Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

Before the little spark of hope I had gained over the last loop could die out as I stared at the ceiling, already feeling myself sinking deeper and deeper into a dark ocean of despair, the smell of food filling the room made me pause enough to question it, as there never was food at the start of the loops before.

I raised my neck and looked around, only to see that the table on the far side of the room, which I didn't payed attention before, as it was just a normal wooden table in comparison to the other parts of the room, was filled to the brim with various types of different foods.

I got up and walked towards it, and I felt residual temporal energy around the food, only then did I notice that the food was the same as the one that elf guy ordered for me. I didn't know how to respond to it. I barely noticed what looked like a sheet of paper on the side of the food.

When I picked it up, I noticed it wasn't actually paper, but pure light, made somehow solid. There was a message, made out of a different color of light.

"Consider this as a small gift from Zwriniz." The message read. "You are drawing a lot of attention from us, primarily from the leniency Zwriniz is displaying to your temporal displacements."

"While your current path is driving you further towards Tenessa than one should," it continued, "you must learn how to balance Tenessa and me. The light from a star hardly ever hits a planet, traveling forever in the emptiness of space, but the light of a candle lights up the room, revealing all of its secrets."

"Whenever you start feeling lost, take a step back and reconsider. Of everything you may lack, time is not one of them." It finished.

I stared at the message for a few more minutes, watching it break down into countless little sparks of light that seemed to dance in the air surrounding me before fading away. The message was burned inside my mind like those ghost images you get after staring at a singular point for a lot of time, and yet it didn't hurt.

Two things were happening inside my mind at the time, the first being that the message itself served to empower the fading spark of hope inside me, turning it into a burning star of hope. I knew I would exit the loops eventually, but how I would be once I left was completely under my command.

The second thing that passed through my mind was a memory of Farahio talking about the gods.

"The God of Space, Theo. The God of Time, Zwriniz. The Goddess of Life, Vida. The Goddess of Death, Maut. The God of Light, Luminos. The Goddess of Darkness, Tenessa, and the Goddess of Chaos, Somi. Those are the names of the greater ones. The ones who created the universe," he had said the names of all the gods. At the time, I only knew about the God of Time and the Goddess of Life, having personally heard them. Theo, I only knew because of the ritual that brought me here, having his name. But the others I had almost forgotten about.

At that very moment, it hit me. The elf I ate with yesterday, the very same one who paid for my meal, introduced himself as Luminos, and this message just now confirmed everything. I had lunch with the God of Light himself.

The weight of being observed by something far, far more powerful than myself fell on my shoulders. The message itself said as much, but it also confirmed something else that was nagging at my mind since I saw it on my titles list.

The only title I wasn't sure about what it was. The [???????????????????] 3/7 title.

When I first noticed it, I asked [Knowledge Library] what it was, but it didn't answer me, instead, it gave me the following.

[Information is not yet available as the origin of the information is incomplete.]

Farahio mentioned seven gods that created the universe. Seven parts. At the time I noticed the title and asked about it, it was at 2/7, and at the time I only had "met" two gods, Vida and Zwriniz.

Whatever the title was, it was clear that it was related to the greater gods, but I still didn't know exactly how.

I was both filled with confidence that such powerful entities were observing me and embarrassed by their attention. I mean, what should I do when literal gods were paying attention to me and what I was doing?

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Although the System itself was already watching me everywhere and every time, I think I just didn't consider it to be anything else than a computer program of sorts, so I just went with it, like an RPG game where you can unlock skills and levels. Now that I was thinking about it, this wasn't a video-game, this was real life, and the System was a form of entity that was both observing me and somehow part of me, considering it place skills diretcly into my soul.

And it wasn't just me. The System was everywhere, in every person, and I had a hunch that it was also on monsters. I probably didn't need to be so embarrassed by having the attention of more entities, considering one of those entities already did it, and yet I still felt self-conscious about it.

Shaking my head to banish those thoughts to the back of my mind for now, I turned to the food on the table. The message said it was a gift, and who was I to ignore a gift from the literal God of Time? So, with a rather voracious appetite, I ate everything on the table.

It took me several minutes to finish everything, a lot faster than before, thanks to having a bigger body while in my true form, although I was a little bigger than those giant dogs I saw on the internet.

After I finished, I sat on the bed, deep in thought.

