Their talents are genuine. I’ve witnessed an old woman with hardly any mana in her body connect to something greater and divine my identity. As I have said, I have a theory regarding the origin of mana, and it is quite possible the seers’ gift and mana share it.

  — Excerpt from Notes For Newstar

  Day 1042, 12:15 PM

  Day by day, seven years passed. And yet, we’ve barely covered eight thousand miles of the empire’s obscenely huge border. I suffered no backlash from seven years of looping. For the most part, I’ve been doing new things all the time. I even spent a loop sculpting my realm. An utterly futile effort.

  The only thing that worried me was that I was giving the outer gods and the cultists a whole lot of time to hone their ideal future. On the other hand, if they had developed plans and contingencies for the future events, and then the ripples of my actions change those events, that was kind of worse than not being prepared at all.

  At least that’s how I comforted myself.

  About half of those loops I spent doing alchemy. The constant failures, which would’ve bankrupted most alchemists my realm and driven the rest insane, didn’t even cause a ripple in my mental state.

  The strange thing with alchemy was that you could tell when you succeeded. Your failed concoctions turned to goo on complete failures, or appeared clear, similar to a potion, but leaked mana and lost their effectiveness within seconds. The latter were near misses, and they helped you hone in on the potion you were after. Or perhaps another you weren’t.

  That implied several interesting conclusions, such as the existence of a finite, predetermined number of potions, probably in the system archive of some sort. Or the fact that I was getting close to making an unknown potion, with unknown effects.

  Pink mist swirled inside my retort flask, translucent, but slowly turning pink again as it filled the baker. A faint zesty aroma lingered in the air, not quite citrus-like, but close. Like I was recreating the smell of lemons from memory, but couldn’t get it right no matter what I tried.

  Unlike in my previous attempts, mana didn’t bleed out of the drops as they fell, meaning I had successfully brewed something.

  Funny thing with how skills work, I had to package the concoction in vials and make them ready for use before I could identify them with Expert Appraisal.

  Finally, ten minutes later, I had a vial ready. Minor Second Chance Potion registered in the back of my mind.

  Really? Minor? That means there are other, better versions I could make. It kind of felt like a slap, but I didn’t let it taint my success. Besides, just making the minor version should prove boon enough in the war against the cults.

  Now, what to do with the formula? Should I submit it anonymously, or attach my name to it? When should I do it? The sooner I do it, the more I undermine the cults, but if I leak it and then redo, the cults are going to go after me. And based on the rumors about the empire-wide wave of attacks, they won’t send level-appropriate assassins after me.

  A couple of attackers a realm ahead of me, I could handle. A passing grandmaster, who happens to be in the area, would swat me dead a hundred times over before I could muster some resistance.

  Better wait, perfect the formulas, and brew hundreds of potions I could store in my spatial pouch.

  That would require a lot of capital, but after running the numbers, the production cost of those potions should be around fifteen second realm manarium crystals per batch, three per vial, ten if you take into account profit and inevitable failed brewings.

  Coldridges would’ve become filthy rich with this business. Just selling the recipes should have earned them a fortune.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Basically, I ended up with a money press everyone wanted me to use, but that came with murder attached at the other end. The most sensible approach was to forget the money and use it once I reach a dead end, where I would die either way. An addition to vengeful, since the cultists and the outer gods were almost certainly going to be the ones to kill me.

  It’s of no consequence for now. The next thing to do is make a potion which will increase the odds of awakening. The formula should be somewhat similar.

  That one took a total of thirty years stretched across twenty-eight different imperial cities, and nearly a week of the Explorer’s Gate’s exalt’s time. Based on our progress, we had another forty years of time to search before the exalt’s deadline came up.

  But to say dabbling in the lab, working on my skills, and mana control, would be a gross over-exaggeration of my need to be productive.

  “I threaten your exalt.” I placed the grandmaster to threaten the wounded exalt.

  Apparently, every world had board games of some sort. Which made sense, humans have an innate need for socialization, entertainment, and to keep their minds active. Board games made one of the simplest and most obvious solutions to the problem.

  The guildmaster of the local adventurers’ guild glared at me. He reached out to move one of his masters to block the attack, but he was just delaying the inevitable. With a resigned face, he flicked the wounded exalt and toppled it.

  “Even if I block, you will have the game in eight moves,” the fifth realm mage said. “You’re a third realm mageknight. You must have spent a lot of time playing the war of two mountains?”

  “Some, I smiled.” The modular board strategy resembled simplified Cyclades without the sea.

  I spent several weeks playing it on and off, not because I enjoyed it the most, but because it was the most common one amongst the awakened, and playing with non-awakened was a deal breaker. The advantage in mental faculties was too big to make for a proper game.

  “I was thinking of making a card game with civilisation building—” But the snob turned up his nose the moment cards were mentioned.

  Cards were a cursed thing the non-awakened used, not something proper awakened would be caught dead playing. Counting cards was too easy, as was memorizing each crease on the cards. They never even let me finish describing the localised Seven Wonders version I had in mind.

  I swallowed my frustration. It was time to skip town soon. With three more days remaining in the loop, I looked at the brothel. Old habits die hard, but I reminded myself how hollow such pleasures were. Well, they aren’t with the right person, but the brothels made me feel worse when I left than I did when I entered.

  Immortality sucks. I kicked a stray pebble, driving it between the bars and into the sewer.

  We’re about a third of the way around the border. If we keep going like this, we might run out of time. Should I ask the exalt about the reason for his deadline?

  No. Not until it becomes relevant, and that’s years away.

  I sighed and strolled around the city. A talented potter was working with clay in front of his store in full public. I stopped to watch him work the clay. He was the most common of the commoners, old, with strong, knobby hands. Still, he worked magic with a bit of torque and wet mud.

  There’s something deep there. Something I should learn.

  I watched him for the rest of the day. Then the next day tomorrow. Whatever it was, it was relaxing, his work meditative. I wanted to give him manarium for his effort, but that would see him killed.

  “Here.” I handed him a note worth ten thousand gold instead.

  He stared at me with amazed gratitude, then I realized he was having a heart attack from shock.

  Oh, fuck me!

  I grabbed the gasping old man’s wrist and sent a trickle of wood mana into his body, patching his heart, blood vessels, and ridding him of the tumor on his kidney.

  “Kid,” I told him, “you need to learn to take better care of yourself. Take it easy with fatty foods.”

  He still stared at me, the pain in his chest gone, the disbelief in his eyes even clearer than it had been a moment ago.

  I left so as not to further traumatize him, wondering what was so important about the scene I had been observing the past hours. Yes, humans could create magic with their minds and simple hand gestures just like they could create magic with their minds and simple hand gestures.

  That he was sculpting earth with knowledge much like an earth mage also would wasn’t lost on me, but just thinking that magic was an extension of our nature whether or not one used mana was too much of an oversimplification.

  The exalt returned the next day, and then a new loop started.

  “He’s not here either,” I said after my ritual with a map and highlighting the areas the exalt had searched, but failed to find anything.

  “Are you certain?” The man suddenly broke the established script.

  I nodded. “As certain as I would be if I sent you out to search this patch of wilderness, overturning every square mile of it.”

  He held my gaze, then nodded knowingly. “Next city, then.”