"Emilia did very well. Before Flora and I found her, she held her own against the opponent for quite a while. We may really have underestimated you before."
Shade did not spare his praise for the elf, while Emilia shook her head rather bashfully.
"The Tree Hole Association sent out its elite this time. They probably wanted to complete the assassination by surprise. Emilia truly did well, and the 'Clockmaker' was a little too careless."
This was Vanessa's own judgment, though she seemed rather proud of it:
"She had the misfortune of running into me. I'd wager that, aside from the Speaker, no one in the entire Council can stop that 'Clockmaker' now. And those High-Ring Arcanists from the Tree Hole Association—my earlier idea was indeed right. Gravity is one of the nemeses of 'accelerated time.'"
At that moment, the Outlander dearly wanted to explain the theory of gravitational time dilation he had learned: the greater the curvature of spacetime caused by gravity, the more slowly time passed. But after thinking about it, it seemed to amount simply to, "Gravity slows time, so it weakens the effect of the Rapid Spell," so he did not discuss it at such an inappropriate time:
"The halfling assassin Emilia encountered felt very strange to me. Most halflings now live alongside the Three Great Academies. They no longer have independent communities, much less any famous Ring Arcanists. But that fellow was clearly high-ring and proficient in the powers of time and space. I don't think he's from our time.
"However, on the way back just now, I already swallowed a Beacon Acorn and found no Time Traveler."
"So the other party's Time Travel was legitimate? That halfling was an assistant the 'Clockmaker' had summoned from an unknown time in the past?"
Flora asked. She