***
“Looks like you beat me fair and square.” Domonos walked up to Yui, who was looking at the group of men and women headed out into the city to celebrate.
“First group fully qualified. Hard to believe that they will be the officers and CPD squads in a few weeks if they pass.” Yui smiled as he looked to Domonos.
They fell silent as they looked over the barracks.
“It’s completely different from what we were trained as kids to do. I thought that those with the best techniques were the best to lead,” Domonos said.
“Now the pressure is to be stronger so that we can make sure that as many of our people make it back as possible. So that we don’t need to sleep as much, so that they don’t have to worry about losing us and so we can provide a greater impact in the fight ahead,” Yui said.
“We don’t need the strongest people leading us; we need the best people leading us. Erik and Rugrat gave command to Glosil, not because he is stronger, but he is better at leading and organizing people.” Domonos snorted. “How hard you hit is not everything.”
“You sure you’re my brother? Doesn’t seem like something you would say!” Yui laughed.
“We’ve changed since joining Alva. In more ways than just our fighting ability—our way of thinking is different too.”
“People understand when we talk about increasing our strength, but not how we live with the possibility of dying and laying down our life for the others around us.” Yui leaned on the railing again.
“I guess they just don’t understand. Unless you’ve put your life in someone else’s hands and they’ve put theirs in yours, you don’t know what that bond is like, what this is all about,” Domonos said. Yui grunted as the two scanned the barracks.
“I never felt like I belonged when I was training to be a trader, but as an officer, it feels right. It’s shit at times—damn, it’s shit.” Yui’s voice grew quieter and he looked at his hands. He saw the faces of those under his command and hadn’t made it back.
“Though seeing them all working together, working for a singular goal, one order having the ability to change everything—it’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure to take them out, to complete the mission and bring them all back.”
“But you wouldn’t trust it to anyone else,” Domonos said, filling in what Yui felt but didn’t want to voice.
“Yeah.” Yui nodded.
They stood there for a few minutes and turned as they heard someone approaching.
A formation master with a frantic expression ran up to them, pulling out two wrapped items. “Your sister sent me over with these. She says she’s sorry but she had broken through to Expert. Oh, she said that you were lucky enough to get the first ones. And, uh...” The formation master looked awkward. “Don’t break them.” He coughed and bowed quickly, bobbing as he backed away. “Got to go—she promised me a class!”
Yui and Domonos shook their heads as the formation master fled the barracks.
“Looks like Qin’er is terrorizing the lower ranks of formation masters still.”
“Either he is really looking forward to that lesson or terrified,” Domonos said.
“Probably both. Have you looked in a mirror? You’d crack it.”
Domonos opened the wrapped bundle and looked at the weapons inside.
Yui took the spear. He turned it in his hands, closing his eyes as it sung in the air. Domonos unsheathed the sword, giving a few practice swings.
“Balanced perfectly for me, focusing on increasing strength.” Yui spun the spear behind his back and shot it out forward, the spear in perfect balance with his body. With his reactions, the two came together harmoniously.
Faint sparks floated off Yui’s new spearhead with his thrust. He retracted his spear and studied it closer. He looked up, seeing Domonos move with his blade.
Domonos had trained with weapons since he was a young boy. Their father had not once denied his boy’s tutors and teachers from the First Realm. With his connections, he was able to get his hands on trainers and manuals that kings wouldn’t be able to acquire.
There was once a vast gulf between the two brothers but with joining Alva earlier on, he had been able to bridge that gap.
They had both continued to refine their fighting styles. The further Yui went, the less he felt he knew. There were so many paths that one could follow and none could be said to be right or wrong, a thought process that had started once he had become a soldier of Alva.
Still, although the gap is shorter, Domonos’s skill with a sword is on another level. If we can create fighting techniques, then how powerful would we be? If I could make a technique before him, maybe I could beat him in a fight.
