Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

In any case, the treatment worked far better than he had hoped – four days after he fed Zach those potions, his fellow time traveler woke up from the coma. Not long after that, he demanded to see Zorian, which pretty much shut down any further attempts to keep Zorian from visiting the hospital.

"How are you feeling?" Zorian asked his fellow time traveler.

"Like crap," Zach grumbled. He gave Zorian a suspicious look. "I heard you’re the one who tracked me down after my asshole caretaker just stuffed my unconscious body down in some basement. I guess I should thank you for that, but… how are you so much better off than me? Did you not get caught in the blast or something?"

"You know our conversation is probably being eavesdropped, right?" Zorian asked him.

"So? Just put up a privacy ward on the room and be done with it," Zach told him.

"I can’t," Zorian sighed. "I can’t really cast anything right now."

Zach was quiet for a few seconds.

"Ah," he said finally. "I guess you didn’t get off as lightly as it appears. You probably don’t want to hear this, but that kind of makes me glad. I kind of prefer it when you have to suffer through this crap with me."

"Jerk," Zorian said, though there was no real heat in it.

"Yeah, yeah… but seriously, why are you already walking around while I can’t even stand up without vomiting all over myself?"

"I’m not sure, but… do you perhaps remember waking up in your own room for a moment before losing consciousness again?" Zorian asked him.

Zach frowned.

"It’s hard to remember," he said after a few seconds. "Maybe?"

"Hm. Well, we’re going to have to continue this particular topic when you get out of the hospital," Zorian told him. "Can you estimate how long it will be before you’re back in top form?"

Zach frowned. "I don’t know. Four, five months? Something like that."

Zorian breathed a sigh of relief. Although Zach’s condition was worse than his own, it would seem it still wasn’t too bad…

"Is there something urgent you need right now?" Zorian asked him. "As you can imagine, my ability to acquire things is a bit limited at the moment, but I’ll do my best."

"All I want right now is to be out of this damn hospital," Zach grumbled. "But I don’t think that’s going to happen before the end of the month, considering what I’ve overheard, and neither of us has the ability to force the issue right now."

It was as Zach said. He spent the rest of the restart trapped in the hospital while Zorian had to dodge increasingly insistent questions about his involvement in the Zach affair and his personal activities.

Thankfully, before those things could really get anywhere, the summer festival had arrived and the restart came to an end.

The next five restarts were relatively relaxed. With their souls so heavily damaged and their spellcasting impaired, Zach and Zorian couldn’t really do anything particularly dangerous or strenuous, lest their recovery be prolonged even further or their soul damage become permanent.

Whether it was Zach or Zorian, they had no choice but to patiently wait for their soul to heal, so they gave up on doing anything serious and decided to just have fun and work on some of their easier skills. A part of Zorian was aghast at taking a break with their time steadily running out as it was, but forcing themselves would gain them little while risking a lot so he did his best to suppress it.

Unexpectedly, having his soul damaged actually ended up being quite a boon to Zorian’s skill with soul perception and soul magic in general. It allowed him to map out his soul in far greater detail and enhanced his understanding how souls generally functioned. There were some things that were very hard to notice when things were going smoothly, and some pieces of the soul were far easier to comprehend when one compared intact and damaged versions of the soul to one another. He knew from reading Sudomir’s mind that necromancers often deliberately mutilated other people’s souls for that exact reason, destructively studying the anatomy of the soul to enhance their own skills, but one could never really perceive foreign souls on the same level of detail as one could perceive their own. As far as Zorian knew, no soul mage was crazy enough to deliberately damage their own soul as heavily as Zach and Zorian had gotten theirs damaged just to enhance their knowledge of soul mechanics, so their current opportunity was somewhat unique.

Although Zach started from a lower level, his skill in regards to personal soul perception also grew by leaps and bounds in this period, since he invested a huge amount of effort into it – much more than Zorian himself. The fact that he had ended up worse in the wake of Quatach-Ichl’s soul attack seemed to have affected him greatly.

Aside from soul magic, the two of them also worked on their basic shaping skills and tinkered rather heavily with alchemy, since this was the one magical discipline that hadn’t been affected by their injuries in the slightest.

They didn’t try to inform anyone of the time loop during this time. Most of the notebooks and other gathered information had been stored in the palace orb, which they couldn’t actually access at the moment. They still interacted with many of the people they previously worked with, but mostly for the sake of fun and hanging out this time.

They spent an entire restart diligently going to class, being as helpful as humanly possible to every teacher and student they encountered. They spent a restart shapeshifting into various animals through transformation potions and explored the city and its surroundings through alien senses and perspectives. They dabbled in painting, sculpting, wood carving, drawing and various art skills. They went on a tour of Eldemar and its neighbors via train and other mundane methods.

And when the last of these relaxing restarts was drawing to a close, Zorian realized he wasn’t sorry for it all. Even though they kind of wasted their time, even though they would only have 19 iterations left once this restart was finished… he was at peace with it all.

"We really need to give it our all in the upcoming restarts," Zorian said to Zach one day. "19 restarts aren’t that much and we never know when something like this can happen again. If we had gotten this injured with only a handful of restarts left, that would have been the end of us right there. Do you think we should still mess around with Quatach-Ichl after this?"

"Hell yes," Zach said firmly. "I mean, yeah, he really got us good this time, but we still haven’t figured out a good way to break into the royal vaults without his help. And besides… while he ended up messing us up, he also showed us a really good way of taking him down with relative ease."

"Oh?" Zorian asked curiously. "And what would that be?"

"See, I think we’ve been overthinking things a little," Zach explained. "Instead of trying to lure Quatach-Ichl into a trap of flooding him with golems and enemy mages, we should be relying on our strengths to defeat him. Well, your strengths in this case. I’m talking about mind magic, of course."

"Mind magic?" Zorian said, stunned. "But with his mind blank on…"

"Xvim also had his mind blank on and it didn’t stop Quatach-Ichl," Zach quickly pointed out. "It would be tricky, but if we time things right and I get a moment to concentrate properly, I’m pretty sure I can hit the guy with a powerful enough dispel to get rid of his mind blank. Just for a moment, but that should be enough for you, right?"

"I’m quite sure that Quatach-Ichl has some measure of skill with defending his mind," Zorian said carefully. "The fact he was able to search Xvim’s mind so quickly in the heat of battle shows he’s quite proficient in mind magic. Still… I don’t think he’s psychic and the brief telepathic clash I had with him didn’t impress me much. I suppose it could work."