Second World Chapter 828. Direction of Time

Chapter 828. Direction of Ti

Jack didn't know how long he walked. Years? Decades? He had been walking in auto mode. Day and night were now alternating between one another at a more rapid pace.

He felt his body getting weaker. He looked at his hand. His hands seed thinner than usual. His skin had wrinkles. It felt like he had seen them for the first ti. Perhaps it didn't register to him all this ti or he just ignored them. He touched his face, there were wrinkles as well. He was getting older.

He looked at the sky which looked to be in a fast-forward mode. Was my body affected by the increased ti flow as well?

There were more hills and dead trees. The land seed like a chaotic ss. A far cry from what it was near the cliff wall where he started. He could hardly rember that ti anymore. It seed like ages ago.

How was everyone doing?

He tried to rember his friends' nas. Nothing ca into mind. Did he forget them? Did they forget him?

His legs finally felt like they couldn't move anymore. He fell to the ground. He turned around and laid on his back, looking up at the sky that was exchanging rapidly. Sun, moon, repeat.

Was this the end?

He rembered when he talked with a woman, her na also eluded him, that players could still die a real death. Death by old age. He was old now.

He admitted that this was a completely unexpected way to die. Alone. On an alien land that he didn't even sure where.

He decided this was the end of his journey. He was done walking. There seed to be no end to this journey. His body also didn't seem to agree with continuing the walk anymore.

Now all he could do was just contemplate all this. He was done thinking about how to clear this trial or find a way out. He was past that now. He didn't even feel regret to have decided to take the trial that caused all this. He didn't feel the unwillingness due to still having many things that he should have done and planned to do. He didn't feel the fear of dying a useless and lonely death. He might feel all that during his journey, but now that he was lying down here. Spent. Those seed unimportant.

All he had now was just his curiosity. What's the deal with all this? What exactly was the point?

Jack closed his eyes.

All he could think about this place now was its distortion of ti. Ti appeared to completely stop where he left Peniel and Majus. As he went on his journey, ti seed to start flowing. As he moved forward, its speed picked up.

There were tis when he had considered turning back. To where Peniel and Majus had been frozen in ti. Though it won't solve anything, at least he won't die alone. He would have died accompanied by two statues.

Now that he thought about it, why didn't he?

He thought back to those tis. He felt compelled to go forward. There was no return. No going back. All he had to do was move forward. Like ti. Ti was one direction. You could only go forward, not backward. You could only go to the future, not the past. You could rember the past, not the future. You could influence the future, but not the past. Ti in its actuality, was irreversible. It went consistently in one direction, as if an arrow.

Disorders and complexities also escalated in relation to ti. This was expressed by the landscapes he had passed through. It was neat and empty at the start of his journey. As he journeyed further, the landscapes got more uneven with various trees in a chaotic arrangent. As ti passed, a building without maintenance would fall apart by itself. It would not happen the other way around, the building would not repair itself with ti. So did the human body. Just as how age was breaking his body down now with the passage of ti. This was irreversible.

It's the sa with complexities. A story in its infancy was most simple. As ti passed, more plots were added, more characters were included, and more rules were incorporated. The story would beco more complex as ti passed. So complex that it was easy for the author to make mistakes and inconsistencies. Hence, andnts and retcons were sotis implented, which in turn, enhanced the complexities even more. The sa thing happened with society, knowledge, technology, etc. They beca more complex as ti passed. This was irreversible.

So, ti, in reality, was irreversible. There was no do-over. There was no loading previous save file. There was no replaying new ga plus.

Wait... But he was not in the reality. He was in a world that had its entire underlying laws rewritten based on a ga system.

"Hm...?" He felt sothing. He sensed sothing. Sothing that he had not sensed for a very, very long ti. Mana. Freewebnᴏvel.cᴏm.

He opened his eyes. Tendrils of light filled his sight. It was... mana. He saw it visually. The tendrils of mana ford a river of light, flowing in one direction.

He didn't know how he knew it, but he was certain that this mana river represented the ti that existed within this place.

He extended his frail hand up, trying to touch those tendrils of light. He felt too weak to do his out-of-body experience. After a struggle, his finger finally brushed one of these light tendrils.

His thought was connected to the river from that touch. His consciousness was pulled out of his body into the stream. His understanding was further reinforced after connecting with the mana that governed ti.

He felt his consciousness join this river. He rged with it. Flowed with it. He perceived ti in its most basic essence. Indefinite enlightennt washed over him. He felt sohow transcended.

In this transcended state, he sensed a certain power influencing this ti stream. The stream seed to be constructed of imasurable parts that ford the whole, like gears on a machine. Each part was essential. One alteration might cause a ripple effect on the whole system.

He reached to one of these parts. Like a gear, he shifted it. Rotated it.

The whole system started to vibrate. They tried to adjust to the change. The mana river slowed until it eventually grounded to a halt. Then slowly, the river flowed backward.

Within the river, Jack saw an astonishing sight. He saw his frail body getting up. His body then walked, backward. The scene didn't look right. It looked as if a movie was being played in reverse. He watched his body walking backward.

It was like watching a replay of his journey. He was in a true auto mode this ti, he couldn't influence any change to it. He was just a spectator.

Days passed, months passed, years passed, even decades, as he watched his body walking backward through the path he had walked before. The stream followed exactly where he had walked through. Or perhaps it's the other way around? Unconsciously, he had been walking following the stream all those years.

Eventually, he saw the cliff wall from where he had started his journey. He saw the stream entering the cave from where he had co out from.

He followed the stream as his body reentered the cave, all the way up to the hall where Peniel and Majus were still in their statue-like state. He watched himself walking around the room, on a backward track from what he did. It ended with him back in front of Majus. The ti stream began from where he stood at that ti.

He felt himself flowing with the stream and re-entered his body.

"!lairt eht semoc ereH. yawyna ,lleW" Jack heard Majus utter as he stood before the illusory mage.

Majus' eyes then blinked. He looked at Jack as if he had just seen Jack for the first ti.

"You did it...," he said.

At the sa ti, Jack heard a notification, "Congratulations on passing the special class trial. Your Archmage class has been upgraded to a special class, Ti Sage."

Jack was blank for quite so while. When he reentered his body, he felt as if he had just been awoken from a dream. As if all the decades of the journey he had taken were just an illusion. A long dream, but a dream, nevertheless. He felt that he had gone through all that, but at the sa ti, it was just a second ago when he started his trial. He couldn't exactly describe how he was feeling at that mont.

"What do you an he did it?" Peniel, who was floating beside Jack, asked Majus. "What trial? How is it completed already?"

She turned to Jack who was still having a blank face. "Hey, did sothing happen?" She asked.

Instead of answering Peniel, Jack asked Majus, "This... The trial..."

Majus gave him a sign to calm down. "It's rather disorienting, I understand. To be honest, I didn't have much confidence in you passing, considering your low level. I'm just glad despite your low level, you actually have already learned the basics of how to manipulate mana. Well done, young man."

"But... Why... Why couldn't I... sense the mana right from the start?" Jack stamred. His mind was still trying to adjust.

"Because you need to understand ti before you can sense it, before you can beco its master," Majus answered.

"Its master?" Jack asked.

"You are now a Ti Sage. A mage who holds dominion over the most enigmatic elent, ti," Majus said.

"Ti Sage? One of the Council of Twenty-four?" Peniel uttered with wide eyes.