Chapter 108: Chapter 103: Paradox

No-one asked what I was doing in the small village. The group simply knelt and waited for instructions. So I gave them some.

"Don't treat me as anyone special. Just act normal," I commanded, ignoring the contradiction. "I'm just here to repair your protective shrine."

"I... But..." stammered one of them in confusion. A group of five, none looking younger than sixty in human terms.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked, trying to make conversation.

Surprisingly, that question managed to break through their emotionless facade and trigger a reaction. "It's our home," said one bitterly. "I was born here. I've spent my life working this forest, and soon enough, I will die here."

I'd ask them what happened, but I already knew. A human raiding party broke down the barrier, killed anyone who tried to fight back and took everyone of working age, along with the older children. The elderly and the very young were left. The human raiding party hadn't even considered them worth killing, the location in the middle of a forest probably being the only reason they didn't burn it. Not because they cared about the forest, but simply that they were in the middle of it, and setting fire to something you're in the middle of was generally not considered a great career move. The remaining young had been sent to orphanages in the larger town. Some of the elderly had moved, too, but this small group refused to abandon their lifelong home.

The shrine stood in the centre of the village, in the open air. It made sense villages this small wouldn't have a dedicated church.

New side quest: Make an offering to the demolished shrine
You have found the remains of a shrine consumed by war. Make an offering to restore it and return the protection of the Goddess to this land.
Clear conditions: Sacrifice mana crystals worth a minimum of 100 mana to the demolished shrine.
Reward: Gain one class level

With little thought, I went through the motions and did as the quest requested.

Side quest complete: Make an offering to the demolished shrine
Level cap reached
For making an offering worth more than 500 mana, additional reward granted: A strengthened barrier provides healing and restoration to all within its domain.
For making an offering worth more than 1000 mana, additional reward granted: An enlarged barrier protects a greater area.
For making an offering worth more than 5000 mana, additional reward granted: Level cap increased by one.

And that was another level. What new skill options would I get this time?

Paradox: You are an effect without a cause.
Courier: You provide safe delivery.

That didn't really tell me much, so I tried again.

Timeless: While most drift passively with the streams of time, you swim against its flow.
Ferryman: You are a protected vessel travelling through the Void.

That was just confusing; another skill had already called itself 'timeless'. But whereas that previous one seemed to be about bringing things from the past into the present, this one sounded more like it would let me travel to the past. The second skill seemed more straightforward, letting me bring others with me when I world-hopped.

Bringing the fox-kin with me back to Earth was an option I'd considered, but would I really be able to move that many people all at once? Wouldn't going back in time to before the demon lord had linked me to them be better?

For that matter, couldn't I just rewind time over and over, to repeatedly repair this one shrine until I ran out of crystals? Or if I dropped a crystal beforehand, couldn't I repair it with the same crystal? Paradox was right... If that skill did what it said on the tin, it was completely and utterly broken.

And what sort of fool would I be to not take advantage of such levels of brokenness?

Not that I was completely sold on the idea. If I went back in time and repaired this shrine again, then yes, I'd gain another level and get my last skill, but what about the 'me' that already existed in that time? She wouldn't be able to repair the shrine, wouldn't get her next level, and so wouldn't be able to time travel. It certainly would be a paradox. Maybe that wouldn't matter, but I didn't want to end up with two of me again. Or three of me, since I was definitely going to bring back dupliKatie at some point.

The only 'safe' use would be to get me back to Earth at the time I left, so no-one would notice I'd been missing. In that respect, it would combo very well with formless.

Putting my new skill selection aside, I instead enhanced draconic power and evolved item box.

Skill enhanced: Draconic power
You gain a massive increase to mana reserves and regeneration, and a massive boost to the power of all magic.

No extra perk there, and it wasn't as if I could do real magic, but at least the effect would strengthen my breath further.

Skill item box evolved to dimension home
Grant access to a pocket dimension, completely under your control.

Woah... Now that was an evolution. What was previously a time-stopped space for equipment storage became a real place in its own right. A place very much like the dungeon I'd been trapped in for so long, albeit far smaller. I jumped straight in, unconcerned about finding my way back out, or even about my link to the fox-kin. After all, it was mine. I knew how to keep it linked to this world.

