Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 2 - Chapter 6

Spring of the Twelfth Year (V)

Connection

A special NPC that is either officially written into the handbook or specifically prepared by the GM. Boasting detailed backstories and in-game data, these characters have the power to influence the campaign.

At times they help the PCs as guides to move the story forward. At others, they become enemies to cross swords with.

Some systems have connection characters so infamous that their appearance alone can be enough to hazard a guess at future developments and twists.

To pacify a child whose mood has soured is an onerous task.

I dragged myself along like a bag full of lead and rested my legs by the stable next to our inn. More precisely, I hurled my body onto the floor in exhaustion. My duties as a servant had no hand in my crushing fatigue; feeding our steeds and carrying luggage from the carriage was not at all tiring. I’d spent enough time and experience points building up a farmer’s body to not buckle at this kind of chore.

My exhaustion was purely emotional. I’d been too frantic in my attempts to assuage the never-ending tantrums of my little princess.

Lady Agrippina had completely ignored several inns on our way to this one, likely owing to the fact that it was a glorious place catering toward the upper class, where lodging alone was paid for in the order of silver pieces. Food services were purchased separately, and this too unabashedly cost another few silver, as if this sort of pricing was the proprietor’s god-given right. It was easy enough to tell that commoners like us weren’t welcome here.

To put this into perspective, I could stay two whole nights at a cheaper inn for a copper quarter so long as I managed my own meals. I could only imagine how nice it was to be wealthy.

At any rate, Elisa’s temper had come to a head at suppertime. Being a servant, I’d refrained from sitting at the same table as my master in an attempt at prudence. Truth be told, the real reason was that I could tell at a glance that the food was laden with fats, and I knew it wouldn’t suit my palate—both my past and current lives had been spent growing up in a household that preferred lighter tastes.

However, this did not sit well with Elisa. Her outburst could only be described as an explosion of emotion, and her crying had made it difficult to understand why she was so upset. I eventually managed to decipher that she couldn’t comprehend why the only member of her family by her side couldn’t even sit with her at dinner.

Elisa loved mealtime at home more than anything else: that was when we were all together.

Lady Agrippina had planned to teach her table manners while they ate, but balked in the face of Elisa’s unstoppable sobbing and permitted me to join them. Although my liege never once broke her noble veil, it was clear she was contemplating how difficult the road ahead looked to be. I couldn’t help but feel a smidge bad.

Soothing Elisa while sampling foods that didn’t suit my tongue had been strenuous. Also, I’d realized I was as in need of a lesson in table manners as my sister. We’d been the only ones dining there today, but at this rate we were sure to cause trouble for people around us in the future. I wouldn’t last long as a servant if I threw dirt on my master’s name.

I’d finally been freed once I’d somehow managed to put Elisa to bed. Perhaps out of good will—though it was far more likely that she simply wanted to sleep on her own terms—Lady Agrippina had rented two rooms, giving me some space for comfort. Still, I simply couldn’t get in the mood to doze off.

“This is rough,” I said, heaving a heavy sigh.

My long-lost habit of talking to myself reared its head. When I’d lived alone in my past life, I’d spoken to myself so much that it must have seemed like I had an invisible roommate. Yet my constant company in this world had never given me a chance to do so.

I loved Elisa—I truly did. But that didn’t make this any less arduous. I prayed that she might settle down a little eventually, but if things went on as they were, my life was slated to be nigh unmanageable. Lady Agrippina had seemed to form some kind of plan, evidenced by the fact that she’d provided verbal covering fire partway through dinner. Hopefully that would be enough to form some kind of bond with Elisa, which would be the best for all of us.

If a student and master don’t see eye to eye, the process of learning is all but doomed.

I gazed up at the sky to try and refresh myself...only to question whether the intense pain of this afternoon had bugged out my eyesight. There were two moons.

