The moonlight cascaded gracefully from the heavens, wrapping the clock tower of the Tower of the Crown in a silvery, dreamlike illusion. At the very apex of the tower, a Time Cleaner wearing a plague doctor’s avian mask and a black, coarse wool trench coat crashed heavily to the ground, staring open-mouthed and tongue-tied at the two battered, blood-drenched figures before him.
The combination of A-0—the primordial archetype of the Chrono-Entropy Corporation’s Time Cleaners—and the current Chief, Quicksand, was utterly absurd. Raven remained silent for a long moment before asking, “Cleaner Quicksand… why on earth are you here?”
Quicksand looked down at him as if staring at an insect crawling through the dirt. Raven shuddered, as if struck by an invisible whip, and quickly pressed further:
“Why are you… standing alongside a traitor to the Corporation?”
Quicksand had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about. However, believing he had already mastered the persona of the “Chrono-Entropy Corporation’s Chief Time Cleaner” to an absolute tee, he planted his hands on his hips and put on an arrogant front:
“Who do you think you are, trying to cozy up to me? Is that any way to speak to your invincible Lord Quicksand?”
Raven was completely bewildered. He scrutinized Quicksand, seriously wondering if the man’s cranial chip had suffered catastrophic damage or if someone had mistakenly uploaded a comedy sketch routine into his programming.
Clutching his injured arm, Raven struggled to his feet, letting out a jagged, intermittent laugh directed at Diamonds. “Senior, you truly are full of surprises. To think you managed to recruit such an ally… what sort of methods did you actually employ?”
Diamonds offered a sly, cunning grin, silently mouthing back: “A honey trap.”
Raven suddenly burst into a wild, echoing laugh, the corners of his mouth trembling like withered leaves whipped by a gale. The hands of the clock embedded in his short cane suddenly shuddered, snapping backward by half a tick. At that exact instant, Diamonds and Quicksand felt an invisible field expand outward from Raven’s body. Time was rewinding; one by one, the lacerations on Raven’s torso knit themselves back together perfectly.
Diamonds and Quicksand tightened their focus, instantly recognizing the unique capability of Raven’s cane. Enhanced by corporate technology, every Time Cleaner possessed the terrifying ability to manipulate and toy with time. The adversary before them remained an exceptionally lethal opponent.
“Very well. Regardless of whether it’s a farce or reality, it is my absolute honor to clash with two legendary seniors,” Raven sighed softly, his voice dripping with false humility. “But this era is my home turf. No matter how violently you struggle, you cannot escape the cage I have constructed. Just now, I only deployed a mere 160 mechanical soldiers. But tell me, seniors—did you truly believe the 1805 Branch was limited to just over a hundred units?”
Diamonds’ heart skipped a violent beat.
Raven threw his arms wide open in a grand, theatrical gesture, resembling a tragic actor reaching the absolute crescendo of a soliloquy: “To completely overhaul this era, Headquarters has spared no effort in manufacturing over 570,000 mechanical soldiers! With a single command from me, they will seize this entire world!”
Suddenly, from the far side of the dense fog, countless silhouettes forged of brass and iron materialized. A massive torrent of rust-colored metal flooded into the Tower of the Crown. The joints of the mechanical soldiers emitted a horrific screech of grinding gears, sounding like thousands of blunt saws tearing through raw wood. Stepping heavily, they trampled over the moss-covered stone steps, completely packing the apex of the tower.
Quicksand’s expression turned incredibly grim. Simply destroying a hundred mechanical soldiers had already left his body heavily lacerated, his flesh torn and bleeding. Even the most ferocious lion could not withstand a ravenous pack of wolves; if 570,000 mechanical soldiers swarmed them simultaneously, the two of them stood absolutely zero chance of survival.
Yet, Diamonds let out a low, mocking chuckle. “Is that so? Personally, I believe eliminating a single individual will suffice. The only person we need to slaughter is the puppet master controlling the machines—you!”
With a lightning-fast flick of his wrist, Diamonds snapped a tiny vial down from his sleeve into his palm. It was the deep-purple fortifying elixir Madame Spades had gifted him. Diamonds bit the cork loose, downing the contents in a single, desperate gulp, forcing his battered frame to stand upright through sheer willpower.
