R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 12

R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 12 

(this chapter took an enormous amount of cross-referencing and planning, and takes a look back at things many people were curious about. I hope you enjoy it!)

((it's also 6,000 words long))

(if I made a mistake in my references anywhere, please let me know. My outline is a long and detailed one, but as we all know, humans are fallible)

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“Constantine… Lancaster?” Andron’s eyes narrowed. As he spoke, the air around him seemed to stir with a breeze, twitching with energy. The Tribe Leader’s mind was so focused on what Micheal was saying, he was inadvertently activating his Winged Giant Bloodline.

“Yes. He’s a psychopath that cares nothing for the lives of others and delights in torturing the innocent.” Micheal took full advantage of the opportunity to tarnish the Vile King’s name.

Constantine didn’t actually take any pleasure in his actions and honestly believed he was doing the right thing, but that wouldn’t stop Micheal from doing his damndest to preemptively ruin his image.

“The Beasts of Providence that have been targeting your people were directly created by him. They serve under his orders, first and foremost.” Micheal went on to provide a detailed description of the Vile King, his methodology, and his past actions, also explaining that he was the mastermind behind the large plague that was currently sweeping through the Second Layer.

Abruptly, a loud crash echoed in the room as the Tribe Leader of the Marrow Tribe, Bolder Bloodworth, smashed his hand onto the table. The circular table fractured, sending up shards of jagged wood.

“Where is the bastard?!” Bolder was a large, muscular Farian with a greying beard and his deep, angry voice reflected that stature.

The Marrow Tribe Leader had lost his eldest and his second son to attacks led by the Beasts of Providence. In the first timeline’s Great War, he was renowned for his ferocity and great strength, at least initially. His hotheaded nature got him killed within the first two months of the war.

“I don’t know.” Micheal shook his head as he added,

“But, with the tracking technology provided by the Wise Lady, we have a way to hunt him down.”

At that, everyone’s eyes turned towards Myla, who gave a small nod.

Technically, Myla could only track the Beasts of Providence members that were connected through the Beast King’s mind-controlling Ability. The Vile King’s Seeds were untraceable as far as Micheal knew. Still, on the Second Layer, the two were close enough that Micheal felt no need to point out the difference.

“Do you have any evidence you can offer us to support your words?” A silky, quiet voice rasped out from the smallest Tribe Leader at the table, the black haired Leader of the Tillnorth Tribe, Ramen Tiinorth. He was the Tribe Leader in charge of general supplies and intelligence gathering during the Great War.

Micheal shook his head.

“I know what I say is true, but I can’t provide anything tangible. In truth, my knowledge has an origin that might seem hard to believe.” Micheal paused after a few seconds before he went on to add,

“I am a Seer.” He quickly continued,

“The reason I was able to come to your aid was because of the danger I saw in the future of the Farian people.”

His words caused all of the Tribe Leaders to pause. Many of them exchanged glances and opened their mouths before closing them, registering the impact of Micheal’s words.

Calling himself a Seer was a good way to explain the knowledge he had obtained, while lowering the expectations that he knew all the answers. In the legends of virtually every race, Seers were beings that usually saw knowledge that was cluttered and of little use.

However… that wasn’t the only reason why Micheal had claimed to be a Seer, both on the First Layer and now here on the Second. This second reason was one that had also strongly influenced Micheal’s decision to purchase the Life Orb Mastery Ability.

And… it was a reason that had been on his mind ever since he obtained the Eyes of the Deep Ability and used it to create a Divine Scan of himself.

It was a very dangerous thing to be known as a person that had travelled years backwards in time. Most people didn’t like the fact that someone else might know their darkest secrets.

And in the eyes of the 3 separate Tribes of Deities that would, in a few short years, began to show up on the Fifth Layer…

Manipulation of the past was utter heresy.

If there was one rule shared between all Tribes of Deities, it was that upon discovering a being that was suspected of traveling to the past…

The Deities would drop everything they were doing to target that creature for destruction. For, the existence of a creature that could travel to the past was the only threat that could reverse the process of a Race Ascending into a Tribe of Deities.

