Earth's Alpha Prime
chapter-277-2

As soon as the Origin Glaive glitched and returned to normal, the three deep, bloody gashes across Jay's chest vanished, as though they had never existed. His skin, once marred by the brutal attack, was completely unscathed, not even a scar remaining.

But what was even more startling was his sudden shift in position. Jay was no longer standing where the force of the attack had thrown him. Instead, he stood right beside the massive Lightning Jackal, which lay crippled and helpless on the ground.

The creature's front legs had been sliced in half, cleanly severed by a strike Seath hadn't even seen Jay deliver. The once-mighty beast, with its fearsome growls and crackling lightning, was reduced to a miserable state, its body trembling with fear. Its bloodshot eyes, once filled with rage, stared up at Jay with a deep, primal terror, as if it understood the power that had overwhelmed it.

Seath, standing a distance away, had watched the entire scene unfold. His heart raced, his mind struggling to process what he had just witnessed. "How… is this possible?" he muttered to himself in disbelief. "How could he manipulate the Space-Time continuum and alter the past so effortlessly?"

As a Time element Innate Talent user, Seath had many powerful time-related abilities in his arsenal, but nothing like that. Changing time of one-self was one thing, but changing the past? That was something even he with a Grade-8 Innate Talent didn't dare fully grasp, let alone execute perfectly. And yet, Jay had done it as though it were second nature.

Jay, however, seemed almost detached from everything around him. He stood with an ecstatic smile, gazing down at the Origin Glaive in his hand.

One of its sleek, silver blades dripped with the blood of the Lightning Jackal. The weapon in his hand was unlike anything he had ever wielded.

His thoughts drifted back to the Obelisk's 4th floor, where the bond with the Origin Glaive had been forged. He had reflected deeply on what the Glaive truly was. Before it had chosen him, the Origin Glaive had been an all-powerful weapon, wielded by his predecessor, Orpheus, during the Prehistoric Era.

Back then, it was unrivaled, its grade the highest any weapon could reach, capable of feats beyond imagination. But upon bonding with Jay, the Origin Glaive had been reduced to its original state—exactly how it was when it had first been bestowed upon ORPHEUS by the TIMELESS PRIMORDIAL.

Even at its lowest grade, merely as a Common Grade weapon, the Glaive was still immensely powerful. The most immediate ability Jay had discovered was its effortless mastery over space, allowing it to traverse through the spatial fabric with ease, like a fish gliding through water.

Despite its degraded state, Jay quickly learned the devastating potential of the Origin Glaive. He had tested it extensively following their bond and realized that its spatial manipulation, though powerful, had a range limit—just 10 meters around him. But within that limited radius, the Glaive could strike anywhere at will, making physical movement almost unnecessary.

The concept was staggering. In combat, that meant that Jay could target his enemies without even having to lift a foot. His strikes could reach his opponent no matter where they stood within that 10-meter range, as if space itself bent to his will.

Whether they were behind him, above him, or even hidden from sight, the Glaive's reach would find them. The potential of such an ability was immense, and Jay knew it.

Jay was by no means disappointed by the limited 10-meter range of the Origin Glaive. After all, it was only at its Common Grade, and he knew that as it advanced to higher grades, its power and the range of his attacks would increase exponentially.

What he had experienced so far was merely a glimpse of the weapon's true potential, especially since he had yet to fully explore its capabilities when infused with Origin Energy.

Not only was the weapon perfectly suited for channeling Origin Energy, but it could also store a portion of that energy for later use, even when Jay wasn't in Inverse Mode. That was a game changer, providing him with a strategic advantage in situations where he would need to use Origin Energy.

However, at its current grade, the Origin Glaive could only store 10 Origin Energy Units, a capacity far too limited for techniques like Momentary Materialization or Heaven Breaker—both of which required higher amounts of energy to perform, especially Heaven Breaker.

Still, those stored units were crucial for activating the ability Temporal Relapse, the weapon's time-altering defense mechanism. Each activation of Temporal Relapse consumed one unit of stored Origin Energy, meaning Jay had to use the ability wisely and sparingly.

Once those units were depleted, he would have to enter Inverse Mode to recharge the Glaive's Origin Energy reserves.

For the moment, he set that aside and focused on testing the Glaive's ability—Temporal Relapse. However, when he first tried to activate it, the weapon seemed to resist, as if certain conditions needed to be met.

After several attempts and a frustrating process of trial and error, Jay struggled to communicate with the Glaive. The weapon didn't communicate through words or anything close to a recognizable form of expression.

Instead, it conveyed its intentions through subtle gestures that Jay had hard time interpreting. Over time, and with patience, Jay realized that in order to activate Temporal Relapse, he needed to be injured.

At first, he thought to injure himself, but the weapon intervened, preventing him from doing so. That's when he learned that self-inflicted harm wouldn't qualify—the injury had to come from an external factor. With no monsters left in the Obelisk to test the ability further, Jay was forced to halt his experiments, which was why he set out in search of a monster as soon as he left the Obelisk.

He brought Seath along for good reason. Jay knew he had only scratched the surface of the Glaive's potential, and communicating with it was still an arduous process. Seath, with his Time Innate Talent, would be able to observe things Jay himself might miss.

After all, Temporal Relapse was tied directly to time, and who better to assist in understanding such a skill than someone who could feel the flow of time itself?

As Jay stood with the Origin Glaive firmly in his grasp, his mind drifted back to the moment when he had first activated Temporal Relapse. At the cost of a single unit of Origin Energy stored within the weapon, he had experienced something truly miraculous.

Jay's consciousness seemed to merge with the weapon in his right hand, and the next thing he saw was an ethereal phantom of himself, spectating the scene that had played out a few seconds into the past.

Everything in his vision was drained of color, replaced by shades of silver and black. The entire landscape—from the smallest grains of sand to the trees and leaves surrounding him—was devoid of any hue.

He couldn't move, interact with anything, or change the events unfolding before him. His past self stood there, oblivious to the phantom's presence, instructing Seath to stay back and observe for any changes in the Space-Time Continuum, while the massive Lightning Jackal charged forward. It was as if he was a silent witness, bound to watch but not interfere, forced to observe his past self preparing to face the incoming attack.

As the moment where he was slashed across the chest approached, something remarkable happened. Everything within a 10-meter radius around Jay's past self began to regain its natural colors, breaking free from the silver-black filter that had once enveloped the scene.

At the exact moment his past self was about to be injured, time itself froze—everything within the color-filled radius was suspended in place, the entire scene locked in a motionless frame.

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