Chapter 86: Before Our Time

  [Time Plane Memory #1]

  The world was a battlefield.

  There weren’t any flying platforms or endless wastelands, but it still somehow looked worse.

  A young soldier ran through the ruins of what had once probably looked like a prosperous industrial city, taking cover beside his comrades in navy-blue uniforms.

  Brick rowhouses stood with their walls ruptured, pipes twisted and torn, releasing steam into the air. Overhead catwalks collapsed into the streets below.

  The sky was a gray color, choked with soot, steam, and ash, while the ground vibrated from what sounded like distant artillery.

  On the other end of the street, a gray-uniformed infantry pushed forward in coordinated lines, rifles raised and firing.

  The young soldier's comrades, hiding behind crude barricades, shot back. He joined them, fumbled a new magazine into his rifle, and fired.

  A shriek of gears made him look up.

  The enemy rolled forward an armored wagon carrying a cyclic multi-barrel machine gun, already spinning. The spray of bullets that followed shredded their barricades, blowing up wood, stone, and metal. A few soldiers beside him got hit and collapsed without even a cry, blood pulling beneath them rapidly.

  The soldiers tried to take out the enemy manning the machine gun, but their bullets could not get past the armored walls of the wagon.

  Morale was plummeting quickly.

  “Hold the line! We need to earn more time for ‘Overlord’ to arrive!” shouted one of the navy-blue officers, encouraging his troops. “Protect Orlinth! If we fall here, it’s over!”

  Invigorated, the young soldier looked up from his cover and fired again, aiming at the wheels. But that didn’t seem to work either.

  Though, before the wagon could turn its fire toward him, his comrades on the rooftops intervened. Using their rocket-lances, they fired at it.

  The rockets streaked downward and struck the wagon’s boiler. A violent detonation swallowed the machine in flame and shrapnel.

  “Now!” screamed the navy-blue officer. “Push!”

  His soldiers surged from their barricades and charged at their enemy, advancing from cover to cover while rockets streaked ahead of them, blowing apart the gray forces before they could regroup.

  But then, the street darkened.

  The young soldier glanced up again.

  A massive gas-lifted war vessel glided through the smoke overhead, blotting out what little sky remained. Its turret-mounts rotated, and the racks beneath swung open, steadily and mercilessly spilling down bombs.

  “Get to cover!” someone shouted.

  Each explosion heaved chunks of street into the air, tossing them in fiery arcs that rained back down as devastating shrapnel.

  The young soldier dove behind a mound of bricks and sandbags as the gunfire and bombs from above shredded the avenue into chaos.

  Before he could rise, a deep metallic groan rolled across the battlefield—barely audible under the noise of the bombing airship.

  A few blocks away, a colossal metal war-engine crawled into view. It resembled a rolling fortress of iron plating and smoke pipes, its four thick cannons the size of houses.

  The cannons swiveled toward their airborne target, and two of them fired one after the other.

  One shot went wide. The other? A direct hit.

  Hydrogen ignited in a violent explosion of fire. The sky practically turned red as the shockwave tore through the street. Heat slammed into the young soldier’s back as he pressed himself against the ruined wall.

  The navy-blue troops cheered, but only for a heartbeat. More enemy airships descended through the smoke, targeting the fortress with concentrated fire. At the same time, the gray army retaliated again. Dozens of canisters arced overhead before rupturing on impact, belching thick yellow gas.

  “Masks!”

  The young soldier ripped a mask over his face just as the wind pushed the poisonous cloud forward. Those too slow collapsed almost instantly, choking and clawing at their throats as blood and tears streamed from their swollen eyes. Those still standing were cut down by gunfire as the masked gray troops advanced with renewed fury.

  “Beska!” they shouted in an unknown language. “Garkona na Solvane!”

  A bullet tore into the young soldier’s shoulder and he dropped, clutching his wound. A comrade tried to haul him up, but a shot pierced the man’s skull before he could.

  Meanwhile, the gray airships hammered the fortress relentlessly. They succeeded in destroying three of its four cannons, though at the cost of nearly their entire fleet. Only one airship remained—just long enough to see the final cannon fire a shot that punched straight through its gondola.

