POV – Tobias

Lying on the grass, I considered the previous exchange I had with Rin.

The entire discussion was strange.

Rin doesn’t want me to be polite? Why?

Rin had seemed somewhat emotionally unstable, so I was trying to be polite and careful to avoid causing unnecessary distress.

I really don’t understand how that could be a problem and cause her to breakdown into tears… Is it a cultural phenomenon from her homeworld?

Also, how could Sidney’s boyfriend disturb the plan? I examined him earlier and he seemed extremely weak. Perhaps his ability is troublesome? Does his ability have nothing to do with dueling?

Shaking my head at that line of questioning. Theorizing is useless. I wouldn’t have messed with him had I known Rin was waiting for him.

What exactly is Rin’s plan? Or, more likely, my future self’s plan.

A pleasant wind blew a cool breeze over my face and I sat up, glancing toward the barrier of dangerous looking smoke surrounding Sidney.

What am I going to do with you now, Sidney?

When I scared her boyfriend, I was partially attempting to separate her from her past life. The fastest method of acquiring Sidney’s trust is to completely separate her from any contact with her old life.

While it’s cruel, it would certainly be effective.

However, with her boyfriend around, any progress I’ve made will almost certainly be undone.

Yet, the same problem occurs if Rin kills him. If Sidney found out, she would never trust me again.

Falling to the ground in exasperation.

Annoying.

Everything gone to hell. The plot’s been completely derailed at this point.

Theoretically, we should be in Third Zone collecting artifacts to seal the frost immortal that guards the exit to that zone (and yes, in this case, immortal means physically unkillable).

While I don’t remember the specific locations of all the different artifacts, everyone from Hell Difficulty should have been able to find them individual like the novel.

With the power of friendship (more accurately known as, Rin’s save/load power), they would have been able to seal away dealing with ice immortal.

Then everyone would go to celebrate in the residential zone and discover that a tournament is happening with a fancy weapon as a prize.

They’d undergo the obligatory tournament arc in the Residential Zone, where everyone from Hell Difficulty would join and compete. This would showcase their respective power level and give the audience a more accurate comparison between Hell Difficulty and other difficulty levels.

Of course, as the main protagonist, Rin won.

Although Rin’s victory required disqualifying Duke from the competition through some unsavory means.

Later, they head to the Fourth Zone and discover the massive difficulty spike from the Third Zone to the Fourth Zone. The massive jump in difficulty finally forced Rin to work together with Stanley and Tracy to continue onward in the Fourth Zone.

There should be heritage sites in the Fourth Zone, only theoretically speaking. I wouldn’t have the slightly clue where they would be. Rin never ran into any heritage sites in the Fourth Zone.

I had intended for Rin to run into heritages sites in the Fifth Zone, but I was teleported into this universe before I got chance to even write that part into the story.

Letting out a sigh of exhaustion from the thought of dealing with all those problems.

Just the ice immortal isn’t going to be easy to deal. Without all the artifacts to seal him, it’ll be impossible to move onto the next zone.

Not that I could move onto the Fourth Zone in my current state. I would probably freeze to death.

Due to my basilisk physique, similar to a regular snake, I have a weakness to cold weather and abilities. That combined with the massive difficulty spike, leaves me in an awkward position.

I could have dealt with the difficult spike of the Fourth Zone with the void flower’s ability.

The void flower’s petals provide a spatial manipulation ability. Spatial manipulation would have allowed me to create tears in space effectively allowing me to instantly tear apart monsters and teleport around freely.

With an ability like that, along with special preparations, I would have been able to at least survive in the Forth Zone with Rin’s help.

Although it would’ve required practice to reach that stage, I would have finally gotten to experience the feeling of being overpowered.

… Meaning that you don’t feel overpowered despite being able to kill almost everyone in this entire zone?

Err… Well, I wasn’t exactly comparing myself to these weaklings. I was meaning in comparison to other people from Hell Difficulty.

Anyway, with an ability like that, although I wouldn’t be considered more powerful than Rin or Stanley, I could at least escape in a serious fight.

If the ability worked the way I intended.

Ugh… Nothing to be done about it.

I won’t trade power for my life, that would be entirely pointless.

Even if I could somehow save the universe with that power, what would be the point? I’d be dead.

Why exactly would I care about the universe when I’m dead? There’s no such thing as an afterlife in this universe. I don’t know about other universes, but here… there’s nothing.

Your soul just fizzles out and vanishes. Poof… Gone forever.

My mind drifted in a blank state for a while as I thought about various people who sacrificed themselves for others in novels and movies I’d watched.

I’ve never quite been able to empathize with people who sacrifice themselves for others in that manner.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly respect it… to be able to sacrifice your life for others. That takes a certain kind of person and I respect them for it.

…But, understand it? Sorry, that seems impossible to me.

The only person I can imagine sacrificing myself for is Rin… but, even then, I’m conflicted.

Am I only willing to sacrifice myself because she can turn back time and save me in turn?

If she didn’t have her ability, would I still be willing to die for her?

Honestly, I don’t know.

…But, I hope I would.

Realizing Sidney was standing over me, I was jolted out of my mental tangent.

Damn, another example of why I should pay more attention to my surroundings. How did I even end up on such a depressing topic?

I sat up and greeted her. “Sidney, hey.”

