Chapter 62: The Time
Meanwhile—
Chiba and Kerberos hid behind a body pillow vendor's booth.
"So, the conclusion is obvious."
"We're trapped. This lobby is like a game level that keeps loading saves."
"Exactly."
"Because The Time card is one of the highest-tier cards among the Clow Cards."
Kerberos looked deadly serious. Though it appeared somewhat comical on that fuzzy face, its tone was absolutely not joking.
"It possesses the ability to manipulate the flow of time. It can make time speed up, slow down, or even like just now—directly reverse time within a certain range back to the past!"
"Reversal..."
Chiba narrowed his eyes.
"Then why do only we remember? Those people outside seem completely unaware of what just happened."
"Because of magic."
Kerberos explained:
"Time magic is an absolute rule for ordinary people. Once it resets, their memories return to that time point along with everything else. But for people with magical power, we can resist this rule's erosion. It's like... even though the river flows backward, we're the rocks in the river, still in our original positions."
"I see."
Chiba nodded.
This also explained why Eriri thought today was Tuesday.
That ojou-sama had probably been trapped in this convention loop starting the day after he blacklisted her.
That is, starting Tuesday.
She was stuck in this infinitely repeating day, reset over and over, forgetting everything, then starting again.
"This is troublesome now."
Kerberos sighed, clutching its small tuft of mane.
"The situation is obvious now. That Move card was just a decoy to distract you."
"They're definitely working together! The Move card's job was to trick you into this inner hall, while The Time card already turned this place into a time-loop trap. Once you enter, you'll be trapped in this constantly resetting time with no way out!"
Chiba couldn't help but marvel.
"These two cards working together—pretty slick coordination."
Though he knew there'd definitely be trouble in the inner hall, he hadn't expected it to be this troublesome.
"The old man's cards were intelligent to begin with, especially these high-tier cards."
Kerberos explained helplessly.
"But... there's one thing that's strange."
It stroked its chin, showing a thoughtful expression.
"Though The Time card is powerful, after each ability activation, it needs time to recover magical power. I don't understand why it would pull this stunt at a manga convention."
"You just said this thing burns a lot of mana?"
Chiba keenly caught the key point.
"Exactly! If it were completely resetting an entire day, it would indeed need to rest for a long time. But this kind of small-scale few-minutes reset isn't difficult for it."
Kerberos seemed to realize something too, its expression becoming uglier.
"Could it be... it's conserving magic and trying to trap us here with minimal cost?"
"Conserving magic..."
Chiba keenly grasped the critical point.
He remembered that in the original series, The Time card directly reset an entire day for Sakura's town, but here it was only resetting a few minutes.
The card couldn't be doing this without reason.
Could that Time card be charging up for something big?
Chiba clearly remembered that in the original, Sakura used The Shield card's absolute defense to become immune to time reversal, then captured The Time card.
But he didn't have that card in hand right now. What should he do?
Fortunately, Kerberos saw through his concerns.
"However, you don't need to worry. When the old man originally designed The Time card, to prevent it from being abused and causing spacetime paradoxes, he built in significant restrictions."
"After The Time card activates its ability, regardless of what it's used for, it needs a period of time to reaccumulate magical power. Though I don't know how long this interval is, it's definitely our only chance."
"Cooldown period?"
Chiba mulled over this term.
"You're saying that although this guy can rewind time like a videotape at will, after pressing that rewind button each time, its finger cramps up for a while?"
"Though your metaphor sucks, that's basically it."
Now Chiba understood.
The current method to break this situation was probably: as long as he could find it after The Time card activated reversal, he could take it down.
But the biggest problem right now was that The Time card was extremely cunningly hiding in the convention's sea of people, using the constantly looping time to turn everyone into its cover.
This really wasn't easy to discover.
Thinking this far, Chiba couldn't help but ask:
"Since it's trapped so many people here, won't their relatives and families notice the abnormality?"
Kerberos answered:
"Most likely The Time card has already reset time for all of Tomoe District. In short, any factor that might affect it, it will intervene."
Hearing that The Time card had this terrifying AOE (area of effect) control ability—
Chiba immediately realized this card's strategic value was simply immeasurable. Being able to reset time for such a large area—if he could capture it, his combat capabilities would see a qualitative leap.
Then, by reviewing the reset trigger point from earlier, Chiba keenly discovered the core mechanism of The Time card's time reversal.
When he first entered the venue, he hadn't seen The Time card activate its ability, indicating it wasn't targeting him specifically.
Just now, it seemed to activate reversal only when the crowd started noticing the time inconsistencies.
So that meant it was an extremely order-focused entity.
As long as someone became aware the time was wrong, it would unhesitatingly activate reversal to patch the loophole.
If that was the case, then he should actively create chaos large enough that it had no choice but to intervene.
Chiba immediately laid out his plan.
Kerberos immediately showed a worried expression.
"But Chiba, how will you do this? This is a manga convention. Even if you streaked around the whole place, people would probably just think you're cosplaying some perverted character."
"Streaking and that kind of lowbrow entertainment should be left to influencers who want to go viral."
Chiba snapped his fingers.
Shadow Khan instantly emerged from behind him, holding several gold bars in their hands.
Kerberos looked puzzled.
"What's this, gold bars?"
"No, these are magical wonderful tools we'll be using shortly."
...
...
Three minutes later, at the convention's inner hall central stage—
Several scantily clad cosplayers with fairly accurate costumes were twisting their waists to energetic otaku dance music on stage.
Below the stage stood a circle of photographers with cameras of all sizes and dead-serious otaku frantically waving glow sticks and shouting support.
Just as the atmosphere reached its peak—
Several ninjas suddenly took the stage. Without any unnecessary words, moving in perfect unison, they stepped forward and lifted those still-dazed dancing ladies like picking up chickens, showing no mercy as they escorted them off the stage.
"Hey! What the hell?! My little brother was just getting to the good part and you pull this?!"
"Bastards! I already took my pants off and you show me this?!"
"Where'd these troublemakers come from?! Security! Where's security?!"