Chương 27: Reliable Script

Even though it was the third time he had been woken up by Cillin's morning knocks, Nolotl simply didn't feel anything. Perhaps his status didn't say that he was afflicted with Apathy, but still a powerful sense of futility assaulted him. He had been so beneath Enantyum that the man had almost put an end to his life without a second thought. The worst part was that when the chronomancer had afflicted him with Stasis, the diviner could tell that in those eyes was no murderous intention.

For the Regressor, it just had been a lesson that he had to give to the Interlooper. A lesson that could have put an end to him with the slightest of misplays. Just like the previous loop, Nolotl followed the script, though this time without pressing Cillin about her physical attraction. For better or worse, he had experimented enough with the time loop for the time being and he didn't want to deviate from his initial itinerary for the time being.

Though his previous brutal death at the hands of thirty-seven bloodthirsty warriors paled in comparison to Enantyum's nonchalant demonstration. Getting each of your cells individually stopped in time whilst still being conscious was an experience that the diviner would only hope for his worse enemies.

Yes, you heard that right, Nolotl Xocoyotzin was a spiteful person, and he would replicate that effect on his ambushers without batting an eye even when he knew how much it hurt, not only in body, but also mind and spirit. I saw it in his eyes, he really didn't care if I died. And why would he? If only a speck of what he has entailed is true, he can just let me die and take a new me from the next loop as I'm only one loop into this, I'm easily replaceable for the time being as I'm 'free' to loop around.

It was a pragmatic and pessimistic thought, but Nolotl knew that it was true. He simply had no intrinsic value. I guess if I survive for enough loops the sunk-cost fallacy will strike him hard and I will have more leeway to act. But… I won't count on it. As he continued to write the standardized status sheets of every student and staff member that passed through his booth, Nolotl resigned himself to let this loop go the same time around as his first life.

Only because he knew the ambush would be manageable, which would allow him to focus on his magic.

"You look a bit down," Enantyum shamelessly as he presented himself in front of the booth. This is all your fault. Of course, the diviner didn't speak those thoughts aloud and simply limited himself to reading the man's status, even if everything was fabricated except his mana and alignment percentages.

"No noticeable changes," Nolotl informed him with the same tone he used for the rest of people coming for status readings. This actually surprised him, even if he didn't show it. Last loop Enantyum had managed to increase his mana pool by 0. 5—meaning half the total mana of a normal person—yet this time the value had barely increased by a hundredth. What has brought such a drastic difference?

"Oh well, that was to be expected," the man shrugged.

"Continue doing what you have to do. We will see each other at the gathering of empyreans." And with that Enantyum walked out of the office, still tormenting the terian's mind even if he basically promised he wouldn't be seeing him for fifty days straight. Once he was free from his scribal duties, Nolotl continued following the script, going as far as repeating his early conversation with Clonazepam at the start of the month.

He doubted that would have any repercussions, but the butterfly effect had told him that anything could spiral into something far greater than expected.

"What has been the cause?" He bit his fingernails in his room whilst killing time until Xanax's lecture.

"None of the three gnosiamancers were present—not the Finil twins nor Luminol—why's that? Is it Enala's survival? Is it because I made myself valuable to the twins? Or is it because I told Cillin to keep her guard around the astromancer?" The diviner bit on his finger enough to draw blood, the taste of iron being the only thing taking him out of his concentration.

"The worst part is that I only know if those three weren't there, but I cannot say the same thing for the taximancer nor the akyromancer. They could have still been there and I just didn't have enough presence of mind to fixate on them." The one problem with Perfect Recollection was that if the memory wasn't a clear one, there wasn't much to be done with it.

Whilst a gnosiamancer with the Boon could read a book from memory, that only worked if they carefully looked at each page—not necessarily reading it—and not just simply flipping through the pages as that was bound to create many lagoons of information and blurs of ink.

"But why has this Yaxkin decided to bring so many soldiers? Did it affect him so much that he couldn't recruit the gnosiamancers that he forwent subtlety and risked an international incident? But why?" Why, why. It all reduced to that. He simply didn't have enough information to fill the gaps.

