Chapter : 1945

  Think, he told himself. You are not just a soldier. You are not just an engineer. In this world, you are a Spirit User. You have access to things that don't make sense.

  He dove into his own soul. It was a dark, vast place. He floated past the raging fire of Iffrit. He floated past the crackling storm of Fang Fairy. He ignored the watery depths of Abyss and the shifting mirrors of Echo.

  He went deeper. He went to the place in his soul where he kept the things he was afraid to use. The things that felt cold and alien.

  He found a door he had kept locked since the day he bought it from the System Shop.

  It was a heavy, iron door covered in rust and cobwebs. It didn't feel hot or energetic like his other powers. It felt... old. It felt dusty. It felt like walking into a house where no one had lived for a hundred years.

  Lloyd stood in front of the mental door. He could hear a sound coming from behind it.

  Click. Whirrr. Clunk.

  It was the sound of machinery. But not the smooth, electric hum of his Nova cannon. This was the sound of heavy, grinding gears. It was the sound of a giant clock tower counting down the seconds to a funeral.

  "Physics is against me," Lloyd whispered in the silence of his mind. "The laws of motion are my enemy. So... I have to cut the laws."

  He reached out and pushed the door open.

  A blast of cold air hit him. It smelled of old oil, stale perfume, and the dust of a grave. A voice whispered from the darkness. It wasn't a human voice. It sounded like the ticking of a metronome.

  You are late, Master, the voice said. You are always late.

  "I know," Lloyd replied. "But I'm here now. And I need to stop the clock."

  In the real world, inside the greenhouse, the grey air suddenly rippled. It wasn't a wind. It was a vibration. The plants that were frozen in time began to shake. The glass shards hanging in the air started to vibrate.

  The Collector stopped. His hand was inches away from Airin’s face. He frowned and looked around.

  "What is that noise?" he asked.

  It started low, but it got louder. A rhythmic, grinding sound. Like the heartbeat of a metal giant.

  Ka-CHUNK. Ka-CHUNK. Ka-CHUNK.

  Lloyd opened his eyes. The blue light in his pupils was gone. His eyes were now a dull, flat gold.

  The Collector turned to look at Lloyd. His smug smile faltered.

  "You..." the Collector stammered. "You shouldn't be able to do anything. My machine... it stops all energy."

  "You stopped energy," Lloyd said. His voice cut through the slow air like a knife. It wasn't distorted anymore. "You stopped movement. You stopped physics."

  Lloyd took a breath. The air around him seemed to crack, like a mirror breaking.

  "But you didn't stop the story," Lloyd said. "And every story has an end."

  The grinding noise became deafening. It was coming from behind Lloyd. The air behind his back split open, revealing a darkness deeper than the night. And from that darkness, something began to step through.

  ________________________________________

  The thing that emerged from the darkness behind Lloyd was not a monster. It wasn't a dragon or a wolf or a demon.

  It was a woman. Or at least, it looked like a woman.

  She was tall and painfully thin, floating a few inches off the ground. She wore a long, heavy dress made of black lace and velvet, the kind of dress a widow would wear to a funeral in an old history book. The fabric of the dress didn't hang still; it moved and shifted like smoke, and hidden within the folds of the skirt, you could see brass gears spinning and clicking.

  Her skin was white—not pale human skin, but the white of cracked porcelain. She looked like a beautiful, broken doll. Her hair was long and black, floating around her head as if she was underwater.

  But it was her face that made the Collector scream.

  She had no right eye. The skin was smooth and blank. But her left eye... her left eye was a golden clock face. The hands on the clock were spinning wildly, forward and backward, never stopping.

  She wrapped her long, cold arms around Lloyd’s shoulders from behind. She rested her chin on his head. She looked like a jealous ghost clinging to the living.

  "Zafira," Lloyd whispered.

  Chapter : 1946

  The name seemed to make the glass of the greenhouse vibrate. Zafira, the Weaver of Eras. A Spirit of the Transcended Rank. A spirit that didn't control elements like fire or water. She controlled Causality. She controlled the "Cause and Effect" of the world.

  The Collector stumbled back, dropping his black box. He didn't know what this spirit was, but his instincts were screaming at him to run. The "Chronos-Dampener," his precious machine that controlled time, was starting to spark. The gears on the box were grinding against each other, trying to fight the presence of the ghost-woman.

  "What... what did you summon?" the Collector shrieked. "That’s not a Spirit! That’s a curse!"

  Lloyd ignored him. He felt Zafira’s cold presence seeping into his bones. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. Merging with Iffrit felt like burning rage. Merging with Fang Fairy felt like electric excitement.

  Merging with Zafira felt like dying. It felt like the cold numbness of the end. It felt like accepting that everything eventually turns to dust.

  They try to hold the sand in their hands, Zafira’s voice whispered in Lloyd's mind. They try to stop the grains from falling. Shall we cut their hands off, Master?

  "Yes," Lloyd said.

  Zafira moved her hands. From the black smoke of her dress, she pulled out two weapons.

  They weren't normal swords. They looked like the hands of a giant clock tower that had been ripped off and sharpened into blades.

