Tristan

Tristan had never really considered himself much of a reader. Prior to his Awakening, he'd always been one to prefer spending time working with his hands than his mind. In the months since Awakening, however, he'd begun reading a lot more, for all sorts of reasons. Now he was in what basically amounted to a huge library, and it was surprising just how excited he was!

The building was tall enough that it almost seemed to touch the sky, and every level was filled with shelves packed with books of all sizes, shapes, and colors. It was the first time in his life Tristan had truly been surrounded by books, and he found it kind of beautiful... if a bit intimidating.

It helped that he knew this was all in service of his Path. It may not have been crafting anything, but dealing with Timetwister was the next step in his Path quest. He wanted to do that smartly, which meant he had to learn as much as he could about her before engaging.

Sophie and Sneakers had led the way to a section on the fourth floor where tons of guides and books specifically dealing with time mages were stored. It wasn't just Class, build, and skill guides. It had documented tales of famous as well as divine time mages, of past and present, along with details of their Paths and Cores when known. Sophie seemed fascinated by all she saw and immediately found a table where she began making piles of books.

"I'm going to try to learn as much as I can about her Class in general, OK? So any skill or Path guides, put on this stack," she said, indicating a small pile right by her hand. "Anything about typical Class progressions should go on this stack. Anything else that isn't related to historical and famous time mages, put them here. Because that last category is your job: find out as much as you can about what the best time mages were capable of."

"Right, and specifically looking for anything about Timetwister herself," Tristan acknowledged. "Got it."

There were a huge number of books to dig through, more than Tristan had ever read in his entire life combined, and they were just about time mages! It wasn't exactly easy to figure out which would be helpful to their cause, though. Sometimes he found himself just reading the stories and being amazed by what these historical people had accomplished, especially when they were tales about people he'd never even heard of before.

Like, how had he never heard of Andromedus the Ancient? Anyone who had supposedly found a way to loop his own personal time and allow himself to live a thousand years beyond the normal as a Tier 5 should have been famous the whole realm over! Then again, his fall into obscurity was part of the theory Tristan thought the author was trying to lay out. Tristan agreed that Adromedus's death did seem quite suspicious when explained in as much depth as the historian went into. Especially if the time mage was truly on the brink of tiering up, how could he just be forgotten, overlooked by seemingly the entire realm?

There were other books on the subject, which Tristan couldn't help but dive into. As he read more and more, he grew fascinated by the first author's conspiracy mini-tangent, which provided four other instances of people being killed off just prior to Ascension, right before they might have reached divinity. None of them had Tristan ever heard of, though admittedly each would likely have been more memorable in their local areas.

Like the Brightshield, he realized. Hesden Brightshield and his whole party were Tier 5. And they were assassinated...

He thought back to what Shadow had told him. 'That was for my Path, kid. I had a quest, the same as what I'm sure sent you here after me.'

He couldn't remember, though, whether Shadow had said it was a contracted hit or a natural notification. Could it have been both? Was his a Path Quest, too? Was someone out in the world, giving out Path Quests to kill Tier 5s prior to their Ascension? If so, why would they do that? Or was it one of the natural hurdles one had to overcome to reach divinity?

How many Paths had been ended just before they could be completed?

And more importantly, why weren't more people talking about it?

About the time he asked that question, Sophie heaved a hefty sigh and stood up. "I can't do more of this today." She then quickly changed back to her more upbeat tone and added, "It's fascinating, and I'm learning a ton, but I think I'm at my knowledge saturation point for now. I need a break, and time to digest."

Tristan cracked his neck and checked his [Clock] skill. They'd been at it for the better part of six hours already! Hopefully Billy, their driver, didn't mind that they hadn't checked in yet. Tristan stood up, too, ignoring his groaning muscles that were clearly upset at sitting so still for so long. "Yeah, I could do with a break, too! Are we just talking about a meal, or are we planning to dig deeper tonight?"

Sophie scratched Sneaker's head as she thought. "Hmm. I'm honestly not sure. I think at the bare minimum I need an hour off, then we can revisit that question. For now, I'm overstuffed with new knowledge, and I'd rather be stuffed with food."

As it turned out, after Billy took them to a relaxed, leisurely lunch, they were done for the day. Sophie apparently had taken pages of notes, and she wanted to "organize some of them" better. Tristan shook his head with a slight laugh. Since Billy said he'd be just fine staying in the carriage, Sophie and Tristan rented another two-room suite in a nice but inexpensive inn. Then the pair decided together that it might be nice to take some time apart. Tristan wasn't exactly sure what Sophie had in mind, but while she did that, he took advantage of the open space near the stables to practice his swordsmanship.

For two full hours he went through his grips, his forms, his footwork, and his skills. By the end, he was dripping with sweat and a little sore, but he also felt really good. It had been a while since he'd really trained like that. What's more, thanks to the intensity of his session, he was starting to think that maybe he could do something to empower or otherwise improve his [Descending Crescent] skill, especially since it was his strongest single-target attack. He remembered well how Jamal had talked about guiding upgrades of his skills to truly make them his own.

I can do that, too, Tristan thought. He just wasn't sure exactly how yet. Maybe I can make the wind-up faster, or bring the blade down harder. He was determined to figure it out.

When Tristan finally went back inside, Sophie had apparently resummoned Mister Biggs, and it looked like they had been training, too.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to finish up," she said. "Billy said it looked like you were getting a good workout in."

Tristan nodded. "It was exactly what I needed after a morning of sitting so still."

"The morning wasn't that bad," Sophie said, looking a bit affronted.

Tristan hadn't even realized that his words might have offended her, so he tried to backpedal a bit. "Oh, I didn't mean it to sound... I definitely did enjoy it! Especially this fascinating conspiracy theory I read about, but--" A look at her raised eyebrows suggested now might not be the time. "Yeah, I'm just not used to spending that much time with books, okay? Even in the forge, I'd be moving around, swinging a hammer, and the like. I just really needed to work my body, not just my mind, you know? Besides, there was a lack of any real, solid information that I could use, no matter how interesting it might have been in general. I've found nothing on Timetwister so far."

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Sophie scratched Mister Biggs behind his ear. "It definitely sounds like I had a bit more luck than you did, then. While I didn't find anything on our mystery woman, I was able to find the common build guides for time mages. There are three main branches people usually take. In order of popularity, they are: enhancer, damage dealer, and healer. Obviously there are lots of other considerations, and even among those skill trees there will be major divergences as people better define their Paths, but still."

"And didn't Cherry tell us Timetwister was a healer?" Tristan asked.

"Yes! I'm glad you brought that up! While Cherry's file wasn't nearly as comprehensive as I'd hoped--I guess because Timetwister is trying to stay low profile--it did have records of some of her early exploits. There were a few eye-witness testimonials. She was supposedly really good at reversing damage from a very early age. As a result, she grew into a fairly well-known healer in her home region of Krisholme, before she left home. Granted, that was over a decade ago, so she's bound to have changed and grown a ton since then, but when I took that information and put it together with the build guides..."

Tristan leaned forward, excited with her revelation. "You were able to put together a profile of what we might expect to go up against?"

"Exactly!" Sophie said, mirroring his excitement as she pulled out several pages of hand-scrawled notes. "Even if it's just a list of the baseline abilities she's likely to have, now we can prepare for those! And that's important, because she's a higher-tier time mage. If you screw up, you likely won't get a chance to fix it. Not against a time mage. Time mages can be really scary."

Tristan swallowed. "Yeah, so she can really control the passage of time--?"

"More or less, yeah. Since she's tier 4, it's expected that she will have at least a fair amount of control over her own sphere of local time."

Tristan blinked. "What does that mean? And how does that work if she's a healer?" His muscles were still a bit sore from working out, so he began to go through more of his cooldown stretches, both to help soothe them and to hopefully help focus his mind on the task at hand.

Sophie flipped through a few pages. "Here it is. One of the books said that as time mages grow," and here she began to read what was clearly a quote from the text, "'They tend to develop control over a limited local area surrounding themselves, often referred to as their sphere of temporal control. The radius of said sphere and degree of control will depend upon the individual time mage, and how much they choose to devote themselves to such manipulations.'"

"Ugh," Tristan groaned. "Who wrote that? It reads like a school textbook."

Sophie giggled. "Yeah, it wasn't the easiest read, but useful, wouldn't you say? And since she's a healer, one of the books said it was actually more likely that she'd be more in tune with not only her own sphere, but also manipulating the spheres of others."

"Great," Tristan said with a sigh. "So what else did it say, specifically, about what that sphere of control thing could actually do?"

"Speeding up and slowing down relative time," Sophie said nonchalantly and referring back to her notes. "There were examples. Like one of the more common time mage defensive measures involves 'freezing' things within their sphere."

"Can that be done to people?" Tristan asked, suddenly growing even more concerned.

"Not usually," Sophie said, flipping a page. "And definitely not at low tiers. Not that Timetwister is, though... Hmm. I have here that usually the sphere is most useful against projectiles, like some spells or arrows. Anything that can be stalled or delayed. Usually they'd be frozen just long enough to be dodged or to cause them to miss outright."

Tristan cracked his neck. "That's not so bad for us. Neither of us really uses those kinds of attacks."

"I do cast spells, Tristan," Sophie pointed out, "but I suppose they're not really attacks. Regardless, it's still good to know, right? So, let's see. Against melee attacks, they tend to rely more on self-buffs and opponent debuffs. [Haste] and [Slow], specifically, are two of their earliest skills, and every single guide that I read talked about training or upgrading them as quickly as possible."

That piece of information caught Tristan's attention. "Did the guides say how to do that?"

Sophie looked at him inquisitively, and she must have seen the deeper meaning behind his question, because she asked, "Have you ever looked at a guidebook for your own Classes, Tristan?"

"For Blacksmithing and Swordsmithing, sure," Tristan admitted, "but Swordsman was kind of a recent addition. Besides, I didn't think I needed it as much, since I had private lessons with Jamal, and he insisted that I listen to him. He didn't want me getting outside ideas that could... How did he put it? Oh, right. He actually said, 'don't ruin the foundation I've worked so hard to build.'"

Sophie laughed. "That sounds like Jamal."

"Right?" Tristan sighed. "But now that I'm kind of doing my own thing, and I'm not just training with him..."

Sophie smiled. "Yeah, I think when we go back tomorrow, you should go spend some time in the Swordsman section."

Tristan smiled back at her. "Thanks for understanding. But anyway, is there anything else you learned about Timetwister from the report?"

"Just that, as a healer, she's much more likely to fall into the 'preparer' sort of role. She'll likely have several buffs up constantly, with debuffs ready to go, and even some if-then spells that might fire off automatically if certain triggers are met."

"What? I've never heard of anything like that before!"

Sophie shrugged. "I'm not surprised. It's kind of a higher-tier magic user specialty, and you're a bit more into whacking things than casting... anything. But if we can dispel her buffs, or any of the other tricks she's bound to have up her sleeves..."

Tristan leaned back. "Then she might be manageable."

"Well, maybe," Sophie said. "She'd still have her healing skills, which as a tier 4 will be really impressive. If she gets even a single heal off, she honestly might be able to outlast you basically forever."

"But she's not very armored, right? Aren't healers more fragile?"

"More fragile than what, Tristan? 'Fragile' is a relative term. She may be more fragile than a tier 4 warrior, but she's still tier 4."

Tristan scratched his chin. "Yeah, but we'll all be hitting her. With as well as we were able to coordinate against Venom..."

"Venom wasn't tier 4, and he didn't have heals."

The start of an idea came to Tristan, but he needed to put more of the pieces together. "I know Poof is your best damage dealer, but how do the others do?" he asked.

"Sneakers does more than Mister Biggs, but it's maybe a third of Poof's. Why?" Sophie's eyes narrowed.

"Well," Tristan began, trying to find the best way to explain this and not sound like a loon, "What if I can somehow make a rune that silences her?"

"How are you going to affect a tier 4 with that? She's going to be so likely to resist it!"

Tristan sighed. "You're probably right, but what if I put an AOE silence around me instead?"

"That would affect a lot more than just her, Tristan."

"Which is why it might work in the first place," he replied, "because of the drawback. Sufficient drawbacks might balance the rune enough to allow it to be something I can reasonably make."

Now it was Sophie's turn to pause, and she tapped a finger to her lips as she sometimes did when deep in thought. "Maybe. I should add that I don't exactly love relying on a 'maybe' either."

"But if I can do that, do you think that would be enough that we could take her?"

"Again, maybe. It would help a lot. We're only tier 2, though, so we'll need more than that."

"Hey, I'm almost tier 3, and you're not far behind!"

Sophie tapped her lips again. "Right, but... Could we take her? Maybe. With proper preparation, I am kind of starting to think that we can. And if I toss in a little coin, or even a lot of coin... But the more we can learn more about her, the better we can prepare for her. And if anything, this first day has shown me that we have a lot more prep work to do if we're going to stand a chance against her. To beat a preparation-based healer, we'll want to be better prepared, over prepared even."

"Makes sense," Tristan admitted. "We've still got a lot more to learn."

"Yep," Sophie agreed. "So rest up and prepare yourself. Tomorrow's shaping up to be another stationary, research-filled day."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.