Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 4.1 - Chapter 1

Late Spring of the Thirteenth Year II

Racial Traits

Unique bonuses or abilities exclusive to a race. Some may even be powerful enough to become the cornerstone of an entire build...

Knowing that Miss Celia was a vampire did little to improve our journey home.

You see, no amount of reassurance that she wouldn’t die or that she was fine with being injured could convince me to let a young lady go off and hurt herself. This wasn’t even something society expected of me: I couldn’t call myself a man if I did. That, and I wasn’t keen on seeing her resurrect for a second time.

Laugh at me for being old-fashioned if you’d like, but I fit in quite well with the times here in the Empire. Besides, as fragile as we mensch were, I still had my pride as a trained warrior.

Now, I’ll admit that had she been a PC whose player I could talk to, I would have happily sent her along as a low-tech mine detector to ensure the party’s safety. Even the cruelest orders could bait out a laugh at the table, and I’d enjoyed acting out plenty of equally crazed scenarios in the past; barbarism was the spice that gave our humor kick, and lunacy was our palate cleanser in between meals.

However, I was not at my old table laughing at crimes against humanity and crunching numbers to the point of absurdity: having lived so long as Erich that I could no longer internalize any other identity, I couldn’t overlook danger for efficiency’s sake alone.

Of course, I was still willing to shoulder risks myself and had less than zero qualms about letting someone as overpowered and morally bankrupt as Lady Agrippina throw herself into danger, but Miss Celia was off the table. Shriveled up as it was, my heart wouldn’t let me laugh at a kind and sheltered lady running headfirst into death.

My old tablemates were sure to smirk at how soft I’d gotten if they were to see me, but I didn’t care. This was my life, and I was going to play my role as I saw fit.

After a lot of huffing and puffing about how she wanted to lead the way, we managed to convince her to stay in the middle. I was the vanguard and Mika was tasked with keeping an eye out from the back, just like how we’d started.

To reiterate, the tunnels beneath the Mage’s Corridor were precarious to navigate. Now that we knew criminals could be lurking around any corner, we needed to be extra vigilant. This was different from my peaceful quests from the College in every way; the worst part of feeding slimes was just the humidity.

“I won’t die no matter what kind of foulness crosses our path, you know...”

“Please,” I begged. “We’ll be okay, so please just stay behind me.”

“We just don’t want to see our friend start vomiting rainbows, Celia.”

“F-Friend,” she echoed.

Leaving her to her moment, I threw all carelessness to the wayside and decided to call for fey support once more. Owing Ursula anything terrified me, but it was better than being attacked for having visible light out. I borrowed the same wondrous night vision she’d lent me in Helga’s manor and marveled again at how convenient it was. These tunnels usually required a torch to see more than a step or two away, but now it felt as if I were walking around outside at high noon.

It would have been nice to call for Lottie too, but I couldn’t reach her; a different alf ruled the stale air down here. Despite presiding over a concept as nebulous as wind, I supposed it was only fair that she couldn’t meddle in a place where air only circulated at open exits. It would be like asking an open-ocean sailor to navigate a muddy stream on an unfamiliar rivercraft. I wasn’t about to be the sort of idiot that said, “They’re both boats, aren’t they?”

With my vision accounted for, I picked up a random rat scurrying around with an Unseen Hand. The vermin that survived in spite of the sewer keepers’ constant patrol were fat and vicious; I suspected the city’s high population meant they had a lot to eat.

We didn’t have to worry about dog-sized rats coming after our lives or anything, since those had been exterminated years and years ago—which, in a horrific twist, meant that they’d actually existed at some point—but smaller rats could still break skin with a bite and carried all manner of pestilence. They were a legitimate danger to our safety.

So why capture one, you might ask. The answer was that I needed a canary: by constantly having an outstretched Hand carrying a rodent in front of me, I could detect any clouds of death ahead of time.

I refused to breathe in any aerosolized versions of the illicit substances imprudent mages flushed down here. Paying a visit to the iatrurge because I’d come down with the prismatic flux, like Mika had said, was not on my itinerary.

I grabbed the rat’s snout to shut up its annoying squeaking and got walking. After a decent while of gingerly tiptoeing and looking out for any reject homunculi that might await, we managed to find a familiar accessway to the surface.

Apparently, there weren’t any morons who’d decided to zap the ethics out of their brains and let it dribble out of their noses today. What a thing to be thankful for; honestly, I’d been steeling myself for an encounter with a giant white alligator or something with how my day had gone.

“Is this our destination?” Miss Celia asked.

“It is,” I answered. “My lodging is on the street just above us.”

I let the rat go as thanks for its honorable service and waved over the other two, who had been following at a distance. As curious as ever, I had to stop Miss Celia from reaching for the ladder. Please just let me lead the way...

“Good gods,” Mika said, “I never thought this dingy ladder would look so dazzling... Man, I want a bath.”

“I completely agree,” I sighed. “Too bad the bathhouses are all closed at this hour. We’ll have to make do with a bucket of water.”

“It’ll do. I just want to get rid of this awful feeling of filth that spells can’t solve.”

I heard my friend groan as I began climbing. The Clean spell was amazing to be sure, but it didn’t induce the feeling of cleanliness. Having been dunked into water from head to toe, I really wanted a bath. Spring was coming to a close, but tonight’s episode had left me chilled to my core.

“Hrrgh... Got it.”

But after sliding the heavy manhole out of the way, my house was right there. A towel and a warm tub of water would go a long way, and I could cozy up afterward with a cup of red tea.

“...Dear Brother?”

“Wha— Elisa?!”

I poked my head above ground, only to find my beloved baby sister sitting at my doorstep, dressed up in her finest clothes...

[Tips] The slime-feeding request regularly posted on the College’s job bulletin only entails work in relatively safe portions of the sewers. The Mage’s Corridor is handled by specialist magia who have means of defending themselves, and most never travel to the area; Erich is only familiar with the area because it serves as a shortcut to his destinations.

Elisa had been in a good mood lately. Her master had vanished just as suddenly as she’d appeared, which meant she could spend more time with her beloved brother. Of course, she still felt lonely without her Mama and Papa, her brothers and new sister, and all the friends she’d left behind back home. But so long as her dear brother Erich was with her, Elisa could put up with it. When he patted her head with his rough, warm hand, she felt as cozy as when she used to take naps under the midday sun.

That very same brother had been giving her even more attention than usual ever since her master disappeared. When she tried on the clothes that the disgus— scary see-through lady gave her, he clapped until his hands were sore. He even rewarded her by taking her outside to play, and that was a lot of fun.

Elisa could remember the day they’d gone to see the knights marching in sparkly armor like it was yesterday. Until then, she had never understood why her master forced her to keep a diary for tradition’s sake; now she finally had memories she wanted to preserve in written words.

After all, it was the first day Elisa met someone new since coming to the capital. The black-haired boy—her brother explained later that he wasn’t always a boy—that Erich introduced her to was a bit scary at first, but she warmed up to him as they played.

While he was more reserved than her other brothers back home had been, he was very nice. After spending more time with him, Elisa could tell that he wasn’t an enemy—to her and her precious Erich both.

To tell the whole truth, Elisa had difficulty understanding him at first. Fey conceptions of life differ wildly from those of every other living thing. Even the eternal methuselah and vampires are remarkably mortal compared with creatures whose intuitive control over magic leaves them just shy of embodying incomprehensible concepts.

Having the soul of a living phenomenon, Elisa commanded an ability she’d never told anyone about: she could see a person’s inner self.

That was why she was so attached to her family; they had shown her nothing but affection. They had given her the love and serenity that the alf she had once been had craved to the point of throwing her self away.

Yet she had trouble understanding Mika. Tivisco were newcomers to the Empire, and she had never encountered one, even before she’d been reborn. Their emotions were a complicated blur: she saw the hues of a boy, the pigments of a girl, and the dizzying mix that resulted when they joined. They were all sincerely a part of them, but each was hidden away—a paint swirled into water that refused to settle into a flat color, instead creating a rainbow whirlpool.

The young changeling’s ego was not yet ready to wrap itself around a mind that refused to conform to monochromatic harmony. Although she was positive that Mika’s sentiments were affectionate, their contour was more difficult to navigate than the involutions of an unbroken geode.

Friendship, love, envy, attachment, joy, and...craving? Whatever they were, Mika’s threefold self defied Elisa’s understanding. It was too confusing that only one seemed to surface at any given time, despite the underlying soul remaining the same ineffable, iridescent anchor.

Even knowing that Mika was an honest ally of her brother’s, Elisa didn’t know how to get along with them. She had no reservations against a friendship like the ones she’d read about in books. They were already friends with her brother, and she had become quite fond of them during the parade.

The children in Konigstuhl had scared Elisa. Hesitation was foreign to them, as was deep thought; they took it for granted that everyone could do what they could, and that everyone thought as they thought. No matter how normal that may be for children yet to learn to think beyond themselves, it had terrified the frail girl.

Mika was a different story. They were thoughtful and always paid attention to the people they were with; Elisa didn’t need to peek into their soul to see that.

So, on a personal level, she didn’t mind being friends with them. Going outside to play together sounded fun, and she suspected she’d enjoy sharing a cup of tea at home as well. Though she had only ever been dressed up by others until now, she’d read in stories that girls would buy clothes in each other’s company as a pastime—perhaps they could try that together if their schedules aligned.

But one thing held Elisa back: Mika’s intricate emotions concerning Erich. What was it that they wanted from him? No amount of pondering could produce an answer, even with her profound fey intuition.

The alfish merkwelt diverged from mensch’s as a matter of course, but also from those of all sentient life. Time’s passage was inscrutable to them, but the most private feelings were clear and concrete. Indeed, those like Ursula who appreciated the awkward and roundabout expressions of sentiment that mensch employed were few and far between.

For most fairies, affection spanned the range of love, attachment, possessiveness, and sensuality. Whereas humanity had created rigid boundaries to preserve peace and order, the alfar chose not to—nay, they could not. Such urges were why they snatched away their favorite children to join them in a merry dance lit by a never-setting twilight, hoping to eventually turn them into one of their own.

These heinous “pranks” were not the product of mortal malice. Anyone with the slightest semblance of common sense knew the unhappiness of a child being torn away from their home—even the aloof methuselah could at least reason it out logically—but alfar were wholly ignorant. Rather, they kidnapped children to show them their version of happiness.

For all the poets who had sung of the complexities of love, their words only rang truer when considering the love of alfar. Theirs was impossible to organize—if there was any need at all. How could we ever put to words the passions of beings who existed wholly for their own sweet sakes, drifting through life on no more than a whim?

Humanity was unfit to study what the alfar intuited as love, and not even a changeling making her calculations through a mensch brain could hope to crack the code.

Though a mensch’s mind and an alf’s ego had melded to create Elisa, the process was too imperfect for her to fully reflect. In fact, her relatively long life had let her experience human love and mortal values that only deepened her confusion. She had gone out of her way to mix two mutually exclusive essences.

The discrepancy between fey soul and mortal shell was not the only reason changelings were considered unnatural. The inner struggle between human ethics and alfish instinct caused a breakdown so great that it ruined the body and soul, generally cutting their lives short.

Yet despite living in a constant mental state of utter chaos, Elisa found Mika’s condition more perplexing. Really, what did they want out of their relationship with Erich?

Margit had been easy. Her romantic affections had been so overt that even a five-year-old Elisa had been able to envision the arachne’s hope for the future: she wanted to marry, start a family together, and live belonging to each other until the day they died. The huntress dreamed of a tried-and-true ending, passed down since the dawn of time. Some might even consider her desires morally righteous (setting aside the issue of whether the average married couple lived up to this ideal).

Elisa hated Margit—hated her because the arachne wanted to steal away her dear brother’s number one spot. Even if Margit failed, the mensch part of Elisa’s heart knew that the child they produced would certainly succeed. Erich loved to ramble on about how his sister was the cutest girl in the whole wide world; Elisa had no intentions of giving up the title.

Agrippina was also easy. That thing was plenty evil, even by Elisa’s sensibilities, and their current give-and-take relationship changed nothing about her opinion. However, the methuselah was also clearly uninterested in disrupting the siblings’ relationship in a way that Elisa feared.

Put simply, her master’s heart was so full of ill will that she was ironically pure. Her passions ran so deeply green they were nearly black, only ever concerned with how to maximize her own pleasure. While it was impossible to guess what she was thinking, knowing her overarching goals made her easy to handle.

Elisa was anything but fond of the danger she exposed Erich to as his teacher and employer, but so long as she didn’t threaten her position, the changeling figured that there were ways to deal with her.

But what about Mika?

When male, Mika had, for the most part, exhibited trust and camaraderie. His bond with Erich had proved unshakable by an outside force; Elisa wasn’t sure, but she thought it was probably the feeling epitomized in the term “brothers-in-arms.” If that had been the whole of it, Elisa would have been happy to heed Erich’s advice: it would have taken some time, but she could eventually come to treat him like yet another brother.

The problem was the other two genders wrapped up inside of Mika. Had each gender assumed a separate personality that only appeared with the corresponding sex, Elisa would have been content to treat each as a different person. But a tivisco was only ever themselves, and they were not three identities sharing the same body.

The soul that lay beneath was a single, unified individual, and the differing genders were akin to clothes that they put on to show the world. Garments did not make the person, but each article of clothing came with a valence, a significance that played off all the other parts in the ensemble.

On this point, Erich gave the matter little thought and internalized Mika’s condition as an underlying personality that swapped between three distinct phases. Elisa saw something more. They were like an art piece composed of three different paints. Although the carefully placed pigments seemed discrete at first glance, the colors were bound to blend at the edges so long as they touched in any way. This delicate mixture was the root of her confusion.

When all was said and done, what did Mika want? Elisa was too incomplete as an alf and too inexperienced as a mensch; the fragmented girl could find no answer. Indeed, the thought that Mika did not know the answer themselves would take yet more time and experience for her to consider.

Still, Elisa had no qualms saying that Mika was kind. Just once, they’d even helped her study. Following that tutoring session in the College library, Erich had begun accompanying Elisa when she studied—something she was very grateful for.

The pile of books her master had assigned was full of boring and hard palatial writing, but Erich brought stories that were much easier. Those books were funny and weird—her brother had said the word she was looking for was “emotional”—and they took turns reading; when she did a good job, he would praise her.

One accomplishment and he’d smile; two and he’d pat her head; three and he’d hug her. For the first time, Elisa thought to herself that it might be nice to get better at things. The thought of what he’d do after four, or five, or six threatened to send her beating heart right out of her chest.

These days were so blissful that she didn’t even care about the meandering thoughts clouding her relationship with Mika. She woke up every day with her dear brother at her side, they enjoyed breakfast together without her master getting in the way, and then they studied together after they were done. He still had to leave a lot to do errands, but they spent much, much more time together than before.

Elisa wished her master would never come back. She would probably do something terrible with her usual pristine smile if she found out, but the young girl couldn’t help it.

And today was another peaceful day without her.

After Elisa finished her morning studies, her brother let her ride the horsies for a little bit. The black horsie named Polydeukes was much bigger than Holter was at home, but he was just as nice; he walked around really slowly so that she could have fun. The beautiful world around her was shimmering so vividly that just getting a higher view atop the saddle made it seem like the whole world had changed.

At noon, Elisa’s dear brother had to go to work, but it was okay because he was going to come back in the evening. So, she waited eagerly.

She waited very, very eagerly.

But then the sun started going down and her brother wasn’t back yet and then it sank all the way and he still wasn’t back and she was so so so sad...

So Elisa decided to go find him. Because her brother was always doing something dangerous. He was always using dangerous tools, and learning dangerous magic, and running into danger with a smile. That’s why Elisa had to go find him.

Elisa knew where her dear brother lived. He’d brought her there a few times, and she was friends with the nice gray lady that took care of him. The gray lady told her a lot of stories about him and was really nice, so she liked her. She was way better than the silver moth meanie that just came to brag all the time.

Her dear brother would be so lost without her, she thought. She put on the clothes he’d praised her for the most—she’d gotten this snow-white blouse and black corset skirt on her first day in Berylin—and decided to go to his house and find him.

Elisa packed a lot of gifts: a can of tea leaves that her lazy master stashed in her room, a small pouch of pastries, and even some grown-up things, like a bottle of wine and a wedge of cheese that made her nose scrunch up.

It was going to be okay: her master just bought things at random and stashed them away, so she would never notice a bottle or two missing. Elisa couldn’t read the name on the wine label, but it was bright red and very pretty, so she was sure her dear brother would love it. And there was no doubt in her mind that he’d mix a little bit with plenty of honey and water so that she could try some too.

Elisa asked her floating friends to help her braid her hair and then set out with the basket full of goodies in one hand, but her brother wasn’t home. She had waded through a dizzying crowd of people and fought the wooziness that came with the noise around town, but he wasn’t home.

She was so sad that she almost cried. The friends that had come with her cheered her up and the nice gray lady came out to check on her, so she didn’t. But she was still very sad.

What would she do if he never came home? She hadn’t become a mage that could protect him yet...

Elisa was so, so, so anxious. But just when she felt like she couldn’t hold back her tears any longer, her dear brother came back to her. For some reason, he came out of a hole in the street in front of his home, and was looking at her mysteriously.

“Did you come all this way alone?!”

Her dear brother jumped out of the hole in a worried panic and scooped Elisa into his arms. She was so happy that she didn’t even ask why he wasn’t wearing a shirt; the urge to cry vanished and she felt like the sun had come up even though it was midnight. He was warm and gentle. If joy had a color, it would be his pretty hair; if fun had a color, it would be his twinkly eyes...

And he himself was happiness.

“Um... May I come out?”

Someone else peeked their head out from the hole. She had wet black hair and was wearing the shirt her dear brother always wore. Elisa didn’t know what the jewelry dangling from her neck was, but she had a terrible feeling about it.

This woman, too, was gold...but not the golden joy that her brother brought. No, she was the glow of the half-moon floating high in the sky—just like the image clearly etched into her gleaming medallion.

They were similar, but different. She was not joy; she was not fun; she was certainly not happiness. Hers was a colder hue.

The color scared Elisa. Her chest squeezed up as tightly as the night she found out they were tearing her away from home. It was as if someone had gripped her heart and was trying to squish it so it would never beat again.

All Elisa could do was cling tight to her brother as she stared at the frightening girl soaked in lunar glow.

[Tips] Imperial climate is best suited to producing sweet white wines, but heavier reds are preferred to the Empire’s west. The bottles produced in royal wineries are known as “highborn blood” in Seinian, and just one can cost as much as an entire mansion.

You know, when it comes down to it, I was a single-tasker at heart. This might ring hollow coming from someone with fancy Independent Processing, but I believed that casting multiple spells and solving multiple problems were fundamentally different beasts.

What I’m trying to say is that there wasn’t the slightest chance that I could handle a double-booking of my sister’s moodiness and a damsel in distress. For the love of all that’s good, GM, don’t just toss them into the same session out of laziness.

Clearing the nasty smirks of the powers that be out of my head, we slipped into my home and decided to start by fixing up our attire. I couldn’t loiter about half naked forever, and that was doubly true for Miss Celia’s coquettish legs peeking out for the world to see.

“I’m sorry, Elisa. Be good and sit still for a minute. We’ll all catch colds if we stay in these clothes.”

“...Yes, Dear Brother. But whatever were you doing?”

“It’s a long story... A long, long story.”

I fled up to the second floor to break free from Elisa’s accusatory stare. Ever since our big discussion—the “why do you do scary things” one—she’d begun acting overprotective. Thank goodness I hadn’t suffered any visible injuries during my scuffle with the underground bandits; if she’d clung to me in tears again, I would have had to grovel on the floor for mercy.

Internally thanking Miss Celia for ensuring a woundless battle, I pulled out three sets of normal clothes from my drawer. As an aside, the luxurious and oh-so-unique threads given to me by a certain pervert were stashed away at the madam’s laboratory. There were no convenient bug repellants in this day and age, so I didn’t want to store fabrics that fine in a wardrobe that didn’t so much as have a mystic seal. The Ashen Fraulein could maybe handle it, but I didn’t want to add more to her plate.

Not that I would have lent Mika and Miss Celia those costumes had they been here, of course—though I couldn’t deny that I often thought they’d suit my old chum more than me during my fitting-room escapades.

...Wait a second. Properly laundered as they were, I realized it might be uncouth of me to loan out my boxers. While Mika almost certainly wouldn’t care—they generally chose to wear masculine clothes when agender anyway—offering them to Miss Celia could constitute sexual harassment.

However, the culture of undergarments was remarkably advanced in the Empire, and many women’s underwear were similar to what I’d seen on modern Earth. Having her wear clothes without any would be poor form.

But, again, my gut morals told me it was probably wrong to give her my own underpants. Ah, but without anything, the pants would chafe, and...

Thunk. I turned around to see a pail of steaming water atop my writing desk. Slightly on the hotter side, the water carried the aroma of a floating herb bundle throughout the room as it waited to be used.

What was more, a set of unfamiliar clothes lay folded beside it: women’s underwear. The traditional set of a nightgown and shorts looked like they were woven with a mystery textile that was softer than silk. Obviously, these didn’t originate from my room; I wouldn’t own something like this, and I didn’t have any women in my life who’d forget them after an overnight stay.

“Ashen Fraulein?” I called.

No response. I had yet to ever hear the silkie of few words speak, but today’s silence seemed a bit different. She was being as helpful as ever, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d done something to offend her; she usually never made a sound during her chores. Perhaps the noise was simply to notify me of the bucket’s appearance, but I had a feeling that I’d done something to get on her bad side.

Still, she wasn’t the type to throw a fit over my inviting a girl over, and Miss Celia was the pinnacle of good manners; I couldn’t imagine she’d broken the rules of etiquette horribly enough to upset my housekeeper in this short time. Miss Celia was the sort of upstanding lady to honor me as the lord of the house and politely ask me for permission to take a seat, despite my low birth.

Regardless, I didn’t have the time to dwell over my speechless housemate’s mood, so I said my thanks and headed downstairs. My apology to the Ashen Fraulein would have to wait until I could swipe some top-grade cream from Lady Agrippina’s atelier.

“Miss Celia,” I called. “A change of clothes is waiting for you upstairs. Please help yourself.”

“Truly? Oh, but Erich, I couldn’t sully your clothes like that.”

“No need to worry. There’s also a bucket of water to wipe yourself with.”

“My!” she exclaimed, gently pressing her hands together. As someone whose only contacts were country bumpkins and total scoundrels, her genteel mannerisms were new and refreshing.

Miss Celia skipped up the stairs on light feet, and her excitement at the thought of being able to clean up was apparent in the ring of her steps; she had felt just as icky as we had. Much like how my hopeless employer still had to sweat, immortality did nothing to wick away cloying humidity.

“Let’s get changed too, Mika. We’re total messes.”

“Honestly. By the way...I got scared when this bucket showed up out of nowhere. Is this her doing?”

They pointed at the dining table—by the way, I’d painstakingly repaired the legs to return it to its former glory—where a large tub was seated. Round slices of dried citrus floated in place of the herbs found upstairs, giving it a pleasantly sour odor. Citrus was a perfectly fine fragrance for men to wear; it could be a bit risqué when dealing with demihuman races with sensitive noses, but this much would be fine wherever we went.

The tub came with towels to dry ourselves with afterward, and even a comb. I was beyond thankful; my dip into rainwater had left my hair strewn with tiny particles of grit. It was itchy and painful, but I couldn’t scratch at it without damaging my hair; I’d been in quite a bind.

Elisa kindly turned to face the wall, so we stripped down without any reservations. Having grown up in small, rural households, we didn’t even mind undressing in front of members of the opposite sex; it wasn’t like anyone had cared when we took steam baths or played in the river.

We made sure to cast Clean on ourselves first, and then began wiping our bodies down with wet cloths to get rid of the discomfort. It wasn’t anywhere close to a real bath, but the deliverance from the dank hell we’d suffered made it every bit as enjoyable.

Magic had dispelled most of the sand from my head as well, but the densely packed nature of my hair made it impossible to get everything in one cast. As I contemplated my options, Mika pulled out a chair and waved me over.

“Allow me to rinse your hair, old pal. I didn’t swim and my hair isn’t that long, so I feel fine, but I’m sure the same can’t be said for you.”

“Are you sure?”

“If only you’ll grant me the honor of brushing against your dazzling locks.”

My old chum’s Prince Charming line painted my cheeks red. Man, good looks are so unfair. After all, the only thing Mika had to do to turn our pretentious game of theatrics into a real heartthrob moment was fix their posture a tiny bit.

“I wanna—oh! Um... I would like to as well! Please, Dear Brother?”

And so, my enthusiastic little sister joined in and the two of them began washing my head. I untied my hair and sat down, leaning back over the edge of the pail. While it was similar to what one might see at a beauty salon, the chair in use unfortunately did not have a backrest; I had to carry most of my body weight with my abs alone. My daily training meant I could manage, but this was shaping up to be a good workout.

Mika and Elisa splashed on warm water, running their fingers through my hair to clean out the dirt. I did the same thing every time I bathed, but having twenty foreign digits do it in my stead was indescribably relaxing. I’d been getting sick of my long locks, but the two of them massaged my scalp like they were handling delicate glassware.

“You two don’t have to be so gentle, you know. A man’s hair is tough.”

“Don’t say that,” Mika said. “We can’t just carelessly yank on something as magnificently kept as this, now can we?”

“That’s right,” Elisa agreed. “Your hair is nicer to touch than Lady Leizniz’s clothes, Dear Brother. I’ll be extra careful while I’m washing it!”

The pair huffed in unison, and I gave up and left them to it. They were doing this out of goodwill; I wasn’t going to rudely demand they do it my way.

I hadn’t gotten a haircut since I left Konigstuhl. What had started as a means of getting on the alfar’s good side now left me with hair past my shoulders and down to the small of my back; it was getting to the point where I wanted to trim it down. The problem was that everyone I knew save for Lady Agrippina was sure to throw all manner of fuss my way if I did.

But it’s so annoying... It’s hot and heavy, and as you can see, it’s a pain to clean.

“All righty,” Mika said. “Nice and clean. Sit up so we can dry you off.”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll just use a spell to—”

“Dear Brother, you can’t! You always do the same for Master! I thought you said drying it by hand makes it prettier!”

“Well, yeah, she’s a noblewoman and I’m her servant.”

Alas, my logic did not get through to them, and the duo went through a stack of towels to dry my hair.

I wondered why Mika seemed so much more forceful than usual, but figured that they were probably throwing themselves into this boring everyday task in order to quell the jumpiness of our recent battle. It made sense, since this marked only the second time they’d experienced life-or-death combat. Coping like this was leagues better than mechanically seeking out sex or alcohol, so I was content to let them do as they pleased.

Rather, I was the odd one out for being able to clap my hands and instantly put every fight behind me without a care in the world. I had a good explanation for it: my brain was primed to interpret the shift from combat to daily life as a scene transition, a side effect of my TRPG-inspired blessing. Still, I couldn’t deny that my behavior was strange.

Sir Lambert had once said that the ability to switch between a state of relaxation and emergency was a sign of budding talent, but I didn’t want to be too talented. While Mika never found it eerie on account of our strong friendship, anyone else would have expelled me from their party. I made a mental note to be careful going forward; I’d fake it if I had to.

That said, I was only at ease because I’d secured a win without having to kill anyone. There was a real chance that I’d only be able to keep up my cool demeanor as long as I could still ride out fights without trying.

“Phew. Thank you very much.”

My creaky staircase and the young lady walking down it pulled me out of my wandering thoughts. She’d tied her pitch-black hair into a braid that flowed nicely behind her, uncovering a smooth forehead in the front. The hairstyle would have paired well with a ballroom gown, but sadly her current attire was a men’s set of peasant clothing too big for her.

“It isn’t much,” I said. “Apologies for the meager clothes.”

“They aren’t meager at all. In the Circle Immaculate, our uniforms are often made of hemp or cotton. Besides, I’ve never cross-dressed before, so I’m finding this rather enjoyable.”

Miss Celia covered her lips to hide a befittingly upper-class smile, but her animated excitement was closer to that of a child. It seemed she meant every word.

“More pertinently,” she said, sitting in a nearby chair, “you all seem to be having fun.”

I cocked my head in confusion, and she pointed behind me with an elegant hand gesture.

“Hey, quit moving, Erich!”

“Um, M-Mika, please hold on to that part tight!”

I tried to turn around, but my hair pulled me back. I didn’t even have time to appreciate my sister adorably stammering over Mika’s name without honorifics.

“Wait... What are you two doing?”

“Well,” Mika said, “we went through the trouble of prettying up your hair, so we figured we may as well pretty you up even more with a nice braid.”

“It’ll get all out of shape if you move,” Elisa said. “It has to be symmetrical to be pretty!”

“What do you mean you ‘may as well’?!”

Why does every single person I know insist on toying with my head?!

Alas, I didn’t have it in me to interrupt my best friend and beloved sister’s fun. All I could do was sit and endure the awkwardness while Miss Celia watched and smiled from a distance.

[Tips] Under common imperial values, a man dressing in women’s garb is considered an oddity, but the inverse is far less peculiar. In high society, cross-dressing is seen as a powerful statement of fashion so long as the wearer can pull it off.

I come bearing bad tidings: my head has become a flowerbed.

Those particularly blessed in the realm of objective critique might point out that my head had been stuffed full of posies from the moment I’d decided to continue pursuing adventure despite my powerful connections and limitless talents; to that, I have no refutation. However, in this case, I literally mean that physical flowers were sprouting on my dome at every which angle.

Once again, the mischief began with one of Mika’s awful strokes of genius. My home had dried flowers hanging about to add color and freshen up the air, and they’d plucked a handful to stick into my hair.

Taking a shine to this, Elisa then began grabbing some of her own; the whole thing escalated from there. At this point, I had one giant braid intricately wound with other, smaller braids, with a whole garden planted at every step.

To top it all off, Miss Celia decided to join in on the fun by sticking a mallow right on my temple.

Fine, have it your way.

While I would have loved to say that aloud and dive into bed so I could flee to the land of dreams, our long day had yet to end. We still had business to settle, so I got everyone back on track and sat them all down at the living-room table. Mika and Miss Celia took positions on the couch, I sat across from them on the floor, and Elisa planted herself in my lap.

The Ashen Fraulein was kind enough to read the room and prepare a pot of tea so that we could enjoy a sip as we discussed. Miss Celia was terribly surprised to see a ready-to-serve tea set appear without warning, but I was too tired to explain. I just said, “It’s magic,” and left it at that; I didn’t specify whose, but I wasn’t strictly lying.

I took a mouthful of tea—of all the things she could have brought out, the Ashen Fraulein decided to serve blue mallow tea with a hint of lemon in what I could only imagine was a bout of mischief—and patted my sister on the head to try and get her to stop staring into the table.

“Allow me to formally introduce you, Miss Celia. This is my sister Elisa, firstborn daughter to Johannes of Konigstuhl canton. At present, she is studying under a magus so that she might enter the Imperial College of Magic as a full-fledged student.”

