– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 217, Season of the Rising Sun, Day 91 –
Terry sat in his cell and focused on the prickling sensation in his mind. For the past weeks, Terry had made it a point to take time for practicing his mana control beyond the mana-blocking effect of his cage.
To Terry’s amazement, the sensation became more and more detailed. If Terry closed his eyes, he could still sense the area outside. It wasn’t like eyesight. It wasn’t like his mana sight or normal mana sense either. Whenever Terry had used his mana detection field to detect manaless projectiles or concealed opponents, he had received a rough idea of his mana being disturbed through his mana sense.
“Wait…” Terry woke up from his state of deep contemplation.
How did I sense manaless projectiles with my mana detection field?
Terry crossed his arms.
It makes sense that I can perceive concealed opponents. The very fact that they are concealed is evidence that they are using mana and therefore my mana should react. A mage’s body creates resistance for mana naturalized by me. Normally, their own mana pool would shield them and they would subconsciously try to wrestle the mana from me.
It also makes sense for some materials that carry an affinity with mana, or some active or residual mana charge.
Mana-interference from a magic item? Normal.
From a mana-osmotic material? Also normal.
But a plain rock? Terry looked at the pebbles that Damian had allowed him for his training. Afterwards, Terry looked at the balls on the side of the transparent cell. Or a rubber ball? Is it normal that all of them interact with mana?
Terry shook his head slowly.
“How did I never notice this before?” Terry wondered out loud.
Because I was too distracted by the direct sensation of moving mana. Or how I could use it. I never paused to wonder why my mana was being disturbed in the first place.
Terry closed his eyes again.
But this…
Terry felt a prickling impression of the area outside the cage. He felt everything. The closer it was to Terry, the stronger and with a sharper impression. Weaker and more dull the bigger the distance. Terry also noticed that the mana concentration affected how much detail he perceived.
It would have been one thing if this impression had been limited to magic items, but it wasn’t. Terry had almost missed the significance of it. At the beginning, Terry had only been focused on finding his magic items. Once found, he had been too excited to notice any open questions.
Fortunately, Terry had enough sense to not blindly attempt retrieving items at a distance and stopped to give the way forward some more thought. Even if he could interact with his equipment from a distance, how was he supposed to use it without messing everything up?
As long as Terry was still testing the waters, the tingling sensation continued and eventually, Terry was hit by the realization of how strange this whole sensation was.
“If only Uncle Samuel and Aunt Brynn were here,” muttered Terry with a look of homesickness. After a moment, Terry frowned and grumbled: “If only I had my wasted notebooks.”
“Hm…” Terry tapped his fingers on his upper arms which were still crossed. He mentally went over the examples of mana-interaction with the physical realm that he knew. Until he reached...
Fire with fire-aspected mana.
Terry blinked. Involuntarily, he recalled a statement he had uttered a long time ago, on a day Terry would never forget: the day that Terry became a mage, the day that Terry discovered his only spell.
“Fire-aspected mana burns,” muttered Terry. Oscillating mana moves.
Could it be that simple? Terry blinked. Oscillating mana moves because it interacts with the physical realm? With everything? Terry lowered his head in thought. But interacts how? This tingling itch…
*Click*
Terry rapidly dispersed his mana outside the cage to thin it out and avoid detection by whoever was entering the outer cell.
Damian walked into view with an annoyed expression. “Were you aware that you’re carrying around a fiendish item?”
Terry blinked innocently and nearly forgot his intention of being tight-lipped when it came to revealing any intel. Instead, he eloquently blurted: “Huh?”
Damian chuckled and shook his head. “Damn, you’re really as green as fresh grass. We only noticed it on closer inspection too. We gave it a closer look because the effects seemed too good to be true. Whoever sold you that small blue crystal egg is not your friend.”
Terry looked at Damian with ill-concealed confusion. “Ohhh…” It wasn’t that Terry realized which item Damian was talking about, but that he remembered Blue, the lizan leader with his prophecy, backstabbing, and items that Terry had picked up from the corpse of the traitorous lizan.
Damian mistook Terry’s reaction and believed that Terry knew which item he was referring to. “Take it as advice from a business partner. If a magic item appears too good to be true, it is probably a trap. There is no bottomless supply of easily absorbable mana without a catch.”
Damian gave Terry an appraising look. “I figure the only reason that you’re still in possession of your mind is that the effect depends on the user’s mana control. It’s gradual. Even with your mana control though, you would lose eventually. The more mana from that egg in your system, the more intense the influence becomes.” Damian smirked. “Perhaps it’s your fortune that we picked you up. We’ll return the crystal egg to your belongings, but I wouldn’t use it if I were you.”
Terry did not forget to scowl at Damian’s last remark.
“Anyway, you’re doing… okay,” said Damian with a shrug. “If you continue your winning streak through the next four or five battle days, then you can earn your first item privilege.”
Terry reacted. “I’ve thought about it and—”
“I said if,” interrupted Damian. “The audience has a tendency to make contestants earn their privileges. If you had paid more attention to the difficulty shift, you might have been able to guess when your friend Nash earned his.” Damian yawned. “Who cares? You need to pay attention now, because I’m not convinced you can make it.”
For once, Terry listened closely. He had to admit that a part of him was offended and eager to prove Damian wrong, but the larger part of him was eager to get advice that might be of help.
“Did you notice that your battles are dragging on?” Damian asked pointedly. “How even beaten opponents never seem to take you seriously? Always trying to get in one last punch that might be their lucky chance to turn things around?” He shook his head and snorted amusedly. “I believe I know your problem.” Damian retrieved a book, or more accurately: a large tome.
Terry immediately recognized his first edition of the Path of a Mage.
“I concede that the Veilbinder is an inspiring figure…” Damian pulled a chair and then sat down. “...but I find it very difficult to derive any practical lessons from him.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I mean really. Take the Second Great Crisis as an example. What could we possibly learn from that?”
Damian cleaned the fingernails on one hand with the fingernails of the other. “Be lucky? I mean: come across enough weird magic that somehow fits into a greater plan to address your needs. Be industrious? I mean help everyone everywhere to increase your chance of randomly stumbling across powerful magic while saving someone’s kitten from a tree. Or flip it around and make the best use of whatever you have available? Sounds nice, but what kind of lesson is that? Might as well give the advice: Be ingenious!”
Damian crossed his fingers and stretched his arms. “Hardly useful or remotely insightful. Of course it would be great for everyone to be lucky or ingenious, but not everyone is and that has to be your starting point.” He shook his head. “No. For practical advice, I find this book much more helpful.” Damian took out another thick tome. “Step back.”
Damian placed both books into Terry’s transparent cage.
Terry subconsciously caressed his cherished copy of the Path of a Mage before examining the other book: ‘c.’
“Thanatos was famous for his essays even when he was still building our empire, but after he had retired from active duty, he truly dove into developing his own branch of scholarship,” explained Damian. “What you have in your hands is mandatory reading for leadership positions in our military. You can consider it the second fundamental pillar of our education system. The Proving Grounds teach us what will happen and the Inquiries explain why.”
Terry reflexively frowned and his distaste for the Thanatos Proving Grounds was very much coloring his initial opinion of The Warlord.
“The part that you are utterly failing to understand begins on page 359,” said Damian with an obvious invitation to open the book.
Terry inwardly shrugged and flipped to the page. The chapter title read ‘Rational Madness.’
“I suggest you give this a thorough read instead of clinging to the inspiration from unattainable legends,” said Damian. “If it’s too theoretical for you, we also have evidence to substantiate the theory. I’ve personally always found medical studies of people whose brains have been damaged in battle or accidents fascinating.”
Damian cracked his knuckles. “What you are lacking is what we colloquially call the Punisher’s Brain.” Damian caught Terry’s gaze. “Your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is dominating your ventromedial prefrontal cortex, even when it shouldn’t.”
“Is this supposed to make sense?” Terry blurted out.
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“You can think of the dorsolateral part as a detached decision maker – an embodiment of pure rationality,” continued Damian unperturbed. “The ventromedial part, by contrast, incorporates emotions. The latter makes you feel that you want to punish or retaliate, the former analyzes if it’s rational.”
Terry pointedly shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, waiting for Damian to make his point.
