Aniel's group departed without a goodbye, and then moved on as planned.

That girl, whose name I learned was Lisya, also went with them after some convincing.

She learned pretty easily what I truly wanted from her, but she decided to go along with it with some persuasion.

Aniel was by no means dense, and seemed at least aware of the princess's feelings, while Lisya herself had managed to bottle up everything.

So I told her to actively approach him.

He's a stiff guy, and I'm guessing that not much changed from his past life, despite his memory loss. I mean, people still write diaries? I know he called it a Journal, but if it's something he wrote to detail his day, that was definitely a diary.

Keeping his serious attitude in mind, he'll probably resist her during the trip, but I convinced her that there are two reasons why she should aggressively throw herself at him now instead of later.

—First of all, once everything has settled down, and and Aniel is more open to forming a more intimate relationship, it will already be too late. He'll likely be swamped by suitors if everything goes according to plan, as he'll be recognized as some sort of war hero. Heck, he might even jump up in noble rank by quite a lot, and thus have the right to become Aire's consort.

—Second and probably most sever; that boy doesn't seem like the type who knows how to unwind. Or if he does, he refuses to do so. He may have had the wisdom of an adult, but he still had the body of a child, and he could only take so much stress. If Aire ends up trying to compete, even if the ensuing drama is funny, it would be better if she agrees to share.

I honestly can't see a single appealing thing about that boy beyond his face, but I guess people can't help who they like.

Well it's fine; I expect to be rewarded generously for this when I meet up with Aniel. Even if it causes him quite a bit of distress at first.

That said, I got something valuable out of that exchange.

Information.

Not from her directly, but as a result of the exchange itself.

Well... I'll put that aside, because there's various conjecture I can come to, but I want to ascertain somethings before I make bad conclusions. For that, I want to finish breaking my pet in, and get answers out of her.

First, I decided to go feed her for the first time since I captured her the other day.

There was a cave out in the mountain, that the villagers practically never came through. That's where I kept my little fox.

I had nailed some rope to the ceiling of the cave, so I could hang her upside down, but now that I've come to check on her, I realize that was a terrible idea. She was filthy, having shat and pissed on herself. It's not like you can hold it in forever, I guess.

Well, before anything, I go ahead and get a cage from the Thenri family.

When I return, I decide to... play a little prank on my toy, gathering up various insects in the area, and placing them at her feet. They were all generally harmless to humans, but I'm sure she can't know that.

It seemed to work great as she panicked, squirming for dear life. But, as the insects began to crawl too far down, I splashed a bucket of water onto her, washing away most of the insects, but I went ahead and removed the rest by hand.

After that, I untied her feet, but stopped time, so that I could gently set her down. It wouldn't be funny if she busted her head.

Of course, with her feet freed, she frantically tried to escape. Either by instinct or intuition, she dashed towards the cave exit, but I stopped her in no time at all.

I took on the careful job of disrobing her, and setting her filthy clothes aside.

Time stopping powers came in handy here, as it would be difficult to remove this without her struggling.

After that, I had a bucket of water prepared, and began to wash her by hand.

Not even a minute had passed before I thought, "What the fuck am I doing?" but figured it was the responsibility of a pet owner to make sure the pet was healthy and clean. I do remember washing down a pet dog I had in my previous life. This isn't too much different.

So I took the job seriously, as I made sure she was perfectly clean after such a degrading thing. Well, she probably found this humiliating, which sort of added to the fun.

With that, I stuck her in a cage, and bound her in a way that she could still move, but in a really restrictive and uncomfortable way.

After that, I decided to take a look at her face, to make sure she was clean there.

As I held up her face, I didn't see anything off.

Well, she is quite pretty. Though, she's still not ready.

I considered the idea of starving her a little longer, however, as though on cue her stomach began to grumble.

I laughed a bit, but realized people need food and water. I wouldn't want my pet to die.

So, I decided to feed her by hand.

Why by hand? Because I felt she would refuse it any other way, so this seemed necessary.

Once I was done, I took my things and left.

Her dirty clothes were burned, but those weren't really "her clothes" to begin with. They were just something I bought as a spare for her, but I don't feel like washing them, nor getting her new clothes again.

Her original clothes were packed away for later.

From there, I decided to head home to Yenna to talk.

We had a small chat, before I had the idea to do some tests.

The two of us actually spent two days on these tests.

Tests regarding my powers, of course.

I wanted to see if it was possible to bring someone into my ability.

The result?

Absolute nothingness.

That's what Yenna described.

Thinking about it logically, it makes sense.

For me, my power compensates the fact that my body can't send me sensory information. It tells me up and down, and lets me feel resistance, so I know where my limbs are, even if the nerves in my limbs can't send information that fast.

Best of all, I can see in perfect color, even if there isn't any light hitting my retina, yet my eye-balls can only send so much data to my brain.

After all, my bodily processes are still working at their real-time level, despite the fact that I can move at will, without harming myself.

But most of these benefits are not extended to Yenna.

As such, slowing time down to half, means that her ability to see is slowed down. On top of everything becoming motion blurry, everything is darker as well.

Worst of all, she lost responsiveness in her body, as all her senses began to lag behind her mind.

It was an interesting discovery to say the least.

If I tried accelerating towards a factor of 50 or 60, we reached a boundary where Yenna could no longer sense anything, except for the occasional random sensation. Many times that, and it's basically like the mind was completely disconnected from the body.

Of course, I didn't want to scare Yenna too badly, so we only did these experiments for a few seconds at a time.

After various toying, I still couldn't "will" my ability to work properly on her.

It's a bit of a disappointing limitation, meaning that there's little use in speeding up other people with me. On the other hand, I did learn that I could apply my powers to her, without applying them to myself.

