Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 4 - Chapter 2

Winter of the Thirteenth Year

Bonds with Connections

Some games include systems of rapport to clearly define player interactions with friendly NPCs. Ranges are defined for professional partnerships at arm’s length, friendships built on mutual ties, and even undying romantic love. But beware: the actions taken over the course of a session are sure to affect one’s social ties.

“Mm... So cold...”

While I couldn’t handle the bitterest of frosts, I appreciated the brisk air of winter. The crisp morning stung my nostrils as I inhaled, but I could feel the deep breath rinse my lungs clean as I blew out the lingering cold. It was a sure way to rouse me, even as my warm sheets tried to pull me back in.

Even with the Ashen Fraulein’s thoughtful care, the low streets of the imperial capital abounded with the chill of a dark morning. Winter saw little sunlight, and I needed Cat Eyes just to make things out, even though I hadn’t awoken any earlier than usual.

“It sure is colder here than back home...”

The silkie had been kind enough to prepare me a warm pail of water. Raw well water at this time of year was so cold that I often felt like just touching it would peel my skin off. The capital’s wells weren’t connected to natural groundwater: they pumped from a system of aqueducts spanning both below and above ground, making the temperature fluctuate with the seasons.

“But they say it snows here every year,” I mumbled to myself. “I guess it’s bound to be different.”

Berylin was situated in Rhine’s northern reach, and I’d never experienced weather this frigid back home in Konigstuhl. I’d spent many a year without snow there; maybe comparing its climate to that of a land with frequent sleet was a fallacious idea to begin with.

Still, there was always a bigger fish, and the capital was far from the coldest place in the Empire. The further north one went, the more ruthlessly the elements pierced one’s protective layers; slightly to our south, the great spirit of hoarfrost presided over the southeastern mountain range. I didn’t freeze to death the instant the fire went out, so I had it good by comparison.

Still convincing myself of my relative fortune as I wiped down my face, when I opened my eyes, a small vial that hadn’t been there before entered my view. Smelling faintly of milk and olives, the salve inside was a moisturizer to fend off the dry air. These sorts of things were much too costly for commoners to regularly purchase. I had no idea where she’d gotten her hands on it.

“A word of thanks for the Fraulein’s goodwill.”

Regardless, questioning its origins would do me no favors, so I offered my gratitude and decided to help myself. I sat down in front of the foggy mirror a tenant from yesteryear had left behind, and peeled off the bandages covering the remaining wounds from my...

“Huh?”

I peered into the mirror to find that my face was absolutely flawless. Er, not to say that I’d taken a skill or trait to attain unparalleled beauty; I mean to say that the scabs dotting my profile had given way to silky-smooth skin. Not only that, but the scars I’d been secretly looking forward to were nowhere to be found!

I ran my fingers across my mug in disbelief, but the only tactile feedback I found was that of a baby’s bottom. I could have sworn I’d heard the iatrurge sigh about how my injuries were going to leave a mark.

What? How? Where’d they go?! And here I’d been so excited to finally start looking like a man: after all, facial scars told the badass story of a personal history rife with conflict. Having vanquished a foe so mighty, I’d been ready to bear a physical memento of our fierce battle. In the far future, young adventurers would look up to me and ask, “Where’d you get that scar?” and I’d tell the tale with a knowing smirk plastered on my face...

Or at least, I would have, if the things hadn’t up and vanished with my fleeting fantasies. Losing the scabs was nice and all, but how had they disappeared without leaving so much as a dent?

What’s more, I’d begun sprouting the first signs of a mustache by this point in my first life. Looking back, I remembered my brother Heinz bragging about his facial hair when he’d been my age.

The Trialist Empire of Rhine—and most nations in the West—saw the beard as a marker of adulthood. Growing one might have been easy, but keeping it neatly trimmed was a far greater challenge. Maintaining stately facial hair was evidence of time and manpower spent, and some races went so far as to decorate their dignified scruff with ribbons or golden bands. Of course, the trouble it took to remain totally clean shaven also spoke to one’s stature, but most preferred the majesty of a bountiful beard.

Like the scars, I secretly longed to grow my own one day. I hadn’t ever been sent overseas—to say, the Middle East, where hairless men were sometimes looked down upon even in the modern day—during my time in Japan, giving me no excuse to cultivate my facial hair. But all the handsome actors in my favorite fantasy films graced the screens with grand manes lining their chins.

My father in Konigstuhl kept a neat beard, and my oldest brother’s had nearly fully grown in by the time he came of age. I clearly did not want for genetics, and I’d spent countless days in my youth daydreaming of how I would style my own when the time came.

Yet in spite of it all, my face was positively velvety. I rubbed myself over with inhuman Dexterity, but my sensitive fingertips picked up so little resistance that the whole affair began to feel fishy.

“...Ursula.”

“Did you call, O Beloved One? How busy you must be to be up before the moon hides away.”

I called up the svartalf to confirm my suspicions, and she appeared in the darkness like she’d been there all along. Dawn had yet to break, and with the False Moon nearly full, I caught a full-sized night fairy’s reflection in the corner of the mirror. Although I wasn’t exactly keen on letting her lounge on my bed like she owned the place, I decided to look past her poor manners for hospitality’s sake.

“My wounds are gone and I can’t grow a beard. What do you know?”

Recognizing that it was hopeless to win a verbal exchange—why did every woman around me have a tongue of silver?—I kept my question blunt. She raised her head from my pillow and answered without a care in the world.

“Hmm, I wouldn’t know anything about wounds or facial hair. Personally, I’m quite particular to boys with scars. Lunacy shines brightest under moonlight, and I find those blemishes reminiscing over the mad heat of battle poetic and beautiful.”

Aha, so you don’t know anything “personally,” huh?

“Lottie.”

“Hiya! Need something?”

My second suspect responded as soon as I called for her, gently floating down onto my head. The waxing Hollow Moon did nothing for the sylphid’s height, and her appearance was as fittingly fey as ever as she tucked herself into my hair.

“Did you do something about my wounds and beard?”

“Huh?! Uh... Um...”

“Never mind. Don’t bother answering.”

Between Ursula’s roundabout testimony and Charlotte’s obvious stammering, the culprit was readily apparent. I lurched forward and buried my head in my arms; the sylphid hovered away before she could fall, coming up to my face with puppy-dog eyes.

“Um... I’m sorry. Lottie just thought you’d be sad if you got cuts and stuff that stayed. Peoples worry about ouchies on their faces, right? And, and my friends too! All my friends say it’s not cute to have ouchies there...”

I see. So the alfar had done something to prevent my wounds from leaving scars once they healed. You lot sure do have a lot of tricks up your sleeves.

“No,” I said, “you know what? Don’t worry about it. Really, it’s fine. I’m not that upset about it anyway.”

Seeing her hang her head in shame made me feel like I was in the wrong, however untrue I knew that was. That said, I genuinely wasn’t that mad, so I was happy to forgive her knowing that she had my best interests at heart.

I was still going to dock a candy drop from snack time, though.

The Empire traded for sugar with its satellite states bordering the southern sea at favorable rates, so it wasn’t particularly expensive to get ahold of...but it also wasn’t particularly cheap.

Hm? What’s that? I’m a cheapskate? Forgive me; I couldn’t help the lightness of my purse. The ten drachmae I’d gotten from Sir Feige had mostly gone to extending Elisa’s scholarship, and the rest had gone home to my parents and the newborn nephew I hadn’t been able to celebrate.

Charlotte’s jaw dropped to the floor and she began to sulk. However, one thing bothered me about her confession: for all that she’d said about scars, she hadn’t touched on the matter of facial hair.

“Which means the beard was the work of...”

As I voiced my doubts, I heard the sound of ceramics clinking together as if the one holding them had jerked in surprise. I glanced behind me in the mirror and saw that the bucket at my bedside had been replaced with a steaming cup of chicory red tea. Never before had I heard dining ware clatter in this house when receiving my morning brew; for the rule to be broken now pointed to a conclusion I hardly needed to restate.

“...Ashen Fraulein.”

“‘I can’t help it,’ she says. ‘Beards aren’t cute.’” Ursula spoke for the tight-lipped housekeeper.

...Oh, fine. Have it your way—do whatever you want. I couldn’t help but be surprised that my reserved and responsible caretaker would play such tricks on me, but then again, silkies had a reputation for their penchant for mischief. I would have preferred a less noticeable prank, but I supposed I had to live with it.

As I stroked my featureless chin, awash with melancholy, realization struck. The alfar liked children with blond hair and blue eyes. The two latter points were what had drawn them to me in the first place, but who was to say that youthful innocence wasn’t just as important to them?

Furthermore, Ursula had stated that she wouldn’t know anything about “wounds or facial hair,” but she had conveniently left out her relation to anything else.

“Hey, Ursula.”

“Mm? Is there more, Beloved One? I’m getting sleepy, you know...”

“Looking at the rest of my family, I’m going to grow pretty tall.”

In fact, I’d already allocated enough points to get me past the 180-centimeter mark when fully grown. Imperial mensch were blessed with sizable physiques, so this wasn’t enough for someone to consider me especially tall...unless they were obsessed with childish cuteness.

