The three Elder Scrolls collided with one another in the temporal vortex.
On the Dragon Scroll that had sealed Adan, a hand was desperately gripping one corner of the scroll.
In the end, the collision between the Elder Scrolls unleashed an incomparably immense power.
The barriers of space and time were torn open, creating a crack.
The three Elder Scrolls passed through the rift and disappeared into an unknown world.
…
A crack suddenly appeared over the surface of the Pacific Ocean.
An Elder Scroll silently flew out of it, with a blood-soaked, unrecognizable elongated object still clinging to it.
Once it had completely emerged from the temporal rift, the elongated object fell into the Pacific Ocean, while the Elder Scroll itself disappeared without a trace.
None of this was noticed by anyone.
Neither the guardians of this world nor the watchers standing within an unknown realm, coldly observing the Nine Realms, knew that several uninvited guests had already slipped into this world.
At the End of Time, within the Void Land, after an endless stretch of years, a new visitor had finally arrived.
A beautiful soul.
Adan’s body floated silently through the void, enveloped by strange white mist.
Those were the very essence of time—the power condensed from nothingness.
Adan’s soul was imprisoned within his body, unable to move.
Here, Adan’s soul had lost control of his body and all perception of the outside world.
The only thing he could sense was the passage of time.
Like a knife, it cut into him again and again.
Living like this seemed to be worse than dying.
But Adan was fortunate.
He would have otherwise been imprisoned here for thousands of years, suffering in loneliness and darkness until, amid that endless torment, his soul was completely scattered.
But those memories…
Those memories he had been unable to understand after crossing over into this world…
Those memories that originally belonged to “Adan”…
Consumed him.
…
Adan had once been nothing more than a character in a game.
A character in a virtual world.
He was a character controlled by Xie Han, and every decision of his life had been determined by Xie Han.
To Xie Han, those were merely casual choices, simple judgments, and effortless quests.
But in Adan’s world, each one represented another major turning point in his life.
Each choice was one for which Adan had risked his life.
The magic and techniques that could be learned in the game simply by assigning a skill point had been mastered by Adan’s world through blood and tears, through countless nights of painstaking practice.
And now, Xie Han had become Adan.
He would experience everything through Adan’s memories that he had never experienced himself.
He would learn everything he had never learned.
Because Xie Han was Adan.
The Adan of the past had possessed the assistance of the rules.
Those were the rules belonging to the world of The Elder Scrolls, the rules of a game world.
They could enhance Adan’s ability to learn and comprehend.
But now that Xie Han had become Adan, he could only rely on himself.
He could only rely on time to comprehend those rules.
Arcane magic, frost, flames, lightning…
The secrets of endless magic filled his mind.
Knowledge, rules, and divine power immersed Adan in the world within his mind.
It was a world constructed from memories.
Adan quietly immersed himself in that world.
Within the world that had become his own, he experienced Adan’s entire life.
And in this place, where even time had no meaning, all of this was a blessing bestowed upon Adan.
Fortunately, Adan spent year after year within that world inside his mind.
Perhaps he suffered through countless hardships there, experienced every kind of tribulation, and witnessed the ugliest side of the world.
But believe me—
That version of him was fortunate.
At least he was still alive.
And the place where he was alive still contained color.
Adan slowly grew within the world of his memories.
He gradually became the true Adan.
Eventually, his soul became perfectly compatible with this body.
At the same time, however, his body continued to age.
Time gradually wore away the power within him.
And the moment that power disappeared would be Adan’s end.
Perhaps he could simply die quietly within the world inside his mind.
A hundred years.
Two hundred years.
Five hundred years.
A thousand years…
Whenever Adan’s lifespan was about to reach its end, the powers contained within his body would emerge.
The power of the Dragonborn.
The power of magic.
The power of a warrior.
The power of the ancient Nords.
They would replace Adan’s lifespan, consuming themselves throughout the endless passage of time.
At the End of Time, time was the most useless unit of measurement.
One second here might correspond to a thousand years in the outside world.
But a thousand years here might be nothing more than an instant outside.
This was a place where even death itself seemed so insignificant.
…
No one knew how many years had passed.
Adan awakened.
More precisely, his soul awakened.
When his soul regained consciousness, when he left the world within his mind, Adan was incredibly happy.
He thought he had escaped that filthy and sinful world.
He thought that, at last, he had been freed.
But he was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Within his memories, he had experienced everything “Adan” had experienced.
Everything he himself had once controlled.
A simple memory of joining the Dark Brotherhood nearly drove Adan insane.
So the choices he had once made so casually had actually been so terrifying.
So sinful.
He finally realized that his own hands had long since been stained with blood.
The blood of innocents.
After awakening, Adan spent three years blaming himself for his choices.
He lamented Adan’s miserable fate and rejoiced that he had finally escaped that world.
But it wasn’t long before Adan regretted it.
Because this world was the real hell.
This place was his punishment.
Compared to this place…
That world had practically been heaven.
Adan was now trapped inside his body, like being sealed inside a tiny bottle.
He had lost his freedom.
There was nothing he could do.
The only thing he could feel each day was the passage of time.
That was his only source of sensation in this pale world—
The pain brought by time.
At first, Adan went mad.
He screamed.
He prayed.
He tried to tear his own soul apart.
But he could do nothing.
All he could do was endure the pain day after day.
Because that pain was the only thing he could feel.
Later, Adan gradually became accustomed to the pain.
He began searching for reasons to continue living within that suffering.
He organized the knowledge he had acquired in the world of The Elder Scrolls inside his mind.
He began constructing and building a world of his own.
He sought a way to survive within his prison.
He did not want to die.
Only after experiencing pain does a person truly cherish the hope of living.
Adan was like a traveler lost in the desert, desperately clinging to a single flask of water in his desire to survive.
But the things seeking to take Adan’s life were not merely hunger and thirst.
There were also wolves surrounding him, eyeing him greedily and waiting for the right moment to tear him apart.
The struggle of a dying man could be terrifying.
Time brought Adan pain and consumed his life.
So Adan used the very pain that time inflicted upon him to study it.
His body imprisoned him and deprived him of freedom.
So Adan desperately transformed his body and destroyed it.
Through the combination of the two, Adan changed.
His blasphemous defiance of the rules pushed him into an even more terrifying predicament.
But what did a man already trapped in a desperate situation have left to fear?
And so Adan paid the price.
He lost the thing most important to a human being—
His emotions.
…
The Dragon Scroll that had sealed Adan disappeared somewhere on Earth.
Meanwhile, the sun that symbolized light was picked up by a traveler in the universe.
A strangely dressed man was listening to relaxing music and drinking a peculiar fruit juice while piloting his spaceship.
He leisurely hauled a large amount of “cargo” through the universe.
“Hmm?”
The man’s body suddenly stiffened.
He sensed an immense force flying toward him.
“Bang!”
Enemy attack?
An energy attack or a physical attack?
What had struck his spaceship?
A huge hole was blasted through the ship’s cabin.
The “cargo” stored inside had either already been drenched in blood or had been reduced to twisted scrap metal.
But an elongated scroll remained completely unharmed, lying quietly on the floor of the cabin.
The man walked over and gently picked up the scroll, holding it against his chest.
Power.
Abundant power.
Incomparable power.
The man greedily sniffed the scroll.
“A treasure…”
“It’s mine.”