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Mother of Learning

2016-04-08T11:36:04Z

Zariur: /* Arc 02 */

{{Status|Active}}

Mother of Learning is a light novel written by [https://www.fictionpress.com/u/804592/nobody103 Nobody103], first published online in 2011 on Fictionpress.

==Story Synopsis==
Zorian is a teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. He is a driven and irritable young man, consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, whom he resents for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, he has no time for pointless distractions or paying attention to other people's problems.

As it happens, time is something he is about to get plenty of. On the eve of the Cyoria's annual summer festival, he is killed and brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take a train to Cyoria. Suddenly trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, Zorian will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery before him. And he does have to unravel it, for the time loop hadn't been made for his sake and dangers lurk everywhere...

Repetition is the mother of learning, but Zorian will have to first make sure he survives to try again - in a world of magic, even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill.

== Updates ==
*11 July 2014: Mother of Learning Project Page initiated.
*08 August 2015: Added Mother of Learning Chapters 34-40 to site.

== Series Information ==
*'''Genre:''' Action, Adventure, Fantasy,
*'''Author:''' Nobody103
*'''Illustrator:''' TBA
*'''Volumes:''' 1
*'''Series Status:''' Ongoing

===Format Standards===
'''Every chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

===[http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10568 Feedback]===
'''If you enjoyed this OLN, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10568 Feedback Thread]'''

===[https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning Source]===

==Mother of Learning by [https://www.fictionpress.com/u/804592/nobody103 Nobody103]==

=== Arc 01 ([[Mother of Learning:Volume 01|Fulltext]]) ===

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 001|Chapter 001: Good Morning Brother]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 002|Chapter 002: Life's Little Problem]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 003|Chapter 003: The Bitter Truth]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 004|Chapter 004: Stars Fell]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 005|Chapter 005: Start Over]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 006|Chapter 006: Concentrate and Try Again]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 007|Chapter 007: Of Gaps and Pretending]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 008|Chapter 008: Perspective]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 009|Chapter 009: Cheaters]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 010|Chapter 010: Overlooked Details]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 011|Chapter 011: Limiters]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 012|Chapter 012: Soul Web]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 013|Chapter 013: Any Second Now]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 014|Chapter 014: The Sister Effect]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 015|Chapter 015: Busy Friday]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 016|Chapter 016: We Need to Talk]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 017|Chapter 017: Sympathy for the Spider]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 018|Chapter 018: The Pact is Sealed]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 019|Chapter 019: Tangled Web]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 020|Chapter 020: A Matter of Faith]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 021|Chapter 021: Wheel of Fortune]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 022|Chapter 022: Complications]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 023|Chapter 023: Lighting the Fuse]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 024|Chapter 024: Smoke and Mirrors]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 025|Chapter 025: The Unexpected]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_026|Chapter 026: Soulkill]]

=== Arc 02 ===

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_027|Chapter 027: Cast Adrift]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_028|Chapter 028: Cauldron]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_029|Chapter 029: The Hunter and the Hunted]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_030|Chapter 030: A Game of Shops]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_031|Chapter 031: Marked]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_032|Chapter 032: Alternatives]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_033|Chapter 033: Gateways]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_034|Chapter 034: Unreasonable Things]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_035|Chapter 035: Mistakes Have Been Made]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_036|Chapter 036: A Battle of Minds]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_037|Chapter 037: Slow Burn]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_038|Chapter 038: Return to Cyoria]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_039|Chapter 039: Suspicious Coincidences]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_040|Chapter 040: Shifting Tracks]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_041|Chapter 041: Myriad Clashing Motives]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_042|Chapter 042: Sum of Its Parts]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_043|Chapter 043: Overwhelmed]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_044|Chapter 044: A Show of Trust]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_045|Chapter 045: Fine Structures]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_046|Chapter 046: The Other Side]]

==Project Staff==

*Project Administrator: [[User:onizuka-gto|Onizuka-GTO]]
*Project Supervisor:

===Author===

*[[User:Nobody103|Nobody103]]

===Editors===
''To Wiki Formatting (To Author's Style) & Simple Spelling/Grammar Correction Only''
*[[User:onizuka-gto|Onizuka-GTO]]
*[[User:Starwarscards|Starwarscards]]

==Project Status==

Project Status: '''Ongoing'''
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Original novel]]

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 046

2016-04-08T11:34:11Z

Zariur: /*The Other Side*/

===The Other Side===

"I'm ready," Zorian said. "You can start casting whenever you want."

Estin, his current practice partner, gave him a solemn nod and started launching magic missiles at him in quick succession. Zorian calmly intercepted them all with his shield, dividing his attention between watching the way Estin was casting the spell so he could help him improve it afterwards and trying to work out the absolute minimum shield strength he could get away with to safely tank the attacks. A bad idea usually – if this had been a real spar, like the ones he had been having with Taiven recently, being as cheap as possible with his counters would be a recipe for disaster. But well, his practice group had pretty much given up on those when he was involved. He was too good and didn't know how to hold back properly, so these days he mostly served as a living target and dispenser of advice.

Not that this made him useless to the group, far from it, but it did mean he had to get creative to get some personal benefit from attending these practice sessions.

After fourteen magic missiles, Estin stopped casting and they switched positions, with Estin defending himself and Zorian attacking. The former Ibasan was the only person in the training group who could really tank one of his magic missiles at maximum power, so there was no need for Zorian to hold back. The floating earth spheres Estin used as shields were far more resilient than he initially gave them credit for, soaking up his magic missiles with ease. No matter what he tried, he could not even shatter one, much less punch through them. It was an interesting challenge.

He had largely reached a plateau in terms of magic missile strength. Like all spells, magic missile had a limited amount of mana it could be supercharged with, and Zorian was at the point where he simply couldn't cram in more mana without hopelessly destabilizing the spell boundary. That was a shame, as magic missile was his most-energy efficient combat spell, thanks to the amount of practice he put into it. In fact, the spell was so mana-efficient at this point that it was playing merry hell with his ability to judge how far his mana reserves had grown. He could cast about 35 of them in quick succession, which was more than four times the amount he could cast before the time loop – that shouldn't be possible, especially since he was sure his mana reserves still hadn't topped out yet, so the most logical conclusion was that his magic missiles required significantly less mana now than they had in the past. The magnitude system probably wasn't designed with people like him in mind. He doubted a lot of people practiced magic missile as doggedly as he did.

And yet, for all the refinement his magic missile now had, he knew from Kyron that he still hadn't reached the pinnacle of the spell. A properly executed magic missile would be totally invisible. Which his magic missiles weren't.

He had an idea about that, though.

No one in the practice group other than Estin could reliably tank one of his magic missiles without their shields giving way. Even his normal missiles often proved too much for them, never mind if he really powered them up. As a consequence, he had been forced to learn how to adjust his attacks downwards to something they can deal with. He quickly found that trying to purposely weaken his missiles was pretty hard. Strategically sabotaging the spell boundary to make the spell less mana efficient was inelegant and offended his professional pride, but trying to make magic missile technically perfect yet functionally weaker was not as easy as it appeared at first glance. His reflexes, honed over the years spent in the time loop, and even the very construction of the spell itself naturally tended towards a certain optimum effect. Going against it was a constant struggle.

Still, he had gotten the hang of the ability to dial down the missile's power after a few days, and had discovered that when he dialed the power low enough, he could get the shine and opacity to drop like a stone. At the very lowest point, he could produce missiles that were nothing but a faint warp in the air – and sadly, about as effective on anything they hit. Still, practicing the spell at these lower power levels made it easier to see the faults and imperfections he made in the spell boundary, and fixing those immediately led to a small but noticeable increase in his mana efficiency when casting his normal version of magic missile.

He had a feeling this was the secret to effectively developing proper invisible force spells – don't start by making normal versions invisible, instead reduce the power and work on making a weaker version more technically perfect and mana efficient. Then steadily work your way up until you end up with a flawlessly executed, fully-powered version.

None of the books he'd found actually outlined this method as a possible training regimen, instead suggesting endless repetition of the spell as a method, but Zorian felt his idea had merit. He had little to lose by trying it, since the officially suggested training method consisted of mindlessly practicing the normal version for years and even decades at the time. Yes, he was stuck in a time loop, but there had to be a better method than that.

After he'd failed to get through Estin's earth defense, he called for a brief pause to let everyone replenish their mana reserves. He personally didn't need the break – he was purposely using only a small fraction of his reserves during these practice sessions, and he had already honed his ability to assimilate ambient mana as far as it could go, so it generally took him only a few minutes to go back to his top form. The others needed to catch their breath, however, and he had to be mindful of that.

If nothing else, he was learning the limitations of people around his age. He had honestly forgotten what it was like to be on their level, and had trouble judging what people his age found challenging or even downright impossible. Hopefully this experience would make him better equipped to pretend he was a normal student in the future, or at least more aware of what would attract people's attention and to what extent.

The break was eventually interrupted when Edwin marched into the gathering, the latest golem they'd made following after him.

"Hey Edwin," Naim greeted. "What brings you here? Finally decided to join us?"

"Ha, no. No, I'm here because of this," he said, grasping the little golem by its shoulders and proudly pushing it forwards so the group could take a look at it.

The construct was pretty impressive, even if Zorian was a little biased in thinking that. Being little less than a meter tall, the golem did not look particularly intimidating, but he doubted anyone would mistake it for a harmless toy. Its slender, humanoid figure was made out of alchemically-treated steel and powered by a comparatively massive crystallized mana battery that supplied it with plenty of power. Its movements were smooth and natural, and despite Edwin's rough handling, it never lost its balance like Zorian's previous golems would have. The golem looked and moved like a credible little helper and last ditch defender/distraction.

They did a good job of making it, Zorian felt. Enlisting Edwin to help with his golem making had definitely been the right decision.

"Neat," Naim shrugged. "That's what you and Zorian have been working on all this time, isn't it? What about it?"

"Yes," Zorian agreed. The last time they met, he left the golem with Edwin so the other boy could run a bunch of tests to see if it worked properly. Did

Edwin find some critical flaw in the construct or did he just come to brag about their success? "Is there something wrong with it?"

"It?" Edwin asked with faux outrage. "His name is Chelik, and he's absolutely perfect! I mean, just look at him! Everyone, meet Chelik. Chelik, say hi to the nice folks gathered here."

The golem quietly gave a brief wave before letting its metallic hand unceremoniously drop again.

Yeah, apparently Edwin just wanted to brag. Zorian caught Estin and Kopriva rolling their eyes at the spectacle, while Briam and Raynie seemed honestly impressed by the little golem. Naim just continued smiling serenely, and Zorian couldn't tell whether Naim was honestly happy for his friend or just humoring the guy.

"Unfortunately, there was one part of him that I just couldn't test properly," Edwin said. "We warded this little beauty with every defensive ward we could manage. Well, Zorian did, I just kind of watched and took notes. But never mind that, the point is that Chelik here should be able to shrug off a lot of damage and disruptive spells and…"

"You want us to try and damage it," Estin surmised.

"Yes," Edwin agreed with a grin. "I'll just move aside and then you can all just attack it together."

"All of us?" Raynie asked curiously.

"Yeah," Edwin nodded. "He's really tough, so don't worry about overkill. I don't think any of you can really do anything to it individually."

Estin frowned, clearly taking that as a challenge, before putting one of his palms on the ground in front of him. For a second, nothing happened. And then, without any warning, the ground beneath Chelik opened up like a set of earthen jaws and pulled it into the resulting hole before snapping shut. The poor golem was left with most of his body trapped under the soil, with only its head sticking free.

Edwin stared at the buried golem for a second before glancing uncertainly towards Estin. The other boy inclined his head to the side, smiling faintly, clearly very pleased with himself.

"Okay. Claim disproven," Edwin chuckled awkwardly. "Could you please unbury him so we can move onto further testing?"

Eventually, they did try to bring down the little golem with a collective magic missile barrage and predictably failed. Even Zorian's missiles did not damage Chelik in any way, though hitting the limbs and head could imbalance it and knock it to the ground. Estin tried to hammer it into scrap with one of his earth spheres, but only succeeded in knocking it to the ground and rendering it immobile so long as the sphere was pressing down on it. Kopriva chucked a vial of alchemical acid at it, but this didn't work either. Finally, Briam went ahead and summoned his familiar and had the juvenile fire drake breathe fire at the golem for a while. That at least had some effect, in the sense that the golem ended up visibly heating up as a result. The fire wards weren't able to deal with sustained fire magic, it seemed. Edwin terminated the testing at this point, not wanting to see Chelik actually destroyed.

A satisfactory result, all things considered. The vulnerability to being buried and otherwise restrained was a large and obvious weakness, though, and Zorian was already considering what he could do to overcome it when making golems in the future.

The end of Edwin's golem test ultimately also signaled the end of the current practice session as well, and most people excused themselves and left afterwards. The day of the summer festival was only a few days away, so this was basically the last training session he would have with the practice group. That fact left him strangely sad – he had originally resented the loss of free time that came with the meetings, but the classmates he taught had ended up growing on him a little. It was nice to have someone actually respect his skills and achievements for a change, instead of constantly reminding him about how inadequate he was and how far he still had to go.

He turned towards Raynie, the last person to remain at the training round with him. She didn't look like she intended to excuse herself, so he assumed she wanted to talk to him.

"Yes?" He asked.

"Did you find out anything about your extra soul bits?" she asked.

She was stalling for time, but whatever. No reason not to answer the question.

"Sort of," he said. "I found a few ways to interact with it, but I only know what one of them actually does. Or at least I think I do. I'll try it out soon to make sure."

Yes, it was rather surprising, but apparently the marker actually was designed to be interacted with by its bearer. There were multiple… switches, for lack of a better word, that were clearly meant to do something once they were activated. A good number of them were utterly inert, and did not react at all to his probing, either because he did not know how to interact with them properly or because they were broken in the marker's transfer from Zach to Zorian. A lot of them were perfectly functional, however, and readily responded to his probes, eager to be set off like exuberant little puppies. He shied away from actually experimenting with them, since they gave absolutely no indication what their function was.

All except one. There was one command switch that immediately gave him a vague impression of what it was meant to do when he tried mucking around with it. He planned to test that one at the conclusion of his portal infiltration attempt.

"Make sure to have someone watching over you when you do that," Raynie cautioned. "At the very least they can call for help if you collapse or something."

"I will," Zorian lied. "Now why don't you tell me what's really bothering you."

"It's nothing you can really help me with," she sighed. "I just feel like complaining to someone, I guess. I have no one here to confide to, except for Kiana. My fault, really. I didn't try very hard to make any other friends. I don't want to bother Kiana about this again, so…"

"Well, feel free to complain," Zorian told her. "Is this about your family, perhaps?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "I sent them a letter last week. Asked them if I could come home for the summer festival. They said I wasn't welcome. Well, not really in those words, but I can read between the lines."

Harsh. What did she do to deserve that kind of response? Well, Raynie did say she wanted to complain, so he would probably find out soon. He opted to stay quiet and let her talk.

After a moment of quiet while she collected her thoughts, she started her story.

"The leadership of my tribe is hereditary," she said. "The firstborn son of the current chief inherits the mantle of leadership from his father. Simple enough, but the problem was that my father didn't have a son. My mother had a hard pregnancy when she bore me, and the tribe refused to bring outside healers to help. After I was born, she could conceive no further children. Or at least that's what we all thought for a time. Regardless, it was decided that in the absence of a male heir, even a daughter would do. Nobody wanted a succession crisis."

Hmm, so the tribe accepted a female leader but wasn't too happy with it. Considering the 'hypothetical scenario' she'd asked him about earlier in the restart, he had a feeling he knew where this was going…

"As I grew up, I was constantly told I had to be strong for the tribe," Raynie said. "That I have to work hard and embody the ideals we represented, so that there could be no question as to whether I deserved my position. I never resented that. I was proud of my tribesmen and my parents, for putting so much faith in me. I did my best, and I was good at it. Good enough that, in time, even my staunchest critics had fallen silent. But then mother got pregnant again."

Zorian winced internally. It was a son, wasn't it?

"Nine months later, mother gave birth to the baby boy that my father had always wanted," she said bitterly, confirming his suspicion. "I wasn't sidelined immediately, of course. They had to make sure my brother was not defective in some way before doing something so rash. I had hope for a time that I might succeed in keeping the mantle through superior skill and effort, but of course he ended up being a blasted prodigy. It was clear that he would eventually eclipse me. I… did not take it very well. I did not step down from my position quietly, and some of the tribe members even supported me. Mostly because they felt I had proven myself capable while my brother was still a relative unknown, and the designated heir had never been stripped of their position like that, so the whole thing was a bit questionable. But ultimately, my worst enemy was my own father – I had thought he was proud of me, of all I had accomplished, but in the end he was the one arguing most vehemently that I should move aside so my brother can take the mantle. How could I have possibly won that battle when my own father stood against me?"

"So they don't want you back because they think you're a threat to your brother's legitimacy and the tribe's leader?" Zorian spoke out.
"I am a threat to his legitimacy," Raynie said. "Was. I don't know. I'm not really sure about anything anymore. I feel like nothing I did mattered in the end. What do I even have to live for, now? All my life I was taught to live for the tribe, but I'm not sure I even want to go back there when they finally deign to let me return. What is there waiting for me? I don't think I'll ever be happy living back there."

Zorian studied her for a moment, wondering if he should try and comfort her. She seemed more angry than sad, though, and he had a feeling she wouldn't appreciate such a gesture. Best not to risk it.

"So you being here is your exile, then?" he asked.

"Pretty much," she answered. "Me being here allows them to cement my brother's position without my interference. Plus, me being educated by outsiders and taught outsider magic destroys whatever shreds of legitimacy I had left."

"I can't understand why they won't let you home for the summer festival, then," Zorian said. "Not that I understand why you'd even want to go back to your father and brother you clearly can't stand, but that's beside the point. The point is that if you've been outmaneuvered that thoroughly, surely there is no harm in letting you go back home for a few days. That seems very petty of them."

"I was a bit of a bitch to my brother the last time I was home," she admitted. "I guess the little shit went crying to our parents, because they've been keeping him away from me ever since. They seem to think there is a risk of me killing him. So insulting."

They kept talking for a while – well, Raynie kept talking, he mostly just listened – but eventually she ran out of steam and just fell quiet for a time before announcing it was late and that she should go. Before she left, however, she told him that she enjoyed their meetings and asked if they could continue meeting like that, even if his original purpose for approaching her had long been fulfilled at this point.

He agreed. Of course he did. And despite her stoic demeanor, he could tell she was very happy to hear that. But the summer festival was just around the corner and she would soon forget any of this ever happened. The next time they met, they would be virtual strangers to each other.

He decided not to befriend Raynie again in the future. Not while the time loop was still in effect, anyway. If he ever managed to get out, though, he told himself that he would try to befriend the red-headed shifter for real. She reminded him of his pre-time loop self too much to just ignore it. Her problem was, as she said, something he couldn't really help her with… but maybe just having an extra friend would be enough.

He remained at the training ground for quite some time afterwards, lost in thought, before making his way back to Imaya's place.

- break -

It was the day before the summer festival and everything was ready. He had stopped Nochka's kidnapping again, crafted all of the equipment he would be using in his gate-crashing attempt, and evacuated the Filigree Sages back to their home. Now all that was left was to gather the findings Kael and Taiven had made with their personal research and store them inside his mind for future restarts.

Fortunately, he was currently meeting them both in Imaya's basement for exactly that purpose.

"Here," Taiven said, handing him a small notebook. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm kind of glad the month is coming to a close. You have no idea how annoying it is to practice shaping exercises all day, every day."

"Taiven, I've had Xvim as my mentor for the past four years," Zorian pointed out.

"Yeah, yeah…" she waved dismissively.

"Show me what you've learned," he told her.

"What? But it's all written down there," she protested, pointing at the notebook in his hands.

"Doesn't matter, I want to see it personally," he insisted. "Some things really cannot be written down."

She had progressed nicely, he decided fifteen minutes later. Some things he considered trivial didn't really work out, which meant he either wasn't teaching them properly or Taiven was spectacularly unsuited for them, but there were also some exercises that came almost naturally to her. It was a good start, if nothing else.

"That was way too slow," he said. "And you fumbled a bit towards the end. Start o-"

"If you say 'start over' one more time, Zorian…" Taiven warned him.

"Fine, fine, I'll stop channeling my inner Xvim," he chuckled. "We'll stop here. I got what I needed, I think. Kael, how about you? Are my eyes deceiving me or has the amount of notebooks you got for me actually shrunk from what it was initially?"

"You said you memorize how the whole book is made with that spell of yours, not just text, so I figured I would write as dense as possible and save space that way. A single book takes the same amount of space in your memory regardless of how much is written in it, if I understood you correctly," Kael said.

"That's true, but the alteration pattern I store is never flawless, so some imperfections are bound to creep up in the reproduction. I hope you didn't make the letters too small…"

Some quick testing proved that Kael's condensed writing survived the memorization-reproduction process just fine, so Zorian went ahead and memorized the whole stack.

"Well, that's it I guess," Taiven said awkwardly. "I guess we'll see each other in the next restart. Not that I'll remember any of it…"

"Actually, I'm going to skip going to Cyoria for a couple of restarts," Zorian admitted. "I need to find a way to halt, or at least delay the degradation of the Matriarch's memory package. And also to advance my memory reading skills so I can get something out of it if I fail. I can't waste time on classes before I solve this."

"Fair enough," Kael said. "I'll note that I have pretty much exhausted all the low-lying fruits when it comes to my research. I'll need to reach out to other experts and maybe acquire some restricted materials through less than legal channels the next time we do this. I know you're justifiably leery of making too many waves, so you'll have to discuss this with my other self."

Just as well that he was putting his routine in Cyoria on temporary hold, then. He didn't need a distraction like that right now.

The group separated after a while, with Zorian leaving to find Kirielle. There was one last thing he wanted to do before the end.

"Kiri, do you think you could show me your drawings?" he asked.

She didn't need much convincing. She ran out of the room and soon returned with a thick stack of papers that represented her artistic endeavor over the course of the past month. She drew anything that caught her fancy, it seemed – the sparrows that liked to gather on the street in front of Imaya's house, the house they lived in and its inhabitants, the trees in the nearby park where she played with Nochka, and so on. He was especially impressed with the handful of images that depicted the Cyoria's main train station – not only did she remember what all the various storefronts they'd visited looked like, she even memorized many of the individual items that had been on sale. Zorian had forgotten most of that stuff roughly five minutes after they had left the train station, but Kirielle had remembered it well enough to draw a realistic picture of it an entire day afterwards.

If he ever found some time to kill, he should ask Kirielle to teach him how to draw. He doubted he would be any good at it, but the mental image of his little sister trying to teach him something was amusing.

"…and this one is Nochka's kitty fo- err," Kirielle fumbled, barely catching herself in time. She threw him a panicked look and then tried to shove the drawing of the young black cat beneath some of the already inspected drawings.

Heh.

"Her kitty form, perhaps?" Zorian asked innocently.

"You knew!" Kirielle gasped.

"I knew," he confirmed. "So could you tell she's a shifter on your own or is she simply as bad at keeping secrets as you are?"

"I'm not bad at keeping secrets!" she protested. "And, um, she kind of slipped that she can do magic and I bugged her until she showed me what she can do."

Ah yes, the eternal tendency of people to brag about their skills. Well, that and Kirielle's incredible ability to keep bringing the subject up until the victim decides it's easier to just give in and humor her. He didn't blame Nochka for giving in, considering how often he ended up doing the same.

Nochka's indiscretion aside, there were no further surprises waiting for him among Kirielle's drawings. He then tried to cast the memorization spell to commit the entire stack to his memory, but found that Kirielle was intensely protective of her work and strangely suspicious of his actions. It took a while for Zorian to convince Kirielle that the spell he wanted to cast was totally non-destructive and that he wouldn't even dream of burning her artwork or anything similar. Really, where did she even get the idea?

"Fortov once burned a bunch of my drawings when I asked him to show me some magic," she admitted. "Said it was a joke."

Zorian rolled his eyes. Yes, that sounded about right for Fortov. Knowing Kirielle, she was probably being extremely annoying and disruptive… but that was still a very shitty thing to do.

"I'm kind of insulted you'd compare me to Fortov, but whatever," Zorian said. He quickly memorized the stack and handed it back to her. "There. All done."

Kirielle quickly leafed through the papers to make sure he really hadn't done any damage and then left to put the drawings back to her room.

She was back soon enough, though, looking worried.

"Zorian, why did you want to memorize my drawings?" she asked. "You could just ask me to show them to you whenever you wanted to take a look. Are you going somewhere?"

Zorian gave her a sideways glance, wondering what to tell her. He would be leaving her behind during the next few restarts, and he kind of felt guilty about it, but there was no helping it. It was why he was 'wasting' some of his mental space on her drawings instead of filling it out with something more practical.

She was pretty observant to have come to that conclusion, though. She probably noticed some of his other preparations.

"Yes," he admitted. "I am. After the summer festival."

"Oh," she said. "But don't you have to attend classes?"

"Well yes. But this is more important," he said. "Don't worry, I won't be gone long. You won't even notice I'm gone."

Surprisingly, she accepted this explanation without complaints. Good. The last thing he needed was for her to freak out this close to the end.

"But," she decided, "you have to bring me a gift when you come back. Or I'm telling mom you left me alone with a bunch of strangers."

"Sure," said Zorian, rolling his eyes. He wondered if gifting her with the drawings she'd drawn herself in previous restarts counted as cheating.

Probably. But he was going to do it anyway, just to see how she reacted.

- break -

The dimensional gate beneath Cyoria was a difficult target to approach. One had to avoid numerous Ibasan patrol groups to even get near it, and then the prospective attacker had to deal with an entire defensive base built around the gate if they wanted to actually pass through. Storming such a place was a task for a battle group, not a single mage, and would give the defenders plenty of time to shut down the gate if they felt the base was about to fall. Not to mention that Quatach-Ichl could and probably would come to their aid if such a major assault was launched on the place. No, the only viable way of accessing the gate was to sneak in somehow. A rather unlikely endeavor, considering the place was teeming with mages and war trolls, and likely had plenty of detection wards layered on top of it too. But Zorian had a plan. A rather reckless plan that he'd never even think about trying outside of the time loop, but it was a plan regardless.

At its core, it rested on the assumption that the Ibasans would send almost everyone they had to participate in the invasion proper, leaving only a handful of defenders to guard the gate. Thus, the best time to make the attempt was when the invasion had already begun. If the Ibasans were smart and cautious, that wouldn't be true and his plan would be over before it even began. If they were really smart and cautious, the gate would be shut down the moment the invasion began and all of his plotting would have been for nothing. But Zorian was willing to bet that the Ibasans needed all the manpower they could get for the fighting on the surface, and that the leadership needed the gate functioning so they could retreat safely to their island. There was a lot of sea between Eldemar and Ulquaan Ibasa. He was hoping they would just leave behind a skeleton crew at the base, with orders to summon Quatach-Ichl if they get into more trouble than they can handle.

Thus, when the day of the invasion had finally come, Zorian immediately descended deep into the tunnel system beneath Cyoria and started looking for some nasty critters to dominate. Something strong enough to cause a distraction, but weak enough that the defenders wouldn't panic when it started throwing itself on the base defenses. Just a random monster attack that would distract everyone and give Zorian a chance to slip inside unnoticed.

It took him some time, but he eventually found a pack of hook goblins – small, flightless, bat-like humanoids whose front limbs sported huge, hook-like claws. Highly dangerous up close but easily killable. A threat but not that much of a threat. Perfect.

Then he waited. As time went by, his prediction of Ibasans withdrawing virtually everyone to participate in the invasion gradually came to pass – the Ibasans were indeed withdrawing nearly all patrol groups around their base, allowing Zorian to finally approach the place and lay his eyes on the center of Ibasan invasion. Well, he already knew its basic layout from the memories extracted from the captured Ibasans, but that wasn't the same as seeing it first-hand.

The base was situated in a massive cavern, and was quite large. It was practically a small town, which was not very surprising considering the amount of forces the Ibasans normally kept here. In the center of the settlement stood a handful of stone buildings that were probably raised from the cavern floor via alteration. The gate was in the middle of this section, serving as the heart of the settlement. Surrounding the fancy stone buildings was a ramshackle collection of tents and pens where the peons and war trolls lived.

There were no walls around the settlement, but each of the tunnels connecting to the cavern had a checkpoint that served as a first line of defense.

Zorian waited for a while for the numbers to thin out further and when they remained static for a while, mentally pushed the hook goblins to attack one of the checkpoints, doing his best to boost their bloodthirstiness and suppress their fear. He didn't have to do much, honestly – hook goblins seemed to be almost perpetually angry creatures, going utterly berserk at even the slightest provocation. They fell upon the checkpoint, screeching and clawing, and the base immediately went into an uproar.

Zorian's original idea was to use the distraction to attack one of the other checkpoints while everyone else was distracted, but that turned out to be unnecessary – when he reached his chosen target, he found out that its guards were unprofessional enough to leave their posts to help out their buddies against the hook goblins. Or maybe the base was even more short on manpower than he originally suspected? No matter, he decided to simply take advantage of the situation and waltzed in.

He made it all the way to the gate without being stopped, or even confronted by anyone. At one point he crossed paths with a mage running towards the battle site but it only took a weak suggestion from Zorian that he was 'completely normal, nothing to see here' and the man promptly put him out of his mind and kept running. He honestly didn't expect it to be that easy. Unfortunately, when he reached the dimensional gate itself he found that it had its own guards and that they refused to leave their posts, despite the commotion.

Four mages and two trolls. He could deal with them perhaps, but he didn't think he could do it without raising a ruckus. Shame. He was just about to throw caution to the wind and start chucking around fireballs and explosive cubes everywhere, when one of the other defenders came running and started shouting at the mages around the gate. The hook goblins had broken through the checkpoint and the newcomer wanted them to signal Quatach-Ichl to come and save them.

Uh, oops? He honestly didn't think his little minions would end up winning. It seemed that not only did the Ibasans leave a skeleton crew to hold the base, said skeleton crew was composed out of the dregs of their force. No wonder this infiltration was so easy.

Fortunately for Zorian, no summoning of Quatach-Ichl would take place. The mages guarding seemed horrified at the very idea. Their leader ranted for an entire minute about how the ancient lich would have them all flayed alive if they summoned him to deal with a bunch of stinking hook goblins, and eventually sent two of his fellow guards and both of the war trolls to contain the incursion.

Zorian could only watch incredulously as the gate was suddenly left with only two mages to guard it. Well. That certainly made things easier. He waited for a while for the other Ibasans to put some distance away from the gate and then chucked a vial of sleeping gas at the two remaining guards from his hiding place. One of them, the one that spoke to the panicked defender and seemed to be their leader, managed to stumble out of the cloud in a semi-lucid state and promptly received a piercer in the head for his troubles. The other collapsed into sleep, as intended, and Zorian blew the cloud away with a gust of wind before hurriedly approaching the dimensional gate they were guarding.

Zorian itched to examine the thing in greater detail, but no, this wasn't the time for that… the current priority was to find out what was on the other side. Looking through the opening itself, he could see that the gate lead to an empty, spacious room devoid of further guards. Which was rather weird – were the Ibasans really leaving one end of the gate undefended? He tried extending his mind sense through the dimensional opening and was pleased to note that the gate was no barrier to his mind sense. And even gladder that he could detect no hidden enemies.

Suspicious, but mindful of the limited amount of time he had, he took a deep breath and stepped through the gate.

He felt a tendril of magic brush against his soul protections the moment his foot touched the floor of the destination room, trying to identify him. It recoiled from his spiritual defense and Zorian immediately felt the atmosphere in the room change, becoming heavier and more foreboding. He had been detected by the wards and labeled as an intruder.

Behind him, the edges of the dimensional opening started crackling with lightning. The gate then began rapidly shrinking and soon winked out of existence entirely in a soft flash of light.

- break -

Though the closing of the portal had taken him off guard, Zorian was ultimately unconcerned about its disappearance. He was already through, after all, and at least this way the Ibasan forces on the other end of the gate wouldn't be able to pursue him.

He quickly looked around and confirmed that the room was indeed empty, aside from the now-inactive stone icosahedron erected in the center of it. There was only one door in sight, and Zorian immediately blasted it to splinters rather than open it normally. No need to risk getting hit with some hostile ward effect because he was dumb enough to grasp the handle. Quickly leaving the gate room, he started exploring the place, trying to find out as much as he could before the Ibasan forces on this side of the gate, alerted by the wards, come running to deal with him.

Except that there were no Ibasan forces. And he wasn't in some hastily erected base, either. He quickly found out that the gate had been situated in a basement of a pretty luxurious mansion. A very large, seemingly abandoned mansion. Zorian was confused at first – the first gate in the chain was supposed to lead to some isolated place in the Sarokian highlands after all, so he kind of expected a wilderness camp surrounded by trees.

Then the defenders of the place finally tracked him down, and he understood where he was. The undead boar that just tried to bite his leg off was exactly like the ones that assaulted Lukav every restart.

He was in the Sarokian Highlands. Specifically, he was in Iasku Mansion. And the place was apparently teeming with undead.

He frantically dodged a knife thrust by his assailant – a silent, knife-wielding man wrapped in concealing black clothes. Zorian had shot him through his head with a piercer earlier, but that didn't seem to bother him too much. Another black-clad, knife wielding corpse advanced at him from the left, and the blasted boar looked like it was readying for another charge.

Zorian threw a glowing cylinder on the ground in front of him, causing a disruptive, dispelling pulse to wash over everything around him. The three corpses attacking him collapsed lifelessly to the ground, the pulse having destroyed the magic that kept their animating souls bound to their bodies.

Zorian sighed. That was the third dispeller grenade he had been forced to use since coming to this place. He'd only ever had five of them to start with, not having expected to fight hordes of undead today. Most of his other single-use items were gone as well. He knew this mission was likely to result in his violent death, but this was still kind of annoying.

And also more than a little dangerous. The presence of so much undead meant there were necromancers inside. It might actually be dangerous to die here.

He was just about to go back to the gate room and barricade himself there when a living person entered his mind sense, heading straight for him.

Well, crap. That was the necromancer, wasn't it? Of course it was. That must be why the undead backed off after that last attack. He quickly scattered his remaining explosives cubes on the floor in front of him and retreated deeper into the corridor.

Then the door on the other end of the corridor opened and a tall, muscular man with a huge mustache stepped into the corridor. He took one look at Zorian and smiled jovially, like seeing an old friend who he hadn't heard from in years.

"Welcome!" he said. "I am Sudomir Kandrei, the owner of this humble abode. May I ask why you have invaded my home?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Zorian, taking a step back. Step deeper into the corridor, step deeper into the corridor… "The door was quite open; all I had to do was step through the gate. If you didn't want anyone coming through, surely you wouldn't have left that thing so unprotected. Why, I bet a whole army could just waltz through this place if you weren't careful…"

Zorian took another step back. Sudomir followed him, taking a step deeper into the corridor-

Now! Zorian sent a pulse of mana to the explosive cubes, triggering them and sending the entire corridor into a-

No, actually nothing happened at all. What the hell?

"Wards. Wonderful things, aren't they?" Sudomir smiled. "I can't have things exploding in my own home, you see. And besides, even if you did catch me in that trap, that wouldn't have killed me. I assure you I am quite hard to kill."

Lovely. Zorian stared at the man in front of him for a second and then concentrated on his marker for a second.

"What are you doing?!" Sudomir asked harshly. He could probably see that he was doing something with his soul. Damn necromancers and their cheating soul sight.

Zorian ignored him and ordered one of 'slots' of the marker, the one that actually gave him an impression of what it was supposed to do, to activate. His vision immediately turned dark and then he woke up back in Cirin, Kirielle wishing him a good morning.

He sighed in relief, confusing Kirielle. Thank the gods that worked.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 045

2016-04-08T11:10:21Z

Zariur: /*Fine Structures*/

===Fine Structures===

Zorian was starting to realize he didn't understand Taiven nearly as well as he thought he did. And it wasn't just the surprising amount of insecurity that lurked behind her seemingly endless optimism and confidence that made him think that – it was also the amount of thought and consideration she put into his time loop situation. When he told her about his situation, she actually listened to him without interruption, and even took notes, and then later came back with a list of questions and ideas. This was very atypical behavior for her. Taiven was pretty much a prime example of the 'less thinking, more action' philosophy, and she even admitted that she still wasn't entirely convinced about the whole 'time loop' thing, so he was rather baffled about her motives and thought processes.

