Thief of Time

"Tis cold here," Dia muttered, looking at the cloudy, overcast sky. Snowflakes drifted from the heavens, chilling her to the very bones as she rubbed her eyes and looked around.

As per her personal quest, Dia had nodded off and woken up in a false world, a place where she would hopefully gain the power to stand against the Omen, who had apparently grown so strong that the five grand skies were forced to intervene one way or another. The only question that remained was why they couldn't just grant her power enough to stand against the Omen directly, but…

Well, the divinities and gods worked in mysterious ways, according to Nero. Those that don't met the fate of the Red God, apparently.

"Four mana circuits only too." Dia drove her mana experimentally. "How troublesome."

She ran through the plan again. Since there was an apparent motif of ice and snow, Dia had spent the last day memorising and familiarising herself with down jackets and other artefacts that would be useful in a cold climate, so the only thing left was for her to imagine them into—

"Ooohh. This is comfortable." Dia looked at the warm, fluffy jacket around her. "I miss the others already, though."

A small bag had appeared on her back, and Dia checked through the items packed inside. With them, Dia could probably survive in the freezing wilderness for a month, before starving to death, so her first priority was to not starve to death by finding a food source.

She looked around the place. "Where am I, though?"

She couldn't sense any danger, so the first thing that she had done was to make sure that she was nice and warm. However, as she looked around, Dia could tell that this place was probably the site of a massacre, a battlefield between routed troops and chasing pursuers.

"And I'm…one of those who fell in this battle?" Dia jumped as that realisation hit her. Indeed, she was in a narrow path, and the area in front of her made it evident that this place was a narrow path where a single person could hold back an army normally. Of course, the use of mana and other things would render that invalid, but from the ruined ravines and stirred earth, it was clear that her current spot was probably where one such person had perished.

The only question that remained was whether this one such person was her. For some reason, Dia felt that in this world, she had indeed perished here for one reason or another.

The proof of that actually laid not too far from her.

"That's my sword hilt…" Dia picked it up. The hilt itself was special; it was made to accommodate a standard issue sword, and was designed to enable her full use of Sword Roar. The actual blade itself would be destroyed, but the hilt, which affected her perception of her weapon the most, remained, and could be fitted with a new sword.

While she was happy that she now had two sword hilts, it was also a sombre discovery.

"So I died here…at least I didn't show up as a skeleton," Dia muttered, looking at the frozen skeletons that dotted the place. Clearly, the scenario had created a body for her, rather than making her inhabit her corpse…but where was her skeleton anyway?

Dia looked around, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out where her corpse went. It was possible that after using Sword Roar, the her in this scenario was completely obliterated by some insane counterattack, but this also meant that she didn't need to see her own corpse.

It was an experience that she didn't need to go through.

Shaking her head, Dia continued to examine her surroundings. She hadn't moved a single step yet, though. Dia was more concerned with checking her current situation, given that the Dia of this false world had made a final stand here and died with a lot of other people.

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Still, why would she make a stand here? Who was she protecting? Babies and children?

She mulled for a while, and then decided not to mull on the topic of her death just yet. Picking up the closest, unbroken sword, Dia popped open the hilt of her own weapon and slid the sword into the opening. The cold had preserved many things well, and the soldiers that had died here…

"Hmm. I thought you guys wouldn't turn into skeletons, though. How is it possible that there's a pristine sword, but you guys are already bones?" Dia muttered, before looking up the snowing sky. She had heard about winter and the four seasons before, but they were as distant as the other continents to her. That said, she knew the effects of cold; they were a natural preservative of sorts, for instance, and that they had a nasty habit of sapping the will to live and one's energy within moments.

Thankfully, none of the skeletons answered her question.

Securing the sword, Dia checked herself once more, and then looked up. The flight artefact was burning vividly in her mind, so it didn't take much effort before she rose up from the pass and looked down on the white world.

Snow had fallen everywhere. Dia could also sense multiple different sources of power burning all over the world — the tri-pronged presence of the Moons, the engulfing sensation that the great Dark gave off, the individual, similar yet different presence of the Coloured Gods…

And the massive, massive presence that seemed to sit not too far from her.

"The Frozen Emperor, I presume," Dia muttered, probing the massive, chilling presence that burned in front of her. "And I'm stuck as a tetra-folder…do I need to do the whole thing all over again? Shouldn't I at least be a octa-folder or something? What am I supposed to do? Wave my mana circuits at him?"

She grumbled for a while. There was a solid chance that the bonus was probably in case she actually managed to off the Frozen Emperor, and that the five grand skies just wanted to give her more time to hone her other skills…

Dia shook her head. For now, she would try to find a small town or a city first. From up high, she could discern a few spots that she really had to avoid, like the crystalline fortress and the city built around it not too far from her. It would suck if the Frozen Emperor killed her the moment she got too close; at the very least, she needed to dig out information.

After flying for a while, Dia spotted a small settlement that looked a little familiar.

"This is…Monsville?" Dia muttered. "Really? It's expanded greatly, though, but I can actually make out the lovebirds' nest…I wonder what happened."

Moonlit soldiers could be seen in sparse numbers. These sentries seemed to be guarding the baron's mansion, deterring anyone from trying anything funny, and Dia decided to make this her first stop.

It was better to be careful, though.

Landing in a nearby glade, Dia checked the town once more. A lot of buildings and infrastructure had been added on to the original Monsville, but she still knew the original town like the back of her hand. For some reason, however, the Moons didn't seem to know that the Seekers of Life had a house here, or that…

"Maybe Kemata and Nero didn't meet in this world," Dia muttered, before prowling towards the sprawling city. There was little in the way of walls or order here, and Dia crinkled her nose as a faint stench filled the air.

She had a feeling that if it wasn't snowing like this, the stench would have been far stronger. At any rate, however, it seemed that Monsville had been expanded multiple times, and there was a distinction between those who lived within the original, now heavily walled Monsville, and the areas that were built around it.

No one seemed to care about her sudden intrusion, and Dia believed that they wouldn't either. At a glance, there were a few types of people here. The first were those who were curled up under shacks or makeshift tents, huddling against the cold. She could vaguely sense a profound air of death from everyone who fell into this category; they would not last all that long.

The second group of people were those who moved around in packs, presumably gangs that extorted honest folk…if any such folk still existed, anyway. The last group of people were those who were somehow fortunate enough to become the privileged groups in this place, although Dia didn't know what backing they were relying on.

She spied around for a while, and then nodded to herself. The old currency system was still in use, although the value of even a silver piece had ballooned greatly. The streetside stalls were proof of it; one bronze piece could net the customer four skewers of meat.

How much attention would she draw if she used other denominations of currency? Tilting her head, Dia willed a few bronze coins to appear in her hand, and then glided towards the skewer stall.

"Evening. How many?"

"Eight skewers, please," Dia replied, before finding herself at a loss. How would one go about asking about basic information, like the year or recent historical events?

Dia frowned. She needed Schwarz's ultimate skill.

Alcohol.