YoTS: Lord January ~ 22!

CHAPTER 22

“You’re one crazy son of a goat!” A soot-covered steelworker slapped Grant on the back as he came down to walk among them.

“Is that what exercise is?” Another asked with awe in his voice. “I often wondered, but it seemed like too much… you looked like you were having a blast! I was told that it was the worst thing ever!”

Grant smiled at all of the people that strangely wanted to talk to him. He tried to answer seriously, “No… that wasn’t about fun. I was training.”

Collective sighs and oohs came from the group, who were hanging on his every word. A ridiculously massive, soot-coated, hirsute steel worker barged through the crowd, coming to a stop only when he towered in front of Grant. He was holding the bounty order, and this one had a too-accurate depiction of him on it.

All of the excitement that Grant had been feeling, all the happiness and strange sensations in his chest vanished in an instant, leaving only exhaustion and resignation. “So… this is it then. You’re going to take me to House Friday and get the reward. Can’t say I blame-”

“Mr. Monday. Sir.” The man held out the notice in front of his heavily muscled arms. “Can I… umm, have your autograph? Just from what I saw there, I know that you’re going to be famous someday.”

For a moment, Grant was completely unable to utter a sound. The only time he had been more shocked in his life was when Sir Thirty-first impaled himself on the sword Grant was holding. People admired him? They actually wanted his autograph? Trying his very best to appear like writing was simple for him, he scribbled his chicken scratch on to the notice. it took every ounce of schooling he had ever stolen to write the word ‘Monday’ passably. Grant beamed, reveling in his new-found celebrity. “There you go. Would anyone be willing to show me the way to the dining hall? Also, if anyone else wants a signature… please go tear down any bounty order you can find and bring it to me?”

That got a roar of laughter and approval.

“This way!” The massive man twisted and used his bulk to clear a way through the masses. People were starting to drift back to work, but this time they were wearing smiles as they got to it. Only a few minutes later, Grant sat heavily on the bench next to the ex-guards and Red’s friend, Derek. Grant was confused at first by the looks that they were giving him, then he realized that his new-found fan club had joined him.

He coughed awkwardly and reached for some food. “Well, I’m starved. How’re you all doing?”

“You lot!” Derek got to his feet, shocking the people that had surrounded the table. None of them had seen that their boss was sitting at the table they were walking toward. Even before he said his next words, the horde of huge men were scrambling away as quickly as they could. “Back to work, on the double! If you don’t hit today’s quota, your wages will be docked four Hours! I recognize all of you!”

There were shouts and curses, but the steelworkers were already headed back to work. A frustrated Red slapped the table, “Celestials, Grant! The point of coming here was to blend in; stay incognito! Fat chance of that now, is there?”

“They won’t tell…” Grant looked around at the firm faces. “Will they? I was just training. I didn’t expect such a large crowd!”

“Training?” Fergus almost choked on the bund cake that he had just bitten into. “I came back to check on you! You’ve been swinging and jumping around like a madman for the past four hours!”

“You missed lunch,” Skinny shook his head sadly at that thought. “We all went to see what you were up to, then came back for second lunch and pre-dinner.”

Grant was utterly ravenous. He reached for a cake, only to have Sarge's voice pop into his head. <Don’t. You. Dare. The next thing you reach for had better be that lean chicken meat on the left-hand side of this table.>

Feeling very put-upon, Grant did as he was told. Every once in a while, Sarge would chime in with a new thing that he should eat, or to tell him to stop eating what he was. The only thing Grant was allowed to drink was water, which was very hard to do with all of the tantalizing chocolate drinks and ale that was available at the table. A whistle blew, and Derek stood and winked. “That’s the end of my shift. Come back to my place and share your adventures, I've plenty of appetizers that we can snack on until dinner!”

<Stay here, we need to talk,> Sarge’s voice made Grant freeze. He had been hoping for this, but for some reason the powerful voice made him nervous.

“Don’t mind if we do,” Red answered for the group as a whole. Everyone except for Grant stood, earning him some confused looks as well as a glare.

“Not coming with us, Grant Monday?” Skinny spat out the surname. “Too good for us now that you’ve got fans?”

“No, if it’s fine with you, I’ll stay here for a bit. There’s a few more dishes I’d like to try… and I’m not sure I can walk right now.” Grant was clearly circling around what was really on his mind, but the others–sans Skinny–didn’t mind giving him some alone time.

Derek leaned forward, clasping his shoulder and nodding. “Not a problem at all, Grant. You’ll find us a five-minute walk from here. Twelve Iron Circle. Take the first left after Candlestick Lane. You can’t miss it. Number’s on the door. Make sure you try the stew before you leave!”

“Thanks. I’ll catch up with you later.” Grant waved at them wearily as they walked away. When he was alone, he let his left-hand drift down to the handle of his sword. “What’s going on, Sarge?”

<First off, my apologies for the lack of responsiveness over the last… however long it’s been. I just regained enough energy to come back to my senses.> Of all the things that Sarge could have said, an apology wasn’t what Grant had expected. Before he could assure the sword that everything was fine, it continued speaking to him. <When you killed that monstrous rat, I told you that your last easy level had been gained. It is time to fill in the gaps of your knowledge. Frankly, it’s getting embarrassing.>

“I'm sorry to hear that my lack of education as an abandoned and practically-enslaved orphan is embarrassing for you.” Grant kept his tone very bland as he responded. The sword had a habit of punishing him by making him see combatants that weren’t actually there; there was no need to make others doubt his sanity.

<Acceptable. There are going to be three points to our conversation: what cultivation does for you, how you can increase in cultivation achievement level, and what the different stages mean.> Sarge's words made Grant's eyes widen in excitement. The secrets of cultivation that he had yearned for his entire life were about to be… given to him? <First of all, let’s discuss what your cultivation numbers, also known as stats, or characteristics, actually mean.>

“Thank you, I’ve been wondering-”

Sarge barreled forward without taking note of the interruption. <As I'm sure you know from even how little you understood or were taught of this… system… an adult with no cultivation at all will still have fifty points of health. This can only be increased by physical cultivation. Now, I'm sure you understand, getting stabbed in the heart is going to kill you no matter how many points of health you have, getting your head chopped off is the same. That’s where armor comes in, as well as armor cultivation. We’ll get to that in a moment. First, just understand that each point you have in physical cultivation gives you one and a half points of health on top of that base of fifty.>

“But… if it doesn't matter how much health I have, why is that statistic tracked?”

<When did I say that it didn’t matter?> Before Grant could say another word, Sarge exploded, <Fatal blows are fatal blows. Ask Sir Thirty-First how that worked out for him. However, an increase in your pool of health allows you to take many times more non-fatal blows and survive. When your side is sliced open by a serrated blade, and you’re bleeding out at ten health per second, you’ve gained ten additional seconds to get healed up by having an additional one hundred health! How would that not matter?>

Grant had nothing to say to that, so Sarge pressed forward.

<Physical cultivation and armor cultivation have a synergistic effect. Meaning they help each other. Armor cultivation makes it harder for weapons to damage you, even when you’re not wearing armor. Combine a large health pool with skin, bones, tendons, and organs that simply refuse to be damaged, and you have a ‘body cultivator’. They are a person who can take hits from all over the place and continue walking forward with their head held high.>

“Are there… numbers involved with physical cultivation?” Grant winced as he said the word ‘numbers’, he could barely tally his coins. To be fair, Time was never something that he had large quantities of, or needed to keep track of for more than a few days at a time.

<But of course.> Sarge's casual words made Grant sigh. <Now, while you’re in the ‘Spring’ stage of armor cultivation, your body will automatically decrease the amount of damage you take by your cultivation number, divided by four. At Summer stage, divided by three. I'm sure you see a pattern here. When you reach the winter stages, your body is so tough and durable that it is a one-to-one damage mitigation.>

Grant tried to put the message into a form that he could understand. “That’s… I don't really understand the stages, but that means that if I hit someone with a sword directly in the throat, it could just… bounce off? Like what happened with the rats?”

<Very similar, the main difference being that a standard sword would probably be dulled by the impact. In fact, you might even take damage for hitting something so solid.> Sarge’s affirmation wasn’t something that made Grant happy to hear.

“How am I supposed to defeat the Lords of the Months? Their cultivation has to be way higher than the damage I can put out!”

<We’ll get to that right now.> Sarge paused while Grant collected himself. <Weapon cultivation. It uses the same system that armor cultivation does. When a weapon hits someone that has an equal amount of armor cultivation, no damage is done to either party. This is where gear comes into play, because the fact of the matter is that no one is going to be attacking you barehanded if they’re a weapon cultivator. We can talk about mental cultivation another time, because while most people with high scores are able to think faster, that’s only because they are used to using their mind in exotic ways. All the characteristic does directly is allow for Mana regeneration and spell damage. You have no spells. If you get one, we’ll have that talk immediately.>

<There are thirty-six ranks of gear, but they can easily be broken into three categories. Each type will have a prefix, and there are only three prefixes. Early, Middle, Late. The middle word of each type of weapon or armor will be either Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter. If you put some thought into this, you could see that a prefix and a middle word could be comparable to one of the months each. Early Spring? January. Late summer? June.> Sarge paused to let Grant catch up, knowing that his mental cultivation was fairly low. <The reason for this division is that the materials to make those weapons or armor are typically only found in each of those districts. You might find Mid Spring equipment starting in January, but that is going to be highly sought-after, and it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to attain it with the resources you have, especially when compared to what the aristocracy have.>

“I think my brain is melting.” Grant whimpered as he frantically wished he had a way to take notes about what Sarge was telling him. He knew this information was important, and he really wanted to be able to understand it fully.

<Here’s the big difference between cultivation stages and gear.> Barely a hint of a pause this time. <There are only twelve cultivation stages. Gear has a third designation, a suffix. The three suffixes are light, medium, and heavy. As I'm sure you could guess, heavy weapons will do more damage than light weapons, but are slower to attack and are heavier. However, an Early Spring Heavy sword combined with weapon cultivation would be able to deal damage through an opponent's Early Spring Medium armor and armor cultivation. That is why proper cultivation of all of your characteristics is incredibly important. So that you do more damage, take less damage, and can survive a fight.>

“But Sarge, all I've is February Twenty Nine. I don't have any other weapons! I certainly don't have armor!” Grant was starting to panic. Never before had his task seemed quite as impossible as it did now, after barely understanding exactly how large of a difference in combat potential both cultivation and gear provided.

<It is all going to be okay, Grant. Here’s a fun fact to make you feel better: there’s a good chance that your Wielded Weapon will transform into a more powerful version of itself in the near future. The ability is locked, but I feel like that will change soon.>

There was a long pause, and Grant looked at the rusty sword strapped to his side.

“What?”