"Oh, while I'm thinking about it, how fast do I need to be able to bring an image to the front of my mind for it to materialize, exactly?"

"0.9832 seconds, or 0.4 system seconds. We aren't certain that's rounding, but we've measured to 13 zeros after that system time, and it's still exactly that."

Degritone nodded and said, "Mm."

They laid there for multiple minutes, waiting for his next fight as Melena did stuff with her system, whether it be messaging someone or checking unknowable screens, and Degritone worked on bringing down the time to imagine the young Immortal Troll. Maybe a minute before his next fight, Degritone managed to bring the time down to under 1 second and he thought of a question for Melena.

"Hey, do you have any romantic feelings for me, at all? I know I'm excessively - for most people - young compared to you, but blah."

Melena thought for a while. "I'm not certain. Given my brand of loyalty, it's hard to differentiate between the romantic and simple closeness."

"Ugh, same. Do you have a concept of dating?"

"Yes, many of the more technologically advanced worlds brought the idea to the system long before I ever became a part of it."

Degritone shrugged. "If you ever feel like trying me out, feel free to ask. I will never be able to actually tell unless you actually state your intentions in unambiguous terms. I'm uncertain if even you having me lay my head in your lap counts, since it could just be you doing it because you know I want to."

"Which it is. If I ever do 'feel like trying you out,' I'll let you know, though I have a feeling we're already experiencing what it would be like."

Shrugging, Degritone said, "Probably. Though, I should clarify that my offer stands for all lolis, not just you, which may heavily detract from the offer, and should the first loli who claims me want it, I shall stay monogamous. Though, as you're experiencing right now, that does not mean I won't be close with others, just I won't have any higher than or equal in my heart, which brings with it all the other unsaid benefits of such a relationship."

Melena looked at him incredulously and said, "Way to sell yourself."

"Yeah, I know I'm terrible. I just want to," long pause, "make sure I don't allow any unsaid assumptions to go by without being broken or affirmed, so whoever ends up actually becoming my wife doesn't get upset, sad, or whatever other negative emotion when they find me resting my head on another's lap, for example."

"That makes logical sense, though the delivery could be better."

"It would be disingenuous of me to not be blunt about it. The only way I can consistently be gentle about a topic is to avoid it entirely. I'm blunt 99% of the time, so it wouldn't be the authentic Degritone experience if I weren't blunt with a touchy subject. Well, I guess I could avoid it entirely, but blah. That 99% of the time does not include the high percent of the time I know to just not open my mouth."

Shaking her head, Melena said, "Suit up. Your next fight is soon."

Degritone stood up and started making his armor and sword. As he finished doing so, he arrived in the clearing. His opponent having proven it possible, Degritone activated everything immediately. On the other side of the clearing from him was a large green snake, coiled up.

Round 30 begin!

The snake immediately propelled itself forward, reaching Degritone without having moved even half its body from its starting position. Degritone raised his sword to intercept and inches from impact, the snake's jaw opened and fangs flopped down from the roof of its mouth. They began to glow green and as they hit Degritone's sword, they tore through them like a full speed jet engine through butter, rendering the weapon useless.

Before the position of his Condensed sword would leave the mouth of his opponent, he summoned his Condensed sword, stopping the snake in place. With a cast of each of his Ghouls, he yanked his sword back toward him, preventing the snake from properly retracting its fangs. It closed its mouth as much as it could, and ineffectually pulled Degritone. However, his Swordsman's Territory soon told him that the pull wasn't just to try to get his sword away, as the tail came blazing in - literally.

The end of his opponent's flaming tail came rushing into his predictive sphere too fast to react to, and pierced right through his chest, on the opposite side of where a child might imagine their heart to be. With the pain, Degritone's mind focused in on the creature before him. He yanked his sword - and with it, his opponent's head - down toward his rising knee, which he manipulated a long spike onto.

His opponent tried to get away, but for once, Degritone was too fast. The blow wasn't enough to pierce all the way into the mouth of his opponent, but it did draw blood. Degritone moved one hand to the tail of his opponent and yanked it further into the wound, then activated Revitalize. The end of the tail popped right off, and Degritone took advantage of the flinch it caused to bring his sword around for another attack.

Just before impact, his opponent's scales turned blue and his attack bounced off. However, his opponent also became significantly slower, as a loud screeching could be heard as it moved its body to try to get a bite of Degritone's arm. Degritone cast Omen of Pestilence so the Ghoul's arms would be between his opponent and himself, cast Omen of Famine, and began to bring his sword around for another attack.

As he did so, his opponent's scales changed colors once again to a translucent red and they sped up greatly. With his measly 252 Agility and bonus almost 418 feet per second of movement speed, Degritone was unable to get his arms out of the way of the attack in time. The snake barreled through his green ghoul and sank both its glowing green fangs into Degritone's right arm. He activated Revitalize twice to get back to full health as they sank in fully, and he heard loud cracking, but the fangs did not pop off.

