Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 143: Time Warp Clocktower

"A time warp?!" Lewis cried, scrambling towards Percival and getting into his face. "You mean we’ve not been redoing the same thing, we’re just actually going back in time?!"

Percival turned his back on the Arcanist, causing him to peep over the Hero’s broad shoulders as if he could then see what he was thinking.

’If it’s not a simulation, then I don’t think this is really just a race to the top. It can’t be,’ Percival thought, dissecting the trap. ’We had run perfectly in the last loop, completely outpaced the blood lake, and reached the door with time to spare. Yet, the clock still reset us.’

There had to be something else.

Perhaps some kind of hidden variable. A mechanism they had completely bypassed in their blind panic to ascend.

Percival stepped back, lifting his face as he swept the circular walls of the clocktower with his glowing blue eyes.

He looked past the immediate threat of the massive brass cogs and the swinging pendulums. He focused on the shadows, on the stagnant, rusted architecture behind the moving parts.

His brows creased. There was something there.

Blending almost perfectly into the dark, soot-stained stonework was a heavy iron lever, attached to a thick chain pulley.

It was crude and rusted, bolted directly into the masonry about forty feet off the ground.

Percival tracked his gaze along the curvature of the tower. He spotted another one tucked behind a grinding gear. Then another.

He quickly counted them as his eyes traced the chains upward. There were ten levers in total, scattered at similar heights along the treacherous inner wall.

He traced the heavy chains connected to the pulleys. They fed directly upward into the central column of the tower, interlocking with the colossal gears that controlled the suspended glass clock.

Pulling those levers had to do something. It had to.

BOOOOOOOM.

The massive bell at the apex of the tower tolled, signaling the start of the three-minute countdown. The glowing numbers ⸢03:00⸥ flared to life above them.

Instantly, the stone pit below their grating cracked open, and the roar of boiling blood echoed through the shaft. The blistering heat returned, alongside the rising crimson.

"What do we do?!" Lewis cried out, exasperated. He scrambled to his feet, his knees trembling as the red steam began to billow upward. "I can’t go through that again! I don’t have the stamina!"

"Go ahead and do it anyway," Percival ordered apathetically. "Climb as high as you can. I’m right behind you."

Lewis stared at him, his eyes wide with disbelief. "We’re doing it again?" 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"Just do as I asked," Percival snapped.

As Lewis and Mercius turned to rush up the first flight of the rusted iron stairs, Percival stood his ground, studying the levers.

’You have to mean something,’ he thought.

Trusting his instinct, he reached into his Necromancer core, funneling his mana into the Summon Space.

He summoned ten Skeleton Soldiers in bursts of blue flames. They stood silent, their empty eye sockets devoid of fear, completely unaffected by the blistering heat melting the iron beneath their bony feet.

Percival pointed an iron finger at the towering walls. "Do you see those levers? Climb the walls and pull them down. Try not to fall into the blood lake."

The Skeletons quickly obeyed. They hung their swords, rushing past the stairs and leaping directly onto the masonry.

Their bony fingers gave them an advantage as they could find passage in the cracks between the stone blocks. Slowly, they began to scale the black, vibrating wall like a swarm of macabre spiders.

Satisfied, Percival turned and hurried up the stairs, just as his standing point was melted by the blood. He caught up with Lewis and the dead Knight.

"What are you doing?" Lewis asked, glancing over his shoulder, panting heavily as the heat chased them. He noticed the skeletal figures crawling up the walls in the periphery of his vision.

Percival pointed toward the levers. "I think those things stop the clock."

Lewis followed his gaze, squinting through the steam. "But the clock isn’t our enemy!" he argued, ducking instinctively as a massive pendulum swung overhead. "The blood lake is! And so is that door that won’t budge! We have to get it to open before the clock timer ends!"

"This isn’t an ordinary Survival-type Encounter Zone," Percival corrected him, keeping his pace steady. "We’re not meant to allow the timer to finish. If it finishes, the loop resets. We’ve lost, and we will continue doing this for eternity. I think stopping the timer entirely is the key to opening the door."

Lewis gritted his teeth, dodging a splash of hot blood. "That makes sense, but it’s kinda a wild move. Hope it works."

"It’s the only thing that makes sense," Percival stated grimly. "Now! Get ready. The Demon Bats will be coming anytime now."

High above them, the darkness fractured with a unified, deafening screech. Hundreds of green eyes snapped open among the rafters and cogs.

"If my calculations are correct," Percival continued, "they’re not going to attack us this time. They’re going to target my Skeletons to stop them."

He looked up. "If that’s the case, use your Skills to destroy them, while we also hurry to the top."

"Got it!"

Just then, the swarm of Demon Vampire Bats detached from the ceiling. They dove with terrifying speed, their wings beating against the hot air.

Just as Percival predicted, the swarm completely ignored the three figures running up the stairs. Instead, they banked sharply, zeroing in on the ten Skeletons slowly scaling the sheer walls.

"Stop them!" Percival barked.

Mercius swung his Paragon Blade in a wide, horizontal arc from the stairs. ⸢Blessed Cleave⸥! A crescent wave of holy blue fire detached from his sword, slicing through the air and incinerating five Bats before they could reach the wall.

"⸢Arcane Volley⸥!" Lewis chanted, throwing his hands forward. A cluster of violet mana bolts spiraled across the chasm, detonating against the swarm in a series of concussive blasts.

Percival aimed his free hand at the wall. ⸢Entropy Wave⸥! A pulse of corrosive death mana washed over the stone, withering the Bats that dared to fly too close to his summons.

But it wasn’t enough.

They couldn’t focus on climbing and stopping the Bats at the same time. Even worse, the Skeletons were struggling.

Scaling the vibrating, crumbling masonry was difficult enough with only their bony fingers to anchor them. Now, they were being battered by the sheer physical weight of the relentless Bats.

The Demons crashed into them, their razor-sharp fangs snapping at the Skeletons’ skulls.

Worse, the crossfire from the stairs was destabilizing them.

The concussive blasts of Lewis’s Arcane Volley shook the stones loose. The shockwaves from Mercius’s holy light made the Skeletons lose their grip, leaving several of them dangling precariously by one hand, hundreds of feet above the boiling blood.

They weren’t going to make it to the levers. They were getting overwhelmed.

Percival looked up at the clock.

⸢2:23⸥

He returned to the walls, eyes narrowed. This wasn’t enough. His Skeletons had to get to those levers in time, and he had to keep climbing.

There was only one way to stop this. Only one way to fight chaos.

"Lewis! Mercius!" Percival commanded. "Go! Climb to the door!"

"What about your Skeletons?!" Lewis yelled, unleashing another mana blast that barely dented the swarm.

"I have a better way to handle this."

Percival stopped running. He stood on the spiraling iron staircase, the heat of the rising blood lake licking at the metal a few floors below him.

He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and violently pulled on his Necromancer Core, exploring his Summon Space.

But instead of his Skeleton Warriors, he reached directly into the darkest, most volatile corner of his dark house.

There, he found the thirty chaotic, swirling masses of bound dark mana he had stolen from the Library.

Percival threw his arms wide open, his blue eyes snapping open as a terrifying, suffocating aura of pure malice erupted from the center of his palm.

"Attack."