Chapter 12:
Chapter 12: The Clock That Binds the World
The Day I Reincarnated in Another World and Became The Darkness Lord
[Scene - The Old Fortress - Throne Room, Timeline Reset]
The atmosphere within the throne room of the Old Fortress was no longer charged with the violent tremors of an explosion. Instead, it was defined by a heavy, unnatural silence—the kind of silence that exists only in the eye of a storm or the wake of a miracle.
Shujin sat upon the stone throne, his posture relaxed yet radiating an authority that seemed to pin the very air to the ground. There was no smoke, no rubble, and no screams.
The eleventh hand of the clock had done its work; the world had been stitched back together as if the previous instant of obliteration had been nothing more than a dark thought in the mind of a god.
With a slow, rhythmic motion, Shujin's fingers brushed the empty air. In response, the massive, spectral face of Chronael, the Death Clock, materialized behind him.
It was a terrifying construct of obsidian gears and ghostly Roman numerals, its twelve hands glowing like starless moons in the gloom of the hall.
Shujin's gaze was fixed on the eleventh hand—the Hand of Time Travel. It still hummed with a faint, residual violet light, a reminder of the power required to pull the timeline backward.
"So," Shujin whispered, his voice echoing off the ancient masonry, "even the gods can be restored."
He knew the truth of what he had done. He had not merely reversed the damage to the physical world; he had undone the deaths of the four Elemental Gods he had erased in the God Realm. It was not an act of mercy, but one of clinical necessity.
The balance of the world required their presence for now, but they would return to existence with a gift: the memory of their own extinction. He wanted them to carry the weight of that void.
---
[Scene - The Gods' Realm - The Viewing Hall]
In the high reaches of the God Realm, the silence was even more profound. World Goddess Elmyria stood at the edge of the divine viewing pool, her hands trembling as she watched the reflection of the boy on the throne. Behind her, the four Elemental Gods—Ignir, Maris, Terranis, and Sylphar—stood in a tense semi-circle.
They were no longer the arrogant masters of nature who had challenged Shujin; they were survivors, their divine auras flickering with the trauma of the erasure they had just experienced.
"He restored us," the Wind Goddess, Sylphar, groaned, her voice a fragile whisper. "But he didn't do it to save us. He did it to show us he could do it again."
"He won't stop," Ignir added, his flames burning a low, sullen orange. "He is a calamity that understands the laws of time better than we do. If we do not find a way to bind him, he will eventually turn the twelfth hand."
Elmyria did not turn to face them. Her eyes remained fixed on Shujin.
But Shujin had stepped off the page. "What are you truly planning, Kiyoshi Ishida?" she murmured, using the name from his previous life. "Are you seeking justice, or are you simply proving that the universe is a project you intend to finish?"
---
[Scene - The Old Fortress – Dusk Approaches]
Back at the fortress, the sun began its slow descent, casting long, bloody shadows across the courtyard. Shujin stood and began a slow, deliberate walk around his throne.
The Death Clock followed him, shifting its orientation as he observed the other hands. To Shujin, these were not just spells; they were the tools of a master psychologist who had transitioned from manipulating human minds in Tokyo to manipulating the fabric of existence. He reviewed the hierarchy of the clock's power:
Hand I - Time Slow: Used to make the movements of others appear like insects in amber.
Hand II - Time Stop: An absolute suspension of reality.
Hand III - Personal World Creation: The ability to carve out a pocket dimension where he is the sole arbiter of time.
Hand IV - Rewriting the Past: A surgical manipulation of an individual's history.
Hand V - Memory Erasure: The power to make one's enemies forget why they were even fighting.
Hand VI - Future Illusion: Forcing a target to experience their own darkest or brightest destiny in a mirage.
Hand VII - Time Lock: An eternal imprisonment within a single moment.
Hand VIII through X: The manipulation of memories—stealing, peeking, and sharing them at will.
Hand XI - Time Travel: The bridge between the past and the future.
Hand XII - The Death: The end of everything—universes, gods, and the user himself.
---
"Each hand," Shujin mused, "is like a divine punishment. And I am the one who holds the gavel."
