Timeless Assassin, Volume.3
(A World Untouched By Time)
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Me and my colleagues once had the opportunity to study a Tainted creature who had accidentally made its way out of a Still World.
What struck us wasn't its strength, nor the degradation of its form— but the clarity of its madness. It spoke of memories that never existed, wars that never happened, and gods that had already died.
To the Tainted, truth is a moldable thing— bent by delusion, reshaped by agony, and sharpened into faith.
They do not scream because they are in pain.
They scream because they want you to believe it's beautiful.
— Professor Alin Drex, Chrono-Biological Anomalies and Mana Degradation, Volume 112.
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(Black Serpents Guild Headquarters, Twin-Fang Planet)
*Clack*
*Clack*
Antonio's boots clicked rhythmically against the marble-black tiles of his office floor, the sound echoing faintly off the walls before fading into silence.
He walked with purpose, but without direction, tracing the same invisible path over and over again like a prisoner pacing the length of his cell, except this one was adorned with velvet drapes, ancient weapons, and a desk that hadn't been touched in over a week.
It had been forty days.
Forty days since Dupravel Nuna— the man that even other Monarchs feared to face in battle— had stepped into that cursed tear in space.
And was yet to come back from.
No one else knew.
The rest of the Black Serpents moved through their days with practiced obedience and quiet ignorance, unaware that the heartbeat of the guild had gone silent.
There had been no announcement, no emergency protocols, no shift in command.
Only Antonio knew where the Guildmaster had gone, and more importantly, how long he was supposed to be gone.
Because contrary to what the name suggested, a time-stilled world wasn't truly frozen in time.
No— time still moved there, but it just moved wrong.
Slower.
Denser.
Like trudging through molasses while the rest of the universe sprinted ahead.
One day outside the tear was equal to a hundred inside. A paradise for anyone looking to train in isolation, to squeeze decades of progress into mere weeks— if they were willing to risk everything else that is.
Because what people didn't understand, or rather what most refused to understand, was that a Still World wasn't a training ground.
It was a graveyard.
A half-dead wound in space, cut off from the rest of the universe, and a world where mana had long since stopped flowing and begun festering.
What once was pure energy, like the mana found in the rainbow stream of cosmic energy had, over the centuries, grown stagnant in the time still worlds and had curdled into something poisonous.
The mana inside a Still World was no longer a river but a stagnant pool, long uncleaned, long forgotten, its waters thick with decay, unfit for even the lowest of beasts.
It didn't kill outright, but rather seeped into the cracks of one's soul, altering thought, corroding memory, and burying whatever remained beneath, leaving behind something that although still looked human— was anything but human.
And that was the biggest reason behind why, once awareness about the dangers of a Time-Stilled world began to spread, there was almost no-one who entered such spatial tears willingly anymore.
Because once the body began circulating that tainted mana, although it became abnormally stronger— it also started to become unstable.
Rage came first. Then obsession. Then delusion.
And then came the silence—
The kind that settled in one's mind like fog, until they forgot why they entered the time stilled world in the first place.
People who lived inside the still world for a long time, often forgot their own names, forgot the sound of their own voice, and most often than not forgot that there ever was a world beyond the still one.
As the time passed, the world corrupted them entirely, changing them into something they were not, which those in the outside universe referred to as 'The Tainted'.
'The Tainted' were creatures with immense power but no morality.
A powerful form, but no sentient memory.
They no longer knew what they had been, only what they had become.
And Dupravel… had now been inside such a world for forty days. Which meant, for him, over four thousand days had already passed.
*Clack*
*Clack*
*Pause—*
Antonio stopped pacing, the weight of that number sitting heavier than ever on his chest. Four thousand days. Alone. Surrounded by nothing but poisoned mana and the howls of the lost.
'Not even a Monarch can endure that unscathed. Not mentally. Not spiritually—' Antonio thought, as he clicked his tongue in regret.
He had trusted Dupravel to come out of that forsaken realm in under 3 days.
He had believed that such a time frame would be enough for Dupravel to map out the world and its threats and make a plan to retrieve the origin metal stored inside.
However, he was wrong.
It had been 40 days now, and if Dupravel did not return in a couple more days, Antonio would be forced to treat him as a lost cause.
"I don't even know what I'll do without you," Antonio muttered in exasperation, as he felt truly lost without Dupravel.
He was Dupravel's first real friend and follower, who was riding his coattails from before Dupravel had even become a Transcendent level warrior.
He was there when Dupravel had founded the Black Serpents Guild, and was present when he killed the Dragon Noah and claimed his treasure.
Never before had he ever worried about Dupravel and him returning from a battle alive, as never before had Dupravel ever failed to return from even the deadliest of battles.
However, this time, for the first time since he began following Dupravel about a century ago, Antonio no longer felt sure if he'd ever see him again.
Not as the same man, at least.
Because while everything else inside a Still World moved slowly.
Madness, as it turned out, was always fast to catch in there.