CH.731 Last Time Travel Experiments
Continuing with my upcoming time travel adventure.
Some good news is that Wilma has finished the Hero’s Sword, so that is ready to go. As are everything else I need to take to the past.
The bad news is, I’m not sure if I am. I think I can make the jump, but I don't know how precisely I can do it. Basically, I can probably get there but I might be 10 or more years off.
I’ve only been doing short jumps, a month at most. So today, I had to make a larger one.
I was tempted to go to the future, just because I couldn’t mess with anything if I did. But at the same time, I’d then have to travel back here with that future knowledge, and I’d honestly rather not.
So instead, another jump back in time. This time, about three years.
The time travel was a perfect success, and I was about to head back, but I kind of wanted to go check up on the lovely ladies that would end up being my wives. So with Invisibility and Intangibility active, I headed for the nearest one, which was Alice.
Well, the nearest I knew for sure. Lua might be somewhere reasonably close by, but I don’t know exactly where she is.
Getting to the Watchman manor wasn’t difficult, and finding Alice wasn’t any more challenging. She was outside, practicing magic with Trystan. Well, Alice at the time couldn’t cast any spells, so she was mainly focusing on mana control and chanting.
I saw both the frustration and hopelessness in her eyes, but I sadly couldn’t step in. Sure it would be easy to just alter my appearance and give her an attribute right now, but the timeline shift might cause massive problems. I still stayed, watching until Alice’s morning training was called off.
It really is a shame. Had this backwater town had better magic knowledge, Alice could have learned a non-attribute magic like Time or Space Magic. Or Spirit Magic. Sure the first two are much more difficult and Spirit Magic needs spirits or at least pseudo-spirits, but that could be handled. Especially if Mariina had her contract with the earth spirit at this time.
Finding Lua took a bit. She wasn’t in Alewatch, so I used a card to find her. Following Dark Designator, I found her and the rest of Prime Rib on an escort quest.
Spoiler
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Again, I didn’t mess with them, but I was tempted. I almost ghosted right next to Lua, just so I could place a bit of my blood inside of her blood flask. But I managed to hold myself back.
Teleporting over to the Dragon’s coast, Agunan’s volcano to be specific, I took a quick look around there. Janina was just living her life, seemingly sleeping as I entered her cave. But I know she wasn’t by her body movement. Janina would be more tense if she was actually sleeping, as she’d have a Soul Magic spell active. But since she is awake, she can relax her muscles more, as she is paying attention to everything. Yes, it is backwards, but welcome to being a dragon.
From there, it was just a quick flight over to the Nixie clan’s waters. And it was the place where I had to hold back the most.
Amilie hadn’t gone completely off the rails just yet, but she was already demeaning towards Cailie, mainly by calling her names.
But at least something good came out of this trip, as I saw Cailie’s mom with her. So this must have been before she died.
It was kind of sad looking at her. I knew what her daughter would do in the coming years, yet I couldn’t really do anything about it. And honestly speaking, from the little I observed, Cailie’s mom wasn’t perfect.
She didn’t bully Cailie or anything, but she did somewhat ignore her isolation. She wasn’t there for her. Maybe because she was teaching Amilie to be the next head of the clan, but still.
Finding Wilma was another easy one. I knew where her workshop was located, and it seemed to be in the decline stage. She still had two workers outside of herself, but she did say she had even more during the best time.
For her, I did decide to interfere, just a bit. I used some of my skills to transform myself completely, put on some clothes that wouldn’t look out of place and visited the workshop's front room.
I purchased a simple dagger from there. It wasn’t great, but the price wasn’t bad either. And sure, a purchase of a single dagger won’t be much, but that is also why I was willing to do it. Just a customer along all the others. And not like I purchased it from Wilma directly. It was one of the other two how sold it to me.
Last was Unika. Finding her in the capital was a challenge, but with Dark Designator, I managed.
Like with Wilma, I was tempted to give Unika something nice. But sadly, I didn’t really know what. I couldn’t just give her money like I did with Wilma.
I was tempted to make a ‘fake quest’ at the Adventurers’ guild, something I could pay her a decent bit of money for, but that would be too much and would likely cause some problems.
I did consider hiring Olia for the services she offered at the time, but that would be strange. And I was admittedly afraid that her Fox Instincts would pick up on it.
I just returned to the future instead. I had been here for long enough.
As I returned to the future, I realized a small mistake. I returned at the wrong time.
I was meaning to return within the second that I disappeared. But instead, I was in the past for almost three minutes. Well, of course I was there for basically an entire day, but I miscalculated my return time.
We, my monsters and I, quickly realized that it was because of time I spent in the past. It affected the timeline calculations, and thus I ended up just a bit more forward than I meant to.
It didn’t cause a big issue this time. My girls just lacked Storage Access for a few minutes. But when it comes to going all the way to the past, it might cause some issues.
We do know the date when the sword is handed over, so I know what I’m aiming for. But I might be off by a few days, so I need to travel at least a week extra backwards. That way, I’ll be ready when I should meet the hero.
Because of that, I’ll have to spend that time in the past. No, it really isn’t a problem. I’ll have all the food and other stuff I’ll need in Storage.
But it might cause me to come back here too late. Especially if there is any sort of holdup. So I considered the ‘back ups’ I should make in the case of that.
… only to realize that I’m an idiot. I can time travel. If I end up traveling too far forward in time, I can just make a few small jumps backwards, just so I’ll arrive precisely when I mean to. Like a real wizard.
With that test, I was decently confident I’d survive the time travel. Decently. But I had still made the ‘back-up plan’. A card that would freeze me in an eternal crystal for a millennia.
Yes, it was a terrible back-up plan to have, but better to have it than not to have it. And it isn’t like I haven’t checked the six most obvious spots where I’d freeze myself, like the bottom of my quarry, Agunan’s volcano, under TinaWood, etc. But the problem is, I’ll know all those places, so I can just use some other place.
I’ll just set a Dust Tornado with the condition to activate when an appropriate time has passed, which will release me from the crystal.
But again, final back-up plan. And yes, I’m most likely on the moon if I did do that. And no, I won’t be checking. I honestly don’t want to know.
What I do want to check is the states again. Ideally I’d want to deal with them before I go to the past, but I have to accept the fact that it might not happen.
And I don’t want to risk an ICBM being launched while I’m unable to stop it. … though again, time travel makes that basically impossible. Sure I might see a post nuclear apocalypse world for a bit, but then I’ll just time travel and fix the world.
So what can I do about it? Well the answer is time travel. Of course.
No, I won’t stop them from stealing stuff, that isn’t good for anyone. I’ll just change the timeline in a somewhat major way. Instead, I’ll time travel back to the day of the Smorog attack and track where they take the void uranium they stole.
And since I know the room they teleported back to, I can track the core from there.
… or that is what I assumed, but it didn’t work. I knew that 7-E-1 was the one who took the metal, and he was the one holding it when they returned to the States capital. From there, he handed it to 7-E, who handed it over to 3-S. 3-S took it to PS3, short for Power Structure 3, aka. the Enchant Master Dwarf, for inspection, and after he approved of it, 3-S took it to 1-I.
1-I had Inventory, and he placed the void uranium inside of it.
But then I ran into a problem. I tried to track the void uranium further, but 1-I never handed it to anyone. At least not quickly. I watched over him for almost a week. And while doing so, I also spied on a few past meetings of the big 5, learning that apparently the core, which referred to the void uranium, had been delivered to the leader.
So somehow the leader was able to take the core from inside of 1-I’s Inventory. I did notice a few times during which 1-I was possessed by the Power Structure, but I didn’t think a higher up in the Structure could use their skill to remove something from inside of the Inventory.
I tried to track the core from there, but it quickly became impossible. I can’t track things inside skills like Inventory, even when using my cards. They are hidden information.
And while I can get information by playing hand reveal or set card reveal cards, I need to target a person with them. And they’d definitely notice. So at least I can’t do it in this timeline and I’d have to return to the future before doing that.
And even then, I still can’t track who has the core. I can only be like ‘does this person have it?’, and my card will say yes or no. I don’t have a card that will point me to a person who has it in their Inventory.
It really sucks. But again, I learned something new about Power Structure. They can transfer items inside skills like Inventory. It probably also works with Item Box, and that is a lot more common.
After returning to the ‘current time’, I tried to track down the core using my cards. But naturally it failed, proving it was still inside someone’s Inventory or Item Box. Or the States have dedicated tech that can stop my cards. Which could be possible.
I also tried to locate the holder of Power Structure again, but with no name, my cards can’t do it. I don’t have a card that finds a person based on their skills, only by name. And I don’t know the name of the Power Structure holder.
After returning to HomeBase, I decided to run a few tests on my cards I tried to use to find the core. But I found out that they are easy to fool.
Something as simple as a closed chest would keep them from finding the object. That is because at that point the content of the chest is ‘hidden’. Like a set card. I can find the chest just fine, but not what is inside of it.
And yes, I can use a card to reveal what it holds, but again, I can’t search for something that is ‘hidden’. It is a stupid limitation, but even my cards have their limits.