Professor Daniel’s expression contorted.
His eyes were filled with grief and pain.
What had Neo gone through for him to say he was fine with those injuries?
“There is a lot I would like to say, but I guess time’s up,” Neo said. “We’ll meet next time.”
The world around Professor Daniel shifted.
When he could see again, he saw Neo surrounded by countless writhing maggots and towering, thousand-eyed pillars.
Every time the scene changed, Professor Daniel only saw Neo fighting.
He could guess a few hundred years passed every time he ‘blinked’—the name of the phenomenon where scene around him changed again and again.
He saw Neo go from barely fighting against the maggots to being able to clash against them as an equal.
The scene shifted once more.
Neo was now breathing heavily.
He sat atop the gigantic, twitching corpse of the maggot.
A part of his abdomen was missing.
He was focused on treating his own injury with shaky hands.
“Long time no see,” Neo said when he noticed Professor Daniel.
His voice was hoarse and his smile faint yet serene.
But Professor Daniel could see the loneliness in his eyes.
There was no way he was sane after being alone for centuries.
Neo walked up to Professor Daniel.
His movements were slow, burdened by pain and exhaustion.
He pressed his forefinger on Professor Daniel’s forehead, and a surge of energy flowed between them as he transferred his Intent.
The Intent was imbued with vast knowledge.
Professor Daniel saw fragments of Neo’s memories—how he had come to the Shadow World, how they had failed to protect the Child of Mana, how everything was destroyed by the Angel, and how Neo had become the last living human.
“Take your time to go through the information. We’ll talk next time we meet,” Neo said.
The scenery shifted again.
Professor Daniel’s surroundings melted back into the void.
His ability was to see fragments of someone’s future
To be exact, his soul would appear in the future and observe the target for a short moment.
Then it would go farther into the future, observe again.
Then, it would go even farther and observe again.
It would keep repeating for several cycles.
When the skill ended, Professor Daniel’s soul would be pulled back into his body.
He couldn’t control the duration of the ‘observation period.’
As a result, the scene kept changing before he could fully understand Neo’s situation.
The visions ‘blinked’ too quickly.
Thankfully, Neo used Intent to bring him up to speed.
Professor Daniel appeared in a barren land.
The soil was cracked and lifeless beneath his feet.
Melted rocks filled with purple cracks jutted out from the ground, and a pale mist lingered in the air.
When the distortion around him calmed down, he saw Neo fighting once more.
He was now capable of pushing back the sea of maggots and the thousand-eyed pillars.
As long as he could keep growing stronger at this pace, he could one day reclaim Earth from the Angel.
Yet Professor Daniel’s expression wasn’t a good one.
His lips were pressed into a thin line, and his brows furrowed with concern despite the happy news.
“Their Shadow Trial came to save the Child of Mana?” he muttered under his breath.
Child of Mana, Sphinx.
Real Name: Selene Caelum.
Professor Daniel knew who she—no, ‘it’—was.
The knowledge clawed at his mind like an unwelcome truth.
“This sounds like a sick joke,” he whispered with a hollow voice.
Finally, things were making sense for Professor Daniel.
He covered his face with his palms, sighing as the weight of the revelation pressed heavily on his shoulders.
Moments later, Neo mowed down all the enemies surrounding him.
Blood splattered across the cracked earth as the last creature fell.
He approached Professor Daniel.
“I take it you understand what is happening now?” he asked.
His voice was calm but tinged with exhaustion.
“…I do,” Daniel replied.
“That’s good.”
Neo swung his sword.
The black blade left a trail of blood on the ground before he returned it to its sheath with a metallic click.
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure we would meet.
“You saw my future before we came to the past and caused the world to end. Technically, you should’ve seen this moment back then.
“This moment is…. The Paradox sent you to my future. And since my future is this world unless I leave, I predicted you would come here.”
Neo smiled bitterly.
“It was a complete gamble though.”
The timeline of events was, of course, jumbled up, but Neo wasn’t bothered.
Events like this were Paradoxes.
It was like trying to know if an egg came first or the chicken.
“You can send people into the past, right?” Neo asked. “I need you to use your abilities so that we can save Child of Mana.”
Professor Daniel was in soul form
He could send Neo to the past—but only in theory.
“I can’t do it,” Professor Daniel said. “I’m too weak now, and you are too strong.”
Professor Daniel’s time travel worked similarly to throwing stones upstream.
The people were pebbles, Professor Daniel was the thrower, and the river was the river of time.
Professor Daniel’s strength determined how far he could throw the pebbles upstream (back in time).
Currently, he was too weak.
He could barely send someone back by five years, let alone 1,863 years.
The weight of the pebble (the target sent back in time) mattered too.
The heavier (stronger) a pebble was, the more difficult it was to send them farther back in time.
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“Right now, you are capable of wiping out a civilization. That’s… a Paragon,” Professor Daniel said. “I can’t send someone so powerful back in time.
“Awakened or Mythic Demigod? I could do it, but not anything higher than that.”
“I am not the one whom you’ll be sending back in time,” Neo said. “Anyway, there is something I need to do here before we do this. I’ll get back to you later.”
Before Professor Daniel could question what he meant by that, the scenery around him shifted.