Amidst the torrential rain, Rain Crow slowly stood up from the ground.
The tide of crows had receded. Their corpses and bones had been completely devoured, and the Shadow of Saturnus slowly straightened its body like a giant digesting a heavy meal.
The moment the magnificent giant shadow stood upright, the glass curtain walls of the high-rises were enveloped by its shade, and the torrential rain paused.
The world fell dead silent. The billboards atop the skyscrapers flickered with black-and-white static, like malfunctioning televisions.
Clock Maker finally ceased his inaction. As he lowered his head, a pocket watch appeared in his well-knuckled hand. It was an exquisitely crafted watch with a mercury-colored casing.
He pressed the button on top of the watch.
Click. A mercury hue washed out in all directions like a tidal wave.
Crow feathers drifting in the wind and fine threads of rain froze in midair. The texture of every single feather and the shape of every raindrop could be seen with absolute clarity.
Streaks of snow-white liquid hung suspended right in front of his pupils, dense and sickening like swarming insects. Yet, Clock Maker suddenly narrowed his eyes.
"This is..."
He looked up, tracking that almost imperceptible stir, and stared at the pitch-black, gargantuan shadow looming above Rain Crow's head.
From a distance, the Shadow of Saturnus looked like the djinn from the Arabian Nights, with Rain Crow acting as the magic lamp. The djinn clung silently to the top of its vessel.
Dead quiet, completely still... no words could truly capture the atmosphere of this mercury-colored world.
Here, even a dropping pin would sound like a detonating nuclear bomb; nothing could possibly go ignored. Thus, it was hard for Clock Maker not to suspect that the tiny sound he had just heard was merely an illusion.
But a fraction of a second later, his assumption shattered.
Within this silent, mercury-colored world, the Shadow of Saturnus suddenly moved.
It parted its bloodstained teeth, flashing a ferocious grin.
Man and shadow locked eyes.
Clock Maker widened his eyes slightly. The pupils behind his monocle showed pure astonishment. Tremors of the unknown, mixed with fear and fury, completely exploded within his heart.
Amidst the ticking of the watch, his heart hammered violently. The chain of his monocle swayed like rippling water... Without a doubt, this was the first time in his life he had ever seen something capable of moving within his time-stop space!
The Shadow of Saturnus stretched its lips into a mocking smile.
They stared at each other in silence.
Even after the terror and shock faded, Clock Maker's pupils remained sharply contracted.
All that remained in his heart was rage and a sickening sensation.
This single second dragged on endlessly in Clock Maker's eyes, feeling as long as twenty years.
For so many years, he had gazed out alone across this lonely mercury world, looking down on every subject like a tyrant.
Nobody in this world could transcend the cradle called time. Only he could. He was unique. He had been completely certain of that.
But at this moment, he was no longer special, and no longer the sole master of this mercury-colored domain.
For the longest time, he had been like a despot sitting upon a lonely, archaic throne, gripping the power to rule everything—yet his palace had never seen a single visitor, its steps overgrown with moss.
But right here, right now, it was as if someone gripping a longsword had suddenly barged into this brilliantly lit, resplendent, yet sunless palace.
You thought it was a man, but it was actually a beast.
The terror and shock of having his order broken were inevitable... but what surged into his heart right now was delight, as if someone had just painted color onto this desolate, unpopulated black-and-white world.
"I knew it would be you... You came to see me."
Clock Maker rejoiced silently, his lips curling up. "I knew you wouldn't leave me lonely for too long... Rain Crow."
His time stop could last a maximum of 1.5 seconds. Only 0.5 seconds remained. Within that fleeting half-second, several bronze pocket watches materialized in Clock Maker's hands.
He pressed down on one of the protruding buttons, and every single watch rapidly heated up and cracked.
Bang—!
Clock Maker's suit collar whipped up in the wind as he unhesitatingly hurled the pocket watches straight toward Rain Crow.
In the very next instant, four or five watches burst apart simultaneously. However, right before time resumed its flow, the Shadow of Saturnus abruptly moved.
The fifteen-meter pitch-black shadow suddenly grabbed Rain Crow's body, unfurled a massive pair of black-and-white wings forged from crow bones and feathers, and launched high into the sky.
"Oh?" Clock Maker arched an eyebrow and slightly narrowed his eyes.
