"How'd you do that, child?" the mage asked, but that wasn't something Konrad could answer.
The orb of light kept growing in his hand without him putting in any special effort.
In fact, mana was so abundant in this place that he didn't even have to use his own.
"I don't know? It was the first thing that came to mind, and I cast it," he muttered, squinting at his miniature sun. Where did the light even come from in this dull, grey void?
He didn't summon anything; he'd only focus the photons into one place.
The simplest runes, the least amount of effort—but well, it worked.
"Did you guys actually try to cast something?" he asked as it became too blinding to look at.
His gaze fell on the back of his hand instead.
On his triangle moles, the sign of his Halstadt heritage.
"Of course I tried," the old wizard scoffed, waving his poplar staff around. "I tried to open a portal the moment I found myself here, but nothing happened."
"A portal?" Konrad raised an eyebrow.
So Lily wasn't the only one who could teleport?
That would've meant it was something he might've learned someday, too.
But then, why would people bother with convoys and travelling?
Sure, mages didn't grow on trees, but this old man was one, and he served the court. If the king used a portal to reach Aset, this whole debacle wouldn't have happened.
It must've had some limitations that he wanted to find out, but this wasn't the time.
"I also tried to cast searching magic and flames."
Something like searching magic existed? What did it do?
Konrad wanted nothing more than a proper mage to teach him at some point.
"I'm trying to cast light right now, and it's not happening," Zoltan added, his face scrunched up.
Odd. Was he someone special after all?
Ever since he felt how mana flowed in his body, he knew—his triangle wasn't magical. Those marks—that's all they were, moles that proved he was the biological son of Erwin Halstadt.
Or at least, his body was.
A vessel that his guardian angel, Lu, had found and given to an outsider.
But that itself might have been the reason. He wasn't from this world—in fact, his soul got severed from that eternal cycle thing, whatever that was.
"So that's why they call you Prodigy," the Silver Mage muttered, forced to cover his eyes by now.
"Uh, I don't know about that," Konrad said with an embarrassed chuckle. "It had more to do with my maths than my magic. I struggled a lot when I first started—"
"Says the guy, who couldn't cast a thing mere two months ago, and now is an expert."
Right. Magic was something that everyone struggled with.
Only a few could even comprehend the runes, and even fewer could cast them.
To call themselves mages, only three in the entire kingdom could do that.
One was here, and another one was his mortal enemy now.
And given the Silver Mage's rough coughs and being in a trap, it wasn't a real question which one was stronger. As always, Konrad had his job cut out for him, whether he liked it or not.
"So what now?" he asked, struggling to keep that ball of light from growing.
It was getting hot, and he had to work against the ambient mana, or it would've gone out of control. Why he hadn't dispelled the thing in the first place, he couldn't tell, but—
"What kind of spell is that?!" Zoltan demanded, his hands flying up to protect his eyes.
He was still peeking through his fingers, and when Konrad did the same, his breath hitched.
The greyness of the void faded. The bright light shone through, revealing something strange.
A world outside their bubble.
A place so vast yet small enough to see every corner of it all at once.
Past, present, and future, each of them overlapping and looping forever.
So fast, they only saw a flicker—but Konrad had already seen it once, so he understood.
"Space-time bubble?" he muttered, his mouth hanging open. "More like a time-space anomaly."
If he concentrated hard enough, he could see a swamp around himself. It formed and dried out before his eyes, ever-changing through thousands of years. But he recognised it.
He'd only spend a few days in it, but he mapped every inch of the place.
It was the swamp near Aset where he disappeared.
Looking at Zoltan—
Despite standing within arm's reach, he was in a completely different place.
It was harder to recognise. But for a split-second flicker, Konrad noticed the Tower of Illusions.
No. The real thing. The Green Mage's tower.
Zoltan was still in Eytjangard, but out of this world's time.
And the Silver Mage was, well, wherever he got ambushed.
"We're not in a pocket dimension," Konrad concluded. "We're still in the same place, but—out of time."
The old wizard nodded, combing through his long beard.
Zoltan seemed less convinced.
"What does that even mean?"
"Fuck if I know, but that's what it looks like," he said. "Look around you. You were in the Tanidia Inn. Right? If you focus very hard, you'll see how it's built around you, then it rots away."
"But we are in an endless loop," the mage noted. "Time here moves faster than light itself."
"And now that I have given light a push with this spell, we can finally see through this greyness."
If he didn't try to dig too deep into the metaphysical, it did make sense.
The question was—what could he do with this knowledge?
"How do we break this loop?" he muttered to himself, sending his giant ball of light into the sky.
An even larger world opened up around them, but their bodies still couldn't move to explore it.
Or rather, no matter how much they have walked, they never moved from their initial place.
"If we understood how this loop came to be in the first place," Zoltan said with a sigh.
He might have finally caught up with them, but then he let his voice trail off.
"Hold on," Konrad yelled, allowing his light magic to spiral out of control on purpose. "I have a hunch. The Green Mage was trying to escape this world. Right? That was his final research."
"Spatial magic," the illusionist agreed. "And this is anything but that."
"Because he failed," he pointed out. "And he travelled back in time to become Maou Midori."
He already treated this as a fact, but now the others didn't seem so outraged by the claim, either.
"I've read all the books you restored, but—"
"Nonsense," Zoltan scoffed, hands on his hips. "It took me a month to copy them all. And you know how fast I can write. There is no way in hell you could read them all in a day."
Fast and furious. And most of all, unreadable.
"Well, the thing is," Konrad said with a smirk. "This isn't the only place that messes with time."
Now he was getting all those doubtful glances again.
Too bad, he wasn't about to explain Gabrielle's skill.
"So you know the way out?" The Silver Mage cut the silence short.
"Uh, I wish," he groaned. "But I have a hunch where to look for it."
By then, the light was so bright—
It not only illuminated the world outside their bubble—it was starting to show the cracks.