I couldn't kill her. I couldn't outlast her regeneration at this rate. Triple Accel was burning me out, even with the Wolgram resilience fighting a desperate battle against the self-inflicted damage. Quadruple Accel was a momentary flash, not a sustainable strategy against someone who just regrew limbs.
My accelerated mind raced. Plan A (speed blitz) failed. Plan B? Stall. Change the venue. Create chaos. Find leverage. Hostage. It felt wrong, but survival instincts were screaming louder than morality right now.
My eyes flicked towards the doorway, towards the street where I'd glimpsed the small girl, Meili, lurking with her… pet? If she controlled the Wolgrams, maybe she was the key.
Decision made. Forget engaging Elsa directly. I poured every ounce of speed Triple Accel afforded me into pure, desperate movement.
I bolted. Straight past Elsa, ignoring the flash of renewed interest on her face, and shot out the inn's main entrance like I was fired fro
m a cannon.
"Shamrock!" "Wait!" Rem and Ram's startled cries echoed behind me. Needed them focused on Elsa, not chasing me.
Over my shoulder, still moving at blurring speed, I yelled back into the inn, pitching my voice to carry over the remaining sounds of combat: "Let's take this outside, ya cantankerous bitch! Don't want yer guts dirtyin' up the nice floor!" Hopefully, that conveyed 'tactical repositioning' rather than 'cowardly flight'.
Bursting onto the now mostly deserted street, I scanned frantically. There! Meili, standing near the shadows where the Wolgrams had emerged, watching the inn with those wide, unnerving eyes. Nestled in her arms was a creature that looked less like a pet and more like something cobbled together from nightmares – mangy, dark brown fur, patches missing revealing sickly pale skin underneath, including a noticeable bald spot on its head. Its eyes held a low, unsettling glow. It looked small now, deceptively so.
Perfect. Hostage time.
I crossed the distance between us in a handful of accelerated heartbeats. My intention was simple: grab her, use her as a shield or bargaining chip. I reached out, aiming to snatch her by the arm or shoulder.
But in my haste, fueled by accelerated speed and desperation, my hand moved faster, less precisely than intended. Instead of grabbing her arm, my fingers closed around her forehead.
It was, I realized instantly, a catastrophically stupid mistake.
The moment my skin made contact, Meili didn't scream. Her eyes widened, not in fear, but in something else… focus? Command? The mangy creature in her arms reacted instantly.
"FSHHHHAAAAAAWWWRRRR!"
It wasn't a growl; it was the sound of unnatural growth, of flesh and bone expanding at impossible speed. The creature exploded outwards from her arms, its form swelling, distorting. Dark brown fur rippled over rapidly expanding muscle and bone. In seconds, the small, mangy beast towered over us, easily the size of a small building, its bald head scraping against the eaves of the nearby structures. Its eyes, now huge green lanterns, fixed on me with ravenous, world-ending hunger. Its shadow fell over the street, plunging us into sudden twilight.
Oh. Right. Demon Beasts. Some of them change size. And this one, the Gildawolf, was apparently Meili's personal ride/guardian/mobile weapon of mass destruction.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Forget a new problem. This was an extinction-level event standing three feet away from me. And I'd just provoked it by grabbing its master's face. And Elsa was likely right behind me. My life expectancy, already measured in seconds, just plummeted into negative numbers.
My accelerated reflexes screamed DODGE!, but the wave of fear, combined with the sheer shock, locked me in place for a fatal fraction of a second.
Then the world became teeth, pressure, and agony.
The Gildawolf's jaws snapped shut, not on empty air, but on me. I barely registered the sickening crunch of bone, the tearing of flesh, before being lifted bodily off the ground. I was a chew toy. Shaken violently, tossed around like a rag doll in the colossal maw, the world a blur of pain, teeth, and the horrifying interior of a demon beast's mouth.
