Level Up Legacy

Chapter 1115 Studies of Time

Although on a cliff, the cabin was warm with table lamps illuminating its interior. There were all sorts of lamps with varying colors, some of them even shaped as crying faces. As Robert saw Arthur staring at them, he chuckled before throwing some clothes over them.

"A man picks up the oddest habits on his travels, but fate wanted me to love lamps, because all my wives loved them," said the middle-aged man as he navigated between the furniture while gesturing for Arthur to follow. "Please consider this as your home."

"You are very kind, sir," said Arthur, making Robert trip over something and fall down. As he hurried to help him stand, Robert found himself waving his hand frantically, his face flushed.

"Don't call me sir, my king. Your status is far above mine," said the old man as he cleaned up the scattered seeds on the ground, shoveling them with his hand. Arthur raised a finger, and the seeds all flew back into the bag on their own. Robert stared with an awestruck expression.

"You are older than me and you have helped me more than once," said Arthur as he offered a hand to help him stand. "Calling you sir would not undermine my dignity at all, but merely show you the respect that you earned."

Robert stared at him while rising from the ground. Arthur smiled as he pointed toward the table and asked to sit down. The scholar nodded three times, as if scared one would not be enough, before the two sat opposite to each other.

"This is the tea I have brewed for the past few days; please have a sip," said Robert as he took the teapot, whirled it a little, and poured it into the cup. Arthur took the cup with both hands before sipping, exclaiming at the fragrance and taste.

"Even though I cannot taste a thing, the fragrance and memories make this tea one of the best I have tasted," said Arthur, putting down the cup. "However, we have more important matters to attend to, like the past."

"Or the future," said Robert with a smile as he poured himself a cup as well and sat down. "We have a lot to talk about, Seika. It took me a while to understand what happened after you visited me in Livia."

"You remember the alternate timeline that clearly?" asked Arthur with confusion, as the man did not have a lot of spiritual energy at the time. "How is that possible?"

"The criteria to remember the past is spiritual energy, right?" asked Robert with a smile as he sipped on his tea. "As you can see, I don't have much of that. I use other means to awaken those memories, recalling bits. My first memory after I awakened in the alternate timeline was the One-Armed Man visiting me in another world."

"That is rather specific," said Arthur with surprise. "What are the chances?"

"A hundred percent, if I may state with certainty," said Robert with a smile. "I discovered that those in the presence of great amounts of spiritual energy would remember those moments the clearest."

"And how did that help you in building this cabin?" asked Arthur as he looked around. "I can tell that this wood is no ordinary wood, and this soil does not belong to this realm. You have built a spatial vessel, have you not?"

"As expected of the Returning King," said Robert with a smile. "I have indeed, and made sure to travel to Alka back and forth to understand what happened. The history I found there differed from the one I knew, and then I found someone who knows you more than I do."

"An ally, hopefully?" asked Arthur with a slight smile as he looked around.

"Her title was the Knight of Courage," said Robert, forcing Arthur to freeze. Then, he turned toward him with surprise. "She remembers everything about you two. But as you know, Alka has a different timeline than ours."

"Everything that gets transported between the two worlds has a time gap between them," said Arthur with a nod. "I don't know the exact extent of the gap or how it works."

"I studied all of that so that you wouldn't need to," said Robert as he placed down his cup and bowed slightly. "This knowledge is yours to use."

"I appreciate that gesture, but why have you spent your life studying something that brings you no benefit?"

"So that no one suffers the same fate as I have," said Robert with a sigh. "I have been thrown into the past and a different world, away from my family. Instead of living my new life as it is, I kept thinking about those who must be suffering as I did."

"Did the merge of timelines transport you back to Earth?" asked Arthur, confused. The man nodded. "Time is a mysterious thing. I will accept your reasons, Robert. Please share your knowledge with me."

"With pleasure, my king," said Robert, excitedly jumping from the chair and pulling a whiteboard from somewhere. "This board sums up the knowledge I have obtained, and I call it 'Studies of Time!'"

"I feel like I'm in class again," laughed Arthur, nodding. "I will be a good student as you explain the knowledge you have uncovered."

"Then, let's begin!" said Robert, wearing his reading glasses before turning toward the whiteboard. "We start at this point, where the world was divided into two!" Robert then began explaining. In essence, he explained the following:

For some unknown reason to him and through an unknown mechanism, the world was split into two. This was labeled the split on the whiteboard, dividing the world and timelines into two. Robert explained that the two worlds existed in the same universe but in different realms!

The tower was in a higher realm, so time flowed slower here. A day here would be an hour on Earth, which was in a lower realm. The reason that time flowed slower on Earth than on Alka, making it ahead of that world, was because Alka entered a sub-realm of the main, right above Earth!

This made time flow differently in the two worlds. Robert was beginning to look insane as he studied the exact difference. Arthur did not understand most of the equations, but the end result was written in bold:

[1 day on Alka = 0.0416666666666666666 day on Earth!]

This meant that if 23 hours passed on Alka, an entire day would pass on Earth! This resulted in the time gap, which has accumulated each day since the split until now. Every day that passed resulted in Earth becoming one hour ahead of Alka.

Furthermore, Robert calculated the time gap between the two worlds down to the exact second. In a rough estimate, it was about 150 years.

Arthur sat there with amazement as he watched the man pour his heart out, everything he worked on, and sometimes mentioning that it took him years to find a single result!

This was not even the end of it, as Robert calculated how much time has passed since the split of the two worlds. Since he knew the difference for the total time passed and the difference in a single day, he calculated that the split happened three thousand years ago!

"Three thousand years ago, this event divided the world into two, a smaller Alka and a bigger Earth, sending Alka to a higher realm than Earth. I believe that was intentional, as Earth was safer compared to Alka for that reason. Mana becomes less abundant as you are in a lower realm."

"Robert… this is amazing," muttered Arthur sincerely. "You uncovered a mystery that the entire world could not figure out. Even as we go to Alka now and send people to the other side, no one realized it was a different timeline!"

"I did not realize it as well, but I had the memories from the other world," said Robert as he slumped in his chair, a satisfied smile appearing on his sweaty face. He took off his glasses and stared at them with his green eyes. "In a way, you gave me the opportunity to understand something about this world that no one else could!"

"Your hard work had the bigger part in that," said Arthur, admiringly. "I could never have uncovered this alone, let alone do all those calculations. There is one more thing I don't understand. Why do things travel in time as well as space when they pass between the two worlds? This tower is a higher realm, and we would return to the exact same moment that passed over there. Why is there a difference between the two worlds?"

"When someone descends to a lower realm, they notice that less time has passed there, but we consider that as time travel. If a man leaves this tower and lives a hundred years on Earth, he would find that only five years have passed inside this tower."

"You solved every question I had about temporal fissures, Robert," said Arthur, awestruck, as he stared at the whiteboard. "However, there is one more thing I came here to learn about."

"I know what that thing is," said Robert, smiling. "You want to know what happened to the Princess of Ice and Fire."