I wished I could say that training was easy and that I just blasted through it. It wasn’t as if I had been completely out of shape before coming to this world, and I’d done a bit of physical conditioning in high school before an injury took me off the competitive ski team. I liked to think I’d been pretty athletic.

  But none of that mattered. This body was completely different and new. I was rebuilding everything from the ground up—stamina, endurance, strength, basic muscle control. All of it had atrophied so much in this body.

  The only thing I had going for me was spite. The more that people like Ticks stared at me, glaring, the more I wanted to prove them wrong, and the self-pity and indignation at having to rebuild my body from scratch evaporated. They didn’t think I could do it, and I really didn’t want them to be right.

  And of course, the threat of death was a helpful motivator.

  So I traded all my pay for an extra meal a day. Two bowls of steamed oats at breakfast and an extra fried egg, an extra helping of soup at lunch, and double the rations at dinner time. Dinner was usually some kind of wild meat that the hunters caught or purchased from Slowbend.

  At first, it felt like I was simply putting on fat, but with my routine, my muscles began growing again. I wasn’t sure how normal it was, because I’d never had to do this back on Earth, but it felt fast. Perhaps that was something to do with Duplicate biology, but the other Dupes didn’t know what I meant when I asked. They hadn’t considered the speed of putting on muscle, since they’d been training for combat as long as they could remember. Since they’d been created.

  The others had been created with bodies that were about eighteen years old, then received two years of training and education at a place called Homecamp—which was far, far back from the front lines.

  That meant I had plenty of catching up to do to get back where Lemming had been.

  I formed a routine. In the morning, I always had chores to do at the camp, and so I found ways to do them that took twice the effort. If I had to carry logs, I carried them under my arms instead of on my shoulders, and I took the long way around camp. If I had to move kegs of water and ale, I made sure to carry them instead of rolling them. I sharpened palisade logs with the heaviest knife available or voluntarily helped carry water from the stream. I took whatever odd task I could find and did it in the most difficult way I could imagine.

  Soon, the other Dupes started asking me to do their chores for them. I took everything with a soft smile and a dutiful nod. Some of them were just lazy, and some of them wanted me to break—I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Besides, eventually I’d start making friends this way, right?

  In the afternoons, although I was always exhausted, I found myself training for a few hours with Shave and a few other Dupes who I had won over with chores.

  We started with spear training. I thought Shave was going to make me train in a shield wall formation or something, but he simply began with thrusts and jabs, and we slowly moved onto more complex movements.

  Much to my disappointment, I did end up having to do more than just jab with the spear. There were slashes, whirls, and more. Shave called the fighting style the ‘Sun Splinter,’ because it involved a lot of attacks from above. The goal was to overwhelm the opponent with an offense-heavy style before they could land a hit themselves.

  Dupes, as it turned out, had a lot more training than what I assumed the average medieval footman had. I'd never been a historian, but I was pretty sure the average soldier didn't get martial arts training like this. It seemed like they were trying to prepare me to fight a large group of enemies by myself.

  Were we that badly outnumbered? I wasn’t sure what we were going to face, but I didn’t want to get caught off-guard or flat-footed, so I kept training hard.

  The days of the week all had different names here, as did the months, but from what I could work out, it was the equivalent of the middle of July. Every equivalent of Sunday, the Dupes had a day of no tasks in camp, so we were permitted to head into Slowbend. Of course, even on Sundays, I didn't skip combat training in the afternoon, but I did use my mornings to try to acquire some books.

  The first problem was that I had no money.

  Here, they used coins called sceats, which came in copper, silver, and gold. Our wage in the 294th was two silver sceats a month and ten copper. But I had been exchanging my wage for extra food, and I had nothing to pay the Greenway merchants who risked traveling out to the front lines.

  I had my eyes on a manuscript. It was a history book, and not all that valuable to most people here, but I needed to learn about this world somehow. Besides, it was a manuscript, hand-copied onto sheets of parchment, and that still made it decently expensive. It was ten silver sceats.

  So, to pay for it, I did more chores for Commander Galliard in the evenings in exchange for extra pay (which had the added benefit of getting me more exercise). More sweeping, more ferrying goods around, but I eventually got myself ten extra silver sceats and purchased the history manuscript—and only a day before the merchant departed for safer lands.

  After that, I spent my evenings reading. Although Dupes could read, most of them didn't seem very good at it, and this body's Focus was a real issue. But it seemed that I could improve it with practice, so that was what I did.

  Although I had been spending most of my dinner time alone, reading or staring at the sky, one night I joined Shave’s group around a crackling fire, a skewer of venison in hand, and asked, “How hard is it to improve your attribute scores?”

  Most of the Dupes around the fire all laughed. Ticks watched from a distance, but he didn’t join us.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A Dupe named Romance (because he’d gotten caught with a romance manuscript back at Homecamp a few years back) said, “You only ask that now? Word of your little arrangement with Ticks has circled around the camp.”

  “Well…” I looked around slightly awkwardly. “Sorry. Just didn’t think to ask. I thought they would improve as I trained.”

  “That is correct, lad,” Shave said. “Attributes are a method of tracking progress. You’ll gain a point of strength if you get stronger. Of course, the System lets our bodies grow beyond the limits of regular mortal Men. It takes a bit of work, but you’ll get used to it. And you’ll learn ways to manipulate it if you’re lucky.”

  I nodded. “Magic. Like you said.”

  “Call it what you will,” said a different Dupe named Trench.

