Volume 1 - Capítulo 89

Chapter 089

Victory

It was a peaceful summer day in the Great Northern Forest. The vegetation was vibrantly green and thriving, colorful flowers covered the forest meadows, the songbirds were seemingly competing to see which one of them was louder and shriller than the next, and strange insects were flying through the air.

While the vast expanse of trees that covered the northern portion of the Altazian continent was usually portrayed as a dark and foreboding place, crawling with dangerous monsters and hidden dangers, the truth is that the area could be quite beautiful and breathtaking. One just had to be strong enough to survive the challenges and travel the land unchecked.

Zorian, Taiven and Kael were definitely strong enough. Not just because Zorian was present in the group, either. Taiven and Kael had gone through five whole loops by now, each of which included additional time in the Black Rooms. They’d had nearly an entire year to improve their magic, backed by nearly unlimited resources and top-tier tutors. Even Kael, who spent most of that time focusing on alchemy, was now capable of at least defending himself from common threats. As for Taiven, she was a combat magic specialist to begin with. Her power was probably equal to an average professional combat mage at this point. She even had real combat experience, since she insisted on fighting the Ibasan invaders at the end of every restart and often participated in minor battles that Daimen’s team stumbled upon while exploring Blantyrre. Even if Zorian decided to stand back and let the other two fend for themselves, there was very little in the forest around them that could threaten them.

Currently, the three of them were resting on a large boulder in one of the forest clearings and playing a game of cards. It was just something to pass the time while they rested their feet. They had been wandering the forest for hours before stumbling upon the clearing, and it looked so perfect for a temporary camp they decided to take a bit of a break. They didn’t intend to stay here for very long.

As Zorian pondered his next move, he felt Taiven ‘subtly’ try to take a peek at his cards with a spying spell. Zorian was proud for her for expanding her horizons beyond flashy combat magic, but that didn’t stop him from reflexively crushing her magic into nothingness before giving her a knowing smile. She pouted for a moment, before remembering she was supposed to act like she didn’t know anything and schooling her expression into one of indifference.

Kael silently observed the scene from the side before shaking his head in amusement, probably guessing what had happened. Zorian suspected Taiven had tried to use the same trick on Kael as well, though he had no idea if the morlock boy had managed to stop her, or even noticed her cheating. Then again, Kael didn’t seem to take the card game very seriously. He seemed to be playing mindlessly, uncaring of how likely he is to win. Zorian supposed this sort of attitude made perfect sense, since this was supposed to be just a nice relaxing game with no stakes, but it faintly annoyed him anyway.

Zorian himself didn’t try to cheat, of course. That would suck the joy out of the whole activity, since it would be so trivial for him to succeed. He simply immersed himself in the game while listening to the sounds of the wilderness around them. His legs throbbed in pain, unused to the level of activity he was engaging in, but he had kind of gotten used to that by now. Even with the aid of potions and mind magic, the beginning of every restart involved Zorian being in a constant state of dull pain because he lived far more actively than he had before the time loop. Hopefully that wouldn’t have any long-term mental effects on him once he was out of the time loop…

He was broken out of his thoughts by a loud crunching sound. Looking to the side, he saw Kael with a large yellow root stuffed in his mouth.

Taiven gave Kael a strange, possibly disapproving look.

“What?” Kael complained, chewing loudly. The sound it produced reminded Zorian of someone eating a raw carrot.

“How can you eat that thing?” she asked him.

“It’s really tasty,” he told her matter-of-factly.

“It’s a wild root you washed in a nearby river,” she protested. “That cannot possibly be safe or hygienic. Plus, I can smell it from here and it doesn’t smell like something you should be eating…”

Kael gave her a challenging look before biting into the root again and chewing even louder.

Zorian pretended to study his cards while inwardly chuckling in amusement. Personally, he wasn’t worried about Kael in the slightest. Although the morlock was the weakest of the three in terms of combat strength, he was the person who was most at home in the forest. He had been working and living in this very environment ever since he was a child, and doubtlessly knew exactly what was safe to eat and how.

Taiven had gotten relatively close to Kael after they had both received a temporary marker, since the two of them were arguably the closest in age and relative skill among the new loopers, so she probably knew that too. Thus, she simply threw her hands in the air with a huff, accidentally showing them a glimpse of the cards she was holding, and dropped the issue.

