“Yeah, the last five games have basically been for nothing,” the other man piped in.
Zorian nodded. Even with mind reading on his side, some hands were just unwinnable. Besides, he purposely threw a couple of games so as to not arouse suspicions of cheating in his partners. “We’re both even at this point, and I really have to get going, so it’s a perfect place to stop,” he said. “Still, if you’re that desperate for a rematch, I can always relieve you of your money some other day. I’ll be staying in the town for a whole month anyway.”
“You relieve me of my money, ha! The only reason you haven’t ended up in your underwear is that you’re immune to my secret technique!” Orinus half-shouted.
The other man snorted in amusement. “Getting the newbie drunk is a secret technique, now?”
“Hey man, don’t reveal all my tricks to outsiders… what kind of friend are you?” Orinus protested.
After a few more minutes of bickering and refused offers of alcoholic beverages, Zorian finally managed to excuse himself. Ignoring Orinus’s muttered questioning of Zorian’s masculinity due to his refusal to drink anything remotely alcoholic, he left the inn and started searching the streets of Knyazov Dveri for an out-of-the-way corner he could teleport from without being seen. The game had been both unexpectedly fun and useful for his mind magic training, but he hadn’t been lying when he had said he had to get going. Timing was crucial for what he intended to do.
In the previous restart he learned that most of the soul mages on Kael’s list had disappeared or died recently. That was, of course, highly suspicious — there was a good chance the whole thing was somehow connected to the time loop, which meant he had to know more about it. Sadly, during the last restart he had made the mistake of telling Vani about the disappearances, and he had raised enough of an alarm to have the police crawling everywhere around potential clue-sites. Consequently, Zorian had been forced to set the issue aside and wait for the next restart to conduct his own investigation.
Which is exactly what he did, the moment he woke up in Cirin and could leave without making Mother and Kirielle throw a fit. As he suspected, virtually all of the soul mages had been already gone, even on that very first day. Whatever had happened to them had been going on for far longer than the time loop existed, it seemed. There were only two exceptions: the two mages that were confirmed dead in the previous restart were alive and well at the start of the new one. The first one, a priest named Alanic Zosk specializing in fighting undead, had simply been found dead with no obvious cause a few days into the restart. The second one was Lukav Teklo, an alchemist specializing in transformation magic. He had been killed by boars not far from his home, on the evening of the second day of the restart.
Naturally, Zorian intended to talk with both of them, which necessitated saving their lives. The alchemist was a priority, as he died sooner and the cause of death was known and easily preventable. Thus his hurry to leave the game — if he timed things correctly, he would arrive at the man’s home an hour or two before his fateful stroll outside the village. If he mistimed things or his actions somehow caused the alchemist to accelerate his schedule… well, there were always future restarts. It’s not like the man would die for good.
He could have contacted the man sooner to warn him, he supposed, but how would he explain his knowledge of the attack? He’d just make himself look suspicious. And besides, he actually wanted the attack to happen. He doubted those were regular boars that attacked him, so he wanted to examine them up close… and also, the man was bound to be a lot more helpful if he met Zorian as a savior who protected him from a vicious pack of boars than if he just showed up at the man’s door with no warning.
After teleporting just outside the man’s house and making sure the alchemist was still in his house, Zorian settled in for a wait, making sure to keep out of sight of any windows. If there was anything that tiny villages like this one never had a shortage of, it was nosy old people who had nothing better to do except watch the streets for anything out of the ordinary. Honestly, some of the old women back in Cirin spent practically every waking moment glued to their window sills, making note of everyone that passed through their domain… he lost count of the number of times they got him into trouble with his parents when he had foolishly forgotten to account for their presence.
He didn’t have to wait long. Barely half an hour after he had settled in to wait, the alchemist left his house. It was a good thing he had come early, then. Zorian promptly cast an invisibility spell on himself and then started following after the man some distance away. Hopefully he remained far enough that the man would not find it suspicious when Zorian burst onto the scene at the first sign of trouble, but that couldn’t be helped. He didn’t feel comfortable putting even more distance between the two of them, lest the man be killed before he could come to his aid. Depending on how oblivious and combat capable the man was, he could get overwhelmed in seconds.
And the attack itself was bound to happen any moment now. The report he saw in the last restart said the man was killed just outside the village, and Lukav had immediately made a beeline towards the main road leading to the next settlement. Cautiously, Zorian drew his spell rod and strained his mind sense to the limit in order to find the attackers before they could strike.
He found nothing out of the ordinary, and was thus just as shocked as the alchemist when a bunch of boars burst out of the tree line and charged the man. They both froze for a second, and before either could react the boars had already closed half of the distance to the alchemist.
Embarrassingly enough, the alchemist reacted first. With a practiced movement, he threw a bottle of some sort into the path of the approaching horde and immediately dropped on the ground. Lacking the alchemist’s reflexes and thinking himself too far to be affected by the bomb, Zorian opted to simply drop invisibility and erect a shield in front of him as a precaution. That turned out to be a mistake, as the deafening explosion of light and sound left him dazed and blinking spots out of his vision for the next few seconds.
When he did recover, he saw that the bomb’s effect on the boars themselves had been underwhelming — they had been thrown about by the blast (as had the alchemist himself, having misjudged the distance somewhat in his panic), and the leading boar that had been caught in the center of the blast had been blown to bits, but the others were already up on their feet and converging on their target. Even the one with a broken leg was stubbornly stumbling towards the dazed, bleeding alchemist, undeterred by what should have been excruciating pain.
They made no sounds, they were unafraid of loud sounds and bright light, and completely ignored severe injuries like they were nothing. So much for the idea that they were ordinary animals. Oh well, he kind of suspected it was something like this. Acting quickly to stop them from killing the other man, he cast a swarm of 5 magic missiles at the boars closest to the downed alchemist. Smashers instead of piercers; if he was right about what these things really were, holes in their bodies wouldn’t even slow them down. The missiles were there just to knock them away from their target and give Zorian time to cast another, more unorthodox spell that he didn’t put in his spell rod. Oh, and possibly shift their attention towards him instead, though he didn’t think anything could make them switch targets. They were clearly sent to kill a specific man.
The smashers hit the boars in their flanks, sending them tumbling. As he suspected, they immediately scrambled to get up as if nothing happened, and the other four kept running towards the alchemist. He had finished his spell before they could reach him, however, causing a large shining disc of force to materialize between his hands.