When I realized I was awake, my eyes shot open, and I triggered the loop almost by instinct. When the reset ended, I took a deep breath, nearly gasping for air. The difference between my anxious mind and almost sleeping body causing me to become nauseous for a few moments.

I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, but didn't touch the runes that heated the water. The cold water running down my face calmed me down, and I was able to keep whatever was in my stomach inside it.

I went back to the bed before grabbing the mattress and throwing it against the wall while I screamed in frustration.

It seemed that everything I did was meaningless. If it wasn't Jack coming to kill me, it was the underworld of the city coming for me, and they had that stupid anti-magic field on their cells.

I grabbed the mattress and threw it across the room. It hit a few decorative items, making them fall and break.

I sighed and went to where the pieces were on the floor, picking one of them and looking at it.

"I feel like this is me," I started. I was speaking with no one in particular, just saying out loud my thoughts. "Currently, it is broken and worthless. But…"

After a pause, I triggered the loop, and after it reset, I went and picked up the whole vase. Not a single crack was there, it was never broken, after all.

"Is forcefully put back together by forces I don't fully comprehend," I said, placing the vase back where it was, my hand resting for several seconds on it before I pulled it back.

I just didn't know what to do. Everything I did caused me pain and suffering. I just couldn't see a way out. I felt trapped inside a room with no windows or doors. The fact that every time the loop restarted, I came back into this very room I was currently in did not help.

I needed to get out, but even to do that I needed to suffer to change my species through my skill. I couldn't exit in my true body without the city guard capturing me and then Jack finishing me off. I honestly didn't know how long I would last without cracking like that vase.

I looked at the pillow, my heart already clenching from the pain I knew was coming, but I had no other choice that I knew of. I bit into the pillow as I triggered [Genetic Disphoria]. I felt some tears running down my face as pain flooded my being as if I was being injected with molten metal and blended altogether.

What looked like an eternity later, I was left panting on top of the bed, saliva dripping from my open mouth, with what remained of the pillow falling out of it.

I eventually got up, my legs shaking, and made my way out of my room and towards the outside.

This time, when people asked if I wanted help getting to the hospital, I asked them to bring me to the mage's guild, lying that my situation was one that I was born with, and that the hospital wouldn't be able to help me. Surprisingly, they agreed and helped me to the mage's guild.

There has been two incidents of the mental suggestion that the underworld of the city tried to do, but it seemed they only had one mage with the skill for it, as whenever I started going in the wrong direction, the person helping me would call me and when they started going to a weird path I asked them about it and they seemed unsure about it and then returned to the correct path.

I eventually was able to enter the mage's guild, and thanked the person helping me. The Brostin's mage guild was different from the one in Flamecrest, it was bigger.

I could see a section that looked like a small library filled to the brim with books on shelves, several tables and chairs, with a few people studying the books from the same shelves. On the other side, there was a small cafe-like place. There were people drinking hot drinks, and there were even some candy-looking food being sold there.

I ignored both, for now, and made my way to the actual guild's counter. It was a large wooden counter with two people manning it, one dog person doing paperwork, and an elf waiting for me to approach her. She had seen me the moment I entered and was doing the most basic customer service face I've ever seen.

"Good morning, dear customer," She said in, again, the most basic customer service voice I've ever heard. "How can I help?"

"I'm looking for books about runes," I said, directly to the point. "Would it be possible for me to read them here? I'm not a member."

"Of course!" She started explaining. "Everyone can read our collection of magic books for free while inside the guild, but only members can rent them out."

"Oh, that's perfect. Do you have any books about runes?" I asked again.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Of course!" She repeated, in the same tone as before, but then she turned towards the dog person. "Harley, could you show our guest the rune section?"

The dog person, Harley, looked up from the paperwork he seemed to be doing and looked at the elf and then at me. "Oh, sure," he said and then got up, exiting from behind the counter and coming near me. He was at least thrice my size, as my current body looked like that of a 7-year-old child.

"If you'd follow me," he said, and then started walking. I followed him slowly and with stiff movements, but eventually he led me to a part of the library of the guild where the books about runes were stored.

"This is our runes section," he said, then moved to a shelf on the other side of the corridor and brought me a book. "This is one of the easiest books we have about runes. They are organized from there to here in increasing complexity. Those on the top of the shelf are the hardest, stuff you'd see in the advanced courses of magical academies, donated to us by the royal court several years ago."

I thanked him and brought the book with me to the table. I opened it and proceeded to read the book for the rest of the day.

"Excuse me, kid," Harley said to me after several hours. "We are about to close for the day."

"Oh, I see," I said. In only one day and I was able to read around 75% of the easiest book they had. I looked at the three shelves filled to the brim with books, it would take a lot of loops to go through them all. I hoped it wouldn't take that long to understand the runes Jack has on his clothes, but I doubted it.

The concept of runes is very simple. They are simply natural symbols that represent an effect. For example, if I carved the rune for "fire" and inundated it with enough magicules, the rune itself would ignite the magicules, producing fire.

The problem came in two parts. The first was that the sheer amount of runes was just insane. Just on this single book, there were hundreds of them, it was basically the whole book, and it was just the first volume. The second part of the problem was that if you connected two or more runes, the magical effect they caused varied wildly.

Taking the rune for "fire" again as another example, if I connected it to the rune for "water" and activated both at the same time, it produced steam, but if I activated the fire rune before the water one, it would produce liquid fire, almost like the magic napalm I created with my skill, and if I activated the water rune first, I would end up with hot water, the same principle is used on the plumbing on the inn's bathroom for the shower.

"You can return tomorrow, but we need to close," Harley said, bringing me back to reality.

"Sorry…" I said and moved to the building's exit.

As I exited the building, I saw that it was already nighttime. The only light was that of the light poles in the streets, the same ones that drained the magicules in the air and pushed them towards the ground, and the occasional lightning strike from the magic storm into the city's shield.

I watched the storm for a few seconds, seeing as how it was already beginning to dissipate. It was weaker now than when I first felt it, and I couldn't help but wonder what had caused it–whether the loops or something else.

I looked at the streets again, and placed everything I could on [Magicule Detection] before walking towards the inn I was staying at.

The moment I felt some auras, as I assumed was the name of the magicule pulse everyone had, starting to follow me was the moment when I reached the temporal strand around me and triggered the loop.

I wasn't going to get kidnapped again by them if I could help. One time was enough.

Everything moved backward as the loop reset, and I was back in the inn's bedroom with my true form. This was the only bad part of triggering the loop, the fact that if I wanted to do anything in the loop, I needed to pass through a torture session of transformation before I was able to even exit my room.

It wasn't much, just one loop, but for the first time, I managed to do something. It wasn't much, but if I could keep doing it for every loop, I would eventually be able to do anything. The only thing I didn't know was when this soul burn was going to start healing.

But still, it was a step in the right direction, I hoped. I wanted to create this loop to help me study runes and learn how to deal with Jack, and I finally felt like I could do something about it. It was a reprieve from the suffering from all the other loops I've spent.

But still, the first step to every loop…

I looked at the pillow and bit down on it as the skill triggered, pain erupting from all around my body until the transformation finished. It wasn't getting easier, every time it felt like I was dying, or worse, actually, considering that every time Jack killed me wasn't as bad in terms of physical pain, couldn't say much about mental, though.

After the pillow's mortal remains left my mouth with my drool, I was able to get up with shaky legs and move to the entrance of the building, asking the same person to guide me to the mage's guild.

Just as last time, I managed to avoid being kidnapped by the mind mage by having another person with me. I still didn't know if the person doing this was just that weak, or if mental magic was that complex, but I would take whatever advantage I could right now, as I couldn't defend myself with anything except manually triggering another loop.

The first thing I did when I got to the mage's guild was ask if I could go read some of the books, and if I needed to ask everytime. After receiving confirmation that I could directly go read the books, and that I didn't try to leave with them without talking with the two people manning the counter, I grabbed the book I was reading on the previous loop and read the remains of it before grabbing the next volume and starting to read it as well.

This would suck. I could remember the first loop, with me grabbing Henry's books and trying to learn from them and having a really bad time, and it seemed this would be worse, I think. But there was nothing I could do but do it if I wanted to truly fight Jack and not be immediately killed by him.

The thought still sends shivers down my spine whenever I think about the times my head was cut into several pieces.

Without much further ado, I delved into the books about runes.

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