---
[Scene - The City Streets – Rei's Mission]
While Shujin contemplated the cosmic, Rei Nocturne was navigating the terrestrial rot of Valerion. Cloaked in black and hidden behind her porcelain mask, she had spent the night infiltrating the Devil Guild, a syndicate that operated in the capital's deepest shadows.
She moved with a silent, predatory grace, her heart hardened by the lessons Kuro had taught her.
She emerged from a ventilation shaft of a high-ranking mansion, a stolen scroll clutched in her hand. Her teeth were clenched tight as she read the contents by the dim light of a street lamp.
"The Duke of Felthrain..." she whispered, her voice thick with disgust. The scroll detailed a ledger of human misery. The Duke, a man who sat in the King's inner circle, was funding the Devil Guild's slave shipments using Demi-human captives as currency.
"Even the lords, even those sworn to protect, are nothing more than parasites."
She vanished into the shadows, heading back toward the fortress to deliver her report, unaware that a greater threat was converging on her Master's location.
---
[Scene - The Old Fortress – The Eastern Demon Lord's Arrival]
A sudden, suffocating pressure shattered the silence of the Old Fortress. The sky above the ruins turned a bruised crimson as a magnificent, terrifying figure descended from the clouds.
The Eastern Demon Lord had arrived. He was a titan of malevolence, clad in crimson armor that seemed forged from cooling lava, with massive black wings that blocked out the fading sun.
"You..." the Demon Lord roared, his voice causing the stones of the fortress to groan. He landed before the throne, his eyes burning with a prideful fire.
"You are the source of that shockwave. That throne... your existence... it is an insult to the natural order."
Shujin did not even look up from the armrest of his throne.
"Boy," the Demon Lord continued, stepping forward with a thunderous gait,
"you do not yet understand how this world works. Fate has always been on the side of the demons. Humans are weak, fleeting things. Join us. With your power, you could rule at the side of the Great Demon Lord himself. Even that Hero of Light would fall before our combined might."
Shujin finally looked at him. His eyes were not filled with fear, but with a cold, clinical boredom.
"No."
Before the Demon Lord could respond, Shujin released his Aura. It was not a physical blast, but a release of Pure Dark Aura—a manifestation of the psychological desensitization he had achieved in his first life. It spread instantly, not just through the fortress, but across the entire continent of Velgrith.
The Demon Lord's eyes widened. The "boy" he had seen a moment ago was gone; in his place was a monster of primordial darkness that made the Dark Magic God look like a flickering candle.
"You're... worse than Umbryas," the Demon Lord stammered, his armor beginning to crack under the pressure.
"You are—"
"You talk too much," Shujin interrupted. He raised a hand.
A spear of colorless hatred erupted from the ground. It was soundless and inevitable. The next moment, a mass of darkness swallowed the Eastern Demon Lord whole.
There was no grand battle. The Demon Lord's form simply crumbled as magical spears pierced his essence. Within seconds, he was gone. Not even bones remained to mark where a lord of the Demon Empire had stood.
The ripple of that aura was felt by everyone of significance in the world. In the Great Demon Lord's Palace, the high king of demons stood rigid as his eastern throne sat suddenly empty. "That wasn't a boy," he whispered to his trembling ministers. "That was Death itself."
---
In the Silverwood Kingdom, Queen Bellatrix felt the immense pressure even as she sat in a council meeting. Her blue eyes were wide with a terror she could not name.
The ministers around her couldn't even comprehend the magnitude of what they were feeling; they only knew the air had suddenly become impossible to breathe.
Similar reactions echoed through the kingdoms of Mistwood and Flarewood, and even the remaining three Demon Lords retreated into their fortified mountain holds.
---
In an unknown place of absolute darkness, a figure in a black robe with a cracked mask looked toward Valerion. A dry, rasping chuckle emerged from behind the mask.
"Hmm... it seems it is too early to look. Anyway, this boy isn't my rival... yet."
Shujin returned to the academy through a black doorway, stepping into his dormitory room with a dignified air. As he crossed the threshold, his form began to glow. The dark, oppressive aura retracted, and his hair—black as the void—shifted into a soft, shimmering silver.
