Heh?

My left eye twitched slightly.

Did he just…? Really…?

Chronos clicked his tongue and turned away.

“Pull up your skill system.”

“Stratum…”

My skill window formed in front of me and before I could even glance at it, Chronos’s fingers shattered through the side and yanked it over to him.

“Wait, that’s-”

“Shut it.”

He started pacing around while dragging my skill window like it was a coffee mug.

As he looked through my list I got a few notifications.

||NOTICE: Variant ‘999’ has been recaptured!||

||NOTICE: Variant ‘03’ has been recaptured!||

||NOTICE: Variant ‘727’ has been recaptured!||

||NOTICE: Skill [Fireball] has reached Level 30! Would you like to merge related Skills to make an Ultimate Skill?||

Nice…? And a new skill? Now's not really the best time…

I swiped my windows away before looking back over toward him.

“Hmm… Name, Cynical… I’ll just call you ‘Cyn’... level 144… only 614 mana… leftover stat points… and wow. Just wow. A shit ton of low level skills that I can tell have been used maybe once or twice. I mean you have twenty-two active skills and twelve of them aren’t even level ten yet~”

He tapped the window with his finger before looking back toward me.

“You can’t make this shit up~”

Chronos was laughing a little at how poorly managed my stats were.

“I’ve made up my three week course for you. The first week and a half will be sword training, you’ll reach a bare minimum of 1,000 proper swings without fucking up. The second week and a half will consist of skill creation and skill merging. You have too many excess skills, and not enough vital ones.”

“Oh… uh-... okay…”

“Can you use ‘Save Data’ yet?”

“No…”

“I see… what variants do you have so far?”

“I have Risible-”

“Numbers.”

“06, 444, 04, 99, 58, 18, 541, 999, 03, 727.”

“I’m guessing ‘727’ will be teaching it to you?”

I was a little astonished by how much he was able to narrow down.

“Yeah… but how did you-”

He glared at me.

“R-right… no shitty questions…”

Chronos sighed.

“When you live for more than two thousand years it affects your thought process.”

Huh?

Did he… that doesn’t make sense though. The variants are ordered by age so how is he-

“This space.”

…

“That’s the answer to your question… I can distort time like we are now. All I had to do was amp up time till one real month equaled two thousand years…” 

“So… the entire time I’ve been walking around, you’ve lived over two thousand years?”

He nodded.

“That’s…”

“Don’t think about it too much… Get to training, on the last day I’ll fuck your shit up if you can’t handle yourself.”

Chronos walked toward one of the green metallic pillars. He pressed his hand against it softly, causing it to rebuild and open into this doorway.

I looked back down toward the wedged shotel. I gripped the hilt tightly and pulled, ripping it out. The pulsing green ceased and the crack repaired itself. I got into the stance I remembered seeing Chronos in before swinging down.

Swing.

“One.”

Swing.

“Two.”

Swing.

“Three.”

Swing.

“Four-”

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Chronos walked along the wooden floors, both wooden pillars and green metallic rock around him, his shoes tapping lightly. He reached this sort of pier that overlooked a floating void of space. Clocks floated around, worlds on the brink of destruction frozen in mid air. They slowly drifted around, spinning ever so slightly. His coat flapped slightly, in what appeared to be a hint of a breeze.

Sigh.

“I’m really not cut out for this… I’m tired.”

Chronos lifted his right hand, his wrist limply hanging down with his index finger pointing out. He flipped his arm, his palm facing the sky.

||PARA-LINE||

A small blue-green light flashed in the palm of his hand, a small world was being constructed, it was spinning slowly. He abruptly grasped the planet, his fingers digging into its crust, piercing inside until it was about to burst. The planet was on the verge of explosion, the earth shattering, the core bursting.

“Time; Freeze.”

The small planet that was being crushed by his grip was frozen in place. Everything else however, remained as is. Time flowing and moving the other decimated planets around the open void. 

Chronos lifted his right hand and looked at the small planet near eye level. 

||GAMBIT: REVISE||

“Gambit: Revision Creation; number 6,312.”

Chronos lifted his other hand over the frozen planet and a clone of it started stretching out. He now held one in each palm.

He looked at the planet in his left hand.

“Rewind; one minute.”

The planet started swishing backward, small green clocks formed around it before swinging counter clockwise. The planet on his left hand was now renewed to before he crushed it, while the planet on his right hand was still frozen before absolute obliteration.

Chronos stared at the renewed planet.

“Time; Unfreeze.”

The planet shook in his palm, slight cracks of light beaming out. The small planet exploded, its core melting down and destroying everything. He flicked the molten liquid off of his now searing hand. Blue-green slime wrapped around regenerating his hand rather quickly. 

He stared down at the small frozen planet in his right hand before looking out into the void again.

“Well… I guess that’s good enough for today.”

Chronos tossed the frozen planet out into the void. It swam out relatively fast, its size growing the further out it went. Until it was truly the size deemable of a planet again, and just like all the other planets. It now sat in the frozen minefield of pure doom, the planetary graveyard of more than 6,000 potential apocalypses.

The Graveyard of Time.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Swing.

“313.”

Swing.

“314.”

Swing.

“315.”

Chronos walked out of the pillar and looked in my direction.

“What are you doing?”

“Practicing…”

Swing.

“316… how about you?”

“Just burning some stress down. It builds up after a while.”

“317… I see…”

“By the way, you fucked up three swings ago. Restart.”

Ah-

Swing

“One.”

