Ace of Capes [Superhero LitRPG] [Isekai] [Card Crafting]

The next thing Lexie did after she calmed down–and after Ryn and the little fae came over–was to summon the V'Sala.

When he showed up, he was crouched over the ground, his jaw distended as though he were about to eat something. When he looked up and saw Lexie was there again, he sighed in disappointment.

"I do not enjoy your timing, Princess," the V'Sala said.

"What is this place?" Lexie asked.

He glanced around. "It seems to be a human school."

"It is a human school," Ryn said.

"It's not just any human school," Lexie pointed out. "It's pretty clearly my former human school. Is it possible that the dungeon took this place from my memories?"

"Perhaps. That is the most likely possibility."

"I agree," Ryn concurred.

"But things that are happening are not based on my memory," Lexie said. "The place is the same, but some of the situation is different."

Both Ryn, Little Fae, and the V'Sala blinked at Lexie cluelessly. She shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Did she have to spell it out to them?

"Perhaps the dungeon is playing a trick on you," the V'Sala said tentatively. "And twisting your memories to create its own story."

"Perhaps," Lexie allowed. She thought about Mickie and the fact that only Mickie could see them.

Or maybe she could only see Lexie. After all, she hadn't mentioned Ryn at all.

The fact that Mickie had clearly recognized her meant…something. But Lexie didn't know what.

Then again, Lexie no longer looked like Lexie. Ryn had stitched her back together to look as human as possible, including giving her clothes, but she was still rail-thin, hunched over, and pale. She'd seen her reflection in a water body, and she looked far from the Lexie she had been. She also looked about twelve years old.

Mickie should have mentioned that.

"Do I still look the same as when we first met?" Lexie asked the V'Sala.

"Yes."

She was surprised. "Yes?"

"He does not see you as you see yourself," Ryn explained. "The outer coating is unimportant to V'Sala as they have advanced soul sight. They can see the inner coating of your soul."

"But my soul has changed," Lexie said.

"The coating is still you," the V'Sala said. "You look like you."

Lexie was confused, but this seemed like a concept that would need further explanation, and she didn't have the time to dive into that right now.

Lexie sighed. "V'Sala, recite the poem again, the one that you read before we entered this dungeon. You should know it too, Ryn."

Ryn nodded as the V'Sala cleared its throat and began to recite:

"A forbidden truth, lost in the abyss

It begins with silence and ends in mist.

It knows all, sees all, walks all the worlds

All at once, then none at all

No door was built, yet one appears,

Drawn by the words of ancient seers.

It does not open, it does not close,

It merely waits and always knows.

Wealth and wisdom are not all it bestows

For untold treasure brings untold woe

Take what you need and go no further

For madness lurks just beyond the other

A watcher waits beyond the veil

No flesh, no blood, just endless tales

The gate must remain without a key.

So none unlock what none should see."

"That is the tale of Yasycht," Ryn said. "And a warning to all Fae who wander into the heart of this dungeon. The heart is a place to collect treasures that are relevant to a given form of chaos, and for Yasycht, these treasures are those lost in time. He was locked in the Beyond by the–"

"It begins in silence and ends with mist," Lexie wondered aloud, interrupting Ryn. "The first section of the dungeon, where we arrived, was filled with mist. If that is the end, then it means we're working backwards to the beginning. The Silence."

Ryn made a Fae sound.

"That does align with the pattern of the levels," Ryn said. "From the fyuloh to the dollhouse, to the town where the doll originated from, we were continuously going back in time."

"To what end?"

Another one-shouldered shrug. "To the origin."

"The origin of Yasycht?" Lexie asked. "What do you know about him, Ryn? Only the salient points, please."

"Ah, yes." She cleared her throat. "In the beginning of time–"

"Actually, maybe you should tell me what you know first, V'Sala," Lexie cut her off, much to Ryn's annoyance. "Ryn will fill in the gaps."

