Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 4.1 - Chapter 2

Climax

Split Party

Occasions wherein the PCs find themselves split apart. This may be due to a villain’s scheme or a member of the party’s staying behind to buy time for their comrades; in any case, each division must fight their own battles.

So long as tabletop adventures take after life, there will come times when one’s own strength is the only thing left to rely on.

Bumping and thumping on a lump of clothes, Cecilia could not rein in her pounding heartbeat. Temporarily throwing her oath of virtue to the Night Goddess to the wayside, she’d tucked herself into a suitcase belonging to her church’s liaison to the aeroship—the Head Abbess of the Great Chapel herself.

On paper, this was no different from when she had still been a naughty little child of twenty, playing hide-and-seek with the other children at the Goddess’s almshouses. Reenacting a game that she’d partaken in with five-year-olds at the age of forty-three was terribly embarrassing, but her heart was banging for an entirely different reason.

So emphatic was every beat that she worried that those outside might hear it. The basket she now cradled herself in had originally been packed tight with spare clothes—she’d removed almost all of them to make space for herself—and she wondered with great fear and excitement how her plan had gone so smoothly.

How could she not, when the swaggering motion rocking her along was that of shipmates carrying her aboard?

Although the luggage belonged to someone of great authority, the sailors still did precautionary checks to make sure the contents were what the owner said they were, and that it didn’t contain anything suspicious. Whether it was the property of an aristocrat or not, every bag checked in was heavily scrutinized.

His Majesty the Emperor was to board tonight. As the most important individual in the whole nation, his order superseded the rights of the highest nobles—even the great dukes of the other imperial families. His loyal retainers would never let someone smuggle a dangerous item onto the ship no matter how important they were, even if they truly meant no harm.

However, the boy’s invisible “helpers” reduced all this security to naught. Though the trunk was too heavy for a basket of clothes, it mysteriously felt light to carry; when the guards opened the top, they curiously saw nothing but a stack of neatly folded clothes. At last, Cecilia found herself set down in the ship’s hold.

“It worked,” she marveled. Despite having set the plan in motion, the girl had been skeptical. Truth be told—though she had no means of knowing this—her scheme to stow away in someone’s luggage would have had her discovered instantly. This was no estimation or conjecture; she would have been found.

Unbeknownst to the vampire, every parcel carried onto the top secret aeroship had been scanned over not only by eyes, but by magia with search magic. The magia employed astounding spells that tracked thought itself to uncover any living creatures trying to slink aboard, going so far as to probe their minds for hostility. Yet not even the prestigious academics of the College were a match for the alfar: so in tune with the concept over which they presided, the fairies were nigh invincible in their element. Though they led many a child astray, at times fey guidance pointed to safety.

Cecilia’s lack of ill will and the Night Goddess’s protection also aided in her infiltration. While many revered the moon for bathing the mortal realm in gentle light, there were tales of how its rays sowed rot in the minds of mortals. Interwoven with the idea of lunacy, lunar deities provided their followers with divine barriers to guard the mind, and the Mother Goddess of Rhine was no exception. Sample Her light too frequently, and one was sure to lose their mind. After splitting goodness with the Sun God, She had come to lead the stars on the darkened ballroom of the heavens above; yet one must not forget she’d once been the arbiter of all that was evil.

With a little luck and a lot of brute force, the priestess had managed to smuggle herself in, but now cocked her head, wondering what to do next.

The cargo hold she’d been toted to was massive and provided plenty of room to hide. It would be all too easy for her invisible helpers to keep her hidden until she reached Lipzi. Much like the boarding process, a solo attempt would have her caught immediately—the vessel was outfitted with mystic sensors that sounded alarms when unauthorized personnel walked by them—but with fey assistance, the patrolling guards posed little to no threat.

Furthermore, she was a vampire: she did not have to take anything in nor let anything out. All she had to do was sit perfectly still for a day; deep prayer would suffice to pass the time. Upon reaching her destination, she could unveil her identity and they would surely bring her to where she wished to go.

Yet one thought gnawed at the back of her mind: What has happened to those kindhearted heroes?

If all had gone well and they’d gotten away, then the two of them would be home with Elisa by now, celebrating with a toast of freshly made tea—but Cecilia was not so naive as to presume this. As any good ehrengarde player does, she constantly kept the worst possibilities in mind.

Admittedly, a part of herself had faith that, of all people, Erich and Mika—the pair who had delivered her from the depths of despair—would handily escape their captors and make their ways home. However, they were unlike her: they were mortal. Broken bones took months to heal, severed necks could never be rejoined, and ruptured organs would cause them to fall where they stood, squirming like insects on the ground in their last moments.

The raw ability required to outdo the entire city guard for an entire day was something held by only the most exceptional individuals in all the land. The pair may have been savvy, but they were not so broken, as it were.

Countless avenues to tragedy raced by Cecilia’s mind: their hanged bodies, their deaths at the hands of a swarm of guards, or a lonely demise in a desolate corner of nowhere, caused by lingering wounds after managing to slink away. But it was when she imagined their heads lined up on boxes that her fear evolved into a fit of shivers.

Any of these situations were perfectly plausible. Clutching her trembling body, the priestess had only one thought: They need no ill fortune for this to be their future...but I cannot let it be.

Could she let them help her so earnestly without anything in return? Would she be able to hold her head high and face her Goddess if she did?

The answer was plain to see.

No one would ever know of her sin, and even if they did, tossing away two commoners as pawns would hardly be reason to vilify her. But Cecilia would never be able to forgive herself. How could she dare to speak of faith—to claim to revere the merciful Mother above—while carrying such misdeeds in her heart?

Her friends had set out to help her with their fragile lives on the line. To cast them away and hide away in her monastery without a shred of dignity was unthinkable; she would rather cast off the imperfect immortality that sustained her and return to the earth. Tearing off her cloak at daybreak without protective miracles to return her life to the gods was a far, far better fate—nay, it was the proper fate, as a believer and person both.

In fact, to do so would be her only hope of returning to the Goddess’s side without shame.

Cecilia was not fueled by romanticism or an immature longing for tragic catharsis. Hers was an oath founded in honed theology: If those two—even one of them—is to meet an untimely end, so too shall I lay myself before the sun.

This was the product of neither obligation nor responsibility; contemplating how she ought to be was simply another part of her theistic journey. Anchored around a hallowed selflessness, the vampire’s line of thought twisted to produce a rather self-centered conclusion: a life that she could not proudly offer to the Goddess was a life not worth living.

Spurred on by this thought, Cecilia began groaning in deep contemplation. How could she possibly help Erich and Mika? Her options were limited, and she only got as far as considering exposing herself to demand their safe return when an epiphany struck.

Cecilia knew only a few things about magic, but one included a means to contact faraway persons...and on a ship of this size, so prized by the crown, the device had to be installed on board.

“Will you please help me?”

The priestess spoke with the same solemn reverence she committed to the Goddess, and the fluttering lights danced around her in response.

“Those who give, heed well: give all that you have. Those who receive, heed well: receive only but once.”

Clasping her hands tight around her medallion, Cecilia recited the maxim nearest to her heart. It served as reminder, as confirmation, as resolution: she was not to freely take all that life gave her. In a world full of people interacting with people, the priestess believed this to be cardinal among the Goddess’s teachings, and it imbued her with the strength to leave the box of simple robes behind.

Leaping out, she felt sorry for those who would run out of clothes due to her actions, but this was a matter of faith. A day or two of wearing the same threads wouldn’t be the end of the world, and a boat this large was sure to have casters kind enough to Clean them if asked politely.

Cecilia placed the lid back on the basket with an unspoken apology to the Head Abbess and stepped out into the expansive interior of the vessel.

The aeroship was currently anchored just outside of the capital in order to facilitate the boarding of its guests, chief among them the Emperor. Though the location amounted to an empty field at present, if this preliminary test flight went well—of course, the truth was that anything resembling a real test had been concluded long before His Majesty could set foot on the aircraft—then a giant skyport would surely be constructed there in the future. The busy ruler was always in need of a quick means of transport, after all.

Naturally, a ship intended for the bluest blood in the nation had been outfitted with every bell and whistle: arcane lamps dotted the interior halls.

“I don’t see anyone.” Sticking her head out to peek left and right, Cecilia found the unbelievably well-lit hallway empty. She surmised that the crew had finished hauling in the luggage. “To think it could be so bright at this hour of night. How indulgent...”

Just like the streetlights of the capital, these lanterns were powered by stones full of mana. Their warm glow was counter to the stark exterior of the ship, illuminating the wooden floorboards and tidily set wallpaper in a calming ambience. One might confuse the place for a well-kept mansion, were it not for the portholes in place of proper windows.

“More importantly,” Cecilia mused, “wherever could I be?”

Unfortunately, the girl had no nautical sense, and she was not so spatially adept as to keep track of direction and distance traveled while being ferried around in a sealed box. The best she could do was peer out—moving past the decadence of a glass window—and speculate that she was near the lower levels because the ground seemed relatively close.

Now, the aeroship may have looked utterly alien from the outside, but it had been created to conform to traditional maritime design on the inside. The bottom of the ship was reserved for relatively nonessential goods—that is, freight that could be destroyed without endangering human life—while the upper levels were dedicated to inhabitable rooms that rose in quality as one ascended. One could see that the designers had fought for every edge in survivability to guard against a system breakdown that would send the ship tumbling to earth.

Given the tangle of spells responsible for flight, there were various facilities and instruments to operate the goings-on of the vessel, and they were primarily clustered up near the stern. Numerous arcane furnaces burned away in the lower floors, and the rear command tower poked up right above deck.

On the other end, the bow tapered off into a fine point, leaving little space for rooms or cargo holds. Instead, the whole of the ship’s head was taken up by the front command tower—though this one was not actually a tower—fitted with apparatuses to keep an eye on the ground, the path to be traveled, and the ship’s underbelly.

In practice, the piloting crew were centralized in the rear command tower, with those posted up front being tasked with feeding the captains the information necessary to make the right calls.

“Just as I’d feared... The most important points are unlisted.”

Cecilia had realized that a ship this gargantuan would certainly have its fair share of wayward guests, and as such would include public maps somewhere in its halls. Her guess had been correct, but alas, the chart had been designed for the guests and their staff and only detailed the locations of living quarters and luggage holds. Every critical point had been blotted out in gray ink and was simply labeled “No Entry.”

“I suppose I must consider myself fortunate to at least know where I am.”

If nothing else, this made her own location clear. Whoever drew the map had been thoughtful enough to clearly mark the viewer’s current location with a red dot.

Cecilia was on the first level of the lower layer—it seemed the demarcation between lower, middle, and upper had been decided by simply splitting the ship with horizontal lines—near the luggage bay for noble passengers. If she ascended one floor, she would find herself in the middle layer with a dining room and banquet hall; keep going and she could enter the first level of the upper layer, where the passenger rooms began. Three more layers would land her at the very top in the zenith suites, but despite being listed on the map, these were also grayed out.

“Hmm... If it’s anything akin to the monastery, I doubt they would place the working rooms in sight of the passenger rooms—particularly the honored suite.”

According to imperial taste, day-to-day affairs were best kept out of the eyes of one’s guests, and this idealized elegance pervaded even religious values. The kitchen and laundry room that the priestesses worked in were hidden in the back, away from pilgrims and regular churchgoers; similarly, though the Head Abbess’s office was located on the upper floors, it was placed on the back side of the Great Chapel.

Deduction told that Cecilia’s destination was not near the guests’ quarters or luggage. It had to be somewhere reserved for mariners: the stern or the bow.

As the young lady’s finger swayed back and forth indecisively, a memory suddenly grabbed her attention. When Erich had been scattering her dolls to throw off search magic, he had asked the alfar for help; perhaps these fairies had the power to look around without attracting any attention.

“Excuse me, Miss Alfar. Do you know which way I should go?”

Her question caused the two tones of light to blink. In more mortal terms, they were looking at one another in contemplation.

At last, the green orb excitedly flickered and circled around Cecilia before vanishing into thin air.

“I...take it you’re helping me?”

The vampire tilted her head in confusion and decided to wait. The thought of someone coming to check in a forgotten bag or to rifle through their belongings sent cold beads of sweat down her back, but eventually, the green glow returned from the hallway leading to the front of the ship.

It blinked a few more times to get the girl to follow; then it turned right back around the way it had come.

“You’ve found it?! My! Thank you so much!”

After a short while hurriedly chasing the fairy, Cecilia came upon a large stairwell that ran from the vessel’s top to its bottom. Wide enough to fit five or six bellboys carrying luggage in parallel, the staircase was vast and open.

And wouldn’t you know it: perhaps on break, a handful of sailors were sitting on the steps and drinking water.

The vampire rushed back into the hall she’d come from in a panic. Considering how empty the area was, it wouldn’t be easy to sneak by them and follow the green fairy, who seemed to disregard her plight entirely and had flown straight past the stairs.

However, Cecilia was no alf: her body was corporeal, and she couldn’t simply choose to not appear. There weren’t any convenient potted plants or unpacked cargo blocking their view—such things would be a safety hazard for an aerial vehicle—giving her no means of evading their lines of sight.

Oh no, she thought, plodding her feet in place, won’t you please go somewhere else?

Now it was the black light’s turn to grab her attention. It flew up and blinked right in front of her eyes before gliding over to a poorly lit spot in between the mystic lamps. This way, it seemed to beckon.

Cecilia hesitated. True, the path the fairy suggested was dark. However, it was only dark in comparison to the artificially lit hall around it; it hardly counted as shadow. Any shelter it offered still failed to hide her in any real way.

However, if the alf was telling her to come, then Cecilia was ready to believe. Steeling herself, she took a step into the open.

Miraculously, the men didn’t notice her as she passed by mere feet away. Her attire was clearly not that of a lost passenger or of a shipmate, so it wasn’t a matter of her not seeming out of place. In fact, not only did the sailors fail to notice her, but they didn’t so much as glance her way.

“...Huh? How?” Cecilia was so baffled by how easily she’d managed to slip by them that she turned around and muttered in disbelief.

She had no way of knowing this, of course, but the black dot guiding her belonged to a svartalf with the power to conceal her. Night was Ursula’s domain; her power was at its peak. Turning a wispy shadow into the impermeable veil of midnight was an easy task if it meant sheltering a child. Cecilia’s ludicrously careless remark had been swept away by the winds of the green light and the sylphid who shone it. The same held true for the vampire’s loud, artless footsteps and the sound of rubbing cloth that came from her unfamiliar robes.

Under the alfar’s guidance, the priestess managed to complete her perilous journey without being noticed: not by the sailors she encountered, nor the patrolmen on watch, nor even the wayward magus who crossed her path.

The only point where she had gotten a tad stuck was the magic door—made to automatically lock upon closing—that led into the unmarked section of the map. Thankfully, a sailor happened to come out and let the door swing wide, allowing her to squeeze in before it shut; the man had found it strange how long it had taken to close, but anything was possible when the thing could lock itself.

“Oh, it really is this way!”

