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

Preface

Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRPG)

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

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

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

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

There was no pain, no weariness. How long had it drifted in this endless space of mellow warmth? With every breath, a soft tickle came up its nose and into its brain, sending the ego deeper and deeper into the viscous, gentle sea.

Unburdened by even the recognition of its own sleepful state, the self was composed not of a string of thoughts, but by primal being.

Though it assumed its amoebic experience would continue forever, the end eventually came. Like the sudden sensation of cold that sets in after soaking too long in a lukewarm bath, the consciousness was ripped free from the sunken place where it had settled.

At last, the sleeping ego was freed from its restraints. It knew. It knew that it had a body. That its body had a core, and that from this core full of beating organs came arms and legs. That the cradle it called a brain resided in a head attached to this core. And, of course, that it was an instance of what one might consider the quintessential humanfolk race: it was a mensch.

Memories bubbled up, jumbling together as they surfaced, becoming me. I knew that I had been born on a planet third in orbit from its sun, in the country of Japan to the far east. I knew that I had lived a little more than thirty years before spleen cancer ended my time as Fukemachi Saku.

And I knew more. I knew that I had kept those memories when I had been born in the southwestern canton of Konigstuhl in the Trialist Empire of Rhine—that I was Erich, the fourth son of Johannes.

That’s right... I wasn’t some prokaryote destined to drown in the muck of repose, with no concept of life or death. I was a person—one fortunate enough to get a second character sheet.

As my self congealed, so too did my memories.

My life in Konigstuhl, and the unbreakable bond I’d formed with Margit. My beloved sister Elisa, her kidnapping, and the subsequent revelation of her changeling nature. The cautious laws our nation used to control unchecked dangers, and the path she had needed to take to remain Elisa of Konigstuhl, as opposed to state property. The methuselah who opened that path by employing me and teaching Elisa, Agrippina du Stahl.

My first time leaving the canton. The manor we stopped by, the fateful encounter, and the unforgettable pain of farewell.

The glorious streets of the capital. The raven-black castle, and the bizarre workings of the Imperial College.

The hustle of trying to earn my sister’s tuition. Mika becoming my first friend outside of the canton. Inviting him to Wustrow, the doorway to the north, for a minor errand. Searching for a stubborn old treant. Finding out that Sir Feige just didn’t suit his line of work.

A coincidental sighting, and the lifelong oath of friendship that followed, creating a night that was a secret all our own.

And finally...the woods we entered to win Sir Feige’s tome, and our first-ever ichor maze cleared. The relentless zombies, the exhaustion, the bleeding, and the pain. The humbling realization of inexperience and the exhilarating recognition of strength that preceded my first-ever fight with a swordsman stronger than me.

What had happened at the end of that desperate struggle as I grazed against the void of death? In an instant of eternity, the world whirled around me.

I have to wake up. Powerful will lifted my heavy eyelids...to a scene it would be criminal to describe.

“Up early, are we?”

By which I mean I awoke to see Ursula before me with her privates as dubiously protected as ever. Despite her hair being her only covering, and even then only at certain angles, the svartalf hadn’t a hint of shame standing on top of my face with her bare legs.

She planted her feet on either side of my nose and placed a hand on each hip, announcing to the world that she was not in a good mood. The smile on her face made her ever more terrifying.

“I don’t think it’s very nice to walk on someone’s face.”

“This is what happens when you ignore another’s considerate warning, O Beloved One.”

The ill-mannered svartalf fluttered her wings and took to the air, only to come back down and plant her ass on the bridge of my nose. No, that’s not what I meant. The walking part wasn’t the important bit.

“I’d like you to get off my face,” I said plainly.

“I happen to think this is a fitting outcome for someone who runs into harm’s way despite my wise counsel. Don’t you?”

Ursula’s slender legs reached over to poke at my mouth to reprimand me for talking back to her. I put up with it for a while, but eventually grew annoyed and tried to scare her by opening wide like I was going to bite. Unfortunately, she just started kicking my tongue instead, so I gave up. I had no intention of leaving teeth marks on my tiny, silver-haired friend, even as a joke.

After giving up on removing the weight from my face, I finally realized that I’d been strapped into bed.

“...Was I out for a long time?”

“Not particularly,” Ursula said. “No, not at all. The doctor’s medicine only put you to sleep for a mere five days.”

Five days?! I’ve been unconscious for five days since Sir Feige knocked me out?!

“I hid away and listened in on the diagnosis. Apparently, you were in quite the sorry state, Beloved One. Your body was in tatters, and your mind was pulling all sorts of tricks to ignore the pain. Any worse and you would have been disabled for life.”

Hearing what was wrong with me in such definite terms scared the living hell out of me. She was basically telling me I’d been ignoring the warning signs of pain thanks to the rush of battle, and every step I’d taken had come with its own constitution check. Finding out that a single unlucky roll could have killed me on the spot didn’t help at all; it just scared me.

“Honestly,” Ursula sighed. “You can’t go around risking your life when we can’t help you. What exactly do you think I gave you these lips for? Mortals are so quick to run off and die as soon as we look away. How will I gaze at these pretty eyes of yours if they’re buried in the dirt?”

Still upset, she deftly twirled around on my nose without getting up and set to pinching my eyelids with her toes. Tears welled up from the pain, but I resigned myself to my scolding...even though deep down I felt that no adventurer would have turned back from a warning so deep into a quest.

That said, I was surprised to see her: if I’d been out for five days, that meant the False Moon had just begun to wax. Taking a better look, I saw that Ursula was two sizes smaller than usual, and the dreamy glimmer of her hair wasn’t as brilliant as before. What little I could see beyond the curtains pointed to night; for her to be so unimpressive when the stage was set for her clearly showed that she was pushing her boundaries.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “And thanks for worrying about me.”

There are two things you owe to someone who strains themselves to visit you at your sickbed: apologies and gratitude. As tired as I was, I hadn’t fallen so low as to forget my basic manners.

Ursula’s dainty eyes blinked in awe. After a moment, she managed to digest what I’d said and finally nodded in acceptance.

“I still have plenty I want to say, but that was all I wanted to hear. I shall keep the rest to myself.”

The fairy’s wings fluttered again, sending her up with a faint shimmer trailing behind. As she took flight, the restraints that had kept me from falling out of bed in my animated sleep undid themselves.

Freed from both the weight on my face and my bindings, I sat up and found that my body was surprisingly light, in spite of having slept for five days.

I’d slept for a good two weeks straight during the dreadful treatment of my first life’s terminal illness, and I’d atrophied to the point of not being able to sit up by the time I’d opened my eyes. The contrast was astonishing; perhaps the healing spells were to thank.

Furthermore, neither my clothes nor my hair were filthy messes. Some kind soul must have regularly cast Clean on me—it was a blessing that magic had a way of getting rid of grime all without unclothing or setting foot in a bath.

I carefully dragged myself out of the blankets I’d warmed with my comatose body. I tested my fingers to find them as Dexterous as ever, and I could feel the cold of approaching winter on my legs. I bent my knees, rolled my ankles around, and wiggled my toes to make sure I hadn’t lost any motor control.

Slowly, I brought my feet down to the floor and tightened my lower half; I stood up with a gentle rock, but was unmet by any undesirable surprise.

I could hardly believe I’d been laying in bed for five days, from how robust the trunks holding me up felt. My body wasn’t cold, pale, or lifeless; I’d surmounted certain death without losing anything.

“Yes... Yes! I can move! I made it! Eat shit!”

“Who in the world are you cursing at?” Ursula asked. “If it’s the God of Trials, I suggest you stop. Your excitement will only serve to spur Him on.”

If I had to direct these words somewhere, it would be the incompetent GM the universe called fate. What kind of moron would send an unfinished party without an all-important healer into a dungeon like that without even giving us time to prepare?!

Yet in the end, I’d managed to survive. Every enemy in our path considered themselves the true PC1 as they walked this world devoid of deliberate level design, but I was still breathing.

What could I do if not celebrate? Falling in battle alongside the final boss could be a beautiful conclusion in fiction, but a rough-cut adventurer’s definition of victory included the trip home. My career aspirations were further boosted by the immediate goal of earning Elisa’s tuition, making this point doubly true.

“Wait, what about Mika?”

The tall, aromatic room housed more than just one bed, but the one in front of me was empty. I turned around to see that the cot to my bed’s left had a person-sized bump.

I approached on silent footsteps and found my friend sleeping blissfully. He was on his side, clutching at the edge of his blanket to keep warm, and his long, deep breaths were devoid of any sign of mental anguish.

Although I couldn’t quite see clearly in the darkness, my old chum’s hair sticking out from underneath the covers looked longer than I remembered. Was I imagining things?

“Your little friend had a much better time waking, and even has the doctor’s permission to walk,” Ursula informed me. “You’re a full two days late.”

Thank the gods. Mika recovered even faster than I did. Seeing him bleed out of his ears had caused me to worry that his condition was more critical than mine, but it turned out that my physical strain had earned me an extra two days of immobility. Regardless, I was happy to hear that he was now well enough to stand on his own two legs.

My hand reached out to his hair before I could think. At some point, I’d unconsciously begun to fear that his good health was but a dream, and wanted some kind of tactile feedback to confirm its authenticity.

Mika’s breathing was so slow and steady that it put me at ease just by listening. When I combed through his locks with my hand, they slipped between my fingers like running water.

...Huh? Wait, I swear your hair is longer. That, and wasn’t it wavier before?

Totally oblivious to the fact that playing with my sleeping friend’s hair without consent made me a freak, I thoughtlessly continued toying with it with one hand and placed the other on my chin to think. Ursula landed on my shoulder with a sigh and eyed me like I was some kind of irredeemable beast.

“I’d hate to interrupt your fun, but now that you’re awake, I ask that you take some of the responsibility for your actions.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The sudden mention of responsibility I didn’t know I had caused my fingers to stop, and the glossy strands of hair slipped from my grasp. I stared at her in confusion. Ursula shook her head and shrugged before pointing to the drawer at my bedside.

“—?!”

I was so shocked that I forgot I was in a hospital and screamed—but no sound came out. Judging from the “Is this boy stupid?” look that Ursula was giving me, she had been kind enough to stop me.

Beside the bed I’d been snoozing in were two swords. One was Schutzwolfe: my trusty partner had been neatly propped up, snugly wrapped in leather. The problem lay with the other, similarly familiar blade haphazardly leaning on the dresser beside her, undressed by the modesty of a sheath.

The cursed sword that I’d sent to the ends of the universe was sitting there as if doing so was its god-given right.

Ursula didn’t need to use her fey magicks this time: my lips trembled up and down, but not a single word came out. Seeing me soak in the sight of the chunk of darkness that shone darker than the lightless night utterly stupefied must have been a marvel of comedy.

“You sure have wooed a difficult one,” Ursula said. “I’ll have you know it took a lot of effort to make sure she didn’t get up to any trouble while you were asleep.”

The svartalf sighed with the gravity of a student trying to get the class clown to stop acting up. Uh, I don’t think this is as laid-back as you’re making it out to be...

Why was it here? I’d wrung out every last drop of my mana to send it to the endless grave of faraway somewhere.

“I’m not entirely sure of the specifics,” she explained. “After all, this blade is even older than I. In fact, I’m doubtful we could find many as ancient as her.”

With that shiver-inducing foreword out of the way, Ursula went on to break down the general gist of things. Apparently, alfar could roughly interpret the whims of such living banes. As a mensch, I could only pick up on the raw emotions they radiated...but having an interpreter wasn’t enough to make me want this bothersome blight of a blade.

According to Ursula, the sword of damnation had spawned the ichor maze in search of a new master. It had desired a warrior fit to wield it: the challenger had to be as strong or stronger than its previous partner. Hearing that all that had been caused by this evil weapon’s tantrum locked my jaw agape.

“She wants love: to love and to be loved... She seems to have been acting out of courtship, as distressing as that may be for a mortal.”

Suddenly, a voiceless scream clawed at the back of my mind in disagreement. Needless to say, the source was the relic of unclassifiable danger.

I have no idea how to describe the “sounds” it was making. I heard a cacophony of voices swirl together with screeching glass and metal; the meaningless noise of it all paradoxically injected meaning alone into my psyche.

It was never meant to be heard by the fleshy sacks that walked about the planet. Perhaps that was why my disgruntled brain chose to interpret the sword’s intent in such a horrid way.

“You may claim you cause no distress all you like,” Ursula retorted, “but even we are closer to fleeting life than you.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Do you have any idea how many people died in that labyrinth? I’m sure there were even more than I saw that couldn’t even be resurrected as zombies... I’m sorry, but there’s no chance I can use a sword with that kind of terrible power!”

“But she’s saying that she doesn’t know anything about the undead.”

“Excuse me?”

Ursula continued translating the splintering creaks entering my soul for me. Apparently, the sword itself hadn’t commanded the power to raise the dead; no, that had been caused by the regrets of her former master as he cradled it in death.

The sword itself had birthed the ichor maze to beckon in challengers, but claimed that the zombies and thematic riddles strewn about everywhere had arisen from the late adventurer’s personal obsessions. His attachment had given the concentrated ichor direction, recycling those he felled into further trials of might...until a dungeon was born.

Come to think of it, the journal I’d skimmed through had ended with the adventurer confessing his greatest regret: that he had failed to find a successor to entrust his beloved sword to.

What a pair of lovebirds! Go get a room and lock yourselves in forever!

My heartfelt lament failed to reach anyone else, and the dispassionate explanation continued.

Barring its sentience, the blade itself didn’t have any notable powers...that is, other than its ability to return to its wielder’s side.

The sword boasted the same capabilities as the famous divine blades littering the myths of my previous world. I had no idea how something so magnificent could end up exuding such a deathly aura. Is this okay? Can we trust it? I was sure that wielding it would eat at my mind; I mean, just listening to it mandated a SAN roll.

Ursula went on to elaborate that the accursed blade had used its homebound property to its fullest extent in order to escape the infinite elsewhere of my portal and end up at my bedside. But, you know, I wasn’t quite a fan of being recognized as its wielder without my consent.

No—no way. I don’t need this thing.

“But these sorts of beings are the type to chase you around until the end of time...or space, in this case,” the svartalf said. “You aren’t to go around selling her over and over again to earn extra coin. Am I clear?”

I wasn’t the sort of fool to go around selling invisible knives all my life. Rather, I couldn’t even imagine what kind of lunatic would want to buy something this atrocious in the first place. If I were a buyer, I wouldn’t care how rare or strong the thing was; you couldn’t pay me to take it.

“You may not wish to hear this,” Ursula added, “but I think it pays to know when to fold.”

If a mensch—or at the very least, a mortal being—had said this to me, I might have been able to swallow this truism. But hearing it from an undying phenomenon given consciousness felt like pure mockery.

Sure, I’d gotten this far by accepting some losses. I may not have had control over my hair and eyes, but I’d gotten used to my dealings with alfar—I would go so far as to say it wasn’t all bad.

However, this unadulterated consolidation of wrongness was a different thing entirely. Yes, I had played plenty of characters with literal evil double-edged blades, where I’d found loopholes to use my demerits to my advantage. Yes, I had enjoyed dragging my family in—looking back, they’d all been amazing sports—as I role-played the emotional struggle of wielding such a weapon. But to do it for real was out of the question.

Besides, what the hell was its deal? What did a sword want out of love? What did that even mean? Was I supposed to cradle it to bed every night? Was I supposed to lick it clean?

“Um...” Ursula frowned. “Whenever love comes up, she starts speaking incredibly quickly and it’s honestly rather disturbing...”

The sharp pain of displeasure had stabbed my inner skull; apparently, the sword was chatting up a blue streak. While it was only natural to become livelier when discussing a favorite subject, this was extreme. I would have appreciated it if it quit compressing all its emotions into high-frequency waves that bounced around in my skull.

Barraged by innumerable brainwaves, I grew woozy to the point of nausea. Just as the world began to spin...the assault lightened. I put a hand to my head to temper the lingering headache, and the other remained planted on the bed frame to secure my balance; suddenly, the latter hand began to glow.

More precisely, the ice-blue gem planted in my lunar ring was gleaming. Even after I’d killed her, even after she’d disappeared in my arms, Helga was watching over me. Although she couldn’t block everything, the stinging pain softened considerably. Listening to this “voice” for too long was sure to grind away my sanity, so I was terribly thankful that it was quieter now.

Whether Ursula knew of my plight or not, she continued interpreting the toxic current of meaning without my asking. Hearing her clarify small bits at a time was a serious threat to my well-being on its own. Stop! Don’t tell me any more! Just let me sleep!

Helga’s memory did its best, but covering my ears did little to interrupt the constant voices. Even so, I wished that someone would plug them up just to give me some small feeling of security.

There was a good chance Ursula was only translating because she would otherwise be the one eating the brunt of the sword’s ill will. Unenthused, she explained that for a sword to love, it simply needed to fulfill its purpose to the best of its ability. To offer its wielder an eternally sharp blade that would never chip, bend, or break was its ode of affection.

While its offerings were simple, the dark blade certainly did epitomize what it meant to be a sword.

In this day and age, a sword was a symbol: around the waist, adorned with golds and silvers, it was a marker of authority. However, at its inception, the sword had been a tool to better slay one’s enemies. Thus, the accursed darkness professed its love by means of unparalleled quality to that end.

