“Do you mean this world is a person’s imagination?”

The question hung in the air like smoke from a dying fire, each word carrying the weight of existential dread. Rudeus stared at Carla with eyes that had seen too much, processing a revelation that threatened to unravel everything he thought he knew about reality itself.

“Exactly!” Carla’s response came with theatrical enthusiasm as she sprawled across his bed like she owned it, golden hair fanning out across the rough woolen blanket.

Her thumb shot up in a gesture of confirmation that somehow made the impossible seem casual. The afternoon light streaming through the grimy window caught the dust motes around her, creating an almost ethereal aura that belied the earth-shattering nature of her words.

“Wait, wait, wait…” Rudeus’s voice cracked like an adolescent’s, his hands trembling as he pressed them against his temples. The room felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in with the weight of cosmic insignificance. “Does that mean this world is merely fiction? That nothing we do, nothing we feel, none of it actually matters?”

Carla’s expression shifted, her playful demeanor melting into something more serious.

She sat up, the rope springs of the bed creaking in protest, and fixed him with a stare that seemed to pierce straight through his mounting panic.

“Nah, you’re wrong about that,” she said, her voice carrying a gravity that made the room feel sacred. “We are real and living beings. You can see the world as fiction from some distant perspective, but don’t you dare deny our existence and past. We are living beings, and we have lived our lives normally—loved, lost, bled, dreamed. Don’t take things to such an extreme, and just think of this world as normal. Because for us, it is.”

The philosophy of her words hit him like cold water. Real versus fictional—did the distinction matter if the experience of living felt genuine?

If pain cut deep and joy lifted the spirit, what difference did it make whether some distant observer considered them mere characters?

Gulping audibly, Rudeus tried his best to comprehend the matter, but it was like trying to hold water in cupped hands—the concept kept slipping through his mental grasp.

The implications were too vast, too alien to his human understanding.

As confusion clouded his features, Rudeus found himself grasping for concrete details, anything to anchor himself to something comprehensible. “What… what can you tell me? How much do you know?”

“Chill, man.” Carla waved her hand dismissively, though her eyes remained sharp and calculating. “Our informant only knows the situation before your first night with the Boreas girl—he’s kind of useless beyond that point. Nonetheless, he had access to some wiki-sourced trivia and general plot knowledge.”

The casual mention of his most intimate moment with Eris made heat rise to his cheeks.

Even in this bizarre conversation about the nature of reality, embarrassment could still find him.

“I see.” His voice came out as barely a whisper. “What’s the title of this… fiction?”

“It’s called Mushoku Tensei.”

The words fell between them like stones into still water, each syllable rippling outward with implications that made Rudeus’s head spin.

His mind raced, parsing the meaning with the desperate intensity of a drowning man grasping for driftwood.

“Jobless. Reincarnation.” The translation came automatically, and with it, a crushing realization that made his stomach drop into his boots. “Fuck, don’t tell me…”

Clap Clap Clap

Carla’s slow, mocking applause filled the room like the tolling of funeral bells. She repositioned herself to face him directly, her posture that of a teacher about to deliver a particularly devastating lesson.

The smile on her face held no warmth—only the cruel amusement of someone watching another person’s world crumble.

“That’s right!” Her voice carried theatrical triumph. “You’re the main character of the said work! The hero of your own story, as it were. How does it feel to discover you’re the star of someone else’s entertainment?”

She leaned forward conspiratorially, her voice dropping to a stage whisper. “The book chronicles your adventure from pathetic NEET to… well, slightly less pathetic adventurer. Master Claude mentioned that his incarnation knew you from an animation adaptation created years after the original work was completed. Though he didn’t particularly enjoy your journey—too much secondhand embarrassment, he claimed—he still watched all the available seasons!”

Rudeus felt his world tilt on its axis. Every triumph, every failure, every private moment of growth—all of it consumed as entertainment by beings in another reality.

The violation felt more intimate than physical assault.

“Does everyone know about it?” The question tore from his throat with desperate urgency. The thought of his deepest shames being common knowledge made his skin crawl with mortification.

“No way,” Carla said with a dismissive wave. “Only the Alphabets and a single digit from the C division have access to this information. We keep such sensitive intelligence on a strict need-to-know basis. Even so, because of our access to the source material, we already understand your… particular perversions and your rather unhealthy obsession with your teacher’s undergarments.”

The words hit Rudeus like physical blows. Every secret fetish, every shameful thought, every moment of weakness—all of it laid bare before strangers who judged him from across the dimensional divide.

He rolled across the bed in mortification, burying his face in his palms as a low groan of anguish escaped his lips.

“Arghhhhhh…”

Thud

His dramatic writhing carried him over the edge of the bed, sending him tumbling to the wooden floor in a graceless heap.

The impact jarred his shoulder, but the physical pain paled beside the existential anguish consuming his thoughts.

