Getting support for the second step, the longer expeditions, territory gained rather than just defended as he wanted, depended entirely on the first. On being followed from real trust rather than reputation.

And the first step was proving more complex to execute than he had expected. Not because it was too difficult, because it required thinking in a way that was different from how he thought when the problem was power or mathematics or geometry. The social calculation was a different kind of problem. His humility and generosity had always opened doors, but that was different from deliberately building something…

Social interaction wasn't his strong suit.

Though if there was a way to solve things that aligned with Ren's values, it was usually through doing something useful for the people around him.

And the veterans of the southwest sector had a consistent grievance.

They didn't express it as a grievance exactly, because people who had spent enough time at the wall learned to process things as necessary realities rather than complaints, the mental reframe that made long service sustainable. But the information arrived regardless, in the way they talked about shifts and ranks and the new arrivals who showed up each year with capabilities that made the distance between what they could do and what was becoming the standard go in only one direction.

Garret had said it before and better than anyone, without appearing to say it: "I have five years of work left before they let me go on mandatory retirement."

Yet it was not a complaint about the five years. It was a complaint about what those five years were going to contain relative to what his previous seventy-five defending had contained…

The relevance problem. The specific pain of being good at something and watching it become insufficient not because you had declined but because the standard around you had risen beyond the ceiling you had always operated under.

The thousand-day method was indeed the path most of them had taken to try to stay useful, to add the sub-levels their current rank allowed, to push the baseline a little further before the end.

Expensive, long, and with a specific ceiling: not an official rank but the power of two sub-levels to whatever rank you were already at. Enough for someone who had started well, who had cultivated without major errors up to a decent rank, to stay relevant for another period while they reached low Gold or high Silver. But nowhere near enough to breach the 500% Vitality threshold that unlocked considerably longer lives, ten or twenty extra years was good, but it wasn't the kind of number that changed the fundamental calculation. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

And that was the best case.

For those who had started with cultivation errors, or who were close enough to the end of their service that the cost of ten thousand more days had no practical return before they were gone regardless, the picture was different. The method worked if you had enough distance to the end. If you didn't, it was effort and expense that bought very little.

Ren had been observing this closely these days.

And he had arrived at a conclusion that had the shape of doing something for them using what he had been doing long before the wall existed as a problem for him, one of his oldest hobbies turned toward a new application.

The problem wasn't that they wanted to live forever… At least not for the realists who made up the majority. The problem was that they didn't want to become irrelevant before they retired. The specific dignity question of people who had spent their lives doing something that mattered to them and who wanted that to remain true until they were actually finished with it.

♢♢♢♢

Isaac's workshop had moved to one of Ren's mansions, exactly where Ren had arranged the best available materials for him to work with.

Isaac had accepted at once, which was predictable because Isaac had a big liking for people who brought him interesting challenges and interesting materials that surpassed his interest in most other things. A client-boss who understood what the preferred work was and supplied it accordingly was the best kind of client-boss.

"The bow," Isaac had read in the letter, without needing additional context.

"The bow," Ren had written, wondering how long his order would take to arrive.

The version of the bow that Isaac had produced over the last few years was considerably different from the early ones they had built together. Better in the available materials, better in the technique Isaac had continued refining, better in the integration of the channel points that allowed the user's element to transfer to the arrow through more efficient pathways than the original design had contemplated. All improvements made possible by Ren's later work on the crystals and runes in the tips, refinements that had arrived gradually as both of them got better at their respective parts of the problem.

The perennial issue had been cost.

The perennial issue was still cost, except that Ren now had the ability to produce runes at a level that the Ren who had designed the first bow didn't, and runes at that level reduced the cost of making something useful against monsters up to Gold rank in a way that changed the calculation sufficiently. The gap between what was achievable and what was affordable had narrowed.

Not closed… But narrowed enough to work with.

♢♢♢♢

Jessy had grown up too.

Ren had found her in the warehouse at the base of the wall with the same energy he remembered from the first time, though the energy was now better organized in a way that suggested years of experience had added structure without taking all the somewhat clumsy style. Her cat ears still twitched the same way they did when something caught her eye and distracted her from the thing she was doing but now stuff didn't fell so easily because of that.

"Add your name and sign as if you were making a new distribution channel," Ren had said.

Jessy had perked up an ear.

"Those are not for me but for the wall. For a specific sector of old defenders. The bows we've been working on with Isaac..."

"Wait… Under whose name?"

"Yours," Ren had said again. "I was just the one who handled the paperwork to connect the academy where they were used for testing to the military channel. You're the one who produces them."

Jessy had looked at him while she assessed whether there was anything in the proposal that required further analysis.

"Why?"

"Because if it comes with my name on it, the point is lost.