Taufik exhaled slowly.
"…Heh"
A faint grin returned to his face.
"Just woke up and already giving orders, huh?"
His grip tightened.
"Fine," His eyes burned with focus. "Then let's do it your way"
"…Word Magic: Time Stop"
*Swoosh*
For a moment, time slowed.
Then... It stopped.
The wind froze mid-current.
Clouds halted in their violent churn.
Lightning hung motionless across the sky like fractured veins of light.
Even the shockwave… stopped.
Everything became still.
Absolute.
And then the cost came.
Taufik's mana drained instantly, ripped from his body at a terrifying rate.
One second… The flow of mana collapsed.
Two seconds… There was nothing left.
And then...
It began consuming his life force.
His breath hitched slightly as something deeper was pulled from within him. A single strand of his hair turned white... then more followed.
*Sigh*
"…I still can't recklessly stop time, huh?" His voice echoed faintly within a world that had lost all color.
Black.
White.
Stillness.
"…Hm?"
Taufik's head turned sharply.
Within the frozen world… something moved.
No.
Not movement.
Awareness.
He felt it.
Gazes.
Plural.
Watching him.
Even with time completely halted, there were… beings that still existed within it. Not freely. Not fully. But enough to resist his Word Magic.
A faint smirk tugged at his lips.
"…We've got some interesting fellows gathering here, huh?"
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"Well… I'll deal with that later"
[Master, your life force is being consumed at an extreme rate. If this continues, the same incident that occurred in Draco will repeat]
"I know," Taufik replied calmly. "…Just give me a moment"
Without hesitation, he converted his life force again into mana.
The cost showed immediately.
His hair turned completely white.
"…False World: Mirror Realm"
*Swosh!*
A massive surge of mana erupted from his body.
At the same time... Time resumed.
The frozen world shattered back into motion.
Wind roared.
Lightning struck.
The shockwave surged forward once more.
But before it could reach him... Reality changed.
The world inverted.
Not just visually... Conceptually.
Above became below.
Distance lost meaning.
Direction became uncertain.
Everything around Taufik folded inward like a reflection being forced into existence.
The sky cracked and a second world emerged.
A mirrored layer of reality.
A False World.
Then...
*BOOM!!!*
The shockwave struck.
Not the real world.
But the reflection.
For a single instant... Reality hesitated.
It could not decide which world to break.
The original or the mirror.
Then...
*Crack*
A fracture spread across the Mirror Realm.
Thin at first.
Then widening.
The surface of the False World splintered like glass under unbearable pressure. Space warped violently along the cracks, distorting everything they touched.
The shockwave didn't stop.
It pushed.
Relentless.
Inside the Mirror Realm, Taufik stood at the center.
Unmoving.
Watching.
Wounded
The reflection around him trembled.
Not collapsing yet... But no longer stable.
And then... Another crack echoed.
Louder.
Deeper.
Closer.
The Mirror Realm… was beginning to break.
---
- Outside.
The moment time resumed, Taufik vanished.
To most observers, it was abrupt, one instant he stood at the center of the storm, the next he was simply… gone.
No trace. No transition. Just absence. For a brief moment, the world stilled.
Not because the disturbance had ended, but because no one understood what had just occurred.
Confusion spread.
Even among the watching entities, there was a pause.
But not all of them were blind to it.
A few had seen.
A few had felt it.
Time had been forced to kneel… and then released.
Tiamat's gaze remained fixed on the space where Taufik had disappeared.
Her expression did not change.
But something deeper did.
A faint tension lingered behind her eyes.
"...To stop time on that scale…" she murmured, her voice layered with something ancient and restrained. "This new Aboriginal Being of Earth… is far beyond acceptable limits"
There was no exaggeration in her tone.
Only calculation.
"And that mana…" she continued quietly. "It is too pure. Too complete. An existence that defies all known structure"
For the first time, a trace of caution surfaced in her gaze.
"Remaining too close is dangerous"
A pause.
Yet her eyes did not turn away.
"But… withdrawing now would be a waste"
Curiosity outweighed fear.
And so, she continued to watch.
Elsewhere, the same realization spread among the other aware members of the Null Pantheon.
Those who had perceived the halt in time did not react with panic.
They reacted with interest.
With anticipation.
With hunger.
Fear existed.
But it was not enough to make them leave.
Not yet.
