Usually, I would find it hard to keep from smiling at this point. Mother said it was why I would never make a good actor. It took an effort for me to keep playing the part when I was winning. I was always aware that I was playing a role and why. My mother, on the other hand, was able to completely engross herself in the role. Which is what made her such a capable spy, conman, and thief. Also a merchant, but she never really enjoyed it. Not enough lying or the thrill of being caught. Trade just offered the chance at money, which was always just a locked box away if she needed it.

Interestingly enough, [Meditation] seemed to help with my smiling issue. It shouldn’t have surprised me, it left me introspective, and my emotions muted. It would probably make it more challenging to act when I needed to seem frightened, mad, or any time I needed to project a strong emotion. But to hide them, [Meditation] was perfect.

It also left me drifting in thought as the subjective hours in slow time crawled by. While [Meditation] improved my focus, it also stretched my perception of time out so that it was oddly hard to maintain my attention as well.

Of course, the ice forming on my mostly naked body was amazingly effective at bringing me back to the moment.

[Cold Resistance] was a basic resistance Skill. It didn’t offer any interesting secondary effects, there was no apparent magic involved. Despite the seeming blandness of the skill, I could still tell that something was circulating through my body to allow the effect to work. It wasn’t mana. The feeling of mana moving through my body was something I was well acquainted with by now. But, while I could detect this something moving through me in an endless cycle, affecting it was apparently beyond me.

I focused on my [Cold Resistance] Skill to see if I could glean anything from its description. I doubted it - it hadn’t changed from what I remembered - but hope springs eternal. It was also useful to distract myself from the next ten minutes of cold I would need to endure. Ten minutes that would feel like hours in my current mental state.

Cold Resistance - Tier 1: 44

The cold is a relentless foe that you have learned to resist.

Passive Effect:

Effects of the cold on the body reduced by 22%

Effects of the cold on the mind reduced by 65%

Active Trigger Effect:

Effects of cold on the body reduced by an additional 3% for the next 5 minutes

Effects of cold on the mind reduced by an additional 2% for the next 5 minutes

After Effect:

Increased appetite

[Cold Resistance] and [Heat Resistance] were my two highest level Skills at forty-four and forty-two, respectively. The why was obvious, I had a device I could use safely for training, and I could even focus on other Skills while practicing. Most often, I worked on my [Carving] since the increased difficulty of sweaty or cold hands seemed to help me improve my Skill. Practicing [Cold Resistance] and [Heat Resistance] while working on something else meant they leveled slowly. However, it was nice to be able to focus on other things while still improving. They weren’t the most powerful of Skills, nor the most useful in my day-to-day life, but the ease of practice made them well leveled.

And that practice was going to earn the Sergeant a staggering three silvers.

“Look at him! We need to pull him out, he’s turning blue! He has ice growin’ on him!” came Terrid’s shout.

His concern would be a bit more believable if he hadn’t bet on how long I could stay in the resistance training box. That no one seemed to care was less about how little they liked me, and said a lot more about how they disliked Terrid. I knew he was going to be the target of the Sergeant’s ire since he was almost always on someone’s bad side. Terrid was under-Skilled for his position, never trained with the rest of the guards, often showed up to duty drunk, and was a colossal braggart. That the Captain was his cousin likely had nothing to do with it, of course.

“Shut yer yap. He’ll get out when I win and not a moment before!” Sergeant Baker yelled, but I could hear the concern in his voice. To which, I opened my eyes only long enough to wink at him and then return to my introspection. My wink didn’t go unnoticed by the other men, and Terrid suffered a few jokes at his expense while the Sergeant had to shoot down demands that he pay for the next round at the Rusted Lance.

I wasn’t interested in showing off. It was a fun and novel experience, but my actions had multiple goals. Hiding my profession meant pretending to be younger and a combination of either incompetent or stuck with a grumpy alchemy master. No matter that the men knew I wasn’t what I had been pretending to be, they would carry that view of me around until something changed. That was my first goal. As soon as the guards tried to outlast me and failed utterly, they would stop seeing me as a young, failed alchemist. Instead, they would come to see me as a knowledgeable Skill Trainer.

The guards, except for Terrid, understood that the only reason the Baron had invested so much in them was that they would be the Skilled core of his military force. If they fell, then conscripted peasants who showed promise would take their place. If they failed to live up to his investment, then he would stop investing in them and push them off to other duties. Those guards who were unable to improve found themselves in administrative positions within the guard. It meant safer work and consistent pay, but there were only so many positions available, and advancement slowed.

Having access to a Skill Trainer, openly and with the Baron paying for my effort, was a boon that few would pass over. War could be a battle of inches, and I was offering to give them each a great deal more than an extra inch.

“Time!” shouted Private Balk. Balk had the [Metronome] Skill, useful for the company's march drummer.

When the lever was pulled, the metal box flowered open and I slowly stood, the thin ice cracking off my body as the air fogged around me.

“Now, who wants to try and beat three minutes?” I asked with a mocking look.

For a second, there was silence, and sideways looks before Terrid stepped forward.

“If you can do it, then I can! Who thinks I can’t beat three minutes? Aye? Sergeant?” Terrid shouted as he unashamedly began to strip his padded armor.

