I woke up who knows how much later. I tried looking around, but an ominous message blocked my sight, like a screen projected half an inch from my eyes.

With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.

This message told me a lot of things. One, it told me what my ultimate next step should be, though I kept it to myself. Two, it revealed that I was probably going to be stuck in this little loop until I saved the blonde-haired girl whose name I still didn't know from the orc invasion (a fact which almost killed me some minutes ago). I could already feel a heroic savior complex welling within my chest. Three, in corollary with that, I was bound to her in some way and needed to stick with her in the future. I could already imagine us going our separate ways, only for this message to pop up when I was in another loop miles away. Rule 5 for adventuring: don't split the party.

Anyway, the message faded after a few seconds. I got up and looked around. Everyone behind me was dead; there was scorched earth, a lot of corpses, and no orcs whatsoever. Not even orc corpses, strangely enough. Either way, the battle was over and we lost. After putting my helm back on, I decided to head to the fort and do what I had been planning to do the second I first ran in its direction.

Trudging to the fort on tired legs was my true first moment of quiet in a while. It gave me time to think things over. You might be tempted to say I was kind of a sociopath for being less bothered by the fiery deaths of possibly a thousand people, but I was always good at deadening my heart to that kind of thing. And no, I don't say that to be edgy, or imply that looking at gore online makes one immune to real life suffering. Rather, I was strongly of the belief that we felt how we chose to feel, that we were in control of our emotions a lot more than we led ourselves to believe; it was one thing to be sad, but another to want to be sad, to feed off and fall in love with the state of being sad such that one clung to the sensation of despair. In my case, I had just grown used to shutting off all feelings. The meditation from before was a part of that. Shut out the outside. Shut off my heart. Feel nothing. It was my speciality, like I said.

Oh well, I guess it's hard to say that without sounding edgy.

The point was, I wasn't really bothered by all the death. If I was, deep inside, I didn't let myself feel it. This being a mysterious video game world helped to some degree, though it all felt so real that it would be a lie if I said I wasn't already convinced this was the kind of "fantasy world" that got corrupted by an outer god or something that plastered stats on top of everything as a form of control. That was really one of two kinds of ways this situation could end up: either the stats are an artificial layer grafted onto the world, or it actually is a video game, and neither one was even close to proveable until the True Final Boss, the One Behind it All revealed themselves. I would just have to wonder until then, but my bet was more in the former, if only because it being a video game would more or less demand that my brain be in a jar or stabbed with needles, which I would not have preferred.

I was almost at the fort. In case it wasn't clear, I was coming here to learn magic and deflect the fireballs. I was making a few assumptions here, but even if they were wrong, there wouldn't be much of a punishment for trying. My first assumption was that the mages inside the fort were alive (or anyone was really). That would be answered soon. My second assumption was that I would be able to learn magic quickly. It seemed to me that fantasy protagonists always learned magic at a blistering speed, unless the point of the story was them learning it slowly over a grueling period of time. Me going from "never thrown a dagger in my life" to "artfully throwing it in the neck of a charging orc" seemed to imply rapid learning applied to physical skills, so why not magical skills as well? My third assumption was that I could get in and someone would be willing to teach me, but hey, you miss every shot you don't take. I don't count my stats persisting through loops as an assumption, though just for safety's sake I checked my stats page again.

General Information Attributes Skills Name Malcador Name Value Name Level Species Human STR 110 Dodging 4 Sex Male DEX 110 Athletics 3 Age 18 AGI 110 One-Handed Blades 2 Class Hero (Level 2) END 110 Throwing Weapons 2 HP 220/220 (+1.1/sec) INT 110 Heavy Armor 2 MP 220/220 (+1.1/sec) WIS 110 (more...)

Nothing fancy to report. I now had "Malcador" listed as my name, and an option to view more skills if I wanted, though if I remembered correctly the only thing not shown was "unarmed combat." There was still an odd uniformity to my attribute levels, but at least the basic function of everything was clear thanks to the tooltips. (Note that HP = 2x END, HP regen = 1% of END, same for WIS, etc). Anyway, I didn't recall using any throwing weapons this loop, so the level 2 there was about all the proof I needed that stats survived loops. But I didn't learn much new.

I reached the fort, and realized I was on the back side. The gate or whatever was on the other side, which I supposed made sense if the backside was facing the wastelands where the orcs had presumably come. I remembered the girl saying something about this being the borderlands, i.e., the border between Good People Place and Bad Villain Place, so that would make sense. I scooted around to the other side and indeed there was a gate.

"Ho there!" I declared loudly, and a guy popped his head over the edge over the crenellated walls.

"Who're you?" he asked. "One of Rose's?"

That was probably the blonde haired girl. "Yes sir," I called back. My lack of armor would have made me immediately suspicious from the front, but all he saw was my helm and possibly sword.

"You lot've been crawling back all day. Come on in, come on in."

The portcullis raised just a bit with some creaking, and I slipped inside.

Inside the fort I was blasted by an even more gruesome site than the fight had ever been. There was a courtyard of dirt surrounding the main building and it was covered in makeshift beds and makeshift piles of dirt upon which the dead and wounded were strewn about. The worst were the burn victims, those who survived the fireballs but were too close to emerge unscathed, but nobody here was having a good time. Mages—whom I identified by their blue robes—dashed about, casting what looked like healing magic. I heard some chants. They were saying naore naore, imasug naore, which made their hands light up with a green glow that seemed to heal the wounds before them. Detached limbs remained detached, and the larger gashes didn't heal well, but the smaller cuts were closing up in fast succession. This seemed like a good testing situation.

I leaned against a nearby stone wall, trying to look inconspicuous, and muttered "naore naore, imasug naore." My hand lit up with a green glow and healed a cut on my arm.

Restoration Arcana Unlocked! Restoration Level 1

Bingo. I didn't know how long those chumps had to slave over textbooks in ancient libraries before learning this spell, but I simply had the knack for it right away. I got the feeling I wouldn't need to worry about builds or anything—my attributes rose equally without my input, and skills raised by use. If anything it was like a certain open world RPG where there were no classes and everyone could become a master of swords, magic, and archery. Particularly archery. Everyone ended up as a sneaky archer in that game. Maybe I should do the same myself, here, but I got the feeling that in a world with actual stakes, magic was the way to go. Not every problem could be solved with a sword or arrow, though I had to admit that a skilled swordsman here could possibly slice the magic fireballs to bits. Too bad the human army back there seemed to consist largely of new recruits with spears. Good luck poking the fireballs away, O honorable level 1 footsoldiers.

Anyway, I had my restoration spell. It seemed that spells were bundled under Arcana rather than being individual skills, which made sense. There had to be a way of viewing them, so if you'll excuse me, I need to be cringe for a second.

"Spells."

"Spell List."

"Spell Memory."

"Spellbook."

Elemental Arcana Mystical Arcana Cursed Arcana Restoration Arcana Natural Arcana Heal

Okay. Five Arcanas. Time to theorcraft for a second.

Elemental was probably combat-focused and had the most spells. Fire, Ice, Water, Wind, blah blah blah. The fireballs I was trying to deflect probably fell into this Arcana.

Mystical was probably utility-focused with a bunch of misc spells. Telekenesis, illusions, the works. Perhaps a general purposes non-elemental barrier would fall into here as well.

Cursed... Necromancy, darkness, etc? Maybe there was a demon summoning skill there as well. That showed promise.

Restoration, no need for elaboration. Heal shit. Cure shit. Not extremely well at lower levels, though, judging by what I was seeing.

Natural Arcana as... like, druid stuff? Grow trees? Turn into birds? Works for me.

With that settled, my next order of business was learning some spells and seeing if I could grind my Arcana levels up a bit, for hopefully obvious reasons. I got the feeling that I wouldn't be allowed to just sit on my bed and cast Heal until it was max level, which was tragic but understandable. I could probably get a decent head start though.

I looked around for a mage to exploit for free labor. Most were working, but surely one was... Aha! A gloomy-looking girl in black robes sitting gym-style in the corner. No doubt she would be so traumatized by all the blood and screaming that she would be more than glad to teach a stranger to use magic at probably abnormally fast speeds.

"Ho there, fine miss," I said as I walked up to her, trying to sound as much like a local ye olde knight as I could. By this point I had removed my helmet (and miscellaneous blades) so nobody called me out for wearing a mismatch of armor.

