He had done it!

  Success! Massive success! Critical success! Theo had found a way to repeat the sigil instructions he weaved in the air at barely any cost at all!

  He realised it immediately, the moment he saw the mana tick down a single point and the spell repeated itself with no difference whatsoever. This was how he would catch up. This was the cheat Arcana had alluded to.

  “Yes!” Theo roared victoriously. Eternal mounds of dirt were at his fingertips! Infinite amounts of fresh, clean water! Inextinguishable light, unconquerable darkness. Give Theo a windmill and he would produce power, unlimited power! Enough fire to burn down entire fields of green was under his control.

  There was nothing that could stop his imminent rise to power. With him behind it, Sigil Town would rise higher than any town had before. It would soar as high as Ercheat itself, then higher still. With infinite potential, nothing could stop Sigil Town's ascension to that of a truly godlike town. The potential was Theo, as bottomless and vast as space itself. His magic was as powerful as the world itself. He was the infinimage. The world mage. The repeat mage- no! He. Was. Loop Mage!

  He turned to share in his victory with his friends, both eyeing him as if he was a loon. He tried explaining his findings, but they didn’t understand. They were too simple to understand this complex magickery. They were too limited, simple as that.

  A hard fist knocked him straight on his head and he found Wen with her hand raised above him with that familiar frown on her face Theo never did figure out what meant.

  “We aren’t ‘too limited’, you just suck at explainin’!”

  Oh, had he said all that out loud?

  “Sorry,” he apologised, clearing his throat to make himself sound more sincere. “I meant to internalise that. Not that I really meant it!”

  “Good,” she said with the slightest stretching of her lips. She lowered her hand. “So those glowy things weren’t usual spell glyphs, then?”

  “You saw them?”

  “Yeah? You weaved them, didn’t you? It’s just mana weaved through the air, same as glyphs.”

  Theo considered this. Then what was with his ability to pierce the veil? Why hadn’t Wen seen the sigils on that town deed when she could see the sigils when Theo weaved them.

  The answer came to him barely a moment later. Because the world wasn’t weaving them! He did, so it wasn’t at all different from normal glyphs. What Theo was able to see was the world’s magic itself, not the sigils or the mana used to weave them. The two were so intertwined in his mind that he hadn’t realised they were two separate things at all, but they were.

  Rather than starting his path down the gleeful cheating route, Theo once more dived into the World Primer. There had to be something relating to the amount of times this loop repeated. Surely it was the two commas after the ‘Loop’ sigil as he’d start calling it, but the system couldn’t be to just add another line for another loop, right? What if he wanted it to repeat ten times? What if he wanted it to repeat a hundred times? Should he need to draw a hundred commas following the ‘Loop’ sigil? Certainly not! The world was smarter than that. It would be easy, if not in some obscure, arcane way.

  The sigils themselves followed this rule; they were almost laughably easy to weave, and when he knew what he was doing, it was just as egregiously simple. The only trouble was learning how it all worked and functioned together. There was surely an easier way.

  He flipped through the pages, his eyes like that of a hawk as he scoured the next several pages for more commas. He found them pretty far back… an index for the number system. Okay, that wasn’t just easy, that was too easy! When had he become so lucky? Where was this index for everything else!

  “One comma means one, two means two, three-.. Okay. Then it changes,” Theo muttered to himself as he looked up and down at the page. For some reason, four was one comma, one sharply angled shape consisting of two lines forming a ‘V’-shape. Then five was just that second shape. “Six and seven adds another comma each, then three for eight… Then comma-cross? Then just cross, cross-comma, cross-comma-comma…”

  On and on he went, but he finally thought he had some basic understanding of the rather arcane numbering system. What kind of lunatic had come up with that system, he didn’t know, but he supposed it was simple enough. It was based on adding and subtracting the various symbols from each other, he figured, so all he needed to know was which symbols had which value. If that value was lower than the following number, subtract it. If it was higher, add them together. It could certainly grow complex if he was to have any big numbers repeating, but he didn’t need that right now. He could ease himself into the system as he saw fit.

  For now, he needed about ten more chunks of dirt to spread around to fill in the field. With how he had been doing things earlier, that meant a hundred mana down the proverbial drain. Now, if the ‘Loop’ sigil wasn’t just a fluke, it would take him no more than fifteen for the initial casting, followed by nine mana, one for each additional rep! It would save him a whole seventy-six mana! Well, he had to make sure that’s how it worked first. There was a chance the cost might increase per repetition, a bit like how the cost of a spell increased by five each sigil, which was what he was worried about. He’d find out momentarily.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  His brow tensing as a lone bead of sweat collected where his hairline ended above his face. Theo started weaving. ‘Create’. ‘Earth’. ‘Loop X’. Chime!

  Sparks flew as the sigils flashed repeatedly. Each time they did, they sent more dirt falling with a thump thump thump onto the dirt-filled ground. The mound in front of Theo quickly grew taller and wider before the tenth dose of heavily packed ground slammed down on top of it. Twenty-four mana!

  “You’ve got to teach me that,” Willam said with a wide, awed mouth. A little sloppy mound of dirt or two? No problem, that’s magic, right? A nearly limitless amount of fine, dusty dirt? More, please.

  Could he even do that? He wasn’t sure. He had the recipe, so why shouldn’t any old cook be able to use it? It wasn’t specifically integrated into the System, and even that Wen and Willam had acquired a small part of. Was there anything about his Boon that gave him the ability? Theo had forgotten what it said, focusing just on those sweet, sweet mana points it gave him. As far as he could remember, it just droned on and on about his chances of immediate death. To be doubly sure, he checked it again.

  Lingering Magic (Boon): The lingering magic of a Divine-tier spell runs through your entire body. Increases Mana recovery rate by 1000% until effect ends. Gives a chance of hallucination. Gives a chance to see through the veil. Gives a chance for a random, magical event to trigger in any of your affected limbs. Gives a chance for instant death that increases over time. Gives a chance for your physical body to explode. Gives a slight chance for spontaneous hair growth. Permanent Luck +10. Permanent Luck + 10%. Permanent Luck -10. Lingering mana remaining: 85.

  He had to admit, he actually had forgotten most about it. He’d certainly forgotten that the chance of instant death increased over time! Yikes, he had to empty himself out ASAP. He also hadn’t noticed any particular hallucinations, which was a good sign, he thought. At least no one had mentioned anything… Unless they were all…

  “Wen! Willam! If you were hallucinations, would you tell me?”

  They looked at each other, sharing confused glances, then shrugged.

  “Sure,” Wen said.

  Theo sighed in relief. Good. That was that cleared up, then. Also, no hair growth. Good. He felt he had gotten to know this world pretty well by now, and he was sure any spontaneous hair growth would certainly not happen on his head or face. There was an above fifty percent chance it would happen on his knee, he figured.

  Also, he couldn’t help but notice the change in luck. It might’ve been the impending doom last time, but he was sure he hadn’t noticed that earlier. He got a permanent ten to luck, then had the same ten luck removed, though not before he got a 10% increase to it. He technically gained 11 luck, then, but only ten were removed. But luck wasn’t even a stat, was it? He checked his stats and was more than elated about the progress he’d made since last time.

  Theo's stats and skills:

  Health: 100% | Mana: 51 | Stamina: 100%

  Physical: 51 | Mental: 51 | Vital: 51

  Level One skills:

  Sigil Weaving

  Calculation

  Planting

  Brooming

  Serving

  Cleaning

  Plant Tending

  Water Affinity

  Town Management

  Tilling

  He was nearing the same amount of mana that his Boon had remaining! With this new cheat of his, that was perfect timing. He’d just reduced repeated casting cost by quite a bit, reducing his future mana requirements by a lot. But there was no Luck stat, though.

  “Hello?” Willam asked.

  “Hm?” asked Theo, knowing there was something he’d forgotten already. What was it though?

  “Can you teach me?” Willam asked again, reminding Theo of Willam’s original question before he’d spiralled into checking if they were hallucinations and so on and so forth. Geez, if his mind wasn’t spinning from today.

  “I can try?” he asked back, shrugging to let him know that he really wasn’t sure.

  “Great. My mental multiplier isn’t high, but I suppose I should be able to do some of it, maybe?” Willam then said.

  “Your mental what?”

  “Multiplier. As a farmer my physical multiplier is by far the highest, but my vital multiplier is also a bit up there.”

  “While innkeepin’ is hard work, it isn’t anythin’ like farming. My vital is the highest, though my mental is pretty low as well,” Wen chimed in.

  “No, you’re not getting it. What the hell are these multipliers no one has told me about?” asked Theo as he scrubbed his dirty temple with his even dirtier finger.

  “Oh, they’re permanent multipliers added to your stats,” Willam answered as if he wasn’t just revealing a secret of the cosmos.

  “Are you just very bad at explaining the multipliers gained from Level Two and Level Three skills? Those are universal, aren’t they? They add to all three stats, I mean?”

  Wen chuckled, but seemed to rein it in a bit. It seemed she had briefly forgotten Theo wasn’t from around here. She then apologetically explained.

  “Those are added to all three, you’re right. Then, there’s the specific multipliers to each. Working out, doin’ brain work and whatnot over a longer period of time will start to increase a specific multiplier related to what you’re doin’.”

  “An extra multiplier on top of the Level Two and Level Three skill multipliers!?”

  “Aye,” Wen nodded, unable to see the imaginary steam rising from her otherworldly friend’s head.

  “What!”

  “So, about teaching me that magic…” the farmer repeated humbly.