The moment the Gray Reaper touched the tree, the sky filled with light.

That light was proof of victory over the Object that had been slowly consuming America.

The shattered time and space were returning to their original state.

Now, I suppose I’ll collapse as a torn-up corpse.

But at least I can close my eyes, knowing that the crisis in James City has been properly resolved.

The Deputy Mayor turned his barely functioning head to gaze at the sky.

His slowly deteriorating eyes faintly captured the celestial bodies above.

Beautiful moonlight poured down over the Deputy Mayor's head.

Even though his body was completely shattered, his heart was full of a sense of accomplishment.

‘It was only six hours, but in that time, I protected James City properly.’

With that, the Deputy Mayor let go of the final will that had been maintaining his form and consciousness.

As his hand, which had tightly gripped the control console, loosened, he began to accept his fate.

Though his body was growing cold, the Deputy Mayor kept a smile on his face.

Released from the endlessly repeating fractured time, a whirl of emotions surged within him.

He had fulfilled his duty, protected the city he loved, and now, freed from the shackles of time, he could leave James City safe.

Out of the corner of his now barely functioning vision, he saw a golden flame burning.

Seeing that flame, he thought it looked like the flame of an angel coming to take him.

The area around me was an utter mess.

Buildings of different styles and materials were randomly jumbled together.

Marble columns, looking like they belonged to an ancient temple, sparkled as though new, rolling on the ground, severed.

Beside them, a sharp-edged, square section of a fresco depicting a religious scene had been cut cleanly.

Parts of antique iron furniture, ornate with intricate designs that seemed out of place in modern times, lay broken nearby.

A lavish chair, the kind aristocrats might have used once, was sliced in half and lay scattered.

If not for the massive wall visible in the distance, I could have easily believed this wasn’t James City but the scene of a museum explosion.

By the way, who exactly is that blue-haired girl?

She feels strangely familiar, yet obviously a stranger. It’s odd to feel familiar with someone I don’t even remember.

There have been many strange things, but the power I gained this time is quite to my liking.

The power to control time.

Just as I could grip and manipulate space, I could now move time a little, too.

Well, it’s just an inferior version, so I can’t recklessly mix or cut and paste time and space like the original.

I can only accelerate or slow down my own time, but that’s enough to satisfy me.

Now, I can clearly move faster than the Golden Reaper, which will make pranking easier.

Hehe.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

Even without going ghostly, just walking slowly was fast enough to leave afterimages!

Moving fast was so fun that as I wandered around the ruins, I sensed a person in the air.

A person, in this desolate, dangerous space?

Now that I think about it, when I was heading to destroy the tree, I noticed some firewood trickling in. That must have been from this person.

They were trapped in the cracks between time and space, but thanks to the destruction of the tree and the navy-blue moon, they seemed to be slowly returning to the real world.

Looking at the crack in space, it was clear that this person’s body had already been shattered to the point of death.

If left alone, they’d be 100% dead.

I’m not sure if it’s because I can manipulate space or because I gained the power of time, but I feel like I can save them somehow.

Since I’m waiting for Yerin to show up anyway, I decided to gather the scattered fragments.

I suppose I should consider this as paying back the firewood I was given on my way to the tree.

The task was easier than expected.

If the person had been shattered into 3D pieces, I would’ve given up immediately, but they were shaped like someone had pressed them into glass panels and then shattered them. It felt like solving a puzzle.

What made it easier than a puzzle was that I could freely arrange the fragments just by thinking about it.

So, the work turned out to be quite enjoyable.

It felt like assembling a giant puzzle.

I found that I quite liked puzzles and found them fun.

I’ll have to ask for some proper puzzles when I return to the Sehee Research Institute. Maybe some with beautiful landscapes or something.

The downside of this puzzle is that the reward for completion is a muscular black man, which isn’t exactly thrilling.

Just as I heard the footsteps of people approaching, likely having noticed that the tree within the wall was gone, I completed the puzzle.

A man dressed in a sharp suit fell from the air.

When the puzzle was completed and I could see his face, I realized it was the Deputy Mayor, the man who had glared at me earlier.

As soon as he regained consciousness, the Deputy Mayor stared blankly at my face before raising his hand to the sky and shouting.

