(Pixabay.com)

Domagoj Kurmaic’s  online novel, Mother of Learning (available on Royal Road) has 108 chapters spanning close to 3,000 pages and  11 million views. The novel is so popular that a Kickstarter to transform it into a physical book was successful in raising $126,176 of its original $10,000 goal.

The story follows teenage mage Zorian Kazinski attending classes at the city of Cyoria’s magical academy, at which he is a third-year student. He is driven but has only average skills in magical ability. That all changes on the night before the annual summer festival, when a huge invasion force storms through the city. Zorian finds one of his classmates, Zach Noveda, fighting off monsters, so they stick together but die at the hands of an ancient lich sorcerer.

Because of the lich’s meddling, Zorian finds himself waking up again but in the past month and realizes he is stuck within a time loop, forced to repeat the same month before the invasion over and over again.

They say that repetition is the mother of learning, so Zorian must use the loop to gain strength and defeat whatever evil forces are out there plotting against him.