It had been almost two years since I came back in time, and I was once again in The Archives doing some research.

Genesis, who was sitting in her usual seat near mine, put down her tablet and said, “Why is it impossible to meet me in person?”

Genesis had been dancing around the point of me possibly meeting with her in person for a while now. I was unable to tell her the whole reason for my inability to meet her, so whenever she mentioned the topic I just brushed her off noncommittally. However this led to her bringing up the topic almost every time we talked to each other for almost a month.

This time I tried to cut off her questions so I could continue with what I was researching, “I can’t really talk about it. It won’t be for a long while until I could possibly meet you.”

However my response didn’t mollify Genesis and she continued to ask, “Then when will you be able to meet me in person?”

I sighed and put down my tablet as well, I could tell this wasn’t going to be a short conversation, “If you really want to know, I won't be able to meet with anybody for a long time. It’s not just you, it's everyone.”

Genesis leaned back in her chair and looked like she was thinking about what to say next. After a moment she said, “Are you doing some sort of special training or something?”

I’ve never thought about my situation like that. When she put it that way I couldn’t help but think it was a fairly accurate description of my situation and said, “Hmm, yeah I guess you could call it that. It’s kind of like specialized training just for me.”

“How long will it be until you’re done with your training then?”

“It probably won’t be until I’m an adult Genesis. I know that you want to meet me in person, and I would like to meet you in person too, but it’s impossible for me to stop what I’m doing and visit with others. I know this kind of makes me a bad friend, but I can’t do anything about it. I'm sorry.”

Genesis shook her head, “There’s no need for you to say sorry. It's me who’s sorry for pressuring you to meet when you’re in such a difficult situation.”

I raised my hand and said, “It’s fine Genesis. I’m not upset or anything so don’t feel bad about it. But what makes you keep bringing this up anyways?”

“Well, I just brought it up because I’m about to have my tenth birthday next month and I was kind of hoping that you might attend the party. But since you can’t come I won’t bother you about it anymore.”

“Your tenth birthday huh. Is there something special about your tenth birthday that’s different from last year? I don’t recall you wanting to meet me for your birthday last year.”

Genesis sat up in her chair and her voice had a tinge of excitement as she said, “There is something special happening this year. I’m going to get my bloodline talent awakened the day before my birthday; so the birthday party this time will also be to celebrate my talent awakening.”

I tried to put some excitement into my voice to match hers, “That sounds exciting, I hope your talent awakening goes well. I know about bloodline talents and could even awaken the Shadow’s bloodline talent, but I’ve always thought that I would rather have my own unique talent instead. Maybe that’s just me though, I can certainly see why others would want to awaken a bloodline talent instead. What about you? Why do you want a bloodline talent instead of your own unique talent?”

Genesis took some time to think about how to answer my question before saying, “Well I guess it’s because I have to have the Rotthall bloodline talent if I want to be an heir. If I didn’t have the bloodline talent then my family would probably kick me out of the house.”

She sounded a bit uncertain, but what she had said raised a flag in my mind. Ever since I had met Genesis almost two years ago I had always wondered how she would end up all alone like the future I knew. However Genesis had never hinted at any reason that such a thing might happen. This was the first time I had found a clue that might lead to that future scenario.

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Trying to sound casually curious I said, “When you say that you would be kicked out of the house, why would that happen? Do the Rotthalls not allow anyone without the bloodline talent to be a part of the family or something?”

Genesis always seemed a bit uncomfortable when talking about her family and displayed the same signs now as she said, “No, there are Rotthalls without the bloodline talent. People who marry into the family obviously wouldn’t have the Rotthall bloodline after all. It’s just that the Rotthall bloodline talent is so essential to running the family that if I didn’t have it my family wouldn’t hesitate to dismiss me as an heir candidate. If that were to happen I don’t know what I would even do.” She waved her hand in the air like she was shooing away a pesky bug and said, “But that’s not going to happen. My unique talent isn’t going to awaken before the bloodline awakening ceremony.”

