Chapter 65 – Exploiting the Trait

AG. The day I've warned about has come. I'm sick... well I have a moderately heavy cold and my wife COVID (I tested a couple of days ago and was negative and have no desire to do another test). I'm still confident of getting tomorrows file out but I lost two hours this morning because I slept in and this thing could get worse, so no promises.

Eventually, Tom picked himself up. His brain was still swarming with the implications of being given the trait. However, he was pragmatic enough to acknowledge that the reasons he received the stroke of luck weren’t as important as the fact that he had. The answer could end up being the equivalent of an ant hill being made into a mountain. It was possible that Dimitri had been manipulating things from the shadows, or that community fate was twisting probabilities, or even that DEUS was using a divine intervention, or something as equally as weird. But, honestly, that didn’t matter.

It was his.

He had absorbed it, and it couldn’t be taken away.

The divine champion’s trial was his to reach and profit from. His movements almost reluctant, he started to walk. The others would be worried about him, and, as momentous as the moment was, there was nothing he could do until he got access to an isolation room tomorrow.

With lighter steps than usual, he continued his day. Kang watched him suspiciously, but he ignored the scrutiny and threw himself into harder and harder obstacles and taking nastier and nastier tumbles as a result.

As he held his hand to the healing crystal for the disturbingly long fifteen seconds, and it felt like every single individual rib was being mended and shifted to their correct positions, Kang approached him.

The other boy shifted awkwardly. “Um… I’ve noticed.”

Tom turned and met his eyes flatly, not wanting to talk about why he was happy even if gossip rings would eventually let everyone know. Either Declan or Boreas were bound to let the secret slip.

“Um… yeah, I guess you can’t talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Tim asked innocently.

Kang flushed. “Um… how you’ve been approaching training.”

Privately, Tom was surprised by that revelation. This was not the reason he had guessed for the looks he had been receiving. But, he supposed, in hindsight it was not a surprise. Tom had been training aggressively for days, and it was expected that Kang would notice. It was just a coincidence that he had chosen to raise the concern on the same day that Tom had other things happening.

Frustration washed over the other boy’s features. He started to point at Tom’s chest and then stopped himself. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come over. I have nothing. Absolutely nothing to talk to you about.” With another frown, he walked away, ignoring the eighth run that had full safety features incorporated, and instead stopped in front of the identical ninth that didn’t. It was the obstacle course Tom had been using under the guise of turning it into a direct race rather than a timed one. He looked back at Tom questioningly, and Tom deliberately kept his face neutral.

“This sucks.” Kang muttered, before doing a couple of stretches, as though they would help.

Briana had, of course, noticed the interaction. “Don’t do it, Kang.” She glared at Tom. “Why are you doing it? Don’t.”

Naturally, neither of them answered. Tom because he understood the cost of sharing the information, and Kang both for the same reason and because he didn’t actually know why Tom was doing what he was.

“Why are you doing it?” She repeated.

Kang sighed. “Because of that idiot.”

She stamped her foot. “That’s a stupid reason. Tom, explain yourself.”

“If I make a mistake, I want to feel it.” Tom told her.

“That’s really dumb. Kang, don’t be as dumb as this one.”

Tom walked up beside her. “It’s good that you care, Bri. But if he wants to do it, then don’t stop it.”

“We’re not listening to you. You’re the problem.” She snapped at him. She looked almost hurt by his and now Kang’s apparent stupidity. “What’s your issue? Even if that,” she gestured in annoyance at the healing crystal. “Even if that fixes everything. It still hurts. Why would you do it?”

“It does hurt,” he agreed. “But that won’t stop me.” The whole time he had been speaking, he had been watching Kang, who was losing his nerves. The other boy stiffened slightly at the reaffirmation of Tom’s intentions. His expression of worry transformed into one of determination.   

Kang ran the ninth obstacle course, cautiously. He didn’t fall once.

Tom followed and took far more risks and beat the larger boy’s time by a few seconds. It wasn’t an impressive result, until you factored in the impact of the handicap he was applying via his ring. Kang knew about the ring, and the fact Tom had managed a superior time was damning.

The boy kicked the ground, an angry expression on his face. Then he slouched and looked abashed. “I can do better.”

“Yes, don’t mope. Just go faster next time.” Tom told him.

The larger boy straightened. On his next attempt, he was substantially more reckless, and was on track not just to beat Tom’s time, but to smash it; until, on the fourth last obstacle, he attempted to leap across a gap instead of going around the edge like it was designed for. The leap was beyond ambitious, and Tom was not sure the feat was even possible without five or six more years of growth, or else a magic skill. Kang did not have either of those, so he missed the attempt by a good foot and struck his nose on the way down. Blood poured everywhere, but he didn’t complain. He went to the healing crystal, then lined up to do the same thing again.

