“So how was the dwarven patterns lesson today?” Dan asked. “Did you still enjoy it like you did last week?”

  Sam nodded. “It was markedly harder. But it was still pretty interesting. I think that I might as well keep on with it. You never know if it might come in handy.”

  “Well that’s up to you. And Erianna, I suppose. Is she also going to keep at it?”

  “I think so. She didn’t seem dejected after the lesson today like she was last week.”

  “Alright, then I’ll leave it to you two. I’ve never studied dwarven patterns, so I have no idea how to combine them with the rest of your studies. That’d be up to you. But like you said, it might come in handy. And electives are elective for a reason. If you enjoy it and feel like it’s worth studying, then that’s good enough for me.”

  “I do. And as to how to combine it with everything else… I’m not too worried about that. Even if I never make use of it, studying it really helps me push my understanding of patterns further. And that’s always going to be helpful.”

  “Indeed.” Dan nodded and took a sip of his tea. “And it’s been very evident to me that you have been markedly progressing faster in patterns, especially the theoretical aspects of it, than in the other subjects we’re spending time on. Which is obviously very good by itself. But more than that, having a niche where you’re more proficient in won’t just help you catch up faster, but it’ll also help you in the long run.”

  “Like you with cultivation.”

  “Exactly. And it’s also good and relevant for what I want us to start focusing on today: combat patterns.”

  Sam smiled and leaned back. “Already?”

  “You’ve been ready to imprint them for quite some time now. Sure, you’ll have to re-imprint a fair amount of them once you reach levels 2 and 3, but that’s just how it goes. You can’t train in magical combat without making use of the most important aspect of magical combat. And I think it’s high time that you’ll start making use of it.”

  “Well I’m game. Just give me the list of which patterns you want me to work on together and which on my own free time. I’ll be done in no time.”

  Dan chuckled. “It’s good to see you’re confident in the matter. And I dare say that you deserve to be. But the meat of the lesson this time isn’t in simply imprinting the patterns. I want you to choose which patterns you want to imprint.”

  Sam frowned. “Come again.”

  “It’s up to you to choose which patterns you want to imprint.” Dan smiled and pulled a small binder out of his storage artifact. “Here, this is a list of… pretty much every suggested configuration of patterns I could think of. I took into account your current state, i.e. level, imprinting proficiency and so on. Farris also had some of his own input.”

  “It sounds like you already did most of the work for me.”

  “This time, yes. The point of the lesson isn’t to have you further work on your pattern theorycraft. But on your combat intuition and perspective. I want you to pick which patterns you want for the kind of fighter that you want to be. That’s the most important step in your combat training. It determines all else. Once you decide on a path, in the future it’ll be up to you to think up the best ways of making that path into a reality. But first, you need to pick a path.” He tapped the binder. “All the options are here. The rest is up to you.”

  Sam took the binder with a somewhat dour gaze. “So I have to choose from one of the configurations in here?”

  “No, you can make your own configuration if that’s what you want.”

  “And can I decide on patterns that aren’t in here?”

  Dan regarded him for a few moments. “I feel like you haven’t truly grasped the point of this lesson.”

  “I did. I just think that I might as well also use this opportunity to start on the next lesson.”

  “If that’s what you want.” Dan raised his hands. “I’ll still be here to go over your chosen configuration and make sure that there’s nothing wrong with it, of course. And don’t forget that you should feel free to ask me or anyone else for advice or thoughts. But the important thing is that you end up reaching a decision that you’re happy with, and that is truly yours.”

  Sam nodded. “I don’t think that’ll be too hard. So how long do I have?”

  “A week. And we wouldn’t be dealing with it during our lessons at all. It shouldn’t even take that long but… Well, I wanted to give you plenty of time to come to a decision. And I guess that now you might need some time for other aspects.”

  Sam gave him an apologetic smile. “I just want to make sure that I’ve covered all fronts, you know. Like you said, this decision needs to be fully my own. Gotta make sure that I’ve researched it thoroughly.”

  “Yes… well, I won’t try to dissuade you anymore. Just make sure to come to a decision by this time next week so we can start focusing on imprinting you with combat patterns. I want you to be ready to join a combat magic lesson in a month.”

  “That soon?”

