# Chapter 6: The Junk Umbrella and Heaven's Wrath
Kaelen Drago's grip on Aster's wrist felt like cold iron freshly plunged into polar ice. The protagonist's fingers trembled violently—not from weakness, but from holding back a weight of emotion that seemed to have been buried for hundreds of years.
Aster stared at Kaelen, eyes wide. His heart raced with adrenaline as he tried to process this absurd situation. 'Why did this novel's protagonist suddenly emerge from the shadows and grab my hand? Does he know I just humiliated Valerius? Wait, what did he just say? The World Law is going to kill me?'
“Let go, Mr. Drago,” Aster whispered, trying to pull his hand free without triggering an explosion of mana from Kaelen's unstable body. “I don't know what you're talking about. It's just an ugly rock that fell from Mr. Clydes's hand. I only wanted to pick it up so no one would slip.”
“Don't lie to me!” Kaelen's voice was hoarse, his ruby-red eyes radiating terrifying despair. “I've watched you die one hundred forty-seven times, Aster! Every time I try to change your fate, this world corrects it in an even crueler way! That stone... it's Valerius's causality anchor. If you take it tonight, before the appointed time, the World Law won't send monsters to kill you. It will erase your existence directly from space and time!”
Aster swallowed hard. His mind spun. 'One hundred forty-seven times? A time loop?! Kaelen Drago is a regressor?!'
No wonder Kaelen's gaze in the cafeteria earlier had been so full of grief. No wonder he knew about Vespera's debt. But this revelation didn't change the fact that Aster had to take the stone. If he didn't, he would die being torn apart by the Abyssal Wave in Chapter 50. Between being erased by the World Law now or eaten by monsters later, Aster would rather try to trick the system.
“Mr. Drago, I truly appreciate your concern,” Aster said in a forced polite tone, “but I really need this stone to prop open my dorm room door. It always squeaks.”
Kaelen stared at Aster as if Aster had just announced his intention to slap the Creator God. “You... you want to use an Earth Dragon Heart Scale as a doorstop?! Have you gone insane?!”
Before Kaelen could continue protesting, the air inside the black market suddenly changed.
The temperature, which had been damp and stifling, abruptly dropped below freezing. Thick white vapor poured from Aster and Kaelen's mouths. The black market's uproar, previously filled with laughter and the whispers of trade, vanished completely. Aster turned and found hundreds of merchants and customers—even Valerius, still crying on the floor—frozen in place. Time around them seemed to have stopped.
Only Aster and Kaelen could still move.
Crack... Creak...
An ear-splitting sound of cracking came from the ceiling of the black market's cavern, which was made of solid granite. Aster looked up, and the color seemed to drain from his face.
The cavern ceiling was no longer stone. Its surface had transformed into a slowly rotating golden geometric vortex. In the center of the vortex, hundreds of lidless “eyes” formed from pure mana light stared straight at Aster. Their gazes held no emotion, no anger. It was the look of a programmer staring at a bug or virus in their source code, preparing to press the “Delete” key.
[Critical Warning: The World Law has detected High-Level Fate Theft.] [Entity ‘Aster Vale’ is attempting to modify Valerius Clydes's Causality Anchor.] [Causality Execution Protocol Activated: Erasure Tribulation.]
“I won't let you die for the 148th time!” Kaelen shouted. A blood-red mana aura exploded from his body, shattering the frozen time around him. He drew his greatsword, stepped forward, and stood directly in front of Aster, prepared to throw his own body into the World Law's attack to protect the extra.
Aster panicked. 'Is this protagonist trying to commit suicide?! If he dies here, who will save the world in Chapter 50?!'
Without thinking, Aster reached into his backpack. He had no weapon. He had no shield. All he had was the pile of junk he'd made that afternoon because he was worried the underground black market might spring a leak and get soaked by runoff from the sewers.
He pulled out a Folding Umbrella.
Its frame was made from the ribs of a young Wyvern he'd found in the academy kitchen's trash, and its canopy had been stitched together from a used tarp that had covered a cow cart and was riddled with patches. The thing looked utterly pathetic, bent in several places, and smelled faintly fishy.
'I just need shelter from falling rubble!' Aster thought as he pressed the umbrella's release button.
Click.