Navir, the Titled Deity that humanity encountered on the 6th Layer, was known as the strongest Angel for good reason.

He had long since killed all of his rivals.

When he first revealed the truth behind his abilities thousands of years ago, the entire Angelic Tribe had come together in an attempt to kill him. They failed, and had continued to fail ever since.

Micheal’s existence was one that would draw the eye of every single Deity in existence, and there was no known way to block a Divine Scan.

The result of his efforts to disguise his powers were something he had been preparing for ever since he returned.

Micheal’s reversal of time had left indelible marks on his Soul that he could never remove. Yvvtal, the Fallen Deity, had confirmed the existence of these scars when he transferred the Brand of Janus to Micheal.

They were something Micheal could not change. And they were something he could not just ignore, either.

So he did what he did best: 

He adapted.

The Divine Scan of the Deities had the ability to see the ‘Path’ that a Soul had walked. It referred to the marks left on one’s Soul after they manipulated, used, or otherwise experienced certain types of energy.

All the marks that Micheal had formed in his first life had vanished when he went back in time. The only ones that had remained were ones caused by the reversal of time.

The process Micheal went through when baptizing his Soul with Master Tier Sword Energy, molding it to the point where he could draw on that power freely, was an example of marking one’s Soul. This was picked up as the ‘Path of the Sword’ when he scanned himself.

Two things had happened when Micheal moved backwards in time.

The first was that he had died and been reborn.

The second was that he had travelled back through time.

To hide the truth of his return to life, Micheal was forced to choose the Life Orb Mastery Ability, something that, thankfully, was an excellent choice. The stains on his Soul that would show up as the Path of Rebirth in a Divine Scan thus gained an explanation.

To hide the truth of his return to the past, he claimed himself a Seer and sought out the Mark of Janus in the Inheritance of Yvvtal the Fallen. The stains on his Soul that would show up as the Path of Time in a Divine Scan thus gained an explanation.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best he could come up with. The Abilities he picked out were the best ones for his situation, each having multiple aspects that made them useful, beyond just a disguise. 

It was inevitable that he would, at some point, encounter a Deity among the 10% that possessed Divine Eyes.

If the real truth about his Soul became known early on the Fifth Layer, he would fail and die no matter how well he prepared himself. In the end, his disguise didn’t need to be perfect, it just needed to buy him enough time to prepare humanity and himself.

The Farians eventually began to debate amongst themselves. Micheal’s claims were big, but he had proven himself already once before. He was even prepared to use his Time Bubble Ability to prove his powers that related to time in case all else failed.

Micheal wouldn’t leave anything up to chance. He had already realized how difficult it was to change the future by himself or with a few allies.

No matter how difficult it was or how much effort it took, he needed to greatly expand the number of people on his side.

That was the only way he could change humanity’s fate, and, indeed, the future itself.

‘First things first.’ Micheal thought as he glanced over at the Lord Justiciar.

‘Let’s ruin the Vile King’s day.’

.. .. .. .. .. ..

Fate was a tricky thing.

There was a saying on Earth that spoke of how a single flap of a butterfly’s wing could go on to create an enormous storm. Even the tiniest of actions, in the right place or time, could change the future.

Micheal’s actions on the First and Second Layers had an impact that ranged far and wide…

And those changes altered fate in ways he would never have predicted.

In the original timeline, Constantine Lancaster remained on the Third Layer until after the Great War Between Races began. There were countless reasons why he lingered as long as he did, ranging from his dissatisfaction and worry over humanity’s growth to extra time he spent organizing his plans for the Third Layer.

In the current timeline, however…

Far from being dissatisfied, Constantine Lancaster was in a good mood.

A great mood, in fact.

The best mood he had been in since the day he arrived on the 7 Layers, during the First Wave.

‘Micheal Care.’ He had finally identified the person that was killing his Seeds and interrupting his plans.

And his reaction to that…

‘What an excellent young man indeed.’

He could not have been happier.

