Chapter 29
The memories of Sage Lona were, to be honest, noticeably more unappealing compared to those I had received before. After all, the memories of the warrior, the simple mage, or the healer Lona—all of them came from times when Lona already had the system. Obviously, such a start significantly simplifies things. Even though the fates of those versions of Lona were, to put it mildly, unenviable, it was still better than Lona's situation without the system.
As she had said, the memories began from the moment she unconsciously realized that pregnancy allowed her to preserve memories. And from this realization began the least pleasant part. She had to sell her body to quickly earn enough money to endure a pregnancy and become pregnant as soon as possible. And here, for the first time, a strange peculiarity was revealed, which, perhaps, influenced why she was chosen by the two foolish goddesses. Lona's pregnancies progressed surprisingly quickly—just two to three months, depending on the child's race. There were also several other unusual moments: her ability to become pregnant from anyone, the fact that all her children were always girls, and that there was a high probability that the child born was a human-other hybrid who retained most human features while inheriting the other race's advantages. For the first couple dozen cycles, motherhood was extremely difficult for her, her psyche was constantly on the edge; as a result, those cycles ended pretty quickly. And once, her mind couldn't take it anymore, and she did something for the first time that, a month later, caused her to end her life herself—she gave her baby to Dr. Alice, who was obsessed with infants.
But something also happened that broke her psyche. She kept her memories, and at that moment her perception of the child changed drastically. Now it wasn't a child, but merely a means to preserve her memories, and she began consistently handing the baby over to Alice, who turned out—to her surprise—to be quite reliable for that purpose. She was still periodically tormented by breakdowns at the thought that she was a terrible mother. But now that she had found a way to keep her memories and have greater maneuverability afterward, she decided that no matter how many cycles it took, she would become strong enough to raise her own child herself. She learned various skills, from thievery and stealth to warfare. With each cycle, she became more and more skilled, but eventually she faced a problem: her body was simply too weak. No matter how much she improved her expertise, with a new cycle she always had to start her physical development from scratch, so her progress stalled. That's when her attention turned to something she'd always considered too expensive to attempt.
Magic. There was no magic in her body at all, which is why, when acquiring artifacts, she fell victim to a perverse artifact dealer, which, honestly, she no longer cared about after everything she'd been through. But more importantly—even though her body had no magic at all, the artifacts gave her just enough crumbs to let her cast spells. And so she set out on a path that completely changed her situation. Learning was hard for her, but still, she felt that, unlike with physical skills, there was no limit to what she could do with magic. Her control over magic improved every time, and finally, another turning point came. She discovered the very race best suited for becoming a mage.
The Deep Ones. She herself wasn't sure why she decided to try her luck with a fishman at that moment. Maybe she had simply gone mad long ago and wanted some sort of variety at the start. But most significant of all—in the next cycle, she finally had, even if just a little, her own magic without relying on artifacts. This gave her more self-defense options at the start, and, just as important for her future, she became interested in the race of fish-people. Eventually, she found out that, unlike her, female fish-people could not give birth. She also learned about the existence of a certain sea witch. It took her several more cycles to find the ancestor of the fish-people, and at that time, she met one of the culprits responsible for her hardship, though she didn't know it then. But one thing she knew for sure—the sea witch was useful to her, not only agreeing to teach her water magic but also helping her to become, albeit a weaker version, a sea witch herself. Now she had new tools: a magically alluring appearance, a greater inclination toward magic, and the ability to summon water spirits to aid her—which were, to say the least, strange. From this moment on, visiting the sea witch on the fish-people's island became a mandatory part of every subsequent cycle.
