Crack.

Kain's breath hitched.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

It felt like the entire chamber they'd entered was splintering around him. Hairline fractures crawled across the crystal cylinders like glowing veins.

Then the relic's voice boomed: "—CONTAINMENT BREACH—"

"Oh EXCELLENT," the demigod hand screeched, already beginning to glow and summon space blades to destroy the approaching enemies, it can easily destroy them all but it could also tell that more and more powerful ones were 'waking up' as time passed. "YOU JUST HAD TO POKE THE ONE THING IN THIS ROOM THAT LOOKED LIKE IT WOULD RUIN MY DAY AND IT DID. STELLAR WORK."

A containment tube exploded beside it. The hand slapped the creature emerging from it without even looking.

CRUNCH. Shards of crystal rained down.

Kain barely noticed — his palm was still fused to the giant crystal's surface, every nerve in his body drowning under a soothing flood of spiritual energy that his withered body soaked up like rain in the desert.

He could feel the connection with the creature deepening by the second, only so slow because of his body's depleted state. Unfortunately, Chewy was also devoid of any energy—having been sucked dry by the 'God's Eye'—making him unable to transfer any to Kain either.

But with this mysterious creature seemingly willing to help him restore his energy reserves, the process was beginning to pick up.

At first he thought the creature was simply helping him recover—some weak trickle of energy, nothing like Chewy's efficient transfers. But the sensation was wrong. Chewy acted like a battery: when Chewy fed him energy, his reserves increased by whatever Chewy supplied. If he was at 1% and Chewy pushed enough for 30%, he would sit comfortably at 31%. Then depending on how much energy Chewy obtained before Kain needed another energy 'injection' he may transfer only 15% of Kain's total energy reserves, 80%, or even 100%

This was nothing like that.

This creature wasn't adding energy at all. It was resetting him—dragging his body back to a prior energetic state the way one might revert a device to an old save file. And that snapshot, unfortunately, was from about an hour earlier, when he had already been exhausted but possessed slightly more strength than now.

His reserves would plunge to 1%, and in an instant, this little guy would snap him back to exactly 10%. Never 11%. Nor 9%. Always the same number with surgical precision.

He would burn through that 10% again, drop, and the reset would hit once more—cold, clinical, and eerily consistent. Eerily there was also no warm filling sensation like when Chewy transfers energy to him. Just the disorienting jolt of suddenly having more energy out of nowhere in the next second.

His vision flickered each time it happened, the world jittering as if two nearly identical frames of time were being overlaid on top of one another.

Behind him, the two weakened Vespids huddled close, their bodies trembling. One could barely stand; the other had curled its wings around itself like a dying moth.

More cylinders split open. Then more. Then all of them.

Creatures tumbled out — most, if not all, appeared to be made out of some kind of crystal substance, like many of the other creatures and plants in this relic. But in most of them he could also sense the faint presence of a microscopic parasite, similar to the mushroom growing out of the centipede's abdomen earlier. Many of these guys had mushrooms or mould like substances growing out of their backs, limbs, abdomens...one particularly grotesque one resembled a giant bear made of crystal, only one of its eye sockets was a gaping hole with what looked to be delicate white mushroom stocks growing out of it.

Their awakening screeches overlapped until the chamber sounded like a chorus of knives.

Kain remained kneeling, trapped inside the lengthy contracting process.

The hand didn't even bother dodging a lunging beast, slapped it into pulp as it guarded Kain nearby, and screamed, "I TELL YOU YOUR DEATH-SEEKING IS YOUR PROBLEM AND NOT MINE, AND YET HERE I AM—AGAIN—CLEANING UP AFTER YOU! "

Its voice broke into an angry yell as several creatures attacked at once.

Kain wasn't listening anymore.

The energy he was injecting into the glowing crystal, in order to establish the contract, was about to reach the threshold soon. Soon he would have his sixth contract completed.

Reality flickered.

Then—

The scene around him changed. But it did not feel like an illusion. Nor quite like the transfer of memories from Bea.

It felt more like looking through time.

He stood in the chamber hundreds, maybe even thousands of years earlier.

Two figures stood before a crystal cocoon that Kain instinctively sensed housed the creature Kain was contracting.

A woman stood closest to it—an easterner by appearance, with long dark hair bound in a ribbon, her features sharp and composed. She ran her fingers lightly across the cocoon's surface, leaving faint trails of light, multicoloured crystals continuously formed in the surrounding and began to engulf all the sleeping creatures there alive.

