"You’re trying to kill ?"
Upon hearing Annan’s words, the Grey Professor not only did not get angry but instead laughed out loud: "Are you planning to swing your knife at a shadow, or to punch at mories of the past?"
"Or is it that, despite all I’ve said, you still have not understood... my essence?"
"Of course, I know."
Annan said calmly: "You are old hatred laid down by the Grey Craftsman, mories suspended at the upper reaches of the river of ti. To the world we inhabit, you are but a projection hanging on a wall."
"You do understand quite clearly."
The Grey Professor said with a smile: "So, you are intending to destroy this projection on the wall?"
"What I aim to destroy is, of course, your essence existing in the [past]."
Annan replied.
Upon hearing this, the smile on the Grey Professor’s face faded considerably.
"If you can do it," he raised his hand, "then why not... give it a try."
As the Grey Professor spoke, he gently snapped his fingers.
The crisp sound of the snap echoed in the air, and the whole world suddenly quieted down.
With him as the center, a grey domain violently spread outwards. It was like a colored photo or screen suddenly turning into black and white.
Except for Annan and Niusel, the others were all frozen in place, motionless.
——Their ti had been brought to a halt.
Although Annan and Niusel could still move — Annan was surrounded by a pure white light that enveloped his entire being like a soft shell.
Niusel’s skeleton shone with a dark red light... That light even perated through the skin, observable directly with the naked eye without any equipnt.
However, even though Niusel was not directly solidified by the grey domain, his movents were extrely arduous. It was as if he was moving through thick syrup, his entire being seemingly entangled.
Niusel struggled hard to lift his head, the veins on his neck and forehead bulging out.
Even so, he was only barely able to catch a glimpse of a vague humanoid figure forming behind the Grey Professor.
——This was surely, a subli avatar of the Grey Professor that no one had ever seen before.
"That is..."
Niusel was astounded.
The posture of that subli avatar was so Twisted that it even made one feel "pain."
It looked like the vague figure of a human male.
But it wasn’t vague because of any lack of purity in the subli avatar — rather it was as if a photograph had been rubbed repeatedly until its features were blurred, or like a portrait that had been washed with water, its ink gradually bleeding out.
If you stared intently, you could only make out a "young man" within this blur, made up of broken and reassembled geotrical shapes, reminiscent of Picasso’s "Portrait of Fernande."
Based solely on intuition and structure, one could generally infer that it should be a young man.
He had the sa grey hair as the Grey Professor, but he did not have an aged figure like the Grey Professor.
The "young man’s" pupils were also grey, yet unlike the Grey Professor’s rcury-like deep and dim grey... they were gentle and soft, like grey agate with a gradient hue.
The "young man’s" shoulders were slender, his arms even thinner, seemingly shy as he looked down. His tense left arm was clutching the shoulder of the Grey Professor in front of him, while his extended, equally broken and vague right arm, held a dangling pocket watch.
On his entire body, only that silver-grey pocket watch was clear and distinct. Even within the grey domain of Silence, it continued to emit a loud ticking sound of its gears.
That was the only sound in this silent world.
The pocket watch raised by "the Youth" initially displayed the position of "zero hours, zero minutes, and fifteen seconds."
Unaware of the danger, Annan was simply standing by, calmly watching everything unfold; Niusel, on the other hand, was struggling to make his way towards Professor Grey... But within this sticky, glue-like domain, fifteen seconds were indeed too short.
Niusel only managed to struggle forward two steps before ti completely ran out.
With the seconds hand ticking back counterclockwise as if ti were flowing in reverse... and when all the hands returned to zero,
The four players, completely engulfed in gray, silently turned to ash.
The stagnant ti around them was restored in an instant, and the quiet, silent atmosphere was shattered.
Niusel, unable to stop his montum on short notice, bellowed and charged forward—Professor Grey, however, just smiled and extended his right hand, gesturing a "stop" like a traffic commander, and an endless wall of gray ford in front of him.
Niusel’s fierce shoulder charge, on the contrary, made his own body nearly shatter under the pressure.
His muscles deford and disintegrated under the imnse force, his bones creaking sourly, and purplish-red traces like spider webs burst from underneath his skin—that was the seeping blood.
He imdiately grunted and was sent flying back in an instant.
As he flew past Annan, Annan stripped away the excessive kinetic energy, finally stabilizing him. Otherwise, with that force, he would probably have been able to fly back through the wall.
Annan could see clearly; it was not a simple defense... nor was it any sort of "absorb damage and return double" ability.
Niusel had simply been running forward with all his might—turning it into a shoulder charge when the flow of ti suddenly resud, and he was unable to stop. He hadn’t really exerted much force.
To instantly grievously wound Niusel, who bore the holy relic, it couldn’t have been rely double the force striking back.
If Annan hadn’t guessed wrong...
This should be related to what Niusel had done earlier within that gray domain.
His every move beca extrely sticky, difficult... Professor Grey must have stored those forces by so ans, turning them into his own temporary stored power.
In the end, when Niusel was about to launch an attack at Professor Grey, they all rebounded back at him. It was Niusel’s own strength that grievously wounded him in an instant.
Although the principle is not yet clear, it roughly seems to be an ability like that.
That is to say, one must imdiately stop when covered by the gray domain?
It sounds a bit like playing Statues...
The four players who had silently turned to ash earlier were now resurrecting on the spot, as if ti were flowing backward, with countless firefly-like light particles gathering.
"Holy shit, what happened?"
"...Strange, did I lose my mory?"
"How did I suddenly drop dead with a snap of your fingers? Are you Thanos?"
From the players’ quips, Annan imdiately realized that the players bound by that gray domain had no mory left at all.
Which ans, this should be a ti-related ability—
Annan paused for a mont.
"...It’s ’mory,’ right."
He said softly, "You turned them into dust, returned the ’erased-from-history’ strength of Niusel back to himself; all these are the powers of the ’mory’ domain.
You speak nicely about destroying the truth of mories, seeking revenge on the Dust Craftsman... Yet aren’t you still using the Dust Craftsman’s powers?"
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