The exact moment time resumed its normal flow, the tumbling watches finally detonated.
Mercury-colored flames swept out like a massive dragon, blotting out the sky as a blazing vortex swallowed everything across the plaza.
In the blink of an eye, the entirety of St. Honghu Plaza was reduced to ruins. The fiery light of the explosion converged into a heaven-piercing pillar of flame that shot into the sky.
Clock Maker tilted his head back, gazing upward with keen interest.
High up in the heavens, the Shadow of Saturnus had overlapped its wings, folding them tightly in front of itself to shield Rain Crow's body, blocking the scorching wave of heat.
A moment later, the pillar of flame erupted upward from the ground, slamming directly into those skeletal wings. Layers of black crow feathers were burned away, exposing the bones beneath. The bones gradually turned glowing red, then charred, and finally began to slowly melt.
The Shadow of Saturnus withstood the blow, then slowly spread open its thoroughly riddled wings.
Cold-colored flames continued to burn as the black wings beat against the air... It looked like a gigantic moth. Just then, sunlight pierced through the curtain of rain, illuminating its shadow.
Silhouetted against the enormous solar disc, Rain Crow lifted his head. His face remained expressionless, but the brutal ferocity in his eyes remained undiminished.
Looking down from on high, he quietly stared at Clock Maker. The giant moth-like figure behind him cast a sky-blotting shadow down onto the earth, as if it were the sun itself...
A black sun.
Not far away, White Jack stared up at the scene, slowly coming back to his senses.
He stood frozen for a moment with one hand on his hip before realizing that, just a second ago, Clock Maker had activated his time-stop domain and detonated the watches.
But right now, a question slowly surfaced in his mind: how exactly did Rain Crow manage to change positions and fly into the sky during the precise moment time was stopped?
Then, he suddenly remembered the description on the super-human species panel.
"To be precise, it was the Shadow of Saturnus that took action during that instant," White Jack muttered. "The Shadow of Saturnus transcends all laws of the world, including time. But pops himself shouldn't be capable of moving or thinking inside a time-stop domain. So how did he command the Shadow of Saturnus to act?"
Just then, he recalled the other ability of the Shadow of Saturnus, and his brow instantly shot up.
"So that's how it is..."
Up in the sky, the skeletal wings quickly dissolved completely. The Shadow of Saturnus plummeted from midair with Rain Crow in tow. Tearing through the grayish-black smoke, it crashed into the ruins, gouging out a deep crater.
Boom—!
Standing at the edge of the crater, Clock Maker stared at Rain Crow's figure and let out a savage laugh. "Twenty years... you've finally shown me something different."
"You are going to die... There is plenty of novelty down in hell."
Rain Crow spoke in a hoarse, gloomy voice as he walked out of the deep crater step by step.
The Shadow of Saturnus wavered in midair, just like the distorted figure in Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream.
In the very next instant, Rain Crow violently launched forward, rushing head-on like a black tornado.
He threw a punch, and the massive shadow behind him raised a claw. As he smashed his fist toward Clock Maker, the giant shadow ripped its claws through the floors of a skyscraper.
Their movements were synchronized to an eerie degree.
Clock Maker stared at the fist rapidly closing in on his face. He casually pulled another mercury-colored pocket watch from his suit pocket and clicked it.
The mercury hue splashed out like frantic strokes of paint.
The fist froze. He could see its bulging veins and tense knuckles; he could even feel the stagnated gust of wind from the punch resting heavily against the bridge of his nose.
Yet, the claws of the Shadow of Saturnus did not stop. An entire floor of the building was instantly ripped apart. The glass on the curtain wall shattered, crashing down alongside chunks of the broken floor.
Within the mercury-colored world, Clock Maker flipped a small knife from his cuff. It was a scalpel used for dissections. He had never imagined he would actually need to use something like this in a real battle.
He raised his right hand, aiming to plunge the blade straight through Rain Crow's neck.
But there wasn't enough time.
A giant black hand tore past a row of structural pillars, lunging for Clock Maker's flank. Left with no choice, he merely sliced a bloody gash across Rain Crow's collarbone with the scalpel while simultaneously tossing out a bronze pocket watch.
A split second later, Clock Maker appeared atop a pile of rubble over a hundred meters away.