The two celestial bodies floated a short distance apart in the heavens. The first emitted the familiar white glow of a gentle moon—the physical manifestation of the kind Mother Goddess who ruled over the night, worshipped by many in our nation. The crescent visage of the Rhinian pantheon’s grand dame was well guarded by her twinkling retainers. Tonight, like every night, she bathed the earth with a beautiful, benevolent light.

On the other hand, the second moon was pitch-black, steeped in ill omen. Darker than the black of night, it looked like a hole had been cut out of the sky itself. Its macabre lightlessness was so absolute that it would stick out even on an unlit night of a new moon. Despite embodying darkness, it had an inexplicable glow.

The two lunar orbs mirrored one another: for as full as the white moon was, the black moon had lost an equal amount.

What... What is that? Is this the answer to the question the old man asked? “How many moons are there?”

It had a strange allure to it—the moon was enchanting. The hollow cutout in the sky was a void that threatened to swallow everything whole; it was a bell-mouth spillway, hiding its tremendous capacity for violence deep within. The horror of it gave birth to a sublime sense of beauty. If I continued to watch, I had a feeling that the heavens and earth would flip, with all the world falling in.

The most terrifying part was that my horror was accompanied by an uncontrollable part of my soul telling me that the phenomenon was comfortable. Somewhere within, I knew that a journey to the other side would never let me return—yet that same part wanted to go.

“I wouldn’t recommend staring for too long.”

A quiet voice rang out like a bell. The dainty tone of a young girl was accompanied by a sweet scent wafting from behind my shoulder.

I couldn’t believe it. My Presence Detection was polished enough to pick up on the ever-elusive Margit, yet I hadn’t noticed a thing. Still, my body refused to freeze in surprise and leapt forward on pure reflex. I tumbled and used the momentum of my roll to pivot on my landing foot. With a flawless full-speed turn, I found myself facing a strange girl.

Unlike the majority of people in the region, she had dark skin. Her age and height didn’t differ much from my own, though the long hair she wore like clothing reflected the luster of the moon, drawing my eye.

Why? Why am I surrounded by girls so full of vitality?

Alas, this was no time to be joking around. I mean, come on, she was plainly bad news. I’d been gazing up at a horrific moon on a ghastly night only for her to appear and provide running commentary. To make matters worse, she managed to sneak past my senses. This girl was anything but normal.

“I’m hurt,” she said. “And here I’d come to caution you.”

When she saw me crouch down to prepare for potential combat, the girl’s charming and refreshing smile scrunched up into a frown. Hey, quit that. Daintily playing with your hair like the maiden you are is all well and good, but you’re showing things that you aren’t meant to show.

“Who might you be?” I asked, maintaining my posture. Judging from the fact that she bothered calling out to me, I could tell she didn’t mean any harm. Unfortunately, ill intent was far from prerequisite to death in this world. That was doubly true for an incomplete child like me.

Furthermore, I could feel something with my newfound sense for magic. Waves of immense power radiated off of her—no, she was the power.

“Me? I’m a svartalf, a fairy of the night. Nice to meet you, o Beloved One.”

“An alf?”

I thought that the title fit her perfectly: the idea permeated into my skull and my mind accepted it straightaway. Her flesh was supple, despite her young appearance; her skin glowed dimly beneath the night sky; her hair was crafted from a chunk of the white moon itself; and her blood-red eyes spoke of an overwhelming existence that no humanfolk could match.

“I apologize if I frightened you. I just couldn’t help myself when I saw your beautiful golden hair.”

Her saddened expression once again flipped to a smile as she took a step toward me in the dark. Freed from the shadows of the barn, her moonlit figure only strengthened her mystic charm.

“My hair?”

“Indeed. You have been endowed with looks especially pleasing to alfish tastes. For a boy, your locks are rather soft and have a sweet odor to them.”

Her stride was so natural that I couldn’t process that her foot had left the ground, let alone that it had landed. My eyes registered her approach, but a haze obscured my mind and prevented me from grasping what had happened. I’d been holding a work knife behind my back this entire time, but I didn’t notice she’d entered striking distance until she had already touched my cheek.

