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Chapter 132: The Conversation
🕑 Added 2023-05-01 12:00:09 +0000 UTC“I’ve got more resets,” I said to Xhag’duul, trying my best to buy time as Erani and Ainash went to get help from the guard post in the distance behind me.
“Oh?” the Demon said. “How many?”
I straightened my back, trying to show as much false confidence as I could. “One hundred.”
He blinked, and for the first time, I saw this unbeatable being actually show a bit of fear. “One… hundred?”
I nodded, getting a bit more confident. “Yeah, a hundred. How else do you think I got past your forces every time? They were competently set up, you know. Killed me a few dozen times each. But it isn’t really fair when your opponent gets that many tries. Wasn’t your fault, really.”
His hands shaking, he snarled at me. “You’re lying. That’s absolute fucking bullshit. No fucking way it’s that powerful. I know about your Classes, you know. They don’t give you so much power right away.”
“Mm,” I nodded. “Sure, you know about the common Classes, but you don’t know about the rare ones. My Class comes from killing a one-of-a-kind monster. It obviously rewards you for that.”
“No, no!” He shook his head. “No fucking way!”
I nodded. It was working even better than I’d expected. I knew from the previous timeline, he seemed to feel like it wasn’t his fault that he’d failed to kill me for so long. At least, his whole rant about wanting to see me feel the same way he’d felt seemed like it portrayed that. So I was basically just validating all of his fears and frustrations. His whole operation was doomed from the start, I was telling him. He’d never had any chance of beating me. And maybe, if I pull this next part off, I could convince him that he didn’t need to fight me at all.
“I get it,” I said. “You probably had nothing to do with this in the first place. It sucks that you got pitted up against me. I’m sorry for anything the people who forced you into this did to you for failing. But, I mean, I’m actually a bit surprised they expected you to win in the first place.”
He shook his head. “How the fuck were any of us supposed to know you could just get out of any fucking situation we put you in?! We all got unlucky, nobody could have known!”
“No, I mean, Demons have a longer lifespan than Humans, right?” I said. “Plenty of people have gotten this Class in the past. We’ve got it in some of our history books. I looked into them and found some basic info. So wouldn’t most Demons already know about the things the Class got?”
He looked into my eyes. “...What?”
“I mean, I get that most of you guys wouldn’t know. It was a long time back, after all, and it isn’t all that well-documented on our side, either. But I’d be willing to bet that some of the Demons would’ve lived long enough to have encountered the people who stole this Class from the Underworld, too. They’d definitely know it’s basically impossible to beat the Class.”
“...No,” he said. “That’s ridiculous. I haven’t heard of anything like this. Not from my superiors, not from any of the Diviners, not from the underlings who worked closely with the Overworld…”
“Weird,” I shrugged, trying to find the perfect time to hit him with the biggest part of all this. Putting all the pieces together, I understood a basic idea of what had happened with this Demon. When Ripley had warned us about all of this, she said that she used to be given orders by one Demon, whose name was something along the lines of ‘Xhag’duul.’ And then, he was replaced with another Demon whose name started with ‘Quinmorada.’ And she was the one who both said she was ‘dealing with’ the first Demon, and the one who announced the fact that they were sending in ‘special forces’ to kill me now.
Obviously, that first Xhag’duul Demon was this one, who was standing right in front of me. The second one, though, must have been someone who was in charge of him. If she got to make the decisions over what he did, she must have been. And considering the number of times he’d derided the people above him, he probably held some resentment toward her. In fact, it seemed like he felt like she was just lording her power over him and forcing him into unwinnable situations. That’d been what he’d said in the previous timeline. So, if that was the case…
“In the books, they actually said the Demon who the most recent user of this Class fought against,” I said. “Maybe she’s already dead, though. Could’ve been too long ago.”
He looked at me. “What was her name?”
