Carnifexes could redeem themselves, thus Aaron wouldn't go hunting for them. However, any carnifex that told him to follow them without answering his questions should be prepared for battle!

His voice had been loud and clear when he gave the attack order, and the Mouth-Man also heard it. He stopped walking and turned his head back in a full one hundred and eighty degrees without moving the rest of his body.

That was free info on the beast's ability: despite not having a face, the Mouth-Man still had a front side to his head and was subject to surprise attacks from his blind spots.

Alys and Lana took a while to obey, but they eventually did.

Alys canceled her detection ability and used an attacking one. A transparent bubble of Space Energy, filled with runes etched throughout its extension, appeared around the Mouth-Man, rapidly shrinking to smash him.

Lana chanted, "The Light illuminates my paths of justice. Shine in splendor and fade my enemies away! Third Grade Holy Skill: Holy Pulse!"

Holy Energy left her body to rest on the air above the Mouth-Man. Once there, it formed a circle twice the width of the Man-Mouth, filled with mystical symbols. Then, a jet of golden light came out of the circle. It slammed into the carnifex like liquid fire, trying to burn him to cinders.

Both attacks took place almost at the same time. Lana's Holy Pulse was so bright it hid the Mouth-Man for almost thirty seconds and lit up the entire hall. Aaron had to reinforce his eyes with a little Qi to prevent the excessive light from hurting his retina.

Finally, the light disappeared and showed what was left of the Man-Mouth.

He was standing in the same place, in the same position. Not only had Lana's attack not affected him at all, but Alys's bubble had also stopped shrinking long before it touched him.

"How?" asked Lana, confused.

"Time Energy," explained Aaron. "We can't see it, but he froze time around himself. Space and time are closely linked, and usually, nothing can move in space without the passage of time. That's why none of your skills can penetrate his area of frozen time. As for him, his body is also frozen, but his mind probably isn't."

The Mouth-Man had to keep pouring energy into his skill to keep time frozen. The girls' attacks had tried to force the Spacetime continuum to move, which increased his energy expenditure. However, as long as he didn't empty his reserves, his defense was almost absolute against anyone of similar power to his or weaker. The only other way to counter it was by finding and exploiting weaknesses in the skill itself.

Aaron had identified said weaknesses, but he wasn't in a hurry. He had expected a Four Star Entropomancer to survive against the attacks from a Three Star cultivator and a recently elevated Four Star one, especially because he had alerted the carnifex about the attack. Aaron had been testing the girls as much as he was testing the Mouth-Man.

After being attacked, would he dialogue, counterattack, or flee?

Aaron prepared for the worst. Qi made his movement-related muscles more agile and elastic, and his sensory organs super sensitive.

"Alys, cancel your spell," he ordered.

Alys's bubble disappeared, and Aaron felt the time freezing skill disappear as well. Keeping his head still, the Mouth-Man turned the rest of his body to face the group and his mouth appeared again.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't follow carnifexes without receiving an explanation first," replied Aaron. "When you refused to speak to me, I concluded that you were trying to lead us into a trap."

"Carnifex? Trap?" The mouth gave a wide smile. "True!"

Suddenly, the Mouth-Man was no longer distant from everyone, but in front of Aaron! He had a huge curved ax in his hands and was in the middle of an attack.

Aaron reacted instantly, rotating his body while drawing his sword and dagger from his waist and shouting, "Alys, protect all..."

As Aaron spoke, the Mouth-Man disappeared again. Aaron felt the Mouth-Man's internal energy, and both felt and heard the ax's blade approaching his neck. The carnifex was behind him!

"...of you!" Aaron finished the sentence.

Strong cultivators with mastery over Time would simply erase their targets from the past, thus removing them from the present. They were terrifying to fight against unless you were strong enough and knew some tricks. If the Mouth-Man had been at such level, Aaron would be dead already.

Fortunately, the carnifex was only at the Four Star level. Just as Alys had difficulty using her Four Star Space Energy, an Entropomancer of that level could only affect time in bubbles around their targets.

Therefore, weak Time cultivators usually fought like the Mouth-Man was doing. It looked like the beast was teleporting, but he was actually freezing time for everyone but himself, moving elsewhere, starting an attack against Aaron from an unexpected position, then unfreezing time.

Aaron had to keep a stable base and avoid any movements that could get him out of position, or he would die when an attack came from an angle impossible to defend. Again and again, the Mouth Man attacked from different angles, testing Aaron's defense until he finally changed targets.

Suddenly, the carnifex let out a scream of rage and frustration, then attacked the weakest member of the group, Tia. Or rather, the spatial shield Alys had erected around Tia at Aaron's orders.

"Coward!" Aaron bellowed.

The Mouth-Man attacked the shield in a different way to what he had attacked Aaron. He seemed to blink at millisecond intervals in the same place, like a broken video recording, using the ax to hit the spatial shield repeatedly.

It looked like he was moving too quickly, but that was a trick of perception caused by Aaron's group being frozen in time, then unfrozen after the Mouth-Man moved. Aaron estimated that an Entropomancer would need to reach the Five Star level to advance time only for themselves and move that quickly.

Since the Mouth-Man was failing so pathetically in his attempts to destroy a mere Third Grade Spatial Shield, Aaron determined he was weak enough to be captured and questioned. Unfortunately, he was too close to Tia, so Alys couldn't use her spatial bubble. They would have to do it slowly.

