Judal returned with Linhard to the room where Olgren was left waiting.

The room was beautiful, you could tell it was high class.

But the items inside were strange.

They were failed artifacts, experiments of a strange man.

Olgren stood trying to analyze the strange painting that looked like a woman eating an octopus for breakfast.

Opening the door, Linhard said.

"Sorry for the delay. I very rarely eat sandwiches and tea."

"That's okay, they're first class right? I can't stand to take anything that isn't first class."

"...Yes, they are."

Judal poured the cups, despite the fact that he couldn't see because of the bandana covering his eyes, he perfectly knew how to place the spoon and plate near Olgren and Linhard.

He walked straight to the back of the room without making a sound.

Olgren stared at him.

"Before we start, why is that guy with you?"

Linhard took three sugar cubes and threw them into his tea, as he stirred it he said.

"He's my bodyguard. As you may know, I am a man who does not exist, therefore, I must not leave evidence. Years ago I made a slight mistake, but it is not one I regret."

"To get out of the capital I use several of my contacts and this guy is very helpful. My ally recommended I hire him since he used him to take care of assassins who were sent for his head."

"He charges dearly, but I'm never short of money."

"I see..."

Olgren poured milk cream into his tea.

"As usual, you're a strange man. You're the spitting image of the real dark side of the empire for a reason."

Linhard aggressively placed his cup of tea on the saucer.

"Don't call me like that. It's not my fault that my experiments and those old idiots in the palace have come into conflict."

Olgren retorted.

"If your dog bites someone's hand, is it your fault or the guy who got bitten?"

"The guy's. Nobody sends him to touch the dog."

"The dog I'm talking about is the son of Loic IV. You used the former emperor's youngest child to turn him into a chimera."

"How on earth did you plan that no one would notice?"

"The boy always spent playing alone, he had no one around him. It's not my fault, my breakthrough experiments require humans, it's impossible to achieve the same effect with plants, animals or monsters."

"Remember those kids I told you about?"

Olgren touched his chin trying to remember.

"Kids? ... Oh, I remembered."

He uttered a familiar name.

"You're talking about Zoro and the other shadows, right?"

"Their names are irrelevant to me, that's why I was barcoding them to remember them. Anyway, thanks to the experiments I did on them, the 'dark crystal' was completed."

Dark Crystal.

It was a very dangerous gem in the game.

There was only one country that used it in the game.

"You're talking about that stone you sold to the Ideal Empire, right?"

"Exactly."

Linhard raised his hand.

He stood up and his eyes sparkled.

"There's nothing more wonderful than managing to create something that doesn't exist!"

"Knowing that mana can be corrupted, just as fresh water can become salt water with only slight changes in its molecules, isn't this world wonderful!"

Linhard proceeded to tell his story as he recounted the wonders he saw to Olgren.

◇◇◇

A long time ago a child was born into a prestigious family.

The child was christened Linhard Wiseman.

One day on his fifth birthday, he caught a glimpse in the sky something that would change his life forever.

A meteor shower.

From that night on, Linhard's life focused on one thing.

"Why?"

That simple question kept him awake at night.

Why is water blue?

Why do we have to breathe to live?

Why is blood red?

All those innocent and simple questions were escalating different kinds of levels.

Until one day when he was writing down a magic formula, his pencil fell down.

The reason for this was simple.

Linhard had turned eighty.

He was already an old man.

His entire childhood, youth and even his old age was focused on research, but without coming up with an answer.

Linhard paused briefly to observe his body.

He was very old.

His teeth and hair had long since fallen out.

He didn't have long to live either because of his lousy diet.

All seemed lost until one day, something came in the mail.

The sender was unknown.

It was a small box with strange contents inside.

It was a diary and a stone accompanied by a note.

"Use it. It's a gift from an admirer."

Linhard thought it was a joke.

But the moment he touched the red stone, a glow emanated and his body began to rejuvenate to a very young age.

Seeing that miracle, Linhard began to read the diary.

It was written in a language he did not understand.

No, it was a language that did not exist. It is impossible that such a language could ever have existed.

Linhard set about studying and deciphering that language.