“Wh-Why do you bring that up?”

I had never—and I mean never—heard Ursula stumble over her words. Her shifting eyes were the nail in the coffin.

Huh, I see. So that’s how you want to play it.

I whirled around, summoning an Unseen Hand to uncoil my trusty loop of rope and propelled it toward the bed. I wasn’t using it as a whip or anything: my invisible fingers pinched the tip, leading it into position to apprehend the guilty fey.

No sooner had I thrust forth the rope than Ursula disappeared with a short yelp, leaving only my blankets within the lasso. I heard the Ashen Fraulein drop something in a panic as soon as she sensed our scrap; an errant spring breeze whizzed out of the window I’d opened for fresh air.

“All of you?! Hey! This isn’t funny, dammit! You better not have done anything! Come back here! Show yourselves!”

This was the first time I’d ever lost my temper enough to shout at my ephemeral company, but not even the threat of fey retribution could stymie my rage. Height was more than a matter of personal preference: I needed that to do my job as a swordsman!

Every inch lost affected my arms as well, shortening the reach of my swings by proxy. Those who would laugh this off as an acceptable margin of error were fools; whether a wound proved fatal oftentimes came down to mere millimeters.

Furthermore, weight was king in close-quarters combat, and the total load of muscle a body could bear directly scaled with height. Losing that dimension put me at an inherent disadvantage. The drama of a David felling a Goliath was electrifying, but the feat itself was daunting. At the very minimum, if I were to face a large man with parity in skill—magic notwithstanding—the odds would be insurmountably in his favor. Why else would the boxing associations of Earth have placed such stringent restrictions on their weight classes?

My fury at having my life toyed with flooded out in the form of angry yelling. Alas, all my shouting faded unanswered into the quiet of early morning.

[Tips] Blessings and protections require the will of the conferrer, but not always the conferred. Otherwise, shades of gold and blue would not so commonly arise among the young souls departing for heaven or those who never return from the deepest woods.

Last night’s snowfall had painted the town in a layer of white, and the virgin snow crackled under my feet with every step. The burnt vermilion of brick peeked out from beneath the bleached landscape, and the faint blue finish of mystic street lamps made for a dreamlike scene.

As I swallowed the chilly air like a tall glass of ice water, I felt like I’d taken in the slowly brightening sky of the fading night with it. If the night sky were ever bottled up as a wine, surely it would taste like this: crisp and sweet, its flavor only lingering in the nose for a brief moment.

I let out a long, slow, deep breath; my anger was finally fading. At this rate, neither Ursula nor Lottie would respond to me for a while, and the Ashen Fraulein never showed herself to begin with. It seemed their plan of action was to wait out what seemed like a childish tantrum, but they would do well to realize that I wouldn’t forget this so easily.

Showing up to my morning duties in such a foul mood would be improper of me, so I’d come out on a walk to enjoy the sights of an awakening town. Although I hadn’t left the Empire’s borders, my first winter in the capital felt like I was in a foreign land, and this peculiar feeling improved my mood even more than I’d hoped.

That said, not wanting to let myself loosen up too much before work, I couldn’t bask in wintry sentiment forever. I wasn’t going to let myself freeze up no matter how romantic the nipping air was. I activated an Insulating Barrier with the Selective Screening add-on to push away the cold air and apply a hydrophobic coating to my boots.

This had been one of my purchases with the ichor maze payday. Combat may be the meat and potatoes of TRPGs, but I’d always wished to have access to the convenient lifestyle skills that popped up during role-playing segments; these were a key element to the craft in their own right.

Stuffing myself fat with cotton or weighing myself down with a heavy leather coat proved a massive bother, and I figured relying on half-baked space-bending magic as my sole means of true defense wasn’t ideal. My answer had been to pick up a mystic barrier at a III: Apprentice level. All the quintessential barrier did was impede physical and magical contact: conceptually, it was a boring, paper-thin layer that denied entry to unwanted phenomena.

However, its simplicity lent itself to resource efficiency, and up at Scale V, the activation would become startlingly quick, making it usable as a twitch reaction to deflect arrows and middling swords. I could also weave them at an angle to divert attacks to get some extra value, and a little ingenuity let me repel water, wind, and cold as an all-in-one weather shield.

Walking through the snow without worrying about my clothes and hair getting damp was a wonderful feeling. Never again would I have to scurry for a change of clothes upon tripping, and my eyes were safe from the tear-inducing pain of strong tempests wicking away their moisture.

Man, this was such a good find. The barrier was as useful in daily life as it was in the heat of battle. I could even wrap it around my hands when drawing water to prevent my skin from cracking. I’d swiped the idea from Lady Agrippina’s thaumaturgic gloves, thinking that I might hold some experiments of my own; clearly, I’d made the right call.

I arrived at the College very pleased with my new toy, and headed to the stables as I did every morning. No matter how much frigid snow piled up on the land, the stablehands showed up without fail to care for their dependents, and I was much the same.

“Hey, whoa. Good morning to you guys too.”

I pacified the crowd of horses that came up wanting to play—I made an excessively long detour to avoid that stupid unicorn—and finally arrived at my stable to find that Castor and Polydeukes were as full of life as ever, despite the gelid dawn. Once more, I was made to marvel at how hardy these creatures were. They were inherently warm, sometimes even producing the kind of heat that would knock out a mensch. The steam they could generate after a good workout proved that they didn’t need magic or overcoats to withstand the elements, unlike us.

“Hey, hey, quit biting me... What? Are you bored?”

Polydeukes nuzzled up against my back as I cleaned his waste and replaced his bedding. He nibbled on my clothes with a snort, begging me to take him out; only a few days ago, he’d gotten to run to his heart’s content. A horse had to run to fully exercise its purpose—especially these two warhorses. Every generation of their ancestors had been handpicked for their exemplary physiques, and I was well aware that they were itching to get some exercise.

“I’ll ask them to let you run a lot today, okay? And I’ll take you two out for a long ride sometime before the snow piles up, I promise.”

I stroked his long face and let him lick me in mine. I stared into his eyes and his solemn violet irises stared back. Though they lacked the tool of language, the twinkle in his eyes felt to me a testament that these trusty beasts of burden rivaled our own intelligence. With his gaze alone, he asked me, “Do you swear it?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” I said with a pat. “I’ll invite Mika so all four of us can go.”

Finally satisfied, the first half of the Dioscuri stopped gnawing on my garb. Communicating with them like this made horses feel so very human. They resisted bad treatment as a matter of course, and forcing a saddle on one was far from enough to tame it. These proud animals were the types to shake off an unwanted jockey or die trying.

Perhaps that was why they responded so kindly to my sincerity. Of course, I couldn’t take it easy now: spoiling one brother was sure to upset the other if I didn’t give him equal treatment, so I made my way over to Castor. Here, too, I had a similar exchange that ended with my face covered in drool—I couldn’t bring myself to just deny them with a barrier—so I cast Clean on myself as I did for the line of fellow horse keepers waiting with copper pieces in hand. I’m happy to report that nowadays, many of these folks were kind enough to wave to me in town whenever our paths crossed.

“Excuse me,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble...”

“Don’t worry, I know the drill. I’ll let them run all they want.”

Among the many stablehands to whom I offered my services, I asked the one in charge of the steeds’ physical activity for a favor. Horses had the emotional capacity to feel depressed if the stress of staying locked indoors piled up, so the management here scheduled time for them to run. In place of a tip, I thanked the exercise director with a free Clean and made my way inside Krahenschanze.

“Huh,” I said to myself, “what’s with all the people?”

Winter’s grip let off the moment I stepped through the front door. Visually temperate like an ancient banking institution, the main hall had also been carefully tuned to disallow the interior from deviating more than a few degrees off of the most agreeable of temperatures.

In the wee hours of the morning, I expected only to see students picking at requests on the bulletin board, the clerks at the front desk, and those who had to partake in an early lecture...but not today.

It didn’t take a master detective to realize some well-to-do members of the gentry were paying the College a visit. Silk and golden thread were accentuated with sparkling gems for buttons, and I spied mantles imbued with personal climate control, to say nothing of the fancy wands that prioritized form over function.

Those waiting at the wings wore lavish outfits deliberately tweaked to remain slightly out of fashion; only the richest and most influential could afford to dress their attendants as proper nobles. Beside them, even the bodyguards were equipped with stylish swords, though their attire remained simple to prioritize ease of movement.

In total, there were two or three separate groups within the crowd. They chatted with one another with perfectly set smiles. I didn’t know whether they were waiting for more company or killing time while the clerks filed away paperwork, but I found it curious that they had business at the College.

Researchers and professors were bureaucrats in their own rights, and many orbited court politicians to offer their counsel, but the magia were generally the ones paying the visits, not the patrons.

Those returning to their Berylin estates from across the land for the many social events held in winter generally held property near the palace. It was a straight, short shot north from here, but I wondered what would bring these haughty patricians here on their own two feet. I would have expected them to send a messenger bearing an invitation to a tea party held elsewhere.

Whoops, I thought, turning away. My inquisitive nature had gotten the better of me, and the sharp bodyguards caught me staring. I decided to make a tactical retreat before they could scold me for my poor manners. This was all worlds apart from me anyway. Nothing good could come from a lowly commoner like me trying to get involved...a lesson which my own master, Lady Agrippina, taught me with every fiber of her being.

“My, you’re here already? Time certainly flies.”

I entered the madam’s mystic greenhouse, bathed in gentle sunlight wholly inappropriate considering the season. Of all the things I’d expected to see, her buck naked frame was not one of them.

Her usual chignon had been reduced to a wet mass of free-flowing hair, clinging tightly to the white curvature of her body. Her limbs had an unbelievably normal amount of muscle despite her refusal to exercise, and they drew the eye from her core with aesthetic appeal that rivaled the nude marbles of the Renaissance.

“I have many things to say,” I sighed, “but first and foremost, I implore you not to wander about before drying your hair.”

Although my liege never failed to laze about in thin garments, this was the first time she’d so brazenly abandoned clothing altogether. Occasionally, her pajamas would slip to reveal a single tit—and no, of course she didn’t care—but this was almost enough to make me question whether she was a real noblewoman at all. Yet no matter how impeccably polished this breathing still life was, I didn’t even need to roll the dice to succeed in resisting her charm.

“I had a sudden fancy for a bath, you see,” she explained, “but the book I brought to pass the time proved a tad too gripping. I’m airing myself out to avoid sweating in my clothes.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” I replied. “I’d like to set your hair, so would you be so kind as to take a seat?”

Lady Agrippina sat down as if she were the one accommodating me, but let the records show that all the concessions made were mine. Not wanting to let her drip all over the carpet and make more work for me later, I dispelled the water on her body. I carefully began combing her locks and drying them with a towel; I could have handled this with a quick Cleaning as well, but that invariably led to a lesser final result.

“Ahh,” she sighed. “How relaxing. Give me a scalp massage while you’re at it, will you?”

“I fear the day isn’t long enough for that, madam.”

It was remarkable just how insistent she was on marching only to the beat of her own drum. I painstakingly wrung the towel out after every stroke as I patted down her long silver strands. The comb proved exceptionally superfluous with how few knots I encountered, and I felt as though I’d wasted my time caring for an already-superb product as I finished setting her usual hairdo.

“Mm, well done... Now hand me the comb.”

“As you will.”

My stark-naked employer had oh-so-elegantly pulled out a book with which to busy herself, but now she waited with her hand outstretched. As soon as the comb left my grasp, a blaze of fire ran across its surface. Methuselah bodies were machines efficient enough to produce almost zero waste, but their hair was one of the few exceptions.

Hair could be used as an arcane ingredient, especially when concocting spells to find or target a specific individual. My liege was well aware of her penchant for earning grudges, and thus was very fussy about plugging any leaks—so much so that she refused to lower her guard around her one and only servant, even though she held my life in her hands.

Still, her concerns were valid; one carelessly done errand could turn lethal in an instant. High society was a toxic sea of knavery where crooked souls donned the guise of morality; staying afloat required a constant state of alertness.

“Hmm,” Lady Agrippina mused, “shall I partake in breakfast today or no?”

“Madam, I beseech you to dress yourself first.”

“But it isn’t as if anyone is looking.”

Ignoring her sociopathic comment, I forced the madam to change classes from an irredeemable streaker to a beauty rivaling Helen of Troy—in the sense that she too could bring a nation to its knees, albeit physically. I knew that asking her to choose an outfit would only prompt a half-hearted answer, so I brought her a robe that I’d seen her wear often enough.

The madam grumbled to herself as she made herself decent, and it sank in that this woman had truly forgone food, sleep, and drink to read when she’d been on her own. She was a wealthy, hedonistic, silver-haired, mystic-eyed elf (sort of) with a distaste for clothing and an inclination toward remorseless villainy—did she really need all of these quirks?

I muttered under my breath that we’d all be better off if she could pawn away some of her character traits as I went to prepare breakfast. Living up to the needs of its finicky clientele, the room service always delivered on time, and I went to wake Elisa after I finished setting the table.

Elisa’s room was the most cramped in the entire workshop, but I use “cramped” here in the monied sense of the word. Two or three normal people could comfortably live in this space: it was around twenty-six square meters in total.

Every visit saw the room more cluttered than the last: the place was buried in gifts fueled by Lady Leizniz’s favor. I failed to comprehend how that deranged vitality freak had ended up the way she did, but it was evident that she derived no greater joy than from presenting the objects of her affection with lavish gifts that she personally picked out. In my opinion, it seemed like her long life at the top of the world had eroded her ability to see things from a more normal perspective...but I supposed she was free from the expenses of the living. I guess I couldn’t be too hard on her.

“Wow, this sure is...something.”

Still, her most recent offering may have been the grandest yet: my darling sister—the cutest girl alive—was snoozing away in a bed literally fit for a princess. Three full-grown mensch could complete a yoga routine on the mattress alone, and obviously, there were fine silk curtains hanging from the canopy. Elisa was sleeping in conditions far better than the casual hammock her master employed.

On a similar note, the writing desk that had been installed at some point was a first-rate piece of arcane furniture that gained height proportional to its user, and the wardrobe that gobbled up the never-ending stream of new outfits had been magically enhanced into a multi-room walk-in closet.

If these unhinged feature lists weren’t enough, the desk had been graced with paper and pens extravagant enough to line a working aristocrat’s table. With their thin layer of dust, they spoke to a nauseating wish to receive a letter penned in my sister’s big, round, cutesy-wootsy lettering.

I mean, I could see why someone might dote on our family’s little girl—she was the cutest, after all—but this was just sickening. The plethora of long gloves and folding fans unfit for a child under ten spoke to the sender’s repulsive proclivities. But this sea of excess warmed my heart even more when I saw Elisa clinging to the product of my sorry finances. Most of the dolls cluttering the room had been tossed to the wayside without so much as being unwrapped, but the one in her arms was starting to fray from being squeezed tight every night.

I had used every ounce of Dexterity at my disposal to make her a stuffed bear so she wouldn’t feel lonely at bedtime while I was away from the capital. It didn’t quite live up to the teddy bears I’d once held, but I was proud of my work all the same; seeing my baby sister cradle the patchwork of cloth and cotton so dearly filled my heart with joy.

“Elisa,” I cooed, “it’s morning.”

“Mmgh... Mr. Brother?”

I knew she would one day grow out of such toys, but it was enough that she appreciated it now. I just prayed that I could be her number one until the day that some dashing gentleman swept away her heart as a fine lady in her own right.

“Morning Mr. Brother...”

“Mhm, good morning, Elisa. I’m here, so let’s go get some breakfast.”

Although the palatial tongue was nearly second nature to her now, Elisa’s speech always crumbled when she was half-asleep. I gently rocked her shoulder, and she looped her hands around my neck. I scooped her up out of bed and helped her get ready for the day.

...Come to think of it, I wondered who had taken care of her while I’d been away. It couldn’t have been Lady Agrippina, could it?

Elisa was slowly learning how to do things for herself, but I had yet to teach her how to set tables. I didn’t notice any food stains upon returning, so it had all evidently gone smoothly, but trying to imagine the one and only Lady Agrippina of all people taking care of another... Brr. The thought sent chills down my spine.

I managed to peel off my sister-sized prickly burr and sat her down for breakfast. This was where I would have once been dismissed for a period of free activity, but my schedule had changed ever since I’d come back: Elisa was acting spoiled again.

How was a brother supposed to say no when his little sister’s eyes welled with tears and she sniffed, “You won’t get hurt again, will you?” I was sure the only reason I’d been permitted to sit in on her morning lectures was because the madam had grown weary of dealing with her outbursts. Lady Agrippina knew that leaving Elisa’s mental care to me was the path of least resistance.

So I stuck around until noon and watched over two lectures, on the palatial tongue and etiquette respectively. These turned out to be much more thorough than I’d imagined: the material was considerably more advanced than the speeches the local children had given to thank the magistrate at the end of their schooling back home. Elisa was learning poetry: she wove together rhymes, pulled from historical motifs, and counted the strokes of her brush as she delved into linguistic territory that I had never trodden. I’d read my fair share of poems, to be sure, but like the one Sir Feige and I had discussed, those had all been ametrical pieces aimed at the unlearned. I didn’t know anything about composition.

Lady Agrippina was a ceaseless font of critique, but wasn’t our little girl incredible for composing her own poems? I’m sure you’ll agree that she was at least a genius like no other.

Her palatial dialect was also distinct from the lower-class pronunciations I used; she was studying an accent meant for the members of the upper strata. The intonation was difficult to get right, especially when it came to the nasal sounds that didn’t appear anywhere else, so I was floored when I heard her form fluid sentences.

Even more amazingly, our master said that she was only a few perfected topics away from being ready to attend College lectures as a registered student. Elisa had grown up so much in the time I’d been away.

