Crossing the buffer street between the castle and Leoren, the capital city, I moved toward a little used side alley. I had to move fast before anyone noticed me. It would be hard going places shortly. After entering, I found a quiet nook where Lia and I could have some privacy.

  “I have something I need to do before we go forward,” I tell Lia.

  “Whatever you command, my lord,” Lia replied in a soft, unsure voice.

  I sighed and removed the scroll. I wouldn’t tell her to call me Oliver until after I did this. I didn’t want her thinking it’s a slave master’s order.

  Putting my finger on the left empty circle, I willed my mana into the document. The Florida Seal once more appeared. Lia looked confused by what I was doing. I held out the document. “Now your turn.”

  Her eyes turned to me with surprise and admiration. “Do you know what this means?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I’m transferring ownership of you to yourself.”

  “But,” she stammered. “That means you’re canceling the contract and ending my sentence.”

  I smiled and nodded. “That’s correct. We don’t abide by slavery where I come from. I can’t have people thinking I’m just another stereotype southerner pining for a time we rise again.”

  Lia’s hand tentatively reached toward the scroll. She paused and looked at the paper skeptically, like it was going to jump out and bite her finger. Then she touched the paper. After a brief moment of concentration, an illegible scrawl that served as her personal identifying mark appeared.

  I dropped the scroll to the ground and, a second later, it burst into a green flame. The document quickly turned to ash and blew away on the wind. At the same time, a cracking sound drew my eye to her slave collar. The lights in the delicate workings dimmed and the device disintegrated. As the pieces fell to the ground, it dissolved into mana and vanished into the air. That which was made by magic always went back to magic.

  Lia’s eyes turned to me with tears. I had just thrown away a small fortune I could have sold her for. It was something I gladly did every single time loop. The thankful look in her face was worth it.

  “Now that you’re free, I have a proposal for you,” I said.

  Lia’s eyes looked at me with surprise. “What do you request of me?”

  “I offer you two options. First, you go about your life however you see fit. You’re free now and you can do whatever you want. The other option is we both join the Exterminator’s Guild and form a party. We get stronger, improve ourselves and, maybe, make a little money,” I offered.

  I knew the answer immediately. The times I didn’t offer to join and let her just go, she ended up back in the slums. There wasn’t much future for an uneducated, illiterate orphan. Not even the Exterminator’s Guild was an out if she couldn’t afford basic equipment. She beamed with excitement. “I accept, my lord!”

  “Good,” I said with a warm smile. “I promise to do what I can to help you be the best Lia possible. First off, please just call me Oliver. I’m not a lord.”

  Lia’s eyes turned down. “I know. I know you’re weak. I heard the castle rumors saying you’re a dud. Still, you’ve already proven a hero on your second day here. It’s not fair to call you anything but a lord.”

  Her heartfelt thanks always warmed me. “I don’t do this for recognition. Calling me Oliver is the reward I ask of you.”

  Lia gave a small smile. “Thanks, Oliver.”

  I clapped my hands together. “Now, let’s get some things taken care of. After that, we need equipment and you need some better clothing. I can’t have you walking around in rags.”

  “Willem didn’t give you any money. I think I was supposed to be your funding,” Lia replied. Her expression was even more relieved when she realized what she said.

  I waved my empty beer mug. “Don’t worry. I have this. The king wanted to buy it for a gold Sovereign.”

  Lia’s eyes popped. “That’s a lot of money! You turned him down?”

  I smiled. “Of course. Because I know a place where I can get a platinum Sovereign for it.”

  Her face morphed into confusion. “How? You just got here yesterday.”

  I sighed. I had to go through this process when things got serious. “Lia, I have a secret. I’ve been stuck in a time loop and I’ve been here a very long time. In three months from now, an eldritch horror from between the dimensions is going to break in over the city and destroy the world. I think I’m here to stop it. Every time I die, I wake up in the castle basement right after my summoning.”

  Lia looked at me, clearly rethinking her decision to join me. She thought I was insane. I smiled. “Come on, let’s go to the shop. We’ll talk a bit more along the way.”

  As we walked, I started getting stares. People were recognizing my face from the posters the king had sent all over the city yesterday. Not that I blended in since I was a pale hairless ape wearing my weekend finery. I gave my best Queen of England wave. I wondered if she was still alive. I was summoned a long time ago from my perspective and I have no idea how time differences work between our dimensions.

  I guided Lia through the town to a section she had never been to before. It was filled with high-end shops and residences for merchants and skilled workers. As we moved through more gawking citizenry, I started talking about my time loop.

  At first, she was suspicious. I told her about how she was an orphan in the slums. I told her how I knew she was bullied for being small. I discussed an old doll she had sewn from scraps she collected in the garbage and how it was thrown in a furnace in the winter.

  I told her I knew she was kicked out of the orphanage at the age of 16, this world’s age of adulthood, to live on her own. I knew she tried to make an honest living. She did odd, degrading jobs like being a public toilet attendant in the slums or crawling up chimneys to clean soot.

  I knew how she ended up in the castle as a slave. She continued to fall behind and was tired of eating out of the garbage. She wanted to have a place to sleep that wasn’t an old crate in an alley and fell in with a gang. As part of her initiation, she was meant to steal a dungeon relic helmet from an exterminator equipment shop. She was predictably caught.

  Terror now fell over Lia’s face. I had known far too much about her to have been a series of lucky guesses. “Does this mean I died?”

  I gave a sad smile. “Thousands of times. You won’t remember any of them.”

  She gave a thoughtful look and shuddered. “Does this mean there are thousands of me who suffered and perished?”

  To that I didn’t know the answer. The concept of dimensions was beyond my ability to study. I did dig into my old physics background for a hypothesis. My guess tends to make everyone feel better, so I went with that. “No. Whatever this is reverses time. While I come from a whole different universe, this universe won’t branch and create new ones. The idea of a branching multiverse where there are an infinite number of you is really stupid, especially for narrative tension.”

  Lia looked confused. “What? Narrative tension?”

  “Sorry,” I replied, realizing my bad attempt at a joke she wouldn’t understand. “Trying to split infinite realities out from every mundane choice is ridiculous on its face. It would take a stupid amount of energy to create a new reality where I picked my nose with my left index finger as opposed to my right pinky finger. Now compound this to the countless possible things countless people, animals, plants and particles of dust can do and we realize it’s not a feasible concept.”

  I tapped my chest. “Entirely different realities with unique, different people? I’m living proof that’s real. I’m confident when I tell you that you are the one and only Lia. My ability only turns back time and undoes everything so I can try again for a better result. Sure, you’re losing a part of you, but I figure this is better than everything being destroyed forever.”

  I let Lia ponder her existential dread for a while as she processed my explanation.

  We made it to a trading shop called Jummi’s Baubles around 10Mor. I make my way past the gawking crowd as I wandered into the shop. This will make Jummi’s business quite famous since she’ll tell everyone she was the first stop of a summoned hero.

  I entered the shop through a wooden door to a tinkling of a wooden bell. The interior of the shop is cramped and packed floor to ceiling with various knickknacks and baubles. I find her naming convention apt. Trying to navigate the shelving is a challenge since product is spilling out on the floor. The room smelled of old books with an undertone of herbal tea.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Two customers attempting to push their way through the tight space stop and stare in awe. I give them a wave. “Howdy!” They didn’t know how to respond.

  At the back of the shop, I see a long counter. Jummi is surprisingly trustworthy with her wares. She can’t see the front of the shop from her vantage. Though, I admit, if anyone did try to swipe something, odds are the pile would come crashing down and alert Jummi someone was present. It also helped that most of the items in the main shop were literally garbage. She was a bad hoarder. Jummi kept all the valuable stuff in the back for auction.

  I held my beer mug for dear life. I’d dropped it a few times and had to scramble to find a way to make money without it. The scrap jobs I was able to get from the Exterminator’s Guild aren’t going to help me in this loop. Without that cash, we get no gear and we can’t go monster hunting to improve our skills.

  I reached the back table and set the mug on the surface. I adjusted it to catch a beam of light coming in through a skylight window, allowing it to split it into a rainbow over the counter. It helped sell the value of the item.

  The counter was one of the few clean and organized places in the entire shop. It had a small box to serve as a register and a little bell. I gently touched the bell and a pleasant magical chime rang out when I ran my paltry mana through it.

  “Coming,” a feminine voice called out from the back room.

  Emerging from the back room was a squirrel-clan woman in her late-30s. She had thick lens glasses perched on her face and a weaving beehive hairdo on top her head. Her curled tail coming out from under her modest brown shopkeeper clothing had a severe case of bedtail hair.

