Sam woke up without a pounding headache. Which made sense because even though the free drinks from yesterday bypassed his strongest barrier against getting drunk, the fact that he couldn’t actually get drunk just yet prevented him from seeing much utility to drinking much of the, admittedly, pretty sweet wine. So his third and last glass ended up being just before the last slice of cake. And since the picnic carried on for quite a while after that and Felix got very drunk indeed, his imbibing last night was quite the picture of temperance as far as Sam was concerned.
Although, he did end up forcing the three of his friends to promise him that sometime in the future, when the prospect of having a day off wouldn’t be a moral failure in Sam’s eyes, that they’d all get well and proper drunk together. The definition of which, to be decided at said time in the future.
But for now, there was no sense worrying, or dare he think it, looking forward to the hypothetical future in which Sam was confident enough in himself and his progress that he allowed possibly two whole days to be written off. For now, there were the very real seven days that stitch up each week and stretch through the remainders of the school year in which he would have to try and make up for his deficiencies compared to his peers.
Sam had already made a mental list about where he should hope to be in half a year’s time in relation to the current first years. The list’s stated purpose was to calm his worries by pointing out that it was more than reasonable to be behind on some matters. But at the same time, that catching up on them was also very feasible. It worked, if just barely, and only because he shared said list with his friends yesterday and they all nodded along with his optimistic conclusions.
Item one on the list was, of course, Sam’s level, which had probably only barely began to move from zero. His goal, as dictated by both Dan, in order for him to be able to start imprinting and Farris, in order for him to be able to start learning about threads, was to reach level 1 by the end of the year. An impossible task on the face of it because it took the average Terran about three years to make up their first level. Of course, Sam wasn’t your average Terran. He was blessed (brute luck as a result of Web-Web’s intervention, which by itself was guided by brute luck) with the most perfect pathways a person could have.
But so was Sarah, and it took her more than two years to make it up a level. But, from that despairing evidence, rose a much more hopeful conclusion. Because Maurice took less than two years to reach level 1, only a year and a half. And the only empirically objective difference between the two was the matter of age. Maurice was older, so it took him less time to cultivate to a higher level. Said conclusion was further strengthened by past observations of the older Terran Taken, which would have been very useless during the Integration War if it took them three years to reach level 1 (although they had the added variable of being able to get energy from felling the monstrous Harots invaders).
So reaching level 1 in half a year’s time was not out of the realm of possibilities for Sam. He was, after all, a talented and intelligent young man. Much faster than a twelve years-old at grasping the concepts of gathering being taught to him and much more determined to make use of them. In short, getting to level 1 before the second year started was a valid and attainable goal.
Crisis of faith averted. As long as he didn’t focus on the fact that the average level at the beginning of year two was much closer to 3 than it was to 1.
The second goal on the list was making up the gaps in his knowledge. A goal which on paper appeared rather easy because Sam only had half a year of catching up to his peers to do, the additional aid of an older, more experienced mind, and private instruction for the most difficult and time-consuming subjects. The problem arose when you took into consideration that his mind was also more rigid than his peers’, more resistant to thinking in terms of magic being a possibility. Add to that, the fact that in all his private lessons so far, he has yet to be taught anything on the academy curriculum and only stuff that every new cadet is bound to know.
Those two aspects made the attainability of the goal of starting next year with the same knowledge base as everyone else’s, much more uncertain. It was a question of whether his own personal qualities and prior knowledge were sufficient to bridge the gap; provided Sam put in as much effort into it as possible (and wasn’t that the single most recurring question on Sam’s mind ever since his first night here?). But there were already plans made, and a schedule designed with the intention of meeting this exact goal, so there was no rationality in continuing to worry about it as long as Sam adhered to them.
The third and fourth goal were directly intertwined and also happened to not worry Sam all that much. There were also the most amorphous of his goals, having no definite end line or even an understanding of where his peers were in contrast to him. The third was getting in combat shape and the fourth was getting to be combat ready. In essence, getting fit and knowing how to fight. Getting in shape didn’t worry him. As long as he continued to follow Sarah’s guidance, there was no room for doubt or individual thinking. He had six workouts a week, with six more planned somewhere on the horizon. There really was no place for thinking as long as Sam kept to the schedule. Exercise was exercise and muscles were muscles.
The only possible cause for concern between the two goals was him becoming a good fighter. But the concept of knowing how to actually fight was so alien to Sam that he couldn’t see what more he could do other than attend Lin’s lessons. Sure, in due time he would hopefully be competent enough to start sparring with other people and embark on his own path of spearfighting. That would require some independent thought, but he figured that by that point, he would have some more sense of what was required of him as a fighter. He had no idea how good he might be with a spear, and combat in general, in half a year (or how bad he might remain) and also no idea how good was the average Terran cadet, so he left the duty of judging his progress to other people.
