Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 1 - Chapter 9

Autumn of the Twelfth Year

Session

Best thought of as a single chapter of a campaign. Each session is a time for all the players and the GM to meet and advance the story.

Let only those whose pride is unswayed by the sweet praise of others cast a stone upon me.

“By the Goddess, this is something else.”

“Do you really mean that?” I found myself shyly scratching at my cheek as the dvergar (I had to stop myself from calling him a dwarf on more than a few occasions) master of the only smithy in the canton marveled at my work.

“I knew you had a good pair of hands, but I never would’ve thought you’d finish a whole set this fast,” he said, stroking his thick beard in awe. A set of wooden carvings lined the countertop in front of him. The twenty-five different types of figures each represented a distinct piece from a board game popular in Rhine and her neighboring countries.

Ehrengarde was a shogi-like game played on a twelve-by-twelve grid wherein each player attempted to rout the enemy emperor and prince. The unique rules dictating each piece’s movement and attacks were reminiscent of classic shogi, but not all the rules were so familiar. Out of the twenty-five types of pieces, only the emperor and prince pieces were mandatory for both players: the players then filled the first four ranks of their board with twenty-eight more pieces of their choosing to begin the game with a total of thirty units.

The abundance of things on the board evoked the image of a trading card game, and the intricacies during play complicated things in a similar fashion. While the game owed its staying power to its complexity and depth, a new player could fend for themselves with a cheat sheet briefly summarizing the more particular rules. The country’s relatively high literacy rate made the game a mainstay in Rhine and the neighboring satellite states.

Pieces could be drafted anywhere from one to twelve times—naturally, powerful rook-style pieces could only be taken once, while twelve pawns were allowed on either side. This balancing led to a handful of archetypal compositions, but none of them were blatantly overpowered enough to ruin the game. The game was so popular in the region that I’d heard stories of methuselah dedicating centuries to studying the mind sport.

One might think that 144 tiles containing sixty pieces would lead to a prolonged playtime, but the asymmetry that arises when strong and weak pieces intermix causes the game to end quickly once one player hems in the other’s prince and emperor. It has quick rounds for a game of its scale.

Of course, pieces for a board game as popular as ehrengarde were in high demand. The price varied wildly depending on quality, but every set was guaranteed to find a buyer. As the seller, this was as simple as it came. With each set requiring a total of 140 pieces, I certainly didn’t want for work, and the distinctness of the markets I could cater to was a great help. After all, there weren’t many other commodities that could be sold to patricians and plebeians both.

A set of wooden chunks with words written on them was dirt cheap, but a collection of statuesque pieces tailored for nobility could fetch a pretty penny depending on the quality of its make. Apparently, some sets were such masterpieces that they could rival the price of an entire manor. I’d dedicated the whole summer of my eleventh year to polish off a batch of pieces ready to be used as the basis for a mold.

“I can’t believe this only took you one summer,” the blacksmith said with a contemplative pause. “If I had an apprentice like you, I’m sure the other smiths would slam their chisels into the counter for not finding you first.”

“Oh please,” I said, “you’re just flattering me.”

“...Hm, yeah, well, be glad you’re a country kid. Things get hard in this neck of the woods for folks who can’t take a hint.”

Huh? Is it just me or did he insult me to my face? I set the rude comment aside as the waist-high smith picked up the emperor piece with a grunt. It depicted a middle-aged man hoisting a flag up high: the motif was the heroic emperor who, with his son, had repelled a joint invasion of Rhine over 120 years ago. Knowing that dvergar prized their beards, it was a good sign that the smith was stroking his as he gazed at the flag fluttering in an invisible wind.

“I’m really proud of that one,” I told him. “I based it off a portrait of the Black Flag I saw at church.”

“Sure, he’s a famous emperor. Him and the Silver Prince make a good father-son duo, so I’d bet they’ll sell well as emperor and prince pieces.”

Although they didn’t always retail for a full manor, well made pieces could still trade for significant coin. I’d been told that since many patrons elected to only buy single pieces that caught their fancy, the ever-present emperor and prince pieces were extra marketable, especially when they depicted popular monarchs, and as such I’d spent the most time and effort refining those two into works of art.

The major pieces were the height of an index finger and the minor ones the height of a pinky. It had been a daunting endeavor to carve out glorious poses that could fit into the pedestal at our town’s meeting hall.

“So, what do you think, sir?” I asked cautiously after the man had inspected each piece.

“Hrmm... All right, fine,” he said, crossing his arms. With a hefty nod, he sealed the deal and declared, “I’ll hammer you a set of armor.”

“Thank you so very much!!!”

“I didn’t think you had it in you to make it—and even if you did, I thought it’d take at least half a year. You did well, kiddo.”

I let out a shy chuckle. It was a wondrous feeling to have the fruits of my labor accepted, and all the better when I could trade it for what I really wanted.

“All right, let’s get you measured out. You mensch keep growing, don’tcha? I’ll make sure to build a set you can have tweaked.” The man hopped down from the counter stool and led me into the back of his workshop, swinging his shoulders to invigorate himself. The thought that a month of hard work was finally paying off sent shivers of joy down my spine.

It had all started this summer as I approached my twelfth birthday: I’d needed money. A set of equipment and a weapon was the bare minimum for an adventurer. Unfortunately for me, equipment and weaponry was mind-bogglingly expensive. Generally speaking, a set of chainmail paired with hard leather underneath would cost what my family spent to eat for an entire month.

There was no getting around it, as the requisite leather and metal alone was already pricey. I may have been operating on a TRPG system, but that didn’t extend to the finances of those around me. The world wasn’t so kind to adventurers that skipping out on a few nights at the inn could buy an entire armor set. In the nostalgic settings of days gone by where the entire universe was built around the concept of adventure, weapons were well within the price range of a child’s allowance, but here a mere bronze sword cost a small fortune.

As the fourth son, it went without saying that I was in no position to beg for scraps. Further, our family had recently built a cottage in preparation for my brother’s wedding, so our purse had taken a swift turn into the land of austerity. With betrothal fees, ceremony fees, and an officially wed bride on the way...no amount of parental love could justify a spare coin for me.

The only choice I had was to earn it myself. I was not as brainless as a certain hunter who’d ventured into the depths of ruins in search of tanks—or rather, weapons in general. I also could see the costs of raw materials coming, so I refused to take smithing skills as a stopgap.

Besides, I had a different means of earning money. In order to secure an easier path to independence (though that sounded unconvincing coming from me) I made wood carvings until my Wood Whittling skill was all the way to VII: Virtuoso. I picked up an Artistry skill to improve the finer details on the board game pieces, and with that at V: Adept, I took an add-on called Realistic Depiction to round out my money making abilities.

Thinly veiled excuses aside, when I first had brought a pawn to the blacksmith as a sample, he’d been so impressed that he offered to make me a set of armor in exchange for a full ehrengarde set. My initial hope had been for him to buy it off me and then to use the earnings to commission armor, so this was beyond my wildest expectations. I’d leapt at the opportunity without a second thought.

Admittedly, the process of designing and carving twenty-five different pieces had been back-breaking work, but the tantalizing thought of my own personal armor kept me working at a rapid pace. I’d lessened my usual craftwork without hesitation and spent all of my free time creating these instead. My shoulders had grown stiff, no doubt entirely due to the extra weight of Margit dangling on my back begging for attention, but she repaid me with a massage (of the completely wholesome variety, I might add) so we’ll call it even.

Any fantasy lover’s heart would light ablaze at the prospect of having their own personal armor. That enthusiasm, coupled with the restless feeling that I was only some two years and change away from leaving home, spurred me to work at a pace I had never before achieved. And now, my work was being recognized as I stood still to be measured.

“Hmph, you’ll grow another head or two on you,” the smith said with a measuring tape in one hand and my shoulder in the other. I had committed a sizable sum of experience to my future growth, so I was meant to be somewhere in the ballpark of 180 centimeters at full size.

“You can tell?” I asked.

“Back in the day, I handled a lotta adventurers and soldiers when I worked at the Innenstadt smithy,” he explained, jotting down the measurements of my arms and shoulders. “When you’ve seen as many tots turn into full-grown men as I have, a good rub is enough to tell.”

Innenstadt was a major city that lay on a river to the west of Konigstuhl. Tens of thousands of people called it home, and my father often went there to sell crops wholesale in order to pay our liquid taxes. My brothers had also once hitched a ride with a caravan to learn a trade in the city, but I had never gone, unfortunately. But that made me wonder: why would someone go from a smithy in the big city to this tiny village?

“You’ve got a good swordsman’s body,” he said. Then, after a short pause, he wondered aloud, “But there’s a bit more muscle on one side of your back and chest here... This from a shortbow or something?”

“Wow, you’re spot-on.” I was amazed that he could tell from a single touch. Swordplay was my main mode of combat, but I’d been learning how to handle a bow from Margit on the side. Despite my phenomenal run-in with the old wizard who’d given me the ring, I had yet to encounter my second episode with magic, and wanted for a long-range attack option.

