System Change

Derek went home in a very good mood after seeing the newborn twins—even if he had been slightly embarrassed by Rayna there at the end. Even though Rayna and Jacks looked great and didn’t seem tired, he and the others knew that they would be after all the stress and planning, so they didn’t want to stay too long. It was the middle of the night, after all.

For the next couple of weeks, Derek continued allowing his Time Prison skill to passively train up while focusing on some of the less useful skills he had—or at least, the less combat-oriented skills like Cleaning, Basic Repair, and even Cure Toxin. During that time, he and the others visited Rayna, Jacks, and the babies almost daily. There was just something about being around them that brought them all joy.

However, with his Time Prison packed full of monsters, it finally hit level 20. He almost scolded himself for not doing the same thing sooner, but in reality, ever since the raid, he’d been using his Void Travel ability so much that it would have been impossible for him to do so. But now that it was level 20, he no longer needed to worry about it and could get back to focusing on other things.

So, he ran one big experiment with his Time Prison and Void Travel. Since all the monsters were locked inside the cells and not just out in the open, he wanted to see how Void Travel would affect them—to see if the cells offered any increased protection. They didn’t.

Derek took a quick trip to a few familiar places—like the area by Savannah with the golem dungeon, and a couple of the less populated areas that he and Alanah had gone to—then came back to his shop. Once inside his ‘travel room’, Derek opened his Time Prison and went in.

Normally, the doors were locked until the sentences were complete, and he only had control of how quickly or slowly the sentences passed. He couldn’t just cancel the sentences and open the cell, he had to wait. But when he stepped into the Time Prison this time, he looked around and saw that all the cells were unlocked. Instantly, he knew what had happened.

Still, he went ahead and opened each cell door and found exactly what he was expecting. Each cell had a corpse—some mutated, some missing parts, but all dead. He gathered all the corpses from the cells and used his Cleaning skill to clean up any messes he found. He clicked his tongue, then left the prison. It all had gone pretty much how he expected it to, but he had a little hope in the back of his mind that the cells could protect since they cut off most all functions, even metabolic functions—unfortunately, that was not the case.

He also didn’t bother dismantling or using any of the corpses in any way. That just seemed… wrong. They were all so mutated that he wouldn’t want to eat any of them, and he wouldn’t trust any of the materials that came from them. So, he had Silvi destroy them completely with her dragon flame, which pained her because it was wasting meat, but she understood.

With everything to do with his Time Prison finished, Derek finally had his complete freedom to use Void Travel back. He was slightly disappointed when the skill hit 20 and he didn’t complete another requirement for advancement, but he was expecting it. But he knew that there was a chance that any type of growth on his part could complete a requirement, so he knew that he would have that hope for anything he did going forward.

Now, with the babies born and doing well, and his Time Prison taken care of, Derek went upstairs to have a quick chat with Malorie.“You busy?” he asked as he knocked twice, then walked through the open door to her office.

“I’m always busy,” Malorie said, but she raised her head up anyway and asked, “Why, do you need something?”

“Not really,” Derek said. “I was just thinking about heading out for a bit, and I don’t know how long I’m going to be. Could be back in an hour, could be a week… I don’t know. Probably an hour, though. So, I wanted to make sure that you had everything under control before I left.”

“So… you’re worried about my workload now?” Malorie chuckled and shook her head. “I have everything under control. The renovations allowed me to catch up on a lot of my work, since we didn’t have any new customers or contracts or anything to deal with at the time. It’s business as usual now, so you can go do what you want.”

“Great!” Derek said. “And you know, you could always hire an assistant. It’s not like we’re hurting for money… I think. You would know more about that than me.”

“I don’t need one,” Malorie said. “This keeps me busy all day, but if I didn’t have the work to do, I don’t know what else I would do. I can’t just go punch things when I get bored, and I enjoy all of this. Besides, Bones is here most of the time, and he’s more than enough help if I need anything. It’s all mostly just finances and sales… stuff like that. Nothing super important that needs to be taken care of as soon as possible, but I like to keep everything up to date.”

“Yeah, I understand that. My mother was the same way with her contract work,” Derek said. “And I’m sure a trained assassin like Bones is good help. He’s a bit like a chameleon in that way. Seems to be good at any job he sets out to do.”

“Yes, he is,” Malorie said with a nod. “Now, what is it that you’re planning on doing? Anything big? Is it going to affect the entire continent again?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“No, nothing so grand as that,” Derek laughed. “Well… hopefully.” He smiled and got an eyeroll from Malorie. “Nah…” he said. “I’m free of my prison skill for now, so I’m going to go keep to my word on something I made a while ago.”

“Oh?” Malorie said with a raised brow. “And what word is that?”

“Well, I told Marrick I’d check in on him from time to time, and I haven’t yet. On top of that, he said he’d be on the lookout for some materials for Brandi, so I wanted to check on that too,” Derek explained.

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll be grateful to the both of you,” Malorie replied.

“Well, if you need me for anything, Silvi can find and come get me almost instantly,” Derek said. “I’m just one traveling skill away for her.”

