Chapter 8 - Slow

I was eating cheap. Cheap was my life.

I might seem to have some money because I had a house in the middle of Seoul, but actually, that house was the only thing of value I owned, except the headset, and it was not really mine. It was my family's property.

Anyway, I was doing so while browsing the internet on my phone.

I was refreshing my memories of today's run. If you wonder, yes, we were going for a record: we would try to beat "Death Cave", a level 4 dungeon, faster than the current n°1 guild to show off a bit.

Well, showing off was my personal goal, I didn't know why the others wanted to do it.

I got up.

Time to go!

The house wasn't really big. From the entrance, you had access to the living room on the right and the kitchen a bit further. On the left were the bathroom and other utility rooms, and the furthest room was 20 meters away from the entrance, which was my room.

Essentially, the corridor was the main access to everything in the house.

And so, with me switching rooms several times a day, the scene of me going through the corridor multiple times in a few minutes could be seen from the entrance. If it was a timelapse, that scene would make me look like a headless chicken.

Going to brush my teeth, going to piss, going back to my room, noticing I forgot my phone, and going back to the kitchen to get it…

All of that required me to go through the corridor.

After a few minutes, I finally settled down on my bed, lying well in order to avoid any muscle pain that could result from a long dive, and put my headset on.

[...]

I had been waiting for 20 minutes.

Well, it was maybe my fault. I mean, I stopped my daily farming earlier than usual due to my stress. I didn't want to be late.

The appointment was in 10 minutes, but someone HAD to come before the others, right?

Anyway, let's check my stats.

╔════════════════════╗

║ Heaven-Defying Paradise...

║ Name: ImperialShadow

║ Level: 8

║ HP: 42/42

║ MP: 34/34

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Stats

║ Opportunism: 3499

║ Strength: 3132

║ Scheme: 1384

║ Intelligence: 1125

║ Wisdom: 820.0001

║ Luck: 513

║ Will: 350

║ Comprehension: 125

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Inventory

║ Sticky bombs x50

║ Sticky bombs x50

║ Random Gift Pack x1

║ Broken Sword x1

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Genome (14 points)

║ Sheep Transformation

║ Soul Collection

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Skills (127 points)

║ Slow (10)

║ Slip (9)

║ Palm Push (9)

║ Thick Skin (7)

║ Bite (1)

║ Sharp Eye(1,MAX)

╚════════════════════╝

I was SO happy that the status window didn't have the place to show the entire name of the guild.

Apart from this most important matter, somehow, after level 2, the HP & MP didn't seem to increase much. Don't misunderstand me, they still increased quite a bit, but the rate of increase was way lower. That on top of the difficulty increase at each level up had me wonder whether the game developers were sadists. The game was already so hardcore yet the further you went the harder the game was.

At least they added features centered around casual players lately. It was a good thing for them. I couldn't see how they would win anything from only having the top 1% keep playing. A modern game needed two things to live long: a high player count, and whales.

Both parameters didn't benefit from losing all your players over difficulty.

At some point, the base stats stopped showing up. I think it was great as having 0.0001+820 in the Wisdom stat would be shameful.

It might seem like some stats were lagging behind, but it's only an impression.

Yes, an impression, don't question it.

Anyway, as you can see, I got a new genome skill and two new skills.

The new genome skill was Soul Collection, which totally proved that my family was shady. My family. Not me. Just my family at some point in time.

For the two new skills, there was Palm Push, which is from the "Daoist" skill tree I unlocked when observing Soul. It was where I got Sharp Eye from too.

And, the best for the end, I got Slow. That skill allowed me to slow a small part of space to a certain extent, it was very useful.

A matter to be proud of, though, is that I was probably the only one in the world with a skill leveled up to level 10. The price of leveling up a skill was exponential, in the same way as to how the more skills you had, the harsher the conditions for getting one got.

Apart from someone like me who spent his entire life playing the game, no one could have enough time to level up a skill to level 10 since the release of the game.

Am I proud to say I have no social life? Yes, absolutely!

