64. Distance

Chapter 064
Distance

Eldemar and Koth were very far from one another. The exact distance was hard to pin down, since the name ‘Koth’ covered a pretty big area on the southern continent, but Zorian estimated it to be around 7000 kilometers minimum. Worse, this was a straight line distance, so the actual journey would be even longer. It was not impossible to make that journey in the span of a month, but just reaching the place was not enough for Zach and Zorian – they needed to reach it with plenty of time to spare, or else they would have no time to search for the piece of the Key that was supposedly lost there. Additionally, if they spent most of their time in transit to Koth, they could not make use of the Black Rooms scattered across Altazia. Thus, by committing themselves to such a journey, they effectively lost more than a single month of time.

There were two main methods of traveling from Eldemar to Koth. The simplest, as well as the cheapest method was to board a ship at the city of Luja and make your way to Koth by sea. Even the cheaper ships would get you there within a month, and the pricier vessel may make the journey in as little as 20 days! Well, assuming the ship didn’t get sunk by a tiger-striped nautilus or something along the way. But he heard those were pretty much exterminated along major shipping routes, along with sea hydras, razor sharks and flying barracudas, so probably not. In any case, this was the method Zorian’s parents were using to get to Koth, as they were not in that much of a hurry and didn’t want to spend more money than they needed to.

The second main method was utilizing the existing network of teleport platforms that connected most major settlements on Altazia and Miasina. It was pricier than ship travel, but that was not an issue for Zach and Zorian. A bigger problem was that while this method was faster than ship travel… it actually wasn’t that much faster. Using publicly available information, Zorian calculated that it would take them 15 days to reach Koth by using the teleport platform network, and that was under ideal conditions. The issue was that the teleport platform network worked on a strict schedule that couldn’t be sped up – the network spanned over numerous different countries, after all, and none of them were willing to let mass teleport traffic go in and out of the country with no control or supervision. Each platform had security checks and border control that travelers had to go through, and that took time. A lot of time, according to Zach – he had already tried to use the platforms as a method of reaching Koth once, purely on a whim, and it actually took him most of the month to reach his destination. Would Zorian be able to do better? Doubtful. Even if Zorian offered to pay extra, the teleport operators would refuse to make an off-schedule platform activation just for his sake – who would cause an international incident just for some extra cash? And even if Zorian went wild with his mind magic and convinced them to make an exception for him and Zach, the destination platform security would not be inclined to play along. Depending on the destination, they might even shoot him on sight – there had been cases where teleport platforms were used for raids and surprise attacks, and some places were very trigger happy about un-announced teleports.

All in all, Zorian didn’t think he could optimize the teleport platform to any significant extent. They were a very fast and convenient method if one was traveling to a destination that was a couple of jumps away, but they just weren’t designed to get people over vast distances as fast as they were willing to pay. If anything, the speed of transit was deliberately throttled to more manageable levels, so that the local authorities could exercise some measure of control over it.

Unfortunately, there were no other routine methods for crossing such large distances. Not many absurdly rich people needed to get from Eldemar to Koth as fast as humanly possible in any given year, so no widespread service provided it.

That left unconventional methods. Zorian had considered some wild ones, such as stealing one of the few existing airships to make the journey or transforming into a migratory bird and flying there, but ultimately dismissed them as too fanciful to really work. Besides, methods like that didn’t solve the problem of losing access to Altazia’s Black Rooms, and would require them to dedicate at least several restarts in pursuit of exotic skills that were unlikely to be useful for anything else. Being able to pilot an airship was good for bragging rights and not much else, unless you were actually an airship pilot by trade.

Eventually, his thoughts turned to the gate spell and his recent practice of making heavy use of simulacrums. Probably because that was what he had been working on recently. By themselves, neither of the two spells was the solution to his problem… but combined together, they could be.

