Road to the Crown Chapter 330: The owner

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Sitting down on the bench in the small park beside the institute, I was slowly sipping on the starrybucks coffee. In reality, I could never guess what made it so popular. For my own tastes, it wasn't any different if not worse than the coffee that I could get from any other coffee-shop.

Sadly, every single consumable product that I could get in the institute was imported, making it impossible for to order any other type of coffee.

"So, did you manage to sort through all the stuff in your mind?"

Suddenly appearing beside , the sa man that attempted to calm down back when I woke up, sat down on the sa bench as . Keeping a respectable distance of one ter away, he started in the distance while ignoring the probing glances that I kept sending to him literally every second.

"More or less. But I still can't wait for you to actually explain everything to ."

Under the pretence of my calm deanour, I was actually full of anxiety and fear. There was definitely sothing in the sedating material that they used on that managed to block those feelings, turning my head to be far calr than it would be in this peculiar situation.

'Elia'

The first thing that I was told once I woke up, was that I took part in the testing of the super-new alpha version of the virtual reality product. The man sitting beside was not only the singular owner of the entire company, but he also held the ownership of this countryless island lost on the pacific.

From one side, if I were to treat everything that happened to over the past year in that apparently virtual world, then the outco of the entire situation wasn't that bad.

Recalling the mont when I tripped on the stairs only to appear in that different tiline of mine was quite hard after all the ti that passed for since then, but after long ntal training, I managed to bring back all the details of that mont. But what was the most surprising about this, is that my mories of my real-world didn't end there at all!

Every ti I returned to the attempts of recalling my real past, I could peer further and further into my actions. From receiving a strange job offer, through over a year of preparing to take part in it, all the while all my living costs were covered by the Institute along with a huge, monthly premium on top.

Yet, I still had to be told literally anything. Was that world that I lived in for nearly a year, real? Or was it just a product of the supre computer calculations? Or maybe it was a mix of the two?

The idea that it was all just an illusion could be ignored right away. There was no way that Elia was fake. Sadly, I was too scared to ask about it as I knew that either I wouldn't receive the answer at all, or it would break my heart despite all the drugs currently tempered my brain activity.

"Let's start the explanations then. Sorry for doing it out in the open, but surprisingly"

Suddenly, the CEO and owner of the entire island and institute on it stood up and pulled a small, half a litre big bottle with a strange, yellow liquid. Uncorking it, he splashed half of its content on himself without even a shred of hesitation, before doing the sa to !

"Wha"

"... this is the only place and way for us to talk comfortably and without soone listening to us."

The rest of the man's sentence managed to quickly shut my mouth. Right, there is always a bigger fish. This was sothing that everyone who ever worked in any company knew. After all, even the owner of the countryless island had to be responsible to soone, even if one was seemingly as powerful as the man that stood before right now!

"First off, let's get to know each other. I'm Bart Hec Katernari. I'm Bart Katenari."

As the man uttered those words, a strange aura of insanely deep sadness appeared in his eyes, as if just ntioning his own surna brought up so incredibly unpleasant mories to him. The fact that he stuttered while saying what his surna was didn't escape my attention either.

"I don't think there is any need to introduce myself. I have this lingering doubt that you know more about than I do know myself"

Uttering this slightly ironic sentence, I noticed how the light returned to the man's eyes as if I just said sothing incredibly funny.

"That is most likely the case. But going back to the topic. By now, your real mories should already start returning to you. You shouldn't worry about this, as it's pretty normal for the artificial amnesia drug to be cleared out of your mind. As strange as it sounds, if not for my own ambition, just by selling that chemical I could beco the richest man in this world"

Sighing out deeply, the man in front of seemingly lost all his energy, powerlessly clasping his body down back on the bench. Even if it was only virtual, the last year that I spent in the other tiline taught how to judge the character of soone that I interacted with. It was a skill that I simply had to pick up in order to not be eaten alive in the political gas of the senate. Yet, for so reason, I couldn't see through this man at all.

As if he was so kind of black hole, or as if he wasn't a human in the first place.

"Moving on, I will speed up the process of you recalling your true mories. The mont that you rembered last, happens about an hour before you received the package with the explanation letter and the first dosage of the amnesia drug. Form that ti onwards, you forgot everything that happened the mont the drug was activated. But thankfully, the story isn't long or hard. To put it in short words, after a year of training to prepare your body for the stress of our little experint, you took the plane here, decided what kind of system you would like to have and entered the world that we constructed for your sake. That's the gist of it."

The story of that man was pretty on point with the mories that were slowly returning to . It was true that the one thing that I could vividly rember about the ti after tripping on the stairs was how extensively I trained my endurance and strength as if there was no tomorrow and my life depended on it.

Well, according to the content of the letter that I could sohow fully rember, it was actually the case.

"You are speaking a lot, but you have yet to answer the two, three questions that actually are important to . Was that place, real? Can I return there? And most importantly, Elia. Was she"

Before I could even finish my sentence, the man suddenly reached with his hands towards my mouth, forcing to stop talking.

"The blockade is about to dry up, aning the electronics in our clothes will start working again soon, so we need to hurry. The world that you were in, was completely virtual. It was sothing that appeared when your consciousness filled the physical fras that we set for it, basing on the guidelines we could implent inside it. But"

Taking a deep breath, the man scanned his own outfit in search for so kind of clues about sothing. Suddenly raising his eyes, the owner of this island looked at with a mischievous smile on his lips before asking a strange question.

"But, does it make it any less real?"