#114 – I really should have expected this

#114 – I really should have expected this I took a deep breath and glanced at my key bracelet. After some experimentation, I’d fused the Timestream Ring with it and as a result, I’d gotten my timestop bracelet back... sort of. It was a much weaker version of it and only could slow time by a little, but still useful. The time on the bracelet showed 8:49 AM, which was exactly the same as the time on Earth in the time zone I’d used to live in. Because yes, somehow, the two worlds had re-synced over time despite me using the time-slowing ability in the past. According to all the lore diggers and researchers, after the times desynced, my second then simply took slightly less time than the Earth second until the times matched again, and then they kept going in sync. I did my best not to think about this too hard. I already knew there was some weird time bullshit happening, after all. Stupid Fate Weaver. ...Anyway. I sighed a little, feeling the nervous jitters, but summoned John anyway. Just like always... Hand in camera... Count down from five... Swing the camera in my direction... “Goooood mooorning, my precious little Aquamarines! It’s me! Nana! Your favorite tier two individual!” I paused and let a small smirk spread on my face. “But that is going to be changing today! Oh, yes! We’re gonna become tier three today, because we’re doing the limit break!” I took on an exaggerated pose as I said that, putting on the most confident of shit-eating grins I could muster. Over the last few days, I’d watched a few more ads and from what these people had said, we have concluded that, the ‘x-tier individual’ did, indeed, mean access to those tiers of skills, and therefore, passing the first limit break made you into a tier three individual. GeorgeDoshington: fuck yeeeaaaaaah RetconRanger: Oh boy. Be careful. KaiEbikoOfficial: you can do it! Irid123: finally! “Now, for those who haven’t been watching these past few days, let’s recap! “I’ve done pretty much everything I could to prepare. I used the giant combo expansion ticket I still had laying around, I used all thirty-three points to buy Hunter’s Eye, its upgrade, Analysis, as well as all the subskills, which left me exactly with zero points left! “Then I also did a bunch of fusing! My beloved first weapon, the Ether Volt, went into my axe, while the crown, ninja sandals, the backpack, and the white gauntlets went into my clothes – that one was a pretty tight fit, I went from full to pretty much zero Ether to fit the last thing in. “Other than that, I had a good old training montage! I learned how to fight using only John’s point of view, got better at Hydrokinesis, and even managed to spark a small flame without using any skills! All on my own!” I grinned. “That’s right, chat! I can do magic!” I paused. “Well, I could do magic before, but now I can do magic without the system helping me! It’s not good enough to use in combat, but that’s only a matter of time! “And okay! I can hear you all asking: ‘But, Nana! Why are you trying to do the limit break before you fully learn this cool technique?!’ Well, it’s really simple, my dear viewers! You see, I’m not going to need this skill in the limit break, because, as a reminder, I will be able to freely swap my skills and titles during the limit break any time I wish!” I made a show of looking at my bracelet, which showed 8:58. “Speaking of time... I promised to start the limit break today at nine AM, didn’t I? Well... I think I delayed enough haven’t I... Let’s do this!” I took a deep breath, narrowed my eyes, and mentally opened up the window again. Limit break #1 - Trials of courage The Limit Break takes place outside of time and space. No time will pass in the real world in the meantime. For the duration of the Limit Break, the cooldown on swapping skills and titles is removed, but rewards from any Achievements and Quests you manage to complete within will only be accessible after failing or succeeding. Warning: You have only one attempt. If you fail the Limit Break, you won’t ever be allowed to try again. Do you wish to attempt to break your limits? Y/N “Do you wish to attempt to break your limits...?” I read out loud. No, I don’t. “Yes!” I pressed confirm. The world went white around me as I got the feeling that something had just punted me out of reality. I stiffened, but didn’t scream, because weirdly enough, it didn’t feel like I was in any danger, despite the weirdness. A moment later, the whiteness abated and I found myself in a lightly illuminated cube-shaped room while a system window with a message right in front of me. Welcome to the Trials of courage! All cooldowns have been reset. For the duration of the trials, there will be no cooldown on swapping titles and skills. Completion of any achievements and quests will be postponed until after the trials are either completed or failed. Good luck! I let out a measured breath as I read the message and then looked around the little room I was in. Said room seemed empty save three things right in front of me. A red door to the left, a green stairway going down to the right, and a plaque on the wall in between them. “...Chat? You’re still here, right?” RetconRanger: Of course. KaiEbikoOfficial: still here! “Okay, good! I was a wee bit concerned that the whole time stop nonsense might have blocked you all out, but I guess we’re good!” I forced myself to make a small smile. “It would been kiiiinda awkward to have this whole intro for the limit break and then skip straight to being done from your point of view, eh...?” With that said, I looked ahead and walked forward to take a closer look at the plaque. “Now let’s see...” It read: ‘Your goal is to find and walk down the green staircase in every trial. To give up at any point, walk through any of the red doors.’ “Okay... sounds straight-forward, but I bet it’s not going to be that simple, is it...? Not with this being called the ‘Trials of courage’.” The red door was interesting though. I would have thought that I could leave just by wishing for it, just like how I’d entered here, but apparently, I would have to find a red door first... Not that I planned on giving up, but still. Why have the door at all? I shook my head and then clapped my hands. “Well, alright! Let’s get going, chat. These trials won’t complete themselves!” I immediately turned to the stairs and looked down. Weirdly enough, I couldn’t see further than a couple of steps. Beyond there, everything was completely white. “Hmm... Weird...” I began going down anyways. One step, two steps... As I walked, the whiteness got pushed further, and after a couple of steps, I looked behind me, only to see that the room behind me ceased to exist and was replaced by a wall. “...Uhhh, right. Already starting with space-warping and reality-bending. How delightful.” Why did I suddenly have this sense of foreboding...? Well, no. I knew that this was probably going to be really difficult but... something about this... I kept going, one step at a time, while occasionally glancing behind me to find that the wall had moved with me. I frowned and then did a little experiment as chat suggested – I turned around completely and began walking backwards, just to see if the wall would move. Contrary to what I expected though, my back bumped into something. I immediately whirled around to see... the stairway again. “...I could have sworn I bumped into something.” But when I looked back up, the wall had already moved while my attention was elsewhere. “This is just creepy, chat. What is this, red light green light? Why does the wall only move when I’m not looking, huh?” Naturally, the next thing I tried was to summon John and have him look at the wall while I looked down. Unfortunately, John’s view was pure white, no matter what I did. I huffed in annoyance. My last experiment was to put my back to one of the side walls and then look at the opposite wall, trying to get both sides of the stairway into my field of view. That one worked. The wall from the back never moved into my vision, nor did anything start blocking me from the other side. Of course, the moment I looked up the stairway, the wall was right there, just outside of where I’d been looking. “...Okay, fine. This is pointless. You win this time, mysterious stairwell.” With that silliness out of the way – which honestly helped quite a bit to calm my nerves – I simply turned forward and kept going down the stairs normally. After a minute, the whiteness in front of me receded and gave way to darkness instead. I frowned and swapped Rend to Flameguard before lighting a tiny flame. And then I realized that there hadn’t even been any system window or a confirmation before the skills swapped. Huh. Neat. I kept walking into the darkness, and eventually, the stairs ended, sleek green slabs abruptly turning into grayish jagged rocks. I tensed up and looked around, but it was hard to see in this darkness. “...Oh, I already hate it,” I mumbled under my breath. I hesitated for a moment but eventually stepped onto the rocks. When I turned to look at the stairway, it was gone. RetconRanger: Oh dear. Jeofffff: rip “Yup. Absolutely hate it.” Trials of courage. Because I was afraid of the dark? But I wasn’t afraid of the dark, it was just that after the damn locker where I’d gotten pilled by the sentient clothing and almost died... Well, okay, maybe being traumatized by dark spaces counted as being afraid of them. Whatever. Shut up. Before I could decide on my next move though, I heard something to my left. I whirled around, lighting my way with a flaming finger. There was a spider the size of my hand just chilling there, apparently looking at me with its eight eyes. I froze, subconsciously hoping that it couldn’t see me if I didn’t move. The spider responded by... crawling away and out of sight. Then I heard more crawling behind me. I whirled around again, spotting a group of centipedes, sliding in and out of my vision. “Oh, I hate this so much,” I gritted out in a strangled voice. A dark cave filled with bugs... and probably a non-euclidean maze to boot, if I were to guess. Exactly as– “George, you’re banned!” I snapped and immediately banned him, despite him not even being in the chat at the moment. But I soon realized my mistake as some of the creepy crawlies around me stopped their crawling and turned their disgusting heads in my direction. Fuck fuck fuck! I summoned my gun self to my hand and fired it at the same time the bugs launched themselves at me. The cone of fire momentarily lit up the cave, letting me see just how many freaking bugs there were. They were everywhere. On the ground, on the walls, on the ceiling, in the tiny holes and crevices all around me. And they all reacted to my outburst by jumping out of their hiding spots, falling down from the ceiling, skittering into my shoes– I screamed.