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Nero Walker, Book 2 Ch.9 (41)
🕑 Added 2023-12-07 23:30:01 +0000 UTCBoth Nick and Captain Angelton looked at the scrying screen Jennings was projecting. They watched as Nero realized where he was transported, and promptly gave them a double helping of middle fingers.
Chuckling, Jennings dismissed his scry. He turned to his compatriots and said, “Let’s head back to the city lord and your wife. I’m sure they’ve made some decisions. I want to make sure that the boy’s growth isn’t impacted by all this noble nonsense.”
Without waiting for a response, Jennings started back toward the dining hall. Both Nick and Angelton followed. Neither was going to argue with an arch-mage.
As they walked down the halls, they discussed the oddity that was Nero. Captain Angelton did his duty and reminded them that they needed to make sure the boy learned how to defend himself. Whether he was protected was irrelevant. There were many dangers that they couldn’t intercept.
Jennings walked them past the dining hall where they had eaten dinner, and said, “The dinner guests have moved on to a sitting room.”
With a chuckle, he turned to Nick. “You should check on your brother, he’s looking a little pale. I think he’s terrified of your wife.”
Nick responded, “Most sane people are.”
Jennings pinged the large wooden doors as the trio walked up. After receiving a welcome, he waved them open.
“So, what’s been decided?” he asked without preamble.
The city lord, Lord Cosgrave, was sitting in a large chair resembling a throne, while sipping tea. Her response was equally to the point. “House Walker has been allotted the spoils, and we are now discussing the trials.”
Sitting in the comfortable ‘after dinner’ room, was General Branson, Lord Bennings, Lord Salvatore, and Nick’s wife, Vera Salvatore. After walking into the room, the trio took their seats among the couches. Nick relaxed next to Vera, while Captain Angelton joined the general, and immediately reported what happened with Nero.
Jennings however, didn’t seem to find a place that was up to his standards. Walking next to the city lord’s chair, he hopped into the air and crossed his legs. He hovered in the air, evidently quite comfortable.
His smirk was wide as he said, “That boy is intriguing. He skipped essence weaving and went straight to stamping. I didn’t even show him how to do it. He just saw me cast using my center, and copied me. It was remarkable.”
Waving his hand, he poured himself some tea with sugar. As the teacup floated over, he asked, “Now where are you with the trials? He is too young for them. Lord Bennings, isn’t there some law or procedure that is applicable?”
Lord Bennings nodded. “Yes. As I’ve explained to the city lord and house Walker’s proxy, a schedule has to be made, but not enforced. This situation isn’t common enough to have a procedure in place. The closest thing would be a disinherited noble heir. They could found a new house, but without royal protection. They must complete one trial within a year, but it doesn’t matter which one. I have been recommending service. With some help, House Walker should be able to complete that trial with some effort,” she said.
Lord Cosgrave said, “I’ve offered the city’s assistance, but Mrs. Salvatore said she wanted to speak with Mr. Salvatore first.”
Nick looked to his wife with a raised eyebrow. “Oh? How can I help?” he asked.
Vera said, “Well, aren’t you and he working on a paper or two. It’s his identity which is the subject of the data. Wouldn’t that constitute a service to the people? I know that the identity of the subject is usually not published, but it is never a secret. Is that a viable avenue to explore?”
Jennings was the one to respond. “Technically, service requires the noble to do something. Being a test subject, even if it is immensely helpful, doesn’t qualify as service. Make sure to check with the Tower of Law, but I believe I’m correct. I’d recommend the combat trial and service to be done in unison. Nobles up north do it that way all the time. Have the new Lord Walker go kill something that constitutes a danger to the public. That way he knocks out two trials at once,” he said.
Lord Bennings offered a nod and said, “The arch-mage is correct. Subjecting oneself to testing doesn’t qualify. However, a beast quest would be acceptable. Isn’t the boy too young for that though? I’ve never heard of someone under level 20 attempting one.”
The city lord snorted. “That’s because it would be madness. A beast quest can only be issued for dangerous animals or monsters, class 3 or above. The hunting guild has it’s own laws that have to be followed, and cannot be interfered with. It will take years before the boy is ready to fight at that level.”
The general looked over at Captain Angelton. The captain spoke up, “I doubt it will be that long. Based on his leveling speed, he’ll be level 20 in two weeks.”
Jennings started laughing. “None of you have figured it out yet? Not even you Mr. Salvatore?” he asked with a smirk.
The city lord looked around the room, and saw only confused faces. “Please let us know what we’re missing arch-mage,” she said without a hint of shame or embarrassment.
Seeing that no one was rising to his provocation, the arch-mage sighed. He missed being around people that he could irk. Everyone in this city was so afraid of him, he could insult them to their face and receive nothing but a smile. It was irritating.
