Chapter 278: Timeless Traces

Losing access to the radios further increased the difficulty of the dungeon, forcing us to rely on shorthand communication through private messages. In addition, the security guard was still roaming the halls, and had likely moved towards Room 404, meaning that Diane and Bella would have to deal with two ‘bosses’ at the same time.

The one benefit was that it was unlikely the security guard could free the other Timeless. In order to do so, he would need to shine his flashlight onto them to get them to move, but his flashlight was the only thing allowing the guard himself to move. If he carelessly freed another Timeless, it would instead be he himself that was frozen.

Once they made it to the fourth floor, and had me clear the halls, Diane sent me a message telling me to leave the dungeon before they drew the boss’s aggro. There was a chance that a special event would play out for whoever was stuck in the security office, whether it was the guard returning or another Timeless appearing.

I had made sure to leave them a clear path out of the dungeon and disabled all other sources of light that I could find. Doing so should have given them the easiest path out with all Timeless along the way already incapacitated.

After that, I walked to the exit, being careful to watch out for the security guard as I moved. Given that I didn’t see him, I could only assume that he was near Diane and Bella. In the front lobby, the lights were still on, providing a clear path out of the facility.

I’m at the entrance, I messaged Diane before leaving the dungeon. Outside, the facility loomed beneath the dark sky ominously. The storm raging within the dungeon did not exist in the desert of Khestra.

I waited outside the entrance of the dungeon, my foot tapping against the sands impatiently. The more time passed, the more I was worried that something had gone wrong. Had the boss of the dungeon managed to grab hold of them? Had the security guard entered the office and turned the lights off?

After nearly half an hour passed, I heard Diane’s voice in the distance. “Drake! We’re over here!” she called out, her voice seemingly coming from the other side of the dungeon.

Blinking in confusion, I activated True Sight and saw the two of them standing at another dungeon gate on the far side of the facility. Both of them seemed out of breath, so I teleported over to greet them. “What happened?”

My question prompted an exasperated sigh from both girls before Diane explained. “There was a scripted event when we grabbed the book from Room 404. A bolt of lightning cut off the power to the facility, freezing us in place for about ten seconds.”

“When the emergency power came on, it turned on all of the lights in the facility at once. Worse, the third boss, the patient of Room 404, was climbing into the room through an air vent. Unlike other Timeless, I’m guessing that it could move in the darkness thanks to the skill it learned.”

“Anyways, we had to run, but the other Timeless were leaving the rooms that we trapped them in, so we couldn’t go the way that we came. We ended up having to kite them through the halls until we could open a path up to the southern exit.”

“I had thought that the south exit was just something you said to distract the security officer,” I muttered aloud. “So there actually was one.”

Diane simply chuckled, standing upright and rolling her shoulders. “Obviously. Given how intelligent humanoid dungeon monsters have been getting lately, I had to study the map while we were in the security office in case of any contingencies. I even took a few screenshots, just in case.”

Hearing that, I let out a sigh of relief. “Did the security guard give you any trouble?”

“We didn’t see him,” Bella answered. “He probably went to the security office after the emergency power came on.”

Diane seemed to agree. “If the theme of the final stage is an escape where all the lights are on, the key requirement would be to remove the Player’s ability to control the lights. Even if there was a different theme for the final stage, the Player in the security office would always have some kind of event play out. Remember the vent in the office? Under the right circumstances, the patient of Room 404 probably goes to the security office itself.”

That would be a horrifying dungeon to experience without the proper knowledge. If someone entered and couldn’t read Cromoran, they might get past the first corridor, but they would likely not make it to the security office. Even if they did, they wouldn’t be able to read the notebook there to find the clues for the director’s office and Room 404. They’d need to navigate the building blind, brute forcing the exploration by searching every room.

In that situation, the exploration would take far longer than normal. Maybe that would be when the patient arrives in the security office to eliminate whoever was controlling the lights. Clearly, this dungeon was not meant to be anyone’s introduction to the main questline. Instead, it was something to help those who had already made at least a small degree of progress.

As I was thinking about that, Diane pulled out a skillbook and handed it to me. I identified it as the Timeless Traces skillbook that she had mentioned before. “You didn’t learn it on the spot?” I questioned, but she shook her head.

“We don’t know what the mana burden for a skill like this would be. Given that it touches on the principles of time, I can only assume that the cost is suitably high. High enough to make it inconvenient for a normal Player to be able to wield it outside of special dungeons. Bella and I talked about it on the way to Room 404, and we decided that you’re the best match for this skill. If it does have an obscene mana burden, then not only will you still be able to use it normally, but you will be able to evolve it more quickly.”

“In the worst case scenario, it might already be a grandmaster-ranked skill, at which point we lose nothing by having you be the one to learn it.”

