Glimpse of Eternity [A Reincarnation Isekai Fantasy]

There was no concrete proof that Reivan's theory was absolutely correct, but every bone in his body was telling him that this place was actually more dangerous than the fiesta of blood and chaos happening above.

'Yep. I'm getting the hell outta here.'

If he'd known earlier, he would have gone in the other direction as the others. Surely, the rabbits wouldn't have chased after him too far since their goal was elsewhere.

Well, maybe it wouldn't have gone as well as he would have hoped, but ending up in the same location as the monster babies was one of the worst outcomes imaginable.

Because the adult monsters might treat him as an enemy by association.

“Ah, yes, I almost forgot.” Thomund Valand suddenly walked over to him and took out two envelopes. He held them out to Reivan with an awkward smile.

Reivan tilted his head and inspected the letter, but didn’t take it yet. “What’s this?”

“This… unfortunate event was both unforeseen and unwanted. But I feel as if I’ve failed as a host by being ill-equipped to protect you from all danger.”

“And like I said, what is this, Mr. Valand?”

“One of them holds a letter for you to give to the Spirit Tower if you are ever late for the opening ceremony. I know not how effective it can be, or how much weight my words have as far as the Tower is concerned, but I feel I should still offer this up so they know that your lateness is not your fault.”

Reivan grunted in thought for a moment before taking the letter with a nod. “Thank you. You prepared this in quite a timely manner.”

“Of course. Given our present circumstances, the penmanship may be a bit faulty, but I hope it’ll add to the authenticity.”

“And? You said there were two letters. What’s the other one about?”

“Ah, that is…” Thomund rubbed his chin with a sheepish smile. “An apology. For your emotional distress. Of course, I’m not just trying to buy you off, but I don’t want this unexpected event to cause a strain on our relationship. There should be enough in there for you to ride the express train from the farthest reaches of the republic to Vel Ayala ten times if you wish. You can, of course, spend it on something else.”

Reivan cocked a brow at him and peaked inside, only for his eyes to widen momentarily at the stack of banknotes. “There is indeed quite a lot in here.”

“Yes, well, I understand that most of your possessions were lost in the initial attack, seeing as you’re not carrying anything on your person.”

‘Well, that’s true.’

The bag with all of Clover Salwyn’s clothes and other personal effects was completely ripped to shreds by a barrage of sharp horns flying faster than a bullet. Now, a wand, the clothes on his back, and a wallet with not much in it were all he had to his — Clover Salwyn’s — name.

‘This amount of money can easily get me to Vel Ayala safely and buy me a few sets of brand-new clothes.’

That said, the general trend in Arkhan meant he would only be buying white shirts and a few colors of dark pants. Maybe a few coats, a hat, and some shoes too. But nothing too crazy.

It was, of course, much better than continuing to use Clover’s raggy clothes.

‘This is great. He didn’t need to apologize since we’re all adults and I came with them willingly, but…’

“I won’t refuse this.” Reivan tucked the thick stack of money into his pocket, barely fitting it inside.

“Thank you for accepting.” Thomund bowed a little, a relieved smile on his face. “By the way, where is Ms. Hardeling?”

“She’s still up there, waiting for me to replenish some of my mana so I can cast a spell to stop her from falling. If the need arises, of course.”

“I see. Not many can still have the capability to cast spells while plummeting to their doom, I suppose. It’s impressive how you managed to do it.”

“You think so? Is that why you’re showing me such consideration?” Reivan gestured at his stack of bills in his pocket.

Thomund chuckled. “Perhaps. At the very least, I would not have apologized so… sincerely if I was talking to someone incompetent.”

Reivan smirked and shook his head in exasperation, turning around to head to the mouth of the cave. “I hope you don’t mind me loitering near the entrance. I have to watch out for that girl.”

“Of course.”

“And I hope you compensate her too. She used a couple of spell balls in this whole ordeal. Me and her both share a lack of financial resources at the moment.”

“I already planned to, Mr. Salwyn. But thank you for the reminder.”

Reivan waved his hand and then ignored the Custodian, sinking into his own thoughts once again.

‘Haste makes waste though, so I should make sure of some things…’

He stretched his back before sitting at the edge of the cave, his legs left dangling in the air. A quick glance at the river below his feet filled him with confidence.

