Ch.171Gap

“Kuhak! Cough… uwup, kehuk.”

Charlotte, who had managed to prevent herself from collapsing face-first onto the ground by kneeling on one knee and supporting her body with both arms, coughed up blood.

Blood poured out in an amount that could fill a cup and then some, dripping onto the soil and seeping in. The pungent smell of blood rose from where it had soaked into the earth, stinging her nose.

With each hacking cough, more blood soaked the dirt floor. Among the spatters were even pieces of blackened internal organs.

It was evidence that her internal mana had backflowed through her circuits, violently turning her insides upside down—the backlash from forcibly attempting to peer beyond spaces that humans were not meant to see.

“Keuuk…”

Charlotte, who had painfully suppressed the groans escaping between her blood-stained crimson teeth, raised her hand to cover her left eye. Plop—something red flowed between her fingers.

It was her burst left eyeball.

Her red eye, which had once shone with the beautiful crimson hue of a brilliant ruby, had literally burst from within and was now flowing between her fingers as a bloody mess.

The palm trying to stop it was already soaked in blood. The remains of the melted eyeball fell limply onto the soil, which had turned bright red from the absorbed blood.

Her left eye, which had directly faced the higher dimension, couldn’t withstand the reaction and had shattered, and the condition of her right eye wasn’t much better either. Her vision was blurry.

—It’s too dangerous to continue. Come back, child.

Gritting her teeth at the voice echoing in her head, Charlotte was filled with self-loathing for failing yet again when she thought she could succeed this time.

She struggled to get up, but her body refused to obey. Her arms rejected the command to lift her upper body, and her legs refused to stand firmly on the ground.

Honestly, just being able to survive without flailing about pathetically on the ground and instead managing to compose herself was already a remarkable achievement.

At the very least, it meant she had been able to attempt to understand a new concept and try to make it her own.

However, the problem was that mere survival was not the achievement Charlotte had desired.

—You know well that continuing would cost you your life. Come back quickly.

Charlotte’s remaining red eye widened. As she clenched her teeth harder, the sound of her molars cracking mixed with the blood in her mouth.

She ignored the pain from her cracked molars. Breaking a few teeth was nothing compared to the agony of mana backflowing throughout her entire body.

In fact, Charlotte wasn’t even aware that her teeth were breaking.

She drew upon her mana. Pushing her mana circuits to their limits, she forcibly redirected the mana rushing through her body. Gathering it all and expelling it outside her body, the bleeding gradually stopped.

Her vision, limited to one eye, spun. Charlotte’s consciousness flickered—a symptom of mana exhaustion. Her body had been emptied from expelling all the backflowing mana.

Just before collapsing to the ground, Charlotte touched a small thread that appeared before her.

Her blood-soaked body began to rewind.

Her ground-down molars regained their original form, and the fragments of her burst eyeball gathered back together, restoring its beautiful ruby-like color.

The blackish-red pieces of internal organs and the copious amount of blood that had been vomited out were sucked back into her mouth.

Finally, as her violently shaken internal organs were completely healed, Charlotte found herself kneeling on one knee on the ground, her body restored to its normal state.

But the restoration of her body didn’t mean her mental fatigue was reversed as well.

“…Kuhuk, cough!”

Charlotte let out an empty cough. It was a dry cough, unlike before when blood and organ fragments had sprayed out. Her throat felt parched and constricted.

Despite confirming her body’s recovery, Charlotte, unable to overcome the overwhelming fatigue, tried to stand up but collapsed back down as the strength left her thighs.

A voice echoed in her head.

—Only half a success.

“I am well aware of that fact. There is no need to remind me.”

Charlotte exhaled roughly. The mental drain had been beyond what she’d imagined.

Physical fatigue wasn’t much of a problem. After all, she could rewind all bodily injuries the moment she became aware of time, just as she had done moments ago.

“…Kuk.”

As Charlotte tried to stand up, she had to fall forward onto the dirt floor once more due to a sudden wave of dizziness. No matter how she tried, her legs refused to support her.

If the dragon hadn’t supported her body with telekinesis in time, she would have undoubtedly rolled across the floor in an unseemly manner.

Watching Charlotte, the dragon spoke with a troubled voice.

—You don’t have to push yourself.

“How can I not push myself? How could I possibly do that?”

Charlotte broke through the telekinetic force enveloping her body by drawing upon her mana and stood on her own two feet. She nearly collapsed again as her knees and thighs gave way, but she gritted her teeth and endured.

“My husband is at this very moment suffering in the clutches of some madwoman, so how dare I, how could I possibly not push myself? I absolutely cannot do that.”