She developed, improved, optimized spells so that they consumed less mana, and sometimes their effect was even greater. But ultimately, everything still boiled down to the fact that even after becoming a sea witch and with all the possible artifacts, she still had too little mana; it was enough to fight off a random group of slavers, but not nearly enough for anything bigger, and she still died tragically, unable to change her fate. That's when she set out to explore every corner of the island in hopes of finding something to help her move forward. As much as she disliked the answer, she found it among the flesh demons and the cultists' rituals. That way, she learned that after death, everyone has a release of death energy, which, surprisingly, could easily be converted into mana. After that, new experiments began, which made her feel like she was losing her mind more and more. But perhaps this very madness allowed her to perform the ritual on herself. Using as a base the god-imposed system on the island, which allowed storage of items in an inventory of sorts, she made it so that after each death, her energy didn't dissipate into the air but accumulated in the space linked to her body. She still didn't know how to achieve more, but the first step was made. Further, through her research, she managed to supplement this "add-on" with the ability to harvest energy from killing others—luckily, there was always an abundance of orcoids and bandits. In this way, she managed to solve most of her mana problems, but it still wasn't enough. She had been tired for a long time, wanted to forget everything and die, but continued by sheer stubbornness alone. Even if this Lona gave up, she had to, at the very least, leave a loophole for her future self. And so, gradually, she met the second culprit of the misfortunes on the island—the creator of the flesh demons, who had lost control over them and now posed as a fortune teller living with a wealthy merchant. Naturally, at that time Lona didn't know that she was at fault for her sufferings. However, she did manage to glean some very important knowledge: the foundation for transferring the majority of one's skills and memories into future lives via skills. As a result, after death, not only energy was preserved, but also the girl's experience, spreading among the cells relating to that experience. And so, feeling that she had reached her goal, Sage Lona gave in. She killed herself, and a new Lona appeared, who, even though she received the predecessor's memories via skills (and this even influenced her personality), yet the experience was noticeably less vivid than if she had lived through it herself. Therefore, her personality was now different from her predecessor's, and, even more importantly, she no longer carried the weariness from countless cycles. However, until she gained her first skill, she still remained just a regular girl, unable to take advantage of the system. So, while energy continued to accumulate over many cycles, the island caught the attention of the original owner of Justice. What he saw horrified him: the land that he had leased out to two idiots was on the verge of an apocalypse, which would eventually engulf the world if he did not stop it. And, even worse, he felt that he no longer possessed the omnipotence he once had over his territory. He was almost in despair until he noticed that those two useless goddesses had somehow, perhaps as a last resort, managed to create a time barrier, weak though it was, by anchoring it to a regular mortal—who, lacking some of his powers, was now difficult to find.
At first, what drew his attention was a girl named Feyra. Justice thought she was the one to whom the loop was anchored, and even tried to help her, planning to fix things with her assistance. She even ended up killing one of the goddesses, depriving her of a solid chunk of power. However, that very moment sealed her fate: the time loop contracted, making it clear she was not the main character; but thanks to that shift in the loop's start, it became clear who the true main character was. He finally found Lona in the system, where an enormous amount of death energy had accumulated—energy so close to his own. He was amazed by this girl and by what she had achieved. Using the energy she had gathered, he was able to partially influence the time loop so that her journey would begin with their meeting, to give her a more stable start. He also directed the remaining energy into improving the system itself, allowing it to take on its present form and improve its attributes. Lona would only learn about this much later, in the far future, when she became a true sage after talking with a god. By then, she had already reached the heights of magic, allowing her mostly to isolate her home from the outside world; her powers had grown so strong that she'd solved the orcoid and flesh demon crises several times, but there was still one problem. The time loop couldn't be cancelled—everything always reset, and, inevitably, there were cases when Lona died by accident and had to start over, thus creating new skills. However, the main objective for every new Sage Lona remained the same: to study space and time magic in order to find a way to break the loop.
Waking from viewing the memories, unlike when I took several skills at once, was surprisingly calm and, I'd even say, refreshing—despite the greater volume. I felt that there was noticeably more magic in my body, and when I got up from my bedding, I also realized I'd grown taller; I suppose it was lucky I was wearing the magical clothes I'd bought from that pervert.
"Even so, she is worthy of admiration," I sighed, recalling the ordeals Lona had gone through, and the trial I'd just passed proved to me that even memories come nowhere close to conveying how hard it was for her.
"Lona?!" Indiana's voice, filled with astonishment, rang out. She was covered in dirt and had come back to camp with Merrimi.
"Girl, I left you alone for just an hour! What the hell have you managed to do again?!" Big Mama's tone was full of irritation.
"It doesn't matter," the catgirl shook her head with a smile on her lips, and looked so beautiful at that moment that even Indiana swallowed involuntarily and had to mentally remind himself of the girl's age in front of him.
"You really are a handful," Merrimi grumbled. Sitting down by the fire, she added, "Tomorrow we're going back to Noer. I'm done babysitting you."