Chapter 25: Regression

It was happening again, Araceli thought as she opened her eyes, she staggered as tried getting up from her bed, to get to a mirror, trying to figure out how she looked.

With great difficulty, she got to the nearest mirror which was located on the other side of the room, full-sized, as if someone would carry out the same routine everytime dey work up, and stared at her reflection

'Hmm, 20 perhaps, atleast I don't have to wait before I can move this time around' she thought as she started to probe her body trying to figure out her current state.

She was an ascendant with 97 channels open, and her source had been condensed 20 times over already.

This was strange, she had gone through the cycle more times than she could remember but never had she been this powerful at the start.

She threw aside all thoughts to the side and just tried to figure out where she was this time, won't be bad to know the date and what was the state of the world currently.

As she fumbled around trying to get a grasp of her body the door swung open and a woman dressed in a suit walked in to assist her.

"You're awake madam, please hold on and allow me to help you"

The woman said as she approached Araceli to help her.

"Stay where you are for a moment, don't come closer and tell me, who are you?"

Araceli had just enough of this body that refused to even listen to her order to prepare for an attack. She really needed to make sure she could defend herself if anything goes wrong, but to make things worse she got caught at her weakest moment.

"May the unending time lead us to the light"

The woman uttered as she bowed before Araceli.

"And let its flow wash away our burden"

Araceli replied.

"You're welcome priestess, I am Camila, and I will be your aid throughout this period"

'Ahhhh, it was successful, I actually did it this time around'

Araceli thought to herself

'You have put me through enough already, but even when rest was right in front of me, just how foolish I was to walk away from it and back into this'

She turned around with great difficulty hiding her face from Camila, she wasn't even sure which expression she had on her face and didn't want to show that to her guest

After taking a few moments to calm her nerves, she asked

"So what's going on right now?"

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The earliest memory she had of herself was she playing around in the village.

Just like any other child she had the warmth of her parents, experiencing their love and affection.

Grew up to become a fine young woman, get courted and married to one of her suitors, but it all came crashing down when the war happened.

When elephants do battle it is lowly grass that suffers from their effects. When the empires took to arms and declared war, each for their reasons which remained unknown to her as she just a lowly village woman.

Luckily or unluckily for her, she somehow managed to see the war out to the end, one of the few who survived. But the world was too damaged to take care of them, one by one they all fell until only she was left.

She was one hundred and fifty years old, then she opened her eyes once more to find herself back in her 30's.

She fell into a panic and try to talk to thepeople around her about what she had seen and warn them about the possible future, but they all called her crazy.

Her suitor dwindled, her friend avoided and she became the village crazy woman. Things only went from bad to worse from there asthe war she said was gonna happen didn't happen when she said it will.

At this point even she had started to doubt herself, wondering if only she was crazy, then cracks appeared all around the world, with countless monstrosities rushing out from within.

Perhaps because she had once survived an age of war and death, she was able to survive yet again, becoming a part of Kreatia's last bastion against the intruders.

For the first time she gained interest in becoming a practioner herself, but in such a time who could teach her.

She wondered what sort of fate she had again as she found herself the last person standing on the battlefield. Not a god, a practioner or an ascendant, but a village woman, a mere mortal.

She closed her eyes yet syet again waiting forthe sweet release of death but was forced to open it again after being hit by a sudden bout of dizziness

The scenery was a familiar one but she couldn't recall just when she had seen it, she tried getting up to find a mirror or anything she could use get an image of herself.

She was a little shaky, stumbling over once in a while but she found one eventually, she looked like she did in her twenties, she was back yet again, but there was a difference in time compared to the first one.

Learning from the experience of the first turn she didn't try to tell anyone about what she had experience or what was going to happen.

In the first sets of memories she had, the world ended sure to wars, in the second an otherworldly invasion, she didn't know what to expect this time, but she wasn't going to be caught unprepared.

She had been mucky to survive the first two and even luckier to have a do over on both occasions, she didn't know if she'd have a third as the saying*the third time's the charm* goes, she might really die in this turn.

So she set out and left her village, her objective to become a practitioner.

But alas, Fate was cruel to her, when she returned she was already in her twenties, way past the age she could awaken, if if they tried to forcefully open her channels it would fail.

But it didn't let it deter her, she wandered the lands learning different martial styles from different places. In both timelines it was her an ordinary person that survived, not practitioners, so she was going to increase her chances.

In this timeline she wandered the lands for 50 more years before the world suddenly ended to an epidemic, once again, she was the last one standing.

What a brutal fate, she was prepared for battle, but her lack of knowledge was the reason for failure this time or so she thought.

This time around, she wasn't even surprised when she awakened and found once again she had gone back in time

Continuing the routine she checked herself, hmm, late thirties early forties perhaps.

During this turn she decided to stock up on knowledge, she traveled the world, visiting different libraries and institutes. It was easy, she was turned down at first because of her age a d but she kept trying.

A hundred and thirty years passed this time before the world ended, how it did this time, she wasn't even sure, she was in a ruin she discovered by accident reading the books she found there.

He knowledge had increased this time, but because she wasn't aware of what was going on in the world she couldn't save it

or so she taught.

On her fifth turn, she was in her sixties this time.

She started a organisation aimed at keeping studying the world history and noting the events of the world.

The watcher she called them. For 200 years the watchers functioned, growing from a small cult like group to a continental wide group.

Her only regret was that she couldn't take it further than that.

Oh and the world ended due to a world-wide famine and drought.

If it was before, she could only wonder why it was so, but due to the watchers she now new, the mages of the elven kingdom in a bid to increase their fertility and productivity performed a grand sorcery. It failed though leading to this result.

What did she learn from this turn?

An organisation without actual power and authority was just useless and couldn't do anything to save the world.

She waited again and this time, when she opened her eyes, she was 4 years old.

It was time she put all her knowledge into practice, she was going to walk the path of ascension

She just had to get this body in the right condition, and that she did.

When she was just 9, she had awakened, a body route practitioner in the element of water.