Chapter 102: Chapter 102

“You’re doing well, Luetta Treadway.”

“And this training you’re putting me through is going to break me, Orodan Wainwright!” the woman choked out as her face was red with strain and sweat rolled down her brow in droplets. “Is this… any way… to treat a lady?”

“When said lady wants to achieve Transcendence, this is but the minimum she must do,” Orodan countered, madly shifting his arm mid-flight and causing his soul to harbor conflicting thoughts on which direction he wanted to chuck the pebble.

“Tch! Madman…” she muttered and then yelped as a pebble caught her in the knee. “Can you stop getting me there every time?”

“Then perhaps you ought to stop letting me do so,” Orodan replied, preparing another pebble. “Read fate and correctly predict where I will throw the rock, and your suffering shall end.”

She was learning faster than she had last time too. A natural consequence of Orodan’s Teaching skill being far higher than it had been back then. Unfortunately for her, the process of achieving Transcendence would still take some time and pain, no matter how good his teaching methods were.

“Hmm… perhaps if I’d had a taskmaster such as you driving me onwards I might not have taken as many loops as I did to achieve Embodiment,” Almyra, standing off to the side, uttered.

“And if I had your level of caution and planning who knows how much more efficiently I could have navigated the loops,” Orodan replied. “Given how you only had to go through eleven loops to shake off your pursuers, perhaps there’s something to your method.”

“Eleven loops, each consisting of a few thousand years,” Almyra added. “Now, as your halfling commander predicted, the hostile divines of my home world have not made any moves upon Lonvoron or the Collective’s territories in the time Alstatyn and I have been gone. They are doubtlessly searching, and when the time comes, will seek to make me pay for what I have forced them into.”

Orodan chucked another pebble at Luetta, who came close to deflecting it with her war fan, but not quite.

“What? Having to control them and my people in a bid to keep all I know and love safe? Why would I? I took no pleasure in imposing such stringent rule upon the Gods of the Collective or in having to spill much blood in order to form it and see Alstatyn installed upon the throne in the first place. But to secure our world and drive off the Eldritch, it had to be done,” she explained, her tone proud and more than a little defensive as though expecting him to rebuke her. “Indeed. Do you think my actions driven out of ambition or selfish desire? The Eldritch, that rotted plague, are a threat to Lonvoron and the Collective right from the start of my loops. Even from the very first moment I realized I was a time looper, the Prophet has had its wicked eye set upon Lonvoron, searching for the Reject’s Mantle stowed upon my world. If I do not act in a heavy-handed manner, quell the disparate factions of our home and bring them all together, then the Collective and Lonvoron die a slow and miserable death and I am forced to end my own life in order to avoid corruption.”

“A difficult situation,” Orodan agreed, his tone non-judgemental. Though he quite judgementally connected another pebble against Luetta’s elbow. “I only have the Eldritch Avatar to deal with. It will arrive in just over five months’ time, and it is a singular foe, a mere quadruple-Grandmaster. But to deal with plague worlds sending corrupted armies led by Gods and Transcendents would be a different matter entirely. You did what you had to. I respect that.”

If anything, Almyra was the logical one and Orodan was the fool. He was an anomaly for not facing permanent corruption and the removal of his time looping status when facing the Eldritch Avatar for the first time. How many loopers had fallen to its corruption and been stripped of their anointment? How many mighty beings in the cosmos rightfully feared a plague which could infect them in mind, body and soul? Her ending loops of her own accord to avoid corruption was only natural, as was her iron-fisted rule and the process of turning the Blackworth Collective into a faction capable of standing against the wretched taint.

“If there was a better option within my means I might have considered that, but there were none. I did the best I could with what I had and even then, as you can see, my best wasn’t good enough.” she said with a tinge of bitterness in her tone. “Here I am, bereft of the time loops and following the next time looper like a lost dog. What good am I? What purpose did all that time in these loops serve besides hardening my heart and giving me a curse I wish I never had. Even now my full breaths and health of body are foreign to me… I close my eyes and fear I’ll feel the pain return.”

“That will not happen. Not this time,” Orodan said, steel in his voice. “I… made Alstatyn a promise. And while the grand ambition of mine will take longer still, I refuse to let things go back to the way they were.”

“Hmm. He said you told him about that… foolish man that he is, asking you to ensure something so silly and whimsical,” she muttered under her breath.

“If it makes you smile like that, I do not think calling it silly and whimsical is entirely accurate,” Orodan pointed out, causing her to clear her throat and look away. He spared her further embarrassment by chucking a pebble at Luetta’s toe.

“Damn you! Orodan Wainwright! When I achieve Transcendence I shall… I shall…!”

Orodan connected another pebble to the woman’s noggin. The pain would serve as a good training aid.

“N-not my pretty face!”

“Don’t let me hit you then,” Orodan replied. He hadn’t even left a bruise with how much he held back on that one. How melodramatic of her.

A light chuckle came from beside him.

“You are an odd one, Orodan Wainwright. Fate is nothing more than mere probability and calculation; I certainly do not subscribe to the superstitious faith in it that many do,” Almyra said. “But if anything could shake my skepticism in destiny, it would be your anointment as the time looper. Thank you.”

Her face looked far more stress-free than it ever had before as she spoke.

Orodan was about to tell her to not worry about it when the woman he was stoning let out an angry growl, like that of a maddened beast. Luetta Treadway had had it. And she was angry.

The unfortunate fate reader’s frothing rage served a purpose. For on the next pebble throw where his arm shifted in confusing patterns and each cell of his became a mind of its own with conflicting ideas on where to chuck the rock, she moved decisively.

Her face was red with concentration, the rage channeled into anger. And despite blood leaking from her nose, the woman’s eyes blazed with the golden power of fate reading as she furiously accounted for every single possibility and began reading through as many of his cells’ fates as she could.

It was an uphill struggle, but despite the odds she finally succeeded, reading his absolutely maniacal and ever-shifting fate and correctly predicting the trajectory of his pebble throw.

The rock smacked off of her war fan, and she practically roared in triumph, looking far from the dignified and demure noble she tried to present herself as. But before she could sink into her celebration and let him know how much she was going to make him pay, the powerful currents of the System’s energy filled the air.

“It is here. Ready, Almyra?” Orodan asked.

“Everyone is in position,” she said. “Alstatyn and the fleet is in the void above.”

They were in a training room within Anthus, Luetta and Almyra present within. And today was an important day.

Today was the day Alastaia would secure its independence from the Hegemony and begin a series of events which changed everything.

The skies roiled with System energy, the System being descended, and as usual, everyone else besides the trial-taker froze as it enacted its time stasis. Everyone except him.

He watched closely as Luetta matched her insights against this golem of the System, her eyes blazing gold. And despite her nervous utterances over the past few days, Orodan was not surprised when she smoothly outcompeted the golem in a contest of Fate Mastery. Her Bloodline gave her an advantage, one of the few things not accounted for by the System, and his harsh training had given her another leg up.

The System’s golem inclined its head in respect and departed and time resumed. With the resumption came the emanation of System energy from Luetta’s soul and into the tapestry of fate. Energy that was very much trackable.

If there was any sort of person who could remain hidden from the Hegemony’s descent after achieving Transcendence, it would be a Transcendent of Fate Mastery. But Orodan had instructed Luetta to let the beacon of power resound throughout the void and the tapestry.

After all, they had a God to catch.

The dimensional boundary in the sky above rippled, something quite large coming through.

Glowing power, fifty-arms with weapons of glowing gold in each one and a hymn of radiance and holy worship echoing through the surrounding hundreds of miles upon its arrival. Astalavar, one of the Gods of the Hegemony.

“A Transcendent… although not one of our territories? No matter, achieving your ascension here places you under our domain, and the Hegemony is ever-generous with its rewards for those who willingly serve it.”

Unfortunately for the many-armed divine who had physically entered the material plane, it was not Luetta Treadway who greeted it, but Orodan Wainwright.

“Good morning. Thank you for appearing so reliably. We’ve been waiting for you.”

“What is this? Why are there ships in the… this is a trap is it not?” Astalavar asked, catching on. “Voidships of powered by steam… the Blackworth Collective of the Vystaxium Galaxy?”

“You know your cosmic powers well,” Almyra spoke. “Will you surrender?”

“Do I have a choice in the matter? I can feel you have an exceptionally skilled dimensionalist with you… he and the world core are funnelling much power into preventing my otherwise hasty departure,” the many-armed divine spoke, correctly identifying the contributions of Talricto and the world core of Alastaia behind the scenes. “Shrewd… very shrewd. I did not expect to me ambushed and taken captive in our own territory today. You realize this means war, yes? Lord Agrimon will not take this slight lying down.”

“Good. We’re counting on just that,” Orodan spoke. “We are time loopers and have come to put an end to your wicked ways.”

“Time loopers? That… would explain much. But you will find that there are ways of dealing with your kind. Your appearance is hardly unprecedented.”

Almyra made a show of elbowing him in the side for his careless mouth, but the damage was done. Astalavar of the Hegemony now knew that he was a time looper.

“How horrible,” Zaessythra dryly uttered.

Astalavar was not stupid nor willing to give up its life for no price at all. It was surrounded by void ships of the Blackworth Collective, Transcendent sharpshooters and two Embodiers on the ground who were more than happy to come up and tear it to shreds.

Descending to press a newly ascended Transcendent into servitude upon an unknown world within its own territory should have been an entirely safe endeavor. It routinely did so. But what it had failed to account for was Orodan and his ability to ferry peoples’ memories across the loops via Fenton’s orb. Even if he didn’t slaughter Astalavar, the other parties present certainly could. And with its escape cut off the only chance it had at preserving its life was to cooperate.

Gods were quite vulnerable when they descended unto the material plane directly.

Within five minutes a cage of energy was wrapped around the divine, courtesy of Almyra, and Astalavar’s many arms were divested of their weapons as the God was penned between a formation of Blackworth Collective void ships.

“And don’t think about any silly attempts at overpowering your guards and escaping,” Orodan warned. “Not only would I simply resurrect them, but I would then take your head off myself.”

“I would not dare, Embodier. It is… very rare to see not one, but two of your kind within the bounds of a galaxy. Not that I would ever presume to warn you, but the Administrators do not take kindly to such things.”

“I know. I’m counting on that as a matter of fact,” he replied and then called out. “Talricto. Found what we’re looking for yet?”

A familiar eight-legged spider appeared next to him, floating in the void via a thin disk of force beneath its feet.

“I knew right away of course. Did you expect anything less of me? Such an amateur of Dimensionalism could not hold a candle to the might and splendor of Talricto the Wanderer,” the spider imperiously declared causing Astalavar to tremble with indignation.

The divine looked as though it was halfway considering killing the spider then and there and potentially making a rapid escape via the dimensional boundary only for Orodan to give it a warning look.

“Talricto would make short work of you. I don’t recommend it,” he said and then frowned at the spider. “And if you knew from the start why did you not say so?”

