The other person at the table was Elena. Elena was a complete speed fanatic. Her current speed was 44, and her potential speed was at an unbelievable level like 615. She had literally buried all her points into speed; in return her defense was extremely low — she had the kind of build that would be knocked out if she took a single hit, though to land that hit you first had to catch her.
Peter, with a potential score of 2,980, was the only person at the table who fell below the three-thousand barrier. He had extremely high defense values, but because his ceiling was low he would never rise into our league. There were magnificent dishes on the table; from beef to chicken, a great variety of drinks and desserts, meats and fruits and vegetables. The view whetted my appetite as always. All at once I forgot everything and started stuffing myself. I loved the school's food so much that I could probably eat only from here for the rest of my life.
Dex, on the other hand, preferred to take just a slice of steak and water every time. He's probably very used to this kind of thing because of the clan he's heir to. What can I say, his loss.
After the meal we went back to the classroom. The afternoon class was the period's first theoretical Chi Control session — boring but mandatory. Throughout the class Elena kept poking me from behind, wanting to see my notes, and I ignored her; in the end she gave up and started scribbling something in her own notebook, probably complaints about me.
As we walked down the corridor at the end of class, Dex came up beside me, unusually. "She told today's history a bit differently, didn't she?" he said, his voice calm as always. "About the System."
I shrugged. "Teachers usually praise the system a lot."
Dex laughed slightly, a short laugh like a single note. "Maybe. But it caught my attention; it was as if this newly arrived teacher didn't like the system all that much. If I remember correctly, she said 'like a cage.' It's the first time I've heard that from a teacher."
I couldn't answer, I just nodded. But inwardly, those words got caught somewhere... Still, I looked at these things as conspiracy theory. Most of the world thinks this way about the subject, you could say.
Because Ms. Laura's "a new cage" comparison kept turning over in my mind, when the day's last class ended and everyone was leaving, I hung back a bit. Ms. Laura was tidying her own desk after the afternoon's theoretical session.
"Ms. Laura," I said, approaching with some hesitation. "I have a question, if you'll allow me."
She looked at me over the top of her glasses, with a tired but curious expression. "Let's hear it."
"In today's class, you implied that the System put humanity into a new cage. Why do you think that?"
She stayed silent for a moment, as if weighing her answer. "You're asking an interesting question — Kai, isn't it?" I didn't understand why the question was interesting, but she looked at me and thought deeply, and then: "Look, my child, a cage isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes a cage protects you from the dangers outside. But don't forget that a bird raised inside a cage can never fully know how wide its wings can open. The System shows you a ceiling. But have you ever considered whether that ceiling is real, or merely a limit no one has managed to pass so far?" I couldn't answer. Many people had asked this question, but no one had gone much further than their potential. Some people staged demonstrations outside just to do damage to their surroundings; there wasn't a single piece of evidence to support it, really, but...
While I was sunk in these thoughts Ms. Laura smiled faintly, but that smile was not an answer. "Go and rest, Kai. Maybe one day you'll find the answer to this question yourself." Then she gathered the files in her hand and left the classroom, leaving me alone with new questions in my head.
That evening while I was eating in the cafeteria, Elena sat down next to me, beside Dex who had sat down before me. "What did you talk about with Ms. Laura today?" she asked with curious eyes. "I saw you, you stayed behind when class ended."
"Nothing," I said, shrugging. "I just asked a question."
"What question?"
"It's not important," I said, wanting to close the subject.
When I returned to the dormitory, I watched the city lights from the window of my new room. In the distance, the darkness beyond the Barricades was silent as always — but today, for the first time, I felt that the silence was trying to tell me something. Ms. Laura's words, the question of "whether the ceiling is real or merely a limit no one has managed to pass so far," echoed over and over in my mind.
Then I put on my earphones and ignored that feeling. There was a new class tomorrow anyway, and I still didn't want to rack my brain about anything — or at least, that's what I was telling myself.
The next morning, I had the first session of my "Individual Development Counseling" class. When I went to the room indicated on the schedule, a small, plain room greeted me — there were only two armchairs and a small table between them. The counselor sitting across from me was a middle-aged woman with glasses; her name was Ms. Vinter.
Her grade wandered between F+ and E-. After their panels opened, people were categorized on a ladder that ran from H to Z: H, G, F, E, D, C, B, A, S, and finally Z, which remained in legends. Each letter had three branches — minus, neutral, and plus; that is, thirty steps. Each step meant 100 stat points. Someone with 0 points, whose panel hadn't opened yet, was H-; I had 266 points, which made me H+, and when I hit 300 I would become G-. But the power between the steps was not equal. Climbing from H to G would take months; climbing from A to S would take years. Only those with a potential of 3000 could ever see the Z step. After three thousand the system didn't work well enough to fully measure a person's Chi density, and so from there on there were only points. But people generally used only these grades when necessary, in order not to give away all their information; it was a more hidden, different name for the same things.
"Sit down, Kai," she said, smiling, but there was a professional distance in her smile. "These classes were designed so that every student can use their potential in the most efficient way. I looked at your file — your potential is quite high, but your current performance is far below it. By performance I don't mean your stats, but your work routine and what you do. Is there a reason for this?"
"I'm just not in a hurry," I said, shrugging. "My ceiling is high anyway, I'll get there one way or another."
Ms. Vinter raised her eyebrows slightly at this answer, then made a note of something on the tablet in her hand. "An interesting philosophy," she said, with neither approval nor criticism in her voice. "But I want you to know this, Kai — potential limits are calculated based on the data the System has observed so far. This is not an absolute truth, only an estimate. Some students, under unexpected conditions, can go beyond their own ceilings."
This sentence overlapped strangely with the "cage" comparison Ms. Laura had made. "Has anyone managed to do that before?" I asked; my curiosity had genuinely woken up.
"Rarely, and by a very small margin. We can say forty or fifty points past the ceiling," Ms. Vinter said in a careful tone. "But don't forget, at that step forty or fifty points means the last ten years of a person's life."
Then she changed the subject and started asking me a standard series of questions — my goals, my areas of interest, which stats I wanted to develop. And I gave ordinary, unimportant answers, without sharing my real thoughts.
When the class ended and I was leaving the room, Ms. Vinter's last words rang in my ears, but since I already knew all of it, I had been disappointed.
Friday evening I had come home early. For some students, leaving the academy counted as a step backwards — getting Chi training out in the world was far more primitive compared to the resources the school offered. But for me, that little apartment with its rotting stairs was more valuable than the most expensive student room in the world.
When I opened the door, Master Ren was sitting at the table as always; this time in front of him was an old book with yellowed pages. The writing on the cover couldn't be read anymore; only an embossed symbol could be made out — three lines interlocking inside a circle. It was a symbol I had never seen before.
"What's that?" I asked, while setting my bag down by the door.
He shut the book quickly, pulling it back as if his hand had been caught. "Something old," he said briefly. "Nothing to do with you."
It was a strange answer, but I was used to Master Ren's strangeness, and I didn't dwell on it.
While I was in the kitchen drinking water, Elisa came in, still in her school uniform. "Brother!" she said when she saw me, her face lighting up. "This weekend you were going to show me that training method that lets me work on two different steps at the same time, remember?"
"Which one?" I said; I didn't remember.
"That one, the one you learned in combat class in the first period — I don't remember its name, the last-step training, I think. Master Ren told me about it, said you know it."
Now I remembered. "Last-step training" was known as the most effective training method for people at the upper steps of the first stage of Chi. If your control was good enough you could even work on all five steps at once, and the method raised all your stats simultaneously. Elisa was at the fourth step; she couldn't carry more than two at once, but even two meant a big leap for her.