Chương 98: Pioneer

The first person to eat a tomato must have been fearless beyond measure. Red things in nature usually meant poison, and yet someone took that gamble. Human advancement had never progressed any other way. It was a tradition Kelly upheld by mapping magic, by dissecting runes, by attempting to tear the fabric of time itself. This was the tradition that at the forefront of Kelly's mind as she moved. Kelly planned to attack with her time attunement in a way she had never before conceived.

Each blow from her fists would be infused with a trickle of enhanced time, causing them to move impossibly fast, but just the arms. Each blow would break the sound barrier and generate a sonic boom. A sonic boom generated a single millisecond of force in all directions. Kelly knew from experience a single one was equivalent to an explosion's blast wave—not the explosion itself, but the shockwave. It was a concussive event with enough force to shatter windows and rumble old buildings.

She'd heard stories of speed specialists, speedsters, using them offensively, usually in quick succession. Kelly was planning to throw twelve punches in a fraction of a second. When she'd tested it in her cleared-out lab, the act had drained her about as much as a single full-body teleport. She would have used her chainblade, but the last time she tried, she had almost fallen unconscious from the drain. The explosion from the sonic boom would compound, blast out in all directions, and assault her as well.

Twelve was the limit. It was the safe level at which she could launch the attack without having her body obliterated. One of her fists, her mimic skin primed, her material bank ready to shift into a [Explosion] mana crystal. That would trigger in a continuous stream through the impacts, stuttering twelve times. It meant she wouldn't escape this completely unscathed. It was going to be on a much grander scale than the attack she had made before. She instinctively felt that anything less would not even touch him.

In the last loop, she hadn't known what she was doing. The trait had been fresh, new. Her familiarity with the new sense it gave her had been too low. All of her traits had been. Now, they were each buffed by a grade. That meant her body was strong enough to channel all of the energy she could into the attack—far more than last time. Back then, her trait had been new and unknown, a pebble in the stream of time. Now, she had tested it extensively and had an idea of what she was doing.

She was no longer a pebble resisting the current. She was a rock. Unmoving. She fired the gun, a steady pattern to herd him. She threw a grenade from her shadow. He knocked it into the air with a precise slap. It exploded above him, covering the space in smoke and debris. He evaded the falling wreckage without looking, a casual step taking him clear. She time-skipped into his blind spot. Her movement was a stutter of skipped frames.

She unleashed twelve attacks with her fist, its skin a dense [Explosion] runed mana crystal. Each fist moved at Mach speed. She threw all twelve in half a second. Each attack overlapped with the next, a storm of compressed instants and converging force. A massive explosion rocked the room. The surrounding floor turned to rubble. Cracks spread through a room designed to withstand heavy artillery. The protective metal sheets sealing the balconies cracked. The dust was instantly swept away by the blast.

The entire ground where he stood caved in completely. They both sank into a crater in the reinforced floor. She had used her bare fist. She hadn't reinforced it with her Mythril Fist title. The attack was still devastating. It was capable of obliterating multiple individuals in a blast of pure explosive force in all directions. Kelly had switched to her Fortress of Flame title as she'd swung. Her body still tingled with numbed pain. Before her, Ren Sato stood. He was unharmed.

He held her fist where he'd casually caught it. Steam shunted off his arms and shoulders. Light flared in his augments as his nanotech reformed. He held a soft smirk.

"Passable," he said.

"That frame-skipping, teleporting thing was unique. Doesn't look like the work of a relic, or deadtech." He gave a considering hum.

"Well. I suppose this is not bad. If barely. I guess if I was feeling lazy, that attack could make me use my weapon augment. But only because I don't want to ruin my clothes stopping it."

"Do you believe me now?" Kelly asked, her breath returning.

"Yeah. Knew you were telling the truth." He released her fist.

"I was keeping an eye on your fight with the vice-captain. Had an employee on the balcony on a video call. I've seen a time mutation before. Yours is the second. The most powerful one. Beyond what should even be possible by any stretch." He paused for a moment.

"So much it doesn't even make sense. Your age makes it even more believable. Think I knew a relative of yours." He studied her.

"I was wondering when you'd finally decide to use your time-jumping teleport ability."

"It's called a timeskip," Kelly corrected.

"And I was adopted. Both my parents died. I have no family."

"Why not just call it teleporting?"

"Because it's not teleporting." Her words came in a rapid, focused stream.

"I'm skipping forward in time. I can age things. I can rearrange things. I can alter things. Moving position is just one use. It's not even the best use. You can't teleport your fist. It would rip off. I'm literally skipping sections of myself forward in time. Parts of myself—the rest stays connected. It's like skipping forward on a video. Or pressing fast-forward to increase just my punch speed. It's temporal compression, not spatial relocation." He stared at her for a long moment.

"Why haven't you learned any military combat arts? Close-quarters combat? Weapons training?"

"Tomatoes," she said.

"What?" He blinked.

"What the hell does a tomato have to do with anything?"

