Chapter 1

“Uwaaaa~!” Kei stood up and the world was still as a photo.

Kei went outside his room and saw a woman on a chair drinking coffee. The woman is quite peculiar as behind her are white wings that radiate off an aura of being untainted and pure. It makes you feel holiness and when you see it makes you want to kneel and worship the woman.

“The world isn’t normal yet huh? How long has it been since this started?” Kei asked her.

“Ah, you’re awake, you slept for 16 hours today huh, quite long. The time stop started 2 days ago.” The woman looked up and answered calmly.

“Eh, so when do you suppose this will return to normal? An estimate would be fine. I will die seeing and talking to no one other than you.”

The woman glared at him and spoke. “Oh! so you think I’m not good enough to be your companion? Not like you have someone to listen and talk with you before this started, I don’t even think you had any friends.”

“You!! Arghh.” Kei looked disgruntled but didn’t fight back.

The woman looked satisfied with his reaction and looked smug, “I don’t know when the time will start again, and I don’t even know how this happened. I’m trying to find a way to return the world to normal.”

“How did all this happen huh?” Kei poured a coffee and tried to remember the events two days ago.

…

Crackle! Bang!

Kei looked up when he heard the sounds. “Renting for a year took like half my savings, this better not have any problems.”

Crack!

Kei felt like the sounds were outside his room and went to the window to take a look. He saw black lines appear in the sky.

“The fuck is the government doing now? Did some aircraft explode?” Then he saw the lines turn to crack as the sky exploded and there was a massive hole in the sky.

Black dots were pouring from the sky, to be specific, from the holes in the sky. Looking closely, some kind of living beings were falling, and looking even closer shows massive insects.

One insect fell in front of the apartment’s gate and on the road. Kei went outside to take a look, he looked up to check if there’s any more falling, once cleared he opened the gates and took a closer look, the dust subsided and he saw a massive crack in the road and in the middle was a huge cockroach, it was heavily injured with its carapace cracked and disgusting liquids coming off it. When it saw Kei, it jumped to Kei and opened its mouth, and planned to take a bite.

Kei, seeing this was terrified, and his hairs stood up on its ends. He saw the cockroach rapidly closing in on him, he tried to run but his legs wouldn’t move.

“HELP!!!” He looked around him and saw people looking at the cockroach and backing up in disgust or fear.

He felt the wind brush against his face as the roach was literally in front of him, about to bite.

“PLEASE! STOP!!!” Kei shouted in desperation and fear and closed his eyes, his life flashed in front of his eyes.

‘I survived the streets, the typhoons, and the winter, I even studied on my own and finally got a job and an apartment. Why do I have to die like this?”

When he opened his eyes, he saw the disgusting and scary face of the cockroach, still there. He closed his eyes again, but feeling that nothing happened, opened it again. He looked around and saw that people were still backing away.

“To whoever saved my life, thank you and I owe you my life.” Kei thanked the gods and bowed repeatedly.

“You’re welcome.” A voice sounded out behind the cockroach. The roach then exploded revealing the person behind it.

A beautiful woman is standing in front of Kei with her index finger stretched out and pointing where the cockroach was before.

Her beautiful white hair fluttered in the wind, the blood and gore that splattered from the cockroach didn’t touch her at all. Her seemingly aloof expression made her seem out of this world, but what made her otherworldly are the wings behind her softly fluttering.

Kei looked at her shocked. “H-how is your dress still clean?”

The woman looked at him oddly and asked, “Is that really your first question?”

“Uhh, I mean how did you kill that insect?” Kei blushed and tried to change his question.

“I poked it with my finger, that’s all.” She answered calmly.

Kei’s eyes widened, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN POKED?! That’s a massive cockroach no way poking would kill it, no matter how strong you are.” He wanted to ask if she’s joking but the blood scattered around and her eyes were real and serious.

“Anyways, the danger is gone now, could you please remove the time stop?” She looked around and asked him.

“Time stop what? Did the time freeze or something? Don’t joke like that, you killing that cockroach could be that you have a hidden weapon or something but freezing the time is just outrageous.”

He then looked around and saw that everybody was still standing there, nothing has changed.

“Don’t tell me you’re not joking, please no.”

…

“I just remembered, you’ve stayed with me for 2 days and I still don’t know your name. Oh, mine is Kei.” He looked up at her while sipping coffee.

“Hmm, my name is Krie, kind of sounds like yours. What a coincidence.” Krie answered while reading a book.

“What is that book and where did you get that?” Kei saw the book she was reading and got intrigued.

“Just something that piqued my interest while looking at your bookshelf, something something physics. Oh right, I might know how to remove the time stop.” Krie looked at Kei.

