Zorian immediately set to work on the soul recovery potions when the guards returned with the requisite supplies. Ever since they got back, Zach seemed unusually quiet.
At one point, Zorian would have been rather inept at reading people well enough to understand what that was all about. However, that was old Zorian. Before he had started making a habit of casually invading people's minds. This has a way of developing an uncannily good intuition in regards to interpreting a person's body language cues.
Even without that though, this was Zach. The one person Zorian had spent more time along side than anyone else in this endless time loop.
"Yes, they were acting unusual. Yes, it was because they were under the effects of mind magic, and a very highly-skilled level of it at that. No, I have not read your mind. I have been specifically avoiding it, in fact. The old you informed me of exactly why it would be a bad idea to do so," Zorian told his friend.
"Huh?" Zach replied, and then he made a rather sour face. "Wait, what do you..." He trailed off. "Heh, of course you went and learned mind magic too."
Zorian found it a little interesting how he seemed to have deflected away from the subject of the angelic contract like that. Well, of course, Zach doesn't actually know about that yet. At any rate, he decided to continue and not complicate things by avoiding bringing up that particular issue. If Zach wants to talk about mind magic, that's what they'll do.
"Actually, I had little choice in my case," Zorian explained. "You see, I am actually a natural mind mage since birth. Learning some proper control over my natural gift was a necessary step to keep me sane. Well, I suppose I'm far past just the level of control now, though. Even Spear of Resolve is afraid of the skill I have with my gift now.
"Spear of Resolve? Is that a person?" Zach asked.
"A spider, actually. She is the matriarch of the local Cyoria Aranea web. She was the one who originally started teaching me mind magic so long ago," Zorian said.
Zach just got quiet again after that. Even though Zorian was pointedly avoiding any contact with Zach's mind, he had become such a skilled read of people that he could still almost feel the bubbling emotion under the surface and he could predict the explosion before it came.
"Damn it! You're definitely doing that on purpose! Ach...!" Zach suddenly collapsed back into his chair, holding his head in pain. However, that only managed to take off a small bit of the edge on the righteous indignation that was fueling his outrage at the moment. "Come on, man, seriously. I know exactly what you're doing. You think I haven't done it like a hundred times already? Knock it off with all this confusing talk about deliberately shocking topics."
Zorian couldn't help but have a little chuckle at Zach's expense over that one. So, he's admitting to being a hypocrite then? Oh well. He decided to show just a little tact and not call him out on it. Not while he was already riled up like this, anyway.
"Well. I suppose there is a lot to catch you up on. For now, drink this. It will at least start the recovery process. It should get you to the point where you can withstand dimensional magic cast on you by someone else by morning. We can get the ingredients to complete the regiment tomorrow," Zorian told him while handing him the completed soul recovery potion.
Zach just stared at it. It had been freshly brewed. Normally, an alchemist would give it some time to cool and settle at this point, and Zach was good enough with potions to be aware of this. However, Zorian had learned several techniques to speed up the process.
Alchemy was normally a completely non-magical process. But, with Zorian's incredible command over spell shaping, he had learned several different un-structured magic techniques to speed up every step of the potion making process, often also improving results in addition to the huge reduction in fabrication time.
Zach didn't even verbalize his question. Perhaps it was some petty revenge for earlier, having somehow sensed that this might be something Zorian would want him to ask about. He simply snatched the potion straight out of his hand and began chugging it down.
"Right," Zach said with a look of challenge in his eyes. "So, how about you start catching me up to speed then?"
-break-
"Ugh... shit!" Zach complained, leaning heavily on Zorian as the two of them walked down a road through the woods toward a small settlement in the vicinity of Knyazov Dveri. "Man, why can't we just get there ahead of this guy and hide nearby in the bushes or something! Why all this perfectly timed walking and all that!" He expressed his frustration at the heavy pace Zorian pushed him to.
Despite his good physical condition, Zach's soul right now left him in a state where he had a difficult time functioning in a normal manner. On a normal restart, he'd have spent the entire month comatose, hidden away in Tesen's villa. Despite the healing Zorian had given his physical body, the young man really was in terrible condition.
But Zorian made him walk anyway. He could have likely been kinder about it, but even with all the time in the world, he did not like wasting any of it. A habit he had built up in his early days.
