Fara moved instantly, hand on Tad’s arm, grounding him without interrupting the flow. “Stay with it,” she said quietly. “Don’t let go.”

  I pushed harder, anchoring the bypass in my own authority as System Mediator. The pressure spiked, and for a terrifying moment I thought I’d misjudged the tolerance of the structure. Then something shifted. The resistance didn’t vanish, but it realigned, the system grudgingly accepting the logic I’d imposed.

  The bypass locked into place.

  I pulled back sharply, gasping as the pressure released. My knees threatened to buckle, but Urg’s presence steadied me, solid and unwavering at my side. The bindings around Decimus flared once, then settled, unchanged on the surface but subtly altered beneath.

  Decimus’ eyes widened, and for the first time since he’d arrived, something like genuine surprise crossed his face. “You altered it,” he said slowly with something that might have bordered on awe. “You didn’t break it.”

  “No,” I replied, wiping blood from the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand. “I gave us a window. One hour. When I say the word.” I met his gaze, hard and unyielding. “After that, you go back in the box, unless you’ve complied with the terms of our agreement. I won’t bother asking for oaths, because you have to believe in something for those to matter.”

  The demon laughed, low and dangerous, but there was tension under it now. “You are a strange mortal, Silas Renner-Kalestian. I believe in many things. I believe in revenge. I believe in pain. I believe in might. Most of all, I believe in Eternity, and I tremble in fear before it. You want to know why demons can’t be trusted? It’s because we already know the end of the story.”

  I straightened, ignoring the ache spreading through my skull. “Get used to it.”

  “Oh, I have. And if you live long enough, so shall you.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Time Pool

  Peace returned to the warehouse as Tad pulled Decimus back into the scepter again. I hadn’t even realized how tense I’d been. With that peace came an awareness that several updates awaited me from the work I’d been doing.

  Potentiality +5.04%/5.69% >> +5.05%/5.69%

  Architect of the System, Level 173 >> 174

  System Sight 16 >> 18

  Feral Charisma (Legendary 2%) >> 3%

  I smiled. Gains were getting harder to come by, but they never stopped feeling good. I looked at Tad. “So. What now?”

  Samvek was the one to answer. “We need to move in three days or less, as you said. That means we can set aside two more days for preparation, but then we have to move. Agreed?”

  Tad nodded. “I admit that having you all here has made it easier to simply rely upon your tactical experience. My people know that I’m not a warrior at heart, but I’m also willing to step up, to protect not only myself but all of them. With that said, driving the Order out of Basetown doesn’t secure Aerth, nor does it give me and my people a peaceful future. But I feel like I need to stop reacting.”

  Selena smiled. “That’s a wide river to cross, but you’re on the right track. Sometimes you can only react, but if you plan well enough, then you can be the driving force. I’ve observed you enough to know that you’re nervous about reaching out to your family, but I think that’s the only way that you can ultimately protect this world and give yourself the life you want, other than simply fleeing from the Fey System. I don’t always like my family, but they’re still my family.”

  “I’ve been putting it off for too long,” Tad sighed. “As soon as we secure Basetown, I’ll go to the human capital. Then we can see where we go from there. I sent word to my aunt that I’d meet her there.”

  “Okay, so I understand what you said about not being a warrior, but are you okay with my suggestion from earlier? That I attempt to create a temporal distortion for Samvek to train you in?”

  He nodded. There was still a bit of reluctance in him, but I could understand that. “Just so long as it doesn’t take up more than two days real time.”

  “I can promise that,” I said, “but I have no idea what the ratio is going to be. It could be a week inside, or it could be months. You have to be okay with that.”

  He thought for a moment, then gave me a single nod.

  I returned the gesture and pulled up the description of the new spell that I’d received.

  Time Pool (Legendary): Manipulate a portion of the river of time into an eddy pool, so that it will move at a pace different from the area around you. Mastery of this spell will enable you to more greatly modify the flow rate and the area affected. Cooldown: 72 hours.

  On its face, I’d need to be within the area of effect, but with my newly increased affinity, I was willing to try to manipulate it to affect just them. They secured supplies for a long training stay, as I didn’t know how long I could give them. They set up a training area pitched their sleeping rolls nearby, and we marked it off so that once the field was established, no one would enter their corner of the warehouse.

  When everyone signaled they were ready, I focused on the structure of the spell. I let the rest of the warehouse fade from my attention. The spell wasn’t written like the others I was used to, but that made sense. I’d gained it from the Fey System, after all. It didn’t anchor to mana channels in the same way as my normal spells, nor did it rely on a simple cause-and-effect trigger. This felt like a suggestion to reality, a carefully shaped request asking time to slow down in one place while continuing normally everywhere else. As with everything in the Fey System, I was beginning to realize it was a matter of authority directing chaos. The results of the spell were intended to be somewhat unpredictable.

  But that wasn’t the way I worked. I was used to shaping outcomes.

  I reached for mana first. The boost in my temporal affinity allowed me to see the flow of mana better as I converted the raw mana around me into its temporal cousin. The initial response was resistance, not violent, but firm, like pushing against a current that refused to acknowledge my direction. Time did not like being told what to do, and the Fey System reinforced that reluctance with rules I couldn’t completely understand. The spell wanted an eddy, small and self-contained, and it wanted me inside it as an anchor.

