Volume Six: What She Lost, What I Gained - Chapter 563: Time Flew By

Rewind a little bit --

"Haha... hahaha... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

As she watched the bright moon being swallowed into the vortex, Casey let out a maniacal laugh.

Yu Xun and Valentina, who happened to arrive at the scene, witnessed this moment.

But none of them noticed one detail.

Just as Haoyue was swallowed, a small piece of flesh fell out of her ear, wriggled briefly on the ground, and then fell silent, like a stone.

"Let's play along. Since things have developed this way, let's force a return to the original plan. One minute outside is ten years in Casey's alternate dimension. We can only hold out for ten minutes at most before Tartaglia is doomed!"

You mean...?

"Protect Casey first, then—do you still have the energy-boosting Spiritual Medicine Fisher gave us? Drink it, then compress the entire racetrack into our spatial storage!"

Unaware of the small piece of flesh, Yu Xun and Valentina continued their conversation, little did they know that every word they uttered was overheard by the small piece of flesh— Sin Annihilation.

"Such a thing actually happened..."

Having just awakened from a brief hibernation, Sin Annihilation murmured, his body already recovered.

Fortunately, everyone had been given pieces of meat to aid their hearing, otherwise she wouldn't have known something so important.

Haoyue Tartaglia was in a real life-or-death crisis. One minute is equivalent to ten years, so one second is more than sixty days. In just a few seconds, Tartaglia had already been in the other dimension for hundreds of days!

Not eating or drinking for hundreds of days shouldn't be a problem for Tartaglia; she has her healing abilities and various other methods to nourish her body, so she won't starve, die of thirst, or die of illness.

But lifespan is something we cannot control.

People with superpowers have a longer average lifespan than ordinary people, but only a few live past 100. Haoyue is already 20 years old. In two minutes, she will be a 40-year-old middle-aged woman. In four minutes, she will enter old age. In six minutes, she will be an 80-year-old old man. In eight minutes, she will be exactly 100 years old.

In ten minutes, she'll be 120 years old... By then, even if she hasn't died of old age, she'll be a wrinkled, emaciated mummy.

More importantly, there are psychological issues.

The premise for Haoyue to survive for so long without food or water is that she still possessed the will to live and the normal mindset to use her supernatural abilities to prolong her life, and had to endure decades of loneliness and solitude.

"..." Oh my god.

Sin Annihilation knew very well how paranoid this antisocial person named Haoyue was. To her, Ye was as important as water and food. How long could she endure life without Ye's company? How long would it take before she went insane?

"We must tell Ye..."

"Something's wrong? A surprise attack? Haoyue?"

Yes! She--

"Wait!"

Boom boom boom boom boom!

The bombardment intensified! A barrage of light rained down on my Yog-Sothoth. If it were the real Yog-Sothoth, this wouldn't be a problem, but the issue is that I'm just a mere imitation meat shield!

This can't go on!

"Grab her!!!"

With a roar, Yog-Sothoth immediately unfurled its tentacles, forming a bizarre net that coiled around Julia! Without hesitation, I spread my Flame Wings and flew away from the scene, releasing a large number of Blood Beast to shield me from the bullets as I flew. Although I didn't know how long I could hold out, at least I had time to "make a phone call"!

"Go on! What exactly happened to Haoyue?"

I ignored the booming explosions behind me and focused intently on the sounds coming from the chunks of flesh inside my ear canal.

The idea that "the male protagonist will sense when the female protagonist is in danger" is, of course, just an exaggeration in literature. In reality, how could I possibly know if she's in trouble when we're so far apart?

"In short, she and the Sick Spider were on the verge of turning the tide of battle, but at the crucial moment, an unexpected situation arose. The Extra Weapon called 'Casey' suddenly appeared and... uh..."

"Don't stop, keep going... Huh?"

I dodged the two cannon shots that breached my Blood Beast's defenses and continued accelerating! At this speed, I should already be able to see the racetrack, but...

No? What about the racetrack?

Disappeared?

The site where that huge, flat cylindrical building once stood was a giant circular pit, almost as if drawn with a compass, with the edges of the pit and the ground forming perfect arcs.

It's like someone dug up this piece of land with a giant ice cream scoop.

"... What's going on?"

"It was Valentina who did it. She could only compress a small area of space normally, but because of the extraordinary circumstances, she seems to have drunk some kind of Spiritual Medicine that forcibly enhanced her output."

"So they managed to compress the entire racetrack into a single space?"

"The situation is a bit complicated, let me explain..."

"..."

Then, Sin Annihilation explained the situation to me in the most concise language possible.

"One minute outside is equivalent to ten years in the alternate dimension inside... Is that right?"

How much time has passed since then?

"Almost a minute!"

One minute... ten years.

Haoyue is now thirty years old.

What is she like now? A mature woman in her thirties, she must be even more charming. I really want to see her.

"And the culprit, Casey, is a tragic figure who becomes unresponsive whenever he uses his powers..."

"Yes! After Casey used her ability, she fell into a state of suspended animation. Valentina used a 'small' compression space to protect Casey, and then she put the entire racetrack, including herself, Yu Xun, and the marble containing Casey, into a 'large' compression space!"

"Where is that marble that 'contains the entire racetrack'?"

"There's absolutely no way to find it!"

"Then where are you? You can move around again after your short hibernation, right?"

"I was just leaving when she compressed the racetrack into her space! Damn it! If I had been still at the racetrack, I could have taken them all out right there inside the compressed space!"

Really.

In such a vast area, finding a marble the size of a fingernail, which also moves according to someone's instructions, is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even if you did find it, destroying it would be no easy task, since it's a compressed space that can't be destroyed by ordinary means.

What should I do?

It wasn't until then that I felt panic.

One minute equals ten years; in ten minutes at most, the bright moon will die of old age.

Even as I pondered a solution, she was growing older. A few seconds later, she must be almost thirty-five now.

But before that, I faced an even bigger problem.

"Hey hey hey hey--Don't--run--ah--!!!"

Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, boom!!!

A strange, unsettling noise rang out above my head.

Looking up, I saw that my Yog-Sothoth had been defeated.

They weren't blasted to death, they were sliced open.

"War Weapon Series, No. 10--"

Julia's body has been reconstructed. Although it has basically rebuilt into a human form, her limbs are all grotesque machines, and her mouth is like a replica of Haiyin's.

The key thing is that thing she was holding up above her head, which was a full kilometer long.

"--Anti-military weapon, 'Disassembler' super-powerful chainsaw!"

"Don't mess things up!!!"