Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 3 - Chapter 1

Early Summer of the Twelfth Year

Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRPG)

An analog version of the RPG format utilizing paper rulebooks and dice.

A form of performance art where the GM (Game Master) and players carve out the details of a story from an initial outline.

The PCs (Player Characters) are born from the details on their character sheets. Each player lives through their PC as they overcome the GM’s trials to reach the final ending.

Nowadays, there are countless types of TRPGs, spanning genres that include fantasy, sci-fi, horror, modern chuanqi, shooters, postapocalyptic, and even niche settings such as those based on idols or maids.

With each passing day, the Sun God’s worldly figure grew bolder: summer had arrived. Vast fields of wheat painted the land gold out to the ends of the horizon, where the vibrant green of the mountains beyond represented abundant life.

The world breathed as it always did, blissfully unaware of my agony, regret, and the terrible mistake that had brought these emotions on. Such was the way of things: whatever intentions the future Buddha held when he set me down on this land, the rest of existence knew precious little of it.

I was no main character. Even if I were to don the title of PC 1, I was still just another actor to round out the overarching plot of reality. No matter how meticulously my handouts had been written or how lengthy my character sheet became, a clattering set of cubes was all that laid between me and my untimely end.

The GM of this universe did not bend for a mere player; how could they when I had never done the same, sitting on that end of the table? At times, the world offered challenges that could not be overcome. To live was to bitterly elect the lesser of any evils offered.

Thus, life abounded in spite of my remorse—and who was I to resent that? Besides, I had sworn to shoulder the burden of condemning myself for the rest of time.

I squeezed the reins of the carriage and took a deep breath to buffer my shriveling spirit. As my fingers tightened around the bridle, my ring gleamed in the sunlight. Where once there had only been bare metal, a blue gemstone shone with pride, as if in an attempt to cheer me up. This brilliant ice-blue prism was the last remnant of the girl I had been unable to save—the crystallization of my failure and sin.

As I had clutched the icy sapphire and wailed, Elisa had realized the mayhem was over, and in spite of her fear, she’d made her way over to embrace me. She’s growing up to be so kind, I had thought.

When Elisa looked at the gemstone, she told me, “She wants to be with you.” Perhaps she sensed something as a fellow changeling. Even after awakening to magic, my pitifully dull mensch eyes could not compare to the fey soul resting in my sister’s body. Although I couldn’t see the world as they did, I wondered for a moment if I would have been able to understand had I taken the svartalf’s eyes.

After all that had been said and done, Helga’s final wish had been for me to carry her memory with me, and I’d done so by fitting it on my lunar ring. Initially, Lady Agrippina had callously asked, “Ooh, how rare. Would you be interested in a sale?” After I had firmly refused her, she went on to say, “Very well, I shan’t harm it, so let me play with it for a spell.” In the end, she did the actual work of affixing the gem.

The madam could offer five years of waived tuition all she wanted; there was too much sentimental value for me to part with it.

As luck would have it, Helga’s final memento went well with the lunar ring: spellcasting was easier now than ever before. The fatigue that came with mana expenditure (it was at times like these when I wished my blessing gave exact MP values) was barely noticeable, meaning I would be more tenacious in extended fights. With another of my ideal magic swordsman’s flaws patched up, I couldn’t be more confident.

Above all else, it gave me the will to fight: I would not snap so easily. Every time I glanced at my left hand, I was reminded of all that I was meant to fulfill.

Ah, what splendid weather. The skies went on forever without a cloud in sight. Staring up at the heavens, I felt as though I might fall into that endless blue.

The Trialist Empire of Rhine enjoyed pleasantly dry summers, and the cool climate of the region meant that the temperature was far from unbearable. There was no asphalt to bounce back extra heat, and the air was not so sickly humid that it felt like I was breathing liquid. While I missed many things from my past life, the need to hydrate every thirty minutes or risk stroke in the summer was not one of them.

Around this point in the year, the watchmen of my hometown were probably beginning their most intense season of training. With little farmwork to be done, the men would toss their hoes in exchange for swords and spears as they swung beneath the open sky. After working up a comfortable sweat, they would strip off their clothes and jump into the local river.

Had I been among them, I would have returned home to see cured meats being readied for storage. My mother would offer me fruits she had cooled in the well, and I would sit idly by, waiting for the caravans to roll into the canton with delicious ice candies.

I could only pray that everyone was doing well. With my sweet home of Konigstuhl far, far away, our three-month trek was finally nearing its end. Berylin, the glorious imperial capital of Rhine, was almost in sight.

Mine had been quite the journey. Slaying daemons in an abandoned mansion and bringing Helga’s tale to a close had only been the start of my troubles. In fact, I’d been so busy that I had hardly found any time to steep in my guilt.

Rain or wind was reason enough for Lady Agrippina to grow weary of the road, and she frequently extended our stays at taverns at her whim without a care in the world. Furthermore, we often stopped by towns to stock up on supplies and whatnot; if anything caught her eye, she would gleefully waste whole days, saying, “The College can wait. They’ll still be there by the time we arrive.”

On one occasion, we found ourselves in a region famed for bookbinding. When the good madam learned of a literary bazaar that was to take place, she threw all pretense of progress to the wayside and cooped up in the town for over a week. Her deranged love of reading was on full display: she tossed gold coins left and right for the rarest tomes as a matter of course, but also bought a fair share of shoddily bound booklets so long as the title piqued her interest.

Had I not pried her away, we surely would have been stuck in that city for three or four times as long. Rumor of a wealthy patron had spread quickly, and the books were literally coming to us by the time we’d left.

However, pushing along the immovable object that was my employer’s ass had been far from my only hardship. I will take responsibility for the time that I’d borrowed a tome of combat magics and burned off my bangs, but the incident where Lady Agrippina whimsically dragged me into a canteen was absolutely not my fault. I had been forced to beat down countless drunkards with my bare fists to protect them from the wrath of the terrible magus at my back. I’d been so close to screaming at her that such activities were not part of a servant’s duty.

Other than that, I’d gotten over my hesitance to interact with Ursula and Lottie...but the other alfar that tagged along were becoming a problem. Their most recent bout of troublesome mischief was when they’d tied my hair into a million tiny braids that looked like the world’s worst dreadlocks. Even with my Unseen Hands working at full throttle, it took a full calendar day to undo everything; regardless, I’d walked around with a hideous perm for a few days afterwards.

Speaking of notable events, there was one I couldn’t ignore...

“Mr. Brother!”

“What is it, Elisa? Didn’t I tell you that coming out to the coach box is dangerous?”

...Helga’s influence had apparently awoken my sister to her magical powers.

The carriage was rolling along at quite the brisk pace, and falling off would have been comparable to a one-man car accident. Actually, the risk of being trampled by our steeds or run over by the wheels meant it was probably more dangerous.

No normal seven-year-old would be able to open the door and skirt the outside of the stagecoach all the way to the coachbox. They’d need to be able to leap through space-time or fly through the sky—Elisa could do both.

“Miss Master said to take a break. She said you can’t focus for very long.”

My sister casually floated over to hug my neck from behind, but her lower half was lazily lagging behind, inside the frame of the carriage. This was the natural talent of all changelings: they could manipulate their bodies to exist outside the absolutes of physical reality.

Elisa had less awoken to magic and more remembered what it meant to be a changeling. One morning, I’d found her floating in her sleep, which scared the living daylights out of me. I had flashed back to a certain classic film; I nearly ran out to the closest church to tag in a priest before the projectile vomit started flying.

Ever since, Elisa had begun floating around like a stringless kite, touching only the things that she wanted to touch and phasing through everything else. If every child like her survived to adulthood, the world’s spies would be out of a career.

All that being said, Lady Agrippina explained that she was still only half awake (like when first rising from bed), and her training as a mage had yet to begin. Her current tricks were as natural for a changeling as walking was for mensch, or swimming for fish.

This only meant that Elisa was finally nearing the starting line. Her adorably poor command of language and plebeian diction clearly betrayed her lack of education. Without fundamentals like the palatial tongue solidly in hand, she had no hope of studying magic. Lady Agrippina let her float as she pleased to prevent a bottled-up explosion of arcane power, and often tasked me with overseeing her meditation to heighten her concentration.

Elisa was eager to learn, and her efforts were beginning to bear fruit, but her clumsy tongue was ill-suited for fanciful language. Looking back, I’d struggled with this too: while Margit had taught me a popular variant of the palatial tongue, it had come with a distinctly embarrassing add-on... Nope, enough of that. That memory isn’t good for my mental health.

Although Lady Agrippina unhelpfully compared Elisa’s progress to mine (all I had to do was click a button, after all), I was genuinely thankful for how patiently she taught my sister. Tutors who could motivate students and stuck with them through thick and thin were a rare breed.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why the woman had been playing the part of an actual guardian as of late. She had clearly thought us a bother when we’d first met, and who knew what kind of trouble we’d get into next?

Speaking of which, Elisa’s awakening brought its own host of problems. Blind rage had nearly turned me into a murderer of seven when a group of slavers offered to purchase our “exotic good” (the only reason they survived was because Lady Agrippina graciously tended to their wounds for me). On another occasion, a merry band of alfar had excitedly tried to whisk her away to be their new playmate.

We’d drilled it into Elisa that she was not to play with people or entities that she didn’t know unless she asked us for permission first. Although this rule had worked so far, I had no idea when the next ordeal would rear its head.

Now that I thought about it, the Imperial College of Magic was, as one might imagine, a densely clustered gathering of all things arcane. Thus far, Elisa had seen a sizable chunk of trouble out in the boonies—how bad was it going to be in the mecca of magic?

A cold sweat ran down my spine, but seeing my adorable baby sister tilt her head and ask, “What’s wrong?” soothed my weary soul.

“Nothing at all,” I answered. I would not break—not until I could win a happy future for Elisa—and I would carry on to forever repent for what I had done to Helga.

[Tips] With a population of sixty thousand, the imperial capital would be on the smaller end of urban centers in modern Japan, but is the tenth largest city in Rhine. Although the majority of its citizens are aristocrats who reside there for political reasons, a tenth are affiliated with the College in some way—no small number for a city of this size.

From a hill, I spotted a metropolis sprawling out on the edge of the horizon. Emotion swelled from the depths of my heart and I could feel myself trembling: Berylin!

The city stood proudly alone in the middle of a vast field, announcing its presence for all to see. Majestic walls fully encircled the town and streets radiated from its center. The perfectly organized network of roads was picturesque—the sort of thing you’d gawp at when the GM laid out the bird’s-eye view at the table.

Most impressive of all was the lofty imperial palace that towered toward the heavens. I was no architect, but the chalk-white walls dotted with countless spires that guarded the castle proper were imposing to an overwhelming degree. Yet, counterintuitively, it was not overbearing: the pressure it exerted was a form of honest beauty—a monumental ode to the greatness of the Empire that had constructed it.