Still, while the list she had made with Kael's help was kind of surprising, it contained nothing particularly revolutionary, and all of the points could be boiled down to four basic questions. Why didn't he get help from more people around him than her and Kael? Why didn't he tell the government or academy authorities what was going on and get their cooperation? Why was he pursuing so many magical fields instead of properly focusing on them, one at a time? And lastly, why didn't he try harder to develop his combat magic!?

Zorian found the last one especially amusing. It was only a few days ago, after all, that Taiven was breaking down into tears over his 'incredible combat skills', yet now she was saying he should have put more effort into them.

You just couldn't satisfy some people.

Alas, Taiven didn't find her complete turnaround of opinion nearly as amusing as he did. Zorian's logic for putting combat magic practice squarely in the 'secondary goal' pile – namely, that very few of his problems could be solved through direct violence and that he just wasn't terribly suited for combat magic in the first place – had been summarily rejected by Taiven, who decreed that she would be helping to bring him up to snuff in that regard. Through sparring.

Constant, daily, dangerously serious sparring. He'd apparently had no idea what he was getting into when he'd decided to go along with her idea, because there was a huge difference between sparring with Taiven when she thought he was just a precocious amateur with a couple of tricks and sparring with her when she considered him a serious threat right from the start and wasn't afraid of hurting him. She was vicious and merciless, and he was honestly afraid she would end up killing him if he didn't give it his all, despite all the safety wards embedded into her family's training hall. It was just a bit too intense for his liking.

Maybe she was still a little bitter about him improving so much in so short a time.

"Are you ready?" she asked him, twirling her combat staff playfully in her hands.

"No?" Zorian tried. He'd just finished another frustrating session with Xvim, and didn't get to rest at all before coming over to Taiven's place. The last thing he wanted to do right now was get smacked around in the name of training.

"Too bad," Taiven snorted derisively. "We're starting. Go!"

Yeah, he didn't think that would actually get him anywhere. He immediately threw himself to the side, dodging her opening shot. This wasn’t a magic missile or anything reasonable like that – no, she opened the battle with a powerful beam of force. 'Force lance', as the spell was called, was her new favorite when fighting him. He knew better than to try to shield against it this time – the beam was practically designed for cracking simple force barriers, focusing an immense amount of penetrating force on a tiny patch of the shielding surface. Some of the stronger, more advanced shields could withstand the beam, but nothing in Zorian's arsenal could truly stand up to it. He had learned that lesson very painfully in the first few spars he'd had with Taiven during the past few days, and he still had bruises all over his chest and arms to prove it. Even at their highest setting, the safety wards couldn't blunt the power of the spear-like beam completely.

No, the only realistic defense he had against that spell was moving out of its way. The good news was that beam spells like those couldn't home in on targets, so dodging them was an option. The bad news was that a beam traveled blindingly fast and was really hard to evade at the distances he and Taiven fought at. Plus, he kind of sucked at dodging.

The last few days had forced him to learn quickly, though, and in this particular case he was fast enough to move out of the beam's path.

He responded immediately with a gust of wind, trying to knock her off-balance and possibly blind her. Sadly, this was not the first time he'd tried that and she simply countered it with a weather shield before throwing a fully-powered fireball at him. Gods, she really wasn't playing around, was she? He fired off a dispelling wave to negate it, since the alternative would be to tank it with a much more expensive aegis. Besides, cost concerns aside, the spherical shield would leave him immobile while in place, and Taiven would be sure to capitalize on that.

A force lance that quickly followed the fireball told him that this was indeed her likely plan – if he had stood still and tried to tank the fireball, the force lance would have caught him flat-footed.

He threw a small swarm of magic missiles at her, all of them on a very direct trajectory towards her. They were just bait, really, intended to take advantage of a certain predictable maneuver Taiven liked to do, where she countered such attacks by firing a massive battering ram of force that not only swept the attack aside, but also acted as a counter attack at the same time. That's why he immediately followed up his barrage with a ray of electricity, which would be completely unaffected by her blast of force.

He guessed her response well this time. She had tried to respond with a force battering ram, but then caught onto his plan half-way through and dodged the beam he'd sent at her. As for himself, he used the disturbance in her attack rhythm to initiate a short-distance teleport, transporting himself behind her back. She noticed him, of course – she was probably using that mana-sensing trick she'd taught him so long ago – but she could do little else but raise a hasty aegis to shield herself against the blast of force he'd sent at her. He followed this up with a force lance, intending to give her a taste of her own medicine, but she expertly dodged that and sent an eight missile swarm at him, forcing him to fire another dispelling wave to deal with them. He kind of wondered why she still kept bunching up her projectile swarms together like that when she already knew that allowed him to take them all out with a single counter-spell. Maybe she couldn't? He knew he had better shaping skills than her, so maybe that kind of fine control over one's projectiles was beyond her.

He teleported again to evade another battering ram of force and then sent his own missile swarm at her, each missile following its own exotic trajectory to make them hard to track and take out.

That battle raged like that for another couple of minutes, before Zorian was forced to concede defeat due to running out of mana. It was a good fight in his opinion, if nothing else because he didn't get any new bruises this time around. Taiven complained, of course, lecturing him about pacing himself better, but the simple truth was that she was driving him way too hard for him to be conservative with his mana use. He would rather be too frivolous with his mana use and lose due to exhausting himself than end up on the receiving end of an offensive spell again.

"You know, running out of mana like that in a real battle basically means you die," Taiven said.

"And getting speared through the lung by a force lance doesn't?" Zorian countered.

She stared at him. "Okay, yeah, you got me there."

She walked over to a nearby bench and motioned him to sit beside her.

"Have you thought about that list Kael gave you?" she asked.

Of course he had. He even discussed with her some of the points she'd brought up over the past few days, although he suspected she didn't like his answers all that much. Interpreting her question as a demand for a more long-winded, comprehensive explanation, he started telling her about the reasoning behind his decisions.

His reasons for not getting help from more people, and especially official authorities of any sort, were simple to explain. The more people he told about the time loop, the greater the chance that they would let something slip to the wrong person and lead Red Robe back to him. Unless they had something he really needed, and which he simply couldn't get by any other way, it was best to keep them ignorant of the time loop. Truthfully, even telling Taiven was probably a pointless risk. He told her about the time loop for the same reason he kept taking Kirielle with him to Cyoria, despite his little sister being nothing but a huge liability and time sink – he wanted someone familiar to talk and confide to.

He kept his mouth shut about that last detail in his explanation to Taiven, though – he doubted she would appreciate hearing that. Instead he focused on the fact that virtually no one would be willing to believe him about being a time traveler, and that convincing them would probably take weeks and could easily cause quite a stir. This was especially true in regards to her ideas about contacting the city government or academy authorities. Zach had already tried to notify them about the time loop and had never been taken seriously – there was no reason to think Zorian would be any more successful at it than Zach was.

"Didn't you say Zach is kind of an idiot?" Taiven asked curiously.

"Sort of," said Zorian. "But in this case, I think he's far more suited to the task than I am. There is no way I'd ever be as trustworthy to authority figures as Zach."

"Ah, yes, the natural mind magic thing," Taiven said.

"Well, that too, but I was actually thinking about how I'd probably never be as forthright and honest about things as Zach probably was," he admitted. "I'd hide things and people would notice and be wary of me as a result."

Taiven gave him a long, searching look. "You're not even telling me everything, aren't you?"

"I'm telling you most things," he said. "Everything I think is relevant."

She stayed silent and gave him an annoyed look.

"Anyway," he said quickly, looking to change the subject, "even ignoring that, contacting Cyoria's authorities is a particularly bad idea because there is obviously someone high in the administration that is cooperating with the invaders. I'm almost certain by now that whoever is leading the Cult of the Dragon Below also has a high position in the city government – it would explain why the members of the cult keep getting lucrative contracts from the city and exemptions from all sort of normal regulations – and it would make sense for Ibasans to also have someone in their pocket."

"I keep forgetting that part," Taiven admitted. "This is pretty bizarre, now that I think about it. Finding out that some crazy cult has thoroughly infiltrated our city government is honestly one of the scariest parts of your story, but the part where I'll apparently get erased out of existence at the end of this month sort of drowns out everything else."

Ouch. She was still fixated on that. He did his best to move the conversation along, tackling her concerns about spreading himself thin next.

Her complaints that it would be better for him if he picked one or two things to really focus on held merit. Unfortunately, there was a reason why he was not doing that - he kept encountering various emergencies during his time in the time loop, which forced him to often drop topics or push them into background to accommodate for the newest priority that just sprung up on him. The second issue basically amounted to personal weakness – he could only focus on something for so long before he got thoroughly sick of it and had to do something else. Since he aimed to be a generalist mage anyway, he didn't think of this as some huge issue he had to work on, but he understood why a tightly-focused spell caster like Taiven would be annoyed with him for that.

"As for not trying harder at combat magic, well… we already discussed that topic enough, I think. You already know my opinion on the matter," he told her.

"Yet you keep coming to these spars anyway," she noted. "I know I was kind of pushy about it, but it's not like I can really make you come if you decided to put your foot down."

"Well, I do want to get better at it," he shrugged. "No reason to refuse free practice. I just wish you would tone it down a little."

"Oh, come on. What are you afraid of?" Taiven scoffed. "Aren't you a big, bad time traveler that can't really die?"

"Treating death as a nuisance could easily become a habit that would kill me for real once I'm out of the time loop. Unless there is a pressing need for it, or some downright amazing opportunity, I'd like to avoid dying too much," Zorian said. "Also, you do realize that the time loop only resets when Zach dies, not when I do? If you end up killing me, you'll have to live with the consequences 'till the end of the month."

The look she gave him told him that no, she did not realize that.

Yup, that was more like the Taiven he knew.

She mumbled something about sensitive little flowers and then leaned back on the cold wall behind them. Rather unhealthy, that.

"You know, you don't have to rely on me to help you with combat magic," she said. "There are quite a few combat magic instructors in Cyoria. With the amount of money you have at your disposal and the ability to keep spending it over and over again, you could get instruction from all of them. Combat magic may not be a priority for you, but keep that in mind. This is a killer opportunity, and you will never get anything like it outside of your time loop."

Zorian frowned. "What do you mean?"

"A lot of mages simply won't teach you if they know you've been taught by their rival or competitor," she told him. "As in, they'll refuse out of principle. There is quite a bit of difference in teaching your personal tricks to some young mage who is just starting out and teaching them to this extremely talented guy who has absorbed the teachings of several veteran mages. Hell, some mages won't want to have anything to do with you if you seem too competent, period. They don't want to create a competitor that will overshadow them and steal lucrative opportunities from them in the future."

"No offense Taiven, but Daimen never had any trouble securing powerful teachers," Zorian said. "If anything, the number of people who wanted to mentor him increased as his talent became known to people."

"I don't doubt it," she said. "But I guarantee that some doors also became closed to him at the same time. For you, that don’t have to be the case – not only will prospective teachers never know who else taught you in the past or how good you really are, you can also do things like sign apprenticeship contracts without them really binding you to anything. Hell, you could accept some really shitty deals if it meant getting some of the really deep secrets people have. Just… think about it, okay?"

"I am thinking about it. I've been thinking about that sort of thing since the start of the time loop. It just that more pressing issues keep cropping up and eating into my time," he said. "I'm surprised you're bringing that up, though. Doesn't that bother you? I mean, we're basically talking about weaseling out the secrets that these people have spent their life gathering without compensating them in any way."

"Well, yes," she said. "But realistically speaking, I'd do it in a heartbeat if I was in your place. And frankly, so would nine tenths of those same experts you're feeling sorry for. Are you seriously telling me you haven't been doing something like that all this time?"

"Sometimes," Zorian said. Ilsa stood prominently in his mind, since he'd flat-out become her apprentice to get her to teach him some of her stuff. "But I have been keeping a mental list of people I 'owe' in this way, and I was thinking of doing something for them once I get out of the time loop. It's already quite a long list, though, and I don't know whether I can even do anything for some of them…"

"Ugh," she grunted, looking away uncomfortably.

"What?" he asked.

"You're a really weird guy, Zorian," she complained. "You can be such a selfish jerk at times, and then you say stuff like that and I realize I don't understand you at all."

"The feeling is mutual, Taiven," he told her with a smile.

"What, that you think I'm a selfish jerk or that you don't understand me either?" she asked.

"Both," he said. Man, she really walked into that one…

She made an outraged sound and gave him a light shove.

"You're violent, too," he added.

"Whatever," she said, getting up from the bench. "I'll bring Grunt and Mumble to our next spar so you can have some variety. I think I can also call in a few favors from my former classmates who also went for combat-related careers and have them fight you a few times as well. Your spell casting is technically flawless but you need better combat reflexes."

Zorian gave her a curious look.

"Why are you being so proactive about this?" he asked her. "I know you hate me bringing it up, but it was only a few days ago that you hated the idea of me surpassing you in your own field. Why did you change your attitude so drastically? You don't even fully believe in the time loop story, according to your own admission."

"Because your life is on the line," she told him seriously. "That's the most important thing I got from your explanation. If it weren't for that… well, I'd be hell of a lot more jealous and bitter about all this. But it's not just an advantage, you have a heavy responsibility on your shoulders, and someone is trying to get you killed. In light of the chance that you might not make it out of this alive, all of my frustrations seem so… petty in comparison."

Huh… was that why she was so insistent he needed to work more on his combat skills?

"Don't die, okay?" she said when he didn't say anything for a while. "You're the best friend I have."

Zorian fidgeted uncomfortably, unused to that kind of confession and mystified as to how he should respond to it. The snide, cynical part of him felt that was a pretty sad admission. He hadn't exactly been a nice person in his pre-loop days, and he had nursed a grudge against her ever since she'd laughed at his love confession. If the invasion and the time loop had never happened, would he have gotten over that in time to salvage their friendship? Or would he have continued to push her away until she eventually gave up on him, completely unaware that she apparently considered him her best friend?

"I'll try not to," he eventually told her. He couldn't promise anything. Telling her that he would definitely live and that she had no cause for concern would be a lie and they'd both know it. "Say, Taiven, did you put some thought into how we can make this time loop work to your benefit? You know, like Kael did for his alchemy?"

"Well, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "It's useless, isn't it? Practicing combat magic requires shaping skills and routines that cannot be transferred via written notes. What could either of us possibly do to help the other Taiven?"

"I could teach you various shaping exercises and note which ones work best for you, though," Zorian said. "I could show you the different combat spells I found over the restarts and note which ones you handle the best and what the most effective way of training you in them is. Kirielle's magic lessons are at least two times more effective now than they were when I first tried to teach her, so it should be utterly trivial to create a training program that would let you grow twice as fast as you would without it."

"Just how much stuff do you think you can cram in one month?" Taiven asked skeptically.

"We won't know 'till we try it, won't we?" Zorian countered. "And besides, there is no reason why the final training plan has to be limited to a month. Does every single new thing you learn necessarily build atop things you already mastered?"

"No?"

"There you go. That means we can break down a training plan into month-long chunks and optimize them separately. We can get at least a year that way, especially if you branch out in some necessary support skills that you've been ignoring. Your lack of divination skills is really felt in any restart where I decide not to join you, for instance."

Taiven looked torn. She was clearly excited about the idea but at the same time she felt… guilty about it?

"I don't know…" she said. "That sounds really time consuming, and you don't really get anything out of it. You said yourself that you already have too much things vying for your attention."

She was right, of course. Still, he owed her something for all the help she'd given him in the past and this seemed like a perfect way to pay her back.

He would find the time if he could. Maybe not a lot of time, but still.

"I was going to look into combat magic-related shaping exercises anyway," he said. "It might actually be a better idea to go through those together with you than to study them alone. You would know which ones are more useful better than I would. And besides, who says I have to hover around you all the time – I'm sure you can do a lot of testing yourself and then write a notebook for me to transfer into the next restart like Kael is doing. Or just tell me what you found out face to face before the summer festival."

It didn't take much convincing before Taiven was fully on board with the idea. In a way, this was what she had asked of him back when she lost her composure – to 'show her how to cheat, too'. He promised to bring an initial batch of spells and shaping exercises tomorrow on their next spar and then left to take care of other obligations.

He wondered how long it would take for her to realize that she had agreed to spend day after day doing shaping exercises. He'd have to practice his Xvim impersonation for tomorrow.

- break -

In the ruins of the aranean settlement beneath Cyoria, Zorian patiently waited for Memory of Sublime Glories to finish memory probing the Ibasan mage he had captured and brought to her for interrogation. He had ventured deep into invader-held underground to retrieve this man, and was fortunate to stumble upon one of the middle-ranked leaders of the invasion force, so he had high hopes for the result of Sublime Glories' memory dive.

In the meantime, he kept floating above the cavern floor not far from the aranea and her victim, holding himself aloft with the personal levitation exercise. In his left hand he held one of several small stones, which he kept disintegrating into dust in similarly non-structured manner. He had mastered both shaping exercises a long time ago, but the mild disruption effects present this far underground made them mildly challenging and thus a nice way to pass the time.

He was starting to run out of rocks when the aranea finally withdrew from the invader's mind and approached him.

Obviously, he had not told Memory of Sublime Glories anything about time travel, so he was not surprised that her report didn't mention anything remotely related to that. Still, she found out plenty of things of interest.

[The Ibasans are scared of you,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [Well, not you personally, but the human nations on this continent are a source of constant worry for them. The technological revolution you are undergoing has not taken root on their island, and they fear they will gradually become powerless and irrelevant as time goes by. Since your nations have recently gone through several rounds of self-destructive wars and a deadly epidemic, and are at their most disunited in the long while, a lot of Ibasans feel that the time to strike at you is now. There has been a lot of agitation to launch some kind of invasion, but apparently there is also an influential faction that thinks such an invasion would be utter suicide and advocates trying to reopen diplomatic links to the continent. In light of that, this attack seems to have two main goals. The first is to make this nation look weak to others, thereby making any potential invasion by Ulquaan Ibasa look more attractive to their less warlike kin back home. Such a perception of weakness could also possibly ignite another continental war that would weaken everyone on the continent further. The second goal is to destroy any chance of official peace between Ulquaan Ibasa and Eldemar, thereby making the position of the reconciliation faction untenable.]

[They're not scared that Eldemar might respond to the attack by outright invading Ulquaan Ibasa?] Zorian asked.

[Ulquaan Ibasa is remote and inhospitable, and Eldemar has continental rivals to worry about,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [They expect a response, but nothing substantial. A series of raids at most.]

Zorian wasn't so sure about that. Eldemar had been prospering for some time now, and the government was quite proud and aggressive. He wouldn't put it past the current royals and the Noble Council to launch a full scale invasion of Ulquaan Ibasa out of sheer principle, costs be damned. Especially since the Ibasans were diplomatically isolated and not part of the byzantine web of alliances that prevented the larger Splinter States from simply attacking the smaller ones and absorbing them through force of arms.

As the aranea continued with her findings, however, it became obvious that the Ibasans had not simply relied on empty hope to discourage such an invasion. Sometime near the beginning of the month, just before the start of the time loop, the Ibasans had managed to overrun Fort Oroklo without alerting Eldemar that it had changed hands.

Situated on a small island to the northeast of Eldemar and named after the general that had defeated Quatach-Ichl's army at the conclusion of the Necromancer's War, Fort Oroklo was a small but important installation that served the dual purpose of being a monitoring station for keeping an eye on Ulquaan Ibasa and a supply base for Eldemar naval patrols. The Ibasans apparently called it 'Fort Dagger', because they considered it a knife pointed straight at their throat. So long as Eldemar held Fort Oroklo, they had a perfect staging ground for any raid or invasion on Ulquaan Ibasa.

Before Eldemar could launch an attack on Ulquaan Ibasa, it first had to retake Fort Oroklo – a heavily-warded fortress situated on an excellent defensive position.

[Some of this doesn't make any sense,] Zorian complained. [According to you, the Ibasans are transporting their forces straight from Ulquaan Ibasa to Fort Oroklo, then from Fort Oroklo to some unknown point in the Sarokian Highlands, and then from there to beneath Cyoria.]

[Yes, what of it?]

[That's not enough stops for an effective teleportation chain,] Zorian said. [Only two stop points for a journey of such distance, with the final destination point being deep underground to boot? There is no way that's really what's happening. If they were sending letters or small packages maybe, but no way could you transport an army like that. Even if Quatach-Ichl is the best mass teleported in the whole damn world, the mana costs for such long jumps would be completely impractical on that scale.]

Admittedly, such a small number of stops would do much to explain how they could transport such an army through Eldemar territory without being discovered by Eldemar, but…

[They're not teleporting in the manner we've seen you do it,] Memory of Sublime Glories noted. [They are using some kind of stone construct to open a dimensional passage between two points. Like a door to another land.]

What?

[Can you describe that 'door' in more detail, please?] Zorian asked, frowning.

Instead of answering with words, the aranea promptly projected an image of said 'door' that she pilfered from the man's mind straight into his mind.

It wasn't a stone arch like he expected – instead, it was a collection of stone 'bars' arranged into a form of a large, skeletal icosahedrons. Suspended in the middle of this bizarre geometric construct, like a window cut into the very air itself, was the dimensional gate. It appeared circular at first glance, edges marked by a warped, blurry outline that looked as if someone had ran a finger through a wet painting and smudged all the colors together. As the aranea helpfully rotated the image, however, it became obvious that the gate looked circular no matter from which direction it was seen. It was spherical.

Well… he supposed that answered some things. The gate spell was pretty much the pinnacle of dimensional magic, requiring both a lot of mana and extreme shaping skills to pull off successfully, but the invaders did have an ancient lich on their side. If anyone could casually open a gate, it would be Quatach-Ichl.

But…

[They were inspired by ancient artifacts called Bakora gates,] the aranea added. [Though unable to actually figure out how the Bakora gates work or how to activate them, they realized that the 'icosahedrons' thing around them is meant to stabilize the dimensional passage and make it last indefinitely. Or at least as long as you keep supplying it with enough mana. So they made their own version of it.]

[Wait, you're saying that thing down there is constantly active?] Zorian asked incredulously.

[According to our prisoner, yes,] the aranea said. [As far as he knows, the door is never shut down.]

Gods, a permanent dimensional passage like that… no wonder the invaders could bring such a huge force beneath the city and keep supplying it. He fired off a bunch of additional questions about how the knockoff Bakora gate was made, what its limitations are and so forth, but found that their captive had no idea of any of those things. Anyone except the leaders of the invasion was unlikely to know such things, and possibly no one except Quatach-Ichl, who seemed to be in charge of maintaining the gates.

Annoying. Still, the fact that the invasion was supplied by permanently active dimensional gates did provide certain opportunities. For instance, it meant that if he could capture the gates fast enough, he could get access straight into the heart of Ibasan operations, perhaps even Ulquaan Ibasa itself. Destroying the gate in their main base would no doubt utterly cripple the planned invasion, unless a new gate was easy to build, which he doubted. Finally, it opened the possibility of stealing the design from whoever made the thing – something he definitely wanted to do if it was at all possible.

Hopefully the design wasn't exclusively held by Quatach-Ichl or ran on children's souls or some such, because that was one amazing piece of magic.

[What about the research facility I've told you about?] Zorian asked.

[Nothing that you don't already know,] Memory of Sublime Glories told him. [Frankly, I think you're going about this the wrong way. You say the previous aranea found out something important about that facility? Well, I don't think they did it by reading the minds of Ibasan invaders. Admittedly, I cannot tell that for certain without getting access to some of their leaders, but they seem to neither know nor care about what's down there. Except for the lich, and as we both know, they'd never succeed in reading that thing's mind.]

[Well they clearly got information about it from someone,] Zorian said.

[Yes, well, it is a government facility. It stands to reason that someone from the government knows what they do down there. Chances are that if you want to find out about the facility through the same methods that the previous web used, you are going to have to target whichever government official that facility is reporting to.]

That… was a good point. He had no doubt that Spear of Resolve would attack a city official without the slightest bit of hesitation if she felt he had answers to her questions and she felt she could get away with it. And she could definitely get away with it, since she knew she was stuck in a time loop and none of the consequences would matter beyond certain point.

[A valid point, but let's refrain from antagonizing the city government for now,] he said.

[More than fine with me,] the aranea responded.

Having exhausted all of the topics Zorian could think of, they bid each other goodbye and agreed to meet the next day for his usual mind magic lessons.

- break -

Weeks passed, and while he didn't make any incredible breakthroughs, his various projects kept slowly advancing forward. He absorbed everything about memory packet creation and reinforcement that Memory of Sublime Glories could teach him, he dutifully practiced what the other two Filigree Sages had to teach him, he scoured the academy library for interesting shaping exercises for both himself and Taiven, he built no less than three different golems with Edwin, and he learned a large number of spells from the books he and the Filigree Sages had found in the aranean treasury.

The most interesting of these new spells were a couple of highly illegal teleport variations that could punch through weaker teleport wards. If he could master those, he would get a major mobility boost within the city. Admittedly, it was possible that the city authorities could detect when someone was bypassing the city's teleport redirect in that fashion, but even if they could indeed do that, that would still make those spells incredibly useful during the actual invasion, when they'd be far too busy with other things to deal with him.

Oh, and he also met with Raynie a couple of times. He was given a lot of information about the current political climate among shifter tribes and their history, which was kind of interesting but probably not really important for anything. The meetings were a nice distraction, though, so he didn't care that he wasn't really learning anything.

"So there is something I'm kind of curious about when it comes to shifter magic," Zorian said. "I apologize in advance if I'm asking you to reveal some kind of tribal secret, but what exactly is the big advantage of being a shifter as opposed to just using a potion or a ritual to assume an animal form? I know that shifters can eschew material components that are otherwise needed to make a transformation shell and that you can do a partial transformation to access the senses and other traits from your alternate forms, but that seems a little underwhelming, all things considered…"

"Well, you have to remember that shifters originate from a different time, when other methods of transformation were far less developed and common than they are now," Raynie said. "But there are some things you're missing. The shifter transformation is much faster and safer than anything you can cook up with your alchemy skills, and you automatically get instincts to go along with your new form. A normal wizard that transforms into an animal will have big problems moving in their new body and even interpreting the animal's senses if they're too different from what humans are used to. A shifter can innately understand how their alternate form works, so it doesn't take much for bird shifters to learn how to fly as easily as birds or for wolf shifters to actually understand what their enhanced noses are telling them."

"Ah," said Zorian in understanding, remembering how badly he flew while transformed into an eagle, even after spending several sessions practicing his flight. "Yeah, that does sound like a major improvement over a transformation potion."

"There is also a stealth factor to consider, as your cat shifter friends can attest," Raynie continued. "It's much easier to use transformation magics covertly when you can transform at will, whenever you want, to what extent you want, with no strange movements and material aids required. And since we're on the topic of your feline friends, let me ask you something that I've been kind of curious about. Did you know all this stuff about shifters before you met the cat shifters, or did you only researched the topic because you started hanging out with them?"

"I'd known about shifters for a while by the time I met them," Zorian said. It was true, in a way. "I was searching for help with something and came to Vani for advice. He actually advised me to seek you out."

"Me!?" she asked incredulously. She frowned. "Or do you mean shifters in general?"

"Both. But he recommended you by name," Zorian said.

"Oh?" she leaned forward in her seat, curious. "And what exactly could I help you with?"

"It doesn't matter," Zorian said, shaking his head. "I've already gotten help elsewhere, and I've been told by others that you couldn't have helped me anyway."

"Oh come on," she huffed. "That's just teasing. You can't just say something like that and then say it doesn't matter. Either you tell me or I send a letter to Vani, asking him what he sent you to me for."

Ugh. He didn't think she was serious, but if she was that could easily lead to awkward questions about why Vani doesn't remember ever talking to Zorian in the past. He really had to learn how to watch his tongue better; he was becoming as bad as Zach.

"It's very personal so I'd appreciate if you leave the matter alone, okay?" Zorian sighed. "The short story is that I had the misfortune to end up on the receiving end of a necromantic spell and had a piece of foreign soul spliced with my own. I wanted answers as to what exactly happened to me, and Vani suggested I approach your tribe for help. But since he had no idea how to actually find them, he named you as a possible contact."

"Ah, that's… more serious than I thought," she said. "I'm sorry I pried. Are you…"

"I'm fine," said Zorian, waving her off. "Don't worry about it. I found a nice priest that helped me learn how to sense and protect my soul, so there should be no further incidents like that."

"I see. That's good," she said. She stared to the side for a few seconds, considering something, before refocusing back on him. "So did you at least get any good abilities out of the whole thing?"

"I'm… not sure," Zorian said evasively. "I'm still not sure what exactly the newest addition to my soul is or what it does."

"Really?" she frowned. "But didn't you say you learned how to sense your soul?"

"Yes, so?"

"So why don't you just focus on the spliced part for a while and try to figure out what it is? That sounds important to know. I know you probably want to forget about whatever happened to you, but as a shifter I can tell you it's very unhealthy to ignore parts of your soul because they won't ignore you."

"Hold on, how would I sense a part of my soul?" Zorian frowned. "That wasn't a part of the lesson I received from the priest."

Raynie opened her mouth to say something before quickly closing it. She stayed silent for a while, considering something.

"You know," she finally said, "I'm not sure whether anyone other than shifters would even want to sense specific parts of their soul. No need, probably. Unless they intend to modify it somehow, and that's usually a bad idea. And also not something a priest would do, unless they're a very heretical priest. So your teacher probably didn't even know that it could be done."

"Oh," Zorian said lamely.

"Do you want me to teach you how to do it?" Raynie asked.

"What?" asked Zorian. "Really? Aren't shifters very secretive about their magic?"

"No?" Raynie said uncertainly. "Not about stuff like this, anyway. This is simple stuff, every shifter learns how to do this as a child. They have to if they want to make use of their abilities properly. I can't see any harm in teaching how to do it if you're willing, and I kind of feel like I owe you for all the help you've given me during the practice sessions you organized."

Huh, something good came out of that time sink? This restart was just full of surprises.

"Well, I'm willing," he shrugged. "Name the time and the place."

He didn't have much hope that a technique designed to sense a part of your soul would give him anything particularly substantial about his soul marker, but it didn't hurt to try and see if it led to something.

At the very least, Raynie implied it was a simple thing to learn, so it shouldn't become another thing vying for his time.

- break -

As it turned out, the method for sensing parts of your soul turned out to be rather simple when someone actually pointed it out to you. Well, provided one had already went through the trouble of developing a personal soul sense beforehand. The results he got when he used it to inspect his soul were… better than he hoped. He actually could sense his marker and the way it was woven into his soul, but unlike shifters, he didn't get any instinctive understanding of its function and how to use it (if it could be actually used by the one it was stamped on). Which made sense, considering it was not actually a part of his soul in the way a shifter's alternate form was.

Raynie herself seemed unfazed by the partial failure and told him to keep trying for a while. It usually took months for shifter to fully map out the way different parts of their soul interact, and while she doubted his case made him as complex as a shifter she felt it was too early to give up after a single day or two.

Fair enough. He supposed he could set aside an hour or two every weekend and see if it led anywhere.

In the meantime, the day of the summer festival approached and Zorian became consumed with preparations for the end of the restart. This time, he had something a bit more ambitious he wanted to try out.

He was going to try and infiltrate the Ibasan main base during the invasion and pass through the dimensional gate to see where it led. And then, hopefully, find someone new and more interesting to interrogate on the other side.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 044

2016-04-08T10:39:29Z

Zariur: /*A Show of Trust*/

===A Show of Trust===

The idea that someone might connect all the dots and realize his abilities were way too developed for his age was not a foreign idea for Zorian. He tried to make sure that the abilities he showed to any one person or group were firmly within the realm of possible, but he always knew that a sufficiently curious and dedicated individual could track down enough clues to realize something didn't quite add up. There was no solution to this, as far as he could tell – not unless he wanted to spend most of his time performing an incredibly elaborate and boring act. Something which he wasn't sure he was capable of, and which probably wouldn't be too good for his sanity. Ultimately, he decided that the whole thing was largely a non-issue. As long as he wasn't caught doing something illegal, he could simply tell such amateur detectives to get lost. Well, he'd probably be more formal and courteous about it than that, but that was what it all boiled down to in the end.

He was even aware that it might be Taiven who caught on to him. In many ways, she was in an ideal position to do so. She was probably the only person who actually had a solid idea of what was normal for him and what wasn't , and was thus far more likely to realize just how abnormal and sudden his current skill growth was. He had been interacting with her pretty heavily lately, giving her lots of material to work with. And lastly, they'd known each other from before. They were… friends. She would feel entitled to an explanation of some sort, and would be a lot less hesitant about confronting him than someone else might be.

And yet, despite all of that, Taiven still managed to completely blindside him in the end. He expected her reaction to be a lot of things, but never did he imagine she would break down into tears. It was just so unlike her. Yes, she was a very emotional girl, but she was also the sort to keep going forward and never let anything get to her.

He glanced to the left, where she was sitting on the bed beside him. She was a mess. She had stopped crying for a while now, but after-effects were still very visible – red face, runny nose, the standard stuff. Still, her emotions had leveled off in the past few minutes, so maybe she was ready to talk now?

"Feeling better?" he asked.

She lightly punched him in the shoulder as a response.

Yes, definitely feeling better.

"This sucks," she complained. "I came here all fired up, ready to get some answers, and in the end we didn't even have a proper fight. I just made a fool of myself. Why couldn't you have been more angry and defensive and… Zorian-like?"

"Err, sorry?" he said, mildly confused. He was tempted to ask just how she defined 'Zorian-like' but decided it would be best if that remained a mystery for now. "To be fair, you weren't behaving very Taiven-like either."

"I guess," she conceded. "Tell me something. Have you always been this talented? Have you been lying to me this whole time?"

"No," he answered simply.

She scrutinized him for a moment, watching for any sign of uncertainty and shiftiness in his eyes and posture, before sighing heavily.

"Figures," she said. "I thought as much. You'd have to be very dedicated to keep up the act for so long, and I can't think of a reason why you'd bother. Still nice to hear it from your own mouth, though. Except… that only leaves one option on the table. That you overtook me in everything, including my specialty, in the few short months since we last saw each other. That…"

"You're wrong," Zorian said, shaking his head. "I did not overtake you. I am confident that if we fought, you'd be victorious nine times out of ten. You're still better than me."

If he didn't just use mind magic to incapacitate her right from the start. Or ambush her. Or cover the battlefield in enough explosives to level a building. But he was pretty sure Taiven wouldn't count those as 'real' victories anyway, and aside from that, his point still stood.

"It doesn't matter," she huffed. "With the kind of ridiculous growth you're displaying, you'll close that gap in a handful of weeks and then leave me in the dust. And you'll have all that other stuff you're tinkering with too. Am I wrong?"

"Sort of," he said. She gave him an annoyed look so he immediately clarified. "It's complex. There is no way I'll be able to close the gap between us 'in a handful of weeks', as you said. But time flows differently for me than it does for you, so I'll get a lot more than that."

"What? What the hell are you saying?" she asked, giving him an incredulous look.

"We'll come back to that later. Before I say more on the topic, I want to know what got you so upset about this," he said calmly.

"Say what? Zorian, you can't say something like that and just go 'but we'll talk about that later'. This… this demands immediate clarification! This will be bugging me in the back of my head until I get an answer!" she complained.

"I know," Zorian said, smiling widely. "That's why I'm not explaining anything until you tell me what's going on."

She glared at him. He only smiled wider.

"You're evil," she told him, looking away. "Besides, I already told you what's bothering me and I'm pretty sure you heard me just fine. Everything I've done, all the skills I've spent my life honing… if you can surpass it all so easily, then what the hell have I been doing all my life? I don't know what kind of cheat you used, and it honestly doesn't matter because it shouldn't have been enough! I’m good at this and I live for this, you can't just decide one day to pursue the same field as me and then catch up to me in less than three months… while not even focusing on it properly! The only way that could be possible is… is if I were never really that good to begin with…"

"Oh come on," Zorian protested, quickly wrapping Taiven into another hug to forestall a second round of crying he could feel welling up inside of her. "That's so totally ridiculous. Why would you doubt yourself like that? How do I being better erase your own accomplishments?"

