She gulped hard, "I got reincarnated."
Arzoth's eyes widened, his face turned pale, and his palms became sweaty.
"What?!"
"You got…. reincarnated??" The question hung in the air.
"If Arisa got reincarnated, if she knows everything, and knows my name from my previous life, then it means that she is not from the novel I read, not from the fate I need to avoid."
"But she is from the fate I created?"
"That is the only conclusion I can come up with; any other assumption doesn't make sense to me."
"I need to know what happened, how she knows my name, because if my assumption is true, and if I really messed up in the future, why would I reveal my previous identity to anyone, let alone Arisa?"
"And most importantly,' why did Arisa get reincarnated? Even if I failed, it was me who was supposed to die, not Arisa, so why is she here?"
Arzoth looked at his daughter only to see the consequences of his actions staring back at him. A deafening silence fell over the room, and neither of them spoke for a long minute.
At last, Arzoth broke the silence as he said, "Why are you here? And why do you know my name?"
"I am here because I died, again!"
"I know your name because I know who you are..., this is my 6th time getting reincarnated after all."
Arzoth stood stunned, his jaw dropped. "What do you mean by 6th reincarnation?"
Arisa sighed, "I unwillingly kept getting reincarnated after my assassination, and this is the 6th time. I know you've got a quest to complete or you will die, and I will too."
"I have no idea what this is about. Arisa can talk; she knows what will happen, she knows about her assassination, and she claims that I failed six times. Six!"
Arzoth ran his hand through his flowy white hair, his mind crossed through thousands of thoughts at once.
"What happened?"
He glanced at Arisa. Many questions troubled his peace of mind, yet he didn't know where to begin asking them or even if he should do so.
"If she knew how she got assassinated, why did I not save her? How did I fail?"
"One possibility can be that she never told me about her reincarnation until her 6th one? But then again, how did she know about my previous life if she never opened up in her previous lives?"
Arisa said, "Don't stress out, fate can't be changed, either way, I will die and get reincarnated again and again. There is no way out anyway."
Arzoth's eyes narrowed at her nonchalant words, "What are you talking about?! Do you mean you are okay with getting reincarnated again and again!? Or do you mean you don't care if you get stuck in this cycle forever and never get to experience your life!?"
Arisa gazed at Arzoth with wide eyes, and she remained quiet, a sense of unease bottled up in her chest at the possibility of never getting out of this constant cycle of death and reincarnation, and never getting to experience her life entirely, always stuck in a never ending loop. Her gaze lowered. What could she do?
Arzoth sighed,
"I need to calm down; she is just a child, even if she speaks otherwise. I need to think this through."
He looked at her and said in a much softer tone, "If you know my name, you must have gotten it from me in your previous reincarnations, and you must also know how and when you got assassinated. Despite knowing this, how did I fail to avoid it? I need to know. Everything."
Arisa looked up and said, "You are wrong."
"Huh?" Arzoth furrowed in confusion.
"When I said I got reincarnated six times, that didn't mean I was assassinated right after you brought me here."
"What do you mean?"
"In my first life, I grew up in the basement. And then, I killed Arzoth, my real father. You know that."
"Just like in the novel I read,"
Arisa continued, "But after that, I got killed too."
Arzoth's eyes widened,
"This was never mentioned in the novel. After Arzoth died, Evren took over the throne, and what happened to Arisa was never mentioned. So, this is what happened? She was killed. But how?"
"I got reincarnated, I again went through the same events, then died, and it kept repeating until my 6th reincarnation. Instead of just Evren, you came to take me, it was different. But then, when you took me to the Crystal cave, my system got awakened, which was supposed to happen after a few years, and I did not awaken my power as well. Just then, I knew that you were not Arzoth but a transmigrator
He frowned. "How?"
"My system is surprisingly stronger this time. When it got awakened, the first warning it gave me was about you and your stats. That's how I know."
"System! Show me the first warning." Arisa said.
A blue screen appeared in front of Arisa's face, which was also visible to Arzoth.
[System type: A]
[User: Arisa Valkyra Draven]
[Status: Demon princess]
[Previous warning: "The Soul in Arzoth's body is of a transmigrator named Sole."]
Soon the blue screen disappeared.
Arzoth frowned. This was somehow making sense why Arisa spoke like an adult, it is because she was living her life according to the novel, and has lived five lives, and knows Arzoth's real name. But he was still submerged in the pool of questions.
"And how did you know that I got a unique quest of avoiding your assassination? Did your system tell you that as well?"
She nodded, "Yes, it did."
Arzoth thought for a while and asked, "Then, the suggestion of not meeting the Empress and the information that the Empress unlocked the new skill was also from your system, I assume? But why would she do that?"
"As I told you, she will try to convince you to disown me."
"In the novel, the Empress disliked Arisa, but she never took action to remove her from the palace as she knew that doing so would only risk getting the secret of the half breed child out. But now that I revealed Arisa to everyone, she has no reason to keep Arisa here."
Arzoth smiled and said, "I think I should have breakfast with the Empress."
Arisa frowned. "What are you planning to do? You know that she just unlocked the skill of manipulation level 98, right? "
Arzoth's smile only widened. "Yes, I know, and I think I even know what I need to do next."