╔══════════════════════════════════╗

║ Sheep Transformation

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ In ancient times there existed a clan with

║ with abilities known as Transformers. They died

║ quickly and disappeared of the evolution chain

║ because the two last representants died quickly,

║ one was able to transform into a corpse, so died

║ while Transforming for the first time, the other

║ was able to transform into an apple and was

║ eaten by Adam, becoming the first case of

║ cannibalism known to man.

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 5 points per change of form

╚══════════════════════════════════╝

╔══════════════════════════════════╗

║ Soul collection

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ In ancient times, there existed a clan called

║ Soul Collectors. They were known to kill others

║ for their powers.

║ Though it was well known they had huge

║ collections of souls, where they were stored

║ is still a mystery to this day

║ PS: Each use of a soul costs 10 points

╚══════════════════════════════════╝

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Slip

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ A skill from the crossover event with

║ a certain stupid yet funny light novel series

║ The target, whatever its level, will slip and

║ fall without fail and suffer 125% of the CC

║ effects common people would suffer

║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 5 skill points

║ Active

╚═════════════════════════════════╝

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Palm Push

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Pushes your target with a power equivalent

║ to 88% of your strength

║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 3 skill points

║ Active

╚═════════════════════════════════╝

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Thick Skin (32/1000)

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ With great powers comes great responsibilities...

║ Reduces all CC effects by 64%

║ Reduces your blush coefficient by 64%

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ Slackface

║ Worst bastard in the world

║ Emotionless Machine

║ ???

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 1 point per activation

║ Duration: 4 Seconds

╚═════════════════════════════════╝

I still didn't understand what the 32/1000 in thick skin was for.

I noticed the effect percentage was the double of its value. I wanted to avoid leveling it too far. I didn't want to take the risk of the blush coefficient reduction going above 100%. You never know, I might end up looking like an undead.

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Bite

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Some pok*mons have stronger attacks than

║ others. Don't worry you can still learn

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: nothing

║ Active

╚═════════════════════════════════╝

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║Sharp Eye

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ We all love to steal from LoPH

║ Depending on your and your target level,

║ gain 0 to 100% of Comprehension of the target

║ Opens ergonomics windows around the flaws

║ and details about the spotted target when

║ saying "Flaws"

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: from nothing to dying, passing by headache

║ and fainting

║ Passive

╚═════════════════════════════════╝

-Hey!

SOUL! You saved me yet again!

What a time to be alive!

-Hey Soul!

Getting friends, having them show up at a rendezvous point. It was almost as if I had a social life!

Anyway, it was no time to get all emotional.

A small head peeked from behind Soul.

-Hi…

Loli Pinky! Uh, I mean… PinkyKitty.

-Hey Pinky!

Still as timid as ever, I see.

I was happy about the evolution of my status, so I talked about it.

We ended up talking about all of our statuses animatedly.

Well, me and Soul, at least. But Pinky still placed a few sentences. I guess she was getting more confident with herself now.

-Hey!

-Hey Darta.

Now came Dartagnan.

In the end, though he joined us at the last moment, he integrated pretty well in the guild. Actually, even SilentVoice, that chatterbox, did.

Talking about the guild, I closed it and disabled invites. It was first a group of friends before anything else.

And maybe let's say that maybe I became the strongest player in the world and I really really really didn't wish people to see the full name of the guild.

Right now it was very convenient because the last two words were cut in every menu, but anyone who joins should be able to see the full name in the guild window.

It could be seen in global announcements too, but for records, you could set the group name, so it was okay. I could just type "Guild Heaven-Defying Paradise" and omit the last two words!

Talking about words, I could hear that Silent arrived.

-Everyone!

It was time for a motivational speech. I always dreamt of doing one!

So let's see, what do they usually say?

First, something to lighten up the mood.

-Even though it doesn't look like it, we spent many hours training in that dungeon.

Next, an "I believe in you" thing.

-I believe everyone knows what they're supposed to do and will do so without fail.

Next, saying the names of everyone with a camera plan to each of them.

-So now... Soul! Pinky! Darta! Silent! Let's go clear that dungeon and make the name "Heaven-Defying Paradise" known!

Next, we need to start the dungeon before the good mood goes away.

I turned to the dungeon.

-Guys, do you think he can do a more awful speech next time?

Silent! I know my back is facing you, but can hear you! Don't do this!

