Published: April 16th 2025, 9:50:33 pm
Malkah's face was pale and delicate, expressionless, almost like a porcelain doll. His gray eyes were hard like stone, with no trace of youth naivety behind them. I wondered if elven blood must’ve run through the Stormvale family.
“Does your father physically punish you, Malkah?” I asked, looking for his reaction, but there was none.
“I must get used to pain, sir. I’m a Bloodreaver,” Malkah replied.
The answer took me by surprise. The System had an immense influence on how the people of Ebros perceived morals, and I couldn’t tell if Malkah was excusing his father’s actions or stating a pragmatic reality. I bit my tongue. Before speaking, I needed to understand.
“Getting used to pain?”
“Yes, sir. A Bloodreaver can’t freeze in the face of pain. We have to channel it and use it to gain strength. We get stronger when we spill blood. My father and grandfather went through the same ‘conditioning’ before me,” Malkah said.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, refusing to believe I would have to deal with magical Spartans. That ‘conditioning’ explained Malkah’s 99% Endurance. The Man in Yellow and his friends should’ve considered the consequences before adding the Bloodreaver Class.
“Do you like it, Malkah?”
“It’s necessary,” he said, unyielding.
I sighed. My teacher’s sense was telling me Malkah was lying. I wondered if I should break the Hex and recover my levels to have a better read with [Foresight], but I decided not to. It would be too obvious.
“I understand that it’s necessary to improve oneself. There are a lot of dangers out there, and one day, you’ll have a lot of people under your care. Believe me. I have a bunch of orphans, a handful of friends, and a whole lot of orcs living in my backyard. There is no day I won’t think about keeping them safe and healthy…” I said, picking my words carefully. There was a huge hole in Malkah’s story. “...but you flinched because you thought I was going to punish you for getting in a fight. That has nothing to do with pain conditioning, does it?”
“It’s part of my training.” Malkah diverted his eyes, his voice showing cracks. His shoulders were still, but his fingers twitched—tightening, relaxing, and tightening again. His silence said more than any answer could. However, I wasn’t sure if I could get much more of him if I continued that line of questioning. Everything went back to his training as a Bloodreaver.
“Why did you hit Ralgar that day, Malkah?”
My question took him by surprise, and Malkah had to take a moment to collect his thoughts. Still, he answered. It was a good sign.
“Father told him to focus on potion making. He’s supposed to become the Court Alchemist, not a Naturalist,” Malkah said.
“That doesn’t answer my question. Why hit him? Ralgar seems smart. He can understand words better than punches, I presume.”
Malkah looked over my shoulder, yearning from squats and push-ups the other cadets were enduring instead of my questioning. I examined his expression. He was starting to show emotions. He was uncomfortable.
“Is this going to help me become a better Knight?” Malkah asked.
“Getting to know a student helps teach them better,” I replied, knowing Malkah tended to be extremely pragmatic. “I won’t tell anyone. This conversation is between you and me, nobody else. Why did you hit him, Malkah?”
The boy nodded, probably sensing this was a safer topic than his relationship with his father. Fifteen-year-olds were much more eager to tell everything that happened in their lives, good and bad. Malkah took a deep breath, making up his mind.
“Ralgar is my half-brother. I’m supposed to keep an eye on him, but he never follows father’s orders and…” Malkah said, biting his tongue.
Something clicked in my brain. It wasn’t a punch of anger. It was a punch of fear.
“And you take the fall. Every time Ralgar disobeys, your father punishes you because you are supposed to keep an eye on him.” I finished his sentence. “Am I wrong?”
Malkah begrudgingly shook his head. I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, but he was opening up. Which only meant one thing: he wanted to be heard even though he couldn’t say the words.
“I understand why you did it, and I’m not blaming you. There is nothing wrong with feeling that way, Malkah. It’s not fair that your father punishes you because of Ralgar’s transgressions,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.
Malkah shook his head.
“A Bloodreaver shouldn’t fear pain.”
