Free Web NovelThe morning after the estate walk Raze sat in the east corner of the summer garden with Bephe beside him and the climbing plants making their quiet work of the old stone wall overhead and did something he hadn't done in a year.
He opened his system.
Not that he'd forgotten it existed. The system had been present the entire Academy year the way it was always present — available, patient, indifferent to whether he consulted it or not. But the Academy's environment had been so saturated with external measurement — point tallies, ranking brackets, cultivation assessments conducted by faculty whose perception operated at Paragon level — that the internal accounting of his own status window had felt redundant in ways it hadn't before the Academy.
Now, in the quiet of the estate garden with the summer morning doing its unhurried work around him, he let it surface.
--- fгeewebnovёl.com
[Status Window]
Name: Raze Dragonheart
Age: 19
Rank: Master (Peak)
Core: Crystalline (Mid)
Bloodline: Empyrean Sovereign [Awakening — 20%]
Authority: Chains of Exodus [Inherited — Partial Access]
Talents: [Absolute Genius], [Dungeon Master]
Strength: SS
Agility: SS
Endurance: SS
Mana: SS+
Mana Well: SSS
Perception: SSS+
Charm: SS
Will: SS+
Skills:
[Swordsmanship SS]
[Mana Manipulation SS]
[Inspect B]
[Combat Reflex SS]
[Scarlet Leap SS]
[Instant Transmission B+]
[Inventory]
[Mind Sword A]
[Demon King Form A+]
[Aura of Dominance A]
---
He read through it with the detached attention of someone receiving a report on a situation they had been inside rather than observing from outside. The numbers were accurate — he could feel the accuracy of them in the particular way that the system had always mapped to internal reality rather than presenting information he didn't already know on some level.
Master Peak.
The advancement had happened in stages across the Academy year — not a single dramatic breakthrough but the accumulated pressure of Asura's nightly training applied to a foundation that the bloodline awakening had restructured into something capable of handling that pressure. The Crystalline core's mid-tier development was the visible expression of what that pressure had built — denser, more refined, the mana pathways running with a clarity that Low tier hadn't possessed.
The bloodline at twenty percent.
Six percent across a year. The number looked modest against the total but the nature of bloodline awakening wasn't linear — each percentage point at higher awakening levels represented more than the equivalent point at lower levels, and Asura had indicated on several occasions that the first seal's full expression would begin to manifest somewhere in the thirties. Twenty percent meant they were approaching the threshold of something rather than simply accumulating toward a distant ceiling.
Perception at SSS+.
He looked at that one for a moment. The Academy year had done exactly what Asura's training had been designed to do — not just refined his technical execution but fundamentally rebuilt the sensory layer underneath it. Reading Seraphine's light distortions. Tracking Gareth's decision architecture before it expressed itself in movement. The month of nightly sessions where Asura had attacked from angles that should have been untraceable and had made him find them anyway until finding them was no longer effort.
SSS+ was the system's acknowledgment of a capability that had been built from A+ through sustained and very specific pressure.
Mind Sword at A.
That one had arrived differently than the others — not through repetition but through a specific moment approximately four months into the Academy year when Asura had been drilling him through a sequence for the two hundredth time and something had shifted in the relationship between his attention and his blade. The technique existed in eastern cultivation traditions that predated most of the mortal realm's current understanding — the principle that a sword was an extension of the wielder's mind rather than simply their body, and that the mind's reach exceeded the body's reach when the connection between them was refined to sufficient depth. His version was still A rank, still developing, but in the sparring sessions with Gareth it had been the layer underneath the technical execution that made the technical execution something more than excellent mechanics.
Demon King Form at A+.
Asura's martial art. The entity had not named it — had presented it as simply the way he moved, the accumulated fighting philosophy of something that had existed long enough to reduce combat to fundamental principles that operated below the level of specific techniques. The system had named it Demon King Form, which Asura had commented on with the dry quality of someone who found their life's work being labeled by an external system both accurate and slightly reductive.
The form's core principle was total economy — nothing wasted, nothing performed, every movement the minimum necessary to produce the maximum effect. It looked like relaxed movement from outside because the tension that most fighters carried in their committed strikes simply wasn't present. The force came from alignment rather than effort, from reading the situation completely enough that the response was already optimal rather than being made optimal through force of will.