“Aye Terrid, I’ve got a silver saying you can’t!” Sergeant Baker said as I started to dry off. Luckily in the bustle of the morning, I had remembered to bring a cloth to dry off with. I knew exactly how much moisture the device seemed to dump out of nowhere when in use. With cold resistance training, it was just water; when we switched to [Heat Resistance] later on, I needed to remember to include water for cleaning. There was nothing like itchy dried sweat to make the rest of the day hell.

“Before we get to that, let me explain what you should be doing to get [Cold Resistance],” I began as I stood in front of the men nearly naked and resisting the urge to shiver.

This had the men’s attention. It was one thing to show off and compete, but another thing entirely to gain a new Skill. Especially if it would let them show off better!

“There are many Skills which could allow you to do what I just did, but the most important one is [Cold Resistance],” I began.

“[Cold Resistance] isn’t fancy. It just does what it says, it makes it so you can resist the cold. [Heat Resistance] is the same way. Simple, basic, and, most of all, life-saving.”

While I was lecturing to the gathered men, I noticed Mason leaning in the corner and watching. What was interesting was that I knew he had been leaning there the entire time, but it wasn’t until now that I consciously noticed him. I knew that this had to be something other than [Stealth] or [Sneak]. He dropped his skill, watched as I marked his position, and then nodded at me to acknowledge my notice. Then…he seemed to fade away in importance. He was still right where he had been the entire time. Still, I had to focus on keeping him in mind, and it was playing havoc with my ability to talk to the men, so I let him drop from my awareness. Even then, I knew that my willingness to put aside his hiding was unnatural. The active effect of [Meditation] screamed his Skill’s impact on me, but I ignored it once again.

“Now, if you manage to gain [Cold Resistance] or [Heat Resistance], I’ll help you try for one of the other overlapping skills. Don’t count on it, but the offer is there if you manage,” I said, watching as the gathered men gritted their teeth or clenched their fists in eagerness.

Then, with a tone of voice as if I was providing the secrets to the universe, I dropped the secret to most resistance skills.

“The key to gaining [Cold Resistance] is to ignore the cold.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the look of confusion and annoyance. I did notice a couple of men had considering looks.

Holding up a finger, I expanded on my explanation, “I know what you are thinking, but really. The secret is to ignore the cold. Don’t try and resist it. Don’t focus on how your body feels. Don’t try and push the cold away or anything else. Just ignore it. Better, focus on trying to do something in your mind while you resist. I would suggest math problems. Maybe try and figure out how many coins the Rusted Lance has gotten from you in the last season. Whatever it takes. The point is to pull your mind off your body and not focus on it.”

Most of the guard would pick up [Cold Resistance], it wasn’t particularly hard to do as long as you knew the trick. Without guidance, most would focus on trying to resist the cold, which was the opposite of what was needed. A rare few would manage something like [Cloak of Warmth] or [Veil of Ice] when trying for [Cold Resistance] or [Heat Resistance] which then just made gaining the resistance that much more difficult. Both of the ‘cloak’ resistances were passive weak and active strong. They were useful for emergency situations and complemented the resistance skills nicely. They were almost the direct opposite in nature, but having an active Skill made it harder to gain a passive version of the Skill. I’d only managed the active [Veil of Ice] Skill myself to match the passive [Heat Resistance].

Veil of Ice - Tier 1: 11

Using the power of your mind, you can repel heat from yourself.

Passive Effect:

The effects of heat on your body reduced by 2%

The effects of heat on your mind reduced by 3%

Active Trigger Effect:

For the next 15 minutes, heat flows around your body, leaving you untouched.

After Effect:

Your body becomes less resistant to the cold for 5 minutes

I knew which Skill I wanted if I had to spend weeks hiking through the cold, and with these skills, the guards would be able to rush ahead of the conscripts and protect the army's approach. That would act as a force multiplier and might even allow the Baron to attack before the war season officially started. [Heat Resistance] would be less useful, but I didn’t know anything that could help with the mud of the wet season. I would have to search through my Skill Dictionary and see if I could find anything in the movement skills.

While Terrid crawled into the cold box, the icy metal causing involuntary flinches to the jeers of the rest of the guards. I focused on the loudmouth doing all I could to trigger [Teacher of Skills]. While I didn’t like him, letting him regain some of his lost wages from the Sergeant would keep him from being a problem. It would also help spur more of the men on to try and beat him.

That was my second goal. I wanted the guards focused on improving, and nothing helped more than a competition to spur someone on.

“Ignore the cold Terrid. Hey, tell me your family tree. Work upward on your father’s side listing only men, then work up your mother’s side listing only women!” I called as I watched Terrid fruitlessly try and shift his cold flesh away from the metal.

Sliding over to Sergeant Baker, I kept an eye on Terrid and the gathered men as they threw insults at his failing memory. This kind of taunting would generally be counterproductive to learning a new skill, in this case, it was actually useful.

Lowering my voice, I leaned toward the Sergeant, “Today I plan to work with all the men here, but tomorrow I’ll work with them one by one. Give me two hours per guard, and I’ll work them through Skills as they earn them. Feel free to let them use the cold box here, but I’ll want you watching them while they use it. Too easy for one of them to get upset and break it or something.”

The Sergeant nodded but didn’t look away from the men as they cheered when Terrid’s shivering body was ejected from the box from accidentally pressing one of the trigger plates.

“Be right back. I’m going to talk to Mason,” I said as I stepped to the corner as Mason once again appeared.