She stopped muttering to herself and looked up, her thick bangs of messy black hair sliding slightly to the side to reveal slivers of her dark purple eyes. It was like this girl was color coded for darkness. I had to wonder whether she intentionally chose the black robes to go with it, and I couldn't help but notice that in this sitting posture they hugged her above-average chest. Hey, it was hard not to look when looking down was the only smooth way to escape the utter black pits of despair that were her eyes.

"What do you want?" she muttered, half under her breath. She looked away, having apparently only been able to maintain eye contract for half a second before looking away just as I had.

"Can I, uh... Can I trouble you for some magic lessons?"

"HAH!" She barked. "Magic this, magic that. Is magic all I'm good for? Is that all anyone sees or cares about? Apparently! It's always 'Hilda, we need you for your magic' this and 'Hilda, stop talking to yourself, you need to cast magic' that. I hate it! I hate them! They sneer at Cursed magic but still use me like a tool! Nobody ever compliments me on my stunning black fashion sense. They just see the robes and think 'Ah, a mage to exploit for free labor!' They never see the robes and think 'Gosh, what amazing fashion sense!'. Bah, bah!"

"Is that a yes?"

"Yamiyo tekionagure," she chanted in return, and next thing I knew a concentrated ball of darkness slammed into my forehead. It didn't hurt—she had probably held back, unlike a certain blonde-haired knight that was quick to draw her sword—but the message was loud and clear. I turned and left as she resumed muttering to herself. Note to self: The women of this world are violent. And possibly the men too, will have to keep an eye out for that.

I returned to my pile of deposited goods and leaned against the wall again, just as inconspicuously as before. "yamiyo tekionagure," I muttered, and a small ball of darkness appeared over my finger.

Cursed Arcana unlocked! Curse Magic Level 1

It was a weak ball, and even with my inexperience I could tell I didn't have nearly the control that the gloomy girl had. Mine would be weak out of necessity rather than due to holding back. In retrospect, I had healed the cut on my arm, but a larger gash nearby had barely budged at all. Would take some time and effort to get better.

Anyway, I was getting the script here. I had a potential Curse Magic teacher, who had a complex about being a Cursed mage due to prejudice and also cruel, cruel people trying to exploit her for free labor. I just needed to handle things better in the future, be it this future or the... future of the past? The... The alternative future-past. Future-future?

Either way, I didn't suspect Cursed spells would have much in the way of barriers or defensive spells in general, so I started looking around for maybe a Mysticism or Elemental mage that I could crib some spells from. I ran the risk of bodily harm, but goading them to attack me (or threatening to attack them) was a possible last-resort to bait them into stating a spell chant, which I could then copy. I got the impression that learning spells instantly from the chants was abnormal, or everyone would be a master of all Arcanas, so they wouldn't hold back for stealth reasons.

I looked around the courtyard and dismissed all the mages running around with green hands.They were Restoration mages, not Mysticism or Elemental, the two most likely Arcanas to have barriers. Unfortunately, mages weren't kind enough to color code themselves based on Arcana - the Restoration mages were wearing blue robes, rather than green or anything, and while certain mages with amazing fashion senses cleverly wore black due to being Cursed mages, it didn't seem particularly standard. I supposed it would be pretty hard to take seriously if entire schools of magic actually color-coded themselves like that, though. It would also be revealing to any potential enemies what your skillset was before they even got close. You would have to be pretty thoughtless to just wear your powers on your sleeve... Aaah.

A few minutes of observation later, and I noticed a guy striding out of the center building of the base. He wore more ceremonial-looking robes, blue still, but with light cyan embroidery across the hems and sleeves. If most here were novice mages, then I could guess he was a... not novice. He was giving instructions swiftly while making no move to heal anyone himself, so I perhaps erroneously concluded he was not a Restoration mage. Time to go.

"Ho there," I said for the countless time, walking up to him once he was alone and all the other mages were busy. "Can I..." I began, only to trail off when I saw the dude's smirk.

He was a bit taller than me, and had bit of a nerdy look to him. Brown hair, slightly hooked nose, and a smirk. The fact he was smirking amid all this suffering and death told me he was either a kindred spirit or just quick to be distracted. In this case, distracted by my clothes.

"Nice outfit," he said.

"Thanks. I made it myself," I lied, so he didn't ask where I had gotten it. I didn't even know the names of any places in this world; bullshitting would be impossible.

