Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

The effects of my new skill were immediate. I could feel the mental fatigue that was building up rapidly starting to slow down and even start to go down as I had stopped doing a bunch of things at the same time and was simply keeping the status quo I had created.

The magicule cubes weren't being refreshed anymore as I wasn't rewinding time as before, but I still had a bunch lying around that would hopefully last until the end.

I looked outside and saw my countless clones closing the rifts. It looked like we had a chance of making it out alive from here.

"I have no words," the butterfly said as it flew and landed on my snout. "I can feel how wrong time is right now. I don't know how you managed to create this many copies of yourself and keep them stable."

I gave a pause, searching for the right words to answer it. "To be completely honest," I started, deciding that it wouldn't hurt to be open with the dungeon. "I didn't exactly know how I managed to do it. I went with my what my instincts told me, even though they were screaming it couldn't be done. Heh, I guess I proved my own instincts wrong."

A gush of blood came out my mouth. I had drunk that health potion earlier and even transformed between species, but it didn't change the fact that my body was hurt. Looking at my HP, I was around the 10% mark. Thankfully, it wasn't dropping, but it wasn't increasing either.

All of this was pushing my body more than the weak healing it received from the potion could hold, but I unfortunately didn't have a choice in this. If I relaxed my control on temporal energy, all my clones would disappear, and I could feel that this wasn't something a clone could do. It needed to be me.

"Would you have another of that potion?" I asked. Better safe than sorry.

The dungeon created another of the glass vial with red liquid inside of it instead of answering me, but it was enough. With a shaky hand, I grabbed it and downed it with a single gulp. I felt the energy from the potion spreading over my body, weaker overall than the last one. My best guess was that the efficacy of healing potions dropped with how many you consumed within a period of time.

Looking at my HP, I saw as it slowly started tickling up. I sighed in relief as it meant that I wasn't damaging myself more than I could heal, in other words, I wouldn't die if I kept things as they were.

I kept looking over at my temporal clones, seeing them work with each other. While some of them were holding space together, others were stitching it back together with a few remnants of the temporal energy I couldn't hold. They were taking the leftover energy being released by the temporal singularity and using it as needle and thread. They were quite literally stitching reality back together.

The resonance my soul was having from this many clones meant that some of our skills and senses were shared for a moment. For those brief windows, I could see the tapestry of reality we were fixing as a whole. Space, time, and how both of them mixed together to create reality. Those moments were very brief and my memory of the events were fuzzy at best, almost as if I wasn't ready to know this yet.

An explosion made me jerk my head to the source of it. I saw a clone being thrown backward and a Jack echo coming out of the smoke the explosion had created. My heart started to pound in my chest. I knew I was safe inside the temporal zone, but my clones weren't inside. I could see how they also started to look anxious at Jack's figure.

If Jack killed my clones, then all we did was for naught as I would be back at square one, trying to figure out how to close the rifts.

"Hold him down!" I heard one of the clones shouting. I saw as he grabbed hold of space around Jack's echo and tried to hold him there, but Jack was able to overpower him, but only until other clones joined together to hold him. Every clone that joined them made space a little harder and a little stronger until Jack couldn't move.

"To the rift!" Another said, throwing the echo into one of the rifts and closing it after him. A good way to deal with him quickly as I doubted we could damage him, even if all my clones and I came together to attack him.

"It's working," The dungeon said. "The stability is climbing up, and this space is stable enough to start generating the echos again. Soon, the spiders might start appearing again. If you can do with them what you did with the last one, then I might be able to fix everything."

"Might?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm sorry if I don't have a manual about what to do when someone breaks time this badly." The dungeon said angrily.

More and more, I heard the shouts of warning as more and more Jacks appeared, but my clone army dealt with them as soon as they appeared. They would pin him down with several clones and then throw him into one of the rifts or open one before closing it again if there were none close enough. I felt like a Sith lord, having a clone army doing everything for me while I sit down and do nothing. Well, I was keeping everything stable enough for it to work, but the comparison was still valid.

The scene reminded me of an ant colony where every ant came together to deal with threats and to work on building the nest, except here was rebuilding the broken reality of the white void, which was weird considering every 'ant' in this analogy was basically me, a temporal duplicate but me nonetheless.

At least I was able to farm a couple of levels on my skills.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Okay, the timing here was just on point. Was this made by the coincidence fairy?

"How long will you need to keep this up?" The dungeon asked me. "I am running out of magicules, and I can't regenerate them in here."

I looked over and saw that more than half of the magicule cubes were gone, with me having absorbed them all to keep up with the demand. I was still keeping tabs on how much magicules I had spent in total and… Let's just say that it's a lot.

I– What? Ok, that came out of nowhere. What the fuck?

The system message about the title and skill was so abrupt that I almost lost my grip on the temporal energy around me, but I managed to keep it held tight. While I wanted to see my status screen, I was already running low on available magicule cubes, and to add one more parallel process to check it out would only make things worse, so while I knew it was best if I checked it first, I just couldn't.

One thing I noted from the skill or the title was that magicule under [Magicule Manipulation] felt easier to manipulate, and my body felt like a weight was dropped from it as my skills became easier to use. I didn't know what it meant, but I would take it.

Looking at my temporal clones, it seemed the effects of the title and my new skill didn't propagate to them. I guess it makes sense, considering they aren't really me, but somehow they still are? Janeway, you might be in the delta quadrant, but I share your hate for temporal mechanics.

The new skill and title increased my efficiency, and my usage of magicules dropped a little. Still, I almost drained every single cube before my clones had finished closing the rifts and came back near me. I took another look at the void, checking to see if I could see another rift that we might have missed, but I couldn't see anything. Even the dungeon confirmed that the rifts were closed, and only after that did I release my control of the temporal energy.

The moment I released my control over it, the temporal energy keeping the clones rebounded and came crashing back into me, merging myself with the clones. In that single instant, I gained the memories of all the clones at the same time. The mental pressure was enough to black me out for a few moments.

I regained consciousness as I was falling to the ground and vomiting whatever was left on my stomach from the last time I ate. I got up with a massive headache that threatened to burst my head at any moment. I remembered how, during the loops, whenever I fused together with my past self always ended up with a horrible pain. Thanks to my title [Temporal Resonance Synchronization], the pain was lessened, but it seemed that it was still there, just in another form.

My head was still spinning from the sudden influx of memories. "Remind to myself. Never do anything like this again," I said out loud.

"The stability is better than when we first arrived. I can feel several spiders starting to appear." The butterfly said. "Could you please transform them into more of these temporal singularities? Thank you"

"Just give me a minute," I said with heavy breaths. "The world needs to stop spinning first."

"It's not?" The dungeon said, clearly not picking on the figure of speech.

I ignored the dungeon and waited for the headache to fade before I stepped out of the zone. I could feel space around me with way more clarity than before. It was strong enough it could hold with simple spatial manipulation like gravity changes and stuff, but anything more complex, say, portal creation, would tear another rift that I didn't want to fix anymore.

I absorbed the last of the magicule cubes on the ground and sprinted towards the closest spider. The faster I do this, the faster I get out of this damm place. I also used the opportunity to check my status screen, as I couldn't before.

I fumbled over my steps and fell to the ground after I read my status.

"What the heck?!" I half-shouted. I couldn't believe my eyes.

My magic attribute shot up to 12 thousand. Okay, that I could deal with. But what the heck was that with my MP? There was my normal 15 thousand units of MP, which I feel was both a lot and not at the same time, but what the heck was that thing on the side? was that– one, two, three… FIFTEEN BILLION UNITS OF MP?