Joe briefly pondered if it was possible for the ground to rise up and swallow her whole.

It was nothing short of a miracle she had managed to keep her expression carefully confused and mercifully neutral in that moment. But inside her mind, a different set of vocal chords was hollering incessantly. Joe clamped down on the urge to wince and kept her eyes fixated on Nero.

“How the Devil does he know about that?!” Lady Joanna was screaming, “He isn’t supposed to be able to know that! Don’t tell me— ! Don’t tell me it was Nero who had orchestrated the whole damn thing!”

‘Christ! Would you shut up for a second?!’ Joe screamed back to the villainess rampaging around in her head. ‘I am trying to get a read on the guy. He could be lying, but I doubt he’d reveal this information if he was the one pulling the strings all this time!’

The man in question was watching her intently. He seemed to be searching her face for a reaction, Joe realized belatedly. She recovered her composure half a second later, carefully schooling her facial muscles into an expression of vague curiosity. But of course she knew about the time loop. But Joe couldn’t let Nero know about that! What should a believable reaction be? What is the first thing a normal person would say to such an absurd declaration?

“Wha— ? Nero, are you pulling my leg?!”

The reaction must have been what the man had anticipated all along. He gave her a weak smile and shook his head slowly. “It would seem unbelievable at this point, Lady Joanna, but this is the truth. Nero knows it for a fact, because Nero is someone who has experienced all the loops first hand.”

Ah, he has gone back to his old speaking habits, Joe noted distractedly. But the more important piece of news was that— the villainess wasn’t the only victim of the thrice damned loops. Either Nero was indeed telling the truth, or he had heard it from someone who had experienced the loops themselves. At any rate, Joe didn’t have a way to verify his words, but she didn’t have a way to refute them either. All she could do right now was to play along by playing dumb.

The girl crossed her arms over the chest and gave him her best ‘I-am-still-not-convinced’ face.

“Let’s say that I believe your crap story.” She cocked her head to the side. “Does it mean that you know what’s going to happen in the future? Do all the events of the future remain constant through the loops?”

Joe could play dumb. But who said that she couldn’t fish for more information while playing dumb?

Nero scratched his head. “Not necessarily. Some things differ from their pervious timeline. Some events might not even happen in one loop, only to crop up again the next consecutive loops. Some possibilities branch out so vastly that they become disconnected to each other. But some things— some things remain perfectly the same throughout all of them.”

“Exactly like all of my ill-timed deaths, I presume…” Lady Joanna sniffled.

The girl scrunched up her face, partly in confusion and part in understanding.

It would seem that the death of the villainess was inevitable at this point. But Joe wanted to know all the events which led up to that incident, and all the events which happened after it. In the video game, the death was almost always brought upon by Lady Joanna’s own jealousy and harassment of the heroine. In some routes, the prince would try to defend the latter and accidentally cut down his former fiancée in a fit of righteous anger. In the others, he would simply become fed up with her blatant hostility towards his new love and sentence her to death.

All in all, Joe was certain that she would go bald with stress if she kept worrying about every single scenario of the game. It was theoretically easy to prevent her demise if she steered clear of the prince and the heroine— if she kept her head low and didn’t go around bullying the girl, and if she just stayed content with the perfect life of a perfect noble lady (whose fiancé technically cheated on her, but who cares) in the perfect world of Triciella.

Joe didn’t want any of it, dammit! She wanted out of this world. She didn’t want the magic. She didn’t want the 24-hours maid services. She didn’t even want the expensive silk dresses that spread out elegantly and bounced with every step. And she wanted nothing to do with her heroine either!

If there was one thing Joe actually wanted to do, it was to kick the damned second prince right between his legs, before she left Triciella for good.

But these weren’t the things that Joe could casually blurt out to the man in front of her. As far as Nero was concerned, she wasn’t even supposed to know about her untimely demise.

“This really sounds like bullshit.” She replied flippantly, “As far as I know, there are only four kinds of magical attributes in this world. I have read everything about them in the royal library of Riseindell. Fire, Wind, Water and Earth— all of them are elemental in their basic forms, and all the magic are derived from them. Assuming that the cause of these time loops is magic, there exists no such attribute which can cause a person to manipulate time!”

But if it did exist, Joe thought desperately, it could have been her biggest lead to that rumoured man who could manipulate space and time!

