All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 71: Workload Optimization

Chapter 71: Workload Optimization

Harold sat on his horse as he watched the brigade march out of the capital's gate. He wasn't exactly happy, but he supposed this was as good as he was going to get. The report from the adventurer team had not been followed up with a more detailed report. He could only assume that the two remaining members had not been able to get away. This had worked against him in some ways and for him in others.

He had managed to convince the king that they needed to send troops. With the looming war, though, all that he could peel off was a single brigade that was slightly understrength. Of the army's managed divisions, he had managed to get one of the more competent ones to draw from. But the command structure was not exactly what he had hoped. He wouldn't have cared if he wasn't being dragged along by himself - but since he was, it irked him that he was not only coming, but he wasn't in charge.

It was a type of punishment meted out by the king and tacitly supported by the Warden. Harold had been left in an advisory role for this mission on account of his failures. He couldn't complain too much, as he didn't have the military expertise to really lead a bunch of soldiers. But when it came to decisions involving demons, it was going to be difficult to take a backseat. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be much of a problem, but the brigade Commander was not someone he felt he had much influence over.

Colonel Gaston was a hard man. A man who worked his way up from the ranks. He started at the bottom as a commoner and has spent many years being promoted only due to extreme service and loyalty. All around, he sounded like an amazing commander, but he was a bit of a stickler for the rules. Worse, he didn't hold much respect for the mage types. Normally if the colonel had come from a noble family, he would have been more used to the political world of the mages and been more willing to listen to Harold's advice. At least Harold would understand how to interact with him.

As it was, he feared that Colonel Gaston would put them in danger by underestimating the threat they were going against. The nearly four and a half thousand men were not half of what Harold thought they would need, but it was better than nothing. With those numbers, though, it was going to take them a while to get there. It would be a little over a week of travel to Greg and then 5 days more to the castle. He thought that even if the Lieutenant was released immediately, they would still be okay. Still, Harold's leg bounced nervously in his stirrup.

For the last 170 years, the mages had been replacing the Lieutenant's containment on a monthly basis. It used to be a permanent fixture until some dolt messed it up while trying to replicate the thing. Harold shuddered to think about the consequences that the poor guy must have dealt with. Still, between the last replacement date and the estimated time for the Lieutenant to recover, they would be getting there several weeks before it would wake up. Harold could only hope that that was enough time to fix things.

He sighed. He was doing a lot of hoping now, and neither he nor the Warden was very happy about that. Well, while he was at it, he might as well hope that they could handle the monster that the college had summoned.

---

Beatrice and I had given up on the book soon after Tony woke up. Apparently, our conversation was getting pretty loud as she asked me questions, and I beeped confusedly back at her. Normally she seemed to have no trouble interpreting my sounds, but this time I didn't think she understood what I was saying. As she got increasingly confused and I struggled to explain that I didn't know what this was about, I was rescued by the other human's entrance.

Tony seemed like he hadn't charged quite enough, based on his 31% slower-than-usual movements, but maybe I was wrong. He and Beatrice began to make plans for "breakfast ."From their conversation, the word appeared to refer to a type of food. I normally wasn't really engaged in the whole human food situation until recently. And, of course, I had heard of breakfast before, but only now as I was really able to put together what it meant. Thinking about it, I tried to figure out how the word would be spelled. Not for any particular reason but just out of curiosity.

My humans wanted to go make their breakfast, and I followed them to the kitchen. As we traveled, they talked about chickens and eggs and other food. I made my way over to the little crack that I caught the little furry mess maker in so long ago. I now had a word to describe it. It had been a small rodent that was either a mouse or a rat. With its size, I would say it was either a very large mouse or a small rat, so it was hard to say. But one thing I remembered was that they tended to not be solitary creatures. And if there was one, there might be others. So I sat there patiently with my claw extended, ready to pounce in case anyone came out.

I wasn't lucky enough to catch one while the humans ate, but it was a good way to pass the time. It also gave me time to ponder the human food situation more. Tony returned to full movement efficiency after eating, suggesting that humans really did require some combination of food and charging to function optimally. I wondered why they needed two separate types of fuel. Soon after they finished, they went about their separate days. Tony ventured outside to go take stock of the gardens that he hadn't gotten to yesterday, and Beatrice and I went back upstairs. We checked on the fire elementals before we did anything else. We found nothing to worry about; apparently, we had done our job well.

We continued exploring the hallway companionably. As we checked each room, I did my best to clean them. Most of the time, we didn't need to stay in a room for very long. We found a few more that were similar to the fire elemental room but had a significantly lesser number of cages. Most of the time, we stopped to contain them right away. Only a few did we skip at Beatrice's behest.

