74. The Return

Chapter 074
The Return

Simulacrum number four was worried. He really shouldn’t be, considering what he was and how many times the original had fought the grey hunter by now. If anything, he should be feeling excited – he had a good feeling about this attempt. Their skills had grown, they had become intimately familiar with the grey hunter’s capabilities and they had brought a number of surprises designed specifically to counter it. This could work. This could actually work, unlike so many previous attempts they’d made.

Maybe that was it. In their previous attempts, Zorian – and, by extension, simulacrum number four – had always felt the attempt was a long shot. Even if they failed, it was to be expected. This time he actually felt good about their chances, making him more emotionally invested in the outcome.

Then again, they actually had a pressing need for the grey hunter’s eggs this time. They could contact Silverlake without them, but talking to Silverlake was going to be much harder and much more annoying if they couldn’t bring her something she desperately wanted.

He unconsciously clutched the rifle closer to his chest, the sensation of it dispelling his current stream of thought. He remembered practicing with it over and over, but it still felt a bit alien to his mind… and so did the arms that held it. He was a brand new type of simulacrum that the original had thought up recently – instead of being embodied into an ectoplasmic shell like a regular simulacrum, he had been attached to a real matter golem body designed to mimic the original. This was a step up from the base spell in just about every regard, granting him vastly increased durability and halving his maintenance cost at the same time. It allowed Zorian to maintain twice the usual number of simulacrums and ensured that they wouldn’t be destroyed by relatively minor damage. The only downside was that making the golem bodies was very time consuming, and that the materials were expensive as hell. Or at least that was the idea, anyway. The simulacrum actually felt significantly stiffer and more restricted in his movements than he was used to, a clear sign that his joints weren’t working quite as well as the original had hoped they would. No doubt the original would find a way to fix or mitigate these issues as time went by, but that would make no difference for him personally. He really hoped he wouldn’t lock up or miss in the actual battle because of this.

Alas, the time for contemplation was over. A short message rippled out of his soul and into his consciousness, informing him (and the other three simulacrums gathered around the area) that the original was about to start the fight. He quickly checked up on his rifle one final time and then sent a confirmation that he was ready through the exact same method, using their shared soul as a conduit for communication. Very convenient, that. The original was already working on further upgrades, based on their studies of the hydra and the cephalic rat collective, but that was still in the initial stages and nowhere near ready for field use. For now, ‘normal’ soul conduit communication would have to suffice.

And then it began. The grey hunter leapt out of its cave and immediately moved to attack Zach and Zorian, completely ignoring the simulacrums scattered around the area. A swarm of projectiles answered its charge, Zach and Zorian doing their best to keep it pressured without wasting too much of their mana reserves. Zach launched powerful beams of force at it, forcing it to keep dodging and breaking up its momentum. Zorian, on the other hand, borrowed Kirma’s trick – holding a greyish metal cube as a spell focus, he launched swarms of smaller, cheaper projectiles that homed in unerringly on the grey hunter’s weak points. He timed his attack to coincide with Zach’s, forcing the grey hunter to take at least a few hits from every barrage. Although individually weak and unable to truly threaten the grey hunter, they were apparently doing something because the spider was clearly getting angrier and more agitated as seconds ticked by.

Simulacrum number four trailed the grey hunter with the scope of his rifle, but did not shoot. The grey hunter was currently ignoring the simulacrums because it did not perceive them as a threat, but that wouldn’t last very long if they started blindly firing into the battle zone. No, if he and his duplicate brethren wanted to help Zach and the original, they needed to pick their moment carefully.

The problem with using the gun on the grey hunter wasn’t in whether or not it could dodge the bullet. It couldn’t. To Zorian’s knowledge, nothing was fast enough to dodge a projectile that moved faster than sound itself. The problem was that the spider never sat still long enough to get a good shot on it. Bullets didn’t track their target and using magic to make them do so was incredibly difficult. The most Zorian could do was curve their trajectories slightly towards where he wanted them to hit. And the simulacrums didn’t just have to hit the grey hunter – they had to hit it in a way that left the egg sack unharmed.

Basically, they needed the grey hunter to stay still for a second. A tall order, but the simulacrum was confident that Zach and the original could pull it off.

