Chapter 5B: Memories
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 410
[Claude POV]
The fragments came to me in dreams.
Not the normal dreams of childhood, chasing butterflies, playing with friends, simple fears of the dark. These were different.
These were memories that didn't belong to me, yet lived inside my skull as vividly as my own experiences.
Being a Miko of Convergence meant the memories didn't follow normal rules of time. Deaths from parallel universes could bleed through regardless of when they occurred, past, present, future.
All of it existed simultaneously in the space between worlds. I could witness the end of a timeline that hadn't happened yet in my world, experience failures from futures that would never come to pass.
Tonight, they pressed against my consciousness with particular insistence.
I lay in bed, eyes closed, while the memories unfolded like stories told by a stranger who wore my face.
[Alex Cromwell's Timeline]
The first memory belonged to someone named Alex Cromwell.
I watched through his eyes as though peering through a window into another world. A world where I had made different choices.
Where different circumstances had shaped the boy who shared my name.
In that timeline, the water ball struck me the same way it had in mine. The awakening came with the same shocking clarity, the same flood of knowledge from lives I had never lived.
But what emerged from that awakening was different.
Alex became a prodigy in swordsmanship. By age nine, he had already surpassed Paul Greyrat in raw skill, his blade moving with a precision that shouldn't have been possible for someone so young.
The knowledge in his head, memories of a past life as a Professor of Psychology and University Teacher, gave him unique insight into learning and instruction.
He could break down complex techniques into simple components. Could adjust his teaching methods for any student, whether they were seven or seventy.
His explanations carried crystalline clarity that made even the most difficult concepts accessible.
Word of his abilities spread across the region like wildfire. Ambitious nobles came to Buena Village, bearing offers to claim the young prodigy.
I felt Alex's emotions as though they were my own, the pressure of constant attention, the weight of expectations, the steady determination to refuse them all.
"I want to have a peaceful life in this village," he would say, bowing respectfully. "Please forgive me for refusing your offer."
Even Ghislaine of the prestigious Boreas family journeyed to see him, her crimson eyes evaluating his every movement with intense interest.
"I would have you as my disciple," she had declared, her beast-race features solemn as she extended this rare honor.
But Alex declined her too, his attachment to Buena Village transcending ambition. Where others saw a stepping stone to glory, he saw home.
The villagers spoke of him with reverent tones. Children gathered around him in the training yard, eyes wide with wonder as he demonstrated forms and techniques.
His past life knowledge allowed him to teach with patience that seemed impossible for a child.
"The sword is an extension of your intention," he would tell his students, patient even when they fumbled. "Before your arm moves, your mind must see the path."
Days passed in comfortable rhythm. Sometimes he assisted his father at the smithy, the heat of the forge painting his youthful face with orange glow as he hammered metal into submission.
His creations astounded even seasoned blacksmiths, blades with perfect balance, tools that seemed to anticipate their users' needs.
His intelligence shone in every endeavor. The village flourished under his subtle influence.
Merchants diverted their routes to pass through the growing settlement, bringing trade and prosperity.
But then came the mass teleportation incident.
Alex was training with a group of children when reality fractured around them. The air crackled with arcane energy, and blinding light engulfed everything.
His first instinct, born of combat experience and protective nature, was to shield the young ones. He gathered them close, his body curving protectively around them as the light intensified to unbearable brightness.
When it faded, the familiar training grounds were gone. In their place stood a dungeon, deep within the Great Forest.
"Where is this?" he whispered, his voice echoing strangely in the unfamiliar space.
Around him, the children whimpered and cried, their small faces contorted with fear.
What followed was desperate struggle for survival. Each passing day claimed young lives, some to starvation, others to the monstrous inhabitants of the dungeon.
The memory of each lost child carved itself into Alex's heart like acid on metal.
Despite his status as a sword prodigy, protecting multiple children while fighting proved impossible. The first day, he succeeded through sheer determination and skill.
But as hunger and thirst weakened his body, his reflexes slowed incrementally.
He discovered quickly that the monsters' blood and meat contained potent toxins. One desperate taste confirmed this, the bitter, burning sensation on his tongue warning him away.
He couldn't risk feeding such poison to the children, yet without sustenance, their strength diminished with each passing hour.
