Through these exchanges, the audience was able to catch a glimpse of Phainon as a child.
It was a Phainon far more youthful and inexperienced than the one they knew now.
And what the audience found fascinating was that, MiHoYo hadn't turned this part into a flashback.
Instead, they used a letter inside a drifting bottle as the medium through which to present this content.
Sometimes, the images conjured in one's mind through words alone could achieve an unexpectedly excellent effect.
Just like now, through this letter, the audience naturally pictured a young Phainon in their minds.
Though still adorably immature, he had already begun to display some of the qualities that would one day shine brilliantly.
The contents of the letter continued.
Phainon began rambling on about everything he knew of the world.
Because very few people in Aedes Elysiae ever ventured outside, most of his understanding of the world came from stories passed down by word of mouth.
He had heard that there were all sorts of city-states outside, and that they were constantly at war, giving rise to countless heroes.
He didn't like war. He would rather the entire world be like Aedes Elysiae, where everyone knew one another and harvested grain and herded sheep together.
If the whole world became like that, then there wouldn't be any need for a savior anymore.
Naturally, Phainon had no idea that one day in the future, this wish of his would be fulfilled in a very different way.
He merely allowed his thoughts to wander in the letter and began imagining what his future life might be like.
[Mrs. Pythias and Uncle Galba both say that one day, when I'm a little older, I should go see the world for myself.]
[If I could go anywhere, I'd visit the mighty Castrum Creamnose, find the greatest craftsman, and ask them to forje me a sword.]
[With that sword, I'd protect our little village. I want no part in wars.]
[Right now, I don't even have a sword of my own, just a stick and a hoe.]
[Oh! And by then, I hope the outside world no longer needs a Deliverer.]
[That would be the best thing ever.]
[This is my hometown, and this is my dream. You who picked up this bottle, what about you? What's your home like?]
[What do you dream of? You could write it down, too. Toss it into the sea, and let the tides carry it to the next stop, into someone else's hands.]
When they reached this part of the letter, the audience subconsciously burst out laughing, only for their expressions to immediately turn sorrowful.
...
: Castrum Creamnose, this typo is hilarious.
: Crown Prince of Castrum Creamnose? Now that would be interesting.
: Phainon was so cute when he was little.
: And that part earlier about how a deliverer is a very important person, hahaha. Phainon is seriously adorable.
: But the more I read, the less I can laugh.
: Actually, this is just a letter Phainon wrote when he was a kid, right?
...
The audience's inexplicable sorrow hadn't come from nowhere.
Logically speaking, there wasn't really anything in this letter worth analyzing, nor were there any hidden clues buried within it.
It was simply the wandering thoughts of an ordinary child, with most of its contents filled with childish innocence.
At most, it merely offered a glimpse into a few of the qualities Phainon possessed when he was young.
Just as the letter had said. When Phainon was little, he wished for peace throughout the world and hoped everyone could live peacefully together without needing a savior.
If any adult said something like that, people would probably laugh at them.
But when those words came from the mouth of a child, everyone would simply think that the child was so kind and innocent, and affection would naturally well up within them.
Another example was Phainon wanting a sword, yet the reason he wanted one was to protect Aedes Elysiae, not to go off and fight in wars.
Even when he said at the end that he didn't have a sword and only had a wooden stick and a hoe, no one would think this was some sort of literary technique meant to contrast with what had been written above.
It was simply a child describing his current circumstances.
Ordinary. Simple.
But when people stretched the timeline far enough, when they looked back at everything from Aedes Elysiae, to Phainon stepping into the vortex of creation and attempting to create the world anew, the changes that had taken place along the way could only make people sincerely lament the fickleness of fate and deeply realize that what a person eventually becomes is the result of everything they have experienced.
The child who didn't want the world to be at war eventually picked up that sword and threw himself into the conflict.
The child who believed he could never shoulder the responsibility of saving the world eventually became the Deliverer who carried the entire world upon his shoulders.
