Blackout Ascension: Return of Primordial Heir-Chapter 68: Temporal Acceleration

The swirling sphere of black gravity above the Void Herald’s head looked like a rotting sun. It was terrifying. It pulled the world. Loose chunks of pale stone from the broken barricades levitated from the ground, floating upward before being crushed into fine dust the moment they touched the black sphere. Even the surviving Mana Aberrations were not safe. Three of the massive, mutated beasts shrieked as their paws lost their grip on the stone dam. They were sucked straight up into the dark vortex. Their corrupted flesh and bones were cracked, rattling into a bloody, messy paste. The Herald did not care about its own troops. It only cared about total destruction.

"Get back!" Terravarous roared over the howling wind.

The giant slammed his boots into the stone. He expanded his diamond armor, covering his back, and threw himself over Ignis to anchor his cousin to the ground. Ignis tried to fight back. He pushed a surge of his mana into his sword, firing a laser of blue fire at the Herald. But the black sun just swallowed the heat. The blue fire twisted in the air and was sucked into the dark vortex, disappearing instantly.

"My fire can’t reach him!" Ignis yelled, struggling to breathe under the crushing wind.

A few yards away, Velanor Banner dropped to his knees, slamming his bare hands into the pale stone, using his earth magic to anchor Catherine and Soltheia. He created curved walls of solid granite over their heads, firmly keeping the stone deep into the foundation of the Great Dam.

CRACK!!

But the granite walls began to groan and crack loudly.

"The gravity is too dense!" Velanor shouted, his nose bleeding from the magical strain. "If that sphere touches the surface of the dam, it will vaporize the wall! The dam will break!"

The Void Herald stood proudly beneath the black sun. Thick, dark blood still oozing out from the wound Kairos had carved across its neck, but the commander ignored the pain. It slowly lowered its armored hands, guiding the sphere of destruction down toward the Vanguard Generals.

"You die in the dark," the Herald’s demonic voice echoed.

"No," a quiet, calm voice replied. "We don’t."

Luna Zephyros stepped out from behind Velanor’s cracked granite wall.

"Luna! What are you doing?!" Soltheia screamed, reaching out to grab his dark jacket, but the wind was too strong. She couldn’t reach him.

Luna didn’t look back. He kept his hands shoved into his pockets. The alluring wind of the black sun whipped his silver hair around his pale face, but his boots stayed still on the pale stone. He looked up at the descending sphere of destruction.

He remembered the dusty, pitch black aisle of the Restricted Archives. He remembered the immortal librarian looking down at him.

Exhale the pressure. Vent the lock. Three seconds. No more.

Luna closed his eyes. He sent his consciousness inward, diving into the center of his own soul. He found the massive, shining golden chain wrapped around his core.

The First Cosmic Lock. The Gate of the Mind.

Three months ago on the balcony, he had foolishly tried to pull the chain apart with brute force. It had nearly melted his brain. This time, Luna didn’t pull. He gathered his own natural, human mana, gathering it tightly into his chest. He took a slow breath. Then, he pushed his magic outward, pressing it gently against the golden chain, and he exhaled.

CRACK!!

The golden chain slightly opened a tiny fracture space. A single, controlled drop of the Infinite Mana Vein trickled into Luna’s mortal brain.

ONE.

Luna opened his eyes. They were no longer pale gray. They burned with a brilliant, liquid silver fire. The pain felt like his skull was expanding, filled with the sheer, terrifying weight of the universe. But along with the pain, he also got clarity. For this single second, Luna could calculate the weight of the Great Dam, the density of the black sun, and what was required to stop it. Luna pulled his hands out of his pockets and raised his palms toward the sky.

TWO.

He didn’t cast a small gravity pocket. He used the primordial drop of cosmic energy to unleash a massive pillar of pure, natural gravity. It shot upward from the pale stone, an invisible, unstoppable force of nature. The invisible pillar slammed into the bottom of the descending black sun. The collision of the two opposing gravity fields created a booming shockwave that shattered every single glass lantern on the top of the dam. The black sphere rigorously shook. It stopped descending. Luna’s natural gravity pillar pushed against the corrupted void magic, holding the lethal magic sun.