  “No reason to wait. You’re already good enough in physical combat. And you won’t be reaching level 2 before the end of the year, at least. The only aspect you could be making significant improvements in until then is tracings. Which at the academy’s level of combat isn’t that meaningful.”

  “Alright. Sounds great. So if I come to a decision before next week, does that mean that I might be able to start going to magical combat lessons earlier?”

  Dan was struck speechless for a few seconds. “That’s… it’s up to Lin, I guess. If he’s fine with it.”

  “Alright. I’ll ask him on Tuesday.”

  “Still, you shouldn’t rush your decision. Take your time and really think it through.”

  “Obviously.” Sam nodded.

  “So I’ve obviously already made a decision about the overall direction,” Sam told Erianna after they had finished with their lesson. “Just need to really think through what will be the best patterns for it.”

  Erianna blinked at him blankly for much too long before raising her hand and swiftly bonking him on the head. “Are you an idiot? He told you to think it through. To focus on the ‘overall direction’ and not how to manipulate your choice of patterns further.”

  Sam waved her off as he opened the binder on his desk. “Sure, but I mean, the choice is obvious, right?”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah. Speed.”

  “Speed?”

  “Of course. There’s no way that I’ll make it to level 4 by the time I’m deployed to the front, right? Even with the extra year of Military Training, it’s just not enough time.”

  Erianna looked away hurriedly and said, “So?”

  “So the best course of action is to train to fight as though any hit I receive is a lethal one. Ergo, speed is the most important aspect for me to focus on.”

  “Alright, I’m not disagreeing with you, at least not so far. Not that I’m agreeing with you, mind you. But even so, speed is just a very general term. It’s all well and good to say that you want to focus on patterns that improve your speed, but it’s not as simple as that. We’re not in a video game with a single value for the speed stat after all.”

  Sam nodded. “Which is the specific direction I need to make a decision on. But once we get this far down into the reeds, I might as well also stop to consider the particularities of the patterns I use, right? And whether any improvement can be made to the general configurations that Dan had prepared for me.”

  “I just don’t think that you’re quite there yet, Sam. Both as in… having enough training and understanding. But also as in needing to worry about it just yet. You’re still level 1, for gods’ sake. Any pattern you imprint now is going to be obsolete in a couple of years. You’ll have plenty of time to worry about making the perfect configuration of combat patterns later on.”

  Sam gave her an understanding but frustrated nod. “OK, but if I do that, then I can just finish this assignment today, no? Just go over all of these configurations; see which one tackles the aspects I want to focus on the most, and pick that one.”

  “OK, and even if it does end that simple? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s meaningless. What have I learned? I already knew I wanted to focus on speed. I already knew the general direction of patterns I needed to have in order to do that. I can just search online for speed-focused configurations and probably find something that isn’t so bad in a top-ten list somewhere. That doesn’t teach me anything.”

  Erianna sighed. “Something tells me that I’m not going to be able to convince you.”

  “Probably not. At least not today. Maybe if it’ll prove harder than I thought, you might have a chance in a couple of days.”

  “How lucky for me. So I guess that until then I’m just going to have to help you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “What else am I going to do with the…” She checked the time. “Twenty minutes that we have until dinner. Sit here silently and watch you reading a binder?”

  “I mean…”

  “Fuck off. And move over.” She inched her chair next to Sam’s. “Let’s see what we have here.” She tried taking the binder.

  “Hey, I haven’t had a chance to look it over yet.”

  She sighed. “You can be really unbearable sometimes, you know that?”

  Sam pursed his lips downward, making a sad, pitiful face. “Does… does that mean you’re not going to help me?”

  She flicked him on the ear. “Let’s just go over it, shall we?”

  “Got her!” Sam gave the wall a thumbs up as Erianna rolled her eyes. They spent the next five minutes going over all the configurations present in the binder. Sam was forced to wait for Erianna to finish reading some configurations despite the fact that it was more than obvious that they weren’t suitable for him. She really mastered the art of hmphing and ahahing at the right spots to make the person waiting on her really annoyed.

  “Alright,” she said after they had finished, “so what have we learned?”

  “That you can be really petty when you want to?”

  “You’ve only learned that now?”

