In took all of two days for Farris’ prediction to come true.

  Sam had spent Sunday exactly like he was “supposed” to: resting in the block of time between his lesson with Dan and his evening workout. He ended up cultivating a little bit afterwards. But it was only for about half an hour (he didn’t set a timer for it like he usually did, so the session managing to last that half an hour obviously came as a surprise to him). But that was all for the day. Just tracing and gathering practice with Dan and then that half an hour by himself. A huge drop in working hours when compared to his old schedule. Fuel for the ever burning fire of anxiety raging in his heart.

  Monday, in contrast, was outwardly meant to be a “usual” day, spent in just the same fashion he had spent his Monday a month prior. With the full quota of tracing and gathering practice with Dan. But of course, it wasn’t the same. They weren’t learning anything new, and Sam was obviously less efficient than he previously was. Who knew how much an hour today counted when compared to an hour back then? And in the depths of Sam’s mind, the worry most in vogue was that the hour didn’t count at all; that he wasn’t making any progress in every aspect of his training.

  Suffice to say, he was greatly relived, reluctant as he was to admit it, when on Monday, as his lessons with Dan for the day drew to a close, he managed to trace Prior Skin Reinforcement for the second time. That was a great achievement, and even Sam couldn’t downplay it and heap all the reason on luck again. But he could lay a lot of it on luck. In fact, that’s what he did. That’s what his anxiety and worry forced him to do. Unfortunately for them, succeeding in the tracing for the third time was much harder to hand wave away. And succeeding again immediately afterwards was a fatal blow to his attempts at downplaying.

  “Alright, that’s it for now,” Dan said with a smile. “Let’s—”

  “I’m not going to crumble if I end up failing to trace it again.”

  “Sure. But we already practiced that tracing more than I wanted to for the day. I still want you to run through everything else we learned in a row. Say three times each tracing. Prior and posterior both. Besides the last one, obviously.”

  Sam shrugged and presented his left hand forward so Dan could refill his core. Some time later, after he achieved an almost perfect success rate in all other tracings, it was time to come back to Skin Reinforcement. First two times he failed, but the third somehow turned into another success.

  “There you go then,” Dan said, “finishing the day on a high note.”

  Sam nodded and took a long breath. “Tomorrow we’re starting magical foundational?”

  “Indeed, no reason to tarry. And Wednesday we’ll go back to theory as well. All in all, by the end of break, we should right where you should be in the curriculum, if not ahead of it… Even if we keep to our current working hours.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “Are you asking whether I’m planning to return you to your old schedule? Or what are we going to be studying in a month’s time?”

  “The first one.”

  “Then I’m afraid you picked the question I can’t provide an answer to right now.”

  “So do you have an answer for the second question?”

  “Of course. I did design your schedule with the whole of the first year in mind, after all. But you don’t have to worry about that. As always, the only aspect of your studies that you need to concern yourself with is the one that is left up to you. And you already have quite a head’s up on where I planned for you to be.”

  “Which isn’t a reason to take it easy. If I finish all the independent studying you gave me for this year, then I could begin on those of next year.”

  “Sure. But the number of courses that you’ll be studying by yourself next year is greatly diminished. Still, I have put the ball that is your independent studying in your court. I’m leaving it up to you what to do with that. If you want to use ‘all’ of the free time I gave you to study instead of resting. That’s up to you. It’s free time, after all. But if you want my advice, don’t. Go back to your nightly studies, sure. If you feel up to it. But let the time off I ‘ordered you to take’ be time off. Now let me refill your core and we’ll finish for the day.”

  Sam left Dan’s office shortly after and headed for the mess hall, the subject of his “nightly studies” occupying all of his thoughts. Of course, it wasn’t just studying that counted under what Dan was talking about, and it wasn’t just nightly. As far as Sam was concerned, all of the time he spent cultivating and practicing tracing on his own fell into that same category as well: the greatly diminished time he was spending training on his own when compared to before. Time he spent in order to become stronger while by himself, without any other interacting party to enforce a schedule on him. In essence, any time that Sam didn’t “have” to spend doing something else counted. Sure, you couldn’t account for the block of time between working out and leaving for breakfast, but you could account for most of his Saturday, for Sunday morning. So what was he going to do with all that time? Time that was previously accounted for, and part of a self-imposed schedule of Sam’s design?

