Rating Zero (Alpha LitRPG Book 5), page 16
And on, and on it went, with everyone inevitably surrendering ground they fought so hard to gain and finding themselves back on the rocky edge that encircled the improvised skating ring. Once you were there, you were safe, and no one even made you have another go at it. So it was no surprise that soon enough there were precious few volunteers remaining. No one fancied the role of a live drum or gong pummeled with such enormous force. We all needed a break.
We also kept wondering what the point of the exercise was, and the more we thought about it, the worse it looked. The task was clearly impossible. No one managed to progress more than thirty paces in, and most were stopped much earlier. Some were knocked back as soon as they stepped on the metal floor, while luckier others could make it a few yards further in before the inevitable reversal.
The only successful tactic, if marginally so, was to accelerate to a near-run, before even setting foot on the polished floor of the chamber, and then, if you were lucky enough to avoid an immediate whack, slide as far as you could by sheer inertia. Since the unwieldy suits made dodging impossible, all one could do was wait for the right moment to try and slide under the sweeps and gain a few extra yards.
However, the bats moved quickly and randomly, while we could barely move at all. Our “runs” were not so much runs as a Little Swan dance performed by pregnant elephants with their legs tied. During one of my more successful attempts, I got really lucky, gaining sufficient momentum on the rocky floor of the first chamber, and then just leaned back as much as I could to lower my vertical profile and glided forward. I did not even try dodging the swinging bats. I just got lucky and made it further than most.
That was when my feet played a trick on me. I slipped and fell onto the metal floor with a loud bang, so what little momentum I had left was lost. All I could do now was twitch like a fly in molasses and wait for the first blow that would send me back. But, amazingly, my luck held. Two of the students who had just tried to repeat the same feat got hit and fell on their backs, which usually meant the run was over.
Me, on the other hand, I landed on my knees and managed to get up quickly, which qualified as a true miracle. And I narrowly avoided getting whacked as a diagonal “sweeping” swing that should have gotten me in the forehead went high and missed.
Ordinarily, that would be the very kind of blow that sent you back, but it only worked if the bat found you when you were down and unable to move. Me, I was standing already, so I took a step forward before the next blow could find its way home, and thus managed to get past the blind automaton. They were not very agile at the waist and hardly ever tried swinging behind them.
I took a small step. Then another. And yet another—and then the dummy was no longer a concern. As I was taking additional steps forward, my fighting spirit shot up like a rocket. I was now making serious progress—until two more dummies on my flanks began taking an unhealthy interest in the matter. I froze, my position unstable and barely tenable.
Watching them carefully, I wished they would get on with it. I’d wait. I had nowhere to hurry, and heck, I would even be happy to put some extra weight on my shoulders if they agreed to leave me alone. Except of course, they didn’t. First, one of them took a swing, and then another, but both bats missed me, if only by an inch or two. If I hadn’t stopped to wait it out, maintaining my precarious balance, I would have already been on my way back to square one. Instead, now I could finally get moving again. I took a step, and another one—and I was still on my feet! Hallelujah! I now broke my own best record and managed to get further in than anyone else before me, and perhaps, if my luck held for a few moments longer and the next dummy up took a brief mental vacation, or finally found time to call its mother-in-law, or at least took its eyes off the prize for a split second—you know, a wink-wink moment, and all that—then…
And then it was lights out time. A crushing blow made the world in my visor slit tumble, and I was once again on my back, a hapless puck chased across the metal surface by those legless hockey players. They didn’t give a hoot about my records, and they gave me no second chance to get up. The hits just kept on coming and only stopped when I was back where I started. Again. I sighed dejectedly and tried to get up.
The bulky figure next to me crouched a little and offered me its hand to help me up. Next, it muttered in Paxus’s muffled voice,
“Chuck, you’re the man! I saw it! You’ve made it further than anyone else!”
“What’s the point?” I sighed. “There was still a long way left to go. It’s hard to tell with this kind of lighting, but I don’t think I covered more than a tenth of the distance. Not much of a record, if you ask me.”
“Relax, Chuck! Just take a moment, all right? No need to kill yourself over this. Don’t you see, that’s how they want it to go down. You can’t get across, period. That bugger brought us here on purpose just to humiliate us again. There’s no point trying too hard. None whatsoever. I gotta give it to you, you are the king of the hill here, but it really makes no sense to keep pushing under these circumstances.”
I could almost feel it, physically, that the little punk was up to no good here.
“Why are you such a big fan of mine, all of a sudden?” I asked.
“Oh, I made a little bet on you, you know.”
“Come again?”
“What, you had a whack too many on your head, Chuck? I’m telling you, I placed a bet on you.”
“Oh, so we have us a little action going now, eh?”