  Jummi looked at me. “Can I help you, sir?”

  Jummi was the first, and so far only, person in this reality that didn’t act surprised to see me this early on. I initially chalked it up to the glasses, but I discovered she was able to see through the spectacles with perfect vision when she noticed subtle markings on a relic I found during a dungeon expedition. She was just that unflappable.

  “Good morning, Jummi. My name’s Oliver,” I said with a big smile.

  She gave me a neutral stare. “Are you here for pleasantries or to do business?”

  “Business, my good shopkeep,” I replied. I gestured to the glass. “I am here to sell you a unique, rare and priceless heirloom from my homeworld.”

  “Saying unique and rare contradicts yourself,” Jummi said and picked up the mug. She looked it over closely and lifted it to the light. “Fascinating. The bevels are perfectly flat. What’s more, it’s also perfectly symmetrical. I don’t see a single bubble or seam anywhere. Why are you selling this?”

  I put on my sad face. “I don’t wish to. It’s a family heirloom passed down for generations. Alas, I was summoned to this world without a Sovereign to my name. As such, I need to sell it. I hear you have the fairest dealings in all of Leoren.”

  Jummi snorted. “You six only arrived here yesterday. How would you know I make fair dealings?”

  “Willem, a mage at the castle, informed me,” I lied. Well, lied because he didn’t tell me during this loop.

  Jummi’s eyes lit up and her demeanor instantly changed. “Willem? Oh, he’s my brother-in-law. It’s so nice of him to send business my way. Yes, I can see the value in this. What do you want to sell it for?”

  I pulled another fib out of my basket of tricks. “Willem suggested I sell it for two platinum Sovereigns. He said you could easily move it to a nobleman attempting to improve his status.”

  Jummi’s eyes squinted at me. “Willem may be good to my big sister, but he’s awful at appraisal. Any number of exterminators can pull something like this out of a dungeon.”

  I knew she wouldn’t accept the offer. One of the lessons I learned from Jummi herself with negotiations is never name your desired price. If you’re selling, go higher than you want. Buying, lower than you wish to spend. I also had to trick Jummi into a different tactic called price anchoring. By bringing up Willem’s name, it let me name my price first. The first to name a price has an advantage, so long as the other is unaware of the trick.

  “I see. Willem told me this glass is unusual since it has no traces of mana in it at all. It was crafted entirely without the help of magic by a real person,” I said. Of course, I left out the part where the real person was watching a machine pump a dozen of these things out per second onto a conveyor belt. Precision machining, which was seen as overly perfect on Earth, was near impossible for artisans here.

  Not that I was cheating her. The object may be mundane and available at big box retailers for a few bucks a box, but here it legitimately was one-of-a-kind. She would auction it off for the four platinum Sovereigns to a nobleman who would impress his social circle with a cheap bar mug.

  We ended up haggling for around 30 minutes. I usually took my time here because my next appointment isn’t until around 11Mor. We eventually settled on the one platinum Sovereign.

  “Since this is a favorable purchase for me,” Jummi said as she pulled out a small sack and counted 100 gold Sovereigns into it. The coins were tiny thin discs the size of my thumbnail. “I’ll throw in a coin pouch for free. I see you don’t have anywhere to keep the coins. Are you sure you’ll be safe from pickpockets?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m used to avoiding them,” I replied as I took the bag. I pulled one out and rubbed my thumb over the reeded edge. The coin lit up with a gentle glow which spread to the others in the sack. Jummi gave me a nod of approval. I had tested the coins to ensure they were legitimate. Metals in this world were entirely formed from magic in dungeons. If you ran a finger over the coin edge, they would glow briefly as an authentication feature. Alchemical coins made out of wood wouldn’t glow.

  I tied the handle to a belt loop and stuffed the bag inside my booty shorts. It was uncomfortable with how tight the denim was, but it beat having someone slit the bag off my waist.

  “Now that our transaction is done, can I interest you in some clothing for you or your companion?” Jummi asked.

  I looked around the store. All she had were some odd pieces of elaborate stage costumes that, even compared to what I was wearing, would look ridiculous. “Nah. I have another place in mind.”

  Jummi shrugged. Her revenue stream wasn’t from the wares out here. “If you find any interesting relics, I’ll give you a good price.”

  “I know you will. I’ll be sure to stop by,” I said.

