The world shattered, and Dei ceased to exist for less than a moment. To him though, the nonexistence did not simply pass.
He stood within a house of mirrors, around him a dozen or so timelines all in stasis, but all with the same result. They were backwards and forwards copies of himself in fake timelines.
Some were seconds into the future, where he reached the ground but the frog was already gone. Others were seconds into the past, yet to realize it was too late, and he stood in the middle.
‘How did I find my way here?’ he wondered, staring around curiously. He felt no sense of urgency either, knowing that no time would pass where he currently was. He was in a time void, somewhere the concept did not exist, yet he found that his physical body did. Clever, Fendrascora, and Perumah were not here with him.
He took a moment to go over all the notifications he’d built up during his fight.
[Skill Leveled Up: Pandora’s Box (Sealed) (300) -> (338)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Good Samaritan (138) -> (143)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meaningful (70) -> (83)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Rage (235) -> (248)]
[Stat Gained: +1 Physical]
[Skill Leveled Up: Solidity (133) -> (140)]
[Skill Leveled Up: Homeostasis (182) -> (200)]
[Skill: Homeostasis (200) has reached an evolution threshold]
[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (173) -> (200)]
[Skill: Meditation (200) has reached an evolution threshold]
[Skill Leveled Up: Identify of the Stout Protector (114) -> (120)]
[Skill Leveled Up: In Tune (62) -> (87)]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Kindness: High-Rare: 99% has strengthened into Kindness: Low-Treasured: 18%]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Wrath: Low-Rare: 99% has strengthened into Wrath: Mid-Rare: 37%]
[Affinity Strengthened:
[Void: Mid-Common: 99% has strengthened into Void: Low-Uncommon: 4%]
Two evolutions to choose and three affinity strengthens. Wrath and Void he understood, even Void skipping High-Common tier entirely was expected, but he still didn’t know why Kindness was steadily going up.
Even if no time passed, he wanted to get back to the fight as soon as he could- to that end, he also checked his Pandora’s Box and what mana types were in it.
[Pandora’s Box:
10287/13520 Wrath
253/13520 Kindness
166/13520 Soul
1573/13520 Fortitude
1150/13520 [NULL] ]
184/13520 Void
80/13520 Tracking]
His eyes landed on Void. he didn’t know the exact amount he had before he’d cast whatever Void spell he was currently under the effects of, but he still clearly had a healthy amount. Whatever he’d done, it was… shockingly cheap.
His mind was also brought to the fact that he didn’t have a Void spell listed on his Interface. What he’d done was a result of pure mana control which explained why it was only him in this void. He could, after all, only manipulate mana when it was within his own body. Clever was able to do stuff with his Time affinity before he had the proper spells too, so he’d ask later about the process of formalizing a spell. What he’d done would be useful, of that he was sure.
His fears of running out of Void mana and being stranded here alleviated, he considered what to do next. Clearly, he had to at least evolve the Skills. Sighing, he closed his eyes and started using [Connection] to produce the materials he’d need to evolve Homeostasis.
* * *
The evolution went off without a hitch, and the result was much similar to Growing Rage.
[Homeostasis - Level 200 - Health affinity - Passive
The world is in…
…
Level 100 evolutionary upgrade: Raise the maximum level of resistance you can develop to a particular imbalance
Level 200 evolutionary upgrade: Body will naturally ??? when met with adversity]
For Meditation, he chose once more to not allow Connection anywhere near the Skill. They were both based on connecting with things, and Dei was afraid Connection would devour his meditation Skill by merging with it, and he’d have a super esoteric form of Meditation. Sure, that could be good, but he really did not want to deal with that right now. He went for the more mundane path of regular evolutions.
[Diverging paths for evolution open:
Puzzling
Controlled
Intuitive
Parasitic]
He’d ended up choosing Puzzling.