A+ reflected a year of learning something that Asura had been refining for millennia. He was working from the notes of an entity that had already solved the problems the form was designed to solve, which accelerated acquisition without substituting for the integration that only came through actual application.
Aura of Dominance at A.
This one had surprised him when it first appeared in the status window around the sixth month. He hadn't been training it specifically — it had emerged from the bloodline awakening's ongoing integration, the Empyrean Sovereign's passive presence asserting itself through the merger in ways that weren't tied to active ability usage. It was present in the way the room changed when he walked into it. Present in the way opponents sometimes hesitated at the edge of engaging with him — not always, not against people of equivalent or higher cultivation, but consistently enough against lower ranks that the system had apparently decided it warranted classification.
He closed the window.
Bephe was watching him with the patient quality the creature brought to most things, its Master Low cultivation a steady warmth in the bond.
'Satisfied?' Asura asked from the background.
'Accurate,' Raze said.
'Same thing, in this context.'
---
Oziel and the others returned from Clearwater on the third day.
The assignment had been a border security matter in the region — something that had developed while Raze was at the Academy and that Logan had coordinated with Oziel to address in the interim. The details were administrative but the outcome was clean, which was the relevant information.
Raze was in the estate's training ground when the carriage arrived. He heard it — the particular sound of Dragonheart vehicles on the estate road — and stayed where he was, letting them come to him rather than going to meet them because that was the natural arrangement and also because he was curious what a year looked like on the people who had stayed.
Oziel came through the training ground entrance first.
He moved the way he had always moved — the particular quality of someone for whom combat readiness was a resting state rather than an activated one, the Heavenly Sword Master bloodline expressing itself in the baseline of his presence even when he wasn't doing anything specifically martial. But there was something more to it now. A depth to the presence that Grandmaster Low hadn't fully possessed, a weight that came with advancement rather than simply refinement.
He looked at Raze with the assessment that had been their greeting since the beginning — the quick professional evaluation of someone who measured people in the specific currency of combat capability.
The evaluation lasted longer than it usually did.
"You're different," Oziel said.
"A year will do that."
"Not like this." He was still looking, the assessment running deeper than the initial pass. "What did they do to you at that Academy?"
"Trained," Raze said.
Oziel made a sound that communicated he suspected that word was covering significant ground. Then he settled into the training ground with the ease of someone returning to a familiar space and looked at Raze with the expression that appeared when he was deciding something.
"We should spar," he said.
"We should catch up first," Raze said.
"We are catching up," Oziel said. "This is how we catch up."
Which was true. Raze acknowledged it with a slight nod and they moved to opposite ends of the training ground with the ease of people who had done this enough times that the transition from conversation to spar required no particular ceremony.
Shiro arrived through the entrance as they were taking their positions, followed by Ban and then Berth. All three stopped when they registered what was about to happen and rearranged themselves along the training ground's edge with the focused attention of people who had been doing their own development and were now going to see what a year had built in their returned lord.
Alvis came last, moving with the unhurried quality that had always characterized him — the particular ease of someone who had learned to operate at Grandmaster capability within Expert constraints and had made peace with the gap between what he could do and what he could officially be.
He looked at Raze and his expression carried something that acknowledged the change without needing to name it.
They would talk later. For now the spar was starting and Alvis settled beside the others with the observational quality that made him as valuable watching as participating.
---
Oziel moved first.
Grandmaster Peak was a different thing than Grandmaster Low had been — Raze felt the difference immediately in the quality of pressure the first exchange produced. Not just stronger or faster, though both were true, but more complete. The gaps that existed at lower advancement — the small inefficiencies that even skilled cultivators carried until sufficiently refined — had closed in ways that made Oziel's technique feel less like something being executed and more like something that simply was.
His Sword Intent had deepened too. The invisible pressure of it extending further from his blade than the previous year, carrying a weight that affected the local atmosphere of the engagement rather than just the immediate striking distance.
Raze received the first sequence with Demon King Form's baseline economy — minimum movement, reading the commitment depth of each strike before responding, the Perception at SSS+ processing the Sword Intent's direction and weight as readily as it processed visible movement.
Oziel's eyes sharpened.
The second sequence came with more commitment — he'd read Raze's defensive response and was probing the depth of it rather than testing its existence. His Flash Step activated, the speed enhancement compressing the distance between them at an angle that would have caught most Master rank opponents mid-response.
