Chapter 343: A Lump in Time

It seems as though he’s tried to ambush me in a new way at the beginning of the loop, at least (XIII) recorded ways. Somehow I keep getting lucky and avoiding it by changing up the manner in which I dodge each time.

List of prior dodges and the methods used to generate them listed in subsection C of the Getting Started manual.

-William Oh, note to self

P.S. Sooner or later, he will get lucky and I will dodge into his attack. Get this done, me.

Will stepped through the door, and his map instantly went crazy, showing something coming straight for his head.

He reflexively ducked and flew off to the side an instant before a portal opened where he had just set foot. Thousands of malignant-looking threads of miasma erupted from the portal and clung to the nature where he’d landed.

What’s going on? Will thought. His map was still telling him there were things coming for his head, but they weren’t. His map had been modified to exaggerate movement on a very specific path straight towards him, making every rock and bush look like it was lunging towards his face with every miniscule movement of his head.

But I never did that.

Will glanced back at the portal, where a young man with pale skin and golden hair stepped out of the portal, giving Will a deathly glare.

Do people live here? Will thought, keeping one eye on his opponent and the other on his map. Written across the map in large letters was a concise note to himself.

Time-loop.

Secure V.I.P. before he picks them off. List below.

His name’s Kyle, BTW. Use that to fluster him.

Jason’s auguries piss him off real good.

Check ‘Getting Started’ section in the legend once safe.

“Long time no see, Kyle. Did you miss me?” Will said, circling at a safe distance without stopping. One thing Will knew for sure was that it was difficult to make a portal to catch a moving target.

Difficult, but not impossible.

“Don’t bullshit me,” ‘Kyle’ said, pointing up at Will. “You don’t know who I am any more than I know who you are, William Oh.”

Will cocked his head.

“You don’t know who I am?” Will asked aloud.

“How arrogant. You think I should know the name of a one-armed wretch with an overgrown Porter Class who was born in the ass-end of nowhere more than twenty Floors below me?”

“Thank the gods.” Will said.

“…What?” Kyle asked.

“Someone who doesn’t know who I am. You have no idea how nice it is to not have my reputation precede me.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not much,” Will said, using the time bought by taunting this ‘Kyle’ fellow to read his own notes.

“I don’t suppose you would be willing to let us leave the Floor?” Will asked.

“Tell you what: Leave half your people on this Floor and I’ll allow you to leave.” Kyle said.

“What do you intend to do with the ones I would leave?” Will asked.

“That’s none of your business.” Kyle said.

“Then we cannot come to an arrangement. If I abandoned half of everyone every time things got hard, I would have no one left by the time I got here.” Will said.

“Eventually, your little notes to yourself will tell you to give me what I want.”

“Hey, I’m never gonna get bored doing this. It’s always the first time for me.” Will said.

“How about this?” Will continued, his mental gaze landing on a description of a strange object that seemed to be at the center of the loop. “You let us out or I shove that vortex on the Key Site up your ass.”

Kyle’s eye twitched.

Emotional response to either the vortex or getting things shoved up his ass. Figure out which.

“Your luck won’t last forever, William Oh.” Kyle said before stepping backwards through a portal and vanishing.

If he showed up on the map, he was at least twenty miles out. Either that, or he had found a way to mask his Class.

Come to think of it…I couldn’t see his Class, Will thought as he began gathering up his newly-arrived Party, along with Jason and Badur.

A small correction of origin: the author publishes this chapter on NovelPhoenix, and this version was copied without approval.

But he called me an overgrown Porter. So either he perceives my Class, or he’s fought me enough to guess my base Class…Wrong.

Not too far off, though.

“Lady and gentlemen, we seem to be trapped in a time-loop on this Floor.” Will said, turning his attention to his Party. “Jason, here’s your augury bag,” Will said, retrieving the bag from his Dimensional Storage and tossing it to him. His Phantom Hands had been going and grabbing things while he talked to the maniac.

“There’s a deep conversation we need to have about your luck buff,” Will said, waggling his finger at Jason. “But there’s no time right now.”

“There’s a weird…thing atop the Key Site about twelve miles that away.” Will said. “Loth and I are going to figure it out, while the rest of you keep each other alive and un-kidnapped.”

It seemed as though Will’s notes always cut off when he approached the vortex, which implied he died every time, but even if that were the case, that meant it was dangerous enough for him to need to figure out what it was. If it was that important, it was probably at the heart of…whatever this thing was.

“Loth, how is your Draconic Domain handling the surroundings?”

“Well enough. I appear to be starting from scratch each time so it doesn’t seem like living through multiple loops is speeding up the process. I’ve got his scent and I’ll use it to create triggers for traps to hopefully take away his homefield advantage.”

Will picked up everyone who needed help and began blazing towards the Key Site in the distance.

It seems smaller than my notes suggest…Will thought…frowning as he approached the Key Site, taking a picture and making constant notes, as he didn’t know when they would be cut off.

“Stop.” Loth said, grabbing him by the collar as he approached the Key Site.

“Do you see that?” Loth asked, pointing at the edge of the strange vortex.