-Don't worry, I'm sure he's going to prepare it next time.

Soul! I thought you were my bro!

-Um, well… I believe in Shadow!

Pinky! You're an angel!

-I believe he can write a good speech.

Pinky! Noooo!!!!

-You know-

-Darta.

-Hmm?

-Shut. Up.

Let's start the dungeon.

To think my pride would be hurt so much just by opening a menu.

Come on, I don't have any experience doing speeches you know?

I just got inspired by anime!

I'm never doing a speech about friendship ever again.

-Anyway, let's go clear that fucking dungeon.

I was going to release all my frustration on the mobs.

[...]

Death Cave's name was pretty easy to understand as soon as you got inside.

We were set on setting a record, so for the start of the dungeon, we just ran to avoid fighting the first skeletons.

As usual with the mobs in this game, the skeletons were way stronger and faster than they should be.

But there was a simple strategy that was commonly seen as the best one to use.

-Pinky!

I carried Pinky on my back.

-Fire! Fire!

The AIs in this game were way too good, so they wouldn't sacrifice their lives if it didn't allow them to get to their objective: killing the player.

It made them hard to fight using usual tactics, but it also meant that they wouldn't try to go through an attack that would decrease their survival chances too much.

So with Pinky just putting fire everywhere behind us, they couldn't follow us. They just were unwilling to be kited to death.

As for why Pinky was on my back, it was simple: she couldn't use most of her magic skills while moving. So we were going at it moving turret style.

By the time the fire was down, we would be too far into the dungeon for them to catch up.

As for the arrows from the skeleton archers…

-Slow! Slow! Slow!

I slowed down their tip. So either the whole arrow was slowed, either the rest of the arrow pushed too much on the tip, which broke it while expanding most of the energy that pushed it forward.

In both cases, we were not in the arrows' way anymore.

The second step was spiders.

They were immune to most CC, and they had a lot of PV.

Fortunately, they pretty much held their aggro until the person in question died.

Some other groups would use that to kite them the traditional way, but our group was only constituted of strong individuals.

Actually, as much as I complained about my hand being forced, I let them in.

If Dartagnan and Silent weren't strong, I would've kicked them out of the guild after its creation.

So right before entering their range of detection, everyone but Silent stopped moving.

Once Silent has taken the aggro of all the spiders, we rush through them. Silent would stay behind to take care of them. He barely had time to kill the spiders before our planned time, so had no time to join us later, and basically was free to do whatever he wanted once the spiders were dead.

Next was the Spider Queen. It was basically a bigger spider with more damages, more health, more speed, but without the CC immunity.

So I just used Slip while Dartagnan used Keep, which basically froze someone's status for a duration depending on the points used. This meant that the Slip CC was not cleared after the Spider boss fell, so it just would fall for all the Keep duration and without ever being able to come after us.

Spiders' aggro never resets until the death of the target, so normally, Dartagnan would need to use the right amount of skill points to make sure we wouldn't be bothered until the end of the dungeon.

But we had another strategy.

Dartagnan used enough skill points for 30 seconds only.

Next was the dungeon boss' room. The Lich.

The thing with the Lich was that it has a lot of sure-hit skills. They were pretty weak, but as it had enough HP, it could wipe out parties pretty easily.

That's where the Spider Queen came in.

In order to help us decrease the Lich's PV faster and to take the Lich' sure-hit skills in our stead, we used the Spider Queen.

One of the peculiarities of the Lich is it only took the aggro once hit.

It's probably made to let the players the time to heal, recover and prepare before the fight, as well as deal the first hit, but here it was advantageous.

It took exactly 45 seconds to get to the boss room, the spider moved twice as fast as we do, and the Lich could take the aggro of another mob.

So we just had the one with the aggro of the spider get behind the Lich.

It made sure that the Spider Queen hit the Lich, because its first attack, which we delayed with Slip, had a big starting animation and triggered right before the player went through the Lich.

To optimize the run, I was the one with the Spider Queen's aggro.

After all, I could CC.

In this game, the players gave themselves several types of roles for parties.

They were the holy trinity that was the base of most MMORPGs: tanks, damage dealers, healers.

