I opened my eyes screaming, which was very unlike me. The pain in the my head was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was like my head was on fire three times over, radiating a crippling heat that scorched the absolute hell out of my entire body.

Out the corner of my teary eyes I got the impression the massive green orc might have even faltered at my sudden appearance and screaming, rather than just swinging mercilessly like he usually did, but in the end he did ultimately did swing. I didn't even have it in me to dodge.

----------------------------------------

Splat.

----------------------------------------

Splat.

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I weakly rolled. Splat.

----------------------------------------

I rolled with slightly more gusto. Splat.

----------------------------------------

It took five full loops until the damage to my... soul, maybe? Until the damage to my soul had healed enough for me to successfully dodge out of the way of the axe. It wasn't rare for soul damage to last through even time loops, and it seemed this was one such case, if I had to guess. Whatever had happened, it crippled me to the point of near-immobility for five loops. Hopefully I didn't have a hard cap of those.

I stood up on wavering legs, still reeling a bit from the pounding pain in my head. The orc was, as usual, taking a second to pull his axe out of the mud. I shook my head and focused. I had shit to do.

"Yamiyo tekionagure," I said, pouring as much mana into my ball of darkness as I could before launching it. It flew forward and hit the orc in the side, causing it to roar with pain.

Skill up! Curse Magic Level 2

Nice. It was hurt, but not dead. It pulled the axe out of the ground and swung it in my direction.

"Hantai ike," I chanted, and the axe launched back, bending the orc's arm back over it's shoulder. I heard a crack, possibly its shoulder getting dislocated or broken, then another roar. I cast a barrage of darkness balls at it while it reeled to adjust to its new life as a cripple.

Skill up! Mysticism Level 3

Skill up! Curse Magic Level 3

The levels were coming fast and swift. As expected, combat would probably work a lot better than any grinding, though I doubted I would get infinite EXP from fighting a crippled orc. I turned to go grab the sword I usually got, and in retrospect, rarely actually used.

On my way there I noticed a few humans giving me quick, baffled glances before returning their focus to their fights. I felt like I should know what earned that response this time, but it wasn't coming to me. Maybe due to the still-pounding headache from the possibly-soul damage. I scooped up the sword, stretched for a bit, held out an arm, and said "Haintai ike". The goblin's arrow that had been rushing for my head abruptly reversed.

Goblin Rogue Defeated!

Skill up! Mysticism Level 4

Level Up! All Attributes increased.

Not usable against arrows... unless you knew they were coming. The timing was pretty lucky, I had to admit, but that goblin and I were likeblood brothers by this point. He killed me, I killed him, he gave me a concussion, I gave him... death? Okay, our relationship was pretty one-note, but I felt like I really knew him on a deep level. Same for the orc from before. It would be nice to hang out and maybe play some video games together once this whole thing blew over.

I left the helmet and trudged on. It marked me immediately as a sus impostor, and with Rose—the blonde knight, presumably—so high-strung from this battle, she would kill me the second I misspoke. Better to go in with a different plan. (As for the sword, I figured that since mages didn't need to do complex hand gestures, it would be standard for them to at least know how to use a sword).

Once I reached the camp, I walked over to Rose.

"—at least five hundred of them. The Excursed could send more at any moment, if she's behind this," I heard her saying, voice as hard as steel, just like always. I saluted her.

"Ma'am! I'm a novice Mystic, here thanks to Timothy. Scouts have reported orc mages in the back of the enemy ranks, I'm to stand ready for any artillery spells," I said, speaking quickly to not give her any room to ask questions about my rank. Hopefully Farmer Second-Class was a thing for mages and not just infantry.

"Damn!" she pounded a fist on the table. "Orc mages, here, now? The Excursed is behind this after all. At least we have a Mystic now," she said, glancing my way. Her icy blue eyes were visible behind her visor. "Name and rank?" she asked.

"Ma'am! Malcador, Farmer Second-Class."