With the passage of time he managed to do it and write it down.

Little by little he revealed some of them in order to have money and thus expand his horizons.

One day, a man approached him. It was the former head of the Granville duchy, Casimiro's father.

He offered him a juicy amount of money and whatever, if he managed to duplicate something.

He handed him a vial of blood, it was from the king of the night, a creature known as a vampire.

Linhard was astonished, it was the first time he heard that word, but he already knew the information about the creature.

Duke Granville told him that vampires stay young even reaching a hundred years old, humans grow old, and that a certain friend of his hated to look old.

So he asked him "Can you come up with a way to give strength and youth to a human being?" to create the red pill.

A pill used by the leading members of the Black Crows to be strong and young.

For Linhard it was simple.

Thanks to that he managed to get a lot of allies and money.

His research was known worldwide.

But something was missing, he wanted to discover something else.

It was then that he said to Olgren while pointing to the sky.

"Don't you want to know if there is something beyond the stars?"

"What?"

"The stars. I wish to know what lies beyond what our eyes see."

Olgren burst out laughing.

"Hahahaha here we go again with that!"

What Olgren was referring to was...

"It's impossible that there were humans living in the stars."

The reason for this thought was due to the day he met Linhard.

Olgren was young and not yet the head of his household.

Linhard was already old, about to be two hundred years old.

Seeing him lying on the ground looking up at the stars he asked him.

"What are you doing?"

At which Linhard told him what he was thinking.

"I was imagining how they did to come."

"They?"

He pointed to a star.

"I have a theory that is not confirmed that there was an ancient humanity. They came from the stars."

Young Olgren laughed at the craziness he heard.

"Hahaha, and how did those humans get here?"

"On ships by any chance? Hahaha."

From that moment on, the relationship of these two began.

It was even Olgren himself who had contacts in the Ideal Empire who suggested to Linhard to create something for them and have more bonds.

That was how he created the dark crystals, which will serve for the dark knights to fight against the soldiers of the Arklight Empire.

To top it off, one day before rejuvenating himself, Linhard had to fake his death.

But it was a bit difficult to do so as years came a pupil. A bright young man who wanted to learn him.

Due to his family, Linhard could lie and say that he was Linhard II or Linhard III, it was very easy for him.

So lying again was not complicated, except for this boy.

That boy looked up to him so much, Linhard felt remorseful about never seeing him again.

It did him no good to be young again when the bond he had with this boy was engraved in this personality.

That's why he gave him his notes. A souvenir to help this boy and give him a legacy.

He didn't do it for fame or anything, he just wanted to have a bond with someone who understood him.

That's why Linhard didn't know that was a mistake.

For days later, the sword saint came for his head.

As the boy, young Brian of the Pleven Household didn't know nothing, he only unwittingly revealed the name "Linhard" as part of the answers he gave.

The sword saint did not say as he thought they were in confederate.

Linhard had no choice but to "die" at that moment and thus, the entire Wiseman family was executed.

But Linhard was an ambitious man. He wanted to find out everything about this world. That's why he changed his last name to Weissman.

That's why he pretended to die after creating something that wasn't supposed to exist.

A homunculus.

Linhard did not realize that when he was gathering parts to create his homunculus, a young man by the name of Gregore was working at the place where he ordered the materials for his experiment.

When Gregore went to visit Linhard's office which was being destroyed by knights, he found a page which was soiled with footprints.

On that page it said something that would change his life forever.

"Create artificial life, aka homunculus."

It was then that he managed years later to create Evelyn.

Of course, Linhard didn't know that thanks to him he managed to help the man who would become the wizard god years later and even help Evelyn to be born.

This man managed to make the strange technological advances seen in the game real.

Without knowing how, a non-playable character, a real background character managed to do something that the game never revealed.

Something like this was impossible to know.

◇◇◇

Olgren finished his new cup of tea.

He was enjoying a quiet moment.

Linhard asked him.

"We've talked about the past for a long time, but this makes me uneasy, what are you looking for here?"

"You still don't reveal how you found this place."

Olgren said.