  Lia and I squeezed back out into the street from the shop. Curious eavesdroppers by the door pulled away and acted like they were going about their business.

  Instead of heading toward the equipment shop I preferred, I took a detour down a different street. It was a tavern district with a number of establishments lining both sides of a narrow street. There was a commotion ahead that competed with my arrival for attention.

  Outside a seedy looking bar, I saw a pair of guards, one a wolf-clan man and the other a jaguar-clan woman, trying to wrestle with a giant lizard wearing tattered pants and no shirt. The lizard was Tizek of the crested-clan. Reptilian beastmen weren’t from this region. He hailed from an island chain a few months by sail to the southeast. From his description, the place sounded like Australia. He looked like a frilled lizard with green scales and a bright red frill. It was currently fanned out in a threatening manner like the spitting dinosaur from that one movie.

  “We’re only taking you to the guardhouse to sleep it off,” the wolf guardsman said.

  “I am not drunk!” Tizek shouted drunkenly. Even though it was 11Mor, he had been heavily hitting the bottle and then failed to pay for it. He arrived by ship yesterday and didn’t have any money.

  Even though I met Lia first, Tizek was the first person who joined me in my party. It was the first time I was here when I was wandering around town aimlessly. I saw Tizek and the guards fighting and thought someone had dressed up a gator in clothing.

  “Who dresses up a gator in pants?” I shouted. My cry was enough to grab the attention of everyone around. The guards and Tizek both paused to stare at me.

  Before anyone could react, I darted forward toward Tizek. His eyes went wide with surprise and he folded out his frill in an attempt to intimidate me. I tackled him in the midsection and brought him to the ground. I was now wrestling with a 180cm lizard man in the middle of the street. In my rubber clogs, booty shorts and torn red checkered shirt.

  “Calm down, big boy,” I said as I maneuvered myself behind Tizek. My stamina bar started to drain rapidly as Tizek began to resist my grip. “I’ll get you back in the swamp where you belong.”

  “I don’t live in a stinking…” Tizek started to say before I managed to clamp my hand under his chin and close his mouth.

  I turned to a guard. “Quick! Give me those shackles!”

  The confused jaguar guardswoman tossed her shackles my direction. I wrapped the shackle chain around Tizek’s mouth and clamped the ends together. I then pinned him to the ground. “There you go. You gotta get a gator from behind and hold his mouth closed. They’re harmless after. I can toss this fella back in the swamp if you point me the right direction.”

  “Uh, hero?” the wolf guardsman stuttered. “We don’t have any swamps here.”

  I looked down. Tizek had forgotten about the fracas and had fallen asleep. He was wasted.

  “Then where should I bring him?” I asked.

  “Nowhere,” the jaguar guardswoman said. “We’re going to take him down to the guard house and put him in a cell. Then we’ll give him a fine. If he can’t pay the fine, he’ll be sold into indentured service.”

  My first run, the indentured part made me mad, especially when I realized he wasn’t a gator in pants. I asked if I could pay for him. I had sold my beer mug to the king for one gold Sovereign, so I was able to cover the tab.

  “What? That seems excessive. What if I pay his fine now?” I asked.

  The two guards looked at each other. “The fine is 50 silver Sovereigns.”

  I reached into my pouch. “All I have is a gold Sovereign. Can you make change?”

  I knew they were going to pocket the money since it was silly to think the law collected fines on the spot.

  “We don’t have any spare coin,” the wolf guardsman said, staring at my gold Sovereign.

  “I can help with that,” a voice came from behind. It belonged to a burly bear-clan man with black fur. He was the owner of the tavern. I never caught his name since this isn’t a place I liked to hang around. “He owes me 45 silver Sovereigns. I can give you an antidote to clear his drunkenness for another 5 silver.”

  I knew it was part of the scam. This place sold cheap swill for a two copper a glass. Tizek was from out of the area and he was swindled. The barkeep lied to me about his tab. He was also an opportunist and saw me, a freshly summoned hero from another world, flashing a gold coin in public as an easy mark. The drunkenness remedy sold for 20 copper and was a common offering at taverns to deal with this sort of thing.

  I handed the gold coin to the barkeep. “I think you three can work out the details.”

  The barkeep reached into his apron and handed me a pill. The jaguar guardswoman removed the shackles from Tizek’s mouth and, like feeding medicine to a dog, I pried his mouth open and popped the pill down the back of the throat. He involuntarily swallowed.

