I’d spent some of the time during my three free days talking to some of the soldiers around the camp. To my surprise, most of them were here against their will. The few I’d talked to that were here of their own volition were only here for money in the first place. Still, it was all a bit baffling. If almost no one wanted to be here, then why not just leave? Victor seemed strong, sure, but I seriously doubted he could fight off thousands of people.
“The Arbiters.” One of the older soldiers eventually told me. “There’s at least one attempted escape every month. Usually, we stop them before they can get too far.”
I wanted to ask why they would stop anyone from leaving, but the soldier didn’t let me cut him off.
“If we don’t stop them, then the Arbiters come. We never see them, just what they leave behind. And the Arbiters never hold back, either. Every time they hunt down a deserter, the entire area turns into a battlefield. It’s ugly stuff.”
“Are the Arbiters really that strong?” I asked.
He nodded. “It’s because none of us have even a rare Class, while it's rumored that the Arbiters have mythic Classes.” The soldier shrugged. “I can’t tell you how true that rumor is, but they definitely have stronger Classes than us. There are plenty of higher-level soldiers, but none of them even come close to matching an Arbiter in power.”
That made things quite a bit scarier for me. Even if I did get away from Victor, did that mean I’d just doom myself to getting killed by an Arbiter? It sounded like an execution by the army was a better choice of punishment than whatever an Arbiter would do. Not that that changed my end goals. I was getting out of this place, no matter what.
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The evening came and went. In the morning, I woke up just before sunrise. After so many days of training, my body was used to getting up around then. It was an annoying habit that I planned to shed whenever I went somewhere that I could relax in.
That said, I didn’t mind it today. I woke up to a new notification! There was only one thing it could have been, honestly. My new Skill.
System Notification: New Skill!
Mana Arrow - Expend 10 mana to conjure an arrow. (Increased projectile damage per level.)
Really? All of that waiting for such a simple Skill like that? Though, judging from the description, it sounded a lot like the Skill I’d seen my past self use.
To test, I picked up my bow, and drew the string back. Then, activating the Skill, I watched as an arrow materialized out of thin air. While it was shaped like the real thing, it obviously wasn’t. The arrow was blue and glowed. I was pretty sure that was because it was made out of mana, though. Either way, it looked exactly like the same Skill I’d seen in some of those memories. Apparently, Skill Recall had brought back an actual Skill for me. Normally, I would have been quite a bit happy with that, but I had been hoping for something to help me escape.
I dismissed the Skill, allowing the arrow to fade into nothingness. I was 10 mana short, but that wasn’t a large amount of my total pool. At the very least, I now knew I was going to need to invest into the magic stats a bit. My new Skill would need both to work well.
I spent some time thinking about possible ways to get away without getting myself killed or captured again in the process. So far, I hadn’t been able to come up with a reliable plan. There was only so much I could do when I was so much slower and weaker than everyone else.
Victor came soon enough, and immediately wanted to know if I’d gotten the new Skill yet. When I’d confirmed that I did, he took me to the firing range I’d been at a few days ago, and told me to show him the Skill. From what I could tell, Mana Arrow didn’t seem aligned with any specific element. It was just made of mana. I was hoping Victor wouldn’t catch on to the fact that I’d chosen a light-element Class.
I conjured the arrow, and shot it at a target. There was a resounding ring, and the arrow disappeared in a flash of light after. Honestly, it was kind of pretty, although I knew that same arrow could tear through someone’s flesh easily enough. It wasn’t a Skill I’d be using just to see something cool.
“Disappointing…” Victor said after a while. Oh no. I knew what was coming next.
“Back to training, then!”
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Despite his disappointment, Victor and I mainly worked on my Mana Arrow. That made things considerably easier on myself, as I was allowed to take a break every so often to recharge my mana. Thankfully, he didn’t have any potions for that, so there was no longer an endless cycle of pain and humiliation. And having bones that I didn’t even know existed being crushed. It was a miracle I was even alive anymore. Well, not really. Victor ensured I didn’t, but I could only take so much more of this harsh regimen.
Still, his methods had results, if nothing else. There were a few things that had happened over the course of the next week. First, I’d gotten Archery up to level 20, with Heightened Learning doing the same on the last day. I was fairly certain it would do the same thing that Skill Recall had. Victor mentioned that most people would have three Skills in their Class by now. But the two Skills I’d first gotten in Calamity Amnesiac seemed designed to level up rapidly. It’d made sense that the System wanted me to evolve them both before it gave me any more Skills. Perhaps those wouldn’t be Skills that I’d already technically had at some point.
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Aside from Archery and Heightened Learning, Mana Arrow had also gotten itself a few levels. It sat at level 5 already. Each level wasn’t a significant increase, but I could tell that my arrows hit a bit harder than they did at first. And that was with me still holding on to my free stats.
One day, I’d been prepared for another arduous day of training, but was pleasantly surprised when Victor announced that nothing of that sort would be happening. Instead, today was a day of planning. And for some reason, I was being included.
