Ch #7

"Deja vu"

As Kai surveyed the shelves around him, a sense of déjà vu washed over him, as if he had been in this place before. Professor Aionos had led him to the east wing of the grand library.

"Give me the books now."

Taking the books from Kai's hand, the professor placed them on the ground, opened various pages, and laid them in front of the tallest eastern shelf tucked against the wall.

"This should do it."

Instructing Kai to move back a bit, Professor Aionos chanted something in a strange ethereal language. Pricking his finger, the professor smeared a drop of blood against the spine of a conspicuous book on the shelf.

As Kai observed the scene, a shiver ran through his body involuntarily.

'This is eerily similar to blood rituals...'

With a click, the library shelf split apart, revealing a hidden door. The door appeared ancient and rusted, made of some kind of bronze metal. Professor took out his timepiece and held it against the center of the door. The timepiece fell into place as if it were a part of the door itself.

"This is the entrance to the heart of the spell, a teleportation formation has been placed on the door. Touching it with the key in place will send us directly to the seal where the spell is anchored."

Professor Aionos reached out and touched the door, vanishing in front of Kai. As Kai looked around, he considered not following the professor inside. However, he realized that the trial still had to be completed, or else he might be stuck or face certain death when everything reset.

'Sigh, I have no choice but to follow, it seems.'

Placing his hand on the timepiece, he disappeared from the library, reappearing in front of a similar gate to the bronze one. This one looked much more rusted, and Professor Aionos stood beside him, seemingly waiting.

"You sure took your time. I almost thought you might not come at all."

"I was curious about the spell as well. Where are we now?"

"We're thousands of meters below the academy, in a natural cavern of sorts. That door behind you is the only way in and out of this place."

"Look over there, see that statue? That's the center of the spell. The spell was cast by that creature when the first principal sacrificed his life to seal it into that stone-like form you see."

The professor pointed at the center of the hall, where a massive, almost hundred-meter-tall statue of a snake-like beast stood, looking down at them. Kai felt an unexplainable fear as he gazed at the stone beast's gray eyes.

"So what do we do now, professor?"

"The question is not what do we do, but what can we do? The spell is unimaginably powerful, but it is not limitless. Initially, it reset time every thousand star cycles, then it began resetting every 800 star cycles, then 700, 600, and now it resets after a mere 10 days. Its power has waned."

Kai listened to Professor Aionos' explanation, but something still bothered him.

"If this spell was cast when it was sealed, shouldn't everyone present at the academy at that time also be in this loop?"

"Very perceptive. Yes, they were trapped in this bubble as well. But they perished long ago. Their souls were destroyed while attempting to leave this time prison or crushed by the weight of eons passing by. That timepiece is the only thing recording everything that happened."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Carefully choosing his words, Kai asked another question that had been troubling him.

"That still doesn't explain how we are still alive, then. We're much weaker than the first principal and his allies. It shouldn't be possible for their souls to be destroyed while ours remain intact."

"There weren't just a few thousand students at this academy. At one point, there were over a hundred thousand students. This time prison has also moved through time. The first generation gave birth to the second, and then they gave birth to the third. As the earlier generations died, the newer ones took over. So there are still people alive. But not for long."

"The time here is too short for a new generation to grow up, isn't it?"

"Yeah, we're the last. And so, I see no need to keep this seal active any longer. I have been studying this seal for hundreds of thousands of years already. I can break it, but I need help. I never thought I would be able to until I found you. You're not from this time, are you?"

Kai was taken aback by the sudden question. He prepared himself to run for the gate at the slightest sign of an attack, even though his chances were quite slim.

"What do you mean, professor?"

"Come on, boy, I've been living the same life so many times I've practically been on autopilot for millennia. I noticed the slightest deviation from the norm. The only way for that to be possible was to have an intact soul, the only way to not forget the time being reset. But the only other intact soul is inside that damn seal."

Listening to the professor, Kai sighed. It seemed that the secret was out, but he couldn't help wondering why the people in the trial could perceive others from outside it. It seemed strange to him.

