73. Plodding Ahead

Chapter 073
Plodding Ahead

Deep in the jungles of Koth, there was a large, circular hole in the ground that led to a narrow vertical shaft and a pool of greenish water at the bottom. Although the place was quite beautiful, very few people could come here to admire it. It was, after all, absolutely teeming with chameleon drakes.

Naturally, this was the cenote where they had recovered the orb of the first emperors in the previous restart. Zach and Zorian stood on the edge of the cenote, observing the chameleon drakes milling around the place and discussing how to go about recovering the orb this time around. Occasionally a group of chameleon drakes wandered past them or scrutinized their location, but between their cloaking spells and Zorian’s ability to reach into their minds and edit their senses and memories, there was little chance of them being discovered.

“So how are we doing this?” Zach asked. “Do you think you can sneak us in?”

Zorian stared at the cenote for a second before shaking his head. The drakes inside the cenote tended to clump together in groups of five or more, and the orb cave seemed to be the place that held the largest group.

“It’s hard enough to keep the drakes from noticing us when it’s just one or two,” Zorian said sadly. “Those four independently moving eyes make their senses quite unlike humans. Figuring out how to fool their senses from moment to moment is too tiresome for me to do it on large groups.”

Zach didn’t seem surprised by this. He seemed to be getting more familiar with the limitations of Zorian’s mind magic. “Then we should just go in, spells blazing, then?” he offered. “I mean, why complicate things? We can take them, I’m sure of it.”

“I’d rather not fight a swarm of chameleon drakes today,” Zorian said. “How about this? You move back from the cenote a little and attack them. If their previous reaction is any indication, they should all swarm out to deal with you. When they do, I will teleport into the orb cave, claim it, then teleport out. Even if they leave behind a few guards, these will be no match for me.”

“And what if your attempts to claim the orb cause the hydra to appear?” Zach said with a frown. “I don’t want to be mean, but your fighting skills…”

“I’m no match for that thing, I know,” Zorian said, nodding. “I don’t have to actually fight it, though. I can always just flee if it appears. I’m good enough to survive its assault for the few seconds it takes to cast the teleport spell. Besides, I suspect the hydra can’t actually exit the pocket dimension inside the orb cave itself. It’s just too big. The last time it emerged from the lake at the bottom of the cenote, and I suspect this time it will be no different.”

“But if you snatch the orb and leave the cave, won’t the hydra have plenty of space near you to teleport itself in?” Zach asked.

Uhh… damn. He hadn’t thought of that.

“And even if the hydra doesn’t react immediately, simply having it inside makes the orb into a massive time bomb. The monster can clearly exit the orb whenever it wishes. What if we bring the orb to Cyoria and the hydra decides to enter the city while we’re sleeping or otherwise distracted? Imagine the damage it could do. If it decides not to react when we claim the orb, it might be a good idea to deliberately lure it out before we bring the orb to a populated area.”

They decided to try Zorian’s idea anyway. The execution turned out to be a little more complicated than Zorian had thought it would be. Apparently Zach alone was not threatening enough to whip the entire group of chameleon drakes into a frenzy and make them leave their lair. After all, he was just one man. He might have been ungodly powerful, but that wasn’t something that could be gleaned at first sight. Thus, the drakes initially simply sent a group of five young drakes to deal with him. Of course, when Zach effortlessly slaughtered those five, the entire cenote grew more agitated… but not agitated enough to rush out and swarm him. They felt pretty safe in their cenote base, so they just massed themselves together and decided to wait and see if Zach would actually dare attack them in their home. Inconveniently for Zorian, they picked the orb cave as their rallying point.

Thankfully, when Zach started to launch artillery spells at the cenote, they decided they couldn’t afford to turtle up like that. They rushed out to try and stop him, leaving only a handful of guards behind. Zorian quickly teleported in, claimed the orb and teleported out.

Mission accomplished. As for the hydra, it never showed up. Not when Zorian claimed the orb and not when Zach and Zorian waited for several hours in the middle of the jungle to see if it would eventually decide to emerge. Zorian didn’t know what to think about that. On one hand, this meant they didn’t have to fight a giant, teleporting, godtouched hydra. On the other hand, it was just like Zach said earlier – this meant that said hydra could pop out of the orb when they least expected it and ruin the entire restart.

“We really need to figure out how to actually enter the damn orb,” Zach said unhappily, turning the orb idly in his hands.

