Feels like it's a bad decision for him to have both interfered in the murders of those two soul mages AND revealed so much information about who he is. I think its most likely that the invaders / red robes is the one who is behind the attack. The sudden drastic change should tip him off that the third/fourth time traveler has interfered, giving him an easy way to track down Zorian.

 

He didn't really reveal who he is though. All he said is that he knows Kael, but that won't lead anywhere, because Kael doesn't know him outside of individual restarts.

 

And getting in the crossfire of a lich casting a soul spell on someone else.

Either one of those is enough to get Red Robes to consider the idea that Zorian could be a student, which is all that needs to happen for RR to figure it out.

I'm not really complaining about this- just sort of speculating where this might lead to.

Also- I think the "stamp" on his soul might not be how the time travel spell works on Zorian. That stamp could be something Red Robes placed on him after he died in that one restart where he had to commit suicide and hope his body got eaten- maybe he wasn't as cleanly disposed of as he had hoped. This could be an easy way for RR to keep track of him and identify him, and maybe RR was just leaving him alone for a few restarts to give him a false sense of security while he observed him.

 

I haven't read the latest couple of chapters because I too felt like the story had slowed down, so I was planning to wait until this arc was nearing completion for the excitement to appear again. But the last few comments here sound interesting. Damn.

I too would like some recommendations - in case someone was going to give some outside the thread (because it might de-rail the thread). I tried looking for stories, but never did find any. I remember a couple fanfics, one in Harry Potter and the other in Naruto, but both had the characters becoming OP and... weird stuff happening. Bad.

 

Waiting for Godot would be the smartass answer.

Martian Time Slip by Philip K. Dick and Replay by Ken Grimwood are both very good and worth reading. Also All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, which has one of the great all-time side characters (Rita, aka Full Metal Bitch).

 

Updated.


I liked it, things are moving along and we get to see Zorian in a full combat environment in what feels like a long time.

 

I recently finished a book called 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August'. It's not quite a groundhog day style situation, but basically a man who keeps reliving his life--he lives from like 1910 to 1995, so there's some really cool period stuff as well as things that edge into more modern science. Definitely definitely recommend--the author does an amazing job and I'm eagerly looking forward to more works.

As to the new chapter--the fight was pretty cool, but otherwise it felt kind of brief. Maybe my sense of dissatisfaction comes from how the author keeps introducing story threads for Zorian to pursue, but he seems to always be putting them off for future resets. We keep getting introduced to new mysteries, but never really resolving old ones. For some reason it keeps pulling me back. :/

 

Just got updated. Lots of teased information, and a new reset.

Spoiler

I wonder if the Cyoria gate are how the invaders are getting in?

 

Loving the faster update rate.

 

The thing with the gate felt a bit heavy handed, but still, pretty good update all told. I am more curious about what killed him than anything else. Although it's just as likely that Zach bit it I guess.

 

I wonder if there will be a loop where he'll take Kiri with him. It would be neat to see them traveling around like that.

 

Didn't the spiders talk about the time-loop deteriorating? This might be what they were referring to. With each new loop shortening the span of it by a few hours or days.

 

Meh, still finding everything so boring due to the lack of any familiar characters even with the action scene. My favourite scene of this chapter was his brief interaction with Kirielle.

This would actually make everything fine again.

 

I like the updates. It's a completely original universe anyways, some of these new characters will eventually become old, familiar ones. Traveling the world, getting some real experience is what Zorian desperately needs.

While it might be nice for interaction, there's basically zero reason to take Kirielle with him when he's doing his traveling thing. She brings nothing to the table, and takes time from Zorian to take care of her. Maybe we'll see her in the school again, but I doubt it.

 

Until Zorian moves onto the next stage of his journey and the story has another major change?

We had a lot of chapters that basically saw the exploration of various characters in Zorian's life. His teachers, classmates and sister. Sure, each loop seemed to have a different focus, they did build up on each other. While they didn't remember anything, there was changes in relationship from how Zorian viewed and dealt with them. And while there were many characters, the fact they were all in the same setting didn't make the changes in focus feel too jarring.

Now all of that has been thrown away. Not just in a literal change in scene, but Zorian has basically shown himself to have become a pretty serious and cold guy. He has shown no desire to continue building on those relationships, no desire to go spend time with some of these people he's grown closer to (just for his own benefit and comfort). Even if those characters feature more later on when Zorian decides to get back to fighting the invasion, the benefits of that build up is gone. And for what? To basically go back to the beginning where Zorian is focused on training new skills, except minus any personal relationships.

 

I think it's less that and more that he's concentrated on the problem that Red Robe presents at the moment. Zorian has shown himself to be a very goal focused individual. To the point that he doesn't catch all of the social things going on around him, even though he's fairly talented at handling party functions. Once he get's what he needs from traveling he'll probably return to Cyoria and set up shop again. But right now Cyoria is a bit too hot right now for him to touch so he puts it out of his mind and focuses on what he needs to be doing.

 

This I don't agree with, it implies he left all those people because he didn't value them. He left because he directly encountered Red Robes and all of his spider friends/allies got perma killed. He wasn't only protecting himself he was also protecting his unlooped friends and family in the only way he knew how, until he had the necessary knowledge to more directly combat Red Robes and the other villains.
I'm not sure what you expected the protagist to do after so many people permanently died in loop after his face to face confrontation with Red Robes, with the protagonist unable to do anything about it.

 

Updated. Still reading through it myself so will leave comments, if any, later.