Now, let us rewind back to when Benjamin and Tensei were in the middle of discussing their identity crisis matters on the beach, before a sea monster interrupted them and everything spiraled out of control into cosmic devastation.

***

"So... what did you want us to discuss here in private that you did not want your women to find out about? You dragged me all the way to this remote beach and even created seats, so it must be important."

Tensei sat formally and stiff on the flat boulder, his posture rigid but proper, his golden eyes still warily watching Benjamin as if he expected the other man to do something unpredictable at any moment.

"Would you not make it sound like I am cheating on them or something?" Benjamin frowned and crossed his legs on his boulder. "You said Diana earlier... You said that you were originally from Diana. You mean that third sister planet to Earth and Elyndor, right?"

"Indeed, you are surprisingly well informed about the worlds," Tensei nodded, his expression showing a flicker of respect. "I cannot pinpoint the exact time of my reincarnation to Elyndor, but I know it was something around six thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries."

Benjamin made a mildly surprised face at the mention of such a high age number, his eyebrows rising and his eyes widening slightly.

"Wow, that... is quite the age number, haha. I did not expect you to be so ancient. But how come you cannot pinpoint the exact year? Elara and the rest of these long-lived beings seem to know the exact time they were born down."

"Yes, that is because they keep proper written records of it and have archivists whose job is to maintain those records across generations," Tensei explained, his voice calm and measured. "Especially royalty and nobility, or those in positions of power—they keep specific count of the time they were born so that their age can be verified for legal and ceremonial purposes. That is how I can even roughly remember it was around six thousand years ago I reincarnated here, because Silverøse-sama was still an infant at that time.

"However, when the age begins to surpass ten thousand years? It just becomes a genuine pain to keep exact records of every single year. Sakura-sama knows she was born around twelve thousand years ago, but that is all. If it was exactly twelve thousand and three hundred one years, or twelve thousand and eight years, she cannot tell the difference anymore. The years blur together after a certain point."

The two men talked deep about age and the passage of time, with how it felt to remain alive for such an extended period, watching the world change around you while you stayed mostly the same, outliving entire civilizations sometimes.

Though, Tensei clarified during their conversation that he was already part of a long-lived race of tribal demihumans back in Diana, with a natural lifespan that stretched centuries rather than normal human lifespan. So the concept of living a long time was not foreign to him.

Though he is even more long-lived now after his reincarnation and his various upgrades.

Thus, unlike Benjamin who was adjusting to the idea of immortality from a human baseline, Tensei had always known that living long was normal.

"Trust me, you shall get used to it eventually," Tensei assured him, his golden eyes softening slightly. "It may be strange for you initially, watching people age and die while you remain utterly unchanged. But fortunately, many of the people surrounding you, the people who you call family and loved ones, are going to be around for similarly long periods of time. You will not be alone in your longevity. That makes the burden easier to bear, no?"

The discussion soon shifted to the planet of Diana itself, and the mysterious connection that seemed to exist between the three worlds of Earth, Elyndor, and Diana.

Tensei explained that he was reincarnated to Elyndor after he died during a monster subjugation mission.

He was trying to subjugate a dangerous monster, that is, not the other way around.

The mission went wrong and he perished, only to wake up in this new world with his memories intact.

Diana has different sides and different regions with different levels of technological advancement, Tensei explained, but in many ways it was closer to Earth in terms of progression.

There were cars, trains, suits, jeans and many of the same conveniences that Benjamin remembered from his old life.

However, there were also large parts of Diana that refused to join the progression, that rejected modernization and digitalization, but clung to older ways of living.

Those regions remained medieval and removed from the digitalized world, with knights, castles, kings and peasants living as they had for thousands of years.

By the sound of Tensei and the way he described certain technologies — the way he talked about steam-powered machines and clockwork devices with analog systems — Benjamin could make out that the Diana that Tensei had reincarnated from was something in a steam age era.

A time where machines and technology were still a bit archaic and clunky compared to the sleek digital world of modern Earth.

But due to something involving the cosmos and the nature of reality, and the way time flowed differently between worlds, Tensei admitted that it was entirely possible that Diana was still like that now, frozen in its steam age, or it had progressed further into something Benjamin would recognize.

There was no way to know without visiting, and visiting was not easy. Nearly impossible.

This entire line of discussion indicated that Elyndor, Earth, and Diana probably had something to do with... the original.

If Benjamin came from Earth and Tensei came from Diana, then there might be a third person somewhere in Elyndor that shares their similarity.

Either that, or the person who is supposed to be the Elyndor-native equivalent is what will emerge as a new being if Benjamin and Tensei ever fully merge together.

It still needed heavy research and many more findings to draw most conclusions about the nature of their connection.

However, Benjamin soon remembered something during their conversation.

Something that he did not remember to do or ask about when he was with Violette or even Ren.