I woke up who knows how much later. I tried looking around, but an ominous message blocked my sight, like a screen projected half an inch from my eyes.
With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.
This message told me a lot of things. One, it told me what my ultimate next step should be, though I kept it to myself. Two, it revealed that I was probably going to be stuck in this little loop until I saved the blonde-haired girl whose name I still didn't know from the orc invasion (a fact which almost killed me some minutes ago). I could already feel a heroic savior complex welling within my chest. Three, in corollary with that, I was bound to her in some way and needed to stick with her in the future. I could already imagine us going our separate ways, only for this message to pop up when I was in another loop miles away. Rule 5 for adventuring: don't split the party.
Anyway, the message faded after a few seconds. I got up and looked around. Everyone behind me was dead; there was scorched earth, a lot of corpses, and no orcs whatsoever. Not even orc corpses, strangely enough. Either way, the battle was over and we lost. After putting my helm back on, I decided to head to the fort and do what I had been planning to do the second I first ran in its direction.
Trudging to the fort on tired legs was my true first moment of quiet in a while. It gave me time to think things over. You might be tempted to say I was kind of a sociopath for being less bothered by the fiery deaths of possibly a thousand people, but I was always good at deadening my heart to that kind of thing. And no, I don't say that to be edgy, or imply that looking at gore online makes one immune to real life suffering. Rather, I was strongly of the belief that we felt how we chose to feel, that we were in control of our emotions a lot more than we led ourselves to believe; it was one thing to be sad, but another to want to be sad, to feed off and fall in love with the state of being sad such that one clung to the sensation of despair. In my case, I had just grown used to shutting off all feelings. The meditation from before was a part of that. Shut out the outside. Shut off my heart. Feel nothing. It was my speciality, like I said.
Oh well, I guess it's hard to say that without sounding edgy.
The point was, I wasn't really bothered by all the death. If I was, deep inside, I didn't let myself feel it. This being a mysterious video game world helped to some degree, though it all felt so real that it would be a lie if I said I wasn't already convinced this was the kind of "fantasy world" that got corrupted by an outer god or something that plastered stats on top of everything as a form of control. That was really one of two kinds of ways this situation could end up: either the stats are an artificial layer grafted onto the world, or it actually is a video game, and neither one was even close to proveable until the True Final Boss, the One Behind it All revealed themselves. I would just have to wonder until then, but my bet was more in the former, if only because it being a video game would more or less demand that my brain be in a jar or stabbed with needles, which I would not have preferred.
I was almost at the fort. In case it wasn't clear, I was coming here to learn magic and deflect the fireballs. I was making a few assumptions here, but even if they were wrong, there wouldn't be much of a punishment for trying. My first assumption was that the mages inside the fort were alive (or anyone was really). That would be answered soon. My second assumption was that I would be able to learn magic quickly. It seemed to me that fantasy protagonists always learned magic at a blistering speed, unless the point of the story was them learning it slowly over a grueling period of time. Me going from "never thrown a dagger in my life" to "artfully throwing it in the neck of a charging orc" seemed to imply rapid learning applied to physical skills, so why not magical skills as well? My third assumption was that I could get in and someone would be willing to teach me, but hey, you miss every shot you don't take. I don't count my stats persisting through loops as an assumption, though just for safety's sake I checked my stats page again.
General Information
Name: Malcador
Species: Human
Age: 18
Class: Hero (Level 2)
HP: 220/220 (+1.1/sec)
MP: 220/220 (+1.1/sec)
Attributes
STR: 110
DEX: 110
AGI: 110
END: 110
INT: 110
WIS: 110
Skills
One-Handed Blades: Lv. 2
Dodging: Lv. 4
Heavy Armor: Lv. 2
Athletics: Lv. 3
Throwing Weapons: Lv. 2
(Expand for more...)
Nothing fancy to report. I now had "Malcador" listed as my name, and an option to view more skills if I wanted, though if I remembered correctly the only thing not shown was "unarmed combat." There was still an odd uniformity to my attribute levels, but at least the basic function of everything was clear thanks to the tooltips. (Note that HP = 2x END, HP regen = 1% of END, same for WIS, etc). Anyway, I didn't recall using any throwing weapons this loop, so the level 2 there was about all the proof I needed that stats survived loops. But I didn't learn much new.
I reached the fort, and realized I was on the back side. The gate or whatever was on the other side, which I supposed made sense if the backside was facing the wastelands where the orcs had presumably come. I remembered the girl saying something about this being the borderlands, i.e., the border between Good People Place and Bad Villain Place, so that would make sense. I scooted around to the other side and indeed there was a gate.
"Ho there!" I declared loudly, and a guy popped his head over the edge over the crenellated walls.
"Who're you?" he asked. "One of Rose's?"
That was probably the blonde haired girl. "Yes sir," I called back. My lack of armor would have made me immediately suspicious from the front, but all he saw was my helm and possibly sword.
"You lot've been crawling back all day. Come on in, come on in."
The portcullis raised just a bit with some creaking, and I slipped inside.
