"Hey have you guys seen this?! Guys! Wake up!" Skinny called out waking us all up.
I had to roll awake from the place I had chosen to sleep which was on top of the interrogation room table, luckily Dionysus' wine was always there if I needed a sleep aid.
I walked out of the room after shaking Steven awake, he had chosen to sleep on one of the chairs next to all of his boxes. He had hurriedly moved out of his place and into here, fearing for his life, so he had about 3 boxes stacked up in the corner of the interrogation room.
The guild got lucky that I was just some nobody straight out of a coma, I doubted there would have been enough space if I added some of my boxes to our cramped living space as well.
I stumbled out into the main room, bumping into Karson who I guessed had woken up earlier and gone to the bathroom. We walked into the main room and found Skinny and Clarisse excitedly reading something on our busted old laptop.
"Hey what's all the commotion about guys?" Karson asked having to step over some of the empty beer bottles and ramen cups.
We had had a celebration for destroying a dungeon and welcoming Steven as a new guild member, that had gone on late into the early morning. But Skinny had to leave early on. I still had no idea what work he did that meant he had to keep disappearing and frankly I was a little scared to ask after learning about his past.
"You guys need to see this!" Clarisse said her eyes glued to the screen but motioning for us to look.
What I found after shuffling around to the back of the sofa (Clarisse's bed for the night) was an article titled "Orion – The Dungeon Destroying Guild".
"Theres another one like this as well!" Skinny said to us with palpable excitement.
"It must be from those two reporters from yesterday." I said turning to see Steven cracking another one of his shy grins.
I drank from the wine, which was still in my hand, and said, "Should we all have another celebration?"
"I'd love to Zane but right now we need to figure out who's in charge of cleaning up." Karson said motioning to all the rubbish and various monster bits scattered all over the floor.
"I'll do it! I need to start making myself useful right?" Steven said raising a hand awkwardly.
"I'll give him a hand as well since I'm just as new." I said slapping Steven on the back, it was starting to become as normal as a high five to me now.
Steven and I spent the morning picking up rubbish that could be thrown away into bin bags which we stole from the restaurant above us. All the monster bits were just put in our inventories which I now realised were all from minotaurs that and the new observation skill was putting in work:
{Minotaur eye}
{Minotaur hoof}
{Minotaur heart}
Seeing that last one nearly made me throw up remembering my first meal after I woke up.
Turns out we didn't actually have any cleaning supplies of our own so we had to keep 'borrowing' from the restaurant above. After a very intense game of rock-paper-scissors we finally figured out who was going to be cleaning the bathroom… I lost.
My focus skill definitely didn't help with this as it made me more in tune with everything around me, this was the moment where I figured out I could turn it off.
Once we'd finished Steven and I looked over the cleaned headquarters, sure it still looked crap, but it was our home.
Clarisse and Karson finally came back from the association and snuck up on both of us. I needed to remember to turn on my focus skill again.
"Woah it looks great guys!" Karson slapped me on the back whilst Clarisse buzzed around the room marvelling at all the new space on the floor.
"Hey Karson how much did we make from the job yesterday?" I asked.
"Well they originally weren't going to pay us anything since we destroyed a dungeon that they had rights over but after the articles this morning they had to pay us" Karson made a money sign with his hand before saying, "We earned 5,000 credits!"
I turned around to Steven to get confirmation that that was a good amount of money but he seemed pretty dejected.
"We only got 5,000? You were supposed to get 7,500 originally." So I guessed that maybe it was a lot.
"Hey Clarisse and I really turned the screws to them! They only gave us this amount because we really put pressure on them that they may face a scandal if more of these articles get made."
"Karson how much is 5,000 credits?" I finally decided to ask. I had been given about 10,000 for the minotaur nose ring and hadn't really put much thought into the value of this new currency system.
"I can take this one Karson! Age before beauty you know." Clarisse said moving over to us. I was sure that Steven would have argued that she was both but thankfully he didn't.
"A laptop costs about 200 credits, an apple costs around 1 credit and the rights to a dungeon can cost between 50,000 and 500,000: the prices change depending on how profitable the dungeon has been surveyed to be."
I think I understood and could easily convert credits into the currency I was most familiar with. I told her as such and she seemed to celebrate at being able to teach me something.
"Speaking of Clarisse weren't you going to teach me magic today?" I asked her. She stopped celebrating and her shoulders slumped.
"Oh you were serious about that last night?"
"Yup we can use the interrogation room. It has the thickest walls." I dragged her by the arm before she could refuse. I knew from my experience before in the hospital about to fight the boss that sometimes you just need to face it no matter how much potential pain there could be in it.
Apparently the magic part was actually built up of different elements relating to either inherent skills or skills you gain later on. The higher your intelligence skill was controlled how often you could use magic and how powerful it was.
When I asked Clarisse how she gained skills she said by constant training so I decided to make a note of that under: things I need to ask Tock about.
She brought out the pedestal to look at my skills and instantly noticed the few new ones.
"Oh you finally gained observation. It sucks that it's at the lowest level though, because that means you can only see the names of things but the higher the rank goes the more information becomes available."