"I believe I explained this already," Zorian said. "We need to look like we've just happened upon the man, and we need to coordinate our arrival with the time just before he gets attacked. If we are already there, we might look suspicious to him and it will make him less likely to help us. We are going with the cover story that I'm bringing you to him to fix your soul damage. It should be believable this way, but it is best to minimize the risk wherever we can."
Zach groaned when he heard this. "I know that! That was rhetorical! It just really sucks we can't be more direct about this, especially when it means I need to take this long hike in this kind of condition."
"Technically, it would need to be a question posed as part of an argument or meant to make someone think in order to be considered rhetorical. That was just complaining," Zorian said.
"Man, shut the fuck up or I swear I will punch you!" Zach responded.
Zorian chuckled after hearing this. "And here your old self used to call me the one who needed to get in better shape. It is kind of funny to hear all that complaining from the experienced battle mage of this pair."
Zach just groaned. "Man, I really hate what that old bag of bones did, leaving me in a condition like this. If it weren't for that, I could handle this trail like it was nothing. But seriously, save this guy to save the other guy who we gain the trust of over several re-starts using a spell to transfer physical journals through a person's memory into other re-tarts in order to have him help us out with the church when we finally exit the time-loop. This has got to be the most convoluted plan I've ever heard of."
Actually, it would have been ridiculously simple to just go straight to Alanic and use mind magic to gain his trust immediately with a little bit of manipulation. However, Zach would not be at all comfortable with that plan. All the older loop versions of Zach had always said how scary Zorian's mind magic was, and he always took the most issue with it near the beginning. Mind magic would make things easier in the short run, but it would seriously complicate things if he created a rift between himself and Zach right now.
"Well, we originally worked it out quite by accident over the course of several dozen re-starts," Zorian explained. "It was because the man in question was a very effective ally. It just turned out after we got out the first time that he was even more essential than we even realized while inside the loop."
"Heh. Yeah... outside the loop, huh..." Zach said with a far off look in his eyes.
Zorian glanced back at him, then quickly fixed his eyes on the trial ahead once again. Zach was already fully aware that Zorian knew all about the angelic contract. He had completely filled him in on the source of the 'strange conditions' that were on him, as well as their true origin and how he'd made the contract with the angels during a dream. He was very disturbed at first, but then he was eventually relieved, perhaps because he realized that Zorian merely knowing about the contract had not triggered his compulsion to 'disable' anyone who found out about it.
He considered it to have been a very good thing he hadn't informed Zach about Jornak. It was a real shame they were going to wind up having to soul-kill or mind-wipe the poor guy during this greater loop. After all, it was about the only way to keep Zach stable after he finds out about how the man had invaded his mind and mind-wiped him. That compulsion in the divine contract is rather difficult to overcome, after all.
The guy may be a total nut-case, but he was also one of the few people Zorian was actually able to carry on a decent conversation with anymore, and he wanted to let the poor man live for as long as he could manage it before Zach needed to be made aware of him.
This was also one of the reasons Zorian had substituted the black knife for the Ikosan dagger. That thing could do the job of disassembling a divine artifact just as well as the knife. Better, in fact. However, stealing that thing before Jornak was an excellent way to get the deranged man on their tail as it would key him off that something is wrong.
In fact, it was this specific issue that had caused Zorian to search for something like the knife in the first place.
"It will work out alright," Zorian said, doing his best emulation of sympathy as he was working around the mild exhaustion of having to go through an explanation the old Zach should have known very well. "By this point, we have a few methods of dealing with the death condition in your contract. I haven't quite managed to work out a perfect solution yet, but removing your blessing or mind-wiping a whole bunch of people are always options we can go with."
After this, Zorian's eyes focused back on the path once again. "Alright, that's enough of that," He said. "We will be approaching within ear-shot in a short while."
"Finally!" Zach grumbled as the pair staggered onward.
Thanks to Zorian's mental enhancements, he managed to keep his eyes ahead as though he was completely unaware of the undead boars hidden in the bushes they were currently passing by. The old Zorian was not very much of an actor, and was easily seen through when he was acting suspicious or trying to lie. This new Zorian had long since done away with flaws like that.
Instead, he looked straight on ahead to the man who was approaching from the opposite direction on the trail. Lukav. The alchemist friend of Alanic who was scheduled to be murdered by Sudomir's undead in order to avoid the risk of anyone with soul sight catching on to his well of souls.
