Chương 48: Chapter 45: Gaping Void

As always, Paizon's arrival at the gathering was completely unpredictable and this time he arrived exactly on time. Emphasis on exactly. The gazes of the already gathered empyreans were split as suddenly the last two empyreans simultaneously materialized in the room.

"Who do you think has arrived first?" Paizon asked to everyone.

"Like, this is very important. This way Nina completely loses the rights to criticize me." The Empyrean of Arcane had a clear 'I can still criticize you for not being well before the agreed hour' but she decided to be silent this time around, instead choosing to let out a tired yet dignified sigh.

Enantyum looked at Nolotl with more interest than usual, which was an easy task as the usual was none at all, but the master chronomancer failed to comment on anything and the meeting soon started with the same accelerated cadency of the previous loop. The Regressor looked somewhat thankful for the extra saved time, but he disappeared as hastily as always once the Empyrean of Information adjourned the session.

The empyreans started making their way out, but the variance in their timings and order of exit was wholly different from other loop. Mostly because a certain topomancer remained behind even though everyone else barring him and Beta had left already.

"So~" Mio roguishly said as she teleported next to him.

"What are you going to do now? Make out in the room we share once everyone is gone?"

"Why are you so morbidly interested in this development?" Nolotl asked in veritable exasperation.

"Oh? So there's been a development?" The oldest of the gathered empyreans grinned.

"Ugh…" The youngest of them groaned.

"It was a figure of speech, Mio. And you know it. There's been no development whatsoever."

"Really? Because I'd bet something you're just being shy now," she poked him softly on the arm.

"Yes, I was actually lying and we're about to have a sloppy make out session in this room the moment you step out," Nolotl said with such lack of emotion that it felt like a good Beta imitation.

"Happy?"

"Can I watch?" The words that came out of the topomancer's mouth baffled him so much, shook him to the very core, that Nolotl didn't only raise a finger to flick at her but his whole open palm. Alas, Mio reacted far faster than before and she teleported out of the room. Not to reappear again.

"I will never interact with you again after the total celestial alignment," Beta said dryly after she had stood up, deciding only to talk once the rumor-starved topomancer was gone.

"Yeah, fair enough," Nolotl nodded with copious exhaustion.

"I didn't know Mio could get so hung up on romantic affairs. She's gone down a bit on my Empyrean ranking list because of that." Beta raised an eyebrow slightly after hearing that. The akyromancer pondered for a long while as they walked through the Central Tower in silence before asking the question.

"Who is in the last place?"

"Paizon," he didn't even hesitate to answer. The silence continued to linger as they continued walking.

"Are you not going to ask about your standing?"

"No," she taciturnly responded.

"Oh," the gnosiamancer couldn't deny that he was disappointed with that answer. Pulsars, I thought I'd gotten a bit of curiosity out of her, but it seems it was just a fluke. He really was more disappointed than he expected about the ordeal.

"First?" The akyromancer ended up asking.

"Ugh… It would be hard to say. Like, every Empyrean has wronged me in some way or another, so I will have to say Alvedon because it's the one I've interacted the least with so he hasn't had time to wrong me."

"That is a… pessimistic attitude," she responded slowly, the words seeming more out of a script than her actual thoughts. That was to say, a bit of an awkward and sluggish mess.

"But… how have the empyreans wrong you so much to garner such hostility?"

"Well, just today Nina sold me out to Mio, and the Mio literally pestered us," Nolotl started.

"Clonazepam has scolded me a handful of times, and whilst she hasn't done so in bad faith, it still sucks being at the other end of it. Roxina flirts with me but sometimes takes it too far. Enantyum has tortured me. Paizon is Paizon. And you've treated me neutrally, but getting called a rapist really burned. Besides the fact that neutrally is a low bar and I feel our deal hasn't been exactly fair for me."

"That still burns?" Beta asked in confusion, perplexed at it more than anything else. The torture comment completely escaped her. That or she just didn't care.

"Well, yeah. Words have power and even if I'm not the best person out there, I do try to do my best to at least foment an amicable relationship with everyone I know," he answered.

"And that felt like a betrayal, even if I admit that I overstepped my boundaries with my trespassing."

"Huh…" The akyromancer remained in that pondering state even after they reached the Void Tower. The 'many' gazes of people at the Central Tower even failed to enter her mind as she continued to think.

