Another day, another bunch of reports on the developing and emerging matters that plagued the Red Sand Sector, according to Faith's intelligence.
Settling comfortably into my chair, I first reached for the extremely limited pile of reports written directly by Veiled, those belonging to the third unofficial Path of the Faith.
Red Sand was ripping itself apart more than ever, with its two major internal factions, respectively standing for stability and dominance, escalating their conflicts by a non-negligible degree that saw the Lower Temples take in many injured innocents in their wakes.
Maybe it was time to establish some mandatory healer rounds...
In any case, the timing was approximately correct to begin another recruitment round, so talent acquisition specialists could simultaneously be deployed to uncover hidden gems.
I swiftly wrote down my current thoughts on a proposition form that would be circulated through the hands of the high-ranked Seekers, Sentinels, and Veiled before returning to me with any pieces of knowledge I may be missing, then moved on to the next report.
This one... originated from one of our upper Strata relay posts.
A company from the Nexus Order, composed of two to four units, had been witnessed traveling towards Red Sand Rift City.
As for what their objective was, it could reasonably only be to investigate the potential existence of a still-standing atmospheric research station hidden and protected by the sky radiance of the Red Sand Realm.
For this information that we already confirmed the veracity of months ago to be acquired by the Nexus Order was hardly a surprise.
That it took so long for them to react was the only deviation in what would otherwise be the regular timeline of yet another recurrent expedition organized by the Nexus Order to uncover the secrets of the past belonging to before our era.
While the Faith of the Aspects did not concern itself with that, being prepared for it never hurt.
Consequently, I started writing some directives intended to adjust Sentinel assignments with a mind to readying our Sentinels for the unavoidable enlisting drive the Nexus Order was bound to provoke when they revealed their intentions to scour the skies of the Red Sand Realm.
Not that we had many Sentinels remotely qualified for such a mission, as the ability to fly would be mandatory...
Still, it would make for a strong impetus to progress, so I followed through with it.
As I wrote, I was unable to not dwell on when the last time something worth reporting to other branches of the Faith occurred.
When the only answer I could think of was that I couldn't remember, the weight of my own insignificance really got to me.
What was even the last notable event to have transpired in the Red Sand Sector beyond the habitual mortal squabbles of individuals who would never amount to anything by remaining in this Nexus-forsaken Sector?
Ah, right.
We did receive the transient visit of an Architect affiliated with the Rune Sanctuary, but that illustrious personage departed all too shortly following its arrival, no doubt due to an evident absence of anything worth remaining here for.
Then, for some reason, my thoughts drifted towards a certain fairy that I kept receiving regular reports on.
A fairy who, four days ago, successfully synthesized the [Cultivation] Aspect, an inordinately difficult Aspect academically judged as a Second Order Aspect due to, despite originating from the synthesis of three fundamental Aspect lines, embodying an astonishingly sophisticated concept.
Solaena.
A lost little fairy who made the journey alone from the wreckage of her birth town of Volow, through the rust wastes and the Red Desert, that the Faith ultimately picked up.
Looking back at how much time had passed since she settled in the Prime Temple, she had already spent more than a year here, and that timespan had only further displayed her extraordinary nature.
It wasn't just one thing that made her [Worthy] of attention.
It was a combination of accomplishments.
Her Origin Aspect, understood to be a rare variant of the [Guide] Aspect targeted at her sole self, with auxiliary capabilities that were hard to fathom without being the Essence entity it was formed with.
Her conviction in her Origin Aspect, which was echoed in her [Will] to push herself to extremes that caused her to be constantly threatened by Essence overdevelopment.
Her astonishing growth, putting her on the same level as prodigies born in the proximities of Prime Realms that were thrice her age—though that was mostly due to how her Origin Aspect somehow allowed her to skip her preconscious years.
Her prodigious ability to apply the knowledge she voraciously learned, which saw her earn her healer qualification before I had the time to blink.
Her drive...
Her detachment...
Her sociability...
She wasn't even two years of age yet, but she had already lost most of the qualities that defined children in favor of focusing wholeheartedly on her Path.
That sort of individual was rare in this branch of the Faith, as most shortly found themselves transferred to neighboring Sectors once they proved themselves reliable enough, even when transfer schedules didn't match.
What could I say, some Veiled [Truth] were better left unsaid.
When it came to a child who had already formed two high order Aspects and was well on her way to form three more, however...
I nearly wrote another letter to the Fairy House to confirm they wouldn't forget about her when they departed on their journey towards the Everwell Sector, but stopped myself.