Saving this man was the best way to get an easy contact with the old battle priest.
The alchemist looked surprised to see the two teens on the road, but quickened his pace when he saw them. Zorian's mental calculations immediately went into overdrive as he carefully tracked the decreasing distance between them. He had to get the location for their meeting exactly right in order to get the ultimate result for this.
Of course, he could easily fudge this a little with a bit of discreet mind magic, but he figured that if he was already handicapping himself by shutting down the really overt mind magic he might as well go all the way with it and simply use none at all. It could at least make for a little bit of entertainment to get over the monotony.
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They met at a location just outside where the undead would likely judge a good location to attack them, and Lukav immediately looked to Zach with concern as he greeted them.
"Hello. Is he alright?" He said, looking quickly between the two.
Zach just gave a dry chuckle and Zorian did his best approximation of a grim look.
"No, he's not," Zorian said. "He was hit with some kind of soul attack by a necromancer. We heard there was a really good alchemist who lives around here, I was hoping to find him to brew a soul recovery potion for him," Zorian said. He knew it was slightly unnatural to reveal this much information to someone who ought to be a stranger, but he also knew that sufficiently shocking informaiton could make a person overlook certain things.
Lukav's face immediately became quite grim upon hearing this. "A Necromancer, you say? That is some rather serious news. Well, in regards to that alchemist, you've found him. Although, I'd say I'm a little more than just good. Maybe not the best, but... well, that's not really important right now I guess. How about I get you boys back to my house now and we can discuss this more after we get a good place for your friend to sit down. Seriously, you did not have to drag him all the way out here. Would have probably been a lot easier if you had just come on your own while you let him rest back home, but... well, what's done is done. Come on, this way. My house is back at the edge of town."
Just as they were turning to leave, the undead hiding in the bushes seemed to realize they were about to loose their target. The small herd of zombified wild boars all sprung up out of the underbrush at once, and began their charge.
Due to the way Zorian had cleverly positioned everyone, Lukav wound up being the first person who would have normally been capable of noticing the attack in progress. Zach, even though he had Zorian's warning ahead of time, seemed fairly shocked and wound up staggering so badly he nearly fell on the ground as he tried to get into a combat stance.
"You two, get down, now!" Lukav shouted as he pulled a potion from his belt in a practiced motion and sent it flying toward their attackers.
Zach made a strange sound as he attempted to cast a spell, but had the process interrupted by his soul damage, causing him to really collapse to a sitting position on the ground this time right around the same time Lukave went voluntarily face-first into the dirt.
As all of this was happening, Zorian had clamly turned and cast a full barrier spell for their front area, overlaying it with a little bit of non-structured magic to give it a pale glow, similar to that which would be created by the barriers of people less adept with force magic. All of this was in service of the role he was supposed to be filling at the moment. Knowing exactly how powerful that alchemical bomb was, he also looked down, closed his eyes, and cast four more fully invisible shield spells covering his and Zach's ears.
He felt the shock-wave with his body, and despite the shield spells he actually still partially heard the explosion from the reverberations through his skull. However, the forward barrier was able to properly disperse the force enough to prevent them from being flung away.
After the blast had passed, Zorian calmly pulled what, to any observer, would appear to be a perfectly normal spell rod from his belt. This spell rod was anything but ordinary though. He had specially crafted from some of the divine artifacts he'd had his simulacrums gather. It was an object anyone would cringe at if they had to know how many divine artifacts were destroyed for it's creation, and it's function was so rudimentary that it would seem like a complete joke when put up against the artifacts that were sacrificed.
Essentially, it was a divine energy battery. It was also completely useless in the hands of anyone other than Zorian. However, for him, he greatly preferred this item and had taken to creating one every restart in which he planned to do any kind of significant spellcasting. While it was essentially just the scrap remains of divine objects to anyone else, with the right spell-shaping skill, it allowed Zorian to accomplish some rather incredible feats.
With a wave of the spell rod, Zorian put his spell-shaping skills to work, creating an entire swarm of magic missiles. These were far from ordinary magic missiles though. In the core of each of them, he had accomplished a genuine feat of spell-shaping, weaving a micro ward made from pure magical energies. Then, he pulled the divine energy from the spell rod and put his spell shaping skills to use once again, drawing a small icosahedron around each and every one of them. This had the purpose of stablizing the spell boundaries against the effects of the wards he had just drawn within each missile.
