69 – Rafters

Looking around the attic after climbing the ladder really showed a massive improvement over the first time I entered. Even when I went up here to help my bat familiar, it had still been a bit dirty in places.

Someone clearly put some effort into getting the more persistent stains out. Even the rafters were largely clear of old bird nests and other detritus.

I felt a bit bad for whoever had to deal with all that – literal – shit, but saying I wasn’t glad it was done would be a lie. And that I didn’t have to do it myself, as well.

Apart from the stack of boxes in the corner that I sat on last time, the room was empty. As far as I remembered, those didn’t contain anything. The wood was also showing strong signs of neglect, with some obvious rot in places. Why they were still here, I didn’t know.

As for why I decided they qualified as seating opportunities before, I could only chalk that up to being under stress at the time. Not like I could reasonably blame the dark, with my night vision. Well, I didn’t collapse them beneath my weight, so it wasn’t the most important mistake.

Those will have to go though. Other than that, hmm.

The floor was even enough and free of splinters, as far as I could see. A few pillars were scattered around the place, holding up the roof. While less than ideal, we would make do.

I looked around some more. It wasn’t totally dark, just nearly. A tiny amount of ambient light filtered in through the holes leading to the adjacent rooms. Plus a bit more from below, though the room with the ladder wasn’t really lit, either.

Obviously, a minimum of lighting was necessary to turn this into a proper training space. At least if anyone besides me was expected to use it. Since I wanted Lars to train me, that was a given. Not too bright though, if I could help it – I was the boss, so I very much could.

Maybe I should train how to fight in bright light, just in case. Absolute darkness was no problem, but a middling brightly lit room was uncomfortable and made me squint. Not to mention light levels equivalent to sunshine. I’d basically be fighting blind. Funny, in a way. Like I’m a reverse human, in terms of sight. Annoying, too.

Blind fighting wasn’t really a standard thing to train for humans, to my knowledge. But I might actually get a lot of benefits out of it. Being blinded by bright light would happen much more commonly for me than fighting in a pitch-black room for others. Especially if any enemies I made learned of this weakness, which wouldn’t be hard.

It was basically the first thing those demon hunters learned upon meeting me.

I did have unfair advantages in the realm of blind fighting compared to humans to make up for it, at least. My heart sense, even though it appeared a bit like ‘seeing’ hearts, wasn’t actually based on sight, but rather hearing. That, plus my otherwise enhanced senses would allow me to learn much more about my opponent even without visual information.

Less than ideal even so, but at least I wouldn’t totally be fumbling around in the dark– err, light.

Unless my enemy has something akin to my sister, or that demon hunter captain… If I couldn’t hear them well, or at all, then even my heart sense was out. A situation like that was really something I’d rather avoid, but had to prepare for anyway. Learning to fight truly blind could help there too, if only a little.

With Lars still occupied downstairs, I didn’t really have anything to do. So, I started on my warm-ups early. My weights and special training clothes were packed away wherever Lars took them after the entrance hall wasn’t a viable training location anymore. That just meant I had to push myself harder to achieve the same level of exertion.

I didn’t mind the excuse to let loose a bit. The whole situation with the visitors was stressing me and getting on my nerves, satisfying as putting the idiot in his place was.

As I ran and did some jumps, I paid special attention to how the floor handled the movement. Surprisingly well, in my estimation. Wood was unsurprisingly significantly louder than the tiled entrance hall, but I felt it was to a reasonable level. The floors in the manor were made thick, which applied to the attic as well. This was also why I couldn’t just listen in on the guests staying on the level above my room. Likewise for them, too.

In summary, we wouldn’t have to be too worried about breaking through into the first floor by training a bit too hard. And the whole building also wasn’t ringing with loud thumps of my feet on wood, so it was reasonably discreet. Anyone directly below me – like in the room with the ladder – would know someone was moving around above, but that was about it.

Good thing my sister decided on the eastern suite. That side of the attic was a quiet zone, due to the bat nest. I could hear their tiny sleeping hearts hanging below the ceiling from here. Cute.

Speaking of that room, I wasn’t sure whether it had been cleaned or not yet. It was a bit inconvenient to do, since the bats were only out and about at night, when my staff tended to be asleep. Something to consider – and maybe bring up with Mia – later.

To cap off my exercise, I took a running start and leaped into the air. I’d experienced it before, but the sheer grace with which my body moved according to my will was exhilarating. A second of weightless soaring later, my hands grabbed onto one of the lower-hanging rafters.

After strengthening my grip so I wouldn’t slip, I looked down. The beam I selected as my target was near the room’s sides, where the roof sloped down quite a bit, so it was about four or five meters off the ground. Accounting for my height with my arms outstretched upwards like this, that was ‘only’ about a three meter gap or so.

