Chapter 1872: Chapter 1872

"The time has come," declared the lead Time Paradoxer. "This must end."

Having settled matters with his three companions, he issued a final reminder.

Jenkins nodded, his gaze fixed on the golden, glowing ring in his hand. It now held two drops of divinity. The problem was how much to keep and how much to offer up.

Keeping it all was clearly out of the question. Although he didn't know if the Sage could perceive such things, Jenkins felt it was best to be cautious. But surrendering both was equally impossible. He had to keep at least one drop of divinity in his possession to sleep soundly at night.

"So there's really no choice at all."

He gently stroked the ring with his left hand, slowly coaxing a single drop of divinity out from a crack on its surface.

The brilliant golden droplet hovered in his palm, and Jenkins exerted all his willpower to keep from absorbing it. He stared into the air before him as ethereal lines appeared, outlining the ritual for praying to the Sage for an audience. But Jenkins didn't immediately begin the offering. He'd learned from Papa Oliver that the great beings detested Cursed Items, so he had no intention of calling upon the Sage's gaze while the hospital still existed.

"This ring... is there any way to hide it?"

Jenkins directed his question to the Time Paradoxers. The one on the right, who had been silent the entire time, finally spoke.

Jenkins considered this for a moment. He slipped the ring, now slightly dimmer having lost a drop of divinity, onto his right wrist. Under the control of his spirit, the silver circlet gradually shrank until it was the size of a bracelet.

He nodded. This would serve as a temporary way to contain the divinity, at least preventing anyone from noticing anything unusual at a glance. But once he got home, he would still need to seal it within a metal block. After all, he had already cracked the ring, and it was bound to cause problems sooner or later.

"Well then, Miss Ross, Lark, Mr. Robinson... farewell."

With these matters resolved, he balanced the golden point of light in his palm and gave the three a slight nod. In return, they bowed to Jenkins, expressing their final gratitude. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn novèlfire.net

Then, standing with the Time Paradoxers, Jenkins watched as everything—the hospital, its contents, its very reality—flew into the kaleidoscopic colors swirling within the massive ring in the sky.

As the hospital vanished, he slowly descended back to the ground. The last thing he saw was his three companions waving to him from their position in the air.

With the departure of all else, the celestial ring began to shrink and close, and the figures of the Time Paradoxers started to fade.

"I'd like to ask," he called out before they disappeared, "in my timeline, is there a time anomaly zone in the material world anywhere near Nolan?"

He hadn't forgotten about that.

The Time Paradoxer's answer was blunt, but Jenkins wasn't disappointed. The Astral Plane was always his backup plan, even if it was more troublesome and carried a risk of failure.

"But you can create one," the being added. "It is not difficult."

As it spoke, the three Time Paradoxers extended their fingers toward Jenkins in unison. A fragment of the dissipating hospital transformed into an arc of light that shot into his pocket, colliding with the recently repaired pocket watch.

"God of Lies, when you reverse this pocket watch, you will create an independent time stream that can exist for only nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds, slowing time by a factor of a thousand relative to the normal flow. But it can only be used once. We wish you good health. Farewell."

A humming sound filled the air, followed by a blinding white light that forced Jenkins to shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he was standing alone in a small, moonlit forest. Strangely, rice was growing among the trees.

Everything that had just happened felt like a phantom dream. Not a single trace of the hospital remained.

A trickle of spirit flowed from the void and merged with Jenkins's soul—his reward for helping the Time Paradoxers eliminate the Cursed Item, Bigges Hospital, at its root. It was proof that the experience had not been a hallucination.

The Cursed Item that had been hanging from his chest, the Silent Doll, was gone. Filled with the emptiness of someone waking from a profound dream, he looked at the dancing golden droplet cradled in his left hand, then felt the pocket watch in his pocket, which now pulsed with a spiritual light. At the same time, he heard voices coming from other parts of the woods.

In the distance, the church party was advancing. Jenkins had been inside the hospital for so long that they had grown worried something had gone wrong. They had decided to risk approaching the hospital's perimeter to observe what was happening from the outside. Their goal was to determine if Jenkins was truly trapped in a time loop and if a second rescue team was necessary.

The Legacy Sage Church, having its own interests at heart, had tried to fill the observation team with its own members. But an exclusively Sage Church team was impossible. Thus, the group led by Miss Bevanna and Miss Audrey actually included representatives from all twelve churches.

The party had just entered the outer edge of the dense fog when their vision was completely obscured by the white mist. It was then that they felt an overwhelming pressure descend from above—the very moment the Time Paradoxers were destroying the hospital, now stripped of its divine power.

For safety, Miss Bevanna and Miss Audrey had everyone wait a few minutes. Only after the pressure dissipated did they continue forward.

As their vision cleared, the bizarre environment of a forest interspersed with farmland—a product of the overlapping space—appeared before them. But as they looked around, they saw no sign of the towering Bigges Hospital mentioned in the reports.

Chocolate, trailing at Miss Audrey's heels, darted into the shadow of a tree trunk where the moonlight couldn't reach. The little cat's nose twitched.

The cat smelled the scent of divinity and knew that its capable Jenkins had succeeded.

It was a meow of praise, though Jenkins couldn't have understood it even if he'd heard it. The cat lifted its short legs, ready to trot out happily to greet its master who had acquired such a prize, but it suddenly froze. An unhappy expression crossed its feline face as it looked up at the sky nearby.

A few seconds after Chocolate, the humans also felt it—a gaze from the void, so tangible it felt almost solid. Everyone saw a brilliant golden gleam ascend into the night sky, carried on a wave of vast, surging power. The gaze lingered for a long moment before finally vanishing.

Miss Audrey frowned, thinking for a moment before turning to Miss Bevanna with a look of displeasure.

"Are you hiding something from the rest of us?"

A smile played on Miss Bevanna's lips, one she made no effort to conceal.

"We can talk about that later. First, let's find Jenkins. Oh, Jenkins, you simply must be all right! Otherwise, who will look after your poor cat?"

Just then, she saw the little cat dart away as the young writer emerged from behind a patch of grass, pressing a hand to his forehead with a bewildered expression. She changed her tune.

"You see? There he is."