“We need to consider the possibility that the orb simply doesn’t have that kind of ability built into it,” Zorian told him, staring at the orb in Zach’s hands in a speculative manner. “Teleportation magic is tricky to make into magic items. There are recall rods that can teleport a person to a pre-determined point and teleport platforms that can allow teleportation between fixed points, but anything more sophisticated requires a living caster. It might be that the previous owners of the orb used some kind of specialized spell to enter and leave the orb dimension.”

“Lovely,” Zach said, throwing the orb into the air and triggering its deployment mechanism. The orb distorted and then collapsed inward with a soft whooshing sound. In a flash it was gone, no visible trace of its presence anywhere. “That means either searching for an obscure teleportation spell or creating one from scratch. That could take forever. As if we didn’t have enough time sinks already…”

He reclaimed the orb, causing it to pop back to existence again, and then deployed it again immediately afterwards.

“If you are right, though, then this is really poor design,” Zach continued. “Why the hell would you not include a way in when making something like this? It shouldn’t be that hard to place a teleport platform, recall stone or something similar inside. Then, when the owner of the orb commands it to, it pulls the person inside and deposits them there. That’s a viable method, no?”

He reclaimed and then deployed the orb again.

“It is,” Zorian agreed. “And maybe there really was such a place inside the orb, once. But teleport platforms and recall stones don’t last all that long without regular maintenance. Not for centuries, at least. And there is a chance that something inside actively broke the mechanism. Say, a giant rampaging hydra…”

“I didn’t think of that,” Zach scowled, reclaiming the orb again. “We just don’t–”

When Zach deployed the orb the fourth time, there was a much louder whooshing sound than usual and the two of them suddenly found themselves standing next to a gigantic, pissed-off hydra. It immediately pounced on them with an unearthly roar.

Needless to say, the next few minutes were… somewhat hectic.

– break –

Defeating the hydra took longer than it had the last time they fought, but the fact they didn’t have to worry about Daimen and his men dying actually made the battle easier. Things were a little hairy in the beginning, when the hydra had caught them off-guard, but after that they just kept themselves out of the hydra’s reach and kept hammering away at it until it decided the situation was hopeless and fled into the jungle. That took hours to do, though, because Zach had already reclaimed the orb by that point and the hydra really didn’t like that. It didn’t help that Zorian was interested in how its multi-part mind worked and thus spent most of the battle studying it instead of fighting it for real.

They didn’t chase after it to finish it off. Having it out of the orb was enough for them. They did spend a lot of time discussing what happened, though, and came to a conclusion that it was no accident that the hydra had only emerged after Zach had deployed the orb. It was likely that the hydra couldn’t exit the orb while it was in its portable form and had to wait for Zach to deploy the orb before it could make the attempt. That, in turn, suggested that perhaps entering the orb without deploying it was similarly impossible… which would make their previous method of studying the orb while holding it in their hands a somewhat wrong-headed method of finding the entrance.

Regardless, after claiming the orb and chasing off the hydra that emerged from it, Zach and Zorian returned to their current base in Koth – the small aranean base that the Silent Doorway Adepts had established around the local Bakora gate.

Zorian’s previous suspicion that the Silent Doorway Adepts would get friendlier and more open to his arguments if he brought them a functional gate address to Koth turned out to be true beyond his wildest dreams. The aranea went absolutely crazy once they tried it out and confirmed it worked. It took little more than four days for him to convince them that the time loop was real and that they should work with him, which was less than half of what it was before. He still sent a simulacrum on a slow journey to Koth, though, both because he didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket and because he needed it to establish a telepathic relay link to Koth by physically placing relay stones along the way.

Still, he was extremely pleased that he managed to get this deal with the Silent Doorway Adepts working. It wasn’t absolutely crucial for reaching Koth, but it would be absolutely necessary when they decided to retrieve the piece of the key that was lost in Blantyrre. Blantyrre didn’t have any notable human civilizations, meaning that ships traveling there were extremely rare. There was no convenient archipelago to serve as a bridge between continents and allow island hopping, so teleporting there was out of the question. The seas and coasts were wild and untamed, full of dangerous monsters and natural danger zones. Zorian had spoken to Daimen about it, and the conclusion was that it was theoretically possible for them to reach Blantyrre within the span of a month… but only just. They would have to fully dedicate an entire restart for the task, and they would be left with a measly handful of days to explore Blantyrre before the restart ended.

Thankfully, Blantyrre was seeded full of Bakora Gates. In fact, they were seeded much more densely there, as if whatever power that had made the gates originated from that continent. This was curious because, as far as anyone knew, humanity had never really lived there in the past. Scholars often quarreled about what this meant, but Zorian didn’t really care about those arguments – all he cared about was that the Bakora gate network was pretty much the only viable method he had of reaching Blantyrre in a timely manner. The fact that one of the imperial artifacts was lost in Blantyrre was one of the major worries he had about their chances to collect the entire Key. Now that he knew he could potentially reach the continent in as little as four days if he acquired the correct gate address, it was like a giant rock was lifted off his shoulders. Maybe they really had a chance of doing this…

“What about your brother?” Zach suddenly asked. “Didn’t you hand him a notebook full of descriptions from our previous restart? Surely he left himself information about where the orb is.”

“He did, but I already told him we would be claiming it for ourselves,” Zorian said.

“Ha. He must have loved that,” Zach said, smiling at Zorian slightly.

“Yeah, he wasn’t happy about that,” Zorian nodded. “He wasn’t too bitter, though. He knows he can’t handle the hydra without our help. He’d need more than a month just to find, vet and organize the extra mercenaries he’d have to hire to successfully retrieve the orb. He did make me promise I would let him have the orb once we were out of the time loop, though.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Zach shrugged. “I mean, I’ve really taken a liking to this thing, but he does sort of have a legitimate claim on it, and he’s your brother to boot. You owe me, though.”

“I owe you?” Zorian said, raising his eyebrow at him. “Owe you what?”

“Another portable palace like this, of course,” said Zach, waving the orb in front of Zorian’s face. “You’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon, no? Surely, a measly little pocket dimension like this is no big deal.”

‘Measly’, he says. Information about pocket dimension creation was scarce, but what Zorian had found suggested that this orb was near the top end of what was possible to achieve. There were examples of bigger hidden worlds, but not many.

“Correction,” Zorian said blandly. “We’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon. Are you seriously telling me you’ll pass by the opportunity to learn how to create one?”

“I’d never pass up the opportunity to learn something so useful,” Zach said with a grin. “But you’re the one who’s good at creating things, while I am more the kind of guy that breaks them. Plus, we’ve already established that you owe me. I’ve magnanimously decided to let your brother claim the orb outside the time loop as a favor to you. As recompense, you need to make another portable palace for me when we finally get out.”

“We’ll talk about that later, when we find out how feasible the idea actually is,” Zorian told him lightly. “However, I can tell you right now that you’re never getting an actual palace.”

“Whaaat?” Zach whined. “Why not?”

“Because pocket dimensions don’t create matter,” Zorian told him. He pointed at the orb in Zach’s hands. “If you want them to contain a piece of land like that one does, you basically have to ‘steal’ it by enclosing an actual place into it during the creation process. So if you want a portable palace… well, you first need to build the palace in question. Putting aside the actual costs of such a project, which are bound to be astronomical, I just don’t have the necessary skills to design and build a palace.”

“Oh,” Zach said. “Yeah, that makes sense, I guess.”

“Now, if you want a tastefully hollowed out rock or a nice wooden cottage… that I can definitely help you with,” Zorian told him. “Hell, I might even be able to fit in some actual glass windows if you want me to be extravagant!”

That triggered a lengthy argument about what kind of building would be possible for a single mage to build on his own, using only natural materials. The argument eventually culminated into a building competition where both Zach and Zorian did their best to construct the most luxurious residence they could with the materials they had on hand.

If any jungle explorer were to stumble upon the site several hours later, they would probably be baffled by the series of towers, ziggurats and blocky houses scattered throughout the entire region. Alas, this part of the jungle was very remote and no such explorer would ever come before the restart ended.

The bats and other animals that moved into the buildings after a few days definitely appreciated their new accommodations, though.

– break –

Zach and Zorian floated in the black void. The black sky that surrounded them was omnidirectional and featureless, containing only one point of interest – a roughly humanoid entity with softly glowing eyes. The Guardian of the Threshold.

It had been a while since they visited this place. They tried not to interact with the Guardian too much, lest they accidentally trigger some kind of safeguard and it realized there were two Controllers inside the time loop and that it should do something about that. However, now that they’d gotten their hands on a piece of the Key, it only made sense for them to come and visit the Sovereign Gate to see how it would react.

