Aaron recognized the ritual focus as soon as he saw the Mouth-Men. Most of the meaning fragments were surrounding the heart of the Mouth-Man in the middle.

The ritualist had chosen well. That meant Aaron couldn't kill the beast to disrupt the ritual, for his death would only feed into it. Even attempting to stab the heart would make the ritual complete an instant after the Mouth-Man died, and an instant before the focus was destroyed.

Freezing them would be hard, but accomplishing it would allow Aaron to at least leave much more easily. Once he was away, he only had to keep the ritual from being completed for a couple of days and it would dissipate naturally. His goal in denying his enemies the ritual instead of fleeing from it would be accomplished.

Bymor and the others didn't instantly obey his order to attack. Aaron was already one-fourth of the way to the Timelords produced a knife each, and thousands of Mouth-Man heads appeared behind them.

"We have erred, Herald of Light!" the Timelord with the focus yelled. "May the death of all Timelords but one cleanse our sin, maybe our sacrifice protect our kin! We beg you, O herald!"

Finally, as Aaron was midway to them, the world exploded in energy. Space skills, Time skills, rocks, earth, vines, ice, wind, Arcane nets, and many other attacks were met with powerful resistance by the ongoing ritual. The clash between the power of the skills and the will of the ritual became a cacophony of all colors as the ritual stopped all skills with no trouble, except one; Bymor's skill kept going at crawling speed.

Aaron had reached the clashing point by now and created a huge Arcane spearhead in front of the physical spear he took from his ring, and together with his Qi-enhanced thrust, they pierced the ritual protections like a hot knife.

Aaron used no special ability for that, but he was part of the ritual. That brought issues for him, like being unable to leave, but also disadvantages for the ritual itself. It was handicapped in acting against him until the ritual was completed.

At the same time, one of the Timelords yelled, "May my life wash away our sins!" and plunged the knife into his heart. His lifeless body fell and the ritual's power increased.

"Everyone, focus behind me to widen the gap!" Aaron yelled. "Bymor, help me pierce it!" The ritual was creating a localized Truth, so it wasn't a hollow bubble. Instead, Aaron had to fight its influence all the way.

"May my life wash away our sins!" A second Timelord yelled and killed himself.

The ritual power increased again, but then, the skills all focused behind Aaron. As he pierced through the ritual, it created internal weak spots the other attacks were exploiting. The whole thing weakened.

"May my life wash away our sins!" The third one screamed in pain and fanaticism. Their minds were already lost to the ritual. Even if they wanted, they couldn't stop it anymore. The localized Truth demanded it be seen through to the end.

Aaron was fifty feet away from them by now. He was the head of a wide drill that created a huge hole on one side of the Truth area. The more he kept going, the weaker the ritual became.

"May my life wash away our sins!" The fourth Mouth-Man killed himself.

The spike in the ritual's power made no difference this time. Aaron was going faster by now, much faster, and the damage being caused by all Champions was increasing exponentially. The weaker the ritual became, the more damage they caused to it, which caused the ritual to weak further.

Yet, Aaron knew they were fated to fail. There was still a Master Entropomancer one skill away from stopping them all.

"May my life wash—" The focus Timelord yelled, but he never completed his sentence.

For whatever reason, the Master never defended the ritual. Aaron had gotten to the Mouth-Man. Bymor's skill evolved the beast and froze him in space.

And that's when the Master appeared.

"You dare reject my kind tribute of peace?!" An irate yet melodious female voice filled the whole place a barrage of countless Time blades ripped through Aaron's Champions like shrapnel.

"Stop him internally too and take us away! Now!" Aaron yelled as he embraced the Mouth-Man.

His biggest worry now was for the Mouth-Man to kill himself and finish the ritual. Thankfully, just like space couldn't move through an area of frozen time, time also couldn't move through an area locked in space. Locking him internally would prevent him from acting.

It was complex to move an area supposedly locked in space, but Bymor had the skill for it. He froze Aaron and the Mouth-Man like a billiard ball, cut the space itself around it in a way that detached it from the spacetime continuum, then pulled it straight into a portal he opened right there. At the same time, he went through a portal he opened for himself.

Aaron's Five Star Qi wasn't enough to protect his mind from being frozen by Master Space Energy. When he came back to himself, he was in the middle of a forest, Bymor beside him. The Timelord was kept frozen.

"Open a new portal away from here, but shatter its space completely when we are on the other side," Aaron ordered.

Entropomancers could easily read the past to find out where a portal led to. Weak ones would then use Time skills to make themselves teleport somewhere nearby they had visited in the past and run at the place. Expert ones could even revert time as if the portal had never disappeared, then go through it. The female Timelord — Timelady? — was skilled enough in rituals, which were hard to pull off, so she might be skilled in that too.

By shattering space in the same place the portal was, the spacetime continuum would be affected where the portal had been created. The Timelady would at least need to fix it before following, and even Aaron would require half an hour to do that if he were a Master Entropomancer himself.

"That'll hurt me," Bymor said.

"You can't cast a delayed skill detached from you?"

Aaron had used such detachment technique to go back from death. It wasn't easy, but much easier than opening portals... Well, if you were using Spiritual Energy. Just like having access to the Check Level Heavenly Skill made people not develop their energy sensitivity, so did the high energy specialization of that world prevent them from learning anything not straight on their given paths.

Bymor shook his head. "No."

"She's not here yet, maybe she's running here. I can teach you—" Suddenly, one of the portals Bymor had used to teleport there appeared out of nowhere. "Do what I said! Now!"

For once, Bymor complied immediately. The still-frozen Mouth-Man was pushed through the new portal, followed by the two of them, right as the Timelady appeared from the other one. Once on the other side, Bymor destroyed his portal and coughed blood as the rebound injured him.

