It had taken a lot for Vera to wake me the following morning, but I did my best to get prepared with the rest of the team. Breakfast was a delight compared to the food I had packed with me, that limited stockpile already running nearly out. The others grumbled at the food, but I was more than pleased. Eggs and bread were a fantastic meal— back in the village eggs were for rare occasions, and the bread we had was much worse than the city bread. This bread was softer, less coarse, more flavorful. The perks of a larger economy, I supposed.

From there we had to exercise, Javier arriving to instruct us personally. It started with a generalized routine of running and lifting rocks of various sizes— Alain said to me in-between sets that it was meant to strengthen us further— and then we were split into more specialized tasks.

“Sorry, I still need to get a sense of your skills before we can develop you further, Perry. For now you’re going to continue running and lifting rocks,” Javier had told me. I didn’t have room to argue. The constant exertion after one good night of sleep didn’t make up for the shitty night prior and the high level of exertion I did then. My body was screaming at me to stop, but I couldn’t stop. Not until Javier said I could.

After what felt like hours but was at most one hour of exercise, we were taken inside to study, sitting in a small classroom within the barracks, Javier continuing to educate us himself.

“I’ve heard that you’re already aware of the purpose of the team, Perry. But what you didn’t know is that you’re getting trained even more than the rest of the guards. I presume you’re illiterate. Mia, I’m going to need you to help him further outside of class hours to get him up to at least a basic level of literacy, and don’t you even consider complaining to me. You did it for Vera, you’ll do it for Perry. It’s called being a team player.”

Mia groaned, throwing her head into her desk. “Do we have any materials to start him off with this time?”

“I managed to scrounge up a noble child’s alphabet set. Don’t ask how.” He dropped the blocks on Mia’s desk and she sighed in defeat, sliding the toys into her bag.

“What’s the expected timeline that I need to meet for learning how to read?” I asked.

“How long did it take Vera?”

“For her basic literacy? About two months,” Mia replied.

“You’ve got the same, Perry. Don’t let me down. In the meantime, now that we’ve got enough members for a full squad, even if one of them isn’t fully up to strength… that means I can share more of the city’s mission. Are you ready?”

“What else is there to the city guard other than killing spike feeders and defending the citizens?” I asked.

“That’s essentially still the same goal, Perry. The issue isn’t in our tasks, but in the spike feeders themselves. City records have shown that spike feeder attacks have escalated within the last fifty years. It’s the highest rate they’ve ever been. Fifty years ago, a spike feeder attacked a village maybe once a year, and that was a person-ranked spike feeder. Thirty years ago, attacks were three times a year. Ten years ago, monthly, and to this very year, you’ll have more than one attack a month, and village-rank spike feeders are more common than ever.”

The room was silent, enraptured by Javier’s message. I didn’t even know how to respond, to learn something so important on my first official day on the team.

“Based on the city’s experts, if we can’t slow down the spike feeder attack rates to what they were of yesteryear, they’re estimating that civilization as we know it could come to an end within the next five years. Now don’t you relax at that thought,” he said, slamming his table in response to the collective sigh of relief.

“If it comes to that point five years from now, it’s already over. That’s why we’re being assigned as part of a task force to investigate the spike in spike feeder activity. Optimally we can put an end to them altogether, but from a more realistic standpoint, the aim is to ensure that the attacks are manageable and able to be mitigated. We need to do whatever we can to mitigate the attacks. If the appearance of city-rank spike feeders increases past from what it currently is, I don’t think we’d be able to handle it. We’d be overrun.”

Alain rose to his feet, slamming his desk. “That can’t be. How has this gone unnoticed all this time? How has only the city noticed it?”

Javier sighed, leaning against the wall of the classroom. “I’m sure some of the more savvy nobles know, as well as other influential people and certainly other cities, but you know as well as I do that certain things don’t make it to the general population. You can opine as to why in private company though.” He said, staring at Alain to have him sit down once more. It seemed as though fights between the two were a semi-regular affair.

“Are there even any leads on where to look?” asked Mia. “I don’t know how one would even manage this. This seems like an impossible task.”

“We do have something, but that’s not quite ready for us to act on it yet. The researchers were in the middle of another project. We can’t study this until they’re free. That’s the ties of money— they can’t tackle the city’s task until their other paid projects conclude. In the interim, we were given a mission which will put the team to the task. We’ve got a village rank spike feeder to kill out by the Vessen Swamp.”

“How did they even become aware of it? No one lives around there. It’s simply not inhabitable,” Mia said.

