Chương 62: Chapter 61: Welcome back

The body, left to itself, will distribute the essence from a tier up gradually as it sees fit. This is not always wrong, but it is rarely optimal. The purpose of directed training is to ensure that when the essence moves, it moves where you intend it to go. - From the memoirs of Principal Dovar Heiss, Progenitor's Faction The notification arrived while he was still sitting in the snow at the gulley entrance, Waggy's chin on his knee, the mountain wind moving through the rocks above them.

Grade G, Tier 3 >> Tier 4 It started in his chest and moved through him - warmth first, then minor improvements to his condition felt throughout his body. His left thigh, where the quill had gone in, eased up on the complaints. His legs, which had been operating well beyond what they had budgeted for, found a small reserve they had not had access to a moment before. He sat with it, eyes closed, and let it finish. When he opened his eyes, Waggy was looking at him.

The bond notification sat just beneath the tier-up, waiting. Waghoba: Grade G, Tier 1 >> Tier 2 Kara looked at Waggy. The rear leg was still not working correctly and Waggy was trying to be brave about it. But his eyes were clear and he moved a little better.

"Your first tier up, little fella. How does it feel?" Kara asked, petting him. Waggy's tail moved once, he made a small sound like a purr and leaned in. Beside him, Ren was going through something similar.

"You too?" Kara asked.

"You bet. Tier 4," Ren said. A pause.

"Kohaku's Tier 3 now." Kohaku, sitting with her injured wing held carefully away from the rock face, made a sound. They sat there for a while. The wind moved across the snow and the light shifted. They had the harvested bundle of quills beside them, the cedar and iron ore about ten minutes east in the crevice, and an hour and a half of traverse between them and camp. The tier-up did not alter any of that. Kara gave it another minute. Then they got up.

The cedar shafts were where they had left them, wedged deep in the crevice. Kara worked them free, settled the weight across his shoulders, adjusted until the load sat as evenly as it was going to sit, and began walking. The adrenaline left them completely somewhere on the first long stretch of descent. Kara's thigh resumed its complaints with increased conviction. Ren's forearm had stiffened in the cold. Kohaku flew in short careful bursts, low and controlled, her injured wing angled away from the wind.

Waggy moved ahead on the path, the rear leg altering his gait. Kara felt the load on his back. Cedar shafts, iron ore pouches, the full weight of the pack. He worked through the first stretch on will and the small reserve the tier-up had returned to him. The mountain's gradient did not do him any favor. Then, somewhere into the second hour, the load changed. He still felt the weight. But he could carry it with greater competence now, which on a mountain with a small hole in his thigh was a significant difference.

He exhaled through his nose. Strength: 12 >> 13 They found a sheltered spot between two rock formations as the light started fading, a natural windbreak with enough flat ground for four, and stopped for the night. Kara sat against the rock with the cedar shafts propped beside him and let the silence settle. Then he started thinking. He thought about the training - Isamu watching intently, the corrections landing as single words that opened into understanding only when he tried to apply them.

He thought about the sparring, Isamu's canopy redirecting his strikes before he had finished committing to them, the lesson about reading the whole body. He thought about the valley fights and what he had understood about Waggy's movement only when Waggy was in danger. He thought about the Vorrkai cave, the ceiling drop, the precious half-second Sixth Sense had given him.

He thought about the Tier 5 in the gulley and the canopy gap that eight careful practice attempts had not resolved and thirty seconds of necessity had, and what that said about the conditions under which he actually learned things. Three things kept surfacing with respect to his movements and Waggy's. The same three things, across every fight, every session, every moment where something had gone wrong in a way that was not random. His spatial awareness, his offensive liabilities and the coordination with Waggy.

He turned them over until he had the causes closely, and then he thought about what the next year at University would offer and how he could improve. The interface updated. IQ: 23 >> 24 He sat with it for a moment. Then he looked at the remaining points. His role on the SDC came to mind. Reading what was not being said in a room. Understanding the gap between what people were asking for and what they needed. Understanding Waggy better and possibly pre-empting what someone would do next.

He had been operating on instinct and instinct was not the same as developed capacity. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. EQ, then. When it was ready. Dexterity would come on tomorrow's descent. He did not know when, but with the terrain ahead, he knew it would. He closed his interface and slept. The fifth day of Isamu's timeline. They rose before full light and moved.

The terrain on the upper descent was still open rocky traverse, the surface demanding the kind of sustained attention that did not leave much room for other thoughts. Kara's thigh had stiffened overnight and the first hour was tough. His left leg and the uneven ground reached an arrangement that satisfied neither of them, but was workable for now.

The rock changed character as the morning went on - less flat traverse, more broken and irregular, the surface shifting underfoot in ways that required constant small adjustments. His bad leg could not provide the quick weight transfers the terrain was asking for. For the first hour he was compensating late, catching himself after the slip rather than before it, spending more energy on recovery than on movement. Somewhere in the second hour, the corrections started arriving earlier.

What changed was the adjustments happening at the right moment rather than the moment after. He still could not put full load through his left leg. His right leg and his core were distributing around it with a fluency that had simply not been available earlier. Dexterity: 23 >> 24 He kept moving. The footing held. By the time the light was practically gone, the treeline was visible below them - dark cedar against the last grey of the sky, the settlement somewhere past it. Ren looked at the treeline. Then at Kara.

"We could camp," Ren said. He did not say it with any conviction.

"We could," Kara agreed. He did not say it with any conviction either. The thought of sleeping on a comfortable bed was tempting. The moon was up and full and the snow on the traverse caught it cleanly, the path ahead lit well enough to walk but nowhere near well enough to be careless. It would do. Waggy, on the other hand, had other thoughts. He sat down in the snow, having given the matter full deliberation and arrived at a position he was prepared to defend. His rear leg was extended at a careful angle.

His expression was that of a senior official who had reviewed the proposal and found it wanting on multiple grounds. Kohaku landed on a boulder beside the path. She looked at the treeline. She looked at Ren. She looked at the treeline again, then settled her good wing with the slow finality of a creature announcing that it had made itself comfortable and was not open to discussion. Kara looked at Waggy.

"You looked perfectly comfortable chasing the little martens along the way." Waggy looked at him with the patient attention of someone who considered that a separate matter.

"The settlement has food," Ren offered. Waggy's ears moved. He remained seated.

"Hana will have something warm and nice," Kara said. A pause. Waggy stood up and began walking with the air of a creature that had made a pragmatic decision under duress and was not endorsing the principle. Kohaku watched this. Then she lifted from the boulder and glided ahead down the path, low and smooth, as though she had been ready to leave for some time and had merely been waiting for everyone else to come to their senses. They went into the moonlight.

Two hours later, the trees thinned and the settlement lights came through the cedar trunks in warm broken lines. Kara heard it before he saw it. The settlement square was not quiet. There were voices - too many for the hour - and as he and Ren came through the last of the treeline, he understood why. They were all waiting. The community arranged in the square with the lamps lit, faces turning as Kara and Ren emerged from the dark.

Hana stood near the central space, her crane on her shoulder, watching their approach. Ren's mother came through the crowd, her patience done now that she saw her boy. She reached him and took his face in both hands and said something low that Kara did not catch, and Ren's expression changed with it. Kara stood at the edge of the square and watched, and felt the full weight of what it meant that all of these people had been standing out here in the cold, waiting.

Isamu was standing apart from it, near the entrance to the main building. His eyes moved from Ren to Kara to Waggy's rear leg to Kohaku's held wing. He stood there and watched them. Kara filed it. There was something in that stillness though he couldn't quite catch it. Yuki had the treatment space ready before anyone asked. Hana was already at the table, everything arranged in the order it would be needed, laid out in advance by someone who had thought the whole sequence through and prepared for every part of it.

Her crane stood on the window ledge. The room was warm. Kara sat on the low bench while Yuki worked on his thigh. Ren was across from him, forearm being cleaned and wrapped, his mother's hand on his shoulder. Waggy had submitted to Hana's attention on his rear leg with the grace of a creature that had decided the indignity was worth the outcome. Kohaku had her wing extended across the workbench, amber eyes fixed on the middle distance. Kara looked at the room.

Hana's supplies were thorough in a way that was not accidental. Four injuries, four different requirements, each one anticipated and prepared for. She had known they were coming back today - not the hour but the day - and she had arranged around that knowledge with perfect preparation. He thought about the community outside, going back to their evening now that the waiting was over. People who had absorbed him and Waggy into their routines from the first day without discussion.

He thought about Ren's mother's hands. He thought about Isamu standing apart in the square, watching them come in with that careful stillness. He understood now, sitting in this room with Yuki's hands working on his thigh and the warmth of the lamp on his face, that it had been something else. The stillness of a man who had sent people into difficult places for long enough to know that relief was something you waited to confirm before you let yourself feel it. Isamu had been worried.

But they had needed a pillar of composure after their ordeal, and the old man was precisely that. A thought surfaced of his own parents, briefly. He set it aside. It was not a box he was going to open tonight. EQ: 15 >> 16 Something settled in him. The room came into slightly clearer focus. Hana tying off the last of Waggy's bandages. Yuki finishing the binding on his thigh quickly and precisely, having done it a thousand times and still taking satisfaction in doing it right.

Ren's mother not saying what she was feeling because it was not the right place and time. He had been in this room for twenty minutes and he had been watching all of it and he was only now reading what had actually been there. Yuki handed him a cup of something hot without comment. Kara drank it. Outside, the settlement had gone quiet. Isamu had gone inside at some point.

Waggy climbed carefully off Hana's workbench, tested his rear leg, found it acceptable, and walked to Kara with the deliberate dignity of a creature that had endured significant indignity and intended to move past it. He sat at Kara's feet and leaned against his good leg.

"Come on," Kara said quietly.

"Let's go find our room."