CHAPTER 29: THE PANEL

Joe spent the first week dividing his attention between both foundations.

He refused to abandon Static practice simply because the Hall now considered him ready to move forward.

His hidden Major Success was too valuable.

Static Foundation sharpened his perception and strengthened the resonance.

Dynamic Foundation tested whether that resonance could survive movement.

The two methods were beginning to support each other.

That gave Joe another reason to try something he had postponed for months.

The panel.

On a Hall rest day, he went behind the house.

The old tree he had once used to count birthdays had grown thicker, its bark carrying years of small scars from his earlier marks. Joseph had eventually forbidden further carving, but the tree remained one of Joe's favorite private places.

The autumn fields beyond the yard were mostly bare now. Wind moved through dry grass along their edges, and somewhere nearer the river a flock of small birds rose suddenly from the reeds before settling again farther downstream.

Joe sat beneath the tree.

He settled his breathing and found the blood energy within his body.

Major Static Success had changed the sensation enough that he no longer needed to search for it.

Then he focused on the strange mental pressure associated with the pale birthday notifications.

Blood energy shifted.

Something pulled on it.

A faint rectangle appeared in front of him.

This time it did not immediately vanish.

Joe stared.

The panel was sparse.

No strength.

No intelligence.

No list of mysterious attributes.

Only skills.

[Skills]

Fishing — Lv.4 50/100

Farming — Lv.3 48/100

Medicine — Lv.2 98/100

Static Foundation — Lv.3 2/100

Dynamic Foundation — Lv.1 5/100

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Joe remained still.

The addition of Medicine caught his attention almost as much as the martial skills.

Lv.2.

Ninety-eight out of one hundred.

That felt surprisingly accurate.

Joe could identify and process most of Merek's common materials, understood far more about healing, nourishment, preparation and storage than an ordinary village apprentice of his age should, and performed routine shop work efficiently.

But he was not Merek.

He lacked years of unusual cases, independent diagnosis and complete recipes.

More importantly, much of what he knew still existed as pieces learned from another person's system.

He had not yet turned enough of those pieces into medicine he could independently understand and reproduce.

Apparently the panel agreed.

Joe let his eyes move lower.

Static Foundation gave the clearest reference for the martial levels.

He had just reached Major Success.

The panel called it Lv.3.

That strongly suggested Lv.2 corresponded with Minor Success, while Lv.1 represented the long learning period before the first recognized threshold.

Fishing at Lv.4 was even more interesting.

Joe had spent years working at it, especially after Every Hard Work Pays Off appeared. The result suggested his fishing skill had already moved into something comparable to Complete Success.

Farming sat at Lv.3 despite receiving far less deliberate attention.

At first that seemed strange.

Then Joe realized he was comparing entirely different skills.

Learning to harvest grain efficiently was not equivalent to building a martial foundation capable of resonating with blood energy.

The levels measured mastery within each skill.

They did not claim that each skill required equal time or effort.

The number following a level appeared to measure progress toward the next one.

Static at 2/100 made sense.

He had only recently entered Major Success.

Dynamic Foundation had reached 5/100 after approximately a week.

Medicine at 98/100 suggested something different.

A bottleneck.

Joe had learned almost everything his current pattern of work could easily teach him. Another hundred trays of roots might improve his speed without producing the understanding necessary to cross into the next level.

The thought interested him.

Every Hard Work Pays Off guaranteed that genuine effort produced something useful.

It did not guarantee that repeating the same easy task forever was the best way to progress.

Some thresholds probably required new kinds of effort.

New problems.

Independent understanding.

Joe immediately calculated how long Dynamic Foundation would take if five points per week continued.

Then he stopped himself.

Static Foundation had already shown why that estimate was unreliable.

Early improvement could be fast.

Near bottlenecks, each reward became smaller.

Every Hard Work Pays Off guaranteed a return from genuine effort.

It did not guarantee that every return was equal.

That was probably why ordinary practitioners could remain stuck for years.

They might improve by amounts too small to recognize until circumstances, comprehension or opportunity finally allowed those gains to become a breakthrough.

Joe possessed two advantages they did not.

No Regression kept every genuine improvement.

And now the panel let him see that progress existed.

The screen flickered faintly.

Blood energy continued draining from him.

Joe released his focus.

The panel vanished.

He leaned against the tree.

It was dangerously satisfying.

He understood immediately why games in his previous life had used visible progress bars.

Human beings tolerated unreasonable amounts of repetition when a number moved afterward.

Joe promised himself not to become obsessed with checking.

Four days later, he checked again.

Dynamic Foundation had increased.

Medicine had not visibly moved.

Apparently two kinds of patience needed practice.

Joe eventually restricted himself to occasional checks, usually no more than once each week.

The panel consumed blood energy every time it appeared. Maintaining it too long meant reducing what remained available for actual martial training.

Information was useful.

Progress was more useful.

Still, the panel changed one thing permanently.

Joe no longer had to confuse slow progress with no progress.

And the stubborn 98/100 beside Medicine gave him another problem worth solving.