GODReset. Hmmm, nothing''s happening. I''ll need to do a hard reboot. I sat in a blank space looking at the Void all around me. I hope I don''t have to work all the way back from the top. You know, calling for light, working six days to make the universe, repopulating the place, then moving forward until the Oracle of Tao. It wasn''t so bad this last time, but everyone found out about this, so they got infected too. There''s more to this space than your puny human brains can understand, so I''m simply translating it into effective terms. This is my Control Panel.

    Load *,8,1. Ah good, the original copy still runs from the disc. I don''t have to rebuild the engine itself. Okay, let''s see here, list of options... Alright, we have a Last Good file on this one. It''s pretty old though. I hope it hasn''t gotten corrupted. Run Last Good Version. Uh oh. Everything looks intact, but Ambrosia and that other one are misplaced. Ah, there she is. Set Location - IP Address 256.108.64.08

    AMBROSIA

    Where am I? This town... It looks like Opening. But... there''s no one here. I wander about this land and suddenly understand that there is no “was” or “will be.” There is only a sense of “is.” This place is the present only. I''ll probably screw up and use words referring to the past anyway, because I''m human and pretty fallible. I walk through this town all the way out the entrance, but find myself unable to do so. It isn''t that I''m blocked by a wall. I move out of the town, but the entire space of this area appears to be a small looped area. I walk out of town and after a while, find myself walking back into town from the opposite direction. So then I try walking left or right, and find myself moving alongside an infinite number of Opening towns. I decide to do an experiment. I have some bread for some reason and I lay it down on a tree stump near where my bed is in town, not remembering at this point how I got it. Sёarch* The ηovёlFire .net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    Got. Past tense. An image of the past flashes in front of me, I remember some things. Time is eternal here, but I remember how old I am, my name, and my friends. Not much else about this place is clear. My name is Ambrosia, I have friends named Aqorm, Elias, Azrael, Zoe, Lilith, and Michael... I feel like I am missing a friend, one who didn''t travel with me recently. I was fighting... something, but none of that matters now. I return to the town from outside the town. This is not a false town. It is simply vacant, from what I can see. I walk outside, moving away from town however I can. Nothing happens to this bread, so I bite it, and the bread is in the same state of digestion in all towns. I walk north in this town. If it really is my town, there ought to be ghosts in the graveyard, and that weird lady who gives away Jars of Human Tears. She is not here. There is no time, after all, so I suppose this old woman cannot be old, and there is no death here, only emptiness. But near the grave, I do see someone.

    YAZIM JIANNE

    I know this town. This is town where I buried her. Oh yes, I remember who I am. I remember everything because my past is through her. I am Yazim Jianne, and I know why I am here. I came here when Belial tried to destroy me, after my portal went wrong. But that''s not why I''m here.

    I am here, alone, because things went wrong. I am here, because for me, time has stopped. I am here because I am eternally trapped within my own regret, and this place is a place of the present. This is a place to get away from my past. But even here, I cannot leave behind my past. The memories of her define me. I read the gravestone again, having not needed to sleep or eat since I got here. ?Here lies Sarai Jianne, beloved of Yazim Jianne (7045-7073 AD)? it reads. She died because I was caught off-guard. I tried to make a light source, and she wound up in the wrong place. She was electrocuted, dying in an attempt to save me.

    Memories come rushing in. I see the event in every gory detail. It starts with me being a sorcerer dedicated to helping others. I make inventions. Some of them are mad, yet I don''t care what other people think. I was in love then, with a beautiful wife. She even helped test my creations, to the point where she immune to most poisons! She was a real treasure to me. However... I see us now in an underground laboratory. Using crystal seeding, I trap luminescence in the form of electrical energy, then proceed to grow peridot crystals around the energy, and I triumphantly laugh, “Mwahaha!!! My Glow Crystals are perfect!” That''s right, I was the inventor of the Glow Orb. The Glow Crystals though, had a flaw in their design. My wife, having tested all my theories personally, immediately understands this. She sees what I can''t see. “Now to examine more closely...” I say, as I begin to approach them at a distance where the radiation would produce toxic effects, and I would be at risk of electrocution due to the peridot crystals having little insulation due to their high iron content. “No! You mustn''t!” she cries, rushing forward and pushing me out of the way. She trips, and falls right in the space where several crystals met. I watch, again and again, as the trauma of what happened replays in my head. Her long blue-hair and tall delicate body started to flex in response to the charge. Her skin becomes covered in burns. Gradually, her body writhes and twists in response. Then her own muscles try to throw her across the room, but she instead hits another Glow Crystal. There is nowhere to go. She receives charge after charge of electricity until the current stopped her heart. She is dead, eternally, in my memories.