The working sector of the ship was different in every way from the lavish midsection geared toward nobility. Uncovered metal plates lined the walls, devoid of warmth and aesthetic appeal.

Fire was the greatest fear on any ship, and doubly so when there was no sea to escape to. Out in the open skies, there were precious few ways to stop flames once they erupted; flammable materials had been elided to every degree possible during construction. Though the designers had been forced to concede on the usage of magical flame-retardant wood for the areas that housed guests, the halls seen only by the crew were built out of unembellished alchemical alloys.

On one such metallic wall hung a map made for the sailors’ convenience. Furthermore, there were written signs everywhere to keep the shipmates oriented in emergencies without forcing them to stop and read a chart to get their bearings.

In Cecilia’s case, though, the map told her exactly where she needed to go: the communications room equipped with thaumagrams and shortwave mystic speakers.

The monastery on Fullbright Hill was the Night Goddess’s foremost temple and was surrounded by towns of faithful in the valleys below. That said, it was also located in a region so physically remote that to dub it the middle of nowhere would be no understatement. The hill’s gentle slope paired with its impressive elevation to create an excessively protracted road just to get to the nearest blip of civilization at its foot.

The resulting difficulty in making emergency correspondence meant the righteous clergy swallowed their pride and employed what was debatably supreme amongst all of the proud Imperial College’s inventions: the thaumagram. The technology was so revolutionary that the devout priests who ordinarily spat on magic as affronts to the gods had no choice but to accept its utility.

The device worked by linking two separate units to ensure that the state of each perfectly mirrored the other; that is to say, if someone were to write on a paper slotted into Device A, the same writing would be produced on the paper slotted into Device B.

True, there had been advancements before it that served to send messages at a distance in the past. Yet none could claim to be as momentous as the thaumagram: the contraption could be easily operated by non-mages, and it allowed the transfer of unprecedented quantities of information at once.

Above all else, the invention included a feature to reroute its own link by swapping out a mana stone: a single device could connect to countless cities. By sizing up to two units and converting one to a read-only state, one could remain constantly available for an emergency message from any location. Not even the churches could deny its convenience, and the gods themselves had begrudgingly decreed, “If it helps my worshippers, I guess...”

And Cecilia knew how to use the machine.

Despite recognizing its utility, most belonging to the pulpit still regarded magecraft as a transgression on the realm of divinity. Though the technology had been adopted, few wished to be the one in charge of actually engaging with it; even the charitable, self-sacrificing pastorate of the Night loathed the thought of offering themselves as tribute.

However, Cecilia was different. When the previous operator retired due to old age, she willingly pitched herself as the replacement. Her heritage and the trouble it caused hung heavy above her head, and she had nothing but gratitude for her peers who treated her like any other nun. If everyone else was so staunchly opposed to it, she’d thought, then the least she could do to return their goodwill was learn how to use the mystic contrivance.

She had never imagined a day would come when this skill seemed so useful to her. The world truly was ever unpredictable, and devotion thought forgotten had come back to bless her.

Once more borrowing fey strength, Cecilia managed to reach the communications room without being spotted. But just as she reached for the doorknob, she pulled back—there were voices on the other side.

Of course there were. A communications room, by its very nature, was a place prone to urgent gatherings. An emergency message arriving at an unmanned facility, and leaving the admiral bereft of critical information was no laughing matter.

“Wh-Whatever shall I do?”

After all she’d done, Cecilia feared that she’d reached an impasse. Vampiric though she was, the girl had cast her lot with the ascetic believers of the Circle Immaculate. The Immaculate got by on little, and the most devout went so far as to unhand one of their own freedoms in the Goddess’s name; in her Rite of Prohibition, Cecilia had given up the right to wield violence by design.

Obviously, a vampire could muster strength far beyond what a mensch could resist. Otherwise, the young lady would never have managed the feat of rooftop parkour that had been the backdrop of her chance meeting with the piecemaker.

It was unlikely that the people stationed inside a communications room were well versed in combat, so Cecilia could theoretically let her ancestral might do the talking and forcefully take control.

But the priestess had a pledge: a grave, weighty promise with the Goddess. To break it would bring about penance greater than the favor that She had shown her. Rites of Prohibition were not mere goals set to better oneself, but verifiable pacts with a deity.

“Oh... But...”

Yet still, Cecilia wavered. The faith that she shouldered was a priceless treasure she wouldn’t give up for the world, but her friends’ lives weighed just as heavy—and they were out there, right now, risking death on her behalf. Could she bring herself to spare herself alone and abandon them?

An oath to the heavens is absolute: there can be no grounds for pardon.

But would She forgive her for forsaking those dear to her for her own preservation?

Nay, that was not the issue—Cecilia would never be able to forgive herself. They had called her their friend and treated her likewise, marching into danger for her sake alone; that she had allowed this in the first place infuriated her to no end.

What had she said only moments ago? If abandoning them was her only ticket to the safety of Lipzi, then she would rather let the Sun reclaim His gift of eternal life.

“Erich! Mika!” Cecilia exclaimed. “Wait for me!”

The priestess—the good Sister Cecilia—forcefully grabbed the knob and twisted with all her might. The explosive sound that followed was the result of her vampiric strength snapping straight through the metal lock; the deadbolt may as well have been paper in the face of a girl who’d ripped apart the bolted gratings of the underground.

Cecilia tackled the door open with everything she had, jumping in to find three men...knocked out in their chairs.

“Huwgh?”

Flabbergasted, a shameful sound that she’d never made before escaped her lips. After battling with her faith and resolving herself to sully a divine contract, she entered only to find that the situation had already been ironed out.

“What a helpless little girl.”

The charming voice of a young girl snapped the priestess out of her stupor; meanwhile, the door she’d busted open slowly closed itself to hide her from the outside.

“That voice...” As soon as she spoke, the black light floated into view. Though it took Cecilia a moment to process the situation, her question as to who had helped her was definitively answered. “Miss Alfar!”

It had been the fairies: unable to bear seeing the girl’s afflicting inner struggle, Ursula had asked Lottie to stop casually drifting around and to incapacitate the men inside instead. With authority over winds and the air that made it up, the sylphid had simply told the breathable bits to go away for a bit until the operators inside were out cold.

Truth be told, the alfar did not care about the girl. In fact, they might even say they disliked her: vampires were godly creatures from their inception, and their mode of life harshly conflicted with their fey values.

Still, Erich had taken a shine to her. Had they abandoned her, she would have suffered a terrible wound that would bring the boy just as much pain. While Ursula loved to tease and toy, she was not the type to enjoy true tears shed from sadness. Lottie, on the other hand, was an innocent soul who simply wished for her favorite children to live out their days with constant smiles.

Unbeknownst to the world, the three’s unique interests narrowly aligned, causing the alfar to help Cecilia beyond the conditions of Erich’s original request. But the svartalf couldn’t help but slide in one sarcastic comment—the remark forced its way up from the bottom of her heart.

“Thank you so very much, Miss Alfar. You have my sincerest gratitude for all your help. Thanks to you, I will be able to fulfill my duty to my dear friends without relinquishing my faith. I’m not sure if I can ever repay you, but I swear to try!”

Once she was finished expressing how grateful she was, Cecilia hurried over to the thaumagram—a state-of-the-art model fine-tuned by College engineers but identical in basic function. The only practical difference was that the mana stone determining the recipient could be removed at the press of a button, making it orders of magnitude easier to handle than the older versions.

“Umm, first I take an unregistered stone, and then, if I recall, the code for her Lipzi estate should be...”

Thaumograms could only communicate if both were set up for a connection, but a read-only machine could be outfitted with an empty stone to allow anyone with the right identification number to send it a message. This betterment was the result of many great minds’ blood, sweat, and tears—though most users in the present day tended to take their century-old contributions as a given—and their effort had evidently been well spent, as the contraption worked exactly how it was meant to.

Long ago, Cecilia had been given this number to write to if she was ever in need; how thankful she was at having committed it to memory. Ready to pen her letter, the girl dipped a quill into ink.

[Tips] The interior of the aeroship has the essentials as a matter of course, but also is fitted for epicurean lifestyles. An internal reservoir distributes water to every corner of the vessel through a plumbing system, even supplying a public bath. As if that isn’t enough to confound a regular sailor, the water is purified by a small slime, split off from the College’s Berylinian sewer keepers.

Landing in water means certain life; I knew of a TRPG that included this as a mechanic, so there wasn’t any room for debate. I recalled that the generous system gave free points for good character acting, and it had been fun enough for me to turn a blind eye to the glaring holes in its gameplay rules. Though its lack of safeguards and liberal charity had turned every playthrough into a munchkin-fest, I had thoroughly enjoyed playing.

“Blegh, ach! Glargh!”

That said, hacking up filthy sewage as I dragged myself out of the water was the pinnacle of the unseen struggle that lay behind the scenes of a PC’s heroic revival. I was most certainly not having any fun.

Look, I couldn’t help it: mensch just weren’t built to swim in armor. And we were especially incapable when an arrow was sticking out of one of our arms.

“All, ugh, according to plan...”

Along with the filthy water, I coughed up a cheeky one-liner on absent ears. Unseen Hands yanked my waterlogged body over to the wall, and I leaned on it in exhaustion. Had I not used a spell to pull myself along, my soaking armor and draining blood would have seen me making friends with the stones at the bottom of some river by now.

Honestly, when the chase had first begun, I had considered throwing off my pursuers by diving into one of the aboveground aqueducts that ran through the city. If I pretended to get hit, I could fall in and trick the guards into thinking I was dead; the search for a corpse in the sewers the waterways fed was sure to pull off the heat.

Afterward, I could casually vanish into the underground and calmly wait for Miss Celia and Mika’s safe return at the atelier...or so went my optimistic plan.

Everything had gone swimmingly until the part where I pretended to get hit: actually sustaining damage had not been part of my calculations. Had the arrow’s trajectory been the slightest bit off, I could have become a lavish feast for the fish and bugs of the city.

“Shit. I was so close to triple digits too.”

I swore under my breath to dilute the pain and began stripping off my armor to get a better look at the wound. The wooden rod lodged in my upper left arm was of magnificent quality, and the stinging pain that refused to go away proved that the metal tip buried within was equally superior.

After another handful of police encirclements and brawls to escape them, this critical arrow had sailed right into me. I hadn’t so much as seen the sniper and their presence had barely been noticeable—my focus in combat was at the precipice of mastery, and I’d still only noticed when the projectile was too close to dodge. I’d been trying to watch out for open avenues of fire, but to no avail.

I bet it was the same sniper that shot the first arrow I dodged.

I just had a feeling that it was them: I’d probably made them get serious by avoiding their first shot. If I’d been any later to react, it would’ve landed straight in my shoulder, tearing my ligaments and totally incapacitating me.

My gods, the jagers are terrifying. No one ought to have been so skilled; what was the Trialist Empire thinking, employing people this inhuman? I was unfortunately aware that the nation had no scruples about gathering individuals of every disposition, but this was just absurd.

My childhood companion Margit had been a frightening huntsman in her own right, but she hadn’t been able to land a shot from outside my range of observation. To think I was up against an archer that potentially outclassed her once again highlighted my dearth of luck.

“Hrrgh...”

For all my complaints about fate, an attempt to grip my left hand produced pain and a balled fist; fortunately, my nerves and muscles had been spared. Seeing it in my arm had scared me, but the arrow was a slim one designed to get through chain mail, and its smaller nature worked to my benefit. Not to say the silver lining didn’t come with a whole cloud, of course.

Anyway, I needed to figure out my next move. I looked up at the peculiarly clean pipe ceiling and expelled all the air from my lungs in a massive sigh.

I think it was safe to say that I’d succeeded in drawing the guards’ attention to some degree. The skies were dark by the time the chaotic manhunt had come to an end by the aqueduct; I’d bought a few hours of time. While I would have liked to fade into the veil of night for another few, or perhaps even till daylight...well, this would do. I didn’t want to overstep my bounds and lose everything for my troubles.

In any case, my first matter of business would need to be the rude guest making itself at home in my arm. I wasn’t in the most hygienic of places; the risk of infection worried me.

I gripped the shaft to see if I could pull it out, but my muscles tensed up and wouldn’t let it go. The agonizing pain that accompanied this attempt told me that the arrowhead was probably barbed.

“Oh man... I really don’t wanna. Ugh...”

Tugging on it would only worsen the wound. It evidently hadn’t hit any important veins or arteries, meaning I had an out, but whether it would kill me and whether it would hurt were two wholly separate issues. Not even I was far gone enough to push an arrow through my own flesh without hesitation.

“...Fuck it!”

I took a few seconds to steady my breathing, bit down on the edge of my clothes—I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t bite down on my tongue in pain, but needed something soft so I could grit my teeth without grinding them—and shoved the arrow with a Hand.

If only I could summon an Unseen Hand inside my body, I wouldn’t have had to brute force it through. I swore that I’d invest in an add-on like that or some kind of medical skill in the future. Or maybe I’d make friends with someone well versed in healing. Either way, my oath was solemn.

“Mmmgh?!”

The world flashed white with searing pain. The clump of metal fashioned to cause maximum damage mercilessly tore through my flesh and pierced my skin from within to poke out on the other side. Too besotted with agony, I couldn’t keep the spell active.

“Hah... Hagh... Augh...”

The dreadful pain was so harrowing that my breathing fell into disarray. If I could travel back in time to when I’d considered picking up Pain Resistance and a handful of similar traits, I’d punch the words “Mm, I should probably save up,” right out of my gods-damned mouth.

Maybe I should go find a time machine.

“Urgh... Hrrrgh...”

Sure, I’d experienced my fair share of suffering in the ichor maze, but this tear-inducing misery was a different flavor to the mind-bending migraines of mana depletion. My crying came with a stuffy nose and a pitiful moaning that couldn’t be held back. For all the injuries I’d overcome in my many years as a farmer’s brat, nothing had been this bad.

I haphazardly snapped the shaft and endured the sickening sensation of a foreign body sliding through a cavity in my flesh, bawling the whole time. Finally done removing the accursed arrow that had ignored my armor in favor of hit points, I tossed it into the sewer to allay my rage.

“Dammit,” I groaned. “I can see why all those NPCs gave up on this line of work.”

It fucking hurt. It hurt so bad that my vocabulary went right to shit.

Just imagining someone trying to fight without removing an arrow made me question their sanity. Pure tank builds were expected to soak more than a couple for their rear guard, and they now retroactively had the whole of my respect. The warriors standing up front to shield their squishy companions had truly been the greatest of men.

I reached into the bag around my waist and pulled out a flask of spirits to begin treating the wound. Buying time away from the guards had cost me a lot of effort, and I wasn’t going to squander it by sniveling forever; tears wouldn’t give me my arm back if I lost it to an infection. With my wallet, I couldn’t afford the luxurious iatrurgy I’d received following the zombies’ labyrinth.

I wondered how long it’d be until the airship set sail. Once it was off, I’d be able to breathe a sigh of relief: the only things left to do would be to find Mika and bring her back to hide in Lady Agrippina’s laboratory until Miss Celia’s aunt came to fix everything with her authority.