Zorian took note of her cards and changed his tactics accordingly. This wasn’t cheating, of course. Taking advantage of your opponent’s mistakes was only natural. It wasn’t his problem that he could memorize her entire hand flawlessly after seeing it for only a fraction of a second…

After another fifteen minutes of chatting, playing cards, eating roots and berries and lazing around, the three of them reluctantly decided to move on. After all, this whole expedition originated from Kael’s desire to search for rare alchemical ingredients in the depths of the Great Northern Forest. This wasn’t really some critical task that had to be done, and the three of them were mostly using it as an excuse to relax and socialize, but they did intend to seriously search for things Kael was after.

For the next half an hour or so, Zorian followed after Kael casting divination after divination and occasionally taking over the minds of forest birds in order to scout the area around them. Taiven also utilized divinations, having achieved some measure of expertise in the field over the various restarts, while Kael mostly relied on his own two eyes. Considering his extensive experience in searching for magical plants, however, he probably still saw and understood far more than Zorian and Taiven did.

Every once in a while the morlock boy would inspect some random stump or boulder, occasionally picking up some other magical plant that wasn’t on their list, but which he apparently also considered worthwhile, and occasionally just stared at them meaningfully while pondering some mysterious issue. The backpacks the three of them wore had all been made by Zorian, and were considerably larger on the inside than they appeared, but Zorian estimated Kael’s backpack was already starting to get full from the various plants, jars full of worms and beetles, and even some colorful stones that seemed pretty mundane to Zorian’s eyes. Even if they failed to find the things they were searching for, Kael certainly intended to make the most out of this expedition, that’s for sure.

Relaxing times like these had become increasingly rare in these last five restarts. Everyone was constantly busy with something, whether it was following some plan, searching for things that could help them, experimenting with exotic magics or simply training their skills. This was especially true in this particular restart, since this was the last restart for the temporary loopers. If they could not figure out a way to modify the temporary markers before the end of the restart, they would lose… well, everything.

Sure enough, eventually Kael and Taiven could not help but bring up the issue that was constantly in the back of everyone’s mind these days.

“This is the end, isn’t it?” Kael suddenly said.

The other two gave him conflicted looks. There was no need to ask him what he meant by that.

“Tell us honestly, Zorian… what are the chances we can figure out how to adjust our markers before this month runs out?” Kael continued, seeing how he had their attention.

Zorian suppressed a sigh. Temporary markers… they had spent almost a year studying them, if one factored in the time spent in Black Rooms, and in that time they had made significant progress. They managed to map the general structure of the markers and figure out what many of the pieces did. They compared these markers to the larger, more complete markers embedded in Zach and Zorian. They placed and removed temporary markers on random people to test possible modifications and see what happened. They found out that, yes, the markers really did contain components made out of divine energies… and they also found a way to deal with that. Through several ruinously expensive deals with Quatach-Ichl and innumerable destroyed divine artifacts, they managed to create methods to detect and crudely manipulate strands of divine energy inside their markers. Not enough to manipulate them as they wished, but enough to tear out some portions of the structure and change how this divine foundation interacted with more normal magic that surrounded it.

It wasn’t enough. Despite their best efforts, the solution remained frustratingly out of reach.

What bothered Zorian most about this was that he didn’t think the problem was impossible. They were making good progress. He felt they were definitely on the right track. He felt that this was something that could definitely be solved in time.

Could they figure out a way to prolong the temporary marker in one more restart? No. Not even three would be enough. But maybe if they had five or six… if their soul magic was more developed… if they had easier access to the imperial crown resting on Quatach-Ichl’s head… if they had learned how to sense divine energies sooner…

If. If, if, if…

“No,” Zorian finally admitted. “There is no chance at all.”

All three of them walked in silence for a while.

“I am actually not that upset,” Taiven eventually said. “The idea that I could just suddenly disappear at the end of the month was terrifying at first, but I’ve gotten used to it by now. I even died in one of the restarts.”

Zorian vividly remembered that one. Watching Taiven get decapitated by a war troll was strangely upsetting, even though he knew she would be fine in the next restart.

“I mean, I don’t want to disappear at the end of the month,” Taiven continued, “but we’ve done everything we could and it was fun while it lasted. If this is how it has to be, then so be it.”

