CHAPTER 8 — “Slow Growth” #2
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ STATUS SCAN ││ Bram Ironworth (Apprentice, Level 3) │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ HP: 65/65 │ MP: 15/15 ││ STR: 14 │ AGI: 11 ││ INT: 9 │ WIS: 8 ││ DEX: 12 │ LCK: 6 ││ ││ Class: Blacksmith's Apprentice (Common) ││ ││ Skills: ││ \[Basic Smithing\] Lv.
2 ││ \[Heat Resistance\] Lv.1 ││ \[Material Assessment\] Lv.
1 ││ ││ Combat Skills: NONE ││ ││ Physical Condition: Good ││ Mental State: Eager (possibly too eager) ││ ││ "Strong for his age.
Smart enough to seek ││ training. Dumb enough to think he's ready.
││ Classic beginner package." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
No combat skills. Not even [Basic Defense] or [Awareness]. He’s got the physical stats of someone who’s spent years working a forge, but no practical application for violence.
“I understand that,” he says, responding to my earlier point.
“No. You don’t. Not yet.” I stop in front of him, meeting his eyes. “You think you want to fight. What you actually want is to matter. To be someone who can protect the people you care about. Those are different things.”
“How is that different?”
“Fighting is a method. Protecting is a purpose. If you focus on the method without understanding the purpose, you’ll make stupid decisions that get you killed.” I gesture at the space around us. “So before I teach you how to swing a sword, I need you to answer a question: Why are you really here?”
Silence.
He stares at me like I’ve asked him to explain the meaning of life, which I suppose I have, in a way.
“My father’s getting older,” he says finally. “He can barely work the forge anymore. His hands shake. The village is dying—everyone can see it. And I just…” He swallows hard. “I can’t just stand there and watch it happen. I need to do something. Anything.”
Sincere, Johnson comments from inside the cottage. Painfully sincere. But also naive. He thinks effort and determination are enough.
They’re not. I know that better than anyone.
But they’re a start.
“Okay,” I say. “Good answer. Wrong answer, but good.”
“Wrong how?”
“You want to save everyone. You can’t. Nobody can.
The best you can hope for is to save some people, some of the time, while accepting that others will fall through the cracks.
” I pick up two sticks from the pile Mariella trimmed from the hedge last week.
Toss one to him. “Lesson two: you’re going to lose.
A lot. At everything. The question is whether you can learn from losing without letting it destroy you. ”
Bram catches the stick, holds it awkwardly. “That’s… kind of dark.”
“The world is kind of dark. I’m just preparing you for it.” I raise my own stick, settling into a stance that feels like coming home. “Now. Attack me.”
“What?”
“Attack me. Hit me with the stick. Don’t hold back.”
He hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt—”
“You won’t. Trust me. Now attack.”
He attacks.
An hour later, Bram is sitting on the ground, nursing a collection of bruises that will be spectacular by tomorrow.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ TRAINING SESSION COMPLETE │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Student: Bram Ironworth ││ Duration: 1 hour, 12 minutes ││ ││ Attacks Attempted: 47 ││ Attacks Landed: 0 ││ Times Knocked Down: 23 ││ Injuries Sustained: Minor bruising (multiple) ││ ││ Skills Potentially Unlocked: PENDING ││ --- \[Basic Combat Awareness\] (progress: 34%) ││ --- \[Defensive Instinct\] (progress: 12%) ││ ││ Assessment: Student shows persistence and ││ acceptable physical conditioning.
Lacks ││ any practical combat experience.
Recommend ││ continued training with emphasis on ││ survival fundamentals.
││ ││ "He got hit 23 times and kept getting up.
││ That's either determination or brain damage.
││ Time will tell which." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
“I didn’t hit you once,” he says, somewhere between frustration and awe. “Not even close.”
“No.” I sit down across from him, barely winded. The advantage of fighting someone with no training is that they’re predictable. Everything telegraphed, every intention visible in their body before they even move. “But you learned something.”
“I learned that you’re terrifyingly good at this.”
“That’s not the lesson.” I wait for him to figure it out.
His brow furrows. Thinking. Processing the past hour of repeated failures.
“I was always off balance,” he says slowly. “Every time I committed to an attack, I lost my footing. And you just… waited for it. Let me make the mistake.”
