One With The Abyss

"Well... I better get to work then." I said rising to my feet and turning to the entrance of the 40th floor.

"Yeah... Huh? Why are you standing up?" Abby initially agreed, but suddenly became confused.

"I've got to go find talents that allow me to unlock the last three gates, right?" I said, stopping myself from going further, it seemed something big was about to occur.

"Sure, but it makes more sense for you to practise the ones you already have." Abby said, she seemed insistent on improving either [Shapeshifting] or [Abyssal Soul] it seemed.

"What, no... Those can wait. I meant acceleration control." Abby said, reading my mind. 

And boom! I was right, a giant bomb of information was dropped right on top of me.

"Sure you could try and push shapeshifting further, but it would not be the best use of time and abyssal soul can't be used all that well until your aura awakens. Though that seems to be soon." Abby continued, ignoring the storm of chaos that were my thoughts, "The best course of action is to try and awaken your abilities with time by practising acceleration control."

She said it like it was something obvious, ignoring the fact that I had no idea that the ghoul boss's talent could even do that.

"You didn't know!?" She almost yelled, "I figured after I explained the gates you would see it!"

"You really are stupid..." She muttered the last part under her breath, but I still heard it and it caused me to frown.

"Just explain it you asshole." I said, sitting back down.

And so she did, the gist was that I wasn't changing my acceleration at all. She mocked me for not realising this as, and I quote, 'Movement talents actually require the user to start the movement dumbass'. It was cruel, but after she said it I did realise it was odd.

I could simply accelerate in any direction from standing perfectly still, that didn't really make much sense in retrospect. Had it actually been a movement talent I would have had to start my action and then apply the talent, though active movement-type talents were rare anyway and according to Abby they were often either space or time based; one way in which the 3 lost elements are utilised.

As it stood no one, to her knowledge, had a talent that allowed for direct manipulation of a genesis element any more; though she suspected the possibility of [Space Manipulation] talent having popped up somewhere every few hundred years as it was the most common of the 3.

(A/N: The genesis elements are called magic, but generating any of the 3 is impossible, hence they fall into manipulation territory. Mages manipulate and generate elements; manipulators just control them - with minor generation abilities)

Following her mocking she explained how [Acceleration Control] actually worked. Essentially it slowed time around me, while increasing the speed of my own time then brought the different time-streams together causing it to react and accelerate me in any direction I chose.

Something about forcing different time-flows together caused a pseudo-explosive reaction that accelerated me in the direction I wanted to go.

"Wait, If it's speeding up my time, then does that mean I'm getting older?" I asked, kind of panicked.

"Probably." Abby was so nonchalant about it despite how panicked I was, "Don't worry, with the speeds you were going you'll only have aged a day or two at a time."

That still wasn't good.

"When you unlock the [Void] and [Formless] gates you will have an infinite lifespan." She reassured me.

"Isn't that something [Eternal] should do." I asked, becoming slightly more confident.

"No, lifespan is based on the body and [Void] and [Formless] are the gates relating to your body." I nodded at her explanation and turned back to the matter at hand.

"So... How do I get time manipulation from acceleration control?" I asked, I couldn't wait to start using some cool-ass time magic.

"Slow down there tiger, it won't be as viable as you think." Abby said, "Genesis elements require a lot of energy to manipulate, you'll be able to use them fine, but to do any of the insane things you're thinking of you'd need energy that isn't feasibly possible to obtain."

My smile dropped slightly but I was still excited.

"Okay, the process is simple, you've just got to change how you use acceleration control." Abby said, too little explanation forced her to continue, "Since the talent somewhat alters the flow of time. Just change how you use the talent to alter it."

"Like I told you before. Talents are like a container that holds water, simply change how you use the water inside."

"That doesn't make sense!" I complained.

"Just shut up and do it!" She shouted, slightly annoyed from the sound of it.

So, I did. I spent around 2 weeks crashing into walls and the roof and the ground. Basically, if it was in the small waiting room, I would crash into it.

I fell into the fountain more than a hundred times and the 40th floor waiting room had so many dents in the walls from where I had crashed into them, I managed to increase the size of the room by about a metre in every direction.

