“Since you are so eager to get started, Krion, why don’t we begin by seeing if we improve some of your stats with some assessments? If we improve some of them, we get a better sense of how hard ush you in training.”

  “’t we just jump right into the real training itself?” Krion asked Alesin.

  “You could,” Alesin said. “But it is equally as important that you get a sense for your own strengths and abilities as they are now. You are still so o the System, and if you are anything like everyone else who is ied, you likely haven’t pushed yourself as far as you with any stat yet. Only once you do so will you, and by extension us, have a good grasp on what you are able to do.”

  “Though these methods will be crude pared to what you will have access to ter, having knowledge of what you are capable of will only increase your odds of survival at the Imperial Academy,” Rolfun added.

  “Is the Imperial Academy truly that dangerous?” Krion asked. While he could already guess it would not be easy, he did not think that he would be at risk of dying before he could graduate. Seeing both Alesin and Rolfun nodding in respoo his question, it looked like he would have to revise his expectations.

  “You’ll learn more once you arrive at the Imperial Academy, but yes, the risks you will be fag there will be signifit, especially given that you are a member of House Bcksword,” Alesin said.

  “But you don’t o know any more about that tonight,” Rolfun interjected before turning to his wife. “Alesin, if you would like to start, I’ll check the wards a everything ready for you to begin cooking when you are done.”

  Nodding in agreement, Alesin stepped close and gave a light kiss on the side of the half-ogre’s face. Rolfun’s grey skin reddened and a grin bloomed across his face. Unbidden, Krio a brief twinge of jealousy. Not at the fact that Alesin was married to Rolfun, but he had not been able to meet anyone himself in quite some time. There had been a brief period after he had pleted his physical therapy and gotten started w with Doctor Halter that he had been able to go on a few dates with acquaintances of his family and even once or twice a blind date set up by his friends. Nothing had clicked, though. Every single one had not gone past a sie. Perhaps it had been him. And then he had gotten progressively more busy with work, leaving ime to meet anyone new.

  Banishing the thoughts from his mind, Krion focused ba what he was supposed to be doing. Rolfun had set his pack down and was now going about the clearing, cheg what looked to be markings of some sort in the dirt. Before he could look closer at them, Alesin stepped up in front of him.

  “Alright, Krion, we will begin with Intelligence. Let’s go find a seat and then we get started.” She led him over to the tents. Reag inside, she pulled out two simple stools. Setting them up, she indicated that Krion take a seat.

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the typical tools that we might use to work on your Intelligence. So we’ll have to do some simple riddles to work ohey likely won’t increase your Intelligence much, but given how low your level is right now, any improvement will help. Are you ready?”

  “Sure, but you should know. I’m only so-so at riddles.”

  “I’ll try to keep them simple then. First one is this: I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I e alive with wind. What am I?”

  Krion furrowed his brow. While riddles werely something he spent a lot of time on, but this one didn’t seem to difficult. He sidered each part. No mouth, no ears. unication through somethihereal, something intangible. And the wind….

  Krion smiled as the answer came to him. “An echo,” he said, meeting Alesin’s gaze.

  She nodded approvingly. “Well done. Now, here is ohat is slightly harder: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What is it?”

  Alesin was right, this one was a bit trickier. Krion pondered what might work, before he came up with the idea of fog on the imagery. Taking somethi leaving something more. His mind drifted ba time oh. After he had recovered, he had gone on many hiking trips with his family and friends. The trails had been well kept and whehey went up or down through the forest they had wooden…steps.

  “Footsteps,” Krion answered fidently.

  Alesin grinned. “Well do seems that you might have a mind for riddles. Lets see if you ahis one.”

  For about ten minutes, Alesin asked Krion some increasingly difficult riddles. He struggled, but he was ultimately able to guess the ohat had no basis of specifiowledge or text. Alesin quickly moved away from those, however, and Krioually gave in to pining about how he could be expected to solve them. The sun elf simply said that sometimes the riddles that one ot solve are the ohat work the Intelligeat the most. After a minute of straight silence when Krion wracked his brains for an answer for the test one, Alesin finally called a halt.

  “You have an agile mind, Krion. That is good. With your te start, you will o leverage every point as you grow in order to maximize your ces of survival at the Imperial Academy,” Alesin said. “Alright, why don’t we take a break from w on your Intelligeat. Don’t bother cheg yrowth, if there is any, as we are going to go directly into Wisdom.”

  “And how will we be doing that?”

