Chương 50: The Routine

Before dismissing us, the Drillmaster informed us all that we could find a reading slate in our barracks. We would be shuffled into rooms with the rest of our squads, except for the druids, who all received their own rooms—men or women. Apparently, they needed to meditate as part of their advancement methods. Or something that required silence and isolation. When I found my new room, I was the first one in, but Anchor and Brawl were close behind me.

Our beds had been neatly made, and a reading slate lay atop the folded sheets. I picked mine up and gave it a quick look over. I'd gained a point of Vitality, which brought me up to three, and there was a new Skill at the bottom which read [Commanding Presence (Novice)]. It wasn't much, and I doubt I would have gotten that at all had it not been for the Labyrinth run and its ability to condense Skills. My rank had also increased, and now it read [Sergeant (SAP)].

The others checked as well, but since we hadn't gathered any Presences, there weren't huge differences. Besides, most of my early and fast increases in attributes were due to my body recovering from the process of having its soul replaced. Now that it had more than recovered, I had to begin the more difficult process of improving it constantly—all while maintaining what was there. The resonance nodes would help, but they weren't perfect. Once we'd gotten settled, I said, "I'm heading to the library.

I want to research skill merging and such, and figure out what I'm working toward. I don't suppose anyone wants to join me?"

"Is that your subtle way of telling us that you don't know where the library is?" Anchor asked. Brawl clicked his tongue.

"Implications, brother. You know my thoughts on those slimy words." Rolling my eyes, I said, "Well, yes, but I can ask around. It was a genuine offer."

"We're heading to the sandpits to spar," Anchor said.

"I wish you luck. Perhaps you can convince Sage to come with you."

"Perhaps," I said. After a pause, I said, "How bad do you think things are if they've sent military intelligence here to hunt for traitors?" I gulped.

"And if this is because of what we did to Plume and his guys?"

"Perhaps it is. The portreeves are relatively powerful." I scowled.

"And their influence is causing problems, if they're trying to only force squads loyal to them through."

"Or it's a command from on high," Sage said.

"From the Warlord." I began, "God, the more I hear about this guy—" Anchor shook his head and held up a finger, then whispered, "It's not safe to talk about that here. Save it for the Labyrinth. The Subtle Men have Perception that would put me to shame." I nodded and kept quiet, then backed out of the room and rushed down to the main floor. After asking around, I learned that the library was located on the floor directly above the mess hall. I took the stairs up to the library.

It was only one storey tall, but it was packed full with shelves. I had to turn sideways to fit between them, except in the central aisle. Dust choked me as I stepped in, and the musty scent of thousands of manuscripts seeped from the stone and wooden shelves. A sign outside the door read 'no open flames,' and the only light came from lanterns hanging from the walls. I plucked one off a hook and delved into the library.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but I wanted to improve my Art and I'd need a guide. Each shelf had a label on it. Some held scrolls and manuscripts of history and accounts of ancient scholars, and others held documents on weapon smithing or mythological tales. But the majority of the shelves held books regarding resonance Skills, System-based advancement, and Pure Arts for Dupes.

(As it turned out, the Arts that we used, based solely in Presence and manipulating the deeper laws of the universe, were considered Pure Arts, as opposed to those which used maegen.) I picked a shelf that seemed promising, one which held hundreds of different documents about merging Skills. The majority focused on wedge-enhancing Arts, which seemed to be the most common Art for a Dupe to earn.

When you coupled it with a sword or axe's resonance skill, it could be devastating—and later, could evolve into a devastating Skill like I'd seen the Dupes who escorted me here use. There were others which focused on internal storage spaces—involving tiny, subtle warping of space and reality, and others focused on enhancing your speed, or spatial transport. One granted effects similar to telekinesis. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It turned out that, depending on what your favoured attribute was, you were more likely to get a basic Art that worked with it. You could, of course, reset your basic Art by completing more low-level Skill merges, until you reached an Art that you wanted. But when you advanced to Steel, your Art was locked. But I was more than satisfied with gravity manipulation. There was only one problem: prioritizing Focus was rare as it was, so there were few texts regarding what it did.

Even worse, gravitational manipulation was a rare Art for Focus-based Dupes, and even more difficult to find texts on. But Dupes had served Gate for hundreds of years, and there had been plenty of us who had experimented—plus, we weren't the only ones who could use Pure Arts. Wicca were more than capable of deploying a Pure Art like we were, and they'd studied it far longer than we had.

