Zorian Kazinski has all the time in the world to get stronger, and he plans on taking full advantage of it.
A teenage mage of humble birth and slightly above-average skill, Zorian is attending his third year of education at Cyoria's magical academy. A driven and quiet young man, he is consumed by a desire to ensure his own future and free himself of the influence of his family, resenting the Kazinskis for favoring his brothers over him. Consequently, Zorian has no time for pointless distractions, much less other people's problems.
As it happens, though, time is something he is about to get plenty of.
On the eve of Cyoria's annual summer festival, Zorian is murdered, then abruptly brought back to the beginning of the month, just before he was about to take the train to school. Finding himself trapped in a time loop with no clear end or exit, he will have to look both within and without to unravel the mystery set before him. He does have to unravel it, too, because the loop clearly wasn’t made for his sake, and in a world of magic even a time traveler isn't safe from those who wish him ill.
Fortunately for Zorian, repetition is the mother of learning…
My Opinion: 644 pages, $4.99, Not Available On Kindle Unlimited
The story has a slow start and the regressor/time loop aspect doesn’t start until you're about 20% in. Before that the story is just ok as it just describes a new mage starting school. After the 20% mark though, it's a slice of life adventure with the main character (MC) using all his relative years starting over to accrue higher level training and magic skills to overcome the big disaster he’s trying to avoid. There are a few twists in the story as new allies and enemies appear, but it's mostly training, with some occasional action. It was interesting to see how the MC varied his interactions with people and events he’d dealt with in the past for new results. Though I will note that the story ends on a bit of a cliff hanger. It’s the nature of a serial story collected from its online source that there isn’t a baked-in plot arc, just a decent place to pause the story till the next book.
Overall, good story, not a LitRPG story, and it doesn’t claim to be, but it is a close cousin as progression fantasy since the MC very clearly becomes more powerful through rigorous training and study.
Score: 7.5 out of 10