"I said it…" thought Tyel while crying with his whole body, lying on the ground. With his face pointing at the ground, he could not see the faces of his companions, but each of them looked confused and at the same time worried because of his current condition.
"Tyel, what are you talking about?" asked Syrmax, confused, but Tyel didn't answer yet.
"Think about resting, don't use your power… you've almost reached the final stage," warned Liro, trying to calm Tyel, but he kept crying in front of them.
As everyone turned quiet, waiting for Tyel's response, the room was only filled with the crying of Tyel. After some seconds, Tyel smashed his fist on the ground.
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ACTIVATE MY FUCKING POWER IF IT ONLY ACTIVATES WHEN I'M DEAD!?" Suddenly, Tyel raised his face, and with countless tears flowing down his cheeks, he looked at his companions, who had finally understood what he meant by a lie, and all of them gasped in surprise.
"Only activates once you die?" asked Vane, confused.
"Then if you've reached this stage…" pointed out Orechin as his whole body began to shake in fear.
"Hey, Tyel, try to calm do—" said Martheel as he took a step forward and spoke with a reassuring tone, but he couldn't even finish his sentence before Tyel screamed once again.
"CALM DOWN NOTHING! NOT AFTER I'VE DIED COUNTLESS TIMES… NOT AFTER I'VE SEEN ALL OF YOU GETTING KILLED COUNTLESS TIMES NON-STOP… I CAN'T CALM DOWN AFTER THIS!!" Suddenly, Tyel leaned his back against the wall and positioned his hand to cover his eyes.
"And I can't even do anything anymore… it's the last try I even had available… and I said everything to you all…" Tears kept flowing down Tyel's face; the group looked at each other and took a small step, trying to get closer to their friend.
"Hey, Tyel…" said Orechin as he broke once again the only sound in the room, which was Tyel's incessant crying.
"Please… I've failed countless times… each time some of you had to die… or I had to kill myself to prevent you from dying…" Tyel removed his fingers from his eyes and looked at his group; each of them had a worried look.
"And I couldn't do anything differently than that… each of you was suffering in these loops… every time your head was getting sliced off… every time your body was pierced by Ashikunz's spear… every time your body was sliced in half… I was powerless… I couldn't save you those times…" said Tyel as some tears stopped flowing down his cheeks, but his expression was still really sad.
"Maybe we didn't need the details of how we were getting killed…" whispered Vane before Darian behind him bumped his hand over his neck, telling him that it was not the right moment.
"It was hard… getting my knife close to my throat every single time…" Suddenly, Tyel grabbed the knife from his pocket and showed it to the others. "It hurt… but I knew it was the only thing I could do to prevent each of you from getting brutally killed by our enemy… you can't even imagine how much pain I felt every time I'd stab my own throat with this knife." As Tyel began to remember all the pain of all his countless loops since he discovered his power, tears began to flow down his cheeks once again.
"Talking with you should have helped me… in fact, I feel less weight over my body…" said Tyel as he held the knife tighter in his hands.
"Then—" Martheel took a step forward to speak, but Tyel interrupted him once again.
"But I lied to you… since that day I made up a lie… I could never look into the future… I simply reverted the day so that I could try again and again," spoke Tyel as he finally left the knife on the floor.
"Then why?" asked Orechin, confused.
"I was scared… that you would use me… you would send me forward just to gain information… but what would have happened? I could only get killed… but now?" Suddenly, on Tyel's face, a new look appeared: he first smiled, and then he began to laugh softly.
"I was scared I would become your object… but in the end, I fell right into this trap… without noticing, I became an object without noticing… I would simply waste my life to gain information…" With that, Tyel's laugh became stronger, and all the group was looking at him even more confused.
"I promised myself that I would not become your tool… but in the end, I became the tool of myself… I should have chosen better actions in these loops… in the end, I completely failed… and as I became the tool for myself, I could only gain information without arriving at an actual conclusion…" said Tyel as the tears completely disappeared from his face.
"So you've gained information on Ashikunz in these countless loops?" asked Darian as he sat down next to Tyel, surprising everyone else.
"Exactly… there are countless ways for us to resist one of his attacks and fight against him… but we always failed because you were missing the information from the previous loops… I only ever explained to you how his armor worked… I never told you what we used to fight against him and how we could have been able to win…" said Tyel. In his mind, the scenes of his companions dying repeatedly were playing once again, and he lowered his head.
"And this is supposed to be the last try?" asked Liro as he sat down in front of Tyel, while Tyel raised his head and noticed that everyone was sitting around him.
"Then if it is the latest… why not tell us your whole story?" asked Orechin.
"We might not know what will happen to you after your soul completely shatters… so you'd better not hold back, right?" asked Syrmax with a reassuring tone.
"You're right… and we've always tried in the night… waiting until the day will just be better," said Tyel with a reassuring tone; suddenly, he took a deep breath.
"Okay… let's start from the beginning… since the first time I unlocked my power…" With that, Tyel began to explain to the whole group about the first time all of them got brutally killed by Ashikunz, followed by the other trials and when Tyel finally realized how his power worked.
"And… as I've told you before, I was scared… scared that I would become one of your tools… like, I imagined this future in which you would send me inside a room just to check how things were; if it was alright, I could simply return… but if something happened, with the day restarted, I would simply warn you not to go there…" Some hours had passed; Tyel hadn't arrived yet at this latest attack, he had just arrived at when Martheel and Chud had joined the rebels.