    Next, I see myself succeeding in correcting the original problem of the Glow Crystals, distributing the design safely among the public. I win acclaim but it is meaningless now. I disappear from public view, and begin working in more and more dangerous alchemy, sorcery, and eventually I begin to research forbidden techniques. Chimeric genetics, demon summoning, and experiments attempting to make a surrogate soul. I see my deal with Belial, and I see now his obvious lies for what they are. I finally look up from the gravestone and stop reading the inscription. I see another girl with blue hair looking up at me. It was her.

    AMBROSIA

    That man... I have seen him somewhere before... but where? He glares at me, as if he knew about me more than I knew him. “It''s you...” I say, before asking, “who are you again?” He presses his palm to his face, “Yazim Jianne! My name is Yazim Jianne! I''m the evil sorcerer that helped the demon Belial and got us in this mess!” It is rare to hear a person honestly declare himself evil. People normally believe themselves good, making excuses for their behavior. This Yazim Jianne... he was familiar... wait, Belial? Suddenly memories come rushing into my mind. I remember my quest. I remember... this dude. Yazim Jianne, was it? I remember the Oracle Crests, which started to glow on my hand. Right, I have spiritual powers, don''t I? “Why are you here?” I ask him.

    He explains, “I was duped. The demon I worked with convinced me that he would help me bring back my wife. So I helped him get released. But as soon as he got the chance, he tried to destroy me.” He recounts how his wife died, how he gathered the keys to Belial''s urn, and how he tried to use a Gate to get away but was instead trapped here. It was such a tragic story, so I started crying.

    “So we can get out, right?” I ask, “you can just throw up a Gate inside here and get us out, right?” He shook his head, “No. This is not Opening. This is the Eternal Town. Runes can work here, but...” He calls a Gate. “Look at the other side, if you will,” he says, pointing to the inside of the Gate. Gates, when open are like windows, able to show the area on the other side. And what I can see is... well, the town we''re in.

    “You see?” he says, “we aren''t in another place or another dimension. We''re beyond everything. Nowhere. Everywhere. Gates work by traveling dimensions and physical space. You can go anywhere in the universe, parallel universes, and even travel in time.”

    I am confused, “But wait, if the Gate can go anywhere and anywhen(?) then why can''t we leave this place?” Yazim Jianne sighs, “You don''t understand magical theory, do you?” I shake my head, so he explains, “All runes come from energy flowing from sources. There are natural sources, like the sun, the air, moisture, and the earth below your feet. There are arcane and divine sources, from old runes or from God or immortals. So, all of this energy comes from existing phenomena in the universe, wonder-workers and sorcerers simply pull it to use for their purposes. So, where do you think the time/space magic comes from?” I make a wild guess, “So you''re saying this Eternal Town is where time and space collects? And the reason we can''t leave through a Gate is because we''re inside a Gate?” Yazim Jianne looks impressed, “After I first met you, I sent scouts to study you. But they came back with the impression you were very naive. It looks like you have good instincts though. Yes, that is the general idea. I got trapped in this dimension by casting a Gate which was forcibly closed on both sides by Hellfire. Wait, hold on...” A thought occurs to him, “Just how did you get here? The Law of Conservation of Will states that the amount of magical versatility that a person could have is inversely proportional to its base power; that is, a power such as the Oracle''s should leave you with only those techniques, you shouldn''t be able to make a Gate.” Because I want to understand this as well, I explain what I remember of my past. I tell how God had basically promised to Reset things if my adventure went wrong, and how I learned too much about my past (although now I can''t recall what I just learned) and so the Reset didn''t work properly. Yazim Jianne suddenly stops me, “Wait, so you say God used some kind of technique that delivers you back to the last save point, and doesn''t use the runes of the Gate? Maybe we can get out, after all!” I shake my head, “But the last place I saved was inside the Realm of Void.” He smiled, “No, we probably can''t Reset anyway, since it''s something governed by God. However, I may have an idea. First, tell me about all of the abilities granted to you by the Oracles.” I explain in detail everything I was able to do, taking care not to skip anything. “天空寫作 ,” he says, causing his index finger to be coated with blue fire, which he uses to jot down letters, numbers, and other symbols in midair. “Let''s see,” he says, in a way that reminded me of when Elias geeks out on research, “if I carry the one here, and move that there... Yes, this might work! Okay, Ambrosia, was it? I''m going to need you to use all of your powers at once. This won''t be easy, and might hurt... a lot, actually, but you should should be able to warp time and space enough that we''ll be able to leave. You''ll need to hold each Crest in place while you do the next. Now, you''ll need to do it in this order...” He shows me how to effectively string together techniques. Because our circumstances were different, a completely different mix of techniques is needed. Yazim Jianne needs a portal to simply open it back to Opening, so I needed to activate his Crests in the following order: Chronos, Aiken, Tao. This will bolster the range of my powers, then open a portal to the Gate''s original destination, using the Resonance of the Tao to maintain the portal until he crosses. I, on the other hand, cannot simply go back through a portal because it will either drop me off in the Realm of Void or separate me from my friends. I need to rewrite my reality, much like the Reset ability, only more so. I had to use all of my Crests, to transfer my future self to my past self. Before he enters though, he asks me, “How will I know you''re from the right timeline, though?” She shows me a Transport Coin. “When I was heading down the Mountain of Fate, this girl who said she was your assistant handed me this. She said that she was from the future.” He scowls as if to say that it is absurd.

