[Protocol: Chronos]
Name: Nico
Race: Human
Circuits: 9
Affinity: Infinity, Time, Ice
Level: 0
EXP: 0 / 1000
Status: Normal
Stat Points: 0
Stats
STR: 1
AGI: 1
END: 1
DEX: 1
MP: 10 / 10
MP Regen: ∞
LCK: ERROR
Magic
Ice Pebble (Common) [2 MP) (2 Circuits for Optimal Function)
Skills
Precognition (Legendary) (2 MP/sec) (2 Circuits for Optimal Function)
Gear
Cloak of Flight (Epic)
Credits: 0
Tabs: [Shop] [Inventory] [Map] [Crafting]
"Cool..." I whispered, grinning at the screen floating in front of me.
"Let's try the Ice Pebble!" And with just a focused thought, a fist-sized shard of ice floated right in front of me like a dream made solid, catching the sunlight in cold blue flashes.
Its surface was smooth as glass, its shape long and elegant, almost like a crystal sculpture someone forgot to finish.
"This is so awesome!" While I couldn't help grinning. "I'm actually doing magic!"
A week ago, I could barely lift a spoon. Now I was making ice out of thin air.
And it honestly felt… unbelievable.
I hadn't even needed to wave my hands or chant anything. Just a thought, and the air had shimmered until the pebble formed.
A second thought, and it grew. From a speck of frost to this shining crystal, floating obediently in front of me.
- Ding!
{This is the only spell you should need.}
"Nonsense!" I said, eyes still wide. "I'm gonna master a whole bunch of different spells! Imagine a massive hail of these... like a carpet bomb! That'd be so OP."
- Ding!
{Please don't. How about—}
"Shush," I said quickly. "I gotta focus."
I turned toward a chunk of rock jutting out of the ground about twenty meters away.
My new world's first target practice.
The moment I pictured it, the floating shard tilted, its tip glinting like a dagger.
"Alright, Ice Pebble… showtime."
And with just a thought, the shard fired off like a bullet.
- Boom!
The impact sent shards of ice and stone flying in every direction. And for a moment I just stood there, staring at the shattered rock.
I knew instinctively how to guide the spell, how much mana it needed, how fast it would travel, even what it could do if I poured more into it.
It was like muscle memory for something I'd never learned.
Still, knowing something in theory and feeling it were two very different things.
"Holy shi...!" My voice cracked halfway through, my grin splitting wider as I stared at the damage.
Chunks of stone were scattered across the grass, and frost still steamed from the edges of the crater i made upon that rock.
- Ding!
{Assessment: Overkill.}
"I call it artistic expression."
- Ding!
{I call it reckless endangerment.}
I laughed, brushing bits of frost off my fingertips. "You're just jealous."
- Ding!
{Of what? Your complete disregard for any order of safety?}
"Exactly."
The System didn't reply, which I chose to interpret as agreement.
For the first time in years, my heartbeat wasn't from fear or exhaustion, it was from excitement.
Every breath felt sharp and alive, every sound brighter than before.
The weight of eight years in a hospital bed felt smaller with every second I stood under this sky.
I looked down at my hand, at the tiny flakes of frost still clinging to my fingertips, melting in the sunlight.
"I could get used to this," I murmured.
- Ding!
{Statistically, that's the problem.}
"Relax," I said, smiling as the breeze caught the grass again. "It's not like I'm gonna blow anything up."
The rock in front of me cracked down the middle before collapsing with a dull thud.
"…Probably."
- Ding!
{Probably?}
"Oh, hush now. Let me see what I can really do."
I lifted my hand again, and the moment I called upon the magic, mana crawled upward from somewhere deep in my stomach.
It unfurled like warm air through my chest, then rushed into my arm.
And by the time it reached my fingertips, it shifted from air to weight before hardening into ice.
The next moment, a perfect little pebble hovered in front of me, spinning lazily.
I felt mana dip for a heartbeat… and refill so fast the dip didn't even register.
