Nikola Tesla, who doesn't know him? He was one of the most popular scientists of his century, with a magnificent and creative mind that seemed to operate on a whole different level.
At his peak, Tesla worked tirelessly in his laboratory, dedicating years to studying magnetic fields and high-frequency currents. This was an incredibly productive period for him. As a result of his groundbreaking work, his popularity soared high enough to almost match that of Thomas Edison. He might have been the most popular scientist of his era, with an incredible number of patents to his name.
His fame grew so much that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers invited him to lecture about his achievements in front of the most prominent electrical engineers of that time.
In these famous demonstrations, he lit lamps simply by placing them in an alternating electromagnetic field, showed how to transmit electricity without wires, and even sent out lightning bolts, using his hands to pass currents of over a million volts through his own body.
It was a huge success.
He received a great ovation, and for the first time, his peers started calling him by a name that would stick—
"The Man From Future!"
They saw him as someone whose inventions were a century ahead of everyone else.
But how could he ever forget Thomas Edison?
In his early days as an emerging scientist, Tesla worked tirelessly for Edison. Edison promised Tesla a cash lump-sum bonus of $50,000 if he could completely redesign and dramatically improve the efficiency of Edison's poorly performing Direct Current (DC) dynamos and generators.
In return, Tesla poured his heart and soul into the work, achieving the goal Edison had set.
But after fulfilling his promise, all Tesla received from Edison was a chuckle and a cold reply.
"C'mon Tesla, can't you understand American humor? How about a $10 raise for a week instead?"
Tesla immediately quit his company afterwards, never forgetting how humiliating and betrayed he felt at that moment.
Although, a few years later, he was already a worldwide famous scientist, with contracts worth billions. If he had chosen to sell them, he would have been a billionaire of his time.
But soon enough, his life started going downhill.
A catastrophic fire completely destroyed Tesla's New York laboratory, wiping out decades of research, prototypes, and notes. This setback pushed him back years, just as he was on the cusp of major breakthroughs.
Tesla envisioned a massive tower at Wardenclyffe to provide free, wireless global energy. However, when his primary financier, J.P. Morgan, realized it couldn't be metered for profit, he pulled the funding. The project collapsed, leaving Tesla bankrupt.
Tesla originally held a contract with George Westinghouse that would have made him one of the wealthiest billionaires in history through AC power royalties.
But he still tore up that contract, sticking to his principles to invest in the benefit of humanity, not for business and profit.
Having a careless attitude towards his inventions, several of his credits were stolen, and many of his inventions were patented by someone else.
As he aged, Tesla's obsessive-compulsive tendencies completely consumed him. He became obsessed with the number three, washed his hands compulsively, and withdrew entirely from human society.
In his twilight years, the scientific community began to dismiss him as a "mad scientist." His advanced concepts—like a planetary "death ray" intended to end all wars—were openly mocked by the public and the press.
In his later years, he became so poor he couldn't even afford proper food. With several mental instabilities, even though there were almost ten years between Thomas Edison's incident and his actual downfall, he still blamed Edison, believing it all started with him.
At his last breath, he died alone in a hotel room. A tragic end for a brilliant mind.
But at that point in his life, his rage and hatred had grown so big that he didn't just hate Thomas Edison, but the whole Earth instead.
He hated all the people on the Earth who didn't believe in him, who didn't support him in his quest for a better future, who didn't support one more step towards a utopia he envisioned.
And after his death, he was somehow given a new chance, reborn in this unknown fantasy world of magic and swords named 'Chetna.' It was his second chance to get his revenge.
*****
Being inside his domain, Closed-System Entropy, Auren looked at Aoto, and hearing him call his real name, several memories of his past life resurfaced in an instant.
"That is right!" he answered, his voice sharp and clear.
"Are you Nikola Tesla from some other universe?" Aoto shouted, slowly pushing himself up from his knees. "Nikola Tesla from my world was clearly a good person. He wouldn't be out here shaking hands with those kinds of people."
"I was, but no longer," Auren replied, taking another deliberate step forward. The metallic clink of his armor on the ground was the only sound. "They do not deserve me," he added, his voice dripping with contempt.
"I have made all the preparations, but there was one major problem. Without the necessary coordinates, I won't be able to go back to my previous world to exact my revenge. And my memories have become too hazy to go back just from my experience alone. But now, this is not a problem. Once this all ends, that vice-captain of the Holy Knights will provide me with the coordinates," he scoffed.
He then let out a satisfying, chilling laugh. "Haha... Can you believe it? They all mocked me when I talked about my project, the 'Death Ray.' But I have already completed that project. Once I go, I will make sure to obliterate Earth with the Death Ray!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the glitchy domain.
At this point, his earlier appearance of calm and open demeanor had completely vanished. He looked like a maniac who had lost his mind.
"I don't think he is mentally stable anymore," Aoto thought to himself, instinctively taking a few more steps back, his heart pounding in his chest.
Auren finally stopped his laughter and looked back at Aoto, his serious face returning, but it was a harsh, cold seriousness now.
"But it won't be that easy. I'll make sure to announce their coming doom, make them feel helpless. Let them come to me," he spoke again, his voice low and menacing.
"Beg me!"
"Cry at my feet for mercy!"
"Blame each other for their end!"
"See their end with their own eyes, helpless to do anything!"
As he said each word, he lunged forward. Despite being several meters away, he shot his leg forward in a powerful kick. But then, his leg stretched impossibly, like a rubber band, swinging through the air like a projectile.