"Alys," Aaron shouted, "create multiple space walls in the corridor and block the exits! But leave me with a straight line of access to the Mouth-Man!"

Long before Aaron finished speaking and Alys could act, the Mouth-Man had already disappeared again and reappeared at the end of the corridor.

"Weak!" he said, laughed provokingly, and disappeared.

Alys blocked the corridor after the Mouth-Man was gone anyway, and Tia just fell on the ground, eyes wide, trembling in terror. Aaron guessed that had been the closest she had ever been to death.

"That was... something," Lana said.

Alys nodded. "Yes. Yes, it was. I knew Entropomancers were powerful, I saw Madam Selna use time skills before, but that..."

There was no time to relax though. Aaron didn't know if the Mouth-Man would return with some company.

"Alys, add a sound barrier around us. Tia, get to cooking. Everyone, listen closely. I am going to teach you how to kill Entropomancers."

Unfortunately, Aaron was cultivating only Qi and couldn't kill the Mouth-Man alone. Fortunately, he had two people to help. People from his clan whom he intended to train eventually anyway.

He shot Tia a glance. He owed her nothing, so he didn't care for training her any further. However, the knowledge he would give Lana and Alys wasn't secret or special, and listening to it might make her less of a dead-weight if they met enemies again. He decided to let her listen to it.

"Weak Entropomancers excel in defense and escape. They are as susceptible to sneak attacks as anyone else, but in a frontal assault, you must first trap them, then suppress them until they run out of Time Energy. The best way to do that..."

He explained to them his estimates of the limits of power of Four and Five Star Entropomancers and how to win against them. Champion Entropomancers... If they found one, they would die, simple as that.

For the first time in that world, Aaron felt unease. He could destroy any spell by abusing their weak points, but if an Entropomancer stopped time for Aaron, there was nothing he could do to defend himself! That's why he hated fighting those with mastery over Time.

Still, a Four Star Entropomancer was not enough of a threat for him to pull back. The Champion Beast who was protecting the Sky Splitter Sword was a problem, but until he got there, Aaron would do as much damage to the king's forces as possible.

That is, if such a beast even existed.

The more Aaron thought about it, the less sense it made. How could a weak king from a small kingdom have control over a Champion beast? If he had it, why would he create such a complex trap? A Champion beast would reign absolute in Illyria; the king could just attack the guild head-on and be done with it.

The most plausible explanation would be that the king had thrown the sword into the territory of said beast. But then, why were there no signs of the caves being the territory of a powerful best until now? And why would such a beast allow the king to keep mentally enslaved Psychotic Pigs in its territory?

Aaron put that to the back of his mind and focused on his teachings. He taught them how to battle Entropomancers, then took the opportunity to also impart on them the ways to fight against cultivators of all levels up to Champion, from all energy specializations:

Against Qi Manipulators, who obviously used Qi;

Against Arcanists, who used Arcane Energy;

Against Elementalists, who used Elemental Energy;

Against Vitamancers, who used Vital Energy;

Against Naturamancers, who used Natural Energy;

Against Psions, who used Mind Energy;

Against Shapers, who used Space Energy;

And, finally, against Entropomancers, who used Time Energy.

He had no way to teach them how to fight against Devouts, who used Holy Energy. That energy was just too exotic. However, the knowledge on the other energies should give them a solid foundation to not die too quickly against Holy Energy.

Likewise, by focusing on how to fight energy specializations instead of classes, Aaron was giving Alys and Lana general knowledge that would be much more useful in the future. There were just too many classes in the world; what if they crossed an unknown class with unique abilities? By understanding the energies the class used, they would know what to do.

The group traveled no more that day. Aaron taught them extensively and asked questions about the content of his lessons until he was satisfied with how quickly they replied. Taking too long to make a decision in a battle could prove lethal.

Tia just listened in silence and cooked the two times Aaron ordered them to eat.

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Tia could hardly believe what she was hearing.

She had been taught by some of the best instructors in the Thenor Empire, but the way the monster explained everything was extremely simple and incredibly profound at the same time.

Even more shocking, he was spreading forbidden knowledge!

Entropomancers were supreme existences in the Empire, rare and highly regarded, but he had a ridiculously simple way of dealing with Five Star Entropomancers! If any of the Imperial Clans heard Aaron's words, he and everyone he knew would be killed immediately to keep that knowledge suppressed!

And it wasn't just Entropomancers, any energy specialization meant nothing to him. He was dissecting them, exposing their strengths and weaknesses, and teaching ways to at least defend against them using absurdly simple antics.

Worse still, he didn't teach how to disarm or subdue their enemies in non-lethal ways. No, his every word only taught how to kill. If they wanted to avoid killing, it was up to them to find a way to do so. It felt like an angel of death had descended, and she shivered thinking about what he planned to do with all that terrible knowledge.

Before, she hated him for his cruelty. Now, she was starting to fear him.

Her father had said multiple times that the Imperial Clans needed to be merciless because their enemies were even worse. She hadn't believed it, but Aaron was making her face reality.

She stroked her spatial ring, considering whether to flee. Facing her father didn't look so bad when she found herself being attacked by Entropomancer carnifexes and following a monster like Aaron.

Tia considering it for some time but decided to stay for now. Aaron was a monster, but he was teaching things that she wouldn't learn even at the academy. As long as the gains outweighed the risks, she would remain there. After all, she had to listen to everything to report it properly to her family.

Attracted by his words like a bee to honey, she barely paid attention to the pig carcass she was cleaning and seasoning to roast.