Volume 4 Chapter 44: Clock Eye

Besides “Combat Gunmanship,” the other bronze scroll Kathleen dropped was the “Curved Trajectory Technique” she had used. Curved Trajectory and Qin Lun’s Spiral Shooting Technique were of the same type. Learning this skill would overlap.

Qin Lun sighed. Shattered Starry Sky had already taken good care of him. Just the “Grimm Foe” mission alone dropped three Skill Scrolls, practically guiding him step by step to open up his career path. He couldn’t expect it to tailor everything for him. These three Skill Scrolls were likely the skills Kathleen and David had used in battle.

Although learning Curved Trajectory would allow Qin Lun to use Spiral Shot without entering Combat Model, he didn’t plan to use it. Spiral Shot currently required precise calculations based on Combat Model to use. However, as long as his Law Body formed muscle memory through countless uses, Qin Lun believed his self-created Spiral Shooting Technique could also gain recognition from the Shattered Laws and become a true Apostle Skill.

Putting the “C-grade Curved Trajectory Technique” back into his Storage Space, Qin Lun opened the final silver Skill Scroll. His eyes immediately lit up.

Clock Eye (B-grade Active Skill): This skill belongs to the perception category. When the Clock Eye’s pointer begins to tick, the caster’s thinking and perception will operate at several times the normal speed, achieving a virtual time-stop effect. When the Clock Eye develops a third pointer, perception will transform into intangible Time-Space Threads.

Skill Effect 1: When Clock Eye is active, the caster gains varying degrees of virtual time-stop, allowing calm contemplation during enemy attacks and formulating the best response plan.

Skill Effect 2: When Clock Eye develops a third pointer, the Time-Space Threads formed by perception can simulate some of the enemy’s offensive and defensive skills. This simulation ability is limited to the user’s own techniques and physical attributes.

Skill Effect 3: Stellar Black Hole. Information unknown. Requires skill level to reach A-grade.

Skill Effect 4: Wheel of Fate. Information unknown. Requires skill level to reach S-grade.

Skill Description: Clock Eye’s perception acceleration ability is based on the number of pointers and has a time limit. Duration is related to the caster’s Mana Value. In terms of Apostle-defined Energy Points, a single pointer consumes 20 Energy Points per second; double pointers consume 100 Energy Points per second.

Skill Description: After Clock Eye skill is upgraded to B+ grade, Time-Space Threads with three pointers can be used. Besides consuming Energy Points, it will also consume a certain amount of Apostle currency.

Looking at the Clock Eye description, Qin Lun shook his head emotionally. Joey really got lucky to escape from “Vector King” David. Either that, or David was too old to sustain high-level Clock Eye skills.

After unlocking the three small light spheres, Qin Lun no longer hesitated. He rubbed his hands together and learned both “Combat Gunmanship” and “Clock Eye.” His previous tests at the Training Ground showed that learning Skill Scrolls wouldn’t cause any accidents. For technique scrolls, it was better to train for a while to let muscle memory reach a familiar degree before learning.

As the light spots of “Combat Gunmanship” merged into his Law Body, Qin Lun slowly closed his eyes. Thirty-two combat action diagrams clearly appeared in his mind.

Since this skill came from Kathleen, the human figure in the diagrams also looked like Kathleen. Kathleen still held dual guns, dressed lightly, maintaining her appearance from when she was alive. Only now her face was dull, completely lacking the liveliness of a living person.

The thirty-two combat diagrams integrated into Qin Lun’s Law Body like symbols. Wherever his consciousness reached, he could call upon these combat diagrams, making his body follow them to perform identical combat gun techniques.

Ordinary Apostles who obtained such combat diagrams would still need some time to familiarize themselves, allowing their bodies to form muscle memory for accurate use in actual combat. Qin Lun, however, could skip this familiarization process using his Combat Model. Still, to make Combat Gunmanship more powerful and upgrade it to B+ grade, he would also need continuous training and combat.

Compared to “Combat Gunmanship,” “Clock Eye” was less troublesome. As the scroll’s light spots fully merged into his Law Body, a clock-like eye symbol appeared on Qin Lun’s “Magic Network Core.”

Qin Lun tried to activate Clock Eye with his consciousness. The scenery before his eyes immediately turned into simple black and white, as if watching a black-and-white film.

At this moment, his bright black pupils transformed into a clock shape, with a tiny pointer slowly ticking inside. Qin Lun raised his hands before his eyes. This ordinary action now gave him two completely different feelings.

In his body’s sensation, Qin Lun didn’t feel anything unusual. But in his Clock Eye, his hands’ movements were more than twice as slow as usual, as if the entire action was broken down into several slow-motion shots. If he focused his gaze, the tiny pores on the back of his hands were clearly visible, exceptionally distinct.

