Loop: 33

The searing pain came and went quickly as my eyes registered in the same forest. I don’t have much time. I might fail but failure leads to progress… No matter how many times it happens.

The main things that happened at this time were the battle and the ritual ingredients that were going to come from that battle. I still needed to get Merli-… Zothozeft’s corpse so I could wane some of the anger that I had for him.

I heard weeping. The weeping of a deranged lady spirit. The weeping of the same spirit that helped Zothozeft while he was controlling my body. I felt disgusted when I heard that weeping. I was too shocked by the eternal death of Zothozeft in the last loop to recognize the disgust I felt for her weeping.

‘Enough of that.’

I steered away from focusing on what I felt at the moment and instead focused on the plan I made just before ending the last loop. I waited until Solteq was close. The only reason I waited was so I could lessen the area that would soon be damaged.

I created a spell with a bit of Zothozeft’s know-how.

My right and left hand made a symbol. On my right hand, the index, ring finger, and pinkie were raised while everything was closed. While the left hand covered the right hand except the ring finger and pinkie. Both ring fingers and pinkies met and the mana I’ve been preparing shot out. The power was a bit much.

The extended fingers on my right hand snapped off as an aura of blueish haze disintegrated Solteq’s body. His soul received some major damage. Hyftri on the other hand didn’t notice until the sound of my finger gave it away. It didn’t matter though.

Everything in front of me overflowed with energy and died due to not being able to handle it.

Hyftri received enough energy to have reserves on the level of an elder spirit. Without an elder spirit’s consciousness, however, her mental faculties went away. She was a shell.

Solteq was too except his soul took some damage along with the blast.

I took both their souls without much trouble.

Zothozeft’s corpse was still there. It was a thin see-through veil. His soul was gone. No signs of struggle or death. His soul just vanished.

A feeling of hatred erupted. I made a Sol symbol with my left hand to create a spark of flame. The flame went across his body. It didn’t do any damage though. I used a [Graviton] spell to pummel his body. I kept shooting off spells on the soulless corpse. No damage appeared on it though.

After the outburst of hatred, I felt a sense of arrogance. I was the one still standing. Zothozeft still failed after knowing my loops. He still played in the palms of the elder spirit. My thoughts soon turned to hatred again. This time, it was toward the old man.

I stood there in front of Zothozeft’s corpse with two incapacitated souls.

***

I dragged all of them to the ruined temple. I put the souls into jars etched with hand-drawn symbols. The symbols just looked like hands in different poses. On the bottom of the jar, the Luna symbol was made. A hand that all its fingers closed except its thumb. There were others on the sides of the jars. I didn’t focus much on them since I already had Zothozeft’s memories of using many symbols during his stay.

Now and then, I’d shoot out a spell on the soulless corpse to cool my anger. I set up the ritual so I wouldn’t need to do it later.

After that, came the material-gathering section. The materials were numerous but weren’t impossible to find on this planet.

There were thirty different ritual ingredients I’d need to gather. First, xiomuth herbs usually gather around dense areas of spirit energy or mana. Since spirit energy was so scarce here, I’d need to find or make a place dense in mana so regular herbs would transform into the xiomuth kind.

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The map of this world was inside the memories of the unsealed Zothozeft which would help me greatly. I’d need to travel to another continent since it used to have a lesser spirit living there before it died and the pair, Zothozeft and Solteq, were exiled here.

This continent and the other one that I need to get to are connected by a thin strip of land that has frequent weather irregularities.

Although the lesser spirit doesn’t have an abundance of spirit energy it does have the diluted or impure form of it which is mana. Luckily, mana doesn’t dissipate after the death of a spirit, as spirit energy does, and instead gathers and increases with each breath a ‘human’ takes.

‘Humans’ otherwise known as low-born avatars of the first spirit are considered a failsafe in case all the elder, great, and regular(lesser) spirits are wiped out. ‘Better note that down if I ever want to get rid of the first spirit. I wonder if this looping will go away if I kill it.’ I didn’t want to try it since it’d be much easier to just escape this universe and find my home outside his domain of control.