“Ah, but I was perhaps pilfering some of this many-armed fool’s weapons for myself,” the spider said, bringing out a giant greatsword and comfortably lounging upon it as it floated through the void. “You think those cultivators would be impressed by the size of my flying sword?”

Orodan wasn’t sure if that sword was even capable of flight.

“You thieving mongrel! Unhand my sword immediately!”

“Talricto… cease provoking captives and let us depart. We have a soul nexus and afterlife to assault.”

Their plan was a simple one. To impress upon their potential allies of the magocracy how strong they were, and to goad the Hegemony into acting with as much force as possible, the forces of Alastaia and the Collective intended to strike not at their local soul nexus, but directly at the afterlife under the control of the Hegemony itself.

The central location where all souls within the Hegemony’s territory flowed was heavily guarded and obscured behind many defenses and dimensional tricks. Furthermore, souls only periodically went from the local soul nexus and towards the overarching tributary of the Hegemony. Which meant that actually narrowing down its location in a timely manner would have been difficult. Doable for Talricto or Orodan with some time, but not when they were on a tight schedule already and could take care of two problems at once by abducting Astalavar and using the God’s connection to said afterlife to track it down.

The divine of the Hegemony realized what they were doing too.

“We are not entirely alone, Embodier. Your brazen act of causing such ruckus within the bounds of a galaxy will not go ignored. Know that we too can call upon an Embodier if needed. Your act of war shall not go unanswered.”

Perhaps the divine was bluffing, perhaps it wasn’t. But what Orodan did know was that he’d never lived long enough after causing trouble for the Hegemony to see what their response was to an Embodier running amok in their territory. The Embodiers pursuing him reached first.

Perhaps it was something to watch out for as this plan progressed.

“Enough of this one’s prattling. Come, Orodan Wainwright. We have our path to the enemy-controlled dimension and we must strike against it with haste before they entrench themselves,” Almyra spoke, and Orodan nodded.

Soon enough, the voidfleet of the Collective were traveling through a parting of the dimensional boundary, with them on-board. Upon crossing the partition, the sights of an ethereal plane similar to the divine dimension could be seen.

Impossible geometry, a lack of solid ground, and various gigantic vortexes within which he could sense separate spaces where souls were frolicking and undergoing a period of rest… or in some cases, punishment. A closer look at these spires revealed that each soul was subject to its own version of the afterlife, dwelling within their memories, the moments played over and over until they lost meaning.

The good, those who had lived lives of virtue and had performed good deeds, had their cherished memories replayed and dwelt in beautiful reconstructions of what they loved. The wicked though, were the opposite. The screams and pleas of mercy or forgiveness coming from those were better left unsaid. They had brought it upon themselves through their actions.

Strong souls with a powerful mind and sense of self would be capable of holding on. These it seemed, were marked by the various death divinities and their minor God and Goddess underlings for reincarnation into one of the Hegemony’s prime worlds. Others though, had their memories, cherished moments and connections to those they loved worn down and washed away over time.

It was… sad. It only reinforced to Orodan the need to conquer death at some point. If anyone would be capable of it, it would be him.

Still, despite Orodan considering the Hegemony his enemy, he had to admit that they were not unfair or tyrannical in the afterlife. After getting cycled through a soul nexus, a deceased individual was judged by an attending divinity of death and their deeds and misdeeds in life fairly assessed. There was no bias, no requirement that the individual profess their faith to the Hegemony or help them in any way, just impartial judgement which wasn’t even that harsh.

In most cases, people with minor or even moderate misdeeds were simply given a stern lecture followed by a brief period of time where the guilt and negative feelings associated with those memories were played repeatedly. But after that, they were allowed to enjoy the rest of their time in the afterlife peacefully. And for the good, they were simply granted happiness and contentment right away. But for the few wicked evildoers, they were locked in a cycle of true torment until their old selves were completely washed clean and a blank soul emerged.

It explained why, historically, no reincarnator he’d seen had ever been evil. For by necessity, the wicked would never retain themselves under the Hegemony’s afterlife. And it also explained why nobody of true talent ended up reincarnating. The Hegemony designated those people to reincarnate upon their prime worlds instead.

Gods, Transcendents and Embodiers though, did not join the local afterlife upon death. Instead, their souls would drift someplace different.

For his first time entering the afterlife, he had to admit, it was as beautiful as it was sad. And the death divinities maintaining careful vigil over the fallen were more than a little alarmed at the sight of all these voidships of the Blackworth Collective entering the place.

“Interlopers! Call Lord Agrimon, send word to honored Avraxas! We are under attack!” hissed a divine serpent God of the dead, its body curling around a gigantic structure containing trillions of souls protectively. Not out of malice, but genuine care and the intent to guard the souls of the dead in their afterlife.

“This domain belongs to them no longer,” Orodan declared, holding his soul energy as still as he possibly could, causing it to utterly roil with the desperate need to move. “And the trespass of the Hegemony upon this domain ends today. Let the dead be free of these cosmic politics.”

[Burst Casting 64 → Burst Casting 66]

[Dimensionalism 96 → Dimensionalism 97]

Over the past loops, his Burst Casting had grown frighteningly strong.

What he had done once, sealing all Alastaia’s dimensional boundaries perfectly, could now be applied to a larger scale and in a more controlled manner. His titanic reserves of soul energy, held still all this time, erupted with absolute violence.

Even Talricto looked on in awe, more skilled but nowhere near as capable of the feats of raw might that Orodan was. His soul energy, channeled into affecting the dimensional boundary, wrapped all-around the entirety of this strange realm of the deceased they were in…

…and sealed it off against intrusion entirely save for the souls of the deceased and the domains of the death divinities that tended to them. Now… there was no way into the afterlife of the worlds under the Hegemony save for one entrance point within the material plane.

“You have sealed off the afterlife…” the serpent God of death muttered, though it did not sound displeased.

“Aye. The politics of the Hegemony and their desire to strengthen their worlds have no place here. Nor will ours,” Orodan firmly said. “This is a place of rest and finality, not a ground for recruiting the talented. If they wish to reincarnate in their original world or someplace else, that is their business and not the Hegemony’s.”

Malzim nodded approvingly at this. For the Inuanan God of Death, the sanctity of the afterlife was an important thing.

“Yet a singular passage leading to your world within the material plane remains,” the serpent divine spoke, still protectively curled around the gigantic structure it tended to. Other divinities of death were now starting to approach as well. Some livid at what had occurred, some cautious and others afraid.

“That, would be because we require our foes to come to us with something they possess. I assure you, we have no designs upon strengthening our world by recruiting the dead or worse.”

“Your words… are not intolerable,” the serpent allowed. “If it is simple non-interference you enforce, then that I can abide by.”

Of course, there were a minority among the death divinities who looked quite angered at this.

“No we shall not. Our interests lay firmly with the Hegemony and these intruders shall soon face Lord Agrimon’s wrath.”

Well, a good first step to clearing the afterlife of the Hegemony’s influence would be dealing with these divines.

Orodan’s hand gripped the hilt of his sword.

“Anyhow, you made it, so it should stay with you until we’re approaching the end.”

“Oh bloody hell no, Mister Orodan. What in the bleedin’ damnation are you thinkin’ giving something like that to me?” Fenton demanded, repulsed by the orb as though he was a vampire having light shone upon him. “That’s far too much responsibility for me to shoulder ser. No, I think a world-breakin’ hero like yerself ought to keep that close at hand. Whoever gave it to you did so for good reason.”

“…you were the one who gave it to me,” Orodan replied, deadpan.

“Precisely. I reckon the Fenton of that loop had a good idea why,” the boy replied. “Besides, I got somethin’ else for you. An upgraded model.”

“An upgraded… model?”

His question was answered as Fenton brought out something a fair bit larger than the orb he currently possessed.

It was a far larger orb, just near the limit of what the space within his soul could accommodate. And instead of twelve slots, it had a hundred. Far more than the old orb Fenton had tossed out after transferring the memory banks from that one to the new one. It would make a substantial difference in his ability to empower Alastaia.

What if he brought more divinities along? The dragon flights and spider dragons? What about high-level crafters like Griok and Varnok Grimbreaker?

It was an excellent addition and backup, but this time Orodan genuinely felt that he would not need it, even if he did keep it tucked away in his soul.

“Thank you Fenton. Although I shall keep it with me, this time I feel I won’t be needing it.”

But for now, those concerns were alittle distant. After all, he was preparing for a victory celebration. Specifically, as one of the cooks.

“Teacher! Hand me that light-devouring squid!”

Orodan quickly tossed it.

“And help me chop that mana-infused serpent?”

His knife descended, slicing it into even portions even as raw energy wafted off of it.

“We should perhaps try boiling its scales and bones down for a broth Zukelmux? I could add the death roach carapace to it in ground down form as well,” Orodan suggested and his first disciple nodded.

“That sounds quite delectable!”

[Cooking 53 → Cooking 54]

Just as he grew over the loops, so too did Zukelmux. The goblin was the far better cook, Elite in fact. One of his student’s hobbies was to cook and eat whatever Orodan sent him to kill in their regular forays into the depths. As a result, the spear-and-shield wielding warrior had a rather culinary side to him that one might not expect at first glance.

And as he’d learned long ago, not everyone’s skill levels reflected their actual amount of skill. Orodan, while a normal cook at the Adept-level, was nowhere near Zukelmux who was an Elite but had the skills of a Master. Furthermore, although Alastaia had no Grandmaster of Cooking, the goblin was honestly poised to become the first one. A fact that had seen him chosen to prepare the meal for tonight’s celebration.

Of course, Zukelmux needed an assistant chef, and who better than Orodan himself who he often worked alongside? If anything, the goblin was his teacher when it came to the culinary arts.

“Damn… that smells bloody good sers…” Fenton muttered.

“Fenton, what have I told you about calling me ser? Just Zukelmux!” the goblin chided rapping an empty wooden ladle over the lad’s head in a gentle manner, followed by getting another ladle and holding up to the boy’s face. “Taste that and tell me how it is.”

The lad had little need to think about it given how good it smelled.

[Cooking 54 → Cooking 55]

“Mm! This is amazin’!” the boy exclaimed, desperate for a second sip already. “How’re you makin’ it Mister Zukelmux?” ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel-fire.net

A gentle but chiding smack of the goblin’s apron unto Fenton’s face was delivered for again referring to him as Mister.

Over the few days they had been together, Fenton had practically been adopted by the rest of his disciples. Zukelmux, the big brother, Aliya and Wainroach his little sisters and Edrosic the lazy sibling he didn’t quite know whether to be awed by or miserably disappointed of.

The boy… he was happy. His mother was present upon Alastaia now, healed and happily living in Anthus alongside her son. And more importantly, he didn’t have the shadow of the Eldritch looming over his head the way it had. He was an indentured servant no longer, but a free boy. Free to wander and go wherever he pleased. Free to live a life of his own. Free to try and sneak more spoons of the stew into his mouth.

“Fenton Penny!” Zukelmux scolded. “You shall not ruin your appetite before dinner!”

“Uwah! Alright, alright! I was just about to get goin’ anyhow. Every prissy blue-blood and fancy mage is in the banquet hall waitin’ for the two of you,” the lad said and then noticed Orodan’s look. “Eh? Ser? Why’re you starin’ at me like that? Got somethin’ on me face?”

“Nothing more than the silly quirks of youth,” he replied and reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair. “Now off you go. I don’t think your mother would approve of the mess you’ve made of your mouth.”

“Oy! I don’t have nothin’ on me… oh damn… er, right you are ser,” the boy replied catching sight of himself in a mirror.

Fenton fled quickly after that, making sure to get himself presentable again before heading towards the hall.

“You have a soft spot for the boy, teacher,” Zukelmux said while chopping some exotic herbs and mushrooms sourced from the abyssal depths of Alastaia.

“Do not speak as though you do not, Zukelmux,” Orodan reminded, putting the finishing touches on his portion. “I have seen how you are with all of the others. Like the big brother they never had. Even the lazy Edrosic subconsciously looks to you for a kind word when dispirited or wise counsel when unsure.”

“You think too highly of me…”

“I state mere fact. Now come, we have a meal to serve do we not?”

Zukelmux balanced the giant room-sized platter of food upon a singular finger, with Orodan simply walking alongside. The weight was negligible for either of them at their respective levels of Physical Fitness.

His first disciple was not wrong. Orodan had a soft spot for Fenton, for all of them really. He had come to care much for his students, for everyone in these group loops. Perhaps a little too much.

It evoked the same dreadful feelings of happiness he had desperately been burnt by near the end of every long loop. That feeling of attachment followed by the horrid pain and hollowness within after it was all wrenched away from him.

But… he had to remind himself that this wasn’t just any other long loop. He had Fenton’s new orb, holding a hundred slots; more than he ever saw himself needing to use. And for once, he had a mad desire in his mind that he’d been carefully planning out. Something, which if done would solve the problem once and for all.

These thoughts came to an end as he and Zukelmux moved down the hallways of Anthus’s central fort and into the grand hall which was meant to host politicians and visiting dignitaries. The city built around an energy well didn’t often get many visitors besides the occasional noble looking to secure a trade deal or politicians and high-ranking military officers who wanted to check in on the state of its defenses.

So for the grand hall to be packed so full of people that it looked like a noble’s ballroom was quite out of the ordinary.

Not only were military officers, leaders and even divinities present directly from all the nations of Inuan, but so too were the officers and leaders of the Blackworth Collective. Alongside their new allies from a neighboring star system, the Magocracy.

From what Destartes had said, there were other worlds too, farther out, which might be amenable to allying with their own. The Orastian Magocracy of Thazrivin was but the first step in an ambitious plan to secure more allies and create a network of worlds and factions which could mutually defend one another against aggressors. Certainly, it was important that Alastaia stand on its own two feet, and for that reason Orodan had avoided getting himself too involved in these talks of alliance.

If he held his world’s hand at every turn then that would make its world spirit and the people upon it soft, weak and dependent upon him for everything. Instead, if he helped them rise into their own strength and encouraged self-reliance, then not only would Alastaia and its peoples become stronger, but they would also be far more capable of helping him when it came time to learn new skills, develop further fields of magic or just funnel copious amounts of exotic resources towards his training and development. After all, the stronger the world, the more it could devote to helping raise Orodan’s srength.

Already, the forces of Alastaia had gained over a hundred new Grandmasters after the battle against the Eldritch upon Lonvoron. The combat against the plague in a foreign world had done wonders for pushing many peak-Masters into the Grandmaster-level. And even on the domestic side dozens of new Grandmasters of crafting had emerged, their final push acquired from helping rebuild the ancient machine or from helping build the grand array which allowed the forces of Alastaia to teleport onto Lonvoron in the first place.

Still, not every moment would be filled with thoughts of growth and training. He was an anomaly, but not everyone had the single-minded dedication to perpetual advancement. Alastaia was made up of its people, and people needed rest, companionship, love and merry. All of which was occurring within the grand hall of Anthus.

It was quite the raucous gathering too. Which spoke well of the demeanor of these allies of theirs from a neighboring world. Already, various people from disparate backgrounds were getting along quite well.

“And then, I let the rogue have a kiss from my twelve-shooter and that was the end of it!” a Transcendent gunslinger, Madam Lawson barked, causing the nearby elves to hysterically laugh as they were quite smitten with her.

“And this is a humble device from my guild. The aurameter, we call it,” Clyburn explained, fascinating a group of mage-lords who were specialized in spellcraft but not anywhere near as proficient at regular Engineering as Clyburn and the Collective were.

“You must show us how you fight without magic, esteemed Adeltaj,” a pointy-hat wearing wizard of the Orastian Magocracy spoke. “Our warriors simply cannot compare to the level of strength you display!”

“Unbelievable… an actual cockroach! This world of Alastaia is truly advanced if they have insect pyromancers of such size… why the possibilities in combat…” another spellcaster of the magocracy muttered, in awe of Wainroach who was preening like a prize horse under the attention.

“O-oh! My blood flows quick and my mana roils at the sight of such beauty…! My lord, esteemed ascendant of the brush… master Parthus Edrosic, please… I would be most honored if you would allow me to purchase this profound painting from you! I shall offer up ten-thousand golden marks. Nay! Twenty-thousand! Equivalent to twenty-three-thousand of your gold coins from Alastaia!” a Grandmaster mage-lord of power begged, causing the lazy militia man to lower his head in embarrassment.

Hells, even folk he’d not interacted with overmuch since truly sinking into his training were present. Brought along and involved for their expertise by the other members of his looping group who helped Orodan manage things far better than he could if it was just him alone.

“Why’ve you got that look on your face mage-lord? It’s a good deal which we both profit from! Why, let me tell you all about the particulars…” Esgarius of Trumbetton conspiratorially whispered as he leaned forward with a contract in his hands as though he was revealing the secrets of the cosmos. The mage-lord on the receiving end looked skeptical, but even if the merchant drove a hard bargain, nobody could claim he was a con artist.

“Master Hannegan, we humbly request you lend us this Bodil Bistrid. The woman will not even look at us when we offer her many marks for the position of geometry instruction for our premier academy. I did not even know that simply organizing the mana within a spell in such a manner could improve its efficiency so!”

“Might we have leave to borrow-”

“Unfortunately, that cannot be allowed, mage-lord,” Balastion denied politely. “Alovardo Balmento is a critical asset of Alastaia’s. Although perhaps we can work on arranging visits between yourself and him at Arkwall?”

And of course, Fenton was sitting at his assigned table next to his mother. Which consequently was where Orodan had insisted he be seated, alongside his disciples. Balastion, Eldarion and Tegin had argued against that decision, but Adeltaj had backed him up saying that in the Eastern Kingdoms, the royalty often sat at random tables and ate with the humblest of their subjects. Though Orodan hadn’t appreciated the insinuation that he was some sort of king.

The boy’s mother, Fanny Penny, was deep in conversation with an Alastaian enchanter over how her Weaving techniques might be turned towards the arts of inscribing magic effects onto items.

“Mister Orodan! Mist- er… Zukelmux! There you lot are!” Fenton cried. “Been waitin’ to have a taste of that platter again!”

The halfling commander of Anthus, the Lieutenant-General who was hosting this entire gathering, noticed them too. Hard not to when Zukelmux was carrying a platter the size of a small room.

“Ah! There’s the food! Mister Wainwright! Mister Zukelmux! I thank you from the bottom of my heart for preparing the feast we shall enjoy today!” Tegin Carrotfoot declared as he marched up to them, happiness in his stride. “Please, right here upon the grand table. And my, oh my… does that smell heavenly!”

The food was set down, Orodan and the goblin took their seats, and after a short speech from Tegin and a toast to the health and prosperity of their new magocracy allies and the longevity of their alliance, the festivities were on.

Wainroach, looking a little ridiculous with her own seat, happily began scarfing down a thick portion.

All across the room people really enjoyed the food, and Orodan received more than a few levels as a result of successfully helping cook such a good meal for so many people.

[Cooking 55 → Cooking 59]

A quick look at Zukelmux told him that the goblin had received even more levels for being the one who had a leading role in the platter’s preparation.

And when Orodan took his first bite of the food himself…

[Gourmand 29 → Gourmand 31]

…pure bliss hit his cells.

As though life was truly worth living, the food made him feel… deeper as a person. The gains were not insignificant either.

Crossing a threshold, he felt his body grow stronger. Not the typical small trickle of strength acquired from a singular level gain in Gourmand, but a far larger one which had his arms feeling as though they could break a star in their grasp. Yes, he had gotten quite strong over the course of five loops of battle against Embodiers, one of whom was a true physical juggernaut. But to feel his physical strength grow by a tenth? Not a mere addition, but a multiplication? It was ridiculous.

His mind, his soul and all his abilities felt a tenth better too. As though the quality of his very being was amplified.

“What a ridiculous thing…” he muttered to himself.

No wonder Wainroach had also gotten stronger by just experiencing arts, culture and occasionally meditating on a drawing from Edrosic. The soul had a quality to it which only grew with life experience. And Orodan had to wonder if he was neglecting an entirely different sort of training by not engaging more deeply with the arts and cultural practices of his world.

He would never regret his pure fixation upon combat and advancement… but perhaps there was even more he could be doing to enrich the quality of his soul? Especially if Gourmand benefitted him in such a way.

“You’re lost in thought,” Edrosic said, always observant of the things which nobody else cared to see.

“And you’re far too perceptive. But I suppose that’s not a bad thing. Helped us drive the Prophet away in fact,” Orodan said.

The militia man looked embarrassed, but Tegin Carrotfoot, at a nearby table had overheard.

“Everyone! While we recently participated in destroying the foul Eldritch plague from the territories of our honored Collective allies, I’d like to raise my goblet in recognition of someone who truly rose above and beyond during that conflict!” Tegin declared. “Three cheers for Parthus Edrosic! A humble private of the Volarbury County militia!”

“Incredible! A mere militia man of such quality…” a Collective officer muttered.

“Alastaia is truly profound, raising such a talent from so little. Worthy allies we have!” a mage-lord loudly declared to cheers from both side.

Edrosic himself kept his head low even as Orodan and the others laughed at him.

“Why did he have to introduce me as the militia man…?” the prodigious artist groaned.

“Because you are. In fact, you might be the most famous person to come out of the county militia now, even more so than me,” Orodan said with a grin as he clapped Edrosic on the shoulder and rose to go for a walk.

It was true too. While Balastion and Destartes had wanted Orodan to take a more central stage in leading, he’d instead gone with Eldarion and Adeltaj’s plan to have him remain relatively inconspicuous when it came to politics and having a face to put forward. Sure, his looping group, the Collective’s top leaders and the Magocracy’s mightiest knew who he was and that he was the central time looper. But them aside it wasn’t exactly public knowledge that he was an Embodier or that he was a mighty breaker of star systems who was the entire reason a number of Embodiers and an Administrator were coming for Alastaia.