  “Did you guys make the System?”

  Another bout of laughter. Romance jostled my shoulder and Trench beckoned me to sit on the log beside him.

  “The System, the Path, call it what you will,” Shave said. “It’s been around longer than any of us, lad. We’re just caught up in its flow.”

  “Okay, but really, what kind of magic can we do?” I asked.

  “There are many kinds of magic in this world,” Trench said.

  “We’re not like the sorcerers or druids,” Romance said. “No flashy displays of elemental magic or transforming into wild beasts. Resonating a Skill with your weapon is where a Dupe’s true strength comes from. And hey, maybe if you merge enough Skills, you’ll luck into a magic Art. Those are what you would likely call magic. But you’ll have to forgive me, it’s been a few years since my time at Homecamp.”

  “If you got yourself an Art, you’d be better than anyone else in the 294th!” Trench said with a laugh. “No one else here has an Art. We can just resonate our knowledge Skills with our weapons.”

  “I see,” I said again. I didn’t really understand, but I didn’t want to press the point.

  According to my history book, there were three main types of Path-walkers (which was the general term for a magic user): sorcerers, who focussed on casting massive spells and manipulating the raw elements; druids, who thrived with nature, manipulating plants and using healing spells; and wicca, who were close-quarters battle mages. As Dupes, we were closest to wicca.

  “How do I get to Iron tier?” I asked finally, once the chatter died down. Most of the other soldiers in the 294th were Irons.

  “You have to get a full point of Presence,” Shave answered. “And you have to have a minimum of ten attributes in other areas. One attribute has to be over five.”

  Again, I didn’t really understand. I just kept staring at him, until he clarified, “Presence is your ability to affect the world around you. It’s your realness. Your overall power. You increase your Presence by defeating enemies, and you resonate Skills by temporarily consuming Presence. Skills cost Presence to resonate, and your Presence will refresh every day.”

  That made slightly more sense. And hey, at least Ticks hadn’t demanded that I earn a point of Presence.

  But now, I hungered to see what a Dupe could actually do. What resonating a knowledge Skill looked like. That night, I begged all of them to duel me, until finally, Romance agreed—but he’d wait until the next morning. “I need to sober up a little, kid,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t have bought that cheap wine from the Greenway merchant,” Trench teased.

  “He said it was herb-infused!”

  “He lied.”

  “Yeah, well—” Hiccup. “—I’m not buying anything from him again.”

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  I leaned back as a non-Dupe camp maid came around and grabbed our plates and mugs from us. Aside from Romance, everyone else was just drinking watered-down rum. It wasn’t enough to get us drunk, but it was enough to disinfect the water.

  I nodded my thanks to the camp maid, but she only gave me a skeptical look before scampering away.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Shave assured me. “The people of Slowbend are just on edge. There’s been word of orc attacks drifting farther south. It seems like they’re trying to widen the frontier and open up new battlefields.”

  The next morning, after I’d finished all my chores, I met Romance in a sparring ring. The ground was covered in hay to give us padding in case we fell, and a short fence surrounded it. I noticed Trench, Shave, Ticks, and even Galliard watching. Trench and Shave whispered something to each other then shook each others’ hands. Had they just made a bet over me?

  I picked up my spear, whose tip was wrapped with a thick cloth so it wouldn’t be deadly, and turned to face Romance’s blunt training sword and shield. He wore a shimmering chainmail hauberk and plate pauldron with a raven sigil on it—the sigil of Gate.

  “Begin!” Shave called.

  I took the stance I’d practiced, following through with Shave’s teachings, and let Romance approach. He darted to the side in a quick motion, throwing off my aim, then circled back the other direction. I turned to face him and gave a testing jab, but he batted my spear out of the way and knocked me gently on the shoulder with his shield.

  “Keep him at a distance!” Shave called to me. “You’ve got the longer reach!”

  I backed away, but Romance was too quick. He darted in playfully, and it went much the same, except when I whirled my spear back up, I caught him with the spear’s back end. He had to deflect it with his shield so it didn’t hit his chin.

  But it had caught him off guard. Was I actually going to win? There was an opening, right there near his chest. Lunging, I tried to jab him and—

  His shield whirled back into position. It wasn’t faster than a human could move, but it was what I would’ve expected from a top athlete. The tip of my spear caught his shield in the center and pressed against it, and I tried to push him over.

  But it was my boots that ended up scrambling on the straw bedding of the training pit. His shield wouldn’t even budge. He was immovable.

  “That’s what five points in Strength gets you,” Romance said. “And three in Agility.”

  “Have you resonated a Skill yet?”

  “I’m about to.”

  Before I could respond, the air seemed to shiver across the surface of his shield. He thrust it forward, and a pulse of force resonated off the wood, knocking me flat onto my back. It was like a truck hit me, and I didn’t exactly want to relive those memories. All the wind left my lungs, and before I knew it, I was staring up at the distant purple storms of the planet in the sky.

  I tried to push myself back up, but before I could, I found Romance’s sword pointing right at my chin.

  “So that’s what resonating a skill looks like?” I asked.

  “[Apprentice Shieldmanship],” Romance replied. When he said the words, he spoke it with a certain reverence that sent a shiver down my spine. He sheathed his sword and helped me to my feet.

  “Thank you for the lesson,” I said, brushing straw off my pants. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Shave handing Trench a silver sceat. The sergeant had bet on me?

  I had more training to do, then. I wasn’t going to rest until I earned Shave his sceats back—nothing else would feel right.