Jeff jumped back to avoid the brass lich's attack. Jumped back in relative terms at least. He'd recently learned that his time keeping ability was more handy that he thought it would be. In this world, so long as he kept track of time, he could affect it, alter it slightly.

He'd done it a few times on accident, slowing time down and attacking an ogre six times in the amount of time it would have normally taken him to attack once. After a little practice, he found that he could do this at will if he tried.

He'd found that speeding time up came just as easily as slowing it down. Traveling through time however, that was a bit more difficult. It took a lot of focus, and he could only go a few minutes at best.

His jumping back was a jump through time, and he appeared behind the lich. The dark, stone room was quiet. 'Must be before I got here.' He thought to himself. He raised his bat, taking a swing with his Slugger and knocking the lich on the side of the head.

He jumped back forward, appearing a second or two after he'd jumped back and slamming the handle of the bat into the lich's stomach. As it doubled over, be brought the bat down on the back of its head.

The lich died and became a pile of grist. He gathered the grist and walked to the end of the room, opening the treasure chest and pulling out the large iron key, the first of the four required to re-calibrate the clockwork planet's ticking.

"But where to find the next one.." He wondered aloud. "Try those metal mountains to the east." He replied to himself. He from the future presumably, as he had no memory of coming back and saying this in the past.

Nor did he recognize the red outfit he was/would be wearing. It was pure red, with a gear symbol on the chest, and a long hood that nearly touched the floor. It didn't look bad Jeff felt, just odd.

"Thanks," Jeff said with a nod, "So.. when do I get the fancy outfit?" He asked. Future Jeff shook his head, "Naw, that one's too big a spoiler. Minor stuff is fine, but trust me, that's a really big one." He insisted.

"My clothes are an important event?" Present Jeff asked, more than a little surprised. "Kinda," Future Jeff said, "It's a bit more like everyone's are. They don't get them until they ascend.. Which I probably shouldn't have said but oh well." Future Jeff shrugged, "Oh well. Just keep going. Also keep track of your sprite. Gonna need him later, trust me."

Without another word on the subject, future Jeff vanished in a flash of red light. Present Jeff couldn't help but feel that the light was extremely familiar. Had he seen it before? He sighed, rubbing his head. He'd had these powers for all of two hours and already he was having to deal with time loops.

He shoved that aside for the moment, and turned his attention to the mechanical mountains east of the tower he was currently in. He doubted he would out and out lie to himself, so he guessed that would be his next target.


Valtina stabbed her sais into the throat of the charging ogre, jumping off of it as it dissolved into grist and landing on the back of the mechanical basilisk. She stabbed her sais several times into its back before realized that they weren't effective enough.

A realization that came too late to save her from being thrown off of the cybernetic serpent. She rolled over the ground, feeling her legs gets scraped by the landing. She switched from her sais to the Sawvel, raising it up as the chain blade began moving.

The basilisk hissed, opening its mouth and spitting acid at Valtina. She dodged to the left of the acid spit, throwing the Sawvel at the basilisk and taking out her Drill Cutter and Spade Blade. The basilisk was focused on avoiding the Sawvel, and didn't realize it was a trap until the Drill Cutter was digging into its metal scales, the Spade Blade wrenching chunks of meat and wiring out of its back.

The basilisk hissed in pain, attempting to coil around Valtina and kill her quickly, only for her to use the drill to tunnel through the coils, picking up the Sawvel and cutting the head from the basilisk's body, killing it.

Panting, she put her weapons away and returned to the town. She'd only left the town a few times since arriving at it, all of which were to either gather grist or fend off monsters trying to attack the town.

Using her book of agriculture, and her natural memory for things related to gardening, she'd been felting the consorts learn to tend the little land they had; which seemed to increase every day.

She had an idea though, and finally had enough grist to pull it off. She purchased a book of magic from the shop and alchemized it with the nature book, creating the Book of Natural Magic. This, she was sure, would help restore the land even faster.

On her way to test it out, a few consort children came up to her. They had a few cuts and bruises on their hands from helping out with the gardening. They held their hands out to be healed, which Valtina was more or less the go to fix for, and Valtina held her own hands out to heal them.

The green and blue energy left her hands and surrounded them, healing their hands and arms. Confusingly though, the consorts stared up at her in shock when she was done healing them. After a few moments, she realized what had surprised them.

