"Can you help me hear and speak again?" He sent.

"A few of the Degritone already can. Most of them who have come to this timeline have already learned how. It shouldn't take long."

And it didn't, only taking around 7 minutes. "So, oh wow this is weird. Has anyone figured out how to make us sound less... warbly? I have no idea what word to properly describe this. Sounds like I'm talking through a fan."

"Oh, yeah," Melena said, "that happened with... well, all of you so far at the beginning. I think you just make an assumption about how sound should be produced in a throat and your weird new body makes it not work that way. The others said something about not needing to manually manipulate your larynx or something."

"Wow you must be an emotional wreck if you're talking like that."

"Yes."

"Is my body too hard for hugs? Should I figure out how to make skin? Is my calming aura annoying?"

"My gosh, you are all the exact same-"

"Yes."

"-no, you're fine, you can if you want to, and no. It's nice. I didn't expect to see you so soon, but I also wish it'd been sooner given what happened."

"Should... should I be getting hit by my aura?"

"No. No, no, no. If anyone should, it's that guard that killed you."

Degritone silently nodded. They spent the next few hours in each other's embrace with accelerated time.

----------------------------------------

"You know, that's the first time I've killed a person. Maybe some monsters counted before, but blah. Those are monsters."

"Do you feel bad about it?"

"Not at all, they deserved it."

"Yes, they did. If you don't feel bad, then what more is there to say?"

"Well, I kinda feel bad that I don't feel bad, but I'm sure that'll go away soon. Especially after the others report on how cleaning up the world went."

"They said they'd give us an hour and a half, real time, to ourselves before they come back."

"I doubt they aren't looking on. Watching happy loli be happy is nice." He sighed before saying, "I want to stay like this forever; however, as before and always, I need to do stuff. How in the world do people actually fight at full speed? I have over 400 levels in what you said to be a great perception skill, and I still need another 1k percent time compression to keep up with my own movements, and I only have an effective Agility of like 140k."

"Can we please not talk shop until the others get back?"

"Anything you wish, Melena," he said, pulling her closer and laying down with her on top of him.

"Next time you go somewhere, please check in with me at least once a day," she said, burying her face in his chest.

"I can't promise I will be able to escape the soul prison thing in under a day, but I will do so," he responded, gently rubbing her back.

For the next almost 20 hours subjective time, they laid there, Degritone slowly taking in Melena's existence as he rubbed her back and occasionally played with her hair, while Melena made herself comfortable in his embrace.

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As soon as another Degritone showed up, Melena said, "Dang it. Well, to answer your question, people don't keep up with fights at the highest Levels. They might try for fights against monsters, but more often than not, people just don't fight others at high Level simply because it's too fast. Instead, they just try to predict what their opponent will do and command their bodies to move as appropriate to counteract that when possible."

She sat up on his stomach before continuing, "We may not be able to react to stuff, but we can still tell our bodies to move faster than we can actually react to it. It definitely takes away from our control, but it at least lets us get attacks and movements in. It is somewhat similar to how you were replacing your body with an image during the tournament. Your body was much more responsive than your normal one. Now, they are probably exactly the same."

Degritone held his hand up and Melena took a hold of it, then she finished, "The very few with two compatible perception Skills are very powerful because they can react to fights. If So'Ejan did not have twice their PP, I would say they would have a chance at actually beating him in a one on one fight. As it is, he can simply overpower anyone with his tier 3 image and ridiculous Stats."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"So, how are we dealing with him, by the way? Are we just killing him?"

"'Just' killing the most powerful person under the System," Melena says, playfully mockingly. "Since you are a timeline hopper and have an army of yourself, it might not actually be too hard to just swarm him with a few hundred Degritones and take him out."

"We're actually not a timeline hopper ourselves. Actual timeline hoppers simultaneously perceive and exist in around 10 timelines at once. They can freely choose to not exist in one more of those or change one of the timelines to a different, adjacent one. Killing a timeline hopper is only possible if you can simultaneously kill them in all their timelines at once.

"We're just a collection of people who originated from a single timeline and were originally one person using the System's power to jump between timelines. We're not actually a timeline hopper yet, and I doubt I'd get to keep the army of myself when I do so. It's kinda hard to explain without explaining the hundreds of hours of RP that happened before the point we made timeline hoppers, but basically, once a timeline hopper of someone is made, they take over all versions of themselves within a roughly 100 timeline radius.

