Time Mastery

A hunter's ability is sensitive personal information—or so the official line goes. Aside from the Hunter Association that oversees them, and the companies or clans they belong to, no institution is legally permitted to collect data on any individual hunter's ability.

That said, hunters hungry for fame going around broadcasting their abilities is surprisingly common, and even without the bragging, the abilities of truly skilled hunters tend to leak to the public soon enough. The abilities of famous hunters that people actually talk about are, for the most part, already an open secret.

I had never once heard of an ability called Power of Sex. For rumors about an ability like this not to spread would have been the stranger outcome. I had never heard of a hunter with this kind of ability—not in Korea, and not anywhere abroad. With a tense look in my eyes, I read the text over again.

"Having sex strengthens your stats and skills? And this Defeat Orgasm… it's all too unbelievable."

The explanation was anything but generous, so the finer details remained out of reach, but I had grasped the part that mattered. Have sex, get stronger. That was the kind of ability this was.

Two notification windows floated up before my eyes. I decided then and there to call these things that appeared in my head notification windows. And the contents were so good I almost wanted to throw my arms up and cheer.

Bonus Points were a precious resource. Credits, too, were a resource spent on liberating abilities—perhaps they functioned as a kind of currency.

In an instant, my Bonus Points had swollen to 250. That was higher than the sum of every stat I currently possessed. I started turning over how to spend them, then realized the tutorial still wasn't finished and put the decision off. The skill window blinking in front of me demanded attention. Same as I had been doing all along, I reached out and touched it.

In games, the word "skill" gets thrown around constantly. It's a concept you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠can treat as nearly equivalent to an ability in the real world. Which was exactly why this particular category had me curious.

The status window already had an entry for Abilities. So what, then, was a Skill? I compared the notification that had appeared when I liberated my ability with the one in front of me now.

Liberating an ability also cost 10,000 Credits. But with abilities, the credit cost doubled each time you liberated another one. The skill prompt said nothing of the kind, which suggested that skills were worth less than abilities.

Skills might even be a degraded version of abilities. I couldn't be sure—the information I had was still too thin—but acquiring one certainly couldn't hurt. I didn't hesitate. I chose to liberate it.

"Time Mastery? As in, Master of Time? Just hearing it sounds terrifying…"

SS-Rank was clearly nothing to sneeze at. I checked the new entries that had appeared in my skill window.

A new category had appeared in the skill window: Branch Skills. I read the contents over several times, making sure I had them right. All that reading I'd done came in handy at times like this. I more or less understood what I was looking at.

"Root Skill… meaning a foundational skill? So the Time Mastery I just acquired is the Root Skill. And Branch Skill means a branching skill… which would make Branch Skills the ones that grow out of a Root Skill."

Time Mastery, the Root Skill, didn't seem to do much on its own—not based on the description, at least. "Wield time with mastery." Whether that was poetic abstraction or a literal statement of fact, I had no idea.

A Root Skill, then, was the foundation from which Branch Skills grew. Time Acceleration, which had spawned from the Root Skill Time Mastery, had a concrete, usable effect. Skills also had a level attached to them. Abilities didn't. I sorted my thoughts.

"So abilities can't grow—but skills can? Looking at it that way, you can't really call skills a degraded version of abilities."

Except that left something odd. Real-world hunters steadily raised the level of their abilities through training. In other words, abilities in reality were a growing power. Maybe the abilities and skills I was looking at now existed on a completely different track from the real world. It was an incomplete guess, but it was as much as I could figure out for now.

"If the Root Skill Time Mastery gets stronger, the Branch Skills might get stronger too… and my ability, Power of Sex, did say it could strengthen stats and skills through sex, didn't it?"

Both the Root Skill and the Branch Skill were currently level 1. Naturally—I'd only just acquired them. While I was turning all of this over, more notification windows appeared.

A little disappointing that the skill was SS-Rank rather than SSS-Rank. But even so, it was more than enough. My Bonus Points were already at 400, and my Credits had climbed to 36,000. That was enough to liberate two more abilities.

"Of course, I should probably sit on the Credits for now. No telling where or how I'll need them later."

Everything was happening so fast that just keeping my composure took effort. For the moment, I decided to try out the skill I'd just acquired. Time Acceleration—an ability that consumed my stamina and mental power to speed up time.

The power to interfere with time ranked among the highest-tier abilities in any work of fiction. I had no idea why something this absurd was rated a mere A-Rank skill.

"Time Acceleration!"

I spoke the skill's name while willing it to activate with everything I had. I suspected I didn't actually need to shout it, but I did it anyway. Strength drained from my body all at once—as if a ghost had possessed me and stolen my precious stamina and mental power.