At this height, even Clover would survive the fall. So that meant Reivan could now jump into it without much of a problem.

Wherever the river led him to, it wouldn’t matter. It would be much safer than this hole on the wall where the monster magnets were being kept.

For the next few minutes, Reivan internalized his plans and thought of backups. He wasn't smart nor was he a genius strategist, so he had to give each plan considerable thought.

And then after thinking it through once, he would do it a couple of more times just to make sure.

'The important thing is not to mess up.'

Valter had told him that the first step to becoming proficient at anything was to focus on fundamentals. Then afterward, one had to eliminate mistakes and build consistency — the good kind of consistency, of course.

The guardian knight had said that about something else entirely, but Reivan believed that the advice applied to many other things.

'It should be about time...'

Reivan looked up and sent a bolt of magic power skyward. It was a spell that was used to send signals and looked much like miniature fireworks, without the loud noise that would probably attract all sorts of things.

A few moments later, the rope dangling in front of the cave entrance shot upward. Then quite a few moments after that, far above him, a figure started descending on a gradually elongating rope. It was obviously Maya, and she seemed to have taken some time to tie the end of the rope around her body just like he did — she even used her head and found a much safer, but magically costly way of getting down safely.

Nerves probably had something to do with the improvement too.

Reivan patiently waited for her, his ears perked while his eyes scanned the river below for any creatures he had to watch out for when he inevitably jumped in.

‘Just fish, as far as I can see… That’s good. Really good. I hope there aren't any piranhas or something. I've seen the movie and I don't wanna end up like those guys...’

Having cleared up all he needed to know, Reivan looked around and noticed some discarded rope nearby.

It was probably used when all the crates were brought down. Slowly lowering the crates would have taken too much time, so they had probably just attached all the crates to the Custodian Guard’s back and had him go back and forth, hiding as many crates inside the cave as possible.

Reivan picked it up and held it up for a nearby Star of Fortune employee. “Hey. Do you mind if I have this?”

The employee took one look at it and raised a brow at him. “That’s just some used rope, sir. If you have some use for it, then by all means. Feel free.”

“Thanks. And sorry, do you have a knife to cut this with?”

After borrowing a small dagger from the kind employee, Reivan made some smaller ropes to more securely close his wallet, which was full to bursting with a stack of money inside. Clover had the type of wallet that was only ever used for coins, so it couldn’t contain thick wads of banknotes optimally.

Reivan had to take some extra measures to prevent his newly acquired funds from escaping him.

He had even stuffed Thomund’s letter inside, rolled up and folded. It ruined the thing and made it quite unsightly, but he didn’t have much of a choice here.

After securing its stability, Reivan tied it extra tightly to his belt with another piece of rope.

Once he was done, Reivan tied together some shorter pieces of rope to make a much longer one. He managed to connect quite a few, giving birth to a rope of decent length that he could use in all sorts of situations. The knots tying it all together also served as something firm to grip on, so that was an unexpected plus.

He then cast a waterproofing spell on all his valuables, including the pistol that he'd looted. The spell would last for an hour or two, but sadly, he didn't have enough to cast it on his entire body. This meant he would likely end up like a wet dog later on — which was fine, since being soaked was preferable to being broke.

'That should do it.'

Finished with just about all his preparations, Reivan rolled up the rope and slung it over his body. Then he looked up to see that Maya had managed to climb low enough for him to notice how much of a horrible job she’d done tying the magic rope around her body. He could also vividly see her underwear because she was wearing a skirt.

Reivan frowned a little before he looked away.

“I-I… I did it!” Maya exclaimed as her foot touched down on the cave’s floor. In the end, Maya didn’t seem to have needed him to cast the Whisperfall spell since she made it down without any help. “I’m out of mana again though.”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? Anyway…” Reivan suddenly pulled on her arm and whispered. “I’m getting out of here. And I suggest you do too.”

“What? I just got here though… Wait, why are you leaving?” Maya asked in a subdued tone, noticing how he seemed to want to keep the conversation between them.

She also didn’t seem immediately dismissive, which was something he felt thankful for.