“Oh, I don’t remember that,” I shrugged, trying to keep myself from shaking. “You know how Demon names are, I’m sure. Us Humans just don’t get them.”
“Just…” he closed his eyes and shook his head again. “Do you remember something, anything, about it? Tell me the name.”
I put a hand to my chin. “I think it started with a… K? Something like Kwit… or, no. Was it a Q? Right, right, it was something like Quitnorda, or, or was it something like… Quinmorada?”
His eyes lit up with rage the moment I said the name. “That name. Wh—where did you hear it?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think it was Quinmorada,” I said, nodding. “Why? Do you recognize it?”
He shook his head, laughing in frustration. “I fucking knew it! I knew she was pulling some shit! That fucking bitch. She just set me up for fucking failure. She hasn’t even beaten these bullshit fucking powers, either! She lost, and she knew it was impossible to beat. She knew it wasn’t my fault, any of the fucking times you got away. She just wanted to get rid of me. Just wanted to berate me, demote me, try to fucking kill me.”
I did my best not to sigh in relief. He’d bought it. It was a gamble, that was for sure, but he’d actually bought it. People believed what they wanted to believe, and it seemed like, whatever was going on with this guy, he desperately wanted to believe that none of this was his fault. He wanted a scapegoat. And I’d given him one.
He continued rambling about how he’d been set up, and I fought my urge to look back at Erani and Ainash, still on their way to the outpost. It’d been a while. Had they gotten there? Were they on their way back yet?
“Were there any other names?” Xhag’duul’s voice snapped me back to our conversation.
“What?”
“Did those history books mention anyone else who knew?”
“Uh, no. No, just the one.”
“Hm.” He nodded. He seemed a lot more composed now. Ideally, he’d conclude that he just needed to go back down to the Underworld and kill the people that’d wronged him, or whatever. Or just desert from their forces and live on his own, away from me. “I honestly thought a couple more would be in on it, but I guess it makes sense if it’s just her.”
“R-right,” I said. “So, truce?”
He squinted at me. “What?”
“I mean, if you have this enemy in your ranks, why would you want to do just what she wants?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t think you get it. I have to do what she wants.”
“What? No. No, you can beat her, right? I mean, she wants you dead, remember what you just said? Why would you go along with her plans?”
He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, you definitely don’t get it. Y’know, I didn’t ever think I’d say something like this, but you Humans are lucky. You have no idea how good you have it down here. I don’t want to go along with her plans. I have to operate within the bounds placed around me. It’s completely impossible for me to survive otherwise.”
“But don’t you understand it’s impossible for you to survive if you do? I mean, even if you do kill me, you still have to face her. She’s plotting against you, right? There’s no way she’ll just let you go.”
“But there’s an even lower probability I’ll be let go if I don’t kill you,” he shrugged. “Simple game of odds. And I intend to win.”
“You don’t have to—”
You have been slammed against something. 1.31k damage.
Dark Plate has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 240.
Your Health is 240.
I was interrupted by an impact to my chest, and my body went flying. I ragdolled through the air, hitting the ground and rolling downhill as I struggled to control my flailing body.
“Don’t hurt each other, you too!” I heard the voice of Paiiniak halfheartedly call out as I tumbled along the rocky ground.
Eventually, I came to a stop, sick to my stomach from the pain and from the fact that my vision had been spinning the whole way down.
You have activated Regenerate. You will gain 29.6 Health over the next 10 seconds.
50 Stamina Cost. Your Stamina is 141.
C’mon, I mentally urged the Dark Plate. Fix yourself.
After triggering, the plate would be ‘broken’ and unable to trigger again for around the next forty seconds. It still stayed on me, though, so as long as I could survive that off-period, the armor would be able to protect me again afterward. And with Regenerate, I was able to get my Health back up to a point where I’d be able to survive another hit equal to half my maximum Health.
The problem was surviving the next forty seconds.
