Zarek inhaled so hard that one would have thought he had a collapsed lung. Wheezing and coughing akin to a fish out of water, he collapsed, his body shuddering.
His eyes, however… they carried not the slightest hint of surprise.
This was what he did.
The impossible… it was something that he had accomplished more times than he could count. So long as he had a purpose for continuing to live, he wouldn't collapse for anyone.
That unbridled confidence in himself, his untouchable resolve to find a way out no matter the situation he found himself trapped in…
That was the real reason to fear the Ashborn Demon.
This time, Zarek had the boy-man to thank.
Back then, when he saw the tent, he had been confused. Why did the boy-man want him to tattoo a tent to him? It made no sense.
But then he realized.
It was a test.
The boy-man actually wanted to see if Zarek could pick out his intentions, whether Zarek was as reckless as he seemed or not. If Zarek was able to realize that he wanted him to do something with the storage device itself, and not the tent, then he would be willing to take Zarek with him.
If Zarek had a useful ability and a brain on him, then he would be worth having around. But if he was a fool, then no amount of talent would help.
What he didn't expect was that Zarek would find the Dimensional Sphere so useful that he preferred to keep it a secret that he could control it rather than give the boy-man a chance to use it.
Instead, Zarek found another way to prove his worth, keeping his secret and gaining the boy-man's approval at the same time. Plus, he managed to subtly hint at the fact he wouldn't be able to reproduce the Dimensional Sphere by displaying certain abilities of his Profession and hiding the others.
In fact, that was the real reason he had shown the scroll being used without an obvious activation of Infuse.
The Dimensional Sphere was too perfect. It was only an F Class item, but because of its rare Space Godsfall Intent, its potency even at this stage was enormous.
That left it in a unique position where Zarek could both easily recreate it, and yet it was also incredibly helpful to him.
All of that came in handy right this moment.
What Zarek did best was finding loopholes in the system. For Challenge Hubs, there was no better loophole than the barrier itself.
When a Challenge was accepted, a barrier would form and nothing on the inside would be allowed out, and no one on the outside would be allowed to interfere.
But what if a piece of the black knight found its way outside?
The question was… how the hell was Zarek going to do that?
However, before Zarek even entered the range of the Challenge Hub, he had already left a Dimensional Sphere outside. It was harmless, and practically impossible to detect.
But he had still cast Atom Link on it.
Then, when his battle with the Eclipse Threat began, he formed a new Dimensional Sphere.
At the same time, he used a line of Lurker's Godsfall to cast Atom Link on the black knight's finger.
The purpose?
It was quite simple.
He needed a connection between the inside and the outside. What had he linked the black knight's finger with? It was none other than the Dimensional Sphere on the outside.
But just this alone wasn't enough to do anything. Atom Link was just supposed to be a low-level spying Talent. It couldn't do more than that…
Normally, anyway.
What did Atom Link do? It sent sensory information back and forth. Sound, sight, anything of the sort.
They were constantly communicating with one another.
Distance didn't matter, no matter the location in the universe. It was all instant.
But what did this actually mean?
It was a concept of quantum physics: Entanglement.
It's not sensory information they share—that's just a first-level effect. The true effect of Entanglement was that anything that occurred to one object would directly happen to the other.
So what happened when a Link was formed between two Dimensional Spheres—one on the outside of the Challenge Hub barrier, and one on the inside of the Challenge Hub barrier…
And then they were given a little nudge?
A nudge that reverted one back to a previous state?
What Zarek had done was simple. After linking the two Dimensional Spheres, he used the one trump card he had remaining.
The hourglass.
Space and time were two sides of the same coin. With two Atom Linked Dimensional Spheres, and a trapped finger, all Zarek needed to do was force the finger to travel from one Dimensional Sphere to the other.
To do so, he needed to boost the power of the Dimensional Spheres substantially, and there was no better complement to space than time.
With the hourglass, he had even been able to control the teleportation to an A Class planet for a short while—just enough to land with the boy-man.
And now, it was just enough to give the Dimensional Spheres enough juice to fool the barrier into thinking the finger of the black knight was on the inside and outside.
In fact, the finger landing on the outside wasn't even real. It was only an illusion akin to Schrödinger's cat—as though it was both inside and outside until it was well and truly observed. Only then would it appear in one or the other.
Zarek didn't even think to harm the black knight. Even with all of this setup, even with the goal of just taking a finger, he had no confidence in severing even such a small, insignificant thing from a creature that powerful.
But it hadn't mattered in the end, now did it?
The hourglass was all out of energy, he was bleeding out, and he had nothing left to give.
But he had won.
The Challenge Hub trembled, a bloody light shooting into the skies as a howl crossed the cosmos.
And then it descended onto Zarek.
"Your man isn't too bad, babe…" Zarek wheezed out with the last of his strength.