Then, there was the unsaid fifth goal, which was, in fact, the only one that truly mattered and was the culmination of the previous four. Sam being strong. A lean, mean killing machine capable of serving death to the Epirak invaders like the best of them. And since Sam wasn’t going to go anywhere close to an Epirak for at least three years, that hopefully left enough time for him to transform from someone who was immediately going to get himself killed to someone who shows an inkling of the person he would have to become eventually.
So those were his four stated goals for catching up with his peers: Level (really far behind, but on the way there, hopefully). Knowledge (also really far behind, but of a different sort. One that hopefully left him a chance to leapfrog ahead of the competition). Fitness (hopefully, two workouts a day in a year’s time). And combat skill (being deemed good enough compared to his peers, hopefully before graduation). All culminating in his fifth unstated goal of becoming strong and combat capable (which was too abstract to receive a deadline and was thus, one would hope, not worth worrying about).
“Now…” Sam muttered to himself as he went down the stairs, ready to begin his day. “The only question that remains: Is where does being a good person factor into this? What happened to being moral Sam? You got the chance to play a hero and suddenly all that matters is how good you are at swinging a sword? Sure, that’ll carry you pretty far as long as your opponent is literal evil, but what happens in the day after when the question of making the correct ethical choice is back on the table?”
That was indeed a troubling line of thought, and he hadn’t even gone down the even more thorny road of the interaction between him as a personal combatant of great strength and the civilian government who had no material method to control him. Trouble, trouble… he pondered. Then he saw Sarah waiting for him outside and the solution hit him. So simple, so elegant, so plagiaristic.
“Sarah, I just had the most brilliant of thoughts! My future path has revealed itself to me and I now know what is required of me in the way forward. The proper conduct of life has—OK, if you’re not going to stop me, then I’m just going to keep talking forever and eventually I’ll run out of bullshit to spout.”
Sarah laughed, and they began walking towards the mess hall where Felix and Yvessa were already waiting for them. She texted him earlier in the day, right after he woke up (literally right after) and “asked” him if he wanted to go to breakfast together. Apparently, on Sundays, she had an online lesson first thing in the morning, so she couldn’t keep to her regular workout schedule. “What did you discover then?” she asked.
“The unexamined life is not worth living! Now, I know what you might be thinking, ‘Socrates? Phooey! Don’t you have anything even more cliche in your arsenal of morning greetings?’ But that’s just the thing, the joke works this time! You see, I was just in the midst of being troubled by worries that by being so consumed with materialistic pursuits in the form of attaining great strength that I’ll stray from the path of a proper moral person. Due to not keeping my virtuous senses sharp, of course, and failing to deduce the correct moral choice to make in a hypothetical future moral dilemma.”
“Sam.”
“Yeah?”
“I just got out of two hours of an incredibly dry and technical lesson, so please use more digestible words if you want me to understand you.”
“Agh! OK… let me think how to say this. I’ll start from my joke and make my way backwards if that’s alright with you. So, it all solved itself when I realized that for the first time in my life, I have made some friends. That’s the joke. Me having friends. For the first time… You get it. Anyway, how we get there, to the joke, is that you, my friends, are the solution to my problem of not being as focused on normative questions in the last week as I’m used to. By combining my leisure time, that is the time spent in your company, with pondering time, I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone. Have fun while also working on unraveling the mysteries of life.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Ah ah. And how are you planning on doing that?”
“Well… do you remember three days ago when we spent the entire breakfast listening to me spreading dogma concerning referendums?”
“I seem to recall something like that, yes.”
“So that’s pretty much the gist of it. I’m going to just spout off nonsense concerning any field that’s not of the pure sciences and you’re going to be my captive audience. Subject to all of my declarative whims.”
“So you just want to talk to us philosophy?”
“Pretty much. But really any of the social sciences or humanities is fair game as far as I’m concerned. Except the arts, those guys are hacks. But besides them, anything goes. As long as you don’t contradict anything I’m saying, of course.”
“Oh, that’s alright then, you do enough of that for the three of us. I can’t wait to tell Felix the good news that he’s going to be privy to some more elucidating discussions with you.”
“Didn’t you just say not to use complex words? ‘Elucidating’ is pretty damn heavy.”
“What can I say? Conversing with you has been the perfect balm for my stilted and weary mind. I’m feeling positively reinvigorated by this ‘take’ of yours that I’m able to put all the dreariness of this morning’s lesson behind me.”
