Extra's Path To Main Character-Chapter 13 - 12 - The Performance [2]

He ran it again. This time he held it for forty seconds, let the circulation wobble slightly at thirty-eight seconds to suggest he was approaching his limit, and released it with a minor spike at the end — small enough to be a normal error, large enough to look like genuine strain.

Elian watched the whole thing with the focused attention of someone who was actually trying to assess capacity rather than simply going through motions. When Amaron finished, he stepped forward and gestured for him to lower his hands.

"That spike at the end — you felt it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Most people don’t notice when they’re about to lose coherence until after it happens. The fact that you’re aware of it means you can start training the release point." Elian demonstrated the movement — a slight adjustment in hand position that redirected the mana flow at the circuit’s end, smoothing the release. "Try it like this next time. It’ll feel awkward at first, but it reduces the spike by about half."

Amaron watched the demonstration with the careful attention of someone being taught something they didn’t know, despite the fact that he knew this technique, had used variations of it extensively, and could have corrected two minor inefficiencies in Elian’s hand positioning if he’d been willing to explain how he knew that.

"Understood," he said.

"Run through it a few more times on your own," Elian said, and moved to the next person in the group.

Amaron ran through it. He performed exactly as well as a diligent F-rank with some natural talent and a strong work ethic would perform. He made small, believable improvements over the next twenty minutes. He did not, at any point, reveal that he could hold the circulation for over three hundred seconds without effort, or that his control was fine enough to shape the mana flow into configurations that the standard manual didn’t even name.

It was, he thought, one of the harder things he’d done in his second life so far.

— ◆ —

The striking drills were worse.

Not because they were difficult — they were extremely simple, basic forms designed to teach people how to channel mana into a physical strike without injuring themselves or wasting energy. But they required Amaron to deliberately perform them badly, which meant he had to actively suppress his muscle memory from nine years of dungeon combat and produce movements that looked like someone learning the forms for the first time.

He struck the training post with the stiff, uncertain posture of someone who was not confident in their own strength. He channeled mana into the strike at a level so low it would barely register as reinforcement. He hit at angles that were technically correct but lacked the fluid efficiency that came from doing something ten thousand times.

Elian corrected his stance twice. Demonstrated the proper follow-through. Reminded him to keep his shoulders loose.

Amaron accepted the corrections with the appropriate mix of attention and mild frustration — the emotional texture of someone who was trying hard and not getting it quite right. It was a good performance. He knew it was a good performance because no one questioned it.

Livia walked past at one point, saw him working through the drill, and offered a piece of advice without breaking stride. "You’re tensing right before impact. Relax your grip. The mana does the work, not your muscles."

He adjusted. Struck again. This time with his grip deliberately too loose, so that the impact looked slightly better but still imperfect.

She nodded and kept moving.

He had just taken advice from someone who was, in his estimation, roughly two full ranks below his actual combat capability. The advice had been sound — for someone at her level of understanding. He had performed as if it helped.

This is exhausting.

— ◆ —

The session ended two hours later. Everyone was tired. The F-rank group looked pleased with themselves in the specific way of people who had worked hard and felt they’d improved. The C-rank supervisors offered encouragement and reminded them that fundamentals mattered more than flash.

Elian found Amaron near the water station, where he was drinking slowly and trying not to look like someone who had just spent two hours deliberately underperforming at everything.

"You did well," Elian said. "Your circulation’s solid. The striking needs work, but that’s normal. Most F-ranks don’t have the mana capacity to reinforce strikes effectively anyway. You’re ahead of where I expected."

"Thank you," Amaron said.

"You should come to the next session. We run these every two weeks. It’s good cross-training even if you’re staying in support roles." Elian said this with the easy assumption that of course Amaron would want to improve, of course he’d be interested in continuing. "You’ve got potential. Just needs refinement."

Amaron drank his water and looked at Elian Solhart — seventeen years old, B-rank, genuinely talented, genuinely kind, standing there offering encouragement to an F-rank support contractor who had just spent two hours lying with his entire body about what he was capable of.

"I’ll think about it," Amaron said.

"Good." Elian clapped him on the shoulder — a brief, friendly gesture that carried no weight except friendliness — and walked off to talk to the other supervisors.

Amaron stood by the water station and felt the exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical effort and everything to do with the specific kind of strain that came from being extremely good at something and having to pretend, with precision and care, that you were barely competent.

— ◆ —

He walked home alone as the sun set over the fourth district. His mana reserve was untouched — he hadn’t used even a fraction of his actual capacity during the entire session. His body was fine. His mind was tired in a way that sleep wouldn’t fix.

He thought about the striking drill. About the circulation exercise. About Elian’s genuine, well-meaning advice on hand positioning.

He thought about the fact that he would have to do this again. And again. Every time he trained with them, every time he worked alongside them, every time someone offered him advice or correction or encouragement, he would have to calibrate his response to match what they expected from an F-rank who was trying his best.

The alternative was revealing his strength. Which would raise questions he couldn’t answer. Which would compromise everything he’d built. Which would, eventually, get him killed or controlled or turned into a weapon for someone else’s war.

He knew this. He had planned for this. Performing weakness was part of the strategy, and the strategy was sound.

It was also, he was discovering, a particular kind of lonely.

[ VOID SYSTEM — DAY 60 STATUS ]

[ MANA RESERVE: 1,247 units ]

[ CONTROL ADVANCEMENT: EXTERNAL MANIFESTATION — 500 COUNT STABLE ] 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

[ ITERATION POINTS: 2 ]

[ PERFORMANCE METRICS: WEAKNESS SIMULATION — 94% CREDIBILITY ]

[ HOST AFFECT: ELEVATED STRAIN INDICATORS ]

[ QUERY: IS THIS SUSTAINABLE? ]

He looked at the last line for a long time.

It has to be.

The system, as usual, did not argue.