Chương 86: Chapter 75: The Ones Who Left

Simon was back on full duty in the early summer. His ribs still complained if he twisted too sharply, but Joe had stopped restricting him after repeated examinations showed clean healing. That pleased Simon greatly until he discovered that full duty meant returning to the western assignment board. The safer routes did not come back. Their team rotated between outer roads, timber camps and managed forest markers often enough that Cole had stopped predicting when they would be given warehouse duty again.

He now predicted rain instead. He was equally unsuccessful. Joe minded the western routes less. Dynamic Foundation had reached Perfection, and rough ground made the difference obvious. Roots, slopes, loose stones and unexpected changes in pace no longer forced a separate recovery before the next useful movement. His body reorganized continuously, preserving structure through motion rather than finding it again afterward. Muscle progressed too.

The fifth tempering completed during the first weeks of summer, leaving the tissue denser and noticeably stronger without sacrificing flexibility. Joe rested properly, increased food and medicine again, and began the sixth pass only after the improvement had settled. He did not test maximum strength. Not yet. His ordinary movements already told him enough. The interesting problem was no longer whether Muscle would continue improving.

It was what happened when Muscle eventually finished and Bone stood in front of him. Alex had shown one answer. Have the correct relative. Earn his trust. Afford the resources. Sign whatever restrictions protected the inheritance. Simple. If one happened to possess all four things. Simon disliked that answer far more than Joe did.

They were eating after morning patrol when Alex crossed the guard yard. The change in how people treated him was subtle. Younger guards moved aside slightly sooner. An instructor stopped him to discuss something that would previously have gone through Tomas. Two men congratulated him again even though his Bone breakthrough was already several weeks old. Simon watched. Then looked at Joe.

"What happens if you reach Muscle Completion and nobody in your family has Bone?" Joe kept eating.

"You find someone who does."

"That is not an answer."

"It is the answer Alex used."

"I mean a normal guard." Daren, seated beside them, said, "Most stop." Simon frowned.

"At Muscle?"

"Eventually."

"That's ridiculous."

"Why?"

"Because the guard needs Bone practitioners."

"The guard needs two hundred useful guards more than it needs two hundred people chasing private Bone inheritances." That silenced Simon. Joe looked toward Alex again. Daren was right. The guard benefited enormously from Bone practitioners. It did not need every guard to become one. If families, teachers and outside institutions paid most of the cost of producing advanced people, Blackwood could simply employ the results. Simon apparently reached the same conclusion and disliked it.

"So poor guards get Skin and Muscle, then hope somebody notices them?" Daren shrugged.

"Sometimes being noticed is enough."

"By whom?" A voice behind them answered.

"Someone larger than Blackwood." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Halven stood with his lunch bowl. Simon immediately turned.

"What does that mean?" Halven sighed. He had clearly regretted speaking before the sentence finished.

"Finish eating."

"That was not an answer."

"It was an instruction." Joe smiled. Simon spent the remaining meal waiting visibly. Halven endured it for perhaps five minutes. Then said, "Reading room. Old transfer registers. Look for Joren Vale and Farris Dane." Simon stood immediately. Halven closed his eyes.

"I said finish eating." Simon sat again. Joe decided this was probably why Halven's hair had gone gray.

The old personnel register was thicker than Joe expected. Most entries were unremarkable. Joined. Promoted. Transferred. Retired. Injured. Dead. Then Simon found the first unusual line. Transferred for Decennial Screening — Spiritual Root Confirmed. Joe leaned closer. The man had entered from a remote village with no listed martial family. Several pages later they found another. Same broad history. Village-born. Ordinary guard recruitment. Years of service. Then confirmation of Spiritual Root and transfer upward.

Simon stared at the page.

"They found two?" Halven followed them eventually, presumably because allowing Simon unsupervised access to questions was considered unsafe.

"During different screenings."

"Why weren't they tested when they joined?"

"With what?" Simon paused. Halven folded his arms.

"Blackwood does not keep proper Root testing available for every curious recruit. The magistrate can arrange testing when there is reason. The guard occasionally receives authorization for group screening. Proper private testing means going to the state capital and paying for it." Joe already knew the capital possessed better testing. The price interested him.

"How much?"

"Last I heard? Around a gold." Simon nearly laughed.

"For finding out you have nothing?"

"For finding out whether you have something." One gold. Years ago, Joe would have considered the amount impossible. Now it was expensive. There was a meaningful difference. He looked back at the register.

"What gave them reason to screen these two?"

"Decennial recruiters. Old stories. Good martial progress."

"What stories?" Halven scratched his jaw.

"Joren's family supposedly saw colored lights around the room when he was born. Village blamed cheap lamp oil. Farris had some story about frost where there shouldn't have been frost." Simon looked thoughtful. Then at Joe.

