"That's right, just like that." Cyrene's voice held approval as she patiently guided the little creature whose color scheme resembled her own. "As I wrote, only the Coreflame of 'Time' can summon this book."
"And the so-called authority of 'Time' is essentially about salvaging sunken pasts, bringing truths buried by time back into the world..."
Stelle watched this scene, a twinge of guilt rising within her—she, the nominal demigod of 'Time,' actually had to rely on a pet to wield the authority, and even needed someone else to teach it. It felt somewhat derelict.
"Mimi! gateway to the past... open!" Guided by Cyrene, Mem quickly grasped the essentials. A gateway constructed from flowing time slowly unfolded before the three of them.
Its learning speed was astonishingly fast, as if this knowledge had long been deeply embedded in its memory, and was now merely being reawakened.
"Well done, you learn so quickly." Cyrene gazed at the gateway to the past before them, a complex look flashing in her eyes. "Now, we can finally investigate and see exactly why Nikador became what he is now."
"Is this the gateway to the past?" Castorice observed the door emitting temporal waves with curiosity. "Let's go, Lady Stelle. Together, let's uncover Nikador's secret."
...
When the three stepped into the gateway to the past, they were instantly swept into a dazzling, flowing river composed of countless memory fragments.
They traveled upstream along the trajectory of time, finally settling on a moment not long after the Kremnos clan abandoned the completion of the ritual.
"This is... the Nikador of the past?" Standing on the bank of the 'River of Time,' Castorice, along with the others, watched through the floating memory fragments at the figure battling desperately against countless Black Tide spawn at the heart of Castrum Kremnos.
"Because the time span we need to investigate this time is too long—to view the entire era of Nikador standing alone in Castrum Kremnos," Cyrene explained. "We've chosen this method: observing this segment of history from a safe distance along the River of Time."
As Cyrene waved her hand, the scenes within the fragments began to flow rapidly. The group witnessed, as if watching an epic film on fast-forward, the entire process of Nikador's unceasing struggle against the Black Tide across the long years.
"Nikador... it truly fought the Black Tide until the very last moment." Castorice's tone held genuine admiration.
"Pay attention," Cyrene suddenly warned. "If my guess is correct, the anomaly is about to appear."
"Mi... Mimi!" Mem waved its little hands, causing the playback speed of the image to slow down abruptly.
At that very moment, a man with hair white streaked with amber-orange suddenly appeared in the scene.
He appeared abruptly before the exhausted and dying Nikador, as if he had been standing there all along. The man looked down upon the 'Strife' Titan, on the verge of death from the Black Tide's encroachment, and spoke in an utterly emotionless, icy tone:
"Tell me, Titan. Do you still wish to keep resisting? If so, then persist in your existence... For only by ensuring your continued existence can you continue to choose to resist."
Even through the barrier of 'Time,' the man's voice was somewhat distorted, but the power in his words was undiminished.
As his words fell, a light all too familiar to Stelle ignited upon Nikador's body—precisely the same eerie regenerative ability they had witnessed on the battlefield.
"So this is the source of Nikador's abnormal state? He's too far away, a bit hard to see clearly. Can we zoom in more?"
Castorice squinted, trying hard to make out the man's appearance. She noticed the man's clothing was very peculiar—less like garments and more like large amounts of cloth strips wrapped around his body. At most... one could compliment him on the neatness of the wrappings.
Mem made a sweeping motion with its little hand, and the view within the River of Time rapidly zoomed in. Just as they were about to clearly see the man's face, the man, who should have been completely unable to perceive their presence, suddenly let out a soft sound of surprise—
He actually began to turn his head!
"Mi!" Mem cried out in alarm. The memory fragment before them suddenly began to shatter into pieces from the edges.
Even more shocking was that dark green "0"s and "1"s surfaced within those cracks, spreading rapidly like some sort of digital virus!
The man's power was invading the River of 'Time' in reverse!
When the man had fully turned around, the remaining fragments could only barely reflect a pair of eyes, azure blue with a hint of deep amber. The moment she met those eyes, Cyrene jolted violently—
Even though she had only seen those eyes, a dull *thud* seemed to resonate beside her ears, shaking the very depths of her soul!
Mem frantically waved its little hands. It swiftly mobilized the 'Time' authority it had just mastered, and like a fisherman hauling in a net, it abruptly "fished" Stelle, Cyrene, and Castorice out of the surging, torrential River of Time.
The moment they disengaged, the invading force originating from the mysterious man, seemingly sensing their retreat, surprisingly stopped its pursuit.
The dark green data streams dissipated from the temporal fissures like a receding tide, ceasing any further erosion or interference with the River of Time, as if its goal had merely been to expel these "peeping toms."
Safely landing back on the solid ground of reality, Stelle's gaze remained fixed on the now-closed temporal passageway. The final image replayed in her mind—that single remaining eye in the fragment, azure with a sediment of deep amber. A powerful sense of déjà vu clung to her.
"Why do I feel like I've seen these eyes somewhere before..." she muttered to herself, desperately searching her memory banks for a matching image, but the answer remained elusive, blurred and hard to grasp as if veiled.
Only after confirming they had fully returned to their own timeline did Mem finally let out a long sigh of relief. Its small form relaxed, slumping softly against Stelle's shoulder.
"Whew... Partner, that was, too dangerous." It said, its voice still carrying a slight tremor, a lingering fear from the experience.
After this sudden fright, it seemed some latent potential had been stimulated. Even its language ability had taken a small step forward, now capable of expressing simple phrases. "Luckily, Mem, reacted fast..."
Stelle gently stroked Mem in reassurance, while also casting a somewhat helpless look at Cyrene and Castorice:
"What was that just now? I always thought that as observers within the River of 'Time,' we should be absolutely safe. Being directly detected in reverse and even having power to track us back... is that normal?"