Triple Accel sputtered and died under the overwhelming trauma. The Wolgram regeneration fought a futile battle against catastrophic damage. My consciousness flickered, submerged under waves of agony. I felt ribs crack, limbs bend at unnatural angles, the coppery taste of my own blood filling my mouth. This wasn't a quick death; it was agonizing, drawn-out demolition.
Three minutes. Or maybe three seconds that felt like three minutes in the jaws of a building-sized monster. Time lost all meaning before oblivion finally claimed me. Utterly, definitively, messily dead. Again.
…Darkness. Not the suffocating darkness of being a chew toy, but the relative quiet after the storm. The faint smell of antiseptic competed with stale blood.
Ugh. What now?
My eyes snapped open.
I wasn't on the street being nommed by a kaiju-dog. I was… standing near the back of the inn's common room? The wreckage from the earlier thug fight was still evident – overturned tables being righted by the harried innkeeper, guards milling near the entrance finishing their report, the lingering tension in the air. Rem and Ram were supervising the cleanup with grim efficiency. Emilia and Puck were talking quietly near the stairs.
Confusion hit me first. Then, understanding. The reset. It hadn't thrown me back hours. When I died outside, my desperate wish for safety hadn't latched onto the first arrival, but onto the state after the immediate threat (the thugs) had been dealt with, before the next wave (Elsa and Meili) arrived. The closest point of relative 'safety' linked to a potential 'Bonfire' anchor – maybe the lingering adrenaline and focus from the fight itself created a temporary anchor? Or perhaps it was still the kitchen hearth nearby, but the respawn point was simply the last moment of calm after the initial battle.
My internal clock confirmed it – only minutes had passed since the guards started clearing the bodies from the first fight. The fight where I killed sixteen thugs. The fight that had happened in this timeline. I still had the boosted strength and skills from that encounter.
But Elsa and Meili… they were still coming. Tonight. The future I'd just died in was still barreling down on us. The fancy dinner invitation from Roswaal (which I'd hallucinated earlier) was definitely not happening now. We were stuck here, in this damaged inn, waiting for the Bowel Hunter's return.
Okay. This wasn't a three-hour prep window. This was… maybe slightly less time than that, depending on when Elsa decided 'tonight' began. But it was still a second chance. A chance to use the knowledge of their attack, their methods (Wolgrams, Meili's beast, Elsa's regeneration), to prepare a defense.
I wasn't reset to zero. I had the gains from the thug fight. I knew Elsa regenerated. I knew Meili's beast was huge and dangerous. I knew they planned to attack tonight.
This time, grabbing Meili was definitely off the table. This time, I needed a plan that didn't involve becoming dog food. And I needed to convince the others that the danger wasn't over, without revealing how I knew. This was going to be tricky.
Alright, respawned after the thug massacre, before Elsa's dinner-time entrance. Time is limited, knowledge is critical, and becoming giant demon dog kibble is still fresh in my memory. Plan: hardcore internal prep and subtle external nudging.
The adrenaline from the Gildawolf death faded quickly, replaced by the cold, hard reality of the situation. Elsa was coming back. Meili and her building-sized monstrosity were coming back. And my current power level, while significantly boosted from Base Shamrock, was demonstrably insufficient against regenerating assassins and kaiju pets.
No time for rest. No time for awkward post-battle chats. Every second counted.
Mental Command: ALL IDLE PARTITIONS - FULL RE-TASKING!
Partition 1 (Arena): Target Echo - Elsa Granhiert. Difficulty Assessment: EXTREME. Objective: Analyze attack patterns, speed, regeneration capabilities. Identify any potential weaknesses or openings through relentless simulated combat.
Partition 2 (Arena): Target Echo - Gildawolf (Maebeast). Difficulty Assessment: HIGH (Size/Power). Objective: Analyze movement, attack vectors, potential vulnerabilities (eyes? joints? Meili link?). Develop evasion and counter-strategies.
Partition 3 (Arena): Target Echo - Wolgram Swarm (??? Estimated 10-20). Difficulty Assessment: Moderate (Curses/Numbers). Objective: Refine pack-fighting tactics, maximize curse resistance assimilation, test anti-swarm maneuvers.