Kuro Velgrith stood before his bed, the Darkness Lord now hidden behind the Perfectly Average mask once again.
Rei was already there, her mask removed and her eyes shining with relief.
"Welcome back, Kuro-sama," she said, her voice returning to its gentle cadence.
Kuro raised an eyebrow, his silver hair catching the moonlight.
"I don't think you should be in the boys' dormitory, Rei."
She giggled, a sound that seemed impossible after the violence of the night.
"Don't worry, Master. I used my magic." She shimmered beside him, demonstrating her mastery of shadow-step travel.
Kuro nodded and accepted the scroll she offered. He read the report on the Duke of Felthrain and set it aside.
"Rei... well done." He reached out and gently stroked her head. Rei closed her eyes, her cheeks turning a soft pink as she leaned into the touch.
"Hey... I think I could get addicted to this," she whispered.
Kuro let out a tired yawn. "Wake me if there's an emergency. I'm going to sleep." He fell onto the bed and was unconscious almost instantly.
---
While he slept, Rei stood over him, her expression shifting from affection to a deep, agonizing curiosity. She touched the glowing crystal on her belt—her unique power, 
"I want to know more about you... I want to understand the silence in your heart," she whispered. "Forgive me, Kuro-sama."
She placed her hand on his forehead and focused. The room dimmed, and Rei's consciousness was pulled into the "World of Presence." She saw it all in a fragmented rush:
---
A six-year-old boy being handed a "Black Book" of psychology by a father who viewed him as a monster.
The boy kneeling in a corridor, hearing his parents call him a "project" and realizing their love was conditional.
The violent night in Tokyo where he watched his parents die without shedding a single tear.
The years spent as a "quiet tool" for the Yakuza, finding solace only in the honesty of a kitten and a puppy.
The final, bloody sacrifice to save a girl named Aiko.
---
Rei withdrew her hand and collapsed to the floor, sobbing softly. The weight of his first life was more than she could have imagined.
"So this is who you really are... carrying the memories of a world that didn't know how to love you."
She clutched his blanket, her resolve hardening into something indestructible. "I won't betray you, Master. Not like the others. I swear it."
---
✦ To be continued...
The atmosphere within the throne room of the Old Fortress was no longer charged with the violent tremors of an explosion. Instead, it was defined by a heavy, unnatural silence—the kind of silence that exists only in the eye of a storm or the wake of a miracle.
Shujin sat upon the stone throne, his posture relaxed yet radiating an authority that seemed to pin the very air to the ground. There was no smoke, no rubble, and no screams.
The eleventh hand of the clock had done its work; the world had been stitched back together as if the previous instant of obliteration had been nothing more than a dark thought in the mind of a god.
With a slow, rhythmic motion, Shujin's fingers brushed the empty air. In response, the massive, spectral face of Chronael, the Death Clock, materialized behind him.
It was a terrifying construct of obsidian gears and ghostly Roman numerals, its twelve hands glowing like starless moons in the gloom of the hall.
Shujin's gaze was fixed on the eleventh hand—the Hand of Time Travel. It still hummed with a faint, residual violet light, a reminder of the power required to pull the timeline backward.
"So," Shujin whispered, his voice echoing off the ancient masonry, "even the gods can be restored."
He knew the truth of what he had done. He had not merely reversed the damage to the physical world; he had undone the deaths of the four Elemental Gods he had erased in the God Realm. It was not an act of mercy, but one of clinical necessity.
The balance of the world required their presence for now, but they would return to existence with a gift: the memory of their own extinction. He wanted them to carry the weight of that void.
---
[Scene - The Gods' Realm - The Viewing Hall]
In the high reaches of the God Realm, the silence was even more profound. World Goddess Elmyria stood at the edge of the divine viewing pool, her hands trembling as she watched the reflection of the boy on the throne. Behind her, the four Elemental Gods—Ignir, Maris, Terranis, and Sylphar—stood in a tense semi-circle.
They were no longer the arrogant masters of nature who had challenged Shujin; they were survivors, their divine auras flickering with the trauma of the erasure they had just experienced.
