88 - Day 3 part 1(s)

Come to think of it, why was the influence of the witch's soul fragment so strong? If anything my soul should have been strong enough to consume it and make it my own, considering it wasn't torn into fragments. That would have been the usual outcome, I can't dismiss the possibility of another enemy.

"What's wrong? You look like you were hiding something troublesome again." (Iyori) She had her eyelids lowered halfway, freely displaying her displeasure. Come to think of it, was it finally time for Iyori? Usually Fez was the one to point out if I was acting weird, James would just indulge me into keeping it to myself. Did they purposely stay out to let Iyori grow close? Or has she actually improved to this point by herself.

"Hahaha!". Laughing to the point some tears came out, I regained my composure as I got ready to answer their questions.

"Eh? Why are you laughing?" (Iyori) With a pleasant look of surprise, she seemed to also regained her composure seeing that there was nothing wrong.

" Well, she was probably trying to place a value on how close you've gotten to her, then she jusy realised you can't place values on such a valuable feeling. Well, was I right? " (Fez) With just a tiny amount of smugness, she turned to my direction, awaiting for my answer.

" Jeez are you a psychic? I should have defense against those and yet you still read my mind. Well it only proves how long we've been together. " A strange feeling wells up in my chest, I beam a relaxed smile that hasn't shown up in a while.

"Yeah compared to back then, it is so much more better now. You would pretty much gamble your life just to make friends with me, in the end you threw that position away because you didn't have any free time. What a joke! Haha~" (Fez)

"What are you talking about? If I hadn't done that, would you have open up and give my life a chance to get this far?" A slight flush manifests on Fez's face, though she's unaware so she was still acting smug. In any case it was true, we came so far. Was this the end of the journey?

*Vuuuu*, a tiny shock wave unnoticeable for the human skin was picked up by my [omni detection]. Where is it? Next to James?! 'wrath' "[Stop time]." right below his waist, and next to his right toe, space itself was somehow collapsing while releasing little energy. It had almost gone out of my detection due to many things in the world creating the same amount of vibrations to camouflage it. But this was different, other than vibrations there was a massive shift in space itself. A blackhole was deliberately formed, it was an attack.

The miniature black hole was immediately stopped and dissipated into thin air. Why was it able to dissipate in time stop? It was all a trap. Countless rifts in space formed, hundreds no..., thousands decided to show up just to cut off my escape route. If it was that easy to kill me, I wouldn't have gone this far. [Control space] was enough to instantly dispell all of it, freeing my field of vision. With [omni detection] it wasn't necessary, but seeing with your eyes instead of a skill is just one of the things you learn to appreciate.

Of course, the trap didn't work at all. Manipulating 'wrath', it was extremely easy to get my teammates out of stop time and allow them to move. Iyori on the other hand had already freed herself right after I dispelled all the black holes. This enemy was unseen, it was the first time someone was able to escape the gaze of [omni detection]. Even if you stayed still and pretended to be stuck in stopped time, [omni detection] could view other factors like your heartbeat, humidity, blood flow, light flow, and such.

This person was somehow completely gone, there weren't any distortions in space other than the black holes so there had to be another method. The enemy couldn't have used the black holes as camouflage as space would still be distorted, or my [omni detection] would have picked up on it back then. So what the hell was he using to hide himself?! Hm... Distortion... If there weren't any distortions...then was he able to hide under reality itself? Far from the negatives of the time and space axis, this person has somehow managed to hide in a third dimensional axis. How annoying.

Just how would I be able to attack him? He was literally from a superior realm if he was able to travel in a higher dimensional axis, [omni detection] was completely useless on him. Even if he could be detected, there was no way for me to reach him. Strange orbs started appearing in the air. It was similar to that time with 'lust', it was made of a material that kept changing in state. It was the forced combination of everything harmful in existence, it never decides on a single shape and was also wriggling like an unknown horror. Reality itself could not process what was happening in that single space, so everyone just sees it as a mosaic substance, our perception itself was being attacked. If we looked at it for long amounts of time, our sanity will run out.

Well, just like the last time I encountered it, it was easily blocked by [control space]... Not! For some strange reason it had broken through, it seemed like that would be the end. One of it has reached the ground next to us, purple roots spread out with the orb as its source and ensnares everything in its range. It was not an exaggeration to say it was comparable to [control space], everything in the surroundings were sliced apart like cheese.

And the other orbs were starting to reach us, yes there was no doubt we would all be sliced up. There could very possibly be a material that attacks the soul, it wasn't uncommon considering the presence of undead monsters, but those weapons were usually weak to other monsters. It was able to go past my spatial barrier, did that meant that it could freely travel across the time axis as well?

Activating 'wrath', I rewinded the time of the orbs. The purple roots were slicing apart atoms itself, if I let time flow as normal, the whole city would be gone. So much energy was being built up in the area. Well, I'll make use of that energy though. " 'Pride'." Using mana to convert the frozen energy into more mana, I sent all of it into the orbs and used 'wrath' to rewind the orbs time even further. To send it back to the enemy's soul, I had to use [True death] and [fate lock], his hiding was no longer an obstacle .