You have invoked Virgil, a great philosopher of olden days, that you may gain his wisdom, his insight and perspective. +3 Int, Wis...

Like many before you and ever more after, you look back and forth, up and down, the river of time, considering what was, what is, and what could be. +2 Luck, Wis, Int

Some may say that the road of might will always win out against the roads of mind. But they are fools, for seldom have they questioned the World, but you have, you will, and so you will suffer the consequences. +3 Con, +1 Int, Wis...

Congratulations! You have completed the Philosopher's Road I. +5 mana regeneration...

Dante felt his feet beginning to move once more. He watched the notices roll in one by one.

This time he felt someone walking besides him, looking over he saw Virgil smiling.

He felt the moment shared between. He smiled too.

It felt nice to have someone else to walk the road with.

His feet tread ever onward as he turned his head and found he had moved.

He found himself by a river. His eyes widened in shock.

He turned left, looking back upstream. Images began flashing through his mind.

Men, women, children, places he had never known but nevertheless he saw now.

He took it all in for a moment before he felt Virgil with him once more.

"It would seem the system has shown you a bit of my past." He spoke, his face twisted with a mix of joy, and sadness.

They stood together in that moment, Dante looked at Virgil and for that moment knew his thoughts. For that moment they shared them.

Men, women, children.

He had known many and Dante knew it hurt him to know they were all long gone.

Dante saw a place through Virgil. A beautiful place of peace, and he knew so few Virgil had known in life were there.

----------------

Dante read the notice and so he looked forward, across the river.

He saw a changing world, unveiled before him.

Creatures high in the sky, deep beneath the ocean waves, and far below the world.

Some he knew, others he didn't.

He saw men and women running around in the streets.

Occasionally he saw someone use this or that skill for one reason or another.

He heard the echo of footsteps, the scene before him shifting and for a moment he saw...

...

What did he see?

Dante's eyes narrowed as he tried to remember, but it was gone.

He knew he had seen something, but couldn't recall what.

He had heard footsteps, but that was all he could recall.

'Some powerful people probably. Best not to linger on that too long. It might draw the ire of someone I don't want to mess with.' he thought before smiling at the notice.

+1 Wis...

---------------------

Dante took a breath and looked right, down this river of time. But as he looked it spread forth into countless smaller rivers.

Faint things flickered through his mind.

A tree standing tall and proud, it was a beautiful thing, a man standing beneath the northern lights, a blue flame burning in a familiar fireplace.

All that he saw he felt a connection to. His eyes widened as he pondered.

'These are things that could be so says the notice...'

He had not the words to express what he felt in that moment. It was overwhelming to see so many possibilities ahead of him.

However, one image stood out amongst the rest.

He saw a river that grew ever more red the farther it went. In the distance he could barely see where it became crimson red.

He looked upon where the red began.

He saw a man standing in a ruined city. The street was lined with what looked like withered husks that appeared to have once been people.

He focused on that singular stream. That one possibility, the other fading as the image grew clearer in his mind.

He saw...himself? But something was wrong, there was a shadow behind him, something was...

Something was his shadow...

Someone was standing behind him...

The thing, the person that stood in...his shadow? He couldn't make out details of it all he could see was the identical robes they both wore.

He watched the shadow laugh and in perfect unison the thing that looked like him laughed too.

The robes they wore were colorful. Not quite a tie dye, it was more as if someone had dyed a robe randomly with color. Some colors were dull, others vibrant. But that colorful robe could do nothing to hide the thing beneath it.

For in that laugh, he heard an ocean of joy, twisted by a lifetime insanity...

"If I cannot have this world, If I cannot rebuild my empire..." He felt something building as they looked up to the sky.

He felt Virgil pulling him away but it was too late, he saw it.

"...Then you shall all die with me. %*($(&@^&$%^&!" The thing that looked like him, was him, spoke.

Its words tore at his mind and soul.

