Running Through Erased Time

Finally, only one bullet remained.

Mista is now in an awkward situation:

He fires, and the last bullet will almost certainly be Time Erasure, Polnareff will die.

Even if he doesn't fire, the King Crimson can kill someone in a second, Polnareff will still die.

Nothing he did was of any use, and what's worse, the situation was so tense that he had no time to think of a solution.

Fortunately, there's Giorno.

While Mista was at a loss, the vine wave that Gold Experience had created earlier finally took advantage of the precious time created by the bullet barrage and spread wildly along the ancient walls of the Colosseum to the second floor.

Throughout its growth, the vines made a continuous, frantic thumping sound.

Like the surging tide in the darkness.

These vines, which could only be seen as dark shapes in the dim light, now looked like a tangled mess of writhing pythons.

They bared their fangs and claws, dancing wildly like a tidal wave, sweeping over the stone pillars and railings, covering every inch of the surrounding space.

The shadows of vines clung to the floor, the stone pillars, and the surface of this ancient building.

Eventually, these vines gradually coalesced into a giant wave as they grew, which then crashed heavily towards the spot where Diavolo stood.

But Diavolo was not afraid; of course he was not afraid.

Because the growth rate of these vines, accelerated by life energy, is still limited.

Diavolo himself could barely see it clearly, so to King Crimson, who shared his senses, it was as ridiculous as a slow-motion playback.

Diavolo is clearly not going to be hurt by such an attack.

To conserve his precious mental energy, he didn't even use the Time Erasure. He simply let the King Crimson guide him to jump slightly to the side, easily dodging the seemingly overwhelming and unstoppable wave of vines.

However, the capabilities of the Gold Experience are clearly limited.

Giorno can indeed stimulate plants to grow rapidly, but creating such a large-scale spectacle, allowing the sea of vines to spread over ten meters in just a few seconds to launch an attack, is indeed too much effort.

After his initial attack failed, he was no longer able to urge the vines to continue growing.

He had already reached his limit by cultivating the vines to this extent.

Is that all?

Diavolo smiled as he looked at the sea of vines that was stuck in place like a sculpture.

In his eyes, Giorno's performance was far worse than Mista's.

And that is indeed the case:

Mista's Sex Pistols can also force Diavolo to use a skill through "precision guidance".

However, because Giorno lacks ranged attack capabilities and cannot perfectly control animal movements, he can only manipulate plants to carry out such simple and crude attacks.

This weak version of "Wood Release" can probably only buy them a tiny bit of time.

"If that's all there is to it..."

"Then it's all over— King Crimson!"

Diavolo roared.

The King Crimson raised his hand high, his taut muscles brimming with immense and terrifying power.

Giorno stood there helplessly, his expression stiff, seemingly at a loss for what to do.

Mista gripped his pistol tightly, torn between whether or not to fire that last, pointless bullet.

Polnareff strained to lift his head, glaring angrily at his enemy.

He already knew he would die in the next second.

However, there was still no despair or fear in his eyes.

These words had long since disappeared from his vocabulary during years of fighting. Polnareff already knew what death and sacrifice meant more than a decade ago in Egypt.

"Diavolo".

"Your evil plan will never succeed."

"Your sinful and ugly life, like that of a diseased rat, will surely be ended by my dearest friend, Jotaro Kujo!"

Polnareff stared coldly at Diavolo, as if he were looking at a dead man.

"Yeah?"

"Haha. Hahahaha."

Diavolo smiled dismissively.

As the laughter subsided, a hint of anger crept into the mockery.

"Jotaro, Jotaro, shut up!"

"I, Diavolo, the king of the underworld, would never be intimidated by a mere name!"

"Take a look—"

With that furious roar, the King Crimson's hand blade slashed down:

"I've cleaved your best friend in two! Where is that invincible Jotaro now?!"

"Here!"

A soft shout suddenly rang out.

The voice carried a rare tremor, beneath which lay suppressed boundless rage.

But what truly alarmed Diavolo was... no, what truly terrified him was...

The voice was right behind him!

It was right next to him!

"What?"

