The Gamer's POV-Chapter 227: Is That My Brother?

Leon Von Caprio was known by almost everyone in the empire as the definition of the perfect noble.

As the only child of Duke Caspian, one of the three dukes of the empire, he was very highly respected, and since those who were of noble blood were naturally born more powerful, he was no exception. In fact, everyone knew that in truth, he was more gifted than any of his peers, and some even saw him as a man who had been directly blessed by the gods.

However, Leon saw himself as far from perfect. His self-crisis started when he was twelve years old, right after his awakening. On that night, he suddenly heard an eerily familiar voice speaking to him while he slept:

"After your eighteenth birthday, your brother will come for you. Find your brother."

When Leon woke up, he wondered just what the hell that voice was. When he could not find a single logical explanation, he told himself the message simply didn’t make sense. For one, he was the only child of Duke Caspian and Duchess Elena. There was no way he could have a brother.

He decided not to let it bother him and tried to forget the whole thing. However, exactly a year later on the night of the same day, he heard the voice again. It was the same familiar tone, telling him the same impossible thing:

"After your eighteenth birthday, your brother will come for you. Find your brother."

At this point, rather than dismissing it, Leon tried to probe the issue using his bonded ability.

He began by questioning if he really had a brother.

Almost immediately after, he was surprised beyond belief when his eye revealed the knowledge to him, confirming that he did indeed have one.

Many questions began to flood his mind:

How was that possible? Who was this brother, and what did he even look like?

Unfortunately, when he tried to use his eye to find those specific answers, he saw nothing. His ability had confirmed the existence of a sibling, but it refused to show him a face or a location. It was as if a wall had been slammed down in front of his vision, leaving him with a truth he couldn’t explain and a person he couldn’t find.

Of course, he did try to get answers from his parents. After all, if he had a brother, they should know, right?

However, they both denied such an existence, assuring him that he was their only son. When he tried to press the issue, mentioning what his eye had revealed, he nearly drove a wedge between his parents. The Duke began to look at the Duchess with suspicion, wondering if there was a part of her past he didn’t know about.

Seeing the damage he was causing, Leon lied to his parents, telling them that he was joking in order to prevent their marriage from falling apart.

Since his parents really seemed to have no idea, he decided to ask his eye a different question. He asked who was responsible for this supposed brother of his. Surprisingly, his eye gave an answer. The result showed that neither of his parents were responsible for the existence of his sibling.

This impossible answer just made the whole issue more confusing for him. How could he have a brother who wasn’t related to his own mother or father?

It defied all logic.

But since his eye wasn’t giving him any more answers, he decided to put it aside for the time being. Still, things did not end there. The same voice came to him every year at the same time, repeating the same message like a clock ticking down to his eighteenth birthday.

But that was not all. Leon began to discover that a huge part of him was missing. There were times he would remember something that never took place, experiencing intense bouts of déjà vu that left him reeling. He would find himself staring at a mundane object and feel a crushing weight of grief or nostalgia for a place he had never been. It was as if his mind was a mosaic where half the tiles had been swapped with pieces from a completely different picture.

At first, he was bothered by all the strange happenings, but eventually, he got used to it, and since his eye remained stubbornly silent whenever he tried to dig deeper, he also got used to not knowing.

However, things changed for the worst when he developed an essence core.

An essence core was like a mana core but far more potent. It dwelled directly above the mana core within a dominant and acted as a secondary reservoir, ensuring that even when a dominant ran out of mana, they could still use their skills.

Not everyone could develop an essence core. In fact, they were so uncommon that an entire kingdom might have no more than five people who possessed one. The reason for its rarity was that to develop an essence core, one needed to influence the world and the hearts of others.

For instance, right from the time Leon awakened his ability, many in the empire had grown dependent on it. Many nobles would come to him seeking his insight or judgment. Some would come to him to determine which lands held hidden veins of gold or which investments they should or should not undertake. They used his eyes to uncover secrets that should have stayed buried, or to predict the success of their political schemes. The King even used Leon’s gift to root out traitors and settle disputes that had lasted for generations.

Of course, all of this had to be within the realm of what his grade permitted him to see without suffering a backlash.

And so, despite being a low grade at the time, Leon was regarded as a golden treasure of the empire. It was due to this immense influence that an essence core finally formed within him.

The advantage of an essence core was that, unlike mana cores which had a fixed limit to their growth, essence cores did not. Furthermore, every essence core grew and filled differently based on the specific authority and influence of the user.

In Leon’s case, his essence core grew based on his influence over the "need to know." Whenever a person he had influenced felt a sudden, desperate need for knowledge or answers, a trickle of essence would flow into Leon’s core.

However, it was important to note that some essence cores came with a side effect. For Leon, the side effect was that his own "need to know" became an insatiable hunger.

He felt the need to know everything about everything. Since his ability was literally built around the acquisition of knowledge, any time he encountered something he could not know, it upset him gravely.

Luckily, he had Uriel here to always stop him whenever he tried to know things that he shouldn’t know.

That aside, Leon’s need to know more about this missing part of himself, and about his brother had been growing intensely ever since his eighteenth birthday. He could no longer settle for not knowing and needed to have answers.

For some reason, after the last week, the knowledge of his brother felt closer than ever before.

He suddenly began to feel deep down that he knew this brother, and what he looked like. So he tried to remember.

Tonight, the agonizing itch grew even worse. He needed to remember. He could feel that the information was right there, buried just beneath the surface of his consciousness.

He tried to force the memory to the surface, but the images remained just out of reach.

"What is this? Why... why can’t I just grasp it already? Why is there a void in my memory? Why is there a huge part of me missing? Why can’t I remember it? Why don’t I know? Aren’t I supposed to know what I want to know? Isn’t that my power? Why can’t I even know about myself then?!" 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

His voice grew frustrated and he began to hit the side of his head violently.

The moment Leon began to hit his head, the cat in his arms leapt down and shifted into Uriel. With a worried expression on her face, she immediately held his hand to stop him from hurting himself further, then she cupped his head and rested her forehead against his.

"Enough, Leon. Please... enough."

But Leon kept resisting, "I can’t, Uriel. I’m going insane. I feel like I know, but then... I don’t. I feel like I can get it, but when I try to grasp the thought, it slips. I can feel it. I just need to focus. If I can just..."

He hit his head again, wrenching his hand free from her grip just long enough to deliver a dull, frantic blow to his temple.

"Leon, stop!" Uriel cried out, as she reached for his hand again.

But Leon barely seemed to hear her. His eyes went unfocused as he kept searching his memory, still muttering those same three words.

"Find my brother."

However, no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t remember. It felt like there were massive holes in his memory, where the most important parts of himself should have been.

Then, all of a sudden, an image began to slowly appear in his mind. It was the same mysterious man from the strange memory he had over a week ago.

It was the image of Kim Min-jun.

He could see Kim Min-jun smiling at him, and when that image surfaced, he felt a painful tug in his heart and his eyes widened.

He immediately leaned back, finally noticing Uriel’s worried eyes, then he tilted his head and muttered unsurely.

"Is that... my brother?"