"Yeah? I doubt it. Anyway, what do you want? Kind of busy here. The name's Timothy, but you can call me Tim. I'm the highest ranking mage here around. I'm explaining because you're not part of this squadron."

Uh-oh. He either had a good memory or just... average observation skills. At least he wasn't screaming or murdering me on the spot. "You're right, Rose caught me wandering outside and I served with her for a bit before the orc attack. So yeah, I'm new here."

Tim rolled his eyes. "Do you really want to put yourself as joining our side moments before the attack? That makes it sound like you drew them to us. Which, maybe you did. How about it?"

"I..." Fuck, this guy was good. I should have known from his nerdy look that he was an intellectual beast.

"Whatever. I'm not blasting you with fireballs—" (an elemental mage, good) "—because the battle's already over, and you're so fucking blatantly weird I doubt you're a spy. Would have to be the most incompetent doppelganger alive to walk in here wearing a cultist's clothes. Not sure what you're here for, though, and that's why I asked what do you want. Go."

"I cannot confirm or deny any of your suspicions, but I will graciously accept your understanding on the subject. I was going to ask your advice on how to block fireballs from the sky, or like, explosions from the sky. Do you know any magic barriers or something of the sort?"

"Do you have five years to study?" he asked. That confirmed my learning speed was unnaturally godlike.

I waved a non-commital hand. "It's, ah, an intellectual thing. I'm intellectually curious. So, what would it be? Water Barrier to counter-act the fire? Or Fire Barrier to fight fire with fire?"

Tim hesitated, thinking it over. "Are you talking about the Meteor spell that hit the infantry? Too late to do anything about that, y'know."

"Like I said, it's intellectual curiosity."

"Okay." The smirk was back on his face. "You talking to me means you probably have the Talent for Elemental magic, but what you actually want to do is find a Mystic, so they can use a telekinetic reversal spell to reverse the direction of the meteors. Meteors seem deadly to massive armies, but all it takes is a pair of novice Mystic to start a perpetual game of ritter, with the meteors being knocked back and forth until they just explode in the air or the troops have moved out of the way. They're only so devastating when infantry has no mage support, as you probably saw."

"Why weren't any of you guys out there, anyway?"

He shrugged. "It was just an infantry exercise a few minutes away from the fort. Standard stuff. Military policy hasn't quite caught up to the influence of this new Excursed, so this shit's been happening all over."

"Excursed?" I asked. It seemed like he enjoyed explaining this stuff. A nerd indeed. You can always count on nerds to infodump.

"Okay, you've gotta be fucking with me. How do you not know the Excursed?"

"You got me. I was just testing you. Of course I know." Please don't hit me with a fireball before I learn kinetic reversal.

Tim shrugged again. "Sure, okay. Weirdo. Now, I've gotta get back to managing this mess. If you want to talk to a Mystic about this, go check out the Crystal in the bottom of the base. Our best Mystic is recharging his mana right now. Been using it all to teleport messages about this mess throughout the kingdom, as you can imagine. Or not." He walked off, resuming his order-giving to a group of mages who had been watching us from afar.

I had to admire his complete willingness to let a suspicious stranger wearing what he called "a cultist's clothes" into the fortress. I got the impression that he had risen to his rank of... not-novice out of love for learning about magic, not for being a hardass about military security. In fact, now that I thought about it, he was probably only giving orders because literally everyone higher in rank than him had died outside. Whether the smirk was a mask covering internal torment, or just him not giving any fucks, I may never know.

Anyway, I wandered into the fortress, content with the inferred knowledge that normie mages were stuck with one Arcana while I could lavish in all five. The interior of the fort was a pretty stereotypical layout, with stone walls dotted with torches extending in either direction, though instead of fires, there were glowing gems. To my front was a larger door. I hadn't asked where the mana crystal thing was, but if he just assumed I knew where it was, it couldn't have been in some secluded location. I went through the larger door.

I found myself in a large hall with a spiral staircase in the center. The number of food-stained tables led me to conclude this was some sort of common room or mess hall, maybe both. Some people were sitting and talking with weary looks on their faces. I ignored them and the doors on the side to go to the staircase. As expected, it wasn't secluded, and if the mana crystal was at the bottom of the base, it was probably down. So down I went.

