Emisarry Of Time And Space-Chapter 194 - 195: Addict.

Orion's expression hardened.

"That's… not possible."

Protocol was already running at full priority, tearing through the incoming data. Mana sense

flared, recalibrated, discarded false positives. Temporal Locus anchored again, mapping

continuity instead of structure.

And then he saw it.

Another anchor.

Not where the first had been.

Deeper.

Offset at a different vector entirely.

A second core.

Smaller. Denser. Newly formed.

His eyes narrowed.

"So you can regenerate the anchor itself."

That was new.

The realization landed at the same moment the abomination attacked again.

But this time, it didn't attack harder.

It attacked faster.

The shift was immediate and violent. Appendages blurred, no longer telegraphing their motion

with pressure buildup or displacement cues. Instead of massive, crushing strikes, the creature

switched to rapid, precise sweeps—slashes, hooks, glancing blows meant to overwhelm

reaction time rather than brute defenses.

Protocol screamed warnings in rapid succession.

Orion moved.

Kairos Step chained into Aether Step seamlessly, his body slipping through impossibly tight

intervals as claws and segmented limbs tore through the space he had occupied fractions of a

second earlier.

Stone exploded around him.

The cave screamed.

He felt pain for the first time.

A sharp line across his shoulder as something clipped him mid-transition. Not deep. Not

crippling. But real.

Then another.

A scrape along his side.

Another across his forearm.

The abomination learned.

If power couldn't catch him, speed could.

Orion clicked his tongue quietly.

"This is getting annoying."

He considered pushing more mana through his movement skills, increasing displacement speed

further—but dismissed the idea almost instantly. That would be brute escalation. Wasteful.

Inelegant.

He had better tools.

The Seer activated.

Mana surged upward immediately, far more demanding than any of his other skills. Protocol

intercepted the flow, calculating optimal output in real time—how much future vision he could

afford without burning through reserves prematurely.

The answer was clear.

Short windows.

Constant refresh.

Fragments of the immediate future flooded his perception—overlapping possibilities, branching

actions, attack vectors forming before they existed.

The world slowed.

Not in reality.

In comprehension.

The abomination's attacks became readable before they happened. Appendages blurred

toward him—but Orion was already moving, stepping into the spaces they would miss, pivoting

through futures that never fully manifested.

The fight escalated instantly.

Darkness churned as Orion weaved through a storm of motion, dodging, countering, striking in

brief, surgical bursts. Nova Spark detonated against joints and connection points, not to destroy

but to disrupt. Appendages ruptured and reformed faster than before, but the interruptions

stacked.

Still not enough.

The second core shifted constantly, sliding through the creature's mass whenever Orion aligned

with it. Every time he came close, the body restructured violently, blocking access with layers of

dense flesh and mineralized bone. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

This thing wasn't just durable.

It was adaptive.

The cave began to collapse.

Walls sheared apart as spatial implosions and kinetic impacts tore through stone. Jade veins

ruptured, spilling raw mana that the abomination absorbed almost instantly. The ground split

open beneath Orion's feet more than once, forcing rapid repositioning.

Protocol chimed sharply.

Mana reserves: 60%.

Orion frowned.

That hadn't happened in a very long time.

The Seer was expensive. Even minimized, even optimized, it drained steadily. He couldn't

maintain this pace indefinitely.

He needed a solution.

Now.

Another slash passed inches from his throat as he Aether Stepped sideways, reappearing

against a fractured wall. He pushed off immediately—

And paused.

Something flashed.

Barely noticeable.

A faint glow along the cave wall, gone as quickly as it appeared.

Normally, he would have ignored it. The cave was saturated with jade, mana fluctuations were

common here. But the timing bothered him.

Protocol flagged the anomaly.

Orion's gaze snapped toward the wall mid-dodge, Seer still active, temporal fragments aligning.

Was the monster drawing energy from the cave?

The idea should have occurred to him earlier.

He dismissed it instinctively—and Protocol confirmed why.

There was no detectable mana transfer.

No flow.

No siphoning.

If mana had been exchanged, he would have noticed immediately.

Still—

His attention returned to the second core.

Mana flowed outward from it cleanly, feeding the body. Conversion was happening there. That

much was certain.

Which meant the core wasn't a decoy.

It wasn't even an anchor in the traditional sense.

It was a processor.

The realization hit fully formed.

The creature wasn't generating mana.

It was converting something else into it.

Something his senses didn't register.

That explained everything.

Why the cave mattered.

Why jade veins reacted.

Why the environment bent and warped without direct mana manipulation.

The cave wasn't supplying mana.

It was supplying fuel.

Raw, untyped energy embedded in the stone itself—geological, elemental, something older

than mana refinement. The abomination absorbed it, processed it through the core, and output

mana.

A self-sustaining system.

Orion laughed softly.

"Well," he muttered, dodging another flurry of strikes, "that's just wonderful."

No wonder destroying the core hadn't killed it.

As long as the system remained connected to its source, it would just rebuild.

Which meant—

He had to cut it off.

He Aether Stepped upward sharply, vanishing and reappearing high above the chamber, his

mana sense and Temporal Locus expanding to cover the entire creature at once.

The abomination reacted instantly, launching appendages upward in a violent attempt to pull

him back down.

Orion didn't let it.

He brought his hands together, palms slapping sharply as spatial coordinates collapsed.

Teleport.

Both of them vanished.

The transition was violent.

Light exploded into existence.

Orion reappeared in broad daylight, standing on shattered stone at the base of the mountain,

the abomination materializing several meters away with a disoriented lurch.

The effect was immediate.

The creature shuddered.

Its movements faltered.

The pressure dropped sharply.

Withdrawal.

Orion smirked.

The abomination twisted violently, angling its bulk back toward the cave entrance, appendages

clawing at the ground, desperate to return.

"Sorry, buddy," Orion said calmly, mana gathering around him. "Your addiction ends here."

He didn't widen his next attack.

He compressed it.

Every ounce of gathered mana was forced inward, constrained brutally by Temporal Distortion

and spatial compression. Nova Bloom began forming—but not as an expanding sphere.

As a prison.

A perfectly contained collapse field wrapped around the creature's entire body, limiting the

blast radius to its physical form.

The abomination thrashed wildly, composure gone, movements erratic and desperate. Without

access to the cave's energy, regeneration slowed drastically. Appendages tore apart and failed

to reattach properly.

Orion released.

The collapse was instantaneous.

There was no explosion.

No sound.

The creature simply… ceased.

Space folded inward, consuming mass, structure, core, and conversion system alike. The

compressed Nova Bloom annihilated everything within its boundary with ruthless efficiency.

When space relaxed again, there was nothing left.

No residue.

No presence.