Book 2 - Chapter 20: Understanding of Time

“Holy hell. These are the bad rewards?” Sean was incredulous. Some of these improvements were massive despite seeming small. Slightly improved ranged attacks? Absolutely a big deal, especially as he built up his ranged arsenal. Full, unqualified improvement to footwork? Gigantic.

Even improved blunt force damage was huge, even if only one of his weapons dealt it. If Sean had learned one thing from this warm-up that the system didn’t mention, it was that having different kinds of damage and attacks coming at him one after another was about the worst thing that could happen. A single enemy attacking in a single way had a rhythm. It meant he could get used to that beat after a while, dance a bit better, and win.

Having to constantly adjust was a nightmare. Right now, he could put a lot of different kinds of damage into play, and so far, he had used that to approach fights with the best weapon in hand for a particular enemy. From now on, he wanted to work on making himself the variable, unpredictable nightmare, the guy who was able to make every attack different from the last in an unending chain of attacks enemies couldn’t block.

He was a bit tougher and more dangerous in a fight now, and a few of those ways would affect everything he did. And that wasn’t everything the system had for him. There was still one more notification to go, one whose title he wasn’t absolutely thrilled with.

Killamari

Bane of squids, opponent of octopi. We know they aren’t the same thing, yes, but you know, he wasn’t anymore a squid than you are. Lots of things have tentacles, Sean. You think that’s weird?

At this point, you probably assume that the few sentient species with tentacles are power-hungry jerks who lack empathy. That’s a pretty big, biased assumption, Sean. And the fact that you are right about it is completely a coincidence, and you should still feel bad for.

Even ignoring the fact that he was from one of the few species that’s completely hostile to everyone at all times, including their own, this guy was a pretty big jerk. He tried to lull you into false security and kill you, which is usually a good enough reason to kill someone right back.

Like a betrayed woman leaving the city to live in the countryside in a low-budget holiday movie, we hope you can learn to trust again. But even if you can’t, it’s okay. From now on, these deceptive little wrigglers will find more trouble trying to hurt you.

Rewards: Improved detection of stealth creatures and difficult-to-sense attacks. Improved resistance against mental attacks, mind reading, and psychic manipulation.

It was more passives, but Sean would take it, especially since they seemed like they’d be broadly useful against an entire form of attack. And, timed to the moment he finished reading his upgrades, was the last update in the set.

Warm Up Complete!

If you haven’t already, return to your base for a 24-hour rest. Do so quickly. The world of the forest will cease to exist in the next 30 seconds to prevent further harvesting of natural materials. The next leg of your journey will commence once the rest period ends.

Sean popped out of the shower and went to make sure the door was barred before heading back in to shoot the shit with Brett.

“That thermite is some crazy stuff. I’d say we should use it more often if it wasn’t for the bit where it explodes,” Sean said.

“Hm, maybe. Exploding is fine, I think. It’s exploding when you try to light it that’s the problem.” Brett was at the stove cooking dinner, which was a nice thing to do. The apples were convenient, but after a day or so of just that in their stomachs, both he and Sean were ready for a hot meal. “I’ll screw with it. With the right kind of fuse, it might be useful for later. Wish I could have helped more than that, though.”

“I mean, crafting class. You are helping in the way you can help, right?” Sean walked over to the stove. “Most of those kills are yours if the system was fair about it. It’s not your fault if you don’t get the stats.” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Actually, how does that work? You get stats on level up with everyone else, right? I get that you don’t get a combat skill, but with a high enough DEX score, you might be able to use a bow or something.”

Brett shook his head.

“It’s not like that. Everyone has the same set of possible stats, but not everyone’s class uses them the same way. Crafters get debuffs for most kinds of combat, with some other skills that keep them a bit more secure in safe zones. Your bunker here is a little harder to raid when I’m around, that sort of thing.” He stirred the lentil and rice, tasted them, then added a bit more salt to the mix. “But mostly, I’m weaker than I was before I took my class. You can think of it as a blanket debuff. My skills don’t like being used for combat. I’m afraid I’m mostly stuck in here.”

“Well, it’s very appreciated, anyway. I can’t imagine trying to do this without you.”

“Well, that’s very… mushy. But thank you.” Brett started ladling out lentils, handing a bowl off to Sean. “What’s it like outside, anyway? The new locale.”

“No idea. Apparently the Apocalypse System has us locked in here for a day, as a rest. I was thinking I’d rebuild my shield in the meantime.”

“That’s going to go faster than you think, now that you have some practice. What about the rest of the time?”