  First things first, when I get back to my room I need to sit down and have a think. Skip meditating if I need to, whatever, I don’t care. Sit down and think about all of this shit. If only I could tell Rose… everything. Doesn’t have to be her even, she just makes the most sense cause it’s her job. But just someone, a normal human being who can understand the choices I’m facing and why I have to behave in this certain way. And have them help me come up with a plan. Tell me whether I’m being reasonable or not. Instead, I got a demential AI that has to spend their precious life force if they want to contact me in order to tell me that I’m not training hard enough.

  Ugh! Whatever, drop it. Leave it for later. He shook his head and tried to adopt a neutral face as the entrance to the mess hall came into view. He must’ve succeeded because Felix didn’t make any comment when they met up.

  “Hey, Sam. The books arrived today, by the way. They’re really big.”

  “He was a big man. Also he… never mind.” He chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Forget I mentioned it. One thing though, maybe do a last-minute check on whether the book is appropriate for a thirteen-year-old.”

  “It’s a history book. How inappropriate can it be?”

  “Are you seriously asking? History is very much rated R, man.”

  “Yeah, fine. I’ll do a check. Honestly, I think Lucy will be fine reading something that’s considered for adults, but I’ll ask my mom to decide anyway. If this series doesn’t make the cut, you got another suggestion for me?”

  Sam shrugged. “For some reason, the only books that come to mind right now are about the Holocaust. But I think some of those books were given to children at your sister’s age to read, so they’re technically fine. Hm… I guess she you can send her a hundred years before and give her the memoirs of another president.”

  “You got something that’s neither the Holocaust nor American presidents?”

  “I’ll think of something later.”

  “Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sam said and nodded towards Yvessa, who was coming to join them.

  “Good evening,” she said. “Should we head inside?”

  “Sarah’s not coming?”

  “Read your bloody messages, mate.” Felix shook his head. “She wrote she was going to be late.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s busy imprinting some healing pattern.”

  “Training on imprinting it,” Yvessa corrected.

  “Yeah, whatever. Can we head inside?”

  “So if she’s only training, why can’t she just stop?” Sam asked.

  Felix let out a grumble and forcefully led them inside to the sounds of Yvessa’s chuckles. “She’s training by imprinting the pattern itself,” she explained. “She’s already familiar with all the parts required to imprint the pattern, and expert enough to have imprinted before, so she’s not training in order to imprint it successfully, but to improve the imprint of the pattern.”

  “Is that a common practice?”

  “Sure is,” Felix said, mollified now that they were preparing their dinner. “If the pattern isn’t like Body Protection—where it takes a whole day to finish the imprinting—it can be more efficient to train at imprinting the pattern as a whole than just parts of the patterns, provided you’re certain in your ability to imprint it in the first place. Sarah said that imprinting the pattern she’s working on takes her, from start to finish, about an hour and a half, so if you have the time to spare and want to maximize the pattern’s efficiency, it’s worth it. You also might get lucky and end up imprinting really well, so that’s another bonus, even if at our stage it’s not usually the main goal. Of course, the main reason is the training; getting better at imprinting as a whole and, more importantly, at imprinting those types of patterns for when you reach higher levels and better ones come along.”

  “So pattern that take longer to imprint aren’t trained that way?”

  “It depends what you count as training,” Yvessa said. “For example, the whole body pattern that Sarah was working on when you first met, she only imprinted it once, back then. But if in the future she’ll decide to make it more efficient—I don’t actually know how good her imprint was so maybe she doesn’t need to—but if she does, I wouldn’t consider the first time she imprinted it as ‘training.’ I guess it’s about intentions, really.”

  Felix nodded. “Yeah, plus, for those types of patterns that take a long time, you usually only want to imprint them once in your life, so you want your first imprint to be as good as possible. Again, it’s a question of efficiency; it’s more efficient with those kinds of patterns to train at them in parts, rather than as a whole. Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t have a problem with spending yet another entire day on imprinting Body Protection. I’ve even heard of ones who do it while they’re still level 4. Which is very fucking dumb in my opinion. Like, unless you’ve not been cultivating at all and that’s the reason you’re still level 4, how much better could you have gotten at imprinting in the year that passed after you reached level 4 and first imprinted it? Spend that time cultivating instead.”

  Sam sat down with a sigh. “Honestly, I can’t fucking wait until I’m level 1 and able to start imprinting. Feels like the last major difference in… understanding between me and everyone else.”

  “That and sculpting. But you don’t need to bother all that much with sculpting, so you’re right.”

  “Also, there’s less to bother with,” Yvessa added.

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  “Also that. Also also, I’d have added muddling to the list of subjects. But it’s muddling; no one really understands what they’re doing anyway.”

