Konrad didn't feel ready by any possible metric.
Overwhelmed, overworked, and confused, if anything.
And now he had an archangel in a frilly blue dress sitting on his lap with an unreadable expression. Time might've stopped around him, but they were still in the middle of an arena.
Not that anything made sense to him anymore.
"Since we're out of time, we're going to borrow some," Gabrielle said, whatever that meant.
Konrad half-expected Lily to materialise and snap at her, but he was alone with his confusion.
And while that should've been normal—
He got so used to the external thoughts of teleporting deities that he felt more lost than ever.
Except, well, Gabrielle was still with him, perched on his lap in this almost frozen moment.
Which made him realise something.
"Wait, this was always an option?" he asked, part confused and part angry. "You pushed me to my limits, but you could've stopped time at any given, uh—time?"
Like an extensive training session, to get proper rest, or anything, to be honest.
"Was it an option? Sure," the angel smirked. "But once we start, you'll beg me to stop it."
Konrad's first reaction was to push her off his lap.
Or would have been, if he could.
He didn't lose control of his body, but it took way more energy to lift a finger than he had anticipated. Not to mention the speed—a snail could've run laps around him now.
And the backlash?
His mind went numb, his body overheated, and he felt like panting as if he had run a marathon. All he did was lift his finger a single inch.
"What the hell?" he asked, surprised that he was even able to talk at this point.
And this wasn't even his first rodeo.
Gabrielle stopped his time before, but—how did he not notice this until now?
"Yes, it was always like this, but the human mind is a peculiar thing," she noted with a sigh.
Jumping off his lap, she pulled him onto his feet.
Like a rheumatic old man with the worst case of lumbago, every joint screamed at him to stop.
"Your lips stand still when you talk. And earlier, when you thought you had moved, that was only your imagination. My skill would be rather useless otherwise, don't you think?"
The world was spinning.
He lost his balance, but frozen in the moment, even falling would've taken him forever.
Only his mind worked at its usual speed, which left him plenty of time to—well, panic.
"It's my fault," Gabrielle confessed, circling him and fixing his crooked posture. "I expected the Demon Lord to arrive at least a week later, but it is what it is now. We haven't lost yet."
"What?!" Konrad snapped, his mind finding its sudden focus. "You knew he was coming?"
The angel looked at him with a glare as if he were an idiot.
"Why else do you think I let the Green Mage's disappearance leak?" she asked. "You could say, I invited Maou Midori here. The time seemed right, but—you were still a bit too slow."
It made no sense.
Did she admit her betrayal and then blame everything on him?
"I thought he was the final boss you wanted me to get rid of," Konrad complained, fighting to find his balance. "And now you say you called him here?"
The angel let out a long sigh, taking a step back to look him up and down.
"As I said, I expected you to develop faster," she noted, looking disappointed. "That we could've fought this threat on our own terms. The longer we wait, the worse our chances get."
Now that things made some strange sense, Konrad hated it even more.
"What was your original plan?!" he demanded. "I'm no superhuman, you know. I still see no way to win against something that scares the likes of you."
Given that she stopped time again, what could have even threatened an archangel?
Gabrielle took another step back, rolling her eyes before leaning against the railings.
"The plan was that you'd impress the king and earn your ducal title. That you master this world's magic and face him as an equal. And to stop the nomadic armies at the Halaima Pass."
She listed those things as mundane tasks.
"But alas, the king's dead now," she claimed with an unreadable face.
"What?!" Konrad yelled, the world spinning around him again.
No, he was falling. Or was it getting dark?
"And the worst part is that we're in the wrong place," Gabrielle continued, her voice feeling distant. He knew this feeling. He was about to pass out, but why? "We should be at the pass—"
His eyelids, heavy as they were, started to close on their own.
When the angel finally noticed, he felt her cold touch on his arms, then—
The softest lips that had ever touched his.
Confusion, exhaustion and magic or not, his eyes snapped open to see Gabby closer than ever.
They kissed, but it wasn't anything like he'd done before.
Be it a kiss with Lily, or any other haremette.
From those, he would usually feel a flutter in his heart, his mind going blank—
But now, it was the exact opposite.
His lungs filled with air, his sight cleared out, and he was in perfect focus again.
A moment later, Gabrielle took a step back, releasing him and wiping her lips.
"My bad," she muttered, only the slightest blush visible on her cheeks. "I didn't expect you'd suffocate once I slowed time. Now you see why I don't do this often."
That wasn't a kiss. Not exactly.
It was artificial respiration. And yet, realising what happened, he was now blushing even more.
"Calm down and relax," the angel snapped at him, right as a sharp cough wracked his entire body. "Great, now you wasted all that air I have given you."
And with that, they were back to kissing again—or whatever this counted as.
"Every minute in the real world, I can turn into an hour," Gabrielle claimed, her face still too close. "You can brush up your magic knowledge, but only if you don't suffocate."
"So that's what you had in mind," he panted, or imagined it, still struggling with his instincts.
The scene around him might've felt frozen, but now that she mentioned it, people moved.
It was a pace so slow that he wouldn't have noticed otherwise, but it also told him that he wasn't invisible. If he had the strength to fight the angel's power, he would've spun around, but—
"How am I supposed to learn anything here?" Konrad asked, reigning in his mind.
Neither Lily nor this angel used this world's magic.
They couldn't teach him, and his former master disappeared.
He had no spellbooks, only a crowd and an illusion broadcast he lost track of.
"Fair," Gabrielle noted, scratching her temple.
She snapped her fingers, and everything returned to normal.
Everything except Konrad's mental state.
He almost fell; his only luck was that he'd still stood over his seat. Then the reality of his present hit him, and he was desperate to grab the frayed strands of his illusion screens.
The angel cared little about his struggle.
"Call that dragon, and tell her to bring every book she can find in the scammer's place," she said. "Then she'll take over this broadcast thing. The tournament must continue."