A fist slammed into the ice barrier, cracks spreading through it that Mia quickly repaired. The owner of the fist, a muscly woman. Looked down on Mia as she towered over the small child. “Missy, you have seconds to explain yourself.” She grinned a toothy grin, her left eye twitching in frustration.

She was not alone in this frustration, every adventurer in the hall had gathered at the barrier separating them from the monsters inside. Understandably pissed that they had just been freed from one barrier, only to be stopped by another, this one from one of their own. Several voices spoke out in the crowd, voicing their complaints and worries about the monster inside.

“I, uh…” Mia stuttered, trying to carefully choose her words less the crowd turns on her “I know these creatures… you can’t touch them, I can deal with them.” She said, backing up against the ice wall.

“Don’t listen to her!” The crowd turned towards the voice, seeing Ryker run up to them and point a clawed a finger towards her “she’s the one that turned my friend into this beast! She is deceiving us!”

The crowd switched their view to Mia, who dived into the ice like it was water ‘forget this!’ she cursed, abandoning the idea of convincing the crowd. Who were they going to believe? A high level adventurer or an unknown child? While swimming through the ice she felt the vibrations of them pounding on it, her expression twisted ‘have to do this quick...’ she resolved herself, and plopped out the other side.

She tumbled to the ground, feeling the cool wet black goop that covered it, she glanced up, both creatures still pounding away at the ice as she went unnoticed by them, the crowd on the other side doing a good job at distracting them. ‘You sure there isn’t another way, Ami?” Mia asked, hoping there was.

[As of right now? No, they have progressed too far.]

“Bu-“ she felt a tremor shake the building, the group on the other side of the ice apparently feeling it too as they braced themselves “what was that?” another tremor, this one lasting longer than the last.

The creatures lost their footing, falling to their knees. When the shaking stopped they noticed Mia, one charging towards her while the other outstretched its lanky hand towards her, stretching beyond its natural limits.

[Mia! Now!]

“R-right!” she had to act before they got too far from each other, she slowed time and cast her magic, creating a wall of true ice in front of the charging beast that it slammed into then she froze it in place, keeping one arm exposed. she then dashed forward, grabbing ahold of the exposed part and resumed time.

The beast readjusted its arm’s trajectory, bending towards Mia and grabbing her.

“Got yo- AERGHAAAAA!!!” it clamped down and squeezed, crushing every bone in her torso and nearly causing her to black out. She momentarily let go of the second beast’s hand, but with her remaining strength she gripped harder and saved, and finally, loaded.

Time slowed to a crawl, almost stopping completely before Mia felt herself sink into something, not having to question what that something was as she watched the other two beasts were in a similar situation, sinking into reality as the world around them crumbled like a piece of paper with something wet falling through it, before they fell through and leaving nothing but a black hole in their place, with reality clamping shut the black hole.

Mia then found herself back in front of the two adventurers she was torturing, the two still slobbering messes “…that was-ack!” she clutched her head as information flooded it, overwhelming her thoughts.

[Major paradox detected! Searching for cause.]

[Missing individuals of importance after usage of time! Searching… ;:ERRROR:; not found.]

“What… is…happening…?” Mia tumbled back, bumping into Roxie who didn’t react. Mia glanced up and saw she was frozen in place, as was everyone else in the lobby “time is…Gah-?!”

[Activating [Log]…Warning: [Log] has received major damage, past major events from date R3/%S/@$^D save &@ corrupted… attempting to fix with current information… failed: retrying…failed: retrying… failed: retrying…]

Her head pounded, her heart thumped heavily, and she started pouring sweat. She figured she’d be used to pain like this by now but no, she felt horrible as her head heated up, she swore she saw steam emitting from her body as the messages of failed retries kept pouring in, until finally…

[…Success.]

Mia collapsed into a puddle of her own sweat “G-good…” she sat up, wiping her brow “so, does that mean they are back?” she questioned, hoping for an answer but only got a monotone voice in reply.

