The walk to the Faerie village was tiring, especially when I was forced to spend all of my Stamina on Regeneration in order to keep myself alive. Despite the extra Health from the Talent, I was still net losing Health every hour – just not as dramatically. It was coming up to midnight, and my Health had dropped to 19.
As Erani helped me walk along, I also decided to go ahead and look at my options for what was called a ‘Time Loop Upgrade’. I had the time while we walked, and whatever it entailed might end up helping us on our mission.
It was hard to meditate while moving since I had to keep my eyes closed, but Erani was already helping me walk, so I just had her guide me as I tried my best to sink into my own mind. Before I looked at my Upgrade options, I first looked at Time Loop itself.
Time Loop – Rank 10
Type: Activated
Go up to 11 minutes back in time, resetting your Health, Stamina, Mana, and other Talent cooldowns – as well as the rest of the world – but preserving your memories and the rest of your Status.
This Talent activates at will, or automatically when you would die.
This Talent may only be activated twice per day.
The Time Loop Usage Increase was true – I could now use Time Loop twice per day, instead of just once. Of course, I couldn’t reap those benefits yet, but after midnight came – it wouldn’t be too long, at this point – it’d essentially be twice as good. That was an incredible increase in power.
Then, I looked at my Time Loop Upgrade choices.Choose one Upgrade for Time Loop:
Extended Loop
—
Time Loop now goes back up to 1 hour in time, rather than 11 minutes.
Further Level-ups will increase the amount of time Time Loop goes back by 30 minutes rather than 1 minute.
Invigorating Loop
—
Upon activating Time Loop, when you arrive in the new timeline, you gain 40 Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity for one minute.
Incrementing Loop
—
Whenever you activate Time Loop and arrive in the new timeline with more XP or Spell XP than you had before, increase the amount you gained by 100%.
So it was like a Spell Upgrade, I mused. Three options, each of which added a new, unique ability to the Talent. And they were all incredibly powerful. Extended Loop would make it take me much further back in time, Invigorating Loop would give me a temporary boost in physical strength every time I used it, and Incrementing Loop would give me extra XP whenever I went back in time after killing a monster.
Invigorating Loop was the first one I looked at. It was an intense increase in power – just about tripling my Endurance and quadrupling my Strength and Dexterity – but I actually didn’t like it that much, regardless of that insane enhancement. Especially with Recursive Growth, as time went on, that Upgrade would get worse and worse, since the amount it increased my Stats didn’t actually go up at all. Sure, it’d quadruple my Strength for now, but once I was Level 20, would it even double my Strength? Eventually, it’d barely do anything at all.
Besides, it actually had a surprisingly limited range of uses, even now. It wouldn’t be much help in the situations when I didn’t go back right into the middle of a fight, because of the extremely limited one-minute time limit on the Stat increases. Even if I went back to redo a fight, if I gave myself any time beforehand to rest and think, the buff would wear off by the time the fight started. And even if I went back into the middle of the fight, if it dragged on too long, I’d also lose out on the buff.
Incrementing Loop seemed incredibly useful. Over the course of, say, a year, it could easily gain me enough extra XP for multiple additional Levels. If I killed something and got 100 XP, then went back in time, I’d arrive in the new timeline with 200 extra XP – plus I’d still get to kill the monster again. Given enough time, I could end up way ahead of the curve. But…
Venom is coursing through your veins. 1 damage.
Your Health is 18.
I wasn’t sure if I’d survive to see the next year. Or the next month, week, even day. I’d been burned many times now for getting too greedy and taking options that didn’t do anything at all in the immediate future. And now, I needed help more than ever. So taking an Upgrade like Incrementing Loop that would do absolutely nothing now, even if it would work incredibly well later on, felt like a mistake.
Extended Loop felt like the perfect in-between. It didn’t explicitly gain me more XP, but by going back an entire hour, I could fit more time into a single day, and still end up getting some extra XP. It had an immediate use of multiplying the amount of time I could go back by a factor of almost six, and with its benefit only increasing as I Leveled, I could soon find myself with more time than I knew what to do with, rather than scrambling for every second.
Plus, that much extra time would only become more powerful as I continued to get more Time Loop Usage Increases, effectively multiplying the amount of time I could go back for every one I got. It felt like a reasonable in-between of the short-term benefit of Invigorating Loop while not giving up on the long-term strength of Incrementing Loop. It’d help me now and later.
So, I picked the Upgrade.
Time Loop has gained the Upgrade Extended Loop.
But before I could even process the change, I was suddenly shaken out of my mediation by Erani. I opened my eyes and looked around. We’d stopped, and I was currently leaning against a tree, squished between Erani and the Nymph.
“What’s–” I started, but Erani interrupted me with a shush. She nodded her head in a direction around the tree, and I leaned over to see what she was talking about. I realized that we weren’t just leaning up against a tree – we were hiding. A group of armored soldiers walked through the forest on the other side, examining the area and looking for something. It was obvious what – or rather, who – they were searching for.
That guy with his Dryad must’ve snitched to the guards about us, I thought. They obviously weren’t those royal guards from before with the blue-and-silver plate armor, instead they seemed like normal city guards. They had simple swords and spears and some leather armor with the most important bits covered by small pieces of metal, an emblem of a sword and hawk’s feather blazened on their chests.
Normally, I’d be confident we could take them. But…
Venom is coursing through your veins. 1 damage.
Your Health is 17.
My Health was abysmally low, and wouldn’t be going up any time soon. If I even got poked, my Health would drop dramatically, and even if the strike didn’t kill me, it’d put me in a position to be killed much sooner by the venom.
I was incredibly thankful to have Erani to keep me out of danger there.
But now, I wasn’t sure what we could do. It didn’t seem like Erani knew, either. We were close enough to the soldiers that if we ran, they’d immediately see us and attack, and if we stayed, they’d eventually find us, anyway. The Nymph seemed to have its own ideas of what to do, drawing its whip from its side and pulling it taut in its fingers.
But we couldn’t fight. If we did, they’d only attack me, and…
Well, actually, maybe the Nymph was on to something. If it was the only one to come out, the soldiers would just think it was a random monster attacking them. It hadn’t been tied to us yet, according to the fliers we’d seen posted around the area, and if they were distracted by the fight, Erani and I could flee without being seen. After that, the Nymph could safely disengage and follow us, and the soldiers would think it just ran away.
I wasn’t sure how I could actually communicate this to the Nymph; not only could I not speak due to the nearby enemies, but it didn’t even understand my language, anyway. I’d just have to hope it could figure it out as it went. Who knew, maybe it had the same idea we did.
The Nymph tensed, readying its attack, and Erani put up a hand to stop it, but I grabbed her wrist and held it down, shaking my head. She seemed to understand that I intended for it to attack. I pointed to us, then pointed in the opposite direction of the soldiers. She nodded.
I watched as the Nymph waited a few seconds, took a breath, and dashed out from behind the tree, thorny whip held tightly in its hand. The moment I heard the soldiers shout in surprise and draw their weapons, I dashed off, Erani’s hand held tightly in mine, and didn’t look back as I fled. I didn’t want to slow down for even a second.
The sounds of battle became quieter and quieter as we ran into the night. Once we were far enough away that it was totally silent, I stopped, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. I’d been spending so much Stamina on Regenerate that I barely had enough to move around.
“Where’d they come from?” I asked Erani.
“No idea,” she said. “We were just walking along, and I randomly saw them walking through the treeline. Obviously looking for us.”
I nodded. “Think the Nymph can handle them?”
“Yeah, hopefully. Seems strong enough that it can handle its own against some simple town guards.”
“I guess,” I furrowed my brow. “Think we should just wait for it to come after us?”
“Seems like it.”
We waited for a while for the Nymph to come back and find us, Erani and I glancing around and making sure we were relatively hidden from sight. If there were any more enemies around, we needed to see them before they saw us – especially when we were so far from one of our allies. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute, then two. Once a few more minutes had passed, I knew something had to have been wrong. The Nymph was a quick fighter, and its combat shouldn’t have taken longer than it took for us to even run to where we were, much less even longer.
“We need to go see what’s going on,” I said. “It could be in trouble.”
“It’s too risky,” Erani shook her head. “If they’re powerful enough to give the Nymph trouble, they’re powerful enough that we can’t go after them.”
“But if all it needs is a bit more help so it can escape, we can’t just leave it to die. What if it misunderstood what we intended to do, and thought we would have its back? We can’t just abandon it.”
Erani pursed her lips, taking a moment to think. “I’ll go ahead, you trail behind and yell if anything happens. If I wave my hand like this,” she demonstrated, “it means it’s too dangerous for you, go back.”
I didn’t like feeling like dead weight, but I guessed that was pretty much what I was at this point.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds good.”
