Free Web NovelChapter 56: Trauma (2)
"We’ve recovered the memories from your previous life," a female voice echoed, carrying an unmistakable threat. "I’ll ask again: who are you?"
James opened his eyes and found himself within a celestial blue void.
There was no smell, temperature, or weight. Only silence, endless vastness, and an overwhelming pressure that prevented him from even thinking properly.
Six stars of different colors pulsed on the horizon.
His eyes widened.
He was inside this terrifying void again.
It was another nightmare!
These were the memories of the first time he had found himself in this place, right after dying on Earth. Despair filled him as he realized he was about to relive everything once more in this dream.
It was like being trapped in hell, reliving and feeling every detail of his most painful moments with near-perfect accuracy, unable to change anything. It was as if he were trapped inside his own body while everything repeated exactly as he remembered it.
Who could endure something like that?
Worse, these nightmares were relatively frequent.
"He knows nothing," a deep male voice said from one of the stars. "Those bastards would never allow him to know so easily."
"Earth, the Milky Way, pure humans... none of that exists in our world," said another male voice, calmer this time. "We’ve checked every universe. There is nothing similar."
James felt his stomach sink.
Those seven presences were not talking to a man.
They were talking to a captured thing.
A case.
An experiment.
"There are only the memories of a single short life inside him," the female voice said again. "He appears to be an Invader, but we have no definitive proof."
"How could someone with only a single lifetime be born with a Wheel of Destiny and an Anima at that level?" another female voice asked coldly. "He is definitely an Invader."
"The Invaders have already tried everything before," the first woman continued. "This time, they managed to send someone into our world’s cycle of reincarnation without anyone noticing. Even with all of us working together, we couldn’t discover what was wrong with him. But I found him far too quickly. They failed. Now this has become an opportunity."
A chill ran through James’s soul.
The stars grew brighter.
It felt like being a lamb surrounded by starving wolves.
"Boy... I discovered you shortly after your birth in our world," the female voice said softly, almost too calmly. "I tore you from your body before anything irreversible could happen."
He swallowed hard.
"You are merely a mortal who was used by the Invaders. They brought you here through an unknown method and hid something inside your consciousness," the voice continued, growing colder and colder.
"We do not wish to destroy your soul unnecessarily. But we also need to extract the truth from you. The only safe method is to force your soul to its limits. If there is something hidden inside, it will eventually emerge."
James tried to speak, but he could not.
"You will be sent to reincarnate with your Wheel of Destiny and your Anima sealed," she said. "You will live a life... you will never forget. As for your memories, they will remain. Every thousand years, you will be evaluated. The sooner you cooperate, the sooner you will be freed."
There was no time for fear.
The next instant, absolute darkness swallowed him.
James felt a brutal, profound pain, as if millions of needles were piercing his soul from every direction.
...
...
...
Shortly after the darkness came the light.
James reincarnated.
From the moment he was born, he retained his memories.
When he opened his eyes, although he could not see anything properly, something suddenly appeared before him with perfect clarity.
[Awakening Mission for the Nexus Seed System Initiated]
[To activate all system capabilities, it is necessary to absorb celestial energy. To do so, you must properly assimilate the Nexus Seed into your soul and gain control over it.]
[Current Progress: 0%]
James stared at the green windows in confusion. They were written in English, but he had no idea what any of it meant. Remembering all the games and books he had read, he assumed reaching 100% might grant him something useful.
Since he was a baby and could not even move, he spent his time thinking and developing theories about how to achieve that assimilation.
He soon noticed that his mother was rarely around, and he spent much of his time hungry. Unable to do anything else, he could only cry out with his tiny throat, begging for help and food.
After a great deal of time and effort, a female figure would appear, saying angry things.
That was his mother, but he could not properly understand her words or see her clearly.
Soon afterward, he would feel something warm in his mouth, and his body would move on its own.
The sensation of being fed as a baby was unique, and strangely comforting.
The days passed.
Whenever his mother came to feed him, those were the moments when he felt alive.
Little by little, his eyes began to see that woman more clearly.
She was not particularly beautiful, but she was his mother.
He chose to love her, even though he felt she did not seem to like him very much.
Perhaps the circumstances of his birth had not been kind to her.
’It’s not your fault. It’s okay, Mom...’
He comforted himself with that thought and promised himself that he would build a good relationship with her in the future. He would become a good son and make her proud to have brought him into the world.
After all, he had reincarnated with his memories. How many stories had he read about that? With his memories from Earth, countless opportunities and possibilities could be created.
He was a member of the Wube family, after all. He had received an excellent education and studied extensively while in the hospital, since he had little else to do.
But...
Before he even reached his first birthday, his life was forever sealed in hell.
James discovered the meaning behind everything those six sinister stars had said.
In short...
