"Praying to false Gods won't make you a holy warrior. You are bandits blaspheming the real Gods, and you are being punished for it."
The merchant leader had no idea if that was true or not, but those words were enough to provoke that the bandit leader had a big opening that let the merchant leader give him a fatal blow.
As if that wasn't enough, he was stroke by lightning afterward.
"Gregor, what is this?"
The merchant leader guessed that what happened to the bandits had some relation to Gregor. Thanks to that sudden bad luck of the bandits, no one had been severely injured. Of course, no one died on their side.
Just as Gregor was about to reply that he wasn't sure either, all the storm's remaining lightning hit him.
The merchants were shocked by that sight as Gregor fell to the ground, but as the merchants ran to him to check his state, they found that he wasn't injured at all, just unconscious.
"What happened? That wasn't normal lightening."
The merchant leader knew that there was no way Gregor would be alright after being struck with so much lightening. He should have been burnt to ashes with that quantity. Thus, the only answer was that the lightning wasn't normal.
After that, they felt that Gregor's energy began to increase at a quick pace.
In a minute he had reached Rank 1.
He had reached it before Shiba and Eini despite being unconscious, so he didn't know how he did it.
Moreover, the energy didn't stop there, and he quickly reached the peak of Rank 1.
The curse wouldn't let him advance more than that, that was something proved by a lot of generations of the people on the Forest of Illusions.
However, ten minutes after falling unconscious, when the merchants already thought that Gregor's strange level up had finished, he advanced to Rank 2.
The curse on Gregor had been broken. His cursed fate was destroyed.
Of course, the merchants didn't know about that cursed fate, so they were only shocked by Gregor's abnormal advancement.
"He is someone chosen by a God. A real one and not that fake Goddess that the bandits served."
That was the only conclusion the merchant leader could reach. There was no other explication unless he considered that a real God had acted.
All the other merchants agreed. Everything started when Gregor was about to die. The things that happened afterward were too unnatural, so they could only believe that a really powerful being had acted to protect Gregor.
The unconscious Gregor woke up in a place he didn't know.
In fact, he didn't see anything at all. It seemed that he was lost in the nothingness.
"Did I die?"
The last he remembered was being struck by lightning, so assuming that he died was a normal thought.
"No, you are still alive. It is just that your consciousness has been dragged here due to my interference with your fate."
After hearing that voice, Gregor tried to look around, and he found a man standing in front of him.
However, he was unable to remember anything about him. He just knew that he was there, but he couldn't remember a single thing.
"Don't try the impossible. A weakling like you can't remember me."
Despite being called weakling, Gregor didn't feel displeased at all because he could feel that the man in front of him was completely at another level.
There was no doubt that the strange things that happened in the previous battle were due to that man's interference, given what he said, so he was the one who had saved his life.
"Are you Master Liye?"
Those were the only words Gregor was able to say. The presence of the man in front of him was too strong to speak more.
"Yes and no. I am indeed the same existence as the Master Liye you mention, but I am a mere shadow of him, not the real one."
Gregor was shocked when he heard those words. If a mere shadow were that powerful, he couldn't imagine how strong the real one was.
"You seem to have a wrong idea. I am a mere shadow, but I am far stronger than the Liye you have heard. I am a shadow of the future, after all. Liye must become me someday, but that isn't easy. If it were easy, Alrein wouldn't have been dealing with this loop for so much time, but I am the only one who can break it, and this self with this power doesn't exist in the real world yet."
Gregor couldn't really understand what Liye's shadow was saying. A lot of words were even censored when trying to hear them, so most of what Liye's shadow said was unintelligible.
"Kid, this place is called Timeless Border. Here, the concept of time doesn't exist like in your universe. Past, present, and future merge here. You don't need to ponder deeply into it, you won't be able to remember anything about the Timeless Border anyway. Not even Alrein, the one who created your universe, can properly remember his conversations with me despite being a Timeless Sovereign. I guess that is unavoidable since I am a shadow of a future that is still difficult to reach. He still thinks that I don't like to speak too much."
Liye's shadow was only speaking to kill time. Gregor wouldn't be able to remember anything, but since Gregor was there, it was better to speak than to remain silent.
After all, Liye's shadow was usually extremely bored.
He had existed since the moment Alrein created the Timeless Border, so he existed even before Liye, who was his real self in the real world, was born, or the universe where Gregor, Shiba, and the others resided was created. However, as a shadow of the future, he could barely interact with others despite existing from such ancient times.
In fact, he really didn't know exactly how to reach a future where he exists since he couldn't remember most things about what was supposed to be his past, so he couldn't do too much to guide the timeline to his goal, but it was a must that he did it. After all, he was the key to escape the loop in which the universe had been trapped for so long due to the curse of time.
In a certain way, he could be considered an incarnation of the curse since he existed from the same moment the curse was set, which was the same moment the Timeless Border was created.
Since he existed as Alrein's counterpart inside the Timeless Border, it was undeniable that he needed to exist someday, so the time itself wouldn't allow it to not happen, which provoked the constant loops each time Alrein was defeated and the universe destroyed.
However, he had been helping Alrein from the beginning, even if Alrein could only barely remember their conversations. Both wanted to escape from the curse of time.
When the universe stopped just before the bandit killed Gregor, it was because the time had just rolled back to that moment from the future after the universe was defeated by the invaders.
The universe had been going back each time there was a defeat, with Alrein being the only one on the real world capable of remembering it.
In previous timelines, Liye's shadow determined that Shiba's death was the main cause of failure.
Shiba was the legacy disciple chose by the real Liye before reincarnating, so it wasn't hard to guess that his presence could influence the real Liye a lot.
After Gregor was killed by the bandits, it would be unavoidable that Shiba discovered it after some time and tried to avenge him. Trying to avenge Gregor, Shiba would be killed while Lina was stopped by several Law Gods, which ended up leading to a chain of misfortune that ended up with the defeat of the universe and its destruction.
Thus, a small thing like Gregor's life was something that had a huge impact due to the chain reaction. Gregor dying against someone else might not be a problem since Shiba would be able to avenge him, or Lina would be able to save him at least, but Gregor shouldn't be killed at that moment in front of those enemies.
Liye's shadow knew that Shiba shouldn't die, but Shiba was related to the real Liye too directly, so it was more difficult for Liye's shadow to help him because Liye's shadow interferences had huge prices to pay for those saved by them.
On the other hand, Gregor's life or death was considered unrelated to Liye despite Shiba accepting him as a disciple because, with his curse, he wouldn't be alive to meet the reincarnated Liye anyway, so the price for interfering wasn't that much of a problem.
"Kid, listen to me. You were fated to die in that battle, but I have destroyed that fate. This will allow you to live, for now, at least. However, since I broke your fate, your death is now unavoidable. You won't reach immortality no matter what you do unless you reincarnate. Basically, I gave you some more time to live, but that is all. Someday you will die, that is the price for being saved today."
Given Liye's shadow situation, his interferences in the real world always led to the same.
If he tried to alter someone's fate, that person would end up dying later on. Thus, he couldn't just save Shiba directly.
Of course, Gregor was going to die anyway without Liye's shadow interference, so the result was just that he got some more time to live.
"The curse on you is broken, and your luck will be extremely good while you live, but that it is just for the short time that you will live. Someday, that luck will turn against you, and it will force you to die. This is unavoidable."