Sadly, the newly unveiled aeroship was probably not in any hurry to depart. I suspected it would load up some influential nobles and fly around the capital for some time in a showy pleasure cruise.

I really did underestimate how hard this would be...

As I internally griped, something white fluttered past: a moth. It floated by on gentle wings that were so devoid of hue that they stood out in the unlit darkness of the underground.

Tormented by fatigue and pain, my muddled mind wrote it off as just another critter that called the sewers home...but I should have been more wary. Especially when I was in the middle of a counterspell war, as basic as it was.

Bugs were toys to magia, customizable for any and every purpose. Having seen Mika’s raven—Floki was on standby at home so he wouldn’t get hurt or give away his master’s identity—and all he could do, I should have known...

[Tips] In Rhine, familiars refer to domesticated creatures that have been artificially enhanced through the use of magic. They are mainly employed in correspondence and search, and their usage in the region predates the Empire’s founding.

The unpredictability of sentient life has brought the art under critical spotlights in modern times and chipped away at its image among magia. Still, the creations of the expert biologists of yore boast tremendous utility to this day.

I awoke to the impact of my head hitting the floor.

Oh, crap. The relief of being done with my makeshift surgery loosened my guard so much that I’d gone out like a light. I may have been a fan of the heroes who shrugged injuries off as flesh wounds with nihilistic smirks, but I was in a bit too much pain to model myself in their image. I think I could be forgiven for going out cold for a moment.

Besides, I was alone. Propping myself up on badassery meant nothing without anyone to impress.

“Aw man... I don’t wanna get up. I just wanna take a nap right here...”

I only voiced my unrealistic hopes to remind myself of how hopelessly futile they were. Obviously, I knew I couldn’t stop now, and resting here would just worsen my chances of getting an infection.

Slow and steady, I told myself as I peeled my rear off the floor it so desperately wanted to cling to. Every step sent a stinging jolt into my arm, but I continued trudging along the sewers to complete my escape. I lit the way with the faintest mystic light I could muster and looked for the filthiest path available.

My goal was to get away without leaving a trace: a dirty pipe was likely to be cleaned by the sleepless slimes, and their presence amounted to a roadblock that not even jagers could surmount.

Still, they were jagers... I had literally just been on the receiving end of a faraway sharpshooter’s undetectable pinpoint shot, so maybe my idea was wasted effort. Who knew? Perhaps they’d just walk upside down on the ceiling and skip straight past the jiggly blockades.

“Whoa,” I groaned. “Another one.”

I tried to turn into a minor pipe only to be met with a wriggling body of gelatin hard at work. This unit had split itself up to plug the waterway and clean the grime that had accumulated on the walls, as well as any other miscellaneous foulness it found.

Spying a rat squirming helplessly in one of the translucent blobs caused my stomach to drop. As it melted away in the powerful base, I was reminded that one wrong step could see me sharing the same fate—not exactly a boon to my mental health.

Sure, danger was perfectly avoidable, but why was the crown’s infrastructure deadly, anyway? I wanted to leave this place in the dust as soon as possible.

“Man, this sucks...”

Unfortunately, this blockage in particular posed a real problem: my only two options were to turn back or head deeper into the earth. I’d selected this route as a shortcut, but luck hadn’t been on my side. This throughway had just been cleaned when I’d come to take care of the slimes a week ago, so I’d been convinced that it would be clear now too.

Irritably scratching at my head, I begrudgingly descended into the detour, knowing it was the only path forward. I could have attempted to cleave open a path with a full fleet of Hands, but putting the risk of failure on a scale with the reward of a few minutes saved simply didn’t balance out. I wasn’t in the business of teaming up with clowns to fight against millionaires in costume.

“Hrm?”

After a few more turns, doubt began to creep into my heart. It seemed like every path I wanted to take was clogged by sewer keepers.

Am I being led somewhere? By who? More importantly, why and how?

If their goal was to arrest me, then this process seemed rather over-the-top. They clearly knew my position, so it would be easiest to sic the jagers on me.

Turning on my heel for a tactical retreat, I heard a disquieting echo off in the distance. The sound was a plain warning: that of a viscous liquid not flowing, but writhing. A particularly hulking slime could be heard squeezing through the pipes, scrubbing everything from floor to ceiling as it did.

Nope, not happening.

I’d listened to plenty of verbal descriptions depicting despair-inducing enemies in my time, but not even the most theatrical GM could instill the same sense of dread as this distant noise. To hear it was to immediately imagine the walloping mass that produced it, accompanied by a mental siren flashing “DANGER” in runes that the mind couldn’t process. I could practically hear the words, “I repeat—do not fight this thing. Seriously. Are we clear?”

Admittedly, I’d giddily jumped into combat against such beasts once or twice. Or thrice. Maybe more. After all, I had been a player seeking fun, and it had seemed like doing so would produce the most entertaining outcome.

But to do so now was impossible; that thing could not be survived. The slime was the type of instant game over that would make a forlorn GM fold up their screen if they couldn’t manage to convince their players to be reasonable people.

With no room for contemplation, I advanced down the path, which was really beginning to feel like a trap.

Eventually, I emerged into a vast chamber. I had no idea what it was for—I later learned that it was an emergency storage tank for floodwater—but it was spacious enough to require rows and rows of pillars. For reasons unknown, the facility had even been equipped with mystic lanterns; the lights glowed eerily at regular intervals.

My most carefully placed steps still rang to the ends of the room and back; while I was sure they served some purpose, the bluish-purple lanterns flooded the scene with a ghastly aura. I was hard-pressed to keep walking in this skin-crawling atmosphere, but with my retreat blocked off, I had no choice but to continue.

I kept track of how many pillars I’d passed in order to prevent my sense of distance from getting skewed; my count reached thirty. Considering each one was placed roughly five meters from the last, I had traveled a sizable distance when a figure stepped out from behind one a ways in front of me.

The man’s appearance was sudden, yet altogether graceful. With every step, his spotless boots produced a satisfying click that reverberated through the hall like the fanciful beats of a song.

Slender and sleek, the man’s presence transformed the macabre hues of blue and purple into an elegant spotlight. Enveloped in a black silk ballroom suit of impeccable craftsmanship, the patrician’s looks were without flaw—nay, he went past that. His outward image was so sublime that it shocked the viewer into believing there were none who could rival his class.

However, the ostentatious mask covering his slender face betrayed that he was undeniably deranged. I’m pretty sure I’d seen his ilk in Saturday morning cartoons.

This oddball nobleman was a crank of high rank, so to speak; it was a shame he was wearing that mask, because otherwise his dashing bow would have been the height of showmanship. Upon completing his highborn greeting, he snapped his fingers.

Would you look at that? His empty hands cradled in soft silk gloves were suddenly holding a long staff. It wasn’t the kind of walking cane aristocrats were liable to carry for fashion, mind you. The rod was punctuated with a shining ruby whose crimson glint trended on sinister; how could I ever mistake it for anything but a sorcerer’s tool? And what was more, it was the kind wielded by the professors of the College—those perverts with as much authority as money—to facilitate ultra-high-level spells.

Instinct and experience collided to sound every alarm bell in my brain. Spare contemplation would just have me thinking in circles; I abandoned thought entirely and dove behind a pillar.

In the very same instant—or at most, a split second later—the space I’d been standing in exploded. Shock waves flung me off my course midair and violently thrust me past my initial landing point.

What the hell was that?! I didn’t feel any heat—that wasn’t a normal explosion! That felt like the air itself collapsed in on itself! What the fuck?!

My inability to decode what had happened left me in disarray, but I got a hold of myself by shifting my line of thought: I’d just failed a stat check for arcane knowledge. Rolling off the force of impact, I rebounded high while summoning my Unseen Hands.

First, I used a few to bounce myself like a beanbag; this let me redirect away from a collision with the pillar while chipping away at my velocity over the course of several repetitions. I didn’t want to dizzy myself by stopping all at once, and that would surely have crushed my internals in a horrifying way.

For perspective, the blast hadn’t just blown off my hood—it had caused the band tying my hair together to explode. If I decelerated too quickly, I’d cough up my organs like an unfinished kidney pie.

Once I’d slowed down to a manageable speed, I used a Giant’s Palm to cushion my landing and then shifted to advancing on invisible platforms without missing a beat. I kicked off each Hand with enough force to break them, closing the five pillars of distance in a single breath.

“My word,” he marveled.

I ignored him and swung down with both hands. I wasn’t in range to use the fey karambit, and I was sure he had some kind of ever-present barrier despite his nonchalance...so I spoke its name: that of the accursed blade that haunted me.

“—!”

Its wail sounded like the end of sound itself, but the nuance hidden within was that of euphoric rapture. It wept a song akin to grinding metals, and I could feel it weigh down my hands; singing the same ode to love that it cried at my bedside every night, the Craving Blade leapt through space to heed my call.

Painfully present in my grasp, the sword churned the air with its sickening moans of passion—no doubt a cheer of joy at having its long-unanswered wish to be used for its true purpose fulfilled. Loving adoration and thanks banged around my skull to the point of nausea, but I couldn’t complain; I pressed on, knowing I needed its unrivaled power.

The zombified adventurer had seemed to tie some of his self-esteem to this devilish zweihander and its constant yearning, but I was genuinely curious as to what kind of man he had been. Reading through his diary, he seemed to have had healthy relations with a set party of equally skilled friends, and his writing hadn’t set off any red flags about his character.

Whatever the case, I may not have been as eager to sate the blade, but the thing still let me go from unarmed to full swing in exactly zero time. I’m sure any TRPG enthusiast could instantly recognize how incredible it was to equip a main-hand weapon without having to use up an action.

By summoning a sword from thin air to turn my weaponless stroke into a full-blown overhead slice, I managed to pull off a frontal surprise attack—I bet he hadn’t seen that coming. The only reaction the noble had time for was to open his eyes wide behind his mask.

As its edge sundered the air, the sword converted the whistling gust into screams of mad delight. One might think leaping forward and bringing my weapon straight down was a thoughtless display of brute force, but I’d carefully coordinated every movement to transfer every joule of energy into the tip of the blade. Combined with the gravitational acceleration dragging me back down to earth, the strike was a masterclass of swordplay.

For most, a person’s body was simultaneously too hard and yet too soft to cleanly split in two—but the feedback I felt upon collision told me that this was one of the few exceptions. Yet for all its rarity and virtuosity, my attack began to spark while still en route to its target.

“Hrgh?!”

I shattered one, two, three, four adamantine bodies before coming to a midair halt on the fifth. The Craving Blade and my muscles propelling it had reached an equilibrium with the invisible screens impeding us.

“Hm. To think you would destroy half of my sevenfold barrier.”

With a dazzling voice better suited to an opera house than this dank dungeon, the man casually dropped an astonishing number—not that I had time to dwell. I’d eat a counterhit if I stopped pressing the attack for even a second.

I activated my spell once more: simple, efficient, and all too familiar, my Unseen Hands weren’t limited to just movement and defense.

“Oh?!”

All six Hands gathered together as fists to hammer my strike forward.

See, I wasn’t delusional. The strength of each Hand was based on my base Strength, which was only barely better than that of the average mensch. I knew that no amount of add-ons could turn six punches into a threat, especially against a barrier that had stopped a maximum-force attack made with a weapon that defied reason.

So I didn’t hit the man or his barrier; instead, I hit the back edge of the Craving Blade.

The logic was quite simple: it was akin to leaning into a carving knife stuck in the side of a pumpkin. I simply substituted the body weight with six fists that could beat a grown man into submission, and the carving knife with a double-edged mystic sword.

The man tried to dodge in a panic, but it was too late. All he’d done was shift the angle of entry from his crown to his collarbone. And as sorry as I was to say, I wasn’t grown-up enough to hold back against a psychotic bastard who introduced himself with a one-shot-kill attack!

I didn’t care if that meant I would once more have blood on my hands. It was this pervert’s own damn fault for toying with me when I was out here fighting for my life. Traditional wisdom dictated that decapitation wasn’t enough to feel safe around a mage. As a swordsman prone to disarmament at the mere loss of my thumbs, I couldn’t judge him by my own standards.

Forgive me: my life did not belong to me alone. I still had to watch over Elisa; I had a promise with Margit to fulfill; I had places I wanted to see with Mika. But above all else, to die here and now would be to cast a shadow on Miss Celia’s heart forever. If this lunatic wanted to curse anyone for his fate, it ought to have been himself for picking this fight for shits and giggles.

The sensation of metal shredding muscle and swimming through the meaty gaps between bones raised every hair on my body. Entering through the shoulder, the Craving Blade fluidly completed its arc by exiting between his legs. An attack this flawless felt like rolling two extra dice; the cut was so clean that making sure the blade wouldn’t smack the ground proved challenging.

Backstepping after a committed offense was practically second nature at this point, and it saved my hide: the man swung his staff up at me immediately after. Leaving a lingering heat on my nose and singing a few strands of hair, the gem flew by with enough force to make my gonads shrivel. I would’ve been reduced to a diet of porridge and soups had it landed.

“Mm, not bad. Not bad at all.”

Moreover, the masked aristocrat was standing on his remaining leg, wholly unfazed. His severed left half collapsed without the staff to hold it up, but it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

...Yeah, I figured. An enemy killable by normal means would never have been waiting in this carefully tuned stage meant for his theatrical entrance.

The mistress of fate was a cruel and sadistic GM. Would it kill her to provide an encounter with trash mobs I could mop up without lasting consequence at least once?!

“A great departure from my expectations to be sure, but laudable nonetheless. The methodology behind your efficiently assembled spells is breathtaking. For this I shall give you an A. However, the formulae are a tad bland for my tastes. I understand that they’ve been designed to produce maximum effect at minimum cost—no, truly, I do. But they are lacking in playful grace and especially in redundancy. At this rate, young man, your foes will easily be able to interfere with their construction. Were we in class, I could do no better than a C on this front.”

Out of nowhere, the loon began to assess my skills like some kind of tutor. Why in all the gods’ names did everyone around me have to be this way? I had enough incorrigible deviants and/or unkillable monsters in my life as it stood, thank you very much. Could they please stop multiplying?

His mutilated half deftly propped itself up on an arm and leg to push itself back onto his main body; as soon as it made contact, the man’s flesh infuriatingly stuck itself back together as if to say it were only natural.

Undead again. Great.

To add insult to injury, even his clothes mended themselves, driving home how much of a farce this was. I had to painstakingly stitch mine together or pay for someone to do the same whenever I landed myself in trouble.

“Let us resume our lecture. The second period begins.”

The noble struck the floor with the gem of his staff, and before I could wonder what he’d done, two shadows stirred from behind the pillars at his wings; I hadn’t noticed their presence whatsoever.

Glossy fur shimmered in the mystic light, covering explosive muscles itching for action below. Ferocious though they were, their lithe frames betrayed an agility that outstripped any mensch’s. And of course, the defining feature that completed their alarmingly perfect physiques was the three heads staring at me with the intelligence of a thoroughly trained hound.

I had seen triskeles like them around the city many times, but none had boasted the anatomy of these two. Where others had been comparable to large dogs, these eclipsed them with bodies the size of a lion.

