“Since you are so eager to get started, Klarion, why don’t we begin by seeing if we can improve some of your stats with some assessments? If we can improve some of them, we can get a better sense of how hard we can push you in training.”
“Can’t we just jump right into the real training itself?” Klarion asked Alesin.
“You could,” Alesin said. “But it is equally as important that you get a sense for your own strengths and abilities as they are now. You are still so new to the System, and if you are anything like everyone else who is integrated, you likely haven’t pushed yourself as far as you can with any stat yet. Only once you do so will you, and by extension us, have a good grasp on what you are able to do.”
“Though these methods will be crude compared to what you will have access to later, having knowledge of what you are capable of will only increase your odds of survival at the Imperial Academy,” Rolfun added.
“Is the Imperial Academy truly that dangerous?” Klarion asked. While he could already guess it would not be easy, he did not think that he would be at risk of dying before he could graduate. Seeing both Alesin and Rolfun nodding in response to his question, it looked like he would have to revise his expectations.
“You’ll learn more once you arrive at the Imperial Academy, but yes, the risks you will be facing there will be significant, especially given that you are a member of House Blacksword,” Alesin said.
“But you don’t need to know any more about that tonight,” Rolfun interjected before turning to his wife. “Alesin, if you would like to start, I’ll check the wards and get everything ready for you to begin cooking when you are done.”
Nodding in agreement, Alesin stepped close and gave a light kiss on the side of the half-ogre’s face. Rolfun’s grey skin reddened and a grin bloomed across his face. Unbidden, Klarion felt a brief twinge of jealousy. Not at the fact that Alesin was married to Rolfun, but he had not been able to meet anyone himself in quite some time. There had been a brief period after he had completed his physical therapy and gotten started working with Doctor Halter that he had been able to go on a few dates with acquaintances of his family and even once or twice a blind date set up by his friends. Nothing had clicked, though. Every single one had not gone past a single date. Perhaps it had been him. And then he had gotten progressively more busy with work, leaving no real time to meet anyone new.
Banishing the thoughts from his mind, Klarion focused back on what he was supposed to be doing. Rolfun had set his pack down and was now going about the clearing, checking what looked to be markings of some sort in the dirt. Before he could look closer at them, Alesin stepped up in front of him.
“Alright, Klarion, we will begin with Intelligence. Let’s go find a seat and then we can get started.” She led him over to the tents. Reaching inside, she pulled out two simple stools. Setting them up, she indicated that Klarion take a seat.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the typical tools that we might use to work on your Intelligence. So we’ll have to do some simple riddles to work on them. They likely won’t increase your Intelligence much, but given how low your level is right now, any improvement will help. Are you ready?”
“Sure, but you should know. I’m only so-so at riddles.”
“I’ll try to keep them simple then. First one is this: I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?”
Klarion furrowed his brow. While riddles weren’t exactly something he spent a lot of time on, but this one didn’t seem to difficult. He considered each part. No mouth, no ears. Communication through something ethereal, something intangible. And the wind….
Klarion smiled as the answer came to him. “An echo,” he said, meeting Alesin’s gaze.
She nodded approvingly. “Well done. Now, here is one that is slightly harder: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What is it?”
Alesin was right, this one was a bit trickier. Klarion pondered what might work, before he came up with the idea of focusing on the imagery. Taking something yet leaving something more. His mind drifted back to him time on Earth. After he had recovered, he had gone on many hiking trips with his family and friends. The trails had been well kept and whenever they went up or down through the forest they had wooden…steps.
“Footsteps,” Klarion answered confidently.
Alesin grinned. “Well done, it seems that you might have a mind for riddles. Lets see if you can answer this next one.”
For about ten minutes, Alesin asked Klarion some increasingly difficult riddles. He struggled, but he was ultimately able to guess the ones that had no basis of specific knowledge or context. Alesin quickly moved away from those, however, and Klarion eventually gave in to complaining about how he could be expected to solve them. The sun elf simply said that sometimes the riddles that one cannot solve are the ones that work the Intelligence stat the most. After a minute of straight silence when Klarion wracked his brains for an answer for the latest one, Alesin finally called a halt.
“You have an agile mind, Klarion. That is good. With your late start, you will need to leverage every point as you grow in order to maximize your chances of survival at the Imperial Academy,” Alesin said. “Alright, why don’t we take a break from working on your Intelligence stat. Don’t bother checking your growth, if there is any, as we are going to go directly into Wisdom.”
“And how will we be doing that?”
