MY SYSTEM LOADS 10 SECONDS LATE

CHAPTER 3: Ten Seconds to Rewrite a Massacre

Eight seconds.

That was the exact amount of time Jaxen had before the ceiling imploded and a Level 120 Abyssal Boss turned everyone in this room into a crimson smear.

The knight's fingers were inches away from the iron latch of the chest. The rest of the Iron Vanguard stood by, relaxed, their guards completely dropped as they tasted a victory that didn't exist.

"Step back from the chest right now!" Jaxen roared. His voice cutting through the quiet chamber was so sharp, so utterly demanding, that the greedy knight instinctively froze, his hand hovering a mere centimeter above the metal.

"Vance, what the hell is your problem?" the knight snapped, turning around with an annoyed scowl. "I told you to shut your—"

"Lana, look at the ceiling arches!" Jaxen interrupted, completely bypassing the knight to lock eyes with the Vice-Captain. He didn't have time for a polite debate. "The runic resonance isn't coming from the chest. It's a localized gravity anchor. Something massive is dropping from directly above us in exactly four seconds!"

Lana's eyes widened. She didn't trust an E-Rank scout, but she *did* trust magic. Jaxen's words were so hyper-specific that her survival instincts overrode her arrogance. She cast her gaze upward, her mana sensing skills flaring.

"The structural mana... it's collapsing!" she gasped, her face draining of color. "Fall back! Defensive formations now!"

"Two seconds!" Jaxen yelled, already sprinting backward toward the narrow entryway they had just come through. He didn't care if they formed a defense; he knew firsthand that a B-Rank barrier was nothing but tissue paper against an Abyssal Boss.

"One!"

*BOOM!*

The colosseum ceiling shattered into a rain of boulder-sized debris. A monstrous, multi-legged nightmare slammed into the stone floor, exactly where the treasure chest had been. The shockwave was just as violent as Jaxen remembered, kicking up a blinding tempest of dust and sharp rock fragments.

Because of Jaxen's countdown, the Vanguard hadn't been caught completely off guard. The greedy knight had leaped backward, narrowly avoiding being crushed to death, though the wind forced him onto his back.

"What is that thing?!"

"Systems! Check its status!"

As the dust cleared, the blood-red letters illuminated the dark chamber: **[Calamity Beast: The Crypt Weaver - Level 120]**.

"Abyssal Boss..." Lana whispered, her hands shaking as she held her magic staff. "This is a wipe. We can't fight this. Retre—"

The Crypt Weaver snapped its massive, razor-sharp mandibles. Jaxen's eyes locked onto the creature's throat. *It's coming,* he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. *The sonic wind.*

"Get down!" Jaxen slammed his hand into the back of Lana's robes, forcing the Vice-Captain flat against the stone floor just as he threw himself down beside her.

*SWISH!*

An invisible blade of compressed air sliced horizontally across the room. The three Vanguard knights who had stood their ground to form a shield wall didn't even have time to scream. The sonic wind sheared through their steel armor, their shields, and their torsos, spraying the stone walls with a gruesome arc of blood.

Lana looked up from the floor, staring at the headless bodies of her elite frontline vanguard. If Jaxen hadn't tackled her, her head would be rolling across the stone right next to theirs.

"How..." She looked at Jaxen, her eyes filled with a mixture of profound horror and awe. "How did you know the exact height of the attack?"

Jaxen didn't answer. He was staring at the Crypt Weaver, his mind racing at a million miles per hour. The beast was currently locked in a brief, three-second recovery animation after unleashing its signature skill.

Through his memory of his own death, Jaxen knew something the Vanguard didn't: the monster's initial aggro path always targeted the highest concentration of mana. Right now, that was Lana.

"If you want to live, cancel your active mana channeling and run toward the left pillar!" Jaxen commanded, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Now!"

Lana, completely stripped of her usual B-Rank authority, nodded blindly. She suppressed her magical aura, scrambling behind a massive fallen stone pillar to the left.

Sure enough, the Crypt Weaver blindly lunged toward the spot where Lana had just been standing, its massive bone-plated legs puncturing the stone floor like hot knives through butter.

Jaxen slid behind a crumbling altar, his eyes darting to the invisible golden text hovering in his peripheral vision.

```

[System Notification: Your actions have drastically altered the local timeline.]

[Fate Deviation Rate: 1.45%]

[Data collected. Chaos factor increasing.]

```

*Only 1.45%?* Jaxen grimaced. *I saved the Vice-Captain and altered the deaths of three knights, and it barely moved. To get real power out of this System, I need to do something impossible.*

He looked across the room. Garret, the crippled Captain, was staggering near the exit, his leg still purple from the trap's poison. The remaining four members of the Vanguard were in a full panic, fleeing toward the narrow corridor.

But the Crypt Weaver was fast. It realized its prey had hidden, and its eight crimson eyes began to shift toward the fleeing group at the exit. In two seconds, it would leap and massacre the survivors.

Unless someone changed the timeline again.

Jaxen gripped his cheap, E-Rank iron daggers. A reckless, brilliant, and utterly insane plan formed in his mind.

"Hey, ugly!" Jaxen shouted, stepping out from behind the altar into the open.

He didn't just yell. He pulled a low-grade mana potion from his pouch, smashed it against his own daggers, and let the raw, volatile fluid coat his weapons. To a Level 120 monster that hunted mana signatures, he suddenly lit up like a neon sign in a dark room.

The Crypt Weaver's massive head snapped toward Jaxen.

"Vance, what are you doing?!" Lana screamed from behind her pillar. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

"I'm resetting the clock," Jaxen muttered under his breath.

The Abyssal Boss lunged. It moved like a streak of black lightning, a massive, razor-sharp front leg thrusting straight toward Jaxen's skull with enough force to obliterate a building.

Jaxen didn't even try to dodge. He stood perfectly still, watching the blade of bone approach his eyes.

*One second.* He memorized the exact angle of the creature's lunging posture.

*Half a second.* He noted the exposed, unarmored soft tissue right beneath its secondary left eye.

*SQUELCH.*

The leg impaled Jaxen directly through the throat, pinning him to the stone altar.

```

[ALERT: Fatal damage detected.]

[Status: Dead.]

[ACTIVATING TALENT: 'Hindsight Bias'...]

```

*Whoosh!*

The vacuum of time ripped him backward once more.

Jaxen blinked. He was back behind the altar. Lana was hiding to his left. The Crypt Weaver was just turning its head toward the fleeing vanguard at the exit, its muscles tensing for a leap.

This time, Jaxen didn't scream. He didn't break a mana potion.

Before the beast could even begin its lunging motion toward the exit, Jaxen was already sprinting forward, his daggers reverse-gripped. He knew exactly where the monster's head was going to be in two seconds. He knew exactly where the unarmored blind spot under its secondary left eye was.

To Lana, who was watching from the shadows, it looked like Jaxen Vance had suddenly vanished, moving with a terrifying, prophetic anticipation that defied the laws of the S

ystem.

Jaxen leaped into the air, completely clearing a shattered boulder, aiming his daggers straight at the empty space above.

A millisecond later, the Crypt Weaver lunged forward—placing its soft, unarmored eye socket precisely onto the tips of Jaxen's descending blades.