Partition 4 (Skill Integration): Task: Synthesize Combat Style - 'Feral Knife'. Input Data: All assimilated skills (Thugs, Wolgrams, ongoing Elsa/Gildawolf simulations), sensory feedback from previous loops, conceptual understanding of 'Time' (basic accel/rewind). Goal: Develop a hyper-aggressive, unpredictable, speed-focused fighting style leveraging dual knives, regeneration, and temporal bursts. Adaptability and survivability paramount. Codename: FERAL KNIFE OF IRELAND (Aspiration, not current reality).
My mind became a battlefield. Multiple instances of me were thrown against simulations of Elsa, the Gildawolf, and Wolgram packs simultaneously. The results were… brutal. Virtual Shamrock died. A lot. Dismembered by Elsa's impossible speed countless times. Crushed, bitten, swallowed by the simulated Gildawolf. Torn apart by spectral Wolgrams. Each death, each failure, however, fed data back into the system.
Elsa Simulation Defeat: Cause - Decapitation. Note: Regeneration speed appears slightly slower for head trauma? Needs verification.
Gildawolf Simulation Defeat: Cause - Crushed. Note: Direct confrontation ineffective. Evasion critical. Possible weak point in underbelly during leap attack?
Wolgram Simulation Defeat: Cause - Curse Overload. Note: Resistance stacking is effective but has limits. Need faster elimination.
I absorbed the phantom agony, the simulated deaths, the fleeting successes. The Feral Knife style began to take shape – less finesse, more brutal speed bursts using Triple Accel, focusing on evasion, targeting joints or sensory organs, using the butcher knives for tearing, gouging, anything to slow opponents down, relying on the minor regeneration to patch up the inevitable damage. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't heroic. It was desperate, savage survival. Becoming the 'Feral Knife of Ireland' wasn't just a boast anymore; it felt like a necessary, grim transformation.
Externally, I must have looked like hell. Pacing restlessly near the stairs, hands clenching and unclenching, muttering under my breath as simulation data overloaded my senses. Eyes darting towards the windows, the doors. Fidgeting. Jumpy.
Emilia noticed first, her gentle nature picking up on my distress. "Shamrock? Are you alright? You seem… agitated." Rem and Ram's sharp eyes were on me too, their earlier assessment likely shifting towards 'potentially unstable'. Puck floated closer, curiosity piqued.
I couldn't tell them I was fighting virtual death battles in my head based on knowledge from a future I'd already died in. They'd lock me up, or worse. Need to nudge them. Plausible deniability.
I stopped pacing, running a hand through my hair, trying to look stressed but not insane. "Yeah," I managed, my voice a bit rough. "Yeah, I'm… okay. Just…" I forced a grimace. "Got a real bad feelin' 'bout this. Somethin' ain't right." I glanced towards the main entrance again. "Felt like that attack… it was too easy, yeah? Like they were just probes. Or softenin' us up." I met Emilia's gaze, trying to inject urgency without revealing the source. "Call it a gut feelin', but I don't think we're outta the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Maybe… maybe we shouldn't relax just yet?"
Emilia looked uncertain at my vague warning, clearly wanting to believe the danger was over but troubled by my intensity. Puck tilted his head, considering my words. Ram remained impassive. But Rem… Rem reacted differently.
Her blue eyes, usually calm or politely menacing, held a flicker of something else – understanding? Resonance? She stepped forward, interrupting whatever Emilia might have said next.
"He is right to be cautious," Rem stated, her voice soft but firm, carrying an unexpected weight. She gestured towards the table where the simple meal still sat mostly untouched. "Come, Shamrock. Sit. Eat." It wasn't just an invitation; it felt like a gentle command, acknowledging the tension while offering a moment of grounding.