“Again, since you are so low-level, we can will begin by testing your judgment,” Alesin said. “We’ll start with a thought experiment. Imagine you are the leader of a village, and you have two sick people under your care, but only enough medicine to save one. One is a young child with their whole life ahead of them, and the other is a skilled healer who has saved countless lives. Who do you save?”
Klarion frowned and considered the dilemma. Weighing the value of each life was difficult, but it was clear to him what Alesin wanted him to focus on. In regards to the child, it was easy to see the potential contributions to the village would be high. Indeed, they would have a long life ahead of them and the possibility that they could be trained or educated to fulfill a need that the village might need in the future.
On the other hand, the healer already has a lot of experience saving people from injury or disease, something that would likely always be a concern in a village of the Empire. To save the healer would mean that more people might be saved as soon as they were better.
With these thoughts in mind, for Klarion the answer would depend on how he weighed the possibility of future gains via the child against the certainty of the present usefulness of the healer. Given his own experience of suffering from a disease that no one in the hospital on Earth had been able to heal, and what the potential trajectory of his life now might mean for Earth’s survival, he was tempted to answer in favor of the child.
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But he hated these kinds of thought experiments. There was always another way if you looked hard enough. He had to believe that, otherwise if he faced too difficult an obstacle at the Imperial Academy he might give up. If he did, the Earth might well be doomed like the world that Franz had shown him in that memory. Perhaps just as bad, what if he was put in charge of making life and death decisions for others.
An idea struck him.
“I would save both of them.”
“Klarion, I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of this exercise. You can’t—”
“I would save the healer, and then help them in any way I could to then save the child.”
“That would not work,” Alesin began to explain. “The rule of the thought experiment is that you could only save one. You have to make a decision that saves only one of them”
“I can’t accept that.” Klarion shook his head. “I won’t accept that. There is always a way. There has to be a way.”
Alesin looked like she was about to say something else when she paused to just look at him. “This isn’t about the thought experiment, is it.”
“No.” Klarion stood up from his seat, stared out to the trees beyond the campsite, and ran his hands over his face. His fingers slowed as they began to trace his scars. “No, no it is not.”
“Lord, what is wrong?” Alesin asked, clearly concerned as she was lapsing back into the form of proper respect that both she and Rolfun had used we he had first arrived through the portal.
“That,” Klarion said, spinning back to point at Alesin. “That is what is wrong! Despite what you, Rolfun, and Franz have said and how you all have treated me, I don’t feel like a ‘Lord’. I am a glorified secretary with dreams of becoming a doctor who was kidnapped by criminals, almost killed, and then catapulted into this insanity! In three days, everything has changed!” He was practically shouting at the end, and the words just kept coming. “I told myself I would be ok! I told myself that I would be able to do it, that I could do what needed to be done! That I could save my family… save Earth...” His shoulders slumped, and he stared at the ground. Klarion continued, voice cracking, “But actually being a ‘Lord’; being in charge of making life and death decisions for others. I don’t know if I can…”
“Lor—” Alesin halted what she had been about to say when Klarion’s red misty eyes rose to meet her own. Rolfun had put down the cooking pot he had been setting up and seemed to be about to come over, but she subtly shook her head. Nodding, Rolfun turned back to what he had been doing, trusting his wife to handle it.
She understood the weight of what he was carrying on his shoulders, having seen other young nobles in House Blacksword deal with the same, though perhaps not to such a degree as having the future of an entire planet on their shoulders. She herself had to make such difficult decisions as Klarion was concerned about on any number of occasions in the line of her duty to protect the House Blacksword. Decisions that had not always resulted in the outcomes she had hoped for. So she told him what others had told to her when she had faced exactly what he was facing now.
“Klarion,” Alesin began, “no one becomes a Lord overnight, no matter their birthright. Each and every noble in House Blacksword, like the nobles in all imperial houses of the Empire, feels overwhelmed when faced with these responsibilities. But it’s not about knowing everything from the start. The whole point of the Imperial Academy, and why you are being sent there, is to learn, adapt, and grow into the role.” She reached out, gently setting her hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly in reassurance. “You are not expected to have all the answers right now.”
“But what if I never am ready?”
“I don’t see that happening, Klarion,” Alesin responded, her tone full of her honest thoughts. “From the information that Franz communicated to us prior to you coming through the portal, and what you yourself have shared, you have already survived things that most people never will. You have shown strength, compassion, and resilience in the face of what would have been certain death without Franz’s intervention.” She smiled, emphasizing the next point. “That is already more than what many of the nobles joining your class at the Imperial Academy will be able to say.”
