Thirteen
 
“Up and at ‘em!” Alice booted him in the leg and Kon jerked upright, sputtering as he peered around himself owlishly. Alice looked stern as she stared down at him.
“Did you fall asleep on watch duty?” she asked, her voice deadly serious.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kon responded instantly as he jerked upright. Her tone brooked no defiance or even the most simple of the playful verbal jousting they had been enjoying before.
“When you are a Squire and fully entrusted to you Knight, falling asleep on watch duty is a crime. Punishable by brig time, demotion, and loss of opportunity and cultivation materials. It is a serious issue. You will never fall asleep on watch again, am I clear?” She didn’t raise her voice, there was no need to shout as Kon slowly withered inside of himself. Alice’s disapproval was enough to curdle his stomach.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Time to get moving seeing as you're well rested,” Alice slumped slightly, a bit of the general joy for life returning to her eyes as she looked out at the humid forest around them. The rain hadn’t returned yet, but the glimpses through the canopy showed the vast coverage of the black clouds. On occasion a rumble of thunder would roll through the world and rattle their bones.
“Time to train. Get in a boxer’s stance and punch me!” Alice barked and Kon obeyed on instinct. His left foot led while he kept his fists up by his face in a classic guard. He snapped a crisp jab at her and she simply swatted it away with a flick of her wrist.
“I said punch me, not spar,” Alice said, a bit of annoyance in her tone. Kon gritted his teeth and lanced out a combo that should have landed a blow on her. Two jabs as fast as he could followed by a right hook, and then a left uppercut aimed at her liver. She weaved and both jabs sailed by her face and a simple backward step took her out of range of his cross. When he stepped forward to reset his stance and power the uppercut, she blocked sidestepped and Kon was left to stagger by as he met no resistance.
“Boring.”
Kon kicked the thin dirt at his feet up and at her face as he began to rain blows as fast as he could at her. He abandoned any pretense of defense and simply trusted she wouldn’t knock his head off his shoulders as he tried to hit her. In the tight confines of their cave, Alice shouldn’t have been able to maneuver around him. There wasn’t enough space to jump and dodge.
She did it anyway. All while looking more bored by the moment. She finally just punched him in the chest. It was a slow, fluid, movement that Kon thought he could dodge. He twisted to the side to allow the fist to scrape by him, but the broad hand seemed inescapable.
Pressure erupted in his chest as his breath escaped him and he was forced down on his ass. Alice stood over him with a single arched eyebrow as Kon gaped about like a fish trying desperately to catch his breath. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Aside from kicking dirt at my eyes, that was wholly uninspired. Where’s the little maniac that used a rock to bash in skulls?”
“You told me to punch you,” Kon wheezed as he finally managed to suck in some air.
“I didn’t say how to accomplish said goal. If I’m unconscious because I got brained by a rock, it’d be pretty easy to punch me, right?”
Kon stared at the crazy lady in front of him. She stared right back at him without the hint of a smile or that she was joking. Alice saw the look of disbelief on his face and sighed again, a bit of the tension leaving her shoulders as she crouched down so she didn’t dominate the space above him.
“Listen. Remove all that nonsense in your head about being a chivalrous warrior. That bullshit they pump into your head during the initiation phase is useless. There’s winning and there’s losing in a fight. And the way we fight and who we fight, losing generally means death. So when I give you the objective, punch me, you need to explore every possibility to accomplish said objective. If you need to hit me in the head with a rock in my sleep, then do it.”
“So how would I accomplish your objective with you actively defending?” Kon asked as he got to his feet.
“There was nothing you could do. Lesson two, advanced cultivators are going to kick your ass unless you have specific preparations.”
“Like having power armor?” Kon asked.
“That or weapons that can scale up to help neutralize the threat. A powerful plasma cannon or railgun can humble most. Good power armor can absorb a few blows and amplify your strength and speed, but surprise and overwhelming power can overcome a cultivation gap.”
“So I was set up to fail?” Kon realized.
“Yes. It’s the first lesson most need to realize as they begin to cultivate. They start feeling powerful and that power can go to their head. So they need to be humbled,” Alice explained. Stolen story; please report.
“So what’s my real training?”
“Punch me.”
“You just said it’s impossible.”
“Yup. Now punch me,” Alice curled her fingers into a come at me gesture and Kon immediately kicked her in the knee. He held nothing back and tried to drive his heel into and past her knee. Alice smiled and spun athletically on the ball of her other foot to take her leg out of danger.
For the next hour Kon tried every possible way he could think of to hit Alice. He kicked, threw rocks, dust, and even tried to tackle her. Nothing worked. But as they fought, she gave suggestions, hints, and even a few outright corrections. His punches became crisp, his guard tighter, footwork smoother, and even his breathing. She never degraded him, the worst came from the slightest scowl when he became repetitive.
At the end of the hour he dropped to the ground in exhaustion, soaked through in sweat and his chest heaving while Alice breathed only slightly deeper than normal. She had a bit of a smile on her face as she looked down at him, but turned her head toward the forest a second later.
