Ugh, assuming the author isn't jerking our chain here, I find the reveal lackluster. Almost any other option would have been better than 'oh hey, did you try to tell that guy?'

 

Not to toot my own horn much, but

I do agree the reveal was a little lacklustre though, although the rest of the chapter seemed on par.

 

I liked the rest of the chapter but the reveal was simply unnatural. It just skipped all logical thinking to get lucky on a random guess that didn't even seem to fit in the conversation.

 

Yeah, I agree that the 'reveal' came out of nowhere. But in other news, I CALLED IT!!!!!!!! I called it sooooo long ago. Nice to finally be right about something.

Also, I really want Zorian to introduce Zach to Silverlake. He's already met most of his annoying teachers, with the exception of Mind Like Fire, I guess. Also, I would love to see the look on Zach's face (or at least read a vivid description) when Zorian reveals that he's basically gone on dates with both Akoja and Raynie, after all, he kind of thinks of himself as a playboy.

 

The conversation did flow nicely to me. It makes sense how they talk about other students, then jump to the one related. I didn't read many of the theories on the thread, so I wasn't biased to one thing or another.

 

Yea, much like the majority here I enjoyed the chapter up until Boranova. I really hope that its just a red herring.

On the face of it, the chapter end heavily implies that Boranova is RR, who has edited/removed himself Zach's memories.

I don't know if I like that though, I'd probably have prefered RR to have been someone else other than a classmate. I hope this Boranova thing is a troll, or inaccurate. I.e. Boranova goes to the top of the list, but as the final arc unfolds Zorian and Zach discover a number of equally likely RR candidates.

That way you can have the final reveal at the end of the story where you can go 'A-HA! it was the candidate #3 all along, I knew it wasn't [1-2, 4-5]'.

I guess ZZ are going to track down this guy, as it seems a given that if they can find him, he's not RR because RR has left, right? Unless, due to the deviant nature of RRs inclusion in the loop theres a normal-copy of Boranova around, with the looped RR version outside the loop now.

I really like reading the updated chapters every month, but on the other hand I don't like all the waiting and just want to read the whole final thing in one go, but that'd probably around 1.5 years away.

 

I never disliked the theory that Boranova is RR. But the main evidence supporting it until now has been that Nobody has a pathological fondness for Chekhov's Gun. Boranova was put on my list of suspects simply because I paid close attention to the start of the story and he was named without any reason. I expected him to become relevant at some point just as everything else has.

But its called Chekhov's Gun, it should go off with a Bang! At this point in the story there are no immediate stakes attached to figuring out RR's identity. Why should it be revealed now? And, to quote Cheddar, the entire conversation is shoehorned in. The plot isn't ripe for this kind of information to be revealed to Zorian yet, but Nobody forced the conversation to reveal it anyways. Can you imagine how much more tense the story would be if Zorian gets out of the timeloop and doesn't know who RR is yet?

The issue isn't that the reveal is illogical or poorly written, it is just a miserable place in the story's plotline for it.

Of course this is all assuming that Boranova is RR, but I am pretty damn sure. It would be very silly to go through all the trouble of making Zach not remember him otherwise. At the very least, Boranova is connected to RR's actual identity, and RR didn't want Zach snooping around him.

Zorian got the information about him from Benisek, so Zach was made to forget about him not the other way around. My working explanation for why Zach doesn't remember ever hearing him mentioned is that he had a geas placed on him, which prevents him from either retaining the knowledge or acting on it in someway. That or Boranova's disappearance wasn't worth discussing.

 

I don't really mind how Boranova gets brought up, I think thats more or less fine. I just don't like that its Boranova. I did a ctrl+f of the PDF (updated up to chapter 54) and 'Veyers' and 'Boranova' appears only once; in chapter 2. I think there might've been a singular throw away that referenced him obliquely after chapter 2.

It's all very Chekov's M.I.A Gunman and thats why it feels off to me. Haha. Lol. It was forshadowed in chapter 2. Maybe I'm being too harsh on the author, but to me it just feels a bit off. Maybe the episodic nature of how we follow this story (chapter by chapter) and with lots of theorizing inbetween meant that I had encountered the Boranova theory before, and so the reveal now feels lackluster.

Maybe instead of Zorian going 'how about that guy who explicitly hated you, and you explicitly hated, did you tell him about the loop (after having to track him down because he got expelled!)?' It would've been better if he said something like 'Where you close to any of the students who didn't pass? You tell any of them? Oh, how about Boranova?'

 

I really hope the main character does something cool defensively with the dimensionalism Magic he is learning. Him learning to translocate instead of just block attacks with regular Shields is just the kind of savvy he seems like he would try. A barrier that can absorb an arbitrary amount of force and never collapse because it doesn't actually block it would be amazing. We know he'll end up genius at dimensionalism and able to create his own pocket dimension so it's just a logical extension of that.

 

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Zorian may be currently learning dimensionalism to help with his understanding of the loop, but it's not a low-power branch of magic so it would be hard for him to take to it's limits. Even if he had the skill to pull off a pocket dimension he might not have the mana to cast it. Same with the shield portal idea. Even if he could cast it it would probably take too much of his reserves just like the aegis.

 

We got some Word of Author on Zorian's theoretical limits by the end of the story, which include creating a pocket dimension. You're just plain incorrect here.

 

Where is this WOG?

 

From earlier in the thread.

 

Direct source is the authors patreon page, as a reply to a comment for chapter 50. But another member on the site kindly copied it over for our convenience.

 

Was it ever said where Boranova lived? Because it seems likely that, if he is RR, his copy learned about the loop when Zach was trying to convince everyone and, after learning what he could from it, erased his memory of him so that he could work uninterrumped. If he was the only one who believed him, it could also be that Zach helped him investigate how to join him in looping before he revealed his true colors. The problema with this is that it seems the whole expulsión thing happened before the loop started so I am uncertain about where they would have met.

 

Boranova could also be a red herring for Red Robe. If Zach were to discover his mind had been tampered with to the apparent benefit of his rival/enemy he'd surely throw himself into finding out more. Boranova is a member of a powerful family, which might mean it would take Zach a loop or three to deal with them. The public conflict would be a signal to Red Robe that Zach broke his memory wipe, or is about to, while simultaneously costing Zach time.

 

You know, re-reading the chapter, I found that whole Boranova drop wasn't as out of nowhere as I thought.

If you go back there's a '...' right before they go over how Zach told Benisek he was a time traveler, so they'd been talking about the reactions of their classmates for a while.

We just didn't explicitly read about them, since that would have taken to much time. Zorian probably asked about other classmates before asking about Boranova. I guess it was so jarring because it comes off as Zorian asking about just the right person on his first try, but that probably wasn't the case.

 

The prodigal son returns... I didn't really expect Alanic to get introduced in such an abrupt way.