A world?
Perhaps this so-called world differed from his understanding and from what ordinary people saw. Perhaps what those Wizards wanted, what they hoped to accomplish, did not concern a world in the conventional sense. His teacher had compared the deaths of countless worlds to a single fruit, and he must have heard that description from a Wizard with greater authority. Many, many worlds together counted as one fruit, while what was going to die was the tree.
Ruger pondered this, but when he heard Immanuel speak, he turned to look at his teacher.
"Teacher, have you remembered why you became like this?" he asked, pleasantly surprised.
After all, this was another problem waiting to be solved, another unanswered question.
"No, I haven't," Immanuel said.
Ruger was not particularly disappointed. He had not expected much to begin with.
"It seems that was never something I was supposed to know. All I know is that I am your teacher. As for what exactly I am, that doesn't seem particularly important to me." Immanuel tilted his head up slightly. "Although I do want to know what I truly am, that desire isn't especially strong."
Had his real teacher already died?
That was what Ruger wanted to know more, actually. Yet he also felt that the teacher before him smiled more often and was less stressful to talk to.
Although he had not spent much time with his previous teacher, the man had always struck him as stern.
Of course, this might still be his teacher. Perhaps this body was a safeguard left with him, allowing his teacher to achieve a different kind of rebirth through the Notebook and this disciple in a distant place if something went wrong.
But would rebirth change his personality? Or was this his teacher's true nature?
Ruger