The butterfly effect.
It was a phenomenon where a small change in the beginning could exponentially cause large impacts at a later point in time.
For example, a butterfly flapping its wings could theoretically lead to a hurricane forming thousands of miles away.
The point is, it only takes one simple change to greatly alter the original trajectory and shape of things.
And in Eric's case, he had massively changed how everything was supposed to originally playout and the way Aria should have confronted Celeste.
In the novel, the way Aria lashed at Celeste was one full of pure anger, hatred, and revenge, with not a single bit of mercy anywhere to be seen.
It was definitely messy to say the least, and there were no other thoughts of even forgiving Celeste at all.
Her only drive in life after that for a very long time was just to seek revenge for her parents' death.
It was like that in every timeline as well every time Aurora told her about it.
But now that he had stepped into Aria's life and told her about it instead well before Aurora even started dabbling into magical energy in this world and still struggled with fighting 'normal' people, Aria no longer walked blindly toward revenge.
Instead, her drive probably, no, definitely, shifted towards him now.
After all, while he might be stupid in a lot of ways, he wasn't stupid when it came to this.
Just by judging the way Aria had been treating him ever since he managed to calm her down, and by the way she was looking at him now, there was no doubt in his mind that he had shifted from a despicable person she could use as a tool to get what she wants to the second most important person in her life.
A friend, in her eyes.
Or maybe even more.
And although Eric still didn't even fully understand how he had managed to get up to this point since Aria's attitude for Aurora didn't necessarily change much even after she told him everything in almost the same way he had in the novel, it didn't matter to him all too much at this point.
He still planned to use Aria anyways and get her to subtly kill Aurora off without even knowing it.
That goal hasn't changed.
As long as either him or Aurora was still alive in this life, there was no avoiding it.
Eric lifted one of his arms in front of him and sighed as he scanned his body and saw all of the old bandages that were soaking up in blood from the injuries Aurora previously gave to him.
"I look more like a revenant than a living person right now." Eric grumbled in a very low voice.
"What was that?" Aria didn't hear what Eric muttered about and tilted her head slightly to the side.
"Nothing. I was just talking to myself." Eric waved her off before approaching Celeste, who was probably still processing everything that Aria had said, and stated, "I believe we're finished now, can we use one of the teleportation array you have set up here in this place to get back to the skyscraper?"
"Huh? Oh, of course. I can even do you one better and teleport you directly back to your house." Celeste snapped out of her guilt ridden thoughts and looked at Eric while trying her best to seem calm.
"Sure, that'd be great." Eric couldn't help but sigh in his heart while he accepted the offer.
Teleportation arrays in this world were pretty simple.
As long as the person creating the teleportation array could fully envision the image and details of the place where they were going, and there was no measures in place to block them like a barrier or anything else that could stop the teleportation, then it shouldn't be much of a problem for them to teleport someone or something there.
So the fact that she could teleport him directly back to his house meant that she had been there before.
Without permission of course.
'Really makes me wonder how many others have been secretly inside my house before.'
Still, given his family background and who he was by nature, Eric could understand why she had snuck in before, and he didn't really mind it.
Hearing what Eric said and seeing that he wasn't surprised about it, Celeste nodded and led Eric and Aria towards one of the rooms where her friends had initially ran off to.
The room was as equally massive to the one they were previously in, but instead of a huge sigil inscribed in the middle of the ground and pillars aligned evenly all across the perimeter, there were a bunch of smaller circles with no symbols on them scattered all around the place.
It honestly looked more like a marble room filled with semi translucent polka dots of various colors, but that was besides the point.
Celeste found a spot that wasn't already occupied by another teleportation array and asked the both of them to stand in the middle.
Once they complied, Celeste started chanting a teleportation array while fully envisioning the place in her mind.
After a bit, the teleportation array was created, and Celeste waved them off.
"Take care... and I'm sorry to the both of you for everything. Especially you, Aria. I..." Celeste thought about voicing the guilt she had carried for years, but eventually just shook her head and instead said, "I truly wish you the best in your life."
Aria didn't respond to Celeste and only looked at her with an icy cold gaze while Eric nodded before they faded away.