Not even just because of the speed I was moving, but also because of the amount of times I crashed. Since I was trying to alter what the talent did I ended up losing control of the direction and speed.

After 2 weeks I stopped, taking a break - besides the time I spent sleeping of course - to let myself recover from the amount of crashes I had made.

"Aaaaah! This is pissing me off!" I yelled, Abby didn't respond. She had stopped laughing at me by the 98th time I had hit the wall; though she did start laughing again when I accidentally started going up and down with the talent, but that bout of laughter didn't last as long as the first.

Thanks to my break, and excessive use of the ability, I did notice something about the talent. Nothing related to controlling time, unfortunately, but a quirk of the talent.

There was a brief moment, less than a second, where I felt the effects of activating the talent but nothing happened. If I reached this point, then cancelled the talent, I may be able to observe the way it interacts with time and finally be done with this bullshit.

It took around... 48 tries before I could continuously reach that perfect state between activation, but when I did, progress began in much greater leaps.

Almost all of my energy was focused in my senses, primarily my eyes to allow me to see both the physical and magical reaction. And soon, I did.

There was some kind of... Overlap. Like parts of the world were not properly aligned with each other; but it wasn't this as I was soon able to discover. As I became more proficient in reaching the inbetween state of activation and cancellation, I found myself being able to prolong it for a long amount of time - I even reached an hour one time... Before being launched into a wall.

But when this state began lasting for minutes, up to hours, of time I could move around with it; like, trying to touch the strange overlap.

But when I did, it followed around my hand. Closer to a barrier distorting me than something wrong with the world, of course it was only the slightest difference, so much so that it was inconceivably difficult to notice it even occurring, but it was there.

I felt like I reached a state of enlightenment, similar to the flood of ideas relating to [Shapeshifting] I had gained when fighting the yeti, but more so.

I didn't eat and sleep eluded me, I couldn't even tell as time passed me by; all while I experimented with the strange distortion.

I tried bringing my hands together and found that the 2 fields of distortion shook ever so slightly, before becoming one. This surprised me so I looked further, enhancing my eyes to the point they began bleeding and I finally found what had happened, the distortion hadn't been shaking, it was the area between the fields. As there was less, regular space between the 2 fields the space outside of the field was forced to split and shake to do so, in order to evade the distorted field.

The next thing I tried was bringing objects into the mix. This took significantly less investigation: As I reached for whatever item I wanted, the distorted barrier around me shook in rejection, but I pressed on - slowly - until the shaking reached its height, I thought that may cause something bad, but pressed it further. The field then enveloped the item in the same field that covered me; no issues at all.

Similar experiments went on for a while until I finally began to see some kind of... Regular reaction, in it all. One thing occurred the same no matter how I did it: Bringing other things closer to me.

If Abby was to be believed, then the field around me showed where the slowed and speeded up time met. As such, when other things became enveloped in this field, I was effectively speeding up their time. I can work with that.

(A/N: I know I said this ages her, but just ignore that for now. It would kind of ruin the story if she suddenly became like 80 years old because of her practising. If you want an in-story reason then let's say that the ageing only occurs when the talent is activated - something to do with unstable time-streams not properly responding when out of sync, could be immortal this way though. Only putting it in an author note since I don’t plan on addressing it in-story and I realised it’s a massive plot hole)

I released the activation that I had been holding, finally having a tangible result to grasp onto; then I was panged with a distinct discomfort: Being both tired and hungry, to a dangerous degree.

"Holy shit! Why am I so fucked up?" I muttered drowsily, pulling some meat from my bag and eating it like a ravenous monster; I felt slightly better after that. Likely thanks to the talent from the monster on the egyption pyramid style floor that I had fused.

"You should sleep, I'll explain later." Abby said, I didn't even listen to the last word as I collapsed backward to go to sleep.

When I awoke, I was hungry again and so I ate.

"Good morning, I assume you found something." Abby said, slightly wary.

"Yeah. How long was that practice for me to feel so hungry though?" I asked, laughing at my success.

"Uh... If my calculations are right..." Abby trailed off, so I urged her to speak.

"You're a few days off a year of practice." Abby said, her tone sounded as though she expected me to freak out, but honestly I didn't care.