“My,” Miss Celia marveled. “The College? Hello there, little one. I am Cecilia. I am a member of the Church of the Night Goddess; I serve the merciful goddess of the moon from my lowly, unranked position at the bottom of the Circle Immaculate. I pray we may get along.”

Unranked? As surprised as I was, the more pressing matter was that Elisa was turning her cheek and refusing to answer.

I wonder what’s wrong? I’d thought she’d gotten more used to this sort of thing thanks to her time with Mika, but maybe she was still afraid of strangers.

“What’s the matter, Elisa?” I cooed. “Come on, say hello.”

“Mm... Mmgh...”

I peeked over to see my sister’s face; she was trembling and biting her lip. She seemed scared of something, but I had no idea what. Knowing that it was poor manners to display this sort of attitude to a noble, I tried rocking her shoulder, but Miss Celia raised a gentle hand to stop me.

“That’s enough, Erich. She doesn’t need to speak to me if she doesn’t wish to. Children of her age rarely do. The Night Goddess’s sanctuaries often double as almshouses, so I am well accustomed to dealing with young ones.”

“But...”

“Please, that’s enough. Don’t you agree, little Elisa?”

She smiled with all the compassion of the Mother Goddess above, but my sister turned around and buried her face in my chest. After looking at her sadly for a moment, Miss Celia raised her hands ever so slightly to signal she was done with the topic.

I looked over at Mika, but they shook their head; they were just as lost as me. Elisa’s manners had been really impressive at the parade, but it looked like I’d need to talk to her about it later in private.

Moving on from my sister’s sudden shift from merrily playing with my hair to outright sulking, we had important matters to discuss...

“The two of you have helped me more than I could ever have asked.”

...but our good dame managed to take hold of the conversation before I could.

“I cannot allow you to be swept up any further in the trouble that is to come. Despite having given me even the very clothes on my back, I have nothing to compensate you with. But mark my word, I shall repay this debt.”

Whoa there, she’s going off in the wrong direction. Still patting Elisa’s back, I glanced over at Mika; they knew where this was heading too, and answered my look with a small nod. In turn, they tried to confirm my intentions with an inquisitive blink; this time it was my turn to nod.

As short as our time together had been, we were both certain that Miss Celia wasn’t a bad person. On top of that, she’d saved my life. What reason was there to hesitate now? How could I call myself a man—nay, how could I call myself human if I cast her out out of suspicion like she was going to ask me to?

I thought it was too late for such things in the first place. We had a common saying in the Empire that an assarius and drachma were equal in the pot, similar to the Earth idiom that posited one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. Er, well, that came off a bit gruesome—I probably should have likened it to “in for a penny, in for a pound” instead.

At any rate, the point was that we’d gotten involved out of our own free will. Whether she brought more trouble or not, we had a duty to see through what we’d started.

Talk of responsibility aside, our own feelings on the matter were even more important. I would never be able to sleep soundly at night after chasing her out after only helping her with half the job.

“Miss Celia,” I said, “I pray that you won’t ask something as merciless of us as to abandon you now.”

“My old pal speaks the truth, Celia. I’d thought that having your permission to use a nickname made us friends. Was I wrong?”

“Of course not!” she blurted out. In another moment, she would realize her mistake and cover her mouth. Alas, it was too late: she’d given her word.

“Then I see no need for secrets among friends,” I said. “We’ve accompanied you thus far, so if delivering you to safety is within our means, we would be happy to oblige.”

“Besides,” Mika added, “our parents didn’t raise us to be so heartless as to throw a young lady onto the streets with nothing more than a meager set of clothes. Please, won’t you let us face our families again with our heads held high?”

Our usual tomfoolery managed to creep into our pleas, but the sentiment itself was genuine. Not helping her here was sure to leave something terrible lingering in our hearts for years to come.

But, hey, ignoring her absence as of late, I had an absolute behemoth of a connection covering my back; our odds of success weren’t astronomically small by any means. I wasn’t sure what she’d make me do in exchange, but knowing that villain, she was sure to cook up some tremendous ordeal for me. Still, she’d probably honor my request for help: lending a hand every now and again to her ticket to Berylin was sure to be in her interests.

Mika and I stared at her with passion in our gazes, waiting for a response. After a brief pause, a single tear bubbled up from those glistening ruby reds of hers, and she wound her hands together with downcast eyes.

“Thank you so much, Erich, Mika. I... Well...” Despite the hesitation still present in her tone, Miss Celia finally unveiled the reason for her escape. “You see, I am running away from a marriage. Yes, a marriage I have no desire to partake in.”

I knew it!

The ancients themselves had decided long ago that a dainty girl on the run was sure to be running from the altar. I’d seen the tale of a young maiden fleeing the clutches of a slimy old man or a calculating schemer who only wanted her for her family’s fortune countless times, in every possible medium.

This trope extended to the Empire’s tales as well. Twenty people counting on their fingers and toes still wouldn’t amount to the number of times I’d heard sagas of wandering knights and adventurers rescuing noble girls from their perilous engagements. Surely the little boys of our nation dreamed of committing such heroics themselves, whether in bed or wide awake.

That said, arranged marriages were absolutely everywhere, to the point where it was the default.

“As you can see, I have cast my lot with the Church, but this was originally my family’s intention. While I serve the Night Goddess of my own volition now, it was my father who first sent me away.”

Whether noble or common, marriage in this day and age was not something to be decided by personal feelings: it was a familial affair. The folly of a union between patrician and plebeian needed no explanation, but even the son of a wealthy, land-owning farmer would face serious repercussions for trying to pursue romance with the cute daughter of a poor family who borrowed the land on which they worked.

Questions of romance could only begin to be asked when society advanced enough to prioritize the interests of the individual; in an era where industry and the economy built on it were weak, such things skipped straight past futility into the realm of the downright harmful.

“Yet now, he demands that I return to secular life... I had thought his summons was simply to see me, as I hardly ever have an opportunity to descend from Fullbright Hill. Never in my wildest imaginations had I thought that he would sully my faith, of all things...”

Parental authority over wedding their children was more than a matter of preserving the interests of a clan: it was seen as serving social order. Trying to butt in was incredibly uncouth. Even under the lax standards of Earth, meddling in another’s marriage was considered inconsiderate at best. Done here, it would be the same as picking a fight—or in the worst case, starting a war.

“I caught wind of this plan, and made my escape just as I was being taken to his estate to be sealed away.”

The three of us could cause mayhem and destruction, getting away in a daring chase with the blocky words “THE END” preceding the end credits, but we still had the rest of our lives to live. Factoring in our futures, the problem was anything but trivial. Were we characters in a cheap novel, we could just sock Miss Celia’s father in the face and lecture him until he changed his tune, but alas.

Despite all my pessimistic grumbling, I had a feeling that we’d be able to figure something out within the bounds of the law.

We would have had no choice but to pack it up if we were dealing with a stupid girl trying to elope with a commoner: the only ways out then would be to tear down every barrier on her way to the remote edges of the frontier, or to punch her dad with a heartfelt prayer that everything would work out.

However, I could vouch that Miss Celia was not the type to let her own partiality dictate her actions without thought. While she was admittedly reminiscent of an elementary schooler excited on their first trip to a faraway land, succumbing to pangs of curiosity was different from thoughtless indiscretion. She had to have known her father would send people to chase her, and I doubted she would have tried running at all without some chance of victory.

“Thankfully, I suspect not all of my family will take kindly to this engagement. I have a gregh—ahem. I have an aunt whom I owe much, and I am certain she would convince my father to stop.”

“Now that’s reassuring!”

While I was a bit curious about her cough, having a dependable ally within her family sped things along tremendously. I knew she’d have something up her sleeve.

“With my aunt’s help, I will be able to reach the Church, whom I’m sure will also take my side. I hate to be presumptuous, but I believe myself to be regarded well amongst my peers, and the Head Abbess of the Great Chapel is a personal friend of mine. So, as long as I can evade capture...”

With religious authorities on our side, we had a real shot at pulling this off. Er, more importantly, the Head Abbess of the Great Chapel was the top authority that oversaw all of the Night Goddess’s following. What kind of acquaintance is that?!

Perhaps it was one of those stories that played off immortality. Miss Celia was a vampire who looked to be our age, which put her at least past fifty; if she’d taken care of children in her youth, it was perfectly reasonable that one might grow up to climb the ranks of the church. As curious as I was, it wasn’t exactly a pressing matter, so I decided to shelve it and maybe ask again when we had more time to spare.

The big news here was that we had Miss Celia’s aunt on our side. Since time immemorial, little brothers had been fated to bow down to their big sisters—I would know. Although her name had grown difficult to recall, the painful episodes I’d endured at the hand of my sister a lifetime ago were as fresh as ever. How could I ever forget? My birthday and Christmas had been the only chances to beg my parents for a new game, and she’d bullied me into choosing something that she’d wanted.

Maybe equating my frivolous trauma with the inner workings of a noble house wasn’t quite right, but I maintained that people were ever people, no matter the world. Besides, it was clear who wore the pants, given Miss Celia’s conviction that her aunt would make things right.

“In that case,” Mika said, “all we need to do is contact your aunt.”

“Victory is finally in sight, old chum!”

Now that we had our mark, there were plenty of ways to stick the landing. If she was nearby, we could sneak out of the capital and head straight there. If she was far away, we could hope to reach her by mail. At the very worst, we could run around Berylin and wait for her to back us up, so long as we could get in contact with her.

We had a clearly defined goal; now was the time to act. After all, we were up against nobles. They had limitless angles of attack on account of outstripping us by a gigantic margin in terms of wealth and manpower. Perfection could wait—haste was the name of the game. As the ones on the lam, our position was only going to worsen the more time we gave our pursuers to prepare.

Judging from how well-dressed the first batch was, I surmised that Miss Celia’s father was anything but underprivileged. It was best to assume he’d put his money where his mouth was and hire hundreds to search for us with a fine-toothed comb. The worst-case scenario could even entail him enlisting the guard, making the whole city a danger zone.

Gods damn the bourgeois...

“By the by, Miss Celia,” I said, “wherever might your aunt reside? Does she have an estate here in the capital? Or is her main residence close by any chance?”

I swallowed back a mysterious desire to go find a flag dyed scarlet and looked over at the vampire. Suddenly, she clammed up and averted her eyes, twiddling her fingers in silence.

“She is in...um...Lipzi.”

“What?”

Lipzi was the capital of the administrative state—formally a Regierungsbezirk—that made up the eastern reach of the Empire, and the headquarters of one of the three imperial families, House Erstreich.

But most importantly of all, the direct distance from the capital to Lipzi was one hundred and forty kilometers.

[Tips] The capital of an administrative state is the center of regional political and executive affairs, and is thus most often found in the territory of influential families. The imperials, electorate, and other members of the highest order maintain estates at each and every one, sending stipends to lesser, local nobles under their wing in a bid to maintain their influence. They then reconvene during the months where the nation’s oligarchs engage in politics from their separate estates in the imperial capital.

I was so shocked by the distance that I stood dazed for a moment. Even Mika, who was less familiar with the geography around here, was furrowing their brow.

My acquaintance with the lay of the land could be traced back to my three-month-long journey with Lady Agrippina. Thinking that it would be helpful for the future, I’d memorized a national atlas—a rough sketch that included every territory in the Empire—which gave me a decent idea of relative distance. That understanding was exactly why I was in such despair.

One hundred and forty kilometers sounds simple enough; it was about the distance from Osaka to Nagoya. Modern sensibilities would reduce the journey to roughly one meal and a really hard ice pop on a bullet train, or a two-to-three-hour road trip involving a picnic at a highway rest stop...but it was a massive distance for us.

It was too far a march on our own two feet, not even to mention that one hundred and forty kilometers only covered the distance between the two points on a map. Traveling there would require us to traverse several times that.

In case it wasn’t already obvious, the Empire was home to mountains, rivers, and rolling hills, just to name a few topographical complications. The state wasn’t some half-baked player in a city-sim game who could conjure up direct roads between key locations on a whim.

Between Berylin and Lipzi lay a sheer mountain range known as the Southern Sword. While not as harsh to navigate as the Frost Spirit’s Peaks the giants called home, normal travel gear would still leave a traveler freezing or slipping to their deaths in half a day. Obviously, no road went through them; while a path straight south would be an all-around good investment that would save time and money, oikodomurges weren’t exactly omnipotent.

Ideally they’d plow a tunnel through the mountains to make a direct path, but that remained an ideal for now. That would surely only come in the far future, when advancements in architectural technology would grant the crown the heavy machinery and sturdy materials needed for such an endeavor.

The Trialist Empire was still miles ahead of any other country, and the crowning jewel of its great transportation network was the linchpin highway, a series of stone-paved roads that connected all its most important regional capitals. However, this system did not prioritize creating optimal paths; not only did it snake around to avoid obstacles, but it also took efficiency of construction into account, meaning the intersections were structured to connect three or four different roads at once. There wasn’t any way to shrink that down to match the direct distance.

Not that we were lucky enough to even use the roads.

The Empire’s esteemed highway system laid its foundations in bedrock, complete with drainage systems and enough ruts for several lanes of traffic to run in parallel, and foliage was cleared on each side to prevent highwaymen from having a place to set up ambushes. Oikodomurges had polished what was effectively a medieval autobahn more finely than a shining mirror. Smaller roads branched off the nation’s central artery like capillaries, connecting towns and cantons to the greater Empire.

This was all in the name of national security and economic prosperity. Over five centuries of history, the Empire had laid and maintained new roads with a zeal that bordered on mania. Unlike in the Middle Ages with which I was familiar, the crown did not scoff at major highways as a path for enemies to take to our key holds; rather, they were seen as a means of rapidly deploying our own troops to any location on the front lines as the situation called.

Inversely, it followed that minor roads were not well kept. A country’s budget and manpower were finite, and the towering five-hundred-year-old behemoth was no exception. Local lords often maintained streets within their sphere of influence, but only insofar as it suited their own interests; they weren’t serving a public demand for free travel.

Even the furthest frontiers in my past life had been neatly tailored to bend to the whims of automobiles, but the same could not be said here. Common sense said that an attempt to travel without using the main roads was one’s own decision, and it was thus up to the individual to figure something out.

For us, that was incredibly unfortunate. Naturally, the first places anyone would check would be easy avenues of movement; cutting off any high-speed escape routes was the first step of catching a fugitive in a wide search radius. Much like how the police of Earth set up freeway checkpoints, enacted searches at hub train stations, and shut down airport boarding gates, our pursuers were sure to keep an eye on every road out of Berylin. There would be guards at every gate checking our bags, they’d forbid face coverings, and the inspection to get into the city would be far less lax than it had been. I had no doubt that they’d cast a net so tight that they wouldn’t let so much as a kitten get by without questioning.

We needed to dodge the authorities and our pursuers and hike through a couple hundred kilometers of uncharted mountains with a young lady in tow... That’s death.

If we had access to proper roads, I could have made it work. I could make around thirty kilometers of progress per day on foot—even with my stubby child legs—while stopping at the inns that dotted the land, and I could easily double that if I rode Castor or Polydeukes. Despite having an inexperienced and sheltered girl with us, I swear that I could manage similar numbers if I could get ahold of a stagecoach; there were plenty of caravans that regularly traveled between the imperial and regional capitals, so finding one that would allow us to join them would be a cinch.

But the net ensnaring us would only grow wider, and eventually, ducking under the watchful eyes of patrolmen would become impossible. I doubted they were idiots, so they were sure to close the path to Lipzi as soon as possible to prevent us from seeking help.

Uh... Are we screwed?

Had it just been Mika and I, we could have braved the perilous journey with a private letter to Miss Celia’s aunt in hand. However, in that case, we needed to worry about what to do with the damsel in question while we were gone. With the master of the house absent, we could stick her in Lady Agrippina’s atelier, but I couldn’t just leave her alone with Elisa when the madam could come back at any moment.

Though Lady Agrippina wasn’t totally heartless, she had exactly zero tolerance for anything she deemed a bother. Should she return home to find that I’d brought in a walking nuisance that she had no obligation to attend to, she would throw Miss Celia out in an instant. Worse still, I would be thoughtlessly dragging her into something that could affect her standing in high society; I would certainly be at her mercy after she cleaned up the situation as she saw fit.

And how could I complain when this really was a decision made solely on my account? That would be like leaving something out in a shared common space and getting upset when someone else threw it away.

I wanted nothing more than to have already perfected space-bending magic. If only I’d mastered that, I would have snapped my fingers and solved Miss Celia’s problems with all the ease of a fairy godmother summoning a pumpkin carriage and glass slippers.

I supposed the fact that teleportation invalidated so many scenarios like this one was exactly why it was locked behind such steep experience costs. Had I possessed the madam’s skills, this whole conundrum would have taken fewer than five days to mop up: not only could I have cut out the entirety of our sewer disaster by sending Miss Celia straight to my lodging, but I could have teleported to some random point I’d visited on our three-month journey to the capital and gotten a massive head start to Lipzi. From there, I’d just run straight to my destination and complete the mission!

Hm... This was the sort of anticlimactic story that would make a player chew out their GM for not planning against their antics, and one that’d cause the GM to shout that they should have held back.

“Um, but there isn’t any need to worry! I have a ride! I’m well aware that it’s too far to reach on foot!”

“A ride?”

Miss Celia must have caught on to our uncertainty, because she began speaking in a rush. Apparently, she had some means of getting from Berylin to Lipzi without being caught by the police.

“I cannot spare the details yet,” she went on. “But it shall arrive in three days’ time. If all goes well, I will be in Lipzi only a day after that.”

“One day?! That’s unbelievable...”

“Even dragon knights would take longer than that. Are you sure it’ll only take a day?”

My sheer surprise was joined by Mika tilting their head in tempered curiosity. Under normal circumstances, a fast horse would need a few days, and a messenger on foot would need two to three weeks; making the trek in a single day was absurd. Drakes could soar through the skies in a straight line, but they could only be handled by experienced jockeys—if one could manage to steal one of these living weapons from underneath the crown’s nose, that is.

“Yes, one day! You will have to wait and see, but from what I hear, it will surely only take a day.”

Miss Celia puffed up her chest with confidence, but her refusal to explain further worried me. More than anything else, her twinkling eyes spelled danger: whatever means of escaping the city she had, it was something that this curious lady considered fun. That same fun was why she merrily told us to wait and see; while knowing she only did so hoping to entertain us as friends left me with no room to complain, it really did not feel like she understood the gravity of our situation.

Ah well. It beats risking the hike.

“Very well,” I said. “Then we simply need to buy three days, correct?”

“Yes,” she replied. “But I suspect hiding away here...”

“Will only net us around one.”

Having a concrete goal in mind made victory seem within reach, but things were not as easy as they seemed. It sounded like we could evade detection for three days if we holed up, but that wasn’t an option when there was a very convenient and very magical way to search for persons of interest.

Ladies Leizniz and Agrippina sent their origami birds and butterflies my way without the messages getting lost using the same tracking system found in search magic. The fact that Miss Celia’s location hadn’t been exposed yet could be entirely chalked up to her pursuers not employing a mage. I suspected they still believed her to be a sheltered princess wandering aimlessly about the capital, and they hadn’t gotten serious yet as a result; she’d been on the cusp of capture when we crossed paths, so I doubted they wanted to escalate their efforts any more than they already had.

If a moderately trained mage—say, the apprentice of an ordained magus—began searching in earnest, we’d be caught sooner rather than later. We would have been cornered in the sewers long before getting to sip tea at this table had one been present from the start.

“An experienced magus can pick out their target amongst the tens of thousands of people in this city in no time at all,” I explained. “A strand of hair or a chipped nail will be more than enough for them to mark you for their spells.”

Search magic scoured the fabric of reality for traces matching whatever query was made. These were essentially wrinkles or stains left on the warp and weft of existence, and hiding in the deepest, darkest corner one could find would do nothing to eliminate such evidence. Secret rooms designed to shelter persecuted priests and catacombs built in the depths of the earth could not stop a procedure that dealt in metaphysical realms.

Yet it also had its drawbacks. Searching was only accurate when provided with an item that had some connection to the target.

I didn’t know for sure how much time we had before they dipped their toes into the arcane, but factoring in the requisite preparations, we had a day at best; if they’d already begun setting up, they would begin sometime tonight...and magia fit to serve noble houses were a stone’s throw away in the capital. It went without saying that I wouldn’t have been worried about three days on the run if we’d been up against the kind of beggarly house that didn’t have any connection to the College.

Which means we don’t have time to take it easy.

“Fear not,” I said. “I’d like to believe that I know a thing or two about dealing with magia.”

I was a servant, not a magus—but I was still a number-crunching munchkin to my core. I knew better than anyone that the tactics I didn’t want to run up against were also the tactics that would frustrate my opponents the most; I always kept contingencies to counter things that I found troubling.

After all, doing what one wanted while disallowing one’s enemies from doing the same was among the strongest strategies in any game, whether that be ehrengarde, a TRPG, or the sprawling game of life that used people as its pieces.

[Tips] Search magic refers to a mix of true and hedge magic that traces mystic footprints left behind by a mark, and exists in a variety of differing implementations. The simplest cantrips merely highlight particles of matching scent, but most either seek out a predetermined mark or use a catalyst to find the catalyst’s “owner.”

The masters of search magic, however, reverse engineer a target’s location by starting with evidence that the target physically existed to begin with. From there, they make semantic connections to approach their destination with certainty that no normal method can match.

Sleepless as the city may have been, the majority of the imperial capital’s denizens were tucked away as the Mother Goddess sailed on her gentle arc through the sky. In a dim, dreary room, a man heaved a heavy sigh. He was dressed in a thick, hooded robe of equally dark colors, plainly telling the world he was a magus.

“...Did it fail?” The woman facing him was the same one who had been chasing Cecilia on the rooftop. She’d changed into skinny pants and a white top, with a pelisse draped over her left shoulder so as not to offend any nobles with whom she might have an audience. Her hair, cut too short for the tastes of most, was neatly slicked back with a bit of oil.

“I’m afraid so.” On the table in front of the man lay the most up-to-date, comprehensive map of Berylin available. It spared no detail, not even the most vulnerable of military secrets; no normal person could hope to get their hands on something of this quality.

A pendulum dangled above the map, its bob a triangular pyramid cut from blue topaz. The name of the gem meant “that which is sought” in the southern tongues spoken near the sea, and the mystic formulae etched into the sides bolstered its inherent properties.

The magus had attempted to locate the girl via dowsing, a form of divination initially used to search for water and ores buried underground. In recent times, the thought of trespassing in the domain of deities who presided over the earth had put a pause on its original use—not even magia were willing to seriously anger the gods—but it was still commonly employed to find missing objects or persons.

“Was the catalyst I brought too weak?” the woman asked. “I should’ve known a single lock wouldn’t be enough...”

“No, it should have sufficed. Ordinarily, I require no catalyst at all to find somebody. For example...would you happen to know of anyone in the capital whose current location you can pinpoint?”

The knight pondered the magus’s question for a moment and then offered three names belonging to the men who’d joined her during the day. She had given them the night to rest on account of their strenuous search, so they could all be found in the servants’ quarters of her master’s estate.

“Mr. Karl is here, as is Mr. Lars...”

The man lifted his pendulum over the map, and it bent in gravity-defying ways to point at the very building the woman had envisioned her subordinates sleeping in.

“Ah, but it seems Mr. Luitpold is down in the low quarter...near the pubs, if I recall. I, too, paid these cheap dens of alcohol visits in my youth.”

That moron, the woman thought, holding back a click of her tongue.

A sudden shift in the pendulum’s angle directed their attention to the low-class bars the magus had mentioned, complete with a nearby red-light district.

The man’s skill was obvious. Of course, someone who knew whose house she served could have made an educated guess at the manor—her employer was just that famous. Anyone who hadn’t heard of him was sure to be a hick who spent their lives under a rock.

However, she knew her talented yet foolhardy subordinate well, and he was an ardent lover of liquor and women. It was easy to picture him ignoring her orders to get some rest; he had once coerced a young boy from a branch family into sneaking out to the red-light district with him so he could save on paying from his own pocket. Seeing an idiot like him sneak a drink to soothe his aching body was as sure as the roosters’ cry in the morning.

Engraving a mental note that she’d make him write up a report and do fifty laps around Berylin when they next met, the woman’s attention moved on to the wavering pendulum.

“But this,” the magus said, “is the young lady in question.”

“What in the world?”

Until now, the thread had been taut, pointing straight at a single location; now it began aimlessly tugging every which way. Every few seconds, it would stop in place for a moment before zipping away to a new spot. The places it pointed to had no rhyme or reason to them: it ventured outside the city walls on several occasions, and once it even came to rest directly on the imperial palace.

“Ordinarily, even a failed attempt won’t produce such erratic results. With my skills, I would say...at worst, the marker would restrict itself to a single district. Considering I have her hair, I was confident I’d be able to pinpoint the very building she is in.”

“Then what is this?”

“At the risk of repeating myself, may I ask if the young lady is versed in the magical arts?”

“That’s preposterous.”

The woman was in such disbelief that she let a minor faux pas slip under her breath, but the magus did not react in any way. Instead, he continued his questioning by asking if the Night Goddess provided any miracles that could impede his spell.

This time, she could not be so sure. Every member of the family she served paid tribute to the Mother Goddess—though the degree of their faith varied by person—and their retainers had all converted as a matter of course. Yet she personally knew little about miracles: they were gifts from divine to devout meant to protect the faithful, and the clergy of each religious order guarded their unparalleled rewards from the public eye. Modern churches placed great emphasis on written record, but the secrecy surrounding miracles meant that they alone were passed down via oral tradition.

Those unconnected to a church thus had no means of learning about its miracles. While most had a general idea of which gods had power over which domains, the technical details remained a blur. The woman didn’t know whether the religious leaders of old had wanted to avoid being used by statesmen for their powers or their gods had explicitly sworn them to confidence, but regardless, she was merely a lay churchgoer with no means of finding out.

The Night Goddess was said to lend Her strength primarily in the name of healing, protection, and guardianship; it was difficult to tell if hiding oneself fell under those categories. While the veil of night certainly helped conceal those in the shadows, Her true nature was the moonlight that offered solace within that darkness.

At an impasse, the woman had no choice but to answer that she didn’t know; the magus then stated that it was unlikely anyway.

“In which case,” he went on, “would you happen to know of any powerful connections she may have in the capital? Specifically, a magus or someone adjacent?”

“That also seems unlikely. My lady spends nearly all of her time praying atop Fullbright Hill, and her only friends within the city should be a handful of religious officials.”

Fullbright Hill was located in the southern reach of the Empire, near the mystic Frost Spirit’s Peaks. “Hill” was a misnomer: it was a mountain. Its name came from its gentle slope that stretched out for miles and miles, but its peak was the highest of all the holy mountains in the nation.

Legend had it that moonlight shone more brightly at the summit than any other place in the country, which was why followers of the Night Goddess had planted their head temple there. Peoples seeking protection from Her or Her believers then began gathering at the base of the mountain, giving rise to the churches and towns in the surrounding area.

Limited were the opportunities for a dedicated priest to leave such a location. Evangelist missions weren’t unheard of, but the girl they were searching for would never have been chosen to go on one. Barring her fellow believers, there was no way for her to have an acquaintance in the capital, let alone a friend.

The woman asked the aim of the magus’s questions. Catching the swinging pendulum, he answered that this result was anything but natural.

“Say, for example, that I cast this spell to search in a completely mistaken area, or to try and find something that doesn’t exist. The pendulum would not budge. On the other hand, even when tasked with searching for someone I haven’t met, whose name I only know by hearsay, and whose face is unimaginable to me, the marker will point somewhere, with enough mana and skill.”

“But that isn’t what happened. Which means?”

“We’ve been challenged to a counterspell war.” Confused by the unfamiliar turn of phrase, the woman asked the magus to explain, so he added, “We magia tend to fight magic with magic of our own.”

In essence, he was saying the girl had a mage or magus assisting her getaway.

“That’s absurd! My lady shouldn’t know anyone of the sort! She had no more than the clothes on her back—not even a coin purse—when she escaped!”

“Which makes it unlikely that she hired a mage... Pardon me asking, but is the young lady...well, how shall I put this? Is she blessed in manners of appearance?”

“I... Well, my bias as her loyal attendant aside, I believe her to be exceedingly attractive.”

“Then I suspect some troubled lad has fallen for her at first sight. Every boy has dreamed of saving a pretty damsel in distress at some point in their lives, you see.”

The magus slipped off the ring linked to the pendulum with a sigh and rolled up the map. Sifting through a drawer at his desk, he pulled out something that glimmered in the candlelight.

“The current reaction is that of the young lady’s presence being scattered all throughout town.”

As soon as she heard the word “scattered,” the girl’s servant lost all color in her expression. The only thought that had come to mind was her charge being cut into pieces and hidden away all around the city.

For reasons undisclosed, her lady was resilient to death, but she could still be physically destroyed, and her natural powers of regeneration could be delayed. The most brutal and horrific means of doing so would be to dismember her and carry off each piece to a different place.

“Rest assured, I do not mean that in a physical sense. Rather, the spell would have given no feedback at all had she been killed.”

“Th-That...is good to hear. If anything were to happen to her, my blood would skip past running cold and freeze solid.”

As he beckoned his pale-faced companion to relax, the magus took the lid off the shining silver thurible he’d fetched from the drawer. All the while, his mind cynically drifted to wonder whether the woman’s reaction was one of loyalty or self-preservation.

“If one were to put mystic pursuance into simple terms, it would be the art of scanning through the skein we call reality in search of a stubborn stain—that is, a person. Our ‘eyes’ are driven toward the most notable of blemishes, but a smattering of smudges made in a similar hue will cause our attention to wander.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying that a dense gathering of closely related family members might make the process more difficult?”

“That is one possibility. But more commonly, search spells catch traces left by the person themselves: fallen hairs or well-worn articles and the like.”

“Then what point is there to using magic?!”

“Of course, this is an issue encountered only by novices. As little as it may mean, I consider myself a specialist in the field, and my formulae reject the noise that lesser spells may snag on. However, the accuracy of my means is sure to drop when encountering decoys of stellar make.”

“Decoys?”

In response to her question, the magus raised his hand and began counting down examples: something soaked in blood, the most powerful mystic trail of all; a prized trinket that one carried around at all hours; a loose tooth, or any body part greater in importance than a single hair; or a body double specifically made to stand in for the person in question.

“A body double?” the woman repeated in awe.

“They’re employed by more nobles than one might expect. Having one’s location known can often lead to trouble, after all.”

The magus reached back into his desk to produce a mortar and pestle. He pinched a bit of ash from the thurible and placed it into the bowl, and then opened a tiny box, throwing in the bundle of hair found inside as well.

