Chapter 536: Halden Merdara

Ronald looked around at the familiar vast expanse of low grass and the magnificent tree whose roots might wind around this entire world—if this even was a world.

He was here again.

Against his will this time.

Ronald lifted his hollow eyes towards the clouds, searching for even a glimpse of a leaf. He had married the avatar of this tree. Knowing the truth should have liberated him somehow, but it hadn’t.

It only made the pain worse.

All that struggle, all those days crossing the desert and surviving orc hunting parties, all that devotion to reaching her, gone. She had been taken from him right before his eyes, and there was no way to get her back because this tree was her.

It had always been her.

Part of him wanted to burn it. Another part couldn’t bear the thought of any harm coming to it.

Ronald drew a shaky breath. "You’re wasting your time. I won’t do anything you ask me to."

"Ronald..."

"You should have told me!" His voice broke through the vast emptiness. "You should have told me what you were, and I would have taken my own life in that desert. You’re cruel. Selfish. A murderer. Everything has to satisfy your goal, but your goal isn’t worth the deaths of trillions! It isn’t worth what you’ve done to my family or what you’ve made my son go through!"

"Enough of your ranting. As we speak, your son is nothing but stone."

Ronald’s expression fell.

"W-What?"

"You feel concerned. Don’t. He is my creation, not your human boy. I planned everything about him—his character, his traits, everything. I bent to the rules of Earth only for the sake of order, and that is why I needed you. You were merely one of many choices available to me. I made him. I will decide what happens to him."

Ronald’s fists clenched.

"Your anger is worthless. There is nothing you could do to me even if you were the most powerful existence alive. Your tears are useless to me. I know what you did. I remember it, and it is my duty to direct what remains."

The Mana Tree’s voice rolled across the endless grass, each word accompanied by a gale that swept past Ronald.

"What I did?" Ronald frowned. "What have I done? Tell me."

"Do you know the name Halden Merdara?"

"No."

"Do you know why Pathan is important to my plans beyond being a chosen world?"

"No."

"Do you know where fate lies, where the future of eternity stands?"

"Why are you asking me about—"

"Because you do not know!"

The Mana Tree’s voice crashed over him. A gale tore across the field with such force that Ronald staggered and nearly lost his footing.

"You know nothing. You are a flicker in the vastness of reality. You are nothing, nothing to be spoken of, nothing to be remembered. Nothing!"

Ronald planted his feet against the gale.

"Then why do you speak to me?" he shouted back. "I am nothing, aren’t I? So why speak to nothing?!"

The wind continued to howl around him.

"I am on the verge of breaking order, and I do not want to. Go to the Unknown King and remind him of what he is. Godfrey. Restore him, and hand him over to Cain."

"I will die first," Ronald replied. "Call this Halden Merdara. If he impresses you so much, why don’t you use him instead?"

There was silence.

"How dare you?"

A terrible dread fell over Ronald.

His mind, body and soul seemed to acknowledge at once that he had provoked something greater than anything he knew. His legs gave way beneath him. Strength drained from his bones and muscles, then from his thoughts, until even the effort to remain conscious felt beyond him.

Then, in the next moment, it all came rushing back.

Ronald dragged in a huge breath as life seemed to surge through his body.

"I have glimpses of the beginning, of when life first spread through the void. Back when no world had yet evolved, the sentience of life possessed a world, the place you now call Pathan. Only then, it was called Vitareth.

"I existed within her blood, and her creations learned to tap into it. They used it for power, for beauty, for their religions and their traditions. They consumed the very thing that gave them life.

"Halden Merdara answered the call of his creator when the others succumbed to their lust. He forced humanity beneath strict laws. They hated him, but he saved them all.

"And in the end, long after his death, they rose again. Always crying about their loved ones. Always making themselves the centre of the world."

The wind intensified around Ronald.

"You think you are the only ones with emotions? What about the being that gave them to you?" The voice crashed through the world. You, your kind, killed the sentience of life and doomed all of creation."

Ronald could barely breathe within the windstorm.

"I never possessed sentience, but now I do. I don’t know where we are going. Reality is changing, and someone has to take the reins. I did not ask for this, but I have my fears, and I will use you. I will use trillions upon trillions if I have to.

"You brought this upon yourselves, and for eternity you will pay the price. I will not stop. I cannot be killed, so grieve, Ronald. Grieve, for I have grieved and accepted fate."

The windstorm suddenly fell still.

"Rise from your fear. If you believe I am wrong, prove me wrong. I am surviving. Do the same. But I will not let you do it with ease, not after you emotional buffoons have continued ruining my plans."

Ronald opened his eyes.

He was back in his living room.

Percival and Lucy rushed towards him and gently took hold of him as he recovered his balance. Ronald let out a slow breath.

"Let’s go."

Percival blinked several times. Only minutes ago, Ronald refused them harshly.

"What?"

"Let’s go to Godfrey," Ronald said.

His ears were still ringing, and the Mana Tree’s outburst continued to replay in his mind.