Chapter 76: Welcome to the Frontier

Author's Note: Third chapter of the day!

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“I’ve heard that before. Potential. I don’t really know what it means,” Arthur said.

“Nobody really does. It’s not something that shows up on a status screen. But it’s in history books as far back as The Bear, and some people think even earlier.” Spiky visibly shifted into librarian mode as he pulled out a notebook. “The system doesn’t really work in numbers even though we understand it as such. But imagine someone like Milo had a level one primary skill, and he was making nails to level it. Each nail, say, is worth a single unit of experience. And he needs a thousand of them to level.”

“That would take a while.”

“It would. But if they were worth five units of experience a piece, it would go faster. And over time we’ve more or less confirmed that some people level faster than others, even doing similar things.”

“Even in the same class? Like who?”

“Like you, for one. Karbo leveled pretty fast at the beginning too, they say. A skill in his hands went just a bit further than the same skill used by someone else. And he kept growing.”

“It’s skills too?”

“It’s everything having to do with your class. And even though we can’t exactly calculate it, it’s measurable in the sense that we know that it’s happening. You see someone get a class, and in the early stages they whip through levels pretty fast. Then that stops.”

“Bottlenecks?”

“Bottlenecks. Higher levels come slower, even for fast levelers. And for some of them, that’s that. They stop leveling at a certain point. But just as many keep seeing progress, even if it’s slow. They break through bottlenecks that would stop other people. They learn more skills than other people could learn. And they end up being people like Karbo, who are just a little better at their classes than most,” Spiky said.

“Or like Mom. She doesn’t talk about it a lot, but she’s levels and levels further than the average cook. She never leveled fast, but her levels just kept coming,” Milo said.

“Although that might be because of how she works. Creativity, concern for quality, and that sort of thing. She’s the kind of person who does things the system likes. That’s a different kind of potential. But that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about, Arthur. Some invisible effect from the system that pushes you from behind.”

“And you’ll get it from this?”

“Probably. It’s a hard thing to study, but most famous inventors are pretty high-levelled. As far as I know, the highest level smith alive today invented a specialized armor and weapon combination for fighting Aantoranths. By all reports, he’s an old monster of a smith now.”

“Huh. But he also had to be the kind of guy who would invent that armor and weapon in the first place, right?”

Milo rolled his eyes and Spiky clapped his hands, all at the same moment. Arthur got the feeling he had opened a can of worms.

“See, Arthur gets it,” Spiky spoke first. “Yes, there’s some question of causality here. Some people argue that the kind of person who makes something new or significant is the kind of person who would have busted through bottlenecks and jumped hurdles anyway. That there is no potential in the first place.”

“And it’s stupid,” Milo said. “Because you still have all those fast levelers who just level fast at the beginning and then cap out at a certain point.”

“But some of them don’t and they go on to reach new heights.”

“If that were true, we aren’t getting anything out of this. We were both very normal levelers before, remember?”

Spiky’s eyes widened.

“Oh, gods. I could write an entire paper about this. Whether we do or don’t see growth. If we don’t, then that’s a serious blow in the cause-and-effect of inventions. Plus, I can write it from the perspective of someone experiencing it firsthand. It’s never been done.” His brow furrowed. “Of course, if the paper became popular, it would muddy the results.”

“Just use Milo as a control,” Arthur said. “He certainly won’t be writing any papers.”

“I won’t,” Milo said, proudly. “I would never.”

A sudden bump in the road brought them all out of their conversation.

“Sorry about that. Old creek bed. No dodging it.”

“How are the shocks doing so far?” Milo asked. “From a driver’s perspective, I mean.”

“I’m trying to figure out the extent of it, but I’d say they are doing a lot. We’re definitely moving over these roads faster. And smoother. Like it takes less energy.”

“It’s probably not that much less energy. But I could see it being a lot less troublesome for Littal to handle if the cart wasn’t trying to wrench off his back the entire time.” Spiky made a few notes in his notebook. “What I’m interested in is how long he can maintain his top pace. Smooth rides are great, but if he tires out less from this…”

“Yup. That’s my thinking as well.” Talca turned back to Littal. “Arthur, make us some more of that tea. And Littal, kick up some snow. Let's see how long you can go fast.”

It turned out Littal could go very fast for a very long time. Arthur spent most of the day messing around with tea mixtures, not making much progress with them but passed the time as he tried to fine-tune his brewing process a little more, which was always worth working on. Milo and Spiky worked on theoretical improvements to the shocks. And Talca and Littal navigated the forest like old rangers and constantly pushed the pace even quicker.

They dropped speed sometimes when the forest grew thicker around them. The wagon bumped over larger stones in the road and waded through mud as Littal continued to strain towards their goal.

“This is the worst of it. Give it another hour and we will be clear of this messy patch, and we can go fast again,” Talca said. “I think we might go all out after that.”

Once the hour passed, Arthur began to see why the road was getting usable again. The great forest was thinning around them, letting through more and more light as average tree size became smaller and smaller.

“We are going downhill now. Should hit the treeline any second,” Talca said.

“Treeline?” Arthur asked.