So glorious and dignified was the building that its reflection in water seemed to soar through the skies. No one could cast their eyes upon this marvel without internalizing the greatness of he who commanded its halls.

This was imperial sovereignty given form. It served to instill pride in those who served such an impressive ruler while sending a message to those abroad that the Empire was not to be trifled with. Those who wrote off extravagant palaces as wasteful spending would surely change their tune if they gazed upon the Rhinian capital. Architectural dominance on its own could serve to preserve national security.

Smaller branch castles the size of whole forts guarded every cardinal direction. Each and every one was painted to please the eyes, blending everything together into one massive art piece.

Furthermore, buildings sprang up all along the sixteen major roads beaming out from the central palace. All in all, the circle made by Berylin’s borders was breathtakingly perfect. Smaller streets intertwined like a spider’s web, and one look at the chic burnt bricks that paved the alleyways was enough to appreciate the untold effort that had gone into its urban planning.

Billows of smoke rose from every corner of the city; if that wasn’t enough of a sign of life, the tightly packed walkways full of people and carriages that looked like a dark carpet from afar certainly were.

This was fantasy—the otherworldly cityscape I’d long pined for.

“Oh my god... This is incredible!”

We’d stopped by bustling towns on our way here, but the largest among them was home only to five to ten thousand people. I had never visited the capital of any major region, and my tempered expectations only fanned the flames of my excitement.

When the people of the Showa era left their middling towns—the Okayamas of the world—for the capital, this was surely how they had felt. A burning desire to walk those streets took hold of me; what had once been a task solely for Elisa’s sake had become something I wanted of my own volition.

“Wear a sign that reads UNCULTURED SWINE in tall red letters around your neck, why don’t you.”

Lady Agrippina’s weariness flew straight into my brain, but I basked in wonder all the same. What did I care? I was a hick.

I would have loved to give form to my admiration with a photograph, if I could. I had once watched with cynicism as my peers traded in their eyes for smartphone cameras, but now I sorely missed the presence of that glowing slate.

I wish I could show everyone back home...

“So big!” Still acting as a living scarf, Elisa gasped in wonder.

“It really is! Elisa, we’re going to live there from now on!”

“Really?!” she said, kicking her feet in excitement. “The big castle?!”

“Well,” I said, ignoring the pain of her knees slamming into my back, “the castle might not be...”

“The College is in the southern branch of the palace.”

“What?! For real?!” ...For real?!

Immediately after receiving this gobsmacking morsel of news, I turned my attention to the southern fort. In contrast to the white palace, the College’s walls were an intimidating black. Looking again, I noticed that every other minor castle had tons of foot traffic; this one was far less popular. Presumably there weren’t as many people who had business there. I was in awe—soon, I would be one of the few knocking on those gates.

“Krahenschanze is the southern fort of the palace and home to the College. There are wards to the east and west of the main campus, and quite the sizable underground structure containing the library and laboratories. It is every bit the center of magecraft you might expect.”

“Whoa...”

Hearing the madam run through one textbook fantasy trapping after another skyrocketed my excitement. All twelve of my years had been spent facing the harsh reality of life, so the overdose of anticipation was starting to mess with my brain. I couldn’t wait to walk around like a tourist—surely they had to have museums and landmarks in the dozens, right?

“Well, I suppose with all the branches and local leaders scattered about the world, there are certain fields in which the highest authority lies elsewhere. Still, no other location can claim the College’s preeminence. Heh, fitting that this vain castle stands in the capital of vanity.”

“Capital of vanity?”

“I may clarify one day, should time allow. Gawking is well and good, but I’d like to get going soon. I’ve sent a letter stating we will arrive by the day’s end, and failure to do so would be terribly unpleasant.” 

Although I wanted to dwell on what she’d said and continue soaking up the dreamlike view, I had no choice but to comply. Besides, Elisa was raring to go, and I wanted to escape to the coachbox to prevent any further attacks on my back. Ow, ow, please stop.

I pushed down my desire to zoom forward at full speed and slowly began rolling the carriage downhill. We followed the southern trail, bound for an entrance stemming from one of the main roads: Krahentor, the south-southeastern gate.

This gate was the primary passageway for all College affiliates. Unlike the major gates stationed in each cardinal direction, it did not close at night so long as one had a particular pass. Apparently most of the minor gates served similar roles for each of the branch castles.

Furthermore, the southeastern part of the city was known as the Mages’ Corridor, as it was filled with personal laboratories, student housing, small lecture halls, and even private schools. Magic was a dangerous field of study, so it made sense that all these experimental locations would be situated far from the city center.

That was fine—no, really, I understood. There were tons of spells that could cause catastrophic loss of life with explosions and what have you. I didn’t at all mind being in the area. In fairness, the tomes Lady Agrippina had given me to study were laden with so many dangerous spells that I’d gone to confirm that I was reading the book right more times than I had fingers and toes.

Krahentor was split a ways off of the main road. A garrison of guards in grand plate armor oversaw the traffic. There was no one to watch the foot soldiers, but they didn’t so much as slouch—ample evidence that these military men prided themselves on their work far more than their rural counterparts.

Still, what commanded the most attention wasn’t them: it was the large three-headed dog standing guard with them. While it was the same size as a large household breed, the sight of a menacing mystic life-form was thoroughly intimidating.

“Stop fidgeting or you’ll draw suspicion. There’s no call to fret over a mere triskele. It may be an artificial life-form, but it makes for a loyal companion. Why, it’s practically a harmless puppy without any orders to attack.”

What the hell are you people making in the College?! I don’t know of any puppies like this!

Lady Agrippina gave me the verbal whip for balking at this horrendous creature, so I tried my best to straighten up. Despite the intimidating air about them all, the guard that came up was kind enough to politely ask for my entry pass rather than browbeat me for it. I handed him the ticket the madam had entrusted to me and the man held it next to something similar in make. Suddenly, it glowed blue; the ticket was evidently laced with some kind of magic.

I squinted to see that the blue light was spelling out my employer’s name and title. Not only did the ticket keep track of traffic in and out of the city, but it served as an identification card to boot.

This was far higher tech than I expected. The adoption of advanced mystic technology meant that entry under a false identity was nigh impossible. Unlike us common rabble, the members of high society must have had IDs with built-in measures to counter political espionage.

“Clear,” the guard said. “Enjoy your stay in the capital.”

“Thank you very much,” I said.

For a moment, I wondered if I was supposed to tip him, but he quickly marched back to his post. It seemed more likely that they, like the Japanese police, were barred from receiving extraneous donations.

“Here we are in the Grand Old Capital. Such a pity that they came up with the moniker themselves.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed. The doors had opened without anyone else’s help to welcome us in. Red brick structures filled my vision. There wasn’t a shabby building in sight; stylish signs hung at every turn to catch my eye.

I had already been impressed before entering: the rutted road leading here had been made of paved stone so impeccably packed that a razor would hardly fit in the cracks. But seeing the pristine interior was something else. The magical suspension of our carriage had absorbed almost all of the bumps in our journey so far, but we were practically gliding over the streets of the capital.

People walked to and fro: some looked to be students, and those in dignified robes were surely the magia that taught them. Seeing all the different shapes and forms of the passersby was so entertaining that I could have people-watched all day.

However, what commanded the most attention lay dead ahead. At the end of the straight path leading forward were the black walls of the Imperial College. Grave yet resplendent, the silent behemoth was every bit as imposing as the magias’ castle ought to be. I respected it as Elisa’s sanctuary from abuse, but without her circumstances I would have thought it to be the final bastion of a demon lord.

On the hill, I had thought I was at the height of excitement—yet with this magnificent place now so close, my fervor exploded like never before.

[Tips] The College often creates artificial life-forms to suit its interests. However, these are considered to be categorically different from wild beasts with the capacity for magic; the primary determining factor is whether or not it can breed without a magus’s assistance.

The capital was so full of towering buildings that I got a crick in my neck doing my best country bumpkin impression. No amount of training could prepare me for a whole day’s worth of staring upward.

Can you blame me? Discovering a new location always sets a player’s heart aflutter. I was like a GM who’d just bought the latest supplement, ready to run through a new campaign with the usual crowd at a moment’s notice.

“Wait,” I said in realization. “Where are the guards?”

Our carriage had pulled up to the College, but the gate to Krahenschanze was wide open. I checked both sides of the entrance, but it was barren of guardsmen and three-headed dogs alike. All I could find was a bored scribe sitting at a desk on the edge of the moat, waiting for his next customer.

However, upon further inspection, I realized a spell had been cast on the gate itself. The fact that someone of my level could notice its presence meant that it likely was made with an unimaginable investment of mana. If I had to guess...

“If anyone tries to pass through these arches without the proper ticket, a barrier will instantly send a report to the local guard. We have no need for someone to dawdle in front of a doorway all day. Besides, who wants to pay for labor?”

The magia employed a truly fitting form of security. I think I might have been impressed, had my liege forgone her final sentence.

As we crossed the bridge, I noticed that our carriage was drawing a fair few eyes from the foot traffic, but they quickly lost interest, as none recognized the Stahl emblem. In a town like Berylin, visits from nobility must have been a dime a dozen.

“Ah, yes. It’s good to be back after twenty-odd years away.”

I froze. Twenty years? Lady Agrippina had indeed told us her journey was long, and that we were a means to secure an end to her fieldwork. But what on earth could she have done to be sent away for two decades?! I still didn’t know what she specialized in, so there was a chance that she had some incredible hypothesis that took generations of hands-on research to prove, but I sincerely doubted it.

While I wouldn’t bat an eye at an archaeologist or folklorist spending twenty years on the road, the madam’s pragmatism was as far from these romantic fields of study as I could imagine. Perhaps it could be explained if she had some need to observe mystic beasts to crib from for some groundbreaking new homunculus. But if she’d been wandering the Empire as an indoorsy scholarly type...the thought of what she’d done suddenly struck me with fear. Whatever it was, getting the dean of her cadre to exile her for twenty years was no small feat.

Our vehicle slipped into the driveway—structured like a modern hotel’s—as if we were gliding on silk and stopped just as smoothly. Just as I’d practiced, I hopped off the coachbox and extended the landing steps before opening the carriage door.

Simple tasks like these were alien to members of the aristocracy. Thus, they employed innumerable servants, assigning each a menial chore to specialize in. Sure, it created new job openings, but my commoner brain couldn’t help but wonder if the pompousness of it all grated on my colleagues as it did on me.

“Madam, we have arrived.” Stating the obvious and taking the hand of Lady Agrippina, who was dressed in a convincingly noble way, to help her down was all a part of my duties. She didn’t need my hand to step off the carriage, of course, but the assertion of social dominance was necessary more often than not.

Everyone here was desperate to keep up airs. Beauty was a blade, clothing was armor, and the rules of social etiquette defined the terrain. Skill with all three was the bare minimum one needed in their arsenal to resist being rent asunder by the unseen blade of the peerage’s regard as it made its rounds (Lady Aggripina’s analogy made it sound like we were all trapped inside a blender set to “puree”)...or so I had been taught.