"Accomplishments?" she asked incredulously, pushing him away. "What accomplishments? I work as a freaking teacher's assistant, Zorian. For a non-magical class no less! Do you honestly think that's what I hoped for when I graduated?"

He winced. So Taiven wasn't as sanguine about that 'temporary setback' as she pretended to be… In retrospect, he shouldn't be so surprised by that – while failing to secure herself a mentor immediately after graduation was by no means the end of the world, it was bound to be a severe blow to her confidence. Still…

"Taiven, aren't your parents both battle mages?" Zorian asked. "How come they haven't pulled some of their connections to find you a mentor, or even just a better job?"

"Oh, my parents would love to find me a mentor," Taiven scoffed. "In fact, they already have someone in mind! He's one of their old friends who have long left the exciting parts of the business behind him when he lost his leg to a rock worm. He's all about being cautious and minimizing risks, and he never does anything more challenging than routine pest extermination. Of course, that's precisely why my parents want me to learn from him. If they had it their way, I'd be hunting mutated rats until I was thirty or something."

"Ah…" said Zorian awkwardly. He seemed to have walked straight into a touchy subject there.

"Yeah," Taiven said. "I love my parents, and I know they just want to keep me safe, but we just don't see eye to eye there."

"Okay, sorry to bring that up then. But really, if the reason you're so upset is that you think you're some kind of failure, well… you can rest easy. You're an awesome combat mage. As awesome as you ever were, and nothing I do can change that."

"I'm… not sure I really believe that," Taiven sighed. "I couldn't find a mentor. The team I made wasn't going anywhere until I recruited you in it.
Meanwhile, my parents keep insisting I'm not ready and that it's good thing I've had such a slow start of my career. It's nice to hear some encouragement, but it rings a little hollow considering… you know."

"Taiven, I'm not so good because you're secretly bad and nobody bothered to clue you in until now," Zorian said. "I'm so good because I had more than four years to hone my skills since we last saw each other."

Taiven looked at him like he had grown a second head.

"That's right – I'm actually older than you now," Zorian said. "With that in mind, it is actually pretty amazing that I am still not capable of casually sweeping you aside in a fight. Sure, I could kill you instantly from an ambush, but if we clashed head to head in a battle of pure spell work, I would have to use every trick at my disposal and still wouldn't be guaranteed a win. That is why I keep insisting you're awesome."

"I don't understand," she said. "You don't sound like you're joking, but that's what this looks like to me. How can you be older than me? That's not how age works, Zorian."

"Ah, did you already forget what I told you earlier?" Zorian asked, amused. "About how time flows differently for me than it does for you? I seem to remember you said it would keep bugging you until you get an answer…"

"Look, you know I'm not one for riddles and intellectual maneuvering," Taiven said crankily. "Why don't you just tell me what's happening here, okay?"

Sure, why not.

"I've lived through this month before," he said. "Many, many times. Every time I die, or on the night of the summer festival if I don't, my soul gets wrenched back in time to the start of the month. It's an endless loop that sees me getting stronger and more capable with each passing restart. Since you don't retain your memories across restarts, my growth appears abrupt and inexplicable to you, but it's really nothing more than your typical gradual improvement. Believe it or not, you're the one that taught me a fair deal of that combat magic you're so jealous of."

"Shut up. I'm not jealous!" she protested.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Out of all of that, that's what you chose to focus on?"

"Yeah, well, at least that one has an easy response," she said. "What the hell am I supposed to say about the rest? Sure, it would explain your skills perfectly, but it's just so…"

"Crazy?" Zorian offered.

"Yes," she agreed. "And also terrifying. You're basically saying I'll get killed in a few weeks and replaced with a one month younger version of me. And that this isn't the first time this happened, it's just that I don't remember any of it. That's like something out of a horror story!"

"I prefer to think of it as just memory loss rather than death," Zorian said. "You're still you, you just lose a couple of weeks of your life."

"Repeatedly," she added.

"Repeatedly," Zorian confirmed. "I'm not saying it isn't terrifying, just that I don't think it's equivalent to death. Admittedly, I'm a little biased here – if I thought that the time loop murdered millions of people at the end of every restart, I'd have probably gone insane from stress a long time ago."

"Ah," she winced. "Sorry, I guess I'm still thinking of this as some kind of hypothetical scenario instead of something that's actually happening. Still, assuming you're not just pulling my leg here – and I swear to heavens, Zorian, if you are pulling my leg I'll glue your mouth shut with that really nasty gunk they use on dangerous prisoners – that's still pretty messed up. And also very unfair. Why are you the only person to remember anything?"

"I'm not," he said. "There are at least two other people looping with me, possibly more. One of them wants to destroy Cyoria."

She stared at him for a second before getting up from her position. For a moment he thought he had gone into too much detail too fast, and that she was going to walk through the door, but instead she started looking through his drawers, searching for something. He thought about telling her off for rooting through his stuff like that, but decided to wait and see what she was up to.

She eventually found an empty notebook and a working pen in one of the drawers, appropriated one of the larger and thicker books in his room and then reclaimed her seat on the bed.

She opened the notebook on her lap, the heavy book she took serving as an improvised table, and quickly scribbled something down on top of the page.

Huh, he'd never thought of Taiven as someone to take notes like that.

"There, I'm ready," she said. "Why don't you start from the beginning this time…"

- break –

In the end, he wasn't sure whether he had convinced her what he was saying was true or not. She took a lot of notes, asked even more questions, and then just left after telling him she has to think about things.

A far better outcome than he had expected to get, honestly. He really hoped she would overcome her disbelief and accept his story. It would be nice to have someone other than Kael to talk to about time loop related things. Not that there was anything wrong with the morlock boy, far from it, but sometimes he really wished he could get a second opinion about stuff.

Of course, it would hardly be him if that little bit of hope that came his way wasn't soon balanced out by something or someone popping up to complicate things. In this case, that someone was Xvim. When he arrived at his office the next day for their weekly mentoring session, he was informed that 'his' training group had been noticed and that Xvim was not happy at all that such an amateur had delusions about being fit for a teacher. In order to make him fit for a teacher, Xvim decided to step up their schedule – they now met three days a week instead of the usual one.

He really hated that man.

- break –

His talk with Raynie was going well, in his opinion. If nothing else, she was a lot more relaxed than she had been in the previous restart – she'd even ordered a glass of wine to go with her meal. Of course, he wasn't actually learning anything new from her, since she was telling him the same things she had told him the last time they'd done this, but that was to be expected. He couldn't exactly continue on where they last left off without explaining where he got that information, and he didn't feel like making something up. The week had been stressful enough; he was fine with just going with the flow like this.

"You know," Raynie said, taking a small sip from her glass, "I'm getting the feeling that you already know most of what I'm telling you."

Oops. It seemed Raynie was a bit more perceptive than he gave her credit for. He didn't think he was being particularly careless, so maybe she was just that good. Probably for the best that he'd never tried to lie to her, then.

"Sort of," he admitted.

"Why did you ask me something you already know the answer to, then?" she asked.

"So I can compare it with what I already know and see whether you were feeding me a bunch of lies or not," he said.

She snorted derisively. "I think you've confused me with one of your cat shifter friends. Don't you think it's kind of rude to assume the worst of people like that?"

"So you're saying your visit to our training group the other day wasn't about you testing me to see what I would do?" he asked with a smile.

"Ugh. It was so obvious, huh?" Raynie sighed. "Well, it wasn't just that… but yes, I wanted to see how you would treat me."

"And?" he asked curiously. "What's the verdict?"

"It's good," she said. "You didn't lash out at me for being so clearly underpowered compared to you and your buddies, but you also didn't drop everything to spend the entire meeting hovering around me, trying to 'help'. A fair treatment. I respect that. I don't want special privileges."

"So you intend to keep coming, then?"

"Yes. As I said, seeing your reaction was just a part of it. I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to get better."

There was a brief silence as Raynie seemed to considering something.

"So, Zorian? I'm curious about something," she eventually said. "What is it that drives you to try so hard? I mean, you're near the top of the class at every subject, and you seem to be good enough for a fourth-year when it comes to combat magic. That had to have taken quite a lot of work. What are you trying to accomplish?"

Hum. What an interesting question. His reason for pushing himself at so many magical skills was, of course, that he very much needed them to survive… but that wasn't true for all of them. Some of them he pursued for personal reasons, because he had an interest in the field. The funny thing was, he no longer had any idea what he wanted to actually do with his life once he was out of the time loop. Most of the career paths he had been eyeing before he got stuck in the time loop no longer appealed to him. They were too modest and routine for someone of his current skills, and he would only get more capable as time passed.

He could do better than that. But better how?

"Independence," he eventually answered. Raynie gave him a curious look so he hurried to clarify. "My family and I don't really get along. I want to get away from them as soon as possible. Buy my own place; get a source of steady income to support myself, things like that."

All true, except that he already had the skills to achieve all of that easily. But it was the best answer he could come up with on such short notice.

"I see," she said. "I apologize if I'm overstepping my boundaries, but why aren't you getting along with your family?"

"It's a bit personal," Zorian sighed. "And also a long story. But the short version of it is that my parents have never cared much for me. I am the third son and a disappointment."

"A disappointment?" Raynie asked curiously. "Do I want to know?"

"You probably already know this, but I have a really famous older brother," Zorian said.

"Yes, Daimen," she nodded. "What about it?"

"I'm not him," Zorian said simply.

"Ah," she said, drawing the word out. "It's that kind of disappointment. But shouldn't your other brother have the same problem, then?"

"He does, but he's more charming and social than me," Zorian shrugged. "He'll never measure up to Daimen, but he's ultimately alright in their book."

Also, Fortov was a selfish asshole and could go straight to hell for all that Zorian cared.

"Interesting," she said. "Let me present you with a hypothetical situation. Imagine it was not Daimen who came first. Imagine it was you, and your parents treated you as their chosen son. But then Daimen came about, and they promptly switched their favors to this new wonder child. Your time in the spotlight is over, and your parents fully expect you to move aside for their new darling. Do you think you would still have the same attitude you do now?"

Oh boy. He had a feeling this wasn't really a hypothetical situation at all.

"Well…" he said, swallowing heavily. "Truthfully, I don't think it's possible for me to know what this hypothetical me might think and feel. So much would change in my life that I wouldn't be the same person sitting here today. However, assuming someone magically switched me with this alternate version of me… yes, I would have the same attitude."

"You wouldn't try to fight for your birthright as the firstborn?" she asked.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "The alternate version of me, having experienced my parents' favor, might see some value in trying to get it back. I would still seek to strike out on my own as soon as possible. The scenario doesn't change anything for me."

"I see," she said, lost in thought.

Not long afterwards, they finished their talk and went their separate ways. As he walked back to Imaya's place, he wondered whether he'd answered her 'hypothetical situation' correctly.

She agreed to meet with him next week, so perhaps she would eventually explain what that was about.

- break –

He spent the rest of the Saturday working on the next golem with Edwin. This one was going to be a little more ambitious, being made out of steel and much bigger than Kosjenka – though not nearly as big as he had originally wanted, since Edwin had informed him that construction of golems taller than a meter in height was prohibited unless one had a special license. He had already broken that law in a previous restart, and he was definitely going to break it again in future ones, but there was no need to do so right now. He didn't think Edwin would report him, but he probably wouldn't want to help him break the regulations so brazenly. Them being arrested would be but a brief inconvenience for Zorian, but Edwin wouldn't think of it that way.

The next day he immediately left the house in the morning and descended into the tunnels below Cyoria. One way or the other, the magic research room was getting opened – if he could not bypass the wards on the entrance, the Filigree Sages were going to break down the door to get in, consequences be damned.

He didn't really agree with this decision. It had been less than a week since the Filigree Sages had started their salvaging operations, so he didn't see why they were in such a rush to get it open. Well okay, they did explain why they were in such a hurry – the Cyorian underground was highly coveted territory among the aranea, being a center of their magical and technological revolution and all, and they were worried that the neighboring webs would swoop in and muscle them out any day now. Of course, Zorian knew from previous restarts that the neighboring webs weren't going to come any time soon, but he couldn't exactly tell the Filigree Sages that he had seen the future and that their fears are unfounded.

But no matter, even if they ended up destroying the contents, it wasn't some great harm, at least from his perspective. He could always try again in future restarts.

He approached the dead settlement and he reached out telepathically to the guards posted by the Filigree Sages, announcing his arrival. Circle of Fortune and Golden Dust, the overseer of the Filigree Sages' expedition, moved to greet him.

[Welcome back, Zorian Kazinski,] the aranea greeted. He had told her previously to just call him by his name, but she hadn't taken him up on that. [Any news from the surface?]

[Nothing too important,] he said. [The monster incursions are beginning to peter out so the number of monster hunters stalking the Dungeon should see a sharp drop soon.]

[Good,] she said. [This place is outside their usual patrol routes but I still worried some of them would stumble upon it. Are you ready for the attempt?]

[I guess. I still think you're rushing, though.]

[We are,] she admitted. [I am not casting aspersions on your combat skills, but you're still just one mage. If nothing else, you cannot be in more than one place at the same time. We have to work quickly.]

They soon arrived at the room that held the research room. Six more aranea were already inside, two of them analyzing the wards while the other four waited for a command to break down the door. After conversing with the two aranean ward breakers for a few minutes, Zorian created a floating disc of force to stand on and lifted himself towards the hole in the ceiling where the entrance stood.

He took out the ward analysis device from his jacket – the 'pocket watch' that Taiven had been hired to retrieve so long ago, and whose absence clued him in to the existence of the treasury. He had located it inside the treasury uncovered by the Filigree Sages and, while he fully intended to dismantle it to see what makes it tick, for now it was more useful to him intact, serving its intended purpose. He channeled a divination spell through the device and got to work.

From what he and the aranean ward breakers had been able to tell thus far, there were three main layers of defenses on the entrance. The first one would electrocute anyone touching the walls of the entrance. The second one would superheat the air inside it to lethal temperatures. The third one would bring down the entire ceiling on top of wannabe looters. All three had complicated and hidden trigger conditions, tied to a detection layer that neither he nor the aranean ward breakers could figure out.

Obviously, the third defense was the priority to disable, but it also appeared to be the defense most sensitive to attempted tampering. The Filigree Sages had worked out a way to neutralize it, but doing so would no doubt trigger all other defenses – both the two they were aware of, and any further ones they had yet to detect.

The ward analysis device really showed its usefulness, though – the detection layer, so byzantine and obscured from scrutiny in the past, simply unraveled under its power. It was… not as bad as he feared. He could do this. He contacted Circle of Fortune and told him he thought he could disable the defenses. The aranea in the room exploded into a flurry of activity, mostly vacating the room in case he overreached and brought the whole room down. Circle of Fortune and the two ward breakers, however, remained. The ward breakers would help him in the attempt, while Circle of Fortune simply announced that she 'had to be there'. He didn't argue with her, too absorbed by the task in front of him.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, he and the two aranean ward breakers slowly and carefully neutralized the detection layer and then moved onto unlocking the door itself. The door itself had some additional defenses, relatively minor in nature but strong enough to really ruin their day if they triggered any of them – it was to his immense relief, then, that they managed to get it open without setting off a single one.

Unfortunately, that's when the defenses inside the room itself, completely separated from the main ward scheme and therefore undetectable from the outside, activated. If Zorian hadn't reacted immediately by erecting a shield in front of them while simultaneously directing the force platform they were standing on downwards at maximum speed, the incoming explosion would surely have killed them on the spot. Even with that, they ended up crashing painfully on the floor of the cave, dazing them for a couple of crucial seconds.

There was no time to sit down and recover, though, because the ruined entrance to the research room was starting to pump sickly yellow gas into the room and Zorian had no intention of seeing what effect it had when breathed in. He held his breath and quickly sealed the entrance with a bubble of force, stopping more gas from pouring in, before casting a spell he'd seen Kyron cast once during the invasion. He raised his hand into the air and concentrated on the gas, causing it to surge towards his outstretched palm, where it flowed into a small, compact ball.

Moments later, once he was sure he'd gotten all of the gas, he restructured the churning ball of poison gas into harmless, inert dust and took stock of the situation with Circle of Fortune, who was lucky enough to escape the incident without consequences. The two ward breakers were not so lucky – they weren't dead, but it was close. It turned out that aranea could not hold their breath like humans, so they ended up breathing in some of the poison gas in the room before he neutralized it. They would recover, but not any time soon, so Circle of Fortune asked him to drop them off back at the main Filigree Sages' settlement and pick up a new pair of ward breakers as replacements.

He later sent some ectoplasmic eyes and other remote sensors into the room to check it out, and found it completely wrecked by the explosion and coated in some dangerous looking green slime. Circle of Fortune just mentally shrugged, pronounced the entire thing a bust and ordered the entrance to the room walled off with alteration spells to prevent any further surprises coming from there.

[Don't beat yourself up over this failure,] Circle of Fortune told him. [If we had gone through with our original plan, those defenses would have still gone off, probably killing the entire assault team assigned to breaking down the door. Plus, we'd also have had to deal with other traps you ended up disabling before you ran afoul of that last set. This is a much better outcome.]

Well, that was one way of looking at it. He left Circle of Fortune to deal with the final cleanup of the situation and went off to find his mind magic teachers among the aranea.

It didn't take long for him to track them down to one of the isolated corners of the dead settlements, where the three of them were huddled together and engaged in telepathic conversation.

Before this restart, such intra-aranean conversations were completely opaque to him – telepathy was not language-independent, so unless the aranea 'spoke' in manner he could understand, he was out of luck. Now, however, one of those teachers had begun to teach him how to understand and use the aranean telepathic language, so he could actually understand a few snippets. He was still a rank beginner at it, of course, but it was enough to understand the general topic of the conversation. They were discussing the three strongest neighboring webs – Burning Apex, Red Brand Bearers and Deep Blue – and the threat they would pose to the expedition if they decided to send a war party to Cyoria. Sadly, that was about as much as he could figure out from the conversation. The details totally escaped him.

He made a mental note to see if he could find something about the neighboring webs in the records room. It might be a good idea to visit them sometime and see what they had to offer.

[Greetings,] he sent to all three of them. [Am I interrupting something important?]

[We're just killing time,] Voice of Peace answered for them. She was the teacher that was supposed to help him learn how to interpret aranean senses, thoughts and memories. She'd decided on her own initiative that this included teaching him the aranean language, claiming he would never be really capable of making sense of the aranean mind without being fluent in it. She was also the most enthusiastic of his three teachers, often willing to work with him beyond their officially allotted time or go beyond the strict boundaries of what she was assigned to help him with. [Are you here for your daily lesson?]

[Yes,] he confirmed. [I know I'm a little early, but the project to open up the magic research room was a bit of a disaster.]

[We've heard,] said the aranea known simply as 'Hammerer' – an rather apt name, considering the aranea in question specialized in telepathic combat and favored powerful, unrelenting assault. [Circle of Fortune was always the reckless sort. At least you made sure nobody died. I must admit I didn't expect much from you when I heard you were supposed to guard us, but it seems you are actually useful from time to time.]

[Hammerer!] Voice of Peace protested.

[I just say it how it is,] Hammerer responded, not in the least bit contrite.

[Let's not bicker in front of our student. It sets a bad example,] said Memory of Sublime Glories, the last of his three teachers. Zorian got the notion that she resented him somewhat and considered the job of teaching a lowly human to be beneath her. Or maybe teaching in general, he wasn't really sure. Either way, she was too professional to let that get in the way of her job, so he had no cause to complain. [Are we following the same program we did the last time?]

[I don't see why not,] Zorian said.

[In that case, we will continue where we left off yesterday. As an aside, I will not be able to help you further unless you acquire someone to serve as a, ah, practice subject for our next session. You indicated this would not be a problem?]

[No,] Zorian stated. [It won't be.]

It should be trivial to ambush one of the cultists and drag him down here for interrogation and memory magic practice. The only thing he was unsure of was whether to go for a low-ranking member who probably didn't know anything but whose disappearance would go largely unnoticed or if he should aim higher. He would have to think about it some more.

[Before we start though, I'd like your opinion about something,] Zorian said.

[Oh? What about?] Memory of Sublime Glories asked. [Is this about that massive memory packet lodged inside your mind, perhaps?]

Ugh. This was a problem with learning memory manipulation from the aranea – he had no choice but to let Memory of Sublime Glories inside his head somewhat. He was pretty sure he would detect any serious breach of trust on her part, but it was hard to prevent her from taking a sneak peek at his thoughts every now and then.

[I thought you said you'd refrain from doing that?] he asked her, annoyed.

[I barely looked,] she protested. [An aranean memory packet inside a human mind, especially one of that size, is just very noticeable. Besides, you were just thinking about letting me examine it in more detail, so why are you complaining about that? I'm about to get a much closer look at it anyway.]

Zorian sighed in defeat. He hated it when the aranea responded to his thoughts before he actually put them into words. It was just rude. Still, she was essentially correct – he needed her to take a look at the matriarch's memory packet and tell him what she saw, because to his own amateur mental senses it seemed to be degrading already.

If that was true, then he needed to know how much time he had.

After a bit more back and forth he reluctantly opened his mind to her and agreed to let her take a closer look at his mind so she could figure out what was happening with the memory packet. Thankfully, she seemed to behave herself, so the explosives around his neck remained inert and undetonated.

Eventually she withdrew from his mind and gave him the verdict.

[I'm afraid you're correct,] she said. [The boundaries of the memory packet have indeed begun to fall apart.]

His heart sank. That was precisely what he was afraid of. He wasn't ready. If he opened the package now, he doubted he would get anything out of it. But if he waited…

[How long do I have?] he asked.

[Hard to say. I've never seen a memory packet that big, so it's hard to judge how the decay will progress. It can stay stable for another three months, I think. Maybe four. If you really want to be certain, though, you'll have to open it within the next two months.]

[Isn't there anything that can be done to stop, or at least slow the decay?] Zorian asked desperately.

[Repairing memory packets is fairly easy if you're the one who made them,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [Far less so if somebody else did. I don't think I could repair something that elaborate, and you would never trust me to tinker that deeply with your mind, anyway. I will teach you the basics of the skill, if you wish, but to get good enough to repair that thing you will have to secure a better teacher.]

[Any idea where I could find one?] Zorian asked.

[The Luminous Advocates probably have what you need,] she said. [I heard they can be hard to deal with, though. They drive a hard bargain.]

Ugh, those guys. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. If nothing else, getting enough money to pay for their outrageous prices should be fairly trivial at this point.

[In that case, I'd like to postpone our current lesson plan for a bit and concentrate on memory packets and how to repair them,] he told her.

[Of course,] she agreed easily. [Here is what you do…]

- break –

He returned home later in the evening, tired and depressed. He had hoped to do some more work after his visit to the Filigree Sages, but between the failure to secure the contents of the magic research room intact and the confirmation that the matriarch's memory packet had begun to unravel, he didn't feel like doing anything.

"Oh, you're back!" Imaya exclaimed when he entered the house. "Your friend has been waiting for you for a while now. She's in the basement with Kael right now. Do you want me to call her or are you going to get her yourself?"

His friend? Her?

"Taiven?" he guessed. Imaya nodded. Huh, that was a lot earlier than he had expected to hear from her. This could be either very good or very bad. "I'll go see what she wants."

"You know, the last time your 'friend' visited you, she left the house looking like she had been crying," Imaya said casually.

"Is there a reason why you're pronouncing 'friend' like that?" Zorian asked her suspiciously.

"You're not breaking young girls' hearts, are you, mister Kazinski?"

"Ugh. There is nothing like that between me and Taiven, okay? And besides, if anyone is the heartbreaker here, it's definitely Taiven," he protested.

She gave him a curious look.

"I'd prefer not to talk about it," he said, shaking his head.

Thankfully, she didn't press the issue, so he went to the basement to talk to Taiven and see what she decided. He found her talking with Kael about the time loop, comparing notes and discussing time travel mechanics.

"So does this mean you believe me?" he asked her hopefully.

"I suppose," she said. "This still all very fantastical and unreal to me, but everything you told me seems to check out. Or at least the parts I can actually check do. And Kael here seems convinced you're telling the truth, too. So yeah, I guess I kind of believe you."

"Is there anything you can tell me that would help me convince you in future restarts?" Zorian asked.

"Kael and I talked about that for a while," she said. "I don't know. Any personal information I could give you would just creep me out if you started spouting it off all of a sudden – I'd sooner decide that you've been spying on me or that you're reading my mind than that you are a time traveler. If you just tracked me down at the start of the restart and started showing off everything you've learned inside the time loop, I'd definitely accept that something strange is going on, but I'd probably think you're a shape-shifter in disguise or possessed. It's only because I interacted with you pretty heavily for a whole week that I never doubted that you're… well, you."

"How about this then: I start the next restart the same way I did this one, joining your group and all, wait for a few days for you to get annoyed with my growth spike, and then confront you about it on my own initiative before you have a chance to get really fed up with it," Zorian tried.

Tension that he never even noticed until that moment seemed to drain from her shoulders and she sagged in relief.

"What?" he said, frowning.

"I… was afraid you'd just keep duplicating the circumstances that led me here over and over again," she admitted. "Even if I don't retain memories of it, I don't want to be repeatedly reduced to tears. It was humiliating once, thank you very much."

"Truth be told, I wasn't okay with the idea of repeatedly making you cry, either," he told her. "So that option was definitely off the table, even if you were okay with it."

She looked away, embarrassed.

Kael cleared his throat to get their attention.

"I hate to break up the moment, but we have much to talk about," he said.

"Yes," Taiven agreed, relishing the chance to change the topic. "First of all – Zorian, why haven't you contacted Zach yet? This 'Red Robe' of yours is a threat to you both, and you said yourself that you think he's at the center of all this. It only makes sense to work together. I don't understand your reluctance to talk to him."

"First of all, there is a possibility that Red Robe is monitoring Zach and tracking his movements. If so, then contacting him would mean revealing myself to Red Robe," Zorian said. "Secondly, I suspect that the moment I contact Zach, my whole schedule is getting thrown into the trash can. I have some fairly urgent things I need to do in the near future; I can't drop everything to hang out with Zach. Even assuming he is fairly understanding of my goals, he'll still probably insist on taking part in my activities. Since the things I'm doing require subtlety, which he entirely lacks, that's a problem. All in all, I just don't think it's a good idea to involve myself with him at this moment."

"So, what, you intend to avoid a potential ally just like that?" Taiven asked.

"Only until I'm done investigating the invaders and I can get the matriarch's memory packet open," Zorian said. "After that, I will probably go out and meet with him to see what he has been doing and whether we can help each other."

"Huh. Alright," she said, somewhat mollified. "That makes more sense. To be honest, I thought you'd be a lot more stubborn about this than that. Kael said you had some sort of grudge against the guy, and I know how you are with your grudges."

"Well, Kael is wrong. I don't have a grudge against Zach," he said, giving the white-haired boy an annoyed look. "But whatever. One problem solved. What else do we need to talk about?"

Kael ripped out a page out of his notebook and offered it to Zorian.

"We made a list," Kael said with a smile. "Taiven had a lot of suggestions."

Zorian accepted the piece of paper with a sigh and began to read. She really knew how to pick a day to drop this on his head, didn't she?

When it rains, it pours.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 043

2016-04-08T10:19:06Z

Zariur:

===Overwhelmed===

Perhaps it was because she 'knew' that Zorian already had a date, much like everyone else seemed to believe, or perhaps it was simply a matter of Zorian being more circumspect with his intentions this time around, but Ilsa didn't send any girl after him in the end. Not that Zorian had stayed at Imaya's place long enough to see that in person, of course – that could have easily left him stuck with an unplanned date for the evening again – but he had left a scrying beacon in the house so he could check up on it periodically.

A part of him was annoyed he even cared about that. In the grand scheme of things, such petty drama did not matter in the slightest… there wasn't enough time left in the restart for the consequences of ignoring it to really catch up to him. And besides, he can hardly be blamed for not showing up on a date he had never arranged to begin with! But, well, he was curious… and it wasn't like checking up on the house from time to time was some huge commitment on his part.

No, most of his time was spent on hovering on the edges of the invasion proper, trying to spot breakaway groups small enough to ambush. Well, that and repeatedly telling himself that he didn't have to interfere every time he saw the invaders kill helpless civilians, since they were going to be just fine when the loop restarts. The first thing was complicated by the variety of monsters that accompanied the mages, who all had very good senses and came in great numbers. The second was complicated by the sheer brutality the invaders displayed to everyone in their path. For heaven's sake, some of them were breaking into random houses and murdering entire families inside! Not even looting anything, just committing mindless slaughter of noncombatants for no real reason. Madness.

He knew stuff like that happened during the invasion, of course, but it was never this… personal for him. He was there this time, witnessing the behavior in detail and coldbloodedly deciding where to engage the invaders and where to move on. And he wasn't talking about avoiding groups that were straightup too big for him to handle – those were easy to ignore, since he had never felt compelled to help others if doing so would cost him his own life in return. No, he was talking about groups that were entirely manageable with his current skills… except that he couldn't figure out a way to deal with them without killing everything. And what would be the point of that? He needed Ibasan mages alive so he could read their minds – that was what this was all about. An ambush that did not result in subdued mages to interrogate was a waste of time and mana, as well as liable to summon QuatachIchl to dispatch him. The ancient lich always personally intervened when someone got too successful against the invading forces.

And that was without even considering the possibility that Red Robe was secretly lurking somewhere out there in the city, waiting for a big enough disturbance to clue him in that a time traveler was back in Cyoria. He didn't think that option was very likely, what with Red Robe completely abandoning his support of the invasion lately, but it was not an option he felt completely safe discounting. No, sticking to his original plan and avoiding unnecessary engagements was definitely the right choice to make.

Maybe it was a good thing his mind kept going back to the stupid date drama – if nothing else, it gave him something to distract himself with.

Fortunately for his deteriorating mood, he soon found a duo of Ibasan mages that had strayed too far from their main group and were only lightly defended. Well, relatively speaking. They had two war trolls and twelve skeletons as bodyguards, with another six war trolls vandalizing shop fronts not too far from where they were standing, but he was confident he could deal with that if he could surprise them.

He made his way towards the group, mentally nudging the iron beak whose senses he was tapping into to fly closer to his targets so he could examine them more closely. There was something deliciously ironic about using the invader's own scouts against them like that, but the real reason he was using the iron beaks instead of simply scrying on the invaders was that iron beaks had much better vision than he did and could also see in the dark. Very useful, that. He had also tried to employ the same trick on the war trolls that hanged around the invaders, but found their senses very hard to process. Trolls had terrible eyesight, and were color blind to boot – their main sense was their ridiculously good sense of smell and, to a lesser extent, their hearing. Not to mention they were far less mobile than the iron beaks, and the Ibasans kept a much tighter leash on the brutes than they did on their iron beak flocks. Hmm… he wondered…

Acting on a hunch, Zorian focused on the nearest iron beak flock and tried to dominate the one flying on the tail's end of the flock. It was surprisingly willful for an animal, but his attempt was not contested by anyone and the iron beak soon broke off from its group and made its way towards Zorian. Huh, that worked. Nobody seemed to be reacting to his actions, either. Convenient. Apparently the iron beaks were a bigger weak link of the invasion than he'd thought!

He removed a potion vial from his pocket and handed it to the dominated iron beak that had landed next to him. It took some time, but eventually he managed to telepathically convey to the magical corvid that it shouldn't clutch the vial too tightly in its claws unless it wanted bad things to happen to it. That done, he directed it to dive bomb the Ibasan duo with the vial.

He would not have been at surprised at all if his ploy had ended up as a failure. A lot of it depended on the iron beak executing everything flawlessly, since Zorian was only dominating the iron beak, not puppeteering it – a dominated creature executes orders to the best of its own ability, not the controller's. That was nice, in the sense that there was no way Zorian could have puppeteered the bird precisely enough to pull off something this complicated. It did mean he was a bit of a helpless observer as a result, though. Oh well, even if the ploy failed it should at least act as a proper distraction for his own attack…

The iron beak exceeded his expectations. Not only did it approach the two mages from behind, entirely on its own initiative, it dropped the vial at the ''exact'' spot Zorian told it to aim at. The exact spot. That had got to be some innate magic ability at work – they were uncannily accurate with their feather attack too, come to think of it. In any case, once the vial hit the ground it exploded into a cloud of yellow gas that knocked out the two Ibasans in a matter of moments. Their bodyguards weren't affected – the war trolls because their magically enhanced metabolisms kept the knockout gas from working and the skeletons because they had no metabolism to affect – but once their controllers went unconscious, it became ridiculously easy to goad the war trolls into attacking the skeletons. It took less than a minute before every skeleton was reduced into dust and splinters.

He directed his iron beak to make a few passes at the two trolls, and the bird interpreted that as 'send a couple of feather volleys straight at their eyes (ouch), after which the two former bodyguards ran off to chase the bird in blind anger, leaving Zorian free to approach the two knocked out mages unopposed.

This was the fifth group he ambushed tonight, and the first one where everything had gone so smoothly. He didn't even have to personally fight in the end! He really should use iron beaks more extensively in the future.

After dragging the two unconscious bodies to some less exposed place, he took a deep breath and dived into their memories.

Memory reading, more than any other branch of mind magic, deeply resembled divination in the way it functioned. You had to decide what you wanted to look for, and if you were asking the wrong question, your answer would be worthless or misleading. In Zorian's case, there were four main things he looked for whenever he read the minds of Ibasan mages: whether they knew about any mage in a garish red robe, where the primordial 'summoning' ritual was supposed to take place, what they knew about the goals of the invasion and, last but certainly not least, whether they knew anything about the time loop or time travel in general. The same thing he probed the minds of cultists about, really. He was lucky this time, in that one of the two mages lying before him was a higher ranking mage that should hopefully know more than the common grunts he had been dealing with thus far.

None of the Ibasans knew anything about a mage wearing red robes, and the two men he currently had at his mercy were no exception. Follow up questions regarding missing members which had left the group around the start of the time loop revealed that despite their inability to maintain discipline during the actual invasion, the Ibasans ran a pretty tight ship during the lead up to it. Anyone who stepped out of line was severely punished by the Ibasan leadership, and the handful of cases where someone tried to abandon the invasion resulted in QuatachIchl hunting them down like dogs as an example to everyone else. Consequently, all such attempts had stopped long before the time loop had begun.

As far as Zorian was concerned, that pretty much killed the possibility of Red Robe being an Ibasan invader. He had suspected as much, considering how QuatachIchl treated Red Robe during that evening, but it was nice to have more confirmation. It was still possible he was connected to the Cult of Dragon Below, which didn't (and couldn't) exercise anywhere near the same control over its members.

As far as the location where the primordial ritual was concerned, none of the Ibasans officially knew anything about it… but it was apparently a sort of public secret among group commanders (such as the one whose mind Zorian was currently reading) that the 'summoning' was supposed to take place on top of the Hole, or at least as close to it as humanly possible.

Zorian felt pretty stupid when he found that out. Of course. Of course it was the Hole, the city's biggest and most obvious landmark. He had even known that the Cult assigned special significance to the damn place, he just never… damn it. He shook his head. In his defense, the lowerranking cultists were convinced that the ritual was going to take place in some supersecret place that nobody knows about.

As for the goals of the invasion, that was something Zorian found very easy to extract from the minds of his victims, as they knew very few actual facts about that. Only the very top of the Ibasan leadership seemed to know what they were really trying to accomplish here, and the common grunts were going along with the whole thing almost entirely because QuatachIchl was going along with it too. The ancient lich was held in very high regard by the Ibasans. As a thousand year old lich, he was an almost impossibly ancient mage, and had power and skill to match his age. He was alive back when the gods still spoke to humanity, and was rumored to have been blessed by several of them. On top of all that, he had a reputation for being harsh but fair, as opposed to a lot of other Ibasan leaders who simply had a reputation for being harsh. He was something of a saint to these people, as strange as that looked to Zorian. The mindset was that if QuatachIchl said this was possible and worthwhile to pull off, then it was. It was just that simple.

Also, there was a general feeling among the Ibasans that Altazians were all a bunch of degenerate weaklings that would surely fall like wheat before the mighty men and women of Ulquaan Ibasa. Then again, that particular brand of rhetoric was common in Eldemar too, so he didn't think it all that notable in the grand scheme of things.

