《Ages of Learning》 Chapter 1; Teleportation or Time Travel? ¡°It¡¯s ready.¡± A professional looking person wearing a lab coat over shorts said to Paige¡¯s Art History tutor, around the corner near where an intern is holding open the fire exit on the side of the science building, leading her tutor quickly into the building. Paige with nothing else to do for the next two hours was curious, knowing that those fire doors can only be opened from the inside, she went through the front door of the building. Going down half a floor, finding a hallway that led to several student laboratories, hearing her tutor and those other people walking down the hallway around the corner. Following them, Paige walked on through, missing the RESTRICTED ACCESS sign on the open double doors. Getting closer to a lab at the end of the hall, Paige started hearing what sounded like someone outlining an experiment. Hopefully they won¡¯t mind a spectator, probably not this is a university after all and it doesn¡¯t sound like a class, and most importantly, it sounds interesting. ¡°¡­-eleport skill in a clone, as a skill that allows faster than light travel, rapid applications may allow time travel into the past.¡± Feeling her phone buzz, Paige stopped outside the lab to check her messages. Looking at the large number of notifications she¡¯s somehow missed she starts going through them. ¡°How do you plan to provide it the mana necessary to do this, doesn¡¯t providing mana greater than 2% of their maximum pool per second cause debilitating pain in the subject? And 10% per second would start damaging them? How big is the subject¡¯s mana pool that they can perform rapid teleports, which is one of the most mana-intensive skills currently recorded.¡± Someone who Paige suspected was her Art History System course tutor asked, trying to poke holes. ¡°The cloned subject for this experiment was engineered specifically for this purpose, it is not alive technically speaking, we¡¯re controlling it through mentalist derived mana-injections and implanted electrodes to trigger its one and only skill, teleport.¡± Paige glanced up at that, to only have one skill how did they manage that on a cloned subject? If they cloned it from a person with the teleport skill they must¡¯ve at minimum have had the mana manipulation skill as well, right? Paige supposes it¡¯s possible that they combined skills in a precise and lucky combination to get the theoretical tier 7 skill Teleport, but she¡¯s never heard of that combination before and to not have any other skills, that sounds restrictive and cruel, there¡¯s skills for nearly everything after all. Scowling now, Paige knows if that¡¯s true that means that these people must be keeping skill combination information private, there was an international policy of open information regarding skills combination and knowledge to gain them. If these people are caught keeping skill info secret, Paige is going to have to move to another university, maybe another state if this matter gets escalated. Teleport specifically is a heavily pursued skill as well, and as far as the world at large and previously Paige knew, there were no humans with the skill. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. They continued inside the room ¡°An average subjects entire mana-pool would allow maybe 80 teleports, this subject was cloned from a sample that was suspected to have an extremely high teleport skill level as well so it can teleport between extremely far distances without the mana cost increasing, approximately allowing to teleport two and a half million metres away. We are going to be connecting it to the mana node beneath the mana stream beneath the university providing approximately 185% of its maximum pool of many per second, the subject won¡¯t last long under these conditions, but they are necessary for the experiment.¡± Paying full attention to his words, Paige recognises the value of this experiment, if it succeeds or fails, it will still provide the answers to multiple questions physicists have about possible theories of causality and gravity. If the lab coat and shorts wearing guy conducting the experiment¡¯s approximations are correct it would allow the subject to teleport approximately 90 x 185% = 148 times a second allowing for a total distance travelled per second to be 148 x 2,500,000 = 370,000,000m/s, which is faster than the speed of light, potentially allowing for backwards time travel. Time. Travel¡­ Maybe. Having finished reading the texts from her family curious when she¡¯s returning home and some emails, Paige decides a response can wait and walks into the room finally seeing how they managed to get a cloned subject to only have the teleport skill. It seems Paige might not have to worry about changing Uni after all, what she thinks is the subject of this experiment in the middle of the room wasn¡¯t a human or human analogue creature after all, it looked more like a plant than anything else. How it has the teleport skill and nothing else is still interesting, but as the method probably doesn¡¯t include skill combination or acquisition information for people, it probably won¡¯t violate the information sharing policy. Looking up and seeing everyone facing the shorts wearing scientist with him focused on his monitor Paige started walking up to them, waving ¡°H- ¡°. ¡°This is just a test to see if its possible, we¡¯ll conduct further tests depending on the results of this one, after we check if it can be repeated. Without further ado, lets begin.¡± The shorts and scientist coat wearing person who seems to be the one conducting the experiment interrupted, nobody hearing Paige¡¯s aborted attempt to gain their attention. He typed something in quickly and pressed a button, and everyone turned to face the about-to-be teleporting plant, finally noticing their extra guess. ¡°Uh, Hi, I hope yo-¡° Paige was interrupted when her tutor rushed up to her poking her backwards. ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing here; this is a restricted area!¡± Paige¡¯s tutor, that she¡¯s really regretting not looking up the name of in the course information, but hey, it¡¯s not Paige¡¯s fault that the tutor didn¡¯t introduce herself in her tutorial before. Continuing to be poked back, Paige tripped backwards after a stronger poke, this lady must have significantly higher strength stats than her, causing Paige to trip backwards into the about to be teleporting mass of brambles. ¡°Sorry, I didn¡¯t know.