A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 982 Facing The Dungeon Boss (4) - Manipulating Time

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'Calm down. Calm down. Calm down... Remember everything you've learned.' Eldrian told himself.

He was no longer using his bloodline powers without knowing what it even was. He knew what to expect, and what he needed to do to keep space from imploding. 

'Plus, this is a dungeon.' Eldrian cheerfully noted after he had calmed down and took a few seconds to think.

Sadly, he was not moving fast to match the slowing of time. His swings were slowed just as much as everything else. The only thing still working at capacity was his mind. 

'Since this is a dungeon, the space is different. It is an artificial manipulation of space.' Due to a few reasons, one being magic, the AI couldn't make dungeons separate servers or what have you. 

Instead, they made dungeons like pocket dimensions that people could enter. Which to Eldrian sounded far more difficult and complicated, but apparently it wasn't that different from making a server.

Well, not that he could comment on that either. Most importantly, ANW only had one server. So Eldrian didn't know where that claim came from. 'Maybe the personal homes?'

Shaking off this line of distracting thought, Eldrian turned serious. He needed to get control of what was happening. He had pushed a substantial amount of lifeforce (literal parts of his soul) into activating Chronos. 

This meant two very important things. One, the time dilation effect would last for quite some time. Possibly even longer due to the dungeon, or shorter. But Eldrian felt confident it would be the former.

Two, Eldrian could feel the energy spreading through space. It was part of his soul, after all. He knew what it felt like and he was used to manipulating it. 

Sure, it had a weird attribute at the moment that he didn't recognize. The attribute of time, in all likelihood. 

'So, what I need to do is keep things stable. Don't let it collapse, and... surround... myself... with it.' The last part was more tricky.

Eldrian also didn't know how he would be able to breathe if he made himself faster. Hopefully, his breathing didn't increase with his speed. After all, the air was frozen just like everything else. 

Slowly, the Death Knight tried to rise, and Eldrian swung Willo down just as slowly. As the mace moved at a snail's pace, Eldrian imagined it moving faster. 

The next thing he knew, it had connected and concaved the entire back of the Death Knight's armor. 'Not that fast. I couldn't even follow what had happened.' Eldrian told himself, his shoulder and arm crying out in protest. 

Trying again, Eldrian continued wailing on the Death Knight. Realizing sadly that at some point Wrath and all his other buffs had departed him. 

This sent Eldrian's damage back to the pathetic few hundred points per hit. 'Keeping things stable is much more difficult than channeling my auras, but... it isn't as difficult as channeling them while activating Wrath.'

And while fatigue had started to set in, Eldrian felt confident he wouldn't lose control in the next few minutes. Sadly, he didn't think he could kill the Death Knight at that time either. Not without Wrath's damage buff. 

'Trying to add Wrath would be suicidal. But, what if...' Getting a crazy idea, Eldrian manipulated part of the energy around him to enter the Death Knight. 

It offered some resistance, probably due to the green flames it could command. It had to be an aura of a type. But it could withstand the amount of energy was pushing forth. 

'I doubt speeding up one part of its body will do much.' Had this been a living thing, Eldrian could return their lungs to the normal time and they would die from a lack of air. However, it would take some time. 

Magic to accomplish the same result wouldn't work in this situation either. It would be slowed too, just like everything else. Even if you place water around someone's head or sent it directly into their lungs, it would take forever for them to die. 

But, if only their lungs returned to normal function (if it was even possible), then they wouldn't be able to breathe. 'I would probably also need to increase their blood flow, to let the lack of oxygen take effect...'

That certainly didn't sound easy. The most Eldrian could actually accomplish at the moment was moving a ball of energy within the area and changing its attribute. 

Naturally, he had sped himself up a few times. But that wasn't the same as external manipulation. To allow himself to move normally, he need only channel more energy and match the energy attribute around him. 

'And, sadly, I doubt this will give me super speed if time flows normally.' Eldrian would need to come up with how to increase his speed without influencing the outside. But that wasn't a problem he had to tackle now. 

No, he would try to master that after the dungeon. Now that he knew what the time element of lifeforce felt like, he should be able to summon it at will. Naturally, he would refrain from doing so anywhere but the core. 

'Now, let's see if my plan works.' Having moved the bubble of energy into the Death Knight's body and near its heart (or where it was supposed to be), Eldrian destabilized it. 

To do this, he returned the flow of time to normal in the bubble. At the same time, he stopped stabilizing the flow of time around him. Letting it devolve into chaos. 

The plan was simple, and as the energy started to move, Eldrian confirmed that it was working. 

Everything was rushing towards the Death Knight. 

Sadly, things got exponentially accelerated. Eldrian had managed to follow for the first few moments, but then everything went white. 

The next thing Eldrian knew, he was embedded into the walls coughing up blood. 

"Eldrian!?" The shocked voices from the players echoed through the air as they received the notifications for having slain the dungeon boss. Informing them to gather the seed of corruption and bring it back to the fort. 

Almost no one had managed to follow the fight between Eldrian and the dungeon boss. And the last few seconds had been such a blur that not even slowing the time of their videos showed them anything.