No consequences my ass. Aurelius thought cynically.
It was Saturday, almost a full week after his second death.
Normally, Aurelius would be gratefully welcoming the weekends with a deep, sensual slumber well into the late hours of the morning in the luxurious comforts of his bed.
However, he was currently awake at an unholy hour of dawn, a time that even the school weekdays would not call for.
It was 5 o’clock in the damned morning, before even the first birds rose to irritate forest critters, and definitely before the sunshine shone on Teotlcan.
It was all to be blamed on that… godless woman, also known as Ms. Yeltz.
Firstly, his brain had been put in an insane amount of strain from the kinds of academic documents and papers that she had been bringing him over the past week.
He personally had no idea how the sage was able to locate these documents so effortlessly and acquire an endless supply of them, especially given the obscure and old nature of many of these documents.
She had even brought him materials and records of Hero Rodric’s life and accolades for his reference. Among which, the only particularly interesting items of note were the reproduced copies of the Hero’s personal grimoires, a ridiculous rarity to find in the world of magic, and unsurprisingly VERY MUCH OUTDATED.
All these materials took him HOURS to finish, which contrasted terribly with the fact that most of it left the confines of his mind the moment his eyeballs laid eyes off them.
The experience had thoroughly deepened the impression Aurelius had of academic literature being dry, pretentious and written by a group of “circle-jerking” old men.
That was the extent of his complaints regarding his forced study sessions with the sage.
AND ALSO the start of his complaints about her sense of TIME.
What kind of INSANE individual would pick 6 AM in the MORNING as the reporting time for training their “apprentice”?
Aurelius almost suspected that this was a method of torture by the commission, given the horrifying toll it was taking on him.
And all that talk by Tiberius about there being “no consequences”?
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Absolute baloney. Aurelius personally considered many things a “consequence”. For example, the rather high probability of him getting beat up by Sage Yeltz for skipping out on their sessions alone was a rather CONSEQUENTIAL consequence.
He was very limited in what he could reasonably get away with.
Aurelius supposed that he could afford to spend money a little more liberally, given that the next loop would reset his account. But he didn’t quite have the desire to spend them on anything in particular.
Maybe a massage or two? Or… do as the seniors did and pay a visit to the… red light district?
It wasn’t like he could escape the confines of the city, at least in this loop. It was way too likely for both the school authorities and the Commission to get involved, chasing him for truancy AND contractual obligation.
He could possibly escape the clutches of authorities for a while in subsequent loops, if he laid low from the prying eyes of authorities, but he had no particular place he could go to for now.
He couldn’t even teleport yet!
Having gotten stuck, he had also gone to the library to find inspiration. He had found that the birth of the House of Corvinus did much to inspire writers, with the wide variety of fictional works exploring the concept of time loops.
From his skimming, other than the ideas he had considered so far, he found that they all had, for some reason, made a trope of some sort of romance in the story, with a lot of repeated confessions or something along those lines.
To be perfectly honest, Aurelius felt that these bordered on sexual harassment, not to mention the fact that there was no one he felt particularly inclined to try this with.
If he approached some hot girl on the street and tried it out, and inevitably got rejected, he might just crawl up in a corner and like die of embarrassment. He decided that he would just bully Tiberius a bit over the next few loops if he ever stepped out of line.
But other than that, even the books had yet to give him a good idea on how he could abuse his current situation. At least, not in the first few loops.
Aurelius wondered if he should iron his shirt as he smoothed out the creases on his shirt half-heartedly, mulling over the lingering thoughts and grogginess.
Eh, there are fucking fae assassins on my ass. Who would even give a shit about the wrinkles in my shirt?
???
Aurelius arrived in the empty gymnasium with a glum expression.
The gym was a renovated part of the ballroom that the castle had back in the days.
Given the removal of the chandeliers that once lined the spacious hall, the gym relied on a few tiny, pathetic lanterns on its walls, and mostly its glass windows for the natural lighting.
This meant that using the gymnasium at the crack of dawn was a BAD IDEA given the general inability for users to use the sensory organ named the EYES.
As he entered with eyes scrunched up to slits in the darkness, Aurelius made out 2 chatting figures cloaked in the shadows of twilight.
“Hmm, you’re earlier than I expected.” The sage commented sarcastically, turning away from the second figure in greeting
Aurelius found that remark completely unnecessary given that he had arrived on time for all of his sessions with the sage.
Despite his complaints, Aurelius squinted a little harder to look through the darkness at the face of the second figure.
“Good morning Ms. Yeltz, and… Seraphine?” Aurelius asked in surprise.
“Morning shaman kid.” His senior replied with her usual playfulness.
She was dressed in the same attire that Aurelius had seen her in during the previous loop at the potions drawers.
Her casual attire included the rather distracting pants decorated with pictures of numerous caricature rats which Aurelius once again stared at and judged.
Following Aurelius’s gaze, the usually gloomy sage cracked a rare smile as she observed the comical designs of her pants.
“Ah, this? I like them. It’s quite ironic, and I find it to be a great testament to my impeccable sense of humour.” The senior explained rather shamelessly.
With an amused look in her eyes, Ms. Yeltz turned back at Aurelius.
“She’ll be joining us as your second instructor on weekends from now on.” She declared.
