Schlacht the Omniscient looked at me.
I had deactivated Pseudo-Haniel. My violet hair fell around a face of porcelain and alloy, marked by the seams of my construction. My eyes were not human; they were glowing optical sensors, cold and devoid of life.
Schlacht didn't flinch. He simply observed, his many eyes taking in the reality of the monster that had come to kill him.
"An outsider," he said, his voice echoing in the silent chamber. "A being who does not exist in the future I saw. The fate of demonkind will not end by your hand."
He spread his arms. "Today, I wager my life for the continuation of my race..."
BANG!
I didn't let him finish his speech.
I raised the revolver I had materialized, a modified construct based on Zafkiel's design, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet wasn't lead; it was a capsule of compressed energy designed to bypass magical defenses and preserve the target's body for later analysis.
Crack!
shatter!
snap!
Layer after layer of invisible barriers shattered around the demon. Schlacht had prepared well; he had stacked dozens of high-level shields around his body. They deflected the bullet slightly, pushing its trajectory down.
Instead of piercing his brain, it slammed into his chest.
"Guh!"
Schlacht clutched his wound. Golden veins spread rapidly from the impact point, crawling across his skin like a circuit board.
"What... is this?" he whispered, staring at the glowing lines.
"Confirmation: Your foresight is incomplete," I stated, leveling the gun again. "You cannot predict data you do not understand."
"Is that so?" A grim smile touched his lips. "So this is the 'unknown' I could not see."
He didn't panic. He didn't try to run.
"However," he hissed, "even this margin of error... is within my calculations!"
"Activate!"
The floor beneath us erupted with light. The entire chamber was not just a room; it was a single, colossal magic circle.
I had scanned the room upon entry. There were no other demons, no hidden soldiers. Schlacht was alone. He had turned the very ground into a weapon.
I didn't hesitate. I adjusted my aim.
BANG!
A second shot rang out.
This time, there were no shields left to stop it. The bullet punched clean through Schlacht's skull. The golden corruption spread instantly to his brain, severing all neural and magical connections.
His body went limp, eyes rolling back as he collapsed to the stone floor.
Dead.
But the spell did not stop.
The light intensified, blinding and absolute. It wasn't an attack. It didn't burn or crush. It simply was.
In 0.2 seconds, the chamber was consumed by a white void.
I stood my ground, my sensors recording everything. The light washed over me, but my internal systems registered no damage. My shields held. My body remained stable.
Then, the light vanished.
I was still standing in the same chamber. The stone walls were the same. The glowing crystals were the same.
But something was different.
Schlacht's body was gone.
I scanned the room. No traces of ash, no residual mana from a teleportation spell. He had simply vanished.
But that wasn't the only anomaly.
I checked my internal chronometer against the atmospheric data. The air pressure, the position of the mana currents, the subtle vibrations of the earth... everything was slightly off.
"Query," I whispered to the empty room. "Has the time... changed?"
"Analysis: Local temporal flow remains constant. However, environmental data indicates significant degradation."
I ran a finger along the stone wall. It came away coated in thick, gray dust. The glowing mana crystals that had illuminated the room seconds ago were now dim, flickering like dying embers. The magic circle on the floor was faded, its lines broken by centuries of erosion.
"Conclusion: I have been displaced into the future. Approximately three hundred years, based on the decay rate of the stone."
It was a clever trap.
Schlacht knew he couldn't kill me. So, he had opted for removal. By banishing me to the future, he hoped to remove the "anomaly" from his present timeline, securing the Demon King's victory in the era I had left behind.
"Ingenious," I admitted. "For a mage limited to the logic of this world."
My Pseudo-Zafkiel hummed within me, resonating with the shifted timeline. Because I possessed the concept of Time, I understood exactly what had happened.
If I were a normal being, even a powerful one, this would be checkmate. I would be stranded in a future where the war was already decided, powerless to change the past.
But Schlacht had made a fatal miscalculation. He had assumed I was bound by the laws of his reality.
I placed my hand over the crystal in my chest.
"Dimensional Engine: Activate."
"Target: Temporal Anchor - Point Zero."
To a traveler of dimensions, time was just another coordinate.
….
The Present:-
"Hah... hah..."
The corpse on the magic circle twitched.
Schlacht the Omniscient raised his head. A hole had been punched through his skull, and golden veins of energy were consuming his flesh, but he was not dead. I had aimed carefully. The shot was fatal, yes, but not instant. I needed his brain intact to harvest his memories later.
He dragged himself across the floor, leaving a trail of black blood.
"It worked," he wheezed, a bloody smile twisting his lips. "Of all the futures I saw... this was the only path to victory."
He had seen me. He had seen the golden light that would erase his master. And he had devised this desperate gambit to send the monster away.
"Now... the Demon King... is safe..."
He forced himself to concentrate. He needed to verify it. He needed to see the new future he had created, a future without the Violet Demon.
"Foresight."
His many eyes glowed as he cast his vision forward into the river of time. He expected to see a diverging path, a world where the demons triumphed.
But he saw nothing of the sort.
The future remained exactly the same. The Demon King fell. The demons were slaughtered. The golden light consumed everything.
"Why...?"
Schlacht's eyes widened in horror. "Why hasn't the trajectory changed?! She's gone! I sent her away!"
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A sound echoed in the silent chamber.
Footsteps. Calm, rhythmic, and terrifyingly familiar.
Schlacht froze. The blood in his veins turned to ice.
"No..." he whispered. "It can't be."
He slowly turned his head toward the center of the room, where the magic circle still glowed faintly.
….
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