A still childlike desire to beat his older brother appeared in Yui’s eyes as he watched Domonos. His attacks didn’t have the flair from before. Now they were refined down into their simple moves, looking to injure, kill, defend, and alter the battle to his advantage.
“Looks like our sister is soon to leave us in the dust. Expert formation master...” Domonos laughed and Yui grinned, proud of Qin and the heights she had reached. Domonos cut his finger and put it on the blade. It shone, creating a link between them.
“Huh?” Yui said.
“It’s an Expert-level weapon. You can bind your Expert-level gear to yourself. That way someone else can wield it but then they can’t use any of the innate effects or enchantments,” Domonos said.
“I knew that. I just haven’t seen one before.” Yui followed after Domonos, putting his blood on his spear.
“Talking about weapons, aren’t we selling weapons to others on the Fourth Realm?” Domonos asked.
“Yeah, I think Elise is meeting with them now. We will be selling repeaters, the first generation without the formations, to people in the Fourth Realm. As well as body armor and helmets,” Yui said. “The repeaters are effective as a supporting weapon. We’re selling exploding arrows with them as well and those who agree will have to sign an agreement saying that they will not attack us. They get weapons; we get an alliance, coins, and more people coming to Vuzgal to pick up gear and pay money to go through our totem.”
***
“Your first order,” Elise said.
Taran looked up from the smithy. “Did you run all the way down here from Vuzgal?” Taran asked as he turned around.
“Not quite.” Elise put the notes down on the table.
Taran put down what he was working on and looked at the orders. “One thousand repeating crossbows, five hundred repeating ballistas with accompanying mounts,” he summarized.
“Yes, as well as explosive arrows. How long do you think it will take?”
“Should be about four months for the crossbows, three for the ballistas. Arrows—you’ve got twenty thousand listed here. That will take...” Taran half closed one eye, thinking on it. “I’d say six weeks.”
“Will that affect the production speed of the army’s gear?”
“Shouldn’t. Most of this stuff I can give to the students. The people working for military supply are working around the clock to make weapons and armor. We are already playing catch-up. We need more crafters and workers to keep up with the demand for clothing, weapons, and armor. The newest recruits, we can only supply enough clothing and armor for half a company. We don’t have the weapons for them, so they’ll be getting the latest generation of repeaters.”
“I thought that production had increased?” Elise asked.
“Yes, it has, but we just had four hundred and fifty people to supply gear to. Now we have another four hundred and fifty who will finish training in just a few weeks, and another four hundred and fifty who will finish a few weeks after that. With an aim to train nine hundred people a month until we reach ten thousand men and women in uniform. That’s ten thousand sets of body armor, helmets, and personal weapons. Now add in four sets of clothes and two sets of boots. Medical supplies, mortars, staffs used by the mages, grenade launchers, ammunition.” Taran looked at
Elise.
“Right. Not that easy to support.”
“The armor and helmets are easy enough to make. The carriers for them take more time as the tailors are at capacity here. We should get some support from the tailors in Vuzgal chipping in. Just need more time to build up supplies and people to create the supporting backbone.”
“Can we really do these deals then?” Elise asked.
“Making the repeaters is much easier than making rifles—won’t take much time and people of lower skill can do it. Train them up. Also, it gets us allies and people who won’t attack us. Can we not?” Taran asked.
“I guess not. All of them are asking for it. We need to take this time to establish Vuzgal in the middle of the Fourth Realm. Trade is the basis of all agreements. If we can benefit more from trading than we can fighting—” Elise let out a breath and straightened up.
“Everything good?” Taran asked.
“Yeah, crazy, but good. There is a lot going on up there. So much to be done. Vuzgal, if we build it up right...” Elise shook her head, thinking about the possibilities.
“I’ll see what I can do on the side of the orders. See if I can give them smaller order sizes and then eke them out over a longer time.”
“Remind me to have you on my side in a negotiation.” Taran chuckled.
