Walking was the pits. After months of water slinging and whipping through the roads, I'd forgotten how much I hated traveling on foot. It was too late to buy a horse or a similar mount, and Smiley made it abundantly clear she wouldn't let me wait. This raised the question: Why was she forcing me to walk if she felt the task was urgent?

I chalked it up to typical smoker style—hot and pushy…? Irrational…? No. Damn, I forgot the word. The important takeaway was all smokers were the same. Most likely, Smiley was hovering in the distance, waiting for me to bolt or try something funny. I wasn't gonna do any of that. My plan was to head back to the graveyard and solve the mystery of the missing princess. If I had the fire sage figured out right, she would follow me into the forest as well and most likely try to kill me there.

An assassin from the guild of Jesters… the thought played in my mind repeatedly. I knew there was something to it, but I wasn't connecting the dots. Did it have something to do with the High King of the elves? I tried to think back on all my past conversations. Lana didn't mention the High King much, if at all—which made sense given the new light of understanding. Samantha, my close friend from my former marine squad, talked quite a bit about Lochland. Unfortunately, much of what she said was a blur.

Selene's pits, come to think of it, I couldn't picture Sam's face anymore, and the last look of her wide eyes when she got buried beneath rock was deeply ingrained in my mind. I'd sometimes wake up in a cold sweat when I dreamed about her terrified expression. Her death gutted me, and yet, I couldn't remember her face.

My mind ran with worry as a panic about Cal's tracer consumed my thoughts. What else had I forgotten… How much more was I going to forget? The pace of my light jog picked up.

My plan for this recursion was to join an intense cult of body cultivation to get on the fast track of progression. Robbing the blood cult in Cyanne was a start to the plan. I'd hoped I could buy my way through admission with enough money. My goal was still the same. It just had a slight detour that might actually be a shortcut. Once I secured the money, I would seek out a top-tier cult and rapidly train my body to reach higher levels. Once my body was at the ninth rank, I'd switch to spirit cultivation.

There was a lot more I wanted to do and see in my loops; I firmly believed it was necessary to take breaks. However, the fear of losing essential memories… of losing Lana—removed any thought that I had time to spare.

I settled into a comfortable jogging pace. My straight course into the woods veered me from the road to Tom's Pond, four miles outside Cyanne. I didn't have a road to follow, but I was confident in my path. It didn't take long before I let my passive mind take control of navigating. At the same time, my main focus entered a state of meditation. I wasn't entirely in my mindscape; I was in between the realm of my mind and the physical realm.

Time dilated a fraction of what it did in the between state and created simulations weren't as potent or easy. I pushed through the limitations and tried to understand the new twist.

The last time I visited Cyanne, I was there for a couple of days, made a much bigger presence, and never saw Smiley or fellow Jesters once. The only difference was timing. I visited Cyanne immediately after this recursion started. The last time I went into town, a week had already passed.

I wasn't Smiley's target, but it was clear that she wanted Lana. However, it seemed like she was looking for me. Was she tracking me to get to Lana, and if so, why?

Out of our squad I was the closest to Lana and probably the weakest. Lana was a creeper, so she might have light runes that dispelled tracking. If she had those types of runes, though, why not share them with the rest of the squad? Why not hide better?

I continued to work through the mystery while I passively navigated the terrain.

Suppose I was trying to follow a group closely. In that case, I'd probably pick the group's most ignorant or arrogant member to be my mark. Someone easy to follow… someone who didn't suspect they were being followed… In that light, it made sense why Lana and Flint weren't Smiley's mark. They would be extra cautious about people looking for them if they were hiding.

My guess about keeping the rest of us in the dark was that Lana and Flint were trying hard to live a life that didn't look like they were in hiding, allowing them to hide in plain sight. It was wise to keep their identity secret. That allowed the rest of us to behave normally, which played right into their hands. It must've been working, too. The Lumin Kingdom and the royal family died ten years ago. That meant that if Lana was Princess Sunny, she had successfully remained hidden for ten years.

The encounter with Smiley played over in my mind repeatedly. Her white teeth were no longer a shock, and I had an in-depth look at the tattoo on her chest. The three points of the hat each had four bells on them, each bell a different color. The cap had a large checkered pattern of red and black, and there was a script of runes I couldn't read along the headband.

The Jesters were definitely a cult, and judging from the conversation, they were closely tied to the High King. Perhaps they were the High King's secret band of assassins or adventurers. It would be no different than the Alderi Golds—The Deliverer's personal band of guards and assassins and most likely the nine cultivators that were with him as he sowed havoc in the bloodwoods.

A cult of Jesters and a lost princess… this loop was nothing like the vampire punching party I thought it would be.

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I glimpsed the harsh rays of the early morning sun just as I entered the forest. It was the second day of this loop. I didn't cultivate the mana before I left for town, which meant it would rain today or tomorrow. The further I walked into the Bloodwoods, the more I suspected the wet weather was an isolated occasion.