¡± were Paige¡¯s last words for a long, long time. Chapter 2; Ages Pass Constant flashes pass through Paige¡¯s eyes. Rapidly switching from a white and cr¨¨me ceiling, and then a white ceiling and the sky. Until sometimes she thinks she sees scenes of the night sun and the blue clouds. They¡¯re changing so fast that they are getting mixed together, faster than she can count. How long has this been going on? Closing her eyes doesn¡¯t help, the constantly shifting night and day penetrating her eyelids, until finally, it stops. Still blinking, Paige slowly recovered from the rapid flashing that has gone on for far too long, still holding onto a few vines for dear life. Before it started falling apart under her, causing her to flop backwards onto her back. Blinking away the last few dots, she stayed laying back just looking up into the sky. The sky? Did she get caught up with the subject¡¯s teleports? Did she not teleport back to the same spot afterwards? How did they intend to determine if the subject successfully time travelled if it just teleported somewhere else and didn¡¯t return to the lab? Then again, Paige supposed, if the subject were to teleport back to the spot in the lab there was also the question that if the subject did time travel and did it through rapid teleportation between the spot it was in and somewhere else, how would it avoid superimposing itself over itself. That was a lot of questions, usually she was more composed than this, and only asked questions in the back of her mind. Actually¡­ Moving her hand up, Paige had to blink twice about how rapid she moved her hand. Waving her hands around and seeing them move much faster to her eyes than she was used to, in fact, her whole body felt more alert than she was used to. Sitting up and almost falling forward, Paige stopped. What was going on, why was her body so much faster, and why did she have so many questions in the forefront of her mind without any answers, her mind felt so slow. Paige did what has been ingrained into her since she was born, what she had gotten out of the bad habit of doing too often that many people have and opened her status page. ¡­ Paige once did consider doing a Systemology bachelor¡¯s degree, but the world understood and still understands so little about the system still, that she¡¯d rather spend 4ish years studying something that would actually let her something new and interesting. She¡¯s regretting that now, because maybe if she did that degree, she would have some semblance of understanding about why her status is not appearing in her mind right now. What. This is a new feeling for Paige, an intense curiosity about how this is happening, glee about finding something that as far as she was aware had never happened before, and not a small amount of terror. Considering the lack of the systems presence, which Paige is still trying to conjure every second by thinking of opening her status, her body and minds response is starting to make sense. It¡¯s not that her body is extremely fast, in fact looking up slowly in order to not give herself whiplash and seeing the trees blow with the wind, she realises that her mind and her perception of the world is just the slowest it¡¯s been in a long, long time. Her body isn¡¯t extremely fast, actually, its slower than normal. It''s just that the speed at which she¡¯s used to controlling her body, and her speed of her body¡¯s response is at a level she¡¯s not experienced since she was a child. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. This is how the world looks without system augmentations, without her vast number of skills and high intelligence. It was. So slow. Refocusing on the crux of the problem, she sorts through her memories for an answer. The popular consensus about the system was that it utilises a not yet defined energy that¡¯s been colloquially termed ¡®Mana¡¯ in English and acts like some kind of nanotech that only seen in fiction, adding phantasmal structures in people¡¯s bodies in correlation to the modification of stats and skills. However, the barest of capabilities to measure mana were just invented last year, and there¡¯s no physical evidence of any nanomachine device in play other than the effects the system has on people¡¯s bodies, so it¡¯s still very much just a theory. While struggling to remember more, a problem she¡¯s not experienced this much difficulty in in years, and considering the facts, her constant need to open her status finally returns a result, but not one she likes. Paige Penelope Turner LLl: >< Cla}es: # po(3¡¯ a#I>?:¡±{} ¡°R%its: &o&¡¯ I*#Jf: &o&¡¯ O/..[: &o&¡¯ Paige¡¯s status appeared, with everything other than her name written in the system language, who¡¯s new syntax and words Paige and everyone else in the world has made sure to keep on top of. But still, for some reason she¡¯s having some trouble and has to think again to remember what they mean, only immediately recognising her name. And also immediately noticing it is far emptier than it should be. Translating the words one by one to what they meant in her memory, that¡¯s life level, a number she¡¯ll come back to, class, option available with a number which means 1, which doesn¡¯t bode well, age, a bigger number she doesn¡¯t recognise, traits, stats, skills, and a word next to them both she thinks she recognises but can¡¯t really remember. SU(0em ¡°{:age skill *(¡°. That was a skill prompt. That¡¯s not promising. SU(0em Language skill has reached ^I. Theres only one thing she¡¯s actively focusing on right now. But she already has that skill at a high enough level it¡¯s not increased in months. That¡¯s not stopping it from rapidly levelling right now though. System Language skill has reached lvl#. ¡­ System Language skill has reached lvl9. System Language skill has reached lvl10. The skill¡¯s levelling slowed down when it reached lvl10. Paige considers this, and looks at her status again, internally knowing what it will say already. Paige Penelope Turner Life Level: 0 Classes: 1 choice available Age: ->?:93 Traits: None Stats: None Skills: Tier 1; System Language lvl8 What. What is going on? Where are her skills! Her hundreds of skills, thousands of skill levels, her trait, and class as well! Did her system not working earlier somehow reset it somehow? How? What? Why? One thing popped out to her then. The biggest number remaining on her status page. A huge number that was only sort of familiar, that she only managed to make out after remembering descriptions of what some higher life levels some people had looked like in the system language. Age: -1693 She knew already that she fell into the experiment and was caught in the subject¡¯s teleports after being poked into falling by her tutor. But their experiment was apparently actually a success! Did they actually manage to create a method of backwards time travel? Well there is the proof right there! That¡¯s world-changing! The theories this discovery answers, and the more questions it¡¯ll inspire! Paige was distracted by the possibilities for a moment, before looking at the number again and realising. -1693 She¡¯s¡­ never going to see her family again.