With these unorthodox beasts under his command, the gentleman once again bowed with gracious civility.

“These are my little darlings. Take a gander at their magnificent coats. And the neighbors just love how friendly they are.”

They couldn’t quite swallow me whole, but they were certainly large enough to bite off a limb in one gulp. To have them introduced to me like they were adorable puppies was...well, no, fuck off. What kind of paragons of bravery lived in this guy’s neighborhood?

“The one on your right is Gauner. He’s a lively bundle of energy who loves to play with balls. On your left is Schufti. She’s a spoiled little princess who always sleeps cuddling her favorite dolls. They run through their favorite toys rather quickly, but they’re very sweet.”

I said fuck off, my guy. Don’t just keep running with the proud owner schtick. From my perspective, these were organic killing machines bigger than an oversized motorcycle; if that comment about their toys was supposed to come off as some kind of cutesy charm point, he needed to revise his script.

Who was this guy, anyway? I had so little idea of what he was here for that the mystery threatened to drive me insane. I could outright deny that he was here to apprehend me: his spells were too deadly. His casual attempts at murder and commitment to dramatic flair made it unlikely he had anything to do with the forthright city guard. Unpredictable to his core, the way he made his decisions based on entertainment value alone made him closer to one of my kind.

Could you quit prioritizing your fun and pull your head out of your ass for one second to explain yourself in a way that I can understand?!

“Look alive, young man.”

Gods dammit! Don’t just move on after your shitty melodrama like we’re all on the same page! Argh, I feel like I’m stuck at the table with a pretentious GM!

All this activity had my fresh wound throbbing, but I didn’t have time to stop now. With my Independent Processing firing on all cylinders, I steeled myself to face the charging hounds.

[Tips] Triskeles are arcane life-forms and the canine of choice for the Empire’s military affairs. They are highly intelligent, with those trained by expert handlers capable of comprehending human speech and following complicated orders. Though most serve alongside city policemen, some find work supporting more specialized recon units.

As artificial organisms forged purely from thaumaturgic science, a male and female triskele still cannot breed without the assistance of a magus; one could consider them the descendants of animal familiars.

Is man stronger than beast? I think there are convincing arguments for either side. But one thing is for sure: there aren’t a lot of creatures mensch can beat in a fair fight.

“Eep!”

Two rows of razored teeth clamped down on open air, barely missing my foot. Not only were their fangs finer than pointed blades, but their massive jaws packed just as much power as they seemed to; they could tear through my leg as casually as I could snack on a pretzel.

The triskele that had leapt at me from a low crouch—hereby referred to as Dog A for my own convenience—led with its middle head, but then its left head tried to chomp at my midsection a beat later. I kicked this second snout both to divert the attack and to leap upward to make some space.

Despite its menacing appearance, the hound whimpered like a puppy when I kicked off it; was it trying to guilt-trip me? Too bad it wouldn’t work when its partner—aka Dog B—cleverly jumped up to catch me midarc.

I tried to summon an Unseen Hand to act as a platform so I could sneak in a slash while slipping past Dog B...

“Whoa?!”

...but my Hand was nowhere to be found, and the weight I’d committed to my step sent me tumbling in midair. As I spiraled to earth, I spied the masked noble muttering to himself and gesticulating with his cane; the bastard erased my spell!

“Man, that was close!”

I kicked Dog B’s left mouth shut to counter its perfectly timed attack, landing hands-down on top of Dog A as it tried to turn for another strike. Quickly bouncing right off, I curled up and swung its way as a parting gift...but only grazed it.

The Craving Blade’s unusually perfect edge let me cut right through the hardy coat of fur and score the dog’s flesh; a normal sword would have had trouble snipping off more than a few stray strands. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a manga protagonist, and a slash made without any solid footing lacked the force needed for a deep cut. Although it seemed like I’d rent a good chunk of flesh, I hadn’t so much as scraped the organs beneath.

Put another way, I’d cleared my saving throw and got a bit of chip damage in to boot—that wasn’t anything to scoff at. It was just that this world failed to provide me with the numerical hit points or damage numbers that would make these sorts of glancing blows feel rewarding.

Truth be told, the first triskele’s oozing red blood did nothing to stymie its feral rage, and the wound was already closing up. There was no doubt in my mind that they had some kind of spell woven into their cells to accelerate their regenerative properties.

They were the ultimate vanguards: strong, fast, and good at protecting their back line. Adding insult to injury was that they were composed of four distinct parts—three heads and a torso—making them difficult to take out in one go. Lopping off one head wouldn’t be enough for a kill; I couldn’t afford to keep playing fair forever.

I wanted to regain my footing upon landing a short distance away, but the hounds weren’t kind enough to let me. Dogs A and B twirled around with celerity unthinkable for animals of their size and bolted toward me with uncanny agility. Whereas I was sneaking in hits on reaction rolls, these two had specced their builds to take initiative every round—it was downright unethical.

Well, I guess that makes two of us!

Dog A charged straight at me, forgoing any wily tricks to simply crush me with its weight. Right behind, Dog B jumped high to attack from the air.

Are these things really animals?! Their synergy puts most adventuring parties to shame!

The flanking heads let them cover a great deal of lateral space, and their rushing legs were built to follow a sudden lunge to either side. Stepping back would only put me one pace away from the inevitable, and the massive frame barreling down from above gave me almost nowhere to run.

Fighting the urge to cry, I slid down the only escape route left: the wide space between the massive triskele’s legs. The thin layer of water coating the floor flared up in a tremendous splash as I dove, and I boosted myself with an Unseen Hand to clear the danger zone.

The mage’s jamming caused my Hands to dissipate immediately after construction, but the momentum they imparted upon me was here to stay. Though a force field may be magic, its physical effects on the world are not.

I considered sneaking in another hit as I slid by, but thought better of it. While it was tempting to strike at a distance where I could pierce the hound’s exposed belly to rupture its heart or rip out its organs, it would cost me a lot of speed; the remaining dog would pile on its friend’s corpse to crush me alive.

So instead, I left them a little present.

After completing my shiver-inducing ride under the great archway of the triskele’s legs, I sprinted toward the puppeteer behind it all. The Hands I used to push myself back onto my feet disappeared in an instant, but they were cheap enough to produce en masse. It was like I was a spendthrift filling up on bottomless hush puppies at a tacky American restaurant, dishing out more magic boosters every second to force myself forward.

All things considered, I was glad the noble was taking the time to annoy me by erasing every spell. I was a fragile little mensch, already wounded; if he’d started harassing me with attack magic that pierced my flimsy barriers, I would have been done for.

Plus, the triskeles were giving me enough trouble, so I did not want to have a ranged opponent to dodge. I hate to admit this, but I wasn’t strong enough to solo bosses, okay?!

“My word. You’ve gotten past them both! Alas, before you can close the distance...”

...Your hounds will chew me up, right? Don’t you worry about that: I’ve laid the groundwork. Before the masked man could say another word, an eruption of radiance lit up the world behind me.

“What?!”

Even with my back turned and the triskeles blocking the view, the flash was blinding; the dogs ate the same brilliance at point-blank range. The screeching blast that accompanied it put every canal in the ear through the wringer and dismantled any semblance of balance. As a finishing touch, I’d fitted my well-loved arcane flash-bang concoction with a modified trigger spell that had a few seconds of delay.

I didn’t know how long this would disable a triskele for. They seemed hardier than mensch, so there was a chance they’d recover more quickly. Worse still, the beasts were intelligent; the trick might not work a second time.

Still, I’d decided that this was the time to play my card. If I could disable the masked noble, his dogs would pose less of a threat. You know what they say: it’s always a good day to die—not that I planned to, of course.

I sprinted ahead, holding the Craving Blade to one side. I had to close the distance while the hounds were out of commission and the sorcerer was flinching from the residual flash.

The quality of my spirited yell was something difficult to put into words, even as the one making it; all I could say was that its energy was at least on par with the intensity of my hulking sword as I shifted my forward momentum into a sideways swing. Collisions fed back from the edge to the handle, letting me know I’d hit more than a few obstructions as thin as they were hard...but this time, my blade swung true.

I didn’t know whether his counterspells or the need to command the triskeles were to blame, but the nobleman’s barriers had lessened from his original seven to five. Perhaps he’d thought the last two superfluous to block a simple attack—unfortunately for him, a strike made on solid ground was sharper than anything I could do in midair!

His head flew. I would have liked nothing more than to mercilessly lay down another slash, but I could feel danger stirring behind me and had to retreat. Shit, they’re already up?! Not even tabletop wyverns recover this fast!

Both hounds jumped in for a tackle; I intercepted their front paws with the Craving Blade and pushed off, turning the force of impact into an accelerant to buy myself some space.

This time, neither Dog A nor B followed through with another offensive. Instead, they posted up next to the aristocrat’s body in a defensive stance, growling at me the whole time. I couldn’t help but feel that their worry was unfounded when the thing was standing upright, all peachy without its head.

Look, see?

The decapitated body sauntered off in the direction of its head, hoisted it into the air with a flick of its staff, and caught it in its left hand. The long wand activated, Cleaning the sewage off the smirk hidden behind a perfectly repaired mask.

I was up against the truest form of undeath: he wouldn’t die even if I killed him. Judging from how he shrugged off lethal damage, his talent in sorcery, and the fact that he was anything but physically inept, my best guess was that he was a vampire. That would prove a problem. Without a silver weapon—the metal triggered a visceral allergic response—laying around or a priest to invoke the word of a god, I had no way of putting him down for good.

Of course, that wasn’t to say that undying beings could restore themselves indefinitely. Regenerating after a fatal blow took a lot of resources, and enough repetitions would eventually cause his resurrections to slow down to a snail’s pace. The only problem was that I had no way of telling how many more deaths it would take.

Much to my dismay, I didn’t have so much as a spare second to scour through my character sheet for new skills—not that I could’ve brought myself to subject a deity to such blatant circumstantial worship. Seeing as They already had to deal with workplace power harassment, I could only imagine how painful it would be to have Their followers draw on Their power out of convenience alone. Besides, Faith-based skills were literally based on devotion, as the name suggested, and I doubted I could pray sincerely in my current state; any miracle I could conjure up would certainly be too weak to make a real difference.

“My goodness, how surprising. To think you’d not only incapacitate my little darlings—albeit for a fleeting second—but lead your blade to my person not once, but twice! It has been over a quarter of a century since I was properly bisected, and my most recent memory of losing my head is over a century since past. You have me feeling rather refreshed, young man.”

The man merrily twirled his staff in a way that skipped straight past nonchalance into open mockery of mortals. His mannerisms were so derisive that, had I not been surrounded by silver tongues that let loose frequent sarcastic jabs in my daily life, I would have lost my temper and cussed him out like a sailor.

“Swordplay is wholly removed from my realm of expertise, but it is apparent that yours is remarkable. The way you couple it with magic is likewise splendid. Much like your grade in formula assembly, I shall grant your practical applications an A. Though, I must say, while swiftly replacing every spell I erase is technically a solution, it fails to stimulate my love of beauty. What I’d desired from you was the ingenuity to rewrite the formula on the spot to prevent any further interference.”

Thanks for the rapid-fire analysis. Maybe I could’ve done that if your two dogs weren’t nipping at my heels!

“Yet I must admit, that last spell was splendid. Regrettably, its construction remained hidden to me behind the silhouettes of my darlings here—would you mind showing me again? I shall save my evaluation for after I have had a proper look.”

Oh, wait. I should just tweak my spells while he’s killing time taunting me. I’d gone out of my way to invest in multithreaded consciousness, so it would be a waste not to dedicate a portion of my mind to shoring up my weaknesses. I came up with a few new permutations which I would cycle through at random, making my Hands a bit harder to erase...I think. Man, I hope this works. Maybe I should pray.

“Well then,” he concluded, “lecture resumes. Do your best to keep up in the third period, young man.”

The click of his cane striking the floor rang out once more, followed by a vibration that tickled my eardrums. Though it began as a low drone, the buzzing grew louder and louder, causing my skin to crawl; at last, the light tickle became a violent scratch that made me shudder as my ears cried out against the unpleasant wave of noise.

This was the sound of insect flight in full murmuration. The cacophony of beating wings crept closer from the back of the room in the form of a single unified mass; each bug fluttered in such peculiar consonance with those around it that the whole flock looked to be a single organism that triggered a hard-coded mammal revulsion.

Faced with a white lump of insects folding in on themselves, I reflexively gave the noble what he wanted: I shoved an Unseen Hand into my pocket and grabbed every remaining ounce of catalyst, throwing it at the swarm. Instead of clumping it up, I scattered it to cover my whole field of view in an attempt to blot out the cloud of bugs.

Intense radiance followed as the dolomite powder exploded into light and sound. Seventy-five thousand candelas flashed across 150 decibels of raw noise to burn and shock the insects’ sensory receptors until the critters could no longer fly. The wall of vermin that had been steadily approaching now crashed into the earth like a wave.

Upon closer inspection, I found they were white moths.

“Eugh!”

As the moths rained down onto their fallen comrades, they began to crush those at the bottom, releasing a pungent odor that stung my nostrils. Whatever fluids ran through their bodies were anything but kosher; they were probably familiars that had had been designed from the outset with self-destruction in mind.

Some time ago, I’d thumbed through some tomes on familiars after seeing how helpful and cool Floki had been. Can you blame me? Just imagine a mystic swordsman with a raven perched on his shoulder and try to tell me that isn’t cool. Alas, beastly companions were both inconvenient and inflexible. Their most glaring flaw was expense, in that rearing a proper familiar took vast reserves of time and money. I frankly did not have the patience to spend generations acclimating animals to arcane contact just to get the base to start making adjustments on. Mika had been gifted a thoroughbred from her master and was fortunate enough to tame it straight away; that wasn’t going to happen for me.

Modern magia dismissed the art as a hobby for the affluent, and there was no chance that Lady Agrippina had connections with anyone in the scene. After all, my employer and the perverted wraith she called a master belonged to the School of Daybreak—the foremost critics of familiar breeding.

Setting my bygone dreams aside, I hurried away from the stinging poison while conjuring the Insulating Barrier I’d picked up on a cold winter day, complete with the Selective Screening add-on. Though I primarily employed it to keep me warm or dry in my daily life, a quick shift in perspective made it a protective suit against harmful substances.

“Ahh, how clever of you, young man. Hm, perhaps a reevaluation is in order: consider your grade in spell structure bumped up to a B. Your formulae are multifaceted—truly quite delightful. Simple and versatile, I suspect this dandy trick would temporarily impede persons of any make. Not bad at all. I’d love to purchase the rights when we’re finished, so begin thinking of your price now, will you?”

Can you please stop breaking down everything I do after a single glance?! I didn’t spend all this experience just for you to see right through me!

Despite shaving away the frontmost layer of moths, the swarm continued on unimpeded; as I backed off, I could feel the rage getting to my head. I knew perfectly well—oh, believe me, I knew—that the masked noble was stronger than me...but having him underestimate me to this degree ground my gears.