The warrior had procured that from her lady’s bed and comb. Though the girl inherently produced little waste on account of her people’s efficient metabolic processes, no amount of careful cleaning could eliminate her footprint entirely. While the woman considered her actions a terrible transgression, she’d rushed to collect as much as she could when the magus had informed her of its utility.

“‘Body doubles’ are simple charms,” the magus explained. “Take a slip of paper with an arcane formula, have the person write their name on it, and wet it with a few drops of blood. That will suffice to draw a great deal of mystic attention away from the target. Not only are they trivial to produce, but they are easy to carry around. I suspect a great many people have elected to employ them—not that they impede someone of my skill, of course.”

The man ground the hair and ash together. Though hair wasn’t usually something that could easily be broken up, the clump immediately crumbled into dust, combining with the ash to create a fine black powder.

“Paper substitutes are then often delivered to body doubles of the traditional kind to lend their disguises credence. They’re beyond common in this line of work, but there is an alternative that outstrips its deceptive capabilities.”

Tapping the bowl to accumulate all the powder in one spot, the magus placed it down and pulled a pipe out of his inner pocket. He gracefully opened the tobacco box on his desk and plucked out a few leaves from the countless varieties stuffed inside. After packing them in, he took a drag and they glowed red without a flame in sight.

“...Which would be?” the woman asked.

“A doll.”

He exhaled a cloud of smoke with no regard for the woman’s scrunching nose, and dumped the leaves into the thurible after finishing his first puff. The embers slowly spread into a fire that filled the chamber, producing a smoke with a curious scent. Finally, he poured the black powder from his mortar into the thurible, causing a massive pillar of flame to shoot straight up.

Not expecting the sudden flash, the woman covered her face and instinctively reached for her dagger; in the next moment, she realized the heat was gone. She looked up to see the fire pillar had been replaced with a dark smoke cloud hovering in one place. The cloud began to swirl above the thurible, eventually stretching itself into a new shape: that of a raven.

The bird fluttered its massive, smoky wings and landed on the desk; unbelievably, it began to preen itself.

“Be off.”

At its master’s order, the raven flew away in peculiarly lifelike fashion. Though it disappeared upon slamming headfirst into the door, it did not dissipate; instead, it slipped through the cracks in the frame.

“With this, we shall find her in a few moments’ time. Would you care for any tea while we wait?”

Placing down his pipe, the magus walked over to a cabinet in the corner of his room, pulled out a set of cups, and leisurely began preparing tea. Still dazed by the fantastical display, the woman had to pull herself together to politely accept his offer.

Instead of the usual red tea, he handed her an herbal blend made up of soaked dried leaves. The soothing fragrance helped the woman unwind after a long day of running around; his attention to detail even in softer matters heightened her opinion of him—it had been worth sending away his apprentice in search of a true professional.

After getting halfway through her cup, the woman looked up to ask the magus how long the process would take. Yet her eyes rose to see him frozen, teacup in hand, with a profoundly grave expression.

The man’s breathing was shallow, and he coughed violently as if some terrible pain had possessed him. The woman could not bring herself to call out to him, but the abnormality of his demeanor dragged her back out of the relaxation she’d finally attained.

Just as she regained enough wit to hurry to his side, he yelped in pain and threw his cup onto the floor. The teaware was clearly expensive and well used, and his carpet was equally as luxurious, but he didn’t care at all—he couldn’t. The magus was too busy clutching his chest in a desperate bid for air.

“Sir! Are you all right?! What’s happened?!”

“Agh! Aurgh! Hrgh...gah!”

She rushed to hold him as he writhed in agony, but his frantic dance was so violent that he pushed the trained warrior off and flung her back into her chair. He stumbled about, shattering his teacup underfoot and kicking the shards in every direction. Yet all his squirming did nothing to ease the pain, and he began frothing at the mouth...when an earsplitting noise erupted from within his desk.

“Grah?! Hah... Hah...”

The sound signaled the man’s emancipation from his torturous pain; he collapsed onto his knees with labored breath. His right hand continued to hold his breast tight, while his left clung to the table for purchase.

“Are you okay?! What in the world happened?!”

“Ugh... Is this...recoil?”

With the woman patting his back, the magus stumbled to his desk, fighting a coughing fit the whole way. He opened a drawer to pull out a clump of wood from its depths: a clump that had once been a doll made in his likeness.

“Recoil? Recoil from what?!”

“Within defensive...magic,” he heaved, “there exists...a subset of curses... Ugh... That attack anyone...trying to peer into a location...”

The doll had been a stand-in for the magus. It had been modeled closely after him and engraved with his name, and he’d carried it around with him for a considerable length of time to ensure it would make a compelling mystic substitute. In fact, it bore such a connotational resemblance to him that it posed a risk of its own: damage dealt to it could feed back to hurt him. But a long career spent ferreting out the lost and that which does not want to be found had convinced him the dangers were worth it.

Tonight, that assessment saved his life. Had this doll not exploded in his stead, his body would have taken the whole of the fatal attack.

He surmised that his seeking spell had snagged somewhere, earning the ire of whoever resided at the location. They then responded with a curse so lethal that it would not serve as a warning—its sole intent was to kill. The hex was close to the upper bound of human capability to withstand. This was a matter for the best of the best, grounds only meant to be trodden by those who had one foot out the door of mortality: the professors of the College.

“I apologize. It brings me great frustration and even greater shame to admit this...but your request is more than I am able to bear.”

“I... I see,” the woman said. “And are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Worry not. I won’t die from this...but I humbly request to be relieved for the night.”

Although her mission was of the utmost urgency, she couldn’t whip the magus into working after seeing his condition; he was trying his best to seem healthy, but one glimpse at his complexion made it clear he was inches from death.

“O-Of course,” she said. “Please get some rest and take care of yourself.”

“Thank you very much for your benevolence... Forgive me, for I shall pen my master tomorrow morning.”

After being seen out of the wobbly-legged magus’s atelier, the woman entered the College elevator and began ruffling her hair in frustration. He’d been the best magus she personally knew. Finding someone that outstripped him would mean going through an intermediary within the clan, but the most influential were all at their personal estates preparing for the upcoming harvest in fall. It was too far removed from the political season for anyone notable to remain in the capital.

Those that remained were hardly any better than herself, and absolutely none had as much expertise as the collapsed magus. Of course, that didn’t include her employer, who would have been the most dependable help she could have asked for...if he weren’t in the midst of partaking in his favorite hobby. No matter how many messengers she sent to retrieve him, the man refused to respond.

Oh, how unimaginably blissful it would be for her to throw up her hands, exclaim, I tried my best! and collapse backward onto a fluffy bed. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. While she was displeased to see her lady forced into an undesired position, she couldn’t ignore the plans of the main family. Few could survive without ties of kinship in this day and age.

No matter how exhausted she was, the retainer could not give in. More than anything else, she simply couldn’t stand the thought of her master wandering unknown lands alone; the appearance of an unknown mage only worsened her fear and confusion.

“My lady,” she whispered, “your Mechthild is coming. I beg of you, please be safe.”

Up, right, left, and down; the elevator’s wild swings in unthinkable directions made Mechthild dizzy, but she remained cool as she reached into her breast pocket for a small vial. She tore off the seal—including the warning label that stated only one was to be administered per day.

One sip of the mysterious drug sufficed to banish drowsiness, but she downed the entire bottle in one gulp. This was her third vial of the day, and she had two left; they would no doubt be gone by sunrise too, but insomnia, minor paralysis, and complaints from the mage who’d written the prescription were a price she’d gladly pay for her charge’s safe return.

The instant the elevator dinged, Mechthild squeezed herself past the slowly opening gate and bolted out. At the same time, the elevator beside hers began to move.

Though it was odd for someone to be around at this hour, she ignored it and tore through the empty Krahenschanze halls to burst through the front gates, ordering the night watchman to prepare her a horse.

Her first order of business would be to return to the palace and hear the imperial guard’s report. From there, she’d need to visit the head of the city guard; then she’d return to the manor to organize her own men, and...the list kept going on.

Steeling herself for a long night, the woman looked up at the heavens. Her master’s object of worship had sailed over half Her nightly course, and she offered the moon a silent prayer.

May my brave lady be safe.

Whether the Goddess above knew the praying servant or the runaway master mattered not; Her heavenly form remained silent, bathing the lands below in the clear glow of night.

[Tips] Successfully casting a spell does not always mean successfully activating the effects of said spell. Lighting a basic flame underwater will obviously lead to immediate extinguishment. A spell may as well not be cast if its target resists its effects; the same is true if the activation itself is jammed.

I had a passing memory of chaff and flares being included in modern military aircrafts as a countermeasure against missiles. Chaff threw off radio-guided missiles by scattering a bunch of electromagnetically visible decoys, while flares created large amounts of heat to distract heat-seeking missiles away from the plane.

In that sense, I supposed the teachings of great mages long gone could effectively be boiled down to this: mystic chaff and flares make for great counterspells.

“My... How marvelous!”

“You’re so cool, Dear Brother!”

Two children stared intently at my hand; I was using a fleet of Unseen Hands to whittle down a block of wood. Seeing the lifeless chunk of raw matter change shape with every passing moment, only to receive a delicate coat of metal and paint must have been an enchanting scene.

With the equivalent of two grade-schoolers on a field trip gawking at my work, I finished up one in a series of many decoys. I’d done quite an impressive job, if I do say so myself: I used my piece-making supplies to produce something reminiscent of ⅛ scale hobbyist figures.

Well, technically, they weren’t reminiscent—they literally were figurines made at a one-to-eight scale...of Miss Celia.

My Dexterity was knocking on the door of Divine Favor, and I’d left my Whittling skill at Scale VI. Combined with my impulse purchase of the Keen Eye trait, I could reproduce my model with startling accuracy. My heated bouts of ehrengarde with Miss Celia had earned me a nice chunk of experience, so I had no qualms about spending some of it on her.

Furthermore, much like how Insight heightened my sense of sight in battle, Keen Eye would do the same during everyday life. It allowed me to take in fine details without error, and also made me more perceptive of things that were out of place—I suspected Margit already had this trait, since the examples included a twig clearly snapped by someone’s weight, or a footprint left in dust—so I was sure it would remain useful going forward.

Bolstered by my investment, my wooden statuettes threatened to drown me in narcissistic glee with how well they came out. The little Miss Celia closing her eyes and clasping her hands together in prayer, complete with her holy robes, was her spitting image; I was sure anyone who knew her would be able to name her at first glance.

From there, Mika added on a coat of foil to make it sturdier, and then colored her in. The final product was market-worthy.

“You’re such a perfectionist,” Mika sighed. “You know you don’t have to make it this good, right?”

“Don’t be like that, old chum. You’re not one to talk anyway. Look at how much detail you put into the blush of her skin.”

“That’s only because you were so picky back when I was coloring the ehrengarde pieces. ‘No,’ you said, ‘the thighs need a more flirtatious shade of—’”

“All right, Mika! It’s time to shut up! Besides, you’re just as guilty as me! That was the most excited I’ve ever seen you to touch something up with paint!”

I used one of my actual hands to cover my friend’s mouth before they could make any more slights against my character, taking the finished product they were handing me and hiding it behind my back.

Now is a good time to clarify that this one-to-eight-scale Cecilia had not come about because Miss Celia’s beauty suddenly struck my fancy; we had a proper goal in mind. On its own, it was just a well-made figurine that would retail for around 29,800 JPY in a hobbyist store, so I’d worked in a way to include some mystic meaning.

Each doll had a compartment to carry a slip of paper that Miss Celia had written her name on in blood. The effect was that each carving looked like her, had the name Cecilia, and carried a small part of her body inside of it. This transformed these wooden knickknacks into magic objects that might be her. An arcane algorithm seeking her position would wonder, Is this her? It kinda feels like her...

It didn’t matter that an actual person could tell they were fakes at first glance. Much like a high-quality flare misleading a missile’s seeker pod, the important part was that the substitutes could fool a spell devoid of sentience.

“Here,” I whispered. “I’m counting on you.”

Summoning a Hand, I carried the figurine I all but snatched out of Mika’s hands around a corner. I was pretending as though I was hiding them using my own magic, but the truth was that I was putting in a request with my invisible neighbors using a Voice Transfer.

“Yes, yes, very well. A request from our Beloved One is a request well worth honoring, and I suppose it’s only right to finish what I’ve started. Run us around all you please.”

“Okie dokie! Ummm, where oh where should Lottie put the next one...”

The fey duo accepted the piece and vanished to who-knows-where. Decoys meant nothing if they were clustered around in one area. If they got a read on our general location, the people chasing us could use their authority to order searches of every house in our district. On the flip side, if they were strewn across every part of the city without any rhyme or reason, their discoveries wouldn’t divulge our actual position.

Scattering the woodcrafts by hand was more than just a hassle, so the task of lugging them to ridiculous places—and some to more believable locations, of course—went to the alfar that had blessed me with mystic lips.

Ursula’s expression made it clear she was less than enthused to work overtime after exiting the sewers, but Lottie seemed to be enjoying the job as a bit of fey mischief; either way, their efforts were incredibly helpful. I was sure they were sneaking the things into all sorts of places that would confuse a magus right about now.

That said, I didn’t want them to take it too far. The figurines’ striking resemblance meant they could be used for curses if they fell into the wrong hands—though a lack of any personal connection to Miss Celia meant this wasn’t a huge issue—so we had to make sure to retrieve them later. I’d explicitly stated that they needed to remember where they hid them all, but Ursula aside, I was worried if Lottie had taken my warning to heart.

I supposed at worst, I could offer them candies and a few minutes playing with my hair to have them seek out any missing statuettes. Still, I couldn’t get over the fear of scattering something more personal than personal information all over the city. I prayed that no pervert would come across one and take it home with them.

“Magic is so wondrous,” Miss Celia said. “To think you can create wooden sculptures like this is astounding.”

“The strength of magic is that it can do anything so long as the caster has the wherewithal to find out how.”

The priestess cheerfully watched my knife and chisel dance, while my sister stared off into empty space—she was paying more attention to the construction of the spell itself. I’d complained before about attracting too much attention, but purehearted praise was a different matter entirely.

With this, we were safe from any magus trying to locate us...though I unfortunately had to add the qualifier, “for now.”

We had three more days of this; I could only hope that whatever Miss Celia’s plan entailed, it was worth all this effort.

“It’s time to go,” I said.

“Go?” the vampire repeated. “Are you heading out someplace?”

I’d been at this for several hours, and had produced more than ten Miss Celia action figures; this was probably enough. Any more would produce diminishing returns. While we still ran the risk of their effectiveness waning as our pursuers collected them, I could always make more in the future.

Now that we’d weakened the effect of enemy search magic, it was time to leave my lodging in the low quarter behind for a place no one dared to intrude on: off we went to Krahenschanze.

“We may be safe against magic,” I explained, “but we won’t have anywhere to hide if the authorities come knocking. They won’t hesitate for a second to bust down the door to a mere servant’s home.”

What was more, I’d sensed the Ashen Fraulein throwing a fit upstairs a few moments prior. Our presence made the house a target for search spells, which tickled the silkie’s fury. As the keeper of this dwelling, uninvited guests were sure to upset her. Personally, I considered myself a tenant solely thanks to her benevolence; it was best to ride out this episode anywhere but here. Plus, a silkie guarding her home was nigh invincible. Alfar wielded utterly overwhelming power when dealing in their place of power, and I would hate for some poor, unknowing mage to eat the brunt of her wrath for accidentally trespassing.

“I know of a place that no one would dare set foot uninvited.”

“Wait,” Mika cut in. “Are you sure about this, Erich?”

“It’ll be fine. She won’t have any complaints about me merely inviting a guest.”

Besides, I thought, I have an excuse or two up my sleeve.

[Tips] A counterspell war is a battle between mages waged via magic. While some are simple exchanges of destructive spells, many occur entirely in the realm of espionage or intrigue. Much like how traditional wars are fought on and off the battlefield, counterspell wars span a wide range of potential settings.

Also, the term is often used even when one side utilizes divine miracles as opposed to magic.

Why had the Trialist Empire stood for five centuries despite being surrounded by enemies on all fronts, championing a culture and mode of society unseen in any other nation? Why did it stand tall as a great power whose influence permeated the greater part of the central continent’s western reach?

The answers were many: a favorable geopolitical location; a lack of racial persecution that allowed full use of its multicultural populace; an efficient and bureaucratic—and ruthless, as those who lived through it would add—selection process for nobility that occurred early on in the nation’s history.

Ask for an explanation, and one would be showered with innumerable theories from countless historians, all insisting that they alone knew the true reason. Yet if we were to ask what qualities allowed Rhinians to build their sprawling Empire, one would surely find itself on every list: their staunch belief that achievement be rewarded amply.

A woman sat exhausted, the deep bags under her eyes and a terrible complexion hidden under a layer of powder and rouge. Messy from days without washing, her hair could only be kept in place with a liberal dose of perfumed oil. As she stared at the trinkets lined up on her desk, she felt as though all strength was fighting to leave her body.

“I found these scattered about the city, so I elected to bring them to you. I’ve made a handful of attempts to eliminate decoys to bolster my spell’s efficacy, but my efforts only led me to these.”

A half-written letter, a mountain of unopened reports, and enough formal grievances to spill off the table and onto the floor packed Mechthild’s office tight. Though she’d hired a civil servant to handle her paperwork, there were so many issues that ultimately required her oversight as the commander of the search that she hadn’t been able to keep up at all.

The magus she’d met three days earlier had gone out of his way to pay her a visit, and used what precious little desk space remained to show her something that shocked her to her core.

One glance had been enough for the servant to recognize that the three dolls depicted her master. They’d been meticulously crafted, as if someone had shrunk down her lady to an eighth of her size; for reasons unclear, each depicted her in a different pose to further please the eye with a masterwork of artistry.

The first showed her standing upright, praying with her eyes closed; the second saw her on her knees, facing the earth, surely singing a hallowed hymn; the last depicted her dancing with both arms outstretched, her hair fluttering about her. Each piece was unique and detailed, and had this been a normal day, the woman would have reached for her wallet and politely asked to purchase them.

But the price mattered not in their current state of affairs. More importantly, these were the decoys the magus had explained on their first meeting.

Mechthild did not understand. Surely, these had been crafted in order to throw her and her men off her lady’s trail, but did they really need to be this well-made?

“I inspected these for the sake of my report and found them to be decoys of exceedingly superior make. They contained a charm inside with a signature written in blood. Paired with the impeccable attention to detail, it is nearly impossible to tell these apart from the real lady using magic. I am absolutely certain that whoever created these is a pervert—no sane person would go this far.”

“I suspected as much... Even I can tell.”

What was the craftsman thinking as he worked? Looking at these, it seemed less likely that a lovestruck mage decided to help the girl escape, and more that a crazed man enchanted by her beauty decided to kidnap her. The commander of the search concurred with the magus’s absolute confidence in the creator’s perversion.

“There were a handful of safeguards in place to prevent their use as targets in a curse, but I have brought them here to be prudent. What would you like me to do? I can dispose of them in a safe manner if you’d like, but I imagine that you may wish to handle this within the family, seeing as they depict the young lady of the house.”

“Yes, well... Please leave them here. We shall handle it.”

Despite agreeing to take responsibility for them, the woman began to pity her future self: discarding something that bore such a close resemblance to her lady would weigh on her. As difficult as it would be to throw them away, showing them to her liege when all was said and done would surely be met with a troubled smile and both of them sharing the burden.

Handing them to her employer—the distinction between whom she served and who paid her was a common one—was no better. He was an eccentric who allowed his hobbies to absorb him to such an extent that she was sometimes baffled at his continued leadership of the clan, but he was also a father who loved his daughter; keeping these away from him was better than inciting a crazed response.

But she felt that to destroy them as the magus suggested would be a waste of these perfect recreations. She truly was at an impasse: she couldn’t bring herself to be rid of them, but putting them on display in her room would surely cause a scene somewhere down the line. This was giving her a massive headache.

“Also, I bear correspondence from my master.”

Opening the letter with a hand on her temple, the woman instantaneously had to fight the urge to tear the paper to shreds. The letter read thusly: “Sorry about my inexperienced student. I’ll give you a refund for the work he did. I’d love to come help and all, but my research is getting good, so give me a bit, okay?”

Naturally, the author was a prestigious magus who bore the rank of professor, and the actual contents of the letter did not read so frivolously. The grammar, style, and verbiage all abided by the rules of etiquette as a shining example of imperial aristocratic penmanship. Its sole flaw was that, for all its mannerly airs, even the most favorable interpretation amounted to the same message as the casual hypothetical.

You may think, Surely he can’t get away with that. Alas.

Character aside, the man in question was a professor at the Imperial College who had earned his status through diligence, not blood. The stark meritocracy that laid the foundations of the Empire meant people like him were afforded some leeway in the realm of social misconduct.

In fact, a slothful methuselah once abused such lenience to spend years camping in the College’s library, and there was an infamous wraith who unabashedly and openly pursued her personal interests for similar reasons. The only way of winning over someone in power was to face them with greater authority; the woman was but a steward, and as you may expect, she did not carry all the might of her employer.

There were two ways to convince a professor to abandon their research and bend to her will: she either needed the power of someone who could force them to or a topic that would compel them into voluntary assistance. Sadly, she had neither.

Though she acted as proxy for the head of the house, she was ultimately no more than a lackey doing chores. The professor likely expected her employer to come out himself if the task was actually important.

And what a compelling argument that is, Mechthild thought, pushing down the stinging pain suddenly manifesting in her gut.

“...I am so very sorry,” the magus said. “My master has a conference soon, you see...”

The man bowed apologetically. From his perspective, he’d hoped his master would cover for his mistake and help him save face. Unfortunately, whatever pet project the professor was working on took priority over his disciple’s dignity.

“No, it isn’t a problem. Not at all... Would you please just let him know that I would appreciate a message should he find himself with time to spare?”

“Of course. I shall also continue to work within my bounds. With that, I shall take my leave.”

“I wish you a safe journey home.”

You’re all worthless. Rage and bloodlust boiled up from the depths of her heart, but the woman wrung out all her self-control and managed to see the man off with a flat expression.

All of this was her employer’s fault. He’d been so beside himself as he prepared to welcome his daughter that he’d let what should have been a tightly kept secret slip to one of the maids. While she was sure the maid was enduring a steep punishment by now, Mechthild believed the blame lay with the lord of the house for being careless enough that a mere maid could catch on.

Furthermore, she simply could not comprehend the thought process behind holing up in a conference room in the middle of this important procedure just because he’d found someone who piqued his interest. Had he been around—not even that! Had he at least assigned an influential member of the main house to help, all this could have been resolved much sooner. This was the same man who still refused to let go of his professorship. Surely he must have had an underclassman or two whom he could task with a favor.

The woman’s rage was so rabid that she legitimately feared fainting from a burst blood vessel in her brain, but a series of cautious knocks at the door quickly extinguished the flames of fury. She reordered the scattered documents and letters before permitting the visitor entrance.

“U-Um, Lady Mechthild?”

One of her subordinates clad in holy garments walked through the door. She, like their master, could most often be found praying in a secluded church. The nun was something of an adjutant, who was tasked with accompanying the young lady places where the bodyguard was barred from entry.

The nun carried in a tray with a hot bowl of food; the steam rising up was her concern over her overworked superior given physical form.

Unfortunately, Mechthild was not looking forward to a nice meal: she had sent the girl off with a letter hoping for her to return with any kind of response from the man in charge. The nun’s sorry smile and the tray carrying nothing but a gentle pot of porridge—those close to the woman all knew about her chronic gastritis—and a wine glass were evidence that her expectations had been betrayed.

“Not yet, I take it?”

“Um, well... Yes, not yet.”

If sighs had mass, then hers would have plummeted through the floor and sunk into the pits of hell. Massaging the bridge of her nose, she waved the girl inside.

Mechthild resented her employer—the root of this whole ordeal—with every fiber of her being. Not only was he the instigator of the overarching nightmare she found herself in, but he was directly at fault for the theatrical runaway she’d been dealing with for three days now. The only reason an unworldly nun with no one to turn to was now evading detection was because of him.

If only he’d been more careful in wording his letters. If only he’d paid more attention to his daughter’s growth. If only he’d realized in how many ways the apple failed to fall far from the tree. Had a single one of these been true, the woman would not have had to run her frail mensch body into the ground for three days and nights, fueled only by short naps and arcane drugs.

“It would seem that, well, um, his current conversation is proving quite...engaging, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign that he, er...”

“Enough,” Mechthild said, waving her hand.

Her history with their lord was long, and she knew well just what kind of creature he was. Oh, indeed, she knew all too well—down to the familiar pain in her bowels.

Her employer was, in most cases, a talented man. Where lesser lords would abscond in a fit of tears within days of inheriting the litany of arduous duties that came with his position, he handled them all as a mere side venture for his hobbies. He was the kind of verifiable genius who did more than avoid catastrophic failure; he actively bettered the situations he dealt in.

But once his curiosity was piqued, the jig was up.

Usually, a letter or thought sent his way was enough to pull his attention away from academic merrymaking, but nothing worked at his most engrossed. Even if the Emperor himself summoned him to the palace—a claim backed up by multiple documented accounts—he would continue indulging himself in whatever so gripped him.

The man had personally handed Mechthild a magical device that would deliver her thoughts to him, but it was no better than a brick if he disabled his end of the communication; letters were met with no reply. Crises concerning his own estate or the fate of the Empire meant nothing in the face of his interests.

She was painfully aware that he led a life incomprehensible to mensch; though they shared similar forms, the beast within was totally different. Reaching true understanding was no small feat.

Mechthild let out a long sigh and asked, “And the reports from the highways?”

“We’ve mobilized the city garrison, but no luck so far. The director of the imperial guard has kindly tasked his infantry with checking within the capital’s borders, but...”

“No luck, I take it.”

Berylin’s garrison was full of talented soldiers. It was composed entirely of veterans who had several years of experience serving as guards in other imperial cities, and they were selected for discipline and appearance—the capital was the hub of foreign diplomacy, after all.

Skill varied between individuals, of course, but they outstripped the watchmen killing time in smaller cities in every metric of pen and sword. The sense of duty that came with promotion to a post in the capital meant they invariably took pride in their work, and one could hardly find a better fit for the slow and steady job of inspecting traffic.

Meanwhile, the Emperor’s jager unit was composed entirely of huntsmen and scouts who’d been recommended for the position; searching for a mark was their specialty. True, a more precise definition would peg their main activities as the reconnaissance and pursuit that bookended a wartime battle, but they were still more than capable of seeking out a target in the city.

The woman and her flock had called in every favor they could to amass a force like no other. Calling upon the city guard alone was ordinarily beyond the scope of a single family’s power, and the authority required to order around the secret service went without saying. This was only possible thanks to the cooperation of her employer’s secretaries and clansmen, and the magnanimous collaborators from the church, who were all surely dying of overwork in the palace right about now.

Yet despite having assembled this utter dream team, they still had not found the lone girl. Here stood a collection of talent that could apprehend a world-class spy; how in the name of all that was good could they let a sheltered priestess who did nothing but pray roam free for three days?

The woman simply could not fathom how this could be, and those taking part in the investigation were beginning to cock their heads; were they really being sent after an ignorant young lady? It would be easier still to believe that they were chasing a spirit that could hide its presence at will.

“Please have them continue their searches. I will head to the palace and speak to the secretaries about any adjustments that need to be made.”

“Understood. But the landing is scheduled for—”

“I know,” the woman muttered. Truth be told, she had planned to drown in work pertaining to a completely separate issue until the heiress decided to head for the hills. The task must have fallen to someone else, judging from how the event seemed to be going as planned.

More importantly, this was sure to draw the attention of her employer away from his long, long chat. Her interrogation as to why a “simple question” turned into a month-long conversation could wait for another time.

“In that case, I shall ask for the details after discussing with the secretaries.”

“Huh? No, please, someone else can handle that. Lady Mechthild, you need to rest.”

“I have many things that must be reported in person, so I shall go myself.”

Pushing the enticing pot of porridge out of her line of sight in a feat of sheer willpower, the dutiful attendant pulled her cloak off the coat rack in the name of servitude. Her mantle was a thick, dark pelisse which left her right arm unhindered; the crest of a wine glass split down the center was embroidered on it in silver thread.

Donning the crest of shattered antiquated evils, of value drawn from strength and not history, of the venerated House Erstreich, the woman steeled herself for a marriage with her stomachache and left her seat.

She was to meet with the pitiable vampiric secretaries who shared her unenviable position, and would then pay her employer a visit with a morsel of news in hand: the airship was arriving at the capital.

[Tips] House Erstreich’s crest is a wine glass split in half. The original Erstreich belonged to a branch of a branch of an ancient vampire predating the Empire. After emerging victorious in the founding war, he is said to have broken the old patriarch’s emblem—that is, a wine glass—and announced that, in the end, power spoke louder than heritage.

Walking around town as of late was terrifying; it was like living in the wake of a terrorist attack. City guards patrolled every corner at least twice as often as usual, there were casual inspection points in every district, and customs harshly scrutinized anyone passing through the gates despite the ongoing busyness of spring traffic.

Furthermore, the patrols searched through every non-noble house they came across—with the homeowner’s “permission,” of course—in what amounted to warrantless raids. While I’d have expected the other precautions if, say, Tokyo or Osaka was hosting a global summit, this last point was a startling first for me.

Finally, dragon knights whom I could only assume were partnered with the police circled the skies above; for the first time, I even spotted a few avian races employing their gifts of flight to join them in patrol.

If I didn’t know what was going on, I would have thought we were going to war...but what scared me most was that the denizens of the capital shrugged it off with a casual, “Again?”

“Yeah, this happens a lot here.”

Mika gave me some insight as a veteran Beryliner while picking out an apple from a street stall. It was a breed sourced from the archipelago in the polar north that had been cultivated here in the Empire; being a brighter red than native apples made it highly popular around these parts.

“It’s always like this when a foreign big shot comes over, so I doubt it’s all about our friend.”

But you know, the changing season had brought a fresh wardrobe with it, and even the most common of fruits felt poignant when in my well-dressed friend’s hand.

“Hello? Erich? Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just... That apple suits you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Mika giggled; the beautiful maiden’s laugh was brighter than the red apple in her hand.

That’s right: much to my bemusement, Mika’s shift had come. Today was the first day of her cycle, and I’d been caught terribly off guard when we’d met up. This was already the third time I’d seen her female form, and yet I wasn’t even close to getting used to her charms.

She pulled out her wallet with cheerful laughter, handed the merchant a copper, and walked on ahead.

“Mm,” Mika said. “This one’s juicy and sweet!”

Seeing her plump, scarlet lips pressed against the red skin of the apple ought to have been so very mundane, but curiously, I found it seductive enough to make me dizzy. My gaze was dragged toward the point of contact, and my eyes continued to follow her tongue as it chased a bead of juice rolling down her cheek.

My fascination was partly fueled by fatigue, but only partly; her actions made for a dreamlike scene. If it did pop up in my dreams, though, a certain brilliant philosopher’s psychoanalytic interpretations would probably lead me to the conclusion that I was just pent-up.

