Chapter 21: 21. Time
Murphy moved.
His body blurred, a streak of lethal intent cutting through the darkness.
Gray-white hair streamed behind him like a banner of defiance, every strand laced with raw power.
The Moonblade pulsed with his momentum, screaming through the air like a vengeful wrath.
The Entity—this being of wrongness and unclean—was fast.
But not fast enough.
By the time it reacted, Murphy was already there.
One flash of silver.
A single, brutal stroke.
Its wing—twisted, malformed, forged from darkness—was severed.
The appendage spiraled into the air, flailing like a dying thing before it dissolved into black mist.
Before it could even touch the ground, it vanished. As if purified by the blade that knew what should not be.
The Entity reeled.
Shrieking—Not in pain. But in shock.
And something dangerously close to fear.
"You!! What did you do!?" it howled.
Gone was the grotesque maternal parody.
Gone were the soft words and sickening coos.
Now its voice was pure venom—raw, guttural, unnatural. Its limbs flexed in anguish.
Murphy stood tall.
Expression carved from granite. A bit old. A bit more.
His breath slow, weighted.
And his voice—now deep, hoarse with time and sacrifice—rumbled.
"I... gave up my youth. And half of my midlife.
For one minute—"
He raised the Moonblade. It flared—violently, unnaturally.
The light it gave off wasn't radiant; it was righteous. It judged.
"—I now have the physical strength of a Transcended."
He paused. Not from hesitation.
But for promise.
"I shall end you in a single minute."
And then—
He dashed forward again.
But this time the air changed.
Where once there was helplessness, uncertainty, despair—
Now there was only stillness. Heavy. Suffocating.
The ruin of a child's dreams forged into something monstrous and final.
The Entity froze.
It felt it before it saw it.
The strength. Violent. Wild. Thick.
It blanketed the entire cave with a crushing pressure, dragging stone and air and soul down into a primal abyss.
And then—he stepped forward.
Murphy.
But not the boy it had once known. No.
This was a man forged in the fire of grief. A being of wrath wrapped in human skin.
Hair flowed freely—long and white—lashing like whips in the storm of his own essence.
Muscles corded his frame. His arms glowed with coiled violence.
And his eyes—once filled with mirth—now held only judgment.
The Entity's wings twitched involuntarily.
"Is this…" it whispered, "his potential?"
No time for awe.
He moved.
The ground shattered beneath his feet.
One second: ten paces away.
The next: impact.
The Entity barely raised a limb before Murphy's fist connected.
Not a technique. Not a spell.
Just raw, unrelenting force.
CRACK.
3 seconds passed.
Bone broke.
The Entity was flung backward like a ragdoll. It crashed through wall after wall, through rock and shadow and centuries of waiting.
Rubble cascaded. Dust rose.
But Murphy was already in the air, descending like vengeance.
His eyes never left the target.
BOOM!
Another impact.
The ground cratered.
A shockwave ripped through the surrounding land.
Trees outside the cave bent, some falling outright.
Animals screamed and fled into the distance.
7 seconds passed.
Blood sprayed.
Not Murphy's.
The Entity retaliated—claws like scythes, wings honed to a razor's edge.
It slashed, stabbed, spun.
Its strikes were fast—perfect—deadly.
But Murphy was faster.
His movements were feral yet precise, reckless yet divine. He welcomed the pain.
And in return, he delivered execution.
Each blow was not an attack, It was a sentence.
Each strike declared, You should not exist.
"You should have killed me," Murphy growled, voice warped by sacrifice.
"Now you'll regret it."
14 seconds passed.
A punch to the gut. A knee to the jaw.
The Entity's form crumpled, shrieking—bleeding.
A detached wing hurtled toward Murphy.
He caught it mid-air.
Crushed it with one hand.
Turned and shattered every last wing The Entity possessed,
each one with a single, perfect stroke—as if to deny it even the idea of survival.
The Entity tried to retreat.
It fled.
Dodged. Twisted. Bled.
It was stalling for time.
But how could it hide its intention from a spectator?
Murphy chased it.
Every dodge met with a graze. Every counter met with a cost.
31 seconds passed.
But Murphy wasn't done.
He stood still—and began to chant.
"I sacrifice..."
The words echoed.
Not through air.
But through fate.
The light in his palm flared, black and red and wrong.
Reality strained to contain it.
The storm twisted into his body, pulling decades—entire lifetimes—into his core.
"...my midlife and..."
15 seconds left.
He disappeared.
And then—
He reappeared—above.
Like a judgment falling from heaven.
And brought the full, merciless might of his sword down on The Entity's skull.
"...4/5th of my old age.
Along with my fifteen seconds of strength."
Impact.
Silence followed.
Dust rose like incense from the corpse of something unnatural.
A crater bloomed where The Entity's form once stood.
And in it—Its body, twisted. Mangled. Unrecognizable.
Its head bent at an impossible angle, staring off as if still asking—
How? Why? Who are you to hate me so much?
Murphy stood above it.
Breathing heavy.
No joy. No glory. No song to sing of this.
Only ruin.
Murphy stood in the crater, his breath shallow, his body spent. The dust settled. The cave was silent.
Then—
A twitch.
The Entity's corpse shuddered. Its mangled fingers clenched.
And from the ruin of its skull, a single, bloodied eye rolled—fixing on Murphy's prone form.
It wasn't dead.
It had let him believe he'd won.
Now it struck.
A lash of darkness, whip-fast, speared up from the ground—a final, desperate attack from a creature that refused to die. Murphy's eyes widened, but he couldn't move. Couldn't dodge.
The blackened tendril pierced his chest.
Or it should have been.
The tendril of Entity had stopped—not because it missed,
but because Murphy's hand had caught it.
The Entity shrieked in his grasp, curling back like a wounded animal.
It had no face, no voice, but in that moment, Murphy heard it beg.
He looked down at it.
No hate in his eyes anymore.
Just resolve.
"You know," he said softly, "I told you I had the strength of a Transcended for one minute."
The tendril writhed.
Murphy tightened his grip.
"I lied."
He took a breath, slow and final.
"It was one minute… and twenty seconds."
Then he raised his arm one last time—bones cracking, aura flickering—and muttered, almost casually:
"I sacrifice… my last ten seconds."
His hand ignited with brilliance. Not gold. Not flame.
But the purest white—like memory before it is born.
And Spells voice resounded. A bit disappointed.
[You have slain a Corrupted Demon, Sira'thun.]
His body began to falter. Lines deepened on his face.
Hair grayed further. Bones ached.
He trembled, not from weakness—but from finality.
He had traded everything.
All for this one minute and a bit more.
And that time had passed.
Murphy's body should have healed. If he had spent a month's worth of time.
But he had greedy hands.
He had taken too much. Spent too recklessly.
And now, the debt was permanent.
His joints ached as he pushed himself upright. His hair, once streaked with gray, now hung bone-white and brittle. The face in his mind's eye—the grinning, bright-eyed boy who'd first entered this nightmare—was a stranger to him now.
No going back.