“Wha?!”

“What do you say? Shall we dance? The moon is stunning tonight, Beloved One.”

Her hand was cold against my skin. Even knowing the cool sensation of an arachne’s touch, her palm was like ice. She brushed her shapely fingers up past my cheek and pushed up my hair affectionately. I couldn’t stop her. No, for some reason, a part of me didn’t want to stop her.

“Now, take my hand. And then, won’t you tell me your name?” She pushed back my bangs to expose my ear and whispered at point-blank range. Without any conscious thought, my lips began to move...

“Leave it at that.”

A violent gust of wind brought me back to my senses. I whirled around to see that reality had torn open like an old cloth, and Lady Agrippina sat on the edge of the tear in her nightgown. The impeccably tied bun she wore in the daytime now flowed freely; paired with the thin silk clinging seductively to her figure and the entrancing moonlight, she looked like a masterwork of art come to life.

“This boy is my servant. I won’t have him whisked away just as I begin drilling some sense into him.”

A handful of terrifying black orbs floated listlessly around her—some combat spell, most likely. At my current level, I only had an aesthetic appreciation for it, but the tingling sensation of mana on my skin let me know that those were anything but the result of a peaceful spell. The kidnapper had been moments away from hitting me with something similar, but his version had been a cute trifle compared to these things’ overwhelming aura. This is not normal.

“Oh my,” the fairy said. “What a shame to run into a boorish methuselah on such a splendid night.”

Horrifyingly, the alf remained calm, not letting me on to her true strength. She simply toyed with my hair, her laughter akin to the chimes of a rolling bell.

A long moment passed. Only the crackling of spells ready to fire echoed through the night air. Stuck between two monoliths of magical power, I was hideously uncomfortable for the entire duration; I worried my heart was going to shrivel up. I wonder if I can just run away at full speed and make it out alive...

However, the conclusion to this drawn-out scene never came to be, and the fairy stepped away of her own volition. With the same imperceptible movements as before, she left my side, but not before leaving something in my hair.

“My fun has been thoroughly spoiled,” she said. “Let us meet again, on another night with a beautiful moon.”

Leaving only reverberating laughter behind, the alf melted into the night. At long last, silence took hold of the scene.

“My goodness,” Lady Agrippina spat. “As predisposed as you may have been, the night of? To think this would happen on the very day you learned to see. Give me a break, will you?”

She abandoned all pretext of dignity and hopped down from the tear in reality with an ignoble grunt. She walked over on her bare feet—actually, on closer inspection she was hovering just above the ground—and wadded up her hair wearily.

“Thank...you very much?”

Alas, I was still utterly lost as to what happened, and my words of gratitude inflected upward as a result. Did she...save me?

“Act with more care. Alfar dote on mensch in particular, and it would be quite the ordeal should they manage to take you.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked worriedly.

The horrifying answer that I received was that I would be brought to dance with them in a never-ending twilight. I knew she was bad news! Am I cursed? Why are all my encounters with terrifying young girls that have a screw loose?!

“The great majority of mensch don’t have the capacity to see fairies, you see. Even those with open eyes often fail to recognize them due to matters of the spirit. When an alf finds one that will entertain their conversations, they tend to excitedly involve themselves with their mark.”

What the heck? These fairies were no better than the random mobs in RPGs that picked a fight as soon as the player walked into view. Did this mean that an entire race of supernatural beings was out to get me?

“And plus, your hair...and eyes...”

When I’d first met Lady Agrippina, she’d said something about how fairies loved blonde hair and blue eyes when explaining Elisa’s situation, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Being kidnapped and held captive forever was no joke. Obsessive love interests were fun to read about in fiction, but were a completely separate beast when they were stalking me personally.

“Well, worry not; I shall teach you how to deal with your fey troubles. Get some rest for tonight. Unripe mages ought not to loiter about on nights when the False Moon shines with vigor.”

