Lackey's Seducing Survival Odyssey

Chapter 1710: YOU. WILL. REGRET. THIS.

How long had it been since someone called Jonathan... Jonny?

That nickname belonged to only one person. The only person who had ever called him that with such casual familiarity, and the only person Jonathan had truly acknowledged from the bottom of his heart.

"Aether...?"

The name escaped his lips in disbelief as he stared at the young man sitting across from him. The flickering campfire cast dancing shadows across the cave walls, its warm orange glow illuminating a face Jonathan knew all too well.

He found himself staring blankly, unable to look away from the impossibly familiar features. Even after all these years, he could still admit without hesitation that Aether possessed the most handsome face he had ever seen.

Young Aether simply nodded and smiled.

"Yo, asshole."

And annoying, same disgusting mouth!

He casually raised two fingers in a peace sign, as though they had only been separated for a few hours instead of years.

Jonathan’s heart trembled.

The way Young Aether spoke, the way he smiled, the way he mocked people whenever the opportunity presented itself, and even the slight tilt of his head while waiting for a response were exactly the same as he remembered.

Every habit, every expression, and every tiny mannerism belonged to the Aether engraved within his memories.

Nothing felt forced or artificial.

Everything felt natural.

Jonathan could no longer convince himself that he was imagining things. The young man sitting before him wasn’t someone who merely resembled Aether, nor was he a dream conjured by a dying mind desperately searching for comfort during its final moments.

He was Aether.

Or... had Jonathan died and somehow reunited with him?

There was that possibility, wasn’t there?

Yet if this was death, why did everything feel so real?

The rough stone beneath him pressed against his skin. The scattered bones around the cave looked tangible enough to touch. The campfire crackled and popped as sparks occasionally drifted upward before vanishing into the darkness overhead.

Every sight, sound, and sensation felt painfully vivid.

Jonathan’s throat suddenly went dry.

"H-How...?"

The question slipped from his lips before he could stop it.

His eyes remained fixed on Aether’s face, afraid that the moment he looked away, the impossible figure before him would disappear like a fragile illusion.

"Hm?"

Young Aether tilted his head in confusion.

Before Aether could ask what he meant, Jonathan ignored the lingering pain throughout his battered body and lunged forward without a second thought.

"A-Aether! Aether! Aether!!"

His voice broke as tears burst from his eyes. Jonathan wrapped his arms around him as tightly as he could, holding on as though loosening his grip for even a single second would cause Aether to vanish once more.

Not again.

Never again!!

Young Aether blinked in surprise before his expression softened into a warm and gentle smile. Without saying a word, he slowly raised a hand and gently patted Jonathan’s trembling shoulder while allowing him to cry against his chest.

However, at that moment, the dark voice lurking in the back of his mind echoed after remaining silent for a long time, its tone dripping with ridicule and amusement.

"Oh? What’s this? A reunion? Hahah... Look at you getting soft again. Pathetic. Don’t forget what you’re here for."

For the briefest moment, darkness flickered across Young Aether’s left eye like a passing shadow before disappearing without a trace. He lightly shook his head as though dismissing an annoying distraction before looking back at Jonathan with an amused smile.

"You know, I understand that you’ve missed me so much that you immediately hugged me and cried all over my shoulder, but from an outsider’s perspective...

This looks fucking gay!"

To be fair, if someone happened to walk into the cave right now, they would probably come to the wrong conclusion. The two of them were sitting beside a campfire deep inside a secluded cave after an emotional reunion, and Jonathan had just thrown himself into Aether’s arms while crying his eyes out...

So fucking romantic, right?!

"Ha... hahaha..."

Chuckling, Jonathan wiped away the remaining tears from his face before pushing Aether away and properly looking at him again.

The familiar smile, the annoying jokes, and the complete inability to take a serious moment seriously made his chest feel strangely warm.

"You really haven’t changed at all. No matter how impossible this feels, you’re definitely Aether."