  “I thought you considered yourself an expert at muddling?” Sam said.

  “I am. But most people aren’t. You can’t compare yourself to a bright star like myself. And you shouldn’t. Because there is a pretty big chance that in a year’s time your big picture understanding will exceed mine and I don’t want to have to carry that chip on my shoulder.”

  “You’re way more optimistic than I am. I honestly don’t know what to expect from studying threads. Don’t even know if there’s anything to be excited about.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be excited?”

  “I don’t know. Cause no one was able, or willing, to explain to me what threads actually are? Or what studying them will entail? And yeah, obviously, they’re important, but will the knowledge be of any help to me right now? Help me become a better fighter by the time we graduate or in studying other subjects? Or is it all for the future when I reach level 10?”

  “Yvessa?” Felix turned to her.

  “Sorry Sam, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Erianna didn’t tell me how much of how her study of threads impacted her other studies. But for what’s its worth, I think there’s a reason they want teaching that stuff to Thread-Weavers when they’re young. If it only mattered to you when you were trying to become a Ruler they wouldn’t teach you that until you were trying to become a Ruler.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. Guess I should be excited then.”

  “Also,” Felix said, “let us not forget that if studying threads does end up giving you a boost in fighting capability or, especially, in studying other subject. That definitely counts as a cheat ability, which means—”

  “Year’s not over yet, Felix.” Sam gave him a middle finger. “Do you know how I know that? Because for that year to have passed, I would’ve had to have started studying threads and so we would’ve already known the answer to that question.”

  “Only if you’ll tell us. Erianna didn’t tell her best friend.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Felix.” Yvessa frowned.

  “I’m not! I’m sure that she didn’t tell you because she couldn’t for some reason. Which means that Sam wouldn’t be able to as well.”

  “If I can’t tell you,” Sam said, “then I promise to tell you that.”

  “Can’t tell what?” Sarah asked, coming from behind him and sitting down next to him.

  “Whether studying about threads helps with other aspects of studying.”

  “Oh, it definitely does.”

  “How do you know?” Felix asked.

  “Maurice is always complaining—hypocritically, might I add—that by staying at level 8 and not being able to develop his Threadsight and knowledge of threads, his research is suffering greatly. Plus, I think it’s fair to assume that as a more basic level of understanding of what magic is, that knowledge of threads would translate, at least somewhat, to a better understanding of other aspects of magic.”

  “Sure, but that’s more theoretical and high brow knowledge. We want to know whether Sam starting to study them will see him getting an outright boost to his pace of training. Like being able to imprint better, to use what we were speaking about as an example.”

  “And speaking of, how was your training?” Sam asked.

  “Pretty good.” Sarah smiled. “I’m pretty happy with the pattern right now, but I know that I can get it a little better. So I’ll work on doing that tomorrow. Thank God for the break.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be using said break for rest?”

  “I am resting.” Sarah pursed her lips and crossed her hands in a challenge. “The only training I did today was this. And I only started after lunch. Working out doesn’t count as ‘not resting’ just so you know.”

  “And what about yesterday when you spent the whole day cultivating?”

  “It was hardly the whole day. At most, I spent the same amount that you spent with Dan. Besides, that’s what the trimester break’s for, to allow you to catch up in the aspects you’re behind while also being able to rest more. I have plenty of free time right now to both take it easy and cultivate more than I used to. My heaviest workload days are still equal to your ‘days off’ like yesterday.”

  “How exactly?”

  “It’s simple math. Let’s compare between how much I worked yesterday to how much you’ll work on Monday in a week. We’re the same until breakfast, right? If we count working out as not resting.”

  Felix chuckled. “The problem here is that while that might hold true for Sam, the same couldn’t necessarily be said for you.”

  Sarah ignored him. “So we’re the same until breakfast. Then you go to study with Dan and you do it until sometime in the afternoon, a couple of hours before dinner. In contrast, I went back to my room yesterday after breakfast, and cultivated only until lunch. I had a late one, so let’s add an hour to my time. I’m still a behind you. And because I ‘didn’t do anything’ until dinner, I’m still behind you. Then I worked out, so let’s add two more or so hours to my count and say that I’m equal to you, right?”

  Sam shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “And I spent another hour cultivating before bed. But that’s as far as my work for the day went. What about you? You’ll have all this free time until you’ll go sleep. You’re telling me that you won’t use an hour of it for training or studying? Come on.”

  “Fine. I see your point. Not sure that I agree with all of your conjectures, but I’ll allow it.”

  “And that’s without getting into the days when you don’t finish early with Dan or you have spear practice in the morning.”

