CH740

With his first plan done, he continued to count seconds until the time the demon would see its inevitable future came forth, waiting for what was sure to be a brilliant distraction but forced himself to continue to jump and dodge in the meantime as he avoided as many spells as he could, feeling his body wear down in the process.

He was straining himself but he couldn’t help it. He was one man against a swarm that was only growing by the minute, even as he fired back when he could to try and thin them out. The demons of the woods were descending on him, with his only benefit being that none were coming too close, instead choosing to fire their spells while keeping some room between them.

It was a gap he’d need to break eventually but the window for it was on its way. With only ten seconds left until the demon would see the future Ben had worked so hard to create he took all but two hundred of his many minds and directed the rest to finding different options for how he wanted to face the future, splitting it into hundreds of thousands of potential paths and stunning the demon in control at the same moment it would have seen the true endpoint Ben had created.

It was enough to create a distraction though, pushing that discovery off just a bit farther as he used that window to shoot himself forward, activating his shoes for all of the extra speed he could get to break the distance between them as the demon looked on, first preparing to reacting but freezing again in realization, with whatever it had been trying to do drawing attention to the end point of all of its paths no matter what it picked. One where the awakened skill holders it had brought into its thrall had all disappeared.

It was a future it couldn’t figure out how to prevent and one that Ben had begun working on creating hours earlier, back when he’d harvested all of his voidstone from his guns that he could.

One piece had gone towards holding Azeezol, Queemit, and Joois but it was the three left that really mattered. Both times Ben had attacked Pato and Fone by trying to batter them away with a swarm of pebbles he’d snuck a piece of enchanted voidstone into each of their clothing, using his magic to bind it to the fabric so they’d be locked in place no matter where either of those two ran and then doing something similar to Thera.

In her case, he had no choice but to be subtler with it though. When he’d attacked the other two it hadn’t been worth the effort to dodge when the demon could see they’d come out unscathed but in her case he could easily imagine a future where it used the barest fraction of her power to block the attack, forcing him to use his mind instead as he actualized around it to slowly carry the small stone over until he could cast his magic to bind it to her outfit in the same way.

With all of it leading to that one result as the demon began to panic. While it could hypothetically avoid that future if it found the stones or thought to do something like stripping them, Ben knew from personal experience that it didn’t matter how smart one was or how far ahead they could think, there would always be blindspots in one's thoughts that weren’t so easily dealt with.

With its continued flailing making that more and more apparent. It didn’t know what to do about whatever was happening and the time limit was approaching as fast as Ben as he ran to the demon, talking to Myriad as he did to keep the futures around him as varied as possible.

Give me a number!

<Sixty thousand three hundred and four.>

Futures collapsed as Ben materialized oil under around the feet of some nearby demon before casting an enchantment on a bit of stone to make it combust and threw it over, lighting them on fire.

Again!

<One hundred and ninety-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-seven.>

More materializing as Ben took a deep breath before he created two large blocks of frozen gas in among the crowd that rapidly melted around them and forced everything to deal with its effects.

He’d materialized the one with the lowest freezing point he was aware of and by being created in an otherwise warm woods it instantly began to sublimate into a super-chilled gas that began freezing the area around it while others breathed it in.

It wouldn’t kill anyone but it would be far from pleasant, even he could feel its bite on his skin in a way he expected would need to be healed later, and with it choking out the air around them it would leave plenty light-headed until it dispersed as he continued to shrink the distance.

Again!

<Eighty-four.>

An aspect of actualization that time as he got closer, materializing boiling metal to rain down around them in a way that continued to strain his mind as everything within range screamed. He knew from his testing that it was transmitting the feeling of extreme heat in a way that would cause overwhelming pain but for whatever reason, there was no genuine energy being transmitted. In essence, it was a psychic attack of sorts meant to cause suffering and nothing else, not that his targets would be aware of that. Even if they could see the future and tell they’d live through it, that didn’t make the agony any less real while he was maintaining it.

Ben could see all of this was straining the demon too, providing too much stimulus from both Ben’s attacks as well as all of the futures he kept creating as he chose one and moved to the next, ultimately leading to Ben’s victory.

He’d sworn to himself that no matter what happened he wouldn’t attack the demon in control until the five minutes he’d needed had passed and he had forced himself to abide by that with every fiber of his being. If even a fraction of him planned on attacking when he got in range then that would lead to an avenue where it could see what he was planning and try to stop it so even once Ben had his victory by blocking those futures and reaching into the demon’s mind he didn’t end things there.

He’d blocked that path from himself in order to get so close and while a part of him knew it wouldn’t matter now that he was already within range, dealing with prophecy had proven complicated enough as he instead used his massive mind to process all the demon was seeing to pick the futures he wanted for himself.

An outcome the demon didn’t understand. All at once, the futures he was seeing had changed, no longer having hundreds of thousands to try and process but instead only a couple, but each time it moved to take advantage of one it saw them completely change before its eyes, not understanding that Ben was reacting to its thoughts to alter the outcome before it could begin, nor knowing how outmatched it was.

It may have been using hundreds of minds to process the futures around it but it was now facing off against thousands and was being backed into a corner. It knew if it wanted to live then it needed to either go beyond its limits or run away and now that it seemed outmatched despite the numbers it had, the choice felt obvious as it tried to bring Pato to it, only for that to be foiled the second he arrived.

When Pato appeared, already preparing to teleport the demon away, Ben was already attacking him with moribusial stored in one of his rings, binding the other fast enough that bones were surely broken but succeeded in ripping away his mana as well, leaving him unconscious and the demon trapped as fear started to claw at it.

Now somehow escaping really was the only option as it desperately tried to see how, using everything under its thrall to think harder as their minds were pushed while its time magic was pressed even further, trying to go beyond its limits in the face of what it had found.

It had wanted a new limb, a mind and body to make its own but it had found an unbelievable monster that could warp futures faster than it could see. Every move it could make was being countered before it could make it and pressed the beast to strain itself all the more, feeling its eyes bleed and its brain begin to break down under the pressure as it struggled for any possible means of survival as it saw future after future where it was either killed or taken over itself and once the first time limit passed and its most powerful limbs disappeared, fulfilling the future where they were pulled into the enchanted voidstone Ben had bound to them, that desperation made something change.

In a moment of clarity, it felt the wall it had been pressing up against come down as notifications rang out in its head, telling it and Ben of just what the pressure it had been applying had accomplished as a flash of mana lit the forest.

<PROPHETIC TIME MAGIC HAS COMBINED WITH LOW SOUL MAGIC LV9 TO AWAKEN TO TEMPORAL DOMINATION>

<ACQUIRED SKILL HIGH THOUGHT SPEED ENHANCEMENT LEVEL 0>