Funny thing about Lifedrain Syndrome - they actually found a cure for it.

About thirty years into the future, Adom himself led the research team that cracked it, working with some of the most brilliant healers and alchemists left in the world. It took them the better part of a decade, countless sleepless nights, and expeditions to places most sane people wouldn't go near just to gather ingredients.

The cure worked. That wasn't the problem. The problem was its timing.

If you caught the disease early enough - before any visible symptoms appeared - and took small doses of the treatment over several months, you had an 90% chance of never developing Lifedrain Syndrome at all.

If you'd already shown symptoms, but caught it within the first year, you could try the more aggressive approach: direct injection into the mana pathways. The survival rate for that was 3%.

Three percent didn't sound great. Then again, when you consider that untreated Lifedrain Syndrome had a death rate of 99.99% - with that 0.01% mainly consisting of people who technically hadn't died yet - suddenly three percent looked like a miracle.

Not that any of this had helped Adom in his previous life. By the time they perfected the cure, he'd been living with Lifedrain Syndrome for decades. Well past that one-year window that might have given him even that slim chance at survival. He'd spent years developing a cure he couldn't use himself.

Now, back again, he had exactly 2 months, 21 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes before the first visible symptoms would appear. The System's precision would have been amusing if it wasn't so terrifying.

Adom was supposed to be sleeping now, but his mind kept circling back to the cure's ingredients. Most of them were surprisingly common - herbs any student could gather, plants found in the academy's own grounds, those ubiquitous blue mushrooms that dotted the forest floor.

But then there were the two components that made seasoned alchemists pale: a fresh wyvern's heart and some water of jouvence.

A single wyvern's heart could bankrupt a merchant family. The kind of expense that would force his parents to sell their home, and probably still leave them in debt. And that was assuming he could even convince them to help - somehow he doubted "I'm actually your son from the future and I need this to prevent a magical disease I haven't fully developed yet" would go over well.

The nearest wyverns were in the Ranges of Darakya, a good ten days' journey from Arkhos by boat. Even if Adom somehow managed to slip away from school without raising suspicions - and good luck explaining that absence - actually obtaining a heart meant either facing a wyvern himself (suicide) or finding someone willing to hunt one (ruinously expensive).

Then there was the water of jouvence. Everyone knew it could only be found in one place: the Wellspring Dungeon, deep in the Northern Wastes. The dungeon itself was supposedly only accessible during the winter solstice, and even then, its challenges had killed more adventurers than anyone cared to count.

The few vials of water that made it to market each year cost more than most people earned in a lifetime.

That left Adom with only one choice.

Crime.

Legal channels would take too long and cost too much. The black market would be cheaper - criminal enterprises had a way of making rare goods more "accessible" than their legitimate counterparts - but even at black market rates, he'd need more money than his entire allowance for the year. Far more than he could explain away to his parents without raising questions he couldn't answer.

Still, tomorrow he'd have to visit someone. The thought made him both nervous and oddly excited - he'd never done anything truly illegal. Strange how being young again made even the prospect of criminal activity feel like an adventure.

But excitement wouldn't pay for a wyvern's heart. Or water of jouvence. Even with the underworld's discounted rates, he needed funds. Significant funds. The kind of money a student simply didn't have access to.

Adom sighed into his pillow. Think, think, for God's sake, how does a regressor makes money fast?

Ah! He gasped.

Of course. He smiled.

By using a regressor's greatest advantage: knowledge.

Then Adom deflated almost immediately.

He was starting to regret all those times he'd scorned gambling halls in his past life. And horse racing. And Krozball betting. And stock market speculation. And pretty much anything that would have given him reliable knowledge of winning odds or future market changes.

He'd been too busy with his research, his books, his experiments. Even sports - he couldn't name a single winner of any major tournament from this period.

What kind of regressor didn't know next week's winning lottery numbers?

Adom groaned into his pillow, then rolled onto his back. There had to be something from this time period he could use. Something, anything... what did he know about this year that could make him rich? What happened, what changed, what was discovered...

"The treasure!" he shouted, bolting upright.

He started pacing his room, careful not to bump into anything. Two years from now... what was that guy's name? It started with a T... or was it an M? Thomas? No... Martin? No... Trevor... Marcus... Thom... Tim...

Some dude.

Two years from now, some dude would become the talk of every tavern and newspaper across the isles. The lucky bastard had stumbled into a cave while chasing his goat and found what turned out to be a leprechaun's hoard - 500,000 gold pieces from the Krona reign. The coins were still legal tender, their value unchanged after all these centuries.

