Loopshard

"How the hell does that even happen?" Adam asked, still reeling from the revelation that he was alone in this universe. "How many people entered Stage One??"

[1 Player entered and survived Stage One.]

That makes no sense!

Or did I replace myself in a universe where I was the time-looper??

But how would that lead to only me being alive?? Thousands, maybe millions, of Players had to have been sacrificed to achieve something this devastating.

Around him, the houses were melted like candles, barely even coherent. The ground lacked texture and definition. Without Players dying, the System didn't have the power to give the island much structure.

He looked up into the clouds, but Luvicidix didn't fly down to meet him.

Is this what she was warning me about? he wondered.

Or maybe this is what happens when I go to a universe where nobody looped the 'layer' before.

Without a time-looper, there would be no new layer added to the universe and thus all the people wouldn't exist since this layer technically doesn't exist.

Adam started walking towards the Market, but almost immediately stopped going any further despite moving his legs.

It was the same sensation as what he'd first felt in Stage Two when trying to go beyond the invisible boundary lines of the Goblin Village.

"What the…?"

He turned around to look at the cube.

It was stopped in the middle of the island where he'd arrived after the Stage.

It always stuck to his side, except for when it gave rewards and evolutions, but now it was just floating there mid-air, its eye looking at him.

< < ADAM > >

A quake rolled through the ground, and the incoherent cobblestones under his feet became a flat sheet of obsidian black that expanded outwards in a ring from the centre, travelling across the entire island and deleting all its features. When it was done, the island had transformed into a flat plate that hovered between the layers of clouds.

With a loud thud, the Eye fell to the ground. The sound made it clear it was far heavier than its small cuboid body had any right to be.

Adam didn't dare move any closer, and he brought his single barrier out in front of himself, shaping it into a pathetic attempt at a lance. He didn't have nearly enough Manipulation Effect upgrades to make anything better and he was fairly sure it wouldn't matter anyway, though he wouldn't go down without a fight.

The cube started to bulge outward as something pressed against its walls from within.

A tortured screech of metal preceded a large black limb emerging from inside the cube. It was made of curling smoke given physical mass and it had three large claws, with its palm the size of Adam's torso. Attached to its forearm, elbow, and back of the hand were eyes of varying sizes.

Then another limb emerged.

And another.

More and more emerged from within until a fully-formed entity had broken free of the metal shell of his companion cube. The sight almost reminded him of the Voidspawn, but he knew it was different.

Adam's eyes immediately caught on the sphere that filled the large eye in the middle of its body. It had the shifting hues of dimensional glass, identical to the shard he'd seen within himself, and the splinter that was located at the top of Alepheria's Crooked Tower.

It's the dimensional core.

The Eye's visage was nonsense, and it kept warping and growing as more of its real body pulled itself from an unseen fourth dimension. Even as it grew, the central part of its body was like a weirdly elongated and uneven clump of smoke dotted with eyes that glowed violet and sprouting large arms.

It just hovered there in the air, every last eye of its body bearing down on him.

Then the All-Seeing System spoke through the entity.

It was not the gentle human voice that it had used when he'd talked to it following his third loop.

No, it was its real voice.

Every syllable of every word sent a cascade of lightning crawling across the inside of Adam's skull, tickling his brain and making his vision flicker with staticky artefacts like on an old CRT TV. Blood drippled out of his ears and nostrils, as though the sound itself was full of sharp edges.

< < SUCH A MESS YOU HAVE MADE > >

< < PERHAPS I WAS FOOLISH TO BELIEVE YOU WOULD HEED MY MANY WARNINGS > >

< < EVEN STANDING AT THE FOOT OF THE GREAT DEVOURER WAS NOT ENOUGH TO DETER YOU FROM YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTIVE WAYS > >

The Eye spread out its body, widening like a net while moving closer to where Adam was pressed up against the invisible boundary.

He flung his barrier projectile at it, but it just vanished mid-air along with his spell-tome, then went Gram, the cores wrapped up in his shirt, and the Green Slime Glove Relic he'd gotten from the Magical Forest. All of them were erased, just like that. It really hammered home the fact that the All-Seeing System ruled the Trials and could do whatever it wanted.