If, on the off-chance that I can’t find my home or it’s in the domain of the first spirit… Then that’ll leave me no choice.

With that tangent out of the way, I spent three days preparing some dried food, filling the canister of water after hiding away the corpse and the jars, and went to walk toward a populated city. The capital would be too far from the other continent, so I thought it’d be better to kill two birds with one stone and stop by a city on the way to the other continent.

***

It’s been a day or two since I’ve reached Sornithia, the closest city to the other continent and the strip combining it to this one, and after gathering my bearings and stocking up on supplies I felt I’d wasted enough time here and continued walking toward the irregular strip.

I went out of the rugged tavern I was in and walked along the path until all the city’s buildings were far enough away behind me that they seemed a couple of centimeters in height.

The scarce grass that was prevalent in Sornithia soon became dead grass the farther away I got from that city. After a while, the dead grass became an abundance of sand and, in rare instances, weeds.

The weather started as a heavy and dry wind. It became worse after a few days of walking and resting along the path. The wind started to gather, and a small tornado was made. I kept walking towards it. It was a bit smaller than some of the tall buildings back in Telok. I held up my hand and made the symbol of Pyr. My index and middle finger were closed as well as my thumb. The rest of the fingers were arched and stuck next to each other.

The spell [Ember of Sol] was used and caused the tornado to dissipate. My body remembered how Zothozeft used powerful magic with only one symbol. I didn’t need to use a row of symbols to make a row of symbols anymore to cast a single spell. I do need to control the mana more precisely because I’m using one symbol, but with my memories of Zothozeft’s stay in my body, it’s much easier than usual.

I continued walking along until I saw patches of grass start to show up; and with those patches of grass, I felt a torrential downpour come along as soon as I stepped on the grass. I stepped back and the rain stopped.

I continued under the protection of cover by constantly making a ceiling of water above me with the spell [Veil of Ma’] with the symbol of Ma’ and the rain kept pouring on top of the veil which helped me use less mana.

It was a long stretch of damp grass plains and some parts of sand. It was past sunset and I needed to camp soon. ‘That patch of sand looks like a nice spot to set up.’

Although I could sleep in the rain, I’d much rather sleep in a dry area. My hopes were crushed as I stepped onto the patch of sand and the rain soon became a storm of sand that wasn’t possible since it was surrounded by grass. The irregular strip earned its name in my mind on that first night.

I spent close to the whole night finding a spot where I could set up but gave up after realizing the only decent spot would be out of this Irregular Strip. I spent that first night sleeping under the rain. The rain didn’t touch me until my eyes closed and I drifted off to sleep since the spell would cancel out and I’d be hit with a cold splash of rainwater hitting my body, blanket, and carpet or rug.

Luckily, I went into a deep enough sleep after hours of that process. I woke up tired and disgruntled. It felt like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. My carpet was drenched along with my blanket and clothes.

The rumors I heard of the strip were weird, to say the least, but weird is an understatement to what I’ve experienced. I heard of the rain-bringing grass, but it wasn’t mentioned that along with the grass, there was storm-bringing sand. Another rumor I heard was that right after the grass doesn’t bring rain anymore there’ll be a forest that acts as a wall. No matter how many times someone tries to cut it down it grows back in a second as if nothing ever happened. I have multiple ideas on how to get past that, but I’d need to see how the forest works first before I jump to conclusions. Although… I have been jumping to conclusions ever since I thought of and believed to be right that the theory of the first spirit rejecting my soul is the reason why I’m stuck in a loop. The only alternative is some Great Spirit of Time, but he’s already merged with the first spirit based on the history that Zothozeft remembers. I might be wrong though…

Getting back on track, I packed my gear and started walking. And walking. And walking even more.

So, there I was, standing in front of the giant wall of trees that were high enough to block the horizon and the sunset. “I’ll deal with this tomorrow,” I said to myself.

I prepared the bed and finally slept well without rain or sandstorms.

I woke up the next day, prepared to deal with the regenerative and problematic tree wall.