I've spent the next thirty loops freeing Karol from the criminal underworld, geting blasted on the face with her bloodlust, passing out, waking up to find Jack attacking us, somehow always receiving a fatal wound before we manage to force Jack back, then I trigger the loop by either dying or just manually if I don't feel like dying that moment, which is almost every time. It is a very awful feeling, after all, even if I know I would just end up back in the inn's room.

I took a shower and ate the still-appearing food the Gods gave me. I didn't know if the God of Time was manually making the food appear every loop, or if it's like a setting in a video game to make the food permanent on the loops. I wasn't a god to know, but I appreciated it either way. I wasn't the best when it comes to religious matters, but I quickly sent a mental thank you to both the God of Time and the God of Light– Why did I suddenly feel like someone was watching me? Just as it appeared, it vanished. Weird. It's probably my sanity disappearing after so many panic attacks caused by Karol's bloodlust.

The last loop, Karol said I should take a break from this constant training. She told me that even the most rigorous training gives the soldiers a couple of days to recover between them, and I was basically doing it every day for the last thirty days, from my point of view. Even I could feel how it was affecting me. I was starting to be twitchy, jumping at every sound. It was not a good sign, according to Karol. I needed to take some time to rest.

I sat by the windows, adjusting the visibility from them until they were completely transparent, and watched the small portion of the city I could see. I stared out the windows until I could see the dark clouds over the city being dispersed by Amity's strong winds.

I thought about talking with her again, but I feel like I needed to at least resolve these two things before I could move on. I honestly didn't know what would've happened if I hadn't somehow started the loops, my guess was that I would've kept running away from Jack until I reached my destination… I couldn't even remember Farahio's face now. It's been so long since I've last seen him, I wasn't sure if I could recognize him if he appeared again.

This thought made me go down a dim road. I noticed I was starting to forget the faces of my friends and parents. I could still remember them, but it was like their faces were starting to blur from so long without seeing them. The only reason I didn't spiral out of control was because I was already doing everything to see them again. The only question was if they would accept me as I was now.

I might still have acted like a human up until this point, but I wasn't one anymore. I haven't been one since I– no, since Marcos died in that classroom.

I checked my status.

Name: Denaru Theris

Age: 0

Species: Ouroboros Dragon

Lv. 12

Yes, I was a dragon now, not a human. I honestly felt like I've had this exact chain of thoughts for a while now, but even then, I still keep falling back on how a human would see the world.

I pulled up [Magical Programming Language] and casted a fireball spell, keeping it floating over my extended hand. The orange flames casting a glow on my green scales, reflecting a weird mix of colors that I couldn't quite describe with words.

As I observed the flames dance over my hand, my mind went over how this would be basically impossible for Marcos to do, but to me, Denaru, it was as easy as the press of a mental button.

I extinguished the flames. I wasn't sure where I wanted to get to with those thoughts, maybe I wanted to keep reminding myself that human values weren't the same as a dragon's, or maybe I just wanted to flex these cool magical powers to the memory of my human childhood and the countless hours of playing pretend with Leo and Alex.

Seeing my reflection in the glass, I saw a sad smile on my mouth as a single tear escaped my eye and dripped down onto the floor. I closed my eyes and breathed in, keeping the air in my lungs until I felt them starting to burn, then I breathed out.

I've been procrastinating on what that cart reader said about my soul burn, I just wasn't comfortable doing it consciously. Sure, I did kill those bandits before, but at that moment, I was so consumed by rage from seeing them kill in cold blood that my body acted on its own.

Maybe it was time for me to stop ignoring it, maybe it was time for me to teach myself what it means to be a dragon.

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I trigger [Genetic Dysphoria] and turn into my cat person form as I walk towards the room's door.

"Maybe it's time to abuse the consequence-free status of the loops and drop my human morals," I said as I exited the inn, totally aware of how hypocritical it was for a 'humanoid' creature to drop their 'human' morals.

I walked straight to the hidden entrance, tinkering with a new spell that Karol's swords inspired me with. As I approached the hidden entrance, I could feel how erratic the mind mage's attempt to control me was getting. I wasn't sure if I was confusing him or making him panic a little about where I was going. This allowed me to find his location with [Magicule Detection] and a little application of trigonometry I used with [Mathematical Cortex], even though it still hurt to use it.

I stopped and looked behind me, straight at a person who was casually eating an apple as they walked a dozen or so meters behind me. I saw the moment he noticed me looking straight at them. They were human, although I couldn't quite make out their features from this far out.

I launched myself at them using gravity, and before they could run away, I casted the spell I had made during my walk here.

Water condensed in front of my extended hand before freezing into an icicle. Just as it finished freezing, I shot it at the person running away from me, but my aim was off, and instead of hitting them in a vital area, I hit them on their shoulder.

I heard screams from the people around us, but I pushed on, casting more and more icicles and shooting them at the mind mage. My aim was terrible and I missed most of my shots, but I managed to hit his legs and parts of his torso.

As I ran after him, I thought I had trapped him in an alley, but the moment I entered it, I was surrounded by though looking people.

"Who do you think you are to hurt one of ours?" One of them said. I wanted to talk with him, but I held myself. This loop, I wasn't going to hold back. Even though I always tried not to kill NPCs in video games if I could, at that moment, I needed to ignore the part of my mind that was screaming at me to stop.

I went so far as to use [Mathematical Cortex] to create a secondary focus and push my emotions to it. It hurt like hell, it felt like my brain was going to explode from the pressure, but at the same time, I was completely devoid of emotion at that moment. I knew I would regret it later, but not now. Now was the time to be like a certain flower. Now it was kill or be killed.

Before the thug could even respond, an icicle hit him right in the nose, burrowing deep inside him before he fell to the ground dead. I could feel how it was hurting me, how I wanted to throw up, but those thoughts and emotions were locked on the secondary focus, the only thing in my primary mind was how my aim was off. I had aimed at his eye, but hit his nose.

Time slowed down to a crawl as the seven thugs around me rushed to pile on top of me. I created another icicle in my hands and walked towards each of them, pushing the icicle inside their eyes until I had hit the brain, before pulling it back and doing it to the next.

I felt the desperation coming from my locked emotions. I knew it was wrong, but I wouldn't stop. I could almost feel the last of my true humanity escape through my fingers as the icicle melted in my hand due to the friction it was being subjected to.

After all of the thugs had a hole where one of their eyes should be, I stopped slowing down time. My legs gave out and I fell to the ground, with my back on a wall, at the same moment all of the thugs dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

I was breathing heavily, my magicule reserves weren't big enough for me to keep time slowed down for so long, not even mentioning it was actually harder for me to do so in my cat person form than my true form, and even more so because my soul burn had tanked my magic status.

The only thing I kept up was the parallel thought. It was a constant drilling in my head, but I couldn't afford to actually feel my emotions at the moment. I knew the moment I did so, I wouldn't be able to continue. It was like a small piece of who I was was being broken.

Even without my emotions, I knew I was being the exact type of monster Jack was hunting me for. But I had no other choice but to keep moving forward… Or maybe I had, and I just didn't see it. But now it was too late. Even if the loop would erase their deaths, this memory will be forever with me.

I waited for a few more minutes until I had the maximum amount of magicules I could have with the soul burn and got up. I heard fast-approaching heavy footsteps and recognized them as the guards. They were probably finally coming to investigate after someone must have reported what had happened.

With another slowdown of time, I left the place and made my way to the secret entrance, where I found the two thugs guarding the entrance and an elf, they seemed to be in high alert. I opened [Magical Programming Language] once more and made changes to the water sphere spell I had cast during the last loop. It was now the shape of a bullet, and I had increased the pressure by one order of magnitude yet again.

The spell was slow to manifest inside the slowed time, and gave the trio to start noticing me. The elf was the first. I had no idea how fast I was, but by how much his clothes floated and refused to fall, I could guess that I was very fast. Their being able to perceive me was a show of their strength, even if I had stayed still for a while as the three bullets formed.

As the bullets flew from my extended hands, I saw the elf diving underneath theirs before continuing straight at me. The other two thugs weren't so lucky or agile and were hit straight in the face by the bullet. In this slowed-down version of time, the bloody remains of their heads lazily floated away from what was once their head.

I casted another icicle and moved to engage the elf coming at me. It seemed I would have a physical fight in slow motion, but all I felt was the empty void as all my emotions were still locked in my second focus, still screaming at me to stop.

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