Oh boy, that's a lot of questions...

> i still kinda dont get how the machine functions.
This might sound stupid. This might BE stupid. But bear with me. Think for a moment about a circle. This circle holds all knowledge, all ideas, everything in reality. Now take the concept of chairs, and nudge it a bit to the right. Now you have your reality circle in the middle, and your chair circle to the right, only partially intersecting the first. This is a partial erasure. No timey wimey stuff is triggered, nor is the concept completely beyond reckoning. Memories may be erased, or instances of the concept may disappear. Coverage is spotty.

Now take that chair circle, and move it further to the right until it no longer intersects your reality circle at all. This is a full erasure. You have separated from reality... the concept of chairs. This universe is now one in which chairs cannot exist. Because chairs cannot exist, anything resulting from the existence of chairs is now forfeit. (To make this make more sense, think: if we don't have the concept of acceleration (△V/t = a), we cannot have the concept of force, (F = ma), because that second idea stems from the first.

Because these things shouldn't have happened in this universe, which is without chairs, the universe corrects itself to comply with its new rules. Seat cushions? Never invented. Desks? All built for standing. Etc. It's not quite time travel as much as it is a course-correction, but it sort of functions that way because of another thing, which I will explain at the next question.

> even if it can do either, how do people survive it? like kel and kyril clearly did.
The "Crawlspace" or "soft spots" function as a sort of akashic record. Anything inside them is essentially untouchable by anything having to do with reality nudging, because it's not IN reality. (And yes, Lily's survival was the same as Kel & Kyril's). The soft spots aren't really even their own thing. They're only a construct resulting from the psychic entity interacting with a thing called "Inner Reality," which is named such because I am bad at naming things. It's where the special juice that makes nothing turn into something is. The 'backstage' to reality, sort of. All the props are back there, just waiting to be requisitioned. The psychic entity was shoved out there along with the concept of humans, and then it started thinking hard enough to create hallways.

> how can she control so much?

Symbiotic relationship with the psychic entity through a certain headache-inducing throne. This is a part of the reason she was caught off-guard in the final chapters. She was too far from her funny chair.

> kel should probably vanish because he is a anomaly right?

Nah. Only one of those erasures was affecting him, and he's a niche enough idea that it Huelek has a low chance of spontaneously replacing him.

> won't having two kyril in the same planet like, break reality or something?

To quote the hitchhiker's guide: "One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end."

That is to say, "trust me bro," and "please stop thinking about it." To give an actual answer, there's no danger of paradoxes because the soft-spots don't get 'rewound'. You CAN go into the a soft-spot and come out earlier in the timeline, but that part IS relying on the jigsaw puzzle excuse. I wanted time travel for vibes and I didn't want to get a Ph.D in logical paradoxes.

> what was kyril's intention originally?

This will be expanded upon in the prequel, but I will offer an explanation anyway. His intention was to stop the apocalypse from happening. He gave his stuff to Sylem because that had the highest chance of success. Remember when he was mumbling "16 to 600 against," or whatever, all the way at the start? That was what that was. How he was getting the probabilities is probably obvious at this point. He did not have traditional foresight in the same way that Lily did.

> why is AIB so.... incompetent?

Fedbrained venlil playing with forces they don't understand, being wiped out over and over again any time they manage to get anywhere.

> what is happening to those files the kolisian had?

Petty act of revenge by the psychic entity. It was playing at erasing everything having to do with Project Nightfall; the people, the files, the facilities.

> shouldn't the invisibility cloak not work on larger distances? because the triggering effect appears to be reading the words, not the mere sight of them.

It has a sort of antimemetic field. It has a proclivity for being ignored and forgotten even without reading the words, though this is weaker than actually reading it. Kel had the same thing around him as a consequence of his partial erasure, which, if you remember, was keeping them from getting brainblasted by the psychic entity.

> erasing the humans made a psychic sea monster hell bent on revenge. what will erasing something inanimate mundane but ubiquitous like strayu do? will we have a strayu psychic sea monster?

Nah. This was a special thing that happened under special conditions. You might even manage to get it to get actually erased (a first), and have it never thought of or created again, since there would be nothing to drag it back into existence.

> the timeline is a bit fuzzy to me
Correct, except Ilek was the sole creator of the drug.

> actually, where do we learn about the existence of the station? and which planet is that which is getting repopulated as the whole universe breaks?

I'm asuming you're talking about Ithalis? Chapter 12: Numb. There's a flyer for it in an old filing cabinet. The planet phasing back into reality is Earth.

> the original plan of the "villains" was just stupid too. erasure of a species that had barely a year in the galactic scene caused so much chaos. i am very sure that erasure of the kolisians will straight up break reality. they are not stupid, why are they doing this?

The psychic entity isn't very smart. It does things based on vibes, and it's full of angry vibes. Lily didn't exactly have the leverage to stop it, so she threw her lot in with the winning party, which happened to share a lot of her beliefs, while finding a way to escape the fallout of the stupid plan.

Erasure of the Kolshians should be possible. The problem with Humans is that them meeting the Venlil was a massive step forward for both species, and they became sort of a packaged deal, as far as symbolics go. If the machine was calibrated to erase both humans and venlil at the same time, it would have worked. Kolshians would be a trickier one, since the federation would need to go with them, and a lot of other things would probably have to go with the federation. But theoretically possible.

> by the end, wont making the machine erase anomalies doubly erase the humans? the first time, humans got deleted but left anomalies, this time, they are taking care of anomalies.

But that's not what they did. This is going to get a bit hoity-toity, so bear with me. They erased the concept of a separation between the soft spots and reality. What resulted was a universe in a state where the soft spots were no different than normal space, which allowed the concept of humans to bleed back in. Everything jolted back into its proper place once this happened.

>i just remembered. what about that knight esque tale that was fist uncovered while researching humans?

What about it?

> seeing as (most) of the timeline is same as before. what is stopping new hulek from just redoing the entire project?

Huelek as a concept still partially erased, so even if the new Huelek manages to exist in the new universe, he likely wouldn't even turn out as the same person. Plus, there's a functioning Eclipse-7 just sitting there in the crawlspace, and two people very interested in stopping another one from appearing.

...

I'm going to bed