Zorian watched the events in the main entryway of the Noveda house using his own unique divination magic. It was an advanced form of the arcane eyeball spell. Where the normal form of the spell would form an ectoplasmic eyeball, easily seen by someone who is looking carefully enough, his spell simply anchored the spell structure to a small bit of the ambient mana in the air.
This went beyond just removing the visible component of the spell that could easily give it away. One would have to be incredibly mana sensitive to even stand a chance at detecting the slight fluctuations this spell created, and those fluctuations became infinitely smaller the more skilled the caster was. And Zorian was incredibly skilled.
Even then, that very slight chance only existed in areas where the mana density was low, far away from any dungeon. Here in Cyoria, the location of the largest source of mana in the world, this spell was effectively undetectable. Enven Zorian himself would find the task impossible to do with passive senses. He would need a ward set up to detect this specific spell in order to accomplish the task. After all, this spellw as designed to even be so subtle it couldn't be picked up by your typical wards.
And so, he watched as Zach threw a few test punches at Tesen's face, giving the man a bloody nose with the first sucker punch.
The man hastily backed off, trying to persuade Zach with words to calm down. When Zach continued to advance on him, Tesen cast a shield spell. Zach responded to this by cassting three magic missiles in a bunch, each splitting off and going at Tesen from a different angle.
The man quickly switched his shield to a full front-side barrier. That barrier then became a full Agis when Zach upped the missiles to five coming at Tesen from every direction including behind.
Zorian knew very well by now, but Zach was no idiot. After decades in his time loop, the boy had learned quite a bit of proper strategy and knew how to take account of the things that really mattered.
Zach would have an easy time overpowering those shields with a high mana cost spell, but that would aggravate his soul damage and slow down his recovery. So instead he was opting to rely on his superior mana supply and wear Tesen down by forcing him to cast thosse high mana-cost agis spells to protect himself.
Zach had been born with an absurdly high mana capacity and this became even larger when he recieved his angelic contract. The contract came packaged together with an enviable reward, further doubling his already high mana capacity without increasing the difficult of shaping.
Zorian had spent no end of time researching divine artifacts and even the captured soul of Quatach Ichl who had a similar blessing to Zach in the hopes of replicating this blessing for himself. This was, in fact, the way he'd come upon the design for his spell boundary stablizing formula which allowed him to utilize ambient mana in his casting. Attempts at actually replicating the blessing for himself, however, had all ended in catastrophic failure. Even as a potential permanent cross-restart suicide attempt it had failed due to whatever the mechanics of this higher time loop were.
However, there was also a second aim to this research aside from how he could benefit himself. The major focus of this research was to actually find a way to remove Zach's blessing, and hopefully the angelic contract along with it. That, at least, was a short-term success as he'd be free of the contract for the remainder of that particular restart. It had even become somewhat routine for him to remove it at the end of a given greater restart so Zach would not find himself compelled to go around mind-wiping everyone with any knowledge of the time loop.
He was still trying to figure out how to remove the contract without destroying the blessing, and had even spent a fair amount of time studying the previous Zach's version of the blessing for this purpose as well. It would be somewhat nice being able to do this more surgically rather than just going about destroying things, and it would also allow Zach to maintain his higher mana capacity for that final month before the current loop on the greater restart ends. Or rather, in the optimistic words of Zach, so he could keep it even after they get out of the greater time-loop.
Optimism aside though, Zorian was only just barely scratching the surface when it came to figuring out ways to constructively utilize divinity. Actually, even that would be giving himself too much credit. All he knew how to do was brutishly destroy what already exists and make bad faximilies. He felt like he was still a long ways away from even attempting the surgical removal of only the contract from Zach's soul.
It really didn't take Zach long to wear down Tesen's defensive barriers. Once they were down, Zach delivered a low powered smasher directly to the man's jaw, launching him off his feet and sending him sprawling across the floor.
From there, he continued pelting the man with smashers for a while before finally jumping on top fo the guy and beating him with his bare fists.
This vindictiveness Zach showed toward his thief of a caretaker was the exact reason Zorian always liked to start with Tesen and his hired goons when exposing a new itteration of Zach to his use of mind magic. These were people Zach already saw as scum. He didn't care if Zorian puppeted them as he desired. Zach could probably see himself doing it too if he had the skills to make it happen.