[Let's see how fast I can do this…]
Grinning, I pointed at the half-destroyed rock and let loose.
And before it could even reach the rock, I made another and fired it. And then another… then another, until…
-boom! boom! boom! boom! boom!
Like a magical Full-Auto gun, Ice Pebbles streamed forward in a continuous, rapid-fire burst.
Each shot punched into the rock with a sharp crack, sending debris and frost spraying into the air.
A haze of dust billowed up, thick enough that I couldn't even see the target anymore.
Still, I kept firing.
And through it all, not even a single drop of sweat slid down my skin while I fired away.
"This is so awesome!" I laughed, half shouting over the thunder of my own spell. "They fire at the speed of thought!"
- Ding!
{That is terrifying. You have fired more than one thousand projectiles. Please stop.}
I let my arm drop, shoulders sagging like a kid told to stop jumping on the bed.
"Man, I was having so much fun…"
The dust cloud slowly thinned, revealing what used to be a rock.
Now it was a crater surrounded by shredded earth and a glittering field of broken ice shards.
- Ding!
{Your fun just removed an entire micro-ecosystem full of moss, insects, soil cultures, and much more. I hope the thrill was worth the extinction event.}
"Well… now I feel bad," I muttered. "But I have to know what I can do. I mean, what if there are monsters around here?"
- Ding!
{Then please mind your surroundings. I would prefer you didn't erase the entire forest.}
"Yeah, yeah." I sighed, "Besides… It's gonna take way more than a bunch of Ice Pebbles to destroy a forest."
With another flick of my wrist, I created another Ice Pebble.
But this time I didn't fire it.
Instead, I kept pouring mana into it.
I've got a ten MP capacity, and Ice Pebble takes two MP… and since my regen is instantaneous… Well…
Mana surged through me in a steady flood.
And the pebble grew from fist-sized to the size of my head, then bigger still.
The air pressure shifted as the spell ballooned outward.
The larger it got, the heavier it became, and the harder it was to keep it afloat. I could feel the weight pressing back against my will, like holding up a snow boulder with one hand.
I reduced the mana feed into growth and diverted most of it into keeping the thing suspended, but the strain kept building.
When it reached the size of a large car, something snapped.
My mana output couldn't match the cost anymore.
The giant slab of ice dropped straight down, hitting the ground with a heavy thud that sent tremors through the earth and a ring of dust spiraling outward.
"Okay… so the energy needed to create the ice and send it flying is all packaged into that two MP…" I breathed, wiped sweat from my forehead.
"While keeping it floating drains mana constantly. Almost negligible at first, but not when it's car-sized."
I stared at the fallen chunk.
"Hey, System. What was my total mana expenditure for this little experiment?"
- Ding!
{Approximately two hundred MP.}
"Hmm." I nodded. "And it took almost a full minute to make. So giant Ice Pebbles aren't combat-efficient yet… I should stick to the Full-Auto style."
The ground groaned behind me as the last surviving chunk of the original rock finally gave up and collapsed.
I scratched my cheek.
"Yeah. Definitely Full-Auto style… what else do I have?"
With a thought, the status screen slid open in front of me, and my eyes skimmed to the Magic and Skills section.
{
Magic
Ice Pebble (Common) [2 MP] (2 Circuits for Optimal Function)
Skills
Precognition (Legendary) [2 MP/sec] (2 Circuits for Optimal Function)
}
"Okay… let's try this."
I let out a slow breath and activated Precognition.
The change was instant, and the world didn't feel so random anymore.
A strange clarity settled over everything.
When I looked at a single leaf dangling off a nearby tree, I didn't just see it, I knew the path it would take in the next second.
I knew exactly how far it would swing, how the breeze would catch it, even the little flutter it would do right before it stilled again.
"Now that's OP," I whispered, grinning.
But when my focus shifted from that one leaf to the entire tree, the world collapsed into noise.
Hundreds of leaves. Hundreds of trajectories. Hundreds of futures shouting over each other.
The information crashed into me like a wave, and a dull throb started pulsing behind my eyes.
