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[RT] Mother of Learning, Chapter 26. Time travel original story.

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• u/ProfessorPhi:

  With all the Damien name dropping going on, I can't help but feel that this has happened before and Damien was the survivor from that time loop. 
  
  It makes sense, Zorian may not be a magic prodigy, but with all the restarts, the comparisons are being made, simply because he has more time to work with.
  
  I predict we're going to have an Arc or at least a Chapter in which Damien tracks down Zorian and reveals something to that effect. Especially I expect it soon, as Zorian will be avoiding the uni now that Red Robe knows about him.
  

  • u/Kodix:

    >With all the Damien name dropping going on, I can't help but feel that this has happened before and Damien was the survivor from that time loop.
    
    That's exactly what I thought as well! It also seems odd that Damien is apparently a prodigy but everyone else in the family (including the sister as we find out this chapter) has no exceptional talent. And then there's the positive comparisons of Zorian's to Damien's prowess throughout the loop..
    
    >Especially I expect it soon, as Zorian will be avoiding the uni now that Red Robe knows about him.
    
    I'm not sure that would be wise of Zorian. If he hid his identity successfully, then that would be a dead give-away that he's the time traveler. Zorian's best bet next restart is probably to make everything like the same as before any restarts at all, up until the point that he gets a single hint he's been compromised.
    

    • u/ProfessorPhi:

      With Zorian avoiding uni, I was going on the fact that Red Robe has an idea of build, size and gender. Combined with Zorian's marked improvement since last year would set bells ringing, as opposed to someone above average not returning after certification to work in a mage shop maybe. He does mention that not everyone comes back after first year, and his family background is ideal. 
      
      Of course, his late withdrawal at the start of the time loop would also be a red flag. And if Red Robe has noticed him in class before, disappearing now would be a dead giveaway. If he does go back, he can't show any improvement to anyone or else it'll be too obvious, and that would make his time at uni less useful, than say travelling and learning anonymously (especially since the Aranea are dead). It also serves the purpose of setting him up to meet Damien. 
      
      I think it's safe to assume that Red Robe is not someone close to the uni, else they'd already realize that Zorian was advancing in each reset and would have come in contact with Zach much earlier, which makes him withdrawing from uni a distinct possibility. Well I guess let's see.
      

      • u/Kodix:

        >I think it's safe to assume that Red Robe is not someone close to the uni, else they'd already realize that Zorian was advancing in each reset
        
        I agree, but if I recall correctly there's a couple of students in Zorian's class that don't seem to come to class this semester. It's quite possible that RR is one of those students (and wasn't one of them supposedly tied to soul magic? I genuinely can't recall, need to re-read). 
        
        If this is the case, then Zorian not coming to class is a dead giveaway if RR chooses to come to class to investigate. But if it isn't, then what you're saying makes perfect sense - make it appear that Zorian stops this semester normally, regardless of time loops, or even that he goes missing at the beginning of the time loop every time, making him indistinguishable from other missing people (in terms of searching for the time traveler).
        
        Can't wait to see.
        

  • u/Prankster42:

    If he has been in a Loop it would have been before his second year. We know that he had access to restricted spells then (in chapter three we hear Zorian reminisce about being on the receiving end of a not-so-refined Animation Spell).
    
    Now that I think about it, a Loop would be basically the only way for a student from a town with no mages to gain access to it before having a mentor. Before the gaining a mentor you would almost only have been taught very basic stuff if Zorian is any indication, and it is likely that magical prodigies in general only really shine through somewhere around the middle of their third year because of the restrictions on spells. I don't recall any mention of outside tutors either, but if there has been I'd consider this theory a lot less likely.
    

• u/Evilness42:

  Arc 1 is finally complete! Zorian is going to get punched in the face by Zach, however, so the next loop doesn't look promising.
  

• u/loonyphoenix:

  Woah. That was intense. Spoilery chapter name, though, I was expecting something of the sort from the beginning of the chapter.
  
  I'm wondering whether soulkill is dependent on the victim being a time-looper. Though, if I read it correctly, the aranea settlement was dead even before RR showed up, so that seems to be wishful thinking. Soul magic is OP in that case... Do souls exist outside of time somehow? That doesn't seem to make sense, since it's established that only the time-travelers' souls are preserved through the loops, and the rest of the world, including all the other souls, is reset. This might be a clue about the nature of the time loop, but I can't seem to follow it...
  
  So. The current situation is pretty dire. Zorian is dead, RR is alive. Meaning that RR has time to prepare, to investigate Zorian, before the next restart. And Zorian is gonna have to leg it out of his room the second he wakes up in the next restart—RR will surely teleport to his home as soon as he'll be able to. And given his ability to permakill people, RR will be able to blackmail Zorian by threatening to kill people he cares about. So Zorian should at the very least teleport Kirielle out with him. That is, unless I missed something.
  
  Wonder what Zorian is going to do now... Honestly, he should not have rushed to the aranea and risked the meeting with RR. It was an obvious sort of trap for another time traveller. Zorian's biggest defense was his anonymity, and now he's blown it.
  
  Edit: On the other hand, during this reset Zach will be able to figure out that Zorian is a time-looper, based on the fact that he's dead from the very start (unless he skips school this loop as well). Maybe Zach will be able to lend a hand at the start of the next reset?
  
  Edit2: Upon a reread, it seems obvious that the aranea are indeed permanently dead. Perhaps there will be a way to revive them somehow, but I don't think it'll happen any time soon. Also, it seems that Zorian might have managed to hide his identity during his fight with RR. Whether that's enough to remain anonymous, I don't know. I think it should be trivial for RR to investigate who is missing in this restart who shouldn't have been, unless the bullets Zorian put into RR were enough to kill him in the near future, or incapacitate him, after whatever magic RR used to patch himself up wears out.
  

  • u/Abpraestigio:

    I am confused. If there is a soulkill spell, why would the lich use soulMERGE instead during the first chapter? Is the only reason Zorian joined the loops that the lich likes to drive people insane instead of killing them?
    Or are the purple beams more like soulmaim, meaning that the aranea will recover after enough loops like Zach and Zorian did? That would explain why the lich didn't use it, since it would just piss off another lich.
    

    • u/loonyphoenix:

      I'm guessing that the Lich might not have known the soulkill spell. He's merely a Lich,    after all, not a time-looping necromancer who has every reason to seek out and learn a spell that kills souls outside of time. 
      
      Or perhaps the spell the Lich was doing was easier, and he had no reason to believe soulkill is superior. Or perhaps he had something amusing in mind for Zach that required soulmerge as a prerequisite. Or perhaps soulmerge *is* a prerequisite for soulkill. Or perhaps soulkill has an unknown drawback that we don't know about. 
      
      The hypothesis space is pretty big.
      

  • u/GeeJo:

    > Soul magic is OP in that case
    
    Not really, its just rather specialised. For the vast majority of cases, it really doesn't matter whether you're dead by fireball or soul kill - you aint coming back either way. If soul blasts are more mana intensive or more restricted in their range or area of effect (and the latter is almost certainly the case given how the Aranea fight went down), its a trade-off that wouldn't make sense most of the time.
    

  • u/Kodix:

    >Also, it seems that Zorian might have managed to hide his identity during his fight with RR. Whether that's enough to remain anonymous, I don't know. I think it should be trivial for RR to investigate who is missing in this restart who shouldn't have been
    
    Does RR even have a clue as to who Zorian is? If he knows it's a student, he can find him very easily, but all he knows is just that it's a random male, then Zorian's virtually anonymous. 
    
    It also depends on who RR really is. If it's a student necromancer that joined the loop after Zach talked to him, then it's likely he'll find Zorian. If it's a random necromancer that joined on his own, or through other means, then Zorian's moderately safe.
    