The exact millisecond Raven moved to adjust the hands of his pocket watch, Diamonds hurled his silver dinner knife! A streak of silver cut through the air, burying itself deep into Raven’s palm with a dull, sickening thud. As Raven let out a muffled groan, Diamonds pulled the trigger of his Mauser pistol in the blink of an eye, sending a Time-Stagnation bubble crashing directly into Raven’s pinned hand.
With his palm completely encased within the time-Stagnation bubble, the flow of time for Raven’s hand ground to a dead halt. The sensation was frozen at that precise instant, infinitely prolonging the agonizing, white-hot agony of his hand being impaled.
Raven hissed through his teeth. With a sharp wave of his uninjured arm, a swarm of pitch-black shadows leaped down from the cast-iron spires. The mechanical soldiers emitted high-frequency hums, dropping toward the duo with the crushing weight of a collapsing mountain.
Quicksand moved. He swung his Trowel-axe in a devastating arc. The mechanical soldiers swarmed him like an angry nest of hornets, their hands spinning at blinding speeds into lethal drills that grazed past Quicksand’s ears. Without so much as glancing back, Quicksand violently jerked the Trowel-axe backward, shattering the electric motors and speed reducers within a soldier’s knee joints, causing the machine to collapse forward like a severed branch. He moved with terrifying velocity, leaving his very afterimages struggling to keep pace. The high-carbon steel gears inside the mechanical entities simply could not withstand the savage, concussive strikes of the Trowel-axe, exploding into fragments of scrap metal.
A cold sweat broke out across Raven’s neck, yet he maintained his mocking smile. “To think the reinforcement Senior dragged along isn’t a counterfeit after all. Is this a new 2026-model Cleaner? How are his facial features and raw combat prowess so identical to Chief Quicksand?”
Quicksand praised himself deadpan: “Correct. I am the absolute latest model. Witnessed my true power now, have you, you 1805 rustic?”
Raven sneered, snapping his fingers sharply.
Instantly, a series of hidden iron chains groaned to life, sending a violent shudder through the floor beneath their feet. The very ground they stood upon was composed of concealed trapdoors. As the mechanism engaged, massive counterweights dropped, causing the trapdoors to swing downward a full 90 degrees. Unable to maintain their footing, both men plummeted into the darkness below—a colossal abyss lined entirely with razor-sharp, three-sided iron spikes.
In the face of imminent death, Diamonds bared his remaining dinner knife.
The exact moment before his body was to be hollowed out by the spikes, Diamonds jammed the tip of his blade perfectly against the point of a spike, executing a breathtaking, acrobatic handstand. Instantly coiling his legs like a lithe cat, he delivered a savage kick squarely into Quicksand’s torso mid-air!
The impact hurled Quicksand violently against the stone wall of the pit. Acting on pure instinct, he buried his Trowel-axe deep into the masonry, anchoring his descent. He glared up at Diamonds with an expression that could murder:
“Why did you kick me?!”
“If I hadn’t kicked you, you’d be a human kebab right about now. Instead of thanking me, you’re interrogating me? Where’s the logic in that?” Diamonds offered a mischievous grin. “Consider this payback for the kick you dealt me right before we entered the Stairs of Paradox.”
Quicksand was left speechless. Right then, a massive, deafening hum echoed from directly above. Looking up, they witnessed a wave of mechanical soldiers dropping from the sky. The two scrambled frantically out of the mouth of the pit, only to be met by two more mechanical soldiers thrusting razor-sharp drills directly at them. As Quicksand lunged to parry, the rivets securing the abdominal plating of one of the soldiers violently popped open. A silhouette burst from within the machine’s torso, driving a silver sword mercilessly into Quicksand!
The silver blade tore completely through Quicksand’s abdomen, causing dark blood to spill from the corner of his mouth. Yet, his expression remained utterly cold and detached as his gaze drifted downward. The assailant was none other than Raven; he had stripped away the cooling grille of a mechanical soldier and hidden within its frame, catching Quicksand completely off guard.