Young Aether’s smile widened slightly as he leaned forward and casually patted Jonathan’s cheeks with the same familiar affection he had always shown toward his friends.

"And you’ve changed a lot since the last time I saw you, yet somehow you’re still the same old Jonny underneath all of that."

Jonathan’s lips twitched in annoyance, but he didn’t bother arguing. Aether had always treated everyone around him like children who needed constant supervision, despite being the exact same age as them.

Nobody had ever figured out where that strange habit came from, and nobody had ever managed to stop him either.

"Wait a second. Why do you look so young? I mean, seriously, you look seventeen or eighteen at most. What the hell happened to you? You haven’t aged at all."

The more he looked, the more unsettling it became. Jonathan reached out and touched Aether’s cheek to confirm for what felt like the hundredth time that he wasn’t looking at an illusion.

The warmth of his skin and the solid feeling beneath his fingers proved that Aether was real, yet his appearance remained completely unchanged from the one preserved in Jonathan’s memories.

Young Aether chuckled softly before raising an eyebrow.

"Out of everything that’s happened today, that’s what you’re worried about?"

"Huh?"

"What about the skull head monster? Shouldn’t that be your first concern right now instead of my skincare routine?"

The question immediately shattered Jonathan’s distraction and forced his attention back toward reality. Memories of the horrifying creature outside flooded back into his mind along with the pain, fear, and desperation he had experienced only moments ago.

"Shit! I should have...!"

Jonathan abruptly looked down at his body, expecting to see the horrific injuries he remembered suffering during the battle.

His voice died in his throat when he found absolutely nothing.

The twisted limbs, the broken body, and the scorched skin that had been ravaged by the reactor’s energy should all have been there.

Yet his body now looked completely normal.

His breathing gradually became uneven as he slowly raised his head and stared at Aether with growing disbelief.

"D-Did you do this?"

Young Aether shrugged, "I did."

Jonathan’s confusion only deepened after hearing that answer.

"But how? According to everything we know, current technology shouldn’t be capable of doing something like this. Forget repairing injuries this severe, I shouldn’t even be alive after taking a direct hit from an energy reactor. The fact that I survived at all already makes no sense."

Young Aether opened his mouth, but before he could say a single word, the dark voice echoed through his mind once more.

"Oi. The fuck are you doing? You’re seriously planning to tell him the truth? Why don’t you throw in some inspirational friendship music while you’re at it? Huh? Are you a fucking nugget? He’s a stranger now, asshole."

Yet Young Aether showed no sign of changing his mind.

"I was reborn in another Empire."

The answer left his lips without the slightest hesitation, accompanied by a small smile that suggested he had already accepted whatever consequences might follow.

"..." The dark voice immediately fell silent.

Several seconds passed in complete silence before the voice finally returned, speaking with such cold fury that a chill instinctively ran down Young Aether’s spine.

"YOU. WILL. REGRET. THIS."

Young Aether scoffed inwardly as the dark voice continued grumbling within the depths of his mind.

’Regret? Oh, come on, man. When my life hit rock bottom and everything around me collapsed, it was these guys who stayed by my side when nobody else would.

They carried burdens that weren’t even theirs to carry and listened to my problems when everyone else had already given up on me.

During the lowest period of my life, when I was little more than a broken wreck stumbling through each day without purpose, they still found time to drag me outside, force food into my hands, and remind me that I wasn’t completely alone.

When the world treated me like garbage, they treated me like a person. So tell me, why the hell would I regret telling the truth to people like that?’

This wasn’t a decision born from impulsive emotions or temporary nostalgia.

Young Aether had made this choice because he understood exactly what kind of people his friends were.

Sure, Time could certainly change people, and years apart could transform even the closest relationships into distant memories, but the moment Jonathan broke down and cried on his shoulder, Young Aether had already found the answer he was looking for.

The Jonathan he remembered was still there.

