2.22 – Small Talk

2.22 – Small Talk

“The three main factors are the quantity and quality of monster cores,” Sofia said, “which floors you’re delving, and finally, the number of weekly outings.”

The third surprised Natalie. “How often you’re delving?” It didn’t line up with Tenet’s modus operandi—always reward merit, not effort.

“Tenet wants to encourage hard work in some way, I suppose. Have rewards to those pushing the hardest, even if they’re not the most adept.” She shrugged. “If I had to guess, it’s not the biggest factor. But Instructor Lauer mentioned it, so.”

“And how do they track all that?”

“Without people cheating?”

“Seems like they could buy cores and lie about it.”

“Tenet’s able to detect how recently a core’s been gathered.”

“How?”

“Devices.” Another shrug.CHeCk for new stories on no/v/el/bin(.)c0m

“And why can’t someone pay a higher rank to collect them? Then pass it off, so it’s recent?”

“You slept through the whole class, didn’t you?”

“Jay doesn’t let me sleep,” Natalie said sourly. “She forces me to suffer.” But she did zone out, regardless of her friend’s efforts to keep her conscious. Even when she wasn’t zoned out, the information went in one ear and out the other.

“Well, like I said, in modern days, they use various tech to handle most of it,” Sofia said. “Before, to my knowledge, they kept profiles of students and compared expected results. Aberrant cases, those who deviated too far, were inspected, and most incidents of cheating were unearthed through ... whatever methods they used. And when cheaters were caught, they leveled sufficiently devastating consequences to persuade most opportunists to not even try. Tenet’s been playing this game for a long time. They know their way around keeping students in line.”

A long time. Yeah. Millennia. Sometimes it was hard to contextualize just how old this institution was. Sure, back in those days, Tenet didn’t look anything like this—that is, modern—but the academy had been formed shortly after Aradon’s first settlers. The world had always needed delvers dragging up valuables from the dungeon.

That thought, combined with Sofia. ‘Knowing her inside and out’.

Uh.

Her mind went briefly white.

From horror.

Not ...

Definitely horror.

“Sure,” Natalie said, her brain failing, briefly, to structure more reasonable thoughts, and saying whatever came to mind. In this case, agreeing to Sofia’s offer for spars. “What time?”

Sofia seemed surprised she’d agreed so easily. “Whenever. We’ll ask Jordan when she’s done.”

They watched the fight wrap up, and she caught Sofia eying her. It was ... a fair reaction. That exchange of theirs had been surprisingly easygoing. Very unlike them.

Natalie wasn’t sure why it had been so. Sofia’s presence was still distinctly inflaming, but not as much as back home. She guessed with so many other things going on, Sofia just wasn’t ... well, the biggest thing in Natalie’s world, recently.

She meant that in a bad way. The biggest roadblock. Her rival. Sofia wasn’t—

Anyway, she hadn’t been sitting in Natalie’s thoughts, aggravating her. And they weren’t each other’s rivals in the way they’d been back home. The two big fish in a tiny pond, desperately struggling to pull ahead of each other.

But in these new circumstances, Sofia as a teammate, with everyone else their rivals. It was far from ideal. Natalie would never like the irritating woman, but maybe she could grow on her. Some sort of horrible lichen, but ultimately tolerable.

Even that, though. Sofia growing on her. What had the world come to?