His voice was low yet filled with warmth.
“I can assure you, your will to continue forward is unmatched.
“You might not be the most talented student I’ve had, but I’ve never seen someone with a more indomitable spirit.
“I’m proud of you, Neo.”
Professor Daniel hovered his hand behind Neo’s nape, and a faint glow of Divine Energy began to emanate from his fingertips.
The air around them seemed to still, the distant chatter of other students fading away as if the world itself was holding its breath.
The energy crawled over Neo’s back, burning his skin.
It traced a pattern of a dragon biting its tail, forming a loop.
Neo frowned.
His brow furrowed at the unfamiliar sensation.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“You’ll know when the time comes,” Professor Daniel replied.
He stopped infusing Neo with Divine Energy.
Sweat glistened on his forehead, and he wiped it away with a tired hand before placing it gently over Neo’s head.
The academy’s stone walls loomed in the distance.
Their shadows stretched long as the day neared its end.
“This might be the last time we’ll meet. As a parting gift, I’ll read your future. Do you want me to do it?”
“Why are you even asking about this?” Neo replied.
“Because some people hate knowing their future. They think predicting it will set it in stone,” Professor Daniel said quietly.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
Professor Daniel closed his eyes.
A faint glow lit behind his eyelids, as if his irises were alight with an inner fire.
The world around them seemed to fade.
He looked into Neo’s future.
The scene around Professor Daniel changed.
He saw a sky covered with ashes.
Purple cracks ran across the land, and maggots were present everywhere he turned.
“Where is Neo?” Professor Daniel muttered.
While the apocalyptic scene was horrifying, Professor Daniel thought it must be a vision of Neo crossing a rift and entering another world.
Such tasks were normal for Templars.
Sometimes they would encounter broken worlds, sometimes resourceful worlds.
Some worlds were filled with savages and monsters, and very rarely Templars would encounter peaceful civilizations.
The scene before Professor Daniel’s eyes changed again.
The vision of the future showed him snippets of Neo’s future, instead of one detailed scene.
The new scene was similar yet different.
Broken mountains were present all around.
Instead of forests and bushes, maggots writhed on top of each other.
Something flashed, and the mountains were cleaved into two.
A ‘monster’ with long black hair, a body covered in scars, and carrying an ominous weapon appeared.
It was fighting against a powerful swarm of maggots.
The ‘monster’ suddenly stopped.
It looked towards Professor Daniel.
As if it recognized him, it threw the maggots and moved towards Professor Daniel at a mind-blowing speed.
“What…?”
Professor Daniel was stunned.
Only the entity whose future was being seen could see Professor Daniel in the future vision.
In others, the ‘monster’ was Neo.
Neo landed with a resounding crash, sending ripples through the still air.
The ground beneath his feet cracked with the force of his landing, but the surrounding area remained eerily silent.
Before he could speak to Professor Daniel, the scenery shifted abruptly.
Professor Daniel found himself standing on the seabed of a dried-up ocean.
The once-vibrant waters was now reduced to cracked earth.
The sky overhead was ashen, heavy with a perpetual gloom that cast everything in a dim, unsettling light.
The air felt thick and suffocating, carrying a sickening aura that seemed to cling to everything.
It was the same world, yet entirely different.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” came a low, gravelly voice.
Professor Daniel turned around when he heard the voice.
His gaze scanned the desolate landscape before landing on the familiar figure.
He saw the ‘monster’ again.
“Neo…?” he said, a mixture of confusion and recognition in his voice.
Neo nodded.
His presence was a strange blend of nostalgia and dread.
“Sorry about looking like this. But I couldn’t care less about how I looked after a few thousand years passed.”
His words echoed in the stagnant air, and they sent a chill through Professor Daniel’s spine, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
The professor’s mind raced, struggling to comprehend the strange scene before him. Stay connected via empire
“Are you stranded on some remote planet?” Professor Daniel asked.
“How long have you been there? Tell me. I’ll warn your past self and make preparations—”
“It’s fine,” Neo interrupted, his tone flat and unbothered. “You don’t need to warn my past self about this. This is something I need to do myself.”
By now, Neo had a guess as to who was supposed to save the Sphinx.
The surroundings began to shift once again.
The air thickened, and the once-barren seabed began to distort, as if reality itself was bending.
Professor Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the world shifted one last time.
He found himself standing in the dark, damp interior of a cave.
The walls were slick with moisture.
The air was cool, and the faint scent of wet stone filled his nostrils.
The dim light that filtered through cracks in the cave ceiling barely illuminated the rough-hewn walls, creating eerie shadows that danced and shifted with every movement.
“I’ll be direct to the point,” Neo’s voice echoed in the narrow space, his words reverberating against the stone.
“I need your help. If my memory serves me right, you are supposed to be best Time mage.”
“What are you doing here, Neo? I need to get you out. How long have you been stranded in this place—”
“Professor Daniel, I’m sane. You don’t need to worry about me losing my sanity.”
Neo looked him in the eye and smiled faintly.
“I’m a tough nut to crack. Anyway, sorry for showing you a state like this.”
Professor Daniel’s face hardened as his gaze drifted downward, taking in the horrifying state of Neo’s body.
His Shadow robe was torn, revealing pale, scarred skin where tiny maggots wriggled just beneath the surface.
They had burrowed into his flesh, devouring him from the inside, corrupting him, trying to kill him.
Neo’s aura shimmered, like a protective mist clinging to his skin, fighting back against the corruption.
The clash of energies was visible—dark purple veins pulsed against the light emanating from him, as though a battle raged just beneath the skin.
It was clearly a painful fight.
And yet, Neo’s eyes remained calm, steady, and filled with unwavering confidence.
