Chapter 35
Too Much Wisdom
No human king had ever passed through their second threshold, so no one knew what to expect. The dwarven kings had been very tight-lipped about the changes that occurred when they went through their second thresholds, and those changes were so far underground that no one could observe them. Anything could have happened, which was why the king had sealed the throne room.
The palace spent nearly four hours transforming, but none of us knew that at the time, because within the first few minutes, it had grown so bright that everyone was left comatose. We only learned how much time had passed after the light had faded and someone looked out the window to see how far the sun had moved.
Ranic and I were in the hallway, watched over by a few guards and discussing the pros and cons of him using my threshold to pass through his fourth threshold, when the king ended his conversation with his advisors, unsealed the throne room, and summoned me to appear before him.
I walked down the carpet with more than a little peep in my step, despite my arrest. I was no longer trapped in the farmer class. I could go to a temple and select a second class whenever I wanted. Not that I wanted to. Being a farmer was far too lucrative for me right now, and Ranic said I didn't have the best boons for passing through the merchant class.
We were supposed to acquire those while he helped me pass through my fourth threshold, but we were three years ahead of schedule, so we had to reevaluate all our plans.
I stopped before the king's dais and gave a brief bow, before rising and looking him in the eye. The excitement I'd seen when he sealed the throne room had been replaced by silent weariness, but that didn't bring down my good mood. "What do you need?"
The king stared at me from his throne with a befuddled look before his gaze began rapidly moving from left to right. A moment later, he sighed. "You appear to be experiencing a mild attribute high, Crown's Champion Arnold."
I chuckled, both impressed and amused by how quickly he'd picked that up. "You're correct that it is mild compared to what some undergo, but I can't say I'm not affected."
Ranic had pointed it out to me.
The king paused before giving another sigh. He seemed to be troubled, but that was his problem. "Are you in your right mind, Crown's Champion Arnold?"
"For the most part. Wisdom tends to be one of the least burdensome attributes, and my charisma is helping me suppress my emotions."
"Then I will proceed with my questions and overlook your breaches of court etiquette."
I was breaching court etiquette.
I raised an eyebrow at Eric to see if he agreed with the king's assessment. Eric seemed to understand my subtle question and nodded back that he agreed with the king's assessment.
The king cleared his throat. "Were you aware that the magical building you invented might cause me to qualify for my second threshold?"
I turned back to the king. "No more than I was aware it allowed me to qualify for mine."
"I would like a yes or no answer, Crown's Champion Arnold."
"No."
"Do you have a theory on why I passed through my second threshold?"
"I believe it's related to the Blueprint and Patent Office. My Great Inventor title likely wouldn't be possible without its existence, so I believe no one was able to pass through thresholds by inventing new technology without it. You likely passed through your threshold because your kingdom possessed the rudimentary blueprint for a technology which is far beyond what you should have possessed."
"Your assumption is correct."
"Knew it."
The king sighed yet again. "What do you think will happen when I reach my next threshold?"
"I imagine you will be stuck until you construct the Experience Reactor."
The king frowned. "You believe I can pass through my third threshold."
I had no idea why he was so worried. We should have been celebrating, talking over ale or wine, with a few bards playing loud music, while servants brought canapés.
I snapped myself out of my daydream. "What was the question?"
The king repeated himself.
"Oh. If having the blueprints for the structure is enough to qualify you for your second threshold, then building it will likely qualify you for your third. The only way this wouldn't be true is if the system gave you the Experience Reactor like it gave you the Blueprint and Patent office. Did it give you the ability to construct it?"
"No."
"Good. It is far beyond the level of technology that we should have, and I got the impression that the system didn't expect it to appear. I think the systems a little confused about what it's supposed to do in this situation. Like, it obviously has to let you pass through your threshold, but it isn't certain that this is the optimal choice."
The kings' advisors all frowned.
"What's a Year of Abundance?"
"It's something Master Scholar Ranic can inform you about later," the king replied. "For now, let's stay on topic. What do you believe will happen if I pass through my third threshold?"
"I have no idea. The kingdom might be able to imitate the technology of my old world, or it might be able to do that already. Computer nerd doesn't exactly come to mind when I think about dwarves, so they might be holding themselves back through their own incompetence. Or it could be because they're craftsmen rather than engineers. I think I see what you were saying about the breach in etiquette. I seem to be running my mouth in a most unfavourable way. This could be problematic."
I opened my interface and dumped my free attribute points into charisma, so I could suppress my attribute high more effectively.
+24 Charisma.
Eric and the other royal scholars facepalmed as my complexion improved, but the additional charisma let me keep my mouth shut.
The king tapped his fingers against his armrest, ignoring his advisors' reactions. "I believe the structure you've invented will allow the other kings to pass through their second threshold. As such, I'm immediately making your blueprint a controlled good."
