"I'll ask again: mister Lake, do you still deny being part of the loop?"
"I'm not part of this loop thing of yours." Gaus said through his teeth, "I don't know how you came to see me as part of this shady organization but I don't even know what you are talking about."
"Then, tell me, if you're so innocent why do you carry bodyguards around? And why are some of the predators monitoring the city reporting unusual behaviors around La Magia. You may not know about the predators in the city so allow me to tell you. They are a squad of one hundred loopers whose only mission is to monitor the holy city and its people. They monitor any changes in the loop which includes people like you." Tyren said.
Gaus silently considered everything. Was the city under siege? What exactly was going on?
"I don't have any bodyguards." Gaus said.
"Then you won't mind if I do this," he whistled and a couple of seconds later the red-haired woman brought a cuffed man into the restaurant, "the other one has run away," Tyren added.
Gaus frowned. The captive was a middle-aged man with a dark-green hair, sunken, little eyes, and a heavy built. This was the first time he was seeing him.
"Surprised?" Tyren asked, "don't be. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have him. You surely don't expect me to just walk in here while your bodyguards lie in wait, do you?"
Tyren smiled viciously. He was winning gradually and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
"I'm sure you also know that this isn't the first time I have them." He went on, "one always escapes. They look the same so I don't know if I've been catching one or the other, especially since they can't speak, even if they wanted to. They don't have a mind so mind magic won't work on them. Moreover, when we killed them they turned into woods." Tyren spoke with exasperation. He cared little about the puzzled look on Gaus's face.
"Wood clone magic," he concluded, "you've to be at least level 50 and above in spirit magic to conjure something this exotic."
Gaus stood up. There was no point in listening to the conversation anymore. "I've nothing more to tell you." He turned around and headed to the exit. "And you would do well not to antagonize me anymore." The threat in his voice was so clear that not even Tyren realized it was empty.
The red-haired woman moved to intercept Gaus but Tyren shook his head. "Let him go," he said, "he has one day. After that, I'm going to the academy to inform The Master about him."
***
Leave or stay? Those were his options. Even if he left now he would still be starting his next loop in the city and he also didn't know what he would meet outside the city: it could be good or bad. But if he stayed he would have to deal with Tyren and the so-called predators. There was just no way to defeat Tyren the way he was. Yes, he could have just admitted to being a looper but then his chances of survival would have been even lesser. What would he do if Tyren asked him to bring him into the loop? Gaus had no way of bringing anyone into the loop. He also didn't know how he came to be in it. And Tyren was a temporary looper who served a master that was looking to kill people like Gaus who joined the loop without his knowledge. No doubt The Master would reward Tyren handsomely for selling him out. If Tyren finally realized Gaus couldn't help him he would just sell him out. It would be the logical thing to do to survive.
"How long to the next city?" Gaus asked the carriage driver.
"We'll be in Little Lang in an hour, sir." The driver answered.
Little Lang was the closest stop.
"Okay."
Gaus murmured a few prayers before he closed his eyes.
There were two clones chasing after him and he didn't even realize it. He didn't offend anyone (if you excluded the one person from the gambling shop, but that was different), so why did someone saw it fit to send people after him.
How exactly did he join the loop again? He had not the slightest idea. The more he tried to understand it the more complicated it became. Right now, there were at least three insanely powerful mages playing this game (if you count The Master, the archmage, and Tyren) and he was in the middle of it all. It didn't matter what he did he just couldn't defeat them at the moment. So, in order to ensure his survival, he decided to run as far away from his enemies as possible. He would keep on running every loop until he had become strong enough to stand against them. And when that time came he would pay them back a hundred times.
"Hurry the hell up. Why are you slowing down?" Gaus snapped at the driver as the carriage slowed to a stop.
"I'm sorry, sir, we're at the check-up point outside the city walls. It won't take long."
Gaus looked through the window to see a couple of policemen asking the driver for his permit. Apparently, leaving the holy city in the evening required some kind of permit. The driver gave them a handwritten note from his pocket. They stamped on it and gave it back.
"Go on."
They let them pass.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. There was little to no hitches for the next fifty minutes.
"Now stopping in Little Lang station," the driver told him.
He heaved a sigh of relief as he came down with as much a hurry as he could muster.
"Sir, hold on, you didn't collect the change."
"Keep it. Thanks for your hard work."
