Three kinds of learning.

  First, the obvious kind. The things they want me to learn. Each level has a lesson if you look at it sideways. Complex systems. Dependencies. Example: Umbral Shrill and Night Lilies. Shrill die, their essence feeds the soil, lilies grow, blooms feed the Shrill. Closed loop. Lesson: perpetual essence symbiosis.

  Second, the unintended kind. The things nobody points out because they’re “harmless.” Resets between challenge instances except one thing: the people. They remember in fragments. Faces flicker with déjà vu. Ask specifics, they blur. Everyone on Union worlds probably figures this out. It’s not even hidden.

  Third—new. Dangerous. The things they don’t want me to know. That they would hide if they knew I was watching. This is where I am. Why? Because when I think of the people I care about being forced to participate I feel like punishing it—the system, and by extension the Union.

  What irritates me most: maybe that’s exactly what the system’s built to do. A cruel engine designed to cultivate those strong enough to resist.

  

  The Register notes, with some reservation, that this passage is consistent with later behavior [cf. ]. Although contemporary scholarship attributes his experimental approach to lack of instruction or guidance [cf. ], the primary materials suggest deliberate contrarianism shaped by systemic mistrust. Whether this reflects the success or failure of the Union’s probationary pedagogy remains a matter of ongoing debate [cf. , Vol. XXII].

  SURGE ONE: Repelled.Exit now to receive a reward (common).

  Warning: Failure later will forfeit all rewards.

  Rem made for the glyph stone, his notebook in hand.

  “Penny,” he yelled, catching the attention of a rosy-cheeked girl near the blacksmith.

  “Rem!” she called back.

  “Catch.” He wound up, tossed an orange to her, and watched her desperately manage to snatch the fruit like a rare treasure. Oranges were novel fruits here in Madarox, and he found them useful for loosening the tongues of the children of the outpost.

  “Th-thank you!” she called back, her gap-tooth grin splitting her face.

  Rem hurried past and placed his palm on the glyph stone, returning to his locker.

  On the low stone table he found a simple wooden staff, his challenge reward

  Elmwood Staff (Level 3)

  Effect: +1 reach.

  Durability: Low.

  He turned it once, unimpressed, and tossed it down with the others: a patched leather jerkin, a crude knife. A little pile of starter junk, cluttering his workspace. Then he sat at his desk and began the work of copying his journal to the duplicate.

  Keralee Voss, daughter of Captain Hendrick Voss, red hair, always grooming horses in the corral. Likes to sing.

  Horses. Three unharnessed draft horses. One harnessed, guzzling water from the trough.

  Piper, stable boy, limps. Inside stable, mucking first stall. Stable has tack and harnesses, and two more leaner horses. For ranging?

  Rem pushed the notebook aside, unpinned a canvas map from his wall. Titled , the image was slowly developing. Already he had sketched many of the buildings, their approximate shapes, relative distance — neat labels for some: Barracks. Kitchen. Dining Hall. Storage. He moved down and inked the stables in, the corral beside it, circled Keralee’s post with a note:

  He nodded in satisfaction, pinning it back up. A third of the outpost mapped. Each run gave him two buildings, maybe a conversation if he was quick, never more. Enough to push the edges out a little at a time.

  Verifying his notes, he stepped back to the glyphs for another run.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Rem scrawled another line in the ledger, the ink blotting where his tired hand lingered too long. A column of failures stared back at him—roots boiled to nothing, powders curdled into useless clumps, reed milk that congealed instead of separating. Crossed-out entries marched down the page, a testament to his mediocrity.

  He muttered through the notes, lips shaping combinations that went nowhere. After a while he shoved the ledger shut and went to water the lilies, taking a clay pitcher of duplicating umbral water with him. He stood in front of the garden rocking the pitcher back and forth until it refilled. The lilies were serene, steady, their glow unbothered by his frustration. He watered them, one at a time. It was calming, or should have been.

  When he was done he turned and looked back at the workbench. It was littered with the hours of his effort: rows of bottles clouded with dead mixtures, empty papers of spent alchemical powders and nothing that remotely resembled success.

  Hours gone, nothing gained. The odds of stumbling across a new formula this way? Near zero.

  He felt the umbral core in his pocket, its seeping cold. Pulling it out he looked it over. Dull. Light-drinking. It seemed to absorb even the glow of the lilies, as though shadow had weight. He wanted to start with this. Planned to. Just skip right to what he knew would work. But no.

  He could hear the disappointment in his father’s voice. That’s what you needed to master any subject, he would say. So, Rem forced himself to try it the way a legitimate alchemist might.

