Reborn To Master Time

[Serentt Royo][Royal Guard]

[Location: Fallen Kingdom of Eza]

[Date: 3000/04/08 to 3000/04/17 ~ approx 9-10 days]

[Reason for movement is unknown, but when he passes through the capital, he will fall into a chokepoint. Their closest base is two days away, so he may not receive any reinforcements.]

A few days before the big incident with the Evil God, White, the [Strategic Table] received some interesting intel: a time and location where we would find one of the strongest fighters on the demon's side—Serentt Royo, one of White's royal guards. When the intelligence arrived at the [Strategic Table], it was obvious to every member that it was clearly a trap.

The Dragon Princess had recently gone out of commission after forcing a one-on-one with one of the royal guards, a very stupid move. So when the intelligence arrived, our initial thoughts were along the lines of ‘bait.’

Since the Dragon Princess would have been the closest to the fallen kingdom at the time, we believed the demon’s objective was to see whether or not she would respond to the bait. If she chose to remain silent, they would know she was in a bad enough condition that she didn’t want to risk fighting another royal guard. Alternatively, if she chose to fight, it would give them an opportunity to eliminate her while she was still weakened from her previous battle—a simple, yet extremely effective trap.

As the [Strategic Table], we decided to respond to the provocation with an equally strong force. Who better to send than myself? The mission was simple: kill Serentt Royo without wasting too many resources.

“So, what do you think? Should I tell everyone to start preparing tonight?” Eliana asked as she sat down in a chair opposite my table. With the arrival of other joint teams, we could intercept Serentt Royo at any time. I sat back down in my chair and stared at her without saying a word.

“What?” She shot back, furrowing her brows in confusion.

“Why are you showing me this?” I asked back without showing any emotion.

“Huh? What are you talking about? Do you have a problem with how I look or something?” she said, puffing her cheeks in anger. I sighed as I responded,

“If I wanted a trip down memory lane, I could have used [Recall] and seen it for myself.” I said casually, causing Eliana to smile. She stood up from her chair and placed her hand on the table, tapping her finger as she spoke.

“I guess you could. It's quite sad how little you think of that skill. But what if I told you this isn’t a memory?” Eliana replied, or more specifically, the being that had invited me to this place.

“Can’t you take a different appearance?” I shot back with a frown. Speaking to this version of Eliana brought back memories of the day she died, making me feel a bit uncomfortable. Her younger self had always looked so immature that I couldn’t really see her as the ‘real’ Eliana, but the one I was looking at now stirred a deep sadness in me.

“Oh, I thought you’d love this appearance. She’s the person you adore more than anyone else in the world. Your sister would be very sad,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ear and smiling.

“Stop stalling. I came here for answers. I already know we’re in my memories,” I said, keeping my tone flat. Eliana chuckled as responded,

“Memories, huh. What exactly do you think Time Magic is?” She began to walk around the table, slowly approaching with each step.

“…”

I stayed silent. The only thing I knew about Time Magic was what I had already managed to perform with my own magic.

“You seem to think you have some kind of omnipotent power that let's you see the future, am I right?” she asked, pausing to look at me. I didn’t respond, but the answer was obvious: I had come back from ten years in the future. I can see the future. I continued to remain silent, letting her continue,

“Well, there's no doubt you have some interesting skills, but the power to see the future doesn’t exist. What you’re seeing is the [Supreme Probability] of the future, calculated by the OverGod algorithm. You’re familiar with chaos theory, right?” she asked, lifting a finger up as a small, white ball hovered above it.

She flicked the ball into the air, and it bounced off the walls of the room, leaving a white light in its path before hitting the door handle and coming to a complete stop. Even after it stopped, the white lines didn’t disappear from the room, showing the balls path from start to finish. She then lifted her finger again, and this time, a reddish-colored ball appeared. She flicked it the same way, causing a similar pattern. At first, the red lines overlapped with the white ones, but eventually, the red ball deviated, forming its own pattern before coming to a stop at the ceiling—a completely different outcome from the first.

“A study of how a system’s outcome can change drastically with a small change in its initial state,” I replied back. It was an oversimplification of the concept. The angle she flicked the second ball had been slightly different from the first, but despite that small difference, the resulting path was completely different, with the ball ending up on the ceiling instead of the door handle. A butterfly effect.

“Right. Everything that happens in the world is a series of events, and each event either happens or doesn’t. Whether you blink your eye in the next millisecond or not. The outcome of that event is affected by other events around it—how much sleep you had last night, the amount of light entering your eye, whether or not I try to slap your face. All these events affect each other in complex ways.”

“Get to the point,” I said bluntly.

“You’re quite impatient. We have two hours with each other, you know.”

“...”

“Sigh. Think of all those events on a much larger scale. There are an infinite number of events happening across the world right now, which means an infinite number of probabilities for the future. That’s where the OverGod algorithm comes in. As long as the event occurs in a space with mana, the algorithm calculates the probability with 100% accuracy, giving us the [Supreme Probability]—or as you call it, 'seeing the future'.” She spread her arms, as if giving a grand lecture.

“What does that have to do with me?” I shot back. I didn’t care how the so-called future was calculated since I had already experienced it. The [Supreme Probability] was already in my head.

“You’re not the only one who can do that. In fact, there's quite a handful. If I’m not mistaken, even White can see the so-called ‘future.’”

“Huh?” I muttered in surprise.

Did that mean White already knows I've been changing the past?

Isn’t that… really bad?

