Reaper of the Martial World

historical

Book 11: Chapter 114: Somewhat (2)

Dyon breathed hard, the butt of his scythe stamped firmly into the ground. He stood tall among what seemed like a mountain of corpses. But, whether this was due to the obscene size of the dead, or the sheer number of them, Dyon couldn’t be bothered to decipher.

In the end, his daze was quite dull. He had a few scratches on his body, but nothing as terrible as what he experienced during the world trial. However, the fact he had these minor injuries to begin with was a massive red flag he couldn’t ignore.

These Overlords were too weak. What right did they have to harm him?

“You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

Dyon’s words were very obviously targeted toward Little Yang and Yin. The two of them were the only ones around him right now. But, oddly enough, Dyon could only faintly feel his connection to them, as though it was weakening.

However, Dyon’s connection with the beast babies and Chenglei hadn’t weakened at all.

“It’s related to time, isn’t it?”

Dyon looked up at the red sun above his head. The grass planes beneath his feet were soaked with the same crimson that painted the skies. It was as though the more he killed, the lower the ceiling above his head became. Eventually, there was no difference between it and the ground beneath his feet at all…

“I was thinking about it all already…” Dyon spoke as though he was speaking to himself. “The Timeless Library … Jade used it to come back and help set me on a better path… But wasn’t the Timeless Library a creation of this world alone?

“Even worse, the abilities of the Timeless Library aren’t that of a treasure, but is rather the handy work of a Heaven’s Child… But how could the ability of a Heaven’s Child extend beyond this world? They can’t even transcend to the Immortal Plane… So how could they so easily manipulate the timeline?

“Changing the timeline on the scale of one world may be possible, but what if the timelines of several other worlds are contingent on what happens here and vice versa? Is it possible to forcefully bend the timelines of countless other worlds based on this one mortal plane alone?

“Maybe I should have thought of it earlier. But, I actually didn’t notice until I realized my connection with the two of you was waning. The fact you two haven’t said anything could very well mean you already can’t…

“… It isn’t a coincidence that I couldn’t find that damned library, huh?”

Celestial Hamsters always existed outside of the timeline. It was their partners who acted as anchors that allowed them to freely appear and make a mark on history.

But, what if their anchor was compromised? What then?

After days of battle, it all finally clicked for Dyon. He realized that he had been too correct about the scope of everything. If it hadn’t been for his having the twins as his partners, he may have died before he even understood what was happening. If things were really happening as he thought, it was quite the funny joke the past century had been for him.

Dyon took the twins from his shoulder, smiling as he lightly stroked their fur. This rudimentary existence of simply having forms, but no ability to speak or act was the current state of these twins. Other than the fact only Dyon could touch them now, they were no different than a normal pair of hamsters, looking up toward Dyon with sparkling eyes.

Since they had already chosen Dyon as their anchor, there was no undoing it.

Dyon himself was being rejected by this timeline. As such, they themselves didn’t have a place here either.

Time was a complex thing. It wasn’t linear as everyone believed. However, what it did have were penultimate nodes in history, checkpoints, if you will, that had to be passed. The details could be scrambled as they pleased, however these keynotes in history must be met without fail.

How could the fall of the mortal plane not be one of these keynotes?

Luna and their daughter had already informed Dyon of their speculations. They believed that whatever it was that sealed Dyon’s loss in the previous timeline most definitely occurred during this first phase.

In that case… Didn’t that also mean that this first phase was the penultimate moment?

Dyon found it all quite amusing.

Wasn’t this exactly what he wanted to avoid the most? Being a puppet, pulled along by the string of some faceless, emotionless being. Maybe the Heavens were also a jumping clown just like Death, but this may very well be a jumping clown that was undefeatable precisely because this clown wasn’t the ‘Heavens’ Dyon knew at all. It was an even higher existence, one that controlled the flow of existence of all worlds.

The reason he was losing his strength was likely because this timeline wanted to ‘reset’ itself so that it could continue to follow the larger designs it had planned. It treated Dyon’s previous efforts like a joke. It watched on as he struggled and smiled down smugly, knowing it could undo everything on a whim.

In the previous timeline, around this time, Dyon was skulking around like a rat in the shadows, too weak to take part in this phase. He could only watch as the armies descended and the landscape of the mortal plane changed as he knew it.

This was exactly what it wanted. It wanted him to go back to the weak little rat.

“You live up to your name, truly.” An unfamiliar voice filled Dyon’s ears.  

He looked up to see two young men, only one of which he knew. The seven swinging black tails to his back were immediately noticed by Dyon.

However, Kaori was immediately disregarded by him entirely. In fact, he wasn’t paying attention to the unknown young man either, all he had eyes for was the small beast on his shoulder…

A little hamster with glistening white fur and beady white eyes…

A celestial hamster!