"Someone had to be the first to eat one. Red usually means poison. They did it anyway." She shrugged, the motion tight with residual adrenaline.

"We had this conversation before. I want to dissect the apocalypse. Unfortunately, there are people and things capable of harming me permanently. I only encountered them recently. That's why I wanted to get stronger. Before, a gun and my sword were enough." He grumbled, the sound like grinding stone.

"The youth these days. So lazy. You have enough time to become a master of anything on the planet. Literally anything. And you spend it focusing only on researching how to blow things up for your own amusement."

"Not just for my amusement," Kelly said.

"For my friend, too. Fun is just a bonus." She rolled her shoulder, testing the joint.

"I've seen plenty of fighting as a kid." The word'seen' was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

"I never had a need to learn from a pro until now. During the loops, I've beaten a lot of pros. Just not magic eldritch god-channeling ones." He nodded slowly.

"Your file says you went missing over a decade ago. For years. As an orphan. One of many made by the massacres. If that's true."

"It's true."

"Impressive that you survived. That explains why your work ethic is decent. At least you're better than the fresh, spoiled, green-nosed brats from the academies in that regard. Or the echelon's kids who waste everything they have. Like the Wards. Or one of Han's kids." He spat the last name in disgust. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Adrian?" Kelly said.

"Yeah, I told you I met him once. It was a very explosive encounter." She met his gaze.

"And thanks. I know I'm a genius. I did it all by myself." The statement hung in the air. It was a lie. Without her Jellybean, without Jennie, she would still be a gas-rat slum kid with nothing and no one. She would be scavenging for clean air and food, trying to stay alive in some corner of the outskirts. She owed everything to her. He broke the silence.

"What's your combat expertise? You've had to survive the apocalypse in the loops."

"I kinda play it by ear. Mostly guns. My special molecular blade for anything bulletproof." She flexed her hand, the mimic skin receding.

"I've had so many fights I've kind of learned what works and what doesn't. After the seventy-ninth time getting sliced and shot, you learn to tilt your head to the left and hide your comeback. By now, I kinda have a feel for what works before most fights even start. Only high levels, special gear, special weapons, or abilities give me any real trouble."

"That's fine," he said.

"The fact that you've survived to this point means you're teachable."

"You'll really teach me?" she asked, the reckless energy surging back, her eyes alight with growing excitement.

"What can you teach me? We have different augments. I don't really have weapon augments yet. I can't wait to make some!"

"Yes. I'll teach you." He folded his arms again, the motion familiar.

"Before we begin, I need to know the exact nature of your abilities. Everything you can do through your mutation and augments. Some element of the cocktail polluting the atmosphere was a key. It sunders the boundary between dimensions on a quantum level. Elements of the pathogens killing or mutating anyone who contacts them exist in more dimensions than one, we've discovered. The mutations themselves are extremely rare. Unpredictable. Knowing everything you can do will help me train you." She recalled the trigger.

Higgs Cannons. Orbital strikes. Nukes. Magic Explosion. Standing unfortunately close to an unstable altered portal. Beneath an annoyingly passive, ten-foot floating maybe-god, definitely nudist, when it all happened.

"It's not a mutation," she said.

"I'm a baby time-god." He shook his head. A slow, weary motion.

"If you insist."

"The audio and video of this battle hall is not recorded except by spectators in the balconies," the old veteran said.

"The balconies have been shut down thanks to your last attack. Nobody can see or hear us. The diagnostic data erases itself. Only life signals are logged. Anything beyond that will not leave this room." Kelly wiped a trickle of blood from her temple.

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yes. Of course—" Kelly shook her head once.

"No," she said.

"I don't think you actually want that." Ren raised an eyebrow, waiting.

"If anyone really understood what I can do," she continued, voice flat but tight at the edges, "every planet, every system, every species with the ability to point a weapon would start pointing it at me. All of them. At once." She paused, then added, quieter, "Are you sure you want to know?" He didn't answer immediately. He leaned back against the bench, folding his arms.

"I've seen your time mutation before," he said at last.

"Not this version. A weaker one. I've seen things on worlds you don't even know exist." His gaze stayed fixed on her.

"So yes. I'm sure." Then, with a faint edge of disbelief, "You just told me you can loop through time. What exactly is supposed to shock me after that?" Kelly stared at him for a long moment, measuring him. Not amused or impressed. Just checking whether this was another wall she'd have to hit headfirst.

"Okay," she said. She started listing. Kelly spared Ren the drama, the speeches, and listed it all like inventory; something she'd recited to herself a thousand times while bleeding out in alleys or under rubble. She told him about mana—what it actually was, how her body absorbed it constantly—compressed it—how everything she did ran on it. Her augments. Bones. Muscles. Her strength. Her cognition. Even her skin. Every trick, system, and every reaction. Fuel. All of it.

