NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter-183 Déjà Vu
Just reliving a few seconds of what Ewan had already experienced smacked him with a strong flavor of déjà vu—hence the name. He knew the effect of the fruit, yet it caught him off guard, let alone the unprepared and the unaware—such a small fruit forced even a star system to repeat its last hour. The remarks and the comments in his journal mentioned the drastic changes and the repercussions of the fruit, but they weren’t clear on the extent of it. So, Ewan could only reference his family’s knowledge and make a generalized presumption of the aftermath the fruit would leave in its wake.
The Governor thought he would travel back to the past with the fruit, where he could redo his life, where he could wash away his regrets. And not only him, but many who called it the ‘fruit of regrets’ carried the same desire. Yet, the fruit would only revert his existence back to the beginning of his second life—when his soul awakened—and the rest of the world would only retrace one hour. How shocked he must be right now, to become an eighteen-year-old again, but losing all his powers and remaining in the present time, with his enemies still at their peak and alerted from the phenomenon…
The gap in knowledge created the current skewed situation. The Governor outwitted and crushed Ewan, but his family’s legacy pulled him back to be a winner again, and his prize was the second fruit from an hour ago, before it withered. Even the mighty planets and the planes bent before it and repeated their time, sacrificing it to create the potion Ewan wanted must be feasible.
The trend of events hinted at the overshadowing chaos that would soon engulf the area, it was better to scoot away as soon as possible. Thus, Ewan got to work, and by the time the disoriented duo woke up and staggered in, the etched spell circuit with the tree as its center glowed for the sacrifice.
Transmute!
The chamber tremored when the spell crushed the tree and the fruit into a crowd of amber light specks, powdered soil falling from the ceiling, the Warship squeaking, and they came together to form a pearly blob of liquid. Time was running out, one hour was all Ewan had before the déjà vu ended and the repercussions of the fruit bloomed, so he ignored the duo’s confused questions and injected his blood into the potion and gulped it down. The slaves had already helped him calculate the risk factor and perfect the details, he was sure of the potion’s effect. The only missing link so far was the quality of the sacrifice, and the déjà vu tree filled that gap.
His soul space rumbled as the potion rushed in, gathering into a blob again, and hammering his head with waves of dull pain. Layers of blood halo cocooned Ewan and dropped him into a trance while the potion exploded inside his soul space and an irregular mass of argent filaments flickered between illusion and reality.
His sense of time faded away, and the dreamless sleep eased the pain. The world retraced the same minutes, but Ewan followed a different thread—his chat with the Governor only remained in their memories. He woke up when the cocoon waned, and as the darkness of the chamber overlayed the blackness of his closed eyes, the mystic rune solidified into a stable state in his soul space—it carried his virtual image as its contracted Astylind. And with the applause and the cheers of the Mystic-Anima around him, his affinity with the element surged into the Endued level, the highest any material being could have at birth.
Among his three runes now stood another, a jumbled stack of silver filaments guzzling down the Mystic-Anima rushing in from Ewan’s surroundings. Though the ups and downs took him to the skies and plunged him into the pit, he finally achieved what he set out to do, he finally had the mystic rune. Its stability equaled his other runes, its function also matched theirs, and the virtual Astylind it contracted would serve as the node for the Elementalist.
The itch to explore the spells with the new rune was persuasive, yet Ewan refused and focused on the Warship again—they had to get away now.
“Boss, what happened?” Kidd said. “I feel weird.”
“I’ll explain later,” Ewan said. “Go check the bottom parts, see if there’re any big holes. Stefan, you go check the thrusters from the top deck, see if they’ll still work. I’ll go to the bridge.”
“I feel like…you said that before…,” Kidd murmured.
“It will because I did. I said I’ll explain later, just go check the Warship now,” he said and flew to the top deck, down the stairs, and to the bridge.
The authentication process repeated the same, and after minutes of strong déjà vu bombarding his senses and triggering nausea, he became the sole owner of the Stormfalcon again.
“The full status report give. What the ship condition?” Ewan asked, barely making up coherent sentences. Luckily, he understood Kaaleria better than he spoke.
“Negative, cannot gather the feedback, all modules down, backup storage is only enough for the core system,” Nightingale said.
“How tall last?”
“Continuous energy usage will last 3 hours, 48 minutes, 20 seconds, counting down.”
“Do contain a map, nearby liquids? Exclude Drarith, look Rigen station near side?” Ewan asked. Once upon a time, the city of spices also saw an influx of Warships parked for refueling and repairs, yet not even their shadows remained on the city now, he had to find another.
“Information outdated; reliability index has fallen below 1 percent.” Nightingale showed him the map and marked the nearby island with a fueling station, but the red warning sign stayed on the screen. Nevertheless, Ewan ticked it and made it his next destination—they had to start somewhere.
“Kidd! Stefan!” He yelled from the bridge, and his voice reverberated inside the chamber. “Start digging.”
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