Chapter XVIII (18)

  “What happened to that guardian? You called him Rodrick. Who is he? Will he hurt my friend Holly? She came to the city just before me.”

  “Hm.” Sterling’s glowing green eyes examined her. “I understand that you’re working with an information deficit at the moment, so I will answer that as if it was properly worded as a single question.”

  Then the sage paused and tapped his temple, as if deep in thought.

  “Your friend is fine. She is currently wandering the city above. She died in the last loop. And even if she was dead now, which she is not, she’d be alive next loop. Rodrick, on the other hand, is banished. You won’t see him again for a long time.”

  Another pause. Mitsuko thought he was finished and let out a held in breath at the information that Holly was safe. Then the sage continued.

  “I will also add…though this is stretching the parameters of my answer, that Rodrick is only the first of six guardians you must face. I must refrain from providing further details unfortunately.”

  “Are you kidding me? Each of you has a juggernaut like that guarding you?”

  He looked away to avoid answering.

  “I’m not a mage! I can barely cast a basic compass spell. How do you expect me to fight more people like that?”

  “You killed Rodrick. It takes more than luck to accomplish that. Besides, you have plenty of attempts.”

  “Not if the other guardians rip out my heart! That’s what your pal Rodrick was trying to do, by the way. What feels like a day ago, in the cathedral right above my head was a pile of corpses, all missing hearts.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well thankfully you have my spell to assist you now.”

  “Mend?” Mitsuko threw up her hands. “What the fuck am I a supposed to do with that? Fix a bit of ripped cloth?”

  The sage sniffed and turned his nose up. “Well now. That’s simply insulting. Mend is the most powerful temporal spell ever developed.”

  “That does not give me confidence in the rest of my future arsenal.”

  “Let me ask you this, what does Mend do?”

  “Fixes stuff.”

  “Ugh.” His face puckered like he’d swallowed something sour. “An absolute base answer. Please use your brain to look a little deeper than the most shallow possible explanation. How does it repair objects?”

  Mitsuko considered. “It’s temporal magic. So it returns them to how it used to be.”

  “Perciscily!” His demeanor shifted and he snapped his fingers. As if that statement proved something. She stared at him and considered what she was missing.

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  “Wait…it turns back time. So…if I had a steel sword, could I turn it into an ingot of metal?”

  “Finally. That’s only scratching the surface of what my spell can do. Of course, the higher level, the further back in time you can render something. And the larger.”

  “What can I do at the first level? How far back? And how large the object?”

  “There is a ratio. For something as large as a sword, you could perhaps return it to its state of up to two minutes previous. An object the size of a coin, you could reach as far back as a week…and some change.”

  Mitsuko stared at him. “Was that a joke?”

  He frowned at her. “What?”

  “Nevermind.” She should have known better than to think this sage had a sense of humor. “How much blood does each spell cost me?”

  “An inconsequential amount. The levels are designed to progress alongside your heart. Though there are of course still limits to this, I doubt you’ll encounter such things anytime soon. As you practice, your level will improve. And of course placing yourself in dangerous and stressful situations will speed up the progress.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a known phenomenon. Your body evolves faster under pressure. The more stressful the situation, the faster spells develop. Combat being one of the most obvious avenues to accomplish this.”

  “And how exactly am I supposed to use Mend in a fight? Fix up the fraying edges of my opponent's shirttail?”

  “Hmp. My spell’s usefulness is completely dependent on your ingenuity and creativity. Do not blame it if you're too thick to understand its capabilities.”

  Mitsuko picked up a gold coin. Then she chomped down on it. The metallic tang filled her mouth. When she released it, he examined the slight bite marks in the edges where her molars had dug into it. Good gold. She saw no sign of scraped away paint in the bite marks. Not solid, but an alloy with enough gold in it to remain malleable.

  She cast Mend and watched the bite marks pop out of the coin. It took only a second for it to once again return to a state of perfection.

  “I don’t need to put myself in life or death situations to advance the spell, do I? Normal practice will work as well?”

  “For lower levels, that should be fine. But you’ll have diminishing returns the higher the level. And normal practice is not as blood efficient.”

  Fifty weeks. Each week she would return to a state of full health and be full of blood once again.

  “You’ll answer another question when I level up?”

  “Correct. You’ll be notified on the level increase when the week ends.”

  “Or when I die.”

  He nodded.

  Mitsuko turned around the room, examining the objects. The sage watched her carefully.

  “So, Sterling.”

  “Pardon yourself, my name is Pilrorth Sterling Novryss III, Great Sage of Tempus.”

  “I’m not using twenty syllables every time I refer to you. The only normal part of that name is Sterling.”

  “Twenty syllables is hyperbolic.”

  “So Sterling,” Mitsuko continued. “In this room. Is everything exactly as it seems? Is it just a treasure trove of magical items and gold? Nothing linked to the time loop system that I need to worry about breaking in here?”

  “It is indeed. The Prismatic Spiral’s spell did not rely on any object within my chamber, I am only here because—”

  Then he cut himself off and his face scrunched up, like he’d swallowed something foul.

  “Don’t glare at me,” Mitsuko said. “You did that to yourself. I was referring to dangerous or cursed objects, not attempting to trick you into revealing your secrets.”

  “Nothing in here fits that criteria,” he said bluntly.

  Mitsuko sat up and swished her sword around. She stepped towards a painting hanging on the wall that depicted a balding man with a self-important sneer on his face. A grin broke onto her own face as she met his gaze. At least this would be fun. Who didn’t dream of smashing invaluable artifacts consequence free?

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