“I can’t tell you why…” Reivan shot a glance toward the others in the cave, who were all busying themselves with tending to the crates or whispering amongst themselves. “But I just don’t think this place is as safe as it seems.”

“That doesn’t really tell me much of anything… wait, so it’s just a gut feeling?”

“You can say that.”

“Uh-huh…” Maya stared at him skeptically for a moment before shaking her head. “Where are you even planning to go? Surely, you’re not planning to jump into the river below, right?”

Reivan shrugged. “That’s exactly what I was planning to do.”

“You're crazy. There could be all sorts of nasty things down there.”

“Better than being here, though.”

“And like I said, what makes you say that…?” Maya sighed before gesturing at the others. “Look, there’s that guy who’s as strong as Deni. And surely the Star of Fortune’s employees are going to have a bunch of other tools hidden away to defend themselves — they must have more spell balls than I did. Then we’ve got all those mercenaries up there holding the line. This is the safest place around here, as far as I know.”

Reivan couldn’t help but admit that her logic was flawless.

Logically, this cave really was the most defended place in the vicinity — but it was the most defended because it was the most dangerous spot. And the Star of Fortune's employees knew that.

In any case, Reivan didn’t want to fuck around and find out which side was stronger.

With a sigh, he stared straight at her. “Look, are you coming with me or not? If you’re staying, then you’re on your own. I’m leaving.”

Maya seemed to sense that he wasn’t kidding around and gave it some thought for a few moments. But it didn’t take her long to shake her head. “I’m staying. Sorry, but we just met a few days ago, and I can’t be sure how accurate your gut feelings are. I'm not sure I can trust it.”

‘That’s rich, coming from a woman who literally hooked up with someone she met on the same day.’

Reivan shrugged at her refusal. “Then talk to Mr. Valand over there. He probably has a gift for you.”

“Is it money? I hope it’s money.”

“It’s money.”

“Great. See you, Clover.”

“Yes. I’ll see you in the tower, then.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“...You too.”

Reivan nodded and didn’t watch her as she passed by him, heading deeper into the makeshift cave. As she had just mentioned before, they had only met yesterday, so he had little attachment to her despite what happened between them.

Of course, he didn’t wish death and suffering upon her, and he actually saw her as a potential connection within the tower. But at the same time, he couldn’t really convince her of his theory’s accuracy without telling her about his ability to see through lies or his experiences in the dark underbelly of Arkhan’s society.

And obviously, he wouldn’t trust her with that information.

In the end, there was simply no way for him to convince her. Naturally, he couldn’t force her to come with him either, seeing as she was an adult and was therefore responsible for her own decisions.

So all he could really do was hope that everything worked out for her while doing what he thought was correct.

With that out of the way, Reivan took one last look at the people inside the cave before jumping off.

---

‘This is a lot more dangerous than I gave it credit for. Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped straight into the river…’

Reivan desperately tried to keep his face above the water as the ravine’s irresistible flow carried him off to infinity and beyond. He was a pretty adept swimmer, but there was no way he could go against the flow as an ordinary human. All he could barely do was change his direction a little to avoid being rammed into rocks jutting out of the river bed.

‘Ideally, I can get to one of the walls so I can grab onto something…’

Despite the lack of agency, Reivan was still thinking clearly about how to most efficiently get out of his situation without using anything that would compromise his mission.

Unfortunately, none of his thoughts or plans mattered when he suddenly found himself on a downward slope, straight into what was obviously a massive waterfall.

‘Oh. Well, that’s not too good for me, isn’t it?… Or maybe it is?’

Realizing that he could just use another Whisperfall spell right before he fell to his potential doom, Reivan hastily tried to feel his body up underwater, trying to tell if his wand was still there.

If it wasn’t, he would probably have to give up on his plans to infiltrate the Tower.

Because if he suffered enough damage from the fall, activating Saintess Frey’s gift, that would be one of the worst-case scenarios. That thing was a one-time-use life-saving artifact that would protect him even from a Transcendent’s attack — it would be an absolutely massive waste to use here.

‘Good. It’s there.’

With that, Reivan let the river push him off the waterfall without any resistance.

---

Completely soaked and looking not unlike a dog in the rain just as he'd expected, Reivan sat atop a rock near the bottom of the waterfall, where a somewhat large lake was formed.

