CHAPTER 20: EVERY HARD WORK PAYS OFF

The night before his eighth birthday, Joe tried to sleep early.

It did not work.

Deepwinter had made the house feel smaller than it did during the rest of the year. In warm months, the door remained open for much of the day, and half the household's activity spilled into the yard. During winter, seven people, their bedding, tools and much of the food meant to survive the season crowded into the main room together.

The hearth sat slightly toward the rear of the house inside a low border of stone and packed clay. Most of the fire had already collapsed into red coal, leaving only enough light to outline the smoke-darkened rafters above. Bundles of onions, herbs and strips of drying vegetables hung from several beams, while two fish Lily had decided to preserve remained farther from the heat.

Pam and Joseph slept on a low raised platform near the warmest side of the hearth. Mike and Lily's bedding occupied the rear wall beyond them, while the children slept along the opposite side of the room on straw mattresses that were rolled away each morning.

Simon was only a few feet from Joe. Mary, now six, had somehow turned sideways in her sleep and pushed half her blanket against the wall.

Near her bedding leaned the old wooden writing board Simon had once carried to the Talent Hall every morning. He had long since outgrown any need to bring it back and forth, while Joe had never needed it after being excused from beginner literacy. Mary had claimed it instead. Uneven characters, crooked animals and several shapes only she understood still covered its surface in faint charcoal marks.

Everyone else had gone quiet.

Joe remained awake beneath his blanket.

His talents had appeared at one, two and four. If another appeared tonight, then the intervals would form a pattern strong enough to take seriously, with sixteen becoming the next birthday worth watching.

That possibility had been sitting in the back of his mind for weeks.

Joe enjoyed the advantages his talents gave him, but he had never possessed any proof that more would continue appearing. There was no status screen showing future rewards, no explanation of where the talents came from and no way to summon the pale words once they disappeared.

Tonight would answer at least part of that question.

The notifications themselves were brief, which gave Joe another reason to stay awake. He did not know what would happen if one appeared while he slept, and missing the name of a talent could make understanding its effect unnecessarily difficult afterward.

So he waited.

He shifted once, trying to settle more comfortably beneath the blanket, then shifted again several minutes later.

Simon made an irritated sound from nearby. "Joe, if you're going to spend the whole night wrestling your blanket, at least do it quietly. Some of us actually trained today."

"I'll stop."

"You said that with your body, not your mouth."

Joe almost answered, decided Simon was mostly asleep already and remained still.

Without a clock, there was no good way to know how late it had become. He watched the red glow beneath the hearth slowly diminish while the room grew darker and colder.

Eventually his eyes began to close despite himself.

Then pale words appeared in the darkness.

Every Hard Work Pays Off.

Joe became completely alert.

He read the sentence carefully until the light disappeared.

Eight had produced another talent.

That was enough to make the birthday pattern a serious working hypothesis. If it continued, sixteen should bring the next one, but there was no reason to spend the next eight years thinking about a notification that might or might not appear.

He had something far more useful to understand now.

Every Hard Work Pays Off.

The meaning sounded simple enough that Joe's first impulse was to test it immediately. A knot, a written character, a balancing exercise—anything that involved deliberate effort might tell him something.

His hand had already reached the edge of the blanket when he stopped himself.

There was no reason to wake the household in the middle of Deepwinter because he was excited.

Joe occasionally forgot that possessing an adult’s life memories did not make him biologically forty years old. His judgment remained his own, but excitement sometimes came more quickly than he remembered from adulthood, as did the urge to act immediately when something interested him.

Morning would provide much better tests.

He settled back into the mattress and forced himself to relax. Sleep still took some time, but eventually exhaustion overcame anticipation.

-------

Morning came cold and colorless.

Joe dressed, ate and left for Talent Hall beside Simon. Frost covered the edges of the road, their breath turned white in front of them and thin columns of smoke rose almost vertically from Green Hollow's roofs into the still winter air.

