300 Over Here
Dust and smoke billowed through the air, the aftermath of the magical explosion that had just occurred. It was impossible to see anything in the chaos.

But then, a fierce gust of wind sliced through the thick haze like a razor-sharp blade through paper.

“Nizemar”, her body wrapped in a whirlwind, stood before the sliced smoke curtain.

Her moss-covered hand gripped the Evil Breaker rapier with a fierce intensity, and white smoke hissed from her palm.

“He’s… escaped,” she said coolly, her voice sounding like a pesky mosquito.

“Floral”, the antler-crowned woman, approached her with caution.

“Stay sharp, he might still be hiding nearby.”

But Nizemar didn’t seem to agree. With a clang, she sheathed her silver rapier and made her way towards Elaire, who was still bound to the roots. She closed her eyes and began to chant an incantation, an emerald-green rune vortex lighting up around her.

“I’m sure the other party isn’t here anymore,” she finally explained.

As the runes flickered to life, the roots began to squirm and loosen, sending Elaire tumbling to the ground with a loud clang.

Thump! Elaire landed in a pitiful heap, complaining about the rough treatment.

Nizemar marched forward and flipped him over with her boots.

“You f*cking…”

“Who was the man beside you?”

Ignoring the other party’s curses, Nizemar asked,

At this moment, marks resembling burns covered her body, the result of a life spell. But she showed no signs of pain—not because of her strong willpower. It was as if she was impervious to it.

“Man? What man?” Elaire asked with curiosity.

“It’s…”

Nizemar wanted to speak but froze in mid-sentence. She struggled to remember a distant memory, hesitating for a long time before finally letting her hand fall to her side. Her expression returned to a cold—perhaps numb—tone.

“So, you’ve found this underground resistance stronghold,” she spoke in a mechanical tone like a terrible stage actor.

“Our deal is settled then? I help you find this place, and you return the blind girl to me.”

“Elaire” stood up, grinning as if he had won.

“But I warned you not to kill unnecessarily,”

“Were you hoping I didn’t resist? I wanted to negotiate with them, but they attacked the moment they saw me… I was just defending myself, don’t you think so?”

Elaire looked at the surviving Forest Elves, opening his maggot-infested mouth for a beaming smile.

The Forest Elves squatting and trembling immediately shrunk back, causing the smile on Elaire’s face to freeze.

“Why are you so afraid of me? I won’t eat you…” he said gloomily.

Floral beckoned someone forward, and Ebony, who was tied up, was brought forth.

“Alright, all the evidence is here. What else do you want to quibble about?” Floral turned to the man and asked.

Ebony, who had been escorted up to the room, appeared utterly drained. He bore the expression of someone who had been incarcerated in an asylum for too long and couldn’t tell if they were the crazy ones or if the world had gone mad.

“I don’t quite understand what you want to ‘prove,'” Ebony said numbly.

“You used your identity as the Holy Tree Matriarch Listener to hide the prisoners I sentenced to death,” “Floral” said.

“I was just trying my best to save… one of the few normal people in this city,” he weakly responded.

“So, you want to challenge the order of Holy Tree City in this way?”

“Holy Tree City?” Ebony looked up and forced a bitter smile. “More like Dead Tree City…”

“That’s your answer?” Floral asked with a frown.

“In any case, you won’t believe me even if I point out the truth, right?”

Ebony stood before the undead duke.

Then, as if he couldn’t take it anymore, he took a deep breath and rattled off like a cannon, “Or do you need to hear it again? The truth is staring you in the face, yet you turn a blind eye. You’re all dead, your history nothing more than a fading memory. That Holy Tree Matriarch you cling to is nothing but a lifeless carcass… But you’ll keep on with your charade, won’t you? Pretending to be alive, to be normal, to really be in Ravenwood instead of some illusion created by a higher power or something even more sinister.”

“Can you hear me, though?”

“Floral” eyed the man before her, tapping her magical medium in a steady rhythm. After a moment, she turned to Nizemar, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Did you catch any of that?”

…

As the smoke cleared, William, with him chanting non-lethal spells, was just about to counterattack when he saw Floral and the others looking at him with worry in their eyes.

Their faces weren’t rotten, their gums weren’t exposed, and they didn’t seem to have any intention of attacking. It was as if everything he had just witnessed was an illusion.

William turned to the Forest Elves, but this time he couldn’t detect them through Life Detection.

Wh…

His maxed-out willpower told him that what he had just experienced was too real to be an illusion. It wasn’t possible, even if the Lord of Nightmare had personally cast it.

In other words, what he had seen previously was a real scene…

So… did I cross timelines?

With a wave of his hand, he dispelled the spell he was casting and lowered the empire ambassador who was tied to a tree root.

The man fell to the ground with a loud thud and rolled twice before laying still, not daring to make a sound.

“Stay there,” William commanded, before walking over to the group of people.

“Did someone launch a sneak attack? I saw your magic barrier activate,” Nizemar asked carefully as she turned her head and looked behind warily.

Previously, she had seen very clearly that the Presiding Judge was chanting a spell in their direction.

“Were you here all along?” William asked.

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘here all along,’ but we followed Mr. Ebony’s guidance and didn’t encounter anything strange on the way, nor did we hear any strange sounds… Therefore, what happened just now, Mr. Presiding Judge?” Nizemar immediately replied.

Floral seemed to have guessed what William meant. She immediately asked, “Could it be that you just went to the other side?”

William nodded slowly.

“I was in and out of there in a flash, barely a few minutes tops.” William gestured towards Elaire, sprawled on the ground like a dead fish. “And just so you know, this guy here went to the other side with me.”

“What did you see on the other side?” Floral scanned the dust-laden surroundings warily.

“I saw you guys… But it seems like you’re the ones worse for wear, if you catch my drift,” William chose his words carefully and replied.

Floral got the hint and let the matter drop. Instead, her eyes locked onto Elaire.

“You said he went with you?” she pointed at Elaire, who seemed to be acting dead, and asked.

William nodded, about to divulge more when Elise wriggled out from under Nizemar’s grip.

Her eyes, a milky white, zeroed in on Elaire and spoke with a strange authority.

“Presiding Judge, please allow me to correct you. You didn’t take him to the other side, he took you.”

The Eyes of God revealed a world that defied explanation. It was like trying to describe colors to a blind man. But Elise could see the threads of time, dividing and weaving like untied ropes on the body of the empire’s ambassador.
Or rather, the shadows of the two possibilities were constantly overlapping.

In other words, his time had been shattered into two by a certain force, and it was slowly healing.

As for what power broke the time, considering what the other party had done…

“In other words… killing the undead who crossed into our timeline can break through time to a certain extent and lead us to another timeline?”

After hearing Elise’s description, William could only come to this conclusion.

Elise nodded and continued in confusion, “It seems that he is the only one who can cross temporarily. And for some reason, being beside him, you also crossed over. I’m not sure why this happened, but time remains intact for you. I even wonder whether anything can destroy it.”

To Elise, time was like a thin thread for a normal person. But on the Presiding Judge, it was like thick ropes anchored to ships, unbreakable and unwavering.