Martin swore as he paced around in the forest.

He kicked at random rocks, threw sticks at birds, and punched some trees.

None of it helped his anger.

He had died not once, but twice, to the same fuck using the exact same trick.

‘So, how would we prevent things from happening again?’, asked Ration.

He struggled to find a response.

He could just simply avoid the forest from now on. But that wouldn’t get him the answers he wanted. It also wouldn’t help him figure out this time loop, or whatever crazy batshit this was. Therefore, this was not an option.

However, he was very clearly putting his life at risk by entering the forest. Why should he continue to do so? Was this chase for answers really worth his life? It hurt to die. Every time he did, he was sent to that place, for who knows how long. That place was … terrible. All he did was float in darkness. He couldn’t see anything. Nor hear. Nor smell. Nor taste. He couldn’t even feel his own body. Everything was numb. He half-convinced himself he was going insane.

Had he floated there for two minutes or two hours?

Two hours or two days?

Anything would be preferable to that.

So, he resolved, there would be no going back to that. Not if he could help it.

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If it weren’t for that ghosty piece of shit…

‘Soo, what would our course of action be?’

On one hand, he had a mystery to solve, consequences be damned.

On the other hand, when he failed, he went to that place.

‘Isn’t the answer obvious here?’, asked Magic, who had been busy angrily hitting things for the past two hours.

‘Just don’t fail.’

‘That’s … not a solution. That’s a wish.’

‘Well, it’s a goal to aim towards.’

‘I was looking for something with a higher likelihood of happening.’

So, out of the two options, which one is better?

In this ‘time loop’, death seems to be temporary.

However, it took him years to finally have a goal. To finally want to do something of his own accord, and not just because it was required of him.

So, the answer is obvious.

“I’ll have to go back there,” Martin whispered.

The first thing to do would be to prepare.

First, he would have to be more efficient with his chains.

Second, he distinctly remembered the ghost man saying a word right before teleporting.

Martin put his hand on a tree as he concentrated. He focused on a spot a couple of feet away. He imagined himself being there.

“Telest.”

He looked up.

Nothing had changed.

Martin frowned. Was there a problem in the way he had imagined it? He tried to picture the act of teleporting itself and spoke the word once more. Nothing changed.

Why?

Was there some sort of special restriction for teleporting?

How did any of this even work?

Magic might not even follow a set pattern.

Martin’s mind froze as it made several connections.

Why had the ghost man spoken that word so freely?

If magic did follow a set pattern, then he was risking giving away a teleporting spell to a person who clearly did not know it. Perhaps every member of the magic community could use this spell?

Or perhaps, was he just very confident in his skills?

‘This is a dumb plan,’ Ration said.

Perhaps.

There was a chance magic didn’t follow a certain pattern.

There was a chance that this was simply basic magic, which seemed unlikely to Martin. If it was truly a basic spell, why had he only used it twice in the fight? If someone could freely teleport in a fight, wouldn’t it make more sense to abuse that ability?

And finally, there was a chance that the assassin was overconfident.

Martin smiled.

He’d take those odds.