It was already too late to run. The only path left was to fell the goliath.

The time had come to unveil one of my trump cards. Having nearly died at the hands of undead once, it wouldn’t have made sense for me to walk around without some kind of counter, now would it?

You see, on that day many moons ago when Lady Agrippina had laughed at me until I curled up into a miserable ball for ruining one of the firing ranges at the College...that hadn’t been the only spell I’d planned to test.

Sprinting away from the cloud of moths at full tilt, I thrust a Hand into my bag to pull out my ace in the hole—or maybe it would be more apt to say I tore off the seal on Pandora’s box. I’d hidden it away partly because I’d wanted to save it for when the time was ripe, but the main reason was that I’d known a facility that couldn’t handle molten thermite definitely couldn’t withstand this. When I’d packed it back at the atelier, I’d thought to myself, I bet I won’t use a single one of these—in fact, I’d laugh if I ended up in a predicament where I had to.

I tossed the catalyst. Although it looked like a scrap of junk wrapped in a few layers of cloth, this was the product of my mind firing on all cylinders to create the world’s most unethical board-clearer.

As the package disappeared into the veil of moths, I could feel the tactile sensation of my Hand being crushed by the overwhelming torrent of insects, crushing the packet into dust. Oh. I guess self-destructing isn’t their only trick...

Regardless, their efforts simply saved me a step in activating the spell. The outer safety layer was supposed to be activated by crushing it in a Hand, so its destruction posed no issue.

The safety carapace doubled as a trigger, and its destruction automatically activated the cantrip surrounding the catalyst within. A bit of simple migration and mutation was all it took to convert the contents, and an Insulating Barrier much like the one around me surrounded point zero to limit the blast zone’s radius before it warped the laws of reality to its whim.

And the final step lay with me.

Once the alchemical reaction completed and the final layer of cloth was gone, the aerosolized particles of the mixture flooded the isolated space in fractions of a second...

“Petals of the Daisy, hear me and scatter!”

...at which point I used one of the “overblown” chants the magia disliked so much—I found them a tad embarrassing too—to set it off.

The world erupted in an instant.

Despite being quarantined in space by a mystic barrier, the detonation was so powerful that the gale that leaked through knocked me away. I wouldn’t have shamefully tumbled off had I controlled the explosion from start to finish with true magic, but I’d opted for a cantrip in order to skirt by with the bare minimum mana usage.

Searing waves of air stirred within the bubble, carrying the force of the blast like an invisible iron hammer that rammed into everything it encountered. The liquid oxygen I’d scattered had instantaneously dispersed and subsequently exploded; to say the air itself had blown up was no exaggeration.

A tiny spark had been all it took. The insignificant outset began a chain reaction of ignitions in the oxygenated air that produced nearly two thousand degrees of heat with which it battered the space inside the barrier.

I’d heard that the destructive range of an explosive was far less than what it seemed. So much so that one could survive the scorching flames of an impressive blast—injuries notwithstanding—so long as they avoided the impact at the center. This was why every modern Earth explosive from grenades to flechettes utilized the initial burst as a means to deliver more damaging metal projectiles.

This had led to a realization that straddled the baffling line between brilliant and barbaric: since shock waves lost their force as they diffused over long distances, if one distributed combustibles across the whole area intended for destruction, then everything would blow up without losing the initial blast to natural dispersal! I’d just happened to borrow what these scientists had dubbed fuel-air explosives.

I hadn’t been able to synthesize the complicated fuels used in cutting-edge thermobaric weapons. Mulling over an alchemy station for hours and even getting a bit of help from the madam had only been enough to produce an early version that relied on liquid oxygen, and even then, I’d broken my fair share of equipment trying to keep the fluid below the boiling point. Had the smirking Lady Agrippina not offered a word or two of advice, I would have spent a truckload of experience points trying to develop this card up my sleeve.

And, well, this one should have stayed up my sleeve; whether I was happy or sad about finally seeing it in action was a complicated question.

But what mattered now was that it was strong enough. Everything in a ten-meter radius from its origin had been sectioned off in a barrier that trapped what should have been a momentary blast for seconds. The violent winds were paired with a vacuum that contorted lungs already emptied by the shock of impact; to top it all off, the reaction filled the air with carbon monoxide. Everything melded together to become an unsurvivable nightmare for anything that breathed...

...or at least, it would have by Earth’s standards.

[Tips] Formula revision is perhaps the highest form of spell jamming, in which one tweaks another’s spell to dissipate or otherwise backfire. To do so is to read someone else’s mind in order to rewrite their mystic formulae, and is a considerable display of arcane mastery.

It is similar to inserting erroneous variables or numbers into a mathematical equation. Say, for example, that a merchant wishes to tally a total sum via multiplication: if the price of the items or their quantity changes, or if the foundational idea of multiplication turns to division, the output loses all meaning. In fact, at times, the final result may cause direct harm to the solver.

The life-form thought.

The life-form always thought.

Such was the purpose that led to its creation; such was the desire that led to its acceptance; and such thought was how it had won its love.

Equipped with enormous capacity for thought that enabled quick and accurate arithmetic, it understood that a great many of its selves had been destroyed in a single breath. Eighty-five percent of the battle-ready units that it had split off and carefully cultivated had been blown apart in a terrific, never-before-seen explosion that burned and blew for far longer than anticipated.

The unknown spell demolished the swarm so thoroughly that no individual unit caught in the blast could be recycled for further use. Every call to its many selves went unanswered. Furthermore, the toxic fluids it had secreted were burned away; the pragmatic mind assessed that it was in no position to fulfill its duty.

At the same time, its master was incapable of movement. While he would have been fine if the burns were only surface level, the damage to his body was so salient that it was harder to pinpoint what sections were undamaged. The incessant turbulence of the prolonged explosion had churned his organs like a meat pie, and his bones had shattered under the extreme pressure. Unblocked heat had melted his skin into a frightful goo that dribbled onto his charred clothes, producing a sorry figure.

A normal person from nearly any other walk of life would be unequivocally deceased; yet the life-form knew from its unwavering link that its master was still alive. To be refused death even when reduced to this painful state of outright physical destruction begged the question: could this truly be called a blessing?

Vampires were hardy creatures. They could lose their heads or spill their guts and continue about their lives. There were only three things that could kill one of their kind in the truest sense of the word. However, what seemed an inexhaustible font of life could be drained by seriously maiming them.

Though the life-form’s master accepted that he was a vampire, the man personally rejected a life of vampirism. He scarcely ever partook in blood, and on the rare occasion he did, he far undercut his contemporaries. The raw power he had inherited meant living in a constant state of fast did not spell doom for him, but his diet remained insufficient for robust growth.

Eternity was a prison without something to cling to; if not warm nectar, then, what did he choose? Uncontent with the thought of surrendering himself to the circumstances of his birth, the man found meaning in the product of his own diligence, something that none could ever deprive him of: his own wit. He learned how to manipulate his mana by branding the lessons of magecraft onto his brain, actualizing a flood of creative ideas to imprint himself onto the world.

He was not a mere Erstreich, born to a fate of privilege. No, he was an individual: he was Professor Martin von Erstreich, member of the College’s factionless School of Midheaven—and he had polished himself to suit his own ideals through the merit of his own intellect.

The history of his studies threatened to numb the mind. Making full use of his immortality, the magus had spent day in and day out steeped in nothing but thaumaturgical research. As a result, he had climbed the sublime peak of strength; even a bloodsucker who had bolstered their own might via sin was no better than a pile of ashes in his wake.

Yet this also meant that he was incomplete as a vampire. His ability to heal was significantly inferior to a comparably powerful member of his ilk.

Today, he had already suffered two fatal blows—at the hand of a child he could annihilate at first sight, no less. The cost of frolic was steep. Although he carried himself as if nothing concerned him, a crumbling vampire in his position would have long since been reduced to dust; having endured two attacks that would ordinarily necessitate a prolonged holiday to heal from left the life-form worried.

Worse still, the life-form considered the act of taking a third attack head-on because it “seemed unique” to be utter insanity. Despite having seen the immortal prioritize curiosity over well-being all its life, it could not accept this as a decision made by a sound mind.

His resurrection was slower now. A vampire of his age who had nourished themselves with ample nectar would have easily brushed off the damage, but it knew its master’s injuries were deep enough to prevent him from moving for a short while. Given a few dozen seconds, he would be back to good health. His wounds would close, his clothes would neatly mend themselves, and he would once more resume his bombastic praise in his usual taunting—though he himself did not intend it in the slightest—tone.

But the life-form thought even this was too long.

The unsightly child had failed to rein in his own spell and flew off into a faraway pillar, but the will to fight burned on within him. While he’d unhanded his weapon upon being knocked away, his body remained full of life.

The life-form felt strongly that it could not let the child approach its master before he was fully healed.

It did not have time to recall the many selves posted far away. The stockpile of units it had left amounted to no more than a twentieth of its full arsenal.

Yet for it, that was not reason enough to forgo trying. The life-form scrounged up its dwindling selves to create a weapon that came pitifully short of its true power. Still, that would do: it just needed to buy a transient moment. In less than a minute’s time, its master would wake and clean up this elementary problem.

The life-form had no hope of comprehending his true intentions, but that was fine. His thought process mattered little to it. All that mattered was that he had loved it; as a tool, it was its duty to repay him.

So the life-form did not hesitate: leaving only the bare minimum needed to ensure its continued ego, it crawled out of hiding.

[Tips] The excellence of a vampire is decided on two key points. The first is the strength of their lineage: a vampire born as the result of a mighty mother and father will invariably inherit their strength. The second is the quantity of blood consumed: the liquid residue of foreign souls ennobles them.

However, this rule only expresses an individual’s merit as a vampire, and is an inadequate measure of overall power.

After letting loose my secret weapon—in the sense that I would’ve liked it to have remained a secret—the explosion sent me tumbling straight into a pillar.

Since I’d had no chance to practice, I hadn’t been sure how much of the impact would escape the barrier. I’d been wholly unprepared to steady my footing or to incrementally bleed off the momentum like I’d done with the masked man’s opening attack.

Still, it seemed like my combat rolls weren’t too shabby today. Luckily enough, I’d flown off at an angle that avoided collision for a few dozen meters, letting me roll for a decent while before slamming into a pillar. In the worst case, I could have flown right into one and splattered like a pomegranate.

“Augh! Blegh, ack!” ...But I ended up sustaining a deep wound that I couldn’t shrug off. “Hrgh... Ugh... I think I broke a rib...”

Every breath caused my stomach to spasm in pain at the sensation of something digging into my gut. I wasn’t shrewd enough to diagnose how many ribs I’d broken, nor was I slick enough to laugh it off as a flesh wound. When every breath felt like I was drowning, the best I could do was forcibly shut my wailing body up with my mind.

Okay, calm down—I gotta calm down. I didn’t have the time to writhe around in pain. While it was tempting to jot down the lessons that the output produced might be overdone and that I needed to work on the mystic barrier containing it, I knew I still hadn’t finished the job.

A mensch like me would need to be maxed out with special traits—enough to march across the line of humanity with their own two feet—in order to avoid being pulverized into dust; that much was clear to see from the two gargantuan triskeles laying on their backs, twitching and frothing at the mouth.

But I wasn’t brainless enough to expect raw destructive force to put an undead down for good, especially when I was up against the most physically resistant race of them all. Besides, blowing a giant fuse only to face the billowing smoke with a “Did we get him?!” or a “He couldn’t have survived that!” was just asking for him to get up again.

Although some considered methuselah “undead,” they were perfectly reasonable organisms that died when you lopped off their heads or tore out their innards. Of course, the question of how someone like Lady Agrippina might ever lose her head was a conundrum too ambitious to waste time on now.

No, the problem lay with those that never truly died unless a specific condition or conditions were met—vampires were the worst of the lot. The most effective means of permanently finishing one off was to either keep them in direct sunlight or impale their heart with a divine stake blessed to prevent further regeneration, but neither of these were clear-cut one-hit kills. If left alone, they would resurrect after years and years of healing; their ludicrous persistence was comical.

Other options were limited. Bitter that His wife granted them Her protection despite His having been fooled by them, the Sun God imbued his devotees with intense powers of purgation. On the other hand, the Night Goddess had recognized vampires to be too individually powerful and shackled them with a mortal weakness to silver. Without one of these methods, a vampire was sure to put themselves back together time and time again.

“Marvelous.”

See? He’s still kicking. As the lingering aftershock mellowed, I could make out a silhouette in the settling dust. I figured he’d still be alive, but why the hell is he still person-shaped?

Still, his recovery was incomplete and he seemed unfit to move. Inaction would let my short-lived moment of opportunity pass in the blink of an eye, so I had to hurry.

Clutching at the pain with a few Hands—I figured a makeshift corset would be better than nothing—I called the Craving Blade back to my side. It nestled itself into my outstretched hand like a lovable puppy, but its mad desire to hack and slash was anything but adorable.

Propping myself up with my uncute sword, my psyche gave my flesh the brutal order to start running. Every step caused tears to well, but I sucked it up—pain would quickly cease to be an issue if I dared stop.

I was going to kill him, right here and right now. As I started to weave my Unseen Hands with an iron will...it appeared.

“Ngh?!”

Permanent Battlefield triggered as a jolt of unease that zipped across my body; a moment later, I sensed a dull and strangely artificial bloodlust coming my way. Acting in slow motion on Lightning Reflexes, I managed to sling the Craving Blade around my back to block the attack aiming to pierce my heart from behind—that I pulled this off was a miracle no better than happenstance.

I’d positioned myself in a desperate bid to preserve my life, and the heavy blow easily knocked me off my dubious balance.

It barely took any time to regain my poise. I’d known from the start that I couldn’t block properly with my impromptu stance, so I’d managed to leap away in a direction of my choosing. Rolling off the momentum of a hit for the umpteenth time today, I funneled the recoil into my arm to swing my “emptied” right hand.

Having rerouted nearly all my kinetic energy into this motion, my arm whipped at breakneck velocity; the Craving Blade once again answered my call just as quickly. The sword had been blown away when I’d blocked, but it was already perfectly set in my hand as I swung to intercept the mystery assailant’s follow-up and sliced straight through their right forearm.

“Wha— Who the fuck?!”

My inner thoughts leapt out into the dimension of spoken word; the enemy pulling away from me was bleeding purple blood.

[Tips] A vampire’s regenerative abilities vary wildly with each individual.

When Duke Martin of House Erstreich received the report from his retainer, he felt no anger or alarm. Bright and clear-thinking, the genius’s reactions were twofold: “I see,” and, “I knew it.”

The girl was undoubtedly his own. Here he had thought she’d taken completely after her mother—kind to a fault—but the duke chuckled at the discovery that blood remained ever thicker than water.

Now that he had a moment to dwell, this series of events was not merely reasonable—it was expected. Of the numbered women who had commanded the Trialist Empire as its Empress, one had belonged to his clan. Thinking back, when she had first hinted that she planned to resign as the family matriarch, he’d looked around him and realized that he was the only one fit to replace her; what had he done then?