He was known as being the teacher of his five disciples, and plenty of the public speculated about him and his true identity, but nobody actually believed he was really Orodan Wainwright, the humble militia man from Ogdenborough. This, they saw as an alias or false identity.

His disciples were more famous than he, with Zukelmux being known as a prodigy among prodigies, Edrosic’s artwork being world-renowned and Aliya and Wainroach being prodigious for their unprecedented talents despite their ages and species. Even Fenton, over the few days he was here, had utterly upended what Alastaian, Blackworth and even the enchanters of this Magocracy knew.

All this was perfectly fine with Orodan, as he had grown to realize that excess attention was more of a waste of time than anything useful. A certain amount of renown and recognition was good, especially if it was from the powerful. But he had grown past the days where he told anyone who listened that he was in a time loop. The people close to him had gotten inconvenienced or hurt enough by that sort of behavior.

And he had too much training on his plate to be bothered by the Claridin Rockwoods and Eluian Arslans of the world.

His walk took him to the balcony where he saw Alstatyn and Almyra looking out towards the stars. He was halfway between turning around and leaving the two lovers to their devices when the King of the Collective’s voice stopped him.

“Ser Wainwright! We aren’t participating in anything illicit so you needn’t worry!” Alstatyn declared and then turned towards Almyra with a roguish smile. “Though the striking countenance of the woman near me does rouse my passions quite a bit.”

“You…!” the previous looper said, turning distinctly red. “Do not say such uncouth things so freely!”

“But I do love seeing color on your face once more, especially since the noble ser has seen fit to give you back to me,” the King spoke. The man looked happier than he had ever been before.

“I was always yours…”

“Not when the stress of survival and the question of what had happened to the time loops weighed upon your mind,” the King calmly replied, though non-judgementally before turning to Orodan. “As you can see, she’s a lot tamer when not pursued by an Administrator.”

“Well, technically the Prophet remains a problem still,” Orodan spoke.

“But not one which you lack faith in dealing with,” the King spoke, meeting his eye. “I see it… you have something don’t you? You needn’t say a word. But the look in your eyes when you speak of that wretched thing speaks for itself. I believe you shall prevail this time, ser Wainwright.”

The King was a perceptive one. He supposed one had to be in order to guide and lead an entire faction to prosperity. The previous time looper hadn’t installed the man upon the Blackworth Collective’s throne just because of the pretty face.

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“And I am not some mangy alley cat which is either feral or pacified. Nor am I a damsel-in-distress who cannot fend for herself. Orodan Wainwright and I shall face the Prophet together, and we shall slay it, ridding us of its hounding chase,” Almyra said giving the King an irritated sideways glance. “I apologize for silly antics today, Orodan Wainwright. The festivities today have gotten Alstatyn a little loose-lipped. Perhaps it is the drink.”

“I’m not even drunk!” the King protested. “This is the first goblet I’ve touched all day…”

Orodan spoke, cutting the bickering couple off.

“Well, it is good to see you two in happy spirits.”

“And it is good to see you as well, though I did not take you for the star gazing type, though I suppose you must not like large social gatherings either,” the King said. “Want me to cover for you? Say you were busy with some affair which came up?”

“I’d rather be clashing steel against the foe or working upon a craft, but no. Such excuses might have worked when it was just me in the loops, but Adeltaj and Destartes know me too well by now. They’ll see through the excuse in a second,” Orodan spoke. “Besides, I came here to meet with our newest allies.”

“And we are honored to make the acquaintance of one as mighty as yourself, World Conqueror. Lord Orodan Wainwright, it is a pleasure,” an older woman spoke from behind. Her voice thrummed with magical power, as though the mere utterance of a word besides regular language could herald destruction at any moment. “High-Orast Valmarra Malvorra the Eighty-Fourth, at your service.”

Orodan’s eyes narrowed in a frown as he took the mage in. She was old, exceedingly so. And while Orodan had seen quadruple-Grandmasters before, he had never seen a Grandmaster of six skills who just remained at that threshold. Like a coiled spring, the glyphs of the System within her soul looked ready to explode upwards and into Transcendence. Still, despite all that, Destartes who was beside her didn’t feel any weaker in terms of battle power. Hells, even the old Destartes just before he achieved Transcendence, would have been just a half-step better than this High-Orast.

No wonder these mage-lords had been so impressed by the old wizard. Even in terms of magical talent, Alastaia was not lacking in comparison to the magocracy of another world.

“See how he frowns? I did warn you against calling him a lord,” Destartes spoke, his tone light and overly familiar. He was also rather close in proximity to the woman. Not anything inappropriate, but closer than the old wizard had ever allowed himself to stand next to anyone else. “Instead you must simply refer to him by name. Orodan, I hope the festivities have not overly irked you? Once this inroduction has passed I doubt Tegin or Balastion will mind if you vanish.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about the ‘lord’ part. You,” Orodan said, looking at the High-Orast. “You’re a sextuple Grandmaster. I can tell you’re close to Transcendence too. Why have you held back?”

“The same reason why Lord Eldarion told me he held back long ago,” the woman spoke. “While we of the Orastian Magocracy do not know precisely what occurs when one ascends past the 100th level of a skill, we do know that none of them have been seen again. Much of the wider cosmos was unknown to us… until our meeting with the wizard lord Destartes himself who came from another world, bearing news, knowledge and the offer of an alliance. We… apologize for our inability to aid you during the assault upon the Hegemony’s afterlife, but we had no way of reaching as deeply as you did, and no way of capturing an enemy divine in such a manner either.”

“It is fine. I hope that proves our strength,” Orodan spoke and the High-Orast nodded immediately. “We can help one another. Destartes here has ever been a student of magic. And I have other disciples of mine who require magical training as well, and in comparison to your world, I do not think Alastaia is nearly as advanced in the ways of magic.”

“And it shall not just be I and your disciples, but you as well Orodan,” Destartes added. “Your Elemental Living Enchanting is powerful, but as we have seen it functions far better when used alongside a Mastery skill which draws from the soul and not just a Magic Mastery skill which pulls from the mana pool.”

“That, I believe we can help you with. I have heard tell that our world often acts as a brighter beacon for elementals than yours, which causes Alastaia to lose out on potentially powerful contracts. This would be because a significant portion of our mages possess direct Mastery skills instead of Magic Mastery skills like those upon your world do,” the High-Orast explained. “Our martial development might be rather inferior to yours, but in the pursuit of the elements, we have no equal.”

It didn’t take him any deliberation to conclude that having Fire Mastery would be far more beneficial than having just Fire Magic Mastery. Even better if he could utilize both his mana and soul energy in tandem. Combining that with Elemental Living Enchantment and Burst Casting would make him truly ferocious in combat.

“Of all the elements, you’re quite practiced in fire, and even possess the Fire Resistance skill,” Destartes said. “Valmarra assures me that having the Resistance skill for an element will make you a quick study on acquiring the Mastery. Their world of Thazrivin has many techniques for using the insights from Fire Resistance to help acquire Fire Mastery.”

“Your student Wainroach has done it naturally and of her own instinct already,” Valmarra Malvorra added, further convincing him. “You possess Elite-level Fire Resistance, yes? Even better.”

“And what do you get out of all this?” Orodan frankly asked. “I would be grateful for such aid in my training. It might well make the difference when the time comes for battle. But this feels lopsided.”

“Of course… I have heard recently about how you aided a Grandmaster of this Blackworth Collective in ascending past the 100th level. You then dealt with the descending enforcer from the Hegemony,” the High-Orast spoke. “I would like that service as well. Alongside the natural terms of having the memories of a few key members of our Magocracy ferried along with you.”

That was easy enough, especially with the new hundred-slot orb Fenton had given him. In fact, helping one more Grandmaster ascend to the rank of a Transcendent worked in their favor. For Orodan fully intended to shine their ascension across the tapestry of fate like a beacon for the Hegemony to find and be drawn to.

He, Destartes and the High-Orast discussed a few more things before separating. With Almyra and Alstatyn also pitching in and formulating battle strategies which made use of the Magocracy’s magical prowess. The Collective was a far more powerful faction than the Magoracy, but their numbers of Transcendents and superiority came from having an exceptionally long time to develop, and the aid of the previous looper which organized their society and spread many of the methods of magic across it.

Even Almyra admitted that the specialized world of Thazrivin had certain nuances and insights about the elements that she did not.

Training plans were established where pyromancers, hydromancers and steam mages from Lonvoron would go study with the Magocracy, and engineers and gunsmiths from the Collective would aid both Thazrivin and Alastaia in developing new weaponry in tandem with elemental magic knowledge.

Orodan wasn’t much of planner, but Zaessythra who dwelt in the shade of his soul, was. She was used to commanding armies across global engagements, not just from her liberation and conquest of Vylrystia, but also from the long loop where he’d traversed the cosmos. She often spoke up and gave some surprising suggestions which nobody else, not even Almyra or Alstatyn thought of.

Orodan relayed these suggestions to everyone present, making sure to give her full credit each time. At some point, Tegin, Balastion and Eldarion also came in and the balcony became the site of an impromptu strategy meeting where Zaessythra, using Orodan as her mouthpiece, relayed some rather excellent strategies for inter-planetary troop movements, tactics and logistics.

The entire thing lasted for two hours, and by the end of it he felt as though his own understanding of cosmic warfare and strategy had improved, just by virtue of having to repeat Zaessythra’s points.

Everyone left with a smile on their face or a noticeable slackness to their shoulders.

Orodan saw how Destartes looked at the High-Orast. He saw how happy Adeltaj and Balastion seemed, how easy the stress upon Eldarion’s shoulders was, and how Almyra and Alstatyn looked as though they’d found a new reason for living and had real hope for once.

This, he decided, could not end. Not this time.

“Isn’t that what you say every time?” Zaessythra asked.

“I’ve been getting better about actually winning when I say such things nowadays,” Orodan replied.

“That you have. Everyone seems… happy. You once said you would be the pillar upon which dreams could become reality… I suppose you’ve been keeping to that aspiration rather well.”

But not for her. She, who had been with him the longest, had suffered in silence enough. She was not just some quirky advisor popping up at convenient times to help, or someone who existed to make remarks at funny moments.

She… was his. She had sacrificed so much for him.

And he had not forgotten that.

He was so very close to getting everything he needed to bring her back together.

For while the conditions of life were the easy part, and technically he could resurrect Zaessythra right away.

She seemed to be under the impression that it would be a rather mundane thing he performed upon the moon.

His true mad plan, he kept secret even from her. For if anyone deserved the most extravagant soul genesis in all System space, it was the half-dragon who had given up everything for him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much magic in the air before… it’s enough to render someone blind.”

“Right you are ser… what business has a city got bein’ so bloody bright? Me eyes are already hurtin’ and I got them closed!”

