||Reversing the time||

||...||

||...||

||Your status:||

||Baby Swordsman: You are so bad at swordsmanship that the beginners could laugh at you||

||Baby Mage: You are so bad at magic that the mages all around the world would think your existence is a waste of friggin' time||

|||Lousy Leader: It'd be better to follow a frog jumping to their death than following you||

||...||

||...||

||You have reversed the time||

"Am I in heaven?" I spoke out loud.

[[Guess again]]

I sat up to see Rikal holding a book in the corner of the tent. He didn't see me, but I felt his judging stare all the same.

[[Erik! Wakey wakey! It's a new day! It's a new week!]] Tu jumped around like a friggin' monkey. I groaned. Must be nice to be a deity and not a traumatized human boy who just woke up from being burned alive.

"Did you reverse the time again?" I covered my eyes. Already, the memory that never happened felt like a silly dream.

[[Tu did! Because Erik was dead! You were burned alive!]]

Tu's voice was too loud. It impossibly echoed in the tent, giving me a growing headache. I should just stay dead.

[[Erik, if you keep it up like this, you are going to be stuck in an endless time loop]] Rikal finally looked up from his book, his dark eyes drilling into mine. [[Do you want to know what happened to people who were stuck in the time loop?]]

"I could guess," I said dryly. The legends almost always associated time loops with tragedy. In the past, the heroes who were stuck inside one never quite go back to the way they were before.

I used to be jealous of them. I mean, who wouldn't want a second chance? What was even more pathetic was, I couldn't deny that I wouldn't pick a different choice no matter how many times I regretted it.

"It's fine," I lied. Nothing was fine. "I'll survive in this loop."

Neither Tu nor Rikal looked convinced. They had every right to be skeptical, but they didn't have to make it so obvious, geez.

[[Come with me, Erik]] Rikal pulled my hand. I couldn't help but notice his hands were so tiny that he had to pull one of mine with both of his hands. [[I need to show you something]]

I looked at Tu. She just nodded at me. I would feel more reassured if she said something.

Before I could say something, maybe a sarcastic comment or two, Rikal already brought me out of the tent and dragged me deeper into the forest.

"Where are you going, Your Highness?" One of the knights asked. I remembered him. He was dead via a stab through the heart in the last loop.

"I'd like to be alone," I told them. The actual answer to the question was, I don't know.

They looked reluctant, as if sensing my discomfort, but they obeyed me immediately. Good men, all of them.

Rikal didn't explain anything else, so I just followed him in silence.

He stopped in the south part of the forest, far away from the camp. If I screamed here, nobody would come to my rescue. And even if, by some miracle, they did hear me, they wouldn't come fast enough.

[[Erik, what do you know about Ethereal?]]

I felt my blood ran cold. It was a word that shouldn't be said out loud around here. "It's a mysterious power that the deities granted to their summoners."

[[That's right]] Rikal nodded. [[I am the deity that lord over it.]]

I had guessed that. He did introduce himself to me as the Deity of Etherealm.

[[I will teach you how to use Ethereal]] He appraised me up and down. [[It should be easy even for a degenerate like you]]

I stared at him, stunned.

Contact with the deities was considered blasphemous, let alone being their summoner. It was because the church of the Night Sky was the main religious sect in the Western region. I myself wasn't a devout believer of the Night Sky, but I was familiar with their custom and traditions. You had to if you grew up in these areas.

They hated the summoners, witches, and creatures of New Age alike. I heard if they found one of those, they'd burned them alive in front of the mass, claiming it was an act of purification.

If I was caught using Ethereal, my life was over. They'd targeted me, too, whether I was a prince or not.

Did Rikal offer to teach while being fully aware of its consequence?

[[Well?]]

He did, and he still presented me with this choice.

I clenched my fist. "Alright. Please teach me."