Erin was speechless.
There was so much more he wanted to ask. However, the gnome bombarded him with a bunch of shocking information before abruptly leaving.
The only thing that could help him now was the hourglass in his body. At the very least, it gave him a direction. Even though he wasn't sure if he wanted to become a Timekeeper, it still intrigued him a lot.
The main advantage of it was the power. It's just that this power was at a ridiculously high level; one which was far beyond his level of understanding. The disadvantages were unknown. That was a concern in itself.
As he was thinking about these things, he noticed there was a piece of paper on the ground. The sight caught his attention because the paper was glowing like a divine decree.
As he picked up the piece of paper, the glow faded. A written text appeared in the mother-tongue language.
[This place used to be a small temple for the Timekeepers. It is actually a place I built before ascending. The statues you see are all golems that I created myself. Most of their designs were based on the Dragonkin race.]
[Unfortunately, its life planet has long since been destroyed. Because of this, the only thing keeping this space in-tact is the barrier enacted by the temple's remaining energy source.]
[In the very near future, the energy will run out and the barrier will inevitably collapse. When that happens, this place will be destroyed by the surrounding chaotic space. While I can accept the fall of this temple, I would hate to see my golem creations be destroyed so meaninglessly.]
[I have unlocked the golems' restrictions. They are no longer bound to this temple. Please take all of them into your dimensional treasure before leaving. The third contribution milestone on your hourglass will grant you the basic functions needed to control these golems. Consider it a sort of present from me and use them as you wish.]
[P.S. Before leaving, I recreated the portal leading outside this space on the platform above. Unlike the one before, this one is completely stable. It will be active for half an hour. This is the last portal connecting to this space, so I suggest running.]
When Erin finished reading the note, it burst into fragments of light and disappeared. Without any hesitation, he stored all of the statues into his main dimensional treasure. He would inspect these things in detail later.
Now that the hall was empty, Erin started running back up the passage that he came from. He had no plans on getting stuck here.
Unlike the hour it took him to walk down, Erin spent less than fifteen minutes to run back up. He rushed back to the open plaza and jumped into his small scout starship immediately. This gave him a little bit of time to spare. He looked at the back of the cockpit and noticed Aura was still deep asleep.
Taking one last glance around, Erin piloted the starship to the portal at the center of the ruins. Since this recreated portal was stable, he didn't have to worry about being knocked unconscious.
He entered the portal with his starship and re-appeared in the exact same space from earlier. The only difference was that the dimensional rift was no longer there.
Through the windows and screens on his small starship, Erin could see many Morack guardships facing the direction where the dimensional rift used to be.
Compared to when he first entered, there were twenty times as many starships now! It looked like an entire starship fleet was staring at him.
Although he was slightly surprised, Erin was unconcerned for the most part. He summoned out his Exodus starship and docked the small scout starship in the main hangar.
Carrying the still asleep Aura, Erin left the hangar and took an elevator up to his starship's main command center. He put the sleeping Aura on a nearby seat before sitting down on his commander's chair.
As he sat down, a bright notification appeared in front of him. The AI's voice flowed into his ears as he read this notification.
[Incoming Video Request has been detected. Accept?]
Erin guessed that this was one of the Morack starships contacting him.
"Accept."
The video feed that appeared showed a middle-aged beastman commander in his starship's command center.
"Greetings, honored one."
"By Chieftain Morack's orders, we are here to escort you back to the core home planet safely. It has been almost 23 days since you've entered."
"..23 days?!" Erin muttered out loud in shock. From his perspective, although he was knocked out for 7 days, he still only spent half a day more inside the rift.
'Time-acceleration?' Erin didn't think of this possibility before. By that assumption, time moved at least 3 times faster inside.
"Yes, honored one. Roughly 23 days have already passed. During that time, the dimensional rift grew to a ridiculous size. The chieftain was very concerned and stationed more guardships here as a result."
"On the 22nd day, the entire dimensional rift shrunk and disappeared. We were ordered to remain here in case this was a prelude to another event. Fortunately, nothing happened. However, the chieftain panicked because of your disappearance. Thus, we were ordered to remain here longer."
"Less than two hours ago, a very small dimensional rift reappeared. We have been monitoring it closely. The rift disappeared the same moment you re-appeared in this space."
As Erin took in this information, he sighed awkwardly. Deep inside, he felt like these changes were definitely related to him. Hence, the additional guardships here were basically wasting their time trying to guard against a nonexistent enemy.
"I understand. My thanks for your chieftain's good intentions." Erin responded. "I plan on returning immediately. Please notify him of my return."
"Understood." The beastman commander answered before politely ending the video transmission.
As Erin's starship left this space, he was accompanied by ten Destroyer-class starships and over a hundred battleships!
This kind of entourage was made possible because of the chieftain's concern over the previously growing dimensional rift. That's how large the rift grew before disappearing!
