There were only so many people that could challenge him at the academy. All of them were not in his immediate future.

  He decided that he would do his best.

  It would be up to them to make his day. He forced himself to meditate upon this. He tried to pick out his opponent from the line, out of people waiting to go. The Grammarians had started pulling people individually, and putting them in a lineup, so that all the winners would know who they were fighting next. This wasn't kind to the winners or the ones that were waiting. But it did have the effect of making people stand up straighter.

  The smell was electric.

  He hadn't thought about it, but every single man in front of them had gone through something in order to get here. They had done so much to get there by pulling themselves up by their sandal straps.

  The sulfur in the air gave him pause. He sniffed several times. He hadn't smelled it since…

  He looked around.

  He didn't see a gate, but he could feel it. The sense of something happening… Somewhere nearby. He had to pinpoint it. He closed his eyes as the Grammarian shouted to begin the match.

  He held up a hand.

  As if that would stop the match, he looked into his opponent's soul.

  He wasn't sure what the emotion was, but he found something like a cross between apathy and pity for him. His eyes flew open. He wasn't sure, but he was almost certain. The man's eyes were purple.

  The world felt like it was slowing down.

  Then it was apparent.

  The screaming all around them went from joyous to terrified.

  Ludere looked down and saw that he had been run through with a sword. He hadn't even seen that happen. He tried to look around, but nothing happened. He couldn't move. He was pinned in place by it.

  He went into a meditative trance.

  If he was going to go back to the beginning now, he was going to have to get over everything he had lost.

  As with all times when he went into his soul, he felt solitude. He knew it well. This time, he was not alone.

  There it was. The oddly colored cat was back. He thought of something. He had so many questions that the cat had failed to answer last time. None of it worked.

  The cat rolled his eyes.

  "So I see you've died again."

  "Come to finally let me rest, have you?"

  The cat rolled his eyes. Ludere wanted to laugh.

  "Not so much. Human, why do you… You know that you've put me in a terrible position."

  "Send me back, then."

  "You're going back. That much is clear. I just… I'm not sure when we should send you back now. What if I sent you all the way back to the start of the loop?"

  Ludere felt a twinge of panic. He had gone through so much. He thought that he was done with the loops, but if this was what he had to go through? He would endure.

  "Send me back."

  "Unfortunately, we cannot send you so far back. Too much has changed in the calculus."

  Ludere blinked. In his soul, one didn't really have eyes. This made the sensation worse.

  "So send me back to this morning. Unless…"

  The cat smiled.

  "Oh, no. How long?"

  "Two weeks."

  "Rek. The whole time? How many?"

  "You'll have to find out."

  "Rek. Before then?"

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The last person he would trust was a time traveling cat. At least he got his story straight. It hadn't been a vision. It had been actual time loops.

  He wanted to vomit, but here in his soul? It wouldn't be possible. He still wanted to, but there was no mechanism.

  At least he thought that there wasn't. Suddenly, he was retching, and…

  The sand was loose in his palms. He looked up, and Mila was charging him.

  "Rek!" He dodged to the side. "I surrender."

  "What. Like that? What's going on?" Mila looked like she really wanted to continue. He couldn't blame her. He was out of sorts. "What happened to your muscles?"

  Two weeks? Had it really been two weeks?

  "Mila, you are not going to believe this shit." He looked around before he started getting into it. It was just the two of them. Cire had either not shown up yet, or had left early on this day. He wasn't entirely sure. All he knew was that this was roughly one month into his time. The dueling started at six weeks. He had two weeks to figure out how the demons broke into the academy—the most well-defended place outside of the Senate.

  He needed to remember the name of the guy that he was fighting against. Was it Bel? He would have to check. He tried to concentrate on the man's face, but nothing came up. It was probably the fact that he had been put through the ringer by both the cat and whatever demon had run him through. The last time that he felt so terrible, he had been under the control of a succubus. He hadn't been intentionally holding on to his Spirit or his Soul, so he was a sitting duck.

  The more he explained the time loop, the more Mila gawked at him. "You mean to tell me, this whole time? You knew that you got this because of the time loops? And the only reason that you're telling me now is because you spent two more weeks training, and it's noticeable?"

  He sighed. He would have to explain this to her each time he began the loop, but he knew her.

  "What else happened? Anything between us? Or between Cire and any of the boys?"

  He hadn't actually been paying attention to what Cire did with her free time. Her Grammarian was very strict about what she could do outside of the classroom, and if it wasn't training, then she wasn't supposed to do it. It was like they would dock her points for not being enough of a tryhard. He knew that she was trying to leave the academy in first position. She could do it, too, now that she had both Will and Soul Magic.

  They spent nearly half an hour talking instead of training, but he'd been through two weeks and then a duel. He had to give her the information that he knew. He knew that she was not his enemy. The real question he had was if she wanted to be in the inner circle.

  He didn't have Gia or Erebus to call upon. He just had the sons and daughters of the Prefereti that were there with him.

  It wasn't ideal, but he could figure this out.

  "So, you have two weeks. What are we doing in two weeks?"

  "We're going to hunt."

  There were sixteen people in the first class. Cire was in that one and was trying her best to suss out who could have been replaced by a demon in short order.

  Ludere had to work within his class.

  There were twenty four students, that he could immediately look at and see that they would be bad candidates for a succubus to try and turn. So when he got into class, everyone was a suspect, and he was suspicious of every single thing that happened. He spent a good amount of time peering into people's souls. Trying to figure out if they were the one, or if it had even happened yet.

  At lunch, he walked with Mila all the way to the same spot they always ate. This time, he made sure to let people get in front of him. This time, he made sure to let everyone get an extra bit of side eye. He wasn't playing. He didn't want to relive the experience of having to deal with Erebus or Gia.

  He can only take so much emotional damage before he decided that that was enough. That he had done his duty. Instead of rushing back to read more, he stopped and watched as everyone passed them.

  "I don't think it's going to be one of our classmates. You said you didn't get a good idea of who it was?"

  "I feel like it's Bel."

  "Just because you get someone to do shady stuff for you, doesn't mean that they were going to be a shady person in general, or that they're going to be the one. I mean, it's more likely that they'll take a deal from a demon, but that's really how it is, right? They're more susceptible."

  Ludere watched as the first class passed by, on their way into the mess hall.

  Cire pointedly didn't look their way. Everyone knew that she sparred with them regularly. Outside of that, they didn't really do much together.

  This gave them the opportunity to look at her class for a minute, and for the first time, he was shocked. Every single member of the first class had either Soul or Will Magic. None of them would be an easy target. All of them looked like they were serious about their studies. He could see strong souls and strong training paying off.

  Ludere had to make sure that he was wearing one of his more roomy togas. He'd gotten more muscular in two weeks, but it wasn't that noticeable. It was noticeable when he was in tunic only, which was what they did when they sparred.

  "I'm still not sure it's going to be one of these guys. Maybe it's a woman?"

  "Women can be killers, too. They're probably going to be better at it than you are."

  Ludere gave her a flat stare. "If you knew how many succubi I'd killed, you wouldn't say anything like that. I'm a proud man, but I'm also a proud killer of as many female demons as I can get my hands on."

  Mila tossed her hair over her shoulder. "That's the kind of thing that I aspire to."

  "Nobody should aspire to that. If you get it wrong then they control your body. And then you're going to end up killing me, or somebody else you care about."

  "Oh, so you think I care about you. That's hilarious."

  "Heh. Well, at least you're consistent."

  "Do you think I want to mess with the man who is dating the Oracle? Yeah, I think not."

  He couldn't imagine her fighting with the Oracle, but it would have been hilarious.

  "I'm not seeing anything. Mila?"

  "Unfortunately not. This is the first day of your new loop?"

  He nodded.

  "The cat said that he sent you here before this began? Then we might be too early. Let's take stock of what we see today and tomorrow."

  It made sense. Or, at least, it made enough sense that he could go back to resume a lesson he'd taken months ago.