Chapter 432: Chapter 433: The Strings of Time
Murphy knew of two locations directly connected to the spirit world: one beneath Arkaim, the Door to the Afterlife, which had already lost its connection to the spirit world, and the other was the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts.
Due to its connection with the spirit world, the temporal rules here were looser, theoretically requiring less magical energy for time travel.
After the previous battle, the Chamber had almost completely collapsed, but the chaotic temporal rifts remained. If one were careless enough to step into them, they might fall into the spirit world or get trapped in a temporal loop.
It was precisely because of these dangers that Hogwarts had evacuated its students.
After entering the door, Murphy found a relatively stable rift to the spirit world, broke the seal set by Dumbledore years ago, and stepped in.
The dense fog of the spirit world engulfed him, but Murphy, unfazed, took out the time box, deciding to give it a try.
Traveling through a thousand years was unprecedented, and Murphy had only theorized the possibility based on calculations.
Due to the need to utilize nearly all the magical nodes' energy, the vast torrent of energy was difficult for him to fully control. He sensed he might not have many chances for attempts, so before embarking on the thousand-year journey, he needed to test the feasibility of time travel within the spirit world.
He first tried communicating with the magical nodes around the globe through the psychic network, testing the stability of the connection. Although the spirit world isolated him from other minds, the connection between him and the magical nodes seemed to strengthen.
"The theory of magical energy originating from the spirit world," Murphy murmured to himself.
This was a hypothesis from the Magic Research Institute regarding the nature of magic, suggesting that magic's original source was the spirit world.
In this theory, the spirit world is like a dam with high potential energy, and whether it's magical network nodes, deities, or wizards, due to their uniqueness, have created holes in the dam of the spirit world, allowing magic to flow into the mortal world.
If this theory were correct, being in the spirit world would actually facilitate the flow of magic.
Then, he grasped the time box tightly, channeling his magic into it. The time converter's pointer inside the box rapidly moved backward, and in an instant, he disappeared from his original location.
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Ten days ago, London.
"Restored to original state!"
Murphy strained to repair the time converter damaged by Gungnir, its pierced heart also becoming intact again during the process of time reversal. Gungnir was pulled from his heart and expelled a distance of four meters away.
However, the magic required to repair the time converter was enormous, and Murphy's magic was barely enough to rewind less than half a second. At that moment, the time converter's cracks suddenly widened, and with a snap, it shattered again.
Gungnir, frozen in time, attacked once more.
At that moment, accompanied by a thick fog from the spirit world, another Murphy suddenly appeared between the spear and him.
Almost instantly, Murphy realized where and when he had been sent back to and, with a thought, used the time box to freeze time.
Then, he grabbed the spear, and with another surge of magic, he and the spear vanished into the spirit world's fog.
Murphy intended to return to the Chamber of Secrets, but upon looking around, he realized he couldn't recognize his surroundings.
Surrounded by rolling fog, it seemed he was still in the spirit world, but the location didn't resemble the Chamber of Secrets, and Gungnir had disappeared.
Murphy frowned, understanding the situation.
Time and space in the spirit world are chaotic; he had only reversed time, but the space also changed, likely due to the spirit world's characteristics.
Gungnir's disappearance was probably for the same reason; it was lost in the spirit world.
He tried communicating with the magical nodes again, then sighed in relief. The connection to those nodes was still there; he could still mobilize the entire magical network's power.
This time, he dared not experiment carelessly but recalculated the current situation, considering the effects of the spirit world's temporal and spatial chaos.
"Traveling through time in the spirit world requires at least half the magical energy, and the fluctuations of temporal streams can be ignored on a thousand-year scale. Overall, the success rate of time travel in the spirit world remains higher than in the mortal world."
With this thought, he no longer hesitated. In his mind, he communicated with hundreds of magical nodes worldwide. Magical energy, through the ritual devices constructed outside the nodes, gathered and was transmitted to Murphy through the psychic network.
In an instant, he felt as if he wielded boundless power, enough to fill seas, raise mountains, divert rivers, and even reverse the poles, causing the world to undergo dramatic changes.
But controlling such immense power was extremely difficult. As more magical nodes joined, the ritual devices began to collapse. Even the strongest magical metals could not withstand such grand magical forces for long.
Murphy himself also couldn't sustain it for long. Without delay, he directed all the magical energy into the time box.
The time converter's pointer inside the box immediately began to rapidly move backward. In an instant, Murphy seemed to enter a tunnel of time, with everything around him receding into the distance. He felt a strange power flowing through his body, as if it was erasing the material of his body and reconstituting it in another time and space.
However, traversing a thousand years caused too much turbulence in the material world, requiring an enormous amount of magical energy. The time box, unable to withstand such a vast amount of magic, vibrated violently. Golden light emanated from the box, and in an instant, the external devices disintegrated into particles.
The time converter inside the box, despite being the best quality and most durable Murphy could find, was now covered in cracks.
Golden liquid seeped through those cracks, gradually melting the outer casing of the pocket watch, leaving only the two hands and the layers of golden rings forming the faceplate. As the last ring melted, the hands suddenly stopped, and an immeasurable radiance burst forth from the melting golden mass, exploding in the next moment.
Suddenly, Murphy seemed to rush through a thousand worlds.
He leaped through the chaotic space-time; one moment, he was standing in front of a skyscraper, and the next, he appeared in a coliseum. The scenes around him switched at thousands of frames per second, and even with his extraordinary vision, he could only see a chaotic flow of rainbow light.
But at the center of all this chaos, the golden mass seemed to freeze, slowly splattering outward.
Without time to think, he grabbed the mass.
He had brought several spare time converters in case of emergencies, but now, all the magical energy was connected to the current converter, making a switch impossible. He had to try to salvage the situation.
The moment he grasped the molten gold, something inside him seemed to activate, connecting with the temporal power within the droplet.
Similar to when he repaired the time converter during his battle with Odin, Murphy felt a sluggish sensation as if he was swimming against the current, with a massive resistance from the universe making it difficult to move forward.
However, unlike last time, he now had vast magical energy to support him.
The golden liquid gradually seeped
into his skin, turning his entire right hand golden. At that moment, his psychic network operated at full capacity, concentrating all the magical energy at the fingertips of his right hand.
In an instant, he felt as if he had touched a string. With a slight thought, he plucked it.
The view abruptly contracted and then brightened.
He instinctively closed his eyes, and when he reopened them, he was standing outside a huge castle in the mountains.
A muddy road stretched from his feet to the majestic castle gates, with people dressed in rags and resembling beggars pushing carts and carrying baskets along the path. Everyone looked as if they hadn't bathed in years, dirty and disheveled.
Everyone hunched over, heads down, not noticing his arrival. A skinny man carrying a basket bumped into him, immediately falling to his knees in terror and pleading in Old English after seeing Murphy's appearance.
Murphy glanced at the flag flying above the castle, painted with a sword embedded in a stone.
He helped the serf to his feet and asked, "Where is this place, whose territory is it?"
"Your, your lordship," the man trembled in fear, sure that Murphy, with his extraordinary demeanor, must be a noble lord. Fearing offense, he knelt again, "My lord, this is Ca, Camelot, and its lord is the great kni, Knight King, Arthur Pendragon."
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