Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  Yup, that was more like the Taiven he knew.

  She mumbled something about sensitive little flowers and then leaned back on the cold wall behind them. Rather unhealthy, that.

  "You know, you don't have to rely on me to help you with combat magic," she said. "There are quite a few combat magic instructors in Cyoria. With the amount of money you have at your disposal and the ability to keep spending it over and over again, you could get instruction from all of them. Combat magic may not be a priority for you, but keep that in mind. This is a killer opportunity, and you will never get anything like it outside of your time loop."

  Zorian frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "A lot of mages simply won't teach you if they know you've been taught by their rival or competitor," she told him. "As in, they'll refuse out of principle. There is quite a bit of difference in teaching your personal tricks to some young mage who is just starting out and teaching them to this extremely talented guy who has absorbed the teachings of several veteran mages. Hell, some mages won't want to have anything to do with you if you seem too competent, period. They don't want to create a competitor that will overshadow them and steal lucrative opportunities from them in the future."

  "No offense Taiven, but Daimen never had any trouble securing powerful teachers," Zorian said. "If anything, the number of people who wanted to mentor him increased as his talent became known to people."

  "I don't doubt it," she said. "But I guarantee that some doors also became closed to him at the same time. For you, that doesn't have to be the case – not only will prospective teachers never know who else taught you in the past or how good you really are, you can also do things like sign apprenticeship contracts without them really binding you to anything. Hell, you could accept some really shitty deals if it meant getting some of the really deep secrets people have. Just… think about it, okay?"

  "I am thinking about it. I've been thinking about that sort of thing since the start of the time loop. It just that more pressing issues keep cropping up and eating into my time," he said. "I'm surprised you're bringing that up, though. Doesn't that bother you? I mean, we're basically talking about weaseling out the secrets that these people have spent their life gathering without compensating them in any way."

  "Well, yes," she said. "But realistically speaking, I'd do it in a heartbeat if I was in your place. And frankly, so would nine tenths of those same experts you're feeling sorry for. Are you seriously telling me you haven't been doing something like that all this time?"

  "Sometimes," Zorian said. Ilsa stood prominently in his mind, since he'd flat-out become her apprentice to get her to teach him some of her stuff. "But I have been keeping a mental list of people I 'owe' in this way, and I was thinking of doing something for them once I get out of the time loop. It's already quite a long list, though, and I don't know whether I can even do anything for some of them…"

  "Ugh," she grunted, looking away uncomfortably.

  "What?" he asked.

  "You're a really weird guy, Zorian," she complained. "You can be such a selfish jerk at times, and then you say stuff like that and I realize I don't understand you at all."

  "The feeling is mutual, Taiven," he told her with a smile.

  "What, that you think I'm a selfish jerk or that you don't understand me either?" she asked.

  "Both," he said. Man, she really walked into that one…

  She made an outraged sound and gave him a light shove.

  "You're violent, too," he added.

  "Whatever," she said, getting up from the bench. "I'll bring Grunt and Mumble to our next spar so you can have some variety. I think I can also call in a few favors from my former classmates who also went for combat-related careers and have them fight you a few times as well. Your spellcasting is technically flawless but you need better combat reflexes."

  Zorian gave her a curious look.

  "Why are you being so proactive about this?" he asked her. "I know you hate me bringing it up, but it was only a few days ago that you hated the idea of me surpassing you in your own field. Why did you change your attitude so drastically? You don't even fully believe in the time loop story, according to your own admission."

  "Because your life is on the line," she told him seriously. "That's the most important thing I got from your explanation. If it weren't for that… well, I'd be hell of a lot more jealous and bitter about all this. But it's not just an advantage, you have a heavy responsibility on your shoulders, and someone is trying to get you killed. In light of the chance that you might not make it out of this alive, all of my frustrations seem so… petty in comparison."

  Huh… was that why she was so insistent he needed to work more on his combat skills?

  "Don't die, okay?" she said when he didn't say anything for a while. "You're the best friend I have."

  Zorian fidgeted uncomfortably, unused to that kind of confession and mystified as to how he should respond to it. The snide, cynical part of him felt that was a pretty sad admission. He hadn't exactly been a nice person in his pre-loop days, and he had nursed a grudge against her ever since she'd laughed at his love confession. If the invasion and the time loop had never happened, would he have gotten over that in time to salvage their friendship? Or would he have continued to push her away until she eventually gave up on him, completely unaware that she apparently considered him her best friend?

  "I'll try not to," he eventually told her. He couldn't promise anything. Telling her that he would definitely live and that she had no cause for concern would be a lie and they'd both know it. "Say, Taiven, did you put some thought into how we can make this time loop work to your benefit? You know, like Kael did for his alchemy?"

  "Well, no," she said, shaking her head sadly. "It's useless, isn't it? Practicing combat magic requires shaping skills and routines that cannot be transferred via written notes. What could either of us possibly do to help the other Taiven?"

  "I could teach you various shaping exercises and note which ones work best for you, though," Zorian said. "I could show you the different combat spells I found over the restarts and note which ones you handle the best and what the most effective way of training you in them is. Kirielle's magic lessons are at least two times more effective now than they were when I first tried to teach her, so it should be utterly trivial to create a training program that would let you grow twice as fast as you would without it."

  "Just how much stuff do you think you can cram in one month?" Taiven asked skeptically.

  "We won't know 'till we try it, won't we?" Zorian countered. "And besides, there is no reason why the final training plan has to be limited to a month. Does every single new thing you learn necessarily build atop things you already mastered?"

  "No?"

  "There you go. That means we can break down a training plan into month-long chunks and optimize them separately. We can get at least a year that way, especially if you branch out in some necessary support skills that you've been ignoring. Your lack of divination skills is really felt in any restart where I decide not to join you, for instance."

  Taiven looked torn. She was clearly excited about the idea but at the same time she felt… guilty about it?

  "I don't know…" she said. "That sounds really time consuming, and you don't really get anything out of it. You said yourself that you already have too much things vying for your attention."

  She was right, of course. Still, he owed her something for all the help she'd given him in the past, and this seemed like a perfect way to pay her back. He would find the time if he could. Maybe not a lot of time, but still.

  "I was going to look into combat magic-related shaping exercises anyway," he said. "It might actually be a better idea to go through those together with you than to study them alone. You would know which ones are more useful better than I would. And besides, who says I have to hover around you all the time – I'm sure you can do a lot of testing yourself and then write a notebook for me to transfer into the next restart like Kael is doing
. Or just tell me what you found out face to face before the summer festival."

  It didn't take much convincing before Taiven was fully on board with the idea. In a way, this was what she had asked of him back when she lost her composure – to 'show her how to cheat, too'. He promised to bring an initial batch of spells and shaping exercises tomorrow on their next spar and then left to take care of other obligations.

  He wondered how long it would take for her to realize that she had agreed to spend day after day doing shaping exercises. He'd have to practice his Xvim impersonation for tomorrow.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  In the ruins of the aranean settlement beneath Cyoria, Zorian patiently waited for Memory of Sublime Glories to finish memory probing the Ibasan mage he had captured and brought to her for interrogation. He had ventured deep into invader-held underground to retrieve this man, and was fortunate to stumble upon one of the middle-ranked leaders of the invasion force, so he had high hopes for the result of Sublime Glories' memory dive.

  In the meantime, he kept floating above the cavern floor not far from the aranea and her victim, holding himself aloft with the personal levitation exercise. In his left hand he held one of several small stones, which he kept disintegrating into dust in similarly non-structured manner. He had mastered both shaping exercises a long time ago, but the mild disruption effects present this far underground made them mildly challenging and thus a nice way to pass the time.

  He was starting to run out of rocks when the aranea finally withdrew from the invader's mind and approached him.

  Obviously, he had not told Memory of Sublime Glories anything about time travel, so he was not surprised that her report didn't mention anything remotely related to that. Still, she found out plenty of things of interest.

  [The Ibasans are scared of you,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [Well, not you personally, but the human nations on this continent are a source of constant worry for them. The technological revolution you are undergoing has not taken root on their island, and they fear they will gradually become powerless and irrelevant as time goes by. Since your nations have recently gone through several rounds of self-destructive wars and a deadly epidemic, and are at their most disunited in the long while, a lot of Ibasans feel that the time to strike at you is now. There has been a lot of agitation to launch some kind of invasion, but apparently there is also an influential faction that thinks such an invasion would be utter suicide and advocates trying to reopen diplomatic links to the continent. In light of that, this attack seems to have two main goals. The first is to make this nation look weak to others, thereby making any potential invasion by Ulquaan Ibasa look more attractive to their less warlike kin back home. Such a perception of weakness could also possibly ignite another continental war that would weaken everyone on the continent further. The second goal is to destroy any chance of official peace between Ulquaan Ibasa and Eldemar, thereby making the position of the reconciliation faction untenable.]

  [They're not scared that Eldemar might respond to the attack by outright invading Ulquaan Ibasa?] Zorian asked.

  [Ulquaan Ibasa is remote and inhospitable, and Eldemar has continental rivals to worry about,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [They expect a response, but nothing substantial. A series of raids at most.]

  Zorian wasn't so sure about that. Eldemar had been prospering for some time now, and the government was quite proud and aggressive. He wouldn't put it past the current royals and the Noble Council to launch a full scale invasion of Ulquaan Ibasa out of sheer principle, costs be damned. Especially since the Ibasans were diplomatically isolated and not part of the byzantine web of alliances that prevented the larger Splinter States from simply attacking the smaller ones and absorbing them through force of arms.

  As the aranea continued with her findings, however, it became obvious that the Ibasans had not simply relied on empty hope to discourage such an invasion. Sometime near the beginning of the month, just before the start of the time loop, the Ibasans had managed to overrun Fort Oroklo without alerting Eldemar that it had changed hands.

