Chapter 276: THREE MINUTES

[North Forest — Eastern Island — Day 74 — 4:38 PM]

Full Fragment mode was Alex actively choosing to activate the Fragments in a controlled way — the outfits, the scythes, the channels at maximum with the direction the bearer established.

The frenzy was all four Fragments responding to F7’s concrete reason simultaneously without any of them waiting their turn.

F1 first — the oldest in Alex, the one that had been in the channels longest, the one with ninety‑six corruption that, upon receiving F7’s signal, opened its channel completely before the other three finished processing that the signal had arrived.

F1’s scythe in his left hand — crimson, with the length and edge the Core Fragment produced when it had no threshold.

F4 a second later — the Veil opening its channel with maximum spiritual‑plane reading, the Harvester’s attire materializing from F4 because F4 was the Fragment that gave form to what the Harvester was visually, the black robes with the Veil’s violet veins at the edges.

F5 pushing from inside — Dominion orienting toward the angel’s will twenty meters away, the channel pushing for Alex to move toward the target before the attire was fully materialized.

F7 last — the previous cycle’s memory active at maximum, without the learned control filter, without the four‑and‑a‑half‑minute limit Alex had trained. The spiritual plane around Alex responding to F7 without direction — reality within a five‑meter radius beginning to lose the certainty of being exactly what it was.

All four at the same time.

Without coordination among them.

Without Alex directing which one did what.

---

The result was not clean.

The Harvester’s attire materialized but unstable — the robes with F4’s violet veins interrupted by F1’s crimson flames, which hadn’t waited for F4 to establish the visual base, the two Fragment expressions fighting for the same channel’s space like two currents of water in the same pipe.

F1’s scythe in his left hand with its active edge.

F4’s scythe trying to materialize in his right hand — the hand with the bone completely given way, F4’s channel finding that the physical anchor point wasn’t available and seeking the edge without the complete scythe, producing a violet blade in the air around his right hand without the handle, without the form, only the Veil’s edge floating where a scythe should have been if the hand could have held it.

F5 pushing Alex’s movement toward the angel before F7 finished deciding what to do with the environment’s reality.

F7 altering the ground beneath Alex’s feet — not in the angel’s direction, without direction, the memory Fragment responding to the frenzy without the control filter and changing the nearest space’s state because that was what F7 did when it had no specific instruction.

Alex taking a step and finding that the ground beneath that step had the texture of something that wasn’t exactly ground — F7 having slightly altered it in the previous second without Alex having asked.

---

[Alex HP: 21,400 — no initial change]

[F1 Corruption: 96.3% → 97.8%]

[F4 Corruption: 61.1% → 63.4%]

[F5 Corruption: 26.3% → 28.1%]

[F7 Corruption: 89.1% → 91.3%]

All four rising simultaneously with the frenzy active.

Not slowly — corruption rise in frenzy was different from rise in ordinary combat. In ordinary combat, corruption rose from sustained pressure. In frenzy, it rose because the four Fragments in conflict with each other used more of the bearer to resolve the conflict than they would if operating in coordination.

Three minutes before all four reached one hundred percent simultaneously.

---

The angel stopped.

It evaluated.

Not the two‑second evaluation it had used to process Grim’s transformation — a longer evaluation, the repressor finding something its parameters needed more time to classify.

Alex in frenzy with four Fragments in conflict was different from Alex in frenzy with four Fragments in coordination. The repressor could calculate the threat of a bearer with one active Fragment, with two, with four coordinated. The calculation was straightforward — raw power times efficiency times sustainable combat time.

Alex with four Fragments in conflict didn’t have that clean calculation.

The damage he could produce was unpredictable because none of the four knew exactly what the other three were going to do in the next second. F7 altering the ground in one direction. F5 pushing movement in another. F1 with the scythe tracing an arc that F4 hadn’t anticipated. F4 with the violet edge responding to F1’s arc by reading the spiritual plane of where the angel was while F5 had already pushed Alex’s body two meters closer.

Unpredictable.

The repressor calculated the collapse time.

Three minutes.

The angel waited.

---

Not completely.

The repressor wasn’t the kind of thing that waited without doing anything — it waited actively, using the three minutes to reestablish the channel to the Gods’ plane that Grim had interrupted. The reestablishment channel progressing during the three minutes while Alex exhausted himself.

Efficient.

The repressor evaluating that Alex in unstable frenzy for three minutes without a clear objective produced the collapse at no cost to the angel.

---

Alex felt it.

Not the angel’s calculation — the instability of the four Fragments in conflict. F1’s scythe tracing arcs that F5 completed in directions F4 hadn’t anticipated and that F7 altered the ground beneath mid‑arc. Alex’s body moving in four directions of simultaneous priority with none of the four clearly winning.

Powerful.

Completely without direction.

Twelve meters in four seconds — Alex moving through the clearing space with the specific efficiency of something that has too much energy and no coherent discharge point, the trees around the clearing receiving F1’s and F4’s arcs that no human target was in the correct trajectory to receive, the clearing’s ground altered in patches by F7 without pattern.

The angel kept waiting.

---

Raven from the barrier of forty‑two skeletons — standing, F3 active, her right arm nonfunctional — watching Alex in frenzy.

Watching the instability.

The four Fragments uncoordinated.

The angel waiting for the collapse.

"How long?" Raven said to Grim.

Grim had gotten back up — rising from the four meters the angel had sent him, his crimson flames evaluating.

**"Two minutes forty seconds since it started."** Grim. **"Twenty seconds elapsed. Two minutes twenty remaining before simultaneous collapse."**

"Can he control it?"

**"In the current state — no."**

"What does he need to control it?"

Grim looked at Alex moving through the clearing without direction.

**"What F7 doesn’t have at this moment."**

"What does F7 have at this moment?"

**"The reason that activated it."** Grim. **"That the team survives while Raven and Jessica decide."**

Raven processed that.

"Is the team surviving?"

**"For now."** Grim. **"The angel is waiting."**

"And when the frenzy collapses?"

**"The angel stops waiting."**

Raven looked at Alex.

At the four Fragments’ instability. At F7 altering the ground in patches. At F1’s scythe tracing aimless arcs.

Then she looked at the girls behind the barrier.

At Seraph on the ground at zero HP. At Emily with Purifying Light in passive healing reaching Seraph from a distance. At Kira standing, upright, Predator’s Sense active. At Maya with Akari.

And at Jessica.

Jessica with fourteen thousand HP and F6 still active — faint, at the limit of what her body could sustain with that accumulated damage, but active.

Entropy’s completely black eyes looking at Raven.

---

Jessica spoke first.

"The skeleton barrier buys time," said Jessica. Her voice with the same clinical precision as always even though her body had fourteen thousand HP and F6 at its limit. "The angel isn’t going to attack the barrier while Alex is in frenzy. Too much unpredictability in the clearing — the repressor doesn’t want to process two unstable variables simultaneously."

"I know," said Raven.

"Two minutes and twenty seconds."

"I know."

"If the frenzy collapses without the Fragments having found direction—" Jessica.

"I know." Raven. Without needing Jessica to finish the sentence because Raven had calculated the same.

Raven looked at Alex.

Her right hand went to her stomach.

Not by instinct this time.

Deliberate.

---

Alex moving through the clearing with the four Fragments in conflict.

F1’s scythe in an arc toward the north tree — the tree that already had marks from previous fights, which F1 found as an available target because the scythe needed a target and the angel wasn’t in the direct radius.

F4 reading that the north tree wasn’t the priority target and redirecting the momentum toward the angel twenty meters away.

F5 pushing movement in the angel’s direction before F1 and F4 finished resolving their conflict.

F7 altering the ground under Alex’s step in the north tree’s direction while his body was already going toward the angel because of F5.

The result: Alex moving toward the angel with the altered ground beneath feet going toward the north tree and the scythe in the north tree’s arc while F4’s violet edge oriented toward the angel and F5 pushed all the weight forward.

Three steps before the four Fragments reached any agreement about what Alex’s body was doing.

[F1 Corruption: 97.8% → 98.9%]

Ninety‑eight point nine.

F1’s whisper was no longer a whisper — it was the channel at the maximum the Fragment could produce when corruption approached one hundred percent, the fragmented Harvester’s pressure pushing toward the two missing Fragments with the urgency of something that could feel it was twenty meters from completion.

*Take them.*

*TAKE THEM.*

Alex at the clearing’s center.

The two minutes remaining in his body as physical pressure — not the corruption that hurt in the channels but the time counted in his own heart’s rhythm, in the breathing the frenzy accelerated, in the weight of four Fragments using the bearer as a battlefield between them.

The angel waiting.

The channel to the Gods’ plane at eighty‑three percent reestablished.

Forty seconds remaining in the frenzy before collapse.