The logic made sense, so I accepted the book and learned the skill. “Well, it’s registering as ten stars, but given my level, that could mean anything. As for its description, it allows the user to revert the target to a previous point in time for a set duration.”

Diane hummed thoughtfully at that, before holding her hand out. “Use it on me,” she said insistently. “We need to know what sort of effects it would have if used in combat.”

I hesitated at this. The skill was obviously made for restoring dungeon mechanics from ancient times. If I used it on Diane, would it revert her to her state from ancient times, in which she didn’t exist? If that was the case, it would be an instant kill technique.

However, she seemed to want to test this even knowing that. So, I held my hand out, placing it over her own and cast Timeless Traces. A white light flashed from my hand to envelop Diane, but nothing seemed to happen. Then, she looked off to the side thoughtfully. “I have a status effect right now, Timeless Recovery. It looks like it lasts for one minute. How much experience did you get from that?”

I looked at the skill to confirm. “Almost four percent. If the status effect says it’s a recovery, does that make this a healing skill?”

“Let’s find out,” Diane said once the effect had worn off. She pulled out her dagger and cut her palm, causing it to bleed. Then, she had me cast the skill again. Another white flash, and her hand was as good as new.

However, after the minute-long duration passed, the cut silently returned. Seeing this, Diane nodded her head in understanding. “Got it. So this is a temporary recovery skill. Using it restores someone to their full capacity, but they will regain their injuries after the time has lapsed.”

There was one last test that she wanted to do on herself. First, she cut her right palm, having me ‘heal’ her again. Then, while she was under the status effect, she cut her left palm. This was to see what would happen to injuries sustained while under the timeless effect.

Once the duration expired, Diane had two small cuts, one on each of her palms. “I see… that makes this a dangerous skill to use recklessly,” she muttered as she studied the effect. “If injuries overlap, then you are still taking damage. One wrong move, and you could outright die as soon as the skill is done.”

After she said that, we ran two more tests. One test was on a chipped dagger that she had owned for several months, and that dagger was restored to perfect condition for a solid minute. During that time, I was unable to cast the skill on the dagger again to further revert it or extend the condition.

The last test required us to get a corpse, so we went and hunted a giant sand scorpion. Using the skill on the monster’s body did not bring it back to life for one minute, but rather returned its body to pristine condition during that time. All of the materials that I harvested from it during that minute regained their former damage as soon as the time was up.

With this, we had come to understand several key elements about the skill. First, it very likely was already at the grandmaster tier, given how slowly it was leveling up. Secondly, while the skill was useful in combat as a temporary recovery, it was not something that could be relied on for long term. Instead, it was only useful for one final attack on a boss that had pushed us to our limits.

Similarly, it could not completely repair items like the car or our weapons. It seemed that this skill was truly just made for dungeon usage, with all other effects being a bonus on the side.

“But wait, if the skill only lasts one minute, and it can’t evolve further, how did the patient use it to move through the vents?” I asked, and Diane hummed thoughtfully.

“It’s likely that the duration of the skill can be improved as it levels up. Theoretically speaking, the patient could have had eons to level the skill. Depending on how fast it scales, perhaps the duration for the patient is hours, or even days before it has to cast it again. Likewise, whoever used the skill on the various clues in the dungeon must have mastered it enough that the items were in a state of timeless recovery until the dungeon reset. At which point, they became a natural part of the dungeon’s timeline.”

That made sense, but something still bothered me. “Does that mean that we could go back into the dungeon, leave a translated version of the rules and clues in the lobby, and if we time it right have those clues enter the timeline?”

“Possibly, but it wouldn’t do any good,” Diane countered. “The developers wouldn’t leave such an obvious loophole. If I had to guess, that skill book was likely under a permanent effect of timeless recovery. That means that there won’t be a second skill book for it dropped from this dungeon. Otherwise, countless Players would be able to farm this skill capable of solving main quest puzzles.”

“What if I taught the skill to you two?” I proposed, catching Diane by surprise. “They likely wouldn’t expect that a Player brought along a Fallen for a dungeon like this, right?”

She thought it over, before shaking her head with a shrug. “You can try, but I don’t know if it will work.”

So, that’s what I did. I opened the quest menu and began to create a quest for Diane and Bella. However, when I attempted to register the Timeless Traces skill as the reward, a warning flashed in front of my screen. “It says that Cromoran skills can’t be shared,” I read aloud, earning a small sigh from Diane.

“That’s what I assumed would happen. These are main story skills, and those that find them are meant to serve as focal points of the story. If they could be shared so easily, there wouldn’t be a point in locking them behind those trials. My guess is that there should be a few other dungeons out there that offer the Timeless Traces skill, or something of a similar theme. We definitely didn’t find the only one.”