NOVEL NEXT 67 - An Unfamiliar Ceiling
He didn't remember falling asleep.
When he woke, his muscles were sluggish from misuse.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
No, actually, it was familiar. It was the canopy of his bed. He'd just wanted to make the reference.
"You're up?" said a voice.
He sat up, feeling his back strain as he did so.
"Mary."
She smiled at him. There were bags under her eyes, as if she hadn't been sleeping.
He frowned. He was in clean clothing, not the torn and dirty dueling outfit he'd had when he'd fought the Centaur. Someone had changed his outfit when he was sleeping. The Granavale household spared no expenses when it came to his medical care.
"I hope you've been taking care of yourself."
"I should say the same to you!" she snapped, but the relief was palpable in her voice.
"How long has it been?"
"A week."
A week. A whole week.
He didn't know how to react to that.
In his old life, if he'd lost a whole week to convalescing, he would've been panicked, wondering about the mountain of tasks that awaited him.
But now?
Wasn't he… done?"
"The tournament. The festival," he said. "What happened?"
"Oh, it was awesome!" Mary said. "But also terrifying. It was scarier than the one I'd fought before. But I managed to keep it away and Gelias shot it apart with his bow. Betty hurt herself by kicking it once it was down, and you'd think she'd been shot through the heart from the way she cried about it."
Already calling the Blackstone heir Betty. That overfamiliarity with nobles was going to bite her one day, and it would be mostly his fault if it did. Ah, well.
"And the townspeople?"
"Everyone lived," Mary said firmly. "And the guard you selected joined in to help us, too. If it wasn't for them we might've had more trouble, but with so many of us facing down one Monster… it almost felt a little unfair."
He chuckled. Yeah, a few extra bodies would've helped a lot. It might've been nice to have a few meatshields instead of taking a fist to the chest.
That was dark humor. He hoped that was dark humor. He'd just spent a week recovering, so he was entitled to some dark humor. He really hoped he wasn't becoming a bad person.
"I hope it didn't look too one-sided…?"
"They were cheering, Archie. Like, roaring in the stands, stamping their feet cheering. Completely wild. I've already gotten three offers of betrothal — which I've refused, if you're wondering."
"I wasn't.
"At any rate… I heard rumors beforehand that the townspeople thought your honor guard idea was a silly vanity project… but now they think you're a genius."
It was truly wonderful that his cynical powergrab was getting him hailed as a genius.
"You're the pride of Granavale," Mary said.
Still, it was great that they had won the hearts of the crowd. The Harvest Festival and the Tournament, despite the big hiccup at the end, had gone very, very well.
There was a lightness in his heart, as if a great weight that he hadn't noticed before had simply just lifted. Was it the pressure of needing to succeed? Or was it something else?
His stomach growled. He looked around his room for food and saw his Gemstone Tablet sitting extremely conspicuously on his side table.
It was open, gleaming with the slightest magelight.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to look!" Mary said.
So much for being a state secret.
Well, there was no need to hide it now. He opened it.
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 11->12
Constitution: 9->10
Intelligence: 8->9
Wisdom: 8->9
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Charisma: 8->9
Luck: 5->6
New Skills:
[Channeled Rage of the Dead]
[Bodily Barrier]
The realization of your magic shells your physical form. Blows upon you will be redistributed throughout the shell and into your magic. Level 1.
[Rapier Skills]
[Flurry of Blows]
[Disarm]
[Strobe (locked)]
Ruby of Energy: Reservoir 50/1000
Quartz of Barrier: 20/1000
Gemstone Sword: 40/1000
Ruby of Energy (Octahedral): 20/1000
Titles:
Centaur Slayer
Champion of Granavale
Just where did these stat changes come from? Sure, he could imagine how exercise could build his strength and dexterity, and how public speaking could improve his charisma. He'd had plenty of opportunities to practice all three.
But luck? How could you powerlevel luck?
He'd assumed the leveling paradigm was experience-based. That by putting in the work, he could make incremental but noticeable progress towards improving his stats. And that seemed to be the case for Gem Attunement: as he poured his power into the Gem, the reservoir and Attunement level went up.
But these stat changes? He'd been monitoring his stats pretty much daily, keeping a close eye on them before the tournament and after. It genuinely seemed like these improvements had been triggered by the practical application of his new abilities instead of all of the theorizing and drilling.
He'd done sword drills with Weaponsmaster Garth Alavant, but until he'd tested his blade against real opponents like Rory, Beatrice, Gelias, and the Centaur, he hadn't really had a chance to see the fruits of his progress, his increased Strength and Dexterity. Sure, he'd pursued knowledge of magic and theology, and apparently that had given him the Intellect and Wisdom to defeat Sister Catherine. He'd given a few rousing speeches that apparently had enough to convince Xander to get himself killed.
But the only lucky thing that had happened to him was surviving the attack of the Hundred-Eyed Centaur.
"This all looks really complicated," Mary said, looking over his shoulder. There wasn't much of a point of hiding it from her. It was clear by now that she'd committed herself to a life bound to him, and she already knew enough secrets to paint a massive target on her head. "I guess this is why you wanted me to read, huh?"
Though he was able to see a few of her stats earlier, now that he thought about it. And it would be useful to be able to track her stats as well. But… he didn't want to mingle their magics. This was his Gemstone Tablet, suffused with his identity. It was the very record of his life.
And while at this point he trusted her almost completely — she'd had plenty of opportunities to knife him in the back one way or another — he didn't want to share his life with her in that sense. A man needed his privacy.
And yet…
He tinkered with the Gemstone Tablet a bit, until he navigated to her stat sheet. It was, all things considered, far sparser than his.
Strength: 4->5
Dexterity: 5->6
Constitution: 5
Intelligence: 7->8
Wisdom: 6
Charisma: 8
Luck: 5
Titles:
Granavale Maid
Champion of Granavale
Noble-in-training
Skills:
???
Relationships:
Archmund Granavale, Contractual Master
???
Bound Items:
???
"That's my name," Mary said, pointing at the tablet. "And all of this…"
She took a deep breath. "Alright, fine. I'll take learning to read seriously."
"Mary, I didn't actually mean for you to see this," Archmund said, his voice flat and deadened. "It's an Imperial-level secret."
She gave him a deeply sarcastic look. "Well, I suppose that means you can't afford to send me away, can you now?"
He shoved the tablet under his sheets.
"Oh, he's up?" said a voice, as Raehel poked her head into his room, her frizzy red hair spilling out of her brimmed cap. "And he's decent, too. Pity for you, huh?"
Archmund chose to ignore that. "So what did you think?"
"What do I think of what? You? Your room? Your injuries?"
"The Harvest Festival."
She let a breath out through her nose. "Well, you're definitely a cut above all the other nobles around here, I think that much should be obvious to everyone. But man. It feels like they're just… playing around. If they were thrust into a live combat situation, they might get Skills really quickly, but…"
He nodded. "I thought so."
He was almost certain that Rory had developed a "taunt", some benign hypnosis that drew the attention of instinct-driven creatures like Monsters. Humans, being capable of reason sometimes, could resist it. Xander, in contrast, had only unlocked the easy instinctive Deflection, not the advanced Flurry of Blows technique.
"Two exceptions," Raehel said. "That Mercy person was a bona fide Omnio agent. Definitely near my level. Wouldn't say they're on my level, because no one is, but they were getting pretty close."
He wondered if Raehel would be singing a different tune if she knew Mercy was the crown princess, Angelina Grace Marca Prima Omnio. Probably not, frankly.
Mary snorted. "It's weird how quickly she got here. Maybe she has eyes for you?"
Yes, of course it would seem weird to anyone who didn't have knowledge of Mercy's identity. He chose to ignore the other bit.
"And the other?"
"Oh, that Catherine fake-nun girl has the magical depth you'd expect from the devout. Weird for someone so young, but not impossible."
He nodded. He'd have to remember that, maybe make a note in his journal, but that wasn't the most pressing concern at the moment.
"But," Raehel said, pulling on her hair, twining her red curls around an index finger, "There's a bigger game afoot."
There always was. He waited in silence. Hopefully, she would blab. She was like him: get him on a topic he cared about, and he could talk for hours.
"I don't know if you know anything about politics," Raehel said hesitantly, "but the University and the Imperial Family are… they occasionally disagree on certain matters."
He wondered if that was an understatement.
"The Empire is somewhat responsible for the rank bloat of the University's hierarchy, from what I've heard," she continued. "Adding more granularity. More certifications. More specifications for who's what kind of mage."
There was an odd look on her face. A look Archmund had seen in the mirror when he was holding back an uncomfortable truth that might tear apart a friendship.
"What did you do?" Archmund asked.
"It's called a Grand Working," Raehel said. "They're the kinds of Enchantments that need more than one person to power them, and they permanently alter the world."
"Binding? Attunement? Awakening?"
"They're too vast and dense for any one person to ever manage even binding, but the feats they achieve are beyond even the Fourth Awakening," Raehel said. "But yeah, look, I get it, you like the theory as much as I do. But you should be more focused on…"
"What did it actually do?"
"She said it would pacify the Dungeon," Raehel said. "More strongly than traditional wards, and prevent what happened that day from ever happening again. But if they have that kind of magic…"
It raised many, many questions. Why didn't she use it earlier, when she'd first arrived? Why'd she wait to use it until now? Why was Dungeoneering a career at all, if it was possible to pacify the Dungeons so totally?
He was missing something. It bothered him.
The Princess had an agenda, and he'd only suspected her of it too late. This might be his last chance to pull it out of her.
"So before you meet the Princess," Raehel said, "Remember. She's been raised in the cutthroat world of the Imperial City. Politics, magic, the kitchen sink. And you? You might be a genius, but you're from a backwater. You're just not operating at the same level."