…? What the hell did Aurelius have to do with anything?

  Aurelius stared around the room in sheer, absolute confusion. Of the 4 people in the room, the three mages seemed to be engrossed in their own personal conversation.

  Aurelius could not find an opening to ask what exactly was going on as well, instead being stuck to speculate. He was following the conversation as best as he could, until they mentioned that the sage had… 5 years to live? Was that right?

  “Err… What’s going on?” Aurelius asked, raising his hand up slowly as everyone else stared blankly at him, whose face had now become a mask of sheer social anxiety.

  “Are you dense? I’m dying, and you could help me be rid of this stupid illness.” Sage Yeltz scoffed.

  “For the sake of the 4 Dragons, EXPLAIN what you mean by that, Yeltz.” Mr. Tona exploded, pacing around his spot in annoyance.

  “Mr. Tona!” Seraphine yelled venomously, tears still clouding her vision.

  Mr. Tona just scoffed and raised his hands into the air, signalling his frustration with the conversation.

  With a dramatic pause and a well earned glare at Mr. Tona, Sage Yeltz let out a small sigh. Then, with a voice thick with sarcasm, she started her explanation.

  “Well, as luck would have it, it seems that an apostle of Quetzalcoatl, the Lost God, fell into my lap.”

  ???

  “What the fuck?” Seraphine muttered after Sage Yeltz’s explanation.

  Her sorrowful tears had dried out by now, replaced with confusion.

  “You’re telling me that the Lost God gets ‘found’ after 10 millenia and traps a single, mediocre kid in a… time loop?” Mr. Tona said in disbelief.

  Aurelius did a double take at the statement in indignation. While true, Mr. Tona had no right to spell it out in the open like that!

  “Apparently.” Sage Yeltz nodded, snapping the soul imaging orb into her hands.

  “His story checks out. He’s got an insane soul blueprint with an unregistered contract with the Commission, and I scrutinised the records on Varian. Turns out that Varian’s history has a lot of discrepancies.”

  “I used his friend to tag Varian, so if we’re lucky, we may find the location of the Fae Queen in time if Varian gets careless.” She explained.

  “So… Aurelius is going to act like a drug mule, and carry your blueprint over different timelines?” Mr. Tona asked, pointing at Aurelius in wonder.

  “How do you know the blueprint will hold up over the loops?” He asked.

  “I don’t. But since Aurelius brought over the contract with Pultris from the previous loop, until a better solution is found, it should make sense to tie the blueprint to his soul with a spirit contract with Pultris.” Sage Yeltz replied.

  “I made sure to tie the contract to his soul through his body instead of directly to his soul, so Pultris is still not quite aware of Aurelius’s situation. You see, I didn’t want Pultris exploding in his seals like the golem did so I used a restriction seal and made him sign it with second layer magic equivalent.”

  “...True creation.” Seraphine muttered with a mix of awe and horror, stealing curious glances at Aurelius.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I thought that my soul blueprint won’t affect beings at such high ranks?” Aurelius interjected, trying to fit into this kind of… vigorous Q&A session.

  “...Do you really want Pultris to have access to your soul?” Sage Yeltz asked back, raising her eyebrows at Aurelius’s rather dumb question.

  “Ah… I see.” Aurelius answered back meekly when a question popped into his head.

  “W-Wait. Have you uploaded your blueprint into my soul already? When the hell did you do that?!” Aurelius asked in horror.

  “Yes. I did it when the contract was being made with Pultris. As the notary in the mystical sense during the signing, I had the ability to slip in an extra term without your consent.” Sage Yeltz shrugged, as if what she did wasn’t FRAUD.

  “Are there any OTHER hidden clauses that I don’t know about?!” Aurelius cried out.

  “...No.” Sage Yeltz said, after a very long, very suspicious pause.

  “So there ARE!” Aurelius wailed.

  “You don’t have to know.” Sage Yeltz said nonchalantly, completely ignoring the clearly mortified Aruelius.

