59. One Step Forward

Chapter 059
One Step Forward

Not too long after Xvim had left the house, Zorian did as well. He had no particular destination in mind, he just wanted to get out of the house for a while. As far as he could tell, it was the only way for him to get some time alone. The rest of the house’s inhabitants could tell something had happened between him and Xvim that had greatly upset him and kept prodding him for answers. He knew they meant well, but gods were they annoying.

Their questions were especially inconvenient because he couldn’t actually answer any of them. Not without explaining the true nature of the time loop and multiple other things he had been keeping secret from them.

Maybe he had no right to be annoyed. Considering the magnitude of the secrets he was keeping from them, their nosiness was well justified. But he was not in a good mood at the moment and it was hard to be understanding and rational. Best to get away from everyone until he had a chance to cool off.

Zach didn’t try to follow after him, thankfully. Zorian made a mental note to thank him for his consideration later.

For a while he simply walked aimlessly through Cyoria’s streets, checking out storefronts and watching the people around him. Eventually, though, he grew bored with that and decided to visit some of the more significant places from his past. He checked out his old, academy-provided apartment that he had lived in during the initial restarts (it was now occupied by someone else, as it turned out) and spent some time on the roof of the building, just watching the city and feeling the wind blow over him. He then descended into the dungeon beneath Cyoria and walked through the lifeless corridors of the aranean settlement hidden within it. Finally, he walked over to Hole and spent some time peering into its fathomless depths, idly wondering whether the primordial’s prison was placed here because of the Hole or if the Hole was the product of the prison being placed here.

As he departed from the immediate vicinity of the massive mana well, he encountered a small group of cephalic rats hiding in the shadows of a nearby building. With him no longer trying to mess up the invasion and with so many things happening in a short period of time, he almost forgot about them. He was pretty sure his mind magic had long since surpassed the swarm’s ability to hurt him, so they didn’t frighten him the way they once had. Hmm…

On a whim, he extended a telepathic probe into one of the rats, trying to start a conversation with the collective mind of the swarm. Maybe he could bribe or blackmail it into switching sides? Or at least get it to gather information for him as well as for the invaders – it would hardly be the first time a spy worked for multiple sides…

Connecting to the collective was easy. Trivial, even. Due to the way the swarm mind worked, it couldn’t really use mental shields the way he was using them. Instead, it relied on redundancy of individual rat minds and the sheer psychic might of its combined self when faced with hostile mind mages.

Talking to the collective, on the other hand, was proving to be as difficult as he had feared it would be. The swarm treated his every contact as an attack, striking back at him whenever he established a telepathic link and cutting off individual rats from the greater whole when they realized their ‘counterattack’ was getting them nowhere.

In the end, when Zorian refused to stop his contact attempts and gradually ramped up the aggressiveness of his telepathic probes, the swarm mind just plain wrote off the entire group he had cornered and disconnected them all from the collective rather than continue dealing with him.

Only mildly disappointed by the outcome, Zorian continued on, not even bothering to kill the frightened, suddenly isolated cephalic rats. What would be the point, really? The idea of making the cephalic rats work for him stuck with him, though. What should he do to get the swarm to hear him out, though? Just keep pestering it like he just did until the swarm grew sufficiently annoyed with him to actually start talking back? If Zorian was in their shoes, he’d break the silence after a while to tell the jerk to knock it off. Just in case it actually worked.

Still, maybe he was assigning excessively human thinking to what was a composite mind made out of rats. If he wanted to talk to the swarm mind, he might have to actually capture one of the rats and bind it harder to the collective. Make it impossible for them to cut the connection and abandon it.

Sitting on a nearby bench and taking out a notebook, Zorian started to sketch a spell formula setup that would ‘lock’ a cephalic rat to its collective. A metal cage with three overlapping wards that should… no, wait, that wouldn’t work. Maybe he should just make his own connection instead of trying to strengthen the existing one… if he placed a small marker on five to six rats, it should create a resonance that…

A while later he had to reluctantly put his plotting aside, because it was getting dark and it was time to start going back home. It would take a couple of days to finalize the design anyway. And he was feeling a lot better now too, so there was no need to stay away from Imaya’s house any longer.

He found it curious that making designs for contacting cephalic rats had been satisfying. What did he like so much about that? After thinking about it for a while, he figured it was because that was a problem he actually knew how to solve. He wasn’t sure which one of his ideas was the best solution, but it wasn’t like his time loop problems, which seemed completely intractable. He had no idea how to track down the five Keys, and even if he did they wouldn’t automatically tell him how to enter the real world along with Zach. He had no idea how to track down a kid that couldn’t be found by his own Noble House. Not only did he not have the skills necessary to accomplish these feats, he didn’t even know which skills he needed for that.

