Hourglass of Turn-Based Systems
Five seconds to grasp the situation.
Fifty-five seconds to devise a strategy.
…Or so I thought, and wasted another second just like that.
'Think. Think.'
How do I get out of this crisis?
Above the hourglass, my action points were displayed.
[Action Points: ■■■■]
In the game, if you had 4 action points, you could move more than ten meters.
But right now, my body wouldn't budge an inch.
I could guess why.
The sixty seconds I was given were only time to think.
In reality, my action points were calculated based on that fleeting instant of 0.0-something seconds. There was a hard limit to how much I could physically do in that tiny slice of time.
I forced strength into my unmoving right arm and tried to lift it. When my hand moved about three centimeters, one block of action points disappeared.
[Action Points: ■■■□]
'No.'
This won't work. Even if I use up all my action points, I can't lift the wand and block that blade.
What about dodging?
Can I dodge?
If I squeeze out the remaining action points and duck my head—
The blade will hit my cheekbone instead of my carotid artery.
There's a decent chance I won't die instantly. Instead, it'll hurt like hell. Hurt so bad I'll regret not dying on the spot. Screw up and I could even lose an eye.
And my chances of survival are still extremely low. Once I get hit by the blade, the impact will twist my head, and Goblin Number Two—whom I'll lose sight of—will drive a spear straight through my vitals.
No, wait, fuck, hold on a second.
Then what the hell is this sixty seconds even for?
Isn't this just time to pray before dying? That's great for a fanatic, but what use is it to me?
"Haa…"
I let out a sigh without thinking—and then realized something.
Wait a minute.
Isn't this weird?
I can't move my body, so how did I just sigh? Can I really exhale this slowly within 0.0-something seconds?
Earlier, when the entire world froze, I'd blurted out "What?" without realizing it.
"Can I… talk?"
I carefully pushed my voice past my vocal cords.
I really could.
I could speak.
I could even guess why.
This game supports multiplayer for up to four players. No one actually plays it that way, so it's treated as a single-player game—but still.
'The chat function.'
It was a feature designed with multiplayer in mind. If you press Enter during the game, the chat window opens. Type text there, and it appears as a speech bubble above your character's head.
Then wouldn't the words I'm saying now be judged as a form of chat?
No matter how much you chat during combat, it doesn't consume action points.
If that's the case…
'Can I chant spells too?'
In this game, wizards always chant when casting spells.
Just like with chat, a speech bubble containing the incantation appears above the wizard character.
That incantation message isn't something the player types by pressing Enter.
It appears automatically when the character uses magic.
But both are the same type of speech bubble.
Then maybe…
'Please.'
I twisted my wrist, adjusting the direction of the wand, and aimed it at the goblin in front of me.
[Action Points: ■□□□]
With the movement of my wrist, two more blocks of action points vanished, and only four seconds remained on the hourglass.
Three seconds.
Two seconds.
"Fireball."
The instant I spoke the incantation, new messages appeared.
[All action points have been consumed]
[Ending your turn.]
[The hourglass has been flipped again. Cooldown: 60 seconds]
KWA—AAANG!
A fireball empowered by ten points of Wisdom burst from the tip of my wand. The flames blew away not only the goblin in front of me, but Goblin Number Two behind him with the spear as well.
"KIEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAH!"
The two goblins, engulfed in flames, rolled across the ground. Their screams were like the wails belched up from hell itself.
A short while later, when their bodies finally went limp—
"Hhk…!"
Only then did the breath I'd been holding burst free. Like a dam collapsing, air poured out of my mouth in heavy gulps.
"Hhk… hhk…"
My throat stung. When Goblin Number One was blasted away by the fireball, the tip of his blade had scraped into my neck. Blood seeped from the torn skin, hot against my flesh.
'I almost died.'
Insane.
I almost died!
My entire body trembled as the fear of death—something I'd never experienced before—washed over me.
Like shivering when you pee on a freezing day. My body shook like a quaking aspen.
"Sniff… hic…"
Behind me, I heard the elf woman crying.
I didn't cry. Instead, a fresh surge of anger boiled up inside me.
'Why the hell is this happening to me?'
What crime did I commit by clearing that trash game?!
I want to burn to death—just like those goblins—whatever god, developer, or garbage cosmic law dragged an innocent person here and dumped them into this cesspool.
Was it said that in the five stages of accepting death, anger comes after denial?
If I'm being honest, from the moment I picked up a wand at the magic academy until I walked this far, I'd gone through denial plenty.
This was just a stupid nightmare. I'd wake up soon. None of this made sense.
And now it was anger's turn. Why me?!I lived a decent life! That kind of rage burned like fire.
'Calm down.'
I clenched my teeth to suppress the agitation. I have to stay calm. I have to stay rational.
I will never move on to the next stage after anger.
I will never die.
I'm a player who cleared Turn-Based Master and reached Developer difficulty. I'm a master of raising wizards in this game. There's no one who can build and develop a wizard better than me, using my own methods.
I will survive this place.
Once my head cooled a bit, a more concrete plan started to take shape.
First, the Hourglass of Turn-Based Systems.
A helpful message explaining its usage floated into view.
[The Hourglass of Turn-Based Systems can be used once every 60 seconds. To use it, flip the hourglass.]
[The Hourglass of Turn-Based Systems activates automatically in emergency situations.]
A holographic magic hourglass floated at a fixed distance, following me around.
At any time, if I could just flip it, I'd gain sixty seconds to plan my strategy.
But how do I flip it?
