R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 1

R-a - Volume 4 - Chapter 1 (In editing-v1) 

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"He didn’t drop any Points?” Director Prime frowned as he looked down at a mangled dead body.

The corpse was smashed to unrecognizable bits of flesh, blood, and bone. Whatever it used to be should be dead, though Prime found little solace in that observation. He was all too familiar with supposedly dead enemies coming back to life. 

Prime’s own body was hardly in better condition. His arms, legs, and chest bore more than a dozen knuckle-sized holes, pierced clean through, that he had just bandaged up. Almost miraculously, none of these injuries had damaged important organs, tendons, or blood vessels, but they were still serious wounds nevertheless. 

“Hmm.” Prime sat down next to the body as he began to study it, his entire demeanor calm and unhurried. 

The former S Ranker, and the dead body next to him, were both sitting in the middle of a large crater, the remnants of a once-proud mountain shattered by explosive battle. Bits of debris and rock floated in mid-air, frozen in the midst of flying outward. The sky above was overcast and dark, giving the crater a rather dreary atmosphere.

Time itself stood still for Prime as he drew upon his World Matrix Type Ability, assessing what had just taken place. 

“No Points, yet he’s dead… it’s impossible he’s a new arrival.” Prime paused, his eyes boring into the dead body. 

Several minutes passed in silence as Prime sat there, simply thinking. He continued to remain still as he carefully broke down everything he had observed. Then, he physically dissected the corpse in great detail, confirming he hadn't managed to preserve its brain while also searching for anything that might matter. After that, he scanned the nearby area for anything it may have dropped, manually scattering dust and cutting into rock. 

Finally, after all of that… he repeated these same actions for a second time, but in even more excruciating detail. Anything he changed would revert back to normal once time resumed, meaning there was no need to be careful.  

In this frozen world of time, a full 3 hours passed before Prime finished this investigation. 

Most would consider that an absurd amount of time given how little there was to investigate. Prime’s exquisite search of the nearby area alone took up a full 45 minutes of that time, doubled because he did it twice.

It was mind-numbingly boring… but it was the norm for Prime. 

After all, while the Director was 34 years old in terms of physical age…

Mentally, Prime had now lived for a bit more than 108 years. 

That discrepancy of 74 years arose because of how often Prime stopped time. 

The average human was awake, thinking and moving, for 14-16 hours of the day. After reaching Sky Tier, that number jumped to around 20 hours.

Prime, on the other hand, usually found himself awake for at least 100 hours every day, oftentimes much longer. When time was stopped, his body didn’t weaken and his energy expenditure was minute. With his strong Soul stat, the main thing limiting how long he could freeze time was his mental willpower. 

Over the course of the past day alone, Prime had been awake for 815 hours, or roughly 34 days. Most of that time was spent thinking, planning, and examining his surroundings or enemies in the midst of battle. In combat, he froze time repeatedly, oftentimes for multiple instances each second, to carefully plan his movements and avoid any surprises. 

“He was definitely my target. He was strong… but not strong enough.” Prime nodded as he reached a couple of conclusions.

“So… a Deathless Clone, with some type of mind-enhancing Ability.” 

After considering all the possible options, given the information he did know, it was the only thing that seemed likely.

There were several Abilities in the Shop that granted a person the power to spawn a ‘Clone,’ a copy of oneself that would obey your commands. The range, intelligence, and power of these Clones varied greatly, and all of them possessed some type of downside. 

The Deathless Clone Ability that Prime was referencing allowed one to create multiple realistic Clones, but split the user’s overall power as a result, weakening the main body. Its other downside, one shared by most Clone Abilities, was that the farther each Clone was from the main body, the weaker that Clone’s memory became.

Prime sighed as he looked at the dead body once more, his mouth twisting. Here, where no one could see him, he hunched his shoulders and sat down, exhaustion appearing on his face. 

He… 

He was tired.

Really tired. 

These past few years… no, these past few decades had been exhausting.

It all started back when he was Chosen in the First Wave.

When he arrived on the First Layer, he had been equal parts shocked and horrified at what he found. This foreign world was like a place out of nightmare, full of violence and terror.

He had started with a pitifully small number of Points: 6,000. It was barely enough to purchase an Ability, forcing him to choose the inexpensive Mortal Tier Ki Cultivation Ability, something that ended up being a blessing in disguise. 