“Indeed,” Kael said. “Besides, if I understood Zorian correctly, there are only 13 more restarts left at this point. A little more than a year. We’re not losing all that much.”

“Both of you talk like you think you’re dead for sure,” Zorian said. “Have some faith, okay? Modifying the temporary markers is probably a failure, but the possibility of exiting the time loop still remains. This was our fallback plan if we couldn’t modify the markers, remember?”

“Oh?” Taiven perked up. “That’s still an option?”

“Of course,” said Zorian. “What do you think we have been doing all this time?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Taiven said with a grin. “That mean old witch keeps complaining about you ‘wasting your time on distractions’ and ‘taking too many breaks from your duties’, so…”

“Silverlake thinks everyone should be a tireless golem except her,” Zorian said with a derisive snort. “It’s not like she never takes any breaks or tinkers with new potions that have no connection to anything urgent.”

“I thought that whole project was still shrouded in uncertainty, though,” Kael pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” Zorian reluctantly admitted. “We have yet to actually try things, so it’s all very theoretical. However, just because we are uncertain about some things doesn’t mean the attempt is bound to fail. It’s hard to put actual numbers on things, but I think there is at least a 70% chance that we could transport people’s souls into the real world, and 30% or so that we could successfully open a dimensional bridge that would let us physically step out of the time loop.”

The two of them gave him complex looks that he could not interpret. It was a little hard to accurately discern their emotions these days, since they had both learned to protect their minds and emotions with unstructured mental defenses. In fact, this was something that all temporary loopers decided to invest time in, once they realized the extent of Zorian’s mental powers. Even the ones that already had some level of unstructured mental defenses promptly decided they were insufficient and needed to be strengthened as much as possible.

Zorian understood their reasoning. It was just like that old saying: trust your neighbor, but lock the door. Even if you trusted someone to be a moral and principled person, it was better not to tempt them with easy opportunities. Thus, he did not take such things against them. In fact, he encouraged it. Considering aranea explicitly considered anyone with an unshielded mind fair game for psychic invasion and that they were working closely with several groups of them, getting some level of mental protection was just plain common sense.

“If the only option to exit the time loop is to steal our original bodies from our past selves, I would rather stay here and forget everything,” Kael said, shaking his head. “Additionally, I only care about physically leaving if it allows me to take Kana with me. If not, I’d rather stay with her till the end.”

Zorian opened his mouth to say something, but then realized that it probably didn’t matter that Kana doesn’t have the temporary marker. If they physically left the time loop, every person was as good as any other.

Would others also want to bring family members with them? That… could get kind of complicated.

“Err, I might have gone for the soul exit if it was actually an option,” Taiven said hesitantly. “I mean, I feel sorry for old Taiven but let’s get real here… she is kind of an idiot.”

Zorian’s lips twitched into the beginning of a smile, but he suppressed it.

“As it is, I am not actually capable of taking this way out,” Taiven said. “I’m not even good enough to survive Silverlake’s soul perception granting potion, never mind possessing my old body. So physically crossing over is the only option for me, really.”

Zorian nodded slowly. Truthfully, this was true for most people. People who had zero experience with soul magic would find it impossible to get good enough at it to survive the soul transferal and successfully possess their body. People who were well versed in soul magic, even before the time loop, would probably be annihilated by the originals if they tried to possess them. Aside from Zorian, only Kael, Xvim and Lukav had a good chance of pulling that off. And Xvim, much like Kael, had already ruled out the idea of ‘stealing his own life away from himself’.

“Physical exit is what we’re aiming for, anyway,” Zorian said. “Transferring souls is more of a last resort than anything.”

“Yes, but you admitted yourself that chances of success aren’t too high. Not even a coin toss,” Taiven noted. “So yeah, there is still hope… but it’s nothing to get excited about. Hell, you’re probably putting a positive spin on things to cheer us up!”

“No, not at all,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I was actually trying to be conservative with my estimates. I really think this could work.”

“There is one thing that’s been bothering me about all this,” Kael said. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way out of the time loop, but did you think about what we’re going to do if we succeed with this? If we physically step into the outside world with all our skills and knowledge?”

“Stop the invasion from destroying Cyoria?” Taiven tried, raising her eyebrow at him.