[A tangled knot of fate and life stand before you, yet you are woefully unequipped to see. Gain the ability to glimpse into the web and find what you may]
Controlled let him change benefits or burdens into something lateral to it, equal but different. Intuitive would instinctively pass off a small amount of damage to those he was connected with in an efficient way, automatically negating some damage from him while causing no harm to his friends. Parasitic would let him slowly build up a connection to something that didn’t like him, though it wasn’t clear what this connection did, and the risk was too great for it to be useless. Puzzling… he had a good feeling about it, that’s all.
When he was done, it was time to decide what to do. While messing around with Homeostasis, Dei found that most of his Skills were cut off, with a few notable exceptions.
Connection, Meditation, and Homeostasis worked as intended, but everything else was unresponsive. This actually made Dei sigh in relief, because for just a moment he thought it might be best to sit here, in the Void, for the next few months training and getting his Skills up and training his body with Growing Rage. It would certainly raise his chances of survival, but he still hated the idea of doing that.
His soul strain wasn’t going away either, so this space wouldn’t be useful as a resting spot between battles. Worse, whatever he’d done to end up here made the strain worse. He still had a few days left in him, but he shouldn’t try to enter this time void again haphazardly during this fight.
So all that was left… was to get back.
He looked around at the frozen expression of himself in fourteen different timelines, and considered what to do.
Clever said that when he transferred his soul into a fake timeline, making it real, he was the only one to change. It was not so easy to reverse the entire world, but his body was more… accepting of Time mana, accepting of the change.
So in his original timeline, Dei had been too far away from the anchor to change anything. If Clever was correct, he needed to enter a future timeline, effectively teleporting himself forwards in a very roundabout way.
‘Fendrascora will be without a flowing body of water for a few seconds, meaning she will be unable to move, but I’ll get back to her as soon as I can. I just need to stop the damn frog from killing the Guardian.’
He went to his future self- the one furthest forward. This self was already at the ground, watching the frog slip away by digging rapidly through the mud. If he was in this Dei’s position, he’d be close enough to grab the frog's tongue. Reaching out, he touched the surface of the timeline.
And nothing happened.
Confused, he pressed harder against it, but the frictionless barrier was unyielding.
‘I’m not a Time affinitied being, it’s not so easy to just teleport myself through time. I’m a user of Void, I need to do something with that’ he thought, and remembered the sensation of manipulating the area between time, as he’d done before.
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When Clever showed him that branching timeline, Dei somehow had an intuitive understanding of its approach as it started to converge with reality. It was like he’d finally laid eyes on something that was sitting in front of him the entire time, but his mind failed to acknowledge.
He lengthened the gap between that time and reality, until the false timeline broke apart- resulting in his current predicament. He’d somehow pushed himself out of time by resisting the inevitable march of it or… not pushed himself out, he’d crushed himself within. He remembered the sensation of two realities- or two moments- fusing together as the future became the present. He forced himself between those moments and resisted the merging of them, meaning that the future stayed the future and the present stagnated.
‘I know what I need to do’ he thought, and again walked towards the furthest future self.
He currently existed in the present, but he couldn’t let that happen. He needed to exist in the future, before it happened, skipping all the middle parts.
He sectioned off one hundred Void mana, unsure of how much he’d need. Clearly, Void abilities were rather cheap, but he didn’t want to skimp just in case. Any extra, he could just return to his box.
Flooding his body with Void mana, Dei pictured the gap between him and the future. As easily as he could snap his fingers, he willed that gap to close.
And he was gone.
* * *
It felt like nothing happened at all, but he was aware of what did. His mind, the physical brain in his head, stuttered, and he was there. He didn’t blink or flinch at the sensation, as he knew it was coming. He simply punched downwards into the earth, grabbing hold of the bastard frog's tongue and pulling upwards.
It was too long though, and the frog itself did not come up with it. The frog did not hesitate either, digging through the earth to still reach for the Decay anchor.
‘No!’ he thought, slamming his foot down below to cut off the frogs path, and mostly succeeding.
Mostly.
The tip of its webbed feet touched the anchor though, and that was enough.
