Chapter 419 Paradox
Vivian's figure completely disappeared into the void, and she first infiltrated the city to conduct in-depth reconnaissance.
A moment later, her voice came through the encrypted mental link: "Safe. No organized enemy units detected. Only a small number of Level 1 worker bees were found wandering aimlessly in the lower pipes, possibly abandoned or hatched naturally. You may enter."
Jemin and Roland landed on top of a tall tower on the edge of the city.
From here, you can overlook a large part of the city.
Jemin wasted no time; he immediately took out a recording crystal containing a detailed log of the previous round of wizards collecting samples here.
A mental scan brought the scene back to mind: the battle erupted in a distant high-rise building, the wizard army stormed in from the main passage on the east side, the Scythe-Skull Clan defenders put up a last stand in the western square, and after their defeat, the remnants tried to escape through the underground network, only to be eliminated by pre-placed rune traps...
"That area..."
Roland also viewed the recorded information and then cast a reconnaissance spell in that direction.
After a moment, he nodded: "Indeed, although the disguise is quite good, the energy fluctuations are too gentle compared to other areas."
Soon, Vivian's on-site reconnaissance results came back: "The enemy's camp is indeed in this area..."
Jemin nodded and looked at Roland: "It's good that nothing has changed. Then I'll have to trouble you to make sure that none of them escape."
"It's nothing."
Roland raised his palm toward the sky, and in the blink of an eye, a colossal energy shield spread out.
The energy shield that rose up resembled an inverted, semi-transparent giant bowl, silently enveloping the entire Scythe-Skull Clan outpost camp.
The faint sounds of carapace rubbing and pheromone exchange that could be heard from within the camp were instantly cut off.
"Make your move." Vivian's voice rang out in the mental link, cold and concise.
As the main offensive force, Roland waved his staff, and dozens of meteorites burning with blazing white flames suddenly condensed above the largest spiral building in the center of the camp, which served as the command post, and crashed down with long trails of flame!
Explosions and flames instantly engulfed the building and its surrounding area, with screams of panic mingling with the cracking sound of energy shields shattering.
However, Roland controlled his power very well. This spell only destroyed the opponent's defense system and caused a lot of chaos, but caused as few casualties as possible.
Taking advantage of the collapse of the enemy's security system, Vivian sneaked in and became the Grim Reaper in the shadows.
Her figure flickered between the watchtowers, supply stacks, and small incubation pools on the edge of the camp, each appearance accompanied by a tiny spatial rift passing by.
The Scythe-Skull Clan members whose bodies are touched by the crack will freeze instantly, and then a smooth cut will appear on their carapace, silently splitting them in two.
Her targets were all high-ranking members of the Scythe-Skull Clan.
Jemin's target was also the high-ranking Scythe-Skull Clan.
His mental energy had already locked onto those few points of light in the camp that showed prominent energy reactions. He locked on, raised his hand, and instantly distorted space.
Buzz!
An invisible spatial force suddenly erupted around several level four or five Scythe-Skull Clan squad leaders, like an invisible giant hand violently twisting that area.
Carapace, limbs, internal organs... everything was torn to pieces in the spatial displacement and tearing, and the Scythe-Skull Clan, as the target, did not even have time to scream.
As for the sole level six Scythe-Skull Clan commander, it had just roared angrily as it soared into the sky from the burning ruins of its command post, and was just about to organize a counterattack when Roland pointed at it from afar.
A highly refined "gravity anchor" rune was instantly imprinted on its body, pulling it back to the ground like a meteor and creating a deep crater.
Before it could struggle to its feet, Roland's second spell, "Molecular Stasis," had already descended, completely solidifying its massive body along with a small area around it, rendering it unable to move.
The battle was a one-sided and overwhelming affair from the very beginning.
Tens of thousands of Scythe-Skull Clan members were utterly powerless against three well-prepared, overwhelmingly powerful, and tactically sound wizards.
Except for the low-level Scythe-Skull Clan members who were deliberately preserved, all the high-level Scythe-Skull Clan members in the camp were slaughtered in a short period of time.
The real time-consuming and laborious part is the work that follows.
"Seal!" Roland shouted, forming a hand seal.
The energy shield, originally intended to isolate the outside world, contracted and deformed inward, transforming into thousands of independent energy cages of varying sizes.
The remaining panicked low-level Scythe-Skull Clan members in the camp were separated and trapped, suspended in mid-air, both to prevent them from harming themselves or attacking each other, and to facilitate observation.
“Let’s begin the identification.” Jemin shook his hand, dispelling the spell, and walked to the nearest energy cage.
Inside were a dozen or so trembling sickle-headed worker bees.
To the average person, these insects may look exactly the same.
But in the eyes of Jemin, who has studied their physiological structure, variation lineage, and even the subtle differences in the growth patterns of their shells, they each have their own characteristics.
He began to compare the samples one by one according to the sample information stored in the record crystal.
No, it wasn't the first one.
The second one has an incorrect curvature at the edge of its shell.
The third one...
When he checked the seventh cage, Jemin's gaze settled on a level 2 combat-type Scythe-Skull Clan member.
On the second joint of its left forelimb, there is a very fine, natural dark-colored mark that resembles a broken triangle.
