After wandering around for a while, the young man and the girl exchanged names and helped a girl who had accidentally gotten lost, gaining the assistance of the key NPC, the apple stand owner, and learning that the blonde girl who had stolen the half-elf girl's important item was Felt from the slums.
However, Caelus, who was watching from the sidelines, noted that the girl definitely had not given her real name.
Upon receiving this information, the two were very happy and hurried toward the slums. As dusk approached, although they did not know the exact location, they eventually managed to find Felt through some means, a place known as Old Man Rom's loot house.
Upon arriving at the location, because the atmosphere was too quiet and it had already become completely dark, the young man decided to take the lead.
After the young man pushed open the door of the old warehouse, the first thing he smelled was a very unsettling odor. It seemed to be the smell of fresh blood.
The lantern in his hand provided light for the dim room, allowing him to see what kind of scene was inside. But when he saw the situation in the room, his entire body instantly froze in place, and the lantern in his hand fell straight to the ground.
He saw two corpses.
One was the corpse of a sturdy, tall, middle-aged man, and the other was the corpse of the blonde girl who had stolen the half-elf girl's important item during the day.
Suddenly seeing human corpses, the young man, who might have once lived in a peaceful era, was completely stunned. The pungent smell of blood also made his face turn extremely pale. Just then, the sound of someone falling came from behind him.
He turned his head to look and discovered that the beautiful girl who had been chatting and laughing with him not long ago, and who had made his heart flutter, the one who should have been keeping watch outside, was now also lying on the ground. There was a huge wound on her abdomen, from which blood was constantly flowing out, and one could even see her internal organs.
The immense mental shock caused the young man to almost collapse. When his mouth opened wide and he could not help but scream, he only felt a gust of wind blow past. Then, his whole body felt as if it had lost all strength, and he slumped to the ground. A few seconds later, intense pain came from his stomach, causing his tears, snot, and saliva to flow out uncontrollably.
Only then did he realize that he, too, had been disemboweled, and it seemed his intestines were spilling out as well.
Caelus, watching the two people he had identified as the male and female leads die so quickly, had a slightly bewildered expression. Wasn't this story development a bit wrong?
Just as Caelus was thinking about whether to intervene slightly and save these two, he suddenly felt that everything around him had frozen. A large amount of black smoke began to dissipate from nowhere, and whispers emanated from the black mist, though it was impossible to discern what they meant.
"Time?"
Caelus sensed the power of time, followed by a sensation of being pulled and pushed back. It was not that someone was controlling his body, but that the world itself was rewinding everything.
As the black mist dissipated, and the unknown whispering in his ears stopped, Caelus saw the sun in the sky once again and heard the sound of carriages running and merchants hawking their wares once again.
Time had reversed.
Caelus thought calmly for a moment, then his figure vanished in an instant, appearing behind Natsuki Subaru, who was still standing in front of an apple stall, unable to recover from his previous death.
Before Subaru could react, he lost his life once again, though he died peacefully. The functioning of his heart and brain ceased in an instant.
In the instant after Subaru died, Caelus felt time freeze once again. Then the whispering started, a massive black mist surged forth again, and the world's overall time was reversed once more.
He had observed world-scale time reversal at close range once again.
As the familiar scene played out, Caelus did not kill Subaru again. Instead, he crouched down, grabbed a handful of sand, and let it blow away with the breeze.
Once that small patch of sand had blown away, Caelus looked at the small spot from which he had scooped the sand.
A simple, hourglass-like mark suddenly appeared in Caelus's dull golden eyes, and an invisible force spread out. Then, the sand that had flown away with the breeze seemed to be carried by an invisible wind, returning to where it originally belonged.
The power of The Finality over time.
The power of The Finality that Caelus possessed stemmed from the idea that all things would eventually return to one. It could classify the essence of different things as that eternal one, thereby allowing for arbitrary manipulation and interference, for instance, turning inorganic matter into organic matter, organic matter into inorganic matter, the living into the dead, and the dead into the living.
Because all things originated from that eternal one, the myriad things that split off from that eternal one could naturally be transformed and interfered with at will.
Therefore, this "End" was not that "End."
But now, having directly observed two world-scale time reversal phenomena, Caelus had faintly grasped that power of time reversal from The Finality.
Although it was still very weak and somewhat difficult to control, it had already broken through from zero to one.
"As expected, transmigrators in various novels are bound to carry some kind of cheat. Even for those protagonists without cheats, they are either exceptionally talented individuals in all aspects or possess incredibly good luck."
"And the special ability possessed by the protagonist of this stage of fate is 'Return by Death.' As long as he dies, the world's overall time can be reversed to a certain point. Judging by the intense shock he displayed earlier, it seems he retains his complete memories."
"This ability would be particularly useful for gathering information. Furthermore, after the world's overall time reverses, any injuries he sustained disappear, meaning his physical body also undergoes reversal, while his memories are retained. But what about his soul? If his soul state can be preserved, and I were to teach him the incomplete Third Magic, allowing him to grow stronger through repeated cycles of reincarnation, does that mean that one day, he will attain the eternity of an immortal soul within the cycle?"
Of course, this was ultimately just a conjecture. The fear of death that one must face in repeated cycles of death was too much of a trial for the mind. If one became numb later on, that person's memories, psyche, and other aspects would also suffer wear and tear. If this continued, sooner or later, they would lose themselves in the endless cycle and become a madman.
"I owe him a favor."
Regardless, Caelus's newly acquired power of time came from that transmigrator youth. It was precisely because the youth possessed this special power that Caelus was able to directly observe the miracle of the world's time reversing twice.
"It seems I have to intervene in this story. I must repay this debt of gratitude."
Caelus stood up and walked in the direction from his memories, the slums.
He arrived at the time point of the beginning, at Old Man Rom's loot house where the half-elf girl and the transmigrator youth had gone.
He simply knocked on the door and then stood still. Inside, Old Man Rom, after a brief moment of mental daze, walked over and opened the door. Upon seeing Caelus outside, whose clothing and even overall style were clearly different, Old Man Rom did not show any wariness or confusion, but instead displayed a very familiar and friendly expression.
"Oh! It's Caelus! Long time no see! Where have you been traveling all these years?"
Old Man Rom acted completely like an old friend reuniting after a long separation, happily inviting Caelus inside and even specially pouring him a large glass of milk, though it was watered down quite a bit.
Caelus just smiled and listened to the robust, large-framed old man rambling on, recounting all the things that had happened since they last parted.
Not long after, their conversation was cut short because someone knocked on the door outside.
The person knocking was none other than Natsuki Subaru, who had rushed here, unaware that he possessed the ability of "Return by Death."
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)