Although time might have stopped, the concept of time passing, wherein one remains conscious without time flowing is still present. Even if literal time is not moving, one can still move and count from one to two in the world of stopped time, hence, perceived time still does pass.
Or something like that… Braun stared at the strange world he had entered just as he teleported out of the base/
There was no color, there was no passage of time, yet he remained conscious, so in his perspective, time was still passing.
The place he arrived in after hurriedly escaping was just outside Nuwesca City’s borders, and at this distance, he could see the supernatural phenomenon happening up in the sky.
In the middle of two strange figures floating in the air, one covered in dark winds and the other a mighty humanoid lion, blue light shimmered and a grand, illusory library appeared behind a lone figure with long black hair and piercing blue eyes.
Then, as quick as they came, they disappeared; less than a second had passed since they first appeared, leaving Braun confused.
Braun didn’t know what was happening right now or who that strange man was, but if he had to give an estimate, at the sheer grand scale of the events currently happening, it wasn’t that hard to deduce his identity—one of the ten council members of Aegis!
So my conjecture was right. Braun’s eyes glimmered. So that’s why the world has been so peaceful, they aren’t averse to utilizing their overwhelming strength to squash any potential threats!
While the ten council members were obviously busy with tasks that required their constant attention, this didn’t mean they couldn’t be used for situations like this where a great tragedy had happened.
Although Braun might not specifically know what the man was planning to do, he was sure that whatever the Level 4 Demigod had cooked up would go down in flames now that this godlike entity capable of stopping time had arrived.
Wait, if they’re capable of stopping time, then wouldn’t they be able to-
As he thought of this, green flames abruptly erupted from deep within him, covering the entirety of the crystal that held the power to manipulate space-time.
It extricated the power of space-time, using it autonomously, while Braun felt his senses intertwine with history.
This motherfucker is peering into my past! Braun gritted his teeth as he followed the guidance of his own power that autonomously acted on its own, adapting his existence to avoid this major disaster that had befallen before him.
His zenithral power went into overdrive, exerting its full control over the domains of growth, evolution, and transcendence; entering a state of flow where his mind seamlessly functioned, his pace accelerated and his whole body was clad in a burning green flame.
With his ability to manipulate space-time and sense his own past, he vaguely felt an eye peer into the open windows of time, with his past close to being revealed.
The green flame surged, spreading out into the air, intertwining with the fabrics of space-time. It exerted a strange mystical power and grabbed hold of a strange, metaphysical concept across time.
An overwhelming pain writhed across his body, yet his detached mind remained impassive, discarding the pain as mere nothingness. The moment lasted for what felt like entire hours, years, and even decades, yet it also felt incredibly fast, as if it had finished in the blink of an eye.
Even though no time passed at all, it felt like an eternity and an instant for Braun as the green flame surrounding his body seemed to cut off a part of his existence from the rest of the world.
The domain of zenith held a strong grip over the domain of transcendence, and as someone who had been transcending his limits time and time again, Braun was incredibly familiar with this sensation.
I’ve transcended history. Braun collapsed to the ground, with the overexertion of his zentihral power nearly exhausting all he had just to rush his evolution.
But it was worth it.
He blinked his eyes and struggled to remain conscious, with his thoughts slipping in and out of his mind. Only his strong will urged him to remain awake and his rapidly recovering zenithral power allowed his body to recuperate.
When he finally had the ability to move around, the strange figure once again appeared in the sky, and they mumbled something strange.
The voice may have been light and someone from such far away would struggle to hear them, but Braun was different.
His incredible sense of hearing picked up on the details they mumbled, causing Braun’s body to visibly tremble.
“To not just transcend fate but to spread free will amongst everyone, granting them destiny—Lucas Hum, you’re truly a plague to humanity!”
As short as it was, the message they sent was crystal clear to Braun.
A being that transcended the grasp of fate, acquiring free will—with this variable capable of grasping destiny by their own hands, the others around me would be pushed away from the fate they were meant to embark upon, changing the trajectory of their lives no matter how big or small that change may have been.
