Lucius leaned against the wall in the sweltering room, watching Jack busily hammer away at a small piece of metal. Jack quenched the burning-hot metal in a trough of water for a moment before returning to claim it, but as he reached down to pick it up, the metal suddenly vanished right before his eyes. Jack glanced over, unamused, at Lucius, who was clearly holding the missing item.
"Will you stop that!" he grumbled, frustration evident on his face.
"Sorry, sorry... Catch!" Lucius tossed the lump of metal into the air toward Jack. Taken by surprise, Jack reached up clumsily to catch it, only to watch the metal disappear again the moment it was about to land in his hand. Lucius laughed happily, holding the item and waving it in front of Jack again.
"Okay, I promise that's the last time." He noticed the increasingly angry look on Jack's face and decided not to push his luck any further. Walking over, he placed the item in Jack's outstretched hand.
"Are you going to tell me how you're doing that?" Jack asked as he returned the metal to the forge.
"Nope! It's my little secret. Anyway, I have something more important I want to talk to you about." Lucius proceeded to tell Jack about his experience closing the anomaly and showed him the dead soldier's journal he had taken from the Abyss.
"Yeah, that's pretty weird, but so is everything else. There are magical goblins who can summon ghosts running around the city. Is a little discrepancy with the flow of time that surprising? Anyway, if it's bugging you that bad, why don't you try asking the system about it?" Jack suggested after hearing what Lucius had to say.
"That's a good idea..." The system had been rather forthcoming with information before, and Lucius was frustrated with himself for not thinking to ask earlier. He proceeded to call on it in the usual way, describing what he had seen.
When a world is invaded by the Abyss, the first wave of anomalies can disrupt the normal flow of spacetime. Those in close proximity to an anomaly during this period may experience a reduction or increase in the flow of time. This is a rare and temporary phenomenon, only known to occur within the first few weeks of an Abyssal invasion.
Lucius shared the system's response with Jack, and the two quickly came up with a reasonable hypothesis.
"That must be it," Jack suggested. "We were probably too close to an anomaly during the first wave of attacks."
"Yeah, I think you're right. Only a few days passed for us, but outside, weeks had gone by," Lucius replied, happy to have solved the mystery so quickly.
"Before you go, check this out!" Jack said, proceeding to use his ability to upgrade the quality of the metal he was working on. "You're not the only one with an aspect anymore!" After he explained how his new ability worked, he continued, "You should hunt down some good materials for me so I can make us both a decent set of armor,".
"Now that the anomaly is closed, I can scout the area like I planned. I'll keep an eye out for usable materials," Lucius agreed, waving goodbye as he left the hot building.
After leaving the forge, he walked into the main house, stopping by the room he had claimed as his own. With so much space in his storage ring, he could now carry as much food and water as he wanted. He moved two cases of bottled water and a week's worth of canned food into the ring. Once he was done, Lucius sat down on the mattress in the room and summoned his attribute panel for the first time in a while.
Level 19
Strength 22
Vitality 10
Dexterity 24
Intelligence 5
Creativity 6
Luck 1
Stamina 13
Magic Power 0
Magic Resist 5
Free Attributes: 10
He decided to split his free attributes three ways, adding two to stamina, two to Strength, and six to dexterity. Bumping his strength to 24, his stamina to 15, and his dexterity up to an impressive 30. Lucius took his time to carefully add the attributes, before taking a look at his skills.
Sense Danger - Level 5 Heightened danger sense, passive.
Assassinate - Level 4 +24% damage to each successful attack, stacking, stacks are lost when you are damaged or leave combat.
Novice Tracker - Level 2 You have begun to learn the ways of the tracker. +30% perception while tracking; useful clues become easier to spot.
Sword Fighter - Level 2 Increased learning speed related to sword fighting, +6% damage while wielding a sword.
When he was satisfied, Lucius left his room and checked in with his other companions, updating them on his experience in the anomaly and explaining what he had discovered about the flow of time. Afterward, he headed out the front door and back into the area surrounding the farm, eager to get a better sense of what sort of dangers might exist nearby. At least with the closest anomaly closed, the flow of Abyss creatures should slow down slightly.
This time, he headed south, in the opposite direction of the anomaly he had closed. Lucius walked along the only road in the area—a simple dirt path with no paving, but still better than trudging through the brush. Sparse forest flanked either side of the road, allowing him to see about a quarter mile past the tree line in both directions. Whatever lurked deeper in the forest, however, remained a mystery. Perhaps he would scout its depths in the future, but for now, it was a more efficient use of his time to explore the areas he could easily access.
Only a few miles from the farm, Lucius found his first traces of Abyss creatures. Kneeling down, he inspected the ground closely, his expression turning grim. There, in the dirt, was a set of tracks that looked unsettlingly familiar. His thoughts flashed back to the moment before he had entered the anomaly, when a massive reptilian monster had emerged from the portal, causing him to stumble embarrassingly to the ground in shock and terror. At the time, he had been relieved when the creature moved away from the farm where the humans had settled. Now, it seemed they weren't so lucky after all.
The massive, dark-red, humanoid reptile had left behind very distinctive tracks, and Lucius wasn't likely to mistake them for anything else. Wherever the creature had gone after he lost sight of it, it had apparently wandered closer to the humans. If it was this close, it would probably find them sooner or later.
Lucius began tracking the creature, immediately feeling a significant boost to his perception from his tracking skill. He followed the tracks off the road and into the forest. The creature was easy to track—its sharp claws left deep grooves in even hard-packed dirt, and its large body crushed bushes and broke branches in its wake. For an hour, Lucius carefully followed the trail, sometimes moving closer to the farm, other times farther away. The beast's movements seemed random, but with it living so near, it was only a matter of time before the humans were forced to confront it.
Eventually, Lucius noticed that the tracks he was following were much fresher than before—he was closing in on the monster. He moved with heightened caution, carefully placing each step to minimize noise. Suddenly, the panicked bleat of a deer shattered the forest's silence, startling him. Climbing onto a nearby boulder for a better vantage point, he cast his gaze toward the source of the sound and finally caught his first glimpse of the creature he had been tracking.
Crouched on top of the boulder, Lucius watched as, about 30 yards ahead, a massive humanoid red reptile lifted a small deer to its oversized teeth and tore the young animal's hindquarters off with a single bite. It was a grim and tragic scene—the deer, still alive, struggled desperately to free its mangled body from the monster's grasp as it was eaten alive.