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

Bonus Short Stories

The Aim of Effort

As the sound of footsteps caught the methuselah’s ear, Agrippina closed her book and turned to watch her servant diligently toil away. Her mind spun: he was an average mensch, like those she could find littered across the world over. Her disinterest in names had made it a struggle to drag “Erich” out of the recesses of her mind at first, yet the process had grown easier with time. He was also rather handsome, probably—truth be told, her capacity to evaluate such things had long decayed to the point that the best she could manage was an educated guess.

Furthermore, Erich was quite the student of magic, as far as mensch went. All Agrippina had to do was toss him a textbook, and voilà, he’d learned all the necessary household spells to busy himself day in and day out.

The boy rose early to prepare breakfast and clean the room of dust (though the magus saw no need for the latter). What was more, he even cared for the carriage’s steeds; Agrippina had left their welfare to the people of the caravan and only tended to them with magic when she absolutely had to. For a normal person, he was an employee worthy of praise.

However, the methuselah’s opinion was slightly skewed from normalcy. What a hurried creature, she thought. This was an impression many methuselah had of mensch; simply put, the sight of an intelligent being rushing through their days as if some invisible threat were nipping at their heels was incomprehensible to an immortal.

In fairness, there was little Agrippina and her kind could do to change that. Neither hunger nor thirst hounded them, pushing meals into the realm of luxury—for those that weren’t particularly fond of the pleasure, it was reduced further to a social lubricant. These perfect specimens were on a different plane of reality from the poor mensch who required frequent sustenance and reproduction to prevent their people from collapsing.

The inverse was just as true: no mortal being could possibly wrap their mind around Agrippina’s lifestyle. She ate when she was invited to eat, and only when she was invited to eat. While she understood the pleasures of taste—indeed, she had savored the delight of fine cuisine many a time in the past—it bored her, and she would never choose to spend her precious time eating.

Cleaning was a similar story. Methuselah had such efficient bodies that they expelled no waste. Her clothes could be freshened up with a quick spell, and her rooms never got particularly dirty.

Sleep was the sole mortal pastime she indulged in, and even then, it was only to organize her thoughts and memories. However, this singular commonality was far from enough to make her ludicrous way of life familiar to an average mensch.

Agrippina cared so little for “proper” life because there was no threat of death to loom over her. For a woman that so dearly loved books and the stories they told, the chores of reality were of little concern...that is, until her life with these two children began.

“Erich.”

“Did you call for me, madam?”

“Indeed I did. Fetch me some tea, would you?”

Agrippina had recently begun to allocate attention to the food and drink she had neglected for so long. She didn’t particularly want to drink tea, per se, but by asking for a cup, she reminded herself of the flow of time and how imperative it was for her charges to eat regular meals.

That’s right: as inconvenient and downright illogical as she found it to be, mensch had to eat every day or risk starving. To make matters worse, they grew less efficient if they didn’t eat a whopping three meals per day, according to a child-rearing book in her collection. Had she not read this manual, this basic fact would have completely slipped past her, and keeping this in mind was imperative for a pleasant journey home.

Honestly, what an ordeal—for both me and them.

The book had gone on to state that these little creatures would live no more than a century; when the methuselah dove into her massive pool of memories, she recalled that the faces greeting her upon returning to the Stahl estate as a child would change with every journey. This had been especially true of her mensch acquaintances.

Fifteen years was enough for adulthood; by twenty, they bore children; and by forty, the things were already beginning to die. These fleeting souls could come and go in the time a methuselah finished their childhood. And there, perhaps, lay the reason why this boy hurried around the carriage as he did.

“Your tea is served, madam.”

“Mm, very good.”

A short tangent on a single strand of Agrippina’s consciousness was all it took for her beverage to be prepared. Where once her china had collected dust, it had now been cleaned and shined so perfectly that she couldn’t even spot a fingerprint on it. As for the tea itself, it wasn’t quite as enjoyable as what she’d find at a proper salon with well-trained stewards, but it was worthy of a passing mark.

With a quick sip, the strong and unembellished flavor of red tea slipped down Agrippina’s throat. Ah, yes. I remember now. This is what it feels like to “drink.” Since she was already wasting time, she figured that she might as well enjoy herself. Her initial reason for stopping by so many inns was simply to experience their luxury—however, she found no reason why she couldn’t add extravagant food to the mix.

The magus made certain to tell the boy to order the finest breakfast, lunch, and dinner from every lodging, and to prepare them himself when they were on the road. This way, even if she happened to forget, her servant would sort it out for her. As eccentric as she was, Agrippina cared for the children in her own way. Her way was unapologetically methuselah in standard, though, and the brother and sister could not understand her efforts.

On the topic of food, she recalled that her servant had gone wide-eyed when she’d easily spend librae to purchase meals. The fiscal sense of commoners remained a point of peculiarity to the high-born woman, but she did remember seeing the people of her caravan react similarly when she’d tossed around silver pieces as rewards for errands. Surely, Erich must have thought her quite the lavish spender.

Living alongside an alien race was just plain difficult for the methuselah. That being said, she had no interest in getting the children to understand her, let alone providing them an inroad to do so.

Agrippina spent a moment enjoying her fragrant tea before retreating to one of her few true addictions: the pipe. She lit with it magic, then let the smoke of mystic herbs flood her lungs and drowned herself in indescribable bliss, quieting her active mind.

Suddenly, she noted that the smoke she was exhaling was rather troublesome. The tobacco she smoked had been steeped in an arcane concoction powerful enough to intoxicate a methuselah; naturally, it would have a pronounced effect on lesser beings. Not to say that a single whiff would blow a mensch’s mind into the stratosphere, but a drag of the pipe would most definitely be enough to rob one’s consciousness.

The magus silently knit together a spell to filter the cloud leaving her lips and keep it from wafting out into the room around her. Agrippina could have erased it entirely, of course, but a pipe that blew no smoke was no pipe at all to her.

“How troublesome...”

“Madam?”

“Don’t mind me,” she said with another puff. As she continued her unnoticed act of thoughtfulness, she once more mused on how impassable the gap between peoples was.

After all, no one can ever bring themselves to abandon what values make them who they are.

[Tips] Understanding beings with vastly different physiologies and cultures is inherently a difficult endeavor.