Episode-973
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.
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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.
He was going to cut the future.
The Collector’s portal widened. A clawed hand began to reach out of it.