The next morning, Alex decided to sleep in - waking at eight instead of his usual five. Not that it did him much good; his sleep had been restless, plagued by stress dreams that left him more exhausted than refreshed. The confrontation with Yuma the night before had clearly taken a toll on his nerves. He wished he’d handled it better, though for the life of him, he couldn’t see how.
After breakfast and a morning run to stretch his legs, he found himself itching to log back in. He saw no point in going to the Sacred Training Grounds, not with his hand still mangled. He figured he could pop in later in the day to see if Fawkes had returned. Lying back in bed, he put on the casque and focused his thoughts on his Shard.
Moments later, Hunter materialized in the old speakeasy.
“Morning, Mort.”
“Goodmorning, sir,” said the bartender. “Here to resume your studies, I reckon?”
“You bet.”
“Anything I can get for you? Coffee? Tea, maybe?”
“Yeah. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. In fact, you know what? Scratch that. Can you make me a virgin Manhattan that still tastes non-virgin?”
“Coming right up, sir.”
Hunter sat at his reading nook and opened Fiore dei Liberi’s ‘Fior di Battaglia’. Twenty minutes later, however, he had to put it down. His heart wasn’t into it, and his mind was wandering.
“Mortimer?”
“Yes, sir?”
“I was thinking... can I actually practice here?”
“You mean your Skills and Abilities, I presume,” the bartender replied, immediately catching on. “Depends on what you have in mind. Actual progression is suspended while in your Shard. You can’t gain ranks in your Skills or Abilities here.”
“But I can still practice, right?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
A slow, crooked smile spread across Hunter’s face as an idea began to take root.
“I don’t suppose you have any glaives lying around behind the bar, do you?”
“I can create a wide variety of items, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mortimer replied, “though they’d be restricted to the confines of your Shard. You wouldn’t be able to take them with you outside.”
“Yeah, no, that’s not a problem.” Hunter’s grin widened. “Mort, how’d you like to be my sparring partner?”
“Oh,” the bartender said, realization dawning on him.
“That might now be as good an idea as you might think, sir.”
“Care to explain why?”
Mortimer considered Hunter's question with a thoughtful frown for a bit.
“You have read the first book of Achille Marozzo’s ‘Opera Nova’. Is that correct, sir?”
“Sure,” Hunter nodded.
“There’s an excerpt there that perfectly explains why sparring with me might not be the best idea,” he began, his tone cautious. “You see, my skills are merely a reflection of yours. In a way, I’m like a mirror - you’d be sparring against your own abilities, with no room to improve. If you make a mistake, I can’t correct it or show you a better way. That’s what a real sparring partner or teacher would do: help you refine, adjust, and learn from your errors. Without that guidance, there’s a risk you might pick up bad habits instead of progressing. Simply put, sir, sparring with me wouldn’t challenge you in the right ways.”
“I’m willing to risk that, if you don’t mind,” Hunter said. “Just sitting on my ass with my nose in a book won’t help me improve either.”
“You still won’t be able to receive any Skill and Ability progress,” the bartender reminded him.
“That’s fine. I’m more focused on old-school learning right now. If I can figure out how to actually do that Italian Master stuff, it will be more than enough.”
“In that case, sir, yes,” Mortimer said, polite and reserved as ever. “I would very much like to be your sparring partner.”
***
“En garde, sir!”
Hunter only had time to nod in reply; Mort was ruthless.
The bartender opened with a low sweep, which quickly proved to be a feint. As Hunter moved in to parry it with his own training glaive, Mort took a step back and launched a jab at his opponent’s head. Hunter, already too committed to the parry, felt Mort’s weapon stop a hair’s breadth from his face.
“Is that how I fight?” he asked the bartender, panting.
“More or less, sir. Feinting is a big part of your personal fighting style. Though, to be fair, the fact that you have been sparring with opponents of higher skill hasn’t allowed you to use it to its full potential.”
“Can we take a break? There’s something I want to look up in ‘Opera Nova’.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Mort, putting his weapon away. “Would you like a drink, too?”
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“Just water. Room temperature. Thank you, Mort.”
Hunter let his own glaive clatter to the floor and collapsed in reading nook’s armchair. Sparring with Mort was something he should have thought to do a long time ago. The man always knew how to match his pace and skill level, pressing him just enough. He also never seemed to tire.
The Shard had lost something of its cozy speakeasy atmosphere. Mortimer had made most of the tables and chairs vanish, opening up a big space at the center of the room to use as a sparring area. Hunter didn’t mind the change. In a way, he now felt more at home in his Shard than ever before, as if the changes fit his personality.
He turned to the book that rested on the table before him. They’d spent the better part of the last three hours trying to replicate the moves and countermoves depicted in the illustrations, to a middling level of success. What Mort had warned him about had quickly become very obvious. The bartender knew only what he himself did; he could teach him nothing he didn’t know already. What he could do, however, was help him figure things out.
Hunter had never had the opportunity to spar with an opponent of a fitting skill level, he realized. Most of the fighting he’d done before signing up to be an Aspirant was against monsters - which felt like a different thing altogether. And what little sparring had done with the other aspirants had proven to be of little help to his improvement, either. They were simply too good for him - even Inago.
Well, that wouldn’t be the case for long.
Studying the martial arts manuals had been another thing he wished he’d done earlier. Granted, he hadn’t gotten any actual Skill or Ability progression yet, but he could almost feel the neurons in his brain form new connections.
The fighting styles described in ‘Opera Nova’ and the other manuals were a far cry from what Elder Wroth had been drilling him and the other Aspirants in, but Hunter found he liked them better. Unlike the fluid, broad-stroke style of the White Cloud techniques, these ones felt more like chess moves and countermoves. Hunter couldn’t wait to see the surprise on Yuma’s stupid mug once he tried some of those on him.
Mortimer came to him with a glass of water. Hunter downed half of it in three gulps, then checked the time in his HUD. He felt he’d made a huge amount of progress, and it wasn’t even midday yet.
“Thanks, Mort,” he told the bartender as he handed him back the glass. “Mind if we spar for another couple of hours? There’s this maneuver I really want to get right before we stop for the day.”
“As you wish, sir. It’s not like I have anything more pressing to do, anyway.”
They picked up their training glaives again, this time Mort going on the defensive as Hunter poked at his guard stance, trying to find an opening. Feints rarely worked on the bartender, and never more than once. Frustrating as that might be, it was for the better. The more Hunter sparred against Mortimer, the more he realized that he’d been relying on feints as a crutch, a way to mask the flaws in his technique. Mortimer’s unflinching defense forced him to confront those weaknesses head-on.
An hour went by, then another. By the time Hunter finally called it quits for lunch, he felt he’d improved more in a single morning than he had in weeks. Each clash of their glaives had stripped away bad habits, forcing him to refine his technique until every movement felt sharper, more deliberate. He only wished that training within his Shard actually contributed to his Ability and Skill progression. Seeing those numbers climb would’ve been the perfect icing on the cake.
Still, Hunter made sure to keep Mort’s warning in mind. Sparring with the bartender was like sparring with himself, technique-wise. By itself, it would never be enough for him to really improve. In fact, there was always the risk he’d pick up bad habits and develop blindspots in his fighting style. For now, however, it was the perfect way to practice and digest what he read in the martial arts manuals - and there was still a stack of those to go through.
Just as importantly, Mortimer seemed to enjoy himself too. Since they’d started training together, he’d begun to feel more fleshed out, more like a real person. Hunter liked that. As convenient as it was to have the perfect manservant at his beck and call, it left Hunter feeling uneasy. There was an awkwardness in taking so much without offering anything in return.
Hunter thanked the bartender, promised to return soon, and logged out.
***
Waking up in his bed back at his room, Alex realized he was famished.
All the time he’d spent training and drilling recently had an unexpected side effect; his physical body outside the game had started to change as well. His appetite had surged, and he found himself eating more than usual, his frame slowly filling out with lean muscle. There was a newfound restlessness to him, too. An urge to move, to challenge himself physically even when he wasn't logged in. It was as if the effort he poured into Elderpyre’s world had begun to bleed into reality, driving him to push his limits in both realms.
And he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
“Have you been working out, Rulin?” Carpenter asked him later that afternoon in the cafeteria, raising an eyebrow. Alex looked up, pausing mid-slurp on his third bowl of chicken noodle soup, his appetite so ravenous that it had finally pulled her attention away from the paperback she’d been absorbed in. It was ‘Suttree’, one of Cormack McCarthy’s earlier ones.
“Ugh… I’m legally discouraged from answering, boss.”
“Yeah, thought so,” she shook her head. “You know, not my circus, not my monkeys, but you might want to think about adding some exercise to your routine here, too. The disparity’s starting to mess with your head.”
“Disparity,” Alex smirked, leaning back in his chair. “Careful, officer, you keep using big words like that, and people might start thinking you’re a nerd.”
“What can I say, Rulin? Some of us like to read instead of jacking off to Japanese cartoons.”
Alex had a retort ready, something sharp on the tip of his tongue, but he decided to err on the side of caution and let it slide.
“Book any good?” he asked as he went back to slurping soup.
“Stellar,” Carpenter drawled, not even looking up.
“What’s it about?”
“A guy who chucks it all - family, privilege, all that shiny crap - and ends up living on a busted-ass houseboat in Tennessee. Ain’t got much going for him, spends most of his days drinking, brawling, and hanging around with society’s finest rejects.”
“Jesus, Penny, can’t you read a regency romance or something for a change?” Alex shook his head.
Carpenter shot him a deadpan look over the top of her book, washed out blue eyes sizing him up.
“What, and miss out on all this existential misery? Hard pass. It’s bleak, sure. But there’s something real about it. Doesn’t pull its punches. Guess that’s why I keep coming back to it.”
“Think you could lend it to me when you’re done with it?”
“No chance. But I think I got a copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ lying around somewhere, if you’re in the mood for it.”
"Now that’s existential misery," Alex rolled his eyes.
“Hey, don’t go bashing Jane Austen,” Carpenter narrowed her eyes at him in an overly theatrical way. “You could use a little Sense and Sensibility yourself, Rulin. Might even knock some of that smartass out of you.”
Literary quipping aside, Carpenter had a point - both about Jane Austen and about adding some extra exercise to his routine. His brain was in full warrior-athlete mode, while his body lay in bed all day like a goddamn sack of potatoes. That couldn’t be good for his nerves either.
He put down his bowl, wiped his mouth on his sleeve – earning a scalding glare from Carpenter – and pushed himself up from the table with a satisfied groan. The urge to move, to keep pushing himself, was already gnawing at him.
“Guess I’ll start with some light stretching,” he said.
“You’re not seriously thinking about training on a full stomach, are you?” Carpenter chided, one eyebrow arching. “You’ll throw up before you even work up a sweat.”
“Maybe,” Alex shot back, grinning. “But what's a little nausea in the grand scheme of things?” He rolled his shoulders and headed for the door, already itching to get started. “Besides, would Jane Austen sit around and wait, or carpe that diem?”
Carpenter just shook her head, muttering something about idiots and their lack of common sense as he left.