It had taken Constantine a considerable amount of effort to track Micheal’s identity down, to the point that the layers of obfuscation and deceit Micheal had prepared had earned Constantine’s respect and admiration. The method Micheal used to hide his identity when killing the Vile King’s Seeds, overloading a Signal Seer Bracelet to create a temporary deadzone, was something Constantine hadn’t even known was possible.

In an ironic twist, the extraordinary efforts that Micheal went through to thwart investigations into his identity were a large part of what caught Constantine’s interest. As a result, the Vile King put in an absurd amount of effort into tracing Micheal’s identity, far beyond even the worst-case scenario Micheal had predicted.

Micheal’s blood pressure owed the entirety of its current health to the fact that Micheal was blissfully unaware of this.

In the end, Micheal had done an excellent job… but when the Vile King put his full mind towards doing something, it took either a perfect disguise or absolute power to stop him.

When his curiosity finally overtook him, Constantine decided not only to launch a sweeping full-scale investigation, but also chose to abandon his remaining plans for the First Layer, instead assigning the full extent of his manpower to ferret out Micheal’s identity.

After subtracting those Micheal killed, there were a total of 62 Seeds left on the First Layer. All 62 of these Seeds began moving in sync, across more than a dozen organizations, with the singular goal of investigating Micheal’s past.

From the Vile King’s perspective, Micheal had appeared like a ghost out of nowhere. His actions were so prolific that Constantine had originally assumed that he was part of a large-scale secret organization that was targeting the Nightrunner Numbers.

Bit by bit, however, he began to pull back the layers of mystery that protected Micheal.

Micheal’s biggest weakness in hiding his identity lay in the fact that he went out of his way to help humanity improve.

Eventually, the Vile King was able to trace the invention of Dragon Building Liquid to Micheal. He began connecting the dots.

The death of the Godfather…

The destruction of the Monster Class Nest…

The Golden Morenkai hunting method…

The fact that someone had cut one of the nigh-impenetrable skyscrapers of the First Layer in half, and with such precision that it was only discovered by chance.

That last fact, in particular, made Constantine’s eyes shine when he learned about it.

That particular fact was also the result of the changes Micheal had made to the timeline.

The new leader of the Godfather Organization, Admiral Cardell, had accidentally revealed the split skyscraper while using his Ability to manipulate the weight of objects he was touching. The awe-inspiring sight of Cardell picking up and throwing an entire building had become a widely spread rumor.

This particular incident didn’t interrupt any of Micheal’s predictions. The Godfather Organization had indeed ended up becoming the dominant ruler of the First Layer as he had expected.

However…

That dominance came about through an incredibly long, convoluted chain of events that Micheal never saw coming.

The very first major result of Micheal’s changes resulting in the butterfly effect was also a perfect example of unintended consequences.

In the midst of Constantine’s investigation into Micheal, a huge ripple in history took place.

Consequences that happened because Micheal made 2 rather minor mistakes that came together in a very, very big way.

From a butterfly’s flap to an enormous storm.

Micheal’s mistakes arose because, in the face of brand new knowledge gained during his second life, he failed to reconsider certain bits of knowledge he had obtained during his first life.

The historical records that Micheal often drew from were those spread by Dark Void, a group of fanatic researchers that first appeared on the Third Layer. This group, originally founded as a part of the Purgatory Church, broke off and became independent after the Vile King’s existence was made public. These researchers went on to maintain, expand, and constantly spread an enormous record of all human knowledge related to the 7 Layers, with the express purpose of making it impossible to manipulate or erase the past.

Those records were extraordinarily accurate and grew advanced enough to the point where they utilized a variety of encryption methods that made it easy to ferret out fake copies.

But, accurate as those records were, they relied upon humans.

And humans were fallible.

When it came to the First Layer, there were two things in the records Micheal had memorized that were inaccurate.

The first major discrepancy: they claimed that Director Prime had died.

History said Pedro Almaraz managed to kill Director Prime in the war that saw the Nightrunners collapse. Pedro’s aerial attack was invisible and virtually undetectable. 

