Chapter 254 - The endless, one-second tasks!

After clearing up the castle from those several corpses, Timothy had four tasks in mind, each of which were more important than the other, but yet their prioritization varied. He didn’t prioritize the most important task, such as the deeper understanding of the flow of time, no, he thought that such a task would take a long time until he saw some benefits out of it, so he didn’t want to officially start it.

Instead, he got to the castle library, and wanted to absorb as much information as he could about this universe, or, this specific timeframe of the universe. He wanted to do so for numerous reasons, and the reasons intertwined with his other ideas, including the most important one! He figured that if he understood this crimson time period of this place better, he might also be able to understand the needle universe more thoroughly, and therefore the passing of time. It wasn’t the worst plan in the world.

The other couple of tasks revolved around alchemy, and telekinesis. He wanted to figure both of these things out, and he figured that the library would have something for him. It was a small spot with limited books, but he figured that it was the centerpiece that might tie all of his ideas together!

“Bugs… centipedes… oh look, bugs again! I’ll crank into those later, if I have ‘time’. Luckily, that’s the only thing that’s to my advantage right now.” He muttered.

It was true that the flow of time was working to his advantage, because for example, he could spend years here, doing whatever he pleased. At whatever time, he could get back to the main universe, to the main planet where he stemmed from, and from his perspective, time wouldn’t have moved there much, not more than a few seconds at least.

It was a confusing matter, but the key was the portal itself, which he could configure for it to drop him off at the time frame of where he started! Essentially, he could lead his team to the mouth of that giant wyrm if he chose to, he was capable of doing so with the adequate portal tilt.

Furthermore, since the flow of time in Purpureus Mundi moved slowly, or normally when he was in here, it meant that he wasn’t sacrificing anything. If he spent three years here for example, he would just be three years older when he crossed that portal again, so yes, the flow of time was mostly to his advantage, and he made sure to use it. Purpureus Mundi was his friend.

“My head hurts thinking about time, all the time, I need a distraction that’ll bring me back to earth. Well, back to the castle, cause I’m not on earth, am I?” He spoke to himself.

“What are you up to, Tim?” Gustav suddenly spoke, interrupting his train of thought. “Do you need help? I’m good with books, read plenty of them.”

“Oh, they’re from several different languages, so they’re a pain in the ass to read. I’m just sounding the words out, and hoping for the best.” He said.

This was a light lie, and Gustav bought it. The fact of the matter was that even though the books were in different languages, he could understand some of them, because they were written in English! He could understand English really well, and in this case, he ended up staring at the books for a good half hour, without reading them, because he didn’t know what to think about them being written in a language that was local to planet earth! He was absolutely stunned, because he didn’t peg the prior, human inhabitants as earthlings, not at all, and they most likely were not earthlings, which made the matter all the more confusing.

Then, Gustav snapped him out of it, as he stated. “This one is written in our language, it’s in Goblicus. What the hell could it be doing here?”

“What’s it about?” He asked, quick as a flash.

“Bugs, fuck, of course it is!” Gustav had started hating bugs with a passion, but then he asked himself the question. “What goblin spent enough time here to write about bugs? I doubt that those humans can write in our language?”

“Well, they spoke our language, so maybe this universe is more intertwined with Valporovus than we think?” He added, and then he worryingly said. “Let’s hope no one else knows how to get here, we really don’t want any visitors up here.”

Anyway, they continued studying the books, and gathered up as much information as they could. Information eventually started linking with the topics that he was interested in, so he managed to piece some pieces of the puzzle together. For example, he started learning a lot about alchemy, and unsurprisingly, the alchemy lab in the basement was tailored to work with the contents of this universe, including bugs, and various types of plants! This type of alchemy was really interesting, overall, and it was vastly different from Phantom Alchemy, which intrigued him, so now he felt enthralled to learn as much about it as he could. Despite his best wishes, he had to read more about bugs.

“I can’t believe we got into so much work just because we were escaping that big ass wyrm,” He said.

“Yeah,” Gustav chuckled, “I even forgot that I was hungry! Lost my appetite.”

The topic regarding alchemy kept expanding the more they read. Mantis brains seemed to be the most useful ingredient, though not the most common, because of how big they were as a species here in Mundi. Smaller species of mantis did the trick as well, in terms of recipes, but their quality was significantly lower, so Timothy theorized that there was a population of human-sized mantises that he hadn’t run into yet, which made him a bit excited, because it further extended the very exclusive type of alchemy that this place featured. Lesser quality potions would still be valuable if they were made in great quantities!

“If I make a few potions and get them out of Mundi, I can eventually stack gold bars upon gold bars of wealth here. It’s never a bad idea to have gold, especially when the passing of time is sub-optional.” He thought.