I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and somehow renewed. It might have been because I finally didn’t have to worry about Idonea and Mei bothering me, but whatever the reason I felt good. I had also, it seemed, come to a decision about what I should do about teaching my new roommates cultivation.

I would say no.

I hadn’t decided exactly how yet, but maybe something about how ‘my master’ wouldn’t approve, or just that it was too dangerous (which was true).

I actually felt relieved that Wulfric knew that I was a cultivator though – it would allow me a lot more freedom to practice my techniques in our shared room if I didn’t have to keep everything a secret from the person sleeping across from me.

I was still absorbing Qi energy (that particular name was getting stuck in my head now) at the same rate that I had been since the glowing formation had evolved just after my fifth birthday. As far as I could tell I was gaining roughly one CP every 10 days, or about 35 or so per year. I would be six soon, and I wondered if the formation would evolve yet again… I still had the feeling, just as I had since the start, that the evolutions of the geometric patterns within the formation were moving towards a final form of some kind, and that it was at this point very close to completion.

I had more than a dozen CP to spend at the moment, but I wanted to review my options again. I was getting seriously sick of being weaker than everyone else in our field training classes, and I had been informed that I was going to be moving into combat training this year… which seemed ridiculous given my size difference with everyone else. Well, at least I would have plenty of experience fighting opponents larger than me. It was like ‘giant slayer’ training.

The only issue was that buying straight attribute points was prohibitively expensive at this point. It would take me all of this year and probably most of next just to get my strength up to what a normal adult might have.

Current Attributes Cost to Improve Str: 5 10 CP Dex: 6 20 CP Fit: 6 10 CP Wil: 14 5 CP Per: 12 5 CP

Ten CP for each point of strength increase seemed pretty steep... fifty CP to reach a strength of ten (normal adult) was a lot more than I could afford right now. Not that it wouldn’t be an advantage to be that strong, but it wouldn’t do anything to help me if there was another Beast attack.

On the other hand, if I focused on the Ice powers package I would be able to exercise a stunning amount of control over my chosen element in that amount of time. Not enough to take on another God-Wolf, maybe, but definitely enough to see to my safety as well as the safety of those around me.

Plus, I would grow strong naturally, given a few more years. Between the exercise I was getting during the Master of Fire’s loving lessons and the practice I was getting at the Smithy with my father, I would probably be quite well built by the time I hit puberty. And added to that I was quite large for my age – nothing like Jaw’s supernatural build, or Wulfric’s crazy child-giant mutation (which was shared by Idonea and Mei, coincidentally) – but compared to other children I had seen around the village I was quite big. I had no idea if it was lucky genetics, or maybe a side-effect of being a Cultivator, but for now I didn’t really care.

Tetra, on the other hand, was clearly small for her age. She was the shortest warrior trainee by quite a lot (aside from me, of course), a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that the next youngest (Wulfric, Mei, and Idonea) all had the ‘Giant-mutation’ and were the same size or larger than the older children… and some of the instructors.

As I lay in bed my mind started to wander, going over some of my musings from the past year.

I wondered if the Painted Warriors, the ones who tried to fight off the God-Beast – and who turned out to be House Flameward soldiers – influenced my cultivation from the start. I had seen them use powers, such as fire and lightning, and lo-and-behold… my powers were also mostly elemental in nature. Was my cultivation ‘damaged’ right from the start, when I watched that battle from the top of The Fortress? Was in influenced by what I had seen without even realizing it?

Then I pondered over what I was doing here at Academy. My personal theory, based on some bits and pieces I had gathered in my many talks with Master Jaduk, was that House Flameward wanted me as a trump card. There was seemingly tension between the four Great Houses, and since I was supposedly the Merrik’s apprentice I was a valuable commodity. The biggest problem I faced was that if I ever tried to throw around my weight as his apprentice I would risk the entire scam being unmasked… and I didn’t even want to THINK what the penalty for that would be…

And why did the Merrik keep himself so far removed from politics in our society, anyway? I’m sure he could be a king, or an emperor, or even a president, if he wanted. Nobody had near his level of power, but he never took orders or gave orders, and was rarely patient enough to even speak with a noble on the rare occurrence there happened to be one present when he showed up (nobles were usually hiding from the very dangers that Merrik faced, meaning he had far more contact with commoners than with the nobility).

