He had no idea how long it has been since his heart stopped beating, all he heard was a crazed voice,
"There you fucking are! Replacer!"
A figure was screaming at Mathias Calypses.
His eyes were blurry beyond recognition, he couldn't see who was yelling at him.
If he had enough blood in his brain to think, Mathias would have discerned that this was the voice of the golden ascetic, but he didn't. So because of this he didn't recognize that angry voice.
"It seems that you are done, you've finally realized the futility of your actions."
Futile, useless, incompetent, inept, ineffectual, unavailing, foolhardy, fruitless, meaningless, hopeless, naive, pointless, all of those words seem pretty accurate. Here's the thing about me though, I've been doing futile things all my life. It's no different to me, whether my dreams can come true or not. It doesn't change the fact that I will still try to accomplish them. It is said that our ancestors looked to the stars, despite not knowing a thing about them. I like to think that I'm like them.
"I-" A voice faded off into obscurity.
Oh, I can barely hear you now. I guess this means that this is the end for me. Maybe the end for all of the iterations. Maybe even the end for the legend of Mathias Calypses. Normally someone might say, 'I've had a good run' but I don't think I did, personally I think ever since meeting Julien, my life has been shit. But, enough about me, how have you been, me?
'Oh I've been great Mathias, or we've been great. Or at least the iterations that are currently alive anyway, as for the fallen ones I think you should give your condolences, after all they died so you could die slightly later.'
'I think they'd smile.'
'Excuse me?'
'The ones that died horrible, gruesome deaths. I'd think they'd smile.'
'Because we'd smile.'
'We would.'
'If we could.'
'But we can't, can we? We're dead, Mathias. It's over, Mathias.'
'Shut up, Mathias.'
'Why, Mathias?'
'...'
'I should be able to cry, Mathias.'
'...'
'After everything, at least that much should be awarded to me. After Ashcroft's tragedy, no even before that, during Lengard's funeral-
'Felix's death was our fault. We don't get to blame The Alchemist for that one.'
'You're acting like I killed him.'
'I know you didn't, but we are responsible, it could have been prevented.'
'Really! How would you have done that! We didn't know what we were going up against!'
'Being me, I believe you are already fully aware, Mathias Calypses.'
'I was too conceited. Too arrogant, I forgot to account for a reality different from the one I saw, but none of that matters since no one blamed us!'
'But I blame you. You blame you. It is your fault. Everything is your fault by not any fault of your own.'
'What's that supposed to mean!'
'You know perfectly well what that means!'
'It means that Mathias Calypses is responsible because he is alive, because he survived?'
'No, it means that Mathias Calypses cannot change the past, but he can shape the future. A future he can look at without feeling guilty, it is not something he owes to anyone, but something he owes to himself.'
'...'
'Nobody technically owes the dead anything but we give gifts on their passing for closure, we want to remember them, those gifts and celebrations are not for them, they're for us. We require closure, the dead don't.'
'I know what you're trying to do. Cheer me up so I won't die along a tree trunk but here's the thing: I'M NOT SUICIDAL, IF I COULD WALK AWAY FROM THIS I WOULD!
'Haha, you're right. The situation is looking pretty grim, any iteration we pull from stasis would immediately enter cardiac arrest. We have three iterations in stasis we can still use and 5 iterations on the field. In order to still be at the five-minute mark, 5 iterations must be absorbing aether from the core we split into fifths. This means at most we can replace 3 iterations with the ones in stasis. This leaves 2 iterations that have to completely survive the full 5 minutes, something we already delegated as impossible. So I've been thinking that we don't replace any iterations and all 5 of them survive to the last second.'
'You're retarded.'
'Indeed you are, Mathias Calypses, indeed you are. Yet I like to think of our special mindset as pure madness instead, in fact I already completed most of the preparations.'
'...'
"Who needs a heart anyways, are you your brain or are you your soul?'
'You're your soul. The brain is just a relay center for your soul. It is a conclusion based on the fact that consciousness is housed in the soul and not the brain.'
'So why do you need blood?'