Fear of pain was one of the deepest instincts that all animals shared. It wasn’t something one could just shut down. Even with [Foresight] controlling my emotional responses, I still felt fear. The only moment fear was truly gone during a fight was when I entered the flow state.
Malkah had been conditioned to think that way. Uprooting that belief was going to be difficult, but I decided to take the first step nonetheless.
“Do you like to be beaten, Malkah?” I asked.
“It’s necessary,” he replied.
“You are dodging the question. Do you like being hit?”
Malkah looked away.
“No… I don’t like it.”
I nodded slowly, letting the silence stretch. It wasn’t the kind of quiet that made students uneasy but the one that offered them space. Malkah needed it to think and to internalize his feelings.
“Say it.”
“I-I don’t like to be beaten,” he stuttered.
“Do you like beating others?”
The boy shook his head.
“It’s okay, Malkah. Nobody likes pain,” I said, sitting by the protruding stone foundation. “I can’t say I know everything about Bloodreavers, but I promise I will find a way to improve your endurance without physical punishment. How does that sound?”
Malkah nodded, secretly relieved.
“So… I’m not in trouble?”
“Of course not!” I couldn’t help but laugh. Malkah’s shoulders eased. “I’m not mad you picked a fight, Malkah. Sometimes, fighting is unavoidable. I’m proud you protected Rup, and I wanted you to know that.”
I couldn’t help but notice Malkah’s eyes welling up. He closed them shut and fought against the tears. Then, he turned away abruptly, pretending to study the cracks in the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Malkah said, rubbing his eyes. “I got overwhelmed.”
“It’s completely fine. You can feel overwhelmed. You can feel fear, sadness, and happiness. There’s no shame in it,” I said, signaling Malkah to sit beside me.
Slowly, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Malkah’s aggression toward Ralgar was a combination of learned violence and fear of retribution. Odo and Harwin must’ve developed their overprotective attitude after seeing Lord Kigria’s punishments. Malkah’s cold expression was nothing more than a defensive mechanism. I was tempted to ask more, but Malkah was fighting his own battle.
“Take your time,” I said.
“I’m fine,” Malkah replied.
I made yet another mental note. If I ever get to touch the System’s source code, I should hotfix the Bloodreaver Class. I wondered how the System Avatar was doing. He was probably spying on my progress around the clock despite not talking to me anymore.
“Your kindness is strange,” Malkah said, clearing his throat. “Not that anybody has ever been kind to me before… but my instructors haven’t been nearly as kind as you. It’s strange.”
“A teacher has to be kind and forgiving. How could my students learn if they are too worried about failing to try learning? Well, at least that is what I believe,” I replied, looking at Malkah with the corner of my eye. “Don’t mistake kindness with weakness, though. I still expect you to give your best and help your classmates!”
Malkah gave me a kind smile.
“Well, I’m going back. Show must go on, but if you want to, you can stay here for a moment,” I said, standing up.
Malkah nodded and followed me in silence.
The cadets were lying by the well, their chests heaving for air. Talindra looked at her work with a satisfied smile. She wasn’t lying when she told me she wanted to be a better instructor.
“Alright, squad. On your feet. Wolf isn’t here, so we will do something different. Today, we will focus on your mana sense,” I announced.
“What about Malkah? He hasn’t done a single push-up,” Fenwick said between breaths.
As usual, the boy’s shirt was nowhere to be found.
“Malkah can double your push-up count, though,” Rup interjected.
“And triple your squat count,” Leonie added.
Dolores croaked a long ‘eek’, that, if I had to guess, was mocking Fenwick.
“Come on, it was a joke,” Fenwick defended himself.
I stopped the banter before it got out of control and herded the group inside. The gnome neighborhood wasn’t particularly peaceful, and we would need silence for the next exercise. The kids exchanged quizzical glances when I told them to grab their swords.
“Rup will help me demonstrate today’s exercise,” I said before Leonie’s hand could shoot up. “In battle, the ability to read your opponent’s movements can mean the difference between life and death. You need always to be a step ahead. So far, we’ve practiced martial and magical techniques separately, but it’s time to go to the next step.”