Raze was already there.
Not through Void Step or Instant Transmission — just footwork, the Demon King Form's economy applied to spatial positioning rather than strike response, the body already occupying the relevant ground because the mind had seen where relevant ground was before the feet needed to know.
Oziel's blade found empty air.
He pulled back and reset with the controlled quality of someone who was recalibrating rather than frustrated. "Mind Sword," he said. Not a question. He'd recognized something.
"Among other things," Raze said.
"You're reading intent."
"I'm reading everything."
Oziel looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who had taught and trained and fought alongside Raze and was now performing a significant update to the model they'd built of him. Then he smiled — the particular smile that appeared when he encountered something that genuinely pleased him in combat terms.
"Good," he said. "Then let's see how far it goes."
He came with everything.
Perfect Counter triggered as Raze's first committed strike came in, the skill's SS+ reading the strike's trajectory and converting it into redirect with the seamless efficiency of Oziel's most refined technique. Combat Intuition operating at full capacity, processing the engagement's full information load in real time. Battle Focus compressing his attention to the single problem of the person in front of him.
It was genuinely exceptional. Everything Grandmaster Peak represented in a single fighter who had been doing nothing but refining that peak for the months Raze had been at the Academy.
Raze worked through it with the full deployment of what the year had built.
Mind Sword extending his awareness along his blade until the strike was already placed before the physical motion completed it. Demon King Form converting Oziel's committed force into redirected momentum rather than meeting it with opposition. Perception tracking the Sword Intent's fluctuations with the accuracy that SSS+ produced — reading not just the blade's direction but the intention behind it, the decision architecture that produced each sequence.
They moved through the training ground in the particular way that genuinely high level sparring moved — not spectacular, not dramatic, but dense with the specific weight of two people operating at the upper boundary of their capabilities against each other.
Three exchanges. Five. Eight.
The gap was not enormous. Oziel was Grandmaster Peak with a fully awakened bloodline and skills that had been developed across years of genuine mastery. The distance between them was real but not the distance that had existed a year ago — the distance then had been the kind that one party could cross in moments because the other party simply wasn't in the same category. This distance was the kind that required sustained effort to cross, that could be contested rather than simply decided.
The spar ended when Raze's blade settled at Oziel's throat in the space created by a Demon King Form redirect that had converted a Perfect Counter attempt into a position that the skill's geometry hadn't accounted for.
Clean. Definitive.
Oziel stilled.
Then he stepped back and looked at Raze with an expression that had several things in it — genuine assessment, something adjacent to pride, and the particular quality of a master who had just encountered the student they'd helped build having arrived somewhere significant.
"You could give me a genuine run," he said.
"I just did," Raze said.
"I mean in a real fight. Not a spar with rules." He looked at the blade that had just been at his throat. "A year ago I would have said Master Peak against Grandmaster Peak was a comfortable margin. I would have been correct then." A pause. "I'm not sure I'm correct now."
Shiro made a sound from the edge. Not words — just the particular sound that Shiro made when something had registered with sufficient force to produce involuntary vocalization.
Ban was looking at Raze with the expression of someone revising a prior assessment in real time. Berth had her arms crossed and was nodding with the slow quality of someone whose expectations had been met rather than exceeded, which from Berth meant the expectations had been set very high.
Alvis looked at Raze with the calm that characterized most of what he did, and in that calm was something that was neither surprised nor unsurprised — just the expression of someone who had watched the foundation being laid and was now seeing the structure it had been laid for.
"Sit down," Raze said. "All of you."
They arranged themselves in the training ground with the ease of people who had been operating as a unit and had the physical habits of it. Bephe settled near the group's edge with the proprietary quality it brought to spaces it had decided were its spaces.
Raze used Inspect.
He did it quietly — no announcement or ceremony, just the internal activation of the skill as he looked at each person in turn with the attention that Inspect required.
---
Oziel's window surfaced first.