The simulacrum had no range limit as far as Zorian was aware – it had to be created next to the caster, but it could then roam as far away from the original as it wanted. The gate spell, on the other hand, was largely limited by its rather miserable range… unless there were people on both ends of the gate working in tandem to stabilize it. If there were people casting the spell on both ends of the gate, then it also didn’t have a known range limit. In practice, the gate spell was rarely utilized in this way, both because people capable of casting the gate spell were as rare as hen’s teeth and because actually coordinating two such people to synchronize their casting over large distances was hard. It was often quicker and more practical to simply chain teleports from place to place than to go through such a hassle.

With the simulacrum spell, Zorian didn’t have to worry about finding another person capable of casting the spell. He could effectively be two or more people at the same time. And while coordinating the spell over continental distances was a bit of an issue, it was not insurmountable. In the worst case, he could simply instruct his simulacrum to leave a trail of telepathic relays along its path and maintain contact that way.

One nice thing about the idea was that while his simulacrum was traveling to Koth, he would be able to stay in Eldemar and wouldn’t lose access to the Black Rooms in that particular restart. One not so nice thing was that this would permanently tie down one of his simulacrums, leaving one less for him to boss around. He could only maintain three simulacrums at most without his mana regeneration going negative, so that was not an entirely irrelevant cost.

Additionally, that would require him to discard his previous rule about only allowing simulacrums to exist for 24 hours. However, he didn’t really foresee much problems with that – his simulacrums had been really well behaved, all things considered. His current simulacrums could be kind of cranky and weird sometimes, but they were clearly him and had his best interests at heart. Still, maybe he should start considering some kind of countermeasure in case one of his simulacrums went rogue and tried to take over? But any countermeasure he designed his simulacrum would know about. Argh…

In any case, that still left the question of how the simulacrum was going to reach Koth in a reasonable amount of time. It was nice that Zorian wasn’t going to have to dedicate half a restart to such a journey and lose access to the black rooms, but the fact remained they would only have 15 or so days in each restart left to conduct a search for the Key. He needed something better than that.

That was why he decided to talk to the Silent Doorway Adepts. It could turn out to be a massive waste of time, but if they really knew something about the operation of Bakora gates, that could be precisely the solution he needed.

After all, why bother setting up a brand new gate network if one already existed, and was largely unsupervised to boot?

Thus, Zach and Zorian were currently standing in front of the Silent Doorway Adept representative, Refuge in Void. She was a skittish little thing, twitching and shuffling in place all the time, acting way too nervous for a professional negotiator. Then again, how many humans interacted with aranea so heavily they learned how to read their body cues? Maybe it was Zorian who was weird.

Surrounding them were eight other aranea, serving as guards. There were originally four of them, but the Silent Doorway Adepts brought in another four once they realized what Zach and Zorian were after.

The negotiations weren’t going too well.

“I am sorry, honored guests, but we really cannot help you with this,” the Silent Doorway Adept representative said, using a vocalization spell to speak out loud instead of resorting to their usual telepathy. She was either not very proficient in the spell or was trying to unnerve them with amateurish psychological warfare, because her voice was weirdly resonant and distorted. “The Bakora Gate in our possession is simply a treasured historical artifact. It has great sentimental value to us, but we know of no method to actually make it work.”

Her middle legs twitched slightly, an obvious nervous tic that plagued her since the very beginning of these talks.

“But please,” she added, trying her best to sound sincere, “if you find anything regarding the activation of Bakora gates, contact us immediately. We are as interested in this matter as you are.”

“I’m sure you are,” said Zorian, clacking his tongue unhappily.

They had tried just about everything they could think of to secure the web’s cooperation on this – they had offered confidential information on surrounding polities, offered rare materials and money, offered knowledge of secret aranean techniques they had gotten from the other webs in various restarts and they had offered an utterly ridiculous amount of crystalized mana for it. It was all for naught – the Silent Doorway Adepts remained obstinate in feigning ignorance on the matter.

