Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

I arrived just in time for dinner to start, and it went as I expected. The food tasted bland and consisted of a rice-like plant with sausages of unknown meat and a cup of juice that resembled orange with a taste of apple. From the entire meal, The juice was the tastier by leagues. Did I forever destroy my sense of taste with the food nobles eat?

After going back to my room and lying on my bed, I thought about just flying towards my destination, until I remembered I didn't actually ask in which direction it was. I knew it was in a city called Dracona, but where it was on a map, and in which direction I needed to go and for how long I was completely clueless… Or not

[Dracona is the Capital of Dracius located in the Horana continent]

[The Horana continent is northeast from your current position with a distance of 6.471 kilometers]

…Yeah, no way I'm able to fly that far, I would probably tire out and fall to my death in the ocean.

I sighed.

Guess I would really have to take his offer to accompany me. At least I would have someone to teach me magic, it wasn't the worst of deals.

I stayed on my bed for almost an hour. I couldn't sleep, not after knowing my friends are probably being used as slaves by whoever summoned us to this world. Eventually I got back up and left the inn. I needed some fresh air to drive away those thoughts… Unfortunately the multiple thought streams from [Mathematical Cortex] made my mind able to continue thinking about this even when I was actively thinking about other stuff to avoid thinking about it.

Is this what the "suffering from success" meme feels like? Because I definitely was suffering from having an amazing unique skill.

Deciding to change tactics, as my old human ways to not think about something were clearly not designed for someone who could think in parallel, I decided to visit the portal plaza and see one of the portals for myself. I wouldn't try to use them, I didn't want to get cut into two when passing through them, but I was curious as to what portals looked like. Were they a blue and orange ellipse on the wall? Was it like a sphere in space from a wormhole? I didn't know, but I was going to find out!

Moving towards the portal plaza, I found several soldiers with a lot of gear moving towards the city gate. Curiously, I went to one of them to ask what was happening.

"There has been a report of a dangerous creature in the forest in the vicinity of the city. It has already killed some bandits and probably took the owners of the wagon they were robbing to its den. We are currently investigating, and we are warning everyone to stay away from that area until we can discover more" He explained. I nodded and kept walking towards the center of the city.

It was me. They were investigating me. I was the one who killed the bandits, but I didn't kidnap the owners of the wagon, they were already dead, I just gave them a decent burial, but it wasn't like they would believe in me if I said it to them, who knew? Maybe they would put me in a mental asylum, or their equivalent of that… Yeah, better not touch the subject with anyone, not that I was planning to, but whatever.

As I approached the portal plaza I felt something. It was a weird feeling, something akin to the waves in the timeline called sotobro waves when someone messes with the timeline, but more like I was, or would be, being observed. Just as I was going to turn around to see if there was someone behind me, a man wearing black clothes and a ton of magic inscriptions on them that made my [Magicules Detection] feel like I was staring directly at the sun. It was so bright I tripped over my own feet as I couldn't see anything else and fell to the ground.

The guy just scoffed at me and kept walking towards the direction the guards were coming from.

I patted the clothes the guards donated to me to clean them off the dust before I remembered I could use magic. After a facepalm and two water spells, one to wash and one to dry, I was clean again… Yeah, I would get spoiled very quickly if I didn't stop using magic to stuff like these, not that I was going to. I didn't mind being spoiled on this matter whatsoever.

I arrived at the building in the middle of the plaza soon after. It was a circular building with various doors with names written on them that probably were other cities, some of the doors didn't have any word on them, probably for maintenance if I were to guess. I could also see, now that I was this close to the building, the sheer amount of magicules circulating here. It was all arriving from below the ground and then spread through the building, powering so much stuff I couldn't even begin to comprehend.

Sensing a vibration in space, I followed it until I was in front of an open door. There were some people inside it looking through the enormous crystal floor filled with so many runes I thought they had used a 3D printer to make it for a moment. There were more blue crystal devices on the ceiling and what looked like a control panel on the side, unfortunately I couldn't see it properly at the angle I was in.

"Testing magicule relay three, beginning portal sequence in 3…2…1" The one in the control panel said before I felt the room humm with magicules. Space vibrated so much I almost became dizzy. I saw blue beams of energy shoot out of the crystal devices on the top of the floor into specific points in the crystal floor, which in turn shot a bigger beam to a point in the middle of the room. Some of the beam's energy started to drift from it and come my way before being absorbed by my body.

Space hummed as the beam pushed against it, trying to deform it. I couldn't see it directly, but could feel how space was being forced to buckle under the beam's energy…except it didn't.

"Shouldn't the portal be opening right now?" another guy asked the one in the control panel. They were certainly technicians, probably doing maintenance on the building devices.

"It should" The control panel guy said. "Check the relay three again" He said as he took a crystal from the panel, cutting the flow of magicules and letting it dissipate in the environment. Some of it was being reabsorbed by more runes like the ones in the lamp, which were now fully lit, I noticed, while some of it was being dragged towards me.

Couldn't I just stay here absorbing spatial energy until I stopped and was finally able to cross the portals? Probably not. It took three months with me being in an energy dense place for me to absorb enough temporal energy, and here the energy was anything but dense.

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I continued observing them change pieces of metal, crystals and even use magic instruments to read the flow of magicules in some parts of the floor. For a moment I even forgot I was in a fantasy world and wondered if this was a really advanced tech world, where technology was so advanced it couldn't be distinguished from magic. But then I remembered everything else and dismissed the idea out of my mind.

I watched as they tried to activate it again, only for it to fail again.

"Gods dammit. What's wrong with this thing? I'll try operating normally" He said before placing various crystals on the control panel and a larger one in the middle.