It cut through the hardest metals without a chip of its own, never succumbing to the force of an enemy blade. It returned to its wielder’s hand in an instant if they so willed it, never to be stolen away by another.

An impeccable edge, indestructible body, and everlasting loyalty were certainly the magnificent traits I expected from the Ascalons and Fragarachs of the world; strangely enough, though, my excitement to wield the thing remained stuck at rock bottom. It was effectively a sword of legend, so why was it so...this? Was this what it meant to say that stats can lie?

At any rate, the question of what it meant for a sword to love had been answered; next came what it meant for a sword to be loved. As one might expect, this was simply to be used as a sword: to kill one’s enemies. It followed that the depth of one’s love was expressed through the art of swordplay; after all, mastery was a bud that could only blossom at the end of a long road called dedication.

Swords are weapons. While they can be used to steal, save, or protect, in the grand scheme of things these objectives are all secondary to the act of killing whoever stands in their wielders’ ways. They are but one of many products originating from mankind’s long quest for blood.

In the end, a sword’s purpose had never been to garnish a nobleman’s belt, nor to rest sheathed atop a fireplace as an unused emblem of peace. To sum it all up, this black lump of doom wanted me to go around slashing people to bits. I knew this thing was a psycho.

The throbbing grew more pronounced: apparently, it wanted me to try holding it. They say you shouldn’t knock it till you try it, but...

“I don’t wanna. I feel like it’ll make me sick.”

“Would it hurt to at least keep your imagined side effects to curses?”

The warbled messages bullied my mind further, and I finally gave up, knowing that leaving it be would do nothing to improve my situation. I warily reached out and curled my fingers around the handle.

Much to my chagrin, the sword was splendid. The grip clung tight, yet it was counterintuitively trivial to roll around in my hand. Its center of mass was concentrated in the center, but the tip boasted solid weight; I could surely swing it with great speed if I ever got the hang of it. The shining dark luster tapered off into edges fine enough to cut the cold air of late autumn in two. Ignoring the overpowering dread for a moment, it was as aesthetically marvelous as it was powerful.

Being a lengthy zweihander, I wouldn’t be able to handle it with the same grace I did Schutzwolfe—on account of my countless add-ons for one-handed weapons—but I couldn’t deny that the sword was superb.

“Hm?”

As I inspected it all over to try and find a flaw, I noticed gold lettering engraved into the hilt. The ancient text was mostly illegible due to wear, but it seemed to be in a language that was adjacent to Rhinian—perhaps its parent tongue. Of all the words, I could only recognize one: “crave.”

Amidst the indecipherable string of characters was the will of sheer desire. Being forged with hunger, thirst, and a pining spirit had likely been why the thing was so mad. For now, I decided to dub it the Craving Blade.

At this point, I was out of options. If the thing could find its way back to me after I sent it to gods-know-where, there wasn’t much else I could do. Had it just showed back up on my doorstep after I’d tossed it in the local dump, I would’ve taken the challenge head-on and started looking for active volcanoes, but this was too much.

Although I had to say, the thought of disposing of a cursed item in a volcano was certainly captivating. I already knew someone with pointy ears—though she’d probably shoot me with a bow if I dared to make the comparison—so I just needed to find dvergar and floresiensis pals to make the trip.

Leaving my escapist fantasies aside, the point was that I could no longer handle this situation on my own. Something of this level called for Lady Agrippina or Lady Leizniz—or perhaps Sir Feige could help. I couldn’t exactly sleep off the mana costs of blowing it to kingdom come every time it showed up, so my only option was to put up with it for a while.

I tossed the damned thing aside in a fit of despair—I felt it complain, but couldn’t care less—and crawled back into bed.

“My, sleeping again, Beloved One?”

“I’m emotionally exhausted,” I answered. “Sing me a lullaby, will you?”

I’d meant it as a sulking joke, but Ursula fulfilled my request with a snicker. She gently landed atop my head and sang like a midnight breeze.

“O quiet night—O gentle night.”

Hers was a kind voice. It conveyed that indescribable feeling of staring up at the stars with a cigarette in my mouth after a long night of overtime work. I relived a scene with the tender glow of a watchful moon and a cool gust of wind that wicked sweat off my weary brow.

Amidst all the fatigue and stress, that had been a true moment of respite.

Was it because she was an alf of the night? I squeezed my pillow tight, its herbal fragrance clinging to my nose. A long sigh escaped my lips, full of intertwining relief and nostalgia.

“O moonlit night—let your caring arms of light hold us—let sleeping souls rest.”

I may have found myself saddled with an unwelcome burden, but perhaps this song could count amongst my rewards.

No, in fact, it surely did. I’d just finished sleeping for eons, but I truly felt like I was going to enjoy this next slumber.

Oh, I forgot. I never checked how much experience I earned for all this...

“Good night, Beloved One,” Ursula whispered. “Don’t forget to rely on us next time.”

...but that can wait for tomorrow.

[Tips] While rare, sentient tools are widely known to exist. Although some are heralded as friends to people for their command of mortal tongues, there is no guarantee that their values line up in any way. They are not animals, nor are they spirits; least of all are they people.

Let only those whose hearts have never skipped a beat upon seeing a girl come back from summer break cuter than she was before throw the first stone.

“Hey, old pal... Um, uh, it’s kind of embarrassing to have you stare like that.”

To say that I was looking at a new person would be an understatement. Nothing fundamental had changed: the morning sun still left a halo upon raven-black hair, and the golden ratio remained ever present in the perfect arrangement of Mika’s face.

However, I was now met with a rounder nose, with plumper lips, with a gentler jawline, and with the slight differences in shadows that came from those changes. The arc connecting neck to shoulder was more slender, as were the contours of the lithe arms that extended like willow branches from it. Lithe legs with unpronounced knees stretched from rounded hips, speaking to an undeniable change in appearance.

The friend who had woken me up was a full-fledged maiden.

“Oh, uh,” I stammered. “Sorry. Er, well, how do I put this...”

“Put what?”

Mika smiled bashfully as he—wait, she? Anyway, she smiled bashfully as she played with her relatively straightened hair. So this is what I thought was off last night.

“Uh... Um...” I searched for words to put in my mouth. “You’ve gotten a lot cuter?”

“You think? I feel like I haven’t really changed at all.”

Watch your mouth, old chum. Claiming that this was the result of zero change was sure to rouse all the ladies of the world to throw things on stage in protest; I would of course step in as a shield, but even I wouldn’t be able to deny their righteousness.

Between sexes, Mika had exhibited a cryptic beauty that played to both male and female allure, but that had been replaced with unmistakable girlish charm. What boyishness remained amounted to less than that of a tomboy, and the usual temptation to stray off the beaten path—as crass as this turn of phrase may be—had turned into straightforward appreciation of an adorable girl.

“Do... Do you think I’ve changed too much?”

Mika’s voice was equal parts reproachful for my unrestrained staring and anxious about something yet unseen. Although I suspected he—ah, crap, she—wasn’t doing this on purpose, her head was tilted, lips slightly pointed, and her fingers were fidgeting as she waited for an answer. Combined, her mannerisms compelled both my sense of protectiveness and an uninvited desire to tease her.

“As if,” I said. “Don’t you remember what I told you, old chum?”

The devil on my shoulder kept blabbing about the psychological effect of cute aggression, but the angel on the other side managed to hold firm and punch its counterpart’s mouth shut. The angel then grabbed the devil by the collar and slammed its head down on the floor a few dozen more times, just in case.

“I’ll always be your friend, no matter what you look like or what kind of world we live in. Everything I said that night is as true now as then.”

I took Mika’s hands tightly in mine and bumped my forehead against hers. Her lashes were longer than before, and the corners of her eyes drooped more gently, yet the intelligent eyes that shone at their center remained unchanged.

Through those windows I could see her dignified soul. No matter how the vessel changed, it was the enduring person within that I held in such esteem.

“Or what?” I asked. “Do you take me for a flimsy sweet-talker who’d go back on his word at the slightest change of appearance?”

“...Heh, as if,” Mika replied. “Thanks, old pal.”

We unclasped our hands and moved them to each other’s backs for a good hug. The warmth I could feel beyond our clothes hadn’t changed one bit since that fateful night. Her shoulders were narrower and the smell tickling my nose was now as sweet as the herbal incense in the air, but none of it had any bearing on our bond.

After a decent while, we both loosened our grips and shared a shy chuckle. We laughed at ourselves and joked about how this wasn’t a moment to share in broad daylight to ease the embarrassment.

“But you know,” Mika added, “it might’ve been fun if you were the one sweet-talking me.”

“Ghft!” I sputtered. “That joke is a bit risqué...”

“Ha ha, forgive me, old pal. The physical changes affect my thinking too, and all. Anyway, messing around is fun, but let’s get to eating breakfast already.”

