The Hero is An Academy Librarian

Behind the [Illusion Veil], Viva immediately tried moving forward to stop the elder from killing Ethan! They couldn’t let Ethan die like that! But Percy grabbed her by the back of her shirt and held her back to make sure she couldn’t interrupt it! Viva turned towards Percy with a hard look since she thought that Percy was about to just let Ethan die, but Percy raised a hand to his lips and shushed Viva before telling her to simply watch.

Viva turned back to watch the interaction, and just before the elder could use Blood Magic to kill Ethan, a figure revealed himself from behind the elder and stabbed him in the back with a long sword! The elder gasped in pain and stumbled as he was impaled, and he looked behind him to see who had ambushed him!

"You..."

The elder was shocked by the face he saw, but the elder couldn’t do anything more before he fell to the ground and died!

The man standing behind the elder was a young man who didn’t look a day over twenty. He had hard eyes that were narrowed into a glare and a strong presence that made it obvious he was used to battle. The man had been hiding in this room just like Percy and Viva, and although Viva hadn’t noticed him at all, Percy had noticed the man, and Percy knew that the man would intervene before Ethan was murdered!

The moment the man appeared, Ethan felt his eyes widen in surprise, and he spoke in a shocked tone.

"Prince Zaran...?"

The prince turned to look at Ethan with a hard gaze, and he tightened his hand around his sword! Prince Zaran was the last prince of the Horox faction that had been eradicated by Percy years ago. Even after Verati killed most of the Horox soldiers, there were still many soldiers who managed to survive, and a lot of them had gone to find refuge in either the Pastoni or Ashton territory to remain safe. Prince Zaran had come to the Pastoni territory to hide after the massacre, and he was the one who had orchestrated most of the encounters that led to this moment!

Zaran put his hand out towards Ethan, asking for the Key, and Ethan took a step back as he gripped the key tighter, but Zaran simply raised his sword and spoke in a hard tone.

"I do not wish to kill you, but I surely will. Do not test me, soldier."

Zaran’s promise was more than enough to put fear into Ethan’s heart, and Ethan let out a long breath before he gently stretched the Key out and handed it to Zaran. Zaran looked at the Key with the gaze of a man who had just been gifted his salvation, and he tightened his hand around it before he brought out another Lock from his pocket, wore it around his neck, and sent mana through it!

A door opened in front of Zaran, and the Prince walked through the door and vanished into another time!

....

[The Horox Territory]

[Seventy Years Ago]

Zaran appeared in front of the massive Horox Castle. Before the massacre, this castle had been hailed as the most majestic of the three great castles in Varina, and Zaran felt an intense nostalgia fill his heart as he looked at the busy castle and all the people moving around without a care in the world. This was the time just before the Horox Massacre that killed more than ninety percent of his people, and Zaran had been working hard all this time just so he could rewrite this moment! Zaran couldn’t believe he actually made it!

Zaran’s journey had begun after the Horox Massacre. The death of his people was such an unexpected and jarring event that he couldn’t wrap his head around it! The fact that there was someone out there powerful enough to take out an entire faction of vampire soldiers told Zaran that he didn’t stand a chance against the true monsters in the world!

But the one thing Zaran wanted to do was to bring back his family! Zaran wished constantly that he could turn back time and give the Horox faction a fighting chance against the stranger that decimated them! And that was why, when Zaran learned about the Chronos Medallion, he was immediately interested in it! The Chronos Medallion was an artefact that could affect timelines, and it was powerful enough to rewrite events in history and change the future!

But in order to do this, you would first need to find a Lock and a Key that would allow you to create the full Medallion. Finding the Lock was very difficult. Zaran had to travel across multiple worlds for more than ten years, asking about the artefact and trying to describe it to many artefact dealers before he was finally able to find one of them who had a Lock with him! But once Zaran found one Lock, it became extremely easy to find more. Zaran found another Lock, and then another Lock, and then another Lock, and it was at this point that Zaran realized that numerous Locks existed across multiple moments in time!

Since the Lock was an artefact that allowed you to travel through time, the Lock was capable of existing across multiple moments in time at the same time, and multiple people could use the Lock to travel across time. It was this exact feature of the Lock that would allow Zaran to carry out the second phase of his plan! Zaran learned that, unlike the Lock, there was only one Key across every timeline, and in order to use the Chronos Medallion for what you wanted to, you would need to find the Key and then join it with a Lock that exists in the time that you wish to manipulate!

But first, Zaran had to find the Key. Zaran’s first idea was to go through time himself and find what he needed, but Zaran learned quickly that there was a reason why people didn’t use the Lock to travel across time constantly. And that was the Time Wraiths. Zaran had run into one of them during his journey to find the Key, and the only reason he survived was because he was wearing the Lock around his neck! The Lock acted as a form of deterrent that prevented Time Wraiths from locating you. But the moment you take it off, the Time Wraiths will come for you immediately!

Zaran realised that he couldn’t manipulate time excessively so that Time Wraiths wouldn’t take him away before he could complete his mission, and that was why he began the plan to send someone else to the past to find the Key for him.

Zaran was the one who planted the pendant beside the dead wanderer so that the Pastoni Soldier would find it, and he was also the one responsible for giving Ethan the letter so Ethan would go and find the Key for him. Zaran was even responsible for killing Rita’s sister Raya because Zaran knew that Ethan needed motivation to go and do what he needed him to!

And all of that planning and manipulation had led up to this very moment! This was only a few days away from when Verati would come and eradicate the Horox Faction, and Zaran planned to change the future by combining the Key with the Lock from this moment in time. Once he does that, Zaran would create a Time Displacement Paradox significant enough to erase the timeline where the Horox faction was destroyed, and he would be able to rewrite that timeline by warning the soldiers about what was coming so that they would prepare and have a better fighting chance against Verati!

....

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