The first thing Vorn did after their party's conversation was open his skill selection. Why wait?

Mythril Mind - Legendary

Replace those pesky electric signals in your mind with mana, completely removing the barrier between mind and body.

Learning - Unique

The need for knowledge is rooted in your very soul. You do not pursue knowledge for power, or just because it’s required. You pursue it for the love of learning itself. As such, this skill does not grant incredible power but simply allows you to learn faster and more effectively. Halts the regression of knowledge and triples the effectiveness of INT and WIS on cognition, perception, and memory, but does not improve coordination. Have fun with that.

Scales with INT, WIS… Obviously

Enhanced Cognition - Epic

Permanent 200% boost to your cognition…

If you pick this you're a moron

Scales with INT

Well, Vorn knew what he would be picking, and probably what he would be picking after this skill selection too.

And he had just gotten used to walking with Rowan’s stats.

Vorn hesitated for only a moment before picking [Learning].

Instantly he noticed a difference. Out of the corner of his vision, a drifting leaf could be seen slowly falling toward the earth, but after embracing the skill it appeared frozen in the air. Everything around him was so, so slow. Wait a moment, perception was a sense governed by Agility, not Intelligence- Oh. Oh fuck.

Skills that changed the governing Attribute of something were not uncommon, in fact, they were some of the most common. Almost every warrior that used Vital Energy gained a skill that changed Energy Manipulation to a CON-governed ability, but in his case, this was really, really bad.

Not only did it switch perception to an INT/WIS-governed skill, but it even enhanced that effect by three times, and it wasn't as if their absurd level of Agility just stopped affecting their perception, either.

He wasn’t ready for this! Most rangers that dealt with this level of dilation had training to handle it, but Vorn wasn’t even aware of what that training entailed! Sure, before everything felt like it was moving slower due to the speed of his thoughts, but they weren’t actually! This was an entirely new sensation!

The leaf still hadn’t moved an inch.

Oh gods, oh fuck, his enhanced cognition was making everything feel even slower!

No need to panic, he just needed to distract himself for a moment. He reached for his notepad only to be floored by the fact that he just… couldn’t. His hand wasn’t moving.

Oh. It was, but it was so slow that he couldn’t tell.

He could feel his panic rising with each passing microsecond.

Then, all of a sudden, he was in their soulscape.

From the window, he could tell that things hadn’t sped up.

Shit.

— — —

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Rowan could tell something was wrong the moment Vorn picked that skill, but he couldn’t tell what. All he knew was that his panic was rising very, very quickly. Unnaturally fast.

He took control the instant he noticed, but he still couldn’t tell what was wrong. He tried talking to Vorn, but he wasn’t responding. There was a faint buzz, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

Oh well, last resort time.

He activated [Synchronized Mind].

The world slowed immensely, and they knew what was wrong.

They didn’t dare move, not because they couldn’t, but because they could. Their adrenaline was spiking, and [Thrill] and [Movement] meant they absolutely could move… if they wanted to rip their muscles apart. Moving normally with time dilated to this degree would absolutely destroy whatever they moved. [Regeneration] was good, but not good enough to fix the damage quickly enough in this slowed world.

They knew what they had to do, but they really, really didn’t want to. They were going to have to split apart. They weren’t able to move as they were, and they needed help. Rowan would be forced to bring Vorn to the guild as quickly as he could but for Vorn… It would feel like days.

They resolved to activate their perk as often as they could, if only to share the misery.

And split.

— — —

From where Ark was sitting, it looked as if Vorn had sat down, switched with Rowan, and then began running max speed towards the exit clutching his arm. Ark didn’t think she could catch up if she wanted to.

Was Rowan really just… Leaving them in the dungeon alone? Before she could process that, she noticed a message written in the dirt.

‘When did he-’

She noticed what the message said.

Vorn hurt, rush ing

t o

g uil d

The writing got worse the farther down it went, and was that blood?

Just what was going on?