Still flustered by my unchanging friend’s changed nature, I took the meal Mika handed me. She’d gone to fetch our food before waking me, and the iatrurge had apparently prescribed a plain porridge with an offensively small amount of garum sauce to flavor it. On the side was a single salted plum to sate my desire for savory food. Frankly, it was dismally lacking...

“Don’t look at me like that, Erich.”

I’d been staring at Mika’s tray: she had a classic imperial breakfast of bread, wurst, and butter. Alas, her voice was stern, and she went so far as to hide her meal behind her back to drive home the point that she wasn’t going to share.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’ve been out for six days,” she explained. “The healer said your gut will just throw everything back up if you eat solids right away.”

Mika followed the doctor’s orders to a tee and forced me to take the sad breakfast, despite my objections. Ah, but I did know what she was talking about: it was the fate of many a survivor lost at sea or in the wild. Iatrurges could prevent muscular atrophy while laying in bed, but even they couldn’t reach in to fix my gut; this world was such a mixed bag of convenience and hassle.

“Today’s the first day I’ve gotten to eat solids myself,” she went on. “Put up with it for now, okay?”

Also of note was that Mika’s voice had changed as well. What had once been a boyish soprano now rang higher than ever before. And here I’d thought she’d remain androgynous no matter which way her body shifted.

This made me look forward to seeing her as a boy. I had no doubt he’d be a handsome lad that would draw stares from ladies passing by—all the more reason I couldn’t let Lady Leizniz discover him. Mika ticked two of the wraith’s boxes—in the worst case, an encounter might leave her with a new box to tick—and I could seriously imagine her starting an all-out battle over the young tivisco.

Hrm... I kind of wanted to see that, but also kind of didn’t. Both the nations of Earth and the histories of Rhine had records of ludicrous wars waged over beautiful women, but even so, they were absurd enough to get rarer and rarer as time progressed.

I imagined the conflict between a pervert trying to dress up a cute kid and a decent master trying to protect their student. Depending on what was said, I could see either side exploding in a fit of rage and reigniting the cadre wars.

If that were to happen, fully capable magia would be pitted against each other; keeping the death toll to a few dozen would probably be the best-case scenario. Eventually, that would necessitate the crown’s involvement, and that would then cause the whole ordeal to go down in the official records.

Surely, neither the historians of tomorrow nor the diplomats of today would have an easy time of it: the former would struggle to decipher the preposterous events that the latter would so despondently labor to write in a manner befitting of the imperial court.

“...Old pal? The porridge won’t finish itself, you know?”

“Huh? Oh, right.”

Mika implicitly chided me for staring again, so I hurriedly lifted my spoon. I couldn’t taste the food—though only in small part due to its flavor—but I knew I couldn’t just stay surprised about my friend’s changes forever. While I’d already resigned myself to being shocked again in two months’ time, I planned to get along with her for long enough that I’d have the time to get used to it.

Besides, I wasn’t going to forget my own words: Mika was Mika, no matter the details.

My bland breakfast was finished in the blink of an eye. As an aside, I’d chucked the evil sword underneath my bed before Mika had gotten up—the pulsing emotion was markedly unhelpful for my remaining headache, but I managed to grit my teeth and ignore it—so she didn’t have to deal with any mental attacks as she took away our trays.

“Okay,” she said, returning and sitting on her own bed, “the healer says we have to stay put here for another ten days.”

Apparently, the ability to walk was oftentimes a false sign of wellness. In primeval times, life had equated sickly stillness with death, and our bodies had developed an instinctive mechanism to wake themselves as a result. Thought of in this way, this seemed like a reasonable concern to have.

“We have to spend another ten days in this vat of incense?” I groaned. “I’m going to be bored to tears.”

“Oh, and I don’t think I need to say this, but you’re not allowed to exercise either.”

“Blegh.” I stuck out my tongue and Mika flicked my forehead with a spell.

The way she smiled at me like a troublesome child was picturesque. A normal boy in the midst of puberty would cause incident after incident just to see this expression again.

“But I’ll get rusty,” I protested. “Have you ever heard this saying? ‘One day of rest and you will know; two days of rest and your master will know; and—’”

“‘Three days of rest and everyone will know,’ right?” Mika concluded. “I get it, but this is for the best. The math on sacrificing the rest of your life for one day of training just doesn’t add up. Also, the incense you’re complaining about is for our sakes too. The healer said it’s to fix our lungs.”

“This is medicine?”

“Yeah. You can’t just slather medicine on our throats and lungs, right? That’s why they mix it into the air instead, so it can slowly heal us as we breathe.”

All this time, I’d thought the fragrant candles served the same purpose as the herbs dangling from the ceiling: pretentious artistry. Magia and lowly mages alike loved to embellish their dwellings with this sort of pageantry. I mean, even Lady Agrippina went through the trouble of setting up the (probably) pointless gimmick of turning her atelier into a garden.

Regardless, airborne treatment sounded expensive; just how philanthropic was Sir Feige? He didn’t seem the stingy type, so I doubted he’d hit us with a bill after giving us his word otherwise, but thinking about the total cost of care sent chills down my spine.

I better go thank him later...

“Oh, I almost forgot! Here, I have a letter for you.”

Out of the blue, Mika pulled out a letter from her bedside dresser. The wax-sealed envelope was trimmed with golden foil, and was courteously addressed to “Mr. Erich of Konigstuhl Canton” in elegant cursive.

I only knew of one individual who could pen an address so gracefully on an envelope prestigious enough to warrant several days of hard work for an average laborer. The coat of a silver leaf stamped into the wax was the inviolable proof of aristocracy: this had to be Sir Feige’s reward.

I giddily ran a knife across the top and heard a small popping sound. For a brief moment, I could see the remnants of magic; the treant might’ve rigged the letter with a terrible curse had anyone else opened it.

“You sure seem eager to open it,” Mika pointed out. “Is it...a love letter? Never mind, it doesn’t look like one.”

“This is better than that,” I said. “Come on, old chum. You should be just as excited as me. This is none other than our reward!”

I slapped the spot on the bed next to me to invite her to read with me, and it turned out that she’d been hiding how curious she was, judging by the skip in her step. Her running form was also remarkably more feminine, but perhaps that was an intentional choice. Otherwise, maybe her brain was naturally geared to act out the gender archetype befitting of her current sex, in which case, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Mika’s sexual shifts literally changed her brain.

Although frankly, that was beside the point. What worried me more was the softness of her shoulder against mine and the sweetness that had yet refused to abandon my nose...

“What’s wrong?”

I froze for a moment and Mika peered into my eyes. I told her not to worry about it—I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it, so she probably knew exactly what was wrong—and pulled out the letter from its container.

...Wow, that’s hard!

“Ugh,” Mika groaned, “court process palatial writing?”

The letter was written in an especially formal branch of palatial language known as court process. Letters fit for the Emperor were always written this way, combining delicate complexities with roundabout euphemisms to conjure up a style that was infamous for its difficulty.

“This is amazing,” she marveled. “Wow, whenever a letter shows up, it’s a perfect copy of all the other ones.”

“It really is something,” I agreed. “Wait, look. All the text is set so that every letter is an equal distance apart. This is gorgeous.”

The master scrivener lived up to his name. Gazing at Sir Feige’s masterpiece—it was no longer something I could deride as a mere letter—I could see why his transcriptions could be valued more highly than the originals they mimicked.

Yes, indeed, the lettering was breathtaking. The lettering was without flaw, but...

“Hey, old chum?”

“Stop, old pal. I know what you’re about to say, and no, I only know the very basics of court process writing.”

“Ah... Me too.”

We were a servant without noble tutelage and a fledgling College student. The letter was too difficult for us. If I weren’t already aware that complexity of grammar and speech was a sign of respect in high society, I would’ve thought this to be a mean-spirited prank.

To draw a comparison, this would be like taking an elementary schooler who’d just finished learning all their ABCs and handing them a handwritten Shakespearean manuscript. It was technically the same language and the same letters, but it felt as though I needed a degree just to decipher the first word.

What kind of writing system demands a skill check just to read?! 

If fluent literacy and equal skill in writing were prerequisite to nobility, I was fine spending my whole life as a commoner. This was going to split my brain in two.

“Uhh,” I mumbled, “Does this part refer to...wait, what?”

“Hmm... I have no idea what this figure of speech means. If I had to guess from context, I think it goes here?”

“No, hold on, Mika. If you shift that there, then the subject of this other sentence doesn’t make any sense.”

“Oh, shoot, you’re right. But in that case, we can take the part that precedes this section and...”

Mika and I bumped our heads together and tried all sorts of combinations to decode this secret cipher. By the time I realized it, the awkwardness I’d felt had given way to our usual sense of distance. I knew it, I thought. The time we’d spent as friends would not bend so easily.

