Bae sits perched on the railing that overlooks the training yard. She flicks her bushy tail, watching me with a sharp, knowing grin. The evening sun bathes her copper red hair while she leans forward, arms crossed and ears twitching. I stand below her, still panting from my hectic fight.
“Not bad, little sister,” she muses, sounding lazy and amused. “I like what you did with your barriers. The stepping on them mid-air part.” Her fingers reenact the last part of our fight, accompanied by illusionary copies of Lord Turstan and myself. In this version, stars dance around his head once he falls to the ground, and his tongue lolls out. “That reminds me that we should incorporate your runes into our training sessions. Hum. I may have been too lax with you.”
“Shit!” I groan, giving her a sidelong glance. “Is that necessary?”
“It is. You need to learn to squeeze the best out of every one of your tools.” She leans closer. Her soothing whispers drift between us. “As you have seen, you won’t always be able to brute-force your way to victory. Your fighting style is similar to mine. You rely on trickery, deception, and surprise like a fox.” Her smile brightens, growing wider than her face, before snapping back. “You did well this time, lulled that idiot into feeling like he had already won, and bang!” The smack of her hand against the hollow bamboo resounds like a drum through the evening sky. The excited chirp of the birds disappears for an instant. Then their concert resumes. Bae chuckles, dropping gracefully from the railing. Her feet land in the dust without a sound, without stirring it up, almost as if she is an ethereal being. Maybe this isn’t her, but an illusion, while the real Bae is watching us from somewhere else. “It was so beautiful! I almost felt bad for the poor idiot!”
I straighten, rolling my shoulders, basking in the praise.
The young noble she was talking about is starting to stir under the vigilant silhouette of his guard. He winces, touching the massive lump on his forehead, and traces the swollen skin with his fingers. He sits up, his boots scuffing the dirt floor of the courtyard. Meanwhile, Sir Yan stands watch, arms crossed, his gaze darting toward Bae whenever he thinks she can’t see him.
“I don’t understand,” grumbles Lord Turstan, rubbing his temple. “I had already won. I just needed to finish that pretender off.” He looks over to where Bae is patting my head. Then his eyes widen, and he points a finger at me. “She lied! She used techniques. She can’t be a mere Copper-rank!”
Bae bursts out laughing, bending backward until the tip of her tail peeks over her shoulder.
“Um.” Sir Yan seems to be searching for the right words, rubbing his temple for inspiration. “The girl do is a Copper, milord.”
Lord Turstan whirls around. “What? But how? She used techniques she hid in her treacherous ways,” he snarls.
“Em, no. What that girl used aren’t techniques, but body runes,” clarifies the guard.
“Body what?” He blinks, looking at me, then at his guardian again. “What is that? That can’t be allowed!” He stands up and starts traipsing over, swaying like a drunk. “You cheated. I demand a rematch!”
“What are you talking about, silly boy?” interjects Bae. “Since when are fights fair or some other nonsense?”
“But.”
“You should have stated specific rules or limitations before issuing a challenge. Stop whining like a cub and get out of our valley already. You are disturbing my training sessions with the Mountain Sage's only real and true apprentice.”
“What? But I…”
“Are you deaf, boy? Off with you already before I throw you out myself!” Bae’s voice sounds like the hiss of an angry predator.
The boy flinches back. He walks toward his guard in a daze before shaking his head and looking back at us with a venomous glare. “This isn’t over. The emperor will hear about this!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Bae dismisses him with a wave of her hand.
“Wait, who will carry our luggage back to the carriage?” asks the boy.
“Are you asking me?” scoffs Bae. “Figure it out yourself.”
I watch the fuming lord stumbling down the winding path. The guard follows him a few steps behind, balancing crates over his shoulder that slip and slide over his metallic arm protections.
“Was it wise to antagonize them like that?” I ask. At this rate, I will have so many enemies that I’ll never be able to leave this valley again.
“What? Yeah,” responds Bae. “He will thank me one day for piercing his bubble as long as he uses the disappointment to fuel his growth. Maybe he is a complete moron and will never change, but who cares? A bit of rivalry will be good for you, too. To keep you on your toes when you go back outside.” She starts walking toward the building with a spring in her step.
“Okay?” I mutter, not very convinced.
“Come!” commands Bae. “Let’s find out how much your attributes have grown.”
The result of my training reduced to a bunch of numbers. For some reason, it feels reassuring that there is a measurable effect. I can follow my growth. I’m crawling and clawing my way ever closer to the hard limits imposed by my potential. I can even tear that wall down by ranking up.
“Nice!” exclaims Bae, looking up from the jade tablet. “Your physical attributes are nearly maxed out.” She rubs her chin in contemplation. “We probably won’t be able to get them much higher without alchemy. Your Mental and Mana attributes still have some margin for growth, though. Hopefully, the new exercises we started will help with that.”
“Wasn’t alchemy bad for your foundation or something like that?” I ask, confused.
“It is if you abuse it,” acknowledges Bae. “But, since you have never used it, you won’t have a problem. You probably have the willpower to spare, and.” She looks at me as if about to let me in on a secret. “Let’s say that the pills Master Wen is preparing are special. They are a bit more dangerous to use but increase your willpower almost as if you had gained the extra attributes through training.”