“What do you think happens to people whose ventromedial cortex has been damaged?” asked Damian.
“Don’t know?” Terry furrowed his brow. “They become more rational?”
“Depends on how you define it,” said Damian with a grin. “Many aspects remain functional. Intelligence, working memory, making estimates. Delayed gratification and purely cognitive tasks remain unaffected. The people become more detached, more interested in outcomes than in the underlying emotional motives. If that is your idea of how a rational person ought to behave, then yes.” He smirked with amusement. “Only then, you have fallen for the sucker’s trap.”
“Uh-huh…” Terry muttered half-interestedly.
“People with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex become indecisive, and when they finally manage to make a decision, they make bad ones,” elaborated Damian in the tone of a lecture. “They show poor judgement when it comes to other people, and they don’t shift behavior based on negative feedback.
Damian paused for emphasis. “Feedback like being played for a fool. Without that part of their brain, people may know the concept of being played, but they don’t know the negative feeling that comes with it, which is why they don’t shift behavior. Those people are doomed to live the life of complete suckers.
"Blindly following rational pay-offs ad-hoc without any ego or personal retaliation. That’s what Thanatos calls first-degree rationality.” Damian chuckled. “We also call that idiocy.” He chuckled some more. “Or RYI: Rational Yet Idiot.”
Terry rolled his eyes and read over the title again: ‘Rational Madness.’
“If you’re less impressed with dry evidence and prefer a narrative, we also have a children’s version,” said Damian patronizingly. “Once upon a time, there was a refugee ant queen that was lucky enough to arrive in her new hiding spot with a fresh batch of eggs.”
Terry wondered if he should be offended at Damian’s condescending tone.
“Before the eggs had any chance to hatch, the queen noticed that three eggs were already missing,” continued Damian. “And she eventually found the culprit – a large beetle. The beetle was large enough to pose a threat but the ant queen had a good chance of victory. Therefore, the queen chose to confront the culprit.”
Damian leaned forward. “‘But wait!’ said the beetle. ‘Think about it! If we fight here, then we will certainly destroy more eggs. There is nothing to gain for you. The eggs I've eaten are already lost and you can’t bring them back.’” Damian shrugged and leaned back. “So the ant queen let the beetle go. It was certainly true that a battle in her hiding spot would be costly for the ant queen. She would have to risk even more of her precious eggs or she might even lose her own life and all of her eggs would remain unprotected.”
Damian scratched his nose. “A day later, four more eggs were gone. Same exchange. Same result. The ant queen let the beetle go, because retaliation was irrational. It would cost too much with nothing tangible to gain.”
Damian pushed his hair back. “The third day, five eggs were gone. The fourth day, six eggs were gone. And so forth. Until eventually, the queen was only left with a single unharmed egg. The next time the queen went into stupor, even that egg was gone.”
Damian changed his voice to display insincere anger. “Enraged, the queen confronted the beetle." Damian shrugged with a sheepish expression. "The beetle pointed out that there was nothing to gain by retaliating now. The eggs were already gone and as long as the queen was alive, she could lay more eggs. Retaliation would only endanger that future.” Damian rolled his eyes. “Therefore, the queen departed without a fight.”
Damian clicked his tongue and grinned. “Of course, the beetle was not far behind and followed the ant queen wherever she went.” Damian yawned. “Even a child can tell what the ant queen should have done.” He pointed his index finger at Terry. “There is another layer to rationality. A second degree and even a third degree. Sometimes, first degree irrationality is rational from a higher perspective. Sometimes, madness is rational. An overreaction or even a self-harming madness is, at times, rational.”
“You mean like your blood debts?” retorted Terry skeptically. “From what I’ve seen, they can be quite stupid.”
“Oh, you picked up on that?” Damian chuckled. “Yes, blood debts are one natural conclusion, but the way you deal with your blood debts is essential.
“Rational madness does not include overestimating your own abilities. It also requires correct assessments of others’ reactions to your actions. The point is that if you can make a credible commitment to madness, then it changes the game.”
Damian switched to his patronizing tone again. “Do you believe the beetle would have dared to act like it did if the ant queen had a reputation for mad retaliation?” He paused to grin. “If the queen's reputation for madness protects her, then how is it not rational for her to act mad?