The grey hunter lunged towards Zorian. Zach was a bigger threat, but Zorian was more annoying and probably looked more vulnerable to its senses. If it could get rid of the annoying weakling first, it could then focus its full attention on the true threat and its victory would be assured. But looks could be deceptive. The grey hunter smashed straight into Zorian’s shield at full force and was stopped cold. The thick barrier of force that surrounded Zorian was a marvel of spell engineering, a custom spell that Zorian had designed with the help of a dozen professional spell crafters to make maximum use of Zorian’s exceptional shaping skills. The softly glowing threads, woven through every inch of the thick sphere of force, lit up like blazing lamps, distributing the incoming force away from the impact points and into the shield as a whole, lessening the strain on any individual point in the shield.

The grey hunter attacked the shield again and again in quick succession, and it finally gave way… but rather than the whole shield shattering, three small hexagons of force broke down instead, leaving the main structure unharmed. Before the grey hunter could take advantage of that the entire shield shifted and automatically rearranged itself, nearby hexagons sliding into place to close the gap.

Suddenly aware that Zorian was no easy target to be brought down quickly, the grey hunter tried to back off, but it was too late. Zach had positioned himself carefully while the grey hunter had been trying to batter down Zorian’s shield, and now launched a barrage of three hyper-dense stone spheres at the spider. The grey hunter spun around like an acrobat, deflecting the spheres away from itself with measured kicks, but Zorian took advantage of its predicament to launch a pair of metal cylinders at it. The grey hunter, accustomed to weathering Zorian’s annoying but weak attacks and not seeing any great concentration of mana in the cylinders, chose to ignore them in favor of the much more threatening stone spheres.

Just before they were going to impact the grey hunter, the cylinders detonated into a cacophony of sound, bright light, magical disturbances and aromatic smoke – all of it specifically optimized for grey hunter senses.

Dazed and disoriented by the flashbang grenades, the grey hunter stumbled and stopped. Just for a moment.

Simulacrum number four pulled the trigger.

Another deafening blast sounded out, closely followed by two more. Simulacrum number two didn’t fire, as he was positioned very inconveniently and there was a danger he could hit the egg sack if he fired. Of the three bullets, one missed the grey hunter completely – simulacrum number one had apparently aimed his shot so poorly that not even the trajectory correcting magics the original placed on the bullet could help. It didn’t matter, though – both he and number three had hit the grey hunter straight into its cephalothorax, the bullets successfully breaking through its carapace.

It was a testament to the grey hunter’s toughness that, mere moments following this, it shook off the stun effect and retreated at top speed, as if it hadn’t just been shot twice in the head with high-caliber armor-piercing bullets. But it didn’t matter. It was living on borrowed time – from the moment those bullets sank into its flesh, its fate was sealed. The bullets were filled with the distilled essence of the crystal ooze – a magical creature every bit as powerful as the grey hunter, whose touch turned all flesh into inert crystal. The crystallization bullets, as Zorian called them, were already turning the grey hunter’s organs into lifeless crystal, and there was nothing the spider could do about it.

The grey hunter seemed to realize it too. It went berserk, lunging at Zach and Zorian with even greater zeal, and then tried to flee. They couldn’t allow that, of course. If it escaped, it would doubtlessly retreat into the deep dungeon and hide before dying, and other denizens of the dungeon might eat the egg sack before they could track down its corpse. Thus, walls of stone and force sprang up to bar its path, ectoplasmic threads and tentacles sought to entangle it and dimensional gates barred the path to its lair.

Eventually, the internal crystallization process advanced too far for the grey hunter to keep functioning and it started to visibly slow and then stop. Simulacrum number four and his fellow duplicates were then sent in to hack it apart and claim the egg sack, because the original was too much of a coward to do it himself. Then again, the grey hunter did mangle one of the simulacrums beyond repair as its last act before dying, so maybe he shouldn’t judge.

But anyway… the grey hunter was dead… and the egg sack was still intact.

It was time to visit Silverlake again. After some thought, simulacrum number four wandered off from the grey hunter’s corpse and sought out the original to talk to him about visiting the old witch. He was so looking forward to seeing her reaction when she realized what they had done, and it wasn’t fair that he wouldn’t get to see it just because he was a simulacrum! He was the one that shot the grey hunter! Well, he and number three, but number three ended up being killed by the grey hunter’s last hurrah.