"He restored us," the Wind Goddess, Sylphar, groaned, her voice a fragile whisper. "But he didn't do it to save us. He did it to show us he could do it again."
"He won't stop," Ignir added, his flames burning a low, sullen orange. "He is a calamity that understands the laws of time better than we do. If we do not find a way to bind him, he will eventually turn the twelfth hand."
Elmyria did not turn to face them. Her eyes remained fixed on Shujin.
But Shujin had stepped off the page. "What are you truly planning, Kiyoshi Ishida?" she murmured, using the name from his previous life. "Are you seeking justice, or are you simply proving that the universe is a project you intend to finish?"
---
[Scene - The Old Fortress – Dusk Approaches]
Back at the fortress, the sun began its slow descent, casting long, bloody shadows across the courtyard. Shujin stood and began a slow, deliberate walk around his throne.
The Death Clock followed him, shifting its orientation as he observed the other hands. To Shujin, these were not just spells; they were the tools of a master psychologist who had transitioned from manipulating human minds in Tokyo to manipulating the fabric of existence. He reviewed the hierarchy of the clock's power:
Hand I - Time Slow: Used to make the movements of others appear like insects in amber.
Hand II - Time Stop: An absolute suspension of reality.
Hand III - Personal World Creation: The ability to carve out a pocket dimension where he is the sole arbiter of time.
Hand IV - Rewriting the Past: A surgical manipulation of an individual's history.
Hand V - Memory Erasure: The power to make one's enemies forget why they were even fighting.
Hand VI - Future Illusion: Forcing a target to experience their own darkest or brightest destiny in a mirage.
Hand VII - Time Lock: An eternal imprisonment within a single moment.
Hand VIII through X: The manipulation of memories—stealing, peeking, and sharing them at will.
Hand XI - Time Travel: The bridge between the past and the future.
Hand XII - The Death: The end of everything—universes, gods, and the user himself.
---
"Each hand," Shujin mused, "is like a divine punishment. And I am the one who holds the gavel."
---
[Scene - The City Streets – Rei's Mission]
While Shujin contemplated the cosmic, Rei Nocturne was navigating the terrestrial rot of Valerion. Cloaked in black and hidden behind her porcelain mask, she had spent the night infiltrating the Devil Guild, a syndicate that operated in the capital's deepest shadows.
She moved with a silent, predatory grace, her heart hardened by the lessons Kuro had taught her.
She emerged from a ventilation shaft of a high-ranking mansion, a stolen scroll clutched in her hand. Her teeth were clenched tight as she read the contents by the dim light of a street lamp.
"The Duke of Felthrain..." she whispered, her voice thick with disgust. The scroll detailed a ledger of human misery. The Duke, a man who sat in the King's inner circle, was funding the Devil Guild's slave shipments using Demi-human captives as currency.
"Even the lords, even those sworn to protect, are nothing more than parasites."
She vanished into the shadows, heading back toward the fortress to deliver her report, unaware that a greater threat was converging on her Master's location.
---
[Scene - The Old Fortress – The Eastern Demon Lord's Arrival]
A sudden, suffocating pressure shattered the silence of the Old Fortress. The sky above the ruins turned a bruised crimson as a magnificent, terrifying figure descended from the clouds.
The Eastern Demon Lord had arrived. He was a titan of malevolence, clad in crimson armor that seemed forged from cooling lava, with massive black wings that blocked out the fading sun.
"You..." the Demon Lord roared, his voice causing the stones of the fortress to groan. He landed before the throne, his eyes burning with a prideful fire.
"You are the source of that shockwave. That throne... your existence... it is an insult to the natural order."
Shujin did not even look up from the armrest of his throne.
"Boy," the Demon Lord continued, stepping forward with a thunderous gait,
"you do not yet understand how this world works. Fate has always been on the side of the demons. Humans are weak, fleeting things. Join us. With your power, you could rule at the side of the Great Demon Lord himself. Even that Hero of Light would fall before our combined might."
Shujin finally looked at him. His eyes were not filled with fear, but with a cold, clinical boredom.
"No."