This jubilation carried me into midday, where the biggest meal of the day awaited. Lamb stew was a rarity as the main dish, but the copious use of spices drove home the point that this was fit to grace an affluent table; it even came with dessert that was sure to improve Elisa’s spirits. Thinking about how much the full course cost never failed to frighten me out of my wits.

“You may have some too, Dear Brother!”

“Thank you, Elisa. But make sure to clean your own plate first, okay?”

My little sister had no idea that my smile was just a front to hide cold sweat as my mind raced to put a price to the Western Krantz Cake on her plate. Lady Agrippina was kind enough to foot the bill on account of the food being ordered to suit her tastes, but my working-class mind couldn’t help but wander to the thought of paying for it myself, even though I knew for a fact that my employer didn’t care enough about money to pinch me for pennies.

No matter how much of a tantrum she threw, neither Elisa nor I could eat with her on my lap, so I pecked her on the forehead and coaxed her to hop off. Pushing away my teary-eyed sister was akin to mincing my soul with a Blade Cuisinart...but I knew that there was more to love than spoon-feeding her like a hapless kitten, and told myself as much over and over in hopes of reconditioning myself.

“Ah,” Lady Agrippina said with a wave, “I’d nearly forgotten.”

I made the rounds to clean up some more chores, and the madam stopped me when I passed by her hammock. I didn’t quite comprehend the need to pass me her note as an origami butterfly when I was within arm’s reach, but I supposed that was just her style.

“That’s the reservation you asked for. It’s under my name, so if anyone asks, you’re there carrying out an experimental errand.”

“Does ‘experimental errand’ even mean anything?”

The paper in my hands was a ticket into the College’s testing facilities. For an institution committed to plumbing the depths of theory, the magia here were not satisfied with achievements bound to hypotheticals; naturally, there were several different testing grounds to observe the effects of new research. Sorcery and danger were two peas in a pod, and environmental factors could drastically alter a spell’s effect and throughput. An attempt to grope for the ideal circumstances for newly developed magic necessitated more than an average personal workshop.

These containment rooms had been the College’s solution to this issue. Some were simple spaces made preposterously large to keep all effects localized; others were equipped with specialized apparatus to replicate precise conditions over multiple trials; and others still were built sturdy enough to withstand the sorts of brash trials that would endanger a researcher in their own atelier.

Considering how these personal laboratories were already isolated from society, it went without saying that the potentially weapons-grade experiments held in the larger installations posed a serious risk. No one wanted to leave this liability in the backyard of the imperial palace, here at the heart of Rhinian affairs. That said, the government couldn’t exactly let magia wipe away random swaths of countryside every time they screwed up, especially when some of the more extreme cases involved straight-up biohazards. In the end, the crown had been predestined to pay a premium for enough boxes on a sufficient scale to contain nearly any threat.

Naturally, my purpose in going to such a location was to try out a new combo that I’d been mulling over. I’d figured it might be a bit irresponsible to test my theory in the woods or something, so I’d asked Mika for some advice, at which point he’d told me about the facilities. It went without saying that a mere servant couldn’t reserve a room, so I’d asked Lady Agrippina to do so in my stead.

With how strictly I assumed the College guarded its private grounds, it must have been a serious challenge to get this permission in the short handful of days the madam had taken. Her reputation with those from other factions was terrible, let alone among the Leizniz loyalists, so I was always amazed at how she managed to throw around her political weight. Not that I wanted to know her secrets, of course. I knew not to poke my head in where there was trouble, and I was willing to shake hands without any questions so long as things were smooth sailing.

“Just tell the elevator where to go, as per usual,” the madam explained. “Keep in mind that I could only manage to find a shared suite geared toward students, with how packed the testing facilities are at this time of year. Make sure not to do anything too grand.”

Who did this witch think I was? I knew how to keep myself in line. Besides, my spell wasn’t so mind-bogglingly powerful that I’d need to hold back just because I had a few neighbors. It was just an extension of the flash-bang magic I’d come up with: cheap, efficient, and modest, but impactful.

“Worry not, madam. I am well aware of my place.”

“Really?”

I totally ignored her drawn-out remark and broke free from Elisa’s pleading stares to put the Stahl laboratory behind me.

[Tips] The College’s testing areas have been built even deeper into the bedrock than its underground workshops. The shallowest rooms are small and unimpressive, but the largest spaces extend to the ends of the horizon.

They are segregated into their own worlds by conceptual barriers of peerless make; many generations ago, the sitting emperor had invested over half of the imperial treasury and just as much of his own dignity to bring these safeguards into existence. This implied, of course, that until then, College magia had whimsically conducted their practical research wherever they pleased.

The most confidential, top secret testing center lies at an abyssal depth equal to the most highly restricted parts of the College library. Despite its top-tier security, the records show that unfathomably powerful attack magicks broke all restraints from the inside out on three separate occasions; each left its mark on history as a disaster of cataclysmic proportions.

The sight before my eyes was so irrepressibly familiar to me that an institution absent in this universe floated to the forefront of my mind—a phenomenon that I found most peculiar.

The records of memory rotted far more quickly than those inscribed in parchment or stone. Even the most vivid episodes were sure to fade from someone’s mind after a century, and most mental matters eroded in far less time; how could I ever hope to cling to perfect recollections of a world no longer my own? Introduced to time’s whetstone, my memory was slowly becoming a speckled mess of accounts drained of their color. My closest friends and even my family were fizzling away, their names and faces reduced to shapeless ideas in my mind. Coworkers that I hadn’t been particularly close to were even worse, despite having seen them every day of my life.

The sights and layout of the city I lived in—and of my own room—could only be dragged up in vague terms. On my worst days, it took me serious effort just to remember my own name. That was how immersed I’d become in a world that only knew me as Erich of Konigstuhl canton. Yet there remained an inexplicable through line: the fantastic delusions I’d seen unfold at the game table clung to the core of my being. For the most unique, memorable tales, I could name every single PC by heart—though I could only remember the people who’d played them by nebulous physical attributes and playstyle at best—and retell the whole story to this day.

For example, one of my favorites was the time our PCs had proposed to the dragon we’d been tasked to slay, forcing our befuddled GM to retrofit the story into a Princess Kaguya-esque tale. Where we’d planned for a lengthy session complete with a time trial gimmick to use the lingering vestiges of the dragon’s seal against her, a critical round of negotiation (better known as flirting) got us past the ancient beast’s cryptic riddle and caused the whole aim of the story to shift: our new goal became to prop up the unpopular PC as a man’s man. Who could have seen that coming?

After a great deal of fuss, we finally convinced our heroic buffoon to smooth-talk the dragon, and his dice successfully pierced the final boss’s heart. Preoccupied with the sweet and the sour of newly married life, the dragon gave up on her plans to ruin all of humanity; we’d saved the day.

At some point, the GM had gotten so into the whole thing that he converted her into a klutzy draconic babe who wielded unfathomable power but was super weak to chutzpah; watching our friend lose himself hard enough to boldly lay his fetishes bare left us all crumpled on the floor, clutching at our aching sides for minutes on end.

To make a short story of a long one, memories tied to powerful, deep-seated emotion had yet to fade in thirteen years of physical life and eight years of mental life. But there was another type of memory that lingered just as long: impersonal, technical concepts, like the one I felt upon seeing this testing facility. Fitting, considering how my reason for being at what I could only describe as a firing range had been purely technical to begin with.

The space was partitioned off into innumerable narrow segments. The skinny rectangular boxes were designed to test spells and arcane tools that fired in straight lines and at a distance, with a target at the far end and the controls for said target near the entrance. Each hallway was isolated by walls on every side, and the doors leading in prevented outsiders from peeking. The design served the dual purpose of containing dangerous spells and keeping secrets from slipping out.

All one could glean from the outside was whether or not the room was in use based on the plaque on the door. I expected no less from this den of radical invention: when even lowly students could be rewarded with immediate promotion for progressive breakthroughs, deterring plagiarism was a top priority.

Though I couldn’t see or hear the experiments being held, the overwhelming number of filled booths spoke to an ardor that permeated the air. At this very moment, countless students were putting their ingenuity and doctrine to the test.

Specifically, the fervor here was fueled by the approaching technical showcase. Basically, College affiliates unveiled their latest and greatest to put on a show every new year; anything that caught a professor’s eye could expect to see backing, so ambitious students were desperate to stand out from the crowd. Or at least, that was what Mika had told me.

You may then ask if he, too, was funneling his blood, sweat, and tears into creating something worthy of the competition, but the answer was no, not really. He was still busy dying on the mountain of projects and essays he’d missed during our trip, to the point where I’d barely seen him at all these past few days. In any case, he already had a direct mentor, so he didn’t need to puff himself up for random professors and researchers. He didn’t have a particular pet project to fund either, so there was no reason to push himself.

Enrolling as a College student was precarious business. One didn’t need a master to attend, per se, but it was plain to see that learning directly from a celebrated scholar was a much shorter path to achieving one’s goals. I’d heard that some managed to rise to the rank of researcher without a supervising mentor, but these stubborn geniuses were rare exceptions to the rule.