'To nourish cells with materials, regardless of how proficient a sorcerer you are, you still need a base body made of matter and matter must supply matter.'
'Why does a soul need a base body?'
'It's necessary for performing mediums, the material core around a soul is constructed by the body, without a body a soul can't actually affect the real world. When I grabbed the Ascetic's soul core, I didn't grab the soul itself, but the casing the body made for it. This was the only reason I was even able to touch it. Without a body, a soul is completely incorporeal.'
'So the only purpose of the body is the grounding qualities of a soul core casing?'
'No, you still need hands, arms and fingers for performing certain mediums.'
'What if the sorcery you wished to cast didn't require exterior mediums of any kind?'
'Any sorcery like that couldn't do much, but if such a thing was a case, the only technically necessary augment would be the soul core casing… That's ridiculous.'
'Exactly!'
'How are you so certain I can accomplish such a feat? Using your logic, it is theoretically possible to keep absorbing the aether from the fallen Ascetic's core as just a soul core but I don't know how.'
'What do you mean you don't know how, you just explained it at an efficient enough level.'
'Yeah but that's only one part. What does it feel like, how does it move? What is it like to not have a body?'
'Do you really think you wouldn't have thought of the mental blocks you could encounter when performing such an action?'
'No. I know I would have, but I suppose that's why you're here, me.'
'Why I'm here?'
'Yes. You are not some hallucination or figment of my imagination, you are a sorcery embedded into me by me.'
'Indeed I am. Originally when devising this plan you came to the conclusion that if you were just told to do this while in a state of pain and panic you would have a higher likelihood of failure. The reason you opted to remove the memories of this plan from your iterations was because-'
'I feared the mind-reading sorceries wielded the Ascetic chasing me.'
'Precisely.'
'I thought of this plan under the circumstances of my body being rendered non-functional, does this mean I suspected an eternal heart attack?'
'No, actually. From the knowledge I have inscribed in my consciousness, we did not believe an Adept's ascension to an Ascetic came with such an indefensible danger. The original goal and purpose desired was that with the problem of the number of iterations we had left, we couldn't possibly win if we kept doing things the way we had before.'
'I see.'
'Understanding that I am not a figment of your imagination was the signaling key that your soul possesses enough rationale and sanity to initiate this plan.'
'Now that I realize your realness and properly understand the situation to a certain extent you will permit me to do what I was already doing? That doesn't make any sense.'
'No, you misunderstand. You are not in real time but a fabricated space-time area that constrains time.'
'Bullshit. That would be violating the absolute principles. The only reason you would even suggest that is to probe me further, seeing if I'm really of sound mind.'
'Correct again. You are a really careful individual, Mathias Calypses. Going to extremes that others' would consider pointless and unnecessary.'
'My paranoia is justified.'
At that moment the voice talking to Mathias in that dark space without sensation ceased. The phrase, 'My paranoia is justified' was the final key phrase Mathias Calypses had to utter for his sorcery to leave him. It signified that he no longer needed any consolation.
The fact that Mathias would say this phrase was proof that he still thought like Mathias Calypses. This was because he could reach a phrase that Mathias Calypses was predicted to say.
Mathias had created 1,000 simulations with his consciousness and every single one of them, when exposed to the same starting dialogue, said this phrase within 15 minutes. Through this, Mathias discerned that any iteration which said this line was rational enough to successfully absorb the aether without a body.
In the middle of the Hua forest a headless Mathias Calypses laid against a tree, blood seeping down in his neck and pooling in his small hands.
In front of him was a Acetic wrapped in a golden robe, who was smiling with a hint of frustration. The golden Ascetic was happy that he found another Mathias iteration but was unhappy because he was unsure if this was the real one or not.
The problem with the Ascetic's thought process was that he'd never be able to discern the real Mathias Calypses because they wasn't one. He had taken the first Mathias Calypses he had encountered as the baseline for a clone and was looking for something different in the other Mathiases he would stumble across.
It was for this reason that he would never find what he was looking for.
