The Master of Time, terrifying beyond imagination!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
“All right, enough with the screaming.”
Just as Joss’s body was about to be devoured by the monsters lurking in the darkness, a cool and clear voice suddenly reached his ears.
At the same moment, the boundless darkness dispersed, and Joss found himself staring at a woman in an examiner’s uniform, holding an instrument aimed at him. Clearly, the previous hallucinations had all been generated by this device.
“Useless. Over the years, at least a couple thousand people have taken this test, and you’re the first to scream so extravagantly.”
Faced with such a remark, Joss felt a bit embarrassed.
Though his chronic heart condition had given him a certain detachment toward life and death, allowing him to withstand illusions, the sensation of monstrous claws tearing into his flesh and the pain that followed were far beyond his experience.
After all, before crossing over, Joss had been just an ordinary person; he’d never endured such torment. Naturally, his reaction was nothing short of awkward.
The female examiner didn’t bother to glance at him. She simply set her instrument aside, waved her hand, and motioned for him to leave.
“Hey? Examiner, isn’t the score determined by timing?”
“Timing? In your state, what’s left to time?” The examiner looked at Joss with undisguised impatience, clearly displeased by his persistence.
“Uh… isn’t it just a matter of timing?”
“Just timing? I know you’re just a regular trainee, but I didn’t expect your perception to be so poor!”
At Joss’s words, the examiner’s temper flared.
“This assessment includes dozens of psychological and physiological negative stimuli. For ordinary people, let alone timing, finishing the test without going insane is already impressive.”
“However, as a rookie in the S.H.I.E.L.D. reserves, your training should give you strong resistance to these sorts of hallucinations.”
Here, the examiner abruptly shifted her tone, looking at Joss with a mocking smile, then slammed her palm on the table and pointed at him, berating loudly, “But you! That reaction—what was that? Even recruits just entering boot camp aren’t as cowardly as you!”
“And now you’re telling me you managed to keep time?”
Joss scratched his head helplessly. Facing the mortal peril in the final scene and the agony of his body being torn apart, he had indeed reacted just like any ordinary person would.
It wouldn’t have mattered in another context, but here and now, it had clearly caused the examiner’s opinion of him to plummet.

“Ahem… That’s not important, right? Anyway, I kept time just fine.”
Seeing Joss insist on being tested, the examiner’s face grew even more disdainful. She said impatiently, “Fine. Since you’re so stubborn, guess your time.”
She emphasized the word “guess,” but Joss ignored her subtle hint.
Just as he was about to speak, she interrupted him again, “But let me warn you: if your margin of error exceeds ten seconds, I’ll report it and have you kicked out—not just from S.H.I.E.L.D., but you won’t find a place even in the U.S. military!”
What Joss didn’t know was that the examiner was acting out of pique.
The difficulty of this test was high; normally, an error within a minute was considered excellent. Even Jason, who’d taken it before, had a margin of four minutes.
Contrary to her expectations, Joss, upon hearing this, showed little expression. He simply nodded and murmured to himself,
“Ten seconds… That’s not a problem.”
Seeing that the examiner still wanted to say more, Joss knew she’d be at it forever if he let her ramble. So he raised his hand, stopped her, and casually announced a number: “From the moment I entered this room to escaping the hallucination, it took two minutes and forty-seven seconds, right?”
“Tsk, pretending so well… Impossible! Not a second off?!”
The examiner stared at the number on the electronic timer, her expression as if she’d seen a ghost.
Joss was unsurprised by her reaction; after all, the Time Master’s gift of time was never wrong!
“Well, in that case, I suppose I’ve passed?”
He waved his hand before the stunned examiner’s eyes, finally snapping her out of it and confirming again.
“Passed…? No, you wish.”
Suddenly, the examiner pursed her lips in a smile, her fingers flicking in front of Joss as if manipulating something unseen.
With her movement, Joss was startled to see the world before him shatter like glass, revealing an identical, yet more “vivid,” world.
“This is… a double-layered illusion?”
Joss immediately understood. This was a dream within a dream; not only the initial black-and-white space, but even the subsequent conversation with the examiner had been hallucination.
No doubt, under normal circumstances, no one would bother to record the timing of the second half. Yet that was precisely what the test’s designer intended!

“So you finally understand your predicament. As an agent, you must never let your guard down—if this had been a truly dangerous mission, you would have utterly failed in the latter half!”
The examiner appeared before Joss once again, clearly not considering the possibility that he could recall the timing of the second half.
In fact, the test was designed to trip up recruits like Joss, to show them that an agent’s job demands constant vigilance.
“But since your previous score was decent, I’ll balance it out and give you a—”
“Ah, sorry, after I escaped the first illusion, you and I talked for one minute and twelve seconds. So in total, it was three minutes and fifty-nine seconds.”
Before the examiner could finish, Joss once again reported a perfectly accurate time.
…
“Spot-on timing, twice in a row… Even I—no, not even someone like Steve, with his super-soldier abilities, could achieve that,” the examiner muttered as Joss’s results were delivered to Nick Fury not long after the test ended.
“Yes, sir. The Captain’s best test score had a margin of four seconds; that was the best we’ve ever seen,” the examiner said, her expression equally solemn as she reviewed Joss’s results.
“To achieve such precision, he must have an incredibly steady mindset and willpower, completely unaffected by external influences…”
Nick Fury nodded, then suddenly recalled something. “No, if he really reacted like a normal person to the hallucinations—so convincingly even you couldn’t see through it—then his acting skills are downright terrifying!”
“Indeed, I must admit Joss’s mental fortitude and acting prowess are extraordinary. Even I was nearly fooled,” the examiner said with undisguised admiration. She had never seen anyone fake pain so convincingly!
“Are you sure he had no timing devices on him? Otherwise, this would be a complete farce.” The meticulous Nick Fury asked again.
The examiner shook her head with a smile. “Impossible. All ordinary electronics are confiscated before entering the test site, and the room itself contains multiple detectors. Unless he has some superpower like ‘reading exact time at will,’ there’s no way he could have cheated.”
Hearing this, Nick Fury couldn’t help but laugh. “Pfft, ‘reading time at will’—if such a ridiculous power existed, I’d twist my own head off for him to play with.”
“True enough, ha ha ha ha,” the examiner agreed, laughing unrestrainedly.
After a moment, Nick Fury resumed, “All right, jokes aside. For the next two tests, give him a little ‘extra attention.’ I want to see if he can keep astounding me in other subjects.”
The examiner nodded and placed a file on the table. “I’ve already taken that into account. Here’s his opponent for the next combat test. This kid named Jason is ranked third in combat ability among this batch of recruits.”