Death… And Me

Chapter 3996: Quite Confusing, But So is Xyrath’s Existence

"Enough with that," Roan intervened. "Xyrath, we came here to set you free. However, from the looks of it, you aren’t imprisoned at all. What is happening here?"

Xyrath went silent, and ultimately it was Laiana who talked.

-Xyrath, why are you here? I was truly worried. I thought everyone was sealed, just like me. Yet, here you are. Why?-

Xyrath could feel the concern and deep doubts in Laiana’s words, sighing in the end. "I’m not free. I am imprisoned. I can’t leave this place."

That at least confirmed the system wasn’t wrong. Xyrath was imprisoned. They just didn’t know what kind of confinement he was being kept in.

Seeing everyone looking at him, Xyrath finally began to explain. "It’s a Self-Consistent Time Lock."

Turns out Xyrath is not restrained physically or energetically. Instead, he is trapped inside a ’closed causal loop’ enforced by the Werdlem Empire.

He can see infinite futures in his Time Plates, but every future in which he leaves leads to a contradiction, so time itself collapses those branches before they can manifest.

As mentioned in the past, Xyrath is capable of using the various possible futures to keep himself safe. Fatal injury? Bring out a Fake Possible Future where the injury didn’t exist. Captured? Bring out a Fake Possible Future in which the capture failed. As always, as long as it only involves himself, he can force those nonexistent branches of time to become real.

In the end, any possible future where he gets himself free never materializes. If they can’t materialize in his own branch of time, he can’t escape with his Chronoblade Serpent’s Innate Ability. He can still see countless futures, but they all only get concrete inside the Future Realm, nowhere else.

Laiana heard that, finding it hard to believe. -But... how? How could they make a prison with such characteristics? How can they influence your own possible futures?-

But then, Laiana thought of something, something she had considered together with the twins’ group. -Wait! You let them, didn’t you?-

Xyrath felt bitter when he heard that. "I did indeed."

-Why?!- Laiana couldn’t see a reason.

Xyrath didn’t answer, though. "Doesn’t matter. The point is that I can’t leave. All possible futures where I can get free will never fully take form, so I can’t get out with my innate ability."

Roan narrowed his eyes. "Does it have something to do with the fact that all your Time Plates are drifting aimlessly? They should all be together, creating your Chronoblade Serpent’s form, but they aren’t. Their state at the moment is the very reason the Future Realm exists."

Xyrath looked at Roan in surprise. Even though they were only talking to his soul, it also had the form of a serpent with proper expressions. "So you noticed... Yes, their state is what causes any possible future where I escape to never materialize. I won’t explain how, since you would need to be a Chronoblade Serpent to be able to make any sense of it."

Roan snorted. "Hmph! What bullshit sense? It is just a fuking dome that intervenes with time and space. What is the big secret behind it? The Time Plates can’t get back together, and the Future Realm’s Storm Wall is the Time and Space intervention made by the Werdlem Empire. Stop pretending it is some big shit."

"When both are put together, any possible futures leading outside don’t materialize strongly enough for you to bring them out of the Time Plates and get yourself free. The Plates are kept separated on purpose to make sure no single, self-consistent future exists that you can materialize."

If Xyrath was surprised before, now he had his mind blown. "Are you from some kind of Time Race?"

"I’m not," Roan answered. "I’m just a human."

Kentucky whispered to Rean. ’He really considers himself a human...’

Rean nodded. ’He is having an identity crisis, don’t mention it aloud.’

Roan’s mouth twitched. As if Whispers would be enough for him to not hear them. "Can you fucking pay attention?"

Kentucky and Rean straightened up. "Yes, sir!"

-Does that mean all he needs is to have all the Time Plates brought back together?-

Before Xyrath could answer, Kentucky took his place. "That’s not that simple. Xyrath is already connected to all his Time Plates through his soul. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have answered our call the first time Rean spoke about the entangled tentacles."

"He is right," Xyrath confirmed. "Seems like the black haired boy isn’t the only one smart here. Putting the Time Plates together won’t change anything. I just can’t connect them back together."

"Oh, I see!" Foliana jumped in. "The possible futures where the Time Plates get back together can’t materialize. Is that the issue? That would be one of the ways Xyrath can escape his imprisonment, so it can’t happen."

Roan narrowed his eyes. "You are incorrect, Foliana. That doesn’t make any sense. We are only talking about fake possible futures. Xyrath’s power is capable of making those fake possible futures come into our world to help himself, and they can only affect him. That being said, if you just reassemble the Time Plates without relying on the illusions of possible futures, shouldn’t that interference of the Werldme Empire’s Storm Wall be meaningless?"

"Yet, Xyrath is here, and he is not capable of putting the plates back together. He could have simply put them together without relying on the possible futures displayed inside them, but he didn’t. There is something else in play."

Xyrath confirmed Roan’s words. "The black-haired boy is right. It is not the Storm Wall that makes my reassembly impossible. They only affect any of those possible futures where I could use my innate ability to make them real. Simply put, I can’t use my innate ability to escape this place."

"Now, you are definitely wondering: then what the hell prevents my Time Plates from being put back together without relying on the fake futures shown in my Time Plate? The answer is the possible futures! All the possible futures you have seen inside each of the Time Plates you passed by, and the ones you captured. They are the problem."

"Uh?!" Foliana and the others got lost. "That’s what we were talking about. Let’s just put your Time Plates back together without relying on the possible futures that they display."

"That’s the impossible part," Xyrath would sigh if he had a body. "My Time Plates are manifestations of Possible Futures, different possibilities in space that start from the same moment in time, materialized into the world. You could even say they are windows that let me see and even interact with those possible futures. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the problem, the time when they start to exist."

Everyone still felt confused, but then, Tanxan noticed the issue. "The fake possible futures that they exhibit are not compatible. They are all starting from different times in the future, and you need them to start from the same point."

"Bingo!" Xyrath gave Tanxan a mental thumbs-up. "Unless the times inside the plates align, they can’t be put back together. Trying to do so in their current state would be the same as asking me to exist at different points in time simultaneously. In a certain way, I would need to exist in the past, present, and future."

"And the past can’t be changed," Roan added, understanding the issue. "You can slow down time as much as you want, to the point that it almost stops. However, you can’t go backwards. If a Time Plate shows a starting point a million years from now, and another Time Plate shows a starting point just a minute away, Xyrath would need to exist in the past and the future once they are reassembled. The Plate that shows just a minute away is obviously the past of the Plate showing a Million Years in the future."

"Yes," Xyrath confirmed. "My existence interacts with all those possible futures, even if they are just illusions, fake moments and time branches that don’t really exist. It’s exactly because I can make them my real reality that they must all start from the same point in time, even if they show different possible futures."

Now, everything made sense for the twins’ group. If they wanted to reassemble Xyrath, all the Time Plates’ possible futures in the Future Realm needed to have their starting times aligned, regardless of the potential futures they displayed.