He exchanged a long look with Zach, who just shrugged in response. This meeting was largely Zorian’s idea. Zach came to the meeting while under the effects of the mind blank spell and mostly remained silent – a fact that surely wasn’t helping the Silent Doorway Adepts relax around them. Still, that was the whole point – Zorian deliberately instructed Zach to do that, as an unspoken intimidation attempt. He knew from his past dealings with the Silent Doorway Adepts that merely being polite and generous wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so he brought Zach along to show them he wasn’t someone they could dismiss out of hand. In a way, it worked – Zorian was sure the web would have chased him off by now if he had come alone, but since there was a mind-blanked mage standing next to him, looking all grim and imposing, they remained polite and treated him far nicer than they did in the past.

It was true, what they say – negotiations tended to go better if you brought both gifts and an armed entourage, as opposed to just gifts.

Unfortunately, their hosts seemed to be running out of patience, as Zorian spotted some of the guards shifting their positions, as if preparing themselves for a surprise attack.

“Please don’t do that,” he said with a sigh. “You have no chance against us in an actual fight. I’m sure you’ve noticed that my friend here is under a mind blank, and I assure you he’s as good as you’d think. I am not that bad at fighting myself, if you’ll permit me to be a little immodest, so don’t discount me as a threat either. You would only be walking into your death if you attack us. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“If you are so confident in your combat prowess, why not just attack us and take what you want by force?” Refuge in Void said. Perhaps it was just Zorian, but she sounded a little bitter to him. “Why negotiate with us at all?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Zorian told her matter-of-factly. “We’re not brigands.”

“I see. So your friend here…?” she asked, leaning slightly towards Zach, who raised his eyebrow at her curiously.

“It’s just a precaution,” Zorian said. “Unless you attack me, this meeting will not degenerate into violence.”

Also, he was not at all sure he could figure out their secrets from reading their minds. The sort of knowledge about the gate he wanted was likely held by a small selection of their experts and maybe leaders, and they were liable to have protected it well. In the past, when Zach and Zorian raided aranean webs, their elders had the annoying tendency to erase their own memories in regards to important secrets, rather than let them fall into their hands. Since the two of them hadn’t been after their closest secrets back then, this had been a minor matter back then. Now, though, it would be a giant show stopper.

“In that case, I will be frank with you – we are not willing to divulge our secrets to you,” Refuge in Void said. “You’re just wasting both of our time here.”

“At any price?” Zorian frowned.

“I’m afraid so. I honestly can’t think of anything you could offer us that would make us reveal our closest mysteries to you.”

Well. This was… not unexpected. It was time to bring out his secret weapon, then.

“Let’s test this with one last offer, then,” Zorian said.

“Sure,” Refuge in Void said, projecting a mixture of relief and disinterest, as if she was just pleased this was about to end.

“Me and Zach here are time travelers,” Zorian said. “And we can help you send messages from your current selves to the Silent Doorway Adepts in the past.”

There was a short pause as the aranean representative froze for a second and then shook her forward legs in a strange gesture.

“Well,” she said. “I have to say, this… this is the first time anyone has tried that argument. I find myself curious… do you have any kind of proof for that statement?”

“Three days from now, you are going to send a team of three aranea to an old contact in Tozen to pick up another shipment of crystalized mana,” said Zorian, causing the representative to freeze again. “However, it will be a trap and two of them will never return.”

“That doesn’t-” Refuge in Void started saying.

“Two days after that,” continued Zorian in a louder voice, cutting her off, “you will finally track down the Red Scrolls of Tmilicen, but your previous buyer will say he is no longer interested in them. He will instead point you to Padina’s Magical Museum as a possible buyer. At the same time, you will come into possession of a box of emberheart crystals…”

After Zorian made another ten or so predictions, Refuge in Void finally broke down and went to speak with her elders. An hour later, he was handed over to someone higher in the chain of command – specifically, Glittering River of Stars, who was some kind of vice-elder as far as he could figure out. She was a lot less obstructive than Refuge in Void had been, but still not willing to talk to him about Bakora gates.

“We will need some time to confirm these… predictions of yours. I’m sure you understand,” Glittering River said apologetically. She really sounded apologetic, too! She was a much better actor than Refuge in Void had been.

