Chapter 397: Accident
So heavy...
Even with Anchor active, a profound sense of helplessness still overwhelmed Ashe's soul the moment he stepped into the River of Flowing Gold.
It wasn't because of the speed of the current. It wasn't even the literal weight of the water. In fact, Anchor worked exactly as intended, completely blocking all external, physical influences. In this state, Ashe could have waded through a sea of filth and emerged unstained.
However, Anchor only blocked external forces from affecting the sorcerer. It did not sever his five senses, through which he still received information.
When a soul was too weak, an excess of information became a poison.
The River of Flowing Gold erupted with countless echoes. Its waves reflected endless scenes, and Ashe could hear the collective sighs of millions of lives enduring birth, aging, sickness, and death. He saw a chaotic tapestry of existence spanning across eons, and the sheer cognitive overload nearly froze his soul.
With his current mental capacity, processing this flood of data was impossible. He felt like a struggling student in an advanced math class, able to understand only the simplest ideas on the board while the complex formulas remained incomprehensible. Now it was as if the teacher was forcibly dumping hundreds of gigabytes of study material directly into his brain.
Ashe had closed his eyes and blocked his ears, but he could still feel that what flowed around him was not merely water, but the collective lives of all living beings. Every time his hands swept back through the current, he brushed past the histories of millions. Every time his feet splashed against the riverbed, he accidentally trampled upon the glorious legacy of some forgotten city.
A sudden realization struck him. So this is what it is... The so-called Time Class isn't an independent power called "time." It is the flow and movement of all living things that form time itself. Its essence is change and motion.
Once he understood this, the overwhelming flood of information no longer disrupted his thoughts. His mind's natural defense mechanism took over, rapidly discarding the incoming data into a mental recycle bin.
As expected of the most terrifying natural phenomenon on the Continent of Time... Even Anchor couldn't fully protect us from it.
At that moment, concern for his companions' safety crept in. Ashe looked up, only to find they were already swimming far ahead.
The Witch led the way, swimming the fastest, with the Swordswoman close behind. For a sorcerer, knowing how to swim wasn't optional. It was a basic prerequisite for crossing the Sea of Knowledge. Even those native to desert regions eventually became expert swimmers.
They had already adapted to the basic threshold of the river's informational assault. While Ashe needed a full second to adjust his mental processing, the Swordswoman and the Witch adapted almost instantly.
Ashe sighed inwardly. As expected of the genius sorcerers labeled Special Picks in the Aurora Sorcerer's Handbook. The gap between us is simply too great.
Still, they had only cleared the first hurdle. The real danger lay ahead.
Anchor lasted for only five seconds. The moment it deactivated, the crushing weight of time descended upon them.
Ashe felt his stamina drain rapidly. His vision blurred and pixelated, like a low-resolution feed from an old security camera. His throat rasped like a broken fan, and his thoughts slowed to a crawl, like a rusted screw locked tightly in place.
He reactivated Anchor a heartbeat later, but those fleeting moments of exposure to the River of Flowing Gold had already aged him by decades.
It was only logical. Merely approaching the riverbank accelerated aging, and now they were literally swimming inside it. Them not dissolving into nothingness on the spot was practically the River of Flowing Gold showing mercy.
Furthermore, while Anchor was active, Ashe could not expend soul energy to reverse the temporal damage. He could only keep swimming. The river was not wide, appearing narrow enough to cross in a single, desperate sprint, but Ashe estimated he could only survive two to three more cycles of exposure. If they did not escape soon, he would be swallowed by the tide of the era in the most literal sense.
The Twin Colored Anchor's twenty percent activation rate was simply not enough. Unless it could be raised to one hundred percent, the River of Flowing Gold would remain a forbidden zone for them.
Numerous Time Class spirits drifted within the water. Seeing Ashe boldly swimming through, they seemed to mistake him for a new type of spirit and gathered around to greet him. Among them were more than a dozen rare spirits he recognized, including Heard Day, the precious spirit the Witch had lost in the Amnesia Cabin. Yet, he had no time to salvage anything. All he could do was struggle desperately to move forward.
Perhaps because this section of the River of Flowing Gold was only a minor tributary, they quickly crossed the halfway point. When they were a mere meter or two from the shore, the five seconds expired, and Anchor deactivated once more.
Ashe braced himself to endure another wave of temporal erosion, but the White Ox had likely moved farther away, causing the river's flow to suddenly accelerate. The surging current kicked up a spray, and a single drop of golden liquid splashed onto his ear, sliding into his soul like silk and milk.