One by one, the children were taken. Their screams etched permanent scars on Alex's psyche.
When a particularly vicious attack cost him an arm, sliced clean off by a monster's razor-sharp appendage, he knew all was lost.
He stood alone in the dungeon corridor, the walls splattered with blood, some his, some belonging to the children he had failed to protect.
They were all gone. Consumed by the beasts that stalked the labyrinthine passages.
All of them.
Each step Alex took afterward was heavy with the weight of failure. Tears carved clean tracks through the grime and blood on his face as he wandered aimlessly through the dungeon.
"I was too weak," he whispered to the empty corridors. "Too proud."
His hubris had been believing that skill alone could overcome any challenge. But the dungeon cared nothing for titles like "Sword Prodigy" or "All-Style Saint."
Here, in the merciless dark, he was merely flesh, vulnerable, mortal, failing.
His final memory was of Vorpal Rabbits. Their crimson eyes glowed in the darkness, their horn-like protrusions gleaming wetly as they surrounded him.
Weakened by blood loss, starvation, and despair, he could no longer defend himself.
The creatures fell upon him in a wave of fur and fangs and hunger.
Thus ended Alex Cromwell, devoured alive, in a dungeon far from the sunlight of Buena Village.
[Fred Alphonse's Timeline]
The second memory belonged to Fred Alphonse.
His awakening was different from Alex's. When the water ball struck him, something ignited within, not memory alone, but raw elemental power.
Fire erupted from his small body, blossoming outward in concentric waves of crimson and gold. The sudden conflagration terrified onlookers.
Flames licked hungrily at nearby grass and trees, consuming everything in their path with unnatural voracity. The fire danced around Fred's body without harming him, responding to his unconscious emotions like an extension of his being.
Rudeus, witnessing the catastrophic result of his innocent attack, responded with instinctive problem-solving. He conjured water to douse the spreading flames, but to everyone's shock, the fire only intensified when touched by the opposing element, a violation of natural law that sent murmurs of fear through the gathering crowd.
Someone summoned Paul Greyrat, who immediately called for his wife. Zenith arrived breathless, her eyes widening at the sight before her.
She approached the circle of fire with cautious reverence, a leather-bound tome clutched in her hands. The flames parted before her as if recognizing her intent, allowing her to examine the boy at their center.
"It's awakening," she announced, her voice carrying both awe and concern. "We have a Miko among us."
She explained to the bewildered villagers that they were witnessing the emergence of a rare gift, a person with the ability to manipulate elemental forces as naturally as breathing. Fred had become a conduit for fire magic, a living vessel for primal energy.
Thus was born Claude the Fire Miko, his designation spreading through Buena Village and beyond, with the speed of the very flames he commanded.
Claude's parents looked on with understandable concern, but Zenith offered reassurance. "He will learn control," she told them, her calm voice a balm to their fears.
"The fire recognizes him as its master, it will not harm him. Our task is simply to keep others safe until he masters his gift."
The village buzzed with news of their elemental Miko. What began as fascination, however, gradually shifted toward fear as Fred struggled to contain his newfound power.
For two days, fire manifested around him unpredictably, scorching the earth where he walked and igniting objects he touched.
On the third day, exhausted by the constant effort to contain the raging energy within him, Fred collapsed. Under Zenith's care, he recovered physical strength, but emerged changed in spirit.
In his previous life, Fred had earned master's degrees in chemistry and psychology. He had also developed considerable skill in programming and engineering, a renaissance man of the modern era.
These memories integrated with his new existence. But the personality that emerged was markedly different from Claude's original temperament.
Where Claude had been extroverted and sociable, Fred became withdrawn and analytical. The vibrant child who had once run laughing through Buena Village disappeared, replaced by a solemn figure who spent hours in solitude, exploring the boundaries of his abilities.
He discovered a natural affinity for enchantment, the art of infusing objects with magical properties. This captivated him more than simple spellcasting.
While other mages hurled fireballs or conjured barriers, Fred learned to weave fire essence into metal and cloth, creating artifacts that radiated controlled heat or illumination.
Rumors of an Elemental Miko stirred briefly beyond Buena Village's borders, but without dramatic displays to substantiate these claims, they remained merely curious tales. The nobility of the Asura Kingdom, preoccupied with political machinations, paid little heed to stories of a fire-wielding child in a remote settlement.
