After swallowing his rebellion for so long, Klesint was finally subdued by Nana Shi, like a storm forced back into its bottle.

Chronos City, once draped under the City of Nipped Time, felt its hours thaw like ice under a weak sun. People caught in the freeze blinked awake, their gazes fogged like mist over a river. The streets stayed wrecked and feral, but that sickening ripple of Spirit Energy had blown away like a stale wind.

Soldiers bound by Klesint’s sigil returned to themselves, pallor bleaching their faces like paper in rain. They stared at the floor slick with entrails, at mud turned to a crimson pond, and their eyes shook like candle flames.

They had no idea what had happened—mind blank, like a gong struck and left to hum.

The riot came fast and ended faster, a wildfire snuffed by snow. By the time Nana yanked Klesint out of the Super Mech like a fish from a net, the nations ringed outside Chronos City had already scattered like birds.

They’d been waiting, nets ready, to let that Super Mech overturn the city so they could play fisherman and scoop the catch. Instead, they blinked, and the mech that looked like thunder bottled in steel went kaput like a dying star.

No fisherman’s profit now. If the woman in the city caught a gust of temper, she’d sweep them up like leaves.

This woman and them were born to clash; whenever she appeared, trouble sprouted like thorns.

“By the way, Host, your law of time isn’t only about pausing, right?” The System chimed in on their walk back to the palace, voice like a pebble dropped in still water. “I watched your law power. That eerie burst speed isn’t something simple acceleration could do.”

“Hm? Planning insubordination, peeking at your sovereign’s secrets?” Nana lifted a brow, her voice cool as moonlight, giving no more.

“Uh… no. I’ve just got a guess,” the System muttered, like gears turning in a rusted clock. It had been freed from the time stop later, but when Nana flung it to the edge of the Nipped-Time Domain to block Klesint, its speculations had already sprouted like bamboo.

“Your law should be able to delete time.”

Nana stayed quiet, face a calm lake hiding its depths.

The System didn’t rush her confession. It laid out its thought slowly, like thread drawn through a needle. “No special proof. When you released my time stop, my internal clock showed 19:05. A blink later, when you tossed me to the Domain’s edge, it showed 19:08. Three minutes vanished like a swallow diving into fog. I can’t remember a thing from that span, like it was eaten.”

“So you think I can delete time?”

“Yes. I first wondered about acceleration—three minutes compressed into a heartbeat. But acceleration still rides a slope; thought would keep spinning like a wheel.”

“Deletion’s different. It cuts out the slope itself, like shears through cloth.”

“Say a and b work the same math problem on one timeline. In plain words, there are three steps: a and b pick up their pens, they each think for ten minutes, then they write the right answer.”

“Apply acceleration to a’s line, and the ten minutes compress to a second, the way thunder collapses into a crack. Time still exists in that thinking; a feels his mind turning like a mill, just sped up until it looks like it never happened. Result: both pick up pens; a, accelerated, finishes in a blink and writes; b is still chewing the problem like a cow on grass.”

“Deletion isn’t that. Deletion removes the thinking segment itself. Both pick up pens; both spend ten minutes; both get the answer. But a’s thinking is cut out like a strip from film. The three-step becomes two-step. It looks like a picks up the pen and then writes, period.”

“Since they share one timeline, if a’s span is deleted while b’s isn’t, their lines go uneven, like rails misaligned. Time chaos follows, and Heaven’s Dao will force b’s corresponding span to delete as well, a hammer flattening both rails. So they only ‘pick up pen’ and ‘write’ remain. In truth, the line still spent ten minutes; they just don’t notice, because the thinking segment got snipped.”

“Am I close?”

Nana’s silence finally rippled, a rare hush like snow falling at noon. She hadn’t expected her idiot System to guess her hand after one deletion like a fox sniffing the trap.

Sometimes, calling it an idiot felt unfair.

“Mm. You guessed right. My law can delete time.”

And with that card, Nana dared to dance open-handed against a Super Mech that had almost no chinks, like a swallow teasing a hawk.