As for the culprit for these concerns, Erin was quietly studying things inside his starship's command center. He was playing with an hourglass in his hands. He discovered that it was incredibly easy to summon and dismiss the hourglass. These actions consumed almost no energy at all.
Furthermore, whenever he was actively holding the hourglass, a notification appeared in his mind.
[Current Contribution]
Although Erin could sense more options, they were all a blur. He assumed that these were the 'functions' that would be unlocked after he hit certain contribution milestones.
With a mere thought, he opened the current contribution option.
[5/100]
By the looks of it, it seemed his first milestone would be when his contribution hits a hundred. Thinking back to the gnome's words, Erin knew that the Timekeepers valued the two concepts of Order and Continuity. Anything that supported the growth or stability of these concepts were considered free game.
Keeping that in mind, he tried to figure out what actions garnered him his first five points in contribution.
Ever since he arrived in this timeline, many of his actions were done primarily for his own benefit. The only considerable thing he has done for anyone else was basically rescuing Winslow and his people. As he thought deeper about this matter, Erin finally reached a hypothesis that he planned on testing later.
Now that his curiosity about the hourglass was partially quenched, Erin shifted his attention to the golems inside his main dimensional treasure.
There were a total of 36 Dragonkin golems and a single dragon golem. He took out one of the Dragonkin golems and started analyzing it in detail.
The golem looked no different than a decorative statue. If it weren't for the gnome's note, Erin would honestly think that these are just really well-crafted artisan pieces. He also took out the even larder dragon golem and started analyzing it too. Because it was standing on its hindlegs, the golem was almost two stories tall. Fortunately, the command center was large enough to comfortably fit these golems with plenty of headroom to spare.
After spending more than two hours studying both golems, Erin discovered nothing. Though this was disappointing, he didn't dwell on this too long. To him, it was merely a matter of time before he reached the third level of contribution. Once there, he could explore the features of these golems in detail since he would unlock the functions needed to control them.
Putting away the golems, Erin checked the time and noticed that there was still an hour and a half till he arrived at the Morack Family's core-homeplanet. Before he could think of ways to spend this time, he felt a rumbling sensation coming from Aura.
Glancing over, Erin had a funny expression on his face. He walked over, took out a dimensional crystal, and casually nestled the crystal in Aura's embrace. In the exact moment the crystal touched Aura, Erin could tell that the energy inside of it was getting greedily absorbed. He sighed with a hint of jealousy mixed in his tone. Even in her sleep, Aura was still able to level up naturally. This kind of talent would make countless people and beasts envious.
Sitting back in his commander's chair, Erin decided to spend more time training. Ever since he learned spiritual energy related techniques from Aura, his leveling progress has increased by leaps and bounds.
In the early stages, which he was still at, it was merely a matter of gathering and consolidating this energy. For some reason, spiritual energy was incredibly abundant in the Beastman Universe and could even be sensed almost anywhere. It was just that some places, such as life planets and spatial channels, had higher concentrations of spiritual energy when compared to others.
Erin took out his orb and activated it. A familiar holographic panel appeared in front of him.
[Erin Dawn] [Age: 18]
[Level: 1,557] [Family: Household of Dawn]
[Profession: Apprentice Tamer, Student] [Status: ????]
[Officiator: Intergalactic Imperial Academy]
[Additional Notes: Timekeeper Candidate, ????]
In the past, Erin noticed that "Apprentice Tamer" was added to his professions almost immediately after he started learning spiritual energy techniques from Aura. It seems those techniques were relevant to his advancement as a Tamer.
Glancing down at his level, Erin smiled. He was close to breaking the fourth barrier. This was made possible because he made very good use of his time. Other than studying, he did a lot of training while traveling inside the spatial channels. That kind of environment provided twice the reward for half the effort.
While this kind of progress at his age would be considered great by his universe's standards, Erin knew that it wasn't enough.
Now that he knew about the Ascended Realm, the concept of high tiers and even prestige felt a lot less loftier than before. Every 400 levels was a barrier, and he still needed to break the ninth barrier before entering the first tier. From the first to ninth tiers, Erin knew that the level requirements doubled. This made higher tier people exponentially stronger than lower tier people. As for prestige, most people didn't even know the levels needed to reach and advance through it. To his knowledge, this kind of power only existed amongst the high echelons of his universe.
In comparison, a Timekeeper, as an authoritative being in the Ascended Realm, was worth far more than all of those high echelon beings combined. This gave Erin a lot of perspective on both its status and power. In his mind, after letting these thoughts settle down, he was becoming a lot more accepting of his new position as a Timekeeper Candidate.
Lofty as the final goal was, it could only be reached through sheer hard-work and effort.
At this moment, after all the absurdity he previously experienced, Erin felt like he finally found a path worth following.