One month later.
Under the Stellar Sky Studio finally looked like an actual company.
Gone were the wobbly old desks and the chairs that creaked with every shift of weight. Several new sets of office furniture stood in neat rows along the walls.
The pothos plant that had been languishing in the corner had been replaced with a fresh one, its leaves a rich, healthy green that caught the sunlight.
Most importantly, there were more people.
"Captain, this is Seele."
Bronya, in an unusual move, had stood up from her seat and was guiding a visibly shy girl toward Arthur.
"Her technical skills are solid. Not quite where I was at her age, but well above average."
The girl called Seele stood with her head slightly bowed, hands clasped together in front of her, her voice so quiet it seemed afraid of disturbing something.
"A-Arthur, hello. I'm Seele. Bronya said you needed people here, so I thought I'd... I'd come and see if I could help."
"No need to be so nervous," Arthur said with a smile. "Anyone Bronya recommends is more than good enough. We've been short-handed lately, so having you here is a real lifesaver."
Seele looked up briefly, then quickly dropped her gaze again. "I'll... I'll do my best," she said softly.
Across the room, Kiana was staring down someone who looked remarkably like her and yet couldn't have been more different in presence. If Kiana was the sun, this person was a glacier.
"So. The Principal sent me to protect you. Her reasoning is that what happened last time cannot happen again."
Kiana's eye twitched. "Protect me? You?"
"Yes." Durandal gave a single nod.
"Theresa said that even though you're insufferably loud, you're still a member of the Kaslana family.
Letting someone walk all over you without pushing back would embarrass the entire bloodline."
"What do you mean, insufferably loud?!"
"Every possible thing about you."
Kiana looked ready to combust, but Durandal's expression remained perfectly blank. Mei stood to the side, smiling softly as she brought tea for both of them.
Arthur watched the scene with a quiet undercurrent of concern.
Seele was an intern, which meant Bronya would have to bring her up to speed.
That would temporarily cut into Bronya's output. And Durandal, though nominally here to watch over Kiana, was still an outsider, and clearly not the easiest person to work alongside. The weeks ahead were going to mean long nights.
He had already mentally braced himself for it.
Then the first day passed.
"What is this?"
Arthur stared at the densely packed document in front of him, slightly dazed.
"A technical risk assessment for the game." Durandal stood before him, expression as neutral as ever.
"Based on an analysis of the existing engine architecture and the current output rates of the development team.
I've identified the three most likely failure points, along with corresponding solutions for each. I'd recommend addressing the first one as the priority, since it carries the highest risk weight at 47.3% of total projected risk."
Arthur said nothing.
He looked down at the document.
Every risk item came with a detailed breakdown. Every step in the proposed response plan was annotated with a suggested point of responsibility and an estimated time cost.
This wasn't a risk assessment. It was a ready-to-execute battle plan.
"When did you... when did you put this together?"
"Yesterday."
"I make it a habit to do a thorough information sweep before entering any new environment," Durandal said.
"I'd already reviewed your project documentation and technical framework before I came in. This is just the organized version of my analysis."
She had arrived yesterday. In under a day, she had mapped their entire technical architecture, tracked their development timeline, assessed each team member's efficiency, and produced a complete written report.
Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it again, at a loss for words.
The second day.
"Seele, there's a logic issue here." Bronya pointed at the code on her screen. "Rewrite this section."
"O-okay."
Seele was reaching for the keyboard when a flat voice spoke from nearby.
"That's not necessary."
Durandal walked over, tapped through a few screens, and pulled up several lines of code.
"The issue isn't the logic. It's algorithmic efficiency. The same function, rewritten with a different algorithm, runs 30% faster. Here's the optimized version. You can swap it in directly."
With that, she turned and walked back to her own workstation, where she resumed typing without another word.
Bronya looked at the revised code on the screen and was quiet for three full seconds. Then she drew Seele quietly aside and murmured, "Stay with me for now and work on the basics. What she just did, you're not ready to follow yet."
Seele nodded obediently, though her eyes said, very plainly: she's incredible.
The third day.
Kiana was slumped over her desk, frowning at a particular detail in her illustration. She had reworked it four times already and still wasn't satisfied, though she couldn't quite put her finger on what was wrong.
"The proportions are off."
Kiana's head snapped up. Durandal was standing behind her, having appeared at some point without a sound.
Durandal's finger traced lightly across the screen, marking out several spots that needed adjustment. "Here, here, and here. Fix these, and the overall composition will improve considerably."
Kiana stared at her, temporarily at a loss for words.
Durandal had already turned to leave. She took two steps, then stopped and looked back.
"Also, when you work hunched over like that, watch your posture. Maintaining that position over time will cause spinal curvature."
Kiana had nothing to say to that.
Mei, standing nearby, let out a quiet laugh.
The fourth day.
For once, Stelle and March 7th weren't slacking off. Not because they didn't want to, but because they had no chance.
"These are the messages requiring responses today." Durandal set a neatly printed stack of categorized sheets in front of the two of them.
"I've sorted them by urgency, importance, and difficulty of response. Priority 1 must be handled today: 23 items total. Priority 2 must be handled by tomorrow: 47 items total. Priority 3 must be handled by end of week: the total number is..."
"Hold on, hold on, hold on!" Stelle cut her off, looking alarmed. "When did you go through all our messages?"
"Last night."
"While you were sleeping," Durandal added.
March 7th raised her hand tentatively. "Um, Durandal, do you... not sleep?"
"I sleep. Six hours a day. That's sufficient."
The fifth day.
Arthur stared at the latest progress report for a full, silent minute. Dan Heng stood beside him, studying the same sheet for thirty seconds.
Then Dan Heng pushed his glasses up and said, with a rare note of genuine bewilderment, "Arthur, did we accidentally hire some kind of monster?"
The development efficiency curve on the chart for the past five days showed a trajectory that was nearly vertical.
The output Bronya had lost to mentoring Seele had been covered entirely by Durandal, and then some, with a 30% surplus.
The art team's progress had improved by at least 40% from Durandal's occasional drop-by critiques. The codebase's bug rate had dropped by 60% thanks to her preemptive code reviews.
Even the rate at which Stelle and March 7th handled incoming messages had doubled, simply because Durandal had reorganized their workflow.
And all of this had happened in the margins of her own work, as an afterthought.
Arthur looked across the room at the figure sitting ramrod straight at her desk, quietly typing away with focused calm.
One thought rose unbidden in his mind: is this what peak efficiency actually looks like?
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~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones