Chương 150: Chapter 171: Advancement

While the usual professors are churning out iterations of rechargeable batteries, I've made an excuse to draw Nux away from his usual minders. The orderlies that normally corral him are glad to have an hour off, and I'm one of the few that is trusted to not only keep him calm under most conditions, but to effectively restrain him without harm if all else fails. Not only am I unlikely to need to use force, but if I need to I've got more than enough force.

It's been a few days since Halloween, and the war of public sentiment is raging in newspapers, parlors, and around water coolers. My colleagues and allies are pushing hard for me right now, and we generate a lot of interest from scandal, but if you're pushing against the royal family you're always pushing uphill. Hearstwhile is not kind to an underdog, there's a lot of established power. And I need to get away from it.

I need to talk to someone that has no opinions at all about who should run the city, about which faction has the moral high ground, about the momentum of public sentiment. Nux Gysmo does not seem to care about anything but weapons, violence, and using weapons to perform violence. We're up on one of the terraced hills off the main campus, I think this area is mostly used by the art department to show off the view and perspective of the academy and the city.

I'm lounging back in the grass, supported on a dozen silk pillows that I made for myself, and idly conjuring steel forms that float in the air before us. Nux has his sketchpad and his notepad, alternating between mathematical formulas and frantic sketches. A lot of the diagrams also include pictures of dead people, or parts of them, to illustrate exactly how his proposed inventions will turn living people into funerals.

"I used to be the impetuous one," I said, waving a finger lazily. Steel shifted shape in the air, showing a running chainsaw. It moved with my thoughts, and it spun up to speed, edges blurring.

"When we were kids. I would run ahead. I would jump off of towers. I teased our house staff, challenged my professors. I was louder then. Rowdier. I'm not sure exactly what it was that took that away from me. Could have been any number of things. So much changed so fast. My fear during the fire? My anger when I awoke? The way I needed to make myself small while I was imprisoned? Or something gone wrong in the healing of me, when my cells were disintegrating from over-stressing my connection to the void?"

I collapsed the chainsaw in on itself and morphed the conjured steel into a turbine engine, whirling blades pushing air and flying it around in circles.

"I know I'm not the same as I used to be. I've changed. Nathan has changed. The world has changed. But if the void still stains my skin and colors my hair, surely it is also influencing my thoughts and feelings, right? Gods know, I'm not the same person I used to be. My priorities have... moved significantly. Bit by bit. Every step had a good reason, but sometimes I stand where I am now, and when I look back at where I used to be I can't imagine making that journey.

I had this idea that I would be standing in the shadows, with a knowing smile on my face, nudging my brother with a little advice here and there, walking him through his adventures. And somehow, one piece at a time, I've wound up about as far from that as possible. And I don't think there's a way to walk it back, really."

"Ewer prawn baby bean toward honor cell," Nux said, adding a lot of spikes to his diagram. I sighed.

"Not that I don't still have my hotheaded streak. Talking about how I used to be impetuous, sounds like now I've got things under control. I don't. I still make plenty of moves without thinking everything through, but it's not the same. There's a world of difference between seeing an opportunity to do something unexpected and leaping at it fearlessly, versus behaving reactively. I used to be impetuous in a good way. Now, when I see a chance to have fun I stop and examine it. I question myself.

It's only when I'm threatened that I make snap decisions, and when I'm threatened I rarely have good options available to me. So I used to trust my snap decisions because they were made in good circumstances and so they turned out well, and now I hate making unplanned moves because so few of my off-the-cuff actions end well for me. As things get tenser, as the stakes get higher, I'm getting more and more bound to plans, routines, and an abhorrence for surprises."

"Sudden thudding thunder, under undine ending. Never over salamander, booming blooming shoots." He did not look up from what he was doing, and this time he didn't even sound like he was really paying attention to me. It's different, just talking to myself, versus talking to someone that I'm only mostly sure can't understand me. I glanced at his notebook.

He seemed to have a plan for a kind of gun that would shoot a bunch of spinning grinding motors into someone, connected by electrical wires, and then power them to grind their way through the human body. If I understood his notations, this was meant for mana warriors who had too much HP to kill with normal methods. I shuddered, and moved to a new shape, showing off how a cherry-picker lift works, with hydraulics and hinged gantries.

"And would I even want to walk it back? I killed the Cachexia. Stopped the blight. I've already got my ground work laid for the next stage anyway," I said, slumping back. I could hear it in my own voice, the way I was trying to convince myself. I certainly wasn't going to convince Nux, he was paying attention to nothing except finding a better way to slaughter man and beast. But he was there, and sometimes he responded to my voice. It was better than talking to a wall, somewhat.

"I'm doing what I need to do, and I'm winning. So what if I feel disappointed? So what if I wish there was a better way to do it?" I let the display dissolve into a variety of blades and saws and rasps and points, whirling and blending into each other. It did not represent anything coherent as a weapon, but he seemed fascinated just watching me sculpt something sharp and impossible in the air.

"Hell, I'm going to be level ten by the end of this year. That's not bad at all! Even on a high difficulty level. For a spy run, I'd prefer to be closer to thirteen or fourteen by now, but that's different. I know Nathan's quest lines. I know that after I get the invoices stamped I have to go to the library and find the archivist. That's Nathan's quests, and I don't have them. Instead, I've got twelve new love interests that I don't know what to do with!

I'm floundering through these quests and just doing my best, you know? I don't know what any of the good endings look like anymore. Or how to get them. All I can do is improvise, and... well, I've said before that I hate improvising, but it's not true. I'm scared of improvising. It seems like every time I act without a plan, I get hurt." His eyes jerked my way, but lost some interest.

"Next year, Nux? Things have to be different. I've got to get more serious with these quest lines. I cannot afford to go into the Upheaval at any less than level twenty. And I can't do that with fighting and adventuring. It's gotta be romance quests. That's the only way I'm gonna get past level fifteen, definitely. So far it's been a lot of 'get to know you' conversations. Building chemistry. And then next year? That's when we start tripping flags for 'more than friends'. Third year?

That's when 'take our relationship to the next level' becomes a thing. Fourth act is for 'getting serious', and fifth act culminates in a wedding. That's the story structure. And that means... well, if I'm going to live through this, I need to pick about eight to ten of the love interests to really drive the romance quests. And I don't even know what that's going to look like! Fuck's sake, man, the other day I danced with Yheta.

The guy killed my cousin for the most bullshit reasons ever and I just decided to dance with him. And you? The only XP quest that I've had with you was dragging you to the jungle to kill things. So I've gotta be running way behind with your progression path. Whaddya say, Nux? Would taking you out for some murder and mayhem count as 'more than friends' for you?" I did not even see him move. In an instant he was kneeling at my side, with both of his hands cupping mine, and big ol' heart-eyes staring at me.

"My sins never sleep, they walk in my shadow and talk in my sinews."

"You said that with the tone of voice of someone inviting me to prom," I said, deadpan.

"Fine, I'll bring you with me the next time I aim to go destroy a Blind outpost. I'm sure you'll have some great idea-""Woolly bully ram baa ram," he said, insistent.

"Gnashing slashing bleeding feeding, the apple of apparitions and choking children chewing chum!" I held up my hand, and repeated those words slowly, carefully.

"Nux, buddy, pal, I think I figured out what you're talking about." Tears stood in his eyes. [Quest Begun: War Crimes, More Crimes. +5 XP. Advancement: The Madman.]"But yo, I gotta be straight though- I am not loving the name of this quest," I told him. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"I miss Broghton," I sigh, slumping my chin onto the heel of my hand, resting my elbow on the desk.

"I'm very happy for you," Kurumi said.

"But I need you to focus!" I groaned.

"You've spent six months pretending that this doesn't even exist and now, right now, it's the most important thing in the world?" She flicked her hair behind her shoulder.

"Well, I was scared before. People die going into those tombs, after all. But now I'm scared of not making the best grades, and so that's what I'm answering. I'd rather keep pretending that we're not going to have to do this, because it's ridiculous, How does math have anything to do with tomb robbing!"

"Depends on the tomb," I said.

"You've actually done no research on this at all, have you?" She froze up.

"Research?" Ah, and there it is from the other side. I know that I frequently give people around me these moments. Especially my friends. These "how can a smart girl be so stupid?" moments. I'm staring at her long enough that the silence is drawing out, while I try to figure out if she's fucking with me.

"Kurumi, dear heart, you know that adventurers research their targets before they throw themselves at it, right?" She shrugged.

"How would I know that? I went to private school." Unpacking that later.

"Did you think that this was just going to be us walking into a dead man's trapfest and getting killed for no reason?" I asked her, taking this more seriously now.

"... Yes?" When Nathan gets this assignment, if he's qualified for the scholarship quest options, he takes his math class with Delizabeth, not Kurumi. For him, Kurumi is a classmate in Geography. I have co-opted his math quest because I got the higher Intellect score, which means that instead of the energetic and eccentric Dizzy, I'm taking this quest with the uptight and insecure Kurumi. Which means that I'm assigned the right quest, and I've got the wrong partner.

"Fuck," I opined blandly.

"All right, so we've got a few weeks to sort this out. First of all: dead creepy occultic mathematicians guard their tombs with mathematics, Kurumi. That's why you and I have been drilling on their specific theories for six months. Fortunately, I've already got my guy shopping for supplies for us, I've already scouted the location, and I've been extensively researching the works of Keikthagorus and his disciples." I have, too.

I used to be able to take on the tomb run with my eyes closed because I memorized all the answers. But it's been fifteen years since I played this game, and I don't want to rely entirely on my memory of a video game. So I've been studying up. Wait a second. It finally makes sense. The reason the game interface is dumbing down my math knowledge by several grade levels, it's for this!

It's to justify why we need to be valedictorians of an elite college and well-regarded geniuses just so we can face off against the geometry puzzles in the tomb without the player themselves needing to have some kind of advanced degree. She was staring at me as if I could save her GPA.

"Wait, really? This is all just a test I can study for?"

"Okay, hang on, I need to get my bearings," I said, palms-out.

"Right. You don't know anything at all about adventurers, treasure-hunting, or the methods. Got it. Sorry, there are some things I just take for granted. Very well. Kurumi, the dungeon we're headed for-""Dungeon? Not a tomb?"

"Some dungeons are tombs, some tombs are dungeons," I said.

"This is one such. Anyway, this one is based around puzzles. Mostly mathematical and geometrical in nature. There's a lot of set dressing, but as long as we've got the right answers we'll disable all the traps and grab the notebooks, and all the professional journals will talk about our contributions to mathematics and history. There will be some fighting, but I'll leave you in a safe place for that stuff. You don't need to worry about that part." Kurumi is a conundrum.

She's the love interest that Nathan and I have in common. Which, yeah, is just fraught with context and subtext and lots of possibilities that would get the shippers all riled up. Belisa used to be one of his options, but I kind of stole her. By that I mean that I think someone has stolen her soul and I've got some mysterious connection to her that I'm not ready to explore yet. Nathan's interaction with Kurumi is mostly through her role as Student President.

That's most of what I know, all the conversations I've had with her before this year. All the quests and plotlines and conversations and complications, they have all been focused around her office. And I've spent months trying to engage with her on that front, and gotten resistance. Or, just as often, I've wound up helping Nathan on his romance track for her. I keep needing to back off and just make small talk to get her approval back up, but I'm definitely falling behind on this competition.

And you just know how much I like that. The closest I've had to progress is working on the tomb-robbing project, to find the journals of three ancient mathematicians whose history is mostly about their weird feuds and their weird convictions that math and magic are the same thing. But Kurumi is resistant to this, it's just not a good fit. She was never supposed to be on this project and it shows. Well, there was one other time. One other time that I made real progress with her affection. Huh.

Maybe it's time for me to be too smart to act this stupid.

"Hey, Kurumi?" I said, casual-like.

"Do you know anyone that would traffic in antiquities?"

"Well, yes," she said.

"Why?"

"Because we're likely to encounter a lot of antiquities," I said.

"Where we're going, pretty much everything is centuries old, and some of it is fairly important." She hemmed a little, hawed a little, then came clean.

"All right, I do know a specialist," she said.

"And my specialist can take most sorts of materials from that age. She'll not only be able to buy, up front, but she will also get you a better price than you would get offered from smugglers, black marketeers or any of the guilds. Not just what the industry calls a fair price, but an actual fair price. And a fair sight better than you'd get from any of the laughably-deemed 'legitimate' businesses in the trade. She has a thing for historical pieces that have a connection to known figures.

But it's still not nearly what she would pay for antiquities that have intrinsic value as well."

"Something like stashes of ancient coins?" Her look got sharp.

"Is this about stashes of ancient coins?"

"I am positive that I've mentioned that before."

"I promise you did not, I would have noticed," Kurumi said.

"Tell me more." To me, Kurumi Lautan is not the Student President. That's her other role. And she's not impressed by my intelligence, like she would be with Nathan. For a brilliant hero, she will be impressed by intellect. For a brilliant rival, she's just envious and competitive. I've been trying the wrong things to get her attention. But there is a third hook to her character: money. [The Wealthy] is my way forward. The fastest I can advance her story is by appealing to that.

For Nathan she's responsible, rigid, and respectable. But I can appeal to her ambition and avarice. I've tried plying her with money and that just makes her competitive and envious again. I think that her very specific incentive, is for me to find ways to help her make her own money. Well, it looks like I just started a new quest. [Cache Money], with advancement and XP. And it looks like I need to find a lot of new business opportunities for Miss Lautan if I'm going to overtake the head start that Nathan has.