Still… that’s an impressive jump. My knowledge of world-record high jumping on Earth was spotty, to say the least, but I was pretty sure three meters was out of the realm of human achievement. Without tool use at least.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t scaled things before in this body – the manor and village both had walls – but a simple leap like this felt more impressive.

The best part is that I know I can push myself even harder. Not too much, but a bit more was possible. How much higher that would get me wasn’t something I could estimate though. It wasn’t like jumping up was a simple linear relationship of ‘more force equals more height’, due to various factors like the jump’s angle and air resistance. Long jumping had much greater records, if I remembered correctly.

Which makes me kind of curious about my limits in that regard. Not something I can safely test inside, I decided. Overshooting and face-planting into a wall wasn’t high on my priority list. Even this leap into the rafters was probably ill-advised, all things considered, but I wanted to do it.

As I already knew, my body was too light to really pose any challenge when it came to body-weight exercises like pull-ups. I did some anyway, just for the hell of it. After some one-handed versions, I stopped fooling around and pulled myself up onto the beam properly.

From gripping the wood, I noticed these beams had much less effort put into making them smooth than the floor. If I wasn’t careful, it looked and felt like I could get splinters easily.

Good thing I’m wearing shoes. And that I’m not afraid of heights.

After training, my sense of balance was much improved compared to when I first woke up in this body. Keeping steady footing on a narrow beam like this wasn’t a challenge. More annoying was the fact I had to remain in a half-crouch due to the roof a short distance above me. A ‘feature’ not all of the rafters shared, thankfully.

Moving about up here was an interesting experience. The rafters crossed all over the place, connecting the roof to the load-bearing pillars, with more beams between those to maintain structural stability. At least presumably, I wasn’t an architect or structural engineer.

Anyways, the network they formed provided more than enough opportunities for me to get around.

At the same time, I was impressed with the cleaning staff that somehow managed to reach up here. The central area, near the roof’s ‘spine’, was quite high up. Long-handled tools in combination with ladders, if I had to guess.

Speaking of these top areas, that was where I’d gone. The different parts of the attic were separated by walls, which – as I already discovered the first time I came up here – had holes near the top. These were how the birds had gotten in to nest here.

Doing my best to remain quiet, I sneaked up to the eastern wall’s top. Reaching the collection of holes, my initial assessment of their source seemed correct.

Some of these openings were intentional, to provide airflow between the rooms. But the rest showed signs of rot or other various material degradation. I wasn’t quite sure why only these areas were so heavily affected and not anywhere else, but it wasn’t that big of an issue.

My main goal in coming here wasn’t to inspect the wall, it was to peek through into the eastern attic.

Before even looking, I already knew it hadn’t been cleaned yet. I could smell the dust and various waste from here. My eyes simply confirmed what my nose told me. Once my inspection was complete – verdict: cleaning necessary – I turned my gaze up to around my level.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Near the room’s center, a good distance from me, the bats slept. They weren’t all clustered on the same beam, but instead split up into several groups. Sadly, even though it was around noon and the sun wasn’t shining in through the eastern wall anymore, it was still uncomfortably bright in the room. For my eyes at least, while I was looking in the direction of the holes leading outside.

My fuzzy friends appeared as mere silhouettes against the light. Watching them sleep peacefully warmed my heart all the same. I was a bit surprised they could sleep so well in these bright conditions.

My time for observation came to an end soon. I’d paid partial attention to the developing ‘idiot knight’ situation downstairs, which had wrapped up a short while ago. Now Lars was climbing up the ladder into the attic, to check it’s viability as a training space, as he said he would.

A lantern was tied to his belt, to not obstruct his climbing, lighting up the area. It also made it hard to look in his direction at the same time, though the lantern’s lid or ‘hat’ on top reduced the direct glare.

When his feet were planted firmly on the attic floor, Lars looked around. Instead of a general inspection, he seemed to be looking for something specific. I could see the frown on his face when he didn’t find his target. What that exactly was became clear quickly.

“Lord Steelheart, are you here?” He didn’t exactly shout, which I appreciated on behalf of my bat friends. There was no way he wouldn’t see me if I was on the ground. While the structural pillars did block line of sight a bit, they were less than half a meter across and had a good bit of distance between them.

Walking around while looking as he was, I didn’t think I would be able to hide from him. If I wasn’t up in the rafters as I was, of course. Having come to the conclusion that I wasn’t in the room, Lars headed over to the eastern door. Not a bad guess of where I would be, but I preferred he didn’t disturb the sleepers.