Book 3. Chapter 53

Book 3. Chapter 53

Brin knew exactly which Skill he was going to take and for once he didn’t need to talk to Hogg about it. The old guy never shut up about how [Split Focus] was the most important Skill for an [Illusionist], and from first glance it looked like [Multithreading] was similar. But of course the System never made his decisions easy, so he still had a choice to make.

Multithreading You can break mental processes into multiple threads in order to run them concurrently. As this is a Unique Skill, more System information is available.

Mark, I have a little bit of leeway here to describe this Skill however I wish. For regular Skills, the System doesn’t give much information because we want you to seek out someone who already has it and learn from them, but with Unique Skills you're the only one who has it so I can customize this description to your special needs. I can even maybe slip in a little note about how if I had known she was going to do this to you I never would’ve given you those [Filial Piety] missions. Mark, I’m so sorry. No one should have to go through that. You’re almost through the tunnel. Trust yourself, and trust your plan. And hey, maybe pray to Solia now and again like you promised?

Back to the Skill. At this point, the Skill will act more like a single processor and let you switch between multiple threads of thought at near infinite speeds. The switching will be at near-infinite speed, that is, not your thoughts. Phew! I’m freeballing this, so feel free to ask questions as we go along. I’ll try to be as precise as I can.

When the Skill description had first shown up, Brin had seen the text populate slowly, as if it were being typed in real time by someone not particularly good at typing. He had no doubt that a godling like Tenerer, since that’s probably who this was, would have no problem typing at the speed of light, so the slowdown was probably for his benefit.

He’d asked, “Am I doing the right thing? Will the gods be upset if I don’t kill her?”

The message had backspaced a few words, and then continued.

All I can tell you is to trust yourself. You’ve already put the right threads into place, and now all that’s left is to pull them tight and watch the knot come together.

Speaking of knots, this Skill protects you from certain causes of insanity or mental damage. There’s one or two things about this Skill I can’t tell you, because you know someone who can. Ask Hogg about how Split Focus works.

What I can say is that this Skill is built on top of Split Focus. It can do everything the base Skill does, and gives you some nice efficiency bonuses on top of that. The trade-off is that it’s more difficult to use. You won’t get as much out of it on day one.

Ok, what else? Oh, right, I can give you another bonus, but it’ll require a sacrifice. You can merge [Directed Meditation] with this Skill. That’ll allow you to designate “directed threads”. These will be logic-focused thought processes that will be very good at doing things by rote, but will struggle with taking initiative or being creative. The trade-off is that they’ll be extremely efficient. Would you like to sacrifice [Directed Meditation]? This will remove the Skill and all its levels will be lost.

You must be free to decide. I cannot tell you which answer is correct.

Brin thought about it for a second. Wouldn’t he still be able to use threads with [Directed Meditation] even if he didn’t take the Skill merge? It sounded like all merging the Skill would do would be to prevent him from using [Directed Meditation] for anything other than a [Multithreading]-induced rote logic machine. Right now, it could do plenty of things, not the least of which was make him totally focused during combat. He was struggling to see the upside here.

I cannot tell you which answer is correct, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a correct answer. Maybe ask for advice?

“Hm,” said Brin.

“I’ve never seen someone take this long to read his Skill choices. I assume you leveled up?”

“Yeah,” said Brin. He looked around, realizing that he’d sort of lost track of his surroundings while he was reading his Skill. That wouldn’t be a problem once he had [Multithreading].

Marksi was still chowing down on the barely-visible lump of Wisp flesh, but Zilly was nowhere in sight. Brin asked Davi where she was.

“She ran to catch up with the others,” said Davi. “So what’d you get?”

“Something like [Split Focus], but it’s letting me merge it with a General Skill if I want. But–”

“Do it,” said Davi.

“Really? I’ll lose all the levels. And I’ve upgraded this General Skill. I don’t think I’ll get those points back.”

Davi shrugged. “Then don’t. But Jeffrey says that if you ever get the chance, you should take it. The lower levels of General Skills are really easy to get, and for most people there are only one or two that are really perfect for your Class. I have [Performing], and if I could take it again, I would.”

“Oh!” Brin said, suddenly getting excited. “[Meditation] is an amazing Skill for a magic-user. I think Lumina was a little disappointed that I already upgraded it to [Directed Meditation], because I don’t think that’s what she did with it. I’m going to merge it.”

Davi held up his hands, suddenly panicked. “Don’t go off my say-so! Ask Hogg about it, too!”

Brin didn’t need to. The godling might not be able to tell him the correct answer, but that hadn’t stopped him from hinting at it in a rather obvious way. He was going to take the merge. But was there anything else he wanted to ask the godling before the Skill description ended?

Skill description complete.

That was a little abrupt. Had he offended Tenerer? He decided to pause and take the other piece of advice that he’d been given. He knelt on the ground, and recited the rote prayer to Solia that he’d memorized back in Hammon’s Bog. He cleared his mind, with his own willpower and not with [Directed Meditation], and focused on nothing except respect and penitence. By the end of his third recitation, he got a message.

Skill description continued. Calm down, I’m not mad. I really can’t think of anything else you might need to know.

Since Tenerer could clearly read his mind, he thought his next question. It sounds like all this does is give me the illusion of multitasking. Is there a way to achieve actual concurrency?