Thus, many were the students in search of a capable advisor. Even those who already had their own masters saw this as an opportunity to attract more renowned professors, and the most driven honed their research with frantic vigor. Like salmon climbing rapid falls, the school flocked to fertile grounds.

To that end, I was incredibly blessed to have two academically outstanding—I refused to give thought to their nonacademic qualities—magia taking time out of their days to teach me. Though of course, anyone feeling envious was free to take my place.

I risked being seen as a spy scoping out the competition if I stood here any longer, so I decided to hurry along to my booth. All these hard workers were most certainly on edge at the thought of someone stealing their glory, making this hall more dangerous than a back alley in a run-down city.

...Hm? That gentleman doesn’t look like he belongs.

I spotted a dashing fellow leaning against the wall before I ducked into the reserved room. His looks were enough to make the finest flower blush, more handsome than the moon itself. Somewhere on the younger end of his midtwenties, the man seemed high-strung but noble in quality; his platinum hair was parted a little over two-thirds of the way to his right, and the pragmatic wit he exuded bordered on coldheartedness. Combined with his pallor, the man could have defined a generation of films as a movie star specializing in villainous roles. While his bluish-violet robe immediately announced his authority, his tall, well-built silhouette would have done well in the carbon-black spy suits of secret agent flicks.

Yet in spite of all his outward beauty, there was one element that drew attention like no other: the silver gleam that sat in the back of his deep-seated eyes.

Walking around the melting pot that was Berylin, one could expect to see a whole rainbow of irises, but this was the first time I’d ever seen silver. The finest smith in all the land could spend a lifetime polishing an ingot, and the man’s gems would still outshine its luster; if he told me they were truly made of pure metal, I would believe him without hesitation. They were so stunning that to gaze into them directly would surely stop one’s heart for seconds at a time.

Man... I sure have run into a lot of inhumanly gorgeous people since coming to the College.

I would have liked to continue appreciating his good looks, but I wasn’t about to let myself get in trouble for ogling someone so obviously aristocratic, so I slipped into my lane. He was probably here to scout for new talent: a student’s accomplishments reflected well on their master, so it was no wonder a gentleman interested in taking on apprentices would be here to observe.

...Wait a second. He couldn’t see anything from the hallway, so that didn’t make any sense. I wonder what he’s here for, then?

As fun as it was to speculate, my time here was limited. The baseless supposition could wait for later.

The interior was totally isolated by walls, matching up with what I’d seen from the outside. I knew from the plaques that both neighboring rooms were in use right now, but I couldn’t feel a thing. If I focused all my efforts on sensing the flow of mana, I could only barely make out that something was happening on the other side of the wall—that was how private these booths were.

Oh, of course. No matter how many physical and magical barriers were set up, the most skilled magia would pick up on the faint traces of mana left behind. The gentleman in the hall could easily wait around for a whiff of something interesting and catch a glimpse of the caster whenever they left their room.

Still, at my level, it was practically impossible to sniff out what was happening behind closed doors...which meant I was free to let loose!

I pulled out the goods and got to setting everything up right away. I had a few pipes that resembled pointed throwing clubs or maybe oversized darts that I’d gotten from one of Lady Agrippina’s acquaintances at the capital’s artisan union.

These were obviously thrown weapons, but as one might suspect, my scheming didn’t end there. I wasn’t going to pay this overdone testing range a visit just because I discovered throwables. These iron tubes were actually catalysts, and their hollow insides could be stuffed with arcane reagents.

Just to be safe, I took everything apart and checked for issues before conducting my trial. I unscrewed the cap and pulled out a single cartridge of the substances I’d expected to see.

“Nice,” I mumbled to no one in particular, resealing the lid.

The casing was the same as what I used to produce flash-bangs, but the dolomite inside had been swapped out for a pinch of flame retardant I’d tweaked with magic. And while something that resisted fire might sound difficult to come by, I’d been able to purchase it for no more than a piece of candy at a nearby hardware store.

The initial steps in this multi-spell process had already been completed. Using the alchemy set Lady Agrippina had retrieved from the lakeside manor, I’d extracted and purified a certain compound from the flame retardant with mutative sorcery and increased its volume with a touch of manifestation.

On the inside of the tube, I’d lined the walls with rituals written in my own blood. My ability to wiggle into spaces no real appendage could enter and deftly scribble with all the precision of a rice artist showed the true might of my dexterous Hands.

I had an iron pipe and a chemical hidden inside; all I had to do now was change the makeup of both at the same time. Like I’d mentioned, this was the exact same process as my magical flash-bang. But make no mistake: I had good reason for dishing out the cash for a mold to cast my own pipes from.

Moving my Hands was nearly second nature by this point, and I extended my invisible arm as fast as I could after picking up the throwing stick. I’d invested a lot of points in a new Feather Fingers add-on which let my hands stretch out at speeds never before seen.

The metal rod zoomed forth faster than a flying arrow and jammed into the target hanging at the end of the hall; in an instant, the mana contained within triggered all of the prearranged spells. What little compound was in the cartridge magically migrated into the iron, forming a chemical reaction that would ordinarily necessitate a large-scale industrial plant. Meanwhile, the rod itself had plucked oxygen from the air, instantaneously rusting from its self-inflicted oxidization.

My mensch brain couldn’t register the individual steps in real time, but each dutifully ran its course. As the two components became one, the final formula awakened from its slumber: a tiny, tiny spark. The minuscule ember fizzled away before it could escape the confines of its metallic prison, but its heat quickly spread through the interior, and—

“Whoa?!”

It exploded so violently that I reflexively covered my face. The flash had been blinding; I may have been a split second late with my barrier, but the scorching waves of heat were unbearable even with it up. The metal target hanging from the ceiling had melted away within fractions of the first second.

“Holy...”

Faced with awesome destruction that surpassed my every calculation, a whimper escaped my lips. I could hear my neighbors muttering in the wake of my burst of light and heat, but that wasn’t my fault, was it? This was what this place was for, right?

Fine, I confess: I’d made thermite.

The alum used to fireproof stuff had aluminum in it—though not even close to as much as one could mine from bauxite—which I’d separated out. I combined my pure extract with extra waste metal, alchemically converting the whole thing to aluminum and increasing my supply. Mixed with iron oxide and excited with a spark, the reduction produced four thousand degrees of heat in an instant.

Four thousand degrees. The melting point of pretty much every substance in this world was well below that. Very few things could withstand that kind of heat, and on Earth, the reaction had been used for welding metals together—when it didn’t see use as an incendiary bomb.

Magic could be used to totally liquefy metals, so melting them wasn’t anything new, but such techniques could only be performed by an experienced magus confident in both their capacity and output. If I wanted to do something like that, it would take me a depressing amount of training. However, I’d already developed a batch of cantrips that could be used to disable my foes. I’d figured that if I put my brain to task and made good use of alchemical ingredients, I could mimic the feats of legendary magia without all the strain; seeing my new combo in action, I’d been right.

A substance theoretically hot enough to melt most metals was likely to chew through mystic barriers too, to say nothing of common heat-resistance magic. Furthermore, unlike normal fires, this exothermic reduction didn’t stop for lack of oxygen and could continue when submerged in water. The only counterplay that remained was to use magic to locally cancel the phenomenon of burning itself. Even more obnoxiously, the oxidized aluminum would retain its heat for a while after the reaction completed, continuously scalding any enemy unlucky enough to have the molten metal stick. I’d tweaked the bomb’s directionality to fire forward from within the dart, so if it pierced someone’s skin, this unethical addition would burn them from the inside out.

The world was full of stalwart beings, but I had yet to hear of an organism whose innards were as impervious as outer armor. Although many races boasted lightning-fast regenerative powers, I doubted they could heal themselves while boiling metal braised their organs.

It was simple, cheap, powerful, and hard to counter. When first coming up with the idea, I’d done a little dance of excitement at the thought of having a way to deal with unkillable monsters, but...

“Holy shit, this is horrifying.”

A target probably made from some fancy alloy designed to endure the abuse of constant attack magic had melted in an instant. The molten remains joined the thermite as it dripped to the ground, not forming a puddle, but a hole as it chewed through the floor.

Forget people, this was absolutely not okay to use on any living being—they’d dissolve without a trace. That, and the side effects of sweltering heat and the ultraviolet flash that hit me all the way back here needed to go. Letting this blow in close quarters would cook me and my allies just as much as any enemy.

I mean, polemurgy as a whole had a lot of violent stuff—burning, freezing, shocking, and the like—but I felt like this was a bit...much. Borrowing the advancements of twentieth-century scientists looking for better ways of generating heat on Earth and applying literal magic to bend the rules of physics had left me with unhinged destructive power.

I wonder what’ll happen if I scale everything up...

As I steeped in the awe of my results’ depravity, I finally realized something: the floor was bubbling.

Oh shit! I’d completely forgotten about the Heat Retention spell—originally meant to keep food warm—I’d added in to extend the effects! I didn’t know if there was a floor below me, but I was not about to get in trouble for making a hole in someone’s ceiling. I sat there wondering what to do when neither water nor smothering would do me any good. At my wits’ end, I ended up banishing it to the realm of elsewhere with space-bending magic; I averted the crisis, but earned myself a headache for the rest of the day doing so.

