"Always down to talk." Wu said, scanning around him before the blue lines looped around him and tied around Wu's arms and legs, forcing his limbs together, "How about this, you tell me what you want, and I will give you my answers. But before that, let Lera go." "Always so open, so receptive, and so calm, almost unnaturally so..." The remnant said, holding the tension of the blue lines at a steady level around Wu, "The girl is of no importance to me, but to make sure you can satisfy me with your answers, I will just hold onto her for a bit longer." "Fine." "Huh?" Shocking even the remnant, Wu shrugged, "Can you just flip her around though?" The circular eyes of the remnant blinked a few times as the blue lines that formed his body turned his eyes and mouths into a smiley face, and he snapped a finger. Lera screamed as her body's flipped around, and her hair flops down by the side of her face. "WHY AM I STILL BOUND THOUGH?!" She cursed. "Now, let's get started." The remnant said, "I desire nothing more than a satisfying answer, and nothing less." A white light bathed around Wu's body, and a pair of blue lines of light pierced through the skin around his temple. The next thing he knew, he was floating in the middle of a strange dimension with a light blue color-tone all around. His clothes, and most importantly, his backpack, are all gone, and everything's left hanging out in the open. He gripped with his fingers, and the sensations feeding back from his hands are slightly delayed, and the feelings of touch were strangely muffled. It's almost like he's dreaming. Dreaming awake. "Look at you. Truly a man with nothing." The remnant's voice boomed all throughout the dimension, and Wu looked up to see an overwhelming figure floating and occupying half of what he sees. Before, he was a figure drawn with neon blue lines, but now he's all but a dark shadow without any features. He waved a hand, and Wu's body was split apart with his arms out to the side, and legs floating under his trunk. Fortunately, his livelihood is still intact, though even though his arms are now twenty centimeters lateral of where it usually is, there's no pain. In fact, there is no feeling at all. "Let's see...the savior of this world...What?" The remnant said, his thundering voice now sounding angry, "What is this......WHAT IS THIS?!" "Why are you mad?" Wu shot back, "This is what you wanted!" "SILENCE!" He said as the shadowy right hand clenched into a fist before a gentle pressure is applied onto Wu's peripheral nerves. Sharp tearing pain rushed into his brain, and he hissed loudly. "Shhhhhit! What the hell do you want?!" Wu grunted, this pain far exceeding anything he had ever felt before. Not when he rolled his ankle so bad that he's out for half a year, not when he jammed his already injured fingers into the ball and it swollen up like a lollipop......this is completely different. With cold lines of sweat already covering his forehead, he now tried to yank his arms back and free himself, but the remnant's hold on him remained strong. "What could you possibly offer me. You are powerless! You are useless! This world, and many others around, are governed by the Wave! And you have NONE of it!" The remnant roared, "The Third initially didn't have anything to show for it too, but he was the greatest out of all of them. But YOU! YOU ARE A JOKE!" "A joke?! Is that right?!" Wu yanked his head forward, anger raging inside of him too, "Then why the FUCK am I the one getting summoned? Why me?! WHY ME?! I was just on my way back home, and I am about to fucking graduate, and get a shitty job for the rest of my life! Why the fuck am I being shit on by someone like you when I didn't want any of this shit to begin with?!" The remnant was taken aback by Wu's rage, and he raised his fist but didn't inflict much further pain on Wu's body. There is simply no point. This world will fall into chaos again, and the Portal of Through Space and Time has made a mistake that will cost the lives of everyone in the world. The War of the Fourth Millennium will be the last war ever fought, and that's because there will be no one left to fight the next one. The future is set. "The Tablet must have been tainted." The remnant grunted, "If you are the future for us all, I might as well cut the threat of fate right here." "Tell me then!" Wu said, "Tell me about this future you see! Tell me all of your reasons!" "Why should I?" The remnant's figures slowly faded away, or it might just be getting smaller. "Are you scared?" Wu said, thinking that there is no way this will work. But to his surprise, the remnant became dead silent. "No. But you will be." Then, the sceneries around him changed. He found himself still fully naked with his limbs detached but livelihood intact, but now, he's standing in the middle of an open field with a patch of green grass and bright yellow flowers going all the way to the horizon. In the middle of all of the naturalistic beauty stood sets of stone columns with the same lines that made up all of the Casts that Wu has seen so far. Then, he