“Besides sleeping? I have some thinking to do.”

—

It was about time. Literally. The thinking Sean had to do was about time. He had bet everything on Hard Time, had banked his entire build on it, and it was lagging behind.

Sean Lawrence
Level 38 Human (Prisoner of Time)
EXP: 2,780,600/12,160,000

STR: 20 (24)
DEX: 53 (55)
VIT: 25 (27)
SAV: 63 (64)
MAG: 95 (101)

—

Abilities: Shankmaster LV8, Adhesives Mastery LV5, Stitch Up LV8, Hard Time LV3, Cellblock Brewmaster LV6

Achievements: E-Raticator, Uncommon De-nominator, Three Spectral Bears, Make-shift Ranger, Forest Dragon-kin, Mini-boss Massacre, High-Proof, Late-Start Long-Shot, Junkyard David, Front-yard Defender, Chaotic Alloy, Tell Me More, A Fighter’s Heart

Even after dumping points in from the level he found he had gained from killing the squid and the rest of the enemies on the field into MAG, it hadn’t budged. Even the system agreed he deserved an upgrade based on his usage of the skill, and he still didn’t have it.

He had been held in a crack in time until this competition started, and now was in some sort of synced-up-with-everyone-else-at-the-end variable time bubble, or something. If soaking in more and more time shenanigans was the key to this skill, then he would have already seen a whole host of levels.

That left his understanding of time, and he had no idea how to advance that. He had no tools to measure it. The system screens he had access to didn’t track it. He just had his own experiences with it, which amounted to little more than him understanding it was possible to make things move forward and backwards in time, sort of.

That “sort of” was tricky. Because time kept moving on, really. It was just that objects in it could resist time to a certain degree. Or work with it to move even faster. When Sean was trapped in the initial blast of time that blew him all the way to the future, he had resisted the flow of time so hard that decades and decades of the future had passed by before he synced back up.

It was one hell of a blast. He thought. He didn’t have the time to actually do the math, but it must have been thousands or even millions of times stronger than what he could accomplish with his current skill.

Then again, was it?

That machine ran off wall voltage, didn’t it? Like, maybe that outlet was juiced a little, but it didn’t exactly have a fusion reactor pushing it. The plug wasn’t even very good.

There was no way he was going to understand the exact “how” of the way the explosion had done what it had, but that hardly mattered. The power it put out couldn’t have been that high. The room survived, mostly unscathed. The machine couldn’t have done what it did by working harder. It just didn’t have the energy.

It must have worked smarter. So to speak. Finessed it, even if it did things on accident. And that meant, to some extent, Sean had been thinking about things a little wrong. He was dumping points into MAG, and he was sure that had an effect. The skill slowed things down more or sped him up more. He had seen it. But that couldn’t be the only element at play.

Now that he came to think about it, even his skill had been telling him that, to some extent. He could speed up small things more than he could speed up big things, but past a certain point in size, it didn’t seem to matter at all. The boxers were much bigger than the archers, but both of them slowed the same amount when he zapped them with his time-magic.

The fact that the increase wasn’t linear past a certain size meant something was going on there, something that went beyond mere size. Maybe when he was thrown forward through time, it was just like skipping through the current. Maybe he was decoupling things out of time itself, like a fish jumping out of a river.

And maybe Jeff, that idiot, got propelled against time at a different angle. Or something.

But if finesse and technique were a thing, he had been ignoring them completely. He was pushing on time at the broadest angle. Maybe that was the right thing to do, but perhaps he was trying to push a car sideways, and he just hadn’t ever bothered to think about it before.

And just then, just like that, he got his notification.

Threshold Reached: Understanding of Time

You finally got five free minutes to think about time, and it’s already paying off. But do you say thank you? No, the Apocalypse System just has to do without your thankfulness. Whoop-de-freaking-do, I guess. Good for you.

Seriously, though, decent job. Do you understand MUCH? No, not at all. But you are closer to understanding how time works than you were before, even if that means you are only the slightest amount less wrong than you were before.

The good news is that you’ve accumulated a lot of potential to push this skill forward already, potential that was just waiting for you to stop being unbelievably ignorant and to move into the rarified air of the merely unusually mistaken. You’ve used the skill a ton, in a lot of combat situations. You’ve amped up your MAG score to freaky new heights. You’ve gained levels and spent time steeping in weird time forces like a bag of human tea.

Now you’ve untied the knot on that particular balloon, and all that potential is rushing out like compressed air.

Effects: Hard Time’s level increases by 3. Hard Time also undergoes certain qualitative changes. See the skill description for more details.