New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 534 Countermeasure

But reminiscing and thinking of what-ifs was a waste of time, and he knew it. As he rose to his feet, walking up to the edge of the glass, a shimmer caught his attention.

'Is a star being born?' he wondered, turning his head to look.

A few hundred meters from where his prison floated around, a light began accumulating, forming a ball of glowing white Aether, as it changed shape. Tyr frowned, as this wasn't the formation of a star.

Then his mind snapped to an old memory, something he had done long ago, not too long after Gaius locked Psyche away. A countermeasure he had put in place.

Tyr remembered casting his Aether into the web of time so that if someone tampered with time to an extreme degree, a manifestation of the changed future would emerge. But he doubted his very little stint in the prison was enough to cause it to activate yet.

He hadn't expected it to activate for another century, at the very least. Yet, there it was, right before him, forming.

A small cat, with green, purple, and pinkish fur, the colours flowing freely around on its body, materialized in deep space. It took a moment to stretch its limbs, yawning wide, before it floated over to the hourglass.

From afar, it looked normal for Tyr, but as it closed in on him, he remembered he was currently in a hand-sized hourglass. The cat stopped in front of it, looking gargantuan for Tyr, as it looked at the miniature person in the glass bauble.

Tyr snickered to himself, thinking how the roles were reversed, him being used to being much larger than others, only to know getting looked at like this by a cat.

The cat tilted its head curiously as it examined the hourglass from up close.

"I doubt you are strong enough to free me. But if you appeared already, it means the timeline has already shifted so much it can no longer go back to its previous trajectory. It also means another person strong enough to free me has emerged. Go. Find him. You are the hope of trillions upon trillions of lives."

The cat looked at him, hearing him through the glass, but its head remained tilted. It suddenly extended its paw a bit, batting the hourglass' lower part, sending it spinning wildly.

"Hey! Stop this fooling around! Get going already!"

Tyr wasn't feeling any different from inside his prison, but he could see the cat spinning on the outside, and it was not a fun effect.

The cat stretched itself up once again, before stepping forward one step and disappearing.

Tyr was glad that his countermeasure worked, and that whoever Gaius had put in his place hadn't found it and stopped it before it activated.

"Let's hope it finds the person who can stop all of this from diverging too far. Messing with time is never a pretty thing, in the end."

***

Inside New Eden, a player was currently exploring the outskirts of Bastion City, accompanied by a group of players he had joined. A guild tag was now under his name, in his status window.

"Welcome to the Paragons, new guy! You are lucky! You joined the party of players who saved the guild leader's skin halfway across the continent. We are kind of big shots! Boahahah!"

Chronos looked at his party leader, a boisterous orc, with a large greataxe in his hands, and nodded his head silently. He had been but with these people on a probation period, until they could trust him to be part of the guild, and didn't want to mingle too much.

The orc was a newly promoted lieutenant, which didn't put him at officer level, but still put him over the other regular members. The guild vice-leader, a player named Phoenix, had created a new rank, just for people like him.

"The silent type, I see. That's okay! You'll open up to us in no time. We are such a pleasant bunch, after all. Boahahah!"

They trudged along, performing a patrol in the woods around the outer wall, making sure no monster nest suddenly appeared that could put strain on the city. As they did, Chronos felt a strange itch on the back of his neck, like he was being watched.

But, search as he may, he couldn't see anything in the boughs of the trees.

'Must be my imagination…' he thought.

***

On the dark continent, Khalor was stuck in combat with an army of corrupted undead, swarming the city he had entered when the game re-launched. The Demonoids had bolstered the city defences ever since he arrived, as he had given them enough leeway to perform upgrades on their walls and siege weapons.

The city lord had been so annoying about it, thanking him profusely, insisting he was the saviour of their little city, and that he should present him to his guild leader, as a man that could recruit such a warrior must be such a fine man himself.

Of course, Khalor had brushed away every attempt from the Demonoid to get more information on Astaroth. To the undead, the Demonoid knowing the guild and guild leader's name was already sufficient.

If he was a noble of some clout, he would already have found out more from his information-gathering forces. For now, all that mattered to Khalor was levelling up and clearing this tear before it got out of hand.

He looked at his calendar and clicked his tongue, as he batted away a skeleton oozing with black and red miasma.

'There is so little time left... When is that priest from the main Demonoid cities arrive?'

Khalor couldn't close the portal himself, and they were waiting on reinforcements from the king of the Demonoid country. But they were already many days late.

He had three days left to close the tear before it became a portal that would eventually become the first stronghold of demons on this plane. He was at a point where he was already thinking of getting help from Paragons.

'Two days. If that damned priest isn't here in two days, I'm calling for reinforcements of my own, and those stupid Demonoid nobles are going to regret it…'