Zen didn't answer immediately. Instead, he shook his head, as if dispelling a headache. He frowned lightly. Signs of the discomfort he felt in the earlier days of the skill, from what Aiden remembered. By the time they'd become full teammates in the Order, such things only existed in the stories he had told Aiden.

Everyone waited patiently. Save for Feira, each member of the team looked very confused and or discombobulated.

Feira inched her jepat closer to her brother. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

Zen nodded. Rather than speak, he raised his hand to signal that he was alright.

Aiden waited patiently. He was already so used to getting the answer the moment he asked. Zen had always been something of a man-child, jovial and seeing the fun in the world—not the beauty.

The Zen he knew didn't see beauty in the world. Innocence sometimes, but never beauty.

The Zen right next to him in this moment wasn't a man-child. He was young, a child by some accounts. Aiden had to be patient with him. Training was not always about a hard hand. Sometimes you had to be gentle.

Aiden leaned his head to the side, looked at Zen. "What do you know about two plus two?"

"I'm uneducated," Zen said simply, staring daggers at him, "not an illiterate."

Aiden waited for a moment before he saw the realization on Zen's face.

"How did you do that?" Feira asked.

Aiden remembered the stories Zen had told him. Whenever he had this experience, he was often lost in his own mind. He could see and hear everything around him, but his mind always took a second to reorient itself.

In time, Aiden had found out that gaining his attention in a jarring manner helped. A strong enough blow would work but then he would be forced to be distracted by the pain. A pinch tended to suffice. A well-placed insult always worked, too.

Moving his gaze to Feira, he gave her a slightly cocky smirk with a raised brow. "Are you saying you never tried?"

"I… I just…" she stuttered, then frowned.

Aiden almost smiled. It was like teasing a more civilized Zen. It was fun. He would've teased Zen directly, but teasing Zen was like making fun of a jester. It left no impact and was, ultimately, no fun. This felt like paying Zen back for all the annoying things he had done to him.

Aiden paused. Why am I enjoying this?

Shaking his head, he returned his attention to Zen. There was no rush. Time was entirely on their side. Zen's skill, [Borrowed Guest], had a time distance… so to speak. It never took a version of himself that was too close in time proximity.

By his guess, they had at least ten hours.

"So," Aiden said, returning his attention to Zen. "What did you see?"

Zen pressed his lips into a thin line and gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry."

It didn't take anything for Aiden to know what was happening. "You didn't see anything, did you?"

Zen shook his head. "No," he answered apologetically. "Everything was just moving too fast. I think I was… crouching?" He shook his head again. "I'm not sure."

"What of the area?" Aiden asked.

Zen shook his head again. "Can't remember."

"What of the feeling?" Aiden continued, his voice gentle, conversational. "Was it tense? Easy?"

Feira shot him a half-hidden chiding look as if telling him to stop pestering Zen and to give him time to rest.

He made a face at her, to her shock, then he looked back at Zen.

Zen had his brow raised, looking from him to Feira in intrigue. When their eyes met, he dropped the brow and shook his head, assuming a serious expression.

"Nothing."

Aiden let out a sigh. "No matter. It must be something simple." A part of him had an idea of what it was. To the others, he announced, "Let's keep going. We've got a few days' journey ahead of us."

He nudged his jepat and it resumed its steps.

"You do not expect us to simply say nothing, do you?" Ted asked, testily.

"Would it be too much to ask?" Aiden tried, knowing that it would be.

"Yes," Ted, Valdan, and Fjord said in unison.

Ted looked at the people around them. Passersby continued walking the sidewalks as if a person hadn't just disappeared and appeared in front of them.

"Why are none of them looking?" he asked. "Shit like this should draw attention."

Aiden had the answer to that, but he wasn't going to go spilling everything about Zen's skills to everyone. That was not important enough. Thus, it was Zen's to tell. As for what had happened, it tied into Zen's role in the team so he could share it.

"As we all know," he said, "Zen is a [Time Walker]. What we don't know, however, is that he's a different type of [Time Walker] from what is famous."

Their jepats were all strolling down the road now, carrying them in the general direction of the town's exit.

"He, unlike most people carrying his class," Aiden continued, "has a skill that allows him to predict the future."

Zen looked at him, incredulous. "I do?"

"You—" Aiden paused, shaking his head in confusion. "Wait, you didn't know this?"

How did he not know this?

Zen shook his head, then looked at Feira. "Did you?"

"I had a suspicion," she said with a shrug.

Ted chuckled. "What's wrong with your face?"

Everyone turned to Aiden.