    • u/Gurkenglas:

      A random male of Zorian's height and skin color that probably acquired a revolver since the start of the time loop, and might be reported as missing to the local authorities in the next few days.
      
      EDIT: I might have to scratch the height and skin color information if RR used soul location rather than invisibility piercing.
      

      • u/Kodix:

        It sounds like guns are far less controlled than we'd expect in this universe, seeing how easily that merchant sold it to Zorian when he wouldn't sell him the better rods. 
        
        As for a male being reported as missing - how would RR distinguish that report from all other males reported as missing during the time loop? Assuming he doesn't know Zorian personally and doesn't dig deeper, anyway. I think it would take him at least one loop to find Zorian this way if he thinks of the method at all - gather who goes missing this loop, compare to who goes missing next loop.
        

• u/RMcD94:

  One, it's interesting to know that the Red Robed guy clearly wants what's going to happen, there's going to be no killed by his own creation.
  
  Two, NO ONE HAS DIED FROM SOULS LOSS AT ALL? In the entire month, no where in the world, no lich took someones soul, or did anything with souls? So we have to assume there's something different about this that has literally never been done ever.
  
  Like, if anywhere in the world killed a soul once this entire time it would be immediately noticeable, on the next restart, and it would just spiral out of the control, as people who do soul stuff would do more soul stuff to see if soul stuff really was what had killed the previous people and every time it would restart.
  
  Three, Red Robed guy has no concept way of stopping people from falling, no ranged feather falling?
  
  Four, Zorian is not dumb enough to travel immediately to the place not expecting the Necromancer to come there too. Also, I wonder how the Necromancer can teleport directly to places like that, must be a super good diviner or have extra abilities.
  
  Five, the Aranea really should have considering something might kill her throughout all timelines so I wonder what she put in place for that, it just makes sense. 
  
  Six, why would Zorian reveal himself by killing the vampire to save that girl? His whole shtick is hiding himself, there was no reason to try and reveal himself, indeed I think chasing the aranea in the previous timeline was a bad idea, because if I was a time traveller I would have sat and waited for whoever else the aranea brought back with them. 
  
  Hope he didn't forget Kael's formulas.
  

  • u/None:

    [deleted]
    

• u/Stop_Sign:

  RIP in peace Novelty :(
  

  • u/eaglejarl:

    Do we know that she's dead? She might not have been at the web when RR killed the rest.
    

• u/Drazelic:

  The descriptions of the Primordials at the start is really cool. I love giant monster kaiju with impossible powers, and these guys really remind me of the Endbringers from Worm.
  

  • u/mochacho:

    https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10451949/1/Worm-Loops
    

• u/traverseda:

  >seeing a huge black spider hop into the room
  
  I was expecting a sort of reddish-pink.
  
  Also, endbringers!
  

• u/Kodix:

  This was a thoroughly awesome chapter. How do you beat someone with orders of magnitude your experience, cunning, ruthlesness, and talent?
  
  Probably the first thing Zorian will do next chapter is teleport someplace else. To Zach, maybe? I wouldn't be surprised if Red Robe permanently killed his family, even. So he'll take his sister with? 
  
  Also, I see two possibilities for Red Robe entering the loop. Either he started it or was a part of the start - but then why did he not start it around his own soul? And the fact that the lich thinks he's just an informant seems to suggest that the lich's organization, at the least, did not start the loop.
  
  Or he used soul magic to join Zach's loop during one of his restarts, when he was telling every classmate that he was a time traveler. Seems very likely, given everything else.
  
  But then why is the loop centered on Zach in the first place? Why did it start? If it's to prevent the primordial, then surely someone with the capability to repeatedly loop the whole world could just go back themselves and stop it from happening. So what the hell?
  
  Seriously delicious stuff. It only makes the waiting for the next chapters more painful.
  

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