Author's Note: Unedited Chapter
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"We're mostly out of options so let's just make sure we avoid getting into another scuffle..."
The others nodded in agreent, understanding the gravity of their situation.
The recent events had drained them a lot.
Gustav, sensing the need for personal preparation for what lay ahead, excused himself to one of the rooms within the spacecraft to ditate.
Secluded and in silence, Gustav sat cross-legged. His breathing was deep and asured. The room, dimly lit by the soft glow of the ship's ambient lights, provided a sanctuary of peace. As he closed his eyes, his mind drifted inward, connecting with his bloodline roots.
'The third step of Beta Rank... It's within reach. I just need to push through the barriers, channel deeper.'
His focus intensified and as he delved into the depths of his bloodline channels, he sensed the burgeoning power within him, teetering on the edge of a significant breakthrough.
("Prepare yourself.") The system voiced.
Gustav opened his eyes montarily, his ditation interrupted.
"What is it again? What am I to prepare for?"
("Unbound...")
The word lingered in the air, cryptic and heavy with unknown implications. Gustav's eyebrows knitted in suspicion.
Shaking off the disturbance, he refocused, channeling more intensely.
'I guess sothing will happen when I break through... I can't let anything distract right now.'
Days passed, with the spacecraft inching closer to its destination. Inside his ditation room, Gustav was a conduit of raw energy. His dedication and intense focus finally paid off.
With a resonant surge that felt like a sonic boom echoing through his veins, Gustav achieved the third step of Beta Rank.
At that exact mont, a wave of powerful energy radiated from his body. The ship trembled, panels and tools rattling unsteadily.
Outside the ditation room, the group was taken aback as the ship vibrated unexpectedly.
"What in the world?" Falco was appalled.
"It's coming from inside the ship... It's Gustav! He must have broken through," Endric imdiately announced to the others.
The energy subsided as quickly as it had erupted, returning the surroundings to a state of calm once more.
As Gustav reached the third step of Beta Rank, a profound internal shift occurred. It felt like a physical pull, tugging at the very essence of his being, drawing him inward and outward simultaneously.
His consciousness expanded, flooding with mories that did not belong to him—or did they? The images and sensations that washed over him were vivid, disorienting, and utterly foreign.
'What is this? These mories... Another life, another dinsion, perhaps?'
The mories unfurled like a tapestry of another existence where Gustav was not a fugitive or a fighter, but an honored being in a dinsion vastly different from his own. He saw flashes of ceremonies in his honor, divine beings that faltered before him.
Yet, the details were fragnted, obscured by the mist of a mind not fully his own.
As he delved deeper into the flood of alien mories, he felt a sensation of vertigo as if his spirit were detaching from his body.
When he regained consciousness, the room and its familiar confines had vanished. Instead, Gustav found himself adrift within a constellation of stars, the cosmos enveloping him in its awe-inspiring expanse.
A monuntal presence lood before him, a being of incomprehensible scale whose hand, the size of a galaxy, swung towards him with slow, inexorable force.
The air—or what passed for air in this cosmic vision—vibrated with the power of the colossal entity as it bood a single, condemning word:
"Traitor!"
The accusation was thunderous, resonating through the very fibers of Gustav's being.
The pressure from the descending hand was imnse, threatening to crush him into nonexistence. It felt as if every cell in his body might burst, scattered to the cosmic winds.
'I can't move...'
In a desperate bid for survival, Gustav tried to shield himself, but the power bearing down on him was beyond his newly attained capabilities.
As despair gripped him, fearing his end was imminent, his eyes snapped open.
He was back, not in the cosmos, but lying on the bare floor of his ship's ditation room. The stark, cold tal under him and the ship's movent noises briefly reassured him, but his relief was short-lived.
There was a persistent banging sound, soone at the door, urgent and insistent.
"Gustav! Are you in there? Open up!" Aildris's muffled voice rang out from the other end.
With a groan, Gustav pushed himself to his feet, his body aching as if he had truly been crushed by a celestial giant.