After over an hour of churning our brains at full throttle, we’d managed to convert the wordy lines into something two kids from the boonies could comprehend. We’d only gotten through the first page, but were rewarded with nothing but a boring seasonal greeting, introduction, and a recounting of the events we’d lived through. Oh, come on! How many more pages are there?!

“Huh?”

“Oh? What’s this?”

Totally drained, we dejectedly turned to the next page and were greeted by standard Rhinian text. The simple message didn’t even bother with the palatial dialect, opting to trim all the needless fat, including an introduction, seeing as Sir Feige and I were already acquainted.

What followed were concerns about our health, reassurances that he would foot the bill, and an apology for not coming to visit on account of the need to travel to the local capital and report the incident to the lord in person.

At the very end, he had written this: “Hand the first page penned in court process to your masters as proof of your heroic deeds. I know it can be hard to understand, so I’ve included a version in common Rhinian for you and your friend to read. Make sure to remove that page before you deliver the message.”

Mika and I looked at each other. We looked back at the papers. We looked at each other again. After a few seconds, our eyes turned up to the ceiling and we shouted in unison.

“You should’ve put this one in front!”

[Tips] Court process palatial Rhinian employs the most convoluted grammatical and linguistic devices out of all the palatial subdialects. Unique to the Trialist Empire, it is more a literary phenomenon than a verbal one, and is most often used for imperial correspondence and archiving. 

Some linguistic anthropologists speculate that the mounting complexity of palatial language traces its origins to antiespionage tactics in the early Empire. An inexperienced speaker is prone to letting unfitting turns of phrase slip, making it easy to spot an outsider in high society. Even the most carefully camouflaged agents cannot learn the rules of etiquette in a day.

It took a good while cussing out court process writing for me and Mika to let off enough steam to calm down. I genuinely doubted whether a single person in the entire Empire stood to benefit from the existence of the craft; if imperial nobility had to jump through this many hoops just to send a letter, then maybe their titles were more punishment than privilege.

At any rate, we started sifting the palatial letters from the legible ones, and two small envelopes appeared from between the sheets. They’d been slotted into the larger one like a pair of matryoshkas.

“‘To the young and valiant swordsman?’” I read aloud.

“This one says, ‘To the bright aspiring magus,’” Mika said.

Hesitantly, we each took the one that best fit us—if I may interject, I’d been driven by sheer fear of death and valor was the last thing on my mind—and opened the seals. I pulled out the contents: a single strip of paper with some sort of stamp on it.

“The heck is this?” I asked.

I knew from its make that this couldn’t be a mere note or message. Sheepskin this thick was costly to produce, and it was only used for important documents that needed to stand up to long-term preservation.

“I think it’s a bill,” Mika said slowly. “I’ve seen papers like this running errands for my professors. Oh, and it says here that it’s issued by the merchants’ artisan union, so we won’t have to worry about being cheated.”

Ah, so it’s basically a check. Services for money-holders to entrust with liquid assets meant for a third party were about as old as capital itself. This slip of paper represented securities meant to be paid out, clarifying why the material used to create it was of such commendable quality. The recipients—i.e. us—simply needed to take this to the merchants’ union to trade it in for usable currency. Afterward, the union would handle the labor of collecting their dues from Sir Feige, either by visiting him in person or subtracting the amount in question from a balance of banked funds.

Imperial cash was almost always metal, making it a colossal pain to use in large-scale transactions. Coins were heavy, bulky, and became difficult to prove as one’s own the minute they were stolen. Real tender was reserved for personal use; papers representing tens of thousands of gold coins were indispensable in an age without guarantee of safety in transit. Even the Trialist Empire and all its zealous patrolmen couldn’t stamp out robbery on the roads, so the invention of checks was a no-brainer.

Basically, Sir Feige was giving us an allowance. What a splendid guy. The rich really are leagues above us.

“Let’s see, how much—” Huh? I saw a peculiar word on the paper. “Hey, old chum?”

“Give me a second, old pal. I’m busy wondering whether I should go ask the healer for eye drops.”

What a coincidence. I guess good friends are always on the same page.

Jokes aside, I seriously thought that the written value had to be a mistake. The text did not say assarii, nor did it say librae. No, if I wasn’t mistaken, this check paid out in drachmae.

Drachmae—gold coins! Drachmae were supreme among our nation’s currencies, and unlike the festival stall where I’d been duped in my childhood, this didn’t play with any “ten gold coins” shenanigans; no, the check unambiguously specified ten drachmae.

Yet the sum brought no excitement—only dread.

Take a moment to think about this: my family had been relatively well-off, and this was worth two full years of our income. This would be like handing an average white-collar worker forty to eighty thousand dollars.

I wasn’t going to complain about getting a bigger allowance, but anyone would freak out if they found a stack of bills sticking out of their New Year’s money. I knew old men were prone to spoiling children, but this was a bit much. I doubted I’d ever see a payday like this again, including in my future escapades as a professional adventurer. What, was I supposed to go slay a drake—no, a bona fide dragon—to make up the difference?

“Th-This is—this isn’t a dream, is it? I can buy—oh, I can buy a new notebook—no, a robe... I can send money back home too, and I can pay back my student loans, and, and—”

Being a poor student herself, the staggering number had slapped Mika upside the head she was cradling in a desperate attempt to contain her restlessness. Her head was cocked at a worrying angle, her neck twisting in time with the tangled strands of thought bouncing around her head.

“C-C-C-Calm down, Mika. L-Let’s, uh, let’s cool off and, er—we need to calm down and go ask for the correct numbers.” My effort to restore our composure was laughably rife with stutters, and the hand with the parchment in it went numb.

“M-Me? No, you calm down, Erich. Look, l-look! No one with h-handwriting this pretty would make, um, a mistake like that...right? Right?! I’m not crazy for getting excited, am I?!”

Mika’s panic was just as bad, and she desperately clung to me to confirm over my shoulder that we hadn’t misread anything. Had this been a comic book, our watery eyes would have surely been drawn as spinning whirlpools of disarray.

Call us pathetic if you will, but the two of us were working-class kids through and through. I was a servant that scraped by on pennies every day, and she was the sort of student to treat herself to a bath. How were we ever meant to keep our cool when the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars had fallen into our laps? The last time I’d seen a gold coin in the flesh had been that festival incident all those years ago, and the drachma Lady Agrippina had promised me for coming to Wustrow was meant to be broken up into living expenses and savings. But now I had ten of them?

My supposedly healed head began to spin. Who in their right mind would give this to someone that had just woken up from a six-day slumber? As happy as I was, disorientation won out; I couldn’t process my emotions quickly enough to keep up.

“Nope,” I said, “let’s go to sleep.”

“...Yeah, let’s take a nap.”

Mika and I decided to escape from cognizant reality before our brains overheated and killed us. I needed to be in a better headspace for this to sink in—the letters and all. Once I did, I’d stash one drachma for the future and pour everything else into Elisa’s tuition. Totally drained, both of us crawled into the bed we were sitting on and clocked out. Later, I would wake up and read through the letters on my own, only to nearly faint again.

Sir Feige had decided not to hand over the tome in question to my client. No, that would have been too easy. He’d decided to give the rights to the cursed book to me.

[Tips] The wealth disparity in these times is incomparably massive relative to that of modern Earth. Each of Feige’s transcriptions costs tens if not hundreds of drachmae; Agrippina’s yearly expenditure on leisure reading easily enters the triple digits; Leizniz has already squandered two hundred to clothe the siblings from Konigstuhl.

“Ah, it is good to see you well, my young swordsman.”

The iatrurge had given me permission to get up for some light exercise by the time Sir Feige came to visit us, and he’d brought a gift wrapped in cloth and the early cold of a northern winter. Three days prior he’d sent us forewarning of his arrival as aristocrats are wont to do; the theatrics of slipping a dried, magical leaf in through a closed window to herald his arrival was a clear vestige of his time winning bread in the harsh markets of the imperial capital.

“What an honor it is to have you, Sir Feige,” I said, kneeling down and bowing my head. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance once more, and offer my sincerest thanks for your magnanimous hospitality.”

We commoners had an ordained process for welcoming a visit from a member of the upper crust. Mika and I had both lived in the capital long enough to know that these rules were absolute, even if we knew the noble in question was laid-back enough to forgive casual conversation. Until he went through the hoops of explicitly allowing us to ease up, we had to stay sharp.

“Now, now, no need to be so formal.” With a benevolent wave of his hand, the treant beckoned us to rise. “Honorifics are little more than ornaments in this region anyhow. More importantly, would you introduce me to this charming mage by your side?”