Time resumed its flow. The pocket watch he had left behind clicked before detonating violently. Under the dual devastation of the massive shadow and the explosive watch, the skyscraper completely collapsed.
"You seem especially furious this time. It's the exact same script, so why weren't you this angry when Grey Owl died?"
Clock Maker stood with his hands clasped behind his back, speaking slowly toward the collapsed ruins.
His only answer was the sound of the falling rain and a deep, subterranean rumble.
Amidst the torrential rain, the giant shadow cast aside the crumbled concrete, and Rain Crow stood tall once again.
"Oh, I know. It's because of the connection between you and Blue Pigeon." Clock Maker paused in thought. "I'm quite curious... what exactly is the relationship between you two?"
He hesitated slightly, suddenly averting his gaze. "Could it be... father and son?"
"Shut up—!" Rain Crow let out a sudden, savage growl.
After that, Clock Maker and Rain Crow clashed in several intense exchanges.
Beneath the gloomy, lightless sky, mercury rage and pitch-black fangs and claws collided again and again. The frantic ticking of watches and the roaring booms of impacts took turns echoing across the battlefield.
It was like a chaotic, entirely disordered symphony.
Every time a pocket watch exploded on the long street or the Shadow of Saturnus danced its giant claws across the sky, a massive building would come crashing down. In no time at all, the earth was thoroughly devastated, completely riddled with destruction.
It looked as if a natural disaster had just struck—an earthquake violent enough to level a city.
From start to finish, Clock Maker's gaze never once landed on the Shadow of Saturnus. Within the frozen space, he focused solely on the completely immobilized Rain Crow.
Even with time stopped, the absolute fury painted on Rain Crow's face could not be concealed.
The touch of crimson in his pupils still glowed brilliantly. Out of the corner of his eye, a streak of red smeared across the mercury space...
"Looks like I guessed right. Using your own son as bait... are you truly willing to go that far just for me?"
Clock Maker muttered. Then, the corners of his lips quirked upward, and he broke into a manic laugh.
Five seconds later, accompanied by yet another ferocious blast, cracks finally spread across the body of the Shadow of Saturnus, leaving it looking like a mirror on the verge of shattering.
As the price for this explosion, however, Clock Maker sacrificed an arm.
His right arm was entirely ripped off by the massive shadow's claws. It spun wildly through the air, practically mangled beyond all use.
Right then—click—Clock Maker pressed the button on his pocket watch.
In the world of absolute deathly stillness, he grabbed the severed limb hovering in midair. Using a glimmer of mercury light, he fused the broken arm directly back into the stump on his shoulder.
The very second time began flowing once more, his arm looked as perfectly fine as before.
"A beast is just a beast. So barbaric..."
Clock Maker kept his head lowered, whispering softly as he tested the five fingers of his right hand.
Moving forward, he shifted his strategy, no longer fighting head-on.
In order to maintain a safe distance from the Shadow of Saturnus, he engaged his opponent in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
The moment the click sounded, the world instantly shifted color. Clock Maker sprinted madly through the mercury-colored reality, using his pocket watches to blow up the high-rises all around them, violently stalling for time.
One skyscraper after another along St. Honghu Avenue came crashing down like avalanches, crushing heavily toward Rain Crow and the Shadow of Saturnus.
"Roar—!"
The Shadow of Saturnus bellowed furiously at the sky, using its mangled body to rip the collapsing structures to pieces.
It became the sole shadow left standing tall above the wasteland.
From afar, it resembled a colossal, pitch-black tower.
Rain Crow charged hysterically after Clock Maker like a pitch-black beast stripped of all reason. The giant shadow trailed behind him like a shriveled kite dragged along the ground, violently plowing a fissure-like trench straight down the long street.
Clock Maker suddenly stopped in his tracks. Leaping into the air, he tossed a pocket watch right below his feet.
Amidst the ticking of the second hand, the pocket watch blew apart. The explosion turned into a wall of fire blocking Rain Crow's pursuit while simultaneously providing Clock Maker with a powerful counter-force.
Clock Maker's body shot high into the air, landing square on the roof of a towering skyscraper.
Boom—! Thunder abruptly cracked as faint bolts of lightning arced through the clouds.
Clock Maker stood upon the very peak of the high-rise, his suit collar flapping wildly around him.
