[Temporal Lock Point (Gold) (Gateway Treasure)]
[Exchange 10,000 F-Grade Gold Aether Stones to set Temporal Lock on a region]
[Durability: 998/998]
—
Sylas stared at the Treasure, his mind still racing.
Temporal Lock Point wasn’t capable of changing the flow of time in a region. Instead, what it could do was force two timelines to work in unison with one another.
Whenever Sylas stepped off of Earth in the past, he would find himself suffering because Earth’s timeline and that of the outside world had been misaligned. It was thanks to this Treasure that he had been able to go to the Level 30 Bazaar and change everything.
Ironically enough, as much as he hated his experience at the Bazaar the first time, it was responsible for maybe the greatest boost to his growth in the shortest period of time.
Unfortunately, Temporal Lock Point wasn’t the magic bullet answer to all of his problems.
If Earth had still been under its time warp, what Sylas could have done was return and set the Lock Point in reverse, locking this region to Earth and thus taking advantage of Earth’s time warp to accelerate time around him and gain extra moments to reach D-Grade.
This would have saved him from having to make a trip to Earth, which would have been especially difficult considering there were no superhighways to Earth right now for obvious reasons.
Still, such a path would have come with its own difficulties, since Sylas would have to learn how to build a teleportation point between here and Earth for any of that to work.
Well, he wouldn’t need a full teleportation pad—just something capable of linking the spatial nodes of this place and Earth.
But all of those complexities were irrelevant since Sylas was once again suffering from success. He had successfully broken Earth out of its caged cycle, so there was no longer a time warp to take advantage of in this case.
That said… wasn’t there another?
His Hibernation Realm.
Wasn’t the Hibernation Realm capable of accelerating the healing of his Contracts by a ridiculous margin? The percentages were so exaggerated at this point that they had left the trillions behind by a substantial margin.
Unfortunately, that had its own problems.
Sylas had already confirmed with Nosphaleen, when she had entered the Hibernation Realm to complete her Mesmeryx trials, that the Hibernation Realm didn’t work on time. At the very least, it didn’t heal based on accelerating time around his Contracts.
This made sense, though. And it was probably better this way.
If his Contracts were aging at over 500 trillion percent every time they entered the Hibernation Realm, they’d be dead before Sylas could even benefit from them.
But as Sylas’ connection with his Hibernation Realm increased, and his comprehension of Runes and how things worked likewise deepened, his understanding became one layer deeper.
His conclusion was simple.
It was impossible for the Hibernation Realm to accelerate healing so much without some aspect of time being involved. The difference was that it was a much more clever usage—one that could help to rapidly heal wounds and accelerate evolution without actually impacting the lifespan of his Contracts.
The reason Sylas was so certain of this was because, after the evolution to his Profession, his Progenitor Flame Abilities had begun to influence it, and by extension, he could feel it doing the reverse.
His sensitivity to the Mesh of Reality was especially sharp now, so he could feel those subtleties, and he realized…
That if he could tap into just a little bit of the time-warping capabilities of his Hibernation Realm, just the tiniest bit—even if it was a mere fraction of a fraction of a fraction—then wouldn’t he gain all the time he needed?
When Sylas had this thought, he knew that he would be able to succeed. The thought alone was enough to guarantee it. The confidence he had in himself was only growing by the day…
Not that he needed much more to begin with.
He stood around the dungeon for a full extra hour before he began to move.
Runes danced, not just from his Hibernation Realm, nor was it just Temporal Lock Point either, but even the dungeon itself.
Sylas realized that he would need some of the D-Grade Runes here to stabilize the structure of what he was trying to create for long enough for this to succeed.
Was he about to destroy another top-tier Treasure right after losing the World Scepter?
In all likelihood, yes… but he needed more strength and power, and he needed it now.
He fused with Nosphaleen, and the world released a sigh of relief, as though finally free to allow Sylas to control its Runes. The D-Grade Runes, which had just been unruly, obediently fell into his palms, and swiftly afterward, they formed one barrier after another.
Sylas realized as he worked that there was much more potential he could pull out of his Hibernation Realm if given enough time. This just might be the path he needed to make the prowess of Temporal Delay and Astral Stutter even more powerful.
Right now, his two Progenitor Flame Abilities were both Gold, and yet he didn’t quite understand what this meant or what sort of power they had.
If his Hibernation Realm could become less of a hidden place to store his beasts, and more like a hidden weapon that followed him around everywhere he went, what would that mean…
What if his Hibernation Realm could become a Domain of sorts—one that could both heal him and be used to crush enemies? What if his Hibernation Realm could even help him to extend his Combat Matrix Index to his Contracts as well? How powerful would they grow?
Sylas trembled, and he felt his Rune Spark Mastery progress just the slightest bit. But he was so focused on the task at hand that he hardly spared it the attention.
In a trance, Sylas completed one step after another, and even after he succeeded, he didn’t show the slightest joy.
He simply pulled out the obelisk and stepped into it.
When he stepped out, he was spent, but he only gobbled up a large amount of food before stepping in again.
Every time Sylas left the jade, facing off against the obelisks, his aura became sharper and more refined, and the Runes of the world seemed to hum to his tune all the more.
And then, almost six months later, he stepped out again…
Having well and completely changed.
The world didn’t hum to his tune any longer.
It fell into a silence.
One bred by fear.
