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Chapter 305: The Tragedy of Sam
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BROOM!! BROOM!!
With the final burst of the accelerator, Matthew turned off his bike’s engine then removed his helmet, giving to the old maid that received him.
“Anna?”
“She’s online.” The maid replied helplessly. It was really sad for her to see someone pretty and very active like Anna to be always online instead of her playing sports or anything like any other active young lady.
Matt could only smile wryly as well. When he was about to turn and enter the house there was a pair of eyes that attracted his attention.
“Rex?”
“Yo!”
Matt felt that there was something wrong with this Rex… his presence and his pair of eyes peeking at the garden garage gates was something that he had only seen twice not in the real world but in Terroa.
He walked over but couldn’t make it so. But when he reached Rex’s garage gate, Matt’s steps bid into a stop and his smile turned into a frown.
Because Matt could feel… that he wasn’t Rex.
It was the middle of the day and so he could see clearly the expressive ‘smile’ on Rex when he got closer.
As impossible as a thought it may seem, he also recalled the times when Siva had switched into a different person in Terroa.
“Y-You’re not Rex…” He stuttered. “…are you?”
Rex… chuckled and then changed his smile into a sincere smile of welcome and the pressure that made Matt stop on his tracks vanished into thin air.
Only then did he realize that that pressure was a very familiar pressure that he had come face to face in Terroa multiple times already, with the latest coming from the evil Mefisto himself.
Bloodlust!
It was every monstrous existence’s natural ability, the intent to kill and murder…!!
Matt shivered at the realization as he watched Rex open the garage door and welcome him in.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Matt asked. He trusted that Rex wouldn’t hurt him because they were friends. “Aren’t there some spying things on your house or something?”
Rex brought a chair from the kitchen inside and then the small table from the sala to place a cup in a saucer in front of Matt.
It was really a welcoming gesture.
“Blend or tea?” Rex asked warmly.
Matt couldn’t feel any kind of hostile intentions or any weird and unusual behavior coming from Rex so he slightly lifted his defenses and spoke how he normally spoke with Rex and Siva.
“Since you’ve asked, I’d like to have black coffee.”
“Ahaha… manly, eh?”
“No sugar.”
Rex returned to the house and kept the garage door open as he brought back a thermos and the bottle of coffee. Since he already had his on the bench, he placed it on the table as he raised it to Matt as a greeting.
After the two’s first sips, Rex opened, “I’m sorry to have to test you earlier.”
Matt felt startled and then displayed a look of sincere worry, “So you really aren’t Rex?”
Rex didn’t raise his head and just continued to look at the blend on his cup that he didn’t bring to the coffee table.
Matt couldn’t put it into words but he could feel a sense of…. desolation in this Rex in front of him.
It was as if he was looking at an old man.
“No. I am Rex…. the original Rex. But if I had to classify myself, I am considered another Rex that doesn’t want to ever wake up again… more like I am the blueprint of the Rex that you’ve all met, and the [Siva] that you all will have to face in the future.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I would assume that you’ve seen [Siva] in Terroa, yes? And you’ve also seen how powerful he is…”
Matt agreed, “Yes. Back in Dragona, he destroyed Mefisto who actually also came from your avatar’s body like a ghost and had the power to burn the city in just minutes.”
“Right. That Mefisto is but the [Will] that was left behind by the original Mefisto that I’ve deleted in that war……… 56 years ago. In his failed attempt to eat me, he corrupted me instead and hoped that his goddamned Heavenly Father will try to resurrect him using the original Lucifer’s blueprint that I’ve also deleted…. way back then…”
The long pause and the unusual talkativeness of this Rex was indeed a sign that he wasn’t the Rex that he had met.
But his words were rather odd and very blurry. If he was the original then who was the one they’d been hanging out with all these time?
Lucifer? Who the fuck is Lucifer?
“Anyways, it’s really tiring to be out here. And it’s really taking its toll on me. I had to sleep and hope that I’d never had to wake up again. The reason why I had to wait for you is because I need you as a confidant… I have… a request to make of you.”
This time, Rex placed his cup on the table and the expression on his face turned into a serious look of pleading and pressurizing appeal.
Rex was handsome but when he was in this mode that could even put the President of the Unified States into loosening his neck tie, he was really scary to the point that Matt had to swallow a full gulp of steaming hot black coffee.
Besides, he was starting to regret his choice now.
I mean… hello? Coffee? In the middle of the day?
—in a tropical country that peaked at 47 degrees Celsius during the hottest day of summer and 25 degrees Celsius at the coldest day of winter?
“Is it hard?” he couldn’t help asking.
“World level hard.” Rex quipped and chuckled before lifting his cup for a sip.
“Damn it, man. You haven’t even cleared up all my confusion here…” Matt grudgingly sipped on his cup and then complained like he was Matthew.
