“How does it feel to be a second-year cadet?” Erianna asked with a smirk as she sat down to join him for breakfast.

  “Almost as good as being a second-year cadet and not having to sit through their year-two orientation.”

  Erianna smiled widely. “There’s nothing like basking in the misfortune of others to start the day on the right foot, huh?”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “I am indeed. Which is why I agreed with you. Ah… To think that only a few short months ago I would’ve relished the opportunity to switch even one of my mandatory sit-throughs in favor of two Terran ones. And here I am exempt from both.”

  “No need to thank me.”

  “Indeed, there isn’t. You’re getting yours as well.”

  “I am, aren’t I?” Sam nodded happily as he took a spoonful of pudding.

  “How’s your new gathering methods treating you?”

  “Shit. Can barely manage a full cycle half the time. And my efficiency with the cycles I do manage is just straight awful, so it’s not like they make up for the greater difficulty.”

  “In a couple of weeks you’ll be laughing that you thought these were difficult.” Sam narrowed his eyes at her. “Because it’s going to become much easier,” she swiftly amended. “Not because you’ll have new, much harder techniques to compare these two.”

  “I mean, I will eventually.”

  “Eh, it’s all relative. Objectively harder, more complex? Sure. Subjectively? I don’t know. Everyone has their own hangups and preferences. For me, the techniques I had the hardest time with were those that are, conceptually, two rungs up where you are now.”

  Sam stretched in his seat. “Doesn’t matter to me. For some reason, gathering doesn’t worry me all that much. It just feels like, I don’t know, it’s always going to end the same way.”

  “Same way?”

  “Yeah. It’s like there’s this straight road to level 10—or rather 8. And the techniques are only the vehicles you use on that road. So the speed at which you travel.”

  “Sure.”

  “So I feel like I’m bound to hit level 8 eventually.”

  “But what about the time it takes you to get there?”

  Sam shrugged. “If it’s a straight road, you just keep going and trying new vehicles. It’s like working out. You start out with one-kilogram weights, yeah? You know eventually you’ll get to ten, twenty, and so on, right? How to get there? Just keep lifting weights. You’ll find new exercises along the way, but you can’t go wrong with lifting weights.”

  “I must admit, I’m surprised that cultivating of all things is something you’re not worried about. For most people in our circumstances, it’s at the forefront of their consideration. And they don’t have your…”

  “Delayed start?”

  “I was going to say horrendous lack of sufficient background. Stupendously, horrifically behind even the most—”

  “Careful. You’re not pretty when you’re mean.”

  “We both know that’s a lie.” Erianna tossed her hair back with a flourish of her hand.

  “You’re right. You’re never pretty.”

  Erianna winked. “You’re lucky we’re on Terran ground. This kind of talk could get you executed back home.”

  “I mean… Surely Terran locales aren’t completely immune to such a thing. OK, so maybe there’s not a lawful sanction of bodily harm against any who insult the royal body, but I have a feeling that if I was some no-name bloke and I told a drug lord’s daughter that she was ugly or something… I don’t know, that’s not the healthiest thing to do in the world.”

  “And I’m equivalent to a drug lord’s daughter?”

  “Of course. Your mother peddles the greatest drug of them all. Safety and stability at the cost of individual freedom and the anarchic state of nature.”

  Erianna laughed. “I have to admit. I like that image. Makes me feel like the role of monarchy is one worth partaking in.”

  Sam clicked his teeth and made a finger gun at her. “My gift to you, Your Royal Highness.”

  “How generous of you. Come on, I don’t want to be late for my lesson.”

  Sam rolled his eyes as he got up to join her. “Did I already comment on the fact that it’s super weird you don’t have any sort of Epirak studies until your third year?”

  “You know you did.”

  “Sorry, what I meant was, did I already make the tenth comment about that?”

  Erianna shrugged. “You’ll have to ask someone who pays more attention to what you’re saying.”

  “And what about the fact that you’ve definitely studied the topic on your own?”

  Erianna stopped in place and pivoted so that her face was hovering mere centimeters from where Sam’s would’ve been if he hadn’t retreated in cold dread. “You’re needling me, Sam,” she said with a slightly acerbic smile. “We’ve been over this. What I may or may not know does factor into what I need to have ‘officially’ studied before my time here’s up. It’s a fortuitous coincidence that I can slot myself into your own lesson and thereby save myself the regular students’ schedule.”