“In theory, no. Such a thing should not be possible.” Came a familiar, gravelly voice from the doorway. The girl started and whipped around in alarm. The witch of the west was standing right there, the bouquet of pixie roses clutched against her bosom.

There was a strange look of ‘something-wrongness’ about her expression, but Joe couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

“What do mean by that, Sandy?” She asked distractedly.

The older woman grinned. Immediately, Joe realized her own mistake. There went her precious seventh question. Now she only had four more left.

“Everyone and their grandmothers’ pet parrot know that all magic is limited within the four basic elements.” Sandy went on. “That is what they teach to all the young mages in Triciella. But the reality might just be an entirely different beast altogether. In fact, there could some other rare form of magic as we speak— something that could very well transcend beyond everything that we know right now.”

“And this new form of magic might be somehow related to the time loops.” Joe said carefully. It was a statement. She didn’t want to blurt out the wrong things in a wrong way and accidentally use up the rest of her questions.

Sandy must have caught on to the girl’s intention. “Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not.” She twirled the bouquet in her bony arms. “I have no idea what is it that you’re trying to say. Oh, and by the way, your prized bouquet of pixie rose seems to be acting a little funny, Joanna.”

Joe ignored her jab. The hag was definitely trying to mess up the flow of her conversation. But the girl didn’t have time to waste dawdling around and talking in riddles. The longer she stayed in Sandora, the trickier it would get to return back to the Winsten manor without anyone noticing. Lucia would not be able to ward off the suspicions for much longer.

“All right. Here’s my eighth question, Sandy.” Joe snapped. “According to you, the Scaledfolks are the cause of all magic in this world. But tell me, if all the scales are uniform, and all the scales have the characteristics of four basic elements stowed away in them, how do they manifest themselves as different magical elements in a normal human being?”

There was a suspicious gleam in Sandy’s eyes.

She looked like she had been waiting for this one question all along. Nero coughed into his fist nervously, as if he too, had sensed the sudden shift in the witch’s demeanor. His eyes darted back and forth between the two females in the room, like he was expecting them to spontaneously explode in his face any given moment.

“Tell me, Joanna.” Sandy drawled lazily. “Tell me what you know about the charmstones.”

Well, that was unexpected.

Joe furrowed her brows and tried to remember whatever she’d painstakingly memorized back in the library. Charms were said to be the source of magic. According to the books, these ‘charmstones’ looked like ordinary stones, sleek black and smooth in appearance, and were extracted from the old mines near the Casterwing mountain. The reason they were discussed at such lengths in the first place, according to Lady Joanna, was because of their favourability in the noble houses of Triciella.

When Joe had first arrived at the Winsten manor, she had almost missed the various pellets and pieces of shining black charmstones hanging from the doorways. They were made to blend with the extravagant decorations of the manor intricately, so much so that the girl hadn’t even bothered to think about the stones as anything important. It wasn’t until Lady Joanna had pointed them out while explaining the basics of magic charms that Joe realized what they actually signified in this world.

“The charmstones are made of some unknown material.” Joe recalled loudly. “No one knows till date what the material is, but the one thing that is known — is its ability to amplify one’s magic power. Because of this feature, these stones gained favourability in the noble houses of Triciella, and it is said that keeping charmstones in the vicinity of a pregnant woman would increase the chances of the baby being born with magic.”

“These stones act almost as magical good luck charms, and hence the name. But that is all I know about the subject, really.”

“Good girl. You’ve read a lot.” Sandy murmured approvingly. Joe scowled at the compliment. Really, what did the witch expect her to do for all these days? Sit back in the Winsten manor on her scrawny little ass waiting to be whisked out of this world?

Oh no. No sir. Stuff like that only happened in books. Or video games. And as luck would have had it, this wasn’t the time to bet on those delusional things.

“Who woulda’ thought that these wee little stones would so much sway in the kingdom, isn’t it?” The witch grinned mysteriously. “You’re right, the charmstones do act as the so called ‘good-luck’ charms, but that is merely scratching the surface. In reality, no magic would ever be available to the humankind without the existence of these stones.”

Joe narrowed her eyes at the witch. “I thought you said that the scales of the Scaledfolk are the only cause of magic in this world.”