The room flashed bright in my [Magicule Detection] skill as the room itself started to humm audibly. Various beams shot out, some of it breaking free and drifting to me, and others made a circular spinning disk with a massive beam shooting right in the middle of it. I could faintly sense how much pressure it was putting on the very fabric of space, but some of the energy always broke free and drifted its way in my direction.

I could see two things in this. The first one is that I was the only one who could see the energy breaking free and drifting towards me, and the second one being the portals were using just enough energy to make the portal, but with me there siphoning some of it away, the portal literally couldn't form.

I walked away when I heard shouting and cursing coming from inside the room.

As I walked back to the dorm, I saw two guys following me. After turning left four times in a row on the streets, I confirmed they were indeed following me. Great, I was about to get mugged…Wait. I might use this situation to learn how to use [Time Manipulation] better.

After deciding to have the two dudes following me be unwilling guinea pigs I turned a few streets, and then turned into an alley, where the two guys followed me.

"Hey kid. You lost?" One of them said, laughing softly to his partner.

"We can show you the way home" The other one said. Something in his tone of voice told me that if I were to follow them, home would be the last place I would end up.

I turned to face them. "No thank you. I'm good" I said with a big smile.

"Don't be like that, kid. We can show you the way. Just follow us" The one on the right said.

"No thanks" I answered. They immediately dropped the facade.

"I don't think you understand the position you're in, kid. You will follow us willing or unwillingly"

"No, I don't think you understand the position you're in" I said as I tapped into [Time Manipulation]. I suddenly felt the flow of time around me more clearly than I could feel normally. I could also tell that everything generated small waves in the timeline, bouncing on each other until there was only one bigger wave that created the timeline itself. Each of those small waves were possibilities that were collapsed into a singular one.

The one on the left advanced to me. I moved my hand and felt time responding to my command. A surge of temporal energy flowed to him, slowing him down to almost a crawl. I felt the pull this skill had on my MP. It was draining real fast. I could probably keep this use for fifteen minutes, but there was another one to be worried about.

"Wade?" He called to his partner, who was stuck mid step towards me. "What did you do to wade?!" He jumped at me.

Time slowed down as my mind sped up. For the next test I would need to be able to process things faster. I willed the temporal energy to surge towards the other guy. It was harder to do without being able to move my hands, but my body was too slow for me to do so.

I was ready to dispel the energy at a moment's notice in case anything went wrong.

Temporal energy surged and the other guy sped up as to be normal in my accelerated vision. He ran at me, grabbing a knife from his pocket and the moment he was about to stab me I dropped the hold I had on his temporal energy. He immediately slowed down as the knife approached my torso.

"Well, this is awkward" I said to myself, more mentally as my mouth was too slow to be able to properly form sentences.

The knife was too close for me to drop the acceleration my mind was under let I be stabbed. But I could use the same tactic I used when I had killed those bandits in the forest.

With a mental command, time energy gathered around me as I felt my body slowly becoming quicker, but at the same time I was accelerating my own mind, which was already accelerated. The alley turned so dim I barely could see anything as my eyes couldn't catch enough light for me to be able to see properly. So, while still keeping the temporal acceleration I was under, I dropped the thought acceleration.

I was able to see again, and move. The first thing I did was to move out of the way of the thug, the second thing I did was stretch, testing being in this accelerated state. It wasn't any different from being in the regular flow of time, with the exception being the massive drain in my magicules. I would run out in five minutes if I kept this rate of expenditure.

I dropped my acceleration at the same time I used my mental acceleration. My body became way slower, but my perception kept the same rate. I then tried to focus on only parts of the knife guy. I accelerated his upper body while delecerated his lower body. I also released the hold I had on the other guy, the one who first tried to run at me.

The knife guy pushed the knife forwards and then looked confused at how I had suddenly vanished, then after a second realised he couldn't walk correctly. He looked down and saw his legs frozen midair.

"What the fuck!? What did you do to me!?" He shouted, his voice only slightly different because it had to travel through the normal air. Unfortunately for him, he was in a position that he wouldn't be able to recover from and would inevitably fall over. I released the temporal energy from him, he immediately slowed down.

I then looked at the other guy and only sped up his legs. They took a single step, as that was the signal the brain had let out before, but then went limp as they didn't have more signals from the brain to control them… And probably no blood flow as well, considering his heart was also in normal time. If I left him like this for a few minutes, he would probably lose both legs as they died by hypoxia.

I deactivated both my skills and time resumed its normal flow. The knife guy fell face first into the stone ground, while the other guy tumbled right on top of him as his legs were still limp from the lack of brain signals and lack of oxygen. They groaned on the floor. I appraised them.

[Human. Lv. 17]

[Human. Lv. 14]

Huh. They were higher level than I was.

The level 17, the one with the knife, pushed his partner off him and he got up. He looked at me and made a stabbing motion. Before he could get very far, time slowed down again. I didn't want to kill them, so maybe I could just incapacitate them.

I spent the few moments of real time I had before he could actually stab me creating an electric spell, and then I casted it before his knife could make contact with me.

Electricity arced from the spell, hitting the blade before flowing up his arm to his torso and the rest of his body. It was a basic stunning shock I made, it's not like I would have time for a more complicated spell… I mean, I could have the time, but then I wouldn't have the MP to cast it.

As time sped back up, the guy screamed as he fell to the ground, his muscles spasming under the electricity currently running through him. He would stay like this for the next few minutes as I had placed a medium amount of magicules in the spell when I casted it. I walked to the other guy, who was starting to get up and then casted the same spell on him, sending him back down as all his muscles spasmed out of control

"This was very informative, thank you" I said. I then returned to the inn and finally was able to sleep.