Chương 91: B2 Chapter 33: Finding Paths

Kindar breathed deeply, acutely aware of the wolf-like monsters spreading out to flank him on either side. He raised his sword and held his shield ready. Against this many, he wouldn't be able to focus on any one of them for long, and ignoring an opponent was inviting that opponent to strike him. That lesson had been driven into him mercilessly over the last several days, with the strangely cooperative dungeon spawning an endless succession of sparring opponents that didn't hold back. Unlike my friends back home.

He ground his teeth in anger at the fresh memory of when he'd finally realized the real reason behind why he had won every bout in Erlen. A flash of movement caught him off guard in the momentary distraction, and he hastily jerked his shield into position to block the low lunge of the left-most monster's teeth. The attack scraped along his shield, and he almost failed to react in time as the other monsters joined the assault. He frantically swiped his sword to the right and jumped backwards.

Two claws glanced off of his armored shins, but his last-second evasive movement prevented them from finding any real purchase, and the fifth monster on the right found its leap ended, having impaled itself on his sword. Kindar staggered momentarily, but pushed back hard, and then one hard jerk of his sword sufficed to cut the monster the rest of the way apart and free his sword from it.

The wolf monster's corpse dissipated into vapor, and he felt a portion of its mana join the river of ambient mana – or aether, as his benefactors insisted on calling it – that was constantly pouring into him. In the back of his mind, he recognized that just earlier this morning that same leaping attack would have knocked him to the ground, his legs too weak to withstand it without his new leg-strengthening soul structure, but he resolutely focused on his four remaining opponents.

He did a quick flourish with his sword and snapped back into his practiced stance, trying to give the impression that everything he'd just done was effortless and fully intentional. He focused on that idea of effortless control, projecting more confidence in his superiority than he actually felt as he locked his eyes with those of his next target, the center-right of the four.

He kept his shield oriented towards the one on the far left and watched with his peripheral vision for any sudden moves from the other two flankers, but they were secondary concerns. He kept his focus on a battle of wills with the wolf he was facing, engaging the full force of his second Tier 7 unified soul structure to intimidate it and take its power. The monster growled at him, and Kindar took a sudden step forward. The monster flinched, and with that, Kindar knew he'd finally won.

The wolf-like creature sagged slightly and whined in confused distress, while Kindar felt a surge of extra strength and speed filling his body. He darted forward, faster than ever before, but turned his sword at the last moment to strike instead at the right-most wolf. He caught the monster mid-lunge with its mouth wide open to bite him. Its jaws closed around the steel blade of his sword, and with a powerful burst of effort he sliced its neck and head open from the inside.

He followed up with a seemingly casual chop that severed the head of the one he'd intimidated, and suddenly his opponents were down to just two. Those last two fell mere moments later, barely even able to fight with their morale broken and strength taken. Kindar stayed alert, even with his last opponent slain, and even returned to his stance, sword and shield ready for more. You may have tricked me with a fake end to the spar before, but I won't fall for that again.

He looked around for new threats for several more seconds, making sure to also stay light on his feet in case of a surprise from below, until finally Major Ordens called out from the side of the sparring circle.

"Rest!" The junior royal guard walked up to Kindar and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Good work. That was much better than yesterday." Kindar bowed.

"My instructors gave good advice." Ordens nodded and pushed him to straighten.

"On your new soul structures, or how to fight?"

"Both." Kindar hesitated, then shook his head and sighed.

"I saw no point in using a shield before because I had never been meaningfully hit through my armor by my sparring partners. I suspect now that they were holding back in order to flatter me and gain my favor."

"Very likely." Ordens held out a water bottle, and Kindar took it and drank deeply before handing it back.

"That is something that everyone with power needs to be wary of, and with who your father is, you were born into power beyond what most commoners ever dream of."

"Hmm." Kindar settled heavily onto the ground.

"My father… He seemed to dislike some of my friends, and I never understood why. Maybe this is the reason?" Ordens shrugged.

"Perhaps." She turned and walked back out of the circle. Before Ordens had even taken five steps, a blunted arrow suddenly flew out of nowhere and hit the side of Kindar's neck. He yelped in surprise and cried out as he jumped to his feet.

"What was that!?" Ordens didn't even turn to look as she answered over her shoulder.

"Real enemies won't give you warning and won't wait for you to be ready. You need to learn to be ready to react and defend yourself at any time that an attack might come." The statement resonated with something deep within him, and Kindar realized after a moment that it was his soul structure for skill at swordsmanship, thrumming in agreement. Huh, that's new. I made that soul structure long before I came here, but it's never reacted that way before.

It gave me an intuitive sense for how to properly execute the forms I learned, but this… It feels like it just recognized a whole new principle and incorporated it. Is this an improvement of it for having stronger mana? I'm up to Level 22 now, and I'll be 23 by nightfall. It's absurd how fast I'm advancing, between the natural advantages of nobility, the strangely helpful dungeon, and the soul structures for making new soul structures and actively absorbing ambient mana without concentrati– Whoa!

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Kindar's internal reflection was interrupted by another arrow flying at him. He spotted the hint of motion in the corner of his eye and dodged just barely in time.

"Right. Point taken, Major Ordens." He turned to look at where the arrow had come from and readied himself for another fight. Late in the evening, two and a half days since they'd moved to their current campsite, Trinlen joined Carlos and Amber in their shared luxury tent.

"What's this about, Boss? Remembered your poor neglected teacher and want an extra late-night lesson to make up for it?" Carlos laughed.

