He wanted to go home.
This thought was so clear, so burning, that it even temporarily suppressed the agony of his body and the desperate situation he faced.
However, the "next moment" did not give him any chance to put this thought into action.
No, perhaps more accurately, the very concept of "the next moment" had been rudely dismantled by some higher-dimensional rule the instant the Imaginary Construct entered combat mode.
Then, the opponent "smashed" onto Shu's broken body and accelerated mind with near-infinite density.
[Suspected hairline fracture in the left ulna, force direction from...]
This piece of information was like a fishbone stuck in his throat; its outline had just emerged when it was rudely covered by a torrent of even "fresher" information.
[Right gastrocnemius tendon pierced, attack attribute suspected to be spatial cutting, with attached...]
Interrupted.
Information overwritten again.
[Structural cracks in the third and fourth ribs under the armpit, shockwave attribute...]
Interrupted.
[Left scapula dislocated, accompanied by time dilation effect, movement restrict...]
Interrupted...
Wrong!
Interrupt all information extraction!
Shu abruptly shut down all his senses, ceasing to gather any information from the objective world.
This finally allowed him to start thinking carefully.
Was there a problem with his thinking? Was too much garbage information being poured into his mind?
No, the Authority of the Imaginary Construct is Space-Time, not mental pollution.
Then...
This information is all real.
It's just too fast.
Fast enough that the "basic frame rate" of this world cannot bear it.
Fast enough that the boundary between "the previous instant" and "the next instant" in Shu's consciousness was completely erased, and all "instants" were superimposed into a chaotic "continuous state."
The opponent didn't use complicated feints, nor did it play tricks with space-time rules.
It simply raised the frequency of its attacks to a dimension that Shu's perception and thought structure completely failed to keep up with.
This was the most violent "speed"!
Every "frame" of the world contained one or even several strikes, and under such dense bombardment, attacks filled the entire world.
If he tried to continue synchronizing and parsing this torrent of information, the result would be the collapse of his thought structure first.
No good.
If he can't obtain any objective information, he can't win.
But he isn't without options, it's just that every method carries immense hidden dangers...
Shu's thoughts hesitated for a moment, but he still decided to activate the emergency method.
He withdrew all remaining computational power from the front line of "real-time processing" back to the core "fortress of thought."
Segmented packaging, delayed analysis.
He no longer asked, "What is happening right now?"
Instead, he asked: "In that 'period of time' I just subjectively defined, what total 'state changes' did my body undergo?"
Like a person continuously beaten by heavy rain, instead of counting every drop, he looked directly at the depth and turbidity of the puddles on the ground to reverse-engineer the rainfall volume and speed.
Even what impurities were mixed in the raindrops.
Shu's mind finally snatched a gasp of respite from that crushing information overload and began to operate again.
He obtained a statistical report on the damage within "that short period of time just now."
Accumulated seventeen bone fractures, eight piercing wounds, thirty-four traces of energy erosion, space-time stagnation effects superimposed beyond the critical threshold...
This report was cold and detailed.
But he also completely lost his grasp on the "present."
He didn't know which phase of the attack wave he was in "at this moment," didn't know from which dimension that black-gold clock blade was slashing toward his neck, didn't know if the Imaginary Construct had prepared a "move change" sufficient to decide the outcome in one blow.
He was like a terminal dragged down by extremely high latency, forever seeing images of the "past."
While the enemy lived in the "now."
Possibly even predicting his "future."
If the enemy suddenly changed its moves, even if the new move wasn't this unreactable attack, Shu's response would be half a beat slow, thus missing the optimal window for reaction.
But fortunately, this was just Shu's baseless worry of "thinking one step too far." The Imaginary Construct didn't even disdain to change moves; it was simply suppressing all of Shu's actions with the purest speed.
Shu attempted to resist, and in the next instant, the resistant action was forcibly interrupted by a storm-like barrage of attacks.
However, after understanding his injuries, the Imaginary Construct's damage actually didn't constitute substantial harm to Shu anymore.
He indeed couldn't defend against the opponent's attacks, but his speed of repairing his own injuries completely kept up with the destruction the Imaginary Construct inflicted on him.
This should have been a dawn in desperate straits.
But there was no joy in Shu's heart, only deeper chill.
The Imaginary Construct didn't need to "kill" him at all.
The purpose of its infinite frame-rate attacks wasn't to cause irreversible fatal injuries. Shu didn't believe an Imaginary Construct capable of such speed only had speed.
The opponent absolutely had the ability to inflict fatal wounds on him!
But it was just like a magnet set with a program, firmly attached to him, this iron nail, using continuous attacks as a "contact signal" to ensure he couldn't break away, couldn't do anything else.
For example, to support that meteor flying backward toward Abzu.
Or... to break the deadlock in a more extreme way.
He couldn't "commit suicide."
Not that he didn't want to.
Just now, when he issued a faint command from the bottom of his mind to his body to "actively abandon defense"—
Pfft!
An impact precisely hitting his force exertion node strangled that command, along with the micro-adjustment of his body, in the cradle.
Followed by a second time, a third time...
Whenever he generated any trending intent similar to "actively seeking death," the Imaginary Construct's attacks would intervene in an even more preemptive way, interrupting this "trend" and pulling him back into the loop of "forced defense - take damage - initiate recovery."
It seemed able to "pre-read" the pre-motion of his actions based on the goal of breaking the situation, even if that pre-motion only existed on the mental level.
This completely blocked the possibility of him using his own characteristics to take risks.
And what made Shu dare not act rashly even more were those labels on the opponent: "Imaginary," "Beyond the World."
"Exception"!
This thing seemed to have written these two words on its face!
Who knew if Death Rewind would still trigger after being killed by this thing?!
It was like a person first being tricked to a foreign country by "high-paying recruitment," then taken to an unknown area for "training travel," and then told on the plane that "the destination has temporarily changed" to fly directly into a war zone.
Finally, at gunpoint, a masked man suddenly hands you a note saying, "Give up resistance, I guarantee your safe return home."
—Who would dare believe that?!
Anyway, Shu, who had truly been killed by a bullet before, dared not believe it!