As I hesitated, unsure how to react to her sudden shift, she continued, her gaze distant for a moment, a shadow touching her expression. "This… has the feeling of a bad night brewing. Similar, perhaps, to another bad night, long ago." She glanced briefly towards Ram, a silent communication passing between them that spoke volumes of shared trauma. Ram gave an almost imperceptible nod in return. Definitely referencing their village, I realized. The Witch Cult attack. Roswaal's involvement. Whether the specific details were canon or fanon blurred, the core trauma was real, and apparently, the current atmosphere resonated with it for them.
Rem looked back at me, her expression settling back into calm determination. "Nee-sama is right. Worrying on an empty stomach achieves little. Replenish your strength. If trouble comes again, you will need it."
Her unexpected empathy, the shared sense of foreboding… it actually helped. Maybe more than the frantic internal simulations. "Yeah," I agreed, the tension easing just a fraction. The fidgeting lessened. "Calm before the storm… or the next fight, anyway. Sounds good."
Okay. Eating didn't seem like the worst idea. I needed the energy, and sitting still might help process the simulation data better. I let the 'Wolgram Swarm' partition go idle, freeing up processing power.
Mental Command: Partition Three - Re-task. Resume Primary Study: The Law of Time. Objective: Deepen understanding of temporal mechanics, refine Accel control, explore potential applications beyond self-acceleration. Priority: High.
Having that core study running again felt… centering. Less pure combat focus, more foundational growth. Maybe understanding time better would offer solutions beyond just hitting things faster.
I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Emilia, picking up a piece of bread. Rem and Ram returned to their watchful positions nearby. The atmosphere was still tense, but now it felt less like solitary panic and more like… shared vigilance. Waiting for the inevitable, but facing it together. And maybe, just maybe, slightly better prepared this time.
So I sat. I ate the stew – which was surprisingly hearty – and chewed the dense bread, but my focus was almost entirely inward. While my body went through the motions of replenishing energy, my mind was a crucible.
The Idle Trainer partitions ran relentlessly. Virtual Elsa danced circles around simulated me, knives flashing, forcing adaptations, exploiting weaknesses I didn't know I had until she carved them open. I died hundreds, thousands of times against her echo, each death refining my evasion, parries, and desperate counter-attacks. Her regeneration remained the insurmountable obstacle, but patterns emerged – moments of vulnerability after regrowing limbs, slight tells before certain attack sequences.
Simultaneously, the Gildawolf echo lumbered and lunged in another mental arena. I learned its charge patterns, the arc of its terrifying bite, the way it used its immense size. Direct confrontation was suicide, but its legs seemed slightly less durable during directional changes, its underbelly exposed during leaps. Minor openings, maybe exploitable with extreme speed and precision.
The third partition relentlessly synthesized. It took the raw data – Kan's dirty street fighting, Chin's brute force, Ton's panicked jabs, the thugs' crude swordplay, the Wolgrams' feral agility and resilience, the countless failures against Elsa and the Gildawolf – and hammered it into something new. The 'Feral Knife of Ireland' wasn't just a name anymore; it was becoming a doctrine. Less structured martial art, more hyper-aggressive survival system. It emphasized overwhelming bursts of Triple Accel, using the butcher knives not for clean cuts but for tearing, disabling, creating openings. It incorporated dodges that flowed into gouging counter-strikes, parries that transitioned into joint locks or throws learned from virtual beatdowns. It embraced the minor regeneration, relying on it to offset the brutal strain of accelerated time and traded blows. It was ugly, savage, and getting terrifyingly effective in the simulations. I felt the neural pathways forging, the instincts hardening.
Meanwhile, the 'Law of Time' partition hummed along, deepening my intuitive grasp. Triple Accel felt smoother, the backlash slightly less jarring. Control over the ten-second rewind improved, becoming less a panic button, more a precise tool in simulations – rewinding a missed block, replaying an enemy's attack to analyze it mid-fight. The concepts were still vast and complex, but my foundation felt stronger.