“Look at that. Breakfast found us,” she said as she grabbed her axe off the ground and then leapt out of the cave so fast that Kon was certain he saw afterimages of her. Metallic trees crumpled a moment later and the sounds of metal meeting flesh sounded out as something screamed so loudly that the entire forest shook. Kon hardly had the energy to lift his head off the ground of the cave. If Alice failed to kill the beast he didn’t have the energy to even try to run away.
He didn’t have to worry. Alice came back toward the cave a moment later with a furry beast five times her size being dragged by a foot. Blood trailed behind it and it looked like it was missing an arm and most of its head looked like it had been hit by a gravity hammer.
“Come on, time to teach you about monster harvesting,” Alice called as she stopped a few feet from the entrance to the cave. Kon managed to drag himself up and to his feet before he tottered out and into the humid forest. Alice watched him with mirth apparent on her face as he somehow managed to keep his legs from collapsing under him.
“Rift monsters come in many shapes and sizes, but they all have one common thing in them,” Alice paused and waited for Kon to respond.
“Cores?”
“Yes. Now, we have already gone over grades and the steps in them. This is a Mid D-Grade beast. When you aren’t shipwrecked you’d get paid for these cores. We have machines to fully categorize them and we can weigh and sell them. You’ll pay the Chapterhouse twenty percent of the sale, your Knight will take ten percent of the sale, and the ship Captain will take ten percent. You’ll also likely be charged by the middleman another twenty percent.”
“You lose sixty percent of the sale?” Kon said after a bit of quick math.
“When you’re a Squire. Once you are a Knight you obviously won’t be paying a Knight’s fee and the Chapterhouse will only take ten percent. So forty percent of each core.”
“That sucks,” Kon groused.
“Well if you like having a ship that functions and a Chapterhouse that can pay for your gear and supplies and everything else that goes to being a Knight, it’s something you do. Now, you can always just absorb the cores if you have the proper nodes, but it's generally better to sell it for credits and use that to buy what you specifically need. Everyone’s cultivation is different even if we’re using the same outlines.” Alice turned away from him and then started to skin the beast with brutal and efficient axe strokes, grabbing the pelt and ripping up.
“Anything monster related is generally able to be sold. Pelts, bones, teeth, claws, organs. All of it is saturated with rift energy. We normally have teams who will come down with us and harvest if we’re clearing an infestation. If you’re on an officially sponsored clearing mission, then you just get a percentage of all sales. Only cores can be claimed directly.”
“What do people use the monster parts for?” Kon asked.
“All sorts of shit. Once you begin the process of buying armor, you’ll see that each individual suit is just that, individual. You can supply the armorers with specific monster parts that you want built into the armor that can help make it more durable than just a steel alloy mix. My old suit was cheap, just some ground up bones in it, and it served me reliably for years.” Alice paused in her explanation to crack open the creature's sternum with a series of sickening cracks and reached inside to drag out the D-Grade core. She set it to the side before reaching back in and coming out with several organs that glistened wetly.
“Monster flesh itself can help you slowly fortify yourself. You saw and experienced that yourself. You could theoretically progress with just eating monster’s, but it’d be slow and you’d be so chock full of contaminants you would be building on a foundation full of cracks.”
Alice set the organs on the ground on top of the bloody pelt before cutting more off of the beast. Thick steaks were tossed on the monster and she hummed to herself. Kon walked away from the general butchery and started to gather up sticks and twigs to make a fire, making sure never to stray too far from her so he could always hear her as she lectured.
“We’ll start every day like this from now on. Physical training, then lecture and breakfast, then a hunt once you’ve recovered. With your oversized node you’ll be able to recover much faster than most as long as we keep you stuffed full of food. We can start working on the second node in a few days once we figure out the correct build for you.”
“What does that require?” Kon asked as he made a tipi of branches outside of the cave. Alice would be able to light it with her rune easily enough and he considered himself having done enough. She was busy spitting pieces of meat on branches, her arm full as she turned and started over to him. Kon stood still and waited till she level with him. She shot him a look of confusion as he lightly punched her shoulder when they were no more than inches apart. Then she broke into a laugh as she set down her burden and lit the fire with a single flick of her finger, the rune fragment hardly lasting a second before disappearing again.
“That was good, but you’re going to pay for that. There’s a few more F-Grade rifts around here that need to be cleared out. Once we clear the clutter and get you enough supplies to focus on your cultivation, we’ll make a push for the rest of your baseline nodes and then begin working on your first core!” Alice said this all with a gleam of anticipation and Kon’s tired body folded in on itself as he stared at the fire and the cooking meat.
“I shouldn’t have punched you?” Kon asked morose.
“No, that was a good job. Just shows I didn’t tire you out enough if you can keep scheming like that. Just need to push you a bit harder! Now hurry up and eat, we’ve got monsters to kill!”