Right before the clock was about to strike the final second, I grabbed my girlfriend and threw us together into the bed while deactivating my space-time self-defence spell, lest it undo all the work we just did. She was a bit surprised at first but once she realized time was about to run out it seems reality struck her.
A powerful echoing scream resounded throughout every corner of the labyrinth. As if two voices at once were crying out in great anguish and then were suddenly silenced. The two of us curled in on one another like shrimp forced to contort into the smallest we could possibly go as muscles tore and regenerated themselves endlessly over the next few seconds.
Everything we did to torture ourselves while we couldn't feel it, every movement, great and small, the consequences for everything we did was felt in the moment the spell wore off and continued for an hour after. Knocked out by the pain and then forced awake again by that same pain repeating over and over.
That hour felt like an eternity like the time we spent in that one day was nothing compared to the pain currently shooting through every nerve in our bodies. Everything hurts. And once the pain finally subsided, we collapsed one on top of the other into a dead sleep. We woke up nine hours later sore all over. As if we were hungover except the pain was far worse than a headache and it stung to lift so much as a finger worse than the fire the strongest grain alcohol burns in the back of your throat.
When I finally gained the force of will to crack my heavily lidded eyes open, I was met with two sights, my beautiful girlfriend's face an inch away from mine struggling to open her eyes and my pet lich with an almost worried expression. "If you die does that mean I get to keep the Labyrinth?"
I painfully pushed my eyes over to a wall and hinted at her to look towards it with only the movement of my eyes. "I won't die." I wrote into the wall. "You will be my possession until the end of time."
It was daylight by the time we were comfortable moving again and we teleported back to her house. When we arrived in her room the clothes we were wearing turned into dust and then the dust disappeared as if it never existed and then I remembered, "Oh yeah, we were wearing clothes I made in the dungeon right?"
"Yeah, forgot you said those don't exist in the real world." Our eyes met and I saw her eyes wander. "I see you got your new spell circle."
"Huh?" I looked down at myself, I could barely tell but it seemed the new spell circle looks like an outline of fire around the existing circles, the weapons the angels are holding are now set ablaze with a golden fire while the monsters now have shadows with dark ominous figures hiding in them as well as fire in their eyes and mouths.
Most of these monsters appear skeletal but not all of them. We sat in silence just admiring each other before we realized something important, "we should probably get our clothes." We said together.
We went back to the dungeon naked and grabbed the clothes we came in wearing and went right back to her room to get dressed. "Is it weird being a year older mentally and not physically?"
"Why are you asking me, you're a year older too."
"Because I had you cast that spell that stops you ageing. Because this is how we'll probably spend the rest of eternity. Ageless, immortal, and together. So, I'm asking because I had a really nice time… you know up until that whole, 'pain worse than death' thing."
"Yeah, that was not fun."
"Wanna do it again?"
"No."
"Me neither but my parents are worried I might not do well in hand-to-hand combat and now that we're a bit more evenly matched, I figured we could spend a year sparring together?"
"… you just want to roll around on the floor with me."
"If that's a part of learning how to fight then I won't deny I'm looking forward to it."
She smiled and gently punched my shoulder. I smiled back. We had our first meal outside the dungeon in days and then I went back home. "Mom, dad, check out this new spell I learned." Once I had their attention, I took off my shirt and flexed all the muscles I didn't have until recently at them. "It's designed to boost a person's strength proportional to how strong they were when they cast it."
Surprised doesn't begin to explain the expression on their faces. They almost dropped the food they were cooking. They stood frozen staring at me for a good few minutes until I explained that I also used a spell to accelerate time so we could do a year's worth of training in a day and that it was the worst pain I've ever experienced. And that I was going back to the labyrinth to actually learn how to fight now.
They asked if I was leaving right this second and I told them it wasn't urgent. To explain, my clothes still fit me, I wasn't so swollen my muscles would sooner tear through my old clothes than not, they were just far more well defined. Like when a dwarf lifts an orc into the air and throws them level of muscle just stretched across a normal-sized body.
I didn't become fat like a dwarf I just gained a great deal of strength and knowledge. I spent a few hours talking with my parents and they asked me about what it was like to spend a year in a day and I told them it was fine until all that exertion caught up with us and we were left to suffer for about a day, that we were barely recovering from how sore we were now. That I'm still a bit sore but it's not unbearable anymore.