Until now, high society had been far out of my reach. My feeble, impoverished, commoner mind had envisioned a garden with a host of genteel mademoiselles giggling from behind luxurious fans. However, the reality depicted a battlefield where authority ground against authority as players in this wicked game groped for footholds to weaken their opponents—not that I could truly see what was going on. Still, my friends who had undertaken postgraduate studies in my past life had told me stories of the social wars in academia; it seemed that humans were ever humans.

To this end, Lady Agrippina’s preparations were flawless. Magic wove her hair into an elegant chignon at all hours of the day—Does the concept of resource management even exist in her mind?—like a masterwork of sculpted silver. From up close, I could see the ungodly precision in the embroidery decorating the scarlet silk of her off-shoulder gown. The like colors made its presence subtle; no doubt this understated palette was part of her wealthy sensibilities.

Elisa followed suit. She must have received a very strict lesson, as she walked out with noble grace, hardly letting her feet leave the ground. This was a far cry from the rowdy, stubby toddling of the recent past. Clearly, her hard work had paid off.

Although she still looked uncomfortable in the clothes the madam had tailored for her a few cities back, Elisa looked absolutely adorable in them. Robes were a signifier of magia, and gowns were reserved for the upper class; instead, she wore a white blouse laden with frills, a hooded cape, and a corset skirt that wrapped around her waist. She continued putting one foot clad in a long leather boot in front of the other as she entered the public eye without incident.

I had spent half an hour tying up the golden locks she’d inherited from our mother. Her gently flowing hair had a nymphish charm—both literally and figuratively. Putting it lightly, she was God’s gift to mankind.

At first, I’d been confounded by the exceedingly contemporary design—I think this style had been popularized online for its virgin-killing properties—but the seamstress who created it went on to explain that it was in vogue among the middle class to wear touched-up versions of simple farming clothes.

I didn’t really get it. I didn’t need to. Our little princess was the cutest in the world.

Me, you ask? I was dressed plain and neat in a dark doublet and slacks. The only thing worth mentioning was that my hair had grown long enough to warrant me pushing it behind my head. At any rate, a servant’s job was not to stick out. My place was three steps behind the madam, away from public attention.

Well, there was one other thing. The capital forbade all but the aristocracy and their bodyguards from carrying weapons, so I’d hidden away the fey karambit in my sleeve. Not for any reason, mind you, except perhaps for fashion’s sake.

“Now then, be a darling and make sure not to stray too far,” Lady Agrippina thought. Perhaps she had gotten so lazy that moving her mouth was a chore.

“Yes, madam,” I said, in the humblest palatial accent I could manage. Unlike usual, it was actually time to work as a noble’s steward.

My liege took Elisa by the hand and I followed in their wake three paces behind. This was exactly as Lady Agrippina had taught us. I made every effort to look sharp as we entered the College, but my heart was admittedly taken by the architecture all around us—even the most well-preserved structures of Victorian Europe weren’t this grand.

As the center of imperial magic, a cutting-edge research facility, and an institute of learning to produce more talent, I had expected the main hall to be teeming with people. Yet I stepped inside to find a tranquil interior done up top to bottom in black, occasionally broken up by some small accent.

This was a fortress; in dire situations it was meant to serve as a stronghold against an attack. Yet for some reason, the entrance was fashioned like a large atrium, similar to those of ancient banks. Sunlight flooded in from the skylight to bathe the wooden reception desk in a glow so holy that it felt wrong to approach carelessly. As a final cherry on top, the staff waiting for us were so handsome that I swear they must have been hired on appearances alone.

The scene was enough to grasp why the madam had called this a vain castle in the capital of vanity.

As the pillar of the Trialist Empire’s grip on magic, swaths of outsiders came and went through this reception area to be ushered in for classes or meetings with famed lecturers and professors alike. Some whom I presumed to be students stood at the desk with scrunched-up faces, and I could see bureaucrats going about their business with bundles of documents in hand. This was the hub for paperwork, not learning.

However, my master was here in spite of her official position as a researcher for the explicit purpose of greeting the dean of her cadre. As a former university student myself, I initially wondered why she didn’t visit the head of her school directly. Alas, this too was another quirk of nobility: it was more becoming to announce one’s intent to visit beforehand.

Truly, these were strange creatures bound by prestige and rules. Those who coveted their luxury alone would be horrified to find themselves living this sort of life. I wondered if there were any nouveau riche types that bought noble titles; if there were, how long did they last?

My mind drifted to all sorts of unknowns, but Lady Agrippina paid me no mind as she proceeded to the counter. Yet just as she prepared to state her business, a gust of wind tore through the hall. The tempest’s message was clear: the methuselah had no need for paperwork.

[Tips] Those who need potions or miscellaneous assistance in a mystic field usually take their business to one of the private laboratories in the Mages’ Corridor. However, these clients are usually public servants—laymen in extraordinary circumstances will more often ask for help via the suggestion boxes placed at the gates leading into Krahenschanze. As a result, there are scribes stationed by every entrance to the College.

The Imperial College—the heart of all things magic in the Trialist Empire and home port to all magia—was in the middle of an endless war that had begun at its founding. The question was as simple as it was comically childish: which field of study was best? Ludicrous as it was that the brightest minds in the Empire got along worse than toddlers, the internecine battle had deep roots.

Such was to be expected. The institution’s origins lay with the founding of the Empire itself. Mages keen on research and development had been plucked from every one of the component states of the greater Rhinian nation. Their sole purpose was to create a new source of power that would maintain the nation’s stability and expand her borders. To that end, the gifted were not left to roam free, but shackled by the pride that came with systems and ranks.

And proud they were. Five hundred years ago, there had been no distinction between magus and mage. Every accomplished mage knew only of their local peers, and were sure that the Truth conformed to their view of the world. Had their arrogance taken physical form, it would surely have breached the sky and touched the heavens.

As the scheme of apprenticeship bound mages together with the blood of technique, cliques rapidly formed like twin and triplet brothers. At their heads were invariably geniuses of absolute authority—after all, those who studied wished to do so under a great master. So long as their character was salvageable, the greatest minds were orbited by disciples. In turn, they became the basis of whole factions.

Drawn in by the state’s promise of funding and facilities, those who prided themselves as the cream of the crop gathered to prove their mettle. How could a crowd of this sort ever hope to get along?

You would sooner see a Red Sox fan sitting shoulder to shoulder in beatific brotherhood with a Yankees fan, deep in their cups as they basked under the glow of a sports bar flat-screen, bidding each other a safe journey home at the sound of last call. At worst, the butting of heads at the College could devolve into a bloodbath.

And did. Often.

The Cadre Struggles, as they were known, were a series of unfathomably obnoxious battles without beginning or end.

Shortly after the College’s founding, seven particularly talented mages—as mentioned, the system for denoting exceptional figures as “magia” had yet to be invented—rose up above all others. They staked their claim, declaring that their way was the way, and gave birth to the major schools of thought.

Each school was a place for their respective members to strive for their vision of perfection. With seven whole answers, there was clearly not going to be any consensus—the factions of the College came into being in the perilous state of seven-way mutual condemnation. Damage caused by the glove-throwing one-on-one sessions of mortal combat that emerged among heated nobles was a cute trifle in comparison to the mountains of casualties the mages left in their wake.

Five centuries later, the great founders had long since been buried, but their struggle lived on. Sentient life was beyond help no matter the world, it seemed.

In the present day, the balance of power had reached a sort of equilibrium under the umbrella of the Five Great Pillars. The passage of time had worn the rugged individualist mages into the loosely cooperative magia, gathered around outstanding individuals to form cadres. This was a necessary measure: research was a boiling cauldron, melting funds into the essence of knowledge. A figurehead of respectable pedigree was prerequisite to acquiring a steady stream of government grants.

With explosive growth and noble titles came irreversible change. The melting pot of philosophies had once dictated the magia’s battles; now, a select few moved their pieces for the good of the factions they ruled.

The deans of the five key cadres each bore the torch of one of the seven original schools of thought. They welcomed smaller like-minded groups into their flock and wielded their absolute authority in an everlasting competition with the other deans.

What made the present situation so precarious was that each of these leading magia were masters of their craft. Naturally, the Empire did not enjoy overseeing a cold war between necessarily eccentric, preening personalities that could each individually wipe whole districts off the map.

Every emperor to take the throne found that mediating the magia’s lethally bad blood was every bit as stressful as foreign diplomacy. Coupled with the heavy responsibility of the national budget, one could see why the members of the three imperial houses referred to the throne as the “seat of torture.” Every few generations, the reigning monarch declared their intent to abolish the whole institution in a fit of rage; they then weighed the College’s value on a scale against the trouble it caused and abandoned their dream like clockwork.

Setting aside the woes of imperial rule, Agrippina’s chosen ideology was that of the School of Daybreak, whose doctrine was thus: Let magic dispel ignorance and bring bounty to the world. The faction’s idealism spat in the face of the muddy conflict they had long participated in, and they prided themselves on contributing to society in practical ways.

The School of Daybreak’s greatest breakthroughs included the discovery of a method to transport mana beyond the bounds of space, and a long-range communication device that could instantly transcribe a faraway person’s thoughts. Popular in every region with all sorts of guilds and associations, they were even able to employ the help of adventurers unbound to the state of Rhine.

Naturally, Agrippina’s chosen cadre was one heralded by a fellow Daybreak thinker. There were only Five Great Pillars, and the Leizniz cadre she cast her lot with was chief among them. What was more, Leizniz had not succeeded her cadre from a mentor. No, Lady Leizniz herself had founded the cadre two hundred years prior, overcoming ruthless clashes to lead her faction to dominance.

You may wonder what kind of woman this Leizniz was to tirelessly lead a party as magnificent as hers for so long. She was bold yet delicate. She was open-minded and considerate. She was a peerless genius that effortlessly shared her depth of knowledge in ways that were easy to understand. She was a friend to the weak—a philanthropist of the highest degree.

As wondrous as this description is, these would be the words of someone from her own cadre. What then, you may ask, were the opinions of those outside it?

Leizniz was a godless backslider addicted to novelty. She was a sycophant more suited to politics than scholarship. She was a psychopath that used her silver tongue to cut down all who crossed her. She was a waste of talent, allotted all the wrong traits to create the perfect nuisance. And lastly, she was a filthy vitality glorifier.

They say merit and demerit are two sides of the same coin, but her divisiveness was in a league of its own.

You may further wonder what lineage could have produced this two-hundred-year-old monster, and the answer might shock you. Leizniz was a mensch—or at least, she had been.

A glacial gale tore through the majestic entrance hall of Krahenschanze. With the heat of imminent summer gone, the air was icy enough to crack the skin. The public officials visiting on business fled the scene, and the students filling out paperwork erected barriers in a fit of panic. Some who were used to this sort of disturbance casually sauntered off with peevish looks.

