Damned Healer-Chapter 467: Chaos Of Time

Darian ran over and caught Howlyn, carefully checking her physical condition. She was completely worn out and had serious internal injuries.

She had once been a Risen Lord, completely purified. When Darian had done that process on her and the others, he had also fully nourished their life force, allowing them to basically be reborn, returning as if they were young adults again.

In that universe, people with powerful Bloodlines could easily live between one and two thousand years. Those with draconic Bloodlines could live up to five thousand. They only withered and aged when they had less than ten years left to live.

So even if a thousand years had really passed, Howlyn’s state of weakness wasn’t normal.

Darian didn’t waste any time and started to nourish her body with his own energy. At the same time, his white power healed all her internal wounds.

A few minutes later, the wolf began to rejuvenate. Her fur turned black again, and her eyes regained the sparkle of life.

With a deep breath, she shone brightly, activating her metamorphosis.

Howlyn’s humanoid form appeared before him. Then she immediately knelt and pressed her forehead to the ground, not daring to move. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Darian quickly lifted her up. "No matter what happened, I’m not the type to blame anyone. And I’ve told you before — treat me as an ally and a close friend."

She looked at him, but her eyes were trembling, emotions flowing through them like a current.

Darian took a deep breath, keeping his gaze firm. "What do you mean, a thousand years? I wasn’t gone that long. What happened here?"

Howlyn’s eyes showed confusion, making Darian even more puzzled.

"My Lord... a thousand years ago, the entire universe suddenly changed. No one really knows what happened. But the Spiritual Guardians who were already here found out they couldn’t return home anymore. And on top of that, no new Spiritual Guardian has arrived since then. It’s been like this for a thousand years... until everyone lost hope." Her voice was low and heavy.

"But now... you finally came back..." she said, overcome with emotion, like she had just regained a long-lost hope.

Darian felt Niara completely shaken and sighed, trying to stay calm.

"BRO!!!!!"

Suddenly, a sharp voice echoed. Darian turned, and in the distance, he saw a radiant, ethereal figure.

It was Lucy — now in a physical form similar to what she’d had on Earth. She had a pair of small yellowish wings, like butterfly wings, visible only as decoration. Everything else remained the same.

Lucy shouted but didn’t run toward Darian, because beside her, she was helping a female Mannaz who was struggling to move. The woman was missing a leg and an eye, and she looked as exhausted and drained as Howlyn.

"That’s... Ariu?" Darian muttered, shocked. Howlyn nodded.

It was Lucy’s Summoner — once a very young girl, now completely changed and scarred, radiating the same lack of life force. She should’ve had a pair of wings, but had lost them, along with a leg and an eye.

Lucy shouted, "She said it’s been a thousand years!"

Darian swallowed hard, relieved that Lucy was also confused about it, but he was starting to understand the situation better.

Without hesitation, he moved toward the Mannaz. When she saw him, her eyes trembled with emotion. "Sir..." she tried to kneel, but Darian quickly held her up and began healing her.

He restored her life force, but right away, her mutant Bloodline devoured it all — as if he had poured a bottle of water into a desert. Darian grunted and kept pouring out more and more power, not stopping for a second.

Slowly, Ariu’s entire Bloodline began to recover. Her skin regained its glow, and then—

"!"

A leg, an eye, and wings started growing back in front of everyone.

Lucy trembled, overwhelmed with relief. Ariu, on the other hand, was in shock. The amount of life force Darian was pouring into her was insane — it didn’t even seem possible. She had never imagined she could recover so fast.

In just a few minutes, her whole body seemed reborn and back to its peak. Even her wings, lost for centuries, were back. She couldn’t hold back her tears.

Lucy supported her, still tense, then looked at Darian — realizing only then that he was in his true body. But the situation didn’t allow her to be amazed.

Darian let out a breath, and a doubt crossed his mind. If a thousand years had really passed and everything had fallen into chaos...

"What happens to a Spiritual Guardian when their Summoner dies while they’re in your universe?"

Howlyn answered seriously, "If they’re here, they die together — as you already know. But if they’re in your universe, they’re prevented from coming back to this one. They stay forever with the number of rings they already have, never able to evolve again."

Lucy nodded, already knowing that — that’s why she was so tense. She looked at Darian with a twisted expression.

"Bro... Ariu said that... Rion... he died over two hundred years ago..."

