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  BAAAM!

  A massive and bulky bzing titan fell over a ndscape covered by ice. The enormous giant of over three hundred meters was covered with tless wounds. Its entire body was bleeding, and its head burst open, revealing the crushed brain inside.

  “Huh? And this was a Level 5000? This was too easy.”

  A young man with short bd gray hair ughed, his sharp blue eyes analyzing the corpse of the titan. His aura of magic distorted not only space but time itself. A gray-colored, semi-transparent sphere of pure pressed time essence flowed endlessly.

  He wore blue robes decorated with many golden drawings, and his hands wore dozens of bracelets and rings, further boosting his stats and imbuing him with a variety of useful skills. His neck was decorated with over twenty different neckces, and his siaff was made of bining thirty different staves together using the Synthesis Facility on Floor 40 of the Tower.

  “T-This damned monster…” A bulky blonde man gnced from the distan utter shock. “Oi, Joseph! Did you kill that thing on your own?! I thought we were going to work as a team?”

  “My bad, my bad. I just did a little trick, and it dropped dead.” Laughed Joseph. “It’s hard to tain my powers, you know? Since I ehe tower, I have yet to faeone capable of withstanding my powers. you help me disma?”

  “Sure, fine… Let’s go, guys.” The man sighed, walking with the rest of the ancer’s party.

  As he watched them work for him, because they khey couldn’t just go against someone so powerful, he sat down over a chair he brought outside of his I. After that, he took out a tea set from a world known as Zipangu and started drinking the rich green tea.

  “Well, this is nice.” He sighed, smiling pleasantly. “I’ll get to Floor 50 in a fsh with these new Skills I gained.” He silently g his Status, his Level was over three thousand, yet he had sin a monster over five thousand! The level difference meant nothing to someone who could easily destroy most people’s perception of logic.

  Joseph es from a distant world, ohat was called Apex by many: the world of Acacia, a world of Sorcerers, Magis, Wizards, Warlocks, and Mana Cultivation. Utilizing Mana, these magis cultivated an Inner Magic Circle. Joseph here had reached the top ten in this world, being well known as the “ancer of Beginnings and Ends.”.

  Sihe Toeared inside Acacia, there has been a lot of chaos, and the order of the world slowly started to crumble as monsters ihrough Gates. Joseph and the other ten stro Sorcerers of Acacia used all their strength to push back the ining Apocalypse and decided to delve into the Tower, to grow even stronger and reach the summit so they could save their world from destru.

  Amongst all ten of them, Joseph was the stro and also the you, the only person iirety of Acacia to have been born with the Elemental Affinity of Time. He was a ancer, a powerful sorcerer only theorized in legends.

  With his power, he climbed the Tower with ease; in just a year, he had already reached Floor 40, and his magid skills tio develop and bee even strohanks to the System.

  “Hmm, I am short os though.”

  He was cheg his iory, looking for his step toward being even stronger. He needed a few hundred millios to synthesize many materials and items together and fe himself a new set of robes and accessories. Despite being s, Joseph was obsessed with power. The exhirating feeling that the Tower brought to him pared to his inal world couldn’t be pared to anything he had ever experienced.

  More power, more stats, more skills, and more levels! He couldn’t have enough; even as he destroyed everything on his path from the very beginning, he wanted more and more and more. His mind and personality were slowly ing away from what they once were.

  [The Tod {Schor of the Stars} asks for your help.]

  [The Tod {Grandfather Of Time} asks you, his Avatar, to hear the plea of his you son.]

  “Hm? What is it now? I’m busy, you know?”

  Joseph sighed as he saw the gods' messages, and then something was shown. His eyes instantly widened as he saw the tremendous bounty given to a single woman who has yet to even climb out of floor 1.

  “What the…? Almost a billios?!”

  Grandfather of Time was his beor, a powerful Tod that beloo Floor 90. It was very rare for such gods to even pay attention to beings below Floor 50, but Joseph was an exception; his growth was ridiculous, and the Grandfather of Time already knew he would soon bee a Tod himself.

  Therefore, he didn’t spare resources, skills, equipment, and Credits to help him grow even faster than before. Joseph was already aware of the Tods' iions, though, and he was mostly using him to get stronger without the iion to ever join him.

  However, this new offer they showed in front of him simply couldn’t be ignored anymore.

  It was a bounty to a single person iower, a woman known as Bing Xue, who had destroyed the tower’s church of light and had also destroyed many of the dark cults on the first floor, which maintaihe rality between both of the Gods existing there. They were so furious that they pced all their savings into a bounty to finally kill her. Aside from the almost a billios, they offered over a huems and riches.

  “These Gods of the first tower are sure rich. I thought they were beggars, but look at this! They had their little treasury, huh?” Laughed Joseph. “And Bing Xue, is it? She doesn’t seem hard. I guess she’s strong, yeah, slightly like me, huh? She might e from some sort of Martial Arts world. Those guys were all pushovers, though, and died instantly most of the time. Hmm…”

  He tinued reading her information and the kill list she had; it showed several foes she had killed retly, including three Level 1000+ Pyers, all Avatars of lower flods. Joseph shrugged at that; he had sin a Level 5000 monster with ease; he couldn’t care less how strong she was; she simply couldn’t be strohan him.

  “This looks so easy! Alright, I’ll get going then. No time to lose, as they say, hahaha!”

  Joseph ughed at his me joke as he quickly grabbed a scroll from his iory, whistantly teleported him to Nexus City on Floor 1. He walked through the crowd of people hurriedly, looking for the woman of the bounty. He activated a myriad of searg and location skills, finally finding her.