She tilted her head, but ultimately nodded. Whew. Last time, she asked for her name and my commanding officer's name due to my jumbled equipment, among other things, but this time I knew her name, and had Timothy to back me up. In name only, that is. Hopefully he would cover for me afterwards.

"Mage, stand on guard. Reverse what you can, and put up a Magic Barrier for what you can't." Uh oh.

"Yes ma'am!" I said with another salute, pretending to have Magic Barrier. Damn. I could already see the future laid out, but I had to make do with what I could. No point admitting I couldn't cast Magic Barrier, which was, it seemed, as basic-bitch of a spell as you could get, considering it was novice-level next to the reverse spell. I had the sneaking suspicion that admitting I couldn't cast it would out me as a doppelgager in her eyes and swiftly earn me a sword through the heart. Oh Rose, what can I do to melt your icy heart? Just enough that you don't kill me on sight?

I stood on guard, waiting for the meteors. In the meantime I eavesdropped on Rose's conversation with the other captains. Or rather, the captains, because as it turns out, Rose was actually a paladin sent from the church to observe the base. She wasn't highest authority (the captain-general, highest ranking of the three or so other captains there, was), but she had a lot of influence. Unfortunately, Paladin Rose's influence was not enough to convince the captain-general to call a full retreat to the fort where the mages were. It was just some orcs, he said. Better get real battle experience than hide and do training exercises, he said. He honestly might have had a point if this were a standard raid, and that explained some of the hesitation on the shoulders, but now Rose had an ace up her sleeve. Orc mages.

The thing about orc mages was that they were fairly uncommon. One in ten thousand, at best. Magic took intelligence and regular training (for most people anyway, eheheh), which orcs didn't have the brains or diligence for. There were, however, the ocassional mutants born with blue skin, more powerful brains, and a modicum of responsibility. They would take books stolen from human settlements, teach themselves magic, and then use their superior brains and abilities to take control of orc camps. It wasn't rare to find an individual orc mage, and if you were say raiding a normal orc camp, you would probably find one (or maybe two) in the biggest tent.

Here, however, we were facing a platoon of them. An entire row, from my measure (which they were basing this off), that could be like 20+. That was unusual. Orc mages didn't usually gang up with each other en masse, or give up their little settlements. Platoons of orc mages in armies wasn't unheard of, especially when the Demon King (key term!) was calling the Demon Realm to arms, but the current Demon King had been silent for ten years, and most of all the attack was sudden. That implied the Excursed was to blame.

The Excursed. From what I could gather from Rose's ranting (the captain-general was very slow on the uptake, and very subborn, it seemed), the Excursed was a term used for both individuals and an entire phenomenon. It was hard to grasp the specifics, but it seemed like Excursed were individuals who obtained unnaturally immense power out of nowhere by "tapping directly into the Soul of the World," and there was one Excursed out there of an unknown name who had specialized in summoning before she ended up Excursed a couple months ago. The result? An ungodly powerful summoner who could summon armies out of nowhere. Like, say, the orcs we were facing now.

The geopolitical implications of an ungodly powerful, unnamed summoner stirring up shit were, of course, staggering. Thankfully or perhaps not, the discussion was interrupted by Meteors rushing down. My time to shine.

"Paladin Rose, they're here!" I shouted, using her title instead of "ma'am" now that I knew it. Rose looked up and nodded. I extended a hand into the air for dramatic effect. "Hantai ike!" I roared, and the first meteor did reverse direction, soaring back in an arc.

Skill up! Mysticism Level 5

Bonus: +5 Base INT + WIS!

I had a lot of questions. A bonus at level 5? Base INT + WIS, not total INT + WIS? But I didn't have the opportunity to think on that. I quickly realized there were a lot of meteors - twenty, at least. One from each Elemental orc? I reversed the momentum of one, but nineteen more were coming. I heard Rose cursing aloud, which implied to me she hadn't expected so many, and didn't think a novice could reverse them all. She was, perhaps, entirely correct.