Jennings said, “Lord Walker is an old soul. His body is trying to catch up to the strength of his soul. His mind is acting as an intermediary. I bet his soul and mind stats are exceptional. As such, he’ll start slowing down drastically around level 10. Some of the mage council believe that he’ll assume a normal leveling speed at that time. A few, myself included, believe that he will still be a fast leveler. Regardless, he won’t continue to gain a level a day. The only thing we agree on is that he’ll stabilize in a few days.”
Everyone in the room nodded. Some sighed in regret, others in relief.
Captain Angelton said, “Even if his leveling speed drops off drastically, he is still a formidable young man. I am looking forward to training him. After a few days, I’ll have a better idea of his potential. At that time, I could make a recommendation as to whether or not he can be made ready for combat trial within the year.”
Lord Cosgrave said, “That would work. We haven’t discussed the legacy trial. We could just arrange a marriage. That would satisfy the requirements.”
Nick burst out laughing. “That’s a wonderful idea. Just please let me be there when you tell him,” he said.
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Nero woke up without issue for the first time in what felt like forever. His link didn’t receive any urgent messages, and his alarm woke him with the jaunty tune he programmed. Wearing his center-robes, he went to get a bagel and a coffee from the cafeteria while on his way to Nicks lab.
Waving to the attendant at the front desk on the 5thfloor, Nero sipped his coffee and pinged the door the moment he saw it. He tried waving his hand to open the door with his psychic field, but only managed to rattle the doors. Frowning, he continued his approach.
As the doors slid into the walls, Nero remembered that they slid rather than opened. Cursing himself for ruining his epic entrance, he saw Jennings, Kendra, and Nick discussing some data on a holographic screen. They were ignoring him, and didn’t seem to have noticed his mistake. ‘Nice, no one saw… so it didn’t happen. I’m still having a perfect morning,’he thought with a smile.
“Good morning all. I have 3 stars to use, but first I have some questions,” he said loudly, interrupting them, as he walked up to the trio.
Jennings said, “Welcome Nero. Sleep well?”
Nick and Kendra were still ignoring Nero and muttering to each other about the data on the screen.
Nero replied, “Yup. Slept fine. What’s so interesting?” He gestured to the screen that was evidently important.
Arch-mage Jennings pointed to the screen, and said, “That’s data that was recovered from the mage tower here in Dorchester. It seems the previous court mage was allowing the mages under his employ to ignore a great deal of things. At Dorchen’s request, some mages had moved the testing nodes for a study the director and his aides were doing. It seemed that they were worried that their mercenaries could be discovered by accident, so they removed all the nodes from the mountain, and placed them in a valley instead. Nick and Kendra are trying to see if anything can be salvaged. It may be that the 3 years of work they’ve done is now worthless.”
Nero looked at the data, and had no idea what any of it meant. Perhaps he was being contrary, but Nero felt like pointing out the obvious. If the guy from the 5 minute video on the accidental discovery of penicillin was to be believed, screwed up data still produces results.
Looking at the data as if he understood it, Nero said, “You presuming that the data is useless because it isn’t what you were looking for. But you should be looking at what the data IS telling you. There is always something to be learned from observation, maybe not what you were looking for, but something.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the screen. Kendra spoke up, “Oh no, that can’t be right.”
She manipulated some little knobs as her link lit up on her temple. The display turned into a 3d model of the city and it’s surroundings. Mountains and valleys were beside lakes and rivers. Nero assumed the little dots on the map were the essence testing nodes. The city actually looked small in the map.
Nero said, “Holy crap, how big an area did you monitor?”
Nick responded without turning around, “Just the area within Dorchester’s influence. Kendra, overlay the essence flows with the new locations.”
With a bit of snark, Kendra replied, “What do you think I’m doing? Hold on.”
The 3d map gained, what to Nero, looked like a meteorological overlay. It had some numbers scrolling above it. Suddenly, the little lines and clouds started moving in a 20 second loop.
Nick said, “Taking this into account, the flow was not as even as we thought. I have no idea what this means, but Nero’s right. It means something.”
Kendra responded, “You don’t recognize it? Here, look at it without the flow overlay, just look at the density distribution.” She manipulated the controls to show little pillars over each dot changing height throughout the 20 second loop.
Jennings chimed in, “Can your onsite hub extrapolate a density threshold?”
Nero was getting bored, and was about to go refill his coffee. As he turned to leave, Nick shouted.
“Gods be damned! If that’s accurate, then we can correlate flow data to spawn patterns,” he said in excitement.
Nero said, “So is something bad happening, or are you just being nerds?”
