Chương 79: Chapter 69: A Year Measured in Food

Spring in Blackwood rarely arrived cleanly. Winter loosened first, then returned for a few mornings as if reconsidering. Snow vanished from the central blackstone roads but remained beneath northern walls and in the deeper shade near the western forest. Meltwater filled the gutters, carts splashed through muddy intersections, and every outer road developed ruts that merchants complained about until labor crews packed them with gravel again.

Then the rain came properly, washing away the last dirty snow and turning the hills beyond the wall from gray to a faint green that deepened almost day by day. Joe measured that spring differently. He measured it in food. Muscle Tempering made everything edible look temporary. A meal that would once have carried him comfortably through half a day of guard work now felt like preparation for another meal. Meat disappeared first, then eggs, grain, broth, dried fruit, whatever else was available.

Edwin eventually negotiated a regular purchase from a butcher two streets away after realizing that Joe's appetite was no longer a short-lived training phase. Joe found the arrangement embarrassing only until he calculated the price. Then it became another cultivation expense. That made it easier. Mostly.? The second Muscle tempering began once the first had fully settled.

Joe expected the same diminishing pattern he had seen with Skin: a substantial improvement after ordinary Completion, followed by progressively smaller gains if the layer behaved similarly. That was exactly what happened. The second pass did not introduce anything new. His muscles simply became better at what muscle was supposed to do. They generated more force, coordinated tension more efficiently, recovered faster after heavy work, and retained flexibility instead of becoming stiff from repeated loading.

The change was most obvious during movement. When Joe accelerated, the muscles of the legs no longer seemed to join the motion in stages. The foot struck, calf and thigh drove, hip extended, torso stabilized, and the movement passed through him with less internal delay. When he stopped, opposing muscles controlled the deceleration more cleanly instead of wasting force fighting the motion after it had already changed. He could feel the difference even walking downhill.

That fascinated him more than simply lifting more weight. Strength isn't just how hard one muscle can contract. It's how much of the body joins the same action at the right time. That thought changed the way he practiced. He spent less time performing movements that isolated strength for its own sake and more time on controlled whole-body actions: loaded carries, short sprints, slow direction changes, climbing, pulling, pushing and stance transitions under resistance.

Not because the Muscle realm had suddenly acquired new functions, but because those movements exposed whether the improved tissue could cooperate under realistic conditions. One Effort Equals a Hundred accelerated his understanding after every meaningful session, yet biology still refused to move at the same speed as insight. Joe could understand what needed correcting after a handful of attempts and then spend two or three days waiting for the body to rebuild enough to make the correction permanent.

That mismatch became normal. My learning is faster than my flesh. At first that had irritated him. Then he realized the alternative would have been dangerous. If the body transformed as quickly as his understanding, he might have pushed several temperings forward in a week simply because he could. Recovery imposed a rhythm his ambition could not negotiate with. Eat. Rest. Train. Recover. Then train again. Joe had once thought talent meant removing limits.

Increasingly, his talents simply moved the limits somewhere else.

By late spring, the butcher knew him by sight. That created its own problems. Joe entered one evening after guard work and found the man already wrapping a large cut of meat. Joe stopped.

"I haven't ordered."

"You were going to."

"How do you know?" The butcher looked at him, then at Joe's shoulders.

"You've been here four times this week."

"That doesn't mean I want that."

"You bought the same cut three times." Joe considered this. The man continued wrapping it.

"You want the cheaper one today?"

"Yes." The butcher immediately reached for another piece. Joe frowned.

"You planned that too."

"I sell meat."

"Fair." A woman waiting beside the counter laughed. Joe paid and left. Halfway back to Edwin's district, he realized he had just become predictable to a butcher because of cultivation. That felt like a security failure of an unusually domestic kind. He almost laughed. If anyone ever tracks my secret realm by my meat consumption, I deserve the embarrassment. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. The thought remained private. As all important ones did.