Surprisingly enough, Sir Feige was dressed to the nines. His dark navy doublet and leggings went well with his barky skin and the silvery accent of his foliage. While the design was careful to emphasize the man’s casual demeanor, it retained the traditional elements of attire Rhinian aristocrats so highly prized—fashionistas notwithstanding. In fact, his family crest was even sewn onto his overcoat, making his attire fit for a meeting with fellow nobles.

This was clearly overkill for a visit with two lowborn children, making the weight of his respect all the heavier on my shoulders. I could barely keep myself from shrinking away.

“This is my dear friend,” I said. “She’s the mage I spoke of when I first reported to you.”

“It is an honor to meet you, Sir Feige,” Mika followed. “I am Mika, a student of the Imperial College of Magic, School of First Light. I offer you my deepest gratitudes for your considerate care in nursing my dear friend and me to good health. I swear to one day repay this debt to you.”

“Please,” Sir Feige said, “don’t be so stiff, my little heroes. I too was once a lay sapling, and am no more than a single branch of an old tree. Come, let’s sit. I’ve brought you pastries from a baker in the city.”

At his invitation, I led him to the tea table and pulled out a chair. Whether lady or gentleman, the person of lower standing was always expected to do so for those above them.

The furniture belonged to the doctor, who’d readied everything upon receiving word of Sir Feige’s arrival. Grand enough to suit a magus’s tastes, it was horribly out of place next to the sickbeds; still, it paired well with the treant’s dignified appearance. As I showed the gentleman to his seat, Mika brought over the teapot she’d prepared in advance. In another display of wealth, we’d been given a set of ivory-white porcelain to entertain our guest. Lady Agrippina’s china was more than a few cuts above this, but even so, the teaware was well out of our price range.

I’d found it curious that a magus skilled enough to master iatrurgy would live out on the brink of nowhere, but I felt like I knew why now. The hospital itself was stately yet simple, and it was evident that Sir Feige appreciated the doctor’s choices in decor. Much like the master scrivener, the doctor must have grown sick of Berylin and washed up here.

After taking our seats, we partook in a relaxing tea break. Mika had brewed the red tea perfectly, and it seemed Sir Feige was fond of whatever root she’d used. With how dry the early months of winter get, the old treant was perennially keen to rehydrate.

We unpackaged the pastries he’d brought us, and these were equally delectable. Not too sweet, the snacks drew out the tea’s aromatic flavor with a delicate touch of molasses and just enough chew to satisfy the jaw.

Our conversation went from introductions to personal history to old memories—all fun topics to share. Alas, the peaceful atmosphere lasted only until we finished talking about the joys and struggles of working in Berylin.

“I see,” Sir Feige said. “With all that experience, it’s hardly any wonder how you two managed such an impressive feat. Indeed, you’re more than worthy of my trust with this.”

Satisfied with our qualifications, he reached into his inner pocket and produced a wooden box. It was clearly too large to fit in his doublet: more specifically, it was just big enough to perfectly enclose that infernal tome he’d shown me in his office.

“Urp,” I grunted, the memories flooding back to my mind.

“What in the world?” Mika’s eyes went wide as she stared at the intricate patterns of sealing text etched into the wood.

These engravings were no mere embellishments; rather, the chaotic array of intersecting lines was the furthest thing from the aesthetic symmetry that dominated imperial taste. Too misshapen to be magic and too blasphemous to be the work of gods, the repulsive design could only be a lock meant to contain something even more hideous. Only from a distance could I see that the lawless strokes actually arranged into a congeries of bubbles.

“I present to you the reward for your labors: the Compendium of Forgotten Divine Rites.”

“Thank—” I swallowed back the lump in my throat as I took the box. “Thank you very much.”

The corrupted tome’s presence was overwhelming, despite its seal. I didn’t have any difficulty imagining what horrors would await me if I tried to hold it with my bare hands.

“The book has been fastened with four layers of divine protection, eight layers of magic, and a physical lock. Fear not, little one. That case will not open by mere accident; you can leave it unattended in an unused drawer until the end of the universe, if you so choose.”

Frankly, I was beginning to get the feeling that doing so would be for the best: I wanted to bury the thing so deep underground that no one would ever be able to reach it again. I hadn’t thought about it much when receiving my orders, but what the hell did the madam want this paper brick of pure evil for? I’d known she was a voracious and indiscriminate reader from the lists of texts she had me fetch from her bookshelves and the College library, but I couldn’t fathom why she’d want to read this.

“I pray that your master will make use of their good sense when dealing with this,” Sir Feige said. “For safe measure, I suggest you carry the case and key separately.”

“...We shall heed your prudent advice. Mika, will you hang on to this?”

As I picked up the weighty brass, a sudden thought bubbled up in my mind: why not push it into the lock? I knew the key itself was free of any curse, so this had to be the same appel du vide that had implored me to read the thing during my first encounter.

Mika swallowed her breath. After looking back and forth between me and the box, she finally mustered up enough courage to stick out her hand with a nod. I dropped the key into her palm, and her trembling fingers squeezed tight on the metal. She quickly stashed it in her inner pocket to dispel the lingering gloom.

For my part, I picked up the box and thrust it deep into the knapsack laying by my bed. I dug out everything I’d packed, including the extra clothes I had yet to touch, just to bury the tome at the very bottom. I swore not to let my hand wander in until I was all the way home.

“Hrm,” Sir Feige groaned. “I’m sorry to have soured our pleasant chat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just leave this matter unsettled.”

“It had to happen eventually,” I said. “There’s no need for undue consideration, sir.”

With the manifestation of villainy out of sight, my woozy mind finally regained its edge. Now that I knew how unbearable it could be when locked up, I was even more grateful that I’d been spared the fate of hauling it around raw.

“But what was that thing?” Mika asked, clutching the key in her pocket. “What is a forgotten god?”

Although she spoke more to herself than to Sir Feige, I had been too scared to do even that when I’d first seen the tome.

The old treant grunted and stroked his chin. The white leaves of his beard were like morning fog made solid, and his twinkling scarab eyes shone through the haze; he was trying to assess how much he could tell us.

“Divine strength comes from faith,” he began. “The gods’ might is born from the love of lesser life-forms. However, there is no guarantee that their power will tread a righteous path.”

“Do you mean the difference between good and evil gods?” I asked.

“No, little one, those are mere rifts in doctrine or personal values. How should I put this? Goodwill is not always welcome in our world, you see. For example...”

Sir Feige began to speak of an ancient deity in a land far to our east. It no longer had any followers, but in its heyday had spread its name with the dogma that “death is freedom.” The god had declared this ephemeral realm to be devoid of respite; the suffering of mortals was so prevalent because that was all their world contained. I could see the argument. Maitreya, the future Buddha that had brought me to this world—at least, as far as I could gather—and his predecessor Gautama had come to the same conclusion in the Heart Sutra.

The principle that knowledge of the suffering that fleeting reality entailed was prerequisite to understanding the weight of emancipation from it grasped at the fundamental roots of Buddhism; yet for whatever reason, the god Sir Feige spoke of had decided to declare suicide and homicide the highest forms of charity, teaching its followers that killing was the purest goodwill.

Neighboring pantheons denounced the blasphemous deity and eliminated it and its faithful alike. Nowadays, it was just another villain in the long annals of history, with but a handful of scriptures to its name.

“Countless atrocities arise from good intentions,” Sir Feige said. “Even in the Empire, we have lords who implement disastrous reforms, cantons that crumble due to misplaced kindness, and towns that go up in flames when well-meaning actions go south... The list goes on.”

Similarly, he explained that while many a god had been brought to heel on account of the consequences of their misguided altruism, none had ever lost their names.

“Whether their intentions be good or ill, gods are only forgotten when their existence itself is considered a scourge on this planet. To be, to be known, and to be spoken of are their greatest sins; they are so supremely heretical that the heavens let mere mortals engage in the insolence of god-slaying. You’d be better off not thinking about them too deeply.”

“Just knowing about them can bring us harm?”

“That’s right. Some forgotten gods will curse your soul forever if you so much as utter their name, and others will begin their schemes as soon as your mind acknowledges them. Thus, we bury them along with their monikers, forever entombed in a land without remembrance. The manuscript I worked off of was a copy of a copy of the original, each filtered through the barriers of language, and I still could have been in danger had I not been a treant.”

Holy crap. The tome was a nested translation four generations deep, and it still gave off concentrated ill omen. Sir Feige had to be truly outstanding to have powered through his work in conditions like that.

“Hrm... I’ve spoiled the mood again with my tiresome chatter. Come now, let’s move on to something else.” The treant downed his remaining tea and cut through the heavy silence with a loud clap, putting on his biggest smile. In place of forgotten gods, he asked us to tell him a tale: “What exactly went on in the ichor maze?”

Of course, I’d given him a general rundown of the events upon returning to Wustrow, but I’d skipped most of the details in order to speed along the process of finding an iatrurge. What he was asking for now was a proper retelling.