[Checking stability: local 86% stability. Warning: Do not mention individuals that do not exist to people that once knew them well. This will cause stability to drop.]

“…so that’s a no.” Mia sighed, trying to stand up but couldn’t, falling to the ground again, her legs very unstable and the exhaustion of whatever happened was starting to get to her “gotta reload…”she went to load, the panel popping up in front of her “Hrm?” she noticed it looked different, it was a panel that was constantly filling with information as she read it, with several icons on the side, but what caught her attention was what was filling in at the bottom as she read it aloud.

“Bunch of numbers and then ‘so that’s a no.’ followed by who said it…no way…” she shook off her exhaustion, “This is log?!” she grabbed the screen, pulling it close and scrolling up “The errors, the time travel request…” she kept scrolling up, finding it was literally logging down everything she did and who she interacted with “Even what Ryker said…” she felt remorse over what happened, tapping his name, getting shocked once the field expanded, another panel popping up that just had the information on Ryker on it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“…This is getting creepy…” she said, noticing that it included things she barely even registered herself, as the logs from last load started from him at the top of the stairs, rushing towards her, and even once she stopped paying attention to him to build the wall. “Then Ria…” she tapped on Ria’s name, it popping up in another panel. She scrolled to the part where she got kicked away, plainly saying that she got knocked out after she collided into the wall.

“Hrm… so as long as it happens around me, it logs it?” she glanced over to the two people who abused Roxie before, scrolling through and frowning “they are in here but… don’t have their names. So if I don’t know the information it doesn’t fill it in… still, Adventurer 4487 and Adventurer 4488… have I really seen that many adventurers?” she figured it was just a temporary name until she found it out.

She looked from side to side, everything was still frozen in time except for her “…Ami?” even Ami was suspiciously quiet. She went back to inspecting log, deciding to get check it out as long as she had the chance. She brought her attention to the icons on the side, clicking the first one “GAH?!” a pain shot through her body as all the panels closed “…guess it really is busted.” She sighed, at elast that confirms Ami wasn’t completely lying about it “did that stop or…” she tried to bring it up again, breathing a sigh of relief that it did.

She hit the second icon, flinching when the same thing happened. Again she tried the third and getting a similar result “wow, it really is busted…” she questioned what the icons were but they were not labeled, just icons. She tried with the fourth, surprised when another screen popped up that was mostly filled with a bunch of gargled letters and errors “…huh” it was mostly unreadable to her, but in the sea of errors she made out two distinct instances.

A paradox warning at the bottom that was mostly legible, the details informing her it was describing the paradox that was just fixed.

And another paradox warning, further up with its details jumbled up and illegible.

“That is… mildly concerning.” Unlike the recent paradox, she couldn’t even tell if this one was fixed “So, this is the error log?” she guessed, that’s all she could infer from the long list of errors followed by things like ‘4%_md#S7’

[you need to reload to restart time.]

Mia jumped, standing to her feet only to fall again “A-Ami I wasn’t!” she closed out of log, hoping she didn’t see it.

[I saw. I was restarting, I am just glad you have enough HP to withstand the recoil of trying to access three broken systems.]

“…what?” she glanced at her HP, her face immediately going pale as she only had 10 left “Ami, what would happen if I died during frozen time…?”

[Depends, if you died during the repair process, you might have corrupted something. But if after you’d just get sent to void.]

“Oh… ok…” she had to load anyways to get back, so it would not have been that bad “Wait, is that what happened with log? With the other paradox?”

[Oh, you saw that.]

“Yeah I saw it!” she shouted, bringing up the log again and pointing to the error log “right there, this one was this time, what happened this time? Is that why Log is broken?”

[That… Is more complicated… before you ask, no, I do not know the details of that paradox, or if it was fixed, I have been repairing log for awhile now and have just gotten that part fixed. The log itself is corrupted, repairing it has been, difficult.]

