This… Is A Bit Too Powerful For A Beginner, No?
As Du Lang was energetically thinking of methods of incorporating completely bizarre and 'unrealistic' curse phenomenon with standard, everyday actions, the street he stood on faced a terrifying stress. The people alongside him didn't notice, not until the last moment.
A white BMW i8 barreled onto the wrong lane a few hundred meters from the intersection, and the driver had no intention of stopping. Car sirens and horns screeched in terror as their drivers sought to flee, but the heavy traffic of Jingdou caused them to crash into one another as they sought to escape the rabid luxury sports car's ravage.
Windshields cracked, and the lauded aluminum frames snapped and crumpled under the enormous stress. A large symphony of emergency alarms erupted as airbags bloomed to completely trap the occupants inside their cars, forbidding any escape whatsoever. Soon, there was a massive sound of explosion, and the first onlookers attracted by the sound of a dozen cars crashing together screamed in fright. Du Lang, who had just finished 'setting keybinds' for the preconfigured curse models looked up with great interest.
Compared to the frontline metropolitan cities such as Beijing and Jinan, Jingdou was relatively quiet. Certainly, there were a few scandals here and there in the neighboring cities and Quanzhou that offered themselves as Du Lang's income, but this was the first multiple-vehicle accident that he witnessed personally.
The luxury vehicle had forced the panicked drivers to slam their cars to the side of the road and cause collision after collision, wrecking at least a dozen moving vehicles and at least twenty parked, inflicting moderate to severe damage to each. The sound of the explosion was from the luxury vehicle itself, for the scattered shards of glass and metal scraps had torn the back wheels into shreds.
It was a disaster, for the engine of a BMW i8 was located in the front of the vehicle. The ruined sports car continued to hurl itself forward, but the lack of rear tires caused it to sway from side to side, smashing into the chassis of other vehicles with great momentum.
The driver hardly seemed to hold any intention of stopping the car.
"Is he not going to brake!?"
"This stupid fuerdai! Call the police, call the police!"
"Heavens, the poor old man in the white van! Look, look, his head is bleeding a lot!"
"Save me, save me!!"
The citizens both injured and spectators alike broke into screams of terror and fear, but not a single person dared to assist those either trapped or injured in the crashed vehicles. Many of the young men and women whipped out their phones to record the glorified trajectory of the almost dismantled BMW i8 on the war-torn avenue and post onto their Weibo feeds as a means of garnering attention, whilst the middle-aged and elderly signaled to the police to take action. Du Lang witnessed several people close enough to wrench open the crumpled car doors and rescue the people inside, yet chose to step back and record the happenstance with their phones and screech with panicked excitement.
"Nobody wants a potential lawsuit against them, hence all choose apathy towards the suffering…"
Du Lang knew that the human attachment towards apathy directed at its own kin realized no limits. Over his eight years of journalism and investigation of major corporations and families and their darker lifestyles, he had obtained countless example after example how modern humans were willing to record and profiteer from another's suffering instead of lending a hand.
He knew of devastating apathy, yet he himself hadn't served much of a better example. Du Lang heaved a light self-deprecating sigh, but soon blinked in surprise.
Right – wasn't this a perfect environment to test the inheritance of his 'predecessor'?
Du Lang immediately moved into action and snapped the index finger of his left hand against his thumb. Then, he stepped back to watch in awe as the black sphere that calmly hovered above his head soared into the evening skies of Jingdou. With a groan, a web of black chains erupted from the small fuzzy ball, screeching through the air to stab deeply into the asphalt road and nearby buildings.
Wherever the black chains graced their deathly touch, all motion ceased.
Du Lang gaped in shock as the young girl eagerly streaming the devastating scene before her froze mid-speech, her charming and pretty lips parted wide open in the act of expressing an exaggerated gasp. As he looked towards the street, he discovered that the shrapnel of twisted, heated aluminum had paused mid-air, and the BMW i8 had halted its conquest of self-destruction.
[
Silence reigned as the people affected by the black chains froze either in mid-call, scream, or escaping motion. The display of the young girl's phone revealed the same scene, indicating that even the people watching the stream had ceased their movements.
"Distort Time… it really paused time?"
On this populous street, only Du Lang could move. If Sibyl's prompt in his ear was true, then he was the only person who could move around for the next three minutes. Du Lang exhaled in awe as he poked at the young female streamer's head standing besides him, yet she failed to react even as her head had been skewed by fifteen degrees to the right.
"How do I cancel this state? Does it affect time of the entire world?"
[Host can cancel the state of distorted time by either manually cancelling the curse model, or prompting Sibyl. The effect of distorted time is imposed only on the area defined by the
"Only affected in the area defined by the chains? Oh, so its affected by relativistic principles…"
Du Lang blinked, and burnt a stick of incense to the departed founders of quantum mechanical theory. He patted his arms and reoriented the female streamer's head to its proper position, and dusted his hands whilst staring at the black sphere floating above the demolished street.