I slowed my pace to a crawl. My passive control over movement was skilled enough to navigate through the forest at my jogging pace, but I wanted to dive deeper into my mindscape.

Cal was in the room I left him in. He was tucked against the corner in a ball. His grayish-blue skin looked pale, and he had massive bags under his large round eyes. The flayen's mental fortitude was broken. I resented the man and what he was doing to me, but I wasn't going to waste a resource.

"Calypso." The flayen looked up when I spoke his name. I changed the room to be a lighter and natural environment and created a spread of food. Cal didn't respond to the changes. "What do you know about my friends?"

"Very little. In my loops, I did not bother trying to save them, and they died before I had a chance to interact with them. The girl did manage to cast a spell on you before she died. Initially, I thought she had killed you. That turned out to be wrong."

"Did you ever see a fire sage with a jester tattoo on her chest?" I asked. "She had white hair, decent teeth, long ears, and olive skin."

"Purity?"

"The vampire slayer?" I asked. The name brought up our conversation about leeches, swamps, vampires, and some lady named Purity.

"Has she slayed any vampires?" Asked Cal.

"Probably at least one." There was a chance one of the taverngoers was a member of the blood cult. I didn't get a good look, but I noticed I wasn't the only one listening to the adventurer's conversation. The mug of ale I connected to had a string connecting it to another source.

"Yes, I have seen her."

"When?"

"After you poisoned me and burned down the forest, you lost a fight against the raging fire, and the lady you just described visited to collect the fire spirit that was created."

So much of what Cal said was a blur. There was a fire, I remember that, and two cultivators fighting. One fire and the other earth? I shook my head and projected an image of Smiley to Cal.

"Is this Purity?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Has she entered the forest other than that time?"

"No." Cal picked himself off the floor, dusted off his robes, and tried to straighten his stance. Tension marks crested his face, and his 'beard' was unkempt. He took a deep breath and clicked his tongue. "Show me what happened. Maybe I can help solve whatever is baffling you."

We watched and discussed the encounter multiple times. Our conclusion was that Purity—the smiling jester assassin that put the suppression collar around my neck, formerly known as Smiley—avoided the Bloodwood Forest. The only time she entered was after a good portion of the forest had burned down. Cal didn't think I was her target at the time, though.

I spent a few more hours meditating in my mindscape. I was close to the recursion site but wasn't ready to enter. If my speculation was correct, Purity would visit me shortly after and put an end to this cycle. Delaying too long would probably end in my death as well. With my time, I trained and battled against the fire sage. It didn't end well. Especially since I didn't have my mana.

It was raining when I crossed into the opening of the forest created by the battle of mages. I walked straight to the graves and quickly noticed I wasn't alone. Massive wolfbears had feasted on the corpses and evolved. I counted twelve at epic rank. I cursed under my breath. This must've been a stray pack that wasn't in the dungeon.

There was about a hundred yards between the wolfbears and me. It didn't look like they noticed me yet. I stepped back slowly, retreating from the battlefield. Without my mana, I had no summons. That meant no weapons to fight with or arrows to shoot from Snowpiercer. One of these loops, I'd need to find a way to better equip myself.

Before I could make it into the trees, one of the beasts noticed me. It alerted the whole pack, creating a frenzy of growling and laughter. I started running and could hear the thump of fast footsteps behind me. I wasn't going to make it in time.

I slid to a stop as I planted my feet to hold my ground. The fastest of the pack was a second behind me. My only option was to fight. The collar around my neck weakened me, but I wasn't powerless. I punched the laughing wolfbear in the face. The beast's laugh turned to a whimper as its face crashed into the ground, and it slid away. My knuckles were bloody from connecting with the teeth.

I dodged the next beast's lunge and punched the third wolfbear in the snout. Bones crunched as the halted beast collapsed in its tracks. The rest of the wolfbears surrounded me, including the first beast I knocked down. I had to dodge and fight the second wolfbear that attacked, and as I did, the rest of the pack closed their circle. I took a couple bites to the arm and leg before I killed the second beast. The fight took too long.

Ten elite spirit beasts attacked at once with tooth and claw. I fought back as hard as I could, punching, kicking, and retaliating in any way I could. I managed to maim a couple more before they could sink their teeth into me. Once they got a firm bite, they didn't let go. The pain was tolerable; I'd experienced much worse many times over, but my movement was restricted. My fight was nearly finished when they pulled me to the ground. The only reason I was still alive was from the collar protecting my throat.

I tried to resist as much as I could with the little movement I had. The best I could do was to fight to my stomach to protect sensitive body parts. The pain started burning, and the smell of burnt fur worked its way to my buried nose. The weight on my back dispersed a moment later, and the biting stopped. A light residue fell on my exposed skin, irritating my wounds.

"Look at that. I just saved your life," the fire sage said, her voice a perversion of joy. I think this means you owe."

I didn't need to pull my face out of the dirt to see Purity's smiling face. I could already picture it vividly.

"Now, be a doll and show me which one of those corpses belonged to the princess. I do not want to be here any longer than needed."