"Oh, so what... That puts me at three years in this dungeon?" I asked. Abby was silent, her shock rippling even through me.

"Uh... Yeah. It's hard to tell, but..." She spoke, taking a moment to think, "In around two weeks you should have been in this dungeon for three years."

I nodded, I had tried to count myself, basing days on my sleep cycle, but Abby reminded me that was not realistic as I could easily sleep for multiple days.

We had come up with tons of estimates. 5 years, 10 years, at one point I only counted a month of time; but surprisingly these were almost all wrong. The kicker was when I managed to gain and slightly upgrade [Soul Sense].

Abby had some access to my talents, able to take control of some of them to do certain things; like using [Soul Sense] to see my own soul. With that she was able to measure how much time had passed when I was in the dungeon.

I was sent here at the age of 16, hence my soul would show that same age. As such, since Abby could see my age was 2 years older, that was how long I had been in the dungeon. 

With this we could tell the passing of time in the dungeon.

Hearing that I had practised for almost a year, I opened my status and saw that I was, in fact, now 19 years old.

(A/N: I know the timeline is a bit confusing but it is important later in the chapter)

"Well at least I know what I should be doing though." I smile and once my hunger is gone I get to work.

My current goal was to emulate the effect I had on myself while using the skill, but only on other objects and not at all on myself: Basically activating the effect of the talent without doing the thing the talent does.

It took a while of practising before I could move the field in any way, but I soon found it shifting slightly under my guidance. Like pushing toothpaste from the tube.

This was the first step, but all the others fell quickly into place after.

In 5 days I became able to move the field.

In 3 I became able to move it away from myself.

In 2 after that I was able to easily control the field after it had disconnected.

In 1 day I was able to apply that field to other objects, causing them to accelerate like I had. And finally, it took just a day and a half to use my control over mana to recreate that distortion field over other objects without it coming from the one already created by the talent [Acceleration Control].

12.5 days I had gone from barely grasping a concept to fully being able to speed up time on another item.

And like clockwork, once this feat became an easy one a weight was lifted from my mind; the clear sounds of the system ringing in my mind:

[Talent: <Acceleration Control> has undergone evolution]

[Abyssal evolution conditions met]

[Restructuring Talent]

[You have acquired the talent: <Time Manipulation>]

[Abyssal Gate: <Timeless> Is now open]

The moment the last message appeared I fell back, completely unconscious. Finding myself back in front of the abyssal gates as I often did.

But one of the doors now looked different to the other, purple light was glowing along its carving; gathering towards the word: [Timeless].

It was only now that I realised that the carvings along this gate were different, as the purple glow spread to show what was really carved along the gate. Depictions of clocks and change spread through the entire gate until each line of purple light, much like how it extended along my soul weapon, met upon the text marking.

And as it did, it glowed with a radiance I had never seen before. Even my sister's talent reading had not been so dazzling.

I could not even tell how long it lasted, but as the glow diminished, I could see the gate dissolving. It did not open, rather the door just ceased to exist - pulled into the void that was the abyss and I was once again reminded of the nothingness that hid behind each of these gates.

With creation it was nothing, but somehow this gate made it... Purer.

I don't even understand what that means, but it did. The nothingness was purer with the new gate. Indescribable power rushed over me that I had not felt since my first act of cultivation outside the abyssal gates.

I do not know how long I sat there; cultivating the abyss. New power was available to me and I devoured it like a starving beast. My aura flared to life, sustained by the energy that swirled around me, finally awakening such that I can grow even further. 

My power grew and grew, until neither I, nor my aura, could contain any more energy

When I opened my eyes they glowed behind the mask, bright like the gate once had, but soon settled down and I let out a deep breath of relief. Opening my status to see just how much power I had gained:

I was truly shocked by the drastic increase in my abyssal energy. Opening just 1 more gate had more than doubled my power in what felt like an instant; this would serve me well.

The next matter of business was to look at the changes in my [Abyss] talent and also peek at the [Time Manipulation] talent.

[Abyss]

[You are the Abyss. All time, space and matter converge upon you. Existence begins and ends within your being. Open the gates and all will be within your grasp]

[Creation (1/1)]

[Talent Absorption]

[Abyssal Cultivation]

[Formless (0/1)]

[???]