Even though none of these things were what Phainon had wished for as a child, they nevertheless became the future version of him.
Fortunately, the young Phainon had no idea what he would go through.
When he wrote this letter, the innocence and passion of childhood had yet to disappear from him.
In his eyes, although the world's future was uncertain, it would surely be like the dawn, something worth looking forward to.
The unfortunate part was for the audience.
At this moment, they couldn't let the Phainon they knew accompany them in reading this letter.
Nor could they ever know how that young Phainon would have felt upon seeing it.
Unfortunately, as spectators viewing everything from a third-person perspective, they could experience those feelings in Phainon's place.
Because they had accompanied Phainon through his journey. They had already walked through his future alongside him.
And now, as they looked back upon Phainon's past, that cruel future whose end could never be seen formed a heartbreaking contrast with the utterly innocent letter before them.
There was perhaps no greater tragedy than placing someone's blissfully ignorant past beside their future filled with suffering and displaying the two together.
And whether it was a deliberate coincidence or some malicious joke, this drifting bottle, filled with Phainon's hopes and innocence, had ultimately drifted all the way back into Phainon's own hands.
It was too cruel.
In the end, all the complicated emotions in the audience's hearts condensed into the below comments:
...
: The one thing worth being happy about is that the young Phainon had no idea what the future would become.
: In the letter, he thought the best, best thing that could happen was for the world to no longer need saving. But in reality, things ended up reaching the worst, worst possible situation...
: No, I can't think too deeply about this. If I do, I'm seriously going to break.
: I'm really afraid this is foreshadowing something. Seriously.
: Exactly. The drifting bottle eventually returned to Phainon's hands. How could that not make our imaginations run wild?
: In a way, wasn't the entire life of this wishing bottle itself a cycle?
: The drifting bottle from his childhood came back like a bullet straight between the eyebrows, but the ones it hit weren't Phainon.
: It hit us...
...
The comments drifted sadly across the screen.
Phainon on the screen, however, did not have the same perspective as the audience, so naturally he had no greater realization.
A little embarrassed, he stuffed the letter back into the bottle and hid the bottle behind his back.
"Brother Phainon, what's that?"
The two children who had long been waiting eagerly below asked with expectant eyes.
"Wait a second... this is... This is my old Wish-In-A-Bottle! How did it end up here?" Phainon said awkwardly.
"I want to see! I want to see!"
"Ooh, I wanna see! What did little Phainon wish for?"
At once, the two children completely forgot about fighting over the bottle, their eyes filled with the eagerness of onlookers waiting for gossip.
Phainon naturally wasn't going to let his "dark history" become known. He coughed and waved his hand.
"Not happening. This stays sealed."
Of course, the children weren't happy about it, but there was nothing they could do.
Because the calls meant for them were already sounding from afar.
"Piso! Livia! Dinner's ready!"
It was their parents calling their names in the distance, urging them to come home for dinner.
If they didn't hurry back, they would face something even more regrettable than missing out on gossip.
After the children left, Phainon finally breathed a sigh of relief. Covering his forehead, he sighed with some emotion.
"You know what's funny? I really thought tossing that bottle into the sea would carry our wishes beyond Aedes Elysiae... maybe even bring something back to us..."
"Never thought... the waves would end up pushing it back ashore."Stelle, who had been watching from the side and had finished enjoying the spectacle, looked up at the water in front of the pier and quietly said,
"Seems more like a lake to me than an ocean."
Although the body of water before Stelle was enormous, a dark line could vaguely be seen at the far end of the horizon.
And there was even more direct evidence... The water beneath their feet was a lake.
"Ah... well, that would explain it"
Phainon froze. A little embarrassed, he said,
"What a shame."
It seemed strange. But for a young man who spent every day wandering around the village, it was actually quite normal.
After all, he had never seen the sea, so naturally he couldn't tell the difference between a sea and a lake.
If someone really had to take the blame, then it should be Phainon's teacher, Pythias, who had never taught Phainon the difference between the two.
After all, no one couldn't be too harsh on a child, could they?
After searching the pier without finding anything, Phainon headed to another location.
He stopped in front of an cart that was being used for storing old things.
He still didn't find the Oracle Cards from his childhood, but he did dig out a little wooden soldier he had only carved halfway when he was young.
This pleasantly surprised Phainon.
"Hey, this is the one Mrs. Pythias confiscated! Finally back in my hands..."
Phainon held the crude little soldier in his hands, unable to put it down as he turned it over and examined it repeatedly.
Just then, a greeting came from behind him.
"Phainon, Cyrene? Where are you two headed?"
An intellectual-looking woman dressed in a dark green robe, wearing a hat and glasses, walked over.
"Speak of the devil... Mrs. Pythias? Is school out already?"
Phainon recognized the newcomer and replied with a smile.
Pythias smiled gently and explained, "No classes today. This morning, I used fallen leaves for a reading, seeking Oronyx's wisdom. They warned of potential injuries, so I gave everyone a holiday."
"Besides, it's harvest season. There's plenty of other work to be done even without classes."
Pythias' voice was full and vigorous, yet it retained a woman's gentle softness. She seemed like an entirely ordinary teacher, approachable, gentle, patient, and kind.
Yet when the audience heard this everyday conversation, they keenly picked up on a key phrase.
That reading from Oronyx.
Memories that had not been buried for very long began attacking them, around the time Aglaea was about to be assassinated and had already foreseen her own fate, pushed Phainon to the forefront during an important citizens' assembly.
Phainon delivered a magnificent speech and ultimately won the citizens' trust, formally taking over Aglaea's authority and becoming the leader of the Chrysos Heirs.
But none of that was important.
What mattered was that during the speech, Phainon had recounted a memory from his childhood.
It was about the day Aedes Elysiae was destroyed by the Black Tide.
His teacher had saved all the children, yet at the critical moment between life and death, she had cried out to him for help, and he had been powerless to do anything.
There were also the two children who, amid the destruction, had begged their beloved Brother Phainon to save them, only for Phainon to be forced to watch helplessly as they fell into destruction.
At the time, the audience had regarded these as nothing more than a few insignificant details within Phainon's magnificent speech.
Yet now, they quietly formed a certain resonance with the reading spoken of by this teacher and with Phainon's journey.
Golden and peaceful Aedes Elysiae, the simple and tranquil village, close-knit neighbors, lively and lovable children, and a teacher. Before the audience could fully enjoy enough of this peaceful content, they were forced to confront the worst possibility.
MiHoYo seemed ready to play another cruel joke on everyone. All the audience could do was pray that the assessment of Oronyx was correct, in that Oronyx's divinations were like a child's jokes: sometimes unquestionably accurate, sometimes absurdly ridiculous.
But to Pythias, Phainon, and the others, those words were nothing more than an ordinary statement, and no one would think too deeply about them.
Everyone in the village knew how to perform this kind of reading. Whether they actually acted on it depended entirely on their mood at the time.
Pythias didn't pay much attention to the prophecy. In any case, she had already given the children the day off.
Instead, when facing Phainon and Cyrene, her two former students, Pythias couldn't help giving them a few words of advice.
"When you travel far from here, you must visit the Grove of Epiphany for me, to see what a true haven of wisdom looks like..."
Phainon naturally patted his chest and readily agreed.
"Of course, Teacher! I'll even bring back a souvenir from the Grove for you!"
Pythias could hardly contain her happiness. After chatting with Phainon and Cyrene for a little while longer, she waved goodbye.
"Alright then, I should be going. It might rain tonight, so don't stay out too late!"
"Got it, Teacher."
Watching Pythias leave, Phainon looked at the wooden carving in his hand.
"Although we didn't find the Oracle Cards, finding this means the trip wasn't wasted. And now, we only have one last place left. The Oracle Cards must be there!"
The three of them said no more and headed toward the final place where the Oracle Cards might be hidden.