They asked if they could join us for the next year in a day to train us and while I was a bit hesitant at first, they gave me some very solid points as to why I should let them accompany us on our next time acceleration.
They have many years of experience fighting monsters and other people. We, being my girlfriend of one year and I, collectively have maybe a few years of actual combat experience and have never fought with our lives on the line in any real capacity. And that they've both suffered immense pain since starting their careers as adventurers, seeing as they've both died and gone back in time to undue their deaths several times with mother's ability.
Essentially it looked like they wanted to know if the pain was really as bad as I said it was. I can't tell if they're more excited to train us or if they're more excited to see just how bad it's going to be. I don't how to feel about this. They seem eager and ready but I'm planning on taking a few days to mentally recover from the pain, I should make a full recovery physically by tomorrow.
I asked my parents if they minded, I move in with my girlfriend as we've gotten fairly close over this past year and I'm used to being by her side. They gave me the ok and I started packing my things. Me and her had already talked about this over the year we spent together and had come to this decision together.
Once I had all my things, I left the ring the twins gave me on the bed, I turned to leave the room when the twins showed up behind me. "Where were you!"
"What do you mean?"
"You were gone for two days and we couldn't find you."
"Is it possible you weren't able to teleport to me while I was in my labyrinth through the ring because it exists in a dimension of my own design or is it because I was moving too fast for you to slip out of the ring?"
"What?"
And so, I explained to them where I was for the last two days, and what I was doing. "So yeah my base physical abilities have drastically risen but I've still got no technique so I'm going to have to go back"
They looked down and I teleported all of my stuff over to my girlfriend's bedroom while they weren't looking. And teleported back to where I was standing, before they noticed. They noticed something else instead. "Where's all your stuff?"
"Were you robbed?"
"No, I said it before, didn't I? I spent a year with no one but my girlfriend to keep me company for a whole day. The next logical step would be to move in with her don't you agree?"
"But… we still haven't given up…"
"She has my entire childhood as well as a full year of uninterrupted contact with me over you two who took a liking to me in school because I was the only one who didn't immediately start salivating over you two and trying to fight for your affection. You saw me as unattainable because I never thought you liked me and when I learned I also learned that your love is more dangerous than your scorn. I'm grateful to you for the teleportation pendant truly I am, but there's just no chance for us anymore."
As they looked down trembling with clenched fists trying their hardest not to let me know I made them cry, my cold uncaring words sending them into the pits of despair I contemplated just leaving them here to let out their frustrations on an empty room I decided better of it and sat down waiting for them to leave. They stood in silence for a few seconds just processing the second time I've rejected them. As if trying to look for any hint of a chance I wasn't honest looking into my uncaring eyes and finding no shred of hope for us in the future.
Their tears spilling out unhidden trying to pull at my heart, but I had hardened it for this moment over the last year. There are only three people whose tears will move me anymore and these two are none of the three. I used the spell that summons components to bring to me a cigar I had been saving since I was a child, a gift given to me by an upperclassman when I was a first year. I had never smoked before, but I figured now is as good a time as any.
I used an infernal cantrip to light a small fire over my thumb with a snap and began blowing smoke in their faces. Their eyes irritated by tears were now being irritated by my smoke and I made every effort to tell them to leave non-verbally my cold unfeeling stare, my nonchalant smoking, my arm presenting the door. They continued to stare in disbelief as if it were all just a dream so I gave them the stare of a father who must explain to his paraplegic daughter that her dreams of being a ballerina will never come true.
I walked up to both of them and flicked them both on the forehead. I wasn't used to my new strength, so I wasn't expecting them to actually be pushed back by it let alone brought to their knees but here we were. "Do you believe this to be reality now?" I asked trying not to show the remorse of testing my strength with a flick to their heads.
They nodded solemnly on the floor with their heads in their hands letting out bitter tears and low whimpers. Which soon turned into loud sobs. I walked out of my room and asked my parents if they wanted to explore the labyrinth for a bit. They seemed eager to see the room they'd be spending a year in so I teleported them there before going back to my pet lich's room.
I had a spell I wanted to test out.