Lord of the Truth

Chapter 2388 True age

"This...?" Robin furrowed his brows even more deeply and began examining the book with far greater attention, his focus quickly shifting toward the details written inside as he continued going through its contents.

"Hehe." Jabba sat back comfortably, clearly satisfied with the reaction he had finally managed to draw out of Robin, and began straightening his clothes with an air of smug satisfaction. "Now that's the proper reaction."

"You seem pleased." From the side, Sakar's deep voice struck his ears with its usual measured calm, "Congratulations on earning the Lord's attention."

"...." Jabba cast Sakar a suspicious and somewhat hesitant sidelong glance without moving his head, studying him from the corner of his eye for a moment as though unsure how to take those words, then calmly looked forward again. "Thank you. You too."

"I've felt your eyes on me ever since I arrived on this planet, and they weren't exactly friendly looks, nor were the expressions accompanying them particularly pleased..." Sakar continued in the same calm tone, directly addressing something he had apparently noticed from the very beginning. "Is everything all right with you?"

"I'm fine. Everything's fine." Jabba immediately looked away in the opposite direction, clearly unwilling to elaborate any further.

"Hmm." Sakar gave a small nod. "Very well, then." After a brief pause, he continued calmly, "There is a great deal of unpleasant history between our races, and I understand that perfectly well, but I hope we won't display such petty matters in front of the Lord. It would be unbecoming of both of us."

"Do you think I'm racist or something?!" Jabba quickly turned toward him, visibly offended by the conclusion Sakar had reached. "I passionately study every kind of living creature I come across, and you think I'd be prejudiced against you because of some events involving our ancestors?!"

"Am I to understand, then, that there is another reason behind those looks?" Sakar turned toward him as well, his calm voice now plainly demanding an explanation for the strange attention Jabba had been giving him.

"...." Jabba gave Sakar one final, deliberate look from head to toe, his eyes lingering on him for a moment as if whatever he was thinking had nothing to do with the history between their races, then turned toward Robin without saying a single word.

Beneath his mask, Sakar showed a visibly irritated expression for several seconds before eventually turning away as well, deciding not to pursue the matter any further.

Occupying himself with the strange looks of a creature like this would neither benefit nor harm him in any meaningful way; what truly mattered was that Jabba did not use his status as the Lord's only disciple to harm them or interfere with them in any way.

The simplest example of Jabba's extraordinary status was what had just happened: the Lord himself had given orders for the area to be cleared so he could have a private discussion with Sakar, yet Jabba had simply remained seated, continued talking as he pleased, and even presented his own project to the Lord without anyone asking him to leave.

Sakar continued pondering that matter for several more moments, quietly weighing Jabba's position and behavior...

But his thoughts were soon interrupted when the silence between them was broken once again by Jabba's voice—

"You know, a rather strange coincidence happened today."

"Hmm?" Sakar turned toward him again, his attention shifting back to Jabba. "What is it?"

"Asir." Jabba smiled and gestured toward the cliff, referring to the infant who had just been carried away. "Today could be considered his birthday, the fourteenth day of the eighth month." Then he shifted his hand and gestured toward Robin, who was still occupied with the book. "That's the exact same day the Master was born."

"...." Sakar slowly turned his gaze toward Robin for a moment before answering in his usual solemn manner, "Those are merely trivial formalities that mortals enjoy because of their short lives and their attachment to such occasions. The Lord wouldn't care about things like that."

"...You're right." Jabba nodded in agreement and fell silent, apparently accepting the matter without any further argument.

"....." Sakar maintained his silence for a long while as well, keeping his posture steady as though the subject genuinely meant nothing to him.

But despite everything he had just said, he couldn't maintain that indifferent silence for very long before finally turning back toward Jabba, his curiosity getting the better of him. "How old is he today?!"

Sakar—and anyone else capable of examining Robin closely, assuming Robin allowed them to do so in the first place—would naturally be able to infer an approximate age from the condition and apparent age of his cells, as well as from the amount of life energy still remaining within his body, but determining the exact number down to a specific year? That was simply impossible.