"Did anything happen when you were born?" Joe considered everything Pam had ever said.

"No." Simon smiled.

"I might have had something." Joe looked at him.

"Our family would know."

"Not necessarily."

"Pam remembers who brought the wrong soup when Mary was sick six years ago." Simon's optimism weakened. Fair. Halven snorted.

"Birth stories are hints, not guarantees. Stop trying to invent one twenty years late." Simon looked offended.

"I wasn't inventing."

"You were about to." Joe believed Halven.

The more important question was what happened after confirmation. Both guards had entered the Decennial route. Local screening. State level. Then farther, if they remained competitive. Neither became some legendary cultivator. Both eventually returned. Simon found that strange.

"If you have a Spiritual Root, why come back?" Halven looked at him as though the answer should be obvious.

"Because everyone at the next level also has one." Joe smiled faintly. Scale changed rarity. A Spiritual Root could make someone extraordinary in a village and merely qualified in a place that deliberately gathered rooted people.

"Did they fail?"

"Yes."

"Completely?" Halven shrugged.

"They went farther than they would have without the Root. Learned more. Saw more. Returned with better prospects." He tapped the register.

"Failure depends on what you return with." That interested Joe more than Root itself. The larger world did not simply contain stronger people. It changed the value of traits depending on where a person stood.

Simon told Mira that evening. Naturally. They had met outside a small eating house near the medicine district, where Joe joined them only because Simon had already ordered more food than two people needed.

"Apparently two guards discovered Spiritual Roots after joining." Mira nodded.

"I've heard of Joren." Simon leaned forward.

"I may have one." Joe continued eating. Mira looked at Simon.

"What happened when you were born?" Simon paused.

"That is still being investigated." Joe almost choked. Mira smiled.

"By whom?"

"Me."

"That sounds reliable." Simon ignored this attack on his scholarship.

"There may have been thunder." Joe looked up.

"You were born in summer."

"Summer has storms."

"Mother would remember." Simon frowned. Mira asked, "Would she?" Joe and Simon answered together.

"Yes." Mira laughed. Simon looked betrayed. Joe returned to his meal. His brother could apparently turn a lack of supernatural evidence into a romantic conversation. That might qualify as its own talent.

Joe met Joren by accident three days later. Edwin sent him to inspect a shipment of medicinal bark at one of the Black family's eastern storage yards. Joe expected crates. He found crates and an older man arguing with the warehouse keeper about moisture damage. The man was somewhere in his fifties, perhaps older, with a Black-family side-branch token attached to his belt and the balanced posture of someone who had trained seriously for most of his life. When the argument ended, the man noticed Joe examining him.

"You're Edwin's medicine prodigy."

"Partner." Joren laughed.

"Yes. He warned me you correct that." Joe looked at the family token.

"Joren Vale?" The older man's expression changed.

"Halven has been telling stories."

"Registers."

"Worse." Joe smiled. They inspected the shipment together. Only after Joren approved the driest bundles did Joe ask, "Why did you come back?" Joren did not pretend to misunderstand.

"The Selection?"

"Yes." He considered the question.

"Because Blackwood thought my Root made me extraordinary."

"And the state capital?"

"Thought it made me eligible." That was clean enough that Joe remembered it immediately. Joren continued.

"I passed some stages. Failed later ones. Younger candidates had stronger backing. Some had better foundations. Some simply had better Roots." No bitterness. Just memory.

"I could have stayed and become somebody's dependent for years hoping they eventually considered me worth more investment."

"So, you returned."

"I returned with connections, knowledge and a trait the Black family valued." Joe glanced at the side-branch token. Joren smiled.

"Married well too." That explained another piece. Even failing to climb farther had increased his value locally. The road upward did not need to end at the top to change a life.

"Regret it?" Joe asked.

"No." The answer came quickly.

"People confuse reaching your limit with wasting the road." Joe liked that.

That night he checked the panel. Static Foundation — Lv5 — Perfection Dynamic Foundation — Lv5 — Perfection Muscle Tempering — Lv4 — Complete Joe studied the final line. The panel still called the technique Muscle Tempering. It did not announce Fifth Tempering or Sixth Tempering. Those were Joe's description of what he was doing to the physical layer, not separate techniques. His fifth pass had completed. The sixth had begun. His mastery of the underlying Muscle Tempering method remained its own measurement.

Joe dismissed the panel. A proper Spiritual Root test waited in the state capital for roughly one gold. He could afford that now. He did not need it now. Blackwood still had Muscle to finish, Bone to solve, money to earn and dangers increasingly willing to come toward Simon instead of remaining politely outside the walls. The two guards in the old register had taught him something more important than whether he personally possessed a Root. There were roads out of Blackwood.

But leaving one hierarchy did not remove hierarchy. Usually, it only introduces a larger one.