"Oh, hey, could enchanting help at all and does it have anything to do with skills?"

"Probably not and no. The structures of Skills are completely unrelated to enchanting. While we can replicate some Skills through enchanting, which I now know to be because of how Stavch works, almost all Skill structures exist purely as a way to be a bridge between the System and the Skill holder's mind and/or body. Aura Skills are the biggest outlier, because we are capable of copying a Level 1 version of the Skill to an item.

"If that Skill involves a Stat or any intention required at all, it is impossible to copy with enchanting, as the enchanted material has no will and no normal Stats. While all this is possible, it is very difficult and has only been accomplished by the Patron of Enchanting. Unless you want to beat a second Patron in their own domain, I do not recommend you try to make a perception Skill through enchanting."

"I mean, Google figured out how to interact with the System."

"Yes, but that was a custom Skill for one of its engineers. Before the update, they were given a Skill that was effectively exclusively knowledge on how to enchant in a way that interacts with the System in a couple ways we hadn't known the structures for before. Since it was a purely knowledge-based Skill, they were able to get it back after the update reset your Skills."

Degritone nodded. "Can I ask more questions as I come up with them, or do you want to silently cuddle while we work?"

"You can ask, but I would prefer to silently cuddle with you when possible. I will order you to ask the questions you wish to ask after you have already thought about it for a time you believe to be appropriate, and only if you have not come to a conclusion you are satisfied with as being correct. That way, we can silently cuddle most of the time, but also get some of your questions answered."

Degritone nodded and began rubbing her back, occasionally moving to play with her hair, instead.

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

So, time dilation. I've already used changed gravity around my nervous system to get the first one. How in the world does the system do soul exploration and Dungeon time dilation that, at least the former, can stack with the skills? Does it just create a bubble of spacetime that's effectively separate from the rest of spacetime like in all the most realistic theoretical warp drives, then warp that spacetime?

That would make the most sense, since Dungeons and the soul space don't take up any physical space at all. At least I think the latter takes no space. How in the world am I going to do this...? I guess I could make the space between all my cells smaller, but that'd only be like 4% increase or something. For once, the little about a lot part is coming back to bite me. Don't know enough about brains and the nervous system to properly make this work.

So, I'll probably have to go with my much better understanding of computing and physics. Heck, there's an idea. Replace my nervous system with a computer-like system. Wait, how in the world does... Exotic Nervous System, ENS even work while I'm in this state? My whole body is the same material. I don't have a nervous system.

It must be that skill descriptions aren't actually what's going on, then, just what the system deemed as an accurate representation of your image of the skill, then it goes about calculating how that would work, and does the most efficient method under the hood. Or, maybe not objectively most, but the most that the Architects have found, assuming they're actually the creators of the System.

The interview ticket and them notified of a bug makes sense if they're, if not the creators, then at least the maintainers. So, what's a more efficient method of time dilation than spacetime manipulation? Assuming it's at the level of a multiverse hopper, the most efficient method of time dilation in-multiverse would be to create a pseudo-multiverse that has a different time flow and offload the computational power, or in this case nervous system, to the pseudo-multiverse.

You'd then need to simply use your effectively infinite power on a multiversal scale to link the two together in such a way as to have the person who's getting dilated actually be able to move and not die and stuff. But, the System doesn't strike me as a multiverse hopper-level entity because it was able to be held off by what I assume to be my subconscious self-image that made the Lolicoknight class.

They're almost definitely a timeline hopper-level - it's? - and definitely is if it's the one messing with timelines. I have a feeling So'Ejan is my last stop before dealing with actual timeline hoppers myself, probably the Architects and whatever bounty hunters they have set up to take down people with that achievement. Uhhh, Past Expiration. I'm sure someone's notified the council of Melenas about that.

And I guess whoever actually made the System put in some failsafes - failsaves? - to prevent people who came after them from just implementing instant death for something they don't like, as I see no reason to just allow me to walk free with no downside. I guess the class upgrade was supposed to be the downside, but my Class Ideal was too strong for that to work. Or something.

