Alex kept reading.
The idea that rank decided how many Maximizers a pilot could carry stayed with him, and the book seemed to know it. The very next paragraph laid the numbers out plainly, as if the authors had expected every reader to ask the same question.
It cited the average number of Maximizers suitable for a typical Ravager of each rank. There was a small table beneath it, and Alex leaned in.
S rank had no fixed number. The entry read limit to be determined, and a note underneath explained that too few S rank pilots existed to set a reliable average. A rank pilots could handle seven to ten. B rank, five to seven. C rank, three to five. D rank, two. E rank, one.
His eyes moved down to the bottom of the table and stopped.
F rank was not listed.
He checked the line above, then the line below. There was no entry, no dash, no note. The table simply ended at E.
’They left it out.’
He frowned at the empty space, then worked it out slowly.
’So F ranks can’t use a Maximizer at all. They probably only get the small buffs the suit gives them. Enough to move a little faster, hit a little harder. Not enough mana to run through a weapon.’
It made sense. It also explained why the Foundation had drawn the line at C. Below it there was hardly anything a pilot could do.
He looked back at the C line.
’Three to five,’ he thought. ’That’s what a C rank can handle.’
Three Maximizers at minimum. Five if he was strong. It sounded like a lot to him, more than he had imagined anyone carrying at once. He tried to picture it, three weapons, each one a piece of a Beast, each one with its own power.
Then he stopped himself.
’Don’t do that.’
He knew where the thought was heading. It ran upward, past B and A, to the row marked S, where the number had not even been decided. It was easy to look at that row and dream. He caught himself doing it and pulled back hard.
’I’m not going to obsess over a rank way above the norm. There’s no way I get that high, not this fast. Probably not at all.’
He had no reason to think he would. He had no system, no cheat. He had a book and a month. If he made it to C, that would already be a miracle.
He shook off the thought and turned the page.
The next section moved on to the weapons themselves. Maximizers, the book explained, came in two common builds. The first was the blade, a close range weapon made for cutting, thrusting, and parrying. The second was the blaster, a ranged weapon that fired concentrated bursts of energy. Between them they covered most of what a Ravager was likely to face.
But they were not the only forms. The book said so clearly. A Maximizer could take almost any shape, depending on the drop it was made from and the ability extracted. Whips, shields, hammers, even stranger things had been recorded. Blades and blasters were simply the most reliable.
The traits of each weapon followed its monster talent. A blade made from a fire Beast’s drop might carry heat along its edge. A blaster made from a Beast that spat acid might fire corrosive rounds. A shield made from something that could bend light might scatter incoming attacks. Every Maximizer was different, because every Beast was different.
’So it’s not just the shape,’ Alex thought. ’It’s what the shape does.’
He read a few examples with growing interest. There was a sword that hummed with a faint electric charge. There was a blaster whose shots slowed anything they struck. There was a short, curved knife that supposedly cut through armor as if it were paper, and the book noted, in a dry aside, that it had also cut through three of its own owners’ fingers before they learned to handle it.
Alex laughed under his breath.
Time passed.
He did not track it. The gray rectangle of light from the window drifted across the floor and climbed the leg of the desk. Somewhere in the building a door opened and closed. Pages turned, one after another, in the little room. Jerry sighed from time to time as he crawled through his own book. Kelly did not move from her chair.
Alex lost himself in the Chapters that came next. Drop grades. Talent classifications. The difference between a Beast’s core ability and its passive traits. He read about the first recorded Maximizer, forged in the early years after the gates opened, and the names of the pilots who had carried it.
At some point the clock on the wall passed noon.
Kelly closed her book.
"Are you two hungry?" she asked. "We can head over to the cafeteria and get something."
Jerry’s head came up at once. He looked as if he had been waiting for someone to say it.
Alex did not look up from the page.
"Could I get mine brought here?" he asked. "To the classroom."
Kelly paused in the middle of standing.
"Brought here."
"If it’s not too much trouble."
She looked at him for a long second. Then a thin smile crossed her face.
"Sure," she said. "I’ll get your maid on that."
It was clearly sarcasm, and Alex heard it. He ignored it and kept his eyes on the book.
Jerry hopped up from his chair with a jiggle of energy and hurried to the door. He held it open for Kelly like a shy little brother.
She stopped in the doorway and glanced back.
"Well?"
"Whatever," Alex said, without raising his head. "I’ll pass."
Kelly’s mouth opened slightly.
"Pass?"
"I’m not hungry."
’He’s not hungry,’ she thought. ’He hasn’t eaten since when, yesterday?’
She stood there for a moment, struck dumb. In her experience, a convict should never turn down a meal. It was the one thing they always wanted, one of the few small comforts left to them. But this one was sitting at his desk with his elbows on the table and his eyes locked on a page, and he had not even glanced up.
She shook her head.
"Suit yourself," she said, and left, with Jerry trailing after her.
The door swung shut, and Alex was alone.
He barely noticed.
He was in a zone. That was the only way to describe it. The words flowed into him without resistance. He was not sure why. Maybe it was because the material felt like fiction, a story with heroes and weapons and strange powers. Maybe it was that he had never had anything to read that mattered this much. Or maybe it was something else, something more basic.
’Maybe I’m just getting high off it,’ he thought.
That was it, wasn’t it? All these things being described, the talents and the weapons and the rank limits. It was power. The whole book was about power, laid out Chapter by Chapter, and part of him could not stop drinking it in. It was a heady feeling, the kind that came from standing at the bottom of a mountain and finally seeing the shape of the climb.
He turned a page.
The Chapter on drop grades was getting long, but he did not skim it. He read about purity levels and how they mapped to Beast levels. He read about the extraction process and its failure rate. He read a short case study about a Maximizer that had gone unstable in a pilot’s hands, and how the Foundation had learned from it.
He was halfway through a paragraph on stabilizer coils when the door opened.
Alex glanced up, startled.
Kelly walked in. It had only been a few minutes. Far fewer than it should have taken to reach the cafeteria, wait in line, and eat. She did not look at him. She crossed the room with something balanced in both hands and stopped in front of his desk.
It was a tray.
On it sat a single plate, still steaming, with rice and grilled chicken and a small pile of steamed vegetables. A fork lay beside it, and a paper cup of water.
She set it down in front of him with a soft click.
"Eat," she said.
Alex stared at the plate, then up at her, and for once he could not think of a single thing to say.