“Some forests start gradually. But when you’re dealing with altitude, and when a sharp drop in height means a big difference in the amount of water that the ground gets from rain, sometimes a forest just… stops. All of a sudden.”

Arthur barely had time to consider Talca’s words before the trees stopped. They shot out of the forest into full sunlight. Arthur’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the sun as he turned around to see the border of the great forest stretching out in an almost straight line as far as he could see in either direction. Past that line, there were no trees at all. It was like they had been cut with a razor.

“Why is it like that?” Arthur asked.

“Like I said, it’s a rainfall thing. Above that point, the average rainfall can sustain tree growth. Below it, they don’t do so well. A second ago, you were in a forest. Now I get to welcome you to the desert,” Talca said.

Arthur turned around and looked past Talca to the course ahead of them. It was the longest stretch of barren land he had ever seen. Besides the occasional sad-looking shrub, there was nothing besides rock and dirt stretching on and on all the way out to the horizon. There was no snow on the ground farther than a mile or so from the treeline, something Arthur guessed was less about temperature and more about how absolutely dry it seemed to be.

“Welcome to the wasteland,” Talca said.

“People live out here?”

“Oh, sure. There’s minerals to mine. And there’s water if you dig deep enough. You just have to know where to look or if you actually want to live here.”

“Like Australia.”

“What’s that?”

Arthur plumbed through his foggy memories as he tried to remember enough about it to explain it.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a fictional place in Earth mythology. A big desert continent with giant spiders and little viscous mammals that try to bite you. And… surfing? I think?” Arthur said.

“You had weird books,” Talca said.

“Yeah we did. The weirdest and the best.”

“Okay, guys. Time to break these shocks for real. Hang onto your hats. Yee, Littal! Yee!”

Littal kicked into gear one more time, this time working with gravity’s help instead of against it. He shot downhill, taking every curve at an insane skidding speed. It was all Arthur could do to stay in the wagon as it absolutely flew towards the wasteland below.

“It stays downhill for a while, even if you can’t see it. I’ll sustain this speed as long as I can.”

“Got it! And thanks!” Milo yelled back up. “He’s doing us several favors at once. We have to buy him dinner or something, once we get there.”

After another hour, the shocks started to fail. Milo climbed back up from another peek underneath the wagon to inform Spiky that the shocks were finally leaking.

“Through the point where the rod and cylinder join?”

“Nope, through the side. I think you were right about it needing more lubrication than it was getting.”

A sudden bang erupted from under the wagon. Littal started in surprise, barely correcting his path before he took them off the road.

“What was that?” Talca yelled back.

“One of the shocks failed. Completely. We’re on just three, now.” Milo ducked his head back down over the edge to take another look. “One of the front ones, the same one that was leaking. Hopefully, we lose another front one next.”

“Why?”

Spiky looked up from his note-taking. “Because it would still be balanced. Two shocks, both on the same side of the wagon would be bad. Probably. This is new territory as far as I know but I wouldn’t want to keep going if three of the shocks blow.”

It took ten minutes for the bang announcing the failure of the other front shock to arrive. The ride was getting rougher now, and Littal was slowing down a bit to compensate.

“Is that a town up ahead?” Arthur asked. “I think I see buildings.”

“Yup. And hopefully we get there before the next shock breaks down,” Talca yelled back. “I really don’t want to stop before we arrive.”

“It’s leaking already. Push the pace. We might make it,” Milo shouted.

Arthur held his breath as Littal chewed up the last several miles. The town ahead was made entirely of stone, and as they drew closer, he thought he could see the quarry it was drawn from.

“Huh that’s interesting. Wood isn’t used in their buildings?” Arthur noticed that most of the city had also been built out of stone.

“Not here. They’d have to drive the wood in from the mountain. If they had a stonecutter when they founded the town, they could just use the stone and save the wood for fires and furniture.”

As the town loomed large before them, the next shock blew, making a sound so loud that Arthur saw people in the town turn to see where it had come from. But they had made it, just barely. Littal took his foot off the accelerator as the wagon coasted past the first building, then trotted sedately to the center of town.

Milo jumped down as the wagon stopped, pounding the shocks off the wagon with his hammer.

“Absolute catastrophic failure,” Milo said as he looked at them. “I’ll have to start all over from scratch.”

“Oof. Sorry, Milo.”

“Don’t be. I made these out of the wrong materials while on the road, and the fastest transporter in town pushed them hard all day before they failed. That’s good.”

“Yes, I’d call that a success.” Spiky took a look at the three blown shocks, made some more notes, then snapped his notebook shut and put it in his bag. “So what’s next?”

“I’ll go bother the local smith to let me use his smithy to fix the shocks. He should let me, since I’ll be teaching him something new. And then I’ll mount them, and we can be on our way.”

“On our way?” Talca walked back to where the three were standing near the end of the wagon. “What are you talking about?”

“I just figured I could get it done while there’s still daylight. Unless you want to sleep here and finish in the morning.”

Talca shook his head.

“You have no idea how fast we were going all day, do you? There’s no finishing in the morning to do, Milo.” Talca waved his hand at the town. “This is it. We are at the destination. Welcome to the frontier.”