As Evan maintained the concentration required for his cultivation, he thought back to those books that David had loaned him last night. They had given Evan a much clearer image of the military and how it worked, despite the fact that they were more broadly informative rather than lingering on the specifics.

They also made him realize that despite signing away so many years of his life to the military, he knew very little of how they operated. He had never hung around the soldiers, or even the hunters, that he had seen, always preferring the craftsmen, and refusing to even entertain the idea he wouldn’t make it as one himself.

That bias had come back to bite him, as he realized that this wasn’t a fault on the part of Starspire, but rather his own for not even entertaining the idea he would need to know about the workings of the military one day. There had also been some educational opportunities from the women who ran the orphanage, but it was optional – it was understood they were out learning or earning their own way.

He had only stuck around to let them teach him things he had deemed important, like reading, writing, and math. Most of what he knew he had absorbed from simply living in the city and talking to adults when he could, but those who knew much of the military or any desire to speak of it weren’t who he hung around and was never his focus when talking to craftsmen.

For that reason, he had been operating under a twisted view of how the military in Starspire worked, and what war actually looked like between it and other city-states. His expectation had been of a large, messy battlefield full of chaos, countless soldiers, and thorough destruction, but it wasn’t like that – and hadn’t been for a long time.

Nowadays things were done in a much more orderly, less destructive way. It was also far more mercenary in modern times, which had been a surprise. It had seemed strange that his direct superior would be the craftsman training him, but in the military that was apparently par for the course. The reason for this had to do with how the military was divided, how orders were given authority, and what responsibilities he would have.

The military was broadly split between two divisions – the combat division, and the civilian division. As a crafter he would be part of the civilian division, which meant that his command structure was different.

They wouldn’t fall so directly under the various commander ranks in the combat division; instead, they would have responsibilities that they were expected to keep up with, such as keeping things in good shape for a formations master such as himself. Their pay for this wasn’t great, especially considering the danger they were in, especially for a crafter.

It was the list of extra tasks they could pick up that would make their pay worth it, as they would offer a sort of board of commissions – together with their base pay, this would make working for the military an offer that wasn’t quite so terrible for crafters without much influence or ability like himself.

Part of his contract also included making opportunities available to him, such as buying his work. This looked more generous than it was, he noticed, as he would also be required to sell to Starspire at competitive rates – he wasn’t allowed to manipulate the price for his wares beyond a certain point of profitability while he served.

Starspire would ensure he had a basic wage, while also providing potential commissions occasionally, so that he never did too poorly. For a more established and powerful crafter this would be a terrible deal considering the inherent danger they would always be in, but for someone like him it wasn’t too bad, minus the many years he would have to stay.

This was all to say that the contract primarily did want to help him get stronger, and that the military didn’t want to keep him weak and poor, but that they wanted him to be strong and wealthy under their thumb. If Evan was stronger, that would be good for the military, but they didn’t want to need to pay outrageous prices for his work, hence the long contract term.

Of course, this was war, and so occasionally there would be situations where this status quo had to be broken. That was where the command structure of the combat division could come in with their authority. Ostensibly he wasn’t under their command, but many of the tales inside the books he read had mentioned times when commanders were able to order those of the civilian division into providing labor that would later go unpaid.

This was evidently a big deal a little over a hundred years ago and is why the books contained such extensive details on the matter. It had caused a massive slump in those willing to join the military when word got out that commanders were using their authority in ‘times of war’ to requisition services unfairly, as the doctrine is very strict that in such stressful environments everyone, including the contracted civilians, was required to pitch however they could for the betterment of everyone.

Corruption at the time led to countless civilians being forced into working for free – and given the nature of war, it was difficult to root out this corruption. Strength was important, and those with strength inevitably lived longer than those without, leading to a complex network of favors and bias that simply wouldn’t vanish.

It was the consequence of the accumulation of power, of Substance, that would always remain in organized society. The solution at the time was the construction of the present system, where the same doctrine was in place, but was heavily scrutinized by the new command structure present for the civilian division – fighting fire with fire.