As for time travel, his current victim knew nothing of it, just like everyone else he wait! There was something. It wasn't about the time loop, or time travel, but apparently Eldemar had a secret research facility deep, deep within the Dungeon, dedicated to researching time magic. Time dilation, to be more precise. The facility was heavily defended, with insanely good security measures – as they had to be, considering the sheer depth the facility was located at – so the invaders had decided to leave it alone. Some of the Ibasan leaders, notably QuatachIchl, were known to be unhappy about that. They felt something important had to be there, if Eldemar was willing to maintain a research facility in such a dangerous environment, and wanted to have it. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the leadership felt the amount of troops and effort required to crack their defenses could not be justified with such speculative gains.

That was… interesting. Although the Ibasan mage he was memoryreading did not know the exact location of the facility, Zorian was pretty sure he did. The map left to him by the matriarch had a number of locations marked on it, two of which he had never been able to reach to check out. One was surrounded by Ibasan forward bases and patrolled too heavily for him to ever approach it successfully – Zorian presumed this was their main base. The other was ridiculously deep, and he never even tried reaching it – he did not think he could survive a journey into such depths. Frankly, he was kind of amazed the aranea managed to map the Dungeon that deep, considering even powerful mages would think twice about descending that deep.

He had no proof, but he strongly suspected this was the time magic research facility discovered by the Ibasans. And considering the matriarch had marked it down as important, it almost certainly had some relevance to his situation.

He dived deeper into the man's mind, looking for more information. He felt his victim's mind quake under the severity of the probe but persisted anyway – any compunction about hurting these people had evaporated after watching them rampage around the city for several hours.

The path outlined by the matriarch wasn't the only one, apparently, or even the main one. The government did not supply the facility through a perilous journey down the winding tunnels of the Dungeon proper – they did it by descending down through the Hole until they reached the desired depth, where they had drilled an artificial tunnel into the wall in order to connect the facility with the outside world. Of course, while that path avoided most of the dangers associated with such extreme depths, it was still insanely dangerous for anyone without authorization to be there, so that did not help him much. Maybe if he-

Oops. He pushed it too hard – overwhelmed by his (still rather crude and unsophisticated) memory probe, the man's mind collapsed into a chaotic, undecipherable mess. He would be getting nothing more out of him. Damn it.

He fired two piercers at the unconscious mages, killing them both, and turned to leave, only to find an iron beak watching him closely from a nearby window sill. It was nonhostile, simply scrutinizing him. Zorian checked the feel of its mind, and found that it was indeed the very same iron beak he had dominated earlier, just like he suspected. His influence over it had dissolved a while ago, though, so that couldn't be the reason why it was so docile towards him. Huh.

If nothing else, he'd expected it to resent him for overriding its will. He sensed no animosity from the bird, however – just satisfaction and schadenfreude at seeing the Ibasan mages dead. Either the iron beaks didn't like the Ibasans much, or this particular iron beak was not a fan.

"So," Zorian said. "How do you feel about helping me kill more of these?"

The iron beak cocked its head to the side, uncomprehending. Right, still only an animal, if a very clever and willful one. He sent the bird a telepathic impression of two of them killing more invaders.

The iron beak answered with a shrill screech and a burst of bloodlust so strong Zorian found himself taking a step back from the animal.

Hate. Grudge. Kill.

"Right," he mumbled to himself. "I'll take that as agreement."

He didn't bother to dominate the bird this time – he just instructed it to find another small group of invaders and started looking for more iron beaks to possibly subvert.

break

Zorian subdued two more groups after that, neither of which had anything new to teach him, before QuatachIchl suddenly teleported in front of him and blasted him in the face with one of those jagged red disintegration beams he loved so much. He died instantly, unable to raise any defenses in time.

Oh well, the night had been coming to a close anyway. At least he'd managed to experiment a little with the iron beaks flying around. Sadly, he had discovered that only a tiny minority of them was receptive to his control, and contacting the wrong ones invariably caused the entire flock to descend upon him like a murderous mob. The previously subverted birds also immediately switched sides back to their brethren when this happened, which he really should have expected but somehow was still taken entirely offguard the first time it happened. In any case, the iron beaks definitely hated the invaders for some reason, but turning them against their masters was very difficult. Something kept them loyal, and the few mages whose minds he had questioned for an answer didn't know what it was – they thought of iron beaks as dumb animals and paid no heed to their thoughts and motives.

He began the restart in the same general way he had started the last two by scouting the state of the invasion, getting his mana crystals, helping Taiven clean up the Dungeon of monsters, and so on. Except, of course, that he was far more effective at all of those this time around. He also stole a better library card for himself immediately and recreated Kosjenka for Kirielle, among other minor additions.

The newest restart, much like the two that preceded it, showed no sign of future knowledge by the invaders. This was the third consecutive restart where Red Robe unceremoniously ditched them, and Zorian was starting to suspect this was now a normal situation rather than just a momentary whim. Most likely, Red Robe had completely lost interest in the invasion after their confrontation.

The question was why? Why do that after he had spent all those restarts stubbornly handing out knowledge to them?

Well, perhaps a better questions would be, why had he been doing that in the first place? What did helping the invaders do for him? Was it just a way to keep Zach focused on some highly visible, but ultimately irrelevant quest so he wouldn't question things? Or perhaps a way to muddy the waters, so to speak, and hide the aftershocks of his own actions by regularly inducing a big splash at the start of every restart? Maybe. But the sheer amount of information he provided to the invaders made him think there was more to it than that. It was incredibly optimized to do as much damage to the city as possible – Red Robe must have sunk enormous amount of time and effort to produce something like that. The outcome of the invasion mattered to him in some personal way. So why stop?

What changed?

Zorian tried to think of it with a properly paranoid mindset. Red Robe thought that the aranea had brought an unknown, but large amount of people into the time loop. These people were organized and also crafty enough to evade his notice for years. Not something that would be easy to hunt down and purge. Zorian had also displayed mind magic in their battle, so the one encounter Red Robe had had with these people involved one of the few types of magic that could permanently deal with him. All of this meant that the time loop got infinitely more dangerous for Red Robe all out of a sudden. There was a legion of enemies plotting against him and lurking around every corner.

If Zorian was in Red Robe's place, would he immediately begin to plot against this group, laying down traps and ambushes and trying to track them down? No, definitely not. He would get away as soon as possible, not just out of Cyoria but out of the entire wider region around the city. If he began the restart somewhere in the city, he would get the hell away at the start of the restart, much like Zach seemed to be doing. He wasn't sure how long he would stay away, but Zach had yet to stop leaving the city at the start of every restart, and he was the reckless one out of the three of them.

Maybe it wasn't so strange that Red Robe was staying away from the city at the moment. In hindsight, that bit of misdirection by Spear of Resolve had been far shrewder than Zorian had given her credit for at the time. But how long would it be before Red Robe realized that the legions of enemy time travelers simply didn't exist?

There was another option. If Red Robe was helping the invasion in an attempt to optimize it, so that it could be as effective as possible once the time loop ends, and if the aranea were only ejected from the time loop instead of soul-killed, as Red Robe claimed… then any further optimization attempts would be a total waste of time. Once the time loop ended, the aranea would be alive and well again, and any plan developed in their absence would give worse results than the one Red Robe had previously developed. Admittedly, Zorian mostly liked this option because it meant that the aranea were recoverable, but it would also explain a lot of things. Such as Red Robe's reluctance to use his soul-kill spell more liberally. If 'soul-killed' persons were only gone for the duration of the time loop, that would neatly explain why he didn't use it on nonloopers – that would be entirely counterproductive, since he would still have to deal with them eventually, except that he wouldn't have the option to try out different tactics against them in the time loop, and couldn't find out what worked best.

Zorian could only hope that investigating the invaders would bring some answers to his questions. Though if everything else failed, he supposed he could always behave like Zach and simply launch an endless stream of suicidal missions aimed at breaking into the time magic research facility, since that was clearly relevant to the time loop somehow. He was bound to succeed eventually, right? If Zach was able to kill Oganj with that method then surely he could break into one measly facility.

Hmm, maybe he was thinking about this wrong – he should outright recruit Zach into the attempt. He was still a bit leery of contacting the other boy, both because that would mean revealing himself to Red Robe if he was monitoring Zach and because he was not at all sure Zach would be of any actual help to him at this point, but if he was reduced to metaphorically banging his head on the wall then he might as well involve someone who has spent gods know how many years in the time loop honing the skill at doing exactly that.

Something to keep in mind when the time comes, anyway.

break

With the start of classes, Zorian decided to approach Raynie again while skipping on the mind magic training with Tinami. He still hoped to get to know the Aope heir better, but it was clear that trying to get close to both Raynie and Tinami at the same time was unfeasible, and Raynie seemed the easier one to handle. He did not recreate his initial request as closely as he had intended, but Raynie agreed to set up a meeting between them nonetheless.

Benisek had a spontaneous attack of clumsiness when he had tried to loudly congratulate Zorian and ended up sprawling on the floor of the classroom after tripping over his own two feet. It was a funny and mysterious thing, and Zorian hadn't had absolutely anything to do with it, but it sure was nice that he'd only made a scene out of himself instead of himself and Zorian, wasn't it?

Still, while he had high hopes that his attempt to get to know Raynie better would go better this time around, the fact was that interacting with her involved a lot of waiting time – he might as well try to get to know another one of his classmates in the meantime. And since female classmates had a high chance of producing the same kind of problems that Tinami had in the previous restart (because that was just how his luck worked, damn it), that someone should probably be a guy. Hmm, which one of his fellow male students looked interesting… oh! Edwin was really interested in golems, wasn't he? He had both of his parents in the golemmaking business and couldn't shut up about them the last time Zorian had asked a mildlytopical question about the subject. Well… he might as well show Edwin his own golem designs and ask him what he thought. It would be interesting to see how his designs compare to ones made by someone hyperfocused on the field.

He waited until classes were over and then walked over to where Edwin and Naim were talking. Like always when he saw them together, he found it interesting how different the two of them were, both physically and in terms of personality. Edwin was a short boy, with pitch black hair and slightly darker skin tone that hinted his ancestors were relatively recent arrivals from the south, or perhaps even from Miasina. Naim was a relatively unassuming brown-haired boy of average height, distinguished only by the fact he was rather athletic and fit for your average student.

Edwin was talkative and expressive, getting excited easily and often gesticulating heavily when he spoke. Naim was calm and restrained, like some sort of serene monk who had achieved enlightenment and could thus no longer be fazed by anything anymore. They were like the sun and the moon, yet somehow they'd ended up as inseparable.

He had to admit, he felt just a little bit intimidated by the prospect of approaching them. He was worried they would be suspicious of him, suddenly approaching them out of the blue like that. Zorian's previous relationship with the two was polite, but very, very distant. They had hardly known each other. Then again, that was an accurate description of his relationship with most of his classmates bar Benisek.

But he need not have worried. Edwin was naturally a friendly sort, and only got friendlier when he found out why Zorian was talking to him. And while he did sense some exasperation from Naim, that was solely because of the topic of the conversation rather than Zorian's presence as such. He was not as crazy about the topic as Edwin.

"That's a nice stabilizer for the kind of small doll this is intended for," Edwin said, tracing the relevant glyph sequences with his finger. "I don't think it would work for something larger and heavier, like a proper, mansized golem made out of solid steel, but it's downright inspired for this. I'll have to remember this. I don't understand why you put these in, though," he said, jabbing his finger at the trio of compressed nodes he used to finetune the design. "They're inelegant and just plain unnecessary. The design works perfectly without them, and they don't seem to do anything except randomly tweak things with no rhyme or reason."

"Actually, the design doesn't work without those," Zorian said. "All of the prototypes were breaking down on me until I got sick of trying to make it work like it was supposed to and just forcibly tweaked things in the manner you're looking at. It works fine now, but it makes altering the design a real pain. I'm hoping you can help me find the underlying issue that's tripping me up."

Edwin gave him an incredulous look. "Wait… so this is, like, an actual design. Not just theory work? You've built one of these?"

"Well, yeah," Zorian said. "What would be the point, otherwise?"

"But isn't that super expensive?" Edwin asked curiously.

"No, it's just moderately expensive," said Zorian. Though in all honesty, his sense of what is expensive and what wasn't had probably gotten utterly skewed while he was in the time loop. "But I'm funding it out of my own pocket and no one can really stop me from spending my money on whatever I find appropriate."

"Oh no, I'm not criticizing you," Edwin grinned. "Hell, I wish I could do the same! You sure you don't need an assistant or anything?"

"It's… a possibility," Zorian said hesitantly. He could see that Edwin was very serious about his suggestion, and it surprised him. He had thought he would have to make an effort to get him to cooperate on specific projects, and here he was proposing partnership. "How much time can you dedicate to this?"

Naim gave a short, amused laugh. He was largely content to quietly sit on the sidelines thus far, but apparently he couldn't resist reacting to this.

"That sort of thing is all he does in his free time," Naim said with a light smile. "The real question is just how long your patience will last before you tell him to knock it off already and go home."

"Oh shut up, you," Edwin complained. "Like you are any better, mister training. You have your martial arts, and I have my golems."

"I have a lot on my plate lately, so I'm not exactly sure how much time I can dedicate to this. But I think I can spare a couple of hours every two or three days if you're up for it."

"I'm up for it," said Edwin. "For a chance to see how my designs work in practice, I'd even be willing to wake up before noon during the weekend. What's keeping you so busy anyway? The classes are only starting."

"Ah, well, I do a lot of independent studies," said Zorian. "The golem experiments you already know about, but I also do a lot of studying into spell formula in general, as well as alchemy, general purpose utility magic and so on. I do advance shaping exercises and practice combat magic whenever I find the time."

"Sounds a bit unfocused," Edwin said. "Impressive that you manage to fit in all of that into your schedule, though."

"Yes, and you still found time to join in the monster hunts," Naim noticed.

"I think of that as combat magic practice," Zorian said.

Naim gave Edwin an amused look. Edwin scowled back at him.

"What?" Zorian asked.

"When I told Edwin I wanted to join a hunter group to practice my combat skills in real situations, he called me an idiot. He said no one else would be dumb enough to risk their lives for training," Naim said, patting Zorian on the shoulder like an old pal. "Well, it seems there are two of us. Welcome to the idiot club, Zorian."

"Right," Zorian mumbled. "But wait, what other reason would a student like us have to join a monster hunter group?"

Naim shrugged. "Money. Fame. Duty."

Oh right, some people get paid to do that stuff. And aren't stuck in a time loop that made stuff like fame and duty utterly unattainable.

Before he could actually say anything, another one of their classmates suddenly decided to enter the conversation.

"Forgive me for butting in like this," said Estin Grier, suddenly speaking up from behind Zorian. "But I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. Do you mind if I comment a bit?"

There was a brief pause, as the three of them stared at the newcomer. In the end, it was Edwin that broke the awkward pause.

"We're just talking, man," Edwin huffed. "It's not a private club or anything. Go ahead and say whatever you want to say."

Zorian glanced at Estin, studying him for a bit. The boy was one of the students he once suspected might be Red Robe – well, just 'the third time traveler' back then, since he hadn't met the guy yet – since his family emigrated to Eldemar from Ulquaan Ibasa. If he was being truthful to himself, the boy's appearance had contributed to those suspicions – Estin was a tall, severelooking fellow, with sharp facial features, dour expression, thick eyebrows, black hair and eyes of such dark brown they looked almost black too. He being very withdrawn and rarely speaking unless prompted by someone or something did nothing to dispel the rather sinister impression he got from the boy.

But as far as Zorian was able to piece out, Estin was really just a normal, albeit extremely intimidating student. He had no links to the invaders and didn't really behave like someone aware of the time loop.

"Very well," Estin nodded seriously. "I was going to note that while most of the students didn't join the monster hunts solely in order to test and hone ourselves in the crucible of battle, they surely considered that an additional point in favor of participating. One can have multiple goals for deciding something."

"So… you also like combat magic practice?" Naim surmised.

"Yes," Estin agreed. "That is one way to interpret that. And with that, we can see that there are three of us who wish to test our combat skills and grow. Perhaps we could help each other. Have a meeting so we can trade news and personal styles, spar, and other such things."

For someone who stayed quiet most of the time, Estin sure was very verbose once he got going. Still, he was all for Estin's idea, since he'd been curious about their level of combat skills ever since he'd heard they participated in monster hunts. Naim was also interested, so after discussing it for a while, the three of them decided to ask Ilsa to let them borrow a training hall sometimes in the future. One with actual ground, because apparently Estin's magic 'didn't work well with indoor environments', whatever that meant.

Estin also asked about Edwin joining them, but he wasn't interested. Edwin didn't like to fight, and had no interest in honing his combat skills. Zorian assured the golem enthusiast that he still intended to work with him on their golem designs.

He just had to figure out a way to fit in these two new obligations into his already overloaded schedule.

break

Finding a training hall suited to their needs turned out to have been largely a nonissue – the academy had lots of training halls, and most of them were free to use by any student. Not all of them were billed as combat magic training grounds, but they all had basic safety wards in place and could be unofficially used as such. According to Ilsa, such 'misuse' of academy resources had been rampant for quite some time already, and was accepted as normal even by the teachers these days. As such, she recommended they just commandeer whatever place they needed for a few hours instead of waiting a week for the academy to give them an official time slot that may or may not suit them, at a training hall that may or may not be what they needed. They just had to make sure they weren't interrupting a sanctioned study group or some such.

Armed with that knowledge, they toured some of the available options until they found a training hall that was really just a walledoff and warded section of academy grounds, and thus had plenty of soil and rocks that Estin apparently needed to really show off.

Estin, as it turned out, was one of those people with an innate magical ability. Specifically, he could manipulate earth, rocks and similar materials in an unstructured manner, much like how Zorian could work his mind magic.

Estin was rather cagey about the specifics of how his ability worked, since it was apparently his family bloodline and they were trying to keep it semisecret, but it apparently wasn't immediately usable in its untrained form and Estin's current abilities were a result of considerable talent and a lot of work. In the handful of mockfights they did to familiarize themselves with each other's skills, Estin used the ability exclusively to levitate large clumps of earth and rocks around himself, interposing them between himself and incoming spells with unerring accuracy. Well, if he could see the attack coming anyway – he didn't fare so well when Zorian made his magic missile loop back and come at him from behind his back. It also took some time for him to form a sphere, and he didn't seem capable of controlling more than four at any particular time, because when Zorian launched an eightmissile swarm at him he simply surrendered and asked him to tone it down in the future.

Still, it was a pretty useful trick he had there. Blocking with the spheres didn't seem to take any attention from Estin, allowing him to focus purely on peppering his opponent with offensive spells while his spheres defended him. If he had something more dangerous than magic missile in his arsenal, or if he could actually weave a homing function into those magic missiles, he might have actually posed a problem for Zorian.

Well, a problem for him so long as he held back so very badly. He decided in advance that the only spells he was going to display was his mastery of magic missile and basic shield spells, and that appeared to have been a good choice because he was beating both of them pretty decisively even with that. Especially Naim. As a first generation mage with no special magic or familial history to draw on, he was limited to the same 'magic missile and shield' combination that Zorian claimed to be limited to, but without the years in the time loop to hone his skills at those two spells to near perfection.

If he were fighting against pretime loop Zorian, Naim would have wiped the floor with him. He had more than twice the mana reserves that old Zorian had, and had clearly known how to cast those two spells years ago and had been slowly honing them all that time. On top of that, he was highly fit and agile, and in his fight against Estin he simply dodged every projectile that the other boy sent his way. The old Zorian couldn't weave a homing function into his magic missiles, and would thus not be any more successful than Estin in that regard.

But sadly for Naim, he wasn't fighting Zorian's past self, and thus ended up overmatched in his own game. Zorian's shield was impenetrable to anything the other boy could dish out, and dodging didn't work against Zorian's attacks.

After this, Naim and Estin decided to move onto handtohand combat, probably specifically to spite and oneup Zorian. Knowing he was useless in a fist fight and would just embarrass himself, Zorian immediately bowed out of that, conceding he had no chance against either of them. They were both very smug about that.

Well whatever, let them have their consolation prize. Better than being bitter at Zorian for besting them, that's for sure. In any case, the two of them had no less than five rounds of that, and it became obvious by the end that Naim was just plain better at that than Estin was, despite Estin's greater size and bulk. He would later find out that this was what Edwin had been talking about when he implied that Naim was just as obsessed with martial arts as he was with golems. He practiced martial arts religiously every single day, and was good enough to get invited to national contests in the field.

After that, they decided to share training methods and other advice – something that ended up surprisingly useful to Zorian, since both of them had found some neat little shaping exercises that Zorian never thought to look for, but which ultimately ended up with Zorian doing most of the talking and demonstrating. He expected as much too happen, though – he was the most experienced person among them, after all.

He left the meeting pleased with how it turned out. Considering that both Naim and Estin wanted to have another meeting like that, Zorian supposed they were pleased with it too, even though Estin was throwing him some sour looks when he thought Zorian wasn't looking. When they did organize another meeting, though, it wasn't just the three of them that showed up.

Briam, Kopriva and Raynie also showed up, wondering if they could join. Naim and Estin immediately dumped the decision on him, spontaneously designating him as the group's leader. Lovely. He accepted, of course. If nothing else, he was pretty sure that sending Raynie away would not reflect too well on him and his plans to get closer to her.

The problem was that all three of them were very raw and untrained when it came to actual combat magic. Briam was admittedly already a member of the hunting group, but that was solely because he had his fire drake familiar – his spells were almost entirely centered around supporting that living flame thrower. Kopriva was in the process of becoming a member in a hunting group, but also not due to combat magic as such – she got in on the basis on providing her team with alchemical bombs and potions, and was heavily reliant on them herself. Raynie probably had some of her shifter magic to fall back on if really pressed, but she was keeping that part of her a secret and her mastery of classical combat spells was nothing to write home about.

Somehow, they still managed to make the meeting work, but it involved a lot more work and responsibility than Zorian was comfortable with. Since he was 'the leader', it mostly fell upon him to help the newcomers out.

At the end of the meeting he was sought out by Raynie, who handed him an envelope with the time and place for their meeting. It was the same restaurant she had used last time, which he supposed made sense if the owner was a personal friend of hers like Kiana claimed.

While this was happening, Zorian was in the process of finalizing his agreement with the Filigree Sages. In exchange for transporting them to Cyoria, guarding their 'salvager crews', and transporting their finds back to their home, Zorian had secured three different mind magic teachers, one of which was supposed to be an expert in memory reading and manipulation. Said memory reading expert also agreed to probe the minds of up to five prisoners that Zorian brought to him and share the findings with him. Finally, and a lot less critically, Zorian was entitled to a portion of the things the aranean salvager crews found in the settlement – only important because it gave him the excuse to closely monitor their activities, ostensibly so they wouldn't cheat him out of his due, but really just so he knew how to properly 'salvage' the place in future restarts.

Embarrassingly, it took less than two days for the Filigree Sages to do what Zorian couldn't manage in an entire restart. Apparently the solution to finding the Cyorian web's treasury was to descend down the deep vertical shaft which the Cyorian aranea used as garbage disposal, except that halfway to the bottom was a hole in the wall that led to their treasury. The hole was big enough for an aranea to comfortably pass while lugging cargo, but Zorian would have to crawl to pass through the opening and into the main chamber. The shaft actually had numerous such tunnels of various sizes branching off of it, all but one of which were dead ends, but it wasn't that hard to narrow it down once you knew what the trick was.

According to the Filigree Sages, shafts like these were the 'secret' to the ease with which the aranea could penetrate even very deep layers on the dungeon without getting slaughtered in the process. While a shaft like that did allow for some of the horrid things from lower layers to reach you easier, they were very defensible and could always be collapsed on invaders if incursions got too frequent. In cases where such shafts didn't exist, aranea were liable to create them via application of stone shaping spells.

The actual treasury was… huge. A lot of space was taken up by huge spools of spider silk thread which were presumably the web's primary source of income. But there was also a lot of raw currency there, both in the form of paper notes as well as precious metals and gems. A fair amount of alchemical explosives and potions was also there, including heaps of different healing potions that the salvage crews claimed were optimized for aranean biology. They were very excited about those, and wanted Zorian's help in contacting whoever made those – they seemed very dismissive about the possibility that the Cyorian aranea produced those them. There were quite a few spellbooks, alchemical recipe books, or spell formula blueprint compilations many of them highly restricted, rare or very expensive. The Filigree Sages intended to cart all of them off back home for research purposes, but they agreed to let Zorian peruse them and copy a few choice bits for his own use. That would be enough to keep him busy until the end of the restart, so he was perfectly happy with that.

Finally, the vault held a lot of stuff that was really only of interest to aranea. Leather pouches and straps that aranea used for carting things around, nutrient blocks that were the aranea equivalent of dry rations, things like that. The Filigree Sages, at least, seemed very intrigued by those, marveling at the Cyorian web's technological sophistication and ingenuity. It all looked very underwhelming to Zorian, but he supposed it wasn't easy establishing a technological society when you have no hands.

Amazingly, the treasury was only the tip of the iceberg. There was another secret part of the settlement he had never found a secret magic research room, which could only be accessed by selectively disabling a few choice bits of the warding scheme in one of the rooms, and then passing through the newlyopened hole in the ceiling. Sadly, there was a further layer of defenses even beyond that, and neither the Filigree Sages nor Zorian had been able to crack the wards on the second door thus far. The leader of the salvagers was starting to toy with the idea of simply smashing the door, but worried that there was some kind of selfdestruct mechanism inside that would destroy the contents if the entrance was forced open. That was how Filigree Sages secured their own magic research rooms, apparently.

Finally, there was a room for storing records, which Zorian hadn't noticed simply because it had never occurred to him to try and connect his mind to the one particularly lumpy wall in the back of the settlement. Apparently the bumps were 'memory stones' – magic items that could record thoughts and memories, and which were apparently the aranea's equivalent of written records. Personally, Zorian didn't think this method was nearly as convenient as written records, but the Filigree Sages claimed this was a much more natural and convenient method for them, so what did he know? The important thing was that the records room held information about most of the dealings and operations the Cyorian web had had with the humans on the surface, barring top secret ones, and that Zorian could possibly coopt some of their organization for his own purposes. The Filigree Sages had no interest in that, seeing as how they intended to simply cart off anything that wasn't nailed down rather than establish some kind of long-term presence, so they simply pointed the room to him and told him to do whatever he wanted with it.

Embarrassingly, Zorian remembered noticing the wall the first time he searched the place and thinking it's unique texture might be significant… so he dug it up with alteration spells and was disappointed when he found nothing but solid rock behind it.

It was after one of these meetings with the Filigree Sages that Zorian came back to Imaya's place and found Taiven waiting for him. Curious. They didn't have another monster hunt scheduled until tomorrow. Maybe she wanted to talk about upping their tempo? They were extremely successful this time around, thanks to Zorian making full use of his future knowledge, so maybe she wanted to strike while the iron was hot. If so, he would have to disappoint her –he had too many things on his plate to devote more time on that.

The moment he got closer and she noticed him; however, he immediately realized she wasn't here about something like that. She was upset. She asked to speak to him in private so he led her to his room and locked the door. He had heavily warded it at the start of the restart with a permanent warding scheme, so there was no need to waste time on privacy spells.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"What's wrong, he asks," she mumbled.

Crap, she was upset at him. He didn't remember doing anything to make her upset, though.

She took out a light blue crystal and slammed it at the desk of drawers next to his bed.

"What's that?" she demanded.

"That's a rhetorical question, surely?" Zorian asked, baffled. "It's a piece of crystallized mana, of course."

"Yes, but why do you have an entire crate of that under your bed?" she demanded.

Zorian frowned. "You've been rooting through my stuff without my permission?"

"No, your little sister was," she said. "She and Nochka were playing princesses and making crowns out of crystallized mana for the two of them, Kana and Kosjenka. I walked in on them and asked them where they got those 'pretty stones' they were using."

Damn it, Kiri!

"Okay," said Zorian, taking a big breath to calm himself down. "Putting that aside for the moment, why has this gotten you so upset? Why does it matter if I've got a crate of crystallized mana under my bed?"

She balled up her hands into fists, seething in her own frustration and… self-loathing? What?

"Because everything!" she finally shouted, slamming her fist into the nearby wall and causing him to flinch back in shock. "Everything! Everything, everything, everything!"

"Taiven, please!" shouted Zorian, frantically trying to calm her down. "Just calm down, you're not making any sense!"

Was she… crying?

"How can you be so good at everything!?" she halfshouted at him, pushing him away. "You're good enough at alchemy that Kael praises you. You create golems in your free time. You're so good at divinations that adult professionals accused me of lying when I told them how good at finding monster nests you are. And you're apparently good enough at combat magic that they're letting you teach your own group!"

"That's not" Zorian tried to explain.

"Don't try to lie to me!" she snapped at him. "I know you're a better combat mage than me. You try to hide it, but I can tell. I'm not stupid!"

"I never claimed you are," Zorian assured her.

She ignored him.

"I worked on this for years," she cried. "I'm two years older than you and I worked so hard! Every day, every weekend, every moment I could spare. I made sure to focus; not spread myself too thin. I live for this. And then I find out that not only are you better than me in the one thing I focused on, you also have time for all these other things too! How!? How are you so much better than me? What am I doing wrong!?"

"Nothing!" Zorian hastily assured her. "You're honestly pretty damn awesome, Taiven, and the only reason I got even close to your level is because I'm a dirty cheater who cheats."

"Then show me how to cheat, too, damn it!" she shouted.

Before he could say anything in response to that, she… wrapped him into a hug and started sobbing into his shoulder. He awkwardly returned her hug after a few seconds, desperately trying to think of a way to handle this situation.

He couldn't think of anything at the moment. In light of that, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that Taiven didn't look like she would stop crying any time soon.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 043

2016-04-08T10:11:59Z

Zariur: /* Overwhelmed */

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 043

2016-04-08T10:02:09Z

Zariur: /*Overwhelmed

===Overwhelmed===

Perhaps it was because she 'knew' that Zorian already had a date, much like everyone else seemed to believe, or perhaps it was simply a matter of Zorian being more circumspect with his intentions this time around, but Ilsa didn't send any girl after him in the end. Not that Zorian had stayed at Imaya's place long enough to see that in person, of course – that could have easily left him stuck with an unplanned date for the evening again – but he had left a scrying beacon in the house so he could check up on it periodically.

A part of him was annoyed he even cared about that. In the grand scheme of things, such petty drama did not matter in the slightest… there wasn't enough time left in the restart for the consequences of ignoring it to really catch up to him. And besides, he can hardly be blamed for not showing up on a date he had never arranged to begin with! But, well, he was curious… and it wasn't like checking up on the house from time to time was some huge commitment on his part.

No, most of his time was spent on hovering on the edges of the invasion proper, trying to spot breakaway groups small enough to ambush. Well, that and repeatedly telling himself that he didn't have to interfere every time he saw the invaders kill helpless civilians, since they were going to be just fine when the loop restarts. The first thing was complicated by the variety of monsters that accompanied the mages, who all had very good senses and came in great numbers. The second was complicated by the sheer brutality the invaders displayed to everyone in their path. For heaven's sake, some of them were breaking into random houses and murdering entire families inside! Not even looting anything, just committing mindless slaughter of noncombatants for no real reason. Madness.

He knew stuff like that happened during the invasion, of course, but it was never this… personal for him. He was there this time, witnessing the behavior in detail and coldbloodedly deciding where to engage the invaders and where to move on. And he wasn't talking about avoiding groups that were straightup too big for him to handle – those were easy to ignore, since he had never felt compelled to help others if doing so would cost him his own life in return. No, he was talking about groups that were entirely manageable with his current skills… except that he couldn't figure out a way to deal with them without killing everything. And what would be the point of that? He needed Ibasan mages alive so he could read their minds – that was what this was all about. An ambush that did not result in subdued mages to interrogate was a waste of time and mana, as well as liable to summon QuatachIchl to dispatch him. The ancient lich always personally intervened when someone got too successful against the invading forces.

And that was without even considering the possibility that Red Robe was secretly lurking somewhere out there in the city, waiting for a big enough disturbance to clue him in that a time traveler was back in Cyoria. He didn't think that option was very likely, what with Red Robe completely abandoning his support of the invasion lately, but it was not an option he felt completely safe discounting. No, sticking to his original plan and avoiding unnecessary engagements was definitely the right choice to make.

Maybe it was a good thing his mind kept going back to the stupid date drama – if nothing else, it gave him something to distract himself with.

Fortunately for his deteriorating mood, he soon found a duo of Ibasan mages that had strayed too far from their main group and were only lightly defended. Well, relatively speaking. They had two war trolls and twelve skeletons as bodyguards, with another six war trolls vandalizing shop fronts not too far from where they were standing, but he was confident he could deal with that if he could surprise them.

He made his way towards the group, mentally nudging the iron beak whose senses he was tapping into to fly closer to his targets so he could examine them more closely. There was something deliciously ironic about using the invader's own scouts against them like that, but the real reason he was using the iron beaks instead of simply scrying on the invaders was that iron beaks had much better vision than he did and could also see in the dark. Very useful, that. He had also tried to employ the same trick on the war trolls that hanged around the invaders, but found their senses very hard to process. Trolls had terrible eyesight, and were color blind to boot – their main sense was their ridiculously good sense of smell and, to a lesser extent, their hearing. Not to mention they were far less mobile than the iron beaks, and the Ibasans kept a much tighter leash on the brutes than they did on their iron beak flocks.

Hmm… he wondered…

Acting on a hunch, Zorian focused on the nearest iron beak flock and tried to dominate the one flying on the tail's end of the flock. It was surprisingly willful for an animal, but his attempt was not contested by anyone and the iron beak soon broke off from its group and made its way towards Zorian. Huh, that worked. Nobody seemed to be reacting to his actions, either. Convenient. Apparently the iron beaks were a bigger weak link of the invasion than he'd thought!

He removed a potion vial from his pocket and handed it to the dominated iron beak that had landed next to him. It took some time, but eventually he managed to telepathically convey to the magical corvid that it shouldn't clutch the vial too tightly in its claws unless it wanted bad things to happen to it. That done, he directed it to dive bomb the Ibasan duo with the vial.

He would not have been at surprised at all if his ploy had ended up as a failure. A lot of it depended on the iron beak executing everything flawlessly, since Zorian was only dominating the iron beak, not puppeteering it – a dominated creature executes orders to the best of its own ability, not the controller's. That was nice, in the sense that there was no way Zorian could have puppeteered the bird precisely enough to pull off something this complicated. It did mean he was a bit of a helpless observer as a result, though. Oh well, even if the ploy failed it should at least act as a proper distraction for his own attack…

The iron beak exceeded his expectations. Not only did it approach the two mages from behind, entirely on its own initiative, it dropped the vial at the exact spot Zorian told it to aim at. The exact spot. That had got to be some innate magic ability at work – they were uncannily accurate with their feather attack too, come to think of it. In any case, once the vial hit the ground it exploded into a cloud of yellow gas that knocked out the two Ibasans in a matter of moments. Their bodyguards weren't affected – the war trolls because their magically enhanced metabolisms kept the knockout gas from working and the skeletons because they had no metabolism to affect – but once their controllers went unconscious, it became ridiculously easy to goad the war trolls into attacking the skeletons. It took less than a minute before every skeleton was reduced into dust and splinters.

He directed his iron beak to make a few passes at the two trolls, and the bird interpreted that as 'send a couple of feather volleys straight at their eyes (ouch), after which the two former bodyguards ran off to chase the bird in blind anger, leaving Zorian free to approach the two knocked out mages unopposed.

This was the fifth group he ambushed tonight, and the first one where everything had gone so smoothly. He didn't even have to personally fight in the end! He really should use iron beaks more extensively in the future.

After dragging the two unconscious bodies to some less exposed place, he took a deep breath and dived into their memories.

Memory reading, more than any other branch of mind magic, deeply resembled divination in the way it functioned.

You had to decide what you wanted to look for, and if you were asking the wrong question, your answer would be worthless or misleading. In Zorian's case, there were four main things he looked for whenever he read the minds of

Ibasan mages: whether they knew about any mage in a garish red robe, where the primordial 'summoning' ritual was supposed to take place, what they knew about the goals of the invasion and, last but certainly not least, whether they knew anything about the time loop or time travel in general. The same thing he probed the minds of cultists about, really. He was lucky this time, in that one of the two mages lying before him was a higher ranking mage that should hopefully know more than the common grunts he had been dealing with thus far.

