I woke up slowly, taking a few seconds to recall where I was, why there was a sleeping catgirl clamped onto one of my arms, and the general condition of the universe.

... That had certainly been an experience.

The world's best massage, Cluma had described it as, and I had to agree completely. It had certainly been relaxing. So much so that I'd apparently missed the entire evening. It was the town timekeeping bell ringing twice that woke me. A little earlier than I'd normally get up—waking before Cluma was practically unheard of—but I hadn't had such a good night's sleep in a long while.

Of course, sleeping solid for so long had its downsides, mostly in the form of a very urgent call of nature. Disentangling Cluma without waking her was a fool's errand, but she didn't have her tail wrapped around anything important, so I just used [Detach] on my arm and left her clinging to it. I didn't need both arms to pee.

I managed to get halfway there before remembering why Cluma had demanded I relax.

Screw it. We were going delving today. The world could survive a day without the Law messing anything up.

Getting breakfast with one arm was harder than peeing, and while I had my metallic one gathering dust on the floor, it couldn't be reattached by undoing [Detach]. It needed a full [Redistribute]. But the real arm I'd need to [Redistribute] from was still in the inescapable clutches of Cluma...

Would I have got some more sensible skills if I'd taken [Eldritch High Mage]? Or would they have been even worse?

Thankfully, it wasn't long before a sprightly Cluma bounced down the stairs, still clutching my arm.

"Morning. Can I have that back now?" I asked.

She begrudgingly handed it over.

"Thanks. First shrunken dragons, now severed arms... I think maybe we need to get you a real plushie to carry."

"Glad to see you're feeling better," she giggled. "And only if you make it yourself."

Well, I had [Advanced Tailoring] now. Might be good for a level. But for today, it was finally time to work our way deeper into the Obsidian Spires dungeon.

The monsters on floor twenty-five gained the ability to teleport, and I could imagine that against other delving teams it would be a massive upgrade. Certainly, when I moved towards their real locations, they immediately shifted out of my way, making them far tougher to engage in melee on my terms. I didn't need to close the distance, though; I had [Far Reach] and lightning. Cluma needed to get closer, but since they couldn't see her, it made no difference. And so we continued stabbing, slicing and zapping our way through the floor.

While I knew in theory that the time affinity upgrade to my spells had made them more responsive—by temporally compressing their activation stage, if I was picking it up correctly—using them in actual combat was a different experience entirely to testing them in an open field. [Far Step] could be used at a moment's notice, making it suited for situations that previously required me to keep [Weft Walk] active. Likewise, I could use [Far Reach] with zero prep time, targeting and retargeting in the middle of a single swing, adapting to whatever evasive measures the monsters tried to make. [Superimpose] could equally be toggled mid-swing, ensuring my opponents never knew how much momentum my attacks had behind them. Not so useful against these tentacled wolves, but against someone trying to parry my attacks, it would be amazing.

[Dislocation] saw no use, as the monsters had no ranged attacks. [Timeless World], on the other hand, was just plain cheating.

A wolf monster swung at me with a tentacle. I stepped towards it, the swing slowing as I moved, causing it to miss me completely. I made a stab as my foot landed, using the speed boost to ensure the monster had no hope of evasion. My sword-staff pierced into its drooling mouth, skewering the throat and felling the beast.

The faster I moved, the more the world slowed. I could run rings around an enemy and they practically froze. If I moved towards them and made an attack as part of that movement, they had no hope of dodging. It was so much better than my missing [Minor Speed] and [Minor Slow] that I completely forgave the System for removing them.

My [Weapon Style: Flowing Mist] skill was loving it. My use of shifting weapon weights along with [Far Reach] had already made me unpredictable, but now my speed was shifting, and I could adjust my weapon momentum along with its weight, not to mention retargeting [Far Reach] mid-strike. I almost wished they did have ranged attacks, just so that I could see how [Dislocation] would fold into my style.

... The next guild tournament was coming up soon. I'd never placed particularly well in the rank three bracket, where I couldn't use my overpowered equipment. Perhaps that would change this year?

"You've leapfrogged me again!" complained Cluma. "And I'm ages away from a class change."

"Want to borrow some grenades?"

"No way. I don't want those things anywhere near me."

"We should go back to an earlier floor and practice sharing [Timeless World] in combat."

Cluma paused as she considered that. "Is that even possible? How would it work?"

"I have no idea. Best case, we each get our own personal time dilation based on our movement speed. If we affect each other, I can imagine it being too confusing."

"We don't need monsters to test that; we can toss a coin and see how fast it falls. This room is clear. Go for it."

True enough; we could prove whether or not it might be suited for combat prior to trying it in combat. I activated [Timeless World], using my bracelet of transport to wrap it around Cluma.

ding

Working...

I sighed. Of course it wouldn't be that easy.

"Huh? What happened?" asked Cluma. "Does your bracelet not work any more?"

"Dunno. The System hasn't decided yet."

I could feel the spell stuck in the activation stage, so there wasn't much to do beyond waiting for the System to work out how the effect should be applied to Cluma.

ding

The blockage that prevented the spell's full activation suddenly vanished, but the feeling of the bracelet extending the effect had gone.