"So a single word can linger for more than a month?" The fact that her voice only portrayed academic curiosity didn't surprise Nolotl as he had grown to expect such things from the Empyrean of Void, but that didn't mean he wasn't still baffled that she could utter that question with a straight face.

"Yes, and even longer. Years maybe." Still, he didn't ridicule her and answered in an honest manner as the akyromancer guided him through the astral background of the Void Tower.

"Fascinating." The specific choice of that word sent shivers down Nolotl's spine. He had always known there was something… off with Beta, but out all of the words she could have used, this one was certainly one of the most unsettling ones.

"Can I ask you to rest for today? The events of today and this last conversation has left me with the need to gather my thoughts."

"Of course, no problem." Whilst it wasn't sensible to waste time this close to the end of the loop, it was true that he needed to be fresh for the alignment in case the ambush occurred, though he didn't plan to go out of the academy this time around.

"Do I come tomorrow to help you ready the materials for your own ritual?"

"Do so," Beta answered, not even bothering with a 'please' as the sidereal space opened up to reveal the door of her bedroom. One that she crossed and closed a moment later without so much of an extra sound. The promised day had arrived like many times before. Though this time was different. Nolotl was no longer wearing a backpack at the frigid and windy gates of the Empyrean Academy early in the morning, but instead he still lingered for a bit longer on his stolen bed.

"Not the most fruitful loop so far, but at least it has been far more relaxing than the previous ones," he muttered to himself before finally standing out of bed. The day before he had brought every material he needed from his own bedroom back at the Information Tower, his lead spear included. He highly doubted the ambush would take place, but there was an akyromancer in the midst of the ambushers, so it was possible they had safe-conduct to the Void Tower.

Unlike the previous loops where his whole focus was enchanting himself with Second Mind, now his focus was just to increase his Alignment with Information a bit and help Beta with her own objectives.

"Though I should start looking for other enchantments," he mused whilst dressing.

"Perhaps I won't get an enchantment slot when I assimilate Void, but with this series of loops I'll have access to Beta and perhaps even Tower Master Dol, so I should try to see if enchanting myself or getting someone to enchant me on the Void slot is an option. Though there's also the deal that the enchantment must be a cognitive one…"

He had first doubted that Second Mind would even move between loops but considering that it was a mental type of enchantment, those doubts were shallow enough that he didn't voice them out. But he had it very clear from his limited understanding of the time loop that any kind of physical and even spiritual enchantment wouldn't travel through the coils.

"Cognitive Void enchantment… Perhaps I will need to become an obscuramancer… nah, it's impossible. I'll have to settle with finding one, if only to pick their mind." Nolotl groaned at the prospect of needing to meet more people, but he made his way out of the room he was squatting with only a spear in hand and a satchel in his waist. The ritual he had in mind was simple enough that he only needed chalk and salts.

Truth be told, Beta could provided all of that with Inner Abyss Boon, but he wanted to be superfluous as the extra weight didn't hinder him in the slightest.

"I mean, I had to climb a mountain alone all the previous loops and I still mostly survived the battles that were forced onto me. If I performed now worse than then when I'm rested, then I really deserve to die." Nolotl Xocoyotzin hadn't heard of the concept of a 'jinx'. Out on the cosmic environment of the Void Tower, the terian knocked on the pale celestial's bedroom door several times and then waited.

He used this bit of downtime to calculate some prime numbers as he hadn't done so in a long while with everything he had had in his mind, the looming alignment only bringing this sense of clarity and calmness of the moment before the storm. It took Beta almost a quarter of an hour to get out of her room, time where Nolotl failed to find any new prime number. The akyromancer was, of course, traveling light and only wore her usual robe.

"So," Nolotl separated his back away from the astral wall he had been resting, "where are we going?"

"The rooftop of the Void Tower is taken by the Tower Master but he has prepared a room in advance with even stronger enchantment than the ones that currently fill the tower," Beta informed.

"And what does that mean?" He inquired again as that explanation failed to tell him anything.

"Even though it's an enclosed room, I've been assured that the events should be similar to being outside of the academy and a high elevation at that."

"I see…" If that's true… well, this could trivialize the ambush.