Stavros was most certainly getting in on his years just like I was, but according to our intelligence, there was a high chance he was a member of the Nonexistence Creed, so he would know not to leave a talent like Solaena behind.
As for guaranteeing she would subsequently show up at the Everwell branch of the Faith Of The Aspects...
That was unfortunately not something I could ensure.
I may have already prepared documents for her that would ascertain her identity as a Seeker, a Sentinel, and someone who earned her Healer qualification, but in the end, I was just a local Magister in charge of a Sector few even had a vague remembrance of.
I could literally only put my hopes on the Everwell branch not being dismissive of a young fairy that looked like she had been handed her ranks and been elevated through nepotism.
For the present, however, I could only do my best to provide her with a peaceful environment to develop her Essence, so that she wouldn't forget even when better factions were ready to welcome her in their midst.
"Isn't that the same as accomplishing my duties as Magister?" I asked no one and laughed gently at the irony of the fact that doing my best equaled doing what my Magister rank mandated me to do.
My digression ending in a satisfying way, I finished writing a set of basic Sentinel assignment directive adjustments and put the form on top of the proposition form for the establishment of healing and recruitment rounds.
Next report...
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I anticipated mostly good, some unavoidable bad, with a dash of novelness I could not categorize.
What I got was my first time living through the most quintessential lesson of never judging an Aspect by the perspective one held before forming it.
In a mere week, my Tier 0 [Cultivation] Aspect ended up defying all my prior predictions through its sheer straightforwardness.
It wasn't about maintaining a [Cycle] anymore.
It wasn't about sustaining an [Exertion] for hours on end anymore.
It wasn't about [Tempering] myself through ordeals of my own making anymore.
In the same way I took to being able to manifest my [Will] to achieve whatever I wanted, now being able to undergo [Cultivation] felt like an end in and of itself.
It was both exactly what I foresaw from "The [Cultivation] Guide" and so much more than the guide let through.
And the greatest indicator for that was the indisputable fact of my losing three Tier 2 Aspects, including [Exertion], having not meaningfully lowered my Essence development efficiency.
Simply put, my Tier 0 [Cultivation] Aspect was equal to three Tier 2 Aspects associated with concepts that explicitly enabled one to push their Essence development higher, and that, following a mere week of having formed it.
I had yet to push the boundary of what my [Cultivation] Aspect was capable of.
[Guided] had yet to make me go through a month-long [Cultivation] optimization period to truly form the first stable form of what could rightfully be called a [Cultivation] routine.
I had barely redefined my Essence development priorities, putting the advancement of my [Cultivation] and [Will] Aspects at the top and the formation of the [Purity] and [Harmony] Aspects as my second-highest priorities.
But despite having done so little...
Ten hours following my waking and the sluggish beginning of my daily [Cultivation]s, which consisted in the same habitual switching back and forth between basic [Cultivation] Aspect practice and [Will] [Cultivation] once I topped my energy reserve...
[Guided] compelled me to commune with my Essence.
I effortlessly shifted from a state of exploring the underlying intricacies, functions, and principles of my [Cultivation] Aspect to glimpsing my own Essence.
My timing was perfect as I directly became aware of a leisure depression in the outer layer of my Essence returning to a normal state.
I didn't need to hear [Guided]'s subsequent instructions to know what that meant.
I had reached my daily Essence development quota.
In ten hours.
When I had yet to maximize my [Cultivation] Aspect's Essence development potential or act according to any sort of optimal [Guided] [Cultivation] routine.
Faced with such a reality that would see the remainder of my day spent seeking elusive [Insight]s in the midst of idleness, I couldn't help but feel a sliver of [Comprehension] about my circumstances wreaking havoc on my inner [Harmony].
A two-year-old Essence Entity like me was not meant to have formed the [Cultivation] Aspect.
It wasn't an issue that stemmed from me having skipped my preconscious years, during which my Essence should have leisurely developed to the extent of allowing it to bear a much higher Essence development rate than my current one.
It was simply my Path.
The overarching combination of everything that defined me.
My convictions and intentions, the direction toward which I devoted my existence.
My desires, my principles, my experiences, and the [Ambition]s tying them together.
My beliefs, every choice shaping my growth.
My worldview, the countless influences that molded my existence.
My understanding of the world, and the future I sought to carve from it.
My Aspects.
There was no stopping my strides atop it, for if I did, I risked stumbling, or worse, losing my way.
Even when I synthesized the [Comprehension] and [Clarity] Aspects and further increased my Essence development efficiency, reducing the time required to attain my daily Essence development quota, the only action I would be capable of carrying out was to slow my progress to a crawl.