It was clear the act of living creatures interfering with the anchor was a catalyst for its failure. It disrupted a delicate magical balance Dei couldn’t understand. The earth around the rusted pin could move it, but if any living tissue consciously touched it, the spell would end.
Dei roared in outrage as the worst came to pass, despite his efforts. It did not happen quickly, but the connection between the Convergence and the Physical world began to spiral.
Dei punched downwards into the earth, grasping at the frog's main body, but it clearly had other priorities now that its job was done. It turned ephemeral and fled deeper below, evading the hand reaching for it.
Sadly, for the frog, it was not so simple to escape Dei’s hand, and he still gripped the now translucent tongue strongly.
Dei felt the tongue start thrashing as his companions finally caught up with him, Fendrascora crashing into his back and quickly burrowing into him. He grunted in pain, but endured it.
“Fendrascora, pull us up as hard as you can!” he told her, and she didn’t hesitate despite being paralyzed seconds ago.
They shot towards the sky, and the frogs tongue went with them. Dei used micro explosions to boost them even further, and Clever took over Fendrascora’s movements to keep them balanced as they rose higher and higher into the air.
The frog resisted with all its might, but it was not to be. After thirty feet, Dei saw its white ghostly form tear free from the earth, and it rapidly caught up with them as its tongue returned to its organic shape.
Despite still being a ghost, Dei’s hand came down at the base of its open mouth and met the resistance he was looking for. Though only twenty percent of the force would carry through into intangible enemies, that just meant he’d have to hit it five times as much to kill it.
He saw panick, fear in its eyes, those emotions were met with cold indifference. It was simply too dangerous, too smart for its own good. If he tried allying with it, Dei had no doubt it would scheme its way free and kill him in the future.
He cast an Identify in tandem with his fist coming down upon it. The spell reached first.
[Foretold Hyper-aware Belcher of Slinking - Level 299
Affinities of Foresight, Mind, Snap, Earth, Spirit, Patience, Shadow, and Adaptation]
The Identify disrupted its intangibility Skill and he kept the needle placed within, still providing him with information about the Belcher.
The heat rushed into his fist, Snap mana forcing it out with a volatility unmatched to any of its previous uses, but the Belcher wasn’t ready to die yet, and he sensed its power skyrocket in an instant. ‘It evolved. It’s been sitting at two ninety nine for who knows how long, and its now using all its stored EXP.’
[Foretold Hyper-aware Belcher of Defense - Level 321]
The Convection mana fully compressed itself into a glowing spark, pushed and directed by his fist as the force of the explosion focused in a singular direction- at his enemy.
[Foretold Hyper-aware Belcher of Defense - Level 356]
He felt the Belchers skin toughen tens, perhaps hundreds of times over. His arm vibrated and bones shattered under strain, his simple and furious strike too much for Fendrascora to fully contain.
[Foretold Hyper-aware Belcher of Defense - Level 399]
Finally resulting in an explosion that rocked the world, blood exploding from the Belcher as it was sent downwards, Fendrascora spreading herself thin to avoid Dei’s strike making them rocket upwards.
The Belcher had hardly gone ten feet before Perumah and Clevers attacks landed as well, spurred into action by Dei’s [In Tune] Skill, shredding its soul and cooking its body for several seconds.
The attack was everything they had, and the result was everything it should have been, if Edward weren’t unkillable.
[EXP gained for killing the Foretold Hyper-aware Belcher of Defense (Level 399). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]
[Class Leveled Up: Watchful Slaughterer (134) -> (146)]
[Total Stats Gained: +12 Physical, +6 Mental, +6 Spiritual, +6 Magical]
His long-time enemy, the first monster that’d ever truly almost killed him, was finally dead. He felt a shiver go through his body as a grudge Wrath refused to let go finally faded away, but he didn’t revel in the sensation.
