Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

He really should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. The moment he tried to track down Zach, he was reminded of why he didn’t do that in his very first restart. Zach was not only an heir of Noble House Noveda — he was the only still living member of that House, the rest of his family having been killed in the Splinter Wars. Zach stood to inherit a sizeable financial empire and a legacy of several generations of mages once he came of age, so everything about him was scrutinized closely by a great number of interested parties. Consequently, his disappearance was a Big Deal, and a lot of people wanted to know where he went. Zorian was just one of these people, and if those people (and the people they hired) hadn’t managed to track him down, he had very little chance to do so. Needless to say, he didn’t get anywhere. Like he suspected, the two girls Zach hung out with during Zorian’s original month were nothing special without the Noveda heir there to help them out and hang out with them (and asking people about them led to some pretty annoying rumors being spread around; honestly, can’t a guy ask about a girl without everyone assuming he’s got a romantic interest in her?), his house was sealed with some pretty heavy ward-work, his legal guardian could not be reached, and if he had any close friends they weren’t among his classmates. Zorian wasn’t a detective, and had no idea what else to look for. And considering that many professional detectives had already failed (and continued to fail) to track the boy down, he suspected it wouldn’t help even if he did know a thing or two about tracking people down.

A month went by with little to show for it. Summer festival came, and Zorian once again boarded a train out of Cyoria, awake and alert as the night deepened and minutes ticked away. He brought a pocket watch with him this time, and kept glancing at it every once in a while, silently praying that he wouldn’t have to start over once again but wanting to know exactly when he got thrown back in case he did. Sure enough, his prayers wouldn’t be answered. Somewhere around 2 past midnight he blacked out and woke up with Kiri on top of him, wishing him a good morning.

He probably should have admitted it to himself right then and there. He was a fairly smart person, after all, and not prone to deluding himself. Instead it took 4 more restarts before he accepted the truth of his predicament: he was stuck in some kind of a time loop, and it wasn’t going to end any time soon.

He didn’t know how it was possible. Maybe the spell was powered by Zach’s seemingly inexhaustible mana reserves instead of being limited to a fixed amount at the moment of casting. Maybe it was one of those rare self-sustaining spells. Hell, maybe it reached into the Heart of the World and drew power from the Dragon Below itself! It didn’t really matter how it did it, only that it did.

But that’s retrospect — at the time he just refused to accept it, and instead tried to live like he normally would. It was rather boring, yes, but what if this particular restart was the one where it ended? The restart where the consequences of his choices would not magically disappear at 2 past midnight on the night of the festival (He checked and yes, it was consistent across all 4 restarts).

He was through with that though — he couldn’t go on like this. Excluding the invasion bit, the month had been a bore even thefirst time around, and he had lived through it 8 times already. He knew the first month curriculum well enough by now to get near-perfect scores in all subjects, even warding. It had little effect on how people treated him, as he found out. He was known to be capable, and his grades had always been very good, so people weren’t really surprised if he aced all the exams or effortlessly performed a perfect magic missile on their very first combat magic class. It was within the realm of people’s expectations, unlike Zach’s sudden improvement. The only people whose behavior changed in response to his improvement were Akoja and Xvim. Akoja had gotten twice as annoying now that she apparently found a kindred soul, always insisting that they check each other’s work and asking him for help whenever she didn’t understand something. Zorian had thought she’d be green with jealousy that he was beating her scores, but it seemed she was a lot less bothered to be outdone by him, as opposed to by the likes of Zach and Neolu. Xvim took his superb scores as an indication that he should be held to an even higher standard. As such, not only did he not declare his pen-spinning good enough to move on to something else, he had demoted him back to the regular levitation exercise. In all honesty, Zorian wasn’t terribly bothered by that — even if he did master the pen-spinning exercise to Xvim’s satisfaction, no doubt he’d get nothing more than another minor variation of the basic three to practice.