  Situated on a small island to the northeast of Eldemar and named after the general that had defeated Quatach-Ichl's army at the conclusion of the Necromancer's War, Fort Oroklo was a small but important installation that served the dual purpose of being a monitoring station for keeping an eye on Ulquaan Ibasa and a supply base for Eldemar naval patrols. The Ibasans apparently called it 'Fort Dagger', because they considered it a knife pointed straight at their throat. So long as Eldemar held Fort Oroklo, they had a perfect staging ground for any raid or invasion on Ulquaan Ibasa.

  Before Eldemar could launch an attack on Ulquaan Ibasa, it first had to retake Fort Oroklo – a heavily-warded fortress situated on an excellent defensive position.

  [Some of this doesn't make any sense,] Zorian complained. [According to you, the Ibasans are transporting their forces straight from Ulquaan Ibasa to Fort Oroklo, then from Fort Oroklo to some unknown point in the Sarokian Highlands, and then from there to beneath Cyoria.]

  [Yes, what of it?]

  [That's not enough stops for an effective teleportation chain,] Zorian said. [Only two stop points for a journey of such distance, with the final destination point being deep underground to boot? There is no way that's really what's happening. If they were sending letters or small packages maybe, but no way could you transport an army like that. Even if Quatach-Ichl is the best mass teleporter in the whole damn world, the mana costs for such long jumps would be completely impractical on that scale.]

  Admittedly, such a small number of stops would do much to explain how they could transport such an army through Eldemar territory without being discovered by Eldemar, but…

  [They're not teleporting in the manner we've seen you do it,] Memory of Sublime Glories noted. [They are using some kind of stone construct to open a dimensional passage between two points. Like a door to another land.]

  What?

  [Can you describe that 'door' in more detail, please?] Zorian asked, frowning.

  Instead of answering with words, the aranea promptly projected an image of said 'door' that she pilfered from the man's mind straight into his mind.

  It wasn't a stone arch like he expected – instead, it was a collection of stone 'bars' arranged into a form of a large, skeletal icosahedron. Suspended in the middle of this bizarre geometric construct, like a window cut into the very air itself, was the dimensional gate. It appeared circular at first glance, edges marked by a warped, blurry outline that looked as if someone had ran a finger through a wet painting and smudged all the colors together. As the aranea helpfully rotated the image, however, it became obvious that the gate looked circular no matter from which direction it was seen. It was spherical.

  Well… he supposed that answered some things. The gate spell was pretty much the pinnacle of dimensional magic, requiring both a lot of mana and extreme shaping skills to pull off successfully, but the invaders did have an ancient lich on their side. If anyone could casually open a gate, it would be Quatach-Ichl.

  But…

  [They were inspired by ancient artifacts called Bakora gates,] the aranea added. [Though unable to actually figure out how the Bakora gates work or how to activate them, they realized that the 'icosahedron' thing around them is meant to stabilize the dimensional passage and make it last indefinitely. Or at least as long as you keep supplying it with enough mana. So they made their own version of it.]

  [Wait, you're saying that thing down there is constantly active?] Zorian asked incredulously.

  [According to our prisoner, yes,] the aranea said. [As far as he knows, the door is never shut down.]

  Gods, a permanent dimensional passage like that… no wonder the invaders could bring such a huge force beneath the city and keep supplying it. He fired off a bunch of additional questions about how the knockoff Bakora gate was made, what its limitations are and so forth, but found that their captive had no idea of any of those things. Anyone except the leaders of the invasion wa
s unlikely to know such things, and possibly no one except Quatach-Ichl, who seemed to be in charge of maintaining the gates.

  Annoying. Still, the fact that the invasion was supplied by permanently active dimensional gates did provide certain opportunities. For instance, it meant that if he could capture the gates fast enough, he could get access straight into the heart of Ibasan operations, perhaps even Ulquaan Ibasa itself. Destroying the gate in their main base would no doubt utterly cripple the planned invasion, unless a new gate was easy to build, which he doubted. Finally, it opened the possibility of stealing the design from whoever made the thing – something he definitely wanted to do if it was at all possible.

  Hopefully the design wasn't exclusively held by Quatach-Ichl or ran on children's souls or some such, because that was one amazing piece of magic.

  [What about the research facility I've told you about?] Zorian asked.

  [Nothing that you don't already know,] Memory of Sublime Glories told him. [Frankly, I think you're going about this the wrong way. You say the previous aranea found out something important about that facility? Well, I don't think they did it by reading the minds of Ibasan invaders. Admittedly, I cannot tell that for certain without getting access to some of their leaders, but they seem to neither know nor care about what's down there. Except for the lich, and as we both know, they'd never succeed in reading that thing's mind.]

  [Well they clearly got information about it from someone,] Zorian said.

  [Yes, well, it is a government facility. It stands to reason that someone from the government knows what they do down there. Chances are that if you want to find out about the facility through the same methods that the previous web used, you are going to have to target whichever government official that facility is reporting to.]

  That… was a good point. He had no doubt that Spear of Resolve would attack a city official without the slightest bit of hesitation if she felt he had answers to her questions and she felt she could get away with it. And she could definitely get away with it, since she knew she was stuck in a time loop and none of the consequences would matter beyond certain point.