“Welcome, Controller,” the Guardian said, its voice just as soft and devoid of emotion as Zorian remembered it to be. The entity gave no indication it remembered their last visit to this place.

“We have questions for you,” Zach told the Guardian bluntly.

“I will do my best to answer them,” the Guardian agreed placidly.

They didn’t ask it about the orb immediately. Instead, they first confirmed the number of restarts they had until the time loop collapsed, just in case. They had 42 left, exactly as it should be. After that Zorian summoned a list of questions the two of them had prepared for the Guardian over the previous restarts, concerning Red Robe, the mechanics of the time loop and so on.

They didn’t get anywhere with that, of course. The Guardian either didn’t know how to help them or flat out refused to do so when they asked things they weren’t ‘authorized’ to know. They had expected that, but it was still frustrating to be foiled so thoroughly. In any case, once they had exhausted their prepared list of questions, they finally moved onto to the main purpose of this visit.

“Guardian, can you tell us more about the Key now?” Zorian asked.

“To find out about the Key, please bring me the Key for inspection,” the Guardian told him.

“Yes, yes… in order to find out about the Key, we must first have the Key. A perfectly logical requirement,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “But we’re not here for that. Our question is this: if we bring you a single piece of the Key, does that count for something? Do we get to ask you questions about it?”

“Having only one piece of the Key will result in information about that part only,” the Guardian noted.

“That’s fine,” Zach said dismissively. “We brought you one of the pieces, so why don’t you take a look?”

“I do not see it,” the Guardian told him immediately. “Are you sure you have connected it to the control room properly?”

“Wait, we have to do what?” Zach asked incredulously.

As it turned out, simply having the pieces of the Key on them when they connected to the Sovereign Gate wasn’t enough. The Guardian neither knew nor cared what they had on their person when they entered this void it inhabited. Instead, it was up to Zach and Zorian to connect the orb to the Sovereign Gate so the Guardian could inspect it and confirm its authenticity.

How were they supposed to do that? The Guardian was naturally of no help whatsoever. It took them two hours of frustrated tinkering before they realized they had to use their marker as a sort of bridge, simultaneously connecting it to both the Sovereign Gate and the orb. Only then did the Guardian recognize it.

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“This is indeed a legitimate piece of the Key,” the Guardian decided.

“Finally,” Zach huffed. “So what does this get us?”

“Nothing on its own,” the Guardian responded. “You need the entire key to unlock higher authorization than you have now. However, you can now ask me for information about it like you wanted earlier. Keep in mind that I have no knowledge of the object’s mundane functions. I can only give you information about it as it relates to the time loop.”

“So if we asked you about the pocket dimension contained in the orb…” began Zorian.

“I couldn’t help you,” the Guardian said. “I didn’t even know there was a pocket dimension encapsulated within the Key piece until you told me.”

There was a second of silence as both Zach and Zorian frowned at the information. This was not completely unexpected. It had been very obvious during their previous visit that the Guardian did not perceive the world in the same way humans did and often just plain disregarded things not related to its job. Still, this was disappointing to hear.

“Alright,” said Zach eventually. “So what can you tell us about the orb, then? What are its capabilities as it relates to the time loop?”

“It contains a memory bank that the Controller can use to store and organize their important memories across restarts,” the Guardian said.

Wait, what? Zach and Zorian shared a shocked glance, not having expected this at all.

“A memory bank…” Zorian repeated slowly.

“Yes,” the Guardian confirmed. “You should be able to sense an empty space inside if you focus on the Key piece correctly. Simply focus on the memories you want to store in the bank and push them inside. Once inside, they will persist from restart to restart and be available for viewing at any time, unless you choose to delete them at some point. Keep in mind that this ability only exists inside the time loop – once you leave and this reality permanently collapses, all of the memories you stored inside the Key piece will be similarly destroyed. Make sure to refresh on anything important you placed there before you leave.”

There was a brief silence as the two of them digested this information.

“I guess we now know what that mysterious empty space inside the orb was,” Zorian finally said.

“Yeah,” Zach said distractedly, lost in thought for a second. He then took a deep breath and turned to Zorian again. “It sounds very convenient.”

“Yes,” Zorian agreed. The ability was a little redundant to him, what with his ability to create memory packets, but he could imagine that an average Controller would find the ability absolutely invaluable. It was almost like having a notebook that carried over from restart to restart, only better. “Guardian, is there any limit on the amount of memories this bank can hold?”