The linden-lined street is beautiful, but Lexi’s mind is elsewhere. Sage Elise is older, wiser, more experienced - a sage in every sense of the word - and Lexi knows she needs to make a good impression in order to win the senior player over as an ally.
While she can use Foresight, Eric had cautioned against it because each view relies on a set of conditions leading up to it - conditions that would differ depending on her decisions after seeing the future - and even a million uses of Foresight would likely not prepare Lexi for everything, especially against a 400 year old sage.
Sage Elise’s villa is a beautiful, airy, calming home - pristine white walls and columns, large plate glass windows on a building surrounded by olive and fir trees, a simple water fixture in a courtyard filled with fragrant flowers even in this season.
This feels like one of those historical temples mixed with a modern residential property.
Lexi braces herself after Ray helps her down, taking a breath and readying her most pleasant expression just as a raven-haired woman dressed in elegant clothing comes running out the doorway, crystal purple eyes sparkling, a brilliant smile on a fair face.
She’s lovely.
If this were her home world, Sage Elise would easily be popular on social media, would definitely have multiple endorsement deals. She’s so wholesomely pretty that Lexi is too distracted to look at the number hovering over dark hair.
“Lady Lexi!” It’s the first time anyone’s hugged her in a long time, and Lexi blinks in surprise, realizing now that it’s been awhile since anyone has held her like this.
“Oh! I apologize, I didn’t mean to be so rude.” That flawless face is regretful, and Lexi wants to kick herself for not reacting sooner.
“No, not at all. I’m the one who’s rude. Thank you for agreeing to see me, my lady.” She dislikes using the honorific but has no idea how else to address this woman. It also can’t hurt to err on the side of caution when Sage Elise is the oldest and most experienced player alive.
At the honorific, perfectly shaped brows furrow and Lexi wonders if she’s done something wrong.
“Please, call me Elise.” When she smiles like that, anyone would agree to anything. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you! I should’ve just made a request of Commander Tridentia before this, I’m so sorry you had to reach out first. That’s my mistake.”
Why are you so nice?
Intuition isn’t showing up, which means this woman is no threat to anyone.
She’s not faking it, she actually means what she’s saying.
“Then, E..Elise, please call me Lexi.” She’s usually known for having a bit of a silver tongue in professional settings, but she’s a little humbled and awed by the sage before her in a way only a handful of people in her world - regardless of appearance, wealth, or position - could make her feel.
She’s something else.
“Lexi.” That smile should be a crime. “Please, come in! Oh, and hello Commander Tridentia, Vice-Commander Fortisutum, Sir Aidan, Sir Felix, Sir Pierce, and Sir Dwayne. Please, come in and have some tea, all of you.”
Either she’s met them many times before, or Sight is letting her cheat.
Not that it matters - other than Eric and Ray, all the Dawn Knights are blushing slightly, looking positively enraptured by this enchanting woman, and Lexi doesn’t blame them.
Elise links arms with her and leads her in past bowing servants, towards a stately drawing room with sunlight streaming in and making the flowers shine vibrantly.
When the senior sage starts pouring tea for her, Lexi tries to protest - she knows it’s supposed to be a junior’s role, so she doesn’t want to seem rude - but the dark haired woman shushes her and insists, saying it’s her duty as a host.
“Now then, shall we talk?” Those purple eyes look a little mischievous, and it’s then that Lexi notices the magical device on Elise’s side of the table.
Sound barrier.
I see. This woman is smooth.
Somehow that just increases the respect Lexi has for her.
“What would you like to talk about, Elise?” At the use of her first name, large eyes crinkle happily before becoming serious.
Am I in trouble...?
“Sage Alexandra Hargreaves, I understand why you’re hiding your class.” HOW...oh, right. Sight. So the higher your level, the more you can see. Though I wonder if I have to be level 100 like her to be able to do this.
