Time Twister - 89 Acting

Xander, after finishing the experiments, took a tally of his inventory. He had no problems with Life seeds because he had tons of fruits and seeds left. It was the Creation, Destruction, and Dream seeds that he had a lack of.

He only had 25 more of Creation and Destruction seeds, and 20 Dream seeds left. With what he had, he fashioned 3 of the following seeds:

Dimension seedEvolution seedCDL-seedDDL-seedOrder seed

He then planted Dimension, Evolution, and Order seeds in one section of the garden. For the CDL and DDL seeds, he planned to do it in his dream bubble tonight.

After ensuring nothing was wrong with the ordered system in the laboratory, he harvested the fruits and metals/crystals/ores, as well as the elemental crystals. Although in the past three weeks he headed to the laboratory, he didn’t harvest the metals/crystals/ores and the elemental crystals, and only the fruits. He was not disappointed with the wait.

The produced elemental crystals surpassed the grade of Perfect, and according to the scan done by the System, it just passed through to the Transcendental grade for magic/elemental crystals.

The great thing was that he had different mixtures for them, and some were also pure elemental crystals. The only thing he didn’t like was that the sizes of the crystal compressed, diminishing to 1/100th of their original volume, which was still good since the finished product weighed around 50 kilograms each.

He kept them in his pocket storage and was going to use them if he ever needed to cast some spells under the Yin-yang or Life-Death elements. They were immediately sorted out by purity and quality, being kept in organized containers. When he left, it was 9:30 pm.

He headed out and went to his room, checked the current progress of the ‘scar’ in his room. It was healing slowly, but the fluctuations had already decreased to a negligible amount that it won’t be detected by anyone unless they took a step inside the room.

He then headed to his alternate room and went to Eden, spending 1 hour or 7,200 years inside, then headed out. Besides meeting with 100 million of the population in the span of 500 years with the help of his mirror images, he also fought with the demigods in groups of 10, 20, 50, and 100. Leading the fights were his contract beast and sprites. In the first few fights, he was the one running away, because he couldn’t exert his full power against them and risk causing spatial damage.

He could only use AoE spells that didn’t destroy space-time elements in the area, which left him with a few advanced spells, his pseudo-spells, and a few Legendary and Mythic spells. In the next fights, he was able to stand on his ground, in the next few fights, he was able to counter-attack, after that, he was able to win seamlessly.

In his last battle with a three 100-group of sprites and magic beasts, he had to use spells such as [River of the Underworld], [Golden Light], [Crysis Core Blades], and [Ninsar’s Garden]. The last spell was the first one to be cast before the previous 3 spells were cast in succession, delaying and defending the growing garden. He only managed to delay the enemies for 5 minutes before they broke through the spells he had made.

Of course, they didn’t do this unscathed, with several of them experiencing different ailments from the different rivers summoned, partially changing their bodies’ situation. He was lucky that he managed to summon the 11th river, allowing him to shower them with various effects.

Sadly, the death effect was weakened against these Demigods, only sapping their life essences by nearly half, some of which quickly recovered with the help of wood-type and life-type sprites and magic beasts. Control didn’t work at all, only lasting for a second before being broken by Mind-based magic beasts, allowing everyone to gain control of their bodies. Eradication only removed partial limbs, the zombification of a few parts of their bodies and life essence, and some had bodies becoming transparent or had grown a mysterious limb, or even shrank in size or function. However, he was quite proud of the result. If he was a normal magician, all spells below demigod would probably not result in any effects to these Demigod-2 and Demigod-3 magic beasts and sprites.

However, this time was enough for the spell to grow. The spell began to absorb the flurry of attacks heading at Xander’s way, damaging a lot of the plants, but rapidly being absorbed by them.

Soon, the plants began to grow and produce plant creatures and plant-based creatures, which began launching their own volley of attacks towards the sprites. Xander smiled coldly, chilling his contracted beings and signaled the rest to begin the retreat, while launching their attacks to delay the garden.

If [Garden of Eden] could resist even up to Mythic rank spells and attacks from mythic magicians, what about [Ninsar’s Garden]? Although he had to spend a seed of creation, it was something stationary and can grow up to his current specification. This was part of his plan on dealing with the Sage-rank cultivators, hehe.

Once he was out of Eden, he teleported to around 50 light-years from Eteria. He then brought out the garden, which he commanded to grow up to thrice the size of Eteria. He had made the calculations in his head with the help of the system. At that size, the power output the spell can release was up to Demigod-9, but its resilience and defense can match a Sage-3 cultivator, and can currently travel 0.5 light-years per minute.

To hurry up with the development, he let it absorb roughly 300 tonnes of elemental crystals, around 300,000 kilograms. He also allowed it to eat some fruits of Life, roughly 300 pieces of them after removing the seeds.

In front of Xander’s eyes, It began to visibly grow, absorbing the elements and surrounding matter in space, causing it to grow and become stronger. After 2 hours, its growth began to slow down, reaching the size of Eteria. He roughly had 36-72 hours to make it reach thrice the size of Eteria, so he did what he had in mind: Teleported non-living planets to the garden’s range of absorbance. He teleported a total of 9 planets, each of which was between half the garden’s size to twice its size.

After sending instructions to the spell, it began to slowly chip off the layers of the planets slowly, bit by bit being absorbed and transformed by the garden. He created a mirror image that was recognized by the spell to monitor the area of the garden, remote controlling it, and returned back to Eteria to sleep. It was, after all, already 12:30 am. He had class at 9 am the next day, after all.

I hope they’re prepared for the show I planned for today and tomorrow were Xander’s last thoughts before he finally slept. He awakened in the Dream bubble and got busy with his experiments._______________________Country of Castille, 1 am Wednesday.

The two sages, Maria and Margus, opened their eyes, their powers ready. They looked at the rest, saying,

“We’re ready.”

“Ok.”

To ensure the same situation doesn’t happen again, they began to scan areas around Castille, checking for any anomalies or hidden structures. After 10 minutes of scanning and sweeping, nothing amiss was discovered, and so the two began to cast their spell. After completing the spell in 11 minutes, the illusory mist once again descended on everything and everyone in Castille, all falling into a slumber.

However, as the two sages were checking every person’s dreams and reaction to the dream, this is where the anomaly was shown. All of the emotions showed by the residents of Castille were of sensual pleasure, confusing the two. When they delved into the specific dreams of the dwarves and humans, they finally saw the problem.

They weren’t re-experiencing the phenomenon 4 weeks ago. They were having erotic dreams!

This greatly confused Maria and Margus, who both supervised the setting of the dreams. They began to randomly choose dreams and saw the same situation happening, over and over again.

When their minds returned to the physical dimension, they both showed grim faces, confusing the others.

It was Margus who explained the situation, causing the analysts’ faces to change to shock before both began to ponder about the situation. It was Calissa who gave the possible reasons and conclusions from this.

“First, our operation has been compromised, allowing the enemy to learn of our actions and decisions, meaning, the target was probably present in the meeting we all attended. This lead to the being covering his tracks, meaning if we do search the other cities or the entire planet, most likely, the target has wiped out the relevant information about that situation.”

“The second possibility is that our target is in Castille, and this is red herring for us, misleading us to stop the investigation and search nearby empires with a similar phenomenon occurring. It’s possible if we skipped Castille due to the erroneous results, we might find a “positive” match in other countries but be actually planted by the enemy.”

“The third scenario is worse. It means that not only are we compromised, but the opponent had already laid the trap long before we arrived here, meaning, if we do find positive targets, they might not really be part of the situation. Castille, Nema, Eta, and Nerzon were just some of the places he placed the same disabling trackers. It’s highly possible if this scenario is true, that the target is purposely delaying us from reaching where he actually is in, and the more intense the delays and traps, the closer we are at approaching his current location.”

When Calissa finished speaking the collective analysis she made with Hailey, the rest chilled. Does that mean they needed more support from the other Sages? Or could they handle this situation? Before they could overreact, Hailey addressed the hidden concern etched in their faces.

“No worries. This only means that the target has currently no means of directly dealing with us. Which means, their ability or cultivation level is no higher than a Sage.” Calissa nodded in response.

“The intricacy of the plans and detailed traps indicates the target is afraid of the identity he/she/it holds being discovered by Sages. If the target is stronger than the Sages, probably God class, it could have just disposed of us easily.” When they heard the reassuring words from both the analysts, everyone took a deep breath of relief. Maria then asked,

“Should we still conduct the investigation in Castille? The people here are already compromised.”

“It must still be done. We shouldn’t leave a stone unturned. Actively control the spell again, and then isolate the area of Castille to remove the interference from outside spells.” Both nodded in response and began to modify the spell’s limitation and coverage, as well as purging the remnant outsider spells in the area by assimilating it.

After half an hour, they actually succeeded in assimilating the outside spells that caused the interference. It seemed that every city in Castille had a node where the spells were initially released. Once they targeted that, the spells began to collapse.

After another hour, the dreams were now about the phenomenon 4 weeks ago. After 18 hours of intense scrutiny and checking, no one in Castille was suspected, to the relief of Brutus. He still held feelings for the country he raised and grew up in, allowing it to make its mark in the world of Eteria.

After confirming the results with the two analysts, who also cross-checked it with the records in the servers of Castille, both private and public, they left and were now heading to their next country: Eta.

They don’t know what’s waiting for them in Eta, but they were ready to face it head-on, with their current abilities and power. After a few seconds, they traveled the whole stretch of ocean between Ete and Ria continents, arriving at Eta country. The arrived at the Alpha province, heading to a place between Eta and Hargroove city. This was the space that was considered the focal point of the country, and where they would cast the spell that would shroud the people once again in an elusive dream.

However, when they completed deploying the spell, no one fell asleep, to the surprise of the two sages. The spell they deployed was a Sage-rank spell. They wouldn’t believe it if someone said that their spell doesn’t work for those below Sage class, and even laugh at them. However, the proof is in their eyes: None of the beings in Eta were placed under the spell. It was then they realized something amiss. The place they were in seemed lacking vitality and life as if they were just watching video playback. Maria continued to observe a bit more before looking at Margus, who also carried the same shocked expression as she had.