She wasn't wearing her Pedal Palms. Her hands were bare currently, and she'd still been able to heal them. It hadn't the magical gloves doing the healing this entire time: it had been Valtina herself.

"Do you think… could it be… is she…" The consort children murmured, "Could she be the Sylph of Life?" They wondered aloud. "The what?" Valtina asked them. They nodded, "The Sylph of Life, the legendary hero. There's a prophecy about her and everything."

Curious, and supposing she wouldn't be able to spend the entire game tending to this one town, she asked them, "Would you tell me about this prophecy?"


Arvis didn't stay in the town he'd found for too long. The shelled insect consorts were generally unpleasant, to him and to each other. They didn't seem to care at all about anyone around them, and had all but chased him out of town to get rid of him.

Fine, he'd thought, if they didn't want him, he didn't want them either. He already had everything he needed, and had even managed to find a second thing to put into his sprite: a blood stone statue of a warrior.

After absorbing it, the sprite became fully solid, still having his long hooked claws, but now having armor and a broadsword in one hand as well. Arvis smiled at this, "Awesome." He said, clinking his claw sword against Strikerknightsprite's sword.

"Thanks for the upgrade." He said with a nod, looking over at the small horde that had started to form around them, as they'd been out in the open without moving for a few seconds too many, "Shall we test it out?" He asked.

Arvis nodded, lifting his hook sword, "Let's, but leave me some." He said, charging to one side of the horde as Strikerknight charged the other, bringing his sword down hard and sending a shockwave through the ground.

The shockwave stunlocked the enemies long enough for him to charge through them, cutting through them viciously with his claws. Arvis felt that he'd made a good choice in combination. He had Striker's speed and brutality, and the Blood Knight's power and durability. He was officially a tank.

Arvis himself meanwhile wasn't sure what category he fit into. His hook dug into the shoulder of the imp in front of him, pulling and swinging it around to avoid getting stabbed by its two chimerical tails.

He drew his grappling hook gun, firing at one of the airborne fighter jet-like ogres. He pulled it down, bringing the ogre into a flaming crash on the ground that took out a large portion of the enemies below.

The two of them continued to carve a bloody murder canyon through the swarming enemies. Both took several hard hits, but neither stopped until the two of them were the last living things in the area.

As a sprite, Striker Knight self healed, and could heal Arvis' wounds as well. "Won't be able to fight in every battle," He reminded Arvis, his tone of voice making it clear how upset he was personally by this fact, "But I can heal you after any fight you survive. So long as I'm around that is."

Arvis nodded, "Fair enough. Any idea what we should do now?" He asked. The sprite thought about it, trying to parce what the game's systems would allow him to reveal to his player at this time.

After some thinking, he replied, "Now that you've proven you can survive in this world, it may be time that you learn about it. Every hero in this game has a mission in their world, but you'll have to find it first."

Arvis nodded, lifting his hook blade and stretching out, "Alright, let's look around."


Mutosi flung her broom through the air, bringing it down hard on the target dummy she had set up, which may or may not have been modeled after an idiotic jade blooded femboy who deserved a broom in much less pleasant places.

The dummy cracked under the force of the impact. She was getting even better with it. She wasn't sure how often she'd need it, only three enemies had gone by that she'd been completely unable to use her powers on.

She supposed she would need to be as strong as possible. Eventually she would make it to Risura's land, and she was certain that their verbal fights would take a much more physical form when they met face to face.

She bit her lip at the thought of wiping the smug look off of the jade blood's stupid face, not thinking as she stood with her broom in front of her, stepping closer to the length of it was between her legs.

Her mind flooded with thoughts of their battle, Risura fighting with bare fists, muscles rippling but never making him lose his girly looks. She would win of course, but fuck would it be an impressive battle.

She paused, blushing brown deeply when she realized she'd lost focus and indeed control of her hips, which had started to grind gently against the wooden length of the broom. She stepped back, raising her broom and bringing it back down on the target.

The room shook slightly, nearly throwing her off balance. Mutosi grumbled, walking across the room and sticking her head out of the curtain, "Hey, easy would ya!," She shouted at the camel consorts carrying her room across the desert.

She saw no reason to walk across it when she could easily have these dumbass camel worshippers lend their time to her instead of whatever nonsense they were praying to. She'd be at the next cathedral town soon, and she would be ready to seige it if she had to.