"Furthermore, odds are odds.” Damian closed his eyes for a moment and massaged his neck. “With any process that includes chance, the outcomes alone are not enough to judge a decision. There is always a chance that the ant queen will lose or lose too much, but that doesn’t make her decision to fight irrational. There is more than a single ant queen and there is more than one beetle in life.”
Damian opened his eyes and fixed them on Terry. “All in all, do you really feel prepared to say with confidence that our blood debt tradition has done Thanatos as a whole harm?”
Damian shrugged. “I concede that the principle can be taken too far. I’ve seen more than a single martial sect perish in their thirst for disproportionately avenging even the smallest slights, but that is just another layer of idiocy.” He examined his finger nails. “At some point, you have to reassess your priors. If the beetle turns out to be much stronger than the ant queen, then it’s plain madness. Just because madness can be rational, doesn’t mean that it’s always the case. Also…”
Damian yawned. “If the beetle is much stronger, then the discussion is practically moot. The ant queen is already a dead ant walking and only alive at the beetle’s whim.” He snickered. “A fan of the Veilbinder should hardly be the one to judge an insect for standing up to impossible odds.”
Damian stood up and returned the chair to the table. “You can tell my assistant about your thoughts on which items to use.” He glanced back at Terry. “We’re still in the process of checking all your items."
Damien pointedly caught Terry's gaze. "You have some strange equipment. I’ve never heard of anyone carrying that much tertium. I hope you can understand that we are a bit wary, especially after we have already found one fiendish item.” Damian searched Terry’s face. “There is also still the matter of those unretrievable items in your dimensional storage.”
Terry tried hard not to let his knowledge of the oscillating containers show on his face. Only Terry could retrieve his oscillating needles or containers, because only he could reclaim and naturalize the oscillating mana. He was in no hurry to clear that up for Damian.
After Damian had left, Terry returned to his training: Disruption discharges, mana foundation, spellwork.
When Terry was taking a short break to recover some mana, he could not help but glance at The Warlord. The image of the enraged dimensional mages in Arcana sprang up in Terry's mind. The speech they had given in front of the Guild after Arcana’s barrier had been sabotaged by the Preacher and his allies. Without being aware of it, Terry connected the different perspectives to the story of the ant queen.
I guess the Preacher failed to anticipate a Rational Madness response… Terry bit his lower lip. Even if I don’t agree with everything, it might help me understand people that think like that. Perhaps the Preacher would not have incited the wrath of Arcana’s dimensional mages if he had read the Warlord’s inquiries.
***
Terry subconsciously slowed his steps when he recognized one of the contestants facing him. “Again?” Terry glanced at the audience and wondered: Is it that they have a thing for having contestants face each other repeatedly or does it have something to do with the number of contestants in each tier or whatever they call it?
On the other side, Nash frowned next to his dwarven alliance partner. “If you can block him until I can get Shadow Bind working, we can win.” The dwarven woman nodded.
Terry had already dashed halfway across the distance before the dwarf’s earthen walls rose from the ground. Terry lamented his lack of equipment and that he could not simply step into the air. He burst his mana and took the obstacles in a forceful jump, only to be confronted by several rock spears.
Terry judged the mana concentration that guided the rock projectiles and decided that he did not require a disruption discharge. Instead, Terry compressed his Immovable Object structure further to make the spell structure more intense and stable. His spellwork overwhelmed the earth-aspected mana and the rock spears transfixed in the air. Terry grabbed onto the transfixed rock and propelled himself further towards his opponents.
“Shit, what are you doing?” cursed Nash. “Now I can’t target him!”
Terry was aware of the looming threat of Nash’s Shadow Bind spell. The moment Terry was about to touch the ground again, he unleashed a disruption pulse and immediately prepared the next. On top of that, Terry unleashed a layered disruption discharge towards his two opponents to crowd out the surrounding mana and make it more difficult for them to harvest mana for their spellwork.
Seeing that Terry was about to reach them, Nash shouted: “We surrender!”
“What?” exclaimed his dwarven ally.