I’d been contemplating how my situation wasn’t very ideal when I remembered that my childhood friend was a huntsman. I’d worried that she’d refuse considering that it was a family trade, but my fears proved baseless and she’d instantly accepted my request. When the two of us had free time, she would often instruct me in some light training with the bow.

Thanks to Margit, I’d unlocked archery skills and a whole host of sneaking and tracking skills as we stalked the wooded mountains. These would never gather dust as an adventurer always on the move—nope, never. Never ever. I was absolutely not just telling myself this to avert my eyes from my dwindling stockpile of experience. Besides, my training was a fantastic source of income, I swear.

“A bow, eh... Well, bows are outta my jurisdiction. It’s a shame, but I can’t make you one no matter what you bring me.”

“Really?”

“I’m allowed to make any kinda non-plate armor, swords, and spear tips. Bows are no good. Just ’cause I run the smithy doesn’t mean I can make whatever I want.”

In my mind, a local blacksmith was an all-rounder that made everything from weapons to armor to even grappling hooks, but the occupation had its limitations here. As he took my measurements, the dvergar man explained how he was a member of an artisan union—a guild, so to speak—that issued licenses allowing blacksmiths to open their shops.

In order to prevent advancements in smelting or casting from leaking to other nations, all smithing workshops were required to register with an artisan union. They were the ones who determined who was permitted to create what; this all sounded rather strict, but an information leak could have serious military implications, so I supposed it was fair enough.

In essence, blacksmiths required national qualification... The people making nails or hoops for buckets and barrels in small cantons suddenly appeared much more impressive to me. For the longest time, I’d considered the smith here to be the proprietor of some kind of nail-and-kitchen-knife store. I would still have been looking aimlessly for a place to find armor had Sir Lambert not pointed me here.

“But you can make swords?”

“All the ones hanging off of the watchmen’s belts were hammered out by yours truly. If you want one for yourself, bring another set of these,” he said, referring to the wooden pieces. The price was mildly shocking, but the lord of our region had imposed a minimum price on martial arms for the sake of public safety. Whenever the smith made weapons for anybody other than the lord, he was forced to sell it for an absurd price.

It made sense; allowing easy access to weapons practically begged bandit groups to form in the area. Despite the fantasy setting, the world was a ways away from the fantasies I’d dreamed of. Not only that, but each and every sword was marked with a serial number and documented with a certificate. What is this, a hunting rifle? The dvergar lectured me by explaining that it was a given that a tool capable of killing another person would be tightly controlled, which probably should have been obvious to someone who’d lived in modern Japan.

“Well,” he added, “I hear this is the only place that’s this strict.” After finishing my measurements, he shut his notepad and sat down at a stubby planning desk, where he pulled out a thin sheet of fibrous paper. By this point I had already grown accustomed to seeing paper treated like an everyday commodity in this medieval world. Still, it was always coarse and weak, so long-term writing always utilized parchment instead.

“Let’s see, I’ve got a ton of orders for nails and spikes and the like...” The smith bent his fingers as he counted the orders and mumbled something about one of them being for my brother’s new lodging. “Well, I’ll have it done by springtime.”

I couldn’t tell if half a year was a standard amount of time for a full order to be completed. I’d bought my fair share of business suits in my previous life, but this was my first time ordering armor (it would be stranger if it wasn’t), so I wasn’t sure what to make of it. To begin with, it was dubious as to whether or not my ehrengarde pieces retailed for enough to cover the costs.

Well, in a small canton like this where everyone knew everyone, I doubted he’d hustle me. Dvergar, much like their dwarven tabletop cousins, lived a long time—roughly three hundred years. If he were to spend all of that time in this little village, then it was only right for me to employ some common sense. Without airing any concerns whatsoever, I bowed my head and thanked him.

[Tips] The dvergar are well-known for their short stature, being less than half the height of an average mensch. They are a race with iron skeletons and boiling red blood. Hailing from ore-filled mountains, they are blessed with great strength, heat resistance, and excellent vision in the dark. The men are well-built with impressive beards, and the women are voluptuous despite their youthful faces—either way, they are easy to tell apart from those around them.

In the days that followed my episode at the smithy, I began going through the motions of harvest preparation. I wiped the preservative oil off our sickles and hoes and gave them a thorough polish, then sharpened their blades on the grindstone. This made slicing through our rye and oats a breeze.

Met with the precarious glimmer of our sharpened tools, the details behind my order of armor floated to the front of my mind. In the end, I’d spent so much time trying to suss out what I wanted and yet had nothing concrete.

Faith skills were as unsettling as ever, so I still didn’t want to take those. I hadn’t run into the right encounters for magic, and in the interest of realism, there was no point holding out for a life-changing experience before I came of age. The only adventurer’s paths I had available to me were those of a swordsman or scout; and it wasn’t hard to do both in this world.

Scouts in TRPGs are generally small, alacritous characters (exactly like Margit) whose weaknesses lay in their paper-thin armor ratings and low attack power. However, my hoard of experience points and the lack of a systemic lock on what I could do made it simple to polish both skill sets to my satisfaction. If I kept my equipment load light, I could fulfill both roles at once.

Taking all of this into account, my new tentative plan was to enhance my swordsmanship while leaving some leeway to transition into an arcane or holy swordsman in the future.

This plan was why I spent so much time and effort on the wooden figures that I traded to the blacksmith. Being on the front lines with low armor class is just embarrassing. Trying to recruit party members as a “swordsman” equipped with a stick and plain clothes is doomed to fail, and your prospects would be no better trying to join one.

Figuring this strategy to be my most realistic chance at success, the armor was my first real step toward shaping my future. Proficiency in swords and spears was sure to be a boon everywhere I went, as self-defense was perpetually necessary.

If I ever found myself lucky enough to learn magic, or if I finally bit the religious bullet, I always had time to work it into my current skill set; if not, I could stay on the path of the blade. Fortunately, the school of warfare I learned did not discriminate between types of arms, leaving me free to use whatever sort of weapon was most fitting.

...Which meant that nothing had really changed. I couldn’t do anything about that, since the plan was tentative—after all, I wanted to use magic if I could. Has there ever been a man who didn’t long to slice down his foes while unleashing flashy magic, only to exit combat and use his talents in an array of common situations? Nay, I say.

I saw my dreams for the future gleam alongside the freshly sharpened sickle and chuckled. I wanted to be as sharp as this blade whose steel perfectly reflected my face. But for now, I’d finished polishing our equipment and readied myself to move on to care for Holter. We never ran out of things to carry during harvest season, and our workhorse was soon going to be as busy as we were.

I tidied up the shed and made for the stable when I sensed a presence jump out of the house and begin to trail me.

“Mr. Brother! Mr. Brother!”

Everything that follows behind me is adorable, and that’s especially true of my little sister.

“Hi Elisa. What’s wrong?”

Elisa tumbled into me and grabbed at my belt. Now six years old, my beloved baby sister had only just begun to venture outside the house. Her weak constitution hadn’t improved since the first terrible fever that had almost killed her. Perhaps owing to that, her development had been stunted and her appetite small. From her appearance alone, one would guess she was no more than four years of age. It wasn’t surprising, considering that she had yet to manage a full season without a cold and was bedridden every winter.

It was nothing short of a miracle that she could now step outside on warm days like today. Despite looking like a miniature version of my mother, she truly was frail.

Belittle not the common cold; in a world without antibiotics, doctors and healers (the latter being a type of mage or priest) were exorbitantly expensive. Fragile children died from simple illnesses all the time: I had seen toddlers too young to walk pass away in this very canton. Every year, we saw colds claim the lives of a few weak children, and even adults weren’t safe if they ran into any complications.

A clean bill of health was a fortune of untold value compared to its going rate on modern Earth. Those without such a fortune had to pay their dues in cash if they wanted to see the next sunrise.

Thankfully, I provided our house with a secondary income. When a merchant caravan was in town we would sell my work to them, and otherwise my father would travel to the nearest city to trade my wooden idols for medicine. When I really put my all into a carving, sometimes the bishop would even cast a miracle on my sister as thanks for a generous “donation.” Once, I’d fixed up a new wheel and axle for a broken carriage that earned us a fat sum just as Elisa had come down with pneumonia. The timing couldn’t have been better, and we’d immediately used the money to take her to a healer.

We were already better off than most farmers, so my extra contributions were enough to preserve the life of a girl who would normally have died years ago. Everybody in the family worked hard to care for our little miracle so she could walk on her own two feet.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, my parents constantly made a hero out of me and me alone. Whenever Elisa balked at her bitter medicine, they would say, “Your brother did his best to get this for you, so do your best to drink it.” At some point I’d become a figure of admiration for her, which is why she now followed me around like a baby duckling.

I wasn’t actually anybody special, but I couldn’t bring myself to shatter her childlike image of me. I put on my best big-brother smile and knelt down to pat her head.

