Mistrunner - Chapter 37 - Progression (Patreon)

So often, I went from one emergency to another, pausing only long enough to heal so that I could jump right back into the fire. It affected me more than I can say, and I regret not slowing down and living my life. After all, none of what I did mattered anyway. The bad guys are still there. The world is still ending. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Jeremiah Braddock III

Contrary to Kimiko’s instructions, I didn’t immediately fall asleep. I wasn’t entirely awake, either. Instead, I lay suspended in that curious place between consciousness and unconsciousness, where I was still vaguely aware of my surroundings, but I couldn’t bring myself to react to anything. While in that state, my mind wandered back to my actions in Bayou La Batre, back to the many mistakes I had made. Things had turned out well enough. I had accomplished my goal. But in doing so, I’d left at least one person dead. And I had a suspicion that Hadley – not to mention Kacie – would soon follow his father, Burton, into an early grave. Savanna didn’t strike me as a forgiving woman – even less so after I saw her beaten and battered son lying at her feet.

Eventually, the medication, as well as my exhaustion, caught up to me, and my mind finally surrendered to unconsciousness. My dreams were filled with inescapable sea monsters comprised of a thousand stinging tendrils, so when I awoke, it was to a massive sense of relief.

An hour later, Kimiko returned to once again check my wounds, then pronounced me healthy enough to leave the premises. So, without anything else to do, I gathered myself from the bed and left to go look for my uncle.

My first stop was the inn, though Jo’s mother told me that Jeremiah wasn’t around. Next, I checked the training building, only to find it empty save for a few men and women being put through their paces by the amigos. I looked at the obstacle course with a certain fondness. For the first part of my training, it had been my bane, but it also represented my first real victory as well. When I finished it for the first time, it was a sign that I could accomplish whatever I wanted, that my work would be rewarded with real progress.

After standing there for a while, I decided to get a quick workout in. I was far from healed, but I knew that if I sat around doing nothing, my muscles would grow stiff. So, taking it easy, I went through some light stretching before jogging around the building. I was pleased to see that my slow pace was still almost twice as fast as any of the new recruits. If I went all-out, I could have stretched my advantage by half-again as much. That, as much as anything made me feel the same sense of accomplishment I’d felt after first conquering the obstacle course.

And I was only just beginning. When everything was said and done, when I finally completed my training, my attributes and skills would be even more impressive. Perhaps, one day, I could even rival my uncle.

An hour or so later, my injuries caught up to me, and I ended up finding my way to the edge of the building where I sank to the polished concrete floor. Wiping sweat from my brow, I summoned a bottle of water – one of my last, which meant I would soon need to restock on provisions – from my Arsenal Implant. I drained the bottle, then leaned my head against the wall as I caught my breath.

As I did, I pulled up my status:

There were a lot of small changes, a couple of much larger improvements, and one huge gain. First, my attributes had all increased. Constitution and Mist had gone up by two points apiece, while my mind attribute had only increased by one. It didn’t seem like much, but considering that it had only been a little more than a week since I’d last checked it, I was happy with the improvements.

Next, my proficiency with most of my skills had increased as well. Most were limited to a few percentage points, but I was excited to see myself creeping every closer to a few tier changes. Most notably, my [Firearms]skill was only nine percent away from reaching the third tier, when I would gain more modifiers for my weapons. I was eager to see how the individual trees had progressed as well, but I held off on checking them for now.

The most notable increase was to my [Spycraft]skill, which had tiered up to the second level. I was surprised to see that my advancement had come with an additional skill. I opened the sub-menu to inspect its effect:

· Observation (F) – Passive ability that increases the mind’s ability to parse sensory information and notice minute details.

The moment I read the ability’s description, it took effect. Suddenly, I noticed everything in my general vicinity. For instance, I could tell that one of the trainees had a blister on his right foot that was causing him to limp ever-so-slightly. How I knew a blister was the culprit and not a slightly twisted ankle, I had no idea. But I knew. Just like I could tell that the temperature was a balmy eighty-one degrees, with a seventy-two percent humidity. Or that the amigo who was in charge of the training was paying close attention to me. He never looked at me, but I could tell from the way his ear twitched that he was listening. Perhaps he had a similar ability to Observation.

