Chương 25: Book 2 Chapter 6: The Only Losing Move is Not to Play

"Why are you staying behind, haven't had enough torture yet?" Chemirk asked after Combat Magic 2 reached its conclusion and the beaten, downtrodden students started making their way back to their dorms where they would crash and sleep like the dead. The first time he'd joined the class, Jim had commented that everyone looked starved and insomniac, now he too looked like that, with hollowed cheeks and red eyes.

"I have detention," Jim said in a sigh, causing the prince to pause midstep on the gravel path and look at him with extreme pity.

"What did you even do to deserve that?" the other boy asked while the other members of the year one group pretended not to be listening intently.

"I think the professor was jealous," Jim said with a snort and a roll of his eyes.

"Jealous of what exactly?" Evergreen couldn't help but pipe up.

"My charm, lineage, talent, wealth, just pick one," Jim said in a bored voice, before he realised something. He hit his palm with his fist.

"It's probably all five!"

"Five, you listed four?" Dew muttered curiously.

"I left an open slot for any quality I haven't thought of yet," Jim explained, receiving a round of sighs. Chemirk eventually spoke up.

"... Well, try to stay alive, although I guess Quatzel is still one animated skeleton away from completing his gimmick. Might be funny," he said with a lazy smirk before finally sauntering off. Jim watched all the other students eventually disperse, receiving looks of pity as they went, before he was left alone with the professor who exited the cube-like building.

"Doom?" Jim asked the skeleton once he emerged.

"Doom," Quatzel answered with a nod, before pausing.

"I take my pleasure where I can," he explained before gesturing at Jim with a bone-white bone hand.

"Follow along." Jim dragged his feet, vision swimming from exhaustion as they left the secluded part of the grounds where the classroom was and made their way through the green space of the academy. There they arrived at a small hut next to the staff building that Jim had, until this point, thought belonged to a janitor, or something, but no, the small broken down hut with broken windows was the lich's office. Figured.

"My home away from home," professor Quatzel introduced as he opened the creaky door and bid him to sit at one of the dusty tables in front of a blackboard.

"I'm allowed to teach, remain here and patrol according to my teaching duties. It ain't much, but it's honest work."

"Quaint," Jim grunted, refraining from saying that a leaky-looking grimy shack was exactly what the lich deserved for being an affront to the gods and worst of all, a separatist.

"I offer personal tutelage a few times per year as a part of the direct mentorship program for prodigious students, but I'm still quite restricted in my actions," the lich rambled on, simply standing there. Jim guessed there wasn't much point to sitting if you didn't have flesh.

"Detention isn't that of course, but I am allowed to use it to instruct a student on the information and the values I think they are lacking as part of the charter as long as it somewhat resembles a punishment," he continued, making his way to the blackboard with clacks of bare skeletal feet on dirty stone floor. Click clack click clack.

"Anyway, copy these lines and think about them, really, really, think, they contain information that you desperately need," Quatzel said slowly, before tapping the blackboard and causing a chalk to fly up from the peeling wooden ledge and start writing what appeared to be an incredibly long and complicated text. Jim picked up the quill, set it to the parchment in front of him as his blurry vision refocused just enough to make out the messy script on the blackboard. Then he froze.

Don't react until you've finished reading this, but you are stuck in a time loop… Jim stared at the blackboard, blinked, looked around the barren shack, looked again, found the same text staring back at him, blinked again. Almost automatically, he picked up the provided quill and slowly started writing down the text as he struggled to comprehend it. Don't react until you've finished reading this, but you are stuck in a time loop.

You may be wondering how I know, and I have no qualms in telling you considering the direction our relationship will take soon. I helped develop parts of the theoretical structure for the ritual that would grant the very brand you are carrying at the moment. Naturally, I was not allowed anywhere close to the ritual and its planning, but I do know that it is not yet to be completed for many months. The ritual was developed as a way to send back a chosen person who balances personal might and political influence.

This is Leilei's (the headmaster's) answer to the calamity, of which the vibrations are slowly starting to reach the capital. A leader of men who can unite the warring factions of the kingdom of Rotto through example, influence and most importantly, information. The goal is to remove the calamity as an issue for future generations. Jim paused in his copying and scrunched his brows. A person who balanced personal might and political influence… Was Quatzel talking about… Him?

I do not know how you received the brand, but I can assure you it cannot be felt by anyone. I was able to deduce it from the difference in your academic record, your actual performance in class and your suspicious behaviour trying to sneak around the academy grounds after dark. You telling me to kill you didn't help.

