My mind went from disconnected images and sounds to being fully aware in patches. I didn’t even remember what or who I was until several moments later, and when I was back to myself, I wasn’t in the same room where I had fallen asleep.

  My senses were a mess. From what I could make out, I was in a sort of tunnel that stretched infinitely both in front and behind me. I also had the strange sensation that I wasn’t fully there, somehow.

  Looking at myself, I could see my green scales that were usually filled with temporal energy, but they felt off, like they’re just a memory of themselves. There were also patches of a strange shade of blue expanding around me.

  As they grew, I could feel myself being stretched and pulled backwards. I tried to resist whatever was happening to me, but I couldn’t muster any strength; instead, I tried using [Multi-Layered Barrier].

  A three-layer multi-hexagonal barrier appeared in the direction I was being dragged. The skill felt different, but I didn’t know why.

  Unfortunately, the barrier didn’t help at all, as I was still being dragged. The barrier was being dragged with me, instead of being fixed in place.

  I stopped time. I felt the flow of the timestream around me as it tried to push me forward in time, but I was fixed in place. But I was still being dragged.

  The patches of blue were still spreading over me. I was getting a bit desperate, I wasn’t going to lie.

  I let time resume. It being stopped didn’t help and was only a waste of magicules.

  I tried flapping my wings, but I couldn’t muster the strength to move them properly. It felt like a dream when you try to punch something, but you just can’t do it hard enough.

  Space was too distorted to do anything. Whenever I tried to grab onto it, it just melted away.

  I pulled [Magical Programming Language] and used [Mathematical Cortex] to speed up my mind. That seemed to help slow down whatever was happening to me, but only in my perception.

  I made a simple spell that would push me in the opposite way.

  I cast it, and immediately I felt a resistance to the drag; it was working. I used the spell several more times until I felt diminishing returns.

  Suddenly, the whole tunnel started groaning. I felt it more than I heard it.

  Somehow, the spell I used was distorting the tunnel. I could feel space starting to stretch and stretch. Micro-tears were forming all around me.

  “The fuck is happening?” I asked out loud.

  Together with the tears, I could also feel a crushing headache starting to form, but I didn’t know why. Was it an attack? Covering myself with barriers didn’t do anything to stop it. Maybe mental attacks could bypass barriers, and mine being there didn’t make a difference.

  “‘The fuck is happening’, indeed.” I heard a strange voice coming from the opposite direction I was being dragged.

  Looking at the source of the voice, I saw a white fox with red marks on its face, and the tips of its ears were also red. Behind it were six tails flowing gently in an unseen wind; the end of each tail had a different red symbol.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Are you the one who kidnapped me?”

  It looked at me with a face that said ‘you’re joking’, but I was very much not joking. I had no idea what the heck the creature in front of me was, or how it was able to talk with me, even though my mind was accelerated. The fact that I had a growing migraine that seemed to worsen if I tried to use a parallel thought process made it difficult for me to think properly.

  It looked me dead in the eyes, then furrowed its brows.

  “You really don’t know,” it said, but before I could answer, it continued. “This one is a first. Usually, anyone who tries to invade or disrupt the equilibrium of the realms knows about us, kitsunes.

  “But seeing as you seem to truly lack the knowledge about us, and are trying to kill yourself,” it said, the last part looking at my spells, which were still pushing me against the force dragging me. “I think you are more in need of a Guider than a Guardian.

  “Unfortunately, you don’t have enough time for me to call for one if you keep as you are. So I will offer some limited advice.” It looked at me straight in the eyes with a soft expression. “Don’t try to force your way into the Dream Realm with your body still in the Physical Realm; you only tear your mind apart from your soul.”

  After it said those words, one of its tails flickered, and all my spells broke apart. I was immediately yanked back, and then I was jumping out of the ground in the same room at the Myriad Palace.

  For a moment, I thought it was just a dream, but the migraine I had told me it wasn’t.

  I was also hungry, so I went to the crystal on the side of the door and pressed it.

  I saw that my arm was now a weird blue color, almost purple, with streaks of green that seemed to shift as you glanced over them.

  “Riiight, evolution.” I said as I examined myself

  Opening up [Magical Programming Language], I created a simple spell that would make a rectangular shape that reflects light.

  After casting and taking a look at what appeared, I dismissed the spell and recreated it after seeing how small it was because I accidentally forgot to make a function to convert the size I want from meters to millimeters, which the skill seems to use. Then, after another cast, I readjusted the way light reflected off it, making it turn at a 90-degree angle from a perpendicular imaginary line in the middle of it.

  The magical mirror, after finally working as a mirror, being just a light spell(?), was big enough for me to see myself from head to tail, only if I curved it, because it cut my tail halfway. I could also use it to measure myself, as I knew the measurements of the mirror and could use them to calculate it my own.

  Looking at myself in the mirror, I noticed I hadn’t changed much shape-wise. Now, instead of an emerald green, I was a weird shade of blue with streaks of green around my body like veins in my body. I still had fifteen meters in height, but I was a bit longer, around 25 meters long, from head to tail.

  My eyes had also changed. They were now a mixture of blue and green, almost like they were fighting for dominance over it.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I could feel my body better than before, and my surroundings as well. Time felt more defined, although still raw, as I was still close to my yet-to-be-born self. I could feel space better as well. It was a weird sensation.