—A distorted body can be restored. But a worn-out mind cannot be recovered, can it?

“That won’t be a problem if I master it before then.”

—If that is truly your wish, I won’t try to stop you anymore. Do your best.

Though it might have sounded like mockery at first glance, from Charlotte’s perspective—having the dragon’s emotions and thoughts directly implanted in her mind—she knew very well that it meant exactly what was said.

The dragon had stepped back after sensing Charlotte’s firm resolve. There wasn’t a trace of mockery or ridicule in it.

She positioned herself again. The dragon’s ring on her left ring finger emitted a faint grayish light. It meant that it was allowing its owner to see exactly what the dragon saw.

She stretched her hand forward and took a deep breath. Covering her right eye with her right hand, she narrowed her vision to her left eye, which had transformed to match that of dragons. Then she widened her eye.

Charlotte began to witness the world beyond matter.

The pupil of her left eye stretched vertically. Her constantly moving eyeball breathlessly received information and transmitted it to her brain.

Up to this point, it was a process Charlotte could handle at will, but the next step was the problem.

Exhaling the breath she had been holding, she moved on to the next stage. Rather than simply reading the flow that stretched beyond matter, she attempted to perceive what constituted it.

Everything stopped moving. At this stage, time was essentially a meaningless concept that had lost its value.

‘…It’s not enough.’

Charlotte’s breathing began to quicken. She could feel the mana throughout her body depleting rapidly, giving an indication of just how much mana this was consuming.

If even Charlotte was genuinely concerned about mana depletion, it was a level of consumption that no human, except for dragons, would dare even dream of.

So far, things were fine. Earlier, she had been unable to read the thread of time at this point and had been driven to the brink of death by the backlash.

Now the situation was remarkably stable, so it was time to move on to the next step. Charlotte recalled the last part of the three steps the dragon had taught her.

The final stage: To see beyond.

She closed her left eye briefly, then, concentrating mana in her pupil, gently opened her eyelid to let the outside world be seen by the blood-red jewel she had been preciously protecting.

First, light took root. The red ruby received the brilliant light and transformed it into an even brighter source of light.

Next, space took root. She accepted where she was and where she should be.

Finally, time became entangled.

The past flowed before her eyes. A young girl of about 10 years, with long silver hair reaching her waist, smiling innocently as she wandered through a large corridor.

Behind her was an adult woman with the same long silver hair, wearing an affectionate smile as she followed the girl closely, looking exactly like the child.

Charlotte gritted her teeth. She felt her eyelids trembling but ignored it.

Another past scene flowed by. A woman with long silver hair, wearing a black uniform and possessing bright red eyes, was seen floating in the air, intercepting all approaching dark magic.

Her face was deeply etched with a sense of defeat. The woman desperately cast spells in rapid succession, fighting a losing battle, but before long, a black chain pierced her abdomen from behind.

The black chain that had pierced her stomach exited through her side, blowing away half of her abdomen. Intestines spilled out through the emptied side. The woman tried desperately to grasp and cover them.

Black meteor showers rained down from the split sky. The woman, unable to dodge or defend, took a direct hit and was slammed into the ground.

Charlotte gritted her teeth. She turned her gaze. In the distance, she saw a timeline with a blurry form. As if entranced, she was about to reach out toward that timeline.

—That’s enough.

Hearing the dragon’s majestic voice echoing directly in her head, Charlotte snapped back to her senses. Realizing what she had been about to do, she clenched her fist tightly.

As she hastily broke the connection, a backlash came. Unable to bear the foreign sensation filling her throat, she vomited it out, and bright red blood gushed forth.

—Child, didn’t I clearly warn you?

Though Charlotte had been engaged in a fierce battle of wills with the dragon, this time she couldn’t say anything. This was clearly Charlotte’s mistake, and if she had gone just a little further, she would have lost her life.

She had already been warned before beginning this training. The dragon had said it would allow her to see what humans cannot see—the timeline—but there was one thing she must keep in mind.

Never, ever try to read the future.

While reading past and present timelines might be manageable, reading the future would be beyond what both body and mind could handle, so if she didn’t want to die in vain, she should remember this warning.

She had even experienced it firsthand. The moment she tried to read even a fragment of the future, Charlotte immediately suffered pain as if her mind was being torn to pieces.

It was so severe that she had lost consciousness for a full day.

Yet when the opportunity presented itself, she couldn’t resist. This time, her mistake was so obvious that even Charlotte had nothing to say.

—Child.

“…What is it?”

Charlotte answered in a subdued voice. It was due to intense self-loathing. The thought that she could have died here and never met her husband again gnawed at her heart.

—Have you already forgotten what I told you?