Chapter: Frustrations
Rugrat let out a breath and he opened his eyes. He used a Clean spell to remove the sweat from his face.
“Mist Mana Core,” A faint sliver of a smile appeared on his face. “I reinforced it a bit it shouldn’t be long until I can reach Drop Mana Core. It’s still slow though.” He looked at his stomach, glaring at the mana core inside. “Who asked you to be so damn gluttonous?”
It didn’t answer as Rugrat stretched out and fell back, getting out the kinks in his muscles from sitting so long.
He looked up at the ceiling, the lights of cornerstones and growing mana stones dancing above him.
Rugrat sighed to himself as he looked at the mana gathering formation around him. He looked over to the Vuzgal dungeon core that had been supplying him with the necessary mana.
Rugrat pushed himself up. Instead of feeling excited, he felt defeated. “Come on, dude. You’re progressing quickly, after just a week of being here and concentrating on just increasing your cultivation.” Rugrat’s shoulders slumped as he headed for the exit.
Still, I can’t lie to myself. I haven’t made any progress in my smithing this entire time. My progress with formations is slow. I was never good with technology and figuring out how they work. I’m better dealing with things like nature. I can kill an animal, clean it, cook it, eat it. Teach someone to fire a rifle, scout a position. Physical stuff. Sure, shooting long distance is a lot of numbers—distance, drop, temperature—but it all makes sense. It just works in my brain.
Rugrat headed up just as Matt was heading down.
“Hey dude!” Matt said. He had been working in Vuzgal for a while now, commanding all of the building projects that were going on and establishing the blueprint office in Vuzgal. With so many crafters wanting to record down their items or to get blueprints the blue print office’s grounds was one of the busiest in all of Vuzgal.
“Hey.” Rugrat, not feeling like he wanted to talk, kept on walking.
“Do you want to grab a beer?” Matt asked.
“Not really feeling a bar,” Rugrat said.
“Like up at the top,” Matt said.
“The top?” Rugrat looked at Matt, who pointed upward.
Rugrat looked up through the pillar, seeing the changing sky.
“Sweet! I’ll just put these into the dungeon—new plans for underground Battle Arena training rooms. They’re expanding like mad over there. Also plans for the new defensive networks.” Matt jumped down the stairs and put the blueprints into the dungeon core and then placed everything away and headed up to Rugrat.
Rugrat still felt defeated as he started to walk up the pillar.
“You okay, man?” Matt asked. The two of them walked up the spiraling steps inside the pillar toward the top.
“Just, you know, feel like I’m not going anywhere.”
“Not going anywhere?”
“Like I started to work on formations, hoping that they would help increase my smithing skill. I have made progress with formations but it’s just slow and I haven’t figured out anything new for smithing.”
“Maybe you’re trying to focus on smithing too much?” Matt asked.
“It’s my skill, though.”
“It’s one of your skills. Someone told me that you should only focus on one thing at a time, and put all your effort into that one thing.”
“I am putting all of my effort into improving my smithing,” Rugrat said, confused.
“That’s it. When you’re working on your formations, just work on formations. Else it’s like trying to learn electrical wiring to figure out how to make a house’s foundations. Every time you learn a little thing about electrical engineering, you’ll go overboard trying to apply it to foundations. If you learn all of electrical engineering and about a house’s foundations and compare notes afterward, it will be easier,” Matt said.
“Just focus on formations.” Rugrat felt a bit easier not having to worry about the formations and engineering. Though he really wanted to learn both at the same time. Smithing and formations went hand in hand with each other. I want to make weapons from the ground up, from the base materials through the forging and the formations.
“You seem really convinced.” Matt smiled, seeing through Rugrat.
Rugrat wanted to rebut him and say that he understood it and would take the advice.
“What do you think is better: learning all about how to fight and then learning tactics, or learn tactics and then how to fight?”
