November 3, 2022
Day 14
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"You just said he wouldn't kill anyone!"
Daniel incredulously shouted to his wife, his voice loud in order to be heard over the agonizing screams that were filling the courtyard.
His wife Lana peeked out from behind the protective wall of sentinels and shouted back.
"That's not what I said at all! I told you that there would be repercussions for the guy if someone died, so he would most likely not kill anyone. Your friend's vicious attack seemed to have pushed him over the edge, and now he's out for blood, damn the consequences."
Daniel shook his head.
"I knew Rahul was up to something, staying back from the fight for so long, but I hadn't expected such a brutal attack. It was brilliantly executed, but still... Going all in like that, Rahul must have believed that the stab would kill the rogue, or at least incapacitate him. And yet he went ahead with the plan. Killing beasts is one thing, but humans?"
Daniel sighed.
"I'm focused on the wrong thing here. The rogue was barely hurt by the attack, at least physically. And now he's furious. Tell me about the details later, things are going to get a lot worse here. Hurry back to the castle."
Lana nodded and rushed back to safety, and about 50 infantry sentinels broke off from the group and followed her, setting a perimeter around the castle door.
She had nothing more to contribute here, and her presence will only make Daniel less effective. Not that she wasn't worried for him, but if he and the other defenders fell, no one would leave this island alive.
In any case, she had done her job, the most important part at least.
Lana and the rest of the combatants had watched the battle from the castle roof when someone realized that the island dwellers may not be aware of the events of the World Congress. The crowd looked at each other and enquired if any of the families had told the residents of the island what had happened during the Congress.
No one had.
They had talked about their own trials and tribulations during the tutorial, and the changes to their neighborhoods and cities, but no one got around to discussing the World Congress.
They thought they had all the time in the world to talk, but then the rogue had attacked.
After the discussion on the roof, Lana had taken the responsibility of going to Daniel and bringing him up to speed.
She had only started to tell him about the unofficial resolution in the Congress that stipulated that the first wave be friendly, when Rahul executed his counterattack.
That had cut the conversation short, but Lana didn't think it mattered anymore. If the hooded man was willing to kill, then the events of the Congress were no longer relevant. All the politicking among the human factions and the stewards had come to nothing.
It was now a fight for survival.
Just what the system had intended for the attack on Laysan Island to be.
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Ivan saw Rahul's plan fail, and before long, felt the consequences of that failure in his abdomen.
His friend's knife, which was now being used by the hooded man, penetrated deep into Ivan's gut, tearing through muscles but only grazing the vital organs.
Immutability whispered his satisfaction into Ivan's ears.
That went as well as could be expected.
Ivan thought as he inspected his HP and made a show of drinking a healing potion that he didn't need.
Character Overview Name Ivan Antonov Race Human (F) Class N/A Level 15 HP 386/400 MP 250/250 Stamina 133/300 Intent Points 2/7 Strength 35 (38.5) Endurance 30 Dexterity 28 Vitality 40 Intelligence 25 Presence
Name Immutability Level 2
As he went over the stats, Ivan chided himself for forgetting to disable haste. Rahul had told Ivan about the accumulation of intent, and while Immutability did not spin and rotate like Momentum, Ivan had an instinctive feel for how much intent he had accumulated. With Immutability's help, he had been able to use that intent to slightly distort the passage of time around him, and subtly reposition himself to take the least damage possible from the hooded figure's punches.
Soon, the system recognized his efforts and awarded him with a skill, a specialization, a stat, and a level, all at the same time.
You have gained a new skill.
Haste - Expend your stamina to speed up your movements.
Effect - Dexterity increased by 10% when the skill is active. Stamina consumption increased by 50%.
You have gained 10,000 experience from this skill.
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The specialization had followed the skill immediately, and Ivan guess that getting the specialization had indeed been the reason he had got the base skill in the first place.
Haste - Expend your stamina to speed up your movements.
Effect - Dexterity increased by 10% when the skill is active. Stamina consumption increased by 50%.
changed to.
Haste - Expend your stamina to speed up your movements.
Effect - Dexterity increased by 10% when the skill is active. Stamina consumption increased by 50%.
Specializations (1/unknown)
Chronomatic Haste - Empower your haste with accumulated chronomatic intent, for a significant bonus to dexterity.
You have gained 100,000 experience from this Specialization.
The Chronomatic Haste skill wasn't quite the same as what he had been doing manually earlier. He had been using his intent to slow down the passage of time around him, and that increased his ability to see the hooded figure's motions, given he was traveling slower. However, with the slowed time, Ivan's motions within the time bubble were proportionally affected. He just had more time to execute his movements, and so he was fast and precise by virtue of there being no wasted motion.
When he activated the Chronomatic Haste skill, there was no time dilation. Rather, the increased dexterity allowed Ivan to actually move faster.
Somehow, he was also able to see the rogue move, something he couldn't before without slowing time down.
Ivan guessed that the increased dexterity had some side effects affecting his ability to perceive things.
Despite all this, Ivan would still have preferred the manual use of his accumulated intent to make things around him move in slow motion, if not for one benefit that the skill had.
It was far more efficient in the use of intent.
While he was manually using the intent, he was barely able to keep the accumulation from falling to zero. Using the skill, he was accumulating intent faster than he was spending it, and once he had reached 2 intent points, Ivan started to spend that intent to make his internal organs immutable just before the attack.
