Chương 106: I Won't Let You Down

The next morning, I woke up well before the others and met Lord Ceonwin in his office. He was all alone, as usual. When I arrived, he was smoking a pipe and reading a book, but he put them both down and faced me.

"I'm here, sir," I said.

"Ready to learn?" He stood up.

"Yes, sir. But there's one question for you," I said.

"Go on?"

"How do you know how to do any of this?" He paused, halting mid-step, catching his breath. Then stepped back and faced me again.

"The Greencloaks taught me. Askan, specifically, who you met." I raised my eyebrows.

"And why would he know?"

"He's an immensely powerful Path-walker. He's lived centuries longer than most men. I don't ask about all the things he's done in his life. It would take weeks to recount everything that man has done." He stepped around the side of his desk, until he stood in front of me, and said, "Let us begin."

"Focus?"

"Yes. Concentrate it. Your Focus is like your Perception—a mental attribute."

"Path-walkers don't have attributes, right? How can you guys do this?"

"I'm more curious how people tolerate all your incessant questions…" Lord Ceonwin complained.

"Yes, we don't have attributes. But just like enhancing our bodies increases our strength, our Perception and Focus also increase. We don't have resonance nodes to track it, nor can we increase them merely by straining ourselves. But yes, we technically have attributes along the same lines as yours."

"Alright, so concentrating the Focus. That's like focusing my vision or picking out one sound from a jumble of noises?"

"Correct." He looked over his shoulder, glancing out the window at the rising sun.

"We don't have too much time before training begins. Be quick with this."

"But how can I concentrate my Focus, when my Focus is what I use to concentrate with? I'm better at concentrating when my Focus is higher. That seems circular."

"Your Focus is a mental attribute. It indicates the strength of your mind, yes, your ability to fixate on a task or split mental streams and multitask. You need to fixate on a memory. Have you ever gotten in a disagreement with someone?"

"Y—yeah? Why?"

"Afterward, did your mind get stuck on what you could've said, arguments you could've made, points you should've brought up?"

"Yeah. The shampoo bottles in the shower are a great outlet for that."

"I…imagine that makes more sense to a soulstealer." I gulped.

"Sorry, sir."

"It's the same principle. But with higher Focus, you can control it, concentrate it, and use it to your benefit. Try it. Bring a distant memory, one you don't often think of, to the forefront of your mind."

"I thought I was supposed to be creating artificial memories."

"In time. We'll practice this first." I nodded, then sat down in one of the chairs. I gazed blankly at the back wall of the office, then concentrated on the first few weeks I'd spent here. My first days were vivid in my memory—with me just trying to get my feet under myself. But then it'd faded away into the rush of trying to catch up, of trying to keep myself from dying and get strong enough to survive the battlefields.

So many days blurred together, but I picked out an instance of training with Shave, an average sparring match that I couldn't really describe why it was even a memory, but it was the perfect target. Normally, it would've faded to the back of my mind, but I let it stay at the forefront, fuelling it with my Focus.

"If you linger too long on the memory, it will become obvious," Lord Ceonwin said.

"But it's a good first step."

"Can you read my mind as well?"

"No, but I can extend my arcane senses. Your Focus resonance node is grinding like a millwheel—I know you're using it." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"You'd think I would've gotten better at using my Focus without it being obvious," I said, partially self-depricating, but mostly just curious.

"You've never had to worry about hiding it before. Practice, Levi, whenever you can. As you work today, or tomorrow, and for the rest of the week until the Subtle Men come to interrogate you. Make this second nature. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good. All of us are counting on you."

"They're not going to question the rest of my squad?"

"Not likely. As long as they think you're an average sapper trainee, one without any ability to resist them, and they don't see through your ruse, they will leave. They are aware some can resist them, but they won't expect it to come from you."

"And what then? We took efforts to hide the body, and even if they do find it, it'll probably be decomposed, enough that a proper investigation won't help."

"Even if they do still suspect you, they won't be able to do anything about it. Publicly, they'll likely agree with the messenger that you saved him from an orc attack. If you can make this work out."

"I won't let you down, sir." ~ ~ ~ For the rest of the day, I practiced calling up old memories and focusing on them during training. It was a massive draw of willpower, even as I went about my physical conditioning tasks. Along with our regular exercise, we helped construct the jousting grounds outside the castle walls. No one had arrived yet, but the trial had only just been announced.

Thegns from all over would venture here, hoping to claim the title and vast lands of an Ealdorman, and we had to be ready for them. Experimenting with my Focus while I worked was enough to make me drag behind everyone else, at least for the first few hours, until I got slightly more comfortable. I kept pace with everyone else, even if I lagged close to the back of the group. Moreover, the strain it put on my Focus was exactly what I needed. I could already feel it improving incrementally.

In the afternoon, we returned to sparring, and in the evening, we maintained our earlier schedule: first, sparring practice under the influence of a gravity well, then finally, sparring practice with Habit and Yesman's squads. We all combined our information about the central floor guardian. Although we didn't have a method of simulating what it would do, we could simulate its attacks simply by pretending it existed, then practicing the best formations to counter what we'd seen it do.

After our training session in the sparring pits, I gathered up Yesman and Habit. Habit said, "This isn't going to work. It might help, but it's not going to be enough. We don't have any way to reliably simulate the central golem. Imagination only goes so far."

"We could all train against the floor golems," Yesman said.

"It's not perfect, but if we gathered up our squads and practiced our formations…"

"If we can't simulate it properly, it's not going to help," I said. It was like people who'd imagined going off ski jumps, envisioned it in their minds or watched videos about it, but had no experience with the real thing—and still somehow thought they could do it, starting with the biggest jump.

"It's going to give us a false sense of confidence, whether we want it to or not."

"What about the quarter golems?" Habit suggested.

"They're slower than the central golem in some ways," Yesman countered.

"Faster in others. It's not perfect."

"What about my Arts?" I suggested.

"I remember how the central golem moved. I can slow it down and speed it up where necessary. Make it hit harder. We can simulate the central golem." Habit and Yesman both nodded slowly.

"Next Labyrinth run, then," I said.

"We'll figure something out. Tell your squads, and meet in the far quarter for this week's run." After our talk, I cleaned up in the baths, then returned to my quarters. Anchor and Brawl were already sleeping, and of course, Sage had her own private room. I still had one last task before I slept, though. Opening up my kit bag, I retrieved the aspected Presence I'd gotten from the Subtle Man. It was the largest Presence I'd ever seen, but still delicate in my fingers.

I crushed it, stealing the Presence and absorbing it without a hitch. But a wisp of swirling orange maegen floated in the air in front of me. It glowed, orange smoke in the wind, then wrapped around the palm of my hand like a snake. At the moment, it refused to enter my body, and instead, just tingled on the surface of my skin. If the sensation of popping candy tingling on my tongue could be transplanted to the palm of my hand, that was it. How to use it, though, was a different question.

I tried pulling it in, imagining the energy entering the palm of my hand. It didn't obey. There were internal leys all throughout my body, weren't there? What if the maegen got inside the ley? I imagined my Presence as a suction—I had two points left after training, and it had to go somewhere. I used it to pull inward, as if it was a hook and I was dragging the energy into my body. The maegen obeyed, responding to the void more than anything, and rushed into my flesh. It burned.

Energy seared the inside of my muscles, like I was a marshmallow being roasted. The aspect didn't matter. All it wanted to do was light me on fire. I gritted my teeth. I didn't really want to wake anyone up, and that was enough to stop me from grunting in pain—it wasn't the worst pain I'd suffered, after all. I could resist it. After a few seconds, without any command, my body coughed out the maegen, vomiting it out the palm of my hand.

It turned back into a glowing orange wisp, then disappeared into the air with a puff.

"Huh," was all I could muster, and at that, it was just a whisper. But it was like Askan had said, and so many others before him. Dupes couldn't use maegen—at least, not in our intended form. Aspected Presences weren't supposed to help me. I wasn't just ready to give up yet, though.