by Pegaz
Back on the battlefield, Keket said that the goddess, Bastet, was the one who gave her a new life, but John had never heard of that goddess, so he looked it up.
The information revealed that she was an ancient Egyptian goddess of cats, home, childbirth, women’s secrets, and a few other things. With his curiosity curbed, John went into his computer files and deleted a suspiciously hidden file before turning it off.
He locked the door, placed the keys back into his past self’s pockets, and tried thinking about anything else he should do.
After being unable to think of anything else he had to do on Earth, he opened up his universal map.
The map showed that Earth was at the very centre of this universe and that the Chaos Power barrier he came through was so far away that it would take him thousands—if not tens of thousands—of years to travel here, even while going at the speed of light.
If not for the wormhole, then there would have been no way he would have arrived on Earth without going insane.
He looked on the other side of the barrier for a while before he found the closest planet with a green patch that allowed him to teleport.
When the system asked if he wanted to teleport there, he answered yes and disappeared.
Bam!
His body passed through the barrier with no problem, but when the four souls that were wrapped in his threads touched the barrier, they were stopped which forced John to stop.
What’s going on? When I was in soul form, I had no problem passing through this barrier. Why are these souls being stopped?
John noticed the souls were slowly passing through the barrier, but when the souls tried going faster, they felt more resistance which stopped them from moving at all.
He kept the souls wrapped up in his threads while he helped them go through the barrier.
During the trip, he saw small wormholes appear and disappear inside the barrier. He got close to them every now and then, and he could feel the space and time elements being used.
When he felt a wormhole that had really strong time elements being used, he suddenly had an answer to one of the questions he had for the longest time.
When someone dies, they become a soul. Sometimes, there are wormholes which transfer the souls to this barrier and they will slowly pass through it.
But, while going through this barrier, they can get transported through time at random. That’s why some Siders were born billions or even trillions of years ago even though they died with maybe only a few years difference to me or Sarah.
Tim McNeil, the real Eastern Kingdom’s king, was a Sider who died a little over fifty years before me on Earth, but he was reborn over ninety thousand years before me in the other universe. He must have gone through a time warp in this barrier in soul form which sent him back in time.
My soul was transformed by Chaos Power, so when I travelled through the barrier as a soul, it couldn’t put up any resistance against me and these time warps couldn’t affect me even if they showed up.
But these four souls I’ve got are normal and weak, so everything affects them if I let it.
The four souls couldn’t be harmed or moved in any way thanks to his threads wrapping around them, so he had nothing to worry about.
What took him ten minutes to travel as a soul using Chaos Power, took him almost two months while protecting the normal souls.
He figured out that the souls were travelling only fifty miles an hour while in this barrier, and John had gotten used to travelling tens of thousands of miles per hour, so this was a snail’s pace to him.
When he exited the barrier, he used his universal map to return to the Nobody Sect’s planet. He still had a lot of work to do.
Chapter 36: Danny’s Outcome
John arrived on the Nobody Sect’s planet.
He figured that he was inside the immortal area after finding some signs in his Scan.
After he figured out which way to go, he flew towards the Northern Kingdom. When he did, he used his time element to turn back time.
John remembered telling his master about Danny’s memory all those years ago. It was his master who told him how long ago it was from the point that they fought.
John thought about the years he needed to travel back; it was 32,482 years ago that Jamie and Danny fought, plus fifty-one years since Jamie told him about it and then a few years more to the point where Danny was reborn.
He watched the kingdom go from what it was, to having the city walls deconstructed and the city becoming smaller. The buildings were demolished and a building popped up to replace it, only for that building to repeat the process a few years further back in time.
The only thing that didn’t change during all that time was the castle in the centre of the city.
He stopped using the time element and flew to an alleyway within the slums of the city.
John knew he was in the right timeline because he saw Rose, the princess, inside his Scan. She looked like Claire, the woman Danny liked back on Earth before he died.
He used a thread to touch Rose’s forehead and used his Soul Manipulation on her.
Through the skill, he told Rose, “Get a driver and carriage, and take a ride to the slums. When a man runs up to you and calls you Claire, treat him as a Sider and use him for the kingdom. Flirt with him and make him fall in love with you, but absolutely don’t get together with him.”
John then grabbed the hair he took off Danny’s body back on Earth and started using the cloning technique he had read about. He knew it was possible to create a clone from Chaos Power much faster than Life Power because O’Malley had told him how he cloned Jamie almost instantly.
Danny’s body was created. Thanks to the DNA in the hair and the cloning technique, his new body was a complete replica of himself from Earth, who was in his late twenties.
John placed his finger on the body’s forehead and used the time element to alter his body. This was only possible because the body was just a shell. It wasn’t alive, and it didn’t have a soul inside it yet.