But there was one more role the players through useful to make a whole category of. And this was CC, those who can use crowd control skills. No one could come up with a good name for the role, so we used the name of the type of skills itself instead.

Because this game was so hardcore, it was hard to level up a lot of skills, so there were many players who focused on leveling up a single type of skill.

It was not my case, as my roots were still in PvP, but the importance of CC still couldn't be underestimated.

A full guild party, with enough good CC players, it was possible to complete a boss without taking a single blow. It was very important to avoid getting wiped. Healers dealt with the consequences, but CCs dealt with the root of the problem.

Probably for balance purposes, as this was a type of skill rarely used by the damage dealers themselves in the game, CC skills had a small impact on aggro.

It meant I could use them extensively to balance the HP of both bosses and make sure that the Spider Queen was killed by the Lich right when the Lich was about to die.

The Lich had a lot of sure-hit skills which could wear a player's HP down, it wasn't near enough to kill a boss such as the Spider Queen, but beyond these, the Lich still has a few bigger attacks. I just needed to make sure they hit or did not hit the Spider Queen when I needed it, as well as stop the Lich from landing its sure-hit skills if its HP were lagging behind the Spider Queen too much.

Meanwhile, Darta, Soul, and Pinky were charged with focusing the Lich so its HP could decrease as fast as possible. They also need to use as few CC skills as possible, which excluded Pinky's strongest skill. I still didn't know whether her sister tampered with her account to this level, or if her family was just op since ancient times, but it created a big ass explosion that could one-shot players of the same level. It did deal a good amount of damage, but it would only create chaos, and stop our close-range DPS from attacking. Also, I was worried about her DPS being higher than the Spider Queen if she used it, and I clearly wanted to avoid the aggro switching.

And anyway, even with the restriction on Pinky's strongest skill, she is still one of the individuals with the highest DPS of us all.

In the end, I not only needed to keep an eye on both bosses' HP, but I also needed to manage the aggro of the Spider Queen and have it kite the Lich.

I also needed to often get behind the Lich at the right timing to have the Spider Queen hit the Lich with its attacks.

It was hard even in theory, and I wasn't such a legendary player, so I couldn't possibly do it first try. Which is why we trained a lot for this day.

After many hours of practice, I concluded I had several skills to use.

From time to time, I used Slip on the Lich, to interrupt an attack I didn't want to see landing on the Spider Queen.

I used slow on the Spider Queen's legs to stop her from moving when I wanted her to be hit.

If she was about to hit me and I couldn't avoid it, I used Palm Push.

In combination with my passive Thick Skin, I could cancel out most of the CC while ignoring the damages. I only slid a few meters back and could push back her leg.

All of that might seem easy, but it was a lot to take into account.

If I didn't increase my Opportunism, Strength, Scheme, Intelligence, and Wisdom stats, I wouldn't have been able to do any of these.

I couldn't multitask without Intelligence, I couldn't elaborate such an intricate plan without Wisdom and Scheme. I wouldn't be able to react so easily to everything that happens without Opportunism, I wouldn't be able to push back the Spider Queen's leg using Palm Push if I didn't have such a high Strength.

I would've loved to have a Speed stat, but somehow it doesn't seem to be in the status. From what I had witnessed so far, I was sure it existed as a hidden stat, but I didn't know if there was any way to improve it other than leveling up.

Anyway, all of these stats were gained through hours of hard work and farming, which is what gave me such abilities.

I'd still love to know how the game can make our mental stats actually affect our thinking during playtime. It sounds like magic, but magic is banned in the real world, they wouldn't take such risks.

Maybe the hardware we use to dive also gives our brain additional processing power externally, giving us a third brain, in the way that a certain famous billionaire envisioned a few years ago.

But anyway…

-Looks like it's a win!

I used the last slows on the Spider Queen while the Lich landed a killing blow.

At that moment, Soul, Pinky, and Dartagnan used their strongest skills.

They had CC on these, which is why they were unable to use them so far as I needed to be the one in control of the CC.

It would be faster, but coordinating a complete offensive with skills with CC used would be near impossible with our current abilities. I couldn't coordinate this well with 4 copies of myself.

First Soul, who had the fastest skill, used Slash, a sword skill that looked like it could cut space itself, and projected the Lich towards Dartagnan.