The woman at the center of the frigid tempest was none other than the renowned prodigy of the most powerful cadre in the Empire: Magdalena von Leizniz.

A layer of frost settled on Agrippina’s ever-present conceptual barrier. Despite the worrying cracking sound it made, she had a dauntless smile—nay, she twisted her gorgeous features into a hideous sneer. Yet she was the pinnacle of civility as she graciously bowed to the wraith fading into being.

“I humbly present the most affectionate of greetings to mark my return. May I offer this courtesy to you, my esteemed master, Professor Magdalena von Leizniz?”

“You dare to speak?” The wraith’s beautiful voice was bathed in cold fury; she dragged her words up from the icy depths of hell.

This short exchange was more than enough to see the strife between the researcher and the dean she swore allegiance to.

[Tips] While the cadres of the Imperial College are not legally recognized entities, distinguished professors are granted nobility by the imperial crown. However, even then, they are not allotted territory—they are simply given a stipend and told to carry themselves as a member of the upper class.

Still, continuous contribution can lead to increased awards; should a magus serve the Empire with enough zeal, they can rise in rank to the point of earning an estate. The dream of rising to political prominence is no mere dead letter.

This world was no stranger to cock-and-bull tales of phantoms and specters, told to put ice in the veins of children and the excessively gullible, but geists, as they were known, were verifiably real. I knew nothing about the rigorous theoretical explanation for their manifestation, but the gist of a geist was that a strong will at the end of one’s mortal life could imprint their existence on the very world.

Oftentimes, they exerted all of their magical power in their final moment, surpassing all limits to concentrate all of the mana they would have produced in a normal lifetime in a single instant. As a consequence, such apparitions were incredibly strong, without variation.

Initially, I had thought this was absurd. Yet there were stories about common farm girls turning into spirits capable of cursing the entire bloodlines of those who had broken their hearts, and others about powerless daughters of ruined noble houses turning whole castles into uninhabitable fortresses of blight. Faced with undeniable evidence of supernatural power, I could no longer write this off as an old wives’ tale.

I had come across these anecdotes many years ago: I had been in the canton’s church with a few other local children, and they had begged the priest to tell us a fun story instead of a standard sermon. To this day, I had absolutely no idea why he decided this bone-chilling array of ghost stories would be anything in the realm of “fun” for a group of small kids. Perhaps he’d meant to teach us not to do anything that would cause others to hold a grudge, but there was no reason to offer the lesson in such bloodcurdling form. Frankly, I thought it more likely that he simply had been waiting to share the stories with anyone he could.

Thinking back, the priest had gone on to note that there were beings even more terrifying than the ghastly geists: wraiths. Wraiths arose from the same circumstances as their lesser cousins—deep regret or hatred branded their souls onto reality at the brink of death—but there was a catch.

Wraiths were only born from the greatest of mages. The geistification process amplified common folk to ludicrous levels; what, then, would happen if the deceased commanded an enormous sea of mana? A look to the past sufficed to answer: when a court magus in another land had been executed on suspicion of assassination, the resulting wraith had reduced the state to a mountain of corpses in seven days.

Man, the world is a scary place.

Still, geists weren’t a problem so long as one kept one’s viscous whirlpool of ugly emotions at arm’s length. As a farm boy growing up in a god-fearing neck of the woods—faithful to the reputable Harvest Goddess, no less—and surrounded by friendly neighbors, I had been sure to go my whole life without seeing one.

Until today, that is. Icy gales swirled into a tornado as soon as she appeared, bringing the mere idea of warmth to its knees. The dry heat of early summer shivered out of existence as a layer of frost settled on surfaces that were never meant to freeze over. Even Lady Agrippina’s force field, which was literally the concept of protection given form—truthfully, it was so unfair that I couldn’t begin comprehending it—was covered in crystals of ice.

The wraith was death personified, and yet her beauty was, in many ways, the sort of thing that made your whole body tremble. Her silhouette had a womanly roundness to it, and the gentle droop of her large eyes paired nicely with the well-defined bridge of her nose. Her plump lips were precisely the right size to balance with the rest of her features, and her voluminous brown hair was extravagantly decorated with stylish gems fit for the upper class.

From her appearance, the semitranslucent woman seemed to be in her late teens or early twenties. Although her drooping gown did its utmost to mask her sensual charm, it did little to hide the grace present in her voluptuous figure.

Had she been alive, this gorgeous beauty would know no rest as suitor after hopeful suitor would have vied for her hand—at least, so long as she stopped radiating enough arcane pressure to make their legs give out.

The only reason I was still in my right mind was because Elisa was by my side. Like the episode in Helga’s winter storm, I expanded my Unseen Hands as much as I could manage and used several layers to create an impromptu barrier to protect my sister—who was staring at the Hands blankly, unable to keep up.

Unfortunately, an inexperienced mage’s shield amounted to little more than improv. Layered as they were, the Hands let air whistle through the cracks, and I couldn’t totally insulate us from the gust. But it was a brother’s duty to try, and I hugged Elisa tight in order to defend her from as much of the biting cold as I could.

I needed to get my act together before Elisa’s mind could catch up to what was happening. The madam had said that my sister’s awakening now left her at risk of blowing up whenever she came across undue magical stimulus. No matter how much the terror and cold caused me to quake in my boots, I had to stand firm for her sake.

I squeezed her face into my chest so she wouldn’t be able to see behind me as I exposed my back to the wind. Wearing summer threads in temperatures that made winter nights feel climate-controlled was excruciating—seriously, what on earth had my master done? How had she managed to get someone in a position as important as her school’s dean to pop off without any hesitation?

“My, my,” Lady Agrippina said. “How good it is to see you in the best of spirits. Pray tell, how do you do? I take it that you must have had a wonderful streak of fortune as of late.”

For the love of all that’s holy, don’t spur her on! I still haven’t had the heart to use all the experience points I earned from Helga and the ogre! If this whirlwind gets any worse, my crappy barrier might as well not even be here! You know this isn’t supposed to happen, right?! I’m not supposed to be able to see clumps of hand-shaped frost outlining magical force fields!

“Oh, could it be? May I be so forward as to claim the honor of being the cause for your jubilation? I could think of nothing more delightful than for that to be the case.”

I will admit that in many a past session, I’d talked all kinds of smack to those that were far stronger than me. At times this led to compromise and at others it caused the party to wipe, but I ended up crumpled up on the floor with laughter nearly every time. But seeing the scene unfold in a situation where I didn’t have extra lives was not funny.

“After ignoring my letters while penning frivolous replies of your own for longer than I care to remember, this is the greeting you give me? Truly, Agrippina du Stahl?”

Seeing a gorgeous person drowning in pure rage was even scarier than usual. Although the beauty mark under the wraith’s eye resembled the gentle teardrop of a kind woman, her features distorted to make her look like a demon of hatred.

For the first time in a while, I was on the verge of sobbing like a baby. As of late, I’d begun feeling like a PC that had finished the prologue and promptly been thrown into the endgame campaign material. I wanted at least four more party members I could spec out from scratch to be shameless meta-slaves before trying to wail on an enemy like this.

“Oh, my dearest master, you are much too good to me. What joy it brings to know that you would so benevolently remember my name after leaving me on the roadside for twenty years.”

“Do tell, however might I hope to forget you? No, not a day goes by when you leave my mind—and neither do the countless grievances from the librarians you tossed my way, nor the headache-inducing details of the report I had to write on the events that took place on the day of that crucial lecture.”

On one side was a smile wicked enough to hang on a wall; on the other was a cold expression that ought to be in the dictionary next to the entry for “silent rage.”

The two stood off without a word. Just when I finally began weighing the cost of tagging Lottie in, the glacial air warmed. Perhaps that isn’t exactly correct: the room instantaneously returned to the pleasant summer temperature it had been, as if we’d switched scenes. The frozen wasteland was back to business as usual, and the frost on my and the madam’s barriers vanished.

All that remained was the tingly sensation of stepping into a heated room after braving a blizzard. The disappearance of collateral effects suggested that she’d been using true magic, as opposed to a cantrip. Otherwise, the air would have taken time to warm back up, and the frost would have needed to melt on its own.

The difference in mana costs between hedge magic and true magic was comparable to a fuel-efficient sedan and a high-end sports car. The fact that the dean had used the latter to summon a natural disaster without breaking a sweat made her an absolute monster. How much experience would I need to spend to face something like that head-on?

“I’m so sorry, little ones. This imbecile made me lose my composure. Did I frighten you?”

The wraith had finally noticed me and Elisa, and she slipped past my employer to crouch down and speak to us at eye level. Then, she hugged us with her transparent yet strangely warm arms. I was already hugging Elisa, but she took both of us and buried us in what I now realized was a prodigious chest.

Huh? What? You can touch stuff? Wait, why are you warm?! And soft?! And you smell nice too?!

“Ha! Oh, Master, ever one for jokes, I see.”

“Silence.”

Thoughts of every kind bounced and slammed into one another in my head, and in my state of confusion, the annoyingly prominent call of Boobies! won out, drowning out everything else. While my mental faculties were still bugged, the stunning wraith scooped us up and decided that it was time for tea.

[Tips] Under imperial census law, resurrected individuals are considered deceased and forfeit all assets to be inherited. While they themselves also lose the right to inherit their kinsmen’s fortunes, the property they acquire postmortem is guaranteed by the state.

Several minutes later, I wound up in a room in the College—that was about as precise as I could get. Around me were subdued yet unabashedly expensive furnishings: photorealistic paintings, a sofa stuffed with the finest down, and a matching table embellished with all sorts of unnecessary engravings. It was clear to see that this was a parlor room meant to entertain the most dignified of company.

Someone like me who’d just fallen off the back of a turnip truck had no excuse relaxing in a place like this. To make matters worse, Elisa and I had been dragged along to sit by one of the five most important people in this entire institution. What was I supposed to do? That wasn’t rhetorical—what the hell was I meant to do?

I could guess as to why we were in the room itself: the glares of the receptionists had rapidly approached a tipping point. I could tell from their expressions alone that they’d been ready to put an end to their obnoxious visitors, noble titles and professorships be damned. As the first barrier to entry into the magia castle, they were far from powerless poster children chosen for their good looks, and their angry gazes were nothing to scoff at.

No, my concern was the fact that the hostess of our meeting had taken Elisa onto her lap to pet her head. On top of that, I had no clue why she was pulling me straight into her left breast.

Don’t think I forgot about you, madam. My employer (and just as pertinently, Elisa’s teacher) was sitting across from us with a smug grin, sipping at her tea with an uncaring “Yum.”

“And?” the wraith demanded. “Explain yourself.”