He quietly pondered amidst the curtain of rain. His monocle lens was slick with rain, a bead of water the size of a bean sliding down its surface.
Something felt very wrong to Clock Maker. It felt as if every single move he made had been thoroughly seen through.
No matter where he hid a pocket watch, no matter how concealed the location he detonated it from, no matter how intricate a trap he laid, the Shadow of Saturnus was always able to see through his intentions and violently tear them apart...
This bizarre sensation made it seem as though Rain Crow had become an entirely different person in a very short time, suddenly possessing true omniscience.
Mind reading?
Clock Maker mused, but he quickly rejected the thought.
Logically speaking, Rain Crow's brain should cease all thought when time stopped for that one second. Even if the shadow attached to his body could move, it was absolutely impossible for Rain Crow to be consciously directing its actions.
Then, what exactly was commanding it to move during those moments? Did it possess an independent consciousness?
Or perhaps... was it simply acting on pure instinct?
No, there was one more possibility.
As his thoughts reached this point, Clock Maker's eyes suddenly lit up, and the corners of his mouth curled into a smirk.
He finally realized exactly where this fatal sense of incongruity was coming from.
During the time stop, Rain Crow's thoughts were completely frozen. He couldn't mentally control the Shadow of Saturnus.
However, Rain Crow was highly likely using some sort of precognitive ability to foresee exactly what was going to happen next, issuing commands to the Shadow of Saturnus in advance.
"So that's how it is..."
Clock Maker suddenly began to laugh. "It's precognition. To think it was precognition... So, you thought you successfully predicted my every step? You thought you saw through everything."
As he spoke, a wave of sheer, blinding rage engulfed his heart, severely distorting the look in his eyes.
When a complete control freak discovers that his opponent has slipped beyond his grasp—or worse, that he himself has silently fallen entirely under his opponent's control—it's incredibly hard not to display this kind of hysterical fury.
Meanwhile, White Jack, who had been quietly observing from afar, also grasped a trace of the pattern.
White Jack reached out and grabbed a drifting wisp of mercury hue as it floated past. Looking down as it slowly vanished, he pondered:
Every time he finishes using his time-stop ability, Clock Maker has to wait three seconds before he can use it again... His power isn't omnipotent.
"As long as someone catches that three-second gap, they can take him down."
He raised his head, narrowing his hollow eyes as he looked forward.
Rain Crow sprinted vertically up the surface of the skyscraper, shattering one glass curtain wall after another beneath his boots. The massive shadow behind him flashed a hideous grin and spread its arms wide. Looking like a solid black curtain, or even the night sky itself, it lunged straight to grab Clock Maker.
Clock Maker looked down at the scene unfolding beneath him.
"If it's precognition... then the real question is just how far into the future he can see. If he can only catch a partial glimpse, I can definitely deceive him."
In that split second, Clock Maker made an absolutely unthinkable decision.
He took a bold step forward, plummeting straight down from the sky. Riding the explosive force of a pocket watch, his body spun rapidly through the air until, finally... taking an impossibly tricky angle, he dropped right into the gaping maw of the Shadow of Saturnus.
"what the fuck?" White Jack stared in utter disbelief.
Indeed, he watched with his own two eyes as Clock Maker slipped directly past the razor-sharp teeth of the Shadow of Saturnus, diving straight into its belly and sliding cleanly down the giant shadow's throat into its stomach.
Rain Crow was stunned too.
He had indeed foreseen this baffling scene via his precognition, but he hadn't stopped it. Or rather, he hadn't actually known if he should stop it.
Clock Maker had executed a move so utterly insane that, even when predicted, it defied all comprehension.
"What the hell is this old bastard doing?" White Jack crossed his arms and tilted his head, staring quietly at the Shadow of Saturnus's swollen belly.
In the very next instant, a mutation occurred.
The Shadow of Saturnus suddenly mimicked a violent dry heave. Its stomach began to swell rapidly, and a fiery glow slowly surfaced across its pitch-black belly, looking just like the pale white of a fish's stomach right at the crack of dawn.
Immediately after, a deafening boom exploded from within, blowing the Shadow of Saturnus's body completely apart.
The mercury-colored flames spilled out with a violent roar, resembling a colossal beast bursting viciously from the earth.
