Volume 2 - CH 5

Cyclo barely survives and exhales.

But he has not yet escaped.

The humanoid monster will be waiting for him once he leaves the cave, and he does not know where this cave leads.

For the time being, Cyclo moves to check the end of the cave.

Since it is a small cave, he crouches down and crawls along.

After a while, he discovers that the cave is connected to the side of the cliff.

There was no place to put his feet up, and it seemed impossible to escape from there.

Giving up, Cyclo goes back. He then returned to the side he had entered to check on the situation.

Then, the human-faced monster was still waiting for Cyclo. It was still sitting in front of the cave with a straight face, not even moving.

It was obvious – it was waiting for Cyclo to come out.

“…… Damn it!!”

Cyclo angrily slams the wall.

How long will the man-faced monster stay — no matter what happened, it was certain to cost Cyclo’s valuable time.

“……If that’s the case, let’s have an endurance test.”

Staring at the human-faced monster, Cyclo muttered to himself, and then hid again in the depths of the cave.

How much time had passed?

When Cyclo checked the time on his “Clock Generation,” he found that at least three days had passed since the date before the fall.

There was a small amount of water flowing in the cave, so there was no need to worry about being dehydrated.

However, Cyclo did not have any food with him, so he did not eat at all.

As a result, Cyclo was completely emaciated from hunger.

And — the human-faced monster was still waiting at the entrance and exit of the cave.

It is still waiting for Cyclo to come out without eating.

It was an eerie monster, but Cyclo didn’t think that it was so obsessed with one prey.

Cyclo has been trapped in the cave for much longer than expected.

He was so hungry that he even considered trying to get out from the side of the cliff.

However – as he was about to step out, he saw that the cliff was slightly cracked and collapsed, and he realized once again that it was not a place that he could ever climb up or down, and gave up.

At this rate, he might starve to death without even getting out of this cave, let alone escape from the dungeon.

The sense of despair is so great — Cyclo sits down and goes so crazy that he talks to himself while laughing goofily.

“Ha ha ha, what the hell, damn it. Each and every one of them. They don’t like me that much, huh?”

He thinks back to all the other things he did, as well as to the human-faced monster, and his resentment wells up.

Beyond the anger, Cyclo could no longer help but laugh.

His fiancée did not believe him, and he was accused of being a rapist. And so he was forced to be a baggage carrier in this worst dungeon — pushed to the bottom of the valley.

When he wondered how it had happened in the first place …… Cyclo could only think that the reason was that he had acquired the useless skill of being a “Clock User”.

“…… Hmph, what Clock User. What’s the use of a clock?”

Laughing, then uses Clock Generation.

A skill he has used many times before to check the time. The clocks that appeared were smooth and familiar.

Having created a clock in this way, Cyclo plays with it, using “Clock Manipulation” and “Clock Stop” to turn back, advance, or stop the hands.

(T/N: Sorry, I changed Clock Operation to Clock Manipulation. That sounds more fitting.)

“What value could such an ability possibly have? …… I wonder what the gods were expecting when they gave me this kind of power. I wonder if they’re laughing at me for dying a dumb death?”

Cyclo’s negative imagination didn’t stop.

Eventually, he gets tired of fiddling with the clock and turns it off.

“Seriously, It doesn’t even help pass the time at all. What a useless garbage skill.”

As soon as he mutters this, Cyclo’s stomach grumbles. He is so hungry that he can’t stop his stomach from growling.

“Ha-ha-ha. If it’s called Clock User, how much better would it have been if I could have stopped my internal clock.”

Muttering something like that, Cyclo puts his hand on his stomach and uses his “Clock Stop” skill.

Of course, such an opportunistic move would never happen.

In the first place, Cyclo had also made sure of the adaptive range of his ability soon after he became a Clock User.

The result was that the scope of the Clock User’s effect was limited to clocks running on mechanical gears. It has also been confirmed that the effect does not extend to primitive designs such as hourglasses, sundials, and water clocks.

So, naturally — Cyclo thought that there was no way he could even control his own “internal clock”.

But then – at that moment – a miracle happened.

“…… What? Huh?”

Suddenly, the hunger that had been tormenting Cyclo suddenly vanished as if it were a lie.

Thanks to this, his stomach which had been grumbling all the time now showed no sign of making a sound.

Cyclo was confused because he couldn’t understand what was happening.

“W-Why ……? My internal clock has …… ‘stopped’? With my [Clock Stop]?”

Cyclo is perplexed by the change to the point where he can only think that that’s the only explanation — or that he has lost his mind.

But – eventually, he was convinced.

It has stopped. His own “Internal Clock” has been stopped by using the [Clock Stop] skill.