Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

I observe her as she keeps staring at the card for a few more moments before looking around and then locking eyes on me and then the card vanished inside her ring.

"Oh wow. A white dragon! I thought these guys were only going to be around after the Hatching. Did some dragon come early and…" She noticed where we were. "Gave it to EXCEEDs?" She then began smelling the air. "Humans, specifically. Huh. Why was I not informed of this? I think I should've been informed of this. Athor will hear from me after this."

"What?" I couldn't help but ask. I was just completely lost at the moment by her rambling, and the moment I said it, she completely froze and looked at me.

"What?" She asked. One could practically hear the gears grinding in her head. The ones on mine were already stopped though. "You're not a white dragon?"

"I…Am" I said, unsure of how she was going to react.

"How are you a white dragon if you can talk?" She asked me.

"I just am" I said. I literally didn't know how to answer her, and if she pressed on the matter, I didn't know what I would do.

"...Ok" She just accepted it like it was a given, which confused me but before I could do anything she looked at the card which she took out of her ring and then looked at me. "Do you know what fourteen mean?"

"No… I don't" I answered. I still didn't know what this countdown meant, as it didn't match the timeline for the explosion, meaning it wasn't fourteen minutes until the end of the loop, nor were fourteen hours. I really wasn't sure if it was even tied to the loops or not.

"Sir dragon, Lord Henry has asked for your par…ti…cipation?" Mavi, the butler, entered the tent at that moment and tried to invite me for breakfast before noticing the clearly unknown elf in the tent with me. "Sir dragon, would you mind introducing your friend?"

The elf turned towards him and walked right into his face before taking a look at the card again and basically shoving it on his face.

"Hi. Do you know what it is or why it is fourteen?" She asked about the countdown aga… Wait. It didn't go down. It should be thirteen at this moment in the loop, not fourteen.

"Erhmm. N-no?" Mavi stuttered, unsure about the elf in front of him. She just nodded and then started moving towards the exit. I needed to see the card again.

I didn't know what it was, but if it didn't decrease by now, even though it should have, it meant that whatever it was, was changing with the loops, just like me… I think I knew what it was, but I needed to make sure.

"Excuse-me" I said towards the elf. She paused and looked at me.

"Yes?" She asked as she tilted her head 10º to the left.

"Could I see the card again?" I asked. If I was correct, this wasn't a countdown at all, but a counter. What was it counting? If I was correct, it was the number of loops.

I didn't have anything to actually count how many loops I've been through but my memory. I wasn't sure, but I think I've been to at least ten loops. And if that card was truly a counter to the quantity of loops I've gone through, then it might be the missing piece the God of Time said.

The elf girl nodded and came back right next to me before showing me the card. The design of it was the nebula background moving slightly back and forth, covered with faded green magic circles with the number 16 written in gold letters right in the middle.

"May I pick it?" I asked, which the girl nodded. I then grabbed the card from her hand and brought it closer to me.

The moment it left her hands the card glowed and shone a green light that bathed everything inside the tent in a blinding green, the light fading after a few moments, leaving me, the elf and Mavi on a dark space with nothing but a green line that crossed the entire space and stretched from all I could see to infinity, like a line in a graph.

"Huh. This is new" The girl next to me as she examined the surroundings while Mavi seemed almost scared to death from where we were.

In the meantime I was looking straight at the green line. I didn't know how to explain, but it was calling me, like an old friend that I knew my entire life. As I watched it, I saw a knot in a part of the line, and when I approached it, it zoomed in. It was a mess of lines I couldn't follow exactly, but there was one thing right in the middle, a glowing white sphere. As I watched it closely, I saw it being ejected from the knot as it expanded to at least ten meters in diameter before fading, leaving nothing behind. The knot began to untangle itself after the sphere was removed, returning to a single line that stretched from infinity towards infinity.

It really was the last piece of the puzzle. I knew what I needed to do, but I wasn't sure about how I would do it as I couldn't even use simple magic or skills still. Meaning that I needed to use the loops to recover and plan how I would approach it and not kill myself.

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The space around us faded as the tent slowly came back into existence, or we came back into the tent, whatever. Mavi immediately ran away from the tent, while I was slowly blinking at the card in my hands as it started to break down and crumble away.

Before I could do anything, I was suddenly jerked upwards as the elf picked me and lifted me to her face. She was smiling from ear to ear, making a high pitched sound.

"It was you! I needed to find you!" She said. "I'm not sure about what she told me, but the fact that the card was for you means I needed to find you!"

