My Class is Null, But I Always Get the Best Outcome

Three days later.

The Research Guild’s training grounds had been converted into something between a classroom and a sparring facility. Tables had been moved to the edges. The blackboard from the meeting room had been relocated here. Eight recruits were standing in formation when the sun was still low.

Some of them looked excited.

Some looked like they had not slept well.

Raze walked past the formation on his way to check something on the board.

"Don’t die," he said.

One recruit let out a slow breath. "That’s encouraging."

Raze grinned. "I thought so."

The recruits laughed. The tension in the formation dropped a few degrees.

Lily arrived from the building’s east entrance carrying a clipboard. Elden followed behind her with a notebook open to a page that already had writing in it.

One of the recruits leaned toward another and whispered, "Why does he have a notebook?"

The other whispered back, "Probably bad news."

Elden, without looking up from the page, said, "Correct."

More laughter. The formation had stopped being a formation and had become a group of people standing in approximately the same area.

Lily clapped once. "Let’s begin."

...

She walked everyone into the side room.

A table with a chair on one side and two on the other. Books stacked in one corner. A cracked cup near the edge of the table. A sword leaning against the left wall. A window on the right side, open. A coat hanging on a hook near the door.

"You have thirty seconds," Lily said.

Nobody moved.

"To do what?" one recruit said.

"Observe," Lily said.

Thirty seconds passed. She watched them. Some people moved around the room. Others stood still and looked. One person walked to the window and looked out. One person went to the sword and examined it without touching it.

Then she walked everyone back outside.

She looked at the group. "What color was the book on top of the stack?"

Silence.

Different people started to say different colors. Nobody was certain.

"How many chairs total?"

Three different answers.

"Were the windows open or closed?"

One person said open. One said closed. Three said they had not noticed.

One recruit groaned. "I wasn’t looking at the windows."

"Exactly," Lily said.

Elden stepped forward. "If you miss the window in there, you’ll miss the open door at a scene you’re actually investigating. You’ll miss the footprints near the entrance. You’ll miss the object that isn’t where someone said it was."

The recruits were noticeably more focused after this.

"We’re going back in," Lily said. "Thirty seconds. Same room."

They went in.

They came back out.

The questions were different this time.

Every answer was better.

...

Midmorning. Two researchers had staged the investigation exercise in the courtyard.

A merchant, played by one of the research assistants, was shouting at a hunter, played by another. The argument was loud and specific. The hunter was accused of stealing three monster cores from a transport bag while they were both in a gate.

The recruits arrived.

One Soldier moved immediately to the side of the shouting merchant and started creating space, pulling him gently but firmly away from the immediate confrontation area. Another Soldier moved nearby civilians, the two researchers playing bystanders, to a safe distance.

The Attendant designated as lead looked at the scene. Then at the bag in the merchant’s hand.

"Can I see the bag?" she said.

The merchant, staying in character, thrust it at her.

She opened it.

The three monster cores were inside.

The room went very quiet.

One of the recruits who had been approaching the hunter stopped. "Wait."

The Attendant with the bag turned it over so everyone could see the contents.

The merchant broke character. "Oh. I forgot I moved them."

The recruits stared at him.

One of them said, "I was about to arrest the hunter."

Lily said, "I know."

"He was acting guilty."

"People act guilty when they’re accused," Lily said. "That’s not evidence." She looked at the group. "The evidence was in the bag. The bag was not checked until she asked for it. Everything before that was assumption."

Elden wrote something in his notebook.

Less emotional reaction to behavior. More attention to physical evidence first.

...

After lunch, the two researchers returned.

This time they played guild leaders.

The argument started loud and escalated deliberately. Both researchers had been briefed to keep escalating regardless of what the recruits initially tried.

One recruit stepped between them. "Calm down."

They kept arguing.

He raised his voice slightly. "Hey."

They got louder.

He stepped back, reassessed, and turned to the Soldiers. "Get the uninvolved people away from this area first."

Two Soldiers moved the bystander researchers back.

