Time shattered with a purple glow.

  Keys weren’t born equal and followed very different rules from each other. While Matthew’s own Wormhole stood at the apex of them all—being capable of wiping out a solar system usually put him ahead of most competition—Mr. Chang’s Overtime wasn’t far behind. Its activating conditions were as absurd as its effect. It turned normal employees into temporary masters of time, and workaholics into invincible war gods.

  To put it simply, Mr. Chang’s Key stockpiled his overtime hours—which he usually accumulated at a rate of one or two per day—and then ‘spent’ them. This created a temporal anomaly where time froze for everyone and everything except Mr. Chang and which lasted for the duration of the stockpiled hours. From his own testimony, he could walk around, harm monsters, and do anything he wanted within the span of two seconds. He alone could affect objects for the duration of these lost hours.

  And he never ran out of those.

  Matthew expected to blink and find himself out of the Dungeon, since Mr. Chang would simply have to grab him and the others in the frozen time before rushing out of the Mall through the entrance. Instead, his entire vision turned purple as a violet filter fell upon the world around him. All sound turned silent, all colors dulled, and dust froze in midair. Matthew’s breath grew heavier, and Mr. Chang froze in place.

  “How do you find my Slow World, my most despised plaything?” Durge cackled. Having already been bested by Chang before, the monster had developed a novel adaptation to his Key. “Time dilation centered around me–”

  A sword sliced both of its hands in the blink of an eye.

  Matthew saw Mr. Chang’s rough trajectory, the same way he often caught a glimpse of John’s bullets flying through the air. His fellow Crawler was a thunderbolt, a blur crossing the hall in an instant and striking in a flash.

  Durge’s new adaptation did work as advertised. It simply slowed Mr. Chang’s movements from instantaneous to merely blindingly fast.

  Matthew couldn’t say the same for everything else. Durge’s hands and his teammates both fell to the floor at a glacial pace slower than a Zack Snyder action scene.

  Wait, should I be perceiving it so slowly? Matthew wondered as he raised his hand at a normal pace. Everything from his allies to objects had slowed down except for Durge and him. My Key must be interfering with the spell somehow!

  Or at least, he thought that was the case until he spotted black spots sweating off his skin.

  They were so few and far between that Matthew barely noticed them, but the mere sight sent chills down his spine. Nonetheless, his mind turned away from this mystery to focus on the only thing that mattered: saving his teammates. He rushed forward while casting the Peak spell on himself, forgetting all thoughts of self-preservation.

  Meanwhile, Durge’s eyes all snapped open at the same time and each unleashed rays of orange light. They hit multiple stands and clothing shelves, each turning to stone in an instant at contact. None managed to make contact with Mr. Chang, however, as he side-stepped each of the beams with lightning speed. He actually moved so fast that he began to look like a movie rollback to Matthew’s eyes, a series of afterimages each capturing a single step and turn.

  “You’re burning through hours in seconds, four-eyes!” Durge taunted him. “Time’s running out–”

  Mr. Chang closed the gap between them in an instant and then vertically sliced Durge in two. The monster split into two symmetrical halves sliding off each other.

  Mr. Chang never invested in defensive or support spells like Peak, since his Key made it impossible for his foes to even strike back. His sorcery repertoire was all about offense and that sword move, Spaceslash, was no exception. Matthew vaguely recalled that it worked by carving open spacetime along the edge of the blade and thus sliced everything in its path on a subatomic level. It could carve out anything.

  Yet Durge had already survived worse. Matthew had no idea how many hits it would take for the monster to adapt to Mr. Chang’s spell, but it inevitably would. The fact that time was still slowed down—and the two halves were already trying to rejoin—was proof enough of that.

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  Nonetheless, it gave Matthew the opportunity he needed. He caught up to Durge and slammed the ground beneath the monster’s feet. A hole in the floor opened and sent the monster plummeting below for a time.

  Mr. Chang appeared at his side and said something too fast for Matthew to understand; either he didn’t notice, or he wasn’t willing to cancel Overtime while Durge’s Slow World remained active. He waved a hand over Matthew’s face, and next thing he knew the latter had a new eyepatch to replace the one Durge took from him earlier.

  “Thanks,” Matthew replied, though he wasn’t sure Mr. Chang could understand his words of gratitude at his current speed. With no need to keep a hand over his face to keep his hole contained, Matthew grabbed Kari with both arms while Mr. Chang carried John with one.

  His teammate felt so heavy in Matthew’s arms, even with the Peak spell. Blood tainted her hair and dripped down her forehead so slowly it was almost disturbing. He barely felt her breath through the slowed time, each time fearing her latest exhalation would be her last.

