I quickloaded back to the start of the loop after we finished hashing out the plan.

A lesser man might have been concerned about whether time travel was a form of murder, in which the interruption of consciousness and erasure of memories was essentially the same thing as murdering the future-versions of people and replacing them with their former selves, but not I. For my part, I was forged in the fires of having looped like ten times by this point, and if I started worrying about whether everyone in the alternate timeline technically died or would protest my looping, I would go crazy. As far as I was concerned, the loops were just gentle bumps on the road, and everybody was still essentially their same self.

For what it's worth, past-Rose's last act was to give a thumbs up, and past-Hilda explicitly said "I consent to you time traveling and do not view it as an interruption of my consciousness or a form of murder." Exact words. Bless her heart. I'm glad we can put this subject behind us and never think of it or mention it again.

In any case, I glanced around. Leh'hah was walking this way and Rose was readying to address him, just like always. Hilda was standing beside me. I noticed a small smile on her face I hadn't ever seen before despite all my loops back to this point; now that I was actually looking at her, instead of caught up in my own head, I realized she was happy just to be with the party and spend time with us. The simple act of living was enough to bring a smile to her face, however small. The warmth in my heart that had blossomed last loop grew in size, and I found myself walking over to give her a hug.

"Eep!" she squeaked when I hugged her, but despite widening her eyes in surprise for a second, she quickly smiled and hugged my back. I pulled her close in this loving embrace, and tried to not let the sensation of huge boobs squashing softly against my lower chest ruin the platonic mood. She nuzzled her head against my upper chest for a second, then tilted her head up and pursed her lips for a kiss, eyes closed. No doubt she was just messing around and didn't expect me to reciprocate, but fuck it. I pressed my lips against hers.

I immediately realized she had gotten better at kissing since her ill-fated nighttime assault. There was no knocking of teeth or aggressive face-smashing here; after another wide-eyed look of surprise, she tilted her head to the side so our noses didn't bump together and with that our mouths became one, her soft lips seemingly becoming a part of mine as we kissed. Before long her tongue slipped into my mouth and wrapped around my tongue, starting a wriggly wrestling match that honestly caught me off guard. Her tongue then began an adventure through my mouth, licking the roof of my mouth, the back of my teeth, and digging around under my tongue. It was all I could do to festively poke her tongue with mine while it wandered.

We must have been absorbed in the kiss for only a few minutes before Hilda started to lose control. Her nipples palpably hardened, digging into my lower chest and scraping against me a bit when she shifted. Her hand wandered to mine, grabbed onto it with a surprisingly firm grip, and pulled it onto her boob. I gave a hesitant, experimental squeeze, and found my fingers sinking in like an anchor dropped to sea, held back only by the fabric of her robes. I would have drowned without it stopping me from falling all the way into her all-consuming boob flesh.

I also would have drowned in the moment had she not used her other hand to grab onto my (now-erect) dick.

I pulled my head back and jumped away on instinct, putting distance between us. Hilda was panting heavily, licking her lips and giving me a hungry look. She was making aggressive jack-off motions with one hand while using the other to suggestively prop up her boobs, and in that moment I knew: had I not jumped away, we would have ended up fucking then and there. Which honestly had an appealing ring to it, but we were far from alone.

I turned around. Rose was frowning a bit, but the second I turned, she wiped it away with an impassive look that betrayed no emotion. Leh'hah had on a mixture of grimace and a sneer, the kind a bigot would make when seeing a confirmation of his worldview. Yeah, well, fuck you. Elf women are sluttier than any human, I promise you that.

"In any case..." Leh'hah eventually said. "I, ahem, welcome you to the city of Koh'rin."

I stepped forward before Rose could speak. I had gone through this routine quite a few times by now, minus the public display of affection. "I'm the Heir of the World. You know I'm the Heir. We're going to drop by the inn, talk among ourselves for a bit, then go to the palace for an immediate audience with the Council of Three, which you will arrange."

He gave me a reproachful look, then nodded. "Very well. Forceful, aren't we?"

