☀️ Arselia and Akonia

While the Carneolians pondered how to best merge with the dragon, Alaria, unaware of this, contemplated something else. She reflected on the unique perspectives and worldviews that her life experiences, and those of other newcomers, provided. They had seen other worlds, operating under different laws and social norms. They had witnessed magic and technologies unlike anything on Anuzish. And yet, they were beings torn from time and space, with no idea what state their world was in, or even if it still existed. Given the described principle of Miss Cosmos's operation, there was nothing to prevent a person from the distant future, Reima, from meeting face-to-face with the founder of the empire. This would inevitably influence the person and their worldview. At least, as long as the person was somewhat inclined to introspection. Of course, someone might argue that beings like her weren't truly human, invoking the ephemeral concept of "humanity," into which everyone put something different. She herself had once been guilty of this. However... what defined humanity? Usually, this implied humanistic values, but these values were not close to every "ordinary" person. The Tanarsian would even argue that the undead Kline and the "twice unhuman" spectral newcomer, Kenshiro, possessed no less humanity than some other "ordinary" person. The latter's mindset hadn't changed at all after becoming undead, although some malicious person might note that "a newcomer cannot possess humanity to begin with," while the changes in Kline's character were temporary and seemed more like a consequence of stress. So, what then? Does "humanity" depend on the color of one's aura and the type of energy that sustains one's existence? In that case, a better term should be found. A change in one's state of being could indeed lead a person to abandon certain universal principles, but this was due to their imperfect human nature. For example, if one were forced to drain the life energy of other living beings to continue their existence. To give a more mundane example, the heart of an immortal being, impervious to the passage of time, could harden with the years. But many of these factors were tied to the strength of character and were not guaranteed. Unless the change in mindset, linked to one's state of being, was a gradual process. But documenting such a process would hardly be possible, even if we ignore the risk of the researcher and the subject having certain prejudices. Nevertheless, Alaria couldn't help but wonder how fair it was to consider her human at all, if those dreams were true. If all this really happened, if the memories of those events returned to her, what would that make her? After all, it's unknown how much of her life she spent as a demon, relative to her existence as a human. On the other hand, her current actions were primarily determined by her current human experience, and not by dreams that might be nothing more than the product of her tormented psyche. Even if some hypothetical memories of a hypothetical past were to return, the months spent in the new world had already changed her. And she wouldn't allow that hypothetical past to dictate who she is now.