Simon spent much of the walk discussing training.

"Victor says Thomas is putting his front foot too far forward again, and if he keeps doing it Hall is going to make him repeat the second movement until he forgets every other movement he knows. I told Thomas the same thing yesterday, but apparently advice only counts when Victor says it."

Joe nodded.

Simon walked several more steps before looking over. "You are listening, aren't you?"

"Thomas's front foot is too far forward, Victor agrees with you, and you're annoyed Thomas listened to him instead."

Simon seemed satisfied. "Exactly. The important part is that I was right first."

Joe let him continue.

His own thoughts remained on the new talent.

The name suggested more than simply learning faster.

Ordinary people eventually reached limits. Someone could work hard at a skill for years and still reach a point where additional effort produced almost nothing. Natural aptitude mattered. Physical structure mattered. Intelligence, age, opportunity and training quality mattered.

A dedicated chess player did not automatically become the best player in the world. A hardworking fighter could still reach the limits of his coordination, reflexes or understanding long before reaching the highest level.

If Joe interpreted his new talent correctly, those limits might operate differently for him.

Every genuine effort would produce something.

Perhaps the gain could become microscopic. Perhaps at some distant stage a year of work would provide less improvement than a week did now. His lifespan could still become the final constraint, and no amount of effort could teach him a method he had never gained access to in the first place.

But if work never became completely worthless, then a bottleneck would no longer mean impossible.

It would mean slow.

That distinction was enormous.

No Regression made the combination even more powerful. If genuine effort always produced some progress and genuine progress never disappeared, then improvement could accumulate indefinitely as long as Joe had enough time, instruction and resources to continue.

In theory, he could eventually become extraordinarily good at almost anything he seriously pursued.

Martial arts.

Medicine.

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Writing.

Fishing.

Even something like chess, if this world happened to possess it.

The question was no longer whether the talent existed.

Joe had seen the notification.

The questions were what counted as hard work, how large the reward was and whether every kind of skill followed the same rules.

The Talent Hall was the obvious place to begin testing.

Because Scholar Sean had already excused him from beginner literacy lessons, Joe could spend more of the early schedule on physical training than most new students. Four months of static foundation had also made his normal rate of improvement familiar enough that unusual progress should be easy to recognize.

The winter training yard had already been swept when Joe arrived. Frost still clung to the shaded ground along the wooden fence, but the main practice area was bare packed earth.

He stretched while the beginner group assembled, then entered the first of the six static stances.

Feet placed correctly.

Knees aligned.

Back straight.

Shoulders relaxed.

Breathing matched the posture.

After four months, the basic structure was no longer difficult to remember. Joe's mistakes had become smaller, which was precisely why progress had slowed compared with his first few weeks.

He completed the first stance, moved into the second and continued until he had performed all six.

Only then did something change.

There were no pale screen and no voice explaining what he had done wrong. Instead, several tiny imperfections in the completed sequence suddenly became easier to recognize.

His right foot during the third stance had turned slightly too far outward. His shoulders had carried unnecessary tension through part of the fifth, while his breathing had become shallower than necessary during one transition.

Joe remained still for a moment.

These were not entirely new concepts. Hall and the older trainees had spent months teaching him what correct posture should feel like.

What had changed was his understanding of his own execution.

He began again.

This time the third stance settled more naturally. His shoulders stayed relaxed through the fifth, and the breathing transition became smoother.

After completing all six positions, another small adjustment became apparent. His weight could settle more efficiently through one heel without stiffening the knee, and relaxing his abdomen slightly allowed him to maintain deeper breathing near the end of the sequence.

Joe continued.

Another set produced another small improvement.

Then another.

The talent did not provide knowledge from nowhere. It did not reveal movements Hall had never taught him or somehow teach him the dynamic foundation. Instead, genuine practice seemed to squeeze more value from the knowledge and experience he already possessed.

Joe deliberately tested the boundary.