"I..What?" I said. I was still thinking about the vision I saw, so I didn't catch what she had said.

"Let's go back to my castle!" She said and then raised her hand, making magic circles appear on the ground in front of us.

I felt the pressure around us increase rapidly. It wasn't like before, where the world was holding its breath, it was rougher. It felt like I was being crushed by the entire world and I couldn't even breathe.

The elf girl stepped on the circle and then turned her head rapidly towards one of the walls of the tent.

"What?" Was all she managed to say before everything went white and I was falling back into the ground of the forest, feeling my mouth with dirt, again.

The first thing I did was gasp for air and immediately start coughing up the dirt I inhaled. The pressure had vanished like it was never there and I wondered why it was back after around three loops of nothing, though the only thing I could come up with was that it was somehow related with my time affinity that the God of Time told me was messed up after that explosion in the cave.

Now begs the question, why did the loop end so much sooner than it usually lasts when I don't inter… I did interfere… with the elf. She was about to drag me to her castle, something I think wasn't supposed to happen and that caused the temporal energy inside the cave with the boronita to shoot through the roof, destabilizing it and causing the explosion early… At least that was my guess.

I was yanked out of my thoughts by something hitting my side really hard, causing me to fall to the ground unable to move. I felt ropes around me, holding me in place and making me unable to do anything, as well as a burning sensation that ran deep not in my body, but the link between my soul and body, making me think this rope had an anti-magic effect and it was hurting because my soul was wounded. It was manageable, thankfully, as the golden pendant soothed over the pain as it happened.

"Ehm. Mavi, sir? I think we have a problem" The knight said to the butler as he approached me and saw the golden symbol floating over my chest.

I was carried towards the camp after they decided it was best to ask the healer and was brought to her tent. They placed me in one of the anti-magic cages and removed the ropes, now the burning sensation was all over my body… Thankfully it was more a discomfort than anything else.

The priest looked at me, then at the golden symbol on my chest and told the two of them to leave the tent, which they did after trying to argue for a few minutes. She placed the silencing spell around her tent and opened the cage, sitting on one of her chairs after doing so.

I immediately left the cage. The sensation was just a discomfort, but I wouldn't stay a second more than I needed there. Before she could say anything else, I lifted my paw saying to her to wait, then with a sigh I deactivated [Genetic Dysphoria] and the drilling pain started.

The priest looked at me with a surprised face as I turned into goo and then reformed into my true body.

"Before you say anything" I said while panting. "Time loop, you gave me the pendant, I will not explain how I was a wolf, you asked me to talk with you about a young elf that can throw this entire camp's knights around with ease"

"...Okay" She said, a little surprised. "Tell me about this young elf" She asked.

I then proceeded to tell her about the appearance of that elf girl and what she could do, also telling her about the card she had and her actions in every loop I saw her. Each thing I said made her brows furrow more and more, as if trying to see if I was just lying to her, but I was not.

After I finished telling her, she gave me an almost exhausted sigh, before side-eying the cabinet where she kept the liquor bottle.

"I would really appreciate it if you didn't drink that and pass out" I said, which surprised her as she looked at me with wide eyes.

"Oh, so you know about it" She said, in an affirmative tone.

"I saw you drink it and pass out" I explained.

"tsk" Did she… She did. She had just tsked at me. "Fine. I won't" She said before taking a deep breath, holding it in for a few seconds and letting it out slowly. "I don't know much, but I recognize her from various tales, and I don't know if they're exaggerated or not, but either way, that girl is trouble incarnate"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

" 'The young girl who kidnapped a prince', 'The elf who stole from the royal palace', 'The massacre of Yaqenwald'. Those are the names of the tales about a young girl with cyan long hair, purple and cyan eyes, and pale skin, whose only the title is known, 'The Witch of Pride'. One of the Calamities. She must have read my expressions as she kept going.

"They are one of the most powerful entities in the world, some of them can go against gods and even some dragons" Oh… And one of those guys would be coming here the next day, and if I don't play it smart I'm going to end up in her hands, like she almost did in the previous loop.

"...Could you… Could you get me the book "Foundations of Magic" from Henry's tent?" I asked. Knowing that I had another atomic bomb next to me did nothing to calm my nerves, but the nature of the loops helped me to ignore it to focus on getting the knowledge I needed to end the loops.

I knew what I needed to do, I just needed to learn how I would do it.

"Sure," She said. She left the tent and after a few minutes came back with the book. I then stayed the whole night studying the book, sometimes asking the priest, whenever she was awake, about some things I didn't quite understand.