All of this complex spell shaping had taken place in the blink of an eye, indecernable from the time it would take a person to cast a normal swarm of magic missiles.
The missiles all flew to their targets, and as they flew through the air, the ward he had inlayed into them became active and began sucking in ambient mana. This was a solution Zorian had found to his low mana capacity that would even reset at the beginning of each greater loop. In this way, even with his miniscule mana supply, he could cast powerful spells on par with any battle mage.
Normally spells could not be cast using ambient mana. Doing so would degrade the spell boundary and cause the spell to fail in unpredictable ways. This was what the divine energy icosahedron was for. These icosahedrons of divine energy had a stablizing effect. The angels used them to stablize the soul, creating a blessing that would increase mana capacity without harming one's spell shaping ability.
The Bakora gates used the same principle to stablize dimensional boundaries for their gate spells, a concept Zorian also utilized for his micro gates. In his studies, he had also devised this method. Sourcing the divine energy was the only issue, one easily remedied with his spell-rod shaped divine battery. With this, he could break a great many of the rules in regards to magic given the correct application of shaping skill.
Each missile gathered ambient mana as it flew through the air. Zorian had originally created these with a very tiny amount of mana, so small it would barely be enough to stir up some dirt if he drove them into the ground.
He had only a limited amount of mana, and had used a lot on those shields. However, by the time these smasher-style missiles struck the boars, each hitting a separate one perfectly in the center of the forehead, every one of them had enough force to stop the charge of the powerful creatures and drive their heads into the dirt. If they were living creatures and not reanimated corpses, the impact would have likely even been enough to kill them due to the extreme head trauma. A few that had been thrown farther away by Lukav's potion, thus allowing the missiles to gather more ambient mana in transit, even had their heads blown clean off. But, of course, even a missing head was not enough to deter an undead creature.
Now that the threat had been properly stalled out a little and Lukav was getting himself back up, it was time to resort to a few more normal spells for the sake of mopping up.
Zorian cast four severing severing disks. Like with the shields, he cast them masterfully such that there was no natural glow or color to them. So, he had to add it with spell shaping in order to deliberatly under-sell his level of skill. He quickly removed the legs from the boars that were in the lead, and a moment later Lukav sent out a few spikes of stone with alteration magic to impale the ones coming up behind.
From there, it really was just a simple mop-up operation to take out the rest.
On Lukav's instruction, Zorian then proceeded to chop up all but one of the zombie boars into tiny little chunks. The last one was buried in a pit the man had created with his alteration magic for the authorities to be alerted to later.
Zorian decided not to tell him about the fact that the law enforcement in the area was completely corrupted as a result of Sudomir's hold over them, and that nothing would come of such reporting. The explanation behind that one would be a bit too time consuming, and ultimately pointless.
-break-
The remainder of the day was filled with a lot of persuasive conversations, requiring Zorian and Zach to supply a lot of information to make sure Lukav reacted in the ways they needed him to.
For starters, the fact Zach had already consumed 1 soul recovery potion. This was easily settled by revealing the fact he was the heir to the Noveda estate. It was a little harder to sell the idea they were only able to find one soul recovery potion in all of Cyoria, but not that hard. In fact, Zorian knew precisely how many shops sold such potions, and not a single one of them were the sort that two mere students could be expected to have the ability to access easily.
As for finding a way to prompt him to bring them to Alanic, that required Zorian to confess to the fact he possessed 'some level of soul perception,' that had allowed him to determine there was more than just soul damage that was done to Zach and that he was concerned.
Lukav did his tests and they chatted for the remainder of the day. The entire time Zach seemed rather morose over the fact that he'd wound up being effectively useless during the fight with the boars. It took a while and a lot of assurances that this was just a natural result of soul damage, all for him to end the conversation still beating himself up about this.
"Well, the estimate I gave you before was around six months until you would be back to your old self. And yes, that was with the potion regiment you will be on in mind. But, so long as you don't go damaging yourself even more by trying to cast spells like just now, you should at least be able to manage some shaping exercises by next month and cast some proper spells in three so long as it is nothing too major," Zorian explained after erecting a privacy barrier so they could talk about time loop related information.
