He ran it again. This ti he held it for forty seconds, let the circulation wobble slightly at thirty-eight seconds to suggest he was approaching his limit, and released it with a minor spike at the end — small enough to be a normal error, large enough to look like genuine strain.
Elian watched the whole thing with the focused attention of soone who was actually trying to assess capacity rather than simply going through motions. When Amaron finished, he stepped forward and gestured for him to lower his hands.
"That spike at the end — you felt it?"
"Yes."
"Good. Most people don’t notice when they’re about to lose coherence until after it happens. The fact that you’re aware of it ans you can start training the release point." Elian demonstrated the movent — a slight adjustnt in hand position that redirected the mana flow at the circuit’s end, smoothing the release. "Try it like this next ti. It’ll feel awkward at first, but it reduces the spike by about half."
Amaron watched the demonstration with the careful attention of soone being taught sothing they didn’t know, despite the fact that he knew this technique, had used variations of it extensively, and could have corrected two minor inefficiencies in Elian’s hand positioning if he’d been willing to explain how he knew that.
"Understood," he said.
"Run through it a few more tis on your own," Elian said, and moved to the next person in the group.
Amaron ran through it. He perford exactly as well as a diligent F-rank with so natural talent and a strong work ethic would perform. He made small, believable improvents over the next twenty minutes. He did not, at any point, reveal that he could hold the circulation for over three hundred seconds without effort, or that his control was fine enough to shape the mana flow into configurations that the standard manual didn’t even na.
It was, he thought, one of the harder things he’d done in his second life so far.
— ◆ —
The striking drills were worse.
Not because they were difficult — they were extrely simple, basic forms designed to teach people how to channel mana into a physical strike without injuring themselves or wasting energy. But they required Amaron to deliberately perform them badly, which ant he had to actively suppress his muscle mory from nine years of dungeon combat and produce movents that looked like soone learning the forms for the first ti.
He struck the training post with the stiff, uncertain posture of soone who was not confident in their own strength. He channeled mana into the strike at a level so low it would barely register as reinforcent. He hit at angles that were technically correct but lacked the fluid efficiency that ca from doing sothing ten thousand tis.
Elian corrected his stance twice. Demonstrated the proper follow-through. Reminded him to keep his shoulders loose.
Amaron accepted the corrections with the appropriate mix of attention and mild frustration — the emotional texture of soone who was trying hard and not getting it quite right. It was a good performance. He knew it was a good performance because no one questioned it.
Livia walked past at one point, saw him working through the drill, and offered a piece of advice without breaking stride. "You’re tensing right before impact. Relax your grip. The mana does the work, not your muscles."
He adjusted. Struck again. This ti with his grip deliberately too loose, so that the impact looked slightly better but still imperfect.
She nodded and kept moving.
He had just taken advice from soone who was, in his estimation, roughly two full ranks below his actual combat capability. The advice had been sound — for soone at her level of understanding. He had perford as if it helped.
This is exhausting.
— ◆ —
The session ended two hours later. Everyone was tired. The F-rank group looked pleased with themselves in the specific way of people who had worked hard and felt they’d improved. The C-rank supervisors offered encouragent and reminded them that fundantals mattered more than flash.
Elian found Amaron near the water station, where he was drinking slowly and trying not to look like soone who had just spent two hours deliberately underperforming at everything.
"You did well," Elian said. "Your circulation’s solid. The striking needs work, but that’s normal. Most F-ranks don’t have the mana capacity to reinforce strikes effectively anyway. You’re ahead of where I expected."
"Thank you," Amaron said.
"You should co to the next session. We run these every two weeks. It’s good cross-training even if you’re staying in support roles." Elian said this with the easy assumption that of course Amaron would want to improve, of course he’d be interested in continuing. "You’ve got potential. Just needs refinent."
Amaron drank his water and looked at Elian Solhart — seventeen years old, B-rank, genuinely talented, genuinely kind, standing there offering encouragent to an F-rank support contractor who had just spent two hours lying with his entire body about what he was capable of.
"I’ll think about it," Amaron said.
"Good." Elian clapped him on the shoulder — a brief, friendly gesture that carried no weight except friendliness — and walked off to talk to the other supervisors.
Amaron stood by the water station and felt the exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical effort and everything to do with the specific kind of strain that ca from being extrely good at sothing and having to pretend, with precision and care, that you were barely competent.
— ◆ —
He walked ho alone as the sun set over the fourth district. His mana reserve was untouched — he hadn’t used even a fraction of his actual capacity during the entire session. His body was fine. His mind was tired in a way that sleep wouldn’t fix.
He thought about the striking drill. About the circulation exercise. About Elian’s genuine, well-aning advice on hand positioning.
He thought about the fact that he would have to do this again. And again. Every ti he trained with them, every ti he worked alongside them, every ti soone offered him advice or correction or encouragent, he would have to calibrate his response to match what they expected from an F-rank who was trying his best.
The alternative was revealing his strength. Which would raise questions he couldn’t answer. Which would compromise everything he’d built. Which would, eventually, get him killed or controlled or turned into a weapon for soone else’s war.
He knew this. He had planned for this. Performing weakness was part of the strategy, and the strategy was sound.
It was also, he was discovering, a particular kind of lonely.
[ VOID SYSTEM — DAY 60 STATUS ]
[ MANA RESERVE: 1,247 units ]
[ CONTROL ADVANCENT: EXTERNAL MANIFESTATION — 500 COUNT STABLE ]
[ ITERATION POINTS: 2 ]
[ PERFORMANCE TRICS: WEAKNESS SIMULATION — 94% CREDIBILITY ]
[ HOST AFFECT: ELEVATED STRAIN INDICATORS ]
[ QUERY: IS THIS SUSTAINABLE? ]
He looked at the last line for a long ti.
It has to be.
The system, as usual, did not argue.
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