At first, it was all a bit overwhelming, but my Mind attribute was up to the task of categorizing everything. Soon enough, I got used to it, and when I did, it almost felt like I was some omniscient deity, like I knew everything. It wasn’t true, of course. But it was an incredibly powerful ability.

Maybe that was how Hadley had discovered my secret back in Bayou La Batre. I knew that if I met someone who was masking their tier now, I would know the difference. I wouldn’t be able to figure out just how powerful they were, but it was enough that I’d certainly recognize if a Tier-7 was masquerading as a Tier-1.

In all, even if my mistakes still hung over my head, it had been a profitable few days. And I was just getting started. I concentrated on my [Firearms] skill, bringing the appropriate tree up on my HUD:

There hadn’t been much change there – just a few percentage points’ worth of increase on my Rifle branch. But I’d pulled within a single point of gaining Empowered Shot. It was all I could do not to just head to the range right then and there to see if I could push it over the edge. I knew that would be pointless, though. Time at the range wasn’t nearly as beneficial as the more focused training – or real-world combat scenarios. As such, just heading to the range and shooting static targets would take a week to push it to the next tier. I would just have to be patient and wait until my training resumed.

Next, I pulled up my [Close-Quarters Combat]tree, and I was unsurprised to see that nothing had really changed:

I had gained a single percentage point in the overall skill, then another point in Bladed Weapons as well as Movement. I could only think that the combination of my fight against the bobcat and the flurry of blade strikes that had freed me from the man o’ war had been enough to push the skill that much.

Finally, I focused on my [Mistwalker] tree:

Even though the individual branches of the [Mistwalker]tree tended to lag quite a bit behind the overall skill, I was happy with the progress I’d made. I wasn’t sure exactly how common some of those higher-graded systems were, but I definitely didn’t want to need the ability to infiltrate them but find myself just a bit short. Mostly, though, I was more excited about the ability waiting for me when I hit Tier-3 on my Misthackbranch.

Whatever the case, I had made a ton of progress, and I knew that I still had a long way to go. My uncle had hinted that, at some point – probably when I reached the fifth tier in a skill – I would gain the ability to evolve or combine certain skills. And I wasn’t so stoic that I couldn’t get excited about new and exciting abilities like that.

On top of that, when I reached level ten, I would gain access to a class. And while I had no idea what that really meant, I knew that it was something of a gamechanger, in terms of powering up. More than once, I’d wondered why, if gaining a class was such an upgrade to someone’s power, my uncle didn’t simply take me out into the wilderness and let me kill monsters for a few weeks. However, each time I did, I realized that I was long past questioning his methods. He knew what he was doing, and I trusted him completely with my development.

“Are you done?” came Jeremiah’s familiar voice, which made me flinch in surprise.

When my heartrate had calmed down, I asked, “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to see that stupid grin on your face,” he said. “What’d you get?”

“Observation,” I said. “It lets me –”

“I know what it is,” Jeremiah stated. “But I’ve got to ask – if you just got one of the most overpowered sensory buffs I know of, how the hell did you let me sneak up on you? You should have heard my footsteps. My breathing. You should have felt the slight disturbance in the air, even if you didn’t recognize what it meant. You should have –”

I glared at him, interrupting with, “I was distracted, okay?”

“Distracted, hm?” he asked.  “Let this be a lesson, then. No matter how powerful your abilities – and you have some powerful ones, Mirabelle – they’re only as good as the person using them. All those attributes. Those skills. The ability to notice the most minute of changes. And you still got snuck up on by a hundred-year-old man. You need to be constantly vigilant, Mirabelle. Got it?”

“I’ve got it,” I said, chastising myself. Sure, it was unfair of him to berate me because I hadn’t sensed him coming. I didn’t know what skills he had, but I was certain that one of them had something to do with stealth. On top of that, he had a hundred years’ worth of experience to bolster his skills. So, expecting someone like me, who’d just gained an ability like Observation, to sense him was a tall order. I knew that, but I didn’t let it affect my reaction. After all, he wasn’t wrong. If it wasn’t him, it might be someone else. Someone just as powerful who came at me with bad intentions.

