Master Of None

”That was pretty quick for the first round, right?” Walker had snuck his golem body next to King Rorick, who had caught on to his arrival. However, he had his nearby royal guards hide the golem body a bit so that Walker did not need to bend the light mana and hide himself.

”I thought you would be over with those from Genesis?”

”Alice and the others need to work without me around. Make sure that the younger healers are learning to stand on their own without some string figure there to fix their mistakes.” Walker shrugged a bit but then looked a little more closely at Rorick. ”Your thoughts?”

”I understand that. They could easily rely on you and refuse to grow properly without even realizing it themselves.” Walker looked at him knowing full well that the king was being somewhat playful by not answering his questions.

”Scylla made a good point to me.” With this a seriousness came through the air in the high up booth where the king would always watch any coliseum fight. ”Our guards. Our crafters. Our archivists. Our people as a whole are slowing down.”

As a king, he had seen it too but kept that as a reason that peace was allowing for people to slow down and truly enjoy the world now. That they might have a sense of inner calm that never existed before with the opportunity to truly grow in freedom.

”They are keeping their ways and I am not unhappy that they take pride in tradition. Although, seeing it clearly here is not something that brings me optimism.” Like any king, Rorick was thinking of the worst possible scenarios.

What if another kingdom decided to go to war seeing their kingdom weakening and the chance to take lands from them. What if there was a greater threat arriving and his people could not fight the same as others.

Could they survive if they were the weak ones being protected only? Could they manage to be the only ones not able to properly fight alongside others to protect their homes? How could they manage those feelings if they watched everyone else fail and knew that they had no chance?

”My people are larger in population. We have the forefront of many fields because we can feed the world, most of it at least. The dragons are not something we can feed easily. My people need to accept more of the other races though. They need to see the potential and use it. Not just hear of the strength and praise it while not using it at all.”

He was hitting the nail on the head with the demi-human race.

They were stubborn when they heard of things. They did not act and change their ways just because they heard of other successes.

The farmers might because that was how they grew. They shared knowledge mouth to mouth and they used it. Even the smallest of hints helped them grow and strive for more food. The more that they grew the more that their people could rest easily knowing that they would not want for more.

But for the army. For the guards. For those focused on coliseum combat and growth? Well, they did not work like that. They trusted daily training that was always the same.

The second battle began, this time the groups were smaller, simulating split tactics in the city or during a raid on a group of criminals.

This was normal for every kingdom’s city guard to go through. It was to ensure they could keep together in smaller guard groups when fighting organized groups of criminals. They would have to handle mercenary groups, rogue adventurer groups, or even smuggler groups. Every city and town had these experiences even in the smallest of forms.

Just because the overall public followed the law did not mean there would not be a smaller group that ignored the laws for greed or their own reasoning.

”They are already at a disadvantage. They left themselves open to attacks from multiple sides. The guards from Genesis are standing separately but still moving together. My guards are showing broken and disjointed movements because they have not made their communication more efficient.” Rorick looked at Walker carefully. ”I would assume these were elite if I did not receive their background reports and training times beforehand.”

”I know you saw their information. They have even been trained with some adventurers. Some of them were able to learn from retired masters. There are even a few who trained others in the basics before they had mastered them. Part of an apprentice to apprentice plan used to spur one another to share their skills between races.” Walker knew that this was something the king wished to hear about.

”I understand that the programs where some of my guards travel and return are showing better and better results. Those that return are separated and beginning to rise in ranks but finding that they are being suppressed by older traditions. This should change that.”

With this and the ending of the second training battle, it appeared that many of the subordinates to the generals were also beginning to understand the full weight behind this activity.

There were also some healers receiving a harder lesson in healing as some of the more acclimated and calm healers took over situations from them. It was important, but hard to watch and not speak up about for Walker.

Yet, the two remained watching as a third, fourth, and fifth battle occurred leading to more people learning and more people seeing the truth of the situation they were in.

As Walker told King Rorick that he would be leaving to work elsewhere, the king let him know a larger group could be welcomed here to teach in the next weeks. It would be exactly what the demi-human forces needed to keep pushing for the next advancement.

The coliseum had to motivate them to show off, but the elders within the forces who rose to their positions needed to see that their own standing was at risk here as well. Once they felt that pressure, people would start to grow rapidly too.

As all this happened, Walker found Gil explaining a lot to Alma.

”The knowledge we have about the ways that the high elves became what they were from ancient times is too simple. We need to be simple but not in the why and how. The mana that they drew in was because that was what was available to them. The stances were made to channel that because that was the only way they could survive in certain areas. Nature forced them to move and forced them to adapt and so they changed what they could do, building a survival skill set in archery.”

”They didn’t just start with bows and arrows. It was thin spears that they realized could be sent through the air with magic. They formed bows with magic skills!”

This was the thought that Gil had.

He had been thinking that there was more here than what he believed.

He’d always used a bow and arrow but not in the same way as the elves. But focusing on the projectile, the arrow, was what many people did. However, this could not be the only answer.

The bow itself came after the arrow and their survival. The stances they made were to channel the manas around them and fire the projectiles they made. From there they found a physical medium to better channel those arrows and bring in more magic to it.

They didn’t focus on one or the other but the original was the arrow before the bow which seemed strange since everyone was taught nowadays to rely on the bow as a weapon for close combat and also long ranged attacks.

”You are saying that the entirety of the elven race has forgone the thinking that the arrows should be first, then the bows?” Alma was confused, but this style of thought also went well against what their traditions became.

Over the years, the elves focused on passing the bows down. The same ways as a dwarf might pass down a forging hammer, or a human the sword of their family that carried a crest.

These traditions were used for generations and became a fact.

”It’s not wrong to worry about the bows. But what if there was not a bow to be had? How did the ancient elves survive? How did they make these forms of archery? Did they do it using a rough bow from the first day? Or did they start to use magic to fire the arrows, then grow even further to actually make physical bows?”

His logic was plain and simple.

It also perfectly told Walker that Gil realized where he had gone wrong in his class development.

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