Chapter 369 Encounter



"Do with her as you will."

Mathew's hands tightened into fists.

He already learned that he couldn't influence what he saw happening in any way or form. It was a miracle that his voice somehow managed to reach this poor girl's ears.

A miracle… or rather a curse.

'She stopped because of me,' Mathew thought, gritting his teeth as he watched the expression on the face of a man called Briar change.

He could see the initial lack of understanding turning into shock and then happiness as he turned his eyes toward the immobilized and bound girl on the forest floor.

Due to the hastiness of the man who tried to undress her earlier, half of the girl's ass was now exposed, giving the lucky slaver a perfect trailer of what he was about to claim as his own, even if only for the time being.

"Those bastards…" Mathew muttered, squeezing his fists so hard that his fingernails started to cut into the skin of his inner palms.

Yet, no matter how much he despaired, he could do nothing.

He couldn't physically affect what he saw before his eyes. No amount of punches, kicks, and elbows that he sent to those slavers' bodies did anything.

He couldn't use his spells either. Penetration projectile wouldn't form. His mind's flesh actually would appear… but just like his fists, it couldn't affect the world that he was spectating.

Not even the explosion of a core that Mathew somehow managed to will into existence affected the events in any way or form.

And thus, he was forced to watch how the man called Briar approached the girl with an excited look on his face.

That fucker pulled his pants down without any hesitation before stepping right between the girl's legs.

He then reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling it up with ease in spite of all the nets pinning the girl down.

Briar pulled out his knife and tore open a huge hole in the nets right above the girl's hips. He then threw the knife the way away and pulled down his own undergarments to reveal his stinky dick and balls while reaching out for the catgirl's pants with his other hand.

Tears streamed down the girl's face. She closed her eyes, unable to do anything more to cut herself from the brutal reality of what was about to happen now. And from the looks of it, she had not an ounce of strength left to fight her fate.

Mathew brought his hand up and clutched at his heart. Seeing the terror, pain, fear, and desperation painted all over the girl's cute, cat-like face…

It was too much for him. Too much for a man who saw the apocalypse eradicate nearly all of humanity with his very own two eyes… twice. This moment of simple violence in what looked like a fantasy world, however, felt way more personal than the deaths of millions and billions of people Mathew never even heard about.

Briar reached out… but the movement of his hand slowed down as it came closer and closer to the girl's short pants. And right as he was about to grab it, the time flow of the vision stopped completely.

"Not a great sight, isn't it?" A stranger's voice suddenly filled Mathew's head.

It was ever-present. It came from every possible direction, from within Mathew's core included.

"What?!" Mathew freaked out on the spot, turning around to find who was trying to talk to him.

Yet, no matter how much he searched, he couldn't find the owner of the voice.

"I'm talking about what you are seeing," the voice explained. "Isn't it something that you would be happy to prevent?" the voice continued without any care for Mathew's confusion.

"Who the hell are you?!" Mathew screamed out.

He surely felt bad for the poor girl… but faced with a direct threat to his own existence, he couldn't care less about her.

If there was anything that nearly three weeks of experience in the world of apocalypse taught him, it was to always secure his own arse before bothering with the asses of others.

"I'm exactly what you think I am," the voice surprisingly replied to Mathew's question, proving that its owner could actually hear the young man, allowing a two-sided communication.

'Exactly what I think he is?' Mathew pulled his eyebrows together. The gears in his mind spun at their top speed, quickly connecting the dots and spitting out the simple answer.

"Are you the one responsible for this entire fucking apocalypse?!" Mathew screamed out from the bottom of his lungs.

In the face of the absolute, this was the extent of what an ant like him could do. Scream and wail in anger, unable to affect the higher being's decisions at all.

"Yes and no," the voice replied.

A lump of darkness appeared amidst the greenery of the now time-stopped forest. And just like the shadows in the merchant's realm that Mathew was already used to, the blob of darkness formed into a shape of a human…

Only to suddenly explode with light that upon fading away, revealed the exact copy of Mathew's own body.

"First off, I'm not showing you this to announce I will steal your spot or anything," the voice explained the worry that has yet to form in Mathew's mind. "It's just the form that's easiest for me to assume for our little talk."

Mathew gritted his teeth. He squeezed his jaws so strongly he could feel his ears starting to hurt.

"But before we begin, there is one unchangeable truth that you need to be aware of," Mathew's clone announced with a face lacking any sort of expression.

Sure, his mouth was moving. Even the clone's hands moved around to gesticulate. But there was this imprecise uncanny feeling that made it obvious this clone was nothing more but a stupid doll that the owner of the voice was using.

"And what truth could that be?" Mathew asked, realizing and finally accepting the fact that in his current position, he was fully under the control of this strange being's whims.

"It's that everything that we talked and will talk about won't remain in your memory," the voice announced, only for Mathew's clone to produce an extremely fake smile. "So, while we talk, I want you to think of the message I will allow you to send to your future self to convey the points that you need to understand."