"I need to survive the ambush and interrogate him. Hmm… He won't talk and because he isn't connected to the Cognition I can't simply rape his mind… This is bad. Could I trick him into speaking, some kind of villain monologue? Hmm, that doesn't sound bad. But that doesn't matter quiet yet, my priority this loop is surviving the ambush and getting the Second Mind enchantment, I can solve all those unknowns in the future." For the time being, Nolotl focused on his own status.

Name: Nolotl Xocoyotzin Age: 19 Race: Celestial-Terian Main Resource: Mana Resource Deposit Size: 25. 36 Progression Level: 5 (Information) Accumulated Experience: 3. 67% Top Alignments: - Information ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ 75. 02112% - Light ▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 13. 30427% - Void ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 2.

78235% List of Titles: - Interlooper - Empyrean - Gnosiamancer - High Priest of Nochochenca List of Boons: - Lesser Alignment Assimilation - Lesser Read Thoughts - Perfect Recollection - Resistance to Cognitive Harm - Cognition Connection List of Blessings: - Touched By Information - Starguided List of Proficiencies: - Animal Form (Quetzal) - Animal Form (Crow) - Gnosiamancy - Divination - Insights List of Enchantments: - Life Slot: Argent Bindings of the Twiceborn There weren't many changes, but there were several significant ones.

For starters, he was now level 5 and had acquired Lesser Alignment Assimilation, very important changes. As for some numeric changes, his Information and Void Alignment had gingerly increased. The last one mostly to that incident with the Void Tower. Beyond that, the last change was his tracked experience. He was a little over level 5, which was a good metric of his progress.

The total celestial alignment was a farm of experience for a gnosiamancer like him, simply looking at the starry sky of a perfectly aligned galaxy was enough for him to gain experience. But the most important part that he wanted to look up wasn't his status, but rather a new section that had been created after he had gotten the Lesser Alignment Assimilation Boon.

Lesser Alignment Assimilation Progress: - Light ▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 22% - Arcane ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 1% - Life ▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 10% - Time ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 5% - Information ▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱ 52% - Space ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 1% - Death ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 1% - Chaos ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 1% - Void ▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ 3% Even without the Boon description and everything Enantyum had said, Nolotl intrinsically knew that he would be granted a spell proficiency slot whenever the value of any of those bars reached its maximum.

He couldn't say if that intrinsic knowledge came from the Boon itself, his high Information Alignment, the Insight proficiency, or the Real-Time Status divination. Not that the answer mattered much.

"Hmm, it doesn't seem to be related to my actual alignments as technically speaking my Void affinity is greater than Life's…" Perhaps it was his Insight proficiency speaking, but he knew what was happening.

"I see, this is understanding of the Alignment rather than affinity itself. Because of my training in Tezlan—both theological and martial—I have a higher understanding of Light and Life that what I do with other Alignments. Considering I'm quite advanced with some, this won't prove to be as much as an issue as I thought." But seeing that even after a full decade dedicated to gnosiamancy he only had halfway assimilation did demoralize him. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I just wish it won't take two actual full decades for each Alignment… Otherwise, I fear how much time Enantyum actually hopes to remain in this loop…" He didn't even want to start thinking about it.

"But I don't quite enjoy that I don't have decimals to the percentages, these values are far too big for me to keep a moment-to-moment basis log of them," Nolotl said just to change the subject.

"Though I guess it's better than not knowing the progress." The worst part was that he wouldn't reap any reward from his new Boon and level just yet, but he could live with that for the time being. At least if he did manage to get that enchantment which he had already dedicated a third of a year of his life to get. Anything else was secondary at this point. Soon the time for Xanax's seminar arrived and the lecture hall filled, forcing him to stop with his antics.

No matter if this would be his second time attending the lecture he was being pretty serious about not deviating from the script. As boring as it was repeating the same class, he couldn't deny that he was learning. Xanax's classes were the most advanced in all of the academy as he was one of the few tower masters that bothered to impart lectures. This was obviously seen in the attendance rate as most people were postgraduates, not even necessarily gnosiamancers.

Being taught by an archmagi and the most powerful gnosiamancer was a privilege not that many people could boast of having done. Oh, pulsars! Dread settled in Nolotl's mind. Xanax is an old archmagi and he still won't be more much more than level 15, and Enantyum intends for me to complete the Alignment Assimilation series when the last Boon is bound to be unlocked at that level!