“You tired?” she asked, tossing the half-eaten fruit my way. “Here, have a bite and chin up.”

Something about the whole situation made me feel like her giving me the apple would be plastered front and center on the marketing material had this been a dating sim. Naturally, it would have been backed up with the game’s most moving soundtrack and the highest-quality animation to match.

“...Yum.”

I bit into it with a satisfying crunch, letting the harmony of sweet and sour fill my mouth, and felt a little better, just as Mika had said. We regularly shared food regardless of her gender, so I wasn’t about to start blushing over an indirect kiss...but my complexion was suspect: apparently, I was incredibly pale.

“You don’t look too good,” Mika said. “Have you been sleeping well?”

“Not really... What we’ve done has started to sink in, and the anxiety’s been keeping me up. Plus, even after I cleaned everything up, having the city guard knock on my door in the middle of the night freaked me out.”

Also, my expenditures were starting to mount, though they weren’t necessarily related to my wallet. That said, Mika seemed pretty tired herself, so I wasn’t alone.

“Can you tell?” she asked. “I mean, we’ve gotten ourselves into something pretty big, so I can’t help but be nervous. Whatever do you think will happen should our fair lady’s ploy fail?”

“I wonder...”

While that was a moot point so long as we succeeded, the thought of what would happen otherwise sent a chill down my spine. Even if we pleaded that we’d had no choice but to obey her noble command, the wrath of her family would ultimately dictate our sentence for helping her escape.

Strict commitment to the law was one of the Trialist Empire’s charms, but the powers of discretion unfortunately lay with the aristocracy. Who knew what would happen if they were in a bad mood? They wouldn’t hang us and our whole families or anything—imperial law didn’t even have punishments of association that severe—but we were best off steeling ourselves against the possibility of imprisonment or hard labor.

I didn’t regret our actions one bit, but we really were doing something insane. Having connections in power that would at least be willing to hear our side meant we weren’t totally lost, but we would have had to be utterly demented to try this without any backing. The biggest thing keeping my peace of mind together was that I could bow down and promise a blank check of modeling favors to Lady Leizniz to insure our lives; otherwise, I wouldn’t have managed for three days on only light insomnia.

Now, you may ask what I’d been doing for three whole days. The answer was incredibly simple. In fact, I could wrap it up in one sentence: Miss Celia, Elisa, and I had cooped up in the madam’s atelier.

This was calculated, mind you. First, our pursuers were connected to the church, which made it doubtful they’d have close ties within the College. Even if they did, a researcher’s personal laboratory could only be intruded on if they were under suspicion of treason or another equally severe crime, so we didn’t have to worry about police raids.

Second, that living icon of indolence loved to peek in on others, but was demonstrably less enthused about having her own privacy invaded. Despite having studied under her, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the overdone barriers she’d set up all around the atelier, meaning we would be safe against the spells of all but the best professors.

Last, I could come up with any number of reasonable excuses as to why I was holing up there. Magia and their students locked themselves indoors as frequently as salarymen made their morning commutes; if I explained that my live-in sister had fallen ill, having a servant spend several nights was just as normal. I could even bring in any guest I wanted under the pretext of their helping me nurse my patient. It wasn’t as if they had ID cards to log every entry and exit; no one would notice that one person had gone in but hadn’t come out so long as we played it cool.

I mean, considering the building, I imagined there were quite a few cases wherein someone had gone in without ever coming back out. In fact, I’d heard rumors of someone coming back out multiple times in a row, so...

All things considered, it was hardest to see what was under one’s own nose, and I supposed the bluebird of happiness was closer than I’d first thought.

We walked around the marketplace in the low quarter, nibbling on the apple as we bought up groceries. Lady Agrippina’s continued subscription to delivered meals meant we didn’t have to worry about cooking, but I was giving my portion to Miss Celia, so I needed to get my own food elsewhere.

I couldn’t afford to go back to my lodging much. For reasons unknown, Elisa’s sour mood had yet to resolve itself, and I didn’t want to leave Miss Celia all alone to deal with it. I’d spent the first night at home to see how things would play out, which was when the city guard had decided to inspect my residence—whether that was a stroke of good luck or bad was up for debate.

They would have broken down the door to perform their search if need be. It went without saying that the Ashen Fraulein would have been livid beyond belief, so I was fortunate in the sense that I’d prevented extra trouble. Still, inviting them inside and watching them comb through everything had been taxing on my sanity: I’d been sweating over the fear that they’d find a hair that wasn’t mine or something, even though there wasn’t any rational reason for them to interrogate me for that.

Regardless, my heart-racing and stomach-churning three days were coming to an end. Come evening, Miss Celia would awake and rub the drowsiness out of her eyes, and we’d finally hear how she intended on getting to her aunt in Lipzi in one day.

“Hey, Erich, wanna take a quick break?”

I looked up from confirming the contents of my paper bag—the lack of refrigerators made the daily need to purchase perishables such a chore—to find Mika tugging at my sleeve. It wasn’t fair that the simplest mannerisms felt rounder and cuter when she was a girl; when the good ladies and gentlemen of the world caught on to my old chum’s charms, I had a feeling that the tastes of society as a whole were in for a rude awakening.

Setting my offhand thoughts aside, I followed Mika’s pointed finger to find a familiar kind of stall, one that always popped up around this time of year.

“Ice candy, huh? Sounds good.”

“Right? It’s been warming up, so let’s take a seat and enjoy ourselves. I bet the other two will be really happy if we bring them some too.”

The parasol-shaded pushcart was the kind of quaint summer-treat trafficker that one might see in the countryside of modern Japan. Unlike those that accompanied larger caravans into rural cantons, these fellows were retailers—not mages. The ones I’d seen back in Konigstuhl had been private entrepreneurs, producing ice with simple cantrips and selling their snacks on the spot from the back of their wagons like preindustrial food trucks. Here in the city, the candies were mass-produced by some absentee spellcaster or another who then hired middlemen to peddle their wares on the streets.

It was hard to say which made the tastier treat, but the businesses here in Berylin generally dealt in higher-quality confections, making it harder to find duds. The brains behind each operation could usually be traced back to a municipal ice-keeper who produced extra product on the side, or a full-fledged magus with noble connections trying to earn some extra coin—or avoid their taxes. Basically, the market was full of talent from the ground up.

However, they were also markedly more expensive: a caravan mage might charge twenty-five assarii a pop, whereas urban peddlers doubled that price at the very minimum. Fancier ones casually cleared a libra each, even when marketed toward common folk, so indulging oneself required a serious discussion with one’s wallet.

“Seventy-five assarii per,” I read aloud. “Well, it is important to treat ourselves every now and again.”

“And we can always make more pieces if we need the coin.”

This shop’s price clocked in at three quarters—no small number for a servant and student strapped for cash—but we thankfully had received an ample allowance from Sir Feige, and our purses were plump from our ehrengarde business.

Figuring that this could offer some much-needed relief for our souls, we walked over side by side, ready to swallow the price. But you know, Mika, I can’t help but think we shouldn’t be locking arms if you’re as hot as you say.

“Oh,” I said, “they have ice pops. I think I’ll go with that.”

I was cognizant of my role as bug repellent, though, so I didn’t bother putting up any resistance. After looking through the shop’s selection, I decided on a textbook ice pop: it was a white, crisp, frozen rod of flavored water on a stick.

“Hmm, then I’ll go with...huh. This is hard. Do you think milk or lemon would be better? I want something sweet, but I want to feel nice and fresh after too.”

On the other hand, the large array of different flavors had made Mika indecisive. She was planning on getting a hard pastry bowl with the frozen treat placed inside—probably the standard when it came to imperial ice candy. Unable to keep watching her struggle, I handed the shopkeeper a coin and asked him to put on a scoop of each.

“Huh?! No, Erich, I couldn’t!”

“Come on, don’t sweat it, old chum. I know I’m asking a lot of you, so just think of it as an apology gift.”

“But it’s so expensive...”

Mika’s persistence caused the man running the stand to boom with laughter. The callistian’s ursine coat seemed like it would make the coming season a struggle, but a slight misunderstanding had put him in merry spirits.

“Missie, your boyfriend’s trying his best to show off, and part of being a good girlfriend’s letting him do it. Boys are funny creatures that’ll throw around their muscles and wallets to try and prove they’re dependable, see?”

“B-Boyfriend?!”

Mika was still totally flustered when the large man deftly scooped up some flavored ice with a twirl of his spoon and pushed the bowl onto her. Then, he handed me a quarter back from the change I’d given him.

“Just this once, okay?” he said.

“...Thank you kindly,” I responded. “I’ll be sure to support your business if our paths ever cross.”

“Attaboy,” he chuckled.

I’d planned on going somewhere else for Elisa and Miss Celia’s shares if these didn’t turn out to be exceptionally delicious, but now I had no choice but to stop by again. I pulled my blushing friend over to a bench and we sat down; I began working away at my ice pop before it could start melting.

Oh, that’s good! The milky flavor was sweet, but not too pronounced.

“Um, thanks, Erich.”

“Hm? Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing compared to what you’re doing for me. But you better hurry—the top’s already melting.”

“Ah!”

I held back a snicker as I watched her panic and dig in with a small wooden spoon. We enjoyed the sweet ice for a while; it took about half my ice pop to cool me off enough to regain control of my mental faculties, and Mika suddenly piped up as if she’d remembered something.

“By the way, have you ever heard of a ship that can sail through the air?”

A ship in the air? While I hadn’t heard of anything of the sort, the topic was proper fantasy and I was all for finding out more. Airships were a well-worn trope in ancient mythologies and stories, but that was because they tickled some romantic notion that pervaded every human culture.

Modern Earth dwellers flew often, but only in the context of a sterilized aerial cruise. One couldn’t feel the breeze, nor gaze out at the never-ending panoramic skies below; all that one felt in the airtight box of an airplane was the sway of turbulence or ear-popping barometric shifts in pressure.

The airships that sailed into an unknown, endless frontier in fantasy settings were different. Rushing winds whipped those standing on deck, and one could dangle their legs off the side to enjoy a sea of clouds to their heart’s content. What boy could ever hope to contain their excitement over airships?!

“I happened to overhear a little something during lecture,” Mika continued. “Apparently, a ship that sails through the sky is coming today.”

“Whoa,” I marveled. “What else—what else?”

Unfortunately, in all the time I’d spent in this world, I had yet to hear a peep about the outlandish vehicles that I expected of fairy-tale settings—until now.

“Well, I don’t know that many details, since this is all secondhand...”

Mika looked to be enjoying herself tremendously as she unveiled her big rumor. Just as I was steeped in the boyish delusion of flying boats, she seemed entrenched in the maidenly romance of flight itself. Oh, how blessed I was to have a friend with whom I could share these dreams.

“But apparently, it’s a newly invented vessel backed by the Emperor himself! It’s supposed to change the future of the whole Empire, and all sorts of people are working on it. And they’re bringing it to Berylin so they can show off the crown’s power.”

“Wow! But it’s kind of strange that there hasn’t been any news about it.”

“Come on, Erich. Obviously, the best way to grab people’s attention is to stay quiet, and then...bam! Out of nowhere! If they build up too much anticipation beforehand, the surprise of it coming won’t hit as hard.”

True enough. Groundbreaking technologies of this kind were most astonishing when they appeared out of the blue without any forewarning. If a flying ship soared over the capital unannounced, every citizen in the capital would remember it for as long as they lived.

“What’s more, my master got called to the imperial palace today for a massive terrace banquet. I know it’s nearly summer, but don’t you think the capital is still a bit cold at night?”

“And they’re hosting it outside anyway...which means the people there...”

“Right! I think they’re inviting foreign diplomats and ambassadors there.”

Berylin was home to embassies belonging to all its political partners. These sorts of institutions were a natural byproduct of the need for smooth and speedy international relations, but could also be said to have arisen after the stubborn nations involved realized that they benefited from having a means to end their repetitive wars in some peaceable fashion.

Despite the arcane technologies that allowed for thought transfer and mystic voice receivers, the world was still without telephones or even telegrams; starting and ending wars proved to be a royal logistical pain. Unlike the period of warring states that had preceded Rhine’s founding, no single country had the power to plow through another and occupy its territory.

War was a costly endeavor: a nation couldn’t just annihilate the opposing military forces, declare that it now owned the lands they occupied, and call it a day. Routing a mobilized army still left an inevitable siege, and even after felling a city, it cost a lot of time, effort, and oh lord did it cost money to stamp out remaining dissent.

Winning a war didn’t mean one could claim the losers as faithful taxpayers; no one was going to roll over and pony up. Purging the local leadership and replacing them with new rulers was also a massive undertaking; the budget and manpower needed to keep a newly conquered territory until discord was quelled could outstrip whatever spoils were to be gained from the land, especially once the cost of the preceding battle was factored in.

This economic burden was one that grew exponentially as societies advanced, and the list of nations that could bear it shrunk with every passing year. Small countries could still potentially swallow another of their size whole in one fell swoop, but two rival players on the world stage could hope at best to file off a handful of metroplexes over the course of decades. If enough influential lords sniffed out a turning tide and defected one way in droves, there was a slim chance a major nation could collapse all at once—but that was a big if.

As such, the main mode of conflict between powerhouses had evolved into a game of pokes: snatching up suzerainty of nearby satellites, trading sovereignty of city-states, and exchanging economic demands shaped the battlefield. Everyone knew that the outbreak of war would lead to years of deadlock involving siege after siege until one side ran out of resources and had to sue for peace before they fizzled out entirely.

Not to mention that participating in conquest was as exhausting as fending it off. Taking victory when it showed itself was important, but an advancement made without any consideration for the manpower and resources spent in its achievement could threaten to weaken the victorious state. War truly was a difficult endeavor.

As a direct consequence of jeopardizing their existences on more than a few occasions throughout history, these nations had come to place embassies within one another’s borders—or so it went.

I couldn’t imagine the shock of seeing a seacraft fly through the air at what was meant to be a formal banquet like any other. I would have loved to see how much wine would be spat out mid-sip in person. Looking at the First World War of Earth was proof enough of how important the advent of flight was. I was sure the diplomats in attendance would make up all sorts of excuses to leave the event early and dispatch messengers to their motherlands posthaste. I felt bad for the poor couriers, forced to run out in the dead of the night.

“There have been rumors about the development of flying ships for decades now, but I hear that this is the first time ever one’s going to be unveiled. The feast is supposed to start in the evening, and I already can’t wait.”

“I guess we’ll have to stare at the clouds on our way home.”

My heart had been dancing at the wondrous marvels of this world for the past decade straight, but the only other thing that had gotten me this giddy was my first encounter with magic. The sky was such a fantastic thing: my childhood dreams of standing on the deck of an airship with the wind blowing through my hair came back to life; my imagination drifted to the freedom of soaring on drakeback; my heart pounded at the thought of a personal airplane with a tiny engine taking off.

Open skies were just so incredibly wonderful—as if to say this is fantasy, this is what boyhood is about! I wished to ride on board myself; I wondered how long it would be before they were open to the public. New state-sponsored tech wasn’t going to be easily mass-producible.

“I’m so jealous,” I said. “I want to try riding one too.”

“Same here. Spells of flight are really hard and I’m not a good fit for them, so I’d given up hope. But thinking that I might get to fly one day makes the world of tomorrow seem so dazzling.”

Mika’s penchant for dramatic turns of phrase paired well with our conversation as we went back and forth while staring into the heavens. I felt so conflicted: the dream of flight alone was tempting me to join the imperial army.

As strange as it may be to say as someone dipping my toes into space-bending magic, flying spells were invariably difficult and expensive to acquire. Magia that could freely move in three dimensions were a rarity, and people could build whole careers off that skill alone. In fact, achieving flight alone was enough to go from the already-prestigious title of magus to that of an ornithurge. They were as uncommon abroad as they were in the Empire, and every country prized them alongside their dragon knights as being one of the few forces capable of aerial combat.

Thinking about it for any length of time was enough to see why. From a tabletop perspective, taking to the air was up there with long-range teleportation in its ability to nip a campaign in the bud. Whether the heroes were to sneak into an enemy base or get past a blockade, the ability to fly nullified all the awful traps the GM stayed up at night designing with a devilish grin.

It was downright unethical. The day I designed a booby-trapped hallway only to hear, “Er, I float five centimeters off the ground and go through, and I’m gonna tie a rope up high on the other side for everyone to climb on,” would never leave me...

“I wonder what kind of boat it is,” Mika said. “I’ve only ever seen rivercraft, but it might be one of those giant sea vessels you see in paintings.”

“I bet it’ll be a gargantuan sailboat—one that’ll puff up dozens of giant sails against the backdrop of the blue sky, slowly floating with the wind.”

“That’s awesome...”

“I know...”

Moving past my otherworldly trauma, Mika and I finished off our chilled snacks with our eyes still skybound. Still stuck in the land of dreams, we purchased more for the pair awaiting our return...but I think that we were fatigued beyond help.

After all, here was a high-speed mode of transport all but made to order, and somehow, we didn’t manage to connect the dots to Miss Celia’s “ride.” Had we been in our usual states of mind, we would have spotted the link immediately and had time to prepare ourselves for the shock. Instead, the two of us walked back to the College, blissfully ignorant of whatever our friend’s plan might be.

[Tips] Unlike man-to-man disagreements, spats between nations carry the paradox of absolutely necessitating some sort of compromise while not having an easy means of negotiation. As the scope of states balloons, communication technology has failed to keep up, making far-reaching conglomerations not yet a reality; instead, major powers elect to send embassies and politically protected ambassadors to fill them.

Cecilia was as sheltered as they come, and she had spent most of her life holed up in a monastery. She spent her days revering the Goddess of Night, praying in Her tranquil sanctuary, and emulating Her grace by serving the people of the land. As serene as this lifestyle was, it was rather devoid of surprise.

The hymns she sang were the same that she’d sung hundreds upon thousands of times before. Her days studying proverbs and giving alms to the faithful and needy were eternal repetitions of a set schedule.

Yet life at the church, surely boredom epitomized to some, was not so bad for Cecilia. In South Rhine, far from the imperial capital and regional capital alike, on Fullbright Hill—though it seemed dubious whether the twenty-four-hundred-meter summit constituted a hill—she found herself leading a life she’d chosen to live.

Yes, she had arrived there on order of her parents, but over time, her own desires had shifted to align. A life of earnest prayer and wholehearted faith in the Goddess proved a good one. Words could not describe the soothing fulfillment that engulfed her in those moments when she truly felt the Mother’s tenderhearted embrace.

This sensation was something unknowable to all but pure-blooded vampires—a satisfaction and repose limited to those born with inherited sin, those who were denied the fate of death. At times, the reaper was liberty; he was forgiveness. Alas, no explanation could suffice for mortal comprehension, just as the immortals could never understand the lesser races’ frantic fear of aging.

By no means could she consider a life so rich with the peace absent in worldly cities a bad one. Though others pitied her fall from epicurean luxury to simple clothes and meals, Cecilia valued this placid state more highly than any pile of gold coins.

That said, her life after having come to the capital and been called to her father’s side had been an unbroken string of surprises rife with excitement.

It wasn’t that she thought one was better than the other. But in the three meager days since she’d overheard the maids’ whispers and fled her house, her two friends had given her more wonder and drama than all her years in the church.

She’d run on the rooftops to escape her pursuers; she’d sneaked into the sewers, only to witness her first life-or-death battle; she’d dressed up in disguise and hidden herself away in the Mage’s Corridor, and even made her way to the Imperial College—a place she’d only heard of secondhand. Positively everything was new to her, and the flood of unfiltered information reignited a long-dormant sense of curiosity.

Even now, she wanted to get up and explore any place her feet could carry her to. The only reason she hadn’t was the plea of the young piecemaker who’d saved her to stay put, handing her a book of ehrengarde puzzles and seating her in his sister’s room with tears in his eyes.

And of course, how could we forget the boy? Were it not for him, Cecilia would have been dragged back to the manor ages ago. She would have fallen into that alleyway burnt orange by the setting sun, and her head would have burst like an overripe fig. Decapitation spelled no doom for vampires, but both Sun and Moon had vied for control of the heavens in that hour; her regeneration would have been long. Even a purebred like herself would have been apprehended before regaining consciousness.

Cecilia had been on the verge of dying for the first time in an unknown city, of meeting her end alongside the end.

Yet it was not so. Catching her in gentle arms, the two of them appeared.

It was the piecemaker boy whom she’d dueled over the board many a time. Despite his pretty hair and kitten-like eyes, he had been a fiendish rapscallion in their games, and she’d frequented his stall determined to get the better of him.

The boy was incredibly kind. He was a gentleman unthinkable from his play, going so far as to protect her without any connection between them—all without a second thought of the fate that could await a commoner butting into noble politics to right the wrong of an unwanted marriage. Far from stopping there, he even shouldered the danger of sheltering her in his master’s abode without a hint of hesitation.

With him came the raven-haired mage by his side. Hailing from a people as peculiar as Cecilia’s, they had accepted her as a friend. Not only had their magic shielded her, they’d created a path to safety when it seemed there was nowhere left to go.

Surely, hers could not have been a good first impression. Without Cecilia, Mika and Erich both would have happily ended their days after comfortably soaking in a bathhouse. If they had so chosen, they could have even stopped their friend from taking the path of danger; she’d realized right away that the duo’s bond was something unshakable by a girl who’d literally fallen out of the sky.

Yet they had not. Raven black did not reject the actions of shimmering gold; it instead chose to protect the pitch-dark shade of night.

Though the pair lacked the armor and horses of the knights in fables, as they dragged her forward by the hand, Cecilia thought they must be the heroes the poets sung of. To cast everything aside for someone in need—for a lone girl in trouble—was precisely the stuff of sagas.

Selfless and compassionate, they volunteered themselves to see her predicament through. They refused to abandon her after learning of her origins; they stayed even though hers was a race that only grew easier to hate the more one learned.

Cecilia was a vampire, the progeny of a mensch whose tale lived on in an infamous fable, The Man Who Swindled the Sun. After tricking the Sun God into giving him immortality, the original vampire incurred the divine Father’s wrath, earning a curse to burn and blister his people in His light forevermore. Without the protection of shade, His curse would melt flesh and bone, and eventually reduce even their souls to ash.

Truthfully, this curse was tolerable. As a matter of fact, the Night Goddess Cecilia worshiped admonished her other half, stating that He who was tricked was at fault as well. When She appeared in the skies, the curse weakened; when the Sun God relinquished His daily reign, the vampires fully regained their undying nature.

The other curse was excruciating.

The patron god’s punishment spake thusly: drink directly from the warm fonts of bloody nectar which He hath created, or suffer eternal thirst.

Some may initially consider this to be a mistake; why not make it the other way around and deny them access to His creations? However, for all the Sun God’s impulsive tendencies, He was no fool; He knew that by tying their only reprieve from drought to conflict, He could curb the accursed people’s power to dominate. This restriction was the ultimate reason vampires had failed to ascend to hegemonic dominion, constrained to a fate of reasonable rule as statesmen of peaceful nations.

Without populous peoples to feed on, they were doomed to die out with their prey. If they succumbed to their basest urges, the clump of sheer mana next to their beating hearts would muddy their souls and reduce them to beasts; do that, and they would become the enemies of all men, reduced from people to monsters that needed to be driven into the sun.

The curse clung to a vampire’s instincts, bending their tastes and lust for vice in ways no other being could experience. The thirst was horrific—they couldn’t die. No matter how parched or how starved they got, the Sun God refused to reclaim his gift of immortality; after all, they suffered more this way.

How long it took before any given vampire began to hunger varied, and Cecilia’s devotion to the Mother Goddess was rewarded with a particularly long period of repose. Where others had to feed once per month, she could easily go half a year; if she put her mind to fasting, she could endure several years without losing her mind.

Sadly, that was not the case now. It had been quite a while since she’d last accepted a churchgoer’s charity, and she’d been slated to feast at a banquet hosted at her father’s villa. Running away had thrown away her chance to attend, and her recent overexertion meant her craving had been ramping up by the time she was hidden away.

It was torture. While all peoples were born understanding the pain of starvation, that of mensch was incomparable to the horror of vampiric thirst. A mensch could starve to the brink of death, deranged enough to sink teeth into their own newborn, and still they would not understand the pain. Such was the root of the vampires’ demonic classification; all their lunacy hinged on sustenance.

For all Cecilia’s attempts to stay strong, the discerning boy had found her out instantly. He was well versed in the unique predicaments of the world’s many kiths, perhaps because of his proximity to the College, and must have pieced together what was going on after looking at her struggle.

When she awoke next, she rose from the couch she was borrowing to find a wine glass filled with fresh blood. She wasted no time on such foolish questions as whose it was. There were only two warm fonts of nectar present, and even their short time together was enough to know the blindly doting brother would never spill his own sister’s blood.

The fact that he had said nothing and feigned ignorance spoke wordless volumes to his character and that of those who had raised him. He knew imperial vampires considered the act of sucking or drinking blood highly indecent: only during dinners with close friends and family or in the comfort of a secluded room did they dare partake, hiding in unseen shadows. The culinary culture of imperial vampires was a thoroughly cheerless affair.

Of course, they could also eat standard foods, and they could allow the cradle of drunkenness to rock them to sleep. Yet the only thing that could sate the truest of hungers was the crimson that floated in this cup.

Knowing the burden of her kind, the boy chose to take a step beyond merely saving Cecilia’s future: he bestowed upon her the benevolence of his own lifeblood.

To a mage, blood was priceless. It served as the circulator of internal mana and a catalyst for spells; few would consider giving it away under any circumstance. The more magecraft one studied, the more they were sure to realize the cost and dangers of entrusting it to another.

Yet here she was, holding a full cup of the stuff—no small amount by any metric. She had not even asked for it, and it was here with no mention of an expected thank-you.

The blood was heavy and delicious. Often telling of what went into a person’s body, whether that be food, drink, or the very air they breathed, the liquid conduit of mana revealed more than the family registry at a church.

Cecilia’s tongue went numb and she jumped and twitched in delight. It was young, healthy, and chock-full of magical power; it offered a stimulation unlike any other she’d experienced. The flavor was both gentle and explosive, dancing on her tongue in a way only mensch blood could. As it slid down her throat, it left behind a rich and brightening aftertaste.

When one considered that the contents of the glass had come from a young boy’s body, it seemed far too much, and yet she had finished it in the blink of an eye. Forgoing the modesty and virtuous poverty the Night Goddess endorsed, she greedily lapped at the droplets sticking to the cup with fangs brazenly exposed.

Cecilia would never live this down. To lose herself to such an extent that she would put gluttony over manners was not a matter of priesthood or nobility; she could hardly call herself a vampire. Longingly gazing at the perfectly clean wine glass after the fact was a disgrace like no other. At this rate, she would deserve the derogatory title used abroad: she was practically a bloodsucker.

She threw herself into a particularly complicated ehrengarde puzzle and straightened herself out. Pushing away the drained glass she’d been unable to let go of, she steeled herself to welcome him back as a proper priestess.

The boy would be home from shopping at any minute. Cecilia was going to have to explain how she intended to escape, so she needed to clear her mind, carry herself with poise, and make sure no shameful thoughts—

“We’re back! Man, it sure is getting hotter.”

The empress in her hands fell to the table, knocking away the loyal retainer and knight waiting on her below and toppling a sturdy castle in the process. The calamity of the board reflected her state of distress perfectly.

With the end of spring came warm weather; with warm weather came an open collar; and with an open collar came the boy’s neck, tantalizingly bare.

[Tips] In the Trialist Empire, using one’s fangs to feed straight from one’s prey is considered gauche; vampires instead feed by drinking from a glass. This tradition arose as a means of easing early imperial fears of their predatory nature. 

However, there is an exception made for a “lover”—a special partner who allows the vampire to sink their fangs into flesh unimpeded.

Mika and I returned to the atelier to find our vampiric lady in something of a panic. It was still a tad early for her to be up, but perhaps the unfamiliar environment meant she was having a hard time sleeping too. She looked to have been busying herself with the book of intermediate ehrengarde puzzles I’d brought as a time-killer, and dropped the piece in her hand as soon as she looked at me.

Huh? Do I look funny?

I’d made sure to do a cursory wipedown so as not to appear in front of a blue-blooded lady drenched in sweat, and I’d Cleaned my clothes to make sure I wouldn’t smell. Maybe it was time to start taking some add-ons for this spell to imbue myself with a pleasant perfume after the fact.

“Um,” I said cautiously, “is something the matter?”

“N-No! Not at all! Welcome back!”

I’d figured it would be best to probe into my mistakes for posterity’s sake; Miss Cecilia responded by whipping the puzzle book to her face so quickly that it left an afterimage.

Fair enough, I supposed: pointing out someone’s flaws was pretty awkward.

“As long as it isn’t anything important...” I knew it definitely was, but I moved on and began unpacking our luggage. When I turned around, I could feel an intense gaze drilling into my head and upper back.

Concerned, I groped around with an Unseen Hand...but didn’t find anything weird clinging to me. For a second there, I’d thought I’d fallen for the timeless “kick me” sign. Though I supposed Mika would have noticed a prank like that—assuming she wasn’t the culprit, that is.

In which case, I had no clue why Miss Celia was staring at me like this. I dwelt on the issue while flapping the hot air out of my shirt, when I suddenly sensed a presence behind me.

I know you’re trying to hide and all, but you’re not catching me off guard that easily. How many years do you think I spent dodging Margit?

“Welcome home, Dear Brother!”

But of course, I wasn’t going to dodge my adorable baby sister. Elisa phased through the door of a wardrobe and leapt at me; I intentionally let her get the jump. I caught her weightless body as she wrapped her arms around my neck and slotted her chin over my shoulder. Living up to my sister’s expectations was all part of a good big brother’s job.

“Wow, you scared me!” I said. “Come on, Elisa, that’s dangerous. What if you fell?”

“But I knew you’d catch me for sure, Dear Brother!”

Once upon a time, Margit had told me that leaping on another person took a great deal of courage: they might reflexively swat you away, or they might lose their balance and send both of you tumbling. Clinging to someone’s collar and burying one’s face in their chest or back could only be done with someone truly dependable.

Elisa’s joyful, innocent smile proved that she had absolute faith in me. No matter what she did, she was sure I would be there to catch and forgive her. I felt like I was using up all my good karma; our family’s little girl was an angel after all. I’d have to watch out for any gods trying to snatch her up as their bride.

“That doesn’t mean it’s good to jump on someone without notice, Elisa.”

“Oh, welcome to you as well, Mika!”

I was too much of a doter to scold her properly, but thankfully, Mika put in a gentle warning in my stead. Much to my delight, having spent so much time locked in together had made both of them comfortable with one another’s names.

“Besides, Elisa,” Mika continued, “you’re a well-to-do young lady. You can’t be hiding in the dresser like that. How long were you in there?”

“Umm, since my dear brother left.”

