Chương 92: Where Paths Meet

To Nerez, it felt like an eternity. When everything around you is a single color, you lose not only your sense of direction, but your sense of time as well. Yet when he finally reached the sphere's interior, probably no more than a few minutes had passed since he entered the purple light. Once inside, he realized that although the sphere had a purple tint, it was transparent from within, allowing him to continue gazing out at that mysterious universe through its surface. That was not the only difference, however.

The lights that served as stars seemed somewhat closer here, and whereas he had previously glimpsed only a few moving like comets, inside the sphere every one of them was in motion, each following a path of its own.

"Mm? Now they're moving faster... No... Did everything just stop? Ah... they're moving again... Wait, now they're going backward. It's like the universe is being rewound..." The sphere, if that was even the right word for it, was truly enormous, so Nerez decided to get moving once and for all rather than remain there watching the ever-changing universe forever. He still had to find the god of time, after all. Those abrupt changes repeated themselves several times along the way.

The stars around him would stop, move forward, or retreat along their paths. It felt as though someone were examining a movie, pausing it, fast-forwarding it, or rewinding it whenever something caught their attention. Nerez was certain that someone was none other than Aion.

"If I've understood this correctly, the Void really is just what its name suggests: empty. We can see these lights, but they aren't actually here. They represent the very essence of Eryndea. If Aion studies the way that essence moves backward or forward, then it's practically the same as studying the passage of time..." If he truly spends his life here studying Eryndea, then they don't call him His Eminence for nothing....

The faint purple hue visible along what appeared to be the sphere's walls helped Nerez keep his bearings and continue toward its center. If Aion was the one controlling that space, Nerez hoped he would find him there, so he kept heading in that direction.

"But this is strange. I think it took me less time to reach the sphere after spotting it in the distance than it has taken me to cross its interior. Judging by the distance I covered before reaching it, that earlier stretch could have held countless spheres this size, yet the time each journey took suggests the exact opposite. Between that, what I can see outside from here, and this familiar sensation... I can say for certain that there's a temporal distortion here too."

A great deal more time passed before he finally made out a figure in the distance. Finding someone was an immense relief. Nerez had already begun to wonder whether he would have to spend the rest of his life walking through the inside of that sphere. Being immortal only made the prospect worse. As he drew closer, he recognized a familiar figure from behind. Not that he was an expert on backs, but even in an Eryndea filled with unusual hair colors, Aion's purple hair was quite distinctive.

This time, however, he was dressed in a robe and matching cloak, complete with a pointed hat. He looks like some kind of mage or sorcerer... Come to think of it, if I remember correctly, mages chose Aion as their patron god. They wanted as much time as possible to study magic... or something along those lines. On top of that, the whole "His Eminence" title made its way down to mortals and probably influenced the image they formed of him as a god.

Nerez coughed lightly into his fist and moved to stand beside Aion, almost as though apologizing for the interruption. For someone known as His Eminence, Aion still had a remarkably youthful face, and his lilac eyes remained lost in the starry expanse. Stranger still, he was sitting cross-legged, not on the ground, but suspended above it. Levitating...? No. I've seen other gods levitate, like Helux, but this is different. It feels more static, lifeless, as though he had simply stopped his fall in time.

Honestly, that's probably exactly what he did...

"Ahem... Sorry to interrupt..." Nerez cleared his throat and finally addressed him, since his arrival had yet to provoke any reaction. But Aion still did not respond. Every so often, he would raise one hand, and with a gesture, the starry universe around them would change. It moved backward, accelerated, or came to a halt. That confirmed Aion was the one controlling the space. [Chronosphere] That was the name the Godscript had shown Nerez. In other words, Aion was not merely controlling the space around him.

The entire sphere was one of his skills.

"Aion, I don't mean to interrupt..." Nerez tried again, attempting to move the nonexistent conversation forward.

"I truly don't, but something is happening in Eryndea right now that definitely requires your attention."... Silence....

"This is a problem... Is there some way to communicate with him?" Nerez rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Mm... If I pinch his cheek, will that start the war Dili was so afraid of?" Nerez had deliberately voiced those thoughts aloud. Sure enough, as though reacting to the implied threat against his cheek, Aion finally raised a finger toward the starry expanse. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Nerez followed the direction he indicated until his gaze settled on two small lights that seemed to be struggling against one another or, perhaps, trying to merge into one.

"Even if you show me that, what do you expect me to... Ah!" At first, Nerez had no idea what Aion was trying to tell him. Then the mysterious symbols within his golden eyes began to move, and an understanding gradually took shape in his mind. The strange and contradictory motions of the two lights, each seemingly trying to fold in on itself while also wrapping around the other, corresponded precisely to the temporal distortion in Tirelia.

Before Nerez could ask anything else, Aion raised both index fingers toward the lights and drew them apart. As the god of time's fingers separated, so did the two stars, each continuing along its own path.

"Was that all...?" No answer was necessary. Nerez was certain that the temporal distortion had been resolved. He remained beside Aion, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.

"That was an awfully long walk for something so quick... Don't you want to talk about sports or something? Do you have any hobbies besides sitting here all day?"...

"..."...

"All right, I should probably stop bothering you... I'll just go..." Nerez began to turn away, but then he remembered Jeanne, the girl from the inn who had supposedly been summoned from Earth.