  Sam held his hands up. “Alright, alright. No need to take that tone with me. If Dan approved of it, I’m sure your reasoning can’t be all that flawed.”

  “It’s not flawed, period.” She rolled her eyes.

  “That’s a tall order for any reasoning whatsoever.”

  “Except yours, I suppose?”

  “Heavens no. Mine are especially susceptible to flaws.”

  “Hah! You got that right.”

  “Still…” Sam started after they resumed their walk. “You’re not going to keep to my schedule when it comes to Epirak Studies, right?”

  She waved him off. “Of course not. Don’t worry about it. I just want the couple of lessons under my belt so there’ll be something in my files when I take the exam.”

  “Exams.”

  “Right, you have it all spread out.”

  “I still think our way is better.”

  “I still think that all ‘Epirak Studies’ are a huge waste of time that we could all do without. It’s not like we need to understand the differences between the million variations of Brutes to know how to kill the fuckers.”

  “Don’t you have a ‘know thy enemy’ saying in Sarechal?”

  “We do. We also have a ‘know thyself’ one. Know what I know about myself? That I don’t need to spend a hundred hours learning about Epiraks to know how to best kill them. Besides, it’s not like Brutes are going to be my main concern on the battlefield.”

  Sam regarded her silently. He had always wished to be more self-confident and self-assured. But looking at Erianna, it was easy to see why a non-genius like him would need his self-doubts to rein him in. Not that thought Erianna’s confidence wasn’t a little misplaced. “Still,” he said, “you’re not going to start your Epirak-slaying career by only fighting Martyrs. Or blowing away Brutes on your way to fight Martyrs. Your share of the common battlefield journey might be much smaller than that of the average trenchie, but you’ll still have to share some of it.”

  Erianna nodded. “Which is why I think some form of studying our enemy is called for. Just not the one your and my people teach. Too academic in my opinion. Too much sitting in class and rehearsing facts and not enough practicing against lifelike replicas or choreographed enemies; way too little learning with your own skin which way a dwarf-like comes at you from below.”

  “Which way does a dwarf-like come at you from below?”

  “Nuh uh. That’s for you to learn in your precious classroom, isn’t it?”

  “Office room, more like. At least for now.”

  Erianna laughed. “Whichever way is closest between them and your gut.”

  “Agh… a fucking dynamic variable? What a chore.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “That’s strange,” Sam said as no welcoming call rang out to usher them into Dan’s office.

  “Turn on your Sight.” Erianna gestured towards the door.

  “Do I have to? It’s a bit pointless at this stage, no?”

  “If you won’t do it, I’ll assume it’s because you can’t.”

  Sam sighed and triggered the switch that meant he was going to have a pounding headache for the next few minutes. A few seconds later, he turned it off with a grimace. “Wow, will you look at that? No one’s there? If only I could’ve used my logical faculties to know that instead of this magic.”

  “If you had used magic, you would’ve known about Dan not being in beforehand. We could’ve enjoyed a minute more out in the sun.”

  “So why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I wanted you to learn this lesson.”

  Sam narrowed his eyes. “And?”

  She shrugged. “Also, I wasn’t looking.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Dan said as he came to join them from up the stairs. “Meeting ran over.” He unlocked the door and beckoned them to follow him inside.

  “Always on duty, aren’t you, Colonel Richter?” Erianna said as she closed the door behind her.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Only when I’m working.”

  “And when aren’t you working?”

  Dan stopped midway to the kettle as though in thought. “When I’m dead.”

  “How droll,” Erianna said as she took a seat. “And these are the same role models who criticize us for not getting enough rest,” she said to Sam.

  “I hadn’t criticized you for that,” Dan said.

  “Oh I’m well aware. I’m just laying the groundwork for my future defense.”

  Dan nodded as he set down glasses for the two of them. “If I had to guess, it hadn’t worked out that well for you in the past. So I doubt I will prove an easier opponent.”

  “A girl can dream, no?”

  “That she can, that she can,” Dan said as he sat down, cup in tow. “A woman can dream as well. I venture to say that she certainly would, two or three decades from now when she finds herself in the opposite position.”

  “Hah! We’ll see about that.”

  Sam furrowed his eyes at her. It wasn’t clear just what there was to see in Erianna’s eyes. He didn’t think she shared the same disinclination towards teaching as he did. But he shook those thoughts away and said, “If you two finished with the verbal sparring, can we please start? Some of us actually haven’t learned the information of today’s lesson.”

