31 | Reading The Room

The problem with Battle Sense was that it did not switch off.

Soren found that out on the Saturday, crossing the yard with two buckets, when a stablehand came round the corner of the feed store at speed and Soren's body moved aside before he had registered there was anything to move aside from.

The water did not spill. That was the part that unsettled him. His hands had corrected for a collision that never happened.

<<Loraine: This will be unpleasant for about a week.>>

Why?

<<Loraine: It reads weight and intent. It does not care whether the intent belongs to a knife or a bucket. Every person you pass is doing both, constantly, and you have just been given the ability to see it.>>

He spent the afternoon noticing things nobody had asked him to notice.

Marda's left knee was bad. She took the scullery stairs leading with her right and hauling on the rail, and she had been doing it long enough that the rail had gone pale in one spot, and she did it fastest when somebody was watching.

Bryn Aster flinched at doors. Not at people. At the specific sound of one opening behind her, and only when her hands were in something and she could not turn quickly.

Nessa walked into rooms shoulder first, like a woman going through a crowd that was not there.

Coralie Fenn stood with her weight on her back foot in every conversation she had, including cheerful ones, including with people she liked.

And Sera Delacque, crossing the yard at 4 in the afternoon with a letter in her hand, moved like somebody wearing an injury she had stopped noticing about nine years ago. Low on the left. Hip, or lower back, or the joint between the two.

Soren watched her go past.

She has never put her full weight on that leg. Not once. Not in front of anybody, not in six weeks.

<<Loraine: Correct.>>

How bad?

<<Loraine: Bad enough that a 4th Stage Adept Warrior has been fighting at something under her real capacity for nine years, has arranged her entire posture around concealing it, and has been so successful that the woman who owns her has never once asked.>>

<<Lilith: For a low rank sense, it's pretty much pulling it's weight quite well...then again everyone here is also low ranked enough for it to be so never mind>>

Soren nodded solemnly at her words, he also didn't think battle sense would work even in passive life but it was proving otherwise.

Then again could also be she hasn't noticed or cared

<<Lilith: That is pretty likely>>

Soren thought for a moment, his mind running through various simulations that failed after another because he had less information than he need.

Still, all of them had a focal point that he could exploit if it came down to it, and so he asked.

Would it come up in a fight?

<<Loraine: ...>>

<<Loraine: Why are you asking me that.>>

No reason.

<<Loraine: Soren.>>

I said no reason.

He carried the buckets to the wash house and did not think about it, and thought about it the whole way.

<<Lilith: Assuming you did have a reason, and that reason just so happened to be combat or running related, then yes, it would most likely show up>>

<<Lilith: And if that doesn't work, you can always make it show up with a little hitting>>

<<Loraine: Lilith>>

<<Lilith: That's me>>

Soren only chuckled slightly at their antics and thanked Lilith.

Although they often spoke a lot, he couldn't deny they helped with adjusting to this word and feeling more comfortable than he ought to be.

<<Loraine: You are learning to read people the way a buyer reads a horse.>>

That's horrible.

<<Loraine: Yes. But it is also why you will survive Friday.>>

...

He reached 7th Stage on the Sunday night.

It took eleven hours instead of the six the last one had taken, and Deepwell Circulation ground through it the way Deepwell ground through everything, slowly and without gratitude, and leaving considerably more room behind it than there was any business being.

<<RANK: APPRENTICE MAGE, 7TH STAGE.>>

<<MILESTONE. AWARD: 400 FP.>>

650.

<<Loraine: 650, and 11 days, and 3 Stages to go, and the 8th alone will take five days at your current rate.>>

And the Stage Ascent Pill is one Stage.

<<Loraine: One. Which leaves two by hand, and the second of those is Peak.>>

Although he already had one pill, he felt like it wouldn't be enough at the rate he was progressing.

Just to be safe and as an extra added insurance, I should get something else to speed things up.

Loraine, can you show me something I can get with the points I have?.

Since Loraine herself had said it when he first started that Refined grade items started from 450 to 500 FP, he felt he could get at least something useful.

There was a pause.

<<Loraine: How did you know there was a thing?>>

Because three hours ago you said it wasn't possible "the way I'm currently doing it." You don't waste words. That was six extra ones and you meant all of them.

<<Loraine: ...>>

<<Lilith: Oh, she hates that you read her so well.>>

<<Loraine: I dislike being read by a man I taught to read. Sigh fine, I was only going to suggest this if we were short on time but I suppose now is as good as any.>>

<<GALE-DRAUGHT TINCTURE. REFINED. 500 FP.>>

<<Gathers and compresses ambient mana around the user for 1 hour, at a density no natural environment produces. Cultivation performed inside that hour proceeds at roughly 20 times normal rate.>>

<<When the hour closes, the surplus settles violently. The user is immobile for 2 to 5 hours. Conscious. Aware. Unable to move a limb.>>

<<Effectiveness falls away sharply from High Adept onward. This is a tool for the bottom of the ladder.>>

Soren read it twice.

Two to five hours.

<<Loraine: Two to five hours in which anybody who finds you may do anything they like, and you will watch them do it, and you will be entirely aware throughout.>>

And the hour itself?

<<Loraine: You cannot fight, cannot walk, and cannot stop it once it has begun. You will be a man sitting very still inside a cloud of extremely visible mana. Any cultivator within 200 yards will feel it arrive.>>

How many cultivators are within 200 yards of this estate at night?

<<Loraine: One. She sleeps on the second floor, she is 2nd Stage Adept, and she has read your mark every night for nine nights.>>

Will she feel it?

<<Loraine: ...Probably not. She would have to be awake, outside, and paying attention to the air rather than to the mark. It is not impossible. It is roughly one chance in six.>>

One in six.

<<Loraine: You are about to say something about how those are good odds.>>

They're excellent odds, Loraine.

<<Loraine: I would like it recorded that I hate this.>>

So I need somewhere nobody goes, on a night nobody's looking, for up to six hours.

<<Loraine: You need somewhere with a ladder that pulls up.>>

Buy it.

<<PURCHASED. 150 FP REMAINING.>>

<<Lilith: Sweetheart.>>

Mm.

<<Lilith: If somebody finds you up there, I want you to understand that neither of us can do a single thing about it. Not one. I can talk to you and Loraine can count, and that is the entire extent of what we are.>>

I know.

<<Lilith: I have never had to say that to anybody before.>> A pause. <<I do not like how it sounds coming out.>>