Day 89, 5:30 AM

  I’ve found a decent pace. Around ten loops of reading, then, practicing spells on my own, fighting monsters, playing board games, cooking, hunting. It almost feels like living a normal life, if not for cleaving my skull in half once every fortnight.

  The subject of magic and natural sciences, biology, anatomy, medicine, and such contained within the library’s sea of tomes all interest me. My guess is that this is my biggest blessing and what makes the loops blend well into each other.

  After the tenth loop, I got sick of my stinking clothes, so I spent half a day scouring the mansion for clothes. I naturally found the archmage’s garb easily, but Edna would have shot me for wearing it, so I walk around wearing servant’s clean clothes now. I start all my redos by fetching them and taking a shower, because I find the stench unbearable.

  Another thing which helps is that nobody talks to me. I don’t have to repeat the same conversations and wonder whether I said something stupid as my mind drifts from the repeating topic. And while I have voluntarily isolated myself, people are around me. The animal part of me knows I have the option of speaking, company at arm’s length, and this helps stave off the madness of solitary confinement.

  I am content, and I am learning, a blessed existence really, and it has been going on like this for forty years. At least that’s what I tell myself as I head to bed. Thirty-odd years of reading, I’m close to being done, scant two thousand books remaining, and I’ve spent three years scribing runes and learning how to use them.

  A smile tugs at the corners of my lips. I have spent some two years exploring the mansion, dismantling magical equipment, and exploring how it worked. Edna would’ve flayed me alive had she caught me, but I went through the chambers she wasn’t interested in or revered and would never enter.

  The master bedchamber is a place of mystery, each exploration yielding a new discovery.

  I think I’ll go take another look tomorrow. Edna will be reading the whole day.

  I yawn and go to sleep.

  The gentle rays of afternoon light warm my closed lids. I don’t feel like getting up.

  Is this depression or am I just exhausted? Could be either in all honesty, and I think it’s about time to break the redo cycle. I have about two weeks’ worth of reading left, so I should be fine. The warm shower feels nice even after all these years. I towel myself and dry my no-longer-greasy hair. It takes three showers and loads of soap to get the natural grease out, and only two days without washing for the damn thing to return. An anatomical quirk of this human species, extra active glands in the scalp to make hair impervious to water.

  I see its usefulness, and I loathe it. You feel dirty all the time. Once human again, I eat the food Gila has left for me and head for the master bedroom. The room is as lavish as ever. Richer than my royal bedchamber ever was. Just the massive bed could easily fit five people, assuming people were eight feet tall.

  Last time I visited, several weeks ago, I found runes on the bed which could reshape the mattress, lifting and lowering sections, much like hospital beds, only better and more flexible.

  After pushing the curtains aside to allow more light into the room, I crawl under the bed, tracing the lines which control the mattress, recognizing the craftsmanship and realizing I could do better. A project for more idle times? I smile and move to the nightstand. The piece is made of dark, lacquered wood, void of items of any kind, its drawer empty. I try to pick it up and flip it around, it should have more than just the illumination control, but the thing is glued to the floor.

  That’s unusual. I push the bed, it squeals against the floor, the chairs, the coffee table, the desk, everything is mobile, but a tastefully carved, insignificant nightstand stands firm. My gut tells me there’s a secret there, and my brain concurs.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I close my eyes and use the scanner on the nightstand. Nothing, a perfectly normal nightstand, in perfect state. I almost open my eyes, when I realize there’s a problem. The runes for illumination aren’t showing on the scanner. I open my eyes. Sure enough, they are there, but my scanner tells me they aren’t.

  I touch the rune and the crystals above the headboard spring to life, giving off a gentle light. I grin. For some reason, Hadriuse has cloaked the nightstand with some sort of illusion, and I’m gonna find out why.

  Such mysteries are exactly the thing to help realign my brain to the normal world by derailing the repetitive loop. My fingers search the nightstand, comparing notes with scanner spell, and there it is.

  A faint crack beneath my fingers, right under the top board while scanner sees nothing but flat, polished wood there.

  I rub and press, trying to sink into the wood. It tilts, at first I push but nothing happens, then I press, driving the tiny piece of wood diagonally into the board. It disappears with a faint click, and a section of the wall above the nightstand rises by ten inches, revealing a collection of eight books.

  Ha! I found his stash! Naturally, the thought’s a joke, the archmage had no need for such inanities. I grab the first and scan it, it’s a diary. Hadriuse made weekly entries, most short and simple descriptions of his research for the week.

  I go through six books, disappointed with the mechanical manner in which the man wrote his observations, success and failure treated with equal excitement. Four times, Hadriuse noted he had leveled, the fact added as a footnote to his weekly research, merely saying, ‘reached archmage level three’.

  I open the seventh book and on the first page there is text, which doesn’t fit the standardized format.

  ‘I became an archmage today. The likeliest reason was the understanding and achievement after merging a thriller with the belly-dragger.’

  What? How did you know? Another part of me asked much simpler questions, What are those things and where do we find them?

  I flip through the diary, Hadriuse filled it daily, then every other day, then the entries grow sparser. There’s no mention of what a thriller and belly-dragger are, but my guess is some kinds of bugs.

  Edna can become an archmage.

  I look at the books again, torn. A part of me wants to share them with Edna, another part of me still doubts her motives and loyalty, and the third part of me, the most sensible part, wants to search the mansion, inch by inch, until I find all the secret compartments, chambers, and such.

  I have to tell her, and see how she reacts.

  I close the book. It’s the third day of my loop. The timing for revealing anything which would test our alliance and loyalty is horrible. I replace the books, close the secret compartment, and start scanning for others.

  ***

  Day 100, 9:20 AM

  “Hey Edna, look at what I found.” I hand her the relevant diary. She frowns at me, but her eyes go wide as she reads the first entry.

  “This could be the condition for entering the archmage class!” She jumps from the chair and hugs me in the middle of the empty library. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  I expected a questioning, an interrogation in fact, with bright lights scorching my eyes until I broke and told her how I violated the Honorable Hadriuse’s abode, finding five hidden compartments spread across three rooms, but no, she subverts my expectations and graces me a warm hug.

  “I don’t know which bugs these are, but we can test it with two others. Come on!” She places the diary on a shelf and drags me out into the rain.

  My fine, comfortable clothes become a soggy mess in a matter of moments, sticking to my body, but Edna doesn’t notice the drizzle. She is marching towards the jungle and some thirty yards from the house a dog-sized tarantula appears.

  Edna flicks her fingers at it, and the creature rolls to the side, paralyzed.

  “There’s an orb-weaver twenty yards there, do you think you can paralyze it?”

  I don’t know that spell?

  “You didn’t teach me that spell,” Blunt voices my words, just blunter.

  “All right.” She doesn’t notice the critique, instead heading towards the jungle herself. “I’ll fetch it, you watch over that spider.”

  I guard a paralyzed spider in the middle of the jungle, contemplating my life choices, but I don’t get far in my thinking before Edna returns, holding the orb-weaver by its leg. She puts it on the tarantula, and starts chanting and weaving her arms, motes of green swarming to her hands before surging towards the spiders.

  The creatures merge into an abomination of limbs, still paralyzed, and Edna laughs.

  “Let’s see.” She summons her guide and screams, falling to the floor, stumbling away from the invisible screen, her face bloodless, her eyes wide with terror.

  “I’m a wormlord!”