I stood outside the Citadel Master chamber the next morning, my legs still complaining about yesterday. Every muscle fiber from my calves to my lower back seed to be staging a rebellion against movent, but the questions burning in my mind wouldn’t let rest. Sothing had fundantally changed when my agility hit 10, and I needed to understand why.
I knocked on the heavy obsidian door.
"Enter." Damian’s voice carried through the thick material like it had physical weight.
I pushed the door open to find him sitting at his desk, surrounded by ancient texts and maps of what looked like Argent’s outer territories. His white hair caught the room’s soft light, creating a halo effect that sohow made him appear both wise and dangerous simultaneously.
"Ah, Allaran." He looked up from his work, his expression revealing nothing. "I expected you this morning."
Of course he did. Nothing seed to surprise the Citadel Master.
"Sothing happened during my training yesterday." I said, stepping further into the room. "My agility reached 10, and suddenly I could run much faster than before. Not just a little faster, significantly faster."
Damian set down the pen he’d been writing with, his attention now fully on . "And you want to know why."
It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway.
"Sit." He gestured to the chair across from his desk.
I lowered myself slowly, my protesting muscles making the simple action more difficult than it should have been.
"What you experienced." Damian began, his voice taking on the asured cadence he used when explaining important concepts, "Is what happens when any base attribute reaches certain thresholds. At five points, ten points, fifteen, and so forth, your body fully manifests the potential of that attribute."
I stared at him, processing his words. "You knew this would happen."
"Of course." He folded his arms across his chest. "It’s basic knowledge about the System."
"Basic knowledge you never shared with ." I couldn’t keep the hint of anger from my voice.
Damian’s expression remained unchanged. "Correct."
"Why?" The single word carried all my frustration. "Why keep sothing so fundantal from ?"
He studied for a long mont, his cold eyes contemplating sothing. "If I had told you that reaching 10 in agility would give you a significant boost, what would you have done?"
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again. The answer was obvious.
"You would have focused exclusively on the numbers." Damian continued. "You can’t control when a stat will increase, and your mind would have chased the imdiate reward rather than building a solid foundation."
"So you deliberately withheld information to manipulate my training." The realization settled like a stone in my stomach.
"I guided your developnt." Damian corrected, his tone unchanged. "The System rewards those who understand its rules, but it truly favors those who push themselves."
"And what other ’basic knowledge’ are you keeping from ?" I asked, unable to hide my bitterness.
Damian sighed, the first crack in his composed facade. "Allaran, consider this. What would have happened if I’d given you a manual explaining every aspect of the System from the beginning?"
I didn’t answer imdiately, turning the question over in my mind. "I would have followed it." I admitted. "Step by step."
"Exactly." Damian nodded. "The System doesn’t reward those who follow recipes. It rewards those who adapt, those who push their boundaries, whether or not they gain anything beyond the challenge itself."
"Those who kill Corruptors..." I added quietly.
"Precisely." The corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been the ghost of a smile. "You did that without knowing it was possible, without a manual telling you how. That’s the kind of growth that matters."
I leaned back in my chair, my frustration slowly giving way to understanding. I didn’t like his thods, but I couldn’t entirely disagree with his reasoning.
"So what happens now?" I asked. "What’s next for my training?"
"That depends on what you want to focus on." Damian spread his hands. "You’ve seen what happens when agility reaches a threshold. Other attributes will manifest similar breakthroughs."
My thoughts imdiately went to the Quickstep spell, to the ntal pattern that still eluded despite days of effort. "Intelligence." I said. "It’s at 9 now. If I can get it to 10..."
"You think it will help you master that spell you’ve been struggling with." Damian’s statent carried a note of sothing I couldn’t quite identify.
"Yes." I nodded, conviction growing. "If agility at 10 transford my running, intelligence at 10 might be what I need to finally understand Quickstep."
Damian inclined his head once, his expression thoughtful. "An interesting theory."
"I’m going to focus on intelligence training." I declared. "And if I reach 10 intelligence, maybe learning Quickstep will be easy."
I stood, ready to begin this new phase of training imdiately.
I grabbed the book from the library, and decided to take it to my room today, since Damian was here and sohow trying to learn sothing while being in the sa room as him made a little uncomfortable.
But still, I had a new determination burning in my chest. A new path had presented itself and I was going to take it.
I walked down the obsidian hallway and reached my room, where I placed my hand on the silver plaque and it opened.
I entered my room and before I could start reading and training, my stomach growled with so much ferocity that I wondered if eating so much at had created a feral animal in my stomach.
I opened the fridge and used my newfound speed and switch ability to munch faster than ever, and switching the bones of steak in my hands, for full pieces.
After I finished, I sat cross legged on the floor, and closed my eyes. Today marked a new approach. Instead of building the Quickstep pattern from the first sphere outward as I’d been trying for weeks, I will focus entirely on the third sphere, the one that needed to move fastest.
If I could master that most difficult component first, perhaps the rest would fall into place.
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