Externally? I tried to act normal. Emilia spoke softly with Puck about… something trivial, flowers maybe? Trying to distract herself. Rem and Ram exchanged quiet observations about the state of the inn, their voices low and calm, though their eyes never stopped scanning.
I piped in occasionally. "Stew's good," I offered, hoping it sounded convincing. Listened politely as Emilia fretted about the innkeeper's costs. Offered a noncommittal grunt when Puck made a dry comment about the quality of the local guards. I tried to match their vigilant calm, but inside, I was forging myself into a weapon, heartbeat by simulated heartbeat. The quiet conversation, the shared meal, the semblance of peace – it was the eye of the storm, and I was using every precious second to sharpen my metaphorical (and literal) knives before the winds hit again.
The last piece of bread turned to ash in my mouth. A sudden, jarring notification flashed across my internal awareness, overriding everything else.
Arena Notification: Gildawolf Echo Defeated. Conditions Met: Exploited vulnerability during leap attack sequence. Data Acquisition Initiated…
Before the notification even finished scrolling, the effect slammed into me. Right of Conquest activated, targeting the simulated echo of the building-sized demon beast I'd just managed to 'kill' in the mental arena after countless failures.
It wasn't like absorbing the thugs or the Wolgrams. This was different. This was immense. A tidal wave of raw, primal power surged through me, dense and heavy. My muscles didn't just feel stronger; they flexed involuntarily, thickening, hardening under my tunic with startling speed. Bones seemed to settle, feeling denser, more resilient. A low, resonant thrum echoed in my chest, a feeling of immense, dormant physical potential awakening. It wasn't just strength; it was scale. The sheer concept of the Gildawolf's monstrous size and power imprinted itself onto my being, granting not its form, but a measure of its raw, overwhelming physical presence and resilience. The minor regeneration absorbed from the Wolgrams felt supercharged, turbocharged by the echo of the larger beast's vitality.
The influx was staggering, almost painful in its intensity. I gasped, knuckles white on the table edge, every muscle in my body clenched hard against the overwhelming surge. It felt like trying to contain an explosion within my own skin.
And in that exact moment of internal upheaval, when all my focus was on integrating the colossal power of the Gildawolf echo—
Creeeak.
The sound was almost imperceptible, lost beneath the roaring in my own ears, but my heightened senses caught it. The inn's main door, the one leading to the street, swung open silently, smoothly. Not kicked in, not forced. Opened with deliberate, stealthy care.
A figure stood silhouetted against the deepening twilight outside. Tall, graceful, wrapped in shadow.
Then, the voice, soft as silk, predatory as a razor's edge, cut through the quiet tension of the room.
"Ara, ara…" Elsa's silken voice, laced with amused cruelty, slithered into the tense quiet of the inn's common room. She stood framed in the main doorway, a silhouette against the deepening twilight, her presence instantly commanding all attention, sucking the air out of the space.
Rem and Ram snapped into protective positions before Emilia, radiating barely contained hostility. Puck zipped higher, a small ball of condensed fury. My own hand tightened on the butcher knife under the table, the other hovering near the Estus Flask, the Idle Trainer already screaming silent warnings.
Then she moved. Not walking, but flowing forward, liquid grace poured into human form. The shadows seemed to cling to her black attire, accentuating her unnerving elegance. Her hands blurred, twin throwing knives appearing as if conjured from the dim light itself.
They didn't stay still; they danced. With effortless, captivating precision, she sent both blades spinning in intricate, mesmerizing twin twirls, the polished steel catching the faint light in hypnotic, dangerous flashes. It was less a preparation for combat, more a performance of lethal artistry, a prelude to violence.
She came to a halt a dozen paces away, the hypnotic spinning ceasing as she sank into a wide, low stance. Perfectly balanced, radiating coiled energy, potential energy waiting to explode outwards. The knives settled in her grip, points angled slightly upwards, ready. Her smile, which had been playing on her lips, widened now, shedding its last vestiges of manufactured charm, becoming purely predatory. Her violet eyes locked onto mine, sharp, focused, promising exquisite pain.
