As you may have noticed, I’m in the process of editing my book. Most of the edits are inconsequential, but this section from Chapter 20 should be brought to your attention if you’ve already read past it. It concerns maths to damage dealt, skill stacking, and Henry’s characterization. For context, this is when he’s fighting the Slime King. Henry is much more OCD when it comes to round numbers now.

  First, this section has been added to Chapter 16 to provide justification:

  Ah, I had this skill.

  People liked to imagine knights as well-fed bludgeons with vows, but the Order had always been touchy about appearances. A knight was meant to be educated, to have proof that discipline elevated steel rather than replacing thought.

  Math had applications, of course, mainly in rations, march timing, weight tolerances on bridges that didn’t want to collapse under armored men, angles of impact, force distribution. The boring, survivable parts of warfare.

  But mostly, it existed so no one could call us brutes.

  When Sir Roland took me in, there were still a few knights left—few enough to be territorial about it. They hadn’t liked the idea of an orphan squire. A charity case in armor, I remembered it was Sir Rufus who had said that. Sir Roland had argued back with the same ferocity he brought to duels.

  Give the boy a subject, he’d said. Any subject. If he cannot master it, I will concede your point.

  They’d let me choose.

  I picked mathematics. Then I became reasonably good at it. Good enough that no one argued when Sir Roland called me his squire again.

  Here is the section in Chapter 20:

  I lunged.

  So my calculation was correct! The technique stacked additively, not multiplicatively. (9 + 10) × (2 + 1.5) - 26.

  Nineteen base. Three-and-a-half times output. Sixty-six and a half. Subtract the creature’s Endurance—twenty-six flat—and that landed at 40.5.

  Rounded down.

  Forty damage.

  Good. Ceralis rounded halves down. That mattered.

  If the multipliers had been separate—(9 + 10) × 2 × 1.5—that would’ve implied independent damage layers. Which didn’t make sense. That kind of math snowballed. Every new modifier would inflate the next, turning modest bonuses into exponential spikes.

  My math is mathing! Yes!

  No.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  For the first time, the creature lurched back. Steam rose where my blade had passed clean through.

  It was actually hurt.

  Anabeth’s voice rang out. “I knew it!” she declared, almost trilling the words. “You have been concealing your true output all along! Look at that impact radius! Your strikes are clearly stronger now, and you’re still not drawing on any aether!”

  “Behold!” Ceralis thundered through me before I could stop it. “As I demonstrate the extraordinary art of non-aetheric evasion, an ancient form lost to lesser minds!”

  I pivoted half a step to the side, narrowly avoiding another sluggish pseudopod slap.

  Flawless.

  Anabeth tilted her head, unamused. “That’s... just what you’ve been doing.”

  For a moment, I thought I’d lost her interest. Perhaps she’d finally realized this was just glorified slime-dodging with better lighting.

  But then she added, “But it’s still splendid the fifteenth time I see it!”

  It occurred to me that in the old days, things rarely lasted more than a few exchanges. Jousts ended in a single hit. Sword matches, ten at most. Even the dramatic ones ended with a bow and someone dramatically bleeding onto the parquet.

  The good old days.

  But this? This was thirty seconds of glorified cardio between meaningful decisions.

  Ceralis, of course, was thrilled.

  “Observe,” it boomed through my lungs as I found a space to breathe, “the sacred discipline of Interval Recuperation! A technique once lost to all but the highest order of duelists!”

  I surged forward again, catching the line that marked the creature’s core displacement—

  —and missed.

  The blade sliced clean through a section of membrane that was definitely not vital.

  No! My perfect math! I can’t get it down to exactly 0 anymore now!

  The creature jiggled indignantly and swung a pseudopod the size of a boulder at my head.

  I ducked just in time, nearly slipping on the gelatinous floor. The effort alone cost me more breath than I wanted to admit.

  Now, another thirty seconds of time-wasting terror.

  By the time the cooldown ticked back to zero, my arms trembled and sweat beaded inside my gloves. Luckily, the creature wasn’t smart enough to corner me, so I could just move around the cavern wall and stayed relatively safe.

  I lunged again—this time true.

  I adjusted at the last instant, not for speed, but for angle.

  A fraction shallower. Less torque through the shoulder. Enough to keep my STR expression at nine, not ten.

  if I pushed perfectly, I’d overshoot. Forty-one, maybe forty-two after rounding. That was overkill and not a round number.

  Momentum carried me into another perfect arc, thirty seconds later. Too perfect. I realized my swordform was too clean and efficient. If I let it complete naturally, the system would read it as superior execution—eleven, maybe twelve effective damage before mitigation.

  I couldn’t afford that.

  At the last instant, I sabotaged it with a micro-delay in my wrist.

  Yes. My form was still acceptably sloppy. Predictable, mathematical, beautiful.

  Not beautiful.