He had tried to flee. He’d thrown his pride and reputation out the window, packed anything he could carry, and done everything in his power to seek asylum in an eastern land. Alas, all his efforts had then been trampled underfoot like a snapped twig, as she tore open the cargo hold of the ship he cowered in with a lordly grin; the moment she slipped the seal of Erstreich leadership off her finger and onto his own was everlasting in his memory. Martin still had nightmares about it.

What the father has done, the daughter shall repeat.

Chuckling, the duke summoned a moth from his inner pocket. It was a fully matured silkworm—the most heavily domesticated of all insects. The flittering bug represented a single branch of the familiar he had spent centuries rearing; silkworms were already wholly dependent on humanity, and this was the logical extreme. Packed only with traits that made it a more superior servant, the organic masterwork spoke to a tenacity in its creator’s will.

“Go and find her.”

The name Martin Werner von Erstreich meant many things in the Trialist Empire. He was the head of House Erstreich and a former Emperor, but to some, he was best known as an arcane bioengineer from the School of Midheaven. When he was spoken of in this light, his name was perennially intertwined with the magnum opus that sat atop his many creations: the triskele.

The moth fluttering away divided itself as it saw fit, multiplying to fan out through the city while trailing the girl’s scent. Silk moths did not have such functionality, of course, but its master had ordered it to find his daughter, and it was equipped with the ability to create new faculties to rise to any occasion.

It was an all-purpose tool. So long as a single base remained for propagation, the moths could serve as messengers, investigators, defenders, attackers, and anything else that one could imagine. They were fit to suit the duke’s wildest whims.

If he wished to write a memo, they grew wings of peerless texture, flickering the colors of their scales to jot down his words. Conjoined, they could become any tool or weapon from shield to halberd. When he needed a particular person, they grew vocal cords to call them to his side...using a semantic search that dipped into the arcane to find their mark.

This time, however, the target’s presence was scattered throughout town. Thus, the moths elected to seek a scent stored in their collective memory, scouring the city for the closest match. So robust was their sense of smell that they latched onto particles hounds were liable to miss, let alone mensch.

Eventually, their search produced a boy and girl.

The more powerful odor of the two belonged to a girl running around in the underground sewers, but a closer inspection of her imprint on reality showed that she was verifiably not the duke’s daughter. While he was ill informed as to his daughter’s personal relationships, the thought that she had a friend willing to go so far to help her warmed his heart—as if he weren’t the one she was fleeing from.

Suddenly, a stray thought crossed the man’s mind: Would things have been different if I’d had someone I could trust this way?

At any rate, he swore not to mistreat the first friend of his daughter’s that he’d ever seen as he shifted his attention to the boy. The hooded lad running circles around the city guard did not bear the slightest resemblance to his daughter, but tracing her scent didn’t lead to any other matches more significant than these two.

“But to smell so strongly of her surely must mean they know something.”

There were two people who might know what had happened, but the one that had been playing in the sewers had managed to land herself outside of the capital—following her would be a cumbersome task. If the duke was to visit one of them, the boy was much closer and far less tedious to reach.

Petting his familiar for a job well done, the duke slipped out of the palace. Not too long after, a retainer would knock on his door to let him know the aeroship showcase was imminent...and subsequently scream in horror, but that wasn’t his problem. It would be fine: surely another senior member of the development team would be present to explain, and if not, the Emperor had come to see their progress plenty of times. The duke flew off, thinking that if His Majesty wanted to show off his pet project, he could do the blasted introductions himself.

On the other side of a Farsight spell, the vampire saw the boy in question fall into an aqueduct. A jager sniper had landed an arrow that propelled him over the guardrail and into the running water below.

While his position dictated that he ought to congratulate her on a job well done, this was a slight issue. Having the boy die would be a bother—nothing more than that, mind you—and he would have liked to avoid any extra work.

Thankfully, it seemed his fears were groundless: he sensed a faint trace of mana under the water’s surface. It betrayed a spell unacquainted with the concept of covering one’s tracks; a magus well versed in counterspell wars would never write a formula like that.

But more interestingly, it bore a resemblance to something that stuck out in the duke’s memory. A season prior, he had escaped his monotonous duties to see if there were any promising newcomers running around the College’s testing grounds—these were the same tracks as the exciting cantrip that had failed to show up at the annual gala.

That had been a crying shame. How had he burned through the barriers that protected the College’s experimental facilities with such little mystic residue? Just as cheap blades couldn’t cut his skin, standard flames could no longer even singe the vampire’s hair, and yet the enigmatic substance had managed to burn straight through his hand. Martin had been eagerly looking forward to finding the bright young student and offering him a healthy research grant.

To think their paths would cross again like this! Ah, but perhaps, thought the duke, this was a blessing in disguise. It wasn’t as if he wanted the boy’s spells for himself: he did not pursue magecraft for the sake of glory.

The professor simply adored the joy of repainting the unknown with shades of knowledge, and nothing elated him more than coming across an idea that he would never have come up with himself. This was the sole driver that had pushed him along for four hundred years...and the kind of crazed young man to compose a spell of that nature and embroil himself in a noble girl’s escape was sure to bring the duke enough novelty to have him clutching his sides in laughter.

It took effort to prevent a never-ending life from devolving into tedium; the thought of potentially capturing a peculiar individual that might brighten it, on top of learning his daughter’s whereabouts, put a spring in the duke’s step, and he merrily decided to call upon his little darlings lazing about in boredom at home. After all, a vanguard was a must when facing a promising magus-to-be.

With his course of action decided, the duke turned his attention to the sewers. While the city guard would be preoccupied with trying to fish out a body for the time being, it was only a matter of time before they realized the boy hadn’t drowned. The merfolk jagers were on standby in the palatial moat they called home for now, but they would uncover the truth in an instant if they set out to.

Clearly, he would need to prevent any such interference.

The duke dropped into an access hatch and made his way to an enormous pit that fed straight to the most abyssal levels. Nobody knew of this location, but it was a testament to the fact that the waterways were the most critical infrastructure in the city; one terroristic feat of engineering here could cause the whole capital to sink.

Naturally, the key locations of the underground were kept tightly under wraps. Escape routes stemming from the imperial palace and the final purification chamber that the magically fueled sewer keepers called home were of particular importance; the number of people in the entire Empire who knew these paths could be counted on two hands.

Taking one such integral pathway, the duke descended into the final purification tank. Countless pillars spanned across several dozen cubic meters like divine columns, with strongly basic blobs of living gelatin filling the space in between. Sounds of wriggling masses darker than the night sea echoed around like warped death throes, turning the location into hell on earth.

Yet in spite of the vaporized clouds of death that permeated the air, the vampire laughed away the very suggestion of harm. He looked at the blobs dubbed the Presidents of Pollution—at his apprentice’s children—with an affectionate smile.

“It has been quite some time, my good sirs. A pity you can’t understand me—I’ve known you lot since you were tiny specks on a petri dish, you see.”

The duke hadn’t been a part of the original development team; the methuselah in charge of gathering researchers and directing the project had simply once been under his patronage, and he’d stopped by to give a word or two of advice when it was pertinent. It was on these occasions that he’d learned of this place, of the slimes’ quirks and characteristics...and of a way to ask them for a little favor.

Knowledge of this sort could bring the city to its knees, and the duke used it to shepherd the boy toward a large flood repository. If the bureaucrats of the imperial government’s waterworking branch were ever to find out, they would surely go blue in the face and pen a deluge of strongly worded letters—the Empire did not look down on persons of lower class voicing their displeasure for those above. Of course, the fate of such criticism was almost certainly either the wastebasket or an eternal stay in a folder of issues that the upper noble would get to “when they felt like it.”

Regardless, the man had spent four centuries drowning in his hobbies, and his irrational tomfoolery did not stop as he appeared before the boy.

This young man was a solid spellcaster. While the candor of his formulae was unworthy of praise, Martin could accept it: he only employed simple arcane tricks to bolster swings of his sword, prop up his body, or block an attack as an impromptu shield. The professor would have liked to see more redundancy to counteract an attempt at erasure, but it was clear this was not his main focus.

Rather, it was the boy’s impeccably polished swordsmanship that impressed the duke most. His magic took the form of a torrent of quick spells that were merely the supportive framework to enable a lethal sword strike; why, the lad used magic more efficiently than some magia.

Onward, cut, onward, kill, onward—his relentless onslaught was dazzling. Middling swordsmen would struggle to pierce even one of Martin’s barriers; he had frankly been awestruck when the boy managed to split all seven. The attack cleanly cleaved through his heart, and he knew a crumbling vampire would have returned to dust, unable to heal away the damage.

What could possibly drive someone so young to such heights—especially for a frail, fleeting mensch, who would return to the gods as soon as his heart ceased its function?

“Marvelous,” the duke heaved with a splatter of blood.

Faced with an unknown spell, he had sat there and taken it only to find something far greater than he’d anticipated. No, that was unfair: with how trivial the boy’s incantation had been, he would have been able to recast the trifling steps again and again. To overcome such redundancy would have likely required the professor to eliminate the catalyst in its entirety.

In the end, the vampire thought with a sarcastic laugh, I push through with the power of my birthright.

Still, the spell had been jaw-dropping. Scanning himself with magic, the professor noted that his organs had been crushed without exception, and the astounding pressure the blast produced had all but deformed his overall shape; he was practically a sack of flesh stacked up in the shape of a person.

Despite the care and attention he’d committed to polishing his beloved Schufti and Gauner, they were both belly up and frothing at the mouth. They’d sustained serious damage to their respiratory tracts that had knocked them out cold; they wouldn’t die, but he’d need to bring them out to a resort home and pamper them where the air was good until they were back in good health.

He didn’t need to waste time scanning to know that his familiar Schnee Weiss had been eradicated. The main force hiding in an isolated pocket of space would be fine, but he couldn’t do anything about the low number of reserves for the detached combat swarm; pushing it too hard would be a mistake.

Martin turned his attention to the spell: how could a smattering of mystic parlor tricks amount to a force that could shatter his laminated barriers and ravage a body he considered quite strong, even amongst vampires? His curiosity could not be sated.

As he observed the boy clambering to his feet with continued will to fight, a foreign thought rang out in his consciousness, courtesy of none other than the familiar he’d sworn not to overtax moments ago.

[Tips] The “Presidents of Pollution” moniker was a top secret code name used during the development of imperial sewer slimes. Two hundred years ago, a methuselah researcher had the revolutionary idea of constructing a purification method that might lessen the costs of maintaining the capital’s waterworks. His success is evidenced by the slimes’ continued presence bouncing around the underground; today, their siblings have been duplicated to sustain the clean water of every major city.

My opponent was...difficult to describe.

“She” had two arms and two legs attached to a single trunk, just like a mensch—the catch was that every inch of her feminine contour was covered in a blindingly white carapace. The outer shell’s sheen was unmistakably organic in nature and naturally opened into seams at her joints; the peculiar “armor” had to be an exoskeleton.

Yet the most puzzling characteristic had to be that her head was just that of a moth scaled up to fit a human body. Two giant compound eyes took the place of sockets, and comblike appendages—feelers, probably—jutted out from her forehead. In place of hair, she had what seemed like flowing wings that widened out near the tips.

Though the Empire was home to many insectoid demihumans, this was my first time seeing a creature that was literally just a bipedal bug. No matter how dominant one’s insectile genetics were, demihumans displayed a great many mensch-like features by their nature; some might possess exoskeletons, compound eyes, or feelers, but they invariably had more familiar noses or lips that made them closer to us humanfolk.

This was not the same: it felt as though I was seeing the end result of an insect lineage that culminated in a human form factor... Wait! Is this the hivemind behind the poisonous silk moths from earlier?!

Perhaps sensing my disorientation, the freakish moth ignored her severed hand and closed in to continue the brawl. She nimbly snapped her long limbs like whips, barely grazing me; a direct hit would undoubtedly be lethal. The good ol’ Konigstuhl smithy’s armor may have been expertly crafted, but it couldn’t withstand that: if I tried to eat the hit with the hardest chunk of leather on my chest, I suspected she’d pierce through it and the chain mail below with ease.

The moth’s unique set of biological plating hardened further at her fingertips to frightening levels. How do I know, you ask? Well, she was using her hand to parry the Craving Blade.

“Gah! I can’t get through!”

The carapace covering the rest of her body was barely any softer, and she made extra trouble for me by shifting around to throw off the angles of my attacks. It didn’t matter how sharp the Craving Blade was if the edge didn’t find a good entry. This wouldn’t have been an issue had I been stronger—I could’ve simply let the mass of my sword do the talking—but I’d dumped all my add-ons into one-handed swords, not zweihanders.

I wasn’t in any danger of losing, but...she wouldn’t let me win.

It wasn’t as if the moth was trying to put me down either. Sure, her first sneak attack had clearly been aiming for my vitals, but everything since then had been a clear attempt at buying time. Knowing that one wrong move would let me finish her, she kept this fight going with the deliberate intention of stalling.

Time—it’s always time! The flowing grains slid past, heavier than their weight in gold; how many more would it be before the nobleman came back to life? Two servings of triskeles had been more than enough on my plate, and I didn’t know when they’d get up either. I needed to end this, and fast, or my slim odds of victory would evaporate entirely.

“Grah! Bring it!”

I shouted to provoke as much as I did to fire myself up, bolting forward in the same stance I’d used to take the masked aristocrat’s head. With my stature, this sort of grip let me wield the lengthy blade better than readying it in front of myself.

Furthermore, my body became a veil to cover up my swing until just before impact. I couldn’t even count the number of times Sir Lambert had used this trick to knock me on my ass; it followed that I’d take a page out of his book since I was using his style of weapon.

The strange mothwoman took a fighting stance to intercept me. Perfect. Stay just like that...because I’m not aiming to swing!

Perhaps I was imagining things, but for a brief instant, I felt as though I could see emotion stir within those pitch-black eyes. If I had to name what it was, I think I would label it bewilderment.

After all, who wouldn’t be taken aback when seeing a swordsman throw his sword?

“—!!!”

I stomped my foot and pivoted to throw the Craving Blade as hard as I could. As it spun through the air, I could feel its sad cries of “Why would you do this?!” echoing in my brain, but this was what Hybrid Sword Arts entailed; when the path of effectiveness called, I was there to answer. The cursed sword could complain all it wanted once we were done, but my current priority was to unearth any path to victory that would stave off the reaper.

The moth hesitated between blocking and dodging, but eventually steeled herself to knock away the Craving Blade. I suspected that she didn’t see me as a threat unarmed.

Her assumption was wrong.

“Sorry, I only know how to fight dirty!”

She knocked away my sword with her remaining hand, leaving her wide open. I slammed into her with the fey karambit tightly gripped, slashing at her throat; I cut straight through the outer carapace and made contact with an endoskeleton deep below.

My permanent gentleman’s carry was perfect for exploiting the weak neck all living creatures shared. Despite always keeping it primed for when I needed it most, I tried my best not to use this knife whenever I could. The ability to slice through only flesh that the wielder targeted was just too good: swordsmen need guts, and I was scared my intuition would dull if I relied on an AC-ignoring weapon all the time.

