"Eric." After sending a message to her friends to bring Aria back, Celeste calmly called out to Eric and leaned against one of the huge marble pillars behind her, having thought about it for a while since their last conversation.
"Hm?" Eric muttered nonchalantly as he sat on the floor, scanning his injured leg up and down and occasionally poking a finger through the hole as if inspecting it with mild curiosity.
He might not have been particularly proficient in human anatomy aside from the textbook knowledge he picked up back in college on Earth and all that, but it still came as a surprise to him that he could still move his injured leg so easily and maintain some mobility despite the hole in it.
But he eventually concluded that it was probably because the attack from earlier didn't actually hit anything major and just shrugged it off in the end.
There were many people capable of healing such an injury like this with ease anyways in this world, even though he probably won't be able to find someone who was willing heal him anytime soon, and so he wasn't too worried about it.
He could even ask Celeste here to restore his injured leg for him if he wanted to since she knew a little about this stuff, but he decided against it for now since he was worried that asking her for help might make her less fearful of him.
"Do you think I could have avoided that accident I caused almost two decades ago if I'd been more aware of my surroundings and hadn't rushed things?" Celeste asked with a distant gaze.
Eric understood what she was referring to, and he calmly looked over her posture and thought about it for a second before opening his mouth.
"You were being chased by someone you couldn't defeat on your own without preparation or outside help, like the realm you created to conceal your presence and automatically attack anyone who entered it. Ask yourself this, if you had kept running aimlessly any longer in your condition at the time, would you have survived for much longer?" Eric didn't hide the fact that he also knew everything that happened on that day although he technically shouldn't of have, and gave a neutral response.
"No... but I could've gotten everyone to move out of the way or something before I activated the teleportation array near the park." Celeste admitted after giving it a lot of thought.
"Then you would've just wasted more time and might have gotten more innocent civilians killed." Eric indifferently objected.
"..."
"The way I see it, you had no choice but to escape by any means necessary. You even managed to kill the person chasing you by teleporting him and fighting him there, at the expense of only a couple dozen people or so. That's a win in my book." Eric added.
"You're making it sound like those people's lives were insignificant or something, and that only mine mattered." Celeste paused briefly and then bitterly said as she tightly clenched her fists.
"Not at all. It's simply that you exist to protect those who cannot defend themselves against beings capable of killing them effortlessly, and therefore, you are more important." Eric spoke his mind and didn't sugarcoat anything.
"..." Celeste remained silent however and her anger didn't seem to alleviate.
Eric also saw this and decided to give her a little bit of more information that she wasn't aware about beforehand in order to make her understand better.
"Do you remember about the major fire outbreak that occurred a couple of cities away from where we reside years before you faced that person? You know, the one that ended up causing over 1000 deaths and also setting off a couple of major chain of events along with it?" Eric asked.
"Yeah, what about it?" Celeste's eyes narrowed slightly as she thought about it.
She indeed remembered that event vividly even though it had occurred over two decades ago like it was yesterday, and she would've probably gone there to secretly help the survivors if she hadn't been so busy at that time.
The main thing about it though was that the fire supposedly started as a result of a gas pipeline rupture beneath one of the older residential districts, which then caused a chain reaction of explosions that spreaded uncontrollably throughout the surrounding blocks and parts of the commercial district area with large amounts of gasoline and other flammable materials.
That was what the official investigation had concluded at least.
And although she still had weird feelings about it to this day, she didn't really think much about it because things like that can happen from time to time.
"The major fire outbreak happened because the person who was chasing you on that day used fire magic while fighting a different group with a similar purpose to yours, and things quickly got out of control. As a result, one thing led to another, and before anyone even realized what was happening, the fight had spilled out onto the public streets, resulting in the more than 1,000 deaths you heard about. Of course, the investigation concluded it as an incident though because that group covered it up very well and tampered with evidence, and the officials don't know that magic exists." Eric couldn't help but recall about it as he spoke matter of factually.
Funny enough, in the novel, Aurora came to learn about this event by chance when she wanted to lure someone in to eventually kill them, and she seeked this group out for advice on how to do so because they had a reputation of making traps for defending and defeating opponents much stronger than them.
Then to keep it short, after Aurora grew a pretty good bond with them in one of her regression cycles, one of them accidentially spilled the beans and told her all about it.
"In any case, the point I'm trying to make here is that the person you killed could have gone on to murder hundreds, even thousands more if you hadn't stopped him in time, so lift your head up and find a way to move on from it all. You are, ultimately, a hero to those who rely on you for their safety, even if they're unaware of it themselves, not a villain." Eric finally concluded as he noticed Celeste calm down and he went back to waiting for Aria to come back.
On the other hand, Celeste had one of the most complicated looks on her face at the moment and wasn't sure about how she should be feeling after hearing all about this.
