Chương 181: Doubt

Apart from our usual exercises, and attempting them on the hills past the Castle, our other training activities were designed to push our endurance. Bursts of high-intensity activity were excellent for getting quick stat boosts, but eventually, the rewards would level off, and you would need more endurance to keep improving. In the afternoons, we ran longer distances and sparred for long, no breaks.

Afterward, when we were all exhausted from a long day of pushing, Owl made us flip the riftrock disks around the outer circle of the castle wall again. Before, I'd managed to do a full circle, but now, after a day of work, I was only able to flip it halfway around the outer wall. My limbs were stiffening, and my lungs couldn't draw in full breaths of air. I flopped onto my back, limbs splayed out to the side. Owl was shouting at me to keep moving, but I couldn't.

I was still ahead of the others, but that wasn't worth bragging about. They probably wouldn't catch up to me. It felt like I was going backward. We all were, and I hated it. Sure, this was good for me, but if I was this far away? Having a visual guide of what I needed to do, and seeing that I was only halfway there, after all this work… How much else did that apply to? Hinlaw was a Gold. He was probably quite high-up in the tier, too. More than twice as powerful as me. How was I supposed to beat him?

It was like standing at the foot of a summit. The mountains didn't look so tall from a distance, but when you were right in front of them, they were enormous. ~ ~ ~ That night, in the dining hall, I ate as much infused food as they'd give me, scarfing it down while ignoring the taste. I was just hungry. The others ate just as quickly.

"I assume…" Anchor said between bites, "that you're insisting on evening training tonight, too?" I paused. I didn't want to, but there were plenty of things I didn't want to do. Hell, if you asked me right now if I wanted to be a soldier, I would've said I didn't. But I wouldn't always have a choice if I wanted to succeed. Still…

"Has it been making a difference?" I muttered.

"Imagine how far behind we would be if we had not, brother," Brawl said.

"Anchor's demotivation is infectious," Sage said.

"Levi caught it while trying to help him. Stay out of contact, and—""It's not a lack of motivation. I don't know if I can do this. What if I'm not capable?" Brawl began, "Do you mean just the training here, brother, or—" Sage shot him a look as if to say, You know what he means.

"Yes. Apologies, brother." I sighed.

"I'm not from this place. Where I came from, everything was soft and squishy and no one really would've had to do this if you didn't choose to. How can I expect to just…become that person?"

"It was infectious," Anchor said.

"I shouldn't have said anything. But I did also warn you about this."

"I promised I wouldn't give up. I plan to keep that promise." I paused.

"I just can't fight off the doubts."

"Something tells me the first day of increased training is always like this," Sage said.

"But this isn't like you, Levi."

"It's far easier to say you want to do the impossible when the impossible is so far out of reach that you don't have to think about it," I said.

"But now I'm thinking about it, and now I know more about what I have to do, and I don't know if I can do it." I paused.

"What if we're meant to crumble, just like the old empire? If it hadn't fallen, Gate would never have risen from the ashes. What if something else is supposed to come next?"

"If we do that, cities will burn," Sage said.

"Thousands, millions, will still die." She looked down at the table and swallowed. Morph chittered softly beneath her, in his walking stool form.

"The world has ended hundreds of times before." So what was going to be different this time? I didn't say that out loud.

"At the last hour, when all hope was lost, great men emerged from the rubble to save civilization," Anchor said.

"Always. Don't give up hope. There will be a great man who emerges, and as soldiers, we shall serve him. That's our job as soldiers." I hung my head. I hadn't seen a sign of any of these great men. I hadn't even heard rumours of someone else potentially rising and trying to fight the orcs properly. Lord Ceonwin? He was strong, sure, but he was just Lord Ceonwin. He was just a Gold. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. What about Askan?

The Greencloak, no matter how strong, seemed just as hamstrung by the rules of this world. Maybe Anchor was wrong. Either the world wasn't close to ending, or there wouldn't be any miracle saviour. What if— Metal clanged behind us, interrupting my thoughts. I spun around on the bench, turning to face the source of the noise. A Dupe had taken off his helmet and impaled it on a spear outside the door. The spearhead ripped through the inside and poked out the top, like someone had put a head on a stake.

Hanging his head, he slunk away with the rest of his squad. Our first dropout. Dupes could drop out of the sapper training program if they chose, and they would return to the battalions they came from. They would have to repay all the expenses accrued on their training, though. That included food and board, along with equipment expenses. All of that put together, they would never pay back what it cost them, and they would probably never retire from the army.

Dropping out was a last resort for those who didn't think they could do it. The tradition was to stick your helmet on a spike as you left, returning a bit of scrap for the rest of the Dupes who continued on.

