"Gaaahh... haaahh..."

How long will this go on...?

Aldrus had lost count of the times he’d been rewound to the start of his match. Initially, he thought he could endure it by relying on his seemingly endless stamina. His body was returned over and over to the state it had been before the fight began, so he was basically in perfect condition with every attempt. However, that didn’t help much.

Miss Leona clicked her boots on the floor in front of him, uninterested. Aldrus didn’t really know how long a second-ranked Holder could last using their powers, but he definitely knew they had a limit.

Then why does this witch seem perfectly fine?!

No matter how much he encouraged himself, he knew she wasn’t even close to reaching her limit. And the reason for that was that the amount of Perspective a Time Holder spent in battle was directly proportional to how hard they struggled against their opponent. At his current level, Aldrus barely posed any threat.

I need to do something before I go insane!

Looping back, Aldrus stopped himself from mindlessly sprinting at her like he’d been doing for a while now, and forced his mind to calm down.

Think, there has to be a way to reach her! I can cross the distance between us in no time, but I can’t simply strike her in the same way—and even if I managed to swing my sword at her, she’d just send me back here...

What is it she’s doing? Go deeper, think about it logically; there is no such thing as omnipotent power, every single one of us is bound by the same law. Time is not almighty, the only difference between me and her is the extent of our control over it.

Looping once more, Aldrus frowned, sprinted, stopped abruptly and slid in circles to build momentum. He had noticed that she only rewound him when he got close enough, which didn’t mean she couldn’t do it whenever she wanted—but rather, she intended to make him surrender, and stopping his efforts just before they bore fruit was the quickest way to do so.

That’s why this time he didn’t go further. Instead, he used his speed to throw his sword at her with every ounce of strength he could muster.

One second later, the weapon was already about to graze her. But just as he expected, after a single blink, the wooden sword was nowhere to be seen. Well, at least not there.

Aldrus steadied himself and glanced down at his right hand. There, his sword still rested firmly in his grip.

So that’s how it is.

He let out a barely audible scoff, leaned his head back, and smirked with satisfaction. At last, the first roots of an idea began to take hold in his mind.

Immediately, he resumed his movement and launched forward. Once again, he concentrated on his legs and swung the sword at Leona.

He kept attacking as soon as he was sent back to the start, and even though the result was the same, his face remained calm and confident.

The sensation of repeating the same thing multiple times against his will was certainly unique. His body was in perfect condition, and yet, he could still catch the scent of his own sweat, hear his ragged breathing, and feel his muscles burn.

The mind is truly one hell of a thing.

Soon, the distance between them began to shorten with each cycle. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable, but Aldrus had managed to restart a little closer to Leona. Every time she sent him back, the effect was cut off sooner. To everyone else, Aldrus must’ve looked like a man slowly making his way through a sandstorm.

But that wasn’t the only thing they didn’t know. In fact, Aldrus was not interrupting the cycle himself—after all, it is not possible to control or disrupt the Time manipulation exerted by a higher-ranked Holder. What was really happening was very different.

Aldrus had noticed it earlier. He hadn’t thrown his sword for no reason; he did it to test if Miss Leona would rewind it back to him or all the way back to where it was stored. Since she sent it back to his hands, that meant she was only willing to use her powers as long as she didn’t prevent the fight from happening to begin with.

In other words, she had set a boundary. No matter what, she wouldn’t send Aldrus further back from where the match had started. So, knowing this, there was only one way he could think of to tilt the odds in his favor.

I’m not there anymore, I’m further, I already beat her, I’m behind her, behind that incredulous face.

Backwards.

I’m not there anymore, I’m now even further, class is over, I’m in my room.

Backwards.

I’m not there anymore, I’m further, even further than before, I beat Miss Leona yesterday, my first theoretical class is about to begin...

Backwards.

It’s been a week since I defeated Miss Leona. I’m currently in the bathroom, preparing to sleep. I hope Alice won’t sleepwalk tonight.

Backwards.

Three months have passed since I defeated Miss Leona. I’m here again, in this iron cage. I can hear the winter fury coming closer—and the snow getting stronger.

Backw—

Aldrus opened his eyes in a flash to find himself in front of her, so close he could feel the warmth of her body on his.

Got you, witch.

With a sudden mid-air spin, he sent his right arm forward in a single explosive stab. However, as he was starting to convince himself that he might actually be able to hit her, Miss Leona moved her pupils in his direction with inhuman speed.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

N-No way!

And then, he was crushed to the floor by an invisible force. His momentum, his attack, his plan—everything had been in vain.