“Please don’t worry, I think it’s a wise decision.” Sorrow should never linger on such a lovely visage. “This world is cruel to everyone, especially players and the powerless.”
“It is.” And it truly is. After the attempted assassination, after the discovery of that grotesque operation, after learning that even the wife of a crown prince could be murdered in the palace, Lexi has finally truly accepted that Eric hacking up her arm with Akara had been his way of protecting her.
> ”This world is cruel to everyone, especially players and the powerless.”
It’d be even more cruel to a powerless player.
“I’m really glad you’re being protected by his highness, the duchy, and the Hawk Legion, Lexi.” She means it, it’s clear as day from the relief on that pretty face. “Do you have any questions about your skills? About progression? Ask me anything at all.”
I really wish we’d been friends in my own world. It’d have been nice to have someone like you by my side.
“Well...”
When evening sunlight turns the room golden, Lexi regretfully makes to leave, apologizing for taking up too much time which gets her a huff from Elise and a request to allow the senior sage to visit her at the duke’s manor soon.
“I’d love that, Elise.” Despite being someone who’s spent a long time avoiding face to face interactions, Lexi isn’t surprised that she truly means it.
Eric requests an identification of the ring and the stone just before they depart, and Elise is more than happy to help for free as thanks to the commander for bringing her a wonderful friend. Lexi probably turns as red as the knight’s hair at that, though she mumbles a soft response.
’Interspatia’ can increase the space of any container it’s embedded into? This system doesn’t have an inventory function, so that’ll be useful.
Since Lexi had been the one to find the stone, the law of the land states it’s hers, and Elise giggles before meaningfully wishing that it becomes something she can use.
I hope my last skill doesn’t disappoint us both.
The ring is as Lexi had expected - a barrier against flame - and once again since Lexi had spotted it and dug it up, it’s hers. Elise encourages her to keep it on as much as possible, saying that protection against flame magic up to level 20 makes it valuable, and they all understand what the dark haired sage really means.
’You need all the help you can get to survive, Lexi.’
As soon as they’re back in the manor, Eric and Ray follow her into her room, dismissing Mia and locking the door.
Impatient, much?
Still, she owes the redhead for setting up the meeting, so she tells him everything she’d talked about with Elise.
Like Lexi, Elise had come from a comfortable life - a twenty year old chemistry student dreaming of becoming a perfumer and taking over her family’s fragrance empire who’d blinked one day to realize she’d ended up in another world.
And, like Lexi, her welcome package had come with the ‘lingering consciousness after death’ condition.
> ”It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Elise looks sad, then determined. “That’s why, Lexi, you must be very careful. Listen to the Commander and Vice-Commander, don’t leave their sides. If you ever need help, I’m here for you.”
Elise had also told her about the skills she possesses, and a part of Lexi had wondered why this woman was so open with her.
> ”Well, I suppose we’re kindred spirits? You and I are the only ones to ever appear as sages, we both had good things going in our own worlds, we’d ended up here without doing anything in particular, and we really can’t afford to die.”
Lexi has to admit it’s a nice feeling, having so much in common with someone so beautiful and kind.
Sage Icarian, an old friend of Elise’s, had documented many of the skills players possess, but it seems out of respect for his friend and senior the late sage had left all of Elise’s unique skills out of his writings.
When she’d spoken of the scholarly man, Elise’s face had clouded over, though she’d rushed to reassure the newest player that she held no ill-will towards her for replacing a dear confidant. What bothers Elise is the fact that she hadn’t been able to see a single hint of what had led to ‘Rian’ dying, no matter how much Hindsight she’d used on his home and belongings, since the late sage had turned into streams of light that shot to the heavens on his death.
That’s worrying.
Lexi had been surprised to learn that two of Elise’s ultimate skills are different from hers, having thought that the five abilities waiting for her in future are the best a sage can expect. Even their active and passive skills vary, with Elise possessing neither Intuition nor Flow.