    As I watch Yazim Jianne disappear through the portal, I prepare for what I have to do. My new memories will be in my old body, which hadn''t awakened the Tao yet, so I''d lose my new powers. And yet, I can''t be stuck here. I work myself through the forms. All of them are necessary: Thanatos because I need to discard my current body, Apollo because it is the Crest of Life and I need to be reborn as a spirit, Alexander and Lilith to reinforce the Tao, Michael because it allows transference, Four Gods for balancing all of these energies together, Chronos to move through time, Aiken to move my spirit back to my body, and the Tao to unite my current spirit with my soul in the past. I finish the technique and I appeared on the New Earth just a few days ago. Yup, past tense all of a sudden. Well, longer, after you considered the Realm of Void’s time distortion.

    “What''s that?” I asked. Nevras said, “Weren''t you listening? We''re heading to Hinata.” It was the 10th day of the month of Monkey. What they call December 10. I was back.

    YAZIM JIANNE

    I know this town. I was back in Opening. As an experiment, to make sure that I wasn''t trapped, I left town heading south. I wound up near Shoten. I was indeed back in the real world. I found the Great Tree, Tsukuyomi Mountain, and Shoten nearby me. And yet, my purpose in life was over. My mission for years had been an experiment to bring my beloved back. I''d even believed that a Fallen could help me. All that I could do now was maybe make more insane inventions like the self-grinding coffee machine, a device that could grind its own metal down so no one could make coffee, an online dating App, or do some more research on orgones.

    Wilhelm Reich, centuries ago, believed that the entire world was powered by what we now know of as mystic power, a bluish energy that flowed through all things, usually in the form of an aura. However, Reich believed that this energy which he dubbed “orgones” was derived from sexual energy. He also believed that the reason the sky was blue was because of leftover orgones, flowing into the atmosphere from people having sex. The sky had been ruined from Belial''s actions, and it was up to me personally to heal the world. I would achieve this by getting people to have as much sex as possible, and containing it in a device to later release into the atmosphere. The online dating App would help in this. Yes, this was a worthy goal. I would have to stay in Opening since it was conducive to my experiments, surely not because I wanted to mourn my wife.

    Of the two of us, I had the easier time, I didn''t have to time travel. Time travel is tricky, due to several factors. Normally, people think that the past is fixed, but not only does the future branch but the past does as well. For you see, time-travel is non-fatalistic. Seers divine most likely futures, based on decisions. In the absence of this, there are a large number of branches in both past and future, risking that anyone traveling in time alter a timeline that was not their own and return to a completely alien present. This means you can potentially change one timeline, but in order to ensure travel to the right present requires careful planning or dumb luck. This also means each trip into the past is unique and influenced by which past the person enters, so it is impossible to meet time traveling versions of yourself while time traveling. Since there are a number of pasts and presents, free will governs time travel, so a traveler cannot force future or past versions of themselves to act a certain way. If your past self dies your future self dies, although if a third party acts to save your life then it is saved (even if you previously died). It''s a convoluted mess, but the simple explanation is that time travel can change events, but it is difficult to know which parallel timeline changed or how things changed.

    As this was her first attempt traveling in time, besides all those Reset uses, she might be okay, but there was no way of knowing without investigating. But soon, I would know. And then, all would maybe be according to plan. Mwahahahaha...