"Sibyl, how much time do I have? Can I freely interact with the objects here?"
[Two minutes and eight seconds remain. The host may freely interact with objects within the affected area.]
The cold, secretarial female voice brought an encouraging gleam into Du Lang's eyes. He quickly stretched his arms and raced towards the nearest demolished car, wrenching the door open with a bit of strength. Many of the cars had their locking mechanisms disabled due to the trapped occupants attempting their best efforts in escaping the scene behind them, but collisions had ruined the doors and the regular opening mechanism.
Du Lang had to force the doors open with brute strength. Some cars he dared not touch, for the metal shards had pierced into the driver's thigh and…
-_-;
Two minutes was barely enough for Du Lang to force open the doors of ten vehicles on his side of the road closest to the devastation. He lacked the time and strength to force the people outside, and didn't manage to return to his original position when the black sphere overhead shivered.
[
The black chains extricated themselves from the ground and soared through the air to plunge into the depths of the fuzzy ball. Motion resumed all at once, and the peaceful silence that Du Lang had briefly savored was completely stomped onto the ground as screams and wails filled the air once more.
"Help!"
Several people found themselves abruptly falling out of their vehicles and experiencing a fierce embrace with the earth. They screeched once as the delicate skin of their faces scraped on the porous asphalt, and twice more as even more shrapnel from the BMW i8 smacked the defenseless flank of their precious, ruined vehicles.
"…did I overdo it?"
Du Lang scratched at the back of his head as he witnessed the screams increase by at least six to eight decibels, and began the arduous process of wading through a sea of coldhearted bystanders. He casually ducked under the flailing arms of an overagitated and excited teenage female holding onto her recording phone, and finally left the chaotic street in a flustered hurry.
"My quota of
He glanced at the black sphere floating behind his head in a nonchalant manner, and rubbed his palms to ease the blazing rush of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Du Lang rubbed at his brows to calm his fervent mind, and reassessed the blurred events a few moments prior.
It was strange, and dangerous. He felt as though his entire being of existence had been stretched onto a thin line and held by tetherhooks, fueled by a delirious mixture of exhilaration and apathy.
For three minutes, he held absolute control over his nearby environment. The people within, objects – all were under his manipulation. He had the ability to move around the cars and people in a manner they wished, and should he hold malicious intent, they wouldn't have held an inclination as to how and why they died.
However, he couldn't remember much of what he had done. The three minutes were fuzzy and its details were beyond his recollection.
"Sibyl, what happens to the Distort Time curse model if my
[Advancement of the host's
Each advancement in
Scary. This was beyond scary.
"How did my predecessor manage to keep his sanity and withstand such temptation?" Du Lang exhaled in surprise.
"Distort Time at its most basic level can pause time for three whole minutes. For someone at his personage, then the effects would be capable of changing history…"
[The previous host had elected to employ a personal guardian to manage his daily affairs. Should the host desire the services of a personal guardian, please advance
P…personal guardian to manage daily affairs?
Sibyl's response caught Du Lang completely off guard. He gawked at the black sphere with his mouth hanging open, and it took a while for his sluggish mind to recover back to reality. The silence of the cold, female secretary didn't offer much help in this regard, either.
Du Lang stood in place and reorganized his thoughts, failing to notice the presence of an armed man raise his bat and aim towards his head –
[Mild threshold of danger towards host observed. Initiating automatic usage of
Clink!
Before Du Lang could react to the sudden ambush, a long black chain erupted from within the depths of the black sphere. The wicked chains scorched through the air and stabbed into the solar plexus of the male, eliciting a pained grunt from the latter. The arm holding the bat flopped for a breath, then the man sprawled onto the ground with his eyes rolling into his head.
"What happened?"
Du Lang blinked and turned around to gaze at the collapsed man, and instantly caught onto the metal bat discarded on the ground. He moved aside to avoid leaving any prints on the fantastic 'article of evidence' and brought out his phone to dial the police station… but the man still refused to move.
His chest wasn't even displaying any lung movement, nor could he detect any signs of breathing from the man…
"Sibyl, did he die?"
[Scanning for signs of life. Target identified; Wang Xiefang, aged 28. Physical vitality reduced to 10%.]
"10% of his physical vitality remains… does that mean that only his strength was drained and no other bodily harm was inflicted?" Du Lang rubbed at his chin with a helpless look.
"Are there going to be any permanent effects?"
[No permanent disability remains; estimated recovery of target is 172 hours. For
O-oh, so there wasn't going to be any permanent damage. Brother, looks like you're going to have to stay for a while, but everything should be alright…
"This… is too powerful for a beginner stage, no?"
囧.