  “Also, that both Dan and Farris already recognized the fact that it makes the most sense for me to focus on speed. Like a quarter of the list is geared towards that.”

  “Well, like you said, the overall direction is pretty obvious. And it’s not like your own combat style is that unsuitable for focusing on speed.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Obviously not. I’m sure it’s purposefully the opposite.”

  “Right.” She nodded. “But, what kind of speed-focused configurations are most suitable for you?”

  “Well, I think the most important aspect to start with is lung—”

  “I’m thinking a bit more generally than that. Let’s start with the second choice you need to make. Offense or defense?”

  “Offense, obviously.”

  “Obviously?”

  Sam nodded. “Obviously.”

  “I kind of miss the times when you were a little less cocky and self-confident.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Fair enough.” She shrugged. “So offensive speed.” She raised her hand to cut him off. “Still staying in the general realm. Where do you think your offensive speed should be focused on?”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Don’t act like it’s a stupid question.”

  “Fine. Legs, then.”

  “Legs, why not arms?”

  “Because I care more about better maneuverability that my ability to attack faster.”

  “And…?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “The point of diminishing returns for imprinting the speed of your arm movement is closer.”

  “And…?

  “And what? That’s it.”

  Erianna shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. Alright, so we’re focusing on your legs—”

  “Obviously, I’ll still dedicate some patterns to my arms.”

  “And obviously you won’t just be imprinting patterns that are wholly dedicated to speed. We still haven’t left the general realm.”

  “God, I hate the general realm,” Sam grumbled. “Fine, so what next?”

  “So your combat patterns need to fit a style of combat where you’re focused on improving your offensive speed by increasing your maneuverability and the speed of your footwork. What’s missing from the overall picture?”

  Sam counted on his hands. “Patterns for improving the ability to train in such an aspect. Patterns for improving the thinking process for fighting in such a way. And… patterns for maintaining balance and not degrading your abilities in other aspects?

  “Floundered on the last step there, huh?”

  “It’s your fault for sitting there with a questioning and criticizing glance.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I thought that this was so simple… And that you had already made up your mind.” Sam threw his tongue out at her as she smiled and said, “The correct answer for what kind of patterns you were missing are those that would allow you to capitalize on your chosen type of speed in order to kill your enemy as fast and efficiently as possible.”

  “Well that was obvious.” Sam crossed his hand.

  “And yet you didn’t say it.”

  “I literally just explained the reason for that.”

  “Huh ah.” She gave a condescending nod. “So with that in mind, now you can sit down and think through the exact configuration of patterns that you’ll need in order to match your combat style.”

  “Finally.” Sam rubbed his hands together and turned the binder back to a page in the middle. “So I think the first thing I need to make sure is—”

  “Oh look at the time, I think we need to get going.”

  “There’s still a couple of minutes.”

  Erianna shook her head. “I really don’t think there are.”

  “I’m still going to be talking about this during dinner, you know.”

  “Sure, but then I’ll have other people with whom to share my misery. And my antipathy towards you.”

  “Keep telling yourself that you’re any different from me. Every time you bring up how I’m overstepping where I should be, everyone else just sighs inwardly.”

  Erianna laughed. “You mean to say that I’m as annoying and clueless as you are?”

  “More so. Because you’re not aware of that.”

  “Damn… so that’s why I barely have any friends.” Her eyes suddenly got misty.

  “Hey, come on now. That’s not fair.”

  “Why not? You always make jokes about how you didn’t have any friends.”

  “Yeah, ‘didn’t have.’ As in the past tense. Now that I’ve changed for the better, it doesn’t make other people uncomfortable when I joke about my past self.”

  “Have you changed for the better, though?”

  “Obviously not. But it’s not like you have any way to know, right?”

  “One of these days, when you’re famous enough, somebody is going to go digging in some old digital archives and find a treasure trove of information about you.”

  “Ha! Good luck with that. The only open source information about me available was my LinkedIn page. And even that wasn’t anywhere close to the first page of google.”

  “Who said anything about open source information?” Erianna smiled innocently. “Come on, let’s get going.”

  Sam smiled and followed her out the door. “I don’t know. I don’t think any of the institutions that kept private records about me actually managed to transfer their information to New Terra.”

  “Have you checked?”

  Sam gave her a pitying look. “Nice try. I bet you would just love if I did that. I bet that you had my network tapped for just this moment. As if! You think I’m going to give you even the tiniest of breadcrumbs with which to find out anything about my past self? Not gonna happen, lady. OPSEC rule 101: if they don’t know where to look, and you don’t look there yourself, they don’t know where to look.”

  “I’m glad to hear that you think I have any ulterior motives in spying on your internet access besides seeing what type of porn you watch.”

  “Princess! I didn’t know you were aware of what porn was. In all seriousness, I did look into trying to recover some of my personal accounts. No dice. None of them were even on the system, so I’m guessing that either they weren’t transferred at all. Or, more likely, they just didn’t survive the transformation to a different platform and infrastructure. No skin off my back though—well, except for the photos of my cats.” He sighed. “Yeah, that’s a real blow.”

  “If there were an award for the ability to bring yourself down all of a sudden…”

  Sam laughed. “Fine. Let’s go back to talking about porn.”

  Erianna quirked her eyebrow and was just about to say something when both of their phones chimed at the same time. They looked at each other. “I guess we have a meeting on Saturday,” she said.

  “Ugh!” Erianna groaned as the conversation kept its momentum going while staying on the same topic even as they left the mess hall. “You guys weren’t supposed to be so enthused about this! You’re just encouraging him.”

  “Well yeah, isn’t that what friends are supposed to do?” Felix said.

  Yvessa laughed. “It’s not like you hadn’t spent whole nights brainstorming the best patterns for you to imprint.”

  “I didn’t get into this level of depth until I was level 3,” Erianna objected.

  “I mean, Sam does have the equivalent of your average level 3’s knowledge about patterns,” Felix said. “At the very least.” He then threw his arm around Sam’s shoulder and squeezed tightly. “And we’re just so happy that Sam is finally big enough to start thinking about combat patterns. We’ve been waiting for this moment for almost a year. Do you know how happy I am that I no longer have to self-censor myself in case I say something that Sam wouldn’t understand. In fact”—he wiggled his finger towards Sam’s face—“maybe it’s Sam that ought to watch what he says around us now.”

  Sam nodded. “Could be. I’m not going to do that though.”

  “Of course not. Cause you’re an asshole.”

  “Don’t forget an ingrate.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Guys, can we focus back, please?” Sarah said with a clap, causing Erianna to groan. “We still haven’t settled on the best configuration.”

  Yvessa shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like we’ve been over the most important stuff. All that remains is for Sam to choose the exact patterns to fit his choice.”

  “Don’t forget modify them to suit him better,” Felix said with a smile towards Erianna. “That was the biggest point of contention.”

  “Right… Well, I’m actually not too sure about how useful that will be. But I guess it’s up to you, Sam, if you decide you want to focus on that. And if you have the time.”

  Sam nodded. “I’ll make time. The point is not to make sure that I’m as strong at level 1 as I can be. Who cares about that? The point is that I’ll start training at trying to be as strong as possible at each level from the get go. We’re all going to stray off the main path and pave our own way in regard to which patterns we use. Why not start now?”

  “No other reason besides time management,” Erianna said. “But that’s up to you. In any case, I feel satisfied that I’ve forced you to consider all the necessary obstacles and considerations. Sarah? You’re the expert when it comes to physical patterns.”

  “Sam’s plan does make a lot of sense,” Sarah said. “And it is very comprehensive and thoughtful.”

  “You guys were of great help,” Sam said.

  “It’s not as exact as some of the more detailed and professionally categorized configurations. And it’s not quite up to the standards of the Terran physical-biological system of specifications—”

  “What good configuration is,” Erianna scoffed.

  “But it’s good enough for anyone at our level of knowledge. I certainly didn’t see any glaring errors in it.”

  “A little too Terran for my thinking. You guys focus way too much on trying to match the magical to the physical.”

  “Don’t act like you weren’t encouraging Sam to think along those lines,” Felix said.

  “Just because I know that’s how his brain already operates. And it’s not like I don’t subscribe to the Terran school of thought. I just think that you sometimes try to adhere to it too strictly. In chasing theoretical perfection, you miss practical utility.”

  “When you say you guys, you really mean just Sam and Sarah, right? Cause I don’t go chasing any theoretical whatsoever.”

  Yvessa snorted. “What about the weekend you spent trying to figure out the best way to modify a recovery pattern to focus on the muscles you work the most during spear training?”

  “That was just good sense. Nothing theoretical about it. I’m sure the other races already thought about this kind of stuff long before they were introduced to the wonderful complexity of the physiological sciences.”

  “Or what about the time that you asked Maurice how they conducted the tests to see the difference in efficiency between patterns improving the lungs and patterns improving the heart?” Sarah asked.

  “That was just me being curious, that’s all.”

  “So you’re just going to have an excuse for everything you’ve done?” Erianna asked.

  “It’s the Terran way.”

  “Alright,” Farris said while drumming his fingers, “so I think we can finally move on to the main event of this meeting, yes? So, Sam, how are your preparations for choosing your combat patterns going?”

  “They’ve already gone, more or less.” Sam shrugged. “I feel like I settled on a configuration two days ago already. But since I knew that you would want to have your own input, I abstained from telling Dan and starting to imprint them.”

  “Also,” Erianna said, “Lin told him that it wasn’t going to change when he could start practicing magical combat with other people.” Sam clicked his tongue.

  “Well whatever the reason, I am glad to be able to have my own input on the matter.” Farris smiled. “Or at the very least, to oversee some of the decision-making process. So, what have you got for me?”

  “The basic direction is pretty obvious,” Sam said while twirling his hand. “I want—I need to focus on speed. Which is best served when it’s geared towards offensive actions. Blah blah blah, I’m sure you know the deal from that point on because I have a feeling that Erianna was working with the methodology that you instilled in her.”

  “Yes. Particularity the blah blah blah part. So assuming that the overall picture is crystal clear—”

  “It is.”

  “What do the minutiae look like?”

  Sam nodded. “Now this is the interesting part. I’ve decided to focus first and foremost on patterns that improve the basic physical state of the body. Two reasons for that: One, they’re not as heavy as the more ‘magical’ patterns, and they have relatively a much greater impact from a cost-to-utility ratio. Two, and, in my opinion, more importantly, improving the base state of the physical body offers me the greatest improvement in power in the long run.

  “Again, two reasons for that: one, every magical method of strengthening myself that I’ll have available to me—at least as a leveled—depends on the base state of my physical body. The stronger I am without magic, the stronger I am with magic. And the stronger I am with only magic that improves my base physical capabilities, the stronger I will be with magic that exponentially multiplies it by creating energy out of nothing.

  “And secondly, I feel that I’ll have the most space for improvement in these kinds of pure physical patterns. The science advances daily, and the effect of personal modification to suit each person is much greater than from the generally heavier and harder to modify energy-demanding patterns. So the sooner I start working on improving my ability to imprint these patterns, and my knowledge of how they work and how to modify them, the better.”

  Farris gave an impressed nod. “Hm… Well, I think it makes a lot of sense. Very Terran, perhaps. But carefully thought through. So, what specific patterns did you end up choosing?”

  “I obviously started with the trifecta of heart, lungs and blood oxidation levels. The exact patterns I chose don’t matter too much at this point, especially since there are not a whole lot of ways for me to modify them just yet. It was just a consideration of overall imprinting difficulty and how much space and capacity they required—fitting that with my other choices.

  “But, I did focus on a certain type of blood oxidation patterns specifically because Sarah clued me into some new developments from a couple of years ago that recently resulted in new types of patterns to improve blood oxidation being introduced on top of the general one. These are more location specific and build on the effect of the general one. My thinking is that I’ll eventually have three layers of these types of patterns. The general one. The location specific one at pretty much every point in my body. And a further location specific one for the spots I need the most; legs, arms, etcetera.”

  Farris raised his eyebrows in surprise. “That does sound interesting.” He turned to Erianna with a questioning gaze. “Didn’t you have a specialist invited to the palace a year ago in order to ask her about these patterns and help you in imprinting them?”

  Erianna blushed and looked away from Sam as he wheeled to face her. “Seriously? You kept saying how I’m straying from the purpose of the task.”

  She rubbed her nose. “Someone had to push back against you. No one else seemed interested in being a devil’s advocate.”

  Farris sighed happily. “Ah… Like uncle, like niece.”