Chapter 79: Breaking the Cycle

  “Who are your pieces on the board?”

  “How long have you been setting all this up?”

  “Do you have anything to do with our world’s magic?”

  “Did you make Vorrick and Dalton Rose turn people into crystals?”

  “What is an Aetheprint beside a unique identifier we all have?”

  “Why does every human and Aetheris have a unique Aetherprint?”

  “What’s your Champion’s true identity? Who is Valdemar?”

  “How can Casten Vorrick be in two places at the same time?”

  “How does the Crow track me now?”

  “Why hadn’t ‘Outlast’ activated before the Crow killed me just now?”

  “Had you made my mother leave me by poisoning her mind with your nonsense?”

  Those were only some of the questions I asked Dolos before he sent me away. Needless to say, I didn’t get an answer to a single one.

  But that was fine. I wasn’t expecting anything useful from that liar except more and more lies. The main goal in voicing these questions was more strategic than anything else. If the memory of my previous conversation with Dolos had endured the loop reset, then perhaps this exchange would as well. If this conversation remained in my memory, I will preserve crucial knowledge through the next reset.

  Obvious clues or direct statements might be erased—I still had no idea how exactly it was decided which memories stayed and which got blurred—but these question-like thoughts seemed more likely to slip through the cracks.

  There was still the risk that I would expose myself to Erebus by retaining this knowledge, but I decided to take it. Solvane was just too big to deal with for someone who started each loop practically from zero.

  What Dolos had offered was a way to take out Obsidian Crow #13 for good.

  “A spear?” I asked as he showed me his “solution”.

  In the past, before the creation of the foldable sword, some Enforcers used spears and other polearms—mainly riot squads—so I knew what those looked like. But this spear was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Its tip—the blade—glowed with a blinding light.

  “It’s not just any spear,” Dolos said with a grin. “This one can rid you of the Crow until the end of the time loop. It’ll cut through his armor like hot knife through butter. Strike him down, and he’ll stay gone in the next loops as well.”

  I frowned in confusion. “Gone? What do you mean? Where to? How would that even work?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked, still smiling.

  “It does,” I replied, tone firm. “I’d like to know exactly what I might agree to.”

  “The details don’t matter.”

  “The details are the only thing that matters.”

  “I would never try to fool you, Vik. My help so far is enough proof of that – “

  “Stop,” I cut in. “You literally carry the title of the greatest liar of all.”

  Dolos laughed. “Well, aren’t you the constantly-suspecting-one…” He paused, his expression turning serious. “Let me put it in simple terms: the way the spear works doesn’t concern you. Let me worry about it. You just do your part and rid us of the Crow.”

  When he wasn’t lying, he was just omitting important details. Classic.

  Who the fuck even listens to this guy and believes anything he says? You’d have to be really na?ve—or just plain stupid—to trust a word out of his mouth.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  So I did the obvious thing: I refused the spear and his help.

  I know I said I’d pretend to cooperate to learn his plans, but not at any cost. Who knows what would happen if I accepted that spear? What it might do to the Déjà vu System from inside the Inventory? He was already somewhere inside, and I didn’t want to give him even more power.

  And besides, if my read on the guy was right—and I had a feeling it was—he needed me. Desperately. So even as he frowned and declared our agreement as canceled, I knew he’d come around and call me back eventually.

  ***

  I woke up on the metallic bench inside my holding cell back in Orlinth, a message hovering before my eyes.

  [Déjà vu System: Level 21]

  [Loop Count: 33]

  Almost instinctively, I went over the Inventory and checked every Memory Fragment and Vestige inside.

  Then a train of depression hit me—like a late realization that finally landed.

  Loop number thirty-three…

  Since the time Crow 13 told me he had “gone through an evolution”, he’d killed me thirteen more times.

  And I remembered every single one.

  The shock.

  The pain.

  The problem was that everything else was beyond recognition. Chronos had restricted the memories I could retain from my encounters with the Crow so much that only the worst parts remained, like me choking on my own blood before dying, or the Crow jeering and calling me an evil abomination for reasons I didn’t understand.

