Chapter 167 - Family Reunion?

I must admit, when I saw those bone fragments shoot out, I didn't think too much of them. After all, when I last got hit by them, it only scratched my skin a bit.

But that was an incorrect assumption to make.

Thunderous explosions filled the air, shaking the room.

As for me, I lost the entirety of my arm, shoulder, and half of my chest. When I looked down, I could directly see my organs. The pain overloaded my mind. I could tell I was going to bleed out in a matter of seconds.

Gales of wind stirred around me while my skin tore open. I hurriedly casted the healing spell, focusing everything on it. For a moment, I lost any cognition of the outside world. The only thing I thought about was casting the spell.

And then, it finished.

A gentle feeling wrapped around my wounds. The bleeding stopped and my flesh began to regrow. Knowing how bad my injury was, I immediately started casting another healing spell after finishing the first one.

As the healing process slowed, it suddenly ramped up once more. The pain finally disappeared and I came to my senses.

To realize I was being carried away by a hand of earth.

There was a black mass rushing towards me, trying to turn me to ash. Crashing and rumbling sounds echoed one after another, courtesy of huge stones falling from the ceiling and walls.

The hand of earth blocked the black mass, decaying immediately after.

I muttered under my breath.

"Thanks, Leon."

After landing on the floor, I felt it vibrate.

"If you want to thank me, stop that piece of paper."

I looked up to see that the piece of paper flickering blue was slowly floating up to its other half. On the ground, Osric was running away from a black mass that shot out from the necklace.

It seemed that for now, I would be left alone.

Not wanting to waste this tiny window, I raised my wooden stake towards the flickering piece of paper.

...Or at least, that was supposed to happen.

For some reason, I couldn't feel my arm. I looked towards it to see that it wasn't there. The only thing left was a stump on my shoulder. As for my wooden stake, it was gone. Chances are, it was blown to smithereens.

Suddenly, I remembered Leon's words.

The healing spell prioritizes saving one's life. In other words, it neglects repairing lost functions if that means it's more likely to survive. Needless to say, that really worked against me.

I casted the growing spell on the plant and got another black fruit. After eating it, I felt strength surge through me. However, other than making my wound feel hot and itchy, it did nothing to regrow my arm.

I looked up to the piece of paper that had already made it halfway to the one floating in the air.

...There was still a way to use my teleportation attack without a weapon, but it would sacrifice a part of my body and be very painful. Even now, just after losing my arm, that pain still scared me.

I furrowed my brows. There was not much time left.

Thoughts whirled in my head. Now that I think about it, I've never thought about how my teleportation attack even worked.

I simply did it on instinct.

My eyes glazed over as I recalled the process.

I would teleport... then in the middle, I would just barely teleport the very tip of the wooden stake out and retract it almost instantly.

That was why it was so easy to pierce through things using an object made of wood. The actual toughness didn't matter that much.

As I came to this realization, the flickering blue piece of paper was very close to the red one. I anxiously picked up a fragment of stone with my remaining hand and pointed it upwards. The space around me began to distort.

But a sense of dread came over me, almost like it was warning me against using this fragment of stone.

It didn't make much sense, but in this tiny timeframe, I decided to trust my instincts.

I dropped the stone.

My eyes widened while my pupils constricted.

Then, a tight feeling wrapped around me.

The chaotic travel through space was chaotic, rocking me back and forth like a rollercoaster. There was no real pattern to it or anything to tell me at what point I was in.

Yet, I randomly pressed down with my index finger, letting the tip of it disappear from this space.

Then, I reappeared high up into the air.

The thing I immediately noticed was the searing pain coming from my index finger. As my mind processed the pain, it got overloaded and began hurting too.

However, there was something that hurt me even more.

An ear-splitting cry came from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see the blue paper gradually ripping apart. The light flickered faster and faster.

Until eventually, it split in two. The blue light disappeared altogether, along with the cry of pain.

The abrupt cut off of the deafening scream made the place seem extremely quiet.

As I began to fall, I noticed that the bones rotating around the red piece of paper froze in place before dropping down. However, the piece of paper that split earlier floated up to the red one.

I narrowed my eyes.

That probably wasn't a good thing.

I tried to raise my trembling hand towards it while a massive hand of earth shot out from the ceiling.

However, it was just too fast.

Before any of us could do anything, the red piece of paper attached the ripped piece of paper to itself. Then, everything seemed to freeze.

...No, that wasn't accurate.

Time slowed down.

It was very difficult to tell, everything was moving, just very slowly.

...Correction, almost everything. 

The red light continued to flicker, but got brighter as time went on. A frightening amount of lightning began to coalesce around the piece of paper. It was at a normal speed, which wouldn't have been that intimidating when time flowed properly.

But now, I felt a sense of fear. If time was moving properly, there probably would've been cold sweat on my back.

I attempted to gather mana, but it was far too slow.

Though I desperately wanted to command my body to move, even the time that it took for my mind to send a message was unbearably long.

The lightning around the piece of paper gradually stabilized, signaling that it was coming. Giving one last try, I attempted to teleport, but without much faith. Yet, a massive lightning bolt shot towards me, I disappeared.

Then, once I came back, a fairly small lightning bolt crashed into my back.

Unfortunately, the reappearance process was too slow. There was time for the red skeleton to continue hitting me, while I couldn't even turn to change the direction of my teleportation.

Down below, I saw a black dagger pierce straight through Osric's armor and his abdomen. His body and armor slowly began decaying.

It appeared that we were checkmated because of the time slowing ability.

...How was this ability even fair?

And why were the necklace and paper allowed to move, but not us?

After a bit of resignation, I began thinking about what I could do after dying here. The first part of the plan was definitely not to trick Noah into witnessing his wife alive in front of him.

However, my thoughts were interrupted by an extremely loud wailing.

Suddenly, the entire wall was blasted aside. Pieces of stone were flung aside before freezing in the middle of the air.

...And among those rocks was Leon.

He currently had a dull expression on his face, but there was a bit of blood in the process of being coughed out.

Behind him, was a flickering grey light.

The baby.

Wild gales whipped around him. Deep cracks formed in the surrounding rocks as well as the walls.

And Leon too.

The necklace's attention was immediately attracted. It ignored Osric completely.

"Child?"

The necklace bolted towards the grey light.

"My sweet baby boy!"

The grey light continued to let out distressed wails along with frighteningly sharp blade-like winds. As the necklace traveled, it was hit several times, letting out a violent clanging sound.

Yet, it didn't seem to mind.

Eventually, the necklace made it all the way next to the baby who was in the process of throwing a tantrum.

"Oh hush, my child. It's alright now, your mother is here."

Unfortunately, the grey light didn't calm down. In fact, it got even wilder, even damaging the necklace in its anger.

As for the piece of paper, the red light dimmed slightly.

"...Child?"

It slowly flew over to the pale grey light, almost like it was curious. Suddenly, the grey light fell silent.

Then, it snapped, letting out a shrill cry.

Countless gales of relentless wind picked up both large and small stone fragments and were sent directly towards the red piece of paper.