Day 100, 8:30 AM

  My hands have been shuddering ever since last night. I’ve been devouring fifteen books per day, relying on hyper-stimulator and my mental stats to build up my understanding of magic from scratch.

  The topic is interesting, and now I know Edna sucks as a teacher, but that is fine. Knowledge lives in these books, and reading them and thinking for myself is yielding better results than someone regurgitating it for me.

  Yesterday, however, my focus snapped. My death is at hand, and I don’t know whether Redo will break my mind again. Theoretically, it shouldn’t.

  I can read books for weeks or months at a time. I’ve avoided human contact precisely because I want to emulate sitting alone in a library, reading and learning as I’m alone. That should do. It’s no different from an extended cram session. Except I will have to die occasionally.

  Most people would choose a hot tub and a sharp knife, but I could in theory survive that. It is my greatest fear to be stuck in a death loop inside a coma. That’s probably the only thing which can truly destroy me.

  I shudder and head into the kitchen. A massive cleaver, probably something only an ogre of someone like myself can wield, hangs off a wall, I’ve taken note of it ten days ago and chosen it as my suicide weapon.

  I enter the kitchen. Fourteen days ago, around this time, we finished breakfast, and I issued my warning. Edna and the girls did their best, wishing me a good day or good morning on several occasions, but ignored me once I ignored them.

  I lift the cleaver. Heavens, it’s at least fifty pounds, what the hell did they chop with this thing?

  “Griff?” Gila opens the kitchen door and sees me swinging the chopper straight at my head.

  Her terrified face is the last thing I see, before the phantom pain hits. Blessedly, it passes a moment later, and I’m back in the service corridor, heading for the library.

  I hope she was outside the blast range. Vengeful is the most ridiculous, useless skill ever. No sane man can use a skill that turns him into a bomb upon death. Then again, I’m not sane, and I’m certain I will once more use the skill for the betterment of mankind or at least the lives of those I love. Like I did for Manny.

  Yeah, right.

  I head to the library. A normal person would have picked a different book and continued where they had left off, but not me. I first check whether all books are in their place and whether the writing has changed.

  Assuming I’m hopping from universe to universe, there might be minute discrepancies, but I notice none. Half an hour later, I continue where I had stopped.

  Day after day, week after week, I study.

  [Ability - Advanced Arcane Lore acquired]

  BSD shows a pop-up, momentarily stunning me.

  Huh? Now that is a surprise. In my seventh loop, I have learned enough to advance the skill. Intriguing.

  I advance through three more loops, for a total of ten, each time acquiring Advanced Arcane Lore. But in the repeats, I got it as soon as I started reading a new book, and BSD registered my comprehension.

  Ten loops of reading is enough. That’s some five months. My mind is holding up just fine, but I can’t keep studying. I stare at the cleaver.

  I’ve read around two thousand books. That means I have to repeat these cycles forty-nine times more.

  The kitchen door opens, right on schedule.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “I need a moment alone, Gila,” I say without turning back. Like the previous eight times, the girl leaves without a word. Good girl. It would be a shame if some random shrapnel killed her.

  I need to do something to break the cycle, but I can’t interact with the people. They will forget it, and I won’t. Maybe I need disposable, single-use companions?

  Seems like a safe line of thought. I hammer the hatchet into my brain, explode, and jerk in the middle of the service corridor.

  The eleventh run, and I know what to do to break the pattern. I go into the gaming room, steal an hourglass, which I’ve already timed at twelve hours, and head for the dungeon.

  Wielding magic to fight really isn’t my style, but I need to learn, and I need to practice my alarm spell. Only fools would ignore a tool just because they prefer another or have an hourglass.

  I run to the dungeon and descend the stairs. The light shines, and there should be ten lobsters milling about. I cast scanner, close my eyes, and focus on the input from the spell. The surrounding clearing is void of trees and monsters, my senses riding on the wave of outer mana, touching, tasting, smelling, but there is only grass, void of insects.

