Chapter 496 - 467: Time Loop

Chapter 496: Chapter 467: Time Loop

The wall of sand, so tall it touched the sky, advanced at an incredible speed.

Dark purple vortexes of Energy spun madly within it, like countless giant pythons writhing in the sandstorm.

Ghastly white lightning tore through the sky, each flash illuminating the heart-stopping chaos within the Storm.

"Dammit!"

Duraga gripped the console tightly, his knuckles white from the force.

"This is no simple, natural Storm! I’ve never seen anything like this!"

Bronson’s Magic Net Detector shrieked, the crystals on its surface shattering one after another.

"The Magic Net is collapsing!"

The scholar’s voice trembled.

"The very structure of this space is being torn apart!"

Avril pressed herself against a porthole, her face pale from what her keen Elven Perception was telling her.

"There’s something screaming in the Storm... It’s not the wind. It’s the roar of a living thing!"

All the strings on Galvis’s Lute suddenly snapped. He stared in horror at the Frost forming on them.

"The temperature is dropping fast! We have to leave, now!"

In the few moments it took for them to speak, the Storm had closed in by several miles.

Even light was twisted and devoured in its wake. The ground turned to dust the instant the Storm’s edge touched it.

A pungent smell of ozone filled the air, and the hull of the Shell Ship began to emit a grating screech.

"Start it! Start it, now!"

Roland shouted at Duraga, yanking the dazed Bronson to safety at the same time.

The Gray Dwarf worked the control panel frantically, beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.

"The Star Realm passage needs time to stabilize! Thirty breaths! We need at least thirty breaths!"

But the Storm wouldn’t give them that time.

The leading edge of the sand wall was nearly upon them. They could even see the surging Shadows and flickering, eerie Runes within.

The ship’s hull began to shake violently, and the Protective Barrier made the sound of cracking under immense pressure.

"Fifteen breaths!"

Duraga roared, the dark red glow from the Iron Glove on the console growing ever more brilliant.

Outside, the Shell Ship was now completely engulfed by the sandstorm. Darkness swallowed everything.

Purple serpents of lightning slithered around the hull, letting out deafening CRACKS.

Everyone held onto the nearest fixed object, awaiting their final fate.

"Passage open!"

With Duraga’s cry, a rift opened before the ship’s bow.

The Shell Ship surged forward. Just as its stern was about to enter the rift, the edge of the Storm finally caught up to them.

With a tremendous BOOM, the entire vessel shuddered violently.

Roland squeezed his eyes shut instinctively.

For a split second, he felt as if he had been thrown into the Void.

Sight, hearing, smell—all his senses lost their meaning in that instant. Only his consciousness drifted in the endless Darkness.

Then came a strange sensation, as if his entire body were passing through a soft, elastic membrane.

The membrane was as thin as morning mist, yet he could feel a distinct resistance as he passed through it.

Just as he was about to focus on this peculiar feeling, the pressure around him suddenly vanished.

When he opened his eyes, the familiar scenery of the Star Realm surrounded them.

Rainbow-colored streams of Energy flowed silently around the ship, and distant nebulae spun slowly like an overturned painter’s palette.

The Shell Ship sailed smoothly through the void. On deck, everyone was at their posts, as if the heart-pounding escape had never happened.

’Looks like we managed to escape the Storm...’

Roland let out a long sigh of relief, pushing the fleeting, strange sensation to the back of his mind. He was just about to walk over to the console to discuss their next move with Duraga and Bronson when...

"We’re here, folks!"

Duraga’s gruff voice suddenly echoed through the cabin.

’Here? Where’s here?’

Before Roland could voice his question, the front of the Shell Ship tore through the curtain of the Star Realm and sailed into a rift that had suddenly appeared.

After a brief moment of dizziness, the familiar sight outside the porthole made Roland’s blood run cold.

At the same time, exclamations that perfectly matched his memory reached his ears.

"By the Soul Forger’s name... this craftsmanship..."

Duraga’s voice was filled with the exact same shock as before.

"Incredible! The records in the *Ancient Architecture Examination* were actually..."

Bronson pressed his face against the porthole again.

Avril leaped lightly onto the ship’s railing, the arc her fingertips traced through the air identical to the last time.

"Every curve is so elegant..."

Roland took a deep breath, his voice slightly hoarse with suppression.

"Friends... what are you talking about? Weren’t we just at Silver Radiance City?"

Several confused gazes turned to him at once.

Duraga frowned, his rough fingers unconsciously stroking the railing.