She told him she could interact with it directly. Without loopholes. She could channel it. See it. Feel it. Touch it. Bend it. That, according to the Status, no being she'd ever encounter—from any dimension—could do what she could with it. That the universe itself seemed to object. She explained the weapon first, because it was simple. A rune-engraved, nickel-titanium alloy, monomolecular, shape-memory transforming weapon. A homemade switchblade. How it changed shape with a thought. Longer. Segmented.

Other programmed forms. How it used basic runes to create material out of nothing—instant shields. How it fired a rune-based projectile—the "no" beam—only when killing was the entire point. She moved on to basic firearms, grenades, drones she'd built and stored away. Jury-rigged tech. Reverse-engineered magic. Basic Runes stolen from medieval-looking swords and axes, upgraded, merged, stitched together with hardware that absolutely shouldn't have worked until she figured out how to break them in the right way.

She snapped her fingers once, just to demonstrate the concept, and told him about the gravity spikes. Brief. Precise. Enough to break balance, crack bone, or pin something in place for half a second. Half a second was usually enough. Any longer and they'd be holding a housewarming party for every shambling horror in the district. She described the shields—instant, dense, reinforced composites. How she could form them anywhere, use them as cover or platforms, move through space by chaining them together.

How she could step into shadow-space inside a moving shield and come out somewhere else before most things realized she'd left. Her shadow was a major point. Unexplored. Full of potential. A personal shadow dimension. Its own rules—temporal stasis. Pulling objects from it. Firing things from it at sonic speeds—metal marbles, stone shrapnel, stored flames, bullets, explosions. Anything non-living. Custom biomechanical augmentations. Heat shunts. Impact locking structures to tank hits with Fortress Titles.

Perpetual motion anchors so she'd never stop moving while Outrunning Death. Automated reaction systems. Guided counter-movements. Pushing augments across speed, strength, resilience, cognition depending on what the moment demanded. Mimic skin. Turning small patches of herself into whatever material she needed. Her material bank storing anything she could get her hands on. Dense metal plating over hands, face, anywhere she chose. The partial Werewolf Trait. Claws. Teeth. Eyes. Senses. Bigger. Stronger. Tougher.

Meaner. Ten percent across the board. Titles. Only what they did. Deflection that redirected attacks or broke reality—inverting inertia. Endurance that let her tank any breaking forces—not just physical—outright some of the time; she knew exactly when, her augments calculated it. Vitality for regeneration. Slaughterer of Men for a jarring fear aura. Inertia control to limit knockback. Mana Focused Student, boosting her learning whenever she had a teacher.

Outrunning Death, multiplying her speed each second until it killed her. Death's Foe increasing her effective reach when active. Switching them to use only one at a time, at will. How she fought. Without heroism. She fought efficiently. From experience. Raw—effective. What he taught her; feints, stutters, unpredictable footwork. Ranged and close at the same time. Attacking and defending simultaneously. Dirty. Using terrain, debris, gravity, shields, shadow. Multi-vector pressure until something gave.

Ren stopped her occasionally.

"How precise are the gravity spikes? What's the range? Duration?"

"As long as I need it spiked," she said.

"Localized."

"And the shadow projectiles—stored how long?"

"As long as I want." Each time, his eyes glowed faintly. Not literally—but with interest. Nanotech crawled up his temples and formed angular goggles, facets shifting as though he were checking something invisible. He never interrupted her flow more than necessary. When she finished, the space between them felt heavier. Ren was quiet for a long time. Then he asked, carefully, "How many loops have you been through? Roughly." Kelly exhaled through her nose.

"At least fifteen hundred," she said.

"Somewhere between fifteen and eighteen hundred. I lost the exact count."

"And each loop lasts… the whole day?" She shook her head.

"Rarely." She explained. The first hundred loops, refusing to leave her apartment sometimes. Most loops ended when something killed her—usually evening, sometimes much earlier. The early phase where death came at random angles, over and over, until she learned enough to stop running straight into it. Until she reached the city center, and until she started killing the thing that kept killing her first. Ren stared at her like he was seeing a structure where he'd expected pure chaos.

He started muttering under his breath. About dying horribly. About repetition. About mindset. About what that kind of experience did to a person. His voice dipped into places she couldn't quite hear. He looked at her again, slower this time.

"And the newer abilities?" he asked.

"The ones you didn't start with." She told him. Where they came from. What it cost to get them. That finally shook him. He sat back, silent, eyes unfocused, then let out a low breath.

"Impressive," he said, and then corrected himself.

"Terrifyingly so. Especially given your low EQ score." Kelly tilted her head.

"Yeah," she said.

"I get that a lot." The conversation kept going after that. Questions. Answers. Long pauses where Ren recalibrated and Kelly waited, already braced for the next wall. She didn't soften anything for him. She didn't exaggerate either. She treated it the same way she finally began to treat every loop—as one that mattered. Or like it might be the last one that counted. And so, the discussion continued. Then the old man spoke of his experience with Gideon, and what he said next took Kelly's idea of the world.

And cracked it wide open.