SSS Awakening: I Gain a Skill Every Time I Die
Chapter 83 — The Sixth Bell Again I**POV: Jace**
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My right hand was still trying to get under me.
There was no hand and no stone and no shoulder to fail, and it kept going anyway, eleven centimetres at a time, in a dark with nothing in it.
> **[Mimesis activated.]**
>
> **[Killer identified: Cian.]**
>
> **[Three concealed Ability Cards generated.]**
>
> **[Choose one.]**
Red. Silver. Black.
I took the black one and I did not look at the other two, because I have never once looked at the other two.
> **[Selection confirmed.]**
>
> **[Remaining Ability Cards destroyed.]**
>
> **[Ability copied.]**
>
> **[Antaeus — SS acquired.]**
> **[Antaeus — SS]**
>
> **[Type: Active Reinforcement Ability.]**
>
> **[While both feet remain in contact with a stable solid surface, Strength and Endurance are substantially increased.]**
>
> **[Physical fatigue recovers at an accelerated rate while the Ability remains active.]**
>
> **[The reinforcement ends immediately if both feet lose contact with the surface.]**
>
> **[Mana is consumed continuously while active.]**
I read the third line twice.
*Both feet.* Not one. Both, and on something solid, and the second either of them comes off it the whole thing stops.
That is why he never chased anybody. That is why every good thing that man did happened inside about two metres of wherever he had planted himself.
And it is why I went into him at three hundred kilos and came out of it with my own arm broken.
> **[Ability source recorded: Cian.]**
>
> **[One Ability has been copied from this source.]**
>
> **[Ability source exhausted.]**
> **[Ouroboros activated.]**
>
> **[Regression point established: Twelve hours before death.]**
>
> **[Memories, Levels, EXP, Attributes and acquired Abilities will be preserved.]**
>
> **[Physical condition and Mana will be restored.]**
>
> **[Now regressing.]**
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My hand was on a rug.
I was on the end of my own bed with my palm flat on the floor and my whole arm braced against a push that was not happening, and my back was fine, and my shoulder was fine, and nothing anywhere in me was broken.
I stayed like that for about four seconds.
The room at twenty-one degrees. Late afternoon light low across the wool. A trolley going somewhere on the floor below.
I put my tongue against the inside of my teeth and there was no blood in there at all.
Then I sat up properly and put both hands over my face and left them there for a while, and I am not going to write down anything about that part except that it happened.
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> **[ABILITIES]**
>
> **[Ouroboros — EX. Mimesis — SSS. Aten — SSS. Androphagos — A. Talaria — A. Lycaon — SS. Snare — S. Antaeus — SS.]**
Eight.
It came with me. Of course it came with me. It has come with me every single time and I still check, every single time, because the day it does not is a day I would rather find out about here than in a corridor.
> **[TOWER]**
>
> **[Minimum Level: 10.]**
>
> **[Requirement fulfilled.]**
>
> **[Tutorial: Not Attempted.]**
>
> **[Highest Floor Cleared: —]**
Not attempted.
There is a version of this where I sit on the end of that bed for an hour and think about what I am walking back into.
I did not have an hour. There are two thousand people standing on a causeway who have not been born yet in this version of the afternoon, and every minute I spend on a rug is a minute they spend nearer the end of it.
> **[Attempt Tower.]**
>
> **[Would you like to attempt the Tutorial?]**
>
> **[YES.]**
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Salt.
Wet stone under the boots, the parapet already shaking, the same man going off the wall sideways with his shield still on his arm.
I did not look at my hands this time.
The parapet in front of me went dark and I was moving before the hand came over it.
> **[Ability Activated: Aten.]**
>
> **[Mana: 240/240 → 234/240.]**
He came up out of the seawater and the bar came down and I was inside it, and I did not have to find the gap under the plate because I already knew where the gap was.
One punch. Left side, under the arm, into the seam.
The second one went into the same hole before he had finished registering the first, and he came apart around my forearm.
Four seconds. Last time it took nearly twenty and he put me into a step.
> **[Fomorian Raider — Level 12.]**
>
> **[HP: 0.]**
>
> **[Experience acquired: 60.]**
>
> **[EXP: 585/1,000 → 645/1,000.]**
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Then I turned round and ran eleven metres along the walkway to a man who was not hurt yet.
He was an officer and he was standing, and he had a bronze cylinder on a strap over his shoulder, and he was shouting a section number at somebody down the line.
There was a raider coming over the parapet behind him.
I know exactly which one, because I have seen what it did.
I hit it in the back of the knee before it had both feet on the walkway and put it over the inner edge with my shoulder, and it went down into the street and I did not watch it land.
The officer turned round with his mouth open.
"I did not—"
"There was one behind you."
"There was *nothing* behind me." He looked at the empty parapet and then at me and his face did something complicated. "You moved before it came over."
"I have very good hearing."
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He gave me the cylinder anyway, because he had to give it to somebody and I was standing there with the right stamp on my shoulder.
But he was alive, and a living man can talk.
"Seventh Bell Tower. Inner ring, top of the causeway." He was already checking the wax with his thumb out of habit. "Do not open it. If anybody asks you what is in it you do not know."
"How do I get there?"
"Sixth gate and then straight up, but the Copper Stair will be gone by the time you reach it, so take Halder."
He said it fast and he did not stop to check whether I understood. "Past the Sixth you go under, not through. Any of the tower doors. The Keepers will be moving the same way."
That is four things I did not have last time.
"Go," he said. "Now, before the—"
Then the bell rang.
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Five strikes and the whole wall stopped for one of them, and I stood there and let it happen.
I did not save the Fifth District. I saved one man on a wall.
That is the entire size of what I am able to do here, and I looked out at the fires going up over four streets of somebody’s city and understood the shape of it properly for the first time.
I can move myself. I can move whoever is within about two metres of me. I cannot move a district.
So I went.
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The Copper Stair was gone. I did not go anywhere near it.
I took Halder, which turned out to be a covered stair between two warehouses that half the people running past it did not know existed, and it put me four streets ahead of where I should have been.
And I got to the barricade before the brute came through it.
That is the part that mattered. Last time I arrived to find nine defenders dying in a street. This time there were nineteen of them and none of them were dead yet, and I stood in the line with them and pointed at the barricade.
"It comes through there. Not over. Through, and the beams go into the crowd, so get them back nine metres now."
Somebody argued.
Somebody else with more service on him did not, and moved people.
Then it came through there.
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