Hearing Ansu ask for souls again, Rei almost laughed inwardly.

It gave him the strange feeling of watching a dog incapable of abandoning its old habits.

Future Simulation still could not be used in these ruins.

And divination still could not show him what lay beyond opening the gate.

"Ansu."

"What do you think is behind this door?"

"Based on what I know, this gate is a prison that confines time."

"What do you think it means... to imprison time?"

Ansu responded,

"Time can be imprisoned?"

"But judging from what you described..."

"Perhaps it means there are many beings like you whose time has been stored inside."

"The time you experienced during every reset..."

"May have been preserved there through some special method."

"Time must obey conservation."

"You can’t simply lose a portion of time into nothingness."

"If you are constantly being reset..."

"Then perhaps the time you’ve lost is filling somewhere else."

"Maybe..."

"Behind the door."

Ansu spoke in maddeningly abstruse terms.

"But..."

"You can’t be the only one who has entered this ruin."

"Perhaps others who entered it..."

"Also transformed from moving endlessly forward in time..."

"To endlessly moving backward."

Rei pondered.

In the information Eoin had shown him—

There really had been people who returned from the Third Region.

And she had mentioned—

Time there constantly reset.

But if you waited long enough,

You could leave.

...

Now that he thought about it—

The one who returned...

Was it really her?

"How many souls would you need to open the door?" Rei asked.

Ansu replied again,

"I can’t be sure."

"I can only try."

"The laws governing this gate are strange."

Rei answered,

"Then forget it."

His thoughts gradually clarified.

At the same time, he made a wish.

Return me to normal space-time.

The wish did not come true.

So—

He was still inside a time state destined to reset.

With the wish as a fallback safeguard—

Rei extended a hand.

This time—

He touched the door directly.

Before, he had used the Core.

Or not touched it at all.

Though the Core was himself—

An identical extension of his being—

The tactile sensation was still different.

Bzzzzz—

The instant his palm touched the gate—

He felt infinite vibration.

A humming resonance transmitted through the door into his flesh,

Leaving his body faintly numb.

And from the gate—

He sensed disordered time-space.

Like that hazy sensation of waking unwillingly at dawn.

As if dreams and reality coexisted in his mind.

And at the instant of contact—

His perception seemed to see countless afterimages of himself.

Each subtly different.

One of them seemed...

To be himself from the previous visit,

Trying to use the Core to touch this gate.

Then what about the others?

Are those scenes from the future?

Will I stand before this door that many times?

He had already come here three times.

That already felt excessive.

But...

Would there be more?

No—

Perhaps they were only possibilities.

If brute force was needed to break open this door—

Ordinary death magic likely wouldn’t work.

Then there was only one thing to try...

Rei’s eyes opened again.

Within his pupils swirled countless iridescent colors.

[Seventh Forbidden Magic — Element]

His greatest destructive trump card—

Was still Forbidden Magic.

Unfortunately—

The Forbidden Magic of Time only met its first activation condition.

And was unusable here.

So— 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Pure destruction, then.

Let’s see if I can blast this gate open!

Initiation Form: Elemental Genesis

Shhh—

In an instant—

Everything around Rei decomposed.

All became nothing but prismatic elemental color.

The corridor vanished entirely.

Only the solitary giant gate remained before him.

"Kid!"

Ansu cried out in shock from within his mind.

"The Primordial Forbidden Magic!"

—

Ansu wasn’t merely shocked that Rei had learned a Primordial Forbidden Magic.

He was even more stunned—

That Rei could actually cast it.

Because Ansu knew—

Every Primordial Forbidden Magic demanded a monstrous price.

An incomprehensibly high price.

Not something ordinary mages could endure.

And yet—

Even after the First Form ended—

The gate still remained.

It did not transform into elemental matter.

It was untouched.

Unaffected.

Clearly no ordinary object.

Something transcending even the laws governing the Initiation Form.

In fact—

Within this elemental domain,

Rei vaguely sensed—

The gate was not composed of elements at all.

Something in this world...

Not made of elements.

That was eye-opening.

Then—

Let’s try this.

Release Form: Elemental Kaleidoscope

Shhh!

The entire domain lit up in a blinding instant!

After over an hour of practice earlier—

Rei could now sustain Elemental Kaleidoscope longer.

At least—

One full second.

And within that second—

At least four Ninth-Tier elemental spells fully formed.

The entire corridor—

Vanished instantly.

This whole space became nothing but a dazzling multicolored vortex.

...

Rei’s mana was drained in an instant.

Within his sea of consciousness—

Ansu was left speechless.

No...

How could this kid...

Use the Second Form of a Primordial Forbidden Magic?

Though the existence of the other Primordial Forbidden Magics remained uncertain—

Element alone was relatively well known.

With Ansu’s experience—

He had seen it.

And understood the activation requirements.

Understood the cost.

But...

Why could Rei use it?

A creeping horror struck Ansu.

He had spent day and night with Rei.

He knew Rei vastly surpassed peers of his age—

No.

Surpassed virtually all beings of the same tier.

But even so—

There should have been limits.

And until now—

Ansu had still felt Rei’s strength remained within what he could comprehend.

Until this moment.

Seeing those prismatic surges.

Seeing Ninth-Tier elemental magic slam into the colossal gate—

Only now did he realize—

Rei’s strength had exceeded the limits of his understanding.

BOOM!

The giant gate rang.

A tremendous feedback erupted—

Rei endured the backlash-induced dizziness,

Focused his perception on the vast, magnificent gate.

It had not opened.

Even Ninth-Tier elemental magic—

Could not break it.

And simultaneously—

He felt rippling streams of time,

Like currents,

Surging back along the attack into his body.

Tick—

Another faint click.

The sound of a clock hand turning.

Damn...

That sound alone made his scalp go numb now.

He looked up again.

What he saw—

Was a cramped, dim underground cellar.

A scene far too familiar.

This place—

Misirush.

In Atlan City.

He was being pushed farther and farther back.