With that in mind, was the sort of thing Xvim advocated even necessary? He had flipped through the notebook Xvim had given him as he wandered around. Some of the people Xvim had recommended were experts at divination and mind magic, which might potentially help him gather information. But most of them were more oriented towards magic in general.

What he had was largely an information problem. Would being a better mage help with that?

It might. What were the chances that the Keys, once found, could be acquired without using a lot of magical skill and effort? Miniscule, knowing his luck. And the way out of the fake world, whatever it ended up being, would surely demand far greater skills than he could currently marshal.

And that’s without considering the issue of Red Robe and the fact they would have to deal with him somehow when (if) they got out of the time loop.

It was dark when he finally returned, and when he entered the house, he found Imaya still awake and waiting for him.

Honestly, he just didn’t understand that woman.

“You know you didn’t have to wait for me, don’t you?” Zorian asked her, exasperated. “I do have a key of my own.”

Even if he had forgotten it, it would have been childishly easy to unlock the door with magic. He could have even relocked it the same way after he went inside.

“I know,” she nodded, unbothered by his tone. “But I wanted to wait for you anyway. Do you feel better now?”

“I do,” Zorian admitted. He didn’t really accomplish anything, but he felt calmer anyway.

“Where did you go? Just wandering around?” Imaya asked knowingly.

“Pretty much,” Zorian said with a shrug. “I bought Kirielle a hairclip, climbed to the top of a building, visited a graveyard, stared into a hole and tried to talk to rats.”

“You bought your sister a gift?” she asked, curious. “What’s the occasion?”

Zorian gave her a strange look. Out of all the things he said, that was what she chose to focus on?

“It was cheap and I felt like it,” he said. He sat down opposite to his landlord, not really in the mood for going to sleep yet. He wasn’t tired. “Why did you wait for me? Aren’t I just a tenant to you?”

“I’m not sure. I have heard about these ‘tenants’. They are supposed to be these terrible creatures that come home drunk and late, destroy your walls and furniture and never pay rent on time,” said Imaya, voice tinged with amusement.

“Slander,” Zorian said blandly.

“In all seriousness, I guess you’re right that I care too much,” she said, sighing lightly. “It’s Kana’s and Kirielle’s fault, I think. They make me think of children I always wish I had.”

Zorian gave her a mildly surprised look. Not because her wanting to have children was so unbelievable, but because in all the restarts he had known her, she rarely talked about herself like that. He almost asked her why she was still single if she wanted kids, before he remembered Ilsa’s warning not to discuss marriage or husbands with her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “It’s natural to want kids, you know? I know young people like you don’t want to think about it, but that will change as you age.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Though… I apologize in advance for being so brazen, but if you want children so much, why don’t you just have them. Sure, some people would judge you for being a single mother, but-”

He was interrupted by Imaya bursting into laughter.

“Oh, that is kind of funny,” she said. “I guess Ilsa told you not to mention my husband and you jumped to conclusions, hmm? But no, being single isn’t the problem. It’s the fact I’m infertile.”

Oh.

“My husband left me when we found that out,” Imaya said. “He wanted kids too, and I couldn’t give him any. So there – now you know about that too. It’s not that big of a secret, and I’m mostly over it, so don’t worry about avoiding any mention of it. I’m not as delicate as Ilsa thinks I am.”

She seemed to consider things for a moment.

“Though don’t mention it on a whim, either,” she added. “It’s a depressing topic.”

“I understand,” Zorian nodded. Why would he keep bringing it up for no reason, anyway? “Just one question. You being infertile… is this a problem of not being able to afford the cure, or it being literally incurable?”

“The second, I think. The healers at regular hospitals certainly don’t know of any cure that would help. If it exists, it’s something that would take a budget of a small state to track down and buy,” Imaya said.

Zorian filed that away in the back of his head and moved on to other topics. Imaya’s problem, while tragic, was not very high on his list of concerns. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look for any miracle cures when he conducted his investigation of the Keys and the like. He was pretty sure Kael would appreciate something like that too, and powerful medicines might not be useless to him and Zach either.

He spent the next half an hour talking to Imaya, mostly about Kirielle and what she had been doing all these days while Zorian was away. He was relieved to hear she was surprisingly well-behaved – he had been absent more often in this restart in comparison to others, and he was afraid she would act out because of it. The only issue was that she had apparently broken a couple of plates a few days ago and never bothered to tell him about it. It was annoying – if she had told him immediately, he could have probably fixed them up with magic. As it was, the pieces were dumped into the trash and were long gone now, so he would have to pay Imaya back for the plates with money.

Not that he couldn’t afford it, but still. He was so giving the little brat an earful tomorrow.

– break –

The next day found Zorian sitting in his room, surrounded by a veritable mountain of books. Some of the books were mundane, borrowed from the library or bought from the stores. Others were brought over from the book cache held in the aranean treasury, or stolen from the private collections of the cultists working with the invaders.