Then the first recruit turned back to the guild leaders.

"You," he said, pointing at the louder one. "Stop talking."

Surprising them into silence through directness.

Then: "You. Tell me what happened."

The first one spoke. Then he said, "Now you," to the other.

The argument had become structured. The emotional energy dropped because both parties were given a framework instead of an audience for their volume.

Elden was watching. He said, "What changed?"

A recruit answered, "He gave them something to do instead of just telling them to stop."

Lily wrote on the board: Structure reduces escalation.

"Telling someone to calm down rarely works," she said. "Giving them a process does. They follow the process because it gives them something to focus on that isn’t the anger."

...

Late afternoon. Elden closed his notebook.

"My turn," he said.

Two of the researchers looked at each other.

"Oh no," one of them said.

Elden set up the scenario himself. A merchant who had been robbed, a witness who had seen everything, and a victim who was visibly distressed. All three were played by researchers Elden had briefed separately.

The recruits began investigating.

The evidence pointed clearly in one direction. The witness’s account matched the merchant’s. The victim’s distress seemed genuine. Two of the Attendants were moving toward a conclusion.

One stopped.

"Something doesn’t make sense," she said.

Elden said, "What?"

"The witness answered every question before I finished asking it," she said.

Silence in the courtyard.

Another recruit said, "The merchant never actually said how many cores were stolen."

Everyone turned to the researcher playing the merchant.

The researcher blinked. "...That was supposed to be in the scenario."

Elden laughed. "It was. I took it out."

The recruits looked at each other.

"So what does that mean?" one of them said.

Lily said, "It means you were working with incomplete information and two of you were about to make a decision anyway."

Quiet.

"It also means," Elden said, "that your scenarios will sometimes have gaps. Reality always does. An Attendant who stops when something doesn’t feel right, instead of pushing through to a conclusion they’ve already decided on, is doing the correct thing."

Lily had already walked to the board. She wrote: Never assume the information you have is complete.

Then below it: Stop when something doesn’t fit. Find out why before continuing.

Two researchers immediately started arguing about how to add hidden variables into future scenarios. Another said the recruits were adapting too quickly and the exercises needed to be more unpredictable.

Lily smiled. "Good."

...

Training ended when the light started changing.

The recruits sat on the benches along the wall. Nobody said much for the first minute. The day had been dense without being repetitive. Different kinds of problems, different kinds of thinking required.

One of them finally said, "My body hurts."

Another said, "My brain hurts more."

Laughter from the group. The genuine kind that came at the end of something difficult when everyone had made it through.

Raze walked over from where he had been watching the last section.

"So," he said. "Still want to quit?"

Nobody answered immediately.

The fifth recruit, the one who had kept getting up during the initial selection, looked at Raze.

"When do we start tomorrow?" he said.

Raze laughed. Fully. "Good answer."

...

Lily and Elden stayed after the recruits had gone.

The researchers were clearing up the scenario props. The bystander markers were being put away. Someone was erasing the oldest content from the bottom of the board to make room for what had been added today.

Lily looked at the board. It had been modified significantly from this morning.

"We’ve already changed the curriculum," she said.

Elden nodded. "Seven times."

One of the researchers raised a finger without looking up from what he was doing. "Nine."

Laughter.

Lily closed her notebook. "They’re improving faster than I expected."

Elden was watching the doorway the recruits had left through. "They’re asking better questions than they were three days ago."

"The observation one this morning," Lily said. "The one who noticed the window. Yesterday she was one of the last to answer any of the questions correctly."

"The scenarios are doing what they’re supposed to do," Elden said. "They’re not memorizing rules. They’re building the instinct."

Lily looked at the board. At the categories and principles and the day’s additions. At the scenario notes on the side panel. At Elden’s nine revisions to the system in three days.

"I think we picked the right people," she said.

Elden nodded. "So do I."

The training grounds went quiet as the researchers finished and left in pairs.

The board already had tomorrow’s first scenario written at the bottom in Elden’s handwriting.

The lesson was ready.

The recruits just did not know it yet.