But of course, I wasn’t going to hold anything back when the going got tough. Death wasn’t an option for me.

I kicked the headless and unresponsive monster in the gut to send her off...only to see her decapitated body begin flailing after it hit the ground. I knew I’d been right to stay alert after landing the fatal blow—she resembled an insect even in death.

By my estimate, most people have played with bugs in their early youth, before developing a learned animosity for creepy crawlers. Assuming that holds true, I suspect that many have accidentally squashed an insect’s head when trying to pick it up. The fate of those poor specimens is universally to wriggle and writhe as if they’d forgotten that they’d just lost their heads and that death was right around the corner. This is because insectile nervous systems have several hotspots of nerve clusters; while the brain is responsible for more advanced thought, there are often other clumps that determine the movement of local muscles in the thorax, abdomen, legs, or wings.

Built like a hyperadvanced version of an insect, the strange life-form could very well have possessed similar nerve centers—perhaps even one intricate enough to be capable of acting as a secondary brain.

I’d been playing it extra safe because it wouldn’t have been a laughing matter to die to random attacks from an enemy I’d already killed. At this point, though, the brainless body could do me no more harm. Now that I could turn my attention away, it was finally time to push forward and take the final piece.

[Tips] Although many demihumans possess insectile traits, most do not stray that far from the basic mensch design; none are capable of superhuman feats like running off an auxiliary brain.

Watching Schnee Weiss—a creation he’d cared for nearly as much as his own daughter—sacrifice itself brought the duke to the brink of tears. The moth collective was an expressionless bunch, and it had never overtly reciprocated his affection; to see proof that it cared for him to such an extent moved him. Other than the central unit in charge of self-preservation, all of the swarm had laid itself down in an heartwarming display of parental reverence.

However, the time for joy and doting was not now. Schnee Weiss had haphazardly thrown together a humanish body in the name of protecting the duke by any means possible; the boy who struck it down would have to be dealt with as a matter of first priority.

As Martin began pouring everything into regeneration, the young man tossed another catalyst his way. The small vial burst on its own in the middle of its trajectory, raining down a viscous liquid that instantly ignited.

For a moment the professor thought it a trifling oil bomb—but only for a moment. At present, there was so little oxygen in the air that he could hardly breathe; why had the flames not gone out?

He attempted a simple firefighting spell to pluck out the oxygen around him, but the cantrip’s gooey liquid fire refused to let go. Each passing second scorched his weakened body and summoned waves of excruciating pain.

Fire and the accursed inferno it brought was the loyal eldest son to the God whose grudge had yet to set. Both the pain and scars it imparted upon vampires were more pronounced than those of other races, causing burns to heal far more slowly than normal wounds—it was nearly as bad as the visceral physiological rejection caused by silver.

The prolonged heat continued to torment him, eventually broiling his eyeballs until they popped. Not only was the flame difficult to extinguish, but the temperatures it produced were profound.

Still, while the pain was intense enough to evoke concerns of death, the duke could withstand it. He had lived for quite some time, and assassins impressive enough to be worthy of his praise came with the territory. He’d been stabbed, drowned, locked in a steel coffin, and, of course, burned. Many times, in fact. When he’d managed to survive run-ins with metaphysical flames that only conceptually burned targets, this was hardly anything to fret over.

Martin swiftly manipulated his own blood to cause his entire body to explode.

Flesh flew everywhere, taking the oozing blaze along with it. The fibers of his muscles were painfully visible for the world to see, but it was better than letting the fire impede his resurrection for any longer.

First and foremost, he rebuilt his sensory organs. These were a must to accurately enact mystic change upon the physical world, and more simply, he needed them to figure out what in the world was going on. The deflated sacks of his popped eyes filled once more as if time were flowing in reverse, restoring the silver glimmer hidden behind his mask.

The first thing the vampire saw with his new eyes was the boy sprinting toward him with his blade on his shoulders, reaching into his bag to pull out something shimmering.

Experience and instinct collided to scream in the duke’s mind: He knows how to kill a vampire.

The stern, hairless side profile of Archbishop Lampel glimmered in the boy’s hand. The Night theologist’s infamous dissertation, The Covenant of the Endowed, had pioneered a high-minded philosophy of ideal vampirism that had catapulted him to fame. Coins minted in his honor were exceptionally pure in silver, making them a popular good luck charm for vampires who desired his protection...and for those who wished to hunt the indulgent heathens the world derided as bloodsuckers.

The coin was death: no vampire, be they freshly sired or old as the earth itself, could survive taking that to the heart.

Sunlight, miracle, and silver were the three hefty shackles that had come with their immortality. The vindictive Sun punished those who dared to fool Him; the sheltering Moon bound them so that they might not seek the limits of their pride. These were the things vampires could not survive—so the world had decreed.

Having neglected to train his feral instincts, stooping low to unleash his inner vampiric strength did the duke no good; the boy still won out. In fact, the swordsman managed to lop off all his limbs, taking away the last of his options.

And so, Martin went all out. For a split second, he let loose a humorless burst of his strongest magic, which ravaged everything around him. He was afraid of death; there were still so many pleasures he’d yet to see.

After all, whether the future proved entertaining or boring mattered not if this shell of flesh and bone he called a self housed a heart that would never beat again.

[Tips] Archbishop Lampel’s teachings begin with the well-known line, “Ours is a fate dictated by the humble solicitation of love. Let not the vampire fall to common lawlessness, damned to daemonhood.” Though the Trialist Empire sets the bar for vampiric behavior in the modern day, this treatise was written for a fractious religious group that predates imperial Rhine.

The man himself has passed away, but he is still remembered as the patron saint of vampires—a moniker officially backed by the authorities of the imperial pantheon—and enjoys particular reverence from those who worship the Night Goddess. Legend has it that his soul has returned to the Moon’s side to forever watch over his brethren, offering solace and admonishment when needed most.

Crap, I wasted too much time.

In the heat of combat, every instant had felt utterly packed, but I’d actually used up nearly a minute. While that didn’t sound like a lot, it was more than enough for a vampire to make real progress toward resurrection.

I tucked away the fey karambit and called back the Craving Blade only to find it was throwing a fit and wouldn’t respond—I kid, I kid. It showed up in hand as always, though I didn’t make up the part about it harassing me with its projected abandonment issues. I understood that it preferred the stylish form of orthodox swordplay, but I really wished it could save the grief for later.

Turning to the masked man, he was indeed nearing full resurrection. Shit, he’s fast... I gotta hurry before he can move to pick up his staff.

Running in, I pulled out the last of the antiundead prototypes I’d meant to test in the College’s labs that day. Although I’d kept my expenditures to a minimum, I’d still used most of the experience from the ichor maze on these three spells. I think every player can relate to theorycrafting a bit too much after nearly wiping one time. Of course, the meanest GMs refuse to reuse enemy types for whole campaigns at a time, but it is what it is.

I let the final projectile loose before the noble could fully heal. Shaped slightly differently so I wouldn’t get it confused with the other tubes, the metal cylinder packed with catalysts hurtled through the air and broke apart on its own, much like the fuel-air explosive.

But this time, only one side broke down, causing all the contents to splatter forward. This wasn’t some coincidence: I’d tweaked the formula to program its spread—once again with the madam’s help—so it would dump its payload directly on my enemies.

My commitment to simplicity was alive and well in this design, and its sole purpose was the opposite of the thermite bomb: keep a high heat for as long as possible. Basically, I’d fashioned an arcane napalm to prevent undead monsters from regenerating.

Fire leapt forth with a terrific howl, beckoning the aristocrat to a dance mired in heat. I’d swirled refined oil and animal gelatin together in a thickening agent to produce an incendiary bomb as crude as it was effective.

The lipophilic concoction couldn’t easily be shaken off, and I’d woven in a bit of true magic that would keep the relentless blaze alive without oxygen for a short while—it was the beastly embodiment of combustion. Without gasoline, I’d been forced to settle for enhanced oil, but the mystic boost was more than enough to bring about the firepower I’d hoped for.

No matter how much he regenerated, it meant nothing so long as the newly formed flesh was instantly burned away. I’d worked like mad to pack this spell with as much power and heat as I could manage, and the fruits of my labor were evident. The only way he could rid himself of the stubbornly clinging incendiaries was to shave away any part that made contact. This was what had made napalm so popular amongst the armed forces of Earth: normally, anyone that got the stuff on them was utterly doomed.

That said, the definition of normalcy in this world covered a far wider spectrum. There were probably tons of people who’d shrug it off with a casual whistle, maybe even—

A blast rang out. Once a human torch, the nobleman’s body exploded with a disgusting squelch, rocketing the flames in every direction. Embers whizzed by at speeds impossible for even my reflexes to react to, singing my hair as they passed.

No way... Did he blow off the whole surface of his body to put himself out?!

I had a direct view of the dark crimson entrails that ordinarily lay hidden, and could see some parts practically rewind the damage they’d taken in real time.

Shit! Is he shucking off everything that can’t help him in combat so he can get up and fight?! That must be why his bones and muscles are regenerating first!

I was all out of hidden aces, and without catalysts, I didn’t have a single attack spell to my name. Though I could cut him down so long as I had a weapon, killing him wasn’t the same as finishing the fight. In the worst case, monsters of his make could counterattack while dying and then take all the time in the world to heal back up afterward.

He was literally cheating: I was like the little boy at the arcade playing on a single quarter against a grown man pouring in his salary.

I yanked my shriveling spirit to its feet with my loudest battle cry yet and swung at the bloody mannequin.

Suddenly, he expertly clicked his meatless tongue and raised a misshapen hand—one with long, vampiric claws primed for battle.

I knew you could do that! Why the hell haven’t you until now?! Were you fucking sandbagging?! Are we mortals so pitifully frail that you have to toy with us instead of using your fists, you long-lived asshole?!

But it was too late to fall back now: I’d have to commit to my attack and use the three thermite darts I had left to cremate him before— Wait!

Genius struck. I’d likened the man’s childishness to arcade games and the coins that fueled them, which reminded me...I had one. I had something made of nearly pure silver.

Using one strand of thought, I formed an Unseen Hand to sift through my bag and pull out my meager purse. Inside, I found a valuable coin that I’d kept just in case: the same high-grade silver piece of Archbishop Lampel that I’d gotten as a reward for “selling out” Miss Celia. I’d kept it on hand in case of an emergency expense, but never would have imagined it’d turn into a real silver bullet.

I can win. All I had to do was split open his chest and jam this coin into his open heart, and the unkillable vampire would meet his end. There was nothing he could do to stop it: the gods had decided long ago that this was how the world worked.

I only had one chance, one opportunity—the battlefield never offered redos. But this was a bet worth calling with my last silver piece; I took one final step and showed the cards hidden in the flourish of my blade.

All right. It’s time to see who has the better hand.

But first, I had to stop him from moving. He seemed unaccustomed to fistfights, and I managed to manipulate his movements by bluffing with my gaze and body; a quick feint to the right with my weight still centered left was more than enough to fake him out.

His right hand was wide open when I chopped it off, and I quickly took his left following a panicked attempt to counterhit. Three thermite darts floated in my Unseen Hands above, and my left knuckle curled around the silver bullet to end it all.

If I failed here, it was over. I’d played all my best cards, the deck was empty, and my hand was sparse.

If I pulled back here, it was over. A battle of attrition against infinite healing was no different from suicide.

Hesitation spelled death; retreat spelled death. Everything rode on this one attack—this one moment.

I’m all in.

“—!!!”

Just as I wound up for the decisive blow, the Craving Blade began to shriek. This wasn’t the same pleading sweetness that it employed when begging to be used. It was urging—no, demanding me to do something, but the nebulous blobs of thought failed to produce any linguistic meaning in my mind.

By the time I realized it was a warning, everything was over.

“Ackgh?!”

Hideous creaking accompanied the distortion of space. I’d been in the air, just about to land for my final step, when I blasted off and saw something unthinkable: the arms and legs that so intimately accompanied me through every experience I’d ever had...flew off. My Lightning Reflexes triggered, dragging out the terrible scene into a nonconsensual slow-motion film.

My right arm tore off from the shoulder; my right leg burst at the shin; my left leg twisted free around my thigh. The limbs I’d lovingly used since my ego first woke in Konigstuhl were gone.

Though I couldn’t even begin to understand what had happened, I strangely felt no pain. Perhaps it was the heat of battle, or maybe my brain simply couldn’t process the surreality of the scene. I simply sailed backward, soaking in the force that sank into my body.

The sword in front of my chest groaned. I didn’t know when it had gotten there, but it was probably thanks to it that my neck didn’t spin off for an instant kill. It had realized I couldn’t defend myself, and come to shield my vitals, if nothing else.

My sole remaining limb had still snapped like a used toothpick, but it hung on by a thread—no doubt because of the glimmering jewel on my left hand. Seated in the lunar ring, her brilliant ice-blue shone as beautifully as ever.

It was too bad that they could only prolong my death by a few seconds.

The spiraling force had yet to dissipate, and I could feel that the invisible tornado wouldn’t be content until my carcass was reduced to mincemeat.

I guess I should’ve known. No matter how playful the man’s speech and mannerisms had been, he’d still been trying to kill me. Threatening to put him down for real would naturally trigger an unmitigated response of incomprehensible violence.

But I’m not dying alone.

I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you if it’s the last thing I do.

Looming death brought time to a crawl, and I could still weave together spells so long as Helga’s memory shimmered true and my brain could muster up the formulae. I was going to see my mission through. My Hands had been torn asunder, sending the thermite sticks and the fey knife flying; if I could catch them, drive them into his chest, and grind the silver visage of a somber monk into his exposed heart, he’d go down.

I could sort of just tell that it wasn’t worth trying to live. This wasn’t the sort of direct attack I could redirect with a space-bending barrier; the space around me was the range of the attack. Swordsmen weren’t built to dodge this kind of thing. Maybe a pure tank could muscle their way through it, but a flimsy mensch brat didn’t have the HP to tough it out.

So the only thing left was to not die for free. I’d gotten to this point shouldering all kinds of promises and dreams, and I wasn’t about to lay down and obediently accept what boiled down to a fucking traffic accident with a broken enemy!

Sure, this line of work saw dragons falling out of the sky, high-level characters just hanging out around town, or random mutts that came out to chase you if your dice rolls sucked—yeah, it was hell. But that didn’t mean I could accept being squashed like a bug just because of some crappy luck.

I’m taking you with me!

“Thou scamperst overmuch, pup.”

Just as I was about to avenge myself, the awful creaking and all the pressure causing it were overwritten by the gentle timbre of a woman’s voice.

“Know thy place. To check frolicsome jesters be thy burden by right.”

Scarlet mist settled into the room, enshrouding the nobleman; a second later, I heard a cataclysmic noise. It was the abominable sound of a hard object crunching, like an overwhelming mass had crushed a person whole. The aural equivalent of someone filing my psyche down with sandpaper was the backdrop that accompanied my uncaught fall.

“Oh? A tad tardy, mayhaps.”