  But this late in the day, on the eve of another school trial, Rem was just too tired to care much.

  Hand clammy, gripping the core, he went back to his workbench and willed his power into existence above the surface. It hovered there above the mess of failures. He pushed the umbral core inside–watched it float - then took one of his crafted healing potions and poured it in. The red liquid flowed inside the transparent cube just waiting for his mental command.

  Instinctively he knew he could do this two ways. He could merge the potion into the core - creating a modified core of some kind. Always when he merged two items he would have to think of one as the final form and the other as contributing to it. He didn’t take that route.

  Instead he decided the final form would be a liquid and willed the core to merge into it.

  The core joined with the pool of red in a storm of tiny flashes, before a single large snap sent ripples through the fluid leaving it darker and opaque. He held up the vial and willed the dark substance inside it. His hand trembled as he inspected the vial.

  False Life Potion (Level 2).

  Effect: Grants temporary health

  Relief flared through him. For a heartbeat he felt full, triumphant. Then the drain came. Essence ripped through him, leaving him raw and emptied, breath short, chest hollow. He slumped over the bench, head in his hands, waiting for his strength to crawl back.

  When it did, he found no system prompts waiting to review. No new formula. No progress. No recognition. Only the ache of loss and a darkened vial. His messy handle scrawled more notes:

  The ink ran thin, letters jagged. He paused, staring at the words, then checked the interface again. Nothing. The potion refused to register. He picked up his pen.

  To earn formulas he would have to brew them himself, the slow way, with his own hands. His power couldn’t leapfrog the process.

  .

  He paused – realization spreading through him in a wave. He wasn’t earning essence anymore. Not from his challenge runs, only common junk rewards. He took a minute to do the math, then replayed the numbers again. The pattern was clear now. Unless he started killing wolves, he was in trouble.

  He flipped to a clean page and began the math. His regen: .21% an hour. Roughly five percent a day. The merge had cost nearly all of that, a full day’s income gone. Brutal. He could afford one merge a day. That was his ceiling. He could not brute-force his way forward.

  Too slow.

  He sat back and thought. With no essence earned from his runs his goal of getting into the alchemist guild was going to take much too long. He could try. Right now. He had a new stable sample. But what if the system ran verification, looked up what formulas he had access to? It might flag him as a cheat and open him up to greater scrutiny. That was the last thing he needed.

  While his friends were grinding steady, gaining XP from killing wolves, he was still trapped in the slow work of mapping and note-taking. He hadn’t even finished sketching the outpost.

  He bent over the ledger, cramped hand dragging out the words:

  He stared at the line a long time, ink still wet.

  Day 3, L3 Challenge

  

  Dumped it straight in the trash. Stared at it. Shaking. Annoyed at myself. Hate that I’m legally obligated to them.

  Eventually dug it out.

  Glad I did. Had nothing to do with me specifically. Instead, a warning, guide, and uninstall wafer.

  We have essence imbalances. Problems.

  Some ware components don’t absorb essence the same. Brain is absorbing essence but micros that run interface don’t. Estimate natural failures occur consistently around level four.

  Figures. BioPsion waits as long as possible before raising the alarm about their dying ware. Thanks.

  Supposed to take the wafer before four. Means no more internal network or display. System one should still work. No more music library.

  Ascenders – that’s what those who are still trying the challenges, still leveling, are called. Ascenders will have to use wearable tech. Inconvenient. It’ll blip out. Unreliable.

  Another way to force compliance.

  Problems. Are we going to outlevel the planet? At level 4 will I get the same benefit from level 1 water? Will I need high level water? Food?

  Are challenge runs going to be the only source for higher-level materials? There’s much more here to think about. Too many implications. Feels like the impact of this will be enormous.

  One good thing. If I can figure out challenge three and release a children’s guide – then everyone will be able to get to four.

  That alone may put BioPsion out of business.

  Some small revenge.

  rating

  following

  By order of the Registry Command, the Field Medal of the First Order is hereby awarded to

  reviewing

  A quick personal note. We got to Rising Stars because of your many comments, follows, ratings, and reviews. Thank you for your support.

  I know I still have a long way to go as an author. There are many many better authors here on Royal Road whom I admire greatly. I’m just very fortunate and thankful you’re enjoying the story.

  I needed to adjust my comment drop loot table since I felt overwhelmed over the weekend. Now there’s a greater chance to get no drop, making system responses rarer.

  New cover. I drew the latest cover. I know it’s not on brand for this genre, but I wanted something that emphasized how small Rem is at the start.