Erani and I went back to the Faerie village, taking the Dryad with us, to inform them of the job we’d completed. I didn’t mention that the Dryad was the one that did most of the work.
“Mm. Good,” the Faerie Queene said. “Feel free to stay a while. I’m sure Aankin the Stalwart is still itching for a rematch, after all.”
We were back in the palace, which was very, very slowly being repaired by a crowd of Slimes. I had no idea why the Queene would use them as construction workers – it must have taken months to get anything done. Honestly, she probably just found it funny.
Aankin was also in the room with us, still doing his workouts to get used to his new body. I didn’t know how he expected to perform if we did do a rematch – he was apparently so unsteady in his new form that he felt like he needed to train constantly just to get back to his old level of power.
“Is he even ready to fight right now?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine within the month,” Aankin said as he dropped to the floor and began doing pushups. “Those Champion Vessels try to get their bodies into top shape before I possess them, but there’s always a bit more tuning that can be done.”
I looked back at Erani. We’d had good luck fighting against the last two squads of human soldiers that the city had sent out, but who knew when they’d send in a group we couldn’t beat? I was worried about sticking around for another hour, much less an entire month. And with neither Erani nor I earning any XP from killing our fellow Humans, there was no reason to stay here fighting the infinite waves. Besides, they were probably just stalling us until they could send in the truly powerful Infernal Commanders – those we couldn’t beat for sure.
“We actually need to be leaving,” I said. I didn’t mention anything about the Demons hunting us down, of course – if they knew that we were the ones who drew the soldiers to them in the first place, the Queene would surely not be satisfied with our ‘payment’ being to solve a problem that we created. And I wasn’t too worried about them, with the Queene’s incredible Level. “Looking to head to a neighboring Empire. I don’t suppose you could offer any help during our travels?”
“You would suppose correctly,” she said. “I have no current interest in aiding or following you. But do come back someday. I’m sure Aankin would enjoy the company.”
I nodded. Maybe one day, when we weren’t being hunted, I could get Aankin that rematch. But not now. For now, we had to leave them behind.Erani yawned as we left the Faerie village. It was past midnight, so we were all pretty tired. Hells, from my perspective with Time Loop fucking with my inner clock, it’d been midnight for over three hours, so I was especially so. But we couldn’t rest yet. With the city knowing where we were, they’d no doubt scour the entire nearby area once they realized we’d left.
We walked through the pitch-black forest as the moon moved across the dark sky. About an hour had passed, and we were all exhausted. Even the Dryad looked tired, despite getting an entire new body to play with. Erani and I still practiced our Spells as we walked, though, hand-in-hand so that my Noxious Grasp would trigger her Angelic Shield.
“How’re the headaches going?” I asked her as we went. “Still refusing to die down?”
“A bit better,” she said. “It’s more that I've gotten used to it than that they’ve stopped completely. But it does feel a little less intense.”
I nodded. At this point, I was aware that my situation with Noxious Grasp seemed different from anyone else’s. I seemed to have formed some sort of dependency on the Spell, at this point. I suspected it had something to do with me relying on it to occupy my mind when I was in so much physical pain from dehydration, back when I had first gotten my Class. But I also knew that I’d at least gotten to the point where I could cast my other Spells without much discomfort, so hopefully that aspect of the practice could be replicated with Erani. It was obviously just taking a while.
“I really wish this would just hurry up,” she continued. “I knew it would be bad, and I do feel used to it, but it still kind of sucks.”
“Well, one of the things that helped me a lot was once I started casting Noxious Grasp in my sleep. I’m not an expert, but I feel like the eight-hour break your mind gets from casting every night resets a bit of your progress getting used to the sensation, since it goes so long without it.”
“Right, but how do I cast in my sleep? It’s a Passive, so I wouldn’t be able to, even if I had control over what I cast when I was unconscious.”
“You’re exactly right that it’s Passive. So, as long as something triggered it while you were asleep, it’d get cast automatically without you ever having to do anything.”
“...Okay, I guess. What are you suggesting?”
“If I already cast Noxious Grasp in my sleep, then it’s totally possible for us to rig it so that you cast Angelic Shield in your sleep, too.”
