Chapter 453: Death
Kiryu panted. His hold on Kir’s mana had slipped at an inopportune moment, only to stabilize shortly before he heard Kir talking in his mind.
His opponent, a ferret-like creature made of living magma, lay shattered by the ice Kiryu had commanded, stripping it of heat with as much distance as he could maintain from the pyroclastic steam that his choice of technique generated.
"What the hell is that?!" Kir exclaimed as a feeling of being watched settled over Kiryu.
"I dunno. Lava monster I guess? Looked kinda like a ferret. So let’s just call it a fire ferret." Kiryu stepped up to the rubble and tilted his head, melting the ice and extracting a black and red gemstone, before tossing the mana crystal into Kir’s storage.
"Is this what you’ve been doing with my body? Going on some grand adventure?" the Kid whined.
"I’ve been trying to save the world, like your mom told me to when this thing crawled on your forehead. Then Luda got a message to me with a trio of misfits. One of them knows Rainier by the way. Dark little angel, that one. Also, there was a catkin twink who really wanted to follow me into this hellhole and a demon who said she knows you. Four arms, grey skin, pink hair. Ring any bells?"
"No," the Kid replied. "Where the hell are you?"
"In the Duat. There was a whole city on the first level."
"Full of people who wanted to kill me?"
"Nah. Everyone there was frozen. And not in ice. Frozen in time. There could have been maybe a couple million souls in that state, given how many I saw. Everyone was also frozen on the second level with all the farms."
Kiryu listened to the Kid’s exclamations as he remembered the sense of inconceivable knowledge it must have taken to selectively halt time. He’d checked for stores of food and drink, only to find everything covered in dust and rotting, except for the strongest of liquors whose bottles just looked aged.