“Buwha?” A bizarre noise escaped my mouth. I’d stopped to do several errands on my way to meeting Mika, so I’d been out for a few hours; had she been in there this whole time? I asked her why she’d do something like that, and my sister pouted and turned away.

Ugh, so that’s it. She still wasn’t comfortable around Miss Celia.

I scolded her for being a bad girl and poked the air out of her puffed cheeks, but this just got her to giggle and squeeze me tighter. While I knew that the best thing to do for her as a person would be to seriously reprimand her, I just couldn’t bring myself to be hard on her when she was acting spoiled.

“You shouldn’t just ignore our guest, okay, Elisa?” Mika joined me in gently poking her cheek. “She prepared a lot of stories to tell you, you know.”

Mika then pointed at the small table next to Miss Cecilia’s temporary bed—which was a couch, by the way. She had staunchly refused to use the bed on the principle of not intruding on the sleeping grounds of the room’s master; I begrudgingly let her sleep on the couch, knowing that any mattress I could get my hands on would be several times less comfortable.

At any rate, the desk was stacked with books relating to the Night Goddess that Mika had borrowed from the College library. There were holy texts, hymns, and even picture books made for children, but they showed no signs of having been opened; Elisa really had hidden away the whole time.

Considering how Miss Celia was devout enough to employ miracles, I had no doubt she knew the scripture of her faith by heart. I felt guilty: she’d gone out of her way to ask for these all for Elisa, and never got the chance to use them.

“All is well, Mika,” the priestess said. “Children of her age are prone to such feelings. Matters of compatibility are often unamendable.”

Not even my old chum’s admonishment could get Elisa to face the vampire, but the victim of her neglect spoke up in her defense.

Miss Celia was right to say that this attitude was common in children. Whether a child took a liking to someone or not could be swayed by the most superficial things, and failing to adhere to social standards was a part of growing up. Whether the underlying cause was shyness or a bad first impression, it was often too much for an immature soul to explain in words; most simply let bygones be bygones and waited for time and growth to solve the issue.

The charitable priestess had claimed she was good with children, and here was the proof: not only did she understand them logically, but she had the benevolent mercy to forgive their childishness.

“You’re too soft, Celia...”

“I’m sorry, Mika. But really, I don’t mind.”

The vampire gracefully smiled on the couch and the tivisco crossed her arms with a troubled frown; I sat by the wayside appreciating the two black-haired beauties’ amicable exchange with the world’s cutest girl around my neck. What a blessed place to be. I felt so bad about being a guy stinking up the place that I wanted to turn into the potted plant in the corner.

“Wait, Dear Brother! What’s this?!”

“Huh? Oh, right, that’s a present. Look, ice candy!”

“Yay!”

However, our family’s little princess noticed our gift for her, so it was best to let her dig in quickly. It was preserved with the heat-retention spell I’d designed for my mystic thermite, so I wasn’t worried about it melting; I just didn’t want to make my twinkly-eyed sister wait longer than she had to.

“Well then.” I put on my brightest smile in the hopes that we might all be able to enjoy a cordial atmosphere. “Shall we partake in some tea?”

[Tips] Owing to its multicultural population, smell is a large part of imperial aesthetics. Excessive body odor and perfume alike are considered transgressions against races with keen noses. However, the art of selecting scents is a delicate one: while there are many wrong answers, there is hardly ever one that is universally correct.

The safest choice is usually to employ a lightly aromatic soap or flower to mask one’s sweat, with smoky smells following closely behind as a contender for least offensive. Citrus is harder to fit in for day-to-day use, as groups with canine or feline ancestry often find the tart odor much too strong.

The commandments bestowed from gods to man in the Trialist Empire of Rhine were not so heavy when compared to those of the deities of other lands. The flock—barring that of the Sun God who led them—predominantly upheld the virtues of austerity and chastity, but none expected the common person to rigidly adhere to every rule. Even the dedicated priests of Their cults were not held to a particularly strict standard.

Unchecked gluttony, adultery, or rampant lust were reasons for reproof whether the judge was divine or earthly; the Rhinian pantheon’s leniency was plain to see from how its priests were allowed to partake in matrimony, pursue flesh, or suckle the sweet nectar of drink so long as it was in moderation.

However, there was one exception: those who took after the loving Mother of the Night lived by a precept of self-discipline. The merciful matron goddess upheld that true compassion was not the product of abundance; benevolence was not a tool for the wealthy to trade wide margins for contentment with themselves.

At times, love was heavy; it was painful; it was excruciating. Empathy was rooted in the idea of sacrificing a part of oneself in the name of another.

Now, this was not exclusive to the Night Goddess, but Her church comprised several different factions. This differed from the religious delineations of Earth: those sometimes had entirely different rituals or even worshiped different entities, all due to discordant interpretations of the same holy scripture. Here in the Empire, circles of the same sect still pledged their devotions to the same deity, read their gospel in the same way, and were, strictly speaking, part of the same group.

Yet the faithful were ever liable to grope for more ways to demonstrate their devotion. Theological meditations on which aspect of their god of choice was holiest, or what would be most representative of their will, had been the beginnings for these religious diversions.

The gods may lovingly watch Their peoples, but those who ruled Rhine from Their heavenly perches had an unwritten rule to not interfere with the spiritual journeys of their flocks. Divine punishment and oracle alike were employed sparingly so long as an interpretation was not a self-serving desecration of Their names. As a direct result, the peoples below founded various circles in order to polish the cognitive sport of prayer into something more.

Upon first learning this, a certain blond boy had thought to himself that They were like authors who took no action against those who trod upon their canon, happy about the fact that people bothered to engage with their work so deeply—a rather pointless analogy, perhaps.

At any rate, the point at hand was that worship came in many forms. For example, take the Father that sat at the top of His pantheon. The Circle Brilliant chose to empty their wallets in His name, lavishly decorating their temples and rituals. On the other hand, those from the Circle Vivacious gratefully accepted His light and used it to earnestly raise the crops he gave life to. Some even subjected themselves to penance that would make followers of the War God balk, like those of the Circle Austere. Although they stood under the same banner, their displays of faith varied wildly.

In the Night Goddess’s case, there were two major branches within Her flock: the Magnanimous and the Immaculate. Cecilia had cast her lot with the latter.

While the Magnanimous threw themselves into charity in order to help the needy as their merciful Goddess might, those of the Circle Immaculate prized honorable poverty, helping others not with the whole of one’s fortunes, but what little they had left to spare after divesting themselves of worldly objects. One might say this group was unsuited for a vampiric noble, and there was little that could be said in return; still, the philosophy paired with Cecilia’s character well.

This adherence to prudence was oft spoken of as an unflinching asceticism. Even committing themselves to tortuous fasts, the Immaculate and their radical zeal instilled awe in even the devout priests of other factions.

As evidenced by her use of miracles, Cecilia had not been excepted from this harsh discipline. She had endured fasts wherein she could not so much as swallow back her spit before the Moon rose from Her slumber; she had forgone sleep to recite and transcribe sutras. The priestess had made do with little to nothing, and had spent so long in a destitute lifestyle that would drive others mad that she saw it as nothing more than the standard for life.

Yet that same girl now found herself unable to process her own emotions.

Mind you, this was not the result of Elisa’s presence hiding away the gorgeous contour of Erich’s neck, painted in by the captivating shade of uncovered skin; this caused her no disappointment.

By no means would she ever find herself dismayed that she could no longer see the tightly wound muscles packed under a wrapping of skin that remained fair despite enduring the sun’s light. It was no shame that his collarbone—which had teasingly peeked out from its home in his shirt collar earlier—was now out of sight.

Of course, a sudden rush of saliva threatened to puff up her cheeks with drool, but that was absolutely, positively, not all there was to it.

Whether it was intentional or not, Cecilia was perplexed by the girl who had hidden that neck away—by Elisa herself. For the past three days, she’d tried to open up to the changeling on several occasions, to no avail. Every attempt to start a conversation hit a wall of silence; any invitation to a round of ehrengarde was curtly refused on the grounds of not knowing the rules; her inquiries as to what she was doing were met with, “Homework from my master,” giving her no room to expand.

Cecilia simply could not understand Elisa.

The vampire did not consider herself bad with children—in fact, she was quite fond of them. Her sanctuary had often taken in orphans without homes, and she’d spent many a day traveling to nearby towns or cantons to serve the children in almshouses there.

Cecilia’s confidence in childcare was no hubris; children had indeed taken to her well over the years. She was kind, energetic, and had a wealth of knowledge to share. In fact, she had been so popular that it had been difficult to keep up with all the boys and girls wanting to play with her.

However, some youths had lived through harsh times, or gotten stuck in understandably childish cycles of thought that made them dislike her. She was not so arrogant as to believe that all children were meant to show her affection or anything of the sort. Whether wanting for experience or equipped with egos yet immature, Cecilia believed that every person was to be respected as an individual; at most, she prayed that one day, they might come to be friends.

But Elisa was not the same. Sometimes, when the girl stared at her, Cecilia felt something utterly alien in those big brown eyes; those were not the eyes of a child in her first decade of life. The priestess couldn’t quite put it to words, but for lack of a better term, she felt that the gaze was something that should only have been possible for someone more “adult.”

Having lived in a monastery for so long, Cecilia was not well acquainted with the look and could not pinpoint what it signified. Digging through her memories, she found the hue of her gaze similar to the people she’d met at one of her family’s estates, introduced to her as “friends of her father’s” or “the good lady of so-and-so house.” Whatever the case, she was sure that those eyes, readily changing with the light from brown to amber to gold, hid something extraordinary.

Look, Cecilia thought. Even now, as we chat over tea, I feel it across the table...

The priestess took a sip of fragrant tea and a bite of sweet ice to dispel the uncanny discomfort from her consciousness, clearing her throat in preparation to move to the serious matter at hand. It was finally time for her to unveil her trump card—to reveal how she planned on avoiding the treacherous roads and get to Lipzi.

“By the way, Elisa, Mika told me an interesting rumor today.”

“A rumor?”

Entrenched in the childish notion that she ought to wait until the conversation died down for maximum surprise, Cecilia waited for the siblings to finish their cute family moment. The sister had installed herself on her brother’s lap as a matter of course and happily waited to be spoon-fed. What was more, she was enjoying a sumptuous two flavors, just as Mika had. Cecilia had been treated to two flavors of ice candy as well, but Mika knew that Erich had almost assuredly only used the guise of equal treatment to pamper his sister, despite having only eaten a single ice pop himself.

“Come on, tell her, Mika.”

“Hm? Oh, all right, all right. Listen well, Elisa, because today, a ship that can fly through the air is coming to the capital!”

“Whaaat?!”

Two voices cried out in surprise. Cecilia screamed in sorrow at having her big surprise nipped in the bud.

The other three shrunk back in shock as the vampire shot up. How could they not? Here was a genteel saint who minded her manners and covered her lips for the faintest smile, leaping to her feet with a terrible cry.

“Um... Is something the matter?”

Erich’s gingerly muttered question was met with a response that produced yet another wave of dizzying astonishment: “How did you find out?!”

[Tips] On Earth, religious divisions refer to groups who worship the same god in different ways, or who draw differing interpretations of holy texts. God may have given humanity commandments and scripture, but the details of worship have been left up to interpretation with the faith. As such, worship of the form a person truly considers most hallowed will produce the most pious results.

Had anyone else been present, they would have shouted, “What are you, a child?!” before doubling back and realizing that the vampire was, in fact, a child. However, the three actually present were shocked into dumbfounded silence. Cecilia had hidden her planned mode of transport with adventure in her heart, but none had expected it to be one and the same as the airship making the rounds as hushed whispers in the capital.

Those unrelated to its construction knew it only as a ship that could soar through the skies, but the rumors were true: this “aeroship” was the crown’s cutting-edge weapon to cut a path through the portless boundaries of the Empire. For all its land, the nation had failed to secure even a single hold in warm waters. The three-headed dragon could bear no more burden: the Empire couldn’t afford to take on more territory in the name of open seas.

Of course, the northern regions ended in coastline, but their sheer bluffs and icy winters made them hostile to navigate, if the frigid oceans permitted voyages at all. All the harbors up north were smaller towns dedicated to fishing.

There was one passage in the northwest: the Howaldtswerke Peninsula was a tumorous growth on the continent, and the port of Schleswig on its tip could launch ships into international waters. Yet the belt of islands blocking the path to the north and west meant an imperial vessel would need to make a massive detour to access the temperate and prosperous waters beyond. Clearly lacking in the eyes of the throne, the Empire did not see it as a worthwhile investment.

Long ago, they’d even considered constructing a canal westward to connect their own sea to the greater ocean, but the raging waves of the North hid drakes and sea serpents that would make for an arduous process. Imperial estimates of the day had predicted it would take more than seven generations to complete, and so the project died on the vine; now it only served as a tantalizing what-if that burrowed in emperors’ minds.

For the time being, the Empire made do by giving its southern satellites trade privileges and the power to impose duties in order to use their ports as if they were imperial property. It wasn’t as if Rhine lacked the means to trade overseas, but it was plausible that unforeseen happenstance could deprive them of access at any moment; thus, those in power were always eager to find alternative routes.

This had led the nation to consider all sorts of impractical ideas: the once-dreamt-of Great Northern Canal, a plan to extend their namesake river into a channel for seaworthy craft, and the innovative push for aeronautical travel that was nearing its completion.

Being a work of technology that would decide the fate of a power such as Rhine, the project involved countless people, and the gargantuan vessel wasn’t exactly easy to hide; word passing into the realm of rumor was a matter of course. While the Empire would have preferred to keep everything tightly undercover leading up to their bombastic reveal, the lips of man ever defied sealing; tidbits here and there had leaked from every angle.

Deflated at having her surprise swept out from beneath her, Cecilia explained the details with crestfallen lethargy. Little Elisa only understood that she was speaking of something incredible, but the other two had frozen with pursed lips.

“Tonight,” Cecilia went on, “the aeroship is to arrive in Berylin and anchor on the outskirts of the city...where His Imperial Majesty will board. Then, those involved will tour every state in the Empire on the craft.”

“And you want to sneak on? Onto this aeroship?”

“What a grandiose scheme...”

Both boy and girl shivered at the thought of pulling off such a daring feat, staring at the priestess in disbelief. This was a national project backed by the crown, and tonight was going to be its maiden voyage. Hitching a ride on His Majesty’s personal vessel was not just a step past bold: it was leaping with both feet into the realm of hubris.

To begin with, this was the sort of secret to be preceded by the word “top,” and the security around it was sure to be intense. With the Emperor in attendance, the state would obviously pull out all the stops and assign a detail of imperial guardsmen to secure the premises. Forget not letting a kitten through unquestioned—they wouldn’t so much as let the fleas on its back sneak by.

“But of course, I do not intend to force my way on board like a common bandit. I have an in.” The priestess wavered for a moment, taking in the unfamiliar experience of unveiling a scheme. “The truth is, the church has also been involved in the aeroship’s construction.”

Up until now, the technical design and construction of airships had been led solely by members of the Imperial College. This iteration was no different in that magia had drafted the specifications and seen the building to completion, but going into the third attempt, religious authorities had finally taken on some of the load.

What that actually meant was that they’d spent the first two iterations’ worth of time debating the inconseque... They’d debated the irrelev... At long last, a profound discussion involving the gods themselves—translated through vague prophecies, as was expected—over which deities were involved in aeronautical flight had concluded.

Indeed, the imperial aeroship piqued divine interests as well.

At first, the God of Wind and Clouds had made much hubbub that anything soaring through the skies was His domain; then the Tidal Goddess objected, singing that a vessel with “ship” in its name was Hers to claim; only for the Artisan God to butt in and say the craftsmanship involved could only be done under His name. In the blink of an eye, every deity with an argument for involvement had announced the project as Their own jurisdiction.

While an impartial observer would want to tell them to get along like they might to schoolchildren arguing during a classroom assembly, this was a matter of life and death to those who resided above. Divinity was a condition wherein one’s power drew from faith; take one look at how the Harvest Goddess had managed to become one of the five mainstays of the pantheon, and it was obvious why They were all so zealous. Much like social media, Their reach extended with every follower.

As such, the gods watched as closely as mortals. Whoever managed to claim authority over this turning point in history was sure to earn Olympian acclaim from the peoples below. Unlike those who could count on their believers so long as mortals walked the earth, lesser deities whose popularity waxed and waned with generations were especially desperate.

This theological debate amounted to a classroom assembly without a teacher—yes, there had been plenty of fistfights involved—and had gone on for a few decades before finally coming to a conclusion.

The conclusion caused more chaos. The compromise reached had been that the airship was to include a blessed temple within...but they had failed to decide on whose.

During construction, the Artisan God had granted it His protection; when it was due to depart, the Tidal Goddess offered a blessing for navigational fortune and shipments dutifully delivered; once it was in the air, the Wind God was to look after it in His skies. The arrangement was utterly impossible to wrap one’s mind around. Sure, there was a similar separation of powers for maritime vessels, but the Tidal Goddess ultimately had the final say in that case. The situation here was far more flawed: after all, no one knew who was responsible for the damn thing.

An esteemed physicist had once said that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler, and how right he was. Not only were the mad scientists of the College wringing their brains for everything they had, but the churches and their gods now quibbled over every detail. The airship truly was the culmination of all imperial culture—for better and for worse.

“Um, and as the ship plans to partake in night voyages...”

“The Night Goddess got involved.”

“Well...yes.”

After laying out the complicated context, Cecilia explained that the Night Goddess affiliate that was to board was a personal friend of hers. She had apparently been a fellow pupil at the Fullbright Church, and would never callously turn away a person in need; so long as the vampire could explain her situation, she could count on her support.

“I am sure she’ll bring me as her attaché should I ask. The Goddess is not so heavily involved with the ship itself, meaning our envoys will be limited in number. If I can manage to get aboard, I doubt the guards will pay us much heed.”

“I see. So if we can just get you to the church...”

“Yes. From there, I will be able to stow away, and subsequently sneak out on the first stop of the voyage. Once in Lipzi, I shall be under my aunt’s protection.”

Overall, the plan was a classic stowaway story; it was a bit rough around the edges, but it was still the best plan available. Pushing to reach an effective safe spot that would allow her to ride out the rest of the journey in relative peace certainly offered better odds than trekking the poorly kept backwaters of the Empire for hundreds of kilometers. It was also a much more cerebral plan than busting through security to attempt the world’s first airborne hijacking.

“Understood. In that case, let us make for the holy quarter.” Erich paused in thought and mumbled, “But how?”

Many problems still remained, but one was supreme: the innumerable pursuers still littered throughout the capital. They hadn’t put up wanted posters of her description, but that might have actually been easier to deal with.

Throughout the day, the boy had kept a close eye on the guards around town, and he’d spied something dreadful. The policemen in standard garb equipped with no more than batons had not been alone: they’d been accompanied by men in menacing, pitch-black military uniform.

Escaping the watchful eyes of the city guard was one thing; playing a game of foxes-and-geese with the professional hunters that made up His Majesty’s jagers was a challenge like no other.

[Tips] The imperial jager unit is a military reconnaissance group composed of the best scouts and huntsmen in the nation. These maestros of the shadows scope out favorable sites for decisive battles, spy on enemy logistics, and snuff out espionage in imperial territory. Having played a major role in wars that changed the fate of the Empire on many occasions, they are one of the most esteemed groups in the nation.

Though poets sing no sagas in their name and craftsmen build them no statues, to them, that is an honor of the highest degree.

Avoiding a coordinated search is so hard.

We had a magic swordsman (with an emphasis on swordsman), a sorcerer and scholar specialized in supportive spells, and a noncombatant priestess. Can you see the issue? That’s right: we were missing the single most important class for a city adventure—we didn’t have a scout!

Thinking it over, we had a laughable composition. The only scenarios where this would be acceptable were minor escort quests where full-scale combat wasn’t a given, or when the GM planned ahead to supply a scout NPC on account of the party’s small size; anywhere else and someone would have been shouted at to dip into the class, even at the cost of a level in their main job.

Scouts secured the route ahead and kept an eye on the party’s rear to watch for being tailed; spelunking around a metropolis without one was true hardship, whether we were on the run or in pursuit. It was like accelerating into a full sprint with a blindfold on.

The silver lining was that I’d invested in high-tier traits like Permanent Battlefield and had spells like Farsight to look around beyond my own line of sight. I could probably avoid being totally ambushed, but our enemies wore plain clothes to blend into the city and hid with all the expertise of lifelong scouts: I could only unearth them after their first strike. This meant I couldn’t use the sublime strategy of avoiding every encounter but the boss fight—and even that, with any luck.

Oh, how I pined for my childhood companion, my shining pearl; I wondered what Margit was doing in our beloved hometown. If only she were here to guard me and light our way as she’d done in Konigstuhl, I would have known no fear. We’d taken an oath to set out on a journey together, and now she was the missing piece to make our unwieldy party whole. Without her, my back felt hideously exposed; I shivered like I’d been left out in the elements.

“...Oh, I almost forgot.”

Leaving me to soak in loneliness, Mika smacked her fist into her palm and got up, saying she’d be back in a bit. We waited curiously for a while, and she returned out of breath: apparently, she’d gone back to the low quarter to haul over a large bag whose contents she dumped out onto the table.

“I bet we could use these.”

“...Potions?”

Mika had brought a ton of tiny vials containing arcane drugs. Each of the perfectly shaped glass bottles was capped off with a mystic seal. According to her, she’d gotten these high-quality products from her master.

“My master gets a lot of gifts and samples from other magia whenever he goes to the salon, and he gave me a bunch of stuff when I first shifted female. He said that now that my cycles have started, I should learn a thing or two about makeup.”

“Oh, so these are makeup potions?” I asked. “I can’t believe they hand out things this fancy as free samples.”

“Every time it hooks in a customer, it covers the cost of a freebie dozens of times over, so I don’t think it’s that crazy. Besides, the market is big. Even men will take them for their wives or lovers, and then they’ll buy more as gifts if their lady takes a fancy to them.”

This was news to me. But come to think of it, magia were all rich—barring those whose research really did not make any money—and professors straight-up received stipends outside their grants as a part of being noble. Meeting a fellow magus at a tea party embodied both social and business opportunity.

It was times like these where having a sedentary master who refused to socialize posed a problem. How was I supposed to learn these basic concepts that others took for granted?

Oh, actually...I supposed these sample potions were sort of like the clothes Lady Leizniz forced upon me.

“Uhhh, nope. Not this one. Not that one... Aha!” After sifting through the labels on all the glassware, Mika finally held up three vials with a smile. “Boy, I’m glad I kept all of these. I don’t really care about this sort of stuff, so I was thinking about selling them or keeping them for Elisa once she got a bit older. Who knew they’d come this much in handy?”

“What do these concoctions do?”

Miss Celia leaned in, peering into the vials with great interest; Mika obliged, carefully explaining each one.

The first was a drug that could temporarily elongate a person’s hair. This was an intermediary that had come about from research into reviving lost hair roots—evidently, balding struck fear in the hearts of men no matter the world. While it failed to serve its original purpose in any way, it had hit the market as a nice change of pace for the well-to-do ladies around town.

The second also had to do with hair: it weakened any natural curls to produce straighter locks. This, too, was the product of failure. Its initial concept had been to straighten hair for up to a year with one dose, but only lasted for a few hours at most. In this case, the prototype was to demonstrate the creator’s progress and lure in investors to fund the rest of the research.

That said, I doubted we would ever see the drug have permanent effects: continuous sales drove up profits, after all. I bet that creating a formula for temporary change like this was actually harder than one that didn’t revert; it seemed pharmacists were shady no matter which world I was in. I dubiously eyed the bottle for the telltale alternating red and white corporate logo.

The third potion was one that would temporarily change the colors of one’s eyes. Again, we had something made to spice up a noblewoman’s appearance—or at least, I suspected that had been how the creator pitched it to their investors. In reality, it had probably been designed with deception in mind from the start; unlike the brown-dominated landscape of Earth, the rainbow of irises in Rhine made eye color the most distinguishing characteristic for mensch-like peoples outside of hair and skin. Fashion was secondary to its utility in stealth, including less savory activities like marital infidelity.

“Um, one drop makes this much hair, so I should take...about this much?” Mika measured out a dose of the first drug. “Blegh! Why’s it taste so bad?!”

“It’s growing!” Miss Celia exclaimed. “Mika, it’s growing!”

“Wow!” Elisa cried. “Me next! Me next!”

I’d been left to brood over the dark intentions lurking on the other side of these potions on my own, and meanwhile the girls merrily sated their curiosity for the arcane makeup.

Mika’s hair grew with every passing moment, and her head of wavy black was the gorgeous night sea personified. The growth looked perfectly natural; if she remained fixed in her feminine form and grew out her hair, this was precisely how she would look. Though the product had failed to deliver on its initial goals, the magus who’d designed it was no amateur.

“Whoa, so this is what I’d look like with long hair... Man, it’s curly. I can’t even tie it like this! That’s it, I’m keeping it short. If it’s this bad when I’m a girl, then I can’t imagine how unbearable it’ll be when I’m a boy.”

“Does your hair change when you’re a boy?” Miss Celia asked.

“Yes, it gets much curlier. I think I take after my father when in male form, and he had quite the unruly head of hair.”

“Huh? Why isn’t it growing?”

As the other two engaged in a bit of ladies’ talk by the mirror, Elisa sat off to the side, confused as to why the potion hadn’t worked on her. Despite her mensch body, my sister had the soul of an alf; I surmised that she had too much inherent resistance to magic for a small dose to affect her.

“Next up is the straightening potion...and this one’s bad too! Ugh, my tongue’s on fire! Did they cut corners on the flavor because they haven’t gone public yet or something?!”

“But Mika!” Miss Celia said. “Look, the effects have already begun! How spectacular!”

A small sip of the second brew quelled the rolling ocean into a serene lake that reflected the lights of the room like the glowing midnight moon. Mika’s hair was always soft and smooth, so seeing it stretched out in this enchanting way tickled my desire to run a hand through it.

“Ugh,” she said. “My neck feels so hot and heavy... Is this what you always deal with, Erich?”

“Glad you finally understand,” I responded. “Enjoying the novel sensation?”

“Sure. Don’t think I’ll ever do it again, though. How about you? You’re the one who’s seeing it—enjoying the novelty?”

Mika jutted out her hip to strike a pose and flipped her hair with striking glamour. The fact that my heart skipped a beat seeing my familiar friend’s unfamiliar appearance was a secret I would keep to the grave.

“Yeah, you look lovely.”

That said, I’d honed the art of the poker face in my time working under the madam. My cheeks remained unblushed as I voiced my earnest opinion, to which she answered by whirling around at terrific speeds.

“I... I see. Thanks.”

...But I still had an unobstructed view of her face in the mirror. She was looking pretty red, so it seemed my compliment had embarrassed her. Come to think of it, I doled out praise at every turn when Mika was male or agender, but I often felt too shy to do so when she was a girl. This sort of flattery wasn’t typically part of our exchanges.

For now, the situation was that a female friend was attempting to hide her embarrassment; peeking just because I could would be uncouth. I tilted my chair away just slightly and decided to console Elisa, who was huffing and puffing about how the potions hadn’t worked.

“Are you all right, Mika?” Miss Celia asked. “I pray that you aren’t feeling ill from some unknown side effect.”

“N-No need to worry, Celia. I’m perfectly fine. Uh, um...oh, right, the next one!”

I turned a blind eye to her cracking voice and continued calming my sister down. After a short while, Mika called us back over; her preparations were complete.

We turned to see two girls—not twins by any make, but similar enough in appearance. They looked close in age, height, and color and length of hair. While Mika’s eyes weren’t quite a vivid scarlet, they were a reddish shade of brown that might pass off as the vampire’s bloodred at the right angle. Anyone looking for these descriptors was sure to stop her for questioning. To tie everything together, Mika had gotten changed when going to retrieve her bag: she wore a dark, hooded robe not dissimilar in shape to a nun’s garb.

“What do you think, Erich? Her spitting image, huh?”

That’s why I’d realized her plan the moment she’d returned—why I’d known exactly what the mystic drugs were going to be used for.

“I’m going to go out ahead of time and run around as bait. I’ll let the guard find me around one of the major city gates and drag out a bunch of them.”

Mika puffed up her chest with confidence. Only now that she’d laid her plan bare did Miss Celia catch on; her white complexion drained the last of its color as she grabbed Mika by the shoulders.

“You can’t! That’s too dangerous!”

“Worry not, Celia. The people looking for you consider you a VIP. They aren’t going to get rough to try and catch me.”

“Still! What if you do get caught?!”

“I’m a Berylinian veteran, through and through. I swear I won’t let them catch me.”

Although Mika’s words felt propped up on thin confidence, I decided to trust her. She pushed herself hard, but always spoke up when she felt she was out of her depth; I knew she wouldn’t turn herself into a needless sacrifice.

Every single day, the oikodomurge hopeful roamed the streets of the capital to study the imperial architecture and city planning of the Empire’s crowning urban achievement. She knew every hidden alley and nearly every linking path in the sewers. If she said she could buy us time, then I had no doubt she was telling the truth.

“Got it,” I said. “We’re counting on you, Mika.”

“Of course. Leave it to me, old pal.” Turning to the vampire, she said, “And Celia, won’t you bless me with good fortune instead of fretting over my safety? How sad it would be to head into battle without so much as a maiden’s prayer.”

Miss Celia still seemed distraught, but this request was too much to deny. Though we had come to her aid without demanding any recompense, she had graced us with thanks; we were all in the same boat now. She stared Mika dead in the eye in absolute silence, until finally coming to terms with my old chum’s decision; for the first time, she slipped off her hallowed medallion.

“Please,” she prayed, “I beg of you to not endanger yourself. Should you fall into their hands, I promise I will protect you no matter what it costs me. Until then, may my Goddess grant you Her protection.”

The priestess pressed her lips into the silver icon and solemnly tied it around the mage’s neck.

“Thank you, Celia. See that, Erich? With this wonder-working gift, our success is all but in hand.”

“I’m only jealous it wasn’t me,” I said with a smile. “Our victory is a forgone conclusion.”

I extended a hand and Mika gave it a firm shake. Then, we bent our elbows upward, pulling each other into a one-armed hug with our hands still clasped. No matter which gender she embodied, this embrace of friendship and well wishes was one that we shared without reserve.

“Stay safe.”

“You too.”

Our cheeks slid past each other’s as we pulled away, and she made for the door with a goodbye...until she was stopped by a shout.

It was Elisa.

The three of us turned to her in surprise. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and got up from her chair; we waited as she steeled herself for something unknown. Then, despite her continued disregard for Miss Celia, she walked up to our guest and pinched her skirt in a proper noblewoman’s curtsy.

“I sincerely apologize for my discourteous attitude. I shall accept any recourse you deem fit for my abuse, but may I humbly ask you for a strand of your hair?”

Elisa’s most well-spoken sentence to date shocked all of us into silence. Miss Celia was dumbfounded to receive an apology from a girl who seemed to hate her; Mika was surprised to see someone she considered a child speak so maturely; and I was frozen by some unknown fear that swelled in my heart.