"We'll have a few more dropouts before Vaelheall Week," Anchor muttered.

"You think you can do it?" I whispered.

"I know I'm not dropping out yet." I stared at the helmet on the stake and tightened my fist around a knife I was holding.

"I don't know if we can do it," I told my entire squad.

"But I know we won't make a difference in this state. If there is a great hero who rises, we won't be able to help him like this. Training in the evenings had to have helped, so let's keep pushing." Maybe it was because of how undignified it looked to drop out, but I wasn't going to be like that.

"I'm not dropping out, no matter what." ~ ~ ~ I didn't think folding and braiding ropes would ever be such a rigorous task, but it was one of our main conditioning tasks. Aside from helping us with our attributes, we needed them for the Labyrinth. We weren't meant to find a way down into the second level so quickly. We were supposed to come up against a wall, where we would realize that we needed ropes to descend. To get down into the lower levels, we'd need ropes to reactivate the elevator.

And we had to make those ropes ourselves, using flax from the windy foothills. Our running tasks evolved from simple jogs into fetch quests. Daily, we had to pick up a scythe and sprint across the rolling hills to the lowlands, where wild flax was growing, then cut the little blue flowers and bundle it while the wind hammered us. With the bundles in our arms, we sprinted back to the ridge, where we had to run laps around the castle while stripping the fibres of the plants with our bare hands.

It was meant to increase our Focus as well as our other physical attributes. Once we stripped the fibres, we began weaving them together. I was terrible at weaving. I'd never been able to braid hair back on Earth, and though I could strip the flax fibres well enough, it took me a few days of practice to finally figure out how to weave them and connect them into a rope. I forced myself to learn. These ropes were going to be my lifeline, but also that of everyone else here.

Each squad would have to make at least three hundred paces of rope if we wanted to properly repair the elevator, which I figured we would have to double if we wanted to pick up the slack of the squads who didn't meet that requirement in time. (I did want to, of course, because I wanted to keep exploring the lower levels of the Labyrinth. The prospect of exploring was the only thing that kept me pushing through the exhaustion.) By the end of the week, and mostly due to Sage's braiding expertise, we had four hundred paces of rope available. On the last evening before our next Labyrinth run, while all our muscles were aching and our lungs were heaving from our extra evening training tasks, we worked with the other squads to attach our ropes together and put them onto six separate spools. Others had overshot the metric, and we had more than the target. Only one squad had missed the target, which earned them a warning.

If they consistently failed training tasks during this time, they would be forced to drop out. After we finished weaving and winding up our ropes, we greased them with leftover cooking oil from the kitchen, then carried them to the labyrinth entrance for tomorrow morning. A pair of senior sappers guarded the entrance still, making sure nothing came up. I tried asking one if he knew anything about orcs moving underground and attacking within our territory, but he wouldn't reply.

Next, I took my squad and visited Shatter at the blacksmith shop. He gave us our weapons in a burlap sack, then unfolded them. My eyes drifted to the spear, first. A dark gray spearhead with wings behind it, which would help me trap weapons or catch a shield—and would just do more damage in general to an enemy. Though the shaft was wood, lines of Imperial Steel reinforced it closest to the tip, coiling around the wooden shaft like a spring.

They would keep it from losing its integrity too quickly on the lower levels, I hoped.

"You'll have to replace the shaft after every run," Shatter told me.

"But the spearhead will do everything you need. There's no special skill on it. I doubt this will be your final spear, so Drywsone told me not to try to put a Skill on it anyway. It's better for you that way, so you won't have to worry about bonding to this spear. You can just make good use of the stats."

"Could I get a shaft made of Imperial Steel?" I asked.

"You could, but you might be better off waiting and saving the metal for what you actually want. You'll still need a full set of armour, a final spear, and more for your whole squad. On your final weapon, of course we can make a shaft out of Imperial Steel." I conceded with a nod.

"We did our best on the stats," Shatter said.

"I don't want to say it was a rush job, because it wasn't. But these were relatively weak lumps. We were able to draw out about ten Strength from the spear. You'll get the boost while you're holding it." The others took their weapons as well. Arrows for Anchor, which would enhance his Perception by a few points while he was holding them. As for Brawl, his new flail would increase his Vitality. I thanked Shatter, then picked up my spear. As soon as my fingers brushed the wood, my arms tingled.

Ten Strength was still a noticeable boost, and it activated all across my body while I gripped the spear. I nearly closed my grip too tight, because the wood threatened to splinter in my grasp. I thanked Shatter, then headed back to the barracks for the night. I'd need a good rest, but there was one last task for the week. I turned toward the potted plant on the windowsill, with its faintly glowing leaves. I had a call to make.