The Road to Nothingness

"Are you ready?" The old man looked at Akriod with respectful eyes.

Akriod, who was not really prepared for this sudden situation, met the old man with a calm smile, filled with outward serenity despite his inner questioning, and said, "Give me some time to prepare myself."

He said gently, "Then, I will wait for you outside, sir." and slowly closed the door behind him.

_

Quickly, making the most of the time, Akriod opened the cabinet carefully, discovering it contained only a few simple garments. He then approached the mirror drawer and opened it, finding a few scattered papers inside. He scanned the papers with hollow eyes but felt they held no value. He tossed them aside and closed the drawer. However, for some unknown reason, he reopened it to see what had caught his attention.

He quickly picked up the crumpled paper and turned it over to examine its contents silently. His attention was caught by the writing on the front of the page, "This is the present date! ... Why am I in the month of 'Rizard'? And today is Ados. Wait, this is the 'Atolix Calendar.' It means I'm in the northern continent, but I was supposed to have traveled a whole year ahead. Is this the result of the forbidden experiment?"

After understanding the written date, he looked towards the window at the towering mountains behind the structures, confused about his situation.

Aside from his complete awareness of the date and his current location, what puzzled him the most was the attached date.

He knew he had successfully traveled to the future, but there was a flaw in the process. He had traveled for more than one and a half seasons, which equaled six months and an additional day.

The last full season he experienced before traveling to the future was summer.

Aside from all of this, it was expected for Akriod that 16 full months had passed by now, equivalent to one complete calendar year.

But after thinking about it a little, Akriod had an idea of ​​what caused the problem because it was the only logical thing that could explain why this happened and also matched what he did before he traveled to the future...

* * * *

All the information Akriod studied about the sacred tool, Uru, matched the experiment he conducted on a homeless woman in the forest.

Since he knew that the sacred tool allowed for time travel only three times, the first attempt was made with the homeless woman, who had been unconscious.

The time and place where the woman would appear were chosen precisely, according to the will of the user, which was Akriod himself, the one responsible for the time travel.

After she disappeared while she was sleeping on the floor, he discovered something mysterious while sitting on a large stone, sleepless in the dark forest under the moonlight.

The woman's shadow had been present the entire time, appearing as a transparent halo.

He wasn't sure if he was the only one who could see it or if someone else could also perceive it with their eyes, but there was no one around to answer that question.

After a night that combined darkness and moonlight,the sun rose, and the woman suddenly appeared out of nowhere, exactly in the same spot where the transparent shadow halo had been standing.

After the operation was successful, Akriod was sure that the sacred instrument had worked; he left the homeless woman lying in the forest among the wolves, who could not approach the place in his presence, and left.

But the most important thing is the forbidden thing he did after that.

Mixing his sacred tool, senshu, the form-copying tool, with the sacred tool Uru, the time travel tool, together to copy the form of Inar, which he had transferred about 12 hours before he was transported to the future, was forbidden and had dire consequences.

Each sacred tool represents an independent soul, and two souls cannot be merged together, but this is related to the price paid by the user, if the user does not pay a price equal to the price of the forbidden thing he did, there will be an internal price from himself that he will pay in the future and there is no escape from that, but Akriod decided to take the risk and not care about the matter, knowing that he was forced to do so, because if he moved to the future in a way other than the one he did, it would lead to the disappearance of all the copies of his sacred tool Senshu that he had copied, including Inar, so it was a decision that involved a lot of risk, but all of that so that he would not sacrifice Inar's copy.

* * * *

But since the time travel period changed from one year to six months, he was thinking with uncertainty that the price was the change in time; at least that's what he was optimistic about with uncertainty.

While the sacrifice was necessary to escape the raging curse and reach his goal, which was to take the form of Inar, the son of Agard, to achieve his desire, he had at least arrived successfully, and this is at least what Akriod believes, who does not sacrifice anything to his heart to reach his goal.

He carefully put the paper back in its place and closed the drawer, then stood in front of the mirror for a moment, contemplating his face, before slowly turning to leave the room.

He went out to find the old man standing, his hands behind his back, waiting silently. "Is everything all right, Mr. Inar?" he asked in a quiet voice, expressing his concern.

"Nothing, just a pain in the back of my head." He lied to the old man, trying to reassure him.

The old man opened his eyes wide in surprise upon hearing Akriod's words as he looked worried, "Can I check where you're feeling pain?"

Akriod looked at him for a moment, then whispered in a low voice, "Yes." He then nodded slightly toward the old man to dispel his worry.

When his wrinkled hand gently touched the back of akirod's head, the softness of the touch was amazing. His hand were touching him so gently that it seemed as if he were caring for a child's head. "You are cold, sir," the old man said calmly. The reason for the coldness came from the sacred tool, which produced coldness as long as it assumed a false form.

"Yes, just a slight tremor... nothing to worry about."

"If you say so." But still he looked worried.