I focused and chanted the reverse spell non-stop. I reversed about five more of them (getting two Mysticism levels in the process - these things were giving a lot of EXP, for now at least) before realizing the initial meteor was coming back. And then the others, too. The so-called ritter match had begun, and they had more Mystics than we did. By which I mean they had more than just me.

"Retreat! Back to the fort!" Rose yelled, and it didn't look like the captain-general was about to protest that with imminent doom rushing down. I was buying a slight amount of time, but the meteors were coming. Oh lawd, were they coming.

Reverse. Reverse. Reverse. Reverse. Reverse. I focused on the closest one each time, but they were gaining ground. I realized something—after reversing something, there was a set period of time where it couldn't be reversed again. The momentum was stuck, static, unmovable by outside forces. I concluded leveling up would expand that set period, but I was a mere level 8-ish Mystic, and no doubt they had much higher levels than me. If my momentum was locked in place for half of second, theirs was locked in place for more like two. The game was rigged from the start. Not to mention I was just about out of MP. Whoops.

I was falling back with the troops, casting reverse where I could, where I heard the yell.

"TROOOOOOLL! TROLL IN THE BATTLEFIELD!"

I craned my neck, chanting all the while, and saw the problem. A massive, twenty-foot tall troll, covered in red plate armor and wielding a massive mace that almost gave me a traumatic flashback at the sight of it. I got the impression that these guys were a Big Fucking Deal, and there was one standing directly between the retreating army and the fort. A rock and a hard place, as they say. For a second I wondered why I hadn't seen him before, then discarded it. Surely he had been summoned here by the Excursed summoner, who clearly had a boner for ensuring Rose was dead.

And that was in fact what was happening here. Rose wasn't about to leave her soldiers to die, regardless of whether she was simply an assigned paladin or not. She unsheathed her sword, now glowing blue—that was new—and started going to town on the troll's lower legs. It seemed like her sword was enchanted with frost, and left jagged ice in its place with each stab. The troll didn't seem all too pleased by that, and was swinging his mace like a scythe cutting grass. Rose ducked, jumped, and altogether acrobatically dodged the swings. It was by the time she did a backflip to avoid a ground smash that my jaw was hanging a bit. What the fuck? How much battle experience did she have?

My thoughts were interrupted be a meteor slamming into the ground behind me. Whoops. I had run out of MP and my chants weren't doing anything. Most of the troops had gotten out, and so most of the deaths were probably any orcs that tried chasing us, but— Another meteor hit, shaking the earth and blasting me with heat hard enough I almost fell over. I got a distinct sense of doom, but hey, maybe the army could handle the troll collectively.

Stolen novel; please report.

I checked up on that hypothesis and did not find encouraging evidence. Most people were running right past it, leaving Rose to die, and the few that stayed got stomped on, which discouraged others from joining the fray. It looked like Rose was mostly on her own, unless I stepped in, and I wasn't actually sure what I could do. I had in my repertoire three spells, one useless in actual combat, and... a middling skill in Throwing Weapons? Maybe I should find a target and throw daggers at it until I leveled it up enough to accurately throw a dagger at its eye or something. Then again, don't trolls regenerate? Hard to tell with Rose freezing the wounds... Oh, that was why she was doing it at all. Of course.

All these thoughts were punctuated with a series of explosive Meteor impacts that each ran the risk of blowing me off my feet. Luckily I had walked far enough away from them to not be knocked unconscious by them, and they were keeping the orc horde away (for now), so I tried to ignore them.

I jogged with the soldiers in the general direction of the fort and Rose. It was clear by this point, especially considering the flash of yellow amid swarming orcs I had seen in my second-ish loop, that Rose would never retreat without making sure as many people as possible were alive. She understood the tactical value of retreating, but refused to put her life above those of the men she was trusted to oversee and protect. Paladin morals, perhaps? A sense of responsibility? Pride? Who knew, but either she was going to kill that troll or it was going to kill her. Outlasting it wasn't much of an option, since the orc army was coming, and I got the feeling she couldn't outrun an army throwing shit at her, on top of a troll. It was either she face the troll down, on let the troll cut through the army like butter, and she chose the former.