Will paused and took a moment, staring at the spot Loth had indicated. A moment later, he spotted it. A subtle, uniform shift in the air pressure created the tiniest refraction, creating an invisible bubble around the spiralling miasma vortex.

By itself in a static setting, it wouldn’t be too hard to see, but against the swirling vortex, it vanished.

Will picked up a rock and threw it.

The instant the rock hit the bubble, it vanished.

Will got closer and took a stick and gently tossed it forward.

Half the stick disappeared while the other half clattered to the ground. Anything that passed the invisible line was cleaved away from reality.

The same was true with Miasma and Abilities as well. Nothing seemed to be able to cross that line, despite being able to see past the bubble.

If visual information can pass through, shouldn’t other things be able to as well? Will mused, frowning.

“Explains why he’s so confident that he’s not even bothering to stop us.” Will thought aloud.

If someone started poking around the core mechanic of Will’s power, he’d probably have a conniption, but this guy was letting them play around with it, completely confident that they couldn’t do anything to it.

What is he doing? Just waiting to try again at the start of the next loop or hatching some kind of plot?

Is it moving? Will thought, frowning, unsure of the accuracy of his naked eye, especially when faced with the optical illusion of a vortex in front of an invisible refraction of light.

“Badur, you have measuring sticks?”

“Yes milord.”

“Get a long one.”

***Kyle Eggers, level 83 Steel Trap Mind***

They’re wasting their time. Again.

They’d settled into a repetitive stalemate these last thirty or so loops, which despite being tedious was an excellent outcome for Kyle.

He thrived on repetitive stalemates.

He’d long since figured out the limits of Wiliam Oh’s notes to himself. He was able to put himself on guard and fill in the most important details, but he was forced to read his own notes at the beginning of each loop.

The longer the loops went on, the longer it would take to familiarize himself with the situation. Eventually information would be lost, summarized and shortened, losing meaning and important details as he went. And even then it would still take time for him to catch up.

Too much time.

Kyle never lost a single detail. He couldn’t forget a damned thing, from twenty four thousand yeas ago when he’d been forced by a warlord to take the Record-keeper Class, until this very moment.

It was maddening, which was why he spent most of his time between Coils in stasis, sleeping away time between the visits of Climbers, consuming their memories to rebalance his own psyche.

He needed half-forgotten, vague memories and notions to balance out his crystal-clear memories of every single second since the age of thirteen. He felt like his brain was slowly turning to stone and the only way to slow the petrification was to consume others. For a few decades afterwards, he always felt better.

Like a normal person.

Until eventually those vague, half-remembered notions began to petrify in his mind and he needed another sacrifice.

As time marched inevitably on, the number of Climbers going through the Floor dwindled further and further, and he spent more and more time asleep, his mind slowly petrifying all the while.

This sudden visit of hundreds of Climbers was nothing less than a gift from the gods, and Kyle had no intention of letting them slip away.

Even now, he felt like an automaton ticking away, hundreds of years of memories guiding every action with unnatural surety in every movement. No room for doubt, no room for thought, or improvisation.

He felt as bored as if he were lacing his boots as he strapped the shivering sacrifice down on the table and began weaving his Abilities over their skull.

“If you must blame anyone for this, blame your Lord.” Kyle said. “Normally the feisty ones have the most satisfying memories, so by all accounts, I should’ve gone after him first, but this fish isn’t one I can land without significant preparation.”

In some ways, the dragonkin is even harder to land as she’s killed me every time I go after her, but she can’t send messages to herself, so she’s second priority.

“Mm?” The sacrifice grunted through the gag, looking up at him with pleading eyes.

“If it makes you feel any better…by tomorrow, you won’t remember any of this,” Kyle said before guiding the strings of miasma into his brain-food.

You won’t remember anything at all.

Suddenly William Oh plowed through the room, locked in combat with Kyle Eggers himself.

The two shot past Kyle and his meal, unleashing vicious magics and smashing furniture on their way through. As they were about to slam into the wall, they vanished into nothing.

Kyle’s mental petrification began to fade as something new happened.

“The fuck was that?”

“Mmm?” Kyle’s meal shrugged.

***William Oh***

“It’s exponential.” Loth said, turning her attention from the math in front of her to Will.

“The bubble is expanding exponentially. It’s moving very slow right now, but by tomorrow afternoon, it’ll have expanded to cover the entire Floor.”

Will glanced at the evening sun with a frown. “Floor time or Mason time?”

“Floor time.” Loth replied.

“So, exactly twenty-four hours after we arrived, it will swallow the entire Floor.” Will mused.

“it’s what’s resetting the loop,” Will said as Loth nodded in agreement. So an invisible barrier expanded outward, eventually scouring everything from the Floor and resetting them all to the day before.

Will supposed the bubble then retracted and formed another of the snail-shell layers spiralling in on each other.

I wonder if there are other ‘me’s’ recorded inside the whorl of dimensions, layered so closely together, but never touching, Will thought, studying the vortex closely.

The eerily smooth vortex sported a blemish as a lump formed that caused two layers to touch for a moment.

“The fuck was that?” Will asked.