He totally earned this and was not taking no for an answer.

– break –

After securing the corpse of the grey hunter, Zorian and his simulacrums went about carefully removing the egg sack attached to its underbelly without damaging it – a task far harder than Zorian would initially have assumed it would be. Then again, the egg sack had stayed attached to the grey hunter while it was doing all sorts of sharp movements and acrobatics, so it was a bit silly of him to assume he could just peel it off the spider as he wished. Still, it was nothing that Zorian and his duplicates couldn’t solve with a bit of time and analysis. After an hour or so, they finally managed to separate the egg sack from the corpse without ruining it.

They immediately set off to see Silverlake. They had no idea what it took to keep the eggs alive in the long term, after all, so it was better to deliver them to Silverlake as soon as possible. They also kept the grey hunter’s corpse, stashing it in the orb of the first emperor. Much of its value was ruined when its insides crystallized, but there should still be enough of it for a potion or two.

After some reasoned and totally calm discussion, Zorian also decided to take simulacrum number four with him to see Silverlake. Being accompanied by a simulacrum might help him convince her that he wasn’t just a precocious teenage mage and that she should actually take him seriously.

In any case, tracking down Silverlake’s home wasn’t hard this time around. She may have hidden it in a pocket dimension, but Zorian knew the general area it was in and had specialized divinations that could find such things. They didn’t try to break into the pocket dimension, though. That would have been threatening and rude. Instead, they got her attention in a more civilized manner – by taking the grey hunter’s corpse out of the orb and parading it around the pocket dimension entrance while chanting her name.

It didn’t take long before she decided to come out to meet them. She gave the dead grey hunter a quick, intrigued look before seemingly ignoring it in favor of focusing on them instead. She remained standing next to the entrance to her pocket dimension, though, a long iron rod clutched tightly in her bony fingers.

“Hello,” Zach said, giving her a sunny smile and a casual wave of his hand.

“What a curious bunch of visitors you are,” Silverlake said, unmoved by his friendliness. “It’s not every day that two baby mages manage to track me down to this place… and is that a simulacrum attached to a golem frame? My, aren’t you a clever sort.”

“Well, you’re a pretty clever sort yourself,” Zorian noted. “You figured out what my simulacrum is without casting any obvious analysis spells.”

He really meant that, too. Certainly he couldn’t pull off something like that. He’d have to spend several minutes casting analytical divinations before he could work out what he was dealing with. Granted, she may have done that before she stepped out of her pocket dimension, but it was still impressive.

“Well? Out with it,” Silverlake demanded. “Why are you bothering this old woman in the middle of her afternoon nap, making all this racket?”

“We have come to trade!” Zach said in an equally cheery tone, undaunted by her wariness.

“We have killed the grey hunter and retrieved its eggs fully intact,” Zorian said without preamble, waving his hand at the corpse of the giant spider on the ground next to them. His simulacrum, meanwhile, casually extracted the grey hunter’s eggs from the box he was carrying, letting Silverlake see them. Her eyes immediately lit up with greed and excitement. She hid it quite quickly, but it was there. “We thought you might be interested in them.”

“Oh? And why did you think that?” Silverlake asked him, inclining her head to the side, like a bird that spotted something interesting.

“Because you told me so in the past,” Zorian said blandly.

“Because I told you so in the past,” Silverlake repeated slowly, looking at him like he was stupid. “What a curious thing to say. Old I may be, but my memory is still going strong… and I don’t remember ever talking to you.”

Zach and Zorian had discussed extensively what to tell Silverlake before coming to this place. Telling her the truth about the time loop was dangerous, because she was likely proficient in both soul and mind magic. She was a highly capable witch, after all, and they were famous for dabbling in both of those fields. However, convincing her to help them through lies and manipulations would take a long time… and time was, amusingly enough, something they had a chronic shortage of. Thus, they had unanimously decided to just tell the annoying old witch the truth and see how she reacted. Even if she was hostile, they could probably handle it.

Probably.

“You don’t remember because the world we live in is constantly repeating itself. On the night of the summer festival, the world ends. Everything reverts to how it was the month before, and then carries on as if nothing was wrong. Like an endlessly repeating music box, you repeat your actions over and over in month-long intervals… constantly forgetting, constantly starting over,” Zorian explained, being deliberately a little melodramatic and mysterious.

