Harem Sync: Divine Edition-Chapter 27: Three Seconds Above Time

"I have a plan," Haru said to himself hesitantly.

Isabela looked at him and noticed something different.

Fear.

For the first time, she saw Haru afraid. Afraid of pain... the fear of losing.

Haru was afraid, maybe something would go wrong. Maybe... this time... he wouldn’t come back.

The anxiety of having no guarantee, of making a mistake without a second chance.

Haru looked at the entire field. Devastated, craters, mages fighting against the guards. Bodies scattered, blood mixed with rain and mud.

"In my previous life... things were so monotonous compared to what I’m experiencing here."

He looked at Isabela, then at Kira.

"What I’m building... my harem... my life... I don’t want it to end here."

He took a deep breath.

"Not now."

Haru got into position. Ready to run.

He looked at Kira. "Hey... Get on my lap."

Kira blinked. "...What?"

"Get on, I’m going to need you."

Kira hesitated, then nodded. She went to him and jumped onto his back.

Haru held her, his arms under her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Kira wasn’t wearing anything underneath right now. So... Haru felt the direct heat on his back, damp and sweaty.

Haru swallowed hard. "Focus. Focus!"

He looked at Isabela. "Isabela. Whatever you do... don’t get near Vandris now."

Isabela frowned. "I know. He... drains our mana somehow. I felt it when he left the room with you."

Haru nodded. "Exactly. So stay away."

He looked at the field.

Kaelthar rose from the rubble. He shook off the dust. Blood dripped from his forehead, but he smiled.

His aura spread across the entire field.

Toldos felt the power of that monster growing.

Haru was also hit, but he stopped paying attention. Kaelthar’s right hand was covered in rings. Each one shining differently.

"That explains the power... artifacts"

Kaelthar raised his right hand. A lunar disc formed, spinning compressed.

He launched it.

Another.

Another.

Three. Five. Ten.

Faster and faster.

Fifty. One hundred. More than one hundred.

All going straight for Vandris.

Vandris stretched out his hand. The ring on his index finger reacted. All those attacks began to be absorbed. Sucked into the ring, like a black hole.

And with his other hand, which had a similar ring, Vandris released everything back. Straight to Kaelthar.

Kaelthar dodged, advancing. Teleporting through small black portals.

Appearing to the left, then to the right, behind, above.

The lunar discs exploding where he had been milliseconds before.

Kaelthar appeared in front of Vandris. Lunar disc in hand. Pressed against his face.

Hit him squarely. Vandris flew backward.

"Now." Haru thought.

He concentrated mana in his feet, flames exploded beneath him.

[Ignition: Propulsion.]

His body was launched forward with absurd speed and in the middle of the dash...

[TIME STOP ACTIVATED]

Duration: 3.0 seconds

The world froze.

He ran through frozen time, needing to cross the entire field, minions, Vandris who had been thrown by Kaelthar’s explosion, and finally find some way to reach the airship up above.

He passed between the frozen minions amidst attacks, dodging static poses as if they were living statues, each movement calculated to avoid bumping into anything that could screw everything up. Kira was frozen in his lap, eyes closed, breath held in the previous instant, and he took extra care to keep her steady while running.

1 second.

He entered the range of the [Spiritual Pledge] and felt his mana begin to drain, but slowly, much slower than it should have because of the temporal disturbance that reduced the rune’s effect. The system notified him in the corner of his vision, but Haru didn’t stop to read it, he just kept running.

He began to pass by Vandris’s body suspended in the air a few meters from the ground, still in the midst of the impact that had launched him, and that’s when he felt a devastating pulse coming from inside that fat, possessed body. It wasn’t physical, it was something else, something that hit him directly in the chest as if several invisible hands had tried to grab him at the same time.

He felt as if several eyes were watching him with pure hostility and hunger, whispers that came from everywhere but from nowhere at the same time, voices that weren’t voices but sensations of words being spoken without sound.

The system notified again, more urgently this time, saying something about [non-material entities detected], but Haru could barely process it because the pressure was so intense it felt like the [Time Stop] was ticking away just from being near it.

2.5 seconds.

His breathing became heavy, as if the air had turned to thick syrup entering his lungs, and all that energy, that oppressive feeling of being watched and desired by things that shouldn’t exist, all came from Vandris’s body frozen in mid-air just a few steps away.

When Haru looked directly at Vandris, he was confronted with something that made his blood run cold.

Vandris’s hand was moving, slightly, slowly, as if he wanted to reach Haru but couldn’t, his thick fingers trembling in the effort to move against the stopped time.

It was at that moment that Haru remembered the exact description of the [Time Stop] that the system had given:

[You can move above material being]

Spirits weren’t material; what prevented those spirits trapped in Vandris’s body from attacking Haru was only the fact that they were still bound to the matter of the body, but they could perceive, they could ’want,’ and if Vandris could free himself completely...

Haru got out of there as fast as he could, taking advantage of the debris from the explosion that floated suspended in the air as makeshift platforms.

He stepped on a piece of stone, jumped to the next, then to a fragment of wood that had been torn from some construction, each step precise because one mistake meant falling into the middle of that frozen chaos.

When the debris ended and he was still about five meters from the airship, he had no choice but to step on the raindrops suspended in the air.

"It worked!"

They were unstable, slippery even frozen, and he stepped with difficulty and apprehension because any wrong move meant losing his footing and plummeting.

"Almost there," he thought as he jumped from drop to drop like stones in an invisible river.

2.8 seconds.

He stretched out his hands, his fingers almost reaching the edge of the rope ladder hanging from the airship, and jumped with all his might, slowly moving through the frozen air towards the cold metal of the ladder.

2.9 seconds.

He grabbed it. His fingers closed around the rope.

3.0 seconds.

Time returned like a whiplash, sound exploding back all at once, the airship’s engines roaring, delayed explosions bursting below, the screams of dying men who had been suspended and now all returned at once.

Kira opened his eyes and found himself feeling the wind hitting his face hard, cold and sharp, and realized that Haru’s hands were pierced on the side of the airship, his fingers bleeding where he had forced his way in through the metal, trying to force open the access door with brute force while his whole body trembled with exhaustion.

[Mana: ???/????]

But the door wouldn’t budge; it seemed as if a spell was locking it from the inside, runes glowing faintly around the lock.

"Shit, what now..." Haru murmured, looking down and seeing that he was fifty meters off the ground, hanging by the tips of his bloody fingers as the airship continued to ascend.