“Doesn’t another one appear in your race later on? One like him?” I felt much doubt about this, and he simply bitterly smiled back.

“It’s not that simple,” he sighed, a sigh that told me how much pressure and loss this dude and his race felt by the absence of the holder of such power. “That dude had to die first, then a thousand years will pass, before a new one will appear. As you can see… We got trapped here for endless years by your words, and yet only a few months passed on us each time without feeling anything at all!”

“…”

I got the scary part of this time loop thing. Time was passing, but it wasn’t actually passing for them. They got trapped here, imprisoned in this place, without any feeling of time passing, without any relation to anything outside.

“Does that mean… That old man who gave me such power… He was the same one who vanished from your time?” I asked in doubt, not even believing the words that came out from my mouth.

“It has to be,” but Real seemed more open to believe my crazy words than even myself, “or else how can you explain all this?”

“Perhaps… As time didn’t pass on you here, then no one ever appeared!”

“No, that’s not right!” he firmly shook his head, “if that was true, then new ones will be born out of here, and that will help us get out from this lockdown! You experienced it yourself, you got to see the real essence of the universe!”

“It’s the entire space you were locked at when you activated your hidden powers,” he slowly explained, “that place got the essence of our universe, a place where time and space merge together, forming a unique place where anything can happen.”

“Don’t tell me if I wanted to, I could have changed the real world here,” I said it and like before, I never believed any sh*t that came out from my mouth.

But unlike what I expected, that dude kept nodding, agreeing on what I just said, “that’s indeed what was going to happen! And not only that! You were going to affect our past, not even our present.”

“…”

“You got into a place where anything is possible. And that makes you wonder why such a man with such powers never appeared after the death of the last holder of this power, right? That’s because he never died in the first place! And somehow, and with a weird twist in fate, he ended up meeting you! Sacrificing his life to ensure that we don’t need to wait for a thousand years to get saved!”

Well… what he said made sense and seemed a hellish crazy version of a theory. What the hell did this dude smoke? Huh?!

“Fine, let’s forget about this old man then…”

“No, tell me exactly how he looked, I want to know if he was the one mentioned in our legends or not!”

“Come on! He was looking like a beggar! Not the same dude you have in mind!” I felt irritated by his persistence. Even if things with the old man didn’t happen long ago actually, it felt like speaking about another lifetime of me.

And for a weird and unexplained reason, the image of that old man kept fading in my mind, as if I met him aeons ago!

“At least tell me his name!”

“Would you believe me if I told you I don’t know his name?”

“No sh*t! I won’t believe this!!!” and he bellowed back, making my situation here look a bit weird.

I knew it seemed quite crazy and impossible to believe, but I really didn’t know the true name of that old man!

“Believe me or not, but that’s the truth I got for you,” I paused before seriously adding, “let’s close this page out for now. Tell me, how long did I take in training?”

“How long? Holy sh*t! You didn’t train more than one day! Only one day passed! How the heck did you unlock such an ability in such a short amount of time? Who the hell are you?!!”

“I’m the human Hye, your lord,” I got more annoyed the more he kept speaking and returning to the same topic again, “now let’s speak about something practical. Tell me, how can I use this ability to change the reality here? How can I use it to save and free everyone?”

“You can’t!” and just when I thought and expected a long talk about the legendary and unbelievable things I was going to do, he ended up saying such a weird and unexpected shocking answer.

“Don’t give me that look, to do anything, you’ll need the help of our race first.”

“But… You said the old man or anyone with such power would have been able to save you, save this entire place from the clutches of the fiends!!!”

“No, you got me wrong,” he seemed to renege on what he said earlier, “to do so, one has to be ready to sacrifice his life for the cause. Don’t tell me you are ready to throw away your life for us?”

“Hell no!” and my answer came swift and decisive, without any speck of hesitation at all.

“As I expected,” and his tone didn’t seem to carry any blame to me, “just listen then and don’t try to use this power yet. It’s enough for the purpose you tried to learn this ability of our race, to locate and defuse the bombs all over here and in the other worlds out there entrapped with us. Isn’t that what you wanted most to do right now?”

“Sure…” and under his realistic words, I couldn’t help but slowly nod and accept what he just said. It was indeed true, I did all this to find and remove the threat of these bombs once and for all.