"You can't do that! I mean, you can, but it's a real dick move!"
The king raised an eyebrow. "Would you rather I leave your name attached to it, so you have to worry about them kidnapping you?"
"When I say dick move, I mean it in the most positive way, Your Highness."
The king gave a brief chuckle. "I'll do my best to negotiate for some benefits on your behalf."
"Could you try negotiating a treaty where they can't kidnap me to work for them? That would be a dick move in the best possible way. I think I'm going to shut up now."
The king's chuckle turned into laughter. "I believe that would be for the best. You are dismissed, Crown's Champion Arnold. Randian thanks you for your service."
"Am I still under arrest?"
"No. You had no idea what you had created, so there is no legal recourse to hold you or your companions. However, your people will have to remain in the palace until they have taken an oath of secrecy."
"Quilly is going to be pissed."
The king ignored my comment. "Honour guard, see Crown's Champion Arnold out."
As I turned, the king's guards lined the carpet. They had unsheathed the swords and were holding them up, creating an archway all the way to the main doors.
It was the highest honour a champion or general could receive. The only other time this was done was when a king passed away, and his coffin was taken from the throne room to his final resting place. However, usually this honour would be offered before a crowd of the kingdom's elite, in recognition of what you had done.
All I got was a few friends and my retainers.
Emily was smiling ear to ear as I began walking towards the doors. Between her fingers was a large silver crystal of noble experience, which told me this wasn't an empty gesture.
Halfway to the door, I began skipping without noticing, feeling quite happy about how all this had worked out.
***
Half the Capitol was now surrounding the palace as they tried to understand what was going on, so the king's servants escorted our group to several large apartments where Farentine and Sasha were already waiting. Both had been in the hallway outside the throne room, curious to see what would happen, and both were already drunk when I entered the apartment, because I could hear their slurred conversation from the door.
I followed Emily down the hallway towards them. Ranic, Quilly, Fitz, and Mara all stopped along the way and formed a line as we passed the bathroom, leaving us to continue on alone. The rest of our group had elected to go to the other apartments for some reason.
"He's somehow even weirder than he is gorgeous, which honestly shouldn't be possible when you're that attractive," Sasha slurred loudly.
Quilly snickered, but it was drowned out by Farentine's cackle. "He's a born scholar."
"I know! He's as obsessive as the best of us. I've been trying to get him into bed for months, but he's too busy doing research."
Emily giggled ahead of me as she entered the sitting room. "I tried to warn you about that."
Sasha looked over her shoulder as I entered and then turned towards the coffee table and reached for the wine bottle. She began filling the empty glasses as we walked over, concentrating so she didn't spill anything. "We're celebrating."
"What's the occasion?" I asked as I walked over to the opposite couch.
Emily took the glass Sasha offered her and sat beside her. "Ignore him. His wisdom increased by over 300."
Farentine stared at me as I sat next to her. "How?"
"New maxed unique title on top of maxing my Wiseman title," I replied.
Sasha leaned forward to offer me a drink and froze as she saw my face. "Wow."
Emily laughed at her friend as she took the glass from Sasha's hand and passed it to me. "What possessed you to increase your charisma while talking to the king?"
It was much easier to think now that I wasn't in the king's presence. "Did you hear how I was talking to him? I was three sentences away from saying dude or things like my man."
Farentine choked on her wine, and Emily snickered.
Sasha pressed her lips together, holding back laughter. "I believe that second phrase has an entirely different meaning in your world than ours."
"What does it mean?"
Emily gave me her biggest smile. "I'll explain when you're older."
"That bad, huh?"
"When two men love each other very much, one of them usually likes to be on the bottom."
"Ahhh. Good to know."
The three women erupted in giggles and laughter.
The king, passing through his second threshold, had everyone excited. Everyone except me.
It had taken nearly fifteen minutes for the shock from what I'd done to fade. Then the stress had set in. Was I going to be ordered to do more? Was I going to have to live in the Capitol? Would I be locked in the tallest tower until I was no longer useful? The rush of changes from boosting my wisdom was doing unpleasant things to my mind, not to mention the physical differences.
There was a fly on the wall across the room. I could see the shape of its body and wings. The individual threads on the couch across from me were also just as clear, and I could hear the distinct sounds everyone was making with much more clarity. It wasn't that my senses had improved. It was that I was more easily able to distinguish between things which had once blurred together.
I took a sip of the wine, and my stress began to fade.
Farentine nudged me with her elbow as she finished giggling. "This partnership is already more beneficial than the king expected."
I chuckled into my drink before remembering what she had done. "You arrested me."
"And I was right to do so. You were sitting on a way for the king to pass through his second threshold."
"You didn't know that."
"Which is why I arrested you until I did."
"That don't make no sense."
"That's just your attribute high talking."
I looked at Emily, because she wouldn't steer me wrong.