My chest grew so tight that I clutched it in hand, and Helga’s memory glimmered there in the corner of my eye.

“I require no compensation, Elisa. In fact, you need not apologize at all—I was never angry with you. If a hair is what you need, then please feel free.”

The merciful priestess accepted Elisa’s apology without reserve; Mika was moved, thinking she was doing something clever for the sake of her dear brother. I alone was trapped in my memories: the memory of my sin at the lakeside manor, and what I had learned from it.

Alfar changed to suit their desires. Whether that entailed growth or insanity mattered not; if the fey soul within deemed it necessary, the mensch shell of a changeling would bend to match.

What was Elisa trying to become? What was she doing?

I didn’t know, and it scared me; my heart hurt. This wasn’t the first time, and I’d been so innocently happy to see her mature in the past. But now, for reasons I couldn’t explain, I was deathly afraid of seeing my sister try to grow up.

“Thank you very much.”

Elisa took the strand of hair and walked to her desk drawer, where she pulled out a small pouch. She put the hair inside and filled the whole thing with mana.

Many moons ago, Lady Agrippina had taught her this magical trick—it didn’t even amount to a proper spell—so that she could regularly dispel the arcane energy that accumulated in her body. The madam had once expressed amazement that she dutifully continued the exercise to this day.

Truth be told, this was nothing more than a gamified way of helping toddlers with their first mystic steps. It was supposed to be a fun way of keeping a child’s attention while teaching them mana-circulation habits that would increase their overall capacity with time.

For girls, the most popular variant was to take an undried herb, place it in a pouch, and artificially create a potpourri. This game familiarized the child with catalyst production and taught them the names of various grasses and flowers, so it was well used as a stone that killed three birds.

But Elisa had put in a hair. As I wondered what she could be doing, she finished enchanting the bag and handed it to Mika.

“This will overwrite your natural odor and produce something similar to Lady Cecilia’s. I believe it will trick even those with the keenest noses.”

“Oh, of course!” Mika exclaimed. “I’d completely forgotten that they might have canine demihumans and the like that might know Celia’s scent!”

Mika pulled Elisa into a hug and sang her praises. My tiny little sister smiled as innocuously as ever and said, “Mika, I can’t breathe,” with a tone that betrayed her joy.

And then she looked over at me, with those big, pleading eyes.

Suddenly, I snapped back to reality. Elisa was the same as usual. The baseless anxiety that had gripped me dissipated as though I’d never felt it at all. Glancing down, Helga’s memory had already regained its usual level of luster.

What was I so scared of—no, wait. What was I even thinking about again?

“You’re amazing, Elisa! A genius like you will make professor in no time!”

I shook off the intangible haze clouding my mind and joined Mika in a group hug to extol my brilliant baby sister’s efforts. Afterward, the future-world-renowned genius used one of her own hairs to help mask Miss Celia’s scent as well.

Now we had nothing left to fear; what more could we worry about now?

“All right, I’m off,” Mika said. “Give me about half an hour before you set out.”

“Gotcha,” I replied. “Best of luck.”

“Please,” Miss Celia prayed, “may the loving Mother’s grace from on high shine favorably upon you.”

“Be careful!” Elisa said. “I’ll be good at home and wait!”

It was finally time: the adventure of a lifetime was about to commence.

[Tips] Potpourris are air fresheners generally made with dried herbs or flowers, or cottons soaked in their oils. Carried around in small pouches, they fulfill a key function in common manners when used to hide body odor and serve as an article of fashion when carefully tuned to stay on the cutting edge of aroma. More specialized examples include mystic variants that remove smell without adding a masking scent; these are more often used for nonaesthetic reasons.

Elisa begrudgingly accepted her post to wait for the three others’ return. Naturally, her heart overflowed with discontent when her brother left, but she kept it neatly bottled up inside.

Elisa knew. She knew that her brother would struggle more if she tagged along than if he set off alone with that terrifying moonlit woman. She knew that he would spend a lot of precious time calming her down.

As growing competence fleshed out her repertoire, as she began to want to learn, Elisa was naturally beginning to realize what it was she ought to do. That is to say, she now understood what would make her brother happiest, what would bring him the least hardship, and most importantly, what would make him like her the best. The Elisa of old would have kicked and screamed to keep him home. Her young mind had known no option but to cry and cry and cry until he listened to her pleas to stop doing the things she didn’t want him to.

However, education had nourished her fledgling intellect past the depths of ignorance. She now understood that there was reason behind her brother’s heading into danger; she saw why he chose of his own free will to walk into the pits of hell.

He was kind—too kind. So kind that he could not bear to see others suffer in his presence. It didn’t matter if their hardship didn’t affect him, nor did it matter if their bond amounted to little more than bumping elbows on a walk down the street.

Worst of all, Elisa’s brother was so gifted that he could maybe make it all work out if he worked himself to the brink of death. If this had been a situation in which turning himself upside down and wringing every drop of strength out of his body wouldn’t resolve a thing, he would have grumbled in frustration and given up on her.

No matter how reckless her brother was, he always had his own logical plan for how to see his quests through safely. He would never willingly throw himself into a trial where the odds of death far outstripped any chance of success...or at least, Elisa hoped not.

Besides, including the time where he’d saved Elisa herself, this made for the fifth time he had turned his back to her to march into danger. By this point, it was clear that she couldn’t stop him; this was just who he was.

As a matter of fact, this current predicament was the result of having stopped him once—at this point she had no choice but to accept it. His will was such that Elisa, of all people, had internalized the futility of holding him back.

You know what that means, her maturing psyche whispered. If she couldn’t stop her dear, beloved brother from running off into harm’s way no matter how hard she tried, then the only thing left was to make his journey less dangerous by any means she could. Elisa made up her mind: for all that still confused her, for all the dizzying emotions that made up Mika’s soul, she would trust her with everything she had. No matter how intricate the tivisco’s prismatic desires were, her endearment was genuine, as was her resolution to brave the dangers to come.

And, leaving everything else aside, Mika had been kind to Elisa. She never lied, and her feelings toward the changeling came purely from love. There was no reason at all for Elisa to distance herself from the friendly mage. In fact, their goals aligned quite nicely: the thought of her sneering master detailing Erich’s need for protection flashed back in her mind.

Shields were better in numbers. Though Elisa wished to be the foremost bulwark, she needed time. Until then, she was willing to employ the help of others, and would continue to accept them as comrades once she came into her own; having one of those shields be someone she was fond of offered even more peace of mind.

However, the vampiric Cecilia was just impossible for Elisa to accept. Her eyes were like the uncaring cold of moonlight. Altogether different from the warm, sunny, soothing love that her brother showered her with, the changeling felt no happiness from the lunar glimmer in Cecilia’s eye. Cecilia’s was a bad light. It might very well protect her brother...but something told her that it would snatch him up and take him somewhere far, far away.

On a personal level, Elisa didn’t particularly hate Cecilia. The hues of her soul were pretty and clear; it was rare to find someone so untainted. Her purity was no untrodden snow—not the sort of delicate innocence that would blur into a gray mess as soon as it was trampled underfoot.

No, Elisa thought Cecilia’s soul was more like the diamond that occasionally graced her master’s neck: colorless though they both were, they gleamed with pristine beauty. When Elisa had begged to see the pretty stone up close, the magus had casually handed it off with an accompanying lesson in history.

The diamond’s namesake was rooted in the word for “indomitable” in the Orisons—the Blessed Kingdom’s antique tongue—and it conferred similar durability upon the wearer. Before the time of these ancients, its unyielding hardness had meant no amount of time and effort could polish the gem into attractive shapes; those still in the rough hardly even shone. For the longest time, the diamond had been worthless when compared to the historically adored ruby or emerald.

However, traditional and thaumaturgical advancements made in the past few centuries had brought an uptick in its popularity. By employing specialized techniques, one could buff the stone to shine as bright as sunlight itself; now it stood as the king of all precious jewels.

Apparently, Agrippina’s ancestor had bought a river in western Seine on a whim long ago, which had recently—not that Elisa trusted the methuselah’s definition of recency—produced a fist-sized chunk of ore. It had then been fashioned into a necklace for her master to celebrate her debut in high society.

To Elisa’s fey eyes, the infallible, cloudless beauty of its sparkle seemed something wholly incorruptible—and the same color shone within Cecilia. Pure and uncontaminated, she could only be shaped by another as strong as herself. Her character was not the product of a cloistered life, but rather a preordained outcome that would have come about no matter her surroundings.

Elisa liked this: the priestess did not embody some flimsy virtue that hinged on good fortune, fated to be violated at its first encounter with wickedness. Yet the vampire’s strength was itself the issue; she could become the stone that ground.

Only a diamond could chisel a diamond, and the best were treasured by jewelers and jewel collectors alike. Elisa had seen phantom visions of the blinding light swallowing her dear brother whole. The thought that the icy moonlight might sap the warm glow of the sun into a radiance devoid of heat terrified her to the point of shunning Cecilia.

But now Elisa knew: if her brother had accepted the vampire, then Elisa’s rejection couldn’t change his mind now. So her only choice left was to do everything in her power to make sure the moon didn’t infect the sun’s warmth.

“Be safe, Dear Brother. Please, come home to me.”

With a whisper as heavy as it was soft, the changeling clasped her hands together. She had only ever copied her parents at their local church until now, but today she prayed with her whole heart to the Goddess that that priestess served, with the hope that she would not whisk the boy away.

[Tips] On account of their difficult manufacturing process and scarcity within imperial borders, diamonds have been dubbed the King of Gemstones within Rhine. Though they come in several colors, the achromatic stones are prized most highly by both wearers and mages. Their refusal to bend until they shatter whole makes them a peerless catalyst in defensive barriers.

Mika pulled her hood as low as it would go and walked through the twilit city, carefully eyeing the state of town. Even as the sun careened into the horizon, the streets of Berylin were bustling. Workers walked home after a long day’s labor, nocturnal races rubbed the sleep from their eyes on their ways to graveyard shifts, and young drunkards linked at the shoulders jaunted around, rewarding themselves with booze for the hard work of living.

On the surface, the capital was the picture of peace. It was a bustling hodgepodge of every class of people in the Empire, and the perfect backdrop to blend into. There were countless other hooded figures hiding away from the sun or the noise.

Waves of people that would swallow an inexperienced country bumpkin whole flowed past Mika as she deftly cut through the crowd and made her way to the South Gate. At midday, this city entrance was teeming with merchants and their steeds, but with no more than a few minutes until closing, the traffic was sparse. The roads were well paved and the surroundings were relatively safe, but few wished to brave a trip beyond the walls after sundown.

The packed streets that Mika had used to conceal herself thus far could no longer protect her. On her walk here, a handful of guards had seen the “priestess’s” attire from behind and tried to call out to her, but none had been able to keep up with her fleet footwork through the crowds—but no longer.

I’m on my own from here on out, the tivisco thought, a chill running down her spine. The lump in her throat felt terribly hard to swallow.

“But I talked so much talk to my old pal,” she muttered into her robes. “It’s time to walk the walk.”

Mika casually stepped into the short line leading to the outgoing traffic inspection point. The guards carefully scrutinized every passport and face, going so far as to employ some sort of mystic tool—probably one that removed any magical disguise—which caused the line to move at a snail’s pace. The others waiting in line could be heard grumbling; this had been the norm at every gate for the past few days, and intercity travel had become massively tedious.

Mika kept her hands busy by toying with the wooden passport Cecilia had given her. Surely they won’t let me walk on by, will they?

She couldn’t afford to be found on purpose. Her discovery had to be natural; it had to be the product of some inevitable accident. That was why she’d lined up like everyone else—like someone trying to quietly slip away without causing a scene.

Her turn was coming up. With only a few people left ahead, the guard at the gate proper spotted Mika and put a hand to his chin. He nonchalantly pulled out a written description from his breast pocket, but looked up in alarm after reading it.

Now! The second he caught on, Mika bolted out of the line.

“Hey, wait! Stop right there!”

“What’s wrong?!”

“That girl that just ran off matches the description! Hey, hold it!”

A shrill whistle echoed through the streets, letting everyone in earshot know that a person of interest had been found. The guards leapt into action without much thought in order to not lose their opportunity to catch the fleeing suspect. If only they had spent a moment in contemplation, they would have realized that a person consciously avoiding a search would never appear before the gates looking so similar to how they had when they first fled.

But for now, that was well and good. Instinct that clung to the depths of their hearts rang the alarm on anyone who fled; the cascading chorus of whistles would bring their compatriots to the scene in no time at all.

Mika flew into an alleyway, casting a spell on a set of boxes that some stranger had carefully stacked up: a handful crumbled into pieces and clogged up the passage.

“Whoa?!”

“What the hell?! That was close!”

“Dammit, we can’t follow her from here! Circle around and call for backup!”

As guilty as she felt for destroying someone’s property, Mika asked that they put up with it to save an innocent girl, as little as that meant to the victim. Sprinting through the low quarter, she traversed the path she’d planned out on her way to the gate without so much as slowing down for a second.

The roads she’d chosen were narrow and branching, offering escape routes even if a path or two was blockaded. Among these, she’d carefully selected for walkways covered in eaves or halls between buildings to block off any view from above, using the breakable terrain that filled these passages all the while.

Those chasing her must have found it peculiar: the girl was meant to be a noble’s daughter who probably had never lifted a finger, so how had she smashed all these sturdy boxes?

“Hah, hagh,” Mika panted. “This way’s blocked; it’s time to reroute.”

While the escapee’s knowledge of the city was great, the pursuants were no slouches either. Their job was to protect the peace of the capital, and they knew the streets they served like the backs of their hands. If a native Beryliner wanted to join the guard, they had to be able to orally guide their examiner through every district without so much as a map; naturally, they read the tivisco’s trajectory in an attempt to encircle her.

As the sound of whistles grew in number, Mika realized that they were gaining ground. She’d expected as much: the city guard could very well number over a thousand, and even if the majority stayed put to hold their positions, those that could mobilize to chase her were in the triple digits. No matter how hard she tried, they’d catch her eventually unless she suddenly gained the ability to slip through walls.

“Whoa, they’re over here too!”

The mage tried to pass through a major street in order to hide away in another district, but she could hear the raucous clap of hooves barreling down the road right past the mouth of the alley. Horses could advance no faster than a walk in the capital; unless someone’s steed had gone on a rampage, that was surely the sound of a state-sponsored cavalry unit.

The gravity of the city guard letting their riders loose struck fear in Mika’s heart, but she was thankful all the same. Every troop and horse gathered around her was one that wouldn’t bother her old pal and new friend slipping out of the College around now.

“Boy, I sure am glad I started exercising! Phew! Okay, bear with me for a little while longer!”

Using her lay of the land and her precise, highly annoying magic, Mika continued to evade the dizzying number of patrolmen and imperial guards—though the latter were sure to arrest her instantly in a fair fight. With a runner’s high kicking in, her lips curled into a marvelous grin.

Erich’s penchant for adventures and horseback riding had spurred her on to fight off drowsiness every morning and jog around Berylin; the basic training was finally paying off. In high spirits, Mika swore to herself that she wouldn’t let anyone catch her, even knowing that the dead end was coming up.

[Tips] There are three ways to join the Berylin city guard: veteran guards from other urban centers can be handpicked or recommended for the position, and natives can enlist via a different program. The most influential nobles of the Empire are all gathered in one location during the social season and the Emperor resides in the city for most of the year, so much emphasis is placed on their skill and physique.

Fueled by the desire to cap bribery and corruption, their pay is far greater than that of other guards or watchmen, rivaling the salaries of regional knights. As a result, there is an endless stream of applicants for the position, most of whom inevitably are turned away. Passing through the selection process and passing through the eye of a needle are all but the same task.

His Majesty’s jager unit of the imperial army shared a crib with the Empire itself. The Founding Emperor Richard adamantly insisted that the outcome of war revolved around the accuracy of intelligence on the enemy army. As a matter of course, he began to construct an organized assembly of spies and messengers.

The Emperor of Creation asked for one thing and one thing alone: not loyalty nor justice, but rather the will to return home alive. If the situation called for it, he wanted those with toned bodies of steel and cold hearts of ice who would abandon morals and companions alike to bring him the information he required.

It was said that he had looked out at his people and saw that huntsmen were experts in stealth, equipped with the wit needed to prioritize their lives above all else. From then on, he began recruiting woodsmen and hunters, transforming them into scouts to lead his army.

This was still before Richard was the Emperor of Creation, before even his days as the Little Conqueror, when he was nothing more than a boy seeking his independence. He roamed his territory, making do with what little fortune he had to muster a force fifteen huntsmen strong. They were his eyes and ears, bringing home the reports he needed without fail, and played a large role in his ascent to the world’s first imperial throne.

As such, in modern times, the Trialist Empire continued to honor its exemplary scouts with the title of jager; should duty call, they even marched onto the front lines to navigate precarious battlefronts, unbound by traditional tactics of honor.

Now, a keen observer may then remark that none of the tasks mentioned particularly required hunting expertise. The modern consensus amongst Rhinian historians was that Richard had scrambled for any and every spare troop he could find, and had promised a gang of bandits pardons in exchange for military service; naming them “hunters” had been a front to preserve legal airs.

Whatever the truth, this was history five hundred years buried. The jagers of today were glorified as the most adept reconnaissance personnel in all the Empire... Not that their prestige did anything for them down in the depths of the sewers.

“Gods, the humidity is getting to my nose...”

“Seriously. I can’t get over this smell. How do humanfolk stand this?”

Jagers worked, at a minimum, in pairs. The werewolf and hyenid gnoll duo snorted out the damp air dulling their keen snouts; this incomprehensible mission to rustle up some vampire drew out much complaining.

Of all races, werewolves and gnolls made for some of the best scouts. Not only were they gifted with impressive physiques, but their capacity to safely eat raw flesh made them self-sufficient on long wilderness expeditions, and their body structures allowed them to travel low to the ground at blistering speeds for extended periods of time.

Above all else, their sensitive noses allowed them to pick up on olfactory clues in ways a mensch couldn’t dream of. Their ability to differentiate between scents and commit them to memory rivaled that of magia—suffice it to say, their kind made up a third of all the imperial guard.

“Argh, sending us down here has to be a cruel joke. No noble’s daughter is ever gonna waltz into the damn sewers.”

“Shut your trap. Have you forgotten how many times they barked our ears off in screening about how you can’t ever rule anything out for sure?”

“Okay, fine—sure. But c’mon, why the hell are we out here for a one-in-a-million chance? It’s been three whole days. I bet she’s long gone by now.”

The gnoll scrunched up his nose and griped; his werewolf companion scolded him, though he was truthfully doing no better himself. The duo followed the faint traces of human odor and continued wandering the sewers.

Since their efforts topside had produced no results, they couldn’t eliminate the possibility of an underground escape. The odds were astronomically low, but the higher-ups had had to send somebody, and these two were part of the unlucky crew.

They’d crawled around these filthy pipes and waded through the disgusting odors that permeated them for three whole days, but had yet to find anything. Every now and again, they would catch a whiff of people, but it invariably turned out to be adventurers—rare as they were in the capital—participating in the search, or College students working part-time to maintain the facilities.

Exactly one of the other units had accomplished something: apparently, they’d apprehended a band of criminals who’d been hiding in the sewers. Otherwise, none of the jagers had yet to find any trace of movement or residence in the area—not that this was a livable location.

The humidity was unbearable enough to wet a hydrophobic coat of fur, and the awful smell went without saying; the real issue, though, was that the Imperial College kept a bunch of evil living blobs as pets. The blasted things crept around the pipes searching for filth to clean at all hours of the day.

Running into the tiny ones might only cause a minor scald, but falling into the grasp of the biggest spelled certain doom. Even if one managed to free themselves before burning alive, they were sure to be unfit for public appearance for as long as they lived; an early retirement to a disabled soldiers’ asylum was guaranteed.

The pair had suffered the smell assaulting their delicate noses while avoiding the obnoxious slimes for days, and they had absolutely nothing to show for it. Even the most loyal and resolute soldiers were bound to let a complaint slip when things were this bad.

But someone whose skill was swayed by something as flimsy as personal preference would never have become a jager at all. Though they passed their gripes back and forth, the honed veterans were at their best no matter the situation.

Suddenly, both of their ears twitched, homing in on a sound too faint for a mensch to hear: two sets of footsteps bouncing around the pipes. For these expert stalkers, the volume spoke to the walkers’ weights, and the interval between steps betrayed their strides; combined, it was trivial for them to come up with a mental image of who they were.

They were both bipedal, and working backward from their weight and stride painted the picture of a pair of young humanfolk. A light metallic clinking was indicative of some sort of armor, and one of them had the steady, barely detectable gait of someone with martial training; the other was less precise and seemed wholly ignorant of how to hide his presence. The rhythm and timbre of contact between foot and ground pointed to two males.

The imperial scouts glanced at one another and immediately broke out into a sprint. No matter how much they complained about their lustrous manes being bogged down into sad mops, they were the Emperor’s proud huntsmen. The odds were slim, but even the unlikeliest chance was worth investigating without any semblance of negligence. Accelerating to top speeds, they were like arrows let loose—unable to stop until they found their mark.

They tore through cramped corridors, zoomed uphill, and then leapt over a descending slope in one fell swoop to find the source of the sounds. They hopped right over the flowing waters, and where there were no walkways, their claws sank into walls to keep them moving at full mast. Though an average person would struggle to keep track of them with their eyes, this wasn’t a point of pride for them; it was a given. This alone was hardly enough to call oneself a jager instead of a scout.

Despite the foul smell, the scent of mensch clearly popped out; they were as terrible at concealing their odor as they were their footsteps. In fact, their kind often went out of their way to play with strong aromas, much to the confusion and chagrin of keen-nosed demihumans.

However, as the smell drew nearer, the pair cocked their heads: both of the scents belonged to mensch boys. With hearts full of doubt, they jumped out into the corridor to be safe and checked on the two people occupying it.

The first was a young boy with blond hair too long for imperial style, neatly braided to not get caught up in his leather armor. He looked perhaps like a beginner adventurer, and though he wasn’t armed—naturally, as they were within city limits—they could tell from his footwork and stance that he specialized in swordplay.

Nestled behind him was another boy clad in the style of robes worn by magia: he was a student by every measure. He carried a bagful of test tubes with strange liquids in them over his shoulder and had a map of the tunnels in one hand. This was hardly the first time they’d encountered a poor College attendee just like him tasked with unenviable sewer chores.

Having a pair of jagers kick off a wall onto the walkway in front of them spooked the boys; the armored one jumped to shield his companion, but promptly stood down when he saw the men’s uniform.

Fitted with short collars, their pure sable coats and loosely tailored slacks of like color were immediately recognizable, even without the mantle that bore their insignia. No citizen of Berylin would need to look twice. Theirs was a black of loyalty, impossible to dilute by any dye, and the refined needlework that gave life to an otherwise drab uniform proved they bore the rank of imperial guard; they were the heroes of any young boy who called the capital home.

“The imperial guard?! Why are you here?!”

The men were used to receiving these sorts of twinkly gazes from young lads. While the mage’s mind had yet to catch up to him, the little swordsman was clearly a big fan.

Wrong again, they sighed internally. Still, this was all part of the job; the jagers put on their friendliest smiles and asked the boys for a moment of their time.

[Tips] Draftees make up the bulk of the imperial army, and the Empire sets no strict dress code for its general troops. They are expected to make use of cloth or leather equipment as they become available, and the wealthier among them purchase chain mail or helmets while fastening a signifying badge on their upper halves.

Naturally, the Emperor’s personal men and the guards of some cities also serve ostentatious roles that require a proper uniform. Since the dawn of time, man has sentimentalized coordination under command. As such, the imperial guards don their special regalia and act out the part of perfectly ordered troops; to this end, they are shields perhaps most fit to defend the capital of vanity.

Many like me had clearly run around and left traces of their aesthetic hang-ups all over this world. I knew better than to point out that military garb with stand-up collars had only gained traction in the eighteenth century on Earth, or to wonder why they were wearing double-breasted variants of schoolboy uniforms.

There was only one right response: They’re so cool!

While their features tended bestial, both the werewolf and gnoll were plainly handsome; combined with the killer outfits, the two were a sight for sore eyes. The werewolf had a sleek snout that left an impression of shrewd wit, whereas the hyenid fellow’s thicker neck covered in a ruffled mane oozed virility.

Pretty ladies may soothe the soul, but suave gentlemen in dapper clothes set the heart pounding. Although this wasn’t yet possible, one day I was sure their divine looks would heal insanity and dim eyes alike.

I looked up at them like any other boy would upon seeing the imperial guard and cooperated with their random—though in this case, they’d been spot-on—questioning by showing them my identity plaque. After looking it over, they returned it without any further interrogation.

And why wouldn’t they? These two gentlemen were hard at work looking for a vampiric noblewoman with black hair and red eyes; arresting a College student and his friend who’d tagged along to help wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

“Oh, but just for good measure,” the gnoll said, “would you mind taking off that hood for us, buddy?”

“Sorry about this,” the werewolf added. “I know it’s annoying to have the smell cling to your hair, but work is work.”

“Huh? Oh, yes, of course.”

With both the jagers behind the request, my companion naturally complied; as the hood came off, the sight of a short head of chestnut hair and garnet eyes was all it unveiled. His shoulders and chest betrayed a male physique, and those keener than I in the realm of smell would be particularly sure of his mensch odor.

“Thanks,” the gnoll said. I suspected he was just a detail-oriented type, as his disappointed frown showed no signs of surprise.

“Sorry again for stopping you. Feel free to go on your way, and make sure to holler if you come across anybody suspicious. We’ll be there in no time flat.”

The werewolf jabbed an elbow into his partner’s side while flashing us a dependable smile; that said, his lupine grin bore fangs too terrifying for my mensch sensibilities.

“No problem at all,” I said. “Um, did something happen?”

“Nothing big. We’re just on patrol to make sure no troublemakers hole up down here.”

“‘The grains in the field are yet more finite than the count of the wicked,’ and all.”

The gnoll gripped his ribs with a wincing grimace and the werewolf followed up with a line from one of my favorite poets; neither of the jagers seemed to suspect us as anything more than a pair of boys on an errand. Not to blame them, of course: I doubted anyone would have been able to peg my companion as Miss Celia without mystic eyes or some ludicrous mind reading technique.

“It must be terribly difficult to be part of the imperial guard. I wish you the best of luck.”

Despite covering her lips with a modest hand as she spoke, she was a “mensch boy,” through and through. It wouldn’t have meant much if Mika were the only one dressing up, after all. Miss Celia’s hair and eyes were the product of her Sunscreening miracle, and Elisa’s aroma pouch took care of her scent. Everything else had been up to me.

And boy, had I gone all out. I’d used my Handicrafts skill to fashion spare rags into proper shoulder pads to give her a masculine body line, going so far as to wrap up her midsection to downplay her yet-undeveloped feminine curves. Her gentle jawline was also too girlish, so I’d given her cotton to keep in her mouth.

To top it all off, I’d gone to my wardrobe and pulled out a set of robes worth more than I cared to ponder, courtesy of Lady Leizniz. While the memory attached to them was less than palatable—her exact words when presenting them had been, “If only you were my student,” if I recall correctly—the threads were perfectly suited to putting on the airs of a magus.

Then, at the very end, Miss Celia had excitedly proclaimed that she ought to have her hair cut if she was to pass off as a boy. Considering how long mine was, I’d attempted to dissuade her, but she insisted on it, citing that it would return to its usual length once the miracle wore off anyway; as much as it pained me to say, she then grabbed it and haphazardly lopped off a giant chunk.

That wasn’t what I’d been trying to say. Temporary as it was, seeing her carelessly sacrifice what was traditionally a woman’s pride was agonizing, no matter how happy to do so she seemed.

Furthermore, her unplanned haircut had come out to something egregious; trying to shape it up into something halfway presentable had been an ordeal. I was just thankful that I could brute force it into something decent with pure Dexterity and a pair of scissors.

It seemed my hard work had paid off, seeing as these jagers couldn’t distinguish her. I know I’d been the one to put on the finishing touches, but I doubted even I could recognize her like this if we were to spend a few years apart.

Just as I prepared to bid the men goodbye with a placid smile, the secret servicemen whipped their necks in unison in the exact same direction with frightening speed.

“That way.”

“It’s far. Running topside will be faster.”

“Agreed. Closest exit’s two pipes back.”

To us, their conversation seemed to materialize out of thin air. They must have heard something too faint for our ears to pick up...like, say, the silent echo of a faraway whistle calling for backup.

“If you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to be going. Be careful down here, lads.”

“Thanks again for the help! Make sure not to slip and fall!”

The jagers bolted off as swiftly as they’d arrived; not even I could outrun them at top speeds. I waved them off and kept my affable poker face frozen until they were well out of sight. Their footsteps came echoing down the pipes for some time afterward, but that too eventually disappeared.

“Are...” Miss Celia peeked her head into the tunnel they’d run into. “Are they gone?”

“Shh, they’re not that far away.” I pulled her back by the shoulder and put a hand to her mouth. Taking the safe route, we were still a long way from our destination.

“Is it Mika?”

“I can’t imagine it’s anyone else. Looks like she’s really running them around.”

I internally marveled at Mika’s strategy. Realizing that the overwhelming guardsmen would eventually cage her in on the streets, she must have hopped into the sewers for a locational advantage. Knowing how cunning she was, I bet she’d strung them along above ground until the brink of capture, and then ducked into a major pipe where she could use the flowing water to cover a ton of ground in seconds.

My blessing may have imparted me with the ability to tweak my mental faculties, but the head on Mika’s shoulders was better than anything I could’ve hoped for. I pitied the poor guards forced to traverse the unfamiliar sewers in pursuit; at the very least, I hoped that none of them would find themselves face-to-face with a giant slime.

Come to think of it, Mika had excitedly bragged about a new spell recently: she could turn a small catalyst into a one-man raft. By now, she was sure to be zooming downstream away from those chasing her.

My old chum was putting herself on the line to save our new friend. Now it was my turn to deliver Miss Celia to safety with everything I had.

The two of us walked along in search of our exit; once we’d covered a respectable amount of ground, Miss Celia opened her mouth again. As short as our time together had been, I was well aware by now that she couldn’t handle silence alone with another person. I’d humor her so long as she didn’t choose any dangerous topics.

“You know,” she began, “there have been so many patrolmen today. I wonder if something has happened.”

Her recognition that we were surrounded by keener ears than we could imagine led to rather roundabout turns of phrase—something I was incredibly grateful for. Cloistered life or not, her familiarity with these sorts of subtleties spoke to aristocratic heritage.

“Indeed,” I responded. “To think we’d run into the imperial guard three times—today must be our lucky day.”

Why yes, that was sarcasm.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’d underestimated them. Miss Celia’s disguise had been a mere safety precaution; internally, I had figured the underground would be totally clear after three whole days of hiding. Yet we descended only to find the place crawling with stalkers pulling out all the stops.