“Whatever might there be to explain?” Lady Agrippina said, her tone devoid of any semblance of guilt. Despite her air of innocence, I could only think she’d done something to trigger a response like this, and was curious to know what. If I were to put in a second request, I would have very much appreciated it if the madam stopped fanning the flames of her master’s rage with buckets of oil.

“Why did it take you three months to return?”

The dean’s low growl caused my sister to flinch and squeeze my hand tight. I’d managed to convince her to obediently sit on the lady’s lap, but Elisa hadn’t forgotten what occurred in the lobby.

“Oh, but Master, have you forgotten? I was sent off into the world with but two unhurried horses to my name. I would quite appreciate it if you revised your calculations with this in mind.”

Lady Agrippina’s casual everyday demeanor had caused me to question whether or not she was a true aristocrat at times. Yet I now knew her blood was a noble blue—what other class of people could indulge in taunts this courteous? Even the best of merchants would sneak a sharp edge in among the honeyed words.

That being said, the madam wasn’t wrong. While her particularity for quality inns was sickening, we hadn’t taken any major detours, and the only stops we made had been on account of bad weather. All in all, I didn’t think our journey was long enough to trigger this much anger...

Wait a minute. Thinking back, this was the same woman who tore holes through space for even the most inconsequential things. I didn’t know the details, since space-bending magic was still locked in my character sheet, but on one occasion, she’d teleported the whole carriage all the way back to Helga’s manor from its route to an inn. In which case, there clearly weren’t severe restrictions on distance or targets.

“Do you mean to tell me that a formal researcher of my cadre has forgotten the inner workings of the space-bending spells she used to earn her position?”

I should’ve known! All this time, I’d convinced myself that there had to be an excuse as to why we were trekking for miles and miles on our horses’ hooves, but it had all been a bluff! Sure, I hadn’t asked, but seeing the homebody methuselah willingly choose the tedium of travel hadn’t given me any reason to!

Anger aside, I was still curious as to why she’d chosen to spend three moons’ time meandering across the Empire, considering how opposed to travel she was. With the ability to return in the snap of a finger, I saw no reason for the embodiment of sloth I served to dutifully roll along the roads like everyone else.

“Furthermore,” Lady Leizniz said, “you deliberately reported your new apprentice to the College without first notifying me, going so far as to use the Stahl name to speed along the process. What do you say to that?”

“Oho ho,” my master chuckled. “Paperwork is such a chore, don’t you agree? I merely wished to clear up the bothersome minutiae quickly, leaving time to touch up the documents to be of respectable make. Having built up my name as a magus in my own right, it simply wouldn’t do to trouble my darling mentor with the bothersome concerns of bureaucracy—I’m sure you have your own students to care for, after all. Now, would you please take a gander?”

Lady Agrippina extended her hand, producing a bundle of documents from thin air. Wrapped in silky cloth, the papers slid across the table to Lady Leizniz. The wraith eyed it with scorn as she tore the fabric open; glaring daggers into the pages, she seemed ready to rip the whole thing to shreds should she find a single error. While enjoying the soft sensation on my head (I’d given up on thinking at this point) I took a glance at the text.

Wow, that’s hard!

Thanks in part to a lot of effort spent reading, my Palatial Tongue skill was at V: Adept, but everything on the page flew over my head. The words were sculpted into euphemisms, poetic turns of phrase, historical allusions, linguistic conventions, and enough references to obscure family lines to make the Old Testament quake in its boots. Trying to read it was poison for my brain.

My fatigued mind drifted off to think about how incredible state scribes truly were when the booklet slammed shut. Apparently, the document was so well written that the brilliant dean of one of the College’s largest factions hadn’t been able to find any mistakes. The pieces fell into place: this had been why the madam had needed to stall for three months.

“I do remember you once saying—oh, when was it?” Lady Agrippina mused. “Ah, yes, it was twenty-one years ago, in the summer. It was terribly hot on that day, if you recall. Indeed, the heat made my departure from the indoors ever more unbearable.”

As contempt oozed from the methuselah’s lips, I shriveled to be as small as possible, not wanting to draw the attention of either terrifying woman. Despite the concentrated scorn dripping into Lady Leizniz’s ear, her mind (I wondered how ghosts formed thoughts, anyway?) was still sharp, evidenced by the fact that the air around us was still habitable. If she were to repeat her winter storm from earlier at this range, Elisa and I would turn into popsicles.

“You told me I could return if I were to ever find an apprentice that I had no choice but to care for myself. You did, didn’t you? You wouldn’t say you forgot, would you?” My master hid her mouth behind a baroque fan. “How peculiar that would be. The great dean who has led our cadre for two centuries, forgetting a promise of hers?”

Please stop, I’m begging you. What do you want from me? If you tell me to go kill someone to get you to take this negotiation seriously, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.

“Then...”

I heard a strained voice from above. Peering up curiously, my eyes were met by the gentle features of the wraith.

“Then what about him?! As loath as I am to say this, I shall allow you to take an apprentice and return to your laboratory in the name of education. But this boy isn’t in the documents! No fair!”

What do you mean, “No fair”? Please don’t start acting like a child now...

“It’s not fair that you get to keep two adorable children all to yourself! And one’s a changeling! I’ve never raised a changeling student before! All I’ve had as of late are insolent pigs and disgusting old farts!”

Oh... So you’re that kind of... Ah.

Beginning to get the hint, I reevaluated the woman hugging me and my sister. Lady Leizniz wasn’t just an important magus—she was an incredibly important magus who also happened to be a vitality glorifier. In every world, people like her were among the worst of the worst. Why in Their name did the gods let her go about her business everyday?

To be fair, I knew I was cute, on account of the Mother’s Son and Soothing Visage traits I’d taken years ago. For whatever reason, I could remember my features from my past life, so my opinion of how attractive I was felt fairly unbiased.

I wasn’t adorable enough to look like a girl or anything, but I had once thought my face would land well with someone whose tastes trended younger. Finding out that I’d been completely correct in a situation like this was less than satisfying.

Had I been a girl, I would have started to show signs of puberty—I wondered why Margit flashed in my mind when she was one of the few exceptions—but my body was still stuck in childhood. In recent memory, I’d been excited to see my shoulders and general outline sharpen up a bit, but I was still far from escaping the realm of cuteness in the eyes of the world at large.

“I want him!”

Please, no.

[Tips] Unfortunately, Rhinian law has few written protections for children and young adults. Vitality glorifiers are only brought to pay for their deeds if they cross certain lines.

I considered myself a voracious reader, picking up any book regardless of genre. For a brief period in my past life, I’d fallen down the rabbit hole of Harlequin romance novels in the hopes of bettering my ability to role-play women (in a voiceless setting, mind you—I did not go around speaking in falsetto).

I’d been young: sappy romance was the closest thing to femininity I could think of, and to my unseasoned soul, those novels were the perfect way to put myself in the shoes of a woman. At the very least, I hoped it would give me some insight into becoming a more attractive man.

What awaited me were a slew of exceedingly stunning men in positions of great power, whisking away the heroines with what I could scarcely consider consent. Each time I read through the formulaic narratives of deepening bonds, I found myself thinking that no man could ever be so perfect, but the stories were fun all the same. Surely, women held the same opinion of the characters in dating sims.

Among the many plot points familiar to these tales, one common trope was when the male lead dressed up the heroine to his liking, sparing no expense for the finest threads. I understood this to be a Cinderella moment of sorts, and these developments no doubt set many young girls’ hearts aflutter. Meaningless as it was, I’d even imagined myself in the same situation and came to the conclusion that I would be able to appreciate it in some small way.

Yet if you were to ask me about my opinion now, I would be at a loss for words. No, apologies, that was a lie. I would hate it.

“Master, do you still...partake?” the madam asked.

“I can’t help myself!” Lady Leizniz shouted. “He’s so cute! This bland doublet is such a waste—let’s put him in a snow-white pourpoint! I know the recent trend is to have some slack in the trousers, but a tighter fit would do so much better! And he ought to have boots that come up to his knees with gloves to match! Oh, no, wait. What about half slacks with tights?!”

The pillowy softness that had felt so comforting a moment prior now filled me with dread. I wished to leave behind the realms of sex and gender altogether and go home to Konigstuhl. I wondered what my parents were doing. How was Heinz getting along? Perhaps Miss Mina’s belly was already beginning to expand. I hoped Margit was faring well.

“And this dress isn’t terrible, but it’s far too drab for a girl like her! Look at this dainty little face. She needs an extravagant dress in the pitchest black money can buy! With frills—more of them! Obviously, her skirt needs a pannier to fluff it up so it can go with the luxurious fan I’m going to give her. The look won’t be very childlike, but that’s exactly what makes it so good!”

My escapist train of thought ground to a halt as Elisa squeezed my fingers as hard as she could. I couldn’t understand why I was here. The woman’s rapid speech terrified me, and the fact that her beautiful features didn’t falter at a time like this only made the whole affair even more disappointing.

Lady Leizniz’s chilling entry to the scene was at such odds to her current demeanor that I could hear my brain sputtering out. If nothing else, couldn’t she choose one personality and stick with it?

“Mr. Brother,” my sister whispered. “Scared...”

“Just a bit longer, Elisa.” I clasped her hand in both of mine and tried to encourage her to hold out. I was just as afraid as her, but we weren’t in a position to complain.

“Alas, I’ve signed numerous documents with Erich’s parents when I came to take him as a servant. All of the terms are as you see here.” Lady Agrippina conjured another stack of papers that silenced the wraith’s flood of words. “You may want him all you please, but I can’t simply toss him away so easily...”

“Grr...” Lady Leizniz growled and tightened her grip.

I’m scared. I think it might be time to let go. Please? I haven’t even hit puberty yet!

At any rate, I wanted my liege to get to the point. The fact that she was spurring her own master on to this degree meant there had to be something she wanted, and it would do me wonders to have her spit it out already. I wanted to leave: being hugged tight by a wraith obsessed with my childlike vivacity was quickly becoming a catastrophe greater than the circumstances of my little sister’s birth.

“Of course, that all depends on Erich’s will,” Lady Agrippina said, tossing me a verbal grenade.

No, stop! Don’t pin this on me! The wraith had clenched my shoulders and begun smiling down at me before the madam had finished speaking. How did it turn out like this?

“Hello, little Erich,” she said. “If you’d like, I would love to welcome you as an honorary student at my—”

“I humbly decline.” Never in my life had words of refusal slipped off my tongue so smoothly. Deep within, a voice screamed out that if I let this moment of reprieve go, her next statement would ruin me; I could not let her put in another word. “My place is to serve Madam Stahl, and even personally, I find your offer to be more than I deserve.”

As short as my work history was, the position of servant was the perfect shield to parry her proposal. I’d long wished to learn the secrets of the mystic arts through books and mentorship, but I still had the self-respect to pick my own master. I readied myself for the final push...only to spot the madam’s lips curling into a villainous sneer.

Oh. I’m screwed.