“Okay,” Malorie said with a nod. “Well, you have fun with that cranky old man.”

“He’s not that bad,” Derek laughed before leaving the office and heading back down to his ‘travel room.’ Once inside, he opened up a portal with Void Travel and took a step inside.

Okay… let’s see… he thought. Where is Marrick? Derek pushed his Void Sense to the max and looked around until he saw the aura that indicated Marrick. There you are, he thought as he focused his attention on the aura. Honestly, he was relieved that he found the old man. He wasn’t sure how long the old elf had left, so he didn’t know if he was actually going to be able to find him or not.

With a sigh of relief, he used his senses to look for other auras and frowned. Where the hell is he, anyway? He wondered. First, he looked for auras of people close to Cydaria, or at least on the same continent. Marrick’s aura was nowhere near those auras. So, seeing that, and knowing that the elf planned on heading to the other continent if he had enough time, he looked for one of the very few people who had made a big enough impact on him for him to be able to pinpoint their aura… Nick… from Nick’s Knick-Knacks.

Again, Marrick wasn’t very close to that aura. That’s weird… he thought. Derek also focused in on where they had fought the Echoing Willow, and that area wasn’t close, either. Well… I guess there’s only one way to find out.

With that thought, Derek moved forward through the void. Soon enough, he found himself hovering over the aura of Marrick, and he reached out to rip open the void.

Marrick was currently in an odd predicament, even though he was still having a great time. It had been a very long time since he had so much fun fighting and adventuring—actually, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had so much fun fighting and adventuring. Maybe it was something to do with him being at the end of his life that made it so exciting—he wasn’t sure.

In the last few months, he’d explored Cydaria, Indria, and the new Indaria, before he ended up in Vallum and exploring it as well. He’d pretty much explored all those places before, but it had been countless years, and a lot had changed. A couple weeks back, he’d finished exploring the land of the dwarves, then made the decision that it was time to check out the other continent—the one that the Dawn Siren was from.

He didn’t know much about the continent other than that—to be completely honest, he’d never really cared. But, since meeting Derek and Silvi, a new passion for adventuring had been lit under him, so he definitely wanted to take a good look at the place before he inevitably died from his old age—actually, it would be nice if he could find something or someone to push him to his limits… to give him a good fight before he died, or even give him a good fight that resulted in his death.

Of course, he wasn’t going to go around challenging strong people to death matches. There were too many people with bright futures ahead of them—he’d hate to snuff those futures out before they even began. But, if the right person, who happened to also be a big enough prick, appeared before him, he wouldn’t hesitate. Without that, though, he was left with monsters.

With all of that in mind, Marrick had set out to find a way to cross the massive ocean. He’d thought about summoning his sand and riding it across the entire thing, but he wasn’t sure how long it would take or if he had enough potions to keep his mana up the whole time. Only insane people would try that without knowing the distance or exact location. Hell, who knew how easy it’d be to get lost? If only there was a map or some other way to find it.

One thing he didn’t want to do was run out of mana, then fall into a sea-beast’s maw and, without the mana to fight back, get turned into fish poop. That certainly wouldn’t be a good ending to his long life. So, he went looking for someone to make him a ship small enough to store in his storage ring. That way, he could fly for a while, then rest on the ship to recover.

So, that’s what he’d done. And, since he was in Vallum at the time, it wasn’t hard to accomplish. Hell, he’d found someone selling boats within a couple of hours of making his decision. And, luckily for him, he was able to buy three small boats for a relatively cheap price—and they were all able to fit in his storage ring.

Unfortunately, he’d been looking for the other continent for a very long time now, and he had no idea how close he was. He wasn’t even sure if he was heading in the right direction. He’d gotten pretty lost. And, to top it all off, he’d watched a giant octopus tentacle reach out of the water and destroy his last boat a few days ago. The other two had met similar fates throughout his journey, so he was stuck with his original bad plan—flying forward on his cloud of sand while hoping to find land before he tired too much.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, the giant octopus was following him. The creature was massive, and just waiting for him to get close enough to attack. Marrick… didn’t do too well against sea monster. He could deal with fighting water users on land, as he was surrounded by earth, but it was a little different fighting a sea monster in the middle of the sea.

That hadn’t stopped him before, though. He’d killed quite a few sea creatures—some probably as strong as the octopus following him or even stronger. But he had extra boats then. He had nothing now, and it would take far too much effort and resources to fight his current stalker—even if he ended it quickly.

Still, he couldn’t say it wasn’t exciting. It would all make for a great story to tell someone if he made it across the sea. He’d just have to make it, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to. So, like that, he’d traveled above the water for days while being stalked by a beast. He was going through his mana potions very quickly, and his Greater Meditation wasn’t at a high enough level to keep up with his mana expenditures. It helped greatly, but it just wasn’t enough.

So, his mindset was slowly beginning to change, and even though he would not give up, he was on the verge of accepting that maybe his fate was to become fish… octopus poop. Fortunately, while thinking about how much nutrition his old bones would give to a fish, and how he wished he’d planned a little better, a very familiar, dreadful aura appeared and washed over him—it seemed that fate had other plans.