He was looking for something, anything, that might allow him to grow fast enough without resorting to Xvim’s idea of advancement.

Unfortunately, he had found little so far. As expected, really – if there was an obvious way to gather magical skills and power faster than normal, it would already be in widespread use.

He was actually rather glad when the door opened and Zach walked inside, since it gave him the excuse to take a break from his self-appointed task. He was kind of amused to see Zach flipping through a book of his own, though. It wasn’t often that Zach decided to read a book, especially one as thick as what he was currently holding.

“Something interesting?” Zorian asked him curiously.

“Not really, no,” Zach replied. “It’s a medical textbook. Kael gave it to me. He has been bothering me for a couple of days now, saying that the time loop is absolutely perfect for medical research and begging me to invest more of my time in practicing my medical magic. Apparently someone told him that I am good at medical magic.”

He gave Zorian a small glare while saying the last part. It had no effect on Zorian. He had no reason to keep that a secret from Kael, and he was pretty sure Zach could have made Kael back off easily enough if he really tried.

Instead he decided to change the subject and get to the probable point of this visit.

“What do you think about Xvim’s idea?” Zorian asked.

Zach visibly scowled, throwing his book on top of a nearby book stack before replying.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” he said. “Extremely uncomfortable. That’s the kind of stuff Red Robe did to me, didn’t he? But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I’m pretty biased here, but I can see Xvim’s reasoning. If you feel you have to do this, I won’t try and stop you.”

“Did you ever do something like that when you were first gathering strength?” Zorian asked.

“Not like this,” Zach said, shaking his head. “I didn’t like mind magic much, even back then. But I did attack people and looked through their private libraries and spell collections. I usually had a good reason to attack these people, though. Maybe you can do the same? Limit yourself to people you can justify attacking?”

“That’s kind of what I’m already doing,” Zorian said. “Maybe not as aggressively as I could be, but only because I lack the time to truly dedicate myself to it. Xvim’s whole point is that this wasn’t going to be enough. That I need to take what I need, regardless of how justified the target is.”

Zach hummed thoughtfully, thinking about that for a couple of seconds. Zorian waited patiently, curious about what his response would be.

“You know, most of my magic doesn’t come from raiding other people’s secrets,” Zach finally said. “The majority of it I accumulated by simply paying, begging and annoying various experts into teaching me. Granted, some of it is only possible because I’m the last of the Novedas. Before its fall, my House had a habit of financing talented mages from poorer backgrounds while they were still beginning their careers, and quite a few such people still live and feel they owe Noveda a debt because of it. Me being the last of them also tugs at people’s heartstrings in some cases, as does the fact my guardian practically dismantled the House and robbed me of their legacy. Plus, some of them wish for fame that comes from teaching the last Noveda, or hope to profit from ingratiating themselves to me, gambling on me restoring the House to glory and paying them back afterwards. Between my money, family legacy and fame, it usually isn’t too difficult to talk people into teaching me. Maybe we can leverage that to get some of these people to cooperate willingly?”

“That is an interesting idea,” Zorian said after a short pause. “I’m not sure how effective it would really be, but it’s worth a try. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the fact I do have some small amount of reflected fame myself, courtesy of my older brother. It might be a good idea to see if I can get something with that. That didn’t work too well for me in the past, but back then I clearly wasn’t a magical prodigy like Daimen. Now, I can effectively pass myself off as a second coming of Daimen by demonstrating some of the magical proficiency I picked up in the time loop.”

Zach gave him a surprised look.

“Yeah, I know,” Zorian said unhappily. “It kind of rankles to rely on Daimen like that, but desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Zach just shook his head in amusement, not saying anything.

“What about black rooms?” Zach asked after a while. “Couldn’t we get extra time using them?”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian agreed. “I’ve been checking them out and I think we can definitely trick the operators beneath Cyoria into letting us use the room once per restart.”

“Just once?” Zach frowned.

“Black rooms are really mana intensive,” Zorian said. “The facility beneath Cyoria can activate their black rooms twice a month, but the first activation is really inconveniently timed for our purposes. It happens right at the beginning of the restart. There is no way we can make use of it then, unless we stage an all-out assault on the facility as the very first thing in the restart. And even if that succeeds, that would surely cause the facility to shut down and postpone the second planned activation, so it wouldn’t actually gain us anything.”

“Ugh,” Zach mumbled unhappily. “But that still means we can essentially double our time, doesn’t it? A single activation gives as an entire month for the cost of a day.”

“In a way, that’s true,” said Zorian. “But it’s a month during which we cannot access any experts or books we didn’t think to bring with us in advance. It’s useful to be sure, and we should abuse it for all it’s worth, but it’s not nearly as useful as another actual restart would be.”

“Maybe we can find some more black rooms elsewhere and commandeer them too?” Zach offered.