[Tips] While often referred to as a collective, the Imperial College’s testing facilities are categorized into different grades based on their intended use and intended users. The entire bloc is sectioned off with the most powerful barriers available, but to use such technology to separate smaller sectors would necessitate an infinite budget.

There are departments for students, who are unlikely to cause any real damage; researchers and professors, who engage in risky undertakings; and total containment cells to prevent whatever happens inside from getting out at all costs, to name a few. Each is equipped with appropriate security measures, and as long as the users perform tasks within the anticipated bounds, the rooms are the pinnacle of experimental safety.

What I would give to hold that shimmering silver.

Such were the thoughts of those who gazed upon the monochrome gentleman, who himself watched a blond-haired, blue-faced boy flee a testing room. The man approached the door, secured with a cryptographic spell that would only respond to the formula scrawled on its corresponding reservation sheet, and effortlessly turned the knob—the lock had forgotten its purpose the instant he made contact.

“My,” he marveled.

What remained was the aftermath of an ignition much too strong to be the work of a novice mage: waves of hot air rushed to escape through the opened doorway, suggesting that the initial blast had been powerful enough to generate an atmospheric current.

The man neatly tucked his hair back after the gust settled and stepped inside to the overpowering stink of burning metal. He pinched his high-set nose and advanced to the source of the heat without hesitation.

“A cantrip.”

Oppressive heat had melted the masoned flooring: the stone showed signs of having boiled. Though the origin of the scorching blast hot enough to make midsummer winds resemble wintry gales had vanished, the deep hole remained feverish. To leave all this heat behind after the source had disappeared pointed to hedge magic; true magic unimaginatively used to heighten destructive power would not amount to this.

“Fueled by more than mere mana, I take it.”

The Imperial College had already worked out that while the absence of heat could be absolute, the reverse was untrue. They had done many experiments to work out statistical correlations between mana expenditure and heat production for both true and hedge magic: the results showed that the cost of melting metal was immense.

Yet the sturdy metal target imbued with shock-repellant magic had liquefied beyond recognition. So thorough was its destruction that he could only presume this to be the work of an entirely new cantrip. Even so, it had verifiably not been a spell of epic proportions: the trace mana was too meager. Only a handful of minor magic had been employed here. While the lack of evidence would be understandable if someone had mystically concealed their work, he found it difficult to believe the panicking boy from earlier would have done so. The rest of the scene could hardly be called a cover-up.

“And not a drop of oil to be seen.”

The gentleman’s nose twitched as if to sniff out the origin of this destructive mystery. His brow jumped at the pungent odor, but it helped confirm the absence of traditional catalysts. Fats and oils were widely employed for heat-based spells by mages to the point of tedium, and magia made efforts to avoid them and their traceable nature. No matter how severe a burn oil could produce, it was too recognizable: chief among its obnoxious quirks was how the air around the caster invariably grew thick with loathsome grease.

One could mask its use through careful manipulation and eliminate all but the desired effect, but the idiosyncrasies of oily catalysts could not evade detection. In the absence of any scattered flecks of oil or any hint of its scent, the silver gentleman eliminated the possibility of its use.

The searing heat would drive any other away, but he walked up to the smoking edge of the hole and peered in. All the moisture evaporated from his eyes, but he continued to stare in search of clues.

“These marks point to slow dissolution as opposed to instantaneous explosion. The heat remained constant, but gradually sank downward.”

Despite having nothing more than the shape of a cavity to work off of, the man’s intellect and deep knowledge of sorcery let him explore countless possibilities. He surmised that some viscous liquid akin to molten iron had been used to trap an exorbitant amount of heat. If so, the lack of oil and the frightening speeds at which it had destroyed the flooring could easily be explained.

The only remaining point of mystery was that producing enough heat to melt metal and manipulating it once liquefied was a task too arduous for the young students that rented these smaller testing lanes. With his curiosity at its peak, the man took a moment to ponder, and then touched the scalding hot hole without a shred of hesitation.

“Hm.”

His skin burnt off in an instant; the heat vaporized his blood and cooked his flesh. The man showed no more discomfort than when he’d raised his brow at the scent of burning iron. He was purely analytical, gazing at his own mangled hand like it was an exotic insect preserved under pins and glass.

Where anyone else would have lamented the irreparable damage done to their one and only mortal shell, the gentleman let out an awestruck sigh. The searing pain of his melting flesh and the inconsolable sadness of losing part of himself failed to bother him; rather, he hadn’t felt either in the first place.

“This heat rivals that of Great Work polemurgy.”

If he were to feel anything, it would be the elation of discovering magic yet unknown to him, or the nostalgia of experiencing a similar effect to a spell he’d endured before. Although whatever he’d found had stopped quickly after chewing through his fingers, the heat it produced was similar to the hellfire the Empire employed when wiping entire battlefields clean. That purging flame required several polemurges working in tandem, and could only be deployed with the approval of the Emperor himself.

“Interesting. Its power surpasses that which the destruction suggests, and the melted stone flattens itself at the bottom of each crater in an act of concealment. The combination of atypical features points to an entirely new spell... Most interesting.”

Turning on his heel, the man reached into his breast pocket. His hand reemerged, pinching a fresh glove for his pristine, uninjured digits.

“Shall I investigate? Ah, but how boorish that would be... Anyone coming here is nigh guaranteed to be polishing their work for the showcase.”

The odds were good that someone going out of their way to borrow a practice room in this season was putting the finishing touches on their exhibition for the New Year’s gala. Every year, some budding prodigy or another brought something that truly wowed the gentleman, and he looked forward to untying his purse in support of these inventive minds more than anybody else.

This year’s event was sure to be spectacular. Better not to go poking about for the culprit’s name and face, the silver magus reasoned, if he wanted to avoid spoiling his excitement. The privacy afforded to those using these rooms meant nothing in the face of his authority, but such privileges were to go unused today.

Surprises were always best untainted. No matter how long life dragged on, a reveal could only ever come once.

“Every visit to Berylin is so rife with bother, but I suppose good things do happen. Ah, the vigor of youth is such a wonderful thing to behold.”

With a slight bounce in his step, the gentleman decided to clean up the work he had been so unenthused to do only a moment ago: on he went to the imperial palace.

[Tips] Great Work sorcery—also known as ceremonial magic or grand magecraft—requires multiple mages, a massive arcane circle, countless catalysts, or an incredibly drawn-out incantation. The process arose from the mind-boggling difficulty of casting an unfathomably powerful spell at a ludicrous distance. 

However, the necessity of exhaustive preparations, fine mystic control, and perfectly synchronized teamwork makes the craft accessible only to the most skilled magia, and even then only to those that have dedicated years of single-minded practice to the art.

I learned the painful lesson that a normal scolding is far less painful than sardonic mockery.

Kneeling on the floor as the scum of the earth merrily strolled around me for thirty odd minutes, singing, “Are you even aware of where it is you stand?” had me on the brink of sobbing. But if she was willing to pay the repair fees and cover my ass on the bureaucratic end in exchange, I would take that deal every time: pride was cheap—especially mine.

I was this close to snapping back that it was the facility’s fault for breaking under the stress of a half-baked mage’s inexperienced attempt at ingenuity, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so when I thought back to how smug I’d been when I’d left. Now that I knew an offhand comment could lead to me holding back tears, I swore to watch my mouth in the future.

But considering how Elisa came to my rescue and said, “I’ll get really mad if you keep bullying my dear brother!” I think the overall experience was a net positive. Seeing her step between us and glare back at her own master was like having an angel protect me in the flesh. The way her hair began to float from her overflowing mana was a teensy bit terrifying, but she was an angel all the same.

Faced with her darling disciple’s emotional and magical growth, I’m sure the tenderhearted master had no choice but to cede her incessant barrage of ridicule. But at the end of all of her derision, her final comment was, “Dear me, what a nifty little thing you’ve created.” I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate the madam when she offered morsels of fist-pump-worthy praise like this.

Freed, I began to clean up Elisa’s room. I worked every Hand in parallel to put away scattered notes and half-read books—I always reminded her to keep everything in order, but sadly it seemed she was taking after her mentor—and was in the middle of Cleaning every nook and cranny when Elisa called out to me. I looked back at the canopy bed to see her wearing a new set of pajamas I hadn’t ever seen before.

Again, you pervert?

Several layers of thin silk had been laminated into a piece of nightwear that could buy Heinz and Miss Mina’s cottage—obviously the work of the wraith toeing the tightrope of criminality. I could just barely hold back my disgust, since it wasn’t at all transparent, but I seriously wondered what kind of horrific death one would need to experience in order to revive with inclinations this dire. Cute clothes were one thing, but to squeal over a girl’s pajamas was positively ill. And what was with her fixation on gloves and socks, anyway?!

“Dear Brother?”

“Hm? What is it, Elisa?”

Yet our little girl was so incredibly charming that she could pull off the most deranged gifts from an utter creep. She had a giant tome full of homework cradled in both arms and rocked her legs back and forth with a puzzled expression.

