Chapter 176: Time (1)
"Illusion." Lynn's lips parted once more.
The wizard tower rotated one hundred and eighty degrees with a rumble, and the green eye on the back of the Broken Horn burst with intense light!
Endless green light washed over the figure in the distance. The spilling glow caught the eyes of many commoners in the city. Some raised their heads, strange smiles twisting their faces.
Wealth, power, beauty, desire...
Countless commoners sank into depravity. Even if blades were to strike them, they would never wake from the illusion.
Meanwhile, the wizard caught in the direct gaze of the green eye shuddered.
The vast majority of defensive spells were designed to ward off physical and elemental damage; mental attacks operated on an entirely different level.
Of course, anyone who could become an official wizard possessed methods to protect their mind, but against this green light, those defenses were as fragile as paper.
In an instant, the wizard fell into the illusion.
A sinister smile crept across his face. "This is what happens when you offend our Noble Wizard Alliance. You provoked us first, so killing you now isn't against the rules."
Relying on his formidable memory, Lynn memorized the face. It belonged to an older-looking wizard, though a wizard's true age could never be judged by appearance alone.
To wizards, age was just a number. If they merely wanted to extend their lifespans, they had countless methods at their disposal.
Looking at the entrapped wizard, Lynn narrowed his eyes.
Aside from the Evil Horn of Darifen, the Abyss Ancestral Demon Wolf, he truly possessed no other method to guarantee a one-hit kill, especially against a wizard who had already deployed multiple layers of protection.
However, time was limited. Lynn was not going to give him the chance to summon his wizard tower. The only reason he could catch an official wizard off guard and secure a clean kill was by relying on the Dalifen Fiend Annihilation fired from his wizard tower's Attack Module. If he relied solely on his own spells, he wouldn't necessarily wield such devastating power.
With a single thought from Lynn, the wizard tower flared to full power.
Rotating another one hundred and eighty degrees, the Broken Horn floating within the groove began to spin rapidly, streaks of lightning gathering across its surface.
The Dalifen Fiend Horn had three tiers of power: Dalifen Fiend Punishment, Judgment, and Dalifen Fiend Annihilation.
The higher the output tier, the longer the charge time required, but the greater the destructive force.
Not far away, the wizard trapped in the illusion had already sensed that something was wrong. Thanks to their formidable mental energy and meticulous lifestyles, wizards possessed a natural, robust resistance to mental spells, even if they didn't specialize in illusions.
Relying on his own immense mental energy, the ensnared wizard was already showing faint signs of breaking free.
Break. Lynn narrowed his eyes, a glint of coldness flashing in his gaze.
The wizard tower fired another beam. A shred of clarity returned to the distant wizard's clouded eyes.
The moment his consciousness cleared, the Dalifen Fiend Annihilation had already arrived before him.
The layers of defensive magic around his body shattered instantly; the two forces existed on completely different levels.
As his shields crumbled in the blink of an eye, horror filled the wizard's eyes. He hurriedly pulled a Pocket Watch from his robes, but his reaction was a step too late. Although the Pocket Watch appeared in his hand, the crimson beam had already punched straight through his chest.
After the beam of intense, destructive energy pierced his body, its residual power continuously rippled outward.
But a moment later, this outward expansion abruptly stopped. The instant the Pocket Watch appeared, the surrounding time seemed to freeze and stall alongside it.
Even the power of the Dalifen Fiend Horn was locked in place.
Witnessing this, Lynn knitted his brows, a trace of shock surfacing in his eyes.
This Pocket Watch was extraordinary. It was absolutely an artifact on the exact same tier as the Dalifen Fiend Horn, if not something even greater.
The very second the Pocket Watch was activated, Lynn immediately ordered his followers to retreat back into the wizard tower.
A bizarre atmosphere descended upon the battlefield.
The patch of frozen space just a short distance away formed a stark contrast with the active, flowing space right in front of his eyes.
Reflected in Lynn's pupils was an unfathomable phantom image—the silhouette of an incomparably massive clock.
This colossal phantom clock turned continuously in the sky above. With every rotation it completed, another strand of Lynn's hair turned white.