"Ghk—!"

The shock was so severe it felt like my soul had been ripped out. My knees hit the floor. In that instant, I understood why this skill was A-Rank—and, for that matter, why a fraudulent power like Time Mastery wasn't SSS-Rank.

The skill description hadn't spelled it out properly, so I hadn't known, but the amount of stamina and mental power the skill cost was no joke. My body went numb. I couldn't even think of what to do next.

"Time has definitely slowed. I can feel that much…"

It was only ten seconds, but I could clearly feel the world crawling. No—I had been accelerated. The stamina and mental power I'd paid, however, were so steep that I couldn't even hold myself up. I lay sprawled on the floor. Ten seconds of real time—twenty seconds of my perceived time—passed with absurd speed.

"Damn. Like this, it's completely unusable in a real fight."

Was even the A-Rank overselling it? Time Acceleration didn't seem nearly as impressive as I'd thought. Or maybe my stats were just so pathetic I couldn't use the skill properly.

"Stamina and mental power… in terms of stats, that would fall under Strength and Intelligence, wouldn't it? My Strength is 50, my Intelligence 22…"

I was going to need a much fatter investment before I could handle this skill. Bonus Points were overflowing anyway. I dumped 50 points into Stamina and 78 into Intelligence, bringing both to 100.

One hundred twenty-eight Bonus Points gone in a blink, but I still had over 200 left, so I didn't feel the loss at all. Stats became my flesh and blood either way.

"The extra muscle is immediate. All right—let's try the skill again."

As I'd expected, I didn't need to shout the name at all. The skill fired the moment I earnestly willed it to. I felt that same eerie sensation of stamina and mental power draining away.

But thanks to cranking those two numbers through the roof, I no longer felt that crushing, hopeless exhaustion. The cost was still a burden, though.

"Let's try moving."

I shifted my body lightly. To anyone watching, I would have looked twice as fast. A shame there was no audience—but I could feel the air itself flowing slowly against my skin. More precisely, I was the one who had sped up.

With my stats inflated like this, I figured I could make practical use of it even in a fight against a monster.

"An ability like this would have suited me far better as an Ability than Power of Sex."

Acceleration abilities were fairly common. Relatively speaking, of course. There were more kinds of abilities than you could ever count.

According to a hunter who'd been on television once, the odds of meeting another hunter with the same ability were about the same as running into someone wearing the exact same outfit. Another hunter on the same program had laughed and said the odds were a little higher than that, so it clearly wasn't some vanishingly rare coincidence.

"Come to think of it, this skill doesn't seem to have a cooldown. Does that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mean I can use it over and over?"

If so, the ten-second duration might not mean much. I chained the skill again. Just as I'd thought—no cooldown. The monstrous stamina and mental power cost, however, was very much still in effect.

Already considerably drained, I went limp to the point of collapse. Scratch what I said a moment ago. Duration matters a great deal.

"Once the skill level goes up, the cost should drop and the duration should stretch, right? Down the line, maybe. Right now I'm paying an enormous cost for a measly ten seconds of acceleration. I couldn't call this a good ability even as empty flattery."

I wasn't exactly a hardcore RPG player, but I knew the basic rule: skills get stronger as their level rises. Time Acceleration had the look of a late bloomer.

In its current state, I could only use it to catch someone off guard—and even then, only after paying a staggering cost.

I'd wondered whether pumping more stats would let me fire it off with a lighter heart, but I put that on hold. I'd already invested over a hundred Bonus Points. Being a little more careful with the follow-up spending wouldn't hurt.

The tutorial still wasn't over. Next to start blinking was the inventory window. It looked almost identical to the inventory in any common RPG: a grid-shaped warehouse, five across and five down, twenty-five slots in total.

"Huh? It was empty before. There's something new in here."

I was certain the inventory had been completely empty the first time I checked, but a new icon had appeared in the first slot. It was a small coupon-shaped icon, and beneath it were the words Random Item Coupon. The icon sparkled, which suggested that using it was this stage of the tutorial. I tapped the coupon.

"Use it. So it gives me an item?"

The moment I used it, a cheerful fanfare rang out. Given the word "random," this coupon was almost certainly a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gacha ticket. In the inventory slot where the Random Item Coupon had been, a new item appeared: an unidentified pink liquid sealed in a clear glass bottle.

The name alone was suspicious as hell. After obtaining an SSS-Rank ability, an SS-Rank Root Skill, and an A-Rank Branch Skill, I found myself frowning at a grade as low as B-Rank.