“Mama won’t play! She’s doing needle stuff again.” The way she huffed and puffed was so cute that a smile naturally came to my face.

“Aww, but you know, it’s almost Heinz’s wedding. She must be busy.”

As I turned twelve, my eldest brother turned fifteen this fall, putting him at marriageable age. We’d finished constructing a cottage (though it was honestly a tad big to be called one) for him and his wife. They were slated to hold their wedding in tandem with two other couples during the harvest festival in late autumn.

In Konigstuhl—or rather, in the Rhine Empire—weddings were always held in the fall. Not only did the Harvest Goddess preside over plant life and natural cycles, but She was also the ruling authority over marriage. Just as the flourishing crops were the result of successful reproduction, the theory went that as we humans did the same, it was best to wed in the fall—when Her powers were at their height.

Furthermore, weddings were a big event in a tiny village like ours. It would be a major hassle to have more than one, and we definitely had pragmatic reasons to combine all the ceremonies with the harvest festival, when money flowed through the canton anyway. What was more, the bishop gifted the newlyweds some money—though the marriage tax (which made my Earthling mind twist in agony) effectively canceled this gift out—that allowed for even greater celebrations. We had little reason not to do it this way.

The big event on the horizon left our household in chaos during the final stretch. First and foremost, we needed clothes. Luckily, the other families were the ones handling the most intensive bridal uniform, but we still had a lot on our plate. Reusing old formal wear caused one’s family to drop in status, so the first son’s marriage always spelled mayhem for his mother. However, second sons and below often wore the same thing with minor adjustments to account for height.

On top of Heinz’s outfit, we younglings needed something to wear as attendees. Ours didn’t need to be as fancy as the doublet the groom was meant to wear, but new sets of clothes or additional embroidery were required. This too was likely the result of some kind of social politics in the canton that I wasn’t made aware of due to my age. Even as a child, I could sort of tell: the seating arrangements at church and the order in which we greeted the magistrate were all reflective of our positions in society.

“What’s a wedding?” Elisa asked.

“Well, a wedding is a very happy occasion,” I explained. For a small girl who would one day be sent off as a bride herself, and for a fourth son who was destined to leave his home behind, none of this was relevant to us. “There’s a lot of yummy food. Elisa, do you remember the pretty brides when you went to the harvest festival before?”

“The white dresses?”

“Yup. The brides with the pretty white dresses.”

Curiously, this world also had a cultural history of throwing wedding ceremonies with white wedding dresses. The only twist was that (despite the bishop’s blessing and guidance throughout the ceremony) marriage was not considered a holy matrimony: it was a civil contract that was filed with the magistrate. The mix of ancient Roman and Middle Ages European elements swirled together to make a peculiar culture.

What was stranger, women’s fashion had clear Victorian and art deco influences straight from early twentieth-century England, but also contained ancient quilted clothes and even drew from the designs of the traditional Far East. There were so many different styles intermingling that the whole thing was in a state of chaos.

I’d suspected this for some time, but there must have been people like me every now and again. The fashion here spanned from Earth’s prehistory to the twentieth century, and there were a handful of modernized processes, like papermaking and the suspiciously well-structured governmental model... The more I learned about my motherland, the more certain I grew that this chimera of ancient and modern cultures had to be the result of outside influence.

Not to say anything was wrong with that, of course. As a man myself, seeing women don a colorful assortment of embellishments was certainly more pleasing than the colorless (dye was expensive!) plainclothes that we all wore while at work.

“...I wanna too,” Elisa said.

“You want to wear a wedding dress?”

“Mhmm.”

I supposed it was only natural for a young girl to fall in love with a fancy dress. Even in a frugal canton like ours, nearly everyone dressed up during this season. I’m sure that the fluffy frills and lace tickled her fancy.

“But Elisa, you don’t have anyone to marry.”

“Umm, then Mr. Brother.”

“Hm?”

“I’ll do the wedding with Mr. Brother.”

Aww, you say the cutest things. Having been the youngest child in my past life, I’d never known what it was like to fawn on a little sibling, but...this was addictive. I could see why some claimed that all older brothers had a phase of unconditional doting.

“Ha ha ha, you’re going to be my bride, Elisa?”

“Mhmm.”

I could tell Elisa didn’t really get it, so I picked her up and put her on my broadening shoulders. The beginning of autumn was still hot, and I didn’t want her staying out in the sun for too long. She obviously caught colds in the wintertime, but she was also weak to the heat, so I had to be careful.

“Is that so? Then we’ll have to ask mother for a pretty dress.”

“Mm,” she grunted with an adorable nod.

I’d seen my mother fly through the needlework for the men in our household, and she’d be extra motivated for her youngest daughter. At any rate, we could always go into town to sell the dress once we were done with it, so there was no use cutting corners. All of us at home loved Elisa, after all. I was sure she’d be just as beautiful as the bride herself.

Some rational part of my brain watched my foolish brotherly love and wondered if I was allowed to look forward to her dress as much as I was. Well, it makes me happy, so I guess it’s fair game.

[Tips] Familial laws in the Rhine Trialist Empire are among its most fundamental. In it, mensch are forbidden from marrying their kin—that is, any relative in the second degree or closer.

The curtains of autumn were drawing to a close in the blink of an eye. I was nearing ten years as a farmhand with IV: Craftsman in most agricultural skills, but the rush of harvest season was as unforgiving as it had always been. Yet apparently the routine had seeped into my body, causing the experience income to dwindle, and I couldn’t justify investing any more into making the task any easier.

After surviving the dizzying work, the relief that we had enough to pay our taxes and the elation of the coming festival created an atmosphere that was difficult to put to words. I tried comparing it to the fading memory of earning a promotion after handling a big project, and it was tough to say which was better.

Whichever the case, I had to offer my devotions to those above for the fact that I was here to enjoy this day. Unlike Earth, the gods were quick to respond to sincere worship, and it was their diligence that kept the world turning. I would be remiss not to offer a prayer or two.

Our celebration dedicated to the Harvest Goddess was, as usual, blessed with clear skies. The town square by our village head’s home was the scene for our festivities. The product of countless women’s work lined an endless array of tables with steam drifting off of each dish. The Goddess knew of our struggles and was ever considerate: during this one day of the year, divine favoritism kept any and all food from losing its heat, and liquor stayed ice cold once chilled. I’m sure She had no qualms tossing miracles left and right, since the whole event was in Her name.

Men and women alike had grown frisky, and an air of levity swept through the canton. Some eagerly awaited the formal dress of the weddings, others’ stomachs growled over the feast, and others still roamed the stalls set up by merchant caravans who’d come to capitalize on the festivities...but that wasn’t the cause of the rosy fog that had settled over the region. No, the reason was simple: this was a chance for an eventful encounter.

Musicians abounded, playing their tunes in every corner of the canton, and everyone within earshot was dancing till they dropped. In an era wanting for entertainment, no pastime could compete with dancing. After a jig or two with everyone in high spirits, it hardly needed to be said what occurred after the sun went down.

Wheat on this planet had yet to be selectively bred for shorter stalks, and they provided ample cover for any sort of two-player games one might play at a festival such as this. Some of these couples went on to become officially wed, while others between second sons and daughters turned into secret relationships. It’d been prolific enough to spawn a folk song called Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.

In other words, there were a lot of young lads and lasses looking forward to this sort of thing—specifically, my two middle brothers. Both of them had disappeared somewhere when they were supposed to help us prepare for Heinz’s wedding.

I was close to blowing a gasket as I lined another table with food. There were supposed to be a lot more helping hands, but the urge to play only swelled in children as they neared adulthood, and it was common for those nearly of age to abandon their posts. As a result, only a handful of kids like myself stayed behind, feeling as humiliated as the serious kid before a school festival. I supposed a change in universes couldn’t change human behavior.

After carrying an absurd quantity of piping hot food, I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked around the square, which was covered in a massive, golden rug thanks to the withering underbrush. Everyone around me toiled with sweat streaming down their blissful faces. The work was harsh, but drudgery for a fun cause is quick to be forgotten.

A wave of nostalgia washed over me. In university, my friends and I had taken up part-time jobs to rent a room to play tabletop games in, but our small numbers made it difficult to squeeze out enough money between us. Regardless, slinging dice was more fun in that room than anywhere else on the planet. I’m sure the hardships we overcame were the reason I spent more time reading my priceless rulebooks than any of my college textbooks.

On the flip side, in my past life I never managed to come to terms with systems whose copious dice rolls brought out my disfavor in the eyes of RNGesus, but I’ve since accepted my role when playing such games. I badly wished for another chance to sit at that table and roll the bones with my friends. The moments where I destroyed my players with natural twenties and boxcars only to be called a failure of a GM were fun in their own right...

A loud cheer snapped me out of my daydream. I turned to see a group of small chil—oh. Apologies. I turned to see Margit and her family pulling along a giant pushcart sporting a freakishly large boar. I could tell the skinned beast measured nearly two meters as they wheeled it into view. I recalled that Margit had told me to look forward to her family’s dish, and I guess that was it.

