Five more tries and Linc became agitated. His 'gifted' student was turning out to be a failure.

"Okay. Maybe I'm slightly overestimating your capabilities. Let's try something else."

He retrieved a few practice stones from his inventory.

"I'll throw these at your head and you'll deflect them. It won't be as effective as deflecting a speeding arrow but it will be a good start."

The first stone went directly to his head. He tried to deflect it and when he couldn't, he dodged it.

"No, no, no. You can not dodge it. You aren't allowed to move an inch. This is supposed to test your ability to stop moving projectiles. Got it?" Linc was getting deflated by the second. He was probably regretting his hasty decision to become a mentor.

"Just don't dodge, please."

Hell, no. Gaus would dodge any stone before it hit him on the head. That wasn't what he signed up for.

By the time he left the office his face was swollen. He didn't deflect a single stone. Damn it. What was Linc thinking? That should be level 100 difficulty.

The day was nearing its end. He went to the academy clinic to get dressed before he left to meet up with Minorita.

***

"I'm sorry about what happened earlier," Minorita apologized. This was the first time the woman had genuinely apologized to him. "I'm constantly at war with the marines, so forgive me if I was a bit hard on you."

She immediately summoned the soul-pillars for him as an apology. The cost of the summoning didn't seem to affect her.

"There are two things we have to settle first," Gaus said. "First, you should tell me your real name if we are going to do business. Are you London or Minorita? Second, you have to come up with a way of identifying your memory package faster. We can't be wasting ten hours every day."

"I'm Cinder. Though nobody calls me by that name nowadays. And I'll do something about the package that will help me identify it as an emergency."

Gaus nodded. The next thing was to figure out why Minorita accepted the time loop as a possibility. Many would have called him mad.

"You told me you had your reasons for accepting the time loop as a possibility. I want to hear about it."

"There are two reasons. One, my friends and I are planning to launch an attack on the slavers in a few hours. We've been trying to predict our success through divination and the results have been unnaturally skewed. It doesn't matter how little time passed between individual divinations. We've even tried to divine the future after today. Do you know what we found? Nothing. It was blank. It was as if there's no tomorrow. That everything will just disappear after three o'clock the next morning."

She cleared her throat and pointed at the woman behind her. "I told her there's something strange going on with the world. She didn't believe me. She said it was because of the pilgrimage."

So that was why she was looking apologetic.

"It still didn't explain time traveling," Gaus said. "I don't know your perception when it comes to the dark arts and specifically time magic, but I kind of feel there are other things that can come up to explain your divinations before time travel."

"I did say there are two things, remember? You see, while most mages may consider the ability to turn time back as impossible, I don't. Difficult? Yes. But not impossible. It has been done before. Let me take you back a little."

"It has been done before? When? How? Where? Who did it?" Gaus was getting excited.

"Do you know the Commandments?" She asked.

Of course, he knew them. Nobody talked about the Multiverse without broaching the two Commandments. The First Commandment said: 'people can't live together in harmony'. The Second Commandment said: 'for any two people to live in harmony, one must lead and the other must follow and obey. The most popular religion in the Multiverse was built upon these two Commandments.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"The First Commandment is tyrannical," Minorita said. "The world government used it to send people down from the First World to the six lower worlds. Before the Commandments, everyone used to live in the First World."

Yes, the most influential races all lived in the First World. It was something he attributed to the 'strong prey on the weak' mode of life in the Multiverse. But the inhabitants were okay with it. And if they weren't okay then nobody was showing any concern.

"The First World is rich," she went on. "Rich and big enough to take the entire population of the Multiverse. But the world government took control of it forcing everyone else to live on the lesser worlds. The Second Commandment is also just a cover to enslave us. It's the basis of the jinzidal tournament at the end of the year. Countries will provide slaves and they will fight for them. The winner takes all the slaves. You have seen the slave auction, I'm sure."