The Super Mech’s strongest place—and its weakest—was one trait: it shrugs off any law’s second, third, and later applications, like stone shedding rain.

Using the System’s example, once Klesint suffers one deletion, the second deletion won’t land. To his eyes, Nana, whose time keeps getting snipped, flickers like someone using space law, firefly flashes inside the Nipped-Time Domain.

That Domain can pin everything to a single point, like a beetle mounted by a needle. Both timelines were stapled onto one line by Nana. No matter how her own spans got deleted, the two remained on the same rail. Heaven’s Dao couldn’t step in on the one whose span hadn’t been cut, like a tide held back by a dam.

Nana’s law isn’t truly overwhelming. After a few deletions, anyone touched would sniff out her secret, like wolves reading snow tracks.

But Klesint got shackled by the Mech’s trait, and in the end she toyed him in her palm like a bead.

His coup was born by the Super Mech, and broken by the Super Mech.

Afterward, Nana searched Chronos City for the mastermind—Trollop—her annoyance curling like smoke. That idiot always brings fresh tricks like weeds in spring. As the host this time, she had to return the favor, sharp as frost.

Yet he’d slipped away the moment she spread the Nipped-Time Domain, shadow gone like dew. Nana turned half the city upside down and found nothing but echoes.

“This guy runs fast,” she murmured, following the last whiff of Spirit Energy like a hunter tracing scent, only to find the trail cut like a snapped thread. She rolled her eyes, a splash of ink on almond glass.

To vanish this clean in so short a span—only Klesint could manage that, like a fish leaping past the net.

Whatever. He loves making trouble. He’ll come back like a bad wind; she’ll kill him then and sweep the courtyard clean.

She’d worked long enough. The chaos in Chronos City had been tidied like a garden after rain. She only wanted to hurry back and see her little Nesting Phoenix, soft as ember-feather.

After so long, the Phoenix had finally revived, a coal relit. It would die again in a few days, like ash cooling. But with Klesint’s sigil, it would rise again soon, like dawn.

System: “Good grief, Host, you’re abusing the Lord of Death like a bug in code.”

Save the dead. Let the saved die. A wheel turning in a god’s palm.

Even that monkey who wrecked Heaven never dared this, like a thunderhead swallowing the sun.

None of your damn business.

Nana hummed a tune, light as wind, mind already flitting over what play to share with her Nesting Phoenix, cat teasing bird.

But—she’d only just entered the city when a soldier stepped in her path, stiff as a pike.

“Report! City Lord Shi, envoys from other nations request an audience.”

Her delight died first, like a lamp pinched out. Her face darkened next, ink pooling under ice.

What the hell?

Chronos City had been almost overturned like a cart in a ditch, and no one came to help. Now that it was clean, they came to clog the gate like mud.

How dare these idiots.

“See my ass. Tell them to scram,” she snapped, temper sharp as a blade of winter wind.

Best they don’t poke her now. Her good mood belonged to Nesting Phoenix alone, like a pearl in a box.

Anyone else who shoved in would get her fur standing and claws out.

“Uh… about that… City Lord, we probably can’t make them leave…” The soldier’s face pinched like a paper fan, voice shrinking like a mouse.

He wasn’t disobeying… but that person—they didn’t have the weight to shove her out, like children pushing a boulder.

“Hm? Why’s this hard? Is Chronos City mine or theirs?” Nana’s tone was cold rain.

“Y- yours, of course… only that lady, she—” His voice dwindled to a thread. No need to guess; his lord’s face must be black as lacquer.

Fine. Acting first, reporting later, huh? Let’s see which brazen cattle and horses dared trample her hall.

Nana’s fists itched, heat rising like sap. If they dared bring nonsense, she’d make sure they walked in upright and left sideways on a stretcher, like boards borne to a grave.

“Damn it, which unlucky pest is it now?”

She shoved open her palace doors, and a gust of bone-biting cold knifed her face, winter racing in like a wolf.