Sandy snorted at the accusation. “I hardly said anything wrong, Joanna. The scales from the Scaledfolks are evenly spread around in the atmosphere of this world. They exist in the nature, in every man, woman, tree and animal of Triciella. And each of the scales contain the characteristics of the four basic elements— fire, water, earth and wind. But coming back to your question, how do you think these elements manifest as magic in human beings? If each scale has all four elements in it, how come we see different humans wielding different elements of magic? How does it all get distributed?”

The answer clicked into Joe’s mind as fast as lightning.

“The charmstones!”

Sandy nodded. “Yes, precisely. It might come off as a surprise, but you may have seen some of those charmstones on your way to Sandora as well. Did you not see piece of black, jagged stones strewn around haphazardly near the ruins in the outer boundary of the forest?”

Yes, she had seen them. Joe remembered the broken remains of the ancient relic near the edge of Sandora, at the very place they’d parted ways from Ted Hawkins. She remembered thinking that some of the stones seemed out of place, as if they’d been placed deliberately among the ruins in an effort to make them look part of it.

“The charmstones behave as ordinary stones, other than their ability to directly interact with the scales.” Sandy tapped her fingers against the table again, her face scrunched up in concentration. “When I say interact — you can think of it like this: These stones have the natural ability to absorb scales from the surroundings. I think this world had evolved in a way such that these scales do not over-saturate the atmosphere. The higher the concentration of scales in the surrounding, the more the stones can absorb, obviously. And the more potent their uses as well.”

Joe stared at her suspiciously. “The regular folk of Triciella— they don’t know about the actual details regarding the charmstones.”

“No obviously not. They do not even know about the scales.” The witch waved her bony hands dismissively. “They think that the stones amplify their magic or something. But in reality, a charmstone doesn’t act as amplifier. Think Joanna. If such a stone absorbs the scales from its environment, and consequently has the characteristics of all four elements in it, how it is that magic wielding folks of Triciella can use only one or two elements?”

Joe scratched her head. “I’d say that stones radiate some of the scales that it absorbs. Or it at least radiates some of the elements from the scales that it absorbs. Or something like that….”

“You’re on the right track.” Sandy cut in. “A charmstone radiates the magical elements of the scales it absorbs. It doesn’t act as an amplier of magic. What it acts like— is a Filter.”

“A — A filter?!”

The old woman grinned at the incredulity on her face. “That’s right. Every charmstone acts a filter for one of the four elements present in a scale. It is an innate property of the stone, but it’s not something one can predict. Based on a stone’s property, it absorbs the scales from its surroundings and radiates only one element back to the nature— filtering out the rest of the three. So a charmstone which has absorbed the scales, can either radiate the magical properties of fire, or water, or wind, or earth. No charmstone can radiate more than one element.”

Understanding finally dawned upon Joe. It was all coming back to a circle. “So the unborn children in the vicinity of these radiations are born with the given element, which manifests as magic in their later life!”

“Yes.” Sandy nodded along. “That’s what I view it as anyway. I have no way of proving this mechanism, but it wasn’t me who came up with this theory. It was my master, the previous Witch of the West.”

No wonder the nobles liked the charmstones so much! They didn’t necessarily understand the details, but the details didn’t matter as long their got their heirs to wield magic. There was something very sinister and discomfiting about exposing unborn kids to a strange radiation, even if their parents didn’t know the first thing about it.

“But wait a minute.” Joe frowned. “You said that it was impossible to know the properties of a charmstone beforehand. How do the nobles know which charmstone would radiate which element?”

“They do not.” The witch had a wry smile on her face. “That’s the thing, Joanna. Nobody knows which stone can help manifest which kind of magic. A fire stone— which can radiate the fire attribute of the scales, looks no different than a water stone. The nobles usually collect a bunch of them and keep them around the house. Some of them might be fire charmstones. Some might be wind. Of course, keeping them all in the vicinity would mean that you have no control over the kind of magic which manifests in your body. This is why, in some cases, there are folks who have more than one kinds of element in their magic. For example, a person who has ice magic must been influenced by the radiations of both water and wind type charmstones in their infancy.”

Joe raised a curious brow. “Influenced?”