Sam laughed. “Be careful that these words won’t come back to bite you in the future. I can be very dry myself if I put my mind to it. Not to mention my similar effects on persons of the opposite sex.”
“Ew!” She lightly slapped him on his shoulder.
Sam took the hit with dignity, his newly formed muscled at work in protecting his soft inner shell. “What course was that anyway? And why are you even having online lessons? Not that I’m against those, of course, but it seems pretty useless seeing as all the students are living on campus.”
“That’s just the thing. The course is shared between all five Terran Military Academies for combatants. There aren’t enough people in any given academy interested in it to warrant in person classes. Although, that might not be completely true because this year, the course had two available time slots. What is absolutely true is that the professor has no interest in getting out of her house and coming here in person.”
“She’s that good? Or is the subject that niche?”
“A little of both. She’s teaching dwarven patterns and despite being Terran and never going to Pyllan to study, she’s regarded very highly by the dwarven academia.”
“Question. Why is dwarven patterns a niche subject?”
“Because they are only used in artifice and the dwarven methods of magical engineering, they are much less useful, bordering on useless, compared to other, more common patterns when it comes to anything else. For example, their method can’t create the pattern we use in order to enhance our passive gathering and can only achieve that same result by creating an artifact with a much more complex set of patterns.”
“So why are you studying that, then? You’re not planning to go into artifact creating, are you?”
“Not at all. But I simply think that having as broad an overview of knowledge as possible is only going to help me in the long run. What if it turns out that the dwarven methodology for patterns is also useful for something else? Say surgery perhaps?”
“Is that a complete hypothetical, or do you have some concrete hopes?”
“I’m not sure. My point is that dwarven patterns are the best at what they do and that is imprinting objects. That is, imprinting not of the self. Currently, imprinting another living being is impossible, but what if the dwarven method holds the key to doing just that? There’s been patterns that have proven successful in combating cancer, but imprinting them requires a master’s hand so the average person won’t ever be able to complete them. Can you imagine it? Going to an oncologist and instead of being told that your best treatment for pancreatic cancer is to somehow climb two levels in three years. You’re told that they’re just scheduling you for a couple of sessions of imprinting, after which the pattern will get you healed up by itself. And that’s just the civilian applications! One of the most important military consequences is that once secondary imprinting is possible, we won’t have to train low-level combatant in imprinting if they aren’t interested in tackling the higher levels.”
“Hmm…. That does sound great, even though I still have no idea what some of the stuff you’re talking about means. But… I’m guessing that since the course only has two offerings across all military academies, that most people don’t share your optimism regarding the discoveries to be made by studying the subject.”
“Well… dwarven patterns are really, really hard. I’ll make a reminder to show you the material we went over in the first lesson in a year’s time. Once you already have the required theoretical background to theoretically understand what they’re talking about.”
“That’s very nice of you to see me as being anywhere close to where you are knowledge wise in a year’s time.”
“Not close. Ahead. It took me until lesson three to finally understand what she was talking about.”
Sam held his hands up in defeat. “So what’s the course officially called? So that I won’t even have to waste a second in the future wondering whether to take it or not. I could just skim its name on the list of elective courses and not even bother opening its syllabus.”
“Theoretical Framework of Dwarven Designed Patterns and Their Underlying Foundations and Principles. Yeah… The title is the least obtuse thing about the course.”
“You’re making it very hard for me to feel even a tiny bit of sympathy for you. Even as someone who doesn’t know anything about anything, I could tell that the course was going to be a total slog by that name alone.”
“No sympathy required. I knew what I was getting myself into and despite the difficulty, I’m glad that I’m taking the course. It’s important to broaden your horizons as much as possible before you get too set in your ways. ‘Experience all that the world has to offer before your core becomes ethereal,’ as they say.”
“Oh god… Why did you have to go and remind me about that whole muddling business? I managed to forget that it existed just fine up until now. Great, that’s just another aspect in which I have to catch up to everyone else here.” They had reached the mess hall by now, so he grabbed a tray with a weary sigh and waved it at her despondently.
“You’ll be fine,” she said with a smile, but before she could elucidate her point, they had to split up according to their meal preferences. “Natural muddling is fast enough of a process for most people not to bother with the active method,” she continued once they met back up and went about finding their friends. “Even for soldiers like us. After all, pretty much everyone has an ethereal core by the time they’re forty, and people like us, who make much more frequent use of their cores? Even earlier than that. Didn’t Dan explain that to you?”
