Grey moved, but the blue seed followed him around. His head shifted again, but it followed once more.

’Weird as fuck.’

Grey reached up slowly and poked it.

What was the worst that could happen?

Well, he could die, and then be sent back through that loop again. But at this point, he was pretty confident he could win, and was also pretty confident that he could win even faster.

The only shame was that his Cyber Cores were running low. But one problem at a time. As far as he was concerned, this was his top priority right now.

He hadn’t gotten any stats for killing fellow participants, and what treasures he got from them would probably just be left to what was actually on their person. He could only imagine that whatever was floating above his head now was exactly such a thing.

What he didn’t expect was for the moment he touched the seed to trigger a sudden radiance that sucked it right into his body.

Grey pulled his finger back subconsciously, but the pain he was expecting didn’t actually come. Instead, he felt the lightning flood into his Neural Frame, flashing arcs of its blue radiance sparking in his eyes as though an entirely new circuit was playing out in real time within it.

And then the world grew brighter, sharper, more radiant in detail.

Silence fell soon afterward and Grey’s hair, that had stood on end for a moment, slowly fell.

Grey stood around for a moment, waiting for the other shoe to fall. But...

Nothing.

He didn’t feel any different. He held out his hand to spark up some lightning and smite something, but to his chagrin, no bolts extended out from his fingertips.

Grey pursed his lips, a hint of annoyance playing on his features.

"Forget it, let me loot these sons of bitches."

Grey hadn’t even bothered to learn their names. Actually, he didn’t even know what Races they came from either. But he also didn’t actually give a damn.

He was sure that some trouble would come from all this, but that was tomorrow Grey’s problem—hopefully. Knowing his luck, he’d get steamrolled by a fourth enemy any moment now.

Grey took a step and then froze.

He paused for a long while, frowning. He looked around, and then back at his hands again.

’Hm?’

He turned his hand over, then he pulled at his collar and took a peek inside. He even pulled on what was left of his torn up cargo pants and checked in there too.

Everything was in order, but it just felt...

Grey tapped on the Helm Frame. "Are you feeling this?"

A pulse came from Prometheus.

"Hm... interesting..."

Grey had thought that nothing had changed, but he was wrong.

His Neural Frame... it was firing far faster than before. He hadn’t noticed initially because he was actually quite used to his Neural Frame firing quite fast.

The usual problem with having a Neural Frame as deep and complex as his own was the difficulty in sending signals from point A to point B. The good news was that when you were naturally born with such a Neural Frame, you often likewise came with the talent to utilize it properly as well—which in turn meant your firing rate was exceptional.

However, as fast as Grey’s was before, it was tens of times faster now.

"Holy shit." Grey realized then it wasn’t just that his Neural Frame was firing faster, but he was literally thinking faster by a substantial margin. "What just—."

—

STR: 538 (+100%) SPD: 568 (+100%)

DEX: 520 (+100%) INT: 586 (+100%)

END: 588 (+100%) PER: 510 (+100%)

—

Grey’s lip twitched. His INT and PER had definitely not had those multipliers before. What’d he miss here exactly? Was it that seed?

’Well I’ll be damned. About time I had some good luck.’

Grey couldn’t help but laugh. He couldn’t lie, he could be OCD about the stupidest things sometimes, and the fact his INT and PER were falling so far behind his physical stats was triggering him a little bit. But this fixed everything.

"At least something good came out of all this."

Grey didn’t realize just how right he was until he went through all three corpses—or rather two corpses and one set of remains—and found absolutely nothing.

No lingering inventory, no spatial devices, no treasures.

The best thing he got was the Syrn’s scythe, only to realize it was a temporary item that literally disappeared in his hand.

"You can’t be fucking serious..." Grey said aloud as the scythe dissipated in his palms.

Grey didn’t need to think much to understand what was going on. Even if he hadn’t had the sudden boost to his thinking speed.

These three were pathetic bottom feeders.

Even if Zone 234 was spoken aloud for all to hear, the real top players were too busy optimizing their clears to bother coming even if they were close enough.

Much the same way Zone 234 had a ton of participants who hadn’t managed to gather anything, this Syrn, Dormaji, and Volthari were presumably competing against others of their Race as well.

If that was the case, the fact they couldn’t claim any treasures for themselves made perfect sense.

The scythe was peculiar, though. It was a very good item, though temporary. Had the Syrn just been lucky to get it on the way here? Or was there some other reason?

What Grey didn’t know was that the other reason most wouldn’t choose to simply come here was because they couldn’t interact with Instances and various opportunities the same way outside of their Zone unless they organically enlarged the range of the story they had access to by completing Chapters and arcs.

That was to say that the only items these three could even get here were the ones they stole from people who already had them.

Meaning, it was simply impossible for the Syrn to have gotten the item on the way here.

Someone had given it to the Syrn specifically for this matter.

Grey punted the Syrn’s head away. "Useless pieces of shit. Go pick on someone your own size beyond the grave. Clearly, my balls are too big and steamy for your ass."

Those words had been meant for himself, but when Grey turned around he found an unwelcome group of people awkwardly approaching.