  “You didn’t read the material for today?” Dan asked.

  “Well, I did. I just meant… you know what I meant.”

  “Very well, then let’s begin by reviewing the four forms of a classic amalgamation Brute…”

  As on most days, when they broke for lunch, Dan stayed behind to do whatever it was he deemed more important than eating—at least eating well—so Sam and Erianna were once again the sole occupants of a mess-hall dining table.

  “I love the sight of new students on their first day.” Erianna smiled and pointed with her fork at a tight cluster of new cadets. “Bright eyed with anticipation. Trembling with trepidation. Excitement and fear all mixing together to affect both individual and mob.”

  “There’s something wrong with you.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I’m just not a social recluse like you. So I’m actually impacted by the sight of social upheaval going on around me.”

  “People storming prisons and destroying capital is social upheaval. The gathering of students on their first day of school is not.”

  “And pray tell, from what kind of people does your type of upheaval usually stem?”

  “What’s your point? We all start as babies. Should I be excited at the sight of every baby I see because one day he might lead the masses in tearing apart the symbols of the regime?”

  “You can never lose an argument, can you?”

  Sam shrugged. “Nope. I’m more that willing, is the problem. So the fault’s not with me.”

  “It never is, is it?”

  “Never is.”

  “On that note, would you mind if also joined you today for the rest of your lessons?”

  “Mind? No, not really. Now, do I want you to?”

  “That’s the same thing as mind.”

  “No, because I wouldn’t mind. Hell, I’m happy to have you along. But, I wouldn’t be happy if that’ll be what you’ll end up doing with your time. Now, in a perfect world where you had unlimited time at your disposal… come join me every day of the week.”

  “Well, I do have unlimited time at my disposal today. Because my lessons only start tomorrow and I don’t have anything better to do today but cultivate. So, since that’s what you’re mostly going to be doing for the next few hours…”

  “Sure, but you’re not one of those people who like cultivating with others around. So…”

  Erianna shrugged. “I’m indifferent to it.” Sam gave her a blank stare. “Alright, I’m not a fan. But I also don’t want to spend all of my time here by myself. The entire point of me coming here was so that I could… be around other people who I liked.”

  “Since when was that the entire point of you coming here?”

  “OK, so a point. Point is, I don’t feel like being cooped up in my room and cultivating for the rest of the day. What’s the big deal?”

  “You know what the big deal is.”

  “This isn’t about me trying to focus on you at my expense. I just want to be around other people. Think about it:, this is, technically, the first day of school.”

  “Not sure what’s there to think about. But fine. You’re your own judge at the end of the day. You do what you think is best.”

  “Thank you. Besides, once Yvessa and Felix finish with their day, I promise I’ll go and join them.”

  “Surely they won’t finish that much earlier than me?”

  “Today, at the very least. She texted me that she’ll be free an hour before you finish with Dan for the day.”

  “Damn lazy second-year cadets. They have it so easy.” Sam shook his head.

  “They do have to sit through the opening ceremony.”

  “On the other hand…”

  “Exactly.” Erianna nodded. “Three hours well spent are much easier to bear than an hour spent in senseless ostentation.”

  “Yeah… wish there was a way I could avoid the latter entirely in the future.”

  “Are you talking about next year or just in general?”

  Sam’s face fell. “I didn’t even think about next year… Goddammit!”

  Erianna laughed. “Think of it as practice.”

  “I’d rather not think of it at all, thank you very much.”

  “The sooner you come to terms with what your position now and in the future means for huge swathes of how you’ll spend your time, the better you’ll be at dealing with it.”

  “You’re supposed to be speaking from experience?” Sam gave her a doubtful look.

  Erianna winked. “From wishful thinking. Maybe I’ll get there once I’m strong enough for my presence to count because of who I am and not just because of who my family is.”

  “And me with just my own self to count.”

  “Although…”

  “Although, your family does still factor into mine, so we’re pretty much on the same boat.”

  Erianna made a fist. “Two poor souls adrift in the ocean of customs and ceremony.”

  “Do you think that there’s a point where you’re powerful enough to completely do away with that kind of stuff?”

  “In theory. In practice, not if you’re a responsible person.”