That pair of jagers had not been the first: no, that honor went to a goblin and floresiensis. After them came an orb-weaving arachne—probably what most would consider the archetypal arachne—and a gecko-like reptilian. Each time, we’d shown them our identities and the real job request I’d swiped from the College’s bulletin to get them off our backs.

Can you blame me for letting my guard down after three days? Most normal people would suspect her to be long gone from the city by now and begin focusing their efforts beyond the walls.

This called for the utmost haste. I selected paths that were usually blocked off by slimes and forced my way past them with Unseen Hands. If we missed our chance now, we were going to spend the rest of our lives hiding in the atelier.

Plus, we’d given them a bit too much time. If they brought out a magus as broken as Lady Leizniz or a high-ranking priest with full command of miracles, then that would spell out an unwinnable checkmate...

[Tips] The holy district is located in north Berylin, next to the noble quarter. Every god in the Rhinian pantheon has temples there, but even the divine understand the political city for what it is: almost none of the chapels serve as the premier location of authority for their corresponding religion, though one would be forgiven for assuming as much from their impressive architecture. 

Temples are not restricted to the holy district, and there are smaller parishes strewn across the city for layworshippers to visit. The monasteries of the holy district are primarily used for apologetics and to house clergymen; the day-to-day services provided to the public are hosted closer to the low quarters in which they reside.

Two thoughts etched themselves into the young student’s heart: This is going great! and, but I’m going to soak in the bath for a whole day once I’m done.

Having spent more than half an hour running this way and that, the girl finally found herself cornered. As the guards closed in, she could have accepted her fate with good grace and surrendered to not suffer any rough treatment upon arrest...but didn’t. Instead, she tore open a manhole meant only to be accessed by specialized personnel, and jumped in.

Those sewer covers were specially designed to prevent curious children and random citizens from using them on a whim: they could only be opened by twisting them into a specific position and pulling at an angle. Naturally, the only people who were taught this information were those that had business with the city’s waterworks, and they were all contractually bound to not share the secret with others.

All the pursuants stopped in muddled confusion. Not only had their target taken a path she had no business knowing, but it fed into a dirty slide that would make a common man balk: the gutter led to a pipe full of rainwater that ran off the streets. So long as one could stomach the terrible pain in their buttocks on the way there—or otherwise prepare a plank of wood to ride like Mika had done—the twisting pipe could make a handy escape route to the lower levels of the underground.

A handful of guards leapt after her on reflex alone, but most planted their feet with heaving shoulders; the absurd display caused them to reexamine the situation. No normal lady would choose the sewers, regardless of how desperate she was to escape. For that matter, what kind of noble girl had the stamina to outrun city guards for such an extended period of time?

Alas, pity the men: servants to the public, the members of the garrison were balled and chained by an oath of loyalty. Here was a suspicious person doing suspicious things; that she’d vanished into a dark, dank, eerie sewer was no excuse for inaction.

Manly battle cries—though some were markedly unmanly—echoed out in chorus behind Mika as she deftly steered her sled downward. A long while back, she had joked about sliding down the pipes to save on time despite knowing the filth would keep her from ever trying it; that mundane daydream was now her reality.

Unable to keep up with her calculated twists and turns, most of the men chasing her vanished into different forking paths. At last, Mika arrived at her destination: a wide pipe full of flowing water. Not giving up her trusty ride, the mage repurposed the wooden sled with a midair spell, landing on the underground river with a newly fashioned raft.

“Wow, this is terrifying!”

The planks stretched themselves out, with one contorting into an oar for steering. Mika bit her wand to free her hands—there wasn’t any rule against wielding a wand in one’s mouth—and desperately steadied herself, using a spell to calm the bobbing watercraft.

So long as she didn’t capsize, the rest of her plan was sure to go off without a hitch. Surrendering herself to the rushing current, she floated downstream several times faster than anyone could run after her.

While this was peachy for the escapee, it was nothing short of a travesty for those chasing her. They’d tumbled down a long, bumpy slide only to be spat out into head-high water. The capital’s garrison had training programs that revolved around the exterior moat, so the armored men weren’t at risk of drowning, but that didn’t mean they could move around with full agility.

Bluntly put, this was the worst place they could have found themselves in. None of the guards had dressed for an amphibious mission: they had heavy breastplates on, or soaking leather that clung to their bodies or the ground, or both. Drenched, their boots invariably sploshed with every step, dragging them down.

Worse still, those not blessed with innate night vision could see practically nothing. Natural light was foreign to the place, and they’d rushed down too quickly to prepare any real lighting. Captains were equipped with radiant arcane torches that shone through rain and sleet alike with just the twist of a cap, but the commanding officers had all remained topside to coordinate their men. Considering how they sold for drachmae when on sale, not even the Empire could afford to equip their rank and file with such marvelous equipment.

“Gods dammit! Don’t jump in without thinking or you won’t be able to get out! Everyone without night vision stand back!”

“Argh! I can’t smell jack! Hey, who’s got the lanterns?!”

“Forget it, they’re useless! I can’t even get my tinderbox to light!”

On the other hand, Mika was paddling downstream with an arcane light to guide her. She’d learned her lesson about visible light from her last encounter in the sewers; over the past three days, she’d developed a new spell that would only shine for herself with her master’s help. He hadn’t seemed all too thrilled that his disciple was suddenly studying formulae unrelated to oikodomurgy, but he’d helped all the same on the principle that eureka moments often came from the most unassuming ideas.

“How is she sailing in this darkness?! Damn... Can we buy any more time for the nocturnal guys to get here?!”

“Anyone that can see needs to lead the way! Top priority is to make sure we don’t crash and drown!”

“Blow the whistle first! We gotta call for the sewer patrols!”

The staggering difference in sight meant the disoriented guards were reduced to small dots in the scenery in the blink of an eye.

“Um,” Mika murmured to herself, “I turn here, then watch for the right, and then...”

Still, the mage knew her advantage was fleeting. The city guard had numerous merfolk units, on account of Berylin’s vast moat. No matter how unappealing it was to swim in these filthy pipes, those aquatic specialists would dive in right away if she gave them the chance.

“Okay, here goes nothing!”

Mika may have been well acquainted with the underground, but she couldn’t outsmart the whole city guard once they got serious. Eventually, she would run into the same fate she’d encountered on the surface—that is, if she didn’t put her plan into action.

As she approached a fork, the mage pulled out a vial from her satchel and threw it at the wall. The fragile glass shattered, spilling its contents into the water behind her; suddenly, a mystic reaction turned all the runoff it came across into oily perfume.

This, too, had been a gift from her master. Its intended use was to turn a standard bath into an aromatic skin treatment that a patrician woman might fancy. Squandering such a lovely product in literal sewage was a terrible waste, especially when only a few drops would suffice for a normal tub; yet committing the whole vial lived up to Mika’s expectations.

Off in the distance, a frightful rumbling shook the pipes. Only a few days prior, this sound of thick ooze sloshing through water had caused her blood to freeze solid; now, the keeper of the sewers was hers to summon. A gargantuan slime had noticed the dramatic level of pollution her magic drug had caused.

“Oh—oh gods! But it worked! Okay, okay, next!”

Mika hadn’t forgotten the bandits’ yelps as they’d abandoned their battle: they’d cried, “There’s too much blood!” Working backward, the studious mage realized that they’d been manipulating the slimes by dirtying the water with a potent contaminant.

She used the knowledge that had fueled a smuggling enterprise like no other to help the very same princess that the criminals had been trying to kidnap. The irony had Mika chuckling as she tossed yet another vial to close off a path.

It didn’t matter how skilled her pursuers were; no one could get past a slime if it occupied an entire tunnel. While a mage would be able to push it with a barrier, these were simply too massive to continue past without a detour. Furthermore, the faithful keepers were loyal workers; they wouldn’t run off to a new spot until their work was done, no matter how much filth accumulated elsewhere.

Mika knew she wouldn’t stand a chance in a square fight, but they were as good as scarecrows if there wasn’t a path to reach her. In fact, she’d touted herself a genius when she first came up with this scheme.

The trick went as swimmingly as the budding mage had hoped, and she was finally approaching the end of the line. Several pipes joined together, giving way to a massive tunnel. Ahead lay a pitch-black mouth, swallowing the raging rapids whole.

Mika fell—she sailed straight off the edge of a waterfall.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she’d plummeted without any countermeasure in mind. She’d recently studied up on physical barriers, and covered herself in a thin layer of protection from head to toe that doubled as a pocket of air. While it would only last her a few minutes at most, the rushing torrents meant she wouldn’t need more than that.

The real issue lay ahead. Mika squinted her eyes and carefully looked out into the muddy waters.

“There it is!”

Giant metal bars came into view. With all the water flowing down to this point, there had to be something to filter out physical debris, and there were three layers to the grating. The first was tremendous in size, meant to catch driftwood, and could easily be passed through by a regular person; the second was a softer but more tightly woven net, with openings only navigable by a small child; the last was a fiber wall meant to sift out the finest articles of trash.

With how strong the current was, a direct collision with the metal bars spelled certain death. Mika kept her cool, analyzing the current, and positioned herself as best she could. But for the final moment, she simply closed her eyes and prayed.

Her gamble paid off. She slipped through a gap without eating the fatal blow; in her place, the raft that had carried her here splintered and remained stuck to the metal partition.

Having avoided a double beating from water and metal, Mika found herself caught in the soft second layer. This net was meant to impede miscellaneous trash, like the corpses of small animals; the tivisco found herself nestled in a bundle of foulness. Even with the barrier in place, she could feel her skin crawl.

This drove home the message that the marvelous bioengineering that had produced the sewers’ keepers was not infallible. Seeing as they couldn’t be everywhere all at once, this net was akin to a feeding ground that they cleared out on occasion when there was little else to do. Unwilling to waste her precious air exploring the slimes’ cafeteria, Mika frantically pushed through the garbage to get to the other side.

At last, she pushed herself free and practically jettisoned herself through a hole in the netting. The blockade of junk ate the brunt of the water’s momentum, and the mage let this gentler current carry her for a short while.

Eventually, she came across a massive brown wall. This was yet another of the College’s inventions: a fibrous mesh as colossal as it was thin, designed as the last step to purify water of grit and mud. Clever as she was, Mika couldn’t get through gaps this tiny. Instead, she activated a spell that tore a hole in the fabric. Destroying public infrastructure hurt her oikodomurge’s heart, but the filter had been designed to repair itself over time; she passed through the newly made opening with a silent apology to the original creators.

Upon forcing herself to the other side, she drifted a bit longer and was finally released. Out she went: the water purified in these sewers eventually ended up flushing out to a river that ran alongside the city.

There was a sizable drop from the mouth of the final pipe to the water’s surface, and Mika hurtled out like a falling stone. Dunking into the river with a great splash, she panicked for a moment until her best friend’s voice suddenly flashed across her mind.

“Well, Mika, if you ever lose your bearings underwater, the best thing you can do is stop moving for a bit. Whether you sink or float depends on a bunch of factors, but that way, you’ll be able to figure out which way is up.”

If her memory served, they’d been discussing a scene in a saga wherein the main character fell off a waterfall and disappeared. When she’d jokingly commented that she would be in a real pinch if the same happened to her, this had been the boy’s response. To tell the truth, the answer she’d been expecting was more along the lines of, “Don’t worry. I’ll be sure to save you.”

Regardless, the handiest tidbits of advice often came from the most unexpected sources. Mika curled up in the fetal position and relaxed her muscles, letting the flow of the river sweep her along. Her personal bubble was out of oxygen, but the air that remained trapped within slowly dragged her toward the surface.

At long last, Mika crested the surface. Laying on her back, she floated gently downstream to face the sparkling night sky. The moon cruised along without a care in the world—not full, the half body was on its way to slimming down further.

Too bad. A full moon would’ve been nice.

Still, its gentle rays of brilliance beamed down as if to honor her for all she did for her friend—for that devout follower of the Night.

“Boy... I’m spent.”

Out of energy, Mika let the river dictate her course. As she drifted, her flowing hair shrank down to its usual length and began soaking up moisture to produce a mellow wave. The last of the magical disguises wore off, returning her eyes to their usual hue; it was as if even the potions were saying that her role was finished.

“...All right, it’s time for a bath. I’m heading back as soon as my clothes are dry!”

Flipping onto her stomach, Mika began swimming to the riverbank with an oath in her heart. While she couldn’t quell the anxiety over her friends’ fates, it wasn’t as if she could contact them any time soon.

For now, the best she could do was to wash off the rainwater, sewage, and sweat that were bogging her down, and patiently wait for their return.

I’m sure they’ll be fine, Mika thought, looking up at the heavens. How can they not be with a moon this beautiful?

[Tips] The waxing and waning of the moon is sacrosanct for those who glorify the Night Goddess, and there are poetic meanings for each phase. This does not necessarily mean a new moon bodes ill, however: it is a day of respite for Her followers, as She is thought to be paying a visit to the Sun God’s chambers.

The holy district was in the northern part of the capital—the north-northwest area, to be precise. Every building in sight was either a place of worship or a residence for the monks who ran them; most agreed that a pilgrimage here was second only in importance to the head temple of one’s respective religion, even for the less spiritually inclined.

Muted shades of burnt bricks, marble, granite, and limestone painted the scene with dignity without coming off as too imposing. It was a subdued location: the steeples did not tower high out of consideration for the imperial palace, and ornaments of simple make caught the eye in the absence of grandiose statues or gilded icons. Even the gaudy lovers of ostentation found in the Circle Brilliant kept their glitter confined to the inner rooms they controlled, allowing the Sun God’s temple to retain modesty in its majesty.

Still, our Father God’s monastery was probably the largest of these reserved buildings. Though the Empire did not write legislation codifying the size of divine shrines, the religious authorities had long since decided on their pecking order; one look was enough to get the gist of who was in charge. My quick glance sufficed to pick out a solar insignia, so my initial guess had indeed been correct.

It seemed natural to assume the second-largest temple next to His would be that of His wife, but the brighter colors suggested it belonged to the Harvest Goddess instead. The pantheon’s Mother and Father were customarily housed in locations a ways apart, and their temples could most often be found on opposite sides of major streets or districts. While I couldn’t make out my own goddess’s emblem of bundled wheat on the building, it was nigh unthinkable that the cultural tradition would be broken in the capital, of all places.

I’d only looked around to get a lay of the land, but my quick survey ended up soothing my weary soul. The simple and refined architecture spoke to a high-minded integrity that made the whole sector feel blessed. I was absolutely smitten with the talent on display: here was a place fit to receive the gods, designed to evoke the heavens themselves on earth.

In the Information Era, this place would be swarming with pilgrims snapping photos left and right with their phones—not that I could look down on them. Had I the time, I would have loved to stroll the streets and enjoy the sights. My daily chores kept me too busy to walk out to a corner of the city I had little business in.

Setting my personal observations aside, it was already evening. I’d remained within the manhole, only cracking it open to peek out, and found the area unaccosted by the hustle and bustle that was so common in the rest of the capital. No matter how many people roamed these hallowed walkways, the subdued beauty of these idiosyncratic places of worship commanded its viewers into silent awe.

For good and for bad, the Mage’s Corridor was a lively and developed place. Even in matters of ambience, magecraft and religion remained antithetical.

“We’re finally here,” I said, pulling Miss Celia up. After Cleaning the sewer stink off of us, we finally had a moment of repose...or we would have. “But this is a bit worse than I expected.”

There were more guards marching along the holy district than I had thought possible. Fully equipped city guards with swords at their hilts mingled together with the usual rank and file wearing breastplates and helmets I saw on the daily. On top of that, no one had told me I’d need to watch out for more secret servicemen after running into them three times in one day.

Okay, okay—logically speaking, it made sense. Guarding an escapee’s asylum was standard practice, and a sheltered girl couldn’t pull off three days on the lam against a force like this alone; clearly, they suspected she had some help on the inside.

My old chum had made the path here painless, but the most suspicious suspect alive wouldn’t convince them to abandon their posts here to give chase. Why did these guards have to be so damn sensible? It was nice when they were protecting me, but as someone trying to slip by them, their competence was infuriating. That’s it. I’m never fighting the authorities again.

Trying to suss out my options, I figured we could take refuge in an alleyway while we planned our next move...only to find the backstreets crawling with guards too. The way they eagerly packed themselves into every nook and cranny made this feel like a targeted attempt at bullying me in particular. Even a hooded parkour assassin would struggle to poke holes in this net, but we managed to catch a fleeting opportunity and sneaked into an alley. My brain was churning at full throttle, but the first thought that came to mind was, Why are these jerks such tryhards?

And yes, of course, the answer was because this was reality. Yet again, I was reminded that my predicament was wholly unlike stealth games designed to be cleared; it was incredible how I’d managed to delude myself after being on the receiving end of full-blown bloodlust at both the lakeside manor and ichor maze.

Although my inability to learn had me upset with myself, stray thoughts would do us no good; I decided to voice my concerns to bounce ideas off Miss Celia.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to get through this many guards...”

“Indeed,” she said. “The chapel is over there...see? Do you see the one with the spire?”

I followed her pointer finger to find a tall belltower and a shadow squatting on top: dyed in the scarlet of setting sun, the massive wings of a siren stretched out, its owner perched atop the steeple.

Sirens were a peculiar race that remained unclassified between demihumans and demonfolk. Despite all belonging to one unified people, their anatomies varied wildly, and not only based on what type of avian ancestry they had: some were covered in feathers, gave up human arms for wings, and had pronounced birdlike facial features; very rarely, sirens were indistinguishable from mensch save for a pair of wings sprouting from their backs. The variance was so wild that sirens native to different regions practically looked unrelated.

Some author or another of Earth had once written that a human being with wings on their back wouldn’t be able to fly. They’d posited that a person’s weight outstripped any lift generated by the flapping of wings, so any reasonably sized pair would struggle to even allow the user to glide.

Sirens had not received this memo: they flew. The smallest among them could take off from perfect stillness, and even the heavier ones could lift themselves into the sky with a short running start.

There had been a few siren households in Konigstuhl. All of the ones I’d known were pretty clumsy with their hands, but made great use of their aerial talents for the good of the canton. Most also held property in Innenstadt, and earned their keep by flying from the city to rural cantons with mail in hand. Having known nothing of thaumaturgy at that point, my reaction had been a casual, Wow! Cool! I wish I had that! Now equipped with knowledge, however, I recognized that something in their biology allowed them to intuitively employ magic. In some ways, they were like the fairies and spirits, though those creatures’ entire existences hinged on the arcane.

The benefits of natural flight hardly needed to be stated. When magia struggled to replicate their innate abilities, the strengths were readily apparent; though the physical toll the incredible spells enacted on their bodies made them frail, the pros easily overshadowed the cons.

Still, sirens had historically been seen as deficient beings in many ways, and theirs was a tale rife with persecution. Most notably, they were one of a kind: despite their instinctive mastery of ornithurgy, they lacked an internal conduit for mana. For a people flying off into unknown horizons in search of a place to call home, their arrival in the Empire was a matter of course—or destiny, if you’d like to be poetic.

Whatever their technical abilities or history may be, what it really boiled down to for us was that sirens could fly. That alone put them near the top of the rankings for scouting activities, and judging from the perched one’s uniform...

“Jagers again?”

The world was throwing its highest-level enemies—the best of the best—right our way.

I could only see their back, but judging from the wings and the shape of their head, their bloodline was drawn from birds of prey; their capacity for searching truly was best in class. I’d once heard eagles could pick out and accurately dive on prey from a kilometer away, so avoiding being seen was going to be next to impossible.

Considering how all of my run-ins today had gone this way, my dice had to be loaded. If life had a random encounter table, this was me hitting every bad outcome with a defeated sigh.

“It might be a bit of a struggle to ask your friend for help,” I said with a grimace.

They’d defended the most vulnerable part of their position with all their major pieces. At this point, I wasn’t sure if Miss Celia could get to her ally even if she managed to sneak into the church. She didn’t even need to be spotted by a guard: if someone loyal to her family recognized her inside, it was all over.

“Oh, whatever shall we do? I fear it would be too dangerous to try and masquerade as members of the crew.”

“I doubt that’d be possible anyway. Neither you nor I can pass for a burly seaman, and the crown wouldn’t just hire any old sailor for this to begin with.”

Anchoring in Berylin indicated that the airship was going to take the opportunity to refuel or restock, but dressing up as a shipmate would not suffice. A state-sponsored project intended to promote national interests was not the kind of place a day laborer could hope to find work. I suspected the lowest-ranking crewmen aboard were direct servants to knights.

“How many people is the Night Goddess sending?”

That left one route remaining: the tried-and-true luggage stowaway. If the church was sending people as envoys, it was sure to be a suitably sized party with a good deal of luggage. While they wouldn’t casually saunter up with a truckload of personal articles fit to move into a palace—they weren’t the corrupt bishops of Earth’s Middle Ages—the high-ranking priests most likely to be selected required fitting treatment, and I imagined there had to be some spot Miss Celia could hide in.

“Huh? I believe our boarding party has three members. The Head Abbess will have two priests accompanying her, and as they are all Immaculate believers, none have elected to employ a helper.”

Oh? In my mind, the Night Goddess’s involvement would have been as minimal as possible, but She still got three representatives. That meant the more populous churches would bring more than that; the religious affiliates alone summed to an impressive total.

Perhaps this airship was far bigger than what I’d been imagining. I’d conjured up an image of a humble galleass sailing through the sky, but accommodating my rough passenger estimation would require something far larger. With nobles, College professors, and high-ranking clergy in attendance, their sleeping arrangements were certainly not going to be shabby cots. Not only did they have to provide countless bedrooms fit for aristocrats, but their servants needed quarters and kitchens. Factoring all that in would take a leviathan of a vessel. More and more, it seemed that my fantasy of a classic ship floating on the clouds had been off the mark. I was markedly less enthused to see some luxury liner pop into the heavens ready to treat its passengers to a joyride around the world.

Whatever my personal thoughts on the matter, this new information necessitated a change in plans.

“Do you know where in the chapel the departing party is making their preparations?”

Miss Celia put a hand to her chin in contemplation. After a long moment, she answered with a dubious, “Probably.”

The task at hand was going to take a lot of nerves, but at least the sun had almost set; the watchful raptor’s eyes would lose their terrifying edge. Sirens’ vision was closer to that of birds than mensch, and they were particularly susceptible to loss of light.

For now, our best course of action was to wait out for nightfall before making— Wait. What the heck is that?

I’d been trying to keep an eye on the siren when a hovering dot appeared in the northern sky. Set against the backdrop of the crimson heavens, the garish white blemish grew larger and larger with every passing second. What had been a tiny stain ballooned into a ginormous shadow whose shape stood out clearly to the naked eye. Despite floating gods knew how high above the earth, it seemed gargantuan—larger than my brain could possibly fathom.

The tremendous, chalk-white boat slid across a sky dyed scarlet by the setting sun. Though it was long and sleek, the thing threatened to engulf the entire district whole as it sliced through the atmosphere with a shining snow-white bow.

“That’s huge.”

I knew we needed to keep a low profile, but the words fell right out of my mouth. But I wasn’t alone: everyone in the city with a view of the skies was sure to be reacting the same way.

Exquisitely slender—that is, relative to its length—the tip seemed as sharp as the pointed end of a diamond, and it grew fatter near the rear, assuming I was looking at it head-on. Its point was as acute as a spear and flew through the air with equal aerodynamic grace. Two three-wing clusters stretched out from each flank...fueled by spells so intense that I could see the formulae.

Hold on a second. Just how massive is this thing? Perspective told me it was at a considerable altitude, but it was so big that my sense of scale was sputtering out. It couldn’t cover the whole of Berylin or anything, but it was definitely as big as one of its major districts.

I knew it was amazing, but...this was not it. I’d been looking forward to something straight out of the realm of fantasia. What the hell was this?! It was practically a weapon of mass destruction—the thing was knocking on the door to sci-fi.

This isn’t what I expected! Where’s the GM?!

After gaping in shock for a moment, revelation struck: everyone’s attention was turned toward the sky. I looked over at the spire and found that the siren had jumped to their feet, staring at the heavens in perplexity; the other guards were much the same.

They were possibly—nay, almost assuredly—just as shocked as me. While they’d certainly been given prior notice of the vessel’s arrival, no normal person would think to expect that from the description of “a ship that sails through the sky.”

...Isn’t this a perfect chance to slip away?

The guards had their eyes fixed skyward, and everyone was too bewildered for a passing noise to catch their attention. As the behemoth sailed on, I shook the awestruck lady beside me by the shoulder to snap her out of its hypnotic shock; it was time to go.

[Tips] Mystic circles are one of many auxiliary avenues for mages to supplement their spellcasting, and are generally written with ink on flooring or with arcane strands of visible light. Magia of the Trialist Empire consider them as showy and unstylish as chants, but those who prefer function over form may even tattoo themselves with hexes of their most commonly used spells.

Forcibly quieting the stubborn voice crying, Why? in the back of her mind, Agrippina du Stahl handily cleared a sociability check to put on a graceful smile. Her long, silver hair wove into a braid that embellished her crown far better than any artisanal coronet. Wearing a thin red gown that exposed much of the shoulders and arms was a bold statement only those endowed with natural comeliness could pull off; she needed no action to bolster her allure, which proudly proclaimed to the world that such threads were fit for her and her alone.

With a wine glass in one hand and a pretty smile tinged with melancholy, the methuselah was the shimmering flower at the center of the party. Marriageable men of every kind found themselves instantly besotted with the lovely blossom that rarely bloomed at these sorts of events—knowing not the poison at the roots—and flocked around her like bees seeking nectar.

Agrippina hated social gatherings, but not because she lacked the skill in etiquette or insight to navigate them smoothly. As a Seinian noble, the century or so she’d spent meeting other socialites with her father had been enough to perfect the craft, and another half century away was hardly enough for her to have lost her touch.

No, the methuselah simply found the roundabout conversations to be a fucking chore, and being invited to pleasure cruises or garden walks that she had no interest in made her want to hurl. She’d spent all her days keeping to the bare minimum of contact with others she could get away with, and the sole purpose of this godforsaken place was for her to make new connections with others whom she would otherwise have avoided. Frankly, she wanted to burn the terrace down and be done with it.

Only the surviving shreds of her pragmatic mind kept her base urges in check—that a failure to do so could spell the end of the world was just a part of the methuselah condition.

Painting over her gloomy soul with a perfectly set smile, the scoundrel participated in nauseating conversations and gingerly kicked aside any invitation to dance while filling her internal monologue with the sort of hateful speech that cannot be reproduced in text. The object of her venom was none other than Duke Martin, who had dragged her here saying, “There is something I simply must show you before writing your referral to professorship!”

To think, Agrippina had been so elated when he had disappointedly opened his retainer’s letter while grumbling about the time. At long last, she’d thought, the torturous nightmare would end. The cascading problems that had arisen as a result of their discussion remained very real, but she was happy enough to have a chance to rest her fatigued consciousness for the first time in months.

Yet by the time she’d gotten her bearings, the methuselah found herself dolled up and planted in a balcony banquet. As a final kick in the gut, the source of all her suffering, who had so excitedly dragged her out to show her something he considered interesting, had vanished on account of a “sudden emergency.” Had only the duke been at her side, she could have used him as an umbrella to stymie the torrential rain of idiotic suitors.

Agrippina wanted to throw a fit.

Why? Why was she out on the northern terrace of the imperial palace—so impressively famed as the Astral Garden—participating in a social gathering with the Emperor present?

Sick and tired of it all, Agrippina still continued to throw the names of every man coming her way into some corner of her brain, next to the tiresome topics she’d solved in her childhood that they merrily discussed. An outing of this sort would last hours at most; was there any reason a woman who’d lived as long as she couldn’t tough out a few more hours?

No. Absolutely not.

In the throes of despair, she gulped down the extravagant wines provided by the crown and wasted yet more time with conversations that carried no stimulation—not even negative. As the setting sun seared the skies for one last hurrah before deep navy reclaimed the heavens, those gazing toward the invisible stars began to stir.

Following their eyes, Agrippina looked up—only for her mystic eye to burn in pain. Overburdened by the task of witnessing too many magic formulae at once, her retinas were screaming to be relieved.

“Hngh...”

The vessel splitting the crimson sky in two was, in no uncertain terms, a mass of pure thaumaturgy. Mystic circles were plastered over every inch at every which angle, assaulting her eye with the glimmer of innumerable spells.

Too gargantuan for physical stability, the craft was held together by binding spells that covered the entirety of the surface; hardening magic had been layered on top as if to fully conceal the first arcane coating. The ship had been built to be so unrealistically large that to forgo such overdone measures would lead to its immediate destruction.

The mystic circles had been etched in so densely that six layers were plainly exposed. Each of the spells in use was a paragon of virtuosity: antigravity magic, physical repulsion barriers, and a convoluted system to funnel small amounts of air through gaps in its force fields to turn drag into propulsion. Built on a ludicrous jury-rigging of the most advanced magical tech one could imagine, the airship’s engraved spells could be seen as a blurry glow to even the most mystically illiterate—that was how great a violation it was of the laws of the universe.

I see, Agrippina thought. I can see why this might deserve the praise of the neophilic, magecraft-obsessed duke.

Glancing at the rabble, Agrippina saw that most had either frozen in dumbfounded wonder or spat the wine right out of their mouths. A few even dropped their cups, mumbling in fear about how the end had arrived—likely the product of some foreign pantheon’s prophecies.

Come to think of it, the methuselah realized a good number of foreign diplomats were in attendance; this showy display had clearly served its purpose. Judging from the sorry state of those around her, the airship was responsible for so much shock that those writing to their motherlands would probably be doubted for their outlandish exaggerations.

“My word. They certainly have equipped it with quite the arsenal.”

Having regained her composure, Agrippina plucked a wine glass off the tray of a waiter who’d frozen in astonishment, only to see dragon knights drop out from the bottom of the hull and take to the air. Truly, how many surprises did the Empire intend on delivering before it was satisfied?

Calmer now, Agrippina agreed that this was an impressive showpiece. It was conspicuous beyond belief, and entertained the eyes for as long as one cared to watch. The dragon knights pouring out had begun to fly in theatrical formation while leaving trails of smoke behind them, only adding to the artistic flair.

However, the appearance of something so wonderful begged the question: where had the duke who’d been so enthused about it gone?

[Tips] The imperial palace is home to three minor dance halls and one major. There are seven banquet halls, six smaller dining rooms, and twenty-five total meeting places—the palace is a castle designed in every way with social events in mind. The four balconies facing each cardinal direction are primarily used for parties held in the late evening. They are specially kept with magic to retain a comfortable temperature throughout the year, and the scenic overlook of the capital makes them popular with domestic and foreign politicians alike.

Although the mammoth ship’s ripping tailwind howled well into the heart of the capital, the keen siren staring up at it did not let the distraction dull his senses: the faint sound of a creaking window hinge rang clearly in his ears.