"So you could have restarted the day and you could have prevented me and Chud from joining the rebels?" asked Martheel. Tyel, with an amused smile, nodded his head.
"But I fell unconscious and midnight had already passed… I couldn't prevent it in any way," answered Tyel.
"But if you could have prevented our mistakes… why didn't you try to save Mary?" asked Vane.
"I was… scared." Tyel looked at the ground. "Too many things had happened on that day; we had arrived in the sanctuary without any problem… Darian was able to defeat that huge plushie… and knowing Zrelekai's way of acting, I don't think there was an actual way to save Mary… it would have all been useless," answered Tyel.
"Hey, hey, don't skip stuff… keep telling it normally," pointed out Lily, as she was slightly confused by everything going on.
Tyel let out another soft laugh and returned to speaking about when the group arrived in the sanctuary and of their countless trials against Ashikunz, what he had discovered thanks to the help of Darian's theory, and the sacrifices of his companions.
"And he had almost discovered your power?" asked Vane, surprised to hear about the loop in which Ashikunz had understood how Tyel's power worked, and to prevent him from killing himself, he sliced off all his fingers.
"He surely is smart… but you've said that the longer we fight against him… his stamina will simply be drained… and we will be able to damage him?" asked Darian. Tyel nodded his head.
"Well, I've said this… but it was your theory… so we could say you've said it," said Tyel while scratching the back of his head awkwardly.
"Then that is why you've started to bring a clock… to always check what time it was," said Liro while pointing his finger at the clock on Tyel's wrist.
"Exactly… I had to check the time and realize if midnight had already passed." Tyel checked his clock again and noticed that it was almost six a.m. in the morning.
"Still, I believe we've got countless different chances of defeating him… by starting with Lily's vinewalk and with the help of Orechin's blue crystals too…" pointed out Darian.
"And now the sun has risen up too… I'll be able to gain enough power to attack him," said Syrmax as he touched his muscles, sure that he would be of great help.
"But…" whispered Liro with his hand over his chin, "I don't think you should come directly with us… Tyel, you've said that in one of the loops we've attacked from the prison too?" asked Liro. Tyel nodded his head.
"Should we go first to the prison? But fighting against Corvinus will not be easy…" pointed out Orechin. "I mean, to win against him, me, Lily, and Vane had to fight against him… and we luckily won," he added.
"Yes… but in fact, we don't all have to go; in the prison, there are countless guards who want to defend the city," said Liro; some of them were starting to understand his plan.
"And so you're saying that we should… attack Ashikunz from all sides?" asked Darian, excited. Liro nodded his head.
"I'll create an illusion of Martheel and Tyel…" Liro suddenly snapped his fingers, and the illusion he just mentioned was created nearby Syrmax. "He will have to charge up, and to not have any problems, we will send him to create the revolution in the prison… and so guards like Corvinus will not be a problem for us."
"Even if he is strong… he will never be able to resist the attack of multiple guards!" shouted Syrmax as he clashed his fist into his hand. Liro, finally understanding that everyone had understood his plan, nodded proudly with his head.
"And I believe that Syrmax has to be the only one going there; I mean, I have to remain in the fight as I'll be able to help with the illusions… Tyel will just remain behind, and from what Tyel has told us, Ashikunz was never interested in killing Darian, so he can stay safe behind," proposed Liro. Everyone agreed with him.
"And we have to count that if he rushes towards you… we can easily take him from behind and lower his stamina with enough distraction," pointed out Orechin. "I can create all of my crystals; each of them will be able to do him great damage… Lily can create multiple roots to distract him… Catripple can launch her feathers… and Vane can rush at him on his eagle, and I'll help him with my crystals."
Tyel heard the group making different plans and he felt his heart beating faster. 'I should have never kept these things to myself…' A small tear had started to fall from Tyel's eyes when suddenly the whole ground began to shake.
"What?" shouted Darian, scared, as he heard something huge hitting the roof.
"What was it?" asked Catripple.
"I'll go and check." Lily created a root that rushed directly towards the roof, and right when the root emerged from the ground, it got sliced in half, even if it was barely visible.
"It's definitely Ashikunz…" pointed out Tyel. "I told you that he would be waiting for us… but he has a limit, too."
"We aren't allowed to slack off anymore!" shouted Vane as he returned to his feet. "YOU FUCKER! IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, WE'RE COMING!!" he added, yelling. Suddenly, the stomps on the ground stopped.
"He understood…" whispered Orechin. "Let me just hope he won't be waiting for us at the entrance…" he said while sweating.
"I can always see it with my power… we should not lose any time before he actually destroys the floor and kills all of us…" said Lily. With that, the group nodded their heads and began to walk.
"Syrmax… please be alright," said Liro. Syrmax made a reassuring face and raised his thumb. "Don't worry; even if I'm alone, I'll be able to resist and I won't die… I'll save the prison!" With that, Syrmax began to rush with the other illusions, and they reached the other entrance to the prison.
"I wonder why they haven't arrived yet…" whispered Ashikunz, as he was now standing in the desert.
'They have decided to fight me in the morning with the sun? They surely know my weakness… or at least some of them,' thought Ashikunz. 'While it is night, there isn't the sun, so I don't have any problem… but with the sun, I get more tired… did they know this, or… has someone told them?'
Suddenly, Ashikunz shifted his glance to the black planet; now that the sun was slowly rising, it became visible again.
'I don't think they've explained to them how my armor works… even if…' Ashikunz suddenly looked at his armor, and the thoughts of a distant past played again in his mind. 'Even if I stole this armor from them.'