He entered one stance carelessly, held it only briefly and stopped before completing the exercise.

Nothing noticeable happened.

He repeated it properly, maintaining the posture and breathing until the intended end.

The faint sense of improvement returned.

That clarified an important rule.

The talent did not reward empty repetition merely because Joe could claim he had practiced.

The work had to be genuine.

Joe liked that.

He continued until Hall began his rounds.

The older man stopped beside him, watched through several breaths and lightly adjusted the angle of Joe's hip.

"You've improved. Keep the lower body relaxed enough that you're not fighting your own stance."

Joe corrected it.

Hall watched for another moment, then moved toward the next trainee.

That single comment confirmed what Joe had already felt.

By breakfast, his legs trembled from fatigue and hunger had become difficult to ignore, but the improvement from one morning was clearly greater than what he normally achieved in the same amount of practice.

Joe did not need to pretend the difference was too subtle to estimate at all.

He had four months of experience with his own rate of progress.

If the effect continued at approximately this strength, three times his previous rate seemed like a reasonable preliminary estimate.

Possibly more.

That did not mean he could simply divide every future training period by three. Better stance execution was not the same thing as better blood-energy perception. Later stages could require entirely different abilities, and the benefit of the talent might change as the work became harder.

Still, his previous estimate of one and a half to two years for static foundation suddenly looked conservative.

That should have been entirely good news.

Instead, it created a second problem.

He could not let the difference become too obvious.

A child progressing somewhat faster than average would simply be called talented. The Hall already had several such students.

A child progressing multiple times faster than normal might attract a different kind of attention.

Joe trusted Simon's intentions completely.

He did not trust Simon's ability to keep an exciting piece of information confined to his own mouth.

If Joe told him his progress had suddenly accelerated, Simon would probably swear secrecy, then mention to Victor that Joe had become unusually good, explain the reason to Thomas when challenged and somehow tell Pam the entire story before dinner while insisting he had told nobody.

There was no malice in it.

Simon simply considered information another form of conversation.

Theodere presented a more serious issue.

Joe had no evidence that the older martial artist intended him harm, and he refused to invent sinister motives simply because Theodere was powerful. Still, Joe knew rare medicines existed. Hall had even spoken of treasures valuable enough to change someone's martial qualification.

If Joe began progressing at a rate that should not be possible, people could reasonably wonder whether he had consumed something extraordinary.

A child carrying a pouch of gold through a crowded market had done nothing wrong. That did not make the pouch safe.

Joe did not want to test human greed before he understood the world well enough to protect himself from it.

Fortunately, concealment did not seem difficult.

Hall managed too many students to track every minor improvement. Senior trainees corrected mistakes rather than maintaining detailed progress records. Theodere could probably judge far more accurately, but his appearance remained infrequent.

Joe would not deliberately practice badly.

That would waste advantage.

He simply did not need to display the full extent of his progress every time someone watched.

No Regression made that easy. Once he genuinely acquired an improvement, hiding part of it during supervised practice did not mean losing it.

After leaving the Hall, Joe performed another experiment at the river.

Fishing had become familiar enough over the previous years that his progress had slowed. He could build usable traps, recognize several reasonable places to set them and handle a crude fishing line without embarrassing himself.

That made it useful.

Winter had lowered the river and made the water painfully cold, so Joe remained inside the safer inlet. Bare willow branches reached over the gray current, and thin ice clung to shaded mud near the bank.

He pulled one trap from the shallows.

Empty.

The talent could not put fish where there were none.

That itself was a useful reminder.

Joe cleaned the trap, checked the reeds, replaced the bait and reset it carefully.

When the task was complete, the faint sense of improvement appeared again.

He looked at the opening.

The angle could be better.

Joe shifted the trap slightly toward the boundary where slow water met the edge of the current. Once he saw the new position, the reason became obvious: fish following the calmer path would approach the funnel more naturally.