"Aion, does time pass at the same rate everywhere?" It doesn't really matter whether she comes from the same time on Earth as I do, but it would be interesting to consider the possibility. Once again, the god of time did not answer with words. Instead, Aion raised one hand, and the moving stars stopped, arranging themselves into what appeared to be a series of constellations. With another gesture of the same hand, the stars began moving backward.

The constellations came apart as each light returned to the position it had occupied moments earlier. Aion then snapped his fingers, and the sphere's purple tint deepened. With another gesture, he set the stars in motion again. Once they formed the same constellations as before, he brought them to a halt. The resulting constellations may have been the same, but the stars had followed different paths to reach them.

"It looks complicated, but I can make something out of it... When the sphere shifted to another layer, it showed us the lights following different paths than before, yet still arriving at the same point," Nerez commented aloud, with the faint hope that Aion would correct him if he was wrong.

"I don't fully understand it, but if this was an answer to my earlier question and those paths represent different flows of time, then what we just saw proves that time can flow at different rates simultaneously..." Aion gave no indication that anything Nerez had said was incorrect, so Nerez decided to take that as confirmation.

"If one light represented our own time, for example, while the light seen in another layer represented the time experienced by someone under different circumstances, say, in another world... then the fact that they both reached the same point means that two different flows of time can ultimately converge, contradictory as that may sound." The very fact that there is more than one layer from which the fundamental laws can be observed is already an answer in itself...

But the fact that each light still arrived at exactly the same point as before makes me think of something else too... What could it be? In any case, he had accomplished what he came for. Nerez thanked Aion and prepared to leave. He had taken only a few steps when a voice behind him took him completely by surprise. It sounded young and ancient at once, innocent and wise. It was difficult to describe.

"It is not the inevitable, but the final outcome, that we call fate."...

"What... do you mean by that?" Nerez turned around in confusion. It was almost as though Aion had read his mind. Yet, of course, no answer followed. All he found was the silent back of the god of time. Nerez let out a sigh and continued on his way back. Hearing the word "fate" while thinking about Earth had brought back unpleasant memories.

"Irentia..." Simply speaking the name of the Goddess of Fate sent a chill down his spine.

Nerez had to find a carriage near the cemetery to reach the Artius mansion. There was no helping it, since the cemetery was the only place in the city where homage was paid to him. Nor was he particularly eager to resort to the rather depressing method of using Veiled Trail and appearing beside someone who had just died. Such a short distance hardly warranted it. That said, Veiled Trail had already reached rank S, allowing Nerez to choose far more precisely whom he would appear beside.

His reapers had learned the skill as well. Their work required them to use it constantly to retrieve troublesome souls, and they did so without a second thought. When he arrived at the mansion, Ily and an anxious Falme were waiting to receive him. Falme looked ready to tremble with excitement, but was doing her best to restrain herself, since such a display would hardly be proper for someone of her social standing.

"Sir Nerez, the air feels lighter, and a fly landed on the planter beside the door! Although Ily killed it immediately... Were you able to speak with that important person?! Will my father recover?!"

"Falme, breathe," Ily urged from beside her.

"I've already told you twenty times that the temporal distortion is returning to normal, and that means Nerez succeeded."

"That's right, Falme," Nerez assured her, placing a hand on the young woman's shoulder.

"Your father should be able to move again at any moment."

"Thank the gods! Thank Nereziel! And most of all, thank you, Sir Nerez. Thank you..." That put Nereziel a little too close to Nerez just now... Oh well. If I ever need an excuse, saying I was named after Nereziel never fails.

"I'm going to examine your father, just to make sure there won't be any problems once the distortion is fully resolved." Since necromancers worked with bodies, they were the closest thing to doctors after healers, so there was nothing unusual about Nerez offering to examine him.

"Do you think there could be a problem?" Falme asked worriedly.

"Not at all. It's only a routine checkup." There actually is a problem, but I'll make sure it stops being one while I still can. Taking advantage of Alegor Artius's frozen state, Nerez placed a hand on his shoulder. Death's Touch In that instant, Alegor died.... Because of Alegor's condition, Falme noticed no change in him. That was precisely what Nerez had counted on. At the same time, a veiled trail opened toward the underworld.

Nerez intercepted it by creating another trail that extended from the underworld in the opposite direction. The two trails collided, forming a kind of intermediate dimension where they met. There, two souls were reunited: Alegor Artius and a woman whose features closely resembled Falme's. The woman greeted Alegor with a resounding slap and kept him on his knees, scolding him for quite some time. Eventually, however, they embraced and promised to meet again in the underworld when his time came.

Provided Alegor did penance for the mistake he had made, of course.

"Lord Nereziel, why?" Ily asked once they had left the mansion behind.

"Mm? But I already explained it. I wanted to give Falme and her father some privacy. We can discuss the reward another time..."

"No, not that. I mean, why did you kill Alegor and bring him back to life...?"

"Ah... I keep forgetting that those pretty magenta eyes of yours see more than they should."

"Pretty..." Ily repeated, blushing.

"I was simply taking precautions to make sure something like this never happens again."

"I see," Ily replied, cupping her cheeks in both hands. She understood no more than before, but by then, she no longer cared very much. The two continued toward the inn, neither of them aware that a young woman with sparkling eyes and twintails as red as blood had followed Nerez all the way from Empyrean Peaks.