The world seemed to narrow to the space between us. The thrumming power of the Gildawolf echo, freshly settled within me, met her killing intent. The fear was still a cold counterpoint deep inside, but it was banked now, overlaid with the grim determination forged in thousands of simulated deaths, fueled by the raw strength and resilience I'd absorbed.
I pushed my chair back, the scrape of wood loud in the sudden silence, and stood. The heavy butcher knife felt different now – an extension of my arm, humming with latent power. With a flick of my wrist, born of simulated mastery rather than conscious practice, I sent the knife spinning through the air – a single, clean rotation – catching it by the hilt in a reverse grip. The second knife found my other hand just as quickly. It was a small act of defiance, a reflection of her own display, a statement that I wasn't the same frightened prey she'd encountered before.
Her eyes tracked the movement, the predatory amusement flickering, replaced by a sharper, more focused curiosity. She recognized the change.
My voice, when I spoke, was steady, deeper, carrying the resonance of the power now anchoring me. The earlier brogue was gone, burned away by adrenaline and transformation. "Starson," I declared, the name echoing slightly. "The Feral Knife of Ireland."
Elsa's smile didn't falter. She accepted the declaration, the challenge. She held my gaze, her own posture unchanging, radiating absolute confidence. "Elsa Granheirt," she responded, her voice a silken murmur that carried the weight of her reputation. Then, completing the deadly introduction, she added the title that chilled the blood: "Bowel Hunter."
The names hung between us. Feral Knife. Bowel Hunter. Acknowledged. Accepted.
The air crackled. The moment stretched.
And I was a real Feral Knife now, I thought, feeling the savage energy coiled within me, the instincts honed sharp, the power settled deep. And she looks like she knows it. The huntress recognized that her prey had grown teeth. Sharp ones.
The charged silence snapped. No more words were needed. With my declaration still hanging in the air, I exploded forward.
Forget waiting, forget reacting. The Feral Knife doctrine screamed for aggression, for seizing the initiative, for closing the distance before her superior skill could dictate the engagement. My legs, empowered by the Gildawolf's strength and driven by focused intent, propelled me across the floorboards in a blur of motion.
Simultaneously, I invoked the power, pushing against my own internal time flow. "DOUBLE ACCEL!" The command wasn't shouted, but snarled, a guttural burst of sound ripped from my throat as the world lurched into that familiar, jittery fast-forward.
My speed instantly doubled relative to the room. The distance between us vanished in less than a heartbeat. My butcher knives, crude but heavy, lashed out – not with finesse, but with raw, accelerated force, aiming to overwhelm, to disrupt her perfect stance before she could fully react.
Sparks erupted as steel met steel. Elsa hadn't been caught entirely flat-footed; her own inhuman reflexes were already responding. But the sheer, sudden velocity of my assault, the unexpected aggression, clearly surprised her. She wasn't dancing around me this time; she was forced to meet my charge head-on, her elegant knives working furiously to parry the heavy, brutally direct blows from my butcher blades.
Clang! Screech! Clang! The sounds were sharp, staccato, echoing jarringly in the accelerated time frame.
She was matching me, yes. Her skill was still leagues beyond mine, her movements economical and precise where mine were fueled by brute force and simulated instinct. She deflected my attacks, redirecting the force, occasionally slipping in a lightning-fast counter that I barely managed to block thanks only to the doubled reaction time. It felt less like a true contest and more like she was… indulging me. Testing the waters. Gauging the limits of this newfound speed. She was still playing.
But as our blades locked momentarily, skidding against each other in a shower of sparks, I saw it. Her eyes, those violet pools that usually held either cold amusement or chilling emptiness, widened fractionally. Not in fear, not yet. But in genuine surprise, quickly followed by an escalation of that predatory glee. Her smile stretched, becoming sharper, more dangerous, alight with the thrill of encountering something genuinely unexpected, something that might actually provide a challenge.
