Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

It was the second day of the trip, we were moving for fifteen minutes after the group stopped the night before to sleep in a secluded spot to avoid night time creatures. while we were passing through the edge of the forest I felt something weird in time. I couldn't understand exactly what was happening, so I immediately sped up my mind using [Mathematical Cortex].

Time slowed down around me as my mind became faster and faster. Each second of real time was the equivalent of 30 seconds of my altered perception. In this slowed time, I activated [Time Manipulation] and took control of the temporal energy around me.

Even though time was within my control around me, I could still feel it behaving in a weird way that I couldn't explain. I tried to stop it, but it was something coming from the past, if I understood it correctly.

I moved the temporal energy around me and tried to cancel the weird behavior by simply doing it but in reverse, like when a soundwave is cancelled if another wave equal but opposite hit it. It was hard, but [Mathematical Cortex] allowing me to split my mind into various parts allowed me to tackle every part of it simultaneously.

The moment my altered manipulation collided with the strange effect, everything went still and it felt like my vision was glued to a single point in space, but not in time. I saw the portal plaza of Flamecrest and then time moved backwards until it was before the sunrise. Right in front of my vision was a human man wearing black clothes that, even though I couldn't sense the magic, could easily see it was heavily enchanted.

Time moved forwards and the man's eyes widened a bit in surprise before focusing directly at me and murmuring.

"I found you" He said with only his lips.

The man cut off his own magic and I felt the temporal tunnel collapse in on itself and my vision flowed backwards until it was back on myself.

What the hell had just happened? The man who looked directly at me was the same one who saw me tripping and falling on the portal plaza and scoffed at me, why did he say that he had found me?

A jolt as the wagon wheeled over some rock brought me back. Only then did I realise that my heart was beating like crazy and my own magicules rushed wildly inside me. I was almost trembling from the exertion I had just made, but I didn't realize until now.

"You good?' Farahio asked me when he noticed my state.

"Yeah. Just a backlash from using a skill without knowledge of how it works" I said. And it was true. I knew deep inside that what I did was too complex for myself to do it alone with my low level skill and that it only worked because I piggybacked on the magic/skill that guy used a few hours ago to look into the future. Was this "future vision" what I felt back on Flamecrest? I didn't know. The backlash caused ripples all around the local timezone, blocking my senses.

He just nodded and told me to be more careful, as there were other people with us that could be hurt if something went terribly wrong.

It took me a few minutes to fully recover and then I spent the rest of the morning asking Farahio about what he knew about magic, as well as dividing my mind trying to use [Magicule Detection] in a wide area around us, to see if anything would happen. The encounter with that man got my anxiety up and it wouldn't quiet down.

It was when we stopped for lunch that it happened. A small group of soldiers approached us, shouting at us for us to stay put and to not run. The leader of our small caravan went to talk with the one leading the group.

"Why are they stopping us? Don't they have better things to do?" A person in our group said, Farahio agreed with the guy.

I poked his arm and gestured for him to come closer.

"I think they might have come looking for me" I said in a hushed voice.

"Why? Are you wanted? You don't have a criminal face" He answered in an equally hushed voice.

"I might have killed a bandit or two…or five. But only after they had killed people themselves"

"Only that?" I nodded and he continued. "Bah. If killing bandits was against the law they would have to jail the entirety of the guild society"

That relieved me a little, only for my anxiety to shoot through the roof when the leader of our group came back with a somber expression before addressing everyone.

"Dear customers. Word has reached me that there might be a mimic hidden in our midst. I ask for you all to collaborate with Flamecrest's squad for your own safety" He said. I poked Farahio's arm once more.

"...Don't say it" He started.

"I can assure you I am not a mimic" I said, Farahio's sighing in relief only to stop once I continued. "But I might have a skill that allows me to shapeshift into other species"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Farahio seemed to be deep in thought as the soldiers started to approach us, asking us, no, informing us that they would be using appraisal to confirm our species.

"Are you transformed right now?" He finally asked.

"Yes"

"They will notice once the result of their [Appraisal] doesn't match with your species. Right, when they ge-"

"Oh, then I'm safe"

-t here…What?"

"If they're only checking species by [Appraisal] then I'm all set. It won't be different"

Farahio seemed to want to ask more questions, but a soldier approached us, stopping his attempt to question me for now.

"Excuse me. I will be performing a simple [Appraisal] to confirm your species" He said before his face turned a bit sour. "Sir. I will ask you that you allow me to appraise you"

"Sorry. It just takes a moment to drop all my defensive skills" Farahio said. I didn't know if he was lying or not, but in the next moment I felt as his presence got weaker and weaker. It was something I wouldn't have noticed, his presence, if he wasn't right next to me. After sensing it growing weaker, I was able to feel other presences around me.