Jennings was the one to answer Nero, as Kendra and Nick returned to their scientific babble. “If the data is to be believed, their collection net may be a much more accurate early warning detection system for monster waves and dungeon spawns. In about six months, Dorchester looks to be in some danger. It’s too early to tell from what though,” he said.
Nero nodded, and gestured for Jennings to follow him to the kitchenette. “That’s super interesting and everything, but I don’t care. Let’s grab a coffee, I said I had questions,” he said.
Jennings chuckled and followed Nero.
As Nero poured some coffees, and the nerds collated data off in the lab, he said, “OK. Two main things. What do stars actually do? And how is ‘level stress’ related to their use?”
Sitting down, Nero was focused on Jennings like a dog watching a treat.
Sipping his coffee, Jennings leaned back and crossed his legs, enjoying Nero’s undivided attention. He figured, rightly so, that this level of interest was rare for Nero.
He started his lecture with a gesture to the nerds, “What their looking at is somewhat related. Sentient species use their identity to codify or organize their essence collection. When you grow, you are collecting essence from the surroundings and condensing a star. When enough essence is collected, you level. It’s that simple.
“The star is then stored in your soul. You use your mind to direct its use through your identity. Following so far?” he asked.
Nero nodded, and said, “Yup, you collect experiences and create a star when you level. That part I get, but what do they DO?”
Jennings took another sip and nodded. “When a person has condensed a star from a level, they are able to apply it to an aspect of their existence. For example, they apply a star to their mind. The star then infuses that collected essence in its abstract form to reinforce the person’s mind stat based upon how much stress that sub-stat has sustained. For example, say that they had been training their control, the control sub-stat would have a lot of built up stress. The star’s essence potential would reinforce the mind to consider that the new normal. Does that explain the relationship well enough?”
Nero replied, “Yeah, kinda. But how much will the base go up? The book I read had a lot of charts and stuff, but was light on the examples. Let me give you a hypothetical, a level 5 has a 20 ‘control’ sub-stat in his mind, with a level stress of 10. What would happen if he added a star when he reached level 6?”
Jennings snorted, “You’re hypothetical needs work. A level 5 can’t have a focus that high, at most he would have a 10. Even that would be monstrous, you don’t see 20’s in stats until around level 15. But for the sake of argument, the level stress is based in relation to the base stat. So since the stat is at 20, and the stress is at 10; your hypothetical person would gain a point or two in their base stat. It’s almost impossible to get level stress high enough to increase a stat by more than 3 points.”
Nero was getting nervous, his stats were really screwed up. And he didn’t know if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. Was he uber-buffed, or was he going to explode if he used a star.
He brought up his stat breakdown, and decided to take a chance and ask Jennings a question.
Body 1
Base Operative Level Stress Presence 9 10.8 6.3 Durability 7 8.4 2 Recovery 13 15.6 14.6 Speed 11 13.2 4 Adaptability 24 28.8 17.2 Power 8 9.6 0.7
Mind 1
Base Operative Level Stress Weight 20 24 13.2 Control 21 25.2 19.8 Field 8 9.6 31.2 Precision 22 26.4 36.5 Endurance 26 31.2 41.5 Focus 6 7.2 86.6
Soul 1
Base Operative Level Stress Size 26 31.2 2.1 Density 101 121.2 0.8 Intensity 76 91.2 0.3 Pressure 23 27.6 3.9 Harmony 3 3.6 26.3 Adaptability 270 324 0.8
Nero wouldn’t give up all his secrets, he’ll probably never tell anyone about his soul stats. But maybe his focus stat should be alright he thought. He figured a 6 was pretty normal.
“Alright, I’m going to ask a specific question. But this stays between us, agreed?” Nero asked with his most serious face.
Jennings seemed curious, and said, “Sure. What’s your question?”
With a sigh, Nero said, “I have a 6 in my focus sub-stat for my mind, but my level stress is at 86.6. If I put a star in my mind, what will happen?”
Jennings froze. Nero saw his brain crash like an old computer trying to display 4k video. As the seconds stretched, Nero snapped his fingers in front of the man.
“Hey!” he said. “How fucked am I? And what can I do about it?”
Jennings came to, and replied in a trembling voice, “Um… Nero. I have no idea what would happen. I can’t conceive of a person having a level stress 14x the base stat. Normally, I’d say that there is never a danger to leveling, but that is based on historical data. Data which, I don’t think applies to you. I’m guessing your focus might double? But whether or not you can handle the influx of essence into your mind is another matter entirely.”
Nero sagged back into his chair. “Well… shit,” he said.
Jennings took a sip of his coffee with a worried look on his face. “Shit indeed,” he replied.
