Chapter 56: What's the Lesson? (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WVB1wb6UGPWe3KyNSDHZWfR65Q9tOeZ3wATNwZG2_C4/edit?usp=sharing

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In a flash, Cayden found himself on his feet next to Cassius and Instructor Barry. Though his wounds were gone, the pain lingered, and Cayden winced at the burning sensation from where he had been stabbed in the final assault. His slitherkin opponent stood next to him rubbing at his wrist, and before Instructor Barry could give the command, Cayden turned and bowed. While he wasn’t happy with the duel’s outcome, he had no hard feelings against his opponent for the defeat and had no desire to make an enemy.

“Good match,” the slitherkin hissed as he bowed in return. As he rose from the bow, Cayden noticed his fellow student’s smile. Yet to his surprise, it wasn’t one of gloating or condescension – but rather a feral grin of joy, a mirror to the smile still on Cayden’s face.

“It’ll be even better next time,” Cayden quipped, and his opponent’s smile grew in response.

“I look forward to it,” the slitherkin said. And then with a final nod of respect between the two of them, they returned to their seats in the sand surrounding the ring as Instructor Barry called up the next two combatants.

“...are you…okay?” Jeremy asked in a low voice when Cayden returned to his side. “You really took a beating in there.”

The words could have been taken as an insult, but Cayden couldn’t detect any malicious intent in Jeremy’s tone, just simply concern and curiosity. “Yeah, I’m fine. Still hurts a bit, but nothing too bad.” He smiled at the formine. “I’m tougher than I look.” He chose to ignore the implied question about his moment of crazed laughter, as he didn’t know how he could explain that to his acquaintance – truthfully, he wasn’t sure how he could even explain it to himself.

Jeremy chuckled. “I could see that. If he hadn’t managed to throw you out of the ring, I wasn’t sure it would ever end. Aside from to your clothes, it didn’t look like anything he was throwing at you did any damage at all.”

Cayden shook his head. “Nah, he had me dead to rights. His attacks were doing enough that I would have dropped soon. He was fast enough that my only chance to catch him was by surprise, and that’s unlikely to work next time. I’ve got some real training to do.” Then, the full implications of Jeremy’s words caught up to him, and he looked down at his outfit in dismay.

While Cassius’ skill restored his body to its previous health, the same couldn’t be said for his clothes. The clothes had been brought along for the teleport – or perhaps it was a transition through time? Cayden wasn’t sure – but they retained all the damage sustained by the slitherkin’s swords.

The previous battles had likely resulted in the same, but most of those battles had ended much quicker than Cayden’s own with only one or two serious wounds deciding the victor. None of the rips or holes in the combatants’ clothes had been noticeable, at least not to Cayden from the sideline.

His clothes, however, were another matter.

His shirt barely hung together over his frame, filled with so many tears that it was more empty space than fabric. Thankfully, the majority of the slitherkin’s attacks had been focused on his upper body, so Cayden’s dignity was mostly preserved. Looking down at the scraps of what was once one of his nicer outfits, chosen that morning to hopefully leave a good impression on his first day of classes, he sighed and settled in to watch the rest of the matches.

--

The class lasted another hour and a half until all of his classmates had taken their turn in the ring, each one of the fights unique and interesting in its own way.

One of his classmates turned himself into a grey metal as soon as he stepped into the ring, becoming even more resistant to his opponent’s bladed weapons than Cayden. Another conjured glowing yellow shields to corral his opponent and then used another thin shield as a blade to cleave off his arm. A third made a strange motion with his hands upon entering the ring before splitting into three perfect clones of himself, turning what was supposed to be a duel into a three-on-one battle. Unfortunately, none of the clones displayed any impressive combat skills and were taken out one-by-one by their giant opponent.

While frontline fighters were typically seen as the most ‘boring’ role of adventurers with little variation or creativity between their builds, Cayden learned that, for at least those who attended Delver’s Academy, that definitely wasn’t the case.

Jeremy, unfortunately, was an exception to this. While he displayed a respectable amount of skill with his sword and shield, he showed nothing beyond that, joining Cayden as one of the few non-nobles to lose their duels.

“Gather ‘round, everyone!” Instructor Barry called a minute after the final fight concluded. “Congratulations on surviving your first day in Frontline Combat 101! I can assure you, it’ll only get worse from here.” Cayden ignored the recurring notification about [Intimidate] with a sigh. “For any of you who’re friends with the layabouts who didn’t make it through the first day, tell them that they’re welcome back anytime! Just let them know that they’ll have to make up whatever portion of class they missed. And seeing as everyone in the class has already taken their turn in the dueling circle…” his smile grew maliciously, “...I’ll be the one they’ll have the privilege of dueling.”

Soft murmuring could be heard as all those present thanked their lucky stars they hadn’t chosen to join those who had left the arena early. Instructor Barry clapped, the sharp report echoing around the arena and silencing the murmurs. He had lost the look of malicious glee and was instead staring out at the listening students, meeting their eyes one by one.

“Now before any of you decide that this was too much, that you’d be better served in a backline adventuring role, know this: today served a purpose. A very important purpose.” He took a deep breath. “You are adventurers. You have come from very different backgrounds and experiences, but there is one thing that unites you all: should you continue to pursue adventuring, you will one day be injured. No matter how good, no matter how much you train, there will come a time when you will be in pain. And in that moment, if you flinch away from what needs to be done, you will die.

“Everything that you do in this class has a purpose, and all of those purposes are geared towards your survival. So that when that day comes, when you are looking into the maw of a monster more powerful than you expected with its claws in your gut, you won’t flinch, and will do what you need to survive. To win. So I understand those of you who may be struggling after today. Feel free to visit the healer’s building if you feel any lingering pain. And for those of you who escaped today without serious injury, know that your time is coming. But know that it all has a purpose.”

Instructor Barry seemed to swell in Cayden’s vision as he gave the speech, an effect that Cayden couldn’t explain with any convenient notification from [Mind is a Temple]. But as his last words echoed into silence, Instructor Barry nodded and smiled, his serious air gone like the wind as his head bobbled precipitously.

“Normally, you’d have other classes after this, but given the nature of today’s class, they won’t begin until two days from now. The other styles of combat classes will have their own version of this lesson over the next few days as Cassius makes the rounds.” Then, with a final look over the students and a nod of his head, he clapped again. “Dismissed!”

--

Jeremy’s dormitory was adjacent to Cayden’s, and they walked side-by-side away from the class in silence. Jeremy had a thoughtful look on his face, while Cayden was lost in his own musings.

He had considered many potential purposes from the duels in the morning’s class: getting a baseline for the student’s skills, letting students see and experience their classmates’ abilities, teaching them how to react when the danger was ‘real,’ and serving a dose of humility to those who thought they would be at the top of the heap. And those were likely pieces of the lessons they were meant to take. But he’d never considered what Instructor Barry had implied was the primary purpose of the exercise: getting the students acquainted with pain.

Cayden was well acquainted with pain. He had no illusions that he’d fare well under torture or anything like that, but he’d long ago recognized that pain was a prerequisite to growth, that nothing good came about without at least a little discomfort. He had been training under Elise’s direction, after all, and [Pain Resistance] had been one of his first composite skills that had combined into [Resistance].

He hadn’t realized how divergent his mindset might have been from some of his classmates.

Physically, he was younger than most of the students at Delver’s, which sometimes made him forget that they were mentally less than half his age. And for the nobles, their less-than-two-decades of life were likely filled with comfort and deference from the majority of those around them. How often were they forced to experience pain? Pushed into doing anything that they didn’t want to do?

He was sure that didn’t apply to all of them. His slitherkin opponent, at least, displayed an amount of skill that couldn’t have been obtained without rigorous training and at least some level of discomfort. But how much of the success of the final gambit in his fight, the last charge that allowed him to get at least one grab on his opponent, could be attributed to his willingness to trade a much more severe injury?

It was something to keep in mind, a potential vulnerability of his classmates, as Cayden was sure there would be more fights between students in the future. For the most part, monsters didn’t shy away from pain or danger, and taking advantage of others’ pain was an entirely new avenue of strategy he hadn’t before considered.

At the same time, though, he couldn’t allow it to color how he fought too much. At the end of the day, he was training to be an adventurer, and his true opponent was and always would be monsters, not other humans.

His mind resolved, Cayden turned his attention to his notifications. [Mind is a Temple] and [Inertia] had both leveled to two, but neither of them displayed any change in their description. Cayden had previously talked to Elise about how leveling worked for those skills that didn’t have specific numbers associated with them like the percentage reduction and increase granted by [Resistance] and [Resilience].

For skills like [Inertia], it was simple enough, if not always entirely clear. The skill would increase its capabilities despite not changing its description. Perhaps it would be the maximum and minimum amounts that his [Inertia] could be scaled. Perhaps it was the speed at which Cayden could change his [Inertia], or maybe how much mana was required to make a change. Perhaps it was all of these things, or something entirely different – only testing and experimentation would tell, although Elise also planned to do some scouring of the library for answers when she had the time.

[Mind is a Temple], however, was a different matter. Aside from potentially increasing the chance of detecting the influence of higher-leveled skills – like [Resistance], there would inevitably be skills that could bypass the warning from [Mind is a Temple] – they couldn’t think of anything that might ‘increase’ as the skill leveled up.

That was where skill breakpoints came in.

Apparently, for skills that provided a flat benefit that couldn’t be scaled, they typically offered additional benefits and abilities at certain breakpoints, usually at levels divisible by ten. Elise didn’t know what abilities [Mind is a Temple] might offer but planned to look for answers with her library time.

In addition to the leveling notifications, Cayden was offered several skills after his duel, though all of them he had previously been offered and rejected. [Swiftness], the attribute-boosting skill for agility, was an amazing skill that he fully planned on eventually integrating into his build, but at the moment he unfortunately didn’t have the free slots.

While the workout before the duels had been strenuous, Cayden had long since passed the point – if that point had ever existed – where he could gain any stats from a single workout, regardless of how intense, and so his stats were unfortunately all still the same. If he continued to get the chance to train under the ‘equalizer’, though, Cayden was sure that would change soon enough.

He dismissed his status as they approached the series of dormitories on the edge of the academy’s campus.

“You grabbing food at the dining hall later?” he hesitantly asked Jeremy, who looked lost in his own thoughts.

“What? Oh, yeah, for sure,” Jeremy responded with a smile. “I’m definitely going to need a hot shower first, though. Have checked out your room, yet? Some of the stuff they’ve got is amazing.”

Cayden chuckled, nodding. Compared to his place in Avernon, he certainly supposed that his room on campus was amazing. There was nothing enchanted, obviously, but runecarving could do many amazing things. Compared to the modern conveniences of his past life it was nothing impressive, but for someone who wasn’t a noble in this world, Cayden could see how impressive it might seem.

“Meet you there in an hour? I’d like to check up on Elise, first.”

Jeremy nodded. “See you then.”

With a wave goodbye, Cayden left Jeremy behind and turned to his own dorm, ignoring the stares from the non-frontline fighter students that gaped or laughed at his half-shirtless form.

He’d moved into his room two days earlier, immediately after Elise had been admitted to the affiliate academy and been granted a room of her own on the other side of the campus. And in that time, he’d grown to appreciate his new home. He’d never had a chance to experience college in his previous life. In fact, he’d never even gotten his GED – it had been at the top of his to-do list before he’d woken up as a baby in a new world. But his dorm at Delver’s Academy was exactly what he might have expected of a college dorm from its representation in popular media on Earth.

The building itself was hideous, made of brown brick in a squat rectangle without ornamentation, but the entrance was large and the hallways were spacious. He lived on the second floor, which was split into six different suites of four bedrooms apiece. Each room was smaller than a normal living room on Earth, but was much larger than what Cayden was used to after the orphanage and his apartment in Avernon. The suite also had a spacious shared living area with some comfortable furniture, and each room had its own private bathroom complete with running water and hot showers.

Cayden had been thoroughly enjoying his living arrangements. In the days leading up to the first day of classes, the academy had been a practical ghost town, and he’d enjoyed his run of the dorm and exploring the campus with Elise (she hadn’t been granted library access before the official first day of classes).

Now, however, the place was packed, and Cayden found it much less enjoyable. Servants and students alike bustled in and out of the building, each of them carrying on a single trip more supplies than Cayden brought with him from Avernon, and he constantly had to dodge out of their way as they bumped into each other in the halls. He’d been able to ignore the stares at his torn shirt easily enough as he walked with Jeremy across the campus, but in the closer confines of the dorm, they were much harder to disregard.

Eventually, he climbed up the crowded stairs and made it to his own suite, noticing the propped-open door right away.

He took a deep breath.

It was time to meet his roommates.

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