“Quicksand!”
In a rare moment of sheer panic, Diamonds screamed his name.
Despite the blade impaling his torso, Quicksand remained entirely unfazed. Catching a glimpse of Diamonds’ pale, uncharacteristic loss of composure out of the corner of his eye, a hint of curiosity surfaced in his mind:
“Strange. He didn’t call me his ‘black-hearted employee’ like he always does. He actually called me ‘Quicksand.’”
Believing he had secured a decisive victory, Raven gloated openly. Yet, the moment he attempted to wrench his blade free, it refused to budge an inch. Despite the razor-sharp edge slicing deep into his fingers, Quicksand had clamped his bare hand directly around the sword impaling his stomach. Sweat beaded across Raven’s face as he shrieked: “Five seconds!”
He desperately sought to rewind the timeline of the blade back to five seconds prior, but within that microscopic fraction of a second, Quicksand unleashed a devastating axe strike. It was a blow that shattered time itself; instantly, the ticking second hand appeared to freeze against the fabric of reality, and the dust drifting through the air locked in place. Space fractured, the moonlight seeming to shatter into ten thousand jagged shards, followed by a cataclysmic explosion!
Raven’s short cane was cleanly severed by the Trowel-axe. Quicksand had forcefully activated the temporal technology embedded within the axe, causing the time particles to accelerate violently until they tore apart. His physical form moved entirely on instinct, as though he had been intimately acquainted with the parameters of this weapon for lifetimes. Yet, as a direct consequence, he felt the raw vitality and remaining lifespan within his body rapidly draining away.
Raven trembled violently. With his short cane utterly ruined, he stood entirely empty-handed—resembling a newborn infant facing down two fully armored Byzantine heavy cavalrymen. He frantically slammed his palm against the cracked face of his pocket watch, attempting to force time backward once more to repair his weapon.
But by then, Diamonds had already hauled himself out of the pit, his gaze as chilling as a frozen winter pond. Clamped between his fingers was a single playing card, radiating a sudden, suffocating wave of murderous intent. Under his flawless manipulation, the supple paper had transformed into a razor-sharp edge, slicing mercilessly toward Raven.
“What a terrifying adversary.”
The thought flashed through Raven’s mind for a fraction of a second. Before he could fully rotate the watch face, the playing card tore through his flesh, nearly severing his fingers entirely. With a desperate, spastic wrench of his hand, Raven forcefully rewound time back to the exact moment Diamonds and Quicksand were still trapped inside the pit.
Raven reached out, seeing all five of his fingers intact, and wiped a thick bead of cold sweat from his brow.
“Haha… Senior… you two… truly are monstrous. You are apex predators unlike any I have ever encountered,” he panted heavily. “But I can retry this encounter an infinite number of times, until I eventually slaughter you both!”
“No. There is a definitive limit to the number of times you can restart.”
Suddenly, a silhouette vaulted out from the pit—it was Diamonds, his body drenched in blood. Despite his ragged, battered appearance, his smile remained entirely unbothered as he remarked:
“That limit is your own remaining lifespan. Every single time you rewind the clock, it drains decades of your life, doesn’t it? That is precisely why you have strictly limited your rewinds to increments of mere seconds.”
“And what if it does? Senior, as the Deputy Director of the 1805 Branch, I possess centuries of lifespan to play games with you.”
Diamonds pulled the brim of his white top hat down low, his hand resting casually against his holster as his lips curled upward:
“The remaining balance of your lifespan is completely irrelevant to the outcome of this battle. To break you, I simply need to seal away every single one of your futures.”
He lifted his eyes, his pupils as freezing as a stagnant winter pool.
“Come then, junior. I shall ensure that every single one of your potential futures converges upon a singular destination—the exact timeline where we end your pathetic life.”
From that moment onward, Raven’s living nightmare began.
He witnessed Diamonds and Quicksand lunging at him time and time after time. The Trowel-axe tore into his sternum with the horrific sound of ripping cloth. The playing cards sliced through his flesh, leaving a lingering, agonizing pain that refused to dissipate. Raven would invariably spin the watch hands at the absolute precipice of death, resetting back to the past, only to immediately find himself cornered and butchered by the two legendary Cleaners all over again.
