Chapter 98: H.O.R.S.E. (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z8m94z8_nd8H8aE2_cMgbXaJ2ydTDQbcEsu2h57tXgg/edit?usp=sharing

--

Cayden rubbed his eyes, hoping that, once he looked down at the sheet or papers in front of him, they would have magically transformed into something more interesting.

He opened his eyes and sighed.

No such luck.

The date of the third test – or second test, depending on how you counted them – was fast approaching, and Velic had given each of them pages upon pages of notes on all the different students in their class for them to study. There was nothing definite, nothing like specific levels or skills; it focused more on how they typically fought and their strengths and weaknesses. And though the reports focused more on those teams closer to them in ranking, no team was left out completely, leaving them with close to two hundred different faces and corresponding builds to memorize.

Cayden would have been impressed with the thoroughness of Velic’s information-gathering abilities if it weren’t so obvious that the reports had been created and compiled by someone else, with notes on a few of the other students marking their potential strengths and weaknesses to ‘the young Duke Vaas’ skills’.

Although Cayden supposed delegated information-gathering still counted as information-gathering. But it made the studying a little less easy to bear, knowing his team captain hadn’t had to struggle unduly to acquire the information.

He ignored the fact that Velic would have to memorize the list just as much as Cayden did if he wanted to get any use out of it.

For the first thirty or so students, the list had been interesting. The endless possible combinations of races, general skills, and classes created fascinating, unique builds, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. And combining four of those builds into teams revealed further strengths and weaknesses that their opponents would need to be aware of to counter and capitalize on through various strategies. It truly opened Cayden’s eyes to the sheer breadth of possibilities of the system, and he wrote down a few notes of his own for skills he planned to ask Elise about for his own build.

If he was simply reading through the report, it likely would have stayed interesting all the way through. But Cayden was supposed to memorize each of the faces and corresponding builds. Simply knowing the likely strategy of an opposing team and adjusting their own team’s strategy to match would be useful, and was what most other teams were doing, at least according to Jeremy. But if they wanted the best chance of winning their match, they each needed to know every single one of their possible opponents so they could be properly prepared for any situation in which they might find themselves.

Cayden understood and agreed with the philosophy. He was willing to put in the time and effort it took for them to win. But that didn’t mean he would enjoy it.

He focused back on the papers, recognizing the next face as that of one of the boys in his frontline combat class. He had a somewhat unique skillset in that he was ‘bouncy’. Not in the way he moved, but in how attacks, especially bludgeoning attacks and even certain types of magic, would ‘bounce’ off of him, leaving him no worse for wear. From what he’d seen in class, Cayden suspected that the boy might have had even better defenses than himself in certain situations, but he had a few glaring weaknesses – his offensive abilities were even worse than Cayden’s, and his ‘bounciness’ did little to protect him from piercing attacks. Velic’s lasers possessed a slight ‘piercing’ effect, which would hopefully mean he could counter the boy easily enough. If not, Marvenal’s shadow-net skill could incapacitate him, so the boy’s overall threat level was about as low as it could be. But Cayden dutifully made a few notes of his own on the kid, having found that writing down what he was trying to memorize helped his retention.

He could, of course, have taken [Memorize] and finished with the entire report after a single read-through, but Elise had cautioned him against that approach when she’d been teaching him back in Avernon. While it was undoubtedly a useful skill, those things he used it to [Memorize] would only last as long as he had the general skill, and Cayden didn’t have the free slots to waste on something he could do himself with just a bit of extra time. And unfortunately, the memories stored with [Memorize] would be gone even if she used [Save Progress] on the skill.

He’d checked.

So, he was forced to learn the report the old-fashioned way. With a shake of his head and another rub of his eyes with the heel of his hand, he refocused on the next kid in the report and got back to work.

--

“UGHHHHHHHH…” Cayden let out a drawn-out, dramatic moan as he slapped the paper he’d been holding in front of his face down on the table. He wasn’t yet done – still only halfway, or thereabouts – but he’d finished the report on the eleventh-placed team, the last of those ‘most likely’ to be their opponent.

Making sure his own notes were complete and laying off to the side, Cayden crumpled up the latest page in the report and chunked it toward the waste bin in the corner of the room. It was a bit of a waste, as paper wasn’t nearly as cheap in this world as it had been in his previous, but Cayden was rich enough and frustrated enough to not care. He wanted the cathartic experience of destroying the report he’d been staring at for the last fifteen minutes.

The paper ball hit the rim and bounced off to the side, settling in the corner of the room.

“Ugghhhhhh…” Cayden let out another moan, this one slightly less loud but no less dramatic.

“...are you well?” a small voice asked from a nearby chair, and Cayden jumped in place.

