Aurelius had what could only be described as a stupid look on his face.

  The geezer had just explained to him, straight up, why the commission had such an interest in Aurelius. And he did it in the most blunt, technical manner possible.

  ‘Pawn’? ‘Not a slave’? ‘Gamepiece’? It seemed that Mr. Tona held Aurelius in ‘very high’ regard and totally valued Aurelius as an ‘individual’.

  At the same time, Aurelius did appreciate the old man’s brutal honesty. Having a better understanding of his value would be crucial in navigating through his now… rather messy life.

  Additionally, his mind was whirring as he calculated what this meant exactly if he died in this loop.

  Theoretically, he didn’t really have to avoid… death. Dying might even be beneficial for him in instances where the loop got really bad.

  For example, if the Commission ever seemed suspiciously willing to lock him up in a cell somewhere, taking the risk of incurring the ‘wrath’ of that unpleasant patron of his, he might as well just die to get a reset. He had done it twice already anyway.

  Essentially, whatever Mr. Tona had just said was useless to him. The Commission had a leash on him, yes. But they had it for the total sum of one loop. The current loop.

  The fact that they were unwilling to pry deeper into him with more extreme methods such as mind magic or absolute truth vows made more sense now, given that they viewed him as a potential asset to be nurtured.

  It also seemed that the Commission knew quite a bit about Quetzalcoatl and His past. At least, those important parts that Aurelius was still missing.

  The Commission and their belief in suspecting that He was not included in the Angelic Agreements itself raised much more questions than it answered.

  While all three Churches disagreed on much of the aspects of His power, such as the fact that He was the one to slay the True Dragons, and was the one to introduce magic to Teotlcan, Aurelius suspected that there was much more to this idea than it seemed on the surface, especially with what he had been shown by Quetzalcoatl.

  There was an intense obscurity in the truths of the Early Eras, with the scant Elven accounts being one of the only surviving sources of information, given the chaos of the Spirit realm in the first few Eras.

  It seemed that not even the Commission had an understanding over His purpose and His nature. And that would undoubtedly prove annoying for Aurelius.

  He had been thrown into this absurdity unwillingly by a rather cranky benefactor with limited information, and the Commission seemed to him a way to gather information about Quetzalcoatl, but to be told that even they had no idea about much of his goals were annoying.

  Nonetheless, Aurelius had to gather information whenever and wherever he could.

  Aurelius rearranged his face from confusion and contemplation to that of a neutral curiosity.

  “Why do you suspect Him to not be part of the Angelic Agreements?” Aurelius asked innocently.

  Mr. Tona seemed surprised to find Aurelius’s priorities lying in Quetzalcoatl, rather than his situation regarding the Commission.

  The man made a curious expression, scrutinising Aurelius suspiciously and responded cryptically.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “That is not something that you should know. If you would like to know, you can ask the papacy of the Three churches.”

  “More importantly, pick up the spear and come at me if you believe that your first question has been answered satisfactorily.”

  “I expect you to work twice as hard now, given that you have been informed of your true place in the Commission and in the world.”

  “You are destined for… I suppose a unique life ahead. And the journey will be made much better with effort now, rather than later.” Mr. Tona instructed, flicking his wand deftly.

  Aurelius’s muscles immediately froze, released from the control of his mind.

  His arms reached out with incredible steadiness and lifted his body off the ground effortlessly. With a gentle sway of Mr. Tona’s wand, his right hand picked up the glass of water, and it was brought to Aurelius’s mouth.

  “Grrglr”

  The water made a strange noise as it flowed into Aurlius’s mouth and into his stomach.

  When the cup was empty, Mr. Tona snapped his fingers and waved his wand, teleporting the empty cup away into thin air and instantly evaporating the traces of water that had spilled over Aurelius’s lips.

  “Koff-What the hell-koff-was that for, old man!” Aurelius complained, as the marionette spell was released on his face.

  “You were taking forever to finish your drink. And we have a lot of time left for our session today!” Mr. Tona replied cheerfully, as he fixed up Aurelius’s posture.

  With a casual flick of his wrist, Aurelius’s muscles fell into the man’s command, and Aurelius sank lower onto the ground, his footing immediately becoming stable and grounded.

  His spear was made to be held at an angle, ready to parry and to attack at a moment’s notice.

  “Now, we must move onto the techniques of your spearwork.” Mr. Tona announced, prompting Aurelius to groan inwardly at the man’s absolutely infuriating methods of teaching.

  ???

  Dinner tasted rather stale that night.

  “Tiberius. Will I ever be able to enjoy food again?” Asked the horrified Aurelius, as he chewed slowly at his plate of noodles.

  It seemed that shifting in and out of a ‘flow’ state had an incredibly nonsensical quirk of making Aurelius’s sense of taste go just… haywire.

  Tiberius looked back at him with concern, stuffing his own face with his plate of rice. And promptly shrugged.

  “Mate. How is it even humanly possible that every bite of this noodle tastes different?” Aurelius asked with increasing distress.

  Lucina stifled a chuckle as she enjoyed her own dinner, making a small ‘mmm’ sound with her next bite to irritate Aurelius.

  Glaring at Lucina, Aurelius tried the next bite of his food, chewing slowly.

  The kind of effect that the flow state had on his senses seemed to make the food taste either incredibly bland or incredibly salty at random intervals!

  And even in the rare decent mouthful of noodles, somehow his sense of texture just became overwhelming, making it feel like he had swallowed a mouthful of frogs instead of what was supposed to be noodles.

  His lunch earlier had him questioning the quality of the cafeteria food, but after Tiberius’s kind words had informed him that it was him becoming increasingly schizophrenic, Aurelius had to swallow back another round of curses against former sage Tona.

  No, actually, he did curse. For a whole 5 minutes, in fact.

  The number of quips that the man was able to make after every one of Aurelius’s swings had made Aurelius personally suspect that the man had a notebook somewhere filled to the brim with puns and insults, like that of stand-up comedians.

  More annoyingly, the man had started to smoke halfway through their training! Lighting a stick after another and creating a cloud of increasingly unpleasant smoke around himself that Aurelius had to endure to attempt a hit!

  Aurelius had never felt more of an urge to beat down the elderly than today. In fact, he felt inclined to pay a visit to an old folk’s home for the sole purpose of filling it up with cigarette smoke for some sort of karmic justice in the world.

  In the end, Aurelius had not landed a single hit against the geezer. And Mr. Tona had ended the session after 3 hours, having run out of cigarettes. And it had been just a tad more humiliating than the previous day’s session against Seraphine.

  Although the man’s instruction on spearmanship was decent, Aurelius felt no real desire to encounter him in a lesson again.

  Aurelius took another bite of his dinner, chewing with a face of absolute disdain.

  It seemed that Mr. Tona was a miracle worker. That man had single handedly… made Aurelius crave for Sage Yeltz’s less humiliating instructions…

  However, unfortunately for Aurelius, this casual thought would teach him the true meaning of a jinx.

  A voice rang out across the cafeteria, as a burly woman popped onto a table in the middle of the cafeteria.

  “BOYYYY” Sage Yeltz yelled out.