All things considered, this was actually far less brutal than Zach typically got on the restarts where he was planning to leave town. The beating ended with Tesen bruised, bleeding, and with a few broken bones. However, it was nothing a little medical magic couldn't fix up and have him looking as good as new. Zach even managed to avoid messing up that outfit the man was wearing. Zorian knew from experience though that this kind of care would only last until he became more familiar with exactly how effective the long-term results of Zorian's mind magic could be.
Zach decided to spit on the man as a parting shot, and then stalked out of the room, thus releasing Tesen from the conditions that were forcing him to remain here. Still, the man laid there for a while and cast a few spells to fix himself up. Compared to even Zach's capabilities, this counted as simple minor first aid. The major fixes were more cosmetic than anything, and mostly related to cleaning off the blood and wiping off Zach's little parting shot. After this, the man limped out of the house.
At around the same time, Zorian heard the door to this basement room open and the sound of footsteps as Zach came down the stairs. Zorian was already using this place as a workshop and was in the process of crafting his fourth golem body for his simulacrums. His real self and two ectoplasmic simulacrums were all working side by side.
Zach, having seen Zorian use simulacrums in the previous restart, wasn't particularly surprised to see such a spectacle, although Zorian was still picking up on a bit of unease from the display. But right now, he knew that wasn't the thing that was really bothering the boy.
Zach found an empty seat on the far side of the workshop and sat down, shaking his head and silently glaring at the floor as Zorian simply continued to work.
"You know that's a very annoying habit of yours," Zach said.
One of the Zorians, the real flesh-and-blood one, stopped working and turned to look at him while the two simulacrum bodies continued to work.
"Yes, so the old you has told me before," he said. "I have found the best way to optimize any given restart correlates directly to how quickly I can get these golems created. I hardly need that level of optimization anymore, but I find it is a good habit to have generally. Or, at least it would be counter-productive to get into the habit of laziness at any rate."
Or, more to the point, Zorian's mental ehnancements made him incapable of being truly lazy. It was possible for him to have one body build social relationships in an apparent low-effort manner of behavior, but his long constructed habits combined with the comfortable mental enhancements that reinforced those useful habits made it so he was really unable to do anything else.
It would be possible for him to counteract this effect with enough mental self-alteration, but he felt that would fundamentally change who he was. It really did not sound like a good idea.
"Anyway," Zorian continued, "I am not going to bother asking how it felt to beat up Tesen while he is under the influence of mind magic. I already know it wouldn't quite feel the same as just ovepowering him in a normal fair match-up like you usually do. However, beings we plan to stay here in Cyoria as you are still recovering, I am afraid you are going to have to settle for this."
Zach made a sour face at those comments. "That was not normal mind magic," he said. "Just what did you do to him, anyway? There were hints of the normal Tesen in there, but that change I saw in him was way too much to be explained by a simple suggestion spell. Just accepting a beating like that goes well beyond the bounds of what a suggestion is supposed to be capable of."
"Not really," Zorian said. "Suggestions are broken when they go outside of what someone would normally do. So, all I really have to do is find the aspects of the personality that would find the conditions of the suggestion disagreeable and suppress them."
Zach was suddenly staring at Zorian as though he were some kind of incomprehensible alien monster. Zorian had seen this poise in previous iterations of Zach. The boy was beginning to genuinely fear him. It was always an inevitability, especially where mind magic was a concern. Zorian had come to understand the Aranea discrimination against non-psychics in that sense. Even the most rudimentary display of real mind magic seemed to terrify the... fliker-minds, as they put it. As a prajorative, it seemed apt, although it failed to truly describe the nature of the problem.
At one point, Zorian had made attempts to ease Zach into this sort of thing gradually. Now, he could no longer be bothered to care about such considerations. Zach always came around eventually as he was learning magic, so Zorian did not see a reason to change his normal way of doing things during these early days with a fresh version of Zach.
Eventually, Zach broke himself out of his spell with a shake of the head, finally gathering his wits about him. "You just say that so casually, like it's nothing," Zach said.
"To me, it really is nothing," Zorian responded, earning him another long contemplative stare from his fellow time looper.
"Zorian, just... how powerful are you, really?" Zach asked.
This time, it was Zorian's turn to give Zach a long stare as he contemplated exactly how he planned to answer this question. Finally, his face broke into a somewhat cocky smirk. He had calculated that show of self-satisfaction would be more relatable to Zach and produce the desired response, possibly even breaking the unease the boy was feeling somewhat.