Weighed down by his own drenched clothes. His breathing was rough and his entire body was sore just from the effort of swimming to stable ground, but he remembered what was really important, immediately patting himself down to check if his wallet was still attached to his person.

When he found it and once again confirmed that the temporary waterwarding spell he placed on it still worked, he sighed in relief.

'Damn. I lost my rope though.'

At some point, it just wasn't there anymore. It was unfortunate since a rope was a versatile tool that might be able to help him save mana in a sticky situation if he used it correctly.

‘Anyway, I really need to get more used to this body fast. My sense of danger still doesn’t match my current specs.’

Although he had survived his own antics, he had underestimated just how much force a river’s flow could exert when making his initial estimations. Actually, when he looked at it earlier, the river’s flow was obviously not that strong.

But it’s not like he could blame the inanimate body of water for being so powerful all of a sudden. All he could do now was to internally berate himself for not considering unexpected river conditions.

‘Okay. Time to reflect. What should I have done there, I wonder?’

After thinking about it, Reivan thought that he should have used a Whisperfall spell before striking the ravine’s surface, allowing himself to land on something he could step on, thereby giving him the agency to cast spells or consider his options.

‘These are the types of mistakes that get soldiers killed before they get to fight in the war, huh?’

Reivan certainly thought he was an idiot these past few hours. But now that he knew what he did wrong, he would just have to strive to learn how to be less idiotic.

To his defense though, he had thought things through in his own way. He just wasn't used to having such inferior hardware to work with, so to speak. Of course, he wasn't blaming it on Clover or anybody else. Reivan knew that his life was his own responsibility and he took this matter to heart.

'It's like... I did the calculations, but my calculator was made in China.'

He tried to look at the bright side though — he was now very far away from rabbit monsters and anything stronger they had available.

“God, I’m so wet…” Reivan grumbled to himself, grimacing down at his drenched clothes. They also smelled all sorts of weird now. He quickly waved his wand and used a common spell that produced a few dried orbs of warmth to help him dry himself faster.

With his current physique, it wasn’t too strange to get sick if he stayed soaked for too long, especially with how cold it was in the republic all year round.

‘I’m so glad I practiced sorcery so much.’

It was wrought with difficulty, loneliness, and a lot of mind-numbing studying, but Reivan managed to reach a stage where he could proudly say that he was a full-fledged sorcerer.

The art of sorcery, Reivan had discovered in his private studies, was much like playing the piano. Of course, he never learned how to play the piano, but he knew that one had to press keys at the right time to play certain sounds, somehow producing music.

First, there was the wand.

Using the same metaphor, the wand was equivalent to the piano itself. A tool. The instrument of sorcery.

Wands were fashioned from various materials: certain types of wood, metallic alloys, and on occasion, an unfortunate monster’s bone. While the material did influence the wand's quality to some extent, the most important part of the wand lay in the quality and quantity of its runes.

Intricately engraved on such a wand were many, many tiny runes that glowed when they made contact with the sorcerer’s magic power. If the wand was the piano, then these tiny runes were its keys.

And if it wasn’t obvious enough, the sorcerer was equivalent to the musician, while their mana was equivalent to the fingers needed to press down on those keys.

With a sorcerer, their mana, a wand, and its runes, everything needed to compose a spell was present.

Now, what about a spell?

Using the previous analogy of pianos and keys, a spell was basically a very short song.

And if one wanted to play a song, one had to refer to the song's chords.

Chords were basically recipes, telling the musician which keys to press down on at a particular part of that song. Sometimes, the musician only has to press one key at a time. While on others, multiple keys had to be pressed to produce the desired sound.

Now, this was the part where the piano analogy stopped being very precise — spells weren’t actually as long as actual songs. They only had three beats — referred to as pulses — minimum and a maximum of twenty beats.

One couldn’t be too happy about this, because although there weren’t many pulses to play out, sorcerers were using a piano with hundreds of keys.

Metaphorical analogies aside, a sorcerer simply needed to make certain runes glow using their mana to use a spell. Once they did that, the sorcerer had to direct a slightly more intense burst of mana into the wand’s core, thereby finishing a single pulse — which was very similar to how a pianist would press down on multiple keys at a time to play a beautiful note.

