New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

"You don\'t look surprised that I say this," David said, looking at him, a tinge of sadness flashing in his gaze.

"I can\'t say that I am… To be honest, I\'ve been feeling it for a while…" Alex replied, leaning on a crate behind him.

"I had a feeling you did. The interaction with the hitman in the hotel was what confirmed it to me."

Alex nodded.

"But he wasn\'t the only one. Killing has become too easy. I don\'t feel anything from doing it anymore. Not fear, not sadness, let alone guilt after the fact… It… scares me," Alex said, looking at his hands. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

David sighed.

He had figured this conversation would happen eventually, but not in this fashion. He had thought he would be the one in Alex\'s shoes, with himself getting reprimanded—not the other way around.

"I know that you don\'t kill for the fun of it, so that is already a reassuring fact. But you shouldn\'t be doing the killing at all, Alex. Let me handle that. I\'ve been preparing myself mentally for it all along. Be the saviour we all think you to be," David said, trying to cheer him up.

But it had the opposite effect.

With a scoff, Alex looked at him and shook his head.

"I don\'t think that I can… Not after what happened with Solomon recently…"

David frowned.

"Something happened with Solomon? Is it that bad? You haven\'t said anything about it all this time; it shouldn\'t be too bad, right?"

Alex looked at him and winced.

"Oh boy…" David said, seeing his face.

Alex wanted to joke about it, tell him that \'oh boy\' was an understatement, and hope he would laugh. But this was a serious issue.

He explained what had happened, skipping no detail, with David listening to him, seeming perplexed about his story.

Once he was done, Alex looked at David, expecting him to fly off the handle. But his face seemed calm.

"Why aren\'t you getting angry? I may be the one who unleashed the Demon Lord upon ourselves…"

David looked at him and scratched his chin.

"There are two reasons I am not getting mad," he finally dropped.

Alex looked at him, confused.

"The first one is because the closer I get to my power over death, the less my emotions have a hold over me. It\'s a double-edged knife to me, but it also means I won\'t always be the explosive asshole that you like," he smirked.

Alex grimaced.

"Who said I liked you?" he joked.

David winked at him.

"A bro\'s intuition," he mocked.

"But that isn\'t the only reason. Like I said, there are two. And the second might put your mind at ease."

Alex frowned.

"Care to elaborate?" he asked.

"Sure. I don\'t think you can be blamed for Solomon getting thrust back in time. I think that was bound to happen, regardless of your actions…"

Alex became even more confused.

"How? If I hadn\'t found the ring, it would have slept in that cave forever, no?"

David shook his head.

"I said this to Kary before, but you were unconscious. The ring found a user, even in my timeline. Hell, it found more than one. All of them died, without reaching even remotely as long as you have worn it, but the ring wasn\'t owner-less."

This barely shed light on why he thought it wasn\'t Alex\'s fault, though.

"I don\'t understand. I don\'t think Solomon would have been sent back in time without my actions. Why are you so sure it isn\'t my fault?"

David smiled at him.

"Because there was always a Demon Lord. You didn\'t change this fact. You didn\'t create a new threat. If I understood what you explained correctly, Zagan had been planning this for a while and was already amassing the power to cast the spell.

"I think your actions only hastened the time of the activation," David said, looking pensive.

"Doesn\'t that make things worse?" Alex asked, still convinced he had made a colossal blunder.

But David shook his head.

"Not necessarily. Spells of that magnitude require an insane amount of power. Zagan was probably the reason all the ring owners in my timeline died so fast. He must have been siphoning power from them covertly.

"I think he couldn\'t do the same with you, given that you were leagues above the other ring owners, in terms of raw power. So this could mean a plethora of things," he explained, getting up from his seat.

He walked over to a table, where their mission briefing was already displayed, and Alex pursed his lips, impressed at the tech available for an aircraft this old.

"Let me paint you a picture," David said, sending the briefing to a file, to reopen later.

"Please do."

David opened up an app, where he drew up a two-sided graph.

On the bottom, he wrote up nine numbers, along with the title \'Circles of power.\'

And then, on the left side, he wrote down numbers, ranging in exponents of ten, from ten, all the way to the billions.

He then copied that chart four times and raised his face to look at Alex.

"I can hear the confusion in your head, but it\'ll be clear in a second," he said, chuckling.

"So!" he exclaimed, zooming in on one of the four graphs.

"Zagan did something which I can only assume was a ninth-circle spell. Crossing through time, although not always in the realm of the gods, is, at the minimum, a seventh-circle spell. Hell, just seeing through time is already at least a fifth-circle spell or ability.

"But I digress. If he had pulled it off perfectly, which I assume he did in the past timeline, then he would have needed at least billions of mana points. Of course, those can be substituted with souls, which tend to give a lot, and exponentially more, depending on the strength of the soul.

"I presume that is why he was killing the ring users the last time. He was most likely consuming the souls to power his spell. I\'m actually surprised Solomon hadn\'t detected it the last time. Or maybe he was too lax in his surveillance of his demons, as they appeared tame to him. Who knows?

"But again, a ninth-circle spell would require an ungodly amount of power," he explained, tracing a line on his chart.

The line curved slowly at first, becoming steeper for every circle further down the chart, but Alex remained confused.

"David…"

"Hm?" David hummed.

"What the hell is a ninth-circle spell?"

David looked at him, dumbstruck, before slapping his forehead.

"I forgot you weren\'t trained in the Mage\'s Guild… Your master didn\'t bother explaining the proper levels of magic to you…"

"What?" Alex asked, confused.

Aberon had been quite thorough in his training, he thought. But he had never talked about levels of magic.

"There is so much more theory to magic than what you were taught, Alex. Let me give you a crash course."