Silverlake listened to his explanation with an arched eyebrow, looking surprised and amused in equal measure.

“My word, you came all this way just to deliver this kind of tall tale to me?” Silverlake said, chuckling lightly. “I suppose I can understand where you’re coming from. I have been told, on occasion, that I am rather repetitive in my arguments.”

“It’s not just you,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “Everyone is reliving this month over and over. Only me and Zach here are immune.”

“Oh, but of course!” Silverlake said, slapping herself in the forehead. “Of course it’s like that! No doubt I too can get this kind of immunity at very favorable prices, thus saving myself from this awful, awful fate of… repeating myself for all eternity? I must say, the scammers these days are getting really inventive.”

“Actually, there is nothing we can do to help you retain awareness of previous restarts,” Zach said, clacking his tongue unhappily. “Kind of depressing, but there you go. We’re not here for that. As I have noted earlier, we’re here to trade – the grey hunter’s eggs in exchange for magical help.”

Silverlake stayed silent for a second.

“Ah, I see,” she finally said. “This is just you answering my question. I asked how you knew I needed the grey hunter’s eggs and you gave me an answer. I supposed if I asked you for an actual explanation…?”

“This is an actual explanation,” Zorian said. “It’s not my fault you don’t believe me.”

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Out of curiosity, during this conversation that I have no memory of, did I ever actually tell you what I needed the grey hunter’s eggs for?”

“No, you did not,” Zorian admitted. “To be honest, I was rather angry with you back then and didn’t inquire too deeply. I came to you for help with a pressing problem and you sent me on all sorts of tasks, all of which I did without complaint. But my only reward was to be told to go after the grey hunter for its eggs. I was a lot weaker back then, so that basically amounted to sending me on an impossible task in order to get rid of me.”

“That does sound like something I would do,” Silverlake nodded sagely. “Which brings me to my next point – why are you so certain that I actually desire these eggs? Maybe I just sent you on a fool’s errand to waste your time, and didn’t actually care about the outcome.”

Well, the truth was that Zorian didn’t know this for certain. He was making an educated guess, based on things like her clearly having tried to acquire the eggs herself in the past. But she didn’t have to know that.

“I’m an empath,” he told her. “So I am certain you do want these eggs very, very much.”

Silverlake scowled at him.

“A mind mage,” she spat out in disgust. “I have the most rotten luck, I swear. I only like mind magic when I’m the one using it on others! Fine, fine, I admit it, I do want the grey hunter’s eggs… but they’re not as valuable as you might hope!”

“Meaning?” Zorian asked calmly.

“I have an important project that requires them, but it’s only one of the two critical components that I lack. If you had brought both of them, I would really be desperate to make a deal with you. But it’s a shame, a shame, for without the other critical component, the eggs are merely… interesting.”

Zach rolled his eyes at her.

“You’re just like Zorian described you,” he said. “Every time one of your tasks is accomplished, you come up with another one.”

“Well that’s not very fair,” she said reasonably. “I don’t remember ever giving you a task, after all. But that aside, I never said I will not trade for the eggs. I just said you better not hope to swindle something actually good from me in exchange for something that minor.”

‘Minor’, she says. Right.

“Out of curiosity, what is this other critical component?” Zorian asked.

“Bones and certain organs of a giant brown salamander that has grown past a certain size,” Silverlake said.

“That’s it?” Zach asked incredulously. “Those things are everywhere around here!”

“It’s not as simple as it sounds,” Silverlake said. “Yes, there are plenty of them to be found in the rivers and creeks around us, but they simply aren’t big enough… not mature enough. Giant brown salamanders never die of old age, you see. They simply get bigger. But they are a fairly weak type of magical creature, and they grow really slowly past a certain point, so almost none of them reach the size I need them to be. I need a salamander that has survived for at least one hundred years, and that’s incredibly rare.”

“They can’t be bred in captivity?” Zach asked.

Silverlake looked at him like he just asked the dumbest thing ever.

“Who would be willing to wait a hundred years for a creature to grow up?” she asked. “Nobody has that much time, boy. Besides, they’d probably all get sick and die before the hundred years are up. I have no idea how to go about raising giant salamanders.”