How in the world did those tiny huntsmen bring down a monstrosity like that? I’d once heard that giant boars could survive a 5.56 mm round to the head, and I couldn’t imagine they’d used poison on something they were to serve at a feast...

“Hey, d’you hear? The magistrate prepared some fireworks for the festival.”

“Really, now? That means he must’ve invited a mage. That’s incredible.”

As I gaped at how the size of the boar made the little arachne look like moving specks, the conversation of the helpers a table over drifted into my ear. Recently, my Listening and Presence Detection skills had become so effective that I was a tad overly sensitive.

Fireworks, huh? I love how grand they are. Nighttime fireworks were fantastic, but I loved the afternoon ones that livened up the atmosphere all the same. What was more, they always reminded me of the old man. I couldn’t wait for the day that the ring dangling from my neck would turn into a key item.

Submerged in the festive spirit around me, my heart soared as high as the open autumn sky beyond my view.

[Tips] Divine blessings are a given during festivities, especially when the god in question is the one being celebrated. Some of the divine go so far as to descend and mingle with their subjects via an avatar.

By high noon, the party was in full swing. The magistrate’s address was a simple one, and as was the case every year, it lasted only a few minutes. Eckard Thuringia, the master of Konigstuhl Castle and magistrate of the canton of the same name, emerged wearing a dignified breastplate with a handful of knights by his side. He offered a few words on the year’s harvest, prayed for a serene winter from atop his horse, and quickly took his leave. I figured he still needed to attend to the other cantons under his rule.

As an aside, the sermon that replaced our usual mass was also quite short. This was because the festival in and of itself was a form of hymn, psalm, and prayer in praise of the Harvest Goddess, so we had no need for lengthy worship. It was not because our bishop was such an infamous lover of wine that some questioned whether or not he worshipped the Wine God. And he certainly did not shout “We shall finish our prayer later!” because he wanted to skip ahead to the drinking...I believe. Or at least, I’d like to believe so. I think that he wouldn’t do something like that...in fact, let’s just go with that. Whatever the case, this short preamble explained why the citizens of the canton were so utterly gone within the first few hours of the day.

“Mmhee,” Margit giggled, “are you drinking?”

“I am, I am.”

My usual arachne necklace was no exception. Seeing her baby face flushed red as she slurred words was downright criminal, but rather common in this land. Boiling pots and elementary filtration devices made with cloth, gravel, and charcoal gave Rhinians access to clean water, but those means were too expensive for everyday use. Most of the time, drinking water was sanitized with alcohol.

With its relatively warm climate, southern Rhine was the grape production capital of the Empire. It wasn’t quite as temperate as the smaller states along the southern ocean, but it was good enough for grapevines to flourish and wine to flow through the region. At this time of year, you could go out into the streets to see a constant flow of wagons carrying full loads of wine out of the breweries under the Wine God’s influence.

What was more, the church brought barrels and barrels of the stuff out from its own wine cellar for the holiday. This spectacle was what happened when people let their actions outpace their thoughts and knocked back the strong liquor without diluting it. I didn’t need to check to know what was causing the sour smell emanating from the trees surrounding the town square.

This was the state of affairs in the early afternoon; is this canton going to be all right for the wedding? Well, the weddings of yesteryear had managed somehow, so I was sure it’d all work out. The absolute worst-case scenario was a pair of overeager newlyweds transitioning from ceremony to honeymoon before retiring to the safety of their cottage. Don’t get me wrong, that would be a terrible thing to see, but with half the population too drunk to remember anything, the lasting damage was sure to be minimal.

“Heyyy, don’t ignore meeee...” Margit slurred.

It had been some time since I last heard Margit prattle on in the common tongue. I looked down to see her pouting with puffed cheeks, still dangling in her favorite spot.

“I told you not to drink so much...” I said.

“I only had a bit. Just a teensy little bit,” she insisted.

Truth be told, she wasn’t wrong. Two to three mugs was well within the realm of “a little,” but unfortunately that logic didn’t fly with arachne. What they had over mensch in digestive capabilities, they definitely paid for in their alcohol tolerance. I had no idea what she thought was going to happen.

“Don’t you wanna look around the street stalls? You won’t be able to at this rate,” I warned.

“It’s fiiine,” Margit purred. “You’ll take me there, won’t you Erich?”

The spider looked like a spoiled kitten as she nuzzled her rosy cheeks against my chest. I was worried her vibrant pink makeup would stain my shirt, but my clothes were as clean as always... Arachne can get this red without makeup?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fulfill her request; I had to get changed. “I can’t,” I explained, “Heinz’s wedding is coming up. I have to go and change clothes.”

“Stooop!” she squealed.

Don’t “Stooop!” me. You’re fourteen—one summer shy of being a full-grown adult, young lady. Margit barely looked older than Elisa, but I hadn’t forgotten that she was two years older than me. No matter how cute she was as she threw her little tantrum, I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t let...her...

“Okay!” I said, “Come on, it’s time to let go.”

“Erich, you meanie!!!”

I savagely beat down the urge to play with Margit with an iron will and lifted her by the armpits to dislodge her from my neck. When I placed her down, I noticed that I had grown so much that she no longer came up to my waist. She looked up at me with teary, accusatory eyes that twisted my senses and made me feel like I was legitimately in the wrong, which was less than helpful. To make matters worse, we were out in public—there were plastered men all around the square, and some of them were our old playmates.

“C’mon, Erich! Don’t be such a goody-two-shoes!”

“Yeah, go take her on a walk, man!”

“I wish I were you, ya damn vitality glorifier!”

Drunkards made fine gossip mongers, and I knew all too well that soft words wouldn’t get through their thick skulls. I yelled, “Get lost, deadbeats! I’ll beat the drunk outta you!”

Despite raising my fist at them, all I got in response was a dry whistle. By the way, “taking a walk” in this context meant finding a secluded patch of foliage to disappear into; I’d personally witnessed a handful of couples do so already.

On the other hand, “vitality glorifier” was a roundabout way of calling me a lolicon. Some ancient holy man had been infamously partial to certain demihumans and demons that were at best “youthful” by mensch standards. When called out for his debauchery, he’d claimed that he merely loved their overwhelming vitality with a pure and innocent heart. The tale had become a historical allusion that survived to the current day.

Hm? You want to know what happened to the guy? He’d been pursuing underage demihumans too, so he was beaten to a pulp by all parties involved and excommunicated by the church. The religious authorities of this country were nothing if not fervent, considering they were willing to sack a member of one of the imperial houses.

I ignored the fact that my childhood friend managed to initiate a social attack on me just by tearing up and left the scene to avoid being nonconsensually flagged with any unwanted traits or titles. I didn’t want to have to jot down a new family member on my item sheet at this age (though I suppose I was technically halfway to adulthood). Still...I couldn’t deny that I wasn’t wholly against the idea after all the time I’d spent with Margit.

“Hey, Erich, you’re late.”

I returned home to find my eldest brother all suited up in the living room. The white doublet didn’t really suit the chiseled face that took after our father, but today he’d slicked back his chestnut hair with some gel, helping him round out the look. It would be more than a stretch to say he looked like a noble, given his sunbaked face and calloused hands, but this was the gallant figure of our family’s eldest son. “How is it? Does it look good?”

“Yes, it looks very good, Heinz.”

“That so?” he said, shyly rubbing his nose. He looked just like the little boy to whom I’d handed a wooden sword; at the same time, seeing his growth filled me with pride I’d seldom felt in my nearly fifty years of life.

I fondly reminisced on the days we spent hunting the elusive fairy coins with my homemade weapons in hand, and the time I’d sat in on his language lessons to fix my fabulous accent. I would have liked to delete the latter memory from the minds of all those involved, including myself, but still.

No matter what, it was remarkable how much he’d grown from the sniveling child who had mimicked the adventurous heroes of old sagas. He’d wrapped his brain around the mathematics that had plagued him for years, and he could hold a conversation in the palatial tongue with only an occasional stutter. Our family’s future was safe in his hands.

My brother and I went back and forth for a while with talk of congratulations and future children. I changed into my own formal wear (a clearly well-worn set of hand-me-downs that had passed through my brothers) when I noticed that my two middle brothers were nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, they came home blackout drunk... I think our old man took them out to the well. We didn’t want Elisa seeing them like that, so we sent her off to Mina’s house to get dressed.”

Those boneheaded twins... Not only had they skipped out on their work, but they’d managed to drink themselves under the table. I could imagine my father boiling with rage while he pumped (with a hand crank that I had been shocked to see, much like paper) ironically ice-cold water from the well and generously splashed his two idiot sons.

With the harvest over and autumn giving way to winter, I prayed that the two fools could avoid catching a cold, but a pair of loud sneezes ringing out in the backyard dashed my hopes instantly.