Pedro, himself, died in the same battle after ferociously throwing himself forward, the death of his wife and daughter to Whittling Light Disease driving away his reason. However, there were numerous eyewitnesses reported Prime’s death. Later records held no reports of any reappearance by the Director, so Micheal believed this particular fact to be true.

The records, however, were wrong.

Director Prime did not die.

He managed to survive, and it was due to a factor that Micheal became aware of, but failed to account for.

In his battle against the Director, Micheal discovered something that had been absent in the records of history.

Director Prime possessed a Returning Ring.

Prime had used that Artifact to escape from Micheal after being forced into a situation where he believed any other choice would lead to death.

The Returning Ring was a rare, limited Artifact that cost around 200,000 Points. The ring allowed for limited teleportation once with a cooldown period that ranged from 30 to 40 days.

Prior to Micheal’s fight with Prime, there was no known record of anyone possessing a Returning Ring on the First Layer. Given the 100,000 Points Wall, Micheal had never factored it into his original plans. It was something that could only exist if an Irregular that started with around 200,000 Points bought it, an item listed close to the back of the Shop. The odds of that happening in addition to it flowing down a chain of ownership that somehow ended with Prime was extraordinarily unlikely.

But, as Micheal found out, that was exactly what had taken place.

Micheal learned of the ring’s existence in Prime’s hands… but never reconsidered the possibilities that this opened up.

In the first timeline, Prime was seriously injured by Pedro Almaraz. He received severe burns and was permanently disfigured.

However… he did not die.

Prime managed to stop time in the midst of the attack and subsequently brought out his Returning Ring and activated it.

This resulted in him appearing to disintegrate in front of a large number of eyewitnesses.

The close escape served as a wakeup call to Prime. Instead of announcing his return, Prime investigated the truth of what took place.

And, after learning how completely the people he trusted the most had betrayed him, Prime grew disillusioned with everything. The Vile King was the one at fault, but Prime wasn’t aware of that.

In fact, in the original timeline, one of the reasons the situation blew up as much as it did was because Constantine considered Prime someone that had excellent potential, but was disappointed that he refused to go up the Layers. He hoped the incident would force Prime to move forward.

The Vile King’s existence was a well-known fact on the higher Layers… but information flowed upwards in the 7 Layers, not down. Even the records gathered by Dark Void were uncertain when, if ever, that the First Layer became aware of Constantine’s existence.

In the first timeline, instead of dying off, Prime remained alive, and stayed on the First Layer until the point where Micheal died.

Prime’s badly disfigured appearance, the fact that he went on to abandon the name of ‘Prime,’ a name he had originally donned after arriving on the 7 Layers as a way to inspire himself, and the fact that his most powerful Ability was almost impossible to detect…

These changes all made Prime significantly harder to recognize.

However, it wasn’t as if he stopped existing. While he no longer ran an organization, Prime still continued to live within the Main Cluster.

He should have been noticed.

The odds of his existence remaining a secret simply due to luck was extraordinarily unlikely, especially after more than a decade had passed.

And it was here that Micheal made a second mistake, once again, due to incomplete knowledge.

History forgot about Prime’s existence, as did nearly everyone that existed on the First Layer.

Nearly everyone.

If there was one thing Micheal had missed in his plans for the first Layer, it was the existence of the delusional Fierce Queen Anastasia, one of the very few humans known to be an S Ranker.

Contrary to all of Micheal’s expectations, within weeks of his departure to the Second Layer, Anastasia decided to invade the Main Cluster.

In Micheal’s first life, the Fierce Queen Anastasia never invaded the Main Cluster.

She didn’t make a move after the Godfather died to poison, nor during the chaos spawned by the Great Arrival, nor when the Nightrunners were targeted by all after Number 1’s massacre experiments were exposed.

Even after the Nightrunners collapsed and fatally weakened the other members of the Big 3, allowing for the rise of the Dawning Six and a new era of infighting…

The Fierce Queen Anastasia never made any public moves outside of her own side Cluster.

