Erianna didn’t have a plan for what to do once she reached level 5. She didn’t really need to. The new level didn’t afford her any spectacular improvement on existing patterns or better chances at imprinting new ones. The only preparation she had made was going over a list the Palace had sent her of which patterns were able to be improved now that she was level 5. Then she compared that list to the one Farris had made her (although, more likely, he just approved of the work some officers in doctrine development had done) and both of those to the one New Point Academy (really, Dan) had made for her.

  Then she disregarded pretty much all the patterns whose improvement didn’t enable her to train faster and better. Which left only seven upgrades that were somewhat urgent to do once she had reached level 5. Of those seven, she had finished five so far: The first two were the simplest, a simple upgrade to her existing main passive gathering pattern that didn’t require any re-imprinting. Just adding some new pathways that followed the slightly more accurate and minute design that, now that she was level 5, her magic’s quality was sure to be able to provide.

  The next pattern to be reworked was a passive sculpting pattern. A rather minor one compared to what was on offer in that department, but she didn’t need all that much help with her sculpting after all. So she spent about an hour carefully removing the now unnecessary artificial pathways that made up the design, with the lion’s share of that time going to actually making sure that she left her rebuilt pathway structure as pristine and solid as it was before she traced through it to imprint the pattern. Which just left using the skeleton of the now inert pattern to imprint a new one to do the same thing its predecessor had done with about a tenth or so more efficiency.

  The third pattern took less time but was actually much harder. It was a new pattern, one that was geared towards helping the inert energy in the core speed along its passive cultivating (provided, of course, that the core was full). It joined her other two patterns for that purpose, and together the three patterns might save her a week of work by the time she reached level 10. Well, maybe it wasn’t as meaningless, but it didn’t matter because they did have a measurable effect, especially since she was used to going to bed with a full core.

  A habit that took some adjusting after she came to New Terra. Since there weren’t a dozen different high levels on duty that she could harangue at the late hours of the night to fill her core. Still, unlike some people, she wasn’t anal about fitting in as many types of training into a single evening as possible.

  The fourth and fifth patterns were also completely new, although she did have to remove one pattern, which was no longer necessary. The fourth was a body-wide aid for nourishing, mainly aimed at neurological tissue and nerves, it was the first of its kind that she had imprinted, and with the complexity and intricacy of some of the pathways necessary for the pattern it was clear why. Especially since a faulty pathway of such design could cause much harm. Of course, failure was never an option, and the seven minutes she had spent testing the pattern in order to make sure it was imprinted correctly passed without a worry.

  And the fifth pattern simply built on the fourth one to allow it to better interact with some of her other nourishing patterns and improve their overall effect a little bit. This one required the removal of a similar such pattern that she had since she was level 2, and she couldn’t help but smile when she saw the relatively cruder work that her young self had made when imprinting those pathways. The secondary reason why she liked replacing her older patterns so much (after the obvious, it meant getting stronger) was that it allowed her to compare her present and past self. And see how far she’s come in such a short time.

  Still plenty far to go, she reminded herself as she sat down to work on imprinting the sixth pattern of the seven. This one should be very easy and almost as quick, and the only reason that she waited with it for the week and a half since she turned level 5 was that its effect really was negligible. A small recovery pattern that was suited to helping your brain be less tired.

  The Terrans, of course, had a whole biological and chemical explanation for what the pattern actually did, some of which Sarah had run her through. But all she cared about was that it was a two centuries old by now and had proven to work beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sure, she didn’t really need any help with being less tired, which was why she waited with the pattern. But it was still something. And will probably be of some help, sometime in the future.

  Half an hour later she was done imprinting and barely a minute after that she was content that the pattern was imprinted perfectly and started tracing through it to let it run continuously. Which left just the final pattern, which was incidentally the hardest one. A pseudo-modification for Body Protection. Unlike most combat patterns, this pattern did have an effect that made imprinting it as early as possible advisable.

  Besides strengthening the effects of Body Protection by a small amount through deepening the connection between the physical body and the magical coating that made the pattern the most basic necessity for any leveled combatant. It also made some of that effect spill into your body. In a way, it was a lot like nourishing.