None of the Ibasans knew anything about a mage wearing red robes, and the two men he currently had at his mercy were no exception. Follow up questions regarding missing members which had left the group around the start of the time loop revealed that despite their inability to maintain discipline during the actual invasion, the Ibasans ran a pretty tight ship during the lead up to it. Anyone who stepped out of line was severely punished by the Ibasan leadership, and the handful of cases where someone tried to abandon the invasion resulted in QuatachIchl hunting them down like dogs as an example to everyone else. Consequently, all such attempts had stopped long before the time loop had begun.

As far as Zorian was concerned, that pretty much killed the possibility of Red Robe being an Ibasan invader. He had suspected as much, considering how QuatachIchl treated Red Robe during that evening, but it was nice to have more confirmation. It was still possible he was connected to the Cult of Dragon Below, which didn't (and couldn't) exercise anywhere near the same control over its members.

As far as the location where the primordial ritual was concerned, none of the Ibasans officially knew anything about it… but it was apparently a sort of public secret among group commanders (such as the one whose mind Zorian was currently reading) that the 'summoning' was supposed to take place on top of the Hole, or at least as close to it as humanly possible.

Zorian felt pretty stupid when he found that out. Of course. Of course it was the Hole, the city's biggest and most obvious landmark. He had even known that the Cult assigned special significance to the damn place, he just never… damn it. He shook his head. In his defense, the lowerranking cultists were convinced that the ritual was going to take place in some supersecret place that nobody knows about.

As for the goals of the invasion, that was something Zorian found very easy to extract from the minds of his victims, as they knew very few actual facts about that. Only the very top of the Ibasan leadership seemed to know what they were really trying to accomplish here, and the common grunts were going along with the whole thing almost entirely because QuatachIchl was going along with it too. The ancient lich was held in very high regard by the Ibasans. As a thousand year old lich, he was an almost impossibly ancient mage, and had power and skill to match his age. He was alive back when the gods still spoke to humanity, and was rumored to have been blessed by several of them.

On top of all that, he had a reputation for being harsh but fair, as opposed to a lot of other Ibasan leaders who simply had a reputation for being harsh. He was something of a saint to these people, as strange as that looked to Zorian. The mindset was that if QuatachIchl said this was possible and worthwhile to pull off, then it was. It was just that simple.

Also, there was a general feeling among the Ibasans that Altazians were all a bunch of degenerate weaklings that would surely fall like wheat before the mighty men and women of Ulquaan Ibasa. Then again, that particular brand of rhetoric was common in Eldemar too, so he didn't think it all that notable in the grand scheme of things.

As for time travel, his current victim knew nothing of it, just like everyone else he wait! There was something. It wasn't about the time loop, or time travel, but apparently Eldemar had a secret research facility deep, deep within the Dungeon, dedicated to researching time magic. Time dilation, to be more precise. The facility was heavily defended, with insanely good security measures – as they had to be, considering the sheer depth the facility was located at – so the invaders had decided to leave it alone. Some of the Ibasan leaders, notably QuatachIchl, were known to be unhappy about that. They felt something important had to be there, if Eldemar was willing to maintain a research facility in such a dangerous environment, and wanted to have it. Unfortunately for them, the rest of the leadership felt the amount of troops and effort required to crack their defenses could not be justified with such speculative gains.

That was… interesting. Although the Ibasan mage he was memoryreading did not know the exact location of the facility, Zorian was pretty sure he did. The map left to him by the matriarch had a number of locations marked on it, two of which he had never been able to reach to check out. One was surrounded by Ibasan forward bases and patrolled too heavily for him to ever approach it successfully – Zorian presumed this was their main base. The other was ridiculously deep, and he never even tried reaching it – he did not think he could survive a journey into such depths. Frankly, he was kind of amazed the aranea managed to map the Dungeon that deep, considering even powerful mages would think twice about descending that deep.

He had no proof, but he strongly suspected this was the time magic research facility discovered by the Ibasans. And considering the matriarch had marked it down as important, it almost certainly had some relevance to his situation.

He dived deeper into the man's mind, looking for more information. He felt his victim's mind quake under the severity of the probe but persisted anyway – any compunction about hurting these people had evaporated after watching them rampage around the city for several hours.

The path outlined by the matriarch wasn't the only one, apparently, or even the main one. The government did not supply the facility through a perilous journey down the winding tunnels of the Dungeon proper – they did it by descending down through the Hole until they reached the desired depth, where they had drilled an artificial tunnel into the wall in order to connect the facility with the outside world. Of course, while that path avoided most of the dangers associated with such extreme depths, it was still insanely dangerous for anyone without authorization to be there, so that did not help him much. Maybe if he-Oops.

He pushed it too hard – overwhelmed by his (still rather crude and unsophisticated) memory probe, the man's mind collapsed into a chaotic, undecipherable mess. He would be getting nothing more out of him. Damn it.

He fired two piercers at the unconscious mages, killing them both, and turned to leave, only to find an iron beak watching him closely from a nearby window sill. It was nonhostile, simply scrutinizing him. Zorian checked the feel of its mind, and found that it was indeed the very same iron beak he had dominated earlier, just like he suspected.

His influence over it had dissolved a while ago, though, so that couldn't be the reason why it was so docile towards him. Huh.

If nothing else, he'd expected it to resent him for overriding its will. He sensed no animosity from the bird, however – just satisfaction and schadenfreude at seeing the Ibasan mages dead. Either the iron beaks didn't like the Ibasans much, or this particular iron beak was not a fan.

"So," Zorian said. "How do you feel about helping me kill more of these?"

The iron beak cocked its head to the side, uncomprehending. Right, still only an animal, if a very clever and willful one. He sent the bird a telepathic impression of two of them killing more invaders.

The iron beak answered with a shrill screech and a burst of bloodlust so strong Zorian found himself taking a step back from the animal.

Hate. Grudge. Kill.

"Right," he mumbled to himself. "I'll take that as agreement."

He didn't bother to dominate the bird this time – he just instructed it to find another small group of invaders and started looking for more iron beaks to possibly subvert.

break

Zorian subdued two more groups after that, neither of which had anything new to teach him, before QuatachIchl suddenly teleported in front of him and blasted him in the face with one of those jagged red disintegration beams he loved so much. He died instantly, unable to raise any defenses in time.

Oh well, the night had been coming to a close anyway. At least he'd managed to experiment a little with the iron beaks flying around. Sadly, he had discovered that only a tiny minority of them was receptive to his control, and contacting the wrong ones invariably caused the entire flock to descend upon him like a murderous mob. The previously subverted birds also immediately switched sides back to their brethren when this happened, which he really should have expected but somehow was still taken entirely offguard the first time it happened. In any case, the iron beaks definitely hated the invaders for some reason, but turning them against their masters was very difficult. Something kept them loyal, and the few mages whose minds he had questioned for an answer didn't know what it was – they thought of iron beaks as dumb animals and paid no heed to their thoughts and motives.

He began the restart in the same general way he had started the last two by scouting the state of the invasion, getting his mana crystals, helping Taiven clean up the Dungeon of monsters, and so on. Except, of course, that he was far more effective at all of those this time around. He also stole a better library card for himself immediately and recreated Kosjenka for Kirielle, among other minor additions.

The newest restart, much like the two that preceded it, showed no sign of future knowledge by the invaders. This was the third consecutive restart where Red Robe unceremoniously ditched them, and Zorian was starting to suspect this was now a normal situation rather than just a momentary whim. Most likely, Red Robe had completely lost interest in the invasion after their confrontation.

The question was why? Why do that after he had spent all those restarts stubbornly handing out knowledge to them?

Well, perhaps a better questions would be, why had he been doing that in the first place? What did helping the invaders do for him? Was it just a way to keep Zach focused on some highly visible, but ultimately irrelevant quest so he wouldn't question things? Or perhaps a way to muddy the waters, so to speak, and hide the aftershocks of his own actions by regularly inducing a big splash at the start of every restart? Maybe. But the sheer amount of information he provided to the invaders made him think there was more to it than that. It was incredibly optimized to do as much damage to the city as possible – Red Robe must have sunk enormous amount of time and effort to produce something like that. The outcome of the invasion mattered to him in some personal way. So why stop?

What changed?

Zorian tried to think of it with a properly paranoid mindset. Red Robe thought that the aranea had brought an unknown, but large amount of people into the time loop. These people were organized and also crafty enough to evade his notice for years. Not something that would be easy to hunt down and purge. Zorian had also displayed mind magic in their battle, so the one encounter Red Robe had had with these people involved one of the few types of magic that could permanently deal with him. All of this meant that the time loop got infinitely more dangerous for Red Robe all out of a sudden. There was a legion of enemies plotting against him and lurking around every corner.

If Zorian was in Red Robe's place, would he immediately begin to plot against this group, laying down traps and ambushes and trying to track them down? No, definitely not. He would get away as soon as possible, not just out of Cyoria but out of the entire wider region around the city. If he began the restart somewhere in the city, he would get the hell away at the start of the restart, much like Zach seemed to be doing. He wasn't sure how long he would stay away, but Zach had yet to stop leaving the city at the start of every restart, and he was the reckless one out of the three of them.

Maybe it wasn't so strange that Red Robe was staying away from the city at the moment. In hindsight, that bit of misdirection by Spear of Resolve had been far shrewder than Zorian had given her credit for at the time. But how long would it be before Red Robe realized that the legions of enemy time travelers simply didn't exist?

There was another option. If Red Robe was helping the invasion in an attempt to optimize it, so that it could be as effective as possible once the time loop ends, and if the aranea were only ejected from the time loop instead of soul-killed, as Red Robe claimed… then any further optimization attempts would be a total waste of time. Once the time loop ended, the aranea would be alive and well again, and any plan developed in their absence would give worse results than the one Red Robe had previously developed. Admittedly, Zorian mostly liked this option because it meant that the aranea were recoverable, but it would also explain a lot of things. Such as Red Robe's reluctance to use his soul-kill spell more liberally. If 'soul-killed' persons were only gone for the duration of the time loop, that would neatly explain why he didn't use it on nonloopers – that would be entirely counterproductive, since he would still have to deal with them eventually, except that he wouldn't have the option to try out different tactics against them in the time loop, and couldn't find out what worked best.

Zorian could only hope that investigating the invaders would bring some answers to his questions. Though if everything else failed, he supposed he could always behave like Zach and simply launch an endless stream of suicidal missions aimed at breaking into the time magic research facility, since that was clearly relevant to the time loop somehow. He was bound to succeed eventually, right? If Zach was able to kill Oganj with that method then surely he could break into one measly facility.

Hmm, maybe he was thinking about this wrong – he should outright recruit Zach into the attempt. He was still a bit leery of contacting the other boy, both because that would mean revealing himself to Red Robe if he was monitoring Zach and because he was not at all sure Zach would be of any actual help to him at this point, but if he was reduced to metaphorically banging his head on the wall then he might as well involve someone who has spent gods know how many years in the time loop honing the skill at doing exactly that.

Something to keep in mind when the time comes, anyway.

break

With the start of classes, Zorian decided to approach Raynie again while skipping on the mind magic training with Tinami. He still hoped to get to know the Aope heir better, but it was clear that trying to get close to both Raynie and Tinami at the same time was unfeasible, and Raynie seemed the easier one to handle. He did not recreate his initial request as closely as he had intended, but Raynie agreed to set up a meeting between them nonetheless.

Benisek had a spontaneous attack of clumsiness when he had tried to loudly congratulate Zorian and ended up sprawling on the floor of the classroom after tripping over his own two feet. It was a funny and mysterious thing, and Zorian hadn't had absolutely anything to do with it, but it sure was nice that he'd only made a scene out of himself instead of himself and Zorian, wasn't it?

Still, while he had high hopes that his attempt to get to know Raynie better would go better this time around, the fact was that interacting with her involved a lot of waiting time – he might as well try to get to know another one of his classmates in the meantime. And since female classmates had a high chance of producing the same kind of problems that Tinami had in the previous restart (because that was just how his luck worked, damn it), that someone should probably be a guy. Hmm, which one of his fellow male students looked interesting… oh! Edwin was really interested in golems, wasn't he? He had both of his parents in the golemmaking business and couldn't shut up about them the last time Zorian had asked a mildlytopical question about the subject. Well… he might as well show Edwin his own golem designs and ask him what he thought. It would be interesting to see how his designs compare to ones made by someone hyperfocused on the field.

He waited until classes were over and then walked over to where Edwin and Naim were talking. Like always when he saw them together, he found it interesting how different the two of them were, both physically and in terms of personality. Edwin was a short boy, with pitch black hair and slightly darker skin tone that hinted his ancestors were relatively recent arrivals from the south, or perhaps even from Miasina. Naim was a relatively unassuming brown-haired boy of average height, distinguished only by the fact he was rather athletic and fit for your average student.

Edwin was talkative and expressive, getting excited easily and often gesticulating heavily when he spoke. Naim was calm and restrained, like some sort of serene monk who had achieved enlightenment and could thus no longer be fazed by anything anymore. They were like the sun and the moon, yet somehow they'd ended up as inseparable.

He had to admit, he felt just a little bit intimidated by the prospect of approaching them. He was worried they would be suspicious of him, suddenly approaching them out of the blue like that. Zorian's previous relationship with the two was polite, but very, very distant. They had hardly known each other. Then again, that was an accurate description of his relationship with most of his classmates bar Benisek.

But he need not have worried. Edwin was naturally a friendly sort, and only got friendlier when he found out why Zorian was talking to him. And while he did sense some exasperation from Naim, that was solely because of the topic of the conversation rather than Zorian's presence as such. He was not as crazy about the topic as Edwin.

"That's a nice stabilizer for the kind of small doll this is intended for," Edwin said, tracing the relevant glyph sequences with his finger. "I don't think it would work for something larger and heavier, like a proper, mansized golem made out of solid steel, but it's downright inspired for this. I'll have to remember this. I don't understand why you put these in, though," he said, jabbing his finger at the trio of compressed nodes he used to finetune the design. "They're inelegant and just plain unnecessary. The design works perfectly without them, and they don't seem to do anything except randomly tweak things with no rhyme or reason."

"Actually, the design doesn't work without those," Zorian said. "All of the prototypes were breaking down on me until I got sick of trying to make it work like it was supposed to and just forcibly tweaked things in the manner you're looking at. It works fine now, but it makes altering the design a real pain. I'm hoping you can help me find the underlying issue that's tripping me up."

Edwin gave him an incredulous look. "Wait… so this is, like, an actual design. Not just theory work? You've built one of these?"

"Well, yeah," Zorian said. "What would be the point, otherwise?"

"But isn't that super expensive?" Edwin asked curiously.

"No, it's just moderately expensive," said Zorian. Though in all honesty, his sense of what is expensive and what wasn't had probably gotten utterly skewed while he was in the time loop. "But I'm funding it out of my own pocket and no one can really stop me from spending my money on whatever I find appropriate."

"Oh no, I'm not criticizing you," Edwin grinned. "Hell, I wish I could do the same! You sure you don't need an assistant or anything?"

"It's… a possibility," Zorian said hesitantly. He could see that Edwin was very serious about his suggestion, and it surprised him. He had thought he would have to make an effort to get him to cooperate on specific projects, and here he was proposing partnership. "How much time can you dedicate to this?"

Naim gave a short, amused laugh. He was largely content to quietly sit on the sidelines thus far, but apparently he couldn't resist reacting to this.

"That sort of thing is all he does in his free time," Naim said with a light smile. "The real question is just how long your patience will last before you tell him to knock it off already and go home."

"Oh shut up, you," Edwin complained. "Like you are any better, mister training. You have your martial arts, and I have my golems."

"I have a lot on my plate lately, so I'm not exactly sure how much time I can dedicate to this. But I think I can spare a couple of hours every two or three days if you're up for it."

"I'm up for it," said Edwin. "For a chance to see how my designs work in practice, I'd even be willing to wake up before noon during the weekend. What's keeping you so busy anyway? The classes are only starting."

"Ah, well, I do a lot of independent studies," said Zorian. "The golem experiments you already know about, but I also do a lot of studying into spell formula in general, as well as alchemy, general purpose utility magic and so on. I do advance shaping exercises and practice combat magic whenever I find the time."

"Sounds a bit unfocused," Edwin said. "Impressive that you manage to fit in all of that into your schedule, though."

"Yes, and you still found time to join in the monster hunts," Naim noticed.

"I think of that as combat magic practice," Zorian said.

Naim gave Edwin an amused look. Edwin scowled back at him.

"What?" Zorian asked.

"When I told Edwin I wanted to join a hunter group to practice my combat skills in real situations, he called me an idiot. He said no one else would be dumb enough to risk their lives for training," Naim said, patting Zorian on the shoulder like an old pal. "Well, it seems there are two of us. Welcome to the idiot club, Zorian."

"Right," Zorian mumbled. "But wait, what other reason would a student like us have to join a monster hunter group?"

Naim shrugged. "Money. Fame. Duty."

Oh right, some people get paid to do that stuff. And aren't stuck in a time loop that made stuff like fame and duty utterly unattainable.

Before he could actually say anything, another one of their classmates suddenly decided to enter the conversation.

"Forgive me for butting in like this," said Estin Grier, suddenly speaking up from behind Zorian. "But I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. Do you mind if I comment a bit?"

There was a brief pause, as the three of them stared at the newcomer. In the end, it was Edwin that broke the awkward pause.

"We're just talking, man," Edwin huffed. "It's not a private club or anything. Go ahead and say whatever you want to say."

Zorian glanced at Estin, studying him for a bit. The boy was one of the students he once suspected might be Red Robe – well, just 'the third time traveler' back then, since he hadn't met the guy yet – since his family emigrated to Eldemar from Ulquaan Ibasa. If he was being truthful to himself, the boy's appearance had contributed to those suspicions – Estin was a tall, severelooking fellow, with sharp facial features, dour expression, thick eyebrows, black hair and eyes of such dark brown they looked almost black too. He being very withdrawn and rarely speaking unless prompted by someone or something did nothing to dispel the rather sinister impression he got from the boy.

But as far as Zorian was able to piece out, Estin was really just a normal, albeit extremely intimidating student. He had no links to the invaders and didn't really behave like someone aware of the time loop.

"Very well," Estin nodded seriously. "I was going to note that while most of the students didn't join the monster hunts solely in order to test and hone ourselves in the crucible of battle, they surely considered that an additional point in favor of participating. One can have multiple goals for deciding something."

"So… you also like combat magic practice?" Naim surmised.

"Yes," Estin agreed. "That is one way to interpret that. And with that, we can see that there are three of us who wish to test our combat skills and grow. Perhaps we could help each other. Have a meeting so we can trade news and personal styles, spar, and other such things."

For someone who stayed quiet most of the time, Estin sure was very verbose once he got going. Still, he was all for Estin's idea, since he'd been curious about their level of combat skills ever since he'd heard they participated in monster hunts. Naim was also interested, so after discussing it for a while, the three of them decided to ask Ilsa to let them borrow a training hall sometimes in the future. One with actual ground, because apparently Estin's magic 'didn't work well with indoor environments', whatever that meant.

Estin also asked about Edwin joining them, but he wasn't interested. Edwin didn't like to fight, and had no interest in honing his combat skills. Zorian assured the golem enthusiast that he still intended to work with him on their golem designs.

He just had to figure out a way to fit in these two new obligations into his already overloaded schedule.

break

Finding a training hall suited to their needs turned out to have been largely a nonissue – the academy had lots of training halls, and most of them were free to use by any student. Not all of them were billed as combat magic training grounds, but they all had basic safety wards in place and could be unofficially used as such. According to Ilsa, such 'misuse' of academy resources had been rampant for quite some time already, and was accepted as normal even by the teachers these days. As such, she recommended they just commandeer whatever place they needed for a few hours instead of waiting a week for the academy to give them an official time slot that may or may not suit them, at a training hall that may or may not be what they needed. They just had to make sure they weren't interrupting a sanctioned study group or some such.

Armed with that knowledge, they toured some of the available options until they found a training hall that was really just a walledoff and warded section of academy grounds, and thus had plenty of soil and rocks that Estin apparently needed to really show off.

Estin, as it turned out, was one of those people with an innate magical ability. Specifically, he could manipulate earth, rocks and similar materials in an unstructured manner, much like how Zorian could work his mind magic.

Estin was rather cagey about the specifics of how his ability worked, since it was apparently his family bloodline and they were trying to keep it semisecret, but it apparently wasn't immediately usable in its untrained form and Estin's current abilities were a result of considerable talent and a lot of work. In the handful of mockfights they did to familiarize themselves with each other's skills, Estin used the ability exclusively to levitate large clumps of earth and rocks around himself, interposing them between himself and incoming spells with unerring accuracy. Well, if he could see the attack coming anyway – he didn't fare so well when Zorian made his magic missile loop back and come at him from behind his back. It also took some time for him to form a sphere, and he didn't seem capable of controlling more than four at any particular time, because when Zorian launched an eightmissile swarm at him he simply surrendered and asked him to tone it down in the future.

Still, it was a pretty useful trick he had there. Blocking with the spheres didn't seem to take any attention from Estin, allowing him to focus purely on peppering his opponent with offensive spells while his spheres defended him. If he had something more dangerous than magic missile in his arsenal, or if he could actually weave a homing function into those magic missiles, he might have actually posed a problem for Zorian.

Well, a problem for him so long as he held back so very badly. He decided in advance that the only spells he was going to display was his mastery of magic missile and basic shield spells, and that appeared to have been a good choice because he was beating both of them pretty decisively even with that. Especially Naim. As a first generation mage with no special magic or familial history to draw on, he was limited to the same 'magic missile and shield' combination that Zorian claimed to be limited to, but without the years in the time loop to hone his skills at those two spells to near perfection.

If he were fighting against pretime loop Zorian, Naim would have wiped the floor with him. He had more than twice the mana reserves that old Zorian had, and had clearly known how to cast those two spells years ago and had been slowly honing them all that time. On top of that, he was highly fit and agile, and in his fight against Estin he simply dodged every projectile that the other boy sent his way. The old Zorian couldn't weave a homing function into his magic missiles, and would thus not be any more successful than Estin in that regard.

But sadly for Naim, he wasn't fighting Zorian's past self, and thus ended up overmatched in his own game. Zorian's shield was impenetrable to anything the other boy could dish out, and dodging didn't work against Zorian's attacks.

After this, Naim and Estin decided to move onto handtohand combat, probably specifically to spite and oneup Zorian. Knowing he was useless in a fist fight and would just embarrass himself, Zorian immediately bowed out of that, conceding he had no chance against either of them. They were both very smug about that.

Well whatever, let them have their consolation prize. Better than being bitter at Zorian for besting them, that's for sure. In any case, the two of them had no less than five rounds of that, and it became obvious by the end that Naim was just plain better at that than Estin was, despite Estin's greater size and bulk. He would later find out that this was what Edwin had been talking about when he implied that Naim was just as obsessed with martial arts as he was with golems. He practiced martial arts religiously every single day, and was good enough to get invited to national contests in the field.

After that, they decided to share training methods and other advice – something that ended up surprisingly useful to Zorian, since both of them had found some neat little shaping exercises that Zorian never thought to look for, but which ultimately ended up with Zorian doing most of the talking and demonstrating. He expected as much too happen, though – he was the most experienced person among them, after all.

He left the meeting pleased with how it turned out. Considering that both Naim and Estin wanted to have another meeting like that, Zorian supposed they were pleased with it too, even though Estin was throwing him some sour looks when he thought Zorian wasn't looking. When they did organize another meeting, though, it wasn't just the three of them that showed up.

Briam, Kopriva and Raynie also showed up, wondering if they could join. Naim and Estin immediately dumped the decision on him, spontaneously designating him as the group's leader. Lovely. He accepted, of course. If nothing else, he was pretty sure that sending Raynie away would not reflect too well on him and his plans to get closer to her.

The problem was that all three of them were very raw and untrained when it came to actual combat magic. Briam was admittedly already a member of the hunting group, but that was solely because he had his fire drake familiar – his spells were almost entirely centered around supporting that living flame thrower. Kopriva was in the process of becoming a member in a hunting group, but also not due to combat magic as such – she got in on the basis on providing her team with alchemical bombs and potions, and was heavily reliant on them herself. Raynie probably had some of her shifter magic to fall back on if really pressed, but she was keeping that part of her a secret and her mastery of classical combat spells was nothing to write home about.

Somehow, they still managed to make the meeting work, but it involved a lot more work and responsibility than Zorian was comfortable with. Since he was 'the leader', it mostly fell upon him to help the newcomers out.

At the end of the meeting he was sought out by Raynie, who handed him an envelope with the time and place for their meeting. It was the same restaurant she had used last time, which he supposed made sense if the owner was a personal friend of hers like Kiana claimed.

While this was happening, Zorian was in the process of finalizing his agreement with the Filigree Sages. In exchange for transporting them to Cyoria, guarding their 'salvager crews', and transporting their finds back to their home, Zorian had secured three different mind magic teachers, one of which was supposed to be an expert in memory reading and manipulation. Said memory reading expert also agreed to probe the minds of up to five prisoners that Zorian brought to him and share the findings with him. Finally, and a lot less critically, Zorian was entitled to a portion of the things the aranean salvager crews found in the settlement – only important because it gave him the excuse to closely monitor their activities, ostensibly so they wouldn't cheat him out of his due, but really just so he knew how to properly 'salvage' the place in future restarts.

Embarrassingly, it took less than two days for the Filigree Sages to do what Zorian couldn't manage in an entire restart. Apparently the solution to finding the Cyorian web's treasury was to descend down the deep vertical shaft which the Cyorian aranea used as garbage disposal, except that halfway to the bottom was a hole in the wall that led to their treasury. The hole was big enough for an aranea to comfortably pass while lugging cargo, but Zorian would have to crawl to pass through the opening and into the main chamber. The shaft actually had numerous such tunnels of various sizes branching off of it, all but one of which were dead ends, but it wasn't that hard to narrow it down once you knew what the trick was.

According to the Filigree Sages, shafts like these were the 'secret' to the ease with which the aranea could penetrate even very deep layers on the dungeon without getting slaughtered in the process. While a shaft like that did allow for some of the horrid things from lower layers to reach you easier, they were very defensible and could always be collapsed on invaders if incursions got too frequent. In cases where such shafts didn't exist, aranea were liable to create them via application of stone shaping spells.

The actual treasury was… huge. A lot of space was taken up by huge spools of spider silk thread which were presumably the web's primary source of income. But there was also a lot of raw currency there, both in the form of paper notes as well as precious metals and gems. A fair amount of alchemical explosives and potions was also there, including heaps of different healing potions that the salvage crews claimed were optimized for aranean biology. They were very excited about those, and wanted Zorian's help in contacting whoever made those – they seemed very dismissive about the possibility that the Cyorian aranea produced those them. There were quite a few spellbooks, alchemical recipe books, or spell formula blueprint compilations many of them highly restricted, rare or very expensive. The Filigree Sages intended to cart all of them off back home for research purposes, but they agreed to let Zorian peruse them and copy a few choice bits for his own use. That would be enough to keep him busy until the end of the restart, so he was perfectly happy with that.

Finally, the vault held a lot of stuff that was really only of interest to aranea. Leather pouches and straps that aranea used for carting things around, nutrient blocks that were the aranea equivalent of dry rations, things like that. The Filigree Sages, at least, seemed very intrigued by those, marveling at the Cyorian web's technological sophistication and ingenuity. It all looked very underwhelming to Zorian, but he supposed it wasn't easy establishing a technological society when you have no hands.

Amazingly, the treasury was only the tip of the iceberg. There was another secret part of the settlement he had never found a secret magic research room, which could only be accessed by selectively disabling a few choice bits of the warding scheme in one of the rooms, and then passing through the newlyopened hole in the ceiling. Sadly, there was a further layer of defenses even beyond that, and neither the Filigree Sages nor Zorian had been able to crack the wards on the second door thus far. The leader of the salvagers was starting to toy with the idea of simply smashing the door, but worried that there was some kind of selfdestruct mechanism inside that would destroy the contents if the entrance was forced open. That was how Filigree Sages secured their own magic research rooms, apparently.

Finally, there was a room for storing records, which Zorian hadn't noticed simply because it had never occurred to him to try and connect his mind to the one particularly lumpy wall in the back of the settlement. Apparently the bumps were 'memory stones' – magic items that could record thoughts and memories, and which were apparently the aranea's equivalent of written records. Personally, Zorian didn't think this method was nearly as convenient as written records, but the Filigree Sages claimed this was a much more natural and convenient method for them, so what did he know? The important thing was that the records room held information about most of the dealings and operations the Cyorian web had had with the humans on the surface, barring top secret ones, and that Zorian could possibly coopt some of their organization for his own purposes. The Filigree Sages had no interest in that, seeing as how they intended to simply cart off anything that wasn't nailed down rather than establish some kind of long-term presence, so they simply pointed the room to him and told him to do whatever he wanted with it.

Embarrassingly, Zorian remembered noticing the wall the first time he searched the place and thinking it's unique texture might be significant… so he dug it up with alteration spells and was disappointed when he found nothing but solid rock behind it.

It was after one of these meetings with the Filigree Sages that Zorian came back to Imaya's place and found Taiven waiting for him. Curious. They didn't have another monster hunt scheduled until tomorrow. Maybe she wanted to talk about upping their tempo? They were extremely successful this time around, thanks to Zorian making full use of his future knowledge, so maybe she wanted to strike while the iron was hot. If so, he would have to disappoint her –he had too many things on his plate to devote more time on that.

The moment he got closer and she noticed him; however, he immediately realized she wasn't here about something like that. She was upset. She asked to speak to him in private so he led her to his room and locked the door. He had heavily warded it at the start of the restart with a permanent warding scheme, so there was no need to waste time on privacy spells.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"What's wrong, he asks," she mumbled.

Crap, she was upset at him. He didn't remember doing anything to make her upset, though.

She took out a light blue crystal and slammed it at the desk of drawers next to his bed.

"What's that?" she demanded.

"That's a rhetorical question, surely?" Zorian asked, baffled. "It's a piece of crystallized mana, of course."

"Yes, but why do you have an entire crate of that under your bed?" she demanded.

Zorian frowned. "You've been rooting through my stuff without my permission?"

"No, your little sister was," she said. "She and Nochka were playing princesses and making crowns out of crystallized mana for the two of them, Kana and Kosjenka. I walked in on them and asked them where they got those 'pretty stones' they were using."

Damn it, Kiri!

"Okay," said Zorian, taking a big breath to calm himself down. "Putting that aside for the moment, why has this gotten you so upset? Why does it matter if I've got a crate of crystallized mana under my bed?"

She balled up her hands into fists, seething in her own frustration and… self-loathing? What?

"Because everything!" she finally shouted, slamming her fist into the nearby wall and causing him to flinch back in shock. "Everything! Everything, everything, everything!"

"Taiven, please!" shouted Zorian, frantically trying to calm her down. "Just calm down, you're not making any sense!"

Was she… crying?

"How can you be so good at everything!?" she halfshouted at him, pushing him away. "You're good enough at alchemy that Kael praises you. You create golems in your free time. You're so good at divinations that adult professionals accused me of lying when I told them how good at finding monster nests you are. And you're apparently good enough at combat magic that they're letting you teach your own group!"

"That's not" Zorian tried to explain.

"Don't try to lie to me!" she snapped at him. "I know you're a better combat mage than me. You try to hide it, but I can tell. I'm not stupid!"

"I never claimed you are," Zorian assured her.

She ignored him.

"I worked on this for years," she cried. "I'm two years older than you and I worked so hard! Every day, every weekend, every moment I could spare. I made sure to focus; not spread myself too thin. I live for this. And then I find out that not only are you better than me in the one thing I focused on, you also have time for all these other things too! How!? How are you so much better than me? What am I doing wrong!?"

"Nothing!" Zorian hastily assured her. "You're honestly pretty damn awesome, Taiven, and the only reason I got even close to your level is because I'm a dirty cheater who cheats."

"Then show me how to cheat, too, damn it!" she shouted.

Before he could say anything in response to that, she… wrapped him into a hug and started sobbing into his shoulder. He awkwardly returned her hug after a few seconds, desperately trying to think of a way to handle this situation.

He couldn't think of anything at the moment. In light of that, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that Taiven didn't look like she would stop crying any time soon.

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 042

2016-04-08T09:10:51Z

Zariur: /* Sum of Its Parts */

===Sum of Its Parts===

Not far from the restaurant where he was supposed to meet Raynie, Zorian sat on a bench and waited. There was no sign of her yet, but that was in no way unusual – he had misjudged the amount of time it would take him to find the place, and was thus a little early. He didn't let it bother him, choosing instead to pass the time by experimenting with his mind sense on the passing crowds, tapping into the eyes of pigeons flying overhead and practicing his shaping skills on the handful of pebbles he had taken to carrying around on his person at all times.

Honestly, shaping exercises were kind of relaxing when he didn't have Xvim breathing down his neck and being a jerk. He should try finding one that was actually challenging – really challenging, but not Xvim's patented you-haven't-''really''-mastered-this bullshit – and setting aside some time to… hm?

He drew the pebbles currently floating in front of him back to his palm and pocketed them, before leaning over a nearby ornamental bush where his mind senses had detected an extremely faint mental signature. Despite knowing exactly where to look, it took him two whole seconds to spot the mantis camouflaged against the leaves. He stared at the bug for a while, before an idea occurred to him…

He pointed his palm towards the insect and concentrated, trying to telekinetically draw it towards him without crushing it like a… well, bug. Something that was greatly complicated by the mantis holding on for dear life to the twig it was standing on. He had hoped to surprise it with this sudden maneuver, but its reactions were surprisingly fast for something that had been moving so slowly and ponderously just a second ago. Nonetheless, Zorian wasn't so easily deterred. Five minutes later, he had finally managed to detach the mantis from the twig without hurting it and was levitating it in front of him. The mantis twisted and flailed around in the air, clearly unhappy with its predicament, but Zorian had established too firm a hold on it for his telekinetic control to lapse just from that.

At least until the mantis decided it was finished with this annoyance, then suddenly unfurled its wings and flew off. Oh, right – mantises can fly if they need to… He totally forgot about that. Shrugging, he focused on his mind sense for a moment, checking if Raynie had arrived yet.

She had. She was still hidden by the nearby building from where he was standing, but her mental signature was unmistakable. He set off in the direction of the restaurant, and was soon back at the entrance, trying not to stare at the street corner he knew she was going to emerge from. When she did finally round the corner, however, she stopped in her tracks and just sort of stared at him in apprehension instead of coming over to meet him. Honestly, what was up with that? He already agreed with her that it wasn't a date, so what was she apprehensive about? He 'accidentally' turned in her direction, pretended he'd just noticed her and gave her a little wave.

She stopped stalling and came over to greet him properly.

"Sorry if I'm cutting it a little close," she said. "With most people I know, it's a miracle if they're only ten minutes late,so I've learned not to be too early to this sort of stuff. You didn't wait long, did you?"

"It was a bit of a wait," admitted Zorian. "But to be fair, I was rather early. Don't worry about it, I found things to amuse myself with."

"Oh?" she asked. "And what would that be, if you're willing to share?"

"Nothing too interesting. I was just doing some shaping exercises," said Zorian, retrieving the pebbles from his pocket and making them float in a rotating ring above his palm. "Silly, I know, but it passes the time."

Raynie stared at the rotating ring of pebbles for a second before shaking her head, mumbling something unintelligible and motioning for him to follow her into the restaurant. He returned the pebbles into his pocket and hurried after her.

The moment he stepped inside the dining hall of the restaurant, he understood the reason behind the restaurant's somewhat unusual name – 'Fearsome Catfish' indeed. Hanging from the ceiling of the dining room was a preserved body of massive catfish, big enough to swallow a grown man whole. An… interesting choice of ornamentation for a restaurant. Raynie seemed both amused and pleased that the taxidermically preserved trophy gave him pause for a moment, although he only knew that because of his empathy – she neither reacted nor said anything to him as she lead him to a nearby table where they took their seats.

He halfexpected Raynie to order a plate full of meat, what with her being a wolf shifter and all… but she actually ordered a grilled trout and a plate of vegetables. Huh. He supposed he shouldn't be so quick to assume… though speaking of assuming things, was he expected to pay for them both? His cynical side was saying yes, since her choice of meal was on the pricier side of things… but then again she was the daughter of a tribal chief. Maybe she had plenty of money and this was perfectly normal for her. Maybe she'd be offended that he's trying to pay for her share of the food and think he's trying to court her after all…

"It will take some time for the chefs to prepare the food," Raynie said. "Why don't you tell me about these cat shifters of yours while we wait?"

