Chapter 467: Small Changes, But Overall the Same?

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'Ah, I'm slowly losing sanity...'

He could think coherently now, even with a migraine, but he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to keep that up. Actually, he had lost his senses a few times during Kimi's little torture session. But now he was awake again. That wasn't a good sign.

'From the looks of it, this Kimi doesn't know everything about me. She had sent a part of herself to the future, pretending to be Lucille, who kept me in a time loop for 4 years that I am unaware of... She might have gone through my memories too back then. So now she's up to date with everything – till the Babylon Underworld incident. She must be as confused as me about everything...'

At least, he finally understood many things. There have been a lot of signs back in the day, but it was far too outlandish to believe those thoughts.

'I am... him.'

It took him a while to accept it, but there was no denying it.

If he couldn't control himself enough to not take a bite out of Kimi's neck, who's to say he wouldn't rape the Primordial's daughter.

For example, when he started, he had many restrictions on the System. Sisty said it was because the First Gamer did something and got punished for it, but why must Neji suffer through it since he was the 2nd Gamer? Shouldn't the System be different too?

Now he understood why. Because both souls were the same.

[Yes. After some intriguing development, the previous Gamer made fun of the Creator of the Gamer System, causing the Creator to chuckle at his fate. To teach him a lesson, the Creator changed a few things in the system. They said,] After a pause, a different voice came out of the system, ["Meh, it's no fun if Gamers can enter the power of a True God in less than 50 years, it's just so boring. Hehe, let's make some "slight" adjustments."]

Back in the day, this was what Sisty told him. He had a total of 13 Restrictions back then, with the last one having gotten lifted when he reached Level 1,000. It was the ability to choose Classes.

Neji had all of those restrictions right now – those were part of the Debuffs that the entity mentioned before sending him to the past. Thankfully, since Neji was beyond Level 1000 already, those did not apply to him. But if he died and the time loop began with a young Neji, he'd have all those.

Everything fell into place now.

The most recent call to that was when the Life Golem Ra mistook him twice to be his father. Then again, perhaps the second time it wasn't a mistake. He didn't even bother to remember all the other signs in between.

'This is such bullshit.'

He cursed whatever power existed beyond this, but couldn't finish his thought as the air was slammed out of his lungs. He was thrown to the floor by Kimi, who dragged him back to the living room.

Rising with great effort, he felt the sting of healing wounds. He was healing well thanks to all of his regeneration abilities, but it hurt. 'At least I am alive...'

Although Kimi was extremely mad, she hadn't killed him. Neji suspected that she was unsure what changes it'd cause if he died; she wouldn't trust the butterfly effect. Thanks to her going easy on him, she had realized he wasn't very sane.

So instead, she was about to make him leave this place.

"Are you truly willing to discard him like this?" asked Godmother, nonchalantly sitting on her couch. "He has good Demon affinity, give him to me instead."

"...." Kimi frowned. At this point, she was unsure what would keep things canon and what wouldn't. From the memories of her future self, she knew the Director affected everything to a certain degree. Was this a part of that?

"I will take that silence as a yes," the Godmother dropped the sweater she was sewing and raised a hand at Neji.

He was still chained up, but less. He only had his hands tied behind him right now, but it was still restricting him well. The telekinesis brought Neji near Godmother's knees as she pressed a hand on his head.

A pulse of energy went through him and she blinked, "Odd. On a first look, I was sure he had a high demonic affinity. But what is this? He is more on a 'balanced' path. This is interesting..."

"Oh?" Kimi walked over to Neji and looked into his golden eyes. "Speaking of, you kind of remind me of She Beyond Omnipotence... Could you two be related? Or is it a coincidence?"

Those words caused Neji to frown internally. True, why did that woman give him this appearance? When he asked her the 'question' about her appearance, and she asked back if she reminded him of someone, was she making fun of him? Was this a prank?

'What a bitch,' Neji thought. 'Looks like she and that woman have more than one similarity. Both are bitches.'

On a more important note, this was a clear change in the timeline. In the original, Neji must have chosen the Demon or Chaos path. Then this was the moment that the Godmother of All Demons would have adopted him as her son. But in this timeline, Neji had chosen the Balanced Route.

Why did that happen? What influenced the change...?

"Haah," the Godmother withdrew her hand. "Fine, do as you please, throw him away. What a waste. I'm looking forward to what havoc he'd cause in the world."

"Dammit," Kimi let out a harrowing sigh that hurt Neji to see. He didn't like seeing her like that, he wanted to see her happy. He wanted to tell her everything. But sadly, he couldn't speak.

Just to test it out, he tried to talk through the restraints. It wasn't that tight around his mouth that he couldn't speak, yet no words came out.

[Status Defect 'Curse of Speech' has reacted. You cannot speak.]

He was basically mute. He was unsure if his other forms of direct communication were blocked too, but he couldn't test it now. Kimi wasn't patient enough with him that she'd let him write on a paper.

Besides, he shouldn't be here right now to begin with. Even if he confirmed he was Neji, it would be a bad thing for her since she'd let go of the restraints and he'd attack her. She wouldn't even defend herself in guilt of hurting him.

Right now, as much as he'd like to be with her, the best choice was to leave this place and come back after he'd found a way around these debuffs. He had a feeling things might get better after he'd completed the Level 10,000 Quest.

Neji's main goal was still to get stronger. Strong enough to negate everything that messed with his life. Strong enough to... bring back people he lost. For that, he had to leave the comfort zone that was Kimi and weave his own path.

Neji looked at his first love with a clear gaze, meeting her blue eyes that looked more like his than ever before. Sadly, now his eyes were golden, one of the reasons that she didn't recognize him.

"...Get out of here," Kimi looked at him with disdain and snapped her finger. A wormhole appeared beneath his feet, and he fell right through.

When the teleportation ended, he found himself lying on soft grass. A girl was looming over him, looking down at him with a tilt of her head, her red hair a bright contrast with the blue sky behind her.

"Oh my," the girl grinned innocently. "A handsome human... Hmm, are you human? Ugh, I should have trained on some sensory abilities."

"...."

Neji felt a shiver run down his spine seeing the text hovering over her head.

[Fotia – Fire Goddess – Peak Class 5th]

Shit.

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