NOVEL NEXT Chapter 316 – No Buts
Beneath his skin, Jason’s muscles squirm like snakes as he flexes them group by group. Jason breathes out and his breath flies across the room like an arrow as vapor condenses around it. The dust in the air sparkles with energy and dances around as his vitality surges. He opens his eyes and a slight glow permeates the room. If only the scientists had a proper detector in the house to pinpoint these events. They don’t, and they won’t because Jason’s mom put her foot down.
Jason stands up and all the strangeness vanishes like a midsummer night’s dream. Sure, if the scientists were to test the materials in the apartment they would be tougher by an almost imperceptible amount but that could be down to differences in manufacturing. Jason doesn’t care about these external matters as he goes through a light stretching routine, taking note of his suddenly greater range of movement.
Satisfied, Jason goes into his room and slides back into his pod. The personal room loads up in an instant and almost as quick he hops into the portal to NeoRealm. Once in a quick check tells him it is now very early in the morning. He had been living a very chaotic life ever since the group had arrived in town.
While travelling, Jason might have been in the wild before, it was organized. Each day moving forward with a clear goal in mind and he can’t wait to get back to that. And checking the calendar shows he has two more days before it is planned for the group to leave and five more days until the Sunday slowdown. Seeing that Jason laughs when he realizes it was literally midnight irl. Just have to finish out Saturday, though it does bring up the question of what to do.
On the previous Sunday, Jason had ignored it. He was busy and hadn’t really noticed it as the group was still in the forest and having a good time. Now he is going to be alone once again but there are new questions raised. The good news is that none of those questions involve where to log out or what to do with Lily.
Sunday was meant to let people get out of the game and interact. If it wasn’t for the heavy pushback everyone had when it was first introduced, the company had considered slamming the ratio into reverse, so only a fifth of a day would have passed. Instead, they allowed certain rules to be bent for the day. Biggest for most is that the logout rules change and a person can choose to vanish instead of leaving a body behind even if they aren’t in the safest of locations. Sure, you aren’t going to be allowed to log out in the middle of a war but otherwise it is loose enough.
What is most important for Jason however isn’t that. If he was worried about his body, he could just stay in the city until Sunday and out in the wilds he has a few techniques to be safe. No, what is important to Jason is what happens to companions while he is out. Here in the city, Jason has to admit he has offloaded much of Lily’s care onto the enthusiastic Rachel.
Jason feels a bit bad about this. Now some would expect that sentence to continue with a “but” but Jason isn’t one to make such excuses. Sure, he had a lot of stuff to do all day and night. That doesn’t excuse him not spending enough time with Lily. If he had tried harder or spent less time on something else, he could have. And of course now Sunday is coming up.
While he had been spending less time with Lily, that doesn’t mean he had been spending no time with Lily. In theory, Sunday would be the first time he had spent a day away from her. But that brings us back to the important part about Sunday to Jason. Companions who aren’t intertwined with something time sensitive and are actively in a player’s party while away from civilization have the option to vanish as well.
Of course, if the player stays out past Sunday they will reappear as soon as midnight hits and a player can’t vanish hundreds of locals like this. But none of that matters, as Jason only needs enough space for Lily. The rules for it might be a bit wishy washy and under the System’s control, but being on the road with just Lily is good enough to take it out of the System’s hands. Not that Jason worries too much about that, but he has been basically tweaking the System’s nose as of late so better safe than sorry.
Jason doesn’t believe the System would go out of its way to mess with him mind you. But better to not give it a chance to try. For now, though, Jason decides to focus on what to do over the next two days. Today is mostly going to be focused on finishing his look into stats and testing the sixth step. Tomorrow, however, is the last day in town and he doesn’t really want to have been in a major city without having taken a look around. Though for that, Jason decides to talk it over with the group.
With the loosest of plans in place, Jason settles back into the bed he logged off on and thinks over the sixth step. Pulling a thread through and adding more with each cycle makes sense to him. He couldn’t quite remember if he had decided on how much to increase the number of Energy threats but an idea had come to him.
If he doubled the number of threads, it would work, but not as perfectly as he wanted. Optimally, using the golden ratio would be for the best. Nature loves that ratio as plants will attest. He couldn’t get that but the Fibonacci sequence has a relation to it that should count for something. It isn’t perfect, but any two successive numbers in a sequence will be a ratio that is shockingly close to the golden ratio.