On the other side of the Hua forest a Mathias Calypses was laying on the grass floor, incapacitated by a heart attack.
In the caves they were awakened in, the three iterations which received the aether from the fallen iterations had their oxygen supply cut and slowly faded into unconsciousness, deciding not to teleport.
It seemed that all of them were completely aware of their plan.
The fact that the gamble did not give all of them heart attacks at the final stage would have given hints about the energy requirement of giving them all eternal heart attacks to Mathias, but because he didn't know about each iteration's exact situation, he was unable to discern this point.
At this point all of the Mathiases suspected that the gamble would stop using energy to prevent their bodies' function and start using it to deal direct damage to their soul but that never happened. This caused them to speculate that the gamble couldn't actually damage their soul. Through this they glimpsed how Ascetics could be created, it was through this method!
Realizing this, the 317th iteration had a thought, why didn't the Ascetic destroy my soul then? If he's become an Ascetic before he should know to destroy my soul. There's a chance that because he believes me to be a clone he doesn't think doing so would do anything, so it doesn't occur.
Mathias himself did not like that thought very much. This was because it relied on assuming oversight. Mathias Calypses is a person who takes everyone's intelligence very seriously, meaning that he doesn't assume things such as, 'They're not smart enough to think of this.'
Due to these views, Mathias formulated a different hypothesis: that the Ascetic must have used a different method to ascend, so he had absolutely zero reason to destroy Mathias' soul core, especially a soul core that exists in a being believed to be a clone.
The term 'a different method' sparked a lot in Mathias' mind. He wondered how else asceticship could be achieved. This thought brought him back to an ideology he had internalized,
The number of ideas in the world don't have a number attached to them.
No matter how much he thought about things and how long he thought about things, Mathias could never think of absolutely everything.
The realm of sorcery opens up doors to a lot of possibilities and fantastical truths but it also makes one realize how impossible some things are to overturn.
There are 9 immutable truths that cannot even be slightly altered by anything, they are called the Absolute Principles.
The first one is the finality of time, while manipulating time is completely possible, the past cannot be altered. Once set, things cannot be changed.
Time passed,
Surprisingly Mathias Calypses didn't have anything attack his soul casing. He thought that even if his soul couldn't directly be damaged by the gamble, it would at least attempt to damage the casing which was a physical thing. Yet it didn't.
Not soon after did Mathias realize what this was, it was either that the gamble was applauding him,
or the gamble at the level of a Adept tuning Ascetic considered Mathias dead, since what Mathias did was unconventional, being slightly outside the ability of average Adepts which would trick the gamble. Something which runs in a very mechanical and natural manner, lacking true discernment or intelligence.
Whatever the reason was, it was working in his favor, for once.
Around the golden Ascetic the lights in the forest began to grow dimmer to grow farther, this put an unfathomable expression on the Ascetic's face.
In a clan pavilion a dead body of Mathias Calypses started to glow like starlight in front of the eyes of another Ascetic.
A dull humming sound pervaded the atmosphere, it did not sound like it came from a human being,
it sounded like a form of static instead.
At this moment every dead and alive incarnation of Mathias Calypses was teleported into the sky in a place consisting of a very small point. A point smaller than even the concept of size could represent.
This was possible because there was no longer any interference.
From that infinitesimally small dot a figure of Mathias Calypses appeared, a long azure-haired boy with magenta eyes wearing a celestial blue priestly robe. His skin was as pale as snow and almost glowing.
That figure then smiled, waving his hand bye as he took a step forward in the air.
Mathias Calypses left, startling the golden Ascetic. He had expected a counterattack and instantly prepared a certain degree of preventive measures but alas, Mathias Calypses didn't attack.
If the golden Ascetic spent all his effort on attempting to track the teleportation he could have found out where Mathias had gone to but he didn't, so the Ascetic had no idea where he went.
At that moment, a notion of perpetual ignorance and frustration passed over his mind but instead of yelling at the world, the Ascetic took in the Hua forest air and turned his head to look at the trees.
He sought no grand discovery or recollection for such an action, he was just, thinking.