Professor Daniel Caelum

Professor Daniel Caelum is Neo Hargraves's Time master, Selene's twin brother, and the creator of the Akashic Records. He spends thousands of regressions trying to save his sister and the world, eventually repeating Neo's own willingness to sacrifice memory and identity for another chance. Later revelations identify Daniel and Ouroboros as the same person: the familiar professor is a Time Remnant of the killed Devil of Time and original Supreme of Time, not a separate character who happens to share his powers or name.

Biography

The evasive Time professor and Neo's master

Daniel has taught meditation and worked as a healer at Demigod Academy since its foundation, yet the academy's records cannot establish his age, rank, bloodline, or two of his three affinities. When Neo first asks him to awaken Time, Daniel shuts the door and disappears through Time Slipping rather than a physical exit. Neo later invokes a Ruler's privilege to demand a private lesson, and Daniel responds with a test of patience: he will teach only if Neo is still waiting when he next leaves the office. Because Daniel slips unpredictably through dates, two years pass before that moment arrives. (Chapters 128 and 157–159)

Neo's persistence moves Daniel from irritation to responsibility. Daniel explains that Time is one of the forbidden elements, pushes Neo through regressions, and teaches him to resist the River of Time and Fate's attempts to preserve a timeline. He also recognizes the symptoms of Erosion and Remembrance before Neo will admit them. When the accumulating Time Deaths threaten to erase Neo from existence, Daniel orders him to stop and eventually limits him to three final attempts. The restriction is not lack of faith; Daniel has watched his student endure years of pain and understands that determination does not make a body immune to temporal destruction. (Chapters 159–164)

With Elizabeth's assistance, Neo finally awakens Time. Daniel formally calls him his fifth student, says he remembers struggles no one else can, and tells Neo that he is proud of his unmatched will. He then burns the image of a dragon biting its tail into Neo's back, looks into his future, and sees the apocalyptic isolation awaiting him. Frightened but unable to explain everything, Daniel sends Neo back toward the academy's beginning. The exertion worsens Daniel's own Time Slipping, while the mark later proves to contain the last fragment of Ouroboros's Authority, passed on without the professor consciously knowing its full origin. (Chapters 167–170; Chapter 774)

Selene, the Divine System, and the World-Time loop

Daniel's childhood is recovered through the Shadow Trial. He and Selene are orphaned twins living in a fortified city; she is already awakened while he begins as an unawakened scavenger. In a destroyed future, Professor Daniel and Neo send a ball of Neo's Intent into the past using Daniel himself as the temporal anchor. The Intent binds to young Daniel as a “Divine System,” awakens his SSS-rank Blessed by Time Trait, and distributes Neo's techniques through levels, quests, skills, and consumable slips. Neo hides his identity so the cautious child will accept guidance rather than reject an unknown will inside his mind. (Chapters 299–306)

The System warns that Typhaon will take Selene, but Daniel cannot make anyone understand the danger in time. He fights Charybdis and repeatedly heals, yet the gap in strength is too large and his Core empties before he can save her. Typhaon's use of Selene's knowledge helps overwhelm the surviving awakeners, leaving Daniel convinced that his private rescue helped awaken a global catastrophe. Kronos, Zeus, Gaia, Apollo, and Ares complete a World-Time Spell at the cost of their lives, and Kronos sends Daniel back as the world's last hope. (Chapters 306–312)

The regression lands after Selene has already been taken. Daniel nevertheless retains Time Stop and part of his growth, reaches Kronos, and begins trying to redirect events. Fate resists major changes, and success never comes in one clean correction: Daniel lives through more than a thousand regressions, repeatedly facing timelines in which Typhaon kills everyone or Daniel must kill Typhaon. The System and Daniel argue, adapt, and continue. His relationship with Kronos becomes that of younger and older brothers, while Typhaon eventually becomes an ally rather than only the monster Daniel once knew. (Chapters 312–322)

Daniel finally creates a history in which the world survives, but saving the world does not restore Selene. He realizes that the “System” had always been designed for the rescue rather than his personal ascent and initially feels discarded when it disappears. When he learns that its creator remains trapped in a future being erased by Time, Daniel defies Time itself to meet Neo. He promises to save Selene partly because doing so will also save the man who guided him. The loop makes each the other's master and student: Neo raises young Daniel, while Professor Daniel later awakens Neo's Time and passes the work back to its beginning. (Chapters 323–325)

Search for Selene and creation of the Akashic Records

Daniel confirms that Typhaon destroyed both Selene's body and soul and that she never reached the Underworld. He consults Athena, the Moon's consciousness, and other Children of Mana, refusing the repeated conclusion that resurrection is impossible. Athena's future-derived writings suggest a different possibility: Children of Mana retrieve knowledge from the Records but cannot insert it. Daniel theorizes that part of a Child of Mana remains in those Records after death and shifts from searching for a conventional soul to searching for information that could be brought back. (Chapters 325–327)