“Well, yes. But what about afterwards?” Kael asked. “You have an entire life in front of you, but there is already someone living your life for you. Are you going to avoid your friends and family and set up a new life for yourself elsewhere? Or are you going to do your best to insert yourself into your old life and damn the consequences? What if someone reports you to the authorities and they come to drag you off? How would you explain your presence and identity?”

Taiven squirmed uncomfortably.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, biting her lip. “Honestly, I try not to think about things like that. I’m kind of impulsive, so even if I reach a resolution here, I will probably just break it when I actually get there. So there’s no point. I can only hope I’ll be able to figure something out when the time comes. I don’t want to ruin the other Taiven’s life, but… I don’t know. What about you two?”

“I’m fairly disconnected from most people,” Kael shrugged. “So long as I have my own Kana, everything is fine. I guess I would deliver my alchemy notes to my original and then wander off to do my own thing. But I’m not sure very many of us are like that. Silverlake and Alanic, maybe. The rest? There are probably at least a few of them that would fight bitterly for a piece of their old life.”

“Honestly? I don’t think I could stay away,” Zorian admitted. “I’d try to ‘reform’ my original into something better. Teach him a few things, nudge him into getting closer with Kirielle, things like that. A bit manipulative, but it would come along with personal magic instruction and other help so I think it could work. I wouldn’t try to steal his life away, though. If there was no place for me in my old life, I would find something else to amuse myself with.”

“As I said, I’m not sure everyone would be so serene about it,” Kael pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” Zorian nodded. “Zach and I purposely didn’t raise the issue to the group, since we felt there was no way to reach any kind of official agreement on this. No matter the conclusion, someone would disagree. Possibly violently. The entire group might even fragment, if someone feels very strongly about the option that was chosen or not chosen. It’s better to keep everyone focused on the immediate problem and worry about these things later.”

Despite such efforts, however, they already had a couple of casualties. Two restarts ago, a pair of professors Xvim included into the group decided they couldn’t handle the existential implications of the time loop and asked for their temporary markers to be removed so they could forget everything. Additionally, one of the aranea from the Luminous Advocates became so hysterical and violent that the other aranea asked for her to be stripped of her marker and ejected from the group. Zorian wasn’t sure what had caused that, but since the other Luminous Advocates mysteriously acquired soul perception around that time, he suspected it was a product of some secret procedure they had collectively performed on themselves. In the interest of not starting a fight, though, he decided not to pursue the issue.

With this being the last restart in which the temporary markers would remain effective, the pressure on people would only increase.

Zorian really hoped nobody would crack too badly before the end.

- break -

Spells could only persist for so long. Even the most stable spell, supplied with an ample amount of mana, would fall apart in a couple of hours if not anchored to something. Thus, enhancement rituals had a problem. They aimed to place the user under a permanent magic effect or give them an innate magic ability, but that meant they had to anchor the spell to something to prevent it from decaying.

This was a great problem. Anchoring the magic to one’s flesh by inscribing sigils into the skin was ill advised. Forcing large quantities of mana to flow through living flesh, even if it was one’s personal mana, was usually unhealthy in the long term. Additionally, the resulting anchor was easy to break by physically harming the sigils, which was likely to result in dire consequences for the user. Abrupt, uncontrolled spell failures were dangerous enough in normal circumstances – when the spell was embedded into one’s very flesh and bones, the grisly result could be easily imagined.

Fortunately, there was a solution. Far in the distant past, some nameless mage had discovered how to repurpose a portion of their mana reserves into a spell anchor for the enhancement ritual. Since one’s mana reserves were kept naturally stable by the soul, any magic fashioned from them would also be kept stable. The only problem was that since the anchor was literally made out of one’s mana reserves, the caster would permanently have less mana at their disposal. The mana used in the construction of the anchor would never recover, since it was still there in the caster’s reserves, being stabilized by their soul along with the rest of it.

There was one additional issue, however. Even though an enhancement ritual could grant the user a magical ability, it was ultimately just fancy transformation magic. It never expired, it was almost impossible to dispel and the user had very fine control over it, but they would not get the same instinctive affinity with it that the base creature had.

This was where blood magic came into play. It allowed a mage to anchor the spell not only to their mana reserves, but to their life force as well. The resulting connection was deep and potent – potent enough that the user’s descendants had a chance to inherit the ability in question as a bloodline. The innate understanding of the base creature was also transferred over to the new user, allowing them to use it almost as well as someone who had been born with it right from the start.

