"Well shit! Suddenly I lost all respect for the guy. I thought he was an incredible inventor but this is just a rip-off of everything here." Alastor muttered.
                          
"Are you talking about Marcus?" Vincent asked.
                          
"You are goddamn right. Back in my home, he created a lot of things, making us think that he was an awesome guy and all. But now that I am here, I can see that it's not true."
                          
"You are half right and wrong. True, he was inspired by what I have created but many in my world couldn't even understand my works. Yet he was able to. To me, that's a talent." 
                          
"I suppose you are right. But still, that means he didn't really create anything. Just imitating you."
                          
"I am not so sure about that...." The old man uttered as he lowered his head, as if reminiscing something.
                          
"What do you mean?" Alastor asked.
                          
"....Let's eat first! I will tell you everything I know about Marcus later. Just know that every genius has his fair share of madness and Marcus.....Marcus has a lot of it, to the point where he was consumed by it."
                          
That sentence echoed in Alastor's mind. Madness, the thing that lurked in every man's head, constantly waiting for a chance for the person to slip up before it took hold of him. Once your mind was taken, there was no way out, at least not by yourself. Just who was Marcus really? Why was he mentioned everywhere? And what was his role in this? What happened to him?
                          
After a luxurious meal, probably the best meal Alastor has ever eaten, Vincent led Fiora and Alastor to a room that was different from the rest of the mansion. While everything in this house was made to look very futuristic, this one particular room was very antiquated. The insides were made out of old woods. A table, a small bed, a closet with some books and that was about everything inside this room. Compared to the rest of the mansion, this room looked really out of place like it was not supposed to be here at all. And there was one odder thing about this room. Black ashen trails were all over it, as if there was a fire here.
                          
"What is this place, old man?" Alastor said.
                          
"This is the room Marcus, or the Artificer as you called him where you are from, used to live in when he was in this world." Vincent answered. 
                          
"He lived here? Why? What is your relationship with Marcus?"
                          
"A student. A teacher. A friend. Someone I trusted....and someone who betrayed me! That's who Marcus is." 
                          
"What?"
                          
"It all began thirty years ago, shortly after I created the organisation of Greymen. Upon detecting an anomaly outside the city, I rushed to the marked location with my team. At the time, the threat of the Monochromes wasn't recognized by the government yet so we were on our own. We considered it our duty to protect this world, our world. But when I was there, the only thing I found was a young man lying unconscious where the rift was. His name was...."
                          
"...Marcus the Artificer." Alastor uttered.
                          
"Exactly! That was the second case ever recorded of a Traveller in our history. We were all shocked at that time. We just didn't know what to do with him. When he saw us, saw that he has found himself in another world, do you know what he did?" Vincent asked a rhetoric question. "He laughed, maniacally, like a mad man while shouting 'I DID IT! I DID IT!'.
                          
It was only after questioning him we found that he didn't end up here by coincidence. Your Artificer actually tried to break through the dimensional crack to get to another world, something not even I thought possible. And he did."
                          
"It was voluntary? But what for?" asked Alastor.
                          
"...Marcus was a genius, the most intelligent individual I have ever met and the one person I respected the most. Only after a few months of staying here, he was able to understand all my works, all the technologies that didn't even exist in his world. That was when I decided to take him in as my pupil to help me in my research. But unlike me, his motivation didn't come from the passion of science but out of love.