To the rest of the world, however... There was only confusion.
The sky still churned violently.
Storms still raged.
But the source of it all had vanished.
Some believed it had ended.
Others believed something worse was coming.
They were right.
*Crack*
A sound split the sky.
Sharp.
Unnatural.
Every gaze snapped upward.
Space itself fractured.
A thin line appeared in midair, like a scratch across glass.
Then it spread.
Widening.
Branching.
Multiplying.
Reality itself began to break apart, as if something inside it was forcing its way out.
The sky shattered.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
Fragments of space peeled away, falling like shards of broken glass, dissolving before they could reach the ground.
And from within that fracture… He stepped out.
Taufik reappeared.
But not as he was before.
His hair, once black, had turned completely white.
Not partially.
Not fading.
Completely.
A visible mark of exhaustion that went beyond mana.
His clothes were torn, barely holding together under the strain they had endured.
And his body… Covered in wounds.
Thin cuts layered across his skin, some shallow, some deep, all drawn not by weapons, but by pressure alone.
Blood traced faint lines across him, carried away by the unstable currents of air around his body.
Yet he remained standing.
Unwavering.
Silence fell.
Not peaceful.
Not calm.
Heavy.
Oppressive.
Every entity watching him felt it.
The difference.
Before… he was untouchable.
Now… he looked vulnerable.
And that changed everything.
Curiosity sharpened.
Pity surfaced.
Alertness heightened.
And for some… Greed awakened.
Because for the first time since his return… Taufik no longer looked like an absolute.
He looked like something that could be tested.
A being brought low.
A moment of weakness.
An opportunity.
Their gazes shifted.
Not to him.
But to the weapon.
The katana still hovered beside Taufik, suspended in the fractured air as though untouched by the chaos surrounding it.
Now… it was complete.
Creation and Destruction no longer clashed within it.
They coexisted.
Perfectly balanced.
Perfectly harmonized.
And that… was wrong.
The space around the blade warped unnaturally, bending inward as if reality itself was trying to devour it. The laws of existence rejected it instinctively, like a body rejecting a foreign poison.
But it couldn't.
Because the moment reality tried to erase it… Creation sustained it.
And the moment it tried to stabilize it… Destruction unraveled that attempt.
A paradox.
An existence that denied interference.
That was how it was born.
The strongest weapon in the universe.
And now… Everyone wanted it.
Greed spread faster than fear.
Because this was more than power.
This was freedom.
With that blade, Earth would no longer matter. Worlds would no longer matter. Even the boundaries between realities would become meaningless.
If they claimed it now… There would be no one left who could stop them.
And Taufik…
In his current state… Bleeding. Still... Silent.
He looked like a man who had reached his limit.
This was their only chance.
If not now… Then never.
---
"THAT WEAPON IS MINE!"
The roar tore through the fractured sky.
One of the Outer Gods, a member of the Null Pantheon, surged forward from the void where it had concealed itself. Its form defied structure, shifting and collapsing with every movement, something that could not be fully perceived by mortal or divine senses alike.
It didn't hesitate.
Didn't calculate.
Didn't fear.
Only desire drove it forward.
But it was not alone.
Another presence emerged.
Then another.
And another.
One became many.
Dozens of distorted existences tore through space, abandoning concealment as they rushed toward a single point.
The blade.
None of them spoke now.
There was no need.
Their intent was the same.
Seize it. Claim it... Own it.
Taufik no longer mattered.
In their eyes, he was already finished.
A broken existence clinging to the aftermath of something he should never have attempted.
But not all of them moved.
Some remained where they were.
Watching.
Silent.
Calculating.
They had seen it.
That brief moment.
The moment time itself had stopped.
The moment Taufik had disappeared.
The moment reality had… failed.
This was not caution born from fear.
It was instinct.
A wounded lion was still a lion.
And what stood before them… Was not merely wounded.
It was something that had just rewritten the rules of existence… and survived.
So they waited.
Because if this was a trap…
Those rushing forward now... Were nothing more than the first to die.
---
The sky was still breaking.
Fragments of reality drifted like shattered glass, dissolving into nothing before they could fall.
At the center of it all… Taufik stood.
Bleeding.
Breathing.
Still.
His white hair moved slightly in the unstable air, strands drifting as if even gravity had forgotten its purpose.
And yet... He did not fall.
....
...
..
.