"Just as the advice said, take a step backward," I said to myself. Right now, I was having various problems piled on top of each other, and I wasn't being able to deal with them, having to rely on luck to do anything. Studying runes should be one of the last things I do in these loops, for my final encounter with Jack, but I wasted dozens upon dozens of loops going to the mage's guild and cramming book after book until I was on the verge of a burnout.

My main problem at the moment was the soul burn I was experiencing. It caused me a lot of pain and disabled every single skill I had. It was better now, of course, but I still couldn't use my skills to the max, and even using some of the more powerful ones, like [Genetic Dysphoria] that literally changed my species, was literal torture.

I tried to go to the hospital in the earlier loops, but I ended up staying there until Jack found me and killed me before I had answers from the medical staff there, so I needed another approach.

I tried [Knowledge Library] as well, but it felt like someone was drilling over my skull, and the answer it gave me was mostly static, so I cut the skill short, sighing in relief as the pain eased as the skill was deactivated.

The only other place I knew that could have the information I needed was the mage's guild, somewhere in the thousands of books there. I sighed, my will to do it already dropping by a few notches from the memory of the countless loops I spent going over books about runes.

"Maybe this is different, it's another subject after all," I said out loud, trying to convince myself that this wouldn't end up as a repetition from the rune book reading.

With a new and stronger will, I placed the pillow on my mouth and triggered my skill. The pain was still awful, but it seemed less now, it was as if I was just blended instead of being injected with magma and then blended.

After cleaning the remains of the pillow from my mouth in the bathroom sink, I left the inn and went straight to the mage's guild, my memorization of the path there helping me avoid the constant changes in direction the underworld's mind mage was trying to have me do.

After getting into the mages's guild, I asked the dog person about books about soul burn and he led me to a section about medical condition, pointing to a shelf and only three books about the subject, I almost thanked all the seven gods right then and there after leaning about the quantity of books.

Compared to the hundreds of books about runes, having only three to read was a blessing in disguise, even if the language inside them would be too technical for me to properly understand.

I started by just skimming the contents of the three books, allowing me to confirm that soul burn is generally caused by a person wielding much more magicules than their bodies could handle, usually by casting several high-powered spells and using magicule crystals to recharge. This type of soul burn is easily healed, just needing the person to rest and not use any skills or magic until the status disappears and they feel better again.

But there are more types of soul burns. The one I thought I had was caused by when someone's body is overloaded with magicules, pushing it past its Rozemyne limit. Usually, this just means your body explodes, but in some rare cases, the person doesn't explode because the majority of the magicules were pushed into their soul.

This type of soul burn causes the soul roots to continually erode and break from the giant amount of magicules coursing through them, causing the severance from the body and soul, resulting in death.

The hospital staff had said that my own soul wasn't degrading, probably because of the [Soul Damage Resistance] skill, which I guess was partially true, but my guess was that it only helped with the initial damage, not the continuing effects it would have.

According to the book, the giant amount of magicule absorbed is then released back into the body through the soul roots, which causes the erosion of them and eventual break, but I wasn't feeling that return, I wasn't feeling any magicule coming from them, actually.

Now that I was focusing on them, the only magicules I could sense were the ones currently coursing through my body. They were pulsing with the tiny constructs I think were these soul roots, sure, some of them were even leaving my body, making the rough aura I could feel coming from myself. But I could barely sense magicules surging from my soul roots, only the smallest droplets of magicules appeared every once in a while.

I wasn't sure, but if I were to guess, the reason for that was either the title [Magicule Channeler] or the skill [Liquid Quantum Flux Matrix]. My bet was on the skill, but I wasn't sure.

I closed the book, letting my head drop from behind as I let out a sigh. I stared at the ceiling of the mage's guild.

Different from the other times, I wasn't letting dark emotions overcome me. I was just tired from reading the books and knowing that my situation was so specific and I was so lucky to have my specific combination of titles and skills that they wouldn't be able to help me, because the soul burn I had was lethal to everybody else but me.

I looked at the entrance to the guild, seeing the dimming light and watching as the light poles were starting to become brighter and brighter to light up the street. I had stayed the entire day at the guild, again. It honestly felt like I didn't take a single step towards my goal, but I think that was alright. Just like the God of Light said, the only thing I wasn't lacking was time.