The Dungeon Monitoring Center in the Federal Building was for monitoring exceptional young war-fighters in the dungeons. They had to be truly exceptional to rise to Jim's attention. He brought the best right to President Phearson.
It was incredibly quiet that morning. I was the top of the Monitoring Pyramid. Local centers promoted their favorite possibles to the junior operatives at the federal center here. Then my juniors promoted to the senior officers under me, and the best they brought to me.
I docked anyone pay if they sent me someone who wasn't even in the ballpark. I wanted anyone in the ballpark of being Sphere level talent.
Talent was different from rank, you could have an untalented mathicist who through steady years had reached a rank of Journeyman E-4. He might top out at E-5 or E-6, but he would never be able to be an Elite Dragoon, or be a worthy test case against the Unknown Dungeons.
The Rank system was a property of the sphere itself. No one had ever gone past Journeyman O-3. Those who had reached O-3, President Phearson would call her Unknown Blasters. She had control of all of them, and used them to try to defeat the unknown dungeons.
The Blasters had defeated one previously unknown dungeon and reclassified it as Journeyman 0-3 +8 status. They were a quarter of the way through another which they were thinking would be a 0-3 +10.
The plus numbers were a government designation of extra extreme danger and difficulty.
It was slow. Slow slow slow. Even Jim's three direct reports had not received any dungeoneers to track.
90% of the time, those brought to the Federal Center's attention were a flash in the pan and they struggled more and more as they moved up. But the 10% were worth it.
There were monitoring numbers indicating the number of various special star classes of each rank and subrank.
"When's the last time we've looked into a Novitiate?" Jim asked Jeff, the best of his three reports.
"Last February. Was a burnout who flaked in the Initiate dungeons."
"When it's slow, I look at the monitor numbers, I never see anything under Diamond Star Red Belt Novitiate. There's a 1 there now."
"Pulling his details up," Jeff said, going to his desk.
Jim stood behind him.
"Is he in a dungeon now?"
"Hospital. Region 104. News has caught on and was interviewing him. Oh---"
"What," Jim asked.
"He told them he exploded a Brute so explosively that he was hit with a chunk of concrete. His eye's all messed up."
He could be dangerous, no sense of proportion.
"I'm taking the case," Jim said. "Route all tracking to me."
Jim went to his desk.
He had gone through all the replays. Edmond Bauer was super-confident, and super-accurate. Well equipped to solve problems many ranks beyond his current one. Many many ranks. He even tried algebra orally, so he didn't realize more complex math had to be written on paper. Brilliant, but missing the boat on some stuff. Potentially very useful. And potentially very dangerous.
Finally, Edmond made it back to the Novitiate door, and into the Red Belt dungeon.
Some Novices had a hard time with Red, which extended multiplication and division to include negative numbers. It also added in a few three digit by three digit multiplies at the end of the relatively large puzzle section.
Edmond worked out the three digit multiplies, but missed one of them due to sloppy work. Jim was about to give up on Edmond when he got to the combat section.
It was all brute problems, where it was a challenge to do anything at all to the heavily armored monster.
Jim could tell that Edmond was holding back, crossing out work that might get him hurt again. He paused and zoomed into the work. Edmond knew his arithmetic and algebra very well, far before his time. His stuck to huge multiplication and addition problems, which weren't his best area, because he slipped up once again.
He ended up as a Silver Star Black Belt Novitiate. The news media filtered out at the news. But Jim knew it was because he was holding back.
The Black Belt Battle Royale would be a chance for Edmond to prove his worth to Jim and use his skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment