Black threads wriggled through the air like serpents, then wrapped around Ron with unbelievable speed.
Their trajectory entirely disregarded spatial distance, allowing them to leap directly to their target.
The audience erupted into terrified screams:
"Damn it, the fight has really started!"
"It’s over! No monster, no matter how strong, can break free from conceptual constraints!"
"Nari’s going crazy, run!"
However, at the critical moment, Ron’s intuition warned him in advance.
The special foresight brought by the Astrologer allowed him to vaguely see the terrifying scene of himself being tightly bound by the black threads.
Sure enough, that old rascal Maggs had ill intentions.
Just as this thought occurred to Ron, he unhesitatingly initiated his meticulously rehearsed emergency escape plan.
A strange fluctuation erupted from his body.
It was the "Thousand Transformations" special ability—record reappearance.
During his intimate contact with Nari, Ron had already recorded part of her Chaos Storm power.
Although limited to recording power levels close to the Dark Sun, it was just enough.
Now, this power was perfectly recreated, forming a Chaos Force Field around him.
Pure primal chaos began interfering with Maggs’ conceptual threads.
What should have been an unstoppable constraint began to show slight delays and shifts under the impact of the Chaos power.
"What?!"
Maggs’ nine eyes widened simultaneously, and the runes on his mask flickered violently:
"How could he voluntarily release Nari’s Chaos power? That’s an innate chaos privilege..."
But what astounded him more was yet to come.
Ron took out a silver pocket watch from his bosom, its dial engraved with complex time runes, each symbol exuding an ancient and mysterious aura.
Once the pocket watch opened, the flow of time around him began to change bizarrely.
"Bite the second hand!"
It wasn’t simply acceleration or deceleration, but a more stable form of time manipulation—Time Stasis.
Maggs felt his movements becoming sluggish, like being trapped in an invisible quagmire.
The speed of the threads’ movement was also severely affected, turning what was once an instant capturing process into something slow and awkward.
This was because his power level was significantly higher than Ron’s, giving him some resistance to the Time Stasis; otherwise, he should have been completely immobilized by now.
"This kind of time power..."
Maggs’ consciousness frantically searched through the depths of his memory.
The familiar feeling reminded him of a nearly forgotten name:
"’Clock King’ Erica..."
A legendary Great Wizard from the late Second Era and an absolute authority in time manipulation.
Even "Mist of the Invisible" Nas, a Supreme Apostle specializing in time abilities, couldn’t compare to her.
Maggs would never forget how that legendary presence single-handedly turned the tide, banishing over a dozen Original Apostles in one breath.
At that time, he was just an insignificant Morning Star-level Wizard, forced to watch that epoch-altering battle from afar.
The great clock manifested by Erica’s void remains almost rewrote the basic rules of the battlefield.
Those once-unrivaled Original Apostles were like lambs to the slaughter, powerless against the might of time.
And now, the same aura of power reappeared on his opponent!
"Impossible! Erica was self-banished into the river of time with those Original Apostles after that battle. How could her legacy have spread..."
It was this brief moment of hesitation that gave Ron the perfect chance to escape.
The second hand of the silver pocket watch began to rotate counterclockwise, and the time runes on the dial emitted a blinding light.
This wasn’t Time Stasis, but another capability of the pocket watch—Time Jump.
The next moment, Ron’s figure disappeared like an illusion and reappeared a few hundred meters away in a safe zone.
The entire process left no trace of movement.
It was as if he vanished from the current time node and appeared at another one.
Maggs’ bindings completely missed their mark, and those black threads weakly flailed in the air, eventually dissipating into nothingness.
"Time Jump..."
Maggs’ voice carried deep apprehension as his nine eyes were fixed on Ron, who stood again beside Nari:
"Who exactly are you? How can you use Erica’s Time Secret Technique?"
Ron slowly put away the pocket watch, its silver surface looking particularly mysterious in the reflection of the Chaos Storm:
"Some secrets are beyond your entitlement to know."
His voice was calm as water, but the underlying threat startled even Maggs:
"But I can tell you one thing—if there’s a next time, I won’t just run away."
Seeing her "child" safely escape, Nari heaved a sigh of relief while her anger exploded to its peak.
The earlier bewitching confusion had completely vanished, replaced by pure maternal protective rage.
"Maggs!!!"
Her roar shook the entire arena as countless tentacles began to release pure Aura of Chaos:
"You despicable liar! How dare you lay hands on my child!"
Nari now truly understood that all Maggs’ previous "concern" was a false guise.
His real purpose, from the beginning, was to harm Ron.