“Dear Brother, why did you make such scary magic?”

Her tilted head and pure gaze were adorable enough to shatter my heart. I knew our family had an angel on our hands. Unfortunately, the cherub’s question also made my chest tighten up in a completely different way.

“I’m curious,” she said. “Why, oh why, do you choose to do scary things, Dear Brother?”

Innocent naivete slid into my ear in the shape of refined palatial speech, permeating my psyche. I’d begun developing new weapons solely for the abstract goal of adventure, and the tiny droplet of doubt she introduced now threatened to melt away the supposed righteousness of my goal.

Elisa’s question was genuine, and her heartfelt concern made it all the more difficult for me to answer. In a different light, I had set out on this path for no other reason than simple admiration that had taken hold of me a lifetime ago. I didn’t have a serious duty to fulfill, nor had the gods entrusted me with a prophecy to bring about.

The future Buddha had blessed me with the power to indulge in all that I willed, and that very will had been the starting point of my journey.

This path was one of merciless bloodshed, devoid of neat delineations between good and evil. I was no fairy-tale hero, predestined to bring justice to the world: my enemies were not restricted to irredeemable villains whom I could slay with a Happily Ever After.

Such lessons had long been carved into my soul. Every day, the icy shimmer on my left hand reminded me of she whom I had failed to save. To choose violence was to choose a path with fewer smiles and more pain. It was to actively distance myself from the merry ends of heroic fables.

Countless quests took murder to be a given, and many were so corrupt that accepting the job was a sin in and of itself. The tried-and-true act of hunting down bandits kept someone, somewhere, sometime in the future safe, but still required blood to be spilled in the present. Boiled down, defending a village besieged by raiders and sifting for treasure in a labyrinth were the same: they ultimately came down to transactions of life and death.

I scoured every reach of my mind to find a logical explanation to why I’d willingly subject myself to a career wherein the reaper was my closest companion...but my sluggish brain could not squeeze out a valid response.

“I know you’re very strong, Dear Brother. I know you protected me from bad people...” Elisa stared at me. “But I can’t help but think you’re actively seeking out danger.”

Her words were a mallet slamming into my skull; I nearly lost my balance from sheer dizziness.

“At the mansion in the woods, I think Master would have done something if you hadn’t stepped forward. Master is very strong and very wealthy. I’m sure she could have done something.” I could say nothing as she continued, “And this past winter, I don’t think you had to force yourself on such a terrible journey. If you hadn’t, wouldn’t Master have just purchased the book and tidied everything up?”

Elisa’s logic was airtight. I may have had good reason for internally referring to Lady Agrippina as a scoundrel—she was willing to toy with the lives of others for her own amusement, going so far as to laugh off a lifelong grudge so long as it proved entertaining—but even so, the madam was not the type to force me into something so long as I refused with all my might.

She loaned me to Lady Leizniz, but had gone no further on account of my personal refusal. Had she truly wanted to milk me for everything I was worth, she could have let go of the reins and handed me off to the wraith as an honorary student. I would have been a massive bargaining chip, and with Elisa trapped by her side, she could’ve tapped into me as a never-ending faucet of intel on the dean. As far as bargains went, this would’ve been grazing the upper bound for what one could buy with the life of one forgettable farm boy.

Lady Agrippina had elected not to take this deal. She put in a cruel word at every turn, mocked me for my shortcomings to my face, and threw unreasonable tasks my way, but not once had she forced something onto me that she knew I wouldn’t accept, despite it being clear that her bank and clout made imposing her will a trivial task.

In which case, there was clearly only one reason left for me to dive headfirst into the battlefield: my own will. I couldn’t deny that Lady Agrippina could and would have solved every issue in my stead. Looking back, there had to have been a better way to pacify Helga; at the very least, the madam would not have let her run off like I had. The ichor maze incident wouldn’t have even come up had I not tried to get clever, but if I’d refused Sir Feige’s proposal on grounds of undue danger, he most definitely would have acquiesced—as disappointed as I’m sure he would have been.

My happiness was the product of hindsight. I happened to have been fortunate enough to trade Helga’s life to preserve my own; Mika and I had just been lucky to get home without dying. This streak of serendipity was the product of my own skill, but the perils I’d so narrowly avoided were not, strictly speaking, necessary.

The great rewards they heralded were not in vain, of course: though it pained me too much to think of Helga’s memory as “loot,” the treasures that accompanied my dungeon-delving adventure reduced the total time I would spend in servitude. To me, that was a wonderful bounty.

However, the same could not be said for Elisa. If I had made a single error—no, even if I hadn’t—in any of these encounters, the dice could have told the tale of a boy who fell in battle. My sister was asking me if all the prizes I’d won were worth this risk.

The only fight thus far that had been truly unavoidable had been the one against Elisa’s kidnappers—and even then, there had been the possibility of Lady Agrippina’s stopping by on a whim if she’d sensed something peculiar afoot. On the most fundamental level, everything else had been my own doing.

If I’d asked the madam for help like a normal child during her afternoon meal, I wouldn’t have been sent off to the lakeside manor. If I hadn’t tried to squeeze out a bonus reward from living up to Sir Feige’s expectations, I wouldn’t have been comatose in bed until wintertime.

“Why didn’t you choose to stay and learn with me in the capital?” Elisa asked. “I know it’s expensive, but I’ll do my best too! I’ll hurry up and become a student, and then a researcher—I’ll make enough to pay for your classes too. Besides, you can still make money here in Berylin...just like you’ve been doing.”

I had nothing to say in response. She was completely right: I’d spent my spare time cleaning requests off the College’s bulletin board, and the pay was significantly better than anything I could make as a lowly worker in the city. Lady Agrippina was also far from difficult to part from her coins, and my current wage for household chores had boggled my mind when I’d first seen it.

Not to mention the most important part: the madam had not included any mention of interest or deadlines for Elisa’s student loans. This was an unprecedented act of altruism on her part. No matter how little interest she showed in monetary affairs, anyone else would have included some form of interest, if only to keep up appearances. In a setting without commercial regulation and fixed rates, she could have used her patrician powers to force us into a contract of twenty or thirty percent accruing daily.

Yet she’d elected to forgo any such usury. She saw us solely as a means to prop up her preferred mode of living, and had loaned us capital in service of that goal.

In fact, I could totally see her handing Elisa a casual “graduation gift” on the day she became a researcher that matched whatever debt remained. It seemed much more like her to avoid the bothersome calculations of what had been paid and what was yet owed as soon as she was past the need to adhere to official College rules.

Still, we had no need to cling to Lady Agrippina’s benevolence: a fixed sum that never grew could always be repaid through honest work. Once Elisa won her rights back as a magus and began receiving stipends from the government, the debt would settle itself without her actively trying—her future salary was going to make us look like fools for crying over a measly ten drachmae here or a year’s worth of tuition there.

“So, Dear Brother...won’t you stop? Please?”

At this point, my justifications felt paper-thin. She had done more than blow them away; she’d made them vanish without a trace. For better or for worse, my call to adventure had been a tenuous affair. I was no better than the Lv1 Fighter setting out from his hometown in the boonies after listening to one too many heroic sagas...but the true nature of battle was not so flimsy.

Now I faced questions that shook my very core: Why did my magic have to be scary? Why did I have to fight?

The fervor that had gripped me when the ichor maze had dissipated burned as brightly as ever, and the world of tabletop games shined with the same vivid colors it always had. My earring jingled in the windless room; I didn’t need its reminder to relive the oath I’d made on that twilit hill. All these questions represented was a splash of darkness accentuating the picturesque depiction of adventure in my mind.

“I’ll do my very best,” Elisa pleaded, “so won’t you stay here with me forever?”

Yet the pigment of those shadowy streaks was rich enough to sow the seeds of doubt. Do you have enough reason to abandon a peaceful life? it asked. Can you cut off your worrying sister to dive into the lion’s jaws? Is that what you call morality?

“...But you know, Elisa,” I said, “the world is full of bad people. That’s why we need a little bit of scary magic: just so that they can’t hurt us. I think I’d die of sadness if anything happened to you.”

I could do no better than evade these interrogations. I didn’t want to break my own pledge and abandon my dreams, but I couldn’t deny my sister’s compelling argument, especially knowing she was saying this for my own sake. When two antithetical ideas are both right, finding the correct answer becomes a Herculean task.

Oh, I realized, maybe there is no correct answer.

I had literally fought to untangle exactly this sort of knotty existential question to the grave as the cancer ate away at me, so I think I was fit to say this with confidence: no amount of contemplation would ever produce a satisfactory answer. The only thing that awaited me was the spiritual pain of mental fatigue. At the end of much deliberation, I’d chosen to see my ceaseless pain through with a peaceful finale. Yet as the curtains closed, I shuddered in bed and wondered to myself: I know I can’t win—the numbers show it. But if I had fought on...how much longer would I have lived?

That was why I had turned to meditation. It had been my only escape from the pain that overrode my mind.

“Hrm... To stop bad people...”