Once I got close enough, I did my best to help. "Yamiyo tekionagure," I chanted, putting all the MP that I had recovered into it. The ball of darkness shot up, hit the troll in the face, and... Didn't seem to do anything. The helmet blocked it? Its red greaves didn't cover all its sickly purple legs, but it sure covered its face.

"Anti-magic armor!" Rose shouted without turning, keeping all her focus on dodging the mace swings and kicking feet while getting in a few stabs here and there. It didn't even seem like she knew it was me who had done that.

Well. Wasn't it kind of unfair to summon a massive powerful beast and give it special equipment to boot? I guess that's why the Excursed was uprooting the world or whatever. Magic wasn't completely out of the cards, since I just needed to have enough accuracy to hit them in the eye rather than the helmet (or focus on the legs like Rose), but that seemed a bit beyond my skill level. Experimentally, I waited for the troll to swing (and for my MP to come back), then reversed the weapon rather than its arm.

The result? The mace flew backwards, stopping its arms in its tracks... for a split second. It readjusted its grip and resumed the swing as soon as it could, largely unperturbed by the whole process. It bought Rose enough time to get a stab in, but it was hardly the "disarm him out of nowhere" masterstroke I had expected. My skill level was too low, and it felt like my lack of MP had greatly diminished the time limit. Each time I hit the bottom of my MP, I lurched a bit with nausea. Not ideal.

The rumbling had stopped and I glanced behind me. An army of orcs, charging this way. Fantastic. The question was now thus: abandon Rose to die like the others (excluding the 20-some people who were still here, cautiously fighting the troll), or encourage her to run with me to the fort now that most people had gone? The latter seemed more practical.

"Orcs incoming!" I shouted. "Make a break for the fort!"

Rose shot me an icy look, as cold as her blade. "You don't outrun a Giant Troll, and you don't turn your back to it, either."

Now that she mentioned it, with massive legs like that we would be hard-pressed to outrun it, and despite what one may think, it was moving its legs fairly quickly. No lumbering or slow-moving kicks from it. Apparently this was such common sense it earned an annoyed look from her, and, well, she had just said you don't turn your back to a Giant Troll.

The swing of its mace clipped the side of her helmet as she ducked away. It flew off her, spinning in the air, and only by the grace of some god did it not rip her head off too. She jumped back to her feet, and I saw for the first time her pristine facial features. She looked far more like a princess than a paladin, with perfect cheekbones, full lips, and unblemished, creamy skin. I wasn't one to creep, but she was just so shockingly pretty, especially with the icy cold of her eyes emphasizing the nobility of her appearance. The only things marring her beauty were the mat of red blood on the side of her head, from the mace blow, and—perhaps—the knowledge she had gutted me like a fish. Actually, no, that just made her hotter.

If she held it against me for distracting her, she didn't let it show. She was back in the midst of fighting, her long blonde hair streaming like a golden ocean behind her. I wondered why a paladin would have such long hair, but I couldn't voice my suspicions considering it was potentially a cultural thing.

In any case. My motto was to treat each loop as the last, but I wasn't blind to the reality facing me. An orc army from behind, an unbeatable troll in front, and Rose having already chosen to sacrifice herself over letting 1000-some people be smashed to bits by said unbeatable troll. I could either cut my losses and run to try to scrape up some more power, or die fighting too.

In the end, the world chose for me. Whether it was the concussion dulling her movements or just exhaustion from several continuous minutes of acrobatic dodging, Rose took a mace to the armored chest, and was sent flying back like a ragdoll. The dent in her armor had visibly pierced her body, and she landed with a thud, immobile.

The troll let out a victorious roar, then vanished. The orcs vanished too. They were summons, and they knew their job was done, presumably, which confirmed (more or less) that this was all a hit job for Rose. Strange.