Enhancement rituals were dangerous. Poorly executed, they could kill the user or permanently ruin them as a mage. More than one mage had completely locked down their mana reserves or transformed them into something that ripped them to shreds from the inside.

Blood magic rituals were dangerous. The user had to cut complicated patterns into their flesh and bleed themselves in order to stir up their vitality and coax their life force into appropriate structures. Unless one knew exactly what they were doing, it was very easy to die of blood loss, or worse.

Zach and Zorian combined the two anyway. They started small, but moved on quickly to more ambitious projects due to time constraints. They made mistakes, but none of them too serious… and any lingering consequences were washed away at the end of every restart. With the help of Kael, they tracked down and talked with surviving morlock blood mages scattered across the continent, seeking advice and tricks of the trade. They practiced with their new abilities and took note of which one worked best for them and why.

Now, with time running out and this restart being so critical, they decided to immediately put those skills into practice. They performed the relevant rituals at the very beginning of the restart. A week and a half later, when their mana reserves and life force mostly stabilized, they gathered Xvim, Silverlake and Daimen for a project that would test their dimensionalism skills to the limit. Something that would prove that they were capable of eventually creating the gateway out of the loop.

They were going to create a miniature copy of the palace orb.

Currently, Zach, Zorian, Silverlake, Xvim and Daimen were all standing on the edge of a massive spell formula circle, equidistant from each other. They had spent the past several hours embedding the spell circle into the ground of this place, followed by setting up several complicated wards that had to be layered just right for the whole thing to work correctly. Now they were resting and adjusting their minds for the final task in front of them.

There was a luxurious house sitting in the center of the circle, surrounded by a large garden and ornamental trees. It stood in a fairly isolated location and Zach and Zorian actually bought the entire place, so they shouldn’t be interrupted by anyone. Silverlake complained about the amount of money that had been wasted on this, when they could have simply ‘stolen’ a house from someone or picked a random patch of ground, but Zach didn’t want to hear it. He wanted his own pocket mansion, and he wanted it to really be his.

In any case, the idea behind their current project was a little different than that behind other pocket dimension creation projects. Previously, Zach and Zorian had focused on isolating a patch of space with a dimensional membrane and then inflating it to desired volume. Now they would be forcibly isolating a large patch of land from the rest of the world, compressing it and then attaching it to a prepared anchor object. In this case, that was a ball of magically-reinforced glass, for maximum resemblance to the palace orb.

This was similar to the method Silverlake used to hide her home from outside scrutiny, but harder. Silverlake simply compressed an area to make it seemingly ‘disappear’, but it remained connected to the rest of the world. That made her pocket dimension immovable, but easier to actually create. What they were doing now, however, would require them to effectively tear out a piece of reality and put it into a portable box for their own use.

The house and its surrounding land were not nearly as big as the space inside the palace orb. Despite that, attempting this required all five of them to join hands and perform a group magic ritual, employing every trick and advantage they could think of… and they still weren’t sure if they could pull it off. Zorian didn’t even want to think what it took to create something like the actual palace orb.

Looking around, Zorian saw that the others were well rested and ready to start. He took a deep breath and stepped forward. Five simulacrums followed after him.

Zorian had long since cracked the method that Princess used to coordinate her eight heads as one entity, and was now capable of using it with his simulacrums. It was a fascinating thing, connecting multiple viewpoints and thought-streams into one unified perspective, but it did have an important limitation: it could only be used when Zorian and his simulacrums were broadly doing the same thing. Such as fighting the same enemy or cooperating on the same task. If he was reading books in Cyoria and his simulacrums were scattered all over the world, each doing their own thing, there would be no connecting points to bind their consciousness together and the hydra method couldn’t be used. But for the task at hand, it was just perfect.

He then activated the magic ability he had acquired through the enhancement ritual. He had acquired it from the humble tunneler toad, whose ability to perceive and navigate warped space had seemed most useful for his purposes. It wasn’t the best ability he could have gotten, but it was relatively cheap and worked well enough for Zorian’s purposes. Anchoring it to his mana reserves robbed him of roughly 8% of his maximum mana, which pained him, but did not affect him too badly.

