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By dinnertime, the overseers returned with a group of men and entered the cell. One by one, they dragged the prisoners out into the corridor to frisk and question them.
When it was Reon's turn, he calmly spread his arms and let them pat him down from top to bottom.
The class card was hidden in his mind, There was no way they were ever going to find a clue that way.
By the time the last person had been searched, night had fully fallen.
The cell was unusually quiet, Years of rigid routine meant that even after an afternoon off, the prisoners still lay down early as usual.
Reon closed his eyes as well. He was probably the most exhausted person there, and the wound on his back still ached faintly.
That night passed without dreams, Only the warmth spilling from the card moved slowly through his body, nourishing him from within.
He slept unbelievably well.
In fact, the next morning he woke naturally before the overseers even blew the whistle.
"Hah..."
Reon stretched like he was lying in his own bed at home.
He reached back and gently touched the wound on his back. A tingling itch spread through the scabbed-over skin, The moment he brushed it, the blackened crust flaked away, revealing fresh new flesh underneath.
"That healing speed is incredible."
Reon could not help admiring it. The Archer card did not just grant him straightforwardly powerful weapons and strength. This steady flow of warmth was just as remarkable.
It restored stamina and sped up healing too, only in a subtler, more gradual way.
"Not a bad way to start the morning."
The improvement in his body immediately brightened his mood. What confused him, though, was that the Archer memories that should have appeared last night had shown no sign of stirring at all.
"Was it because using the Noble Phantasm drained too much power? Or are the dreams just irregular to begin with?"
The Book of Heroes came with no instruction manual. A lot of things Reon would have to figure out through guesswork and trial and error.
Before he could dwell on it any longer, the shrill whistle sounded again.
The overseers stood outside the cell door, banging iron bars with clubs and driving the slaves out as if nothing unusual had happened the day before.
"That shouldn't be possible..."
As Reon helped wake Simon and Erza, who still had not adjusted to the place's brutal schedule, he moved forward with the line and thought rapidly.
"If they reacted like that yesterday, there is no way they'd resume work this quickly after an attack. At the very least, there should have been some internal chaos first..."
A bad feeling rose in his chest.
He quickly ran through the possibilities.
The most likely explanation was that construction on the stone tower was nearing completion, and the deadline was too tight for them to afford any real delay.
Another possibility was that there was someone among them, someone calm and capable enough to stabilize the situation almost immediately.
And the worst-case scenario was that both were true.
As they walked through the pitch-black corridor, Reon unconsciously pressed his knuckles together until they clicked softly.
If his guess was right, it would completely disrupt the plans he had been building, and that forced him to make a choice.
In the end, he decided he could not drag things out any longer.
Whether the dream came tonight or not, he was going to try speaking the True Name.
He did not want his own small indulgence to create unpredictable changes. That was something he could not accept.
Once he made the decision, he immediately felt lighter.
But the moment he arrived at the work area and saw the mountain of stacked stone waiting for him, he still fell silent for a few seconds.
After thinking so much, I almost forgot I'm still basically draft livestock here.
Reon did not dare waste time. He rolled up his sleeves and got straight to hauling stone and moving materials. His body might have recovered quickly, but he had no interest in earning another whip across the back.
Clang!
He lifted a block and tossed it into the cart. The weight quickly drew a fine layer of sweat across his skin.
But whether it was a trick of perception or not, moving the stones today felt a little easier than yesterday.
It was still difficult. His arms still burned, and his breathing still came hard.
But there was definitely a little more strength there than before.
He badly wanted to open the Book of Heroes and see what had changed, but doing that meant immersing his mind completely, and spacing out on the worksite would be far too obvious.
So he gave up on the idea for now.
Instead, Reon used his extra energy to observe everything around him.
He noticed that the overseers were patrolling the site much more frequently than before, and there seemed to be more of them as well.
Their hands stayed tight around whips and clubs, and their eyes swept over every slave's movements like hawks.
"So they didn't learn anything, at least."
A faint smile touched Reon's mouth as he looked at the results of yesterday's work.
One thing worth noting was that the people from his cell were working especially hard today.
Not in the dead, mechanical way of someone being whipped into motion.
There was something else in it, something that had not been there before. Their backs were straighter. Their movements carried a kind of long-lost vitality.
Reon could feel that there was something new in their eyes too. It was hard to describe, and at first he could not find the right word for it.
But before long, the answer came to him.
It was renewed enthusiasm for life, mixed with the faintest trace of hope for the future.
The change was small. After a few days, once reality crushed that spark again, they might very well return to the same numbness as before.
Still, it was a good sign.
Reon did not believe that shift had come purely from those few casual conversations yesterday.
He preferred to think that, deep down, they had always wanted life to become better. It was just that before now, no one had ever given them a reason to believe change was possible.
A seed buried too long in the mud forgets that it can still sprout.
Reon stopped letting his attention drift and focused on the environment around him and the patterns in the overseers' deployment.
Now that he had a little extra energy to spare, working hours were the perfect opportunity to learn all of this. He could not afford to waste them.
He endured it that way until noon.
Since nothing had happened this time, food was handed out right at the worksite.
Reon did not eat with Jellal and the others. Instead, he found a shaded corner and sat down alone. Between bites of hard, dry bread, he let his mind sink inward.
He needed to figure out what had changed in his body.
"Book of Heroes."
He called to it silently, and the plain, modestly bound volume appeared before him at once.
Reon turned straight to the page that recorded his physical status. His eyes swept over it quickly, then stopped.
Name: Reon
Alignment: Neutral Good Human
Strength: E-
(A faint thread of force now moves through your muscle fibers. You are, at last, a passable child.)
Endurance: E-
(Your body is still fragile, but there is now the first hint of resilience.)
Agility: E-
(Your mobility is nearly nonexistent. Evasion through your own physical ability is not a realistic option.)
Mana: E-
(There is indeed a faint trace of flow within you now, though it is so weak it almost may as well not exist.)
Luck: EX
(Bearer of the Book of Heroes. Cannot be measured by ordinary standards. Maximum resistance against "predetermined fate.")
Skills: None
"The evaluations... changed?"
Reon froze for a moment.
The rank of the attributes themselves had not changed, but the descriptions after Strength, Endurance, and Mana had all shifted subtly in a more positive direction.
He instinctively clenched his fist, tightened his muscles, and focused with all his attention.
Sure enough, there was a faint but undeniably real sense of strength flowing through his body.
It was something that had never existed in this frail body before.
"Could it be... my attribute ranks are close to increasing?"
The thought surfaced immediately in Reon's mind.
But if so, why?
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