Aegon went towards Liliana and found her crouching near a wooden box. Upon seeing him, she opened it and revealed a golden spherical heart with several mechanisms running on its surface.

She easily picked it up and showed it to him. "What do you think this is?"

"I don't know," Aegon said truthfully.

He could try using his eyes, but he didn't know if they would work here. Even if they did, he wanted Liliana to teach him things for now.

"It's called the Sisyphus Engine," Liliana smirked and explained. "The idiots back then wanted to borrow Essence from future timelines, which would give them an infinite Essence source."

'Another Earth reference,' Aegon thought upon hearing its name and asked, "They didn't have the Essence River back then?"

"They didn't," Liliana shook her head. "Now, I have a question for you. What do you think happened when they created this engine successfully?"

Aegon thought hard about it before answering. He stared back at the engine and said, "Messing with the future surely has its consequences. Did the future events happen too quickly?"

"Not quite!" Liliana smiled and said. "You see, the world doesn't have a set timeline, not for the future at least. So there are endless possible future timelines, some more likely to happen than others."

She put the engine back into the wooden box and continued.

"The engine was successful in pulling Essence from the future, but it also attracted that timeline. Those idiots didn't think of that, and when the timeline finally mixed in, they experienced the consequences."

Aegon felt a heavy weight settle down on his soul, as if something was constricting it. He resisted it, feeling it was a little familiar.

"Wait! If the Essence was pulled from the future... meaning it was gone from the present to the past?" he asked, finally understanding the point.

"Yes, for a few years. The world went mad. Spells would stop working all of a sudden, or worse, produce side effects because the mana disappeared completely. Death zones were created where entire Essence was sucked dry. It was a pandemic brought by some idiots."

She closed the box and added, "The Sisyphus Engine was then turned into a forbidden artefact never meant to be used. Some even suggested disposing of it, but the Academy kept it sealed here."

Aegon lingered for a while, impressed by how ridiculous the things past mages had achieved were. Granted, it had messed up the whole world, but those were the consequences of uncovering mysteries in such a way.

'Can I do something similar without having such severe consequences?'

Probably not.

"Did you feel the suppression?"

Aegon blinked in confusion at the sudden question before he realised and said, "You mean on the soul?"

Liliana nodded. "Yes. That is the suppression of forbidden knowledge. It depends on the knowledge too. Knowing about the world having endless possible futures is forbidden for some reason, but not very heavily."

"Is that why Opa refused to share stuff about Ancient times?" Aegon finally understood.

She stood up and said, "Yes. Your soul is strong, so it can handle a little suppression, but forbidden knowledge of the Divine would crush it badly."

'Damn! This world is crazy!' Aegon cursed. 'Exploring itself is dangerous then. You don't know what you'll stumble upon accidentally and die.'

He thought for a moment and asked, "Wait! Can't others use it as an offense? Like shouting it out in the world and killing everyone? Or even in a battle?"

"Anything related to forbidden knowledge is dangerous and triggers suppression. Sharing it is included. It's just you here, so it's fine, but if I went out and announced it to the whole Dusk City, I'd die a horrible death too," Liliana replied as she moved towards a different past relic.

"The more I know about this world, the more dangerous it seems," Aegon muttered. "And I actually wanted to explore it."

"You still can, as long as you remain grounded," Liliana said. "That is how humans survived till now while mages are so few compared to Knights."

Aegon had to agree with her. Talent alone already made mages rare, but they also had to learn more about the world to grow stronger, so the chances of stumbling upon something dangerous were very high.

Meanwhile, Liliana stopped before a shelf housing many strange things. It felt as if Aegon had visited a museum rather than a treasury and was watching the corpses of history.

She pointed at a glass gourd filled with dark ink and said, "That's Soul-Bound Ink. You can make contracts using it, but it's kept here not because it failed, but because it's too effective."

"Huh?"

She explained, "It's too precise. Let's say we made a contract to meet at noon. If you're even a second late, it'll kill you. No other option. You can't even annul it. Once the contract is made, you either fulfil it or die. Sometimes it even killed both parties."

"Crazy!" Aegon was dumbfounded. "Just what kind of society did people live in back then?"

"It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows," she chuckled and said. "But you're also looking at the exceptions of every era, so it's not right to say they depict that era well."

He nodded in understanding.

Then she continued moving along the shelf and introduced many things to Aegon. Some were failed products that led to severe consequences, but their main principles were sound, so the Academy kept them.

Some were simply too overpowered, which even surprised Aegon. Like that plain, dull-looking sword which could cut concepts themselves.

Everything was so ridiculous that it blew his mind, and that was an incredible feat considering he had also obtained many ridiculous things from the system in the past.

Granted, he couldn't use most of these things. And seeing the consequences each artefact here carried, he was glad he didn't touch them.

He didn't want to take that risk.

As they explored further, Aegon realised there were many things that even Liliana didn't know about, but that was normal too. It was already surprising that she knew so much.

"Here is the information section!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.