Tim's POV
I woke up looking up at the night sky.
The night sky above me was the specific shade of dark that came from being far enough outside E-Rantel's walls that the city's firelight didn't reach, the stars present without competition. I lay in the grass and looked at it and thought about the fact that I was alive, which was not something I had been certain of when the Limit Breaker debt arrived.
Rigrit had healed me enough to not die and left the rest. That was a message as clear as any spoken sentence. She could have killed me. She had chosen specifically not to, and healed the worst of it.
I was never using Limit Breaker again unless death was the imminent alternative and I was using it to run.
I had walked into a fight with two people whose levels exceeded mine, armed with the logic that *Smite* and low karma would give me an advantage that would some-how overcome the gap.
I had been beaten comprehensively and then spared.
The lesson was painful.
I had been more cautious as a child. in my kid years, killing rats in alleys, I had maintained that caution through the church years.
Somewhere in the accumulation of actual capability the caution had eroded, replaced with a dum confidence, *when did I get so cocky?*
Starting tonight, that changes.
I reached for the magic sack.
It was there, *Thank god*
The relief was significant enough that I sat with it for a moment before moving on. The sack's contents, every item from the tomb, the angel crystals, the accumulated player equipment of the Theocracy's generations of collection, were intact and present. Rigrit had not gone through it. Whether by dum luck or by pity, the result was that the most dangerous items I possessed were still in my possession.
I pulled another crystal from the sack. I had a dozen of them, as I summon an angle.
The tier seven angel healed me thoroughly shortly after.
---
The rings went on one at a time, each one selected from the sack with the deliberate attention of someone building a defensive loadout.
Nine rings, Nine resistances, fire, ice, lightning, earth, wind, holy, water, time, and last one being instant death magic, as I leave my right ring finger emty for Rigit's ring later.
The necklace for mind control, secured around my neck.
No more assessing a fight in terms of what I could do to the opponent without equal attention to what the opponent could do to me.
Plain. Cautious. Thorough.
Like I had been as a child.
---
later that night.
The drug makers and slave traders had been returning to E-Rantel with the patient inevitability of water finding a low point, the criminal ecosystem repopulating the space that the previous cleaning had cleared, slower and more cautious than before but present, the structural conditions that produced them unchanged by the removal of their predecessors.
I found them in a night's work. The plant perception still functioned, reduced from its peak by the druid class loss but present enough for the specific signatures of drug cultivation to register. I followed the chains as I had done before, mapping the current network's structure against the knowledge of the previous one, identifying the overlaps and the new entries.
The cleaning was quieter than the first time. Not because I was less committed but because the operation was smaller, the ecosystem had not fully rebuilt, the void of power still partially unfilled, the return incomplete. What was present I removed. What wasn't present yet would be addressed when it arrived.
Near morning, I left E-Rantel and ran north.
---
Philip Dayton L'Eyre Montserrat.
The name had been in my planning files since long before I had the capability to act on it. In the canon timeline, this man would be responsible for an action that triggered catastrophic consequences, the attack on the grain shipment, the chain of events that led to the massacre of this kingdom, the deaths of tens of millions of Re-Estize citizens. He was a spare's spare noble's son.
The timeline I was operating in was the canon timeline. the person who would make those choices existed now, and the choices he had not yet were made and I had decided years ago that some problems were better addressed before they became catastrophic.
His father's land was half a day's run. I arrived in the late afternoon and observed from a distance with the patience, as I was watching a young noble manage his father's peasants with the particular rage of someone who resented every reminder that his actual authority was limited.
The rage was visible from a hundred metres. The farmers moving around him had the body language of people performing their work under the specific pressure of an observer whose moods were unpredictable.
The killing was quick and clean and conducted well away from witnesses. I took the body further still before concealing it in a location that was not going to be found by casual search. At this point in the timeline, Philip Dayton L'Eyre Montserrat was not someone whose disappearance would generate significant investigation. A spare of a spare, gone from a rural estate, the possibilities were numerous and none of them required a search that reached this far.
I ran home before sunrise.
---
Two years later.....[Tim 22 years old]
Two years of nothing but pure studying.
The wizard class remained stubbornly tier one, the wall between tier one and tier two presenting the same resistance it had always presented.
The holy magic was different. My Tier two was solid, the class mechanics of the tier two priest fully operational. Tier three was close, as I could feel it.
Soon. Real soon.
A few weeks ago I send a letter to the Martial Lord, requesting a battle at a mutually agreed time. The response from Go Gin had arrived days later.
Date set. Venue confirmed. The Grand Arena of the Baharuth Empire.
Business time, I guess.
---
Go Gin's POV [level 45]
The crowd was already in a state when I took my position on the arena floor, the announcer had been working them up for the past ten minutes, going through Tim's documented achievements in the specific order that produced maximum escalation, and the crowd had responded with boos to Tim.
They wanted me to beat him. This was appropriate. I was the Martial Lord and he was the challenger, I was comfortable with their wanting this.
When Tim walked out through the opposite entrance I assessed him the way I assessed every opponent. The armour was good. The sword was good, this battle will be wonderful.
I told him if I won I would eat him. He was strong and I found strong things worth eating.
He nodded. Took a stance. I took mine.
The bell rang.
He disappeared.
Not moved quickly, disappeared, the visual information of his presence simply ceasing between one moment and the next. I had fought fast opponents before. I had never fought an opponent whose transition from present to absent was faster than my perception could track.
I felt the bloodlust behind me.
I tried to block.
I was too slow.
The swing was clean. I know this because I watched it from the perspective of a head that was no longer attached to its body, the momentum of the swing carrying my head into a brief arc before the arena floor arrived. The crowd's roar dropped into total silence.
My body was still standing.
Then my vision went dark.
---
Tim's POV
Go Gin's headless body stood for two seconds. Then it fell with the weight of something large as dust flew everywhere.
The arena was silent.
I reached into the sack and pulled the crystal. The tier seven angel unfolded above the arena with the presence that always preceded everything else, the crowd's silence deepening as they saw the massive angle.
I told the angel to revive Go Gin.
The revival took the time it took. Go Gin's body glowed as his eyes opened, as he sitting up on the arena floor with the look of confusion in his eyes.
He looked around. Looked at me. Looked at his hands, as he slowly got up to his feet.
He said out loud, that it was his loss.
I nodded.
The crowd was still silent as I walked back to the exit. The announcer appeared to have lost his words.
I left the arena.
---
Tim [level 63]
Priest: [10/10] [Max] [Updated]
High priest: [4/10] [New]
Assassin: [10/10] [Max] [Updated]
Paladin: [4/5] [Updated]
Champion: [5/5] [New] [Rare] [Max]
Wizard: [5/10] [Updated]