"Hehe, now that's better." Jabba laughed with obvious amusement at Sakar's sudden curiosity. "Forget about his physical age for now, because that part is a little confusing. His body is around 120 years younger than his actual age... Fortunately, we have his true age historically recorded, so there's no need to estimate anything. If I remember correctly, he was exactly 212 years old at the time of the coronation, according to the Burton Family's official birth records."

He then turned his eyes toward Robin's face with an increasingly amused smile, quickly doing the simple calculation in his head. "And since 755 years have passed since the coronation, that makes him exactly 967 years old today."

"..." Sakar slowly turned back toward Robin and stared at him for a long moment, seemingly reassessing the figure sitting before him after hearing that precise number. "Very young."

"Don't let him catch you saying that." Jabba chuckled a little louder, clearly entertained by the way Sakar had phrased it.

"You know perfectly well what I mean." Sakar replied quickly, not bothering to argue over the wording, then continued in his usual calm voice, "What do you think everyone would do if word spread that Lord Human, the leader of the Cosmic Academies and currently the most influential person in the entire universe—hasn't even reached his thousandth year yet?"

"Hmm, I suppose we'll find out if we throw him a celebration for his thousandth birthday, hehe." Jabba chuckled again, already imagining what such an announcement might cause. "I can already picture everyone's reactions."

"....." Sakar gave a slow nod after considering the idea for a moment. "It's better if things remain exactly as they are and he doesn't celebrate it. Everyone already hates him enough."

"Jabba!"

Robin finally seemed to snap out of the deep concentration that had isolated him from the conversation around him, then raised the book slightly and tapped it twice with his fingers.

"Explain to me slowly what exactly this is."

"Umm..." Jabba pointed toward the thick book in Robin's hands, somewhat confused by the question. "Didn't you read it properly, or..." The instant he noticed Robin's sharp gaze settle on him, he quickly waved his hand and abandoned the question. "All right, all right, I'll give you a simple introduction first."

Then he placed both hands firmly on his knees and adjusted his posture before beginning, "As you know, Teacher, I entered the world of research without ever really planning to because of my obsession with distinguishing between different bloodlines, and your research into a method that would allow humans to use the fourth grade of Laws dragged me even deeper into this particular field of research, because I wanted to uncover exactly why some creatures could do something so seemingly simple while others couldn't do it at all."

"...So I continued researching fixed and variable particles, as you already know, but without achieving any meaningful result for a long time. No matter which direction I approached the problem from, I always ended up going in circles and returning to the exact same fact: beasts possess variable particles that can be transferred through their blood, while ordinary humans simply don't have them." His brows gradually furrowed as he reached the point that had troubled him most. "But that never made sense to me. Humans make up the majority of intelligent creatures, and from them branch the mutants and shapeshifters who would rather call themselves practically anything imaginable except human variants, merely so they won't be associated with the weak human race."

"I kept asking myself the same two questions: why and how? Why don't pure humans possess even such a simple advantage in the first place? And how can human bodies receive variable particles taken from mere beasts and then handle those particles so naturally after they're injected into them? The more I thought about it, the less sense it made."

Then he raised his gaze and looked directly at Robin. "I'll use your previous example again because it describes what I mean rather well. It's like someone who was born without a kidney, yet the place where that kidney should have been still exists inside his body and remains empty, and once you transplant a kidney into that vacant place, it functions normally and his life improves as a result." His eyes narrowed slightly as he emphasized the conclusion he had reached. "But after the operation, that person is still completely human. He hasn't transformed into something else; he merely regained something he was supposed to have in the first place, something whose presence simply made him better."

"....." Robin stared straight into Jabba's face with wide, intensely focused eyes, his entire attention now fixed on every word leaving the young man's mouth.

That kid...!!

Jabba lowered his gaze again and continued in a more thoughtful tone, "I won't lie to you, this idea had been circling around inside my head for a very long time, but no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't make any real progress with it or find any specific practical way to use it. That continued until my Eye of Truth mutated and I began seeing things I had never been able to see before, and only then did the ideas that had remained trapped in my head finally begin translating into something tangible."

"...." A strange smile gradually appeared on Robin's face as soon as those final words reached his ears. "What exactly do you mean when you say your Eye of Truth mutated?"