"Feel any different?" I asked, although I already knew the answer. There had been no message along with that ding, but my bracelet had deactivated, and [Mana Sight] showed no extra mana around Cluma.

"No? Should I?"

"Looks like my bracelet can't share [Timeless World] at all," I said. "Given that we tend to teleport everywhere these days, it's not as big a loss as it could have been, but it'll be a pain if we're ever walking anywhere together."

"We can both run pretty fast even without it," shrugged Cluma. "It's not like it was suited for every terrain, anyway. We couldn't use it in a forest, or anywhere with dense plant growth. It didn't help us get through the Serpent Isle dungeon any quicker, or the forest in the Sapphire Peaks."

"True. I just hate losing stuff. Oh well. If we're ever in a real hurry to get somewhere I don't already have a beacon, I can always just run myself and teleport you once I arrive."

"Anyway, forget that for the moment. There's a topic you've been studiously ignoring all day."

"Huh? Was there?"

"Yes! Last night! You purred!"

"I honestly don't remember. I was pretty out of it."

"Doesn't matter if you remember or not. It still happened."

I did a quick internal scan with [Mana Sight] just in case, but it wasn't as if I'd memorised what my voice box was supposed to look like. Everything looked fine to me. Nor was there anything odd about my status. Perhaps playing around with my biology wasn't entirely sensible, but I'd bet I wasn't that unusual. Abigail had outright admitted she'd take cat ears if we offered!

"I don't know what else to say. If you claim it happened, I believe you. I don't think it changes anything."

"You're sure your status still says human?"

"Yes. I check on a regular basis. Anyway, monsters."

Cluma giggled as she re-engaged [Non-detection], and soon enough another trio of corpses lay at our feet.

"How much further to the boss?"

"We're almost there, actually. Just down that corridor, but there's a portal in it at the moment, so we'll need to wait for it to move out of the way."

"Time enough to extract the cores, then," she replied, stabbing a dagger into the dead belly of the fur-less wolf.

I ripped out the other two, able to do so considerably faster with the aid of [Disassembly], and by the time we were done, the corridor was clear. A few minutes later, we were at the end of the staircase, staring down into the hole at an upscaled wolf.

"It's bigger, but there's only one of it. Shouldn't be a problem, as long as I keep an eye out for tentacle swipes."

"Actually, I wasn't planning to fight it at all. It's time to see what my latest creations do to a real monster."

"Oh! Good idea. It's lucky we're so high up."

Actually, that was a damn good point. We were overpowered from the beginning for this dungeon, so a drop of ten metres didn't bother us, even ignoring our feather fall rings. For anyone that would find the first floor challenging, the boss chamber design was ridiculous. Did everyone need feather fall enchanted equipment to enter here? However much research I thought I was doing, or however carefully I prepared, I always seemed to leave huge gaps in my knowledge...

Putting that aside for now, I pulled a decay grenade from [Inventory] and tossed it at the opposite corner of the room from where the image of the monster was glaring at us.

There was a low-pitched roar of static and the monster came apart at the seams, the spatial illusion shattering instantly.

The sight was spectacular. Skin broke and peeled back, globules of blood and chunks of meat suddenly finding themselves unattached to anything, gravity included. Monsters reacted to injuries, but mostly by attacking the source. I'd never seen one look like it was in pain, but the way the face of the wolf-monster twisted as it disintegrated was enough to make me reconsider.

Within ten seconds, a clean skeleton hovered in the middle of a cloud of red mist. Grey dust poured from the bones as they thinned, mixing in with the red in swirling eddies and currents. Another five seconds, and nothing was left but dust. Five more, and there wasn't even that.

The static ceased, leaving us in silence.

Gravity reversed, flipping us both over. We gracefully landed on the reverse half of the staircase, continuing to stare upwards through the hole.

"... Wow," said Cluma, finally speaking almost a minute later.

"Wow," I agreed. The grenade had done nothing to the dungeon itself, which was logical since dungeon stone was normally used to contain decay crystals, but it had erased the boss completely.

"That would be useless if the monsters were right up next to us, but on bosses? It's an instant win."

"Perhaps with enough endurance something could tank it, or at least hold together for long enough to get out of range?"

"Maybe, but that boss didn't even get the chance to move. It just... just... evaporated."

"Yeah. That was certainly an impressive display."

"Why don't all delvers use them?"

"Cost? I needed mythril to do the wiring. Not to mention most people don't have somewhere as safe as [Inventory] to store them. If you're carrying one of those on your belt and it takes a hit that breaks the mana shielding..."

"True. Oh well, onto the next floor!"

"Chest first." It would only contain a bar of mana infused steel, which wasn't at all interesting when I could produce it from regular steel given a few seconds' work, but no harm in taking it regardless.

ding

"Huh? That was delayed," I muttered, still only halfway to the chest.

"What was?" asked Cluma, with her impeccable hearing.

... And my hearing was now just as good, I thought with a smile as I opened up my message.

You have begun to form a new skill