From there he took us to the inn. I could have gone there on my own, but I didn't want to give too much away by somehow knowing which exact inn they had reserved for us ahead of time. Once there, he left for the palace while we walked inside. I introduced ourselves to the innkeep—Soo'wel, nice lady—and into our room we went. Hilda followed rather than going to the second room, since something was clearly up.

"Explain yourself," Rose immediately said once the door was shut. "What's going on?"

"Look deep into your heart and envision a scene marked by the phrase 'frosty bitch.' Your suspicions are correct, you frosty bitch."

Rose frowned for a second, then nodded. "What's our next move?"

"Wait, wait," Hilda interrupted. "What's going on? Why are we calling names? Is frosty bitch some kind of code phrase? Also," she looked at me. "Purr. Let's room together tonight. I have a lot to teach you about, um, curse magic. It might take all night." She formed an O with one hand and thrust a finger through it over and over. I didn't see the point of the innuendo when she was just going to do that in front of Rose. Who, by the way, was frowning slightly again.

I waved a hand. "It's weird time shit. The long and short of it is, the dark elves and tree elves are going to try to kill the high elf princess tonight. In an alternate timeline we hashed out a plan to stop it together tonight. I'll debrief you guys on the situation, go through the plan we worked out together, then we'll give it the old college try. It seemed pretty simple and effective to me, so I think it'll be fine."

Rose nodded, understanding completely, but Hilda was looking aghast. "Bwuh? Bwuh??? Time travel? We hashed out a plan? Who? What...?" She gave a thoughtful look. "Have I managed to fuck you in any timeline yet?"

"No."

"I sense that the previous Hilda gave me a mission... A quest to make things right... To do what all other Hildas failed to do..."

I pointed at her. "I'm glad you're taking this well, but we're probably going to be busy tonight."

"That's what I'm hoping for."

"No, I mean, assassination. It happens at night. We got shit to do."

"Yeah, you."

"Focus. We'll see."

More furious jack-off motions.

"In any case!" Rose interrupted, a little more forceful than usual. "What's the plan? I presume my past-future-self produced quite a solid plan, and I would like to hear it."

"Honestly, given the facts at hand, it's a pretty simple plan. The situation is only really difficult when I try to tackle it alone. That said, I'm feeling a little hesitant about just up and saying the plan."

"Why?"

"You know how I feel about stating plans aloud. If you say a plan aloud, it'll fail."

"Good goddess, what is wrong with you? This nonsense again?" Rose shook her head. "The plan will not fail just because you say it. Reality will not bend around your words. You are being ridiculous."

"Okay, okay. Fine. The plan goes like this..."

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

We left the inn and met up with Leh'hah.

The walk to the palace was as obnoxiously long as before. The Eternal Tree was in the middle of the city, but Koh'rin was a full-fledged city and not just a tree village, so it took a while. Along the way I spent most of my time fighting off Hilda instead of focusing on preparing for tonight. She was as emboldened by the kiss as I thought, and she kept pushing her boobs against me, going for more kisses, and even grabbing for my dick. I whispered to ask why she was doing that last one, and she replied "Stealth handjob." She was a madwoman and I had let her even more loose than she had been before. I needed, like, a leash, but that would probably be demeaning, and wouldn't even stop her from getting near me, unless Rose held it. Which, actually, sounded like a good idea, and given how Rose was frowning whenever she saw Hilda get clingy with me, I imagined she would jump at the opportunity to pull on a leash around Hilda's neck whenever it happened.

We were taken to the usual waiting room, waited for their usual lunch to end and the usual audience chamber to be prepared, and with that we were in.

It went basically the same as always. I demonstrate my abilities, the high elf councilman asks the purpose behind my sudden insistence at getting an audience, I announce the assassination, Soh'fia balks, the dark elf councilman silences the crowd, blah blah. The plan didn't actually involve changing this part up at all, since the earlier changes were made, the greater reality would differ from what I knew. Especially since there was a one hundred percent chance either the tree elf councilman or the dark elf councilman were the culprit behind everything.

And so we were sent back to the waiting room to wait for the afternoon audiences to end and Soh'fia to come get me to guard her for the night. Over time I had come to learn that the original plan was for me to guard the outside of her door along with a contingent of 10-some soldiers, but Soh'fia had fervently insisted for me to guard her alone so we could talk, and only after Bah'loh'kah (the high elf councilman) eventually relented was her request approved. It seemed not even a highly racist grandfather figure could resist the begging of his beloved granddaughter figure, even when humans were involved. It actually boggled the mind that Soh'fia would actively thin out her guard in order to secure alone time with a human male while under threat of being assassinated, but by this point I knew not to question what slutty elves did while horny, and that nothing in the world could convince her the dark and tree elves actually wanted her dead enough to go through with an assassination.

Anyway, she got here eventually, after several hours. I made sure to spend the time training a bit, like usual. Working up a nice sweat to form a glossy sheen over my skin. My athletics in particular were going up nicely since I didn't need to engage in actual combat for it.

(Maybe now is a good time to mention the milestone bonuses I skipped over? 25 in Curse Magic marginally increased the efficiency of energy conversion from light to dark, 25 in Dodging gave me something of a minor spider-sense for attacks coming from behind, and 25 in Athletics boosted my stamina so I could run/fight/etc for twice as long.)

Princess Sof'iah and her entourage came to pick us up like always. She stepped through the door and sniffed the air, instantly wrinkling her nose with a grimace.

"Why do you human monkeys all have to smell so bad?" she blanched. "I can barely stand to be near one of you, much less three."

Soh'fia was a lot easier to understand now that I had a bunch of experience backing me up. The blanch was her way of resisting the urge to let her eyes roll to the back of her head in bliss as she inhaled the raw, primal scent of a human male up close for the first time. The loud insults were to cover the wet sounds of her panties instantly getting soaked. And finally...

"Guards, I will be taking only the so-called Heir with me. Escort the other two out."

She immediately used her authority as princess to eliminate any potential competitors and get me alone. In retrospect, she really was crafty, hiding her true feelings beyond layers of aggression and blustering. You could almost describe this kind of behavior as an archetype of some kind, but the word for it wasn't coming to me. Regardless, she was yet another girl who spoke and acted in layers. Why must so many fantasy women play these mind games? It almost made me yearn for Hilda's blatant dick-grabbing.

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"Actually," I said, "A man named Leh'hah promised we would get rooms in the palace for tonight." It was something of a longshot, something that would help if it worked but not something absolutely critical. They could get back into the palace without this help, but it would be nice.

Soh'fia sniffed, then blanched. I honestly had to commend her for not just sniffing furiously like I had seen her do sometimes. Her strength of will was truly impressive for an elf. Though, I did have to wonder about just how enhanced her senses were. I was, after all, clad in a layer of light armor and a layer of linen clothes beneath that. She was smelling me through two layers and still barely keeping a grip on herself. Just how would she react to no clothes, for example?

"Fine," she said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Guards, show them to the servants quarters and lend them a small room or something. Far from mine. I don't care. Get a move on." She then twirled around. "Follow me, human."

I nodded to Rose and Hilda, then followed after Soh'fia. I trusted them to get into position on their own. I had described the palace's layout and their walk through had cleared up any confusion they might have still had.

"So the Heir is a stupid human," she eventually said, not making eye contact. We had certainly had this conversation like five times by this point. Sometimes I would pass the time by just saying "yes, your highness" each time, and one time I just repeated everything she said back to her. That really pissed her off. I had fun that loop.

"Do you dislike humans?" I asked this time, not really thinking too hard about it. I had to admit, it was kind of hard to get in conversations you had already played out five plus times.

"O-Of course! Humans smell, they're violent, they're not pure like elves, they smell terrible, they're dumb, they don't understand true romance, they smell, and they're just inferior to elves in every way. How could I ever like them?" she asked, sounding offended.

I shrugged. "Our charm and wit?"

