Episode-972
Chapter : 1943
The Collector reached Airin. He grabbed her by the throat. Even in slow motion, Lloyd could see Airin flinch. He could see the fear in her eyes as the man lifted her off the ground.
"Such a waste of time," the Collector sighed. "But don't worry. The extraction process is painful, but it lasts a long time. You'll have plenty of time to regret fighting me."
He pulled a dagger from his belt. It was a jagged, black blade. He wasn't going to kill her; he was going to cut her to start a ritual.
Lloyd’s mind raced. Fire wouldn't work; it was too slow. Lightning wouldn't work; it was too slow. Even his thoughts felt like they were dragging through mud.
He needed something that didn't obey the laws of physics. He needed something that didn't care about velocity or mass or time.
He needed a concept.
He looked deep inside his soul. He looked past Iffrit, the demon of fire. He looked past Fang Fairy, the spirit of storms. They were powerful, but they were part of the physical world. They were elemental. Elements obeyed laws.
He went deeper. He went to the dark, quiet place in his mind where he kept the things he didn't understand yet.
He found a door he had never opened.
It was a new power he had sensed but never used. A spirit he had acquired but never summoned because it was too weird, too abstract. It wasn't a monster or a beast. It was... an idea.
The Collector raised the dagger.
Lloyd stopped fighting the grey air physically. He stopped trying to punch or shoot. He stood perfectly still.
He closed his eyes.
If I can't move fast enough to stop him, Lloyd thought, then I need to change the definition of movement.
He reached for the new spirit. He grasped the handle of a power that felt cold, metallic, and ancient. It felt like the ticking of a grandfather clock in a silent house.
He didn't scream. He didn't roar. He simply whispered a name in his mind.
Zafira.
The air in the greenhouse changed.
The grey heaviness didn't leave, but a new sound entered the silence.
TICK.
It was loud. It sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil.
TOCK.
The Collector froze. He looked around, confused. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.
Behind Lloyd, the air began to distort. It didn't swirl like wind or burn like fire. It cracked. Giant, spectral gears—gold and brass, the size of carriage wheels—began to materialize in the air. They interlocked and started to turn with a heavy, grinding noise that vibrated in the floor.
Grind... Click... Whirrrr.
A shadow grew behind Lloyd. It was tall and thin. It looked like a woman wearing a long, Victorian funeral dress made of black smoke and clock parts. She had pale skin like a porcelain doll, and her left eye was a glowing golden clock face.
She wrapped her cold, ghostly arms around Lloyd’s shoulders. She leaned close to his ear.
"Time is not a river, Master," a voice whispered in Lloyd's head. It sounded like a ticking metronome. "Time is a rope. And ropes can be cut."
The Collector turned around, his eyes wide with fear. He saw the gears. He saw the ghost. He saw Lloyd standing there, not struggling anymore, but waiting.
"What... what is that?" the Collector stammered. He clutched his black box tighter. "My device controls time! Nothing can move!"
Lloyd opened his eyes. His Blue Ring Eyes were gone. In their place, his left eye had turned into a spinning golden clock face, matching the spirit behind him.
Two ornate sword handles appeared in Lloyd’s hands. They weren't made of steel. They were made of solidified time. One was long and thin—the Minute Hand. The other was short and thick—the Hour Hand.
Lloyd gripped them. He didn't feel slow anymore. He didn't feel heavy. He felt... inevitable.
"You control the clock," Lloyd said. His voice wasn't distorted anymore. It was crystal clear, cutting through the dampener field like a razor.
He raised the long, thin sword.
"But I," Lloyd said, "am the one who cuts the hands off."
The Collector stepped back, terrified. He didn't understand what was happening, but he knew that the rules of his game had just been broken.
Lloyd took a step. It wasn't a step through space. It was a step through the timeline.
The grey world shattered.
________________________________________
Chapter : 1944
The world inside the glass building had turned into a nightmare of grey mud. It wasn't real mud, of course. It was the air itself. The air had become thick, heavy, and impossible to move through.
Lloyd Ferrum stood in the center of the room, his muscles screaming in pain. He was trying to push his arm forward, just a few inches, but it felt like he was trying to push a mountain. His heart was beating slowly, thumping against his ribs like a heavy drum in a deep cave. Thump... wait... Thump.
Every part of him was fighting. His mind was racing, screaming at his body to move, to shoot, to do something. But his body couldn't obey. He was trapped in a layer of time that was moving at a snail's pace.
In front of him, the Collector was smiling. The man in the dark robes didn't look scary anymore; he looked bored. He looked like a man who had already won the game and was just waiting for the prize. He tapped the black box in his hand—the machine that was causing all of this.
"You don't understand, do you?" the Collector said. His voice sounded strange to Lloyd. It was deep and warped, like a voice speaking underwater. "You are trying to use speed. You are trying to use force. But speed requires time. If you want to move from Point A to Point B, it takes a certain amount of seconds. If I take away the seconds... you can never reach Point B."
Lloyd gritted his teeth. He understood the science. He was an engineer in his past life. He knew about physics. Speed equals distance divided by time. If time becomes zero, movement becomes impossible.
He looked at his right arm. The massive white and gold cannon, the weapon called Nova, was fully charged. It was humming with enough energy to blow a hole in a castle wall. But the beam of light coming out of it looked like a solid bar of white plastic. It was inching forward, slower than a growing plant.
It’s useless, Lloyd thought. The realization hit him harder than a punch.
He tried to summon his fire spirit, Iffrit. He thought about the raging heat, the explosion of magma. But then he stopped. Fire is a chemical reaction. It needs oxygen. It needs movement. In this grey world, the fire would just freeze. It would be a painting of an explosion, not a real one.
He thought about Fang Fairy, his storm spirit. Lightning. Lightning is the fastest thing in nature. Surely, lightning could break this?
No, his logical mind answered. Lightning is just electrons moving through the air. It’s still movement. It still obeys the laws of nature. If the laws are broken, the lightning won't work.
For the first time in a long time, Lloyd felt a spike of genuine fear. Not for himself, but for the woman standing frozen against the table behind the Collector.
Airin.
She was stuck just like him. Her eyes were wide, filled with tears that wouldn't fall because gravity was working too slowly. She looked like a statue of a terrified girl. The Collector was walking toward her, his hand reaching out to grab her hair. Because he held the black box, he was the only thing in the room that was "real." He was the only thing that could move.
"Physics is a trap," Lloyd muttered in his mind. The words echoed in his head. "I built my whole life on physics. I built guns. I built machines. I built logic. And now, a simple box has turned all my science into garbage."
The Collector laughed. He reached Airin and brushed a finger against her cheek. Airin flinched, but in slow motion, it looked like a graceful dance move.
"Such a powerful Lord," the Collector mocked, not even looking at Lloyd. "You have the power of a god, but you are stuck in the mud. This is the power of the Fire Fly Corporation. We don't just fight you with magic swords. We fight you with the laws of the universe. We change the rules, and you lose."
Lloyd stopped struggling.
He stopped trying to push his arm. He stopped trying to force the cannon to fire. He let his muscles relax. Standing there, frozen in the grey air, he closed his eyes.
If the game was rigged, he couldn't win by playing harder. He had to change the game.