Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 65: Book 2: Incoming

I pore through the logs for a while more, but it soon becomes clear that this is a task for another day mostly because this looks like it's hours of reading, and sitting in the dirt next to the cooling corpse that appears to be a time-twisted distortion of my closest friend in the loops doesn't seem like a particularly good use of my time.

"Where to first?" Ahkelios asks. I take a moment to think through everything I've decided I need to do.

I should meet with Mari and Tarin again, just to find out what's happened to them after the last loop. I should find out what the Interface meant by other anomalies. I should investigate the Fracture. I should accompany Rotar to the Great Cities, because if there are people investigating the Interface there, they might be able to tell me more about how I can jailbreak it.

I plan to get Gheraa away from the other Integrators, given all the signs that he's on my side and all the signs of abuse, but I have no idea how I'm even going to start with that yet. Maybe the next time I bank my stat credits and meet with him.

Naru is a problem. The other Hestian Trialgoers are problems, and I'm almost certainly going to meet with one of them when I head to the Great Cities. That automaton I encountered in the Fracture that is almost certainly the reason I hit the Anomaly ninety days in instead of a hundred and eighty? Also a problem.

None of them I know how to deal with yet, exactly. I feel like maybe I should address that robot-automaton first. Something about its behavior struck me as strange.

Then there's the Empty City a long-term goal if there ever was one. There's the skill shards in the Fracture, but I'm folding that into investigating the Fracture as a whole...

And whatever's going on with K'hkeri. I don't think they betrayed me on purpose there was a distinct look of panic on their face when I got whipped away.

The Interface mentioned new temporal anomalies, which I'm worried about but can't do anything about for now. The best way for me to be prepared for those is to make sure I'm as strong as I can be, which means I should make sure I bank my credits...

Speaking of which, I should probably check my Interface status again, just to see if I've reached any of the milestones I've been aiming for.

[ Status:

Name: Ethan

Strength Skills: Crystallized Strength (Rank C), Concentrated Power (Rank B), Amplification Gauntlet (Rank A)

Durability Skills: Tough Body (Rank E), Barrier (Rank D), Crystallized Barrier (Rank C), Hexfold Shield (Rank C), Second Wind (Rank B), Verdant Armor (Rank A)

Reflex Skills: Quicken Mind (Rank B), Inspect (Rank B), Compounded Mind (Rank B), Iron Mind (Rank A)

Speed Skills: Triplestep (Rank E), Accelerate (Rank C), Firestep (Rank C), Flashstep (Rank B), Intrinsic Lightning (Rank A), Lightning Rod (Rank A), Warpstep (Rank A)

Firmament Skills: Firmament Manipulation (Rank D), Temporal Fragment (Rank D), Color Drain (Rank C), Tetrachromacy (Rank C)

Inspirations:

The Mirror Twice Shattered (Firmament, Unique)

The All-Seeing Eye (Reflex, Rank A)

The Void (Strength, Rank Unknown)

The Accelerator (Speed, Rank A)

Open Dungeons:

The Empty City (Rank S)

Credit Distribution:

Strength: 114 (179 banked)

Durability: 338 (84 banked)

Reflex: 135 (225 banked)

Speed: 87 (273 banked)

Firmament: 70 (256 banked) ]

I grimace. That's a long list of skills. It's occurring to me now that I might have been able to use the Mirror Inspiration, back when I was caught in that temporal storm though I'm not sure that would have helped. I need to get used to using all these different skills, and fast; Quicken Mind helps, but not when everything around me is moving as fast as I can think.

If I bank Strength now, I'll get a new Rank B skill, and it'll round out some of my offensive capabilities but I want to aim for a Rank A skill. The Amplification Gauntlet is strong enough for now, and I haven't yet encountered something I need more physical strength to beat.

Durability will... also get me a Rank B skill. I need a total of five hundred credits to guarantee a Rank A skill, if Ahkelios's information is right; the gap between Ranks B and A is much larger than I'd initially thought. Still, it shouldn't take me too long to get to the next milestone, and I have plenty of Durability skills already.

The only problem is that Durability is the only stat category for which I don't have an Inspiration. I'm... sort of waiting for Gheraa, on that one. The last time we spoke, he said he would prepare for the next time we met. I don't know if he's had enough time, yet, since I'm relatively sure the temporal storm I got caught in was localized to Hestian time.

If it hadn't been, there would be far more humans dead, and there hadn't been when I checked. Ninety days is a lot of time.

Reflex is the most tempting stat to bank immediately. Getting my mind to work faster is an acceptable temporary workaround to the problem of having too many options; the problem is that it doesn't scale well. If I meet someone that's faster than I am, and I have to spend everything I have just to keep up...

Oh well. It's better than nothing. Another four hundred points in Reflex are going to take me too long to get, I think.

[ Are you sure you wish to bank 135 Reflex credits? ]

[ 135 Reflex credits banked! Rolling for results... ]

[ Select between:

Premonition (Rank B)

Analyze Moment (Rank B)

Reflex Barrier (Rank B)

Quicken Mind (Rank B) ]

I narrow my eyes and stare at the list contemplatively.

"Uh," Ahkelios says. He peers over my shoulder at the invisible box I'm staring at. "You want to tell me what you're looking at?"

