Chapter 296: Vol4 Ch21: Timeline alteration
Translator: La0o9
On top of the tower structure, a bright golden eyeball was rotating nonstop, the glow around it continuously flowed like it was preparing something.
An invisible shockwave then spread into the world.
The SCR Foundation members who were originally outside the dome to study it were struck by the shockwave, their eyes instantly became blank, then quickly turned from their original blue, green, or brown hue into pure gold.
Under this shockwave, golden patterns began to spread all around the world, carrying Negary’s virus that contained his will to every corner of the planet.
A large volume of information related to this world quickly flowed, variables were quickly determined and solved, quickly perfecting the complete model of this world.
A large golden net seemed like it had covered the sky above, causing many to stare in fright at it. Their highly dilated pupils reflected the golden net in the sky, keeping it in their visions even after they looked back down.
Infect, analyze, then manipulate.
Without any obstructions, Negary’s infection process was extremely smooth. Once he finished analyzing the current information, he would be able to proceed with infecting the world more deeply, up until he had the entire world completely in his grasp.
As Negary’s infection spread further, he discovered something quite interesting. As his understanding and rate of spread over this world had surpassed that of humanity as a whole, Negary could sense the world’s environment changing itself to better fit his existence. At the same time, if humanity lived in this environment for a long time, they would begin to devolve, becoming essentially no better than regular apes.
Furthermore, Negary could sense that this world’s past was in a tangible state.
〖 The future can determine the past. This world’s Time isn’t linear, but overlapping? 〗
Negary was quite surprised. For a normal world, Time was a concept measured by the rate of motion of matter; as well as the rate at which energy spreads.
Since reality is constantly in motion, the past usually leaves behind nothing but information. An individual could use the state of matter and energy in the present to calculate and determine its state in the past, but since the ‘past’ had already gone by, it was intangible—– unless someone or something utilized their ability to cause a portion of matter and energy to return to their past states.
The timeline resets of the Disaster world was done in this exact manner. The will of the world maintained a record of its own past state, then utilized the [Temporal Displacement] Authority to cause all matter and energy within its influence to return to their past states, achieving local time reversal.
But this world wasn’t the same. Its ‘past’ hadn’t gone by at all, both the matter and energy of the world’s past remained there. The ‘past’ was not just an informational state, but an actual location that existed.
After infecting a large portion of this world’s outermost layer, he was able to begin spreading his virus to the past.
〖 This world is essentially an inverted pyramid. The ‘Known’ of the past is only a singularity, the more ‘Known’ spreads and form the world’s upper layers, the more prosperous it becomes, but its foundation remains in the past 〗
Finally, Negary understood why this world was so strange.
〖 Because the ‘past’ is an existing location, when that foundational ‘past’ is altered, the entire timeline of the world would also change. The inverted pyramid structure would remain the same, but the content of each layer would not 〗
〖 If I continue to infect the ‘past’, that ‘past’ would affect the ‘present’, creating a world of viral lifeforms 〗Negary’s mind was clear: 〖 Consequently, all existing lifeforms that no longer belong to this type of world would turn into anomalies that continue to exist until they are thoroughly analyzed and digested by the new world 〗
〖 Since the ‘past’ and ‘present’ are unified in this way, and because of how frequently it changes, this world is essentially a world-shaped amoeba. The will of this world wouldn’t care what kind of state it was turned into 〗
〖 Naturally, it’s not as if there isn’t a drawback. Due to frequent timeline alterations, the world would gain increasingly more anomalies, and if the research and analysis of these anomalies were to become stagnant in the future, the world would also fall into a state of non-development; or worse, the overlapping of anomalies would eventually cause the world’s structure to collapse, forcing it to regrow from the beginning 〗
Through this world’s temporal connection, Negary’s virus easily headed into this world’s past, which would be an unimaginable feat in any other world. Travelling to a tangible, existing location called ‘the past’ and travelling to an intangible, informational past were two completely different matters.
For the latter, even entities like Eternal Heat would still be far from qualified to achieve such a thing, but for the former, anyone would be able to do it once they had studied this world’s temporal structure long enough. In fact, even human scientists would be able to successfully create a time machine with a flash of inspiration if they had access to the appropriate knowledge.
The keyword here was ‘if’. One must be able to observe the entire world as a whole in order to obtain such knowledge, which was also the reason why Negary didn’t notice it before he infected enough of this world.
〖 Wait a minute, that is… 〗
Negary’s gaze bypassed the world to look towards its space. The reason for a world’s unique characteristic was usually its surroundings and background, for example, the Flame world was created from a collision between the White Light and Black Abyss; the Disaster world changed from a Psychic world into its final form due to the pressure of the New Deity and Progenitor Dragon; the Moon Tree world gained its movement characteristic due to the elves’ invasions.
This Anomaly world was also the same, so there must be an external reason for its overlapping time characteristic.
〖 Those are the leftover remains of previous world alterations, but there aren’t only remains there 〗Negary observed how those remains were stimulated and caused a wave of informational storm to wash into this world.
Receiving this stimulation, the Anomaly world-shaped amoeba started to change its form once again, the ‘thing’ hidden by the remains also slightly writhed.
An enormous volume of inexplicable information was observed by Negary in an instant. Realizing the danger within that, Negary instantly cut off his connection to a large number of his viruses, thus rejecting that information from his perception; the cut-off viruses were then enveloped by the informational storm as the timeline was altered again.
That ‘thing’ was definitely an entity that had surpassed a world, once again giving Negary the sensation of coming into contact with a great entity like the Black Abyss. As expected, this Anomaly world did not betray Negary’s evaluation of it as an amoeba.
〖 Sometimes, ignorance is bliss 〗Negary observed the humans who utilized the [REDACTED] black sword. They most likely knew that the sword was related to those timeline remains, but didn’t know what kind of entity they had disturbed; at least, if Negary was in possession of that sword, he would definitely not utilize it carelessly.
〖 However, this is also a good thing… 〗following the timeline alteration, Negary’s viruses were scattered into different aspects of the world, which were also accompanied by the obstruction of the ‘Unknown’ residing within those remains: 〖 This way, perhaps I would be able to digest all of that 〗
As the informational storm of the remains gradually settled down, the world’s timeline was still in an unstable state, a golden light appeared from thin air at the very beginning of the timeline, it fell onto a tree and created a golden flame.
This was the cradle of all lifeform’s creation. The ancestors of Dino Sapiens, Lizardmen, Snake Sapiens, and Homo Sapiens had only just come into existence, their intelligence was still especially low.
A furry, slightly humanoid ape whose leg was broken was attracted by the flame and slowly approached it.