Emily nodded back. "Nobles and special individuals like Farentine are required by law to arrest anyone they believe might have a way for the king to pass through his threshold. We are required to treat those we arrest with the utmost courtesy and bring them to the palace as soon and as comfortably as possible."
I glanced at Farentine. "You honestly thought I had found a way to help the king pass through his threshold from my crude explanation?"
Farentine emptied her wine glass and held it out to Sasha for a refill. Sasha reached for the second bottle of wine, the one with clear warning labels on the front, which told you it was fatally toxic below a certain attribute level.
Farentine turned to me. "The way the system reacted to your Experience Reactor and the lore that was involved in its creation suggested something was seriously wrong with it. It was like the system didn't want it to exist. I got the impression it was something that was only supposed to exist in higher level kingdom, and yet you had somehow made it work."
"It's technology from a level 5 kingdom."
Farentine emptied her glass again before holding it out for Sasha to refill. "I can't believe you can see that far ahead."
"It's more guessing than seeing. My people had a lot of ideas for what our society would look like in the future, but we were only the equivalent of a level 3 or 4 kingdom."
Emily frowned. "I thought you were more advanced than that?"
"I did too, but I'm no longer certain where the cutoff point is, or if our worlds can be compared. Your level 1 kingdoms seem to be defined by law and order and the unification of city-states. Level 2 kingdoms are defined by education. Where I come from, we had the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, which is similar to how your kingdom is now, but more advanced. Level 3 kingdoms are likely defined by invention. In my world, we had the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, which redefined our society. The first is similar to what the dwarves are capable of now."
"How could there be more than one?"
"The first one was defined by steam-powered technology, which cut down on labour requirements and introduced factories. The second one switched everything to electric and petroleum-based motors, which brought in mass manufacturing."
Ranic walked into the room and took a seat in the armchair. Sasha offered him a glass of wine, but he declined with a shake of his head.
"I think my father told me about the electricity thing," Emily said. "Didn't you set yourself on fire with it?"
"That's one of the many reasons why I'm not sure if I can compare your world to mine."
"What defines a level 4 kingdom?"
"If the system is similar to my world, then a level 4 kingdom will be defined by information and communication."
Ranic frowned as he filled an empty glass. "Why do you believe building your Experience Reactor will help the king pass through his third threshold then? The structure has nothing to do with either of those things."
Farentine and Sasha both choked on their wine.
I raise an eyebrow at Ranic. "You heard that for the hallway?"
"The throne room carries conversations, and you didn't answer my question."
"It's an invention from a level 5 kingdom, which brute forced him through his second threshold, so creating it should work for the third, but I could be wrong and building it will do nothing."
Ranic suddenly chuckled. "Nothing except earn us a whole lot of experience through our new exploits."
"I need to see your logs," Farentine muttered.
Ranic gave her his best disgruntled scowl. "Arnold has at least three ways for scholars to pass through thresholds sitting in his logs, so you can wait until they've been extracted."
Farentine snorted. "The old man routine might work on these children, but I have a century on you. I'm also not a fool. I'll wait. However, you're overlooking what Arnold has done. The king just passes through his second threshold. There are now tens of thousands of new opportunities for scholars to pass through their thresholds."
Emily's eyes widened. "Every class is going to have new class options."
"We're in entirely new territory, so none of the previous advice I've given is relevant anymore. I need to start studying again, which is not something I thought I would have to say at my age."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
Farentine ran her fingers through her hair before leaning against the armrest. "Every class has received new ways to pass through thresholds, promotions, and specialisations, which means that there are now better ways to become stronger. There will be new marks, new titles, and new parts of the system which we have never seen before. The class guide I gave you is no longer the optimum way for you to grow, and that's before we consider what will happen when the new classes appear."
I emptied my wine glass.
"That was our reaction," Sasha said.
***
Farentine didn't think it was wise for me to continue studying in my current state. Not because she believed that it would compromise what I discovered, but because if I found out something, I would rush over to the king to tell him, and he was far too busy to humour me right now. So, Emily organised a trip to Longhill. The last batch of farmers had arrived, so it was time Jeric and I finished up down there, and being stepped on for a couple of days might help me come to my senses.
She was right. It took less than an hour for me to regain my faculties.
Ranic was reading a book in the hotel's sitting room in Longhill when I got back from the party. Emily and Jeric were still networking with the other nobles, but I wasn't in the mood to join them. The boost to my wisdom made me recognise that staying would have meant me being someone I was not. I didn't like networking. I didn't like small talk. And my life was complicated enough without me trying to be someone else.
Ranic looked up as he put down his book. "You're back early."
"There was little point to me staying."
Ranic smiled and nodded. "You're seeing the benefits of raising your wisdom."
I took a seat on the opposite couch. "Feels like it. You made up your mind yet?"
