul would collapse beneath the weight of time and memories, gradually dissolving until nothing remained that could be called a self.

Elden, however, was the Chosen One, and he possessed that harmony.

Perhaps the reason was that he had stopped trying to confine his existence within a single definition of himself. He no longer needed to reject the lives he had experienced to preserve his identity, nor did he need to regard every unfamiliar experience as a threat to what he had once been.

His consciousness had expanded.

It had expanded enough to contain what would have shattered another being.

But that expansion had not given him a new center.

And therein lay the problem.

Elden's existence had become vast beyond description, yet it was empty at the same time. No single desire dominated the others, and no particular memory asserted itself as the foundation upon which his life should be built. There was no central goal directing his thoughts, no emotion that rose above the rest and gave his decisions a fixed direction.

He had retained everything he had experienced, yet he was no longer bound to any of it.

He was like an immense blank page, its emptiness no longer the result of having experienced nothing, but of possessing the capacity to contain countless experiences without allowing any single one to dominate the rest.

A vast vessel waiting to be filled with something.

Elden was neither sad nor happy. He felt no need to recover his former emotions merely because they had once formed part of his understanding of himself. The stillness surrounding him was sufficient, and he could find no reason to disturb it.

And yet, something troubled him.

He did not know what it was.

It was not a distinct feeling whose source he could identify, nor was it a memory he could locate among the lives he had experienced. It was neither pain nor fear, nor a desire to return to a familiar place. It was something lingering at the edge of his consciousness, distant enough that he could not grasp it, yet close enough for him to sense its presence.

Something calling to him.

Elden did not force himself to understand it. He was no longer so curious that he felt compelled to pursue an answer to every question that arose, nor did he believe every mystery required him to take action. He simply allowed the sensation to exist, just as he had allowed the memories of his previous lives to settle within him.

Then the darkness trembled once more.

The tremor did not come from movement within the space around him. A new sensation appeared at the edges of his consciousness. It carried a warmth whose source he could not identify.

Elden made no attempt to predict what would appear.

He simply waited.

A few moments later, the Will of the World descended.

But this time, it did not appear as it had during his previous experiences, when he had sensed its influence without seeing any definite form, or recognized its presence through the changes it imposed upon him. Now, it assumed a distinct shape before him.

It was a mass of light in the form of a human being, without clearly defined features, as though a human body had been formed from light alone. Yet there was something in the place where its eyes should have been that Elden did not need to see clearly to recognize.

There were familiar emotions within it.

Emotions he had witnessed countless times throughout his lives: in the faces of mothers holding their children, in the smiles of fathers when their children returned home safely, and in the hands of strangers who reached out to help others without expecting anything in return.

Those emotions were known as innocence.

The Will of the World carried neither malice nor hatred, and there was no trace of hostility in its presence. Its feelings were closer to pure happiness, to the warmth of someone who had finally found the person they had been waiting for. It approached Elden slowly, then raised its hands and placed one against his cheek.

He did not resist.

Nor did he need to understand why.

He felt at ease.

"Well done, Elden."

Her voice was gentle, filled with a joy she made no attempt to conceal.

"I'm so proud of you. Thanks to you, countless other children will be able to survive."