  Before, space was just felt like an overlay on my senses through the skill, but now I could feel it just as much as I could feel time itself. I knew, without having to look, that my skills had leveled up as well, just by the difference in sensations.

  Of course, there was that whole ordeal with a, I think it called itself a kitsune? Doesn’t matter. There was that whole thing as well that happened, but I needed to see the changes that happened with me first before I did anything else.

  As I was pulling my status screen, the doors opened, and a human wearing the white uniform walked in with two carts of meat being held in place by magic. The human bowed after leaving the carts and exited.

  I shrugged and started to grab some pieces of meat and eat them while I checked my status.

  I choked the moment I looked at them.

  “What the hell is this?” I all but shouted, my voice an octave higher.

  It was no wonder my dad warned me not to tell anyone about how I restored the [Passive Growth] skill to 100%. All my stats basically doubled, and my skills increased in levels. I was more than impressed.

  I didn’t know how long I kept staring at it, but eventually I managed to pick my jaw up off the floor and sighed in exasperation.

  “Okay, I’ll just accept it,” I said. “Now, let me try this theory.”

  There was one thing I wanted to confirm, and it was how to regain the percentage I lost by evolving. The last time it happened was during my failed attempt at a dungeon, where a corrupted temporal spider bit me and broke time inside the dungeon.

  I stared at one of my titles, [Temporal Resonance Synchronization]. This title was given to me by the God of Time back on my first loop, and it was a means for me to not kill myself by forcing the rules of time to rip me apart. But what if it wasn’t all that it did?

  Time didn’t seem to like it when two versions of the same person interact with one another. Those first loops and now made it very clear. But what if I push it?

  I remember how the God of Time appeared on that glass dome in the room with the other dragons and told me leniency is not freedom, but he couldn’t fault me for trying, could he?

  …

  I took the fact that I wasn’t smitten where I stood as an agreement and reached into the timeline with [Temporal Manipulation].

  The timestream was rougher this near to my egg and unborn soul than anywhere else. It was like trying to push your hand through a pool of broken glass, but my skills allowed me to push it through and reach to who I wanted.

  Once I had grabbed it, I pulled it forward with all my might. A flash of green light erupted, together with a wave of temporal energy that turned everything, except me, not stuck on a wall, to dust.

  “What the fuck?” I heard myself- correction, I heard my past self say as I stared down at him.

  I was looking at the version of me that was from a moment just before my evolution. And, oh wow, I was tiny. From my point of view, my past self looked more like a small cat than anything; it was rather cute, although a totally weird feeling.

  “Wow, you’re big…Wait, you’re me?” My past self asked.

  “Yep, just after choosing an evolution,” I answered as I opened up my wings and looked all smug at my past self.

  “Wow, you’re huge!” He said.

  I heard a knock on the door, and then Lilith’s voice echoed from somewhere.

  “Is everything alright? The magical detectors warned me of a weird surge of temporal energy.” She asked.

  “Uhm, yeah, everything’s alright. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be finished.” I answered.

  I waited a few moments for a reply, but none came. Then, I turned back at my past self.

  It was starting to hurt keeping him here. I could feel time trying to pull him back like a spring being pulled apart. The more I waited, the stronger the pull would get.

  I extended my hand over to him and motioned for him to get up, which he did. I found it super cute how I could hold myself almost perfectly on my own hand, and at the same time amusing, as I was holding myself up.

  I stared at myself for a few moments. Seeing it from an outside perspective was something else entirely.

  Slowly, I reached with my other hand. My past self looked at it, then at me, confused. I closed my hand and left only one extended finger raised.

  Before I, or my past self, could stop it, I started scratching his head gently.

  “What the fuck?” My past self said, mouth agape as I kept patting him. I stopped when I felt he was about to do something.

  “Sorry,” I said, not meeting his eyes. “You really looked like a small cat, and I just couldn’t stop myself.”

  “....”

  Before he could say or do anything else, I placed my hand over him and, closing both of them together, leaving space for myself inside, I didn’t want to accidentally kill myself, you know? I stopped holding him in this time.

  Immediately, I found time pulling on him, hard, so hard that I was almost dragged to the past myself. But somehow, we both weren’t pulled to the past.

  I felt the [Temporal Resonance Synchronization] title doing something, and then I was hit with a wave of pain that lasted for a fraction of a second.

  Opening up my hands, there was no sign of my past self anywhere. The only trace of his presence was the new memory that appeared in my mind from his point of view.

  Wow, I really wanted the floor to open up and eat me whole, even though it was I who did it. I wondered if what I did could be considered bullying or something else.

  While a part of my mind kept wondering about the moral implications of summoning your past self and treating them like a pet, I checked the last thing I needed for my theory.

  [Racial] Passive Growth [51% Remaining]

  A grin crept up on my face. It had gone up! I was right, this was the reason why it had gone back up to 100% back on the dungeon. I had hundreds of temporal clones.

  Normally I wouldn’t be able to do this, but both times time wasn’t really okay. In the dungeon, time literally had broken down, and here in the palace, it was almost split open.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of finding a loophole in the laws of the universe. I wondered if this would be how a scientist would react if they found a loophole in the laws of thermodynamics, but damm, finding a cheat code in reality felt good.