He could only imagine what he currently looked like. The Zen he knew was funny and jovial but could also be smart when he needed to be. He tried not to take the world too seriously, too.

Was it possible that the side of the Zen he knew that was quick to catch on to things was the side the Order had trained into him? Was it possible that at this point in Zen's life he was the fun, and his sister was the brains?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Aiden squinted at him, wishing to test something.

"Anytime you use your skill," Aiden began, "where do you think the clone comes from?"

Zen shrugged, his haze gone. "An echo of an action I performed not long before I use the skill?"

Aiden opened his mouth, then paused. He closed it carefully. That was actually not an uneducated answer. It actually made sense if Zen had actually given the skill much thought.

Unless he practiced the skill constantly and studied it, that was a reasonable answer. It was like asking someone who didn't know much about physics and subjects in that area why the ocean was blue. Most people would guess that it was simply a reflection of the sky above.

It wasn't the correct answer, but it also wasn't a stupid answer. It was a logical answer, given with the common knowledge that they had.

"And what do you think this feeling you just experienced is?" he asked further.

Zen shook his head. Feira did the same.

"I just always thought that it was some kind of side effect," Zen answered.

Feira nodded. "None of the healers back in town could explain it or treat it. And since it started after he got his class… we just assumed and hoped it didn't worsen."

"The less I used the skill, the less it happened," Zen finished for her.

"And so," Aiden said slowly, piecing everything together. "You stopped using it entirely."

Zen nodded.

Aiden could not believe it. Zen had actually stopped using his skills. It wasn't unusual for a person to not use their skills often. Not everyone wanted to be a monster hunter. Not everyone that got the [Baker] class wanted to be a baker. You could have the [Butcher] class and still grow old and die as a level fifteen [Butcher] making moderate money as a tailor in some normal town.

Maybe it only confused him because it was Zen, and he just couldn't imagine Zen not wanting to—

Aiden smacked himself on the forehead. Idiot!

Zen had, in fact, once told him about how he had thought that his class was making him sick somehow when he had gotten it and had stopped using his skills for a while.

Aiden dragged his hand down his face. And the award for shittiest friend of this timeline goes to you.

"Alright," he said as their jepats turned down the road, making a right. They were not too far from the exit now. "Here's how your skill works."

"How do you know how his skill works?" Feira asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Was she going to question every little thing he did? Aiden was used to people just taking his word as it was. No questions asked.

He frowned at her in a childish lack of restraint. "Because I've had almost a month's worth of access to a royal library and I like to read."

Feira paused, sufficiently chided. "Oh."

That was rude of me, Aiden thought, chiding himself. And childish.

He shook the thought, returning to Zen. He slowed his jepat down a little as a random child ran across the road to hug his mother, and she shouted in terrified anger at the boy.

"Your skill," Aiden said, "works using the laws of time magic. I don't know just how deeply the laws work, but you can't see enough or last long enough to get information worthy of making enough of a difference to affect it."

"I'm like… an oracle?" Zen asked, a slow smile creeping onto his face.

Aiden groaned. The last thing he needed right now was Zen thinking he was special. It wouldn't get to his head, but he would still be insufferable about it. Like a child who got the highest score on a test.

"Not an oracle," Aiden corrected him. "If an oracle is a jepat, you're like…" His hand flailed about as he looked for the right word. "You're like a strand of my hair that a jepat accidentally stepped on. You're a stow away in the timeline."

Zen smirked at his sister. "I'm a stowaway oracle."

"Zen," Aiden said sternly. "It's your skill, pay attention."

"Thank you," Feira said with a sigh when Zen returned to seriousness.

"Now," Aiden went on while everyone listened. "When you use the skill, it takes an instance of you from the past. In this case, you in the future have borrowed you, a guest from the past, to assist in whatever you're trying to do."

Zen nodded sagely. "Oh… that kind of makes sense."

"Good." Aiden returned his attention to the road, holding his hand out to Valdan. "May I have a look at the map?"

"I thought you have it memorized," Ted said as Valdan handed him the map."

Aiden said nothing. He had the map memorized. He only asked for it because if he looked busy, nobody would ask him questions.

To the side, Fjord looked lost in thought.

"So that's how he's going to be our scout," he said in a burst of realization. "Wow."

Wow, indeed, Aiden thought, as he unrolled the map.

Level two hundred Zen could stop time, though.

But that was a conversation for level two hundred.

…

The next day, Zen and Aiden stood in the middle of a dirt road. It was empty, and from the information they had gathered during their journey, next to abandoned. It was one of four roads that led into Trackback, and for some reason, nobody had used it for months now.