Still producing grisly sounds—I thought I could hear screams, or maybe pleading, as well—the red cloud wound into a more definite shape. The amorphous crimson fog dissipated to naturally unveil a noblewoman as if she’d always been here.

The lady wore a toga that, while far behind the times, evoked lofty imagery from the days of classical poetry; her stature was apparent at first glance. Dyed in the rare imperial violet, she wore it well, though for whatever reason, she seemed to wear nothing else. Her near nudity clashed with her grace to produce an eccentric impression.

Bloodred eyes and inky-black hair embellished the purple tunic with orphic charm, and the gloss of her milky-white skin betrayed softness beyond that of clouds. Though her eyes drooped in a dreamy way, the long and menacing fangs protruding past her lips were the mark of a vampire.

She seemed familiar, almost. As the pain began to set in and the blood loss blurred my vision, another face quite similar to the gorgeous woman’s popped into view. The girl in holy garb crawling out of the red mist was the same one I’d parted ways with a little while ago.

Ohh, I thought. Of course. She looks like Miss Celia.

Gazing up at the crying nun running my way, I found this pointless discovery terribly entertaining as I closed my eyes with a smile.

[Tips] Imperial violet is the most highly prized of all forbidden colors in the Empire. Only the Emperor and former emperors are permitted to wear it on their persons. The dye is incredibly rare and labor-intensive, and has been considered a status symbol for centuries; naturally, the Empire codified its restricted use upon its founding.

However, the tone of purple is incredibly garish, and modern emperors tend to avoid the color outside of official ceremonies.

“Wha—wait! This isn’t fair! Why are you here?!”

These were the duke’s first words upon being yanked by the neck out of the red mist. Though he’d managed to scramble together something resembling a head and chest, his limbs and lower torso had been minced beyond recognition—even his carefully set hairdo had been reduced to a terrible mess. The mask he seemed so partial to lay shattered on the floor.

“Oh? Thy japing wit is ever marvelous, pup.”

The woman let her imperial-purple toga scandalously sag with a grin, flashing her kind’s trademark fangs. Hers was a smile steeped in intimidating menace. Though her words tiptoed around and around, the dated Rhinian she spoke sent the duke into a shivering fit.

Martin hated this roundabout speech; he hated this enunciation; but most of all, he hated her. That was the sole reason he made a constant effort not to allow his verbiage to fall into archaics as so many long-lived vampires were disposed to.

“If I should read the matter fairly, the first fault must be thine. Look to the ruin thou hast fashioned from a boy; look to my beloved grandniece, so tearful she hath clung to my side.” The woman smiled tenderly, yet with the pristine etiquette of a proper lady—all while engaging in unspeakable violence. “And look finally to me, whose banquet thou hast cut short.”

Here stood one of the few women to grace the Trialist Empire with her reign. Theresea Hildegarde Emilia Ursula von Erstreich, remembered as the Delicate Empress, crushed her nephew’s neck.

“Grghleg...”

Dainty fingers suited best to shining silver cutlery or epicurean fans squeezed tight, shattering all seven bones in his neck. Her lithe frame could not give away her ruinous clutch as she held fast so that the man could not heal.

Vampires very rarely received enough divine favor to put down undead, and a mutual inability to wield lethal silver weapons caused infighting to devolve to this: raw violence. Combat between two vampires was a constant exertion of overwhelming pressure that only ended when the opponent cried uncle.

Though the frame may be immortal, the self resided in the realm of thought. The psyche, being a ginger, fleeting thing, was markedly less unkillable. Such was why Martin had developed a spell to continuously compress space: the incessant twisting force was his way of dealing with the undead.

“Rather, he who hath been duly called Emperor must not cry like the hens at dawn at the passing sight of a kinsman. At present I am a playwright only, and retired in the main; these slender fingers can hold naught but pens.”

Though the duke tried to scoff, “Slender indeed,” his crushed windpipe could do no better than produce bubbles of blood. The crowning jewel to seal his misfortune was that, much like how he had honed himself to the height of magecraft, this aunt of his was the pinnacle of vampiric strength...and she was at point-blank range. The fight had been decided the moment she’d gotten into close quarters—that was how bad the matchup was for him.

The Delicate Empress turned her body to mist, rocketed across space, and gulped down blood to heal her wounds and tap into strength unimaginable. She took every single strength that caused the other races to fear their ilk as bloodsuckers and proudly announced that this was what it meant to be vampiric; her strategy was unbeatable precisely because it was so simple.

Broken and battered, the duke was damned to a cycle of death and rebirth without any hope of casting a spell. All he could do was match his aunt’s look of disdain with a hateful glare, just as he had on that boat all those years ago. For her part, the woman apathetically shrugged off his silver rays of loathing and turned her attention to her great-niece, who’d sat down by the unconscious mensch boy’s side.

“Fix thine eyes upon my honey-hearted darling. How she doth remind me of mine youth; oh, how I pined for Sir Richard as a maiden,” Theresea said with a sultry sigh.

The vampiric nun knelt over the fading mensch life and wound her hands over her holy icon. Spurred on by the rich smell of blood, her fangs instinctively slipped out; their pointed tips tickled her tongue as if they were whispering right into her soul. For a moment, the addictive taste crept back from her memory to her mouth, triggering gluttony that spoke in hushed tones from the back of her brain.

Here lies a feast, it said. The God of Cycles has played a trick of fate to supply you with the greatest meal you could ever ask for.

“...O Goddess.”

Yet the priestess held firm, clinging to an invocation of the Goddess’s name as she bit deep into her tongue. She was not Constance Cecilia Valeria Katrine von Erstreich, the weak-willed vampire; she was Sister Cecilia, the humble priestess of Night that would save this boy’s life.

“O merciful Goddess of Night, Ye who watch over us from the heavens.”

She let the bead of blood that spilt forth from her lips roll down her chin unimpeded, instead moving her tongue to speak the words that needed to be spoken. Every syllable contained meaning—latent power that her faith granted her, yet that she had not once called upon until now.

“I am she who prays to give, she who refuses to merely receive. Loving Mother, I beseech Ye to relieve this soul of suffering.”

The gravitas of her incantation was met with a gentle glow of unknown origin that dispelled the eerie lighting of the room. True moonlight shone: the Mother’s guiding gaze cut through the dark to guide Her lost lambs.

“Take me to dust, and save Your beloved child from agony, for such is the path Ye have laid out.”

Cecilia’s solemn prayer was answered by heavenly power meant to distort reality to be as it always was meant to. Miracles were just that—miracles; their effects could bring about change that not even the most sublime magic could replicate. When the nun placed a torn limb back into place, it fused with the greater body as if it had never left. Leaving no scars nor even a mark of its destruction, the flesh combined with a lustrous new coat of healthy skin.

This was infeasible by normal means. What few or none could accomplish with thaumaturgy became perfectly possible with miracles. The powers that be used the limited omnipotence vested within Their bounds to dutifully bring about the wishes of the faithful.

But the gods did not coddle. They were guardians to be sure, but keepers of the world: to give and give alone was unthinkable for a miracle of sizable scope. Allow that, and men would cease to be men—they would fall to become mere servants of heaven.

“Urgh...agh! Aurgh! Hgraaah!”

The nun’s limbs began to rip apart with a distressing clamor. Muscles, tendons, bones—everything tore to announce that this was the price paid for a feat that defied reason.

Limbs were not made to be replaced. Even in a futuristic world far more advanced than this one, to reconnect a severed body part was the exception, not the norm. Ask a deity to achieve the impossible, and they were sure to collect a fair due.

Flesh was bought with flesh; bone was bought with bone.

This miracle was one where the caster could accept another’s injuries to heal them. Recreating lost limbs was the peak of healing, and it differed from small exorcisms or insignificant blessings to cure fatigue as a matter of course—mere dedication could not afford such awesome results.

Cecilia’s right arm and both of her legs were rent off exactly how Erich’s had been, and her left arm folded in on itself like a game of cat’s cradle, bone jutting out of her skin. This was the price of calling the Goddess to the mortal realm.

“Mmgh...grah! Hng!”

It went without saying that a vampire would not die from losing their limbs. Furthermore, the miracle’s side effect only went as far as shifting the damage onto the caster; once the process was over, Cecilia would be allowed to heal the wounds away—she could even employ other miracles to expedite her recovery. One could say that this was the epitome of the mercy over which the Mother of Night presided; without Her aid, a detached arm would be as good as lost, after all.

Still, for a sheltered nun who knew not pain, the Goddess’s trial proved too much to bear. The agony of losing all her limbs was as excruciating as what Erich had felt—no, in fact, the boy’s senses had dulled in his intense battle. Cecilia’s torment was incomparably worse.

Shredded to pieces, her starving body thirsted for blood. The demonic nature she had thought pacified flared up inside of her, saying that to take a sip now would be a trivial fee for the life she’d saved.

How euphoric it would be to sink her fangs in this limp body—oh, how luscious it was sure to be. Without a doubt, it would be a rhapsody that would never leave her mind; something deep down told her that nectar like this might never appear before her again for as long as she lived.

“Hng...no! Augh, agh...aaaugh!”

This craving was inherent to the rabid species. Yet forcing down an accursed thirst that mensch couldn’t even begin to imagine, the nun pushed herself to her feet. Whipping her ego like a cruel taskmaster, she propped herself up on disfigured legs.

At last the young vampire confronted the root of it all. Still hanged in the hand of the great-aunt born during the Empire’s foundational years, the father born in its era of first light looked down at her as she spoke.

“Father, allow me to make my intentions expressly clear.”

Clad in bloodsoaked holy garments, the daughter glared at her self-serving father and decided to take after him. Though she believed in filial piety, the thought that she might not be allowed what he was drove her mad. Just because her great-aunt had forced the position on him did not mean that he could do the same to her.

“I will not rise to the throne. How can I, in all my inexperience, take the reins of House Erstreich and the Empire both when I am not even yet of age? I am sure Uncle Dearest and the venerable Second Emperor will agree.”

The duke seemed like he had something to say, but the noose of flesh around his neck refused to let up. Besides, he was in the presence of the clan matriarch—who was going to oppose her? Piping up now wouldn’t do him any favors. His cute little familiars were still unresponsive, and while they were due to wake up soon, the only one that had any hope of lasting more than five minutes against Theresea had been Schnee Weiss.

“I have chosen to dedicate myself to my faith. You and Mother may have placed me in the monastery for my own security, but I now call it home of my own volition.”

Above all else, Martin could tell from his daughter’s eyes that there was nothing more he could do. The signature vampiric bloodred gems overflowed with independence that reminded him of his wife. She had been a gentle woman, but her will to see through anything she set her mind to had always been unshakable.

Strength had resided in grace; strictness had resided in love. And though she had supported him wholeheartedly, she’d possessed the fortitude to not lose herself in her husband—a tenacity that was alive and well in their daughter.

Martin had lost. While she might take on some responsibilities in a legitimate emergency, nothing he could say or do would get her to accept the post now. It was clear from the moment that she’d steeled herself for the exhausting politics of dealing with their extended family—and her particularly terrifying grandaunt, at that—that she was deathly serious about this.

“Let me repeat: I will not be Empress, nor will I lead the clan.”

Having been turned down so plainly with the wild card of their family’s power dynamics on her side, the duke had no choice but to give in. But just as he was about to nod in defeat, he noticed something off: a streak of pure rage in the swirling passion that he saw in her crimson eyes.

Why was his daughter so angry? Sure, he’d tried to make her the next Duchess Erstreich while arranging what was effectively a marriage with the Empire—no reigning monarch had time for love, what with all the duties—which explained some of her ire. He, too, had gotten into genuine life-or-death fights with his aunt because of how much he resented her for the succession. But something told him that a good chunk of her fury came from something else.

“And one last thing...”

Martin wondered what it could be. Perhaps it was how he’d bullied the church into bringing her to the capital. Or maybe his overdone plans for a succession banquet had been leaked, complete with the seven full outfits he’d excitedly prepared for her. If not those, then she could simply be bitter about how he’d pulled a bunch of strings within the family to make this scheme work in the first place...

“Don’t ever talk to me again! I hate you, Dad!”

A bolt of lightning zipped through the duke. This was the biggest shock he’d felt all day—nay, this was surely the most traumatic event of his entire life. Not even the time a silver dagger had grazed the side of his heart had frightened him so.

“S-Stanzie?!” So great was his hysteria that he managed to squeak out a word despite his aunt’s steadfast grip. He yelped the diminutive to his daughter’s first name, which he’d picked out for her—though she never seemed to introduce herself with it—and his handsome features scrunched up sadly.

“My name is Cecilia! How many times must I tell you to call me by my favorite name?!”

“Thou fancy the name I ha’ picked, dost thou? Ha ha! Splendid! Lovable—oh how lovable thou art, my precious babe. There, there, fret not. Let this old bat set all affairs to suit thy design.”

Turning her back to her stunned father, Cecilia made her way over to the sleeping boy. If her great-aunt was offering to handle the rest, then it would be best to patiently wait here, but to leave him on the hard floor was simply too much—he was the hero who’d saved her from a marriage with the throne.

“Wh-Why... Stanzie...”

“Woof, woof—thy barking moves me to such pity. What folly seduces men so with promises of love undying from spouse and spawn alike? Alas. I shall teach thee this lesson and many more tonight, pup.”

Despite the filthy ground threatening to sully her robes, Cecilia took a seat, lifting the boy’s upper body onto her legs. While she may have taken on all his injuries—even the minor scratches—the miracle did not restore blood already lost. His body was cold, and letting him lie on the chilly stone wouldn’t do.

The boy slept soundly. His head tilted to one side, exposing the neck that had captured the girl’s imagination ever since drinking from that cup of wine. As appetizing as ever, his smooth skin called out to her.

What a natural-born vampire slayer, Cecilia thought with a giggle. She pulled up the collar of his armor so that he wouldn’t catch a cold.

Her instincts whispered: You fool. The perfect prey is before your eyes and yet you refuse to bare your fangs. If you act now, it would be all too easy to prop him up as your lover—as your thrall, ever by your side.

She whispered back: Would that not make me a bandit? The very same as the bloodsuckers Archbishop Lampel once condemned as the pinnacle of evil? I am a vampire, yes, but also a believer of the Night. As such, I shall return goodwill with goodwill—I would never pilfer his life for my own gain.

And to tell the truth, the girl found this all a bit fun. Once, she’d seen a play. It had depicted the done-to-death story of a noble girl sneaking out of her house and running into a traveling hero. The princess did not do such awful things to the hero. She simply took his outstretched hand with a cordial smile and hugged him close when he was tired. From there, her job was to support him from out of sight.

The Goddess would not reproach Cecilia for inserting herself into an innocent fantasy, and she wanted to spend a little more time enjoying the reality that she’d been saved. And as if to affirm her dreams and actions both, the lunar medallion jingled quietly.

[Tips] Patricians often have several given names. Though most customarily go by their first (usually given to them by their fathers), many also elect to employ a second or third name that they are particularly fond of. This is especially true if a high-profile figure tarnishes the reputation of one’s main name.