Well, look who decided to return. My imaginary audience. My initial instinct is to be rude and tell you off. The problem? I’m not sure if you want to be here any more than I do. Did you buy tickets? If so, I’m not receiving any of the royalties. Not even the 50% box office share. That must mean you’re in a shady theater running a bootleg version from a thumb drive.

  The thing is, I’m not sure how time works between us. To me, it’s been a few seconds since Void slapped me in the chest for my bad joke about missing my favorite beer. To you? Maybe you’ve been sitting in those sticky theater chairs for a while inhaling the scents of artificial popcorn oil and listening to some jerk three rows back trying to sell crypto to his neighbor. Do people even still go to theaters?

  “What are you doing? Who are you talking to?” a grey furry lump on my chest with impressive muscle tone asked. It was Void, the wolf-clan love of my life and fiancé. She was nuzzling into my pec while waiting for her next bout of nausea to hit in about an hour.

  “I’m just giving my audience a recap,” I replied.

  “Huh?” Void asked, perplexion evident in her voice. “Why? Lia and Tizek just left the room a second ago.”

  “You never know. It could have been, I dunno, three months and ten days later for them. Possibly more for those waiting for the completed paperback edition. That or they binged up to this point after publication. I have no idea how time works there,” I explained in my best professor voice.

  “I—huh—wha—” Void eloquently rejoined. She shook her head. “Oliver? They’re not real. Are you sure you shouldn’t be seeing a doctor, too?”

  I gasped in horror. “You take that back! They’re good people. Maybe. Unless they’re doing this on purpose and not held hostage by a creepy theater owner in a back alley. I have to be polite and give them a recap of what happened.”

  Void huffed. “Fine. Can you at least do it quietly? I’d like to get some more sleep before I have to run to the bathroom again.”

  I stroked the back of her head. “Yes, honey.” She grumbled and closed her eyes. Joke’s on her, I’m enjoying this more than she is.

  “You’re still talking out loud,” she mumbled with a happy little grin on her face.

  Anyway, where was I? Right, the recap because I’m not sure how much you remember. I’m not going to go overboard here and waste an entire 26 minute episode because the animation studio ran out of budget. Nope, just the highlights.

  My name is Oliver Stewart, a former professor of optics from a major Florida university in Orlando I can’t remember the name of. Physically, I’m 32 years old, give or take since the calendars don’t line up here. Mentally, I’m roughly three or four, maybe five, centuries old. I dunno, I lost count.

  I’m what’s called a Florida Man back home. Not the insane face-eating type. I’m the lovable kind who likes to wear tight jean shorts, unbuttoned plaid shirts with the sleeves torn off and rubber clogs. Or, since coming here, pink boots.

  As for the reason I make Methuselah look like a toddler? Ever since arriving here, I’ve been trapped in a time loop and, up until yesterday, I’ve been reliving the same three months over and over again. At the end of each loop, a big Lovecraftian beast opened up a portal to his dimension and wiped out all life here. Pretty damned cliché by apocalypse standards.

  As for why? I didn’t figure out that until fairly recently, by my reckoning of time at least, the mongo sky calamari was here on the behest of something even stronger called He Who is Eternal. Yes, that’s how old Takoyaki capitalized it. In his speech anyway.

  So, why me? Well, I was summoned here with five other people from Earth. Each of them are in their teens and all of us got crazy powers. Shame it was entirely done because the King, the bastard, found a summoning scroll in his archives and decided to see if it worked.

  Now I’m here. As for my powers? Apart from my time looping skill called Mulligan, which up until recently always sent me back to the moment of my summons on my death, I’m also the single most powerful person in the known history of this world.

  Or I would be had my mana channels not been dried out from atrophy. It stretched out to a huge size when the world’s magic flooded my empty mana pool and, unlike the five summoned teens, my channels weren’t elastic enough to fight back. My channels were expanded to near bursting, partially tore and now it won’t hold more than a pitiful volume of magic. I’d be impressively powerful if I could figure out how to heal it.

  As for where I am? I’m in a city called Leoren in a kingdom called Vialina on an absolutely massive planet which competes with gas giants in size called Alios. I don’t recall if I told you the planet’s name before. For some reason, I figure it’ll be a surprising revelation to a very tiny portion of you, assuming the serial killer theater owner kidnapped one of you who heard that name before.