  “Right… that’s what I figured. If even all of the Chosen take up some sort of mantle, in some fashion or the other, there’s no way out of the maze. And even if you eclipse the Chosen, that will just make you even more important, and your presence even more necessary.”

  “At least the number of events you’re required to attend will most likely drop.”

  “Small mercies, huh?”

  “Hey, small mercies are all we have. If not for that, what other reason would either of us have for wanting to become stronger than a Chosen?”

  “For me?” Sam pointed at his chest. “Political influence. I’d like to completely dictate the direction of at least one parliamentary election in my lifetime.”

  “Not like there’s much to manipulate.”

  “Careful now, you’re displaying political acumen. One might think that you’re not all averse to that statecraft business as you’ve purported to be.”

  “It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the Terran political stage isn’t all that diverse.”

  Sam nodded with a shrug. “I’m honestly proud of us, you know. We still have a functioning liberal democracy with strong institutions and a vibrant political field. So what if the actual political machinations going on are small game compared to what all the other nations have?”

  “With the exception of the Accord.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “You disagree?”

  “No. I just wanted to score another point in my ‘Erianna’s political science skills’ checkbook.”

  “You’re an ass.” Erianna wrinkled her nose. “Besides, it takes even less skill to learn that the Accord is the closest thing to a benevolent dictatorship in history.”

  “And how much skill does it take to learn that a benevolent dictatorship is a thing?”

  “Apparently not a lot, considering you’ve heard of it.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense in the context of what I’m niggling you about.”

  “You don’t make any sense.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with this. Come on, let’s head back before you embarrass yourself any further.”

  Sam spent the rest of the afternoon practicing his new cultivation methods with Dan, while Erianna (mostly) watched from the sidelines and cultivated herself. True to her word, she left about an hour before Sam’s lesson was over to join up with Yvessa and Felix. Thankfully, Dan didn’t broach the topic any further than giving Sam a meaningful glance as she closed the door behind her. Hopefully, this’ll be the end of Erianna’s heavy presence in my lessons, he thought as he went back to focusing on one of three new gathering techniques.

  He didn’t make much progress during that last hour, just the slow inching towards becoming competent enough with the new methodology to consider switching to parts of it during some of the times he was cultivating purely for leveling. It was much more challenging, he had to give it that. Well, obviously it was more challenging, because he was having a harder time with it. But Sam enjoyed the extra difficulty exactly because it resulted in less mental weariness during cultivating. The fact that it required more of his focus and concentration helped keep him more engaged with the act and thus made the time pass faster.

  Of course, any welcome distractions such as music were still off limits (and would probably remain that way even in the far future if he wanted to fully utilize his cultivation sessions) so there wasn’t anything besides the mental exercise—and probably even more important, the drive to get stronger—to keep his mind focused while cultivating. But it did get him thinking: He was already treating cultivation as a solvent for boredom in many ways. It wasn’t as pronounced as listening to music or daydreaming, but it was something he had started regularly doing to while away time while time wasn’t demanding his immediate attention.

  Which was great because the problem with listening to music was that, so far, technology hadn’t allowed you to do it without people nearby noticing you doing that. Which took away the ability to suspend boredom with rock and roll when duty called for you to maintain distraction-less boredom. But cultivating, that was just like daydreaming in a sense. Other people couldn’t see into his own mind, so as long as he kept a facade of respectably bored attention, he could do whatever he wanted behind the veil of magic. Then again, if there were any Rulers or Thread-Weavers in attendance, they could glimpse his gathering, but luckily for him, those irregulars were few and far between in the foreseeable future.

  So he could do that, he definitely could. Which got him thinking: why was Erianna whining so much about being forced to attend this or that event? Ah, right. She does have to worry about Rulers in attendance. First and foremost, her mother. Luckily for me, I’m… yeah, let’s not make that joke.

  He shook his head and stilled his face back into a smile as he sat down to join his friends for dinner. “I just had a brilliant revelation,” he said after waiting a few seconds to make sure he wouldn’t be running over any ongoing conversation.

  “Let me guess—” Erianna started.

  “Please,” Felix said, “I beg of you, don’t. Either you’ll get it right, which will… it will just be plain weird. There’s a limit, you know. Or, and just as likely for some hellish reason, you’ll get it wrong, and then we’ll never get Sam’s stupid joke over with.”

  “Hey!” Sam objected. “I wasn’t going to make a joke. I’m being serious.”

  “Oh, sure.” Felix’s nod dripped with sarcasm. “My apologies then.”

  “So can I guess?” Erianna asked.

  “Still no.”

  “Eh, I wasn’t really asking.” She turned to Sam. “You thought about how you could pass the time at some of the ceremonious events we talked about by cultivating, right?

  “To be fair,” Sam said in response to Felix’s disgusted grunt, “we did talk about it at length. Any one of you would’ve made the same connection just as easily… Maybe more.” He upturned his hands in open question.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Felix shook his head. “It’s still positively disgusting. If you were in my shoes, you’d be much more adamant about how outrageously fast your new friendship has bloomed.”

  “Felix,” Yvessa said with a gentle smile as she laid her hand on his arm, “you need to stop being so paranoid. No one is going to steal Sam away from you.”

  “R-really?” Felix blew his nose and wiped it with his arm.

  “Hold on a moment.” Sam objected with a raised hand. “I don’t agree with that line of humor whatsoever. Sarah’s the only one who’s allowed to feel jealously possessive of me.”

  “Hey!” Sarah raised her own objection.

  “No one’s stealing anyone, and no one needs to feel possessive of anyone,” Erianna said.

  “Well, I feel possessive about you stealing Rufus away from me if we ever go back to that pet restaurant.”

  “As well you should.”

  Felix laughed. “If you like that cat so much, why don’t you try adopting it? Or some other cat? You always talk wistfully about Yvessa’s cats after all.”

  Sam’s face darkened. “You can’t… Eh-hm. You can’t really adopt a cat for just two years,” he said between gritted teeth. He quickly hid his whitened knuckles.

  “Right… eh, no, yeah, that makes sense. Guess you’ll just have to wait a couple of years then.”

  A cold shiver ran through Sam. He gave a fake smile and said, “Let’s talk about something else, shall we? We veered off topic, after all. My topic.”

  The three Terrans exchanged awkward looks but, thankfully, Erianna took the opportunity to ridicule Sam’s new insight. “Your idea is stupid, and it wouldn’t work. And just because it took you so long to come up with it and you thought it so very brilliant, you’re…”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Stu-pid.”

  Sam clicked his lips and gave her a nasty stare. “I think you’re just jealous.”

  “Doubtful. If anything, I would’ve been envious.”

  “Not really. The word has developed both meanings due to incorrect usage.”

  “So you just bring up that fact whenever you want to and ignore it every other time?” Felix asked.

  “Yes. Jealous?”

  “Why’d you say it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like not how you usually speak.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, you were saying about my plan?” He turned to Erianna.

  “That it’s stupid and that you’re stupid?” She shrugged.

  “And the explanation for those conclusions?”

  “I’ve spent time with you?”

  “OK, be like that.”

  She held a finger. “First, Rulers can see if you’re cultivating. That rules out a bunch of ceremonies—usually the most tedious ones. Second, you’ll find it hard to both clap when needed and cultivate to any degree of worthwhile efficiency. And that’s only if you can avoid getting distracted by the noisy affair. Which, let’s face it, you can’t.”

  “For now. I don’t have any mandatory participation planned until next year.”

  “Well why don’t you give it a try?” Felix asked. “Cultivate while we’re eating.”

  “But I want to take part in the dinner-table gossip. I don’t want to pay attention to what… I don’t actually know who spoke at your opening ceremony.”

  “Then how do you know you won’t want to pay attention to them?”

  Sam gave him a dumbfounded look. “I’ve lived a normal life?”

  “He’s got a point there.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, come off it, you two. It’s that bad.”

  “Not compared to other events you’ll have to attend,” Yvessa said.

  “What’s with the ‘you?’” Felix asked. “You’ll be there as well.”

  “I have much greater mental fortitude than you two, however.”

  “That’s true, I guess. After all, don’t they say that a dull mind seeks dullness?”

  “Who says that?” Sam asked.

  “The people I’ve just made up in order to make fun of Yvessa.”

  Sam gave Yvessa a helpless shrug. “It is a credible source. But just because they say it, doesn’t make it true.”

  “Who’s side are you on, anyway?” Felix said.

  “I don’t know at this point. Is there a third reason why my genius idea wouldn’t work?” he asked Erianna.

  “Sure.” She smiled. “You might be sitting in front of the audience; not in it.”

  Sam suppressed a shudder.