There was simply no way he could look directly into his friend’s eyes and answer his questions with lies after everything they had endured together.

To Young Aether, his friends occupied a place in his heart that very few people could ever hope to reach... Not even his current wives, in fact!

They were among the handful of individuals who had witnessed his weakest moments and chosen to stay regardless.

Jonathan blinked several times as he attempted to process everything he had just heard. A complicated mixture of relief, frustration, disbelief, and lingering sadness flickered across his face before he eventually released a long sigh.

"So all that time we spent searching for you ended up being completely pointless, huh?"

Young Aether immediately raised an eyebrow before a teasing smile appeared on his face.

"Oh? You actually searched for me? That’s surprisingly sweet coming from you."

He winked playfully while simultaneously directing his thoughts toward the dark voice.

’See? Even after all those years, they still searched for me.’

The dark voice responded with nothing more than an irritated scoff.

’Hmph.’

However, his amusement quickly disappeared after his mind caught up to a particular word Jonathan had used.

We.

Young Aether’s expression gradually became more serious as his heartbeat unexpectedly accelerated.

"We?" he repeated carefully. "What do you mean by ’we’?"

For reasons he couldn’t fully explain, the answer suddenly felt incredibly important.

Jonathan smiled weakly before opening his mouth.

"Yeah, that would be because—"

THUUUUUDDDDDD!!!

THUUUUUDDDDDD!!!

A violent impact interrupted him before he could finish speaking.

The entire cave trembled so violently that cracks spread across sections of the ceiling.

Dust and loose fragments of stone rained downward while the campfire flickered wildly from the vibrations.

Both Jonathan and Young Aether immediately became alert.

Without exchanging unnecessary words, they quietly moved toward the cave entrance and carefully peered around the rocky corner.

Both men stared in stunned silence.

Towering in the distance stood a creature that looked less like a living being and more like a nightmare that had somehow gained physical form.

The abomination easily exceeded thirty meters in height and possessed no consistent anatomy whatsoever.

Countless monster corpses appeared to have been forcibly fused together into a single gigantic mass of flesh, bone, scales, claws, and distorted organs. Massive limbs protruded from every direction at impossible angles, many of them bending backwards or splitting into multiple joints that shouldn’t exist. Some of the arms dragged across the ground while others extended from its shoulders like grotesque branches growing from a diseased tree.

Its surface constantly shifted.

Flesh bulged outward before sinking back into the mass.

Bones emerged from beneath the skin before being swallowed once more.

Entire sections of its body appeared to pulse as though thousands of living creatures were trapped beneath the surface and desperately trying to escape.

Dozens upon dozens of monster heads protruded from different parts of the creature. Some possessed glowing red eyes that moved independently of the main body. Others hung limply from strands of flesh while silently opening and closing their jaws. Several appeared partially melted into surrounding tissue, creating horrifying expressions frozen somewhere between agony and madness.

The creature’s lower body was perhaps even worse.

Instead of normal legs, enormous clusters of fused limbs supported its immense weight. Hundreds of feet belonging to different monsters continuously moved beneath the flesh mass like a colony of insects, causing the entire abomination to crawl forward in a disturbingly unnatural manner. Every step generated enough force to shake the surrounding terrain.

Atop the creature’s body rested an enormous Origin Crystal nearly the size of a small building. [Imgincmt]

As Jonathan stared at the abomination, a cold sensation slowly crept down his spine.

"How long was I unconscious?" he asked while keeping his eyes fixed on the creature.

Young Aether studied the monster for several moments before answering.

"Approximately two or three hours, if I had to guess."

Jonathan’s expression immediately darkened.

"That long...?"

His eyes widened as a terrible realisation struck him.

"Shit. If that much time has already passed, then Hell’s Gate could close at any moment. We need to get out of here immediately, Aether. If the gate closes before we reach it, we’re going to be trapped inside this place with that thing."