From there… his story was not that special, not at first. 

He fought to live alongside the people he arrived with. Despite his slow start, Prime quickly adapted to the environment, doing his best to protect his new companions. He overcame his fears, knowing that his new allies were depending on him, and grew into a strong leader. 

At his core, Prime had always been obsessively methodical in everything he did. 

Because of that, his group of survivors weathered storms of Morenkai with ease. Even when they encountered a group of Abnormal Morenkai, everyone survived because of his efforts.

Time passed and the number of people he led grew, forming a large survivor’s colony that was focused on farming Morenkai for Points. He didn’t give up on exploring, especially after the Great Bridge appeared and connected their Cluster to the Main Cluster… but his primary focus was on building the strength of his colony. Their survival was most important. 

Everything seemed to be going well… until 4 months in, one month after the Great Bridge appeared. 

The peace of his colony collapsed as they were attacked, not by Morenkai, but by humans. 

Specifically, a single human. 

A serial killer that owned the incredibly rare Void Ripper Type Ability. 

It was a Limited Ability that could be bought only 10 times. It had been completely bought out by the time Prime glanced at it, priced at 40,000 Points.

That price was relatively inexpensive… but that didn’t mean the Ability was weak. More Points typically meant a stronger Ability, but this wasn’t always true. 

As Prime came to personally learn, the Void Ripper Type was incredibly powerful. 

It gifted their attacker with skin that was absurdly thick, blocking bullets like they were paintballs. It made this murderer far stronger than Prime’s team, giving the man the power to literally rip apart steel with his bare hands. 

Prime had prepared half a dozen countermeasures to protect his survival colony. After four months of survival, he had long since outgrown any naivety he might have possessed. He was well aware that they could be attacked at any moment, by Morenkai or fellow humans.

He had thought he was ready…

And he was wrong. 

Nothing worked against this butcher. Every trap Prime had readied, every weapon he launched, every Ability his allies pulled out…

All of them failed. The butcher came, killed, and then left.

On the day before his group was attacked, there had been 1,012 living members in his colony.

On the day after, there were 907 survivors. 

A single man had killed over 100 people, men and women that Prime had promised he would protect. 

It was a horrific experience for the Director. It showed Prime how numbers could mean nothing and how weapons could become meaningless. His mindset began to shift, his view of the world becoming distinctly colder. He realized, then, that when push came to shove, only one thing really mattered. 

Power. 

After that fateful day, Prime spent a large amount of time pouring through the Shop. He ramped his methodical nature up to the maximum, using every waking moment to plan, to think, and to research. 

About two days after his colony was attacked, he finally decided on his Type Ability. 

The World Matrix Type cost 82,950 Points, a significant investment to make on the First Layer. Its description spelled out its sole power to freeze time for everyone, as well as how it did almost nothing for a person’s stats. To most people, it was a very mediocre Type Ability. Other Type Abilities offered more direct benefits, ranging from mystical powers to enhanced stats.

In Prime’s eyes, however, this Type Ability exceeded all others. 

It gave him the one resource he never had enough of:

Time.

After he obtained the Ability, Prime began to flourish. 

The efficiency of his colony skyrocketed. His plans became incredibly deep and thorough. His own power jumped enormously. 

And so, around three weeks later, when the man with the Void Ripper Ability attacked again, the number of deaths dropped drastically.  

More than 100 survivors had died in the first attack. In the second attack, however… 

Only a single person died.

And that was the butcher himself, killed by Prime’s own hand.

Prime sighed for a second time as these old memories rose up. He smiled a little sadly as he ran his fingers through his golden hair.

“What does it all mean?” He looked at the body, his surroundings, and the situation as a whole… 

And then he pursed his lips as he started to think, trying his best to understand what was happening here. 

The Director was widely considered a genius. His enemies, his subordinates, even those that hated him agreed on that. 

Prime felt that he was probably the only person alive that disagreed with that assessment. 

He knew his limits. 

He was no genius. 

He was not a person that could come up with a diabolic countermeasure on the spot. He couldn’t see through a person’s words as they spoke them or judge a plan’s value from his intuition. He was not a rapid thinker that could split his focus multiple ways at the same time.  

What he could do, however, was spend inordinate amounts of time to make up for that. 

