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’Thank you...’
This is what the Bug Empress, Cain, and the Supre Will said to Nicholas and Patricia for what they did.
Honestly, a huge portion of the credit goes to Patricia since this was her idea in the first place. Nick just helped her iron out so of the details and also assisted in constructing the thousand-year-long dream.
If others were to learn of what they did and what happened here, so would probably say that the Bug Empress and her family didn’t deserve a peaceful ending.
They have committed so many cris against humanity that they’re beyond salvation. Hell, death itself was a rcy to them; they should’ve, at least, been tortured for a million years and made to beg for death before killing them.
As the strongest of the humans alive, Nick and Patricia owe this much to the bitter history between humans and the Horde.
But that’s not what they did. Instead, Patricia plunged them into a thousand-year-long dream, one of peace, serenity, and mundanity.
She didn’t do it out of the goodness of her heart, mind you. She did it because of Cain—that poor child who had been caught in the crossfire. Him, because killing such a pure and innocent soul straight up might offend the Supre Will.
While the Supre Will indeed wants the child to return to it imdiately, it doesn’t necessarily an that it had to throw the child rudely into its arms. That’s bad karma right there.
And, to be honest, Patricia pitied the child. Sure, he was one of the Horde, but he’s innocent; that much was clear. He had never been corrupted by the ideals and values of his mother. He deserves a peaceful and serene life, one that he could experience without being burdened by a curse he did not deserve in the first place.
Honestly, she could’ve made it so that none of them would’ve guessed what was happening.
She could’ve made it so that none of them would even suspect that they’re in a dream. She could’ve erased their mories completely, edited their personalities, and made sure that everything goes well according to the script and the ending she had in mind.
But when she thought about that, she imdiately realized that doing exactly that defeats the whole purpose of why she’s placing them in a dream.
Because in the end, once the dream was over, all they’d know was her manipulations, and they would just resent her even more. Cain, himself, would most likely resent her too, and she did not want that to happen.
So, what she did was just re suppression. She did not erase or rewrite their mories completely, just suppressed the more violent ones, especially their tendencies. She made it so that they were more susceptible to accepting this new life of theirs, letting go of their past and focusing on the now and the future.
And it worked...
The Bug Empress, her husband, the firstborn, and the sister...they all knew what was happening. But because of Patricia’s careful considerations, they all accepted the events as is instead of dwelling on the past and the actual reality.
She even made the deal sweeter by lifting the curse that the Supre Will burdened them with. She returned Anuman his voice, she got rid of Pelle’s volatile temper, she removed Maricel’s curse of infertility, and, most important of all, she allowed Cain to grow up before their eyes.
The dream world they lived in was also her creation, but the rest of what happened inside? That wasn’t her.
The Bug Empress and her husband dying midway through those 1000 years, their children eting their beloved, marrying, and extending their families? None of that was her. That was the result of the dream world reacting according to their tendencies.
None of these things would’ve happened if the main characters hadn’t wanted them to happen in the first place.
Neither she nor Nick expected the Bug Empress and her husband to die in the middle of those 1000 years. They didn’t even see it coming. They just knew that, sohow, at so point during this dream, they’d grown weaker.
When they investigated, it turns out that the dream worked even more potently than Patricia herself expected.
Despite knowing that everything around her was fake, the Bug Empress didn’t care. She completely imrsed herself in this dream, turning it into her reality and accepting everything as her truth.
As it turns out, this was really all she ever wanted in the first place: a reasonably peaceful and serene existence. Nick and Pat gave her what she wanted, and she was imnsely satisfied.
And so, even though she could’ve stuck till the end, she chose to make an exit at a reasonable ti.
She was tired, as it turns out. Tired of everything—living, scheming, plotting, fighting...the fact that she got to see her family live the exact life she always wanted; how the curses on her children were lifted; and above all, saw her youngest grow up to be a kind gentleman, was all it took for her to finally ’surrender.’
This was it, all she ever wanted.
She didn’t want to bury her own children, and she knew that her husband was only holding on because of her, so she made her decision.
Once she died peacefully in her bed inside the dream, she died in real life too. And not once did she resent what Nick and Pat did. She even thanked them before she dissipated.
Her death shouldn’t have been this easy, peaceful, and serene. But because of what Nick and Pat did, it went this way. And maybe this was for the best.
If the Supre Will disagreed with their ways, then it certainly never voiced out its complaints to them.
Pelle and Maricel followed them soon. And as cruel as it might be for Cain, he had to live out that full 1000 years.
Having him bury his family, his wife, and his children wasn’t a pain that Patricia wanted to inflict on the boy, but it was a necessary developnt. Such is life.
And to her relief, Cain took it all in and processed it in the healthiest way possible.
Life wasn’t a linear experience; that’s one lesson that Cain must learn to be a well-rounded individual and to satisfy his soul. He couldn’t move on properly on his next adventure if he wasn’t fulfilled and satisfied with how life had been in his current one.
And much to Nick and Pat’s relief, the boy learned and adapted beautifully after learning this lesson. He passed with flying colors, a feat at least 50% of the population, regardless of the race, failed to do.
Because of this, he passed on full and satisfied.
He saw Nick and Pat before he returned to the embrace of the Supre Will. He thanked them with all the sincerity that he’d grown to appreciate in that thousand-year-long dream they allowed him to experience and was gone at the next mont.
He felt the Supre Will’s satisfaction upon his return. And it certainly didn’t waste ti on continuing where it left from with Cain.
In an instant, Cain was cleansed of this life, prepared and ard for his next adventure. What that was was sothing that not even Nick and Pat would know. That’s out of their jurisdiction, and the Supre Will won’t appreciate them peeking.
They won’t even know when Cain will be reincarnated or who it will be; that’s not sothing that they could know. But it doesn’t an that they’d never know.
Patricia, for one, would be able to tell if she sees him one day. Even though Cain’s soul was cleansed of his previous identity and mories, she would still be able to tell from the traces and make the connection.
But that’s a matter for the future. Right now, their job here was done.
Once the Supre Will was done sending Cain off to his next great adventure, it thanked them both for what they did, because they certainly made it easier to do its job.
The Supre Will then returned to its peaceful slumber.
As for Nick and Pat, their main job was done. But it doesn’t an that they could leave. No, there’s still a lot of work for them to do.
Decimating the corrupted and vile civilization that the Horde built in this Chaos Realm was certainly easy. Repairing it, however, was much, much harder than that.
The two of them could hear the desperate wheezing of this chaos realm. It almost sound like it’s begging to be put down, to die.
But how could they let that happen?
Sure, this place was a goddamn ss thanks to what the Bug Empress subjected it to, but it’d be a damn sha to let it die just like that. And it just wasn’t fair since this place never really stood much chance.
So, now cos the difficult part. And that is how to cleanse the corruption from this place and revive it completely.
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