  In some of the instances, I could remember someone else being there with me, trying to help me. But everything about that person was blurry.

  I couldn’t even remember where each death happened, which made me wonder if I’d just been repeating the same run over and over for the past thirteen loops.

  My gamble had worked—my memory of the second conversation with Dolos was intact in its entirety—but what good did that do me? If I was getting killed thirteen times in a row by a fricking force of nature, then surely, I wasn’t progressing anywhere despite cheating my way to get more knowledge.

  More importantly, where the fuck was Chronos?!

  There was no way he hadn’t summoned me for this long after I’d clearly made zero progress for so many runs. What could possibly be keeping him so occupied that he’d ignore the fate of my world?! Had losing Goren made him lose all sense of duty as well?

  Was this why Dolos was so content with letting me go? Because he knew I’d regret it?!

  Suddenly, some of the things Dolos said during our first meeting came rushing back. Suddenly, they made more sense.

  I was ready to throw in the towel. But…I couldn’t. Not really.

  It wasn’t just about saving the world. It was about fixing it at the same time.

  Déjà vu tingled in my mind when I watched the Memory Fragments minutes ago, confirming the argument between Casten Vorrick and Riven—Valdemar’s lieutenant and former Obsidian Crow—had been real. The cheat-question I asked Dolos strengthened it as well.

  The crystals we used were made of people.

  I needed to learn more about that. I needed to stop it.

  I didn’t want to save a world that burned its own citizens to keep the lights on.

  If there was no way to change that, then let Erebus devour us. Solvane didn’t deserve to keep existing in a reality like this.

  Fuck it. If Chronos doesn’t help, I’ll do everything myself. I just needed to push harder. Erebus’ perception of Solvane might’ve improved and he would be able to sense significant changes better across all platforms, but I had no other way.

  Now think, Viktor. What did you likely do in the past thirteen runs? Let’s try to break the cycle.

  ***

  As I spent my time thinking about a way out of this mess, one of my cellmates was released.

  I was only released at noon.

  ***

  Outside the station, near the dumpsters, I finally had enough freedom to explore the items in the Inventory.

  The Vestige with Mom made me want to talk with Dad. But recalling the blurred-out person in my memories made me rethink that quickly. What if he was the one who tried to help me when the Crow killed me? What if the Crow had killed him too?

  The other obvious lead I had was the photo of my mother and her friends. Two Aetherprints were written on its back—both technically belonged to that Riven guy based on the names.

  Recalling the cheat-question I asked Dolos, and seeing similar sequences on some of the items in the Inventory, I connected the dots.

  I could use that weird extension on my COG to track one of them, but that was probably the same thing I’d done in those past thirteen loops. Maybe I even used the tracker on the run of the Crow's so-called “evolution”? I couldn’t really remember, so it remained just a theory.

  What else could I do, though? How else could I find Valdemar? If his goal was to fix Solvane before saving it, then he was the person I needed to meet the most.

  This last thought only reinforced the feeling that I was stuck in a never-ending cycle of dying to the Crow by likely doing the exact same thing—forcing myself to find Valdemar through Riven.

  I took a deep breath and summoned ZK-0 from the Inventory.

  The dog automaton materialized before me. The memories I hadn’t lost, and Déjà vu, made me remember him as Zee.

  He was in bad shape. Remembering how he’d saved my ass a couple of times against the Crow, I suspected I was the reason for it.

  And now, thinking of him as an ex-human, I wanted to fix him more than anything.

  But I couldn’t go back home. No. I didn’t want to risk Dad getting hurt—or worse.

  Instead, I decided to head to one of those places that rented workshops for inventors by the hour. It would probably cost me most of what I had on me—Inventory included—to rent a working space for even a single hour, but somehow, with everything else on my mind weighing me down, the thought of fixing the dog automaton sounded…therapeutic.

  I could only hope I wasn’t repeating the last thirteen runs.