Chapter 2012: Motherly Involvement
An eternity passed.
Or at least, that was how Rui felt when he opened his eyes.
An eternity may as well have passed.
For a moment, he couldn't remember.
He couldn't remember where he was.
He couldn't remember the last thing he remembered.
His blurred version grew clearer as he saw the sky.
The sky of the manifold.
His eyes widened as his recollection came through, triggered by the visual stimulus.
Two years worth of memories flooded through his mind as he recollected his entering the dungeon, his meeting with the Divine Doctor, the two years of preparation for Operation Prisonbreak, his battle and breakthrough against the Chimera, and, of course...
"...Who am I?"
His Martial Drive shuddered at the question.
His eyes were vacant.
Hollow.
His body loosened as he felt like a walking corpse.
Not even the inheritance of the Elder Tree made him feel that way. His Martial Drive had protected him from the worst of the inheritance, merely causing him to suffer a drastic shift in emotional quotient.
Yet, the Divine Doctor's words had struck him harder than anything the Elder Tree could have ever mustered up.
It attacked the very root of his drive.
The very root of who he was.
All this time, he thought he was the actual entity of John Falken himself, continuing his life past death after being reborn in a new body. Yet, the information provided by the Divine Doctor, or the inheritor of the Divine Doctor, had shattered this very foundation at the center of his identity.
He was not John Falken.
He was a man of Gaia who, as a newborn baby, had been brainwashed with the memories of John Falken from another world.
"...Is John Falken even real? Was Earth ever real?"
His hazy eyes grew steely as a faint hint of certainty lit up within the depths of his uncertain eyes.
"No." His voice grew a little more confident. "John Falken was real. Earth is real. The probability that they didn't exist is astronomically low."
There was far too much internal and external coherence in his memories for them to be conceivably fabricated. Additionally, the knowledge that he had learned and researched throughout his entire life was extremely consistent with reality. The probability that they were fiction was so unfathomably low that it could be dismissed out of hand.
Thus, unless he was truly confronted with supernatural and extraordinary evidence, he was inclined to believe that Earth was real.
If that was the case, then someone had taken John Falken's memories after he died and then brainwashed fetus Rui with all his memories to believe that he was John Falken.
If someone hadn't done that, Rui Quarrier would have gone on to become someone else. Rui would have grown to become an entirely different person with a different life, different emotions, temperament, and personality, and different goals, ambitions, and aspirations.
All of that had been snuffed out the moment the fetus Rui had been brainwashed and hypnotized.
"But how...?"
He couldn't fathom how.
It was truly incomprehensible to its very root.
According to the descriptions of the Divine Doctor, the soul transference ritual required an extraordinary amount of preparation, resources, and active involvement from three supergeniuses.
How on Gaia did such a thing happen without anybody noticing?
It made no sense!
"Wait..." Pure horror erupted within the depths of Rui's metaphorical soul. "...My mother."
According to his grandmother, his name, bestowed by his mother, meant 'reincarnated' in the Silas Dialect.
He had already concluded that this was strong evidence that she knew that he was a reincarnated being, yet, now he realized that there was another possibility in light of the new information that he had been confronted with.
"Was my mother involved with my soul transference ritual?" Pure terror lit up in Rui's eyes at the thought of this bone- chilling possibility. Did his mother truly consent to having her unborn child be brainwashed and hypnotized in her womb with the memories of another man?
"Huff...huff...huff..."
His heart rate accelerated as his breathing grew heavier.
He felt as though someone was choking him.
As though someone was suffocating him, snuffing his heart.
As though his own mother was squeezing the life out of him.
He didn't know.
He couldn't know.
How could he possibly know?
Yet, it was this uncertainty that was the most horrifying part.
Who was his mother?
Was she a monster who erased the potential identity of her child with a prepared identity from another world and another man? Was she uninvolved? She certainly knew; what did she do with that knowledge? Where did that knowledge even come from if she herself was not involved?
He didn't know.
He didn't know who she was.
He didn't know who he was.
He didn't know anything.
"Rui?"
Kane's voice shook him, breaking him out of his stupor.
Rui became suddenly became aware of material reality.
"Kane..." He whispered, heaving a sigh. "You're awake."
Kane snorted. "Those should be my words. You slept for three days!"
Rui's eyes widened. "...What?"
"Yeah, doc said your injuries were grave, and for maximally optimal recovery, it was best that you remained unconscious, allowing your body to dedicate all its resources to objectively optimal health or something like that, so he fed you some gross concoction to keep you asleep."
Rui sat up slowly, glancing at his hands and body for the first time since he regained consciousness. He had been so emotionally immersed in his thoughts that he deigned to ignore his material conditions.
Although his mind was a mess, his body was the very opposite.
It was pristine and brand-new.
It felt extraordinarily rejuvenated, energetic, and powerful from within his depths all the way to the outside.
Every cell across his body roared with life and vigor, working hard to fulfill their minute but important role in the microcosm that was his body.
He had never ever felt this good physically in his entire life.
"In fact..." He murmured, stunned. "...My body feels more powerful than it ever has."
"Yeah." Kane grinned. "He said he took the liberty to make some optimizations to our Martial Bodies."