Back at the Protectors Academy, a slightly balding old man with a long flowing white beard sat in silence. Opposite him, Athena, the rare affinities instructor, sat lazily.
Athena and the old man sat opposite each other.
One was very nervous and the other was oddly composed.
Weirdly, Athena was the composed one.
"Are you really sure of what you're saying, young lady?!"
The old man exclaimed in urgency.
"You really are sure that a grade- 0 Time Storm is currently blowing under Black Nest Island?!"
Athena tilted her head a bit, with a confused look on her face.
"Uh, I think I am. Is it really that serious, though?
It's just an ordinary zero level Time Storm."
Carnuni's eyes widened at her words, how could anyone call a Time Storm ordinary?!
"Do you know what you are saying, Protector Athena?!
All Time Storms are harrowing death traps enough to break even the most powerful people. The levels we put on them only predicts the amount of destruction it would cause, not the type of creature would come out of it.
I want all students embarking on their expedition there returned this instant!"
Athena frowned slightly as she stood up groggily.
"Yes sir!"
***
Tai woke up very early in the morning. It was another day on the Black Nest after all.
However he woke up as a sweaty mess. Panting, the red haired teenager clutched his chest. "Was it all a dream?"
But deep down, Tai knew that it was not a dream, neither was it a figment of his imagination. It felt all too real. The fear on Claire's face, the hopeless look on Nikolah's, the heat from the black flames, everything.
Tai put on a shirt and decided to practice his runic sorcery, even if he had not yet made much progress, he still found the process of drawing the mystical figures calming. However, today as he circulated his energy, he found himself seamlessly weaving the mana threads like he had done it hundreds of times before. Cold sweat dripped from his brow as he frowned in absolute concentration.
This was the last rune.
Looping the thin spiderweb like energy thread over another one, Tai sighed in relief as the pencil slowly disintegrated into pure energy and went into his chest.
The sweet words he had been expecting for days soon appeared.
[You have received a Summon, Ordinary pencil]
The red haired teenager smiled brightly as he read it's description. Describing the abilities and uses of stuff was also another boon Protectors had through their systems.
The floating words read:
[Ordinary Pencil]
[A stubborn red head once failed at Summoning. However, he obtained a great teacher, and after a two hundred days of failure, he finally succeeds.
This summon grants no boosts whatsoever and is completely useless.]
Tai kept his smile as he read the words, but his face soon changed into a deep frown. The description of the Ordinary Pencil had said that he had failed 'Two hundred times'. That was wrong as the teenager had only began runic sorcery two days before leaving for the expedition.
"Unless...." Tai paled in realization.
"...Have I spent two hundred days on the island without knowing it?!"
For any other person saying this, they would think that they themselves were crazy, but for the red haired teenager, it seemed plausable.
Time acted weirdly the higher one ascended in the Floating Isles.
When Dawn, the goddess of Time built her temple, she had ordered a gale of time to blow around the kingdom in a circle in order to preserve her temple from ageing. When the war had begun, however, she had turned the winds upward and abandoned the temple. This caused a disturbance in the time space continuum as the gale reduced the higher it went.
Later on, after Dawn had long perished and her kingdom was raised into the skies, the winds had begun to revolved around the biggest of the floating islands. Fairly big islands like Black Nest Island always had a strong breeze at it's bottom, and gargantuan ones like Isles of Reflection always had a mighty gale blowing at it's top.
It was very possible that the red haired teenager and his cohort had been caught in a time loop due to the winds blowing under the islands. Frowning, Tai shook his head.
"Nikolah just had to go ahead and choose the only option that had a miniature time storm under it, didn't she?" He still vividly remembered the dream he had had and knew what was to come.
"If I've been here for two hundred days, that would mean that I've died by the hand....or rather maw, of that beast two hundred times. Obviously, it's time for a payback."
Tai was not usually a violent person bent on revenge, but if a dragon was required to be slain for him to get back, then slay a dragon he would. Learning that you had been dying and waking up hundreds of times was enough to break the minds of even the strongest people.
Tai was still sane, but something in him had changed.