Next to her stood a man Kain recognized instantly. Dark hair. Dark eyes. The same detached calm he had seen in records and the vision Aegis had given him long ago.

Amos Sans.

The woman exhaled, weary. "Even with my temporal attributes and the time-crystals I generate… and with your abyssal-restraining attribute… we aren't going to contain that thing forever. That abyssal demigod is unique and it isn't something you lock in a box and hope it behaves."

Amos shrugged lightly, as though they were discussing mild weather rather than a living apocalypse. "Forever is unnecessary. He only needs to be contained until the chosen time."

The woman's eyebrow twitched. "Which is…?"

He lifted his palms in a helpless gesture. "I have no idea."

She stared at him, incredulous. "Amos—how do you even know a 'chosen time' is coming?"

Amos's expression softened, almost fond. "A close friend of mine has pretty good instincts. She told me someone better suited to fight the abyssals than even myself will appear. When he arrives, we leave the demigod to him. Simple."

The woman muttered something decidedly unladylike under her breath, then they both turned back toward the cocoon.

The woman seemed to be focused on injecting more energy into it, whereas Amos' dark eyes looked beyond it...seemingly straight at Kain.

The vision dissolved.

Kain snapped back into the present directly into the sound of the hand stilll yelling: "DON'T TOUCH RANDOM THINGS! ARE YOU A CHILD THAT CAN'T HELP BUT GO AROUND AND PRESS EVERY RED BUTTON HE SEES?!"

Light burst from the crystal cocoon before him to reveal...nothing.

But Kain wasn't disappointed. In fact he smirked with some reminiscence. This scene strangely reminded him of his awakening ceremony when he opened up affinity egg after affinity egg in his subconscious and they were all empty.

Moreover, with the System by his side, even if it was extremely small, he could still 'see' the identity of his new contract.

He opened up its panel with anticipation and the system created a visible image of the creature he couldn't see and a flood of information cascaded through his mind:

A microscopic creature resembling an archaea composed of interlocking crystal-lattice rings, each segment rotating at a slightly different temporal frequency. At its center pulsed a dense, time-stilled core—an organelle frozen between moments, flickering at irregular beats as if to whatever the creature willed the time around it to move at.

---------------------

Species: Chrono Archivolt (Ancient Temporal Microorganism)

An ancient strain of extremophilic temporal archaea, able to persist for geological ages in suspended crystals frozen in time. Reactivated only under precise energetic conditions. Through crystalline lattice structures within itself, the Archivolt manipulates micro-scale time flow, exerting influence across a host's meridians and environment. It anchors, bends, and dampens the passage of time in localized fields.

Quality: Unknown (Relic-Sealed Variant)

Type: Microorganism (Archaea)

Attribute: Time

Skills: S — Crystal Bloom Growth: Generates microscopic nodes across surfaces, forming temporal anchors that slow or distort motion. Zones can delay kinetic force, stagger enemy timing, or disrupt coordinated attacks.

S — Cyst Rebirth: Upon critical damage, the Archivolt collapses into crystalline dust, reverting to its last stable temporal state. Reassembly is instantaneous, allowing full regeneration if enough temporal energy remains.

S-Archive Memory: Reads faint historical imprints in people, objects or areas to view past events.

A — Time-Dampening Hide: When the archivolt inhabits another, a thin temporal membrane envelops the host. Incoming attacks are stretched in duration, slowing at the moment of contact. Environmental hazards such as falling debris or rushing air also lose momentum.

A — Temporal Echo Instinct: The Archivolt perceives "adjacent moments." The host may see ghost images of actions seconds before they occur or lingering after-images of the past. This enhances evasion, prediction, and pathfinding.

B — Chrono-Lysis Drift (Passive): The Archivolt subtly alters metabolic timing within the host, reducing spiritual fatigue accumulation for brief windows. Effects are inconsistent in larval form, sometimes causing minor temporal stutters.

-----------------------

The system profile vanished.

And then the Archivolt released a pulse of energy.

Reality warped.

A giant crystal beast lunged — and its movement instantly slowed to a syrup-like crawl. Its claws hovered inches away, suspended mid-swipe.

A ripple of temporal distortion spread from Kain's body, like water ripples in reverse.

The hand darted in, moving at full speed relative to the slowed world.

SPLAT.

The beast exploded into glitter.

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