  That wasn’t going to work.

  I adjusted my stance and leaned into System Sight, letting the expanded perception show me the scaffolding beneath the Fey System’s interpretation of time. It was flow management at its finest, a distribution of causality across living systems. Time here was less a straight line and more a braided river, and I needed to divert one strand without collapsing the rest. The more I saw into this weave, the more I understood the limits of my current existence.

  Was that the first step toward ascension? Maybe. But I couldn’t allow my mind to wander now.

  I pushed gently at first, trying to persuade the system that Tad and Samvek’s training space qualified as a valid eddy. The answer came back as denial, in the form of tightening constraints. The spell’s boundaries hardened, and the mana I’d invested began to slip sideways, bleeding inefficiency into the air. I felt sweat bead along my spine from mental strain, despite my Durability.

  “All right,” I muttered under my breath. “Let’s escalate.”

  I shifted focus to my System Mediator title and asserted it as a form of negotiation. I was explaining what I wanted and how it benefited, but the Fey System didn’t seem to want to play ball. I framed the distortion as a temporary accommodation, a local exception that would not propagate or destabilize the larger flow. I offered safeguards, decay timers, and rollback conditions, all the things a system liked to hear when you wanted it to bend without breaking.

  The Fey System listened, but it still didn’t agree. I felt my frustration growing, but it wasn’t easy to hold the pattern of the spell in a static state, partially cast but not yet fulfilled. I didn’t have time for emotional distraction.

  The resistance changed texture, less rigid, more… evaluative. I could feel the spell wobble, the eddy trying to form before collapsing back into the river. For a heartbeat, I thought I might be at the limit of what I could do here. Then something else pressed at the edge of my awareness. At first, I didn’t recognize it, but then I understood what it was.

  I was sensing the Psi building up in me, and it wanted to do something. Was it possible that there was a Psi power to manipulate mana? It didn’t seem very likely. According to Jay, there hadn’t been any magic at all in his universe. No, the sensation was likely the result of something simpler than that.

  Thinking about Jay reminded me of how comprehensively he was able to manipulate time. There had to be a Psi-based ability to do that. It was there at the edge of my awareness, not fully formed. I knew the potential existed, but couldn’t spare the time or resources to explore it now.

  The Psi I needed hovered just out of reach, a quiet pressure like a half-remembered idea. I could feel the concept—time as perception, time as skipped moments, time as cognitive compression. Though I hadn’t used it yet, Blip had shown me that time could be stepped over, not just slowed, but I couldn’t quite see how to scale that insight without tearing something important. I took this as a reminder of what could be rather than what had to be. I wasn’t ready for this ability. Not yet.

  I let Psi recede and reached for something more familiar—Tinker with All Systems. It had been upgraded, but I’d used it enough to feel comfortable with it. Still, I figured it would be harder to use with a system I wasn’t familiar with, and I certainly wasn’t wrong.

  The moment I leaned into the title, the resistance flared hard. I was shoving my hands into the gears, and the Fey System wasn’t having any of it. I pulled back, then tried again, more delicately now. I adjusted the spell itself, adding logic it hadn’t originally possessed. External anchor. Distributed reference. Detached observer.

  The spell groaned like a kid who didn’t want to brush their teeth.

  I poured more temporal mana into it, accepting inefficiency in exchange for brute force. The pattern thickened, the eddy stabilizing just long enough for me to grab it and reshape its boundaries. I felt the system recoil, alarms skittering across my perception, but I locked the change in place before it could reject it.

  Time folded.

  The air inside the marked training area shimmered conceptually, like looking at heat haze through thoughts instead of eyes. Tad and Samvek froze for an instant, then staggered as their internal sense of pacing adjusted violently. Samvek dropped to one knee, bracing himself with his spear, while Tad sucked in a sharp breath and steadied against a support pillar.

  I held the spell, teeth clenched, and forced the ratio to settle. The resistance peaked, then abruptly stopped.

  The eddy snapped into place, stable and contained, a pocket of accelerated causality spinning quietly inside the warehouse. From the outside, nothing moved. From the inside, time was already racing forward. I could feel the drain immediately, not catastrophic, but significant, a steady pull on my mana, Will, and focus. Slowly, it died off. The spell had been cast. The effect was created.

  Instantly, Tad and Samvek disappeared as they began to drift along a different part of the river of time. I could sense the temporal distortion more clearly than ever before, but I knew there was still a great deal for me to learn.

  You have successfully cast Time Pool. You have anchored it to a set location and it is now affecting two individuals—Tad Ocean and Samvek Rayden. They are locked outside of your regular flow of time until this Time Pool expires in 47 hours, 59 minutes, and 40 seconds.

  For that duration, they shall experience time dilation at a ratio of 60:1.

  Time Pool (Legendary 1%) >> 6%

  You continue to show your prowess using Tinker with All Systems. We anxiously look forward to what you will become.

  Abnormalities with the unknown element of Psi within you have been noted. The meaning is not readily apparent. Continued vigilance is recommended.