After repeatedly enduring the horrific sensation of dying, an emotion a Time Cleaner should never possess began to take root within Raven’s psyche: Could he ever escape this living hell of a loop? Diamonds was entirely correct; merely altering past events was utterly useless. He attempted to spin the hands back a full day, five days, even further into the past—yet Diamonds and Quicksand would invariably materialize directly before him, using the most barbaric, agonizing methods to force him to spin the hands yet again.
Impaled, crushed, and mutilated beyond count, the sensation of dying had transformed into something mundane. Finally, collapsing heavily onto the stone floor, he rasped in a hollow, defeated voice:
“I… I yield.”
At this hour, the moonlight resembled liquid mercury, spilling over the apex of the clock tower. The avian-masked Time Cleaner, Raven, lay pooling in his own blood, twitching like a fish stranded on dry land. Diamonds and Quicksand stood over him, their chests heaving violently from the sheer exertion of the slaughter. To the two of them, the battle had felt simultaneously instantaneous and eternal, as if centuries had condensed into a flash.
“But… seniors, do not think for a single second that you have achieved a victory,” Raven let out a raspy, mocking laugh. “Once a soul has officially expired, even my cane cannot reverse their demise. The person you traveled through the time labyrinth… back two hundred years into the past to salvage… is already dead. You cannot save her.”
Diamonds flinched violently, his eyes dropping. Earlier, during the chaotic clash with Raven, he had briefly checked Madame Spades’ pulse while trying to shield her; her flesh had already turned deathly cold. He replied in a freezing tone:
“What of it? The 1805 Branch still holds the definitive blueprints regarding the Corporation’s time-jump technology. We can easily utilize those schematics to leap back to a timeline where Madame Spades is still drawing breath.”
“No. Did you honestly believe I would leave corporate secrets behind for my adversaries? I have spent more than enough time in this miserable era; I have long wished to greet my end here. Every shred of data has already been completely incinerated; the intel resides solely within my own skull.” Raven hoisted his shattered cane, aligning the remaining blade directly with his own forehead, offering a serene smile. “And now, I shall completely destroy my brain.”
The two men lunged forward in shock, but a mechanical soldier suddenly crashed between them, blocking their path. From behind the iron machine, Raven’s hysterical, unhinged laughter echoed:
“Allow me to grant you one final parting gift, Senior! I have already hardcoded your genetic profiles into the target identification modules of every mechanical soldier. Even after my demise, they will never cease their hunt. 570,000 mechanical soldiers will block your path to the time labyrinth, hunting you down to the absolute ends of the earth. You will never return to the future; this era shall serve as your permanent coffin!”
The exact second the words left his mouth, a brilliant burst of crimson sprayed from behind the mechanical soldier. Raven had driven the blade of his cane directly through his own skull.
Quicksand clove the blocking mechanical soldier in two with a single axe strike, and the duo rushed to Raven’s side. His skull was completely hollowed out; he had ceased breathing entirely. Diamonds desperately spun the hands of his pocket watch, attempting to force a rewind, but the mechanism possessed zero efficacy upon a corpse. The blade had flawlessly vaporized Raven’s internal cranial chip; they could harvest nothing from his remains.
Worse still, a cataclysmic, earth-shattering grinding noise echoed from below, sounding like millions of stone millstones churning simultaneously. Looking down from the apex of the Tower of the Crown, the silhouettes of the mechanical soldiers resembled a biblical plague of locusts, advancing forward in a massive, unstoppable sea of iron.
“Black-hearted boss, what’s the play now?” Quicksand asked, wiping blood from his chin. “We failed to salvage the target, and now we’re completely surrounded by an army. I don’t want to work this shift anymore. Can I submit my resignation?”
Diamonds rose from Raven’s corpse, limping heavily toward Madame Spades. He knelt in silence, placing his fingers beneath her nose. Suddenly, a violent tremor rippled across his face.
“Madame is still alive!”