“Well put,” the madam said. “Yet Erich here has a penchant for spellcasting, and he is a splendid boy trying to earn his sister’s tuition in any way he can. Thus, should you be willing to accept a handful of terms, I would be more than willing to allot a certain amount of free time in his schedule.”

Lady Agrippina’s motives were so ulterior that they paradoxically showed on the surface, and her grin was the lowest of the low.

What’s “free time” supposed to mean? Who is going to be using whose time freely—no, go on, tell me. I can’t help but feel like this isn’t going to be time in the day that I can use to enjoy myself as I please.

“Very well,” the dean said. “Speak.”

You scum of the earth! You used me as a bargaining chip?! Oh, you better remember this.

I was busy etching an oath of vengeance into my soul, and Lady Leizniz looked like she was grinding a bitter insect to dust with her back molars. Yet across from us, my methuselah master had a wide, taunting grin chock-full of all the world’s evil.

“Firstly, I would dearly appreciate some time to recuperate. I was hard at work in the field for twenty-one years, after all.”

“...Fine. Rest at your leisure. I shall allot you half a year.”

The madam’s first request went through without resistance. While six months was an eternity without work for me, it wasn’t particularly strange for a noble. Retreating to a secondary residence for a year was common practice, or so I’d been told.

“And those twenty-one years of work will need to be properly recorded in an official report. Wherever will I find the, say, two to three years needed to polish my prose?”

She was lying. There was no doubt in my mind that she’d already finished the whole thing. I didn’t need the Deception Block skill in the upper classes of the Sociability tree to know that.

“Two years granted,” the wraith said. “I would never doubt you had already completed the document, which I’m sure the two years’ time I’m granting suffices to prove. I expect great things.”

“Oho ho, but of course. I shall put the whole of my efforts into producing something worthy of your eyes.”

The madam’s second request brought her total to two and a half years of leisure time. While it may have been a blink of an eye for an eternal creature, that was a massive length of time for the College to fund someone and their workshop. Most people would come close to killing for that amount of paid leave; selling out her servant was chump change.

What was more, I knew my client: in two and a half years, she would find some kind of excuse to take more time off after her moratorium came to a close.

“Let me see,” Lady Agrippina continued. “Even after the completion of my report, there will be so much to do. All the greetings and preparation needed to attend another lecture makes my head swirl...”

“Fine! Well enough! I shall write as many letters on your behalf as you desire!”

What is wrong with you? For the record, I probably—no, certainly—wasn’t worth all this trouble. Elisa, maybe. But me?

“My, my,” Lady Agrippina said. “If you’re going to accommodate me so handsomely, I must see to it that I uphold my end of the bargain. Looking after me oughtn’t take too much of the boy’s time, anyhow.”

How long had the madam planned for this? I’d signed the contract knowing that our relationship would be marked by the both of us taking advantage of one another, but if this had been part of the plan this whole time, she was beyond redemption.

I couldn’t catch a break. I was here to let Elisa live a life with human rights and to one day set off on an adventure, not to play around with degenerates...

[Tips] The College’s researchers and professors receive ample research grants, bolstered by bonuses, honors, and even salaries upon making groundbreaking discoveries. 

And so, after being sold off to a filthy vitality glorifier in a shady backroom deal, I found myself...in a patrician clothing store on the northern end of the capital.

Roads sliced the capital into sixteenths from the palace in its center, and the northern sections were home to many high-class dwellings brimming with historical value. Some residents were technically common folk, but they were invariably distinguished scribes or otherwise talented. The area was so dignified that lowborn folk hesitated to set foot in it, even if they had official business to attend to.

Pristine white stones paved the streets; the carriages that rolled across them each had their own forerunner (that is, a person whose sole duty was to disperse crowds for the incoming vehicle) and proudly flew flags signifying the upstanding heritage of those within. Although I saw a handful of lightly armored individuals riding directly on their steeds, they were no doubt either knights or bodyguards for especially wealthy nobles.

“Oh my, what a pretty shade of gold. You are so very right, my lady. White will fit him wonderfully. If only it were a bit longer, we could braid it with ribbons and gems.”

“A moment, please. The navy blue velvet that came in from the west the other day would be sure to suit him just as well. And what shall we do for the embroidery?”

“What say you we ruffle his collar? Ah, but the current fad is to dress children down to give them a more simple overall look... How difficult.”

“I think he needs a tie—no, perhaps a scarf? Whether we use white or blue as his base, a deep red accent would be perfect for this gallant face.”

Yet here I was, in a clothing store so luxurious that it was liable to turn away the nouveau riche with the same upturned nose it did the poor. I’d been stripped of the doublet Lady Agrippina had prepared for me, and four seamstresses were measuring me in my undergarments.

The tasteful furnishings of the room made it abundantly clear that this was not the kind of establishment to sell off-the-rack articles or hand-me-downs like the ones frequented by people of my stature. Every outfit in the store was a display piece; the real products were made to order, tailored to the customer and the customer alone. As far as clothing went, this was the most bourgeois place anyone could hope to shop at.

Ready-made items were unheard of in the noble sphere, and I’d heard that they even had baby clothes sewn from scratch. Still, I wouldn’t have ever dreamed of patronizing a place like this myself.

The workers brought one new roll of cloth (each enough to buy my house, farm, and all who lived on it) after another. Having these fabrics placed to my neck filled me with intense fear: an ill-timed sneeze would sink me into more debt than I cared to imagine. As much as I wanted to make my escape, I had my orders. Without the right to even hide myself, all I could do was power through.

“Mr. Brother,” Elisa whined. “Tired...”

“Just a little longer. I’ll treat you to some ice candy later.”

Above all else, my baby sister had been dragged here too. It was my duty as her older brother to stand resolute beside her and protect her in any way I could.

“Ah,” Lady Leizniz sighed blissfully. “The current emperor is so wise to reopen our trade routes to the east. Where else would we find silk this beautiful? I’d like golden embroidery—oh, my apologies, not that one. Do we have a darker gold?”

In contrast, the source of all that ailed us was in high spirits after she’d won the right to dress us up from our master. Lady Leizniz made her purchases more casually than a shopper buying chocolate from a convenience store, yet the custom requests on each order were ludicrously detailed. Thinking about the final total was enough to upset my stomach.

However, there was still something in it for me. First, Lady Leizniz had been taken by my determination to earn Elisa’s tuition by my own hand, and awarded me special permission to use the College’s job bulletin.

To explain in short, the job bulletin was a quest board. Being a massive institution, the College was made up of magia from every end of society. Where some professors were active nobles that happened to get invested in their magical hobby, others earned their title after long years of subsisting on bland oatmeal to win a living.

Extrapolating down, the same could be said of the students. Well-to-do sons and daughters leisurely attended classes from secondary or tertiary holdings in the capital with the aim of one day becoming Rhinian diplomats; their penniless counterparts knocked on the College’s doors out of an unfettered ambition to go from mage to magus, ready to make ends meet on their own terms.

With such extreme disparity in wealth, the magia of the College implemented a system of work distribution known as the job bulletin to assist the needy among them. Requests varied wildly: some hired help carrying their luggage (trustworthy porters were a rarity in this world), some asked for editorial revisions, some needed educated herbalists to gather specific plants, some required temporary assistants to mix potions, some sought a party to join them on polar expeditions, and some just wanted a partner to practice spells with.

Benevolent professors even offered tasks especially for struggling students, like requests to make tea parties or dinner events more lively. These thinly veiled excuses were dreamlike opportunities to hand students money while treating them to tea or supper.

The bulletin board was not open to the public. The whole point of its inception would be rendered moot if adventurers could snatch up the valuable quests offered there. In fact, some leading professors used the system as a means of scouting promising young mages into their cadres.

Since I was neither a student nor an apprentice of an official researcher, my current predicament was the price I paid for access to these opportunities. At first, Lady Leizniz had offered a stipend in a curious form of patronage, but I’d feared what she might ask of me in the future and politely declined. Instead, I’d told her I wanted to find a way to earn my own keep, leading to our current agreement.

I now had a means of earning extra change whenever I had free time on my hands, though I was still bound by my lower standing. My presence would obviously go against the spirit of those afternoon teatime invitations that I mentioned previously, and I lacked the formal status to do anything like editing another’s treatise.

However, having an avenue of income at all was cause for celebration. Lady Leizniz recommended that I make a name for myself with the researchers and students of her cadre and work my way up from there, and I planned to follow her advice.

I couldn’t be more grateful that I now had a vision for my future. Being half naked and toyed with like a dress-up doll by a handful of women who “accidentally” brushed across my skin at times was a small price to pay.

Again, I hadn’t expected to find a point of empathy with the plight of the modern woman in the Trialist Empire. Had the people around me not been a strange pervert and her cronies, the whole thing might have been rather enjoyable. Alas, the events of my life seemed to always be one step shy of success.

Putting that aside, I had one more thing to be thankful for: when Lady Leizniz had heard that I’d begun my arcane studies, she offered me access privileges for the College’s library, from the entrance all the way to the middle layer. What was more, it came with the so-called restriction of only allowing me this opportunity when she was there to accompany me.

Take a moment to imagine this: I was to be joined by the dean of a faction that had survived for two centuries in an institution ruthless enough to leave the weak groveling in pools of their own blood. She may have been a vitality glorifier (the fact that this didn’t automatically make her a criminal was a crying shame), but receiving instruction from her was a boon like no other.

The overwhelming power of a wraith was not enough to lead a cadre at the College. Lady Leizniz was exemplary as a teacher, researcher, and even politician, seeing as she’d managed to continue her reign to this point in spite of her scandalous sensibilities.

Thus, the shame I bore now—and the shame I was sure to bear many a time from this point on—was going to be worth it. In my past life, I’d endured all manner of rough part-time jobs just for the spare scratch to cover the cost of a supplement that opened up a whole new world; this would be no different.

“Lady Leizniz, what do you think of a hat? We can’t simply abandon fads in their entirety, I think.”

“That’s very true,” the wraith said. “Oh, I know! The headpiece we saw at the banquet the other night would be marvelous. You know the one—wide-brimmed and fluffy! The feather sticking off of it was so adorable...”

Admittedly, manning a cash register at a convenience store was orders of magnitudes less exhausting, but I swore to hold out all the same. If nothing else, I had to stay and make sure Elisa’s outfit wasn’t too outlandish. I had four seamstresses on me, but she had a whopping six.

With renewed resolve, I decided to ask something that had been on my mind for some time. Running my mouth was far less painful than running my mind, considering what the future held in store for me.

“Excuse me, Lady Leizniz,” I said.

“Hm? What is it, my dear? You’re free to call me Lena, you know?”

I met the wraith’s wide grin with one of my own in an attempt to glide past her outrageous request to use her diminutive. She was my elder in both flesh and mind, and the sort of refined soul to make visits to the royal court; a farm-born brat had no place referring to her with that level of affection.

