46. The Other Side

Chapter 046
The Other Side

“I’m ready,” Zorian said. “You can start casting whenever you want.”

Estin, his current practice partner, gave him a solemn nod and started launching magic missiles at him in quick succession. Zorian calmly intercepted them all with his shield, dividing his attention between watching the way Estin was casting the spell so he could help him improve it afterwards and trying to work out the absolute minimum shield strength he could get away with to safely tank the attacks. A bad idea usually – if this had been a real spar, like the ones he had been having with Taiven recently, being as cheap as possible with his counters would be a recipe for disaster. But well, his practice group had pretty much given up on those when he was involved. He was too good and didn’t know how to hold back properly, so these days he mostly served as a living target and dispenser of advice.

Not that this made him useless to the group, far from it, but it did mean he had to get creative to get some personal benefit from attending these practice sessions.

After fourteen magic missiles, Estin stopped casting and they switched positions, with Estin defending himself and Zorian attacking. The former Ibasan was the only person in the training group who could really tank one of his magic missiles at maximum power, so there was no need for Zorian to hold back. The floating earth spheres Estin used as shields were far more resilient than he initially gave them credit for, soaking up his magic missiles with ease. No matter what he tried, he could not even shatter one, much less punch through them. It was an interesting challenge.

He had largely reached a plateau in terms of magic missile strength. Like all spells, magic missile had a limited amount of mana it could be supercharged with, and Zorian was at the point where he simply couldn’t cram in more mana without hopelessly destabilizing the spell boundary. That was a shame, as magic missile was his most energy-efficient combat spell, thanks to the amount of practice he put into it. In fact, the spell was so mana-efficient at this point that it was playing merry hell with his ability to judge how far his mana reserves had grown. He could cast about 35 of them in quick succession, which was more than four times the amount he could cast before the time loop – that shouldn’t be possible, especially since he was sure his mana reserves still hadn’t topped out yet, so the most logical conclusion was that his magic missiles required significantly less mana now than they had in the past. The magnitude system probably wasn’t designed with people like him in mind. He doubted a lot of people practiced magic missile as doggedly as he did.

And yet, for all the refinement his magic missile now had, he knew from Kyron that he still hadn’t reached the pinnacle of the spell. A properly executed magic missile would be totally invisible. Which his magic missiles weren’t.

He had an idea about that, though.

No one in the practice group other than Estin could reliably tank one of his magic missiles without their shields giving way. Even his normal missiles often proved too much for them, never mind if he really powered them up. As a consequence, he had been forced to learn how to adjust his attacks downwards to something they could deal with. He quickly found that trying to purposely weaken his missiles was pretty hard. Strategically sabotaging the spell boundary to make the spell less mana efficient was inelegant and offended his professional pride, but trying to make magic missile technically perfect yet functionally weaker was not as easy as it appeared at first glance. His reflexes, honed over the years spent in the time loop, and even the very construction of the spell itself naturally tended towards a certain optimum effect. Going against it was a constant struggle.

Still, he had gotten the hang of the ability to dial down the missile’s power after a few days, and had discovered that when he dialed the power low enough, he could get the shine and opacity to drop like a stone. At the very lowest point, he could produce missiles that were nothing but a faint warp in the air – and sadly, about as effective on anything they hit. Still, practicing the spell at these lower power levels made it easier to see the faults and imperfections he made in the spell boundary, and fixing those immediately led to a small but noticeable increase in his mana efficiency when casting his normal version of magic missile.

He had a feeling this was the secret to effectively developing proper invisible force spells – don’t start by making normal versions invisible, instead reduce the power and work on making a weaker version more technically perfect and mana efficient. Then steadily work your way up until you end up with a flawlessly executed, fully-powered version.

None of the books he’d found actually outlined this method as a possible training regimen, instead suggesting endless repetition of the spell as a method, but Zorian felt his idea had merit. He had little to lose by trying it, since the officially suggested training method consisted of mindlessly practicing the normal version for years and even decades at a time. Yes, he was stuck in a time loop, but there had to be a better method than that.

After he’d failed to get through Estin’s earth defense, he called for a brief pause to let everyone replenish their mana reserves. He personally didn’t need the break – he was purposely using only a small fraction of his reserves during these practice sessions, and he had already honed his ability to assimilate ambient mana as far as it could go, so it generally took him only a few minutes to go back to his top form. The others needed to catch their breath, however, and he had to be mindful of that.

If nothing else, he was learning the limitations of people around his age. He had honestly forgotten what it was like to be on their level, and had trouble judging what people his age found challenging or even downright impossible. Hopefully this experience would make him better equipped to pretend he was a normal student in the future, or at least more aware of what would attract people’s attention and to what extent.

The break was eventually interrupted when Edwin marched into the gathering, the latest golem they’d made following after him.

“Hey Edwin,” Naim greeted. “What brings you here? Finally decided to join us?”

“Ha, no. No, I’m here because of this,” he said, grasping the little golem by its shoulders and proudly pushing it forwards so the group could take a look at it.

The construct was pretty impressive, even if Zorian was a little biased in thinking that. Being little less than a meter tall, the golem did not look particularly intimidating, but he doubted anyone would mistake it for a harmless toy. Its slender, humanoid figure was made out of alchemically-treated steel and powered by a comparatively massive crystalized mana battery that supplied it with plenty of power. Its movements were smooth and natural, and despite Edwin’s rough handling, it never lost its balance like Zorian’s previous golems would have. The golem looked and moved like a credible little helper and last ditch defender/distraction.

They did a good job of making it, Zorian felt. Enlisting Edwin to help with his golem making had definitely been the right decision.

“Neat,” Naim shrugged. “That’s what you and Zorian have been working on all this time, isn’t it? What about it?”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. The last time they met, he left the golem with Edwin so the other boy could run a bunch of tests to see if it worked properly. Did Edwin find some critical flaw in the construct or did he just come to brag about their success? “Is there something wrong with it?”

“It?” Edwin asked with faux outrage. “His name is Chelik, and he’s absolutely perfect! I mean, just look at him! Everyone, meet Chelik. Chelik, say hi to the nice folks gathered here.”

The golem quietly gave a brief wave before letting its metallic hand unceremoniously drop again.

Yeah, apparently Edwin just wanted to brag. Zorian caught Estin and Kopriva rolling their eyes at the spectacle, while Briam and Raynie seemed honestly impressed by the little golem. Naim just continued smiling serenely, and Zorian couldn’t tell whether Naim was honestly happy for his friend or just humoring the guy.

“Unfortunately, there was one part of him that I just couldn’t test properly,” Edwin said. “We warded this little beauty with every defensive ward we could manage. Well, Zorian did, I just kind of watched and took notes. But never mind that, the point is that Chelik here should be able to shrug off a lot of damage and disruptive spells and…”

“You want us to try and damage it,” Estin surmised.

“Yes,” Edwin agreed with a grin. “I’ll just move aside and then you can all just attack it together.”

“All of us?” Raynie asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Edwin nodded. “He’s really tough, so don’t worry about overkill. I don’t think any of you can really do anything to it individually.”

Estin frowned, clearly taking that as a challenge, before putting one of his palms on the ground in front of him. For a second, nothing happened. And then, without any warning, the ground beneath Chelik opened up like a set of earthen jaws and pulled it into the resulting hole before snapping shut. The poor golem was left with most of its body trapped under the soil, with only its head sticking free.

Edwin stared at the buried golem for a second before glancing uncertainly towards Estin. The other boy inclined his head to the side, smiling faintly, clearly very pleased with himself.

“Okay. Claim disproven,” Edwin chuckled awkwardly. “Could you please unbury him so we can move onto further testing?”

Eventually, they did try to bring down the little golem with a collective magic missile barrage and predictably failed. Even Zorian’s missiles did not damage Chelik in any way, though hitting the limbs and head could imbalance it and knock it to the ground. Estin tried to hammer it into scrap with one of his earth spheres, but only succeeded in knocking it to the ground and rendering it immobile so long as the sphere was pressing down on it. Kopriva chucked a vial of alchemical acid at it, but this didn’t work either. Finally, Briam went ahead and summoned his familiar and had the juvenile fire drake breathe fire at the golem for a while. That at least had some effect, in the sense that the golem ended up visibly heating up as a result. The fire wards weren’t able to deal with sustained fire magic, it seemed. Edwin terminated the testing at this point, not wanting to see Chelik actually destroyed.

