Episode-971
Chapter : 1941
Lloyd raised his right arm.
Airin watched, eyes wide, as his arm began to change. This wasn't the [Steel Blood] power she had heard about. This was something different. Something from the System.
White and gold metal plates materialized out of thin air, snapping onto his arm with mechanical clicks and whirs. His hand disappeared, replaced by a sleek, futuristic barrel. His entire right arm transformed into a massive, heavy cannon that looked like it belonged on a spaceship, not a human body.
It was the Nova Arm Cannon. A weapon he had summoned to fight technology with technology.
Hummmmmmmmm.
A high-pitched sound filled the room as the cannon began to charge. The air around Lloyd started to vibrate. The barrel of the cannon glowed with a blinding white light. It was gathering pure spirit energy, compressing it into a bolt of plasma that was hotter than the surface of the sun.
"You like the Void?" Lloyd asked, leveling the massive weapon at the Collector. "Eat this."
The Collector’s eyes went wide. He could feel the power building up in that weapon. It wasn't normal magic. It was dense. It was heavy. It felt like a bomb waiting to go off.
He reinforced his shield, pouring all his dark mana into the black wall. "I am a servant of the Seventh Circle! You cannot break me!"
Lloyd didn't blink. He didn't hesitate. The soldier in him had taken over. He identified the target. He calculated the solution. The solution was to remove the target from existence.
"Goodbye," Lloyd said.
His finger tightened on the trigger mechanism inside the cannon.
The light in the barrel reached critical mass. It was so bright it cast harsh shadows against the walls. It was ready to fire. It was ready to vaporize the Collector, the shield, and the wall behind him.
But just as Lloyd was about to fire, the Collector did something unexpected.
He didn't cower. He didn't run.
He smiled.
It was a nasty, triumphant smile. He reached into his robe with his free hand and pulled out a strange object.
It wasn't a wand. It wasn't a staff. It was a black metal box, covered in gears and dials. It looked like a piece of complex machinery, something made in a factory, not a wizard's tower. It ticked loudly, like a clock counting down.
"You rely too much on speed, Lord Ferrum," the Collector said, his voice calm now. "You think physics is the only law. But my masters... the Fire Fly Corporation... they taught me a new law."
He held the device up.
"Let’s see how fast you are," the Collector whispered, "when time decides to stop."
He pressed a red button on the side of the black box.
CLICK.
________________________________________
The change happened instantly.
There was no explosion. There was no flash of light. It was more like a heavy blanket had been thrown over the entire world.
The bright sunlight streaming into the greenhouse suddenly turned dull and grey. The vibrant green leaves of the plants looked like they were made of ash. The sound of the wind outside, the distant noise of the campus—it all just cut off, as if someone had unplugged the world.
Lloyd felt it immediately.
One second, he was ready to fire. His muscles were tense, his adrenaline was pumping, and the Nova Cannon was humming with power.
The next second, his body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
It wasn't paralysis. He could still move. But it felt like he was moving through thick, drying concrete. Or like he was deep underwater, at the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure crushed everything.
He tried to pull the trigger.
His finger moved, but it moved agonizingly slowly. He watched his own hand as if it belonged to someone else. It took a full second just to twitch his knuckle.
What... is... this? he thought. Even his thoughts felt slow, sluggish, like words trapped in syrup.
He looked at the end of his cannon. The beam of pure white plasma fired.
Usually, the Nova beam moved at the speed of light. It should have hit the Collector before the sound of the shot even registered.
But now?
The beam emerged from the barrel like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. It was a solid bar of white energy, inching forward through the air. It crackled and hissed, fighting against the grey atmosphere, but it was moving so slowly that Lloyd could see the individual ripples of energy in the plasma.
It was impossible. It broke every law of physics he knew.
Chapter : 1942
Across the room, the Collector stood perfectly still. No, not still. He was moving, but he looked normal. To Lloyd, stuck in this slow-motion hell, the Collector looked like a speedster.
The Collector stepped to the side. He didn't rush. He just casually took one step to the left.
The slow-moving beam of plasma passed harmlessly through the space where he had been standing a moment ago. It continued its slow crawl across the room, melting a hole through a fern before eventually hitting the far wall and exploding in a slow-motion blossom of fire that looked like a painting.
"Fascinating, isn't it?" the Collector said.
His voice was weird. To Lloyd, it sounded deep and warped, like a record playing at the wrong speed. But the words were clear enough.
The Collector looked at the black box in his hand. The gears on it were spinning wildly, glowing with a sickly purple light.
"It’s called a Chronos-Dampener," the Collector explained, walking toward Lloyd. He moved casually, stepping over the broken glass. "A gift from our partners off-world. It creates a localized field of high-density time dilation."
He stopped right in front of Lloyd. Lloyd tried to swing his arm, to hit the man with the heavy cannon.
He pushed with all his strength. His muscles screamed. Veins popped out on his neck.
But his arm moved inches per second. It was pathetic. He was a statue trying to fight a ghost.
The Collector watched Lloyd’s struggle with amusement. He reached out and tapped the side of the Nova Cannon with his finger. Tink.
"You see, Lord Ferrum," the Collector lectured, "your weapons rely on velocity. Your 'Nova' beam needs speed to penetrate. Your 'Void Steps' need instant movement to teleport. But in this field? Speed doesn't exist. Velocity is zero."
He leaned in close to Lloyd’s face. Lloyd could see the pores in his grey skin. He could smell his bad breath.
"You are the fastest man in the kingdom," the Collector whispered. "But in here, you are slower than a dying snail. All your power, all your fancy technology... it’s useless. Because I control the clock."
Lloyd felt a surge of panic. This was bad. This was worse than bad.
He tried to activate his [Void Steps]. He tried to tear a hole in space to escape the field.
He focused his mind. He visualized the destination behind the Collector. He pushed his mana into the spell.
Nothing happened.
Or rather, it happened too slowly. The blue sparks that usually appeared before he teleported fizzled out like wet matches. The reality around him was too thick, too heavy to tear. The dampener didn't just slow down his body; it slowed down the magic itself.
He was trapped. He was a fly in amber.
He looked past the Collector. He saw Airin.
She was frozen against the table. Her face was a mask of terror. She was trying to shout his name, but no sound was coming out yet. Her hand was raised, trying to cast a spell, but the light was just a tiny, slow spark on her fingertip.
She was stuck in the time trap too.
The Collector turned his back on Lloyd. He dismissed Lloyd as a threat completely.
"Now," the Collector said, walking toward Airin. "Where were we? Ah, yes. The battery."
Lloyd felt a rage so hot it should have burned the grey air away. He watched the man walk toward his wife. He watched the monster reach out a hand to grab her.
And he couldn't do anything. He was the strongest warrior in the North. He had a cannon that could blow up a tank. He had the strength to punch through steel.
But he couldn't move his feet.
Think, Lloyd commanded himself. Think, Evan. You are an engineer. This is a machine. Every machine has a flaw.
He analyzed the situation. The box—the Chronos-Dampener—was generating a field. It was manipulating the flow of time in a specific radius.
Physics. It was all physics. Time is relative. Gravity affects time. Speed affects time.
The Collector was moving normally. That meant he was wearing something, or holding something, that exempted him from the field. It was probably the box itself. As long as he held the box, he was the master of time.
Lloyd tried to push forward again. He strained against the invisible weight. It felt like walking through solid rubber.