CHAPTER 140: ERASURE

"Temporal Displacement Shot!"

The words weren’t shouted—they were whispered like a divine invocation.

And the world responded.

The moment Damien activated the only skill of his soul weapon, Epoch Breaker, the atmosphere shifted.

Reality twisted.

The sky dimmed. The horizon bent unnaturally, as if the very concept of time had been pulled taut like a stretched string on the verge of snapping.

Behind Damien, a phantom clock emerged from thin air—colossal, ancient, and shrouded in otherworldly mist.

But there was something deeply unsettling about it.

Its needles spun backward.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Each movement of the hand echoed like a chisel striking the wall of fate.

The backward spinning was not chaotic—it was calculated. Like it was scanning the river of time itself, seeking one perfect moment.

A single, decisive instant that would change everything.

Damien’s expression was grim.

His brows furrowed.

His hand trembled as he gripped Epoch Breaker.

Even in his current state of hyper-cognition, this power demanded too much from him.

His soul felt like it was being unraveled, strand by strand.

But he held on.

His eyes turned cold—deathly cold—and his jaw locked tight.

At that moment, far ahead, the Blood Fang Lord stopped walking.

A strange shiver crawled down her spine.

Her body froze, pupils dilating. An invisible pressure wrapped around her like a vice, and for the first time in decades, fear flickered in her chest.

Her steps halted mid-air. Her expression paled.

"What... is this feeling?"

It was as if something primordial, something ancient and monstrous, had just marked her for death.

A predator far above her level.

A hunter who had found his prey.

Her instincts screamed.

She didn’t even dare look back.

Then—Damien pulled the trigger.

SIZZLE!

A sound unlike anything echoed across the battlefield. Epoch Breaker’s long barrel turned incandescent, etched runes burning with blue and silver fire.

The bullet did not fly forward.

It didn’t explode. It didn’t flash.

It disappeared—vanished—piercing a hole into the void as it slipped into the long river of time.

It was not a shot fired through space.

It was a shot fired through causality.

---

For an instant, the world shivered.

Maybe it was just an illusion, but the vibrant green grass beneath their feet suddenly withered, turning into ash.

The soft, fertile soil hardened into grey, cracked stone—as if time had rushed forward a thousand years in an instant.

Above them, the wind stilled.

Birds froze mid-flight, wings paused like suspended puppets.

The shadows around Damien flickered unnaturally—elongating, vanishing, returning.

And then...

Just as suddenly, the distortion ended.

The world snapped back into place.

Colors returned. The grass was green again. The soil once more soft and moist beneath booted feet. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

But something had.

Something had irrevocably changed.

---

"Huff... Huff..."

Damien gasped for breath, his knees nearly buckling as he fought to remain standing.

His vision blurred for a split second, and he tasted iron in the back of his throat.

It felt like an entire mountain had been dropped on his shoulders.

The weight of time itself.

Even with his enhanced state, this ability drained him—mind, body, and soul. He had glimpsed something he wasn’t meant to see. Touched a thread that mortals weren’t meant to tug.

And yet...

He had done it.

His gaze, unfocused for a moment, slowly sharpened.

"Let’s see if she’s still smiling," he muttered under his breath.

"Are you okay?"

A voice suddenly echoed in Damien’s mind—soft, feminine, laced with genuine concern.

It was Salene Veylor.

Damien shook his head slightly in response. A silent gesture to say he was fine—more or less.

His heart still thundered in his chest. His legs felt heavy.

But he was alive. That was all that mattered.

Just then, another voice chimed in—loud, theatrical, and annoyingly familiar.

"T-The coward Arctic finally decided to show himself!"

Within the depths of a newly forged ring gifted by Salene, a peculiar being stirred—a horned, genie-like creature with bulging eyes and sharp teeth. It was none other than Baron Arctic, self-proclaimed Noodle of the Infernal Realm.

Right now, those bulging eyes were comically wide, his jaw halfway to the ring’s floor, utterly stunned.

In his thousands of years of existence, he had witnessed many miracles, wars, and atrocities. But this?

This was absurd.

He had no idea what had just happened.

One moment, that fearsome Blood Fang Lord—a woman whose killing intent could freeze rivers—was walking away unharmed. The next, a single shot from that weird, rune-etched gun had shattered her body like glass.

It didn’t make sense.

Even now, Arctic was trying to rewind the scene in his mind like an old memory scroll.

But the more he thought about it, the more his understanding collapsed.

Some distance away, the battlefield had turned unnaturally quiet.

A hush fell over the wind.

Where the Blood Fang Lord once stood... there was nothing now.

Her entire body had fragmented into shimmering particles—like stardust—before vanishing completely.

It was as if she had never existed.

As if the timeline itself had rejected her.

---

Damien’s gaze lingered at the spot for several seconds.