Now Gaus might accept the First Commandment but the Second Commandment was bullshit. No bloody idiot would agree to send their people to slavery just for the sake of a stupid tournament.

"I wonder why everyone just accepts this as their way of life. Even the world government can't deny the collective voice of the people," Gaus said, puzzled.

Minorita chuckled. "It's not that simple. The Second Commandment conveniently prohibits all conflicts between countries. If you have any dispute with another country then you have to wait and settle it during the competition. This stopped the many wars that plagued the six lower worlds. People were happy. Especially the smaller countries. But it was just a cover for the real slavery. And don't forget the world government doesn't call them slaves, they call them 'followers'. If you lose the tournament then your people should 'follow'. Also, the countries use clever guidelines in selecting the slaves. The people don't complain because most of them consider it a price for the peace they enjoy."

He got it, but... he didn't like it. The world government lived in the First World and the six lower worlds were considered lesser worlds. This should be enough of a punishment without enforcing slavery on poor people.

"We digressed," Minorita said, looking at her timer. "Let me tell you a little bit about the past. Before the Commandments, our grandparents lived in the First World. The world government didn't just ask them to leave, they were forced to leave. In the year 12BC, there was a demon invasion that consumed the entire world. Before the final human city fell, the King called upon his council to save what was left of humanity. They came together and cast a skill known as the Universal Rewind, a spell that would take the world back for twelve months, which would be a few months before the demons appeared. The King would have defeated the demons with this, after all, he already knew where they would come from and what they would do when they appeared. But one of the four mages that cast the skill deceived the King. He changed the skill formula when the others weren't looking. As intended, the world Rewound for twelve months to the period just before the invasion. But instead of disappearing into oblivion, the current timeline continued thereby creating two timelines. In the first and original timeline, the demons have already conquered the world. And in the second timeline, the demon invasion was yet to occur.

"While the King and the others lived peacefully in their timeline, the deceiver planned another attack in the original timeline. He found a way to control the demons and connect the two timelines. A few years later, he attacked and killed the King and the other three mages that cast the Universal Rewind. He joined the two timelines to build the Multiverse. If those mages could Rewind the entire world for twelve months, I wouldn't be too surprised with a mere time loop." Minorita explained.

Gaus just stared at her in disbelief. If it were true then he would have heard about it somewhere or read it in one of the books in the library. At least, someone would have told him.

"Why didn't I hear about this before? You can't tell me that something this big will just disappear in a puff of smoke," he asked.

Minorita shrugged. "Why wouldn't it disappear? The deceiver who killed the King is now the leader of the world government. He's still alive and he rules the First World. He founded the marines and the MIAs, short for Multiverse Intelligence Agencies. This part of history was intentionally erased and the people who knew about it are all conveniently dead. The knowledge has been buried under the sea for hundreds of years."

"Then how did you know about it?"

"I'm part of the resistance, aren't I?" she said.

A period of awkward silence passed. He would need time to digest everything he'd just heard. And honestly, it didn't matter that much, the fact that she believed it was good enough for now.

"Tell me," she went on. "How long have you been in the city? I've done some background search on you. There are no records about you in all the seven worlds. I've asked my contacts to check every Register in all the libraries but still nothing. It's as if you don't exist until this morning."

She scrutinized him silently.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He asked.

"It can only mean one thing: you aren't from this plane," she said with a shrug.

He didn't expect that. The woman sounded as if 'coming from another plane' was the most normal thing in the world.

He furrowed his brows. "Not from this plane? You are kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not kidding." She punctuated her words with a jab. "You should tell me right now if you are from the Parallel Timeline."

What the hell? The woman knew about London so she was either from Earth or she knew someone from Earth. London and William Wilberforce weren't common names after all. But what's this about a parallel timeline? Did that mean people were coming from that timeline that was supposed to be destroyed?

This was too much information for a single day. He was lucky he wouldn't miss anything because of the save library.