Ask Hogg about how Split Focus works.

“Marksi, you really shouldn’t be alone out here,” Brin said, but Marksi ignored him.

Brin decided to try out a directed thread. He created it with the instructions to use [Memories in Glass] to copy his Invisible Eye spell and cast it to watch Marksi. If anything went wrong, it should end the thread.

This time, the change in his thought speed was insignificant; he couldn’t tell any noticeable change in the world’s time. He almost didn’t believe it’d worked until he felt the drain on his Mana telling him that he was casting a spell.

Unlike before, where it had been a real strain to keep switching back and forth between maintaining his spell and doing other things, this happened literally without a thought. The method he’d figured out earlier in the day had moved this process from mind-breakingly strenuous to merely difficult, and now it was easier than breathing.

There was a major problem, though. He had no idea what the thread was up to. He didn’t have an insight into what the Invisible Eye was seeing, either. That was a crippling limitation, and he’d need to fix that if [Multithreading] was going to be a viable tool. He wanted to be able to do what Hogg did and monitor a dozen different illusions all at the same time, but if he couldn’t get feedback on the thread until it ended then this skill was useless.

There had to be a workaround. That was fine; Tenerer had warned him that this Skill would be harder to use. He didn’t expect to have everything working perfectly the first time he tried. He would figure it out. That’s what he told himself, at least, to try to ward off the growing sense of disappointment. Hopefully the directed thread would at least be smart enough to warn him if Marksi got into trouble.

Together, he and Davi walked into the cave. It was low enough that he had to crouch a bit to get inside, and he wasn’t the tallest guy around. That was Davi, who had to crouch down quite a bit.

The stench of rot and undead blood hit them immediately, and when Brin pulled out a sphere to make light he saw the source ten feet ahead of them. A destroyed undead soldier lay on the ground, where they couldn’t avoid stepping over him to get further into the tunnel. There were already several bloody footprints heading past it.

Brin gingerly stepped over the corpse and they moved on.

The tunnel eventually opened up a bit to an area that could fit two men side-by-side, and a cluster of destroyed undead littered the floor. They were torn into so many pieces Brin couldn’t even tell how many there had been; clearly Hogg hadn’t wanted to waste the time it would take to do this delicately.

A big wooden door stood slightly ajar at the end of the tunnel, and when they opened it, Brin and Davi found the rest of the team.

There was a large underground cavern, lit with lamps that cast an even light that spoke of enchantment rather than flame. A cozy-looking log cabin was built into the far corner, and in front of them was the bloody corpse of some kind of big, hairy brown beast. It was sprawled out across twenty feet of ground, which meant that it must’ve been terrifying when it was still alive. Zilly had a touch of blood on her sword, which meant that she’d arrived in time to get a piece of it.

“Where’s the [Witch]? Have you checked the house?”

Hogg sighed in irritation. “See for yourself.”

Brin walked past the dead monster and pushed the door to the log cabin open. He found Araunya the [Camp Chef] inside, crouched over the body of a young woman. The [Witch], probably.

The rest of the cabin was sort of cozy, with a few hanging plants and a tapestry of bucolic bliss, with some rosy-cheeked shepherd children playing with lambs. There were lots of clean squares on the ground, looking like some kind of furniture or box had been sitting there for a while and recently moved.

Now that he was looking closely, the place looked too empty. It’d been cleaned out.

He noticed the woman on the ground was breathing. “She’s alive?”

“Out cold,” Araunya nodded. “My perpetual sleeping stew will make sure she stays that way until we’re ready for her to be awake.”

Brin [Inspected] her.

Margald Hought Level: 28 Age: 16 Class: Perfumist

She was much younger than he’d assumed. That was a pretty high level for someone that age. It was an incredibly high level for someone that age in Arcaena.

Back out of the cabin and into the cave, Brin found Hogg again, now sharing his irritation. “That’s not [Hide Status], is it? We missed the [Witch].”

“Your... informant probably warned her we were coming. She left this one behind to direct the defenders. A servant, maybe an apprentice, but no. Not a [Witch].”

Brin saw a similar look of disappointment on Pio’s face. Jeffrey looked to be taking it stoically, while Zilly just seemed happy to be here. She was already regaling Davi with the tale of their battle.

“So what’s the plan?”

“We’ll take whatever we can get and split it with the team. The beast core for this thing will be worth a pretty penny, and they left some gold behind. Then when we get to Blackcliff we’ll report this to the kingdom. They’ll want to send a team over to collapse the tunnels. See that there?” Hogg pointed at a shadowed corner that Brin now realized was a tunnel moving further down. “That connects to the network of caves and underground roads that Arcaena has been using to move her army.”

“Any chance that we can track down the [Witch] that lived here?” Brin asked.

“I know a pretty good tracker that could do the job, but if she’s smart then she ran down that tunnel to join the army underground. And in that case, I don’t think it’d be worth it. How’d your fight with the familiar go?”

As if he didn’t know. Brin would bet his left eye that Hogg had a Visible Eye up in the sky that showed him the entire thing. He still smiled and said, “It went amazingly! I leveled up and I got an awesome Skill.”

Hogg gave him a forced smile, trying to match his enthusiasm. “Good! Then we got what we came here for.” He lowered his voice. “But I think I’m about done playing games with your informant. She screwed us, and I have some ideas on how to make her regret it.”