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I was in the largest tent of the camp. Most of the area was taken up by a map that rested on a wide table. There were small markers placed on various areas, which were clearly meant to represent people. They were small figures in armor holding swords and bows, and sometimes riding on horseback. Actually, there was even one figure that seemed to be on a bird…
Either way, the map was huge, and I was having a hard time making sense of it. There was just so much. I couldn’t even figure out where I was.
“Great. It seems each of us have gathered,” Victor said as one man with graying hair entered the tent. For that matter, all of the other dozen or so officers here seemed to be multiple times my age. And using Identify on them proved that they were each higher enough in level for the Skill to only return question marks.
“Not long from now, we will march our legion to Belias and take the city. We’ve discussed it in detail already, but I feel a refresher may help. That, and a new discovery of mine may just turn the tides of battle even more in our favor.” I rolled my eyes. Victor referring to me as a ‘new discovery’ wasn’t going to make me hate him any less.
“To refresh everyone’s minds, we will be using the underground tunnels that are being dug as we speak by capable earth mages. This will allow us to go through the mountains unnoticed.” Victor pushed a few figures from one point to another. They had the same red and brown colors of the legion, so it was easy to figure out who they represented. I also got an idea of where we currently were. The forest looked so tiny on the map, even though it felt so expansive when I had been hunting in it. “Once we exit, the legion will only need to run for a very short while until they reach the city. From there, we will have our siege mages get us through their walls, and strike before the city of Belias can even react. Should everything go to plan, our losses will be minimal.”
The officers around the room nodded. They’d all heard this before. They’d helped to create the plan in the first place. The refresher had been entirely to get me up to speed, which wasn’t a good omen. I had a feeling Victor was trying to give me a bigger role in all of this than I really wanted.
“Now, I’d like to bring up Luna. If deployed properly, I believe she can make a large difference on the battlefield, even with her low level. Instead of grouping her with the other archers, I recommend we send in a small squad of elite soldiers to stealthily escort her through the city. While their focus will be on organizing a response to our main force, Luna and her squad can target the enemies weak points, and cripple their ability to fight back.”
That was my chance. In the middle of a battle, away from Victor. During all the mayhem, it’d be easy for her to find a way out. There were already ideas forming in her head. Countermeasures in case something didn’t go to plan. Not that she had a solid plan. She had a date of escape, but was really going to have to rely on finding the perfect moment to get away from everything.
“I also suggest we move out sooner than initially planned. The tunnels are almost completely finished. Plus, I would like Luna to get levels, and battle experience, as soon as possible.”
The men in the room began to talk amongst themselves, considering everything that Victor had just said. I, on the other hand, didn’t really care much. They could discuss all they wanted, it wouldn’t make a soldier.
I was mostly surprised that Victor seemed to be so trusting of me. I hadn’t exactly been an obedient student. And I knew he was smart enough to realize that I didn’t want to be here. It was strange that he would even suggest I have a role that was even close to important. Sure, his original plan wouldn’t be affected much, regardless of if I succeeded or not, but still. If I were him, I definitely wouldn’t have given myself the chance to get away, regardless of if I’d be accompanied by others or not. He had to have known I’d use this as an opportunity to try and run. Something was off here, but I wasn’t going to comment on it.
My attention wandered, until I eventually saw a large sheet of paper that was bundled up. No one was really paying attention to me, so I opened it up, and saw a whole bunch of numbers.
More specifically, numbers that were arranged in sets up to 30. Even with my dicey memory of things like this, I was able to work out that this was a calendar. I gave it a quick look over, and used the information to fill in some holes of my knowledge.
A year consisted of 394 days, which were split up into 4 main parts, according to the seasons. Spring and fall were 82 days each, while summer and winter were 115 days each. Spring and fall each had three months. Two of those were 27 days long, while the last was 28. Summer and winter had four months. Three of those were 30 days long, while the last was 25.
The more I looked, the more flawed the calendar seemed. I didn’t see the point of dividing months between the seasons. What did it matter if a single month changed from spring to summer, or fall to winter? There easily could have been thirteen months with most having 30 days, and some having 31. That way, the length of a month wouldn’t vary so much.
I could vaguely remember using a different calendar system in my past life. Or more like, I’d used a different system to keep track of time. Perhaps that would have been better than this mess. Perfect Memory would be the only reason I even remembered what I was looking at.
One thing that seemed like an especially terrible design was the way that weeks were set up. A full length week was seven days, for some reason. Each day had a name that I didn’t recognize. Either way, the problem was that if a month was cut off before the end of the week, then that was it. It’d reset the next month. So, you might be in the middle of the week on one day, and then right back at the beginning on the next.
I couldn’t help but wonder who’d even designed this. I barely knew anything about anything, and even I could recognize just how many flaws there were here.
“Then it’s decided,” Victor’s voice boomed through the tent, reminding me of where I was. I’d completely forgotten that they were discussing plans for a battle. “In one week, we will march, and Luna will be tasked with causing as much confusion among the enemy soldiers as possible.”
I still didn’t care, honestly. Whether it was a week or a month, I would endure until I had my freedom back. Until then, I wouldn’t be broken.