  Please God, if you exist, let us make it through this, Matthew pleaded in his mind to whoever or whatever would listen. He and Mr. Chang ran towards the exit that he sensed beyond the menswear area. He knew Mr. Chang could have easily outpaced him, but he couldn’t carry all the Crawlers at once and leaving the Dungeon to drop John would have left the rest at Durge’s mercy. Please!

  Durge’s shriek of rage only sharpened his fear. Matthew and Mr. Chang ran past menswear and into a haberdashery store with futuristic eyewear shelves standing behind plastic counters; one showcased various models of eyepatches, with one missing. They ran past changing rooms in a world of slowed time, Matthew’s heart pounding faster than a war drum.

  “You can’t run forever, Matthew!” he heard Durge shout in the distance, each word sounding louder and closer with each passing second. “We’re reaching out everywhere, everywhere, with concrete roots and glass leaves stretching across all of space and time!”

  Finally, Matthew sensed one of the Dungeon’s thresholds at the back of the shop. A half-open rift floated in a hall of changing rooms overseen by faceless mannequins with far too many arms and legs. Matthew immediately reached out to it with one hand.

  The Mall resisted, as it always did. Matthew felt its hunger and greed, its overwhelming desire to keep him contained within its concrete bowels. He powered through it all in spite of his dread and exhaustion and forced it open. The very fabric of space ripped apart.

  He heard something big crashing through the mannequins behind him. Matthew’s instincts proved stronger than his wisdom, and he peeked over his shoulder to see an enormous clawed hand lunged at him. Mr. Chang immediately moved to intercept it with his weapon.

  This time, however, his Spaceslash-powered sword failed to cut through Durge’s flesh. The monster’s fingers closed on the blade and snapped it in half with a mere flick of the wrist.

  Still, those precious few seconds made all the difference.

  The rift opened and swallowed up Matthew, his teammates, and Mr. Chang in a swirl of multicolored light. He caught a glimpse of Durge chasing after them in a desperate attempt to escape with them, its legs and arms thinner than before, the very fabric of reality seemingly shifting at the edge of its monstrous body as if space refused to get a good grasp on its angles.

  “We’re going to eat you all, Matthew!” Durge all but screamed at him. “One day I’ll be out of here, and you’ll choke on the buffet of screams–”

  The rift closed behind them, and the slowed time snapped back to normal.

  The backlash threw Matthew across a condemned parking lot and onto the cold asphalt floor, though his grip was so strong he managed to hang on to Kari anyway. The impact tore part of his shirt and left bleeding bruises. His vision went white for a second, and when it stabilized again he sensed warm hands grabbing his shoulders.

  “Matthew!” It took him a moment to recognize Crypto’s voice, because she never shouted. He looked up to see the Association’s manager looking over him and checking his face for wounds. “Matthew, are you hurt?!”

  She came in person? Crypto never took the field outside of extreme emergencies… which the current situation admittedly was.

  She didn’t come alone either. Mr. Auguste was there, alongside Julia, Officer Kresnik, and Nurse Florence. The latter’s hands shone with green light as she pressed them against John’s chest. Matthew had seen her Key heal deadly wounds in an instant, but his teammate barely started breathing again.

  “I’m… I’m okay…” Matthew blurted out. It was a lie–his whole body hurt even though he had stopped producing black particles–but a glance at the unconscious Kari reminded him that someone else needed his help far more. “But they… John and…”

  “We’ll take care of them,” Crypto said upon taking Kari away from him and laid her on the ground. The Association’s manager immediately cast a blue spell on his teammate to check her condition, which was bad enough to warrant a scowl. “She has a major concussion. Auguste, stasis.”

  “Yes, of course.” Mr. Auguste applied his hands to Kari and froze her body in time until she could receive better treatment. “That should hold.”

  “The portal is stable,” Officer Kresnik said as he checked the Dungeon’s threshold. “It’s not coming after us.”

  Yet. Matthew’s jaw clenched in dread and sorrow. It’s not coming yet.

  “How many hours did you burn?” Crypto asked Mr. Chang with a hint of concern; something she almost never expressed with him.

  “Sixty-three,” Mr. Chang replied with a deep scowl. He looked emaciated and drank from a plastic bottle to replenish himself. From his perspective, he had spent almost three days without eating or drinking in his world of altered time. “Too many.”

  The scowl on his face told Matthew that Mr. Chang wouldn’t be able to pull off that stunt again for a very long while.

  “Matthew,” Julia consoled him softly. “Everything will be alright.”

  They all knew she was lying.

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