Darian froze.

Rion was Lucius’s Summoner.

He swallowed hard, not knowing how to react to all that.

"What the hell is going on..." he muttered, then turned to Lucy. "When you came here last time, everything was normal, right?"

Lucy nodded. "Yeah, I came to this universe three months before you were supposed to return. Only ten years had passed."

"Then... wait." He stopped, holding his breath. "Maybe... maybe I caused this when I used my power on the celestial altar?"

Lucy was stunned by that thought, but soon remembered something.

"Bro, did you ever notice that the history of this universe with the Spiritual Guardians has existed for hundreds of thousands of years? But in our universe, it’s been less than five hundred years since the first awakened one appeared."

When Darian heard that, it hit him. He had never really thought about it, since he knew time could flow differently between universes. And every time he came to this one, it was always chaotic — he never had time to think deeply about it.

"In Rank A or S missions, sometimes the missions last for years inside the universes, but on Earth, only months or weeks pass. Of course, there are also rare situations where time flows the same in both universes," Lucy continued, her tone serious.

"I read about it in old records from here, because on Earth, there’s nowhere with that kind of information. A long time ago, when thirty days passed in our universe, that meant more than thirty years here. Back then, all the Spiritual Guardians could return to our universe whenever they wanted, easily, and never stayed that long. Usually, they’d spend a few years training and trying to earn Merit Power. When they felt they had enough contributions to evolve their rings, they returned."

She looked at Darian and added, "Everything changed when the two Primordial Beasts — the Divine Dragon and the Enfield — disappeared. Suddenly, both universes started having time flow at the same rate. That was over three centuries ago on Earth."

Darian let out a heavy breath, finally understanding everything.

Most likely, those two Beasts had managed to do something with Heaven’s Will’s support.

That might’ve prevented the Celestial Shadow — who had been severely wounded — from devouring this universe’s Immortal Chaos Essence and recovering easily. That way, he would have to heal first, giving people time to grow stronger and try to fight back.

Of course, it didn’t work — and the whole universe was overtaken, leaving only a single galaxy.

It had been a cruel trade-off, because the Spiritual Guardians who once had years to train at a time now only had thirty days before being forced to spend months unable to return.

It got even worse because the academies had altars connected to the Spiritual Guardians within the universe, and each altar had a maximum number of people it could sustain. With almost all of the altars deactivated, the number of Spiritual Guardians able to exist inside the universe became extremely limited.

Combining those two factors with the growing corruption among the Spiritual Guardians, the number of powerful individuals dropped drastically over the years. Everything fell apart, sealing this universe’s inevitable end.

Darian took a deep breath, trying to calm himself again.

It was possible that all of this was his fault. He realized something had been triggered in the altar when he tried to come to this universe using his power. There was no way to know the mechanism behind it, but by breaking it, he must’ve restored the original state.

As for the thousand years that had passed...

He remembered feeling a space distortion when he was crossing the channel to reach this universe.

Maybe, when the thing that kept time synchronized broke, it was like a dam bursting — releasing everything and making the flow of time unstable for a while.

That way, inside the universe, time passed uncontrollably, and the disturbance prevented anyone inside from returning. Possibly, Lucy and everyone else who was crossing or about to arrive got trapped, unable to enter.

But for those who were crossing, it only lasted a few minutes. Once space stabilized, everything returned to normal.

Cold sweat ran down Darian’s face. If he hadn’t entered the Earth altar right after Lucy had been taken, she might have reached this universe first — and been trapped for a thousand years.

Luckily, his people had waited for him to enter, so they wouldn’t waste time, so they all must’ve crossed only after he did.

As for Lucius... and probably many others... after a thousand years, countless Summoners had died — and they would never be able to return. The damage caused by the passage of time was definitely deep.

"Howlyn... what’s the current situation of the universe?" Darian asked, staring at her seriously.

She looked back and replied, clenching her fists, "My Lord... right now, the soul of the Celestial Shadow has already fully recovered and can influence and act easily. Luckily, you destroyed his plans to recover his body when you took this academy, forcing him to look for longer paths. But after all this time, he’s already almost 80% recovered."

Lucy, Niara, and Darian froze.

"And worse... his recovery speed has increased a lot in the last few years. If no one does anything, he’ll fully awaken in less than three years."