“I understand,” Zorian said, nodding slowly. “It’s fine. We didn’t really expect to get your cooperation after one attempt, anyway.”

“But that’s okay,” Zach said with a sunny smile. “We have as many attempts to get this right as we want to.”

To her credit, Glittering River did not shift or twitch uncomfortably, as Refuge in Void had been prone to, but Zorian could tell she was uncomfortable anyway. They had explained to her the general nature of the time loop they were in, but neglected to mention some important details – such as that they were on a time limit or just how crucial Bakora gate information might be to them. Zorian wasn’t sure how much the Silent Doorway Adepts really believed about their story, but they were clearly spooked enough by the implications to humor him for a bit.

“Incidentally, if there is a way for me to prove my claims easier to your web in future restarts, I’d love to hear it,” Zorian said.

“We will have to discuss things before I get back to you on that,” Glittering River said diplomatically.

After that, they were basically ejected out of the colony and told to come back in a week. Considering that Zorian had been afraid they would laugh them straight out of the room the moment they mentioned time travel, he considered this already a victory. So long as they didn’t reject the idea out of hand, he was sure they could prove to them that the time loop was real. They may not have literally infinite retries like they had implied to Glittering River, but what they did have should be more than enough.

“We seem to have frightened them pretty badly there,” Zach commented on the way back to Cyoria. “Especially when you started mentioning the deals you’ve made with other webs and how you intend to repay them after you get out of the time loop. You’d think they’d be happy about their fellow webs being rewarded, but apparently not.”

“The last time one of the aranean webs got massively superior to others, they swept over the entire continent, conquering or supplanting every rival colony in the way,” Zorian pointed out. “They’ve got every right to be worried.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Zach said thoughtfully. “I mean, you’ve already told me that, but I just hadn’t considered how that would affect their attitudes. It’s good I left the negotiations mostly to you, then. You really understand aranean psychology way better than I do.”

There was a short silence before Zach spoke again.

“So… do you really intend to just hand down knowledge to other webs like that?” he asked curiously.

“Of course,” Zorian nodded. “Not to every single web I interacted with, admittedly, but every web that has been especially helpful to me is bound to get something for their trouble.”

“What about help of the human variety?” Zach asked. “Do they get any repayment?”

“That’s a bit more dangerous, since they are far more likely to track me down through my gifts than the aranea. I want to pay people back for their help, but I don’t want to suffer just because I have a sense of honor,” said Zorian.

“Yeah, some people are really shameless,” Zach agreed. “Give them a finger and they’ll try to bite off the whole arm. And some might just be too curious for their own good.”

“Yeah,” Zorian nodded. “I intend to try and repay people anyway, but I’ll have to be a lot more careful and selective about it.”

“Makes me feel a little guilty,” Zach admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever seriously considered paying people back for things I got from them over the restarts. Invite me when you start finalizing those plans, okay? I think I have a few people I should really reward somehow for all the good they’ve done to me.”

“Sure,” Zorian nodded.

“So,” Zach continued. “The Silent Doorway Adepts. Do you think their leadership will believe us in the end?”

“Maybe. But even if they do, it’s no guarantee that they’ll agree to a trade,” Zorian said, shaking his head sadly. “If they’re paranoid enough, any deal with us might seem like shooting themselves in the foot. They have no way to make sure we’re actually going to keep our end of the bargain once we’re outside the time loop. Who’s to say we won’t just pump them for every secret they have and then unceremoniously discard them? You know, like the Ghost Serpent thought we would do to it?”

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Zach made a sour face. He didn’t like to be reminded of the snake spirit – he had been severely insulted by its accusations, taking them much more personally than Zorian himself did.

“In any case,” Zorian continued, “Even if these negotiations fail, it’s not the end of the world. There is at least one other group that seems to have insight into how Bakora gates work – there is a fully functional gate mechanism beneath Cyoria, courtesy of the invaders, and it’s supposed to be heavily inspired by Bakora gates.”

