Arguably, this was the worst possible situation. I couldn't even really save time by reversing the meteors since I was probably close to death due to poison. And low on MP from spamming Darkness Balls. Actually, I can check that. "Check status," I muttered while getting behind the orc mages. They were the back row, at least, and I didn't see more arrows coming. I had some seconds.
General Information
Name: Malcador
Species: Human
Age: 18
Class: Hero (Level 8)
HP: 205/448 (-2/sec)
MP: 17/486 (+2.43/sec)
Attributes
STR: 243
DEX: 243
AGI: 224
END: 224
INT: 243
WIS: 243
Skills
One-Handed Blades: Lv. 18
Dodging: Lv. 12
Curse magic: Lv. 16
Athletics: Lv. 8
Mysticism: Lv. 11
(Expand for more...)
Damn, talk about powering up. AGI and END were lagging behind since they weren't associated with direct combat skills, but still. That's over twice as many stats just from getting to level 8—like I said, exponential stat growth with leveling up is insane. That was honestly what concerned me more than any of this time loop business.
Anyway, that discussion could wait until I wasn't 100 seconds away from death and behind enemy lines. Keeping the status window up, I muttered imasug naore and started using my basic bitch level 1 healing spell to try to generically heal myself. It probably didn't cost that much MP while it was so low-level. And as for the results...
>HP: 168/448 (+.01/sec)
Perfect. It just about equally cancelled out the poison, it seemed, and I got two sweet Restoration level ups in the process, since I had barely used the heal spell before. It looked like my MP was remaining more or less static, so I could guess the heal spell was matching my native MP regen (either on purpose to keep itself going in perpetuity, or just coincidentially needing exactly that much). Either way, I was now not dying, but due to needing to keep the heal spell up I was basically stuck at the verge of death with no MP. And no MP meant not reversing the meteors.
In a way, I kind of just wanted to let myself die. It was grim, but also not due to the whole time loop business. I had my levels—why not just die and start anew, stronger? It would be more efficient. But at the same time, it would require giving up. To approach matters assuming I would lose. In a way, planning to fail was more likely to be effective than planning to win, but Rose's dying words were nagging at me. She said I didn't get it. Maybe I would if I tried to follow it, and then I could discard it, like I had discarded so many things already.
I decided to do the best I could with what I had. I had been jogging away from the contingent of orcs following me this entire time, and now stuck my sword out beside me, at neck-level for the orc mages, and just ran down the line from the middle. Their heads popped off one after another. There was a reason these mages were at the back row, not the front. And that reason was fragile, fragile necks. Plus, the more I killed the more the aura around them faded, and by the last one it was all but gone. It seemed like they were powering each other up through physical contact, which honestly was unsettling. They were literally using the power of friendship and mutual trust to defeat us, and I had just cut off like 10 of their heads since said power of friendship distracted them. For a second I had to ask if I was the baddie.
Luckily for me, philosophy found its home in times of peace, not war. One could hardly muse about the ethical implications of their arguable mass-murder when a gang of orcs was chasing them down. Since I was probably a clean hit or two away from death, I looped back around the other side of the orc army (having come along the right side from the human's perspective, and now on the left), and started sprinting. Low HP and MP didn't stop my still-novice level athletics from carrying me... somewhat fast and true alongside the side of the army. The lack of meteors implied I had killed enough orc mages to interrupt their ritual, though there was no way of knowing whether or not more orc mages would be abruptly summoned. I got the impression something was limiting the Excursed, since they held off on summoning the troll, and bulk-summoned weak orcs rather than an army of ancient vampires or something, but maybe it was just general pragmatisim. Waste not, want not.
As I ran, I saw the orcs quickly thinning out. The humans were getting steady ground on them. That made sense; the orcs were weak and largely existed just to shield the orc mages from sight while they did their ritual-thing, such that a surprise Meteor attack could catch Rose off guard and weaken her enough to be shanked to death (presumably). The humans had been winning in the first loop before I even came, and this time I had killed maybe 1/5th of the entire orc army in a whirlwind of death and destruction. Not that the Excursed could have known, but it had been a big mistake to populate the battlefield with essentially perfect grind fodder.
By the time I reached Rose's little camp, I already had a plan. It wasn't necessarily a good plan, but I didn't know what else to do this loop but die, so I gave it my best shot.
"Ma'am!" I declared with a salute. She turned. "Malcador, Farmer Second-Class of the Torso squadron. I went deep into enemy lines and was shot in the back by goblin archers. May I request an antidote, Paladin Rose ma'am!"
She gave me a silent look. Her ice-blue eyes first fell on my bloody face, then moved to my incredibly bloody sword, then to my bloody fists. Her eyes rested on the green healing glow of my off-hand for a bit, and then finally locked onto the still-visible pop-culture reference on my T-shirt. Her eyes narrowed a fraction, and it was clear about a thousand different gears were turning in her head. I waited a solid thirty seconds with her staring at me, feeling tense. I still didn't know the name of a commanding officer to give. If only my good friend Jeffrey hadn't been tragically slain in battle, I could have asked him. Life is a bitch, and then you die.
Ultimately, Rose unbuckled a potion from the utility belt wrapped around her ornate armor and stepped forward. She forced it into my hand, then walked to my back. "This will hurt," she said, and before I knew what she was doing, she started ripping the arrows out of my back. She was smart. It did hurt, and the only thing that stopped me from yelping in pain was the oft-described deadness of my heart. Pain, too, could be controlled with enough practice. Once the arrows were out, she walked back to my front, and curtly said "Drink." So I did.
Affliction Cured! You are no longer poisoned.
Smart to remove the arrows before they just re-poisoned me. With that, I dropped the healing spell and let my HP and MP regen. Rose was still giving me a careful look with her eyes narrowed. A lesser man might have balked beneath the cold glare of a stunningly attractive woman, but I already had experience with her stabbing me to death. Nothing short of her drawing her sword could scare me now, and the fact she was debating something internally was a sign that she hadn't immediately marked me as a doppelganger to be executed.
"Think fast," she said, and suddenly threw a rock my way. My hour-ish of rock reversal practice paid off, because I managed to instantly chant hantai ike and reverse the rock back to her hand. Rose caught it in midair, perhaps having expected that, and... simultaenously grimaced and widened her eyes in surprise? It was a complex expression that involved a lot of facial contortions, but it only lasted a second before her face wore an expressionless mask again. I heard some of the captains gasp.
"Are you," Rose began, but I interrupted her. I didn't want her asking me about my commanding officer. Perhaps all doppelgangers were master Mystics.
"Ma'am! Paladin Rose ma'am! How do you kill a Giant Troll?"
"I—What? You... What?" she said. She had on the look of someone who had predicted literally everything I could possibly say, except that. Luckily for me, she was not one to leave a question unanswered. "They regenerate, so you need to either induce magical wounds that can't regenerate, or stab their brains. It usually takes multiple people to beat the regeneration. I... Why?"
I pointed at the fort. "That's why."
The Giant Troll had been summoned.