Chapter 56: Once Could Still Be Luck

Chapter 56: Once Could Still Be Luck

Silas lost his place in the exercise when Nim sneezed.

The strip of paper he had been guiding between two cups clipped a rim and fell. His pen kept moving for another word before he realized he had written the same number twice.

From the bed, Nim blinked at him.

"You were doing it," the spirit said.

"Briefly," Silas said.

"Then I sneezed."

"I noticed," Silas said.

Silas put down the pen and picked up the paper with his fingers. Four days had passed since the tutoring session. He had started with simple sums and one floating scrap, then moved on to reading while guiding an object along a marked path. Both tasks worked right up until he got interested in one of them.

The other would carry on just long enough for him to make a confident mistake.

He crossed out the latest wrong answer. Dividing his attention hadn’t stopped him neglecting one half of it.

This time, he swapped the calculation for a paragraph he already understood. He guided the paper between the cups, read a sentence, then deliberately shifted more of his attention to the turn.

The scrap cleared the rim.

Silas went back to the text without losing the path entirely. The movement grew less smooth, but it kept going where he wanted it.

For the rest of the session, he practiced changing the balance between them. He finished with a headache and a page he had actually understood, which was a considerable improvement on the evening before.

Vessa had the dart ready the following afternoon.

It lay in its case looking like an unremarkable sliver of polished metal, narrow through the body and tapering to a point at each end. For the price, Silas had expected something more impressive. When he lifted it, though, its balance held beautifully through the turn.

He brought it to a stop above the counter.

Vessa watched him lower it into the case, checked that he closed the catch properly, and handed him the receipt.

"Use a proper backstop," she said.

Silas promised he would. For once, she had no further corrections.

At home, he kept the live dart covered. The blunt practice blank Vessa had included was less exciting, but he could use it without worrying about what lay beyond a missed turn.

The blank moved easily under the studio’s amplification. Silas kept it slow, practicing approaches, stops, and withdrawals until he knew its balance.

Split Focus let him take three careful steps while the blank followed a line above the desk.

On the fourth, he caught the chair with his heel.

The metal hit the far wall.

Silas stood very still, one hand braced on the chair, and listened to Nim relocate to the kitchenette.

"That," he told the empty bed, "is why it wasn’t the sharp one."

He moved the furniture before trying again.

The next two days held ordinary classes, Returning Edge practice, and shorter private sessions than he wanted. His enthusiasm kept outlasting his concentration. After one especially useless evening, he shut the interface rather than watch the percentage refuse to move.

He slept, ate properly, and came back to it in the morning. The same turn that had beaten him the night before worked on his second attempt.

By the morning the copy was due to expire, the remaining time had become impossible to ignore.

He cleared a narrow path along the room and set the blunt blank in its starting position. A book lay open on the desk. This time, he would walk the slow recovery step Renn had taught him while guiding the metal through a separate turn.

Neither action was new. Putting them together kept dragging his shoulder after the dart.

Silas started again.

His foot turned. He let his attention settle on his balance for an instant while the blank finished its simple approach. Then he adjusted its angle without trying to move his whole body with it.

The metal passed the first marker. His rear foot came around, uncrossed, and he stopped with his weight squarely beneath him.

He could feel both demands clearly enough to choose between them.

Silas drew the blank back and ran the sequence again from the other side. He wasn’t fast. But he no longer had to abandon one movement to rescue the other.

[Split Focus — Assimilation: 100%.]

[Permanent acquisition complete.]

He let the metal settle onto the cloth before sitting down.

For a little while, Silas just breathed and looked at the message. Then he laughed, quietly at first, and rubbed both hands over his face.

Seven days. One visit. It’s mine.

When he drew mana for a gentle circulation afterward, he noticed the difference beneath the excitement. A troublesome stretch of the current was easier to follow. He could attend to its unevenness without losing track of the rest, and the mana itself felt less reluctant to answer.

The first ring within his Core hadn’t changed. He badly wanted to settle down with Steady Current and explore how much easier the circulation felt now.

His practice-room booking started in an hour.

He went to get his blade instead.

The rented room had a reinforced target wall, a clear floor, and a door that locked from the inside. Silas checked the listed privacy conditions again before setting down his bag. Nobody would be observing an ordinary booking without cause.

He still left Shadow Passage and Burst Motion alone.

The dart was the reason he had come. He needed to know what he could do with it outside his studio.

Its first approach felt disappointingly heavy.

Silas stopped it short of the target and brought it back. The room’s extra output was gone, exactly as he had known it would be. Knowing hadn’t stopped him hoping the difference would feel smaller.

He shortened the distance and tried a straight thrust.

The point sank into the replaceable facing with a sharp sound. He pulled it free, inspected the mark, and felt the beginnings of a grin. It hadn’t gone through the reinforced backing. It had gone far enough into the softer layer that he wouldn’t want it anywhere near his ribs.

Now he needed to manage it while holding a sword.

He used the blunt blank first, keeping the shortblade’s edge well away from his own returning hand. Returning Edge drew his weapon through its recovery line while Remote Grasp sent the metal toward a second marker.

The first attempt wrecked his guard. The second left the blank tumbling sideways. On the third, he abandoned the extra attack halfway and finished the ordinary return cleanly.

After several more repetitions, Silas swapped the blank for the dart and faced the empty target lane. He chose a short, direct attack, with no elaborate circling. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

His shortblade swept across the first marker. He recovered behind its guard just as the dart struck the target beside it.

Silas held the position, breathing through his mouth.

Both had gone exactly where he intended.

He retrieved the dart, grinning now, and tried again. Once could still have been luck.

The second mark sat a finger’s width from the first.

On his way out, he checked the narrow case twice to make sure it was fastened. The little weapon barely changed the weight of his bag.

For the first time since reading the competition notice, he was impatient to keep preparing rather than simply afraid of running out of time.