Soon, the body looked more like a fifteen-year-old boy, but John couldn’t see the age of the body in his Immortal Eye skill, so it wasn’t guaranteed if he really was fifteen years old.
He knew how old Danny was back on Earth and simply reversed the number of years to make him fifteen again.
There was nothing else he could do, so he unwrapped the threads around Danny’s soul and carefully guided the soul into the body.
As soon as the soul fully merged with the body, some rags which covered the important parts were created which surprised John.
How do clothes get created by the soul merging with the body? Are these made of Soul Power?
After examining the clothes and finding nothing to answer his questions, John placed Danny’s body on the floor, face-down in some mud next to a pile of trash, before he flew into the sky.
While he was in the sky, he thought about the systems.
I still don’t know how the systems are created. I only transferred the souls from one universe to another and had nothing to do with creating them, yet Danny will wake up with a system.
The most plausible thing I can think of is that the mass of Chaos Power that acts like a barrier to this universe has something to do with it.
If that barrier can alter the time when souls come into this universe, can it also make a system that latches onto the soul?
When a Sider dies and the soul moves on, the system stays behind inside the body and will control it after ten thousand years, so I’m not sure if I’m right or not.
Every Sider that I’ve met, including myself, has a system that involves their past life one way or another and our memories are intact when we arrive in this universe.
That means O’Malley was right about our soul carrying our memories while they go through that barrier. That should’ve been obvious from the start, though, since we were reborn in this universe with memories!
Since the systems are connected to our past li
ves, that barrier is the only thing that connects everything together.
I can say that it all seems plausible; I just don’t know how it works.
John then watched Danny get up, get knocked over by the horses that Rose’s carriage was using, and then used the time element to speed up time while making sure the past events of Danny’s life happened like they should.
When Rose betrayed Danny, John paused time and flew next to him. He used the Soul Manipulation skill on him and suggested using the Sinners System to reach its potential.
History repeated itself as Danny killed his way through the kingdoms and gained power that rivalled immortals before he met the real immortals.
After the fight between Danny and the immortals, John was floating in the air while invisible and he noticed Danny was staring in his direction as he lay on the floor, dying.
Oh, I remember Danny’s last thoughts.
‘This is the best I can help you out, John. I hope your life is a lot better than mine.’
Who knew he was speaking to not only me that witnessed his life first-hand, but the me floating above him that made these events happen?
He can’t see me, but his instincts—after all this fighting—must be telling him I’m here, watching.
At least I now have an answer as to how Danny knew about me even though he had lived over thirty thousand years earlier.
Sarah was right. She said it was called a time paradox, and something should happen that would transfer some of my memories to Danny while he was alive.
I gave him some of my memories through the Information Sphere.
Now that Danny has served his purpose here, which helped me immensely, I suppose I’ll suffer a little and make it up to him.
My vision of Danny’s life ended before the soul came out since Danny’s system shut down to preserve its function until it’s able to take over the body, so it’s safe to take the soul back.
John flew down to Danny’s body. When the soul came out of the body again, he used his threads to wrap around it.
He opened up his universal map, went to the other universe, and clicked on Earth to teleport there.
When he opened his eyes once more, he was back on Earth.
That worked better than I thought!
I thought I would have to suffer another two months to get here with his soul, but now the souls can travel through the barrier without resistance.
The first trip through the barrier must have caused the souls to mutate, or the resistance was there in the first place to generate the systems through the souls’ memories.
If I’m right, then as long as a soul has already been given a system from the barrier, then they’ll have no resistance from it. That could explain why I could travel through the barrier as a soul without resistance, too.
Wait... If the barrier is the one that makes the systems, then does the ‘we’ in my system messages mean the universe itself?
O’Malley did say I have to defy the universe to kill transcendents, but to defy something means it needs sentience to make and govern the rules. If it’s got sentience, then maybe it could give out rewards and punishments in the systems, too?
That’s the best theory I’ve found so far that might answer at least another question I’ve had.
John used the light element to turn invisible before he flew high into the air. He could see he was in America again and thanks to his first trip, he knew where New York was this time.
He decreased his altitude while going towards New York.
When he arrived, he went back to Times Square but stayed on top of a skyscraper as he used the time element to turn back time again.
He stopped when he came to the point where Danny was lying on the floor.
John saw the soul come out of Danny’s body, but then it disappeared. He knew that was the past him collecting Danny’s soul, so he waited a few seconds before he flew down.
Using the time element to freeze time once more, Danny’s soul was placed in front of Danny’s body before John guided it back inside. At the same time, he used his Chaos Power to heal Danny’s body.
When the body was healed and the soul was placed back inside, John used the Soul Manipulation skill on him and made Danny forget what happened.