Rex felt the sincerity in that complaint and he can’t help beaming a wider smile as he sipped his blend before putting the cup down to make a serious expression.
“Matt, please trust me on this. Right now, I am an incomplete me. Some time ago, a few men from Augustus Laniary’s Family took something away from me and that enabled me to control the devil that became a part of me when I was corrupted by Mefisto. What I want you to do is to take it away from me as far as possible. Use your mother’s connections to the World Government. Tell them that a weapon of mass destruction is being kept here in our country, or anything, just tell someone you trust and has a real connection to the good guys… tell Thorn…. tell all the guys back in the Fortress, tell them all, but don’t tell Siva, that a weapon of mass destruction has been taken away from [Siva] and had been put in the real world. That way, you guys will be prepared when the time comes that the people who had my [Devil] decides to unleash it. They have no idea of what they’ve done. They thought that they have it all under control but the Truth in Terroa is greater than they’ve imagined and they’re mistaken if they think that they can control it. What I want is a confidant in you, Volt… Matt… I need a friend I can trust with my brother’s life.”
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From beginning to end Siva spoke in a straight line without stopping and all the things he said just so happens to be one shocking thing after another that Matt found himself hanging.
He was only Pentium Four and Rex expected him to process Battlefield 4 and play it in max settings.
Matt’s hands were shaking.
“Wait… wait… WAIT!!! Slow down… what are you talking about weapon of mass destruction? I am just a college junior, man… I’m no police. And even if you’re serious, shouldn’t these matters be put into the hands of the specialists?”
Rex smiled drily, “I know that, man. But those so called specialists you’re talking about are the ones who actually made me.”
“Made you?”
Rex sipped his blend clean and the cup made a ‘ting’ sound when he put it gently on the saucer.
“Do you know who made RPG: Terroa?”
“Alfred Pegasus?”
“Who else?”
“Your parents.”
“And they’re dead. Why?”
“Wasn’t it an accident?”
Rex laughed ironically at this and then pulled out a window and then showed it to Matt.
On that panel window was a search result on the browser and seeing this made Matt frown.
Rex spoke, “Do you understand now?”
“Zero results? How could that be? Your parents are famous people! I mean they’re the makers of the greatest RPG game ever!!! Why are there no search results about their accident?”
“It’s not that the media can’t find anything about it, it’s because every media perks are being grabbed in the neck.”
“Meaning…”
“There are people in the World Government that schemed to kill my entire family.”
At this point, Rex’s bloodlust was seeping and his entire body was shaking in anger. Matt also knew why because in that accident, Rex’s life changed for the worst.
His parents died and now, his only family left, a three year old boy, in a coma, and was being held as a hostage as he toiled at some entertainment scenario at the stage called Terroa.
—all by the people who held the world in their hands…
Realizing this, Matt couldn’t help but widen his eyes as he tried to picture it all in his head.
God, and he thought he was ready to carry it all and be a real friend to Rex Kingsley. And now that he was really asking for help, he was hesitating.
Matt found himself ironically funny. He wanted to punch himself for taking Rex’s circumstances light to the point that he actually thought he was in an adventure.
He clenched his fists as he closed his eyes and thought very hard about it.
Rex’s enemies are a few higher ups in the World Government, in UNICORN, and they… who are they? They’re just a bunch of kids playing a game and discovering a tragically enormous secret that could threaten the world they’re living in.
In the middle of it all, Rex spoke to break the ice in Matthew’s heart, “Back then, four years ago, I have a girlfriend. I loved her very much. Then I discovered that she was Alfred Pegasus’ only daughter… how do you think I felt back then?”
Matt opened his eyes wide and he looked at Rex as if he was looking at a fairytale personified.
“Fucked?” He jokingly asked and Rex actually bid him an amused laughter.
They laughed with a taste of ink in their mouth.
“Yes.” Rex suddenly said, “I felt fucked up but she also told me her circumstances. At first, she didn’t know that my parents are working together with her father. In sequence, she first told me that she hated her father because she was an evil and ambitious man. If she wasn’t his daughter, she’d have been abandoned in the streets when her mom died when she was four years old. And the reason why Alfred took him in is not because he felt fatherly loved for her, but because the World Government at the time was still upright and as a world-renowned personality, if he didn’t took her in, all his assets and everything he had would’ve been taken away as he goes to jail. And so, he did his part and took her in…. but never once did he become her dad. Although they lived in the same house, they are worlds apart and she was sad because of it. She ran away from home and also even supported herself in her school, here, in our country, for her college. She wanted to run away from him as far as possible. And it’s not only at a petty reason of her hating him, but because she had also discovered his evil plans…”
Rex looked at Matt with tear-ladened eyes. Matt could feel that the next part of this ‘story’ was the part where the tragedies happen.
He braced himself and sat quietly down as he bid a quiet prompt for Rex to continue.
“…I met her in my college, if you would believe in the word called ‘destiny’. In the acquaintance ball that was held, I saw her walk in the building… and I knew I was in love. I walked in and introduced myself. She slapped me for being cool and she exited the place. After that, I courted her for over a year before I finally got her to agree to her and, if you’d believe it, also my first date. After another year, I learned her story and she became mine. At the time, I was still unaware that her father’s name was Alfred Pegasus. Because her surname in our school’s official registry wasn’t Pegasus but some Campbell. She was Samantha Campbell to me.”
“Actually, I didn’t know that Alfred Pegasus had a daughter to begin with.” Matt said and Rex made a shrug with a self-mocking snicker before shaking his head.
“The news brought her to the limelight as Kris Pegasus. We were sixteen and we were just very in love with each other. She wanted me to take her away by proposing to meet her father. Back then, I was invited to The Conclave that was going to happen in Lausanne.”
“The Conclave?” Matt was incredulous.
Am I talking to a legend here? But then again, Rex is indeed a legend, in and outside the game.
“Yep. The Youth Conclave of Achievers that was held annually in random places in the globe… that year, it was going to happen in Lausanne and it just so happens that I was going there too, so I happily agreed on her proposal. After all, I was actually thinking of introducing her to my parents.”
“Wow. It is a fairytale.” Matt said, fixing another cup of coffee, this time, he added creamer. Lots of it.
Rex chuckled and went on, “I thought back then that even though her father had that evil secret, he couldn’t actually be that evil like in the movies and novels… I mean… what are the odds that my girlfriend is the daughter of an evil scientist? But the world played its card unfairly… when we went to the UNICORN-controlled facility using a fake ID that she programmed herself that I didn’t know is a fake ID, we entered the restricted area that’s only for the people involved in Project Salvation.”
“What is this Project Salvation?”
“That is the real name of Terroa, Matt. It’s not just a place to conduct the game. It’s the culmination of our real world’s technologies… hundreds even thousands of years in the future.”
“Nooooooo waaaaaayyyyyyy……” Matt made an amusingly exaggerated reaction as he intensely stirred his blend while looking at Rex with large balling eyes.
“Sigh. You will learn later. Let me continue; it was there that I saw my parents about to conduct an ‘initial beta’ for what we now know as the game called RPG: Terroa.”
“Beta Testing?”
Rex’s expression seemed to be filled with pain and hate at that moment. “Yes. The one that’s supposed to dive in was Pegasus himself but it was there that Samantha, no, Kris panicked since she knew what Pegasus wanted to do so she ran and tried to stop him, causing a commotion that ended in her being shot and me being in a coma.”
Matt felt speechless and he drank the hot blend half-full in one straight, hand-shaking, manner.
The sound of him doing so was actually audible between the two of them.
Rex’s breathing was short and ragged he tried to stop his tears. Recalling the sight of her being shot by her own father was a very painful memory.
*****
“What have you done?!! She’s your daughter!!!”
“No one can stop me!”
“Rex?!” “Rex!!”
“Mom! Dad!”
“Rex, watch out!”
“Son!!!”
CRAAAASSSHHH!!!
*****
Rex was clenching his fists so hard that the blood veins were showing on his arms. And as he was trying to stop himself from bursting, he could only let out tears as he gnashed his teeth trying to calm his breathing.
The memory may seem to have been trillions by trillions of years ago for him, but it was still as fresh and as painful as if it happened yesterday.
“When I woke up, I was already in the Terran Universe and the trouble that Pegasus had caused there spread like wildfire, burning worlds and killing lives as if they were grasses. I did my best to struggle and survive… proving my own path and eventually gaining complete control over the [Shiva] Divinity.”
“Do you understand why I’m telling you all these, Matt?”
“I actually don’t. But if you want me to search for that thing that they took away from you, how will I know that I am looking at the right thing… ah, no, before that, how do I even begin searching?”
“For now, it’s impossible… Terroa had gone to its last phase and me defeating Mefisto 56 years ago in Terroa is but a temporary thing. Pegasus won’t stop until he gets the final fragment of Mefisto from my avatar, Siva.”
Matt held his head as he dropped the cup on the saucer. “This is driving me nuts. You’re here but you’re not the Rex we’re hanging out with. Is this a case of split personality?”
“Maybe it can be said to be that way.” Rex looked at his hand and he explained helplessly. “That war brought me so many pains that I couldn’t even choose to forget them even if I wanted to. But when I was given the chance to, I didn’t think twice and took that knife to severe my memories… choosing to forget it all and start all over again. And it wasn’t until the accident in NLEX where the so called wheels of ‘destiny’ had to bring me back from my sleep that you all are dragged in this mess. I wouldn’t mind fighting on my own; I wouldn’t even ask your help if I am the only one who will suffer… but they have my brother, and he was just a boy.”
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The wheel of fate is turning fast!!!
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