He staggered to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open to find Aildris, concern etched deeply into his features.
"There you are! We heard a loud crash, and then nothing for the last three days. Are you alright? You were unresponsive."
'It's been three days? It felt like a few seconds,' Gustav couldn't believe his ears.
It had already been three days since he broke through to the third step of Beta rank.
Gustav leaned against the door fra, trying to collect himself.
His voice was hoarse, his mind still reeling from the intensity of the vision.
"I saw sothing..."
"How do you an?" Aildris inquired.
"A vision... Or perhaps mories. It is strange but now I have even more questions," Gustav answered with a botherso expression.
"A vision? That's... unusual. Do you think it was real?"
"Real or not, it felt significant. Things like this never happen to . I was called a traitor, Aildris. By sothing ancient and powerful."
Aildris looked at him, trying to make sense of the words. His concern deepened, reflecting the gravity of what Gustav described.
...
In the dimly lit control room of the spacecraft, the air was thick with concern and curiosity. Gustav and Aildris entered together, the weight of recent revelations hanging heavily between them.
The group turned expectantly as they approached, their faces etched with worry.
"Gustav, you've been silent for three days. We thought you'd co out after your breakthrough... What happened?"
Gustav paused, the disorientation from his temporal displacent evident in his expression.
"It was only a few seconds to . I had no idea three days had passed."
Endric, who had been observing Gustav closely, nodded with a knowing look. His background as a ti candidate had given him a unique perspective on such anomalies.
"You regained so mories, didn't you? The kind that stretches across ti and dinsions."
Gustav turned to look at him.
"Yes, I did. mories that don't feel familiar."
Endric's forehead glead with a green glow as Husarius's voice rang out.
"As you grow stronger, Gustav, the more 'unbound' you beco. This ans your past, potentially across different realities, will continue to reveal itself to you, piece by fragnted piece."
'Is that why the system warned ?' Gustav recalled the system's heads-up before his breakthrough.
"mories of what, exactly?" Ria questioned.
"mories of being the outworldly," Endric blurted out.
The revelation added a layer of tension to the already charged atmosphere. Gustav's frown deepened as he internally questioned the mysterious title that had lood over him for the past three years.
"Being the outworldly... It seems there's much more to it than I anticipated. I need more answers."
As the words left his mouth, a phenonon occurred.
From within Gustav, a teenage feminine figure with striking red hair, eyes, and a gown, materialized. She phased out smoothly, her presence both startling and srizing.
"What did you an back on the Nereus Sector when you said you had sothing to tell ?" Gustav's eyes didn't have a hint of surprise as he voiced out.
Aildris and Ria on the other hand were just experiencing sothing like that for the first ti and couldn't believe their eyes.
"It's always sothing new with you, isn't it?" Aildris voiced, startled.
"Oh, yeah... et System," Gustav said to both of them.
"That explains nothing but... Okay?" Ria mumbled with a confused look.
The system maintained a calm deanor as her red eyes locked onto Gustav's.
("What you perceive as mories are indeed glimpses of your existence as the outworldly—a term that encompasses much more than can be easily explained in a mont.")
("What I wanted to let you know at the Nereus Sector was the fact that I am an echo of your past. I existed back then.")
"What do you an by that? You knew as the outworldly?" Gustav inquired.
("Yes I did.")
"So you're older than just a few thousand years?"
("I am.")
"Is that why you bound yourself to when you ca to earth?"
("No. I didn't know it was you at the ti.)
"So who exactly are you?"
The system's face glitched multiple tis after hearing the question.
("I am unauthorized to answer this question. This is as much as I can tell you at the mont.")
Gustav absorbed the information, his mind racing with possibilities and the weight of his hidden past.
Aildris and Ria were doing their best to keep up but they could barely understand what was going on.
Falco had an idea since his Father was a higher dinsional level being while Endric was ahead of them all in terms of said knowledge since he was a ti candidate.
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