Chapter 212: Time Sign - Private Square
'I can win.'
This single, intoxicating thought echoed through the Magician's mind. His smile fractured entirely out of his control, the corners of his mouth splitting so wide they threatened to tear his cheeks. Desperate to maintain some semblance of composure, he buried his face in his voluminous velvet sleeve, his shoulders trembling with suppressed, manic glee.
"What is wrong with that guy?" Haruto muttered.
"I do not know," Kaguya replied, tilting her head. "Perhaps you provoked him so thoroughly in the first round that his mind simply snapped."
"Is his mental fortitude really that fragile?" Haruto rubbed his chin, feigning a look of deep concern. "Should I go over there and offer a sincere apology?"
The two of them had ceased their pursuit entirely. Standing casually on the stage, they watched the Magician huddle with his back to the audience, whispering to each other with zero regard for the tension of a death match.
Their voices carried effortlessly across the silent stage, piercing straight into the Magician's ears. A violent flush of rage crept up his neck. He drew in several ragged breaths, forcing his chest to steady. 'There is no need to argue with the dead,'he chanted inwardly.'They are already corpses.'
"Come now! Best of three! Let us commence the third round!" The Magician spun around, a twisted, brilliant smile plastered across his face. He swept his magic top hat from his head and slammed it onto the wooden floorboards.
A torrential geyser of pitch-black seawater erupted from the hat's hollow depths. Within seconds, the surging tide defied gravity, forming a massive, floating ocean suspended directly above the stage.
Ripples disturbed the floating water. Pale, bloated human faces broke the surface. They were attached to the bodies of grotesque fish, their dead eyes locking onto the players seated in the audience. Their jaws unhinged, revealing rows of jagged, inward-curving teeth that resembled rusted thorns.
The players huddled in the viewing area swallowed hard. A cold sweat broke out across their backs.
Before anyone could scream, the suspended ocean collapsed. The foul, suffocating stench of rotting seafood and stagnant blood washed over the crowd as the tidal wave of human-headed fish lunged straight for the stands.
Panic erupted. Players scrambled over chairs, desperately summoning their respective ghost artifacts. Yet, facing an area-of-effect catastrophe of this magnitude, their meager defensive items felt like paper shields. Several players were on the verge of tears. They were just spectators! Why were they getting dragged into the crossfire?
"Boundary of Motion and Stillness."
The young man's voice was not loud, yet it cut through the chaotic roaring of the water with absolute clarity.
A miracle descended upon the circus tent.
The crashing tidal wave, along with the thousands of gnashing human-headed fish hidden within its depths, froze instantly in mid-air. Every single droplet of water locked into place, suspended like a massive, glittering chandelier of glass. The only thing that remained was the nauseating fishy stench lingering in the air.
Dead silence reclaimed the venue.
The players stared blankly at the frozen tsunami hanging mere inches above their heads. They swallowed dryly, then slowly turned their heads toward the stage. Their eyes locked onto Haruto, shining with the kind of fervent reverence usually reserved for a descending god.
'Boss... you are incredible.'
Without a single word exchanged, every player reached for the electronic screens attached to their seats and mashed the 10 button. If saving their lives from a grotesque tsunami did not warrant a perfect score, nothing in this twisted world ever would.
The Magician stood frozen, his arm still raised high from slamming the hat. The manic ecstasy on his face shattered, peeling away piece by piece. It was only when the harsh buzz of the final scoring echoed through the tent that he snapped out of his delusion.
"I... lost?"
The floorboards beneath his boots softened. Sickly, pale hands tore through the wood, their long, decaying fingers wrapping around his ankles like iron vines, dragging him downward.
"No! I did not lose! How could I possibly lose?!"
His features twisted into a mask of pure, hideous desperation. His hand darted into his top hat, ripping out a gleaming scimitar. Without a second of hesitation, he swung the blade in a brutal arc.
A flash of cold silver illuminated the stage. Blood sprayed across the floorboards as the Magician severed his own legs right at the knees.
As his mutilated torso began to fall, he snatched a parasol stitched from human skin out of thin air. He snapped the canopy open, and an unseen updraft caught it, lifting his bleeding body high into the air, safely out of reach of the grasping hands.
"Damn it! We agreed on a best of three! The loser forfeits their life! How can you just back out of the penalty? Just die already!"
"Cheating! This is blatant cheating!"
"Is the system not going to punish this?"
The players, their nerves already frayed to the breaking point by the near-death experience, completely lost their minds. Fear gave way to absolute outrage as they screamed at the floating mutilated man.
Haruto simply stood there, his posture relaxed. He was in no rush. A man bleeding out from double amputations could not float up there forever.
"Shut up! I did not lose!" The Magician hissed, his face contorting into a demonic snarl. "I still have one move... my final act!"
He violently threw his bloodstained cloak open.
A deafening buzzing sound filled the tent. A massive, churning black cloud of demonic insects poured from the lining of his coat. Each bug was the size of a fist, equipped with razor-sharp mandibles and serrated claws. The swarm split into two distinct columns. One half dove directly toward the screaming audience, while the other half charged straight for Haruto.
However, the moment the second swarm closed within three meters of Haruto, they hit an invisible wall of terror. The insects made a sharp, frantic hairpin turn, abandoning the Boundary Youkai entirely and diving toward the audience instead.
The crowd froze in sheer disbelief. Why was it them again? They were just trying to watch a show!
