A dignified Fake God of the Time Domain — needing his protection?

Daniel couldn't help but let out a quiet, helpless laugh.

If danger truly appeared, shouldn't it be Kartora protecting him instead?

He shook his head at the irony, then followed her without hesitation, stepping into the radiant portal.

This time, the portal's inner corridor was much wider than before — perhaps a reflection of Kartora's recent growth.

Her increased power had clearly expanded the structure of the timeway itself.

But as Daniel moved forward, he felt it — the resistance of time thickening around him, slowing the motion of his body and mind.

The air was heavy, viscous, as if made of layered glass.

All around him, the walls of the passage shimmered with fragments of reality — flickering scenes, moments from countless eras that had once truly existed.

He saw ancient gods in battle, their colossal forms tearing apart dimensions.

He saw the birth and death of god ranks, civilizations that rose and vanished within heartbeats.

He saw weak races destroyed before their wisdom could even blossom, erased from existence by the careless hand of stronger beings.

And he saw newly born demigods, eager to harvest faith and ascend — only to be devoured by greater powers the instant they succeeded.

The Land of Origin, he thought, was truly a world ruled by the law of the jungle.

If you were strong, you could do anything.

If you were weak, your survival depended on the mercy — or the mood — of those above you.

That was why every living being in this world carried the same obsession: to become stronger.

Because only the strong could protect their families, their homes, their dreams — the fragile things they loved.

So generation after generation, more and more intelligent creatures awakened, chasing power no matter the cost.

Even knowing that most would die as cannon fodder, they persisted.

Daniel understood them.

He was no different.

The reason he kept pushing forward, honing himself, facing gods and monsters — it wasn't for conquest or glory.

It was simply to survive, and to protect the people under his care.

In this world, there was no other way.

And even now, after everything he had achieved, Daniel could feel it — that faint but unrelenting sense of insufficiency.

His power still wasn't enough.

Just then, Kartora's clear, musical voice broke through his thoughts.

"Lord Crossbridge, over here!"

Daniel blinked, returning from his reflections, and hurried to catch up. Kartora was already some distance ahead, moving gracefully through the corridor's endless glow.

He increased his pace, stepping quickly to match hers.

Outside, time itself froze completely.

The flow of the world beyond — every clock, every heartbeat — had come to a halt.

Even within Daniel's own mental world, the Land of Origin itself hung still, motionless like a painting.

He found himself half amused at the thought.

If only those inside could continue acting freely while everything outside was frozen — the human race could have all the time it needed to grow stronger.

Imagine it — centuries of progress in the span of a single moment.

What kind of unimaginable empire would that produce?

But no. Inside this tunnel, everything was still. The price of timeless travel was absolute stagnation.

Time slipped by quietly, though Daniel could no longer tell how much had passed.

A day, perhaps. Maybe more.

Still, the tunnel had no visible end.

"Kartora," he finally asked, his voice echoing softly in the emptiness, "how long do you think we'll have to travel before we reach the destination?"

Kartora furrowed her delicate brows, thinking for a moment.

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure," she admitted. "I think… when it's time for us to arrive, we'll arrive."

...

Days blurred into weeks, and before Daniel realized it, a month had passed.

He had stopped counting the hours.

The journey had become something else — not a mission, but a quiet, endless voyage through the river of existence.

He had even learned to enjoy it.

He watched, calmly, as civilizations rose and crumbled in flashes of color beyond the timeway.

Worlds were born and destroyed like sparks from a fire.

Whole ages flickered by faster than a heartbeat.

Each passing vision deepened his insight.

His thoughts grew heavier, more reflective.

He continued his Mental Deduction as they traveled, dividing his mind into two threads — one calculating and observing, the other engaging in light conversation with Kartora.

Their talks stretched across days, sometimes across what must have been years.

They spoke of time and memory, of faith and evolution.

They shared stories of the countless ages they glimpsed passing by.

And in that way, a year slipped quietly into eternity.

During their journey, Daniel began to notice fragments of something strange floating through the current — shards of condensed light, each containing whispers of ancient memories.

They were time fragments, remnants left behind by gods from forgotten epochs.

Most were chaotic and incomplete — moments of laughter, war, creation, despair — but Daniel's keen mind could still glean patterns from them.

Combining the fragments with his deductions, he began to see the greater picture — the history of the Old Gods, the ones who ruled before the modern pantheon even existed.

He realized something startling: from a certain point in history onward, the modern god system simply appeared.

Before that, everything belonged to the ancient gods.

The "current" divine order wasn't born gradually — it was replaced.

That revelation deepened his curiosity, and he followed Kartora onward, eager to learn more.

Ten years passed.

The further they traveled, the fewer modern gods he saw.

Their echoes faded from the timeway, replaced entirely by the lingering power of the Old God lineage.

Twenty years. Thirty.

The fragments grew sparse, dissolving one by one until the corridor was filled only with silence and the dim hum of spacetime itself.

The tunnel began to distort — twisting at impossible angles, folding back on itself.

Daniel could feel the pull of the void, the raw drag of collapsing dimensions.

It tugged at his body like invisible tides.

But he was far too strong to be affected by such forces now.

Kartora didn't even seem to notice them.

Her confidence was absolute.

Time passed.

Fifty years since they'd stepped into the portal.

By now, there were no more fragments, no more echoes of life.

Only darkness and colorless light remained — a mixture of deep blue and black that swallowed everything.

The deeper they went, the more suffocating it became.

The structure of time unraveled here, turning chaotic, harmful to all living things.

Even divine beings could be torn apart by the turbulence.

But under Kartora's protection, Daniel remained untouched.

He had layered his own defenses as well, surrounding himself with a reflective barrier, a luminous shell that turned away temporal distortion.

Years continued to bleed together — sixty, seventy, eighty.

Until at last, Daniel realized something.

Ahead of them, there was nothing.

His mind power stretched forward and met pure void — a blank expanse with no movement, no energy, not even the faintest pulse of existence.

The roaring torrents of time that had accompanied them for decades were gone.

The entire corridor had gone silent.

No more light, no more color.

Only the endless black.

In that infinite stillness, only two figures remained — Daniel and Kartora.

Every other trace of reality had vanished.

And the long, timeless journey pressed on, deeper into the unknown.

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