Gaus disappeared into the crowd as quickly as he could. After successfully leaving Fydeba the next thing was to figure out where he would go to. It was dark and he knew no one in the entire city. Unlike Fydeba, the buildings didn't look the same and, despite it being 5:50 pm, there were as many people as he would expect to see in a market at noon. Apparently, Little Lang was a business district.
"Hey," he grabbed the person next to him, "where can I find a hotel?" It was after he was done asking the question that he realized the person he thought was a random passerby was a little girl that couldn't be more than eight years, "sorry." He released her and went to ask the next person. It took him seven minutes to find the place.
For the next twenty minutes, he cleaned up and ordered some food. He was probably being followed but he just couldn't let himself think like that, not now. He had been beaten in the game and the only thing he'd left was hope. It was hope that let him stand despite not having enough energy to do so.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three short but confident knocks. It was totally unlike the knock of the waitress he sent earlier to get him food.
"Who is it?" Gaus asked.
"We just wanted to know if you are inside." Someone said from behind the door. He was confident and arrogant.
Gaus took five steps backward away from the door. He put his hands on the crown and readied himself to react at a moment's notice.
"Can I come in?" The confident voice asked.
"Er... wait. I'm putting some clothes on. Wait a minute." Gaus said, stuttering a bit.
There was some silence before the voice sighed. "I can't let you go beyond seven o'clock, so hurry up."
Gaus frowned. "Beyond seven o'clock? What the hell are you talking...?"
"You've thirty seconds to dress and ten seconds to say your goodbyes." The voice cut him off, "it won't be your last so don't worry."
"...." Gaus opened his mouth but couldn't find the right words. So many things were happening at an unusual speed. It would take several days just to figure out the events of this loop alone.
"Tell me who the hell are you? I'm gonna call the police." Gaus shouted at the top of his lungs.
"I'm Niln."
"Niln? Whatever. What the hell do you want with me?"
"Time's up."
Niln pushed the door open despite it being locked. On the other hand, Gaus Rewound to the beginning of the conversation, or at least he thought he did.
Your can't Rewind!
There is currently an unimaginable amount of time essence in your surrounding that is forcing some changes on your magiwatch.
Initiating...
What the hell...
Initiating done.
The excess time essence in the surrounding has activated a few functions from your skill formula.
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Assessing functions...
This may take a while.
Niln came into the room. He was a young man in his twenties with short, black hair and a well-trimmed beard and mustache. He was dressed in an immaculate green robe and a black sandal. Just by looking at him, Gaus was intimidated. He felt like he was looking at a giant mountain that could crush him at any moment. Even worse was that the man looked extraordinarily innocent to the point he looked like he wouldn't bite. But there was just this feeling at the back of his head that kept telling him to run away as fast as possible.
"It will be quick, I promise," Niln said. He bowed his head slightly before he unsheathed the sword that had been hanging down from his shoulder.
He slashed.
The time essence in the surrounding has just doubled, it is beyond what your physique can hold. If you get too close you may trigger an untimely transformation in your magiwatch.
XM-9999
He was the ultimate looper. Born and trained to be a looper and a killing machine of The Master. He served long before the loopers became commonplace and he was still serving even now when everyone could become a looper. XM9999 frowned at the fact that many nobles born with a silver spoon in their mouth could become high ranking loopers without any reasonable skill to show for it. He hated the fact that nobility was given a priority over skill. If his master would listen to him he would scrap every damn noble from the surface of the academy and be rid of them forever. But his master was a political man who cared very much about the feelings of the Kings and the higher echelon of the society.
If you asked XM9999 how he felt about his job, he would tell you that the job was boring on its own, but he felt great doing it because he was serving The Master. XM9999 wouldn't mind sailing across the narrow water dungeon and bringing the flames of war upon the world government if it would please his master. But The Master didn't want that, he just wanted him to stay around the holy city of Fydeba and kill any non-looper who left the city in the evening. 'Non-loopers aren't allowed to know what happens in the evening outside Fydeba', The Master had told him while assigning the mission to him some years ago.
As a general rule of thumb, any job that didn't involve a looper was mundane. A non-looper wouldn't remember what they did today, they would keep repeating their trashy life over, again and again, so dealing with them involved only repetitions. XM9999 didn't know how long he'd been repeating the same routine in the last couple of years. For him, the routine was to kill the 433 people that left the holy city: 168 in the morning, 97 in the afternoon, and the rest in the evening before seven o'clock. That had been the routine, so it would be a searing headache if one person were to just appear out of nowhere and make the list 434. It was just one, but it meant a significant change. He now had to find this person's location and he had to plan the killing to make it look like an accident. His colleagues had accused him of wasting time unnecessarily but he preferred to be thorough, just in case it was the last loop.