He forced himself back into Anchor on his very next breath, but the protection could not stop his ear from practically exploding. This time, what he heard was not the echoes of others' lives, but the reverberation of his own soul.
"Such an ugly child. Looks just like you."
"No, looks more like you. I'm not that ugly."
"I just gave birth, and you can't even let me have this? It clearly looks like you!"
"Both of you, stop it. All newborns look like this!"
"Big brother, why are our sizes different?"
"Shh, that's normal. When you grow up, you'll understand— Σ(っ°Д°;)っ Wait!? Why?"
"Shh... Ashe, keep your voice down. This is my classmate. She's just here to study at our place..."
"Mom! Brother brought a girl home!"
"Such an ugly child. He looks just like your father."
"Do you even have manners? How can you insult my grandson like that? If you want to scold your brother, just tell him directly!"
"Exactly, exactly!"
"I got an internship. If things go well, I might stay on permanently."
"Did you get a girlfriend?"
"It's a mobile game company. Fourteen months' salary with a year-end bonus, and they even provide a housing allowance..."
"Then did you get a girlfriend?"
"Can you ask something else, you damn old man?"
"How much did you lose in your index funds?"
"I don't have a girlfriend."
"I already told you not to come back. Dad just threw out his back. I'm taking care of him."
"You! You! Don't come any closer!"
"What's wrong, Iger? Didn't you say you wanted to fight me ten times? Now both you and I have won once each. We still have eight more rounds to go."
"Cough... haha, what a pity, Varkas. You were so close to dragging me down with you. Luckily, the executioner was faster... luckily, you are an elf the people despised!"
"Freya, come with me. I need you."
"Veela... the Gospel Kingdom hardly has this race anymore... but you two aren't even sorcerers. How did you pass through the Virtual Channel? Forget it. From today on, you are employees of the Funeral Agency."
The echoes stirred up memories, and those memories churned into raw emotion.
Voices filled his ears, fragmented and surreal, and Ashe's mind was instantly overwhelmed by the noise. His soul felt trapped within the reverberations of his past. He struggled just to stay afloat, let alone swim forward. Caught in the golden drift of time, a mere instant stretched into eternity.
Sonya noticed something was wrong. She turned around and swam toward him with all her strength, trying to drag him along. However, that brief delay was all it took. The five seconds slipped away, and the third surge of the River of Flowing Gold hit them, nearly turning both of them into withered husks of their former selves.
They had lost the strength to cross.
***
On the bank, Denzel said, "Alpha Senheiser. You have the Armor Specialization talent. Try to get them back."
The named Hero Commander nodded silently and activated his unit form before stepping into the River of Flowing Gold. While the river's temporal power was just as lethal to Heroes, their armor shielded them against time with equal effectiveness. As a commander, Alpha's stacked protection reached an astonishing ninety-five percent. It consumed an enormous amount of soul energy, but it allowed him to achieve game-changing tactical reversals at critical moments.
A few moments later, Alpha returned to the army empty-handed.
Denzel bit her lip lightly, a sense of helplessness rising within her. "The temporal barrier..."
He reported, "They are not on the shore. Crossing the River of Flowing Gold requires breaking the temporal barrier. My Time Class proficiency is insufficient."
She had already used almost all the resources at her disposal, yet those sorcerers still somehow managed to deploy a special unit capable of resisting the River of Flowing Gold, and they had even managed to breach the temporal barrier itself. The river's current was essentially lethal poison to sorcerers. Only geniuses who understood the very essence of time could hope to interact with the river water, not to mention actively leverage it.
In simple terms, the temporal barrier was a mechanism that measured a sorcerer's limit. Only those with the potential to raise their Time Class to the rank of Legends could pass.
Even if it was only theoretical potential, all three of them had passed. It was absurd. Then again, the fact that they could drive a car together through the Continent of Time was already ridiculous enough. Put in that context, the revelation that they were geniuses suddenly wasn't all that surprising.
At this point, it had been one accident after another for Denzel in her first attempt to hunt the sorcerers. Still, they would remain in the Continent of Time for a long while yet, meaning their paths would inevitably cross again, multiple times in fact, in the Spider Tower region.
The one-sixth fragment that remained of Denzel's soul made one thing clear. The same trick would not work on them twice. She thought, Next time, I need something far more underhanded.