"Lead the way then." Beta nodded and walked toward the gravitational well of the Void Tower's central section. This time around, they went as up as possible, though Nolotl was a bit slow at his pace as he was fearing every single moment that they would impact against the tower's ceiling with all the height they were gained. There was no shame at all on lingering a bit behind the intrepid guide. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"So you can just see the real tower without issues?" He softly asked.

"Yes," she taciturnly responded without looking back. A lot of their conversations started and ended like that: Nolotl showing some curiosity and Beta treating it as a yes or no question. The moments where the Empyrean of Void spoke full sentences were an oddity and even the highlights of his day.

Yesterday Beta had failed to speak about the gathering of empyreans, and when he asked, the affirmatives and negatives weren't even verbal but grunts or movements of the head, which led the gnosiamancer to keenly intuit that she didn't want to talk about the subject. Beta wordlessly stopped in her advance and walked on top of a platform that was invisible for Nolotl, everything just merging into the same cosmic background.

It didn't help that the Void Tower's astral aesthetic wasn't some kind of wallpaper but instead an invisible tower thrown in the middle of space. The lack of reference frames really hurt, and no emphasis would ever be enough to highlight the idea. Recreating her movements, Nolotl walked behind the akyromancer. After a short walk, Beta made the motion of opening a door, but unlike with the bedrooms, no extra-dimensional space materialized and instead only more void was in place.

Taking care of the invisible door that was somewhere, the terian put his arms hesitantly in front of him and followed the celestial's steps, not wanting to eat headfirst an invisible wall. After he was thought he had crossed the doorway, a metallic sound echoed around the room and Beta stopped dead on her tracks. The stars of the cosmic background dimmed for a moment before they changed altogether, the nondescript sidereal space now becoming far more familiar than him.

Mostly because they had a massive planet in front of them.

"Woah… Is that Lon?" Nolotl asked, rapidly recognizing the shape of the landmasses. Beta nodded affirmatively." Tower Master Dol was deeply interested in the solution of the restricted three-body problem, so he searched for the libration points of the sun, Lon, Zesca, and Orlon."

Libration points, or usually known as Lagrange points in the name of the arithmomancer that discovered them, were spots were the gravitational attraction of celestial bodies became equal and any object placed on it would reach a standstill from the equal forces.

"There are more than three celestial bodies in that equation," the gnosiamancer noted.

"You understand what I'm saying," the akyromancer stated. There was no annoyance in her tone, it was truly just a fact. Beta was aware that Nolotl knew about the three-body problem which dealt with the chaotic movements of more than two celestial bodies. Of course, she failed to consider that he had simply tried to pester her a bit, but that had utterly failed.

"I do," he admitted with disappointment.

"So what about the libration points? It must be hard finding them considering we're dealing with four bodies."

"It does help that the celestial bodies in question are nowhere near equal in mass, but that's not the matter at hand," Beta started pulling things out of her Inner Abyss.

"What Tramma Dol has done hear is throw a beacon into space with the hopes of cataloguing the libration points. The beacon moves slow enough that if the gravitational attraction of the four bodies pull in equal manners, it will reach a standstill. This room is keyed to the only of the many beacons that have found a libration point by sheer brute force and luck."

"So… is this a glorified window?" Nolotl asked as he looked around. He had peered many times into the heavens as his personal interest as a diviner and his duties as the High Priest of Nochochenca but he couldn't deny he was amazed by the quality of the images surrounding him. They were, quite literally, out of this world. This wasn't the firmament that people peered from the gravitational and terrestrial embrace of Lon, but instead the sight coming from the very heavens. Not sidereal space, but still space.

"I can understand why someone would call this a window, but no," Beta denied, her hands slowly moving in preparation for her ritual.

"This mimics the enchantments of the Void Tower, and you wouldn't call that cosmic imagery you see just a window, would you?"

"No, not at all," he awkwardly chuckled.

"I constantly feel both the pressure and the call of Void, and that's with Vacuous Filtration active. I'm already fearing having to turn it off when I start practicing Ode to Silence." Nolotl wasn't so stupid as to waste the barely five seconds that he would of the total celestial alignment with practice. Five seconds weren't enough for that, after all.

Instead he would use the preliminary four minutes to practice with it and then perform a simple Alignment-boosting ritual to see how much he could manage to increment his affinity towards Information. Beta proceeded to ignore him a bit as she focused on her preparations. He couldn't blame her, the ritual was bound to be complex with all the material he had brought her.

"Aren't you scared of performing an original ritual?" He asked her.

"I can't feel fear," the akyromancer plainly responded with her body glued to the ground as she painted it. The sight was a curious one as the ink disappeared from the gnosiamancer's sight, melding with the spatial background.

"But as for confidence in my success, I cannot say they're high. If I'm correct, this could be classified as a ninth-tier ritual."

"N-ninth?" Nolotl choked on his spit.

"Yes?" She dedicated him a short, confused look before focusing on her task again.

"Are we using different nomenclatures or something?" He asked nervously. It can't be a ninth-tier spell, right? Like, that's what the time loop must be, isn't it? Is she going to perform something at the same level of Enantyum? The sheer implications of the thought were making him dizzy. No, it can't be… And if it is… fuck. Are all empyreans besides me this competent?

"No, I don't think so," Beta replied a while after once she lifted her body from the ground.

"…I see," the terian didn't know what to say. He didn't even know how to react.

"Can I ask what this ritual is about?"

"You can," she replied matter-of-factly and summoned curious-looking crystals from her pseudo- Inventory. A whole minute passed in silence.

"…so?" He finally added.

"So what?" Beta replied confusedly.

"So what is the ritual about? You told me I could ask about it."

"Oh," the akyromancer mouthed.

"I did say that you could ask about it, not that I would answer." She must be doing this on purpose. There's no other possible answer. I refuse to accept she can be this clueless. Nolotl sighed.

"So you won't be telling me anything about it?"

"I believe it's your duty as an assistant to decipher those things," her voice carried no malice nor interest.

"You had to read all the references I asked you to get before showing to me, so you must have a clue of sorts at least."

"Beta, you honestly overestimate the brain's capability of connecting dots when I had to read tens of books that I barely understood and fell way out of my area of expertise."

"Hmm, I guess it's true you aren't an akyromancer and don't have even the basic studies on the subject," she muttered.

"Oh, well. You will be seeing shortly enough if I don't succeed."

"If you don't?" Nolotl frowned at the choice of words. For the first time… ever, Beta showed some real emotion as he scowled at him.

"Don't you have your own tasks to handle?" She barked.

"The partial celestial alignment is starting soon."

"Right, right…" He deflated a bit at the lack of answers, but what Beta said wasn't a lie, he had his own stuff to focus on.

"Just to check, you don't have any verbal component for this ritual of yours, right?"

"None, now stop pestering." That surprised him as adding xenoglossia to a spell that complicated seemed mandatory. Requirements could be annoying, but they reduced the casting difficulty by a lot. Nolotl cleared his throat and started making simple sounds to intone his voice before getting with the practice of Ode to Silence. The song he had finally settled on was a Tezlan serenade on a failed love as one of the partners had become a star and the other entombed in the earth.

It meant to parallel the dual high priests of Nochochenca, one being the Astral-Who-Knows and the other the Rooted-Who-Feels. Even though Beta couldn't begin to be classified as a public, he still preferred to sing in Tezlan for the stage factor. Or rather, the stage fright. The first sentences came out of tune, but soon Nolotl found his own cadence and the words started to come out naturally out of his mouth, imbued with his own magical essence.

Sonomancers didn't even need to pour mana into their songs, making them one of the cheapest casting schools, but the one-spell-at-a-time limit was one that hurt a lot. Still, the spell had yet to fully form. That 3% Void Alignment truly hurt, and these minutes of partial celestial alignment helped greatly, but he still struggled to get over the age and get the casting right. The worst part is that because this isn't a gnosiamancy, it doesn't mean I will be able to recreate the spell even if I do succeed.

Only Information magic can be perfectly recreated after one successful cast. The longer he lived, the more he felt validated with his choice of remaining a true gnosiamancer. He didn't have that je ne se quoi that made others capable of casting from their heart, he truly needed to comprehend it down to the smallest of details from a theoretical perspective, and only gnosiamancy allowed him to do so. Not wanting to waste time, he readied the last preparations of his basic Alignment-enhancing ritual whilst singing.

