Fragnts of the future shattered apart, as though space-ti itself had been kneaded into a single chaotic mass.
"Ansu, did you feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"Ti was reset."
"No... I didn’t feel anything at all."
Kanzaki Rei was probing—was only his ti being reset, or had Ansu been dragged into it as well?
If both of them had been reset together, then Ansu should have retained the mory.
But if only he had...
Then it ant he alone had returned to the past, and Ansu should have no recollection of what happened afterward.
And now it seed...
He truly had no idea what ca next.
"Actually..."
Rei had just begun to explain.
And then—
Tick—
Like the hard chanical click of a clock hand forcibly turned backward by one notch, a crisp echo rang out.
Rei realized he had returned to the very beginning.
The start of the corridor.
At the distant end of the hallway—
That sa door he had just seen.
"The door?"
Ansu’s thoughts echoed in his mind.
He was startled. A door had appeared here?
Exactly the sa reaction as when they had first entered...
"Ansu, ti seems to have reversed."
Rei spoke with grave seriousness.
His consciousness surged, transmitting the entire situation to Ansu through thought at the fastest possible speed.
Ansu considered it for a brief mont, about to answer—
Tick—
Another turn of the clock.
Rei lifted his gaze.
Now he was already outside the ruins.
He had left the corridor entirely and returned to the vast darkness from before.
He didn’t even need to think hard.
His brain had already reached the answer.
I’ve been reset again.
And to an even earlier point in ti.
The previous span of ti had been precisely the period from entering the corridor to reaching the door.
It had seed to take a long while—
But in reality, only a few seconds had passed.
Which ant simply communicating with Ansu in his mind, waiting for him to think of a response...
Had already exceeded those few seconds.
In other words—
Once the allotted ti was up, he would be reset to an even earlier point.
Is that how it works?
Rei’s thoughts raced.
And he didn’t know whether, after leaving the corridor, there would be another reset beyond this.
There wasn’t much ti to communicate with Ansu either.
But Ansu’s line of reasoning had already given him inspiration.
Tick—
Not long later.
Roughly ten seconds after this reset.
The scenery before Rei abruptly shifted again.
He found himself even farther from the spiral entrance.
"This ti... thirty seconds."
From this position to the door—
Thirty seconds of lived experience.
Tick—
This ti, the instant the reset occurred, Rei relayed everything to Ansu at maximum speed.
Ansu sent back a wave of shock.
But his mind rapidly turned and offered Rei a strategy.
Ti was continuously rewinding...
But according to every theory—
The past could not be changed.
If it was a past already fixed, then it could never alter.
If his ti could roll back to earlier monts,
Then in theory it could roll back months.
Years.
And he could make different choices.
That would an changing history itself.
Impossible.
Which ant—
There was deception here.
This "ti reset" was absolutely not true temporal rewinding.
That was Ansu’s conclusion.
—
Shhh—
Rei spread out his perception.
Everything felt real.
Utterly real.
There wasn’t even the slightest trace of illusion.
At minimum, it proved this was no mirage.
Tick—
Ti reversed once more.
The spiral entrance was no longer visible.
He had returned to a point before he had even discovered it.
And this ti—
Boom!
Rei exploded forward.
Ignoring the stunned and confused Ansu beside him, he shot straight toward where the spiral entrance should be.
Back then, when he had wandered through the darkness—
He hadn’t been moving at full speed.
And every reset was based on the total duration from this point to reaching the door.
So as long as he moved at maximum speed—
Ti would be more than enough.
He had wandered in darkness for over ten minutes before.
Now—
Within only a few breaths—
He saw the entrance again.
In the blink of an eye, Rei charged straight into it.
Bang!
Into the corridor.
Without wasting even a fraction of a mont, he maintained top speed and closed in on the door.
Instantly he reached striking distance.
But Rei did not touch it directly.
There were no visible restrictions.
No signs of illusion.
Yet every previous ti, the mont he was about to touch it—
The reset had triggered.
So this ti—
He wouldn’t touch it himself.
Instead—
He extended the Core.
Shhh!
The Core touched the door.
[Gate of Closed Ti]
[Creator: Aehkator]
[Beyond the gate lies another manifestation of ti—ti beyond mortal imagination.]
[This place is also a prison that confines ti itself.]
At last—
He knew what this door was.
Rei’s intuition stirred.
And he could sense—
If he failed to open this door,
The next reset would still co.
Originally, intuition had only vaguely warned him he would be reset again.
But...
Level 6 mastery in Mystery Scholar let him pinpoint the source of that intuition.
Understand exactly why he felt it.
He had to admit—
Advancing Mystery Scholar to Level 6 was proving an enormous help.
He didn’t know how far the resets would continue.
Whether they would stop only after rewinding all the way back to the real world.
But when encountering an abnormal phenonon—
The first move was to interrupt the anomaly itself.
And as his strength grew,
Rule-based phenona only seed to grow more frequent.
Tick—
Using the Core to touch it seed safe...
Then next—
Push the door open.
Rei exerted force through the Core!
BOOM!
The Core was himself.
The Core was his own existence.
Skyflow Art — Sixth Form: Absolute Piercing Dragon: Void Nether
One hundred billion souls were sacrificed.
A monstrous force detonated upon the gate.
BANG!
Yet when the blow struck the door—
There was no feedback whatsoever.
The gate didn’t budge.
But under that impact,
Fine pale-gold patterns flowed across its surface.
Rei’s perception swept over the markings.
Another puzzle...
His mind deciphered their aning almost instantly.
The patterns ford a complex language—
A language based on ti.
But Rei had experience solving this kind of enigma.
"The aggregate of ti... here is the prison where forbidden ti is sealed..."
Rei murmured.
It seed...
Opening this door
Would trigger an even greater calamity.
In that instant,
Iz’s face flashed through Rei’s mind.
Iz’s words echoed.
I seem destined to make many mistakes... to commit many evils.
If he truly opened this door here—
Would that correspond to the deeds he would one day commit?
Like Pandora’s Box—
Would opening this gate unleash catastrophic disaster upon the world?
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