That defensive use of intent hadn't been costly earlier, when the force of the blunt punches dissipated over his muscles and only a fraction made it to his internal organs resulting in the expenditure of intent. But the cost of keeping the delicate organs Immutable was notably steeper when a knife grazed against his liver.
Still, Ivan had kept at it, hoping to be rewarded with a skill that will help him on the path of becoming a tank, an unbreachable wall standing in front of his friends.
Not done with the notifications, Ivan re-opened the penultimate one.
The one he had been waiting for.
You have learned to harness your accumulated intent in various ways, and that experience has resulted in you discovering a hidden stat - Intent Points.
Based on the nature of your presence - Immutability - your accumulated Intent will be Chronomatic.
Please note that intent accumulation is measured on a logarithmic scale, and 3 intent points indicate ten times as much volume of intent as 2 points.
This was identical to the notification Rahul had shown him while they had waited with their injured friends.
The final notification Ivan received was due to the windfall of experience from gaining the skills. The 110,000 XP had raised his level to 15.
You have advanced to level 15.
39880/100000 experience to the next level.
Your strength has increased from 34 to 35. You have been awarded 5 free stat points.
As he finished going over his recent notifications, Ivan noticed that the rogue had completed his cycle and was coming back toward him.
He now had a choice to make. Either keep expending the intent points and defending his organs, drastically reducing the damage he suffered with every attack and making progress toward a skill he really wanted. Or save the intent for the dungeon.
Ivan was fairly certain that if he worked on the skill, he would get a base skill and a specialization for a total of 110,000 XP and a new level. It was the same pattern he had seen twice with intent-empowered skills like Rahul's Kinetic Cleave and his own Chronomatic Haste.
A powerful skill and a level was a worthwhile result to aim for.
On the other hand, Ivan had noticed how viciously the enemy was attacking and knew it was only a matter of time before someone took a fatal blow. In such a dire situation, he couldn't afford to think of his personal gains, and with that realization, Ivan knew what he had to do.
Conserve his intent till it reached 3 points, and then pour it all into the dungeon.
The synergy with the bastion had affected various landmarks and buildings in the settlement, and Ivan skimmed through the notification until he found the relevant one.
Dungeon Synergy Bonus
Congratulations. The synergy between Immutability and the tiered dungeon has unlocked a hidden capability of the dungeon - Time Dilation.
Time Dilation - By feeding the dungeon enough Chronomatic Intent, you can slow down the passage of time within it by several orders of magnitude.
Effect: The extent of time dilation depends on the amount of Chronomatic Intent stored in the dungeon. With the minimum serviceable amount, time moves ten times slower within the dungeon. With the maximum, time moves up to a thousand times slower. This effect will stack with other skills and bonuses.
Finalizing his decision that the defensive skill could wait, Ivan started to cut down his intent expenditure and start accumulating enough intent to let at least one team enter the dungeon with 10x dilation. The notification didn't say it, but Ivan had tried feeding a bit of intent to the dungeon, and based on the response, he knew that he needed at least three intent points to activate that base dungeon bonus.
Even if Rahul alone goes into the dungeon for an hour, he can grind for ten hours and come back with a dozen levels. If five of us could go and come back above level 30, it'll shift the battle completely.
As long as the others can hold back this rogue for one more hour.
Ivan thought, and instantly he saw the folly in his plan.
There was no way this group could last even another fifteen minutes with the way the enemy had ramped up his attacks and was terrorizing them now.
The group here was battered, and five more had left the defensive circle to rest and recover, their bodies fatigued by the continuous cycle of being torn open and healed.
The rogue could now afford to focus on and whittle down one enemy at a time, and everyone was just waiting for the other shoe to drop when it finally happened.
Satisfied that he had sufficiently broken the wills and morale of the defensive force, the rogue stopped and stared at every individual, slowly, one at a time.
Ivan couldn't help but flinch when his eyes met the hooded man's.
For what felt like forever, but was only thirty seconds, the courtyard was still, not even the ranged and magic users daring to attack the standing figure. Daniel too held the sentinels back, and Ivan considered whether this would be a good time to invest in a shield upgrade for the castle.
It won't help against someone this strong.
Ivan thought helplessly.
Finally, the hooded figure moved and his attacks honed on to a target right next to Ivan.
He had picked out the weakest link in the defending chain, someone who was already halfway to death's door after having been in this fight since the start.
The moment the rogue started moving with clear killing intent in his eyes, all of Ivan's earlier deliberations, calculations and considerations were tossed aside.
He immediately activated haste and prepared to turn his entire body to solid stone with Immutability.
While the tank had only started to move, the rogue was already there and started his attack with three deep stabs to Matt's abdomen.
He followed it with a strong kick, and Matt fell to his back, his hands instinctively moving to brace for the fall.
An action that left him entirely open.
Mirroring what Rahul had done to him minutes ago, the hooded man raised his knife and stabbed straight toward Matt's exposed neck.
That attack left the rogue open too, and his weapon was only inches from Matt's neck when he felt a boulder crash into his side, and for the first time in the entire battle, the hooded figure fell to his back.
The next instant, a hundred arrows flew straight at the fallen rogue.