MAGUS INFINITE

I shivered and looked at the knight hanging in the air, and holding her up with threads, I slowly walked away, retracing the same path that the Sovereign of Darkness had shown me.

I wrapped my domain around me like a blanket, cutting through the thick darkness essence inside this place. If I were lucky, I would reach the secret room shown to me by Seed and avoid any conflict. I was no longer afraid of the broken Sovereign after seeing what a free one was capable of, and I had a promise to keep, but I wanted silence and a moment to pick myself up.

Soon I reached a blank wall, and I raised my right hand and began to make the starting motion to cast the Initiate-level spell, Clean, which was the method used by the Sovereign to hide the door from the prying eyes of the demon.

Then I paused, as something occurred to me, and I almost staggered. There was something about the soul of a mage as we grew stronger, and that was our memories that got increasingly better.

The scars from what happened in the previous loop, where I became a Death Titan, were fading, but not my memories. Even now I can perfectly recall everything that happened, and a few miles down, and six hundred miles to the south, there was a small town called Tarth whose inhabitants were experiencing hell on earth.

I had come across a child there on the verge of death, and I had no healing spells to save her, and the only thing I could do was repeatedly cast the Clean Spell and hold her as she passed away.

That moment was the birth of the cold in my heart, that not even the purification of my Anima could erase, but there was something else that happened there that my powerful soul could not miss.

When I was casting the Clean Spell repeatedly, my Status Screen vibrated when the spell seemed to evolve and was closing the wounds of the dead girl. Even though I had not checked it, I knew that I had just gained something at that moment that was related to the Clean Spell, but I had no time or care to check what I had acquired, and I had moved on.

Many things happened after this moment, and when I died and returned to the tent at Caelith Mourne, I had checked my status screen, and I had gained a lot, but there was nothing related to this spell. I had strangely missed this, and if I did not return to this Temporal Point and find this room, I would have forgotten about this spell.

By all the lights in the heavens, how was this possible?

My mind whirled around briefly in panic. What could erase this spell from my memory and soul? The obvious answer may be staring at me at the face, the Sovereign of Darkness had taught me the hand motion I needed to cast this spell, and perhaps there may be something embedded in this spell that I had missed?

Maybe if this spell was pushed to a certain point, it would simply vanish from the soul of the caster. The Sovereign wanted to hide this place from everyone, so perhaps the spell he taught me was not as simple as just an Initiate Clean Spell.

I sighed, this was the problem of becoming strong too quickly, I had missed a lot of the basics of spell casting, and I needed to close this gap... I needed a teacher. I had managed to go far on my own, but I could not walk this road alone.

In the meantime, this spell would be added to the list of things I needed to investigate, and as long as I was not disturbed, I was determined not to leave this hidden sanctuary until I digested all that I had gained in all the loops.

I have been running for far too long, and it was time that I rested for a bit and put my affairs in order.

I cast the spell slowly, but I could not really detect any sort of mystery behind it. It was barely a spell, just a cantrip that Initiate used to keep their clothes and quarters clean, while disinfecting wounds and other myriad uses that a versatile spell like this had to offer.

I knew of the spell, so I would use it to study the one given to me by the Sovereign.

The wall in front of me became transparent, revealing a door, and I followed the final steps in opening it by pressing on certain spots in the air, following a particular sequence.

The space rippled, and I walked through, feeling something cling to my skin as if I had just walked through a bubble.

Entering this place, I looked around. The room was small and empty, if I held out my hand I would be able to touch both sides of the wall without any problem, walls that were filled with dense Inscriptions that pulled at my eyes... I would love to unlock every restriction here and know their secrets.

I was learning that any Sovereign was a fountain of knowledge, and the Sovereign of Darkness should be far older than Sovereign Caldus. Although he had spent much of his life imprisoned in this flying fortress, there was no doubt that he was someone who had touched the mysteries of laws... I could learn much if I observed his work, Seed’s eight thousand years of patient work, carved into stone with a precision that spoke of a lifetime spent in quiet defiance.

As much as I wanted a teacher, the opportunity for this may not come for a long time, so it was important that every opportunity I had to learn be utilised to the utmost.

I sat in the stillness of the secret room, the silence pressing against my ears like a held breath. The walls around me, covered in Inscriptions, seemed to be moving with the rhythm of my breath. I did not look at them for long; there would be time for that later.

First, I needed to see what I had become.

I called up my status screen, and the familiar blue light flickered before me. But it was different now. Brighter. Sharper. The letters were no longer the flat, uniform script of the system I had known. They had depth, weight, as if they were carved into the fabric of reality itself.

And there were more of them... So much more.