I mean, he was pretty much identical to Orkas, only that he looked a few years older.
"I haven’t been called this name for quite some time." He looked at me, and I felt something calling out.
The weapons.
They resonated with him.
"So it’s really you. But... Weren’t you in..."
"Inside the [HIDDEN NEST]?" He chuckled. "Yes, and I’m still there."
I was ready to say something, but his words got me off-track.
"What do you mean? How’s it possible that there are two of you?"
Somehow, the thought of two Orkas made me think of Evellyn.
"Actually, ’here’ I’m called Oliver, but I’m linked to the Dark Hero trapped inside the system."
"You know about the system..." I was getting more and more perplexed.
"Why don’t you take off the mask so we can have a proper conversation, Kurt Blake?"
Shit!
The surprise for seeing him made me forget completely that I was Silence in there. But I guess it couldn’t be helped.
I’m just glad I know it wouldn’t have happened if it was anyone else but him, so I took the mask off, and he studied my face.
His eyes carried impossible calmness, but we’re sharp as knives.
"But... Why did you want to see me? And how do you know about the system? How’s it that there are two Orkas?"
His eyes curled up ever so slightly and his eyes softened.
"There are many things you still don’t know about anything, and as I can see, your world still revolves around friends, guilds, and staying alive, is it?"
He wasn’t wrong, but how could a man be so accurate?
"I learned to read people, just like my daughter can read past, present and future."
Wait...
"Your daughter..."
"Is Evellyn Smith, the Seer from the Shadow Guild, yes."
My eyes went wide and my jaw dropped. It explained a lot, but still... It didn’t make sense at all.
"Okay, now I think we’re going to have to slow down a bit." I raised my hands. "Would you mind explaining me everything you just said, from the beginning?"
Orkas, I mean, Oliver nodded and led me to a bench so we could sit down.
"It’s actually quite relieving to be able to talk to you outside that hell hole."
"But how do you know about the system and the Orkas trapped in there if you’re not the same person?"
"You asked me to explain everything from the beginning, right?" He chuckled, making me feel a bit awkward. He was right, I wasn’t letting him speak.
"Okay, go on."
"Evellyn knows nothing about the system, but as far as I know, she somehow knows that everything is connected. I understood my part in this truth as soon as she awakened to be an irregular, when she was only five years old. Can you believe it?"
I tried picturing a baby version of the girl I got to know that I knew nothing about, but I failed miserably.
Evellyn would always be the Red Oracle to me.
I didn’t comment anything about it, so he kept speaking.
"As I came to know, later on her childhood, she wasn’t really ’my’ Evellyn. She was the conscience of another Evellyn prior to this version of the world. But when she awakened a few months ago, her powers became more prominent, along with the new abilities she acquired due to the awakening.
And after that, I began having this strange dreams, which I only came to understand a few weeks ago, about the dark hero Orkas, the Calamity, and how strangely your fates are intertwined."
"Wait right there." He didn’t say much, but it was already a lot to take in, and I had to take it easy before I had a brain hemorrhage. "You’re Orkas in this version of the world, but how come only the fates of me and the Orkas in the [HIDDEN NEST] are entangled?"
"This world will end soon, kid. At least for you. And when it does, there won’t be a me, an Evellyn, or even your friends for you to rely on. You’ll have to move on."
"What do you mean?" I didn’t understand it, but as if it was waiting for a cue, the wind began blowing hard, and dark clouds began gathering above us.
A storm was coming, and I didn’t thin it was just a literal one.
It would be much easier if it was only water and thunder.
"You’ll get it when the time comes, and we’re running short on it by the second. The thing is, the ones trying to purify the regulars from the world are the same ones trying to awaken the great disaster that history doesn’t speak of."
"The... first Calamity?"
"Yes, and they already have enough of the materials to begin. But it won’t end up like anyone’s expecting. It’ll be a bloodshed like you’ve never seen before, and even you won’t be able to stop it-"
"But I’m-"
"It doesn’t matter what your level is right now. If you don’t understand your enemy, you’ll never be able to even stand up to fight it."
"..."
I tried to speak.
I wanted to, but no matter what I thought or tried to arrange in my head, nothing made sense.
"But that’s not what I’m here for." He got up as if he was getting ready to leave. "Orkas is your friend, so when you meet him next time, learn everything you can from him. You inherited his weapons as a successor of the class, and you inherited his will as a host of the system. So when the time comes, it won’t give you a choice. You’ll have to fight your way through it, and you better win, because if you don’t... Well..." He gave it a pause there, turning to face me. "You’ll end up just like Orkas, trapped inside a partition of the system. So you get it, kid?"
I kept quiet, looking at him.
"The system is not your friend. Much on the contrary, actually. But you’ll understand it soon. And as for how I know it, in this version of the world I’m the only one, aside from my daughter, who can peek into some aspects of the universe, even though in a much lesser scope."
He turned around and left, as if we didn’t meet.
Like I didn’t come to talk to him, as if he was just a total stranger.
He left me with a lot of questions, but at least I had some answers.
As I watched his back disappear within the trees, I got up and exhaled.
Now I had to save my school, prevent the Burst from happening, and understand what disaster was going to happen before it happened.
I opened the quest window and checked the timer.
The sun was already setting in the horizon, and the timer counted exactly five days until the Burst, which meant that I probably had five days to help Evellyn with planning the fall of the New Dawn’s attack.
But as I looked at the system window, Oliver’s words kept ringing in my head.
’The system is not your friend.’