“Apologies. It seems the on-duty mage has neglected to cast the Fortified Sight spell upon you. Not that I think it would affect you, Lord Wainwright,” Valmarra, the High-Orast, spoke. “Perhaps they felt a little nervous about casting magic upon you when you have Mana Resistance.”

He saw power gather in the old woman’s throat, and she uttered a singular word.

The overwhelmingly bright surroundings suddenly dimmed, the city itself becoming more manageable for the eyes of all lookng upon it. If there was one thing Valmarra Malvorra the High-Orast had over Destartes it was the sheer strength of her soul. Yes, the old wizard had the Eternal Soul Reactor skill, but Orodan aside, for everyone else it simply meant a steady if perpetual generation of soul energy and potentially endless power. But even without that her reserves of natural soul energy was quite high, more so than even a Grandmaster soul mage of Alastaia.

And despite that, the word had cost a full third of her reserves. And as a particular skill warned him of the rewriting of the fabric of existence, he knew why.

“You’re rewriting reality,” Orodan immediately commented. “My Reality Alteration skill can tell when someone else does the same. What manner of speech is that?”

“My Mythical skill. Existential Speech,” the High-Orast spoke. “Something earned from the skill combination of Power Word Speech and Reality Whispering. Won me the duel for the position of High-Orast. But you, Lord Wainwright, are full of surprises. We searched for ages, to find anyone possessing the Reality Alteration skill spoken of in the ancient civilizations of our world… but to no avail. It seems this alliance between our peoples will bear more fruit than expected. Would you be against demonstrating that skill once we reach the magical university?”

“Not at all. Though I can only use it in tandem with my Celestial skill. Thus it will have to be a controlled demonstration,” Orodan said, establishing his limits. He had big plans involving it this loop, and the last thing he wanted was another incident where he wiped a whole number of people out of existence. “But this Power Word Speech sounds intriguing. There are limits to it?”

“As there are limits to everything I’m afraid,” the woman spoke. “Would you believe I tried using the power word for killing upon Destartes here when he first descended unto our world?”

The old wizard coughed in embarrassment.

“You gave me quite the fright… who greets visitors in such a manner?”

“I do when they are the first recorded otherworlders aside from elementals and demons to visit our planet,” the High-Orast spoke. “But needless to say the power word failed, his mana pool being far too large and his soul roiling with a bit too much power for me to overcome. Yours, Lord Wainwright, I suspect would fare the same. As we speak I am receiving multiple complaints about how the city’s soul sensing devices are breaking or our soul mages are unable to work or are outright fainting.”

He closed his eyes and consciously toned the roiling energy within down a bit. Burst Casting and its principles of fully stilling his energy pools helped quite a bit in that regard.

They were upon the newly contacted world of Thazrivin, under the rule of their now-allies, the Orastian Magocracy.

Unlike Alastaia which could be considered a small world, theirs was a medium-sized one. At least double the size of his home world and with a far larger and more sprawling civilization upon it.

Where his world had the three continents with their own nations, clan and enclaves, this one had just one, the Magocracy. And although small groups and the occasional clan of magic practitioners outside of the Orastian sphere of influence existed, these were akin to nomads and independent practitioners of magic who simply wished to remain outside of the settlements. Not rebels.

It was a world of mage-lords where almost everyone knew magic. However, unlike the elitism and class-disparity he expected it might cause, these people instead used magic to try and elevate the common folk as much as they could.

The streets of the Magocracy’s capital city of Thazmylion were packed full of people either walking, flying or teleporting around via the abundant amount of teleportation arrays, elementals or tamed flying magical beasts. Not only did mage lords in their opulent robes rub shoulders with the common man or woman, but everyone had a demeanor of respect in their interactions with one another.

It took Orodan a few moments to truly understand why.

There was no real scarcity here. Yes, it was an utterly foreign feeling for him, coming from Ogdenborough where everyone had to work in order to get by and make ends meet. Hells, even in the capital city of Karilsgard or Novar’s Peak in Novarria, the people had to work for a living and had something or the other that weighed upon their minds.

But in the absence of such worries, when everyone went about their days and had their basic needs provided for through magic… what a sight it was. There was no undercurrent of resentment or wariness towards the mage lords either. If anything, the commoners looked at them as though they were heroes. And given how he saw these folk stop on multiple separate occasions to help a commoner or listen to one of their concerns he could see why.

On Alastaia, thirty-thousand years ago a horrid cataclysm had occurred when the Void Horror ascended and destroyed the continent of Inuan. His world had always faced Eldritch incursions or wars among nations. But here and now, upon Thazrivin, these people were in the midst of a golden age just one star system away from his home world.

Almost everyone was a magic caster, with even the most mundane-looking grandmotherly figure using basic spells. And for more complex tasks they could utilize enchanted devices if they themselves weren’t capable of something. Even the children here knew magic, evidenced by the number of them he saw playing around with small-scale elemental magic. Their mischief and play was of course accounted for thanks to the wards lining the city and the overwatching mage guards who kept an eye to ensure that no spell of excessive power was launched.

“I will not lie… seeing children sling spells as though they are playing with sticks is a novel sight,” Orodan remarked.

These were combat-capable spells too. Mana Bolts, Flame Spray, Lightning Sparks, Galewinds and many more elemental spells he didn’t think Alastaia’s libraries even knew of. The only equivalent he could think of would be if the street rats were given live steel and allowed to go wild.

The streets of Ogdenborough would have turned bloody within the hour and the orphanage’s occupancy would have sharply dropped.

But life was different here. There were no starving children, no street rats, no orphans who were unhoused and desperate to make a better life for themselves. The children had no desire to truly harm one another aside from the occasional bit of mischief and mean streaks that little ones everywhere had. These too were swiftly handled by interceding mage golems, directed by the mage guards who watched closely from their towers.

Orodan had been to Swordpeak city in Xian, and Storven upon Lonvoron, yet despite the utterly foreign nature of those two cities, one in a different part of the galaxy and the other in another galaxy altogether, it was this place in the neighboring star system which truly felt foreign.

“Who knew that the orphaned street rat who grew up knowing nothing but violence would be shocked to see children happily play fighting with magic?” Zaessythra reminded.

That certainly made sense.

“It is not so shocking a sight when you consider that such early childhood play reinforces the skills and provides them with a good foundation of skill levels that will only help once they enter school,” Valmarra explained. “Naturally, even the earliest schools we have here are magical. Right from the age of two years old.”

Orodan tried to imagine a two-year old child slinging spells, he did. But it just didn’t compute in his mind. Destartes must’ve noticed the look on his face for the old wizard laughed.

“It’s nothing so jarring, Orodan. I have seen some of these schools. The children are exposed to magic and undergo exercises which develop their mana pools, yes, but two-year-old children are not casting Fireballs at one another. They are still just as human as we are on Alastaia.”

Of course, there were some differences not immediately apparent but became so upon closer examination.

Orodan was big. But he wasn’t three heads taller than most people back home. Here though, that was the case. And as he and all his students walked along the streets of Thazmylion even Aliya looked far taller and sturdily-built compared to the other eight-year-old girls her age.

“Teacher… why do they look at me like the people back home look at big brother Zuk?” Aliya asked. The girl had been excited at the opportunity to travel to another world for the second time.

Furthermore it was quite funny to consider that Aliya of all people would draw more attention than the goblin Zukelmux. On Alastaia that wasn’t the case at all, but here on Thazrivin where goblins were a common race and some of them were even among the mage lords, it wasn’t at all out of place. Instead, her size set her apart from the rest.

Valmarra could only cough at the girl’s innocent question.

“That is… let us just say that our people’s have different specialties,” the High-Orast tried to brush off. “An over-reliance upon magic can leave us vulnerable in other areas. But that is why our alliance is so critical. We strengthen Alastaia’s mages, and warriors such as yourself help to strengthen us, Lord Wainwright.”

She had refused to drop that honorific despite his insistence, claiming it would be disrespectful to refer to herself and her fellows as mage lords while not calling him a lord in the same vein. He had given up on trying to get the old woman to stop. Perhaps it was a cultural practice and the title of lord was more important than he thought it back home?

Their discussions en route to their destination continued for a while longer. Orodan happily agreed to not only display his Reality Alteration skill but to also help train Thazrivin’s spellblades and those attempting to master the martial pursuits. He didn’t think it an unreasonable request, but from the look on the High-Orast’s face she didn’t hold much faith in her people going very far in the ways of the warrior.

Throughout the duration of their walk, Destartes and Valmarra practically hung off one another’s very words. Not in an overly sappy sense, but in the way where one would treat every syllable leaving the other’s mouth as being of utmost significance. As an impartial observer Orodan could see why. Both of them were studious academics, scholars of magic who thirsted for its innermost secrets. They had found a kindred mind in one another. Whenever they weren’t speaking to him or his students, they were bringing up some esoteric area of arcane study, or the particulars of a spell.

Orodan, knowing a thing or two about magic by now, tried his best to follow along with the conversation, but he gradually fell behind. Each cell being capable of thought and his speed of mind being far faster than sound didn’t help when the topic of discussion was alien to him.

Who even discussed the seasonal migration patterns of wind-element empowered birds and cross-referenced those with that of wind elementals to project peak population numbers? He had studied at Bluefire but none of it had prepared him for that. It seemed there were levels to academia beyond just the basic education one could receive.

Edrosic was openly yawning, Aliya dozing off mid-walk and Fenton busy tinkering with an enchanted gun in his hand. Even the normally studious Zukelmux looked to have lost the topic. Oddly enough, Wainroach was paying rapt attention to their every word.

Her antennae wiggled.

“You… you wish to study this topic of discussion?” Valmarra asked and her forelegs shook with excitement as she relayed her own experiences. “Oh? I hadn’t even considered that the ancillary food sources of migratory birds would factor in. I suppose that would change my projections a fair bit. You have some experience with them attempting to make a meal of you, do you not? Yes… a forest cockroach’s insight on the matter would be quite valuable…”

His disciples were dragged along as Wainroach and the High-Orast began conversing, leaving him and Destartes to lag behnd for a moment.

“I can see where this is going, Mister Wainwright,” Destartes spoke, suddenly not very talkative and sounding very formal given the way he referred to Orodan.

“If you don’t want me to pry, I will not,” he assuaged.

“It’s hardly anything so severe. We simply appreciate one another’s intellectual company,” the old wizard spoke.

“Just intellectual?” Orodan asked in turn and he saw the briefest twitch upon the old mage’s features.

“It will not interfere with the performance of my duties if that is what concerns you,” the wizard said, looking slightly defensive.

“Destartes. I’m not your lord or master who you need to be in shape to render duties unto. I didn’t bring you along on the loops just so you could be useful to me. I did it to repay the debt I owe you,” Orodan clarified. “If anything, it is good to see you happy. I didn’t think you had it in you at your advanced age…”

Destarte’s face went through a range of emotions at that. Relief, appreciation, fondness and finally… irritation. That last one brought a smile to Orodan’s face of course.