All so that my Essence may one day catch up to an Essence development rhythm that would never cease to grow.
It wasn't a paradox.
It was my Path.
And what that told me was that it was past the time I started sacrificing a non-negligible part of my daily Essence development quota towards something unbound by Essence development efficiency, yet just as valuable as everything else that made up my Path.
And when it came to what this unbound something was...
I already had an idea of what it could be.
Something governed by relentless coordination.
Something organized through calculated redundancy.
Something sustained by disciplined execution.
Something preserved by ceaseless anticipation of failure.
Something made reliable through invisible labor...
Logistics.
As for how it would advance my Path without worsening my Essence development problem...
I honestly had no idea.
Yet.
In other words...
It was a perfect avenue of research to pursue while I was wallowing in idleness.
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"...and right here we have the assignment orders, those in this area are cycled daily, and those go from weekly to monthly depending on whether they're undertaken or not."
As Scribe Norene showed me the innards of the logistics, a lot more than I expected became clear.
How the Faith managed hundreds of daily patrols.
How supplies were so easily found missing.
How after-action reports were used to adjust future patrol assignments in the same area.
"In this cabinet, if you ever need them, you'll find the deployment rosters and patrol schedules. Those are the complete files, so we have shorthand documents that we use to identify schedule and personnel clashes and complications. We use lots of abbreviations, so you'll need to learn them, too."
It was factual.
It was practical.
And I hadn't even been introduced to the document repository yet, which was where I wanted to go once I learned and mastered all I would need to unravel and decipher decades' worth of logistic documents in search of errors, discrepancies, irregularities, omissions, and corruption.
For the moment, however...
"For this section, don't mind the chaos. Those are all after-action reports. We usually tidy it up every week by involving Sentinel logisticians. It's a waste of good paper in my opinion, but who am I to say..."
I was here to go through my initiation period as a logistician, and that's what I intended to do.
Everything Scribe Norene explained to me, I memorized, and whenever I had questions, I asked them.
While I wasn't here to become just another logistician, as dedicating too much of my time to tangible and ongoing logistics matters would evidently hinder my more and more refined process of acquiring useful [Insight]s during idleness periods, that did not mean I wouldn't do my absolute best at being one during the time I was required to act like one.
Investing all my steadily growing idle time into this new endeavor, it took me but a month to become qualified as a Seeker logistician, and I interrogated enough Sentinel logisticians to know I wouldn't even need a week to become qualified as one too if I ever wished.
Not that I was remotely interested, as becoming qualified as a Sentinel logistician would only really allow me to take part in major deployments as some manner of field logistician, which had nothing to do with my core interest in joining the Faith's logistics force.
For that reason, the day I graduated from my initiation period and was recognized as a Seeker logistician capable of assisting basic logistics tasks somewhat proficiently anywhere, I directly headed for Archivist Desideria's office.
"Archivist Desideria," I called right as I opened the door, announcing my presence.
"Scribe Solaena." The bald female human in charge of a good part of the Faith's supply network looked up at me without an ounce of surprise on her face.
"Congratulations on proving this wasn't just one of your whims. A month is as short a delay as I'm protocolly bound to respect, and it was the last barrier that prevented me from signing off on your promotion."
"Thanks again for your guidance on where I ought to spend my initiation period if I wished to prepare myself to become an auditor," I thanked her with all the respect she deserved as the one who took upon herself to make my strange desire a reality.
“Thank me by demonstrating some of your promised wondrous auditorial capabilities. I'll get a senior logistics auditor to start showing you the ropes on the first day of the following week. Use the time until then to ascertain this is what you want."
This was evidently her way of warning me off of starting something I did not intend to follow through, a warning I heard with the concerns it was given...
However, I was plenty confident in my rationale for being here and taking such a path.
"I’m grateful for your concerns," I said without breaking eye contact. "I'll use the next couple of days to ensure I did not, in fact, make an enormous mistake that would render this whole endeavor totally irrelevant to my actual intentions."
A nod of her head was all it took for me to then leave her office and make my way to the sanctuary.
More specifically, the [Faith] Section of the sanctuary.
Not the [Faith] Aspect section, the [Faith] section.
A section that started bearing another, more spiritual, name in my heart since around a month ago, when it delivered to me an answer that justified investing so much of my idle time in becoming a logistics auditor.
A section that permanently etched in my mind the importance of not overlooking the most obvious in one's quest to seek [Perfection].
A section which introduced the Path-defining concept of [Faith]-handling Aspects to anyone who believed their Path was [Worthy].