  “Again, since you are so low-level, we will begin by testing your judgment,” Alesin said. “We’ll start with a thought experiment. Imagine you are the leader of a vilge, and you have two sick people under your care, but only enough medie to save one. One is a young child with their whole life ahead of them, and the other is a skilled healer who has saved tless lives. Who do you save?”

  Krion frowned and sidered the dilemma. Weighing the value of each life was difficult, but it was clear to him what Alesin wanted him to focus on. In regards to the child, it was easy to see the potential tributions to the vilge would be high. Ihey would have a long life ahead of them and the possibility that they could be trained or educated to fulfill a hat the vilge might need iure.

  Oher hand, the healer already has a lot of experience saving people from injury or disease, something that would likely always be a in a vilge of the Empire. To save the healer would mean that more people might be saved as soon as they were better.

  With these thoughts in mind, for Krion the answer would depend on how he weighed the possibility of future gains via the child against the certainty of the present usefulness of the healer. Given his own experience of suffering from a disease that no one in the hospital oh had been able to heal, and what the potential trajectory of his life now might mean for Earth’s survival, he was tempted to answer in favor of the child.

  But he hated these kinds of thought experiments. There was always another way if you looked hard enough. He had to believe that, otherwise if he faced too difficult an obstacle at the Imperial Academy he might give up. If he did, the Earth might well be doomed like the world that Franz had shown him in that memory. Perhaps just as bad, what if he ut in charge of making life ah decisions for others.

  Aruck him.

  “I would save both of them.”

  “Krion, I think you are misuanding the purpose of this exercise. You ’t—”

  “I would save the healer, and thehem in any way I could to then save the child.”

  “That would not work,” Alesin began to expin. “The rule of the thought experiment is that you could only save one. You have to make a decision that saves only one of them”

  “I ’t accept that.” Krion shook his head. “I won’t accept that. There is always a way. There has to be a way.”

  Alesin looked like she was about to say something else when she paused to just look at him. “This isn’t about the thought experiment, is it.”

  “No.” Krion stood up from his seat, stared out to the trees beyond the campsite, and ran his hands over his face. His fingers slowed as they began to trace his scars. “No, no it is not.”

  “Lord, what is wrong?” Alesin asked, clearly ed as she sing bato the form of proper respect that both she and Rolfun had used we he had first arrived through the portal.

  “That,” Krion said, spinning back to point at Alesin. “That is what is wrong! Despite what you, Rolfun, and Franz have said and how you all have treated me, I don’t feel like a ‘Lord’. I am a glorified secretary with dreams of being a doctor who was kidnapped by criminals, almost killed, and then catapulted into this insanity! In three days, everything has ged!” He ractically shouting at the end, and the words just kept ing. “I told myself I would be ok! I told myself that I would be able to do it, that I could do what o be dohat I could save my family… save Earth...” His shoulders slumped, aared at the ground. Krion tinued, voice crag, “But actually being a ‘Lord’; being in charge of making life ah decisions for others. I don’t know if I …”

  “Lor—” Alesin halted what she had been about to say when Krion’s red misty eyes rose to meet her own. Rolfun had put down the cooking pot he had beeing up and seemed to be about to e over, but she subtly shook her head. Nodding, Rolfun turned back to what he had been doing, trusting his wife to ha.

  She uood the weight of what he was carrying on his shoulders, having seen other young nobles in House Bcksword deal with the same, though perhaps not to such a degree as having the future of aire p on their shoulders. She herself had to make such difficult decisions as Krion was ed about on any number of occasions in the line of her duty to protect the House Bcksword. Decisions that had not always resulted ies she had hoped for. So she told him what others had told to her when she had faced exactly what he was fag now.

  “Krion,” Alesin began, “no one bees a Lord ht, no matter their birthright. Ead every noble in House Bcksword, like the nobles in all imperial houses of the Empire, feels overwhelmed when faced with these responsibilities. But it’s not about knowing everything from the start. The whole point of the Imperial Academy, and why you are beihere, is to learn, adapt, and grow into the role.” She reached out, gently setting her hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly in reassurance. “You are not expected to have all the answers right now.”

  “But what if I never am ready?”

  “I don’t see that happening, Krion,” Alesin responded, her tone full of her hohoughts. “From the information that Franz unicated to us prior to you ing through the portal, and what you yourself have shared, you have already survived things that most people never will. You have shown strength, passion, and resilien the face of what would have beeaih without Franz’s intervention.” She smiled, emphasizing the point. “That is already more than what many of the nobles joining your css at the Imperial Academy will be able to say.”

