Second World

Jack didn't know how long he walked. Years? Decades? He had been walking in auto mode. Day and night were now alternating between one another at a more rapid pace.

He felt his body getting weaker. He looked at his hand. His hands seemed thinner than usual. His skin had wrinkles. It felt like he had seen them for the first time. Perhaps it didn't register to him all this time or he just ignored them. He touched his face, there were wrinkles as well. He was getting older.

He looked at the sky which looked to be in a fast-forward mode. Was my body affected by the increased time flow as well?

There were more hills and dead trees. The land seemed like a chaotic mess. A far cry from what it was near the cliff wall where he started. He could hardly remember that time anymore. It seemed like ages ago.

How was everyone doing?

He tried to remember his friends' names. Nothing came into mind. Did he forget them? Did they forget him?

His legs finally felt like they couldn't move anymore. He fell to the ground. He turned around and laid on his back, looking up at the sky that was exchanging rapidly. Sun, moon, repeat.

Was this the end?

He remembered when he talked with a woman, her name also eluded him, that players could still die a real death. Death by old age. He was old now.

He admitted that this was a completely unexpected way to die. Alone. On an alien land that he didn't even sure where.

He decided this was the end of his journey. He was done walking. There seemed to be no end to this journey. His body also didn't seem to agree with continuing the walk anymore.

Now all he could do was just contemplate all this. He was done thinking about how to clear this trial or find a way out. He was past that now. He didn't even feel regret to have decided to take the trial that caused all this. He didn't feel the unwillingness due to still having many things that he should have done and planned to do. He didn't feel the fear of dying a useless and lonely death. He might feel all that during his journey, but now that he was lying down here. Spent. Those seemed unimportant.

All he had now was just his curiosity. What's the deal with all this? What exactly was the point?

Jack closed his eyes.

All he could think about this place now was its distortion of time. Time appeared to completely stop where he left Peniel and Majus. As he went on his journey, time seemed to start flowing. As he moved forward, its speed picked up.

There were times when he had considered turning back. To where Peniel and Majus had been frozen in time. Though it won't solve anything, at least he won't die alone. He would have died accompanied by two statues.

Now that he thought about it, why didn't he?

He thought back to those times. He felt compelled to go forward. There was no return. No going back. All he had to do was move forward. Like time. Time was one direction. You could only go forward, not backward. You could only go to the future, not the past. You could remember the past, not the future. You could influence the future, but not the past. Time in its actuality, was irreversible. It went consistently in one direction, as if an arrow.

Disorders and complexities also escalated in relation to time. This was expressed by the landscapes he had passed through. It was neat and empty at the start of his journey. As he journeyed further, the landscapes got more uneven with various trees in a chaotic arrangement. As time passed, a building without maintenance would fall apart by itself. It would not happen the other way around, the building would not repair itself with time. So did the human body. Just as how age was breaking his body down now with the passage of time. This was irreversible.

It's the same with complexities. A story in its infancy was most simple. As time passed, more plots were added, more characters were included, and more rules were incorporated. The story would become more complex as time passed. So complex that it was easy for the author to make mistakes and inconsistencies. Hence, amendments and retcons were sometimes implemented, which in turn, enhanced the complexities even more. The same thing happened with society, knowledge, technology, etc. They became more complex as time passed. This was irreversible.

So, time, in reality, was irreversible. There was no do-over. There was no loading previous save file. There was no replaying new game plus.

Wait... But he was not in the reality. He was in a world that had its entire underlying laws rewritten based on a game system.

"Hm...?" He felt something. He sensed something. Something that he had not sensed for a very, very long time. Mana.

He opened his eyes. Tendrils of light filled his sight. It was... mana. He saw it visually. The tendrils of mana formed a river of light, flowing in one direction.

He didn't know how he knew it, but he was certain that this mana river represented the time that existed within this place.

He extended his frail hand up, trying to touch those tendrils of light. He felt too weak to do his out-of-body experience. After a struggle, his finger finally brushed one of these light tendrils.

His thought was connected to the river from that touch. His consciousness was pulled out of his body into the stream. His understanding was further reinforced after connecting with the mana that governed time.

He felt his consciousness join this river. He merged with it. Flowed with it. He perceived time in its most basic essence. Indefinite enlightenment washed over him. He felt somehow transcended.

In this transcended state, he sensed a certain power influencing this time stream. The stream seemed to be constructed of immeasurable parts that formed the whole, like gears on a machine. Each part was essential. One alteration might cause a ripple effect on the whole system.

He reached to one of these parts. Like a gear, he shifted it. Rotated it.

The whole system started to vibrate. They tried to adjust to the change. The mana river slowed until it eventually grounded to a halt. Then slowly, the river flowed backward.

Within the river, Jack saw an astonishing sight. He saw his frail body getting up. His body then walked, backward. The scene didn't look right. It looked as if a movie was being played in reverse. He watched his body walking backward.

It was like watching a replay of his journey. He was in a true auto mode this time, he couldn't influence any change to it. He was just a spectator.

Days passed, months passed, years passed, even decades, as he watched his body walking backward through the path he had walked before. The stream followed exactly where he had walked through. Or perhaps it's the other way around? Unconsciously, he had been walking following the stream all those years.

Eventually, he saw the cliff wall from where he had started his journey. He saw the stream entering the cave from where he had come out from.

He followed the stream as his body reentered the cave, all the way up to the hall where Peniel and Majus were still in their statue-like state. He watched himself walking around the room, on a backward track from what he did. It ended with him back in front of Majus. The time stream began from where he stood at that time.

He felt himself flowing with the stream and re-entered his body.

"!lairt eht semoc ereH. yawyna ,lleW" Jack heard Majus utter as he stood before the illusory mage.

Majus' eyes then blinked. He looked at Jack as if he had just seen Jack for the first time.

"You did it...," he said.

At the same time, Jack heard a notification, "Congratulations on passing the special class trial. Your Archmage class has been upgraded to a special class, Time Sage."

Jack was blank for quite some while. When he reentered his body, he felt as if he had just been awoken from a dream. As if all the decades of the journey he had taken were just an illusion. A long dream, but a dream, nevertheless. He felt that he had gone through all that, but at the same time, it was just a second ago when he started his trial. He couldn't exactly describe how he was feeling at that moment.

"What do you mean he did it?" Peniel, who was floating beside Jack, asked Majus. "What trial? How is it completed already?"

She turned to Jack who was still having a blank face. "Hey, did something happen?" She asked.

Instead of answering Peniel, Jack asked Majus, "This... The trial..."

Majus gave him a sign to calm down. "It's rather disorienting, I understand. To be honest, I didn't have much confidence in you passing, considering your low level. I'm just glad despite your low level, you actually have already learned the basics of how to manipulate mana. Well done, young man."

"But... Why... Why couldn't I... sense the mana right from the start?" Jack stammered. His mind was still trying to adjust.

"Because you need to understand time before you can sense it, before you can become its master," Majus answered.

"Its master?" Jack asked.

"You are now a Time Sage. A mage who holds dominion over the most enigmatic element, time," Majus said.

"Time Sage? One of the Council of Twenty-four?" Peniel uttered with wide eyes.