“Okay,” I mutter. That doesn’t sound ominous at all. “How much longer will it take, anyway? Didn’t he say we had a month for something we needed to do?”
“How should I know? He probably got distracted by another of his projects.” Bae stores the tablet back in one of the drawers. “Better for you, right? You have more time to train with me!” She grins at me, wiggling her ears. “Do you have another question to get out of the way, or can we resume our training?”
“Hum. I do. What did that boy mean when he said he followed the path of the spellblade?”
Bae sighs before sitting down. “I should probably explain this so that you can start thinking about what you want and in case we don’t have much time later.” She looks up at me, inviting me to sit next to her with her hand. “What do you know about the meridian carving…, the silver rank?”
“Nothing?” I admit feeling embarrassed.
“Good! At least you won’t have to unlearn false information. Who knows what nonsense they teach these days?” She leans back in her chair. “How do I explain this?" She starts casting another illusionary human between us, illustrating her explanation. "During the Body Tempering stage, you flood your body with mana." The figure seems to draw the air in. It shimmers and flickers all through his transparent body. "Once you finish, you are like a soaked field, prepared to be sown upon.” Her fingers drum on the desk in a rhythmic pattern, dismissing the illusion. “It also changes your cells on a fundamental level. They start burning mana as nourishment, apart from what you get from food. The higher your rank, the more mana they consume. That’s why you rarely see high-ranking mages in low mana-density regions. It can’t sustain them, and they start consuming the mana stored in their core. At least until they reach nascent soul rank and open their inner world.”
“Huh.” It probably explains why random groups of empire mages haven’t taken over the Solarian kingdom ages ago. A handful of them would be enough to do it. Back in the kingdom, a Gold-ranked mage is an elite. Here, it can be a fourteen-year-old boy.
“Well, as I said, when you finish tempering your body, you become like a flooded field. Mana flows through you unimpeded. You can draw it into you to fuel your core and expulse it, creating various effects. But your control over where and how it flows through is still bad. It is as if every time you need to guide your mana somewhere, to fuel a specific technique, or water a specific plant, you do it by flooding the whole field. That is wasteful and inefficient. If you increase the flow too much, it can even erode your body. That’s why you carve meridians. Do you follow me so far?”
“Sure,” I say. I don't dare to interrupt with further questions right now for fear of missing something.
“Your meridians form a network of hardened channels, carved into that field, through which mana flows. You can use that network to distribute your mana where needed, avoiding unnecessary spillage.”
She illustrates her point, making the illusion reappear.
“Interesting.”
“It is important to carve your meridians with utmost care. Once finished, they will stay with you for your whole life. It’s hard and expensive to modify them afterward. Techniques, by contrast, are temporary patterns engraved over your meridians. Think of them as the crops. They are useful and can help you for some time but aren’t important for your advancement. That’s why it doesn’t matter which techniques you choose or if you botcher the process of engraving them, at least at lower rankings. They get erased each time you rank up, forcing you to engrave new techniques anyways.”
“Okay, but what does this have to do with being a spellblade?” I ask.
“That’s where it gets interesting!” answers Bae with a grin. Her fingers stop drumming, leaving us in sudden silence. “You see, there isn’t only one correct way to carve your meridians. There are a lot of them. That’s why people say that at the meridian carving stage, you specialize or choose a path. Each of these different paths or ways of arranging your meridians are roughly equivalent but come with particular benefits and drawbacks, apart from different techniques with which they will be compatible or incompatible.” Bae stands up and starts walking toward the door. “Wait a minute. We should use this opportunity to let you start thinking about your options.”
I watch her disappear in a blur and sit back. The room feels different now that her explanation has stopped. The air, once filled with the rhythm of the foxkin’s voice, has settled into an almost oppressive stillness. I shift in my seat, the wooden chair creaking beneath me, sounding too loud in the hush of the chamber. I try to entertain myself, watching the flickering flames in the hearth and trying to remember everything that Bae told me. Dust motes drift in the slanted sunlight from the windows. I drum my fingers on the table’s worn surface, feeling the warmth Bae’s hands left behind. How long has it been since she left? Time stretches in the silence, and with every heartbeat, the weight of my thoughts grows heavier.
“I’m back!” exclaims someone behind me.
“Eek!” I screech, getting up with a start, my heart hammering wildly in my chest.
Bae cocks her head, half-hidden behind a mountain of dusty tomes and tablets. “Got them all,” she huffs, setting them down on the table before sitting again. Her amber eyes drift over me, then toward the stack of books. “As you can see, there are a lot of paths you can choose from,” she explains, pointing at them. “Some people use this as an opportunity to get the maximum out of the attributes they were born with. You see, by choosing a path that further improves you in what you are already strong, you can play to your strengths and make up for an overall lackluster set of potential attributes. The problem is that it can be hard to find techniques compatible with the more esoteric paths, forcing you to find a balance between what will give you the most utility, what will improve your attributes more, and what you like and feel comfortable with.”