[Tips] Alcohol is used throughout the Empire as a means of sterilizing drinking water. However, it is common for races that can subsist on contaminated water to have little tolerance for drink.

The wedding was less a magnificent ceremony and more a jovial party. Commoner weddings in our canton were wholly removed from the concept of elegance, opting for a raucous gala instead. It was practically tradition for the drunken crowd to hoot and holler at the newlyweds only for the bridegroom to retort with a vulgar remark, causing the bride, one of their relatives, or the bishop to smack him upside the head as he passed by.

It was a simple process where the pair walked down the aisle littered with flower petals and boorish insults to receive the bishop’s blessing and sign a contract. After that, it devolved into the usual feast. Booze and commotion were age-old wedding companions, and this world fit the mold. Everyone from the groom to the bride was sure to dance, sing, and drink themselves mad.

The songs changed at the drop of a hat, with dances and partners following suit. Anyone tired of the commotion could grab a bite to eat or quench their thirst with liquor. At sunset, the newlyweds were hoisted up and marched around town, finally being tossed into their bedroom accompanied by a hooting cacophony.

After causing their fair share of mayhem, the crowd proceeded to give the couples some room by leaving for a second (or third, if we count the day-drinking that precedes the whole process) party. It was rowdy and potentially even barbaric, but I thought this was much more fun than the weird speeches and parlor tricks that I’d seen in the past. Of course, I couldn’t deny that my view as a thirty-year-old bachelor may have been warped from the wedding gifts that only exchanged hands in one direction.

Regardless, the ceremony was wondrous. Heinz looked triumphant as he led his bride by the arm. He and the fragile Miss Mina made for a pairing that was as criminal as Margit and me in a completely different way—a quick glance at the couple made the words “abduction” and “intimidation” come to mind—but the new Missus’s face was dyed a blissful rosy red. Practical factors like familial relations and finances played a part in marriage, but that wasn’t to say that those involved weren’t happy.

“Mr. Brother,” Elisa said, tugging at my shirt.

“Hm?”

I’d been leisurely sitting in the corner of the square with my sister on my lap. Our entire family had been worried that she’d collapse if she got caught up in the dancing, so I was put on guard duty.

“Mr. Brother won’t dance?”

“I’m not a fan of dancing,” I replied. That was only half true. I was confident that my proficiency in swordplay would translate to the steps of a jig or waltz, but...I simply had no one to dance with. Margit had been fine until midway through the wedding, where she downed a full container of mead (distilled mead with herbs strong enough to get mensch drunk, no less), leaving me without a partner.

Of course, I could have followed in the footsteps of Michael and Hans, who powered through their newfound sneezes to dance with any and every maiden that came their way. However, girls my age had begun to avoid dancing with me as of late. I was sure a certain little arachnid who was about to become best friends with an empty bucket was to blame for that. I didn’t know what she was so worried about, seeing as I was a fourth-born son with little chance for a suitor.

“But you danced with Elisa,” my sister pointed out.

“That’s because you’re special,” I told her. My only dance of the day went to Elisa on the outskirts of the area. I say “dance,” but I’d picked up my sister and slowly spun her around because she wanted to partake in the festivities. I hadn’t let her take a single step for herself, but she seemed happy enough, so I figured it was fine.

“Special!” Elisa huffed smugly and leaned back against me while flapping her tiny legs. So cute.

But as a real, in-the-flesh little sister...she would probably be saying things like “Oh my gosh, my brother is so annoying,” in a few years. Thinking about it now almost brought me to tears. If it were to actually happen, I could see myself bawling without reserve, since just imagining it was enough to make my chest tighten.

“Oh, I know. Elisa, do you want to go see the stalls?”

“Stalls?” she echoed.

“Yup. There’s rare food and poets there!”

I shooed away the depressing thoughts with a simple suggestion. With how often Elisa was stuck inside, she’d been starved for outlets for her curiosity, and the idea of looking at street stalls enamored her. She answered with an enthusiastic “I wanna!”

Our father had given me some pocket change to spend at the festival, so I was sure I could buy one or two things for her. It was hard to say if any ice candy remained now that we’d finished the harvest considering how popular it was, but perhaps if I could find some, my rating as a brother would improve. With my excited sister in my arms, I set out for the long line of street stalls.

[Tips] The Wine God, who presides over festivity and merriment, has a following that rivals the Harvest Goddess’s. He states, “The pain of a hangover is but part of liquor’s charm,” and there exists no miracle to cure hangovers. In His eyes, to be a true lover of wine, one must love all its effects.

Why are festivals more fun as a child than as an adult? A stack of 10,000 yen bills is enough to buy anything—even a shot at the raffles that children can only dream of. And yet, the days I’d left the house tightly clutching a few hundred yen coins were always the ones that made my heart dance.

I enjoyed a spell of nostalgia as I looked over the many street stalls that had set up shop. They were all run by wandering merchants who’d built up their stock abroad. At times, they stopped by towns like ours to hawk their wares.

“We’ve got obsidian knives made in the north! They’re great for picking herbs!”

“Hey, hey! How about some lacquerware I picked up on an eastern route? There ain’t nothing around here that shines like it! Buy a whole set as a gift! How ’bout it? It goes great with today’s blue skies!”

“Heeerbs! Herbs from the western peninsulaaa! Bruises, scrapes, cuts, it’ll heal it all!”

The traders sat on floor mats or stuck their heads out of special wagons that opened on one side as they called out to the dwindling traffic. This shopping aisle had been bustling with activity earlier in the day; with the locals either too drunk to stand or busy dancing away, business always slowed to a crawl after the wedding, but some shoppers here and there preferred to browse at their leisure or wanted to test their luck with what was left in stock.

No shortage of things caught my eye, but today I was following the orders of our family’s little princess. I didn’t even need to ask her where she wanted to go. Her twinkling gaze was clearly fixed on one point: a jewelry stand for housewives. The clearly wellborn proprietor sat in a folding chair, a humongous ogre bodyguard by his side. His enthusiasm to sell had clearly waned, as he leisurely watched the sparse crowd of potential customers walk by.

“Mr. Brother! Pretty! Pretty!!!” Elisa squeaked.

“Yup, they sure are pretty,” I concurred.

My sister toddled over with stars in her eyes, but the shopkeeper didn’t bother to shoo her away. A child that couldn’t pay would’ve been nothing more than a nuisance if we’d come at peak hours, but now that the business was slow, the jeweler called her over with a gentle voice.

“You’ve got good eyes, little lady! This here is a pearl unearthed by the mermaids who live in the deep blue of the southern inland sea. Look how round and spotless it is! And this is it unpolished—it came out of the water looking exactly like this.”

I guess this well-built man in extravagant clothing is a fan of children, I mused. After all, he carefully showed the beauty of his priceless pearl to Elisa as if she were legitimately a potential customer. What’s the price on this thing? ...Urp, three drachmae?

The Empire’s numeric system was base-ten, and its currency reflected that. One gold drachma was worth a hundred librae; one silver libra was worth a hundred copper assarii. It was a simple, familiar system.

The average independent farmer expected to make five drachmae in a year. From there, one drachma was taken as liquid tax, and it took roughly fifty librae to purchase the materials needed to pay the product tax that couldn’t be grown, like silk. Living and agricultural expenses totaled to around two drachmae, so the final disposable income for a year calculated out to be one drachma and fifty librae. The ratio between what the government took and what we were left with was roughly four-to-six, which put our canton on the more lenient side.

Adding my side occupation and our extra fields to the mix, our family could stash away three drachmae in any given year—which meant we’d need to commit all of our spare money to buy this single pearl.

“W-Wow, what a gorgeous gem,” I stuttered, reflexively tightening up. This village bazaar isn’t the place for this sort of treasure, old man!

“My, my,” the man said welcomingly. “The young gentleman shares the little lady’s eye for beauty, it seems. Indeed, this is a prize that we’d stock at our main shop in the imperial capital. I brought it with me on the off chance that someone might wish to buy it, but this is usually something that’s chained together to adorn the collars of noblewomen.”

The store owner stroked his sizable beard and laughed affably. Judging from the signet ring on his finger, he was probably in charge of stocking goods for a company in the capital...which made him a big deal. I know you’ve got time on your hands, but please don’t open your store in the countryside. This is bad for my heart.

“Ha ha ha,” I chuckled awkwardly, “I see. No wonder it’s so stellar. We’d never be able to buy something like this.”

“No, see, there’s a tradition among merfolk to buy one pearl at a time to create a necklace out of them when you marry. I’ve heard that it’s been catching on in the mensch realms too! How about it? Why don’t you discuss this with your mother and get one for your adorable little sister here?”

What kind of mensch are you talking about? The bourgeois farmer? The wealthy capitalist? Huh? Spit it out, I dare you. That pearl could buy my armor and then some.

“Ahh, well...” I put on my most polite smile and said, “My eldest brother was married just moments ago. A splendid treasure like this is unfortunately beyond the scope of what our household can afford.”