The soldiers each had a massive presence in the environment, but if you didn't know where to look it would be easily mistaken as ambient magicules. It was a new aspect of [Magicule Detection] that had just opened up to me.

A sudden jolt of electricity running through my body told me I had just been appraised. I didn't know how much it actually gave the soldier, but at least he didn't seem concerned or surprised like that calamity elf by my list of unique skills. Maybe he only checked my species like they told us they would do? Either way, I was thankful for it and that it would soon be over.

As the soldiers finished up appraising everyone of our group, they returned to their leader to discuss while I gave a sigh of relief. Farahio seemed like he was going to demand an explanation any moment now. But before he could, I heard a voice that I recognized as being the man I saw earlier.

"I have an idea" I heard him say in a low voice before shouting "Dragon!"

My heart sank and my ears perked up. Time slowed down as my mind accelerated. My head moved towards the source of the voice, and only then I noticed my mistake. When everyone else was looking around with a scared/surprised expression, I was the only one turning to him.

I saw his mouth slowly move, forming the words "There. You. Are". I saw him starting to charge towards me, his right hand pulling a sword from a ripple in space and turning it towards me. Even in this slowed version of time, he moved surprisingly quickly and I knew I wouldn't even have a chance to react if my mind wasn't accelerated like it was.

With [Time Manipulation] I pulled time towards myself and accelerated even more. Everything dimmed and redshifted as the light reaching me was now slower, and thus their wavelengths were bigger, putting a red shade over everything.

[Mathematical Cortex] helped me calculate how long of this distorted time I had before the man reached me. As slow as he was at the moment, he was accelerating, extremely fast by comparison. He would reach me in just over a minute. I couldn't drop either type of acceleration I was over or I would not be able to react in time. Even now, when a second of real time was equivalent to a little over four hours of my perception, he reaching me over a minute was way too fast for me.

Dividing my mind, I pulled several [Magical Programming Language] and started to create several spells at the same time, casting them as soon as I could.

My magicules moved extremely fast inside me, but as soon as they exited my body and the temporal acceleration they were under, their speed dropped to a crawl. The spells were already triggered, at least. They were already starting to manifest.

The ground between myself and the man in black started to move as several stone walls began appearing out of the dirt, growing extremely quickly, relatively. A fireball started to manifest itself as it was flung towards him, followed by an electric arc and pressurized wind in the shape of a blade.

I wasn't only counting on those little spells. Sure, if they worked I would rejoice, but I doubted they would, so I also casted a few spells on myself. One that was already manifesting as a force that would be throwing me upwards with incredible force and another that would generate a shield, or at least my first try on creating a shield.

Magicule flowed from me and started to form a bubble around me as gravity turned upside down, making me "fall" upwards, leaving another spell that had a delayed action.

The next moment, the stone walls grew and obscured my view of the guy, but I saw them crumbling as his sword came piercing them with unstoppable force. Then, with a simple twist of his wrist, the sword deflected the fireball downwards, hitting the ground and vanishing without causing any damage. Next were the electric arc and the invisible air blade that rushed at him.

The electric arc hit his sword head on, but he didn't even flinch as it travelled from his sword to his clothes and dissipated. The same happened with the air blade, exploding on contact with his clothes as the spell broke apart.

He had reached where I was moments before, right on time as my delayed spell activated and the entire area was pressed down as gravity suddenly increased five times, but he still resisted and looked at me. I was still accelerated, how the heck he had that crazy amount of reaction time to look at me that fast?

He jumped. I was in midair with no wings, I had no maneuverability. I was completely exposed, and he was coming straight at me with that sharp sword in hands. He would catch me in just a few seconds. I didn't have time to do literally anything else.

I saw the blade touch the shield and it began to buckle. I grabbed the entire thing with [Magicule Manipulation] and condensed it into an hexagon shape right on top of the blade and tried to keep it that way. I felt the immense pressure that small piece of magicule was under, both mine and the sword's. This was different from the time I had pushed the boronita outside of the timeline, that time I had time to prepare, but this time I didn't.

The sword was too much and the small hexagon shield broke right in the middle. As the sword approached me I looked over and over at my skills lists looking for something that could help. Anything.

As I felt the sword touching my chest, I knew I had no more time. I placed all my hope on a single skill as I felt the blade easily cut through my chest, bones and pierced my heart.