I summoned a shiny ball of mana that floated over my shoulder.
“This little friend here will attack you,” I said. “On your guard, Rup.”
Rup adopted a defensive stance. Then, a moment later, a small mana shard shot from the floating ball. Rup raised the hilt of her sword, and the projectile exploded in a small cascade of blue sparks.
“The shards will not harm you, but you still will feel them, so I recommend putting on your jacket, Mister Fenwick,” I said.
Leonie’s hand shot up as soon as I finished the sentence.
“How is this supposed to train our mana sense?”
“Excellent question,” I replied. “Instructor Mistwood prepared blindfolds for you. You will not be able to see the attack. You will have to feel it.”
Talindra handed the blindfolds—courtesy of the gnome ladies, paid with the Academy’s money. Rup put the blind fold over her eyes and raised her guard. The mana ball orbited around her. Rup took a moment to get used to the exercise, but she quickly picked up the position of the mana ball.
Cabagge house was in complete silence.
Suddenly, the ball shot a mana shard. Rup parried, almost missing. Then, the mana ball repositioned and shot at Rup’s back, but the girl ducked just in time to dodge. The other cadets were speechless.
“Perfect,” I said. “Grab your blindfolds and take distance. Four cadets on the left, four on the right, two behind the fireplace. We will have ten minutes to get accustomed to the exercise, and then I will increase the difficulty.”
The cadets seemed excited about the change of pace. For the past two weeks, we have been doing the same workout day after day: cardio, muscular training, drills, meditation, and sparring. I didn’t expect them to reach the level required for this exercise until the fourth week, but they were the cream of the crop. Day after day, they crushed our expectations and enjoyed doing it.
“Using defensive and movement skills is forbidden! Remember, we are training your mana sense! Don’t let the System tell you where the attack is coming from, discover it yourself, and you’ll never be the victim of an interference skill,” I shouted. “I’m sorry, Kili, but after this, you won’t be able to sneak past your classmates!”
The cadets grinned.
During the limited time I allowed the cadets to use their full arsenal of skills in sparring, Kili’s interference skills were a headache for her training partners.
“Don’t worry. I have more tricks up my sleeve, sir,” Kili replied.
“Oh, I know,” I said.
Kili used a mix of interference, obfuscation, and deception: interference to scramble her opponent’s detection skills, obfuscation to make her presence disappear, and deception to feed the opponent false information. Her Class might lack the brute force of a Berserker or a Sorcerer, but her skill would make her a formidable foe to anyone but the most seasoned opponents. It was no surprise that she could steal beneath the guards' noses without being detected.
“Blindfolds on!” I said, walking to the center of the room and channeling my mana. “Ten-minute practice starts now! Focus on blocking rather than dodging.”
I closed my eyes and, weaving tiny strands of fountain mana, I summoned eleven mana balls. Each ball floated near a cadet, with three to five meters of distance in between. A drop of sweat ran down my jaw as I strained my mana pool.
“What level are you right now?” Talindra whispered near me.
“Level one, please don’t distract me,” I whispered back.
Talindra gasped. It might not be the flashiest display of magic, but keeping a summoned mana ball seven meters away required more mana than a Lv.1 could channel. The further I sent the [Mana Mastery] summon, the more mana it required. When I first arrived at Farcrest, my mana knives disappeared less than two meters away, but even now, I felt I had a long way to go. I wanted to be prepared for anything, whether Corrupted Monsters or underworld thugs.
“If you need help with extra mana balls, say balls,” Talindra whispered.
My spell almost fizzled, but I managed to keep it going.
I opened my eyes and examined the classroom.
As expected, Rup and Leonie dominated the exercise without much trouble. Magical Classes had a natural advantage over Martial Classes, and the girls were used to manipulating mana, which only pushed their mana sense further. Although Trickster wasn’t technically a pure Magical Class, it relied heavily on their anti-detection skills, and as such, Kili had little trouble detecting the mana shards.