We cautiously made our way back, with me a couple dozen paces behind Erani as she crept her way forward, glancing around as she did so. It was eerily quiet as we approached. Had the soldiers really captured the Nymph and taken it off somewhere?
After a few excruciatingly long minutes – both mentally from anticipation, and physically from the poison – Erani arrived at the area of the fight. I was too far back to see, but she stopped and stared ahead, looking shocked and afraid. She didn’t wave her hand, though, so I kept approaching. What was up there to make her look so fearful? Some sort of calling card? Or a ransom note?
When I got there, I understood.
Scattered throughout the woods was red. The trees were painted with blood, the leafy ground fertilized with intestine. A bone here, flayed skin there.Though it all obviously came from Humans, there were no recognizable bodies in sight. Still, it was less likely that they had been taken away, and more that they were all around us. A crushed heart lying alone on a stone, a lung inside a log. In the dark, it was somewhat difficult to see, but it was obvious that the Humans that were once here had been completely obliterated. The entire location was completely unrecognizable from what it had started as.
And, sitting inside this cathedral of chaos, the only green thing in these red woods, was the Nymph, alone and unharmed, cleaning off its bloodied weapon.
It looked up and saw us, smiling and running forward. It handed me a piece of metal, one that I belatedly recognized to be the emblem of sword and hawk feather from the armor of one of the soldiers. It was offering me a trophy from its hunt.
“What the fuck…” Erani was clearly at a loss for words.
“Well… at least the Nymph was okay,” I exhaled.
We continued on our way after that spectacle, leaving the reddened battlefield behind us. I fought to keep the contents of my stomach inside my body as I tried to forget the sight. And the stench. The smell from back there was so nauseating, the sight so horrible… Still, it wasn’t so bad as to make me faint, or anything. Ironically, the abstract nature of the scene – the fact that I couldn’t really even recognize anything there as coming from a human body – made it a bit easier to stomach.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking of the Nymph. I glanced over at it as we walked away from the scene. I knew Nymphs were powerful monsters – I’d experienced their strength, myself – but it still put things into perspective to see that power turned on a group of people like that. I’d never seen what the Nymph had done to my body from an outside perspective, either.
But what if the Nymph decided to turn that power on me and Erani? Would it be able to destroy us in the same way? I kept side-eyeing it as we walked, afraid it would suddenly turn on us. I mean, it was obviously upset at these Humans and Demons for attacking its home, so what would happen if it knew that I was the one to bring the Demons to it?
My mind was filled with thoughts of betrayal and plans in case it did attack us. The Nymph was a monster, I reminded myself. It didn’t care about Humans. I felt like I’d slowly allowed myself to get attached to it and gotten complacent with my guard. It could kill Humans and not give a damn afterward. The fact it was skipping alongside me with such a cheerful expression was proof enough of that. Sure, the Humans it’d just killed were our enemies, but I doubted it cared about that.
It was a bloodthirsty beast, and I couldn’t let myself forget that.
Eventually, as we walked, I finally felt a sudden change in my mind, like something had been unlocked. It was the familiar feeling of Time Loop coming off its cooldown and becoming available to use again. Only, this time, it was slightly different, like a second lock I didn’t know was there had been unlatched, as well. It was my second use of Time Loop, added by the Usage Increase. So I had two one-hour redos now, in case anything went wrong. Of course, if I died to the poison, there wouldn’t be much I could actually redo – my mistake there was a day in the past, not an hour ago. So I’d have to do everything in my power to remedy it soon.
My Health continued to tick steadily downward, and as it got to the low single digits, my Stamina also finally got high enough for another activation of Regenerate, and I eagerly did so.
You have activated Regenerate. You will gain 14.3 Health over the next 10 seconds.
34.3 Stamina Cost. Your Stamina is 2.
Dropping my Stamina down to 2 wasn’t a very comfortable sensation, to say the least, but I had to do it in order to stay alive. I fought the urge to drop to my knees – if I’d just give it some time, my Stamina would regenerate a bit. After the ten seconds, my Health was up to 19. I’d done the math, though, and my totally exhausted Stamina wouldn’t recover fast enough for it to get to 34 before my Health reached 0. In other words, that was my last activation. I had 19 Health left, and I’d either use that timer to cure myself of the poison, or I’d die trying.
As I trudged along, completely drained by the sudden loss of almost all of my energy, I realized my ability to figure out this cure would be put to the test sooner than I’d thought. Because just off in the distance, I could see thatch roofing come into view, colored a pale blue and purple from some magical lights set up in the nighttime.
We had arrived at the Faerie village.