From the translucent screen floating in front of him, Leon could see a detailed merging progress bar that had started at 10% and was steadily increasing with each passing second.

DING!

[Integration Progress: 15%... 16%... 17%...]

Leon felt mild concern that the existing settlement and carefully cultivated farmland might be destroyed or severely damaged during this violent expansion process. Still, he was genuinely happy it wasn’t something truly disastrous or life-threatening.

This expansion seemed to be some sort of beneficial realm upgrade, and he trusted completely in the people’s ability to stay safe—he’d given them more than enough cores and training to handle themselves in emergencies.

Leon also noticed something else significant as the progress bar reached 20% and continued climbing steadily.

He said aloud to Seraphine, his voice carrying concern, "Have you noticed? The mana density in the atmosphere is slowly but surely becoming noticeably thinner."

"Yes, I’ve noticed it too, Leon." Seraphine’s expression turned distinctly troubled. "This is really not good at all. The size expansion of the dimension is theoretically beneficial, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to losing the incredibly rich mana concentration that was already present here. The realm was already vastly large—we haven’t even explored its full extent yet, after all this time. This is definitely a significant net loss overall."

Leon nodded slowly in complete agreement with her accurate assessment.

"There’s absolutely nothing we can do about it now. The process is already happening. I at least hope this tower will somehow make up for the loss in the long term."

Still, he felt genuinely relieved that the time dilation inside the dimension remained exactly the same as before—that thousand-times acceleration was the single most vital aspect of this treasure for his exponential growth.

However, just as the progress bar arrived at exactly 50% completion—

ALERT!

A new message suddenly popped up in front of him with urgent flashing red text.

[CRITICAL CONFLICT DETECTED]

[Law of Time Interference Detected in Integration Zone]

[Ascension Tower’s Intrinsic Spatial-Temporal Framework Directly Conflicts with External Time Manipulation]

[Forcefully Removing Law of Time Interference to Complete Successful Integration]

[Master Permission Status: NOT REQUIRED FOR RESOLUTION]

Shit! Shit! SHIT!

Leon’s panicked thoughts raced desperately.

I don’t understand Everything being said in this technical message, but I definitely get the basic terrifying idea—the 1000x time acceleration property in this realm is somehow interfering with the awakening of the Ascension Tower!

And this motherfucking tower is forcefully removing that fundamental property from my dimensional realm without even asking!

No! Hell no! I absolutely shouldn’t have agreed to this shit! This is way, way too big a loss!

His Dimensional Hourglass was mythical-ranked, so he’d foolishly assumed nothing major would happen to its core properties, considering the tower was only legendary-rank at best.

Fuck! I was completely wrong!

Seraphine saw Leon’s face turn completely white as a ghost, genuine distress and trouble written clearly across his normally composed features.

"What happened? Why do you suddenly look so distressed?" Her voice carried real worry.

"That—" Leon’s words caught painfully in his throat. This was far too catastrophic a loss to articulate easily.

Suddenly, something absolutely fundamental changed throughout the entire dimensional realm at once.

Everyone—every single inhabitant, regardless of location—felt the profound shift in reality’s very fabric.

Leon, who possessed time affinity at such an incredibly high rank, could tell immediately and precisely that time inside was no longer flowing anywhere close to 1000 times faster than the outside world.

However, being so closely attuned to the time element at Rank 7, he could detect the new exact ratio. It wasn’t reduced all the way to match the outside world—but it was now only flowing approximately 10 times faster.

Better than a complete loss, but still an absolutely massive reduction.

To him, with his Tome of Eternal Practice—which required extremely high intelligence stats to use effectively for simulated mental training—it might not be quite as devastating a change as it would be for others like Seraphine and all the people living in the dimension who relied entirely on the time acceleration.

Seeing Seraphine’s increasingly confused and concerned expression, Leon explained in detail Everything that had just catastrophically happened.