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> ”What a wonderful skill! Please pay careful attention to Intuition, Lexi. You mustn’t disregard a single warning sign, promise me.”
The knights are a little surprised to learn that no other sage in history, at least none that Elise knows or Sage Icarian had found out about, has ever been granted the Intuition skill. Eric says something about needing to speak to Jordan after Lexi’s done talking, then he hurries off with a glance at Ray.
“My lady, shall we go to dinner?”
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Later, when Lexi’s comfortably in bed after a relaxing bath, she pulls up the status window once more.
-- EXP: 3,819 / 7,000 --
Oh. I guess all that assassin and hellhole stuff, as well as the conversation with Elise helped.
Looking at her skills, Elise’s comes to mind.
Instead of Flow and that other remaining active skill I’m waiting on, she has Synthesize and Dissolve. And instead of Intuition, she has Control. I guess it makes sense, since she comes from a chemistry background, while I’m from consulting and then marketing. She was hands on in making and testing things in a lab, I was the person sitting at my desk playing with spreadsheets and slides, doing planning and strategy, creating and launching projects and campaigns then tracking and analyzing results.
According to Elise, Synthesize and Dissolve allow her to work directly with objects, while Control allows her to monitor and manipulate factors like temperature, humidity, air pressure, and the like. Though Control is a passive skill, after more than 200 years at level 100 Elise had received a bonus from the system which had turned it into a hybrid active-passive ability.
And while both Lexi and Elise share the same Stop, Haste, and Slow skills, Elise’s Reverse and Advance work differently: the black haired sage can only use them on non-sentient things like plants and clothes, and is forbidden by the system from using them to kill or revive humans and any other type of creature capable of the same cognitive processes as humans.
Still, it’s pretty useful. She can basically turn tea back into tea leaves or make it evaporate just with Reverse and Advance. If she adds Control, she can even play with the temperature and turn it into iced tea or steam.
There goes my request for moving back in time though.
One thing Elise had pointed out, because the late Sage Icarian had had all the same ultimate skills as Lexi, is that though Lexi's Reverse and Advance essentially move her backwards or forwards to specific points in time depending on her level, she then needs to use the opposite skill to return to the present within a specific time limit to avoid penalties.
So every time I travel to the past, I need to use Advance to get back to the present instead of living everything out again. It makes sense but that means spending extra MP.
And of course, depending on the situation, directly interfering with anything in the past or future - taking or leaving things, killing or saving individuals, or even sometimes doing something as simple as being seen or heard - is forbidden and leads to what Sage Icarian had called "the most severe punishment imaginable".
This means my Reverse and Advance are nothing more than glorified Hindsight and Foresight, aren't they? If Hindsight and Foresight allow me to only look while leaving me vulnerable in the present, then Reverse and Advance put me where I can see, smell, hear, touch, taste, and move but that's about it - I’m not actually allowed to do anything more in that past/future.
Not only that, when I move back or forth, I’ll need to be where I plan to be within a certain margin of error - and have to just hope I don’t end up in a wall where there’s none in the present, or in midair when I’m expecting a bridge. AND I need to know exactly what I want to do within the time limit while staying as hidden as possible.
The only reason why I didn’t move backwards in time when I cast Reverse was because I cast Slow first, and that let me move in the reversing-present since that skill somehow slows everything including the system, a really interesting aspect that Sage Icarian had been trying to figure out.
Anyway, I’m lucky I didn’t go too far away before canceling it, or the effects would’ve been more noticeable.
Elise believes Reverse’s effects are why Lexi had such a hard time climbing out of the hole and even standing up, but part of Lexi figures it’s because the older sage is too nice to say that the difficulty was just because Lexi’s overweight and unfit.
More importantly: it's frustrating, even when she can understand why such limits are necessary, and why Sage Icarian had only unlocked Reverse at Level 60 and Advance at Level 70. These two skills, like all Lexi’s passive skills and the three known active skills she has, are focused on securing information for use in the present.
