42. New Abilities

New Abilities

Unfortunately, after more than ten additional minutes of thinking, with the weight above us seeming to grow heavier by the second, no one came up with a safe way to leave the tunnel without risking further collapse, a large explosion, or both.

Beneath the ruins, given our time limit, fire magic and high-tech abilities simply could not solve the problem. Both Chi Li and Cheng Rui were willing to try some bizarre solutions, but I firmly refused.

If our escape was going to cost someone anyway, then I might as well shoulder the burden—figuratively and literally.

Name: Ye Lin
Profile: Female human, 17 years, 3 months, 12 days old

Abilities [5 available points / 46 total]
Force Adjustment lv3
Force Sense lv2
Forcefield Creation lv2
Forced Acceleration lv3
Constant Force lv2
Persistent Force lv2
Progressive Regeneration lv3
Proximal Manipulation lv3
Super Suit lv1

Attributes [5 available points / 46 total]
Strength 20, Agility 11, Intelligence 5, Perception 9, Spirit 11, Luck 2

The long battle, the sheer number of enemies, the danger we had faced, and the effort we had poured into overcoming all of it had greatly improved our abilities.

Chi Li could cast stronger, broader fire magic. Cheng Rui could manufacture his high-tech gear in minutes, repair it in seconds, and make it stronger than before.

As for my own abilities, I had originally planned to wait until we were safe, examine the list carefully, and choose what would benefit any long-term plan we made.

But as usual, that opportunity was nowhere in sight.

Again and again, limited time, immediate threats to myself or others, and my fear of whatever enemy I had just encountered forced me toward simple, direct, violent solutions.

Still, whether or not my current abilities were what I would have chosen with more freedom, I had come to rely on them.

Overwhelming enemies with raw power, withstanding their fiercest attacks, striking them with superior speed, or using force in new and effective ways—those things made me feel strong.

But this once, simple strength was not enough.

Freeing myself and my friends from the deathtrap we had fallen into required a little more practicality, and meant giving up the most immediate increases in power I might have taken.

First, though, I needed to invest in the attributes most useful for applying new abilities, in the hope of bringing the other two safely outside and through whatever tests surely waited for us when we emerged.

To plan the entire operation, I put one attribute point into Intelligence.

When my total Intelligence reached six, the change to my thinking was more obvious than before.

I did not suddenly become some titan of intellect, the sort of genius who could make absurd scientific breakthroughs like people in movies.

No new knowledge appeared out of thin air. Things I had never studied were not stuffed into my head.

But the things I had studied, I could now recall almost perfectly. I suspected I could apply them to everyday situations as quickly as a good engineer.

The instinctive environmental awareness I had built over years, combined with the awareness gained from enhanced perception, integrated cleanly with that knowledge—and now I could actually use it.

I could not solve complicated mechanical problems in the middle of a fight. But given a few minutes to think, I could see the best way to apply the abilities I had, even if those few minutes had to be spent holding up an increasingly heavy tunnel roof.

Speaking of which, I put one point into Agility and one into Spirit.

Immediately, I felt my reserves of physical and mental endurance deepen. Every muscle became more efficient and more controllable, while the discipline and will needed to use them grew stronger. My steadiness and balance matched the confidence and initiative in my decisions.

The change was smaller than the one from increasing Intelligence, but for escaping this tunnel that might become our grave—and for the fight that would follow—it mattered just as much.

Also, gaining a little more obvious charm and a slight but clear improvement in my appearance did not hurt.

Even filthy, sweaty, singed, nearly exhausted, and pinned under hundreds of tons of stone, I would bet I looked better than any actress carefully lit, expertly made up, digitally retouched, and styled to look gorgeous through a dozen action scenes.

Finally, putting two attribute points into Strength made the weight of the world feel lighter, and the concrete and rebar digging into my palms became less unbearable.

My body became denser and stronger, resilient as spring steel even without my powers, and those powers strengthened in turn.

If increasing Agility had only slightly eased my almost completely spent stamina, then adding two more points to Strength left me with only mild fatigue.

Even after being locked in combat with great demons that seemed able to drain strength from every muscle in my body, I felt as if I could survive another fierce battle.

I pushed upward and found the rubble had loosened enough to shift, but not enough to cast aside.

From the moment I invested the point in Intelligence, I knew strengthening myself alone would not be enough.

A five-yard cube of concrete or asphalt weighs three hundred tons. The debris above us was not a solid cube, true, but it was tangled with broken asphalt, brick, and even bedrock, and somehow partially interlocked with itself, making it even harder to lift.

Given enough effort and time, I could push it aside. But that had never been the problem.

The problem was pushing all the rubble away fast enough, hard enough, and far enough that it would not collapse back into the tunnel and crush Chi Li and Cheng Rui.

That was far harder.

I had neither space nor time to accelerate, and not enough momentum to completely clear the way.

So I needed to create those conditions.

Spatial Distortion lv1: You may selectively treat a distance related to yourself as half to twice its actual length. This does not directly affect other people.

For that, I gained Spatial Distortion at level one.

Its usefulness was not limited to our present situation, but here it would be critical.

Hopefully, it would work the way I expected and not ruin everything in some unexpected way.

The next two abilities were partly safeguards in that respect, and would also make the attempt easier.

Spatial Jump lv1: Within the same local space, change the position and facing of a target you can perceive, weighing no more than one quarter ton, by up to twenty meters and ninety degrees.

Temporal Jump lv1: Move a target you can perceive, weighing no more than one quarter ton, to the position it occupied one second ago, or the position it will occupy one second from now.

Unfortunately, several slabs of rubble were far too large for either of those abilities to affect.

Fortunately, they were not what I intended to use the abilities on.

Defensive Rebound lv1: A harmful effect that is blocked, reduced, or healed by a selected defense is transferred back to the source of the effect.

Instant Action lv1: Instantly perform an action equivalent to five minutes of maximum effort.

Of those last two abilities, Instant Action was both a way to buy more time for everything and insurance if something went wrong.