Chapter 17: The Light

As you probably guessed, Sally didn’t stay down for long. It took her less than a minute before she managed to get herself up and returned to standing straight as an arrow. She still looked a little shaken, but I knew convincing her to rest any longer was impossible, so I didn’t bother. I considered running up to the prince and punching him in the face, so I could undo the damage and restart the day, but I decided to hold off. I wanted to hear Sally’s thoughts about everything we had just experienced.

“So,” I began before becoming quiet. I wasn’t sure what to say next. How do you even start a conversation after you accidentally summoned a god? I could barely handle normal social situations, and this was miles beyond normal. Thankfully, Sally eventually broke the silence.

“Milady, you’re amazing,” Sally stated in a voice almost like a whisper before her voice exploded in excitement. “I couldn’t move or even speak, but you...you had a full conversation with Logos. You spoke to a god!”

Sally’s enthusiasm overwhelmed me. I certainly hadn’t been expecting such a strong reaction, and though I wanted to object, I suddenly realized that she was right. I had spent the last six years avoiding my classmates because I couldn’t handle speaking to them, and yet, I had no problem talking to a god. His overwhelming pressure had somehow centered me, leaving me with no room to worry about what I would say next. It had all been so easy that part of me wondered if he’d mind showing up to my next tea party, though I suppose that would have caused problems of its own.

“It was...an interesting conversation,” I said with a sigh. “I certainly wasn’t expecting him to tell me I was stuck playing my own game.”

“A game so amazing that even the gods wanted to see it played,” Sally shouted, her eyes somehow sparkling even more intensely. “Oh, but if it’s your game, don’t you know how to beat it?”

“Seems like Logos thought of that and erased the memory at some point, likely before I was even reborn. He showed me a snippet of me working on it, but I didn’t see anything new. Still, this does feel like the kind of game I would’ve made, and looking back, there’s definitely a hole in my memories that I didn’t notice before now. So yeah, I think it’s safe to say I made this roguelike game.”

“Roguelike?” Sally asked, seemingly confused by the word.

“It’s a genre of games focused on skill growth,” I explained. “While most video games let you hit milestones that you can return to upon losing, in roguelikes, all your progress is lost when you lose, and you have to start over. Normally, the game is a bit different when you start over, but I guess that’s not the case here. Instead, every loop is the same, and the goal seems to be learning enough that I can find the right sequence of events to escape.”

My explanation seemed to have just left her more confused as she cocked her head to the side. This wasn’t too surprising, as I was trying to explain video game genres to someone who didn’t even know what a controller was, so I asked her if there was something I needed to clarify for her.

“No, milady. Apologies. I must have misheard the word he used.”

“What did you think he said?”

“These are not words I am familiar with, so when he spoke them, I thought he said rogue light.”

My eyes went wide as I looked back through my memory of the conversation and tried to remember exactly what word he said. After a few frantic moments, I finally remembered.

“Sally, you’re right,” I said with a giggle as a broad smile began to spread across my face. “This isn’t a roguelike at all. It’s a roguelite!”

“Is that good?” Sally asked, confused by my sudden giddiness.

“It means I’ve been going about this all wrong. You lose everything when you die in a roguelike, but roguelites are different. Something carries over, like currency or equipment. If this is a roguelite, then there’s something I’m missing. What can I get that I won’t lose when the day restarts?”

It couldn’t be money. As the daughter of a duke, I had an almost limitless supply of currency and few places to spend it, other than maybe bribing the students into supporting me. Meanwhile, physical objects would just disappear when I died. That just left skill levels, but sadly, this world didn’t have RPG mechanics. Killing monsters didn’t make you any stronger (unless you counted it as exercise), and practicing magic only improved your efficiency and casting speed. If you wanted to actually learn new spells, you needed to study.

“That’s it! Magic. I can get better at magic just by studying, and that knowledge won’t be erased when I die.”

“That is brilliant, milady, but how will getting better at magic help? Prince Leo cannot be harmed by spells.”

“I don’t need offensive magic, Sally. Don’t you remember what else Logos said? He told me to attain a position that allows no one to oppose me. At first, I thought that meant I needed to neutralize Roman and Holly before the loop ended, but he was being literal. I need an actual position of power. I need to become the saint.”