Meanwhile, inside the Shadow of Saturnus's body...
Seizing that precise fraction of a second—right as the blazing fire melted his monocle but before it could devour his head—Clock Maker suddenly smiled.
His finger twitched slightly, pressing down on the mercury pocket watch.
Click. Time stood entirely still.
Taking off his damaged monocle, Clock Maker wiped away the blood on his cheek with the back of his hand. Flashing a wicked grin, he leaped straight out through the gaping wound in the giant shadow's body, casually brushing past the actively spreading explosion.
A second later, Rain Crow—who was closest to the Shadow of Saturnus—was unavoidably swallowed by the furious blast.
He was essentially at point-blank range. Even though the Shadow of Saturnus desperately threw its arms over his back to shield him, he still felt the full, devastating impact of the raging mercury fire—
Bang!!!
The deafening boom blew the heavy rain entirely apart. An entire long street was visibly warped by the shockwave. Roaring deeply, the Shadow of Saturnus plummeted from the sky and collapsed heavily onto the ground.
Rain Crow let out a soundless scream, dropping completely to his knees in a pooling puddle of blood. His back had been seared by the flames into an unbearably hideous, charred red mess, and his arms and legs were practically crippled beyond use.
The torrential rain continued to fall.
Amidst the pouring rain, the Shadow of Saturnus convulsed with violent twitches. Rain Crow gripped his own reflection in the pool of blood, as if he wanted to savagely tear apart the utterly powerless face staring back at him.
Clock Maker stood perfectly still in the distance, his head bowed as he casually cleaned his monocle lens with a microfiber cloth.
He turned his head for a look. The battlefield where the two of them had clashed was now reduced to an absolute hellscape. Scarcely a single building remained intact... What were once bustling high-rises had been turned into a wasteland worse than a slum. Right now, charred black smoke and mercury-colored flames continued to spread through the heavy rain.
After a moment, Clock Maker slipped his monocle back on and strolled slowly toward Rain Crow, pulling his lips into a wide, mocking smile.
"It's over, Rain Crow. In the end, you were still falling one move short."
"Didn't you love precognition so much?" Clock Maker sneered. "It seems you only predicted that I would enter your shadow's belly, but you never managed to foresee me triggering an explosion right inside its body."
He paused. "Your precognition has certain limits. The moment I went inside its body, no matter what you foresaw, you were completely powerless to change it. Your defeat was carved in stone."
Clock Maker was right. Rain Crow knew exactly why he lost. If he had simply stopped the Shadow of Saturnus from swallowing Clock Maker in that critical instant, perhaps everything could still have been salvaged...
The suited man walked forward step by step, his leather shoes splashing ripples across the flooded ground. The watery reflections perfectly captured a smile completely torn between deep disappointment and manic excitement.
"So this is how it ends, my old friend," Clock Maker said softly. "Over twenty years, and in the very end, you were still completely helpless to do anything at all... But at least you didn't disappoint me in your final moments. That was a beautiful struggle."
Saying this, he restrained his smile, a faint trace of genuine sorrow flashing through the depths of his eyes.
Rain Crow said absolutely nothing. His empty pupils stared fixedly at the water's surface, which vaguely mirrored Clock Maker's figure... The reflection steadily drew closer, violently shattered time and again by the falling raindrops before re-forming amidst the ripples.
But in the very next instant, a second figure suddenly appeared in the ripples.
Plummeting straight down through the torrential rain, that figure landed heavily directly in front of Rain Crow.
Clock Maker raised an eyebrow and lifted his head. Staring through his monocle lens, the sight that met his eyes was a freakish man, bone-white from head to toe.
White Jack lacked his usual white top hat, but he still gripped an exquisitely crafted cane in his hand.
He rubbed his completely bald head and glanced up at the hazy, overcast sky. Then, making a dismissive shooing gesture right at Clock Maker, he drawled, "Alright, you can fuck off now. The small fry's role ends right here."
Clock Maker fell dead silent.
He simply tilted his head, watching White Jack quietly with a look of deep amusement.
White Jack slowly lowered his head. Glaring ferociously, he met the man's gaze dead on. "You don't seem to grasp the situation, sir."
He paused, then suddenly curled the corners of his mouth:
"Rain Crow... gets to be my toy, and mine alone."