With the voice of a man pushing ninety, Vlad spoke.

  "I... will be the one..." he wheezed, "who will teach you the ways of the [Voice]."

  Zack quietly grew excited about his training prospects in a way he never had in the Castle, and Roxy loudly laughed.

  "Nyahahahaha! It's always so funny when you sound like that, Vladdy!"

  Vlad simply made a look of utter disdain and didn't otherwise respond. Roxy pouted.

  "Once you have [Voice], it should be trivial to acquire [Sing] if you so choose," Ronaldo said.

  "You totally should!" Roxy interjected.

  "Oh, I forgot, you'll need to learn to [Pose] and [Gesture] before you work on [Mimic]." Sandra said.

  "Ah, right right" Ronaldo said. "Learning to [Mimic] before learning to [Pose] and [Gesture] really limits your ability to [Act], especially with new characters who have never been performed before."

  Millie came back to reality from her daydream. "Oh yes, plenty of aspiring [Actresses] try to just [Mimic] their overstudy during training, and then lose all flexibility in their [Acting]."

  "...It sounds like the different [Skills] all have a big impact on each other," Zack said.

  Sandra and Ronaldo both nodded. "That's exactly why the Director wants you to learn the [Skills] in this particular order." Sandra said.

  "Even if you're not going to be an [Actor] in the end." Millie winked at me.

  "Nyahahahaha!" Roxy laughed, although Zack couldn't tell why.

  Perhaps she just couldn’t stand not being the center of attention.

  "Anyway, Roxy, you teach him how to [Memorize] the script." Ronaldo said.

  Roxy immediately stopped laughing obnoxiously. "Huh?! Why me?"

  "Because you took the longest to learn to [Memorize] your lines when you started here, so you will know all the wrong ways to try to [Memorize] that should be avoided."

  "Ergh..." Roxy moaned.

  Fyodor clapped his hand on my shoulder and stage whispered to Zack, "Don't worry, if she can't do it, I'll help you out."

  "I so can do it!" Roxy shouted. "I'll be the best teacher ever, just you wait and see!"

  Then she leaned in, provocatively providing a view down her blouse, and whispered softly enough that nobody should have been able to hear, “And when it’s just the teacher and the student, all alone…” she trailed off meaningfully—

  And then Millie and Sandra both smacked her upside the head at the same time.

  Roxy simply put her hands on her hips, puffed out her chest, and laughed. “Nyahahahahaha!”

  "Once you're done with all the other skills, Sandra and I will train you in [Acting] and the Director will complete your training after that." Ronaldo said.

  "Ah! Just look at the time! Get ready, everyone! We need to start the rehearsal!" Millie cried.

  Everyone started to scatter but Roxy swung by to say "Okay Jack, for now just read the whole script through a couple times and, like, try to remember everything that happens in the story!" Then she dashed off to change into her costume.

  Zack looked down at the script, then, out of consideration for the actors, he moved from his sleeping bench over to where the troupe’s lunch was mostly untouched and grabbed his own breakfast, and he moved out from backstage. Down the stairs, around the edge of the stage, he found a seat in the lower gallery with decent light, and looked down at the script.

  Lives and Love Lost.

  It was a sheaf of leaves of parchment, unbound, but with the pages numbered so that if they became disordered, they could be re-ordered easily. The material had a smooth softness to it that felt wrong compared to the slight roughness of paper from Earth, and the writing on the leaves was especially cramped, with even tinier notes written in the margins, for additional stage directions.

  Zack idly rubbed the leaves between his fingers, gently, oh so gently.

  If this was a working copy of the script, it was worth quite a lot. Not just to this troupe, either, but to other theaters, who might pay dearly to steal a copy so they could put on their own shows.

  Information.

  That had been his bread and butter, back on Earth.

  Back where everyone’s information was stored digitally, on computers, and even paper was becoming something of a relic.

  But this world was much more primitive.

  He had yet to see any sign of printing, for instance.

  Yes, this script was valuable.

  But money?

  No.

  Zack didn’t need money. He could earn plenty of money, anyway.

  He needed [Skills].

  And this troupe, especially the Director, had blown his expectations out of the water.

  This was miles better than just [Running].

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  [Pose], [Gesture], [Mimic], [Enunciate], [Voice], [Disguise], [Acting], and more…

  He was starting to see the true power of [Skills] in this other world.

  Sure, when he got the [Archery] skill, his loosed arrows landed closer to where he was aiming.

  Sure, when he got the [Running] skill, he became a little faster and he needed to exert himself less.

  But what he had seen this morning…

  He paused, recalling the [Appraisal] ceremony.

  The [Skill]s announced had all had levels.

  Specifically, level one for all of them, Bradley’s and his own.

  It was certain that [Skill]s could level up.

  In fact, he was fairly certain his own [Running] skill had reached level two, based on the improvement he’d seen on his second day of training.

  But he had no way to check, not without submitting himself to a bishop or cardinal of the Church for another [Appraisal] ceremony.

  And that was the last thing he wanted to do after the [Priestess], Maria, tried to poison him.