Zorian scanned the other tables in the dining hall for any eavesdroppers. They were by no means the only people in the restaurant, and Zorian kind of thought this was way too public of a location to be having this sort of conversation… but it was mostly Raynie's secrets that were at stake here, so if she felt this was fine, then it was. None of the other diners were paying any attention to them, so at least there was that.

He told her as much as he could without bringing up the invasion or information about Rea's background that he obviously shouldn't know about. Even so, he sincerely hoped that Raynie wouldn't want to speak with Rea after their talk, because he would almost certainly find himself in a bit of a hairy situation if that were to happen – he could scarcely explain how he came by some of his information without admitting he had spied upon the Sashal family in ''some'' fashion.

"I don't think they intend to harm you in any way," Raynie said once he was done. "They wouldn't be willing to leave you alone with their daughter like that if they did, nor would they let her get attached to your little sister if they meant to make you into a target. Most cat shifters are dishonorable, but they don't target their own neighbors, friends, contacts and the like. They never make trouble in their own territory."

Well. Zorian had already known that the various shifter groups are by no means united, but it seemed they weren't even on particularly good terms either. Or at least Raynie's group didn't seem to like cat shifters much.

"I'm guessing the cat and wolf shifters don't get along, then?" surmised Zorian.

"We hardly ever interact with each other. Our relations are not bad because they're mostly non-existent," said Raynie. "I personally think they give the rest of the shifters a bad name, and I know I'm not the only one in my tribe with that opinion. You should watch yourself around your new friends. I know I just said earlier that they are not plotting against you, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous. Cat shifters are rarely just cat shifters – they are the shifter group that has embraced Ikosian magical traditions the most. They especially like to dabble in illusionism, mind magic, scrying and… other shady disciplines. I wouldn't put it past them to spy on you in some fashion."

"I'll keep that in mind," Zorian nodded. "I'm curious, though – is that a general thing? Do different shifter groups usually avoid each other?"

"No, not at all," Raynie said, shaking her head. "We try to maintain contact with other shifter groups, it's just that cat shifters are… well, it's a long story, and I can smell our meals coming. We'll talk more after we've eaten."

She was right – the food was indeed brought over to their table not long after that. And Raynie was either very hungry or an extremely fast eater, because she scarfed down her meal in half an hour flat and then kept giving Zorian impatient looks while he ate his own food at a much more sedate pace. Rude. He refused to hurry up just because of her.

"Alright," said Zorian eventually, setting his plate aside to signal that he was done eating. "We were talking about shifter relations."

"Yeah," Raynie agreed. "Well, the first thing you need to keep in mind is that the current image of shifters as some sort of weird mages living on the fringes of normal society is something very… modern. Before the flood of Ikosian refugees came to the continent and conquered everything, shifters didn't live on the fringes of anything – partly because the rest of natives hated us and would have never allowed us to live near them, but also because we didn't have to. We had our own tribes and territories to live in."

"The other natives hated you so much?" Zorian asked.

"Oh yes," Raynie confirmed. "Even today, the scattered remains of the original tribes that lived in the region – the people you collectively call Khusky – can't stand the sight of us. Thankfully for us, they have managed to thoroughly marginalize themselves over the years and no longer have any say in how shifters are treated. That's the good thing that came with the Ikosian conquest the Ikosians didn't find shifters nearly as threatening or inhuman as the Altazian natives did. As far as they were concerned, we were just your typical group of overspecialized native mages that they hoped to absorb into their society."

"But?" Zorian prompted.

"But their attempts to absorb us never quite succeeded properly," Raynie shrugged. "We speak Ikosian and follow the laws of the land, but most shifter groups have stubbornly clung onto every shred of autonomy and independence that we could. Wolf shifters were the most vocal and successful in that regard."

"Ah, I see," said Zorian, understanding. "And since the cat shifters decided to discard their autonomy in favor of assimilating more closely into the rest of the population, you don't get along with each other."

"Yes," she sighed. "We're not enemies, but they have completely rejected our politics and went their own separate ways. Both sides agree that they've got nothing to say to each other and avoid contact."

Zorian hummed noncommittally. Somehow he doubted that the wolf shifters really didn't consider cat shifters enemies. He'd buy the idea that the cat shifters really ''were'' apathetic over the issue, but the wolf shifters must be pretty bitter over the other side breaking ranks like that. They were just powerless to do anything about it.

"So how successful are cat shifters, then?" Zorian asked curiously.

"Very successful," Raynie admitted. "Eldemar's government loves to point them out to shifter tribes worried about what would happen to them if they gave up on their traditional rights. It's why they are so reluctant to seriously crack down on them, despite their shady behavior. If the biggest success story of the shifter integration program comes under fire, it would likely cause all those other shifter tribes considering going down that path to back off and dig in harder."

Right, totally not enemies.

"So if cat shifters were so very successful, doesn't it make sense to copy them to some degree?" Zorian asked. "I mean, I can understand not wanting to be criminals, but what stops you getting yourself some classical mages among your ranks? I'd be willing to bet their decision to acquire Ikosianstyle spell casting had a lot to do with their success."

"What do you think I'm here for?" Raynie asked him with a smile.

"Ah, well…" Zorian fumbled. "While you're clearly training to be a classical mage, you are a rare exception from what I'm hearing, not the rule. Why is your tribe only sending someone to learn this now? Why not earlier?"

"There is a reason why the shifter group most successful in adopting Ikosianstyle magic is also the group that cares the least for our traditional rights," she said. "While the idea sounds simple in principle, in practice it amounts to opening a backdoor for the central government to influence the tribe. Members trained as mages have a tendency to make power plays and bring the mage guild, and through them the central government into internal tribal disputes when they don't get their way."

"Ah," nodded Zorian in understanding. "And the central government is all about abolishing autonomous groups like yours when given a chance."

"Yes," she agreed. "Plus, the tribal elders are very traditional and often react badly if the new mage shows too many outside influences upon return. Many times the mage simply walked out of the tribe in disgust after a few years of clashing with them."

"So what changed to make you come here?" asked Zorian. A flash of indecipherable, but decidedly negative emotion welled up in the girl in front of him. "Or is that too personal a question?"

"It's… not really, no," she said, scowling for a moment before schooling her features. She was annoyed at something, but she didn't seem to blame him for it. "I guess there are two main reasons. Ever since the splintering of the Old Alliance, the centralization policies that characterized its twilight years have been somewhat discredited, lessening the pressure on shifter tribes to assimilate. This makes outsider trained members less threatening to many in the tribe. On top of that, the recent colonization drive to the Sarokian Highlands has had many shifter tribes wary, since their lands are directly in the path of settlers. If a group of mages decides to settle inside of our borders, it is not at all certain we could get them to leave without asking the central government for help."

"Help for which they would demand concessions," Zorian guessed.

"Well, they are actually obliged to help us in that regard for free," Raynie said. "It's their duty. But every time we fail to resolve problems ourselves, we weaken our authority and credibility. If we do it too much, our supposed autonomy will end up being only on paper. So it would be best if we had some of our own mages to handle things.

Anyway, those two come together into a situation where the tribal leadership felt we had to acquire some mages of our own, and could afford the risk that comes with such attempts."

Zorian nodded and spoke no more of the topic, even though he could tell there was more to it. It wasn't as though Raynie had lied to him – he detected no intent to deceive from his empathy – but there was clearly some factor she didn't want to discuss there. Something personal, he guessed. Something that made her angry and bitter at her tribe, which she otherwise spoke about with pride and reverence.

He had a feeling that her coming to Cyoria was something of an exile.

He asked her to give him a rundown of other shifter groups and she jumped at the chance to change the topic to something else.

Shifter politics were surprisingly complex. Aside from cat shifters, the raven and owl shifters had also fully abandoned their tribal roots in favor of assimilation into regular society – they were not quite as successful as cat shifters, but both were doing decently for themselves. The viper shifters had also tried to pursue that path, but theirs was not a successful story – they failed to integrate and were nearly wiped out when they launched a shortlived rebellion during the Splinter Wars. The wolf, deer and boar shifters provided the core of the autonomist faction, which sought to preserve their traditional tribal structure and their special privileges. The bear and fox shifters were aligned with the autonomists, but have been slowly wavering in their support over the years and had powerful assimilationist factions working inside of them.

Finally, there were three more shifter groups that stood out from the rest for a couple of reasons. First, there were the eagle shifters, who couldn't accept being ruled by anyone, autonomy or not. They simply transformed and flew off in the direction of the Winter Mountains, where they somehow survived till modern times. How they dealt with such hostile, monster infested environment nobody was quite sure, and they wanted nothing to do with the rest of humanity. Not even the other shifters. The second one were seal shifters, who got on the wrong side of Eldemar during the Necromancer's War and were mostly killed off as a result. The survivors left for Ulquaan Ibasa along with other losing groups, and were never heard from again. Raynie suspected they wouldn't want to talk to other shifters, even if they still survived in their new home. Finally, there were the pigeon shifters, who were never a tribe to begin with – they were a product of an eccentric mage that managed to get ahold of a shifter transformation ritual and was dedicated enough to create his own shifter clan with it. They were mocked and looked down upon by the other shifters, but Raynie admitted (after some prodding) that they were actually doing quite well for themselves. Being able to turn into a flying animal at will had its uses.

"I'm surprised there aren't more attempts like that, to be honest," Zorian said.

"There are," Raynie said. "They just tend not to go anywhere. They start well, but then run into problems when the first generation shifters start having children. If not handled properly, shifter children tend to grow up somewhat… dysfunctional. Established shifter groups have centuries of tradition to draw on in this regarded – new, experimental shifters are stuck with no guidance and must tread with utmost care for the first few generations. Something that a lot of new shifters have no patience for."

The conversation drifted away from the topic of shifters after that, shifting to a discussion of the recent monster invasion of the city and how it affected them. Zorian largely deflected Raynie's questions about what exactly he did in 'his' team whenever they went hunting, as he suspected Raynie would be a lot less willing to just accept Zorian's implausibly high skills than Taiven was, and she didn't push the issue too much. He was rather surprised how big of an effect the monster invasion had on her, though.

"Honestly, this whole monster crisis is making me very self-conscious," Raynie revealed. "I was sent here to learn magic and become an asset to the tribe, and I thought I was doing fine in that regard… but now I know that many of my classmates are good enough to go after real dangers already and I'm… not. I thought I was among the top of the class, but it seems that's true only academically. I don't like it. I should have been among those of you going out there to fight those things."

He had no idea how to respond to that, so he just kept silent. The conversation died down after that, and they went their separate ways. There was no mention of a second meeting, but she did mention he was welcome to ask her more questions if he thought of anything else. That was more of an approval than he'd expected to get, really.

And yes, she did indeed expect him to pay for both of them.

break

Zorian turned his new library pass in his hands, idly studying the identification glyphs etched on its surface. The name on the pass was not his, of course, since he'd brazenly broken into someone's house and stolen it… but the chances he would get confronted over that were, surprisingly enough, negligible. As he quickly learned when he tried to use his new pass, the higher passes weren't just a slip of inert paper like his old one was – they were small wooden panels imprinted with a magical identification array of glyphs. To use them, one just had to walk up to the doors leading to the restricted section of the library, and then insert the panel into the depression next to the door. If the pass authorization was high enough to access that particular section, the door would unlock and the visitor could walk inside. No interaction with the librarians was necessary, and nobody asked to see his pass when he tested it, even after he'd spent several hours in the mind magic section.

Honestly, he was feeling rather foolish at the moment. He expected the restricted sections to be guarded by some fiendish bit of security and identity checks around every corner, and instead he found a security system a child could break. If he knew it was this easy, he would have done this far earlier. As far as he could see, the only danger was the man he'd stolen from might realize he'd been robbed… and Zorian really wasn't worried about that. He had picked his target carefully, took nothing except the library pass from the house he'd broken into, and had done his best to leave no evidence of his entry. Even if the man suddenly started caring about the library pass he hadn't used for months and noticed it was missing, Zorian really doubted he would conclude somebody stole it. Who the hell breaks into people's houses in order to swipe their library passes?

All that said, Zorian suspected that if he tried the same trick to access some really deeply restricted section, he would be stopped cold by firmer security. He would have to acquire a top level pass at some point and test it out near the end of a restart.

Right now, though, he had to see just what Xvim had in store for him. He pocketed the library pass and approached… the door…

He frowned. What the hell was happening? This was where Xvim's office was located, he was sure of it – had been here countless of times, and everything else was exactly where it should be. He just…

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the mental shield snap shut over his thoughts. The compulsion to ignore the door to Xvim's office melted away, and his eyes finally stopped skimming over it like it didn't exist. No, now that he thought about it, it was more like he had dismissed it as irrelevant. As ''obviously'' not what he was looking for. If he'd been less sure of himself, who knows how long he would have looked for the door before figuring it out.

Opening his eyes and forcing down his annoyance at Xvim's antics, he knocked on the door and then immediately entered without waiting for permission to do so. He found Xvim calmly staring at him, fingers steepled together.

"Pitiful," Xvim declared. "That such a crude trap managed to snare you, even for a minute, shows how woefully unprepared you are for the dangers of mind magic."

"Yes, sir," agreed Zorian easily. He was too inured to Xvim's attitude to really get worked up by them anymore. "That is why I professed a desire for a training partner to Miss Zileti."

Xvim waved his hand through the air once, as if warding away a particularly annoying fly, wordlessly letting himknow how little he thought of that idea.

"I understand, from talking to Ilsa, that you are a natural mind mage, yes?" Xvim asked. It was apparently arhetorical question, because he didn't wait for Zorian's response before continuing. "It is commendable that you are trying to correct your deficiencies on your own initiative. Too many mages with such natural talents mistake their inborn advantage for actual mastery, wasting their potential and putting everyone around them at risk. Even themselves. ''Especially'' themselves."

Wow, was that actual praise from Xvim?

"Sadly," Xvim continued, "your attempt, much like the shaping skills you displayed at our session last Friday, falls embarrassingly short of achieving actually worthwhile results. It is up to me, as your mentor, to mould you into something resembling a competent and responsible Spell Caster."

Ugh. Never mind.

"I see," he said, somewhat sourly. "Please forgive my impertinence, but I was not aware that you were an expert in mind magic. I thought you taught advanced shaping exercises for fourthyear students."

"I also do private lessons for particularly talented first and second years," Xvim said, a ghost of a grimace flickering over his face for a moment before he smoothed it into his usual impassiveness. Xvim probably didn't think much of their 'talent'. "And, more relevantly, I teach a fourth year elective dealing with defense against hostile magic. Obviously, this includes mind magic as well."

"Ah," said Zorian. That did a lot to explain Xvim's constant mind shield. Still… "I feel I should point out that my innate ability grants me a very powerful and flexible mental shield."

"Oh? How interesting," Xvim said speculatively. "Tell me, is your ability purely defensive or can you reach out and touch other people's minds too?"

"The second one," Zorian admitted. "That's why I asked Miss Zileti for help – I needed a willing target that would let me practice telepathy and mind reading on them."

"In that case, you probably already know about the mental barrier I'm currently sporting," Xvim stated.

"Well yes, but not because I tried to access your mind or anything," Zorian lied. "It's just that the base form of my talent is a passive form of empathy that tells me what other people are feeling, and I cannot sense anything from you. As far as I can tell, that only happens when they are shielding their mind somehow."

"I am certain that is the only reason why you know of it, and that you have never even entertained the thought of getting revenge on your insufferable mentor by taking a quick peek at his mind," Xvim said indulgently. "As it happens, though, I want you to try and invade my mind. Please do your best to get past my mental barrier and tell me how it compares to your own."

Oh, this was absolutely perfect. A chance to attack Xvim and get away with it? How could he refuse? Still, as annoying as his mentor was, he didn't really want to hospitalize the man, so he ''didn't'' immediately launch the strongest mind spike he could form into his unprepared defenses. No, instead he first ran some light probing attacks to see if he could find any obvious imperfections (he couldn't) and then launched a quick succession of weak attacks to gauge the strength of Xvim's shield.

It was a very solid thing, comparable in strength to what Zorian and the aranea could create, which surprised him a great deal. On the other hand, that meant he didn't really have to hold back. He powered up his strongest, most focused mind spike and slammed it directly into the mental barrier.

Though outwardly calm and composed, inwardly Zorian grinned in savage glee as he felt Xvim's mental shield crack and buckle under his sudden onslaught…

…and then the moment passed, and Xvim's mental barrier immediately snapped back into place, as perfect and unyielding as it was at the start.

Zorian's eyes involuntarily widened in shock. NNo way… he repaired it!? How? He wasn't a psychic, he was sure of it, and no spell he knew of could repair itself. Certainly not that quickly. ''Zorian'' couldn't fix his mind shield that quickly. Hell, the aranea he practiced with couldn't make their defenses snap back to an intact state that quickly.

He launched three more powerful attacks in quick succession with the exact same result: the attacks did damage to Xvim's mental barrier, but it was repaired so quickly and thoroughly that a lesser attacker could have been fooled into thinking it had never been damaged at all.

He narrowed his eyes. No. No, he was not going to be foiled in this. Brute force wasn't working, but he hadn't been trained by the aranea for nothing – he had far more than that at his disposal. He started executing basic attack patterns taught to him by Mind Like Fire, treating Xvim like a fellow psychic instead of a mage using a structured spell, and slowly the limits of Xvim's defenses revealed themselves to him. For one thing, Xvim, did not seem to feel his probing attacks – anything not strong enough to crack his mental barrier was effectively undetectable to him.Secondly, his barrier was completely uniform – he never reinforced a spot he was attacking, even if he repeatedlytargeted the same place over and over again.

When he next attacked, he did not use a powerful but momentary mind spike – he picked one part of Xvim's mental shield and started crushing it. He didn't let up, and slowly it began to crack under his mental pressure. No repair was possible – his attack was overwhelming the shield's regeneration, widening the cracks and bringing it closer and closer to total collapse. He diverted a few tendrils of power from the main attack into the widening holes in Xvim's defenses, causing the man to visibly flinch as telepathic forces seared his surface thoughts…

"Stop!" Xvim ordered, raising his hand into the air in a halting gesture.

Zorian immediately withdrew, letting Xvim recreate his mental defenses and regain his composure.

"Well," his mentor said, massaging his sinuses. "An afternoon headache, just what I needed today. I supposed that will teach me to tempt my students. Nonetheless, it was a fascinating experience. Less classical mind magic, and more akin to something a memory moss, an azure sea hermit crab or a cranium rat swarm would employ."

"That wasn't a spell you were using to shield your mind, was it?" Zorian asked.

"No, it was not," Xvim confirmed. "It was unstructured magic, much like your own abilities."

"But how?" Zorian asked. "I can tell that you aren't… well, a natural mind mage like me."

"Mind magic shaping exercises," Xvim said simply, as if that explained anything.

"There are shaping exercises for mind magic?" asked Zorian, surprised.

"There are shaping exercises for every field of magic," Xvim said. "They are essential for building a proper foundation around which you can base your spells around."

Right, stupid question. What he ''should'' be asking was how doing shaping exercises allowed Xvim to do a reasonable impression of a full-blown psychic. He was a bit of an onetrick pony, but to be fair, it was a very nice trick.

"I was not aware that doing shaping exercises can give you unstructured magical abilities," Zorian remarked.

"Really?" Xvim asked him curiously. "What did you think shaping exercises were, if not unstructured magical abilities? Do enough of related ones over the years, and they're bound to build up to something greater than the sum of its parts. In case of mind magic, the ability to defend against it is so universally coveted that countless training regimens for gaining mental defenses have been devised over the centuries. What I displayed is not a common skill by any means, but is not particularly rare either."

Zorian frowned. Come to think of it, a fair number of people he'd encountered in the past had some form of mental defense that didn't really feel like a structured spell. Alanic for instance, as well as Rea. Zach also had some sort of mental shield, according to the Spear of Resolve – one she did not feel comfortable tampering with. He really should have suspected something like this earlier.

"Can you also use telepathy and mind reading in unstructured manner, too?" he asked Xvim, acting on a hunch.

"Me, personally? No. I've never had an interest in anything other than defending myself," Xvim said. "But if you're asking whether it's possible, the answer is yes… with caveats. It requires great dedication for rudimentary results – such an aspirant would never be able to duplicate the attack you just casually did, for instance, even after a lifetime of honing their skills."

He knew it – it was just like soul sight. Getting a reduced version of the ability that affects only yourself was doable with a lot of work, but reaching out and applying it to someone else was all but impossible.

"So?" Xvim said impatiently, breaking his contemplation. "The comparison?"

"Err, right. Your shields seems to give you far less feedback than mine do, it's too uniform in composition and your response to attack is very predictable and exploitable for someone who knows what they're doing," said Zorian, relishing the chance to make Xvim on the receiving end of criticism for a change. Xvim simply nodded, giving no indication that his pride was wounded by the barrage. "On the other hand, your shield has far fewer imperfections and you can repair it a lot faster than me."

"Well then," Xvim said, leaning back on his chair. "I guess we know what you'll be practicing today, then, don't we?"

"Alright," said Zorian. He was fine with the idea, really. Improving his mental defenses was always welcome in his mind. "How is that going to work, though? I don't think any classical mind spell can do much to me, barring surprise attacks like that trap you put on the door."

"Surprises come in many forms, mister Kazinski," Xvim said, reaching into his drawers and retrieving a spell rod, which he promptly pointed at Zorian's face. "Allow me to demonstrate."

Zorian hurriedly strengthened his mind shield, determined to weather the incoming mental attack Xvim was launching at him, but what hit him wasn't a mind magic spell. It was some sort of dispelling wave, and his mental shield evaporated upon contact with it like a raindrop hitting a burning oven.

''Then'' the knockout spell hit him.

He resisted. He may have been stripped of his mental shield and caught offguard, but he was still an experienced mage and he went through Kyron's 'resistance training' too – the relatively minor spell Xvim used could not subdue him. But the point was made, regardless.

"A ''proper'' mind mage," Xvim said, "would have reconstructed his shield before the second spell had been even cast."

Zorian sighed. Of course they would have.

"Start over?" he guessed.

"Start over," Xvim confirmed.

In a scene that Zorian would rapidly begin to hate with every fiber of his being, Xvim once again pointed the spell rod at his face and blasted his mental shield into oblivion.

break

Following their Monday session, Xvim largely replaced their regular sessions with mind magic related ones, constantly pushing his defenses and giving him long lists of mind magic shaping exercises to try. Most of these exercises were absurdly easy for Zorian, teaching things he already had an instinctive grasp of, but searching the restricted section of the library with his brand new pass yielded some less intuitive ones that actually taught him something new.

He didn't intend to duplicate the circumstances that led to Xvim's new attitude in future restarts. While he'd definitely learned some stuff from Xvim when it came to mental combat, Xvim was ultimately an annoying teacher to learn from and nothing he wanted to teach Zorian absolutely ''required'' his help to work.

Besides, his meetings with Tinami weren't really getting anywhere. He wasn't really getting much from them himself, and Tinami basically turned his every attempt at interaction into an interrogation attempt, trying to figure out who had taught him to be as good as he was currently.

She also seemed to have blabbed about his meeting with Raynie, since everyone in class seemed to know about it when he came to the academy on Monday. Probably as revenge for refusing to answer her questions. In any case, that pretty much killed any sort of good will he may have had with Raynie – she accepted that he was not at fault when they talked later in the day, but she still didn't want to be seen anywhere near him after that. It was probably Benisek loudly congratulating him in front of the whole class that really screwed him over when it came to that.

Why did he ever think that hanging around that guy was a good idea?

Oh well, live and learn. Seeing how his social endeavors were in tatters for the rest of the restart, he focused his energies on finding the aranean treasury, his personal experiments and tracking down and interrogating the invaders. The latter two were doing just fine, but his quest for the aranean treasury stubbornly yielded no results. He resolved to take the Filigree Sages up on their offer to take them to the Cyorian settlement in exchange for their help with memory manipulation – maybe aranean explorers would be more successful than him, and more help with his memory reading skills was always welcome. He should also save the Yellow Cavern Guardians from their invader again, just in case they have something new to tell him now that he had some actual experience with mind reading under his belt.

His invasionrelated activities steadily continued as weeks passed, yielding no revolutionary results or critical revelations, but his memory reading skills were getting pretty good and he had found some interesting targets that might actually know something interesting. Unfortunately, his constant attacks had made the invaders cautious and paranoid, and everyone important was always armed and under tight security – Zorian didn't feel confident going after them under such conditions. He would go after them in a future restart, when they hadn't had the forewarning that he was coming for them.

As the end of the restart approached, Zorian laid off the Cultists a little, limiting himself to raiding their caches and monitoring their activities. The caches held no crucial clue or amazing treasure, but one of them did have a whole lot of cash (which Zorian intended to put to good use in future restarts) and the potion collection he stole at the start of the restart looked promising. Kael claimed he would need another restart to finish going through them, but some of them were clearly advanced combat potions that produced clouds of acidic vapor upon breaking, doused everything in unquenchable fire and similar effects. That sounded quite compatible with Zorian's fighting style, in all honesty.

And then, several days before the summer festival, his spying effort finally gave him the alert he had been waiting for: the leadership of the Cult of the Dragon Below issued an order to one of their lowranking groups to kidnap Nochka. It wasn't the same team as it was the last time, nor was the kidnapping scheduled to occur on the same date it had in the previous restart, but his efforts had caught the order anyway.

He ambushed them halfway to the Sashal family house, when they were still herding their giant centipedes through the sewers. His initial idea was to seize control of the centipedes and make them turn on their masters, making it look like they lost control of the beasts. Unfortunately, the mage controlling them knew what he was doing – the moment Zorian attempted to influence the minds of the monsters he clamped down on his control over the centipedes and shouted a warning to the rest of the group that they were under attack.

So Zorian used his backup plan and chucked one of the combat potions he recovered from their cache into their midst. The centipede controller, as well as three of his centipede minions, died on the spot, frozen solid when the bottle broke and the glittering blue liquid made contact with the air. Alas, that revealed his hiding spot, forcing him to shield himself from a barrage of offensive spells the three surviving cultists had started peppering him with.

Fortunately, with no more controller mage to contest his control, the last centipede was child's play to commandeer. Before his three attackers had realized what was happening, the centipede's poisonous pincers bit down on the leg of one of them, and they had to defend themselves from a danger in their own midst.

They never stood a chance from that point on, though they had managed to kill the centipede before Zorian finished them off. His task done, he left the scene, wondering what the Cult of the Dragon Below was going to do now that its plans have been foiled. Were they going to come after Nochka again, with more resources this time? Just how important was she to them, anyway?

He supposed he would find out soon.

break

To Zorian's surprise, Nochka was never attacked after that. Instead, the cultists attacked another family the day after that – this time a rather prominent officer serving in Eldemar's military who happened to be one of those pigeon shifters that Raynie didn't think much about. The man and his wife were unharmed, but their eight year old son was kidnapped by their unknown assailants and no ransom demand had been issued.

Unlike the cultists' attack on the Sashal family, this one garnered a great deal of attention from the newspapers and the authorities. After all, their new target wasn't just some random nobody, but a member of Eldemar's military… and they didn't bother with some flimsy 'monster attack' setup this time, choosing instead to just barge in and kidnap a kid during the night. Quite a bit more attention grabbing.

So. Clearly the cultists needed a shifter, probably a shifter child, for some purpose. Primordial 'summoning', most likely. They needed one so badly they were willing to kick over an anthill just before the invasion, exposing it to a huge risk of discovery.

But it didn't have to be Nochka, apparently.

"Hey, Zorian," Kirielle called out, distracting him from his musings.

He looked towards her and found her trying to paint a face on the next generation wooden golem he had made for her. It had a whole bunch of minor improvements over the old one, but Zorian suspected Kirielle only really cared about one of them – the new version had long, brown 'hair' attached to its head, based on her request. Apparently she decided that wasn't lifelike enough for her.

"What?" he asked.

"Who are you taking out to the dance tomorrow?" she asked.

"It's none of your business," said Zorian. Ugh, he would have to make sure to be out of the house by tomorrow evening, just in case Ilsa sent someone after him again.

"Are you going out with the red-headed girl you're dating?" she asked.

"N Wait a minute, how do you even know about that!?" Zorian protested.

"Kael told me," she said, biting the wooden end of her paintbrush for a minute before adding some fine touches on the golem's new eyebrows.

Stupid Kael… he probably thought this was all so terribly amusing.

"I think you could use a girlfriend," Kirielle said, before turning towards her new golem. "Don't you agree, Kosjenka?"

Just as it had been made to do when presented with something that sounded like a question, the golem nodded its head gravely.

"See, even Kosjenka agre-"

"Kiri," Zorian cut her off.

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 042

2016-04-08T09:00:18Z

Zariur: /*Sum of Its Parts*/

===Sum of Its Parts===

Not far from the restaurant where he was supposed to meet Raynie, Zorian sat on a bench and waited. There was no sign of her yet, but that was in no way unusual – he had misjudged the amount of time it would take him to find the place, and was thus a little early. He didn't let it bother him, choosing instead to pass the time by experimenting with his mind sense on the passing crowds, tapping into the eyes of pigeons flying overhead and practicing his shaping skills on the handful of pebbles he had taken to carrying around on his person at all times.

Honestly, shaping exercises were kind of relaxing when he didn't have Xvim breathing down his neck and being a jerk. He should try finding one that was actually challenging – really challenging, but not Xvim's patented you-haven't-''really''-mastered-this bullshit – and setting aside some time to… hm?

He drew the pebbles currently floating in front of him back to his palm and pocketed them, before leaning over a nearby ornamental bush where his mind senses had detected an extremely faint mental signature. Despite knowing exactly where to look, it took him two whole seconds to spot the mantis camouflaged against the leaves. He stared at the bug for a while, before an idea occurred to him…

He pointed his palm towards the insect and concentrated, trying to telekinetically draw it towards him without crushing it like a… well, bug. Something that was greatly complicated by the mantis holding on for dear life to the twig it was standing on. He had hoped to surprise it with this sudden maneuver, but its reactions were surprisingly fast for something that had been moving so slowly and ponderously just a second ago. Nonetheless, Zorian wasn't so easily deterred. Five minutes later, he had finally managed to detach the mantis from the twig without hurting it and was levitating it in front of him. The mantis twisted and flailed around in the air, clearly unhappy with its predicament, but Zorian had established too firm a hold on it for his telekinetic control to lapse just from that.

At least until the mantis decided it was finished with this annoyance, then suddenly unfurled its wings and flew off. Oh, right – mantises can fly if they need to… He totally forgot about that. Shrugging, he focused on his mind sense for a moment, checking if Raynie had arrived yet.

She had. She was still hidden by the nearby building from where he was standing, but her mental signature was unmistakable. He set off in the direction of the restaurant, and was soon back at the entrance, trying not to stare at the street corner he knew she was going to emerge from. When she did finally round the corner, however, she stopped in her tracks and just sort of stared at him in apprehension instead of coming over to meet him. Honestly, what was up with that? He already agreed with her that it wasn't a date, so what was she apprehensive about? He 'accidentally' turned in her direction, pretended he'd just noticed her and gave her a little wave.

She stopped stalling and came over to greet him properly.

"Sorry if I'm cutting it a little close," she said. "With most people I know, it's a miracle if they're only ten minutes late,so I've learned not to be too early to this sort of stuff. You didn't wait long, did you?"

"It was a bit of a wait," admitted Zorian. "But to be fair, I was rather early. Don't worry about it, I found things to amuse myself with."

"Oh?" she asked. "And what would that be, if you're willing to share?"

"Nothing too interesting. I was just doing some shaping exercises," said Zorian, retrieving the pebbles from his pocket and making them float in a rotating ring above his palm. "Silly, I know, but it passes the time."

Raynie stared at the rotating ring of pebbles for a second before shaking her head, mumbling something unintelligible and motioning for him to follow her into the restaurant. He returned the pebbles into his pocket and hurried after her.

The moment he stepped inside the dining hall of the restaurant, he understood the reason behind the restaurant's somewhat unusual name – 'Fearsome Catfish' indeed. Hanging from the ceiling of the dining room was a preserved body of massive catfish, big enough to swallow a grown man whole. An… interesting choice of ornamentation for a restaurant. Raynie seemed both amused and pleased that the taxidermically preserved trophy gave him pause for a moment, although he only knew that because of his empathy – she neither reacted nor said anything to him as she lead him to a nearby table where they took their seats.

He halfexpected Raynie to order a plate full of meat, what with her being a wolf shifter and all… but she actually ordered a grilled trout and a plate of vegetables. Huh. He supposed he shouldn't be so quick to assume… though speaking of assuming things, was he expected to pay for them both? His cynical side was saying yes, since her choice of meal was on the pricier side of things… but then again she was the daughter of a tribal chief. Maybe she had plenty of money and this was perfectly normal for her. Maybe she'd be offended that he's trying to pay for her share of the food and think he's trying to court her after all…

"It will take some time for the chefs to prepare the food," Raynie said. "Why don't you tell me about these cat shifters of yours while we wait?"

Zorian scanned the other tables in the dining hall for any eavesdroppers. They were by no means the only people in the restaurant, and Zorian kind of thought this was way too public of a location to be having this sort of conversation… but it was mostly Raynie's secrets that were at stake here, so if she felt this was fine, then it was. None of the other diners were paying any attention to them, so at least there was that.

He told her as much as he could without bringing up the invasion or information about Rea's background that he obviously shouldn't know about. Even so, he sincerely hoped that Raynie wouldn't want to speak with Rea after their talk, because he would almost certainly find himself in a bit of a hairy situation if that were to happen – he could scarcely explain how he came by some of his information without admitting he had spied upon the Sashal family in some fashion.

"I don't think they intend to harm you in any way," Raynie said once he was done. "They wouldn't be willing to leave you alone with their daughter like that if they did, nor would they let her get attached to your little sister if they meant to make you into a target. Most cat shifters are dishonorable, but they don't target their own neighbors, friends, contacts and the like. They never make trouble in their own territory."

Well. Zorian had already known that the various shifter groups are by no means united, but it seemed they weren't even on particularly good terms either. Or at least Raynie's group didn't seem to like cat shifters much.

"I'm guessing the cat and wolf shifters don't get along, then?" surmised Zorian.

"We hardly ever interact with each other. Our relations are not bad because they're mostly nonexistent," said Raynie. "I personally think they give the rest of the shifters a bad name, and I know I'm not the only one in my tribe with that opinion. You should watch yourself around your new friends. I know I just said earlier that they are not plotting against you, but that doesn't mean they're not dangerous. Cat shifters are rarely just cat shifters – they are the shifter group that has embraced Ikosian magical traditions the most. They especially like to dabble in illusionism, mind magic, scrying and… other shady disciplines. I wouldn't put it past them to spy on you in some fashion."

"I'll keep that in mind," Zorian nodded. "I'm curious, though – is that a general thing? Do different shifter groups usually avoid each other?"

"No, not at all," Raynie said, shaking her head. "We try to maintain contact with other shifter groups, it's just that cat shifters are… well, it's a long story, and I can smell our meals coming. We'll talk more after we've eaten."

She was right – the food was indeed brought over to their table not long after that. And Raynie was either very hungry or an extremely fast eater, because she scarfed down her meal in half an hour flat and then kept giving Zorian impatient looks while he ate his own food at a much more sedate pace. Rude. He refused to hurry up just because of her.

"Alright," said Zorian eventually, setting his plate aside to signal that he was done eating. "We were talking about shifter relations."

"Yeah," Raynie agreed. "Well, the first thing you need to keep in mind is that the current image of shifters as some sort of weird mages living on the fringes of normal society is something very… modern. Before the flood of Ikosian refugees came to the continent and conquered everything, shifters didn't live on the fringes of anything – partly because the rest of natives hated us and would have never allowed us to live near them, but also because we didn't have to. We had our own tribes and territories to live in."

"The other natives hated you so much?" Zorian asked.

"Oh yes," Raynie confirmed. "Even today, the scattered remains of the original tribes that lived in the region – the people you collectively call Khusky – can't stand the sight of us. Thankfully for us, they have managed to thoroughly marginalize themselves over the years and no longer have any say in how shifters are treated. That's the good thing that came with the Ikosian conquest the Ikosians didn't find shifters nearly as threatening or inhuman as the Altazian natives did. As far as they were concerned, we were just your typical group of overspecialized native mages that they hoped to absorb into their society."