A plan that might take a genius 5 minutes to come up with could take Prime 5 hours to realize. Insight that would come to a rare prodigy in mere seconds might take Prime several days of deep thought. A situation that a top planner might need a day or two to breakdown could take Prime half a month. 

The only thing that mattered to Prime was that he achieved his goals. How long it took him meant nothing to him. Loneliness and tedium that would drive other humans insane was merely a normal part of his life. 

An hour passed as Prime sat by himself, simply thinking. 

And then another. 

And another. 

And…

7 hours after Prime sat down to think, he stood back up, voicing a conclusion. 

“I need more information.” He didn’t know what all he was missing, but he realized now that there was still too much he did not know. More thinking would not solve his problem, though he would think things over again later, just to be certain. 

Reality returned to normal around Prime as time resumed. Debris that had been flung into the air settled. Dirt finished falling to the floor and a cool breeze picked up and brushed past him.

The Director winced as he touched a few spots on his body with a grimace. When time was frozen, the pain his body remained consistent, making it easier to ignore. After time was restored, that pain began to twist, jumping back with a vengeance. 

Prime stored the corpse of the dead Clone in his Spatial Ring. He then walked a dozen meters over to one specific spot within this crater. 

A small grey dagger appeared in his right hand. He used this to stab into the earth and ripped out several chunks of it. Several seconds passed as he focused on this. 

Finally, with a grunt, Prime stored the dagger and reached into the hole he had created. 

From within it, he pulled out a pile of broken metal, the remnants of several shattered Spatial Rings. He stored these shards in his own Spatial Ring, choosing to leave behind nothing that had the potential to be a clue, however minor.

As he finished storing these bits of metal and was preparing to move out… something rather unexpected happened. 

A battle started to break out. 

Prime’s eyes whipped to the north. 

Within the Woolen Forest, many miles away from him, he could sense a large number of powerful beings start to clash. Explosions of energy rocked the air, bringing flashes of light that were visible from far away.

“What in the world…?” Prime looked off into the distance with a frown. 

Without hesitation, he froze time once more. 

These energy undulations and explosions had to be from the High-Tier Magic Beasts that were supposed to be ambushing the Farian Life Festival. For some reason, they had begun to fight each other. 

“Is it because I killed the Clone? Even if he was the leader, that shouldn’t be right…” Prime muttered to himself as he looked down at his Spatial Ring. He then scratched his head. 

After Prime had arrived on the Second Layer, he had immediately begun to investigate the existence of the Vile King. The Director had analyzed what Micheal told him more than a hundred times, internalizing the rage he felt over the death of his closest subordinates as he sought out the truth. 

It took only a single day for Prime to believe Micheal. Technically, Prime spent more than 2 weeks thinking things over, but physically, it only took a single day. 

Once Prime realized the Vile King did exist, he started to cautiously hunt down the man’s subordinates with a vengeance. Prime had not forgiven Micheal, but the Vile King’s existence was far more intolerable and became Prime’s main priority. The deaths of his men came about because of that man’s arrogant manipulations. 

One thing led to another and Prime eventually discovered that this attack was going to happen. He swiftly decided to intervene, intent on taking out some Seeds that were higher up the food chain. 

Prime continued to watch the battle between High-Tier Magic Beasts from a distance, unfreezing time. He didn’t make any other active decision, opting to simply observe for now. 

His target had always been the leadership behind this attack. The grunts carrying it out were bound to be disposable. Even if he brought their corpses to a Byren Deathreader, he would probably get nothing useful. The higher-ups were the ones that would have valuable intel. 

He didn’t have anything against the Farians, but he also wasn’t here to babysit them. Protecting them would have meant giving his targets time to escape. 

He was pleased to see the attack fail… but he couldn’t help but to be confused at why. 

He was even more confused when, some moments later, a gargantuan explosion tore into existence, obliterating a massive chunk of forest in searing flames and sending out a hefty shockwave. 

It was an awe-inspiring sight. He had never seen such a clear display of power, an explosion that rivaled small nuclear explosions on Earth. 

Prime spent a few hours trying to analyze what he had seen from afar before eventually deciding on his next course of action. 

He needed to investigate in person, before the Farians realized the Life Festival wasn’t being attacked and sent a team over. 

Prime sprinted down from his mountain, drawing on his Draconic Blood to drastically boost his regeneration, strength, and speed. He could only use the blood’s power in limited amounts each day, and while he had used this blood extensively in his fight against Mantis, he still had some left in reserve. 

Obtaining this Draconic Blood was one of the improvements Prime had made in his past few weeks here on the Second Layer, a change to a new stat in his Status, his ‘Physique,’ that he’d obtained from completing a rather strenuous Inheritance. No matter how focused he was on tracking down his enemies, he would never forget the importance of power. He was always seeking out ways to enhance his strength. 

Prime blitzed through the southern part of the Woolen Forest at great speed. It took him a relatively brief amount of time to reach the place where the explosion had originated. Once he arrived, he approached the situation carefully, freezing time repeatedly to scout out his surroundings. 

Not surprisingly, he found himself in another crater, this one significantly larger than the one he started in. The ground had been blasted black by the explosion, burnt to a crisp. The thousands of trees that had existed here were gone, annihilated into ash. Most of the earth had been flattened. 

The bits that had not been flattened, however, were what came to interest Prime the most.

“Huh.” After freezing time again, Prime knelt down next to one of the clumps and ran a hand down its side. The black lump had fused with the ground and become mostly immovable.

He spent a long period carefully slicing into this black lump, eventually realizing what it was. 

The corpse of a High-Tier Magic Beast, burnt almost beyond recognization. He checked several other lumps, confirming that they were the same. He also noted that all of them were missing their Spirit Crystals. 

“The explosion killed them…? Who did this? How?” It was a startling realization.

High-Tier Magic Beasts were extremely sturdy. Killing one was difficult. 

Killing several of them at the same time was insanely hard. He had experienced that difficulty firsthand inside the Inheritance that held his Draconic Blood. One of the trials he’d had to complete involved several battles against a number of High-Tier creatures, some at the same time. He beat each trial, in the end, but only by the skin of his teeth. 

No normal explosion was enough to cause this.

A few minutes passed in real-time as Prime moved about the crater, investigating the scene. He left the High-Tier Magic Beast corpses where they lay, though only because he had no choice. All of the corpses were fused with the ground and would take too much time to remove. 

The explosion had destroyed almost everything in the area. Nevertheless, Prime persevered, methodically spending enormous amounts of time as he dug up large tracts of earth. 

Because of that, he managed to find a small, fist-sized spike that had escaped destruction, buried a meter beneath the cindered earth. 

And, shortly after that, he found something else…

Or, rather, something else found him. 

“I thought I smelled a familiar stench.” A deep voice rumbled into the air while Prime was in the midst of sprinting to a new section of the crater. 

Immediately, Prime froze time. A short while later, he unfroze it as he realized that the speaker was out of his range. When time was frozen, he could move around freely, but only in a limited area. Anything beyond a certain range was something he couldn’t see or interact with. 

Around a hundred and twenty meters to the south, Prime could make out the speaker walking towards him. It appeared to be…

‘A talking monkey..?’ Prime blinked, temporarily at a loss. 

‘No, it’s a gorilla. A Transformation Type user?’ Prime clarified his thought a moment later, his eyes going cold as he looked at the armor the creature was wearing. 

The gear was damaged, but still obviously the same type of armor that the warriors of the Beasts of Providence used. 

‘An enemy.’

“I’m surprised the lackeys of the Drakes aren’t extinct yet. Your masters died out long ago, runt.” The Transformation Type user’s voice echoed out in the air as he took several confident steps forward. 

Prime missed none of this, his gaze calmly boring into the warrior. Prime was well aware he was in no condition to fight. He had used up 90% of the Draconic Blood he could draw on, while his energy stores were at dangerous lows. He took those things into account as he began to prepare himself, knowing he might not have a choice. 

“I have no master, man or Drake. Who are you?” Prime returned, putting up a confident, collected facade as he began to walk towards the other warrior. 

Unlike most of his other targets, this one was talking an unusual amount, something that made Prime wary. He decided to try to take advantage of the man’s chattiness and see if he could gain some free information. 

“Who am I?” The talking gorilla paused before continuing,

“Yvvtal the Destroyer, of course.” An almost tangible wave of killing intent began to flow from the man's body,

“I’m back… and…” The warrior donned a blood-curdling smile,

“I’m here to destroy.”

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