At His Majesty’s personal request, the Church of the Night Goddess had subjected itself to martial law. Anyone trying to get in or out could only do so under the supervision of the city guards posted inside, and the priests had been given strict orders to report to them if they so much as wished to let in some fresh air.

Ordinarily, the highly independent religious associations of Rhine would never accept such humiliation. The fanatics were willing to face even the crown with swords and horseshoes in hand if it meant their faith and agency were on the line. In particular, the Head Abbess of the Night led what may have been the most rabid of the countless radical sects that made up the Empire’s pantheon: those of the Circle Immaculate were complete lunatics only rivaled by the Circle Austere of Her husband’s flock.

Chaste to the point of insanity, they welcomed daily hardship as a blessing akin to laying on of hands; they were freaks, even by clerical standards. For an organization such as theirs to resign themselves to indignation at the hand of a secular crown was nigh unthinkable under usual circumstances.

Unfortunately, they had carried the burden of responsibility and now faced the consequences of failing to fulfill it. Though the custody of their charge had been a titular affair, her disappearance demanded retribution despite their lack of involvement with the escape—such was the woe of society.

To swallow terms normally vehemently opposed was the plainest sort of remorse. Truth be told, the Abbess had counted her blessings: a scandal of this sort could be grounds for ordained bishops—to say nothing of lower priests—to lose their heads. Cooperation with the state was a meager price to avoid that fate, though she had admittedly gritted her teeth and dug her nails into her palm as she spat in indignation, “Can our good Sister not go one year without incident?”

As such, the interior of the temple was under lockdown. The creaking sound, then, was almost certainly the result of outside interference.

The multicultural capital was home to countless peoples who could climb into buildings. Reptilians could stick to vertical surfaces, and insectoids like arachne could scale walls with ease. There was no end to the troubled citizens who flippantly ignored doors for convenience’s sake alone, and one being shouted down by a city guard was a common sight.

The man took flight: one powerful flap of his wing-arms ignited a magical reaction that shook off the jealous chains of gravity. Deftly making the most of his mensch-like frame, he curled up to turn on a dime as he jumped off the spire, turning to rocket down the roof mere inches from the tower. To write his movements off as mere acrobatics would be a disservice; yet those who partook in the dizzying life-or-death dance of aerial combat considered this mastery of motion no more than a necessity for survival.

Nearly grazing his magnificent beak across the shingles as he descended, the imperial jager spotted a lone intruder trying to break in and shouted.

“You there! What are you doing?! Freeze and take off your hood!”

Judging from the suspect’s build, it was a young male mensch. For a siren like himself, mensch were the easiest race to handle; for reasons unknown, every last one of the fools mistakenly believed raptors were as blind in the dark as domesticated fowl. So prevalent was the misconception that the poets had immortalized it in a limerick: Let your handicap be light for light gives sirens no handicap.

[Tips] Many popular preconceptions about other races arise from the Empire’s large swaths of differing groups: merfolk must soak in water half of each day or die, vampires melt under sunlight, stuarts eat nuts only to file their teeth, sirens cannot see in the dark, etc. 

Despite their pervasiveness, the common mensch are no exception. Understood by others for their rugged adaptability, they often get puzzled looks when they complain about being hot or cold.

No matter what stat is being checked, every tabletop game has situations where the players are asked to make a dice roll that doesn’t really matter. Sometimes this is because failure is practically impossible, and other times it’s just that the official rules necessitate it as a formality, but every player has haphazardly thrown a compulsory die or two not caring what the result may be...

And it was at times like these that I encountered catastrophic displays of fortune.

In all likelihood, I’d succeeded on the action itself. Miss Celia and I had climbed an invisible staircase of Unseen Hands to a second-story window of the monastery (though secretly, I’d been hoping she would sprout bat wings and flutter in on her own), and she’d just managed to tumble inside. But as soon as I tried to follow after her...

“You there! What are you doing?! Freeze and take off your hood!”

For a moment, I couldn’t process the man’s order. Not because I was stunned by my own idiocy at being caught or anything, but simply because the speaker’s vocal cords were that unfit for human speech; his voice was more shrill than rubbing glass.

I’d broken stealth and failed my reaction to boot. Had he forgone the courtesy of clearly announcing my discovery and just gone for the kill, I doubted I would’ve had time to fit in another response.

Guards were principally bound to declare their presence before acting; they always called out to suspects before resorting to physical means. Whether they were an everyday patrolman or His Majesty’s secret service, the policy remained the same.

After all, they could afford it. A few seconds of preparation wasn’t enough for the average criminal to avoid being pounded into the dirt, so it was better by far to give the warning and dodge the ire of the populace. However, in spite of the guard’s orders to identify myself, he was already moving in for an attack.

Naturally, anyone stupid enough to sneak into a building under jager supervision was up to no good. Now that he’d done his formal duty, slapping me around was the next thing on his to-do list. I couldn’t tell whether that made him sloppy or deliberate, but whatever the case, he was barreling down at me with his legs primed for a kick—his hawkish outline made it clear to see.

Imperial culture dictated that people were to wear shoes regardless of what claws and nails were present on one’s feet, but the siren’s sandal-boot hybrid left his talons perilously exposed. Those razors were sharp enough to slice me like a rare steak, and perhaps even score me to my bone.

Basically, it boiled down to a counter-or-die situation. The last vestiges of sunlight gleamed off his imposing talons in a way that made it clear a clean hit would skip past applying concussion and land me in a death saving throw.

At once, I dismissed the Hand that I’d been using to support my torso while trying to get in the window and went into a relaxed free fall; by keeping my foothold present for another beat, I fell in an unnatural way that would duck under the attack. My thanks were split between the honorable jager for his warning and my Lightning Reflexes for letting me capitalize on the split second it offered.

The tips of his claws whizzed by my nose and— My gods, that’s scary! I’d been using another Hand to keep my hood over my face, but he tore up the mystic force field as he passed; I would have lost my nose had he so much as gotten a scratch!

Narrowly avoiding a promising future as mincemeat, I curled up like a cat and caught my fall with my hands. Cushioning the impact by bending my arms, I rolled onto my left shoulder to finish the landing; what momentum remained dissipated after a few somersaults. Those impulse buys I’d made after losing at foxes-and-geese weren’t anything to scoff at—rolling off the damage was orders of magnitude less taxing than breaking my fall with magic.

I didn’t have any time to spare, so I used inertia to propel me to my feet and into an alleyway. Everything would come crashing down if they caught me for questioning; considering the context, they might even resort to psychosorcery.

“Wha— Hey! Hold it, punk! Argh, dammit!”

The realm of flight was one we mensch would never surpass a siren in, but the reverse was true on the ground. While there were a few oddball tribes who were faster on foot than in the air, the jager’s wingspan gave him a hard time flying in the cramped backstreets. Now that I’d dodged his first strike, I was in a good spot to get away.

“Oh, you’re nimble aren’t you, you damn earth-crawler?!” he shouted, blowing into a whistle.

...Yeah, I figured. He was on lookout, so he was obviously equipped with some way to alert his fellow patrolmen, though I admit I was puzzled at how he’d blown the thing with his beak.

There were already patrolmen posted in the alley I’d ducked into, and the piercing hiss of the whistle snapped them out of the airship’s spell.

“Whoa there, who are—”

“Excuse me!” I shouted, tackling a young mensch man with my shoulder. As he slammed into the wall, I took the liberty of relieving him of his baton; this region had low rates of crime, and the local guards didn’t carry bladed spears if they were armed at all.

“Argh?!”

Squished between me and the wall, his grunt sounded thoroughly painful, but I left him to it. Snatching his staff—which was nearly as long as I was tall—I twirled it around to fasten it in my armpit.

Okay, next up is...huh. What is my next move?

I’d left Miss Celia with a final token of aid before making my getaway, so she would need to clear the rest of the path forward on her own; as capricious as this may be coming from the guy who got himself caught, committing two of my most valuable assets to her should have been enough to say I did my due diligence—or at least, I hoped it was. Honestly, I should and would have seen her journey through to the end, but that was a vain hope at this point.

Worrying about Miss Celia’s future was well and good, but my future was the more pressing matter. I wonder what they’ll do if they catch me...

With how out of hand this whole debacle had gotten, I doubted I could get away with the old, “Spare this poor street urchin for trying to steal a loaf of bread!” routine. They weren’t going to just call up my guardian—I supposed Lady Agrippina counted—to have her scold me and call it a day like some child who got in trouble at school.

Whoa, two ahead! The whistle had put them on high alert; with sneak attacks out the window, I had no choice but to face them head-on.

Although the guards of Berylin carefully selected elites who diligently trained even after taking up their daily duties, they didn’t exactly make for difficult opponents for me. Still far from the pinnacle of swordplay as I was, I’d trained up to the cusp of Divine Favor.

But above all else, the capital was simply too peaceful.

“Grah?!”

I bolted forward without readying my baton, just begging them to swing at my unprotected head; the first guard bravely and dutifully obliged. Nothing was easier to manipulate than an attack baited out, and his swing had clearly been made of my volition. I pivoted to my left side, dodging the overhead strike and whipping him with my own staff in the same motion. By levering the long rod at my armpit, I swung right up into his jaw and knocked him out cold.

“What the hell?!”

Baffled at his fallen comrade, the second guard panicked—that wouldn’t do. A guard from one of the bloodier cities in the Empire would have pushed his friend’s limp body to the wayside and thrown himself at me by now. Capital guards may have been famed as the cream of the crop, handpicked from every reach in the land, but as a swordsman trained in dirty rural tactics and the no-holds-barred setting of real combat, I found them much too naive.

Their skill, of course, was respectable. I’d heard that the selection exams included a one-on-one spar with an instructor on equal terms, so I had no doubt they were competent with swords, spears, and anything in between. Yet their posts as city guards in Berylin left them wanting for experience.

The capital was a hub of foreign exchange, and the soldiers guarding it were selected accordingly: they required brawn and brains to get the job. But by and large, they lacked the dogged determination to pry victory out of the jaws of defeat no matter the cost. While they were proud of their sublime mission to protect the peace and would do everything in their power to perform it at full capacity, they lacked the desperation of a canton watchman who knew that his death would be the death of his family.

For protectors of rural towns, defeat spelled the end of everything they knew. As unpolished as their technique was, they would sooner eat a clean stab to the gut in order to deprive an enemy of their weapon than see a bandit swing at their loved ones. Frankly, the fair-and-square strength of the capital’s guards was far easier to deal with.

My personal grading was that these men were skilled but ultimately lacking; I would liken them to a whiskey not yet aged.

To top things off, they seemed unaccustomed to wielding weapons in close quarters. The second guard wound up for a swing and bumped his staff into the walls of the alley, causing his attack to stray off its intended course; a minor tilt of my neck was all it took to avoid it. Such was the result of practicing many-on-one chases where the culprit never dared to advance toward them.

As my baton bounced off the first man’s jaw, I let recoil bring it downward unabated, simply redirecting it slightly. The second guard had preoccupied himself with not stepping on his tumbling ally, leaving his legs wide open for a sweep.

“Whoa— Augh?!”

Thinking it would be a waste of kinetic energy to simply let him fall normally, I placed the tip of my baton right where his head would land, and then kicked it into his chin. Call me savage if you must, but it did the job of concussing him.

...Whew, they’re alive. They wouldn’t be eating solids anytime soon, but it looked like I’d even managed to avoid breaking their teeth. All right, how many more of these do I have to get through?

“I heard voices this way!”

“Cage ’em in! Make sure to circle wide!”

“Remember, backup’s on the way! Top priority is to get the suspect’s location!”

It was time to roll up my sleeves for a round of foxes-and-geese. I’d be fine: surely it couldn’t be as hard as trying to outmaneuver Margit, and my life was on the line in either scenario. Stepping across the comatose duo, my earring jingled, wishing me the best of luck.

[Tips] The main work of guards in the capital is to stop and search for crime, which manifests itself as marching around town in armor. Officially considered reserve forces in the army, they boast great martial prowess; tested on all sorts of intellectual metrics, they make for bright seekers during searches.

Alas, the long drought of instability in modern years meant the most violent criminal an average patrolman faced was a drunkard at a pub. Only aging veterans decades into their careers and immortals too accustomed to the job to quit have anything that can be considered significant experience.

Thrust through an open window, Cecilia planted her noble bottom on the floor for nearly a whole minute in a daze. Outside, shouting voices and loud crashes mingled with a chorus of police whistles. Her large eyes blinked in confusion; she tried to chew on the situation but found it harder than a rock, and it developed without pause as she tried to digest it all. By the time she realized that Erich had been found, the whistles were sounding from far away.

“No!” Cecilia tried to scream. She opened her mouth, moved her tongue, and huffed out a puff of air, but the gift of language she regularly employed without thought refused to produce any noise.

Quizzically looking around, she found a pair of flickering lights fluttering around her: the same ones that belonged to the “helpers” that were present when Erich had been making magical decoys.

As a Goddess-fearing believer, Cecilia had never tried to use the mystic eyes she’d inherited from her father. Though she could catch faint glimpses of the arcane, her natural talents were only enough to see their true forms if they chose to appear before her; if they chose to remain hidden, she had no hope of spotting them.

The glows of differing hues danced about her midair. When speaking to these lights, the boy had seemed equal parts weary and affectionate, and the vampire had then asked what they were. He’d stated simply that they were alfar. He hadn’t given their names—those were a secret for him alone.

Seeing the flittering phosphorescent bodies urge her to her feet, Cecilia realized that the fairies were here. Despite being backed into a corner himself, the boy had left the alfar with her.

The priestess wanted to tear the window open and announce her presence, to shout out that he was not to be hurt. No matter how sheltered she was, she knew his capture would be anything but amicable. While he would likely not be killed to facilitate further questioning, they would beat him into submission; perhaps they might even break his bones and cut his tendons.

Yet the fact that he had left these alfar with her was proof that he hadn’t given up...and that he believed in her. It was a statement: “I swear I’ll escape, so make it to Lipzi safe and sound.”

Cecilia held herself for a moment, trembling. Finally steeling herself, she wound her fists tight and shook the dust off her borrowed robes as she rose to her feet. Even knowing that her voice would not ring out, she looked at the green and black bulbs orbiting her and spoke.

“Will you please help me?”

Not in a million years had the alfar expected her to speak to them. They stopped revolving around her as if they were mortals taking in a surprise.

Eventually, the hidden fairies resumed their dance, spiraling in a helix toward the door. The message was as clear as it was silent: Follow us, and we’ll show you the way.

Despite the clamorous whistles tugging at the corner of Cecilia’s mind, she chose to interpret the continued noise as proof of the boy’s continued safety.

Now it was her turn to play a game she’d enjoyed in her childhood. Even the sheltered princess had a memory or two of getting into trouble, and sneaking into someone’s luggage during a game of hide-and-go-seek happened to be one of them.

[Tips] Most people cannot see alfar, as fey perceptibility is dictated by their own whims and desires. As such, the parents of children whisked away to their twilit hill cannot so much as find the culprit. Only those graced with powers of mystic observation greater than an alf’s ability to hide can dig out a hidden fairy.

In battles between the few and the many, it is routinely the latter that has the edge; such is the reason we tell and retell the rare tales that document the former’s victory. The ultimate result is that legends of people beating the odds stick fast to our memories, and what was meant to be miraculous becomes merely commonplace, finally descending into the realm of hackneyed tropes. And no matter how grueling the true battle is, the poets always paint the scenes with simple and concise language to accentuate how powerful the hero is.

Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that the one-line victories seen in sagas were horribly callous.

“Gods, why can’t I hit him?!”

As I squatted down, a dazzling ray of light blasted just above my head. Dissipating just before it reached the wall behind me, the attack was, in simple terms, a laser beam. Instantly singing the part of my hood that made contact, the magical version of concentrated high-power light was alarmingly destructive.

This was a real head-scratcher. How in the world had I found myself facing yet another man in jet-black uniform—a member of His Majesty’s imperial mage corps? Seriously, when I’d first spotted him mixed into the crowd of city guards with personal bodyguards in tow, my heart nearly stopped altogether.

The hexenkrieger were not quite magia, but they were the resident experts who protected the Emperor in all things mystic. Less scholarly than those I’d encountered in the College, they couldn’t fine-tune complex spells with perfect precision, however, their intuitive understanding of practical sorcery was nothing to scoff at.

Much like how jagers were traditionally selected from our nation’s huntsmen, the hexenkrieger were composed of talented spellcasters who’d made their name in the private sector, or College students who’d abandoned the path of academia. Waiting at His Majesty’s side, they were combat-oriented specialists who prioritized practical defenses against hexes and attack magic, and sometimes even dipped into counterspells for poisons or traps.

For some ungodly reason—probably one as stupid as close proximity, knowing my luck—a monster like him had shown up out of nowhere to blast me with a barrage of spells. This was ridiculous; today was an awful day, even by my standards. Though this world lacked the morning news horoscopes that young girls enjoyed in my past life, I could safely say that mine would have been rock bottom.

Juking around beams of pure energy that would melt through steel given a few seconds—which, by the way, literally traveled at the speed of light—I jabbed my baton into a nearby guard’s gut, swinging the tip to launch him into one of his compatriots. Fighting while sidestepping suppressing fire was tough, but any pause to catch my breath would make me a sitting duck; difficulty was no excuse to give up.

I doubt this needs to be said, but my Agility—or rather, anyone’s Agility—was not enough to avoid a laser after it was let loose. My Lightning Reflexes were fast, but they abided by the laws of physics.

My method of dodging was one commonly seen in shonen manga: I paid close attention to the caster’s eyes and movements to read his next move, positioning myself away from his probable lines of fire.

Spellcasting invariably required mental processing; there were a few seconds of lag before mana could turn into reality-defying effect. While absolute freaks like Lady Agrippina ignored such restraints with sheer hardware, the power balance that held this world together would crumble at light speed if monstrosities of her make could be found on every corner. Not even I was unlucky enough for that.

What that meant for me was that I simply had to do my best to fake him out while abusing his kindness: he wouldn’t want to hit an innocent guard, would he? My brain was working at full throttle—I may have been no more than a musclehead, but I’d be damned if the organ between my ears wasn’t swole.

After all, I couldn’t afford to rely on magic unless I absolutely needed it to survive. Any lingering mana could give my identity away, so I could only use it as a last resort. That’s why this wasn’t me sandbagging, per se. I was just deathly serious about following the restrictions on this level.

“Shit! Open up a line for me! I can’t hit him like this!”

“Can’t you tweak your spell or something?! He’ll tear straight through us if we break formation!”

“Do I look like a god to you?! This beam has the power to pierce dragon scales—it’s hard enough to handle as is! You know light travels in a straight line, right?!”

Sorry, I must be hearing things. It can pierce what? Hold on. When did I become wanted, dead or alive? What happened to bringing me in for questioning?!

As cold sweat dampened my entire back, I shifted my focus to dealing with the imperial guard first. There was a marked difference between being able to dodge and actually managing to keep it up; if worse came to worst, he could give up and hit me with an unavoidable area-of-effect.

“You’re coming with me!” I shouted.

“Wait, sto— Hrgh?!”

After slamming the two city guards with my battlestaff, I unhanded the weapon and grabbed them both by the lapels, taking off in a sprint with their heavy bodies on my back.

My destination? The imperial mage and his two bodyguards, of course.

“What?!” he cried. “You—you coward!”

“Appreciate the compliment!” My words of thanks landed simultaneously with the guards I’d thrown, toppling everyone in the collision.

Imperial guardsmen were still human, it seemed. Had he fired with no regard for the men I’d used as meat shields, I would have been down and out.

Looking back, I supposed the mage’s kindness had been visible from the very start: he’d chosen to employ light from the visible spectrum so the front line could see his shots. A serious magus in his shoes would never have taken the onus of others’ safety on themselves; they’d use a superheated infrared death ray to plow through me, their allies, and the wall while they were at it. Wasting mana on precautionary measures like ending the beam early to preserve the architecture proved that this man was a saint.

Hmm... My patterns of thought were beginning to take after the depraved scoundrels of the College. I’d need to set aside some time to reorient my values to be closer to those of common people or I’d run into problems later down the line.

But the matter at hand left me with no time for these silly thoughts, so I ran up to the fallen mage and put in a solid kick to the jaw to knock him out. His bodyguards tried to untangle themselves and rise to their feet, but I put them to sleep before they could.

“You... You’ve gotta be kidding me...”

I didn’t know who uttered these words, but let it be known that that was my line. Not only had I been jumped by nearly twenty city guards, but they’d brought along a mage more competent in arcane combat than I was—a very comical joke indeed.

Having tossed my weapon to pull this trick off, I kicked a baton rolling around at my feet into the air and caught it to rearm myself. As an aside, this made for the sixth weapon I’d picked up today.

I scanned the remaining crowd. Although some were clearly shaken, not a single one dared besmirch their post by turning tail. Their loyalty was heartwarming; I only hoped that they would continue their service going forward for purposes other than apprehending me.

Tired of running, I raised my left hand and signaled them to bring it on. With a hearty cry meant more to rally themselves than to intimidate me, they pressed in.

“Ugh... Haah... Gods,” I heaved. “That totals...twenty-two? You’ve gotta be fucking with me...”

Yet in the realm of storytelling, the author does a disservice to us both: both their valorous charge and my courageous defense amounted to less than a single line of prose. All that remained was an endless torrent of sweat that spilled forth without reserve no matter how many times I wiped my brow. By the time I caught my breath, I was surrounded by a mountain of wounded soldiers.

They had truly been exemplary. They’d fanned out to cast a wide net, with each group of two to four buying time as they blew their whistles. Once the trap had been successfully laid, they moved in at once to overwhelm me with their numbers. Their tactics had been so methodical that I’d felt like the meat of a dumpling, smothered in dough with no hope of escape. Foolishly letting them stall had netted me the ridiculous odds of a one-versus-twenty-two melee.

These wardens of the capital had polished their craft to become the masters of urban roundup, and I had nothing but praise for their patriotic dedication. Had I not exploited the Bodhisattva’s blessing to its fullest, I would have been collared and chained at the nearest police outpost ages ago.

Unfortunately, the baton had cracked from excessive use, so I tossed it for a hand spear I found abandoned nearby. While Hybrid Sword Arts allowed me to use polearms with some competence, I would have preferred to find a longsword to make full use of my add-ons.

That said, swords were difficult to hold back with unless the blade was deliberately blunted. Once they went home, these hardworking guards were good sons and daughters, or mothers and fathers; I didn’t want to leave any lasting injuries, let alone kill them.

If only this had been a comic book where I could blast through them with a kapow! and kerblam!, subduing them into a starry-eyed state: had they been as invincible as the delinquents who shrugged off certain death with no more than a few sketched-on scratches, I could have saved a ton of energy by going all out. Whoever had built this world had made it so inconvenient.

I checked my grip on my newest partner and swung the spear to make sure I had a handle on its weight. Nice and straight. I’ll be borrowing this—can’t make any promises about returning it, though.

“Hurry up! I can’t hear them anymore!”

“Did our men lose?! That can’t be possible!”

Apparently, they wouldn’t even give me a moment to rest. The shouts and whistles in the narrowing distance got me moving. Their raised voices both helped them communicate and robbed me of any reprieve; they really knew what they were doing.

I hooked the butt of my spear onto one of the fallen men’s canteens as I began running down the alley. After a single sip, I splashed the rest over my covered head to cool off my overheating body.

The streets were beginning to look like a lost cause...but the rooftops offered only another graveyard. Glancing upward, the final moments of sunset had dyed the heavens a dark violet, and I caught a glimpse of a shadow cutting across the sky at terrific speeds. Irritably zipping to and fro in the sky beyond narrow cracks between buildings, the siren jager that had begun this whole chase continued to tail me. He remained relentless despite the darkened skies, and he’d shadowed me this entire time. Worse still, he swooped down to ground level any time I chose a path that even remotely looked like he could fit into, constantly keeping me on my toes.

With his mobility, the rooftops were clearly his domain. Any attempt at climbing for vantage would make me an easier mark, and I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if more sirens appeared. No matter how much the altitude facilitated my escape, it meant nothing if it benefited my enemies more. Plus, it wasn’t like this was a stealth game where I could knock out the guards of this area to conveniently lower the alert levels in the whole city.

I was sort of repeating myself, but the life of a have-not was full of sorrow. A normal person in my shoes would have been completely hopeless: I couldn’t kill them, I couldn’t debilitate them beyond repair, I couldn’t give away my identity, and worst of all, I couldn’t so much as sit still and hide because I needed to be the one drawing attention away from Miss Celia.

Might be a bit late to say this, but wow, is this bad.

I wanted to spit out a curse and a loogie to dispel my foul mood, but a terrible premonition sent shivers along my back; all my hairs stood on end as if someone had pressed ice against my neck. And despite running at full speed, the pink seashell jingled clearly in my ear.

I’d grown all too used to this sensation as of late: someone was going for the kill.

Ceding full control to my instincts, I leapt, knowing that attempting to block with an unfamiliar spear was ill advised. Though my somersault was highly committal, it was better to guarantee the dodge than to greedily position for more actionability.

Immediately afterward, an arrow sank into the cobblestone where my right foot had been—one that the College’s oikodomurges had enchanted with protective magic, mind you. As I crumpled up and rolled forward, I saw that it had lodged itself nearly a third of the way into the masoned pavement without so much as cracking the stone. The power was stupefying and the accuracy was monstrous; the shot was so unbelievable that I could feel my gonads shrivel in fear.

Had I eaten the hit, it would have torn my ankle straight off. Wait a second. Why the hell don’t I sense any mana on this thing?!

I’d had quite enough of the GM’s pranks. Upon completing my roll, I steeled myself for both aerial attacks and snipers with tears welling in my eyes.

[Tips] His Majesty’s hexenkrieger are a subunit of the imperial guard. Composed wholly of mages, the group deals solely in matters of imperial thaumaturgical security. They are further divided by specialty into squads that specialize in maintaining barriers around the Emperor’s quarters, those who preemptively search for danger in His Majesty’s daily life, those who proactively attack threats to national security, etc.

Clock towers to keep the time and imposing spires of artistic make dotted the capital’s skyline, with the smokestacks of the manufacturing district reaching up to catch them. On one such skyscraper, a marksman and her spotter had taken their perch.

The massive arachne gracefully wrapped his great legs around the tower and served as a scaffold for the tiny floresiensis sniper he carried. Though fully grown, the woman looked like a baby on his shoulder, and her bow was bizarrely large for her build.

“No way,” the man muttered. “He dodged that?”

Clad in a custom uniform made to fit his goliath frame, the birdeater arachne nearly dropped the telescope in his spare hand. His partner had practiced archery until her soft hands developed callouses of steel, and he had only witnessed a handful of missed shots in all their years together.

“The perp must have eyes in the back of his head,” he sighed.

A few years prior, a so-called compound bow machined with pulleys had begun circulating the Trialist Empire. Ever since his partner had finally gotten hold of one—nonstandard gear had to be purchased out of one’s own pocket—and mastered it, she had become utterly terrifying in her bowmanship.

The woman relied neither on the gods nor the arcane; everything rode on the skill she cultivated with her own two hands. Despite the limited strength and stamina a floresiensis could possess, she had won the title of jager; there was hardly any need to say more regarding her skill.

Yet this virtuoso whose passion for long-range fire often flirted with psychotic obsession had missed.

The arachne glanced over: though she was approaching thirty, the woman’s exuberant charm was as radiant as ever—an opinion filtered through arachne tastes in physical appearance, mind you—save for the fact that she was trembling with a bitten lip.

Her reaction betrayed that she hadn’t missed due to some unforeseeable misfortune. Rather, she was well aware that the finicky machinery in her hands could at times be less cooperative than the heaviest greatbows; had it been caused by some intricate mechanical error, she would have already fired off a second shot, compensating for the issue.

No, the woman had been confident her shot was true. Everything about her technique had been flawless, and the arrow had still missed—nay, it had been dodged. Their opponent was clearly no ordinary suspect.

Home to more kinds of people than any other nation, underestimating someone of small stature was among the most dangerous mistakes one could make in the Empire. Some fully matured while maintaining a childlike facade like jumping spider arachne; many others, like the woman herself, simply did not grow in size beyond a certain point. Clearly, reports that the escapee “looked like a child” were best forgotten.

“Tch,” the arachne clicked. “He’s a stubborn one, all right. Already ducked into cover.”

Their mark fluidly regained his footing, instantly turning on his heel; he had calculated their line of shot from a single arrow and fled into a different alley. This vantage point would no longer offer them any opportunities.

“...Chase him.”

“Huh?”

Being as high up as they were, the floresiensis’s mumbling was unintelligible amidst the howling winds. Still, the man had literally heard her voice more times than his own parents’, and he could tell her tone was not that of the stark and mature woman he usually knew.

“Chase him! Right now!”

It was that of a little girl throwing a temper tantrum.

Oh man, he thought, bonking the palm of his telescope hand on his forehead. She was a lost cause: no amount of explaining the time it’d take for him to reposition to a decent angle would assuage her now.

Succinctly put, the sniper was a sore loser. Everything she had, including her prestigious title, was the result of her pride and abnormal persistence; naturally, she was confident in her skills to the point of hubris. That applied to the mature and sophisticated speech she’d trained up over the years as well, which had flown out the window when she’d missed her perfect shot.

“Yes, yes,” the arachne said. “As you wish.”

He knew better than to put up any resistance. Not wanting her to kick and flail and potentially run off on her own, he began descending. Boasting the largest frames of all arachne, his kind were known for a low stamina that hindered their bursts of agility; still, he endeavored to climb down as fast as he could. All the while, his partner silently glared daggers into him, as if to say, What are you going to do if someone else gets him first?!

After carefully clambering to the roofs below—tarantula arachne were much frailer than their massive bodies let on, causing many of them to be prudent sorts—he used the target’s speed and direction to infer the path of escape and swiftly began moving to the most apt spot for his partner’s line of sight.

As soon as he clambered up the chimney in question, the woman let an arrow loose without giving him a chance to spot her mark.

“No!”

The floresiensis’s cry shocked the arachne once more. She had been hell-bent on landing true, especially since she’d already let the suspect go once—for the deadeye to miss a second critical shot was unbelievable.

“What happened?!” he asked. Though these situations occurred rarely nowadays, his partner was prone to sobbing like a baby whenever she failed to perform; comforting her all night long was another part of his duties.

Two giant beads of water filled up the woman’s large eyes as she sniffled, “He fell...”

“What?”

“I hit him, but...he fell in the water.”

As her sad whimper vanished into the wind, the man cradled his head in his arms, partner still in hand. This was worse than just missing.

Ugh, he groaned internally. The squads looking for the body won’t ever let us hear the end of this...

[Tips] There are hardly any similarities between the arachne who draw heritage from jumping spiders, tarantulas, and orb-weavers other than the count of their legs. It is far from uncommon to see various tribes classified under the same name lacking common characteristics.