"Yeah, great," Zach said. "Way to make a guy feel inadequate, I guess. At least now I know what our classmates feel like every time I decide to go back to school for a restart. But still, if I was not suffering from this soul damage..."
"I've seen how you fight before when you're at your best. Higher order time loop, remember? You don't have to convince me. I know you would be able to just incinerate those boars with a wave of your hand. You don't have to go trying to impress me," Zorian said.
"Yeah," Zach said in a low tone. "You know, Zorian? I'm still not really sure how I feel about this higher order time loop stuff, but I'm really glad you are a part of all this. It... was feeling pretty lonely when I was the only one. I can't even imagine what it must be like for you. I... just can't believe the old me would have abandoned you like that. That's just so..."
"It's fine," Zorian said as he stood up. "We've managed to get Lukav to agree to introduce us to Alanic. We will be setting off tomorrow. You should get some sleep. It will help your recovery if you keep well rested. Once you're fully healed from this, I will teach you some meditations so you'll be able to recover faster during the next greater restart."
"Heh," Zach chuckled. "I guess there are some things even the time loop can't change about a person."
Zorian didn't question what Zach meant about that one. He was dead wrong if he thought Zorian was getting emotionally riled up about that one. His mental enhancements would not have allowed for such a thing. Although, he had to admit. This certainly was the sort of thing old Zorian from before the time loop would have done.
He decided to simply allow Zach to assume whatever he wanted to. It would probably be good for his fellow time looper to think there was some of the old Zorian in there and see some human failings rather than become familiar with the monster he had become, at least until he was ready to accept the real new Zorian.
-break-
Zorian had decided to demonstrate some more visibly understandable competence as they resuced Alanic from his hasty attackers than he had shown the previous day witht he boars. In this case, visibly understandable actually wound up meaning toning down the actual skill involved with what he was doing and completely omitting any dabblings with divinely sourced magic enhancements.
The rifle men were all taken out with magic missiles of a normal variety, each of them hit perfectly in the head due to the accuracy of Zorian's guidance abilities. It was probably for the best these were normal missiles. At the range they were at, the mana gathering missiles would leave nothing but bloody paste where their heads used to be, and then go on to still take out the guy behind them afterward. It would make it pretty clear Zorian was far outside the norm.
As for the two mages, he just hit them with a kinetic force spell and knocked them around a bit. This gave Alanic time to start directing his focused attacks on the pair before completely incinerating one and then jumping out of the window to actually land right on top of the other and beat him unconscious with his bare fists.
"Man, this guy's pretty intesne!" Zach commented with an appreciative whistle as he came out of their hiding spot in the trees.
"I could probably say the same for your friend there," Lukav commented. "Are you sure he's just a normal teenager in the accademy like you? What year is he in, anyway?"
"Ehh... hehe. That's a long story," Zach deflected.
"Yes, one which we will be explaining soon enough," Zorian agreed. "But first, let's go greet your friend and help him restrain his prisoner." After saying this much, he produced a length of rope that he had clearly not been carrying before and then approached the old battle priest.
Alanic, for his part, didn't say much as Zorian presented him with the rope and then helped him tie up the mage he had just beaten black and blue. The man was still conscious, although clearly listless and completely dazed after that heavy beating. Only after the man was fully restrained did the battle priest seem to actually acknowledge everyone who had just helped him, working aside Zorian for the restraint efforts not withstanding.
"This guy with you, Lukav?" He asked. "You all really helped me out here, but..." Alanic cast his gaze ver toward the pile of now dead riflement, all of whom were killed with a single magic missile to the head and most dead before they even knew they were under threat.
"Well, that can wait for later, I suppose," Alanic concluded. "For now, I need to get this guy down to the dungeon. Me and him are going to have a nice long chat about who sent him here."
"Actually, Mr. Zosk, that is part of what we came here for," Zorian said. "I did not explain this to Mr. Teklo earlier, but the person who injured my friend over there is actually associated with the same people who sent these men to attack you."
"Huh? Wait, seriously? They are?" Lukav asked.
"Hold on, they are?!" Zach nearly shouted, even more surprised than Lukav at this news.
Alanic just fixed Zorian with a hard stare as he slung the tied up and listless mage over his shoulder. "Alright. Get inside. I believe we will be having a pretty big talk in just a little while," he said.