Thief of Time

As the faint light ran through her body, the world around her shivered and rippled, like a clear reflection on a lake being disturbed. Something was happening to the world, but it didn't seem like the end that the Frozen Emperor had immediately brought about.

Dia didn't know what had transpired. The Frozen Emperor was clearly poised to freeze the world over forever, but something else had occurred, something beyond her meagre understanding, and the Frozen Emperor had relented on his plans. Instead, without any warning, the god had burrowed into the centre of the world, making his way to a Cosmic Egg without any preparation whatsoever.

From the looks of it, Dia believed that some entity had given away the location of this particular Cosmic Egg to the Frozen Emperor, in exchange for whatever that was going on right now.

…It was a crazy idea, and yet, somehow, she believed this to be true.

Was it her instincts? Or a guidance unlike any other?

"Faintest hope…" Dia recalled the parting words of the Frozen Emperor. Did the five grand skies give him this faintest hope? Yielding the location of the Cosmic Egg in exchange for him sparing this world or something?

It felt like that, but Dia had a feeling that she was a few nuances off. Whatever the case, though, the Frozen Emperor had indeed spared this world…in his own way, if nothing else.

Probably.

What mattered to her was that she had seen something, and gotten something out of it.

[You have obtained a Shard of Creation!]

[Your skill slots have increased to seven.]

[You have completed <Personal Quest: A Scenario of Stagnant Grief>. You have acquired a new skill, Will of Progress!]

[Skill: Will of Progress

Skill effects: Upon activation, the user's perception of time, reaction speed, strength and bodily movements are accelerated by ten times. This effect can be intensified by expending a portion of your lifespan.

Passive effect: The user can never be affected by temporal manipulation. The user's learning ability has been maximised.]

Dia glanced at the messages once, and then returned her focus to her surroundings, which was fading out now. It was as if the Frozen Emperor and his Frozen Coffin had never existed, and more to the point, their surroundings were also turning unrecognisable. If she had to reuse that analogy from earlier, the analogy where her vision was that of a clear reflection in a still lake, said reflection was now completely messed up.

The Frozen Emperor hadn't destroyed the world, true, but it now felt like the world itself was ending.

Under her gaze, the world around her seemed to evaporate entirely. Dia couldn't catch the moment in which this false reality gave way to the actual one that she lived in, but it happened anyway, and before she knew it, she was looking at the others, who were gathered around her.

Before they could speak, Dia held up a hand, silencing everyone.

"I need to think for a while. Give me some time," Dia muttered.

The others stepped away, and even Beth, who was snuggling up to her, sidled away by a tiny bit. Patting the baby's head, Dia fell into a deep contemplation. She had roughly understood the sequence of events so far.

First, for some reason, the Frozen Emperor awakened. The other gods and divinities waged war on him shortly afterwards, but the Frozen Emperor's strength was unfathomable, and with it, he slaughtered all the remaining gods and divinities. Dia had, back then, arrived just in time to see the Red Moon's end.

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It was said that the Red Moon governed war and strife, so Percuti was probably the combatant that had held out the longest…but the fact that even the Red Moon, working together with the other gods and divinities, was still defeated in the end was quite telling.

After that, the Frozen Emperor had intended to end the world entirely. While Dia wasn't too sure what he wanted to do, she could guess that it had something to do with a massive freezing meteorological event that would fully turn all life into ice. However, that attempt was aborted when presumably the five grand skies were forced to compromised.

Of course, the being that told the Frozen Emperor the location of the older Cosmic Egg could be something else, but Dia believed that it was the five grand skies who interceded at the last. It was probably a last-ditch effort, a last resort — they handed the Frozen Emperor the location of the Cosmic Egg, hoping that he wouldn't completely destroy the world.

How freezing over was different from whatever that had happened after he fused both Cosmic Eggs and did something to them was beyond Dia's understanding, though. At any rate, the Frozen Emperor didn't betray their final hope, and instead used the Cosmic Eggs to do something, even leaving behind a Shard of Creation for her.

