Chapter 1925: Chapter 1925

Jenkins cautiously released his hand, and the gear floated suspended in the silver-blue light.

He withdrew his hand and closed the lampshade. Instantly, a brilliant light erupted from the lamp, engulfing every corner of the room. The flash was momentary, however, and caused no harm to the people, the cat, or any of the objects within.

"Looks like it was a success."

As the light faded, Jenkins, who had instinctively tucked Chocolate into the inner pocket of his coat, let out a long sigh of relief.

"So, has the ability changed?"

Alexia asked, blinking. She noticed Chocolate peeking its head out from Jenkins's coat to look around but pretended not to have seen a thing.

"Hold on, let me check... Yes, the name of the ability is the same, but... I'll show you."

He stood up and retrieved another pen holder from a cardboard box on the top shelf—he always kept two sets of stationery on hand. Then, just as before, he illuminated it with the miner's lamp.

Once again, the pen holder disintegrated into a pile of gears, but this time, the gears were significantly larger.

Alexia asked, pinching one between her fingers. Hathaway picked one up as well:

"But they're still quite small. With this many pieces, putting it back together would be incredibly difficult. Can't you make them bigger? Maybe if we could reassemble them, we could restore the object to its original state."

"I can control the size of the gears, but there are limits."

Jenkins shook his head regretfully, but an idea quickly came to him.

He left the room and quickly returned with a single toothbrush bristle:

"Before, the ability would break an object down into tiny gears, with the size depending on the object's volume. No matter how small the item, it always resulted in tens of thousands of pieces. After absorbing that gear, however, there's now an upper limit to their size. I can control how large the gears are, anywhere between that maximum size and the size of the original object. Of course, the limit is much lower for irregularly shaped items, but for regular ones, it's quite high. That's to make sure every last detail can be transformed."

"So you're going to break down a small, regular object to produce larger gears."

Hathaway immediately understood his meaning.

Jenkins nodded. First, he 'drew' some paint, dyeing the bristle in a multitude of colors. Then he raised the miner's lamp and broke the bristle down into over a hundred nearly invisible gears. Using a toothpick, he carefully nudged them back together, guided by the distribution of the colors.

Sure enough, once all the teeth interlocked, the assembly of gears transformed back into the very same toothbrush bristle.

Although he couldn't yet see a practical use for this new feature of his [Mechanical Light] ability, the sight was enough to bring a delighted smile to Jenkins's face.

His final gain of the day came from the drop of divinity that had been 'burned.' He had acquired it recently from a ring, whose original master was, of course, the sovereign of the [Closed Circle]. As such, the fragmented knowledge he received after using the divinity was mostly related to that entity's domain.

The domain of time had always been forbidden territory. In the entire material world, there were likely fewer than a hundred abilities and rituals related to it. Most of those were incomplete, and the few that were whole almost always demanded a terrible price for their use. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel✦fire.net

Papa Oliver was well aware of the horrors of time and had stressed this point repeatedly during Jenkins's training. Jenkins had never received any knowledge of temporal mysteries or powers from Papa Oliver or the Church. This would be his first true taste of how the power of time functioned in this world.

Making an excuse to use the washroom, Jenkins braced his hands on the sink and faced the mirror with his eyes closed. His consciousness plunged into the depths of his mental sea. At the bottom, scattered points of golden light shimmered brilliantly.

He used his consciousness to decipher them, standing motionless for a full ten minutes. Seizing the opportunity while Jenkins was oblivious to the outside world, Chocolate trotted on its four short legs from the sink to the top of his head, as if climbing an invisible staircase, and curled up contentedly.

When Jenkins finally opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was a heavy weight on his head. For a fleeting, absurd moment, he thought he'd stood there so long a mushroom had sprouted from his scalp. Realizing how ridiculous that was, he reached up, plucked the cat from his head, and carried it out of the washroom.

The knowledge he'd gained was exceptionally fragmented, as if the entity who provided the divinity had deliberately kept him from glimpsing too many of time's secrets.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. While he hadn't gained a single complete ability, he had acquired one complete, time-related ritual: [The Twelve Orthodox Gods Summoning Ritual].

The twelve months of the year in the material world each correspond to one of the twelve Orthodox Gods. As such, it was acceptable in certain contexts to refer to a god simply by their corresponding month.

Months are a manifestation of time, which in turn linked time itself to the Twelve Orthodox Gods.

The ritual didn't summon a god to manifest in the material world, but rather called for their divine attention. Each of the twelve churches had its own methods for this, but those divine rituals could only be performed by true believers. [The Twelve Orthodox Gods Summoning Ritual], on the other hand, allowed anyone, regardless of faith, to call upon a god's gaze, provided they met the conditions.

The ritual was exceedingly complex. Aside from a few materials Jenkins had never even heard of, the core components were: [a symbol corresponding to the month], [a symbol corresponding to the god], [a symbol corresponding to time], and [an offering to the god].

Because this was a call from a non-believer, the required offering was far more substantial than the mere sliver of silver Jenkins or other followers of the Sage might use to draw their god's attention.

These four core components were not fixed; they had to be selected based on the specific year and time, and were even dependent on the caster's own faith and time of birth.

More critically, however, the ritual demanded a price upon success. But given that it could precisely call upon a god's gaze, such a price was considered acceptable.

The price was this: for the rest of their life, during the month corresponding to any god they summoned, the caster had to recite that god's scriptures for at least half an hour at dawn each day. Furthermore, during those months, the caster's body would experience the passage of time at twelve times the normal rate.

It wasn't that thirty days stretched into three hundred and sixty, but that their lifespan would simply drain away at twelve times the normal speed.

For instance, if a heretic used [The Twelve Orthodox Gods Summoning Ritual] to call upon the Sage, then for as long as they existed in the material world—be it alive or as an undead, so long as their soul remained their own—they would be forced to recite the scriptures for the thirty days of every October and endure the cost of aging an entire year in a single month.

[The Twelve Orthodox Gods Summoning Ritual] could only be used twelve times, once for each month. But if someone actually managed to call upon all twelve gods without dying of old age, their time would automatically be reduced to zero, leading them to a true 'End'—a finality so absolute that not even their soul would remain.