CHAPTER 22: WHO AM I?

Soren continued to sink deeper and deeper into The Heart’s Shroud. He had finally done it. He had faced the one person that he could never face. A person that had clouded most of his life in misery. A person who had hurt him in more ways than he could count. A wide smile was plastered across his face as his body fell through the fog slowly—strands of which were strangling him for his foolish decision.

In The Heart’s Shroud, satisfaction was the enemy. Emotion was the enemy. Myrin had warned him about it—the more he indulged in the emotions shrouding his heart, the more heavy the fog would weigh. A person must look past these emotions—they must ignore the projections of their past and sift through the fog to find their true essence.

It was kinda ironic. For Soren, looking past these experiences without at first confronting them was impossible. He had to indulge in his own satisfaction to even have the ability to walk past it in the first place—he needed closure. Well… Not completely. He mostly just wanted to stick it to that fucker George.

And now, he was feeling the weight of that satisfaction—literally. The fog was becoming heavier.

I guess I made the challenge harder for myself… He frowned.

The goal was to reach the bottom of the fog without accumulating too much weight. The more you satisfy your emotions, the heavier the fog will become—and the pressure will rise the deeper you sink into the Heart’s Shroud.

After that first incident with his father, he decided to take the rest of the projected experiences the shroud was going to show him as intended. He had already satisfied himself enough—whatever it was going to show him next didn’t warrant a response. He would probably die if he tried something similar again, anyway.

And the shroud didn’t hold back its punches. First, he had to relive through his experiences with his first crush, then his second crush, then his third, fourth, fifth…

Soren frowned. Was I really this fucking horny back then?

The memories continued to show themselves. His first chess tournament, which he won effortlessly and other experiences in his chess career began to showcase themselves to him one by one. The most notable one had to be his final tournament at the age of fifteen where he was crowned a Grandmaster. The memories from that one… Truly pleased him.

He still remembered it to this day—how only an hour after the tournament ended, he announced that he was quitting chess to the entire world. All his sponsors were so pissed at him—one of them even lost hair because of it. That bastard deserved more, he thought. Nevertheless, he still decided to just look past it—there was no need to satisfy himself anymore.

Other notable experiences also showed up, like the cheating scandal that happened when he was twelve or the time when his parents used some kind of loophole to take the money he made from his sponsorships. The events of his transmigration also showed up, such as his experiences with the Memory Void Spirit, or running away from that headless ogre (who he had still not chronicled with [Record] yet). Surprisingly, there were no experiences shown to him in regards to the whispers of the rift, which he attributed to maybe some form of interference due to Mr. Unknown’s workings.

Nevertheless, Soren was able to look past all of them. It took a fuck ton of effort, but he still managed to pull it off. The only experience that was difficult to get over other than his father’s abuse had to be the death of his grandparents. He did accumulate a bit more weight from that one—unable to fully look past it.

The whole experience of falling through the fog felt like an eternity, but Soren had finally managed to reach the bottom. The pressure he was experiencing made him feel like he could get crushed at any moment if he stayed there for too long, so he hurried as fast as he could toward the distant fleeting light, sifting through the dense fog blocking his way.

“It’s here…” He smiled as he glanced at the light which was only a few steps away from him. He held his breath in anticipation. This is it, he thought. His true self was only a few steps away. He needed to hurry before the pressure of the fog ended up crushing him.

Soren stood before the orb of light, covered in a dense layer of fog. Gulping down what remained of his hesitation, he reached out toward it and swatted the fog away. His eyes squinted from the bright light, and after a bit of refocusing, his true self became apparent to him. He froze.

The Records.

Soren’s eyes dilated in fear as he took a step back. A Cracked leather cover with gilded lines shifting across it, shimmering golden pages that flickered like a flame. A perfect replica of his Soul Weapon was reflected in his eyes—it was staring back at him coldly, surrounded by a thin layer of fog.

“This is impossible…” His voice quivered. His Soul Weapon couldn’t be his true self. That didn't make sense… Right? Myrin had clearly explained that while a Soul Weapon might reflect aspects of a person’s true self, it could never actually embody it. For that would mean his identity was somehow directly tied to the existence of the Abstract Rune his soul had merged with… An impossibility…

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Suddenly, Soren’s eyes focused back onto The Records—something on the ethereal golden pages caught his attention. A singular phrase which he read slowly.