I glanced at Mika. She was staring at me as if to ask for permission to speak...so I caved and nodded. Refusing an aristocrat’s request was a difficult proposition, and we didn’t really have anything to hide.

Now, I know this isn’t something to state with such certainty, but I verifiably lack literary talent. I studied palatial writing under Lady Agrippina as part of my duties, and her great acclaim of my skills had come in the form of doubting whether I’d ever be able to break into high society.

The incomprehensible practice of littering letters with poetry—okay, maybe I could come to terms with the letters, but I refused to acknowledge their need in official records—had quickly exposed my wanting abilities. Honestly, I couldn’t bring myself to waste my experience points on such things, so I’d readily accepted that I simply wasn’t suited to storytelling.

Naturally, I’d need to bite the bullet if I wanted to become a diplomat or magus, but as an adventurer-hopeful I had no need for linguistic mastery.

However, the same could not be said of Mika: she’d landed at the College gates with the lofty dream of bettering her homeland as a full-fledged magus, and had diligently studied all the accessory fields on the road to professorship. When we tossed lyrical lines back and forth, mine were always quotes from sagas that had stuck with me; in contrast, she was creative enough to sometimes ad-lib new material.

So listening to her passionately depict our adventure with more fervor than any minstrel left me staring blankly into the distance, thinking, Wowee, this Erich fellow sure is something. It was just that, well, her narration was so laden with splendiferous rhetoric that I couldn’t help but wonder what alien species she’d seen to come up with such magnificence.

Hearing her say my “twinkling eyes put the glimmering veil of the night sky to shame,” or that my “sweet golden locks were the envy of the Harvest Goddess Herself,” didn’t even give me time to blush; I skipped straight to tapping her shoulder to calm her down.

By far the worst aspect of her oration was that it managed to light a fire in Sir Feige’s soul. He’d whipped out a notepad and had begun writing down everything.

I was intensely curious about his handwriting now that I could see it in person: although the inky letters only gave off a faint trace of mana, whatever spells or cantrips he used were efficiency epitomized when it came to turning a mad scribble into a perfectly typeset font. Alas, I couldn’t focus on his technique with Mika going on about this strange hero, whom I found equal parts familiar and exotic.

Every now and again, I interrupted her romanticized account to clarify that my intentions hadn’t been so grand, but each time, she simply stated, “Don’t be so humble,” and went on without skipping a beat. Sir Feige and his note-taking were much the same.

“Incredible,” the treant said. “What a fine story. I’d wished to have this tale packaged into a proper song when the little swordsman first told it to me, but that desire now burns stronger than ever. Would you two mind if I asked a friend of mine to put your exploits to meter?”

“W-Wait!” I shouted. “Please, reconsi—”

“Really?!” Mika exclaimed. “Are you listening, Erich?! We’re going to have a poem! We’ll be part of a real saga!”

My friend grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me with more zeal and vigor than I’d ever seen her display. Her cheeks were rosy from excitement and she panted with every breath; had the circumstances been any different, I would have mistaken her for a cat in heat.

“Stop!” I pleaded. “Calm down, Mika! I’m not as cool as you make me out to be! No one wants to hear about a pair of heroes dragging themselves home with blood, sweat, and indescribables dribbling from every pore!”

“Don’t be stupid, old pal!” Mika retorted. “That’s exactly what makes our story good!”

“That’s right, little one,” Sir Feige chimed in. “I may love the heroic epics wherein a conundrum knottier than a seaman’s hitch is cleared with the faint flick of a sword, but those that end with the protagonist exhausting all their strength to rip victory from the jaws of defeat are just as splendid. Fret not about the money; I’ll be sure to give you your share.”

“No, that’s not what I meant!”

Please, old chum, have mercy. Not only had Mika heavily dramatized our feats, but she was also apparently wearing a thick pair of rose-tinted glasses when looking at me.

Ours had not been such an impressive victory. We’d been on the brink of defeat, and awoke covered in dust, mud, and the blood seeping from our countless wounds. We’d summoned up the dregs of our mana, shamelessly clinging to any and every means to extend our fleeting lives. If nothing else, the tale was unfit to be immortalized by a poet that spoke to Sir Feige’s tastes for rhapsodic heroism.

It easily took me over two hours to curb the nobleman’s mischief and straighten out the loose screws in my friend’s brain. While I wouldn’t deny that this made for a great change of pace after losing my sanity to the damned tome, I didn’t appreciate the mental fatigue that came with this public humiliation.

In the end, I managed to convince Sir Feige not to publish the saga, but he remained adamant on having it written for personal use. He said he knew of the perfect poet, one whom he regularly patronized, but I really, really did not appreciate it.

He also said he’d send us each a copy whenever the saga was completed, but I knew by this point that I’d seal it away somewhere without so much as opening the cover. This wasn’t just for my soundness of mind: can you imagine what would happen if Lady Agrippina were to see it? Just thinking about it made me shudder.

As the tea party came to a close, I was left wondering whether the accursed book or my company had caused me more grief for the day.

[Tips] Divine seals are a form of containment that rely on heavenly miracles to produce. Though they come with several restrictions, once met, the seals rob their mark of power and weaken its influence on its surroundings.

The cold night nipped at my skin. I’ll need to start stuffing my clothes with cotton, I thought.

A few days had passed since Sir Feige’s appointment. This morning, the iatrurge had given me the all clear for more strenuous activity, so I’d made sure my traveling buddy was asleep and sneaked out after dark.

The hospital was one of the finest buildings in Wustrow, with a large fence enveloping both it and the doctor’s residence-slash-office across the yard.

All sorts of herbs grew in the open garden, and there was even a greenhouse in the corner to sustain less cooperative plants. The lot was of respectable size, making it the perfect place to get my body moving.

“All right...”

I held Schutzwolfe’s sheath in my left hand and placed my right on her handle. Everything but the blade itself had been tailor-made for me, and the way my fingers sank into the grip was always euphoric—especially now that I had forgone physical activity for so long.

I whipped my arms forward and stretched my hips to unsheathe her in one fell swoop.

Although European blades were not as known as their Japanese counterparts were for striking from a sheathed position, it would be wrong to assume such tactics were impossible. By maneuvering the upper and lower halves in sync instead of relying on one’s hands alone, a sword could rapidly be freed from its shackles.

My surging blade sliced through the night air with a whistle. A flurry of sideways strikes followed, and as I warmed up, I twirled Schutzwolfe into a backhanded stance to bring her down from above.

Every limb, every digit, was one. The movement of one muscle rippled through joints to affect all its peers, and congruent harmony created a system more than the sum of its parts.

I kicked off the soil, landing in a way to send the force of impact to my chest. With a turn of my shoulder and a delicate flick of my wrists, I slashed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, both up and down. Every attack cut through the imaginary shadows of necks, armpits, and wrists exposed through cracks in armor.

“Urgh...”

Yet my form was far from satisfactory. My breathing fell into disarray within a hundred swings, and my arms and thighs felt heavy. With every strike, the splitting sound of the air grew louder to inform me of my wasted movements. Allowing the edge of my blade to tilt by even the slightest degree increased drag and displaced more and more air. An impeccable attack—one worthy of being dubbed critical—compelled the atmosphere to stay silent. Yet my unsightly movements were a far cry from cutting down the formless air around me.

I had rusted in every way: my flesh, my bones, and most importantly, my senses.

Taking weeks to rest was far too much to allow me to retain my desired level of skill. I hadn’t decayed to the point of frailty, but I knew that if my past self were to appear before me, I wouldn’t last more than five exchanges before losing my head. The question now was how long it would take to regain what I’d lost.

Come to think of it, I’d seen an interesting trait a while back when I’d been pondering my build. Quick Healer shortened the total time needed to make a full recovery, and there were a few others that made it harder to lose muscle memory once attained.

Up until now, I’d been tunneling on jacking up my maximum damage throughput, but maybe it was time to start taking long-term traits and skills that would help me over the course of a campaign. The future Buddha’s blessing allowed me to build myself up like a tabletop character, but did nothing to shape the world into that of a TRPG; I couldn’t expect a full heal to fall into my hands at the end of every session.

Cliched as it is to say, he who has no health has nothing. I couldn’t deny that taking care of my body was one of my most important tasks as an adventurer. In fact, killing this much time whenever I got injured was sure to cut into my ability to do what I needed to do.

“Ugh, augh... Blegh... Ahh...”

As soon as I eased up, the terrible cramps in my wrists, knees, and all the other joints I had abused wielding a sword set in. I panted more than ever before, and my whole mouth tasted like iron.

