43. Breaking Out of the Tunnel

Breaking Out of the Tunnel

Compared with my other abilities, Instant Action was extremely expensive for what it did.

But it was a trump card that could help in many situations, and hopefully as it leveled, it would evolve into something less costly.

As for Defensive Rebound, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the defense associated with it did not have to be chosen immediately when I acquired the ability.

Instead, it could be chosen for each particular “situation,” though whether that meant each attack in a battle, each enemy, or once per battle still required testing.

As long as they did not have enough endurance to survive my rebound in return, or enough power to make my defenses meaningless in the first place, it would help.

Finally, Cheng Rui gave the signal.

A large portion of the rubble around our small pocket of air began to fuse with the walls, forming new structural supports in the span of a heartbeat as all the energy the black-haired boy had accumulated poured out of him in a vast, crackling blue torrent.

Concrete, asphalt, rebar—according to our nerd, all of it was completely recyclable, and his abilities could do the job without equipment.

His powers lacked the persistence Chi Li’s and mine had, however, so he could only treat a small portion of the debris.

But that should be enough.

In the impossibly brief pause between one second and the next, I doubled the distance between the ground and the already-unstable tunnel ceiling.

Then everything went to hell.

The world slowed to a crawl.

My two friends had braced themselves for what was coming. In that moment, they almost looked like wax figures. The only sign that broke the illusion was Cheng Rui’s involuntary blink, an action that seemed to last several seconds.

Dust motes hung nearly motionless in the air. Bits of brick and concrete falling from above drifted down slower than feathers.

Sound sank deeper and duller. The only reason colors did not shift was that my newly enhanced senses could already directly perceive the full spectrum of light.

Fresh information and understanding struck me all at once, and I resisted a sudden urge to bash my head against a wall.

Under full Forced Acceleration, everything from my muscles to the electrical impulses in my brain to the chemical reactions inside my cells was overclocked to two and a half times its normal speed.

As a force effect, the full use of Force Adjustment magnified that speed increase by eight times.

Together, they stretched one second into thirteen—and from a superhuman baseline, I was already far faster than an ordinary person.

At least, that was how it should have worked in theory, if my brain had not subconsciously decided that a human body could not move at such speeds.

Proximal Manipulation threw me toward the tunnel roof at a speed that would once have seemed like a blur.

Now, before I struck the rubble pile at half the speed of sound, it was only a brief upward rush.

Three hundred tons of broken concrete and brick moved, lifted upward by my full momentum.

But they rose only about a meter before beginning to fall.

The impact had broken their cohesion further. More cracks had spread through them. They would collapse inward with ease, crushing Chi Li and Cheng Rui.

I had no time to retreat, and another impact would only delay the inevitable.

But I was no longer as limited by the fourth dimension as I had been.

With an act of will, I returned to the position I had occupied one twentieth of a second earlier, the instant when I had begun accelerating.

Another use brought me to the place I should have been one thirtieth of a second in the future—fully accelerated, one centimeter from striking the collapsing tunnel roof.

When the second impact landed and transferred my momentum, two Temporal Jumps reversed and accelerated my personal frame of time, causing a third impact.

Then a fourth, a fifth, and more. I pressed that mental “button” as quickly as I could, turning…