His defiance of Time has already produced a curse. Daniel cannot die, grow old, or become stronger because his body is frozen in temporal stasis. He ignores that condition and spends centuries gathering knowledge. With Pandora's Box obtained from Kronos, he tries to create a second Record and connect it to the original. Daniel looks into the futures of Athena, Zeus, Apollo, Kronos, and many others, tears the resulting memories out of himself, and places them in the cube. Because future sight cannot target an exact moment, he repeats the process through nested future observations until the collected knowledge becomes self-sustaining. (Chapters 326–328)

The Akashic Records succeed at a severe personal cost. Repeatedly removing memories leaves holes in Daniel's consciousness; he wakes without knowing who he is, gives up food and rest, and eventually must use the statement “I am Daniel Caelum” as an anchor. Typhaon helps him after the collapse and blocks Zeus from demanding more privileged access, arguing that Daniel has already saved the world twice and deserves to rest. Typhaon makes him headmaster of the academy created as a home for him. Daniel's private refusal to lose Selene thus creates the information system used by an entire civilization, even though it does not immediately deliver the reunion he sought. (Chapters 328–330)

Ouroboros revealed, death, and restoration

Much later Daniel introduces his larger identity directly: he is Ouroboros, Devil of the Tenth Eon. The fuller explanation identifies Ouroboros as the original Supreme of Time, who opposed Hades's attempt to end the Cosmos. After an initial defeat, a surviving fragment of Ouroboros is inspired by four children to fight again. He divides his Authority into five fragments, entrusting four to his first disciples and keeping the fifth for the final confrontation. The professor's memory of four earlier students, once dismissed as temporal damage, is therefore a remnant of this older history. (Chapters 684 and 774)

Ouroboros is killed, and the Daniel who teaches at the academy is explicitly described as a Time Remnant: the final fragment drifting through history in search of a successor. It finds Neo and passes him the fifth Authority fragment subconsciously. Veydran, Ouroboros's first disciple, later recounts how his teacher helped a normal snake rise through nine stages and celebrated every advance. Veydran subsequently appears wearing Daniel's face, but those are Veydran's actions and not additional direct appearances by Daniel. (Chapters 774, 782, and 813)

The ancient attempt to preserve life ends disastrously. Ouroboros hopes for peace but leaves decaying universes, and Apollyon kills him rather than using his strength to help repair the damage. Apollyon uses Daniel's blood to sustain newborn universes and insists that this corrected the mistake. Neo rejects the execution as the only possible answer, arguing that Daniel never intended to destroy the Cosmos and would have tried to fix what he had done. The conflict preserves both truths: Daniel's intentions were protective, and the suffering created by his failed solution was real. (Chapter 786)

Daniel's story does not end with a corpse or historical remnant. After the final conflict, Neo uses controlled time restoration and Daniel falls to his knees, coughing as life returns. In the epilogue, the Heavenly Records identify Daniel among the living people gathered at the wedding. Those appearances are distinct from references to Ouroboros's dead original body and from Veydran's borrowed face. Restoration reunifies the article's identity without pretending that every later use of Daniel's appearance is Daniel himself. (Chapters 832 and 839)

Appearance and personality

Professor Daniel presents as a stern academy instructor in formal clothes and a loosened tie. His age cannot be judged from appearance: academy photographs show the same professor across three thousand years, and Time Slipping makes his personal chronology unreliable. Strain changes him more visibly than age does. He coughs blood, becomes unnaturally light and hollow-feeling, and loses control of his arrival dates after repeated regressions. As a child he resembles his twin Selene, though her awakened development makes her look physically older than him. (Chapters 159, 162–163, and 305)

Daniel is abrasive, private, and bad at expressing care directly. He closes doors on students, hides his pain, and turns instruction into tests that can look cruel. Once he accepts responsibility, however, he becomes fiercely protective. He is proud of Neo, refuses to dismiss Selene as irrecoverable, and endures regressions and memory loss long after ordinary hope has failed. That persistence is also his central danger. Daniel can make the salvation of one person the axis of worlds, ignore his own collapse, and create consequences too large for good intentions to excuse. (Chapters 128, 157–168, 307–328, and 786)

Powers and limitations

Time travel, Time Stop, and future sight

Daniel can push another person backward through the River of Time, regress himself through large intervals, and use Time Stop to freeze surrounding action. His strength determines how far he can send a target, while the target's strength and temporal resistance determine how difficult the throw becomes. Early World-Time regressions require a planet-scale spell, the World Core, and sacrifices from several top awakeners. Later Daniel survives more than a thousand loops because Blessed by Time protects him from Time Deaths, not because temporal travel lacks cost. (Chapters 159–164 and 301–325)

His future sight sends his soul into fragments of a target's future. Daniel observes a moment, moves farther forward, and eventually returns to his body; he cannot freely select every date or guarantee that the images answer the question he began with. He can extract those future memories and place them elsewhere, the method used to build the Akashic Records. Repetition damages his consciousness, and nested observation magnifies the danger until he forgets his identity. Fate also interferes with attempts to exploit future knowledge, making regression an adversarial process rather than a guaranteed correction. (Chapters 168, 300–303, and 327–328)