ANYWAY, back to time dilation. How would a timeline hopper go about time dilation? Well, reality is at least somewhat different from the RP, so I doubt the answer is just "use the inside of a black hole and then evaporate it once you're done with it." Actually, I might be able to create a black hole with just a bunch of mover structures, now that I think about it. So, maybe black holes aren't out of the realm of possibility.

I should test that. Away from Melena. I'd need, what, 6 movers? One for each side of a cube, all equidistant - actually, let's think of how to dissipate a black hole before I make one. Don't want to consume the whole garden. Or any of it besides the air, actually. So, I could just super speed hawking radiate it. I'm pretty sure that's just photon-antiphoton virtual particle pairs being created and the latter falling into the black hole to actually reduce its mass while also releasing said energy as a photon.

Well, I guess it wouldn't have to be photons. Could be any particle, the more massive the more quickly it would evaporate. I don't think normal black holes would realistically create too many actual particles, but if I could create virtual particles of something really massive, like a Higgs Boson, I could evaporate it super quickly. I don't know how to create virtual particles, so let's not create a black hole.

Timeline hoppers, as far as I know, can't actually manipulate time beyond moving through timelines and manipulating spacetime. Actually, changing the shortest path between two points in spacetime, primarily the time part rather than the space part - even though they're the same thing - would work. Shortest path is a straight line, so that would just be curving space time again, which is just gravity again. The System can obviously go to 5k+% compression.

So, it must - wait, I have this in reverse. I'm trying to speed up my own time, not slow down the rest of the world. Derp. Anyway, so, I'd want a white hole, or something like it. The System must be able to create something similar. Can't I just move myself really close to a white hole where gravitational potential energy is really high to get a faster moving thought process to control my - now pure Stavch instead of meat - puppet of a body?

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

Maybe that's what the System is doing under the hood. Create a while hole, move whatever is required near that white hole, keep it alive, and control the speed up by distance from the white hole. Or maybe just negative gravity just before a white hole, but blah. Same idea. So, I just need to focus on that. It might even upgrade my ENS rather than grant a new skill.

Given how many of us are probably working on this, someone's bound to get it eventually. Maybe someone else figures out a different way, like my thought of replacing my nervous system with a computer. I'm certain someone followed that path after going through the thought process and realizing that, since their first instinct was to think on the white hole idea, rather than the computer one, they must have realized I would think on the white hole idea.

Or at the very least, they'd have had this thought, he thought while giving Melena a little squeeze of a hug before going back to rubbing her back and occasionally playing with her hair. So, on to figuring out why the System hasn't given me the skill or skill upgrade yet for the white hole thing. I can't think of how they'd be doing accelerated thinking otherwise. Guess I could just brute force it like Swordsman's Territory.

And so, he spent the next many hours of relative, accelerated time thinking about sending his nervous system to near a white hole and controlling the speed up by controlling the distance from the white hole.

All while cuddling with who was quickly moving up to rival Midna as his favorite loli.

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

Finally, after around 8 hours of intense cuddling with mostly focused thought, Degritone got an announcement.

Skill Upgraded!

Exotic Nervous System lv405 becomes True Time Compression lvX

Lost Skill Levels will not affect your PP

True Time Compression

Control your consciousness's distance from the AWH, increasing the speed at which you perceive the world.

NOTICE: Based on your soul strength, speeds above a 25748721201% increase will almost definitely cause damage to your mind due to some issues with the ejecta filtering. Until these are resolved, keep this on the Architect-only Skills list.

Degritone started to speak then remembered that Melena wanted to silently cuddle. He got her attention before sending her the Skill.

"That notice is concerning," she said.

"My thoughts exactly. That number is stupid high for... anyone, I guess, but still. I should only really need a... multiple hundred million times acceleration when fighting timeline hopper-level enemies. But the fact that people with lower soul strength have an upper limit on acceleration percentage is concerning for everyone with a low percentage."

