Chương 91: Chapter 80: The Gap

Forestry requested an investigation five days after Simon submitted the Camp Seven report. The new assignment was large enough that even Cole stopped joking when he read it. Twelve guards. Two hunters. Three forestry workers. Senior Officer Garrick Vane in command. Simon studied the list twice. Joe knew what he was looking for.

"Bret isn't on it." Simon lowered the sheet.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." Cole leaned closer.

"Perhaps he has been assigned to defend an especially dangerous warehouse." Daren snorted. Simon folded the notice. There might have been a legitimate explanation. Joe had learned that influence worked best when it rarely needed an illegitimate one.

Garrick assembled them outside the western gate before sunrise.

"Camp Seven was abandoned after repeated large-animal activity," he said.

"We identify the threat, determine whether forestry can safely return, and withdraw." His gaze moved across the group.

"We are not hunting unless necessary." One of the younger guards looked disappointed. Garrick noticed immediately.

"If you want a trophy more than you want to follow orders, leave now." The guard looked away. Garrick nodded.

"Good." Joe adjusted his medical pack. Whatever else Garrick was, he was competent. That made him more troublesome, not less.

The western fifth line felt different with seventeen people moving through it. Hunters led. Forestry workers remained protected near the center. Guards covered the flanks and rear. Simon's team held the back quarter. Joe walked beside Daren. Bone I had settled further during the previous days. The change no longer felt like a breakthrough. It felt normal. Before Bone Tempering, Joe's Muscle Great Completion contained more force than his skeleton could safely transmit.

Every heavy test had eventually produced the same warning through wrists, knees, spine and joints. Now much of that restraint is gone. He had tested just below a thousand kilograms without meaningful discomfort. He suspected more was available. There was no reason to find the precise maximum yet. Ahead, Garrick stepped across a fallen trunk. Joe watched. Late Bone. Months earlier, those words alone would have been enough to make Joe cautious about a direct confrontation. Not anymore.

Garrick's movement was refined, his footing experienced and his frame clearly stronger than that of ordinary guards. But Joe had completed Bone once after bringing both Skin and Muscle through nine temperings. The difference underneath the same realm label was enormous. If they fought seriously, Joe no longer wondered whether he could win. The interesting questions were how experienced Garrick really was, how much Joe would need to reveal, and what problems victory would create afterward.

That was a very different kind of caution.

They reached Camp Seven before midday. Nothing inside had changed. Outside it, the hunters found more. One crouched beside the old track. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Bear." Renn leaned closer.

"That large?"

"Old male." The second hunter examined the stripped bark on one tree.

"Very old." Osric asked, "Blooded?" The hunter hesitated.

"Possibly." Joe had heard the term before. Blooded beasts were not spirit beasts and did not cultivate consciously. They were animals whose bodies had become unusually powerful through age, environment, rich food, medicinal plants or simply surviving long enough in dangerous regions. Garrick's expression hardened.

"If it's blooded, we confirm and leave. Forestry can hire hunters." Renn frowned.

"We don't take it?" Garrick looked at him.

"You own another life?" Renn stopped asking questions.

They found the bear before its den. The lead hunter froze. Brush broke downhill. A dark shape pushed between the trees. Large was an inadequate word. The animal's shoulders rose nearly to Joe's chest even on all fours. Old scars crossed its muzzle, and one ear had been partly torn away. It stopped after seeing them. So did everyone else. Garrick raised one hand. Silence. For several breaths, neither side moved. Joe studied the animal. Weight. Reach. Acceleration. Balance.

Seventeen-armed humans were not attractive prey. The bear appeared to agree. Then Renn shifted his foot. Wet soil slipped. The animal lunged. Not at Renn. At the nearest forestry worker. The formation exploded into motion. A hunter dragged the worker aside. The front guards separated. Garrick moved. Fast. Skilled. He did not meet the bear directly. He stepped across its line and drove the spear shaft into the shoulder at an angle. The impact snapped the shaft. Garrick remained standing. Joe's attention sharpened.

That was better than he expected. Not stronger than Joe. Better integrated. The bear turned. A guard stumbled near its path. Garrick reached him first and struck with the broken spear. The animal recoiled. Hunters attacked from the opposite side. Joe caught another forestry worker who lost his footing and moved him backward almost without effort. The bear changed direction. Toward Simon. Joe shifted. For one heartbeat, he considered ending it himself. Really moving. Not the speed he allowed the guard to see.

Not the strength anyone here expected. Then Garrick arrived first. He stepped between Simon and the bear, redirected another charge, and bought enough space for Simon to withdraw. Good. Joe stayed inside his public limits. The bear lunged one final time. Garrick and two guards turned it. A hunter struck. The animal broke away and crashed downhill through the brush.

"Nobody follows!" Garrick shouted. No one did.

