The sled's rope was coarse and unforgiving, biting into Ali's palms through the thin fabric of his hoodie sleeves. Bryn didn't offer instruction. He pointed to a massive, bark-covered log at the edge of the pile, then to the cleared dirt patch before the splitting stump.
"That one. Haul it."
Ali nodded, wrapping the rope around his hands. He planted his feet in the dirt, now just damp earth without the bark wraps he'd discarded, and pulled. The log shifted slightly, then settled. He strained, his back protesting, his legs trembling. He was hauling against not just weight, but the suction of the damp ground.
Bryn watched for five seconds, arms crossed. "By the Father's stones, you're weaker than a sickly spring lamb. Put your back into it, don't just lean."
[Inefficiency Detected: Tension distribution incorrect. 73% of force is upper-body static pull. Leg drive: negligible. Suggestion: Lower center of gravity. Treat pull as a staggered push with the legs. Initiate movement with a lunge, not a yank.]
Gritting his teeth, Ali adjusted. He sank down, bending his knees, and tried to think of pushing the ground away behind him as he pulled. The log creaked, broke free of the earth, and began to slide with a grinding rasp. It was agonizingly slow. Every pebble was a mountain. He dragged the log the ten feet to the stump, his breath already coming in ragged gasps, his heart hammering. He dropped the rope, hands burning.
Bryn didn't acknowledge the effort. He simply stepped forward, positioned the log on the stump with a few expert shoves, set a wedge, and with a smooth, full-bodied rotation, brought the maul down.
CRACK-THUNK.
The log split cleanly in two. The force of the blow seemed to vibrate through the ground. Bryn looked at Ali, who was still panting. "Two more like that. Then you stack the splits by the longhouse wall. Neatly."
The cycle began. Haul. Split. Stack. Haul. Split. Stack.
There was no conversation. Just Bryn's grunts of effort, the explosive crack of splitting wood, and Ali's increasingly labored breathing. His world shrank to the fire in his muscles, the sting in his palms, the growing wobble in his legs.
[Physiological Stress: Moderate. Lactic acid accumulation high in shoulder and back muscles. Caloric expenditure unsustainable at current pace.]
[Skill Formation Progress: Manual Labor - Log Transport - 12%. Form remains poor. Efficiency rating: 18/100.]
After the fourth log, as Ali struggled to stack the heavy splits, his grip failed. A piece of firewood slipped, tumbling from the top of the pile and striking his shin before thudding to the ground.
"Ah—!" He hissed, hopping back, clutching his leg.
Bryn stopped mid-swing, lowering his maul. His expression was pure, undiluted contempt. "Clumsy as you are weak. A child of five stacks cleaner. Pick it up. If you bruise the wood, it'll burn poorly. Waste."
There was no sympathy. No praise for the four logs he'd moved. The mistake erased all previous effort. This was the economy of Blackridge: you were worth your output, and your errors were deducted from your account.
Shame heated Ali's face, mingling with the physical pain. He bent, his back screaming, and retrieved the split, placing it carefully on the pile.
From the doorway of the longhouse, Elara watched, a knife in her hand as she peeled some knobby, dirt-caked tuber. Her gaze was analytical, like a butcher assessing livestock. She said nothing.
Kaelen passed through the yard once, carrying a harness. He glanced at the woodpile, at Bryn's steady rhythm, at Ali's trembling, sweat-soaked form struggling with the sled rope. He didn't comment. His eyes did a quick count of the stacked splits—a meager tally—and moved on. The assessment was silent and damning.
The morning wore on. The sun climbed, offering no warmth, only a glaring light that highlighted Ali's ineptitude. His [Hiking] skill was useless here. This was a different kind of torture.
[Skill Formed: Manual Labor - Log Transport (Level 1, Tier 0 / Rank F- | Lesser)]
Description: You can move heavy, inert objects short distances across flat, resistant terrain. Your technique is brutish and injuriously inefficient. Energy waste is catastrophic. System optimization engaged: redistributing load-bearing stress from lumbar spine to larger leg muscle groups; correcting grip to minimize friction burns; patterning rest-breathing cycles into the haul phase.
Progress to Level 2: 3%.
A notification, but no surge of power. Just a slight, subconscious adjustment in how he planted his feet before a pull. The log felt just as heavy. He was just slightly less likely to rupture a disc moving it.