I'd already suspected I wouldn't be allowed to mess with anything in the past to ensure things happen as they're meant to when it comes to Reverse. As for Advance, it makes sense that the system won't allow me to take actual things from the future and bring them back because I could create the Bootstrap Paradox, and I can’t stay in the future because it might change the events leading up to that future without me in the past.
Did I only get away without a single penalty during the welcome stage thanks to 'one MP-free use with no penalty'? Seems a bit too much of a cheat. Or is that why I got the lingering consciousness gig? As a trade-off: no-penalty usage of ultimate skills in my welcome package, in exchange for remaining aware when I’m hacked to pieces, experimented on, burned, eaten, drowned, buried alive, or whatever else is in store when I die.
She’s not sure if the trade is fair, since she hadn’t even been aware of the options available when it’d happened.
What’s the point of getting angry about that now, though? Not only did the deal happen awhile back, I can’t even go back in time to tell myself not to do what I did because of my low level and the system preventing paradoxes.
Huffing, Lexi wills her mind to continue exploring the possibilities.
Doesn’t make sense anyway. Elise’s Advance and Reverse are different from mine, but she got the lingering consciousness too. And lots of non-sages had that condition as well. So it’s obviously not tied to the skills themselves per se, unless it somehow activates depending on an algorithm that calculates how valuable a skill would be to you during the welcome stage.
Alternatively, if the lingering thing is random, then maybe I'd actually paid the price a little back then? I did use Advance then Reverse after all - I just happened to have Slow in effect and then canceled the operation part-way. And it's not like I interfered with anything beyond saving myself from death by hypothermia and infection. So if the system needs a balancing of books, then maybe I can consider that I fulfilled the requirements in part.
Somehow she gets the feeling that isn’t it.
But, if directly changing events is prohibited even for Advance, then there wasn’t actually a ‘me’ that last day who’d progressed day by day from the ‘me’ who fell into that hole on the first day, since I didn’t interfere and replace the ‘past me’ who would’ve died of thirst, cold, or possibly another attack by then. Which means when I invoked Advance on Day One to move to Day Seven, time ceased to be linear. Instead, I folded the paper and poked a hole through the ends to create my own connection, skipping all the days in between and therefore not dying of my injuries, thirst, or the elements.
So there wasn't any event to change, no 'other me' to replace, since the 'me' from Day One stepped into Day Seven directly via a shortcut. And unlike traveling backwards with Reverse, which can cause so many paradoxes, by going forwards and not taking anything from the future back to the past, I didn't create a paradox.
Or…wait.
Going back to the past means things have already happened - if I go back to a past where I existed, it absolutely means there’s ‘past me’ and ‘future me’ in the same time. But going to the future without a ‘future me’ present means there’s only ‘past me’ popping in to take over.
Horror is hot on realization’s heels.
In that case, the ‘future me’ was actually gone by the time ‘past me’ turned up. Or maybe there’s another ‘me’ wandering around?
Lexi clenches her fists, swallowing hard even as her heart rate starts to spike.
No, calm down. If we follow the earlier theory - that ‘past me’ jumped into the future, then it makes sense because it’s still just ‘one me’, since the future hadn’t happened yet when ‘past me’ acted, ‘past me’ made the future happen as it did. Under normal circumstances, the system would have required me to return to Day One and live out the days until Day Seven - which would have created the ‘two me’s’. But with that one penalty-free opportunity, I got to skip the days in between completely.
She’s starting to feel a little better now. The thought of another Lexi wandering around, or possibly being experimented on, makes her sick.
Remember what Eric said: every future I see in Foresight (and now Advance), relies on a set of conditions. If I change one even the slightest bit with my actions in the now, then I change what’s to come.
He’d told her that before she met Elise, but it’d also been clear at the griffin’s nest, when Eric decided on a course of action after Lexi had used Foresight and everything about the battle she’d foreseen had changed.