  My eyes closed, I take a step, leaves and branches entering my perception. I can feel the juices flowing through them. They are alive beyond any doubt, real trees, such as the trees of Everrain are.

  I keep walking and the rustle of life intensifies until finally there is movement. Fifteen yards away from me, a land lobster stirs, turning towards me. The creature shifts its tendrils, as if tasting air, unsure of what it’s sensing, but the flickering stops as I take another step.

  The thing lunges towards me while an orb of fire appears in my hand. The lobster is five yards away, hidden in the bushes, but there are no thick branches, nor anything else to block the ball of eldritch flames I’ve conjured, so I hurl it.

  I taste the air shimmer in the heat, as the flaming orb blazes towards its target. The lobster freezes, but fire consumes the creature before it can run.

  This is impossibly easy.

  I push more mana into the scanner, and the sphere swells to thirty yards. Eight times the volume would have been overwhelming, but the dungeon is mostly static, inputs to process few.

  Two new lobsters have entered my hemisphere of awareness, and I conjure another ball of flame, inspecting the potential trajectories. A tree stands in the way, saving the first from its immediate cremation, but I have a clear shot to the second, nothing but leaves and twigs obstructing my path.

  I lob the ball of fire at it, and the creature perishes before it understands what’s happening. I clear the level in an easy stroll, killing the creatures unaware of my presence before doing the same on the second and the third floors.

  Down and down I go. Scanner combined with a heavy crossbow or portable ballista could possibly clear everything in my path. It would save me a lot of mana too, but my design is to abuse my mana and expand my capacity as much as possible. Maybe, once I’m done with the library, I’ll come here for real, and exert my mana to its utmost?

  I clear ten floors on the first day, and commit myself to clearing no more than ten floors a day. Redo is red, and while these opponents are trivial, especially with scanner, there’s no reason to risk my life when the purpose of the expedition is honing my skills and staving off boredom.

  I clear forty floors in four days, and head back. I have mastered scanner, improved alarm, increased my mana capacity by around ten percent, and gained an attribute point, which I will lose in a couple of days, since I don’t plan on returning anytime soon.

  Wait! Attribute points. I check BSD, I have nine, with the bonus one I earned, but even without it, I have eight. I can increase my wisdom and intellect to thirty-six, and see how it impacts the rate at which I read. Not a bad idea. With a bit of luck and good deduction, I might save myself a suicide or three.

  I return to the mansion on the evening of my loop’s fourth day, steam vented. Without shame, I lie to the door, saying that I have bought a ticket, and enter the residence.

  “Where were you!” Edna intercepts me in the service corridor.

  “I was clearing the dungeon. You promised not to speak with me for two weeks, please leave me alone.”

  “I promised not to interrupt your studies, then you ran off to play in the dungeon! What were you thinking?”

  “I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going to the library. I had to kill a few monsters for a change of pace.”

  “What change of—”

  “Edna, please, leave me alone. All will be well, don’t worry. I won’t slack off.”

  She’s furious, red capillaries marbling her pale face.

  “Do you want to have sex?” I ask, and spit falls from her slack jaw.

  She was about to shout at me, but her mind failed her when she heard the question.

  “What? No! What are you talking about?”

  “Leave me, Edna, my mind is unstable.”

  I turn around, wondering what the hell I’m doing. I would’ve pounded her right there in the corridor had she said yes. Nothing I do in this loop will matter; it won’t have permanent—.

  No! I realized I almost made a mistake. No, I can’t treat loops like that. I can kill, seduce, gorge myself, it won’t matter to anyone, save for me.

  No, I will treat loops like real life, no repeats, no making permanent friends. It’s fine to go to a random bar and talk to a stranger and forget them, just like they would forget me. It’s not fine going back in time to achieve a result I want and to find a perfect way to handle a social situation.

  God, I need that shower to clear my thoughts.