"God exists!"

Then, with an even more emotional expression, tears streaming down his face, he cried out.

"And that God has gray skin!"

The expressions of the James Research Institute employees, who were dressed in hazmat suits, twisted into strange looks.

They approached the babbling black man, zapped him with a stun gun, and started carrying him off.

Poor guy. Even though he was the Deputy Mayor, he got swept up in space-time and lost his mind…

A small studio apartment belonging to a security staff member who had been injured by the Glass Flamingo.

Through the small window of the cozy but compact apartment, soft light gently streamed in.

The fine mist from the quietly running humidifier caught the light, giving it the appearance of fog.

Though the space was small, the room was clean and neatly organized.

Dust was hard to find anywhere in the room.

The bookshelf, which occupied an entire wall, was spotless, and there wasn’t a speck of dust under the bed or the large pieces of furniture that were hard to move.

On the small but sturdy table beside the bed, an apple had been neatly sliced into bite-sized pieces.

On the bed of this well-kept room were the security staff member and the Blue Reaper.

The Blue Reaper, with its small body, was slowly moving a cold towel to the head of the sleeping staff member.

"Mmm."

As morning arrived and the staff member awoke, the first thing they saw was the Blue Reaper, carrying the damp towel.

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Startled, the Blue Reaper disappeared, and the towel plopped down onto the bed.

The staff member picked up the fallen towel and placed it on the table. Looking around the room, everything was perfectly in order.

Since the Glass Flamingo incident, the Blue Reaper had been visiting the room every time the staff member fell asleep.

The Blue Reaper would clean the room and sit quietly by the bed, watching over the staff member.

It was a type of attention different from what the staff member had hoped for.

The staff member had wanted to eat pudding together and have fun, like with the Golden Reaper.

But instead, the Blue Reaper’s housekeeping skills had only grown stronger.

In fact, it had become even harder to see the Blue Reaper while awake.

The staff member felt a bit unfair, watching the Blue Reaper flee even faster than before.

‘Aren’t we closer now?’

‘Why are you acting like this?’

The Blue Reaper was nowhere to be seen, and only the faint, refreshing scent of its presence lingered in the room.

The quarantine room, now slightly quiet without the usual noise from the Gray Reaper and Yerin.

Having had an old dream last night, I came to rest in the quarantine room, using the opportunity to check the facilities.

Though it wasn’t a very old event, the dream felt like it was from a long time ago.

It was a partial memory of meeting the Gray Reaper while trapped in the Seoul Forest cave.

However, the outcome in the dream was slightly different from reality.

In the dream, I was so caught up in the joy of escape that I didn’t notice the Reaper growing dim and brittle. I returned to the research institute, leaving it behind.

In the dream, I struggled to run the institute without the Gray Reaper.

And I woke up from the nightmare with the image of the Reaper, crumbling and staring at me with resentful eyes.

Surely nothing has happened, right?

It was hard to imagine anything hurting or putting the Gray Reaper in danger, but after that ominous dream, I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned.

Just as I wondered if my worries had reached the heavens, breaking news began to broadcast.

[This just in.]

[Reports have come in that 'James City,' famous for its Object research, has been partially destroyed.]

[It is expected that the domestic research institutes, which formed cooperative relationships following the introduction of 'James Pudding,' will also be affected.]

And on the TV screen, footage appeared, seemingly filmed from a helicopter, showing the Gray Reaper standing on top of a shattered building, looking down at the ruined city.

Reaper, what on Earth are you doing there?

The sleeping quarters at Sehee Research Institute.

Though the work pace wasn’t intense, and the break room was well-designed, making the place always quiet, there was quite a crowd today.

The reason for the gathering was a strange Object that had sprouted on the edge of a flowerpot.

A cute little dicot was swaying in the pot, looking fresh and lively.

It would have been a perfectly healthy sprout if not for its navy-blue color.

Of course, even if it were green, it wouldn’t change the fact that it was 100% an Object.

After all, beneath the sprout was a face.

It was a mini Reaper, looking exactly like the Gray Reaper, its head poking out as it buried the rest of its body in the soil, fast asleep.