  The first one was long, thin, and elegant. It was the "Minute Hand." It was a rapier, a stabbing sword, gleaming with a silver light. It hummed with a high-pitched sound, vibrating with the energy of speed.

  The second one was short, thick, and heavy. It was the "Hour Hand." It was a broadsword, dark and jagged like rusted iron. It radiated a heavy, crushing pressure. It felt like the weight of a long, boring day that never ends.

  Zafira placed the handles of the swords into Lloyd’s hands.

  As soon as his fingers closed around the metal grips, the grey world changed for him. The heaviness vanished. The "sludge" he was walking through disappeared.

  He wasn't fighting the time dilation anymore. He was outside of it. He was standing in the gaps between the seconds.

  Lloyd flexed his fingers. He looked at the Minute Blade in his right hand and the Hour Blade in his left. He felt a strange sense of calm. The anger he felt earlier—the rage at seeing Airin threatened—was gone. It had been replaced by a cold, mathematical certainty.

  The Collector picked up his black box. He frantically pressed buttons, trying to increase the power.

  "Stop!" the Collector yelled. "Freeze! Why aren't you freezing?!"

  The purple light from the box flared. The air got even heavier. The glass shards on the floor began to crack under the pressure of the compressed time. Airin, still frozen against the table, looked like she was in pain, the pressure squeezing her chest.

  Lloyd looked at the Collector. He didn't blink. His clock-eye spun, tick-tick-tick.

  "You rely on the rules," Lloyd said. "You think that if you press a button, the world obeys. But you forgot one thing."

  Lloyd raised the long, thin Minute Blade. He pointed the tip at the Collector’s chest.

  "Rules are just lines drawn in the sand," Lloyd said. "And the tide is coming in."

  The Collector realized, with a jolt of pure terror, that he was going to die. He didn't know how, and he didn't know when, but he saw his death in Lloyd’s strange, golden eye.

  "Attack him!" the Collector screamed at the empty air, hoping more monsters would appear. "Kill him!"

  He tried to open a portal. He tried to summon more shadow wolves. He raised his hands, and a rift in space began to open behind him—a gateway to the Abyss, ready to spew out more nightmares.

  Lloyd watched the portal open. He didn't rush. He didn't panic.

  He simply adjusted his grip on the swords.

  First Form, Zafira whispered in his ear.

  Lloyd took a breath. The air tasted like old iron.

  He lowered his stance. The heavy Hour Blade scraped against the stone floor, creating a shower of sparks that froze in mid-air. The long Minute Blade was held back, ready to thrust.

  He wasn't going to use fire. He wasn't going to use lightning. He was going to use the only thing that could beat a man who controlled time.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He was going to cut the future.

  The Collector’s portal widened. A clawed hand began to reach out of it.

  Chapter : 1947

  Lloyd’s muscles tightened. The gears in the ghostly dress behind him spun faster and faster, building up a charge of temporal energy. The sound was like a jet engine winding up. Whirrrrrrrrrrr.

  "Time is up," Lloyd said.

  And then, he moved. But he didn't run. He didn't jump. He simply decided to be somewhere else.

  The world held its breath. The clock struck twelve. The strike was coming.

  ________________________________________

  The world inside the greenhouse was still stuck in that terrible, grey mud. To anyone looking from the outside, nothing was moving. The leaves of the tropical plants were frozen in the middle of a shiver. The dust motes floating in the sunbeams were stuck in place, like tiny stars trapped in amber.

  The Collector, the man with the grey skin and the black box, thought he had won. He stood there with a smile on his face, tapping his finger against the machine that was slowing down time. He thought he was the king of this little frozen kingdom. He thought that because he held the remote control, no one could touch him.

  But Lloyd Ferrum was done playing by the rules of physics.

  Lloyd stood perfectly still. He wasn't fighting the heavy air anymore. He wasn't trying to push his muscles against the invisible weight that pressed down on him. Instead, he was focusing on the cold, heavy sensation in his hands.

  The spirit behind him, Zafira, floated like a shadow. Her long black dress, made of smoke and old lace, drifted around Lloyd’s legs. The sound of gears grinding together—Click, Whirrr, Clunk—filled Lloyd’s ears. It wasn't a noise that came from the room; it was a noise that came from inside his own soul. It was the sound of a clock that governed the universe.

  In his right hand, Lloyd held the Minute Blade.

  It was a strange, beautiful weapon. It was a longsword, thin and elegant, shining with a bright silver light. It didn't look like it was made for hacking or chopping. It looked like a giant needle. It vibrated in his hand, humming with a high-pitched sound, like a mosquito flying right by your ear. It felt light, almost weightless, but it had an energy that wanted to go. It felt impatient. It wanted to move forward, to skip to the next moment.

  In his left hand, he held the Hour Blade.

  This one was different. It was a short sword, thick and dark, like a piece of rusted iron pulled from a shipwreck. It didn't hum. It didn't vibrate. It felt incredibly heavy. It felt like holding a stone anchor. It felt like the long, boring hours of a rainy afternoon when you are waiting for something that never happens. It was the weight of stopping.