Nothing out of the ordinary in that sector.
Aeliana had a strong sense of rhythm, so her footwork allowed her to block in time even with the slight delay in her detection. I made a mental note to strain the physical aspect of the exercise so she would be forced to rely more on her mana sense. Next to Aeliana, Genivra blocked the mana shards with perfect precision. The girl was older than the rest and had spent a year in the city guard of Ascombe. That extra year of experience showed.
On the boy’s side, things weren’t looking so bright.
Odo and Harwin had the awareness of a panda with cataracts. Fenwick and Cedrinor relied on a combination of parrying and dodging to barely avoid the attacks. Malkah and Yvain had things under control once they detected the mana ball, but missed when it repositioned too quickly.
“That’s curious. The girls are stomping them,” Talindra pointed out.
“They are fifteen-year-olds, it’s probably the hormones,” I replied. “Come on, boys! Focus! The girls are making you look like toddlers!”
Appealing to competitiveness was kind of a teaching cheat code back on Earth, but in Ebros, the effect was doubled. The boys instantly locked in. The girls also put more effort into the exercise, seemingly trying to make the boys look even worse. They were ruthless.
“Where did the ‘don't make fun of students’ thing go?” Talindra asked, raising her eyebrows.
“With experience and a fine-tuned social compass, you’ll know when the moment is right,” I replied.
Talindra wasn’t happy with my answer, but didn’t push the matter. My forehead was sweaty, and the mana balls flickered whenever I talked. Transforming Fountain mana into System mana for a Lv.1 was difficult, and I couldn’t pinpoint the sector of my mana pool that was in charge of the process. Any editing on my mana pool would have to wait until I became better at understanding the code.
I decided to extend the ten-minute limit to fifteen minutes to give the boys more time to get used to the exercise.
Behind me, the door softly opened, and someone entered Cabbage House. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. I’d recognize Zaon’s footsteps anywhere.
“You are going too soft with them, Mister Clarke. They will need a lot more than that if they want to survive the selection exam,” Zaon said with a worried expression.
“Good job, everyone! Let’s take five!” I said, wiping my forehead. “What’s the matter, Zaon?”
The boy seemed more worried than usual.
Zaon looked around like ears were coming out from the walls.
“Word is this selection exam will be harder than the others,” Zaon whispered. “Lord Astur has been lobbying to increase the difficulty since the beginning to allocate the Academy resources into fewer squads. It seems the increasing number of new cadets finally gave him the right reason to do it.”
That wasn’t good news.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
Zaon shrugged. “Instructor Ghila told Firana, and Firana told me last night.”
“Firana is currently in the Blacksmokes with the Wolfpack,” I pointed out.
“Well… Firana might have abandoned her post last night, but if that happened, which I’m not saying it did, she was fast enough to be back before dawn broke,” the boy whispered.
I rubbed my temples. The tiny mining town where the Wolfpack was deployed was at least two days away from the capital. I wasn’t sure my [Minor Aerokinesis] on steroids could make the trip back and forth in a single night without alerting every single person in my path. I sighed. There was a reason why they called her ‘The Thunderbolt’. Firana simply defied logic.
“Should we believe the information?” I asked, looking at Talindra.
“Ghila is a braggart, but she was Astur’s squad companion during their time in the Academy. She might have real insider information on the matter,” she pointed out.
Without Wolf’s [Sanctuary], it would be hard to push the cadets over the limit, at least physically. We needed to get an edge in a different department.
“Let’s focus on mana sense and manipulation, then. If the selection exam will be as harsh as Instructor Ghila says it will be, we'd better prepare them to squeeze the last speck of mana from their pools,” I said, wondering if we’d have enough time to pad their Character Sheets with [Novice Mathematician] and other easily achievable titles.
Zaon and Talindra nodded.
“Time’s up, cadets. Put on the blindfolds. I will crank the difficulty up,” I said, dropping the Hex.