After the End: Serenity

Serenity’s second Tutorial was a lot like his first. The first day was very different; apparently there was a lot more complaining and whining about the Tutorial than he’d expected. He wasn’t sure if the group he’d been with had been exceptional or if he just hadn’t noticed because he hadn’t had to deal with it.

As an instructor, he had to deal with it. He found that a lot of the complaints could be addressed by repeating “Sir/Ma’am, the entire Tutorial experience will take less than a minute of real time, even though it may seem like you’re here for weeks.”

He’d tried suggesting that people think of it as a dream, but that hadn’t turned out well. Apparently people were willing to do things in dreams they would never have considered doing while awake.

The only real difference he noticed was that he didn’t need to worry about completing the Dungeon Trials himself. Fortunately, he was able to enter them as a student, even though he didn’t get any rewards. He did find a number of people willing to help, and encouraged them to become strong while also making sure as many as possible survived.

The third and fourth Tutorials were similar. The complaining dropped a lot when they added signs in the receiving area explaining the Tutorial that emphasized the disconnect in time. Serenity also noticed that the sessions on Time magic had a lot more people the first few days.

Serenity noticed signs appearing all over the facility. When the fifth Tutorial rolled around and the signs converted to a language he’d never learned, he realized that he could read them anyway, the same way he could talk to and understand the students. It was powerful translation magic, clearly provided by Order’s Voice. The Final Reaper had preferred to learn the languages himself; it only took time, and time was rarely in short supply. Serenity could understand why many people preferred the shortcut of magic.

During the sixth Tutorial, Serenity headed over to the medical building to have dinner with Blaze. Unfortunately, two of the students had gotten into a “sparring match” right before dinner. One had a compound fracture of his upper left arm, while the other had a perforated gut. Serenity was looking forward to hearing the story of how they’d managed to break a sword in just the right way to get that pair of injuries. He suspected the stories wouldn’t match up, but as long as the two involved both stuck to the story that it was an accident, no one would do anything.

“Serenity? You’re here to get the story from Blaze, too?” Administrator Ekari closed the breakroom door and headed over to the beverage area. “Blaze always makes the best zeht, though I admit to preferring mine a bit sweeter. Would you like a cup?”

“Sure.” Zeht wasn’t Serenity’s favorite drink, but it sounded good for the wait.

Ekari placed Serenity’s drink in front of him, and sat facing him at the table. “Earth must not be at all the way I expected.”

Ekari was correct; the zeht was excellent. It didn’t need any extra sweetener. “What do you mean?”

“Most people are useless at basic crafting, yet you have near-universal literacy. Combat is even worse, it’s like it’s a game to most people, and very few have any skill. That wouldn’t be surprising, if it wasn’t obvious there’s a large training investment in even the worst. Magic is just strange. Mostly it’s pretty normal for a Tier 0 world, except that everyone has heard of magic and there are a few who seem to know odd things that actually work. There’s also a lot of complaining about all the walking, which makes no sense, we barely walk at all during the Tutorial. There’s something really odd about your planet.”

“The literacy’s fairly recent. A few hundred years, maybe? It’s also not everywhere. Many places, everyone is expected to have ten or twelve years of schooling. Literacy and basic math are taught, combat isn’t. That’ll have to change.”

Revamping the school system was not going to be easy.

“As for crafts, you’ll find quite a few people who are good with their hands and have some training. Those are probably the people picking up crafts now. Most of the rest, well, there are some people who have never done anything like that before.” Serenity - no, Thomas - had met people who had never even used a screwdriver or hammer. “Huh. I hadn’t thought about it. What tech level are you teaching at? I don’t remember noticing anything over a three, maybe four.”

Ekari carefully set her mug of zeht on the table. “You’re about to tell me Earth is a six? That would explain some things.”

Serenity grinned. He didn’t get to shock people who thought they knew everything very often. “I’m surprised you hadn’t realized. The high literacy rate is a big clue. No, Earth isn’t a six. Earth’s an eight, mostly. A nine on a few things, but overall a low-end eight. The scale really doesn’t work very well at the top end.”

Earth’s airplanes and submarines were both “Grade Nine” tech, as were cellphones - actually, cellphones were a possible export if Earth could figure out how to make them compatible with a higher mana level. Yes, people could easily message each other if they had a skill, but a lot of people either couldn’t or didn’t take a Path with a messaging skill. Serenity wasn’t sure what else was Grade Nine, although he suspected that some specialized large projects like the big observatories would probably qualify, and maybe some of the small electronics as well.

This was a surprise he hoped Ekari would spread. Grade Nine worlds were valuable, yes, but only if they stayed intact and the people were still able to do what they had always done. It might provide another layer of protection for Earth.

Ekari focused on Serenity, then paled. “You’re telling the truth. That’s impossible.”

“Grade Nine tech isn’t actually that different from earlier tech. No one bothers, because the people who have the resources to do that sort of project don’t need it. Earth is low mana, at least right now. There aren’t even any weapons that could kill someone over Tier 5, and there are only a few hundred of those, even most of the heavy weaponry isn’t that good.”

Ekari muttered something and held her hand above her mug. Liquid splashed into the mug. “I’m going to have to alter the whole tutoring program, aren’t I? And you - YOU are going to get to help me. We can start tomorrow after you’re out of class. Tonight I’m going to drink something and listen to Blaze.”