"Well, that's something you are going to be finding out rather soon," he said. "Now that your soul has recovered enough to actually practice some magic, I have decided to give you a few aspirational demonstrations of the things that I can teach you."
-break-
Over the course of the many restarts, Zorian had slowly tracked the time schedule of every prominent member of the invasion and exactly where they would be each day on restarts where there is no major interference from him, as well as where they'd be if he were to take certain major prominent actions he has found worth while in the past and which of these actions would alter which individual's course of actions.
There were three major factions to keep track of. The Cult of the World Dragon which was lead by various prominent members of the Cyorian nobility and other people in positions of import to Cyoria's infrastructure, the invaders from Ulquaan Ibasa lead by Quatach-Ichl as an almost soul actor aside from a few other Ulquaanian nobles he would resort to calling in if things were going badly, and then there is Sudomir and his various experimental monsters he would contribute.
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The most crucial of the three was the Ulquaanian invaders. Quatach-Ichl boasted the highest individual power among all members of the invasion, and the Ulquaanian camp held the permanent gate that was necessary to move in Sudomir's troops. Thus, without the Ulquaanians, there was also no Sudomir.
Without either of those, the Cult of the World Dragon would be unable to overtly make their attempt on the release of the primordial, and would have to resort to more covert means. This would be quite easily thwarted by authorities, but not without cost. However, they would only even consider this if the other two were removed very early in the restart, and are not even harassed at all from that point forward. And, even in that case, all it really took to make them give up without even trying was a small amount of heat from the capital authorities. While they could quash the local authorities, something that brings an investigation down from Eldemar would be too much for them to stomach.
If Sudomir and the cult are somehow both removed as factors, Quatach-Ichl would still launch an invasion on his own. He would be unable to make an attempt at releasing the primordial on his own, but his ultimate goal is to show a demoralizing weakness in Eldemar significant enough to spark a new splinter war. He was never fully reliant on the primordial's release anyway, it was merely a convenient flag to rally around and attract the cooperation of the cult.
Of the three, Sudomir was the only one who would not consider moving on his own if the other two were taken out. He did not have the fanaticism of the cult, or the capacity to retreat to mostly secure territory posessed by the Ulquaanians. Quatach-Ichl was his fall-back to escape. If he had a place to go in Ulquaan Ibasa, he had a spell that could teleport his entire manor, to which his wife's soul was bound to the warding enchantments and would thus never be away from, to Ulquaan Ibasa.
He would move his mansion there if he had the lich's support, but lacking that, he wouldn't dare make a move that could bring undue attention that would jeopardize the mansion.
During these experiments, Zorian had identified a whole list of highly effecient methods of stopping the invasion without a great deal of effort. In the last restart, he'd used one of his favorite methods that didn't require him to kill Quatach-Ichl or nearly all his men. This time however, he was going to be doing things very differently.
There were a few windows where prominent members of all three legs of the invasion would be in the same place. And, of these, two days after the beginning of the restart saw the largest number of Cult members, along with a fair number of Ulquanian elites, all gathered in this one location.
It was at this time that Zorian decided to give his 'aspirational demonstration' for Zach. For this, he planned to show off one of his most powerful destructive spells. He would be using the location of this meeting as his target for the demonstration.
-break-
Zach and Zorian sat together in a room in the Noveda estate, positioned across from one another across a table as though for some kind of discussion. As per usual these days, Zorian knew exactly what he was doing and showed a casual confidence as he set up various magical devices on the table.
Zach, meanwhile, had a look of increasing confusion and annoyance on his face as he watched what Zorian was doing.
"So... I still do not understand what's going on here. You said something about showing off some kind of combat magic, right? So, why are we up here in my sitting room as though we were here to have tea?" Zach asked.
"Don't worry, I will be demonstrating one of my ultimate spells. It's just that I plan to explain a few of the principles behind it first," Zorian said, his hands never stopping in their work as he talked.
"Right. So, lesson time before demonstration. Well, I suppose you're the magic instructor here right now. But..." Zach trailed off.
"Yes, what is it?" Zorian asked.
"Do you ever stop to rest? I swear, I have never seen you stop working for a second except when I drag you off to the pub."
"I am still working even then. While I am there with you, my simulacrums are always busy with some task or another. By the way, can you open the window please?"
Zach gave him an incredulous look, but he stood anyway and did as Zorian asked.
