Constant flashes pass through Paige’s eyes. Rapidly switching from a white and crème ceiling, and then a white ceiling and the sky. Until sometimes she thinks she sees scenes of the night sun and the blue clouds. They’re changing so fast that they are getting mixed together, faster than she can count. How long has this been going on? Closing her eyes doesn’t help, the constantly shifting night and day penetrating her eyelids, until finally, it stops.
Still blinking, Paige slowly recovered from the rapid flashing that has gone on for far too long, still holding onto a few vines for dear life. Before it started falling apart under her, causing her to flop backwards onto her back.
Blinking away the last few dots, she stayed laying back just looking up into the sky. The sky? Did she get caught up with the subject’s teleports? Did she not teleport back to the same spot afterwards? How did they intend to determine if the subject successfully time travelled if it just teleported somewhere else and didn’t return to the lab? Then again, Paige supposed, if the subject were to teleport back to the spot in the lab there was also the question that if the subject did time travel and did it through rapid teleportation between the spot it was in and somewhere else, how would it avoid superimposing itself over itself.
That was a lot of questions, usually she was more composed than this, and only asked questions in the back of her mind. Actually…
Moving her hand up, Paige had to blink twice about how rapid she moved her hand. Waving her hands around and seeing them move much faster to her eyes than she was used to, in fact, her whole body felt more alert than she was used to. Sitting up and almost falling forward, Paige stopped.
What was going on, why was her body so much faster, and why did she have so many questions in the forefront of her mind without any answers, her mind felt so slow.
Paige did what has been ingrained into her since she was born, what she had gotten out of the bad habit of doing too often that many people have and opened her status page.
…
Paige once did consider doing a Systemology bachelor’s degree, but the world understood and still understands so little about the system still, that she’d rather spend 4ish years studying something that would actually let her something new and interesting. She’s regretting that now, because maybe if she did that degree, she would have some semblance of understanding about why her status is not appearing in her mind right now.
What.
This is a new feeling for Paige, an intense curiosity about how this is happening, glee about finding something that as far as she was aware had never happened before, and not a small amount of terror.
Considering the lack of the systems presence, which Paige is still trying to conjure every second by thinking of opening her status, her body and minds response is starting to make sense. It’s not that her body is extremely fast, in fact looking up slowly in order to not give herself whiplash and seeing the trees blow with the wind, she realises that her mind and her perception of the world is just the slowest it’s been in a long, long time. Her body isn’t extremely fast, actually, its slower than normal. It's just that the speed at which she’s used to controlling her body, and her speed of her body’s response is at a level she’s not experienced since she was a child.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
This is how the world looks without system augmentations, without her vast number of skills and high intelligence. It was. So slow.
Refocusing on the crux of the problem, she sorts through her memories for an answer. The popular consensus about the system was that it utilises a not yet defined energy that’s been colloquially termed ‘Mana’ in English and acts like some kind of nanotech that only seen in fiction, adding phantasmal structures in people’s bodies in correlation to the modification of stats and skills. However, the barest of capabilities to measure mana were just invented last year, and there’s no physical evidence of any nanomachine device in play other than the effects the system has on people’s bodies, so it’s still very much just a theory.
While struggling to remember more, a problem she’s not experienced this much difficulty in in years, and considering the facts, her constant need to open her status finally returns a result, but not one she likes.
Paige Penelope Turner
LLl: ><
Cla}es: # po(3’ a#I>
Jee: ->?:”{}
“R%its: &o&’
I*#Jf: &o&’
O/..[: &o&’
Paige’s status appeared, with everything other than her name written in the system language, who’s new syntax and words Paige and everyone else in the world has made sure to keep on top of. But still, for some reason she’s having some trouble and has to think again to remember what they mean, only immediately recognising her name. And also immediately noticing it is far emptier than it should be. Translating the words one by one to what they meant in her memory, that’s life level, a number she’ll come back to, class, option available with a number which means 1, which doesn’t bode well, age, a bigger number she doesn’t recognise, traits, stats, skills, and a word next to them both she thinks she recognises but can’t really remember.
SU(0em “{:age skill *(“.
That was a skill prompt. That’s not promising.
SU(0em Language skill has reached ^I.
Theres only one thing she’s actively focusing on right now. But she already has that skill at a high enough level it’s not increased in months. That’s not stopping it from rapidly levelling right now though.
System Language skill has reached lvl#.
…
System Language skill has reached lvl9.
System Language skill has reached lvl10.
The skill’s levelling slowed down when it reached lvl10. Paige considers this, and looks at her status again, internally knowing what it will say already.
Paige Penelope Turner
Life Level: 0
Classes: 1 choice available
Age: ->?:93
Traits: None
Stats: None
Skills: Tier 1; System Language lvl8
What. What is going on? Where are her skills! Her hundreds of skills, thousands of skill levels, her trait, and class as well! Did her system not working earlier somehow reset it somehow? How? What? Why? One thing popped out to her then. The biggest number remaining on her status page. A huge number that was only sort of familiar, that she only managed to make out after remembering descriptions of what some higher life levels some people had looked like in the system language.
Age: -1693
She knew already that she fell into the experiment and was caught in the subject’s teleports after being poked into falling by her tutor. But their experiment was apparently actually a success! Did they actually manage to create a method of backwards time travel? Well there is the proof right there! That’s world-changing! The theories this discovery answers, and the more questions it’ll inspire! Paige was distracted by the possibilities for a moment, before looking at the number again and realising.
-1693
She’s… never going to see her family again.