Richard was busy as well.
Aside from occasionally making trips to Light Castle and the Ash Head Mountain construction site, he spent most of his time researching things alone.
The Ancient Wizard materials extracted from Barta were piled around him as he read, contemplated, and tested them without pause.
As time passed, batch after batch of Ancient Wizard materials were replaced. He found answers to many of his doubts and gained a more comprehensive understanding of many matters.
And so, after an unknown amount of time had passed, one day brought a slight change.
Inside Atlantis City stood an enormous building.
The building spanned dozens of meters and stood over twenty meters high, empty as a stadium. Its inner walls had been painted an immaculate white, smooth as mirrors, but they were now covered with plenty of messy black writing, as though someone had simply used the walls as scratch paper.
Richard stood before one of the walls, narrowing his eyes at a somewhat damaged scroll with a thoughtful expression.
At his feet sat an inkwell. The ink inside flew out on its own, forming a liquid ink pen in midair. Its tip touched the wall and rapidly wrote on its own, helping Richard organize his thoughts.
"Scratch, scratch, scratch..."
"The three characters Atushi are relatively obscure. They seem to be connected to eternity. They were mentioned in Ancient Wizard material number 23489. That material is an incomplete spell called Time Replication, within which..."
At that point, the liquid ink pen suddenly stopped. The next moment, as if it had lost its supernatural power, it splashed back into the inkwell as a stream of liquid.
Richard, who had been deep in thought, turned his head slightly strangely toward a direction outside the room, as if he had detected something