The diviner didn't know if to feel awe or desperation at the hopes—or perhaps machinations would be a more adequate term—that Enantyum directed towards him. Whilst he waddled in the horrors of the time loop and the mysterious thoughts of the Empyrean of Time, the lecture came to an end and just like the first time around, Xanax's Simulacrum appeared next to him. Xanax behaved just like before as Nolotl followed the script, allowing no deviations whatsoever.

Unfortunately, this meant waiting a whole week as he hadn't asked the ritual question at the start of the loop but after reading the Goldsmithing Stars book. Whilst annoying, this gave him the justification to be at the Archives and study about the Lesser Alignment Assimilation Boon. His research didn't bring much knew beyond what he already knew, but it allowed him to increase his Information assimilation by 1%, which was pretty nice for only a week of work. Only forty-seven more at this pace.

Or around eight whole loops. Ugh, that's awful now that I think about it. It was a bit odious to have wasted so much time, but the memory of the Second Mind ritual still lingered in his mind thanks to Perfect Recollection so getting the actual spellware from Xanax was only a formality to follow the script. He continued to think of the misery that was his new Boon during the repeated conversation of the next seminar.

The days had hastily went by with his self-study, but he had managed to recreate his spell fuses and show them to Xanax just like the first time. The diviner only stopped with his inner brooding when the archmagi looked like he was going to blink out of existence.

"Wait!" Nolotl called out to him as he knew the Simulacrum would have disappeared in the next instant.

"Yes?" Xanax inquired.

"On addition to all the material you have suggested, could I get access to the Simulacrum spellware?" So far the archmagi had proven to be dissatisfied with the little use Nolotl made of his Empyrean perks, so he guessed it wouldn't be that much of a petition to request for such spell, no matter if it was a protected one. Second Mind had also been, after all.

"You should really focus on getting Second Mind first, Nolotl," the Tower Master advised him.

"I will, I will," the diviner nodded in agreement.

"But I do best whilst being able to procrastinate into another useful task. It's not healthy to solely focus on one given task, after all." He wasn't even lying, most of his side quests were born out of the desire to procrastinate, only that he also hated being inefficient, which led him to study weird topics and spells to relax. That was how he had managed to get Dijkstra's Routing and his excellent spell fuses.

"Hmm…" The old mage pondered as he combed his long beard with his hand.

"I guess at could, but it's too complex of a spell for you to even learn at this point, especially when your focus should be at the ritual."

"I have double proficiency with it so it shouldn't be that hard to learn it, right?"

"Double proficiency?" The Simulacrum raised a brow and then snickered.

"Oh, I know what's happening here. You think this Simulacrum is the Simulacrum spell," he let an additional hearty laugh.

"Is it not?" It was the terian's turn to frown. For starters, that sentence made no sense to him and for a moment thought if the archmagi had switched languages.

"In a matter of speaking, you are both right and wrong. What you are seeing here is not the Simulacrum spell as such, but True Simulacrum. No one calls it that, hence the confusion," his mentor explained.

"I guess that could be solved by calling the Simulacrum spell Lesser Simulacrum, but I'm digressing. You can't have a double proficiency with the spell because True Simulacrum is not a divination, but a conjuration."

"Wait, so the you present here is a summon in the utmost literal sense?" Nolotl voiced out his surprise.

"Physical too," Xanax casually put his hand on the student's shoulder. The Empyrean of Information's mind stopped working for a second and then he jumped out of his seat.

"Wait! Are you telling me that you weren't faking tangibility with illusions and telekinesis?"

"No?" The True Simulacrum shrugged.

"Why would I do that? That sounds like a massive hassle."

"…because it sounds and looks cool?" Nolotl reasoned.

"Sometimes I forget you are teenager," Xanax sighed.

"Though I guess I can also see the appeal of what you are saying. But no, this isn't a projection, but a very real summon. You can actually substitute the conjuration school of the True Simulacrum with transmutation too, and whilst those ones are better, they are much more of a hassle to maintain because they are real bodies in every sense of the word." Xanax was saying hassle, but in all honesty, Nolotl could only hear opportunity. I wonder if a second body would have the same limitations as my Animal Spirits.