“It was discovered as part of the scouting mission by another team relating to our other task and the city has decided we can’t let it live longer. The researchers theorize that the longer a spike feeder lives, the more likely it is for it to be able to evolve to the next stage. The specifics on how are a bit uncertain for obvious reasons, but we can’t afford to leave any threat unchecked. This will be the perfect training opportunity to get Perry integrated with the team, so be sure to try your best for this afternoon’s combat training session.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Excuse me, combat training in the afternoon?”

“That’s right, Perry. We’ll get you up to speed in no time. You’ve got a great instinct for avoiding being attacked, now we just need to reinforce it with some proper attack stratagems.”

I didn’t know how I’d be able to even endure the afternoon’s training after the morning’s exhaustion. Where was the resting part of the day?

“Do we get lunch first?” I weakly asked.

Javier heartily laughed, doubling over at my inquiry. “It’s a few hours from now and yes, you’ll get to eat again. We can’t mold you if you’re constantly falling under the weight of your own exhaustion. The goal is to push you to the limit so that you can push a little further each time. You’ll slowly inch forward so that your limits are sculpted to the point where your prior limits are a memory, a laughable joke compared to the extent you will finally go.”

“When do we leave for the mission?” Alain said, seemingly doing calculations in his head. His hands were moving rapidly over his desk, beating out a steady rhythm.

“With no delays, we head out in three days. I hope you’re ready, Perry. We’re going to be training harder than ever to ensure that you’re adequately prepared. Just because you killed that weak village-rank spike feeder doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. We need to get your technique to a much more proficient level, if not have you codify another technique. Your teammates here are much further ahead of you.”

Mia and Alain wore smug smiles on their faces, Vera with a gentle wisp of a grin leaking from her lips. “Wipe those smiles off of your face. I didn’t say you were adequately ahead. Just that you were ahead. I don’t know how many of you would have been able to kill a village-rank spike feeder solo, even if it was on the weaker scale of beasts… although I will caveat that Perry over here has a much more deadly tool than I expected.”

Just as quickly as the others had smiled, they were now replaced with a scowl. “Oh, you’re so temperamental. So moody. So prone to fits. You’re adequately prepared to kill the spike feeder Perry here killed, but even faster. The benefits of proper training and having codified your own techniques to higher proficiency.”

He pulled at his goatee, lost in thought, the rest of us sitting restless. “I think it might be merited to have a quick refresher on what a technique is. For Perry’s sake and to determine how much I need to re-teach the rest of you. Let’s have… Vera share with the class.”

Vera rose to her feet, saluting Javier in the process. “A technique is something that doesn’t fall under the scope of any of the tier’s features, although they may end up coinciding with them. They’re elements that don’t perfectly logically follow from the capacities one believes they have, and can perhaps be considered a secret of anyone with a beast soul. Most of our capacities are obvious, but techniques reach past that towards the implications and codify them into potent replicable actions. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of your techniques was to share your camouflage with someone else, for an example of a technique.”

“Very good, Vera. Shows how you’ve been listening in class and during training. I won’t confirm or deny whether the technique you’ve stated is an actual technique of mine, but that’s spot on for the kind of idea. I’d like to add that techniques have proficiency, not unlike any of your features or senses— the more you use them, the better you can get. Furthermore, the proficiency on techniques can go up to 200%. I understand that sounds odd, but don’t dismiss it. Its measured based on your total threshold, with 100% reflecting competence, the rest below that being a learning curve for the technique when you first codify it. It’s like a sample of what’s to come. When you get up to 200%, then you’ve mastered the technique.”

Javier paused, stroking at his goatee once more, mouth opening and closing a few times in false starts. “I wouldn’t advise on trying to codify too many techniques. You’ll stretch yourself thin in battles by giving yourself too many options, given you already have your tiers to pull from. It’s better to focus on a few well trained options than making a wide spread of niche items. Experience suggests that three to five techniques are the most one should aim for, although seven is the upper bound of reasonable measures. If one’s codifying more than that, if they aren’t overlapping, then one is stretching too thin and trying to accomplish too much. That’s what teammates are for. Covering those gaps.”

I nodded, trying to take all of the lecture in. Mia and Alain seemed bored by it, no doubt a reflection of hearing this information before, while Vera was at work taking notes. There was so much I had to learn that the others already knew. So much to catch up on before we went out on our mission, and there was only three days to do so before we hit the road. Perhaps more importantly, three days of having a solid bed.

“How are we getting to the Vessen Swamp? Are we taking a carriage? What resources does the city guard have?” I asked, on the verge of panicking at the thought of sleeping just with my cloak for warmth again.

“Don’t you worry about that, Perry. We’ll get to that. Take things one at a time. Go get yourself a lunch. We’ve got more training to do,” Javier said, dismissing us.