Gilbert had given up on trying to solve the situation. If his calculations were correct, he had spent three days going through the four-minute loop, trying to reason with Anastacia and Emilia, who kept getting reset entirely unlike him. He had found a few ways to get them to believe what was happening but they didn’t have enough time for that to be of any use. Touching the goat again remained as an option but he was unsure about what would happen, and so decided to not do it quite yet. Making Anastacia touch the goat too yielded no results, she disappeared for the duration of that loop but returned at the beginning of the next one. King seemed to be unaffected by the goat, not that figuring that out helped Gilbert.

Gilbert took a bite out of a sandwich for the hundredth time and sighed.

“Something wrong?” Anastacia asked.

“Nay… It’s just that I’m stuck in an infinite time loop and both of you will forget what I said in a couple of minutes.” Gilbert explained for the fifty-third time.

“Oookay… I’ll play along. How much time do you have?” Anastacia said jokingly.

“247 seconds from the start to beginning.” Gilbert stated, fully knowing where the conversation would go next. He had already been through this.

“Oh crap, that’s kind of short. Have you considered getting naked? For funzies.” The necromancer continued jokingly.

Gilbert had considered it, but had deemed it improper and was pretty sure it wouldn’t help.

“Anna, what’s up with you and getting naked? I remember you refusing to put on proper clothes in Crescent, when you thought this wasn’t real.” Emilia pointed out. “You need to calm down.”

Gilbert started counting down in his mind, 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

Anastacia and Emilia who hadn’t gotten stuck in the timegoat loop until now were trying to figure out what had happened. They touched the goat and were returned to their seats around the campfire. Nothing had changed and Gilbert was still gone.

“Okay… That didn’t work. But at least we’re not dead.” Anastasia said and looked around. “King, can you get us some more firewood?”

The simulacrum ran off, leaving Anastacia and Emilia to ponder the situation.

“What are the possible curses that would make us return to our seats? Does the goat reverse any actions that resulted in touching it? But that doesn’t explain where Gil or the villagers are.” Emilia thought out loud.

“Should we touch it again to be sure?” Anastacia suggested.

They listed some more possibilities but nothing seemed to explain everything. Dimension travel would kind of work but that felt unlikely since the so called ‘dimensions’ some skilled mages had seen were completely different from theirs.

Suddenly both of them felt something that resembled a muscle jerk, forcing them to change their position in a blink of an eye.

“What was that? The curse?” Anastacia asked and looked at her hands.

“Anna.” Emilia said to get her attention and pointed at King, who was now standing next to Anastacia again. “Does he know how to teleport or turn invisible? Because he just appeared out of nowhere.”

“Not to my knowledge…” Anastacia said and turned to King. “Can you?”

King shook his head.

Emilia started to understand the situation more clearly, but needed some more tests to confirm the theory she had. The priestess picked up the stick she used to stoke the campfire with and drew a line into the ground.

“What’s that?” Anastacia asked.

“If it’s what I think it is, that line will disappear when we get the weird feeling again.” Emilia explained.

That is exactly what happened, the line was gone, the stick was back where it had been and everything else they had altered had returned to the state it was in before the muscle jerk.

“We’re in a time loop. That would explain everything we’ve seen so far. Gilbert and the villagers are stuck in their own loops. After you touch the goat you disappear from the ‘main’ timeline and get stuck into a loop.” Emilia explained and drew some lines into the ground to visualize her theory.

“How do we get out then?” Anastacia asked.

“We have a couple of options. We could try to wait this out, since we can’t die of hunger or thirst, but the loop may be endless.” Emilia suggested. “Or we could touch the goat again and see what happens.”

“let’s touch the goat, I didn’t become an adventurer to die of boredom.” Anastacia immediately answered and got up.

Emilia was surprised by her friend’s sudden bravery, but that would have been her solution too.

They put their hands on the goat and closed their eyes like before.

When Anastacia opened her eyes, she was greeted by a welcome sight: A very bored looking Gilbert sitting at their campsite. She proceeded to immediately jump on the old man and hug him.

“Gil! You’re alive!” She yelled in relief.

“Wait… this is new.” The old adventurer said and looked surprised. “Are you guys suddenly aware of the loop?”

“Yes. We did a couple of loops after you disappeared.” Emilia explained. “Good to see you’re in one piece. Though you look kind of tired. Have you been here for long?”

“I have no idea anymore… I lost count around loop 1200.” Gilbert said and put his hand on the necromancer’s head.

Gilbert and Emilia shared what they had figured out about the rules of the curse. The short duration of the loop prevented them from looking for help so their only option was to touch the goat again.

The Anastacia and Emilia in Gilbert’s loop had disappeared when the real ones appeared, meaning that when someone touches the goat in a loop, they enter the moment and location where the goat was last touched, removing the ‘copies’ of themselves that were in the previous loop before that. So the Gilbert, Anastacia and Emilia of the next loop would disappear from Rosie’s inn, or wherever they were at when the loop was made.

“So the plan is to just keep fiddling the goat and look for the villagers in their own loops?” Gilbert stated. “We have no idea what has touched the goat before us, so be ready.”

“And after we find the villagers? We just keep on going?” Anastacia asked. “Wait… doesn’t that mean that the last loop, assuming there is one, will just have a load of infinitely resetting wolves and stuff that have tried to eat the goat a bunch of times?”

“Probably, or after the last loop we just get out of here.” Gilbert answered and shrugged.

“As if, we’re not that lucky.” Emilia rebutted.