Internally, Tom nodded, pleased by the determination being shown here, while externally making all the right noises. “Are you sure you should be doing this? Don’t you think you’re going too hard? Shouldn’t you do the easier course?”

Briana supported him with similar suggestions.

With Kang participating in the near-suicidal training, there was even a chance they might eventually convince Briana to join them. That, however, was not about to happen quickly.  When they broke for dinner, she still looked pissed at them, so it was going to take time. Besides, Tom was not convinced getting her to partake in the same reckless activities was sensible. The single Earned Skill example that he had had relied on unrealised technical skills which both he and Kang had from the tutorial; but, despite Briana being as much of a genius with the obstacle courses as she was with her water magic, he doubted that she would have that level of proficiency.

When she fell, she inevitably got hurt far more than either of them, which suggested her gymnastic skills were weaker than theirs.

For now, it was a moot point anyway. When they got to dinner, Briana made a point of sitting away from them.

“This better be worth it.” Kang told him quietly.

Tom didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to take a risk when it came to such a sensitive topic, and his silence told its own story.

The next day, Briana behaved as though nothing had happened. However, some level of trust had been broken, and she insisted on them doing magic practice all morning instead of engaging in anything more physical.

The tension was frustrating, and it was a relief when he finally got to enter the isolation room.

The instant he was sealed tight within its confines, he went to the status ritual and focused on understanding what Maurice had given him.

Text flashed into existence on the screen.

Trait: Speed Matching

Have both your perception and thinking speed boosted to ninety percent of the level of any person, animal, or beast that is attacking you. It will only trigger if you’re aware of the enemy.

This trait does not boost body abilities, but will assist in expedited spell and skill usage. 

Tom did a fist bump as he read it, and a massive grin blossomed on his face.

Thank you, DEUS, he thought. The trait was exactly what Maurice had promised, and, reading it, he also understood why it wouldn’t scale well into higher levels.

When you were at the low ranks, you were much more likely to run into a monster that had a substantial speed advantage against you. It was just how the distribution of them worked. A low-levelled area could have a roaming boss twice as strong as the average, but that same roaming threat in a high-levelled area might only be thirty percent stronger. In both cases, that jump would create something nearly undefeatable to any nearby adventurers, with the creature being thirty percent stronger, and its balanced mix of abilities representing, on a relative scale, a deadlier threat than that of the weaker monsters any team just starting out would face.

The Speed Matching trait would only have a limited effectiveness against the higher-ranked monster, because the enhanced abilities would still remain a threat, but in the low-levelled area it would be a significant boost that would help him flee the enemy. For lower-ranked adventurers, the trait could be a lifesaver, but at higher levels, not so much.

More specifically, for him, this stroke of luck would allow him to cross the divide and reach his goal of achieving a general combat ranking of four. To get that, he needed to be capable of defeating ninety-nine point nine, nine percent of rank-four monsters in one-on-one battles. 

Given that his attributes had barely reached rank one, that was a tough ask. His rule of thumb had always been that you could fight up to thirty percent on an attribute gap, but beyond that, the task became increasingly more difficult. For this, he needed to go four times, which would have been impossible without his specific skill set and experience. Rank-one creatures weren’t supposed to possess multiple spells along with spear mastery the way he had.  

The effects of the trait, unfortunately, couldn’t be tested until he got into the trial, so he threw himself back into routine. Two days later, he finally got to raise his hand and place it on the not-quite-real sphere that represented the trial in his three-dimensional space that humans could perceive.   

He appeared in the forest with a spear in his hand. He glanced around quickly, confirming that there were no enemies about to attack him. “No, April! Not yet. Can we talk first?” he yelled out.

The world blurred, and he was sitting at the cafe.

“I got the trait.” He exclaimed excitedly.

“I can see.”

“Do you think this is enough? Am I general combat four now?”

She inclined her head to the side and frowned, then gave a slight shake of her head. “No, unfortunately not.”

“But… No, I have to be close. I upgraded Spark as well.”

She half glared at him. “I’m not blind. Of course I’m aware of that, but both of them combined is not enough.”

“Really? They have synergy. It must be close.”

“No, it’s not,” she interrupted him harshly.

“But the trait’s better than expected, and that stun upgrade on Spark is basically the best-case scenario, and…”

“I said getting that strong was a near impossibility. And you’re not listening. You’re terrible when you get an idea in your head. You really struggle to change course.”

“No, that’s not right. I’m not fixed in my ways. I’m adaptable.”

“You’re impossible, at least until you see the proof.” She sighed. “Here, let me show you.”

Abruptly, he found himself in a meadow. There were trees in the distance, but the ground itself was closer to a golf fairway than a natural field.