Adom remembered it vividly because for weeks, you couldn't walk two steps without hearing someone discussing the discovery. Every detail had been repeated ad nauseam - the cave's location, how the guy had nearly broken his neck getting in there, how he'd thought the glinting was just mineral deposits until he got closer...

Adom nodded to himself. Tomorrow after classes, he'd head to the cave, retrieve the treasure, and then visit his... contact. Get the ball rolling on acquiring the ingredients. Simple enough plan.

He got into bed, crossed his arms behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

Minutes ticked by.

More minutes ticked by.

Adom was lying there, having literally traveled back through time after watching the world end, carrying the weight of preventing that future on his shoulders, and he was supposed to just... go to sleep?

"No!" he shouted, then immediately winced at the volume.

This was ridiculous.

He needed to go to that cave right now. What if someone else found it first? Which was, objectively speaking, completely absurd - the treasure wouldn't be discovered for another two years, and he hadn't told a soul about it. But still. STILL.

He was already pulling on his boots before his rational mind could catch up with his paranoia. Sometimes the only way to quiet an irrational fear was to do something equally irrational about it.

Getting out of school was surprisingly easy. Nothing technically prevented students from leaving as long as they had a valid reason, and "feeling unwell" was as good as any. The nurse barely glanced at him before signing his permission slip.

It was late afternoon. In any other circumstances, Adom might have paused to take in the sight of Xerkes - the floating pavilions drifting lazily above the city's spires, the familiar streets he hadn't walked in decades, the merchants closing their shops for the day.

But not today. He just grabbed the forty silver pieces he knew he always kept in his drawer and headed straight for the merchant district.

He ran, cursing his younger body's poor stamina, a simple run left him winded. He spotted a shop called 'Garrett's' just as the merchant was pulling down his shutters.

"Wait!" Adom called out between gasps, doubling over with his hands on his knees. "Please... just... one moment."

Garrett - or so Adom assumed his name was - paused, one eyebrow raised as he watched Adom struggle to catch his breath. He was a stocky man with calloused hands and laugh lines around his eyes.

"We're closing, boy," he said, though he didn't continue with the shutters. "Whatever it is, it can wait until tomorrow."

"Dimensional bags," Adom wheezed. "The cheapest ones you have. It's for a school project at Xerkes."

Garrett's expression shifted at the mention of the academy. "Xerkes, eh?" He looked Adom up and down, taking in his disheveled appearance. "Funny how that name opens doors in this city." He sighed, pushing his shutters back up. "Alright, come in. But make it quick."

Inside, Garrett rummaged through a back shelf, muttering to himself. "Let's see... got some basic ones here. Nothing fancy, mind you. Half-cubit capacity each, rough stitching, but they'll hold."

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He placed four small, worn leather bags on the counter. They looked unremarkable, save for the faint shimmer of enchantment around their openings.

"Ten silver for the lot," Garrett said, then added with a hint of pride, "Cheapest you'll find in the district. They're not pretty, but they're honest work. Won't fall apart on you mid-transport like some of that fancy rubbish they sell up in the floating markets."

"Perfect," Adom said, counting out the coins. "Thank you. Really. And you can keep the change."

"Hmm. Just don't come running back tomorrow saying they're too small," Garrett warned. "And next time, maybe don't wait until closing?" He looked at Adom's still-flushed face and shook his head. "Or at least work on your running first."

"Thanks again," Adom said, and headed straight for the strider station.

The massive razorback strider squawked when he approached - twelve feet of irritable, feathered transportation. He paid the rider fifteen silver for a trip to Redcliff Valley, trying not to wince at the price. The creatures might look like overgrown, bad-tempered ostriches, but they could cover more ground in an hour than a horse could in three.

The beast slowed to a stop at Adom's signal. "Here's good, sir."

Redcliff Valley lived up to its name - rust-colored cliffs dropping sharply to meet the sea, white foam crashing against their bases.

The setting sun cast long shadows across the scrubland, and in the distance, the first lights of Arkhos port were beginning to twinkle. Even after everything, this corner of the island still took his breath away.

The rider, a weathered man probably in his fifties, frowned down at him. "Night's falling, kid. Not usual to see a boy your age out here at this hour." He hesitated, then added with careful neutrality, "Everything alright at home?"

Adom almost laughed when he realized what this looked like - a child heading to a remote location at dusk, alone. Every indication of a runaway. "Oh yes. Everything's fine, sir. Just have some business to attend to. I'll be heading back tonight."

The man studied him for a long moment, thumb absently stroking his graying beard. "Tell you what. I'll be at the Salty Dog for a while." He pointed to a distant building where warm light spilled from windows onto the clifftop. "When you're done with your... business, come find me. I'll give you a ride back."