But if she had to describe it, it would probably be a mixture of gratitude and bitterness.
After all, she didn't doubt Eric's explanation at all, since he seemed like the kind of person who should already know that she could find a way to contact the group in the other city where the fire occurred and confirm it for herself, even if they were as secretive as her own, and she was very greatful that he told her that.
At the same time though, Celeste understood that there was now significantly much more to Eric than what meets the eye.
Originally, she thought that Eric was just some kind of strong person that had somehow managed to find information about them and pretended to be weak in front of them just so that he could eventually kill them off or something.
However, she had been completely dead wrong about that.
No, Eric was most definitely still very powerful in her eyes, even much stronger than her, there was no doubt about that, but unlike what the rumors make him to be, he seems very much like someone who had seen or even walked down a lot of paths in life before.
Some bright, some dark, and some just outright brutal to say the least.
That much was clear in the way he spoke to her and Aria, the way he treated his injuries as trivial, and the way he approached things objectively.
Even after living for over 300 years now, she didn't think that the hardships she had faced could even remotely compare to the ones he must have endured alone.
'It must have been tiring for him.'
Just as Celeste was lost in her thoughts and was feeling extremely bad for Eric however, the complex magic sigil in the middle of the room, which was also designed as a receiving end of a teleportation array, suddenly started glowing again.
As such, Eric moved casually away from his spot as Celeste watched him with a meaningful gaze.
Before long, the light slowly subsided, and Zed, Varek, Reina, and Aria could be seen walking out.
Eric's eyes immediately scanned the group and he inwardly let out a sigh of relief once he saw Aria back.
Unexpectedly though, Zed, Varek, and Reina then all began heading straight towards him afterwards and then all bowed their heads towards him at a 90 degree angle.
"We concede." Zed said in a resonant voice while the other two agreed without speaking a single word.
"..." Eric couldn't help but fall silent and he slowly turned towards Celeste for answers.
"Sorry, I told them to surrender to you the moment they come back so that there wouldn't be any further conflicts or misunderstandings." Celeste lightly smiled briefly.
"Oh." Eric then turned back to them, "No need to bow your heads. Just step over to the side and watch."
Eric simply left it at that and then moved even further to the side since he honestly didn't want to wait any longer for Aria to begin her confrontation.
The trios seemed confused by this for a second, but after seeing Celeste looking directly at Aria with a serious look on her face, they also quickly moved off to the side without saying a word.
Now with the stage set, and everyone seemed to finally be at an understanding with each other, Eric nodded at Aria to go ahead and confront the person responsible for her parent's death once and for all.
Aria nodded back at Eric in response, and then with a serious and determined look on her face, she finally walked straight up to Celeste.
Celeste also pushed herself off the pillar and stepped forward to meet her.
Then, they both stared deeply into each other's eyes from up close, and the atmosphere had instantly become heavy.
"You ruined my life."
"..."
"You sent us into that realm. Because of you, my parents never came back."
"..."
"For years, I didn't even know who to blame, what to look for, or even why it happened. All I knew was that one day, I was happily with my parents, and the next day, they were gone."
"..."
"And nobody was able to give me a proper explanation as to why it happened."
"..."
"As such, I grew up watching other kids with their parents. Envying them, resenting them, and even hating them. I always wished that I was in their shoes instead."
"..."
"But that wasn't the reality of things."
"..."
"Instead, I had to navigate through this world on my own for many years with no parents, no guidance, and no one to depend on, and god forbid I even rely on my relatives."
"..."
'It was just me alone in this mess of a world."
"..."
"Then one day I come to find out what really happened that day that turned my entire life around, and I found out that there was someone responsible for it all because of a mistake."
"..."
"You know, when I heard that at the time, all I ever wanted to do was find you, break you, kill you, and make you repay 100 folds for the misery you've caused to me all these years."
"..."
"To be honest, I still do."
"..."
"I probably always will."
"..."
"But I'm not going to let that be the reason I wake up every morning."
"..."
"I've already lost more than enough already."
"..."
"More than enough to never give you my forgiveness."
"..."
"But I'm still going to give it to you anyways."
"..."
"Not because I believe that everyone deserves a second chance."
"..."
"But because I refuse to let you take anything else from me again."
"..."
"You don't get my future."
"..."
"You don't get my hatred."
"..."
"And you don't get to define who I become."
"..."
"So consider my parents the last thing you'll ever take from me."
"..."
"Because from this moment on... you don't matter to me anymore."
"..."
And with that, Aria simply turned away and walked back to where Eric was standing.
Then with a smile on her face, and no hesitation to be seen in her eyes whatsoever, she said...
"Okay, we can go back now."
"..."
'This doesn't even come as a surprise to me anymore.'