Dartagnan, with an incredibly elegant 360° turn on the tip of his toes, used Crush with his 1.5-meter long battle hammer to throw back the Lich towards Pinky.

Pinky, who looked like she couldn't hold it in anymore, used her explosion spell to finish the mob.

<Congratulations! You beat the n°1 record of the dungeon, what is your party's name?>

I typed happily, without mistake this time, Heaven-Defying Paradise, and validated.

In the global chat was written:

<Congratulations! Heaven-Defying Paradise cleared the Death Cave in 6:58 without losing a single member! The previous record was 10:06>

Never been so happy to beat a record to death!

[...]

I discovered you could get drunk inside a game. And that was great because it was exactly the same as in real life except there would be no hangovers or blackouts!

I was minor but I could drink it, so it maybe was some kind of legal grey area. I didn't have actual alcohol in my system, after all.

-Guys! It's time for me to leave! Seeya!

We're in a neutral zone, so I could do a clean disconnect. This meant I could connect wherever I want next login, I wouldn't have to log in too far from my farming zone.

Fulldive games are forbidden from stopping players from disconnecting, so they couldn't restrict cheating through logging off (such as avoiding PvP fights).

But clean disconnecting was meant to reduce the number of players who did such things, as an unclean disconnect had the player login right where they logged off.

[...]

The more time passed, the more I was using the play-asleep function of the diving equipment. It was nice and all, but eventually, as tired as I could be, I would be unable to sleep 24h a day. Which was why I set some schedule for myself. At night, I played in sleeping mode. The day, I played in awake mode.

I only had a single thing to do the day outside of playing, so it might seem like I was forcing myself to keep a routine, but it was not the case.

As chaotic as I often appeared to be, I still thought things through and liked to keep some level of organization.

I opened my eyes. I was in my bed.

Right now was… I moved my head to get some visual clues in the chaos of my room.

1 pm. 1:07 actually. I played asleep, so it couldn't be too far from the night.

Recently, there had been talk about the game company planning to add PvP arenas, together with a leaderboard.

It was good as until now, PvP players had to do these kinds of things themselves, be it organizing fights or keeping tabs.

Thinking about it, I might be the strongest player from a level point of view, but I probably couldn't win against most of my guild. They were all monsters in their own way.

I didn't know what would be the hardest, winning against Soul or getting up from my bed at this exact moment.

Let's just say I'd beat Soul easily. I'll get up and get some fricking nutrition.

[...]

Alright, karma always strikes backs, right. But come on, karma-san, can you please strike a bit softer?

Walking out of your bedroom to find your front door open is okay.

Finding a thief in your house is still okay.

But why the fuck did that thief have a gun?

-It's Korea, not fucking Hollywood!

The thief spun around. I didn't understand, even though I was so discreet while shouting my thoughts out...

Thief: W-W-What are you doing here? Stay back! Or I'll have to shoot you! I will shoot you!

Was he the one pointing a gun at me or was it the opposite? Because his actions made it look like it was the second option.

He was shaking more than an ass in a music video.

-Man, you probably don't need me to teach you your job, but normally, you're supposed to not be seen. And that gun is really, really, likely to give your position away as soon as you fire it. So if you don't want to be arrested and see your life ruined right away, you shouldn't fire it.

-What does that have to do with you? Mind your own business! Remember who has the gun here!

I never noticed how hungry I was when I went out of diving, because I usually eat within a minute, and this guy had been holding me back for almost two minutes. I had to do something about that situation.

-Let's just do this, you get to pick items in the house, I get to eat my breakfast because I'm hella hungry right now. I'm not interested in material goods anyway.

I was going to the kitchen, he was following me with his gun. I put my hands in my pockets as naturally as I could. Tracksuits be blessed, I had enough clearance to flip my phone. It was upside down, which wouldn't have been useful in this situation. I let a part of my phone out of my pocket, just enough to let the camera get out, and double-tap the power button to take a picture.

I could tap four times on the power button to call the authorities, but I don't know how loud my phone is even without the speakers on.

-You know, I'm not stupid enough to call for help when someone with a gun is standing a few meters away from me, right?