“Yeah, something like that,” Paxus grinned, and then winked. “While the likes of you are getting pummeled, the rest of us here are having us some fun. I was betting you’d make three tries and go at least as far as the last dummy—the one that gave Dors his spanking. And you’ve made it even further. It’s a pity the girls aren’t betting and play hard to get in general. You know, they are all such ladies, maybe we are not good enough for them. But that’s all right, we’re doing fine on our own. I have already doubled my stake. Naturally, I don’t carry much with me, but it’s still nice. And I’ve got you to thank for it, Chuck. You’re really cool, and you have my respect. Hold on… Where are you off to?”
“Take a guess… Keep betting your pennies, and I’ll keep trying…”
“But why, for crying out loud? Didn’t I tell you it’s hopeless?”
“Hopeless? That’s my kind of thing then. I’m a sucker for hopeless!”
* * *
In the end, the unusual challenge turned out to be a relative success: I didn’t get any points, but I didn’t lose any, either, which was quite an achievement when you were dealing with Master Byogg.
Few got as lucky as I did. Only about thirty students didn’t lose anything, and the rest got a point taken off. Some, like Paxus who had been studiously ignoring the challenge, lost two points.
I was happy I didn’t listen to my roommate and allowed myself to relax. My head rang like a bell, and it would be hard to fall asleep now, but I managed to hold on to my points. However, the real question was how to earn additional ones. The masters were putting us through a grinder. No matter what we did or how hard we tried, we kept losing those damn points.
The only consolation was that everybody was in the same boat. Some were falling behind faster, others slower, but there were no exceptions, and I didn’t for a minute believe that the school authorities wanted every single student to flunk out. And those who knew more about the school and its strange ways all concurred that it was traditional for each year to begin with draconian measures. The weakest among the students got to zero or even below zero, and got dropped quickly. The rest were subsequently treated in a more humane manner and allowed to build up a reserve of points rather than keep losing them every single day.
I had already lost a lot. My current count was seventy-one points, which was much less than what I started with but still quite all right when compared to many others. Only three names on the boards had more than eighty points to them, one of them being Dors. Certain masters often cut the big guy some slack regardless of whether or not he had made any progress. Some two dozen others were also ahead of me by quite a few points, primarily due to their calligraphy prowess, verse writing skills, and solid rhetoric. Those subjects were often emphasized, and they were definitely not my forte.
I even began thinking of propping my Calligraphy talent up a little but never actually got down to it. Trying to bump any of my parameters would be too risky now since there was always a chance it would leave me completely incapacitated again, at least for some time. How would I learn if I lay unconscious or barely managed to stay upright and aware of what was happening around me?
Besides, as was often the case, parameters alone didn’t decide everything. You’d need to write thousands of symbols to translate your ORDER parameter into a usable skill. One’s hand couldn’t just learn to reproduce them perfectly at the drop of a hat. It took practice and time to develop a harmonious balance between numbers and physical reflexes. So it was hard, and in my case risky as well.
As for poetry writing and rhetoric, parameters meant nothing there at all. For me, those were completely alien subjects, and ORDER didn’t have much to offer in terms of enhancing one’s creativity. I never heard of anyone who became a famous public speaker or poet by dint of their ORDER parameters.
Thanks to Treya and the years she spent on my schooling, I was competent enough in all the other subjects. I may not have always shone in physical tests, but I never went below average even on my worst days.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough. I didn’t have to become the top honcho from the get go, but it was really advisable to stay among the leaders—say, the top twenty. But even if I started showing off all my talents, holding nothing back, it wouldn’t necessarily help me much. The students gathered here were the best Rava had to offer. They didn’t waste thirteen years to try and make up for it over the next two. They developed harmoniously, following established systems and traditions, under excellent tutelage, taking into account the experience of their forbearers and relying on their families’ ample resources, including proprietary clan methods unavailable to everybody else. All of them were probably inferior to me in parameters, but far ahead in terms of practice. Not to mention that their numbers matched their actual skills in a perfectly balanced manner.
If only I could do what Master Tao did with such ease, I could completely disregard calligraphy, rhetoric, and the like. Physical training would be a breeze, and I wouldn’t have to worry about talents one bit. Nothing here was too complex to defy a proper attempt to delve into its energy substance.
I wondered if I should have stayed with the Master longer. He may not have been able to bring me all the way up to his level in just a year, but I wouldn’t be too far behind him after such training. A negligible amount of time for any local—and an enormous period for me. I may have indeed made a mistake. I could really do with a better-developed technique the Great Master taught.
I turned to the other side and winced. Even though I was really tired, sleep wouldn’t come. We didn’t get much time for rest, but I always got by just fine. The Primordial Temple’s boon and Hero of the Night allowed me to stay awake through nights at a time without any dire consequences. However, it was still preferable to get at least some sleep. Even an hour or two of quality z’s would do me good and restore my strength, which was just what I needed after a day of extreme physical exertion.