The crimson river grew to encompass Dante's sight.

He was lying on his back now, Virgil screaming at him but couldn't hear him.

The perspective changed to look up at the sky. It appeared to be noon on earth, but something was wrong with the sun.

Why did it look like that...

The vision ended but not before he saw the scene shift one final time. He looked down the street, and watched everything catch fire.

The corpses caught fire and were ash in the same second, the asphalt of the street bubbled and evaporated, even the buildings leaned as they began to melt.

There was a great crash as he saw the ground fall away...

No, not fall.

He watched the annihilation of the world. Saw as the World died, lost to the fire.

Lost to...

Lost to...

Dante grasped desperately for the answer. What had happened!? What had he just seen?! It looked too much like...

He looked up as the darkness consumed the sky and he knew...

+5 Wis...

...and it terrified him to no end. His soul trembled with fear for he knew what that thing, that person had done...

Fear's Road has opened to you!...

----------------

Virgil knelt over Dante who now laid in the bed of the small farmhouse, as Dante began to come around. Virgil wondered what he had seen to cause...this...

He looked at Dante but his projection in this place was frayed at the edges. Like he was a painting placed in water.

When he came to he shook with terror, but still had the strength to say but one thing.

"Whoever the fuck that was... he...he...he killed...the Sun..."

Dante willed himself to leave. He wanted to run from what he had seen. He fled from his soul space and the darkness of sleep took him.

------------------

Virgil watched as Dante vanished from the soul space.

Sighing he crossed his arm, putting them on the bed then laid down his head upon them.

"What the hell am I going to do?" He said as he laid there for a moment.

Then it was over. Virgil stood and reviewed the log. He found the pertinent sections and fired them off in a report to the system pylon administrator.

Virgil took a few deep breaths before he put on his signature smile.

He had to display confidence and warmth for those he was to help. Even when he was scared.

Virgil vanished from the soul space, following the thread that connected him to Frank stone.

He still had to do the inner world tutorial for Frank and Laura.

----------

Dante opened his eyes, before closing them once more and rubbing the sleep from them.

He took deep breaths and got out of bed, and began dressing himself.

He felt a familiar tingling in his mind as another wall rose to block the memory, leaving only a whisper of what it had been.

Already the details were blurring.

And then it was gone, but not forgotten.

A memory of a memory.

Dante began popping his knuckles, cracking his neck. Trying to keep his mind off the fading memory.

'One possible future. Do I go evil? Who the fuck was that behind me?' He questioned, but no answers came.

As he reached for the door now after getting dressed he paused. He remembered something else that hadn't faded.

Something joyful.

He remembered someone standing beneath the northern lights.

Was it him? Were those his future's? He couldn't say, but he feared the answer.

He pulled back his palm from the door and cupped both hands together, forming a small bowl.

"Light." He spoke in a voice that was but a whisper. A word that gave life to something more, and in a moment, liquid light pooled in his cupped hands.

His mind was set and he felt his foot step out into the dark, before finding purchase.

He had a goal, and so he reached for it.

"Dancing lights." he spoke in a firmer voice this time. The liquid light flowing upward in defiance of gravity.

The small amount of liquid light grew before it divided in two, and those two into four.

When it was done 4 baseball sized orbs of light bobbed in the air before him.

Slowly he tried to shape them, to remember what he had seen and make it with his own hands.

The lights began to grow as he tried to shape their mana. Where once they had been golden now they were green, red, blue, orange.

Mana Manipulation has leveled up! Lvl. 7->9...

Their colors began shifting, slowly, carefully he began to work on his idea.

20 minutes and 4 levels of Mana manipulation later he decided to stop. Allowing his concentration to lapse he watched the multicolored lights break apart before fading back into the manasphere.

Mana Manipulation has leveled up! Lvl. 13...

This wasn't because he had wanted to stop, but because he was getting hungry.

Slowly he made his way out the door and down to breakfast with his parents.