It was commonly believed that this was because she had no interest in the Main Cluster. Micheal shared this same belief.

And that belief was wrong.

The sole reason that Anastasia stayed in her side Cluster, even unto the end, was purely because of the existence of Director Prime.

She was terrified of him.

And that terror was what made her, in the first timeline, become one of the very few people to realize that he was still alive.

In a fact that was lost to history, Anastasia encountered the Director prior to the Fourth Wave.

Before the two met, Anastasia had earned the nickname ‘Fierce Queen’ by conquering every force she came across and forcing them to join her ‘Kingdom’ as she termed it. Her strength was the real deal. She possessed genius-level talent when it came to using the Abilities she had chosen, a range of Abilities that let her manipulate 3 separate types of Elemental Energy, that of Fire, Ice, and Wind.

In the first timeline, her talent was overwhelming enough to maintain her place as an S Ranker despite her inaction for the entirety of the time after Micheal arrived.

The pivotal encounter between the 2 S Rankers that Micheal was unaware of, happened well before the Director established the Nightrunners as one of the Big 3. At the time that she met him, Prime was the Director of a survival camp that had roughly 1,300 members.

Anastasia’s marauding Kingdom, on the other hand, had more than 3,100 members, and was an army that had experience in more than two dozen battles against other groups of Ability users.

Prime’s survivor camp had yet to experience a fight against a large group of anything other than Morenkai.

The battle was a surefire one.

And then, it wasn’t.

Unfortunately for Anastasia, the day she chose to attack Prime happened to be less than three months after Prime had been forced to helplessly watch a superpowered serial killer slaughter over 100 of the men and women he had promised to protect. That particular incident had prompted him to buy the time-stopping World Matrix Type Ability and saw him put into place an extreme improvement of his camp’s security.

Anastasia attacked and treated him like every other group she had come across.

In response, Prime systematically destroyed her.

The powerful army she had created was crushed and the entire upper leadership of her ‘Kingdom’ slaughtered down to the last man. At the time, the trauma caused by the serial killer was still fresh in Prime’s mind. This led to him utilizing the harshest, and most horrifying, methods he could come up with, to send a clear message of what would result to those that chose to mess with his group.

Anastasia got that message loud and clear.

The only reason that she, herself, did not also die was because she possessed both the ability to fly and the power to shield herself from most of the damage caused by the hail of bullets, 2 grenades, and 3 rockets Prime sent after her.

From that day forward, Anastasia lived the rest of her life in terror, hiding in a side Cluster and eventually forming a new Kingdom with the sole purpose of protecting herself. Every time she considered leaving for the Second Layer, her fear of running into Prime while in the Main Cluster held her back. Even after she established an entire intelligence-gathering team with the sole job of stealthily keeping tabs on where Prime was, she still refused to make any actual moves. The only ‘rebellion’ she ever made against the terror Prime inspired was her refusal to hide her identity.

Her decision to tuck herself away saved her life. Prime eventually remembered who she was and actually made plans to kill her. However, as the leader of an organization that became one of the Big 3, the list of issues Prime had to deal with seemingly never ended. Anastasia, who was quiet and caused him no trouble, remained low enough on that list that the Nightrunners collapsed before he got to her.

When the rest of the world believed him dead, only Anastasia, someone that had an entire team of loyal followers dedicated to tracking him, knew he was alive. Prime remained active in stopping wrongdoing when it happened in front of him, but otherwise lived in seclusion.

Upon learning this, Anastasia had a sizable portion of her forces spend the rest of their time during the first timeline making absolutely certain that no one else ever discovered that Prime was still alive. Rather than try and target him now that he was alone, she instead decided to hide his existence to decrease any chance there was of him becoming active again.

The terror that had dominated her heart lessened for the first time in years. It never fully left her, and was also what led her to make the decision to stay on the First Layer, unable to handle the fear of not being aware of whether or not Prime was coming for her.

And, as it turned out, her efforts were, for the most part, successful.

At the bare minimum, no hint of Prime’s existence ever made its way high enough up the Layers to reach Micheal.