“Think of it this way. If five individuals observe the [Supreme Probability] and come to the conclusion that the probability of event x happening is zero, what do you think would happen if one of them decides to change it before it happens?” she asked. It was basically what was happening to me right now. I answered after thinking for a while,

“The others will notice the change?” 

“Wrong. The probability of event x will simply change to one, and to everyone, including the person who directly changed it, it would appear as if it has always one. By erasing memories of past probabilities, the [Supreme Probability] maintains 100% accuracy.”

It kind of made sense. So in actuality, when you change something in the past, you’re not really changing the future because the outcome of that ‘change’ becomes the actual future, or as she calls it, the [Supreme Probability].

Wait… That doesn’t make sense.

“So even if I change something big, everyone else who can see the ‘future’ would see it as something that was already meant to happen? But that doesn’t make any sense. Dante’s death was a huge change in the [Supreme Probability], so how was I able to tell it wasn’t normal?” I said, confused. If the probability of Dante dying at that moment had suddenly changed, why wasn’t I able to register the new event—Dante’s death—as completely normal?

Unless...

“Hehe. You’re finally catching on. Unlike everyone else with the power to observe [Supreme Probability], you possess a special power beyond that,” she said, pointing at my forehead, causing me to mutter in surprise.

“[Recall]...” I said in a low tone.

“Correct. The power to remember past changes in probabilities. While everyone else sees Dante’s death as a definite probability, that skill allows you to see his death as a new probability, something outside of [Supreme Probability]. So you see, [Future Sight] is not the greatest skill in your arsenal.”

“...”

It was honestly a lot to take in.

But as the gears in my head began to turn, I made some analysis of my own. I kept telling myself I knew about the future because I regressed, but I failed to acknowledge a certain point.

[Regress Lv. 1] — Allows the user to revive after death. [Restriction] — memories of the past life are completely erased.

That restriction makes it impossible to know about the future. But with [Recall], I’m able to extract all my memories of my past life up until the point I died, and those memories, in essence, make up the [Supreme Probability], but only limited to my personal experience.

If there were really others out there who could observe [Supreme Probability], then that power would be completely useless without the [Recall] skill. Even if you can see the future, you wouldn’t know how many times it was altered or how many times it will be altered again in the future.

It was like watching a coin flip in slow motion. At first, it would be easy to guess which side it would fall on as long as you watched carefully. But what happens when someone erases your memory at random times and throws the coin back into the air each time?

Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails.

Your guess would change every time, but in your head, you’d still think it was the first toss. You’d have no idea when the coin would touch the ground. How many times were your memories erased? How many times was the coin flipped? The fact that the coin is spinning in a slow, predictable path wouldn’t give you any confidence in predicting how it would land. So using the information you see with your own eyes would be worse than just giving a blind guess.

“I’m sure you now understand why your benefactor keeps killing you off. It’s not your precious memories that need to be protected,” she said, snapping me from my thoughts as I responded,

“It’s the existence of [Recall]?” I answered.

[Recall Lv. 1] — Allows the user to perfectly recall everything they have seen, heard, or experienced at least once in the past.

The key to mastering time?

I thought to myself, shifting to something else she said.

Benefactor? Is she referring to the person I was talking to before she interrupted?

Because of the dungeon takeover, there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to contact that person again in this dungeon since this devil could prevent status interference from the outside.

I'll just have to wait until that person contacted me again.

“That’s right. A lot of individuals would hunt you down if they ever found out about that skill. A war could break out as soon as tomorrow. You’re currently at a point where your choice will drastically affect the [Supreme Probability], and no amount of Regression will save you from the aftermath,” she said in a more serious tone.

Although the devils were restricted, they could still use their contracted demons to hunt me down, and as for the gods, they might descend from the heavens or coerce me through my fellow humans.

The situation was so much worse than I had imagined.

“I see. That was certainly a good lesson, but where exactly do you fit into all of this?” I said, looking into her eyes, but she kept her calm smile. I had taken the risk of accepting the invitation because I knew whichever devil overtook the dungeon, did so because they sensed the anomaly of Time.

This led me to believe that the devil who did this wanted a monopoly over the information I had about the future, which was why they decided to interfere. I was willing to take the gamble of letting only one devil know about the future to escape from my predicament.

Since a single devil could only form a contract with one person, the worst-case scenario would be hunting down their contractee. If the devil shared information with them, I could capture and restrain them without killing them, ensuring that the devil couldn’t create any new contracts, thereby completely restricting them from exploiting the information I shared about the future.

It was still a rough plan, but I had already thought that far ahead. However, what she had just revealed turned my plan upside down.

A devil was already dangerous, but a devil with this much knowledge about Time Magic was setting off all kinds of alarm bells in my head.

“Well, I’m here to offer you a deal, but first, we’ll be making a slight adjustment to your objectives,” she said, extending her hand as if waiting for me to take it.

“...”

I stared at her, but she continued, unbothered.

“We won’t be stopping at just the three Evil Gods,” she said, and at the same time, her eyes suddenly turned into red slits as her smile widened, revealing sharp teeth. The sudden change in her appearance sent shivers down my spine as she continued,

“We’ll kill them all. Every single god in existence will die by our hand!” she declared loudly, her face contorting into an ugly smile and her eyes quivering with insanity.

It's a devil, what was I expecting?

But even so, to confidently declare such a thing, not just to kill one or two, but all the gods?

Even as a joke, that’s a bit… absurd.