The Primordial Record
chapter-932

His Will gingerly touched the Berserker Clone as Rowan searched for that ephemeral connection that he had once felt. He descended past their flesh, spirit, and soul, searching for something more mysterious, something so deep inside them that most would never be aware of its existence.

At first, there was only darkness, and then his perception lit up as he saw the glowing tendrils of the past and the future of the Berserker Clone. It was like a glowing road in the darkness and his Will proceeded below until he merged with it, and then he understood.

For every Berserker clone here, multiple possible variations of their futures were revealed to him, some of the Clones had few branching paths in the future, and a couple of them had only a single branching path. This meant that throughout their lives, they stuck to a single path and they never changed, a warrior remained the same until he died, a baker never left his bakery, while some of them had dozens of branching future paths leading to a myriad of futures.

A warrior in a potential future became an artiste whose works were seen as the pinnacle of Abstract art. Another became a dreaded cultist that raped and pillaged across a thousand worlds before he was executed by Angels, and so many other divergent paths in the future.

He could only see snapshots of their lives, but when combined, it was a vast number of experiences that were fascinating to sturdy.

It was amazing to Rowan that when he first used this technique he had not realized how utterly broken this ability was.

To be fair, at that time he was barely awake, all his actions were mostly due to instincts and if he had his full faculties, he would have never used such a power because he would be unaware that such a thing was even possible.

This present batch of Berserker Clones had more potential than the previous ones he had created and the weakest of them in their greatest possible futures were no weaker than God-Kings, and one of them amazingly reached the state of becoming a Will Holder, but the situation that led to that future was so drastic that Rowan almost blanched in shock.

This Berserker Clone had been able to reach the level of a Will Holder because, in that future timeline, Rowan had perished. This dragged his attention from what he wanted to create for a moment as he thought to investigate this future timeline closely, in his heart there was a rising expectation that perhaps he might have found an unexpected method to search the future.

However he discovered that this technique did not work in the manner he was expecting, outside knowing the future selves of the clones, it was impossible to see their surroundings or even question them, the decisions that were made to reach that point could be inferred, but the state of their environment at that possible future was unknown.

It was like he was a blind man touching only a part of an elephant, his senses were unable to pierce through the fog outside the known state of the Clones.

The only thing he could comprehend was a rather vague sense of the Aura surrounding the clones, and that was how he was able to detect that in this future he had truly died.

Perhaps knowing more of the future surrounding the clones was a power he might unlock as he grew stronger, and that thought made him wonder, if there were ways to see the future then surely the Primordial of Time itself must have had this power, if that was the case, how was it possible that he could have ever being blindsided and fell to the hands of death?

This was only small speculation in his mind before Rowan recalled that all Primordial also had a firm grasp over time, and with their varied abilities, even if the Primordial of Time was aware of the future, he would not be able to change it when every Primordial in existence was gunning for his head, it was like a mortal with the power of foresight who was living on an airplane that was about to crash, no matter if he knew the future, there was no way he would be able to change it.

It was similar to the first vision that the Primordial Record had shown him of their merger when he was attacked by the Primordials, even though he knew the future there was no way to change it because the Primordials were truly invincible, the only way to change that future was to not embark on that path and something told Rowan that a being like a Primordial would never change their mind when they placed it on something, it was like telling a mortal man to grow wings and fly.

Dismissing the thought of his potential death in that timeline, Rowan began harvesting the entire future of his Berserker Clones, stripping them of their varied potential. In essence, he just rid them of their destinies. No matter who they could have become in the future, that potential was no more because such a future could no longer exist. Rowan had taken it. It did not take long for the first of the Berserker Clones to begin falling into death.

The loss of their future meant they were now without purpose, it was as if Rowan had scrapped their soul raw, ridding it of its lights and potential, leaving only husks behind.

Doing something like this did not please him at all, for he was deeply connected with these Berserker Clones, and with every hurt he inflicted upon them, he could feel it a million times more deeply because his senses were broader in scope than the clones and therefore he could feel things that they could not even conceptualize.

If pain was a song, they heard only a single note, while Rowan experienced an entire symphony, and for every Berserker Clone, that symphony was different.

Rowan… hurt.

More deeply than he had ever thought he was capable of hurting, but he did not stop his actions, and when he was done, all the Berserker Clones were dead, and on his hand was a swirling ball of destinies–Countless potentials held on the palm of his hand. Looking at the bodies of all the Berserker Clones, he sighed and waved his hand, dispersing all of them into the wind.

Over his short life in this universe, he had killed countless people, and Rowan found it poignant that by his own hand, he made himself feel a level of hurt that everyone he had ever killed could not even imagine, even if they were all combined.

If there was ever a hell that could punish someone for his wrongdoings for eternity, Rowan had just experienced it, and not just once, but thousands of times. This experience left a scar on his mind.

Shaking himself away from this melancholic mood, Rowan brought out the Cube that held the gate to the Eye of the Primordial and he began to weave a cage of destiny over it. He could not be sure, but Rowan suspected that the higher dimensions controlled the power of Destiny and other ephemeral concepts like this.

It did not take long before the web of destiny he had spread all over the cube began to steam as portions of it dissipated, Rowan nodded as he felt an unknown weight that had been pressing over his body subsided. His back straightened and for the first time since the war ended a thousand years ago, he could breathe a bit easier.

Investigating the cube more closely, he inferred that from the rate of dissipation, it would take at least a few decades before the web of destiny was destroyed, and that should give him enough time to pursue his goals without the thought of madness hanging over his head.

It was time for him to leave the Frozen Waste.