  The curtain rose on the stage, and he could see the actors and actresses, now in costume, taking their positions. At the same time, a door slammed open in the back, and the Director powerwalked to the front row of the middle gallery, the best spot in the entire theater in terms of both acoustics and view of the stage.

  The short, round, balding man glared at Zack, as though to tell him to [Memorize] and stop gawking, and then turned back to the stage and the actors upon it.

  “Begin!”

  And so the rehearsal began.

  Zack knew the drill by this point, after several days.

  The scene would be performed once all the way through, then the Director would have them restart and hurl comments and directions as they went, correcting their performances.

  The first day it had been shocking.

  By now it was just normal.

  Zack turned to the script in his hands, and started reading.

  He was grateful he already had the [Reading] skill, which he could tell was putting in work interpreting the cramped, tiny letters. Probably in the Director’s own hand, now that he thought about it.

  Focus.

  And so, he studied.

  It was…

  Distracting, to be studying while the rehearsal was going on and the Director was shouting directions.

  Still, he did manage to read through the script several times, and watching the play acted out on stage, in fits and starts due to it being a rehearsal, did help the overarching plot of the story stick in his mind.

  It was a tragic love story, wherein a man and a woman broke off their engagement due to the outbreak of war. The love interests convinced themselves it was for the best, to serve their country, but they were clearly shown to be miserable. In the end, the war was won, and the man returned home a decorated war hero, but by that point the two had grown apart to the point that the spark was lost, and the play ended with both quietly sad and alone.

  It was quite a subversive play. On the face of it, it was a war story with gripping action scenes pushing a patriotic line: fight for the King, subdue the foreign enemies, expand the Kingdom and educate the new subjects about Church teachings. But the way the Director had it performed, it was clear there was an underlying moral about seizing happiness with both hands and refusing to let go.

  A cautionary tale.

  The theater, incidentally, lacked any kind of orchestra for musical accompaniment. One of the stagehands stood alone with a violin, providing all the music himself. The final scene had long pauses in the dialogue and action during which there was only the haunting melody of sadness.

  After the climax of the piece, Ronaldo, the lead actor, fingered the medal he had received for his service, and delivered the last line of the play.

  “Oh, what could have been…”

  Despite being a tragedy and a bit of a downer, the battle scenes were full of action and enthusiastically performed, with Fyodor fighting off hordes of extras as he stormed up and down the stage before Ronaldo’s character defeated him in single combat. The theater was nearly always packed, each and every performance.

  Once rehearsal ended, there was a break period of two hours, and then everyone would gear up for the matinee. Full makeup needed to be applied, sets needed to be prepared and pre-staged, and actors needed to rest and relax and get in the right mindset.

  Roxy, still in her costume as Sandra’s character’s best friend and nearly-bridesmaid, skipped around the stage to where Zack was sitting.

  “How’s it going, Jack?” she asked cheerfully.

  “No luck yet, Roxy” Zack answered, mentally pushing on [Resist Allure] as Roxy fluttered her eyelashes at him.

  “Boooo! I can’t believe you got resist already…” she bemoaned, before visibly growing more serious.

  For about thirty minutes, they talked about the play, the characters’ names, ways to remember which character was which, and so on. Towards the end, Zack still felt like he hadn’t made much progress.

  “Should I just keep reading it over and over?” he asked.

  “Nope, you won’t make progress that way. I sure didn’t…” she said. “Instead, try reciting it out loud. Not around here, though, you’ll bother the actors.”

  Just as she said that, the Director appeared.

  “Roxy, take your break!” he barked.

  “Yes, Director!” she replied instantly, and scurried off to do just that.

  “Jack!”

  “Yes!” Zack got to his feet.

  “If you’re going to do recitation out loud, do it over here.” Without waiting for acknowledgment, the Director strode up the steps towards the lobby, well away from where the actors were preparing.

  Zack followed and was shown to what was effectively a closet, with thick cloth hanging on the walls.

  “Do your voice work in here, where the sound won’t bother anyone.”

  And the Director shut the door, leaving Zack in a dark, tiny little space.

  The room was surprisingly tall, and at the top there was a window, so there was just enough light to see by.

  Zack blinked.

  With a bit of effort, his vision penetrated the gloom, and if he really focused, he could just barely read the script.

  A thought occurred to him, and he frowned.

  Did the Director know he had the [Night Eye] skill?

  He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.

  But after four nights of cleaning in the dark after the theater closed…

  Did he plan for him to get that skill?

  Was that why the voice practice room was so dark?

  Just how far ahead was the Director thinking…?

  Or was it just a coincidence?

  Focus.

  Squinting his eyes, Zack reviewed the first lines of the play, skipping over the set description and stage directions.

  “O Katherine, busom friend of my youth and my closest confidant, stay, listen, for I have much I must confess to you. No, I can wait no longer, I can bear no more to hold my peace, for…”

  Zack read the lines aloud.

  He did his best to repeat them as written.

  And, as he did so, losing track of time…

  *ding!*

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