He glanced around, wondering what was going to happen. Then his Danger Sense flared up, and the leaves of the trees that had been gently swaying seemed to almost freeze. They were still moving, but far slower than they had been. Tom instantly understood that this was his new trait at work. His perception had been sped up, even if his body gained no improvements. With wide eyes, he searched for the monster that Danger Sense had tagged as threatening him, and then spotted it flying at him from directly in front.

The monster was tiny and looked weird. It was a chaotic mess of energy rather than anything defined. Much of it resembled an air elemental, but not the normal type. It was more compact than usual, and it was heading straight at him and moving at a speed that, even with his boost, it was hard to follow.

There was no time to do anything but react on instinct. As he would have done if a bird was menacing him like this, he sent his orders to his muscles to move his spear tip into position to push it away. Instantly, he realised that the reflex was wrong. His muscles complained immediately, and he thought it was possible that he had torn something. His weapon and muscles also failed to respond even close to the rate he needed. The trait boosted his perception, but did nothing for his body, and he was just incapable of moving fast enough to compete with the monster’s speed.

It flashed past him at the level of his head. A slither of its compact, swirling mass extended out from the main body like a spinning saw blade to reach for him. Despite the risk, Tom was fascinated. At close range, its nature was as indecipherable as it had been at a distance. His original guess about a concentrated air elemental remained, but it could have also been an exotic monster that used biological processes completely different from anything that had developed on Earth. 

His cheeks stung as its slicing appendage cut into him. Luckily, it was only slightly larger than a mouse, so it was limited in the amount of burst damage it could inflict.

Nevertheless, the single encounter gave him more than sufficient information to assess what he was facing. There was no way he could beat this thing physically. Even if each cut was insignificant, given enough time, it would wear him down with a thousand of them. Briefly, Tom wondered whether he could out-heal the monster. If he recovered fast enough, it would be as though he were like one of the giant monsters that Tom couldn’t currently damage despite their low ranking.

He tested the idea by exploring the cost for him to close the cut. A full mana was all that was required, but that was still way too much. There was no feasible path for him to keep up with its damage output, if its first blow was consistent with what it would continue to deliver.

Prolonging the battle was not a possibility. Instead, he needed to kill it quickly. Intelligence was always critical in these kinds of contests, so he hacked a sensing spell together. To save on energy, he only placed three layers in it. That compromise would lower its effectiveness, but, combined with Danger Sense, which was already warning him of an attack from behind, and the fact that it was a curated battle with one opponent, he didn’t actually need that much accuracy.

The outer layer of his sensing construction was broken behind him.

It was coming again. Then, in a blink of real time, the second one failed. It was too quick for him to turn and face it, but his magic didn’t have the same level of restrictions. Electricity, fuelled partially by precognition affinity mana, crackled into existence. He aimed it for a metre in front of the monster in order to hit it, because it was going so fast that’s what he had to do, even with a spell which was almost instantaneous, like Spark.

The current of electricity, concentrated enough to disable a human, struck true. It should have been overkill against a monster as small as the one he faced, but the magic had no noticeable effect. It didn’t even slow it down.

The creature flashed past him, and he touched his waist. It came away dripping with blood and in the time it took him to do that, he suffered two more scratches. Both wounds were on his lower back, and the clothes that had been tough enough to deny the bat’s claws did nothing to stop the concentrated attack of this creature.

Spark had failed, but there was no time to consider the mechanics of why, because the creature was coming against him again.

He watched it, unsure of what to do.

It was still moving too fast for him to physically react, but, because it was fully in his eyeline, he could follow its progress.

Crack.

Another lightning spell arced out and struck it head-on. This crackling bolt of energy would have taken down an adult human.

The monster, whatever it was, briefly had its internals lit up by the strike, but then it was past him, leaving an additional cut on his upper arm.

Tom had struck twice with the best Spark had to offer, and had failed to damage it. He needed to change strategies. Despite the sideways evolution which was supposed to have greatly increased the chance of his magic stunning the monster, this creature had remained unaffected. To continue using a strategy that didn’t work was a guaranteed death, but he was stumped by the question of how to proceed.

It flew around him, darting in regularly to slice him up, as he conserved his magic. Each pass left another scratch on his body and in a war of attrition he had minutes of dilated time at most, and well less than a minute of real time. Tom realised that this was becoming a slaughter. He wasn’t even getting close to defeating it.

His mind cycled through options. Spark wasn’t working. His physical body was too slow to land a blow.

What then?

While he could imagine April throwing him into an unwinnable battle to prove her point, it was not her standard m.o. Whenever he died, she would critique the fight and explain how he could have succeeded, how he could have won even with his current body and talent limitations - if not immediately, then shortly after.