  “I said I get it.”

  Sarah smiled at him and held up her hands. “And how did your own training go?”

  “Fine. I think we’re pretty much all caught up to where we were two and a half weeks ago. I’m as good now at all that stuff as I was good then. Only took me all this time to climb back up.”

  “Hardly climbing back up, more like climbing ahead.”

  Sam grunted and hid his eyes from view. “Maybe…”

  “What? What is it?”

  He sighed. “Fine. I suppose I have to tell you guys. It’s only fair. But I don’t want to talk about it, so let’s leave it as it is.”

  “Just tell us.”

  “I managed to trace Prior Skin Reinforcement today… a couple of times. Like I said, back where I was two and a half weeks ago.”

  “Can’t be back there,” Felix said. “Because back then, you said that you only managed the tracing because of luck. And succeeding a couple of times today doesn’t sound much like luck to me.”

  “I get it. Can we please drop it?”

  “Well, for what’s it’s worth,” Sarah said, “I’m happy for you, Sam. You should definitely be proud of yourself. I think it’s fair to say that it took everyone else sitting at this table way longer to be able to trace it consistently, and we were under a lot less… stress than you are. But fine, we’ll leave it at that.”

  “Thank you.” Sam nodded with a gulp.

  “So that means that you’re going to be starting on recovery tracings pretty soon, right?”

  “I suppose so. Depends on how long we’ll spend on magical foundational. And then how long it’ll take to get good enough with recovery tracings to trace them consistently. Why? You’re still holding on to your revised plan?”

  “Yeah. We’ll wait until you’re good enough with recovery tracings to increase your workouts’ intensity.”

  Sam was stuck. One part of him wanted to argue, worrying about the effects of not getting in the best physical shape possible (for him) in the shortest amount of time. While the other side was very much content, happy with the stay of execution. In the end, he just sighed and nodded his head. He gave Sarah sole sovereignty of the subject of his physical regimens after all, let her exercise it as she thought was right.

  “Which reminds me,” Felix said, turning to Sarah, “I’ve made plans with a friend from back home for tonight. So I won’t be able to join you for cardio.”

  “What?! Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “We only talked a couple of hours ago. He’s visiting Transit and asked if I wanted to meet. I couldn’t very well say no. And I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were busy with something else.”

  “Fine,” Sarah said, downcast, “you’re right. Of course you should go.”

  Sam squeezed her on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side. You won’t have any of us to distract you while you workout tonight.”

  “You guys don’t distract me.” She tried staring at Sam discreetly for a couple of seconds, before making up her mind and getting up. “Alright. I’m gonna go then. See you guys tomorrow. Have fun, Felix.”

  “Wow,” Felix said once she left, “I really thought she was going to ask you to join her, Sam.”

  “Or at least keep her company.” Yvessa nodded.

  “A month ago she might’ve asked. Right now… never mind. I’m not going to try and psychoanalyze her. And neither should you.”

  “Fair enough,” Felix said. “And I guess that I should be leaving soon as well. Don’t want to be late.”

  “Have fun,” Sam wished him as he left.

  “Want to watch the documentary tomorrow after you finish with Dan?” Yvessa asked.

  Sam laughed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just find it funny how much you want to watch it with other people.”

  “I told you. It’s way more fun when I have someone to talk to. And I know that you didn’t watch any yesterday, so unless you’re going to watch today, we’re still in the same place.”

  “I probably won’t… Alright, if you want to.”

  “You don’t have to sound so dejected.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d love to have you join me and we’ll watch it together.”

  “Good. Text me when you finish with Dan. I’ll come to you.”

  “Sure thing.” They finished eating soon after and parted outside. Sam heading back to his room and Yvessa heading to the Web Communication complex.

  He tried thinking relaxing thoughts as he made his way back. Hoping to get whatever mental rest he could before he had to sit down and think about a bunch of stuff; come against a bunch of negative emotions. It worked… barely. But that was honestly more than he expected. Back in his room, he got in the shower straight after finishing his spearfighting exercises, and after a couple of minutes under the warm water, decided that it would be for the best if he also mediated inside as well.

  So a very long shower later, once he was fully dry and dressed for bed, he sat down in front of the monitor and opened up his self-study schedule that he hadn’t touched in almost three weeks. First things first, he had to bring it up to date. Luckily, or unfortunately, he hadn’t made all that much progress in his studies since he last modified the file, so it only took him two minutes to mark “all” the progress he had made since then. He had to suppress a grimace after he hadn’t managed to suppress the urge to compare his recent progress with his progress from before.