“Eh? Really, how. Do it fast, these 2 days felt like 2 months for me.” Kei was excited by what he heard.

“You see in this book, says something like every action has an equivalent reaction. You almost got killed by a cockroach that’s why the time stopped right? So how about you kill a cockroach maybe that will start it.”

Kei looked aghast at her idea and kept shaking his head. “Nope nope nope. I don’t want to see another one of those insects. Have you seen me leaving this house? No right? That’s because I don’t want to see more, I don’t even want to know what those are. Besides, I don’t think that’s how the third law of physics works.”

“Listen, this could be our only chance at returning everything to normal.” She tried to convince him.

Kei was a little convinced but still shook his head. His hand holding the coffee was shaking and he looked a little pale.

“What if I just beat it up enough so that you can easily kill it with a knife or something?” She continued, clearly wanting to try it out, and checked his reactions.

“Those insects are not affected by the time freeze?” A thought popped up in Kei’s head.

She nodded and explained. “I think the reason why I am also not affected by it is because I have magical energy, so those cockroaches which also have magical energy may also not be frozen. It’s just a hypothesis of mine, we can’t be sure.”

“Cockroach can live with their heads removed right? Maybe I can do it, but I’ll only watch from behind, ok? And since I’m doing this you better explain everything from the start.” Kei strengthened his resolve, his wish to go back to normal pushed him from behind.

‘Wait a minute, the time stopped because the cockroach died, maybe she wants me to die? Wait, no. If she wanted to kill me, she could’ve done it 2 days ago, with that strength… first of all, is she really that strong or just bluffing it? Maybe she wants to borrow a cockroach’s strength to kill me. First of all, the logic of the roach almost killing me causing the time to stop has so many holes.’ Kei was far too deep in his train of thought.

“Ok, I will explain what you want to know so ask away.” Krie looked at him deeply and placed the book she’s reading on the table.

“Ok, first what is that hole in the sky and why are there huge insects falling from it?” Kei asked his first question which bothered his mind since the start.

“That is the Realm Gate, as its name states, it’s a gateway between realms. It allowed the creatures of the Hell Realm to enter the Mortal Realm. It’s not all that bad since now the Heaven Realm can also come here now, we can help you mortals survive for now.”

“So, you mean to say that many more of that horrifying fuckers will come here on Earth? And what do you mean for now? I mean this may be selfish to say but why don’t you all just kill those fuckers?”

“More of the demons coming here, yes. We can’t defend you forever, and in the future, sooner or later, humans who have awakened their abilities will appear, spearheading the defense against the demons. About killing all the demons… It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s just that we can’t. You’ll learn the details if you’re strong enough, right now, learning about it would just break your reality.”

Kei understood and nodded. “If you don’t want to tell me then that’s fine, but I need to learn about the abilities. If you can’t tell me that then I’m not risking my life any time soon.”

“Well, it’s not really a big deal, the gate has connected the three major realms, and with it comes the magical energy processed from primordial energy. As humans get more used to magical energy, they will soon awaken abilities. There are two types of abilities, unique and common. Unique abilities appear in 1 every five thousand ability users. Needless to say, the majority of unique abilities are stronger than common abilities.”

“Ok, I’m satisfied now. Give me some time to prepare before we go.” Kei stood up and headed to his room but a hand grabbed his shoulders.

“Nope, you don’t even need to prepare anything, come I just detected something.” Kei looked behind him and saw Krie smiling ominously.

“No no no. I need to write my last will and I need to get my knife.” Kei protested and tried to shake the hand away, but the grip just became stronger. After a while, Kei just gave up.

“Here’s your weapon, that’s an enchanted weapon, meaning it can absorb magical energy and is stronger than regular weapons.” Krie tossed him a sheathed short knife and then pulled him outside the house.

Kei was grabbed by the waist, he closed his eyes because of fear and suddenly felt the ground disappearing, his feet were flailing in the air, when he opened his eyes, they were already tens of meters in the air.

“Oy stop moving so much, I might just let you go.” Krie looked at him while her white wings were flapping, they were moving so fast that buildings were zooming past them.

Kei stiffened and felt his soul leaving his body. They were so high now that the frozen humans below them looked like ants. His hands flailed due to fear and accidentally touched something he shouldn’t have.

Krie stiffened and accidentally let go of Kei. “Eh, what are you touching? You pervert.” Her faced blushed and she covered her chest with her hands. She then noticed that she’s no longer holding Kei.

“EHHHH!!! HELP ME!!!” Kei’s voice echoed loudly.

--End--