“Oh?” the man said, opening his eyes wide. “You aren’t the eldest son?”

“Not at all, sir. I’m fourth-born.”

“Truly?! Your command of the palatial tongue is so flawless that even I might wish to take lessons from you.”

Ah, I see. He thought I was an inheritor based on my speech. Wait, no! It looks like he thinks our family is rich enough to send four boys to school. What’ll I do if he actually starts looking for my parents...?

“Well, you see, I am in no position to boast—I’d simply picked up what I could from my father and some friends who’d attended school. Of course, I’d love to purchase this for my sister, but the price is a tad steep for us, so if you’ll—”

“Hey, kid. How about that?”

In the middle of attempting to weasel my way out, I heard a voice call to me from the heavens. I looked up to see the sharp fangs of an ogre looming directly over me. She was at least three meters tall. I’d heard that their skin was blue because it contained some type of rigid metal, but that it remained flexile and springy enough that an ordinary sword simply bounced off of them. Her hulking muscles bulged out like plates of armor, with each limb as dignified as a pillar of marble.

“The prize is five drachmae,” she said, pointing toward a sword dealer’s shop. I followed her razor-sharp claw (that could easily rend human flesh) with my eyes to see that the sword stall was advertising a challenge. Scrawled in a hand that read as if it had been penned by a mouse, the sign claimed that if anyone could split the owner’s prized helmet with a single swing, he’d pay out five gold coins. The fee for an attempt was fifty assarii.

Beside the rat-scrawled advertisement, the sword-seller was puffing on a pipe between occasional wholly unenthused calls to the crowd. I guessed from the shape of his face and wizened, tiny body that he was a stuart—a ratfolk.

These sorts of challenges were a common sight at festivals. They were akin to the cork shooting ranges in Japan, where the biggest prizes were propped up from behind, or the raffles that suspiciously never rolled a winning number. It was a trap designed to lure in and sap the spare change out of parents who’d given in to their children or fools who’d been egged on by their lovers.

“Hey now, Lauren...” the first shopkeeper said.

The ogre bodyguard ignored the jeweler’s reproach. With a smile imposing enough to make children cry, she put her hand on my shoulder. I’m so glad Elisa is busy looking at the pearl.

“He’s built for it,” Lauren insisted. Then she turned to me and said, “That mooch has been stacking up petty change for a while now. Don’t you think it’d be fun?”

Hmm. The helmet seems like standard steel, but he’d probably make me use one of the shabby swords he has lined up beside it. My father had given me exactly fifty assarii: I could make two or three small purchases or share a fancy treat with my sister, but... “It does seem interesting.”

“Wha?!” the jeweler exclaimed.

Showing off is all a part of playing the big brother. I pulled out my pocket change and flipped it a few times as I walked over to the stall.

“Hey there, future legend!” the man greeted with a smile. “Here to give it a shot?”

“Yes sir. It’s fifty assarii, correct?”

While his face was friendly enough, a hint of shadiness was evident as I dropped the coins into his open palm. But when he looked over the large coppers in his hand, his expression morphed into a frown.

“Hmm, Beyton quarters, eh? Two of these usually only go for forty-five assarii with how poor their make is...”

Quarters were larger copper pieces worth the same amount as twenty-five standard coppers, but without total standardization, money was liable to change value depending on the quality of its mint. The most extreme case was that of Jose’s Scratch—coins cast to celebrate the ascension or reign of Jose I, the Miser Emperor, only went for two-thirds of their supposed value, even for the best gold pieces. This led to a number of obnoxious situations like this one.

“Well, you’re a kid and all, so I’ll look the other way. We’ll chalk it up to the festive feeling in the air.”

“Thanks,” I said, swallowing back a snide remark.

The blades I could choose from were, bluntly put, all made of cheap steel. On the other hand, thanks to the Aesthetic Taste skill I’d picked up from the Sociability tree in preparation for future social encounters, I could tell the helmet had a thin coat of mystarille despite its plain steel body.

Mystarille was a special metal that often found its way into the sagas of wandering poets. It looked like silver with a tinge of blue that took on a faint glow in the dark, and was usually applied as a finishing coat on other metals. However, its most impressive property was its ability to deflect physical blows. This meant that fashioning mystarille into a usable shape required either specialized magic or tools of the same make. Living up to its legendary reputation, it found its way into the adornments of royalty as an emblem of indomitable fortitude.

This helmet had a litany of tiny scores, but the lack of any damage to the lower layer of metal was likely the root of the shopkeeper’s confidence. With how many nicks and dents it had, I could only wonder how many years he’d been running this scheme. Pennies piled up become treasure, I’m sure.

Still, the task wasn’t hopeless. I could see the outer coating was meager, and the broken ornamentation of the helmet betrayed its old age. Had the entire thing been forged with mystarille, I would’ve thrown in the towel, but the local blacksmith had told me a thin layer of the stuff was only tough—not indestructible.

If I had a chance, then it was my duty as a munchkin to test whose brokenness would win out. Let’s give it a go. I wrapped my hands around the throwaway sword and hoisted it high after confirming my grip. This was the best way of using all my power against an immobile target.

“Go Mr. Brother!!!”

At some point, Elisa’s attention had been freed from the mesmerizing gem and returned to me. Still safe by the jeweler’s side, her cheers reached my ear as I prepared to swing. Thanks, Elisa. Your cheers are worth a full stack of buffs!

“Hup!” The whistling blade that accompanied my short grunt stopped a hair’s breadth away...from the ground.

“Wait, wh—huh?!”

The helmet and the pedestal it rested upon alike had split in two.

“Splendid!”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. The other lauding remark probably came from the ogre that had put me up to this. The sword-seller remained sitting in his chair, looking from me to the helmet and back with his mouth agape.

My dexterity had been on the cusp of VIII: Ideal by my birthday, and my Hybrid Sword Arts and Enchanting Artistry were at VI: Expert. With an upper-level swordplay skill called Insight and the aforementioned Aesthetic Taste, finding structural weak points was a breeze—and splitting the metal had followed suit.

Insight was a skill that granted me a form of visual intuition. Conforming to the teachings of Miyamoto Musashi, the hidden technique allowed me to observe my opponent without tunneling in on one spot, granting me the ability to dodge a blade without staring straight at it. Further, my keen sight made openings in my opponent’s defenses more apparent. In essence, it was a monstrous ability that added bonuses to attacking, dodging, and counterattacking—both for accuracy and damage. The three months worth of experience I spent to get it weren’t for nothing.

...Er, I mean, its dodging bonuses would be useful even if I abandoned the path of the blade, so it was a safe purchase. It’d never collect dust—not a chance.

Anyhow...the helmet I’d sliced must have been smacked around by all sorts of warriors and strongmen over the years. Though the top didn’t have any notable indents, there were some spots that had been beaten flat. I supposed a thin layer of mystarille wasn’t enough to fully dampen the impact of all its abuse.

The thickness of its plating is important, but a helmet’s shape is also a vital part of its defensive structure. The curvature of armor redirects blades to not dig into the body, which is the entire reason Western swordplay on Earth includes the art of bludgeoning someone to death with your pommel.

A small patch of flat metal had been all the opportunity I needed. The sword I’d used was a bit dull, but the rest was a matter of technique. Perhaps owing to its long history of maltreatment, the helmet split far more neatly than I’d expected. Sir Lambert had predicted I could cleave steel if the right circumstances arose, and I was glad to see the skills that had earned his seal of approval hadn’t rusted away during the busy harvest season.

The only hiccup worth mentioning was that I’d ruined the sword. I held it straight up, but even a cursory inspection would have told how utterly warped the blade had become. No matter how perfect my form was, a lesser weapon simply wasn’t cut out for this use.

“Now then,” I said, “I’d like to claim my five drachmae.”

I reached my hand out toward the blank-faced stuart. He looked as though he wanted to protest, but with the terrifying ogre happily applauding behind me and the neighboring merchants joining in, he elected to zip his mouth. The jeweler was at least a few worlds above the sword-seller in social standing, and the former’s presence in the clapping crowd left the cowardly rat-man with little room for objection.

The sword merchant likely realized that it was worse to ruin his reputation with unseemly reluctance than to pay out. In truth, I had used neither magic nor miracles, and cut the headpiece with my skill alone. The way in which I had won was simply too overwhelming to find any reasonable faults.

“W-Wow, you sure are something, k-kid... Here... The prize money... Take it.”

Your word choice makes you sound magnanimous, but you’re not fooling anyone with how badly your voice and hand are quivering. Still, I guess money is...money?

“Hm? What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?” the ogre asked, peering at my furrowed brow as the gold gleamed dimly in my hands. I wondered what kind of unbelievable skill it took for this fully armored warrior to sneak up behind me without making a sound. After seeing the metal in my hands, she turned to glare at the merchant and spat, “...Explain yourself, scum.”