Most commonly when something like this happened it was as a result of the action of his comrades - loopers. Every new quest executed by a looper would bring certain changes to the loop. Those changes could lead to people going in or out of the holy city. Because of this, XM9999 wasn't surprised when he saw a teenage boy topped his list. A looper had probably killed the boy's parents which forced the boy to leave the city to his aunt's or something.
Gaus
Level 2
Untamed Mana
Affinity for time essence: 79.1%
Affinity for soul essence: 0.2%
Affinity for mind essence: 3.1%
He Identified the boy with {sight}. The boy had favorable stats, too bad he had to kill him.
He followed him to a hotel room and knocked at the front door.
"Who are you?" The boy asked him.
It was a custom to tell the person you were going to kill your name.
"I'm Niln."
He unsheathed his sword, the only sword that had come from The Master himself, and slashed. Ever since he awakened to XM9999, only one person was able to dodge his slash - vice-admiral Lilian. Even long before his awakening, there was no one below level 50 who could dodge his slash. The boy was dead the moment he unsheathed...
What?
The boy dodged. He didn't know how; he just did.
Even more surprising was how slow the boy moved.
Speed : 8.9m/s
He used {sight} to identify the boy's speed. Even if the boy was five times faster (moving at 50m/s), it was impossible to dodge him, but the boy did. He slashed again and the boy dodged sideways without even breaking any sweat. XM9999 upped his speed to 100m/s. It was impossible to dodge him now, no matter what trick the boy was using.
He waited for the right moment and then slashed.
The boy dodged to the side just as easily as the first time.
You've got to be kidding me...
But just when XM9999 thought the boy was giving him trouble, the boy rolled on the ground and actually punched him in the chest.
This is.. absurd. He punched me at 10m/s while I'm running at 100m/s.
He was dumbstruck. A level 2 mage landing a punch on him. How ridiculous.
"Haha... you must have a unique skill, boy." XM9999 said, laughing, "congratulations, you're hired."
With that, XM9999 pressed his magiwatch and the boy saw flashes of a rainbow just before he was knocked out. It would be nigh impossible for the boy to ever explain how he was defeated, despite being armed to the teeth.
Gaus
"Wake up, wakeup, waaaakeyup."
Gaus's eyes suddenly shot open. "What the hell are you?" He snapped at the rug singing in his ear with a human-like mouth.
"What the hell am I? I am a living thing just like you." The rug said in an androgynous voice, "look, you can sleep if you want to be expelled on your first day. You don't want that now, do you?"
A rug just scolded him.
"What the hell is this place?" Gaus shouted with wide eyes. He was currently lying on the floor of a giant hall with many other people about his age running around. Nobody spared him a look.
"Wake up, wakeup, waaaakeyup."It continued singing.
"Shut up."
"Ehh... did you just snap at me?" The rug screeched, "look, the only reason I'm worried about you is that your face is very close to mine, and I thought you wanted to be friends."
What? Gaus was speechless.
At this point, a voice came from the end of the hall.
"It's now time for the last badge. Welcome once again to LA, new recruits. If you see yourself here then you've been chosen by The Master or his most trusted subordinates. I believe this is all your second day here, so I'll keep the conversation short. I just want to tell you that you are nothing but bloody Junior initiates class 1. If you survive these first two weeks, you'll become a junior initiate class 2. If you were to survive the next two months then you will become a senior initiate. Don't even dream of becoming a temporary looper just yet, so get to work and earn yourself some reputation from your betters. If you passed the test you'll receive a day worth of lifespan, and if you fail you will go back to your previous mundane life."
After the announcement from the voice, people dressed in uniform poured into the hall.
"Form yourselves into three lines." One of them ordered.
Three lines were formed. The tester was brought forward. It was a simple punch bag that was connected to a transparent glass by a rod. Another white wall was attached to the back of the glass. The first person was asked to punch the bag and after he did a tiny spare of green appeared on the white wall behind the glass.
"Ten millimeters thick." The instructor announced then he checked the list on his hands, "it's the same reading as your yesterday's, so you're expelled. Go back to your miserable life." The instructor told him nonchalantly.
The boy begged with his knees on the ground, but the instructor didn't spare him a look. Two guards dragged the boy out of the hall.
"Hieya, help me, I don't want to go. Hieya, help me." He cried, but whoever Hieya was she didn't respond.