"Hah! Charm! You don't have half the charm of an educated elf poet. Which is why I don't get why the council believed you so easily. You pulled some kind of trick there. I don't know what you did, but when I'm queen, I'll talk to the tree, prove you're a faker, and then have your head cut off."

"That sounds pretty violent. Do you want to be a tyrant?" I asked, echoing what I had said the first time she said that.

She faced forward again, chin up. "It would be justice. That's what good queens do. Justice. They punish liars and criminals. A good queen wouldn't even let a human in the city."

"Because they're so smelly and you hate them."

"Exactly. Maybe you're smart for a human after all."

"If I can understand but a fraction of the complex inner machinations of your mind, your highness, I am honored."

"Good. Now, we're here." She stopped in front of an all-too familiar door. The fifth door on the right of this floor. "Guards, stay by the door. I am going to have a private conversation with this Heir. If I yell, come in and kill him."

They saluted, as normal. I knew from experience they would follow that order, at least on the surface, until it got late enough at night. Maybe when they swapped places with the night watch, and the night watch promptly left the area to leave the door coincidentally unattended. Hmm. It was hard to tell, since they wore helmets that covered most of their faces.

We sat down at the table, the attendant poured the usual tea that served as elvish dinner, yada yada. Soh'fia picked up the cup, but didn't drink any. She just played it cool while her nose twitched like crazy, a sign of her fighting to not just inhale deeply. This was a little different from our first loop, but that was just the butterfly effect for you.

"So," she finally began, setting her still-full cup down. "You really think someone is going to assassinate me?"

I leaned back and held up a sheet of paper with the following opening message written on it: Yep, and this is how we're going to stop it. Watch what you say. They're listening.

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

I leaned back in my chair, facing the door. The covers being bumped up in Soh'fia's bed indicated her presence there. We were in the waiting phase of the plan. I had directed the conversation in such a way the assassin would try to sneak through the door rather than go through the window. Considering what a cock-addled brain she had, Soh'fia was surprisingly competent in subterfuge and quick thinking. She took the message seriously and acted like she hadn't seen anything. From there we talked while she read over the plan, and ultimately nodded to indicate her agreement with the steps. All in all, it was hard to argue with the simple steps.

And now we were waiting. I had to trust that Hilda and Rose were in position, but well, trust was something I had in spades now. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that they would do their jobs just fine.

Eventually, the door cracked open and a dagger came flying my way. Show time.

I reversed it like always, instead of trying to dodge it and begin the game of infinite boomerang. The assassin caught it and flung open the door, but before she could rush in and attack, I myself rushed forward and locked her in a clash of blades while she was still stuck in the door. She took a step back and went for a slice, which I dodged and followed up with a knee to the stomach. I knew her strategies pretty well now; not enough to kill her, but enough to land some surprise blows that would keep her in place. Why did I want to keep her in place?

The assassin suddenly froze, then fell over backwards, revealing an impossible to comprehend shadowy figure behind her. Hilda dropped the Invisicloak and waved.

I wanted to keep her in place so Hilda, hiding in the hallway with her faux invisibility, could slip a sleeping Miasma into her mouth and knock her out. We could now question her, turn her over to the authorities, etc. I had kind of been curious about whether she would have native resistance to Miasma, but even if she had gotten away, it wouldn't have been the end of the world.

I turned to look at the bed, which had a huge branch sticking through it and piercing the figure in bed. Oh no...!

Just kidding. I went over to the bed and flipped it over, revealing... a doppelganger of Soh'fia, or rather, a Dakidoll of Soh'fia, which was a lesser form of the spell Doppelganger. One of the spells Hilda had been keeping from me, and only revealed after our emotional feelings jam, was a spell that used some consumed soul information to create a replica of the person. It was a physical copy with no soul or mind of its own, completely immobile, and basically just good for filling up space. Why Hilda wanted to keep that spell a secret from me was fairly obvious, but I did not press for details. The important thing was that Soh'fia had agreed to be swapped out for it in the window of time between her night's watch leaving the door unattended and the assassin arriving. The night watch leaving unprompted, incidentally, was all the convincing she needed to believe something was actually about to happen. The more you know.