Finally, he activated the mental enhancements he had crafted over the past year or so, helped by numerous aranea experts and even some human researchers. Many of his simulacrums paid with their short lives to test these enhancements, and the end result was appropriately impressive for something made after so much sacrifice. His thoughts immediately became clearer and more focused, his integration with his simulacrums deepened and his ability to calculate and measure things at a glance became superhuman.

Around him, he saw the others prepare themselves as well.

Zach was leaning back and forth on his feet, humming some sort of tune to himself. He looked relaxed and careless, but there was a distant look in his eyes, as if he wasn’t really all there. His choice for the creature to use an enhancement ritual on was the voidsoul deer. Zach seemed to really like its ability to alter trajectories of things in the space around it, since that meant the ability was useful in combat, as well as for things like this. It was a fairly expensive ability in terms of mana reserves, but Zach was easily able to afford it. Zorian could feel the space around Zach ripple and warp as he flexed his new ability in preparation of the task at hand.

Daimen’s presence was a bit of a surprise. Before the time loop, Daimen hadn’t even known how to cast the gate spell, never mind how to use pocket dimension magic. However, his reputation wasn’t for nothing. With a year of time and access to all the restricted material and knowledgeable tutors he could wish for, Daimen had experienced a meteoric rise in his dimensionalism skills. It reignited Zorian’s jealousy a bit to see him blaze through things so easily, given that Zorian had to try so hard to get where Daimen currently was, but objectively speaking, it was a good thing to have another capable dimensionalist on hand. It increased their chances of success immensely.

Daimen had also chosen to dabble in enhancement rituals along with Zach and Zorian – the only one of the temporary loopers that dared to do so. He picked a phase spider that Zach and Zorian were lucky to track down in one of the restarts. Their signature ability, which was literally a power to create small pocket dimensions, was bound to be very useful today.

Silverlake had stabbed six gold-plated stakes into the ground around her and was mumbling something to herself and making some sort of strange finger gestures. They didn’t look like spellcasting gestures. It kind of reminded Zorian of Kirielle trying to perform math with the help of her fingers, except that he knew damn well that Silverlake was frighteningly good at performing calculations in her head. Her growth in skill over the past five restarts was difficult to judge, as she often did things on her own, and gave bullshit explanations when people tried to question her about it. Still, her skill at dimensionalism and soul magic made her one of the key people in the group, and little could be done about it.

Xvim simply stood on the edge of the spell formula circle, staring forward with arms crossed behind his back. He gave off a silent and stoic air, as if the problem in front of them was no big deal at all. Zorian didn’t think his magic had improved all that much in the past five restarts, but then again he had already been a highly-capable archmage before the time loop had started. At his level, every improvement took a lot of time and effort as one started hitting their personal limits and their magic plateaued.

With a silent signal, the five of them began casting.

Glowing filaments of light sprang from Zorian’s hands, and from the hands of his simulacrums, crisscrossing into a dome of light over the entire area, before seemingly sinking into thin air and disappearing. Silverlake fired pitch black beams from her fingers at seemingly random spots in the air, causing flashes of red light to burst out on the invisible boundary, while Zach and Xvim created pale white rings that spun lazily around the outer perimeter. Space warped and twisted, distorting the house and its surroundings like hot summer air and causing strange currents and whirlpools to be created in the sky.

A spatial membrane eventually sprang up around the house, transparent and spherical. Its surface rippled and undulated like it was made from water. Strands of inky blackness occasionally radiated from points on its surface, as if reality itself was cracking apart and letting everyone see the terrible void that existed beneath everything. These were hurriedly sealed by the five participants, disappearing into flashes of rainbow light before springing back anew somewhere else. A miniature cyclone whipped about in the air, kicking up dust and pelting the participants with leaves and small stones.

The process took hours and hours. Five times they had to rest to recover their strength, but thankfully the ritual was designed specifically with that in mind. They knew they would not have enough mana to finish the project in one go, so small breathers were planned in advance.

Eventually the process reached a critical point. The spatial membrane turned completely opaque and pitch black, its surface churning wildly like a pot of boiling water. Cracks spread out from the ground as the entire area was ripped out of the surrounding landscape, small tremors threatening to knock down the participants – something that would surely disrupt the casting at a critical moment and ruin everything. In the end everyone kept their balance, but the momentary distraction caused lances of spatial cracks to scythe through the area, reducing trees into chunks and utterly destroying one of Zorian’s simulacrums. He managed to compensate for the loss, however, and the casting continued.