The third Muscle tempering began as spring turned toward summer. Blackwood changed around him before he consciously marked the season. The morning mud dried into dust along the outer roads. Markets spread farther into the streets. Canvas awnings returned above fruit stalls. The preparation room at Edwin's hall became unpleasant by midday because the medicine stoves trapped heat faster than open shutters could release it.

The forest outside town became dense enough that the western roads seemed to disappear into green tunnels. Joe's actual muscular capability rose with the weather. The first completed Muscle layer had put his controlled whole-body strength around the mid-four-hundreds of kilograms. The second pass pushed substantially beyond that. By the third, the improvement had become unmistakable. He waited until a warm evening when Edwin's warehouse stood empty before using the freight frame again.

The large doors had been left open most of the day, so the building smelled of warm timber, dried herbs and dust. A few flies still circled near the loading entrance despite sunset. Joe closed the inner doors, checked the locks, then loaded the frame. Four hundred kilograms came up easily. Five hundred required real effort but no strain. He added weight. Five fifty. Clean enough. Five eighty. The muscles responded well.

Joe rested before the next attempt and paid more attention to the skeleton than the muscles themselves. He had already learned that strength could outpace the structures required to use it. Six hundred kilograms. He settled his stance, drew a slow breath and lifted. The frame rose. Not easily. Controlled. His legs and back carried the load without losing alignment, and nothing in the wrists, hips or spine gave the kind of warning that meant stop immediately. Joe lowered it.

Then stood there for several seconds, breathing steadily. Around six hundred kilograms. Muscle III. Roughly where his mental model suggested the repeated layer should be. He did not attempt much more. The point had been confirmation, not ego. Joe returned the weights to their proper positions and wiped his hands. The pattern is holding. The second and third passes were producing large gains but less than the extraordinary jump he had seen at Skin IX. Nothing unusual yet. Good. He preferred data that behaved itself.

The extra strength began appearing in guard work whether Joe wanted it to or not. Not in dramatic feats. Small things. A medicine crate that usually required two men became easy enough that he had to remember not to lift it casually in front of others. A stuck cart wheel came free with less effort than expected. During training, he sometimes had to consciously reduce the force of a shove because his idea of "light" had shifted. Power did not become safe merely because he possessed it.

Joe learned to hide advancement through restraint rather than theatrical weakness. He did not stumble intentionally. Did not pretend ordinary weights were difficult. That kind of acting attracted attention because people who trained around him knew his public progress was already good. Instead, he simply never demonstrated the edge. If others expected a talented young Muscle practitioner to handle a heavy medicine chest, he handled it.

If a load would make that same public realm look impossible, he found another person. The best disguise was not appearing weak. It was appearing plausible. That principle settled into Joe's thinking more deeply with every month. Hide what cannot be explained. Let people see what they already know how to value. He did not yet phrase it as a formal rule. He did not need to. It was becoming instinct.

Summer made the guard compound smell of dust, sweat and boiled leather. Training moved earlier in the day when possible. Patrols carried more water. The stone buildings near the central yard trapped heat after noon, while the forest-facing side received enough shade to remain tolerable until evening. Joe found himself spending more time in the medical room. That began because people knew Edwin supplied medicine. Then because Joe could identify small training injuries faster than several ordinary guards.

Then because he had enough experience with recovery preparations that senior officers started asking him which supplies were worth purchasing. The change was gradual until Simon pointed it out. They were eating at the guard mess after a morning patrol. Daren had gone to check a weapon strap, while Cole had disappeared toward the serving counter after learning there might be additional stew. Simon watched Joe finish a conversation with one of the medical clerks.

When Joe sat down, Simon said, "You're barely a guard anymore." Joe looked at him.

"I was on patrol with you this morning."

"For two hours."

"Yes."

"Then you disappeared."

"To the medical room."

"Exactly." Joe started eating. Simon leaned forward.

"Do you realize half the compound now asks you about medicine before asking the actual medical staff?"

"That sounds like a management problem."

"It is becoming my management problem." Joe looked up.

"How?"

"You're attached to my team."

"I know."

"Except every time I make the schedule, somebody borrows you."

"Borrow is inaccurate." Simon stared. Joe continued, "They request medical support."