On the topic of nobles, why were Wolfram’s parents so cold to him? We had never truly discussed the ramifications, but it hadn’t escaped either of us that love and affection had been almost completely withheld from him (except for his nurse maids, maybe) since birth. Was it accidental, or were they actively trying to create sociopaths? Was that was passed for normal in House Spiritwind?

From what little I can remember from psychology, not allowing a child to form a familial bond at a young age can have a SERIOUS impact in their ability to understand empathy or care about other people on a deep level… Whatever the case, it gave me a definite sense of foreboding… I knew Wolfram would be alright since his personality was already formed (plus he had a gentler heart than I did, for all his chaos), but what about the rest of the children raised in such a manner…

Finally, why had Kodan been a student here at Academy? It had taken me a few weeks to pick up on something that should have been obvious – Master Jaduk had told me that Nobles attended Academy in The City, never here on the frontier… and then, almost in the same breath, had told me that Kodan was a noble! It made absolutely no sense, and when I had asked for clarification I had only gotten patient smiles and “It’s not my place to say, Heller.” At least Kodan had displayed a clear sense of empathy – he had been kinder to me than anyone else, right from the start.

------------------------

I had long ago gotten used to our societies views on nudity and the separation of the sexes – or lack of separation of the sexes – and had theorized that it was because we all looked so different. What is the use of modesty in a place like this? How could anyone even decide what was obscene and what wasn’t?

Then there was the issue of our mutated shapes – men weren’t necessarily physically dominant, and women were as likely to have horns and claws as to have a nice dainty figure. There were still some gender roles involved, but they seemed to be almost entirely based around practicality. For example, women generally tended to the young at home while men continued to work – why? Because men couldn’t produce the milk needed to feed the child, and a young child needed to eat every few hours.

We didn’t have ANY domestic animals that produced milk, and very few of any other variety for that matter. There were supposedly some animals that were raised for meat or egg production in The City, but they were impossible to raise on the Frontier because they tended to attract Beast attacks… which would just wipe them out anyway. However, we had a steady supply of game meat that, as I had recently found out, came from the soldiers of the Garrison.

Therefore, the fact that the three of us (two boys and one girl) were all getting changed together before breakfast didn’t seem strange to me at all. We were, as far as I could tell, a very non-sex-obsessed society, probably because nobody cared. Then again, I also had a suspicion that the sex-drive of our adults was probably somewhat low. The birth rate was just above par from what I could figure out, meaning that our population grew quite slowly. It had been hundreds of years since we left the city, and we had at most doubled or tripled our numbers in that time. Humans back on earth would have increased by a factor of ten, at least.

So as I glanced over at Tetra, who was pulling on her pants, then over at Wulfric, who was fighting to make his bed, I decided that now was as good a time as any to tell them about my decision. It was best to rip the band-aid off quickly, but I wanted to keep to my policy of avoiding any direct lies –especially to people who I liked.

“Guys, we need to talk about the Cultivation thing.” They both stopped what they were doing and looked over at me, but I continued before they had a chance to react. “I was in communication last night, and your request was discussed. It was decided that we had to wait until after Academy.” I looked down at my belt, adjusting the fit, and continued with my eyes lowered.

All of that was technically true, but I didn’t mention that I had been the one deciding it. Wolfram was ready to give the OK, but that didn’t tell me much… if anything it made me even more wary.

I looked up, wondering what their reactions might be. I trusted that Tetra would take it well, but I had only known Wulfric for a week at most. But I was shocked to see that my predictions were almost exactly reversed!

Wulfric had a big smile on his face, his bed forgotten as he stared at me. His joy was quite plain to see.

Tetra, on the other hand, wore a scowl as she stared daggers at her belt.

At least neither of them broke out into protests right away, which had been my biggest fear. I trusted that neither of them would try to betray me, but sometimes emotions can get away from a child of only ten years old.

“Great!” Said Wulfric, still smiling at me with an excited look. I tried to wrap my head around his reaction… excitement was the last thing I had expected from him. I might ask later, but for now I decided to just leave it alone.

Perhaps he had thought I was going to give him a definite no – or maybe he had meant for me to teach him after graduation all along. After all, trying to teach them now, while we were students and it was decidedly illegal, was a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

I looked over at Tetra, who still didn’t seem to want to look over at me. I decided to give her space – if she needed to talk about it more I would give her the time to figure out what she wanted to say and approach me later.