Besides, I knew that everything Jeremiah did was for my own good, even if it sometimes felt like he was holding me to a standard I’d never be able to reach.

He slid down to sit beside me, then said, “I talked to Kimiko.”

“Yeah? What’d she say?”

“That you went for a little swim,” Jeremiah answered. “How’d that go for you?”

“Ugh…that thing…”

I let out a little shiver, and my uncle reached over and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close. He wasn’t really much for physical affection – not since I’d gotten older – but it reminded me of when I was little, when he’d hold me and read me old stories from before the Initialization. Back when my mother was still alive.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Those things aren’t very common. You were just unlucky to run into a big one. You know, back before the Mist came, those jellyfish were some of the most venomous creatures in the world. And even after they’ve been enhanced and evolved, you got out of it with a few welts. That’s impressive. Most people – even the ones who could’ve withstood the venom – would have panicked and died. I’m proud to find out that you’re not most people.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaning into his chest. For a few minutes, we just sat like that, watching the trainees going about their business. I knew we must have made for an interesting sight, but I didn’t care. Nor did I really think about the fact that, after spending the last couple of hours training, I was a sweaty mess. At least my uncle didn’t say anything about it.

“So,” he said after a while. “Do you want to talk about what you did wrong?”

I sighed, then slipped out from under his arm. Throughout my time in Bayou La Batre, I’d kept him apprised of my actions. So, he knew basically everything that had happened, which meant he also knew all the places I’d gone wrong.

“My first mistake was that I should have just stuck with that first family,” I said. “I complicated things unnecessarily.”

I’d had my reasons – mostly that the son creeped me out – but that shouldn’t have kept me from doing what I had to do.

“Go on.”

Closing my eyes, I leaned my head against the wall. “That would have kept me from having to kill that giant crab monster,” I explained. “Which, even if it didn’t get me caught, definitely could have.”

“What about the hunting trip?”

I opened my eyes, turning my head just enough so we could lock gazes. “I’m not going to apologize for saving Erica,” I said. “It probably wasn’t the smart choice, but I’d make it every single time.”

“Fair enough. What about the situation with your friends that you left behind?”

“Hadley and Kacie? They weren’t my friends,” I said. “I was just using them to get to Savanna’s office. The only reason it didn’t go the way I wanted it to was because the butcher chose that moment to do the same.”

“You think it was a coincidence, then?” Jeremiah asked.

I shrugged. “What else could it have been?” I asked.

“Bad decisions,” he said. “What would you say if I told you that the moment your friend spoke to his mother, she knew he’d betrayed her? What’s more, Savanna knew it was you. She had her husband corner you on that catwalk, where they hoped you could be taken alive. To your credit, you threw a bit of a monkey wrench into that plan when you shot him in the head. You did a good job with those two subordinates, though. They believed you right up until Savanna arrived.”

“W-what?” I asked, surprised to hear how much my uncle knew. “How do you know all that?”

“I was watching you, Mirabelle,” he said. “Did you really think I was going to just let you run off into enemy territory all by yourself? After what happened at the farm? You’re talented. You’re strong. But you’re only half trained. I had your back the whole time.”

“So, the mission wasn’t real?” was my next question.

He let out a sigh, then ran his hand over his bald head. “It was real,” he said. “None of the rest of us could’ve gone in there and got anything off Savanna’s terminal. Not without killing everyone in the village. With any luck, they won’t have any clue that you’re a Mistrunner.”

“So…I didn’t do all bad?”

“No,” he said. “You did better than I could’ve asked you to do. Like I said before, I am proud of you.”

I felt my shoulders sag in relief. “What now?”

“Now, you rest,” he said. “You’ve got a week. After that, we enter the third and final phase of your training. It’s going to last almost a year, during which you won’t have many opportunities to have fun. So, use this time wisely.”

“I…I think I can handle that,” I said.