Chapter 339: Preparation

For a few seconds, nobody says anything.

Garen keeps looking out the window, at the same sky I just told him would come down on us. The news hit both of them, but in him the shock almost immediately starts giving way to something else.

I would say calculation.

"Forty-five days of rain before the collapse," he says. "That gives us some warning."

"It does."

He rests his elbows on his knees.

"We’ll need to sit down with maps later. I want to know which regions stay defensible in your visions, where the routes break first, and which points can sustain a concentration of population. If Azure Prime starts preparing corridors, depots, and containment positions before the crisis, the Deepwarden loses the advantage of arriving with solutions when everyone’s already desperate."

That’s exactly the reaction I expected from Garen.

He finds out the world will end and, a few minutes later, he’s already thinking about where to put food.

"Just don’t turn preparation into a list of targets."

Garen brings his eyes back to me.

"Explain."

"If you build depots, fortresses, and evacuation routes two years early, someone’s going to want to know why. The Deepwarden doesn’t need to wait for the Tide Collapse to sabotage a structure it discovers is important."

I pick up the bottle of Lunaria and finally drink a little.

"A city with no depot improvises when food runs short. A city prepared to depend on a depot that feeds a hundred thousand people collapses if someone contaminates it in the right week. The better the preparation, the greater the damage if the enemy knows exactly where to cut."

Garen goes thoughtful.

"So everything has to come with counterintelligence."

"And redundancy. Never build a solution that, once destroyed, takes everything else down with it."

He nods slowly, already far from that room in thought.

Kaelen, on the other hand, has gone quiet.

The glass rests on the table. His back, relaxed against the couch before, is straight now. Even the usual boredom in the right eye is gone.

Garen notices before I do.

He looks at his old companion and lets his breath out through his nose.

"I know that posture."

Kaelen doesn’t answer.

Garen tips his chin toward him.

"He’s had an idea."

The red gem spins once, faster.

"I need to change the Academy’s instruction lines."

Garen surfaces from his own calculations.

"What are you thinking?"

Kaelen rests his hands on his knees.

"Hunting and containment stop being optional. I’m going to impose a minimum load, unit work, and rupture-response training."

He stands while he’s still talking.

"I have Rank D cadets who know how to kill monsters but have never held a defensive line. Others spend months choosing only the disciplines that favor their own Class. That works when each of them is responsible for their own career. It doesn’t work if in two years I need to put thousands of them between a city and creatures no one knows. Especially in joint effort."

He passes us and heads to the desk.

"Evacuation, containment, OXI management in the field, prolonged combat..."

He mutters something else I can’t make out as he pulls a sheet of paper.

Garen smiles.

"He’s already started."

Kaelen sits and begins to write.

I watch the scene for a few seconds.

Changing a few classes seems small next to the sky falling, but Kaelen is about to touch the entire philosophy of Azure Academy.

The current model is built around freedom. The Academy offers instructors, equipment, hunting fields, knowledge, and access. The student chooses how to use it. Some spend weeks hunting. Others bury themselves in training rooms or workshops. If someone wants to ignore half the available opportunities, the consequence is their own responsibility.

Kaelen has just decided that certain competencies will stop being a choice.

The Tide Collapse is still two years away and it has already started to alter an Academy that, in my memories, never worked this way.

I leave the two of them with the problem.

I have my own.

Rhayne needs to be evaluated, the dungeon is close, and Richard is still waiting on a decision about industrial expansion.

I stand.

"I’ll leave you two to destroy Azure Prime’s educational model in peace. I have a few things to handle."

Kaelen doesn’t react. He keeps writing while he mutters something about minimum field hours.

Garen raises a hand in farewell.

"I want those maps later."

"Later."

"See you soon, kid."

I leave the room while Kaelen crosses out a whole line and starts over on another sheet.

The moment I reach the corridor, I touch the communicator behind my ear.

"Rayne? Are you free?"

Rhayne answers a few seconds later.

There are voices in the background and the distant sound of some creature being dragged across the ground.

"Dryden?"

"Where are you?"

"Leaving the hunting fields."

Her breathing is still a little fast.

"How did it go?"

"Better. My Void skills are responding properly now. I held the flow longer and stopped before I started losing stability."