The only thing that remained was what the Frozen Emperor did. Where did he go? What did he use these two Cosmic Eggs for?

She mulled for a moment, and then looked at the others. "Okay. I'm a bit ready now, so let me explain the whole sequence of events to you guys."

"Dada!" Beth crawled back to her, and the others sat around her once more.

Dia eyed the little snacks that Schwarz was busy passing around to just about everyone else, and then rolled her eyes. "Do I look like Colidra to you, Schwarz?"

"Colidra?" Kemata asked, the scythe floating behind her tilting to one side.

Dia didn't have the guts to tell her to put the scythe away, so she simply said, "A storyteller that sometimes heads over to Schwarz's bar to tell tales. Anyway, before you guys ask, this was what I experienced…"

She recounted the entire thing, relishing the looks on their faces as she did so. Their faces when she talked about the Red Moon's death, her realisation that the other gods and divinities had long fallen, the Frozen Emperor's initial decision to end all life by turning them into ice…all these and more was enough to make her feel that her hard work had been worth it.

It didn't take her that much time to recount her experiences, since she didn't inject any of her opinions into this recounting. Dia wanted them to think about what they had heard and what she had seen, so colouring their thoughts explicitly by inserting her own opinions wouldn't be of much use.

"So?" Dia asked, after a few minutes of squishing Beth's cheeks happily. "What do you guys think?"

"Maybe we should just hide somewhere or something," Schwarz replied. "The Frozen Emperor…no, the Omen slew all the gods and divinities at the end of two hundred years? Yeah. See. None of us can do that, you know. And our Omen is worse. The Red God's already dead."

"Let's pretend that's not really an option for now," Nero replied. "I mean, it is, but if we do nothing, the whole thing that played out in Dia's vision might just happen to us. The five grand skies chose her and gave her this power for a reason. We must figure it out."

"Bleh."

Farah shook her head. "Nero's right, though. The five grand skies fundamentally aren't all that different than, say, the Emperor, in terms of motivation. Why did they make Dia see all that? What were they hoping to accomplish by letting Dia see how the Frozen Emperor and that coffin vanish? And more importantly, the Frozen Emperor seemed to know that Dia was there."

"I think the five grand skies told him," Dia replied. "They made a trade with him."

"Cosmic Egg for no freezing end of the world." Farah hummed. "Oh, and a Shard of Creation to allow you to hold a seventh skill…the question is why."

"And how, too," Risti added.

"Don't bother with that," Nero replied.

Kemata nodded. "No point."

Everyone fell silent for a few seconds, before Schwarz said, "Okay. I might sound a bit crazy, but the Frozen Emperor…like, you know. The Cosmic Egg is something that creates a new world, right? Like, a new reality? Maybe the Frozen Emperor used both Cosmic Eggs to create a new reality. And it's not like we don't know the motivation to, either. He probably wanted to create a reality where his beloved didn't die or something, because from the way he was behaving, it's clear that death truly is the end."

He folded his arms. "Claud really does have a point, huh."

"That's…quite random, though," Farah replied. "I mean, not even the Moons would say that they created all reality."

"True, but he slew the Moons," Schwarz replied. "Clearly, there's a solid chance that he could do something the Moons couldn't do. And he had two Cosmic Eggs. That's pretty incredible, isn't it?"

"If we take this possibility down to its logical extreme, does that mean that our current reality was created by the Frozen Emperor, then?" Farah chuckled. "Not likely, though. But it might be close to the actual answer, so let's not write off your answer yet…"

"But we can be certain that these Cosmic Eggs and whatever the Frozen Emperor did with them certainly has something to do with bringing back his beloved." Schwarz folded his arms. "That's for certain."

"Fine, you can have that win." Farah clicked her teeth. "But still…what exactly did the Frozen Emperor do?"

Dia, who was looking at her status, sighed. "Well, at least he's a devoted lover…"

"A plus point, to be sure."