Vados hadn't even finished speaking when Champa—who had supposedly just gone to sleep—poked his head back out from a corner. He pushed his fat face forward, asking with a look of genuine curiosity, "Who is Aeos? Do I know her?"
Vados rolled her eyes. Seeing that Ino remained expressionless and clearly had no intention of stepping up to explain, she had no choice but to answer herself.
"Lord Champa, you definitely didn't read the book I gave you back then, did you? To think you could ask such an ignorant question... Sigh. This kind of behavior from you really makes it hard for me to hold my head high among my siblings."
Champa was long accustomed to this level of sarcasm from her. His brain automatically filtered out the trash talk as he cut straight to the point.
"You made me read so many books. Which one, specifically?"
"The one I gave you 150,490 years ago, on July 10th at exactly 3:05 PM. It chronicled most of Lady Aeos's experiences. The very next morning, you told me you had already finished reading the entire book."
Champa sat cross-legged on the ground and counted on his fingers for a while. The more he calculated, the more confused he got, until he completely forgot who Aeos even was.
Vados let out a soft sigh. Her Destroyer was simply far too embarrassing!
In the past, she had been quite a proud and arrogant figure among the Angels. Now? Whenever her siblings gathered together, she was too embarrassed to even speak, often forced to pretend she was completely invisible.
Why was Whis always smiling so brightly every day? Sure, Beerus was despised by everyone and their dog too. If you yelled 'Beerus is here!' on the street, four or five Destroyers would instantly jump out to beat him up. His popularity was horrifyingly bad. But at least he could fight!
And Champa? He had a mountain of awful habits. He was stupid, cowardly, and most importantly—he was fat!
Ino didn't quite understand the "marry a man to get fed and clothed" kind of codependent link between an Angel and their Destroyer. However, she could distinctly feel the Angel sister's bellyful of grievances. Not wanting to get tangled up in this issue, she hastily steered the conversation back on track.
"Big Sister, where do you think the gap lies between me and those two Supreme Kais?"
Vados coughed once and thought for a moment. "It should be your respective levels of mastery over time. Those two have dabbled in it for countless millennia, whereas you have only just set out on this path."
"Since you intend to wield the power of time, you must first know what time truly is. Whis has specifically trained in your Path of Time; I, on the other hand, am actually more skilled in space. I can only give you a general overview. The specifics will be up to you to comprehend on your own..."
Knowing that the lesson had officially begun, Ino focused her attention and listened closely.
Vados waved her hand, her staff tracing out an obscure incantation in the air. Soon, amidst a profoundly hazy mist, a miniature universe gradually materialized before them.
"Time exists objectively; it is one of the cornerstones of the universe. Since you've been to the Time Nest, you should know the architecture of our entire multiverse."
Ino nodded to indicate she understood. "You're talking about the network of connections between the universes, right? Even though I couldn't see it perfectly clearly, I did see it."
She had indeed observed the twelve cloud-like universes from a macroscopic perspective at the Time Nest. However, she wasn't certain if they were 'universes' in the way she currently understood the concept. Because they were simply too massive, they were incredibly difficult to describe. She suspected that what she had seen—what she could see—was merely the tip of the iceberg.
Vados nodded in praise. "Very good. Since you have some awareness of this, it makes my explanation much easier. Our twelve universes all co-exist dependently upon one another. If you truly wish to understand time and grasp this concept, we need to start from the origin of the universe..."
She then began to recount her own understanding of time.
Finding it all horribly boring, Champa went back to his room to sleep.
Time passed quickly. Vados had repeatedly claimed that she wasn't adept at the Path of Time, yet once she started talking, she didn't stop for twelve straight days.
On the thirteenth day, Ino's figure suddenly became indistinct. She seemed to meld with the mist before her, hovering in a state between existence and non-existence.
Wearing oversized pajamas, Champa was brushing his teeth not too far away. Seeing her bizarre state, he couldn't help but steal a few extra glances.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
A head full of question marks, he had no idea what Ino was doing. He turned his large face toward Vados, seemingly wanting his Angel attendant to explain.
Vados didn't have the slightest intention of explaining it to him. With a flick of her wrist, the magic orb at the head of her staff began to emit a steady, pale golden glow in sync with the rhythm of Ino's breathing.
Half an hour later, Ino opened her eyes. She rubbed her forehead vigorously. Frequently traversing the timeline had caused her spiritual world to boil like a kettle of hot water.
She had gone to the origin point of time, and then visited roughly a third of the end of time. Within this half hour, she had passed through over eighty thousand unique time nodes and more than three hundred million ordinary time nodes.
She had even witnessed the scene of the universe's birth. Even though she had only glimpsed it for a tenth of a second, her entire realm of understanding had still undergone a qualitative leap.
It was fortunate that Vados had been acting as an anchor this whole time. Otherwise, forcefully attempting to view the entirety of the timeline like that would have easily resulted in her getting completely lost within it—and that would be getting off lightly.
"What did you see? Come, describe it," Vados asked, her tone holding one part curiosity and nine parts examination.
"Alright," Ino said.
She reached out her hand, taking the miniature universe Vados had previously simulated with magic and reconstructing it.
The world seen through the eyes of an insect and the world seen through human eyes were, in truth, fundamentally different.
Were insects wrong and humans right? From different angles and different levels of existence, the things one perceived were never the same.
The multiverses that Ino now understood were somewhat different from the miniature universe Vados had constructed earlier using magic.
She was interpreting it from the perspective of time. In her eyes, this universe should be completely devoid of color. The twelve multiverses didn't look identical either; some were large, some were small, rather than being as uniformly neat and identical as the ones Vados had built.
The magic orb on Vados's staff stopped glowing. She asked gently, "Do you see the gap between you and those two Supreme Kais now? Those two are existences capable of traveling instantly between the beginning and the end of time."
"I see it."
"Do you have the confidence to catch up?"
"I think I can," Ino replied with absolute certainty.
"Very well. Considering that Lord Supreme Kai frequently gifts me with delicious food, I suppose I can give you a pointer or two," Vados said very formally. Then she added, "I must say, coming to seek me out instead of Whis shows that you have an excellent eye."
Ino coughed twice. The food was just an excuse. She figured that the main reason the Angel sister was willing to teach her was simply because Ino hadn't gone to Whis—which was essentially acknowledging that Vados was stronger than him...
She rubbed her palms together eagerly. "Alright, here I come!"
Champa, his mouth still full of toothpaste foam, looked stunned at first. It took him several seconds to realize what she meant. "You're going to fight Vados?"
"Not a fight. It's training."
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