Before the Demon Lord could respond, Shujin released his Aura. It was not a physical blast, but a release of Pure Dark Aura—a manifestation of the psychological desensitization he had achieved in his first life. It spread instantly, not just through the fortress, but across the entire continent of Velgrith.
The Demon Lord's eyes widened. The "boy" he had seen a moment ago was gone; in his place was a monster of primordial darkness that made the Dark Magic God look like a flickering candle.
"You're... worse than Umbryas," the Demon Lord stammered, his armor beginning to crack under the pressure.
"You are—"
"You talk too much," Shujin interrupted. He raised a hand.
A spear of colorless hatred erupted from the ground. It was soundless and inevitable. The next moment, a mass of darkness swallowed the Eastern Demon Lord whole.
There was no grand battle. The Demon Lord's form simply crumbled as magical spears pierced his essence. Within seconds, he was gone. Not even bones remained to mark where a lord of the Demon Empire had stood.
The ripple of that aura was felt by everyone of significance in the world. In the Great Demon Lord's Palace, the high king of demons stood rigid as his eastern throne sat suddenly empty. "That wasn't a boy," he whispered to his trembling ministers. "That was Death itself."
---
In the Silverwood Kingdom, Queen Bellatrix felt the immense pressure even as she sat in a council meeting. Her blue eyes were wide with a terror she could not name.
The ministers around her couldn't even comprehend the magnitude of what they were feeling; they only knew the air had suddenly become impossible to breathe.
Similar reactions echoed through the kingdoms of Mistwood and Flarewood, and even the remaining three Demon Lords retreated into their fortified mountain holds.
---
In an unknown place of absolute darkness, a figure in a black robe with a cracked mask looked toward Valerion. A dry, rasping chuckle emerged from behind the mask.
"Hmm... it seems it is too early to look. Anyway, this boy isn't my rival... yet."
Shujin returned to the academy through a black doorway, stepping into his dormitory room with a dignified air. As he crossed the threshold, his form began to glow. The dark, oppressive aura retracted, and his hair—black as the void—shifted into a soft, shimmering silver.
Kuro Velgrith stood before his bed, the Darkness Lord now hidden behind the Perfectly Average mask once again.
Rei was already there, her mask removed and her eyes shining with relief.
"Welcome back, Kuro-sama," she said, her voice returning to its gentle cadence.
Kuro raised an eyebrow, his silver hair catching the moonlight.
"I don't think you should be in the boys' dormitory, Rei."
She giggled, a sound that seemed impossible after the violence of the night.
"Don't worry, Master. I used my magic." She shimmered beside him, demonstrating her mastery of shadow-step travel.
Kuro nodded and accepted the scroll she offered. He read the report on the Duke of Felthrain and set it aside.
"Rei... well done." He reached out and gently stroked her head. Rei closed her eyes, her cheeks turning a soft pink as she leaned into the touch.
"Hey... I think I could get addicted to this," she whispered.
Kuro let out a tired yawn. "Wake me if there's an emergency. I'm going to sleep." He fell onto the bed and was unconscious almost instantly.
---
While he slept, Rei stood over him, her expression shifting from affection to a deep, agonizing curiosity. She touched the glowing crystal on her belt—her unique power, 
"I want to know more about you... I want to understand the silence in your heart," she whispered. "Forgive me, Kuro-sama."
She placed her hand on his forehead and focused. The room dimmed, and Rei's consciousness was pulled into the "World of Presence." She saw it all in a fragmented rush:
---
A six-year-old boy being handed a "Black Book" of psychology by a father who viewed him as a monster.
The boy kneeling in a corridor, hearing his parents call him a "project" and realizing their love was conditional.
The violent night in Tokyo where he watched his parents die without shedding a single tear.
The years spent as a "quiet tool" for the Yakuza, finding solace only in the honesty of a kitten and a puppy.
The final, bloody sacrifice to save a girl named Aiko.
---
Rei withdrew her hand and collapsed to the floor, sobbing softly. The weight of his first life was more than she could have imagined.
"So this is who you really are... carrying the memories of a world that didn't know how to love you."
She clutched his blanket, her resolve hardening into something indestructible. "I won't betray you, Master. Not like the others. I swear it."
---
✦ To be continued...
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