She had a tough time believing that, but after seeing the proof [Log] was broken she decided to put a little more faith in her and cautiously believe it, for now. It was still concerning that at some point she created a paradox without realizing it, was that before or after she became aware of the loops?

[Before. It is concerning. Very. Concerning.]

“Hm…” she wondered how she even managed to do that.

She shrugged, not much she could do now till [Log] was fixed. Putting behind her she loaded, going back to resume time and immediately saving over the slot she used to load on the beasts.

Speaking of.

She turned around, grabbing ahold of Roxie “It wasn’t your fault something else sent me flying and you saved me so all is forgiven come meet my sister and join our party.” Mia spoke fast, wasting no time as she dragged a very confused and timid Roxie through the crowd.

“I…what?”

“Don’t worry about it.” She rushed through the crowd, ending up at her sister and before she had the chance to speak Mia spoke over her “Banana, this is Roxie-“ she swiveled behind Roxie and pushed her forward “She’s the one who partied with me when I first got here and saved me, be nice to her she is very upset I got to go check on something.” She waved and then ran off towards the stairs, leaving the two behind.

“”…what?”” the two looked at each other, Ria not sure why her sister was in such a rush, but since she didn’t say anyone was in danger she shrugged it off, and started to talk with Roxie.

[Jeez Mia, slow down.]

‘Can’t, anxious.’ She made her way up the stairs and stepped into the lobby of A-1, looking around she saw who she was looking for, Ryker, sitting with the two other members of his party having a chat with some of the rescued kids, Roy nowhere in sight “so he did cease to exist…” she mumbled, looking over to the boat the helmsman was also gone, it was completely unmanned and no one seemed to mind or notice.

[Sadly, that is what happens.]

The battle cries of the adventurers sounded behind her, the barrier had fallen, and they were rushing out.

“it’s just… I don’t know, feels bad.” She solemnly shook her head pulling up her [Log] and was surprised Ami didn’t protest, she must not mind her using it anymore, and scrolled through it, pausing ‘it is filling up so fast…’ she couldn’t read fast enough to read through all the information that was being added, all she wanted was to pull up what she had of Roy but she couldn't even scroll up fast enough to get to him.

[Yup, completely useless in its current state.]

…which is why she didn’t mind… even slowing down time didn’t help, there was simply too many people around her getting logged.

A guild member came up besides her, shouting “We broke through the barrier! Kids, retreat upstairs and head towards the back rooms for more safety!” and waving for them to leave the area. The kids cheered, followed by the older people standing up to escort them, including Ryker’s group.

‘So, how did it work? Roy was their friend and leader, right? They don’t remember him?’ she asked, watching the group of three lead a small group of kids to the stairs.

[By the looks of it, Ryker is the leader now.]

‘Eargh…’ she felt a bit sick, removing someone like that and the log just, fixes, everything. It felt like too much power, invasive even.

[To put this bluntly, you fucked up.]

‘Gee, thanks.’

[Let me finish. You fucked up, throwing someone into void and removing their existence is not as simple as just tossing them in there and all of a sudden they don’t exist. No, it can only be done without major consequences under specific circumstances. They being consumed by void is one such circumstance. They lacked a will and consciousness at that point. If you tossed just anyone in their trying to get rid of them you could face a lot bigger consequences than what happened this time.]

‘Like?’ she then raised an eyebrow ‘wait, didn’t you throw that one girl in there?’

[She is special and will survive without affecting the outer world, we should go get her out soon, but it is fine to keep her in there for another decade.]

though her usual tone, Mia could pick up a bit of virtual in Ami’s statement. It was probably not fine to leave her in there for that long.

[For others, it depends on their will and presence in the world and how much their sudden non-existence would affect it. Leave too big of a hole and void will seep through. You would not want to throw a king in there, but anyone more than what Roy was is questionable… maybe could get away with a guild leader of a small, but well known, town?]

‘So last resort sort of deal…’ she got it. She didn’t plan on using that anytime soon anyways, she would only consider it if they were particularly evil.