Moments later, Eric was back to the penthouse where he had first woken up in after he recovered his past lives' memories, and he immediately got to work and texted an request to his parents saying that he was in need of urgent medical care for his leg and took a screenshot of it.
Even though none of his parents had any medical knowledge, and he hasn't really talked much to them for a couple of months now other than the basic and usual greetings through text every so often, he knew that his parents had lots of personal doctors on standby 24/7.
At the same time, Aria had a puzzled look on her face as she couldn't help but study the penthouse she was in.
"Um, this isn't your house?"
"It is, the one we were at before was just a temporary location I was staying in." Eric gave a straightforward answer as he read his parents' response and couldn't help but smile at it seeing how worried they were as they started asking so many questions and letting him know when the doctors will arrive.
There was no doubt about it.
They were shitty and terrible parents to begin with, otherwise he wouldn't of have originally grown up the way he did.
But at the same time, he was glad that they were his parents.
Unlike a lot of the other families out there, especially the powerful and name known ones, his parents never expected much from him.
He didn't need to maintain a good image of himself for the family, live up to his family's legacy and become successful at something, or even prove anything to others.
As long as he was happy, that was all that mattered to them.
That was how his parents treated him ever since he was born, and although their approach to raising him was the thing that inadvertently got him killed at the end, he had no hard feelings about it.
While he was responding to all of his parents' text and telling them that they didn't need to call him over a matter like this however, he noticed Aria just staring at him silently like a stray dog unsure of whether to approach or not.
"I'll drop by your work place sometime in the next week if you're comfortable with me coming back, so you can leave now, Miss Aria." Assuming that Aria wanted to get his contact information or something but didn't want to interrupt him, Eric gestured at her that she didn't have to stick around.
"Can you pretend to care at least...?" Aria mumbled quietly yet loud enough so that Eric could still hear under her breath.
"About what?" Eric was genuinely confused on what she was talking about.
"About your damn leg at least! Look at it! Who thinks about texting others first with a hole like that on their leg?" Aria exploded a bit with how apathetic Eric was entirely being.
"Well, there's only so much I can do about it, so I'd rather not make a fuss over it. Besides, look, I was texting my parents about it so that they could send some doctors to have it checked out. See?" Eric had completely forgotten that people reacted when they were in pain and he showed Aria the text messages with his parents.
"You think that sending a few doctors to have your leg checked out is going to help magically fix it? Are they doctors that can use magic or something like that and can heal it? Because if not, then you need to go to a hospital where they have the proper equipments to tend to your injuries this instant!" Aria became even more furious at his relaxed manner.
"No, but-"
"Then we're going to one, even if I have to carry you myself." Aria made it abundantly clear in her words and started angrily dialing emergency services on her phone.
Seeing this, Eric wanted to honestly just run away now and tell his parents to send the doctors to a different location.
However, he ended up eventually deciding against it since he didn't want to put so much strain on his foot, and Aria was honestly right.
His parent's personal doctors could only do so much for him without the proper equipments, and they would most likely have to fly him out to a hospital afterwards anyways.
As such, after mulling over it, Eric agreed.
"Okay, we can go to the same hospital you went to yesterday morning since I've been with them in the past, but only on one condition though."
"What is it?" Aria asked excitedly as she had expected their argument to go for a lot longer.
"I don't want you telling Aurora what we did today, and I don't want you telling her anything about me ever. That includes even mentioning my name."
"Why?" Even though Aria hadn't been planning to tell her entirely what she did today as she could figure out that anything involving with magic should be kept an absolute secret to those who didn't know about it, otherwise she probably would've heard about it a long time ago, she didn't know why she couldn't even talk about him like he didn't exist at all.
"I have my reasons." Eric shrugged.
"Fine." Aria didn't want wait any longer as she felt that each second was extremely crucial and she quickly grabbed the lamborghini car key she had seen lying around near the doorway.
Afterwards, she positioned herself towards Eric so that he could lean on her shoulder.
"It's fine, I can still move on my own." Eric declined the help since he didn't feel like he needed it.
But Aria didn't budge whatsoever and gave Eric a death stare.
So Eric reluctantly complied and leaned on her shoulder.
And with that, they finally exited the penthouse and left to go to the hospital.