“Um,” I said, shifting the conversation back to my question with a pointed hand. “What is that?”

My curiosity had been piqued by a peculiar dress put up on display. This world’s fashion ranged from the tunics and togas of Classical Western Earth to the art deco of the early twentieth century, but the specimen before me was a far cry from even the fabric-saving designs seen in the countryside.

It was a cocktail dress of sorts. As finely crafted as it was, it puzzled me that they sold something with so little grandeur in its design.

“Ah,” Lady Leizniz said, “that is a luncheon dress. I take it you don’t see them in rural towns?”

“Yes, well... I was simply wondering if nobles purchase dresses like those.”

“They do indeed.” The wraith pinched the skirt of her traditional gown—which, I now realized, was technically part of her corporeal form. “Conventionally, gowns are thought to be ‘proper’ attire, but our grand Empire places few restrictions on how we decorate ourselves. Isn’t that so?”

One of the seamstresses nodded along with a smile and picked up the cocktail dress so that I could get a good look.

“This style has been popular for the past few years as luncheon wear in less formal settings. Simple designs with shorter skirts to show off the limbs are especially in vogue.”

“That way, they pair nicely with long gloves and tights. But ladies who are particularly confident in their skin or the contours of their arms and legs make it a point to go against the trend.”

“I’ve heard older women decry these as indecent, but I think that might be because this sort of fashion only suits younger ladies.”

“But don’t you remember our last order? The shoulders were totally bare. I can see why some might say they look like undergarments.”

The four tailors continued to work without pause in spite of all their chatter. At this point, they’d moved on from teaching me and were simply enjoying a conversation about their favorite hobby.

I liked seeing that they were here because they loved fashion from the bottom of their hearts. Perhaps that was the secret behind the store’s success in high society.

“This dress is wonderfully sewn,” Lady Leizniz said. “Little Elisa will look darling in something like this in five years, I’m sure.”

Whoa, wait a second. Five years wasn’t even close to enough time for my sister to wear something like that. My initial suspicions were beginning to take tangible form: my hunch was that this woman had a fetish for dressing young girls in clothes that were way too mature for them. I’d thought her condition was severe, but not this bad.

“I think it would look fantastic on you, Lady Leizniz,” one of the seamstresses said. “Would you like to place an order for yourself?”

“Oh, please,” the wraith replied. “I’m a two-hundred-year-old granny, dear. The latest trends wouldn’t suit someone like me.”

“My lady, your beauty is the same as it was the day you turned nineteen. In my humble opinion, I declare that you would look positively gorgeous in it.” Judging from the woman’s bloodred eyes, deathly white skin, and the fact that she knew Lady Leizniz’s age at her time of death, it was readily apparent that my seamstress was not mortal.

“Ah,” Lady Leizniz said, rerouting the conversation, “why did this catch your eye, Erich?”

“Maybe he wanted you to wear it, my lady.”

Ha. Ha. Funny.

I tried to ignore the excited squeals in my ear. Admittedly, the seamstresses were right to say that Lady Leizniz would look good in the dress, but I can assure you that her beauty would be the last thing I’d ever dedicate thought to.

The reason I’d been so puzzled was that I’d been preparing Lady Agrippina’s attire for some time now, and her wardrobe contained nothing but nightwear, robes, and the apparently standard gowns. Although she had a ludicrous number of them—rotten nobles were still nobles, it seemed—they were all of similar design and nothing struck me as particularly provocative. I’d thought that all of the privileged dressed in formal clothing at all times.

Seeing a cocktail dress in an establishment catering exclusively to the upper crust had confounded me. The thought that my employer was the exception and not the norm hadn’t crossed my mind. Going forward, I would need to learn more about high society than just etiquette—after all, my failures were also my master’s failures.

After explaining as much to Lady Leizniz, she put a hand to her cheek and sighed in exasperation.

“She hates tedium, you see. Since gown dresses are acceptable in any situation, her plan is to wear nothing but gowns to rid herself of the mental effort involved with getting dressed.”

Ah, I see. For once, I could put myself in Lady Agrippina’s shoes. A lifetime ago, I’d done the same when selecting articles for my own wardrobe. What a strange way to grow closer to my employer...

“Robes are the gown dresses of the magia, so all she needs is a staff to be ready for any social event she might be invited to... Goodness, what a troublemaker.”

Wearing a proper robe was a hallmark of magia, and one had to enroll as an official student at the College before they could consider donning a set. It was both the formal dress and official uniform of the Imperial College; the madam had bought up a closetful for convenience’s sake, no doubt.

In fact, the reason she wore dresses more than a few touches too lavish for everyday use was likely to save herself the hassle of changing when receiving a sudden invitation. Methuselah hardly ever sweated or created any sort of waste matter, so her kind didn’t even need to do the laundry.

“We’ll need to put in an order for Elisa’s robe in the near future,” Lady Leizniz said. “Feel free to come straight to me when the time comes.”

I’d been told it was tradition for students to receive their robe and staff from their master or another elder with whom they were close. I would ask Lady Agrippina to prepare Elisa’s. I didn’t want her dressing in something meant for a grown woman. Not to say my sister wouldn’t look adorable in anything and everything she wore, but I wasn’t about to let her put on something inappropriate.

That being said, I had no idea that staffs were part of the official getup. Up until now, I’d witnessed Lady Agrippina settle her spells with snaps, or otherwise imbue her breath or the smoke of her pipe with mana; maybe she had a real treasure hidden away. The madam was a broken unit that wouldn’t look out of place as a regional boss monster, so her equipment had to be the type of prize to make a player’s heart pound when it dropped.

I let my merry imagination distract me from my shameful situation as I waited for time to pass.

[Tips] “Let nobility be found in austerity.” These are the words of the Trialist Empire’s founding monarch; alas, history has yet to see any devote themselves to his teachings.

After a round of measurements and a design session that chipped away at my soul, I made my way back to the College. Tuckered out, Elisa was snoozing on my back as we waited in front of an imposing elevator.

Our freedom had been long awaited; the sun was nowhere to be seen, and it was well past suppertime. I couldn’t blame Elisa for drifting off, considering that my body felt like lead despite not having moved an inch. The anxiety that comes with uncomfortable activities in uncomfortable places is sure to cause fatigue. Honestly, the whole affair had bordered on torture. Not even in modern corporate life had I ever been in an environment where I couldn’t so much as sneeze for hours on end.

That being said, I was genuinely thankful that I didn’t have to drag my weary legs up a flight of stairs. The contraption installed in the wall before me was an elevator, through and through. Seeing a passenger box designed for efficient vertical movement using a series of wires and pulleys may have surprised me, had I not already been acquainted with the rest of this world.

I was all for it. With a blue ribbon in hand, one could expect to use a private express elevator in a mad overlord’s castle, and Krahenschanze looked the part well enough without daylight.

I shifted my weight to secure Elisa with one hand and used the other to press a call button for one of the many elevators. Seven in all, I’d activated one labeled for passage to low-to-mid-level laboratories. Carrying myself here in my sorry state had been a daunting task, but anything was better than Lady Leizniz’s alternative suggestion to let her see us home—or worse, to stay the night at her manor.

Admittedly, her offer of a bathtub large enough to swim in swayed me for a moment, but I was the type to hedge my bets. Besides, her conduct was cause enough to refuse.

The clear ding of a bell let me know that the cable car had been waiting for us all along. A gate the size of a freight elevator slid open and welcomed us aboard. The interior was oddly mystifying, perhaps owing to its lack of a console—in its place was a hole for one to speak into. In fairness, the College was so expansive that a whole wall dedicated to buttons would fail to suffice.

“Middle laboratories: Baroness heir Agrippina du Stahl’s workshop.”

Magic made for an exceptional user interface: all I had to do was tell the elevator where I wanted to go, and it did the work for me. Though, had I not been told how to use it beforehand, I probably would have been stuck there wondering how to turn the thing on.

“Ah, excuse me! Hold the door!”

Just as the gate began to shut, I heard someone cry out from beyond. The voice bouncing around the large, empty halls belonged to a child around my age. Although they were still too young for me to determine their gender based on voice alone, I could see them running straight at us.

With no reason to engage in a mean-spirited prank, I ordered the lift to cancel my previous command. The closing doors reversed their motion and the child slipped into the cabin.

“Whew, sorry,” she...no, he said with a smile after a few exhausted huffs. “You really saved me.”

The boy...girl? Wait, which are you?

Getting back on track, the boy—tentatively—looked to be just my age and wore a black robe paired with a simple wand to signify his status as a student. Judging from the bundle of sheepskins in his hand, he had either just gone to fetch something or was about to turn in a report.

Hearing his voice perplexed me, and a closer look at his mysterious features only served to blur the truth of his gender further. His glossy black hair had a bit of a wave to it, and his grin bore equal parts feminine charm and masculine rigidity. Although he looked like a normal mensch overall, he was easily the most androgynous person I’d ever laid eyes on. If angels were meant to be genderless, he may have been the prime example.

“Haven’t seen you around. New student?” As he spoke, his amber eyes twinkled with boyish merriment. Yet the lips that moved were plump like a young girl’s.

“No, I am but a humble servant to Lady Agrippina, heir to the Stahl Barony. My sister, as you can see here, is her apprentice.”

“Stahl? I haven’t heard of her either... Oh, sorry to keep you.”

“I’m in no hurry. Go on ahead,” I said, beckoning to the voice hole.

“Thanks, you’re a nice guy!” The boy uttered his destination with a smile. He was headed for a professor’s atelier: apparently, the stack of papers was to be turned in, and soon. “Now that I think of it, I didn’t introduce myself, did I? My name’s Mika.”

I shook his outstretched hand with a small sense of awe that even his name was androgynous. “Mika” was a common name used by men and women alike in the Trialist Empire. However, the name was common in every sense of the word, so I could surmise that he was a lowborn citizen here from the countryside, not an aristocrat born in Berylin.

The elevator ride mysteriously pulled us every which way, but our small talk during it was exceedingly ordinary. Mika hailed from the north, and had won an endorsement from his local magistrate to enroll at the College. Well on his path to becoming a magus, he was apprenticed to a professor from the School of First Light, whose goal was the “concealment of magecraft for proper usage alone.”

“I’m hoping to become an oikodomurge one day. The northern reaches of the Empire are buried in snow, so I want to have the architectural skills to build infrastructure that can stand up to the elements.”

Seeing him speak with such pride soothed my weary soul. This was the sort of thing I wanted to see: a young boy venturing out from the countryside to chase his dreams at the College. Not once had I asked to involve myself with a vitality-glorifying wraith or the world’s most irredeemable methuselah.

“Gosh, finally,” he said as the elevator stopped. “Well, hope to see you around.”

Fun times were never to last. The gate opened with another ring of the bell to unveil not a hallway, but another door. Mika slipped through and vanished as quickly as he’d appeared.