Records show that in the previous round, he collected a sample of a sickle-headed creature with similar markings on its left forelimb, but only collected half of its head and part of its body, discarding the rest of the remains.
Immediately, Jemin retrieved the sealed "half a head" from the corresponding area within his body's inner sanctum.
He shrunk the energy cage to just envelop the living Scythe-Skull Clan member, pulled it close, and revealed half of the head's cut surface.
The scythe-skull creature squeaked in terror when it saw the head in Jemin's hand, its voice filled with unbelievable horror.
That's understandable; anyone who saw another person holding their head would surely scream in shock.
However, Jemin ignored the other person's fear and carefully compared the two.
The shell color, texture density, subtle energy circuit patterns, and even the active imprints at the cellular level... all match perfectly!
More importantly, the special armor on the chest of this living Scythe-Skull Clan member, known as the "Armor of Glory," is uniformly colored and has no discolored patterns caused by recent healing.
This means that it never lost half of its head and part of its body... at least in this "cycle" of life, it is complete.
"Partial harvesting... the body has fully recovered. The Glory Armor shows no new healing marks." Jemin recorded in a low voice, then retracted half of the head back into the cave.
They continued their investigation.
As each member of the Scythe-Skull Clan was identified, the results gradually became clear:
All samples that were "partially collected" (only parts of the limbs or organs were stored) by Jemin were resurrected intact in this cycle of reincarnation.
There were no marks, and the Glory Armor showed no signs of being "missing and then restored".
The power of time reversal seems to perfectly repair this "partial loss," resetting the individual's state of being to its original, uncollected state.
However, the situation was quite different for the Scythe-Skull Clan members who were entirely stored within Jemin's body.
Jemin and the two level-six wizards carefully checked all the trapped Scythe-Skull individuals, searched every possible corner of the camp, and even used small-scale magic to detect the undead and trace memories.
The final confirmation revealed that all fifty Sickle-Skull Clan members, who had been stored together in the cave, had disappeared.
In the timeline of this camp, they seem to have never existed.
To further verify this, the three randomly selected several hundred living Scythe-Skull Clan members and used soul memory reading magic to search for memory fragments related to those "disappeared individuals".
The result is intriguing.
In these memories of the Scythe-Skull Clan, the life, work, and combat training in the camp are consistent with the records, except for the absence of the figures and interactions of those fifty "comrades".
In their memory, there were only this many people in the camp; there were never fifty individuals.
The reversal of time not only erased the material existence of those individuals, but also seemed to simultaneously correct the causal logic and collective memory associated with them, making the "absence" itself reasonable and imperceptible.
“The existence of an individual who is removed from the timeline is completely erased, and the related causal traces are also ‘rationalized’ and corrected…” Roland stroked his chin thoughtfully, “This is more thorough than simple ‘deletion’; it’s practically ‘never existed’.”
Jemin remained silent, a bolder idea for verification rising within him.
He retrieved two perfectly preserved samples of the sickle-skull clan corpses from his inner cave—two of the "disappeared fifty."
Two well-preserved corpses appeared in his hands, their carapaces still bearing the scars from the previous battle.
However, just as they completely detached from the grotto and came into contact with the current cycle of time and space...
There was no sound, no energy fluctuations, and no light or shadow effects.
Like being instantly erased by the most skillful eraser, or like fragile soap bubbles under the sunlight.
The two corpses vanished into thin air.
It's not decomposition, it's not teleportation, it's simply disappearance.
Jemin's pupils suddenly contracted, and then his eyes burst forth with an incredibly bright light.
"Just as I expected!" he almost roared. "The existence of these samples was directly erased by the time paradox!"
"When time reversal occurs, everything in the current plane is forcibly reset to a certain 'save point'. For individuals that have been partially collected, the reset power will attempt to repair their 'missing parts'. Since the missing parts (in my cave) and the main body (in the plane being reset) have been separated in spacetime, the reset power seems to 'assume' that the main body was originally complete, or 'fill in' the missing parts in some way, thereby allowing the individual to 'restore'."
Jemin's brain was extremely active, rapidly integrating the various information obtained from the experiments.
"But for the individual stored as a whole, the reset power finds that this individual 'does not exist' at any point in time in the current plane (because it is isolated). It can neither 'repair' (because there is no subject) nor 'ignore' (because the individual should exist at the save point). The two contradictory states—'should exist at the save point' and 'does not exist at any save point because it is isolated'—are irreconcilable, creating the most fundamental spacetime paradox."
"And the way this dimensional law resolves this paradox is the most brutal: it completely erases the fact that 'this individual exists' from the history and future of the current timeline. Therefore, they 'never existed,' and the related memories are also corrected."
"When I removed the corpse, it was as if I had 'pasted' an individual back into the current spacetime. This immediately triggered a second paradox: something that 'never existed' 'appeared.' As a result, the laws of the planes took effect again, instantly erasing it to maintain the continuity of spacetime."
"wrong!"
Suddenly, Jemin realized something and overturned his previous idea: "It didn't trigger a second paradoxical conflict, but it's still in the first round of paradoxical conflict. Unlike the things I brought into this plane from other planes, the things in this plane were probably marked in advance, which is why they were erased the moment they were taken out."
"Otherwise, it should be like those measuring instruments, only being erased when this round of time reversal occurs!"
(End of this chapter)
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