About a month later, there was another major official match in the Academy Inner Court—this time, Shokoya challenged the Soldier Cultivator Quan, to regain the spot he'd lost to him over a year ago. His improvements since that had happened had been, in my opinion, every bit as remarkable as mine. His overall way of fighting was strikingly different from mine as well. True to his nickname of Patient Blade, which unique among us former VR gamers was also his old gamer tag, he fought much more patiently than I did.
My style was to use a mix of offense and defense, in order to leverage my newfound talent in analyzing an opponent during battle to create an opening, rather than relying on my opponent to make a mistake. On paper, it was superior to Shokoya's because of that, but it actually opened me up to a lot more risk than Shokoya's did against skilled opponents—and we could both practically steamroll unskilled opponents anyway.
However, against Quan, he was at something of a disadvantage, because his soldier style had been developed along principles of being simple to use, yet highly efficient and effective, and his own training had refined its strengths even more. In other words, it was relatively easy for him to avoid making mistakes.
With Shokoya having worked both on endurance and on refining his movements so as to use less energy to avoid attacks, the prevailing opinion among seniors and my year alike was that the fight would take hours. So, when Shokoya landed the first touch not long after the 10th minute, it caused quite a reaction. Not least from me—Jue Zhu had talked me out of wagering Academy Points on the match's length, and I had a feeling now I was going to be one of a very few to avoid losing out on that outcome.
"And there we have the difference between combining hard work with talent and hard work alone," said a nearby voice. I turned in that direction, and my eyebrows raised on reflex.
"Elder Head Instructor, sir. I hadn't realized you'd come out for this."
"I got here a little late. At first, I wasn't going to, but decided to on the chance that this wasn't a foregone conclusion. Looks like I didn't need to bother.
So, Comprehension Genius," he said, giving me an ironic smile—one I'd learned to dread when he wore one when he called on me in class, because it always meant that either the answer would be very difficult, or what seemed to obviously be the correct answer almost certainly wouldn't be. By now, I was managing to avoid being tripped up more often than not, but that was in class, "might you offer any insight into how Shokoya has managed to surpass his longtime rival?"
I narrowed my eyes. He said that he wasn't going to bother coming when he thought it was a foregone conclusion, then said that 'he didn't need to bother'. Meaning, he figured Shokoya would win from the start.
I paid close attention to the fight, and after about a minute I saw it. "Quan isn't really making mistakes, and Shokoya is finding ways in anyway. Most of the time he still defends, but every so often, it's as though the same action by Quan produces a different result from Shokoya."
"Indeed." The Head Instructor gave a slight nod of approval. "Senyu Quan's foundation is in moves even an idiot could learn to perform relatively quickly. Outright mistakes won't appear with someone who knows what they're doing with it, like him. But if such a manner of fighting offered the same quality of defense as less brutish styles, who wouldn't be brutish?"
"There are gaps in his defenses...not big enough to land more than a minor strike, and Shokoya has to be totally in tune with the tempo of the battle—but that's what he does best."
He nodded again. "You likely subconsciously ignored them in your own fight with Quan. There's nothing strictly wrong with that—if you can create larger gaps in your opponent's defense, you don't need to rely on small ones—but I think if Shokoya challenges you later, that match will be much closer to worth watching than this."
Quan kept going for a little more than half an hour, but Shokoya overcame him as though it was inevitable. When the instructor overseeing the fight announced that with this, he reclaimed his #4 spot among the juniors, it wasn't only me, Jong, and Jue Zhu who congratulated him. Even some of the seniors joined in.
As Quan got back up, I got wary—it was likely, I thought, that he'd taken this loss much worse than losing to me. However, when he approached Shokoya, it was just to shake his hand. "I guess you were right," he said, addressing not Shokoya, but Jue Zhu, "leaning on my past as a soldier will only get me so far. I'll join your little volcano quest...for the sake of pushing myself to evolve my fighting style."
Jong clapped his fist to his hand, grinning. "With all the top 5 going, the place won't know what hit it! I can't wait!"
Of course, there were still several more months to get through before summer camp would start. Classwork was harder than ever, to the point even I struggled sometimes. In Etiquette, we'd finished with material on how to treat cultivators we outranked, and began a study on how to tell where we stood relative to someone we hadn't yet met with as little information as possible. Combat training period was as intense as it was personalized to each of us. In History and Politics, we covered as many organizations and families who reached across multiple Heavens in-depth as the Head Instructor could fit into the period. I started to wonder if and when that class would cover the Dimension Governors themselves. Technical Studies also intensified, with us being quizzed almost every day on the wide variety of topics that fit under it.
It was a lot harder now to maintain my record as the highest scorer on exams, but after pulling it off for now 5 exams (my score in Etiquette in the midterm wasn't perfect, but I made up for it overall) I was too invested to not try my hardest to do it again, even with the harder material. On top of that was pitching in with extensive preparations for our expedition to Flame Mountain.
There was a development on that front with about a month to go—a new item became stocked in the Inner Court Treasury, known as Communication Stones. They came in sets of 2, and each one was basically the same stone broken in half. It worked rather like a 2 way radio—give one half to the person you wanted to contact, touch your half, and you could send messages to them telepathically, and they could send to you by the same process. Crucially, according to the instructions, this worked even if the receiving end's half was put away in a System Inventory or spatial ring.
Its range was long, but not unlimited. It basically wouldn't be able to allow us to keep in touch after we went to separate sects, but it would with people who went to the same sect as each other. And of course, it would work where we'd be going for the next 2 summers.
I had to laugh. And since bursting out laughing out of nowhere was so unlike me, it drew comment from Shokoya, Jong, and Quan all at once while the five of us were meeting to discuss who would buy Communication Stones, how many, and how we'd use them this summer.
"Come on guys," I said, "we come from a world with smartphones and internet. One of the first thoughts I had when I got here was how annoying it was that our new Systems don't have any communication features. Now we're so starved for communication technology that we're geeking out over mystical walkie-talkies. It's just, so ridiculous I gotta laugh!"
Jong chuckled, and most of the others nodded their heads and shrugged their shoulders like, "yeah, all right," but Jue Zhu gave me a look that educated me on what it was like to be on the receiving end of wondering what planet you're from. Oh shit that's right...laborers were barred from the internet except for official duties. That was why...
"Uh, sorry."
"Don't worry about it. Although, it would have been nice to at least known what the internet was like before I came here."
Even Senyu Quan looked chagrined at that one. We picked the topic at hand back up quickly and emphatically after that. Eventually we agreed on the plan: The four of us would each buy one stone and give one "end" of it to Jue Zhu, and we'd all make our separate ways to Flame Mountain while periodically updating him. That way, we hoped to avoid getting in each other's way so that all of us could grind to the 7th Realm as quickly as possible, at which point we'd rejoin each other and take on the volcano. Jue Zhu was a little reluctant not to buy any of the Communication Stones himself, but they were actually quite affordable compared to actual treasures, so he acquiesced.