The Void Herald stumbled backward in shock, its sleek obsidian boots sliding across the stone. It looked at the fragile, silver haired boy holding up an attack that should have crushed a mountain.

THREE.

Luna felt the blood vessels in his eyes begin to burst. The three seconds were up. If he held the lock open for a single millisecond longer, he would explode. Luna slammed his hands shut inside. He sealed the golden chain tight, cutting off the infinite mana.

The blinding silver fire in his eyes vanished. Luna coughed up a terrifying amount of red blood. His legs completely gave out, and he collapsed sideways onto the hard stone floor like a broken puppet.

"LUNA!" Soltheia shrieked in horror. She scrambled out from behind the granite wall, running to his motionless body. But Luna had done his job. The residual momentum of his gravity pillar had stalled the black sun. The sphere of corrupted gravity was stuck high in the air, slowly losing its shape, fighting against the natural magic Luna had injected into the sky.

The Void Herald realized its ultimate attack was failing. The dark commander let out a furious, screeching roar. It abandoned the gravity spell, gripping its dark halberd with both hands and sprinted toward Luna’s unconscious body, intending to chop the boy to pieces. Kairos Vedaryan stepped firmly into its path.

Kairos raised Asteria. But the holy sword felt different. The white light that usually pulsed from the silver metal was gone. Kairos had drained all the divine energy into his own bloodstream to fuel his previous time-stop. The sword was just a dull piece of iron now. His divine buffer was empty.

If he tried to use his Level 1 Dominion to stop time right now, the System would instantly rip the life force straight out of his heart. But the Void Herald was charging at him with terrifying speed, raising the dark halberd for a lethal, sweeping strike.

Kairos stomped his boots into the pale stone, gripping the dull hilt of Asteria with both of his callused, bleeding hands. He had swung an iron sword for ninety days in a dark basement. He had broken his muscles and rebuilt them. His base Strength was 88. His Agility increased from 95 -> 96 now.

Inside his mind, the blue digital interface suddenly flared to life, glowing with pure, golden light.

[REQUIREMENTS MET.]

[BASE PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES EXCEEDED MORTAL THRESHOLD.]

[CONQUEROR OF TIME: LEVEL 2 UNLOCKED.]

Kairos’s dark eyes widened.

He didn’t have time to read a tutorial. He simply reached into the golden light with his mind and activated the new power.

Activate! Kairos commanded.

[TEMPORAL ACCELERATION INITIATED.]

The world did not turn gray. The deafening noise of the battlefield did not go silent. Instead, the world just seemed to blur. Kairos felt a rushing surge of energy through his legs and arms. The System was not stopping the global clock this time. It was accelerating Kairos’s own personal timeline. It was forcing his physical body to move at a speed different and fast rather than the normal flow of reality.

The Void Herald swung the dark halberd at Kairos’ neck. To anyone else watching, the halberd moved like lightning. To Kairos, the weapon looked like it was moving so slowly.

Kairos simply tilted his head two inches to the left. The lethal obsidian blade passed over his shoulder, missing him.

The Herald’s single eye slit widened in shock. It tried to pull the weapon back for a reverse sweep, but Kairos moved instantly.

He stepped forward, pushing his body to the absolute limit. He swung Asteria, because his physical timeline was accelerated, the dull silver sword moved so impossibly fast that the friction ignited the air around the blade.

CLANG!

Kairos lashed the thick, obsidian shaft of the Herald’s halberd. In the span of a single, normal second, Kairos swung his sword thirty times. It looked like a dozen identical copies of Kairos had suddenly formed around the commander. Physical afterimages blurred across the pale stone of the dam. The deafening sound of metal vehemently clashing against metal merged into one continuous, high pitched shriek.

CLANG!!!! CLANG!!! CLANG!! CLANG!

The Void Herald stumbled backward. The corrupted commander was overwhelmed. It tried to vanish into the shadows, attempting to teleport away from the brutal assault.

"You can’t hide," Kairos whispered, his voice sounding like a dozen overlapping echoes.

Kairos tracked the Herald’s movement. He was moving faster than the shadows could form. He swung Asteria in a brutal, rising uppercut. The dull silver blade struck the center of the dark halberd one final time.