Oh, right. "I rolled for a Reflex skill," I say. "It gave me Premonition, Analyze Moment, Reflex Barrier, and Quicken Mind as options."

"Don't you already have Quicken Mind?" Ahkelios asks. "You should get that. It'll upgrade the skill again."

I hesitate. "Maybe," I say.

I'm not sure that's the best option. It'll help me in battle, and it'll help offset the fact that I'm not yet used to using the full range of my abilities, but I want to round out my capabilities a bit more. I have blind spots, shown very clearly by the fact that I was so thoroughly caught off-guard by the slipstream. Not thinking fast enough isn't one of my blindspots.

Premonition has shown up before. It's a weaker version of Foreshadowing, and will warn me if there's danger headed my way, what direction it's coming from, and exactly how dangerous it is. It's a powerful skill in its own right, and importantly will prepare me against ambushes like K'hkeri's attack on Rotar.

More than that, it might actually have been able to warn me that stepping into that Firmament slipstream would be dangerous for me. I need something that will warn me of upcoming danger, especially if...

...especially if I'm not prepared to lose a loop.

I try not to think about how Tarin and Mari are probably doing.

Analyze Moment is essentially a form of perfect recall. It lets me go back to a memory after the fact, exploring every facet of it for information. It's another way I could have fully interpreted that obelisk back in the Hotspot, I suppose, and it's a useful skill to have, but I'm not convinced that I need it right now.

Reflex Barrier just automatically calls up a powerful barrier of Firmament if something is about to kill me. It's stronger than any of the barriers I can call forth on my own with my Durability skills, but it needs time to recharge. Something like a 'get out of death free' card. Nice to have, but Inspect tells me the recharge time is a long one, and if something is good enough to kill me once, I'm not sure it's going to make the difference.

Quicken Mind will evolve into a new skill that will let me think faster. That one's pretty straightforward.

"I want to take Premonition," I tell Ahkelios. Maybe it's a foolish choice. It's the idea that I might lose a loop before I'm ready for it that makes my decision, here as consequence-free as the loops technically are, I... clearly have a lot to lose when I loop.

I probably can't hold off my next death forever, but I can try, and Premonition will help me more than anything else.

"Are you sure?" Ahkelios looks a bit dubious, but I think he sees something in my expression, because something in his eyes soften. "It gets easier, you know."

"I don't want it to," I tell him. I'm telling the truth, too, though I only realize it as I say the words. I don't want it to get easier to leave people behind, to make friends and then lose them; that seems like a ticket to slowly not caring about any of the events that happen within the loop, to letting myself see people as pieces of a four-dimensional puzzle.

I don't want that to happen. I'll cling on to whatever vestiges of humanity I can. It's the only thing that'll keep me sane through all this.

[ Premonition (Rank B) obtained! ]

"...Maybe that's for the best." Ahkelios looks like he wants to argue with me for a moment, but he acquiesces after a moment of thought, to my surprise. There's something sad in his eyes. A fragment of a memory, swimming back to the surface. "I remember a little more about my loops now."

"Do you want to talk about it?" I offer. It only seems fair. Ahkelios is the only companion I get to keep across the loops, the only one I can call forth at a moment's notice. I haven't been looping for that long, but it's abundantly clear to me that having him around keeps me sane.

"...No," Ahkelios decides. I can tell he's conflicted about it. "Not yet. I don't remember enough yet."

That's a lie, I think.

But I don't call him out on it. If he wants to keep this to himself until he's ready, he can.

"I'm going to go see Tarin and Mari," I say. I want to get that out of the way first. "We need to check if Rotar's pocket oracle is already broken or if it's something that happens partway into the loop, and... I want to find out if Tarin still remembers."

Ahkelios is silent for a moment. "What are you going to do if he does?"

"I don't know." I sigh, pushing myself to my feet and gingerly noting that nothing feels sore or broken. It's strange how feeling okay is suddenly a foreign feeling; I hadn't even realized how many aches my body had accumulated up until the reset. I must've been more injured than I thought.

I still don't have a healing skill. Yet another reason to get that Durability upgrade; if I can draw a healing skill again, it'll solve the problem of long-term damage in loops. I'm lucky I haven't fallen sick yet, honestly.

Or maybe it isn't luck, and the Integrators changed something about my immune system so I don't spend all my loops sick and dying. Who knows.

For now, it's time to make my way back to the Cliffside Crows.

Flashste

As the burst of speed takes me, Premonition activates. My eyes widen. There's a force barreling towards me, and it screams danger.

Warpstep!

There's no quick way to change directions when I'm moving that fast, so I teleport away from the point of impact, but even with that moment of disorientation, I don't miss the cracked crater torn into the ground. Even with the distance I've created, I'm blown backwards by the shockwave, and my back cracks into a cactus-like tree with a thump. Tough Body protects me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. I grit my teeth.

What just attacked me?

The dust clears. I see scales, first, then the telltale silhouette of a tail; a snarling maw attached to a distinctly draconic looking body, twisted and malformed though it is. One half of its body is trying to be quadrupedal, and the other half is trying to be bipedal.

Perhaps the most notable is the scar over its heart.

Definitely an Interface monster. Like the mantis we fought only moments ago. Like the harpies that attacked the crows in the first Raid I encountered.

Why is this here?