"I managed to remember you telling me about this place years ago, the password is a special whistle that manages to mimic the frequency of a wind made with magic. Even someone who knows wind magic couldn't find it, although I would laugh if it was by mere chance, gororororo."

"... And your target?"

Olgren grew serious at those words.

"Revenge."

"I want revenge on the empire, everyone deserves to suffer and die in the worst way possible."

"I want you to help me get to Ideal and sell them information for shelter and food. No! A noble title no doubt, if I'm not noble I don't care a damn."

Olgren told Linhard everything he wanted.

After sighing a little he said.

"Fine. I'll help you, but first I want you to see something with me."

"What is it?"

"Just follow me."

◇◇◇

The three of them followed down a long corridor where a room was located.

After opening the door, a foul smell emanated the air.

"It stinks!"

"Cover your nose."

Linhard handed the three of them an oxygen mask.

Upon entering, they found that all but one part was off.

They approached and Olgren was shocked.

"This is it!"

Linhard replied as he pulled on gloves.

"It's a corpse, but not just anyone's. It's the deceased body of the dark knight of ash."

The body of Curtis, one of the four dark knights lay on a metal table.

His body showed signs that he was ripped open.

He even had a hole in his chest.

That was where the dark crystal that gave him his powers was.

"He died months ago, his neck was broken apparently."

Curtis died when Razel and the dukes went to destroy hidden bases of the black crows, there he met Desmond and was killed in such a simple way.

Linhard grabbed the dark crystal, which called out to him...

"This is the main core. This little thing is corrupted mana, it is altered to violate the laws of nature."

"For that reason..."

*Snap*

In a split second, Judal choked Olgren.

"Linhard... what do you think you're doing?"

Linhard motioned Judal to a far table.

"You see, Garrett boy. I have lived two hundred years thanks to the philosopher's stone. That stone allows me to stay young since it is made of human lives."

"Human lives have an expiration date, those lives run out fast. I can only live a couple of years, sooner or later its effect will run out."

"In other words, it's inefficient. But you know, there is something that is supreme. Something that will give me everything I desire."

He grabbed something from a table and then held it up to Olgren's face.

"Here lies the truth! In this journal is everything I want to know to create that."

Linhard said.

"The holy grail."

An object that in the game was just a simple chalice that gave full energy and could be easily crafted, but Linhard wasn't talking about that item but something else.

"From what I could understand, the holy grail is divided into two parts. The elder grail and the minor grail."

"The minor grail is a physical vessel. While the elder grail is energy."

"If you put them together you get the holy grail. The pinnacle of knowledge, that's what I want."

"But I want more than that, I want to know the truth of the world."

"For example, what happened two thousand years ago?"

"According to history, mankind began a thousand years ago. But the ruins show that there was something else, a thousand years more difference."

"Therefore, there is a gap of a thousand years that we don't know about, but everyone accepts."

"I refuse to accept that."

"My years of life are nothing compared to two thousand years of stories. I wish to know if my theory that humans crossed the stars to come here."

"For that reason, Garrett boy, you will be part of an experiment."

Linhard reached across the table and picked up a syringe.

"I planned to use you as part of the material for the new philosopher's stone."

Linhard showed part of his body to Olgren, he was aging, at an accelerated rate in fact.

"The philosopher's stone wears out if used on the same person, that's why I need a new body."

"Implanting brains into other bodies is simple, I managed to do it in the past, but I don't want your body."

"You will be part of what is written in this journal, the SS project. Don't worry. I'll make sure it's a success."

"Judal I need him awake to check his condition, but I hate the screaming they do, make sure he doesn't talk."

"Aye, aye."

"Right."

Linhard approached Olgren and showed him the black crystal.

"Your desire for revenge will come true, but not in the way you think."

"...!"

Olgren's frightened face could not reflect the torment that awaited him.

_____________

Wiseman means sage, which is part of demonstrating his level of intelligence.

In case you don't understand, Wiseman and Weissman is a play on words where Linhard is still called by the same last name, changing only the meaning. While at the beginning it was called "wiseman=sage" now it is called "weissman=white man", a reference to the old thinkers who were treated that way because it was thought that when a man was older he became wiser.