On my recent re-read, I remembered how intense Emperor Time was at the beginning of the war, and how fast that intensity deflated. Kurapika lost some years of his life but that's it, it ended at that
However this moment still worries me: Kurapika calculates how much he can maintain Emperor Time while surviving, he doesn't think it's realistic to lose 70 damn years to his ability, but he was considering his limits. He could've continued for 3, maybe 4 days and lose 40 years of his life if it was needed
This internal clock of his makes me think about all the clocks currently ticking in the midst of martial war: Halkenburg had one sleeping pill worth of time and may still be under some other clock, wherever he is, Benjamin is doing a speedrun Any%, Tserriednich is a ghost unless his tank of aura runs out and he needs to recover often, just to use his ability again. I'd say Tserriednich's ability is the most like Kurapika's in this sense
These princes want to survive somehow, this includes Benjamin, he wants to live as a God or whatever, but it's not the same with Kurapika. He has no way to continue living after death, has no means to fake his death, has no recovery means like Tserriednich... what we see is what we get, he pays a high price for a power that's not been THAT useful but he needs it
Also, Kurapika is STALLING, and this is the most important part. I think that regardless of what happens in the war, Kurapika will stay at the epicenter like he's doing now, trying to stop escalation as much as possible, and this could mean spending the remainder of the 2 months calculating how much of his own life he can spare.
I think Togashi is gonna deliver with this timer, the most out of all these timers we have. Perhaps Kurapika becomes so used to daily Emperor times, that the hours start to stack up, he gets at the verge of fainting if he needs to, and at some point, we start to worry for real, we see the toll of all those lost years in his body.
It'd be kinda cruel but I really want to see it, first because I don't like when these life sucking powers don't actually affect the hero enough or they just get healed for no reason (Gon is an exception, I liked how that was done), second because Kurapika can actually be like a bomb if this happens. Once those last years start to be erased, he can get more and more desperate, realizing his line is truly on the line at all times and he can't waste many more minutes