Kasen immediately got to work.
The Watch of Flowing Time required Dark Matter to craft, and for the current Kasen, making Dark Matter merely meant combining things a few more times.
Before long, after tinkering at the crafting table for a while, Kasen produced a pile of Dark Matter.
Then he took out a gleaming golden clock, placed it in the centre of the crafting table, and arranged the Dark Matter and glowstone around it.
Finally, he brought down a massive hammer!
Bang!
"......."
"Why did it fail?"
Kasen stared in confusion at the materials on the crafting table. They had not been hammered into a finished product. Instead, the various crafting ingredients had been scattered everywhere by the blow.
They seemed to grow pairs of human-like eyes and stare accusingly at Kasen, as though complaining that he had gone to the trouble of creating them without even knowing how to use them, bringing them into existence solely to suffer.
"That shouldn't have happened."
Kasen waved his hand and gathered all the materials from the crafting table, then sat down in his chair.
Unless the crafting recipe was wrong, or this world did not allow devices capable of manipulating time to exist.
But that did not make sense either. Even setting aside the fact that two future versions of himself had previously used this thing to pull all kinds of outrageous stunts on him, this world already had its own native tool for travelling through time: the Time-Turner.
Yet now it was playing favourites with him.
The native Time-Turners could exist by the sackful, but the moment he tried to craft a Watch of Flowing Time, the world quietly tripped him up...
No. There was another possibility.
The world allowed Time-Turners to exist because they could not actually do very much. At most, they helped the timeline complete itself. If someone wanted to change history that had already happened, they could not alter a single thing.
The Watch of Flowing Time, however, was completely different. Its level was far beyond that of a Time-Turner.
To put it simply, it could stop time, accelerate time, and slow time, all without affecting the user.
Those three functions alone made it vastly more powerful than a Time-Turner.
If only one Watch of Flowing Time existed, there would be no problem. The entire world's timeline could simply revolve around you. It had to revolve around something anyway, so what difference did it make?
But two of them would be different.
One might try to accelerate the timeline while the other tried to slow it down. One small mistake could tear time apart and create a temporal vacuum.
Therefore, the will of the world would never permit a second Watch of Flowing Time to exist.
But even that did not quite make sense.
Unless there was already a Watch of Flowing Time somewhere in this world...
.....
Wait.
Kasen suddenly looked at the pocket watch lying in pieces on his desk.
But that should not be possible. Dumbledore had said the watch was a gift from one of his friends. That alone should rule out both the civil official and the military general.
Could one of them have been disguised?
No, no!
Kasen hurriedly shook his head and picked up the pile of pocket-watch parts.
He had not even confirmed that this pocket watch was the Watch of Flowing Time yet. Investigating its origins now was far too early. What if it was not?
Then all the brainpower he had spent thinking about it would have gone to waste.
Before anything else, he should first determine whether this pocket watch truly was the so-called Watch of Flowing Time and whether he could repair it.
With that thought, he placed the broken pocket watch in the centre of the crafting table, then surrounded it with Dark Matter and glowstone.
If this broken pocket watch really was a damaged Watch of Flowing Time, then theoretically, the crafting table should be able to repair it.
......
As the Dark Matter and glowstone transformed into streams of light and merged into the pocket watch, its colour changed from antique bronze to bright silver.
Its appearance also changed slightly...
Hmm...
It still could not move time forward, but a small button had appeared beside the crown, and a separate miniature dial had appeared on the watch face.
The markings on that dial seemed endless, packed together so densely that they were almost impossible to distinguish. Its hand was pointing to a mark so tiny that it was practically nothing.
"What is this little dial for?"
Kasen frowned in confusion, but quickly gave up thinking about it.
It was like encountering a question you could not answer during an exam. Better to skip it for the moment rather than waste time.
Kasen decided to test the pocket watch's other functions first.
He turned the crown backwards slightly, and the world once again became grey and white.
However, it lasted only an instant. He had rewound time by roughly one second.
Next was the other button. If his guess was correct...
The moment Kasen pressed it, the entire world fell silent. Even the flame of the candle on his desk froze completely.
Then, as though the Watch of Flowing Time could no longer bear the strain, the time-stop effect suddenly vanished.
This time, time had remained frozen for approximately three seconds.
"Three seconds is enough for me to do plenty of things... Hm?"
Kasen suddenly stared at the small dial on the watch face and made a surprised sound.
Originally, its hand had been pointing at a pitifully tiny mark. Now, even that minuscule amount had dropped to zero.
The reason he had been forced out of the time-stop state just now was probably because the dial had run empty.
But how was he supposed to refill it?
Kasen rubbed his chin.
With other fields of knowledge, whether magic, daily life, or even alchemy, he could always find someone to discuss them with.
But with the little object in his hand now, there truly was not a second person in the entire world who could answer his questions.
"I'll have to rely on myself."
Kasen sighed, lowered his head again, and silently continued his research.
...
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