Feeling more morose than I expected, I walked over to Rose and leaned down. She was still breathing, surprisingly; I cast Heal and did what I could, but level 1 Restoration only slowed the bleeding, and wasn't nearly enough to save her.

"Why'd you do it?" I asked, more out of geniune curiosity than anything.

She rose a shapely eyebrow and coughed, weakly. "Do what?"

"Sacrifice yourself. Fight a battle you knew you'd lose.

"I didn't think of it as a battle I would lose. I went into it, and all things, expecting to win."

"You thought you'd win, even when it kept you on the defensive, and you barely had opportunities to attack?"

She laughed. It was weak too. "No. You don't get it. I never had a chance. But I don't think like that. I go in expecting to win, even if there's a one hundred percent chance I lose."

And just like that, she was dead.

With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.

She was right, I didn't get it. Knowing you'll lose, but going into it expecting to win anyway? It flat-out didn't make sense. It was double-think, wasn't it?

I thought it over while I sprinted, running as fast as I could to boost my Athletics by a few levels. I had my next steps planned out, and I even had a backup plan for the Wannabe-Sauron, but this was nagging at me a bit. I wasn't a being of pure logic or anything, though maybe feeling dead to the world looked similar at times, but I really wasn't getting it. Going into all things expecting to win, even if you have a one hundred perchant chance of losing. Hmm.

Skill Up! Athletics Level 5

Bonus: +5 base AGI + END!

I reached the fort, and entered along with the rest of the last few soldiers. The emergency beds and stuff had already been laid out and the Restoration mages were running around busily. There was Timothy in the back, looking unfazed, giving orders like last time. At least this time the bulk of the recruits had survived, evident not only by how much busier things were, but by all the movement within the fortress itself.

I looked around and saw her in the corner again, hugging her knees as best she could considering the... obstructions. I leaned against a wall and waited a bit for things to settle down. Didn't want to be too abrupt.

Ten-ish minutes later, I made my move.

"Hey," I said, walking over. She looked up, messy black hair once again sliing to the side and revealing dark purple eyes. I could really lose myself in those eyes, if only because they were like a vortex of misery and darkness. Now more than ever I believed in the old saying that eyes were portals into the soul.

"What?" she said, sharply. If looks could kill, the daggers she was staring right now would have already cut my heart out.

"I just wanted to say I like your black robes. They look really good on you. I kind of feel like most mages don't have good fashion senses, but you've really got it."

Look, look. I know. I'm more disgusted with myself than anyone. This was manipulation, plain-and-simple. It was what Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day and got karmically punished for. I know. But it was just... just how I worked. If I knew the "right" thing to say, I said it. I parsed conversations through the lens of dialogue options in a video game, with one being the right one and the rest being wrong. The thing about deadening yourself was that you don't really want to say things yourself. You kind of just say what you think the other person wants to hear, and due to my special circumstances, I had a better idea of what Hilda here wanted me to say than most.

Speaking of whom, Hilda balked. Her eyes widened, then shifted around, as if she was looking for people behind me watching on and snickering. Didn't take a genius to guess what had happened to her in the past. And as they say, once bitten, twice shy.

"Shut up. You're just saying that to make fun of me. You think black clothes are dumb like everyone else."

It said something about Hilda that she was more concerned about me potentially making fun of her than the mass amount of death and chaos going on, but you know, it also said something about me that I was doing this right after the tragic death of a fair maiden who I potentially had a growing obsession with. Deadening one's heart is fucked up, I tell you. It fucks you up.

"No, no. Black is cool. Actually, I'm not sure what Arcana you are, but Cursed magic is actually my favorite. I've always wanted to wear cool black clothes and learn Cursed spells."

"I-I'm... I'm of the Cursed Arcana," she said, stammering. Probably trying to figure out what to say next. She looked me over, and on instict I looked down too.

