Good news on breakfast TV. Theoretically. We civil draftees got more vacations. But still none in the first six months of our conscription. Typical. I was sleeping well again. Apparently my subconciousness had come to the conclusion that we were treated so well for the same reason you pay people working with very valuable and fragile stuff decently.
But it made me hope that the government had reason to think that this would be over in less than half a year.
People had segregated into their training groups for breakfast. Tribalism is deep in our bones. Almost as to shatter my convictions on age-old truths about mankind, Johanna waved and plonked down at our table.
J: Our group has been split up for today
W: Driven your trainers to suicide after only one day?
J: No. If I want someone dead I do it myself.
She was in a mood today. Better Werner than me. Scrambled eggs deserve to be appreciated without talking.
M: Are you sure that you have the gun essence.
W: What? Why?
M: Because it looks you have the grave or shovel essence.
Jokes. About essences. After two days. Man is ridiculously adaptable.
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J: Sorry. I am feeling incomplete.
Werner was heroically fighting down his urge to make a remark he wouldn’t regret for long.
M: Is there an eye essence?
J: Why?
M: Because I’d rather be elsewhere if you had it.
Brave and staying on topic. She laughed.
J: Seriously. It is as if my ability were feeling lonely.
M: We have to assume that the (3 + 1) * 5 system is reality.
P: The doctor at my medical had at least two abilities.
W: Did you think about why we are getting essences from the Americans?
Changing the topic. Finally a sense of self-preservation, albeit with a delayed fuse.
P: Don’t they come from looting rituals?
W: Yes, but the first essences and the first rituals must have come from somewhere.
That was a damn good point. One of those awkward moment where multiple people were about to start speaking, decided otherwise and looked around ensued.
W: And what protected the world from monsters, I mean dimensional entities before that?
--
Training wasn’t better. We did the detection ritual. Without coins, dry-firing it, so to speak. You can check a ritual for correctness without setting it off, if you spend the cores. In fact you could set it off without effect. Only that you then need to rebalance the ambient magic. A drudge.
Johanna tried her luck when Mr. Maleux working alone today announced the last round of the day.
J: Mr. Maleux, what do I need to do to get more essences?
MM: You demonstrate that you are worth them.
J: How?
MM: Under the circumstances you’d have to show a looting power. Which you have failed to show.
J: But …
MM: Young lady my family has produced an essence magician in each generation from the time New Orleans was in New France. We never had a looter. We have a crisis going on. After that, it will be up to the German side. Now do that ritual.
Interesting. The Americans were first. And they needed looters.