I Can Assimilate Everything

He took a breath, organizing concepts that shouldn't exist into words that could be understood.

"I didn't manipulate time, Father. I tunneled through it. Using Quantum Tunneling…the same principle that allows particles to pass through barriers they shouldn't be able to cross, I treated temporal distance as just another barrier to bypass. I existed in multiple temporal states simultaneously until I collapsed the probability into being here, now."

His explanation continued, each word carefully chosen to convey the impossible.

"At the quantum level, all times exist simultaneously in superposition. Past, present, and future are just probability states waiting to be observed into definiteness. I didn't travel through time…I simply changed which probability I was observing, tunneling through the temporal barrier like a quantum particle through a wall."

He looked at both of them, ensuring they understood the implications.

"You were supposed to die here today. That's the probability that originally collapsed. But instead, you'll simply disappear. The Achilles who is currently here in this time…young, unaware, about to lose everything- he continues as normal. Rose, who is here in this time, continues her path. Nothing changes for them because I'm not altering the timeline. I'm just... taking you from one distance to another. We're traveling through the distance of time itself, not changing it."

His father's eyes blazed with sudden understanding and wonder.

The concept was so elegantly simple yet so impossibly complex…bypass the entire problem of temporal paradox by treating time as distance rather than sequence.

His mother, still processing, looked up at him with eyes that mixed confusion with trust. Achilles remained in her embrace as he met her gaze, his voice soft.

"Mother, do you trust your lazy, useless son?"

The callback to how she used to tease him, calling him lazy when he'd rather read than go to the gym, useless when he'd failed at doing simple tasks she gave him- it brought a smile through her tears.

"Of course," she said without hesitation.

He nodded, then held her hand with his right while reaching out with his left toward his father. Adras looked deeply into his son's eyes, seeing there the weight of decisions made and prices paid.

The older man sighed…the exhale of someone accepting the impossible because the alternative was unthinkable, and gave him his hand.

The eruption of power that followed made reality itself step back in respect.

Multicolored energy spiraled around Achilles as he began utilizing Quantum Tunneling again, but this time with two additional passengers to protect. Circles of energy- each one a different probability state made visible, wrapped around his parents like cocoons of pure possibility. The colors had no names because they existed in spectrums that only uncertainty could perceive.

The process was paradoxical in its duration.. simultaneously instant and years. Seconds stretched into hours while days compressed into heartbeats.

They existed everywhere and nowhere, when and never, traveling through the spaces between moments where time was just another coordinate to navigate.

Reality blurred around them, showing glimpses of countless possibilities…timelines where they died, timelines where they lived, timelines that never were and always would be. Through it all, Achilles held his parents steady, his will the only constant in a universe of variables.

Then, with the subtle violence of possibility collapsing into actuality, they appeared!

BOOM!

The grove materialized around them like a dream deciding to be real. Purple-gold trees stretched toward a sky that couldn't decide which shade of impossible it wanted to be.

The multicolored swirling light faded like aurora in reverse, leaving them standing on solid ground that hummed with concentrated energy.

Achilles looked around, his senses confirming what should have been impossible. They were exactly when and where he had intended…his current time, in one of the many groves of Primordium Evolutius Trees atop the Adrastia Continent.

"I did it," he breathed, the words carrying wonder even he hadn't expected to feel.

His father and mother looked around in shock as their bodies began to buzz from the immense concentration of atmospheric energy.

The air itself was thick with power, making every breath an act of advancement!

"This... is unimaginable," Adras said, his voice hushed with awe as he took in the grove that shouldn't exist, on a continent that had been dead in his time.

Achilles gazed upward, where the trees' canopy created patterns of light that told stories in languages only power could speak. His smile held satisfaction that transcended personal triumph.

"See? No temporal anomalies, no branching timelines... none of that mess because what I did was far more fundamental than that." He turned to face them both, his expression shifting to something more formal. "Mother, Father, I welcome you to the little home I built while simply trying to protect all those I can."

His gaze focused on his father, and his tone became purposeful.

"The first thing I wanted to do... related to you, Father."

Adras, still looking around in wonder, turned to his son at these words. But instead of gratitude or curiosity, his expression shifted to fond exasperation.

"Can you not try to give the old man heart attacks?" He shook his head with the ghost of a smile. "Slow down and let us take everything in first. The rest can wait..."

The rest can wait.

Such simple words, but they carried wisdom that transcended urgency.

They had just violated the fundamental nature of time itself. They had reunited across impossible distances. Perhaps a moment to simply exist in this impossibility was warranted.

Achilles smiled at this, though his fingers twitched with barely restrained intent. He had been preparing to utilize Structural Restoration on his father immediately…the overwhelming urge to heal, to fix, to restore what had been broken.

He knew his father's condition intimately. The Eighth Adrastia Emperor King's existence had collapsed so thoroughly that he couldn't even assimilate anything anymore. He was essentially the walking dead, held together by will alone, his body a fading echo of the cosmic force he had once been.

Normal healing would never work on someone whose very existence had been compromised at such a fundamental level.

But Structural Restoration from the Assimilation of Spatial Tension? That was different.

This wasn't healing in any conventional sense.

It was the restoration of proper spatial relationships at the atomic level. Through this ability, he could literally make the space his father occupied remember what it was supposed to contain…not the broken shadow of an Emperor King, but the genuine article, restored to its optimal configuration.

The power hummed beneath his skin, ready to reshape reality around his father's form. But for now, he held back, respecting the request to simply exist in this moment.

The rest could wait.

For now, they were together, standing in an impossible grove in an impossible moment, a family reunited across the distance of time itself.

A family that needed one more as instantly, he reached out to Rose!

Today, he did this for his parents. After that…could he not do it for her parents?

And when he was powerful enough, when he assimilated more of Quantum and Spatial Tension and became capable of traversing unfathomable distances of time…could he not do these same thing for the previous Adrastia Emperor Kings?!