What a refreshing young man. I felt rejuvenated: as of late, everyone around me possessed an excess of character, and my chance encounter with an honest, straightforward personality left me in high spirits...which only made my meeting with the madam all the more disheartening.

“My, you look so tired,” my dearly beloved Agrippina du Stahl said.

Jokes aside, I could hardly believe that Lady Agrippina’s atelier was located in the fathoms of earth below the College. Once the elevator stopped, I entered through a lavish front door and walked past a massive sitting room fit for entertaining guests to arrive at her workshop proper. The gentle rays of a spring sun flooded onto live grass, the space looking more like a greenhouse than a laboratory. How was I meant to accept that this was a cellar?

Krahenschanze was a castle of superb make, but it was built with stone like any other. Packing it full of magia laboratories given to explode at any moment was less than agreeable, especially with the imperial palace less than a kilometer away.

One detonation could easily trigger another, and then another, chaining together delightful eruptions like a match-three puzzle game. Surely a blast large enough to wipe away a whole state would make for quite the show, even on the other side of the planet.

Thus, the highly intelligent leaders of the College elected to bury their facilities deep underground. Each laboratory was an isolated chamber dug out from the hardest bedrock; the only way in or out was the elevator, itself imbued with the long-lost—that is, ignoring a certain individual who used the stuff to hop into bed—art of space-bending magic.

These arrangements meant that magia were free to slip up without endangering the capital. Otherwise, the College would have been cast out to a remote region in the name of national security long ago. Nobody wanted to live out their days next to a warhead liable to wipe them away with the tiniest mistake, and placing a country’s royal palace right next door would be the workings of a madman.

Personally, I couldn’t help but wonder who would be tasked with salvaging the elevator should it be caught up in an incident. To my TRPG-addled mind, these terroristic thoughts were of critical importance. After all, a large part of tabletop games was coming up with ways to defeat enemies without resorting to combat. I refused to believe there was a player alive who hadn’t tried to cave in a goblin nest or light a vampire’s mansion on fire under the midday sun.

Nevertheless, I dutifully got to work. Book in hand, Lady Agrippina looked oh-so-relaxed in her hammock as she ordered me to lay Elisa on a couch. Garden landscapes surrounded the glass room on all sides; I didn’t know how the madam had done it, but her fixation on putting her incredible skills to terrible use was on full display.

“And?” the methuselah asked. “What kind of outfit is she to gift you?”

“...I would appreciate it if you didn’t ask.”

Had I worn any of the clothes Lady Leizniz ordered in my past life, I would have been lucky to be politely told they didn’t suit me. At the very least, it felt like an endless array of deranged costumes to me, though both the customer and retailer were squealing with joy. The dean had gone so far as to pay an additional fee to expedite the order, meaning my new threads would be ready in seven days. This next week was shaping up to be the most mentally taxing of my life...

“Well, it is far from a bad deal, so carry on.” Lady Agrippina abandoned all airs—fitting, as her workshop was an overblown lounge—and smiled lazily. “As for me, I will be enjoying my sweet abode that I’ve pined for for twenty-one years... Ah... How wonderful... As splendid as my bed may be, this hammock is simply divine.”

She was right to say that my deal with Lady Leizniz wasn’t bad, per se. Yet between the costs and benefits, the costs were still unbearably steep. Still, the madam had sweetened the deal to prevent me from kicking up a fuss. In fact, her offer had been the final nail to seal the coffin of self-sacrifice that was my fashion show.

Lady Agrippina was to bring me a book from the sealed vault in the innermost depths of the College’s library. Combined with the general access afforded by Lady Leizniz’s accompaniment, I could round off my mystical fundamentals with a nugget of golden knowledge at the peak of magecraft. In short, I was about to amass all the supplements for a tabletop game’s magic system.

I worried at first whether Lady Agrippina’s promise would cause legal trouble, but we lived under a medieval political system and she was a researcher of great authority. Her outrageous deal was a sign of how confident she was that she’d get her way.

Of course, that also meant I was due to be used at the bargaining table again in the future, but the small fear welling up in my heart was a price I was willing to pay. Rulebooks were expensive, after all; those thin booklets had the gall to demand a minimum of three thousand yen without shame.

Now, I had all the building blocks of a min-maxed build. The game was on my home court. Knowing that the College was the perfect place to sharpen my wit, I’d been saving the experience points Helga had granted me, and it was finally time to crack open the safe. Having all the rules to bend is prerequisite for a munchkin to reach his full potential, after all.

There was a particular joy to crafting strong characters with base rulebooks, but publishers printed supplements with every intention that they be used. If they were legal, what kind of power gamer would I be to ignore them?

PCs could only accrue so much experience in their lifetime, and I was no exception. Obviously, I wanted to see all of my options before I sat down to spend my hard-earned funds. I couldn’t exactly come up with a retort if you called me out on my smaller purchases, but...well, I had to. Defeat was frustrating, and losing in foxes-and-geese was still a loss.

At any rate, I was fast approaching a turning point in my life: soon, I would finally set my path to becoming a peerless adventurer in stone. All that remained was to comb through every detail on my character sheet and wring each and every experience point for all it was worth to create a powerful yet reliable combination of skills. I could hardly wait; my excitement made the trials and tribulations of cosplay feel like a worthy investment.

“What an unsightly smirk,” Lady Agrippina remarked. “Well, anyhow, take this.”

My spirits were so high that the madam’s sudden words of abuse failed to sully my mood in the slightest. A tabletop gamer’s thrill on the cusp of a power spike was hard to dampen. However, an insult hadn’t been the only thing Lady Agrippina tossed my way—I caught a single key out of the air.

“I pulled some strings to prepare a house for you in the low quarter,” she said.

“Huh? A house? I thought servants were to live with their masters.”

“This is a researcher’s laboratory, so all I have is a personal bedroom, a living room, a workshop, a storage closet, and a single empty room meant for a disciple. Regulations dictate that servants and stewards are only to be housed on site by titled professors, and I wouldn’t want it to be so cramped.”

Since when have you cared about regulations?

“So,” she went on, ignoring my shock, “you shall sleep and wake there.”

As the madam lazily concluded, a butterfly landed on the key in my hand. It was no ordinary creature: the snow-white insect had been crafted out of a single sheet of folded paper. I was awestruck. How on earth did she make this?

The butterfly fluttered off to the elevator, beckoning me to follow suit. Apparently, this sentient papercraft was my map.

“The spare room has yet to be furnished, so tuck your sister in there,” Lady Agrippina said. “I’m sure my sofa is still far superior to a bed in a mangy inn. Dig around in the chests for a blanket, will you?”

Although leaving Elisa alone with her made me anxious, I put the laboratory behind me after preparing the bedding. I’d also asked about unloading the madam’s carriage and preparing her supper, but she’d sent me along saying that neither was necessary. Perhaps she’d done it herself.

Ordered by my employer to leave, I had no choice but to follow the butterfly as it led me through the capital to my lodging house. Generally speaking, a nighttime traveler could only rely on the gentle glow of the moon and stars in this era. Back in my hometown of Konigstuhl, walking the familiar roads of the canton was a plenty dangerous affair without at least a candle.

Yet the imperial capital shone brilliantly past sundown. Light spilled from windows, swirling together with the magical streetlamps lining the path at regular intervals. The scenery naturally evoked memories of a life long ago.

The streetlights were powered by mana stones tweaked to produce light, and there was a request on the College’s bulletin to turn them on each night. Supplying mana for a single lamp was a task worth five assarii, so powering a full street was a sizable paycheck. On our way to the clothing store, I’d seen a crowd of frugally dressed students gathering around the quest board in anticipation of its posting.

Well-lit pathways created opportunity for ambitious merchants to peddle their wares at night. The people of Rhine generally ate light breakfasts and dinners in favor of a hearty lunch, but the racial diversity of the city created a market for food after sundown: a few types of folk needed to eat more than three meals a day, and plenty were nocturnal.

A little ways away, a stuart couple had just bought a large batch of freshly boiled sausages. The familiar herbal smell wafting off of them indicated a popular imperial recipe using minced pork—a fact which made me want to question if the swine-faced orc merchant selling them had any moral quandaries about his work.

“Hey there, youngster!” he called. “Going to bed? Sleeping on an empty stomach is rough stuff. Come on over, I’ll make it cheap!”

While his bountiful silhouette would have been in the realm of morbid obesity for a mensch, the orc’s crystal clear skin was evidence enough of good health. He waved me over with a wiener lathered in mustard, and I let myself get reeled in. I think everyone can agree that food made by chunkier people looks tastier than usual.

“How much?” I asked.

“Ten assarii a piece, but I’ll make it twenty-five for three.”

Wow. Big prices for a big city, I thought. Pubs in the countryside sold similar goods for half the price—in fact, ten assarii could buy a whole night’s stay at a motel. Still, the man’s prices were listed on a nearby sign, so I knew he wasn’t cheating me.

I decided to listen to my stomach for the night; the day leading up to it had been tiring, after all. Refusing to fuel up now was to risk fizzling out the next day. Taking care of myself so that I’d be ready to work at a moment’s notice was all a part of being a responsible member of society.

“Three sausages with plenty of mustard, please. Do you have any sauerkraut?”

“You bet!” he replied. “Wait a second, youngster. You got a plate or something? These things are hot, and it’ll be five extra copper if you need a bag.”

I hesitated for a bit. The tantalizing sight of the boiling pot made it hard for me to give up, even with the extra fee. But then I realized that I was worrying over a nonissue: I had the perfect “plate” to handle any food, regardless of temperature.

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine.”

“Ha ha! Didn’t realize I was serving a mage.”

I used an Unseen Hand to pick up the sausages and another as a lid to shield them from the open air. Investing in this spell had definitely been one of my better moves, especially since the experience cost didn’t hike up until I unlocked the sixth concurrent Hand. It had already proven useful in my dungeon-crawling adventure, and having it play a role in my everyday life made its cost performance all the more tangible.

Accompanied by the oddball sight of a pack of floating wieners, I walked with the arcane butterfly to the Mages’ Corridor. Cheap boarding houses and motels abounded, aimed at poorer students without the connections to live on the campus proper, earning this sector the title of the low quarter.

My paper guide led me to a small single-unit home sandwiched between larger buildings. As I gaped at the luxury of living in a place like this, the butterfly fluttered off into the sky as if it had clocked out for the night. Looking up, the sight of its snowy wings flying toward the waxing black moon was hauntingly beautiful.

Tonight, the true moon had folded itself fully out of sight. It, too, had a poetic epithet in my homeland of yore: the Saku-getsu. So many of my most exhausting episodes had been overlooked by this empty lunar body. A curse from my past life, I mused.

I had every feeling that the next morning would be no less tiring as I steeled myself for another busy day. For now, I would retire with a hot meal to fill my belly.

[Tips] For better or for worse, Berylin is a city of firm governance and sociability. The endemic magia are similarly inclined to engage in political games.