“Yeah, but that would mean…”
“I think we’re well past getting embarrassed about sleeping in the same bed,” I laughed, pulling her closer by the hand. “Besides, it’s a functional thing. For practice.”
I could feel her fingers shift between mine. “...Right. For practice.”
We walked in silence for another minute.
“Listen,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. What exactly are we?”
“Ah.” I suddenly felt a lot more uncomfortable. These types of serious – definitive conversations – weren’t my thing. “Not really sure. Allies?”
Erani gave me a look. She was obviously wanting a bit more from me than that.
“Allies with benefits?”
That got a chuckle from her. But she still seemed serious. “You know I’m not asking for a joke. Besides, I don’t think we’re actually at that ‘benefits’ part. It’s just, y’know. We’ve been doing some more romance-adjacent stuff. And I’m not really sure what you mean by it all.”
I sighed. “Yeah, sorry. I won’t deny that I have feelings for you – I’ll put that out in the open. But I’m sure you’ll agree that we can’t really be focusing on that. We’re running from the entire Underworld. So I don’t even know how to respond. In a primary sense, in my mind, you’re someone who helps me stay alive. Everything else comes behind that.”
“I guess I agree that we have priorities, but, well, I can’t just ignore my own emotions. I can’t really leave this stuff unsaid.”
“Well, what do you want to say, then?”
“I, I don’t know,” she blinked, then took a breath, seeming to try and collect her thoughts. “I understand our situation – I agree that it’s not like we can go out on dates and get to know each other like that. But I also… want some sort of acknowledgement of us, as an item. I mean, we’re going to be sleeping together for the gods’ sake. I don’t want to be sitting around guessing at intentions.”
“Yeah, sorry. I know I was sort of the one who initiated this, back before all this Demon shit started. …And I guess the Demon shit is my fault, too,” I laughed and shook my head. “But I’m just sort of a single-minded person. I take things one at a time, most important to least important. So, pretty much everything except for survival left my mind the moment I realized what was happening. Sorry for leaving you hanging like that.”
“No, no, that’s okay. I just… wanted to get this out in the open. I really don’t like not having any clue what’s happening next. Thanks for talking with me.”
I could tell she was still a bit disappointed by my somewhat non-committal answer, but we’d have to leave it at that for now. I was completely exhausted, and I was sure Erani was, too. We needed to sleep. By that time, we just had to take the risk of being found; we wouldn’t be able to continue either way.
We walked a bit further until we found a decent clearing and set up camp there, going through the process that’d become routine by that point – find flat ground, remove rocks and sticks that’d poke us in our sleep, set up a basic shelter in case it rained during the night.
The Dryad, of course, didn’t do any of this. I’d learned over the course of our journey that Nymphs could sleep pretty much anywhere in the wilderness, and that seemed to be true after evolution, as well. She snuggled up on top of a large rock, totally ignoring the sharp juts she was lying on top of.
Yeah, I was pretty jealous.
Erani and I got ready to sleep like normal, except now we were lying right next to each other instead of apart like we usually did. The physical contact between us made me feel a bit awkward, especially right after our previous discussion. We had our bodies pressed together to ensure that any movement either of us made in our sleep wouldn’t remove the required contact between us.
I could see the Dryad’s glowing eyes through the dark night. She apparently wasn’t quite tired enough to sleep, since she was still looking around. Her bright white eyes stared at me and Erani curiously – she was probably wondering what happened to change the way we slept.
“What do you think her plans are?” I asked.
“What?” Erani responded sleepily, facing away from me as we lay down.
“The Dryad. I mean, what’s this like from her perspective? A group of monsters comes and attacks her home, a couple of random humans come in and save her, she tags along for some time, and now they just actively worked to get her a Tribute and evolve her. She doesn’t know where we’re going, why the Infernals attacked, or who we are in relation to all this. I just can’t imagine what being so out of the loop would feel like. I have no idea if she’s gonna stick around, leave the moment she thinks things are safe, or attack us at any moment.”
Erani yawned. “Honestly, I kind of feel like that sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
She laughed. “How do you think it feels when you suddenly come back from the future, knowing all of this extra stuff while I know none of it? It was jarring back when you only came back from a couple minutes ahead, but now you’re coming in and informing me of an entire hour’s worth of events. Hells, you technically had to fill me in on two hours’ worth, since you came back two separate times.”