Zorian couldn’t help but remember how his first meeting with Silverlake had gone. If he remembered correctly, he had just been attacked by a particularly large giant brown salamander and had killed it in self-defense. This was the catalyst that had caused Silverlake to finally reveal herself to him. Back then he had blithely given her the salamander corpse, not even realizing how valuable it was… and Silverlake, after receiving something so apparently valuable from him, still decided to send him on a bunch of fool’s errands without even hearing him out.

That withered old bitch!

“Let’s stop dancing around the issue for a moment,” Zorian said, swallowing down his annoyance in favor of actually accomplishing something. “This is our offer: the grey hunter’s egg sack in exchange for a month’s worth of instruction in pocket dimension creation. What do you say?”

“Oh? Pocket dimension creation?” Silverlake said contemplatively, tapping her chin with her index finger. “So that’s what you’re after. That’s a pretty exotic and high-level skill. Are you sure you’re even capable of learning it?”

Oh, good – she didn’t deny she possessed the skill in question. Zorian had kind of been afraid that her hideout was just something she had found through luck and that she wasn’t actually capable of creating pocket dimensions herself. It would have been a pain trying to find someone else who had that kind of expertise.

In any case, Zorian didn’t try to convince Silverlake with words – instead, he simply opened a dimensional gateway straight to Koth right then and there. Silverlake was instantly on guard when he started casting a spell, but didn’t try to stop him. About half-way through, she seemed to realize what he was doing and relaxed. Instead, she got an intrigued look on her face, especially when the dimensional passage itself sprang into existence beside Zorian.

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She circled the gate a few times, peering intently at it, before turning to Zorian again.

“Well, you are full of surprises. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a stable, well-crafted dimensional passage,” Silverlake reluctantly admitted.

Zorian smiled. That was only natural. After all, Zorian’s gate creation skills were a fusion of more orthodox gate creation skills that Xvim had taught him, as well as the insights Zorian had made from studying the Ibasan permanent gates and seeing the Bakora Gates in action. He doubted many people had had the opportunity to study so many different gate creation methods.

“As you can see, I’m quite good at dimensionalism,” Zorian said. “And so is my friend Zach, here. You don’t have to worry about us not being able to follow your instructions.”

“Well that’s good,” Silverlake said with a wide, happy grin. “Then that just leaves the question of payment. You see… I don’t think the grey hunter’s eggs will be enough to pay for this.”

Zorian didn’t bat an eye at this. He’d fully expected Silverlake to discard their initial offer and reach out for more. Someone as greedy and insatiable as she was would never agree to a person’s first offer.

It was good then, that he had many more things to offer.

“I could dispute that, but I am feeling generous today,” said Zorian. He motioned for Zach to take out the orb of the first emperor, which he promptly did. “What my friend is holding is a portable pocket dimension holding an ancient ruin. It’s a lost artifact from the Age of Gods, probably impossible to reproduce in modern times. If you agree to this deal, we will allow you to study the artifact for the duration of our lessons. I’m sure you can imagine how beneficial this could be for your own pocket dimension creation skills.”

Silverlake clearly could imagine, because she stared at the orb with such intensity that Zorian was afraid she would attack them both on the spot and try to take it from them. But after a few seconds, she shook her head and tore her eyes away from the orb.

“Throw in that modified Gate spell of yours and we have a deal,” Silverlake said.

“Ah, no, I can’t agree to that,” said Zorian with fake sadness. “Still, that spell isn’t completely out of the question… if you agree to some additional concessions.”

Silverlake scowled at him, but Zorian completely ignored her displeasure. If she could be greedy, so could he. He could tell she really wanted that Gate spell, so why not get everything he could out of it?

“I suppose you have something specific in mind?” she asked him.

“I want to acquire the ability of soul perception,” Zorian said. “And unfortunately, the potion made out of dirge moth chrysalises is not an option.”

“Yes, that potion doesn’t keep well at all,” Silverlake confirmed. “It can last six months at most, and even that’s pushing it. But really, why are you bothering me with such a minor request? Just go kill some people. That’s how nearly all necromancers get that ability these days. Even if you have no talent whatsoever at soul magic, you should be able to get it after twenty or so sacrifices.”