< < IT IS FORTUNATE THAT THE REALM TRAVELLER IS NOT THE SORT TO HOLD A GRUDGE DESPITE ALL THE CLEAN-UP REQUIRED OF HIM > >

< < HOWEVER > >

< < THIS CANNOT PERSIST > >

< < I WILL GIVE YOU ONE FINAL CHANCE > >

< < LET IT NOT BE SAID THAT I AM NOT POSSESSED OF MERCY > >

The Eye pressed its massive black hands against the boundary around Adam, blocking him in as the giant eye bearing the dimensional core moved closer.

< < IF YOU PERISH BEFORE THE CONVERGENCE OF DIMENSIONS > >

< < THEN I SHALL TAKE EVERYTHING FROM YOU > >

< < I AM ALLOWING YOU TO EXIST OUT OF FASCINATION > >

< < BUT IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY IF YOU REFUSE TO COMPLY WITH MY SIMPLE RULES > >

The smoke-born entity pressed its enormous eye into Adam and its many arms wrapped around him. Immediately his hearing, sense of touch, and ability to breathe all ceased.

After it swallowed him whole, Adam saw the galaxies and stars of outer space.

And they looked back at him with their light, blinking like observant eyes as he plummeted and spun through the void of space.

Then he felt a familiar sensation.

Below his knees was soft grass.

Adam immediately collapsed.

[Before we proceed, you must select a Weapon Type.]

[Failure to select a Weapon Type within 60 seconds will default you to the Weapon Type 'Fool'.]

I'm back here again.

This must be a new universe.

Or perhaps it simply sent me back to the start of the last one.

Adam groaned as he tried to stand.

I really fucked up.

Believing the System couldn't stop me was a mistake.

I only thought I was defying it, but I guess there's a limit to how much it'll play along.

Adam suddenly had the sobering thought that what he'd done was truly as self-destructive as the System had said, both figuratively and literally.

I left an Adam-sized hole in a lot of universes just because I thought it was easier to get Points this way.

He thought about the warning that the System would take everything from him.

It might mean my memories, my upgrades, and perhaps even my power of looping. Though it's possible that it can't stop me from looping on death, since that power was borrowed from the Realm Traveller.

The words of the leviathan Absolute in the black ocean suddenly came to the front of his mind.

'The Realm Traveller told me about you. He was very proud of his little trick.'

That's what he said.

The first time I met the All-Seeing System, it also said 'It is possible that someone played a trick on me and wanted this outcome' when referring to how I gained my power.

Does that mean the Realm Traveller, who I suspect is the final of the big four Absolutes at the Altar, deliberately gave me this power?

And if so, could he take it away if the All-Seeing System asked?

[10 seconds remaining.]

Adam sat up with a groan. He felt the warm blood from his nose and ears trickle down his face, which was an uncomfortable and poignant statement of the System's ability to reach back in time to hurt him.

The takeaway is clear. I cannot die before the dimensions converge. Which I think means the Forbidden Altar where Players' dimensions are merged together.

I'll have to steer clear of time-loopers until then.

It will slow down my meta and mastery upgrade progress, but I was already starting to hit the limit for my current meta upgrades, so unlocking some more by sticking around longer in each universe isn't a terrible idea.

I just hope this one isn't as bad as the last few.

[3… 2…]

Oh shit!

Adam finally looked at the weapons available. It was similar to the one in the last loop.

He saw something he hadn't tried before and immediately picked it.

< < Weapon Types Available > >

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

< Warder (Rare) >

< Duellist (Uncommon) >

< Blood Mage (Epic) >

< Lancer (Common) >

< Spellcaster (Uncommon) >

"Blood Mage!"

< < Weapon Type Selected > >

< Blood Sigils >

< Epic >

< < Player Status > >

< Adam Fischer >

< Blood Mage >

< Level 0 >

< Stats >

< Health — 150 >

< Stamina — 50 >

< Mana — 75 >

< Damage — 125% >

< Defence — 0% >

< Speed — 50% >

< Luck — 10 >

< Upgrades >

< — — — >

Adam almost panicked when he saw the stats. Aside from the Health and Luck, they were absolutely garbage. Even the 100% extra Damage and 25 extra Mana from his meta upgrades weren't really helping.