[Weightless (0/1)]

[???]

[Timeless (1/1)]

[Time-Flow Manipulation]

[Time-Stream Manipulation]

[Temporal Knowledge]

[Dominion (0/1)]

[???]

[Void (0/1)]

[???]

[Eternal (0/1)]

[???]

The [Time Manipulation] talent showed much of the same, powerwise, minus the last of the 3 present in [Abyss]:

[Time Manipulation]

[The turning of the clock bends to your will. On a whim you may alter passage time and dismiss its chaotic power]

[Time-Flow Manipulation]

[Time-Stream Manipulation]

The 3 abilities the talent granted were exceptionally powerful.

[Temporal Knowledge] granted me immense knowledge regarding time and all things relating to it.

[Time-Flow Manipulation] was likely what most people think of when someone says [Time Manipulation], it allowed me to do many things, but its primary feature was to slow or accelerate time in large or small areas. The one thing I could definitely see was impossible was reversing time.

But it was much deeper than this, from what I could gather there was much this talent could do. Under the right circumstances I could produce a time-loop, wherein a specific period of time occurs over and over again without end until I decide to break it.

While this may appear as reversing time, it wasn't. From what I could tell it was actually creating a secondary flow, separate from the regular stream. What allowed this time-stream to loop was that the flow curved back on itself, such that it always returned to where it began; however, since this flow was entirely separate from the regular time-stream it did not count as time reversal - as convoluted as that may sound.

[Time-Stream Manipulation] was much more... Technical. While manipulating the flow was just forcing time to do as I pleased, stream manipulation was more about interacting with the natural flow of time.

[Temporal Knowledge] taught me that the regular flow of time was known as the 'Time-Stream'; so with my second ability I could see and change things about this. It mostly boiled down to probability control and future sight. I could also send myself forward in time, but this posed problems as it removed me from the time-stream until I was placed back in; meaning no change was occurring - and without [Space Manipulation] I would not be able to move at all from where I exited the time-stream.

Probability control allowed me to 'see' and alter the possibilities of any action, letting me choose the best outcome in any situation. It was very akin to the ‘many worlds’ theory back on Earth where every action creates a new universe and probability control allowed me to decide which of these universes I would like to be a part of. Though, if entering the desired universe required me to prevent or force an action I couldn’t physically do, hence with magic, the energy cost became exponentially higher.

Future sight may sound the same but it really isn't. Probability control didn't actually show me anything, it was simply a feeling; but with this I could actually see what was about to come, though the distance I could see varied and it was limited to what I could see. I also needed to choose an eye or I would blind myself to the present, luckily I could grow another eye if needed.

All in all, the only weakness I could see to this talent was the energy cost. Even with my incredible reserves I couldn't reliably make use of this talent.

Even simple abilities like probability control drained me rapidly if I wanted to know more than 5 possible outcomes.

"I can see why this won't make me all powerful." I muttered, at least thankful that my future sight cost very little to make use of, provided I didn't try and see too far into the future.

Once I had seen everything I wanted, I exited the abyss gate.

"How long was I gone?" I asked, stretching as I stood.

"It's been exactly 3 years since you entered the dungeon." Abby responded, and immediately after a system message appeared.

[You have come from another world and fully assimilated into the new one: <+Otherworlder Title>]

[Otherworlder]

[Proof you come from another world. Grants the ability to gain another talent]

"Crazy." I mutter before sighing, "This is gonna make my revenge harder..."

Abby was silent as I felt the similar feeling of a new talent enter my soul, then the message came as I expected it would, though the actual talent was quite the surprise:

[You have acquired the talent: <Dark Lord>]

[Dark Lord]

[You are the prophesied dark lord, said to be the one to unify the demon continent and destroy the world as it is known. All growth is exponentially amplified and (sapient) non-humans are more inclined to follow you. Grants the title: <Dark Lord>]

"Guess you were wrong about the dark lord being bullshit! Though I wish that growth boost came before I was working on my time talent!" I laughed heartily, but Abby's response was not what I was expecting.

"The otherworlder title is supposed to arrive after the otherworlder spends three weeks in another world."