There had to be a path to win here. Power Strike would not be useful even if he had of already gained it. Spear Mastery was no better, as it did not give him speed. Living Wood was not a real time option. Precognition would just tell him that he was about to die, and healing was only a stopgap measure. None of them had a depth that could save him. That left Spark, the ability that many people rejected, but one he had proven thousands of times before to have incredible depths and flexibility. The question was, how to shape it to let him survive?

Direct attacks had failed completely. Was there a way to concentrate the power? No, that second hit had been intense for a creature that size, and it had been brushed off easily. More of the same was not the answer, which meant he had to find an indirect avenue to defeat it.

Its next sweeping attack sliced a cut into his forehead. He healed it immediately to avoid the blood leaking into his eyes.

It came back and struck the same spot.

Tom mentally cursed his instinctive reaction to heal the wound. The damn thing was learning where he was vulnerable, and the speed with which he had healed that specific injury while ignoring the others had obviously triggered something in its tiny brain. Now it identified his forehead as a vulnerability.

Worse, it was right. Too much bleeding there, and he wouldn’t be able to see. Even if every cut only leaked a single drop of blood, that would soon cause blood to drip into his eyes.

A third slice had opened up. The monster was obsessed with repeatedly hitting the recognised weakness.

But the threat was an opportunity. It was targeting the same spot. Which meant he could predict its flight patterns.

A high-risk strategy occurred to him, and he started to spin the spear to get it into position at the right time.

It was coming at him.

His outer sensing layer identified where the attack began, and from there, with a known target of his forehead, it was easy to plot the path it was going to take.

Throwing caution to the wind, he engaged Spark, forcing most of his available mana through it. A series of intense explosions erupted in the air, painting a line between him and the creature. As it flew, it was buffeted with the wave of pressure released by each of the pinprick detonations. There was a whole string of them, each of them placed immediately in front of the monster.

The unexpected wind worked, and, while a direct hit had failed to slow it even slightly the indirect, intense, repeated blasts were effective.

It slowed.

It slowed dramatically right within range of his weapon.

For the first time in the battle, his spear tip was moving faster than it was.

The monster was clever. It realised the problem. It tried to dive sideways, but Tom was able to compensate as it did so. His sped-up thoughts let him react when usually he would have been incapable. A series of explosions held it to its spot.

His muscles strained to keep the weapon on target. It was like trying to cut an erratically fluttering fly out of the air, but he was a spear master, and he demanded his body not to fail him.

The spear slashed through the creature, and it exploded as its inner core was pierced.

Danger Sense stopped its warning, and time flow crashed back to its normal pace. The leaves waved like usual, and he staggered and fell, unbalanced by the desperate slash. He felt woozy. He hadn’t realised how injured he was. Once more, he was bleeding profusely.

“April,” he yelled out weakly while he simultaneously used his advanced spells in tandem to restore his blood volume while healing the deepest cuts. There was only a little mana, but it was sufficient to patch the worst of them up.

“April, please. Help me, please.”

The world shifted, and he found himself back in the café with his wounds healed.

“You know I can’t bring you back straight away when you’re injured. You have to show that you’re going to survive first.” She told him before he could complain. “Once you had passed that threshold, I was able to spare you the ten minutes of you drifting in and out of consciousness as you fixed the final bits. Well done.” She finished, sounding surprisingly unenthusiastic for herself.

Tom patted down his fully restored body. That had been close, but he remembered how much time had slowed during the fighting. “It worked,” he declared in excitement. “And better than expected, too. The time dilation it gave was amazing. And I can’t believe you made it immune to Spark.”

April remained unimpressed. “Yes, it was a bad matchup for you, and I picked it deliberately.”

He grinned. “I noticed.”

“And I’m glad you won.”

“So am I. It’s a relief. I can handle Speedies, and, once I get Power Strike, I’ll be able to dispose of the larger enemies as well.”

“I hadn’t finished.” April continued frostily. “It was a worse matchup, but it was only rank-two. It was close to rank-three, but it wasn’t there yet.”

Tom stared at her blankly. He remembered how helpless he had been in his fight before he had worked out his Hail Mary strategy, and even with it he had only barely won. If it had twisted more to avoid his weapon, if he had slightly less mana in the end, if it had possessed one minor burst ability to avoid the spear, he knew he would have lost.

But she couldn’t be serious about its rank. He had only just won. “Sorry, I didn’t hear that. What did you say?”

She arched an eyebrow and said nothing.

“No, it couldn’t be. It was too fast for that. It wasn’t rank-two. There’s no way.”

But April was not lying, and if what she was saying was true, then maybe there was truly no way for him to get good enough to get into the divine champion’s trial.

“Don’t overreact. I have an idea to bridge the gap. But with the abilities you have at the moment.. Nope, they won’t get you there.”