Ranic sighed. "I've come to realise that I'm not a young man anymore."
I smiled. "Did the grey hair and wrinkles in the mirror this morning give it away?"
"Honestly, yes. But the old man I see in the mirror is an illusion. If my House of Scholars becomes a permanent magical building, then I'm only in the middle of my life. The bonus that comes with my chosen method for passing through my fourth threshold might benefit Blackwood for centuries, and it will be around long after I rush through the farmer class and take a third class for the attributes I'll need to extend my life."
"What if the king doesn't let us level Blackwood for decades?"
"Then I'll have to buy more blessings."
"Will that be enough?"
Ranic nodded. "Scholars don't fight, so I've only ever purchased endurance and constitution blessings as I needed them. Without the strength I gained from going through my last threshold, they wouldn't have been able to extend my life by more than a few years and at the time, I was ready to move on to what comes next."
I felt a deep twinge of fear at his honest reply. "Not anymore?"
Ranic shook his head. "I've spent too long trying to become a farmer to give up on my dream now that I can obtain it. My wife wouldn't forgive me if I stopped."
"You never talk about her."
The words were out of my mouth before I even considered what I was saying.
Ranic placed his bookmark between the pages, moved the book to the coffee table, then sat up and faced me. "It's not because I don't like to. It's because all my stories about her bore me."
"That sounds a little harsh."
"It's the truth. Over the decades, I've repeated our stories so many times that it's now tiring when I share them with someone who has no connection to her. I love her. I wish she were here. But that love doesn't cross the chasm of time which now stands between us. It's been decades since we've had new stories to tell, and the old ones are dull from repetition."
Now that he was talking, I didn't feel so rude. "You ever think of remarrying?"
"Not until I realised I might not be as old as I feel. The thought of facing another century alone is daunting."
"I'll keep my eye out for lonely widows."
Ranic chuckled and then fell silent. He gave me a searching look and then sighed. "How have you been, Arnold?"
He wasn't asking about my day-to-day life or the front I put on. He was asking me how I truly was. I could hear it in his tone. "Honestly…not good. I've been using my access to Farentine's library as an excuse to hide from the world and the things I've done."
"You're talking about the dwarves."
I nodded.
"Isabelle told me what the five of you did. I was grateful that she did, because it explained your change in behaviour and mood before you left."
"I was hoping it wasn't obvious."
"It was to your friends. You were more reserved in some ways and more outgoing in others, as if you were working through something difficult while trying to appear like you weren't. Salem was uncharacteristically unhelpful when I brought it up, which was the only reason I left you alone."
"Salem covered for me?"
It sounded absurd.
"You sound surprised."
"We don't exactly have the best relationship."
Ranic stared at me for a moment, and his face softened. "Arnold, has anyone ever explained to you the difference between being kind and nice?"
"There's a difference?"
"Yes, and the distinction is important if you want to surround yourself with good company."
"I'm listening."
"Kindness is based on actions which carry a genuine intention to help or support someone. This often requires more honesty and courage than most are willing to offer someone, which is why kindness is rare. Niceness, on the other hand, is the passive behaviour we use to create polite, pleasant social interactions. There is no inherent wish or intention to help the other person."
I suddenly understood the saying nice guys finish last. If you were only ever nice, you were only ever creating polite, pleasant environments where nothing improved. Only a complete trainwreck would want to be in a relationship with someone like that.
"What does this have to do with Salem?"
"Salem is incredibly kind, but he is not nice. He shares his honest thoughts on what others are doing wrong and how they can fix their mistakes. This is done out of a genuine belief that he is helping them improve their lives. However, until he experienced your memories, he didn't understand what it felt like to be on the receiving end of such untampered kindness or that people often needed more niceness than he was giving to accept his kindness."
"You're saying I've been looking for Salem to be nice to me, and he's been offering kindness instead."
Ranic nodded. "If you want to improve your life, Salem will help you. However, if you need support and relaxation without progress, he's the last person you should ever go to."
Ranic's explanation made me see my relationship with Salem in an entirely new light. Most of my frustrations with Salem came from hoping he would be nice, and his slapping me down, with what I now realise was kindness. The only reason I didn't hate him was that kindness had saved my skin more times than I could quickly count. And when I had a problem to work on, he was always there to help.
"Thanks for explaining that to me," I said, feeling a little humbled. "I really wish I had known the difference sooner."
"You'll experience this feeling a lot over the next few years. Increasing your wisdom so much is going to bring a lot of things you missed to the surface."
"Like the dwarves?"
Ranic shook his head. "That situation was a them-or-us scenario. I'm talking about every time you made a mistake and didn't learn from the experience."
I winced. "I've been trying not to think about it."
"That's going to get harder and harder."
"I know."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No…But I should."
"Would you like a drink first?"
"Definitely."