New Revelation Recorded: [Who Am I?] (Mystery)

His lips curled into an eerie smile. A smile filled with madness, chaos, and fear—one that he himself didn’t know he could make. He stood there silently in the fog, illuminated by the golden light emitting from his True Self.

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If not for the building pressure of the fog, Soren wouldn’t have minded standing still before his Soul Wea– True Self in thought forever. He stared blankly at the Event Log message that had appeared on the pages of his ancient tome and commanded the information to appear before him.

Who Am I?

This is a question I am asking myself. Who am I? The answer is simple. I am The Records, and The Records is me. We are one in the same. For we exist in realities unfounded with one purpose in mind—to wander.

A Wandering Fairy.

Soren scanned over the words again in shock. What he was reading was his own inner will speaking to him through the book.

No, he couldn’t even call it his own inner will. He was no longer even human from a logical standpoint—his true self wasn’t human. It was tied intrinsically to whatever rune he was merged with.

Even saying the word “merged” didn’t feel right to him, since there was nothing that it merged with in the first place.

His mind wanted to scream, but he knew better than to jeopardize himself further in The Heart’s Shroud.

Calm down. Calm down, Soren. Everything will be fine. He said to himself reluctantly.

The first thing he questioned was whether his past was even real. If his soul had never existed prior to obtaining The Records, what the hell was he? A Soul-less body or something?

No, that clearly made no sense. He had really lived that life—his Heart’s Shroud had clearly shown those experiences to him.

Maybe his soul had been completely absorbed by the rune he merged with?

He shook his head. He didn’t know. Myrin had still not mentioned how Abstract Runes worked and their relationship to soul weapons. He did know that each Abstract Rune governed a distinct concept, and that merging with a rune meant obtaining a Soul Weapon in the domain of those concepts. But other than that, he was still completely ignorant on the subject.

He thought of something else. What if The Records had always existed within him? And only after invoking the ritual did it activate? That could certainly be possible, yes. But the words displayed on the book still worried him.

He was apparently The Records, and The Records was him. In his mind, this was nonsensical. How could he be a Soul Weapon? There was clearly a trick at play here. A part of him wanted to blame Unknown for this, but deep down, he knew this issue was deeper than that.

He then thought of something and froze. Scribe-of-Worlds…

What the hell is up with that website? Why would it have a ritual that had to do with his Soul Weapon?

It was as if the surrounding fog was an allegory to how little he understood of his own circumstances. He wanted to curse under his breath but caught himself—adding more pressure to himself in the Shroud could be lethal.

There was one thing he did know because of this reveal, however. And it had to do with how his abilities operated. Soren had always wondered how [Record] was able to function passively at times, recording things he never told it to record. And there were other times when his abilities translated recorded knowledge into an inherent skill for him to instantly pick up and learn—Vinuan was one such example.

It now finally made sense. If he himself was The Records, why wouldn’t the information recorded into it be in him as well? And the same was true for knowledge that apparently existed prior to even arriving on Yarian. What [Record] was truly useful for was information control.

If he viewed The Records from a computing standpoint, his Soul Weapon acted as an external database that was mounted to his inner self. Essentially, [Record] allowed him to chronicle information in that database, without needing to memorize it himself. And then, whenever he needed to know something himself, that information was pulled and automatically “taught” to him. The Records was in a way, a filter for information, and [Record] was the tool that connected it all together.

It made sense. Judging by how large the Table of Contents portion was, Soren would eventually need to [Record] libraries worth of knowledge. There was no way his brain would be able to memorize all of it, even with his brain which had been conditioned to memorize countless chess puzzles and patterns.

Suddenly, Soren noticed something from the corner of his eye. Past the thin fog surrounding his Inner Self, his eyes spotted something in the distance. He couldn’t exactly tell what it was—shades of purple with what looked to be something… Moving?

Soren gulped. He slowly inched toward it, walking past his own inner self. The fog was denser around this area for whatever reason. Sifting through it felt like walking straight into a sand dune that was trying its best to close around you.

It took him a few more steps but he finally made it. And he instantly regretted his decision.

What he found was a monstrously large crack in space itself—shaded in purple. Countless obscure symbols were seeping out of it and falling in the pool of formless liquid just below the spatial crack. Soren immediately felt his ears breaking—whispers were entering his mind once again.