Mother of Learning: ARC 2

3

“Hmm,” said Zorian noncommittally.

“So… do you have a specific job already waiting for you or are you in search of one?” the man asked.

“Nothing specific,” Zorian said. “I was going to wander around for a while and see what catches my eye.”

“Ah, I see. Well, I can recommend a few neighboring sites if you’re interested in checking them out.”

Zorian shrugged. “Sure. It can’t hurt to check things out, I guess.”

“Alternatively, if you’re looking for a better paying version of the sort of one-off jobs you’ve been doing for the past few days, I recommend you go north, towards the Sarokian Highlands. Always plenty of work at the frontier, whether it’s building infrastructure or hunting monsters and whatnot. Much more dangerous than hunting overgrown rats, of course, but also a lot more profitable.”

“An interesting idea,” Zorian said. The only problem was that Cyoria was the main springboard for the expansion efforts into the Highlands. From what Zorian could figure out from the maps, it was very hard to bypass Cyoria when going that far north, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near the city for the foreseeable future. “You know, I can’t help but notice that the mage guild is pushing the settlement of the Sarokian Highlands pretty aggressively. What’s up with that?”

“Ah, well, it’s the whole thing with the Splintering, you see? Successor States are always looking to one-up each other and searching for advantages that could let them overcome their enemies. Eldemar has access to untamed wilderness to the north, so it would be a bit silly not to take advantage of it. It’s a place rich in natural resources, I hear, both magical and mundane.”

Zorian spent an hour with the man, discussing the region and his options. He didn’t really want to settle down in any one place in this particular restart, but he supposed in the future he might want to try out some of the options presented by the man. In that case, it would be convenient to have visited the location already and thus be capable of teleporting there directly.

So for the next two weeks, Zorian walked around the region, visiting various workshops, libraries, alchemists, herbalists, and so on. Or just plain sight-seeing and doing odd jobs for the villagers and townsfolk he encountered along the way. He did not stop his magical training, but in the absence of any sort of clear goal or a convenient repository of spells like the academy library had been, he defaulted to the most basic of advancement methods—shaping exercises. It helped that most of the rural mages he met on his journey had some private shaping exercise they were willing to show him… and unlike Xvim, who simply told him the end result he wanted and refused to elaborate, they actually had detailed instructions about what to do and in what order.

By the end of the time loop, Zorian had learned how to peel the surface of a marble away, layer by layer; how to do the same to an apple and other fruit; how to cut paper by dragging his finger along the cutting line; how to induce a gentle ripple in a pool of water without touching it; how to levitate a blob of water, shape it into a perfect sphere, then freeze that sphere; and finally, how to telekinetically draw geometric shapes in the dust. None of those were really mastered in the Xvim sense of the word, but luckily Xvim wasn’t anywhere near him. He could simply move on to the next exercise when he felt he had absorbed one to his liking. Shaping exercises were a lot less annoying when he didn’t have to repeat them until they could be done flawlessly, he found.

He also continued practicing his mind powers. They were extremely important, he felt—if it weren’t for them, he would have never survived his altercation with Red Robe intact. At some point, he would seek out other aranean colonies and execute his ‘exploit the time loop to slowly leach aranean magic from them’ plan, but right now he couldn’t do it. It was too soon, his memories of the aranea and their demise (and the role his obliviousness and carelessness had played in it) too fresh in his mind. So instead, he simply used his empathy on every person he spoke to and practiced connecting to the minds of various animals. He particularly liked walking near streams and ponds and taking control of the dragonflies flitting about in order to make them perform dizzying acrobatics around him. Insects had such rudimentary minds that taking total control over them was exceedingly easy, though figuring out how to puppeteer them effectively took some doing, and he still couldn’t maintain control over more than three dragonflies simultaneously.

Time passed. For the most part, he managed to keep himself busy enough that he didn’t have enough time to be depressed, but all his worries and feelings of powerlessness returned in full force every evening as he prepared himself for sleep. Every plan he tried to make seemed hollow, doomed to failure. He wasn’t powerful enough. He didn’t know enough. Red Robe had years and years of experience over him, and that was never going to change.

As the end of the restart approached, his mood only turned darker. He had avoided another confrontation, but what about the next restart? Would he wake up to eerie silence and the lifeless, soulless husks of his family?

On the last night of the restart, Zorian didn’t sleep at all. He watched the night sky from a small, isolated hill he had found in his travels, idly using his mind powers to deflect mosquitoes away from him as he stood quietly, consumed in his own thoughts.