"I can't believe this!" Soh'fia explained in a half-whisper while looking down at the dark elf, having stepped out from the shadows of the hall where she had been hiding with Hilda. "Have the metalheads lost their minds?! This will be a huge political incident! Unbelievable! Dark elves really are more like humans than elves."

I walked over. "Well, first thing's first. Let's see if you can recognize who this is."

In an act that would horrify ninjas all over the world, I pulled back the black cloth covering most of the dark Elf's face and revealed... Dak'muc?! What the fuck? There was no mistaking it. She had the same pretty face that Dakka did, and really, now that things had calmed down, I would recognize that huge ass anywhere. Unless this was a racist "all dark elves" looked the same incident, I was pretty confident it was her. And on second thought, it only made sense. She was a Mystic, and she used mysticism. The assassin had even been using the same throw-and-reverse trick Dakka used when I saw her. All along, the truth had been right under my nose.

"I don't recognize her," Soh'fia said with a sniff. Now, surely that was a dismissive sniff, and not just a cover for smelling me. Surely she would be able to control herself while we were discussing an assassin who had just attempted to kill her.

"I do, somehow. It's Dak'muc, of Dak'muc's Magic Emporium."

"I'm unfamiliar," Soh'fia replied.

"Me too," Hilda said.

I rolled my eyes at her. "I know you are."

"Sorry. I just wanted to be included."

"Don't worry, your dark and occult majyyks have saved the day. You are as included as you could possibly be."

"Yay! Kiss?"

Soh'fia went red with anger. And/or embarrassment. "GEEZ! Can you monkeys settle down and stop thinking of s... lewd stuff for one second? This is serious!" She glared at Hilda specifically.

I decided to let the hypocrisy slide. "Soh'fia's right. I'll try to work out the significance of this later, but for now let's wait for Rose... Oh, there she is."

Down the hall came Rose, dragging an unconscious tree elf behind her. There had been finger-sized holes dug into the ground beneath Soh'fia's bed and dresser, which led me to believe the treesinger was hiding in the room directly below, touching the bed and dresser directly to do the singing. There really wasn't much I could do about that on my own, short of leaving Soh'fia on her own, and attempting to show Soh'fia the hole under her bed one time just earned a shrug like holes were just normal. It felt clear to me now that she had been in extreme denial over the assassination attempt and simply wasn't thinking straight for obvious reasons.

Anyway, the full plan was probably clear now. Rose camps out in the room below to knock out the tree singer. The Dakidoll provided cover in case the treesinger was too fast for Rose or some other complication arose, and meanwhile Hilda camped out in the hall to jump the assassin from behind. It was, like I had said, kind of beautiful in its simplicity. The assassins had beaten me every time since they outnumbered me and one wrong move meant my death. It followed, then, that beating them was as simple as outnumbering them. A 1v2 was pretty much doomed when all they had to do was kill essentially a non-combatant, and a 3v2 was simple as cake.

"You really didn't need to hide this plan," Rose said while tossing the tree elf next to Dakka. "Do you recognize them?" she asked to Soh'fia.

"The tree elf? No. But this is strange. It really, really does not make any sense for dark elves and tree elves working together for this. One of them must be putting the other under duress or something." Soh'fia wrinkled her nose as she frowned in thought. "What's going on here? Something isn't right."

"Are you sure you're not just in denial?" I asked. "It's okay to admit when you're wrong, you know."

"I'M NOT WRONG!" Soh'fia barked, seething. "It just doesn't make sense. An assassination of a princess right before her coronation is a big deal. Almost anyone involved would have to be prepared for death, there would be a lot of subterfuge to hide who's at top, and this is just... Two different factions would never, ever work together on this. It would be more believable for them to have just accidentally attacked on the same day, even, but that's obviously too stupid of a coincidence to be real. I—" she fell silent.

"You?" I asked.