“Get us down to the anchor as soon as you can!” he told Fendrascora, hoping someone in their group would have an idea. He was out of Convection mana, but Clever came in with a save, directing Fendrascora on how to spread her body thinly and swim in the air, forcing them down just a bit faster.
They landed close to the anchor, next to the scorch mark Clever left in the earth, but Dei ignored everything else, falling to his knees and reaching towards where he could feel the anchor. It was not hard to triangulate its location, as waves of Decay mana tore through Dei, all from the same direction, but… it was not as strong as it should’ve been.
Dei’s mind raced, and he connected to the anchor using his Wrath Identify. The material was completely inorganic, so he could not Identify it, but that was fine. He only wanted Connection to link him with the object, hoping he would be able to glean something from it. He saw exactly what he was afraid of. The Convergence was akin to a spinning top that would go on endlessly, but the moment something interrupted its movement, that perpetual motion would come to an end. The anchor was settling, and it would soon become inert- but not yet.
It was still active, if only for a little longer, he rapidly scanned through it, finding what he was looking for- the connection the Guardian shared with the anchor. More than that, he found the sputtering energy source of the Convergence, its link to the Conceptual Plane of Decay.
‘What do I do?! What can I do?!’
He realized that he still had a ton of Void mana within his body- ninety eight, in fact. Merging himself with the future from his place in the time-between had only taken two points.
‘Can I merge the Guardian with the plane, closing the void between them?’
The anchor acted as the liaison, a middle man between the Guardian and Decay. It refined the Decay mana into something more usable, but it limited the Guardian in that the creature could not stray far from the anchor, lest it be destroyed.
If he closed the gap between the Guardian and Decay, the Guardian would be overwhelmed. The mana it received would be too violent, and it would die. He needed the anchor as his middle man to refine the concepts of Decay, but it was losing that connection. He tried closing the gap between the anchor and Decay, but the anchor resisted by its very nature. It was Decay's will, and Decay wanted the anchor to end once any living creature moved it. Dei could resist Void when he had all the advantages, but this was Decay in its home, he couldn’t change the anchor’s goal.
He needed something with the refining concepts of the anchor that was unbound by Decays will to collapse and could properly connect with the Guardian.
He had one idea, one crazy idea as he took hold of the Decay mana rushing through him, bending it to his will and forcing it through his [Growing Rage] Skill.
It wasn’t so easy to imbue himself fully with the concepts, but it was a start. Decay enhanced his muscles in some way but that was unimportant to him right now as he found that Decay mana no longer tried quite as hard to kill him, and he found that he could dive just a bit deeper into the plane of Decay.
Looking at his Pandora’s Box, he checked for the one number that really mattered.
[Soul: 5/13520]
He needed ten minimum for this to work but he’d just used up all of his Soul mana on Homeostasis, so he’d need a revelation about himself to get enough mana.
He sighed. ‘Fine. I admit it. I’m being a total kind idiot by helping Fendrascora past what was initially required, and I’m being an idiot again for what I’m about to do to try and save the Guardian despite it being more than likely to kill me.’
[Soul: 12/13520]
‘Good enough’ he thought, and made a single centimeter of [Connection].
Then, he grabbed the rusty brooch, feeling a pained gasp from the Guardian, ripped a hole in his clothes, and held it to his chest.
With the centimeter of Connection, he formed a dangerously dense line between the plane of Decay, through the gate that was the Anchor, into his own [Growing Rage] Skill, finally ending at the Guardians soul.
The pieces snapped into place with shocking ease, and Dei felt a rumbling torrent of Decay mana flow through his Skill, but was shocked to find it exit him with perfect efficiency.
He sighed in relief as he found that he was correct, and the Connection was perfect enough to keep itself as a closed circuit, so long as it had the right tools to do so. It was a thankfully simple solution, and he expected it to work because-
His thoughts were cut off as a flying Guardian slammed into him, pulled by the Connection Skill which now prevented the creature from ever being more than one centimeter from Dei.
‘Ahh yes the battle. Which I will now have to fight glued to a large skeleton.’
