Sasha observed her son for a long time. Ever since they first went out of his cave, she had been doing so.

Jack, her son… was too clingy. Lazy, clingy and powerful. How could she leave this world with a son like that taking care of her grandchildren?

Oh, for sure he wouldn’t be a bad influence. But he would wail and beg, influence and go out of his way to keep them jailed in his dungeon.

There are many ways through which one can arrest other, without ever needing to use violence.

For instance, had Jack known what his eldest son was doing in his little dark elf village, and he would surely have intervened.

Under the premise of being dangerous, of being unneeded, he would either decimate the opponents or send them away.

It was his form of protecting his family, and it was also a good thing… if his family was comprised of regular human beings, the children being small ones and not hundreds of years old.

She had gone easy on him. She first talked to Elicia, and both shared the same sentiment: Her son was keeping them away from life. From living.

All day long stuck on that dungeon, no way of leaving. How did it feel to have lived over 20 years and only going out with your parents’ supervision?

Oh, for sure, the children didn’t had much emotional intelligence at the time, but they had enough to deal with small problems themselves.

Freedom. Limited, sure, as even she wouldn’t let the children roam the world without minimal supervision.

But freedom, nonetheless.

A butterfly will die if kept in a jar for too long. And right now, Jack’s dungeon was a big, impregnable, steel-clad jar.

And so, she acted. First, by putting her idiotic son out of worry. Then, by giving her grandchildren and daughter-in-law room to breathe.

She wouldn’t accept infidelity, of course, but if Elicia couldn’t meet new people and renew her feelings, soon she would be just like her - ready to die.

Oh, yes. She hadn’t given up on that. She had done what she was teaching those around her multiple times already.

Renewing. Reliving. Forgetting about the past and living in the present. There was even a skill which would allow her to live in the present moment, every second being a whole new experience, unlike all others!

This was the secret for eternal life, no doubt. After all, even after reaching an immortal body, one still had a mortal mind. It was needed to make the mind immortal, by making It immune to the fatigue accumulated through living the long years.

The only reason she was determined to die… well, even she wasn’t sure. It was an impulse coming from her Mind, not her body or brain.

An impulse many of the older generation would get from time to time.

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Was it to forgot who they were? To live being re-born? Or just because things like these were common occurrence?

Even Elicia was starting to show the signs of the Soul Departure, as the old-timers called it. An instinctive desire of the Soul to leave the world.

Sasha lightly smiled, like a mother who had found acceptance of her children’s destiny.

She knew now. After many years of experimentation with the beast’s soul she had with her, she finally discovered why Souls desired to Depart.

It was weird at first, since she would keep trying to prod on the beast’s Soul to no avail, until, one day, it found complete quiet.

It froze, as if time and space didn’t exist. The storage item she used to keep the soul shattered, its existence itself being rendered useless.

And then… it split.

That big soul split on many smaller ones. Seven, to be more precise. Seven souls, seven rays of light.

This was the Desire of the souls which desired to Depart. They wished to become many. To stop being a single one.

At that moment, peace settled inside of her, and she was truly able to enjoy life. All that remained for her to do, well…

Was to deal with her son’s attachment to herself, as well as to those around him.

As a last act of farewell and goodbye, she should at least free them from those foolish worries about keeping sterile relationships.

They should build what they desired to build, and if they desired destruction, then they should destroy.

It wasn’t about fulfilling the senses, but the Mind. To it, all experiences, be them faith or atheism, love or hate, pain or pleasure… were only food. Food so it could grow and multiply.

Was it really alright? To not care about the pain of others? Not to strive to build a wonderful utopia, where all lived in perpetual realization and enlightenment?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the perfect utopia was this useless and cruel world itself. What was the point of being enlightened, if this enlightenment only worked in heaven?

You want to build heaven? Then build heaven! You want for everyone to live in it? Then go and submit all to it, convert them, captivate their hearts and minds!

This too shall pass and become nothing. For the very force that drives one forward is none other than a species of hunger - hunger for new experiences, for new beginnings, for death and rebirth.

This was samsara, this was the truth of this world - we are never satisfied, and the desire to do good to others is only another form of food.

She was ready to accept this, and she was ready for the future.

Could she go beyond this cycle?

What for?

Going beyond this… what exactly could go beyond this? Not her Mind, which like an ameba ate, grew and reproduced.

Something else?

She didn’t know of that. She may have hundreds of thousands of built-up hours of meditation, and still it wouldn’t help in anything.

Because the Mind would only live the search for liberation once it became interested in it. And hers wasn’t.

A regular being’s brain would look for it in an instinctive manner. “I will feel pain in the future, so I shall attain liberation in order to run for it”. This was the basic thought.

But this thought itself was a form of having experiences. Thinking was a way of experiencing.

It was foolish to look for liberation in order to escape pain, as accepting pain and quit running was the first step in looking for liberation!

Maybe, just maybe this liberation had something to do with what she saw once - a Mind breaking down in many others, smaller minds.

It was perfectly still at that moment. Even Time and Space ceased to exist. Even Another World itself, around that big Mind, seemed to have halted.

Maybe liberation came with death - the death of the Mind. Afterall, would one’s Mind’s children still be that Mind? Or could they be new existences?

Could the Thing Beyond the Mind, if it even existed, be the one taking all of those smaller minds, or would it be free of the Mind and the new ones were new beings entirely?

Regardless, it indeed was samsara - as one accepted and valued all experiences around them, be positive, negative or neutral, and learned with them, their Minds would grow faster. If they didn’t, them their Minds would grow very slowly.

Her son’s Mind, as bright and dazzling as it was with Fairy Dust, was so small… he wouldn’t have this chance so soon.

Not that it mattered. It was time for something else to happen. For her to break this cycle of passivity and stagnation.

It was time to break up her son’s marriage and take her grandchildren from him as well.