  “Ok, so what is your plan regarding Aurelius now?” Seraphine asked skeptically, interrupting Aurelius’s attempt to protest Sage Yeltz’s unethical practices.

  He should report this evil, amoral monster to the ethics committee immediately!

  “Well, I need to find the limitation of the time loop and energy ‘source’ of the loop.” Sage Yeltz explained.

  “The little shit being my drug mule is really kind of a temporary solution, and I want a more permanent one if possible.”

  “If I could replicate this ‘looping’ mechanism at a smaller scale, I could theoretically reset myself entirely, while leaving my research outside of the boundaries of the loop.”

  “Also, if it is the case that this has something to do with what those loonies talk about with parallel universes, I would at least need to research on his soul-blueprint so I can attain archsage hood in 2 years time.” She explained.

  Ah… Aurelius thought. It seemed to him that he had become quite… the versatile tool for Sage Yeltz…

  “Hmm, from what I understand about temporal magic,” Mr. Tona started contemplatively, stroking his chin.

  “The caster sometimes expands the area of effect for limiting the set duration of the magic… I suppose that we know that the area of the field is at least up to the 4th planet in the solar system, since that’s where the spirit realm’s boundary ends.”

  “So for temporal magic of such size, I assume that one could set ‘reset’ conditions of time restraints as a limitation instead.” He suggested.

  Seraphine fell into thought at this suggestion as well, and after a short moment of silence, she suggested something else.

  “To add on to that point, I think that since the caster of this magic is presumed to be the Lost God, not Aurelius, it makes sense that Aurelius’s death being a reset condition could be interpreted as a limitation as well. It doesn’t directly benefit the god after all.” Seraphine said.

  “Indeed… These two limitations do bring down the energy requirements down to a reasonable level… At least, a fathomable level.” Mr. Tona replied enthusiastically.

  “Interesting points from two dimwits.” Sage Yeltz interrupted, clapping her hands together.

  “Now, I will remind you that I have work to finish after this. And I want you all to get lost and think about these things on your own time.” She said dismissively, waving her hand around in a shooing motion.

  “I’ll send over documents about what I want you to do after work tonight, so get the hell lost.” She announced, snapping her fingers and opening the door with magic.

  Aurelius immediately jumped up, eager to leave this… uncomfortable room with uncomfortable conversations.

  “You.” Sage Yeltz growled, frowning up at Aurelius.

  Aurelius felt his internal mechanics break with that single word. Why did he need to suffer so much! What more does this madwoman want from him!

  “Come closer.” She commanded.

  Mr. Tona and Seraphine inched towards the door in the meantime, torn between the choice of eavesdropping and leaving the room.

  With a deep, tired sigh, Sage Yeltz’s face softened a smidgen before she started to talk to Aurelius with a serious tone.

  “...Look, since I’m in a decent mood right now, I’ll tell you this. From what I’ve heard from you, it seems that I was hard on you in the last loop.”

  Mr. Tona perked up at this statement, glancing over at Sage Yeltz with a mischievous grin.

  “And honestly, you deserve it. You said that you came into the Commission unannounced and immediately sent the whole DME(Department of Magical Enforcement) over to your shitty school.”

  “And it turns out that the operation ended in a failure with my active participation, and in my city. Let’s admit it. That would not have been great on my resume.” She growled.

  Aurelius gulped at this statement, getting a flashback to every time that Sage Yeltz was… rather unkind to himself.

  “So, what I’m saying is, do not, ever, try doing what you did in that loop ever again.” Sage Yeltz growled, making Aurelius nod weakly.

  “Teleport them back, Wally.” Sage Yeltz waved, her back turned to the doorway as she stood up to get back behind her desk…

  As Aurelius found himself finally out of range of Sage Yeltz’s glare and in the vicinity of the much less hostile Mr. Tona, he found Mr. Tona chuckling to himself.

  “Hehe, don’t worry kiddo, what she said over there is her equivalent of an apology, really. Don’t take it to heart!”