Suffocation nullification advanced to level 23

Of course, just because it was a world of my own didn't mean it came pre-packaged with my daily necessities. For example, air. Or, for that matter, any sort of surface to stand on, the lack of which wasn't quite as noticeable as it might have been given the equally lacking gravity. I teleported back out and stored a chunk of atmosphere, blinking repeatedly as my ravaged eyes did their best to recover from the vacuum exposure. Fortunately, my scales had done a good job of protecting my skin, but I suspected I'd taken some internal damage from the sudden pressure differential between my lungs and my surroundings. My vision remained blurry, too. My eyes had probably taken some irreparable damage. Oh well, I'd just need another respawn. Something which I could now do in zero time, if I picked the paradox skill.

I still wasn't sure it was a good idea. Not knowing exactly how it worked before I took it made it a gamble. I very much doubted it would do any harm; in the worst case, it would simply be too dangerous to use, and I'd have wasted a skill slot.

Given the potential payoff... I sighed as I acknowledged that my lack of self-control would never let me ignore such a potentially overpowered skill, and then selected it after activating trigger respawn, as much to repair my eyes than as a safety net if the skill did anything weird. I stood unfocused on anything as new knowledge forced its way into my mind. It worked just like pathfinder. I could step into the Void, and step back out not only where I wanted, but also when.

Of course, stepping out of the world, however briefly, would sunder my link to the fox-kin and hence kill them all. But if I stepped back in before they died, would that matter?

I worked through my new knowledge, which implied that it didn't, but that if I went back and repaired the shrine before my younger self got to it, I would indeed end up with two of me. The fact that I hadn't just met an older version of myself wasn't a problem. It would be that other one who was linked to the fox-kin, leaving me free to go home, and the other me to get stuck here.

That would be rather cruel...

I could so easily do the opposite. Go back to before my own summoning and screw up the ritual. That would leave a copy of myself home on Earth, while I got stuck here. Or I could go back even further to prevent the war even breaking out.

I could return to the dungeon at any point I wanted. Save the fox-kin there. I could save anyone. Everyone.

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No, that was wrong; not everyone. If I went back before the war, and saved everyone who died in it, I would never have been summoned, and the Goddess would never have created the dungeon. My newly inserted knowledge implied that the dungeon would be obliterated, the entire pocket-space consumed by the Void. Every echo in there would be silenced. Would have never been. I would need to pick and choose who I wanted to save; the originals or their copies. If I picked the originals, another me would take my place on Earth. If I picked the copies, another me would end up here.

Would never having existed be better than having been killed? On the one hand, that felt suspiciously like the arguments people made against contraception, as if any second I spent not-pregnant, I was committing murder. On the other, I'd met those people. They were more than theoretical existences. The fox-kin were dead already, the zombie queen was in suspended animation in my item box, and the demons didn't really count to begin with. The enlimbed blobs and the black dragon counted, though.

Actually, given the time dilation, the original blobs would all have died of old age by now. Any children they had wouldn't be fake. They would have souls of their own. Yet erasing their ancestors would still end them all. As for the black dragon, he struck me as the sort of dragon who could take care of himself, no matter what I did.

Why did I want to go home? How much was because I wanted to see my family, and how much was because I didn't want them to be left wondering where I'd gone? Would I feel more comfortable stuck here if I knew there was another 'me' safe home? A 'me' that still had her mind and her humanity intact? I probably would.

With the red dragon back alive, there would be nothing stopping me from visiting, even if I no longer had a home there.

Self-sacrifice was what being a hero was all about, wasn't it? And so I made my decision. A hero I would be. And should it all go wrong, I could just reverse time again.

"Hey," I called to the fox-kin, who were still standing around doing nothing, waiting for my subduing presence to depart. "What date was this village attacked, exactly?"

"Fifty-eighth of seeding, year twenty-six thousand, three hundred and ninety-six of the lord of our lord."

Okay, first issue; how fricking ancient was that green dragon?! Second issue, seeding? Despite them knowing what a Wednesday was, months were going to take some work.

Cheating a little and sucking the answers out of their memories, the event turned out to be a little less than three years prior. There had been raiding parties attacking travellers for a couple of years before that, but no events I could localise. It had taken time for the human bandits to grow confident enough to start attacking villages, but once they did, it was mere days until the demon lord declared enough was enough. This village hadn't been the first, but I knew which one was, and I knew when.