"How is this possible? That bastard got here so quickly?!"

"Could he... could he teleport?!"

Diavolo's heart clenched violently, and the blood he pumped out nearly burst his blood vessels.

Then, an unprecedented fear took over my brain at the speed of light.

The King Crimson immediately received a completely different instruction than it had half a second ago:

"Run, run fast, race against the clock!"

The chop that was about to smash Polnareff's head was abruptly stopped in mid-air.

Before he could even kill anyone, the King Crimson, under the frantic urging of his true form, activated Time Erasure.

This is not Diavolo being cowardly.

For him, this was the wisest choice.

Having indirectly clashed with Polnareff years ago, Diavolo has naturally devoted considerable effort to investigating Jotaro, this potential enemy, over the years.

All the intelligence he had gathered indicated that the perverted Stand named Star Platinum could not only stop time, but also attack people during the stopped time.

What does that mean?

This means that once Star Platinum gets close and activates time stop, the enemy won't even know how they died.

And now, that sound is so close.

Clearly, this ominous star had unknowingly approached him.

Diavolo, of course, had no other choice.

He could only do everything in his power to get ahead of others and enter the Time Erasure area before he was stopped.

Enemies in the Time Erasure state can only act unconsciously, and Jotaro is mostly unable to use his Stand ability during the reduced time.

Ultimately, to survive against the invincible Star Platinum, Diavolo must seize the initiative and then quickly create a sufficiently long safe distance.

He reacted very quickly.

The first move was successfully secured, Time Erasure began.

Diavolo didn't dare look back and hurriedly ran away into the distance.

He ran for a good 7 or 8 meters before he finally calmed down and looked back to observe his formidable opponent.

Upon closer inspection, the situation became even more alarming.

If he could spot the enemy, his escape plan would be more than successful.

But Jotaro was so elusive that you could only hear his voice but never see him.

Diavolo could only see walls, stone pillars, and blurry black shadows; he had no idea where Jotaro was standing.

"How could this be? He's just disappeared?"

"I've already activated the Time Erasure, how could he still move freely?"

The unseen enemy was even more terrifying, and Diavolo was so nervous he could hardly breathe.

He was already having trouble breathing:

The previous long- Time Erasure followed by five Time Erasure was already extremely mentally taxing, and now, Jotaro's sudden appearance has startled him into performing a long-duration Time Erasure, making the mental strain even more severe.

Worse still, even though he knew it was operating beyond its capacity, he dared not Time Erasure.

After all, Diavolo never actually fought Jotaro face-to-face.

Jotaro is a time manipulator after all; what if he can maintain his consciousness while in Time Erasure?

Who can guarantee that?

Maybe he'll just yell something like "seems to be a stand-in of the same type," and then inexplicably Time Erasure up in his car and catch up with us?

Faced with a globally renowned and invincible figure, Diavolo, who was only Italy, had to exercise the utmost caution.

Helpless, he could only maintain his "invincible buff" at an excessive pace while desperately searching for Jotaro Kujo in the dim scene before him.

Then, he saw it.

Diavolo was no ordinary man; he quickly saw it:

He saw that where he had just stood, on the dimly lit ground, among several vines growing on the ground and clustered together, there was something unexpected.

It contained a mobile phone.

The phone screen was completely covered, but the faint glow on it still seeped through the gaps in the vines.

Clearly, the phone is working—it's in the middle of a call.

"Cell phone?"

Diavolo's face instantly froze.

The voice Jotaro just heard seemed to have come from the location of that phone.

The phone was tightly wrapped in vines, hidden very well.

These vines were deliberately encouraged by Giorno, spreading all the way from the ground.

In other words

Giorno secretly delivered the phone to him.

That phone call was probably made secretly by Giorno before he made his move.

Jotaro answered the phone immediately and heard Diavolo's tirade on the other end. He knew exactly what he had to say.

Ultimately, to put it simply...

"Have I been tricked?"

Diavolo, who had just used up all his skills by mashing the keyboard, had a very complicated expression.

Looking at his skill bar, which was temporarily on cooldown, he began to feel a little disoriented.