Just to be safe, he also activated Bastion at a 15000 shield, then flexed his arm's muscles and pulled his opponent toward him. His flesh burned as it interacted with the glowing green fangs. His opponent, having to contend with a regenerating body that is purposefully trying to keep its fangs inside, tried to pull away, but it was unable to do so in time, taking two stabs to the neck.

The first one drew blood, and the second one slipped into his opponent's esophagus and into the opposite side of the throat. As its fangs fully retracted from Degritone's arm, it tried to yank its own body away to get the sword out of it, but Degritone raised his sword while pulling it back. As it began to slice through the flesh of his opponent, its scales became blue once again, and his sword lodged in its place. What felt like 3 seconds of trying to remove it later, Degritone gave up on it and desummoned it.

As he was moving his hands to have an advantageous position to resummon his sword in, his opponent wrapped around him and began squeezing. Blood gushed from the end of the tail that had been cut off and the stab wound in its throat as it did. Degritone became unable to move out. However, thanks to Knockback Resistance, he wasn't able to be moved inward, either. He manipulated his armor to be spiky, and his opponent was turned into a pincushion.

It sent its fangs into Degritone's chest, biting over his head, but as its flesh reached Degritone's spiked armor, Degritone found himself back in his and Melena's room. They spent the time before Degritone's next fight silently enjoying the presence of the other, as with a majority of the time spent between rounds.

As a fully geared Degritone appeared in the clearing, the world slowed once more. A ball of fire appeared above his human opponent's hand left hand and they lifted off the ground.

Round 31 begin!

As soon as the announcement happened, Degritone erupted into a pillar of fire. He checked his health and saw it had decreased, but only by single digits. The ball above his opponent's hand turned into a lance and fired at Degritone as he flew to the top of a nearby tree. Degritone blocked the lance with his sword and started moving toward his opponent, who created a platform of raw Mana attached to the tree's trunk, keeping him above the trees.

Degritone rolled his eyes and kept charging toward the base of the mage's tree. The ground around him rose up and he saw them close in ineffectually against him in his prediction, so he continued forward. He took another few points of damage as the ground slammed into him, but he was able to barrel through it. A pit appeared in front of him, and judging by his speed alone, Degritone decided to jump it. However, he forgot to take into account the effectively slowed time and flew past his target tree.

As he did, he cast Omen of Pestilence on the mage's platform. After a few seconds of relative time, he saw a flash come from around the platform, and he landed. Immediately, roots surrounded his legs. He tried to get out of them, but he could not. Cutting at them was also ineffectual. Knowing how the system works with damage, he slashed at them multiple times, but still no visible effect, all the while he was getting pelted by spell after spell.

His Adaptive Palisade, however, kept ticking up with each instance of damage dealt to him, increasing his already near-nullification of the damage to actual nullification. With the mage out of range of his Omens, Degritone had to make do with slowly lowering his Guard's level of defense over the next 4 minutes and 28 seconds in order to continue gaining stacks of Adaptive Palisade. After that time, his next swing chopped right through the roots.

More tried to grab onto him, but he manipulated his armor's legs to have blades as thick as the roots on them, which sheared straight through the roots as they came. The roots extended to grab his arms instead, but he did the same thing there, and again when they went for his torso, then neck. He once again got in range for Omen of Pestilence and a few seconds after his cast, another flash of light accompanied a short lull in spells being flung at him.

As he reached the trunk of the tree, he cast Omen of Pestilence once again and a barrier of raw Mana appeared around the base of the tree trunk. He simply jumped, and with his Strength and heavily increased speed, he made it far enough up the tree for his opponent to enter Vital Presence's range. All the enemy Mana in the area immediately disappeared and the mage fell through the air, unconscious, hitting a few branches as he fell.

Once Degritone was in range for a slash, it took one attack and he was back with his head in Melena's lap. "You know, you've let me lie on you for so long. Why don't you let your legs take a rest and you can sit on my belly?"

She shrugged and said, "Sure," before standing up, moving over to Degritone's stomach, and sitting down on it. Degritone tapped the couch twice and a pillow appeared under his head. Melena began rubbing over where his mental space's void would be if it had a physical location and Degritone pat her head. "You have enough to get Vital Being?"

After some quite slow mental math, Degritone said, "Yes. 5 over, even."

Nodding, Melena responded, "Think about what you need those Skill Levels in before you place them wherever."

"I mostly need range. Vital Presence or Aura Manipulation could help with that a little, at least against weak-souled enemies, which is unlikely now. LFS's movement speed scales linearly with level, while Haste scales logarithmically with level, but quintupling my movement speed from what it is at maximum now might be too much for my current amount of time dilation, and putting points into Haste wouldn't be productive, given LFS exists.