However…

Now, things were different.

In the current timeline, when Anastasia first heard that Director Prime was gone, her reaction was the same as it had been before: she didn’t believe it. It took several days before she was able to truly confirm his absence, and several days more before she believed it.

That day was like a dream come true for her.

Things then began to take a drastic turn.

Anastasia immediately invaded the Main Cluster, determined to reestablish herself and get back the confidence she had lost.

And Admiral Cardell was the one to confront her.

The Admiral was no longer just the newly ascended leader of the Godfather Organization. He was also now the leader of the entire Main Cluster. The other members of the Big 3 had both collapsed and merged with the Godfather Organization.

Director Prime, before leaving for the Second Layer, had left what remained of the Nightrunners’ leadership, namely Chief Secretary Kaber, with strict, detailed orders to merge with the Godfather Organization. Prime’s absence led to the collapse of the Nightrunners, but thanks to his orders, the majority of its members had opted to join the Godfather Organization.

The Angels Arcadia had likewise collapsed with the death of their Captain-Commander and sole S Ranker, Sylvester Eron. However, the fact that the Godfather Organization had rushed to their aid when they were being attacked convinced the remnants of the Angels Arcadia to join forces.

Of the two remaining S Rankers, the Enlightened Monk wouldn’t care what she did, and while Tandrum the Explorer had been spotted fighting alongside the Godfather Organization, he was now isolated off in a side Cluster alongside a group of researchers, studying the far-reaching results of the Monster Class Nest Core’s destruction.

In light of the trauma she had suffered from when she attacked Prime, even with Prime’s absence confirmed, Anastasia’s invasion was a tentative one.

She went on the offensive and challenged Admiral Cardell to an individual battle, threatening a full invasion if he refused. Cardell accepted her challenge.

Their battle shook the Main Cluster, and this long, convoluted chain of events was what inadvertently revealed the skyscraper Micheal had cut in half.

The battle also ended in a way that swiftly made the Admiral a figure that history would never forget.

Admiral Cardell won, but not because he had grown into an S Ranker faster than in the previous timeline. In fact, his growth had actually slowed down due to the fact that he no longer had a Seed implanted in him to strengthen his talent.

During the middle of what should have been a tense battle, the brash Admiral’s swashbuckling and jovial nature, even in the face of an opponent that was clearly stronger than him, managed to find a place inside Anastasia’s exhausted, scared, and wounded heart. Throughout the entire fight, Cardell was constantly trying to reason with her and stop the fight, and, even when he came face to face with death, his warm smile never faded.

For the first time since her arrival on the First Layer, Anastasia found a figure that she felt like she could rely on.

In a turn no one would have expected, the fight ended with Anastasia crying and throwing herself into Cardell’s arms.

The chain of events Micheal had inadvertently set off resolved itself on its own, but also spawned an epic tale about a legendary sailor that came face to face with the queen of death and defeated her with naught but his overwhelming charm.

Irregardless of the intense drama that had unfolded in the background, the Vile King’s investigation continued.

Eventually, his Seeds found more scattered traces of Micheal’s past activities, enough to have a hint of who he was.

That hint was promptly brought over to the infamous First Layer’s Seer. By calling in a favor she owed to one of his 62 Seeds, he obtained a prophecy.

And with the aid of that prophecy, his Seeds went off and began interviewing a large number of people. Eventually, they stumbled across people that had witnessed Micheal in action.

And, finally, the Vile King learned the truth about ‘Heron,’ to a certain extent.

He learned Micheal’s real name, he learned the fact that, despite his strength, Micheal truly was a Fourth Wave Chosen.

He learned about the existence of Shin and of Sophia, but mistakenly believed Micheal had betrayed them, one of the few nuggets of truth he failed to discover.

And, perhaps most important of all…

The Vile King confirmed that Micheal truly was capable of creating plans to counter things that took place in the future, to the extent that he could prepare a counter for something so far in the future that the person who he was preparing to counter had yet to come up with the idea he planned to foil. He learned that Micheal had declared himself a Seer, and this fact appeared to be true beyond all doubt.