"If you punch the bag your strength will pass through the glass to appear on the board. The same result will also appear on the mainboard in the teacher's hall. Bear in mind that it's the collective decision of all the teachers to expel any initiate who didn't improve his physique for twenty-four hours straight." The instructor explained before he continued the screening.
It went on just like that. And in just a few minutes eleven people had been expelled. It was Gaus's turn. The instructor looked at the record but he couldn't find his.
"When did you come in?" The instructor asked.
"I was hoping you could tell me," Gaus said with a frown.
"Come again."
"I was hoping you could tell me," Gaus repeated.
"Junior initiate, you're nothing but a bloody XM0000, all it takes is a little sign from me here," he put his index on a spot in front of Gaus' name, "and you'll be gone. You'll wake up tomorrow as a mere human and continue your useless, ordinary life that'll never progress beyond a single day. So, you don't speak to me like that ever again. Are we clear?"
"Of course." Gaus nodded.
"What? That's not how to say it, boy. You say 'yes, sir', not of course."
"XM0101, that's the new recruit brought in by XM9999. He didn't pass through the tutorial that's why he's misbehaving." One instructor came to his rescue.
XM0101 frowned but he nodded and let the other man take Gaus away.
"Sorry about that, he is usually tough on recruits, so don't take it personally." He told Gaus as he led him into a separate room at the end of the hall.
He closed the door behind him to cut off the noise from the hall. "Sit down. I'm gonna have to rush things because we don't have much time. The others complained about you but XM9999 vouched for you."
"Look, man, can you just tell me what the hell is going on here? I was on my way out of the city and someone just grabbed me. The next thing I know is being here." Gaus frantically spieled.
"I understand your confusion, but just sit down and let me explain everything. I'm XM0033." He offered Gaus a seat. Gaus hesitated but at last, he sat. XM0033 went to the board on the wall and started explaining.
"Let's begin with the world as you know it." He drew a picture of the globe and he wrote 'Tuesday' on it. He wrote 'Wednesday' by the right and 'Monday' by the left. "Tell me one thing you did today." He asked.
"I...performed the pilgrimage," Gaus answered.
"Be more specific. Give me one thing that's peculiar."
"I sold milk, cow milk."
"How much money did you make?"
"About one thousand."
"What did you do with the money? Is it still with you?"
Gaus nodded. "Yes."
"But I'm sure you have something in mind for it, don't you?"
Gaus nodded.
"Good. The thing is you've been waiting to spend that money for a very long time now."
"WHAT?!" Gaus mustered the best shocking expression he could. He wasn't surprised at all.
XM0033 smiled knowingly. He'd seen that same expression more times than he could remember, but it never got old. "It's difficult to believe but you've been stuck on this very Tuesday for several years now. Everyone you see in this place is aware of the situation, you can ask them if you want. By tomorrow you'll see the truth of what I speak. Nobody knows how or why, not even The Master, but every Wednesday at 3 am, the world will rewind back for twenty-four hours to 3 am Tuesday. The same thing has been going on for a very long, long time."
Gaus raised his hand to ask a question.
"Don't. I know you don't understand, and even if you did you won't believe it. But let me finish."
The man went on to give Gaus a protracted explanation of the loop, thinking this was the first time Gaus was experiencing it.
"Because you're now blessed by The Master, you'll wake up tomorrow with full knowledge of this conversation and everything that's happened today. This place is called LA, short for Loopers Academy. We teach loopers how to adapt to the current situation and how to make something of themselves. If you work hard, you'll learn mana manipulation to pass your initiate exams and learn mind magic, soul magic, and even time magic. If you are so hardworking and talented, you may even become a temporary looper like me." He was proud of that last statement, Gaus could see it in his eyes. "Your learning will be sponsored by The Master like everyone else and we'll only ask for money in extreme of situations. But you've to prove your worth every day. If you miss a single day of training, the master will automatically erase you from the database and you'll go back to living your mundane life. Even if you come to the training you have to perform as expected or else you'll be erased. Every day must be earned until you become a temporary looper. Take this," he casually handed over a manual, "class starts at 10 am every day. It's expected that you will be here sooner so as to collect your daily uniform and sunglasses.
"Sunglasses?"
"Didn't I say you can't interrupt me when I'm speaking?"
"You didn't."
"I just did, idiot. You better learn how to speak to temporary loopers or you'll be in trouble. I don't have a problem but others have. They are the kings around this place. Just stay low and learn to stay alive. By the time the loop is over, you'll be royalty."