“Hide A Knife Behind A Smile.
Charm and integrate yourself with your enemy and then, when you’ve gained his trust, move against him in secret.”
- Peter Taylor, The Thirty-Six Stratagems: A Modern-Day Interpretation Of A Strategy Classic (298, 3rd Era)
The Vallum Armor stood racked toward the end of the lecture room, a testament to the might of humanity.
Right now, Erec had stripped it bare. Per the free time in the course, he'd meticulously removed the front plating to reveal the network of complex components stuffed below. A blend of beautiful redundancy meant to keep its pilot alive when a horrifying monster tried to bite through the steel with unnaturally sharp teeth.
Erec twisted a nut free to unseal a small cube tucked into the lower abdomen. Placed strategically to minimize chances of receiving damage.
[Interesting. Is this logic cube where the glyph strips lead? My nanites cannot interact with it.]
Erec traced one of the thin strips of bent metal spread outward from the cube. If one looked closely, they’d see welds on the side of these strips—sealing the etchings inside. It was a common technique to protect glyphs from wear and damage by encasing them within metal and then reinforcing them through prayer.
According to the instructor, the purpose of the mysticism subsystems within the Vallum model was only to conduct and make glyph formation easier. There were a few ‘logic cubes’ as VAL put it. On some advanced models, these glyph circuits could perform complicated tasks. But the cost was that they had a constant drain of mana from the user.
But so far, they were wasted on Erec since he was new to Mysticism. And understanding the magical circuits was still far above him.
Even if he could break the weld on one of the strips, he’d have no idea what the glyph work below even did.
He stepped back from the Armor, letting VAL scan it from the outside. Even if VAL was already in the Armor, there were parts it had no control over and needed an outside view to understand.
The instructor was busy on the other side of the workshop, putting together a mechanical version of a hound she affectionately referred to as her ‘pet’ project, made entirely out of scrap.
The woman was a damn hoarder. Resourceful. But a hoarder.
Just one look across the workshop said everything. Endless piles of trash and garbage lumped together with bits and bobs and toasters mingled with fridges. Half of this would never find use. More than a third of this junk had been here for ten years.
Their first lesson with her was about determining the value of the scrap in the wasteland. She stated that not all scrap was equal with a completely serious face as she gave the lecture in a half landfill junkyard room.
Erec wiped the grease off his face with a rag and looked at Olivia.
She hunched over near her Armor, busied polishing the lower legs.
“What was it like living in the Luculentus house?” Erec asked. Now was a fine time to take a break; he wasn’t about to attempt any modifications yet. Most of their course so far had been about repurposing and finding the utility of scrap and getting used to their new Armor.
"We received three fine meals daily, and typically we shared it with the house guards. Sufficient dwellings, and two weeks personal time a year" Olivia looked over at him, still sitting near her Armor's leg—a polishing rag in hand. Out of all the new initiates, nobody's Armor shone like hers. "A lovely garden, kept by the lady of the house. She was a former Knight too, you know. She's the one who encouraged me to go down this path."
"She convinced you to become a spy?"
“You continue to accuse me of such matters, yet you’ve also been tasked with such an assignment, no?” she tsked before letting out a sigh. “But you’re also wrong. That’s very much not why I’m here.”
“Ah. I beg your forgiveness.” Erec rubbed his eyes. Did Garin spill his secret, or did she figure it out somehow?
[Disconnect the yellow wire near the logic cube.]
Erec leaned forward, grasped at the wire, and gave it a yank. It refused to dislodge. He looked closer. Was it welded?
“I did not lie to you, Erec. I’m interested in your goals. It is, after all, of importance to my Lady.”
“And which goals are you referring to? Not being a landless noble? Restoring honor to my family?” He paused and took a deep sigh. “Or is it my mother? Is the duchy worried about me connecting with her again?”
“They’re interested in such an arrangement, yes. That, and the others outside the wall she might have met.”
[Yank harder.]
Erec’s temper flared—channeling a bit of that anger into his fingers clutching the wire—the fused metal broke with a single yank, showering them in odd sparks of red and blue. Erec shielded his face as Olivia scooted away.
[You’ll need to weld that back into place, but it appears that you’ve discharged some excess anomalous energy from it. It’s somewhat like a capacitor, even if it doesn’t work off entirely the same logic.]
He turned his attention towards Olivia, a scowl on his face. VAL had known such an act would disrupt the suit—and that Erec hated having to weld. It meant talking to the crazy instructor for the equipment and a long-winded story about the thousands of projects in her head.