“Oh, right.”
“I mean, sometimes you come back and basically tell me ‘we’re fighting these people you didn’t even know existed, come with me,’ and I’m immediately dragged into some shit, just having to trust that you know what you’re talking about. That’s bad enough. But other times, when you have the time to explain to me exactly what happened, it’s even worse. I don’t think it’s really possible for me to express how strange it feels to hear you recap events I didn’t even know happened, while you explain what I did during those events, and I know that I would have done those things. It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
“Huh, I never really thought of it like that.”
“It’s even worse when you tell me I did something, and I don’t think I’d have done it. It’s like a mini-crisis of identity. Do I just not know myself well enough? Did I experience something in that hour that radically changed the way I make decisions? And now I just won’t experience that potentially life-changing thing? Am I doomed to be a fundamentally incomplete person, now that I won’t go through whatever thing happened? It’s… a really weird string of thoughts to explore.”
“...Yeah” I said after a moment. I remembered her mentioning that type of stuff before, during moments when I told her I had to use Time Loop, and she talked about feeling like she was about to essentially die. “I guess I’m the odd one out here, since I’m the only one who actually has all the information.”
“Yep. I still feel a bit bad for the Dryad, though. Maybe one day we could learn how to speak her language so we can thank her for her help in saving you.”
“Maybe one day,” I nodded.
A couple minutes passed, and, from her breathing, I could tell that Erani had already dozed off. I was having a bit more trouble, though, after the terrifying experience of being poisoned. I tried to calm my racing mind through meditation, essentially putting my mind through the same steps I took to be able to access my Status.
After a few minutes of that, I finally felt a bit less panicked. Subconsciously, I automatically opened up my Status into view.
Name:
Arlan Nota
Age:
20
Strength:
15
Class:
Minute Mage
Level:
11
Endurance:
25
Class Type:
Magic
XP:
66/700
Dexterity:
13
Health:
41/250
Health/Minute:
0.093
Conjuration:
58
Stamina:
47/117
Stamina/Minute:
0.768
Intelligence:
13
Mana:
645/645
Mana/Minute:
12.39
Stat Points:
6
Spells:
Talents:
Titles:
Gravity Well 6 - XP 2/66
Regenerate
Trailblazer
Ray of Frost 6 - XP 5/66
Recursive Growth
Crippling Chill 9 - XP 98/355
Time Loop 11
+Extended Loop
Noxious Grasp 10 - XP 24/461
+Venomous Grasp
I blinked, looking at all of the things that had changed since the last time I’d seen it. And where did those Stat Points come from? Wait, I thought. I’d Leveled up! Back when I fought and killed Aankin – well, not really killed – I’d gotten enough XP to get to Level 11! In all the chaos of trying to get myself cured, I’d completely forgotten. 11 wasn’t a huge milestone or anything, but the extra Stats were always wanted.
But still, that only accounted for 3 of them. I had 6. Had I… not assigned the Stat Points from my previous Level, either? I wanted to dig my face into my hands. I must’ve been so preoccupied with the venom that I’d completely forgotten. I could’ve put them into Endurance and bought myself some time. It wouldn’t have made a big difference – getting points in Endurance wouldn’t increase my current Health, only my maximum – but the extra Health/Minute would’ve been nice.
At this point, though, I didn’t need the extra Endurance. Regenerate offered quite a bit of extra Health as a buffer in case things ever went wrong, and I wasn’t going to make any stupid mistakes because I was in withdrawal from Noxious Grasp, anymore. With it directly increasing my main method of dealing damage, Conjuration still seemed like my best option. I went ahead and assigned the Points.
You have used 6 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.
Your Conjuration value is now 64.
After that, my Mana/Minute had risen up to 13.47, and my maximum Mana was 705. I was well on my way to 1000 Mana!
Despite the danger we were in, I actually felt a bit happy, finally glad to stop worrying about the poison. Things were finally looking up. And it wasn’t like being with Erani was making things any worse.
So I went to sleep, hopeful that the day to come wouldn't be as bad as this one had been.