She grabbed at her throat, facing scrunching up with pain. My eyes widened, and she started to gurgle in pain, unable to breath. I shouted the chant for Cure Poison and held it over her throat in a desperate move, but it wasn't working. Whatever the poison was, it was far above what normal Restoration magic could handle. She kept choking, and choking, and choking. And then she died.

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.

"What the fuck?" I said aloud. "What the absolute fuck?"

"It seems she was poisoned," Rose observed.

"I can see that!" I cursed. "This has never happened before. I guess... I guess she never lived this long either. What the fuck?"

My mind was racing. I could barely process what had just happened. The tree elf was knocked out. Dakka was incapacitated before she could even try to poison Soh'fia. I didn't recall Soh'fia eating or drinking anything; she had even set down her tea without drinking any, having only picked it up to act cool, or whatever. What, what, what?

What was I missing?

I rapped a fist against my forehead over and over. Think, think, think. Poison. Dakka. Soh'fia. Assassination. Doesn't make sense for dark elves and tree elves. First loop. Leh'hah. Dak'muc's Magic Emporium. Wait. WAIT!

It all hit me at once.

THEY ATE FUCKING LUNCH RIGHT AFTER I GET HERE!

SHE GETS POISONED AT LUNCH! EVERY LOOP THAT I DON'T RUN DIRECTLY TO THE PALACE IS A LOST LOOP!

I was fucking aghast. What kind of fresh fuckery was this? The assassins ruse really had been a fucking distraction all along. What the fuck? They... Oh god. I never even saw how Soh'fia died in the first loop, when I never came to the palace. She had probably died from the poison quietly. The assassins were just the culprit trying to take me down with her, or make sure the job gets done. Maybe. I don't know. It was plausible though.

I looked down at Dak'muc She seemed like a key hint here. It was crazy, but putting all the little clues I had together, she felt like the end of a line that I could trace back to the culprit behind all this. My immediate theory for who the actual culprit was now didn't make sense on its own, I was missing the motive, but the "how" seemed to work just fine.

"Well," I said aloud, "Sorry. It looks like I was missing a key detail."

"The plan failed despite all your efforts to not spoil it," Rose pointed out.

"Shut up. Fuck you."

She laughed. I felt like I hadn't heard that tinkling laugh in a long time. "Oh, don't worry. I'm sure your paranoid theory about reality will be proven correct one day."

"Just you wait. Some shit is going to happen to the dwarves and we'll have to skip straight to the beastkin empire. You win this time, but I'll have the final laugh. Your plan is going to fail due to your hubris. You can't laugh in the face of fate forever and come out unscathed."

"I look forward to it. You'll just have to forgive me for keeping my expectations low."

"Right. Well, I guess I should be off. I have a lead I'll be investigating next loop. Qu-"

"WAIT!" Hilda suddenly yelled.

"What?"

She pointed at me. "You better kiss me at the start of every loop now. That's a very important moment for me. I don't want to lose it," she said. The smile on Rose's face faded.

"B... But there's time pressure. I think I'll have to run straight for the palace and interrupt lunch before Soh'fia eats anything to win this eventually. I don't think I'll have time for a five minute makeout session."

"Make time."

"I really don't think he will have time," Rose interjected. "It seems time is of the essence, and we must not prioritize frivolous flirting over securing Soh'fia's safety."

"Oh yeah, color me surprised YOU don't want us kissing."

"Even if I didn't, that would have nothing to do with it," Rose said, defensively. "I speak only on practical terms here. We should not be limiting his movements based on our own circumstances and desires. He has a job to do."

Hilda rolled her eyes at her. "Uh huh. Whatever."

"It's true!" Rose protested. She was certainly losing her cool a little here, but I attributed that more to just the general emotional high of being involved in a high-stakes assassination than anything. Even the ice queen herself had to crack a little under the pressure of dueling a tree elf in enemy grounds alone at night.

"I'll see what I can do. No promises. There really might not be time for anything but bolting to the palace as fast as possible," I said. "But either way, I have to get going soon, or my skull will be smashed beneath the might of a mace."

Hilda waved goodbye, and Rose gave a nod.

Farewell, my fair companions. See you soon.

"Quickload."