"I was going to be found out no matter what, huh... So what do you need my help for? I'm just an unranked. I doubt I could be of any assistance regarding this."

Professor Aionos shook his head. Walking over to the foot of the statue, he knelt down and touched it. The entire statue glowed for a second in front of Kai but then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

"As you can see, it's not possible to break it by myself. The reason you can help is that you are blessed with mana."

Kai did not deny it. He had no need to. Right now, he had to consider how this trial was going to end and what his role in it would be.

"What do I do?"

"Come here, I need to impart the part of my understanding of the ancient language required to form the spell to you first."

As Professor Aionos touched his head, Kai felt a foreign mind connect to his. A vast amount of images and memories flowed into his mind. A complicated, three-dimensional mental diagram of a spell formed inside his mind, giving him a splitting headache. Professor Aionos released him, and Kai grabbed his head in pain, falling to the floor, screaming and cursing.

"Ahhhh! Damn it!!!!! My head! You didn't tell me it was going to hurt!"

Professor snorted at his scream.

"Of course, it's going to hurt; mental transfer is never painless."

Kai cursed as his headache slowly subsided. Looking at his improved situation, Professor Aionos began explaining the plan.

"We're about to release the seal of the first principal. The spell you will cast is an erasure spell and not a normal dispelling spell. The image I transferred to you is the essential symbol for the spell. I'll provide you with a source of mana and assist you in maintaining that image until the spell is complete."

"Wait, if we lift the seal, does that mean the time prison will also be released? And if it does, won't we be trapped with the beast inside?"

"Lifting the seal will indeed lift the time prison along with it. In fact, the seal has been responsible for the time prison's continued existence. As for the beast, we'll trap it inside here and get out using the teleportation and shut it off from outside. The gate and this cavern is actually the fail-safe, in case the seal hadn't worked."

Kai understood the plan, though he wasn't entirely confident that everything would go smoothly. Nonetheless, he had a job to do. Professor Aionos and Kai approached the statue. When Kai touched the statue, he summoned the image that the professor had implanted in his mind. He didn't understand any of it, but that was the magic of languages, he didn't have to understand it to cast it. Professor placing his palm on Kai's back pushed mana into him, while Kai pulled on the mana entering his body and focused on drawing the symbol.

Kai drew upon substantial amounts of mana from the professor, shaping the most complex symbol he had ever seen. He couldn't determine the rank of the language to which the symbol belonged, but it had to be incredibly powerful. As the symbol neared completion, he sensed the mana subtly altering its form. Kai didn't know what these changes would entail, but the mana seemed to guide him, so he allowed them. He pushed an abundance of mana into the symbol, and it finally solidified into the image in his mind.

"Alright, now cast it and head for the gate. Don't look back, just run."

Releasing the spell, Kai turned and rushed toward the gate, hearing a crackling sound behind him. The entire cavern was aglow, and the stone eyes of the statues had shifted from gray to a golden hue. He heard the professor shout behind him.

"Come, beast! I, Aionos, son of Marduk, have waited for this day for thousands of years! You will pay for your crimes against the Order!"

The stone around the beast shattered, sending massive stone chunks flying across the cavern. Professor Aionos released all the mana he had gathered over the years. He wasn't merely a great-mage; he had long ascended to the ranks of the Arch-mages. Only for the sake of revenge had he condensed so much mana into his core, and now he intended to detonate it. This had always been his plan: to bring the weakened beast to the grave with him

Kai had reached halfway to the gate when the mana around him grew increasingly turbulent. The beast and the mana clashed, while an unranked kid tried to escape the fallout. The entire cavern filled with mana and everything turned white.

Kai was sent flying by the shock wave of the explosion, crashing into the bronze gate like a broken doll. As he got teleported he saw a destroyed cavern with a massive crater at it's center, rocks falling from the ceiling. A bleeding, glowing beast with only half of its crimson scales present, motes of light floating around it, stared at him with its golden eyes.

Kai found himself against a bookshelf, sitting in a pool of blood.

'what a déjà vu...'