"What did you even just do? Apparently, that Skill's not supposed to be possible to obtain. You did something significantly more ridiculous than I thought you would, and this Skill would be a great tool to measure the strength of someone's soul, at least relative to other people, unlike the current system that has numerous flaws."

"I basically figured out that the System must be using a white hole for time compression because there were no other logical conclusions I could come to as for how they could accomplish the task while staying in timeline hopper, even if highest-level timeline hopper, levels of power. Which is what I assume AWH means, 'acceleration white hole.'

"Unless Stavch worked significantly differently from Raijingeki from the RP, it was the only logical way I could see someone of that level of power doing any time manipulation beyond entering Flash Space. From what little I've seen, other than its control method and how it moves, it seemed to be exactly the same.

"They need to be similar by necissity, as our worlds are basically exactly the same. There should be differences down the road that don't involve the control method, but they probably won't come into play until halfish way through being multiverse hopper. Still a very long way to go, though. I'm not even a timeline hopper yet, let alone a peak omniverse hopper."

"Give me a moment to process what you've just accomplished in nine hours of thought. You just... I don't know if our collective hearts and minds will be able to take all the surprises you are going to unleash upon the world."

"You've got my calming aura to help out," Degritone offered.

Melena just silently, weakly nodded as she messaged other Melenas.

Degritone also messaged the other Degritones about the Skill and how annoying it was to get before focusing on obtaining Flash while cuddling with Melena.

I should be impossible to hit with Flash and that much time compression, at least until people reach levels of speed and reaction time where they can hit someone with only 3 planck times of warning. I guess they could also have a prediction skill like Territory. Heck, Flash vs Territory, Territory wins. If they can time their attack properly, I wouldn't be able to react in time, regardless of how fact my thoughts are sped up.

Anyway, Flash. Basically, Flash Space is a world without time that's an exact copy of the solid and liquid material on the current timeline. Well, it's actually a copy of the whole pocket of creation, but the boundaries between timelines, multiverses and the void, and omniverses and the hallways stop being permeable, so it's effectively a copy of wherever you happen to be.

That's also not completely accurate, because it's actually just a copy of all the Stavch flows. Actually, I wonder if real Flash Space exists in this pocket or not. It may have just been a property of Raijingeki that can be emulated by Stavch, but not not actually implemented because it doesn't actually exist in this world. In which case, I shouldn't rely on Flash Space. I guess I shouldn't use Flash Space until I know what's going on on a pocket scale.

While Flash may not actually be Flash without Flash Space, arbitrary methods of teleportation can still exist. I guess I'll actually just stick with the System teleportation for now. It doesn't work in or into anti-TP zones, but it'll be good enough, probably. System-less Flash should be very easy once I make timeline hopper, if it truly exists in this world.

So, what else was even on our agenda when we started this? Well, we still haven't made an actually compatible time compression Skill, and I don't know how that would even work now that I know that the AWH exists and is used for time compression, but someone figured out how to make it work, so there must be some way. It's kinda irrelevant, though, because I'd eventually get an effectively infinite speed up if I ever figure out how to make my own white hole and how to deal with its ejecta.

So, what do I even do? Just cuddle and wait? They're working on figuring out the timeline shenanigans, so I'll let them do that. I guess I could work on making cloakium so I can be actually invincible up until people know how to nullify arbitrary Stavch flows, which is mid multiverse hopper-level, assuming it's not significantly easier with Stavch than it was with Reijingeki.

So, let's pull up that memory of the condensed-

A colorful Degritone appeared beside the main timeline's Degritone. Confused, he tilted his head at them. They sent a memory packet detailing how to make pure Stavch interact with light in a way to create the illusion of actually having a normal human body. Main gave the colorful one a thumbs up as he rapidly became colorful, which startled Melena.

Degritone smiled at her when she looked up at his face and gave her a big hug.