“Look at the sign!” the rat squeaked. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”

The glimmering tender in my hands were gold pieces minted to celebrate Jose I’s fifth year in power. The stringent face imprinted on the gold was indicative of the most impure of Jose’s Scratch.

The sad little shimmer of these five coins was impeded by the dirty fingerprints that littered their surfaces—no doubt proof of a long history of being passed among the poor. At most, these totaled a piddling two drachmae and fifty librae.

You skeeze... Who would have thought you’d have an extra insurance policy built into a place like this? Now that I looked again, the sign read five gold coins and not five drachmae. If he’d switched the two, I could’ve complained that he was swindling me, but the advertising wasn’t false in any way... How vexing.

As I failed to hide my slumping shoulders, the ogre’s menacing hand reached into view, causing me to flinch. However, the terrifying claws on her fingertips were unexpectedly gentle as they plucked three of the coins from my hand. Leaving me to my confusion, she turned back to the jeweler and began to speak emphatically.

“Now then, o employer of mine, did you witness this little swordsman’s brilliant strike?”

“Indeed,” he replied, “on the name of House Gresham, I most certainly did.”

I’d never heard of the Greshams before, but they must have been quite prominent for the merchant to so expressly declare the name in this situation. Wait, could he be the sponsor of this entire caravan or something?

“And even these basest of gold pieces,” Lauren continued, “are worth three drachma after being won by a champion. Do you not agree?”

“Indeed, without doubt,” her boss said with a hefty nod. Sir Gresham the jeweler then placed the giant pearl into a small ring box. With a beaming grin, he handed it to my perplexed little sister and said, “You have a wonderful brother, young lady.”

“Thanks...you very much,” Elisa responded. Her juvenile attempts to mimic my palatial speech only broadened the smile on the gentleman’s face.

Oho ho, I get it now. One generous sale here let him show off his magnanimity to the other merchants of the caravan, which must have been his goal. In an age where interpersonal connections were closer to personal friendships than robotic contracts, a good reputation was worth its weight in gold. What a shrewd businessman. If the good word from this episode spread, the one drachma and fifty librae difference was totally trivial.

Still, a good deed was a good deed regardless of intent, so I prepared to say my thanks as well, but my feet suddenly lost contact with the ground. “Whoa?!”

The giant ogre had grabbed me by the armpits and was holding me up high, bringing me up to eye level. “Now then, I sent you forth with the promise that you would obtain five drachmae.”

“Right,” I said, still a bit dazed. “But you’ve already done more than enough for—”

“That leaves you still one drachma short,” she announced, pulling me closer.

I could clearly make out the blue of her metal-infused skin, the flesh-rending canines that lined her smile, and the golden irises that marked the eyes of every demonfolk. Her eyes were beautiful, and the lashes that outlined them only grew longer as I approached. The perfectly balanced nose resting atop her gallant mouth suited her face perfectly, and the auburn locks that gave it its contour emanated the pleasant smell of high-grade hair oil.

The distance between the attractive ogre’s face and mine reached zero before I could react. The stunning demon gave me a little peck—a gentle touch of our mouths.

“Will this suffice?” she asked.

This was my first peck in this lifetime; I use this word precisely, since it was a formal exchange of lips—certainly no kiss. Receiving one from a woman more graceful than most of the models on television left me reflexively nodding at her question.

“Very well. My people will treat you well if you give them the name Lauren of the Gargantuan Tribe. I’ll tell them I found an interesting mensch boy.” The beautiful warrior, Lauren, flashed a handsome smile as she let me down. With a gentle pat of my head, she added, “I look forward to the day you come to challenge me as a full-fledged swordsman.”

The impending reality of a future story beat sank into my body with the tingle of my lips.

[Tips] Ogres hail from the western side of the Central Continent, claiming no home country and organizing around individual tribes, all of whom value martial prowess. Their skin and bones are infused with metallic elements. They are sexually dimorphic, with females in particular commonly towering above three meters in height, and many nations put these absolute powerhouses directly on the public budget. In contrast, the males are relatively small at two meters tall and take up manual labor or odd jobs to make ends meet in their matriarchal society.

“A toast to our legendary swordsman!” a man called.

“Cheers!!!” the crowd responded.

I knew word was quick to spread in the secluded world of our tiny canton, but have mercy. It had only been half an hour since my victory at the shopping stall, and now drunkards raised mugs of booze in my name all over the plaza, their alcoholic cheers mixing with the gentle red of the setting sun.

By the way, the man who’d been leading the toasts this entire time was none other than one of our guests of honor: my buffoon of a brother. It seemed his plastered mind couldn’t register his newly wed wife rolling her eyes on the sidelines as he hooted and hollered.

On the other hand, I was stuck in the midst of this lunacy boredly holding the cup that they’d given me. I’d taken the Heavy Drinker trait knowing that liquor was a staple of any adventurer’s diet, so I was a ways away from losing control. I didn’t want to wake up in the street, sign a sketchy contract, or generally do anything stupid while I was drunk, after all.

Knocking back the goblet, my tongue was assaulted with a powerful sweetness and an herbal taste that didn’t sit well with my childish palate. Wait a second, this mead isn’t diluted—in fact, it’s distilled! Are you idiots trying to kill me?

I wanted water or milk to thin out the mixture: my tongue still hadn’t developed any sort of appreciation for alcohol in this body. In my past life I’d been rather fond of western liquors, but it had taken me until the latter half of my twenties to truly enjoy them, so it was only natural.

“Whoa! Looks like you’re as strong with a drink as you are with the sword!”

“A’ight, give ’im another! Another!!!”

They know exactly what they’re doing too... Curse you, o father dearest. I glanced over at my old man, who was on the outskirts of the plaza caring for the napping princess of our family. He turned away instantly after flashing me an apologetic look. It would appear that the instigator of this pandemonium had no intention of saving his son from the chaos.

After I’d parted ways with the ogre lady (who, in a rare turn, was still well within the age range suited to being called a “lady,” even accounting for my previous life), I’d quietly let my father know what had happened. I couldn’t exactly stay silent, considering we’d made a big purchase and brought home spare change in the order of a drachma.

However, the alcohol in my father’s system had thwarted my attempts at discretion, and he’d begun boasting aloud. On top of that, he’d taken the money I’d handed him—which I said should be used for our winter preparations—straight to my mother and managed to convince her that these coins were to be wholly separate from our standard budget. What that meant was that the currency had quickly gone into the bishop’s pocket and my father had announced, “It’s Erich’s treat!” as more barrels of booze were hauled out of the church.

Without any experience as a husband or father, I could only assume that parents were creatures that couldn’t help themselves when their son does something impressive. Still, given how ecstatic everyone was, I no longer needed to worry about my parents taking away Elisa’s pearl because she was too young for it. Of course, I hadn’t worried that they’d be greedy enough to mimic the villains who pocketed their children’s New Year’s money, but they were certainly cautious enough to worry about her losing it somewhere. My parents were cautious because they loved us, but that was difficult to see from a child’s perspective. I didn’t want my cute little sister to be upset with them over something like that.

As the crowd poured another helping into the goblet I’d emptied, I heaved a sigh of grief—but with a tinge of relief mixed in. This time they’d given me wine with honeywater. Even my immature taste buds could enjoy this.

However, the sun had almost set and I couldn’t help but wonder... Isn’t it about time we toss the newlyweds into their bedrooms?

“I knew it—I knew it all along!” Heinz shouted. “I knew as soon as I heard you stood up in that training session! I knew that you’d show the world something amazing with your sword!”

Despite the advancing clock, my totaled brother showed no intention of sweeping his bride off her feet. With his arm around my shoulder and a mug in his hands, he cheerily prattled on with all the vocabulary his drunken mind could muster. I desperately prayed that he only had more slurred chants primed to expel from his mouth.

“Listen up, Erich, cutting a helmet is great for your confidence, but see, a real enemy moves around...” And to make matters worse, I had the misfortune of sitting across from a drunk Sir Lambert, who made ending this whole affair an impossible ordeal. If you’re going to be drunk, stick to saying drunkard things! How am I supposed to write you off as a rambling idiot when your advice still sounds useful?

If things kept going and everyone blacked out like this, I would never live it down. The women of our canton would glare at me for the rest of time if I ruined their honeymoon night.

“Hey, Heinz...” I said.

“I know, I know! Don’t worry, I’ll talk to dad for ya! You’ll make a greaaat adventurer, and you’ll find the fairy coin too.”

Let’s forget about the coin already, okay? The fact that we never managed to find it must have weighed on him. I personally agreed, but my brother was already a full-grown adult.

Dammit, why do all men love swords so much? Don’t get me wrong, I love them as much as the next guy, but is it really worth getting so worked up over that you’ll waste the precious experience of your virginal night? This is once in a lifetime. Once. In. A. Lifetime!

As I began considering knocking some sense into him with a Body check, the bride shouted, “Heinz!!!”

“What, Mina?!” Heinz shouted back. “I’m here...try’na help my little brother’s future, uh...”