The book had explained in length the new system, no doubt to help appease anyone considering joining, but it boiled down to creating a ranking system for the civilian division that was coordinated with the guild and their certification system. They took the oppression of those certified very seriously and acted as a check towards the abuse of the military.

Establishing this system wasn’t easy, as the military was loath to bring in any third party to military matters, but the guild was a neutral entity, and was so far above Starspire that they could only grit their teeth and accept it – the populace would accept nothing less, and they needed crafters, independents would gouge them blind without their own crafters, especially considering the outcry.

Evan felt that such a radical change to how the military worked showed just how desperate a situation the city had been in. It also explained why his direct superior was his trainer – it told him that the trainer had the authority to demand labor from him, which was of course necessary as his teacher, and that he could seek out his teacher if anyone else demanded things of him. An awkward byproduct of the new system, where any abuse of authority could get someone in serious trouble or even executed.

Time passed as he deliberated on that. Hours passed as he thought over his decisions, his mind slipping into the unique trance of cultivators in seclusion, his mind dim as his soul took in all it could, growing in the process.

When he finally came to, it had been more than a day – which was impressive for his cultivation, given that he was both still young and lacked any way to delay his various needs. He had a meal, supplemented by lots of water – it had never tasted so good.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A day without eating rare – the orphanage at least made sure he had something to eat, even if it wasn’t particularly good or filling. That was where the odd jobs came in.

After his large and delicious meal, he left to spend some time in the courtyard. He felt a little guilty about indulging like that – it made him feel like something he wasn’t, but the drab room combined with the crippling episode of soul pain compelled him to seek out the beauty and tranquility of the courtyard.

Perhaps there was a credible reason for all of this luxury in the middle of the city, aside from the security that very few of the patrons truly needed. Food for thought, he supposed.

Walking in the courtyard, taking in the fresh air, made him realize how relaxing nature could be. The outermost section had nothing like this that he had ever seen – no parks, the occasional tree or bush a rare sight. Everything he knew of nature was thanks to books and views from afar. Starspire had high walls, but it was possible to see the forest that surrounded the city as far as the eye could see through the outer gates.

Would kids from the inner sections even have that? Was the courtyard even more magical for them than it was for him?

He paid more attention to the others he could see in the courtyard, but none of them were as young as he was and had likely at least seen the wilderness outside regardless.

It wasn’t long later that he left the courtyard and made his way back to his room. He tried to distract himself but the allure of getting stronger and the guilt of not doing so immediately stayed firmly in his mind, and he was already behind on time anyway.

The rest of the week passed this way, with his breaks becoming more frequent as his body demanded he move about more and the dullness of cultivation caught up to him. He also found himself enamored with the serenity of the courtyard, and found that it helped him settle his mind.

What he had discovered about the military made it a more promising prospect in his mind – not just the more mercenary nature of it that promised concrete progress for a hard and good worker, but that actual full scale war would destroy the landscape that was fought on as ever more powerful cultivators were brought out on either side, so almost all wars were fought in a much more restrained manner, with various outposts being constructed and destroyed across the territory of each city-state.

Even taking special care not to disrupt the environment, large masses of weaker cultivators would cause damage and a single more powerful one could lead the destruction of entire biomes, requiring immense amounts of effort to fix and causing a delay in their production of Substance.

Said production was something he had only recently learned about, it being a core bedrock of why modern warfare was conducted the way it way it was. Despite this, it wasn’t clearly explained in any of the books he had read, seemingly a concept that was taken for granted.

The gist he was able to gather, however, told a strange story. Apparently, magical plants and monsters grew Substance within themselves as they got older – their cultivation simply increased with age, which was a strange concept to him. So long as they lived, Substance would develop within their bodies, slowly granting them an enhancement to everything that made up their existence.

However, the caveat was that in order for this mysterious process to take place, a variety of conditions must be met – some of the obvious ones he noticed were within their natural environment and being a generally free and happy creature or plant. Otherwise, it just didn’t happen.

It was easy to understand that war would easily disrupt this, and that this meant that territories were endless sources of wealth in the form of Substance from slain monsters or harvested plants.