Blaze arrived only a few minutes later. As he walked over to the pitcher of zeht, Ekari told him to “put something harder in your drink then tell me about this training accident.”

Blaze poured himself some zeht, then joined Ekari and Serenity at the table. “No food? Not even you, Serenity?”

Serenity groaned. “Not you, too! Why does everyone think I’m always eating?”

Blaze grinned. “Because you are. You eat like the mana density’s not high enough here.” Blaze pulled a small pyramidal object out of his pocket and set it in the middle of the table. “I promised good food from my homeworld. Fortunately, I managed to get that done before this little crisis sprang up.”

Three plates of food appeared on the table, placed neatly in front of the group.

Serenity recognized the pyramid; it had to be a very low-grade temporal storage item. It would probably hold only small amounts; the three plates might be most of its capacity. It would also keep them in stasis for a short time; up to a day was common.

While they ate, Blaze shared the Tale of the Broken Sword. “Dave and Ralph decided to train together. They’d just had an argument, and thought that practice would help them to calm down.” Blaze smiled as the other two gave him disbelieving looks. “This is their story. Neither of them said they decided to have a duel.”

The first food Serenity tried was bright purple cubes in an orange sauce on a bed of small green flakes. The orange sauce was a surprise; it was spicy. The purple cubes were a meat of some kind; it reminded Serenity of mutton, though more moist than most mutton he’d had. The green flakes seemed to be a grain of some sort that moderated the flavors. It was delicious.

“So, having decided to have a not-duel to calm down, the two best friends decided to not-at-all sneakily grab some weapons from the Armory weapon racks and practice where no one could see them. Being such upstanding people, they picked the weapons from the pile that no one was using or paying attention to.”

“Don’t tell me …”

“Yep. They picked their weapons from the pile the instructors have of weapons and armor that need repair, instead of the weapon racks people are supposed to use.” Blaze was doing very well at keeping the sarcasm out of his voice, but he couldn’t help but let some emotion into that statement.

Serenity picked up a roll. It was just-cooled-enough-to-eat warm, and melted the spread almost as quickly as he could put it on. The bread had a rich, nutty flavor and the spread added a salty richness.

The only other thing on the plate was a single long probably-vegetable that Serenity would have assumed was a carrot if it hadn’t been the same purple as the meat. When he bit into it, it was crisp like a carrot but the flavor was more like mint. There wasn’t much to it, but that was almost refreshing after the rich flavors of the rest of the meal.

Serenity sighed to himself. He’d eaten everything on his plate and both Blaze and Ekari had barely started. He picked up another roll.

“So now that our dynamic duo has acquired the tools they needed, they headed over to the bank of the river. That’s obviously the best place to have a practice match; why, holding it at the Armory on the practice fields might get in the way of someone else!”

Serenity didn’t understand how Blaze was managing to deliver the story with a straight face.

“The story from there isn’t as interesting. Ralph swings first, but Dave blocks him. Somehow, Dave manages to block with his sword, but his own sword slams into his upper left arm, breaking it, as Ralph’s sword breaks, flips backwards, and stabs Ralph in the gut.”

Serenity shook his head. “Should we come down hard on them, or just let their injuries do that?”

Blaze grinned widely. “I think their injuries will be enough, as long as we make it clear we don’t believe them but don’t see any reason to pursue the matter. They’re both going to heal, but they’re both also going to be coming to see me a couple times a day for the next week. It’s a good thing we’ve made it to the Strategy trial. If we hadn’t, I’d have to get them healed faster. Crazy students.”

Serenity nodded. Being injured wouldn’t be too much of a handicap for the Strategy trial, though it would definitely be unpleasant.

Ekari chuckled. “That’s not even close to the craziest thing I’ve heard this evening.” After Blaze turned his attention to her, Ekari continued. “What tech Grade would you say Earth is from what you’ve seen?”

“Seven.” Blaze replied without hesitation. “At least for their medical tech. The first Tutorial had a lot of doctors, and I spent a lot of time with them. They were frustrated with what we have available and we have a fairly decent Grade Six facility.”

“You should have said something. There are some things that should change for anything over a six. Still, you’re wrong.” Ekari had a huge grin - or was that a grimace?

“Wrong? No, they definitely have Grade Seven tech.” Blaze scrunched his eyebrows. “There’s no other way they’d know so much without magic, and the tools they wanted are more precise than anything other than using an Affinity.”

“Wrong way. They’re Grade Nine.” Ekari was still grinning. It looked a bit more natural.

“Nine?” Blaze sat back heavily in his chair. “That. That would explain some things.” After a moment, he turned to Serenity. “You’re going to get to help me figure out how to teach them better.”

It wasn’t a question.

Serenity wasn’t sure how bad it would be. Surely there couldn’t be that many differences in how you teach healing magic if there’s tech available, and adding some weapons into the combat training portion shouldn’t be too bad, right?

He’d completely underestimated the amount of work needed. He wasn’t wrong about the work needed for the combat portion, but almost everything else needed at least some changes as well. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Ekari stuck Serenity with explaining Earth and its technology to the other instructors, so they could better teach the students.

Some of the instructors were more able to adapt than others. Most were from Grade Two to Four worlds, since those were the most common worlds. They had no idea what being from a higher-Grade world meant.