The Feral Knife had drawn blood, metaphorically speaking. The game had changed, and the Bowel Hunter was starting to enjoy it. Which, I suspected, was very, very bad news for me.
Double Accel wasn't enough. She was adapting too quickly, her smile widening with every parry, every deflected blow. She was enjoying this, treating it like a warm-up. Time to crank it up, push the advantage before she decided playtime was over.
"TRIPLE ACCEL!" I roared, forcing my internal clock faster still.
The world lurched again, slowing further. Steam began to rise faintly from my skin as my accelerated metabolism warred with the ambient temperature. The strain intensified, a familiar burning ache deep within my muscles, but the boost was immediate. My speed tripled.
The change was instantly noticeable. My butcher knives became true blurs, overwhelming her defenses. Her eyes widened further as a flurry of accelerated strikes rained down on her. Parry, parry, block – shink! My blade slipped past her guard, tearing a shallow gash across her arm. Another strike severed the tendons in her wrist, causing one knife to clatter to the floor. A third powerful blow connected with her shoulder, staggering her.
I pressed the attack relentlessly, the Feral Knife instincts screaming to disable, to tear apart. A blurring sequence of cuts followed – severing her remaining arm at the elbow, slicing through the back of one knee, then the other. She collapsed again, dismembered, momentarily helpless.
But the regeneration was just as fast, just as horrifyingly efficient. Black mist swirled, limbs reformed almost instantly. She surged back to her feet, retrieving her fallen knife with impossible speed, her expression ecstatic now, alight with euphoric battle lust.
And then she MOVED.
Whatever restraint she'd been showing vanished. She didn't just match my Triple Accel speed; she exceeded it, flowing like quicksilver, like weaponized lightning. Her knives weren't just tools; they were extensions of her being, weaving intricate, inescapable patterns of death.
"AHH! SO WONDERFUL!" Her delighted cry echoed through the slowed-time perception, chillingly clear. This speed, this violence – this was what she lived for.
Suddenly, I was the one overwhelmed. Her attacks came from impossible angles, faster than I could track even at triple speed. Blocks became desperate deflections, dodges became frantic scrambles. Cuts appeared on my arms, my legs, my torso – shallow, burning lines that the Wolgram regeneration fought to close, but new ones appeared faster than the old ones healed. I was bleeding, lagging, being dismantled piece by agonizing piece.
Not enough! Still not enough! The Idle Trainer screamed tactical retreats, evasive maneuvers, but there was nowhere to run. She was everywhere.
Panic warred with the Invictus core of my will. I needed more. Damn the consequences, damn the strain!
"QUINTUPLE ACCELLLL!!!" The word tore from my throat, raw, broken, fueled by sheer terror and desperation.
It felt like being ripped apart and reassembled simultaneously. Burning. White-hot agony flared through every nerve ending. Steam poured off my body in thick clouds, obscuring vision. My heart hammered like it would explode. The world outside slowed to an absolute crawl, each individual dust mote hanging suspended in the air.
But I was fast. Faster than lightning. Faster than thought. My movements became instantaneous blurs, reacting, attacking, defending at speeds that defied physics.
And finally… we were even.
My impossible speed matched hers. My butcher knives, crude but driven by overwhelming velocity and augmented strength, met her elegant blades in a continuous, blinding storm of sparks. We became two phantoms locked in a deadly dance, our movements blurring throughout the room, weaving between tables, crashing against walls, the sheer speed of our passage leaving trails of displaced air.
Seconds turned into what felt like minutes, stretched thin by the accelerated time flow. Blades flashed, swiped, parried. I dodged strikes that would have killed me instantly at normal speed, relying on the Gildawolf resilience and Wolgram regeneration to shrug off the glancing blows that still got through. Limbs flew – hers, regenerating almost instantly; occasionally mine, followed by the sickening crunch of accelerated self-healing knitting bone and tearing flesh back together.