Frantic players activated their ghost artifacts, throwing up weak barriers of light and shadow. They cast desperate, pleading glances toward the stage, praying Haruto would snap his fingers and freeze the swarm just as he had done with the ocean.
Haruto did not lift a finger.
The seawater and the fish from before had merely been conjured illusions. Freezing illusions with Boundary Power was a trivial matter. But these insects were physical, living creatures. Imposing the concept of absolute stillness on thousands of living, struggling souls was entirely different. Freezing them for a fraction of a second was manageable, but holding them in stasis for an extended period would drain him unnecessarily.
Kaguya stepped forward, raising a slender hand to signal she would take the lead. A crystalline Talisman Card materialized between her elegant fingers, glowing with a soft, ethereal light.
"Time Sign - Private Square!"
The moment the words left her lips, the Talisman Card shattered into a blinding pulse of white light. The radiance expanded outward at an impossible speed, swallowing the entire performance area and the audience stands.
Instantly, the frantic buzzing of the insects dropped to a low, distorted drone. Everything in the venue—except for Haruto and Kaguya—plunged into a state of near-absolute stagnation. It was as if the world had been converted into a film reel and slowed down a hundredfold. The terrifying insects hung in the air, their wings beating at an agonizingly sluggish pace.
"You have this move too?" Haruto blinked, genuinely surprised. He recalled Sakuya giving him a Talisman Card bearing the exact same name, though the visual effect of the maid's time manipulation felt slightly different.
"Is it not cool?" Kaguya curled her lips into a smug, triumphant smile.
"It is cool," Haruto admitted, his expression turning slightly complicated as he pointed toward the corner of the stage. "But why did you slow down Youmu's time flow as well? You do not expect us to walk over there and swat these bugs one by one ourselves, do you?"
In the distance, the insects surrounding Youmu had already been reduced to severed pieces, but the half-phantom swordswoman herself was currently trapped in the time dilation. Moving at a hundredth of her normal speed, Haruto could just barely track the microscopic shifts in her posture.
"Ah. Right." Kaguya blinked, realizing her oversight. With a flick of her wrist, she lifted the temporal restriction placed on the swordswoman.
Youmu froze for a fraction of a second, her combat instincts instantly adapting to the sudden shift in temporal physics. Her hand dropped to the hilt of her blade.
A storm of silver light erupted.
Her afterimages painted the stage. Wherever the flashing trails of her sword passed, the sluggish insect swarm was systematically and brutally dismantled.
When the flow of time snapped back to its normal rhythm, the players in the audience were still screaming, their arms raised to block the impending swarm. They fully believed they were about to be eaten alive.
A second passed.
Deep, cross-shaped fissures suddenly materialized across the hard carapaces of the insects hovering inches from their faces. With a series of crisp, synchronized clicks, the terrifying bugs neatly fractured into four identical pieces each, raining down onto the floorboards like shattered glass.
'We... survived?'
The players sat in stunned silence for several long seconds. Then, the reality of their survival crashed over them. They scrambled to their feet, frantically brushing the severed insect limbs off their clothes.
Countless pairs of eyes shifted toward the stage. The gratitude and sheer awe directed at Haruto and Kaguya burned so intensely it felt as though the audience was gazing upon descending deities.
"Impossible! I do not believe it!"
Suspended high above the stage, the bleeding Magician watched his ultimate trump card turn to dust. His eyes bulged so far out of their sockets they resembled those of a dead fish. His remaining torso began to violently swell, his skin tearing open inch by inch as toxic green veins pulsed beneath the surface. He was clearly preparing to detonate himself in a final, suicidal strike.
"Boss! Stop him quickly! Do not let him use his ultimate move!" a player in the front row shrieked, pointing at the swelling monstrosity.
Haruto and Kaguya casually drew their Talisman Cards, fully prepared to swat the man out of the sky.
Before either could act, a tall figure materialized on the center stage without a sound. Dressed in an immaculately tailored formal suit, it was none other than the Circus Troupe Leader.
The Leader did not even look up. His right arm suddenly elongated, stretching upward like a whip of rubber and bone. His massive hand clamped around the Magician's throat, violently yanking the mutilated man out of the air and slamming him onto the stage.
Under the Magician's terrified, bulging gaze, the Circus Troupe Leader calmly gripped the man's head with both hands. With a sharp, casual twist—
Crack.
The spine snapped. The head was brutally torn from the shoulders in a shower of crimson.
The Circus Troupe Leader unhinged his jaw, his mouth stretching to impossible proportions, and clamped his teeth directly over the spurting stump of the neck. His throat bobbed rhythmically as he swallowed the gushing blood. A moment later, he casually tossed the drained, headless corpse aside.
The floorboards instantly softened. Countless pale palms surged upward, dragging the remains into the depths until nothing was left but a puddle of blurry, crimson mush.
Having disposed of the trash, the Leader pulled a pristine white handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed the blood from his lips, and turned to face the audience. He offered a polite, deeply apologetic smile.
"My sincerest apologies for the fright, everyone," he said, bowing at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. "Since a bet was made upon my stage, the rules must naturally be enforced."
The Circus Troupe Leader pulled back his sleeve, glancing at a non-existent watch on his bare wrist. He offered a rueful sigh.
"Since there was an unfortunate accident during the performance, let us conclude tonight's show a bit early. The Circus will, of course, refund everyone's ticket costs in full."
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