There I found about ten mages standing in a circle around a massive blue gemstone, its bottom embedded deeply into the earth. I could guess it was draining mana from the earth itself, or something like that. The mages (all wearing blue robes, which I now concluded was the universal color of mana and magic) had their hands pressed against it with their eyes closed. It felt a bit awkward to interrupt them, but hey, what else was I going to do?

"Excuse me," I called, and they all looked my way. They didn't seem particularly perturbed, maybe due to how frequent interruptions must have been. "Is there a Mystic in the house?"

One of them removed his hands from the crystal and walked over. "What is it?" he asked, a bit gruffly. Funny that Tim the expert in combat Elemental magic was lanky, while this Mystic guy was more muscular. Stereotyping is wrong, children.

"Timothy sent me. He wanted you to demonstrate the kinetic reversal spell for me."

The Mystic rose an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I... I don't know what to tell you, man. Timothy, y'know? I think the stress of leading is getting to him. His smile just doesn't reach his eyes, y'know? That kind, kind smile..."

The guy didn't seem amused. Oh well. "Fine. Toss me a rock. Arc it, don't throw it."

I obliged, finding a rock nearby and tossing it up in the air. The Mystic muttered hantai ike, and the rock abruptly changed direction in midair, flying back up and then down to me. I noticed that he had started chanting right as I threw it, and only finished while it was descending towards him. Reversing a quick-shot fireball would probably be impossible. Damn you, Timothy.

"Thanks," I said. "Any other spells you could demonstrate?"

That was it. "No. I'm a soldier, not a harlequin. I don't want to be stuck down here recharging mana for any longer than I have to." He turned and got back to deferentially resting his hands on the crystal.

Perhaps the most ungodly strong of my many protagonist abilities would be the MP recharging. Normal mages seemed stuck to drawing mana from crystals, whereas I just had to... absorb it slowly from the air? Maybe they could do the same, at just a severely diminished rate. Hmm.

Either way, I thoughtfully tossed the rock back and forth between my hands as I climbed back up the stairs. I left the mess hall, since it had people in it, and wandered until I found an empty room. It was made of stone on all sides, had a narrow slit of a window that would probably be best used for shooting arrows out of, and had some chairs. I sat in one and tossed the rock directly up.

"Hantai ike," I chanted as it came down, and immediately it reversed direction to go back up.

Mystical Arcana unlocked! Mysticism Level 1

Okay, so that was three Arcanas I had dipped my toes into. This, presumably, should be enough to reverse the Meteors and stave off that disaster. It seemed like the humans had the orcs mostly beaten before then, so with one fell swoop I could save the day now. The Hero Mage who appeared out of nowhere and used a novice Mystic spell to save countless lives. Perhaps a bit inglamorous, but what the hell.

The question was, then, what to do next. I knew what I had to do ultimately, as I mentioned before, but the next step... Hm. With time loops, there was always the question of whether one should detach themselves from life and just grind to max level before doing anything else. My motto was to treat each loop like my last, but I couldn't exactly do that in a doomed timeline. At the same time, I didn't want to just loop back before doing everything I could to power up. That was just foolish. What was I to do?

For a bit, I sat in my chair, reversing the rock's momentum over and over without letting it hit my hand. Nothing happened, so I grabbed a larger rock, threw it really hard, and ducked to the serve while chanting hantai ike. It reversed direction, as expected, and came flying back, hard enough to smash into the stone wall and crack.

Skill Up! Mysticism Level 2

Mmm, sweet, sweet numbers going up. It only made sense I would need to do increasingly harder, or at least different, things to level it up. That made my future decisions easier, at least. If I could max out my level by tossing the same rock, there was really no reason for me not to do it, but I didn't exactly consider myself interested in the idea of spending doomed years traveling the world looking for fast-moving objects to reverse for EXP. I might as well grind up my levels in the relevant parts of the loop itself, where things mattered. Maybe not the most optimal choice, bu-

"It is called Doomed for a reason, young one," came a gravely voice that sounded both like rocks grating and fire roaring.

I whipped around and saw a towering knight in full black plate armor, the most cliche dark knight you could ever imagine. Spikey helmet, fire roaring behind his eye holes, and a spiked mace in his hands.

"Ah," I said. "Are you the Anti-Cheese man? Have no fear, Sauron, I wasn't going to grind anyw-" I didn't finish my sentence. The mace caving my skull in kind of made it hard to speak.