“Yes, influenced.” The tapping ceased abruptly. Sandy looked up at the girl with a grim expression. “It is all tied with your original question. Why do you think the radiations of the charmstones would affect humans so? It’s because humans themselves have a fair concentration of ‘scales’ in their bodies. And a single scale has the properties of all four elements in it. So, the fire attribute radiating from a fire charmstone in the vicinity of a human, will resonate with the fire element residing in the scales of that human’s body. This will manifest as what we call a ‘fire’ type magic in this world. That is merely a fancy term for saying that the person is more attuned to the fire element of the scales.”

‘I wish I had notebook for writing all that down.’ Joe thought tiredly. She had been valiantly trying to keep up with the flood of information, but now the exhaustion of the night was weighing down on her. The return trip back to the Winsten manor was already beginning to look dreadful to the girl. She wondered if she could last another sleep-deprived, four long hours on horseback without promptly falling off the horse midway.

“Of course, there is more to it than simply being in the presence of the charmstones.” Sandy went on nonchalantly. “Some people simply have more affinity to one element than the others. The nobles, who generally come from a long lineage of magic wielding folks, are more prone to develop magic powers than the commoners. Some magical elements are inherited at birth. In fact, I have seen some entire noble families having only one type of element throughout the generations. Two-element magic is very uncommon, and is hence is more widely cherished. Three-element magic is even rarer. You could say that the odds are about one in every thousand.”

“I guess that there’s a good reason for it.” Joe couldn’t imagine a person wielding three elements of magic. That sounded almost too good to be true.

“Of course there is.” The witch rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Think about it this way. Normally Earth and Wind are opposing elements and cancel each other out. However, in rare cases, if a person is influenced by Earth, Fire and Wind attributes in way that the cancellation does not occur, their magic might manifest as a bizarre combination of all three— Glass.”

Joe blinked. “I dunno. That sounds like a very stupid kind of magic to have.”

Sandy nodded. “That may be so. But nevertheless, the more complex the kind of magic, the more it is cherished by the people. To have magic is equivalent to have the blessing of the Goddess in this world, and you cannot really convince the people otherwise.”

‘Yeah, I figured so.’ Joe recalled the face of Mathilda Hawkins when she spoke about magic. It was strange how the woman’s expression held a kind of serene reverence towards something that she’ll never be able to wield in her entire lifetime.

Joe turned to Sandy with a pointed look. “You didn’t tell me everything about the charmstones. If simply keeping them at the house for long periods of time would help manifest magic in a child’s body, how come we don’t see more commoners wielding magic in Triciella? Surely, the miners could just take some of the stones home instead of selling them off, in order to get their children to use magic as well?”

The witch merely smiled in the face of her glare. She was evidently enjoying this a lot. “Ah yes. A very interesting question, Joanna.”

“Not a question.” Joe ground out angrily. “This was from a previous enquiry that you did not quite elaborate on. I have a right to ask for more!”

“Oh, whatever.” Sandy ran a hand through her grey locks. “There are three reasons. First, it is illegal for a commoner to hoard large number of charmstones in their house. Every batch of stone mined from the Casterwing mountain must be reported to the royal family. Only a person whose both parents, biological or adoptive, are of noble lineage, may have access to large quantities of stones. This is usually done to make sure that bastard children do not get access to the magical properties granted by the stone.”

“Second, the powers manifested within a person depends largely on their lineage. As I said before, children with a long magical ancestry are twice more likely develop magic than a child born to a family with no magical ancestry. This is one of the reasons why nobles manifest magic in their childhood, while commoners do not.”

“Third. This is expanding upon the previous statement— there is another good reason why nobles are born with magic. A child’s magical abilities usually develop in their pre-teens to late teens. And consequently, their lifestyle will also significantly affect this development. Joanna, what do you think is a significant difference between the nobility and the common folks, aside from the obvious financial gap?”

“Eh?” Joe stared at Sandy like a deer caught in headlights. She was well aware that Lady Joanna had been quietly listening in on their conversation for a while. Gee, this was an awkward dilemma. Joe had a great many things to say about the nobles, but she didn’t want to come off as a noble-hating, narrow-minded arsehole who sneered at the villainess behind her back.

After all, it wasn’t Lady Joanna’s fault that she’d been born as a noble.