"I do not know the exact origins of Yasycht," the V'Sala said. "No one knows, for it is a secret lost in time. He is an ancient, one of the Great Old Ones, said to have sprouted out of pure chaos."

"And he was locked away by the Fae because…"

"I do not know."

"I do," Ryn said with barely restrained eagerness. "It is because he broke his oath."

"His oath?"

"Yes. Oaths are very important to the Fae. Our ancient ancestors operated entirely by oaths, and even today, it is how our leaders are sworn in. They swear the Great Oath to the citizens, to govern with all fairness and goodness to the creatures they rule. Oaths are also sworn by way of contracts with other species, like humans."

"How did they get Yasycht to agree to the oath?"

"There was a battle of territory between Yayscht and another Great Old One. The Fae aligned with Yasycht, and they enabled him to emerge victorious. In return, the Yasycht was only supposed to remain confined to one domain, where it was free to cause as much chaos as it would like. Yet Yasycht broke the boundary, thereby breaking its oath."

"I see. And how did they lock away such a powerful creature?"

"With the Oath," Ryn said. "It is said that Fae oaths are the most powerful magic in the Universe, and it is part of what makes us Fae so powerful. We take our oaths earnestly, as they are the symbol of order. Every day, the Fae operate under micro-oaths with each other. It is why we do not lie."

"It's also why you overcommunicate, isn't it?"

Ryn turned her nose up. "If by overcommunicate you mean we communicate clearly and not in the insufficient zigzag pattern that humans do…then yes."

Lexie almost smiled, but she didn't know why. She shook the strange feeling off and focused on the problem at hand.

"What does this have to do with winning this level?" Ryn asked.

"It has to do with everything," Lexie said. "I want to know what the dungeon wants. I believe that might be the key to us making it out of here."

"The key is to complete all the levels."

"Maybe not. Maybe there is no chronology in this game. Maybe we're supposed to play laterally, by finding triggers."

"Meaning?"

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"You have completed at least a hundred levels, Ryn. Yet you did not make it out, though you were playing by the rules. You were defeating level after level, following some imagined order, and believed that by playing fair, you would eventually reach your goal."

"Yes," Ryn said.

"Of course. But the poem did not state that we needed to pass the levels to find the door. It said that the door is always present. It does not open or close; it just waits and knows. The door is not at this imagined 'end' of the dungeon that you get to after you complete all the levels. Rather, it might be present in the levels themselves, and you simply need to trigger it."

Ryn cocked her head. "How?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Lexie said. "I think there is a secret test within the tests that proves to the dungeon that the door is worth opening for you. What I know so far is that this dungeon was previously stable, but then it became unstable, and perhaps that was how it gained its sentience." Lexie wasn't sure about this, but this made some sort of sense. "The dungeon is also a denatured spawn of Yasycht. A denatured spawn of Yasycht that has earned sentience. It might have learned to bend the rules somehow." Lexie thought about it. "There still seems to be some congruence between the levels I've faced so far and the ones you faced with your former companion, Ryn. You said that the first level was about putting a story in the right order and exorcising a demon. I fought a demon, too, in the first test and saw my past and future self, which presented a type of story order." Although it seemed like something of a stretch to say so.

"Maybe there is a maze thing here, too, and we simply need to unlock it somehow. " Lexie bit her sore lip, thinking back to the poem. "Untold treasure brings untold woe. What does that mean?"

"The more challenges you win, the more rewards you attain," Ryn said.

"Have you won any rewards so far?"

"Yes. My chi-ta is stronger, I have gained numerous new skills, I attained a lot of mana stones, and found a priceless gem that I will be able to sell for buckets of gold, if I ever make it back home."

"'Go no further'" Lexie quoted. "'Madness lurks beyond the other.' Hmm." Lexie had been working under the assumption that 'the other' was the same as 'The Other.' As in the place where all the Eldritch dungeons met and battled each other.

But what if the other was a different place? What if it referred to the Beyond that the Yasycht was trapped in?

Or maybe the Beyond was literally beyond the Other. As in, once she entered the other, she could somehow access it?