"Count!" Names answered. One forestry worker had bruised his shoulder. A guard had a shallow cut from shattered wood. Nothing serious. Joe looked toward the trees. He could probably have followed the bear and killed it. He did not. That would solve the least important problem while creating several better ones.

They marked the area and closed Camp Seven. On the return journey Simon moved beside Joe.

"You saw Garrick?"

"Yes."

"He's good."

"Yes." Simon frowned.

"I hate that."

"Why?"

"It would be easier if he was useless." Joe nodded faintly.

"Competence and character are different things." Simon considered that.

"Still inconvenient."

"Very." Joe looked toward Garrick at the head of the column. Something else about the fight bothered him. Garrick's frame had taken the impact unusually well. Late Bone explained much of it. Not all. Joe had watched enough Bone practitioners now to recognize differences in how strength spread through the whole body. Garrick seemed unusually balanced for someone whose greatest advancement was supposedly Bone. Had he done more with earlier layers after becoming stuck? Repeated Skin? Repeated Muscle?

Joe had no evidence. Only a question. He stored it.

Several days later, Joe began Bone II. The question returned immediately. Bone I had strengthened his skeleton once. The second pass went deeper. As Blood Energy refined the same structures again, Joe noticed the reaction around them more clearly than before. Muscle adjusted. Tendons changed how they accepted load. Joint structures responded. Even movement across the skin changed slightly as the deeper frame carried force differently. Joe stopped halfway through one circulation. He remained still for a long time.

Bone was not independent. That sounded obvious when phrased aloud. Until now, however, Joe had thought about repeated tempering mostly one layer at a time. Skin improved Skin. Muscle improved Muscle. Bone improved Bone. That was incomplete. Muscle pulled against Bone. Bone transmitted Muscle's force. Both moved beneath and through the outer tissues. Strengthening one layer altered the stresses carried by all the others. Joe thought back through his own progression. Nine Skin temperings before Muscle.

Nine Muscle temperings before Bone. Perfect Body had continuously integrated the changes. Perfect Health prevented accumulated damage. His Foundations had become increasingly refined as the layers strengthened. His path had remained balanced almost accidentally at first, then deliberately later. An ordinary practitioner did not possess those conditions. What happened if someone tempered Muscle repeatedly while Skin remained far behind?

Eventually the force beneath the outer structure would exceed what that structure tolerated. What if Bone became vastly stronger than both? Then movement generated through that frame might damage the muscle and tissue attached around it. Joe opened his eyes. There had to be limits. Not identical for everyone. A stronger Foundation would distribute force better. Better methods would matter. Natural constitution would matter. But the principle itself seemed unavoidable.

Later layers could only exceed earlier ones by so much before the body stopped functioning as one system. Joe thought of Garrick again. If he had been stuck at Late Bone for years, perhaps he had repeated some earlier tempering. That would explain part of what Joe saw. But if Joe's reasoning was correct, Garrick could not simply repeat Bone indefinitely. Something underneath would eventually stop him. Interesting. Then another thought came. Simon. Joe became still.

Simon had reached ordinary Skin Completion and moved directly into Muscle. Joe had never advised him otherwise. Because Joe had not known. At the time, repeated tempering was something Joe knew worked inside his own abnormal body. He had Perfect Health. Perfect Body. No Regression. Talents Simon did not possess and would never know existed. Telling Simon to delay advancement and spend months attempting an uncertain second Skin tempering without understanding the consequences would have been reckless.

So, Joe had said nothing. Now he wondered whether he would have chosen differently if he had understood this principle a year earlier. Probably. That was irritating. Not guilt. Information arrived when it arrived. He could not use knowledge before possessing it. Still, Simon's road had become something Joe needed to think about. Could an already-advanced practitioner return to strengthen an earlier layer? Would that help? Would it destabilize what came after? Joe did not know. So, he would not advise Simon yet.

Bone II progressed through the following weeks. Each successful circulation strengthened the frame and also taught Joe more about the dependency between layers. Joe did not mistake his own advantages for universal truths.

Near the first Starlight preparations, he returned to the warehouse. One thousand kilograms rose cleanly. He added weight. Eleven hundred. Still clean. Joe held it for several breaths before lowering the frame. Muscle Great Completion possessed much of that force already. Bone was simply allowing the rest of the body to use it. He thought again of Garrick. Late Bone. Skilled. Experienced. Possibly refined beyond the ordinary path in ways Joe had only begun to understand. Still weaker.

The difference was that Garrick had rank. Colleagues. Authority. A recognized place inside the guard. Those were real advantages. Just not martial ones anymore. Joe left the warehouse and stepped into the cooling evening. For the first time, he understood two separate problems clearly. How strong a person was. And how much the world around them made that strength matter. They were not the same thing.