Miss Leona stood beside him, victorious. She looked at the young boy lying defeated on the ground with an indescribable expression on her face. A few seconds later, she finally spoke, "Aldrus Dagon," she said, her serious gaze slowly turning lighter.

"No, everyone." She looked at the crowd around them, remained silent for a moment, and then added with a sudden radiant smile, "Listen...be ahead. Don’t try to be. Don’t think you are. Know you are.

"In a battle against a user of Time, strength is futile, and speed—irrelevant. Perspective is everything. Certainty is the only way. As long as you believe strongly in the path you’ve chosen, it’ll lead you there without a doubt. This—is the first lesson you need to know."

She stood there facing the students for a while; to Aldrus, her back suddenly seemed almost admirable for reasons he didn’t quite understand. Her confident stance, the way she spoke... Something was different from before.

Could it be...

As if she had read his mind, Leona turned around and looked into his eyes with a warm smile, "Well done, Dagon. I apologize for teasing you earlier. It was the only thing I could think of to start the class... and you looked kind of funny all flustered like that. So, I’m sorry. And for cutting you off, too," she said, lowering her head.

Huh...? She was teasing me? Of course, that couldn’t have been so simple. Aldrus suspected there was something else to her behaviour.

He was so confused that he simply stared at her for a moment before replying, "I-It’s fine...?"

So she’s not a witch... is she?

***

After some time, Miss Leona had wrapped things up with the students and explained to them a series of basic rules. Soon, the class was over, and Aldrus found himself surrounded by a few students interested in the details of his match.

It was true that from the point of view of everyone else, the battle had lasted barely ten seconds, but these rich kids were no fools—they knew about their power much better than Aldrus did; so instead of treating him like a loser, they were genuinely intrigued by what had really happened back there, instead.

It turned out Aldrus had figured out the type of boundary Miss Leona had set.

He remembered the words Sir Ludwig had said to him the day he saved his life. He’d told him about the basic principles of the laws of the world and how they were used depending on the Holder.

For the ones like them—in possession of Time—there were multiple rules regarding the use and limits of their power, but only two applied to every Holder regardless of their fragment’s nature.

The first was Perspective. A fundamental concept referring to both the amount of mental endurance a Time Holder had, and the actual meaning of the word, which was simply the way a person viewed the world.

Everyone had their own perspective on things, whether it was how they thought of themselves or how they viewed others. However, once a human became a Holder, their perspective was able to physically manifest in the world beyond their mind.

Of course, there were limits to this, starting with the fact that the mental strain they suffered as a consequence for using it was rarely worth the effect, and that’s due to the second and most important rule that bound both mundane humans and Holders alike:

Balance. The primordial law.

Balance was, and had always been, the one and only concept that exists above everything and everyone with no exceptions.

A Time Holder used Perspective to manipulate Time, and thus everything below it. However, every aspect of that power—from how long they could sustain the effect, to the range, the object, the person and the place affected, was limited by their mental energy.

Using Perspective wasn’t as simple as thinking or imagining something and wishing it to become true. To make even the smallest of changes in the physical world, a Holder needed to know. To believe. To be beyond certain of their own mental image. That required an enormous amount of mental energy, understanding and training... at least for Time Holders.

Because of this, Time Holders could only use their abilities for very short periods of time, depending on the magnitude and the effect desired.

The other limits to such power had to do with the ranks. There were six ranks a Holder could theoretically reach. The higher the rank, the longer a Time Holder could endure using their powers, the larger the range of the effect would be, the greater the power exerted, and the easier it would become for them to affect anything and anyone below them.

Miss Leona had used her power on Aldrus, a Holder of the first rank. She limited the range of the effect to reach him and not further, and rewound him only a few seconds back every time. As a second rank herself, that was no big deal. Yet the sheer power she exerted was so much greater than Aldrus’s that he had to perceive himself months into the future just to break through a few seconds of her domain.

It wasn’t like he could truly travel forward in time nearly as much, but he had to perceive himself that much further ahead.

Even if his mental endurance was only able to let him jump a couple of seconds into the future, as he had done on his first attempts against her.

By using perspective this way, Aldrus managed to be rewound a little earlier each time. The concept itself was very difficult to grasp, let alone to put into practice. Yet it was no different from a man pushing a boulder with all his might, slowly advancing forward.

As for how she had made him plummet to the ground... he was fairly sure she had stopped whatever constant motion kept a human body upright, turning him into a dead weight and letting gravity do the rest. Time was the one allowing motion, after all.

As his head began to hurt thinking about all of that, a student suddenly shook his thoughts off. "Hey! Are you telling us or not?"

Oh, that’s right, I have to get out of here...