He ignored the Sage’s instruction to have his dinner before their session.
While he had taken up this advice on Tuesday, the relatively short 2 sessions had made him complacent. He had fully expected to be able to make it in time to the cafeteria for his dinner, but the time now was 8pm. And the sage showed absolutely no signs of allowing Aurelius to leave.
Given that the cafeteria finished up its service at 9pm, Aurelius would likely not be making it for dinner there.
If the sage did not let him go in the next hour, Aurelius would need to wander into the city and find a tavern to fill his stomach during peak drinking hour.
Aurelius had started to seriously consider dragging Tiberius along by promising him a pint or two of ale from the Rowdy Hog. Such an option would allow him to have company that way at the very least…
His stomach growled as he shifted through his stack of paper. The words seemed to float off the page and bounce off of his eyes with increasing incoherence with every paragraph.
It was horrifyingly boring.
Aurelius glanced up at the silent sage, who had replaced her cup of coffee with what he assumed were floral tea.
She hadn’t left her seat in the 3 hours that Aurelius had been reading. with only the occasional magic to refill her cup or bring a different stack of paper over to her hands.
Much to Aurelius’s horror, the sage looked to be enjoying herself in her reading.
Noticing Aurelius’s gaze, the sage looked over her stack of paper, squinting her eyes at Aurelius in annoyance.
“I see that you haven’t taken my advice to grab a bite before coming over.” She commented sternly.
“Even so, I will only be letting you leave once you finish your reading.” She instructed.
Aurelius blinked twice, as he quickly flipped through the pages of his documents.
He was only three quarters of the way done!
???
It was 10pm by the time that Aurelius was released.
Rubbing his throbbing head, Aurelius made his way back to the dorm, deep in thought.
It was actually quite admirable how resourceful the sage had been to find such relevant information from the Commission archives in a matter of days. Some of the resources within the paper stack were dated before even the founding of the Commission!
However, the fact that Aurelius had to read them was clearly appalling..
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Aurelius started to digest the contents slowly in his mind, as he attempted to cool his overclocked brain back to a sensible level.
The Academy had made Aurelius barely literate enough to parse through the terminology used in these terrifyingly dense, academic papers and journal entries.
Each had unique information about the spirit realm, soul blueprints as well as an assortment of accounts and records collected from mages who had been gifted with a soul blueprint by spirit world denizens.
The magical knowledge condensed within these papers were astonishing, especially for Aurelius given his background.
Aurelius tried to organise what he had learnt from the session with his own situation.
- He was stuck in a time loop akin to that of a novel
- His memory was intact after every loop.
- He was bestowed a soul blueprint that could allow him to attain divinity.
- His soul blueprint was clearly anomalous, given that it had not deteriorated at all.
- He no longer had access to elemental magic, unless he gave up on his soul blueprint.
There were also a few key questions that haunted his mind.
- What happens at the end of every time loop?
- Is death for others permanent in each loop?
- What are the boundaries of this time loop?
- Is death the only condition for loops to reset?
Essentially, there was much left unanswered still regarding his situation. Most devastating of all of these facts was that he would not have access to the more traditional elemental magics, and was limited to the magic of whatever this soul blueprint would guide him towards in the future.
These facts culminated in one simple fact. He was valuable enough to kidnap, kill or torture, but unable to fight back other than an access to a “reset button” by DYING.
At least, this would be the case for SEVERAL loops.
With this in mind, his 2nd loop seemed to be going… poorly in this aspect.
He was likely being chased by the Fae, and scrutinised and bound by a contract with the Commission. Fulfilling both the imminent doom aspect, and bondage.
Additionally, the Commissioners scrutinising him the most were a chain smoking geezer and an ill tempered, muscled sage. Ah, by the way, this particular sage also happened to be thrust upon him as a… MENTOR.
He had not gained ANYTHING over the last 3 days. In fact, he had been interrogated, imprisoned, and interrogated again. Then, now it seemed that he was being… tortured by this DAMN mentor of his with READING.
He was already stuck in this useless Academy! Why was more mandatory reading even REQUIRED?
At the same time, he felt incredibly hopeless.
He thought back to his divine benefactor.
Quetzalcoatl was a god.
He seemed capable of divine feats that even the full might of humanity would be unable to accomplish.
With 10,000 lives and 10,000 years, Quetzalcoatl would have lived more than a 100 million actual years of life.
Yet, he couldn’t die by His own hands?
Why was it Aurelius was dragged into his bloody suicide note?
What could Aurelius accomplish that He couldn’t?
To be absolutely honest, Aurelius would not have minded his death when the mana bomb exploded. He would have been dead anyway after all.
Aurelius had always been stuck in a path of mediocrity, unable to attain the heights that others could. With his lineage and chosen career path, the possibility of happiness seemed distant.
Would he even be able to earn that happiness through effort?
It was a selfish thought.
He was in a well adjusted family with financial stability, placed in a path of what most would consider a successful profession.
Yet, he was now being forced on a path that no mortal had yet to walk.
His shelter in mediocrity was now replaced with a divine mission. His ‘saviour’ had trapped him in a situation where he had to grow to become more than he was.
But what obligation did he have to fulfil such a demand?
He didn’t ask to be saved, nor did he ask for more than he had.
So how should he live his life now?