-Chapter Sixteen-

Key - Part One

The notorious four gathered at one of the old abandoned bunkers they frequented in their past lives.

Rusty, expansive and dark, they made their way down the long stone corridors with Light Magic active.

Upon arriving at one of the rooms, they found it was set up already.

“Was this you?” Taylor asked, looking to Jason.

The other young man nodded, taking a seat at a nearby sofa.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” he offered with a gesture.

Diana did so, brushing her loose hair away behind her ear before graciously sitting down on one of the chairs.

Taylor and Andrew also found their respective spots, glancing around the furnished room.

“Taylor,” Jason began to say. “Firstly, there was a timeshift. A large-scale one.”

“I noticed when I arrived on this side. Unprecedented things have been taking place,” he answered, and Jason frowned.

“It’s surprising you were able to sense it. Oh…” he suddenly had a look of realisation.

Taylor’s able to resist the Perished’s influence to some degree, only with his internal capabilities, Jason thought to himself. “You never cease to amaze me, Taylor,” he grunted and leaned back.

“Let me announce to the three of you now, how vast these changes really are,” Jason spoke aloud. “The Perished flip the balance of power in our realm. Mana is more dense, abundant than ever and better yet, there are suddenly people, numerous, who are able to tap into it. Firstly, the Trinity Council comprised of thirty-four members. The headmaster has amassed a force to this extent. That is abnormal. Originally, there were nine of us. Those are changes we have experienced ourselves, as of now. But there have been many other changes. There are complete new civilisations out there. It’s hard to explain. They have their own complete power system. Perhaps we will run into them someday. It’d be best to not bother with them, or make an enemy out of them,” Jason explained, as the others listened on in fascination.

“That is all about the timeshift,” he concluded.

“Okay. Before we get onto our next topic, I have something I want to raise,” Diana slipped in before Jason could continue.

“Go on,” Jason nodded.

“I’ve been all over the place, but I managed to get my hands on a little bit of something about the Provenance Realm,” she rested the side of her head against her arm on the chair’s backrest as she calmly poke. “I’m curious to know… what exactly did you go through in there? I doubt you really are standing here perfectly fine,” she raised an eyebrow at him.

Jason continued looking back into her eyes until he finally sighed, looking down to the ground.

“I was going to tell you guys anyways,” he shrugged. “I don’t know what exactly you found out about the Provenance realm, but I doubt it really touches on the truth of the matter.”

Diana remained silent, allowing him to continue.

“Firstly, when I entered, I saw things. Or rather, I stumbled into something. Now, just understand that, the Provenance Realm was… deliberately made. It was made by some form of intelligence, or sentience, and it had some sort of function. That function, I eventually found out, was to essentially… store every Universe. Or dimension. Whenever a Universe dies, as in it reaches the end of it’s cycle, it is collected into the Provenance realm, and stored there. It is like a database, filled with formatted, compressed code… of all existence. All existence there ever was,” Jason exhaled deeply.

Diana leaned forward in worry, intrigued to hear him keep going.

“I, with my physical body, entered that database. You can imagine… what sort of hell-let-loose it was. It tried to format me, but of course failed. As a result, its foundations were shaken and it began to collapse. I was caught up in that collapse, where I was absorbed into this strange, pseudo-abstract plane of existence, combined with all of existence. Even our future lives,” Jason looked firmly into the eyes of his three friends. “So I experienced first hand an infinite amount of lifetimes, in the span of a moment. And after that moment, I somehow had become something akin to a virus that had overtaken this so-called code of the Provenance Realm. I am in control of it now, but… it only amounts to freedom of travel. I cannot alter the events except for with my physical body, far from able to deal with the Perished. To say I became a virus is sort of incorrect, by the way,” Jason wryly corrected himself. “It was more like I, my existence itself, fused with some sort of Universal law. A principle, and that was able to let me corrupt the Provenance Realm. As a result, my true consciousness is actually in some sort of cloud, being transmitted here to this fleshly body. But I am also mass-transmitting the exact same actions to my other selves. This would mean that, all the events in every timeline have been merged together because all of my actions have been the exact same. This allows us to limit the range of movement the Perished have across our timelines. They will always react the same way,” Jason explained.

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“Wait, I don’t get it. So you mean, the other timelines are happening right now? And they’re exactly the same things taking place right now?” Andrew asked, perplexed.