"What exactly for though?" Zach asked. "Didn't you say you had an over-abundance of time and all that? You're always working like you're in a race against time."
"Habits I developed early, and are now impossible to break," Zorian said. "In my first time through the greater loop, it really was a race against time. I had to go from the me who was only just introduced to the time loop to someone strong enough to survive that fight against a primordial I told you about in the space of only ten years. After that, I worked just as hard trying to figure out the higher order time loop. Now, this has become an inseparable part of who I am."
"So, what are you working on right now?" Zach asked. "I mean, besides whatever you're setting up on this table. You have all those simulacrums out there doing stuff. What are they doing?"
"Right this moment? Preparing for the aftermath of the spell I'm about to demonstrate. You'll understand why after I go over the details of what I'll be showing you," Zorian said as he set the last of his devices into place. "There now, it looks like everything's ready," he said.
Zorian had set up two devices. One was a completely flat and polished surface that had a slight black sheen and a pattern across it eerily reminiscent of the rings of a tree. It looked somewhat mysterious, but it really only amounted to being little more than a technologically advanced divination compass. Zorian had literally only thought up this design on the spur of the moment over about a day's work, although it's likely every divination specialist in the world would be willing to literally kill to get ahold of this little device.
The other was a smaller object filled with complex engravings. It was smaller than the first device, looking like a mere stone and could even be dismissed as a paperweight if not for the intricacy of the designs etched into it. This was another one of Zorian's divinity batteries. He had disguised his last one of these as a spell rod, but this time he was able to give it a far more efficient and simple shape.
With a wave of his hand, the divination compass became active and the black surface displayed an image and projected it into the air. This was one of the compass' more advanced functions, it was able to interpret data he sent to it telepathically via mind magic, and display designs and images directly from his memory or imagination. What it was displaying now was a complex filigree of crossing magic pathways.
"Good, it's working," Zorian said. "Now we can start the explanation. Do you recognize this magic pattern?" He asked.
Zach quirked an eyebrow and then began scrutinizing the image in front of him. "It looks like the spell formula for gathering ambient mana," he said. "I don't know much about warding though, not really my thing. So, what's the point in showing me this?"
"I see," Zorian said. "This is a specially modified version of the ambient mana gathering formula, and it's not designed to be attached to warding schemes. This particular design is meant to be included in the formula for a spell you cast, allowing it to be fueled by the ambient mana after you've given it the small initial kick it needs to get started.
Zach stared at Zorian with a blank expression for several seconds as realization was slowly dawning on him what he'd just heard. "Wait... wait... that's..." he went silent, temporarily struck speechless. For Zach, that was a rarity.
"Ok, wait, how does that even work?" He said after his brain had finally rebooted. "We're all taught that's impossible. I mean, maybe this formula, if you had the ludicrous degree of spell-shaping required to add it to your spell boundary, would save you from having to channel the ambient mana through your body and risk getting poisoned by it, but doesn't ambient mana also degrade spell boundaries? Warding schemes and magic devices are the only things that can function off ambient mana."
"Ordinarily, you would be correct. That is what this part is for," Zorian said, and with another gesture a golden icosahedron set into place around the mana-gathering formation. "This is what this part is used for," he said, indicating the small stone. "It is a divine mana battery. If you can learn to control and manipulate divinity, you can create this design around the spell formation. The icosahedron design has the effect of stablizing whatever is in the center of it. You might also recognize this design from the Bakora gates which use this formation to stablize dimensional gateways. And, of course, you also have this pendant I wear which is essentially a miniature version of the Bakora gates."
Zach just shook his head when he heard this. "You really are a mad man, you know that? I'm guessing you are probably sourcing your divine energy for that thing from divine artifacts, am I right? Probably stop functioning after you charge that thing up too."
"Indeed," Zorian says.
For some reason, this seemed to put quite the smile on Zach's face. "Alright, so that's that question answered. Now, the next issue is, how do you work such a complex design into your spell boundary? That seems a little ridiculous to be just spell shaping, so there's gotta be some kind of trick." Zach looks at Zorian full of expectation, but Zorian only returns a level stare.
"Uhh... there is some kind of trick, right?" He asks with a nervous chuckle. "Zorian, please tell me you don't expect me to actually use spell shaping to draw those designs with pure mana and then graft them into my spell boundary."