“I can see why Gregory finds you most troublesome, Orodan. Let us catch up before you cause me any more headaches today.”

Both their moods lifted, the two of them caught up to the others.

The magical university of Thazmylion, with no specific name besides that, was oddly similar to the university Orodan had seen in Storven. Universities were places of even higher learning beyond academies. They were places where higher academics such as Destartes and Valmarra—having already acquired their education at a regular school—could gather to discuss specialized topics and research.

Inuan at least, didn’t have anything like that. Guzuhar had no academies whatsoever instead relying upon military service or an apprenticeship system where knowledge was passed down orally and rarely in written format, and only Eldiron had a separate department for Grandmasters to gather in the Goldleaf Academy in Aldenil. Yet that paled when compared to these universities where the greatest minds among Elites, Masters and Grandmasters gathered, funded by the magocracy itself, to drive magic research and development forward.

Hells, even Initiates, Apprentices and Adepts with good theories could come forward with them, and if verified and noted to be of use, would receive a generous stipend and be taken care of by the governing power. It was a system which promoted merit of thought and helped drive society forward.

On Inuan, Adeltaj Simarji and Arvayne Firesword, though Grandmasters, did not regularly come down to Bluefire to share their insights and help aid the collective development of society’s martial talents. The only one who did that was old Destartes, and it seemed the wizard had finally found his people for here was a world which valued exactly that.

The campus grounds were wide, expansive and magical. The magic in the air was immense, the grounds were saturated with mana from all the spellcasting occurring at this place of learning, even more so than the casual magic use occurring at every moment in the city itself. And all that mana meant that elementals loved hanging around the area. At least three separate times Aliya got distracted by something shiny or by a mischievous elemental who played pranks on her.

Still, with some redirection the girl was eventually guided onto the right path and they entered the largest building on the campus grounds. It was heavily enchanted and gave off a mystical aura. The very stairs were moving, and at times the doors changed, leading to rooms other than the one initially visible. Occasionally, a student walking through a doorway would be sent someplace out in the city, and sometimes a doorway would appear and a student would walk into the building from another part of the city entirely. Still, everyone they passed in the halls, be they student, teaching assistant or professor, seemed quite used to the antics of this quirky and magical building with a mind of its own.

“Oy… you’ve got some errors with these enchantments… the stairs ain’t supposed to be movin’ like that… and if a poor sod falls into one of those false walls at the bottom they’ll be gone for a whole week,” Fenton remarked, immediately taking note of the pecualiarities. “And is that… oh… whole bloody building’s got a soul, don’t it?”

Orodan’s eyes confirmed it too. Although the paintings were moving and seemed as though they had minds of their own, in truth it was the building itself which was living. It expressed itself and let its thoughts be known through the paintings and its conversations be held via changing doorways. He had heard fables and tales of supposedly haunted houses and even ones where the Cathedral had been forced to send exorcists and diviners back home in the Republic, but he’d never actually seen one.

Though, perhaps the difference between a haunted house and a quirky magical building was the fact that one had young and impressionable students in it and the other did not.

“You are correct, Lord Penny. The… erm… faults in the enchanting are in fact intentional… or they were when this was built over sixty-thousand years ago. Perhaps even longer, but we have no records from farther back,” the High-Orast spoke while casually avoiding a slimeball hurled from a painting by a mischievous knight within. “Some of the faults have been introduced by the building itself, and other flaws formerly existing were fixed by its own hand.”

“Oh? It’s an enchanter then? Maybe we could work together to spruce the place up?” Fenton asked, and in response a set of magical lights lit up, repeatedly blinking as though signaling its assent.

As they made for the magical training halls the building continued to interact with them, excited to have otherworldly visitors for the first time. Aliya was pranked, Wainroach was given treats, Zukelmux had paintings change to do comical expressions of him and Edrosic had plenty of the paintings hand him a brush and palette asking that he give them a touch up.

Even Orodan had a doorway attempt to shift on him as he was midway through it, only for him to muscle the dimensional shift out of the way through the raw might of his arms. The building left him very clearly alone after that.

“Right. Here we are,” Valmarra said. “Mister Wainwright, I present to you the Thazmylion University Department of Elemental Studies. Perhaps we can make a proper battlemage of you yet and get you using soul energy instead of mana.”

They had a few more days until the Embodiers would come for them. Enough time to hopefully get at least some work done with the aid of Time Compression.

And Orodan had a gut feeling that the Hegemony was not stupid. Not when he had intentionally let slip to Astalavar that he and Almyra were time loopers. Not when the imprisoned many-armed divine had sent out a communications pulse.

Still, he would not be surprised.

For they had explicitly allowed the divine to send its messages.

All so the enemy would hopefully bring the shards along.

Like that, the final days until the end of the loop and the coming battle passed.

The Magocracy, Alastaia and the Blackworth Collective worked well together. And so did he and his students work hard towards making as many gains as they could under the tutelage of the magical university’s professors and teaching assistants.

Orodan’s time spent training the spellblades and aspiring martial hybrid combatants of the Magocracy was unfortunately shorter than he would have liked. For while he had used Time Compression to expand what he and his disciples were able to learn, he could not do the same for the aspiring martials.

Certainly, they could enter the bubble of compressed time and train. But the problem was that these aspiring spellblades were primarily mages. Mages who had never grown up even playfighting or engaging in manual labor a day in their lives. The first time Edrosic punched one of them square in the face, the poor woman had crumpled to the ground as though she’d never gotten her nose broken in her life.

The following outrage that there was no talk of it being a full-contact spar had him scratching his head. Supposedly, on Thazrivin the melee spars were performed while both participants had magical barriers laid upon them. Barriers which flashed red whenever a fatal or grievous hit was landed. Which, while he could understand the rationale of, made for some very poor warriors if none of them knew how to take a hit.

Even the county militia could beat some of these coddled fighters if magic was nullified.

In any case, Valmarra had looked quite ashamed and embarrassed at the display from her spellblade and had asked Orodan to start off slow with conditioning drills and hopefully commit to a full training program from the next loop. That much, he agreed with. If the Orastian Magocracy was to stand beside them moving forward, then they would need to shore up their weaknesses, just as their mage-lords were also upon Alastaia helping the mages of Orodan’s world shore up their magical training.

His disciples had advanced quite splendidly too.

Zukelmux’s ability to self-heal, under the tutelage of these mage-lords and professors, grew. The goblin was beginning to approach a point where he might even receive a high-rarity self-healing skill. It made the spear-and-shield wielding warrior a truly unstoppable bulwark in combat. On Lonvoron he had dueled early Transcendent plague forms, held his ground and even won after a protracted struggle. Capable of now fighting a tier above thanks to the extreme training Orodan had been putting him through. In fact, it was interesting to note that the goblin could potentially stand against even the Eldritch Avatar as long as the Incorruptible Being aspect of Orodan’s Celestial skill was laid upon him.

The goblin however was not a mage, thus, didn’t benefit as spectacularly from the training on Thavrivin as some of his other students had. Among them being Aliya.

The girl was a martial specialist and polearms prodigy, but she had also taken a liking to wind. And it was this element that the mage-lords of the Magocracy were especially well-suited to helping develop. Her natural speed, agility and ability to lance in and out of attacking range was amplified as she learned skills such as Wind Step for rapid movement, Gale Piercer for adding wind-based damage to her thrusts and allowing the weapon to move even faster, and the Exquisite-rarity Wind Aura which caused winds to buffet around her in combat creating a deadly zone where the passive winds kept enemies lacking in strength or mass in a constant state of imbalance and allowing her to use those winds to sense the area all around her and target enemy weak spots with greater efficiency.

Monstrous as the goblin was, Orodan had a feeling that she would be catching up to Zukelmux sooner rather than later. And from there their development might well be neck-and-neck for these two were prodigious warriors.

Wainroach’s development had also progressed spectacularly. Perhaps not as explosive as Aliya’s since the cockroach already knew Fire Mastery, but her variety and diversity of fire spells had greatly increased. Multiple professors and teaching assistants of the Department of Fire had sat her down and forced her to learn spell after spell. The end result was a cockroach who now likely knew even more fire-based spells than Destartes did.

Flight? Sprinting? Blocking? Armor? Wainroach now had some manner of flame-related skill for all of those facets of combat and movement. He even saw her learning how to manipulate flames directly, which should have been something only a pyromancer past the threshold of an Elite could do. And while he had been too busy with his own training to really focus upon her, he could’ve sworn that she was staring at him fixatedly while doing so.

Putting that weird pyromaniac aside, Edrosic had a hard time leaving the grounds. Particularly since the main building of the Thazmylion University refused to allow him exit once the man re-painted a number of its paintings. The ancient structure had a soul, and it had never been happier in all its years of existence than when the militia man had so exquisitely re-worked the paintings it expressed itself through.

Pranks stopped, treats became far more frequent for everyone and Edrosic loudly complained to him that a haunted building was in love with him and he felt uncomfortable about it. Still, despite the man’s whining he had reached the level of a Drawing Master, which pushed his profound abilities closer and closer to Grandmastery.

Of the three candidates he strongly suspected to be capable of attaining a Celestial skill, Edrosic was one of them. Though Orodan would not stifle the lazy man’s development by ever letting him know that. Better he worked quietly and kept improving himself without any distractions or weight upon his shoulders.

The other candidate for that possibility, Fenton Penny, faced the same problem but from a different source. The High-Orast and every single mage-lord familiar with Enchanting had come by and practically pleaded with Orodan to let the boy stay upon Thazrivin. They had offered immediate elevation to lordship, practically limitless wealth and entire personal armies at his beck and call if he stayed with the Magocracy. His activities with Orodan and Alastaia would not even be hindered, they had insisted. The only condition being that the lad come by and aid the ongoing research and certain critical development projects at the university.

Fenton had of course, declined most of that. The boy had agreed to come by and look at some of their projects but did not want to be tied down to another world when, in his words, he already had a new home for himself and his mother upon Alastaia. If anything, Orodan felt a little bad for dragging the prodigious enchanter along to this world of magic. None of the enchanters here or upon Alastaia were at all in comparable to Fenton. Neither the Collective, nor Alastaia nor the Magocracy had any Transcendent-level enchanters, but even if they did the lad would have enchanted circles around them all with how far ahead of the curve his abilities, insights and techniques were.

The only thing that had helped Fenton somewhat was Orodan showing the lad working examples of the devils’ four-dimensional enchanting language alongside spider dragon silk and its properties. And of course, Orodan’s System within his soul.

And as for Orodan himself?

These were the two messages he received near the end of that training session.

[New Skill → Fire Mastery 34 (Rare)]

[New Title → Fire Apprentice]

The product of a compressing time so that four hours of work in the real world was equivalent to almost a month on Thazrivin. Any longer and his students wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it, their souls already strained from the Time Compression he’d performed when training them on Alastaia in this loop.