  The victory was short-lived.

  The dying airship spiraled down, and as luck would have it, crashed directly onto the last functioning cannon. The resulting explosion tore apart the entire block, hurling molten debris and waves of fire down the street.

  When the inferno finally receded, and the chaos subsided, the gray troops still pressed onward toward the heart of the city, sweeping through the ruins and gunning down what remained of the navy-blue forces.

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  But the defenders still had one last weapon.

  “It’s Overlord!” some of them shouted, looking up.

  A new airship emerged from the haze, its canvas navy-blue. Its gondola was larger than that of any other airship, but the oddest thing about it was that it pulsed with a blue glow that pierced through the thick smoke in the air.

  Magitek.

  The gray soldiers fired wildly at it, but they were too far for their projectiles to reach it. With their air fleet gone, they had no way of stopping what was about to happen.

  “Overlord is finally here! We won!” one of the navy-blue soldiers cried a moment before he was shot.

  The glowing airship held still, humming as its light intensified.

  Then it fired.

  It wasn’t shells. It wasn’t bombs. It wasn’t any type of ammunition known to man.

  No. It was a straight beam of blue light that speared the ground beneath the ship.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, from the point of impact, a wave of blue light erupted—a perfect expanding ring of shimmering blue that swept outward through the streets. It flowed over stone, steel, rubble, and machinery without leaving a mark.

  But when it touched flesh—that’s when the horror began.

  Soldiers caught in the wave screamed as crystalline growths crept across their limbs, crawling up their bodies, devouring them inch by inch. Uniforms shredded. Skin hardened. Hearts became glowing cores trapped inside statues of crystal.

  But the blue wave didn’t distinguish friend from foe.

  The navy-blue troops who had been cheering seconds earlier now fled in terror, shouting curses at their leaders as they ran.

  The young soldier staggered up and tried to flee too, clutching his bleeding shoulder. But there was no outrunning it. No one could escape it.

  The wave overtook his comrades and him.

  Crystal spread through his legs, chest, neck. Before it reached his face, his expression twisted—not to one of fear, but fury.

  What remained of him was a jagged crystal statue, one silver ring gleaming on its frozen finger.

  [Time Plane Memory #1 - END]

  ***

  [Item Acquired: Time Plane Memory #1 – Added to Inventory]

  [Quest Updated: Memories From the Past]

  [Collect the 10 Time Plane Memory Fragments]

  [Current Status: 5 / 10]

  [Reward: 10 Level Upgrades]

  I snapped back from the Memory Fragment just in time to see Vorrick’s left hand fly toward my collar. He yanked me violently and pulled me toward him, his eyes boring into mine like he intended to scorch me with his gaze. From thin air, a handgun materialized in his free hand, and he pressed it to my temple.

  “ – do to Alice, you scum?!” he finished his question, teeth clenched.

  My mind was still half inside that war-torn past. A past no one in Solvane was ever taught about. All we knew from history lessons was that the Parasite appeared out of nowhere, and that Solvane was the only nation to find a way to “fight it”—by living on floating platforms while the rest of the world was too slow with their innovations and perished. It was something many had questioned, but were always too cautious to voice out.

  But no…it was a full-blown war. And the Parasite? Could it be an aftereffect of the crystallization caused by this Overlord?

  I forced myself to meet Vorrick’s stare without flinching.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, steady and cold. “If you act the way you claimed you would, she’ll be fine.”

  “Tell me what you did.” His voice dropped into a low growl—a clear threat even without the usual “or else”.

  But I wasn’t afraid of him. And I was done choosing sides. Screw both Vorrick and Valdemar. I’ll milk them both dry for everything I needed to save the world on my terms—not just from Erebus.

  “You don’t scare me,” I said, voice steady. “If you kill me, you won’t be able to stop her from being marked. But if you do exactly what I tell you, I’ll tell you how to prevent it. Decide how much she’s worth to you.”

  I hoped my threat would hold—that he did care for Alice Verldson. Trent told me she was his ward—and only living family member—when I asked. I had to assume that meant something to him.

  Vorrick’s grip loosened suddenly, and I almost sighed in relief.