“It doesn’t hurt to look for them,” Zorian agreed. “In any case, we won’t be able to use the chamber beneath Cyoria in this restart. We already missed the activation day, unfortunately. But starting in the next restart, we should plan to take advantage of it every single time to maximize training time.”

“Yeah,” Zach agreed. “Though I can’t help but think those will be some very boring months spent in there…”

“Probably,” Zorian agreed. Especially for Zach, since he didn’t look like the sort of person who handled being cooped in a small room for weeks very well. “We’ll see how it goes in the next restart and adjust the plan from there. If it doesn’t work, we’ll scrap the idea.”

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“I know what you’re thinking. I’m not that impatient,” Zach huffed. “I’m not going to throw away a golden opportunity like that just because I’m a little bored.”

After a quick discussion about what to bring to the black rooms to pass the time (Zach insisted the best answer to that is ‘girlfriends’, but reluctantly gave up on the idea when Zorian started enumerating problems with that idea), they lapsed into a short silence. Zach looked around the room, taking in the books Zorian surrounded himself with and even casually flipping through some of them.

“So is there anything else?” Zach asked. “Did you find something worthwhile in this little book fort you made?”

“Not really,” Zorian admitted. “Enhancement rituals seem interesting, if we can find the right one. Unfortunately, mages are very secretive about those. A lot of enhancement rituals require a lot of dead test subjects before one can fine-tune them to usability, so mages are leery of admitting they use them or know how to perform them. I think someone high up in the Cult of the World Dragon is very good at those, though, so we might have something there if we can track that person down.”

“Don’t enhancement rituals require you permanently tie up some of your mana reserves into maintaining them?” Zach asked. “Sounds like a bad deal for you. No offense, but you don’t really have that much mana reserve to burn.”

“That’s why I specified we need to find the right one,” said Zorian. “And besides, nobody said it has to be me who makes use of them. You’re good now, but it never hurts to get better and your reserves are more than big enough for an enhancement or two.”

Zach considered it for a while, before shaking his head.

“I’m leery of messing with my magic like that,” he said. “I’m not vetoing the idea, but it would have to be some pretty amazing enhancement to get me interested.”

“Fair enough,” Zorian shrugged. Indeed, enhancement rituals could be quite dangerous and some may even have effects that linger across restarts, so Zach’s hesitance was quite reasonable. “Oh! I been meaning to ask you this, but I keep forgetting. Could you teach me how to cast the simulacrum spell?”

“Uh, no,” Zach said. “I did find the spell once, but I couldn’t cast it. The scroll said the spell requires the caster to have ‘awareness of their own soul’, which I couldn’t figure out at the time. I suppose this is what Alanic is teaching me how to do right now, but at the time I couldn’t figure it out and eventually gave up on learning it.”

“Hmm,” Zorian hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I can sense my own soul, so I should be able to do it. I don’t suppose this scroll is somewhere easy to get to, at least?”

“I don’t even remember where I found it,” Zach said. He seemed lost in thought for a moment, before shaking his head sadly. “Sorry, but it was a long time ago. I think it was in the sanctum of that lich in Taraman, but it could have easily been in the treasury of that demon-worshipping cult in Tetra or in that secret vault I found under Marbolkano or in a hundred other places.”

“Damn,” said Zorian. “Well, try to remember. I can’t find a detailed description of the spell, but depending on how it works it could greatly improve our efforts.”

“Will do,” Zach nodded. Before he could say anything else, though, Kirielle barged into the room. Posing dramatically for no real reason, she announced that he had another visitor.

Yesterday it was Xvim, and it was Alanic’s turn to come and talk to him.

– break –

After a short round of greetings, Zorian ushered Alanic into his room, where Zach had been waiting for them, and retook his position on the bed, surrounded by his books. Alanic flipped through some of them, frowning at the dodgier works he stole from the cultists but saying nothing.

“Xvim visited me yesterday,” Zorian said when Alanic didn’t seem like he would start talking any time soon.

“I know,” Alanic said. There was no emotion in his voice, and Zorian couldn’t feel anything from his mind.

“I hope this isn’t an attempt to pressure me to take his advice,” he warned.

“Heavens forbid,” Alanic told him seriously, giving him a grave look. “I didn’t agree with his decision to begin with, so why would I pressure you to go along with him?”

“You don’t approve?” Zach asked, surprised.

“I’m a priest,” Alanic said. “Why would I approve of attacking innocent people for magical power?”

“Forgive me for saying this, but you haven’t exactly been a shining beacon of morality in the previous restarts I’ve known you,” Zorian said, frowning.

“Towards my enemies, perhaps,” Alanic shrugged. “But these are not the kind of tactics one should use on allies and those who haven’t done anything wrong.”

For a few seconds, there was a silence in the room as everyone digested this statement. After those couple of moments passed, however, Alanic seemed to deflate and closed his eyes in defeat.