Quicksand was utterly astounded. He watched as Diamonds gently rolled Madame Spades over. Though dark blood pooled from her chest, her frail chest was still faintly rising and falling. Clamped tightly within her palm was an empty glass vial. The truth instantly dawned upon them: the absolute millisecond she suffered the mortal wound, she had down the “Water of Life”—the revolutionary compound scheduled for public unveiling that very day. Relying upon this medicine forged from temporal fluid, she had miraculously sustained her fading thread of life.
“To think her latest invention actually worked. Give me a hand; we’re taking her with us and breaking out,” Diamonds ordered.
“Escape to where?”
“To the year 2026—back to our own era. I have some trauma medicine on hand that can stabilize her condition temporarily. If we can just deliver her to Doctor Hua, that old man will undoubtedly pull off a miracle.”
Even as they spoke, the mechanical soldiers flooded into the Tower of the Crown like a rising tide. The dull clanking of interlocking gears sounded like thousands of rusted shears slicing through the air, completely choking off their path of retreat.
Diamonds yanked a high-strength alloy cable from the back of one of the destroyed mechanical soldiers. Moving with practiced efficiency, he knotted the cables together, stripping a grappling hook from a machine’s forearm to secure the end before tossing it directly to Quicksand: “We’re using this to rappel down the exterior wall.”
Quicksand caught it, quickly securing the cable around a heavy stone pillar, when a series of violent coughs echoed through the space. The coughing grew progressively hollower. Quicksand snapped his head around, only to find Diamonds clutching his mouth, a massive stream of dark crimson spilling through the gaps of his fingers.
“Black-hearted boss, what’s wrong with you?”
“It’s nothing,” Diamonds replied, his face completely bloodless. “Let’s move. We cannot afford to linger.” Following the brutal deathmatch, his entire body was covered in structural fractures. Compounded by the fact that his physical form was fundamentally an empty shell lacking vital internal organs, his interior framework was a complete disaster. With his physical integrity rapidly deteriorating, he had no idea when he might simply collapse for good.
The two slid down the exterior masonry along the cable. Suddenly, the mechanical soldiers at the base of the tower looked up simultaneously, their eyes flashing a menacing crimson as they unleashed a volley of millions of steel needles! The storm of projectiles blanked out the sky, the air screaming as if torn into countless microscopic punctures.
Quicksand spun his Trowel-axe in a blinding defensive wheel, deflecting the incoming needles while carefully regulating their descent. He felt an immense, crushing weight pressing against his shoulders; from the moment they began their descent, Diamonds had remained completely silent, hanging off him alongside Madame Spades like two lifeless corpses. He recalled Diamonds’ incredibly fragile performance earlier—before he had even arrived to provide reinforcements, Diamonds had already sustained multiple deep stabs from Raven.
“Black-hearted boss, are you still breathing?” Quicksand called out.
There was no response. Diamonds rested heavily against his frame, as if his very respiration had ground to a halt. Quicksand’s focus wavered for a single fraction of a second. At that exact moment, the mechanical soldiers massed beneath the Tower of the Crown emitted a deafening grinding of gears, beginning a massive, structural transformation. Their joints, hinges, and guide rails shifted and locked together, resembling a colossal, violently beating mechanical heart.
The mechanical soldiers were assembling themselves into a singular, monstrous entity. Armor plating, interlocking gears, and rifle barrels served as modular components, locking together like scattered building blocks. Utilizing all of its newly formed limbs, the titan lunged toward the trio, its gargantuan silhouette blotting out the sun and moon like a primordial Titan from ancient myth. The giant slammed its massive fist against the upper tier of the Tower of the Crown, snapping the stone pillars; the securing cables ruptured instantly, sending the three figures plunging toward the earth.
Quicksand’s heart leaped into his throat. Driving his Trowel-axe violently into the masonry to act as a brake, he repeatedly clove the space beneath them, triggering controlled spatial implosions to dampen their terminal velocity.
They managed to hit the ground alive. Without wasting a single second, Quicksand threw Madame Spades onto his back while hoisting the unconscious Diamonds under his arm like a sack of grain, sprinting frantically toward the direction of Madame Spades’ estate. The mechanical soldiers formed a black, suffocating sea of iron, closing in from all four directions to seal off any escape.
