Time Looped

“Ready,” Will said.

This time all three boys remained in the room as Helen went to open the door from the corridor. Their plan was, if not to defeat the monster then to at least get a good look at it so a more appropriate plan could be established.

“I’m outside,” the girl shouted. “Opening now.”

As she did, Will felt something sharp rip through his shirt and pierce his skin.

Tutorial failed.

Restarting eternity.

“I told you the drone’s lit,” Alex navigated the drone to the center of the room. “Now, whatever happens we’ll be able to—“”

Tutorial failed.

Restarting eternity.

Helen slammed the door with her bat, breaking both in the process.

KNIGHT’s BASH

Damage increased by 500%

Object shattered.

Pieces of wood flew into the room, creating a gaping hole where the door used to be. Unlike in the past two times, the loop didn’t end immediately. Instead, a cluster of spiked vines shot out, puncturing the girl faster than Will could react.

Tutorial failed.

Restarting eternity.

“Okay, keep as far away from the door as possible,” Will instructed.

Half a dozen of Alex’s mirror copies had positioned themselves in front of the opened door, acting as shields.

Holding her breath, Hellen rushed along the corridor, not even glancing in the direction of the room. Same as before, clusters of spiked vines shot out, shattering the mirror copies as they targeted the group’s keyholder.

Ready to react, Will leaped forward, taking Helen forward with him. Vines slammed into the wall, drilling inches into it. For a moment, it almost seemed that the group had gotten away with it. More of Alex’s mirror copies charged forward in an attempt to sever the vines or otherwise harm the entity they were part of.

Barely had one of them struck, when a ball of thorns pulled itself out of the geography classroom, creating a massive hole in the door’s place. Spikes the size of daggers burst in all directions like shrapnel, leaving their mark on walls, floors, and ceilings. Unfortunately, that wasn’t everything they hit.

Tutorial failed.

Restarting eternity.

“Sorry, guys,” Jace said first thing in class the next morning. “The fucker got me.” Out of habit, he slammed a nearby desk. The side effects brought on by eternity quickly reminded him that was a bad idea, bringing tears of pain to his eyes.

“Killed by a vine cactus,” Helem remarked. “That’s definitely new.”

“There’s no indication Danny knew about it, either,” Will said, examining the underside of the desk. While there were a few sketches of unknown creatures, none of them resembled the thing they had faced during their previous loop. “It has to be an elite.”

“Fuck that!” Jace said, still holding his hurt hand. “If that’s not the boss, we’re in deep shit.”

“There has to be a trick or pattern,” Will said. “It can’t be invincible.”

“Not sure, bro,” Alex said, while chomping on a muffin. “Might be a late-stage blocker.”

Everyone looked at him.

“Maybe we have to do something before we could kill it.” He explained. “Like get a weapon, or earn a special skill reward… or clear a floor.” He paused for a moment. “Maybe the cactus is the floor boss. That’s lit.”

“You’re not making sense again,” Helen grumbled.

“No, sis. I got it!” the goofball insisted. “Every floor has a mini-boss. Defeat the mini-boss and good things happen. But one can’t just kill the mini-boss. We must get the right skills, just like in a roguelike. If Will still had the dagger, he’d be able to kill it easy.”

“Yeah, right.” Will emerged from beneath the desk.

“For real! The dagger inflicts poison, you can throw daggers. So, all you must do is get it out in the corridor and hit it with the dagger. Well, and then hide.”

“I’m not sure how much poison a single hit could do. Besides, I lost the dagger.”

“He does have a point,” Helen mused, causing even Alex to look at her, surprised. “Whatever the reason, we’re no match for it. Nothing says we must go into that room. We can continue exploring the next.”

“Sounds good to me.” Jace nodded. “We level up in the basement, then check the other rooms. If we end up finding some other fucker, we skip that room as well.”

Will had to agree. It made sense, just as it proved even more that they needed to find a way to make a lasting map.

The following loop, the exploration continued. All the rooms on the way to the basement were checked, resulting in two more goblin discoveries. Defeating them was easy, allowing Helen to boost her knight to level three. By now, a pattern started to emerge. Since goblins never provided any loot or provided any reward other than a level up, it was decided that Helen would only level up using them. If there really were six or seven such rooms, she was guaranteed to get to level seven or eight by that alone. The rest, in turn, would divide the wolf pack bonus, which would guarantee that all would obtain level four of their respective class, with one getting level five.

“How much time do we have left?” Jace asked as they approached the nurse’s office.

Although he didn’t mention it openly, he expressed the same fears Will and everyone else were having during the tutorial runs. The best way to describe it was as uneven. Wolves and goblins had become ridiculously weak to the point that they felt like a waste of time. The special entities, on the other hand, were so overpowered that surviving against them ranged from highly difficult to outright impossible.

“Several more hours, if you did everything right,” Helen replied, continuing forward.

The new version of bat the jock had constructed for her was closer to a mace than a crude spiked monstrosity. He, too, had gotten much better at acting his class, to his internal dismay.

“We’re missing something,” Will said.

“For real, bro,” Alex nodded. “Fire game logic. It gets more difficult further up. Two rooms in the basement, four on floor one, eight on floor two…”

“We’re not done with this floor, muffin boy,” Jace grumbled. “Lots of rooms after the nurse’s office.”

“I don’t know…” Will wasn’t convinced.

“I think Will’s right,” Helen supported him. “Once we’re done with this floor, we take a break. And by that, I mean a few loops to chill. We can all use the rest.”

“It’s not that.” At least it wasn’t exactly. “It’s not like we’re doing much and that’s precisely the point. We either kill everything like that,” he snapped his fingers. “Or get slaughtered. The only challenge was the snake, and it doesn’t even appear anymore.”

“Chill, bro.” Alex gave Will a pat on the shoulder. “We just need to git good. It’s like a puzzle, bro. We get the skills, find who to use them on, and do it. Even Danny oofed most of the time. You’ll see we bust the nurse’s mirror.”

The enemies were, as expected, goblins. It was pretty much established that all class giving mirrors released goblins as enemies. The fight was fractionally more challenging due to the lack of space, but not to the point that it would matter. Thanks to her new skills and advanced weapon, Helen took care of things on her own with some support from Alex.

“Now you know how I feel,” Jace told Will as they stood in the corridor, waiting for the others to be done. “I can’t remember how many times I had to fire up the team when we faced off a bunch of losers in a friendly, knowing all the time that we’ll be fucked at the qualifiers.”

“You still had coach and your game plan,” Will said.

“Coach sucked,” the jock laughed. “And the plan was shit.” He tapped Will on the back. “Don’t worry. We have you. You suck and your plan’s shit as well.”

Will let out a chuckle. Jace was just as crude as he remembered it. Even now he was surprised how similar the two remained in many ways. It was almost inexplicable how a rift had formed between them, then closed without a trace. Despite his thoughts a few dozen loops ago, Jace was good for the group and he had proved that several times in the short while they’d been together.

“I can’t see the point of it,” Will said.

“Don’t get philosophical on me, Stoner.”

“No, I mean the point of the tutorial. In games, tutorials are so that you can learn the rules. What are we learning here?”

He looked in the nurse’s office. The fighting had finished, leaving it cluttered with so many goblin bodies that they could barely fit. The only thing that Helen and Alex could do was wait until they faded away, so that the girl could get her level up reward from the mirror.

“How to fight?” Jace suggested.

“The goblins are easier than the wolves. The elites are tougher than we can handle. We’ve only gotten loot once, and I lost it.” He frowned. “There’s just something that…” his words trailed off as a thought came to mind.

Moving away from the wall, Will went into the nurse’s office.

“Something that what?” Jace asked from behind.

Will ignored him. Climbing over the still solid goblin bodies, he made his way to the mirror. It didn’t have the expected green glint, suggesting that Helen had taken her reward.

“Did you get your gift?” Will asked, just to be sure.

“Yes,” the girl replied. “Why?”

“Hints.” The boy tapped the mirror with his index finger.

The class has already been found by someone else. Next time, try sooner.

“Jace,” Will shouted. “Get over here.”

Affected by Will’s determination, the boy made his way to the mirror.

“Tap it,” Will said.

“I’ve already got my class.”

“Just tap it.”

With a reluctant shrug, Jace did so. The message in the mirror changed.

INVENTORY

You have no items in your inventory.

A grid of empty squares was visible beneath the message. Each of them was empty, but it told Will everything he needed to know, mainly what an idiot he’d been so far.

“Shit!” he rushed off into the corridor.

“Stoner!” Jace shouted behind him. “Where are you going?”

The boy didn’t even register the question. There was only one thought cycling in his mind over and over again. That was the problem with falling into a routine. After hundreds of loops, he’d become so used to the first few steps that he’d used the absolute minimal amount of effort to obtain his class. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d tapped a mirror to get a hint. Technically, there was no need—they always remained the same, and he’d yet to find any bonuses. In doing so, he’d missed the greatest bonus of all.

Rushing into the boy’s bathroom, he tapped on the rogue mirror.

INVENTORY

The grid appeared. Unlike Jace’s there was no message. Instead, one of the sixteen squares had an item in it—a dagger.

“I knew it,” the boy said to himself, then tapped the dagger.

Startled, Will pulled it back. His hand was in one piece without any scars, bruises, or anything else. Slowly, he reached into the square again. His hand felt as if it were in very light and dry water. As he moved it around, he got the sensation of something appearing and disappearing in the palm of his hand. When he tried to grip it, a handle formed.

So, that’s how it is? Still holding on to the handle, he pulled his hand out. The poison dagger was there, just as ready for combat as it had been upon first getting it. That was the definition of an eternal weapon. It went beyond the loop, eternally linked to him. It was also quite convenient, since he didn’t have to worry about hiding it and also could get it along with his class.

Holding the weapon in one hand, Will decided to check whether he could place something else in his inventory. Not wanting to risk his phone, he took his earbuds and tried to shove them inside. The section of the mirror instantly solidified.

“Stoner,” Jace said from the bathroom entrance. “What the hell—” he paused, seeing the dagger in the other’s hand. “Oh, fuck.”

“Inventory,” Will said with a smile. “The tutorial let us have inventories. I never lost the dagger. It was just sent here.”

“That’s shit. How’re we supposed to figure that out?!”

“The same way the game has been telling us every day.” Will tapped the top of the mirror again. “Use additional mirrors to find out more. The mirrors aren’t just monsters and rewards—they’re hints. As long as we find out the right order, we’ll get the instructions we need to figure this out.”

Will would have said something else when Helen emerged behind Jace. That made him slightly uneasy in two ways. For one thing, it still made him slightly uncomfortable seeing her or any other girl looking in the boys’ bathroom. For another, he’d only now realized that she’d never done so since taking on the role of keyholder.

“Will, look out!” both Helen and Jace suddenly shouted.