“I can now ascend safely with around eight thousand wisps,” Vivi said.

  “No you can’t,” her teacher said immediately and with his arms crossed.

  Vivi waited for him to continue, but Tsarvan left his statement at that, as if accusing her of lying. The staredown became awkward, and Vivi’s eyes wandered to the hardstone walls of the palace.

  “It’s true, though,” she said, bringing her eyes back to him. “It felt safe to me in the dream realm. I think my body can safely handle eight thousand wisps now.”

  “I can’t tell whatever this dream realm has made you believe,” Tsarvan said, “but a beginner seventeen-year-old human can certainly not wield eight thousand wisps, or even close to eight thousand wisps, without damaging themselves. Hunters spend years practicing to wield even rare ascension skills, which brings their reserves to seven thousand ether. You claim to already be beyond that.”

  “Well, yes?” Vivi said, uncertain on what she should have said.

  “You definitely can stuff thousands upon thousands of wisps into your body, as you’ve proven,” Tsarvan said. “But safely? Not a chance. We need to start from small steps, Vivi. Not from eight thousand wisps, or even five thousand wisps. You need to learn how to keep the protective layer active, and to differentiate it from your regular wisps. You—”

  “Ugh,” Lucius said, while he was still speaking. “Just do the thing, Vivi.”

  She agreed. She closed her eyes, and formed the protective layer of ether. Then she pushed three thousand ether into Lucius’s core, which he promptly burned, ascending Vivi to eight thousand wisps.

  The process happened exactly as it did in Paradise. She held firmly to her protective layer—reinforcing it, channeling its wisps to be as strong as they possibly could. She felt safe. If she focused, eight thousand wisps wouldn’t harm her. The protective layer worked exactly as Tsarvan had claimed it would.

  Though it wasn’t quite as hard to keep active as he had said.

  Vivi opened her eyes. “I still need to focus entirely on the protective wisps to keep them active. It’s hard to talk, or open my eyes. But I’m not hurting anywhere.”

  Tsarvan studied her with unblinking eyes. His arms were no longer crossed, and the disapproving look was replaced with astonishment. “Well,” he said. “May I ask, what is it your grandpa made you eat for breakfast growing up?”

  “Usually grain porridge?” Vivi said.

  “I see,” Tsarvan said, nodding. “Fucking potent stuff, it seems. So how many days have you practiced now?”

  “For three nights in the dream realm,” Vivi said. “I figured out how the protective layer works on the first night, and I managed to wield seven thousand ether. Then progress slowed a bit. I got to seven and a half thousand on the second day, and now to eight thousand last night.”

  “Vivian…” Tsarvan said. “Haven’t you also made two revelations this last week when it comes to the skill wisps?”

  “Maybe?” Vivi said.

  “And you believe your progress is slow?”

  “Well… I was hoping you could tell me how I could speed up progress.”

  Although, if she had to practice in the real world with Tsarvan by burning wisps, practice would quickly get expensive. She’d already burned over ten million wisps in Paradise over three days. It cost three thousand wisps just to get to eight thousand to prove a point.

  Tsarvan merely stared at her. “Yeah,” he said incredulously, “alright, I see.”

  Then he opened the door and exited the room.

  “Tsarvan?” Vivi asked, following him. He said nothing, so she added, “Where are we going?”

  He walked past a few servants, to the door that led to the guest bedroom assigned to him. By the time Vivi entered after him, he had flung the bedspread off from his bed. He lifted the blanket and slid inside, lying on his back.

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  “Tsarvan?” Vivi asked again.

  “The lesson is over,” he said. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

  “It’s midday,” Vivi said.

  “Good,” Tsarvan said. “Maybe the facets will bring me to this dream realm of yours.”

  He didn’t seem to be joking. He slid a sleep mask on top of his unblinking eyes and lay down, his bony fingers above the blanket. The room fell silent.

  Vivi stood in confusion. The first lesson with Tsarvan had been genuinely good. He had explained theory perfectly in a way that let her immediately put it to use. Now, however… He went to sleep in the middle of the lesson?

  “So…” Vivi asked quietly. “How do you suggest I should continue practicing?”

  “Continue what you have been doing,” Tsarvan said. “You clearly know something I don’t.”

  “I’ve just been practicing the basics, like you told me,” Vivi said.