Swing

“Two…”

After our small encounter. We saw each other a bit over the next week. Occasionally Chronos would give me pointers on my form or change my routine to sideways slashes. There was a day of diagonal ones too. He also reset me a numerous amount of times which got me pissed as fuck since he did it at 998 one time.

The last day of my sword training involved me practicing against time clones again. We fought one on one only using slime swords. I fared relatively well considering I didn’t have any direct techniques.

⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱⊰───────•✦•───────⊱

Roughly a week and a half has passed by now… my sword training is halted so we’re looking into my skills now.

“Pull up your skill window.”

“Stratum.”

————————————

Name: Cynical

Species: Regulus Slime

Level: 144

Rank: A

EXP: 249/1,125,678

————————————

[Titles]

‘World Ender’

‘Monster in Human Clothing’

‘Otherworlder’

‘Magician’s Crusade’

‘Darkest Monster’

‘Arcane Wipeout’

————————————

[Stat Points]

Strength: 311

Speed: 293

Perception: 319

Health: 250,000

Mana: 614

Intelligence: 182

Wisdom: 133

Luck: 77

Remaining Points: 104

————————————

[Skills]

||Passive:||

-Quick Learner, MAXED; 

-Sentient Mind, MAXED; 

-Chantless, MAXED; 

-Language Master, Lvl 26; 

-Integral Requisite, Lvl 18;

||Active:||

-Spell Creation, Lvl 29; 

-Storage, Lvl 19; 

-Sword Bolt, Lvl 9; 

-Fireball, Lvl 30; 

-Stealth, Lvl 15; 

-Mana Control, Lvl 26; 

-Heaven’s Barrier, Lvl 2; 

-Water Shot, Lvl 6; 

-Vocalize, Lvl 5; 

-Teleport, Lvl 29; 

-Flight, Lvl 19; 

-Transfer, Lvl 4; 

-Down Fall, Lvl 1;

-Glimpse, Lvl 3;

-Search, Lvl 12;

-Map, Lvl 13;

-Fire Wall, Lvl 1;

-High Heal, Lvl 3;

-Fire Beam, Lvl 9;

-Con-Paradox, Lvl 3;

-Mana Steal, Lvl 1;

-Sword Arts, Lvl 14;

-Variant Break (11/999); 

————————————

||Skill Acquired: Sword Arts, Lvl 1 → Lvl 14||

Woah… that’s a lot of skills now that I look at them…

Plus I got a new one?

Where should I even begin…?

“Hm… first divvy up fifty points for luck, then another twenty-five for intelligence, and another twenty-five for wisdom. Then dump the last four into speed.”

“You sure…?”

“Intelligence has the slight chance of boosting mana levels higher along with how you think of things. Wisdom changes your perception of things so you’ll make smarter choices. Then Luck allows you to encounter better situations, like a monster skimming over you or a variant crossing paths.”

That was… helpful.

I did as he said and distributed my spare points accordingly.

“Now what…?”

“We’ll combine your current skills together depending on how well they sync with one another. Start with [Fireball] since Level 30 is the base for evolution.”

I then pulled up my system notifications from before.

||NOTICE: Skill [Fireball] has reached Level 30! Would you like to merge related Skills to make an Ultimate Skill?||

“Confirm.”

||WARNING: [Fireball], [Fire Wall], and [Fire Beam] will be removed from your Skill List and merged into a new Active Skill.||

||NOTICE: Commencing Skill Merging.||

||...||

||...||

||...||

||NOTICE: Skill Merging Successful!||

||Skill Acquired: Blaze Magic!||

The skill window then closed down and reopened with the updated changes that I had made.

————————————

Name: Cynical

Species: Regulus Slime

Level: 144

Rank: A

EXP: 249/1,125,678

————————————

[Titles]

‘World Ender’

‘Monster in Human Clothing’

‘Otherworlder’

‘Magician’s Crusade’

‘Darkest Monster’

‘Arcane Wipeout’

————————————

[Stat Points]

Strength: 311

Speed: 297

Perception: 319

Health: 250,000

Mana: 637

Intelligence: 182

Wisdom: 133

Luck: 127

Remaining Points: 0

————————————

[Skills]

||Passive:||

-Quick Learner, MAXED; 

-Sentient Mind, MAXED; 

-Chantless, MAXED; 

-Language Master, Lvl 26; 

-Integral Requisite, Lvl 18;

||Active:||

-Spell Creation, Lvl 29; 

-Storage, Lvl 19; 

-Sword Bolt, Lvl 9; 

-Stealth, Lvl 15; 

-Mana Control, Lvl 26; 

-Heaven’s Barrier, Lvl 2; 

-Water Shot, Lvl 6; 

-Vocalize, Lvl 5; 

-Teleport, Lvl 29; 

-Flight, Lvl 19; 

-Transfer, Lvl 4; 

-Down Fall, Lvl 1;

-Glimpse, Lvl 3;

-Search, Lvl 12;

-Map, Lvl 13;

-High Heal, Lvl 3;

-Con-Paradox, Lvl 3;

-Mana Steal, Lvl 1;

-Sword Arts, Lvl 14;

-Blaze Magic, Lvl 1;

-Variant Break (11/999); 

————————————

“[Blaze Magic]… huh? Well good for you. You have fire attribute magic as a whole now.”

“Uh… thanks?”

“For your other skills… level up either [Map], [Search], or [Glimpse]. By name those three sound like they would combine, so as long as one of them reaches Level 30 you can upgrade.”

“Alright.”

“Then after that… brainstorm some unique skill ideas that are practical. Also think of some combat related skills. That’s all, goodnight.”

He quickly dismissed himself, leaving me standing there alone.

“That’s… easier said than done…”