"I'm not sure I can afford the evening rates..."

"No charge." The man's eyes crinkled. "Just don't want a kid wandering around these cliffs after dark."

"Thank you, sir. I'll find you when I'm done then."

They parted ways, the strider's heavy footfalls fading into the growing dusk. Adom watched them go, oddly touched by the stranger's concern. He'd forgotten how people could be kind for no reason at all.

And so, Adom surveyed the cliffs. Caves dotted the red rock face like holes in cheese, some barely more than shallow indents, others yawning black mouths that disappeared into darkness. At least forty of them, he counted. Somewhere among them was his ticket to survival.

What did he remember about the cave? He squinted, trying to drag details through sixty years of accumulated memories. It was... high up. Yes. The guy had been chasing his goat up a narrow path when he found it. And there had been something about the entrance being partially hidden by... rocks? Plants? Something that had made it easy to miss.

He also remembered people making a big deal about how the cave entrance looked like a crescent moon when you stood at the right angle. Or was it a fish? No, definitely a crescent moon. That detail had stuck because someone had spun a whole theory about leprechauns and lunar magic that had made the rounds in the papers.

And there had been something about water... right. The cave had to be above the high tide line, because the treasure would have been long ruined otherwise. That at least narrowed things down - he could ignore all the caves near the bottom of the cliff.

Still left him with about fifteen possibilities to check. Adom sighed and started climbing. At least his younger body made this less likely to kill him.

He channeled mana through his pathways, the familiar tingle of [Levitation] making him lighter. Not enough to float - that would be too conspicuous - but enough to make climbing feel like walking up stairs instead of scaling a cliff face.

One by one, he checked the caves above the tide line. The first one was barely deep enough to count as a cave. The second was promising until it opened into a natural chimney. The third was just right except for being shaped like a lopsided triangle. The fourth...

Hours passed. The sun disappeared entirely. Still no crescent moon.

He sat on a ledge, frustrated and confused. He was absolutely certain about this location - the newspapers had mentioned Redcliff Valley dozens of times. The crescent shape had been a major talking point. The treasure had definitely been here.

Hadn't it?

Darkness had fully settled now, and Adom was starting to wonder if maybe his seventy-nine-year-old memories weren't as reliable as he'd hoped. After all, what were the odds of remembering exact details of a newspaper story from six decades ago?

He looked up at the moon, now fully visible in the night sky, and froze.

Oh.

Oh.

Adom's eyes widened. Of course. A leprechaun's treasure wouldn't just be sitting in some obvious cave. These creatures were infamous for their deceptive magic, hiding things in plain sight through complex enchantments.

They'd been known to conceal entire castles as pebbles, or turn forests into single trees that only revealed their true nature under specific conditions.

And now that he thought about it, that guy had found it at night, hadn't he? Chasing his goat under moonlight...

"If I was a leprechaun," Adom muttered, "what kind of magic would I use?"

He activated [Identify], scanning the cliff face systematically. The system's descriptions appeared in his mind:

'Natural rock formation'

'Common cliff moss'

'Cave entrance (shallow)'

'Thorny brush, indigenous to Xerkes'

'Cave entrance (15 meters deep)'

'Weathered limestone deposit'

'Ancient ru-'

He blinked. Wait, what was that? He'd looked away too quickly.

"What was that last one?"

He turned back, focusing his [Identify] on that specific spot again. There - almost hidden among the natural patterns of the rock:

[Ancient runic array (purpose: concealment), estimated age: 537 years]

As soon as he deactivated [Identify], the rune vanished completely - invisible to the naked eye. He activated it again, studying the intricate pattern.

Runes were the architecture of magic - geometric patterns that shaped and directed mana flows like riverbeds guiding water. Each symbol was a command, each connecting line a channel, each intersection a transformation point. The truly fascinating part was how they could tap into the natural mana currents that flowed through the world, creating enchantments that could sustain themselves for centuries.

This concealment array was a masterwork. The primary sigil spiraled outward in the Pattern of Endless Return, sacred to leprechaun runecraft. Secondary marks branched off at spirit-angles, creating a cascade that bent both light and perception around it. But the true genius lay in the lunar resonance marks woven through the pattern - tiny runes that shifted the array's power with the phases of the moon.

Adom had to admire the craftsmanship. These were the kind of runes you only saw in museums or old ruins. Modern runesmiths used much simpler arrays, more efficient, built on centuries of streamlined magical theory. But these old patterns... they had an artistry to them that modern runecraft had lost in its pursuit of practicality.