At the next trap, he recognized unnecessary slack in the anchoring cord. Several attempts with the fishing line afterward gradually improved the movement of his wrist and the timing of his release.

The pattern was consistent.

Martial practice seemed to reward the completed exercise. An ordinary skill required a meaningful attempt from beginning to end.

Set the trap properly.

Tie the knot correctly.

Cast the line with real intent.

Complete the work, and some part of the effort became improvement.

Joe remained beside the river longer than necessary, watching the winter current pass beneath the branches.

Every Hard Work Pays Off ensured effort produced progress.

No Regression preserved genuine progress.

The combination changed its most important limitation.

Joe was no longer primarily worried about whether he could continue improving.

He needed enough time, knowledge and resources to keep doing useful work.

Resources immediately brought medicine to mind.

Mike's recovery paste had lasted only a few weeks after Starlight, but Joe had felt the difference clearly. Difficult training days were easier to recover from, soreness faded faster and he returned to the Hall in better condition the following morning.

Medicine did not replace training.

It allowed more training to remain productive.

With Every Hard Work Pays Off, that distinction had become even more valuable. Faster recovery meant more meaningful work, and more meaningful work meant more opportunities for the talent to improve him.

The problem remained exactly what it had been before.

Money.

Their family had once spent four silverlings on one common package of recovery medicine, and even that purchase had caused an argument that lasted most of an evening. Regular access to better medicinal food at the Hall costs more than the household could reasonably consider.

Buying his way around the problem was impossible.

Joe needed another path.

Green Hollow had only one obvious source of medicinal knowledge.

The village healer.

Even thinking about him made Joe uneasy.

He had avoided the man whenever possible since childhood. The healer could set bones, clean wounds and identify useful plants, but Joe also knew he practiced bloodletting and followed explanations about illness that conflicted sharply with what Joe remembered from modern medicine.

That had made it easy to keep his distance.

The Talent Hall had complicated that judgment.

Older students bought medicine from the village shop.

Visiting trainees sometimes did the same.

The preparations were not considered as good as the stronger medicinal food or expensive martial medicines available elsewhere, but they worked consistently enough that people paid for them.

That meant the healer was not simply a fraud.

He could be wrong about why some treatments worked while still knowing that they did.

Practical knowledge accumulated through generations could remain valuable even when the theory beneath it was incomplete.

Joe had understood that intellectually since childhood.

Now he had a reason to depend on it.

If Every Hard Work Pays Off applied to medicine as it did to martial arts and fishing, access to someone with decades of experience could become extraordinarily valuable. Joe could learn plant identification, preparation, dosage, storage and combinations, while separately judging whatever explanations the healer attached to them.

Eventually, he might learn enough to prepare useful medicines himself.

Medicine also gave him a safer outlet for visible talent.

A child who learned herbs unusually quickly could be called intelligent.

A child who tore through martial stages several times faster than everyone else would be much harder to explain.

If necessary, Joe could allow people to see one kind of progress while concealing the other.

The remaining problem was getting inside the shop.

The healer sold finished medicine.

That did not mean he taught customers how to make it.

Recipes had economic value precisely because other people did not know them. Nobody voluntarily destroyed a profitable business by explaining every preparation to anyone who asked.

Joe needed a reason to be allowed behind the counter.

An apprenticeship was the obvious solution.

Full-time apprenticeship was impossible because the Talent Hall already occupied most of his day. He would need some form of part-time arrangement after training, and he would need to convince the healer that teaching him was worth the inconvenience.

Joe did not want to approach with nothing but a request.

Money might help, but his family had very little to spare.

Labor would matter more.

And Joe had recently gained a way to produce something useful without spending silver.

He looked toward the fish traps.

That would be the first part of the plan.

Improve his fishing enough to create a worthwhile gift, find out what his father could reasonably contribute and only then ask for help approaching the healer.

Joe reset the last trap and headed home.

For once, his next step was not mysterious.

He simply needed to work for it.