Odd One Out - Chapter 16 What Is Eight Times Seven? Part One
[Mission update:
Make your ward memorize the multiplication tables up till times twenty.
Time: 9 hr 30 min remaining.
Reward: +1 INT
Penalty: Deduction of 50% savings from bank account.]
Rik helped Doll change his clothes. Absent minded from the mission task issued, he buttoned the shirt wrong.
Picking the child off the bed, he headed to the living room. A plasma screen hovered near the wall showing the weather and current affairs.
His sister was out for work. Within the two weeks that Doll had become his foster child, he had received many ‘guests’ to came to inspect over and over again.
The day before, they said that they would now only come to inspect every three months. Rik was sure that after a couple more visits like those, they would cease to bother.
He placed Doll on the rexine couch and commanded the plasma screen to print out the multiplication tables.
As soon as he finished, the thin screen changed colour and seemed to split into two parallel sheets. One of the sheets floated to Rik and he grabbed it.
He showed Doll the hundred by hundred table and asked him to learn less than a quarter of it. Leaving Doll with the sheet he answered some messages from his colleagues and composed some articles.
An hour had passed and he went to check on Doll. “Did you memorize it?”
Doll flinched. “No,” he answered softly.
Rik knew he would have some trouble. “How much did you learn?”
“I know the one, two and five times tables. And up till three times eight.”
Rik sighed. Rubbing his face, he took the sheet from him. “Recite it. Start with two.”
This way, Rik kept drilling the multiplication tables into his head.
The plasma screen displayed the time. Three hours had gone by.
[ 5 hr 30min remaining.]
“What is eight times seven?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Eight times four?”
“Thirty-si-”
“Wrong.”
for visiting.
“Thirty-two.”
Doll’s mouth hurt. He was unable to remember when Rik randomly asked the ones he learnt.
Saying in order was easy. Unordered was not.
Another two hours and a half went by. They skipped the ten times table. And the twenty times too.
[ 2 hrs remaining.]
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