Chapter 679 - Backdoor access

Sofia turned the page, and to say the least, what she read there was not what she had expected.

‘According to all known laws of magic, there is no way that time magic should be able to fail.

What I mean is, the god-damned spells are correct!

The patterns are good, the flow is good, the activation is good, triggers, morphing and cohesion– ALL GOOD!

And yet!

IT.

DOESNT.

FUCKING.

WORK.

This is driving me crazy!

It’s like reality itself decided that, no, in fact, this in particular wasn’t allowed, when every other type of stupid magic you can think of from teleportation to ex-nihilo matter creation works just fine!

Time magic would unlock so many possibilities! I might even be able to understand what happened to earth! But no. I’m stuck here, still, always. At the other end of the fucking universe.

Infuriating.

Even if I looked in the correct direction the light from the earth’s formation probably wouldn’t have reached this accursed hellhole yet!

I get to see further out from here, at least, and it all just keeps going. I suppose that gives the infinite universe theory some merit…’

Those were the contents of the first two pages after the title, the hand-written meltdown of someone who’s handwriting Sofia was starting to get familiar with.

Jin’s diary about his research on time magic?

Why would he hide this here?

“Was this easy to get?” Sofia asked Pestle.

“Hmmm… No,” she answered, shaking her tiny skull left to right, “Only Pesle can get. Or other fae.”

“So this was here for nobody to find, huh? Well it certainly fell in good hands now. Good job retrieving it, Pestle.”

“If good, give leg!”

“Sure, will do, as soon as we’re out of here.”

Sofia looked back down at the diary.

This is interesting information. Poor man, he wasn’t even wrong, I guess, time magic not working when time is… Yeah, sounds correct…

Earth… So this is confirmation that he was from Alith’s world, though that was pretty obvious. But we’re at the other end of the universe? The other end compared to what? Does that mean he really just left to go check on his old world?

Orator called it a fruitless dance, I think? A past long lost?

Maybe he couldn’t see his world because it’s gone already? That would make sense considering the kind of weapons they seemed to have. Everelle seemed pretty certain that her paperclip thing could destroy it at least.

Whatever the case, it looks like he really was not happy being stuck here. No wonder he ended up leaving.

And well, I can imagine. Alith’s family was already gone but… If let’s say, I were to get suddenly summoned to another world right now… No matter how good it could be there, I would definitely come back to Veliadren if I can. It’s not even a question.

Lastly, infinite universe theory… As opposed to what, finite universe? Like we live in a bubble? What’s on the other side then? Even if the answer is nothing isn’t nothing just more universe, so it’s still infinite? From what I’ve seen… It sure didn’t look like there were limits. Maybe I can ask Auntie Ormoncleth if I ever get to talk to her again.

I don’t know what I would want the answer to be. Finite would feel a bit sad and hmm claustrophobic was the word I think. Meanwhile infinite is scary in a different way…

Are there more pages?

Sofia turned the page, and there indeed was more, in a purple ink instead of black, that time, but wihtout a doubt still from jin.

‘I see I am still terrible at keeping personal diaries. What a waste of paper.

I suppose I should still pen down my new findings, just in case someone ever reads this hoping to find something useful.

Me and… Well, not me actually, my friend has acquired a spell capable of simulating reality.

It took quite a bit of effort from everyone involved to make it work, but we did. It works pretty much like the real world, except it is nothing but a big simulation of mana, like a video-game basically. The VRMMO we all dreamed of back in the day, just a bit more expensive to run that we thought. Only needed a totally unknown source of energy to work…

And the wild part about all of this is: Time magic works. It works in the fake worlds.

I still don’t get why exactly.

It’s kind of like… As if the fake world was such a perfect simulation, that everything just works. While the real world, the genuine universe we all live in… It’s old and scarred, and some things that should work just no longer do.

And it’s not just time magic.

The ‘gods’ of this world…  Their magic works aside from everything else. It’s strange. It’s just  a pet theory of mine, but I think they are like the failure of time magic. The result of a such a scar. I don’t see how else, nothing about them makes any sense otherwise. Even asking them directly, they cannot explain, they do not understand their own existence any more than we do.

But I digress. If you hoped to find time magic within these pages, sorry, but i’ve tried everything, it’s just impossible.’

Sofia scratched her head reading through Jin’s ramblings.