  “There you are, Bing Xue.” He walked silently towards where she was, and then, with a simple word, “{o Stasis}”

  The world itself stopped moving. Time itself weaved to his will; everything froze. The world’s colors disappeared as time stopped, being gray. A world of bd white. He walked slowly towards the woman, looking at her and admiring her beauty, without even paying attention to anybody else by her side.

  “As I imagined. As strong as you are, nobody go against the power of a ancer.”

  “Bing Xue, right?” He ughed. “I’ll be taking your bounty now.”

  Bing Xue stayed still as he g her, gently caressing her face with his hand. She couldn’t move in this Domain of Stopped Time. It was absolute power!

  “Now… {Time Steal}”

  FLUOSH!

  A gray sphere of Time Magic was jured, toug Bing Xue’s body and then beginning to literally steal her time. Joseph used this in most battles. It rapidly aged anybody it touched, weakening them and decreasing their stats.

  O drais lifespan pletely, the target would usually crumble down into dust and disappear. It owerful instant-kill attack, though against the stro monsters who had thousands of years of lifespan, it took a couple of mio work properly.

  Yet Bing Xue, no matter how many minutes passed, did not age and did not lose her lifespan.

  “You sure have a lot of lifespans... More than a Bzing Titan, a Divine Monster…” He muttered, beginning to find her amusing. “Maybe I should hurry.”

  He quickly summowo, three, four, five, ten, and twenty more spheres. Yet no matter how much they tried to steal her lifespan; it seemed as if she had an endless amount. She was not bound by the cept at all!

  “What’s going on?! Why is she not crumbling into dust?!” He quickly swung his staff at her, shaping it into a huge scythe. “{Divine Scythe of Time}!”

  SLAAASH!

  A powerful ssh reached her. This attack was capable of cutting the time and soul of a touched into tless pieces! A lethal skill that Joseph used to end fights whe too bored.

  Yet…

  BOOOM!

  As an explosion of time magigulfed Bing Xue, nothing happened again. She was unmovable, unbreakable, and pletely iructible. Joseph started scratg his head, uo uand what was happening.

  “No, wait, she probably just has a lot of stats thanks to skills or titles.” He sighed. “Well, maybe if I…”

  “Are you do?”

  “Huh?!”

  His eyes widened as he suddenly saw something utterly terrifying. For the first time in his entire life as a powerful ancer, someone was moving through his o Stasis Domain.

  Bing Xue’s gray eyes suddenly regaiheir light, bringing forth the world with tless beautiful, bright colors, almost blinding the man.

  “W-What is this?! You…! How you- AH!”

  Joseph only grew madder as he saw the woman’s hands grasp the fabric of time itself so tightly and strongly that cracks spread through his entire domain.

  “I sat down to see, to watch what you would try to do to me.” She said. “You see, I have yet to meet someo your Level, but it seems it was all rather mundane. What you do is nothing but mere tricks. Your “Time Magic” does not truly manipute time; it simply creates an illusion. And that illusion… I break it.”

  Crack, crack… CRACK!

  “You break it?!”

  Joseph’s entire ego was slowly falling into pieces after finally, for the first time in his entire life, meeting someone capable of tering his time magid the first thing she did was ridicule him and talk to him as if he were nothing but a toddler?!

  CRAAASH!

  The Domain broke, time quickly resumed itself, and Joseph instantly flew away, far away from that woman. Dozens of gray-colored magic circles appeared around his body, enpassing him and f a barrier of Spinning Time. Anything that touched it would have their bodies shredded by the power of Time!

  “e here, boy, we are not doalking.”

  Bing Xue appeared above him in a single sed; he was not even able to dis how fast she moved. His sharp eyes were directed at her as he summoned a gigantid made of pure Time Essence, which he attempted to use to trap her within a Cage of Time, which would slowly devour her Vitality and Mana!

  “Pathetic little tricks.”

  However, Bing Xue simply released a shockwave from her body, and the hand that Joseph summoned quickly disappeared into nothingness. And his barrier shattered into pieces. His much frailer body then received the immense pressure and force of Bing Xue’s plete Primordial Venerable I, s it made his internal ans burst, making him vomit blood stantly.

  “Guuuaaggh…!”

  As he screamed in agony, he fell from the skies. His wounds, stantly regeed by the power of time, fused and merged into his Soul and Physique.

  “G-Get away from me!”

  Fear.

  Joseph, the almighty ancer capable of sying Mohree thousand levels above him, was feeling fear!

  The woman in front of him wasn’t a human.

  Whatever she was, she simply wasn’t bound by the same logic he had worked with his whole life!

  “Yic is simply the illusion of moving time. You choose a space within time and attempt to mold it; you trap others within it, but it truly doesn’t stop anything. The world around you tio move forward. As mercy for your poor and inexperienced soul, I will show you what truly maniputing time is about.”

  The flowing golden rivers of time within Bing Xue’s Inner Realm shook, their entire tents suddenly rushing outside of her Inner Realm, fusing into her clothes and her body, and transf her pletely.

  Joseph was caught aghast as he attempted to jure magic to stop her. Thousands of beams that could easily sy Level 5000 monsters were fired at her.

  Yet!

  “{Primordial River of Time Arts}: {Time Regression}”

  Time truly regressed backward, and all of Joseph’s attacks were celed, as time moved before he even jured them!

  “What?!”

  Joseph gasped again, incapable of believing what he had experienced.

  By fag her, he finally realized something.

  He was nothing but a frog in a well.

  -----

  Pach