Master of the Loop

Chapter 20

  Monster in the Hiding

Sylas woke up back in the library, slumping in the chair and sighing. There were more and more things appearing that put an extra shaft in his plans. He was yet to find a way to get Baron on their side, then there was the whole murderer-in-the-walls business, and now there was also him and the sword and his feeble attempt to learn it. Additionally, due to the ‘event’ with Captain Tenner, now he couldn’t even move out of this loop since that, effectively, became his training.

There was one extra thing, however, that he had to test: whether his body reset after each loop. If it didn’t, then he could just simply spam this one week indefinitely until he bulked up to the point of becoming a superman. His gut feeling told him, though, that he wasn’t that lucky. Chances were that everything restarts with the reset… except his memory. This meant that he could practice techniques and build up muscle memory, but not the muscles themselves.

Hoodwinking the Prince for who-knows-which-time, Sylas decided to take things one at a time: for the next few loops, he settled on training and, in the process, testing whether the bulking of the body stayed. He went over to the training grounds day after day, and then loop after loop, meeting the Captain who’d always give similar pointers, but progressively expansive ones as Sylas began utilizing sword just a wee bit better.

“You are too hunched! Stand up!”

“Pull your non-dominant leg back and use it as an anchor!”

“Your dominant leg isn’t just a tool for walking! Use it as a distraction!”

“Don’t pull the sword that far back! Most of the forward momentum gets lost!”

“Don’t swing so widely! You’re leaving too many openings!”

“Get a better grip on the handle!”

“Don’t posture!”

“Build some muscles!”

“Build some muscles!”

“Build some muscles!

“BUILD. SOME. MUSCLES!”

In the end, Sylas began hearing ‘build some muscles’ even in his dreams. Nonetheless, as his gut suspected… he couldn’t just loop his body into shape. With each time he ended his life and went back to the dawn after the invasion, his body would, too, go back to that day. This included strength, stamina, flexibility… effectively every physical aspect of the body was reset. The only thing that stayed was the training, though how effectively he could do it with a much weaker body was suspect.

Waking up in the library once again, he settled on a change of pace and decided to play around with the Baron this go-around. He’d slowly began grasping the most basic motions of a sword, but it hasn’t truly been that long—accumulatively perhaps two-three weeks of rudimentary training. It was far from enough to get him to stab ten times within five seconds, not to mention that such a feat required a much stronger body than the one he currently had.

Just like before, he hoodwinked the Prince but didn’t reveal Cyrs’ identity. Instead, he settled in the Baron’s chambers on the day of his arrival and waited, just like before. And, just like before, following Cyrs’ angry outburst at his wife, the two were left alone in the eerily silent room.

“Looking for this?” Sylas dangled the tiny bottle in-between his fingers, drawing the Baron’s attention toward him. The latter immediately drew out his sword and pointed it at Sylas, eyes widening.

“Who are you?! How did you get in here?!” the Baron asked.

“Do you feel guilt? Shame? Fear? Are nightmares swarming your mind?” Sylas put down the bottle and asked with a faint smile. “Did seeing these walls still standing tall straddle your already near-broken heart? Did your knees almost give out?”

“W-what… what are you talking about?! Who are you?! Answer me!” the Baron pushed back the fear with aggression, an attribute men world as well as timelines over, it seemed, shared.

“I am a deliverer, of sorts,” Sylas wasn’t certain of his success—the last time he tried this, it backfired greatly and he ended up missing his head… again. However, all he could do was push an inch with each restart. The truth was that men like Baron were hard to convince of anything, especially by complete strangers. “Light to the shadow that promised you the world.”

“…” Cyrs’ dry lips trembled gingerly as he pulled back a step, his confidence lessening somewhat.

“There are two paths in front of you, Cyrs,” Sylas said. “One is inevitable death. Perhaps not today, or tomorrow, or even a year from now. Even if you are never suffered in this life, you will be in the next. Then… there’s the other one. The one I’m offering you. The one that gives you a road to redemption. The one where the gods beyond will reconsider burning your soul everafter for your sins.”

“W-who are you?!! Answer me, or I shall stab you directly into your heart!” It’s not enough, Sylas sighed inwardly. It wasn’t enough to just play on the man’s guilt—that wasn’t to say that his guilt was monumental, but that he wasn’t a man easily swayed with emotion. He needed more than just vague thingamabobs, he needed something far more grounded, far more earthly, logical, factual. Unfortunately, however, Sylas had nothing like that. Not yet, anyway.

