(Meanwhile, inside the Time Stilled World, Amanda's POV)
Only five days had passed for Leo in the wider universe, yet over five hundred had passed for Amanda since she first entered the Time-Stilled World.
As one of the first entrants into the realm alongside Supreme Master Argo, she had been here through it all—through the silence of the first days when the city still felt hollow and haunted, to the extreme bustle now, where even walking two steps without bumping into someone felt like a challenge.
In just five hundred days, the Time-Stilled World had become the heart of the Cult's survival, the last refuge of its people, as all the Cult's brightest minds and highest priority evacuees were sent here to make the place as liveable as they could for the next batch.
*Step*
*Step*
*Step*
As Amanda walked quietly through the streets of a newly expanded city sector, she couldn't help but remember how this very land had been a high-danger monster zone barely a hundred and fifty days ago.
Yet in just five months, the Cult's warriors had driven the twisted creatures of this Time Stilled land back and secured the borders, while the Cult's engineers labored day and night to raise new housing quarters, each one filled almost the instant it was completed by the latest wave of refugees.
Everyone worked in perfect rhythm, each person knowing their role, each hand contributing to the same relentless purpose of keeping the wheel of survival spinning.
To anyone who had lived on the outer worlds before Juxta's fall, this sight would have seemed impossible.
For the very idea of conquering a separate realm detached from time and abundant with tainted mana sounded absurd for colonization. Yet here they were, living within it, building, breathing, surviving, only because Leo had the belief and vision to make this possible.
And though the cities were overcrowded and worn by strain, the people in here were still grateful to the Shadow Dragon, for they knew that being left outside meant certain death.
Hence, despite the streets being narrower here, and the houses being much smaller than what they were used to in their home worlds, the commoners never complained, for they knew better than to bite the hand that fed them.
*Step*
*Step*
*Step*
Walking some more, Amanda soon reached a minor cross-section within this new town sector, where standing before her was her latest invention, the 'Refining Pole', that she and Master Argo had invented after months of intense experimentation.
*THRUMM*
*Shine*
It shimmered softly, thin strands of light pulsing up its length, as translucent runes circled the tower like revolving constellations. Each pulse sent a faint ripple through the air, invisible to the naked eye yet powerful enough to purify corrupted mana across a radius of two kilometers.
Amanda stopped for a moment to admire it, her lips parting slightly as she watched the soft gleam of purified energy drift away into the sky.
When they had first conceived the Refining Pole, the concept had felt like madness, an impossible dream born from desperation. But now, there were hundreds of them across the Time-Stilled World, each one breathing stability into the atmosphere, allowing expansion projects to move faster than anyone had ever thought possible.
Because of these poles, every time a new wave of refugees arrived from the outer planets, they could be sent deeper into safe zones without worrying about mana corruption.
Yet air wasn't the only problem that needed solving within this tainted world, for everything here—from the soil to the water—was saturated with centuries of stale mana, a silent poison that made even the simplest task of growing food directly from the soil an impossible challenge.
So far, Chaosbringer and his men had circumvented this problem by importing soil from back home that wasn't tainted, and keeping it within safe mana zones to grow crops, however, as the population expanded, relying on such limited areas of land for agriculture was not possible, and hence, new inventions became a necessity.
Amanda still remembered the first time they had tried to plant crops in this realm. The seedlings had withered within hours, their roots turning black the moment they touched the ground, as though the very soil itself rejected the concept of life. For a while, even the agriculture experts despaired, believing that this world would forever remain sterile, or yield tainted crops.
But then came Supreme Master Argo with his reckless brilliance as he managed to create a version of Leo's mana heart that could be used to purify soil.
The device was shaped like a buried wheel, whose rotating core diffused refined mana particles directly into the ground, neutralizing the toxins that had accumulated over millennia.
It worked slowly at first, cleaning only a few square meters a day, but as they improved the design and learned how to synchronize its cycles with the Refining Poles, the process accelerated dramatically.
Now, a few hundred days later, the once-gray soil around the major cities had begun to turn rich and fertile again.
Green sprouts pushed through the surface where once only dust and decay existed, and the first cultivation fields of the Time-Stilled World now swayed gently under a manufactured breeze.
The water too had posed its own problem, for every underground vein they discovered was steeped in corrupted energy, making it unsafe to drink or even touch for prolonged periods.
To solve that, Argo and his apprentices had devised the Aqua Strainers, which were complex purification arrays placed at every major water channel designed to refine the flow through multi-layered runic filters.
The result was clean, drinkable water for millions, free of corruption and safe for consumption, though its faint metallic aftertaste still reminded everyone of what it had once been.
Amanda smiled faintly at the thought. None of these inventions were elegant or perfect, yet they worked, and that was all that mattered.
Looking around now, at the city stretching out beneath the weirdly gloomy horizon, at the people working and surviving in this once-dead world, she felt that perhaps, for the first time in her life, she had helped build something generational, whose impact would be felt through history itself.
As while the commoners would not remember her name, like they did of Leo.... While they would not thank her, or sing songs in her honor. In her own way, she still played her part in saving their lives, as best as she could.
(More chapters in Buyers club for TMT in discord.gg/EbbDXMKbYQ)