I spent the time waiting for trigger respawn to fire pulling out more information, recording the location of demons that had been captured prior to the large-scale operations. Drawing up a hit list of places I'd need to go to conduct rescues. Not every captured fox-kin knew where they were, and plenty of the victims were dead already, so I couldn't build up all the knowledge I needed beforehand, but it helped. This was going to be as perfect a run as I could make it; no innocent left behind.

Trigger respawn fired. I'd set my respawn location to the local shrine, and for the first time I saw fox-kin watch my resurrection with completely blank faces, not commenting on the light show in the slightest.

Wanting no more of that, I stepped in a direction that wouldn't be found on any paper map. I heard a collection of overlapping thuds behind me, and I didn't need my rear-view olfactory perception to know what it had been, nor how many others had suffered the same fate. It didn't matter. One more step and they would never have been bonded to me in the first place.

There was a crash from behind me, the noise of a thousand windows shattering, with echoes continuing for long after they should have stopped. I heard a flood of whispers and faint laughter surrounding a louder roar and felt a heavy pressure, as if I'd just been tossed deep under water. That was... harder to ignore. It hadn't been me, but neither did I have any idea what it was. I would just have to pray it had been random Void stuff and not anything that was going to bite me on my tail.

The air grew crisper. Scents changed. The sun swung around the sky, dipping lower and vanishing below the horizon. Shadows lengthened and faded into the darkness. My surroundings morphed from forest to grass and then to green shoots of wheat. The human standing in front of my face yelped and fell backward onto his bum.

"Hi!" I exclaimed, feeling rather buzzed after my first attempt at time travel didn't seem to have gone horribly wrong. Or at least, not in any way that was immediately obvious. I was under no delusions about my luck, and was fairly sure that crash would turn out to be something important and royally screw up my plans in some way, but for now, I could pretend all was well. "Would you happen to know what year it is?" I added, just in case.

"What in the abyss is that?" exclaimed one of the other members of the two-dozen strong party, all armed and armoured, with black cloth wrapped around most of their faces. None were carrying torches, but the full moon and the stars of the clear sky cast more than enough light to see by.

I blinked. "That's exactly what Si'janrii said when we first met. You aren't him in disguise, are you?"

"I haven't got a clue," said a second one, ignoring me. "Which means our pervert boss will probably pay good gold to fuck it. We're taking it alive."

I blinked again. That had been a bit of a departure from my first encounter with the fox-kin, but the spirit was the same; a bunch of soldiers deciding to sell me for a handful of coin. At least Ja'yakril didn't have sex with his monster collection.

Did he? I mean, he did seem to really like them, to the point of obsession... No, surely not. Some of them were far too prickly.

Of course, the remainder of the encounter was going to go very differently, whatever these bandits thought. I wonder what my first encounter with the fox-kin would have been like if I'd had the strength to mop the floor with them?

Perceive mana advanced to level 19

A few of the group waved their hands around, but whatever spell they were casting had no effect. Probably trying to send me to sleep or otherwise incapacitate me, the attempt negated completely by my maxed curse immunity. That seemed to catch the group by surprise, but they reacted professionally and another one of them charged me, stooping low with a suspiciously green dagger held in front of him. I ignored him and, as expected, the blade snapped against my scales.

"Doesn't it look kinda like a dragon..." commented one from the back.

"Don't be silly. Dragons are bigger."

"I can't help but feel like I'm being ignored here. I am speaking out loud, right?"

"Just shut up and surrender, and I promise you won't be hurt. Much."

I stared at the speaker, then glanced at the ineffective mages and the poor guy nursing his shattered wrist, which had given way moments before the blade of his poisoned dagger. Okay, presented with this new evidence, I needed to admit that the demon lord's opinion on the arrogance of humans was, in fact, perfectly valid. How had they not realised that they stood no hope here?

I had been about to ask them if they were bandits, but the way he'd added that 'much' to the end made it completely unnecessary. That was straight out of the school of stereotypical villainy. So, instead of responding with words, I responded with flame.

Slightly less than two dozen bandits turned to look at the line of smoking lava, the plinks as it cooled easily audible over the sudden silence. There were a few louder thuds as the larger bones, which hadn't had time to completely disintegrate in my brief burst of fire, landed on the ground.

"I believe one of you asked what I was. There was a time I would have answered with human. Now, I suppose the only valid answer I can give is that I'm a Katie. If you surrender and hold still, I promise you won't have time to feel any pain. At all."

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