So how did she enter the Other then?

Lexie had thought she could enter the Other by defeating all the challenges. But again, what if that wasn't true? What if there was something more she was supposed to be looking for, a trigger to get the door to appear to her?

This was all too much.

Her head hurt from all the thinking she was doing, and as much as it fed her light, it also reminded her that she wasn't as smart as she used to be. Things were slow to come to her, but she knew there was something she was missing, a few things that would tie it all together.

Unfortunately, she didn't have the brain power to understand it right now. Just like she didn't understand what this world was.

"Let's just find the key," she said as she began walking. "We can understand things better after we get out of here." Maybe Lexie would encounter more people from her past outside the school. Like her brother.

She wondered if he, too, would recognize her. Also wondered what he would say to her. And what she would say to him.

She was not Lexie. She was Eldritch now.

He would probably be terrified of her if he could see the real her.

Then again, she was getting ahead of herself. Ryn and the V'Sala were probably right in that this was just the dungeon trying to play tricks on her using things that she was familiar with. There was nothing else to it. This place might have been copied from another dimension, but that did not mean that they were currently in that dimension.

This was likely all a grand illusion.

It didn't make sense for Mickie to recognize her otherwise and not act as though Lexie was markedly different from the last time they'd met.

Lexie stopped walking suddenly. She turned and frowned.

The V'Sala and the two Fae were no longer behind her. They'd vanished without a sound, like they'd never been there.

Lexie's confusion turned her in a circle.

Her companions were not to the right of her or to the left. She took two steps back, wondering if maybe she'd moved through an invisible portal, but the space remained empty.

She checked her system and found that V'Sala's card was still activated, which meant that it was still in this realm. She just couldn't see it.

"V'Sala," she called out. "Can you see me?"

There was no response.

"If you can see me, take my hand."

Nothing cold and clammy grabbed Lexie's hands.

Where did they go?

Lexie decided to keep walking, carefully, toward the janitor's office. Once she turned the corner, she was inundated by chattering bodies once more, moving through her. One guy was drinking water at the fountain. Two were spitballing with each other.

The janitor's office was at the very end, but when she tried to open it, it was locked.

"Drat." She muttered, frustration making her want to lash out with her magic.

What to do now?

Well, there was nothing else to do. She had to keep exploring the school. She went into classroom after classroom, looking around for the janitor. It was while doing so that she noticed something weird. Most of the classrooms were still empty despite the fact that it was the end of break. Or at least that was what Lexie assumed, given that Mickie had been walking to class listening to Taylor Swift.

Mickie loved to sneak off campus during breaks. She would never go back to class more than a second before she had to be there.

Yet most of the students were just walking down the halls aimlessly, seemingly to no destination.

And then Lexie saw something that felt like a glitch. She saw a girl walk into a classroom, sit down, and disappear.

Lexie blinked. Did that just happen?

What was even stranger was that it happened again. The same girl walked into the classroom again, sat down, and disappeared. And again. And again.

It was like she was caught in a time loop. It didn't happen to everyone. Most of the people, when they walked, did not disappear or return to a point of origin. The bodies coming toward Lexie were not the same people over and over again.

But then Lexie saw something else. The boy at the water fountain. He was still drinking. Quite some time had passed, and he was drinking. How thirsty was he?

Unless he wasn't thirsty at all.

Maybe he was caught in the same strange time loop affecting the girl.

Lexie kept walking and glanced around, trying to identify more timeloopers.

While doing so, she eventually bumped into Ryn and Little Fae again, who came out of a separate classroom.

"Where did you go?" Rn asked her.

"Me? Where did you go?" Lexie shot back.

"What do you mean? You were with me, and you disappeared."

"No. You disappeared." Lexie frowned. This was very strange.

Thinking about it made her head really hurt. She wanted to kill everyone and everything to solve the problem. She wanted to blow up this school and escape.

She wished she could. It would have made everything a lot easier.

"Let's retrace our steps," Lexie told Ryn. "Maybe we missed something."

Ryn nodded, and they followed Lexie back to the first classroom they'd started in.

They stopped at the door, and Ryn said, "Okay. We are here. Now what do we do with our new position?"

"Excuse me." A voice came from Lexie's right. "You're blocking the door."

Lexie glanced over, and another wave of recognition hit her.

"Tate."

He gave her that familiar tired, bored expression. "I thought you dropped out."

"No, I..." Lexie hesitated. She waited to see if Tate would remark on her appearance, but he didn't.

Which meant she looked enough like Lexie Evans that no one questioned it. Hm. Did the level alter her looks?

"Are you going to move?" Tate asked.

He annoyed her.

Lexie wanted to scorch him, but she resisted the urge. She stepped to the side, and he entered the room. She watched him take his seat at the back.

The only other people in the classroom were the two boys from earlier, and the black-haired one called out, "Yo! Tate, my man. I have another client for you."

"I can't," he responded, putting his head on the desk to take a nap. "I'm booked for the semester."

"Oh come on, sure you don't want to add one more? Cole's dad has deep pockets."

Tate finally looked up at the other boy. "Double."

"What?" Cole said indignantly. "That's not fair."

"If I have to take you on, I have to drop someone else, and I'm not doing that for less than double."

"What a rip off. You know what, forget it. I can take the PSAT on my own."

"Suit yourself." Tate didn't seem like he cared one way or another, and he went back to his nap.

Lexie entered the classroom and walked up to Tate.

He looked up again, his eyes snagging hers.

"It's double for you too," he told her.

"What?" Lexie asked.

"I assume you want me for your retake," he said. "It's a thousand, two hundred."

Lexie scowled at him. She wasn't sure, but that amount sounded egregious.

Is he cheating me? she wondered as her fingers tingled and the itch intensified.

But before she could say anything, she heard the boys behind her mutter, "Is he talking to himself?"

Tate ignored them.

"Are you paying or not?" he asked Lexie.

"Dude, stop that." The guy with black hair said. "It's creeping me out."

"Stop what?"

"Talking to yourself."

"I'm not talking to yself."

"Yes, you are. There's no one there."

Tate frowned. Then his eyes snapped back to Lexie, and they widened in shock.

"No," he whispered. "Not again."

Not again? Had this happened to him before?

"You're not real." He closed his eyes and whispered to himself. "You're not real."

Lexie was once again confused. She glanced back at Ryn, who was observing the scene like she was watching a television show, with a curious yet detached expression on her face.

"Tate Reynolds," Lexie called, but Tate got up and stomped out of the room.

"Tate!" She yelled as she followed him. "Hey, Tate."

He didn't respond as he stalked down the hallways, but Lexie didn't let him out of her sight.

Tate could see her. So could Mickie. But she was invisible to everyone else.

Also, at least two people were stuck in a timeloop, and she didn't know why.

But then she got another clue.

Tate was walking past at the exact moment the time-looping girl was about to enter the classroom.

She bumped into him and stumbled back.

"Ouch." She glared at him. "Watch where you're going, idiot."

Tate ignored her and kept walking, but Lexie glanced back.

She saw the girl enter the room and take her seat. She didn't disappear. She instead got on her phone and started scrolling.

Huh. The loop had been broken.

By the time Lexie looked back, she'd lost track of where Tate had gone. It was like before, like when Ryn and co. had disappeared.

"Lexie!" Lexie turned once more to find Mickie chasing after her, alerting several people around them. "Lexie, wait!"

Lexie watched as Mickie ran by the water fountain boy. He finally stopped drinking to watch her, then wiped his mouth, chuckled, and went off in the opposite direction.

He, too, had broken the loop.

That was when it occurred to Lexie. It came together quickly, right before Mickie got to her, as she put together that the timeloop had been broken twice by people who could see Lexie.

That was the only way they could progress.

"The maze isn't the place," Lexie murmured. "It's the people."