The High-Orast had not lied. Their methods of magical training were truly exquisite and miles ahead of Alastaia’s. Slightly dangerous too, but that was no issue when Orodan had the willpower and sturdiness of body that he did.

Long ago, he had learned the Draconic Fireball by immersing himself into a magical ritual where he partially became a dragon and allowed that state of being another species to grant him insights. He had pulled back at the end, unwilling to forgo his own form; his pride refusing to let him accept that the draconic form was better than what he forged himself into through hard work, sweat and blood.

There too, upon Thazrivin, was the same principle used. Fire Mastery could either be acquired through extreme natural talent combined with hard work as Wainroach had done it. Or… the aspirant could allow fire elementals to descend unto their body and aid them in understanding how to produce and control fire with soul energy. It was a method Alastaians had theorized about for a while but every attempt of theirs had ended with death and failure. It was also purported to be how certain Bloodlines originated.

The Orastian Magocracy however had perfected and proven both these theories. Their methods were advanced, the results of tens of thousands of years of work. And so they had set up a grand ritual to summon the most powerful elementals of fire they could, and it came as no surprise when Orodan’s overcharged flames—a requirement to attract the elementals—brought forth a living star.

Needless to say, vacating the university and the world of the Magocracy itself had become necessary at that point lest the two of them turn everything to ash. So they left to the void.

It was a peak-Transcendent and had acted more like an overly excited puppy than a Transcendent elemental overlord should, but it had successfully delved into his very cells, existing within the flames of his Elemental Living Enchantment while guiding him towards understanding what the true nature of fire was.

And while Orodan was no natural pyromancer who knew what flames themselves were, he was good at using soul energy, and he had a lot of it. This allowed him to practice perpetually until, through sheer brute force, he had finally acquired the understanding of how to generate fire and guide it with the light of his very soul.

Little wonder Valmarra had stated that only someone with Fire Resistance could use such a method. Anyone else allowing an elemental to directly enter their very cells would have died a miserable death which even a group of Grandmaster-level healers could not outpace. He’d also acquired the Fire Mastery skill in record time, faster than anyone else in the Magocracy’s history had done. But that, he chalked up to his ridiculous self-healing abilities and absurd Fire Resistance which let him survive a peak-Transcendent practically fusing with his inner flames.

He and the elemental had parted on good terms with Orodan promising to ‘feed’ the elemental overlord some overcharged Draconic Fireballs from time to time, and their group had needed to leave not too long after.

He would have liked to work on acquiring Mastery skills for his other elements, but that wasn’t to be on the limited timeframe they had. Still, he vowed to visit the world of Thazrivin again from next loop. Not only did Destartes like the place, but Alastaia had much to learn from these mage-lords. At the same time, so too did his home world have much to offer to their new allies. Not just in the realm of martial talents, but also in the realm of the crafts where their lack of manual labor meant that while magic did a great job of patching things up and gluing them together, it didn’t build a truly solid foundation. Alastaian buildings, items and weaponry were just sturdier and more reliable, even if the Magocracy’s items had unique effects and esoteric powers that no mage on Alastaia had seen.

He suspected the world core itself influenced the peoples’ skills to develop a certain way, that or the abundant mana and world energy everywhere made the reliance on magic almost mandatory lest the mortal races be torn apart by magically enhanced monsters.

Still, it had been a good time and now, the final leg of the loop was approaching.

The clanging ring of hammer on metal echoed through the control chamber of the ancient machine.

The enhanced forge had been put to work earlier in the day, much to Orodan’s protests that his sword and shield were perfectly fine. Now, instead of his familiar sword and shield of the county militia, on his belt were two weapons which were the pinnacle of Alastaian blacksmithing. The same make, weight and style as his old ones, but composed of different materials.

Orodan tried his best to push down the irritation at having his weapons reforged and simply took in the control chamber.

A room in which he’d fought Ovuru, Baron Viglas Argon and Duke Arestos many a time before. It was the chamber where, long ago, he had thought the loops would end once he won and stopped the machine.

Yet now, this would be where a new chapter of the journey started.

In the deepest man-made chamber of Mount Castarian, everyone of significance was gathered. The greatest blacksmiths, stoneworkers and jewelcrafters of Alastaia. The top engineers of the Blackworth Collective, and from their neighbors the greatest mage-lords of the Orastian Magocracy.

Experts of every single craft evaluated and worked upon the ancient machine carefully.

Griok, the now Grandmaster-level Jewelcrafter of the Rising Spear tribe and possibly the finest of his craft in all Alastaia, carved the central energy battery for the machine with incredible care. Varnok Grimbreaker, the Grandmaster-level Stonecutter and Mason responsible for building a majority of humanity’s fortifications on Inuan, worked with large groups of stonecutters from the Eastern Kingdoms to very carefully sculpt and etch runes into Mount Castarian itself. Blacksmiths from the High Forges of Karilsgard and the Novarrian armories worked the metal, elemental contractors from the Magocracy helped direct high-level elementals who ensured that the fanciful forge machines of the Collective were working at overcharged prime efficiency, and Clyburn Anderthorn worked alongside Fenton Penny to carefully modify and improve the device’s engineering and enchantments.

All while Edrosic’s hands blurred, sketching out drawings, diagrams and models, one after the other, in seconds. Assistants were continually refilling sheafs of paper next to him so that he didn’t run out, and the militia man had a sketch for each and every part of the process down to the smallest task, which dramatically helped the experts with their work with how clearly they visualized their part.

And of course, directing it all like a legendary commander of labor, was old Gregory Hannegan.

“Good work! Keep it up!” the old man encouraged, for once not finding anything to yell about since his core group now knew better how to work under him. “Remember to enchant counter-clockwise and not clockwise young man! You’ll run too close to your other enchantment due to your right-hand dominant method!”

“Aye Mister Gregory! Right you are ser!” Fenton shouted back, quickly amending the organizational inefficiency which even a skilled enchanter might overlook. By now, the boy had grown used to Old Man Hannegan. Hard not to when one’s work inexplicably improved under the old man’s hastily yelled instructions.

“Clyburn! Do not secure those extra joints and load-bearing portions until after Fenton finished that section of the arm!”

“R-right! I see now how that makes sense, Mister Hannegan,” Clyburn stammered, quickly correcting. The lead engineer was unused to following orders, but after seeing the results of them, even the most proud and stubborn Grandmasters could only fall in line while being awestruck.

These gathered experts could ply their trades with skill, but could they correctly identify the workflow and what could be altered to prevent waste, inefficiencies and errors when working alongside other people?

Even the greatest Enchanter in the cosmos might be blind to how they worked in a group. This was where the old foreman truly excelled, directing labor to efficient outcomes and making sure that the project’s deadlines were met on time. The man had been doing so all his life, well before Orodan was born too.

Sometimes, he wondered just how old the man was. Certainly not the age of even a new Grandmaster… but he idly imagined that it wasn’t outrageous for him to be older than even an older Master. Orodan had simply never cared to really see it until now.

“We’re almost done, keep at it! Keep at it! Stoneworkers, focus on carving section ninety-four in tandem with the smiths of group twenty-three! Double time!” Old Man Hannegan shouted. “Orodan! Bodil! Bring out the crystals, the final touches need to be applied soon. And get your broom ready.”

That last bit was meant for him. He and Bodil Bistrid quickly rushed under the old foreman’s directions, scrambling to gather and carry out the last things needed for the re-tuning of the machine. Although there was still one more ingredient left, but that couldn’t be acquired until the Hegemony arrived.

[Logistics 32 → Logistics 33]

He could think faster than sound but the pressure of assisting with such a device which demanded exact measurements and movements was harder than he thought. It caused his Logistics to level once more.

Finally, Fenton was now putting the final touches upon the device. The lad’s natural talent for Enchanting alongside Talricto’s keen sense for Dimensionalism, Clyburn’s Engineering and the Magocracy’s precise control over mana, allowed him to inscribe precise and never-before-seen enchantments onto the ancient machine.

As he was coming to learn, Orodan wasn’t the only one who grew exponentially under the conditions of a time loop.

Previously, he had tried enchanting it himself, but even with Talricto’s help he wasn’t quite up to the task. It had been a humbling reminder that he couldn’t be the best at everything, and even though he was the stubborn skill-grinder and would never stop advancing, that didn’t mean others couldn’t perform certain roles better.

Still, even with Alastaia’s Grandmaster enchanters, the machine had come up just short.

But now, with the single greatest enchanter the cosmos had ever seen, that was looking to be a different story.

Fenton Penny was just about to etch the final enchantment upon the ancient device which had been the center of Orodan’s early loops when Old Man Hannegan’s voice sharply stopped him.

“Hold it! Everyone else finish first. Fenton, yours will be the second-to-last step. And Orodan… raise that broom. You’ll be cleaning it soon as he’s done. Eyes sharp and reflexes ready. You need to get it at the exact instant he puts that last bit down.”

Orodan had to do a double-take upon hearing this. Was it that serious that it needed to be at the exact instant? He had never done it quite like that before when building the ancient machine.

Soon, the work ended and Fenton was the only one left, and Orodan’s broom was raised in the air, right next to the lad, ready to descend the moment he finished.

“I changed it up the way you asked ser… but these are some strange coordinates you got,” Fenton spoke, focusing. “That’s so far out into the material plane… I thought we was goin’ to aim for the System’s bowels, right?”

“We are. But let’s just say that I have a plan.”

“And er… does anyone else know ‘bout this plan of yours? I’ve seen your mad plans Mister Orodan… can’t say I trust you very much,” the lad complained, but making sure nobody else nearby heard it since only the two of them were within earshot of the words.

“After all this time together? I’m wounded,” Orodan said with a manic smile.

“Hmm… let me take that back. I trust you very much to be a bleedin’ madman like you always are. I won’t even question what mad nuttery you’re plannin’. The less of it I know, the better.”

“Alright, we’re just about done! Fenton, now!”

“Aye Mister Gregory! Puttin’ down the last etching!”

Orodan was ready. Whatever skills he had for empowering himself he brought to the fore. He even brought Elemental Living Enchantment forward, holding his mana and soul energy pools still so that the moment Fenton finished he could explode outwards.

Destartes, Almyra and the High-Orast Valmarra were present too, waiting with bated breath as they cast layers upon layers of barriers over Fenton, something which allowed Orodan to truly explode with as much speed and force as he could muster when the moment came.

Orodan watched closely as Fenton etched the final bit. Like a warrior ready to draw his sword, his hand was upon his broom, not nervous or tense at all, simply coiled like a dangerous spring.

But surprisingly, before he thought it was done, he heard the voice of the old foreman.

“Now, Orodan! Start now!”

The early command surprised him, but Orodan did exactly as asked, starting then and there. And it was good that he’d trusted the old man and listened, for Fenton finished a lot faster than expected.

Just in time for Orodan’s broom to hit with the explosive power and violent energy he’d been keeping coiled up.