During a brief pause as Bryn drank from a waterskin, Ali leaned against the palisade, his body a single throb of agony.
"System," he thought, the words slurred with fatigue. "This… this is it? This minuscule gain? You talk about evolution into chainsaws. This feels like I'm being taught to sharpen a stick… by bashing my face against a rock."
[Clarification: The 'stick' is your current physiological and neurological reality. The 'rock' is the objective physical demand of the labor. I am the process that minimizes facial trauma during the bashing, allowing for more sustained bashing, which gradually reshapes the stick. Evolution requires the stick to first become the finest, hardest, sharpest possible stick it can be within its current nature. You are currently a spongy, damp twig. Appreciate the incremental hardening.]**
A grim analogy, but apt. He was being hardened. Forced into a new shape. It was violent, humiliating, and slow.
Bryn finished drinking, didn't offer Ali any, and picked up his maul. "Stop dawdling. That half-pile won't move itself."
Ali pushed off the wall. As he bent to grab the sled rope, a new message flashed.
[Observed Pattern: Axemanship (Bryn Variant).]
[Data Insufficient for Skill Acquisition. Requires foundational [Strength], [Kinesthetic Sense], and approximately 200 hours of observed/replicated practice to begin formalization.]
So, he could watch Bryn split logs all day and gain nothing from it but a deeper understanding of his own inadequacy. The skill gap wasn't just a level difference; it was a canyon of prerequisite attributes he didn't possess.
The morning bled into afternoon. The woodpile shrank, but not by much. Ali's existence became a blur of pain, dryness, and the relentless, unspoken judgment of Bryn's silence and the occasional, passing glances of the others. He was not a person. He was a malfunctioning piece of equipment.
Finally, as the sun began its descent, Kaelen returned. He stood by the longhouse, observing. Bryn split the final log of the section they'd been working on and leaned on his maul.
Kaelen's eyes swept the results: a modest but tidy stack of firewood by the longhouse, the sled and tools put away, and Ali, slumped on the ground by the woodpile, covered in dirt, sweat, and bits of bark, his hands raw and trembling.
"He's slow. Uselessly weak. Drops as much as he stacks," Bryn reported, his voice flat. "A net drain. Maybe half the labor of a day's worth from the south pasture fence."
Kaelen walked over to Ali and looked down at him. Ali forced himself to look up, too exhausted for fear.
"You worked," Kaelen stated. It wasn't praise. It was a simple, neutral fact, like noting the weather. "You didn't quit. You didn't complain. You learned, a little, not to fall over your own feet." He paused, his gaze calculating the cost-benefit ratio of the gruel Ali had eaten against the wood he'd moved. "The balance is still against you. But the law of the hearth is satisfied for today. You'll get your bowl tonight. You sleep in the shed again. Tomorrow, you work on the midden pit. It's lighter labor. If you can't handle that, then you can't handle anything here."
It was a stay of execution. Not acceptance. Not welcome. A reluctant acknowledgment that he had, by the barest margin, passed the first filter. He had proven he could be forced to do monotonous, brutal work without collapsing completely. His value was less than the food he consumed, but the superstition about turning away a supplicant and the minuscule utility he provided had, for now, outweighed the risk and annoyance.
Ali just nodded, unable to speak.
As Kaelen walked away, the System's final analysis of the day scrolled past.
[Daily Survival Calculus: SUCCESS (Marginal).]
[Resources Consumed: 1 unit stew, water, shelter.]
[Value Produced: ~0.7 units of manual labor.]
[Net Standing at Blackridge Steading: Negative, but tolerated.]
[Skill Gained: Manual Labor - Log Transport (Lv.1).]
[Physiological State: Severe fatigue. Minor abrasions. Caloric deficit: high.]
[Note: You have been assessed and found to be of the lowest utility grade. You exist on sufferance and superstition. Improve output tomorrow.]
Ali lay back on the cold ground, staring at the darkening sky through the sharpened logs of the palisade. He had traded the vast, hungry wilderness for a small, walled world of brutal economics. He was no longer prey to monsters. He was a deficit in a ledger, fighting to become a neutral integer.
The grindstone was turning. And he was the grain being slowly, painfully pulverized into something that might, one day, be of use.