There are bunch of words I don’t understand in there… But he found the toybox and time magic works here. I mean… Isn’t the entire point of the toybox to be able to make and play around with things, even ones that do not actually exist? It’s a toy box, that’s in the name.

His guess about why the magic fails is basically fully correct, in a way. Just that he obviously could not know about the true reason. The human admin truly had a good instinct to understand that. But his comments about gods… This was clearly written after he met Anna, maybe even after the system was created. He doesn’t elaborate much but it’s an interesting idea…

Wouldn’t that mean, though, that there is another dead lord?

What if… There were two lords, Time and another.

If Time’s death created two more lords… I’m pretty sure those are Orator and Aphenoreth. They look the same, after all. It’s possible that Edrazeketh and Ormoncleth are the split parts of another Lord, isn’t it?

So Time killed the other, then Edrazeketh killed Time, as revenge, maybe?

What kind of a ‘scar’ would give birth to the gods, though. Concept? They are all tied to one… I don’t know…

Sofia half expected Orator’s pretentious voice to come out of the books’s pages, but there was only the soft rattling of Pestle’s bones as she ran around the white void space they were stuck in. She turned the page.

‘After some reflection, it is a bit of a waste for all these spells to go to waste, even if they are useless as is, perhaps something can yet be learned from them?

Or perhaps I am reluctant to erase thirty years of work just because the final result was different from what I hoped.

I’ll just jot down a few time spells at the end of this diary for posterity.’

OH?!

Sofia flipped the book, opening it from the last page, only to find that the last few pages had all been torn off.

Got my hopes up for nothing.

Turning the diary back to the previous pages, Sofia read the next entry.

‘Anna isn’t usually a fan of destroying knowledge, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she told me she was actually the goddess of books, but she requested that I destroy all the records of my time spell research.

She doesn’t want it to interfere with the trial we are painstakingly setting up for the future generations. I have to agree with her… I did not feel like destroying the entire diary… Mostly because of my doodles in the middle pages, truthfully, but whatever the case, I just ripped off the spell schematics and that’s that.

For anyone reading this, if you hoped to find time magic in here to cheat in your trials, sorry but it is what it is. Even if we urgently need more mana for the core, we cannot let just anyone attain power. There are more than enough problematic people among the ascended already. Climb by your own strength!

Note: since next page is page 13, I’ll leave it empty. I always found this kind of thing ridiculous, but if someone else from earth reads this, at least maybe the idea by itself made you smirk. Oh how naive we were, as a civilization, debating over the existence of gods, when being far scarier have lurked in planes unknown since the beginning of times.’

The last paragraph made Sofia raise an eyebrow, not only because she failed to understand what leaving the thirteenth page empty meant, but also because she could somewhat see through the paper that the next page was not blank at all.

Flipping the page answered part of her question.

‘Just kidding, if you were born human, you should be able to read this page just fine. Anna would probably be able to read it too but she’s a special case, and she wouldn’t look into my things without my permission, so we’re safe.

Anyway, I left a special vocal command in the system, so one fellow human can ‘cheat’, kind of. 

Is this blatant favoritism? Yeah. Who can blame me, though? Ascended humans can be counted on one hand as I write these lines, our poor race can certainly use the help.

I won’t make things too easy for you, but I left a little present hidden in the system’s code, and the command will give it to you. You can even use it during a trial, it’s fine, but it’s a one time thing so if it doesn’t work, unlucky, someone else found it first.

All you have to do is, with a loud and clear voice, say: I was born with a golden spoon, fork the present or get the knife!’

Sofia quickly read through the page. Can spectators still see me now?

Certainly there were humans watching, if so. Hence Sofia wasted no time.

“I was born with a golden spoon, fork the present or get the knife!”

The skeletons looked at Sofia like she had said something weird, which she had, but she did not mind in the slightest.

[EXECUTION SUCCESSFUL]

[RUNNING FUNCTION - ‘THE CAKE IS NOT A LIE’]

[YOU HAVE RECEIVED: STRAWBERRY CREAM CAKE*1]

[YOU HAVE RECEIVED: TIMELY GOLDEN CUTLERY SET*1]

[YOU HAVE RECEIVED: HUMAN RACIAL SKILL TICKET*1]

[THIS FUNCTION WILL NOW SELF DESTRUCT, CAKES CAN ONLY BE EATEN ONCE]