That someone was behind this meant that he could actually think about what he was doing next. Ludere didn’t like the idea that he was following in someone’s footsteps, or trying to clean up somebody else’s mess. That did not sit well with him.

  He did like a good plan. Especially the kind of plan that let him improvise a bit. Too much improvisation overall wouldn’t get him there.

  He was glad that it wasn’t one of the Prefereti. Ludere was supremely glad that it wasn’t a Senator using some amazing magic to keep him trapped in these visions repeatedly. If nothing else, his having to go all the way through and fight inside of the demon’s homeworld meant he did not know what he needed to do to get out of these visions.

  Palooza was not very forthcoming with the details. There were no clear-cut quests. He wanted Ludere to stop the demonic invasion.

  Ludere wanted more information, but he couldn’t give more. Was he going to give the man more time to work on it? Yes. This was not the only point of entry. This was not the only time that they were going to enter. And if they failed in this attempt, there would be other attempts. It’s just that there were so many of them there.

  “My question really is, how are they opening this gate up? It seems like it’s a lot of energy that keeps someone going through.”

  He gave Ludere a blank look.

  He shrugged. He could only do so much with partial information. It was only the thickest of disdain that he exuded. “Neither of us wants to be here.”

  “That is what you want to know? Demons have special skills that let them do this It takes time to develop these skills. You’re not going to get those overnight. I don’t even know if I could teach them to you if I had them. But it’s important for you to know that you’re not alone. You only have so many times to relive this day.”

  “How am I going to know when my time is up?"

  He gave Ludere a glare. That was a clear enough distinction. Obviously, he would know because Palooza would make sure that he knew.

  “All right. Well, if you’re not going to answer that, tell me, how do I fix this?”

  “Stop the invasion.”

  “But… how? There’s so many of them!”

  “You’re thinking too literally. If they can’t cross over from their world to yours, then this cannot happen.”

  Ludere’s brain, which was long accustomed to the diatribes of its master, came to a screeching halt. He could feel a reality warping around him, and he knew that this was not going to last long.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?”

  The poomaki shook its head. In his mind, he had assigned it male characteristics. He was surprised to feel that was possibly not correct.

  It felt familiar, like he had felt it before. “The next time we meet, do more.”

  He felt awake, in a way that hadn’t occurred to him before. Everything around him felt alive, and he… he felt like he was full of Willpower beyond measure.

  The man across from him took a look at him. He was clearly measuring Ludere’s aura. He couldn’t help but smirk.

  The same Prefereti that he had talked to dozens of times could see him, and he was afraid. Not only that, Ludere could feel the fear radiating off the man. The man’s unfamiliarity with this situation intensified his fear.

  “Sir, you’re going to want to bet on the man that’s warming up over there, correct? Fifteen Dinarii.”

  “That is correct. How did you know?”

  “I think a better question is… Why are you betting on this one guy? What are you seeing in them I’m not seeing? There doesn’t seem to be anything special and, shocker, I know he wins, but… Eh?”

  “You… Ludo, you know he wins? How would you…?”

  “Trade secret. Anyway, come back for your winnings in a few minutes.”

  The Prefereti walked away, as if he had once owned the place but lost it because of his gambling addiction. He turned to his friend and smiled.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Ludere, you’re scaring me as well. What happened to you? You look very different from a minute ago.”

  “You’re not going to believe this, but I think the military has got something going on.”

  Erebus sat entranced, as Ludere explained his time-loop story as quickly as possible. He paused only once to come up for air.

  “I wouldn’t have believed you, but you seem like you’ve rehearsed this so much that I cannot discount the possibility that this is true.”

  “I’m starting to see a pattern,” Erebus said.

  “You’re seeing a pattern?”

  “Yeah, the pattern is that you’re an idiot. Stop being an idiot. You keep dying in these visions, so maybe don’t?”

  “Oh, don’t die in the visions. Why haven’t I thought of that? I should have thought of that.”

  Erebus gave him a flat stare. “If what you’re saying is true, I’ve been dying over and over with you. So perhaps, think about the little people.”

  Ludere had done nothing but think about the little people. That is to say, legions of demonic foot soldiers he could now take by the half dozen at a time.

  Did he want to fight that many demons at once? No.

  Could he do it? Yes?

  Was it decided that he finally had Spirit Magic to use against his enemies? Certainly.

  He just needed to figure out how to work it into his battle plans, and he would be off to the races. With his Will and Soul Magic in the thirties, having Spirit Magic at two felt like he was putting together the puzzle. He’d never heard of someone having all three branches of magic. Hell, he’d never heard much about Spirit Magic to begin with, before today. But if he was going to figure out how to use it, he might have to find an Old Master who would train him.

  He didn’t even know where to begin with that. Surely there was one Senator somewhere who had this skill and had trained in it. The skills seemed to want him to take a soul… He couldn’t even think about how that would work. What if he took the wrong soul? Could he take the soul of a demon? And if he took the soul of a demon, could he use it for more than fuel? The skill enabled him to use itself. It took him so many loops to get used to Willpower as its own skill, and the nuance of that. Having Spirit Magic wanting him to kill somebody to use it as well, that in itself was interesting.

  He looked around for someone he could kill and then realized that it was a skill trying to make him do that. He didn’t want to kill any of his fellow humans. He still had time. The gate was going to open up. He still didn’t understand how it worked, but understanding it was working off of Soul Magic combined with Spirit and Will or some combination of the three meant that he now had the potential understanding of how to open up his own portal. Potentially, he could figure out a way to close this one. Or, in some other way, he could figure out how to keep it open. The amount of energy that the demons expected just to keep this portal open was enough to send their troops through. That was something he didn’t account for. He never got to see the extent of how large the demonic invasion camp was. He assumed that there was a lot.

  His best guess was that he would need to fly up to get a better picture. But even if the demonic horde were sitting in neat rows, he wouldn’t be able to count them all. Well, the skill wanted people to count them if you could see them all, but he wasn’t going to.

  He could choose to go back to the Demon World, or he could try to figure out a way to shut down the gate. They were signs pointing to his ability to shut down the gate might just be a stopgap. They could always come back. But if they paid a price to open up the gate, when are they able to pay a price to return it? Could he use one gladiator that was going to die right after it, to close it?

  It made sense that he could use some of them to do it. He knew they were going to die. The gladiators were always the first ones to die under the onslaught. That was mostly because they were right there inside of the arena, and the demons were thorough, if nothing else. Once they killed all the gladiators, they began trying to find a way out and secure the arena. He’d never been there long enough to see them entirely overtake it, but he knew it was possible. Especially with the number of demons that had just queued up and were waiting in line to come across the way.

  “So if Gia has been helping as well, don’t you want to tell her?”

  “There really isn’t a lot of time for me to explain it to you, but if I keep explaining it repeatedly, I’m going to run out of time. I just gained a new skill. I want to learn how it works, but apparently I need to have a demon to sacrifice.”

  Erebus nodded. “That sounds like a play. Just to be perfectly clear. I would not have taken this deal. I don’t care what kind of being came to talk to you about it. Stopping this demonic evasion is just not in the cards for me.”

  “Understood. We just need to make it past this somehow.”

  “So, if you have the Scan ability, and you can tell people's strongest skill from that, even with distance, do that too. Everyone in the arena yet?”

  Ludere shook his head. That had been on his original list of things that he could do. And the more that he leveled his abilities, the easier it would be to predict what they were doing. But because it wasn’t really a combat ability, they could get better quicker through combat. He didn’t know if it was going to help him in the long-term. The fact of the matter was that he didn’t actually have a long-term. If this didn’t start changing, he didn’t even know how it would stop the invasion. Yes, they were coming out of both sides of a gateway. There were thousands of them on the other side, waiting to queue up.

  How would one stop thousands of demons without just killing them? The weak point was obviously the gate. If he could figure out a way to prevent the gate from opening or closing, he could complete his duty as it was outlined to him.

  If someone figured out a way to close it down, how easy would it be for the demons to reopen it? That was another issue. It was one thing to close a gate. He knew where this gate was going to form, and he could take it down. If he closed it down or stopped it from forming, would it reform in some other form?

  His thought was that it would actually depend, and so he resolved he would try that, as soon as he could figure out how to destroy it or stop it from forming.