CHAPTER 37: THE FIRST LAYER

Joe delayed serious Skin Tempering long enough that Simon eventually became irritated.

"You've had permission for weeks, you've read the books, Hall showed you the method, and you've been asking me questions about my skin for so long that I regret teaching you anything. What exactly are you waiting for?"

Joe looked up from his notes. "To understand it."

"You understand it."

"I understand more of it."

Simon stared at him for several seconds before giving up. "Fine. You understand more than I did when I started."

That was closer to the truth.

Simon had needed enough knowledge to practice the inheritance safely.

Joe intended to push the stage farther than ordinary practitioners if his talents allowed it. If he eventually attempted a second or even third complete Skin Tempering, any mistake he made now could be repeated thousands of times.

Several additional weeks of preparation seemed cheap.

Eventually the library stopped providing useful new answers.

Superior Skin Tempering techniques were mentioned often enough that Joe understood what made them superior, but the methods themselves were not recorded. Some supposedly used more complicated circulation routes to spread blood energy evenly from the beginning, while others reduced waste or strengthened naturally difficult areas more effectively.

Joe did not attempt to reconstruct any of them from incomplete descriptions.

That would be clever in exactly the wrong way.

The Hall's inheritance was reliable.

He would use what he possessed.

Repeated tempering offered a safer path to improvement later.

One complete pass would establish the skin.

A second could reinforce the tissue and reduce whatever unevenness remained.

A third might improve it further.

The gains would almost certainly diminish, while the cost in time and resources increased.

Joe could decide whether that trade was worthwhile after the first completion.

Anything earlier would be confidence without evidence.

His understanding of the panel changed before his serious Skin Tempering began.

One evening Joe summoned it while thinking specifically about medicine and martial progress.

The familiar display appeared.

[Skills]

Fishing — Lv.4 67/100

Farming — Lv.3 91/100

Medicine — Lv.3 27/100

Static Foundation — Lv.4 3/100

Dynamic Foundation — Lv.3 5/100

Skin Tempering — Lv.1 2/100

The final line immediately caught his attention.

Skin Tempering had appeared even though Joe had not performed sustained tempering yet.

After thinking about it, the explanation seemed straightforward.

He knew the method. Hall had already guided him through introductory control exercises, and Joe had successfully moved blood energy toward the correct tissues without maintaining enough pressure to create meaningful tempering.

Lv.1 had always represented the learning stage before the first recognized threshold.

Skin Tempering appeared to follow the same rule.

The 2/100 did not mean Joe had reached Initial Skin Tempering.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelPhoenix; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It meant he had begun acquiring the skill.

His attention moved upward.

Fishing and Farming were useful, but he no longer needed to see them every time he checked cultivation.

Joe focused on the panel with a simple intention.

Only medicine and martial skills.

The display flickered.

Two lines disappeared.

[Skills]

Medicine — Lv.3 27/100

Static Foundation — Lv.4 3/100

Dynamic Foundation — Lv.3 5/100

Skin Tempering — Lv.1 2/100

Joe noticed the difference in blood-energy consumption almost immediately.

The panel still drained him.

Just less.

He dismissed it, recovered, then tested again later under roughly similar conditions. Over several days he repeated the comparison enough times to trust the result.

The shorter panel appeared to cost roughly thirty percent less blood energy.

That revealed something important.

The panel was not a fixed page waiting to be opened.

Its contents depended partly on what Joe wanted to know.

His first instinct was to experiment further.

Writing.

Reading.

Herbal identification.

Cooking.

Perhaps individual medicinal preparation skills.

Then Joe stopped himself.

More information probably meant more cost, and learning that his handwriting had improved by twelve points would not change anything important about tomorrow's work.

The panel was useful because it answered questions that mattered.

It did not need to catalogue his entire life.

Joe kept the reduced version.

The remaining numbers provided a clean summary of where he stood.

Static Foundation — Lv.4 3/100.

Complete Success.

Publicly, Hall believed Joe was somewhere beyond Minor Success.

That gap would eventually need to narrow.

Not yet.

Dynamic Foundation — Lv.3 5/100.

Major Success.

Also hidden.

Showing Dynamic Minor had already produced exactly what Joe wanted: access to Skin Tempering, the library and expensive nutritional support.

Immediately revealing another breakthrough would gain less while creating more questions.

That could wait too.

Medicine — Lv.3 27/100.

The library had accelerated the skill rapidly after Joe broke through the previous bottleneck. He understood more why preparations worked instead of merely knowing how to repeat Merek's processes.

That did not make him equal to Merek.

Merek possessed decades of strange patients, failed treatments, unusual illnesses and practical judgment that Joe had never had the opportunity to acquire.

The panel measured Joe's skill.

It did not manufacture experience.

Then there was the final line.

Skin Tempering — Lv.1 2/100.

Almost untouched.

Joe found the low number strangely satisfying.

He had spent years building the foundations necessary to reach this point.

Now the first true stage of body tempering waited almost completely ahead.

There was still time to build it properly.

The following morning, Joe arrived at the Hall before most of the trainees.

A thin layer of mist hung above the ground, and the packed-earth training yard smelled damp from the night. Water clung to the grass beyond the fence while a faint breeze moved through Green Hollow.

Hall was already there.

He looked toward Joe as he approached.

"Finally?"

"I think I understand enough."

Hall's mouth moved slightly. "That's usually when people discover how much they don't."

He led Joe toward a quieter section of the yard.

"Torso first."

Joe removed his outer shirt and deliberately paid attention to the ordinary sensations before he changed anything: cool air against the chest, faint pressure from the breeze and the almost unnoticeable movement of fine hairs along his arms.

Static Foundation brought the blood-energy resonance into focus almost immediately.

At Complete Success, sensing it no longer required searching.

Dynamic Major gave Joe a degree of control Hall did not know he possessed.

Following the inheritance exactly as taught, Joe guided only a small amount outward.

Not toward the surface.

Into the living tissue beneath it.

Warmth developed across part of his chest.

His attention sharpened immediately.

The sensation was not sitting on the surface.

It was beneath it.

Exactly where his working model placed the dermis.

Hall spoke beside him. "Less pressure. You're not trying to force your way through."

Joe reduced the flow.

"Now spread it. If one section responds slowly, don't compensate by dumping more energy into it."

Joe widened the area gradually.

The response was uneven.

Some parts accepted the blood energy with surprising ease, while others seemed reluctant enough that the instinctive solution would have been to push harder.

Joe resisted.

Instead, he adjusted the distribution carefully until the warmth spread more evenly through the selected area.

A faint tingling followed.

Then pressure.

Joe held the state, observing without interfering.

The tissue felt increasingly vivid beneath his awareness.

A sharper sensation appeared near the edge of the tempered region.

Curiosity immediately pulled Joe's attention toward it.

Hall spoke before he could investigate.

"Stop."

Joe withdrew the energy.

The warmth remained for several breaths after the resonance settled back.

His chest looked almost unchanged except for a faint flush.

Joe touched the area lightly.

At first it felt completely ordinary.

Then perhaps slightly more noticeable.

He could not tell whether that was a genuine change or expectation influencing perception.

One session was nowhere near enough evidence.

Joe smiled anyway.

Hall noticed.

"You've accomplished almost nothing."

"I know."

"Good. Then don't act like you discovered a lost inheritance. Recover properly, and if the tissue settles by tomorrow, you do the same thing again."

Joe lowered his hand and looked once more at the skin across his chest.

For weeks he had studied what Skin Tempering might be doing.

Now the knowledge that mattered would come from repeating the process, observing the changes and correcting his understanding against reality.

The first genuine cycle was complete.

The real work had finally begun.