83 Correcting Time

Elizabeth passed Scion the catalog Jade Slip and said, "For now… I think I'll complete a couple more substation legacy trials."

Scion returned a couple words of advice, saying, "Do as you please. Just remember that the better your rating the greater the reward you earn. I won't tell you to buy anything, but always recall that the items you can exchange for here, may impact your score. Also, before you start making your ascent up to the higher floors, remember that you won't be able to return to the lower floors unless your Cultivation stays static, or to put it simply, you don't complete a breakthrough into a higher Stage. If you breakthrough at any time, you'll immediately be teleported to the next floor."

'Mhmm...' After listening to Scion's words, Elizabeth took a moment to reconsider. Should she purchase some equipment to potentially augment her score in the substations? She shook her head from side to side as the decision to postpone spending her white ticket, stood steadfast in her heart; for now. She already had few tests in mind which would not benefit in the slightest from buying equipment, training, or anything else.

Thus, Elizabeth gave Scion a head nod and walked out of the exchange hub. Behind her, the bar-like scene faded away along with Scion, returning into another uncanny white room, left opened for Elizabeth to re-enter at her convenience. She walked back over to the round room and stared intently at the various doors labeled "Space, Time, Yin, Ice, Fire, and Foundation." She was already fast approaching the hard limit of what her perfect path could sustain, especially after reaching 5,000+ units of Inner Strength. Thus, it was already starting to become a dangerous ordeal to cultivate insights into the various energy forms she could control, via meditation.

As was the case, after learning that she could not go down to lower floors if her Cultivation increased, Elizabeth decided to first get these set of substations cleared. Her Time Affinity was without a doubt the area she was most talented in, so Elizabeth chose to start with that. She already knew that the result from taking the Foundation substation would probably be extraordinary. Though it was for that very reason that she felt no need to rush things.

Once more, Elizabeth entered a white room; this time, it was the one labeled "Time." Already expecting it, Elizabeth didn't flinch after hearing the door behind her shut as she was too starstruck by the transformation playing out before her very eyes. Around her, the white world started flaking away in some sort of disintegration, only to reveal a very curious scene underneath…

Elizabeth stood shocked as she now found herself standing on a transparent plane over what looked to be her home planet, Earth. She was several tens of thousands of miles away from the surface, yet what attracted her attention was not the starry space around her or the beautiful sight of her home from her impressive position. Rather, atop the same transparent plane she stood upon, there also lay a massive clock structure.

This otherworldly clock was a massive grandfather clock, hundreds of times larger than anything Elizabeth had seen in her life. It stood a couple hundred meters away from her and emanated pulses of pure cyan time energy. Much like her experience with the Medical substation, Elizabeth received a notification as to what she was supposed to be doing.

[Resolve as many conflicts within the timepiece as you can. Performance will be graded on the number and difficulty rating of conflicts resolved. Time Remaining: 1 Hour, 59 Minutes 59 Sec...]

The instructions she received were not very helpful, as Elizabeth couldn't help but voice a confused, "Huh?" She tried to contact P to inquire what it was that she was supposed to do, but it would seem that their connection was severed, as P would not respond to Elizabeth even after being called over five times.

Without P, Elizabeth didn't stress as she still had her highly dependable Status Functions. She walked over to the massive clock structure and after placing her hand on the smooth wood exterior of the clock's base, she called for its Status.

[Name: Ancient Timepiece à la Phantasmagoria

Grade: High Divine-tier Artifact

Description: A legacy artifact left behind by a strong god to test potential candidates for their legacy.

Current Effects (Settings): Tests a candidate's insights into Time by pitting them against various conflicts, the hardest of which can be solved by those nearing the Soldier Stage.]

After Elizabeth read through the strangely-titled clock's status, she could see the glass casing which held the clock's weights, pendulum, and chains, open up. With the casing open, Elizabeth could feel the calls of dense time energy trying to seduce her into following their trail. She guessed that the conflicts she would need to resolve would come from those calls of time energy as they were so vehemently pestering her. So it was to no one's surprise, that after entering the casing and being confronted with another monumental shift in scenery, Elizabeth's guess was correct again.

Within the casing, Elizabeth could now see hundreds and thousands of projections of nature, civilization, the universe — basically, anything could potentially pop up in the projections — all of which coated the interior walls of the grandfather clock. All these projections had their own unique time signature, and it was only after Elizabeth experimented by going up to one such projection and touching it that she understood what it was that this trial examined.