Terry did not slow down until he grabbed a hold of the bewildered dwarf and flung her towards Nash. He eyed both of them warily with disruption discharges prepared.
“We surrender!” repeated Nash.
“Why? We can still fight,” protested his dwarven ally.
“I know him, he can take one of us out at least,” explained Nash. “The only way to lose as an alliance is if we declare it now.” He sent his ally a meaningful glance. “Then we can continue as a team.”
“Ohh…” exclaimed the dwarven woman and nodded towards Nash. “Okay.” She turned to Terry. “We surrender.”
Terry observed them coldly. “Go on then…” He was not surprised at all to discover cloaked mana movement soon after. “Always the same…” Terry sighed in his mind and instantly went back on the offense.
“Ap-Apologies!” “We s-surrender!” Both Nash and his ally stammered, obviously disconcerted and disgruntled with their failed ambush.
Terry recalled a passage from The Warlord.
‘Surrender is a privilege granted to those that understand their position. For everyone else, it is an object to be bought with suffering. A cheap surrender to them is an invitation for betrayal and rebellion. A warlord is wise to follow the strategy of forgiving tit-for-tat. A warlord may offer mercy, but if it is rejected, a warlord is to remember to display authority on when – or if – it gets offered again. In such cases, a price has to be paid. A price that increases with each rejection, exponentially with each betrayal. A slap in the face is to be repaid with a cracked skull. Cracking the skull is worth an injury to your fist. Whatever is necessary to bring true understanding of everyone’s position.”
“No.” Terry heard himself utter.
“Wh-what?” stammered Nash.
“Fine, then. Let’s fight it out!” shouted the dwarven woman.
“No, wait!” Nash looked pleadingly at Terry. “We all have more fights today, this is pointless. We surrender.”
“Until all contestants stop displaying an intention to fight,” said Terry. “I would have accepted your surrender but you tried to backstab me.” He dashed forward and hurled intense disruption discharges at his two opponents.
Under the effects of mana suppression, Nash and his ally barely managed to activate two spells. Nash equipped himself with a pair of shadow claws. The dwarven woman cloaked herself in rock armor and charged at Terry.
Unfortunately, for the dwarf, her rock armor did not carry enough mana to protect it from Terry’s compressed Immovable Object spell. Painfully, she smashed with all her momentum into her own immovable rocks.
Nash did a better job of engaging in close combat. For a while, he managed to put up a fight against Terry, but before long, Nash broke his own fist against an immovable pebble that Terry had left behind. Terry took off towards the recovering dwarven woman while Nash howled with pain.
Terry flung several pebbles behind the dwarf and then stomped the dwarf against the first. He burst his mana, kicked her feet away, and in the same fluent motion, he elbowed her against the next immovable pebble. Her skull cracked slightly but she was still alive.
Terry used a burst technique and returned to Nash’s position. He sensed mana movement and a shadow blade suddenly appeared from the ground. Terry was a moment too late and received a shallow slash wound on his chest. An instant later, Terry was on Nash and assaulted him with a barrage of kicks, punches, and disruptive palms. He dislocated Nash’s shoulder. He stomped on Nash’s foot and broke two toes. He rammed his elbow into Nash’s face and cracked Nash's jaw.
Terry abruptly jumped back and observed his two opponents. The dwarven woman appeared to have a concussion. Nash looked to be in tremendous pain. “Now, you may surrender.” He could see loathing in Nash’s eyes. Loathing… and fear.
Terry glanced at his own bleeding chest and sighed inwardly. He looked back at his injured opponents. Terry was not entirely comfortable with his new act. It still felt like beating down an already beaten opponent, but as long as a verbal admission of surrender was not the final end of a fight in the Proving Grounds, he was willing to give this new retaliating approach a try.
If the results were still in question on his first battle day after applying the Warlord's lessons, Terry had to admit that it was working on the third day. The incessant repetition of the same sequence of events – insincere surrender and ambush or insincere alliance offering and betrayal – had finally stopped. There were even a few battles in which Terry did not have to fight at all.
Terry's reputation had changed and some of his opponents surrendered before the battle even started.
Perhaps I can finally make some real progress… Terry looked forward to the battle day on which he could earn his first item privilege.
***