(The Eternal Garden, Kaelith’s POV)
"Idiot..." Kaelith muttered, his voice calm but edged with quiet irritation, as he couldn’t help but feel disappointed in his son Raymond for the way he had handled Veyr.
Just like Veyr had guessed, he had indeed been listening in on their conversation from afar, and could analyze the exact moment where Raymond had messed up.
"You took him out of the Garden too easily. Of course he would catch on to us after that," he mused, his tone carrying that rare mix of frustration and weary amusement that only a father could have toward a reckless child.
"All the talent in the universe.... You could have become the greatest warrior the universe had ever seen, even surpassing your grandfather, but unfortunately, you don’t have the mind for it.
You don’t think before you act, and despite being five centuries old, you still behave like a spoiled child."
Kaelith complained, as he couldn’t come to terms with how he had raised such a brainless child.
"Now Veyr won’t co-operate with you anymore.
And my plan to uncover the Cult’s secrets has gone to waste...."
*Sigh*
Letting out a deep sigh, Kaelith shook his head, wondering yet again as to when Raymond would finally mature and become more reliable as his greatest asset.
—----------
(Meanwhile, within the Time Stilled World, Leo’s POV)
Leo sat hunched forward, elbows on his knees, fingers pressed against his temples as he tried to make sense of the numbers spinning through his head.
’Veyr’s execution is in forty-five days... outside-world time,’ he thought quietly, his expression tightening. ’Inside the Stilled World, that’s roughly forty-five hundred days... plenty on paper, but only if I never step out.’
He leaned back, staring blankly at the ceiling as the math continued to unfold in his head.
’But I can’t wait until the last day. I need to be back on Ixtal with the Cult Army at least fifteen days before the execution. That cuts it down to thirty days... thirty days outside, three thousand in here.’
He exhaled sharply through his nose, his patience thinning.
’Out of those, Moltherak needs a thousand days for my final training, leaving me with two thousand days—twenty outside—to ascend to Monarch.’
His hands clenched slightly.
’And even that’s not possible here. I can’t exactly kill a couple billion people inside the Stilled World. Which means I’ll have to step outside early to do it...’
He closed his eyes, jaw tightening as the grim reality settled in.
’And that means my timeline just got even tighter,’
He concluded, as the weight of that thought pressed against his mind like an unrelenting vice.
’Yeah... I’m fucked.’
He thought, as he sat in silence for a long while, until eventually, his own voice shattered that calm.
"Without becoming a Monarch, I won’t be strong enough to learn the technique Moltherak intends to pass on... and without that technique, I’ll have no way of leading the Cult Army to save Veyr."
The words escaped him like a confession, his voice rough and low, as he felt the irrational urge to pull out the Emperor Suppression Manual from his storage ring and tear it to shreds, if only to vent the frustration that had been gnawing at him ever since he finished reading its latest instructions.
"But if I do go down that road and somehow make it through... by the time I return, forty-five hundred days will have passed in here, and my kids will already have turned fifteen and eighteen, destroying any hope for me to be a part of their lives in a meaningful way.
Not to mention Amanda feeling heartbroken."
Leo said, as he exhaled sharply, while his fingers traced aimless patterns against his knee.
"However, if I don’t ascend to Monarchhood, my aura will never stabilize enough for me to even stand near them.
Which means I can only watch from afar and never meet them, no matter what..."
Leo realized, as he felt helpless being stuck in such a difficult conundrum.
"I guess there’s no other way around this...
I can’t compromise on my ascension to Monarch,
and I can’t compromise on trying to be a family man.
So there’s only one right way to do this..."
He said in a shaky tone, as he weighed the pros and cons of this final route.
"The only way out of this mess is for me to send Amanda and the kids to Ixtal under Soron’s protection, while I go out there and try to ascend to Monarchhood within the next thirty days..."
He leaned back slowly, his fingers tightening around the edge of his chair, as his mind turned over the implications of his own words.
"On one hand, that plan ensures that my family won’t have to wait more than a month to see me again... but on the other hand, the security of Ixtal is nowhere as good as the Stilled World."
He paused for a moment, his tone shifting lower, as though the words themselves were weighing on him.
"There’s no telling when the Righteous Gods might descend on Ixtal and make a move against Soron... and if I’m not there to save them at that time..."
He trailed off, his jaw tightening as the thought formed but refused to leave his lips.
Still, after a long moment of quiet contemplation, he exhaled and shook his head slightly.
"Even so, that’s the path with the fewest pitfalls. Security might be uncertain, but at least this way I’ll still be a part of their childhood...
and still have a chance to be a father."
He said at last, as he stood up from his seat.
"To ensure their safety, I’ll send Su Pei and Dumpy with them to Ixtal as bodyguards.
That way.... I’ll know they’ll be as safe as they can be.
But beyond that, I really see no way out of this mess."
He said in a low tone, as he made up his mind on what to do next.