That was why war was fought the way it was – instead of large scale battles that ravaged the landscape, scared away the various inhabitants, and otherwise disrupted this delicate process, outposts would be constructed instead with the intent of exerting control over the surrounding landscape, allowing for hunters aligned with the outposts owners to hunt in peace so long as they paid their dues.

It had been decided that war would only extend its disruption to the outposts and their defenders, which was good news for Evan.

This meant that in all likelihood, he would be posted to one of these outposts, and his responsibilities would include fortifying, maintaining, and perhaps even constructing these outposts.

He felt this made him more important than he would have been otherwise, since the outposts had a lot of functions, and whoever was posted with him would no doubt want improvements. The idea of fortifying and improving such a structure made him excited; this was a real, important structure that he would get to play his own part in.

Not only would he hold some small amount of importance for the outpost, but from the books he read it appeared that having a stronger cultivator show up to take an outpost was heavily frowned upon as it would only lead to an escalation of both parties, eventually resulting in massively expensive fights that ravaged the landscape and ended countless lives in the process.

With this threat mostly cleared away, Evan felt that he had a real chance at walking away from his contract, and depending on how things went, he could even walk away as a moderately powerful cultivator himself.

Despite everything that David had told him, and what he himself had concluded afterwards, the military didn’t seem as terrible a bet as it had been made out to be. Originally, after having spoken to David, he had pictured himself as some helpless technician in the back of a small marching army, relegated to the maintenance of equipment and unable to secure his own life or future.

Now thought, he knew that the military was much more mercenary than he had thought possible, and while this allowed Starspire to extract more use out of people like himself, it also gave him a chance for improving himself at the pace necessary to make this period of his life less of a burden on his future prospects.

These were the thoughts that had slowly accumulated inside Evan’s mind over the week of dutiful cultivation, the serenity and general slothful nature of cultivation giving him plenty of time to think, even accounting for the trances he would increasingly slip into while cultivating.

As he left the facility, having finished his cultivation up to the first Collapse, he felt like a new man.

No, not just a man. A cultivator. His smile was irresistible.

He truly felt as though he had accomplished something, even if it was just a start. Would the military’s promise of the other half of the Collapse even matter to him at that point? It was something to look forward to, if nothing else.

The week had done great things for his soul. Before, he had noticed some sort of strain in his soul, as though it was almost bursting in its efforts to contain something it wasn’t ready for. Now, it looked to be in much better condition, even though his soul wasn’t that much larger than before. There were still some slight signs of strain, but it was no longer constant, and it didn’t appear that his soul was in any trouble. Bloated perhaps, versus close to bursting.

In addition, the pain had never returned. He had been constantly worried it would suddenly reappear, but it never did. The same intrusive thought would return each time he began cultivation, though.

Myth – 0.00%

He still had little idea what increasing the percentage would do, and he only had a vague idea that it would increase from creating items of “myth”, something he was rather far off from, in his humble opinion.

All things considered, he felt good as he walked back through the gates with Alaina, Luke, and Alex. He still didn’t tell them about his enlistment, but he wasn’t as ashamed as he had been before. Now he could actually defend the decision as his best way out, instead of having just foolishly signed the contract.

The coach dropped the four of them off at The Rare Tusk after giving them letters with further instruction, where he was excited to meet with David and tell him of his thoughts and conclusions. Unfortunately, it was late when they arrived, and he didn’t manage to catch David before heading to his room to sleep after a hearty meal. Its quality wasn’t as high as what he had enjoyed in the cultivation compound, but it still seemed to taste better.

He wasn’t picky – it was still far and away better than his usual fare.

Before he allowed himself to drift off to sleep – something he realized he hadn’t done in a week, given his cultivation, a strange quirk of the cultivation trance – he first read the letter containing what he imagined were his deployment orders.

Sure enough, as he scanned the letter he felt his heart drop into his stomach when he realized he was being shipped off to an outpost tomorrow morning. He had come to terms with his situation, and now genuinely believed that it could be much worse than it was, but he was still overcome with a feeling of anxiousness and anxiety when he realized how quickly things were proceeding.

It made sense, there was no reason for Starspire to continue paying his housing and meal costs when they could get him shipped off and working immediately. Would he even get to have that talk with David? He had been looking forward to that…