This suited Fred perfectly. He had no desire for recognition or advancement.
His days followed a predictable pattern, awakening, magical research, training, meals, assisting his father by maintaining the forge's fire at precise temperatures, sleep. Then repeat.
His life continued in this methodical progression until the teleportation event — that fixed point across all timelines — tore him from the familiar and cast him into the dungeon's depths.
Despite his considerable magical power, Fred discovered that some challenges transcend magical ability. Hunger gnawed at him relentlessly as he navigated the dungeon's treacherous passages.
More devastating still was his discovery that his greatest strength became his undoing. When he encountered the Ancient Troll, a massive, primordial creature lurking near the dungeon's exit, his instinctive defense was to summon fire.
But the beast's eyes gleamed with malicious intelligence as the flames bloomed. Too late, Fred realized his error.
The Ancient Troll grew stronger in the presence of light, absorbing energy from fire and converting it to physical might.
Each defensive spell Fred cast only strengthened his opponent. In the end, the creature overwhelmed him.
The Fire Miko's brilliance was extinguished in the darkness of the dungeon, his body broken and left to decay in the labyrinthine passages, another failed branch in the tree of possible existences.
[Claude POV - Present]
I woke with a gasp, my heart pounding against my ribs.
The morning light filtered through my window, painting familiar patterns across the walls of my room.
I was in my bed. In my home.
In Buena Village.
But the memories lingered like smoke, refusing to dissipate. Alex and Fred, two versions of myself who had lived and died in parallel universes.
Different souls who had possessed this same body, made different choices, developed different strengths. Both had failed.
I sat up slowly, pressing my hands against my face. The knowledge in my head whispered of more timelines, more failures, more versions of Claude who had tried and fallen short.
But these two memories were the clearest, the most insistent. 'I am neither of them,' I thought, the words crystallizing in my mind.
'And both of them. And more.'
I was Claude, the Miko of Convergence. Not a reincarnation of a single soul, but a collector of failures from across the multiverse.
Each memory was a lesson written in pain, each death a warning of what awaited if I followed the same paths. Alex's swordsmanship lived in my muscles.
Fred's understanding of fire and enchantment whispered to me when I worked with magic. But I couldn't rely solely on either path.
The sword alone hadn't been enough. Magic alone hadn't been enough.
I needed to be more than they had been. Needed to learn from their failures and forge a new path, one that might actually lead to survival when the disaster came.
I rose from my bed and walked to the window, looking out over Buena Village. The familiar sights greeted me, smoke rising from chimneys, villagers beginning their daily routines, children playing in the streets.
All of it would be torn apart by the teleportation incident. That much was certain across every timeline.
The catastrophe was a fixed point, inevitable as sunrise.
But what came after didn't have to be the same.
I couldn't prevent the disaster itself. The fragments were clear about that.
Whatever was coming was beyond my power to stop. But I could prepare.
I could strengthen the people around me. I could give them, and myself, the tools to survive.
"Third time's the charm," I muttered to myself, though I knew it was more than just a third attempt. Somewhere in the depths of my fragmented consciousness, other Claudes stirred, other lives, other skills, other failures waiting to be redeemed.
But those stories would have to wait. For now, I had training to continue and preparations to make.
I dressed quickly and headed outside, my mind already turning to the day's tasks. Paul would be expecting me for morning practice.
I needed to continue building my swordsmanship, drawing on Alex's memories. Avoiding his fatal overreliance on a single skill.
And later, I would work with Father at the forge, using Fred's understanding of enchantment to create tools that might prove useful in the dungeon to come.
The morning air was cool against my skin as I walked through the village. Somewhere ahead, Rudeus was probably already awake, practicing his magic with the dedication that would make him powerful beyond measure.
Sylphiette would head to the Greyrat house soon, her green hair catching early light.
All the pieces were moving into place. All the players gathering for the disaster that would scatter them across the world.
But this time, I had something the others hadn't possessed. I had their memories, their failures, their hard-won knowledge purchased with blood and tears and death.
I would use every fragment, every lesson, every painful truth. This time, I wouldn't fail.
◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ AUTHOR'S NOTE ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆
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