Chapter 18.

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18一 to hide behind uncertainty

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18一 to hide behind uncertainty

༻𖥸༺

LIES. SUCH FICKLE THINGS THEY WERE. So easy to spot and impossible to forget. Used correctly, they could either break or make mankind depending on the person who utilized them.

It was easy to tell when one lied. There was always a hint that gave away their intentions. Be it either a twitch of a muscle, the averting of eyes or a frantic disposition. For Athanasius, in his right as prince, spotting a lie was as easy as breathing. It helped that he had prior experience from his incarnation.

However easy it may have been to spot a lie being told, the same could not be said about himself. Athan was good at lying when it suited him, he knew how to twist the truth is such a way that lying was not even a necessary option.

Lying came as easy as breathing to the crown prince of Obelia. The same could be said about the act of lying to one's self.

There were many things that the reincarnation repressed. Memories and feelings that he justified not dealing with by telling himself that he had more important things to watch over and could not be bothered with flimsy sentimentalities.

Or perhaps those were not lies, as the use of lies would imply that he denied the existence of a problem. Perhaps what he was doing was pushing back the inevitability of fully acknowledging and coming to terms with over two decades' worth of life experiences from which he unconsciously drew.

There weren't many places that Ye-Jun would consider dangerous. The northern mines would be one such physical place. A series of cavernous passages that formed a labyrinth filled with precious metals and stones. A place that was often in need of protections as the lack of such would be an open invitation for magic beasts to nest in one of the remote corners of the mine.

Yet when Athan referred to dangerous places, he thought of the welling depth of remnants that were brought with him in this life.

His mind was not a place that he would willingly lose himself in, yet it would seem that the solace of the Ice Temple would give him no such reprieve, barrier reformation notwithstanding.

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THE LIBRARY DOCUMENTING EVERY modification done to the barrier by his maternal family was as grand as he had imagined it and then some. It was evidently inaccessible to those not in possession of Saint blood coursing through their veins and the books' contents revealed themselves to him and him only.

It was... overwhelming, if anything, to be left alone with such grand tomes of accounts and magic circle sequences, combinations of possibilities and why some worked while others didn't.

𝐒𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐓𝐘 ━ 𝚠𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚙.Where stories live. Discover now