Inhuman Warlock

Lucifer searched the entire night yet failed to find a place where he could spend the night. He couldn't even find a way out of this city. He knew nothing about this city, but he could see that there was a gigantic barrier around it.

He had a feeling that it was going to stop and alert others if he tried to leave from here. He needed someone's help, but who could help him at a time like this? He didn't know anyone here. It was possible that his future self had some contacts, but it was different for him.

He had to toss all his devices away so he couldn't be discovered. He had nothing but his clothes.

"Sigh, this place is giving me a headache. Why is this time messing up with me so much? I need to find a way to control it before it brings more trouble onto me," Lucifer sighed as he found no other option.

Ultimately, he just decided to take the step, no matter how risky it was. He decided to escape even though there was a barrier around the city.

"I've been here for a long time, but I'm not going back. It's the first time it has lasted so long. I can't wait for my soul to be sent back. If I stay here, I can be caught anytime. I need to leave! It's a risk that must be taken."

Not only was there a barrier surrounding the city, but there were also vehicles of Star Alliance outside the city. It was as if the entire city was sealed where no one could come in or leave without the permission of the Star Alliance.

Lucifer tried to find the perfect spot to attempt an escape, but even the perfect spot was hard to find when there were guards all around.

After a long search, Lucifer finally located a spot that had comparatively low risk. There was only one patrol car near that place, and even that was around two kilometers away. This was the blind spot in the defense.

However, even though the patrol car wasn't nearby, the barrier was still there. And if it alerted anyone about an attempted escape, the Star Alliance members were soon going to be here.

Lucifer stood on the roof of a building, closest to the spot, as he observed the surroundings.

"Even after I leave, where would I even go though. To a different city? What if that's surrounded as well? Maybe this isn't the right plan after all."

Just as he was on the verge of executing his escape, he started having second thoughts. He sat again, with the support of the wall, losing himself in thoughts.

"How can I control an ability which I don't know much about? Controlling time would be incredible, but something is wrong. It can't just be because the ability didn't belong to me since birth. It must be something else. What am I missing?"

Immersed in thoughts, Lucifer started thinking about the events that led him here to see if he was missing something.

"Usually, whenever I stole an ability, I was able to master it from the start. The problem started with the Time Core. Wait a minute... This mess didn't start at the time of evolution. Something happened even when I had absorbed the ability. There was some problem. I remember!"

"At that time, I was sent into the past. That's right. That's where all the problems started! Could that be what I'm missing? The problem isn't that I evolved an ability that I stole, but it's that I evolved an ability that was incomplete."

"I completed it by stealing the ability from the past and came back to the future, but maybe that didn't entirely solve the problem? There was still something that was missing? To understand what's wrong now, first I need to understand what went wrong the first time when I stole the ability."

"As far as I remember, I did everything I usually did. There was no difference in stealing the core. I'm sure of it. The cure successfully entered my body. Then the problem must've started after it entered my body. That's what I need to discover. Maybe I might truly be able to solve this problem?"

He stood up once again, but this time he had a better plan. It wasn't to leave this town. Instead, the plan was to leave this timeline altogether by solving his biggest problem. However, he couldn't do it here. He needed to find proper privacy, which he wasn't going to receive near the border.

He decided to go back to the only empty place he knew. It was the room of Joana, which was completely empty. All the search of the room was finished, even by forensics, and the house was sealed. No one was going to come to that place anymore.

Finding that place to be the safest to spend a few more days, Lucifer moved back to the house again.

Instead of sitting in the same room where he had fought with Joana, he moved back to a different room.

In case someone came to check the room, he didn't want to be the first thing they found. Instead, he went to the storage room and sealed the door from the outside to give the impression that there was no one inside.

After sealing the room, he appeared inside the room. He sat in the corner of the storage room and closed his eyes. He decided to observe his Time core carefully in case there was something he had missed.

Inside his body, there were many ability cores, but the time core seemed to be alone in the middle of his body. There weren't any other cores near it.

"I can't find anything wrong, other than the shape of it. The shape seems slightly off," he muttered, frowning. "Is that the problem? There seems to be more than that. Something is making the core unstable. I don't know what could be doing it. It's not like there's another core which is conflicting with it?"

Just to be safe, he observed all the other cores to see if there was another core that was unstable that could be creating this problem. However, he couldn't find even a single core that was unstable.

"There is none. Could it be that I was overthinking? Maybe it's truly the evolution that made it unstable? Anyway, that would make sense why I can't control this core. That seems to be the only option since no other core is unstable. I checked all the cores."