Inside the fort I was blasted by an even more gruesome site than the fight had ever been. There was a courtyard of dirt surrounding the main building and it was covered in makeshift beds and makeshift piles of dirt upon which the dead and wounded were strewn about. The worst were the burn victims, those who survived the fireballs but were too close to emerge unscathed, but nobody here was having a good time. Mages—whom I identified by their blue robes—dashed about, casting what looked like healing magic. I heard some chants. They were saying naore naore, imasug naore, which made their hands light up with a green glow that seemed to heal the wounds before them. Detached limbs remained detached, and the larger gashes didn't heal well, but the smaller cuts were closing up in fast succession. This seemed like a good testing situation.
I leaned against a nearby stone wall, trying to look inconspicuous, and muttered "naore naore, imasug naore." My hand lit up with a green glow and healed a cut on my arm.
Restoration Arcana Unlocked! Restoration Level 1
Bingo. I didn't know how long those chumps had to slave over textbooks in ancient libraries before learning this spell, but I simply had the knack for it right away. I got the feeling I wouldn't need to worry about builds or anything—my attributes rose equally without my input, and skills raised by use. If anything it was like a certain open world RPG where there were no classes and everyone could become a master of swords, magic, and archery. Particularly archery. Everyone ended up as a sneaky archer in that game. Maybe I should do the same myself, here, but I got the feeling that in a world with actual stakes, magic was the way to go. Not every problem could be solved with a sword or arrow, though I had to admit that a skilled swordsman here could possibly slice the magic fireballs to bits. Too bad the human army back there seemed to consist largely of new recruits with spears. Good luck poking the fireballs away, O honorable level 1 footsoldiers.
Anyway, I had my restoration spell. It seemed that spells were bundled under Arcana rather than being individual skills, which made sense. There had to be a way of viewing them, so if you'll excuse me, I need to be cringe for a second.
"Spells."
"Spell List."
"Spell Memory."
"Spellbook."
Elemental Arcana
Mystical Arcana
Cursed Arcana
Restoration Arcana
*Heal
Natural Arcana
Okay. Five Arcanas. Time to theorcraft for a second.
Elemental was probably combat-focused and had the most spells. Fire, Ice, Water, Wind, blah blah blah. The fireballs I was trying to deflect probably fell into this Arcana.
Mystical was probably utility-focused with a bunch of misc spells. Telekenesis, illusions, the works. Perhaps a general purposes non-elemental barrier would fall into here as well.
Cursed... Necromancy, darkness, etc? Maybe there was a demon summoning skill there as well. That showed promise.
Restoration, no need for elaboration. Heal shit. Cure shit. Not extremely well at lower levels, though, judging by what I was seeing.
Natural Arcana as... like, druid stuff? Grow trees? Turn into birds? Works for me.
With that settled, my next order of business was learning some spells and seeing if I could grind my Arcana levels up a bit, for hopefully obvious reasons. I got the feeling that I wouldn't be allowed to just sit on my bed and cast Heal until it was max level, which was tragic but understandable. I could probably get a decent head start though.
I looked around for a mage to exploit for free labor. Most were working, but surely one was... Aha! A gloomy-looking girl in black robes sitting gym-style in the corner. No doubt she would be so traumatized by all the blood and screaming that she would be more than glad to teach a stranger to use magic at probably abnormally fast speeds.
"Ho there, fine miss," I said as I walked up to her, trying to sound as much like a local ye olde knight as I could. By this point I had removed my helmet (and miscellaneous blades) so nobody called me out for wearing a mismatch of armor.
She stopped muttering to herself and looked up, her thick bangs of messy black hair sliding slightly to the side to reveal slivers of her dark purple eyes. It was like this girl was color coded for darkness. I had to wonder whether she intentionally chose the black robes to go with it, and I couldn't help but notice that in this sitting posture they hugged her above-average chest. Hey, it was hard not to look when looking down was the only smooth way to escape the utter black pits of despair that were her eyes.
"What do you want?" she muttered, half under her breath. She looked away, having apparently only been able to maintain eye contract for half a second before looking away just as I had.
"Can I, uh... Can I trouble you for some magic lessons?"
"HAH!" She barked. "Magic this, magic that. Is magic all I'm good for? Is that all anyone sees or cares about? Apparently! It's always 'Hilda, we need you for your magic' this and 'Hilda, stop talking to yourself, you need to cast magic' that. I hate it! I hate them! They sneer at Cursed magic but still use me like a tool! Nobody ever compliments me on my stunning black fashion sense. They just see the robes and think 'Ah, a mage to exploit for free labor!' They never see the robes and think 'Gosh, what amazing fashion sense!'. Bah, bah!"
"Is that a yes?"
"Yamiyo tekionagure," she chanted in return, and next thing I knew a concentrated ball of darkness slammed into my forehead. It didn't hurt—she had probably held back, unlike a certain blonde-haired knight that was quick to draw her sword—but the message was loud and clear. I turned and left as she resumed muttering to herself. Note to self: The women of this world are violent. And possibly the men too, will have to keep an eye out for that.
I returned to my pile of deposited goods and leaned against the wall again, just as inconspicuously as before. "yamiyo tekionagure," I muttered, and a small ball of darkness appeared over my finger.
Cursed Arcana unlocked! Curse Magic Level 1