By the end of the time loop, Zorian had learned how to peel the surface of a marble away, layer by layer; how to do the same to an apple and other fruit; how to cut paper by dragging his finger along the cutting line; how to induce a gentle ripple in a pool of water without touching it; how to levitate a blob of water and shape it into a perfect sphere; then freeze that sphere; and finally, how to telekinetically draw geometric shapes in the dust. None of those were really mastered in the Xvim sense of the word, but luckily Xvim wasn’t anywhere near him this time so he could simply move on to the next exercise when he felt he had absorbed it to his liking. Shaping exercises were a lot less annoying when he didn’t have to keep doing them until they could be done flawlessly, he found.
He also continued practicing his mind powers. They were extremely important, he felt — if it weren’t for them, he would have never survived his altercation with Red Robe intact. At some point he planned to seek out other aranean colonies and execute his ‘exploit the time loop to slowly leech aranean magic from them’ plan, but right now he couldn’t do it. It was too soon, his memories of aranea and their demise (and the role his obliviousness and carelessness played in it) too fresh in his mind. So instead he simply used his empathy on every person he spoke to and practiced connecting to the minds of various animals. He particularly liked walking near streams and ponds and taking control of the dragonflies flitting about in order to make them perform dizzying acrobatics around him. Insects had such rudimentary minds that taking total control over them was exceedingly easy, though figuring out how to puppeteer them effectively took some doing and he still couldn’t keep control over more than 3 dragonflies at the same time.
Time passed. For the most part he managed to keep himself busy enough that he didn’t have enough time to be depressed, but all his worries and feelings of powerlessness returned in full force every evening as he prepared himself for sleep. Every plan he tried to make seemed hollow, doomed to failure. He wasn’t powerful enough. He didn’t know enough. Red Robe had years and years of experience over him, and that was never going to change.
As the end of the restart approached, his mood only turned darker. He had avoided another confrontation in this restart, but what about the next? Would he wake up next time to eerie silence, only to find out that Red Robe got to his family after he had left and left them lifeless, soulless husks for him to find?
On the last night of the restart, Zorian didn’t sleep at all, simply watching the night sky from a small, isolated hill he had found in his travels, idly using his mind powers to deflect mosquitos away from him as he stood consumed in his own thoughts.
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 mor— Hey!” Kirielle yelped as Zorian enveloped her into a strong hug. “What the hell, Zorian!? Let me go, you brute!”
“Still the same Kirielle as ever,” Zorian sighed dramatically, a weak smile on his face. “Now get off of me before I hug you some more.”
His family was alright and, just like in the previous restart, Red Robe was nowhere to be seen. Thus, a much happier Zorian once again boarded the train and disembarked at Nigelvar. He didn’t bother picking up his badge this time, though — it really was very expensive, and no one had actually asked to see it anyway. Instead he simply teleported himself to the last place he’d been at in the previous restart and continued his wanderings.
Being a mage out there in the periphery was a lot different than being a mage in Cyoria, Zorian mused. Without the massive quantities of ambient mana gushing out of the Hole, conserving mana was actually a noticeable issue — even shaping exercises tended to deplete his reserves after a couple of hours, whereas back in Cyoria his main limitation had been his patience and existing obligations eating into his free time. That was another reason why Zorian focused on shaping exercises in preference to any actual spellcasting while traveling.
He was also starting to miss the academy library. He had thought its reputation was way overblown for a while now, but now that he could no longer hit its vast shelves every time he ran into some issue he realized just how damn convenient it really was. It had a lot of holes where really exotic topics were concerned, but its selection of basic spells and books on common topics was second to none. Out here in the periphery, finding a spellbook that had the exact spell you needed was damn hard. They existed, but they had only the most basic of things and if you wanted anything exotic you were directed to some other settlement or private collection or what not.
He also found out that magic detection spells were a lot more useful than he had first realized. Outside of Cyoria, magical items and creatures actually stood out when exposed to such scrutiny. Back in Cyoria, most general magic detection spells just returned false positives all the time — you had to narrow your divination criteria down to something specific to get results.
All in all, he was starting to understand why mages tended to flock towards Cyoria and other cities situated on top of mana wells. Those kinds of places provided a whole lot of resources that were hard to acquire elsewhere in one convenient location.
But Zorian’s journey continued. He was determined to visit every large city in the country, if nothing else then so he could teleport to any of them as he pleased, and he was seriously considering a journey around the continent as well. The only thing stopping him was that international travel was bound to be a hassle, and he was doing all this traveling to relax, not argue with border officials about authorization.
When another restart passed and Red Robe still failed to show up, Zorian finally allowed himself to more fully relax. It had been three restarts, and Red Robe still hadn’t tracked Zorian down — he was pretty sure that meant he never would, then. Not a master detective then, that was good to know. Buoyed by the knowledge that he dodged the bullet this time, Zorian seriously considered what to do next.
He needed to contact Zach, but it wasn’t a priority. Zach likely didn’t have any crucial information that would help Zorian figure out how the time loop functioned, and Zorian didn’t know how to find the other time traveler anyway. They were bound to meet again at some point, and Zorian wasn’t going to play dumb again when they finally encountered one another, but he saw no need to waste his time on looking for a boy who probably didn’t want to be found right now. It wasn’t like he didn’t have anything to do in the meantime. He absolutely needed to master a number of skills before he considered going back to Cyoria and looking for Zach: he needed to find out more about soul magic, he needed to hone his mind magic into a proper tool and weapon like the aranea had done, and he needed to raise his combat skills to a level where he could meaningfully counter Red Robe in open combat.
The first priority was pretty obvious: he needed to know how to at least counter soul magic if he wasn’t going to get blindsided again when dealing with Red Robe. Preferably he also wanted to figure out what Red Robe really did to the aranea and — if possible — reverse it. He still had Kael’s list of people who could help him in that regard, and all of them were conveniently outside of Cyoria.