“Our future comes first, blockhead!!!” she yelled. Her face was beet red and her voice boomed across the plaza as she leaned toward her husband. The force of her roar was enough to shut up the other drunkards and wrap the plaza in a veil of silence. “Come on, let’s go! All of you! Don’t tell me any of you forgot what day today was!”

The once-frail maiden snatched the goblet (filled with almost more water than wine) out of my hands and downed it all at once before grabbing the groom’s ear. Let me reiterate that she grabbed his ear and did not pinch it.

“Owowowowowow?! Mina?! Ouchhh! Wait, hey, owwww!”

This moment engraved the power dynamic of this couple in stone. In the future, my boneheaded brother would probably be reined in by Mrs. Mina, who’d use this night to tease and embarrass him in front of their children for years to come. Go, Mrs. Mina, go!

“Shut up! Come on, get up, you goons! Work those brains of yours and remember what day it is!”

The enraged howl of a bride ignored sent the crowd clambering to their feet as they remembered how they were meant to close a wedding. The gears in their befuddled heads turned as frantically as their bodies moved to hoist the three pairs of newlyweds. I wonder how many of them will make it back alive.

I slipped away from the crowd and found a miraculous cup of water sitting unattended at an empty table.

“I need to be more careful about standing out...” I mused.

The water chilled by the Harvest Goddess’s blessing gently slipped down my throat. I sought out a hot bowl of porridge to ease the waves of liquor bouncing around my stomach, and the steamy meal tasted gentler still.

[Tips] Each canton’s alcohol is most often kept by a temple of the Wine God or another deity in His absence, and is managed and sold based on need. There is a national price set for all liquors that generally declines in years when the harvest is bountiful; the goal is to make it more readily available than not.

Alcohol is more than a luxury: it is a strategic resource to quell unrest, a sanitary means of purifying water, and a medicinal drug to stabilize mental disorder.

The morning sun glimmered on me as I crawled out of bed and took a deep breath...only to nearly throw up. The spirit of liquor hadn’t overstayed its welcome (a euphemism for hangovers); rather, a cloud of sour stench had drifted in through my open window.

After the celebration—only “without incident” by the loosest of metrics—the three new couples had been tossed into their respective bedrooms, and the rest of the pack had taken the extra booze my winnings provided to start the third party of the day. The still-hot food had probably been accompanied by song and dance, and some must have fancied a spar or test of strength as they partied into the deep hours of the night.

This was my best guess, though, because I’d slinked away early on. No matter how much of a Heavy Drinker I was, I only had so much space in my stomach for liquids. I’d wanted to avoid playing the role of a human pump sober purely because I had the capacity for it.

So I’d gone to bed as usual, but this was quite the nauseating awakening. The odor emanated from a tree placed right by the window. I turned to look around the children’s bedroom of our home—which felt bigger than it had before—and found the perpetrators in my two middle brothers. The urge to pour well-water all over them swelled within me. But I’m an adult. Calm—I am calm. Still, I’d get back at them by advising my father against letting them drink again for some time. That will do nicely.

Wanting to wash my face, I headed into the kitchen to find my mother had already woken up (though I thought I saw she’d drunk more than my father) to stir the same pot that she did every morning.

“My,” she greeted, “good morning, Erich.”

“Good morning, Mother.”

“You made quite the scene yesterday, didn’t you, o Lord Swordsman of our humble home?” she added with a giggle.

My father and brother had praised my ear off last night, but this was the first time my mother had done so; I felt a tad embarrassed.

“Has the alcohol run its course?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, I’m fine,” I replied. “I’ll go feed Holter as soon as I’m finished washing up.”

“Then it sounds like you won’t need any of this,” she said with a mischievous grin that looked years younger than she was. I followed her hand and peered into the pot, where the fragrance of a sweet soup at a rolling boil floated to my nose.

“Oh, it’s root celery...” Root celery was a variant of celery that grew thicker at the root; once it was cooked or boiled, it had a similar crumbly, soft texture to potatoes. The pottage my mother was stirring was called root celery soup, and it was one of my favorites.

Finely grated root celery was mixed in a boiling pot with fresh cream and soup stock to create a mildly sweet broth. The warmth was good for colds and it didn’t have any hard solids, so it was perfect for morning hangovers. It was a staple post-festival menu item in our house.

“Hangover or not, I’ll gladly take some,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Erich. I can’t help but want to tease you,” my mother giggled, readying a bowl. “You know, I was rather lonely when you began calling me ‘Mother’ and not ‘Mama.’”

“Then would you like for me to call you ‘Ma’ like the twins?” I asked as I wiped my face with a cloth I’d dipped in a vase full of well-water.

“No, stop,” she said with a laugh. “That makes me sound like the wife of some country bumpkin.” I was blessed with enough wit to avoid saying that she was the wife of a country bumpkin.

“Then madam,” I said, “allow me to order one bowl of your finest soup. A piece of bread would accompany it wonderfully, should you be so kind.”

“As you wish, Lord Swordsman. Allow me to grace you with complementary cheese.”

I’d bowed as I put in my request in the palatial tongue, and my mother responded in kind with the feminine complement. I accepted the warm soup and rye bread that made up my breakfast.

“Would you fancy any tea?” my mother asked, offering a drink made from the roots of boiled wild grass known as red tea.

Rhinians were partial to tea, but not to the black or green teas of the world that came from leaves. Instead, they preferred teas infused with herbs or grasses. Water was regularly boiled to sterilize it, so drinking it raw was seen as a waste. Being so accustomed to boiling water, we naturally began to include herbs to engage our taste buds and maintain our health. Nowadays, every sip in the Empire included the taste of boiled herbs.

Red tea was made from chicory root, infamous on Earth for its bad reputation as a substitute coffee to those who have tried it. However, it was carefully treated in our household, and didn’t taste so foul so long as I thought of it as its own drink and not as coffee. Instead of mixing it with the milk we traded our neighbors for, we usually put in fresh cream. It had the tender deliciousness of home... How many more times will I be able to taste this flavor?

My brother was now married and likely snoozing away beside Mrs. Mina in the cottage. One day, he would have his own children and I would become an uncle. Then I would need to leave to make room in the house for his new family. Our dwelling was far from shabby but nowhere near the size of a mansion, so I couldn’t stick around forever. Eventually, my parents would move to the cottage and Heinz would take over as the rightful successor to our house.

Despite my two middle brothers’ lax attitudes, I was sure they had their own plans for where they would live in the future. There were widows looking to remarry and households full of daughters wanting grooms all over the canton. The commotion they caused yesterday was surely a means for them to fight the anxiety of choosing their own paths. In the end, the best thing a farmer’s son could do for his family was to leave before he caused any more trouble.

As I sipped on my red tea, my mother began preparing to bring soup to her husband and sons stuck groaning in bed. Gazing at her back filled me with an untold melancholy. It wasn’t as if I wanted to stay; I wasn’t that spoiled. I’d already left the nest to make my own living once. I knew how important and meaningful that was. But still...I couldn’t help but feel lonely.

Considering the fact that my mother hadn’t stopped my father from causing a scene yesterday, she must not have had any qualms about me living off of the back of my sword. Whether I set off on a journey to master the blade, ventured to a faraway land to become a soldier, or fashioned myself as an adventurer or mercenary, she would say nothing.

It wouldn’t be that she’d have nothing to say—the love I’d been shown here was enough for me to be certain of that. If my parents didn’t care about me, they would never have asked me if I wanted to go to school in my second brother’s place.

My parents were trying their best to let me forge my own path, as the future Buddha who threw me into this world had. Our home was my parents’ way of creating an environment where all of us could do as we willed.

They’d told us the truth about adventuring to calm us down as children, but had no words of reprimand when I began studying swordplay or when I ordered armor. That was proof of their acknowledgment.

Just as I proved my filial piety by helping around the house and donating my wood carvings to them, they showed me their parental love by teaching me all that they could without forcing me to do any one thing. Could I ever ask for anything more?

Once I left, it would be difficult to come back. Adventuring is a grassroots affair that follows the trail of work. Without trains or planes to bring me home, a job in a foreign territory would leave me with little means of visiting home. The trip to Innenstadt alone took three days by caravan. A six-day round trip was far too long for a break to see one’s family.

Of course, the same would hold true as a seasonal laborer. Besides, I knew it was stupid, but I’d been blessed with the privilege of becoming whatever my heart desired—and I’d used my powers in the hopes of being one of the heroes in the tales I had loved so.

I have to prepare myself and tell them...

“Mother.”

“Yes, dear?” my mother asked. “What is it?”

I’ve decided on my future.

[Tips] There are many modes of transportation, but the stagecoach is the most common. Even a child could spend their allowance to get a ride to the next canton over, but they travel on predetermined routes, so they do not travel directly toward any given destination. Further, the number of available carriages can drop steeply in certain seasons. The only means of getting around this is to use another mode of transportation: shoes.