"Don't pretend you're suffering here, Trinlen. And besides, we've been learning from you every day; Felton only gets half of our time." He shook his head and smirked.

"Actually, while I did call you here for a lesson, this time it's for me to teach you. It occurred to me that I never got around to explaining my insights on your Find Path spell."

"Oh? You had a rather poor opinion of it, as I recall. Have you made a functioning improvement of it?" Carlos's smirk grew into a wide grin.

"Yup. Shall we start with a demonstration? I had Purple make a maze for us. The goal location to find a path to is 3000 feet due east of here."

"Alright. I'm ready." Trinlen gathered his mana and readied himself to trigger the spell, then arched an eyebrow at Carlos, who seemed to be just sitting back and relaxing. Carlos just waved a hand at him and kept grinning. Finally, Amber shook her head and spoke up to break the impasse.

"Honestly, it's like watching a pair of boys trying to one-up each other. Go ahead and cast, Trinlen. Carlos is so confident in his version that he's giving you a head start." Trinlen shrugged and, rather than casting the Find Path spell from scratch, activated an instance of it that he'd prepared in advance. The spell's scanning focus sped out of the tent's door flap and into the distance much faster than the last time he'd cast it, as expected with how many times more compressed and potent his mana was now.

It quickly hit a barrier and started threading its way through Purple's maze. Naturally, it hit a dead end fairly early, and Trinlen watched with his mana sense as it probed the bounds of the dead end and backtracked until it found another branch. After a full minute, Carlos's spell finally joined the search for an open path, and Trinlen focused most of his attention on it. At first, it behaved much the same as his own spell, reaching the same dead end, probing its bounds, and backtracking to an alternative branch.

However, he got an impression that the probing of bounds was in some way connected to the earlier core of the explored path, rather than to the tip of exploration. It felt like Carlos's spell was creating a thicket of branches, each part spreading out from its own trunk, rather than a single thread winding through space. Trinlen cocked his head and frowned, trying to understand what he was sensing. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he tentatively realized something else.

He split his attention between Carlos's spell and his own, comparing them to confirm the difference. After another 15 seconds, he whistled and nodded respectfully to Carlos.

"You solved the search slowdown problem. Impressive." Carlos chuckled and grinned wider.

"Keep watching. There's more." Trinlen gave him a hard look, then turned his attention back to the pathfinding spells. Before much longer, he got another shock.

"What the– Did your spell just… start a new branch of the search from an earlier point, without backtracking to it first? Why? And how did it determine what point to restart from?"

"Yes, it did. As for how, I'll have to explain pretty much the entire spell for that to fully make sense." Carlos tipped his head sideways toward the maze.

"Also, the biggest surprise is still to come. Watch for the finish." Trinlen raised both eyebrows, then resumed watching Carlos's spell. His own spell was barely an afterthought in his mind now. The path to the designated location was long and winding, with many dead ends branching off of it, and Carlos's spell was already indisputably well ahead, exploring faster and more efficiently than Trinlen's spell. Then Carlos's spell reached the destination at the very tip of its searching probe, and suddenly it was just…

done. The entire path lit up all at once from beginning to end, and Trinlen's jaw dropped open. That single route was utterly perfect, with not even the slightest detour. He snapped his mouth closed again and stared at Carlos.

"You– You somehow completely skipped the entire hardest part of the spell, yet still got the most flawless result I've ever seen. How?!" Carlos broke out laughing so hard he wheezed for a few seconds before he slowly got himself under control.

"Sorry, it's just that your face looked so perfectly shocked there." He took a few more deep breaths.

"Alright, so, the whole spell is in Purple's knowledge store, and I just now gave you access to it. Take a look." Trinlen eagerly reached through his mental bond with the dungeon core, found a new spell helpfully presented to his attention, and started reading through it. A few minutes later, he stopped in confusion.

"I don't understand. What's all the parts with dividing or multiplying a number by 2, and sometimes adding 1, all about? It seems to have something to do with organizing a list in some strangely half-complete way, but… I don't fully see the logic of it." Carlos nodded calmly.

"I'm not surprised. That part really needs some conceptual background knowledge to understand properly. Let me tell you about heaps and efficient priority queues, and then we can get into the real meat of how to account for both distance remaining and length of the path so far, while incidentally building the perfect ideal path as we go instead of at the end."

"Building it as you go?" Trinlen gaped.

"But that would take… You'd have to be building ideal paths for every single spot you search, all at the same time! The sheer amount of information and calculations the spell would have to do… Your spell did not calculate anywhere near that much. Its search proceeded far too quickly for that." Carlos chuckled and shook his head.

"That's the beauty of it: You don't need to calculate and track an entire path for each point. You only need to track the single step that is at the path's end. Then you can follow that single step backwards to find the end of another path, with its own final step. Follow that one to the end of another path, then another, and another. Until you find that you're at the beginning, and the path is complete." Trinlen stared in stunned silence.

The next morning, far away in his own headquarters, Captain Granlan of the Black Blades stared at the message in his hands. We've been waiting with no leads, and now there's this. Our mysterious supplier of impossible equipment has finally chosen to act once more. Why now, and why for this? Why do they care about helping a raid against House Hadral? Are they invested in the brewing conflict against the Crown somehow?

He stirred from his silent pondering and reached for a special token he had not touched in several days. Ultimately, none of that really matters at this moment. I have a duty to my most important employer. Mere moments after he activated the extravagantly expensive communication talisman, a quiet voice whispered in his ears.

"Granlan, report."

"Our quarry has made a new move."