  “Then continue with that,” Tsarvan said. “We’ll meet again in ten days. If you’re stuck, we’ll assess the situation and see how you can continue with your insane growth. If you’ve reached more than ten thousand ether, we’ll go shopping for some fucking ascension skills.”

  “I… see,” Vivi said.

  “Good night, Vivi, and we will meet in ten days,” Tsarvan said, now speaking firmly. “Shut the lights off for me.”

  She lingered in the room for a moment longer, wondering if she had more to ask. Then she pressed the light switch, cutting the flow of ether from the surgeways to the lamp, and left Tsarvan to sleep.

  Outside, she sighed. Did Coshi really have to assign me to this skeleton?

  Lucius laughed in her head. “He is right, though. Our progress is insane. Your affinity with ascension skills is one of the best in the world. We’ll continue practicing in Paradise tonight.”

  Yes. Tsarvan told us there are no shortcuts. That’s how I interpreted his order, at least. We will need to practice the fundamentals and improve that way.

  “You’re good at fundamentals,” Lucius said. “You’ve been practicing them for fifteen years.”

  Runesmithing fundamentals, yes, Vivi thought, sighing.

  She exited the palace and headed straight for the front lines of Shivenar’s defence force. Her dress was cleaned—or rather, Lortel had given her a near identical replacement while the previous one was washed—and she’d taken a much-needed bath this morning, with her light layer of makeup fixed.

  As the days passed, Vivi was starting to realize that Lortel had been right about outfits from the start. Wearing a dress was effective. People recognized her when they saw her. The black and purple were her colors now, and people respected her when they saw her. Her influential position always gave her orders priority.

  The northern city gate was left open for soldiers to freely traverse, and the street adjacent to it was now totally blocked off from traffic. Vivi was let in freely, and the guardsmen bowed as she exited through the open portcullis.

  A whoosh could already be heard, followed by a splash. Constant fighting had been ongoing outside the city walls for the last three days. Today, however, Shivenar’s firepower had easily tripled.

  To Vivi’s left, the front lines had been armed with first iteration slingshot launchers. They stood in front of a taunting device—a large glass-like object, vaguely resembling an hourglass with ether flowing through. Coshi called it a mild taunter that drew monsters within a mile’s radius, but not further than that, just to ensure that monster attacks all attacked where they could easily be killed instead of trying to ambush side-entrances to the city.

  Another missile released, killing an overgrown sand-scorpion with an aura of around thousand ether. Vivi walked closer, while watching the launchers at work. There were seven of them completed and operational with a large box full of mass-produced missiles. The swordsmen and swordmaidens stood behind the launchers for now, letting everyone practice shooting the devices, even if using a missile for lesser monsters was technically inefficient.

  The first iteration slingshot launcher was essentially an improved version of the first prototype. Failure points were improved. Mainly, the pulley system and the release level were strengthened. The stretch ropes still blew up with every launch, and nobody had figured out a solution to fix that, so Freyven decided that the stretch ropes would blow up by design. They instead designed a system to quickly swap them out for every launch, treating the stretch ropes as ammo.

  The slingshot launcher still had the same flaw of wobbling inaccurate missiles, and the firing distance was a pathetic five hundred feet, two hundred of which were accurate. The design wasn’t intended to be the pinnacle of ballistic weapons; it was simply a mass-producable, explosive, dangerous little device to kill monsters.

  And the missiles were powerful, one-shotting just about anything they hit.

  Patryn was amongst the launchers currently shooting. His new job was to teach others how to use the slingshot launcher, and to supervise them, ensuring nothing went wrong. Vivi moved to him. “Is the design working?” she asked.

  “As a short range kill-device, it’s phenomenal,” Patryn said. “Point it at something, pull the lever, and the something is now nothing. As an artillery weapon, however… It’s not really a replacement for ballistas. The ether root method for the rune-string is also proving to be annoyingly slow at re-loading, but that’s a manageable caveat. Mostly, the operating range is just too short.”

  I could probably throw a sword with similar strength from two hundred feet away, Vivi thought, agreeing. The slingshot launchers were good, but far from perfect. In the end, it was just a mass-produced basic design of the concept. With more engineering, a truly destructive weapon could be created.

  “I’ll go see how the second iteration is progressing,” Vivi said. “Good luck out here.”

  And I need to create more inside-carved missiles as well…

  There was so much work to do. Just coming to the front lines to see how defence was going wasted time that Vivi really didn’t have.

  She headed to the foundry, back to work.

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