Braun felt like something in his mind clicked and he finally understood what it truly meant to transcend fate—it was to have free will, the capability to control one’s future!
As his thoughts accelerated to an extreme degree and a budding idea in his mind uncontrollably grew, reality around him began to shimmer as blue light flooded the sky.
Reality was overwritten and turned into falsehood, regressing back the time of the two cities one hour into the past, yet for Braun, time continued to move at an incredibly slow pace, with his thoughts operating at speeds incomparable to the rest of the world.
He blinked his eyes, and a vision of his future was created.
Break fate and weave destiny. He resolutely grinned. That will be my path to godhood!
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…
As soon as time began to flow once more, Braun, whose thoughts operated at a timescale far faster than the rest of the world, already enacted his plans.
His eyes pierced through the fabrics of space-time and he saw his own self hunched on a desk, staring at the clockwork watch.
And he even has all of my abilities an hour prior—Level 2 Thread Manipulation, and Level 2 Ghost.
I just need to find another space-related ability and I’ll be able to create another Space-Time Manipulation crystal and grant it to him.
I could even finally begin practicing Crystal Fragmentation, which is already a heaven-defying ability, but with it, I would also gain the foundation of my next plans!
Braun grinned as he stretched out his hand, mumbling, “Enough dilly-dallying, I’ll have plenty of time to practice now that I can freely manipulate space-time!”
Space-time warped and bent to an extreme degree. The passage he created was chaotic and destructive, with most beings passing through it would die on the spot, but Braun knew himself the best and knew he’d survive.
Only with a passage like this would he be unable to perceive the coordinations that lay beyond it. Braun’s figure disappeared on the spot, and in the next instance, he arrived in a strange dark void, where a bloody version of himself also existed, all cut up and torn in a twisted manner.
Staring at the past version of himself was quite strange, but Braun had always been a predominantly rational person, and the number of crimes he committed was innumerable; it would be unreasonable of him to give mercy to himself when he treated other human lives as dirt.
“You…” the past Braun gasped upon seeing the man that appeared, and he helplessly sighed. “So you’re from the future or something?”
“Nope, I’m from the present, and you’re from the past.” Braun lifted his hand into the air.
“Fucking hell, go easy on me, you bastard!” Past Braun said through gritted teeth as he immediately knew what his future self was planning on doing.
“I will,” Braun blandly said and sent a fist straight into his past self’s face, knocking him out in one go.
“Now, let’s get down to business.”
He pressed both of his hands together and the foundation of space-time in his personal dimension began to visibly tremble. Time dilated, accelerating it to be many times faster than the outside world.
Dealing with Dark Wind should take him a minute or so, and with time being accelerated to over a hundred times faster than the outside world, it would be enough!
A hundred to two hundred minutes may not be enough for him to construct his heaven-defying ability if he was alone, but things were different now.
His zentihral power surged and the crystal belonging to his Cloning ability, which was already at the peak of Level 2, began to release a burst of light and rapidly expanded in size, breaking through and reaching the next realm, Level 3!
The reason why it was able to evolve so fast was due to his zenithral power having attained a significant increase in size and intensity due to three things—his rapid increase in strength, the dangerous threat known as the council member of Aegis, and his understanding of zenith having reached a greater depth.
Not to mention, it was already at the peak of Level 2 after Nora’s years of training, so it wasn’t that hard to break through with a little bit of help from the literal manifestation of growth itself.
This one, seemingly insignificant leap though, brought a change that would soon catalyze the beginning of his plans.
In the blink of an eye, over a hundred clones covered the dark void, each bearing a complete resemblance to Braun’s current body.
Braun’s grin then deepened as a green flame erupted from the tips of his fingers, covering the entire pocket dimension and bathing his clones.
With his clear connection with the Zenithral Force, Braun clearly felt a hundred lights flicker into existence around him, each belonging to his clones.
An explanation wasn’t needed for him to know what those ‘lights’ represented, as, in the next instance, green flames erupted out of his hundred clones, signifying the success of his plan.