They found themselves in vast plains. Aaron made Bymor and himself float and flew away with him. "Just focus on healing yourself and bringing the Timelord with us," he said.

Now that the focus was controlled by them, the weakened but still going ritual couldn't hinder them anymore. Running away was a low-reward move since the Timelady could run much faster than he could fly. However, it was much better than staying still while Bymor healed. If she took one hour to fix spacetime back on the forest and follow then, that would be one hour of running she had to catch up. Even if she took a single minute to reach them, that would be a minute Aaron had won them when he could do nothing else.

Well, he could assist Bymor with his healing, but the man was much more resilient than Aaron himself. It was best to save his power for an emergency — just like Lana should have done against the Fire Elementals.

"Herald, with all due respect, why didn't you just let me fight her?" Bymor asked, already taking a healing potion from his spatial ring and drinking it. "I might not be as strong as her, but I should be able to stop her at least."

"Because of the ritual. One of the greatest weaknesses of rituals is that the intent must be clear. They said they want to kill all Timelords but one, who shall be protected. And that's just what we know about the ritual. Its earlier killings might have also focused on making the last surviving Timelord stronger.

"She might kill the last Timelord herself in the fight, and if you had to fight to keep him safe, you would only be handicapping yourself. If you sent him away, he would complete the ritual. And if you sent me away with some item to keep him frozen, she could still just kill herself and he would kill me.

"Finally, if you sent all other Champions to keep him frozen, sent me somewhere, and she didn't kill herself, we would just be spreading our forces thin. We are at war, and the enemy knew we were coming. That might have been their intentions from the beginning, so their other troops could attack while we were at our weakest."

Bymor widened his eyes. "How do we deal with something like that?"

"We must run away until the ritual dissipates. Focus on healing, but also hear me well. This is how you detach your skills from you." He taught Bymor.

The emperor, covered by shadows as usual, stood at one of the palace's balconies beside a redhead. Her hair was held in a bun, but a few swirling strands on the sides were allowed to fall free. Her blue eyes were highlighted by the eyeliner, in the current imperial fashion, and the light makeup on her face hid some imperfections while accentuating her nice features. Not that they were visible, for she wore a white hat with a veil. Her court dress with wide hem and her gloves were also white.

They were looking at the black flying ships surrounding the flying fortress. The night before, he had gotten word that both the guardian and the herald were fleeing from the Master Entropomancer of the Timelords. Even half a day later, they had not yet appeared. There would be no better opportunity than that. Ready or not, it was time for the emperor to move his plans forward.

"Watch well and remember, daughter. This is the might of the imperial family. Our might to share if you keep yourself loyal, or the might which shall crush you shall you ever rebel."

Tatiana san Lind-Sanlere — or rather, Tatiana san Talare after her adoption into the imperial family — had already been completely brainwashed. He had planned on doing it slowly at first, but she had resisted. Seeing no alternative to doing it slowly other than emotionally breaking her, he had decided to just erase her personality altogether.

Yet, sometimes he wondered. Why didn't she look happier? To see him should be akin to see the sunrise for her. She should be basking in his radiance and glory. Instead, sometimes she looked afraid of him.

He had even erased her personality again and again, which might've destroyed her mind altogether, but his feeling that something was wrong remained. It was bordering on paranoia already if he was honest with himself. Yet, he would rather give in to it and threaten her now and then than not address it at all.

"Yes, father," she said mostly dispassionately but somewhat happy. His presence did affect her, only not as much as it should.

On the skies, the hundreds of ships had completely surrounded the fortress from all sides. That would become a big battle, but not as big as most thought. The Apostle of Light, a Master Priestess of Light, was the greatest threat, but he would never move against even a Five Star Priestess if he hadn't a way of dealing with them. Priests could cast spells up to two levels above their actual level, after all.

"Only fools think power is all about personal strength," he said to continue enlightening Tatiana. "True power is found elsewhere. The power of networking allows you to contact people of all backgrounds, the power of resources — human or otherwise — allows you to acquire all kinds of things, and the power of items and formations allows you to you go beyond your normal means."

He produced a small black bell from his spatial artifact. It fit the palm of his hand. The very presence of the item felt disgusting, unnatural, twisted, and Tatiana stepped away.

"This is the Bell of Heresy. The last Atheist only ever forged nine such items before he was caught, tortured, and killed. His items were also to be destroyed, but you know how such things go, a greased hand here, a greedy man there, and the item disappears. The moment I toll this bell, all Devouts in the capital and the surrounding cities will have their connections to their gods cut off for a few hours, and without that, they can't use any skills."

As if on cue, his people reported through his Mind skill that everything was ready. He removed the bell's simple paper inner filling that prevented it from making noise and tolled it once.

The minute item rung like an enormous bell. It was so loud it ruptured his ears, exploded his balcony, and made even him, a Master, dizzy. He was still awake enough to make himself fly and save his unconscious and heavily injury daughter.

The bell sound rushed throughout the capital like a shockwave, and echoed many times even after it was long gone. That bell itself became ethereal and disintegrated itself right after, its floating particles then turning into nothingness.

That sound was the sign his people were waiting for. Enormous patterns throughout the city lit up, all of them aimed at the fortress. The ships and the people on them fired tens of thousands of skills at the fortress. An invisible dome around it prevented it from being grounded at once — for now. Then it started firing back white light beams from its cannons.

Tens of ships were hit and damaged despite their defenses. One of the beams even hit one ship in the main fueling core and it started falling. It was no trouble though, for it would be stupid for engines of war to have only a single fueling core. The secondary core would activate soon to help them land in safety.

Then came the second phase of his plans. More patterns lit, these targeting certain clans and people. His army occupied the city and attacked the right targets. Soon, the Light would be gone for good from his land.

His empire would be his, and only his, for good.