---
[Oziel Radcliffe]
Rank: Grandmaster (Peak)
Core: Crystalline (High)
Bloodline: Heavenly Sword Master [Fully Awakened]
Authority: Severance [Advanced]
Strength: SS+
Agility: SSS
Endurance: SS+
Mana: SS+
Will: SSS
Perception: SS+
Skills:
[Sword Mastery SS]
[Combat Intuition SS+]
[Flash Step SS+]
[Killing Edge SS]
[Perfect Counter SS+]
[Speed Enhancement SS+]
[Battle Focus SS+]
[Sword Intent SS]
[Severance Domain C]
---
The Severance Domain was new. C rank — early, barely manifested, the first expression of an Authority developing beyond its Advanced stage into something that could project outward rather than simply express through direct contact. It would be years before it became functionally significant in combat, but its appearance in the status window meant Oziel's ceiling was higher than it had looked before.
Raze moved his attention to Alvis.
---
[Alvis Crane]
Rank: Master (Peak)
Core: Fractured — Crystalline Partial [Kael's Restoration — 94%]
Bloodline: None
Strength: SS
Agility: SS+
Endurance: SS
Mana: S+
Will: SS+
Perception: SS
Skills:
[Breathflow Mastery SS]
[Combat Sense SS+]
[Iron Discipline SS]
[Perfect Form SS]
[Perfect Counter S+]
[Mana Suppression SS]
[Breaking Point A]
---
Raze held on Alvis's window for a longer moment.
The core entry stopped him. Fractured — Crystalline Partial. Kael's Restoration at ninety-four percent. The core that had been fully fractured when Alvis arrived at the tournament, the ceiling that had kept Grandmaster cultivation physically inaccessible despite Grandmaster-level capability — ninety-four percent restored.
Six percent remaining.
Six percent between Alvis and the advancement that his technique and his will and his fighting intelligence had been capable of for years while his body's foundation refused to support it.
He looked at the number and thought about what six percent meant and what it would mean when it became zero.
He moved to Shiro.
---
[Shiro Mist]
Rank: Master (Mid)
Core: Refined (High)
Bloodline: None
Strength: S+ freeweɓnøvel.com
Agility: SS+
Endurance: S+
Mana: S+
Will: SS
Perception: SS
Skills:
[Blade Silence SS]
[Flash Draw SS]
[Killing Intent S+]
[Blink S]
[Iron Will SS]
[Death's Edge S+]
---
Master Mid. The advancement from Expert had suited Shiro — the cold precision that had been his defining quality at the tournament had deepened with the rank, the killing intent that the system registered at S+ now carrying a weight that made the air around him feel differently when he activated it. Blink at S was interesting — a different development of spatial movement than Raze's own, narrower in application but extremely refined within its specific use case of pure repositioning.
Ban next.
---
[Ban Crest]
Rank: Master (Mid)
Core: Refined (High)
Bloodline: None
Strength: SS
Agility: S+
Endurance: SS
Mana: S+
Will: S+
Perception: S+
Skills:
[Breathflow SS]
[Iron Fist SS]
[Combat Pressure S+]
[Endurance Strike SS]
[Battle Sense S+]
[Breaking Wave S+]
---
Ban's advancement had gone where his nature always suggested it would — into strength and endurance, the Breathflow technique building the kind of physical foundation that made his combat style a grinding overwhelming pressure rather than a technical exchange. Breaking Wave at S+ was new — a technique built from the Breathflow's principles applied to sustained offensive output rather than single strikes. It suited him completely.
Finally Berth.
---
[Berth Crest]
Rank: Master (Low)
Core: Refined (Mid)
Bloodline: None
Strength: S+
Agility: S+
Endurance: SS
Mana: S
Will: SS
Perception: S+
Skills:
[Breathflow SS]
[Mountain Stance SS]
[Endurance Body SS]
[Counter Force S+]
[Iron Defense S+]
[Pressure Point S]
---
Master Low, behind Ban and Shiro, but the gap was a rank rather than a ceiling — Berth's development had gone into depth rather than speed, the Mountain Stance and Endurance Body building something that would become extremely difficult to move when it reached its full expression. Counter Force at S+ suggested she'd been developing the specific skill of converting incoming force into her own output, which combined with her natural endurance characteristics would make her increasingly dangerous the longer any engagement lasted.
Raze closed Inspect.
He looked at his people with the quiet satisfaction of someone receiving a good report and finding it accurate. A year of work was visible in every status window — not dramatic transformation, not the acceleration that special bloodlines or divine blessings produced, just the honest accumulation of people who had taken their assignments seriously and had the numbers to show for it.