  “I’m still ahead,” he said, trying to calm himself. “I’m still ahead. The only subject I’m creeping up on is Magical Theory. But that’s because it’s pretty much intertwined with my lessons with Dan. So that doesn’t really count. Well, no, it does count. But I should care the least about not being ahead in it than all the other subjects. And care the most about being behind, though. But I’m not behind. For now. Fine. Let’s put it aside. I’ll ask Dan tomorrow what to do about that. I have plenty of other subjects that I can study.

  “The plan was to try and finish everything that doesn’t have anything to do with magic as fast as possible. And we can still do it. We can definitely do it. If we go back to the old schedule, we’ll be able to do it and then have plenty of free time for all things magical. Of course, doing it is the hard part. That’s why we’re really here, right? There’s not much I need to think about on the subject of the… subjects themselves. We can just proceed like we used to.”

  He sighed. “It’s how to actually do that. That’s the real fucking problem. So… what am I going to do?” He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them while reclining back in the sit with a tired groan. “Let’s start with just the studying. So we have Sunday morning, weekday evenings, and Saturday. Fuck… The ideal is to go back to exactly how it used to be, right? And we can do that on every day but Sunday. But I highly doubt it’s feasible. Or compatible with everyone around me telling me to rest.”

  He grit his teeth. “Alright, let’s start by taking Sunday morning off the table. We don’t have all that much time before the therapy appointment anyway. So we can give ourself an easy start to the week and say it’s all rest. Or up to me, I don’t know. Fuck, but if I say that, then I might decide to cultivate or something during that time, and then I’m just gonna end up feeling shitty and indecisive all over again. But I gotta allow myself some time for spontaneity, right? To decide at the moment whether I feel like training or not? Sure, in theory. In practice. I’m me. I think it’s best to just come up with an ironclad schedule, dos and don’ts and follow it explicitly. If it’s too easy, I can change it up later. If it’s too hard… let’s just hope it won’t be too hard.

  “So for next week. This week too, I guess. For this and next week, let’s start with a modest plan. A modest goal. A baseline we can work upwards from. And at least for Sunday, that’s easy. So we’re saying Sunday morning: no studying… And no training as well. Fuck, am I already adding training back into the mix? I sort of have to, don’t I? At least cultivating. I said knowledge is most important, but that’s in the long run. Right now, what’s actually most important is getting to level 1 before the year ends. So we sort of have to cultivate.

  “Fucking hell. Don’t lose focus. Evenings next. Maybe the baseline could be the same as before on even days, while resting on odd days? Fine. That’s good enough. For now, at least. But I also need to re-institute the hour and a half rule. And no breaking it whatsoever. And no tracing practice for now. I’ll probably get enough practice once I learned some recovery tracings anyway. But for now we’ll just start with the same schedule three days of the week. That should be easy enough… right? And not for today. We’ll save it for Wednesday. Today’ll be the last day of full rest or whatever. That’s gotta help me pull this through.

  “Which just leaves Saturday… Yeah, I have no fucking clue about Saturday. Stupid fucking Dan and his stupid not allowed to tell me what to do on Saturday. And we also can’t go back to the old schedule anyway because of fucking Farris and his fucking meetings and him always fucking moving them around because he thinks he fucking knows me. Fuck! I can’t make any plan for Saturdays in that case. At least not until well after lunch. And that’s only if Farris won’t decide to be more of an asshole.”

  He took a deep breath before slowly releasing it. Then another. “Alright, here goes. A base line. A modest, easy goal. One hour of cultivation. One hour, that’s all. And we’ll do it after breakfast or after lunch, depending on Farris. If it’s only those two options, it should be easy enough for me to follow the plan and cultivate. And it’s just one hour. One hour of work in a whole entire day of rest. Not counting spear practice, I guess. One hour. I can do it. It’s a good plan. A good baseline. I can only go up from here.”

  He ran out of steam at that point and slunk into his chair, staring dazedly ahead of him. Eventually, his mind or body managed to rouse some energy back to him, so he shook his head and, with an angry spasm, spat out, “Fuck’s sake, Web-Web! Now would be a good time for you to give a thumbs up or down on my plan… But I guess you can’t. You should only contact me once I majorly fucked up, and only as a last resort. Fine, fine. I get it. Unless you tell me otherwise, I’ll try to consider this baseline as good enough for you and your… plan.

  “Now let’s celebrate my newly lost freedom with some One Piece. No way that’ll come back to bite me in the ass in only a couple of chapters.”