Seraphine listened carefully and immediately realized how absolutely catastrophic the loss truly was for everyone’s cultivation speed. But she stepped forward and hugged him even tighter than before, consoling him gently.

"It’s alright. We’ll figure something out and find another method in the future somehow. Ten times faster is honestly still not bad at all compared to normal cultivation."

She didn’t carry even a single speck of blame in her voice or expression—only the firm resolve to keep moving forward despite whatever obstacles they might face.

"You just have to keep moving forward despite the setbacks you encounter," she told him with conviction. "That’s something I realized long ago when I lost my entire family. I was reminded of it again when I nearly lost my life in the Forbidden Mist. But I never stopped moving forward, no matter what."

Her eyes warmed as she looked in his.

"Isn’t that how I was able to meet you, lovely disciple?"

Hearing her genuinely supportive words, Leon felt considerably better about the situation.

He couldn’t help but lean down and kiss her forehead lovingly, thanking her wordlessly for the emotional support.

While the integration process continued steadily in the background, something else entirely was happening elsewhere in a hidden location...

____

Inside an unknown place deep within the Time Dimension itself.

In the middle of a dimly lit, extraordinarily ornate room, glowing gently with ambient magical illumination. Warm flickering light danced across polished white marble floors, and countless luxurious velvet cushions were scattered artfully around the elegant space.

A figure of absolutely divine beauty sat there in the center—long silver-white hair cascading down her back like a waterfall of moonlight, glowing silver-white mysterious eyes that seemed capable of piercing through the very fabric of reality itself.

Despite her overwhelmingly divine and ethereal appearance, her current actions were completely unrefined, undignified, and totally uncontrolled.

She was currently laughing so hard she’d completely abandoned all sense of decorum or composure.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

She wore an expensive, fancy, silken cloak draped loosely over her shoulders, underneath which she wore absolutely nothing for some completely inexplicable reason.

Her voice was incredibly loud—she was literally screaming with pure unrestrained joy at the absolute top of her lungs.

"THE SEAL HAS WEAKENED! AHAHAHAHAHA!"

"It’s so much weaker than before! Ahaha—no, wait! It’s not just weaker—it’s exactly one hundred times weaker than it was before!"

"AHAHAHA!"

"My future beast of a master—I think the great me is not actually fated to serve under anyone after all! AHAHAHA!"

She danced around the room in barely contained ecstatic joy, her cloak flowing dramatically.

"In a hundred years—no, no! Even less time than that! Considering I don’t have to constantly use my precious divine energy and law enforcement to maintain this cursed realm binding anymore—the seal is literally a hundred times weaker now!"

"Soon I’ll be able to break out of this ancient imprisonment myself without needing anyone’s help at all!"

She looked gleefully at a silver translucent screen floating in the air before her, watching Leon’s visibly disappointed expression as he realized he’d just lost the incredible time dilation power of his dimension.

"Ahahah! Don’t worry at all, my beastly unintentional savior! I, Xyvarithiel the Everlasting Ephemera, will definitely repay this enormous kindness properly!"

"This measly 1000x time dilation? Hmph! Just you wait and see—I’ll show you what a real, genuine time treasure can actually do!"

"But that’s definitely not enough proper compensation for saving someone as great and magnificent as me, even if it was completely unintentional on your part."

She’d been secretly watching him for an extremely long time through various observation methods. She knew exactly how incredible his natural talent truly was.

"Hmm, if it’s him specifically..."

Her divine face flushed slightly red with embarrassment.

"Yes! I’ll let him have his way with me just once as a special reward! In addition to the incredibly powerful treasure I’m going to give him in the future—that would surely be more than enough compensation for this favor!"

"Hahah! I’m so incredibly generous!"

Her face turned even redder as she spoke those words aloud, vivid memories flooding back of the hundreds of times she’d inadvertently witnessed those extremely intimate moments between him and his so-called wives through her passive observation abilities.

"Yes... just once should definitely be fine as payment..."

She muttered to herself, her divine composure completely shattered by her own embarrassing thoughts.

____