Now, I only need to replicate that with crystals and gain the ability to transfer a portion of my abilities to a hundred-plus avatars!
…
Braun might have been confident in successfully accomplishing the ability known as Crystal Fragmentation in a hundred or two hundred minutes even if he was alone, but that wasn’t a guarantee.
And if it wasn’t a guarantee, that might as well be a guaranteed failure for Braun whose life was at stake at this very moment.
Fortunately for him, now that a hundred minds were thinking, each capable of harnessing the power of Zenith, he was able to very quickly formulate the principles he needed to not just achieve Crystal Fragmentation, but also construct the steps he needed to achieve what is essentially a perfect combination of his puppets and clones.
All of the clones in the dark void puffed into fragments of light, leaving only the unconscious past version of himself on the ground.
Green spiritual light gathered around his past self’s body, lifting him up into the air, while he began to activate three different superpowers simultaneously—Threads, Ghost, and Cloning.
In front of him, an illusory milky white soul formed in the air. This was his soul, or to be more exact, a clone of his soul. Given enough time, it would disperse on its own, which was the biggest issue when it came to the ability combination he had in mind, but with Crystal Fragmentation, that wasn’t his problem anymore.
Illusory green threads formed the tips of his fingers and attached themselves to the cloned soul, and as it gained control over the threads, it became like its limbs as it automatically entered his past self’s body.
With his spiritual vision, he saw the cloned soul attach itself to his past self’s soul by plunging their limb-like threads into it.
His past self’s body opened his eyes, calmly lifted his eyes to stare at Braun, and said, “It works. I can control this body, and all of its abilities like it’s my own vessel.”
“The Incomplete Avatar is already done, now we can move to the next step and transform you into a True Avatar, a being that would exist indefinitely!”
Braun took a deep breath and peered into the metaphysical space within his body where a gigantic crystal shimmered. That was his Cloning crystal, and this very crystal held the key to the creation of his avatars.
There was a reason why he used three different abilities to create his avatars rather than just finding a way to make his clones live indefinitely without dispersing, and that’s because this is the most efficient way to use Crystal Fragmentation.
A tiny fragment of the giant crystal broke off from the main body and reappeared in reality right on top of Braun’s palm.
By fragmenting a part of the Clone Crystal and transferring it to a cloned entity, he could allow it to live indefinitely, essentially becoming a True Clone by relying on the power it originated from. While this would mean one less permanent clone for Braun, a clone that lives on indefinitely is far more superior than a temporarily existing clone.
This could have been done with just the clone ability itself and he could create True Clones, but the size of the fragments he has to break off would be far larger, and he would be left with fewer True Clones.
However, if the only thing he had to support indefinitely was just his cloned soul, then it would be far more efficient!
With the cloned soul, now capable of existing permanently, and adding in the soul threads that act as the cloned soul’s controller, he has managed to acquire the ability to create avatars—avatars that could gain access to not just Zenithral power, but to an even far more terrifying notion, Crystal Fragments, fragments that could also grow and increase in size through the zenithral power they wielded.
With a hundred clones which equated to a hundred avatars, each capable of reaching great heights if left unattended, it combined to a devastating combination that would truly defy the heavens.
A hundred Brauns, a hundred sources of turbulent fate.
As his power grows, this number would only increase, granting him far more control over the world.
With a malevolent grin, tens of portals appeared in the air before him, and tens of cloned souls, along with crystal fragments and threads flew out, breaking through the void and scattering all across Dela.
In just a single move, he had effectively allowed destiny to exist throughout an entire nation as a mere Level 3 entity.
This was power. This was the prospect of limitless growth.
In only two months, his influence had grown so exponentially that he could even mess with the ploys of fate.
Just this thought alone made his blood curdle with excitement, and for the future that awaited him.
“But first, I NEED A GODDAMN BREAK!”
He dropped to the floor, gasping for breath.
Now I have to deal with that goober as a mere Level 3, how fantastic! He sarcastically thought and sighed. Just wait, once I reach Level 4, I’ll terrorize this whole goddamn world and give you a big fucking headache!