“None of the Ibasans know how that thing works,” pointed out Zach. “I bet only Quatach-Ichl really does. So that doesn’t really help us much.”

“Yeah, probably,” Zorian agreed. He had delved into the minds of enough high-ranking invaders to realize that the gates probably weren’t made by any of them. Either Quatach-Ichl was the only one who knew the secrets of their construction or the other builders weren’t allowed to be part of the invasion force. It would make sense if it were so – the gates were one huge advantage for the Ibasans, and they definitely didn’t want that secret to fall into the hands of Eldemar’s mages. “But I wasn’t thinking of finding someone to memory probe for the information. I was thinking of simply taking over the gate site and analyzing the gate scaffolding itself.”

Zach raised an eyebrow at him.

“I though you said that would take months,” he asked curiously. “Maybe years. What changed?”

“I realized I was being kind of an idiot,” Zorian said. “Sure, it would take a long time if I tried to figure it out all alone… but why do that? Why not bring a small army of experts down there and have us all tackle it together?”

Zach hummed thoughtfully.

“It would have to be done very, very carefully, unless we want Quatach-Ichl to come crashing to the party,” he said. “But then again, that’s true for anything involving the invasion, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s worth a try. Let’s do it.”

“We’ll wait for the day of the invasion,” Zorian said hurriedly. He could see Zach was getting fired up and he would rather not go get himself killed in the middle of the restart due to his impatience. “The security of the gate is laughable if you time things right.”

“Oh, right, you did mention that,” Zach said, deflating a little. “Man, I feel so angry at myself for never figuring that out before you told me. I never did manage to step through the gate myself, you know? Even when I was fast enough in carving my way through the defenders to avoid Quatach-Ichl showing up to get rid of me, the defenders always collapsed the gate before I reached it.”

“I still can’t believe you just made a direct, frontal assault on the Ibasan base instead of trying to infiltrate it,” Zorian said. “Why the hell did you think that would work?”

“I’m not good at infiltration,” Zach said with an unrepentant shrug. “Besides, it almost did work. It’s not stupid if it works, right?”

They spent the rest of the journey home arguing about whether or not there is any difference between ‘almost worked’ and ‘ultimately failed’.

– break –

“What do you mean, I have a date with Akoja?” Zorian asked his simulacrum incredulously.

“Just what I said,” the simulacrum said, unconcerned with his agitation. “She asked me to meet her in that little tea house two blocks from the academy and I accepted.”

Zorian felt the urge to throw a lightning bolt at his damn simulacrum, but he knew that wouldn’t actually help him feel any better. If anything, it would just complicate things further by denying him much needed answers as to how could this happen!?

“You can’t just decide things like this on your own!” Zorian hissed to his simulacrum in frustration.

The simulacrum arched his eyebrow at him.

“Well it’s true,” Zorian insisted. “I know you’re my simulacrum and I told you to do whatever, but you should have contacted me for opinion before agreeing to something like this.”

“Are you saying that if you had been in my place, you would have blown her off when she asked to meet?” his simulacrum asked with a knowing smile.

Zorian frowned. If this were before the time loop? Yeah, definitely. Now? No, not a chance. He wasn’t interested in dating Akoja – he didn’t think their personalities meshed well – but he’d give her a chance at least.

He hated that gods-damned smirk that was on his simulacrum’s face right now, but he was right that Zorian would have likely made the same decision in his place.

“This is just-” Zorian started, before stopping himself with a sigh. “When?”

“Two days from now,” the simulacrum said.

“How the hell did this happen?” Zorian asked. “I knew Akoja was kind of crushing on me, but she never tried anything until now. What changed? What did you do?”

“Actually she did set up a meeting with you once, remember?” his simulacrum said. “Only she chickened out at the end and nothing came of it. But I doubt it’s going to be like that this time, since she set up an actual date for it and all. Anyway, I didn’t do anything, it’s your previous simulacrums that did.”

“What do you mean?” Zorian frowned. He’d been doing a lot of frowning ever since this conversation started.