It was a stalemate fought at speeds no normal eye could follow. A hyper-violent ballet of regeneration versus relentless assault. I was durable, my stamina seemingly endless thanks to Powered Sustenance and the aggregated vitality. But so was she, her own stamina seemingly limitless, her regeneration erasing every injury, her ecstatic smile never faltering.
How long could this last? How long until Quintuple Accel tore me apart from the inside out, regeneration or no? How long until one of us made a mistake? This wasn't a battle anymore; it was a war of attrition fought on fast forward.
The stalemate was agony. Quintuple Accel burned, regeneration fought a losing battle against the sheer self-inflicted strain, and Elsa… Elsa just kept coming, her ecstatic smile a permanent fixture, her regeneration erasing every wound. This wasn't working. Attrition would kill me first.
I needed something else. Something definitive. Something that bypassed regeneration altogether.
The 'Law of Time' partition pulsed in my mind. Acceleration wasn't the only trick. Causality. Cause and effect. Could I manipulate that? Could I land blows before their cause, stack impacts faster than reality could process, faster than even her regeneration could respond?
It felt… dangerous. Like trying to rewrite the source code of existence with clumsy fingers. But desperation was a powerful motivator.
My fighting style shifted. No more trading blows, no more seeking openings. It became pure, focused aggression, pouring every ounce of Quintuple Accel speed into a single, overwhelming barrage. My butcher knives became indistinct blurs, not just moving fast, but seeming to occupy multiple points in space-time simultaneously.
I wasn't just striking her; I was layering strikes atop each other, compressing the timeline of my attacks, divorcing the effect (impact, cutting, tearing) from its immediate cause. Each blow landed microseconds after the last, creating a cascade of damage that hit simultaneously on a macro scale. It was like hitting her with dozens of attacks in the same instant.
The strain was immense. It felt like my soul was fraying, reality itself pushing back against the violation. My body screamed, the borrowed regeneration faltering badly under the combined onslaught of Quintuple Accel and temporal distortion. I was literally burning myself out, consuming my own existence for this attack.
Elsa's ecstatic smile finally faltered, replaced by wide-eyed shock, then confusion, then the dawning edge of actual pain as the stacked impacts bypassed her regeneration's ability to keep up. Her flesh tore, bone splintered, not regenerating fast enough because the next impact was already landing before the previous one could fully register and heal.
This was it. All or nothing. Pour everything into this temporal shredding. Turn her to paste before I burned out completely!
"GENERAL OVERCLOCKING!" I roared, the words distorted by the accelerated time and the sheer effort. "ABSOLUTE MOVE: SHREDDER!"
My knives became less blades, more localized zones of hyper-accelerated destruction. I didn't just cut; I disintegrated. Flesh, bone, clothing – anything caught in the overlapping temporal impacts atomized.
Elsa Granhiert, the Bowel Hunter, didn't even have time to scream. One moment, she was regenerating, confused, hurting. The next, she simply… ceased to exist in a coherent form. Where she stood, there was only a fine, dark red mist rapidly dispersing, mixed with fragments of black cloth and the faint, lingering scent of ozone and wrongness. The Bowel Hunter splattered.
Silence slammed back into the room as the unnatural quiet of Quintuple Accel abruptly ended, the temporal distortion collapsing. The backlash hit me like a physical blow. Agony unlike anything before ripped through me. I collapsed to my knees, dropping the knives, smoke pouring off my body, every muscle fiber screaming, the world swimming dizzily back to normal speed. I felt… hollowed out, like I'd burned something essential.
And it was into this sudden, shocking silence, amidst the wreckage, the lingering blood mist, and my own smoking, kneeling form, that the inn's main door opened again.
Reinhard van Astrea stepped inside, his expression initially calm, assessing. Then his eyes widened fractionally as he took in the scene – the utter devastation, the absence of the dark-clad woman he'd likely sensed moments before, and me, kneeling amidst the metaphorical ashes, looking like I'd just gone twelve rounds with reality itself and barely survived.
Oh, perfect timing. Again.
And I fell onto the ground like a sack of potatoes.