I shut the ability off immediately.
"What the—" I grimaced and rubbed my temples. "Brain. Ow."
-Ding!
{Focus only on the variable you wish to observe. Precognition adapts to your focus. Narrow your target}
"Huh… that's-" I had barely spoken the words when the sound of something heavy slithering through the grass snatched my attention.
The sound hit me like a slap… and a certain phobia.
Instinct took over. I snapped Precognition back on.
And I knew, a massive snake was coiled in the tall bushes to my right, its muscles tightening, ready to leap straight at my face.
"Holy—"
I didn't even finish the sentence as pure panic grabbed me by the spine. My eyes shut on reflex as I triggered Ice Pebble and fired blindly.
- boom boom boom boom boom boom boom -
It was like my fear hijacked the spell. I didn't aim. I didn't think. I just unleashed a storm.
-Ding!
{Tier 2, Mid-Stage, Mystic Viper slain. 600 EXP received.}
I heard none of that.
I kept firing like a machine gun with infinite ammo and a jammed trigger.
Ice Pebbles tore through bushes, trees, dirt, and anything unlucky enough to exist in front of me.
-Ding!
{Host?}
The barrage only intensified.
-Ding!
{It's dead! Stop!}
"Huh?" I blinked as the spell cut off and the world fell painfully silent.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and found the forest in front of me… a good ten meters wide and nearly a hundred meters long patch of it was no longer a forest.
Trees shredded into splinters, ground chewed up, frost glittering everywhere like someone blew up a winter wonderland.
"I'm… sorry?" I said, voice small.
-Ding!
{Dude!}
"I said I'm sorry! I'm scared of reptiles!"
The system groaned, somehow managing to sound exhausted even without lungs.
And the moment passed.
Not even fifteen minutes of walking aimlessly, I found a stream of crystal clear water drifting along lazily, barely disturbing the reflection staring back at me as I peered into it.
Which was good, because wow, that was... definitely my face.
My actual face.
Not the hollowed-out hospital version.
Not the "chemo chic" edition.
Just… me. The way I used to look before everything went downhill, just all grown up.
I leaned closer, catching black eyes clear as polished obsidian.
But the real highlight?
My hair.
I pushed my fingers through it once more, half expecting my hand to pass through an illusion.
But instead, my fingers touched soft, thick, and perfectly real hair.
I hadn't felt real hair under my fingers since I was fifteen, and the sensation alone made me grin like a proud idiot.
"That's right," I muttered at my reflection, tilting my head to inspect the angle. "Look who's back and no longer reflective on top."
"Gotta say…" I gave myself a little nod, "I look ravishing."
My reflection didn't answer, but it definitely looked smug.
Satisfied, I was about to dip my hands into the water to drink a cusp of it when I noticed my left eye.
Instead of the iris being black like it was a couple of seconds ago, it now looked violet.
And not just the color. It shone with a kind of dominance that made my skin crawl.
And I knew that gaze... was in no way mine.
"H-hey, System?" I rasped, feeling saliva thickening in my throat, "You see that?"
-Ding!
{See what?}
"My eye! My left eye! It's looking different." I replied, watching it flicker as though a glitch in reality itself before it faded back to being black with a final flicker.
-Ding!
{Scanning...
No abnormalities detected... except adrenaline spike.
Please elaborate.}
Taking a deep breath, I said, "Look, my left eye turned violet in the reflection... and it staring at me... and then it went away... like it glitched out!"
-Ding!
{Violet eyes... My previous Host had such eyes.
But he's passed on.
Maybe a spiritual echo if it really was his eye that you saw.
He was, after all, unusually powerful and stubborn.}
"Should I be worried?"
-Ding!
{You are the current host of Cronos Protocol. No amount of spiritual interference will work on you in any meaningful capacity.
Nor will any attempts at possession.
Though an unknown entity did try to peer through you.
But it was stopped the moment it did.
You can rest assured.}
"If you say so..." I whispered, still not quite feeling 'Rest Assured'.