Then they would move on to the second pulse. And then the third pulse and so on.

Put this way, sorcery actually seemed simple.

But then again, a sorcerer had to learn how to precisely control their magic power, directing it only to the barely visible runes they needed for each chord, else, the spell would malfunction — and at worse, blow them up.

Sorcerers also had to memorize which chord was needed in which particular beat. The time between each beat also had to be uniform and they couldn’t be longer than three seconds if they didn’t want the spell to fizzle out.

And of course, to pile on the pressure, they had to finish casting the spell before whatever they were fighting ran up to them and tore their face off.

Each chord could have anywhere from one, ten, or even one hundred runes involved, and a spell could have from three to twenty beats. Runes had to have the same amount of mana infused into them, and the magic power sent into the wand’s core to punctuate each beat had to be uniform too. Naturally, sorcerers had to pay careful attention to their timing and avoid mistakenly including runes they didn’t need in their spell.

As long as one paid attention to all of that, and the sorcerer had extensive knowledge of the arcane theory behind the spell, the spell should succeed.

That was how Reivan understood the sorcery, at least.

He was no teacher though, so his ideas may have been confusing to others. But at least to him, he felt like he understood sorcery better when he compared it to playing the piano.

Of course, it didn’t really matter if his thoughts were a bit messy, because he wasn’t planning on teaching anyone sorcery, and nobody, as far as he knew, was reading his thoughts.

‘Oh, well, I might teach one of my future kids if they want…’

Reivan had no confidence in refusing if one of his children — who, he was convinced, would look absolutely adorable, and even if they weren’t, would still be cute in his eyes — asked him to.

‘That’s a few years into the future, so I’ll tuck that image away for now.’

With a smile, Reivan inspected his clothes, which were now significantly dryer than they were a few minutes ago. He then stood up and stretched, wincing when he felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder.

It wasn’t a big deal for him though, so he continued stretching it, just to see what positions were causing him pain. After figuring them out and purposely doing them just to force his body to get used to it or maybe fix the problem, Reivan started walking off in the direction of where he estimated a nearby city to be.

As the head of a criminal organization who dealt in business around the republic of Arkhan, he naturally had a few crude maps of the country and was somewhat familiar with where the cities were relative to each other.

Nobody was perfect and Reivan certainly didn’t think he was, so he could be absolutely wrong though.

But no matter.

If he walked enough, he would likely come across either a city or train tracks, and if it was the latter, he could just follow the tracks to a settlement. Statistically speaking, it would be impossible not to run into signs of civilization if he just kept going in a single direction.

As Reivan trudged through the brushes of unknown fauna and flora, he suddenly thought back to the cultivation novels he’d read back in his old world.

If he were the main character of one of those, he would have absolutely found something amazing by now.

Like an ancient ruin that was conveniently suitable to his power level and hadn’t been found yet despite hundreds of thousands of years after the area was discovered. Or a supreme elder’s inheritance that only opened up if something he conveniently possessed was present. Maybe even a distressed goddess healing her wounds by bathing naked in a secret hot spring — bonuses if she was in some kind of trouble that only he could solve.

‘So stupid.’

Reivan chuckled at the notion.

How could there be ancient ruins in a country that was fully explored? Sure, there were still monster-infested areas, but the areas those monsters infested were mapped out and checked for relevant resources like precious metals or rare herbs — as any self-respecting country would do.

And as for goddesses and springs, if he saw one, he’d be more likely to think that he was seeing an illusion made by a monster trying to lure him into being its next meal.

'The one about an elder's inheritance could happen, but there's no way it would be meant for me.'

As if to prove just how ridiculous those stories were, Reivan only had to walk for two hours before he saw signs of civilization again. It was a small farming hamlet far into the distance, but at least he didn’t have to wander around aimlessly now that he had something to aim for.

Reivan heaved a sigh of relief as he picked up a sturdy-looking stick on the ground and discarded the one he’d been using for the past hour. The new one was cooler, and if he looked at it from a specific angle, it actually kind of looked like a wizard’s staff.

‘This is a good stick.’

With renewed vigor, Reivan gave his new stick a few whacks to make sure it was sturdy before using it as a third leg.

Then he fearlessly marched onward — alone, but not lonely.