When Noctus saw the prompt — "Is that all it took to break you, Noctus Ignisar?" — his manic laughter froze in his throat. The sound that had moments ago echoed like a madman's relief cut off abruptly, as if someone had severed the string holding him together. His body stiffened, and the faint trace of madness in his eyes flickered, suppressed by something colder, heavier. He forced down the boiling rage clawing at his chest and whispered in a monotone, his voice hollow, stripped of all humor.
"Who are you? Why did you bring me to this world?"
The words hung in the air, fragile yet sharp. Noctus didn't know why he felt it, but deep in his bones, in the marrow of his soul, he recognized it — the same unseen presence, the same voice he had heard just before his death in the other world. At first, he had believed this transmigration was a second chance. A gift. A chance to finally live not for others, not for society's chains, but for himself. But after enduring the torment of the cursed path for months, that naive illusion had shattered.
There was no gift here. No benevolence. There was only struggle. And pain. And the cruel law that in this world, like the last, nothing came for free.
He stared at the floating prompt, his black-green eyes unblinking, waiting for an answer. But instead of words, another notification bloomed before him, bright and indifferent.
New Sub-Quest: Use the Eye of Chronos.Reward: One question — any kind of question — will be answered by the system.
For a long moment, silence stretched. Then Noctus's composure cracked. His lips trembled, and suddenly, he was laughing again, louder, harsher, like broken glass grinding against itself.
"I asked you a damn question! Just answer it! DAMN IT!"
His scream tore from his throat raw, echoing against the silent chamber walls. But the prompt didn't move. It remained where it was, cold and unaffected, as if ignoring a child's tantrum. That indifference — that dismissal — burned deeper than any wound.
Eventually, the fit of madness drained out of him. His body sagged. His breathing steadied. His voice, when it came again, was low, almost tired.
"You said any question can be answered, right?"
He waited, but no answer came. Only silence.
A bitter smile tugged at his lips. He understood. Whoever — whatever — was behind this system wasn't interested in his demands, his cries, or his pain. They weren't going to reveal themselves so easily. And what would he gain even if they did? Nothing would change.
So without another word, Noctus opened his Eyes of Chronos.
The passive power, Time's Supremacy, always lingered quietly, sharpening his perception, bending his instincts toward subtle flows of time. But now, he triggered the second enchantment. Time Seeker.
At first, nothing happened. Then agony.
It was as though an invisible hand had gripped his very existence and twisted. His bones screamed, his soul shrieked, his very essence crushed beneath a force vast and merciless. He had thought he knew pain. For two months, he had been broken and reforged by the cursed core, his body torn apart again and again. But this… this was different. This was annihilation. His blood vessels burst, his skin cracked, and his spirit trembled at the edge of collapse.
And yet — he endured.
Not because of strength. Not because of willpower. But because rage had become his fuel, his marrow, his fire. He refused to kneel, refused to scream, refused to collapse.
Then, through the haze of pain, the world around him shifted.
The chamber vanished. The stone floor, the suffocating walls, the flickering torches — all dissolved into nothingness. Noctus found himself standing in a void. Infinite, black, endless. And at the center of it, piercing the darkness, stood a colossal tree.
It rose into infinity, its roots tangled in the void, its branches stretching and splitting and multiplying with impossible speed, too fast for mortal eyes to follow. Its bark pulsed with a dim, ominous green light, each pulse echoing like a heartbeat in the silence of eternity. The leaves shimmered like fragments of time itself, each one falling and reforming, collapsing and rebirthing.
The moment his gaze fell upon it, knowledge bloomed inside him — not from his own mind, but from his eyes. He understood. This was the Tree of Time. The axis of all timelines, all futures, all possibilities.
His breath caught. And before he could resist, his hand moved, reaching forward.
The instant his fingers brushed the bark, his mind shattered.
Memories that weren't his flooded him, drowning his consciousness in a torrent of visions. He saw a different world, a different flow of time — a different him.
In that timeline, he had left the secret chamber after the first day of cultivating the Time core. He hadn't endured the cursed path. He hadn't been forced to suffer. Instead, he walked out weak, untempered, fragile.
He fought his brother Drake. The duel ended in five moves. Drake's sword battered his aside like it was nothing, each strike heavy with the weight of conviction, of bloodline, of strength. Noctus's sword was mocked, dismissed, stripped from his hands. "Your sword carries no weight," Drake had said coldly. "You are unqualified to hold one."
Banished. Sent to the outskirts of the empire, a villa in name but a prison in truth. For three days, he lived in silence. A noble in title, but nothing in reality. Alone. Weak. Forgotten. And then the assassin came. A shadow in the night, steel in the dark. A knife to the throat. His blood spilled, warm and fleeting, staining the floor. His life ended quietly, discarded like trash.
The vision collapsed, and Noctus gasped as he was hurled back into his own body. His knees buckled. He collapsed to the ground, his palms slamming against the cold stone. Blood poured from his eyes, running down his cheeks, and his chest heaved as if he had been drowning. His vision swam, blurred by crimson.
"That… was my future?"
The words were whispered, cracked, barely audible.
Silence. The chamber offered no answer. Only another notification, bright and unfeeling.
Quest Complete. Reward Granted: One Question.
Noctus stared at it. He could ask anything. He could demand the truth. But he didn't. His instincts screamed at him that the being behind this didn't want him dead — not yet. That meant there would come a time, a decisive moment, when this reward could decide his survival. That was when he would use it. Not now.
He clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked, rage trembling under his skin. He wanted to scream again, to curse, to break everything. But he restrained himself. Because that vision, that alternate path, had shown him something undeniable.
If he chose weakness, he would die. Miserably. Forgotten.
So he swallowed his anger. He steadied his breath. And he returned to training.
Even knowing the pain that awaited him, he forced himself into it again and again. This time, though, he didn't simply endure. He sharpened himself. He began weaving the Chronos Dilation into his sword training, using his heightened pain tolerance and breakthrough to bear the burden of time. His movements grew heavier, sharper, more lethal.
Days bled into weeks. Weeks into months. The world outside forgot him. But inside the chamber, Noctus Ignisar was reforged.
Ten months later, the chamber doors finally opened.
When he stepped out, his hair had grown long, strands falling into his lifeless eyes. His figure was leaner, honed, but it wasn't his body that unsettled those who saw him. It was something else — something darker. The knights who escorted him to the duke shifted uneasily, their hands twitching toward their swords. His aura was clearly only at the Elemental Realm, weaker than their own Knight Realms, and yet… they felt it. A faint, inexplicable sense of danger. The kind that made instincts scream.
They couldn't explain it. They didn't know the truth. They couldn't sense the cursed core, hidden by the system.
When Noctus entered the great hallway, the servants quickly withdrew. Only his father, Duke Ardyn Ignisar, remained. The duke's eyes lingered on his son, unreadable.
"So… you've grown a little, hm?" Ardyn's voice was indifferent, carrying neither warmth nor cruelty. Merely fact. He leaned back in his seat, arms crossed. "Let's see how much."
His gaze sharpened, and a faint ember of fire flickered around his form.
"Prove yourself, Noctus. Prove whether you are worthy of keeping the name Ignisar."
Then, with a flick of his hand, he ordered, "Fetch Drake."