“W-Well, their daily life sure is different, and err— more colorful.” Joe coughed into her fists nervously. “Expensive dresses, extravagant meals and delicacies, maids, butlers and servants for every little stuff and even the most basic day-to-day functions.” She remembered how she had to physically restrain an over-enthusiastic Lucia from trying to dress her up for the first few mornings. In the end, the maid had sullenly settled for drawing up a hot bath and leaving an assortment of colourful towels across the dresser.

“There are much more learning opportunities for the children of nobility.” Joe went on, ticking off the list of things on her fingers. “Better resources at their disposal, and the means to ask for more. Of course, their early education is vastly different from that of commoners. They get three warm meals a day— healthy, balanced meals, while some commoner children might even go to bed with an empty stomach for days.”

“Well, yes.” Sandy nodded sagely. “They have an overall better quality of life than the commoners. But that isn’t what I was asking, you see?”

Joe blinked, confused.

“Now answer this for me— Out of a noble and a commoner, which one do you think will have an overall better health and a better immune system? Assuming of course, the commoner also has enough means to eat three warm meals a day that he or she needs, just like the noble. Which one of them do you think would have more immunity against illnesses in general?”

‘That’s quite oddly specific.’ Joe dumbly scratched her head. She didn’t see what the magic had to do with health and illnesses, but the witch had quite a no-nonsense look on her face.

“Well, the nobles do have access to better healthcare.” The girl mumbled with some uncertainty. “Their living standards are a lot better and cleaner than the common folk of Triciella. But judging from that look on your face, I’d say that there’s a part of an answer I’m missing out on. And I have no idea what that might be.”

“Huhuhu. How honest.” Sandy hid a teasing grin behind her hands, her grey eyes crinkling with mirth. “You’re right. There’s a very obvious aspect you are missing out. Between the nobles and the common folk, it is the latter which will have an obvious immunity against most diseases. Think of it this way— the commoners undoubtedly live a harder lifestyle. But they are the ones that do most of the work— out in the fields, on the roads and marketplaces, near the canals and mines and everywhere. They have grown up adapting to their lower living standards and unclean surroundings. They work in the sun come summer, winter or storm, even in much harsher environments than you can imagine. A noble who’s had a sheltered upbringing will fall ill from merely some dirt and dust here and there— if you suddenly bring them over to a commoners’ lifestyle, they would hardly even last a mere week.”

The words made sense— Joe had to admit that she’d never thought about it that way. For example, a noble used to only the best quality meals prepared their best chefs, might easily fall ill from oily junk food of a commoner, made with lesser ingredients and unhealthy amounts of fat.

“Add to it the fact most of the noble houses have had a history of inbreeding somewhere in their family tree, you have a large population of nobility with genetic disorders, frail bodies and infertility issues, on the top of being born with magic.”

Joe licked her lips carefully. “But that is exactly what I’m curious about, Sandy. You told me a lot about health and illnesses and immune systems. You never told me what magic has to do with any of this, though.”

“Tut-tut-tut!” The witch clicked her tongue irritably. “No girl, it has everything to do with magic. This is what you need to remember— the radiation of the charmstones are more effective in the indoors than outdoors. Think of it this way— a human confined in a closed space with a large quantity of charmstones, is more likely to be affected by the radiation than another human exposed to the stones in an open field. Nobles that hardly leave their mansions and live delicate, sheltered lives are the likeliest to be afflicted with the radiation of the charmstones.”

Afflicted?

“Geez, you almost make it sound like magic is some kind of disease, Sandy.” Joe muttered accusatorily.

Sandy’s grin was razor sharp. “Magic is hardly a blessing, Joanna. It is passed down the generations and accumulates in the bodies of the descendants like a disease. It has caused several disorders and health issues— infertility, migranes and even degrading eyesight. The nobles, who have an overall less immunity than the commoners and expose themselves to large amounts of charmstones are the ones that are affected with this disease.”

“Humans were originally not meant to wield magic, Joanna. The human body wants to reject the radiation. It treats the radiation as nothing short of a virus. The less immunity a person has, the more potent the effect of charmstones. The more magic you wield, the less ‘human’ you become.” Sandy’s voice had an ominous ring to it.

“Do not wish for magic Joanna. Do not wish it upon yourself. We humans are better off living our lives in the human way— without trying to reach out to something that is not meant for us humans in the first place.”