[Domain of Perfect Cleaning 178 → Domain of Perfect Cleaning 179]

[Burst Casting 66 → Burst Casting 68]

The words had likely left the old foreman’s lips earlier, but they hit just now as his broom touched the machine.

“Rockhead! Be sure to get the joints clean first!”

Powerful. He felt the currents of a powerful energy usher his body, mind and very soul along into the action. He trusted the source of it and allowed it to guide him along the vision of the source. And Orodan had to admit…

[Domain of Perfect Cleaning 179 → Domain of Perfect Cleaning 180]

…he had never cleaned this well before.

The machine was utterly purged starting from the joints, and the strange force then guided him along to its skeletal frame. From there, the rocks of Mount Castarian itself, carefully cut by the greatest stone carvers of Alastaia. And following that, the crystal powder lining the joints and the energy battery itself.

The mysterious force finally ended after guiding him towards the enchantments last, ending right at Fenton’s last etching.

Orodan wasn’t exactly a fate-reader, but he had felt that familiar thrum of System energy pulse outwards before. He heard the mutters in the chamber behind him among the diviners present, and he could practically feel the eyes searching for something, or someone.

That someone was of course, where he always stood. Upon the raised platform from where he coordinated the building of the ancient machine.

“Of course… not the most prodigious enchanter I’ve ever seen or an artist with talent enough to cause an Administrator to retreat. It had to be you instead,” Orodan said, disbelief in his voice. “Right at the most convenient moment too. Well, old man…”

“…how does that Celestial skill feel?”

All eyes were upon him, and following his final words, all eyes were upon Old Man Hannegan.

“T-this is…” the old foreman muttered, in shock himself. “All these warnings…! Quest Subject?”

“None of whom will be laying a hand upon you if I have anything to say about it,” Orodan spoke and then shook his head. “Unbelievable… of course it’s you. The very first person who has been alongside me in every loop I’ve started, even before you knew about them yourself. What’s the name of your Celestial skill?”

“Overseer of the Grand Design…”

Overseer of the Grand Design? It certainly sounded as fanciful as a Celestial-rarity skill should have. Frankly, it finally all made sense. Why the old man had been going off to so many places in order to hone his skills. Why even the elementals of the plane of lightning had asked the old foreman for help. How he somehow knew where everything was to the point where even the Lieutenant-General of Anthus and then Eldarion had noticed and solicited his help.

It finally all connected in Orodan’s mind.

The man had the potential, the seeds of a Celestial-rarity skill within him all along. It was natural talent at its finest.

He had seen the old foreman from an early age and had thus never questioned why the old man kept getting handpicked to be foreman across multiple projects. If he had ever bothered to look at how other construction sites and works of labor ran things he would have noticed that foremen were expendable, to be hired and paid and that was the extent of it. For one to consistently be hired and re-hired across multiple projects… the man had to be doing something very different than the others.

The man… Old Man Hannegan… was made for this.

And the pulse of System energy that had gone off of him and into the tapestry of fate and void had almost certainly been noticed.

It was Almyra who immediately asked the relevant question.

“Where are they coming from? To secure you?”

“Two worlds. Narictus and X2,” the old foreman immediately answered.

“Then we shall face the bloodsuckers and their furry pets, and potentially the machine-beings of X2,” Orodan spoke. “It seems this defense of Alastaia may involve a few more parties than expected. At least the hells and cultivators have not decided to pay a visit just yet.”

It made sense. The more powerful someone’s Celestial skill was, the farther it would emanate. Orodan was a monster who had alerted all factions of the galaxy with his awakening of a Celestial skill. Old Man Hannegan in contrast, didn’t seem to provoke nearly as much of a response.

Furthermore, if the metallic folk of X2 were en route, there was the possibility that his old friend W78 would be sent for the mission. Which meant that combat need not be necessary and they might potentially have another ally.

“If the capture of one of their divinities was concerning to them, then the raising of a Celestial will be even more so,” Almyra explained. “We can only hope this forces their hand in attacking us.”

“Let’s give them another thing to worry about then. High-Orast,” Orodan said, looking at the old woman. “Are you ready?”

“I see… add more fuel to the flame, why not? This shall be a battle for the milennia which the Magocracy has never seen before,” she said. “But we shall be glad to aid our Alastaian allies in securing our independence and living freely.”

Everyone backed away as the old woman prepared a fire, an ice and a wind spell in tandem with one another. That was a little odd, but Orodan didn’t question it as he allowed the High-Orast to bombard him with all three.

And to his surprise, he closely watched as three separate glyphs in her soul ascended past the Grandmaster-level at once.

The roiling of System energy came forth, the golem of the System appeared within the grand control chamber of Mount Castarian, and as always it failed to freeze him but bound everyone else in a time stasis.

And then he watched as the old woman was presented a choice of which of the three trials she would like to take.

Valmarra Malvorra chose ice, the element familiar to her. And within minutes the leading mage-lord of the Orastian Magocracy was locked in a contest of Ice Mastery against the golem of the System.

And after a few more minutes…

…she prevailed. The golem giving her a respectful nod as it departed.

Time resumed, and the first person to regard her was Destartes.

“As expected, High-Orast,” the old wizard muttered, a fond smile on his face. “I see Orodan did not even need to revert time.”

“Did you expect anything less of my talents?” the old woman fired back. “I’m offended.”

“And so too are the Hegemony,” Alstatyn warned as a communications ring on his hand glowed blue. “I’m getting reports of space tearing in the void outside Alastaia’s atmosphere. They tried direct spatial entry planetside but our voidfleet rebuffed the attempted intrusion.”

“I sense something big… strong,” Talricto warned. “Pushing through the dimensional layer and accompanied by several warships and divines.”

The assembled forces of Alastaia, the Magocracy and the Collective quickly teleported out and to the command ships of the Blackworth’s fleet. There, it was clear to see that the Hegemony’s forces had arrived as space was still warping under the arrival of the enemy’s voidships.

Dwarven voidcraft too, and accompanying them… an Embodier he had seen facing off against an Administrator directly in the last long loop.

It was the King of Kings. The dwarven Embodier who had conquered his own black hole and fortified it to the point that even Administrators dared not assail it directly. This was one of the strongest Embodiers in the entirety of the cosmos, and it had forced the Prophet to go all-out and only barely been pushed backwards.

And just like last time, its crown was missing.

“As always Talricto, your chronically sticky forelegs bring us more enemies than we should be dealing with,” Orodan said, though there was no accusation in his tone. In fact, he had asked the spider to do just that.

The mighty dwarf, far bulkier and wider than any of its kind he’d seen upon Alastaia, floated out from its voidcraft, which was a planet-sized mountain-hold floating in the void and powered by gigantic continent-sized rune-etched crystals which propelled it through the vast distances of the cosmos. He also had a dangerous-looking battleaxe in his hands.

Last time he’d seen this dwarf, it fought the Prophet. And Orodan was too weak to really understand the danger. But now, having grown in power, quantitatively and qualititatively, he could immediately tell that the axe was utterly deadly and none of his defenses would really be capable of stopping it.

Still, this was necessary and at least somewhat predicted. Given the giant pink crystal he saw in the dwarf’s hands, he had no doubt what payment this Embodier had accepted in return for aiding the Hegemony.

“My Lord, these are the time looper who have tyrannized us. They hold one of our fellow divinities captive and flagrantly violate System law by interfering in the internal matters of a galaxy,” Agrimon, ruler of the Hegemony, announced.

“Time loopers… it’s been long since my axe has bit into the necks of your kind. The last looper that tried antagonizing me… her screams still echo throughout my fortress. Locked away and tortured into madness, the loops left her soon after,” the dwarven Embodier threatened, menacingly dragging his gauntlet along the edge of his axe, causing brilliant white sparks to shower out. “Shall I do the same to you?”

Orodan felt a sort of pressure he hadn’t in a while. That of a social skill meant to cause fear.

Laughable. He brushed it off with not a change in expression, something which caused the dwarf’s eyes to narrow as his foe considered him with a more serious expression. Almyra however, shuddered. Her lack of experience with direct combat situations showing.

“Well don’t expect me to fight him. Kharadun Voidfortress is among the ten mightiest known beings. I would rank him as sixth, just below the Reject. One does not get to conquer a black hole without having a requisite level of might,” Almyra spoke, her mettle waning. “I’ve never been good at direct combat, and while the Mantle I have is good for countering an Administrator’s Mantle, that dwarf is far too fast for me to use it in combat against him.”

Orodan simply laid a hand on her shoulder, gesturing her to remain back. The Alastaian alliance had armies, Transcendents and Embodiers. But two out of the three Embodiers of their alliance were unsuited to direct combat, especially against a foe as brutally straightforward and threatening as this. Alastaia needed its mightiest warrior.

So it was with three raps of his sword upon the boss of his shield that Orodan stepped forward and out into the void, his floating form drifting slowly in the direction of the enemy voidfleet.

They had not attacked yet, which meant they wanted something.

“Hmmph. You’re strong. You are one of these time loopers as well? Do not think that I am unaware of the fact that there can only be one at a time. I do not know who the current one is, but one of you is playing the other for a fool with your little alliance,” Kharadun spoke. “But I suppose it is rare to see a martial looper rise so high. The successful among your kind usually prefer to scheme and act wisely. Facing me head-on has gone poorly for even the Administrators, especially when assailing my abode.”

“And yet, a sneaky little eight-legged wanderer managed to steal your crown,” Orodan taunted. “That black hole isn’t as impregnable as you thought.”

“That thief you harbor shall have its legs pried off one by one. But… such trifles don’t need to stand between us and civility. Let me be direct. Hand over my crown, return the divine you have kidnapped and join me in alliance,” Kharadun offered, the dwarf’s eye gleaming with greed, but also sincerity. “If you’ve heard my name then you’ll know what they all say about me. I’m a dwarf of my word, honor’s important in this shit cosmos we’re limited by and nobody’s got more of it than me. So I make you an offer of partnership, something entire factions would go to war for. Join me, time looper, and we shall stand against the tyrant Administrators together. You’re strong, and your eyes tell me you’re unreasonably young for an Embodier. Join me, and we can stand against the approaching Embodiers who are after you together.”

Agrimon whos gigantic eye was peering into the material plane from the divine realm protested in outrage.

“This is not what we agreed upon! The time looper must fall! We provided you our shards permanently for that purpose!”

“Incorrect. We agreed that I would get your divine back and reclaim your little gathering of deceased. If you paid any attention, you would realize that outright killing the time looper was never one of those agreements,” the dwarf corrected. “So, Orodan Wainwright. What shall it be?”

Orodan’s answer was a simple one. He laughed and drew his sword and shield, pointing the blade at the dwarf.

“Your offer sounds reasonable… but I’m afraid it contradicts with one particular thing…” he uttered. “I want to fight you.”

The dwarf’s eyes narrowed into a glare of death.

“A poor decision. You are strong, warrior, but nowhere near the power necessary to best me.”

“Let us cross blades and test the truth of that.”