That also worked for better practice for the case he ever wanted to use Ode to Silence in combat, though it wasn't like all spells had a xenoglossia component. At least it was an absurdly cheap spell even without sonomancy to relay upon if he ever needed to use it. And he could also force people to shut up with it. His singing failed, however, when he peered into space. The nine promised seconds were coming soon, and the sight from space was just leaving him speechless.

Due to the absolute potency of the total celestial alignment, the libration points of the celestial bodies had been extremely altered and now they were sandwiched between Zesca and Orlon, although they were closer to the later one due to its smaller size. Orlon would be completely invisible to everyone standing in Lon and, of course, they two alone were the exception. People from Lon could only see Zesca as it eclipsed—in the utmost literal sense—Orlon.

And they would also see the edges of the solar crown whilst Beta and Nolotl had an almost unobstructed sight of the local star as Orlon was incapable to produce a total eclipse at their distance. Not even Lon could be totally eclipsed by Zesca either at their distance. It was truly the perfect position to peer every single celestial body. Lon, Zesca, Orlon, the sun, yet more importantly…

Nolotl's singing came to an end as the total celestial alignment started and the galaxy's supermassive black hole defied the laws of physics and causality as it was suddenly brought before their eyes, eclipsing the sun in a way that it shouldn't have been possible. The cosmos itself was folding onto itself, everything coming closer to everything as this cosmological event of impossible magnitudes shed an amount of power that couldn't even be quantified by a mortal mind.

The diviner started with his ritual as he didn't want to lose even a fraction of his 4. 5 seconds of looped astral arrangement. And yet... And yet… His eyes were diverted to the akyromancer next to him. Even with only a single second into the total celestial alignment, Beta Methasome had already executed her ritual. And she had failed. Nolotl turned his head in abject horror as a wave of emotionless malice assaulted him, shaking him to his very core, and he saw a fraction of what Beta should be.

The pale woman had lost half of her body in the utmost perfect of a circular cut, her right arm, right leg, and most of her torso gone.

"W-what?" The terian mouthed in an unsettled manner as he was unable to comprehend what he was seeing. You have failed to resist Madness. You have failed to resist Suppression.

"I have failed," Beta said casually as someone playing darts would do after missing the target.

"B-Beta…" Nolotl tried to move, but the notifications from the Real-Time Status divination rung true and he found his body impossibly difficult to move, and even his potent brain struggled to process anything.

"I told you would know if I failed," she added without a single emotion in his visage, no pain nor fear of death. If anything, the only thing the diviner could peer was… lament? You have failed to resist Madness. No more words came from the Empyrean of Void as her body was unable to keep itself standing with a single leg and she collapsed to the side on the ground, the impact being so brutal when her head hit the floor that it broke her neck.

As disgusting as that fracturing sound was, it could only be called a small mercy as her life was extinguished at that instant. Nolotl had dared to describe Beta's eyes as lifeless, yet now as life truly escape them, only know he understood that they were clinging on with life. He was unable to move as powerful energies of the Void rooted him in place, and even if he could, he was too paralyzed to reach for her or continue his ritual. But the worst part was…

A wave of annihilation assaulted him as blackness started to pour of Beta's corpse. It wasn't a powerful strike, but it was enough to chill his blood and dispel any cantrips in his body. For the first time in ages, he was no longer under the protection of his emotion-numbing spells. You have failed to resist Madness. Letting Enala die in the previous coil had caused him unbearable pain. And he didn't even know the enchantress that much or that well. You have failed to resist Madness. Yet Beta he knew beforehand.

And he had interacted with her more closely than with Enala in this fourth loop. And now she was there, lying dead on the ground with half of her body missing. Not a single instant later, a myriad of items started pouring out of Beta's corpse, completely filling up the room in a blink and threatening to crush Nolotl to death. You have succumbed to Madness.

"Ha… ha…" Nolotl let out a wry and broken laugh as the celestial alignment reached its zenith. Another laughter, yet one far more cadent and crueler, echoed inside of his mind, utterly delighted in his suffering. With an obstructed vision of perfect order illuminating the skies, he still was able to see through the sea of crushing items pouring out of the Inner Abyss the clearest any mage had ever seen of the total celestial alignment as he stood between the very celestial bodies.

Nolotl had, for his first time, survived in the time loop. Yet he could only think that it would have been better for his heart and mind if he had died.