"That sounds worse." Cole returned carrying a bowl much larger than the first one.

"What sounds worse?"

"Joe abandoning us." Joe looked at him.

"I am sitting here." Cole sat across from them.

"That doesn't prove loyalty." Simon pointed at him.

"Exactly." Daren returned at the same time and heard enough to sigh.

"What are you complaining about now?"

"Joe is becoming medical staff." Daren sat.

"That would be useful." Simon looked betrayed.

"You too?" Daren reached for bread.

"He already spends half the patrol checking whether everyone is limping." Joe said, "People hide injuries." Daren looked at Simon.

"See?" Cole nodded.

"He told me my shoulder was bad before I knew it was bad." Joe frowned.

"You knew. You ignored it."

"That still counts." Simon looked around the table.

"This team has no discipline." Daren took a bite.

"You're the captain."

"That is why I'm concerned." Joe smiled. The conversation lasted through most of lunch, shifting from Joe's growing medical work into Cole's shoulder, then to whether Daren's boot needed replacing, then into a completely unrelated argument over who had lost a patrol marker three weeks earlier. Nothing was decided. The next week the guard formalized Joe's medical responsibilities anyway.

The arrangement was practical enough that even Simon admitted it made sense after he finished complaining. Joe would remain attached to Simon's team and continue important patrols, emergency assignments and situations where another capable fighter mattered. But routine street patrols and low-risk escort rotations would decrease.

In exchange, he would provide medical support, help manage certain medicine supplies, assist with training injuries, and contribute discounted recovery preparations through Edwin's operation. The title was unimpressive. Guard Medical Auxiliary. Joe preferred that. Titles attracted expectations. Useful arrangements attracted income. The guard continued paying his existing gross compensation structure: twenty silverlings base plus ten in duty and risk allowance.

Theodere's contract still took ten silverlings, half of the base salary, leaving Joe with twenty. The new role did not suddenly make him rich. It made his time more efficient. He could cultivate without arranging every recovery day around a twelve-hour patrol. He spent more time around medical cases that improved his practical knowledge. Edwin gained a stable institutional buyer. The guard gained better medicine without creating another full salaried physician. Everyone received something.

Joe liked arrangements where incentives lined up. Simon disliked losing a regular team member. Those were compatible facts.

They argued about it on the walk back from the compound. Summer rain had broken the afternoon heat, leaving the streets steaming. Water ran from tiled roofs, and the smell of wet stone mixed with grilled meat from evening stalls opening along the market road. Simon walked beside him.

"You could have refused."

"Why?"

"You're a guard."

"I am still a guard."

"You're becoming a shopkeeper who occasionally carries a weapon." Joe looked at him.

"You say that like shopkeepers don't carry weapons here."

"You know what I mean." Joe did. Simon had spent years building an identity around the guard. Teams mattered to him in a way they never had to Joe. Joe said, "You want me on routine patrol."

"Yes."

"Why?" Simon frowned.

"Because you're on my team."

"That is not a reason."

"It is literally the reason." Joe waited. Simon sighed.

"Fine. You know the routes, you don't panic, Daren trusts you, Cole actually listens when you tell him something is stupid, and I don't have to wonder whether you're going to freeze if something happens." Joe considered that. Longer answer. More honest.

"I'll still be there for important assignments."

"That isn't the same."

"No." Simon looked ahead. The rain had pushed most pedestrians beneath awnings, so the road opened unusually wide before them. Joe continued, "If I'm on routine patrol every day, I spend hours doing work another guard can do while the medical room asks for help, Edwin has guard orders waiting, and I lose training time. That doesn't make the team stronger. It makes the schedule familiar." Simon was quiet for several steps.

Then he said, "I hate when you make reasonable arguments after I've already decided to be angry." Joe smiled.

"You can stay angry."

"I plan to."

"Good." Simon looked over.

"You're paying for dinner."

"No."

"You make medicine money."

"You make captain allowance."

"That isn't the same."

"It is money." Simon stared at him. Joe kept walking. Eventually Simon laughed. The argument ended there. Not resolved. Ended. That was enough.