After this simple deception, the old man nodded and advanced and began to head with Akriod into the huge hall, heading towards the wide staircase with fifty steps, and each step in this empty place was echoing with its sound.

__

Once they reached the bottom, they stood on a wooden floor. In front of them were two massive statues, their right hands raised like swords towards the sky, their eyes watching trained soldiers shaking the arena with their harmonious and coherent voices and steps.

"Who are these?" Akriod asked as he looked at their training.

"Ah, since you've been absent in training for the past six months, you might not be aware of them. These soldiers are the first batch of the 510th year. We have several talents among them, such as the brothers Aram and Aran, who passed the recruitment test with full marks, and there's also the humble and hard-working Ryudas, who is from the Riodas family known for their legendary soldiers throughout history who have passed through the democracy of Elethra, but unfortunately he's below their level, not to mention of course the presence of new faces this year."

In a moment of contemplation, Akriod didn't care about anything the old man said except for one name, and that was of the young man staring at him, whose name was Ruedas, his long black hair that reached his ears dancing in the air with every movement he made, and his cheeks that had some red spots, except that his movements were good; this name Akriod knew well.

* *

It was the same name as one of the Star Sect followers he had previously killed in order to sneak onto the Rex flying ship from which he had taken the Jewel of Order, which had been transferred from a Star Sect team.

* *

"But unfortunately, the gifted eldest son of the Ryudas family is missing; he was indeed a son with a great future as a soldier." The old man's eyes met Akriod's gaze on Ryudas, which surprised him. "Do you hear me, Sir Inar?"

"Yes, yes," Akriod replied, slowly looking away from Ryudas. "I was just thinking about the idea of ​​talent versus hard work. What do you think, Mr.…?" In a sudden moment, Akriod realized that he had made a slight mistake in his reverie, which was not knowing the name of the man with him.

"Ronan… Mr. Inar, did you forget my name so quickly? I know we haven't met often, but I didn't expect my name to be so hard to remember." The old man looked disappointed in his tone.

"No, I wouldn't dare, but I just had a temporary forgetfulness; I apologize very much." With an apology, Akriod wanted to quickly salvage the situation, as the old man felt insulted, although he did not want to mention his name, for fear that this name might be fake and he would fall into an unexpected trap.

The old man smiled gently, "You have matured a lot, Mr. Inar. I remembered you were just a mischievous child brought up by your father and playing with the soldiers. Here you are, a man in the prime of your youth. Don't worry, I accept your apology."

"Thank you, so what do you think of my question?" He wanted to lighten the mood by changing the subject.

The old man answered, raising his eyebrows in surprise and placing his left hand under his jaw, "I did not expect that you, Mr. Inar, would ask me this kind of question."

"You know, for someone of your age, you are more experienced than us young men." With a fake smile, Akriod replied.

"It is an honor to have someone with such a great future as you learn from me, but well, considering the population of the world, hard work is what drives things and this is an obvious fact that does not need discussion. However, talent, without exaggeration, is a very rare thing, appearing once every century according to my estimation of the number of talents I have met throughout my life. But believe me, talent often outweighs hard work and by a margin that makes it seem like heaven and earth."

"I agree with you." He looked at the old man and said, maintaining his fake smile even though he believed in something different. "I think sometimes hard work has a place too, don't you think?" continuing his words with calm steps with the old man while the screams of the trainees roared.

"If talent is not employed in an effective manner, it may mean nothing, allowing imperfect humans to win, especially in the edylis martial arts that only the elite of the elite fighters can fully master, let alone create their own distinctive art." The old man answered realistically.

"You're right." Akriod said as he continued his steps towards a large room.

__

As they entered it, it was huge, with a ceiling intricately carved with various drawings, with a mythical dragon in the middle protecting a crown from other creatures.

A large table stood out, with two old men sitting at it, wearing half masks on their upper faces. The atmosphere was strange in their looks.

Ronan stepped forward. "The heir to the great Dysar family, Inar Agard, has arrived." Akriod looked at him and then returned his gaze to the elders who stood.

He sat quietly on a chair near the two elders while Ronan stood behind them without moving. "First, I would like to express my condolences on the passing of your father, Sir. Inar." The man in the white robe and white mask spoke in a very respectful tone.

"He was a great man, with an iron fist." His companion in the white dotted robe continued his words as he shook hands with Akriod in offering his condolences, whose expression was astonished.

Akriod was surprised by the news; Agard was one of the rich Dysars and an important target for him. "Are you kidding me! Couldn't he find another time to die!" He muttered sarcastically to himself, Out of all the expectations that could happen, Agard's death was not among his expectations.

In the frustration he felt, he wanted to know the reason for the meeting that he didn't know why he was in, so he decided to ask, "Can you tell me why I was invited here?"

Ronan clapped his hands; the black curtains that were in the gate behind them opened to let ten large figures enter with them, humans with chains around their necks crawling on the ground like dogs.