The Unrecorded Extra

"Not so fast, Sabit."

Boss' eyes widened again. Never once in his life did he think he would finally hear his name called by someone else. Unfortunately, it was coming from his grim reaper.

Not giving Boss a chance to counterattack, Newcomer shoved another sword in his hand in the exact same place as the previous stab, adding more burden and power to crush Boss' heart, as well as his core.

"Kuh…!"

Boss chuckled before the light left his eyes. Before the flame in his heart went out. Before he could attain his goal.

Thud—!

His body dropped like a ragdoll, now laying lifeless on the ground.

Sheathing his swords, Newcomer stole the artifact from Boss' hand. After inspecting the artifact, he shoved it into his coat pocket behind the robe.

"Don't hate me for this, Sabit. I'm just doing my job as the Keeper. I can't risk the whole timeline for your goal."

Turning around, he ran a hand through his jet-black hair. Pulling out a hand mirror, the black-void eyes stared back at him.

without guilt and remorse, he flashed a smile innocently.

Storing the hand mirror back to the spatial storage, his hand reached for the artifact in his pocket. He looked at it solemnly.

Newcomer glanced over his shoulder, looking at Boss' corpse lying on the ground.

"I can't risk the whole timeline for your goal… but I can do it for my goal."

***

In his eyes, everything was dark. Complete blindness.

This happened abruptly after Newcomer — a person in the dream who looked like a copy of himself but older — said something like this, "I can't risk the whole timeline for your goal… but I can and will risk it for my goal."

Exactly after he spoke the word 'goal' his vision went numb.

Although the vision was blind, his hearing was still working.

At that moment, he heard the man saying something in the viewless dream. It was the sentence that immediately jutted him out of his dream world.

"And for you who already becomes the 'Destroyer'. You best do your job right this time!"

With that, the dream slammed shut, kicking Zio out of his dream world, immediately with wide eyes staring at a little girl's crying face on top of him as soon as he regained consciousness in the real world.

"Uhh… Reina?" he said. "Why are you sitting on top of me?"

He caught the tears swelling in her eyes.

'Is she… crying?'

Without notice, the little girl hugged his face tight.

"Huaa!!! Master! You're alive!"

"Reina?!!"

He deliberately spoke through the struggle of releasing himself from her. In his mind, he thought:

'And why do you surprised that I am alive?!!'

Some time passed, and Reina finally calmed down while Zio recollected his mind about the dream.

'It is one of memory like the last time I experienced my Clairvoyance level up. But…'

But it was completely different. If back then it was seeing the past then this time, could it be the future? It could be that because the setting was in the ruined world, and the twist of the main character of the dream caught him off guard.

He thought the man named Sabit was the main character of the dream. But it was Newcomer — one he assumed was his future self — all along.

'It must be precognition, right? It must be that as it is one of the aspects of Clairvoyance in general!'

According to the Odyssey system, the passive skill of Clairvoyance was sudden memory recall. The flaw of this passive skill was that it could happen at any time, though mostly, it occurred when the user's mind was unoccupied by thoughts.

It meant that the chances of getting the sight in the dream were higher but not common. Stress level and other aspects were included to trigger the passive skill.

The Memory Recall could either be the past or the future. There were no announcements in the sudden recall to tell him whether he was reliving the past or the future. He could only depend on his observation and deduction skills.

'One thing for sure is that the recalls I experienced are not of this timeline…'

He recalled what the Odyssey had said to him a few days ago through Lux.

The Odyssey said that what Zio saw through them aren't from their timeline so he needed to be smart about it. If he was to follow them blindly or be too reliant on his skill, it would eventually lead him to his doom.

'Now that I think about it. The Me in that dream was saying something about the timeline.'

'Though, I could say that some of the memory might hold important information that I don't include in the novel… Like this boy's and Ember's backstory.'

'I don't know how much the difference between each timeline has exactly but I think this world timeline past event is going the same line with the Memory Recall I experienced a few months ago. But it's different from the novel timeline which doesn't have Ember in there.'

He tried to recall the event of the long dream and found several clues and keywords that might be useful.

Timeline, Keeper, Destroyer, Spectres, and Old God Chrono were seeming to be the most important out of the other clues and keywords he collected from the dream.

'All of this starting to make sense of the difference that happened in this world and in the novel…'

Zio let out a soft laugh. Then he found himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. Somehow, his black eyes seemed to increase their density, making them look much darker than before. Also, his hair. It was so dark that maybe no one could not see much of it in the darkness.

'Now what I need is getting my locked memories back. My past life as the Author and this boy's memory that someone deliberately hid as though to erase the whole existence of Zio Varrez.'

'To do so, I must recover a soul shard that somehow had been broken apart. I am not sure about this soul thing. I have not mentioned it once in the novel. Well, whatever, not everything is about the novel anymore… because now I know that this world, or specifically this timeline, will be different from the story I had written.'

'But, wait a minute. I feel like there is something wrong…'

He lifted his face, breaking himself from his thoughts. As he took in his surroundings, he realized that it was still night. The moon still hanging in the starless skies above Octagram City, and the window of his room was still wide open.

But despite the same night atmosphere, he felt his stomach fight against him. It was screaming loudly asking to be fed.

Finding his gaze falling on the crying Reina, Zio reached out for her, gently calming her down as she ruffled her hair out of habit.

"Master! Can you not mess up with Reina's hair?! Reina is crying right now, don't make Reina angry!"

He pulled his hands, raising them on guard. "Haha…"

In a second, The Crying Reina was no more. It had been replaced by The Angry Reina.

"By the way, Reina, can I ask you something?"

Reina gave him a sideway glance, clearly looking offended by the previous hair ruffling. 

"What?" 

Her mouth turned into a pout after letting out a single, short word of the commonly used English word!

"How long was I asleep?"

Hearing the question, her eyes began to swell with tears again. Breaking down, she said something through the sniffles.

"Huaa!! Master!!"

She went for the warm hug of her master, again. It felt like she was abusing the current situation, though. The opportunist.

"You are sleeping for 24 hours! It makes me worry because you usually slept no longer than 5 hours!"

Zio's ears twitched. "That explained why my stomach is declaring war on me…"

After filling his stomach, Zio left his room, looking for fresh air outside the building.

The dorm had not implemented the regulation to forbid students from leaving their dorm unnoticed, at least not yet. Because of that, getting out of the dorm building through the front door could be done confidently.

Once outside, he took a stroll around the quiet campus area, not sure about his destination. He just wanted to feel the breeze. The chill that was brushed his skin. Making every touch result in shuddering out of coldness.

Without his knowledge, he found himself walking beside the beautiful pond. His reflection was reflected clearly on the surface. For some reason, he felt familiar with this place.

Because that was true. This was the place where he murdered the demon that infiltrated the academy.

The low-rank demon, Julron.

As he relished his time beside the beautiful pond, both hands were playing with the water, a sudden noise of bushes instinctively put him on guard.

Turning around to look at the direction in which the noises were coming, he narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the features of a humanoid silhouette.

With his Clairvoyance, it was an easy job to identify whoever that silhouette was without looking at their face because the information provided by Clairvoyance was in the form of a status screen similar to the player status screen in RPGs.

Reading through the name the screen had laid out for him, Zio was left with his mouth agape open. His voice wouldn't come out.

"Zio Varrez."

Eventually, the voice was coming from the silhouette, regarding him. It was a sweet and alluring voice, making everyone who heard it might certainly felt safe and relaxed.