“Where did Rin go?” Sidney inquired, gesturing around the area with a frown.

I didn’t feel in the mood to make something up, and I’d forgotten her boyfriend’s name again, so I simply deadpanned, “She went to go kidnap someone.”

“…Okay?” Sidney answered with a confused expression, clearly wondering whether she’d heard me correctly.

“You can go train or something.” I casually stated, before spending a moment to think about and realizing that wasn’t entirely accurate. “Maybe avoid warding. Your previous stunt was dangerous enough, it’s probably best to take a break from it.”

I didn’t particularly care what Sidney did. If she heeded my advice, great. If not… so long as she doesn’t practice warding near me, I won’t bother to stop her.

To my surprise, instead of training, she decided to join me resting on the grass a couple meters away.

That wasn’t what I was expecting, but whatever. It’s a good indication that she doesn’t completely despise me.

Then again, Sidney probably hasn’t had much sleep with her constant escape attempts. It’s unsurprising that she’d take the opportunity to get some rest when she has the chance.  

As I began to relax again on the grass, a thought entered my head.

How did Sidney find me resting here?!

The thought terrified me. Sidney shouldn’t have been able to notice me at all unless I purposely revealed myself.

While it might not seem particular important, my ability was my only lifeline in this universe. If my ability to go unnoticed was on the fritz, I’m in a lot of trouble.

Thinking back, there were several occasions where Bai Xiaobao and Sidney had noticed me despite my ability.

While it’s normal for someone like Rin to be able to find me, for weaklings like Sidney? That should be impossible.

How were they able to find me?

<Ability: The Unnoticed Active: become unperceivable for 0.7 seconds, Cooldown 24 hours, Passive: goes unnoticed by most living things. [Rank 7, 60%]>

Pulling up my ability menu, I confirmed that everything was the same as normal. The description hadn’t been altered and it theoretically should have preventing her from finding me.

Are there specific nuances to my ability that I was unaware of?

Either way, the entire situation left a frown on my face. It simply didn’t make sense. The frown remained as I remembered various circumstances that happened recently that didn’t make sense.

While going unnoticed isn’t an powerful ability, it is still an ability at [Rank 7] and affected the majority of monsters in the Third Zone. Someone from Easy Difficulty should have trouble finding me even if I shouted their name into their face.

Is the passive toggleable? Have I been unconsciously deactivating it because I haven’t felt threatened?

No matter the situation, I needed to confirm it immediately. Heading back into Hell Difficulty with a broken ability could be the death of me.

Running various tests using Sidney as the subject proved inconclusive.

While Sidney didn’t mention anything particularly strange as I utilized and tested whether she’d had noticed me, there’s a possibility that she is purposefully ignoring me as she's trying to sleep. I need a more useful test subject to provide conclusive results.

Fortunately, Rin just arrived back with such a subject... Although, apparently he’s asleep as well.

Rin’s gaze instantly locked onto me and I once again doubted the usefulness of my ability. The situation would be entirely different if it took Rin effort to find me… but she found me instantly and easily.

What exactly is the point of having a stealth ability if everyone can find me anyway?

I’ll probably have to just accept that in most situations, only the active part of my ability matters.

Rin walked up to me and unceremoniously dropped the unconscious man on the floor. “Here… Since you wanted him alive, you get to take care of him.”

“Ivan!” Sidney seemed to have woken up from the sudden thud and ran over toward her unconscious boyfriend. Once she discovered he was passed out Sidney glared at Rin seemingly wanting to tear her into a million pieces.

“Right… Well, congratulations Sidney. You’ve been promoted.” I unenthusiastically stated.

She gazed toward me with an expression of confusion.

 “Now you get to take care of our newest prisoner.”I explained, feeling better after shameless pushing the entire responsibility onto Sidney.

If it was a pretty girl, I might have considered it. Spending my time to take care of some unconscious dude though? I got more important things to do. Any potential detriment effect from having Sidney take care of him is worth it to avoid having to do it myself.

“Also… If you keep looking at Rin like that, I’m going to tear your eyes out.” I coldly threatened, fully intent on blinding her if she didn’t stop… albeit temporarily instead of in the manner I threatened. Sidney’s still a valuable resource and my disciple after all.

I don’t care particularly care whether she sent hateful gazes toward me… Hell, I wouldn’t care if Sidney tried to actually kill me, but nobody looks at Rin like that.

While her wrathful expression didn’t stop, Sidney did avoid staring directly at Rin with her wrathful gaze and instead focused on her unconscious boyfriend.

Good enough.

When her boyfriend awakes, I’ll run the tests regarding my ability again. I still haven’t quite discovered why the problems with the unnoticed have occurred.

Pulling Rin off to the side, I asked, “What am I supposed to tell Sidney regarding the reason you kidnapped her boyfriend?”

“Whatever you want.” Rin replied indicating for me to go talk with Sidney. “We should continue our journey.”

With that, Rin continued walking in the direction of the beacon. Staring back toward Sidney, who stood over the body of her boyfriend, I sighed. “Sidney, carry him. We’re continuing our journey. We lost enough time already.”

I’ll have to come up with some excuse for why Rin kidnapped him later.

Sidney clenched her fists in anger from my words, but picked up her boyfriend anyway.

Teleportation beacon, we’re on our way… Albeit at a snail's pace.