Matthew Jones
Stories
7
Chapters
2,283
Words
4.7 K
Comments
0
Reading
23 m
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He was Zach Noveda, the last surviving member of Noble House Noveda, the chosen of the angels… …and he had won. He honestly never thought he would win. He He had tried to beat the invasion so many times, attempt after attempt, idea after idea, until eventually, he became convinced this was his fate. To stay there forever, in an endlessly looping world. All this power and knowledge, all the revelations about his past life, all the insights into people around him… the time loop dangled these things…
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As Zorian watched the massive angel tree and demonic Cyclops torso barrel through the air towards one another, his thoughts inevitably took a depressing and fatalistic turn. He wasn’t deluded enough to think they could solve this crisis without the city taking massive casualties, but as he watched the impending clash of titans in front of him, he couldn’t help but conclude that Jornak was right. The city was going to get leveled to the ground, one way or the other. Thus far, the collateral damage…
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In the middle of Cyoria, relatively close to the massive bottomless hole around which the city was built, there was an anomaly. A large mansion sat there like a lonely sentinel, surrounded by trees. No road led to it, and the surrounding forest was far too thick and wild for a city park. The area was perfectly circular, even cutting several buildings in half at the edges, as if someone had switched a portion of the northern forest with a random city district with zero care as to how it would naturally fit…
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Cyoria was burning. A number of important buildings had been leveled to the ground by the initial artillery exchange, and several sections of the city were ablaze with sapient fire that deliberately sought to burn as much of the city as possible. The invading soldiers did not help matters, as they had a tendency to set buildings ablaze unless there were defending forces to stop them from running amok. Despite this, Zorian felt the situation was actually pretty good. Based on the previous invasions he had…
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Standing in Rea’s home, Zorian ignored the curious gazes leveled at him from Rea and Haslush and kept silent, calmly considering things. A million questions swam through his head. Why were these three gathered in Rea’s house, despite the fact they shouldn’t even know about each other? Why did Rea think he could help in this situation and what were their enemies even thinking when they orchestrated this kidnaping? Was this some kind of strike against him and Zach? Why not go after all of his…
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Arranging a meeting with Daimen was easy this time. Not that it had ever been truly difficult to do that, but after learning the basics of the local language and customs over the restarts, the task had become totally trivial. He just had to approach the Taramatula in the right way, and they didn’t even bother trying to turn him away – they went to fetch Daimen after only a few minutes of convincing, leaving Zorian to wait at the entrance. He was currently flipping through Daimen’s notebooks to pass…
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After the two groups of time travelers agreed to the shaky truce, the daily fighting stopped and the situation in Cyoria stabilized. Zach and Zorian no longer sent their simulacrums to raid invader bases and assassinate their leaders, and the invaders seemed to have no interest in testing their luck with them. Zorian had been worried that their enemies would try to strike at them indirectly, perhaps by sending the law enforcement after them or by attacking targets technically unrelated to them, but…
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Standing on the roof of one of the academy buildings, the two groups stared at one another without speaking. The situation had already been tense, and Jornak’s threats only made it more uneasy and unstable. Zorian suspected that if one of them made a single suspicious move, the other side would attack and the whole meeting would instantly degenerate into violence. Probably the only reason that hadn’t happened thus far was that both sides realized they couldn’t meaningfully hurt the other. They had…
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Before the time loop, Zorian had never frequented the taverns, restaurants and other establishments that were so common in Cyoria. They were a waste of time and money in his opinion, and it wasn’t like he had any real friends to go drinking with. It didn’t help that he had seen more than one of his classmates succumb to the lure of big city life in his two years of education. Rural teenagers like him were especially vulnerable, since they had little to no parental supervision and were unaccustomed to…
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Veyers was a frustrating part of the time loop mystery for Zorian. The fact that he had been deliberately erased from Zach’s mind and that he started each restart dead made him a strong suspect for the real identity for Red Robe. However, that raised the question of how Veyers had managed to become a permanent looper. It couldn’t have been through the method Zorian had used – everything he and Zach knew indicated that had been pure luck, and that deliberately replicating it would be both hard and…
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