I should've picked Warder!

What the fuck am I doing??

If I die now it's game over!

The dark-crimson tattoos appeared on his hands. 'Blood Sigils' they were called.

Unlike most other weapons, the information that came along with the weapon type was dangerously sparse. Beast had been similar, but it wasn't exactly difficult to understand how to utilise claws.

Blood magic on the other hand was completely alien.

No wonder it came with so much Health… he thought as it started dawning on him exactly how he was meant to use the Blood Sigils tattooed to his hands.

The sigil on his left hand almost looked like a musical note surrounded by petals like some kind of flower. The petals curled down to his palm and around his fingers, making the full pattern a bit harder to distinguish. On his palm was a circle with its line broken by a small gap at the top.

Unbidden, knowledge he'd absorbed from Alepheria's study in the bottom of Stage Seven came to his mind. There had been several books about sigils, and though none had exactly described the ones on his hands, he could make an educated guess at their abilities.

My left hand is the control.

The tattoo on his right was like an abstract grin with a saw-toothed smile from which sprouted curling tentacles. These too coiled around his fingers and met on his palm where there was a narrow triangle with an inwardly-curving bottom, looking like the broadhead of an arrow.

My right hand is the trigger.

The Stage had already begun, but Adam was barely paying attention to the two slimes hopping his way.

"Will using my magic and draining my own Health count as taking damage?" he asked the Eye.

[No.]

If he'd asked about the Flawless achievement, he likely wouldn't have received an answer, but this question was vague enough that the Eye had been allowed to respond.

Then I guess there's nothing to it.

Just gotta not think about it too much.

What he had understood from the tiny bit of insight he'd received upon accepting the weapon, was that he could use Mana to summon blood or use his own by imbuing it with Mana to make it possible to manipulate.

Adam activated the trigger sigil and felt his Mana rapidly deplete as a small globule of Mana-infused blood grew in front of his right hand.

[Warning! Mana below 50%.]

He forced himself to stop before he could exhaust his meagre reserves. The extra 25 points from his meta upgrades didn't seem to make much of a difference, since summoning was so power hungry.

With his left hand he made a shaping motion, folding his pinkie and ring finger while pushing his hand forward. With his right hand he grabbed the blood as it took shape, and suddenly he held a strange organic blade made of blood.

With rapid slices through the slimes, Adam separated their flesh from around the cores, killing them and safely extracting the collectibles.

The blood-made blade was slightly dissolved by contact with the acid, but with another shaping motion he remade it.

[Well done! You cleared the Wave within 40 seconds.]

Damn, I won't get the rarity upgrade.

But this weapon has quite the learning curve.

He looked at the blood as he manipulated it out of his right hand and into the air in front of himself. He swirled it around and then shaped it back into a globule.

My experience with Warder is paying off.

There's a lot of versatility and potential with this weapon, but I think I have to use more blood to really get the most out of its effect, and shaping blood into a melee weapon is a terrible idea.

Emelia also said it was possible to prime things like the Spellcaster, and mentioned doing something with other people's blood.

Perhaps those are from evolutions, or things I can do if I fully master the sigils.

He looked at the upgrades available to him.

< < Upgrades Available > >

< Sigil Efficiency (Uncommon) — Reduces sigil activation cost by 10% >

< Invocation Power (Uncommon) — Increases invocation effectiveness by 30% >

< Movement (Rare) — Increases movement speed by 15% >

< Luck (Uncommon) — Increases luck by 2 >

Weird, the sigils have two upgrade types I've never seen before. Invocation and Sigil. But maybe there are weapons later on with those same types.

I could stack luck to try and reach 25 for guaranteed Rares, but I still think picking weapon upgrades inside Stages is more efficient, since I can buy general upgrades cheaper on the island.

He paused.

Wait… What if I'm back at the start of the same universe?

After all, it would make no sense for the System to kill me and make another mess for the Realm Traveller to fix.

But if that's the case, will I come back to an island devoid of Players?

How would the Altar even work without other Players? And would it even count as reaching the convergence of dimensions if my dimension is the only one??

Adam looked up into the apple tree.

I have to get the Glass Acorn before I get the sword.

"Select Sigil Efficiency when there's 1 second remaining."

[Understood.]

He splayed his hand with the control sigil and the glob of blood responded accordingly, turning into a flat disc.

Adam had collected the Glass Acorn so many times that its location was seared into his memory.

With a throwing motion of his control hand, he sent the blood disc into the tree, aiming for a specific branch.

Although he hit it, the strike wasn't powerful enough to actually break the branch or shake loose the nest within which the Relic awaited.

Guess I'm doing this with my own blood, he decided. It was something he had to get used to sooner rather than later.

He focused on his trigger sigil and the arrowhead tattoo started glowing. Mana flowed backwards from his palm and up his arm, preceding a hole forming in his skin within the arrowhead shape and his blood emerging as a rapidly-growing blob in his right hand.

The Mana required to use his own blood was much less than summoning blood directly, but there was a serious downside to it.

[Warning! Health below 50%.]

Adam stopped as soon as he got the alert.

In his hand was a football-sized ball of his own blood.

That's a lot… he thought with a grimace, while feeling light-headed from the sudden exsanguination.

I'm not even sure losing this much blood is meant to be survivable…

"How much Mana did that cost?"

[It cost 10 points of Mana to convert 75 points of your Health into Mana-infused blood.]

Way more cost efficient, but using my own Health as a resource is fucking dangerous.

He was running out of time before the next wave, so he quickly shaped the massive ball of blood into a lance that he shot up into the air, aiming for the branch with the Relic.

The spell struck and then broke apart, snapping the branch and sending his own blood raining down on him.

But with a flurry of controlling gestures of his left hand, he'd collected the blood back to himself, just in time to grab the falling Glass Acorn before it struck the ground and broke. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket. Maybe he'd finally get to see its full evolution this time.

With the Healing Apples, I can afford to use even more of my own blood, but it's kind of unwieldy to have this much all at once. Especially since I can't shape it with very much precision.

Adam continued through the next Wave with ease, clearing it quickly. The third wave was also dealt with quite handily, since he could shape his blood into impossibly-thin blades that the purple slimes had no real defence against, though his first attempt broke the core inside its body.

Between the Waves, he used his ball of blood to carve his way through the tree and get the stone sword. It had dissipated a bit with every attack against the acidic enemies, but he still had a fair amount left.

One of these loops he wanted to evolve the sword to see what it did, but he felt pretty confident in the Blood Mage after the first few Waves, so he wanted to stick with it for now.

Wave four was quite easy as well, although attacking the green slimes used up a lot of his blood, since their brand of acid absolutely devoured organic matter, liquids included.

For the boss fight, he killed the Slime Emperor like every time before by using Anvil-Splitter as soon as it appeared. But unlike the loop with the bow, and even with some of the melee weapons like the Backstabber daggers and Berserker axes, killing the Slime King that remained was an absolute cakewalk, since he was able to slice up its body in a rapid series of slashes with a floating hair-thin blade formed of his own blood.

Melee weapons are fun, and I definitely want to revisit Beast and Brawler, but something like this seems to suit me supremely well.

Already he was moving the blood around with incredible finesse despite not having a lot of the Sigil Effect upgrades that improved responsiveness.

< < Wave Five Complete > >

< < Stage Complete > >

< Tallying Score >

< < Score > >

< 90 Seconds Completion Time >

< 400 Point Secret Boss Bonus added >

< 300 Point Flawless Bonus added >

< 150 Point Speedrun Bonus added >

< 150 Point All Secrets Bonus added >

< 0 Damage Received >

< 2510 Points Awarded >

Could've perhaps been better if I hadn't fucked up the first Wave by taking too long, but I'm still learning this weapon.

Surprised that using my own Health really didn't count negatively towards my Point total or the Flawless achievement, but I suppose it would be unfair if it did.

From the Relic chest, he got the Slime Ring, which he hoped would combo with the blood magic. He'd wanted to grab the Green Slime Glove which had appeared again, but the Eye had informed him that he would not be able to wear gloves over his sigils, which was odd. Rings were fine somehow, even though they also covered parts of the sigils.

