Walking for another two or so hours, Poe noticed that the environment around them had started to change.
Like when they neared the ice tunnel and the environment slowly changed into an icy wasteland. The only difference here was that time itself did not really have a set environment like ice, earth, fire and so on, so the environments changes when nearing the time tunnel was quite interesting and scary at the same time.
Poe looked around himself and saw several different kind of environments interacting with each other.
Yes, instead of there only being one environment present there were more and they were sometimes even mixing with other environments.
What looked like lava floated down a river, that later changed into water, sometimes lava and water floated down the river side by side, while not effecting the other. Flames burning in what looked like a frozen wasteland, a river floating across the sky, a forest with trees made out of rocks and even some shinning rocks here and there. All of this was only some of the weird things Poe, Lucia and Ivy saw, as they walked towards where the time tunnel was located.
"W-what is happening here?"
Poe finally decided to ask the question he was dying to know the answer to.
"Nobody really knows for sure… I heard that time from different places and even different worlds are overlapping and creating this unique environment. We do not really understand how time works and can therefore only guess… It is said that some people can understand time and even use magic to affect time, but they have not been seen for a long time or maybe they already went extinct…"
Listing to Lucia's explanation, Poe was overwhelmed with excitement. Time sounded much more complicated than he thought it was and it could even take environments from different places in time, worlds and even merge them together.
Having a newfound admiration for time, Poe looked at his surroundings in wonder, he also started noticing many things he did not see before.
For example, he did not see any monsters, he also noticed that every time fire from one environment merged with water from another environment, it changed into some form of golden energy that quickly dispersed into the air.
Just as Poe was about to ask Lucia about it, they made it to the entrance of the time tunnel. Compared to the tunnels before, there was two buildings in front of it, one 3 floors high, the other 2 floors high.
Looking at the buildings, Poe saw a sign on both of them. The one on the highest building said [Mage Guild]; the other slightly smaller building had a sign that said [Warrior Guild].
It looked like the reason the mage guild shared this training ground with the warrior guild, had something to do with the time tunnel.
Looking at the entrance to the time tunnel, Poe saw a lot of people going in and out of it.
[Human wind mage, lvl 23]
[Human warrior, lvl 21]
[Human arcane mage, lvl 44]
[Human shield guardian, lvl 46]
[Human lightning mage, lvl 19]
Inspecting the people going to and from the time tunnel, Poe noticed that most of the people were around level 20, with most above and a few people at lvl 19.
The arcane mage and shield guardian both stood on one side of the entrance to the time tunnel. Looking at them, Poe was quite surprised that they were both above level 40 and sending a questioning look towards Lucia, she started answering his question.
"The mage and warrior is guarding the entrance to the time tunnel."
Lucia, as expected, answered what was on Poe's mind without even hearing what it was.
"O-okay, but why did the mage guild and warrior guild send people to guard the entrance of the time tunnel in the first place? There were not any guards at the other tunnel after all…"
Poe asked, as he looked towards Lucia once again.
"The reason for this is simple, monster at higher level sometimes appear inside the time tunnel, right?"
"Y-yes."
"Normally monster are not able to leave a tunnel, cave or dungeon, if they were created by it. Other monsters also known as, wild monsters exist outside the tunnels, dungeons and caves. They are not created by mana from the surroundings and are instead given birth to like us. The reason monsters are not able to leave the place they were created, is because something is binding them to the place."
Hearing this, Poe was slightly shocked as he asked Lucia something that confused him.
"W-what do you mean something binding them to the place?"
"Hmmm… Look at the wind tunnel we went to, monsters at that place were at most level 19 or maybe 20 right?"
"Y-yes."
"Most researchers believe that monsters that go above the max level of the dungeon will normally be transported to somewhere unknown after they surpass it. Then again, we really have no idea… We just know that a tunnel with level 10 to 20 monsters will never have monsters at below level 10 or above level 20."
Hearing this, Poe was quite shocked; he always wondered why there was no monsters below level 15 present on the 4'th floor. How they leveled up in the first place was a mystery.
"Then what about the time tunnel?"
Poe asked Lucia, he was finding it weird that the places with the time attribute had monsters from everywhere, at all levels.
"Places with the time attribute are unique. Take the time tunnel as an example; it can create monsters between level 5 to level 30. No idea why, but the gap between the monsters will never be too much. This place max level is 20 and the time tunnel can go to level 30, so still not too much above the limit. The really unique thing about the time tunnel is that monsters above level 20 will be able to exit it! This is also the reason the mage guild and warrior guild placed guards here."
Having finished questioning Lucia, Poe saw Ivy already making her way into the time tunnel.
"Lucia! Ivy is entering already! Let's hurry up!"
Getting Lucia's attention, Poe made his way into the time tunnel followed by Lucia.
Ivy on the other hand was already inside the time tunnel, this place had made her quite excited after she heard from a group that just exited the time tunnel that they fought against a monster at level 28.
Hearing this, Ivy forgot about Poe and Lucia, before making her way into the time tunnel.