  “Really? But I thought you had said that I was starting off at a disadvantage pared to them,” Krion said.

  “Yes, you will be, in terms of both levels and knowledge,” Alesin agreed, but held up a long finger. “But they gaihose levels and knowledge rgely sheltered from the real world. You have already suffered and, based on how you have ied with us srown stronger for it. You don’t have to be perfect. You also don’t have to carry it alone. For now, Rolfun and I will do what we to help you. And though we know little about what you will experie the Imperial Academy, I expect you will find others there that you will be able to rely on.” Her voice softened even more. “Doubt is natural, but it doesn’t define you. You questioning your ability to save your family, to protect your phat is only temporary, as you will tio pursue strength as you push on anyway. You don’t have to feel like a ‘Lord’ to bee o will e in time.”

  Krion stood still, abs what Alesin had said. While her reassurance didn’t pletely erase his fears, it did soften the edges of the panic he was experieng. He could only hope that she was right, that it was not so much about being born for a role like the ohat had been thrust on him but growing into it. He still felt a bit small against the weight of what will be expected of him, but Alesin’s words had wahe seed of resolve within him that he had pnted within himself previously. He wasn’t, and wouldn’t, be in this alone.

  “Thank you, Alesin. I appreciate it.”

  Seeing that they were done, and that Krion seemed to be doier, Rolfun came over to joihe half-ogre scratched his thoughtfully as he stared at Krion.

  “You know, Krion, if your problems start getting too plicated for you, I could train you as a Berserker. That way, you wouldn’t have to think about all these decisions—you’d just have to smash everything in your path.” He shrugged. “Simple solutions, right?”

  Alesin shot her husband an exasperated look, but Rolfun winked, clearly pleased with himself. Despite everything, Krio a tiny, ued smile creep over his face.

  “There it is! The breaking of the storm,” Rolfun said as Krion rexed a bit. He turo Alesin. “Why don’t I take over for now? I promise I’ll have him nid starving for your cooking.”

  “Of course,” Alesin then leaned in close, making sure Krion wouldn’t be able to hear. “Try not to be too hard on him; I don’t think the young lord is up to some of your more drastic training.”

  As the sun elf made her way over to do the cooking, Rolfun rubbed his hands in delight. It had been quite some time since he had put a new recruit like Krion through his paces. The fact that he was a bnk ste, whatever that meant, made him even more excited to see what the young lord would be capable of doing.

  “Alright, we are going to work on your Strength, Dexterity, and then your Endurand Vitality.” He cpped his rge hands. “Let me see what you do.”

  Rolfun began by running Krion through some flexibility exercises. It quickly became clear his rge size, for a human, had resulted in a more restrained range of motion that would o be worked ohen had the young lord move through some plicated movements meant to simute avoiding an aggressive attacker while unarmed. Krion’s speed was not bad, but he cked a bit of coordination. Rolfu him go for a few minutes longer before he held up his hand for the young lord to stop.

  “I think I have a handle on what we will o focus ohe ing days.”

  “You don’t wao do anything else? I spent more time w on Intelligend Wisdom with Alesin.” Krion rubbed the soreness out of his arms as best he could.

  “No, that is fine. I just wao get a baseline for you. Being too tired will only make the Endurand Vitality exercise I have in mind harder,” Rolfun turo head over to his backpack, talking back over his shoulder. “Hold on a moment while I get it.”

  Krion watched as Rolfun pulled a small, bck orb out of his pack. Standing back up, he came back over, haended but he did not release his grip when Krion reached to take it.

  “This st one is a bit different, Krion. What I hold here is an item desigo work on your Vitality. Part of that is the infli of pain on the holder, which will ramp up in iy the longer you hold it. With how the past few days have been for you, it might be a bit much, however.”

  “Well, what would you do if you were me?” asked Krion.

  “I would still do it,” Rolfun said right away. “Though the pain builds as you hold it, the point isn’t to torture you. It is to sharpen you. Yoing to face worse in the Imperial Academy and beyond. Holding this will not only potentially help your stats, but it will also show you how much you take before breaking. Every sed you hold it will make you stronger—mentally and physically. With everything you have shared with us so far, I think you ha.”

  Krion slowly nodded, “I will do it then.” While he wasn’t looking forward to experieng the pain, Rolfun’s reasoning was good. And givehing he had experieo this point, perhaps it would not be so bad.

  “Good. Now, yoing to want to sit on the ground for this.”