“What others outside of the wall? The monsters eat up anyone out there—hell, I’m not sure I’ll even find my mother after so long. I might just find her corpse.” It’d always been in the back of his mind. He might never understand her reasoning, but he wanted to dig her a grave at the very least.
And then he’d track down the monster that convinced her to leave her family behind and slaughter it after demanding answers. He could hope for the best. But the world outside of the walls was harsh and deadly.
“There’s more outside than they tell you, Erec.” Olivia chided before returning her attention to her armor. “I suppose you’ll learn that sooner or later, now that you’re a Knight.”
“Hey,” Erec called to her, not too happy with her dismissing him. She didn’t return her attention to him. That smug look ticked him off. “You better not hurt Garin,” Erec said before turning away to talk to the instructor. He had a welder to borrow.
She watched him as he walked away with a frown on her face.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
The glow of the blue was all that he saw. Those horrible lines underneath his feet, the white frost of his breath, and an unholy cold filling his lungs. How long could he go? How much of this could a man take?
This was his last chance. The very last opportunity he’d have with Boldwick before the expedition. After weeks of this torture, his Psyche had only advanced to Tier 9. It hadn’t broken the bottleneck and launched him into the next rank.
[Are you sure?]
Erec nodded his head. After the last breakthrough, if he focused hard, he could decipher what the machine was trying to say in his head during this test. But while under the effects of Fury, he couldn’t comprehend a single word of what VAL tried to tell him. The more he let himself slip into either state, the more similarities he saw. If he could break through to the E rank, he was sure there’d be a difference.
The sedatives flooded his veins, numbing his legs. This time, he wouldn’t give himself the chance to crawl out. No.
He would stay in the cold coffin until he broke through that barrier.
Boldwick sat on the side; with bleary vision, Erec saw him take a pull of the wine. This was his fourth attempt for the day. Usually, he only lasted three. Erec made this plan with VAL after excusing himself to a bathroom break.
Surprisingly, the machine agreed under a single condition.
Once Erec managed to break through, they’d never undergo this training again. While VAL didn’t specify what about the glyph perturbed it, the machine was evasive and irritable after every session.
The shadows of sadness crashed into Erec. The voices told him he was doomed, that he’d die in a shallow grave.
At this point, they were almost familiar friends.
Erec gave a gasping laugh as he lay curled on the floor like a dying man. He let the hate pour in; the cold fire of hate reforged him for the Goddess knew how many-ith time. He hated himself. Hated every part of him for living on this doomed planet, this scorched earth, this hell-pit.
What would it be like to live in the old-world?
What if he had been an intern with Vortex Industries? Would that have been his life if he’d been born hundreds of years before? Would he have met VAL?
He laughed until his throat burned.
He laughed until all the thoughts left his head.
He laughed until the shadows backed away, afraid of him.
His eyes closed. Breath hitching as he could no longer force air through his lungs, as the grasp of death lingered nearby but was held at bay by those glowing blue lines.
In the blue light, he saw his life. A life of another man long before, a young man working his way through his daily life, excited for an internship, only for time to wear him down with endless chores.
But there was a point: he'd make a name for himself and gain respect.
And then a light shattered the Earth and consumed everything living on its surface in silver fire, burning away his dreams and future.
In this life, he sank to his knees, screaming. His eyes melted out of his head as alarms went off in the facility. Blue light became silver.
Erec screamed.
[Applying jolt.]
Erec’s body shuddered, and he gasped, letting anger flood. Letting the hate combat the cold anger, his scorn for the world seethe and burn just as bad as the shadows shouted out at him to give up on trying. They reached an equilibrium.
He stood up, body shaking from the cold and teeth chattering. But there was an inner warmth. It was spreading through his veins and pushing back.
And a notification in the corner of his vision.
Everything felt numb. His thoughts hung by a thread, and he worked off impulse. He needed confirmation. His Blessing flashed across his vision.
Psyche Advancement: Rank F - Tier 9 → Rank E - Tier 1
There wasn’t any joy in the accomplishment. He numbly stumbled out of the glyph, sliding onto the ground.
Boldwick caught him and helped him back to his office—and then broke open another bottle of wine to celebrate once Erec’s brain regained some semblance of logic.
Liquor had been a constant companion to sadness since the 1st Era. And that night, both he and the Master Knight indulged in the company of more booze. Tomorrow they would leave the safety of these walls and foray into the unknown for the rest of humankind who could not.
They’d face those red eyes together.