GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

They remembered everything that had happened in the half a second that the Time Lock erased. That means they can use the time loop to acquire infinite time while the world will be the same around them. So using the Time Lock is not a complete waste of effort.

Unfortunately, so did ANNIHILATION. As an ABSOLUTE, ANNIHILATION is an entity unbound by time. It too remembered everything that happened in that half a second that time was rewound.

Maybe things would be different if ANNIHILATION were asleep. But it is awake and active now. It can never forget what has happened to it.

It said to them with a sneer, "ANNIHILATION THE GIVE. IS END UP. INEVITABLE IS YOUR. FATE NEAR STRUGGLE."

Time was rewound so the damage to their existence rewound to the time just before they gained control of the Time Lock.

But ANNIHILATION also remembered what happened. This meant that the rate at which they were being destroyed by the power of ANNIHILATION in their bodies hadn't reduced at all.

ANNIHILATION is infinite. Anything that isn't infinite will be destroyed instantly by it. They were not destroyed instantly because they have the potential for infinity.

But even if they were also infinite, they wouldn't be immune to ANNIHILATION because some infinities are bigger than others.

For example, the set of natural numbers starts from 1 and ends at infinity. So the set of natural numbers is infinite.

But the set of whole numbers is 0 + the set of natural numbers. Therefore, the set of whole numbers is 1 + infinity. So the set of whole numbers is greater than the set of natural numbers.

This difference in the size of infinity is why ANNIHILATION will still be able to affect them even if they were truly infinite. ANNIHILATION is a bigger infinity, so it is stronger than them and is always growing stronger.

They too are growing stronger by the moment, but the rate at which ANNIHILATION is growing stronger than them is higher. That difference in growth and strength is why even though they can resist ANNIHILATION, the rate at which they are dying to it is becoming faster and faster.

But they didn't give up their struggle because the parts of their existence that had been ANNIHILATED had reverted to what it was before they gained control of the Time Lock.

So while they were dying faster regardless of reverting time, they could revert the damage to their existence to some extent and buy themselves time. As long as they keep ahead of the rate of destruction, they will remain alive.

The power of ANNIHILATION is chasing after them despite the reversal of time. Its infinity is clashing with their infinity across time and space.

This dynamic means that the time they can have with the time loop is not actually infinite. If they don't grow faster than ANNIHILATION destroys them, they will die.

It is clear that the Time Lock won't save them. They can only rely on themselves to save themselves from the fate of being ANNIHILATED.

As the void universe began to collapse around them, they looked around themselves for the solution to their problems. All they have to use are their aspects. When combined with the knowledge they got from Monarch High Heaven, they all came to one conclusion about what to do.

They began to use the aspect of Knowledge and Entropy to analyze the power destroying them. They used that knowledge with the aspect of Probability to direct their Evolution towards improving the aspect of Independence.

What they were doing was essentially finding a way to enhance the aspect of Independence in an attempt to make it powerful enough to help them resist the power of ANNIHILATION.

Their ultimate goal was to transform the aspect of Independence into an ABSOLUTE, as that is the only way they know to resist another ABSOLUTE.

But they couldn't stop there. They knew that if they wanted to maximize their chances of survival, they had to grow powerful enough to resist ANNIHILATION better. But anything could happen between now and then.

They could die before they achieved their goal, so they had to find a way to increase their chances of success.

Two things came to mind. The first thing was that they had to increase the size of their existence so that they wouldn't be destroyed quickly.

The second thing was to speed up the proof evolution by using the aspect of Time.

Speeding up the process of evolution is a very difficult, if not impossible, thing to do because they are already trying their best to evolve. All of their energy and power is dedicated to evolution. They will need to divert some of that energy to the aspect of Time to speed things up.

But the aspect of Time is more expensive to use than the aspect of Evolution. This difference becomes much wider because of how large their existence is. After all, the bigger they are, the more energy they will need to speed up their time.

Diverting some of their energy to the aspect of Time will slow down their evolution in a way that the increase in time won't be able to make up for it. It can be done, but it isn't worth it to prioritize speeding up their time over committing to evolution.

The best solution is to find an external source of energy to fuel the aspect of Time. This will let them eat their cake and have it, as it will allow them to dedicate all of their power and energy to evolution while also speeding up the process of evolution.

So they began infecting everything around them, assimilating it and devouring it. The Will of the void universe is no more, so the void universe has become ownerless. It is crumbling apart, but it is still full of energy and power that can help their situation.

Besides, the void universe contains powerful artifacts like the corridor of worlds and powerful entities like archons, usurpers, and guardians. If they can assimilate all of this, they might become half as powerful as the void universe at its peak.