"I think either trickery or truth would be your best bet." She said after studying me for a while. Now that I could use observation I realized that she must be looking at what each skill does.
"These will probably lead to either illusion or light magic respectively. Karson uses light magic because of his inherent skill I think. I use dark magic and Skinny uses blood magic. You'll have to ask Steven what his is."
"So unless you want to tell me what your inherent skill is you'll have to use one of those two." No I think I was fine just one person knowing my big secret right now.
We went through a long and arduous process of her showing me how to utilise my intelligence to channel magic through my body and then using a skill to harness the kind of magic I wanted to use.
I ended up choosing trickery because I figured it would be the most useful in conjunction with time loop, allowing me to more easily gain information or relationships I could utilise.
After I was done I was able to make Clarisse think that she was seeing a puppy on the table but that's all I could manage to do.
"Oh this is great for your first time. Especially when you only have bronze ranked intelligence, for comparison if you had dirt ranked you could probably only make me see an insect or change the colour of something in my vision." Clarisse said trying to comfort me.
"Ok well now that we're done with my education it's time to work on your magic!" I said to her ready to make her re-education as hard as possible after taking 2 hours of learning just to make her see a puppy.
"I don't know if I'm ready! I mean it's just a mental block I'm sure I'll get over it in time."
"But Clarisse weren't you the one that said the mind is the most important aspect of magic?" I used her words from over an hour ago against her.
"Here I was able to get you this to use." I tossed her Laevatein from my inventory. It was a black wand with detailing around it that looked like purple ivy growing on it.
"What is this?" she said studying it's intricate purple and black design.
"It's a wand I found in the dungeon when I beat Loki." I couldn't tell her that I had been given it without spilling everything else.
"Thank you I'll gladly accept it!" she started swinging it around in her hands. I got the feeling that I'd just managed to motivate her to try magic again.
After about 2 hours she managed to make a small stream of purple sparks shoot out but I decided after looking at how exhausted she was, we should probably end it there.
When we emerged back into the main room Steven ran up and hugged me with a sad expression on his face.
"You alright? What's going on?" I asked him lightly patting his back.
"Karson told me why you're here and I wanted to make sure you were OK?"
"Oh! I guess I haven't really had much time to think about it really? Also I can't remember most things since I woke up so it's not really like I'm missing a life but just reincarnating to this one."
"What you don't have any of your memories?!" Clarisse and Karson looked incredibly shocked and that's when I realised that yesterday I had lied to both of them.
"Yeah I'm sorry I lied to both of you yesterday but I promise you it was because of Loki."
Karson approached me with a sullen expression before saying, "It's ok you're one of us. I'll trust you." He joined in on the hug with me and Steven.
Clarisse came over agreed and also joined in. I had no idea what to do in a group hug situation I can't just tell them to get off but it seems like this is supposed to be a big moment for all 4 of us.
I guess I'll try to enjoy it.
When I had a moment to myself I went into the interrogation room as it was the most soundproof room and sat on the floor below the one way mirror so they couldn't see what I was doing.
"Hey Tock I have some things I need to ask you!"
He flew forward from my chest and once he was fully formed into his strange cartoony clock self he flew around the room looking around at everything.
"Wow you look less horrible and it looks like you managed to get out into the open world! So what's on your mind?" Tock said.
"Tock, are the dungeons controlled by gods who are testing me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well I'm talking about the OTO quests: The first dungeon was a bunch of random humiliating tasks like the person issuing them was drunk and the second dungeon was a bunch of trickery and learning secrets." I started to put together some of my recent thoughts for Tock.
"I'm not sure I follow."
"The first dungeon's god was Dionysus who's a famous drunk as he's the god of wine and the second dungeon's god was Loki the trickster god. Are these gods somehow issuing the OTO quests?"
"Wow that is some good deduction! Unfortunately I can't tell you that yet." Tock said condescendingly, its like he doesn't even want to help me.
"Then when can you tell me?" I was beginning to get frustrated with Tock already.
"When you gain more time for your loops, more options will be available as well as more information that can be disclosed to you."
"Ok well can you at least tell me why I was chosen?"
"No."
"Why I don't have my memories?"
"No."
"Well can you tell me if I can develop skills naturally like everyone else?"
"Yes I can. You can't do it like everyone else because your system is different even though you can't develop your skills naturally your system has infinite potential with how strong you are able to get."
"Well can you at least tell me what I should do next?"
"Yes! Check your OTO quests…"
He flew back into my chest like the perfectly unhelpful asshole he is.
I guess I'll check my OTO quests:
{Get Clarisse to use magic again (Tier 1/4)}
{Rewards: +4 seconds of time}
{Discover Steven's hidden potential}
{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}
{Get Skinny to be a warrior again}
{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}
{Get Karson to the second stage of 'Orion's belt'}
{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}
{Buy the rights to any dungeon}
{Rewards: +20 seconds of time}
{Destroy any 3 dungeons (2/3)}
{Rewards: +1 minute of time}
I've really got my work cut out for me…