“Really? But I thought you had said that I was starting off at a disadvantage compared to them,” Klarion said.
“Yes, you will be, in terms of both levels and knowledge,” Alesin agreed, but held up a long finger. “But they gained those levels and knowledge largely sheltered from the real world. You have already suffered and, based on how you have interacted with us so far, grown stronger for it. You don’t have to be perfect. You also don’t have to carry it alone. For now, Rolfun and I will do what we can to help you. And though we know little about what you will experience at the Imperial Academy, I expect you will find others there that you will be able to rely on.” Her voice softened even more. “Doubt is natural, but it doesn’t define you. You questioning your ability to save your family, to protect your planet—-that is only temporary, as you will continue to pursue strength as you push on anyway. You don’t have to feel like a ‘Lord’ to become one. It will come in time.”
Klarion stood still, absorbing what Alesin had said. While her reassurance didn’t completely erase his fears, it did soften the edges of the panic he was experiencing. He could only hope that she was right, that it was not so much about being born for a role like the one that had been thrust on him but growing into it. He still felt a bit small against the weight of what will be expected of him, but Alesin’s words had wantered the seed of resolve within him that he had planted within himself previously. He wasn’t, and wouldn’t, be in this alone.
“Thank you, Alesin. I appreciate it.”
Seeing that they were done, and that Klarion seemed to be doing better, Rolfun came over to join them. The half-ogre scratched his chin thoughtfully as he stared at Klarion.
“You know, Klarion, if your problems start getting too complicated for you, I could train you as a Berserker. That way, you wouldn’t have to think about all these decisions—you’d just have to smash everything in your path.” He shrugged. “Simple solutions, right?”
Alesin shot her husband an exasperated look, but Rolfun winked, clearly pleased with himself. Despite everything, Klarion felt a tiny, unexpected smile creep over his face.
“There it is! The breaking of the storm,” Rolfun said as Klarion relaxed a bit. He turned to Alesin. “Why don’t I take over for now? I promise I’ll have him nice and starving for your cooking.”
“Of course,” Alesin then leaned in close, making sure Klarion wouldn’t be able to hear. “Try not to be too hard on him; I don’t think the young lord is up to some of your more drastic training.”
As the sun elf made her way over to do the cooking, Rolfun rubbed his hands in delight. It had been quite some time since he had put a new recruit like Klarion through his paces. The fact that he was a blank slate, whatever that meant, made him even more excited to see what the young lord would be capable of doing.
“Alright, we are going to work on your Strength, Dexterity, and then your Endurance and Vitality.” He clapped his large hands. “Let me see what you can do.”
Rolfun began by running Klarion through some flexibility exercises. It quickly became clear his large size, for a human, had resulted in a more restrained range of motion that would need to be worked on. He then had the young lord move through some complicated movements meant to simulate avoiding an aggressive attacker while unarmed. Klarion’s speed was not bad, but he lacked a bit of coordination. Rolfun let him go for a few minutes longer before he held up his hand for the young lord to stop.
“I think I have a handle on what we will need to focus on over the coming days.”
“You don’t want me to do anything else? I spent more time working on Intelligence and Wisdom with Alesin.” Klarion rubbed the soreness out of his arms as best he could.
“No, that is fine. I just wanted to get a baseline for you. Being too tired will only make the Endurance and Vitality exercise I have in mind harder,” Rolfun turned to head over to his backpack, talking back over his shoulder. “Hold on a moment while I get it.”
Klarion watched as Rolfun pulled a small, black orb out of his pack. Standing back up, he came back over, hand extended but he did not release his grip when Klarion reached to take it.
“This last one is a bit different, Klarion. What I hold here is an item designed to work on your Vitality. Part of that is the infliction of pain on the holder, which will ramp up in intensity the longer you hold it. With how the past few days have been for you, it might be a bit much, however.”
“Well, what would you do if you were me?” asked Klarion.
“I would still do it,” Rolfun said right away. “Though the pain builds as you hold it, the point isn’t to torture you. It is to sharpen you. You’re going to face worse in the Imperial Academy and beyond. Holding this will not only potentially help your stats, but it will also show you how much you can take before breaking. Every second you hold it will make you stronger—mentally and physically. With everything you have shared with us so far, I think you can handle it.”
Klarion slowly nodded, “I will do it then.” While he wasn’t looking forward to experiencing the pain, Rolfun’s reasoning was good. And given everything he had experienced to this point, perhaps it would not be so bad.
“Good. Now, you are going to want to sit on the ground for this.”