I'm totally going to send the picture I just took with my phone to a friend and ask him to call the police, though.

-...

Why so silent?

Let me see, what should I eat…

-Did you know I can't express the entirety of my culinary arts with a gun pointed at me?

-...

-Oh, and fuck, it'll be milk & cereal.

This trick to get nutrition without eating something too heavy and too slow to prepare was stolen from western eating habits.

[...]

In the end, he just wouldn't get his gun away from my body, and I couldn't find any moment to use my phone even for a few seconds to send a message.

Now I was following him with a bowl in my left hand and a spoon in my right hand, as he was taking stuff from my home, all of that while still pointing his gun at me.

That guy was an Olympic-level athlete. A gun wasn't so heavy, but he had been holding it pretty steadfastly for a long time, with the exact same arm position.

Either he did a lot of fapping, either he just misplanned his career.

I took another spoon of cereals from my bowl.

-Did you know you could be world champion with that kind of arm strength? Crunch!

Wow, it's still crunchy! It's been more than 20 minutes since he's been rummaging through my home, though.

I should buy the same next time.

I didn't know whether being exposed to fighting, even with a virtual body, gave me a lot of composure, or if I was abnormal from the start.

Looking into the consequences of fulldive on people could be interesting, but it would be impossible to set up any kind of experiment without having some media bringing the subject to the table. I didn't want to see the same thing that happened to videogames in general happening to fulldive. Though it was before my time, there was still a time not so far off where people thought video games made people violent without proof, just because it was an unproven possibility.

Getting back to the situation at hand, he was doing a really good job at ignoring me. A lot of people would have had a mental breakdown and left running after 20 minutes of me trash talking, especially people as unprepared to kill as him. I mean, someone being calmer than you in this type of situation is deemed to make you more and more nervous with time.

I wonder what his situation was. With how generous I was, a standard thief would have left with the TV and a bit of money and been thankful nothing happened. Yet this one was so insistent.

Either he owed a lot of money to a lot of money sharks, either he was looking for something specific, which meant his background would be abnormal.

Anyway, the main problem to me was not being pointed at with a gun, but three others:

1) He was getting close to my room, and seeing how he saw the 1000 Won bill that was rolled in my Sofa's foot I manually hollowed for cases of emergency, there was no way he would miss the huge electronic installation in my room.

2) All that stuff in my room was my guarantee I could still live as a neet for a few years by reselling it.

Did I not mention I didn't work anymore? Oh, maybe not. Well, here it is I didn't work anymore.

3) I'm almost running out of cereals.

I needed to get him to leave before he saw the last bit of my depleting fortune.

A greedy thief was the last thing I needed.

-...and this is why the String Theory is much more trustworthy than Loop Quantum Gravity in my opinion. And you? Which theory do you tend to believe in?

-...

I know it's interesting to me, but why isn't he fleeing? Did quantum physics get so much more popular lately?

It's really getting urgent. He went through all the rooms now, there's only my bedroom left. He's going for the door, my life for my diving gear!

-Hey, did you know that if, it just happened to-

I just notice the time. What a rare chance. I change the second half of my sentence.

-be exactly 1 pm and half which is the time some policemen go through my street, which means it is a perfect time to-

I got closer to him, he stopped in his steps, it seemed like I distracted him enough. With so much time without anything happening, his senses must have dulled, so he wouldn't react right away.

Now I needed to scare him enough so he fired. From what I had seen so far, he was untrained, so it shouldn't be too hard to stop him from firing at me. Compared to fighting someone higher-leveled in the game, the stat difference here between the dropped out high schooler that I am and the adult thief in front of me isn't too much, and I have training dealing against bows and crossbows.

Let's jump towards him.

-fire at me!

BANG!

I jumped in diagonal, believing there was no way his bullet would touch me.

But I didn't expect a ridiculous aim even trained professional shouldn't have: the bullet went right to my head, there was no way I'd survive this.

Is this the moment where time seems to stop before death?

I didn't think I'd have several seconds to think when the bullet is right before my head.

Is there something wrong with time?

-What the fuck, who are you, Lucky Luke?

These were my last heroic words before I blacked out.

Ding!

<The player synchronized a skill by a special action <Slow>>