  His expression twisted with disgust as he shoved me back. “A disgusting, filthy mutt…just like your conwoman mother.”

  I ignored the remark as best as I could. “Is that an ‘okay’?”

  “Speak,” he snapped, turning toward the road. The Terminal and its airships loomed ahead, growing larger with every second of the carriage’s approach.

  “Three things,” I began, suppressing a smirk. “One: I’m not stupid. I already have enough plans set in motion to make sure Alice Verldson gets marked in every future loop if I choose so—yes, even with my memory loss. If I so much as see an Obsidian Crow armor—yours or your dead brother's—in any future loop, she’s done for. You got that?”

  Vorrick laughed once, low and humorless, then shot me a sideways glare so sharp it almost felt like an actual knife had pierced my gut. “Big words from a little man.”

  Fear began to claw its way back from my stomach, but I buried it again. “You sure you want to try me? I only need one success. One success and she’ll stay marked for the rest of the time loop.”

  Vorrick growled something under his breath and turned away again. “Fine. But only as long as you stay away from Valdemar.”

  He wasn’t exactly in a position to make demands, but I decided that arguing about it might provoke him too much, causing me to lose everything.

  “Fine. So be it,” I said, exhaling lightly. “Two: the moment we reach this damn Terminal, I want a full pass—a luxury class permanent ticket even. Something I can store in my Inventory and use whenever I want.”

  He barked a short laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. “How will luxury travel help you save the world?”

  I shrugged, and countered, “How will it hurt it?”

  He stared at me silently for a long second, expression unreadable, then nodded once. “The third request?”

  “Questions,” I said. “And the first one is simple: what exactly is Overlord?”

  “It was the first magitek creation,” Vorrick answered without hesitation. “The founders of floating Solvane—Elias Taylor and his wife and colleagues—discovered the first and only natural mana crystal on Earth. Then, they figured out…” He paused, jaw clenching. “A way to create more.”

  I opened my mouth, already ready to spit my disgust, but he cut me off sharply.

  “But those were different times! That was a war of survival. Solvane was on the brink of annihilation. Every man, woman, and child would’ve died—or worse: been enslaved.” His tone hardened. “Yes, at its core Overlord was inhumane. But it was the best the Solvaners of that time could manage. And the machine itself was banned from use ever since we moved to the platforms!”

  I shook my head slowly. I had a hundred and twenty-two more questions about that war, but for the moment, something else gnawed at me.

  My fingers tightened around the silver ring in my hand. The young soldier’s ring.

  “Who was he?” I asked, fearing the answer.

  “The Taylors’ son. He was sent to the front while his parents worked on making Overlord a reality,” Vorrick said before his face twisted in visible disgust at the following words. “His name is Valdemar Taylor.”

  A chill ran down my spine. That young man—no older than me—who got crystalized right before my eyes was Valdemar?

  “Is?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief. “But this happened more than seven centuries ago. He crystalized. How – “ I stopped, recalling what Vorrick himself told Valdemar’s lieutenant in that Time Vestige. “I thought the process was irreversible. Crystals can’t turn back into a human.”

  “It is irreversible,” Vorrick spat. Then something inside him twisted. His fury abruptly doubled. He leaned toward me, eyes blazing with hatred so intense, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “But then the cursed Cecilia Baines somehow brought him back!”

  My breath stalled. My eyes widened.

  Mom? But how did she – ? More importantly, why would she – ?

  Vorrick didn’t let the thought settle.

  “Your mother’s greatest achievement wasn’t the creation of the magitek-steam engines that supposedly saved all of Solvane.” He let out a cold, bitter laugh. “No…Her real achievement was resurrecting an insane lunatic obsessed with erasing everything his parents built even if it means allowing the extinction of humanity to happen!”

  And this is where I'd love your help: Share the main points you're most curious about - revelations that don't fully sit right yet, character motivations you're eager to understand, anything you're anticipating. I'm already tracking all the major plot points in a giant spreadsheet to avoid missing anything, but having your perspective could be really helpful too.

  Chapters will resume on the 22nd of December.

  Update 17/12/2025: