“...Well fuck.” Was what Sage Yeltz managed tiredly after Aurelius’s long yarn.

  The sage had mostly been silent throughout Aurelius’s lacklustre summary of his suffering. However, Aurelius could visibly make out fatigue piling up on her face.

  In fact, he could swear that her muscles actively deflated simply from digesting Aurelius’s words…

  “So… That’s everything that I’ve been through.” Aurelius concluded, taking a sip of his tepid water to satisfy his dry throat.

  “Any questions?” Aurelius asked.

  “...Why am I still here?” Tiberius said, raising his hands up like an overeager pre-school student, tears flowing freely from the corner of his eyes.

  This was a display of pitifulness comparable to even Aurelius’s pathetic displays and antics.

  As the son of a well-off merchant family, Tiberius was deeply aware of the importance of discretion.

  To survive as a merchant, and profit as a businessman, one had to first understand their place in the world and act according to their ‘rank’ in the world.

  And currently, Tiberius, ‘the 18 year old student’, was in no position to be included in the conversation between what was allegedly a blessed of a god, and the highest authority of the Magic Commission within the city.

  Even if it was his best friend who was involved in this matter, Tiberius had nothing to offer, or gain meaning that he had absolutely no desire to get involved in the first place.

  In merchant terms, his involvement and newfound knowledge right now was a complete and utter liability!

  A risk factor beyond his pay grade that could result in horrible outcomes!

  If Aurelius was right about his time-loop shenanigans so far, it was clear what could happen to Tiberius. Even the Fae may come and kill him by association!

  Amidst all of these thoughts running through poor Tiberius’s mind, Sage Yeltz frowned, staring at the tearful tag-along with a blank face as she pondered her reply.

  “Oh shit… I forgot to send you off again.” Sage Yeltz simply said, scratching her chin and shrugging dismissively.

  “The secrecy clause on your friend means that learning about his story here is the only way for the guy not to like, die anyway.” She continued, waving her hand unconvincingly to dismiss Tiberius’s tearful visage.

  “He’ll need someone to confide in to keep sane for a while, so you will do~” She finished casually, looking away from ‘Tiberius the afterthought’.

  Aurelius almost pitied Tiberius, and stared in sympathy as his friend started to visibly sob next to him.

  “Coming back to you, Mr. Dog.” Sage Yeltz said, coming back to the topic of Aurelius, and making him jolt up reflexively in terror.

  “I'll, of course, verify the nature of your soul-blueprint later, but I have a question about your loop ‘limits’.”

  As she said this, she clasped her hands seriously and leaned into the table to emphasise her next sentence.

  “I’m sure you have heard about the Corvinus House.”

  “They are a major Magical House that splintered off of one of the Western Continent’s Noble Houses.”

  “They are at the forefront of cutting edge research these days, and really have gotten quite influential over the decades with their use and control of Temporal Magic.” Sage Yeltz commented.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “They have utilised the advancements in magical research to compress and optimise the magic to its absolute limits and made it available to even first layer mages.”

  “It’s fascinating research really, and they are especially relevant if we want to even try to understand the scale and power of the magic that you’re describing.”

  “Do you know what the principles of Temporal Magic are?” Sage Yeltz asked.

  Aurelius shook his head. This was high level magical knowledge after all.

  “I’ve heard that it’s the ‘limitation’ and ‘energy’ principle.” Tiberius replied, apparently experiencing a brief pause between his bouts of despair.

  …??? Aurelius snapped his head around to stare disbelievingly at his underachieving friend.

  Why does Tiberius know that?

  “Oh, that’s correct. How did a kid like you come across that information?” Sage Yeltz said, apparently amused by Tiberius’s response.

  “My mentor has done some research into Temporal Magic. He’s actually interested in the subject since he’s a wind elemental mage.” Tiberius explained, shrugging casually.

  “My mentor actually goes into rants about the House Corvinus sometimes when his charms don’t get crafted his way.” Tiberius said, shrugging in response.

  “Hm, interesting...” Sage Yeltz responded, looking at Tiberius with renewed interest.

  “You are correct. The principles that Temporal Magic abides by are the ‘limitation’ and ‘energy’ principles.”

  “These principles are taken for granted for most mages, since it’s something that is quite fundamental and intuitive. But for those weirdos using Temporal Magic, it makes up the foundation in the theory involved in their magic.”

  “Since the tearful pinhead knows a little bit about it, I guess I’ll explain more in detail about what this magic is about.”

  “Temporal Magic actually derives itself from the combinant soul layers of the abstract application of wind elemental and earth elemental magic.” She explained.

  “It allows for almost absolute control over a given area.”

  “And by absolute control, I mean that casters can influence the flow of time, and influence space itself, creating regions that do not follow normal geometric rules.”

  “Of course, such power is really limited, especially for single layered mages given the kind of compression that the soul layer architecture has gone through. House Corvinus uses their trademark magic to make storage charms, or ‘construction’ charms these days.”

  “Anyway, their magic utilises wind magic to create conditions inside of the area of their spells. Then, they are able to control the domain further with earth magic, imbuing an… instruction to the matter within the space.”

  “A top tier ritualistic magic utilising maybe 10 Archmages could probably affect… a city at 10 times the normal flow of time? Or command things at the level equivalent to that.”

  “In fact, the Commission should have used Temporal magic when the Fae Queen was identified in your second loop as support magic for deployed mages.” She commented helpfully.

  “What is ‘limitation’?” She asked, raising a finger to emphasise her point.

  “Abstract applications of wind magic act to bind through ‘conditions’. And what Temporal Magic does is really to bind a region of space.”

  “You should already know that even Bound Books are powerful despite being a rather basic charm that can be created as a High Mage.”

  “And that’s because the Bound Book gains a higher level of effect since it is something that limits and places conditions on actions and violations ‘passively’, rather than the utilisation of mana in actively casting a spell.”

  “While non-sentient objects experience a weaker effect of this ‘binding’, the Corvinus House has found a way to utilise the effect to their advantage.”

  “Using the limiting condition, which usually consists of ‘radius’ of effective ranges, they are able to create ‘domains’ that optimise and create an outsized effect in their instructions.”

  “To understand why ‘limits’ are able to create such a powerful effect, we must refer to the second principle of ‘energy’.” She explained.

  “For most magics, the price of casting is the energy converted from mana through the manipulations of the mage.”

  Sage Yeltz then raised a finger, magically taking a small amount of water out of Aurelius’s cup.

  “For example, a conversion of liquid to solid requires an equivalent conversion of energy from mana.” She explained, freezing the liquid to a threateningly sharp icicle in the air casually.

  “But Temporal Magic limits itself by using ‘less energy’.” She explained, turning the icicle back into a liquid.

  She then proceeded to turn just half of it into an icicle, leaving it coated in a thin film of water.

  “You can imagine this process being sped up, but eventually, the water surrounding the icicle would also become ice with ‘time’ because of the influence of the coldness of the icicle. Correct?” She asked, freezing the rest of the water to demonstrate.

  “Wind magic can take full advantage of this kind of efficiency, and use the underutilisation of energy in a sort of ‘leveraging’ effect to create outsized conditions for the magic.”

  “Truly fascinating, and absolutely genius.” She commented, releasing Aurlius’s drinking water into vapour.

  “So taking what you’ve said as the truth, we can imagine at least this whole planet as being affected by the timeloop.” She stated matter-of-factly.

  “As far as I know, no serious attempts have been made to create a ‘time loop’ with magical technology and I cannot even imagine the kind of conditions that would allow for that to occur.”

  “Using our understanding of the Corvinus House’s magic as a baseline, we can also infer that this timeloop must utilise ‘limitations’, and ‘energy’ principles.” She declared.

  “So what is the limitation of your loop?”