"Then they start as one person and rapidly work their way to to around 10 timelines while slowly gaining more and more timelines they can exist in, capping out at the pi times 100 squared timelines they originally took over. After that, they can work on becoming a multiverse hopper, and blah. Anyway, being a timeline hopper would be really nice, but we're not actually one. It'd be easier to figure out Systemless Flash and Flash Space than becoming a true timeline hopper.

"But anyway, yes, we could probably get all the others up to Level and then just zerg So'Ejan. I think our best actual bet, though, is getting some more PP and levels as well as figuring out a compatible time compression skill. Maybe a new class skill, too, but I feel the skill I want wouldn't be super helpful against So'Ejan. Definitely evolve my image a couple more times, maybe even make it tier 2 or 3. I'm not using soul exploration for that, though, because holy cow I never want to be without loli cuddles for that long ever again."

"And you will not be," Melena said, placing her other hand on the hand she was holding. "Judging by that 'more' in that statement, you have already evolved it once, which is faster than I expected even knowing how ridiculous you have been with images in the past. The entire trip to that world was faster than I thought it would be, honestly. Significantly so."

"What have the others brought you up to speed on?"

"Everything up until you went to train your Skills."

"Oh, cool. Have you set up a council of Melenas in the same way we have the army of Degritones?"

"Yes. We have yet to make any significant breakthroughs, though, because we are limiting ourselves to one person testing things at a time so as to not run into Stavch corruption too early. Our Degritones keep telling us that they could handle the testing that we would dictate because you are apparently highly resistant, if not immune, to Stavch corruption at this point. None of us want to risk you like that, however we will not order you to not use Stavch. It is too useful for you to ignore."

"So, report, how's the take over going?"

"We three of us just hit level 90 and are working on getting the others up there. We all took Mark of the Loli Heretic as our 9th class skill. Works perfectly, if a little low on the damage side. It doesn't disappear after first proc, though, so it can continue to grow in power alongside LRR and eventually be a guaranteed kill on repeat offenders. We also had the idea to display the number of their offenses on the mark so people know how horrible they are and they know how close to death they are."

"Nice."

"As for the takeover itself, we've had a few run ins with loyalists and just people who hate us in general, but nothing that isn't expected of a hostile takeover of an entire planet. We're basically already done, just need to make the information more easily obtainable. Maybe spread the police golems around if we figure out how to make cloakium.

"I highly doubt most, if any, other planets will go this smoothly. They hyper condensed their power into one spot and we had a large advantage over that power in that we're very anti-loli abuser. Earth, alone, would probably be able to keep us at bay, and other, more established worlds would definitely be able to.

"Oh, and Padina says hi, and thanks. She's the one you ran into at the very end before coming here."

"Is she ok? She seemed sad or something, she was definitely crying and said something about limited time left."

"Apparently, she has an image where she can trade her lifespan to create any effect imaginable. It'll become useless once she gets higher level and becomes biologically immortal, but she says that's fine. With our second wave of leveling, we're working on bringing her up, as well. We're having a hard time finding low enough level Dungeons where we can actually keep her safe, but that may have already been solved by now given how fast we are, and that we can teleport."

"What are the limits on it, anyway? It still affected by anti-TP skills and stuff?"

"Yes. Flash is still superior, not to mention Flash Space allowing us time to think and properly readjust ourselves as needed."

"Alright. So, back to cuddles with Melena or do we actually need to do something?"

"Work on a compatible time compression skill while you cuddle. It'll be kinda important soon. We're also working on it, but you're the main timeline, so I doubt we'll be allowed to have too many breakthroughs of our own."

"Fine. Oh, yeah, one more thing, how is it we don't already have infinite of us? Each timeline should be splitting infinitely every planck time and we all have the main timeline's coordinates. Do we have any tests we can perform to confirm the System is messing with timeline generation?"

"We can work on that," Melena said. "Well, other versions of me. Maybe myself, as well, as we cuddle, in the same way you will be working on doing something ridiculous again."

Three Degritones and the main Degritone all reached to her head and gave her a headpat. "You don't have to. You're coming off of mourning for us," the three said at the same time.

"Ye," the main Degritone said after they finished.

"We want to. These are exciting times for advancement of System knowledge. It would be nice to also bring my research group into the fold, but until Duels is dealt with, even if I trust them, I do not want to risk news of your survival making it to him until you go to deal with him."

The main Degritone pulled her down into a hug and said, "Fine. Can we still cuddle while you do it?"

"Of course," she responded, placing a hand on his chest and returning the hug with the other arm.