"But?" Zorian prompted.

"But their attempts to absorb us never quite succeeded properly," Raynie shrugged. "We speak Ikosian and follow the laws of the land, but most shifter groups have stubbornly clung onto every shred of autonomy and independence that we could. Wolf shifters were the most vocal and successful in that regard."

"Ah, I see," said Zorian, understanding. "And since the cat shifters decided to discard their autonomy in favor of assimilating more closely into the rest of the population, you don't get along with each other."

"Yes," she sighed. "We're not enemies, but they have completely rejected our politics and went their own separate ways. Both sides agree that they've got nothing to say to each other and avoid contact."

Zorian hummed noncommittally. Somehow he doubted that the wolf shifters really didn't consider cat shifters enemies. He'd buy the idea that the cat shifters really were apathetic over the issue, but the wolf shifters must be pretty bitter over the other side breaking ranks like that. They were just powerless to do anything about it.

"So how successful are cat shifters, then?" Zorian asked curiously.

"Very successful," Raynie admitted. "Eldemar's government loves to point them out to shifter tribes worried about what would happen to them if they gave up on their traditional rights. It's why they are so reluctant to seriously crack down on them, despite their shady behavior. If the biggest success story of the shifter integration program comes under fire, it would likely cause all those other shifter tribes considering going down that path to back off and dig in harder."

Right, totally not enemies.

"So if cat shifters were so very successful, doesn't it make sense to copy them to some degree?" Zorian asked. "I mean, I can understand not wanting to be criminals, but what stops you getting yourself some classical mages among your ranks? I'd be willing to bet their decision to acquire Ikosianstyle spell casting had a lot to do with their success."

"What do you think I'm here for?" Raynie asked him with a smile.

"Ah, well…" Zorian fumbled. "While you're clearly training to be a classical mage, you are a rare exception from what I'm hearing, not the rule. Why is your tribe only sending someone to learn this now? Why not earlier?"

"There is a reason why the shifter group most successful in adopting Ikosianstyle magic is also the group that cares the least for our traditional rights," she said. "While the idea sounds simple in principle, in practice it amounts to opening a backdoor for the central government to influence the tribe. Members trained as mages have a tendency to make power plays and bring the mage guild, and through them the central government into internal tribal disputes when they don't get their way."

"Ah," nodded Zorian in understanding. "And the central government is all about abolishing autonomous groups like yours when given a chance."

"Yes," she agreed. "Plus, the tribal elders are very traditional and often react badly if the new mage shows too many outside influences upon return. Many times the mage simply walked out of the tribe in disgust after a few years of clashing with them."

"So what changed to make you come here?" asked Zorian. A flash of indecipherable, but decidedly negative emotion welled up in the girl in front of him. "Or is that too personal a question?"

"It's… not really, no," she said, scowling for a moment before schooling her features. She was annoyed at something, but she didn't seem to blame him for it. "I guess there are two main reasons. Ever since the splintering of the Old Alliance, the centralization policies that characterized its twilight years have been somewhat discredited, lessening the pressure on shifter tribes to assimilate. This makes outsider trained members less threatening to many in the tribe. On top of that, the recent colonization drive to the Sarokian Highlands has had many shifter tribes wary, since their lands are directly in the path of settlers. If a group of mages decides to settle inside of our borders, it is not at all certain we could get them to leave without asking the central government for help."

"Help for which they would demand concessions," Zorian guessed.

"Well, they are actually obliged to help us in that regard for free," Raynie said. "It's their duty. But every time we fail to resolve problems ourselves, we weaken our authority and credibility. If we do it too much, our supposed autonomy will end up being only on paper. So it would be best if we had some of our own mages to handle things.

Anyway, those two come together into a situation where the tribal leadership felt we had to acquire some mages of our own, and could afford the risk that comes with such attempts."

Zorian nodded and spoke no more of the topic, even though he could tell there was more to it. It wasn't as though Raynie had lied to him – he detected no intent to deceive from his empathy – but there was clearly some factor she didn't want to discuss there. Something personal, he guessed. Something that made her angry and bitter at her tribe, which she otherwise spoke about with pride and reverence.

He had a feeling that her coming to Cyoria was something of an exile.

He asked her to give him a rundown of other shifter groups and she jumped at the chance to change the topic to something else.

Shifter politics were surprisingly complex. Aside from cat shifters, the raven and owl shifters had also fully abandoned their tribal roots in favor of assimilation into regular society – they were not quite as successful as cat shifters, but both were doing decently for themselves. The viper shifters had also tried to pursue that path, but theirs was not a successful story – they failed to integrate and were nearly wiped out when they launched a shortlived rebellion during the Splinter Wars. The wolf, deer and boar shifters provided the core of the autonomist faction, which sought to preserve their traditional tribal structure and their special privileges. The bear and fox shifters were aligned with the autonomists, but have been slowly wavering in their support over the years and had powerful assimilationist factions working inside of them.

Finally, there were three more shifter groups that stood out from the rest for a couple of reasons. First, there were the eagle shifters, who couldn't accept being ruled by anyone, autonomy or not. They simply transformed and flew off in the direction of the Winter Mountains, where they somehow survived till modern times. How they dealt with such hostile, monster infested environment nobody was quite sure, and they wanted nothing to do with the rest of humanity. Not even the other shifters. The second one were seal shifters, who got on the wrong side of Eldemar during the Necromancer's War and were mostly killed off as a result. The survivors left for Ulquaan Ibasa along with other losing groups, and were never heard from again. Raynie suspected they wouldn't want to talk to other shifters, even if they still survived in their new home. Finally, there were the pigeon shifters, who were never a tribe to begin with – they were a product of an eccentric mage that managed to get ahold of a shifter transformation ritual and was dedicated enough to create his own shifter clan with it. They were mocked and looked down upon by the other shifters, but Raynie admitted (after some prodding) that they were actually doing quite well for themselves. Being able to turn into a flying animal at will had its uses.

"I'm surprised there aren't more attempts like that, to be honest," Zorian said.

"There are," Raynie said. "They just tend not to go anywhere. They start well, but then run into problems when the first generation shifters start having children. If not handled properly, shifter children tend to grow up somewhat… dysfunctional. Established shifter groups have centuries of tradition to draw on in this regarded – new, experimental shifters are stuck with no guidance and must tread with utmost care for the first few generations. Something that a lot of new shifters have no patience for."

The conversation drifted away from the topic of shifters after that, shifting to a discussion of the recent monster invasion of the city and how it affected them. Zorian largely deflected Raynie's questions about what exactly he did in 'his' team whenever they went hunting, as he suspected Raynie would be a lot less willing to just accept Zorian's implausibly high skills than Taiven was, and she didn't push the issue too much. He was rather surprised how big of an effect the monster invasion had on her, though.

"Honestly, this whole monster crisis is making me very self-conscious," Raynie revealed. "I was sent here to learn magic and become an asset to the tribe, and I thought I was doing fine in that regard… but now I know that many of my classmates are good enough to go after real dangers already and I'm… not. I thought I was among the top of the class, but it seems that's true only academically. I don't like it. I should have been among those of you going out there to fight those things."

He had no idea how to respond to that, so he just kept silent. The conversation died down after that, and they went their separate ways. There was no mention of a second meeting, but she did mention he was welcome to ask her more questions if he thought of anything else. That was more of an approval than he'd expected to get, really.

And yes, she did indeed expect him to pay for both of them.

break

Zorian turned his new library pass in his hands, idly studying the identification glyphs etched on its surface. The name on the pass was not his, of course, since he'd brazenly broken into someone's house and stolen it… but the chances he would get confronted over that were, surprisingly enough, negligible. As he quickly learned when he tried to use his new pass, the higher passes weren't just a slip of inert paper like his old one was – they were small wooden panels imprinted with a magical identification array of glyphs. To use them, one just had to walk up to the doors leading to the restricted section of the library, and then insert the panel into the depression next to the door. If the pass authorization was high enough to access that particular section, the door would unlock and the visitor could walk inside. No interaction with the librarians was necessary, and nobody asked to see his pass when he tested it, even after he'd spent several hours in the mind magic section.

Honestly, he was feeling rather foolish at the moment. He expected the restricted sections to be guarded by some fiendish bit of security and identity checks around every corner, and instead he found a security system a child could break. If he knew it was this easy, he would have done this far earlier. As far as he could see, the only danger was the man he'd stolen from might realize he'd been robbed… and Zorian really wasn't worried about that. He had picked his target carefully, took nothing except the library pass from the house he'd broken into, and had done his best to leave no evidence of his entry. Even if the man suddenly started caring about the library pass he hadn't used for months and noticed it was missing, Zorian really doubted he would conclude somebody stole it. Who the hell breaks into people's houses in order to swipe their library passes?

All that said, Zorian suspected that if he tried the same trick to access some really deeply restricted section, he would be stopped cold by firmer security. He would have to acquire a top level pass at some point and test it out near the end of a restart.

Right now, though, he had to see just what Xvim had in store for him. He pocketed the library pass and approached… the door…

He frowned. What the hell was happening? This was where Xvim's office was located, he was sure of it – had been here countless of times, and everything else was exactly where it should be. He just…

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the mental shield snap shut over his thoughts. The compulsion to ignore the door to Xvim's office melted away, and his eyes finally stopped skimming over it like it didn't exist. No, now that he thought about it, it was more like he had dismissed it as irrelevant. As obviously not what he was looking for. If he'd been less sure of himself, who knows how long he would have looked for the door before figuring it out.

Opening his eyes and forcing down his annoyance at Xvim's antics, he knocked on the door and then immediately entered without waiting for permission to do so. He found Xvim calmly staring at him, fingers steepled together.

"Pitiful," Xvim declared. "That such a crude trap managed to snare you, even for a minute, shows how woefully unprepared you are for the dangers of mind magic."

"Yes, sir," agreed Zorian easily. He was too inured to Xvim's attitude to really get worked up by them anymore. "That is why I professed a desire for a training partner to Miss Zileti."

Xvim waved his hand through the air once, as if warding away a particularly annoying fly, wordlessly letting himknow how little he thought of that idea.

"I understand, from talking to Ilsa, that you are a natural mind mage, yes?" Xvim asked. It was apparently arhetorical question, because he didn't wait for Zorian's response before continuing. "It is commendable that you are trying to correct your deficiencies on your own initiative. Too many mages with such natural talents mistake their inborn advantage for actual mastery, wasting their potential and putting everyone around them at risk. Even themselves. Especially themselves."

Wow, was that actual praise from Xvim?

"Sadly," Xvim continued, "your attempt, much like the shaping skills you displayed at our session last Friday, falls embarrassingly short of achieving actually worthwhile results. It is up to me, as your mentor, to mould you into something resembling a competent and responsible Spell Caster."

Ugh. Never mind.

"I see," he said, somewhat sourly. "Please forgive my impertinence, but I was not aware that you were an expert in mind magic. I thought you taught advanced shaping exercises for fourthyear students."

"I also do private lessons for particularly talented first and second years," Xvim said, a ghost of a grimace flickering over his face for a moment before he smoothed it into his usual impassiveness. Xvim probably didn't think much of their 'talent'. "And, more relevantly, I teach a fourth year elective dealing with defense against hostile magic. Obviously, this includes mind magic as well."

"Ah," said Zorian. That did a lot to explain Xvim's constant mind shield. Still… "I feel I should point out that my innate ability grants me a very powerful and flexible mental shield."

"Oh? How interesting," Xvim said speculatively. "Tell me, is your ability purely defensive or can you reach out and touch other people's minds too?"

"The second one," Zorian admitted. "That's why I asked Miss Zileti for help – I needed a willing target that would let me practice telepathy and mind reading on them."

"In that case, you probably already know about the mental barrier I'm currently sporting," Xvim stated.

"Well yes, but not because I tried to access your mind or anything," Zorian lied. "It's just that the base form of my talent is a passive form of empathy that tells me what other people are feeling, and I cannot sense anything from you. As far as I can tell, that only happens when they are shielding their mind somehow."

"I am certain that is the only reason why you know of it, and that you have never even entertained the thought of getting revenge on your insufferable mentor by taking a quick peek at his mind," Xvim said indulgently. "As it happens, though, I want you to try and invade my mind. Please do your best to get past my mental barrier and tell me how it compares to your own."

Oh, this was absolutely perfect. A chance to attack Xvim and get away with it? How could he refuse? Still, as annoying as his mentor was, he didn't really want to hospitalize the man, so he didn't immediately launch the strongest mind spike he could form into his unprepared defenses. No, instead he first ran some light probing attacks to see if he could find any obvious imperfections (he couldn't) and then launched a quick succession of weak attacks to gauge the strength of Xvim's shield.

It was a very solid thing, comparable in strength to what Zorian and the aranea could create, which surprised him a great deal. On the other hand, that meant he didn't really have to hold back. He powered up his strongest, most focused mind spike and slammed it directly into the mental barrier.

Though outwardly calm and composed, inwardly Zorian grinned in savage glee as he felt Xvim's mental shield crack and buckle under his sudden onslaught…

…and then the moment passed, and Xvim's mental barrier immediately snapped back into place, as perfect and unyielding as it was at the start.

Zorian's eyes involuntarily widened in shock. NNo way… he repaired it!? How? He wasn't a psychic, he was sure of it, and no spell he knew of could repair itself. Certainly not that quickly. Zorian couldn't fix his mind shield that quickly. Hell, the aranea he practiced with couldn't make their defenses snap back to an intact state that quickly.

He launched three more powerful attacks in quick succession with the exact same result: the attacks did damage to Xvim's mental barrier, but it was repaired so quickly and thoroughly that a lesser attacker could have been fooled into thinking it had never been damaged at all.

He narrowed his eyes. No. No, he was not going to be foiled in this. Brute force wasn't working, but he hadn't been trained by the aranea for nothing – he had far more than that at his disposal. He started executing basic attack patterns taught to him by Mind Like Fire, treating Xvim like a fellow psychic instead of a mage using a structured spell, and slowly the limits of Xvim's defenses revealed themselves to him. For one thing, Xvim, did not seem to feel his probing attacks – anything not strong enough to crack his mental barrier was effectively undetectable to him.Secondly, his barrier was completely uniform – he never reinforced a spot he was attacking, even if he repeatedlytargeted the same place over and over again.

When he next attacked, he did not use a powerful but momentary mind spike – he picked one part of Xvim's mental shield and started crushing it. He didn't let up, and slowly it began to crack under his mental pressure. No repair was possible – his attack was overwhelming the shield's regeneration, widening the cracks and bringing it closer and closer to total collapse. He diverted a few tendrils of power from the main attack into the widening holes in Xvim's defenses, causing the man to visibly flinch as telepathic forces seared his surface thoughts…

"Stop!" Xvim ordered, raising his hand into the air in a halting gesture.

Zorian immediately withdrew, letting Xvim recreate his mental defenses and regain his composure.

"Well," his mentor said, massaging his sinuses. "An afternoon headache, just what I needed today. I supposed that will teach me to tempt my students. Nonetheless, it was a fascinating experience. Less classical mind magic, and more akin to something a memory moss, an azure sea hermit crab or a cranium rat swarm would employ."

"That wasn't a spell you were using to shield your mind, was it?" Zorian asked.

"No, it was not," Xvim confirmed. "It was unstructured magic, much like your own abilities."

"But how?" Zorian asked. "I can tell that you aren't… well, a natural mind mage like me."

"Mind magic shaping exercises," Xvim said simply, as if that explained anything.

"There are shaping exercises for mind magic?" asked Zorian, surprised.

"There are shaping exercises for every field of magic," Xvim said. "They are essential for building a proper foundation around which you can base your spells around."

Right, stupid question. What he should be asking was how doing shaping exercises allowed Xvim to do a reasonable impression of a full-blown psychic. He was a bit of an onetrick pony, but to be fair, it was a very nice trick.

"I was not aware that doing shaping exercises can give you unstructured magical abilities," Zorian remarked.

"Really?" Xvim asked him curiously. "What did you think shaping exercises were, if not unstructured magical abilities? Do enough of related ones over the years, and they're bound to build up to something greater than the sum of its parts. In case of mind magic, the ability to defend against it is so universally coveted that countless training regimens for gaining mental defenses have been devised over the centuries. What I displayed is not a common skill by any means, but is not particularly rare either."

Zorian frowned. Come to think of it, a fair number of people he'd encountered in the past had some form of mental defense that didn't really feel like a structured spell. Alanic for instance, as well as Rea. Zach also had some sort of mental shield, according to the Spear of Resolve – one she did not feel comfortable tampering with. He really should have suspected something like this earlier.

"Can you also use telepathy and mind reading in unstructured manner, too?" he asked Xvim, acting on a hunch.

"Me, personally? No. I've never had an interest in anything other than defending myself," Xvim said. "But if you're asking whether it's possible, the answer is yes… with caveats. It requires great dedication for rudimentary results – such an aspirant would never be able to duplicate the attack you just casually did, for instance, even after a lifetime of honing their skills."

He knew it – it was just like soul sight. Getting a reduced version of the ability that affects only yourself was doable with a lot of work, but reaching out and applying it to someone else was all but impossible.

"So?" Xvim said impatiently, breaking his contemplation. "The comparison?"

"Err, right. Your shields seems to give you far less feedback than mine do, it's too uniform in composition and your response to attack is very predictable and exploitable for someone who knows what they're doing," said Zorian, relishing the chance to make Xvim on the receiving end of criticism for a change. Xvim simply nodded, giving no indication that his pride was wounded by the barrage. "On the other hand, your shield has far fewer imperfections and you can repair it a lot faster than me."

"Well then," Xvim said, leaning back on his chair. "I guess we know what you'll be practicing today, then, don't we?"

"Alright," said Zorian. He was fine with the idea, really. Improving his mental defenses was always welcome in his mind. "How is that going to work, though? I don't think any classical mind spell can do much to me, barring surprise attacks like that trap you put on the door."

"Surprises come in many forms, mister Kazinski," Xvim said, reaching into his drawers and retrieving a spell rod, which he promptly pointed at Zorian's face. "Allow me to demonstrate."

Zorian hurriedly strengthened his mind shield, determined to weather the incoming mental attack Xvim was launching at him, but what hit him wasn't a mind magic spell. It was some sort of dispelling wave, and his mental shield evaporated upon contact with it like a raindrop hitting a burning oven.

Then the knockout spell hit him.

He resisted. He may have been stripped of his mental shield and caught offguard, but he was still an experienced mage and he went through Kyron's 'resistance training' too – the relatively minor spell Xvim used could not subdue him. But the point was made, regardless.

"A proper mind mage," Xvim said, "would have reconstructed his shield before the second spell had been even cast."

Zorian sighed. Of course they would have.

"Start over?" he guessed.

"Start over," Xvim confirmed.

In a scene that Zorian would rapidly begin to hate with every fiber of his being, Xvim once again pointed the spell rod at his face and blasted his mental shield into oblivion.

break

Following their Monday session, Xvim largely replaced their regular sessions with mind magic related ones, constantly pushing his defenses and giving him long lists of mind magic shaping exercises to try. Most of these exercises were absurdly easy for Zorian, teaching things he already had an instinctive grasp of, but searching the restricted section of the library with his brand new pass yielded some less intuitive ones that actually taught him something new.

He didn't intend to duplicate the circumstances that led to Xvim's new attitude in future restarts. While he'd definitely learned some stuff from Xvim when it came to mental combat, Xvim was ultimately an annoying teacher to learn from and nothing he wanted to teach Zorian absolutely required his help to work.

Besides, his meetings with Tinami weren't really getting anywhere. He wasn't really getting much from them himself, and Tinami basically turned his every attempt at interaction into an interrogation attempt, trying to figure out who had taught him to be as good as he was currently.

She also seemed to have blabbed about his meeting with Raynie, since everyone in class seemed to know about it when he came to the academy on Monday. Probably as revenge for refusing to answer her questions. In any case, that pretty much killed any sort of good will he may have had with Raynie – she accepted that he was not at fault when they talked later in the day, but she still didn't want to be seen anywhere near him after that. It was probably Benisek loudly congratulating him in front of the whole class that really screwed him over when it came to that.

Why did he ever think that hanging around that guy was a good idea?

Oh well, live and learn. Seeing how his social endeavors were in tatters for the rest of the restart, he focused his energies on finding the aranean treasury, his personal experiments and tracking down and interrogating the invaders. The latter two were doing just fine, but his quest for the aranean treasury stubbornly yielded no results. He resolved to take the Filigree Sages up on their offer to take them to the Cyorian settlement in exchange for their help with memory manipulation – maybe aranean explorers would be more successful than him, and more help with his memory reading skills was always welcome. He should also save the Yellow Cavern Guardians from their invader again, just in case they have something new to tell him now that he had some actual experience with mind reading under his belt.

His invasionrelated activities steadily continued as weeks passed, yielding no revolutionary results or critical revelations, but his memory reading skills were getting pretty good and he had found some interesting targets that might actually know something interesting. Unfortunately, his constant attacks had made the invaders cautious and paranoid, and everyone important was always armed and under tight security – Zorian didn't feel confident going after them under such conditions. He would go after them in a future restart, when they hadn't had the forewarning that he was coming for them.

As the end of the restart approached, Zorian laid off the Cultists a little, limiting himself to raiding their caches and monitoring their activities. The caches held no crucial clue or amazing treasure, but one of them did have a whole lot of cash (which Zorian intended to put to good use in future restarts) and the potion collection he stole at the start of the restart looked promising. Kael claimed he would need another restart to finish going through them, but some of them were clearly advanced combat potions that produced clouds of acidic vapor upon breaking, doused everything in unquenchable fire and similar effects. That sounded quite compatible with Zorian's fighting style, in all honesty.

And then, several days before the summer festival, his spying effort finally gave him the alert he had been waiting for: the leadership of the Cult of the Dragon Below issued an order to one of their lowranking groups to kidnap Nochka. It wasn't the same team as it was the last time, nor was the kidnapping scheduled to occur on the same date it had in the previous restart, but his efforts had caught the order anyway.

He ambushed them halfway to the Sashal family house, when they were still herding their giant centipedes through the sewers. His initial idea was to seize control of the centipedes and make them turn on their masters, making it look like they lost control of the beasts. Unfortunately, the mage controlling them knew what he was doing – the moment Zorian attempted to influence the minds of the monsters he clamped down on his control over the centipedes and shouted a warning to the rest of the group that they were under attack.

So Zorian used his backup plan and chucked one of the combat potions he recovered from their cache into their midst. The centipede controller, as well as three of his centipede minions, died on the spot, frozen solid when the bottle broke and the glittering blue liquid made contact with the air. Alas, that revealed his hiding spot, forcing him to shield himself from a barrage of offensive spells the three surviving cultists had started peppering him with.

Fortunately, with no more controller mage to contest his control, the last centipede was child's play to commandeer. Before his three attackers had realized what was happening, the centipede's poisonous pincers bit down on the leg of one of them, and they had to defend themselves from a danger in their own midst.

They never stood a chance from that point on, though they had managed to kill the centipede before Zorian finished them off. His task done, he left the scene, wondering what the Cult of the Dragon Below was going to do now that its plans have been foiled. Were they going to come after Nochka again, with more resources this time? Just how important was she to them, anyway?

He supposed he would find out soon.

break

To Zorian's surprise, Nochka was never attacked after that. Instead, the cultists attacked another family the day after that – this time a rather prominent officer serving in Eldemar's military who happened to be one of those pigeon shifters that Raynie didn't think much about. The man and his wife were unharmed, but their eight year old son was kidnapped by their unknown assailants and no ransom demand had been issued.

Unlike the cultists' attack on the Sashal family, this one garnered a great deal of attention from the newspapers and the authorities. After all, their new target wasn't just some random nobody, but a member of Eldemar's military… and they didn't bother with some flimsy 'monster attack' setup this time, choosing instead to just barge in and kidnap a kid during the night. Quite a bit more attention grabbing.

So. Clearly the cultists needed a shifter, probably a shifter child, for some purpose. Primordial 'summoning', most likely. They needed one so badly they were willing to kick over an anthill just before the invasion, exposing it to a huge risk of discovery.

But it didn't have to be Nochka, apparently.

"Hey, Zorian," Kirielle called out, distracting him from his musings.

He looked towards her and found her trying to paint a face on the next generation wooden golem he had made for her. It had a whole bunch of minor improvements over the old one, but Zorian suspected Kirielle only really cared about one of them – the new version had long, brown 'hair' attached to its head, based on her request. Apparently she decided that wasn't lifelike enough for her.

"What?" he asked.

"Who are you taking out to the dance tomorrow?" she asked.

"It's none of your business," said Zorian. Ugh, he would have to make sure to be out of the house by tomorrow evening, just in case Ilsa sent someone after him again.

"Are you going out with the redheaded girl you're dating?" she asked.

"N Wait a minute, how do you even know about that!?" Zorian protested.

"Kael told me," she said, biting the wooden end of her paintbrush for a minute before adding some fine touches on the golem's new eyebrows.

Stupid Kael… he probably thought this was all so terribly amusing.

"I think you could use a girlfriend," Kirielle said, before turning towards her new golem. "Don't you agree, Kosjenka?"

Just as it had been made to do when presented with something that sounded like a question, the golem nodded its head gravely.

"See, even Kosjenka agre"

"Kiri," Zorian cut her off.

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

<noinclude>
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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 042

2016-04-08T07:46:13Z

Zariur: /* Sum of Its Parts */

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 042

2016-04-08T07:32:05Z

Zariur: /*Sum of Its Parts*/

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T07:10:20Z

Zariur: /* Myriad Clashing Motives */

===Myriad Clashing Motives===

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind-reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought-sharing, mind-reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high-ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool-proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love-stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non-violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"

She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.

Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.

But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.

"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."

"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."

Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.

"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"

"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.

Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.

"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"

"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-"

"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"

"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."

"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."

Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."

"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"

"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."

There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."

"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."

"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter-talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."

"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"

"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."

"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.

And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.

Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.

Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.

Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.

Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.

The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.

"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"

Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.

"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."

Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.

"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"

"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."

"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."

"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."

"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."

Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-"

"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."

Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.

He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.

Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried-and-true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.

He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.

"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.

"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.

"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."

Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.

"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"

Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.

"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"

"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."

"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"

Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…

"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"

"Yeah?" she asked curiously.

"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.

At least she had the decency to blush in response.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.

Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…

Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.

His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.

His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.

The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was ''definitely'' making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.

"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"

"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."

Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.

"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.

"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."

"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"

"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."

Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?

Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.

Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.

"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.

[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.

"You're late," she complained.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."

"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"

"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."

"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."

"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."

"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"

Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.

Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.

"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"

"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."

"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-"

There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.

"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.

He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.

"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.

"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.

"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.

"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"

"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"

"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"

She smiled mischievously at him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.

"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."

And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.

"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to- why are you looking at me like that?"

"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do ''that''? I thought that was impossible!"

"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."

"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"

"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"

"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."

"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.

"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."

"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"

"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"

Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T07:08:29Z

Zariur: /* Myriad Clashing Motives */

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind-reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought-sharing, mind-reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high-ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool-proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love-stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non-violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"

She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.

Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.

But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.

"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."

"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."

Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.

"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"

"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.

Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.

"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"

"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-"

"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"

"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."

"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."

Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."

"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"

"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."

There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."

"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."

"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter-talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."

"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"

"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."

"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.

And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.

Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.

Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.

Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.

Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.

The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.

"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"

Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.

"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."

Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.

"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"

"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."

"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."

"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."

"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."

Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-"

"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."

Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.

He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.

Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried-and-true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.

He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.

"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.

"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.

"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."

Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.

"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"

Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.

"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"

"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."

"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"

Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…

"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"

"Yeah?" she asked curiously.

"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.

At least she had the decency to blush in response.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.

Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…

Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.

His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.

His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.

The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was ''definitely'' making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.

"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"

"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."

Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.

"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.

"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."

"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"

"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."

Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?

Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.

Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.

"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.

[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.

"You're late," she complained.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."

"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"

"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."

"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."

"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."

"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"

Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.

Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.

"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"

"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."

"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-"

There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.

"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.

He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.

"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.

"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.

"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.

"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"

"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"

"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"

She smiled mischievously at him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.

"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."

And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.

"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to- why are you looking at me like that?"

"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do ''that''? I thought that was impossible!"

"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."

"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"

"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"

"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."

"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.

"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."

"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"

"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"

Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T07:04:26Z

Zariur: /* Myriad Clashing Motives */

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T06:57:37Z

Zariur: /*Myriad Clashing Motives*/

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind-reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought-sharing, mind-reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high-ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool-proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

- break -

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love-stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non-violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"

She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.

Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.

But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.

"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."

"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."

Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.

"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"

"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.

Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.

"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"

"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-"

"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"

"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."

"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."

Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."

"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"

"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."

There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."

"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."

"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter-talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."

"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"

"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."

"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.

And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.

-break-

Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.

Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.

Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.

Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.

Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.

The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.

"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"

Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.

"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."

Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.

"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"

"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."

"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."

"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."

"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."

Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-"

"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."

Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.

He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.

Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried-and-true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.

He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.

"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.

"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.

"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."

Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.

"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"

Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.

"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"

"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."

"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"

Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…

"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"

"Yeah?" she asked curiously.

"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.

At least she had the decency to blush in response.

- break -

The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.

Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…

Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.

His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.

His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.

The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was ''definitely'' making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.

"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"

"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."

Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.

"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.

"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."

"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"

"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."

Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?

Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.

Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.

"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.

[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.

"You're late," she complained.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."

"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"

"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."

"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."

"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."

"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"

Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.

Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.

"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"

"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."

"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-"

There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.

"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.

He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.

"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.

"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.

"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.

"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"

"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"

"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"

She smiled mischievously at him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.

"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."

And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.

"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to- why are you looking at me like that?"

"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do ''that''? I thought that was impossible!"

"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."

"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"

"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"

"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."

"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.

"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."

"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"

"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"

Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T06:38:28Z

Zariur: /*Myriad Clashing Motives*/

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind-reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought-sharing, mind-reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high-ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool-proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

- break -

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love-stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non-violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"

She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.

Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.

But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.

"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."

"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."

Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.

"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"

"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.

Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.

"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"

"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-"

"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"

"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."

"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."

Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."

"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"

"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."

There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."

"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."

"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter-talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."

"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"

"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."

"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.

And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.

-break-

Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.

Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.

Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.

Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.

Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.

The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.

"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"

Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.

"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."

Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.

"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"

"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."

"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."

"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."

"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."

Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-"

"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."

Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.

He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.

Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-¬evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried¬-and-¬true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.

He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.

"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.

"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.

"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."

Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.

"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"

Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.

"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"

"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."

"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"

Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…

"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"

"Yeah?" she asked curiously.

"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.

At least she had the decency to blush in response.

- break -

The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.

Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…

Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.

His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.

His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.
The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was definitely making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.

"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"

"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."

Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.

"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.

"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."

"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"

"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."

Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?

Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.

Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.

"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.

[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.

"You're late," she complained.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."

"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"

"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."

"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."

"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."

"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"

Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.

Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.

"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-¬upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"

"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."

"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-"

There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.

"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.

He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.

"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.

"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-¬take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.

"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.

"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"

"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"

"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"

She smiled mischievously at him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.

"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."

And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.

"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to- why are you looking at me like that?"

"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do that? I thought that was impossible!"

"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."

"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"

"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"

"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."

"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.

"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."

"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"

"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"

Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T06:30:52Z

Zariur: /* Myriad Clashing Motives */

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind-reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought-sharing, mind-reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high-ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool-proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

- break -

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love-stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non-violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"

She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.

Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie.

He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.

But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.

"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."

"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."

Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.

"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"

"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.

Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.

"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"

"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-"

"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"

"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."

"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."

Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."

"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"

"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."

There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."

"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."

"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter-talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."

"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"

"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."

"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.

And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.

-break-

Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.

Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.

Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.

Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.

Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.

The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.

"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"

Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.

"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."

Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.

"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"

"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."

"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."

"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."

"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."

Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-"

"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."

Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.

He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.

Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-¬evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried¬-and-¬true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.

He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.

"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"

"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.

"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.

"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."

Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.

"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"

Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.

"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"

"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."

"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"

Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…

"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"

"Yeah?" she asked curiously.

"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.

At least she had the decency to blush in response.

- break -

The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.

Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…

Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.

His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.

His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.
The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was definitely making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.

Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.

"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"

"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."

Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.

"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.

"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."

"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."

"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"

"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."

Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?

Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.

Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.

"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.

[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.

"You're late," she complained.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."

"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"

"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."

"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."

"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."

"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"

Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.

Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.

"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-¬upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."

She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"

"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."

"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-"

There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.

"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.

He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.

"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.

"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-¬take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.

"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.

"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"

"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"

"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"

She smiled mischievously at him.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.

"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."

And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.

"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to- why are you looking at me like that?"

"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do that? I thought that was impossible!"

"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."

"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"

"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"

"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."

"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.

"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."

"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"

"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"

Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

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Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T06:10:00Z

Zariur: /* Myriad Clashing Motives */

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-¬magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-¬hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-¬grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind¬reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-¬connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-¬"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought¬sharing, mind¬reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high¬ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool¬proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

- break -

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster¬-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love¬stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non¬violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"
She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.
Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.
But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.
"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."
"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."
Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.
"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"
"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.
Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.
"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"
"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-¬"
"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"
"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."
"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."
Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."
"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"
"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."
There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."
"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."
"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter¬talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."
"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"
"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."
"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.
And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.
-break-
¬ Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.
Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.
Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.
Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-¬sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.
Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.
The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.
"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"
Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.
"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."
Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.
"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"
"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."
"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."
"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."
"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."
Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-¬"
"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."
Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.
He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.
Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-¬evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried¬-and-¬true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.
He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.
"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"
"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.
"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.
"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."
Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.
"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"
Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.
"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"
"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."
"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"
Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…
"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"
"Yeah?" she asked curiously.
"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.
At least she had the decency to blush in response.
- ¬ break -
¬The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.
Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…
Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.
His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.
His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.
The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was definitely making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.
Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.
"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"
"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."
Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.
"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.
"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."
"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."
"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"
"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."
Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?
Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.
Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.
"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.
[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.
"You're late," she complained.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."
"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"
"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."
"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."
"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."
"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"
Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.
Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.
"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-¬upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."
She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"
"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."
"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-¬"
There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.
"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.
He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.
"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.
"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-¬take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.
"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.
"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"
"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"
"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"
She smiled mischievously at him.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.
"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."
And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.
"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to¬ why are you looking at me like that?"
"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do that? I thought that was impossible!"
"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."
"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"
"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"
"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."
"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.
"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."
"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"
"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"
Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T06:05:36Z

Zariur: /*Myriad Clashing Motives*/

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.

Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.

"Ask," he immediately fired back.

He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.

For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.

She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-¬magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…

With Kirielle's trinket-¬hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-¬grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts.

As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind¬reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.

He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.

"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"

"Only the very talented or the very well-¬connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."

"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.

"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention ''that''.

"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."

"What?" asked Zorian flatly.

"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."

"Daimen had ''nothing'' to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-¬"

"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."

"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.

There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.

Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?

"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"

"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."

"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"

"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.

"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."

There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.

"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.

"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."

Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought¬sharing, mind¬reading rats.

Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.

Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high¬ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool¬proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.

He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…

By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.

He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.

- break -

The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster¬-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).

With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.

There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love¬stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?

He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non¬violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.

The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.

The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.

How annoying.

"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"
She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.
Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.
But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.
"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."
"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."
Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.
"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"
"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.
Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.
"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"
"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-¬"
"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"
"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."
"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."
Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."
"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"
"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."
There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."
"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."
"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter¬talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."
"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"
"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."
"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.
And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.
-break-
¬ Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.
Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.
Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.
Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-¬sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.
Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.
The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.
"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"
Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.
"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."
Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.
"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"
"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."
"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."
"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."
"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."
Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-¬"
"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."
Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.
He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.
Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-¬evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried¬-and-¬true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.
He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.
"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"
"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.
"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.
"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."
Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.
"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"
Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.
"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"
"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."
"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"
Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…
"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"
"Yeah?" she asked curiously.
"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.
At least she had the decency to blush in response.
- ¬ break -
¬The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.
Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…
Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.
His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.
His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.
The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was definitely making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.
Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.
"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"
"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."
Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.
"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.
"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."
"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."
"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"
"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."
Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?
Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.
Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.
"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.
[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.
"You're late," she complained.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."
"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"
"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."
"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."
"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."
"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"
Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.
Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.
"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-¬upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."
She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"
"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."
"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-¬"
There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.
"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.
He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.
"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.
"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-¬take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.
"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.
"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"
"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"
"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"
She smiled mischievously at him.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.
"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."
And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.
"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to¬ why are you looking at me like that?"
"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do that? I thought that was impossible!"
"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."
"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"
"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"
"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."
"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.
"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."
"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"
"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"
Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 041

2016-04-08T05:46:57Z

Zariur: /*Myriad Clashing Motives*/

=Myriad Clashing Motives=

The start of the newest loop differed little from the previous one – he got on the train to Cyoria with Kirielle in tow, entertained her with feats of magic as well as disguised (and more than a little embellished) accounts of his own adventures to stave off boredom, and even talked with Ibery for a bit. Just for a bit, though – she wasn't terribly interested in him this time, since he'd finished telling stories to Kirielle by the time they stopped at Korsa, and didn't demonstrate any amazing spell casting skills while she was in the compartment.