The unpredictability of the future sort of balances out my future knowledge if it’s just knowledge. If I went to the future, saw a key battle scene, and came back and prepared for it, then according to chaos theory’s butterfly effect the future I saw and prepared for would change too.
It’s annoying, but Lexi’s learned the hard way many times that people aren’t complete idiots - and even if they were stupid, they’d still react to external stimuli in order to survive, unless they were physically unable to.
If I tried to do anything more than obtain information, under ordinary circumstances the system will step in. For example, if I was about to die in the ‘present’, and I tried to jump into the ‘future’ with Advance to save myself, the system's rules would prevent me from creating another timeline of 'me' being alive in YEAR XX since I'd have to return to the exact moment in YEAR X and die as I was about to, or suffer a ‘fate worse than death’.
…On that note, why didn’t Sage Icarian specify what he meant by “the most severe punishment imaginable”? Dude, some bloody hints would’ve been nice. Unless he was prohibited by the system? Or maybe I was right about the trade-off - maybe Sage Icarian was talking about eternal hell as a penalty for using those ultimate skills as I did.
While Lexi enjoys thinking, all this space-time continuum musing and trying to figure out an unhelpful system - that’s somehow affected by a skill it grants to players, perhaps a result of the multiple timelines / other worlds as hypothesized by Sage Icarian - are making her wish for a drink or twenty.
I don’t have enough information on the system to figure everything out. And forget about causal loops. I stopped studying physics before university, and everything I know about quantum theory is what dad would chat with me about when his favorite sci-fi shows were on.
...those were great times.
Sighing and disabling the screen, Lexi turns to her side, curling up and determinedly not thinking of happier memories.
‘Sheer, dumb luck’. Slow being super common in video games aside, luck’s the reason why I cast Slow before Reverse, otherwise I would’ve jumped back into the past. And the only reason I got away with jumping to the future and staying there/here is because of the damn welcome package. Luck was my highest stat the moment I unlocked my menu, after all.
> ”You could have put it all in your Luck stat.”
Eric had said that to her before.
…I wonder what Eric went to see his highness about. Were they not aware of Elise’s skills before this? She’s been around almost 400 years, I’m sure her skills are documented by the imperial family.
It’s obvious when a player is using their active and ultimate skills after all: their crystal eyes start to glow and their attribute’s symbol takes over their pupils. Ray had realized Lexi was using Foresight that time simply by seeing the hourglass in each eye and then figuring out it was a forward looking skill by the circumstances and the fact that she’d looked terrified while unharmed - similar traits among all sages who’d looked into the future and seen awful things.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I seem to be the only person with Intuition.
She’s always known she has good instincts - but more importantly when it came to her work, no matter how data-driven she tried to be there was always an element of chance. Market conditions, viral trends, government policies, competitor behavior, new discoveries, scandals, arrests, suicides, overdoses, accidents, terrorism, natural disasters, pandemics, wars...no one in her world could predict the future with 100% accuracy, so people like her relied on their instincts and pure luck more often than they liked to admit.
Of course, she always had the historical data and simulations to back up her decisions. Only an idiot wouldn’t cover their ass.
So the system distributes skills based on what we already use at work or school? I guess it’s better than being assigned something I’m unable to properly utilize.
Turning to lie on her back once more, Lexi gazes up at the canopy in the dark. While she can’t see it now, she knows it’s a beautifully embroidered scene of sunrise over the East Sea, and every morning when she opens her eyes she’s brought back to times spent sitting on her surfboard staring out into the horizon waiting for sets with...
Stop it, those days are gone now. Go to sleep. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow since I need to find those other people or items Guide’s been trying to lead me to. Luckily those Guide-lines are Intuition-free.
If another person continues to suffer just because she’d been self-absorbed, Lexi doesn’t know what she’d do.
I know I don’t owe any of those strangers anything, but at the same time if Guide is leading me to them it wouldn’t hurt to be on good terms.
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CHAPTER 13 END