"Rudolph, you must be misremembering. You’ve lived on this continent, so maybe you’ve been to Silver Radiance City before, but as for us..."

His gaze swept over Bronson and Galvis before landing on Avril’s delicate face, and he added teasingly,

"Including your little girlfriend here, this should be the first time for all of us."

"Duraga! What nonsense are you spouting!"

Avril’s cheeks instantly flushed crimson. She grabbed a nearby logbook and pretended to hit him with it.

Galvis aptly began to strum his Lute, improvising a limerick that drew a round of laughter from the others.

Watching the playful scene before him, Roland’s fingernails dug deep into his palms.

He forced himself to calm down and stared intently below.

’The same... completely the same...’

It wasn’t just their arrival point; even the paths of the citizens in the city and the figures of children chasing each other in the square perfectly matched his first impression.

’This isn’t déjà vu...’

Roland’s hand gripped the ship’s railing tightly.

The buff from [Will of Steel] made him completely immune to Spiritual Control. Even against a Spiritual Attack from a being far beyond his own Power, his Spiritual Attribute of seventy points was high enough for him to notice any anomaly.

Yet at this moment, his mind was as clear as a mirror, with no sign of manipulation.

This meant that everything that had happened before...

Discovering Silver Radiance City, investigating the battlefield, meeting Yemiga, the arrival of the Storm—it had all really happened.

His companions’ laughter still filled the air, but Roland felt a bone-deep chill.

Recalling the abnormal acceleration of time before the Storm hit, a theory surfaced in his mind.

’Could I be... trapped in a time regression?’

After this startling theory appeared in his mind, Roland took a deep breath and forced himself to calmly observe his still-jovial companions.

There were no traces of Magic disturbance in the air, and his thoughts were clear and coherent.

All of this ruled out the possibility that he was in an Illusion Realm.

So, was he the only one trapped in this repeating fragment of time, or were all his companions trapped along with him?

This question didn’t trouble him for long.

His gaze, sharp as a hawk’s, swept swiftly over Galvis and Avril, finally landing on the soles of their boots.

There, he could clearly see smudges of scorched black soil, some darker than others.

He looked down at his own boots and found the exact same marks.

The faint Energy fluctuations lingering in the soil were identical to what he remembered feeling on the battlefield outside Silver Radiance City.

The evidence was conclusive.

All of them had experienced everything that happened before, and all of them had returned to this starting point together.

But...

’Why am I the only one who noticed something was wrong, while they have no memory of it?’

This discovery sent a chill down Roland’s spine.

The real traces of soil on his companions’ boots formed a horrifying contradiction with their memories of arriving here for the first time.

Some unknown power had reversed time while simultaneously and precisely erasing or overwriting their related memories, but for some reason, it had failed to affect him.

’Is it... [Time Traveler]?’

His thoughts raced. Roland mentally opened his Professional Panel.

His gaze slid rapidly down the panel, finally stopping on the Trait that had been awakened during a dreamlike experience after the bloody battle with the Demons in Golden Ears City.

"...establishes a faint resonance between you and the structure of Space-Time..."

"...Henceforth, in any judgment involving time and space, you will gain an extremely limited yet genuinely effective advantage, and you will be able to develop a vague... perception of related anomalies."

After carefully rereading the description for [Time Traveler], Roland’s brow, instead of un-furrowing, only knitted tighter.

’It seems I sensed the temporal anomaly precisely because of this Trait,’ he mused.

’Then... who or what is creating this phenomenon? Is it the "Phaethon" mentioned in the Trait’s description? Is it Silver Radiance City itself? Or is it...’

An image of those long, narrow, and eerie yellow eyes surfaced in his mind.

’That... Yemiga, who called himself the Reception Envoy of Silver Radiance City?’

Just as he was lost in thought, Duraga’s voice interrupted him.

"Rudolph, what’s our next move?"

Roland shook his head and gave a decisive order.

"Take the Shell Ship back to the Star Realm. Let’s get away from here for now."

Duraga muttered something odd but did as he was told, piloting the ship and tearing open another rift to the Star Realm.

The moment the Shell Ship sailed into that silvery void, the familiar, strange sensation of passing through a membrane washed over him again.

Before Roland could process it...

"We’re here, folks!"

Duraga’s gruff voice rang out once more.

’This isn’t a simple time regression...’

Roland took a deep breath. Ignoring the exclamations from his companions—identical to his memory—he strode to the ship’s railing and narrowed his eyes sharply.

’This is... a time loop!’