Chapter 1409: The Time-Torn Gale

Ethan had no choice but to keep changing direction.

The lasers contained an overwhelming concentration of time power. A direct hit could age someone to death in seconds—or regress them into infancy, leaving them just as helpless.

Andona closed in from the side.

Her golden blade absorbed Divine Power, shining brighter by the second. She adjusted her position in midair, gripped the sword with both hands, and brought it down on Vesperhart with all her strength.

A wave of holy sword energy crashed down from above.

Vesperhart was still chasing Ethan, and several beams even grazed past Noxhart. Noxhart merely backed away without warning it.

There was no need.

Vesperhart sensed the power in the golden blade and vanished, reappearing in the distance.

Andona didn’t pull back her attack.

The moment she swung, she had already been prepared to sacrifice the weapon.

Vesperhart switched targets.

The clock around its neck turned toward the golden blade. Light contracted across the clock face before firing a more concentrated time ray.

The beam struck the sword.

The long, sharp blade began to shrink. As its timeline reversed, the Divine Power within it steadily drained away. The finished weapon regressed into a crude, incomplete form before losing every trace of energy.

The sword was completely ruined.

Andona didn’t hesitate.

Golden light reappeared around her.

One blade.

Ten.

A hundred.

Thousands upon thousands of golden blades gradually took shape, filling the entire space around Vesperhart.

They weren’t lined up along a single path. Instead, they crisscrossed vertically and horizontally to form a dense grid, sealing off the stag from the front, the sides, above, and below.

Every sword was angled differently.

Even if Vesperhart fired another time laser, a single beam could never eliminate them all.

The lasers chasing Ethan disappeared. He immediately steadied himself in the air, turned his palm, and released the energy sphere he had been building. It shot toward Vesperhart along a straight white trail.

After launching it, he didn’t move any closer. He stayed where he was as white lightning traveled down his arm, inch by inch, into his palm. A new energy sphere slowly formed between his fingers.

This particular gift needed time to prepare.

Vesperhart looked up at the incoming sphere, all four hooves planted firmly on the ground. Two pale-white shields rose around it in succession, while highly compressed energy gathered between its antlers.

A sphere of light shot from its antlers and raced upward to meet Ethan’s attack.

The two energies collided above the center of the battlefield. White light spread in every direction, followed by a shock wave that shook the ground and swept away the surrounding rubble and broken branches.

They had already seen clashes like this too many times to even look away from their targets.

What mattered was Vesperhart’s next move.

It glanced at Ethan and Andona, both still gathering power, and decided not to wait. A third time shield formed close around its body, while the clock at its neck began glowing with a strange white light.

Its hands jumped forward several marks, then slid backward. As they swung repeatedly between the two directions, an unfinished laser began gathering at the center of the clock face.

Heavy pressure descended across the entire battlefield.

One by one, the others stopped forming their energy spheres. The unstable power trembled in their palms, and even its direction of flow became erratic. If they tried to release it now, the energy might reverse course and surge back into their bodies.

They drew in their power and retreated.

Only Andona continued.

The golden blades behind her had fully solidified. Every sword occupied a different angle, their edges crisscrossing to form a colossal net that covered every direction. Holy radiance flowed between the blades, driving back the surrounding darkness and turning Andona’s eyes pure gold.

She slowly opened them and pointed the blade in her right hand forward.

Thousands of sword points turned toward Vesperhart.

Then the golden net closed.

Blades shot in from every direction. Some skimmed over the ground, while others plunged from high above. The rest curved around Vesperhart’s back, sealing off every route of escape. Their overlapping whistles filled the air as thin golden lines sliced across the entire space.

Ethan completed his attack at the same moment.

He pushed his energy sphere forward. White lightning immediately fell from above and wrapped around its surface. Then time power compressed the distance ahead of it, accelerating the sphere even further as it shot through a gap in Andona’s sword formation, straight toward Vesperhart.

Vesperhart finally opened its eyes.

It raised both front hooves and drove the rear two deep into the ground, collapsing the dirt around them. The laser gathered within the clock face fired first, striking Ethan’s energy sphere with perfect accuracy.

White light exploded in midair.

Before the resulting arcs of electricity could fade, Vesperhart turned. Its pupils vanished, replaced by two rapidly spinning clock faces.

The time shields expanded.

Every golden blade that entered their range abruptly changed speed. The swords, which had been advancing from different directions, all accelerated at once, as if an invisible hand were forcing them toward the center.

The clock around Vesperhart’s neck lit up again.

A second laser swept across the battlefield.

The clustered golden blades faded and shrank one after another, finally vanishing into the white light.

Andona’s brow tightened slightly.

Her blades should have arrived simultaneously from different directions, but Vesperhart had used its time power to bring every sword together ahead of schedule. The attack meant to seal it in had instead given it the opportunity to erase all the blades at once.

Ethan didn’t stop.

The energy wings behind him spread wide as several rings of white air expanded from his back. He shot through the lingering light of the explosion and dove straight down from above Vesperhart.

A new energy sphere was pressed tightly into his palm, merging with his clenched fist.

The distance vanished.

Three feet.

Two.

One.

Just before his fist struck Vesperhart, Ethan felt the air around him change.

The time power flowing through Vesperhart had fallen into conflict. One part was accelerating while another was reversing, the opposing currents tearing at each other. The disturbance spread outward from the clock until it covered Vesperhart’s entire body.

A temporal maelstrom formed.

The clock around its neck spun forward one moment and backward the next. The clock faces in Vesperhart’s eyes also began turning in opposite directions.

It raised its head and met Ethan’s gaze.

The power building around it erupted upward.

Before Ethan’s fist could land, a chaotic pulling force seized his arm. Part of the energy had already left his palm, while the rest retreated through his wrist and back into his body. His energy wings flickered behind him, their rhythm completely disrupted.

A strange ripple spread outward from Vesperhart.

Wherever it passed, broken branches rotted away, then returned to fresh green. Dust thrown into the air rose for a moment before retracing its exact path back to the ground.

Something unfamiliar was mixed into the time power. The two forces twisted together, and Ethan’s instincts screamed a warning.

He couldn’t get any closer.

Ethan forcibly folded his wings and used the sudden loss of momentum to throw himself backward. Instead of retreating alone, he crossed the battlefield and reached Andona’s side. He thrust both hands forward, raising a time shield marked by flowing white gradations in front of them.

The gale struck a moment later.

The violent wind swept up rubble and broken wood, hurling them in every direction along chaotic temporal paths.

Vesperhart stepped onto empty air and walked toward the two of them, one step at a time. The clock was torn away from its neck by the gale and swung above it, black specks of light flickering around the clock face.

"If you disappear..."

Vesperhart’s voice came through in fragments, torn apart by the wind.

"Then no one will ever know..."

It repeated the words over and over. With every step it took, the gale intensified.

The detached clock rose higher and higher, yet Vesperhart’s power didn’t weaken. Instead, it broke through its former limits.

Ethan watched the clock in the air and quickly reached a conclusion.

It wasn’t merely a tool Vesperhart used to control time.

It had also been restraining Vesperhart all along.

Now that the clock was no longer attached, those restraints were gone.

Noxhart had noticed the change as well. Hidden in the shadows, it pawed restlessly at the ground, unable to conceal the excitement in its eyes.

"Yes... Yes, that’s it!"