Not with my hands. It's invisible to others, and even I can't physically touch it.
Fortunately, the method was even simpler than using my hands.
All I had to do was decide to flip it.
Just that intent alone was enough to activate the hourglass.
'With this, I won't be in danger of dying right away.'
That said, it doesn't make me invincible forever. Once the hourglass is used, it takes 60 seconds before it can be activated again.
[The hourglass has a 60-second cooldown between activations.]
After killing the two goblins earlier, a message like 'The hourglass has been flipped again' appeared. In fact, the magical hourglass really did flip over at that moment, and the sand began flowing in the opposite direction.
Judging from that cooldown, in an actual battle I'll probably only be able to use the hourglass once or twice at most.
The remaining cooldown on the hourglass is now 17 seconds.
If possible, it would be best to let that time run out completely before moving.
Before, everyone had been panicking and standing around stupidly before getting ambushed—but from now on, we need to proceed while keeping watch in all directions.
I'll find the exit gate somehow and escape.
I will never die.
'And farming.'
The starter wands provided by the magic academy each contain a single Tier-1 spell.
Mine had Fireball. The fat guy's had Telekinesis, and the fanatic's wand contained Ice Spike.
I took their wands.
"Is there anything here you want to use?"
"No..."
There wasn't a shred of strength in the elf woman's voice.
"What spell is in your wand?"
"Lightning Shock..."
"If monsters get close, use that."
"Okay..."
From the goblin corpses, I collected two mana stones. From my fallen allies' bodies, I picked up two potatoes.
I grabbed the elf woman's hand.
"Let's go."
Honestly, I don't know how much help she'll be in a fight.
Still, better than nothing.
I was a little worried she'd completely lost it, but thankfully she was okay. After about ten minutes of walking, she regained at least a tiny bit of vitality.
Then she asked me this:
"Why are they doing this to us...?"
"Doing this?"
"I thought they bought us as slaves to make us clean or do laundry or something. Why send us into the labyrinth...?"
I know the reason.
In the game's scenario, a few years before the point where the player creates their character—
The labyrinth erupted.
Countless adventurers died as a result. The magic academy became desperately short on mages. So the academy decided to rapidly train labyrinth-exploration mages.
Their method was simple: throw large numbers of slaves into the labyrinth and raise whoever survives into a mage.
Reason one: If someone can enter the labyrinth with nothing but a wand and find the exit on their own, they can be considered exceptionally talented as a labyrinth mage.
Reason two: Slaves are extremely cheap. To the elf woman it might seem like "a lot of money," but compared to the academy's annual budget, it's pocket change.
But I didn't share any of that knowledge with her.
There's no guarantee that what I know matches this world one hundred percent.
The best way to survive in an unfamiliar world is to stay silent. Isn't it said that speech is silver, silence is gold?
So I answered her like this:
"Maybe they're just betting on which of us survives."
It was the kind of answer a defeated, ordinary human slave might give while venting frustration to a fellow slave.
When she followed up with—
"What's your name?"
—I hesitated again.
If possible, I don't want to get entangled in human relationships. Especially in a situation like this, I hate getting emotionally attached.
But at least knowing names is necessary. In an emergency, I can't exactly shout, 'Elf girl! Get down!'
"Call me Caleb."
The name I used when I created the account.
"And you?"
"Yernil."
She trotted along beside me and asked another question.
"What did you do before coming here, Caleb?"
That was an awkward question.
As far as memories go before character creation, all I have is sitting around in my underwear, scratching my thigh, and starting Developer difficulty.
"Caleb, you're pretty quiet."
When no answer came, she muttered awkwardly to herself.
"You seemed to chat quite warmly with the other people on the slave ship."
…What?
So there are people who knew me before arriving at the magic academy?
That's troubling.
If I escape this place and meet people who know things about me that I don't—how am I supposed to react?
"I lived in the fairy forest at the eastern edge, then went to the city of Flandor."
Yernil started talking about herself without being asked, and I wasn't particularly interested.
'Memory loss caused by trauma from being thrown into the labyrinth by the magic academy.'
I wondered how convincing an excuse like that would be, then shook my head.
'No—what am I even thinking?'
Escaping this place is hard enough. I don't have the luxury to worry about a future that hasn't even happened yet. Focus on the present.
"I got a job at a courier service there, delivering packages."
Her chatter beside me started to feel irritating.
"But that courier service was actually distributing drugs disguised as parcels. I had no idea! But... in the end they accused me of being a drug mule. I couldn't pay the fine, so I became a slave."
I didn't have the mental or physical bandwidth to listen to her life story.
"Yernil."
"Yes?"
"Be quiet."
I wasn't snapping at her—it was advice for the party. You never know what kind of monster might come after hearing noise.
This isn't a game anymore. This is real.
"I'm sorry..."
Seeing the light drain from her face, I realized my mistake.
She needed this—talking like this—to escape, even a little, from the shock of watching the fat man and the fanatic die.
By complaining about our shared miserable fate with me, she needed to gain even the slightest bit of comfort in this hellish situation.
She needed at least a minimum amount of positive energy to keep going in this labyrinth.
"…If you keep your voice low, it's fine. If it's too loud, monsters—"
Click.
A sound rang out beneath Yernil's foot.
[It is your turn.]
[Action Points: ■■■■]
The hourglass flipped over, and time stopped.
"Ha."
A sigh slipped out.
"Please… don't do this."
I squeezed my eyes shut in despair.
Yernil had stepped on a trap.