“That’s not exactly correct,” Jason chuckled and spread his arms out wide to his sides. “Nothing exists yet everything exists, all at once. Like a diceon ball, if you know about it. The lines run around the sphere, all interconnected and infinite, but leading to nowhere. Our present is merely a single spot along one of those lines, and we’re slowly making out way down to back to the spot we began. This Universe will pull into itself nothingness at which point the Provenance realm will absorb it. I understand what the Perished’s plan was now,” Jason let out a harrowing laugh. The three remained quiet, looking at him as he cackled away.

“Do you all remember the Seventh Gate of Diablo?” Jason asked and they nodded.

“They’re original aim was to plunge the entirety of Earth into the Provenance realm. Physically. Well, not just Earth. This entire Universe. And can you guess what would have happened?” Jason asked, tilting his head before a smile spread at his lips. “The Provenance Realm would have tried to format this Universe. It would have failed, and then collapsed, at which point all of existence will meld together. Then the Perished send the Apocalypse in, or rather, they already have, yet haven’t all at once, and because all the timelines get mirrored across all existence, and then destroyed. And because this timeline gets destroyed, all the other timelines copying this timeline also go bye-bye. And bam, that was all of existence gone.”

The three looked to one another doubtfully.

“But Jason… because you’ve fused with that… principle or whatever, all the worlds have been connected anyways… so if we drop here, aren’t we done?” Taylor asked dumbfoundedly.

“No?” Jason laughed, shaking his head. “I am the only one who has this power, instead of this Universe. And always, technically, we are outside the Provenance realm right now, not inside it. I can freely travel back in time as I desire- well, that’s wrong. My mind is a cloud that oversees all existence. It’s the same way I was able to tell the timeshift, and know the future. Infinite versions of my future self deposit information to my brain at all times, and I send out actions to every single one of my selves at every moment. This power is mine to monopolise, and that is an advantage,” Jason finished.

“I see.”

“Anyhow, I can going to cause my own timeshift,” Jason laughed, rising to his feet. “Diana, Andrew, it’s time to bring you over to this side. Now that we know Taylor’s method works, I can facilitate the process to you two and achieve the same result. With all four of us at demigod-hood, we have a higher chance of winning against those bastards,” Jason pointed one finger at each of them.

“Connect to the Gula Athenaeum… Parabolic rebound.”

The two immediately jolted, falling unconscious and still in their spots.

“How exactly are you doing that?” Taylor wondered, gazing at the two of them.

“I just sent seeds of their current consciousnesses to their fetus in the past. I have the power to do that. However, this is going to rewrite the timeline into a version of the timeline where they went through your version of your awakening, and unlocked all of their powers from the get-go, very early on. I’m curious to see what effects this may have.”

Taylor looked up at light lit up all around him, and the space around him began to shift.

“What the fuck…?” Taylor looked around him.

“First time seeing it?” Jason chuckled smugly as Taylor’s vision returned to him.

They were at a new place now. It appeared to be… the headquarters Taylor had bought for the Trinity Council in Tokyo. Jason and Taylor found themselves at the door, gazing blankly at their surroundings.

“Ahh… okay?” Taylor wondered.

“Come on,” Jason grunted and led Taylor up the stairs. The building somehow looked completely different to when he bought it. It appeared to have been completely internally reconstructed with Magic.

As he rounded corner after corner with Jason, they finally came to two large doors at the of the corridors.

It opened into a round-table with four seats, two of which were already occupied.

“You made it,” Andrew and Diana chuckled.

“That’s what Taylor should be saying, actually,” Jason answered as he took one of the seats.

“I actually don’t know what happened,” Taylor answered, taking the remaining seat.

“Well, we went back in time by three years… so… this present is completely different to the one we came from. Firstly, we went and nipped Antithese in the bud, because Jason said it got stolen from us by the so-called ‘Apocalypse’,” Diana explained nonchalantly. “But it appears they’ve just founded some sort of new organisation- or I mean, they tried to, until Andrew found out where exactly, and that was the end of that,” she giggled, stealing a glance at Andrew who stuck his tongue out.

“Like I was gonna let them,” he scoffed.

“Anyway,” Diana narrowed her eyes. “Now that the time loop has finally fallen back in sync and the two of you have returned,” she smiled. “Jason, it’s time for you to spill what you’ve been keeping to yourself this whole time. Tell us,” she raised her hand to him. “What is the key to ending this war?”