95. Killing Mort

Killing Mort

The bastard was right.

Sweat was already rolling down my skin, and I could not see any way to escape with Ye Lin.

If only I had some kind of ranged attack that would not be stopped by… ice.

Wait.

That might work.

But I would have only one chance, so I had better make it count.

With effort, the world around me froze again.

I did not even lower the weight in my hands before I began constructing the force fields I needed.

The fields were not meant to support the ceiling long enough for us to escape. That would take too much time, assuming Mort could not simply repair the ice wall if he saw me damaging it.

Since that assumption was stupid, I used Advanced Nearby Object Manipulation to form two cylinders as thin as I could make them, projecting from my eyes.

I designed the fields to seize photons.

Only relatively few at a time, and the total force they could apply would be spread across those photons.

Photons, of course, could be affected by force. If photons were not affected by force, black holes would not be black.

You just needed tremendous gravity to do it, because photons barely responded to gravity.

But my Advanced Nearby Object Manipulation did not care about that.

The photons were there. They could be affected by force. And I could imagine the effect I wanted.

Just as the strange rules of acting during time-stop still allowed me to move through air, breathe, hear sound, and see, my ability could affect those things while time was stopped.

A relatively small number of photons were redirected and pushed out.

I had no idea whether this worked the way I thought it did, but my nearby-object manipulation was applying force—energy—to objects within a certain range.

That energy manifested as two continuous beams of light aimed wherever I looked.

During the first few seconds I maintained time-stop, the beams drilled narrow holes through the ice wall.

Then they struck the target I had aimed for.

Mort’s throat.

Three seconds.

Six.

Nine.

Twelve.

Fifteen.

Eighteen.

Twenty-one.

This time-stop lasted longer than any I had ever maintained before, because I poured nearly all of my remaining stamina into sustaining it.

There was no point saving strength for later.

If this did not work, there would be no later.

When time resumed, an impact like a grenade blast shook Mort’s throne.

At the same time, the suspended ceiling’s weight crushed down onto my exhausted body.

Behind the pierced curtain of ice, the evil sorcerer staggered from his throne, both hands clamped around his ruined throat.

Slowly—so very slowly—his head tipped backward.

His charred spine snapped like chalk.

Head and headless body alike collapsed onto the iron floor.

As the great villain died, a powerful and exhilarating wave of strength surged through my entire body.

I kept supporting the heavy mass above me and turned my new eye-rays on the ice wall.

Ten seconds later, half the ice curtain collapsed, and the iron cylinder I had been holding tipped over to one side.

Once it was no longer hanging above us, ready to crush us both, I gathered the terrified Ye Lin into my arms and flew out of the trap.

Behind me, Mort’s body shone with deep crimson light and sublimated into a cloud of glowing mist.

The mist was drawn into the similarly glowing sphere wrapped among the branches of the thorn tree.

For an instant, the radiance formed a perfect globe.

Then tiny mouths opened on the branches.

They sucked in the red light that I was fairly certain was being emitted by many corpses, and the iron tree bore fruit.

And the fruit had eyes.

We got out of there fast.

I flew downward with Ye Lin as quickly as I could while avoiding acceleration and air resistance that might injure my sister.

With every passing second, the tower shook more violently. Vast sections began to rust and rot away, while the parts that remained sprouted more and more eyes.

I kept telling Ye Lin to keep her eyes shut.

Ten seconds later, we were out.

As…