Now that I had some improved knowledge of the containment circles from that book, they made a lot more sense when I was assisting Beatrice. Now I wasn't just copying what was there, but I was starting to understand why they were shaped the way they were. I didn't think I would be able to create one from scratch completely, but if I were to modify one for a different purpose, I might be able to do that. I could definitely replicate one I'd already seen before.

We made decent progress that first day. We had checked most of the hallway, but there was a lot more than just this one hallway upstairs. However, Beatrice seemed to think that most of the dangerous specimens were kept in this area. And if she was right, it made sense to prioritize these. Maybe other demons would escape elsewhere, but those messes could be cleaned. Damage done by something like a fire elemental would be nearly impossible to fix for us. I still couldn't repair fire damage, after all.

We spent the entire day doing this. And when it was time for humans to charge again, we went downstairs and back to bed. This time while the humans charged, I went around cleaning the bottom floor. I still didn't need to, but it felt nice. I took my time and treated it as a meditative pursuit. Plus, I'd rather clean it too often than not often enough. With how things had been lately, who knew when my attention would be shifted toward some new adventure?

This left me with many hours before I expected Beatrice to wake up, let alone Tony. For some reason, Tony seemed to need longer to charge his batteries. Oh well. With nothing else to do, I went back to trying to decipher A is for Alchemy.

I flipped back to the first chapter and read it from the beginning again. Taking my time to dissect each word, I still breezed through the first eight chapters. Everything that Beatrice and I had practiced today helped cement my knowledge from it. When I got to chapter 9, reading about intent, I was still thoroughly confused, though. Eventually, I decided to skip that chapter and just move on. Once I was in uncharted territory, I found that I was reading much slower. It took a lot more time for me to simulate the new information than it was to review the previous information in a different context.

Over time as I did this, I felt like I learned a lot about some of the basic principles of being interested and what Beatrice and I had been doing upstairs. Again Beatrice woke first and came over to see me reading. She continued her questions from the previous day, and this time instead of just trying to let her know I didn't know the answers, I tried to engage with her. We seemed to have a conversation as she would put forth an idea, and I could give her my general impression of it. It was frustrating not to be able to explain my thoughts fully, but I thought I was able to convey my opinions on matters well enough.

Tony woke up, and the pattern repeated. This time while they ate breakfast, I didn't wait for another mouse to come out. I instead found that the cat was back. It seemed to take him a couple days to forgive me, but now it wandered into the kitchen with an arrogant gait and sat on the counter looking down at me. I looked up and met its gaze.

"I didn't know you guys had a cat," Tony said as he jumped out of his seat, extending a hand slowly. The cat sniffed it and flopped over on its side as Tony began to stroke the cat between its ears. "Who's a good kitty."

I was a little taken aback. I had not received any more pats from Tony since the first ones, yet he dispensed them so easily to a newcomer? In fact, maybe he only dispensed them to newcomers? That would be unacceptable. Even more, the reason why I needed him to teach Beatrice this skill. But he clearly had his priorities wrong, giving my hard-earned affection to a third party. I bumped into Tony's ankles indignantly. He jumped slightly, surprised, before looking down at me.

"Oh, don't worry, I didn't forget about you," he said, and he kneeled down to pat my outer shell gently.

I turned around, and I heard a gasp, but it was just Beatrice covering her mouth with her hand. I don't know why, but she looked like she was almost choking on her food. Setting that aside, I was immensely pleased. But the attention session didn't last very long. Tony had apparently finished taking stock of the garden and the animals and now knew what needed to be done to care for them. So he set off, once again braving the horrors of the world outside. Beatrice and I went upstairs to continue our own mission.

The day was a bit more exciting than the previous ones. Apparently, we were dealing with some more threatening experiments this time. We hadn't allowed any major breaches of containment, but the last few had come pretty close. Luckily, there was nothing so destructive as fire, but a few of the bird-shaped creatures of wind had been chirping angrily at us from inside their cages as we redrew the circles.

Beatrice seemed to relax when we left the final room at the end of the hallway. "We still have a lot of ground to cover, but I think those are the most dangerous ones. The next things we should check out are some of the animal resource gathering stations. Those normally just contain normal animals that are either harvested or have some part of them harvested. The animals are rarely dangerous, but I imagine many ran out of food a long time ago."

I wasn't sure what to make of that and decided to reserve any sort of judgment until we opened the first door. Unfortunately for me, that first door set all of my sensors into overdrive.