They had organized into sects of like-minded Path-walkers, which they called Orders, and developed different Arts and routes for arcane advancement. I kept searching through the books for clues until finally, I stumbled upon a manuscript labelled Sir Kotthold's Gravitational Arts: Observations on the Tungsten Staff Order.

When I brought it to a desk at the back of the library and flipped it open, I was greeted by a note informing me that the Tungsten Staff Order was now extinct, and that Sir Kotthold was in fact a sorcerer, not a wicca, but he made many observations on the creation of their Arts. Thankfully, an editor had added notes about how all of this applied to Dupes and our use of magic, and translated some of his suggestions into actual Merging paths.

There were too many details, and it was painfully boring, but hey, I needed to keep working on my Focus as well, so I struggled well into the evening to get through the book. I made it an eighth of the way before returning it to the shelf and promising to come back tomorrow and the day after until I had a plan for upgrading my gravitational Art. Of course, I could work on improving my spearmanship resonance Skill as well, and I could transform it into something even more useful, but for now, I had other plans.

I wanted to improve my Art first and foremost. And there was plenty of time now to make sure I did this right. The last thing I needed was to rush a Skill merge and lock myself into an ineffective Skill. ~ ~ ~ Over the next few days, I kept to a similar schedule. Wake up, eat breakfast, and train as hard as I could with the others.

Lieutenant Owl kept us on a rotating regime of workouts that he promised wouldn't hurt us and were ideal for us to improve, and so I accepted his wisdom—or the wisdom of whoever had planned the regiment—for now. In the afternoons, sparring earned me a few bruises and another dislocated shoulder, but they kept healers on stand-by just in case.

They promised the repeated process of injury and healing would stress-test my Vitality and help it increase, which I really hoped was true because otherwise, this pain wasn't going to mean much. When it came to sparring, even the druids had to participate. They couldn't just sit around and be helpless—if an orc attacked them, they had to fight back. That made it all the more interesting when they matched me up against Sage. She and Morph were a pair, and Morph was doing most of the work—for now.

"Our trainers say they can help me learn to use my legs," Sage explained as I practiced against Morph—she clung to his back, looking over his shoulder.

"If I can enhance myself properly. Path-walkers have to reforge our bodies through other means, and it's possible that the reforging process can fix me." I ducked under one of Morph's limbs. If he hit me with one of those tendrils and latched on, it was game over. There was no way I could break that grip, not when it could adjust to whatever shape it wanted.

"But you'll keep Morph, right?" I asked.

"No matter what I come up with, it'll only last for a few hours or so," Sage said.

"Some of my internal leys are just too broken beyond repair." I leapt away from one of Morph's swings and rammed the haft of my spear into the forest golem's gut hard enough to make it stumble.

"I'll always need him," Sage said, pulling on Morph's shoulder. He slammed both fists down toward me, and I rolled to the side.

"I don't want to lose him, either," I said, landing a counter attack on Morph's shoulder.

"He's a valuable addition to the squad as well." Before I could do anything, a bell rang, indicating that our sparring time was up and we had to switch partners. I stepped back to the edge of the sand pit, and Anchor stepped forward.

"You know," he said to Sage, "there's nothing to fix." He tapped his eyepatch.

"Your scars are simply a sign of your service to the Warlord and Gate." She sighed.

"Yes, that's more or less what my tutors from the northern academies told me." Morph carried her away from the sand-pit.

"But that's easy to say when all you're missing is an eye." Anchor snorted, then shook his head.

"How'd you lose your legs in the first place?" I asked. I paused and winced at my poor phrasing.

"Or…were you born like that?"

"No need to dance around it," Sage said.

"No. I can heal most wounds now without inflicting the true physical damage upon myself. Only the pain. But when I was younger, I was not as in-control of my Arts, and I often absorbed the wound I was healing onto myself." She winced.

"My younger brother, when he was little, was struck by an out-of-control carriage. The damage to his legs was critical and there were no other healers, so I did what I had to. I mitigated it enough that we both lived, but I lost the use of my legs instead of him.

"I attempted a few replacements, including these. Recently, I severed my paralyzed legs and replaced them with golem parts, hoping to make them function again. But it will take more Presence than I have available." She paused.

"If I could walk again, for once in ten years…it would mean the world to me." I nodded, then stepped back as Lieutenant Owl gave us our next sparring partners. As he gave the new assignments, I turned to Sage and said, "You stick with us, we'll get you walking again. And hopefully even running. Even if it's not perfect or permanent."