“Yeah, he did. Right between sips of boiling hot tea which he found out in the past made his core’s muddling much faster.”
She shrugged before sitting down next to Yvessa. “Everyone has their habits and mannerisms. Dan found something that was easy to do frequently and believes that it gave him a tangible improvement in return. I wouldn’t pay that any attention if I were you. You have plenty to focus on already.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Felix asked. “Sarah’s insane electives choices?”
“No, that was the previous topic of discussion. Right now, I was telling Sam that he shouldn’t waste energy worrying about muddling.”
“Why not? Maybe he’ll find out that he’s really good at it and that’ll help him get an edge over everyone else. Come to think of it, Yvessa, didn’t you say that muddling was the one subject in which you were definitely better than your—otherwise perfect—best friend?”
Yvessa nodded. “Erianna always had a spot of trouble with muddling. It took her an extra month after making level 1 to reach fragmented. And after that, she wasn’t making any spectacular progress towards malleable. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? She’s cultivating plenty fast as it is, so it’s not like she needs the extra speed from having a more muddled core.”
“Sure, but what about our boy Sam here? He has all the same gifts that your Mary Sue of a friend has: pathways, Thread-Weaver and what not. But he might also be good at something she sucks at. Which would make his cultivation speeds event faster than ‘plenty fast’ and god knows that he’s gonna need it. What? Why are you all looking at me like that? I’m just telling the truth. He might have a real talent for the stuff and it’s stupid to dismiss its usefulness outright.”
“Are you good with muddling, then?” Sam asked.
“Better than anyone else at this table, for sure. I checked. One day after level 1.” He pointed at Yvessa. “Sarah: three days before, or so she thinks at least, definitely less than a week. Yours truly, on the other hand? A whole week and a half before I made level 1. And I’m already almost halfway to malleable if I’m not wrong. So that’s pretty damn good, even for someone who’s already as amazing as I am.”
Yvessa rolled her eyes at him. “And which one of us was it that made it to level 2 first?”
“That’s different! You come from a privileged background, so obviously you’ll have better results when the distribution of resources isn’t equal between us. We can only judge based on achievement since starting in the academy together, i.e. who makes it to level 3 first.”
“You just brought up being the first to reach a fragmented core.”
“Anyway, Sam, I really think that you should give active muddling a go once you have your bearings, say, when you’re close to level 1. You might find that it comes really easy for you, and that in an hour of muddling a week, you’ll be able to get what most people get of their proscribed habits in a year. There’s no reason to give up a possible advantage, is there?”
“I guess not,” Sam said. “How does one even muddle their core anyway? Dan didn’t explain the process back when he told me about it.”
“Oh, it’s real easy. You just focus on your core and—”
“Don’t,” Sarah said. “You’re just going to get him dizzy and give him a headache.” She turned to Sam. “I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t give active muddling a go yourself eventually, but you’re just going to waste time trying it anytime soon. Honestly? There really isn’t a reason to do it before your core becomes fragmented. So, if I were you, I’d wait until then.”
“Yeah, come to think of it. I actually agree with her. Plus, if you’re actually good at it, then you might make it to fragmented more than a week and a half before you reach level 1. We don’t want that.”
“That’s great,” Sam said. “So we just brought that topic back up again, only for it to be immediately shut down and delayed for a future showing. That’s just great.”
“Look, Sarah’s right. If you try to muddle right now, you’re only going to give yourself a headache, but if you want me to explain the process, then I would be more than happy to.”
“Nah, that’s alright. After all, we only started on this topic because I complained to Sarah after she made me remember that muddling exists after I pretty much forgot about it.”
“Probably the smartest course of action,” Yvessa said. “Muddling is arguably the subject in which you have the least to catch up on. So there’s no reason to start chipping away at it right now. Plus, muddling is really not a big deal. Even Felix, despite what he might claim, doesn’t spend all that much time doing it.”
“It’s true…” Felix nodded. “Which, again, just goes to show how great I am.”
“Yes, I think if there’s one thing that we should all take away from today is to remember how great Felix is.”
“I’m sorry.” Sam cupped his hand next to his ear. “Did you say ‘how gay Felix is?’”
“Ha ha, great joke.” Felix didn’t laugh. “Maybe next time she’ll be speaking English and it’ll actually make sense.”
“Maybe next time you’ll be less gay and it still wouldn’t.”
“How does one go about being less gay?”
“Hm… I don’t know… Fuck less dudes?”
“Surely it would still leave me the same amount of gay. A person in a committed monogamous relationship isn’t any less gay than someone who sleeps with a different person every day.”
“That’s true… he got me there.”