Sia clenched her fists with an excited expression. "You beat him once when he's at the peak of pseudo divine. The reason he's grown stronger than you is through slivers.

You have them too. If you have enough time to train in them, you can beat him like a dog! There's no doubt!"

Varian nodded.

But he'd need a lot of time for that. Not 1,000 years like Immortal. But at least a fraction of it! A few dozen years? A hundred years?

Yet, he had no way of gaining a 100 years of practice time when they're going to be found in a few days.

It's been only 3 days since he returned in the outside world. Assuming they take a whopping 10 days to find Hortus, which would be a very optimistic scenario, even the 20x timeflow change would only give him 200 days.

200 days was simply too short of a time for him to bridge the gap!

Varian's eyebrows tensed and he clenched his fist.

"Ahem, ahem. Brother-in-law, I know what you're thinking. And I solved that problem for you! They don't call me Miss Calamity for nothing! Not just military, I am an academic genius too!" Miss Calamity raised her head with a prideful expression.

Varian would've rolled his eyes in normal times for her acting so humble. But now he was willing to hear a thousand brags of the sister-in-law as long as she had a solution.

"I had a wild guess. Timeflow distortion, as you know, is resisted by powerful beings. If you apply same time power from Hortus and a rank 6 gets 20x of timeflow, a rank 9 might only get 10x.

But what if…it's a mortal? A person without any powers at all? He would barely have any resistance to the timeflow.

Hortus can have different timeflows based on ranks and regions. So, we can put a mortal in a specific region and crank up his timeflow to a ridiculously high number!

Of course, a mortal wouldn't be able to use divine paths or the timeflow distortion won't work."

Varian gasped in surprise and he grasped the simple but brilliant plan. But then he shot her a glare. "You were asking me if I had a plan a few days before while hiding something like this."

"Hehe." Miss Calamity stuck out her tongue. "I was curious if you really had something up your sleeve? And it's not like you revealed anything. What even was your plan anyway?"

Varian shook his head.

Truth be told, he wanted to evacuate entire Hortus and blow it up to take down Immortal. He'd have a small chance of survival and Hortus might be able to regenerate.

But it's really a small possibility. And the plan wasn't perfect.

He'd have to take Isadora and Sarah somewhere safe before the battle. Preferably, Nexus. Aphosis would have to be persuaded to accept Sarah as the successor of Ares. In return, she'd become their first high rank 2 and make Nexus an equal in the Alliance.

It was a stupid, reckless plan. However, it was the only one that he could think of in the face of an overwhelming enemy.

"Sealing your powers and leaving you with only the power of slivers for those days was a trial." Sarah gestured to the sky.

"I was using Hortus the whole time, running a lot of tests on you and trying to see if it'll consider you as a mortal or a pseudo divine ranker when you were using your slivers to secretly train.

It's a make or break situation for our plan. It's a very difficult thing to measure since I had to test it under a lot of conditions. Any mishap could result in devastating consequences, so I was as careful as I could be.

I tried to coordinate Hortus' power with my own to increase the timeflow. The integration was much more difficult than expected."

Just remembering all the tasks she finished in the past 60 days made Sarah feel tired.

But she quickly smiled and raised her hands.

"There you go, the whole process took 60 days.

We know it's a critical time with Immortal's danger. We know you're stressed. We also know you thought we were wasting important time for a vacation.

But you know, the plan was always to go with the sacrifice strategy. So, we treated these days as our last chance with you."

Varian lowered his head and recalled the time he spent with them in the 'vacation' as they called it.

He thought they were disturbed by the solitude of 1,000 years and wanted to take a break. He never expected them to go a step further and prepare for their own deaths.

No wonder their eyes would always look at him the whole time. And whenever they together, there were very proactive. They knew this might be the last time they could be together.

"Yes, we didn't let you practice normally those days. We did add things to your food. And we really disturbed you a lot. Sorry for being selfish."

Sarah held his hands and tears began to form in her eyes, despite her trying not to cry at this moment.

Pressing her forehead against his, she smiled as she kissed him gently. "And thank you for not complaining even though you knew death was looming.

We really enjoyed every second of our time together. Enigma loved the morning runs. Sia liked cooking for you. And I loved our afternoons. Isa, well, I don't want to mention an idiot who does fishing in her last days. Absolutely distasteful!"

"Hey! A movie junkie like you calling my fine hobby distasteful? Introspect a little!"

The heavy mood in Varian's heart cleared a little at their banter. And the regret that he didn't train properly for the past sixty days also vanished.

"So, back to the question again. Did you notice any significant improvement in your slivers in the last sixty days?" Sarha asked, her hot breath hitting his face.

Wait, when did she get on his lap?

Varian nodded anyway.

Isadora, who leaned against him by appearing out of nowhere, nodded with an elegant smile. "Great! We'll seal your powers completely from the outside and you do it from the inside.

Then, we'll stop the timeflow change for entire Hortus. And only change the time for you. It's a mortal zone. And Sarah will use her time powers to accelerate the timeflow even more."

"What's the rough number?"

"1000 if we go with only Hortus. If I manage, I might bring it to 1300 or 1400." Sarah explained with a regretful expression. "I tried hard but this is the safest bet."

Varian pursed his lips and thought about the mechanics of this stuff.

If it's just increasing the timeflow of a mortal, Hortus should be able to take it to 100,000 without much problem.

In other words, if Varian only wanted to live like a mortal for a 100,000 years, he could do so without a problem.

But he's going to keep using the slivers throughout this phase.

Thankfully, the slivers were not divine paths. They were special existences throughout the cosmos.

Rather than remaining in the confines of reality, they were said to be on the very edge of it.

Else, World of Eternal Empress in Paradise should've never able to trap him in that timeless world. For that matter, he would never have to worry about attacks from time awakeners.

By extension, the distortion of space containing slivers should've also been impossible, implying that Varian would never be able to teleport.

That's simply not the case.

The slivers had only minimal interference with manipulation of timeflow. Still, just their sheer presence would make things different. The weaker one was, the more significant the effect.

For a mortal, the slivers made it nearly 100 times harder.

"I know it's not a lot of time but this is the best bet we have." Enigma said.

"If you'll need a bit more time at the end, we can always go for the sacrifice." Isadora shrugged. "To be honest, 10 years of their sacrifice would give you 10,000 years to train your slivers. It's the safest choice you can make! I know you won't like it but really, consider it."

"It sounds too cruel." Varian shook his head and rose to his feet. "Change the timeflow, I'll start the practice."