On their way to see the duke the next morning, Adam reviewed the things he had learned from Szellem. As if hormones weren’t bad enough, he was also stuck with the maddening, old crackpot. Apparently, Szellem was imprisoned in his mind until he managed to no longer need System Assistance, a point he couldn’t precisely define. It could be until he reached a certain point with his Class Affinity, which had actually dropped by a tenth since he got his class, or until he managed to Distill or Evolve it. No matter which way he looked at it, he would be enduring the exasperating presence of his spirit guide for the foreseeable future.
For the other disturbing things in his life, Martin was escorting him to see the duke, and the only thing he knew for sure was that he would not be assigned to the duke’s children for some time still. This meeting was designed to clarify that decision.
Throughout his training over the past week or two Adam had repeatedly attempted to garner information about the kids from Martin and Ruth. His combat trainer seemed to think it was funny to hold his lack of knowledge on the children against him. He would drop hints, then later point out they were lies, maybe. Thankfully, Ruth was a bounty of information, although it was mostly rumors and hearsay. The only things he knew for truth were the children’s ages. They weren’t significantly younger than himself with Marcus at ten, and Abby at eight. He’d hoped to learn more, but it looked like he would have to wait until his actual work began.
Adam was startled to find himself sitting on a rather comfortable chair that dwarfed his smaller size. While he was lost in thought, they had made it to the duke’s study and been seated. Catching the tail end of Martin and Duke DeVille exchanging pleasantries, he realized he hadn’t yet missed anything. After his own exchange with the duke, the two of them updated the nobleman on Adam’s progress with combat and his trade skills, and then the duke moved onto their true purpose.
“My lady wife and I have spoken at length about your capabilities, Adam. Neither of us believe you are quite ready to have sole charge of the children.”
The boy took a moment to send a prayer to whatever god was listening. He knew he was in no way ready for a responsibility like that. Being in charge of his fellow orphans wasn’t his choice, it had been forced on him, and it took all of them working together to keep them all alive. Without better skills, and some levels under his belt, Adam suspected that the duke’s children would be beyond his abilities.
“We debated the possibility of having you work with my wife and the children’s current tutors and governess, but ultimately decided that that would slow your skill and level gain too much. Under those circumstances, you’d never be ready to take on the children in time for our plans.”
Adam was beginning to get a bad feeling, but Martin had moved far beyond that point some time ago. Experience with the duke and duchess had made him aware of their cavalier approach to power leveling.
“In order to get you ready in time, we are going to have to power level you. We would have already started you on this process a week or so ago, but we needed to find the right opportunity first.”
Adam had heard of power leveling, but it had been explained away as a suicidal tactic for anyone but the rich. Nobles had more practice at it than the merchant princes, but both employed it to some degree. He had no idea of how it worked though. His two best guesses were some crazy expensive potion that increased experience gain, or murdering peasants. He had a sneaking suspicion that it was the second one, not even taking into account the bias of the commoners towards the nobles, just the opposite one.
Seeing the duke was waiting for a response, although he had no idea what kind he was looking for, Adam went with the basic option. “As you say, milord.” He was trying to figure out if it was the hormones that made him both nervous and irritated, or if that was just what he would normally be feeling.
The duke smiled slightly at Adam’s answer, then continued. “Power leveling a Care Bear will be more difficult than expected, so we had to get creative. There are plenty of simple classes to power level. Almost everything that has a combat element can just be taken out to slaughter endless waves of monsters. However, in your case, we need you to practice all of your skills, instead of just those for combat. Trade skills are even easier; you just throw money at the problem, but again you need more than just those skills. So, as you can see, it is complicated, but we believe we have found an answer.”
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DeVille’s smile was that of a proud student solving a difficult problem before the class. It was less smug than Adam would have expected.
“See, stress factors into how quickly you develop your skills, as well as how quickly you level. That means that if you really want to see improvements, you can’t just have Martin stand at your shoulder every time you fight to keep you safe. You need to do the fighting yourself, and it needs to be difficult. Help can be provided afterwards, healing and such, as well as scouts leading monsters your way as long as they don’t do much damage to them. With trade skills, stress comes from short deadlines, distractions, new materials, and difficult jobs. So we can speed up your training significantly.
“We are going to combine both of those methods, but you need more than just combat and trade skills. You need child rearing skills. That’s half of the reasons I bought you. And if we can add increased stress to learning those skills, it will make you assimilate them even faster.”
Adam could see where Abby got her smile. At that very moment, it was the same one the duke was wearing. He also, finally, realized what exactly it was. It wasn’t quite the smile of a traditionally happy person, or someone experiencing glee, although they both played their parts. No, it was the smile of a psychopath. Someone who found their glee in the pain and suffering of others, someone happy to have found a solution that used another person like a thing. It was his realization of what that smile truly was that opened his eyes to the horror of what was about to happen.
He had a premonition at that moment. The upcoming power leveling would be the worst however long it lasted in his life, and, if he failed, he would spend the rest of his life trying to make up for it.
Had he or the duke looked to Martin at that moment they would have seen the same horror spreading across his face.
Blissfully unaware of the realization of his evil that was dawning on his two guests, Quentin Roberts Westbrook DeVille, Duke of Summerton, revealed his glorious plan. “We’re going to have you defend, provide, and care for a child while fighting a horde of monsters! We’ve already bought one. He’ll be here tomorrow. We have a few others lined up if you have any difficulties.”
Adam finally discovered a portion of what Mother’s Endurance did for him. The description of “Keeps a Mother going as long as needed” had always confused him. He had thought that it would be a boon to boost his stamina or maybe keep him in the fight long after he should have died or collapsed, but he had had no chance to really test any of those options. In truth, he wasn’t positive that it was Mother’s Endurance, but he couldn’t imagine what else it could have been. The feeling that was coming from his body was different than when a skill was in use, but something was stopping the bile that was trying to gush out of his throat. It wasn’t keeping him from being nauseous, but he couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, so he simply endured.
Between learning a piece of what one of his boons did, and the realization of exactly what the duke was hinting at, Adam was paralyzed. Next to him, Martin was no better. Never before had he seen this side of the duke. He didn’t even have the words to describe it. Apathy wasn’t strong enough, and evil couldn’t pinpoint the how. For the first time in his life he regretted saving DeVille. He’d saved the life of a monster, and now he was facing the consequences.
Martin shook himself from his dark thoughts. There was nothing he could do to stop this travesty of nobility, but maybe he could alleviate the erroneous nature of it. He and Adam had very little time before they would have to leave with whoever the new child was, and much to do.