“The False Moon?”

“You see the dark lunar body floating in the sky? That is the moon’s shadow. Just as the true moon reflects the sun’s light, this secondary figure is the reflection of formless mana weaving together into a paradoxical, imaginary cavity. The moon’s excess is pure poison for mortals.”

I finally knew the identity of the fuligin vortex of nothingness in the sky. It had many names: the False Moon, the Hollow Moon, and Imaginary Matter to list a few. Not even the brilliant minds of the college who aimed to approach the root of all magic could uncover its finer details.

The only thing that was certain was that it waxed as its twin moon waned, and the saturation of magical energy in the environment waxed and waned alongside it.

“Hurry along to bed. If the little princess wakes to see that her knight in shining armor is missing, we’re sure to be in for quite the waterworks. I’m sleepy, and will retire myself. ’Night.”

Lady Agrippina lethargically bid me adieu and fell backward, diving into a space-time tear just like the one she came from. Her angle of entry made it obvious that it led straight to her bed.

“That spell sure is nice,” I mumbled to myself in an attempt to distract my mind from reality, but suddenly remembered that the fairy had left something in my hair. I gingerly plucked it out to find a single flower.

It was a rose whose bud had just broken, with petals a gorgeous purple so deep it was nearly black. The faint red along the edges completed it nicely; the whole was as beautiful as it was orphic—a spitting image of the girl who’d given it to me.

Once again, I’d been given quite the fateful item. This was absolutely the type of thing where I would meet a horrible demise if I dared to throw it away. Wait, is getting rid of it even possible?

With all sorts of foreshadowed story beats pounding in my head, I sighed, my breath infused with utter cheerlessness.

[Tips] Flowers have meanings to alfar. A black rose signifies that “you are mine,” but the Trialist Empire has yet to develop flower language.

The next day, the party of three changed their original plans and stayed another night at the same inn, due to the fickle weather of early spring: lightning and plentiful rain staked their claim on the southern reach of the empire. The Harvest Goddess had awoken; Her husband the Storm God and Their numerous sons and daughters let Their merriment get out of hand.

With limited visibility and uncooperative horses, Agrippina decided her unhurried journey would not suffer because of a delayed departure. Besides, venturing forth when the gods were excitable was ill-advised in any land, near or far. Instead, the methuselah had erected a barrier to escape the noise of the divine banquet and bid Elisa alone into her silent room.

Thus began their first-ever lecture. It was unambiguous that Elisa was still not in the best of moods as she cast an eye of suspicion on her master. She’d been pulled away from her brother and her attitude skipped straight past cloudy to mimic the raging tempest outside.

“Now then, let me start with something simple. Something that will make you want to try your very best.” Yet Agrippina didn’t mind her student’s disrespectful demeanor in the slightest. She was practically singing as she spoke. “My girl, you know what alfar are, don’t you?”

“Alver?”

“Yes, yes, alfar—spirits, if you’d like. Say, a lizard who hides away in the fireplace to protect its warm flame. Or a young girl and old man who live beside you. Or perhaps a black dog who runs around your yard. These are your friendly neighbors who are invisible to all but you. Or am I mistaken?”

At this query, Elisa finally showed something that could be described as compliance. She nodded her head in affirmation.

“Friends.”

“Ah, precisely. Your friends. And Elisa, you love your brother Erich, don’t you?”

This question also got an easy, predictable nod from the girl. As she nodded over and over, she suddenly remembered that her brother wasn’t present and nearly began to cry. Being taken away from her home was lonely enough, but to not have her dear brother by her side left her at a loss for what to do.

Elisa was as anxious as when she’d first awoken in the kidnapper’s carriage. If someone didn’t come save her soon, she was going to die.

“You see, Elisa, it would seem that your little friends love your brother, just like you.”

“Huh?!”

“Do you know of a dark-skinned girl with white hair?”