“So, what should I choose?” I ask, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
“How should I know?” She looks at me, grinning, taken in my frightened self. “I may have some ideas of what would suit you, but it is your choice.”
I doubt everybody who reaches this stage has the opportunity to choose from thirty or forty paths. How many manuals are there even?
“I’ll help you learn the basics before your brain melts.” Bae comes to my rescue with a snicker. “Check these out. First, you have the two most common paths people use in the empire. The Knight and the Mage.”
The mage? Aren’t all of them mages? It must be a quirk in the language. “What’s the difference between them?” I ask, not very enthusiastic.
“Well, apart from focusing on melee and mana-intensive ranged techniques, respectively, there is a difference between the potential attributes they increase. The Knight focuses on the physical side. It gives at least standard increases to all physical attributes, especially great increases to your strength, endurance, and vitality. But also mental resilience and mana resistance. While on the rest of mana and mental attributes, the increases are subpar.”
“Hum. What is the difference between mana tolerance and resistance anyway?” I ask. It doesn’t sound that bad, knowing that my attributes are a bit higher on the physical side. But I always wanted to be a mage!
“Didn’t I explain that already?”
Did she? I don’t know. “No,” I answer.
“Well, it’s easy. Mana tolerance refers to the capacity of your body to sustain ambient mana and channel your mana without getting damaged. Meanwhile, mana resistance refers to your capacity to resist hostile spell effects and to maintain your spell constructs under opposition from another mage or the environment.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think you should waste your time with the mage path,” mutters Bae. “It focuses on the mana shaping attribute, which is by far your worst one.”
I sigh, already having expected something like that. “What else is there?”
“Well, there is the Jack of all trades, also called the monk on the eastern continent, who doesn’t specialize in anything.”
“Meh.” It doesn’t sound convincing. A monk? Aren’t those crazy people who believe some great spirit will save them? No, thank you.
“Under the more specialized but still widespread paths, there is the Archer, a ranged path focused on strength, dexterity, and perception, who can infuse his arrows with mana, but I think you should focus on something that improves your already great speed and agility. Check out this one.”
She hands me a jade tablet, similar to the attribute reading artifact but much smaller. When I touch it, the surface flickers, revealing something written in a faintly glowing script.
That does seem like a decent specialization, even though the mental and mana-related aspects make me grimace. Maybe I was always destined to become something like a thief or assassin. “It seems good,” I admit, sounding unconvinced.
Bae laughs at me. “Don’t worry. There are common hybrid paths also. They are a mix of two of the common basic paths I have shown you, so they benefit from being able to choose from some of the techniques from both of the basic paths they proceed from.”
“That sounds great. Which are those?”
“Well, you have the Spellblade, that boy followed, a hybrid between Knight and Mage. The Rogue Mage, which I follow myself. The Elemental Archer, a hybrid between Archer and Mage.” She browses through the stack of tablets and tomes. “I don’t think any of those would suit you. They all rely on a high shaping attribute.”
I sigh again. “What is the difference between a normal Archer and an Elemental Archer? Didn’t you say that the normal Archer can infuse his arrows already?”
“True. The Elemental Archer is a mixed-ranged fighter who can use arrows and elemental attacks like fireballs. Most of the time, it's like a worse version of the Mage and the Archer. But there is one specific spirit root with which it shines.
“Hum. Which one?”
“One of the most destructive elements is lightning, but it is also one of the hardest to guide and control. That’s why pure lightning mages can be more of a hindrance than a help on the battlefield. Their attacks tend to strike down anywhere except at their target. They always cause casualties in their ranks through friendly fire. Lightning Elemental Archers solve that problem by shooting charged arrows that don’t do much by themselves but attract every lightning bolt in their vicinity, even naturally occurring ones. Then, they follow up by casting lightning toward the general direction of their targets, and it will always strike them. The most famous ones are the elven archers of the Tempest Forest. Nobody likes to enter their woods.”
They do sound fearsome, but it doesn’t suit me either. I sigh again. “What else is out there?”
“Well, there is the Duelist. A hybrid between Knight and Rogue.”
“Show me, please.”
Bae passes me a worn-out tome this time.
It's better than I expected, but I still prefer the Rogue over this. “Isn’t there something magic or rune-related that could suit me?”
“I don’t know. Let me check.” Bae browses through the remaining options like a whirlwind. “Useless. Too niche. Nah. Huh? This one may work for you.”
She passes me another smooth tablet.
I click on a symbol on the side. A drawing of the human body appears, in which the different meridians you need to create for this path are highlighted in a network of glowing lines branching out from the core like the roots of an ancient tree. You can amplify each of them for greater detail.
“This is a hybrid path between the classical Rogue and one of the more crafting-oriented paths, which doesn’t necessarily mean it will be weak on the battlefield.”
“What kind of techniques would this path have?” I like it. I like it. Is it better than the pure rogue, though?
“Well, most of the rogue techniques will be compatible. You would probably also be able to learn some of the precision-enhancing techniques crafters use to help them create sophisticated items.”
“Can I sleep over it?”
“Sure. Take the three or four you like most and keep them. I have copies.”
Which Path do you think Kivi Should choose?