CRACK!!

The ancient weapon completely shattered. The pure dark magic holding the halberd together broke into jagged, smoking pieces of obsidian, scattering uselessly across the pale stone dam.

The Void Herald was disarmed. It looked down at its empty hands, stunned. Kairos didn’t give it a chance to cast another gravity spell. He gripped Asteria with every single ounce of his strength. He poured his entire momentum into a single, horizontal slash.

The blade cut through the thick, obsidian armor covering the Herald’s waist. It sliced through the metal, bit deeply through the dark flesh, and severed the commander in half.

[TEMPORAL ACCELERATION COLLAPSING.]

Kairos’s boots skidded against the pale stone as his timeline violently snapped back into normal speed. He dropped to one knee, gasping for air. His muscles felt like they were melting. His lungs burned terribly, but his heart was fine. He had used his base physical strength to survive the strain.

Behind him, the top half of the Void Herald slid cleanly off its bottom half, falling heavily onto the stone floor with a sickening thud. The dark commander didn’t scream. The shimmering purple slit on its visor flickered, sparking with unstable dark magic.

"The... eclipse... comes..." the Herald rasped, its smooth finally breaking into a pathetic hiss.

Then, the obsidian armor crumbled. The commander of the Fallen instantly disintegrated into a massive pile of rotting gray ash, blowing away in the harsh canyon wind.

High above the Great Dam, without the Herald’s magic to sustain it, the black sun finally imploded. The corrupted sphere of gravity collapsed in on itself with a loud, popping sound, leaving nothing behind but a few scattered clouds of harmless smoke. The terrifying, heavy pressure weighing down on the air vanished.

The battle was officially over. The surviving Vanguard Generals stood in the sudden, eerie silence. The only sound was the howling mountain wind and the gentle sloshing of the blue dam.

"We got him," Ignis panted, lowering his sword and leaning against Terravarous’s thick shoulder. The blue fire faded from his blade. "We actually killed a commander."

Kairos slowly pushed himself up from the ground. He sheathed Asteria, his arms trembling from the brutal speed of his new attack. He looked around the ruined surface of the Great Dam. The stone wall was cracked. Deep, jagged fissures formed along the pale rocks. Several of the lower spillways had been destroyed during the fight, allowing the shimmering blue water to leak into the canyon below.

The ambient mana in the air was noticeably thinner. The dam hadn’t completely fallen, but it was damaged. The continent’s air supply of magic had just dropped by some amount. The world had permanently gotten darker.

"Luna!"

Soltheia’s terrified scream cut through the quiet victory.

Kairos, Velanor, Catherine, Terravarous, and Ignis dropped their weapons and ran across the cracked stone to the center of the dam.

Luna Zephyros was lying still on his back. His pale face was covered in a terrifying amount of dark blood. It was leaking steadily from his nose, his ears, and the corners of his eyes. His breathing was shallow, a wet, rattling sound echoing in his chest.

Soltheia was kneeling beside him, frantic. Her hands were glowing with the most intense golden green healing magic she could possibly summon. She pressed her hands desperately against his forehead, trying to stabilize his damaged nervous system. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Come on, Luna, stay with me!" Soltheia sobbed, tears falling on his ruined gray shirt. "You promised! You promised you wouldn’t die!"

Luna’s pale eyelids fluttered weakly. He couldn’t open them fully, but a faint sliver of his lazy, arrogant smirk touched the corner of his bloody lips.

"I am... just taking a nap..." Luna whispered, his voice faint. "...told you... I hate working..." His head lolled to the side. The faint smirk vanished, and he went limp against the hard stone.

"LUNA!" Soltheia screamed, pushing her healing magic harder, ignoring her own exhaustion.

Kairos dropped to his knees in the dust beside his friend. He stared at the silver haired boy who had just sacrificed his own mind to save the entire continent. They had won the siege. They had killed the Void Herald and successfully saved the Great Dam. But as Kairos looked at the blood soaking the pale stone, he realized the brutal truth of the Great War.

Victory in the Dawn Era was never going to be free. It was always going to cost them everything.