MTL NOVEL Chapter 32: Chapter 29: The Tyrant of Time
---
Prologue: The Silence Before the Storm
The battlefield was eerily silent.
Even the wind dared not stir.
The ruins of the abandoned district stretched in all directions, remnants of shattered buildings standing like broken monuments to battles long past. Cracks lined the pavement where titanic clashes had taken place, the scars of war evident in every collapsed structure, every scorch mark, every drop of dried blood.
And in the center of it all, stood Minh.
His posture was relaxed, his hands tucked casually into the long coat he always wore, his silver eyes reflecting the dim glow of the broken streetlights. But beneath that calm exterior, there was something far more terrifying—an aura so vast and absolute that it made the air itself feel heavier.
He wasn't fighting.
He wasn't struggling.
He was merely observing.
To his right, Cetz leaned against an invisible barrier of his own creation, watching the scene unfold with a smug grin. "They really thought they could take us down, huh?" he muttered, fingers tapping against his arm in a lazy rhythm.
Across from them, Akira, Hiroshi, Daisuke, and Kenji stood battered and bleeding.
Kenji's massive frame heaved with every breath, blood running down his arms in thick rivulets. His knuckles were cracked, his stance unsteady—but he refused to fall.
Daisuke's normally fluid movements had slowed, his body weighed down by exhaustion. He clutched his side, where a deep wound dripped onto the pavement.
Hiroshi gripped his sword tightly, but the blade trembled in his hands. His once-burning eyes now flickered with something dangerous—uncertainty.
And Akira…
Akira could barely stand.
The leader of the group, the tactician, the one who always had a plan—he could feel the weight of Minh's power crushing down on him, suffocating his very thoughts.
"This is bad."
He had fought Stand users stronger than him before. He had survived battles that should have been impossible.
But Minh was on another level entirely.
Minh wasn't just strong.
He was inevitable.
---
Phase One: The God of Time Descends
Minh took a single step forward.
The moment his foot touched the ground—
Everything collapsed.
The world around them shattered like a fragile mirror, reality splintering into a thousand fragmented shards. The sky twisted, the ground melted, and for a brief, terrifying moment—the universe forgot how to exist.
Akira couldn't breathe.
The others around him were gone.
Not dead.
Not unconscious.
Just… gone.
He was alone.
Or maybe, he was never there to begin with.
Minh's voice drifted through the void.
"Chrono Requiem does not fight in the way you understand."
Akira turned—or maybe he didn't. His body no longer responded to normal movement, his perception warping in ways that defied logic. He wasn't even sure if he still had a body at all.
"It does not need to kill you. It does not need to destroy you."
"It only needs to remove you from possibility."
Akira gasped as reality flickered around him.
Suddenly, he was twelve years old again, standing in his childhood home, staring at the old radio his mother had left behind.
Then—
He was eighty years old, sitting in a hospital bed, breathing his last breath.
Then—
He was nothing.
---
Phase Two: Echoes of a Lost Soul
Somewhere, in the infinite void between time, a sound began to resonate.
Faint. Distant.
But growing louder.
Akira clutched his head. His memories—his very identity—were fading. Minh wasn't erasing his body. He was erasing the very concept of his existence.
"No—NO!"
His mind fought against it. His will screamed in defiance.
And then—
Sound cut through the silence.
A ripple spread through the void.
Minh's silver eyes narrowed slightly.
A crack formed in the empty nothingness.
A low vibration hummed through the air, a steady frequency pushing against the overwhelming force of Chrono Requiem.
And then—
Akira Takahashi pulled himself back into existence.
---
Phase Three: The Return of Sound
Minh watched as Akira stumbled back into reality, gasping for air.
His body flickered, distorted, as if he wasn't fully reconnected to the world. But he was there.
His fingers twitched.
His Stand—Echo Chamber—hummed beside him, its form shaking, distorting, resisting the overwhelming pressure of time itself.
Minh tilted his head.
"Interesting," he murmured. "You shouldn't have been able to return."
Akira wiped blood from his mouth. "Yeah, well… I don't follow your damn rules."
His breath was ragged, his vision blurred, but his will remained unbroken.
"You erased me," Akira said, cracking his neck. "But sound isn't bound by a single moment. It moves forward. Even if you erase the present, the sound of the past still lingers. And through that…"
He smirked.
"I forced myself back."
Cetz let out a low whistle. "Damn. That's actually impressive."
Minh's expression remained unreadable.
Then, after a long pause—
He smiled.
"Good."
And with a flick of his wrist—
Time collapsed again.
---
Phase Four: Minh's True Power
This time, Minh did not simply erase Akira.
This time, he erased the future.
Akira's vision exploded into an infinite number of possibilities—
He saw himself winning.
He saw himself losing.
He saw a world where he never met his friends.
He saw a world where Minh never existed.
And in every timeline—Minh was already one step ahead.
"Chrono Requiem does not predict the future."
"It creates the one I choose."
Akira's body began to unravel.
His very existence was being overwritten, his future dictated by Minh's will.
But then—
A single soundwave cut through the void.
Akira clenched his jaw.
"Like hell I'll accept that."
His Stand pulsed with energy, sending out a resonating frequency that disrupted the waves of Minh's time manipulation.
The infinite futures flickered.
Minh's smile faded.
Akira grinned.
"Looks like I can rewrite fate too."
Then he attacked.
---