As she touched a projection, chosen arbitrarily, the face of the wall which held various other projections now only showed the scene of the projection Elizabeth chose, but in much greater detail. Along with the increase in details, Elizabeth could instantly tell that the rate of time was flowing much too slowly for the projection to be an accurate portrayal of reality, and as this thought crossed her mind, she subconsciously drove her energy to simulate what the real deal would feel like.

With her hands still making contact with the wall, as Elizabeth's simulated time energy was scanned by the Ancient Timepiece, she felt the world of the projection change to match her resolution for its problem, before the projection faded to black and the previous screen — the one which held hundreds and thousands of projections — appeared again. Where the projection that Elizabeth initially chose stood, there was now a bold [3 Seconds | 100] prominently displayed.

'Mhmm?' Elizabeth touched another projection and resolved another "conflict," as the legacy dubbed it. Only this second time around, because she anticipated what she needed to do, she resolved the second projection even faster; finishing in less than two seconds. She received another [100] confirming that this was indeed the actions expected of the trial and thereon it was a race to see how many projections she could fix.

Of course, with there being only a couple thousand projections on the three walls of the clock for Elizabeth resolve, even if the projections became harder as she progressed, Elizabeth still finished everything that there was to test her within twenty-five minutes. The reality of the situation sounded laughable, but the truth of the matter was that Elizabeth actually started improving her Time Affinity as she progressed through the legacy trial. Though the conflicts she needed to resolve grew in difficulty, because of her ever-increasing attunement to Time energy as well as the fact that her Timeworn eyes were also in the midst of evolving — the ratio of time they changed for her perception also increasing with her Time Affinity's advancement — Even as she finished the last projection, Elizabeth only took five seconds to score a perfect [100]...

However, while Elizabeth expected for the trial to end then and there, the creator of the legacy must have thought otherwise, as even more projections started appearing; this time only popping up one at a time. Since time was ticking, Elizabeth didn't hesitate to start another round of problem-solving as she thrust her hands at the wall. Alas, these new projections… they were nothing like the previous bunch, where Elizabeth could formulate a correct answer in seconds. It was like the difference between simple operations — adding, subtracting, multiplying, etc… — and college Algebra. Needless to say, Elizabeth's pace crashed into a staggering halt as her eyebrows twitched while a bit of sweat dripped down her face.

She had to think deeply for over ten seconds before testing her deduction by driving her energy into the wall. Elizabeth earned another perfect score, but each subsequent projection took longer than the last to resolve. Even though she resolved thousands of projections earlier in less than twenty-five minute, in the last thirty-five or so minutes, Elizabeth only managed to correct 31 more projections.

Now, as Elizabeth was concentrating as hard as she had thus far into her life, the projection before her was slowly starting to dissipate along with the grandfather clock and the scenery of Earth from space. Elizabeth was so focused on resolving the conflict in Time that even after she was back to the white room from before she started the trial, she didn't seem to notice the change in her environment.

It was only after she finished resolving the problem that she awoke from her stupor, initially proud of her achievement; at least until she realized that the trial had ended. Upon making that realization, her eyes, which had long since turned bloodshot, blinked several times as if they were unsure of what they were reading. The reason Elizabeth reacted this way had much to do with both the notifications she received from the legacy trial and the one she received from her various functions.

[Time Affinity Substation | Performance: 1?? | Reward: 1 Gold Ticket, 1 Cyan Ticket, 151 Grey Tickets

Status

Innate Skills:

Time Affinity

Tier: Bad-tier (Fragmented Transcendent)

Description: Time has become much easier for you to resonate with. You'll find manipulating time energy to be several times easier than when your Affinity was at a mere Trash-tier. Generating Time-type energy from Inner Strength is also several times easier and time-type spells and skills are less demanding on your energy reserves.

Current Effect: Upon restarting Time Talent cultivation, the user improves twice as fast while only having to put in half the effort. Cultivation of energy remains unimpeded until Level 20. Mid-High Mortal Grade Time-type buffs are 50% more potent.

Mission Alert!

Chain Side Quest 1: Legacy Inheritor (Incomplete)

Degree of Completion: (At Least) Mythical

Difficulty: D → C

Objective) Reach the second story in the castle legacy trial

Optional Objective) Pass a substation legacy trial (✔)

Hidden Objective) Earn a Cyan Ticket (✔)

Hidden Objective) Transcend the limit of a legacy substation by earning a score above 100 (✔)

Deadline: Once the First Stage of the Cataclysm ends.]