CHAPTER 33: THREE DAYS OF HONESTY PRACTICE
The empty kitchen echoed with words I was practicing alone.
"I'm an otherworlder with professional skills from my past life. In my previous world, I managed communities—groups of people who needed to cooperate despite different backgrounds and interests. The skills transferred when I arrived here."
My voice sounded flat in the pre-dawn silence. Rehearsed. Unconvincing.
I tried again.
"Managing a community of a thousand people taught me to read social dynamics. To anticipate conflicts before they escalated. To build systems that helped different groups work together." Better. More natural. "Tempest reminded me of that work from the first day I arrived. The cultural documentation, the cross-species integration, the feast program—they're applications of the same principles."
The truth I would tell. The framework I would offer to explain capabilities that had caught three departments' attention.
What I wouldn't tell:
The CCS. The system interface that tracked achievements and optimized cooking and broadcast my accomplishments to relevant parties. The meta-knowledge that came from having watched this world as a story, that let me predict Milim's food preferences and recognize Shuna's analytical approach and understand Rimuru's leadership style before I'd ever met him.
Those truths would stay hidden.
"Transferable professional skills from another world's civilization," I said to the empty kitchen. "Technical expertise that found new applications in Tempest's environment."
Half-truths wrapped in accurate framing. The lie of omission that I hoped would satisfy curiosity without inviting deeper investigation.
I rehearsed until dawn, then started the morning prep, then rehearsed again during the afternoon lull.
By the second day, the half-truths felt almost natural.
The CSN practice sessions happened in alleys and quiet corners, far from the administrative district, far from anyone whose analytical skills might detect magicule threads.
"Ready?" I asked Gobta.
"Always."
I focused on the connection, reached for the link the way I'd learned during our first accidental sync, and felt it snap into place.
[Link Established — Partner: Gobta — Compatibility: 68%]
The warmth flooded my chest again. Gobta's presence filled my awareness—his cheerful emotional baseline, his physical readiness, the faint echo of combat instincts that made me feel faster than I was.
I held it.
Thirty seconds. Forty. The strain built slowly, a pressure at the edges of my awareness, but I'd learned to anchor the link through Emotional Resonance—focusing on Gobta's feelings, using his uncomplicated happiness as a stabilizing force.
Forty-five seconds. Fifty.
[Link Duration: 58 seconds]
[Strain Generated: 4 points]
[Current Strain: 4/76 — Recovery in progress]
Almost a minute. Double my first attempt.
Gobta grinned when the link collapsed.
"That's longer than yesterday. I could feel you better this time—like you were right next to me instead of across a room."
"The compatibility's improving. Repeat links help."
[Compatibility Update: Gobta — 70%]
Five percentage points in three sessions. The system rewarded practice, rewarded familiarity, rewarded the trust that came from sharing something so intimate.
Mira's link was different.
Her compatibility started at 48%—lower than Gobta's, colored by the orc's natural resistance to certain kinds of magicule exchange. When the connection formed, I felt her warmth differently. Deeper. Heavier. The grief she carried for her village, the hope she'd built through cooking, the quiet strength that had let her share traditions she'd been afraid to remember.
The link lasted twenty-three seconds before collapsing.
"That was strange," she said afterward. "I felt... understood. Like someone was listening to everything I couldn't say."
"Emotional Resonance. Part of the connection."
"Your food magic keeps getting stranger." She smiled, and the smile carried more weight than Gobta's ever did. "Keep practicing. Whatever this is, it feels important."
Dorn was the hardest.
Dwarven physiology resisted magicule exchange at a fundamental level. Their bodies were optimized for forge work and mineral integration, not for the kind of energy sharing that the CSN required.
The link barely formed—a faint connection, flickering, unstable from the moment it appeared.
[Link Attempted — Partner: Dorn — Compatibility: 41%]
[Warning: Low compatibility increases strain generation]
I held it for eleven seconds before the strain overwhelmed my control.
"That hurt," Dorn said, rubbing his chest. "Like heartburn, but magical."
"Sorry. The connection doesn't work as well with dwarves."
"Figures. We're built stubborn." He shook his head. "Whatever you're doing, stick to the goblins and orcs. Dwarf bodies don't like sharing."
"Noted. Species matters for compatibility. Another variable I didn't anticipate."
The night before the meeting, I cleaned my kitchen until it gleamed.
Every surface scrubbed. Every herb jar arranged alphabetically. Every tool in its designated place. The work was unnecessary—the kitchen was already clean—but my hands needed something to do while my mind raced through tomorrow's possibilities.
"I'll walk into a room with Rimuru's inner circle. Shuna will be there, watching my face for tells. Souei will be there, cataloging every word for later analysis. Maybe Benimaru, assessing whether I'm a security risk worth managing or eliminating."
"And I'll tell them carefully constructed half-truths, hoping they're curious enough to accept explanation but not curious enough to dig deeper."
The CSN dashboard pulsed.
I glanced at it reflexively, expecting another compatibility update for my practice partners.
Instead:
[Potential Link Detected — Subject: Shuna]
[Compatibility: Unknown (insufficient interaction data)]
I stared at the notification.
Shuna. The Kijin princess who'd investigated my cooking methods, who'd observed the magicule glow in my food, who'd challenged my culinary philosophy in a two-hour session that had reshaped how I understood my own approach.
She was flagged as a potential sync partner.
"The system detected enough interaction to register her as a possibility. Our cooking conversation, our rivalry—it counted as the kind of familiarity that CSN uses to evaluate compatibility."
"Unknown compatibility. Could be high. Could be low. Could be—"
I dismissed the notification.
Tomorrow, I would face Shuna and the rest of Rimuru's advisors. Tomorrow, I would tell them truths wrapped in omissions and hope the package held together.
Tonight, I needed to stop thinking and start sleeping.
The kitchen gleamed around me, every surface perfect, every tool in place.
I locked the door and walked to my quarters.
Tomorrow was the meeting that would determine whether Tyler Barrett remained an anomaly worth watching or became an asset worth keeping.
Either way, the anonymity era was over.
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