Mother of Learning: ARC 2 Read online

  “Mother of Learning: ARC 2”

  Book Two of the Mother of Learning series

  nobody103, Domagoj Kurmaic

  Copyright © 2021 Domagoj Kurmaić

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without expressed permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-955252-22-5

  Cover Art by YAM

  Cover Design by Shawn T. King, STK Kreations

  Art Direction by Bryce O’Connor

  Additional Cover Elements by Noob Model :D

  (https://tinyurl.com/NoobModel3-BlueMagicCircle)

  MOTHER OF LEARNING:

  ARC 2

  by

  nobody103

  writing as

  Domagoj Kurmaic

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 001

  Chapter 002

  Chapter 003

  Chapter 004

  Chapter 005

  Chapter 006

  Chapter 007

  Chapter 008

  Chapter 009

  Chapter 010

  Chapter 011

  Chapter 012

  Chapter 013

  Chapter 014

  Chapter 015

  Chapter 016

  Chapter 017

  Chapter 018

  Chapter 019

  Chapter 020

  Chapter 021

  Chapter 022

  Chapter 023

  Chapter 024

  Chapter 025

  Chapter 026

  Chapter 027

  Chapter 028

  Chapter 001

  Cast Adrift

  Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

  “Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning, morning, MORNING!!!”

  Relief immediately flooded his mind, closely followed by despair. He had done it—he had kept his soul safe from the third time traveler and survived the encounter entirely unscathed. But his allies…

  “Zorian? Are you all right?”

  Zorian stared at his sister for several long seconds, a million thoughts racing through his mind. She looked uncomfortable with his blank stare and silence, but Zorian couldn’t really bring himself to care at the moment. His mind was still stuck on his desperate escape from Red Robe. On almost being captured by a mass murdering psychotic necromancer with an untold amount of time-looping experience. On the fact that said necromancer now knew there were other human time travelers running around and could be coming after him this very moment.

  On the fact that the aranea were dead. Dead and never coming back.

  He absentmindedly pushed Kirielle off of him, put on his glasses, and started pacing around the room.

  Killing a soul was impossible. They could not be destroyed, only modified. Everyone said so—the teachers, all the books he had read discussing the topic, Kael the amateur necromancer… hell, even the goddamn lich had said so in one of his offhand comments back when Zorian was first brought into the time loop. How, then, did Red Robe manage to kill the souls of the aranea?

  Zorian supposed the simplest explanation would be that Red Robe had simply discovered something other mages hadn’t. He was a necromancer with a huge amount of time available to him and an easy way to avoid the usual consequences of various grisly experiments. Perhaps he had succeeded where other necromancers had failed. But Zorian didn’t think this was likely—the lich seemed to be a better mage than anyone he had met thus far, Red Robe included, and the lich had certainly considered a soul-killing spell impossible. But that just might all be wishful thinking on his part. He didn’t want the aranea to be gone for good. Dammit, he had grown to like the stupid spiders! Sure, they’d had their disagreements, but he had really never wished them ill, and he didn’t think they had wished him ill either. Novelty certainly hadn’t, and she couldn’t lie to save her life. If… if he was being perfectly honest with himself, he had practically thought of Novelty as a second little sister. But now she was gone, just like the rest of the aranea beneath Cyoria.

  And the worst thing? He had let it happen. He had spent the whole evening gathering the matriarch’s last message, oblivious and uncaring to what was really happening, while Red Robe was hunting down the aranea across the city. He had known he was dealing with another time traveler, and he had never once considered that the man might have developed countermeasures against others of their kind. Gods, he felt so stupid now.

  Although it was strange… First of all, if Red Robe could permanently get rid of anyone who bothered him, why hadn’t he used that spell more often? Surely the invasion would be a lot easier if he got rid of a couple of key stumbling blocks. Yet Zorian hadn’t heard of any notable people waking up dead at the start of each restart, and he had access to the extensive information network maintained by the aranea. There was an obvious answer to that, of course: there could be a significant cost associated with the spell which Red Robe was unwilling to pay. But the fact that he had gone out of the way to remove every single aranea in Cyoria made Zorian doubt that. If there was a serious cost associated with it, he would have made sure to investigate more thoroughly and soulkill only those he had to.

  Secondly, the aranea weren’t actually time travelers, so the spell shouldn’t have worked! Zorian was quite sure the time loop didn’t pull every soul back in time—if that was the case, every mage would feel the difference after a dozen or so restarts as their shaping skills miraculously increased overnight. Plus, there were traditional necromantic killing spells that forcibly banished the soul from the body, and Zorian had occasionally seen them in use during the invasion. If every person whose soul was banished from their body ended up dead at the start of the time loop, the number of inexplicable corpses showing up at the start of the time loop would have started to pile up quickly, and everyone would have realized something was very wrong by the time Zorian was brought in. So all in all, clearly the souls of regular people who were not time travelers weren’t affected by anything that happened to them in previous time loops. The fact that Red Robe’s spell affected normal people in future time loops was strange, to say the least.

  Zorian stopped pacing and frowned, idly noting that Kirielle had left the room at some point. He was getting the feeling that Red Robe was exploiting the very nature of the time loop to somehow get the desired effect. Zorian himself had no idea how the time loop really functioned, but presumably Red Robe did. Without that knowledge, he was going to just keep going in circles. Like always, he needed more information.

  …Except his main source of information—the aranea—had been utterly wiped out by the enemy, leaving him with nothing except a cryptic, incomplete message.

  Dammit.

  Over the next few hours, Zorian simply went through the motions, trying to hide the frustration, shame, and panic he was feeling and to appear as normal as possible. He had failed to keep his inner turmoil strictly to himself, if Mother’s worried questions were any indication. In the end, she accepted his explanation of being slightly shaken from a recent nightmare and stopped bothering him, so he took that as a win.

  And what a nightmare it was! Aside from losing the aranea, there was a non-negligible chance that Red Robe had managed to figure out his identity and was going to assault the
house at any moment. True, he had hidden his face behind a scarf and remained silent, but there were ways nonetheless…

  He didn’t even think about trying to immediately leave the house in panic, though. The first and main reason for that was that if Red Robe had identified him and was coming to Cirin, then his family was in danger of being permanently killed, just like the aranea, and he wasn’t willing to let that happen. Kiri had grown on him over the course of the time loop, and while he didn’t like his mother very much, he wouldn’t let some psycho murder her. No, it was bad enough that the aranea had paid the ultimate price for his mistakes—he’d be damned if he’d leave his family to save his own hide.

  The second reason was that, while it was certainly possible that his identity had been compromised, it was only a possibility, not a certainty. Yes, it would be easy to track him down by noting which students from Zach’s class were missing and then checking them out one by one, but it was entirely possible that Red Robe wouldn’t think of this. After all, as far as Red Robe was concerned, the mysterious human time traveler was associated with the aranea, not Zach. There was no reason to search among Zach’s classmates. And while Zach probably knew that Zorian was a time traveler by now, Zorian strongly suspected he would be out of Cyoria when Red Robe came knocking. If Zach had even a smidgen of common sense (not a certainty, admittedly), he would skip town first thing in the morning upon starting a new restart. Considering Red Robe thoroughly trounced Zach during the invasion by bringing the lich as his backup and that Zach actually remembered it happening this time, Zorian felt that even Zach wouldn’t be crazy enough to stay where the clearly superior enemy could find him.

  It was an uncomfortable number of assumptions to rely on, but what else did he have left? He was backed into a corner. All he could do was wait and hope Red Robe wasn’t a master detective on top of being a scarily good necromancer and gods knew what else.

  In any case, his plan was quite simple at the moment—board the train as normal, then promptly disembark upon leaving Cirin. He had no intention of going back to Cyoria in the near future. Red Robe was bound to pay attention to Cyoria for a while, trying to catch any time travelers the aranea may have brought in, so going there so soon would be just begging for trouble. Any minor misstep could blow his cover, and he didn’t trust himself to be able to lay low for multiple restarts at a time. No, best if he avoided the city for a while. He would have to return there at some point, of course, but he had to be a lot stronger and a lot better informed before he could show himself in the city again.

  But aside from his determination to avoid Cyoria at all costs, his plans were virtually nonexistent. He felt rather lost. All emotional attachment aside, the aranea were also his best allies, and losing them effectively pulled the rug from under his feet. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

  He needed some time to calm down and come to terms with what had happened. Think up a new way forward. He would probably end up just wandering around the country for a restart or two. Or maybe a dozen restarts. Yes, now that he thought about it, the time loop was the perfect opportunity for him to go on a country-wide tour, maybe even continent-wide. Just… exploring and sight-seeing. Very relaxing. Admittedly, the matriarch’s last message mentioned something about the time loop gradually decaying, but she hadn’t named any concrete deadlines in the fragments he had managed to piece together, and he believed she would have put greater emphasis on that part if the timetable was particularly tight. No, that statement was there just to let him know he did not have an infinite amount of time to work with—and time was steadily ticking.

  At least he hoped. He was quite doomed otherwise. Less than infinite he could work with, but if he had only a handful of restarts left? It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Mister Kazinski?” Ilsa said, breaking him out of his thoughts. Just as well, his thoughts had taken a dark turn again, and he was tired of feeling depressed. “Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m listening,” Zorian lied. He wasn’t really listening, of course, but that was because he’d had this conversation with Ilsa a million times by now.

  Right,” Ilsa said dubiously. “As I was saying, you can pick up your badge when you finish school since it’s so expensive and—”

  “What if I want to pick it up now?” Zorian interrupted. His savings should be enough to fund a month of aimless wandering so he probably didn’t need the badge for work, but he didn’t like the idea of keeping his spellcasting abilities a secret lest some overzealous policeman report him to the guild and ultimately bring the academy in. Having a badge to prove his certification and membership would allow him to do as he pleased for the most part.

  “You can pick one up at any of the mage guild offices scattered around Eldemar,” Ilsa said. “Most large cities and regional centers have one.”

  Oh good. He had feared he could only pick one up at the academy or something.

  Eventually, Ilsa left, her parting words being that she looked forward to seeing him in class. Huh, that was new. Did she suspect he intended to blow off school to do his own thing? Well whatever. Even if she did, it did not matter much—the academy’s response to students who didn’t show up for class had always been rather anemic. They would send a letter to his parents informing them that he wasn’t attending his classes, and that was it. And fortunately for Zorian, no one would be at home to read the mail by the time the letter arrived, since his parents were going to Koth to visit their precious Daimen.

  Satisfied that his course had been set for the moment, he picked up his things and set off towards the train station.

  As the train departed from Cirin and started its journey towards Cyoria, Zorian began to relax. Train rides always made him kind of sleepy, and the steady rhythm and rumble sapped the tension straight out of his body and mind. Moreover, Red Robe was nowhere to be seen. Hours had passed—enough time for someone of Red Robe’s abilities to prepare and mount an attack on the Kazinski household several times over—and no hostile force had struck against him or his family, so chances were that Red Robe wasn’t coming at all. That meant his identity was probably safe for now, which was a major relief. If he hadn’t discovered Zorian’s identity in the previous restart, he probably wouldn’t discover it at all—a month was ample time to track Zorian down if Red Robe knew where to look. He wouldn’t really relax fully until several restarts passed as peacefully as this one, but this was an encouraging sign.

  He just had to make sure he didn’t make any more stupid mistakes in the future.

  The train stopped for a moment and then continued onward towards Cyoria. Zorian opted to stay on the train for now, despite his initial intention of getting off the train at the very first station after Cirin. The first stop after Cirin was an even smaller village that gravitated towards Cirin and had nothing notable to recommend it to anyone. Disembarking there would be noted and remarked upon by the inhabitants, and there was a chance that someone might recognize him and report him to his family before they could leave for Koth. And that was the kind of drama he really didn’t need. Besides, what the hell would he do in a tiny, unfamiliar village like that? No, it was far better to wait until Nigelvar and then travel on foot to Teshingrad. Nigelvar was also a small town of little note, but it was an important enough transport junction that no one would find a traveler who disembarked there particularly strange. Teshingrad was a regional capital. It couldn’t hold a candle to Eldemar, Korsa, or Cyoria, but it was big and influential enough that newcomers were normal.

  Teshingrad also had a mage guild office, so he could pick up his badge there.

  He disembarked at Nigelvar without complications and immediately set out towards Teshingrad. Unfortunately for him, the storm that invariably hit Cyoria on the first day of every restart was apparently a more wide-scale phenomenon than he first thought, and he found himself in the middle of a raging rainstorm halfway there. His rain shield held out long enough for him to reach one of the roadside inns and take shelter. He end
ed up spending the night, slightly annoyed at the delay despite not having any concrete plans for the restart. It did not help that the food was terrible and the people kept giving him funny looks. It was probably his clothes—the ones his mother made him wear were clearly a bit fancy and out of the price range of most commoners, and he hadn’t had the chance to change before entering the inn. He made sure to put a basic warding scheme on his room to deter would-be thieves and attackers, but thankfully no one tried anything while he slept.

  Having survived the night at the inn without incident, Zorian departed the place early in the morning and reached Teshingrad a few hours later… only to be unpleasantly surprised when he tried to pick up his badge. As it turned out, Ilsa had not been exaggerating when she said the badge was expensive. It would cost him half of his savings to have one made! It was highway robbery, in Zorian’s opinion, but the man he spoke with in the mage guild office wouldn’t hear anything about lowering the price. Instead, he pointed Zorian to a nearby wall where a job panel stood. It was similar to the job panel posted at the academy in Cyoria, only the jobs were much more reasonably priced, since the town did not have the same glut of amateur mages that Cyoria did. It would take two days for Zorian’s badge to be ready for pickup, so he decided to earn some money while he waited and replenish his money stash. It wasn’t like he had something better to do.

  The job list was… rather more eclectic than he hoped. He was sure that two chickens and a bag of flour was a fair price for fixing up a broken wall, but such payment was of no use to him. And the couple of job postings that did not define any concrete payment sounded very suspicious to him. Even so, he still found plenty of things to occupy his time. Thus, for the next three days, Zorian helped with a bunch of repairs, tracked down a missing goat, carried a stack of stone blocks from one end of the town to the other on one of his floating discs, helped the local alchemist harvest her herbs, and eradicated a particularly nasty rat infestation in one of the private granaries on the edge of town. None of it was exceedingly difficult, but Zorian would be lying if he said he didn’t learn anything in the process. Knowing a spell in an academic situation was not the same as using it to solve concrete problems.