A faint breeze rustled his coat.

Then, slowly, he turned away. With deliberate motion, he lifted his left hand and looked at the ring wrapped around his finger—the one crafted by Salene.

With just a thought, the contents of the ring unfolded in his mind like a map.

Crystal clear.

And there, atop a small mountain of mana stones, sat Arctic—arms wrapped around his knees, rocking back and forth like a traumatized monk.

His pale blue skin looked a few shades lighter. His expression?

As if he’d just seen a fish walk on two legs.

Damien stared for a moment, then sighed and chose to ignore him.

Truth be told, he wasn’t much better.

His own thoughts were scattered. The memories of what he’d just done felt surreal. The power of Epoch Breaker, his soul weapon, was still something he hadn’t fully grasped.

That last shot—Time Displacement Shot—was more than just a skill.

It was... a miracle. A violation of logic. A weaponized anomaly.

And it came with a price.

---

Damien took a deep breath and turned his attention elsewhere. His gaze landed on a few glowing shards nearby—time essence crystals.

These weren’t just treasures.

They were keys.

Opportunities.

The power he had just used wasn’t something he could activate freely. The Time Displacement Shot wasn’t simply fueled by his spiritual field—it required a catalyst, a bridge between his soul and time itself.

These rare time essence crystals acted as that bridge.

Damien knelt and picked one up, the weight surprisingly light in his hand, yet teeming with a strange, flowing energy.

His expression grew serious.

This is what I need.

If he wanted to use Epoch Breaker’s miraculous skill again, he needed more. As many time essence crystals as he could get his hands on.

This wasn’t just a weapon anymore.

It was a trump card. A threat even the strongest warriors hadn’t found a defense against—not yet.

Even Channel Forging Realm experts, with their overwhelming control and spiritual fields, had been rendered helpless in front of it.

And the Blood Fang Lord, who may have once ruled a battlefield with a single roar, had been erased like a bad sketch in time’s ledger.

---

But still, Damien knew better than to be complacent.

Maybe someday, he would encounter someone at the Domain Manifestation Stage—a realm so powerful, even time might bend around them.

Would even they fall to a Displacement Shot?

That... he didn’t know. Not yet.

But one day, he would find out.

And when that day came, he would be ready.

After another deep breath, Damien shifted his gaze toward reality.

But the world around him was wrong.

Wiggle... wiggle...

The air shimmered faintly—as if reality itself was a stretched-out string being compressed and decompressed. The ground underfoot warped slightly, shapes bending in and out of place like reflections on rippling water.

Just one look at this distortion sent a sharp spike of pain lancing through his skull.

His vision blurred. Blood pounded in his ears.

His knees nearly buckled.

But then—

A soft, silver aura gently emerged from his body, wrapping around him like a warm mist. It pulsed faintly with a rhythm of its own—fast, slow, then fast again.

The essence of his Acceleration Talent.

It responded to his distress on instinct, shielding his mind from the overwhelming backlash of temporal exposure.

Within seconds, the headache faded. The distorted world realigned.

The haze lifted.

---

Hoooooo—

The cold wind howled from the distance like a spectral cry, sweeping across the ruined battlefield. It rushed past Damien, ruffling his tattered coat, and slammed into the towering, obsidian-black walls of Riverfall City.

Up ahead, just beyond the field of broken earth and fractured time, a line of soldiers stood at the boundary.

They were clad in sleek black armor, their bodies tense, weapons in hand—but none dared move.

Their faces were deathly pale, expressions frozen in a mixture of fear and disbelief.

They had seen it.

From the city walls and observation towers, they had all witnessed what had just taken place.

How a single young man had pulled out a strange weapon and fired one shot.

And how the terrifying Blood Fang Lord had vanished from existence moments later.

No explosion. No clash.

Just silence... and erasure.

These were not common soldiers. They were hardened veterans of the frontier, forged through bloodshed and survival. Yet now, they stood still like statues, unable to process what they’d seen.

It was not a battle.

It was a reset.

---

Damien’s gaze swept over them briefly before landing on one man standing at the center of the group.

Unlike the rest, this figure stood tall—not frozen, but composed. His aura was restrained, but Damien’s senses immediately picked up on the crushing presence just beneath the surface.

He wore a crimson cloak that billowed in the wind, trimmed with silver thread. A gleaming black broadsword hung across his back, the scabbard engraved with runes of authority and ancient power.

His skin was bronze-toned, scarred yet dignified, and his piercing amber eyes locked onto Damien with a deep, unreadable intensity.

There was no fear in them.

Only... calculation and something else?

Damien’s eyes narrowed.

This man was different.

Even from this distance, Damien could feel it—an innate pressure that came not from arrogance or cultivation alone, but from command. This was a man who had ruled over life and death in this region for decades.

The City Lord of Riverfall.