  But while nourishing worked by rebuilding your physical components to be stronger and better by simply inserting magical energy into them, this pattern worked by inserting magic carrying an effect into the body. It was a bleed-through effect, which, while not going to save anyone from a sword to throat by itself, could amount to the extra protective edge that prevented an enemy’s attack from inflicting major physical harm after they’ve broken your magical defenses.

  She steeled herself and checked her time pattern. There was still plenty of time before she had to leave. She was hoping to finish the imprint this session, but knew very well that it wasn’t a certain thing. Still, the next three hours will definitely leave her enough time to finish all the foundations for the pattern, leaving only the finishing touches of the imprint. So even though she might not be back until late in the evening, she would probably be able to finish the pattern today. She shrugged her shoulders with an impish smile. After all, don’t I have a brand new pattern to help with lack of sleep?

  She got up from the floor mat to go grab a sip of cold water—and a little snack, because why not? And settled down once again with her eyes closed and her focus on her core. She liked beginning every imprint from this starting position. The whirlpool of sensations that she received from her core helped her relax and center herself. Which was probably why she was so bad at muddling. She already liked her core enough as it was. Yep, that was definitely why.

  Guiding her attention away from her core, she focused on the spot she had chosen for this pattern. Body Protection was a textbook example of a body-wide pattern, stretching in some form or another through almost every part of the elven body. This pattern, though—which she only knew by its Terran overly descriptive name, Body Protection-coating Coupling—worked by modifying the effects of its parent pattern. As such, it could theoretically be imprinted on any part of the body as long as you made sure to modify its connection to the Body Protection pattern accordingly.

  Thankfully, smart elves had already spent plenty of time figuring it where exactly was the best place to imprint the pattern—to ease the imprinting difficulty as much as possible while also trying to minimize the added resistance and extra dissipation. Their original answer didn’t matter because since then, all five races had shared knowledge and discussions on what the answer should be (even the most brutal of their past wars hadn’t come close to the totality of the Epirak War and allowed for plenty of information exchange even in times of hostility).

  The Terrans, as they often do, had their own small but positive impact on the discussion, which resulted in the current form of the pattern and the best placement for it being unchanged since even before Erianna’s parents had been born. The placement and form of the pattern for deshar, funnily enough, went through some slight adjustment a few decades ago, after Terran scientists had begun to study deshar physiology in greater depth. Erianna assumed that the ningani weren’t going to adjust theirs any time soon, whether or not Terran science had any new insights for them.

  The current consensus on where to place the pattern was to imprint it as close to one of the central parts of the Body Protection pattern as possible—removing or modifying patterns which stood in the way if necessary. Erianna, of course, had no need to worry about that as her pattern configuration had been watched, guided, and given to her even since she was twelve years old. There was plenty of room by her right lung to imprint the new pattern and then some. Which is exactly what she set about doing.

  Forty-five minutes later, she had finished clearing most of the space and laying the foundation for the pattern as a whole. By all rights, a basic job like that shouldn’t have taken her so long but she took the extra time to make sure that she was keeping to the exact correct dimensions and that the current imprinting was as open and many-jointed as possible to allow her next imprinting to proceed more smoothly.

  She next went to work on the broad framework, carving artificial pathways that would serve as energy lines for most of the magic passing through the pattern. Her previous work having done away with the greatest obstacle to the imprinting, she managed to finish the framework in less than half an hour. Another half an hour saw her imprinting the frameworks for the additional parts of the pattern that joined outside of the main loop. There was much less space necessary to imprint through, but the specifications required more exact attention and detail.

  That done, she started on the bread and butter of the imprint, working through each section and modifying it so that it had the desired effect once magic traced through it. Thankfully, the longest unbroken chain of foundations-imprinting required for this pattern was just around twenty minutes, so even though it overall took her a long time, no part of it was truly all that difficult.

  When she opened her eyes and checked the time, having finished every part of the imprint but the final crucial stretch, she was dismayed to discover that she had less than twenty minutes before she had to leave. With a grimace, she looked over her notes again. She could do it, especially if she was fine with being late by a few minutes. The hardest part of the imprint was the difficulty of the soldering, but the soldering itself wasn’t overly long. Twenty minutes ought to do.