Carla watched his display with barely contained mirth, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

When his groaning finally subsided, she offered her condolences with mock solemnity.

“Even so, I can’t help but admire your way of embracing every situation you encounter. That mental resilience is genuinely admirable.” Her expression shifted, becoming predatory once more. “But what I don’t understand is how someone with such psychological flexibility became an emo boy just because his baby abandoned him?”

Even though she knew the truth about Eris’s departure—that it had been an act of self-sacrifice rather than abandonment—Carla kept that knowledge locked away.

Sometimes, she reflected, people needed to work through their pain before they could appreciate the deeper truths. Besides, watching him squirm provided its own entertainment value.

In a way, his current emotional trajectory would eventually lead him to Sylphy, preventing him from making impulsive romantic mistakes with other women.

Sometimes the cruelest kindness was allowing someone to suffer until they found their proper path.

“I thought of this world as my playground,” Rudeus admitted from his position on the floor, his voice muffled by shame and self-loathing. “And knowing that the girl I spent my most formative years with suddenly left me… it made me feel dejected and worthless. Like everything I’d built meant nothing.”

“Is that really enough reason to develop erectile dysfunction?” Carla’s question cut straight to the heart of his psychological wound with surgical precision.

“I don’t know. I guess so.” His response came out flat, defeated—the voice of someone who’d stopped trying to understand his own broken psyche.

Carla nodded thoughtfully, her mind drawing parallels to the countless slaves she’d helped rescue over the years.

Different people dealt with trauma in vastly different ways—some emerged stronger, forged by adversity into something magnificent.

Others shattered completely, becoming hollow shells or dangerous madmen. Still others developed coping mechanisms that manifested as physical symptoms: seizures when confronted with triggers, violent aggression toward perceived threats, or in Rudeus’s case, complete sexual dysfunction.

Mental trauma was a labyrinth with as many paths as there were minds to navigate it. Her work with Division C had exposed her to hundreds of cases, each unique in its manifestation yet familiar in its underlying patterns of human fragility.

“In any case,” she said, shifting to a more optimistic tone, “since your documented adventure wasn’t particularly helpful for our purposes, Master Claude took matters into his own hands. He created Arbalest along with Boss Mike! Pretty impressive for someone who started planning this at age six, don’t you think?”

“Does that mean he was building this organization when he was still a child?” Rudeus pulled himself back onto the bed, his curiosity temporarily overriding his embarrassment.

“Hahaha! There’s no way that would be possible!” Carla’s laughter filled the room with genuine warmth for the first time since her arrival.

“Uh…” Rudeus blinked in confusion.

“Master Claude never intended to create Arbalest before the Metastasis Event occurred,” she explained, her voice taking on the reverent tone reserved for origin stories. “Initially, he focused entirely on training us—the original Alphabets. Everything else grew from that foundation.”

A shadow passed across her features as she delved into memory. The playful mask slipped away, revealing something raw and vulnerable beneath.

“The Alphabets… no, we originals are people who were saved from slavery. You understand how dreadful this world’s slave trade can be, right? The casual brutality, the complete dehumanization, the way people are treated as livestock?”

Rudeus nodded grimly. He’d witnessed enough of the world’s darkness to understand the depths of human cruelty.

“It was the work of fate!” Carla continued, her voice growing stronger as she warmed to her tale. “Master Claude was busy dealing with monsters in the wilderness when a slaver caravan happened to cross his path. When he saw how those bastards treated their ‘merchandise’—children chained like animals, women beaten into submission, men broken in spirit—something inside him snapped.”

Her eyes blazed with remembered fury, the same righteous anger that had driven a eight-year-old boy to become a killer in service of justice.

“Under cover of darkness, Master Claude descended on them like a demon. He didn’t just kill the slavers—he obliterated them. Made them suffer for every scar they’d inflicted, every tear they’d caused. By dawn, nothing remained but corpses and freed slaves who didn’t know whether to worship him or fear him.”

Carla stood and moved to the window, gazing out at the city beyond as if seeing past and present simultaneously.

“But Master Claude didn’t just free us and walk away. He gave us a home, a purpose, a family. He trained us gradually but steadily to hunt those who would enslave others. One lesson after another, one mission after another, until we became something more than victims—we became predators with a righteous cause.”

The anger and hatred in her eyes had transformed into something pure and focused—the devotion of someone who’d found salvation in service to a greater purpose.

Carla had spent years building bonds with her fellow Arbalest members, creating a family from the ashes of their shared trauma.

“Knowing the dangers of this world, master Claude didn’t just teach us combat skills and survival techniques. He shared knowledge from his incarnations’ memories—sciences, strategies, philosophies that didn’t belong to this world but proved invaluable for understanding it better.”

She turned back to face Rudeus, her expression thoughtful.

“While we thought he was simply ensuring our survival, it was actually one of Master Claude’s methods for processing and organizing the information himself. Teaching others forced him to structure and verify knowledge that might otherwise remain fragmentary. There’s a saying from Fred’s world: ‘The best way to learn something is to teach it.’ With that principle guiding him, he continued to educate his people while educating himself.”

Rudeus found himself mesmerized by the story, comparing it unconsciously to his own journey. While he had focused primarily on personal growth and immediate survival, Claude—despite being younger—had simultaneously elevated others alongside himself.

The contrast painted an uncomfortable picture of what true leadership and maturity looked like.

‘Unlike a NEET like me,’ he thought with growing self-awareness, ‘Claude approached everything with genuine responsibility and foresight.’

Even so, perfection remained elusive.

“Unlike you, who’ve had time to organize your memories from your previous life, Master Claude faces the ongoing challenge of deciphering information from hundreds of parallel selves,” Carla explained, clenching her fist with determination. “What he’s accomplished so far is remarkable, but there’s still work to be done. Which is where we come in—his assistants, his family, his instruments of change in this world.”

“I see…” Rudeus nodded slowly, his perception of Claude shifting from mysterious benefactor to something approaching genuine respect.

Based on attitude and accomplishment alone, Claude embodied the kind of older brother figure Rudeus himself had never managed to become.

‘No matter how I look at it, my way of thinking has been too narrow,’ he reflected with growing humility. ‘I have knowledge that surpasses the natives of this world, yet I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. I need to let my imagination run wild, think bigger, dream beyond the constraints of my limited perspective.’

As Rudeus pondered these revelations, Carla stood and brushed dust from her clothes with practiced efficiency. She flashed him a grin that somehow managed to be both encouraging and mischievous.

“Our chatting time is over,” she announced with finality. “I need to continue with my work now. I’ve said what needed to be said, so I trust you can handle your situation better from here on out, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Carla.” The gratitude in his voice was genuine, tinged with the first hope he’d felt in weeks.

Without another word, she moved to the window with fluid grace. In one smooth motion, she vaulted through the opening and disappeared into the gathering dusk, leaving only the faintest whisper of displaced air to mark her passage.

Her timely intervention had accomplished its purpose—Rudeus felt the fog of depression beginning to lift, replaced by renewed focus and determination.

The existential crisis of learning he might be fictional paled beside the practical reality of his current situation. What mattered wasn’t the nature of his existence but how he chose to live it.

Currently, aside from searching for his lost mother and addressing his erectile dysfunction, Rudeus needed to improve his skills and expand his perspective.

Stagnation in a world full of lethal monsters and world-ending events could cost him his life—or worse, the lives of those depending on him.

He moved to the wooden drawer beside his bed and retrieved a cream-colored envelope, its official seal already broken from previous readings.

The parchment crinkled softly as he unfolded the contents, though he already knew every word by heart.

“I guess I should head toward Ranoa now,” he murmured to the empty room.

The letter contained an invitation to study at the prestigious Ranoa Magic University—an opportunity that represented both advancement and escape from his current circumstances.

As the gears of fate began turning along altered tracks, the major waypoints of his journey remained surprisingly consistent.

Fate, it seemed, was a river that might change its course but always flowed toward the same destination. No one could change their ultimate destiny, but they could change themselves to meet it with dignity and purpose.

**

High above on the building’s slate roof, Carla knelt beside a trained messenger hawk, its dark feathers barely visible against the night sky.

She tied a small scroll to the bird’s leg with practiced efficiency, her movements precise despite the precarious footing.

“Contact established with primary target,” she whispered to the night air, knowing the bird would carry her words to those who needed to hear them. “Took a slight detour to have an enlightening chat with Master Claude’s adopted little brother. No significant deviations from the main plan anticipated.”

She stroked the hawk’s head once before releasing it into the darkness. The bird disappeared immediately, swallowed by shadows and distance.

“I hope no more unexpected complications arise,” she murmured to herself, though experience had taught her that hope was a luxury rarely afforded to those who served a greater cause.

The wind picked up, carrying with it the scents and sounds of a city settling into evening routines.

Somewhere below, Rudeus was probably still processing their conversation, still grappling with questions that had no easy answers.

But that was tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, she had other work to do.

With cat-like grace, she vanished into the urban landscape, leaving only the whisper of wind across empty rooftops to mark her passage.

___________________________________________

✨ Enjoyed the chapter? Dive deeper into the story world!

I’ve started to share my source here, and thinking to create a AI based video by story telling the story, I already had a testing video for another fanfiction of mine.

Check them out and let me know what you think! Your feedback really helps me grow.

📺 YouTube: EternalLibrary
🎵 TikTok: @library3550
📸 Instagram: @libeternal

☕ Love the story? Support and read ahead!

Help me keep creating by becoming a patron:
💖 Patreon – EternaLib

Read up to 50 chapters ahead + get early access on my site:
📚 Eternal-lib.com

__________________________________________