A satisfactory result, all things considered. The vulnerability to being buried and otherwise restrained was a large and obvious weakness, though, and Zorian was already considering what he could do to overcome it when making golems in the future.

The end of Edwin’s golem test ultimately also signaled the end of the current practice session as well, and most people excused themselves and left afterwards. The summer festival was only a few days away, so this was basically the last training session he would have with the practice group. That fact left him strangely sad – he had originally resented the loss of free time that came with the meetings, but the classmates he taught had ended up growing on him a little. It was nice to have someone actually respect his skills and achievements for a change, instead of constantly reminding him about how inadequate he was and how far he still had to go.

He turned towards Raynie, the last person to remain at the training ground with him. She didn’t look like she intended to excuse herself, so he assumed she wanted to talk to him.

“Yes?” He asked.

“Did you find out anything about your extra soul bits?” she asked.

She was stalling for time, but whatever. No reason not to answer the question.

“Sort of,” he said. “I found a few ways to interact with it, but I only know what one of them actually does. Or at least I think I do. I’ll try it out soon to make sure.”

Yes, it was rather surprising, but apparently the marker actually was designed to be interacted with by its bearer. There were multiple… switches, for lack of a better word, that were clearly meant to do something once they were activated. A good number of them were utterly inert, and did not react at all to his probing, either because he did not know how to interact with them properly or because they were broken in the marker’s transfer from Zach to Zorian. A lot of them were perfectly functional, however, and readily responded to his probes, eager to be set off like exuberant little puppies. He shied away from actually experimenting with them, since they gave absolutely no indication what their function was.

All except one. There was one command switch that immediately gave him a vague impression of what it was meant to do when he tried mucking around with it. He planned to test that one at the conclusion of his portal infiltration attempt.

“Make sure to have someone watching over you when you do that,” Raynie cautioned. “At the very least they can call for help if you collapse or something.”

“I will,” Zorian lied. “Now why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you.”

“It’s nothing you can really help me with,” she sighed. “I just feel like complaining to someone, I guess. I have no one here to confide to, except for Kiana. My fault, really. I didn’t try very hard to make any other friends. I don’t want to bother Kiana about this again, so…”

“Well, feel free to complain,” Zorian told her. “Is this about your family, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “I sent them a letter last week. Asked them if I could come home for the summer festival. They said I wasn’t welcome. Well, not really in those words, but I can read between the lines.”

Harsh. What did she do to deserve that kind of response? Well, Raynie did say she wanted to complain, so he would probably find out soon. He opted to stay quiet and let her talk.

After a moment of quiet while she collected her thoughts, she started her story.

“The leadership of my tribe is hereditary,” she said. “The firstborn son of the current chief inherits the mantle of leadership from his father. Simple enough, but the problem was that my father didn’t have a son. My mother had a hard pregnancy when she bore me, and the tribe refused to bring outside healers to help. After I was born, she could conceive no further children. Or at least that’s what we all thought for a time. Regardless, it was decided that in the absence of a male heir, even a daughter would do. Nobody wanted a succession crisis.”

Hmm, so the tribe accepted a female leader but wasn’t too happy with it. Considering the ‘hypothetical scenario’ she’d asked him about earlier in the restart, he had a feeling he knew where this was going…

“As I grew up, I was constantly told I had to be strong for the tribe,” Raynie said. “That I have to work hard and embody the ideals we represented, so that there could be no question as to whether I deserved my position. I never resented that. I was proud of my tribesmen and my parents, for putting so much faith in me. I did my best, and I was good at it. Good enough that, in time, even my staunchest critics had fallen silent. But then mother got pregnant again.”

Zorian winced internally. It was a son, wasn’t it?

