"..."
Cassandra was once again left speechless. The words Alex muttered seemed to have some kind of impact on her. It was still a mystery to her why Alex was different compared to other veilwalkers.
Just what made him special? She couldn't tell.
"Don't think too much about it." Alex suddenly said, drawing her out of her reverie. "It's just something that has to be done for the future."
"Mm." The catwoman nodded with a sigh, looking around with a thoughtful gaze. "What am I supposed to do while waiting for you?"
"That's up to you, Cassandra." Alex replied. "Of course, there's also the option of accompanying me…"
His suggestion raised the catwoman's eyebrows, only to get a shrug in response. "What? Am I not good enough?" He teased with a grin.
Cassandra couldn't help but chuckle. "Looks like you're back to your normal self…"
"Yeah…" Alex smiled warmly, his gaze drifting towards the universe centre. "I'll be staying here to cultivate in an accelerated time field, and I plan on doing the same for the others."
"You mean Zol and your friends?"
"Mm," Alex nodded. "They're at a stage where the passage of time won't affect their psyche. I wanted things to progress as naturally as possible. Unfortunately for us, time is not on our side."
"Then I'll do the same," Cassandra said, staring directly into Alex's eyes. "There's no harm in continuing my attempt."
"Right…" Alex nodded, returning her determined gaze. "You'll hear from me if anything comes up." He floated backwards as he said.
The catwoman nodded, watching as Alexander's body dissipated into motes of light, quickly moving towards the universe's heart.
She looked in that direction for several more seconds before turning her face away, releasing another sigh.
'Alexander Gray, huh.' The catwoman mused as she sat back down. 'You may be the only hope out of this madness of a reality…'
A few hundred kilometres around her body came a swirling mass of light condensing into a sphere. Inside this sphere, Cassandra manipulated the temporal energies, increasing the time around her body by a ratio of 1:20.
She could have gone further with the ratio, but decided not to. She didn't want too much time to pass. Besides, she had a feeling Alex would achieve his goal within a few years.
.....
Somewhere in the vast expanse of Alex's universe were three figures, each person sitting cross-legged facing the other in a triangular formation, and a distance of 100 meters kept them apart.
Around them was a torrential swirl of magical energies of different attributes, the most common being ice and fire. Fire was predominantly around one figure, while the other had the ice magical attribute.
The last figure simply accompanied the two, whispering guidelines and clues to principles they found challenging to grasp.
This trio were none other than Ross, Julia and Alexander.
Over the past several weeks, Alex had been guiding them on grasping the principles and fundamental elements of their law fragments.
Both Julia and Ross had made significant progress, comprehending more than 5% of their law fragments and successfully stepping into the Semi-Immortal ranks.
It was an unprecedented speed, given who their teacher was. There was nothing they lacked, no roadblock they couldn't bring down — they had it all.
Furthermore, their combat prowess had exponentially increased, boosting the aura of their existence to unfathomable levels.
The few void creatures in the same ranks as these two found themselves swiftly eradicated before they could even make a move — they were overpowered.
However, this speed of progress was no longer enough.
It was time to push things forward, and this time, Alex was going to include all the vassals he had mostly neglected.
While he had paid a few visits to aid them in the universe exploration, it wasn't close to what he gave to his best friend and lover.
"Ross… Julia."
Alex opened his eyes and called softly, his expression a picture of seriousness and determination. He had been able to catch up to his celestial body's experience as soon as he arrived.
"Hmm…"
Ross muttered as he opened his eyes, with Julia following suit a second later. The mana surrounding them gradually dissipated as they emerged from their contemplative states.
"Is something wrong?" Julia asked as soon as she noticed Alex's expression.
"Not exactly." Alex turned to her, revealing a soft smile. "There's something I want to do to speed up your progress…"
"Really?" Ross echoed with slightly furrowed brows. "If there was such a thing, why didn't you propose it sooner?" The Knight princess nodded in agreement, wondering the same thing.
"Because it had to do with temporal energy manipulation," Alex stated, making them confused for a second. "I'll have to accelerate the flow of time." He added for clarity.
"Okay…" Julia slowly nodded, expressing her understanding as well as her confusion. "Again, why now?"
"The passage of time affects all lifeforms," Alex said. "Speeding up or slowing down time has a higher degree of consequences. However, the effects diminish the more powerful and closer to the universe we become.
"I had to wait till you reached sufficient levels before saying anything, and doing anything before would have affected your psyche and ageing process. Now, however, your ageing process is more or less halted the more you approach immortality."
"I see…"
Ross and Julia nodded in understanding, having nothing else to add. Unfortunately for Alex, his friends knew he was still hiding something. At the same time, they didn't want to force him to reveal anything, especially when he looked this serious.
Julia and Ross exchanged glances, and seeing the determination in each other's eyes, turned back to Alex and nodded. "Let's do it…" They both said.
"Mm," Alex nodded and swiftly got to work. "While time will be accelerated, you will not feel the effects for the most part. Just focus on contemplating."
The two nodded, observing as a whitish sphere formed around them. They barely felt any different, but they were sure Alex had done exactly what he said he would.
"I've set the ratio at 1:100…" Alex said, getting tacit nods in response. "Let's continue…"