That’s already progress.

"Stop by Zhang Xi before you head back."

"What for?"

"I want her to check you. Channels, internal injury, exhaustion, anything you’re ignoring because you feel fine."

There’s a small pause.

"I feel fine."

"Exactly."

She lets her breath out.

"All right."

"If Zhang says you’re whole, we leave tomorrow."

The noise in the background drops.

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

This time, there’s no complaint.

"I’ll go find her now."

I close the channel.

The factory is my next stop.

When I arrive, I find Richard at a makeshift table near the production lines, surrounded by stock records. Oliver is on the other side of the warehouse, talking to two workers about crates of alchemical glass.

The two of them come over when they see me.

Richard starts before I can even ask.

"We managed to stabilize the last batch, but space became the worst bottleneck. If we increase production in here, I’ll have to choose between storing raw materials or finished product."

Oliver points his thumb at the side wall.

"The warehouse next door hit the market today."

I look at him.

"The whole building?"

"The whole thing."

That settles half the conversation before it starts.

The two warehouses share the same street, practically the same outer wall, and access to the same service corridor. Expanding into another district might cost less up front, but it would create constant transport of Lunaria, glass, and LDP between facilities.

Here, we could treat both as a single complex.

"Defense?" I ask.

Oliver answers immediately.

"Better than splitting them. We close the side corridor, reinforce two entrances, and that’s it. One perimeter. I can set up new security artifacts without having to double the security shifts."

Richard nods.

"And I’d move storage and packaging to the new building. This one goes almost entirely to production. I don’t need to create another administration, another independent stock, or another logistics flow."

That’s exactly what I want to hear.

"Price?"

Oliver gives me the figure. Around 20 plates.

I make a grimace.

"Are they selling the floor or the owner’s family with it?"

"The location is good."

"It must be."

Richard pulls out another document.

"It still pays off. If we rent two smaller spaces in different regions, we lose the difference in transport and security within a few months."

I look again at the warehouse through the wall that separates us from it.

"Negotiate. Don’t take the first number, and don’t let it look like we need the building."

Oliver crosses his arms.

"And if another buyer shows up?"

"Then we find out how much they really want to pay."

Richard smiles faintly.

"I’ll handle it."

The two of them start arguing about where to move the stock before I even leave.

That catches my attention too.

Not long ago, Oliver would have tried to take over half the decision just to prove he was still needed. Now he talks about defense while Richard talks about production, each one naturally occupying the area where he’s most useful.

That’s much better. I need them working like this.

I get back to the Academy at the end of the day.

Kaelen is probably still destroying curricula. Garen is likely turning my predictions into maps, depots, and supply lines. Rhayne is probably with Zhang Xi, and Richard and Oliver have already started planning an expansion I haven’t even bought yet.

And finally I’m alone. I didn’t think that would be possible today.

I put Kraken to rest near the bed when I enter the dormitory.

I’m not looking for a sword with a personality that bails on me when I need it most. I’m not sure if such a thing is even possible, but I’d rather not take the chance

I sit and open my profile.

[Dryden Sands]

[Rank: C — Reef]

I scroll through the information until I find the skill I’ve been avoiding since my evolution.

[OVERMEMORY]

[Type: Active]

[Consume a Memory to activate Drifter Mode.]

I keep looking at the description.

’Consume a Memory.’

It’s still one of the most unpleasantly vague phrases Ocean’s Law has ever given me.

A Drifter Memory?

A personal memory?

Something absorbed by the system?

The word could mean many things, and almost every bad interpretation involves losing something I couldn’t get back.

Even so, tomorrow we enter a dungeon.

If Overmemory can change what my Class does in combat, going on ignoring it out of fear is a choice too.

I just need to find out how far the system lets me go before it actually charges the price.

I breathe in deep.

"Overmemory."

The interface responds.

[OVERMEMORY ACTIVATED.]

My body tenses but nothing happens.

Then a new line appears.

[A Memory must be selected.]

I wait while the window grows in front of my eyes.

[What would you like to Consume?]

Below the question, a second area starts to form.

Empty lines appear one after another.

I keep looking at the first of them while the system starts to fill it in.