I turned over again. It was hopeless. I simply couldn’t sleep. Come to think of it, there were no surprises there since my head still rang as if a hundred woodpeckers had given it a thorough workout. How many times did I get struck on the heavy helmet? A hundred? Two hundred? Unless it was more, which wouldn’t have been impossible. And no matter how strong the metal armor was, it wasn’t soundproof.
This was no test. This was cruel and unusual punishment at its worst. They must have been counting the hits we were getting and smirking all along. No wonder Byogg looked like a Cheshire Cat afterwards.
With all due respect, even Master Tao wouldn’t have managed to pass such a test. The dummies were quick and moved in a totally unpredictable manner, and the protective suit wasn’t just heavy—it constricted one’s limbs to the point where they became next to useless. You couldn’t dodge the blows, no matter what you did. That would be like trying to set a sprinter record running up to your neck in molten tar.
Back when I was as good as a cripple, I thought that once I developed my parameters enough, I’d be able to do all that and more. But new experience, knowledge, and parameters disabused me of that naïve notion, leading to a clear understanding that the math only built up on what you already had. Besides, it worked better in some respects and worse in others, and there were areas where it was altogether useless. No matter how high your parameters were, they wouldn’t let you do the impossible. What really mattered with such things was getting past zero since multiplying by zero gave you zero ten times out of ten. However, this kind of math made it clear that you had to develop both things in tandem if you wanted a meaningful result. That was what the first part of my second life had demonstrated.
Only when you acquired parameter points AND supported them with something real did you become a fully-functional human being. Once I got off the cart and began walking on my own two feet back on the way to the trading station, I suddenly learned how to move. That’s what happened to the locals once they grew out of infancy. That was when a road opened before them—a truly endless road, with only large numbers giving ostensible bonuses along the way. But no matter how high those were, they still had to be balanced by practical skills.
On the other hand, I could still be wrong here. Master Tao assured me that anything was possible in this world. That said, he never overemphasized the parameters. The key element of his training was an ancient technique adapted to today’s realities. So he was more of a hands-on person than a theorist or a bean counter.
However, mine was a totally different case. I spent most of my life in this world studying without parameters or practice, picking up nothing but pure theory. Then I hastily began acquiring ORDER attributes, following no particular system or strategy. And I only got a wee bit of proper training, which didn’t involve any math at all.
A curious case I was. Unique, too, for all I knew.
As I began drifting away, my waning consciousness served up memories of lessons learned from the Great Master—bits and pieces of exhausting, repetitive exercises that not even my Hero of the Night boon could do much to alleviate. Those recollections only confirmed that even Great Master Tao would not have been able to pass that impossible test. A gazelle in a tortoise shell simply could not escape a tiger. Even if it was a lame tiger.
But what if…
I jumped up in bed as a light went on in my head. I suddenly knew two things. First, I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep no matter what I did. Second, I needed to pay a visit to a certain place. It could be a dangerous delusion caused by excessive acoustic impact on my brain, but I still needed to check something out.
Chapter 11
The Power of Reason
The capital of Rava wasn’t just a city—it was, in fact, the Empire’s largest fortress. It was so enormous that a number of additional sizable citadels could be maintained within the primary fortifications perimeter. Some of them could well be used to continue fighting for the city even after the enemy broke through the main wall. However, only a few of those installations were indeed meant for defense, and the school wasn’t one of them. Its walls weren’t mere decorations, but the place wouldn’t be of much use for the defenders if the enemy did manage to enter the city after all. The school fortress stood on its own at some distance from the center, and that part of the city lacked suitable approaches to the central streets and squares. Using the school premises as a base for raiding enemy columns would be difficult and risky.
The fortress walls were not merely defensive. I doubted they had ever seen any enemy attacks there. Their main function seemed to be preventing students from going AWOL. They were reasonably high, lit up brightly at night, and well-guarded. And the guards were no mere warm bodies who made sure the youngsters wouldn’t escape to the city’s entertainment quarter. They were trained fighters whose mission was also to prevent trespassers from entering the school. The Emperor himself was said to be responsible for the safety of the young men and women housed there, and that meant a lot.
There were enough dangers even in a well-protected place like the school. Take that purported anonymity, for instance. Our secret identities were laughable. In less than a week, three quarters of the students had either revealed everything about themselves of their own volition, or been identified by some other means. A perfectly neutral comment would often suffice to start a school-wide rumor. The students would put two and two together and ferret you out. As far as I could see, though, folks primarily gave themselves away on their own, bragging about how old their family was and fluffing their feathers in other ridiculous ways. That was strongly discouraged and severely punished, but the school couldn’t assign an all-seeing and all-hearing servant to every student, after all.
