Stanley took a punch to the face.

Repeat!

Stanley was surrounded by Crawlers, so he cut through them for so long that he lost track of time.

Repeat!

Stanley dodged an attack, but it struck his mask, so he couldn’t remain in slowed time for more than just a few seconds each time before needing to come out of it to take his breath.

Repeat!

Stanley forgot how many times time had looped back to the beginning by now. He was starting to see all the tricks Raven would use on him, right from the start.

Stanley sighed and took a step back in time to dodge the punch that would come for him from the right. At the same time, his sword moved in a flash and cut through more than just the woman’s hands this time.

No doubt, he had cut through her body too. Could she still survive even with that? He wasn’t so sure.

He stepped forward, ignoring the countless spikes that grew out of the shadows. He knew where to step for the first few seconds, even without his danger sense having to tell him.

He knew how far he had to move before he met his first crawler. His sword lengthened to become nearly twice its size and nearly a ton in weight as Stanley swung it down, cutting the crawler in half.

Instead of ripping away at limbs, cutting it in half was the easiest way to deal the most damage to such a beast as it would have to regrow an entire half of its body.

The Crawlers were packed in one area, so Stanley cut through them, giving them the death they deserved. These mindless humans that had been turned into such abominations needed to be released from this inky flesh prison.

Stanley still couldn’t see. He wished he had some sort of light inside of here, but unfortunately, he would have to wait for that. It would only come a while later when Raven decided to shoot him with a gun that could even tear a hole through him.

Stanley dealt with as many of the crawlers as he could and let go of slowed time.

Even though he was the safest when he was slowing down time, there were two major issues he needed to stop using it for.

First, whenever he something apart, it needed time to heal before he could cut it again.

Second, if he moved too fast, Raven would remain inside her shadows, never coming out. He needed to lure her out.

He acted as though he was out of breath, breathing heavily on purpose. At the same time, Raven used her gun, a soft red light glowing from far to the side where the bullet was going to come from.

’Finally,’ Stanley thought and looked toward the right. Then, he stopped Time for just the light.

The bullet never came. With the time stopped, the gun remained a soft red glow. Stanley immediately ran, going toward Raven, but she disappeared into the shadows before he could grab her.

Thankfully, she left behind the gun.

Stanley looked to the side and where the crawlers would be and shot the gun. Time slowed down and he watched the bullet fly, fast but at an observable speed.

It passed through and beside many crawlers that were slowly regrowing, lighting up everything that was there. As the bullet moved forward, it began silhouetting the crawlers, and that was enough for Stanley to go through them once again.

He cut past the crawlers, swinging his large, sharp, and heavy sword through them all multiple times to make it harder for them to heal.

The crawlers were not an issue, but the other woman certainly was. Stanley still wasn’t sure who the woman was that was being puppeteered around by Raven.

He wondered who the woman was and how she was so strong. For someone to punch him hard enough to kill him in one strike had to have quite a bit of strength.

’How do I kill someone that can heal so fast?’ Stanley wondered. The healing wasn’t just from the woman, but also from what Raven had done.

’I need to kill her in a way that she can’t be alive still,’ Stanley thought. He remembered what had happened with Red when she had died.

’Can I... do that?’ Stanley wondered. Even as he moved through the crawlers, his mind went to a different place, thinking of a way to kill the woman. In the end, he came up with a plan.

A plan, he hoped would work.

Stanley took a deep breath, readying himself for what he needed to do. He turned the gun he held back onto his head and pulled the trigger.

Repeat!

Once again, he returned back to the time when he had activated the Time Loop. The puppet woman would come from his right, punching at him.

Stanley didn’t attack her, and instead dodged the attack, simply touching her once. He placed a mark on her, which gave him a general idea of where she was.

The woman moved, attacking him again, and this time, Stanley swung his sword, fast and heavy, bisecting her from what he thought was the waist.

Because the gravity worked so slowly in slowed time, the woman’s body didn’t fall to the ground immediately. It needed time to heal.

Stanley felt for the mark. There was only 1. Even though he had cut the woman into 2 sections, only one of them was considered the real part, from which the woman would regenerate.

Stanley angled his blade upward and cut through her again, cutting her top half into another two pieces. Once again, the mark didn’t get removed or duplicated.

Only one of them was the real one.

Stanley cut again, and again. He moved around as the spikes grew from the ground, cutting at the mark based on mere feeling. He kept cutting it until whatever he was cutting was barely large enough to fit in his fist.

Stanley grabbed it.

He felt what it was, something mushy. Either heart or brain or something integral for a human. He felt the flesh wriggle around it, trying to regrow.

Stanley used his power to speed up Time on just that one spot. Immediately, the muscle mass began growing at a tremendous rate, but Stanley kept chopping up its part even as it regrew.

He moved toward the Crawlers, continuously speeding up time and cutting her continuously.

At some point, she stopped growing at all and was nothing more than a lump of flesh that had grown itself around Stanley’s arm.

Stanley was a little surprised. He had expected the lump of flesh to heal for a long, long time given the fact that it had such crazy regenerative capability when it was still a human.

Then, Stanley felt something stir within him as he felt a large lump of energy enter him, as though coming from a thousand different souls.

His eyes went wide in shock as he finally realized that the person he had just killed was yet another Nova.

Raven had got her hands on a Nova and corrupted her? Stanley couldn’t believe it.

’It doesn’t matter though,’ he thought. ’It’s just one more step now. Just one attack, and I’m done.’