"Good year," he said.
Oziel looked at him with the slight expression that meant he suspected more was being communicated than the two words covered. "You checked us."
It wasn't a question. Oziel had been around Raze long enough to recognize the particular quality of attention that Inspect produced — the brief inward focus that looked like nothing from outside but had a specific character to someone paying close attention.
"Growth looks correct," Raze said, which confirmed it without confirming it.
Oziel accepted this with the expression of someone who had decided that being inspected without announcement was simply a feature of serving Raze Dragonheart and had made his peace with it.
"Clearwater," Raze said. "Tell me."
---
The debrief took an hour.
The Clearwater assignment had been a border security matter that had developed complexity in the way that border security matters developed complexity — what had begun as reported bandit activity had produced evidence of something more organized underneath it. Not Syndicate remnants — they'd been careful enough to confirm that through the investigative contacts Mariabel had built during the capital conspiracy operation. Something newer, smaller, opportunistic rather than ideological. A group exploiting the post-Syndicate disruption in certain territories to fill infrastructure gaps with their own operations.
Oziel had handled it with the thoroughness that Grandmaster Peak applied to problems it had decided to resolve. The group's operation had been dismantled cleanly, the territory's administrative structure restored to functional capacity, the whole matter concluded without requiring the kind of visible force that would have drawn unwanted attention.
"Logan coordinated the administrative side well," Oziel said. "He has a talent for making complex things look routine."
"He does," Raze agreed.
"The eastern territories are stable. The expansion of the fields produced the yield increase Logan projected. The estate's overall position has strengthened since the Academy year began." A pause. "You built well before you left."
"We built well," Raze said.
Oziel acknowledged this with the slight nod of someone accepting a correction they'd made deliberately to see if it would be made.
Shiro had been quiet through most of the debrief, which was Shiro's default mode and didn't indicate anything specific. But after the Clearwater summary concluded he looked at Raze with the directness that appeared when he'd decided something needed to be said.
"The spar," he said.
"Yes."
"I want one."
"Tomorrow," Raze said. "All of you. I want to see what the year built properly."
Ban straightened with the particular energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this invitation. Berth's expression shifted into the focused quality that appeared when she had something to prepare for. Shiro simply nodded with the economy that characterized everything he did.
Alvis looked at Raze with the quiet attention that meant something was being considered.
"Your core," Raze said, directing it at him when the others had begun dispersing toward the estate's accommodations.
Alvis stilled slightly.
"Ninety-four percent," Raze said.
A pause. "Kael's been working on it since before you left," Alvis said. "The compound he developed from the Syndicate materials — he's refined it significantly over the year. Each application closes more of the remaining fracture than the previous one."
"Six percent left."
"Yes."
"Timeline?"
Alvis was quiet for a moment. "Kael estimates two more applications. Possibly three." He said it with the controlled quality of someone who had been managing a hope for long enough that they'd learned not to let it move too fast. "He's being careful. The last stage of core restoration is the most critical — if the final fracture closes incorrectly it could produce a different kind of damage than the original."
"He won't let that happen," Raze said.
"No," Alvis agreed. "He won't."
They looked at each other in the training ground's afternoon light with the particular quality of two people who understood what the remaining six percent meant without needing to elaborate on it.
Alvis at Grandmaster rank. The technique that had been operating at that level without the cultivation foundation to match it finally having both. What that would produce was not a small thing.
"Soon," Raze said.
Alvis's expression did something controlled and deliberate. "Soon," he said.
---
Sophie found Raze in the training ground afterward.
She came with Mittens at her heel and the expression of someone who had been waiting for the adult conversation to conclude and had timed her arrival precisely. Mittens acknowledged Bephe with the brief assessment that had become their standard greeting and then settled beside Sophie with the proprietary comfort of a creature in its established territory.
"Did Oziel get better?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Did you beat him?"
He looked at her.
"Mariabel said you were sparring and I wasn't allowed to watch," Sophie said, with the tone of someone reporting an injustice. "But I could hear it. It sounded different from before."
"Different how?"
She thought about it with the seriousness she applied to things she wanted to describe accurately. "Before it sounded like he was showing you things. Today it sounded like you were both trying."
Raze looked at his eleven year old sister and thought that her curiosity was better than his inspect in certain respects.
"Yes," he said.