He'd managed to complete all Waves except the first extremely quickly, getting upgraded rarities on the rewards that were already guaranteed to be Uncommon thanks to his Luck.

< < Upgrades Selected > >

< Sigil Effect (Rare) — Increases sigil responsiveness by 35% >

< Invocation Speed (Rare) — Increases invocation speed by 35% >

< Sigil Efficiency (Epic) — Reduces sigil activation cost by 25% >

< Invocation Power (Epic) — Increases invocation effectiveness by 70% >

< Invocation Power (Rare) — Increases invocation effectiveness by 45% >

He'd picked Invocation Power twice, despite not fully knowing what it did. The vague explanation from the Eye seemed to suggest it was related to how strong the invocations were, and as far as he understood that definition, anything he created with the sigils was an invocation. It seemed to possibly be an alternate version of the Impact upgrade for Woodsman that improved the power of attacks, but it was also possible it affected how well he could do stuff with other people's blood.

There had also been Sigil Damage and Invocation Range as options, but range didn't seem super important at the moment, since he could recollect his blood fairly easily and his default range was 15 metres or something like that. Damage also seemed less important when he'd been able to just slice through the enemies with ease, but he was sure he'd find out soon enough how important it was when he went up against the goblins.

The Eye dropped to the ground after inhaling his sigils, and Adam had a sudden adverse reaction to seeing it, immediately believing it was about to unleash its true form on him again.

But then it turned into a pyramid and flashed two holograms of his possible evolutions.

The one on the left showed the music-note symbol on the control sigil split into three, while the one on the right had the music note shaped into something like a shuriken. Both were the same dark-crimson as the original tattoos had been.

< < Select an Evolution > >

< Blood Singer — Manipulate up to 3 separate invocations simultaneously >

< Blood Adept — Prime invocations for later activation >

"Would priming an invocation allow me to create a new invocation afterwards or would I have to wait for the first one to activate?"

[Priming invocations does not lock you out of invoking more spells. However, priming a spell expends the Mana and blood involved.]

So, I can't recover the blood from something like that.

But it would work well as a trap, and since I know all the enemy spawns in the next few Stages, I can do a lot of damage that way.

Having up to three invocations would be very useful, though I'm guessing I'd have to tie my brain into knots to be able to move all three simultaneously.

I struggled with that exact thing when I had the Warder, and it wasn't until I got Alepheria's Mandate that I could really utilise multiple summons effectively.

That being said, it does feel easier to manipulate blood instead of barriers, maybe because it's my blood?

Adam was torn on what to pick.

Priming would clearly be very effective early on, but he wondered if it would still be useful after Stage Five. And if the following evolutions built upon priming, then it could lock him into an inflexible fighting style. Of course, it would also enable him to set up something like a barrage of spells, but he'd have to commit to their form ahead of time, if he understood the idea of priming correctly.

A lack of flexibility had gotten him killed more than once already, such as when he over-committed to the Fiendbarb in his third loop, or when he focused too heavily on fusing his barriers in his fourth.

I think I'll pick Blood Singer.

Learning how to multitask with several spells is something that will benefit me later on as well.

< < Evolution Selected > >

< Blood Mage => Blood Singer >

The blood sigils returned to his hands, and now the control sigil on his left hand had three of the music notes on the back.

Adam still had a ball of blood, though greatly diminished in size, floating in front of him, and with a single thought he split it into three. As expected though, manipulating all three independently was no simple feat.

The cube lifted up off the ground and exhaled a bunch of black smoke, transforming his surroundings.

< < Now Entering > >

< Interim Island >

No sooner had Adam appeared in the centre of Interim Island than he asked the Eye how many survivors there were.

[278 million Players survived Stage One.]

Fucking hell.

Adam let out a sigh.

It's better than the last one though.

But I wonder who the time-looper will be.

With this small a group of Stage One survivors, I bet there has been an absurd amount of sacrifices performed, and whoever is ruling this universe has to be some kind of cold-hearted psycho.

But whatever. I have my plan, and I will stick to it.

If I don't engage with the time-looper, then they can't harm me if I keep them blocked.

I just need to keep my head down until Stage Five.

Adam took his 29 cores and went to the Market.