  But, if she failed, or, more likely, finished the imprint not as fine as she wanted it to be, she would have to spend ten or more minutes undoing her soldering work. Which would definitely make her late unless she decided that she was fine with spending four hours removing the faulty pattern and imprinting it all over again.

  That seemed to have clinched the debate. She’ll have plenty of time in the evening to finish the pattern. And since she wasn’t going to activate her Body Protection pattern today, there wasn’t anything to lose by waiting until later to finish the imprint. She clapped her hands as she made to get up, grabbing some more cold water (but no snack this time) before settling down in her chair and drumming her fingers on the desk.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Now what to do? She wondered. Cultivating? I guess I can. Although I hate to admit it but Farris was right. It does get harder to keep your motivation for cultivating as high as you’re used to after you just reached a new level. What was it that he said? It should take about a month to go back to usual? She sighed, trying to comfort herself in the knowledge that her current lack of determination was still more than almost every other student at this or the Royal Academy had in their day-to-day. Yeah, the main sticking point is “almost.” Ugh, fine. I’ll do some studying instead.

  Twenty minutes passed by in a flash as Erianna went over some of the preparatory material for the officers’ training that she would start in half a year. One of the major points of contention between her uncle and the current military education establishment back home was the almost total avoidance of military science in the academies’ curriculum, at least compared to their Terran counterparts. The logic was that every new graduate was going to go through their own military and officers’ training anyway, so why waste time teaching them that now?

  The problem was twofold: First, education only came with commission. And unlike in the Terran system, graduates of Sarechi combatant academies weren’t guaranteed one. Oh, all the nobles would definitely get theirs, as well as all the most promising graduates from more common backgrounds. For the rest, though, about a third or a fourth of every graduating class, things weren’t quite so certain. Most of them would manage to land a commission in a year or two. But some would never do. And the delay in getting their training and being able to train and cultivate as an officer instead of as an enlisted meant the current system definitely harmed the Sarechi military’s effectiveness.

  The second problem was the same one that the Terran academies were faced with and which Yvessa was always grumbling about, only twice as bad. The new would-be officers, even with their later training, weren’t as good as the officers who went through the noncombatant route and earned their ranks through showcasing of military and leadership skills (in the Terran military, at least). She knew very well just how inept as commanders some of the Rulers back home were. And they were back home precisely because her uncle worked his damnedest to juggle them around and keep them where they couldn’t do any serious damage.

  Erianna, of course, never had to worry about receiving anything but the best and most comprehensive education when it came to generalship and military command. With the Muster set aside specifically for her, she was going to have a year and a half of better training than many officers get in a lifetime. Not to say that she neglected the subject up till now—the Royal Academy might not be teaching a lot of military science, but the Royal Palace certainly was. And whenever she didn’t have any homework from her tutors at home, there was always Farris with a twinkle in his eye and a quiz or a conundrum for her.

  So suffice to say, that the extra workload from attending New Point Academy and receiving their courses on military science didn’t weigh on her that much. It was far from difficult, and she also avoided partaking in the full curriculum, due to the fact that she’ll have a year and a half more to study the subjects. She was mostly just taking the same courses that Sam was. Most of those they studied on their own, but one course was with the general student body, and one was with Dan. She needed to make sure that she had a good understanding of what Sam knew when it came to command. Someone needed to make sure Farris’ influence would be reined back.

  Which, speaking of Sam, she checked the time and saw that she had to leave. She was joining Sam at the end of his lesson with Lin Jingway, this one started later than usual due to a request from Lin. Which Erianna was far from complaining about, having been able to use the extra time to work on her patterns. After changing into workout clothes, she grabbed her bag and her training artifact sword and, throwing a quick look at the mirror to straighten her tussled hair, left her apartment.

  The walk over to the gym was long enough to allow her to train her Threadsight a bit, but not long enough for the training to actually leave an impact. Not that she would’ve felt an impact if it did. Gone were the days when just keeping her Sight open for less than half a day would affect her in any way. Not that she wasn’t well past training by just keeping her Sight open, of course, but even the current “difficult” exercises weren’t enough to affect her after only ten or so minutes.

  As she approached the gym, she saw one of her own threads reacting slightly more than normal; following it, she found Lin leaving the building, going the opposite way from her. From what she could read from the threads that connected him and Sam, he was very satisfied with the session they had just finished. Although she thought she could discern a fair bit of apprehension there; a worry about whether Sam’s incorporating of the Sight into his fighting might end up harming his training?

  Or maybe it was a reluctance to recuse himself at such a critical junction in Sam’s training? Not that there was much to do about that; Lin was only now slowly finalizing his level 9 plans, he was still far from being able to access his Sight, much less becoming proficient enough with it to be able to utilize it in combat the same way Sam would be starting to learn. Which left her with the job of teaching Sam how to utilize threads in combat in general, and her uncle to focus his training on spear-fighting.

  Although she wasn’t fully convinced that there was any need for Farris to involve himself and to separate general combat principles and spearfighting when it came to threads. After all, wasn’t Farris her own principal teacher, despite the fact that he was an awful swordfighter? Oh well, it didn’t matter all that much in the end. Sam was still going to spend the same amount of time with Farris. Only now, instead of the seemingly random lessons that Farris was putting him through, they would spend some of that time practicing combat. Of course, since Farris wasn’t here to spar with Sam, that meant someone was going to have to join him.

  Her lips quirked into a smile, not that she’d have too many objections to joining from time to time. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that Farris didn’t have anything more to teach her. And she never actually had the opportunity to train with another Thread-Weaver under her uncle’s guidance. And of course, although she wouldn’t admit it to anyone, meeting with Farris was the perfect excuse to alleviate some of the homesickness she was feeling without making it seem like that’s what she was doing.

  “Hey,” Sam said with a smile as she entered the training room, “how’d the imprinting go?”

  She smiled back. “Well enough. But I haven’t managed to finish. Guess I’ll have to go to bed late today.”

  “It is a dilemma. Would the effectiveness you’d be losing by being more tired tomorrow be offset by the gain you’d get from having the pattern already running when you’re using Body Protection for the first time since you reached level 5? Decisions, decisions.”

  “Yes it would, because I’m not going to lose any effectiveness by going to sleep a little late.”

  “Show off.”

  She gestured at him with her sword. “Ready to begin?”

  He nodded eagerly. “Yep. Technically, I might’ve been born ready.”

  “Good. Turn on your Sight and we’ll start with a simple spar,” she said as she turned on her Threadsight.

  Sam sighed, and she could sense the fact that he complied in the slight tensing of his body; he still wasn’t fully acclimated to the Sight. Then again, it had taken her years to get to the point that Sam would probably reach in half a year. Might even be before she had to leave. “This is going to suck, huh?” he said as he crouched down into a fighting position.

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  She purposefully let the fight stretch on for almost ten minutes. Making sure to finish each point at around the minute and a half mark. The longest Sam had managed to last when she fought him seriously was about five minutes. And that went down to a little over two when she went all out. But there was no doubt in her mind that Sam wouldn’t manage close to those times currently. Fighting against him now was like going back in time to when she first met him—it was that bad. Which meant that his performance was better than hers had been when she first started training to fight with the Threadsight.

  She wrinkled her nose at that thought as she dodged Sam’s clumsy attack, bringing her left hand to block Sam’s spear-shaft as it came down (she wasn’t worried about being affected by his magic tracing through the artifact, and she of course wasn’t going to attack his artifact) and pivoting her hand so that she landed a clear cut on Sam’s neck, holding back at just the last second so that the hit wouldn’t hurt more than sting.

  “Ugh.” Sam moaned as he crashed to the ground, rubbing his eyes.

  “You can turn it off now.” Erianna smiled down at him.

  “God, that’s awful.”

  “Of course it is. You only moved from using the Sight while stationary a couple of months ago. Now you need to both use the Sight to gather information while also deciphering that information and then thinking through all this and other forms of information you have to reach a decision on how to act in the next second.”

  “I knew all that. I just didn’t expect it to be so… you know…”

  She sat down next to him. “The fact that I do should let you know just how universal this experience is.”

  “How do new Rulers deal with this shit? They suddenly have access to both the Sight and manipulating threads, and they have to combine that with all the other shit that they already need to do and think about in a fight.”

  “First of all, the Threadsight of new Rulers wouldn’t be as good as yours, so the deluge of information would be much smaller. And secondly, that’s why you don’t send newly minted Rulers to the front immediately. They have to train, same as you.”

  “Unless they’re Thread-Weavers.”

  “Even then, although to a much much, smaller extent. I doubt that you can become good at affecting threads in a single day.”

  “You’re right. Better take two.” Sam sighed as he laid his back fully on the floor.

  Erianna patted his shoulder. “Look on the bright side, what’s the difference between the difficulty of training now compared to when we first started training with the Sight?”

  Sam looked back at her with his head tilted. “Now it sucks, but it just physically sucks. Then it also metaphysically sucked.”

  “That’s one way to put it. This is just regular training hardships. Difficulty adjusting to something new. It’s not all that different from when you first started learning how to fight. The only difference is that you’ll start seeing improvement much faster.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Sam groaned as he made to get up only to be blocked by Erianna placing her hand on his chest.

  “Another two minutes of rest. You already had one training session today, after all.”

  Sam let out a disgruntled sigh as he allowed her to push him back down. “What was the point of all the recovery patterns I worked so hard to imprint, then? If I have to keep taking long-ass breaks while exercising.”

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. Instead, I’ll remind you that we also have a session with Farris after this. So be sure that there’ll be plenty of breaks ahead of you.”

  “This sucks! It’s because I’m so personable and charming you know? If I weren’t such a great person, people would worry a lot less about overworking me. It’s my own damn fault in a way.”

  Erianna sharply exhaled a chuckle. “I’ll give you that last part. That’s definitely true.”

  “Alright, two minutes up.” He made to rise.

  “Not yet.”

  “Curse you and your time-keeping pattern.”

  “You can have one too, you know.”

  “Eh, waste of time, no pun intended.”

  “I don’t think there was even a pun available.”

  He frowned at her. “I’ll get the pattern once I’ll actually be required to spend time away from my phone and other electronic devices. Until then, I have it on good authority that most people still default to their phones anyway.”

  She shrugged and cleared her throat as she stood up and presented her hand for him to grab. “Thanks,” he said after she helped him up. “So what now?”

  “The same thing again. I want to do a full spar at least three times before we do anything else. Give you a taste of what we’re actually going to be learning how to do and not to do.”

  “Ah… this is going to be a long day.”

  Yes, I know, I’m just as surprised as you are about this chapter. But after I finished writing the previous chapter, I sat silently watching the screen for a couple of minutes, not knowing where and how to start. The only idea that came up, and which lodged itself in my brain, is how this chapter started. Erianna thinking through her patterns now that she was level 5.

  I honestly wasn’t planning to introduce other POVs in regular chapters so soon in the story. I wasn’t even sure about doing that in book 4. But I feel happy that I ended up biting the bullet anyway, because there are some scenes in the rest of this book that I would like to have from other characters’ point of view. And it’s not like the symmetric bullshit or whatever even mattered. Book 4 would definitely have benefited from having other POVs, so it was a done deal that I wasn’t going to wait till arc 2, let alone 3.

  Especially since I probably won’t even make it that far. So might as well just have some fun while it lasts. And this chapter was a lot of fun (still haven’t completed the Bechdel test, though). As I said a long ass time ago, this story is going to have plenty of POVs by the end (planned to at least), so the only reason to keep to Sam’s point of view this early on is thematic. Fear not, though, for the foreseeable future (and beyond (if there will be one)), any regular chapter that isn’t from Sam’s point of view would still involve him in some way; most likely directly. like in this chapter, but if not then in the same place that he is currently at and from the people around him. And of course, this isn’t Wheel of Time, Sam is always going to have (by far) the majority of the chapters be from his point of view.