She processed this with visible satisfaction. "Good," she said, with the simple definitiveness that was one of her most consistent qualities. "You should be the strongest."
"Oziel is stronger in some ways."
"For now," she said, without any particular weight on it, just as a fact about a temporary condition.
Mittens made the chirp-growl sound and pressed against her leg. Sophie put her hand on the creature's head without looking down, the gesture as automatic as breathing.
"The third form," she said, which was both a change of subject and a continuation of the same subject depending on how you looked at it.
"Tomorrow morning," he said. "Show me again. We'll fix the transition."
Her expression shifted into the particular brightness of an eleven year old given something to work toward. She turned back toward the residence with Mittens beside her, already running through the transition in her mind from the quality of attention she was directing inward.
At the entrance she stopped.
"Big brother!."
"Yes."
"I asked Fedora something once." She said it with the directness of someone who had decided to say a thing and was saying it. "About the Precognition. What it felt like to see a lot of futures at once."
"I know. She told me."
Sophie looked at him with the assessment quality. "She remembered it exactly. The way I said it. Not the idea — the actual words." A pause. "People who remember things exactly care about them."
She went inside before he could respond.
Mittens followed her with the satisfied quality of a creature whose person had said the correct thing.
Bephe watched the entrance for a moment after they'd gone, then looked at Raze with the bond's simple communication.
Raze stood in the training ground in the afternoon light and held Sophie's observation with the weight it deserved.
People who remember things exactly care about them.
He would fix this.
The thirty days were running and he intended to use them correctly.
---
The cultivation session that night ran deep.
Raze moved through the pathways with the Master Peak efficiency that the year had built, the Crystalline core's mid-tier refinement handling the session's demands with capacity to spare. The Empyrean Sovereign bloodline's twenty percent awakening humming at its steady background frequency.
Asura was present and engaged — the training-session quality rather than the observational one.
They worked through a Demon King Form sequence that had been developing over the past month of Academy sessions into something that needed the space of the estate's quiet to be fully examined rather than the Academy environment's ambient pressure.
An hour in Asura surfaced something.
'The core restoration,' he said. 'Alvis's.'
'Six percent,' Raze said.
'Kael's compound is doing the work correctly,' Asura said. 'I've been observing the fracture pattern through your Inspect results. The remaining damage is concentrated in one specific channel — the primary advancement pathway. Everything surrounding it has been restored to full function.'
'Which means when it closes—'
'When it closes the advancement pathway will be clear for the first time since the fracture occurred,' Asura said. 'His cultivation is already operating at Grandmaster level in everything except the formal rank. The moment that pathway clears he will advance immediately and the advancement will not stop at Grandmaster Low.'
Raze stilled.
'How far,' he said.
'That depends on how much cultivation pressure has accumulated behind the blockage,' Asura said. 'The analogy is a river that has been dammed. When the dam clears the water doesn't flow at the rate it would have flowed without the dam — it flows at the rate of everything that accumulated while the dam was in place.' A pause. 'He has been operating at Grandmaster capability for years. The cultivation pressure behind that fracture has been building for years. When it clears—'
'It won't stop at Grandmaster Low,' Raze said.
'No,' Asura said. 'It will not.'
The implications settled into the cultivation space with the weight of significant information received in a quiet moment.
Alvis at full advancement. The technique that had been exceptional with a fractured core foundation — what it would become with the foundation intact and the years of accumulated pressure finally expressing itself through proper channels rather than the compensations he'd built around the blockage.
'Tell the weak alchemist to be careful with the final application,' Asura said. 'Not slow — careful. The distinction matters. The final stage should be done when Alvis has had sufficient recovery from the previous application and when there is time and space to manage what comes after.'
'I'll tell him,' Raze said.
The session continued into the deep hours.
Outside the estate breathed in the summer night — fields and walls and the east corner where climbing plants covered old stone, the domain that had grown in his absence continuing its steady development in the dark.
Thirty days.
The second year waited at their end.
Between now and then there was work — Sophie's third form transition, the sparring sessions that would show him what the year had built in each of his people, the conversation with Fedora that was still unfinished but facing the right direction, the Kael consultation about the timing of Alvis's final restoration application.
And underneath all of it, Asura's information sitting in the place that important information sat — not alarming, just present, shaping the quality of what the time needed to be used for.