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That said, if we break contact, Yenna returned to normal time immediately, no matter what I tried.

I thought it was strange, considering my power only allows me to "cancle" it, if I apply the same amount of mana to return to normal time, but after a bit of testing, I realized that it takes double the amount of mana it takes for myself, to apply my powers to something else.

This rule even applies to my clothes, and I never noticed because the mass was so small. It seems to be some kind of assurance so that an object doesn't become lost in time.

In the end, the Net mana usage is the same, but for objects that are not my own body, I end up throwing in the "cancellation mana" ahead of time.

Actually, I sort of wondered WHY my clothes needed to be shifted out of time, if they were still reacting at normal time... Well, I suppose I'll find out through some testing later.

So the next day, we did some experiments to see "what counts as contact".

First off, being in the same medium of fluid (air or water) does not count.

However, having a solid object with contact between both of us does.

I though, what about the Earth below my feet? But I quickly realized the issue with that. If I try, it requires me to expand my magic throughout the entire planet, and effect everyone on it.

I simply don't have the mana for that.

I could affect just the ground that connects us, but as soon as either of us lose contact with that bit of earth, then contact is broken.

Well, we ended up trying various materials, but it seemed like Yenna was getting bored, so we decided to play with the others.

With Lein's army taken care of, I no longer had to hide any longer.

After a few games, and after instigating a fight or two between the kids, I had mother make some soup, which I once again took to my pet.

Thanks to my time stop ability, the soup remained nice and warm, without a single drop all the way up to the mountain.

As I reached the cave, I saw my pet laying in her cage, and for a moment I wondered if she was asleep. Well, I couldn't know with her face covered, but after a moment of watching her, she seemed to shift around, a bit, and I confirmed that she was at least awake. So, setting down the bowl of food, I went over to Sentra's cage, and touched it. For a moment, I thought, "What am I about to do?"

It was a purely evil idea, really.

I knew that humans could not last long in complete isolation. What's more, being deprived of ones senses was many times worst, as the ultimate form of isolation.

Practically speaking, Kitsune are just a different kind of human. Or so I concluded.

I picked a number...

One-Hundred-Thousand.

100,000

That's not quite a large amount of zeros, but it's still a big number.

If I accelerated time by a factor of one-hundred-thousand, then it would take me over two months to experience even one minute.

Well, this world doesn't have a concept of a month. So, with about 70 days, that would be 11 weeks, going by the 6 days a week system in this world.

From the perspective of anyone under my ability's influence, time may as well have just stopped.

But it's enough.

With that number in mind, I try to extend my power onto the cage, and its contents—Sentra the proud yet degraded Fox Spirit.

And for one minute, I watched.

It was like watching footage play in fast-forward, as she seemed to panic for the first seconds. But after less than 5 or so seconds, she stopped moving, as she lay on her side. Perhaps I would have thought she was dead, but she was still breathing, so I continued. Still 5 seconds should be... almost 6 days?

For the next fifty-five seconds, she didn't move at all. After all, she probably never considered that she actually was moving at all.

From her perspective, the first few seconds of her flailing around was probably her trying "but failing" to move or feel anything, before giving up. Five days of desperate struggle, but not feeling anything, before eventually giving up.

Thinking about it, this is kinda cheating, right?

Something like breaking down the walls of a person's mind, and building them back up—that's something that should take days, weeks, maybe even years.

But I'm not that patient.

It's the reason I don't bother training my body despite the pain. Long-term goals are nice, and I have some myself, but I much prefer instant gratification, if it suits me.

Once the Sixty long seconds were over, I canceled the use of my power.

She almost immediately reacted, as her ears perked up, and she turned her head about. I couldn't directly see her ears due to the cloth bag on her head, but I could see the indentations in the cloth move. As she became aware that her senses had returned, and that her body was once again hers, she huddled up, as if to feel her own warmth. As I opened the cage, her ears twitched, as she looked over in my direction.

Of course, being deprived of all senses, I'm sure she's over sensitive to stimuli at this point.

As I removed the cloth from her head and pull out the cloth I stuffed into her large ears, I cup her face like a child, as I usually do.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but she was delighted, as she seemed to rub her face against my hands, experiencing the first bit of warmth she's felt in months. It was amusing, watching her act like this, and I couldn't help but let out a giggle.

She was likely quite alone in all this time, even if for me it was only one minute.

I then remembered I had a bowl of soup, so I whispered into my pet's ears,

"I have food. Would you like some?"

As expected, after only a moment of hesitation, she nodded.

Thus, I ungagged her, and she left her mouth open, expectantly.

So I once again fed her by hand.

Unlike before, she didn't struggle, and instead was quite docile, taking the spoon, and savoring every second of it, before I pulled away.

Still, she held her mouth open, as if expecting more.

After commenting diminutively about how adorable she looked, I continued to feed her, one spoonful at a time.

However, as I came to my 10th spoon, I thought, it would be better if I hold off. I didn't want to spoil her so early, and it was better to make her dependent on me.

So, I stopped.

She didn't quite like that, as she began to beg me not to leave her alone, but...

"Don't worry, I'll be back tomorrow," I said, giving her a pat on the head.

And just for good measure, "Just be a good girl, ok?"

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Author Notes:

So, this chapter actually starts off where Chapter 22 left off on, and then covers Toya's perspective of Chapter 23. It also explains exactly what happened, and also gives some insight into how Toya's powers seem to work. Not much else to say about this chapter.

On another notes, decided to change my workflow. Instead of writing my chapters into an HTML document, I'm using Markdown for its simplicity, so I can convert it to HTML and BBCode easily, without worrying too much about formatting. Not that it'll affect you guys.

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