Fragments of the future shattered apart, as though space-time itself had been kneaded into a single chaotic mass.

"Ansu, did you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"Time was reset."

"No... I didn’t feel anything at all."

Kanzaki Rei was probing—was only his time being reset, or had Ansu been dragged into it as well?

If both of them had been reset together, then Ansu should have retained the memory.

But if only he had...

Then it meant he alone had returned to the past, and Ansu should have no recollection of what happened afterward.

And now it seemed...

He truly had no idea what came next.

"Actually..."

Rei had just begun to explain.

And then—

Tick—

Like the hard mechanical click of a clock hand forcibly turned backward by one notch, a crisp echo rang out.

Rei realized he had returned to the very beginning.

The start of the corridor.

At the distant end of the hallway—

That same door he had just seen.

"The door?"

Ansu’s thoughts echoed in his mind.

He was startled. A door had appeared here?

Exactly the same reaction as when they had first entered...

"Ansu, time seems to have reversed."

Rei spoke with grave seriousness.

His consciousness surged, transmitting the entire situation to Ansu through thought at the fastest possible speed.

Ansu considered it for a brief moment, about to answer—

Tick—

Another turn of the clock.

Rei lifted his gaze.

Now he was already outside the ruins.

He had left the corridor entirely and returned to the vast darkness from before.

He didn’t even need to think hard.

His brain had already reached the answer.

I’ve been reset again.

And to an even earlier point in time.

The previous span of time had been precisely the period from entering the corridor to reaching the door.

It had seemed to take a long while—

But in reality, only a few seconds had passed.

Which meant simply communicating with Ansu in his mind, waiting for him to think of a response...

Had already exceeded those few seconds.

In other words—

Once the allotted time was up, he would be reset to an even earlier point.

Is that how it works?

Rei’s thoughts raced.

And he didn’t know whether, after leaving the corridor, there would be another reset beyond this.

There wasn’t much time to communicate with Ansu either.

But Ansu’s line of reasoning had already given him inspiration.

Tick—

Not long later.

Roughly ten seconds after this reset.

The scenery before Rei abruptly shifted again.

He found himself even farther from the spiral entrance.

"This time... thirty seconds."

From this position to the door—

Thirty seconds of lived experience.

Tick—

This time, the instant the reset occurred, Rei relayed everything to Ansu at maximum speed.

Ansu sent back a wave of shock.

But his mind rapidly turned and offered Rei a strategy.

Time was continuously rewinding...

But according to every theory—

The past could not be changed.

If it was a past already fixed, then it could never alter.

If his time could roll back to earlier moments,

Then in theory it could roll back months.

Years.

And he could make different choices.

That would mean changing history itself.

Impossible.

Which meant—

There was deception here.

This "time reset" was absolutely not true temporal rewinding.

That was Ansu’s conclusion.

—

Shhh—

Rei spread out his perception.

Everything felt real.

Utterly real.

There wasn’t even the slightest trace of illusion.

At minimum, it proved this was no mirage.

Tick—

Time reversed once more.

The spiral entrance was no longer visible.

He had returned to a point before he had even discovered it.

And this time—

Boom!

Rei exploded forward.

Ignoring the stunned and confused Ansu beside him, he shot straight toward where the spiral entrance should be.

Back then, when he had wandered through the darkness—

He hadn’t been moving at full speed.

And every reset was based on the total duration from this point to reaching the door.

So as long as he moved at maximum speed—

Time would be more than enough.

He had wandered in darkness for over ten minutes before.

Now—

Within only a few breaths—

He saw the entrance again.

In the blink of an eye, Rei charged straight into it.

Bang!

Into the corridor.

Without wasting even a fraction of a moment, he maintained top speed and closed in on the door.

Instantly he reached striking distance.

But Rei did not touch it directly.

There were no visible restrictions.

No signs of illusion.

Yet every previous time, the moment he was about to touch it—

The reset had triggered.

So this time—

He wouldn’t touch it himself.

Instead—

He extended the Core.

Shhh!

The Core touched the door.

[Gate of Closed Time]

[Creator: Aehkator]

[Beyond the gate lies another manifestation of time—time beyond mortal imagination.]

[This place is also a prison that confines time itself.]

At last—

He knew what this door was.

Rei’s intuition stirred.

And he could sense—

If he failed to open this door,

The next reset would still come.

Originally, intuition had only vaguely warned him he would be reset again.

But...

Level 6 mastery in Mystery Scholar let him pinpoint the source of that intuition.

Understand exactly why he felt it.

He had to admit—

Advancing Mystery Scholar to Level 6 was proving an enormous help.

He didn’t know how far the resets would continue.

Whether they would stop only after rewinding all the way back to the real world. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

But when encountering an abnormal phenomenon—

The first move was to interrupt the anomaly itself.

And as his strength grew,

Rule-based phenomena only seemed to grow more frequent.

Tick—

Using the Core to touch it seemed safe...

Then next—

Push the door open.

Rei exerted force through the Core!

BOOM!

The Core was himself.

The Core was his own existence.

Skyflow Art — Sixth Form: Absolute Piercing Dragon: Void Nether

One hundred billion souls were sacrificed.

A monstrous force detonated upon the gate.

BANG!

Yet when the blow struck the door—

There was no feedback whatsoever.

The gate didn’t budge.

But under that impact,

Fine pale-gold patterns flowed across its surface.

Rei’s perception swept over the markings.

Another puzzle...

His mind deciphered their meaning almost instantly.

The patterns formed a complex language—

A language based on time.

But Rei had experience solving this kind of enigma.

"The aggregate of time... here is the prison where forbidden time is sealed..."

Rei murmured.

It seemed...

Opening this door

Would trigger an even greater calamity.

In that instant,

Iz’s face flashed through Rei’s mind.

Iz’s words echoed.

I seem destined to make many mistakes... to commit many evils.

If he truly opened this door here—

Would that correspond to the deeds he would one day commit?

Like Pandora’s Box—

Would opening this gate unleash catastrophic disaster upon the world?