  The world is, as far as I can tell in my long existence here, populated by beast people. Not beast people like a bad anime which pops a pair of ears on the top of a human and conveniently styles the hair to hide the absence of human ones. Beast people as in human-portioned people with animal heads, claws, tails and full body fur.

  Or, in Tizek’s case, scales because he’s a frilled-clan man the locals deride as a lizard. Which he isn’t because I’ve seen him in the arena locker rooms and, apart from the scales, he’s very much mammalian and has the same equipment as any other man.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  That means there aren’t any elves or dwarves in the vicinity. This world doesn’t subscribe to the humans-with-prosthetics-on-their-foreheads method of racial diversity. At least not anywhere near here. Which is nice because I’d probably find it stranger if meter-tall humans with pointy ears and hairy bare feet were running around.

  The people here are all genetically compatible. In some odd system, mothers dictate the race of the child while fathers pass on various traits. I don’t have the knowledge of equipment to validate, but I suspect racial genetics is stored in the mitochondrial DNA here. It’s possible Void and I could have kids, assuming a decrepit book written in an ancient alphabet I found in the library is true. Of course, that would open up a whole different can of Natty Light considering I come from an entirely different plane of existence and it shouldn’t work.

  Void, for instance, is wolf-clan. Her mother, Mira, is also wolf-clan. Basically, a no shit, Sherlock moment since I just explained how it worked. Her father, Doun, is badger-clan. Despite his stature, he is actually quite tall for his people. This is why Void is a tall, muscly wolf-clan woman, which I find outstandingly sexy even if she’s insecure about it.

  I’ll speed this along. I already mentioned Tizek and my third companion is an 18-year-old lynx-clan girl named Lia. She’s an orphan who got kicked out of the orphanage to live on the streets at 16 and fell in with a small-time gang. As part of an initiation, she got caught shoplifting and was sold into temporary slavery, which Vialina practices as a core part of criminal justice.

  Except for terrible crimes not quite up to the standards of execution, which gets you a Max Punishment, or slavery in the city brothels until the age of 60. The legal system here doesn’t subscribe to putting people into cages and feeding them.

  Lia ended up in the castle where she spent each night of the first loop stripping nude to let me have my way with her. I never partook and it took me a few loops to figure out it was a forced order from the king when he thought I was still worth keeping on his good side. After I learned Lia was sent to the guardhouse brothel as punishment each time I rejected her and – nope, not gonna think about that – I devised a way to free her.

  So, now after countless failures, including one where I tried to make a magical version of a LASER I dubbed a MASER, which spectacularly failed, I eventually figured out Uncutethulu was being called here by a twisted cult.

  To beat the cult, I had to form an alliance with the slums crime lord, Gully Jack, aka Lisa of the rabbit-clan. Lisa, along with Lia, Tizek and Void, was one of the only people to believe my time loop story. To facilitate it, she gave me a secret code and revealed her identity. It made it easy to get her on my side when I needed it.

  It was also terribly risky because I was kept as a sex slave for two months the first time I used the code. I waited until I was ready to get her help battling the cult to reveal it again.

  Lisa prepared, we went to battle, and we won. Not without a huge loss on Lisa’s side. When I left the cistern below the city where the fight occurred, I had counted some 700 dead and 300 severely wounded, many crippled. This was along with 300 cultists who were killed to the last.

  While we stopped the apocalypse, it left the question of who financed the whole operation unanswered. I also have to look over my shoulder since Lisa is still out there and still potentially obsessed.

  The worst part? I’m back in the time loop again. Whatever handed me this power has changed my reset point to a few moments ago after waking up from a night of intimacy with Void. Honestly, it’s not a bad reset point compared to a cold, hard stone floor in the castle. Though it does mean there’s still a threat on the horizon and my unwilling benefactor, or curse-er – is curse-er a word? – still thinks I’m the key to stopping something bad.

  The most concerning part? My power used to be solely me. Now, for some reason, Lia, Tizek and Void are drawn into it. They remembered everything prior to my latest loop. I don’t know why this happened but the best I can figure is them knowing is now important. Unless the thing who gave me this power is just winging it out of desperation. That’s the likely answer since a random Florida redneck isn’t anyone’s first choice for world savior. Most I can think of doing is slinging a gator at the problem.

