56. Obscure

Chapter 056
Obscure

Despite how much the experience had annoyed Zach, Zorian judged their meeting with Xvim to have been a full success. Sure, Xvim had been openly dismissive of Zach’s skills, but that was just Xvim being Xvim. The man had been impressed in his own way, else he would not have kept pushing Zach towards ever more demanding shaping exercises as their meeting progressed. Not that this outcome was surprising – there was a lot to be impressed about when it came to Zach’s shaping, especially if one knew how big his mana reserves were. His fellow time traveler had not honed his shaping skills to the same ridiculous standard that Zorian had achieved under Xvim’s tutelage, but he was clearly far better than he had any right to be. Zorian was confident that the skills Zach displayed in that office would be taken as a point in their favor.

The next day, Zorian decided to introduce Zach to Alanic as well and see if the priest was open to the idea of teaching Zach some of his soul defenses. Accordingly, they went to the priest first thing in the morning, effectively skipping an entire day of classes. Not that skipping classes was much of a problem for either of them at this point.

The start of the meeting went about as Zorian expected it would. Zach talked, Alanic listened, and Zorian mostly stayed quiet. The priest already knew the nature of their request, since Zorian had already explained things to him while arranging the meeting, but he wanted to hear Zach’s version of the story as well before he agreed to anything. Thankfully, Zach successfully kept to the script and didn’t blurt out anything he wasn’t supposed to.

Their story was, in essence, very simple: the two of them had ended up on the receiving end of a soul magic attack and now had some kind of marker stamped on their soul. Zach, being shaken by the experience, now wanted to learn how to defend himself from similar attacks.

“There is one thing that is bothering me about this,” Alanic told them when Zach finished his tale, shifting his attention from Zach to Zorian. “If both of you suffered from this attack, how come only Zach is interested in learning how to defend his soul? Does the experience you went through not worry you as well?”

“Ah, well, I already know how to perceive and defend my soul,” Zorian admitted.

“Really?” Alanic said curiously, raising his eyebrows in a silent question.

“Why would I lie?” asked Zorian with a shrug.

Alanic stared at him for a second before reaching across the table they were gathered around and grasping his shoulder tightly in his hand. Zorian was about to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing when suddenly all of his senses went haywire.

He swayed in his chair for a moment, the world around him spinning and melting like a bad illusion and his body feeling like it was being twisted into some unnatural form. Then he realized what was happening and used his magic to violently shove Alanic’s attack away from his soul. It worked, and the world immediately returned to normal, but Zorian had an uncomfortable feeling that had more to do with Alanic backing off at the first sign of resistance than him being all that good.

He gave the man a nasty glare, and Alanic removed his hand from Zorian’s shoulder.

“Shoddy defenses,” Alanic said. “Serviceable, but shoddy. You should reconsider you decision, mister Kazinski. You could use my instruction as much as mister Noveda here.”

“I know that!” Zorian snapped. “I just thought…”

…that Alanic would refuse to teach him, since he didn’t want to do so in previous restarts. Well, not without receiving explanations that Zorian had been unwilling to give the man at that time.

Hmm.

“You know what? Nevermind that,” Zorian sighed. “Does that mean you’re willing to teach us, then? Both of us?”

“I suppose I am,” Alanic said, tapping his fingers against the table for a few seconds. “You are hiding things from me, but I don’t think it’s something sinister. Who taught you how to feel your soul, if I may ask?”

“A friendly shifter,” said Zorian.

Partially true, even if Alanic had done the lion’s share of the work.

“A shifter, huh?” Alanic said, giving him another long look. “Very well. Come with me so I can check up on this marker you two received from your attacker.”

“Err, we don’t want it removed,” Zach hurriedly said.

“Yes, you already said that,” Alanic said. “I just want to have a look. Don’t worry, I’m not doing anything to you without your consent.”

“You mean like launching a surprise soul attack to test our claims of already having a soul defense?” asked Zorian snidely.

“Don’t be so whiny,” Alanic told him unsympathetically. “That was just a light tap, spiritually speaking.”

“That ‘light tap’ almost caused me to vomit all over your table,” Zorian told him.

“Hmph,” Alanic scoffed. “Your defenses are even shoddier than I thought, then.”

Sighing, Zorian decided to drop the issue.

“What is it with you and annoying teachers?” Zach whispered to him as they followed Alanic deeper into the temple that served as his house. “Is this going to be a recurring thing with you? I don’t think I can handle a repeat of the Xvim episode this soon.”

Zorian was tempted to bring Zach to Silverlake after this, just to show him the true meaning of annoying. At least Alanic and Xvim were each helpful in their own way in addition to being hard to deal with. He wondered if Zach was good enough to deal with the grey hunter… he probably could kill the beast, but could he do it in a way that keeps the eggs intact?

Though now that he thought about it, Silverlake probably doesn’t count as a teacher. She had taught him precisely nothing so far.

“Mister Zosk is way less annoying than Xvim,” he whispered back to Zach, putting his musings aside for the moment. “He can be pretty harsh at times, but he’s always fair. He doesn’t insult people without good reason. The truth is my soul defenses really are shoddy at the moment. Give him a chance.”

“I’m happy you have so much faith in me, mister Kazinski,” Alanic said, butting into their conversation. Oops, guess they weren’t quiet enough. Or maybe Alanic’s hearing was just that good. “This Xvim fellow you keep talking about sounds fascinating. I hope you can introduce us sometime.”

Zorian made a sour face. Bringing Xvim and Alanic together into the same room? Yeah, no way in hell was he letting that happen…

Alanic seemed to have noticed Zorian’s distaste for the idea because he actually laughed at him.

“I was just joking, mister Kazinski,” the priest said, his voice still tinged with amusement. “If I really wanted to meet this ‘Xvim’, I would have sought him out on my own. With a name like that, I doubt he’d be hard to find.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Zorian admitted. ‘Xvim’ was a fairly exotic name, and he had a feeling that his mentor was rather famous within certain circles as well. Everyone who worked in a prestigious institution like Cyoria’s Royal Magical Academy was at least somewhat famous. All in all, Xvim probably wasn’t very hard to find for someone like Alanic, who clearly had connections to one or more spy organizations.

Not for the first time, Zorian found himself wondering what exactly would happen if he told Alanic about the time loop. Not in this restart, obviously, but as an idea for the future… well, he could use the battle-priest’s help and advice.

Then again, he wasn’t working alone anymore, was he? He would have to see what Zach would say about that.

Oh well. Hopefully Alanic would leave a better impression on Zach than Xvim had.

– break –

“Ugh,” Zach said as they departed from Alanic’s home. “That psychedelic potion is pure hell. And I’m apparently going to have to go through several restarts worth of that stuff?”

“You didn’t have to take it,” Zorian pointed out. “Its only purpose is to speed things up. You could have taken the slow, painless way and meditated your way to soul perception.”

“No, I know my limits,” Zach said, shaking his head. “Even you opted for the ‘fast’ route, and I’m even more impatient than you are. How you managed to pretend to be unaware of the time loop all this time I’ll never fathom… What did he have you do while I was off hallucinating, anyway?”

“That ‘light touch’ stuff he tried on me earlier,” grimaced Zorian. “He kept using weak soul attacks on me while having me fight him off. It’s helpful, I guess. At the very least it gives me some experience in fending off soul manipulation. I usually rely on actual defensive wards to counter hostile soul magic, but this sort of stuff is useful if I’m ever caught off-guard with some casual soul spell. It’s strange, though. Why is Alanic willing to help me refine my soul defenses now that I’ve brought you along? Why does your presence make him less suspicious of me?”

“I guess I just look like a more honest person than you do,” Zach said with a grin. Zorian rolled his eyes at him. “Anyway, what now?”

“Now? Well, you either go home and do whatever you want, or you go with me to Knyazov Dveri while I visit the local dungeon,” Zorian told him. “I was going to go there while you had your lessons with Alanic, but that idea obviously had to be scrapped, so I guess I’ll do it now.”

“You were going to go have fun in the dungeon while I suffered back there?” Zach frowned.

“Depends how you define fun,” Zorian said. “I’m just going to load up on crystalized mana before getting back to the surface.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Zach said. “Why would you need so much crystalized mana?”

“Money, of course,” Zorian said. “I use some of it for my magic items and golems, but most of it is sold for some quick cash. I memorized where the crystal clumps are over the restarts, so it doesn’t take long to pick up a lot of them. It’s almost like collecting money.”

Zach was quiet for a while.

“Well crap,” said Zach after a while. “That’s clever. Why didn’t I think of that? I could have used that trick a decade or so ago…”

“What, you had cash problems?” Zorian asked curiously. “Aren’t you obscenely rich?”

“I don’t have nearly as much money as people think,” Zach shook his head. Oh, right, his guardian kind of robbed him. “Hell, I don’t have nearly as much money as I thought I did, thanks to my slimy caretaker. But the real problem is that most of my money is unavailable to me. It’s all either banked into long-term accounts or stored away in ways that make it really hard for me to get to it on short notice. And even if I could get to it easily, I would still have to justify my expenses to my caretaker and get his permission in order to spend any significant sum. Which means that when I really wanted to spend a lot of money during the restarts, I basically had to get the money from scratch somehow…”

“Hmm. And how did you solve that?”

“Well, these days I just kill some rare magical creature and sell the corpse,” Zach shrugged. “You can earn huge amounts of cash if you know who to sell it to. I really like your solution, though. It’s a lot safer, and not even that much more time consuming. Doesn’t dumping a huge amount of crystalized mana on the market collapse the price, though?”

Zorian shook his head. “In the grand scheme of things, the amounts of crystalized mana I can gather in a few days are a drop in the bucket. Even if I focused on doing nothing else for the entire restart, I’d only produce a fraction of what dedicated mines produce on a daily basis. Though trying to sell too much to individual shops does tend to bring unwanted attention.”

“Alright,” Zach nodded. “So how are we doing this?”

– break –

Later that day, when they finally returned to Cyoria, Zorian was lugging no less than five luggage boxes full of crystalized mana – a lot more than his excursions into the dungeons beneath Knyazov Dveri usually got him. They probably went a little overboard with their crystal collection, but that was fine. One could never have too much money.

Zorian usually stuck to the safer areas of the dungeon he had mapped and explored a long time ago when embarking on his crystal gathering expeditions, but Zach had insisted they explore the dungeon a little deeper than usual this time. Since the other time traveler was so powerful, Zorian had agreed. He was actually somewhat curious if they could find something interesting. In the end, though, they didn’t discover anything too amazing – just several new crystal clumps and some strange cave plants that Zorian couldn’t identify and decided to bring along with him. He could then show them to Kael when the boy finally showed up again. They didn’t stumble upon anything particularly dangerous, which pleased Zorian (who didn’t want to end the restart short because they died to some stupid monster in the dungeon depths) and disappointed Zach (who had been hoping for a good fight to blow off some steam).

Just as they were about to separate and go each to their own homes, Zach suddenly spoke up.

“That was kind of fun,” he said. “We should go deeper next time.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Zorian said. “We already went past the depth where I met this floating mass of eyes that killed me just by looking at me. It’s only luck we didn’t meet anything like that today. Do you really want to cut one of our restarts short by dying to some stupid monster?”

“Ugh. You’re no fun,” Zach complained.

“We can always go hunting all the monsters that are terrorizing the city now that aranea are gone,” Zorian pointed out. “I already did that with Taiven in previous restarts, but… well, I can never really set myself loose when I’m around her. She knows me too well to accept my growth in skill at face value.”

“Taiven. I remember her,” Zach said. “She was your date for the evening that time when I invited all the students to my home for the summer festival. Are you close to her?”

“Not in the way you’re probably thinking of. We’re just friends,” Zorian said.

“Friends that go on dates together?” Zach said with a grin.

Ugh.

“I’m pretty sure I told you something like this back then, but Taiven isn’t interested in guys like me. I’m not her type,” Zorian responded, hoping this was the end of it.

Yeah, fat chance of that.

“Ah, so she shot you down then,” Zach nodded sagely. “Well, don’t let it get to you. You can’t get to them all, even with the time loop and its multiple retries. I never managed to talk either Raynie or Akoja to go out on a date with me, for example, no matter what I tried…”

Zorian was sorely tempted to ask Zach about his attempts to woo Akoja, since that was bound to have been amusing, in a train-wreck sort of way. In the end, however, he decided that he really didn’t want to know.

“I hope you realize that I’ve been in this time loop for only a handful of years and that most of that time has been spent while under threat and under pressure from various ‘emergencies’,” Zorian told him.

“Yes, so?” Zach asked, not understanding his point.

“Aside from picking a girl for the date at the end of the restart, I never went out on any dates,” Zorian told him. Did his meetings with Raynie count as dates? No, probably not. “I certainly didn’t go after every single girl in the class like you seem to have done.”

Zach stared at him in silence for a few seconds, apparently struck speechless at Zorian’s statement.

Stolen story; please report.

“Seriously?!” he eventually asked, his voice incredulous.

“Seriously,” Zorian confirmed.

“You’re crazy,” Zach told him. “Mark my words, you’ll regret this once we’re out of this time loop. You’ll never get a chance like this in your life!”

“You sound like an old man,” Zorian said.

“Well, I am several decades older than you,” Zach pointed out. “Listen to your elders, young man, I know what I’m talking about…”

Ten minutes and a lot of pointless banter later, they finally called it a day and separated. Strangely enough, despite the fact he spent the entire day either having his soul slapped around, crawling through dark, monster-infested tunnels or being teased by his fellow time traveler, Zorian found himself happy with how it turned out.

Though he really could have gone without that last conversation – now he couldn’t stop thinking about the various girls in his life.

And he was certain that if Zach knew about it, he would be laughing at his predicament.

The jerk.

– break –

Two days after their meeting with Xvim, the man called Zorian in his office to tell him that he had tentatively accepted his story as plausible and to talk about what they should do next. That was… surprisingly fast. It was interesting to experience just how big of an effect Zach’s presence had on people he talked to. Both Xvim and Alanic seemed to be taking him more seriously this time around, just because there was a second person backing his story up. Was it just that multiple people were convincing in a way that a single person wasn’t, or was there more to it?

He was tempted to ask Xvim about the topic directly, but it was unlikely he could offer much insight into the thought processes of his previous incarnations and would force him to admit he was purposely restricting Xvim’s access to relevant information about the time loop.

Regardless, he currently found himself standing in front of Xvim on one of the Academy’s many training grounds, waiting for the lessons to start.

“So,” Xvim said. “I see you are here alone. I take it your fellow time traveler declined my offer, then?”

“I’m afraid you didn’t leave the best impression on him the last time you met, sir,” Zorian told him respectfully.

“A pity. He could have used my help. But enough about the easily discouraged – we’re here to help you. You say you’ve already worked with me to hone your dimensionalism? Show me, then.”

Zorian didn’t have to ask what Xvim was talking about. He took out a large, oval rock from his jacket pocket and outstretched his hand in front of him so Xvim could see the stone.

And then he generated a flawless dimensional boundary around the stone. Visually, nothing happened… but Zorian knew Xvim could tell the difference somehow. He supposed that his ability to sense magic was just that good.

“Passable,” Xvim said, passing his judgement. “Keep working on it in your free time, but I suppose I can work with this.”

Zorian nodded, and quietly pocketed the stone, his long experience with Xvim allowing him to shrug off his mentor’s ridiculous perfectionism without really getting upset. His dimensional boundary was more than just ‘passable’ and they both knew it. Zorian had already started to work on forming a dimensional boundary over complex objects like small statues and planned to move on to live, moving insects soon.

“You seem to have rather good grasp on the basic teleport spell, and even know a great many variants,” Xvim said. “So today I will show you how to defend against teleportation instead.”

“I already know how to ward places against teleportation,” pointed out Zorian.

“Truly?” Xvim said. “Let’s test that.”

He waved his hands, conjuring four glowing orbs of light that quickly assumed a square formation over a large section of the training ground.

“Ward that area against teleportation, and then I’ll do my best to teleport in,” Xvim told him.

Shrugging, Zorian went and did just that. He was quite good at warding, in his humble opinion, but he had no illusions that his wards would actually hold against Xvim’s attempts to sidestep it. Who knows what kind of sophisticated teleportation spells his mentor had at his disposal?

There. Not his best work, perhaps, as he was slightly rushed for time and didn’t have any fancy materials to work with, but that should at least force him to spend some time to-

Without saying a word, Xvim unceremoniously dispelled his teleportation ward with a wide-area dispel and teleported into the previously warded area.

Though he knew it wouldn’t help, Zorian just couldn’t help himself. He just had to say it.

“That’s cheating,” he said. “You told me you were going to try to teleport in, not that you’d just dispel the ward.”

“And an actual attacker would play by the rules, hmm?” Xvim asked him. “You don’t think they would just teleport to the edge of the ward and get rid of it?”