Blessed by Time, Time Deaths, and the curse

Young Daniel's Trait is Blessed by Time, explicitly ranked SSS. It gives exceptional resistance to Time Deaths and allows him to survive the World-Time Spell and successive regressions that Kronos cannot. The Trait is initially frustrating because it does not present a direct attack; its importance appears only when Daniel must endure chronology itself. Neo's Intent-based System separately grants Time Stop, Overclock, sword techniques, healing slips, and retained growth. Those System rewards should not all be treated as innate expressions of the Trait. (Chapters 305–312)

Time remains dangerous to him. Uncontrolled Time Slipping carries Professor Daniel between dates, weakens his control with each use, and can leave him unconscious or coughing blood. After Daniel defies Time to visit Neo's erased future, Time curses him with a frozen body: he cannot die or age, but also cannot become stronger. This is not unrestricted immortality or a power increase. It preserves him at the cost of growth and ensures that the centuries spent searching for Selene cannot be converted automatically into higher formal rank. (Chapters 160–164 and 325–326)

Akashic Records and Ouroboros's Authority

Daniel creates the Akashic Records by filling Pandora's Box with extracted memories of present and future until the information can generate further records. The finished system distributes access according to qualification and persists beyond Daniel's active attention. Its breadth does not make Daniel personally omniscient. He must gather viewpoints, cannot initially locate Selene, and damages himself by contributing memories. The Records are his creation and legacy, but their accumulated knowledge is not equivalent to information he can recall safely at every moment. (Chapters 326–330)

As Ouroboros, Daniel is the original Supreme of Time and bearer of the Authority of Ouroboros. He divides that Authority into five fragments. Four grow through his disciples, while the fifth passes through the Time Remnant to Neo and becomes associated with the dragon-biting-tail mark. The professor is not shown consciously wielding the original Supreme's complete Authority in the academy era, and the original Ouroboros is already dead. The identity supplies continuity and inheritance, not grounds to assign every Supreme feat to the remnant without evidence. (Chapters 684, 774, and 813)

Power progression

Relationships

Neo Hargraves

Daniel and Neo are each other's master across a causal loop. Professor Daniel teaches Neo to survive Time and gives him the Ouroboros mark; future Neo turns his Intent into the System that raises young Daniel. Their bond is grounded in recognition of the same dangerous persistence. Daniel remembers Neo's regressions when no one else does, while Neo watches Daniel struggle through thousands of attempts and trusts that he will keep searching. Each also has to confront the other's willingness to erase himself for a rescue. (Chapters 157–170 and 299–330)

Selene

Selene is Daniel's twin, protector, and lifelong objective. Her kidnapping drives his first battle with Typhaon, his regressions, his alliance-building, and ultimately the creation of the Akashic Records. Daniel eventually accepts that he cannot save her through a simple replay, but never accepts that erasure makes recovery meaningless. The devotion gives him the will to save the world and the obsession that repeatedly endangers his own identity. (Chapters 237–238 and 304–328)

Kronos and Typhaon

Kronos becomes an older-brother figure who believes Daniel can survive the World-Time Spell and entrusts him with the world's final attempt. Typhaon begins as Selene's captor and the architect of Daniel's grief, but altered histories turn them into allies and friends. Typhaon later protects the exhausted Daniel from Zeus's demands and makes the academy his home. These relationships show how regression changes moral positions without erasing the suffering of the failed timelines that preceded them. (Chapters 237–238 and 306–329)

Athena

Athena is Daniel's principal research partner in understanding the Records. She rejects easy assumptions, explains that Children of Mana retrieve but cannot insert information, and lets him test theories against her writings and future. Their work does not find Selene directly, but it gives Daniel the conceptual basis for creating the Akashic Records. His persistence supplies the project, while Athena's skepticism prevents speculation from masquerading as certainty. (Chapters 326–328)

Hades, Apollyon, and Veydran

As Ouroboros, Daniel opposes Hades over whether the Cosmos should be allowed to end. His failed preservation produces damage that Apollyon answers by killing him and using his blood to sustain young universes. Veydran, his first disciple, preserves a more intimate legacy: Daniel raises him from a normal snake and celebrates his advancement through nine stages. Veydran's later use of Daniel's face reflects that inheritance but does not make Veydran's actions Daniel's own. (Chapters 774, 782, 786, and 813)

Items

Pandora's Box

Daniel obtains the empty cube called Pandora's Box from Kronos and uses it as the vessel for his artificial Records. By inserting extracted future memories and enough interconnected information, he turns the cube from a container of the Apocalypse into the basis of the Akashic Records. The transformation requires the Moon's energy and Daniel's repeated sacrifice of memory; the cube does not generate complete knowledge without that work. (Chapters 327–329)

Pocket watch and System slips

Professor Daniel carries a pocket watch to check the dates reached through uncontrolled Time Slipping. Young Daniel separately receives consumable Time Stop, Healing, Instant Kill, and level-related slips from Neo's Divine System. The slips can compensate for injury or supply a temporary temporal effect, but they consume Core energy and can leave Daniel exhausted. They belong to the constructed System's support package rather than proving that every listed effect is an innate technique. (Chapters 159–164 and 305–314)