  So, after I almost screwed up this latest loop by being overbearing, then working through parts of my trauma having seen everyone I loved die countless times, we find ourselves here with me lying in bed with my favorite person in the world drooling on my chest.

  “You done talking to them?” Void said with a yawn.

  “I thought you wanted to go back to sleep,” I said.

  Her eyes drifted toward the clock in our room. “I did. It’s been almost an hou–” She cut her words off with a clamp of her muzzle. I moved out of the way to let her streak to the bathroom to deal with her scheduled bout of nausea. I’m a little surprised I was talking with you guys for almost an hour. It only felt like a couple of pages.

  “Void!” I heard Doun shout. “Put on some dang clothes!” I saw him pass and his expression changed to shame when he realized why she sprinted across the hall naked into the bathroom. I gave him a wave and he quickly moved on without a word. I realized it was because I was also wearing nothing and Void slung the covers off the bed.

  I shrugged. Not like he hadn’t seen similar in the bathhouse.

  After dressing, I collected Void’s clothing, specifically selecting the turquoise vest I bought her because she looked good in it, and strolled to the bathroom. Inside, I set the clothing aside and rubbed Void’s back.

  “It’s a shame we can’t loop back with the stomach tonic,” Void said with a slow wheeze.

  “We didn’t get it the last time because I didn’t look both ways before crossing the street,” I replied. The reason for the loop was a little embarrassing. I had thought the road was clear because I confused today as a different day. I stepped into the road and got trampled by four bison and a cart. I’d felt worse pain.

  “You need to be careful,” Void admonished me. “You’re too reckless.”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I’ve tried to avoid dying because I hated it when you three lost your memories. Still, it’s a habit I need to break.”

  Void took another deep breath. “I’m better now. Come on, let’s get my stomach tonic and Lia’s hair growth formula.”

  Right, the only reason I learned about the time loop was because I forgot Lia’s ointment yesterday. She had lost all the hair on her face and from half her head tanking a fire arrow meant for me in the cistern battle. Now she’s convinced she’s ugly and won’t go outside. Buying the ointment slipped my mind yesterday because I was busy proposing to Void.

  Oh, and I was also granted a noble house and the title of Baron by Crown Prince Johann. Though I consider that substantially less interesting and important compared to hearing Void say yes.

  I helped Void to her feet and waited for her to dress. As she was pulling on her pants, I spoke. “We have to go upstairs first. We promised Lia and Tizek we’d reconvene in my old room.”

  “We did?” Void asked with a look of confusion.

  “Yes, around an hour ago,” I replied.

  “Right. I slept since then, so I forgot,” she replied. The little grin on her face betrayed the fact she was just messing with me. I gave her a little playful slap on the shoulder for that one.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as she adjusted her vest.

  “The nausea has passed,” Void replied.

  I shook my head. “Not that. The looping. I figure you want to talk about it here before we create a strong foundation for the kids.”

  She paused buttoning the vest. “I’m terrified. What you said about mom and dad not remembering anything we do after this morning? I don’t know how you did it.”

  “I just thought about how you three were worth it,” I replied as I drew her into an embrace. She returned it. I continued. “Even at my lowest when I was zonked out on Augury, I was always ensuring He Who is Eternal couldn’t come into the world. It was all because I had a sliver of hope I could give your future back.”

  Her hug tightened. “And I love you for that. We’ll need to lean on each other to get though this.”

  I nodded. “I agree. I can help you three along the best I can. I have experience in this. For what it’s worth hearing that from someone who has gone crazy enough to narrate to an imaginary audience.”

  Void pulled away and wiped away a tear. I could see her putting on her tough Guardswoman face. “Just try not to talk out loud again. I don’t want you getting worse.”

  I moved to the door and held it open for her. “Yes, my lady.”

  Her Guardswoman veneer briefly broke with a smirk before returning to business. “Let’s go. We have a pair of friends who will need our support.”

  She left the bathroom and I followed closely on her heels toward the stairs leading up to the third floor. I’m happy Void is taking this seriously. After doing this alone for so long, it’s nice to have someone who is in it with me. Though it would be even nicer if we solved the problem without ever having to loop again.