Behaving like a heavily laden pack mule, Quicksand forced his legs to pump, carrying two dead weights through the dark streets. He sprinted until he reached the banks of the river, only to find three sides completely pinned by the encroaching enemy. Only the river ahead offered a path, its surface shimmering under the moonlight like a sheet of silver foil.
“Sir! Over here!”
Suddenly, a voice pierced through the night wind. Quicksand snapped his head around, spotting a flat-bottomed boat drifting down the river. The bow was painted a stark white, and a maid stood upon the deck, waving her arms and calling out to them.
Quicksand instantly recognized her as Morana—the “adopted daughter” who worked within Madame Spades’ estate, the very girl who had previously suffered brutal beatings at the Madame’s hands. Launching himself into the air, he leaped onto the deck. The mechanical soldiers ground to a halt at the water’s edge, as if deeply concerned that submerging their intricate joints might permanently compromise their internal mechanisms. As the small vessel broke through the perimeter and sailed out into open water, Quicksand finally let out a massive sigh of relief, turning to the maid:
“Morana, why on earth are you here?”
Morana lifted her head, her face heavily scarred and pitted beneath her protective mask, a look of profound embarrassment flashing across her features. “I noticed you… hadn’t returned after so long. I couldn’t stop worrying, so I tracked you down.”
“You made the right call coming here.”
“This was also… Lady Spades’ arrangement.”
Quicksand froze, a wave of subtle astonishment washing over him. “Madame’s arrangement?”
Right then, Morana caught sight of the dying Madame Spades. Letting out a horrified shriek, she collapsed to her knees in panic: “Madame!”
Though she had down the Water of Life to forcefully sustain her thread of existence, the sword had ultimately hollowed out her heart; she could not escape the icy grasp of the Grim Reaper. Her face was ashen, her body hovering at the absolute precipice of death. An inexplicable wave of anxiety surged within Quicksand’s chest as he barked at Morana:
“Do you know the exact location of this era’s time labyrinth? If I can just transport her back to the modern era to receive treatment, she might still survive!”
“The time labyrinth is located directly beneath Madame’s manor. It is corporate property… I stumbled upon it once in the past.”
“Then we move there immediately,” Quicksand stated. Yet, his gaze instinctively drifted down toward Diamonds. The man remained entirely unresponsive, his head slumped limply against the wooden gunwale of the boat. His pristine white suit was heavily creased and soaked in dark crimson, resembling a discarded, pathetic rag doll. Traversing the time labyrinth would undoubtedly inflict a catastrophic physical toll upon the body; could Diamonds even survive the transition? Quicksand couldn’t help but feel a deep, gnawing dread.
However, right at that moment, a frail, trembling whisper echoed through the cabin:
“There is no need… to take me with you.”
It was Madame Spades’ voice. Quicksand and Morana rushed to her side, finding her face as pale as death, her lips trembling weakly.
“Madame, how are you feeling?” Morana cried out frantically, tears spilling from her eyes. Despite the brutal beatings she had endured in the past, she remained eternally grateful to the Madame for rescuing her from the gutter.
Madame Spades’ gaze drifted toward her, suddenly softening like the final spark igniting within a bed of dying embers. She lifted her head slightly, staring up at Quicksand:
“I am… at my limit. Sir, take Morana… and leave this era behind.”
The scarred girl froze in absolute bewilderment. “Me?”
Beneath the silver moonlight, everything stood out in stark black and white, as if the entire world had been draped in funeral attire. Morana clutched Madame Spades’ trembling hand, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. A profound, suffocating terror consumed her, as if she were standing before a cosmic judgment that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of her life.
“Yes, my child… in the year 1805… Morana, you are the version of me who lives in this era… entirely oblivious to the horrors of the future.”
Madame Spades’ face turned as pale as winter frost. Leveraging the absolute remainder of her fading vitality, she whispered softly to the trembling girl:
“And I am the version of you from an entirely separate space-time… who arrived in this world by traversing the time labyrinth.”