"Here we are," said Zorian, stepping off the train and helping Kirielle finagle her luggage through the train wagon door. It was kind of cute how she insisted she would carry her luggage on her own, but he knew from previous restarts that this resolution wouldn't last very long. Well, whatever, he'd let her live in denial for now. "Welcome to Cyoria, dearest sister."

"I'm your only sister," she shot back, curious eyes looking around the massive train station she found herself in.

"You know I'm telling the truth, then," Zorian said blandly.
Kirielle ignored him in favor of studying the colorful storefronts, the huge clock hanging from the train station ceiling, and the flowing masses of people milling around the place. Truth be told, she handled the sight a lot better than Zorian had when he disembarked in Cyoria for the first time ever.

"Big," she concluded eventually.

"Cyoria is a big city and an important transport hub," said Zorian simply. "They get lots of traffic."

"Do you mind if we look around for a bit?" Kirielle asked.

"You mean browse some stores for interesting trinkets?" Zorian guessed. She pouted at him. "Sure, we can do that. I'm only buying you one souvenir, though, and nothing too ridiculous."

"What qualifies as 'too ridiculous'?" she asked, eyeing the storefronts speculatively.

"Use your common sense," Zorian deadpanned. Like hell was he getting into a definition game with her.

"And if I'm not sure about something?" she prompted.
"Ask," he immediately fired back.
He could probably buy anything she set her eyes on, especially considering he was about to get a massive cash infusion in a few days, but he didn't think it a good idea to encourage her excesses like that. Kirielle had never been very keen on restraint to begin with and he shuddered to think what would happen if he decided to pander to her whims too much.
For the next hour and a half, Zorian simply followed Kirielle around as she flitted from one store to another like a drunken butterfly, following no pattern he could discern. Then again, he didn't really invest much thought into figuring it out – he mostly spent his time practicing his mind sense, trying to process the information he was getting about the crowds around them. Large, closely-packed crowds like the ones at Cyoria's main train station still tended to ruin his mind sense, reducing the feedback into an incomprehensible, blurry blob of emotions and strange signals. He was getting better at picking out specific minds out of that background fog, though. He practiced the procedure by constantly keeping track of Kirielle's mind, turning her into a sort of a telepathic anchor, and then trying to pick out the minds of random people from the crowd to get a better feel for them. It was slow, annoying work, but he was getting sick of having his empathy and mind sense effectively shut down every time he encountered a crowd.
She picked a snow globe in the end. Admittedly, it was a very nice snow globe – the little house and the trees inside it were incredibly detailed and well done, almost as if someone had literally shrunk a house and its immediate environs and placed them in a glass sphere. Clearly some fairly sophisticated magic had been used to produce the thing, even if the end product was completely non-¬magical to his senses, and the globe was priced accordingly… but it was better than Zorian had feared so he bought it without complaint. Idly, he wondered if his alteration skills were good enough to produce a globe like that…
With Kirielle's trinket-¬hunting done, they set off towards the main plaza and its fountain, just like they had in the previous restart. Unlike the previous restart, Zorian took them through the park right from the start – there was really no need for them to meet the cranium rat swarm. Quite the contrary, it was an unnecessary and unacceptable risk, as Kirielle's mind was completely unshielded and there was always a possibility that the rats could figure something important or attention-¬grabbing from Kirielle's stray thoughts
. As it turned out, that had been a pretty important change. Having never seen the cranium rats, Kirielle obviously couldn't tell Rea about them, so the topic simply never came up. And apparently he greatly underestimated how much he'd disturbed Rea in their previous first meeting, because keeping quiet about the terrifying mind¬reading powers of the rats made Rea a lot less on guard around him this time around… as well as much more insistent about them staying for a while. Hmph.
He let Rea and Kirielle 'convince him' to delay their departure. As far as he could tell, this was the best moment to find something out from Rea's mind, before she had time to grow suspicious of him, and he had every intention of using it to the hilt.
"A student of Cyoria's Royal Academy? Pretty prestigious place to study at for a boy hailing from a small rural town, if you don't mind me saying," Rea remarked. "Not that there is anything wrong with being from a small rural town – we're from one ourselves, after all – but doesn't Cyoria's Royal Academy accept only the, ah…"
"Only the very talented or the very well-¬connected?" guessed Zorian. It was what most people who weren't personally involved with the institution thought, after all. Seeing Rea nod in agreement, he continued. "Not really. The admission process is a combination of how well you do on the entrance exams, whether you receive a recommendation from a member of the academy staff or someone else suitable famous and whether denying you admission would offend someone particularly powerful and influential. Basically, so long as you can pay the admission fee and do well enough in the entrance exams, you are guaranteed to get in."
"Is that how you got in?" Rea asked curiously.
"I was in the top 50 based on exam results," said Zorian proudly. He was 48th, but he wasn't going to mention that.
"Brother is plenty talented," Kirielle said suddenly. "But, um, they probably also accepted him because of our brother Daimen. At least that's what mother said happened."
"What?" asked Zorian flatly.
"Umm…" Kirielle stammered. "Please don't be mad because mother told me not to tell you this because you would get mad at me but mother said you and Fortov were only accepted so easily because Daimen got so big and successful..."
"Daimen had nothing to do with it," Zorian said, grinding his teeth in annoyance. "I achieved good enough results that my admission had never been in question! Mother is, like usual, ascribing everything good in the world on Daimen and lumping me with that lout Fortov in order to-¬"
"I believe you, mister Kazinski," Rea interrupted him. "Calm down. There is no reason to jump down your little sister's throat like that."
"Right, sorry," Zorian said, with a little bit more bitterness than he intended.
There was a short, awkward silence for a few seconds. Great. Real smooth there, Zorian.
Damn it, why did he let this get under his skin like that?
"So, I'm assuming your brother is that Daimen Kazinski?" Rea asked finally. "The famous one?"
"Yes," Zorian sighed. "The famous one."
"Wait, your other brother is famous?" Nochka asked Kirielle innocently. "What for?"
"Things," Kirielle shrugged uncomfortably, saying nothing else on the topic. Probably trying not to upset him further by continuing the discussion.
"Daimen is an 'adventuring archeologist'," Zorian said, doing his best to suppress his annoyance with the whole thing. "He leads expeditions to dangerous areas in search of lost artifacts and ruins. Or even rare plants and magical creatures, even though that should technically be outside the purview of archeology. He has been very successful in this, so he gets lot of attention from people."
There. It was an incomplete explanation, yes, but not really misleading or anything. Hopefully it would suffice.
"I haven't heard anything about him for more than a year now," Rea remarked.
"He's in Koth," Zorian said. "Apparently he found something very important in the jungle, but he's been very secretive about it. I'm sure you'll hear all about it when he finally deigns to unveil it to the world."
Thankfully, the topic of conversation shifted away from Daimen at that point. Zorian decided to take advantage of the somewhat personal nature of Rea's questions to ask about their personal details. Her story was functionally identical to what she told him in the previous restart, but her surface thoughts were far more easier to read this time, what with her not being primed to defend her secrets from a swarm of thought¬sharing, mind¬reading rats.
Her surface thoughts told him an interesting story. For one thing, Sauh was not a cat shifter. Only Rea and Nochka were. Rea had been a criminal, but then she met Sauh and decided to leave that life behind to be with him. How… romantic. Except that neither Rea's former associates not the rest of the townsfolk were willing to let Rea forget what her past was, so the family packed up their things and left to somewhere where nobody knew who they were and where they could start anew. Where Nochka could grow up without her mother's past sabotaging her at every turn.
Damn, he was really starting to get mad about what the Cult of Dragon Below had in store for them… he didn't think he could just coldly watch as Nochka's parents are murdered and she herself kidnapped. Though, thinking about it now, it wasn't such a problem in this particular restart – his memory reading was nowhere near good enough yet to get much out of high¬ranking cultists, even if he could track them down by following Nochka's movements. And who said he was even capable of preventing her kidnapping in the first place? It wasn't like he had a fool¬proof plan to stop it, after all – if the kidnapping proceeded under some different schedule than the one in the previous restart, he'd basically have to monitor the Sashal family day and night to intercept it.
He decided to put his original plan on hold for now and see how things developed. Who knows, maybe the last restart was a fluke and kidnapping Nochka wasn't something the cultists routinely did in every loop. He would have to put some kind of tracker on her just in case, though…
By the time they were done talking, the rain had already started falling outside. Rea tried to argue that they should wait for a while until it lessens, but Zorian knew that wasn't happening for quite a while and refused. He enveloped himself and Kirielle in a weather shield to block the rain and bid the Sashal family goodbye.
He considered it a proof of his growing skill and mana reserves that his shield held strong for the entire length of their journey, letting them arrive at Imaya's place completely dry and unwinded.
- break - ¬
The next few days were fairly routine – he went to Knyazov Dveri to get himself plenty of crystallized mana, sold said crystals in various stores in Cyoria for large amounts of cash, accepted Taiven's offer of joining her team in running monster¬-killing missions and tested whether his stored notebooks had survived the restart (they had).
With the start of classes on Monday, however, Zorian decided to go out of his comfort zone a little and initiate contact with one of his classmates. Specifically, Raynie. He was currently investigating shifters, after all, and she was supposed to be a wolf shifter herself. Maybe she knew some crucial information? It didn't hurt to ask.
There was one big, obvious problem with his idea, however – Raynie got a lot of love confessions and date invitations from her many love¬stricken fans, and would probably assume his attempt to talk to her was just more of the same. And she was not interested in love and dating, she made that very clear over the years. How could he ensure his attempt to talk to her wouldn't be misunderstood?
He agonized for an entire day over which method of approach he should use, before deciding he was being stupid. So what if she got the wrong idea when he asked to talk to her? Though she categorically rejected every man who tried to court her, her rejections have always been polite and non¬violent to his knowledge… except for that one time she punched a guy in the face, but everyone who was there agreed that guy got a little more grabby than was proper. Bottom line was, he could just approach her directly before class and ask for a talk, and the worst that could happen was that she could tell him to get lost without hearing him out. Hardly the end of the world, and with the time loop in place he would have a chance to try again in the next restart with a different approach.
The worst didn't happen, though. When Zorian asked to talk to her after class, Raynie simply gave a little sigh and spared a lingering glance at the ceiling, as if asking the gods what she had done to deserve this, before agreeing to his request.
The class came and went, and the classroom gradually emptied of people until only Zorian, Raynie and Kiana were left. Why was Kiana there? Hell if Zorian knew, but her presence was clearly not unintended by Raynie so he opted not to say anything. Did Kiana know about her friend being a shifter? If not, then breaching the topic in front of her was probably not something Raynie would appreciate.
How annoying.
"Sorry about this," Raynie said. "I know you probably wanted this to be private, but Kiana insisted on staying behind too and, well…"
She shrugged helplessly. She sounded honestly apologetic about it, and if he were incapable of sensing people's emotions, he would have probably believed her too. He gave Kiana a glance, and she quickly straightened her posture and fixed a small scowl on her face. Probably trying to look intimidating or something. Her real emotions were a mix of boredom and impatience, though – she probably considered the entire thing a massive chore.
Zorian almost cracked a smile at the whole setup. The funny thing was that if he was going to ask anyone out, it would probably be Kiana, not Raynie. He'd kind of had his eyes on her before he'd gotten stuck in this whole time loop business, in an idle, daydreaming sort of way. If he remembered correctly, Zach caught him staring at her once, in that fateful first restart. A part of him wanted to ask Kiana out right now, just to see how the two of them would react to such a development.
But no, that would only be amusing for a short while and he would have to live with all the created drama for the rest of the month. Besides, his reasons for liking Kiana were extremely shallow and based entirely around her looks – he felt she was just as beautiful as Raynie, and preferred her black hair to Raynie's red. That was it, really. For all he knew, her personality could be absolutely atrocious.
"If you're okay with her presence, then so am I," Zorian said. "That said, do you mind if I erect a privacy bubble around us? Neolu and company are hanging by the door, trying to eavesdrop, and I think we'd all be happier if they did not hear this."
"Ugh," Raynie grunted, rising from her seat and marching off towards the door. "There is no need for that. I'll be back in a moment."
Through his mind sense, Zorian could feel the four mental signatures of their eavesdroppers flee before Raynie's approach. They were already halfway down the corridor by the time she opened the door, and in less than a minute Raynie was back in her seat.
"Well then," she began, "now that the spy brigade is gone, we can finally get this over with. What did you want to talk to me about, Mister Kazinski?"
"Does Kiana know about shifters?" Zorian asked.
Evidently she did, if her shocked reaction was of any indication.
"What?" Raynie stammered. "How do you know about that?"
"I asked a scholar named Vani to tell me about shifters and-¬"
"Vani from Knyazov Dveri?" Raynie asked, interrupting him. "Aren't you supposed to be from Cirin?"
"I am," Zorian confirmed. "That doesn't mean I am forbidden from visiting Knyazov Dveri on occasion. I have friends there."
"Of course you have," Raynie sighed. "Look… Zorian. I kept this a secret for a reason."
Zorian nodded in agreement. "That's why I asked whether Kiana knows."
"I know," Kiana piped in, crossing her arms in front of her. "And I'll be charitable and assume you'll keep it a secret, just as I have, despite being friends with that blabbermouth Benisek. So what exactly do you want from Raynie anyway?"
"I made acquaintances with a couple of cat shifters, and I wanted to hear an opinion of another shifter about some things related to that," said Zorian. "I figured I'd ask Raynie first and see if she was willing to answer some questions."
There was a brief silence as both girls digested this. "I… uh… this is way too heavy of a topic for a free period," Raynie decided. "Our next class is about to start soon."
"Well, yes," agreed Zorian. "It doesn't have to be now. I just want to know if you're even willing to help me out."
"I might as well," Raynie said dismissively. "My main concern about shifter¬talk had always been about not wanting people to know I was one to begin with, and the cat is apparently already out of the bag. Besides, if you're hanging out with the likes of cat shifters, you're going to need some advice. No offense to your new acquaintances, but cat shifters tends to be unsavory characters."
"I did hear some rumors about that," Zorian admitted. "So how is this going to work, then?"
"I don't know," Raynie admitted. "I'm going to have to think about it. You've ambushed me out of nowhere with this. I'll get back to you when I figure out a time and place."
"Don't contact us, we'll contact you," Kiana summarized.
And then they were out of time and ended the meeting in favor of rushing to the next class. Over all, Zorian was pleased with the outcome… even if the looks and whispers of his classmates signified they had noticed the interaction and that the resulting fallout had yet to be determined.
-break-
¬ Raynie didn't seem to be in a hurry to organize a meeting with him after their talk, but Zorian didn't take it against her. It was nothing urgent, and he had plenty of things to busy himself with in the meantime.
Currently, that meant combing the aranea settlement for any hints regarding where they kept their treasury. He wasn't having much luck yet, but then again he didn't expect to be lucky so soon – it would be a pretty terrible secret treasury if all it took was a single day of dedicated searching to track it down.
Zorian wandered the tunnels of the settlement, his mind sense straining in an attempt to detect some surviving aranea hiding somewhere. He didn't find any. The aranean settlement was a silent tomb, unmoving corpses of giant spiders scattered throughout its expanse and undisturbed by scavengers due to the wards the aranea had placed on it. Occasionally his mind sense detected a mental signature, but it inevitably turned out to be some dungeon denizen trying to sneak past he wards of the settlement or one of the few surviving male aranea.
Not that the latter were wholly useless – though sub-¬sapient, they were still representative of what the aranea were like, and didn't have the mental defenses that female aranea did. Zorian made sure to capture each one he encountered so he could read their minds for information about the location of the treasury – more out of desire to practice his memory reading on something related to aranea than out of any real hope that they knew something.
Though he had to say the males were a lot smarter than Zorian had thought they would be, considering what he'd been told by the female aranea – they were actually closer to animals such as ravens and pigs than something dumb like a horse or a dog. Three of them even worked together in order to ambush him, and Zorian only narrowly avoided getting bitten by the one of them.
The aranea were only weakly poisonous, according to what he'd been told by them, but he would still rather not tempt fate like that.
"Damn," Zorian swore. Nothing, not even a clue as to where he should look next. "That's it; I'm done with this for today. Kael, you done with your examination yet?"
Kael shifted his attention from the curled, motionless corpse of some unfortunate aranea towards him, his mind slowly switching gears from his focused work state into something capable of holding a conversation.
"Hmm? Oh, that," Kael mumbled. "Yes, I checked them over for soul magic ages ago. I can find no traces of any soul magic being performed on them. None whatsoever and it's honestly freaking me out. If you hadn't told me what really happened, I'd have assumed these bodies to be very sophisticated meat puppets devoid of souls to begin with, not sapient creatures whose souls have somehow been removed. I've just finished a more comprehensive medical scan, however, and there is no way these bodies are meat puppets. I'm baffled. This doesn't look like the aftermath of any soul spell I know of."
Damn. He had really been hoping Kael would be able to find something.
"You really can't tell me anything else?" Zorian urged. "Anything?"
"No. Well, maybe," Kael said, hesitating. Zorian urged him to continue. "While my medical scans show these spiders indeed died on the first day of the restart, they died somewhere after two in the morning."
"Ah, I see where you're going with that," Zorian said after a brief pause. "That implies that the time loop starts almost six hours before I wake up."
"Yes," Kael agreed. "I'm not sure how useful that is to you, but it's interesting."
"Very," Zorian agreed. "Especially if I can somehow force myself to wake up at the start of the time loop as opposed to when I usually do."
Kael nodded and before suddenly checking on his pocket watch. "Ah, I didn't even realize so much time has passed. I promised Kana I would take her to the park today, do you think we could-¬"
"Yes," Zorian preemptively agreed. "That's why I interrupted you in the first place. I've had enough of this place for one day. Just gather your things and I'll recall us back to the basement."
Five minutes later Kael and Zorian were teleported back to Imaya's basement – or rather, the large stone that served as an anchor for Zorian's recall spell. The recall spell was quickly becoming one of Zorian's favorites, due to its ability to cut through many forms of magical interference and anti-teleportation wards. It would be even better if maintaining a recall link with each anchor stone didn't incur a running mana cost, but you can't have everything, he supposed. He bid goodbye to Kael, who had his own duties to attend to, and went out to seek out Kirielle.
He found her in the kitchen, telling stories to Imaya and playing with the miniature golem he'd made for her. Amusingly, no one in the house seemed to realize just how much money and skill it took to create that thing – it was just a fancy magical doll to them, and they barely gave it a second's thought. To Zorian, though, that little golem was very special for one simple reason: he had created the blueprint for it in the previous restart.
Although Zorian had spent a lot of time in the restarts messing with spell formula and magic item creation, the truth was that he had been somewhat reluctant to truly sink a lot of his time into the field because he had to effectively recreate his designs purely from memory with every restart. While that was good in a sense, as it forced him to re-¬evaluate and refine his designs each time instead of relying on tried¬-and-¬true designs, the fact of the matter was that it slowed things down to a crawl whenever he was forced to recreate everything from scratch over and over again. He had effectively been limited to fairly simple projects, but now that he could actually transfer notebooks across restarts, he was freed of these limitations and could truly start advancing in the field.
He greeted Imaya, announcing his return, and then turned to his little sister.
"Hello, Kiri," he greeted. "Are you ready for your magic lesson?"
"Yes!" she agreed enthusiastically.
"So does that mean you read the first three chapters of that book I gave you?" Zorian asked.
"Err, yeah," she agreed, much less enthusiastically than before. "I, uh, may have skipped a few parts."
Zorian gave her a knowing look. He had a feeling that if he quizzed her on what she read, he would find she skipped far more than 'a few parts'.
"Alright," he said, putting a small black cube on the table in front of them. "This here is the mana absorption cube. Its function is very simple – it will absorb any mana you let out, after which the carved lines you see on its surface will begin to glow. It sounds useless, but beginner mages like yourself have trouble sensing their own mana flow, and thus cannot really determine whether their efforts are achieving any results. This will help keep you on target. Later, when you start extruding mana out of your body reliably, we can move onto purposely feeding mana into the cube in order to build greater control…"
Kirielle took the cube carefully into her hands, as if afraid it was going to bite her, and started tracing the lines carved into its surface with her fingers.
"Did you also learn using one of those things?" she asked. "I thought that was done using those one of those glass balls you brought home after your second year?"
"I did, but I discovered those things aren't really the best tool for the job," Zorian said. "They're mass produced, with an eye for price instead of maximum effectiveness. That cube you're holding in your hand is a bit better than that."
"Oh," she said, giving him a surprised look. "Was it… expensive?"
Well, technically Zorian had produced that cube on his own, but the materials he used weren't exactly cheap…
"Yes, but don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I don't mind spending money on this, so long as you actually take your lessons seriously. And Kirielle?"
"Yeah?" she asked curiously.
"You really need to actually read those three chapters for our next lesson, and I'd appreciate if you didn't lie to me like that in the future," he said.
At least she had the decency to blush in response.
- ¬ break -
¬The first week of the restart was a pretty big success in Zorian's eyes. True, he never did manage to find the aranean treasury, but everything else was going along nicely.
Red Robe had once again neglected to give any information to the invaders, so they were stumbling around just as badly as they had in the previous restart. This was the second time in a row that he had done that, and that was taking into account just the restarts that Zorian knew about – it had probably started way earlier than this. Did Red Robe completely give up on supporting the invasion after their confrontation? That was more than a little strange, considering how dedicated he'd been about helping them out before. Maybe he supported the invasion primarily as a way to keep Zach busy with something and mask the aftershocks of his own actions? If so, the fact that he revealed himself to Zach would kind of make such trickery pointless…
Regardless of the reason, Red Robe's absence made things very convenient for Zorian. The moment he realized Red Robe was once again ignoring the invaders, he immediately launched a series of raids on the known invaders and their cultist allies. He found nothing new yet, but every memory dive he did made him one step closer to opening the matriarch's memory packet so he considered himself successful there regardless. He also scouted a couple of the emergency resource caches that he'd found in the last restart, and even looted a particularly badly defended one. That particular cache holds nothing except a large quantity of unlabeled potion bottles, which was slightly disappointing. He handed them off to Kael to see if he could figure out what they were and find a use of them. He'd feel bad about taking advantage of the morlock boy so much, except that Kael actually seemed enthusiastic about all the work Zorian was sending his way, so Zorian figured it was okay.
His monster hunts with Taiven were more successful this time around as well, since he had knowledge of where the monster nests and main migration routes were from his previous restarts. Taiven was ecstatic at by their results, though Zorian had noticed her giving him some strange looks when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Did she somehow realize how improbable his claim of divining the locations of the monsters was? Well, no matter – since she never actually confronted him about it, he decided to continue using his foreknowledge to improve results of the hunts and deal with the fallout when (and if) it comes.
His quest for getting himself a better library pass was also going along nicely, even though it was still in the beginning stages. The method he chose was extremely simple: he hung around the library entrance during its busiest hours and covertly scanned the minds of everyone who entered and left, looking for people with higher passes who weren't regular visitors of the library. After all, while the academy was stingy about giving higher authorizations to its students, actual holders of higher authorizations weren't exactly rare. Plenty of mages had them, and few of them were using them with any degree of regularity. If he chose his target correctly, they would never even realize their library pass had gone missing. And hopefully, the library would also never realize the holder of the card was not the same person whose name was printed on it.
The crowning achievement of this week, however, was the session with Xvim he was currently attending. Xvim was usually extremely punctual about their sessions, ending them at exactly their mandated time – no more, no less. Today, however, Zorian had been so good about meeting his ridiculous demands that Xvim decided to quietly extend their session beyond their allotted time. Zorian said nothing, simply continuing his endless repetition of the tasks Xvim gave him, but internally he was smiling. Even if Xvim retained his stony facade, the fact he decided to break off with his usual routine told Zorian that he was definitely making progress in unnerving his annoying mentor.
Unfortunately, as much as he'd like to see how long Xvim intended to keep him here if he did not complain, Zorian had other obligations to fulfill today.
"A training session with someone else, you say," Xvim asked curiously. "And what, pray tell, is this training session about, to trump the meeting with your mentor in importance?"
"It's something Professor Zileti arranged for me," Zorian said, invoking the authority of another teacher. "I'm meeting another student so we can practice our mind magic together."
Xvim stared at him for a second. If Zorian had expected some kind of shock at his admission, or a request at confirmation that, yes, he indeed meant 'mind magic'… he was disappointed. Xvim just stared at him for a bit, tapped his finger on the table once, and then reached some kind of decision.
"Why have you not notified me of this sooner?" he asked.
"I meant no offense, sir," Zorian assured him smoothly. "It's just that this was our first meeting, and you immediately had me start with shaping exercises when I entered the room. I felt it would be imprudent to interrupt your lesson for such an ultimately irrelevant detail."
"Hmph. And you say you're practicing with another student? The blind teaching the blind…" Xvim said, shaking his head in disapproval. He then made a dismissive gesture with his hand, shooing him away. "Well, then. Go. I'm not going to keep you from your duties."
"Thank you, sir," Zorian said, rising from his seat. "I am to see you on next Friday, then?"
"No, come see me on Monday after classes," Xvim said. "I need to see this mind magic of yours in action before I can plan for our next session."
Huh. Now this he did not expect. Was Xvim implying he could help him develop his mind magic somehow? He did have a very good mental shield, admittedly, but was still skeptical that the man could help him in that regard. And he was also more than a little baffled that Xvim was even willing to help with that, even if it did turn out that he was some kind of mind magic expert… he thought the man was all about the shaping exercises and other basics?
Deciding he was going to have to wait till Monday to see what Xvim had in mind, Zorian left the man's office and went off to meet Tinami for their mind magic practice.
Well, he technically did not know he was meeting Tinami in particular, but considering that the setup was largely the same as it was the last time around (he told Ilsa about his mind magic and requested a practice partner), he didn't think the identity of the other student was that much of a mystery. And indeed, when he arrived at the assigned classroom, he found Tinami already there, waiting for him.
"You are the other mind mage?" Tinami asked incredulously.
[Yes,] he answered telepathically, causing her to flinch in shock. She narrowed her eyes at him in response.
"You're late," she complained.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Xvim unexpectedly decided to extend our tutoring session beyond bounds. I only managed to get out of it a few minutes ago."
"You chose Xvim as your mentor?" Tinami asked. "Why?"
"I live in Cirin," Zorian explained. "That's pretty far from Cyoria. By the time Ilsa managed to get to me, all the other mentors had filled their quotas and Xvim was the only one left."
"Is he as bad as they say?" she asked. "He had me do shaping exercises for two hours straight today."
"Ouch. Okay, I guess that justifies being a few minutes late," she admitted. "We should probably reschedule our future meetings, just in case this keeps happening."
"Probably," Zorian agreed. Not even he knew what Xvim would choose to do next, and he had lived through this month many, many times by now. "Anything important I should know before we start?"
Just like the last time they did this, Tinami was largely interested in practicing her telepathy and ability to read surface thoughts. She was rather bad at it by Zorian's standards, but she improved rapidly under his direction. As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with her. He could access the senses of other humans quite easily at this point, but trying to actually function while getting two sets of sensory inputs was a massive challenge. Especially if he and Tinami were looking in completely different directions and such.
Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger… but this way he got to talk to one of his classmates, which was one of his resolutions for this restart. It didn't hurt that cooperating with Tinami could be potentially quite useful, considering who her family was. Also quite dangerous, since they were known to dabble in mind magic and necromancy, but he was willing to take that chance. It was too bad he was essentially starting from scratch with her, though – the last time he'd done this with Tinami, he had introduced her to the aranea and they'd overshadowed him in her eyes by quite a margin. Because of that, they'd interacted very little outside their practice sessions. Then again, considering he had simply viewed her as a mind magic practice dummy back then and never even tried to get to know her, he had no right to complain. Now, though, there was no convenient nearby aranea to introduce her to, even if he wanted to… he would have to catch her attention in some other way.
"Okay, I've just got to ask – where on earth did you learn how to perform mind magic so well?" Tinami asked. "I've been learning these things for years, under some very good tutors, and you're just effortlessly one-¬upping me in every application of it I can think of. How come?"
"It's a secret," Zorian said bluntly. "Ask me later when we get to know each other better."
She quirked her eyebrow at him. "When, huh?"
"When, if, whatever suits your fancy. The point is that we don't know each other well enough for me to reveal something that personal to you."
"That's fair enough," she sighed, leaning back in her chair. "It's really annoying, though. I know I'm not exactly a genius in the field but-¬"
There was a knock on the door. Zorian and Tinami both looked at each other and shrugged, mystified about who could be knocking on an empty classroom door at this time of day.
"I'll go check," Zorian said, rising from his seat. Chances were that it was someone looking for one of them, and knowing his luck that meant they were looking for him.
He opened the door, only to find Kiana standing behind them.
"Um, hi?" Zorian said uncertainly.
"Hi," Kiana said, sticking her head inside the classroom quickly in order to see if they were alone. She did a double-¬take when she saw Tinami and gave him an incredulous look.
"It's private," Zorian said crankily, preempting any sort of question. He stepped out of the classroom and closed the door behind him so they could have some semblance of privacy while they talked.
"I didn't say anything," she said, raising her hands in front of her defensively. "I just came to tell you that Raynie has finally decided to meet with you again. It's at ten in the morning tomorrow, at this address." She pushed a folded piece of paper into his hands. "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but don't spread this around, okay?"
"Like I'd feed the rumor mill like that," Zorian scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Will you be there too, standing guard again?"
"No, but the owner of that restaurant is a friend of Raynie so don't get any funny ideas," she said. "Oh, that reminds me – Raynie wants you to know that this is definitely not a date. Even though it's a private meeting in a restaurant between two teenagers…"
She smiled mischievously at him.
"Hey, aren't you supposed to be on your friend's side?" he complained.
"I was just joking," she sighed. "Gods, you're just as humorless as she is. Heavens help us if you two really do end up getting together in the end… see you around, Zorian."
And then she just turned and left without even waiting for his response. She… wasn't really how he'd imagined her to be. Shaking his head, he stuffed the paper with the address in his pocket and went back to the classroom.
"Sorry for the interruption," he told Tinami. "It was a small personal matter I had to¬ why are you looking at me like that?"
"No way," she mumbled. "I heard you were going after Raynie, but to think you got her to agree to it… how ever did you do that? I thought that was impossible!"
"I don't have a date with Raynie, Tinami," Zorian calmly assured her. "You are jumping to conclusions."
"Unless… of course!" she exclaimed. "Of course a mind reader could figure out her weak spot!"
"Hey!" he protested. "Now that's just insulting. I would never violate the privacy of her thoughts like that!"
"Why not?" Tinami asked curiously. "I would, in your place."
"Are… are you sure you want to admit so readily to something like that?" Zorian asked incredulously.
"Please. I don't believe for one second you are being perfectly moral and responsible with your mind magic," Tinami accused. "You're far too good at it to have developed your powers the legal way."
"This topic is over as far as I'm concerned," Zorian stated. "Why don't we go back to practicing mind magic? You know the thing we're supposed to be doing?"
"I have to ask though, what is it that you people see in that girl?" Tinami asked, completely ignoring him. "What does she have that I don't? Is it the red hair? It's the red hair, isn't it?"
Zorian let his face fall into his hands. And it had been shaping up to be such a nice day, too.

Mother of Learning

2016-04-08T04:03:34Z

Zariur: /* Mother of Learning by Nobody103 */

{{Status|Active}}

Mother of Learning is a light novel written by [https://www.fictionpress.com/u/804592/nobody103 Nobody103], first published online in 2011 on Fictionpress.

==Story Synopsis==
Zorian is a teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. He is a driven and irritable young man, consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, whom he resents for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, he has no time for pointless distractions or paying attention to other people's problems.

As it happens, time is something he is about to get plenty of. On the eve of the Cyoria's annual summer festival, he is killed and brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take a train to Cyoria. Suddenly trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, Zorian will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery before him. And he does have to unravel it, for the time loop hadn't been made for his sake and dangers lurk everywhere...

Repetition is the mother of learning, but Zorian will have to first make sure he survives to try again - in a world of magic, even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill.

== Updates ==
*11 July 2014: Mother of Learning Project Page initiated.
*08 August 2015: Added Mother of Learning Chapters 34-40 to site.

== Series Information ==
*'''Genre:''' Action, Adventure, Fantasy,
*'''Author:''' Nobody103
*'''Illustrator:''' TBA
*'''Volumes:''' 1
*'''Series Status:''' Ongoing

===Format Standards===
'''Every chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

===[http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10568 Feedback]===
'''If you enjoyed this OLN, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=10568 Feedback Thread]'''

===[https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/1/Mother-of-Learning Source]===

==Mother of Learning by [https://www.fictionpress.com/u/804592/nobody103 Nobody103]==

=== Arc 01 ([[Mother of Learning:Volume 01|Fulltext]]) ===

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 001|Chapter 001: Good Morning Brother]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 002|Chapter 002: Life's Little Problem]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 003|Chapter 003: The Bitter Truth]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 004|Chapter 004: Stars Fell]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 005|Chapter 005: Start Over]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 006|Chapter 006: Concentrate and Try Again]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 007|Chapter 007: Of Gaps and Pretending]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 008|Chapter 008: Perspective]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 009|Chapter 009: Cheaters]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 010|Chapter 010: Overlooked Details]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 011|Chapter 011: Limiters]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 012|Chapter 012: Soul Web]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 013|Chapter 013: Any Second Now]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 014|Chapter 014: The Sister Effect]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 015|Chapter 015: Busy Friday]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 016|Chapter 016: We Need to Talk]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 017|Chapter 017: Sympathy for the Spider]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 018|Chapter 018: The Pact is Sealed]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 019|Chapter 019: Tangled Web]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 020|Chapter 020: A Matter of Faith]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 021|Chapter 021: Wheel of Fortune]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 022|Chapter 022: Complications]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 023|Chapter 023: Lighting the Fuse]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 024|Chapter 024: Smoke and Mirrors]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 025|Chapter 025: The Unexpected]]
::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_026|Chapter 026: Soulkill]]

=== Arc 02 ===

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_027|Chapter 027: Cast Adrift]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_028|Chapter 028: Cauldron]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_029|Chapter 029: The Hunter and the Hunted]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_030|Chapter 030: A Game of Shops]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_031|Chapter 031: Marked]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_032|Chapter 032: Alternatives]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_033|Chapter 033: Gateways]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_034|Chapter 034: Unreasonable Things]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_035|Chapter 035: Mistakes Have Been Made]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_036|Chapter 036: A Battle of Minds]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_037|Chapter 037: Slow Burn]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_038|Chapter 038: Return to Cyoria]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_039|Chapter 039: Suspicious Coincidences]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_040|Chapter 040: Shifting Tracks]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_041|Chapter 041: Myriad Clashing Motives]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_042|Chapter 042: Sum of Its Parts]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_043|Chapter 043: Overwhelmed]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_044|Chapter 044: A Show of Trust]]

::*[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_045|Chapter 045: Fine Structures]]

==Project Staff==

*Project Administrator: [[User:onizuka-gto|Onizuka-GTO]]
*Project Supervisor:

===Author===

*[[User:Nobody103|Nobody103]]

===Editors===
''To Wiki Formatting (To Author's Style) & Simple Spelling/Grammar Correction Only''
*[[User:onizuka-gto|Onizuka-GTO]]
*[[User:Starwarscards|Starwarscards]]

==Project Status==

Project Status: '''Ongoing'''
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Original novel]]