His mother was a miserable, sick woman, incapable of becoming a Mage. His biological father disappeared before he was even born. As for the man who later lived with her... he sold the baby for alcohol, and she did not care.
James had never felt so betrayed and wronged before. The pain was indescribable. The mother he wanted to make proud had not even given him the chance.
She handed him over without a second glance...
That trauma sank deeply into his soul. It made him hate himself and feel repulsion toward any other woman for whom he felt even the slightest affection.
...
James was purchased by a Sect of Alchemists.
Although he had inherited his mother’s illness and could never become a Mage, his body carried something anomalous. James was an impossibility.
His Bloodline was completely null. No... it was as if his body nullified all energy.
No matter what kind of pill he swallowed, the medicinal energy simply was not absorbed. It was completely impossible and inexplicable.
Before long, the medicinal essence would be expelled from his body, always perfectly pure. However, all of the pills’ natural impurities remained inside him.
It was the most terrible curse a mortal could receive. Only misfortune and harmful things could connect to him.
Thus, the alchemists had gained the perfect filter for creating unbelievable pills.
Before he even learned how to walk, James was already treated as property.
He spent fifteen years in a dark cell.
Once his body reached the slightest degree of maturity, the first experiment began.
A needle pierced his skin, then another, and another. His body twisted and convulsed while the alchemists watched, took notes, and smiled with cold interest. When he cried, they simply increased the dosage. When he resisted, they tore away his consciousness through pain.
James was kept alive by force.
Tests. Pills. Blood. Potions. Cruel methods designed to extract, measure, and study. They did not treat him as a person, but as a resource.
When he tried to bite one of the guards for the first time, he received a shock so powerful that he collapsed onto the floor, convulsing.
When he tried to escape again, they broke his will with another procedure.
His mind remained lucid.
His body did not.
[Assimilation: 6.6%]
The green screen, which rose slowly over time, was the only thing that gave him hope.
The years passed.
Decades. freewebnσvel.cѳm
Centuries.
Millennia.
Thanks to the magic of that world, the alchemists managed to prevent his life from burning out too quickly... the cost was forcing him to suffer miserably. No one willingly lived that way for long because it was not worth it. But he had no choice.
Every thousand years, the six Divinities evaluated him again through his dreams.
Always the same question.
Always the same answer.
Nothing changed. He never spoke about the windows or about the system.
But...
[89.9%]
Slowly, day after day, the assimilation continued to rise.
Even he did not know how he had endured all of that for so long.
No matter how much he suffered, he persevered.
He had to endure. Not only because he hoped the Nexus Seed System would change everything.
James was not an idiot. Those six figures treated him like something disposable.
If he truly were an Invader, he would be erased the moment he stopped being useful.
Telling the truth was not an option. He needed to survive. He needed to find a way to free himself and live, even if only out of sheer stubbornness.
So he waited.
Endured.
Hated.
And continued existing.
Until the day when finally...
[Assimilation: 100%]
A strange light shone from his body.
*BUZZ*
James only had time to read that window.
Then a dozen Alchemists burst into the cell, stunned.
"Finally! We did it!"
One of them shouted excitedly. By this point, James could already understand the language everyone spoke.
Without giving him any time to react, the Alchemists dragged him to the testing chamber.
After so much time, more than one generation of alchemists had already come and gone. Now, after detecting this sudden change through their instruments... these latest ones misunderstood its meaning.
As a result, they began an even crueler process, trying to surpass the achievements of their predecessors.
Then the slave’s body failed.
And for the first time in a very long time, death granted him a single moment of freedom.
***
Priam finally woke up. His entire body was drenched in sweat on top of his bed.
He sat up, breathing heavily...
The Nexus Seed in his chest, just like before, seemed to dim and retreat.
"Damn... this kind of torture is insane..."
He had only slept for a few hours in his bed. But within the nightmare, he felt as though he had lived through millennia once again. It was torture on an almost Divine level.
Alchemists had been ripping his body apart for millennia, but in his soul’s ledger, they were just executioners carrying out a sentence. Even the six Sovereigns who cursed him at least gave him a shot at reincarnating and trying to live.
But the one who actually signed the warrant—the one who truly caused every single scar and night of agony—was the woman who was supposed to protect him. That’s why the touch of a woman he actually cared about hurt worse than a torturer’s branding iron: it instantly brought back the scent and the gut-deep feeling of that betrayal and rejection.
Just remembering the face of the woman who had been his mother in that life filled him with unprecedented rage.
But...
...he closed his eyes, and the image of a loving new mother appeared.
This new mother of his was the only person his soul did not want to distance itself from.
Precisely because he had been born without memories and had lived as Priam. Seien had been given the opportunity to build a genuine bond of affection between mother and son. When the current Priam eventually took over again, it was easy for him not to reject her.
But the other women were not spared from the trauma he already knew he carried, yet still had no idea how to overcome.