The Elf Bloodline naturally had good eyesight. Now, with Clock Eye added, Qin Lun even felt his eyes had become a precise telescope. If he were given a Kar98k rifle now, he was confident he could hit a target a kilometer away without a sniper scope.

After familiarizing himself with Clock Eye, Qin Lun tried using two pointers. But after just a few seconds, the clock pupils in his eyes faded. The two-pointer Clock Eye consumed too much; he could hardly sustain it. Just a few seconds left him feeling exhausted.

The two-pointer Clock Eye wasn’t fundamentally different from the one-pointer version. It just had a stronger sense of time-stop and sharper thinking. Vaguely, he also had an illusion that his gaze was turning solid. But during the process of his gaze transforming into substance, he always felt there was a thin film in front of him. It seemed only after breaking through this film could he turn his gaze into Time-Space Threads.

Qin Lun curled his lips. He knew that before Clock Eye was upgraded to B+ grade and the third pointer appeared, he probably couldn’t use Time-Space Threads and the attack-defense simulation ability.

After experiencing Clock Eye, Qin Lun had a vague sense of the simulation ability of Time-Space Threads. This simulation ability should completely dissect enemy skills through Time-Space Threads, then replicate the enemy skills based on his own understanding of skill laws and physical capabilities.

If it involved laws he couldn’t understand, he couldn’t simulate them. Also, due to Clock Eye’s accelerated thinking, he found it difficult to form concrete memories of this skill in his body. In other words, unless he continuously simulated a particular enemy skill countless times, he couldn’t turn the opponent’s skill into his own inherent skill.

From this perspective, Clock Eye’s simulation ability somewhat resembled Grant’s “Joker’s Gift.” However, “Joker’s Gift” mainly targeted melee combat skills and was ineffective against magical skills. With his Moonlit Elf bloodline, Qin Lun should also be able to simulate wind and wood elemental magic skills.

Of course, Grant’s “Joker’s Gift” could last several minutes, while Clock Eye’s simulation ability, even if Qin Lun’s Energy Points greatly increased later, probably couldn’t last that long. It only belonged to single-skill simulation and replication.

Nevertheless, Clock Eye remained a powerful auxiliary skill. With Clock Eye, Qin Lun’s Combat Model would become even more mature. If the original Combat Model could only handle a few combat actions, the current Combat Model was more like a composite mode of several smaller models.

As long as he wasn’t interrupted by enemy powerful skills, Qin Lun could even establish a reusable Combat Model, greatly expanding the combat environments it could handle. With Clock Eye’s real-time assistance, he no longer needed to collect large amounts of enemy information in advance to build a Combat Model like before.

Ending his thoughts, Qin Lun stood up satisfied. Just as he was about to leave, his body stiffened slightly. It seemed because his Law Body had adapted to the two newly integrated skills during this time, the Death Notice promptly sent several important notification messages.

“Apostle 70053, you have become a second-tier Apostle. The number of skills integrated into your Law Body has met the job requirement, triggering the Combat Career Quest and unlocking the Apostle Combat Career System.”

Qin Lun quickly immersed his consciousness into the Death Notice. He saw a combat career icon automatically appear in the Death Notice. Clicking this combat career icon revealed several career path diagrams. These path diagrams had many nodes, each node representing a combat career.

Except for the first node, all subsequent nodes on these combat career path diagrams were gray. Only the first node emitted a faint glow. When Qin Lun focused his consciousness on one of the light points, he immediately received the description of this combat career.

Jungle Hunter Career Introduction: Jungle Hunters are proficient in using various long-range and close-range weapons. They have a certain bonus effect on the attack power of daggers, swords, spears, crossbows, and firearms. This bonus effect is based on weapon skill proficiency.

Jungle Hunters are skilled in making various mechanical traps and possess some summoning abilities, but without summoning bonus effects. Jungle Hunters naturally possess high evasion, with bonus effects on Apostle movement skills and evasion skills.

Jungle Hunter Job Requirements: Requires the Apostle to possess intermediate long-range attack techniques, basic close combat techniques, and five Apostle skills related to Jungle Hunter. If having corresponding bloodline abilities, this requirement can be reduced to four Apostle skills.

Qin Lun could unlock a total of four combat careers. After reading the Jungle Hunter introduction, he turned his attention to the other unlockable combat careers. The other three combat careers were Demon Hunter, Combat Mage, and Beast Master Hunter.

Qin Lun’s eyes flickered slightly. He successively clicked open the related introductions for Demon Hunter, Combat Mage, and Beast Master Hunter, rapidly thinking about the pros and cons of the four career paths in his mind.