Tick Tock On The Clock [LITRPG Deckbuilding with Time Ticking down]

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{…SO YOU'RE THE HEIR TO MY LEGACY… A KID?}

Cassian felt it before he saw it—the subtle shift in the air, like reality itself had been peeled back. The sensation of being unmoored from time, of something vast and ancient pressing against the edges of his soul. Then, all at once, the world exploded into color and motion, flooding his senses with a force that knocked the breath from his lungs.

It wasn't real.

But it felt more real than anything he had ever experienced.

{YOU TOUCHED MY INHERITANCE.}

The voice came again, colder now. Heavier. Cassian's skin prickled, the air thickening like a coming storm. It pushed down on him, commanding, testing, judging.

{SHOW ME YOU'RE WORTHY TO HOLD MY LEGACY, OR I'LL BURY YOU WITH IT.}

The void split open like a curtain, and Cassian felt himself hurled forward as if from a great height. He landed hard—knees hitting charred earth, lungs struggling for air. His stomach rolled with nausea, but he clenched his teeth and forced himself to breathe, to adjust.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the underground shelter.

He was on a battlefield.

What the hell? System?

The sky above was dark, the color of dying embers, and the wind carried the copper sting of blood and ash. Fires crackled on the horizon, lighting the landscape with flickering red-orange pulses. The ground beneath his feet was scorched, cracked—split by ancient magic and violence.

Cassian flinched and instinctively turned as he sensed motion behind him. He swung a hand at the movement, but it passed clean through a figure. No impact. No resistance. The red-skinned man didn't even seem to notice as he passed straight through him.

What??!… A ghost?… or am I a ghost here?

"System, where am I? What's my situation?" Cassian muttered under his breath.

"Oh!… Great," Cassian whispered, exhaling as he turned back to the scene.

So this is how demons look…

The figure before him was unmistakably demonic—red skin marred with swirling black sigils, a lean, brutal frame encased in cracked obsidian armor. Two short horns jutted from his brow, and wild, shoulder-length hair framed a face that looked both young and ancient. His claws flexed with casual cruelty as he stalked forward.

Cassian's eyes followed his movement—toward someone kneeling in the dirt.

A boy.

He was Cassian's age, maybe younger. His armor was shattered, barely clinging to his bruised frame. One leg was twisted at the wrong angle. Blood trickled down his temple.

Despite that, he stood, his eyes burning with determination.

With nothing but a broken, splintered training blade gripped in trembling hands, the boy forced himself to rise.

The demon chuckled darkly, low, and condescending.

"You humans don't learn," the demon sneered, voice a jagged growl. "Do you think courage matters? You break. You bleed. You die. All the same in the end."

The boy didn't respond. He simply looked up—eyes defiant, jaw set.

Then he charged.

Cassian blinked. The boy was fast—too fast for someone that was injured. In an instant, he was right in front of the demon, his broken blade arcing toward the monster's sneering face.

But the demon didn't flinch. With a casual flick of his clawed hand, he slapped the weapon aside like a toy and caught the boy by the throat, lifting him off the ground.

Cassian took a step forward, instinctively—but it was memory, not reality.

He couldn't interfere.

The demon laughed, holding the boy like a cat toying with a half-dead mouse. "You're brave. I'll give you that. But bravery doesn't mean anything when you're powerless."

Cassian started to look away—he didn't want to see it end like this.

But then he felt a subtle shift in the air.

His gaze snapped back to the boy. A strange energy was building up in the boy's chest. Different but similar to essence… the taste, or rather the flavor, was closer to creation attunement. The demon was too busy laughing to notice.

The boy's fingers twitched subtly, and Cassian saw a faint smirk on the boy's face. The demon paused, his expression morphed into confusion and then fear in an instant. Before he could even speak, the boy moved.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

With a burst of unnatural strength, he rammed both thumbs into the demon's eyes. A golden energy manifested around the boy like an aura.

The demon's scream tore through the battlefield as golden energy surged outward, rupturing through his skull. His head burst in a flash of light and gore.

And the boy fell with it—panting, gasping, bloodied, and broken, but alive.

Cassian stared, stunned. His heart thudded in his chest, each beat echoing louder than the last. The moment replayed in his mind—the flash of golden light, the surge of power, the demon's head exploding like a ruptured drum.

That energy… was that what Aura was?

The shift had been instant. One second, the boy was on the verge of death, broken and bleeding—and the next, he was a storm. The second that aura bloomed around him, his strength skyrocketed.

Cassian narrowed his eyes; his thoughts raced.

Cassian replayed the scene in his mind as he remembered the demon was fearful of Aura… why? Is this just because of the strength or did Aura have some innate property—something deeper—that made demons react like that?

The Aura did feel similar to creation attunement essence, but it was more ordered and sharpened.

Cassian let the memory roll through his mind once more.

It was will.

He tried to make sense of it, to absorb its weight, when suddenly—the world shifted.

The ground tilted beneath him as time itself spiraled forward. Years passed in a blink. The battlefield blurred. Everything spun so violently that Cassian nearly vomited as he fell to one knee, groaning and clutching at the invisible ground beneath him.

"What the hell…" he muttered, gritting his teeth as the storm of memory slowed and vision returned.

When he looked up, he saw the boy again—but now older. Taller. Stronger. His face was still the same, but sharper, set with grim determination. The boy had become a young man—his armor no longer too big or rusted. It was no longer borrowed. It was earned. Fitted to his frame, marked with sigils and scratches that spoke of battles survived and victories paid for in blood.