BAM!...
His kick hit Aoto with devastating force, sending him flying immediately, the air knocked from his lungs.
"Just like I'm going to do with you!" he added with triumphant shout.
****
Meanwhile, in the cold silence of space, Scarlett finally arrived at the large spheres that had absorbed the energy of a kilonova explosion not so long ago.
"Three spheres... which one would have that cube?" Scarlett thought to herself.
Feyre's unique skill was being quite effective; normally, Scarlett was starting to be immune to it. But now, suddenly thrown into such a panic situation, Feyre's effects had once again started to make their presence felt.
"Or maybe it won't be in a cube shape? What if it isn't here at all? Should I destroy this whole thing? What if it leads to a huge blast that'll wipe out everything?" Several unnecessary, frantic thoughts filled her mind completely.
Taking a deep sigh, she forced herself to calm down and focus again.
"Let's start with the middle one first," she said to herself, her voice steady as she flew towards it.
The ring-shaped sphere only looked like a sphere from afar. Upon arriving, she saw it was actually a highly carefully designed space station. Everything was made with some unknown black material, and there were actually several entrances leading inside its structure.
It was like being in a sci-fi game.
But when she looked at the other two huge spheres with her keen eyes, she saw that they didn't have that internal structure. They were pure, solid, made only to absorb the energy.
"It seems I'm going in the right direction," she muttered to herself.
With one flick of her finger, she banged open the thick entrance, a door strong enough to withstand the pressure of space and the heat of supernovas.
Entering inside, she kind of swam through the long, weightless alleys. But just as she entered deeper into the weird structure, several beeping sounds came at once.
"Alert for intrusion?" Scarlett thought to herself, readying herself to defend against whatever was about to come.
But then—"Damage detected. Closing nearest doors to re-establish gravity," a calm, robotic announcement echoed through the corridor.
The next moment, a metal door immediately popped up, closing the alleyway she had just come through. Then, without any sound, the gravity turned back to normal. Scarlett immediately twisted around, carefully landing on the solid ground.
She couldn't help but be amazed by the advanced tech of the facility.
With a sigh, she started going further inside, moving through different ways and rooms that looked more like research laboratories. Yet, there was no one there.
"It seems there's no one here. All of this is operating on its own," she thought, a sense of eerie isolation creeping over her.
For the next few minutes, she felt like she was going around in circles without any goal. It made her feel quite frustrated.
"It would've been better if there was someone here who I could beat up and ask," she sighed to herself, the sound lost in the emptiness of the station.
But then, as she went past another turning point, her eyes landed on a closed room. There was a nameplate on the top of the door, with the words 'Project—Death Ray' written on it.
"Not this one either," she sighed, taking a step forward to continue her search.
But then, her step halted midway as a sudden realization hit her.
"If Auren were to use that cube to shoot energy, wouldn't it be something like a death ray?" she murmured to herself, her mind racing.
Without wasting a moment, she grabs the handle and breaks the whole door off its hinges without any effort.
Just as she enters, she was greeted by a massive, curved room. In the center, there was a huge launcher-type thing, and the presence of that object alone was scary and menacing. It definitely had the vibe of a continent destroyer.
But that thing was of no importance to her.
Her gaze was fixed on something else in the distance. A palm-sized cube, which looked like a semiconductor chip, was heavily and precisely manufactured with great detail. It was floating above what looked like a simple showcase structure. One thing to be noticed was that instead of being protected by glass, there were hologram-like waves in the shape of a great cube acting as a locker.
"It's similar to what I saw in that Avengers movie. Once you extend your hand inside, it'll burn your hand and maybe," she looks up, "finally trigger the security," she thought to herself.
But something like that wasn't a concern for her. No matter how heated it would be, it wouldn't hold a candle to her.
With a light grin on her lips, she approaches it and extends her hand inside.
But surprisingly, there was no heat, and no alarm rang either.
"Huh?" Confused, she casually took the cube without any effort.
"Pftt... what?" She couldn't help but scoff in disbelief.
But her happiness was very short-lived.
A voice directly rang from inside the cube.
"Alert! Cube taken without entering the code. Self-destruction in 20 seconds," the robotic voice spoke.
"What? Twenty seconds?" Scarlett's eyes widened behind her blindfold.
"To stop the timer, please input the eleven-digit code."
"20... 19... 18..."
"What, what, what...? An eleven-digit code? I would've guessed it if it was four digits. There isn't any way to input digits as well!" she panicked, turning the cube over and over, trying to find something to input the code.
Yet, there was nothing. Or, more like finding it had its own scientific ways she couldn't figure out. She felt like a grandma who had been using a Samsung A5 for the past decade and was suddenly given a latest-tech phone to use.
"12... 11... 10 seconds remained..." the timer continued.
"So fast! Weren't timers like this supposed to move quite slow in movies?" Panic completely confused her mind.
Gritting her teeth, she jumped into the air.
SMASH!...
Destroying the ceiling, she once again leaped out into the coldness of space.
She looked at the planet and then back at the spheres.
"Just how far can I get in a few seconds?" she thought to herself, her dead heart pounding once again.
But it was already too late.
"4... 3..."
"Shit, what should I do?... what should I do?" Her thoughts were in pure chaos. Her vertical dragon pupils behind the blindfold refused to move from the countdown timer.
"...2... 1..."
And at the last moment, she did something she herself hadn't thought of, leaving everything to pure instinct.
Gulp!...
She gulped the cube down in one go.