But in reality, that giant phantom clock did not exist. It could only be seen within Lynn's own field of vision.
"Master? Master?" Blood Eye looked up, sensing something was amiss. Its master had been standing there motionless for quite some time.
Flapping the wings upon its back, Blood Eye, having already converted to a shadow demon bloodline, shot into the air. It soared dozens of meters off the ground, intending to place itself right in front of Lynn.
But just as the bloody shadow approached, roughly ten meters away, it suddenly felt as though its body had plunged into a thick mire.
Its speed plummeted abruptly, and along with it, the life force within its body began to drain.
As its vitality rapidly slipped away, Blood Eye's eyes went wide. The master was in danger!
At that moment, it finally understood exactly what kind of peril its master was facing.
The closer it got to Lynn, the slower its speed became—yet the faster it aged.
Even though it had transformed into a shadow demon and gained a prolonged lifespan, a shadow demon's life was not infinite.
The closer to Lynn it drew, with Lynn as the epicenter, the faster its life force drained away.
However, it ultimately managed to reach Lynn's side. The shadow placed a hand on Lynn, but Lynn offered no reaction at all.
Blood Eye watched Lynn's progressively whitening hair, its gaze struggling for a brief moment. Then, figuring something out, its hand shifted into black flames, and it delivered a gentle stab to the exposed back of Lynn's hand.
But a flicker of divine light shimmered across the back of Lynn's hand, completely neutralizing Blood Eye's flames.
Blood Eye froze for a second before increasing its power. Shadow demons were a type of pan-elemental demon. Many assumed they were composed of nothing but a cluster of shadows, but in reality, a shadow demon was made up of countless shadow particles.
If infused with demonic power, the shadow particles on the surface of a shadow demon's body would plunge to a frigid temperature, a cold that possessed extreme corrosive properties.
The more abundant and pure the injected demonic power, the stronger the corrosive nature of these shadow particles became.
As Blood Eye continuously dialed up its power output, it finally shattered the innate Fiendgod Force Field protecting the surface of Lynn's body.
It left a reddish mark on the back of Lynn's hand.
Lynn's eyes snapped back into focus, and the back of his hand twitched slightly. Only then did Lynn realize his current state.
Just a moment ago, he had only experienced a brief daze, yet his mind felt as if it had been dragged into a seemingly endless expanse.
Within that sprawling space, time held no meaning. It felt like merely a split second had passed for him, but quite a while had already elapsed in the real world. He deduced this based on the life force that had drained from his body and the current rate at which it was still slipping away.
He retrieved Maesys's statue from his spatial ring.
"Help me," Lynn urged quickly.
"You provoked the God of Time?" A voice echoed by Lynn's ear.
The statue in Lynn's hand erupted with brilliant light, accompanied by the rising and falling sounds of crashing tides and shrieking sea monsters.
It pushed back against the ethereal clock around them. Gradually, the surrounding clock was washed away.
A strange light flickered in Lynn's eyes.
"Was that a time domain just now?"
"It was. How did you manage to provoke something like that? Whoever crafted such a thing is by no means simple," Maesys said.
Time domains had always been an enigmatic subject; anything related to time was absolutely extraordinary.
Time was like sand. It simply existed there, and if you lacked the proper technique, even sand gripped firmly in your palm would slip right through the gaps in your fingers.
Therefore, anything capable of trapping the sands of time was far from simple.
"I expended quite a bit of divine power, so remember to compensate me later," Maesys reminded him.
He was merely a minor deity who loved to dabble in business ventures; he didn't want to get dragged into too much trouble.
It was only because he found Lynn somewhat agreeable that he reluctantly lent a hand, especially since Lynn had pleaded for it.
However, he was certainly not willing to take a loss. This was absolutely not for free!
As the time domain was broken, the Pocket Watch held by the wizard in the distant void shattered at the exact same moment.
Crack.
Several fractures spiderwebbed across the glass face of the Pocket Watch.
A transparent shard of glass fell from the watch face, tumbling and spinning through the air before landing silently upon a blade of grass.