Chapter 31: Paths Diverge

The barracks felt quieter that morning, though I knew it was only in my head. The air still stank faintly of boiled grain and sweat, boots still thudded across the yard, and sergeants still barked their usual orders. But for me, everything seemed sharper, heavier.

The rankings had been posted.

For three months, I had clawed my way upward, step by step, rank by rank, telling myself that breaking into the top hundred was a distant dream. And yet here I was, standing before the chalkboard nailed to the command post wall, staring at the number beside my name.

Edward – Rank 85.

A strange mix of pride and disbelief coiled in my chest. Just a few months ago, back in the fourth month, I’d barely scraped past one hundred and forty. My stats had grown since then, yes, but that wasn’t the whole story. Hours in the library poring over manuals, memorizing formations, and studying beast habits had counted just as much as raw numbers. Back then, I had been little more than average. Now, I was beginning to feel like a soldier in truth.

STATUS

Name: Edward

Class: Unawakened

Affinity: N/A

HP Regen: 6/day

MP: N/A

Attributes

• Constitution: 12.3
• Strength: 11.5
• Agility: 10

General Skills

• Writing (18)
• Reading (19)
• Math (25)
• Running (22)
• Meditation (22)
• Marching (20)

It wasn’t dramatic, nothing like the sudden jumps of the early months, but it was steady. Solid. My agility had finally reached double digits, my strength was creeping upward, and my constitution was the highest it had ever been. More importantly, my skill levels in running, meditation, and marching had grown enough that daily training didn’t crush me the way it used to.

He snorted, and Henry laughed, shaking his head.

I blew out a breath and tried to smile. The truth was, the work itself didn’t scare me. What unsettled me was the thought of sitting there for two weeks without an instructor, trying to make sense of scraps of theory on my own. If this was so important, why wouldn’t they assign us a proper teacher? What if I misunderstood something critical in those manuals? And even if I passed, it all felt so… basic. Maintenance, patch jobs, simple charges. I wanted to see real engineering, to compare it to the fragments of memory I still carried from before. But if all I got was surface-level tinkering, would that chance ever come? Still, even if it meant drowning in ink and chisels, I couldn’t turn away. This was my only doorway into the kind of knowledge I craved.

“Alright,” I said, standing and brushing crumbs from my lap. “I’m heading to the library. See you guys this evening.”

The library was nearly empty when I stepped inside, the quiet broken only by the faint scratching of quills and the occasional cough. Rows of shelves, mostly filled with basic military manuals, looked as familiar as the back of my hand by now. I had read nearly everything worth reading twice.

That was when I noticed her.

Lela.

She was walking toward me. For months she’d kept to herself, speaking only when spoken to, her focus entirely on training and books. She had never once approached me first. Until now.

“Hey,” I said, a little surprised.

“Hey.” Her voice was calm, but there was something new in her eyes.

“I just wanted to let you know, I’ll be leaving tomorrow. I’ve been called to join the count’s household. My Awakening is in one month, and… well, in a strange way, you might be the closest thing I’ve had to a friend here.”

I blinked, caught between surprise and a strange emptiness. “Ah. Well… congratulations. Best of luck with your future. I’ll miss all the books you used to recommend.”

A faint smile curved her lips. “You have a good academic aptitude, Edward. Your progress has been steady. If you become an elite soldier by the time you retire, and if I manage to carve out a place within the count’s house, I might be able to offer you a recommendation.”

There was no arrogance in her tone, though her words carried the quiet pride of someone who knew her path was set. She wasn’t offering charity, she was offering what she believed was a gift.

“Thank you,” I said after a pause. “I’m sure you’ll do great there. And who knows, someday I might come knocking for that recommendation. It means a lot that you’d even offer.”

For the first time since I’d met her, her smile reached her eyes.

We didn’t talk after that. We simply returned to the shelves, side by side, reading in silence until the sun dipped low. I reread manuals I had already committed to memory, chasing the last drops of knowledge this library could offer. My goal was simple now: push my Reading and Writing to Level 25. If nothing else, that would be my anchor in the storm of specialization training.

When the lamps were finally extinguished, I stepped outside into the cool night. The sky above Stonegate glimmered with faint stars, dimmed by the smoke of countless campfires.

Tomorrow would begin a new schedule. A new phase.

Specialization Training Schedule

I stared at the paper pinned to my bunk, memorizing the hours, the blocks, the lines that would shape the next five months of my life. The routine looked harsh and unyielding, but it was also clear. Tomorrow, new challenges awaited, and I was ready to face them.