He’d been studying in the common room of his dorm suite, completely alone – or so he had thought. He’d started in his own room, but after the first twenty minutes, had migrated out for the change in scenery. Velic, Marvenal, and Delphia had been gone, so he’d assumed he wouldn’t be distracted.

“How long have you been there?” Cayden asked as he looked to where Delphia reclined in an easy chair in her cloak and shadows.

If possible, the small girl seemed to shrink even further in upon herself. “...about an hour…”

Cayden shook his head. He knew he’d been absorbed in his studying, but that was just ridiculous. Although, he was starting to suspect Delphia used some of her stealth skills more often than she’d indicated. He’d never caught her using the shadowy skill outside of combat, and the intangibility skill she’d claimed was too mana-intensive to use for more than a few seconds at a time. But it was entirely possible for her to have a third, less obvious stealth skill. Only the day prior he’d realized for the first time that she shared one of his remedials classes, huddled at a desk in the corner of the room. Cayden knew he could be oblivious at times, but he didn’t think he was that unobservant.

“Just frustrated,” Cayden answered her earlier question with a shrug. “I get the purpose behind it, but…man is it boring.”

“Are you sure you are not injured in some way?” she asked, and Cayden gave her a confused look. He couldn’t see her face, obviously, but her posture seemed strange – hesitant, as if she were dipping her toe into a pond to check the temperature. “...I can’t imagine any other way you might miss such an easy shot.”

A beat passed. And then two.

And then Cayden let out a short guffaw of laughter.

“Oh really? I’d like to see you do better,” he taunted.

As if she’d been waiting for the moment, a wadded-up sheet of paper appeared from the shadows of Delphia’s robe and she barely hesitated before tossing it through the air. Cayden followed the arc of the projectile as it soared across the room and into the basket.

Cayden turned and gave Delphia a suspicious glare. He still couldn’t see her face, but her body language all but screamed satisfaction as she relaxed further into her chair.

“...best two out of three.”

--

“...roll across the counter, hit the cupboard, and then in,” Cayden called his shot, tossing the wadded-up sheet of paper and then pumping his fist in celebration as it went into the waste bin.

He stepped out of the way, and Delphia didn’t speak as she moved forward to take his place, attempting to mirror the shot. And then Cayden gave another fist pump as her paper hit a bad bounce off the counter and missed the cupboard backboard entirely.

“Hah! That’s, what…‘horses are cool to ride around in the M.E.A?” Cayden asked, and Delphia nodded. “Only five letters down – comeback time.”

After losing handily in the best nine out of seventeen, Cayden had switched up the game, moving the basket around and teaching Delphia ‘P.I.G’, and then ‘H.O.R.S.E’, and then adding onto the word one letter at a time as he fell further and further behind. He knew it wasn’t the most sportsmanlike way to play, but Delphia didn’t seem to mind, and the extended game kept them from having to return to studying.

He’d initially expected to destroy Delphia in the physical contest. Even with only his left hand, he expected his physical build to trump whatever skill Delphia might be able to muster. But he’d forgotten that, despite her role as a mage, she was still a shaeden with dexterity as one of her primary stats. It wasn’t a blowout, but neither was it close enough that Cayden ever stood any real chance at winning the impromptu competition.

…Cayden suspected that she even might have intentionally flubbed a few shots early into their contest to keep the score closer and him interested.

Cayden retrieved his paper from the bin, picking up and tossing Delphia hers along the way, before he started planning his next shot. But before he could call it out, he heard footsteps as their suite’s door opened, Marvenal leading the way inside, followed closely by Velic.

Marvenal ignored their presence as usual, his eyes scanning the room for any hidden threats before his posture relaxed. Velic gave the two of them a shallow nod of greeting, his face impassive as he also scanned the room. His lips twinged down in a small show of disapproval as he looked over the mess they’d made, several wads of papers in different corners of the room, waste bin moved from its normal position, and two reports forgotten on the table.

Cayden sighed.

“I suppose we should call it there,” Cayden said with a tired sigh. “Probably should get back to studying.”

Delphia gave a small nod. As they’d competed, her posture had opened further and further until she was moving like a normal person, but upon Velic and Marvenal’s appearance, she’d withdrawn back into her robe, a pale hand reaching out to tug the hood lower over her face. “...my victory, then?” she said, and Cayden smirked. The small bit of sassiness was proof that he hadn’t completely imagined her breaking from her normal shy state.

“Fine. But I demand a rematch once my arm is back – we’ll see who wins then.”

They hurriedly cleaned up the mess they made as Velic and Marvenal departed to their rooms before picking up each of their own reports. It was still boring, but as Cayden settled into the couch, Delphia sitting in the nearby chair, he dove back into his studying with renewed energy.

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Soo...one of my litRPG stories I previously wrote ([Royal Bodyguard]) and put directly on amazon rather than royalroad, I just finished the audiobook production for and it's live in the audible store. If you're interested, check it out here!

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