“I don’t care if I have to kill you ten times,” Xhag’duul said, marching slowly down the hill. “I don’t care if I have to kill you a hundred. Fuck, I don’t care if I have to kill you a thousand times. It’ll happen.”
“But don’t you…” I coughed, trying to pull myself back to my feet as he approached. “Don't you realize you can escape the people above you? It doesn’t have to be this way. You can live the life you want to live.”
“No, no,” he said, “that’s not on the table for me. And I don’t suspect it’s on the table for you, either. I’ll kill you. And you know I will. Your little show back there, trying to convince me to spare you? It proves it. I don’t know how much of what you said was a lie. Probably most of it. But at the very least, you don’t seem to be very confident in your abilities to beat me. If you were, you’d just get rid of me and be done with it.”
“What, I can’t try to solve things peacefully?”
He laughed. “Peacefully? We both know you would never do that willingly. I’ve killed thousands of your species. I’ve destroyed your home. I’ve made your life a living hell—nearly as bad as the one I live every day. And I know damn well that I’d take any chance I got to kill the people who made my life the way it is. Hence why I’m not passing up this opportunity to end you. And you’re the same as me.”
He reached out his hand and snapped his fingers.
You have been cursed with Inferno. You have been set on fire.
Instantly, my body burst in heat and flame.
You have been burned. 18 damage.
Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.
Your Health is 243.
I dropped to the ground, trying to ignore the agony of the fire and roll around in my clunky armor to extinguish it. It didn’t work, though. I knew it wouldn’t—you couldn’t end magical fire through mundane means. But my mind wasn’t thinking rationally as I attempted to stop my skin from melting.
“There’s something you don’t seem to get here,” Xhag’duul said, continuing to calmly approach.
You have been burned. 18 damage.
Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.
Your Health is 230.
“No matter how many tries you get, no matter how many attempts you make,” he said.
You have been burned. 18 damage.
Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.
Your Health is 217.
“No matter how clever you are, or what ideas you come up with.”
You have been burned. 18 damage.
Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.
Your Health is 204.
“If someone is stronger than you, and they’re faster than you, and they’ve got big enough numbers.”
You have been burned. 18 damage.
Heat Resistance has triggered. Damage has been reduced to 13.
Your Health is 191.
“Then you simply can’t beat them. No matter what. You need to learn what I did long ago, kid. Sometimes, it’s just hopeless.”
“Talking with guards now!” I got a message from Ainash. The signal was faint, probably because she was so far away, but I could still barely pick up what she was saying. “Hold on little longer, and will come with help!”
But it was too late, anyway.
Xhag’duul stepped over my body as the flames began to die out. He lifted his foot above my face and sighed. “You just gotta learn when to quit.”
You have died.
**********
And then I was back, five hours before. No more uses of Time Loop left. This was my last shot.
We were all moving down the road, currently. We’d probably only recently left after I woke everyone up last time.
Erani turned to me, seeing that my expression had changed. “What’s wrong?”
But before I could respond, I saw Ainash. She was wide-eyed, staring off into the sky with a shocked expression on her face. She’d stopped in her tracks the moment I arrived in this timeline. This didn’t happen before; what had changed?
“...You okay?” I asked.
She frantically turned to me. “Memories! Have memories, from future! Know what will happen! Need to get to the outpost, with Humans, they will help!”
Comments
Jeanean
Index hinted that there was an interesting connection between Time Loop and the Bond. If you think about it, the ONLY things that get reset upon turning back time are his resources and cooldowns. Everything else about his status carries over across loops. That was what Index said when it explained Familiarity a few chapters back. Logically, that also means that the BOND carries over too. Now, that isn't a big issue normally, but if the bond happens to grow during one loop? It carries over. But the Bond only grows when their relationship improves. So, for the Bond to carry over, their relationship has to carry over. And for that, Ainash's memories have to carry over too.
Jared
Maybe she kept her memories because their minds were connected? Has that not happened before?