He gave Danny another command. Then, he unfroze time as he flew a few meters in the air to watch what would happen.
John could see Danny’s eyes waking up not long afterwards.
The driver that hit Danny was helping him stand up while apologising repeatedly.
John watched as Claire ran from in front of the law firm to where Danny got hit, and as soon as Danny saw her, he ran up to her and embraced her for a few seconds before giving her a passionate kiss.
After their lips separated, John heard Danny confess his love and that the accident made him realise just how short life was.
John smiled because he wasn’t sure if commanding Danny to confess to Claire would work. Even though the skill could control the soul, when it came to a person’s feelings, anything was possible since even his magical system couldn’t control emotions.
Since he helped Danny have a better outcome, John was in a better mood, so he decided to help O’Malley and the other Transcendents before doing the rest of the time jumping.
He opened his universal map and found that the large nano metal castle he woke up in was actually showing up, so he tried teleporting there. The system asked if he wanted to teleport there, so he clicked yes and disappeared.
Chapter 37: Milking Information
John landed at the place he had arrived in when he transcended. Underneath him was a platform made of nano metal which had strange marks etched into it.
John knew it was a teleport rune from the old days. It wouldn’t teleport a real body, but it would only work when a soul had transcended. Even though John had studied runes for a long time, he had no idea how that one worked.
He remembered that this rune and the one inside the room where he transcended were connected together. With that knowledge, he could make his own, but he just didn’t know how it worked in principle.
In his Scan, he could see O’Malley and Jamie sitting on some armchairs around the round table. John walked towards the castle, through the open doors, and into the courtyard.
O’Malley spotted John and paused his conversation with Jamie. “Oh, I didn’t see the teleport rune light up. The runes that stop the Chaos Power from entering the castle didn’t get disturbed either.
“You must have gotten here through a skill you own. Maybe the same one that got you away from the battlefield at the end?”
John ignored his question. “Your greatest wish is about to be fulfilled because I’ve gained the ability to defy the universe as you put it.”
O’Malley placed his trembling hand over his gaping mouth. His straight posture in the chair slumped down into a more relaxed position and he began laughing.
After a few minutes, O’Malley even asked him to repeat the good news, which John did.
John waited for O’Malley to collect himself before he continued, “How are we going to do this? You said there’s plenty of transcendents who want to die, so are you going to wake them all up and ask who wants to die?”
“Yes,” O’Malley replied. “I already know who wants to die, but they told me that millions or billions of years ago when there was no way we could die. Now that there’s an actual option to die, some might change their minds and want to live while others might still not want to.”
John nodded his head. “Fine. But before you go wake them up, I’ve got two more questions I’ve thought of.
“I’ve always wondered why men’s hair went straight and women’s hair went curly when they reached the purified realm or Silver Grade. Care to explain?”
“Because of the brain,” O’Malley replied, pointing at his head. “Men and women have different brain structures, and the cultivation path is enhancing everything about the brain which affects things like emotions, how we th
ink, our IQ, and more.
“So, because men and women’s brain structures are slightly different, the cultivation effects are slightly different, too.”
John looked at Jamie and then at O’Malley. “How come your hair and eyes have reverted to how they were before you reached the Silver Grade? Or are your hair and eyes the same silver colour, but you have somehow altered them?”
O’Malley laughed. “After you’ve transcended, you’re no longer using the Silver Grade Life Power, so your hair and eyes will go back to how they were after a few years of using Chaos Power.
“Now that I’ve answered your questions, I’m going to wake someone up. If you manage to kill him, I’ll wake up the rest.”
After speaking, O’Malley walked towards the entrance of the castle.
John walked over to a seat and sat down before he looked at Jamie. “I remember your clone telling me not to learn about transcending before reaching it because it’ll be more harmful than good. Now that we’ve both transcended, I still don’t know what the clone meant back then.”
Jamie smiled. “O’Malley made the clone back then and the clone said that under O’Malley’s orders, so you’ll need to ask him, but I think it’s got something to do with what O’Malley said when he explained what he had done.
“If he told you either the truth or a lie about how to transcend, then you might not have unlocked the Demon title or transcended, making all his plans useless. So I guess he just said that so you wouldn’t ask any more questions or get any information from him.
“Now that we’re alone, I can tell you that I doubted what O’Malley wanted help with. When he asked if I wanted to die because I’m a waste, I told him no, but I didn’t think he really wanted to die either. I thought he did all those plans because he wanted help with killing the first Sider he talked about and take over both universes.”
“That first Sider is the one in charge of both universes?” John questioned. “O’Malley only talked about the first Sider becoming a Demon and killing the second Sider, but he didn’t reveal that bit of information.”