The first thing I noticed was that I was appreciably more muscular and fit then before, such that my muscles were straining a bit against my now tight-fitting pop culture T-shirt. My increased STR and END probably had to do with that, or maybe just my levels in general. Previously I had been... well, I wouldn't have gotten second glances from anyone that weren't preceded by a slight grimace, but now I could imagine a girl biting her lip at me in the pool. And that was what Hilda was doing now. Good thing she didn't recognize the pop culture reference.

"I-I could... show you... spells...?" she said, ending on a question, despite being the one offering. Her eyes were still shifting; I didn't have her trust, yet, and I probably wouldn't have it by the end of this loop, but just hearing the spells would be enough. Maybe she could train me, too, beyond what levels I could get on my own in combat. It was hard to say.

"Sure, I'd like that. Are you busy, though? Am I interrupting anything?" I asked, gesturing to the chaos behind me.

Her eyes narrowed and sweat trickled down her cheek. "No, and they won't shut up about it. Blah blah 'The Cursed Arcana can't even heal?' blah blah 'Gosh, how useless are you?' blah blah blah. They'd never whine if I was hexing their enemies and summoning demon help in fights, but just becaused the Cursed Arcana destroys souls instead of healing them. It's messed up. They don't know how great Cursed spells are. They're all stuck-up stupid jerks," she ranted, speaking quickly as if this had all been bottled up and she never had anyone to say it to before.

"Geez. What a bunch of morons. They don't know how great you and Cursed spells really are."

"I know right? Right?!" she exclaimed, then fell silent and looked down at the ground, as if embarrassed to have gotten excited, even for a second.

It was clear she wasn't going to speak again, so I stepped in. "So yeah, I'd love to see some of yours spells. Want to go some place alone so we can focus? You and me, ah..." I trailed off, as if I didn't know her name.

"Hilda," she said, her voice worried, as if she was uncertain even about her name.

"Hilda. Cute name, it suits you. I'm Malcador, by the way."

She looked up. She didn't quite blush, but I saw her essentially blue screen of death. It was like wobbly vortex lines arose in her eyes and spun like minature whirlwinds as she processed what had been said.

"S-Spells," she stammered, standing up. She had done her damndest to hide her body behind her heavy black robes, but the movement of her standing up hugged the cloth against her curves, fully revealing her shapely hips and healthy protrusions up front. I was kind of shocked that the guys here would bully a girl with a figure like hers, but thinking about it, it made sense. Those of the Cursed Arcana were apparently a ostracized minority, due to their association with evil (note the soul destruction. I sure did. More on that later), and I got the feeling Hilda's ranting turned away even the people who tried to be friendly. On my part, I thought it was pretty cute. I didn't really feel strongly about anything, so it was always pleasant to sit back and observe what got other people going.

Hilda guided me into the fort, which now had hallways bustling with people. Along the way she took it upon herself to rant about all the injustices wrought upon her by anti-Cursed buffoons. She kept her head straight ahead and never looked at me, as if afraid of either looking into my eyes or even checking to see if I was still there. It was actually a little easy to lose sight of her in the more shadowy halls of the fort, since from behind she was basically like a solid wall of darkness, her almost sickly pale skin hidden from view due to the unruly waterfall of her messy black hair covering the back of her neck.

Amid her rant was some interesting tidbits, like about how the Cursed ostracization was in part due to the Excursed phenomenon being theorized to originate in soul manipulation (hence the name), although Hilda assured me that was all just thoroughly debunked rumors. One interesting thing I noted was that everyone had been assigned to this previously abandoned fort just recently; she didn't know most people here yet, except the mages, which was why she didn't find not recognizing me suspicious. Mages and infantry didn't interact all that much outside of battle, it seemed, simply due to how different their vocations and lifestyles were. They got to know each other through shared combat experience, not so much stories over beer.

We eventually reached a door and she spun around, locking eyes on me as if she had expected me to have slipped away on the way there. She froze at the sight of me for a few seconds, then exhaled. "Here!" she exclaimed, loudly, before lowering her eyes and mumbling to herself. Okay. She opened the door and in we went.

It was time to learn as much as many Cursed spells as possible before Wannabe-Sauron tried to club my head in.