Although on a cliff, the cabin was warm with table lamps illuminating its interior. There were all sorts of lamps with varying colors, so of them even shaped as crying faces. As Robert saw Arthur staring at them, he chuckled before throwing so clothes over them.
"A man picks up the oddest habits on his travels, but fate wanted to love lamps, because all my wives loved them," said the middle-aged man as he navigated between the furniture while gesturing for Arthur to follow. "Please consider this as your ho."
"You are very kind, sir," said Arthur, making Robert trip over sothing and fall down. As he hurried to help him stand, Robert found himself waving his hand frantically, his face flushed.
"Don't call sir, my king. Your status is far above mine," said the old man as he cleaned up the scattered seeds on the ground, shoveling them with his hand. Arthur raised a finger, and the seeds all flew back into the bag on their own. Robert stared with an awestruck expression.
"You are older than and you have helped more than once," said Arthur as he offered a hand to help him stand. "Calling you sir would not undermine my dignity at all, but rely show you the respect that you earned."
Robert stared at him while rising from the ground. Arthur smiled as he pointed toward the table and asked to sit down. The scholar nodded three tis, as if scared one would not be enough, before the two sat opposite to each other.
"This is the tea I have brewed for the past few days; please have a sip," said Robert as he took the teapot, whirled it a little, and poured it into the cup. Arthur took the cup with both hands before sipping, exclaiming at the fragrance and taste.
"Even though I cannot taste a thing, the fragrance and mories make this tea one of the best I have tasted," said Arthur, putting down the cup. "However, we have more important matters to attend to, like the past."
"Or the future," said Robert with a smile as he poured himself a cup as well and sat down. "We have a lot to talk about, Seika. It took a while to understand what happened after you visited in Livia."
"You rember the alternate tiline that clearly?" asked Arthur with confusion, as the man did not have a lot of spiritual energy at the ti. "How is that possible?"
"The criteria to rember the past is spiritual energy, right?" asked Robert with a smile as he sipped on his tea. "As you can see, I don't have much of that. I use other ans to awaken those mories, recalling bits. My first mory after I awakened in the alternate tiline was the One-Ard Man visiting in another world."
"That is rather specific," said Arthur with surprise. "What are the chances?"
"A hundred percent, if I may state with certainty," said Robert with a smile. "I discovered that those in the presence of great amounts of spiritual energy would rember those monts the clearest."
"And how did that help you in building this cabin?" asked Arthur as he looked around. "I can tell that this wood is no ordinary wood, and this soil does not belong to this realm. You have built a spatial vessel, have you not?"
"As expected of the Returning King," said Robert with a smile. "I have indeed, and made sure to travel to Alka back and forth to understand what happened. The history I found there differed from the one I knew, and then I found soone who knows you more than I do."
"An ally, hopefully?" asked Arthur with a slight smile as he looked around.
"Her title was the Knight of Courage," said Robert, forcing Arthur to freeze. Then, he turned toward him with surprise. "She rembers everything about you two. But as you know, Alka has a different tiline than ours."
"Everything that gets transported between the two worlds has a ti gap between them," said Arthur with a nod. "I don't know the exact extent of the gap or how it works."
"I studied all of that so that you wouldn't need to," said Robert as he placed down his cup and bowed slightly. "This knowledge is yours to use."
"I appreciate that gesture, but why have you spent your life studying sothing that brings you no benefit?"
"So that no one suffers the sa fate as I have," said Robert with a sigh. "I have been thrown into the past and a different world, away from my family. Instead of living my new life as it is, I kept thinking about those who must be suffering as I did."
"Did the rge of tilines transport you back to Earth?" asked Arthur, confused. The man nodded. "Ti is a mysterious thing. I will accept your reasons, Robert. Please share your knowledge with ."
"With pleasure, my king," said Robert, excitedly jumping from the chair and pulling a whiteboard from sowhere. "This board sums up the knowledge I have obtained, and I call it 'Studies of Ti!'"
"I feel like I'm in class again," laughed Arthur, nodding. "I will be a good student as you explain the knowledge you have uncovered."
"Then, let's begin!" said Robert, wearing his reading glasses before turning toward the whiteboard. "We start at this point, where the world was divided into two!" Robert then began explaining. In essence, he explained the following:
For so unknown reason to him and through an unknown chanism, the world was split into two. This was labeled the split on the whiteboard, dividing the world and tilines into two. Robert explained that the two worlds existed in the sa universe but in different realms!
The tower was in a higher realm, so ti flowed slower here. A day here would be an hour on Earth, which was in a lower realm. The reason that ti flowed slower on Earth than on Alka, making it ahead of that world, was because Alka entered a sub-realm of the main, right above Earth!
This made ti flow differently in the two worlds. Robert was beginning to look insane as he studied the exact difference. Arthur did not understand most of the equations, but the end result was written in bold:
[1 day on Alka = 0.0416666666666666666 day on Earth!]
This ant that if 23 hours passed on Alka, an entire day would pass on Earth! This resulted in the ti gap, which has accumulated each day since the split until now. Every day that passed resulted in Earth becoming one hour ahead of Alka.
Furthermore, Robert calculated the ti gap between the two worlds down to the exact second. In a rough estimate, it was about 150 years.
Arthur sat there with amazent as he watched the man pour his heart out, everything he worked on, and sotis ntioning that it took him years to find a single result!
This was not even the end of it, as Robert calculated how much ti has passed since the split of the two worlds. Since he knew the difference for the total ti passed and the difference in a single day, he calculated that the split happened three thousand years ago!
"Three thousand years ago, this event divided the world into two, a smaller Alka and a bigger Earth, sending Alka to a higher realm than Earth. I believe that was intentional, as Earth was safer compared to Alka for that reason. Mana becos less abundant as you are in a lower realm."
"Robert… this is amazing," muttered Arthur sincerely. "You uncovered a mystery that the entire world could not figure out. Even as we go to Alka now and send people to the other side, no one realized it was a different tiline!"
"I did not realize it as well, but I had the mories from the other world," said Robert as he slumped in his chair, a satisfied smile appearing on his sweaty face. He took off his glasses and stared at them with his green eyes. "In a way, you gave the opportunity to understand sothing about this world that no one else could!"
"Your hard work had the bigger part in that," said Arthur, admiringly. "I could never have uncovered this alone, let alone do all those calculations. There is one more thing I don't understand. Why do things travel in ti as well as space when they pass between the two worlds? This tower is a higher realm, and we would return to the exact sa mont that passed over there. Why is there a difference between the two worlds?"
"When soone descends to a lower realm, they notice that less ti has passed there, but we consider that as ti travel. If a man leaves this tower and lives a hundred years on Earth, he would find that only five years have passed inside this tower."
"You solved every question I had about temporal fissures, Robert," said Arthur, awestruck, as he stared at the whiteboard. "However, there is one more thing I ca here to learn about."
"I know what that thing is," said Robert, smiling. "You want to know what happened to the Princess of Ice and Fire."
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