You are likely confused at this point about the functions of the spell that has been cast on you, as you are likely unaware, having gained it from what I can only assume was some comical coincidence that someone should really write a book about. The tale starts with the gods who made this world and the purpose for which they did so.

Now, without getting into a theological debate I will briefly argue here that the gods are deeply unimaginative creatures and primarily created us and likely many other worlds for experimental purposes. Perspective shifts creation and humanity has been innovating in many fields, but especially divine essence, or as you would call it, mana, for the entire duration of our existence. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The problem is that every now and again we come up with a way of using divine essence that has the potential of disrupting the order of this world and its purpose, namely as a tool for collecting information. That is what we call banned magic, not forbidden, as that is simply a matter of human law, but banned, as a matter of natural law. A magic that breaks the fragile balance of the world is allowed to be used once, before it simply disappears. True resurrection was a spell such as this.

I developed it for my dead daughters back then, but crumbled under the dilemma of which one to save and eventually lost the opportunity. The Death Flame currently being held by the Empress of Ezengerd after being passed for countless generations is another such spell. So is your Time Loop. The most salient question on your mind is likely what the end of the time loop spell is bound to.

The answer is that the brand has a conditional release of "the user completes a series of actions which fundamentally resolve the calamity as an issue." Your second question is likely how many attempts you have left. To that I can only say, I don't know. All magics have a limit, even banned magics. The issue lies in the variables. The brand was originally designed under the same principle that the Death Flame was. It is not a spell, but an artefact in the form of a spell.

The Death Flame absorbs life and grows stronger, constituting a formula that does not stop burning until the trigger has been activated. The brand is technically supposed to send out an artefact of itself back in time and re-establish itself at a certain date in the soul of a person. Through this constant cycle you are technically always on your first loop, just with all the knowledge of all the previous loops.

Thus, the brand should last infinitely until the condition of release is met, however, as you know, with magics as complex as these, it is always difficult to accurately calculate all the endless possibilities. You might have forever to find the answer to the calamity, or might be on your last attempt. It was at this point that Jim stopped reading again as his brain spun in his head like a roulette wheel. The visions. The visions had been memories.

That's why his experience had been so different from all the other prophets he'd read about. That's why the headmaster had killed him when he'd come to confess back then. Because. Because. Headmaster Leigh had thought that they were going to be creating a situation through which they could forever resolve the calamity. Any threat to that, innocent or not, was too dangerous to let live. A prophet running around was bad for business if your business was hidden in the shadows and some risks were simply unacceptable.

'All those times,' Jim realised.

'All those times, I actually died.' The quill in his hand broke as he gripped it too strongly, the sharp edges leaving indents in his palms. The professor twitched a finger and a new quill floated towards him. Jim picked up numbly, stared at the blackboard. He needed this information. He needed to remember everything, burn it into his brain. You're probably wondering what you should do in this situation.

I'd be scratching my head personally if I were you, but well, in the end the time loop privileges only one form of power and that is the power of knowledge. The reason the time loop was designed as a solution was because magic is simply an application of knowledge and practice. Technically if given enough time, any mage could attain the highest rank that all magic users strive for. In addition to magical knowledge, information is also incredibly valuable.

Who is where, when, what are they doing, who are they doing it with? These are all questions that can be answered in time, although as previously mentioned, it is best not to dawdle too much. After all, you never know which loop will be your last. Who to ally with? Perhaps you already made the mistake and know the consequences of sharing valuable information with the wrong person.

The thing about the time loop is that there are likely many answers to the calamity, but that certain answers privilege certain ideologies and political agendas. Ally with the royal faction and you will inevitably find a solution that strengthens their position. Ally with Leilei's faction and you will likely find yourself pushing against the royals through sheer political osmosis, if not strapped to an experimental table in an attempt to extract the brand.

It would be remiss of me to not give more useful answers of course, of which, to my knowledge, there are two. The first is to find your own way. I did, and so did many others. Obviously however, you could hasten your progress with a dedicated mentor and ally so as to avoid the risk of running out of attempts. There are many people in the world you could hire on a temporary basis, after all, money is ephemeral when it loses the concept of time.

You will find however that the best things in life can only be traded, favour for favour. That some things cannot be bought. In that sense, there is one person, or creature, who has a rather uncorrupted wish it could exchange for the sort of magical knowledge you will find nowhere else. Freedom, nothing more, nothing less. What do you think? The text ended. Jim looked up and locked eyes with the hollow sockets of the skeletal professor.

"As a professor I generally tend to discourage students from gambling," the lich said slowly.

"However, it seems you've found yourself in the peculiar position in which the only losing move is not to play."