Elisa mumbled to herself with the inquisitive glimmer of a fledgling magus. I reflexively shook my head. I couldn’t understand why she was pondering this so deeply, like a cartoon hero trying to overcome the antagonist’s psychological tricks—this topic wasn’t going to make anyone any happier.

“So,” she asked, “is it all for me?”

“...That’s right,” I said. “For you. If I die, I won’t be able to protect you until you’re all grown up. The world has more bad people than you think, Elisa. That’s why I want to be stronger than all of them.”

Not to make excuses, but bloody conflict was shockingly easy to stumble upon in this world. An honest merchant could meet their end when a marauder plundered their house, and kidnapping was obviously a threat, considering how Elisa had already been targeted twice.

The world needed combatants, no matter how shallow their cause.

Shaking off the uncertainty in my heart, I finished cleaning the room and laid my sister in bed, her brow still as furrowed as ever.

[Tips] The Adventurer’s Association once conducted a survey to see why their members chose the career that they did. The third-most-cited reason was the love of heroic sagas, shared by one-fifth of the participants. In second place, one-fourth answered that this was the only path they had. At thirty-eight percent, the most popular response was fame and fortune.

Such is life. Work is usually allotted with no more ado than rolling a set of dice, and at times, the lives of men are lighter in the pocket than a coin minted with silver.

To the methuselah, the other races—that is to say, mortals—seemed to rush through maturation. For a creature that could live without food or drink in a shelter no better than a roof and walls, the urgency required to worry about matters of today and tomorrow seemed awfully antsy.

Agrippina was one such methuselah, who had begun to accustom herself to this foreign pace of life as of late. She chuckled internally, thinking, How convenient it is to have a spur nearby.

“Master.”

“Yes?”

Making full use of her multithreaded capabilities, she’d been scribbling a luminous trail of elegant cursive in empty space, all while reading the book in her hands. Poetic euphemisms were rarely employed amongst magia, but the gentry of this land were so averse to clearly labeled promises that to teach her student the language of letters was unavoidable.

Finished with her necessary but tiresome work, the child placed down an eagle quill too large for her hands and stared at her master. The magus caught a glimpse of her disciple’s expression out of the corner of her eye and closed her book: whatever the girl wanted to say, it was clearly not a question about her homework.

As depraved and self-centered as Agrippina was, she commanded enough good sense to put in diligent effort for the sake of protecting her prized leisure. If her apprentice wished for serious advice, she concluded that putting this riveting story on pause to hear her out was for the best.

Elisa’s mental state had recently leapt forward again, ushering in a great deal of academic progress: her command of the written word was now beyond that of her brother. The methuselah had an inkling as to what had spurred on this breakthrough, and thus also had a solid read on what her disciple was going to say.

“When will I be able to begin learning magic?” Elisa asked.

A fine question. Not the question itself, mind you—Agrippina fancied the implication that lay behind it.

Study words to keep your brother close; learn magic to shoo alfar away; gain strength to protect him. Such were the wicked whispers the villain used to fan the flames of her student’s determination. Her ever-servile spur had been vital in inducing the girl’s belated mental development, and it seemed that another set of gears had clicked into place in her mind.

Agrippina knew not what her apprentice and servant spoke about behind closed doors; she wasn’t fond enough of gossip to consider eavesdropping worthy of her time. Still, she could guess what this spoiled sister would beg of the brother she so adored.

As Elisa’s mind caught up to her body, she had learned the behavior of thought. With this advancement came the loss of dependence—not in conduct, but rather in the invisible realm of the soul. On the surface, she remained the tiny baby clinging to her brother’s side...but her true colors were beginning to soak in: a shade of monomania, a tinge of fixation, and the unmistakable hue of an alf.

“Let me see,” Agrippina said. “I shall take you someplace nice in due time as a measure of your manners. If you manage to play the part of a proper young lady then, I will consider beginning lessons in magecraft.”

A changeling only eight years of age was still a changeling. The base psyche trapped in her brain was not that of a mensch, and once her alfish side roused from its slumber, she would quickly come into her true form. The evidence was palpable: to learn all that she had of writing and speech in a single summer would be grounds to dub any other child a genius.

Fairies were living phenomena; the flesh could pull as hard as it pleased, but these innate desires were too strong a magnet for the ego to resist.

Agrippina thought this very apt for a girl who had begun her studies to protect her brother from meddlesome alfar. She considered Elisa’s single-minded motivation adorably pathetic and wondered what her servant would think if he were ever to discover the truth.

“When will that be?” Elisa pressed.

“Well...I suppose if I were to make a reservation now, it would be sometime within the month.”

The methuselah inspected her disciple’s resolute expression and let out a quiet chuckle. But make no mistake: this was not the loving smile of a mature adult cheering on their mentee through the nervousness of a practical exam. No, it was the sick, twisted sneer of a woman gazing at a live bomb, imagining what kind of fantastical explosions waited at the end of the fuse.

Now then, Agrippina mused, I wonder what sort of alf this little changeling came from?

The magus had come up with a highly probable hypothesis with her wealth of knowledge, and it seemed that the opportunity to confirm her theory was not too far away—in the mensch sense of the phrase, even.

“But isn’t this a bit sudden?” Agrippina asked. “Are you that interested in the grand spell your brother developed?”

“No...” Elisa shook her head. “My dear brother told me that there are a lot of bad people in the world, and that’s why he must fight—to protect me. That’s why he pushes himself so hard.”

The evildoers she spoke of were hardly uncommon. The authorities’ capability to search their vast territories was simply unfit to catch them all; when one hopped border was all it took to turn a criminal back into a law-abiding citizen, violence was a profitable venture. Of course, local churches kept records of wanted fugitives in their family registries, but the inability to validate one’s identity only mattered for those seeking honest work.

Thus the state employed the cruelest of punishments to enforce order. Thieves were collared and chained, murderers were decapitated, and bandits were hanged up high. Yet no amount of severed heads could cull the seeds of evil.

Upon witnessing the execution of a bandit who’d attacked a tax caravan, the great prose poet Bernkastel once sang, “Count the grains of blooming wheat and you may numerate them yet, but these heads shall only end with the history they darken.”

Filled with more resignation than irony, the verse spoke to the infinite stupidity of sentient life. Man’s eternal quest for power was to defend against it, and it was for safety’s sake that the weak accepted rule by others.

“But if I get stronger—so strong that I can protect him from anything—then my dear brother won’t have to do anything dangerous again, will he?”

A will of tremendous gravity gleamed in Elisa’s amber eyes—no, perhaps this was a trick of the light, but they glowed the faint gold of moonlight. She tilted her head and gracefully covered her lips, just as Agrippina had taught her. To smile with childish charm was part of a young noble’s duties, but this was anything but cute.

“And when that happens,” the changeling continued, “I don’t even think he’ll need to leave the house. He’ll always be by my side, and we can play and have fun and be happy forever... Am I wrong, Master?”

The brother was mensch folly incarnate: he longed for fleeting moments of euphoric glory. Now the sister was following suit, dyeing herself in the folly of fey; how did she differ from the eternal dancers of the twilight hill?

She was still so young, but the ripening process had advanced beyond recall. Seeing her disciple this way, Agrippina had to suppress a roar of laughter to speak.

“No, you’re not wrong in the slightest. I think you’re perfectly sound, so long as you become stronger than everyone in the whole wide world, including your brother.”

Methuselah lived incomparably longer and thought incomparably faster than mensch, but they too lived and breathed in their own form of folly. Their irrationality was that of a grown woman smacking a sleeping child awake and rejoicing at the sight of their tears.

With Agrippina’s purse and skill set, leading these two siblings down a sensible path would be trivial. It would be all too easy to teach the girl values befitting a mensch and to shape the boy’s childish ambitions into a more robust ideology.

Alas, the utter scoundrel threw all pretense of integrity to the wayside as she shoved her chips into the most entertaining pot she could find. If the maxim of gods leaving no sin unpunished was true, then surely a divine bolt of lightning or an apostle would come to smite her at this very second.

“If that is what you desire,” Agrippina went on, “you must make haste. Win your professorship and become wholly invincible. Grow so strong that even Erich cannot raise a single finger against you, and he shall know your arms to be the safest place in the world—that to stay there will be his greatest gift to you.”

“Me?” Elisa asked. “Stronger?”

“But of course. Erich amasses strength because he is stronger than you. He endures the burden of danger, the exhaustion of training, and the responsibility of earning money all for the weak Baby Elisa, doesn’t he? Now, tell me. What would happen if the opposite were true?”

“I... I would be the one...”

As you can see, the heavens were silent. Agrippina gave a wicked grin, well aware that she was pouring gasoline on the bonfire of Elisa’s resolve; the changeling beamed as if she’d just uncovered a gift from the absent gods.

Two creatures altogether estranged from ethics each let their own heavy emotions sink deep into their cores, and then carried on with lecture. Elsewhere, the brother was stepping into a bath to recollect himself; he was no doubt accosted by a terrible shivering fit.

How could he not be? After all, his sister was earnestly concocting a plan to keep him safe...from everything the world had to offer.

[Tips] At the end of the day, changelings are merely alfar in mensch frames.