“If I learned tactics and then how to fight, it would be harder. You need to build, learn your weapon, learn how to move, then learn how you slot into a plan. That way your foundational movements and attacks don’t need to be figured out. Movement and fighting can be made instinctual. Tactics is a higher level,” Rugrat said.
“So you would learn to fight and then tactics. So why not learn how to create formations. Then, once you have reached the peak of that, you try to see how you can adapt formations and smithing to each other.”
“That makes some sense,” Rugrat said. “Still, it feels as if I’m losing because I’m not progressing.”
“Sometimes a change is better than a break and sometimes working on something laterally will increase your progress with both,” Matt said.
“Sounds complicated.” Rugrat grinned.
“Don’t it?” Matt agreed with a self-deprecating smile as he nodded.
Rugrat let out a laugh.
“Look, I know I won’t be the most powerful person in Alva, Vuzgal, or whatever. I know for you and Erik getting stronger, showing progress is like a drug to you. We each have our own path to follow. Has your life ever followed an exact plan? Or did it take twists and turns?”
Rugrat fell quiet.
“We each got a path to follow—sometimes there might be dead ends,” Matt said.
“It’s just, with smithing I can get it—you know, add in this, heat this up, form into a shape and then you have something.” Rugrat moved his hands with his words before offering them to Matt.
“Yeah.”
“Now, with these formations, it’s like a computer. I know how to use a computer. Do I know how it works? Hell, no. I plug that thing in, switch it on, and then use a mouse and keyboard. I know that there are graphics cards, fans, a CPU and that in there, but how does it take electricity and turn it into music, video, words?” Rugrat grimaced and shook his head.
“So, mana is like electricity and then you’re trying to figure out how to turn it into something useful?” Matt asked. “This is a long damn walk.”
“Well, it is the tallest place in all of Vuzgal. Yeah, like knowing computers—it’s all complicated and twisted.”
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“From what I know about formations, I think that you might be overthinking it,” Matt said.
“What do you mean?” Rugrat asked.
“Mana is a power source, yes, but I think it’s more alive than you give it credit for.”
Rugrat clicked his tongue and paused before responding. He used his Mana Vision to look around him. He saw the mana drawn into the pillar by the mana gathering formations, the intermixed different attribute mana as it settled on the floor of the pillar and passed through it. He knew that the mana was purified and then turned into mana stones.
They continued walking, with the two of them not saying anything. They reached the top, looking over Vuzgal as the sun went down.
Matt opened a beer and passed it to Rugrat.
“Thanks,” Rugrat said, his voice distant. “Maybe mana isn’t just like electricity.”
He felt as if he were on the precipice of something important. He looked at his hand, seeing the mana moving through it. The natural way it moved through his body.
“Maybe it’s like water, like the creek on Jefferies Farm—just needs the right path to follow so it don’t get blocked up.”
“Jefferies Farm?” Matt asked as he drank his beer.
“A place close to where I grew up. They had this creek, would overflow every year. Was nasty as hell. It was all blocked up. We got the idea to stick one of those hydroelectric generators where the blockage was, then we opened up the creek; when it rained, then the generator would create power. You know, hydroelectric is like that.”
“Like what? I feel like you’re half thinking through what you’re saying.”
“Hydroelectric turns the power of nature into electricity.”
“Yeah, don’t have to tell me. I lived in Canada—water all around. Even turned Niagara Falls into a hydroelectric generator station.”
“You ever see it?” Rugrat asked.
“See what? The generator station?”
“Nah, the falls—Niagara Falls.”
“Yeah.” Matt grinned. “You can feel the water turned mist from hundreds of meters away, just the roar of it. It looks so cool. The best is when it’s winter. Everything gets covered in ice and then the lights play on it, lighting it up. You just need to take a moment, you know? Just look at it and you can feel that roar in your chest if you pay attention. Nature might not be the fastest thing, but it’s the most powerful force in the world.”
The Fifth Realm Page 64