“I am not a mirror, Baron, for you to vanquish your demons with,” Sylas said, remaining confident. He wasn’t expecting to ‘convert’ the Baron anyway, so he may as well try and wring some information out of the man. “Stabbing me won’t erase that guilt gnawing away at your soul. Listening to me, however, might.”

“… what do you know?” the Baron’s countenance suddenly shifted, with Sylas realizing he was finally getting a reaction out of the man. “What do you know my guilt?! Of my pain?! They deserved it! They deserved all of it! You deserved it!” within the Baron’s pupils—that were entirely normal-looking until just a moment ago—Sylas suddenly saw a whiff of black smoke emerge and vanish as his eyes grew reddened. It was minute and the only reason Sylas noticed it, to begin with, was because he was paying extra attention to the Baron, looking for what words or phrases or notions triggered the man, even if he tried to hide it.

“… the innocent deserved to be gnawed away by the ghouls because your big mansion was taken away?” Sylas’ tone grew colder as he pushed the man further, wanting to see what would happen. “Mockery. You’re a mockery of a man, Baron.”

“Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP!!” the Baron fired off one ‘shut up’ after another, almost like a machine gun, while the world around him began to shift. Sylas’ heart trembled at the sight, seeing the tiny tendrils of black smoke emerge from the man’s frame.

Cyrs was shaking like a leaf in the violent wind, his eyes drawing red of crimson blood, lips quivering. He was not himself, not anymore anyway. As though taken over by something far more primal than even the man's most primal desire of survivability, his behavior was not that of a man or even that of a beast… but something far darker.

“They deserved it, you deserved it, the world deserved it!!” his voice became choral, as though there were a thousand souls within him crying out at the same time. His shadow stepped up from within the darkness, framing him further with tilting tendrils of smoke. His red eyes had turned wholly black, iris, pupil and all, like a pair of gaping holes in reality meant to devour the world. He was not a man… he was not a beast… he was a monster. One far more grotesque than even the Ghouls. “Haah, out at last. I must thank you, gullible lad. I thought I’d never get out of this old fart’s tight crust.”

“Holy fucking shit what in the god’s fuck?!!” Sylas screeched out, beyond terrified. For a moment, he even forgot he couldn’t really die—in fact, he was never as terrified as he was at that moment, faced with something beyond even the murderer hiding in the walls. “Who the fuck are you?!! What the fuck just happened?! Sweet fuck almighty—”

“Enough, enough, enough,” the Baron—or whoever he became—crackled strangely for a moment, his laughter like the booming sounds of muffled thunder. “Seeing as how you released me, you at least deserve to know who killed you. I must warn you, though—you might just die by hearing my vaunted name." Sylas, at those words, recovered just as quickly as he went nuts. Unlike what he expected the creature to be—Eldritch in nature, well beyond the scope of any one man to actually understand—it was… very much like any other man. It had an ego, it had pride, it had glee. Those things… those things Sylas could work with. "Khm, this one’s name is… Regent Lord Farseew the Horrible!”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

"Uh… I'm… I'm super-spooked?" Sylas' absolute lack of reaction seemed to shock and stun the man—the supposedly named Farseew.

“W-who are you?! How is it possible that you did not hear of my vaunted name?!! Were you born in another world entirely?!” …fuck, first guess and this guy gets it! Damn, he’s smart.

“I am above mortal matters,” Sylas said, realizing it was time to bid farewell to this timeline and go back to before he nearly shat his pants watching a normal man transform into a shadow-encrusted, black-eyed monster. “For, you see, I am a Prophet! And, as a Prophet, I must tell you… I really have no fucking idea who you are! But, I promise you, I will learn! I mean, I have some other stuff to take care of—to be fair, you did land on my plate fairly late—but, eventually, I’ll get to you! It was, uh… Fekme, right?”

“IT IS FARSEEW, YOU—YOU—YOU PATHETIC HUMAN!”

“Wow, that was lame.”

“I WILL KILL YOU!! I WILL RIP YOUR INNARDS AND FEAST ON THEM!!!”

“…”

“… what are you doing?!” the man asked seeing Sylas bend forward.

“Well, you said you’ll kill me—I’m just helping you along. Go ahead. Chop chop chop. Time is of the essence, as they say. C’mon. Chop me head off so we can both go our merry ways!”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“You’re the lamest Fekme I’ve ever heard of, nothing lamer exists from the far west to the far east to—”

“THIS ONE’S VAUNTED NAME IS FARSEEW! BE PERISHED, PUNY HUMAN!”

Chop.

You have died.

‘New Dawn’ save point initialized.

New quest discovered: Monster in the Hiding

Discover the story of ‘Regent Lord Farseew the Horrible’

Reward: hint toward subjugating him