Chapter 1963: At Long Last
WHOOSH!
The world around Rui shifted in the blink of an eye.
One moment, he was in the Mellow.
The very next?
He found himself standing before the shores of a beach.
The softest of smiles cracked at the edge of his mouth as he spotted Kane standing at some distance before him.
Yet, Kane faced someone else.
He had bronze skin, donning an attire that resembled that of a fusion of between that of an adventurer and medical attire. An umpteen number of instruments, artifacts, and tools adorned it from top to bottom, no doubt able to be of aid in nearly every circumstance conceivable.
The Divine Doctor himself.
Not in a memory, not in a prophecy, but in the flesh.
His eyes devoid of any compassion, shifted away from Kane, turning to Rui slowly.
Curiosity flickered within their hollow depths as he beheld Rui.
"Interesting."
Kane frowned, turning to follow his gaze.
"Rui!" His eyes lit up with joy. "You're finally here!"
An invisible smile cracked at the edge of Rui's mouth. "You're alive."
"Bring it in, man." He lunged at Rui, pulling him in a bear hug. "After the first few days, I thought we'd never meet."
Chills crawled across Rui's skin at those words. "...Days?"
"Yeah, it's been like three days. Actually, what took you so long?"
The atmosphere grew taut.
The void within Rui's stirred as he stared at Kane gravely. "Kane..."
His dark eyes sharpened to slits. "I entered less than an hour after you did."
Kane did a double-take, cocking his head back. "What?! There's no way!"
Realization had already dawned on him.
"Doctor Kar," Rui addressed the Divine Doctor, his dark, sharp eyes slowly turning to him, meeting the man's clinical gaze. "Could you tell me how long you've been here? I wish to confirm or deny a hypothesis."
The Divine Doctor's smile remained frozen.
Yet a glint of interest flickered in his eyes.
"About two hundred and sixteen days."
"Figured..." Rui muttered severely.
"Figured what?" Kane asked, narrowing his eyes. "Spit it out!"
"This place..." Rui glanced at the world around them. "...Time moves one hundred and forty-four times faster here than it does in the real world."
Kane's eyes widened with shock. "What?! Are you sure?!"
"Certain. The ratio matches both your stated timespans in this world compared to how long you've been absent in the outside world."
"And just how would you know how long I've been absent in the outside world?"
The Divine Doctor's tone cut through, seeking to know.
The darkness within Rui's eyes stirred.
They stirred, meeting the clinical curiosity that lay within the Divine Doctor's.
"I verified it in the memory of a deer that spotted your abrupt disappearance when I searched for you in them," Rui truthfully remarked.
Yet, the Divine Doctor's detached intrigue only rose. "And just why would you be searching for me in the memories in the fauna of the Mellow?"
"Because we came to the Mellow to find you, of course," Rui replied.
"And just why did you come to the Mellow to find me?"
Rui's chilling gaze bore into the man.
"...To compel you to heal my father of the Eternal Dream disease."
In just a moment, all the interest disappeared from the Divine Doctor's eyes.
"Eternal Dream disease?" He murmured, bored. "Trivial. Has the medical community not figured that one out yet? Tsk Tsk."
Rui shuddered as a wave of deja vu washed over him.
Those words.
Those very words had been uttered by the Divine Doctor in the prophecy that his grandmother had shown him. It appeared that now that Rui had reached the Divine Doctor, the prophecies that his grandmother had shown him might start unfolding one by one.
"Will you help me?" Rui stared at the man.
The man gazed at Rui with a hint of derision.
"My father is the Emperor of Kandria." His tone was sharp. "Aid him, and he will reward you handsomely."
A mirthless laugh escaped the Divine Doctor. "What I need, he cannot give. No one can. No one aside from the Martial Transcendents who refuse to move despite reaching the pinnacle of Martial Art."
The weight of Rui's gaze pressed down on the Divine Doctor.
The darkness within his eyes stirred.
The endless void within them rumbled.
"You..."
"Besides..." The Divine Doctor's eyes closed. "Even if I were to agree, and I certainly haven't, it would be meaningless. After all, we cannot leave."
He spread his arms, gazing at Rui with a frozen smile.
"Welcome to my prison." He spread his arms. "I came here looking for clues regarding the illness of my latest patient, but alas, I only discovered that this world is even more fantastical than I had ever expected."
Rui narrowed his eyes. "Prison?"
"We can't leave this place man," Kane grew grave. "I checked this place; it's even more bizarre than the Garden of Salvation. The Garden of Salvation had barriers. An end. But this place...
it's continuous. Endless. It loops back over and over, no matter how far you go. It's like it's its own planet! Truly its own world!"
The sheer shock of this revelation stunned even Rui through his cold darkness.
"What...?" He whispered, staring at Kane, turning to the Divine Doctor. "Is this true...?"
"It's a self-warping region of heavily curved space-time," the Divine Doctor replied, intrigued. "It's a shame that the Astromind and Ecologer weren't here; they would have seen through every secret that exists in this place. Certainly, I would have inferred far more than I am able to about the geometry of space-time. It's far too far from my field of expertise."
Rui closed his eyes as a flood of thoughts churned within the depths of his mind.
"If what you told me is true, then it can be inferred that the time acceleration gamma factor of one hundred and forty-
four is a result of the self-looping extrinsic four-dimensional manifold." He sharpened his eyes in thought. "In order to maintain the constancy of the speed of light, time warps to cancel out the effects of the space-warping."