I was embarrassingly sluggish. I’d need to draft up a proper schedule to get myself back on track. I pulled over my waterskin with an Unseen Hand and took a long gulp. With a sad sigh, I returned Schutzwolfe to her sheath; I was definitely going to be sore in the morning. Still, I had more to do: I hadn’t chosen to come out at nighttime on a whim. With the doctor’s approval out of the way, I could have easily done this when the sun was up. Mika wasn’t the overprotective type, anyway.

But I couldn’t exactly test this in broad daylight.

“Come.”

I imbued my voice with will and a sword instantly appeared in my outstretched hand. Reality neither warped nor tore; the sword simply materialized between my fingers like it had always been there.

Howling cheers assaulted my mind. The unpalatable brainquakes were packed with its ecstasy at the thought of being swung. I’d figured that it was best to test the sword, seeing how I couldn’t rid myself of it and all. But I wasn’t just testing how it measured up as a weapon; I needed to see how much of a threat it posed.

Darker than the lightless night, its blade gleamed under the moon. Near the hilt, the engravings blinked on and off with a haunting glow. Although it was monstrously large in my childlike hands, it wasn’t too heavy to wield. Despite its age, the handle was absolutely perfect—irritatingly, even more so than Schutzwolfe’s, which had been specifically made for me. The center of mass was perfectly placed. I wouldn’t grow tired using this sword for hours at a time, yet it still allocated enough weight near the tip that the sharpest part of its edge had significant heft.

I swung it around a few times and could tell that my base mastery in Hybrid Sword Arts without any two-handed-weapon add-ons was enough to create a devastating attack. Even with my tattered arms, I could command it with enough force to split the cold night with no more than a faint whistle.

The sword was magnificent...but oddly enough, that was it.

This was undeniably a mystic blade, and not of the Excalibur or Durandal varieties. No hero would carry an arm of this make; it was the sort of weapon you’d find in the hands of a cursed prince or stumble upon in the family feuds of the Poetic Edda.

Yet holding it now, I felt nothing. It was simply an impeccable sword, and while I found its mind-grating screams tiresome, there was nothing more to it.

It did not urge me to harvest blood and souls for my dark lord, nor did it magically improve my swordsmanship. I didn’t have any problems letting go after taking it into hand either.

“I can’t believe it’s actually safe...”

I was not a blithering enough idiot to pick up an obviously evil nightmare without any thought. I’d made sure to consult Ursula beforehand, since she seemed to understand the thing to some degree. When I’d asked her about the dangers, she’d replied that the sword would be content if I loved it as a sword, and swore that its only quirk was its chatty nature.

I’d remained skeptical. Can you blame me? Sure, it looked cool, but its aesthetic appeal was not that of a shining white knight; it paired better with an unholy villain in full black armor, trimmed with bloody red to boot. One testimony from a friendly alf wasn’t quite enough to assure me.

After finishing my trial run, I wiped the sweat from my brow and stuck the Craving Blade in the ground, only to be met with pleading. It felt like a dog begging to turn off the path home in order to extend its walk. But when I placed my hand on the pommel and expressed my exhaustion, it sent me one last disappointed thought before giving way to silence.

...Huh. I guess it’s willing to listen to me.

Quenching my thirst, I looked up at the moon. I would have to think about my relationship with this thing on my way home. Naturally, I planned to reserve judgment until I could ask the madam for her opinion in Berylin...but even so, the Craving Blade was my reward for this little adventure.

[Tips] Cursed mystic blades are more than tall tales—they exist, and the College keeps several corrupted specimens locked away in the depths of its great library.

Having been born in the temperate lands of South Rhine, the swift and frigid approach of the northern winter was merciless beyond belief.

“It’s already snowing...”

When Mika and I had finished our preparations to return to Berylin, we looked much bulkier from all the stuffing in our clothes. We had busted out the winter gear we’d packed just in case our stay in Wustrow dragged on, and the extra padding was a token of Sir Feige’s compassion. Judging from how fluffy it was, the cotton he’d given us was a high-quality import from the east. Thanks to his present, we managed to avoid spreading what we had on hand too thinly.

“We never even used cotton this nice back home,” Mika said.

“What? You guys use cotton in the north?”

I looked over in surprise. The extra layers rounded out her silhouette, heightening her childish cuteness, but her eyes were anything but: she was glaring at me like I was some sort of moron.

“We might be used to putting up with the cold, but we’re still humanfolk. The werewolves and selchies still barely wear anything in the wintertime, but regular mensch and tivisco have to bundle up. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of what we earn goes into heating our homes.”

“Oh... I didn’t know. I’ve just heard that joke about how ‘it’ll be a cold year when the northerners put on sleeved shirts’ and all.”

“That’s an exaggerated stereotype.” It was rare for her to find a joke so unamusing. She puffed her nose and finished packing the last of our souvenirs and foodstuffs onto Castor’s back.

Speaking of which, Castor and Polydeukes were dressed just as nicely as we were. Again, the blankets keeping them warm were a gift from Sir Feige, seeing as the medical treatment had been the cause for our delayed departure.

Horses are truly a hardy lot. Despite originating in warm climates, workhorses held strong in the snowy farmlands of the north. The stalwart creatures could push through snow even when the temperature was below freezing, and those not born in polar regions could grow accustomed to the cold over time.

However, while they remained lively on days where we mensch would freeze, the cold impacted their caloric efficiency. Their resistance to the elements apparently stemmed from the heat they produced in their intestines while digesting—I’d been blindsided by the awfully modern science behind this knowledge—so they required more and more food as the temperature dropped.

Thus, Sir Feige had granted the Dioscuri these quilts, so that we wouldn’t be totally hopeless on the off chance we failed to find an inn.

The “little adventure” he’d sent us on may have turned out to be an unliving nightmare, but I almost felt guilty for how well he’d accommodated us. I made a mental note to write a proper thank-you letter as soon as I returned home.

“All right,” I said. “We’ve made a lot of memories here, but I think it’s time to go.”

“Yup,” Mika said. “The clouds look like light, powdery snow, but who knows what’ll happen tomorrow? I doubt the roads will get blocked off, but we’d better hurry back south.”

Spoken like a true northerner. Mika felt something that I didn’t as she stared up at the gray skies. Maybe those eyes were looking somewhere else—somewhere far north of Wustrow.

I, too, wanted to visit her homeland one day. Living at the Imperial College made it difficult to leave the capital. Without trains or cars, long-distance travel took heaps of money and time. She would likely never get a chance to return home until she achieved the grand ambitions that had led her to Berylin to begin with.

My situation was not far from hers...but I had Elisa. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been to leave home at such a young age to live in a faraway land with foreign etiquette and foreign foods, all without a single person by her side.

“...You don’t have to worry about me, Erich.”

“Huh?”

“How long do you think we’ve been together? I can guess what you’re thinking from the look on your face.”

Mika put her foot on Castor’s stirrup and nimbly leapt on; the clumsiness she’d shown months ago was nowhere to be found. She pulled down her scarf and flashed me a sunny smile.

“I miss my hometown a lot—so much that I want to head there this very instant.” She offered me her hand and continued, “But I’ll be fine. I have a friend now, don’t I?”

“...Yeah. You’re right. Let’s go home, old chum.”

“Let’s, old pal.”

I voiced my concerns that riding double from the outset might tire out Castor, but Mika’s hand remained outstretched. Unable to outlast her enthusiasm, I took it and climbed on behind her.

“I’ll lead for once. I can’t cling to your back forever, can I?”

Mika’s smile was beaming with pride, so I silently put my hands around her waist. The sensation in my hands was different from the countless rides we’d shared in the past: softer and rounder, her body was markedly more feminine. Yet even so, my heart was almost comically calm.

Mika is here. My friend may look different on the outside, but nothing has changed at all. That thought alone was a comfort like no other.

Our steed’s hooves advanced down the road with the characteristic clopping of horseback travel. Once the layered drone of footsteps began, it refused to cease; more and more, the scenery behind us disappeared with every passing second.

In that moment, I had an epiphany: this must be the meaning of adventure.

And with this realization came another: no matter how ordinary my life in the capital had become, the dream branded onto my soul would never fade. Surely I would set out, time and time again, to see this scenery just one more time. I would chase this indescribable melancholy and fulfillment that awaited after a job well done.

“Hey, Mika?”

“What’s up, old pal?”

“I know this was a rough trip...but will you come with me again?”

She didn’t turn back, but pretended to think with a loud “Hrm” to tease me.

Don’t be so mean. I tightened my hold around her waist and put my chin on her shoulder, causing her to let out a ticklish laugh.

“Fine, fine. I’ll stay by your side for as long as you want. But put a few years between the crazy trips like these, okay?”

Sorry, old chum. I don’t think I can promise that.

I knew my luck: I was absolutely certain that another bad streak of dice rolls would land me in another disaster at some point. The best I could do for her was pray that our path home would be free of ancient dragons.

[Tips] The Empire is so large that its northernmost point and southernmost point share similar climates.