— — —

Rowan activated [Synchronized Mind] every three seconds. That was all he could do while maintaining his top speed. Just leaving Vorn that long felt like a betrayal, but it was all he could do without tripping and further extending the trip.

On every third footfall, like clockwork, his world slowed to a crawl, and they were flooded with relief. After hanging on the footfall for a few minutes, he was forced to let go of the perk and continue his run.

Even for him, this half-hour run felt like days.

But if it was for Vorn, he could handle it.

— — —

Rowan reduced the Guild’s door to splinters, opting to just run through it instead of wasting the split second to reduce his speed and open it.

The adventures in the lobby all jumped to their feet and readied their weapons in less than a second.

For Rowan, it felt like minutes.

“I need help! Party member- is undergoing - greatly enhanced perception – ratio is - approximately seventy two- to one.” Rowan shouted.

Even to him, his sentence sounded stilted. He was using the pauses in the sentence to further use his perk.

Instead of questioning him, the nearest waitress immediately called someone. Between pauses, he could hear, “Percep-tion Even-t: Code B-lack!”

Almost as soon as the words left her lips, Rowan's Elven instructor was in the building. He took one look at them and started talking at a speed Rowan couldn’t even comprehend.

Rowan realized he was trying to talk to him. He must have thought he was the one having the ‘perception event’.

“Can’t talk, perception mental only.” Was all Rowan said before activating his perk.

— — —

“Seeing as your eyes have gone purple, I can assume you're using an ability right now. You said it was an increase in mental perception? Must have been one hell of a skill you picked up to make it this bad. Here’s what you're going to do-” He sat them down on the floor, moving their body for them.

“Concentrate solely on my voice. Normally the Guild can just slowly guide someone towards controlling their perception over the course of someone’s career, but situations like this do happen. Don’t panic, this, while rare, is not abnormal. We can fix this.” He reassured.

“Now, try to imagine your mental energy. This takes a while for some people so don’t worry if you don’t get it immediately. I’ll be here for however long it takes you. Once you’ve got a grasp on it, do your best to slow it down. It should be cycling through your mind at what should feel like a normal pace. It’s not. Don’t try to just pump the breaks on it either. Gradually, smoothly, slow it down. Try to add a little resistance every cycle, ok?”

Voran, already intimately aware of their mental energy, did not take long to locate it. It was a little weird seeing outside of their soulscape, but it was not unfamiliar. It took a winding path through their mind, cycling from their eyes through every groove and neuron of their brain. Each cycle felt… right. A deep unease settled in their gut at the thought of slowing it down.

But they didn’t have any other choice. So they followed the Elf's instructions, every time a cycle passed by their optic nerve they tried to increase the resistance just a tad.

“Oh, I can already tell you're doing something right! Impressive, it takes most a few hours to find their mental energy. Just keep doing what you're doing, but whatever you do, do not completely stop the cycle. That is imperative.” Falnier warned.

They took his advice to heart and kept at it.

— — —

What felt like days later, they were at the point where they could talk. It felt like it was through a vice grip, and it was impossibly slow to them, but they could do it. Honestly, it was probably only possible because they were using Rowan’s perk. His stats made talking at this speed possible without hurting themselves.

“Great job. You're almost at the end. You're already at sixteen seconds to one. Quite an improvement, wouldn’t you say?

“Q-uite.” They ground out.

The only thing to do was keep at it.

— — —

After fifteen minutes in real-time, they were done. After such an intense mental exercise, Voran couldn’t keep themselves together any longer. They split.

Thankfully, despite having separate mental energies when apart, Vorn’s energy matched Rowan’s perfectly.

Rowan sighed in relief. Vorn broke down crying. It had only been around two days, even in slowed time, but the stress had really gotten to him.

Rowan walked them back to the apartment. He couldn’t deal with the outside world right now. This wasn’t only a stressful experience for Vorn, after all.

Thankfully their arm had already healed in the time it took to get to the guild. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the feeling of being able to perceive every individual muscle fiber ripping. Not fun, to say the least.

But it was done.

Rowan should probably have that conversation that his instructor recommended about now. He’d wait until tomorrow.