Based on what I knew about talent awakenings there was indeed almost no need for Genesis to worry about this. However, very rarely, if a person’s unique talent was of the same tier as the bloodline talent they were trying to awaken, there was a small chance that both talents could awaken at the same time and fuse together mutating into a completely new talent. It was extremely rare, and if I didn’t know about Genesis in the future I probably wouldn’t have even thought about such a possibility happening.

Now I couldn’t dismiss the subject without at least saying something, “Yeah there’s no need to worry too much about it. However, and I’m saying this because you’re my friend, if anything happens you can come to me for advice. After all, I'm just sitting here in The Archives every day so I have a lot of knowledge and understanding about a variety of different topics, and even if I don’t know I can definitely find out. Anyways I wish you a happy birthday and can’t wait to hear about how it goes.”

“Thanks Radiant. Speaking of, when is your birthday? You’ve never mentioned it.”

After living for so long my birthdays had lost much of their significance to me. So I didn’t give it much thought as I answered Genesis, “My birthday is on the same day as yours. The sixth day of the eighth month.”

Genesis blinked and widened her eyes, “Wait, you’re saying you have the same birthday as me? Why didn’t you ever say anything about it?”

I shrugged, “It just never seemed necessary to mention it.”

Genesis looked at me like I was a crazy person and said, “What do you mean it wasn’t necessary? If you had told me we could’ve celebrated our birthdays together.”

The corner of my lips almost twitched upwards after hearing that and I said, “You say that like it’s necessary to celebrate my birthday. I don’t need to celebrate my birthday, I’m busy doing other things.”

Genesis shook her head and said, “That’s unfair. You can celebrate my birthday but I can’t celebrate yours?” She folded her arms and said, “Well from now on I’m going to come here on the morning of our birthday and we will celebrate together.”

My lips finally curved into a smile and I said, “You can do that if you want to. However, just know that it’s entirely unnecessary. If you don’t come here I won’t be upset or anything.”

Genesis said, “Well I will be here, and you better be here too or else I will be upset. I’ll be here at seven in the morning so don’t be late.”

It was nice to have someone like Genesis to help me focus on things other than my research every now and then. I nodded my head and said, “Alright, I’ll be here. I’m here every day anyways so there’s no need to worry.”

We continued to chat for a bit before we stopped and continued doing our own thing. She continued her administrative and historical studies, and I continued where I had left off on some research about a possible magical technique called [Internal World]. It could create a sort of pocket dimension within someone’s own body that could be used for storage or other things.

The technique required a specific set of circumstances that would be almost impossible for most people to create, and other research that referenced this one all stated that it was a nice idea but highly impractical. However as I was studying I started to theorize that I could probably create the specific circumstances necessary through the use of my metaphysical organ [Fractured Space Channel].

However, the research I read stated that even if someone could create the circumstances necessary to practice the technique, that didn't mean that they could or should do so. For most people this technique would be too mana hungry to sustain, and even for those who had the mana regeneration needed to sustain everything it would still be too potentially dangerous to practice. The dangers of having a large spatial storage, inside of a fleshy body, that could potentially explode, was too much of a risk for almost anybody to consider. Yet even after knowing all of this I still thought that it might be possible for me to use [Internal World] safely.

My TechnicMorph ancestry made me particularly suited to house something like the small pocket dimension that the [Internal World] technique would create. Because TechnicMorphs were a part of the Mimic Family they were very tough creatures able to withstand vast amounts of change. I was confident that I would be able to stabilize [Internal World] so that it wouldn’t be a danger to me.

However it would still be quite a while before I had the magical skill necessary to practice [Internal World]. This research was more of a long term side project that I had come across while I was doing research on spatial magic.

In any case [Internal World] would function as great practice for the spatial magic I would need for my future prison escape. Also who wouldn’t want to practice a technique as cool sounding as Internal World? Certainly not me.