"That's exactly how I do it. If you can find some simple effort-saving method to skip all the spell shaping effort needed to do it my way, I'm not going to stop you. I don't know of any such method myself though."
Zach threw himself back in the chair with a defeated look on his face. "That's freaking impossible. Maybe with a few hundred years of spell shaping practise..."
"It only took me around thirty years of practice to get to the point I could easily shape such a design into my spell boundaries. Of course, it was mostly useless at first, it wasn't until significantly later down the line that I discovered the means by which to control and shape captured divinity. Most of the difficulty is in the storage, however, so that bar should be significantly lower for you. The old you had accomplished this, so I am certain you will have no significant difficulties either."
"Ah, so this is what you meant by the 'aspirational' part of the demonstration. This is all a pep-talk to get me excited about improving my spell shaping," Zach said.
"Yes," Zorian admitted simply. "Now, I suppose it is time for the demonstration part of it."
With another wave of his hand, the display showed a scene of a large mansion shown from a bird's-eye view from a perspective that was rather high up in the air. The mansion was in the middle of a forest, and if one would look closely you could see the roof of the mansion was covered in numerous iron-beaks, a creature Zach would have been entirely familiar with by this point due to their frequent involvement in the invasion.
"This is Iasku mansion, the location you heard me tell Alanic about," Zorian said.
"The place on the other end of the portal in the invader's base, right?" Zach asked, getting a nod from Zorian in response.
"Right now, Quatach-Ichl along with several of his more talented lieutenants are in there, having a meeting with a few members of the Cult of the World Dragon's leadership," he explained.
"So, I'm guessing you have a simulacrum there ready to cast a super-power magic missile at it or something?" Zach asked, this time however, Zorian replied in the negative.
"The simulacrum I have on location over there is only to cast an arcane eyeball spell and feed the signal back to me to be displayed here," he said. "I'm going to launch the spell from right here in this room."
Zach cast an eye over to the window Zorian had him open earlier, and then nodded.
Without even another word, Zorian got to work casting his spell. He just gestured toward the window and the spell had already been fired. Aside from the fact his other hand was on the divinity battery, it didn't even seem at all different from a standard magic missile spell.
Suddenly, the divination compass projected a second scene into the air, next to the one of showing the mansion. It seemed to be following the missile from some distance behind. This is when Zach realized it. Zorian had tethered an arcane eyeball to the missile! When had he even done that?!
The missile swelled in size very quickly. By the time it left the area around Cyoria, it was taking up most of the display. It was hard to get a sense of scale, but Zach felt it was probably the size of the average artillery magic already. And, if Zorian was to be believed, it had required no more mana to cast than a normal magic missile spell.
The rapid growth tapered off as the projectile left the high mana levels around Cyoria, but it still continued to pick up power as it hurtled northward deep into the Sarokian Highlands.
Zorian had the spell move higher into the air, helping to hide the oncoming projectile from notice by it's intended targets, but also to move it into an elevation where the ambient mana was even thinner and further limit the spell's growth. He explained the spell was already large enough that the explosion will be seen from Taramata when it hit, and he didn't want it to grow so large that it would cause problems for the nearby towns folks.
A third image had appeared in the air, displaying where the spell was in the air compared to their current position and the target. Zorian directed the spell to turn downward as it was almost directly over the target, and the image that displayed the missile's flight briefly showed the same image as the stationary display before suddenly both scenes went dark.
Zorian gestured with his hand again and the three displays were replaced with a single new image that depicted a large explosion of magic and debris being kicked up from a view over a sea of trees.
"This is a view from further out," Zorian said as the dust cloud was pushed up into the air by heat convection before pluming outward in a shape reminiscent of a large mushroom. "The spell that was taking the closer view, as well as the simulacrum responsible for maintaining the spell, were both destroyed by the explosion. That is how powerful it was by the time it finally reached it's destination."
"Hahh," Zach nodded as he stared with a blank expression at the displayed image.
"The litch was also in there. He will only need a few hours to get a new body, but by that time the entire invasion force will be wiped out to the last man by a few more of my simulacrums as well as some help I have recruited," Zorian said.
"So, just like that, the invasion is over again?" Zach said.
Zorian responded to this with a nod of his head.
"These days, stopping the invasion is really not a big deal at all," he said. "The real threat is the primordial we have to go through before getting out of the lesser time loop. From now on, I will be teaching you all that you need to know in order to make that happen."