And this caused yet another major shift in the timelines, and inadvertently led to something Micheal never saw coming.

Upon completing his investigation of Micheal and realizing the extent of his prowess, Constantine was extremely pleased. This was exactly the kind of talent humanity needed.

However… he also found himself slightly worried.

Micheal’s godlike ability to predict the future made the distance between the two seem all too small. Micheal on the Second, Constantine on the Third.

Beyond all else, Constantine was extremely careful with his own safety. He had to be if he wanted to accomplish his mission in life.

Humanity was weak, far, far too weak. If he died now, there was no guarantee that humanity would encounter enough challenges to stimulate their growth before it was too late.

He didn’t fear death, but was afraid that if he died too soon, all his effort would be for naught. He couldn’t let his glee with Micheal’s potential overcome him. The future was far too uncertain and the potential talents the rest of humanity might bring something he couldn’t afford to ignore.

It was never enough.

Every time Constantine looked at humanity’s progress, he compared their growth to the power of the unknown being that had kidnapped humanity and brought them into the twisted 7 Layers alongside numerous other races. Even the power he was using to prepare humanity was something obtained due to that unknown being.

The rest of humanity didn’t seem to worry about the power that creature displayed. Most humans were lazy and indolent. They refused to push themselves out of fear.

Constantine decided to remove that option and willingly became the reason they were forced to push themselves. A million devoted humans would have a better chance of victory than 1 billion humans that were merely average. No matter what it cost, this path was the one he believed best.

And so…

In the second timeline, unlike the original, to avoid the chance of Micheal reaching him, Constantine Lancaster left the Third Layer before the Great War Between Races broke out.

He arrived on the Fourth Layer several months earlier than he had originally planned.

The smallest of changes can create the largest of storms.

The Fourth Layer had another name.

The World of Shattered Time.

Unlike the previous Layers, the Fourth Layer was a world that possessed an incomplete time axis.

Every 37 days, the current world that had been the Fourth Layer was cut off. The people on this now-abandoned world were still alive and were still capable of leaving this world and entering the Fifth Layer.

However… after being cut off, from that point on, everyone that left the Third Layer found themselves on a brand new version of the Fourth Layer. The old, cut-off Fourth Layer would never see any new inhabitants. It became a dead world.

Alongside this particular quirk was one more factor that set the Fourth Layer apart from all previous Layers.

At any point in time, there wasn’t just one version of the Fourth Layer that existed. There were an enormous number of copies that were constantly created and cut off, every 37 days.

The Fourth Layer was the same for every single race that was climbing the 7 Layers.

However, alongside every new version that was spawned in, the races that met each other on their version of the Fourth Layer changed.

In one version, humanity might enter a Fourth Layer that possesses a race of rock golems and squirrel people. In another, perhaps they find a race of pink-colored elfin warriors. In some versions, humanity finds no one and spawns in alone.

Constantine Lancaster, in the interests of ensuring Micheal had no chance to reach him, entered the Fourth Layer earlier than he had originally planned. The day he entered was 2 days after the old world had been cut off, a mechanic he had long since become aware of thanks to the Seeds he already had sent up the Layers.

He scouted out the current iteration by sending some of his Seeds in advance, and upon finding no apparent danger, moved from the Third Layer into the Fourth Layer.

Shortly thereafter, the Vile King and his forces encountered a unique race of humanoids that he had never heard of.

And, as a result… 2 years and 286 days sooner than in the original timeline, the Vile King became aware of the existence of beings that called themselves ‘Deities.’

In a twist of fate that even Micheal knew nothing about, Constantine met face to face with the second oldest Tribe of Deities, a group of creatures that called themselves ‘The Yil.’

And the Vile King also swiftly found the answer as to why Micheal never knew about this encounter.

It was simple.

The reason he had never heard of humanity and the Deities interacting this early on was because, in the original timeline, no human that entered the Fourth Layer during this 37 day period survived to reach the Fifth.

.