The system in his head screamed with blinding blue light. [Item: Wyvern Bone Folding Umbrella (Quality: F-)] [Error: Material incapable of withstanding atmospheric pressure.] [Absolute Compensation Implanted.] [Concept Granted: Absolute Sky Repulsion.] [Defining ‘Sky’ as: Any form of intervention originating from ‘Above’ (Weather, Heavenly Magic, Tribulations, and the Gaze of the World Law).]
From the golden vortex in the cavern ceiling, a silent pillar of deep purple light shot downward. This was no ordinary lightning. It was an existence-erasing beam. Wherever the light touched, matter would not be destroyed—it would simply never have existed in the first place.
Kaelen closed his eyes and tightened his grip on his sword, ready to feel the pain of his 148th death.
But the destruction never came.
BOOOOOM—Ssssshhhh...
The sound wasn't an explosion, but a soft hiss like water being poured onto a hot skillet. Kaelen slowly opened his eyes, and what he saw nearly caused the mind forged through hundreds of time loops to stop functioning.
The existence-erasing pillar of light struck the canopy of Aster's junk umbrella. But instead of piercing through and erasing them, the purple light slid away. The concept of “Absolute Sky Repulsion” forced anything descending from above to veer off course. The deadly light glided smoothly along the patch-covered tarp, then turned ninety degrees and slammed into the black market's main vault door in the distance, melting the one-meter-thick steel door into a pool of molten metal in an instant.
Above them, the hundreds of golden eyes of the World Law blinked wildly, as if suffering from a logic error. How could a causality tribulation be repelled by a fishy-smelling umbrella?!
After three seconds that felt like a century, the golden vortex closed with an awkward pop, and the cavern ceiling became ordinary granite once more. Time in the black market began moving again, but chaos erupted immediately when the merchants realized their main vault had melted.
Kaelen dropped to his knees, his sword slipping from his grasp. He stared at Aster, who was busy dusting off his junk umbrella, with a fanatical expression that nearly resembled religious worship.
“You...” Kaelen's voice trembled, tears unconsciously welling in the corners of his eyes. “You just slapped the World Law in the face... with an umbrella? Did you deliberately provoke a causality tribulation just to test the durability of your handmade mortal artifact?! Master Aster... how far-reaching is your plan to manipulate fate, really?!”
Aster stared blankly at Kaelen, then looked at his umbrella. 'Master?! Who are you calling Master?! I'm just afraid of getting drenched by falling rubble!'
“Mr. Drago, this black market clearly violates building safety standards. Their ventilation is so poor that it triggered static electricity that nearly struck us,” Aster said flatly, hurriedly folding the umbrella and putting it back in his bag.
He crouched and picked up the Cracked Stone lying on the floor. To conceal the stone's aura from any World Law scan that might still be watching, Aster opened a cheap tin lunchbox he had brought to store Toby's leftover bread.
[Item: Tin Lunchbox (Quality: F)] [Concept Granted: Existential Isolation (Hiding contents from scans by gods, natural laws, and landlords).]
Aster placed the Cracked Stone inside the lunchbox, closed it tightly, and slipped it into his robe pocket. “Let's get out of here before the black market guards accuse us of melting their vault.”
Aster grabbed Kaelen's arm while the protagonist was still in a state of severe shock, dragging him out of the black market's chaos and up the secret staircase to the surface.
They emerged in the basement of a wine warehouse. Aster pushed aside the enormous wine barrel that served as the exit and breathed in the fresh night air of the academy city with relief. Finally, I'm safe. I have the stone, and I still have some gold left.
But the relieved smile on Aster's face vanished at once.
In the supposedly deserted backyard of the wine warehouse stood a dozen silver-robed figures bearing the emblem of the Royal Magic Tower on their chests. In their midst, a one-eyed old man held a magic compass whose needle spun wildly before finally pointing straight at Aster's chest.
“Aster Vale,” the one-eyed man said, his voice cold and resonant with the authority of high-level magic. “In the name of the Magic Tower and the Patriarch of the Clydes Family, you are under arrest on suspicion of using a forbidden-grade demonic artifact, destroying black market property, and defaming a noble. Surrender, or we'll use force.”
Beside Aster, Kaelen slowly rose, his blood-red mana aura beginning to boil and scorch the night air, ready to slaughter anyone who stood in the way of his “Master.” But Aster quickly restrained Kaelen by the shoulder, his eyes fixed sharply on the Inquisitors as his other hand slowly reached into another pocket of his robe and touched a cylindrical object he had made from an empty toothpaste tube.