“Nine months later, mother gave birth to the baby boy that my father had always wanted,” she said bitterly, confirming his suspicion. “I wasn’t sidelined immediately, of course. They had to make sure my brother was not defective in some way before doing something so rash. I had hope for a time that I might succeed in keeping the mantle through superior skill and effort, but of course he ended up being a blasted prodigy. It was clear that he would eventually eclipse me. I… did not take it very well. I did not step down from my position quietly, and some of the tribe members even supported me. Mostly because they felt I had proven myself capable while my brother was still a relative unknown, and the designated heir had never been stripped of their position like that, so the whole thing was a bit questionable. But ultimately, my worst enemy was my own father – I had thought he was proud of me, of all I had accomplished, but in the end he was the one arguing most vehemently that I should move aside so my brother can take the mantle. How could I have possibly won that battle when my own father stood against me?”

“So they don’t want you back because they think you’re a threat to your brother’s legitimacy and the tribe’s leader?” Zorian spoke out.

“I am a threat to his legitimacy,” Raynie said. “Was. I don’t know. I’m not really sure about anything anymore. I feel like nothing I did mattered in the end. What do I even have to live for, now? All my life I was taught to live for the tribe, but I’m not sure I even want to go back there when they finally deign to let me return. What is there waiting for me? I don’t think I’ll ever be happy living back there.”

Zorian studied her for a moment, wondering if he should try and comfort her. She seemed more angry than sad, though, and he had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate such a gesture. Best not to risk it.

“So you being here is your exile, then?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” she answered. “Me being here allows them to cement my brother’s position without my interference. Plus, me being educated by outsiders and taught outsider magic destroys whatever shreds of legitimacy I had left.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I can’t understand why they won’t let you home for the summer festival, then,” Zorian said. “Not that I understand why you’d even want to go back to your father and brother you clearly can’t stand, but that’s beside the point. The point is that if you’ve been outmaneuvered that thoroughly, surely there is no harm in letting you go back home for a few days. That seems very petty of them.”

“I was a bit of a bitch to my brother the last time I was home,” she admitted. “I guess the little shit went crying to our parents, because they’ve been keeping him away from me ever since. They seem to think there is a risk of me killing him. So insulting.”

They kept talking for a while – well, Raynie kept talking, he mostly just listened – but eventually she ran out of steam and just fell quiet for a time before announcing it was late and that she should go. Before she left, however, she told him that she enjoyed their meetings and asked if they could continue meeting like that, even if his original purpose for approaching her had long been fulfilled at this point.

He agreed. Of course he did. And despite her stoic demeanor, he could tell she was very happy to hear that. But the summer festival was just around the corner and she would soon forget any of this ever happened. The next time they met, they would be virtual strangers to each other.

He decided not to befriend Raynie again in the future. Not while the time loop was still in effect, anyway. If he ever managed to get out, though, he told himself that he would try to befriend the red-headed shifter for real. She reminded him of his pre-time loop self too much to just ignore it. Her problem was, as she said, something he couldn’t really help her with… but maybe just having an extra friend would be enough.

He remained at the training ground for quite some time afterwards, lost in thought, before making his way back to Imaya’s place.

– break –

It was the day before the summer festival and everything was ready. He had stopped Nochka’s kidnapping again, crafted all of the equipment he would be using in his gate-crashing attempt, and evacuated the Filigree Sages back to their home. Now all that was left was to gather the findings Kael and Taiven had made with their personal research and store them inside his mind for future restarts.

Fortunately, he was currently meeting them both in Imaya’s basement for exactly that purpose.

“Here,” Taiven said, handing him a small notebook. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m kind of glad the month is coming to a close. You have no idea how annoying it is to practice shaping exercises all day, every day.”

“Taiven, I’ve had Xvim as my mentor for the past four years,” Zorian pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah…” she waved dismissively.

“Show me what you’ve learned,” he told her.

“What? But it’s all written down there,” she protested, pointing at the notebook in his hands.

“Doesn’t matter, I want to see it personally,” he insisted. “Some things really cannot be written down.”

She had progressed nicely, he decided fifteen minutes later. Some things he considered trivial didn’t really work out, which meant he either wasn’t teaching them properly or Taiven was spectacularly unsuited for them, but there were also some exercises that came almost naturally to her. It was a good start, if nothing else.

“That was way too slow,” he said. “And you fumbled a bit towards the end. Start o-“

“If you say ‘start over’ one more time, Zorian…” Taiven warned him.