First, rather than deciding what to do next, I focused on figuring out what we could do right now. Yōji and I decided to share what we currently knew about time magic and conduct further tests.

The biggest reason I confided in Yōji was to discuss Time Leap.

So, for starters, we decided to test it in a place where no one would see us, with Yōji keeping watch over me for the shortest possible duration—a single 20-minute leap.

After using Time Leap to jump 20 minutes ahead, I returned to this world. The sensation was like briefly nodding off and then waking up. Getting lots of sleep… no, wait—if using Time Leap restores MP, then it might be closer to a degraded form of sleep.

“So, how was it?”

“Yeah, just as you predicted. Since you warned me beforehand, I managed to wait the full 20 minutes, but honestly, the thought of you not coming back was terrifying. I could’ve easily mistaken you for being in rigor mortis.”

“Ahh, figured as much.”

“Probably feels the same as other objects frozen during your ‘Time, halt’ spell, right? Time stops, so any movement or deformation doesn’t register. It might be treated the same as time stopping. The upside is the MP recovery, though.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. But honestly, considering the risk of exposure, the payoff doesn’t seem worth it. Unless leveling up changes things.”

“Huh? Hideaki, what do you mean by ‘level’?”

“Ah, right. So, it seems like each spell—or skill?—has its own EXP and level. Actually, recently… oh yeah, remember that day I was late? That day, my ‘Time, halt’ leveled up to 1, increasing the duration from 1 second to 2 and reducing the cooldown from 10 minutes to 9.”

“Wait, what kind of hype-inducing mechanic is that? If it keeps going, at level 10, the cooldown would disappear entirely!”

“Only if the pattern holds. And who knows how high the level cap even is?”

“True. Plus, we don’t know if the cooldown reduction is a flat -1 minute per level or something like a 10% decrease. If it’s the latter, by level 10, you’d have ~10 seconds of stopped time with a ~3.5-minute cooldown. That’d be a huge power boost, but… even at level 10, the effect duration would still be kinda short, wouldn’t it?”

Yeah, this guy’s definitely got a science brain. And he’s way too into this. Not that I mind.

“Maybe.”

“Well, we can worry about that once we hit the next level. So, EXP exists, right? Close to level 2 yet?”

“Hmm, hold on. Pretty sure you can’t see it, but I’ll pull up my status screen.”

“Whoa, whoa, ‘status screen’? What the hell?”

“Yeah, that was something I planned to bring up later, but… okay, it’s right here. You can’t see it, right?”

I pointed to where the status window was floating, but of course, Yōji couldn’t see it. He even waved his hand through the space, but there didn’t seem to be any mechanic that’d make it visible to him.

“Alright, moving on. ‘Time, halt’ is level 1 with 124/1000 EXP. Looks like each use gives +1 EXP. Since I can use it about 14 times a day, at this rate, it’d take a little over two months to level up.”

“I wanna hit level 2 fast to see how the scaling works. Even if 2 seconds becomes 3, it’s not that big a difference. Anything else?”

“Right, Time Leap is level 0 at 12/1000. If I can use this efficiently, the MP recovery would let me use ‘Time, halt’ more. Ideally, I’d use it at night, but after that test, it seems too risky. After seeing how Mom freaked out last time, I don’t wanna put her through that again.”

“Yeah, fair. I can easily picture your mom breaking down. If you do use it, it’d have to be when I’m around and… I dunno, when your parents are away on a trip or something.”

“Like that’ll ever happen.”

“Hmm. Might not get a good chance to level Time Leap until you’re living alone in college or something.”

“Even then, at 1 MP per 100 minutes, dedicating all my sleep time to it would be inefficient. Even sleeping 10 hours (600 minutes) would only recover 6 MP. Hideaki, you said a full night’s sleep restores you completely, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s just too clunky at level 0. If level 1 boosts recovery from 1% to 2%, it might become somewhat usable. In that case, we should focus more on grinding EXP than MP recovery.”

“Still, even if I did one 20-minute leap every single day without fail, it’d take nearly three years. Ugh. Oh, right—dunno if it matters, but we should test whether Time Leap reduces ‘Time, halt’s cooldown if used during the wait period.”

“Would that even matter?”

“Eh, probably not, but might as well check? Honestly, I’m just curious.”

Right. This was so like Yōji.

Then again, as a research partner, that made him kinda reliable.

“Got it. Alright, 20 minutes from now. Here goes—‘Time, halt!’ …and Time Leap. Zzz.”

……

“Mornin’. 20-minute naps aren’t the most refreshing. …Huh. Cooldown wasn’t consumed. Still at 8.5 minutes left.”

“So, you really do just jump through time without the cooldown ticking down. Meaning even if recovery gets way better in the future, we’d still have to be careful about that.”

“If that future ever comes.”

When I was researching alone, it was fun at first but eventually turned into a chore.

Now, though, goofing off with Yōji like this is way too fun. Let’s keep this momentum going!