“... Alright. So if I’m correct, I should come here right about … now?” I questioned myself.

I was sitting with Alice in my office, waiting for something to happen. Basically, I was testing a time travel theory.

We’ve learned a few things since I asked Tamaki to look into time travel. Basically, this world operates on a closed time travel system. Or basically ‘This Always Happened’ time travel. This means that everything we know that has happened in the past, in this case the Hero obtaining Demon's Pride and Fall, must happen in the future. And since I’m the one who made that sword, I must make that sword. Then travel back in time and deliver it to the Hero.

Now, that might bring to question destiny and free will. And to an extent, that is true. But I think ‘destiny’ is not quite what you think. Sure I know what I must do, but it is up to me how I do it.

And you might ask, what if you just don’t do it? Well, I honestly don’t want to try. In theory, this entire world cluster, or whatever you want to call this world and the worlds connected to it such as the Spirit world, the monster world and the demon world, all revolve around the central world. The Chaos God Dimension. The Chaos God Dimension powers all of the other worlds around it.

Thus, I theorized that if a time paradox is caused, the Chaos God Dimension would go and correct it. Potentially in destructive ways. Maybe even destroying all the worlds currently around it and restarting from zero.

And I don’t want to take that chance. It will be much better if I just try to fulfill my part in this time bullshit.

Now you might ask, ‘Why not just take the sword to the past? Why do you need to make a new one? Wouldn’t that be easier to just take the one that is already there?’

And the answer is yes. But it wouldn’t fit the timeline. Because if it is my ‘destiny’ to take that sword to the past, it causes a problem. Mainly the problem where Wilma and I never made that sword. If Storage told me it was a timeless object, then yes I could just take it to the past. But it isn’t. We made it, so we must make it.

Along with that information, came a little mission. And not just from the Goddess, but one backed by all four of the System Gods. It was actually quite simple.

Mission: Make and Deliver the Hero’s swordGoal: Produce the Hero’s sword, nowadays known as Demon's Pride and Fall. Then take it to the past and hand it over to the Hero.Reward: Your System Support will be upgraded to UltimateIf you Fail: The entire Time Line might be reset or erased. Do NOT fail.

Wilma also got her own mission, one to help me produce the sword. And after I pulled Alice into this to help me with the Time Magic spells, she also got a mission. Neither of them had any crazy rewards though.

So back to what Alice and I were doing. We were waiting. For what? Well, for me. The future me. Because he should appear here right about…

“Stop your internal monologue already. We have a schedule.” I heard my own voice say in front of me, but I couldn’t see anyone there. “And of course you can’t see me. Numeron Code Invisibility.” The voice continued, as the invisibility became undone and a version of myself appeared in front of me. He didn’t look any older than I do, so it must not have taken me too long to figure out time travel.

“... so it worked.” I said.

“Of course. Don’t doubt yourself. Things do generally work out for us.” My future self said.

“Anything I need to know?” I asked.

“Not telling. The future me didn’t, and nothing bad has happened. I mean, nothing outside the usual.”

“Well, that is good to hear.”

“Are you even going to tell me when I do the jump?” I asked.

“Nah. Let’s not twist destiny. You’ll do it when you are ready. That’s what I did.”

“... I probably should have expected myself to act like this.”

“Considering we are repeating the same conversation I had, yes.”

“On purpose or just because of how  things flow?” I asked. “And wow long will you stay?”

“It just went that way, but when I realized, I began repeating what I heard.” He answered. “And not too long. And you won’t be seeing me. My Laura finished the test she was running, masking us from the System, so we are ready to go back. I just need a bit of time to cast the Time Spell that will return me to the future. And to not bother you, I’ll be going Invisible and Intangible.” My future self said, before he disappeared.

“... well, that just happened.” I said to myself.

“You really should have thought this out better.” Alice commented. “You see your future self and don’t even learn anything.”

“No. I learned everything I needed. For now. I learned that it can be done and that Laura can somehow mask us from the System. And that we’ll be fine.”

“Still didn’t learn if this is destiny or something else.”

“Free will is a lie.” I said jokingly. “But you should know very well that destiny is bullshit and Prophecies are often only partially true.”

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Now, as for Wilma and I, we were doing a lot better. After all, we’d already planned on making a near perfect replica of Demon's Pride and Fall for Wilma. Now we just had to turn it from a near perfect to a perfect. And it won’t be a replica, but a genuine article.

And compared to figuring out all the spells I need for the time travel, this felt extremely easy.

So Wilma and I were in the Factory making plans. And with the Factory time dilation, and all the plans we already had, it didn’t take us all that long to figure everything out.

The only parts we were still missing were the way I hid the maker’s information, and the Protector of the System.

Luckily one of the other System Gods, The Great God, provided us with the info we needed for the situational trigger. And it makes sense. The Gods do have a vested interest in getting this done.

So even that part was dealt with, and we just had to figure out the hidden information.

But at the same time, we don’t have to figure out everything today. As long as we accomplish this before I die, it should be fine. And there is an adventuring tournament going on, so maybe we should go and watch some of the secondary qualifiers.

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And with teleportation, it took no time at all to get to the Hero’s country. Yes I had to teleport us outside the city itself, damn you barrier, and we walked one of the bridges from there.

… okay, I can actually teleport straight into the city. Alice and I developed a spell that goes through the barrier the Hero’s country has. But we aren’t officially in the country at the moment, so we are entering it the regular way. Then we can just teleport out and in, as long as we don’t officially leave.

At first we tried to go around as a group of six, Wilma didn’t come, but we quickly ran into trouble. Mainly that we already were famous, but someone, and not naming any names but it was Tahlia, decided to upload a video of our wedding to the Internet. Then she used the fact that the Hero’s country does public podcasts, using my tech, to give the people living here the news. And Tahlia hacked that and broadcasted our wedding.

So yeah. Our fame, which was already quite high, is now to the point where many people on the streets recognize us.

And while most didn’t have the nerve to stop and talk to us, just the few that did were already crowding us.

After a while, we got rid of the first crowd, but it didn’t take too long for a second one. So walking around clearly wasn’t going to work.

Luckily I do have a carriage, so I got it out of Storage and we got in. Yes it wasn’t as fun as walking around, but we clearly needed to disguise ourselves if we were going to be walking around.

I summoned a monster to drive our magic carriage, and we headed to a manor I rented for the duration of the tournament. It is so that my employees have somewhere to stay, as they can’t just teleport back and forth.

There, we all changed. With our skills, changing our appearance wasn’t that difficult. Except for Cailie, she didn’t have the skills for that. But nothing a little DNA Surgery couldn’t fix. And while Cailie looked mostly like she did, she now had legs instead of a mermaid tail, so most shouldn’t realize the connection.

Lua easily changed her appearance with Vampiric Body Modification. Alice changed hers with magic. Unika used Solar Flare Fox to alter hers. Janina could easily manipulate her scale copy body.

And do I need to mention myself? One of Every Race allows me to change almost everything about my body. Yes I had to do something exotic, as people do know I can change races.

I went with a Silver Fenrir-kin, and gender swapped myself into a female. I also put on a somewhat flowy dress. Because yes, I do have some dresses for my female forms, even if I don’t use them all that often. And I can just quick change outfits with Storage if I need to.

We also split up into three groups of two. It just let us blend in better.

At first I went with Cailie, as she had some minor trouble walking on regular legs. She can do it, she practices it both in the Factory and the Spirit world, but the sensory feedback in the real world is different.

After heading back out into the city, we still got some looks. Probably because I’m quite eye catching. Maybe I should have gone with something more subtle.

But as we were walking near one of the many canals running through the city, we realized it was also because Cailie still had some fans from her time as a singer here. But with most of her fans being those who live in water, we didn’t get too many people stopping us.

But near the canals, some of her old fans asked her how she got legs, asking if she traded her singing voice for it. Which made me question where does that story come from? Who isekaid and told everyone the story of the Little Mermaid?

Cailie giggled and responded by telling that she charmed a god with her voice, and they gave her the legs so that she could sing on land. She then levitated a bit and added that they also gave her the ability to fly so that she could sing in the skies as well.

When asked about me, I used our mental link to tell Cailie to call me her guard. I mean, I kind of look like one. Except for the dress. A guard wouldn’t wear it. But maybe a divine guard would. I need to make myself a combat dress. … okay, I probably won’t, but I’m sure someone else will design one for me and have Wilma manufacture it.

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We met up a few times and traded partners each time. I also swapped my appearance each time, just because I could.

We caught some of the secondary preliminaries, including seeing Rudevik winning his secondary preliminary and making it to the finals.

And yes. Recording the fights in the secondary prelims went well and they are being edited so they can be shared hopefully tomorrow. The tournament itself will start in a few days, as you might recall from last year.

Towards the end of the day, I had one more visit I needed to do. And that was visiting Ibu in the Demon world.

Making the trip there is decently easy now, and I was alone. Usually Janina would come, but since I’m going to Ibu’s most private areas, I decided to go solo. Yes I warned him beforehand, and told him why I needed to see his device, but it was still not something he was super willing to do.

Not until he realized that the device did have the mark I assumed it would have. At that point Ibu realized that what I was telling him was actually the truth.

So I got to look at the device and even analyzed it with Storage. And honestly, it wasn’t anything special. I already had the designs for it. This one was just four of them put together as one for increased efficiency.

The HomeBase mark wasn’t even hidden. It was just on the side of the box. Sadly no hidden messages from my future self.

But still, now I know I need to make one of these as well. Hopefully it is the only other thing I need to bring to the past. But knowing me, there are at least two or three more things I need to take there.