“Good. What else?”
“You never attacked first. Always countered. Like you were reading my mind.”
“Not your mind. Your body. Everyone has tells—small movements that reveal intention before the action happens. A shift of weight, a tightening of grip, a glance at the target. Learn to read those, and you can predict most attacks before they’re launched.”
“Can you teach me that?”
“Eventually. If you survive long enough.” I push myself to my feet. “Same time tomorrow. And Bram?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop sleeping in my barn. The cow doesn’t like visitors.”
His face goes red. “I wasn’t—how did you—”
“I know everything that happens on my property.” A lie, but a useful one. “Go home. Rest. Eat something. We’ll continue tomorrow.”
He scrambles up, collecting his stick like it’s a treasured weapon rather than a piece of hedge trimming. “Thank you. Really. I know I’m not… I mean, I’m not very good yet, but—”
“You’re not good at all. You’re terrible. But terrible is temporary.” I nod toward the road. “Go.”
He goes, practically running, and I watch until he disappears around the bend.
You’re going to get him killed, Johnson observes.
“Maybe.”
Definitely, if you keep training him.
“Then I’ll train him better.” I start toward the cottage. “He’s got potential. He just needs someone to shape it.”
Like someone shaped you?
The question catches me off guard.
I think about my own training. About the Academy, where I learned the fundamentals. About the war, where I learned the brutal necessities. About Dario, who taught me how to work as a team.
About how all of that led to me bleeding out on a throne room floor while my best friend smiled down at me.
“No,” I say finally. “Not like someone shaped me. Better.”
How?
“By teaching him that the people you trust can be the most dangerous enemies of all.”
Johnson is quiet for a moment.
That’s a harsh lesson for a boy who just wants to protect his village.
“It’s the lesson he needs. Whether he likes it or not.”
The afternoon passes quietly.
Mariella returns from the village around midday, carrying supplies she bartered for with some of the coins I collected from the dungeon.
Flour, salt, dried meat, a small bottle of oil that she guards like it’s made of gold.
She moves through the cottage with easy efficiency, organizing, cleaning, making the space feel less like a temporary shelter and more like a home.
I watch her from my spot by the window, where I’m attempting to decipher the grimoire pages I’ve collected.
Three fragments now. Three pieces of a spell that past me apparently scattered throughout the dungeon like breadcrumbs. The notation is starting to make sense—my [Arcane Sight] helps, revealing patterns and connections that were invisible before—but the full picture remains elusive.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ GRIMOIRE ANALYSIS ││ \[Mana Circulation Technique --- Partial\] │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Fragments Collected: 3 of ?
?? ││ Completion Estimate: 35-40% ││ ││ Deciphered Sections: ││ --- Theoretical framework (complete) ││ --- Primary circulation pattern (70%) ││ --- Secondary amplification loop (partial) ││ --- Safety protocols (missing) ││ --- Activation sequence (missing) ││ ││ Current Understanding: ││ This technique appears designed to ││ accelerate natural mana recovery by ││ optimizing internal flow patterns.
││ Full implementation could multiply ││ recovery rate by factor of 3-5x.
││ ││ WARNING: Incomplete technique. Attempting ││ activation without full understanding ││ could result in mana burn, channel ││ damage, or catastrophic feedback.
││ ││ "You designed a recovery technique so ││ complicated that even you can't remember ││ how it works.
Past you was kind of a dick." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
“You’ve been staring at those papers for three hours,” Mariella says, setting a cup of tea beside me. “Any progress?”
“Some. It’s a mana circulation technique—something I developed before.” I gesture at the symbols. “The theory is sound. Revolutionary, actually. If I can reconstruct the full spell, it would let me accelerate my recovery rate exponentially.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning instead of years to reclaim my full power, it might be months. Maybe weeks.”
She’s quiet, considering the implications.
“That’s dangerous,” she says finally. “If the Empire notices the mana leakage increasing too quickly…”
“They’ll investigate. I know.” I take a sip of the tea—herbal, slightly bitter, exactly what I need. “But staying weak is dangerous too. Anton’s scouts are already sniffing around. The longer I wait, the more time they have to find me.”
I pull up my current status, reviewing the numbers that have become my obsession.