Elisa hesitated for a few seconds, but eventually decided that she would answer honestly. For whatever reason, she had a feeling that if she ignored this annoying lady’s question here, she would suffer some kind of fatal loss.

“I do. Sometimes she says mean things. Like, ‘You can’t be up so late.’ But, but! Sometimes she helps me go potty at night when it’s scary.”

This meant Elisa knew of svartalfar. There wasn’t necessarily any guarantee that she’d met the same individual, though, as they were spread throughout the land.

“I don’t know if it was the same girl, but yesterday a black-and-white little girl came to invite your brother to play, you know? She wanted to take him far, far away.”

With a thin smile, Agrippina fanned the flames of Elisa’s fear.

“No!!!”

The changeling shot to her feet with enough force to kick back her chair and lunged for her master. In turn, the methuselah avoided her disciple’s attack with a light step to the side. Elisa lost her footing and hit the ground hard; her sniffles signaled that she was about to cry. The woman did nothing.

“You don’t want him to go, do you? Of course you don’t. But your dear brother is going to be snatched away.”

“No! No!!! You can’t take Mr. Brother!”

“Really, now? You don’t want to lose him?”

Elisa’s harsh screams began to strain her vocal cords. After all that had happened, to lose her brother now would leave her utterly alone. That was so scary, so unsettling, and so hopeless that she couldn’t contain herself.

Agrippina leisurely walked over to Elisa as she screamed “No!” over and over.

“I see. Then I shall teach you how to make sure he doesn’t get taken,” she said, as tenderly as she could. Her honeyed voice melted into the girl’s ear, and then...

“Really?!”

“But of course. If you can listen to everything I say and do well in your studies, no one will ever be able to take your brother away.” Agrippina’s words were a poison that soaked into the depths of Elisa’s soul. “After all, you’ll be the one protecting him.”

The soft-spoken message coated in immeasurable villainy caused Elisa’s tantrum to stop in its tracks. Her expression went blank. Of course it did: her brother was stronger than her. Erich was always the one to come and save the day. When she was scared, suffering, or sad, he would be there to calm her down—even if she was stolen away by kidnappers. He’d gone as far as to join her on her journey away from home.

But what if she were to protect him? The mere thought lit a fire somewhere deep in Elisa’s core. She knew not where this emotion stemmed from, but alas, a frog’s child is ever a tadpole. A carapace of flesh and bones did not let the changeling escape her alfish tendencies.

Imagining being able to lay claim to what she held dearest, did she have any hope of fighting this excitement?

“Come, take my hand. Rise to your feet and join me for a bout of study. Shall we? For your brother’s sake?”

Elisa’s eyes flickered back and forth between the outstretched hand and the smiling methuselah it was attached to. Eventually, the changeling made her decision: she grabbed hold and pulled herself to her feet with a premonition that what awaited her was a fun, wonderful fate.

All the while, the master grinned so wickedly that a hypothetical onlooker would most definitely have groaned in horror at how positively evil she appeared. She contentedly led her pupil to a chair, thinking only about how this would alleviate some of the sniffling and crying. Surely, this apprentice would suit her interests perfectly.

They would take their time—five years, ten years, however long it took—and she would shape Elisa into a magus capable of chasing off any alf.

Naturally, this could very well doom her servant to a bleak future, but they would cross that bridge when they got there. Besides, wasn’t this another one of Erich’s brotherly duties? Of course it was...probably. Nay, definitely! If she told him that this was a necessary expense to smooth out the learning process, he was sure to accept his lot. Agrippina’s dreadful logic would have sickened even the most savage of brutes, but it was enough to convince the magus that her decision was sound.

In the next room over, Erich was suddenly assaulted by chills and a fit of sneezing in the midst of reviewing his textbook. Puzzled, he wondered if he’d caught a cold.

[Tips] Imperial law does not consider changelings and mensch to be the same, and the former are removed from the family registers of the latter.