[Vol. 8] Chapter 84: The Eternal Present
She raised her hand, and a black card with gold edges suddenly appeared out of thin air. On one side of the card was a long, strange number that didn’t seem to mean anything. On the other side, there was a small carving of a fox that looked strangely familiar.
The girl flicked her wrist gently, and the black card floated through the air. Ayla, slightly surprised, reached out and caught it without thinking. Before the scholar could say anything, the priestess’s misty figure disappeared just as suddenly as she had appeared, only her soft laughter echoed in the courtyard.
“It’s just that a certain friend asked me to help someone they once had a bond with. Miss Ayla, this is a token. When everything is over, don’t forget to give it back to me~”
………………………………………
Some time later, somewhere in the Spirit Veil Merchant Guild.
A small figure in a white robe reappeared in the reception room. A dragon-girl had been waiting there alone for quite a while. She turned her head when she saw the priest return, but didn’t seem too surprised. She wagged her tail and came over happily.
“You’re back, Master! How did the talk with that person go?”
“It went okay. With this, she should decide to sign up for the Chosen Hero selection. But whether she can pass or not will depend on her future performance. At the very least… let’s see if she can solve the riddle I left her~”
The priestess hadn’t been pretending to be mysterious earlier. What she valued in Ayla Light was her creativity, the courage to go beyond limits and challenge assumptions. Ayla was sharp, calm, and paid attention to the small details around her. She also knew her own limits and wasn’t impatient or greedy for fame and rewards.
Their earlier teamwork on researching faith-based magic had only been possible because of these qualities. Now that their paths had crossed again, and at such a critical time, the priestess had no reason to sit by and do nothing.
She gently sipped the tea the dragon-girl had handed her, then lowered her gaze to the palm of her hand, where a faintly glowing, colorless orb floated. It gave off a strange, mysterious light that seemed to hold some deep truth. Violet looked thoughtful.
This was a fragment of the Primordial Artifact called the [Sea of Time], a gift left for her by a projection of “Hen” inside the Time-Space Rift. This particular piece was called the [Anchor of Time].
It was said to represent the Present, one of the three states of time. Violet had later studied a bit about time theory and learned that the “three states of time” meant the Past, the Present, and the Future. A way of dividing the abstract concept of time into stages.
According to time theory, the world is always in the Present. No matter how time moves, this state never truly changes. That’s why the [Anchor of Time] holds the power of near-eternal stillness and stability. It can freeze time and hold it in the current moment indefinitely.
Back then, it was thanks to this strange item, whether you call it an artifact or a weapon, that the priestess was able to keep her own time stable within the chaos of a broken timeline. Even though gods exist beyond time and aren’t bound by age, the moment a time gap appears, it still causes huge problems for the outside world.
Violet’s understanding of the rules of Time was still very limited. But since it was now clear that someone within the Twilight Council controlled these powerful laws, she knew she had to prepare carefully for whatever might come.
That’s why, whenever she had free time, she started experimenting with the power of the [Anchor of Time], hoping to study and understand laws like this on her own.
She didn’t know what to expect at first. But once she tried it, she was shocked. The power hidden inside this fragment of the Primordial Artifact was much greater and more complex than she had imagined. In fact, it wasn’t much weaker than the [Demon God's Gem] that Violet already had, which was also a type of lower-ranked Primordial Artifact (Semi-Divine Artifact).
Even her advanced magic tool, Information Detection, which had become outdated, could only give one short and meaningless line about it, showing just how mysterious this item really was.
Now that she thought about it, the reason Hen went through so much trouble to set up that meeting was likely more than 90% just to hand this unbelievable “Present” fragment to her. And if just a small piece was already this powerful… Violet couldn’t even imagine what the complete [Sea of Time], the complete Primordial Artifact, had been like before it broke.
“Time” and “Fate” were the only two laws Violet had ever seen that might go beyond even the highest gods and reach some unknown, higher level of existence. And strangely… both of these laws were bound by rules that prevented them from forming beings with their own will or personality.
This probably wasn’t just a coincidence.
Sometimes the smallest clues reveal the biggest truths. The true power of the Laws might be even more shocking and unbelievable than she thought. Maybe that’s the real reason the [Sea of Time] broke apart.
There were many things Hen hadn’t told her directly, she hadn’t even hinted at them. But it wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell her, she probably couldn’t. So she had to leave behind this key and these clues, hoping the priestess could figure it out herself.
Violet waved her hand, and Xiao Guang seemed to understand her silently and walked over. Violet gently wrapped one arm around the dragon girl’s slim but strong and springy waist. The [Anchor of Time] in her palm flashed brightly, and in an instant, the world around them changed in a strange and amazing way.
The guest room they had been in, a normal, sealed room with walls, tables, chairs, ceiling, and floor, suddenly transformed. Everything now looked like it was made of pure glowing particles. The shapes were the same, but it was like their outer shells had been removed, revealing their true inner form.
Looking around, Violet saw that only the dragon girl, who was touching her, remained normal. Everything else had been affected by the change, as if they had left the real world and entered a different, secret space.
“......”
Violet looked down at her hand.
The [Anchor of Time], which had only been gently glowing before, now shone with a light ten times brighter. The invisible lights around it had formed glowing rings, like the belts of a planet, slowly spinning in a strange and beautiful rhythm.
This was its true power.
After many tests and experiments, Violet discovered that the [Anchor of Time] didn’t just help keep time stable around her. That was only its most basic passive ability. If she poured enough SP into it, this strange artifact representing the law of the “Present” could pull her into a special space that existed outside of normal reality.
Violet called this place the [Still Flow of Time], based on what she had learned from the Time-Space Rift.
This space was a mirror of the real world, it looked the same and could interact with reality. But everything inside, even living things, changed into this frozen state we see now.
That’s right. In this space, time has stopped. Everything here is forever locked in the “Present”. An eternal, unchanging moment.
In other words, as long as Violet stays inside the space created by the activated [Anchor of Time], she can do whatever she wants to do, and even if it takes her hours or days, only a split second will have passed in the real world.