  Lloyd opened his eyes. The normal blue light of his special vision was gone. Now, his left eye was a spinning golden clock face. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  He looked at the Collector. The man was still smiling, completely unaware that the game had changed. The Collector thought he was safe because Lloyd was far away, stuck in the slow-motion trap.

  "You think distance matters," Lloyd said. His voice wasn't slow or warped anymore. It cut through the grey air like a bell ringing on a clear morning. "You think time matters. You think that for me to get to you, I have to cross the space between us."

  The Collector’s smile faltered. He frowned, looking at the strange swords in Lloyd’s hands. "What are you talking about? You can't move. My machine says you can't move."

  "That’s the problem with machines," Lloyd said calmly. "They only do what they are told. They don't know how to cheat."

  Lloyd raised the long, silver Minute Blade. He pointed the tip directly at the Collector’s chest.

  "First Form," Lloyd whispered.

  The gears in the ghostly dress behind him spun faster. The sound rose to a whine, like a jet engine starting up.

  "Accel."

  Lloyd didn't run. He didn't jump. He didn't use his leg muscles to push off the ground.

  Instead, he slashed the air in front of him with the silver sword.

  It was a strange slash. He wasn't hitting anything. He was cutting the empty space between him and the Collector. But the blade didn't just cut the air; it cut the concept of the wait.

  Chapter : 1948

  In a normal world, if you want to walk ten feet, it takes time. Even if you are fast, it takes a second. You have to lift your foot, move it forward, put it down, and repeat. The air pushes against you. Gravity pulls you down. Friction holds you back.

  The Minute Blade severed all of that. It cut the "lag." It deleted the time it took to travel.

  ZING.

  To Airin, who was watching from the side, frozen against the table, it looked like a glitch in reality. One moment, Lloyd was standing in the middle of the room, holding a silver sword.

  There was no blur of motion. There was no wind. There was no sound of footsteps.

  In the very next instant—literally zero seconds later—Lloyd was gone.

  He simply vanished from where he was standing. The air rushed in to fill the empty space with a soft pop, like a bubble bursting.

  The Collector blinked. He looked at the empty spot where Lloyd had been. His brain couldn't process it. His eyes hadn't seen movement. It was as if someone had taken a pair of scissors, cut Lloyd out of the picture, and pasted him somewhere else.

  "Where..." the Collector started to say.

  He didn't get to finish the word.

  "Behind you," a voice whispered, right in his ear.

  The Collector’s blood turned to ice. He spun around, clutching his black box to his chest.

  Lloyd was standing right there, less than a foot away. He was perfectly still, as if he had been standing there for an hour. There was no sweat on his brow. He wasn't breathing hard. He hadn't "run" over there. He had simply skipped the part of the story where he moved.

  The silver Minute Blade was humming, its tip hovering inches from the Collector’s throat.

  "How?" the Collector gasped, stumbling backward. He tripped over his own robes in panic. "My dampener field... it stops velocity! You can't have velocity if time is slow!"

  "I didn't use velocity," Lloyd said, his face blank and cold. "Velocity is distance divided by time. If I remove the time from the equation... then I'm just here. Instantly."

  The Collector scrambled back, his arrogance completely shattered. He realized he wasn't fighting a man with a fast sword. He was fighting a man who could edit the scene.

  Panic took over. The Collector knew he couldn't fight Lloyd hand-to-hand. Lloyd was a soldier; the Collector was just a man with a fancy toy. If Lloyd swung that sword again, the Collector’s head would be on the floor before his brain even knew he was dead.

  "Stay back!" the Collector shrieked.

  He raised his hands. He didn't try to use the black box this time. He knew it wouldn't work on Lloyd anymore. Instead, he reached for the dark magic of the Abyss.

  "Open!" the Collector screamed. "Gate of the Black Dogs!"

  The air behind the Collector ripped open. It sounded like thick fabric tearing. A hole appeared in reality—a swirling vortex of purple and black energy. It was a portal to the place where he kept his monsters.

  From inside the portal, a terrible sound emerged. It was the howling of a hundred wolves, hungry and angry.

  Lloyd watched calmly. He didn't attack the Collector. He let the man open the door.

  "You rely on numbers," Lloyd noted. "You think if you throw enough monsters at me, I'll get tired. Or maybe you think I can't be everywhere at once."

  Claws began to poke out of the purple rift. Long, shadowy limbs reached into the greenhouse, scratching at the stone floor. The Shadow-Stalkers were trying to push their way into the human world. There were dozens of them, a tidal wave of teeth and claws ready to flood the room.

  The Collector laughed nervously. He thought he had found a way out. "You can be fast, Lord Ferrum! But can you kill a whole pack before they tear that girl apart?"

  He pointed a shaking finger at Airin.

  "Kill her!" the Collector ordered his monsters. "Ignore the man! Kill the girl!"

  The first three wolves burst out of the portal, snarling. They turned their eyeless heads toward Airin.

  Lloyd’s expression didn't change, but his eyes grew colder. The golden clock face in his left eye spun rapidly in reverse.

  "You are making a mess," Lloyd said.

  He let go of the silver Minute Blade with his right hand. The sword didn't fall. It just floated in the air beside him, suspended by the ghost of Zafira.