  I felt more tired than I’d expected, but both Urg and Selena were there to check on me. Neither actually asked if I was okay, but the support was present all the same. I shared the notification about the results of the spell.

  A part of me was jealous of Tad. It was like when you told a friend about a great book and then they got to read it for the first time. I could never go back and experience that first round of training with Samvek again, but I still had fond memories of it, no matter how rough he’d been on me. I was sure I’d deserved every cut and bruise.

  “So... what do the rest of us do in the meantime?” Selena asked.

  Before I could answer, we heard a ruckus outside the warehouse.

  Chapter Fifty-Six: The Noose Tightens

  I held up my hand for silence and reached out with my Forerunner-enhanced hearing. Yep, there was no denying it—the sound of armed combat. We had two choices. We could rush out there and risk greater exposure, or we could play it safe for once.

  Motioning for the others to stay put, I cast Assassin’s Veil—one of my least-used spells—and became effectively invisible. The Perception required to see through this spell easily exceeded 50,000 now, and I was hoping that even an ascendant wouldn’t be able to pierce it without physically running into me.

  As I opened the door and stepped out of the warehouse, I could feel Selena warping reality around her as she followed me despite my suggestion. I was pretty sure Fara was bringing up the rear, too. Oliver, at least, had the good sense to shut the door behind us. He wasn’t built for stealth.

  What I saw on the street confirmed my fears. Clay was locked in battle with an Order Dreadnought. There were a couple of dead Lawkeepers, but there were also three separate five-man teams of adventurers all watching, seemingly unsure what to do.

  I had no such uncertainty. The gap between me and the Dreadnought closed so quickly that the Flash might’ve reconsidered his career options. Our opponent was only level 300, but he was clearly overwhelming Clay. In his defense, the Dreadnought was more than a match for the leader of the adventurers’ guild, and even the 25% boost from Tad wasn’t enough to change that.

  Wayfinder was in my hands with a thought, and I struck a decisive blow without my foe even knowing I was there. It wasn’t very honorable, but then again, war like this wasn’t going to be. My blade cut through his armor and bit deeply into his neck.

  His physical durability was great enough that the blow didn’t completely remove his head, but he was rapidly bleeding out. Rather than trying to find me or strike back at me, magic began to swirl around him. I hadn’t seen any fatality reversing items or skills here on Aerth, but apparently there was a first time for everything. That was okay. If a guy deserved killing, then I was fine doing it twice. I could almost hear Samuel L. Jackson delivering that line in my head, which was good. There’s no way I could manage his colorful flair.

  But I realized that it wasn’t life mana I was feeling, or whatever they had that passed for it here. This was spatial mana. I was almost too slow, but managed to latch on to the spell. I wasn’t able to break it up, but I could piggyback on it. Whether I should have or not was a different story.

  A moment later, I found myself standing inside a building that reminded me of Notre Dame from when we’d visited it in Paris. It was clearly an old building, and one with a religious nature. I knew it had to be some kind of headquarters for them. The sunbursts of the Order were all around, which made me more certain. What really gave it away, though, was the small army of Order members scurrying around. At one end of the grand chamber was a large throne on a dais, and in front of it a smaller chair. Both were empty, but the room was abuzz with activity.

  One of the Order members was immediately attending to the fallen Dreadnought, and I watched with interest as his mortal wound began to close under her spells. Yet, for all that I was looking around, no one was looking at me. That was when I realized that Assassin’s Veil was still in effect.

  But I also realized that I couldn’t let them heal the Dreadnought. I took another swing, removing his head and ending the healing mid-spell, along with his life. The Truth Flame who was casting the healing screamed in shock, but I was already moving. As long as my stealth spell remained active, I was going to use this time to learn more about the enemy.

  I moved deeper into the temple with measured steps, every sense stretched thin. Assassin’s Veil was going to run out in another couple of minutes, but until then, the spell cloaked me completely, including any sounds or smells. I could whistle the theme from the A-Team an hour after a dinner of baked beans, and nobody would even know I was there. That being said, if I was racing through the halls, I could knock something over or run into somebody, so I still needed to be deliberate. The spell wrapped me in absence rather than darkness, a place where sound bent away and light failed to settle.

  Except I could feel the spell fabric starting to come undone. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  I pushed more mana into the frame of the spell. I’d seen what Tad had been capable of with some of his spells, and how he’d accomplished their longevity, so it became a surprisingly easy task to turn Assassin’s Veil into a channeled spell rather than one with a set duration.

  You have modified the spell Assassin’s Veil, making it your own. Assassin’s Veil upgrades to (Epic 25%). You are cloaked from visual detection by any being with a perception stat less than twice your Mind stat. There is still a good chance that you will remain invisible to others of a higher tier even while attacking, but it is not absolute.

  All sound you make is reduced by 99%. All other forms of sensory detection, including olfactory, thermal, and sonar, have an 85% reduced chance of detecting you. Magical detection methods of rare tier or lower automatically fail, and even epic tier must be properly targeted.

  This spell requires 50% of your mana regeneration rate per second to remain active. It will last as long as you channel the required mana or until it is dispelled.