Knowledge of runes had survived since the time of Law, the Farmer Mage himself, who was said to possess natural runes - something Adom had never seen in his long life. Not much was known about natural runes, but they had helped Law create the foundations of artificial runecraft that mages used today.

But admiration, Adom realized, wouldn't get him inside. He needed to figure out how to disable it - or at least work around it.

Adom studied the rune carefully. Different runes responded to different triggers - some needed blood, others specific words, many just raw mana. But this one...

"If it's tied to moonlight," he muttered, thinking aloud. "Then entrance would only show under moonlight, so the rune must use it too. And if leprechauns made it..." He remembered something from his magical theory classes. "Leprechauns always built redundancies into their magic. They never relied on just one key."

The pattern seemed to flow toward a central point, currently obscured by centuries of vine growth. Working carefully, keeping [Identify] active to ensure he didn't lose sight of the rune, he cleared away the vegetation. Each time he exposed more of the pattern, new details emerged - smaller runes branching off the main array, all converging toward that center point.

"Okay, so moonlight's one component," he reasoned. "The rune needs to see it directly." He stepped back, making sure the moon's light fell squarely on the newly exposed pattern. Nothing happened, but the lines seemed to shimmer slightly.

"And if it's using moonlight, it's probably designed to channel mana the same way." He traced the pattern with his eyes. "Look at how all these lines spiral inward - like a funnel. It's not just blocking magic, it's... directing it?"

He placed his hand on the central point and channeled his mana carefully, trying to match the flow suggested by the pattern. For a moment, nothing happened. Then he felt it - a subtle resonance, like two tuning forks harmonizing. The rune began to glow faintly, moonlight and mana interweaving through its ancient lines.

"That's it," he breathed. "It's not about forcing it. It's about matching its rhythm..."

The rune flared with silvery light, matching the moon's pale glow perfectly. The illumination spread through the pattern like liquid mercury flowing through glass channels, until Adom no longer needed [Identify] to see it.

Then came the transformation - it started at the edges, the ancient geometric patterns beginning to flow like water, yet somehow maintaining their precise mathematical beauty.

The lines twisted, curved, and reformed themselves in a hypnotic dance. Where rigid angles had been, now flowing scripts emerged. The transformation rippled inward, each ring of runes morphing in sequence, like watching a language being born.

What emerged was... writing? Yes, definitely writing, but in no script he immediately recognized. The letters - if they could be called that - had a certain angular quality to them, each character precise and purposeful. He squinted at them, trying to make sense of the flowing shapes.

Wait. He'd seen something like this before, in the books about the outer kingdoms. The way the characters were constructed, each one built from straight lines meeting at sharp angles...

"Dwarven?" he muttered in disbelief. "Why would there be Dwarven writing on a leprechaun's treasure cave?"

Something wasn't adding up. And how had that shepherd managed to get past this? This wasn't the kind of puzzle you solved by accident - it required knowledge of ancient languages, understanding of complex magical theory, and...

Adom ran his hands through his hair, sighing deeply. The writing seemed to mock him with its incomprehensible angles. He could decipher it, but the idea of going back and get the documents he'd need felt daunting. Then a thought struck him - perhaps... perhaps [Identify] could give him some insight?

He did not think the skill could translate things. It was a long shot, but at this point, what did he have to lose?

[Identify] displayed its findings:

'Writing style: Late Second Era Dwarven Common Script

Origin: Mountain Holds of Khahazad

Approximate dating: 2,847 years old

"Great. Very helpful," Adom sighed, turning to climb down. Then new text appeared in his vision:

[Would you like to translate this language?]

"YES!" Adom practically shouted, then caught himself, grinning like a child. "Oh system, I love you, I really do! Actually, wait - are you a he or a she?"

[This system does not possess gender]

"Well, I can't keep calling you 'system.' That's so... impersonal. What about a name?"

[You may designate any title you prefer]

"How about... Sir Blue the Magnificent?"

[No.]

"Wait, do you have sentience? Because that was a pretty definitive 'no.'"

[This system does not possess sentience]

"Right... we're definitely coming back to this conversation later," Adom said, his curiosity piqued. But the moonlight wouldn't last forever. "For now, let's see what this writing says. Please translate."

The ancient Dwarven script began to shimmer and shift, each character dissolving and reforming in Common before his eyes. Like watching ink bleed through paper in reverse, familiar letters emerged from the angular shapes:

"What dies each night but rises anew,

Never the same yet always true,

Marked forever by what came before,

Yet clean as dawn upon the shore?"

It was a riddle.

"Huh."

Adom hated riddles.