"Well, it would be more useful for situations where I'm not carrying out a loli's order, but blah. ENS could get definitely go up to help with the speed problem. RotG would-wait, we could have done with a fourth the SP for this. Requiem of the Gravedigger is a 4-leveling skill skill set. Blah. Anyway, RotG for more damage on my only real ranged options and the fact I can use less SP if I spend some on it.

"Well, I guess Bloody Aura is also a ranged option. Two thousand damage per second isn't much, though. Just some bonus damage on top, while Pestilence if 8k per cast and Famine is 16k per cast. Empower is actually the majority of my damage, so upping it would also be useful. It seems that most people here have DR penetration, so Guard's usefulness is questionable. Bastion basically only levels for the PP, as its bonus shield is trash. Revitalizing Aura for a bit more regen.

"One SP into Swordsman's Territory to fix it, almost definitely. I have an odd number of PP in Permanently Thriving, so even if I go full RotG, I can still put at least 1 PP elsewhere. No idea if it's 1 or 3 away from a multiple of 4. Block and Mana Armor are lumped in with Guard: DR is nice, but so much DR ignore. Mana Weapon's bonus damage is tiny. Pacifist is useless and I hate that it got up to level 200 while I was unconscious.

"Recuperate or Inevitable Prosperity for more regen, like with Revitalizing Aura. I need... 2227 PP to finish Vital Being. I could go... 500 SP into RotG, then still have 227 SP to spend on other things, like Exotic, LFS, and my regenerations, then save the rest of my SP for emergency situations. Oh, and that one point into Swordsman's. I could also go a little less hard on RotG to have more SP for other things.

"I feel like RotG for around 350 to 400, 1 into Swordsman's to see if it's worth the SP to continue putting SP into it, then about 1000 elsewhere would be the best, keeping the rest in my pocket for if I need an emergency increase in my DR or something. Exact ratios between LFS, Exotic, and my regenerations is the question, but we'll figure that out after this," he said, putting one SP into Swordsman's Territory. Getting no fanfare, he checked his Skill.

Swordsman's Territory

After spending a small amount of time concentrating, gain absolute knowledge of the position of all objects, including creatures, within a short distance from you. Additionally gain a slight predictive power over their future positions.

Must be holding a sword for any effects to apply.

5+log_1.75(1+SLevel) = 15.815... feet range

log(5+SLevel) = 2.632... seconds of prediction

"Why are Skill metrics using units I know, calculating using units I know? It seems like they should use system time and distance and stuff."

"No one knows why the system does that. It simply chooses a measure known to the Skill holder that is close to what the System wants, and gives a local measure known by the Skill holder for that Skill. This makes it so any Skill that has a unit of any measure in it actually not identical between every holder of that Skill, even if they have the same Skill level. Granted, people who have the same measures do have identical Skills at identical levels, but as you say, 'but blah.'"

Nodding, Degritone continued thinking, "Is increased predictive range useful? Maybe. Well, definitely, but maybe not worth SP, except maybe as an odd desperation measure where I somehow need predictive power but don't care about DR. Anyway, let's go ahead and put 350 SP into RotG." At only his 74th SP, he got an announcement.

Achievements unlocked!

For reaching 6000 total Skill level, you have unlocked Achievements and gain

1 Achievement Tutorial Token

"Cool, but not useful at the moment." As Melena's questioning glance, Degritone responded, "Unlocked achievements. With you around, the Token is kinda useless, but I'll use it anyway. Maybe see if there's a hidden achievement for saving a condensing tutorial token until after unlocking achievements."

"Achievements aren't those kinds of things. They're major accomplishments. There are Achievements for creating a Skill Set with 5 Skills in it using nothing but a single image, participating in taking down a level 30 invasion's boss, or becoming a Patron, for examples. You do get rewards for doing other, more minor accomplishments, such as reaching 1000 in a stat, however. Those just aren't classified as Achievements. I'm uncertain if that is one of those. I doubt it."

Degritone shrugged. "I'll still try. Anyway, more SP into things." After putting 350 SP into Requiem of the Gravedigger, Degritone decided to finish off Permanently Thriving to see if its Skill, if any, was worth SP.

Permanently Thriving 1200/1200

Congratulations! You have completed the Permanently Thriving Path

Inevitable Prosperity upgraded to Permanent Prosperity

50 Health Regeneration per level

50 Stamina Regeneration per level

50 Mana Regeneration per level

1 Bonus Health Regeneration per level

1 Bonus Stamina Regeneration per level

Degritone gave the not bad face. "Not terrible. Was probably going to put SP into that, anyway. I have... 826 SP left for Vital Being."