Seeing their reactions, Hailey knew something was amiss. She did her own tests and came to the same realization as the two. At this point, Maria, Hailey, and Margus shouted,

“We’re inside the dream dimension right now!”

When others heard this, they all released sounds of surprise, because they couldn’t believe it. After all, they could cast their spells and even use flight. If they were transported to the dream dimension, their casual actions should have caused ripples in the space, their powers beginning to distort the rest of the surroundings.

It was Calissa that asked once again for confirmation, her voice serious.

“Are you sure we are all in the dream dimension? How is it possible that we entered the place without falling asleep?” What she raised was a valid question. Sleeping was the only way to go to the dream dimension, and create a dream body. And usually, people with no talent in the Emotion and Mind element series do not have the capacity to leave their dream bubbles. It was a different case for those Divine magicians or higher though; they can forcefully move out and about in the dream dimension, but their created dream body usually doesn’t last long and gets eroded.

Maria and Margus closed their eyes for a few seconds, before opening them and nodding at Calissa.

“We’re quite sure. However, it seems we didn’t enter the dream dimension the conventional way but brought in our bodies as well. Meaning, this space we are currently in is a special kind of space, one that connects it to the different dimensions, and in this case, the physical and dream dimensions. However, as far as I know, no natural formation like this existed in Eteria before, nor were there in the dream dimension. Our leader would have gotten that piece of land if that was ever the situation.” Maria responded to Calissa, her voice containing her surprise, shock, and fear.

“Quite a clever lady! I would have thought you would be like headless chickens once you enter this created spell of mine, probably continuously testing your spells till you ran out of energy.” A deep, manly voice sounded out from all over, echoing around the sages.

“Well, I can’t kill you lot anyway, sigh. But I can use this time to delay you all~ I’m preparing a bigger surprise for you Sage cultivators that came here since you won’t stop the investigation. An hour here, is 1 day outside, just so you know~ Tik tok, tik tok, time is running out~” the manly voice giggled, giving the listeners a chill. It just sounded different when a voice that deep and manly would laugh like a doll in a horror story. The voices faded out, and the sages continued to stay alert.

Hailey and Calissa, on the other hand, had a plan already on how to solve the problem.

“Destroy the spell’s foundation. We need to locate the focal points of the spell, disrupt or destroy them completely, and space would naturally dissolve on its own as well. Maria, Margus, we need you to scan and check for notable points of concentration or absence of dream and elemental energy. Those are the usual points of the spell array.”

Maria and Margus nodded and began to close their eyes and extend their spiritual perception all over the space. They wanted to see how far the range of the spell is. The spiritual perception that humanoid beings had was different from Infernals and Celestials. Spiritual perception for humanoid beings used their magic energy + life essence threads + primary elements to establish a connection that can reach up to who knows where distance in a split second. After 5 minutes, they were surprised, because the size of the space…it was around 2 light-years in length!

They weren’t disheartened, because they knew in the dream dimension, space becomes an irrelevant concept, twisted by the dream energy. A light-year can be a few steps for someone proficient in the art of dream-walking. Heck, some can even teleport.

After roughly an hour, they found all 1080 points of the spell, and they instantly destroyed these nodes by writing over it their own runic writings and symbols, overloading it with magic energy of their own, or utilizing the extremes of their elements to destroy the area the nodes were in.

The spell began to collapse. Part by part, the created image of the Eta country collapsed, revealing the blue expanse of water around them. They were in the middle of the ocean. They never reached Eta at all. They also saw that their communicators had to re-sync, showing that they were gone for a day, revealing it was already Thursday night.

Once it was done, numerous missed calls and messages appeared in their communicators, which took them 30 minutes to take care of. They were lucky because the other cultivators wanted to send out another team if they were all dead or missing.

They briefly explained what they experienced, hoping to get feedback from them. The other line was silent for a while before a voice came out from their communicators. The sages recognized who it was: Carolyn Fates, a Sage-6. Her specialty was on the Future-1 element, as well as specializing in the Pandora-Grief and Fear-5 element.

“Prepare. There are more challenges on the way. I hope you can resolve this soon, because I have a strong, overwhelming, foreboding feeling that there is something more in the works, one that we cannot hope to fight against.” When they all heard what she said, their faces changed because it matched to what the voice mentioned earlier when they were trapped in the dream dimension.

They nodded before turning off the communicators, and they slowly headed towards Eta. This time, they slowed down so they could begin to observe any traps that laid ahead of them, and it took them 3 hours to reach the borders of Eta.

They headed this time to the Alpha province but went to Eta city rather than the midpoint of the two cities. They once again observed for any anomalies around the surrounding provinces and cities, and checking there weren’t any traps, they began to cast [Dreamscape].

After 15 minutes, a tad longer because they were being extra careful, the spell was formed, and the entirety of Eta was surrounded in mist, causing everyone to enter a dreamland.