I guess not because they have spirit on the name and they should be bound to my soul and not the body nor mind, but who knows. But he let those ponderations fly free and focused at the matter of hand.

"I guess it makes sense that I wouldn't be able to learn it just yet, then," he admitted.

"It's really hard for me to cast anything without double proficiency."

"For you and everyone, boy," the old archmagi chuckled and patted him in the shoulder. The touch was definitely real now that he thought about it.

"Double proficiency is the standard for casting for a reason; with single proficiency still being a quite difficult task. As for no proficiency… well, unless you want to waste years of your life and copious amounts of mana for a single spell, you could still do it, but the barrier of entry is cosmological." And Nolotl didn't doubt it.

Even the Second Mind ritual that he had been readying for now a third of a year was extremely complex for him as he only had a single proficiency with it due to its nature as an enchantment spell. The only reason why he even thought he could perform it was thanks to the looming total celestial alignment. Hmm, maybe Enantyum was right. Having access to all generic schools of casting is definitely useful. But having to wait for level 10 then having to manually assimilate all alignments…

that's bound to be a massive chore. Though it was true that Xanax was also exaggerating as a normal person could cast a first-tier spell without any proficiencies in a matter of months, rather than years. But I guess a tier one spell doesn't even materialize in Xanax's head, the young diviner mentally sighed.

"But having said that, it's true that you have double proficiency with the standard Simulacrum spell," Xanax elaborated.

"Perhaps it's not tangible, but being able to have another pair of eyes and casting at a distance is certain quite the boon."

"Yes, that sounds incredibly beneficial," Nolotl nodded.

"So the actual Simulacrum spell is a gnosiamancy divination?"

"Indeed," the archmagi nodded in kind.

"I guess I could give you the schematics for this spell, but do not fiddle with it too much. You have barely more than a month at your disposal to deal with a whole unknown ritual and dealing with a fifth tier spell won't be an easy task." Whilst tiers weren't an official classification by the Alignment, it was a helpful guide that mages had done to classify the difficulty of magic. It started with the cantrips that could barely called spells and rather movements of magic, and it ended with ninth tier spells.

If the time loop was created out of a single spell, Nolotl expected that was the difficulty of the spell. The Real-Time Status was bound to be a third tier divination, whilst Dijkstra's Routing was a fourth tier one, meaning that the diviner had some actual experience with complicated divinations. Though, of course, he chose to ignore the fact that it had taken him months to learn the latter. If anything, that only showed the raw possibilities of the routing spell.

"Don't worry, I trust my chances," the Interlooper said with a broad smile. He was going to complete that ritual this time around, no matter what he needed to do.

"Oh well, don't say that I haven't warned you," Xanax said, not believing his odds after the student showed so much nonchalance.

"I will be sending the spellware alongside the ritual's." And with that, the archmagi's True Simulacrum vanished out of existence. Soon came the moment for Enala to appear in his room. A powerful sense of déjà vu assaulted the terian as he heard the knocks on the door, and with some hesitation he opened the door to reveal the western enchantress." Tower Master Xanax asked me to bring you this tome," the female gnosiamancer's voice was shallow and faint, yet sweetly harmonious.

And yet, there was absolutely no recognition in her eyes. Nolotl was aware that this was bound to happen, but it still tore his heart apart. Perhaps it had only been less than fifty days that he had interacted with her, but it felt awful all of those hours of company and work disappear. Enala Pril no longer recognized him, he was only a strange to her.

Perhaps it was because he had been so forceful with her on the previous loop, but he felt a powerful guilt assault him as he spoke with the mindless repetition guided by Perfect Recollection. But truth was, his actual guilt came from another part.

"I c-can give you my body," Enala uttered that awful sentence yet again. Only now he was aware that it wasn't a thought-out exchange, but a blurt of an ailing mind. And he did nothing to change it. Nolotl picked up the Second Mind tome along with the notes on the Simulacrum spell and closed the door on her face. I will only succeed with a reliable script, he told himself as he cast more emotion-numbing spells on himself. They worked. Or at least until he heard the enchantress died three days later.