Cassian watched, awestruck, as the knight led others through war-torn canyons, his squad striking down enemies with ruthless coordination. He pulled civilians from burning ruins. Stood as a wall between chaos and order. Saved towns long since given up for dead.

His swordplay was brutal—far from elegant. No refined footwork, no dazzling flair. It was practical. Wild. Sharpened not by theory, but by the raw edge of survival. Cassian couldn't look away. He saw himself in those movements. Or maybe… what he wanted to become.

Then the memories began to move faster.

"Commander of the Western Gate."

"The Last Bastion."

"Shield of Forlon."

Titles whispered through the storm of memory like echoes of a legend passed from one dying soldier to another.

Cassian clenched his fists as the scenes blurred. The knight aged before his eyes, but his resolve never cracked. His eyes—still lit with that same fire—never dimmed.

Cassian watched a crown being offered to him.

And refused.

He saw treaties burned in rage, alliances shattered under the weight of betrayal. He watched as the knight fought alone across fields of blackened ash, standing over the bodies of demons and traitors alike, every step forward a defiance of fate itself.

He never knelt.

Not once.

….

Cassian groaned; he wasn't just watching a story—he was being dragged through the man's life. His senses blurred and bent, carried along by the flood of memory. A thousand moments flashed through him like lightning, burning too fast, too bright.

And yet… most of it slipped through his fingers like smoke.

The deeper truths—the names, the magic, the doctrines that gave meaning to this knight's rise—whispered past him in a language he almost understood. Ancient words hissed around his ears, dense with purpose, laced with pain, but always just out of reach. They left behind only weight. Shape. Echoes.

It was like watching the world from underwater. He could see it moving, blazing, collapsing—but it was always muffled. Distant.

The sheer volume of it all—the years, the battles, the weight of purpose—pressed against his mind like a stone wall. Cassian gritted his teeth, forcing his focus to hold, but it was slipping.

His attention frayed. His vision blurred. His breath came shallow.

I want to remember this. I need to remember.

But it was too much. And then—like a door slamming shut—everything stopped.

Only one vision remained.

The last stand.

The battlefield was broken earth and fire, a valley carved into ruin by war. Mountains trembled in the distance under the pressure of demonic incantations. The sky was red and bruised with ash and death. Smoke choked the wind.

In the center of it all stood the last knight of Forlorn.

He wore no crown, but he didn't need one. His armor—once regal—was now cracked and splintered, blackened with soot and dried blood. But he stood tall. Unbowed. A single blade in his hand—half broken, the edge jagged and glowing with a golden heat.

And across from him…

Tharaan'ka'Bahk'fus'roh'haran.

The Archdemon of the Wuzsifa Horde.

It towered like a god of madness. Its body was a mockery of flesh, layered in obsidian bone and demonic sigils that pulsed with destructive essence. Six arms. A head crowned with six horns. Fangs like spears. Its very presence made the world beneath it rot.

And yet the knight exhaled slowly, and the surrounding air stilled.

Then, calmly, he raised his sword.

Cassian felt it before he saw it—a golden ripple exploding from the knight's body like a sun igniting: Aura.

But this wasn't the tentative flicker from before. This was a storm.

The Knight's aura billowed outward in a sphere of will, golden and absolute. The earth beneath him crystallized. The broken ground reformed. Even the air shimmered with power.

His presence alone reshaped the battlefield.

The Demon let out a guttural growl that shook the mountains. Then it charged, moving faster than anything its size should. Six arms raised, each wielding a different cursed weapon—scythe, axe, fang-blade, bone lash, spear, and firebrand.

Holy, Cassian instinctively flinched.

But the Knight didn't move. Until the very last moment.

Then he stepped.

Just one. No flash, no fancy footwork—only absolute control.

The first blow he parried with a half-turn, letting the axe skid off the aura dancing across his sword. The second strike he caught—caught—with a bare hand, aura reinforcing his gauntlet until it cracked, then deflected the cursed firebrand into the ground where it erupted harmlessly.

And then—he struck.

Cassian couldn't see the movement. Only the result.

A gash appeared across the archdemon's chest—deep, glowing from within.

The knight's aura burned brighter, clearer, and cleaner than anything Cassian had seen before.

It wasn't about strength anymore. It was about resolve. Every movement was intent made real. Every strike carried a story. A vow.

This world will not fall while I still stand.

Cassian watched, breath held, as the duel continued—a flurry of power and conviction. The Knight didn't win through overwhelming force. He won because every swing denied the demon its future.

And finally, when the Archdemon lunged in a desperate frenzy, the Knight stepped forward and drove his broken blade straight through the monster's chest—his aura flaring into a blazing column that reached the sky.

The demon screamed—then shattered.

Its body exploded into corrupted fragments, dissolving into ash and bone. Silence followed.

The knight stood there, breathing heavily and swaying.

And then he turned, looking directly at Cassian.

Even across memory. Across time.

His eyes were clear. Calm.

{IF YOU TRULY WISH TO CARRY THIS BLADE… THEN STAND AS I DID. WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER BREATHE, STAND. WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER FIGHT, STAND. WHEN THE WORLD ABANDONS YOU—

STAND.}

{The sword is not your hand. It is not your skill. It is not even your courage. The sword… is your choice.}

{Choose well, boy. Or don't choose at all.}

The vision shattered.

Cassian gasped, snapping upright as reality slammed back into him like a cold wave. The warmth of the aura, the burning battlefield, the echo of the knight's last words—they were gone, ripped away as if someone had slammed a door between worlds.

He was back.

Back in the dimly lit shelter room, water was still running from the nearby shower, steam curling around the edges of the mirror.

System notifications began to flood his vision, one after the other, glowing softly in the air before him like falling stars.

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