  A few seconds later, Tizek opened his eyes and a hand gripped the side of his head. “Ugh, I feel terrible,” he groaned. The remedy cleared the drunkenness but it didn’t remove the terrible hangover. You needed water and time to work through that.

  Tizek’s eyes turned to me in confusion then to the guards. Realization of what he had done started to reach his expression. “I apologize. I have dishonored myself.”

  The wolf guardsman shrugged. “Thank the hero. He paid your fine. Otherwise, you’d have been sold to the nobility to work off your debt.”

  Tizek, still on the ground, moved into a kneeling position and pressed his head on my rubber clog. “You have saved me a great dishonor. What do you wish of me in return?”

  “Come now,” I said as I backed away a step. “You don’t need to do that. How about you join my budding party and we register at the Exterminator’s Guild?”

  “I owe you a life debt and that’s all you wish?” Tizek said as he pulled his head up to look at me quizzically.

  “Uh,” I looked around at the passers-by staring at us. I was already drawing a lot of attention, having a frilled-clan man groveling at my feet was adding to the circus. “Come on, let’s get out of here. This isn’t a great part of town.”

  “As you command,” Tizek replied and stood up ramrod straight. It would have looked impressive if he wasn’t dressed in rags.

  The locals in this part of town didn’t appreciate me calling it less than optimal living. The two guards didn’t care, they were too busy counting their coins, but the tavern keep was giving us the stink eye.

  “None of that. Just call me Oliver,” I said as I guided the two back to the main road. “We can’t talk more later.”

  We returned to the main road and headed further away from the castle. The midday crowds gawking at me left little opportunity to have a chat with Tizek about the situation. He was, oddly, very easy to convince. His culture had a strong hierarchal element to it. Since he viewed me as above him in the pecking order, Tizek took everything I said at face value.

  Thankfully, the crowd did make it a point to part and let me pass. My face was plastered all over town as one of the summoned heroes. They didn’t want to get in my way. It would change later in the day after the rumors I was a dud started circulating.

  We were coming close to Victory Square, where Victory Fountain was located. I knew we were close for a few reasons. First, I’ve been here a long time. Second, I saw the purple suit I really want to buy. Third, and most importantly, I smelled Alvin’s roasted chestnuts on the air.

  Sadly, his cart already had a gigantic line and the squirrel-clan man was dishing them out as fast as he could. It would be a bit of a walk to get to our next destination and if we stopped for the sugary goodness, we’d miss the timing.

  Victory Square also housed all the major guilds in the city. This time of day, the Miner’s and Exterminator’s Guilds were both quiet. They were all out for the day mining metals or clearing out dungeons.

  One of the interesting things about this world was metals were entirely magical in nature. They formed deep in underground veins along with monsters. Exterminators were needed to clear out mines to allow the Miner’s Guild access.

  Another interesting fact about metals was they were temporary. Metals only existed from two to five years depending on the type. When they were six months away from fading away back to magic, they’d begin to rust or tarnish. Hence the unusual building style. Magically enhanced wood, stone and animal products were exclusively used to construct anything expected to be durable or permanent. Steel trussed building was foolish since the structure would collapse five years later.

  This means the coins in my pouch would, within the next two years, vanish back into nothing. This created an interesting monetary system where raw metals were mined and sold for coin. Supply and demand kept the money supply from inflating. When gold, for instance, was flush in the market, inflation would spike and the demand for raw gold plummeted. Then as the gold vanished, the price of raw gold began to rise above the weight of the coin and mining started again.

  As for losing money because I didn’t spend it fast enough? Not a big deal. The kingdom allows tarnished coins to be replaced with newly minted ones at any of the banks in the city. Foreign coinage is exchanged with a fee.

  As we passed, I looked over at the prices listed on the board outside the Mining Guild. Currently, coinage metals were priced low while iron and nickel was priced high. Buying metal weapons and armor was prohibitive at the moment.

  As we continued past the Exterminator’s Guild, I heard Lia comment. “Aren’t we registering?”

  “Nope, we’ll take care of that later,” I replied as I eyed Alvin’s cart one more time. “We have one more person to add to our little party and we’ll be ready to take care of business.”

  Lia nodded knowingly while Tizek gave me a quizzical look. I wasn’t about to brief him on the state of the world in public where anyone can overhear. I’d save that after we recruited Void. That was one task I was dreading the most.