"Are you sure about this?" Zen asked.

"I am," Aiden nodded. "What do you know about fighting?"

"I swung a wooden sword a few times as a kid."

Aiden remembered that part of Zen's story. His father had been a soldier but not a soldier with a combat class. He had just been a soldier because he had always wanted to be one. Men like him ended up being cannon fodder in the military whenever there was a war.

He had learned to swing a sword from his father, but nothing too serious.

"Alright, then," Aiden removed the sword at his hip and tossed it to the ground. "Here."

Zen looked down at the sword, then up at him, suspicious. "You're not going to hit me when I try to pick it up, are you?"

Aiden wasn't going to. And he would've asked why he would do that if not for the fact that he had done that exact thing to some of his students at the Order—the students that were still naïve and thought that the world was fair.

"I'm not," he answered. "This is not that kind of practice."

Zen bent down, slowly picking the sword up still in its scabbard. He kept his eyes on Aiden until he was finally standing straight again.

The entire ordeal had been painstakingly slow.

"That," he said, when he felt safe again, "was intense."

Aiden ran a hand down his face. "If you say so, Zen. If you say so."

"Please focus, Zen," his sister said from the side of the road. "The sun is hot."

"You don't get to complain," Zen returned. "You've got a shade."

Valdan was seated atop his jepat, and Feira stood next to it, using the shadow they cast as a shade. Valdan, ever the knight, remained in place to serve as her shade for however long was needed.

"You're going to use your skill during this session," Aiden explained. "Right now, we're not having a real sparring session. I'm just seeing what you can do."

Zen nodded. On the other side of the road, Ted was biting into an apple while Fjord just stood and watched with rapt attention.

"When do I use the skill?" Zen asked.

Aiden shrugged. "When you think it will give you the upper hand. You only get eight attacks, then we call it a day."

"Yes, please," Ted said. "Trackback's literally two hours away. I want a comfortable bed to sleep in tonight. And why can't we just do this when we get there?"

"Nope."

Zen had already used an instance of the skill. Aiden needed to dictate when that instant was before they entered actually hostile territory. If Zen used the skill now, then he could better understand the skill and give them some information on the next one.

"Draw your weapon," Aiden instructed.

Zen obeyed, drawing the sword easily. Its steel shone under the light of the afternoon sun. He did not marvel at it. He did not make any jokes. His expression grew serious instead.

Aiden saw a whisper of his friend who could walk into a room and kill ten men without moving from a single spot.

"Begin!" Valdan barked.

Zen moved immediately. His first strike was a thrust to the abdomen. Aiden moved seamlessly to the side. It was not a matter of skill that helped him evade—he had employed no skill or finesse. He had simply stepped to the side successfully because he was faster and stronger.

Stepping into the stab very clumsily, Zen pivoted into a diagonally upward slash aimed to take Aiden's head. Aiden moved to the side again.

Zen appeared behind him and tackled him.

Aiden moved, attention unwavering. He spun around Zen's borrowed guest and turned him into the real Zen. Both of them ran into each other as their pincer attack failed, and they went sprawling into the ground. Together they raised a cloud of dust before the borrowed guest vanished into blue mana.

"I was expecting a second Zen," Valdan said absently.

"Yeah," Ted confirmed. "What we got was just some blue clone."

"It will gain colors and indistinguishable form the stronger it gets," Aiden said. "Skills like that tend to. Alright, everyone on their mounts. We have a lawless city to enter."

Zen got up, dusting himself off as everyone moved to mount their jepats.

"I've got a question," he said, slowing Aiden down.

"If I can answer," Aiden said.

"We went down together," Zen said. "The clone and I. If I moved through time, why wasn't I dusty when I came back?"

"You didn't move through—" Aiden shook his head. "It's a bit complicated, but I'm sure we'll figure it out as time goes." He tapped Zen encouragingly on the arm. "Alright?"

Zen shrugged, smiling, and handed him his sword.

"No need," Aiden said, shaking his head. "You keep it. You'll need something to protect yourself from your sister."

"I heard that!" Feira called out.

Aiden chuckled as he walked over to his jepat. "I know."

In a matter of minutes, they were all mounted and making their way down the path. In a few hours, they would be in Trackback.

In roughly a day or two, two of the strongest rulers on this side of Nastild would lose their prized possession, and there would be a quiet uproar.

The most silent uproar two kingdoms could cause.

Now, it was a race against time.

The [Crystal of Existence] and the [Heart of Nosrath].

Aiden had to claim both within the month.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.