finds himself walking towards the stone columns and placing his hand all over it. It felt as if someone else's piloting his body, and as a surge of energy traveled from his hands outwards into the stones, everything lit up around them. A headache exploded within his mind as the grass fields were suddenly torn apart by a massive rupture in what Wu can only describe as the fabrics of space and time itself. From a massive yet geometrically perfect cut that formed right on the ground in front of him, armies of demonic creatures crawled out in swarms like insects in the heat of infestation season. Then, the sky above turned red before the clouds were set on flames. An explosion went off from right behind him, and Wu turned around to see the dead body of himself laid bare on the ground, his guts spilling out as a massive hidden figure crushed his skull with a boot. Far out in the distance, cities were ruined, mountains and hills flattened, and the only mountains left are the mountains of bodies. "NOOOOO!" He heard a sharp scream from overhead, and it sounded like it was from Lera. But before he can turn around, the scene changed. He saw a set of ten hidden figures standing around a table within what appeared to be their home base, and an explosion went off, collapsing the structure with all of those figures crushed underneath. Then, everything's zoomed out, and a titanic giant just was just dropped right over a lively and beautiful city. The landscapes of the city looked somewhat similar to the ones that were destroyed in the previous scene, and Wu wondered if it was the same place, just a different point in time. "Do you see?" Wu spoke, though in the voice of the remnant, "Do you see your failures? Do you see your future?" The next scene had Wu being tied in chains while another hidden figure dressed in a long red dress waved a hand, and the empowered blade of his execution slammed down right through his neck. The tip of the blade dug right into the piece of wood behind his neck, and the background transitioned now to the middle of a battlefield, as two armies clashed. "Argh?!" As Wu's mind was thrown back and forth from scene to scene, he was suddenly brought into a forest that's on fire. Then, his perspective traveled through the fire, smoke and burning trees before ending in front of a pair of grey beings that wrapped their hands around one another, accepting their pending fate as they were swallowed up. "ARGHHHH!" Wu's eyes opened, and he fell backward onto the warm and soft grass with tears streaming down his face. However, the visions did not stop here. He found himself crawling on the ground all the way back to a village, and various faces of shock and horror passed right in front of him. Then, a loud group of people gathered around and sent him running. Various other visions came playing back into Wu's mind, but by this point, he has already lost the ability to keep tracking of everything that's happening. Then, the remnant snapped his finger, and Wu's thrown back into his body that was suspended in the air. "What...what the hell was all that..." Wu said, his body drenched in cold sweat and his fingertips felt as if they were exposed in the harshest of winter days. His bodies were shaking, and his legs soft. Of everything there, the scream that sounded like Lera's still haunts him. "Flashes of the Future." The remnant said, "A forbidden Cast. In exchange for a price, you can see a glimpse of the future." "That's nonsense." Wu shook his head as sweat dripped down the side of his face, "It makes no sense." "Can you not feel it? How vivid and real those flashes were?" The remnant said, pulling Wu closer to him, "That's YOUR future. You were supposed to save us, and look at you...nothing but a failure, now, and in the future." "Without any power, you can accomplish nothing. Wherever you go, you bring death." The remnant said, "I knew my visions were right now that I have seen you in person, and I shall end your life right here so that the world won't have to suffer because of your mistakes!" "Shut up...shut up!" "Still struggling?" The remnant asked, pulling Wu closer and closer, "Or are you finally scared of your future, just like I have?" Am I afraid? Wu asked himself that question, and for the first time, he turned around and looked at himself in the mirror. The powerless, mortal, normal, him. "Shit, man." Wu watched himself chuckle before he looked up, tears welling up inside of his eyes, "I will be fucking lying to say I am not scared." "Then, this will be it." "But I will also be fucking lying to say that's all that I will ever feel. Nope. This ain't it." "What?" "Sure, you may have caught glimpses of a future." Wu said, forcing his head up and looking right at the remnant, "You might think everything is set in stone, and nothing can ever be changed, right?" "Of course it will not be changed." The remnant said, "That's the entire purpose of the Cast that reveals the future. All things that I have seen have come to pass, and that will include your future. Know this, there is nothing you can do."