The spherical black membrane started to repeatedly expand and then collapse inward, looking almost like a giant black heart. This process continued for several minutes, but if one observed the whole process carefully they would notice that the sphere was gradually getting smaller and smaller. It was being repeatedly compressed into an ever decreasing volume.

When the sphere had reached half of its original size, a fundamental change occurred and the whole area of space seemed to collapse inward, as if it was about to be sucked into a tiny point in the center. Zach reacted immediately, throwing a large glass ball into the center of the collapsing mass while the rest scattered sixteen stone stabilizers into the surrounding space. Each of the stones was a cube densely covered in spell formula, and they immediately floated into a dense spherical formation around the black mass.

In only a few seconds, the black mass was completely sucked into the glass ball and everything was silent and still. The strange lights and spatial distortions disappeared. The area inside the spell formula circle had completely disappeared, leaving behind a circular crater where the house and garden once stood. In the center of that crater floated an innocuous-looking glass globe, with sixteen stone cubes lazily orbiting around it.

Then, with a deafening boom, all of the stone cubes shattered and fell to the ground. The glass globe was still fine, however – the stabilizers had sacrificed themselves to give that final push for the whole process and firmly attach the newly-made ‘pocket mansion’ to its portable anchor.

If one looked closely, they would be able to see a miniature, lifelike house suspended in the center of the globe. It even appeared intact, which was great. There was a nontrivial chance for everything inside the globe to end up getting wrecked by the stresses of the creation process, if it was not channeled properly.

Complete success.

Everyone gathered around the globe to gawk at it and admire their handiwork. Zach, Zorian, Silverlake and Daimen were in visibly high spirits following the success of such a difficult project. Only Xvim managed to retain his reserved attitude, though Zorian felt he still looked faintly pleased with himself.

“You know, I just realized I have no idea how you intend to power this thing,” Daimen said. “Surely this thing requires a great deal of mana to keep stable.”

“We placed a permanent miniature gate inside the house,” Zach said. “It connects to a cavern deep in the Dungeon, sucking up mana to keep both the gate and the pocket dimension operating. It’s too tiny for the dungeon denizens to pass through, but mana can be collected just fine.”

“Oh? You cracked Quatach-Ichl’s permanent gates?” Daimen asked, surprised.

Silverlake puffed herself up, looking pretty smug. Her contributions were pretty crucial in cracking the method Quatach-Ichl used to make his gate stabilization frame. Hers and, oddly enough, that of the Filigree Sages. Their method of creating spell formula anchors had some surprising similarities to the methods Quatach-Ichl used in his construction of the stabilization frames.

“Yes, we finally managed to replicate the lich’s methods,” confirmed Zorian. “It has limited usefulness to us as a method of transport, though, since it takes a while to make those. It’s more convenient to just use my simulacrums as mobile gate creators.”

“We have made a great deal of progress,” Xvim spoke up. “This globe is a perfect representation of that. However, I wonder if that is really enough to let us make a gateway leading out of the time loop.”

Everyone shared a look for a moment as they considered the issue.

“We have a chance,” Zorian said.

“The chance is too low for my liking,” Silverlake grumbled, before Zorian could say anything else. Her good mood seemed to deflate a little. “If we had another six months…”

“But we don’t. We won’t be able to crack the temporary markers in less than a month,” Zach told her. “Why even waste time thinking about that?”

“Well it’s easy for you and Zorian to be so relaxed about that,” Silverlake sneered at him. “You’ll still be there, even if this all fails, won’t you?”

“You are oversimplifying things and you know it,” Zorian said, frowning. “The protections on the temporary markers are such that we won’t be able to place temporary markers on you for the next six restarts. We have no hope at all of pulling this off without you. Thus, we would be forced to wait until the very last moment to make our next attempt… and if that fails, we are lost. Do you honestly think Zach and I are comfortable with that? We are just as invested in the success of this project as you are.”

“Hmph,” Silverlake scoffed. “Almost as invested, I suppose. But not quite as much.”

“What do you think they should have done, then?” Xvim asked, giving her a knowing look.