Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 5 - Chapter 2

Early Summer of the Thirteenth Year

Reputation/Stature

Some systems include values to track reputation earned for various great deeds. These can be used for anything from upgrading a well-worn weapon in certain contexts, to giving it a cool name, or something more useful like acquiring a noble rank or citizenship of a city.

Spring bade us farewell and the pleasant aridity of summer came to greet the capital; by this point, the uproar that had once enveloped the city had vanished without a trace. After dominating the rumors around town and then suddenly appearing in the sky, the aeroship had departed, soaring low enough to nearly scrape the towers littering the skyline to make sure we could all get a good look—but now the excitement had faded, leaving only the usual hubbub of Berylin in its wake.

High society saw a great deal of envoys and diplomats rush out of the country to report what they’d seen to their motherlands, throwing everyone’s schedules into disarray. The impact of the vessel’s impression had been greater than estimated, and the crown began pumping in even more funding; as a result, ministries and cadres of every kind were fighting to get their cut.

But none of this had anything to do with us common folk. Sure, we were experiencing some aftereffects: timber traders had begun to hoard their wood in hopes that the Empire would buy it for its next aeroship, driving up the price of firewood, and overzealous entrepreneurs had brought in so many new workers without vetting that the streets were lined with more people of disreputable character than usual. But for now, we were back to peaceful days.

Back home, my family and friends had finished planting their fields. I lazily walked the afternoon streets, imagining the fun they were having, enjoying a nice steam bath and jumping into the cool stream to wash away their sweat.

Make no mistake, though: I wasn’t out on a walk for leisure. Having secured her slothful days filled with nothing but books once more, my employer had suddenly sent me to fetch her some lemonade.

This wasn’t exactly a common occurrence, but it happened every now and again. When Lady Agrippina came across a written description that tickled her sense of hunger or thirst, I was the one that had to go out and find whatever it was that she’d read about. While I understood that this was a privilege held by those who could relegate food and drink to the realm of hobby, being made to run around at her whim was nothing short of a nuisance.

That said, today’s request was something I could get my hands on without leaving the city, so it wasn’t that bad. There was a world of difference between picking up a tome that required a mental saving throw just to look at and fetching some honey and lemons, after all. Besides, the madam had explicitly asked for a cheap lemonade—I suspected she was reading something featuring a lowborn protagonist—making this an extra easy endeavor.

Both honey and lemons could be found at the local market. The former was a tad daunting for a regular person to purchase, but it was commonly used for various dishes and therefore was sold everywhere. Mead was second only to wine in the imperial drink repertoire; beekeepers could be found in every corner of the Empire.

Had I been tasked with finding tree sap extracted only from the finest shrubbery to sweeten the madam’s drink, I would’ve needed to knock on the door of an esteemed merchant; if she’d demanded the sourest lemons carefully grown by the southern seas, this would’ve been a herculean task. I was nothing if not thankful that she was happy with the plebeian stuff harvested from who-knows-where—if only every errand she sent me on could be this simple.

I bought up the necessary ingredients, stopped by an ice-candy shop for Elisa on the way—our master had given me a silver piece and told me to keep the change, so my purse was nice and heavy—and made my way back to the main road to go home. But when I stepped out of the smaller street, I noticed that there was a sizable crowd clogging the passage.

“Neeews! Get your news heeere! Big announcement from the national assembly! Forty assarii a pop! Hey, you there! Don’t pass it around—everyone buys their own!”

The mob was gathered around a newspaper salesman. He was a small jenkin...guy? Wow, was I awful at guessing age when it came to beastly demihumans. Whether he was a boy or man, I could tell from his clothes that he was at least male; anyway, he was shuffling through the crowd to hurriedly dole out his papers.

“Whoa, wait. Seriously? But he looked fine during the parade.”

“Who knows what’ll happen next? This’ll put the whole country right back into a frenzy!”

“It’s one thing after another... We just got over the aeroship too. Man, I feel bad for all the poor ambassadors trying to report this stuff back home.”

“Hey, maybe stirring up confusion abroad is the whole plan. Can’t count anything out with the Bloodless Emperor.”

Scanning the pack of people discussing the news, I saw more confusion than gravity in their expressions; whatever was written must have been incredibly surprising. I was a bit curious, and I still had some change to spare. Maybe buying a newspaper every now and then wasn’t so bad.

The last time I’d read through one had been a lifetime ago. Back then, my involvement at a trading firm had led me to keep up with the four major national publications; though I’d only read those out of obligation, perhaps I might be able to derive some entertainment from the news now that I could lie back and take it in at my own pace.

“Excuse me!” I said. “Give me one copy, mister!”

“Sure thing! Forty assarii—and no change!”

I handed him exactly forty assarii and took the paper in hand. While it was nigh unthinkable to refuse to give change on Earth, most merchants here didn’t carry enough small coinage to guarantee that they could break up their customers’ payments.

“Let’s see what this is all about...” This hadn’t been cheap, so I was going to be upset if the big scoop was unimpressive. But the sheer size of the headline’s typeface proved enough to shock me. “Huh? Abdication?”

The salesman’s pitch had been no exaggeration. The Emperor was going to step down from the throne for health-related reasons, even though his term had yet to end; in his place, Martin I of the Erstreich Duchy was to ascend. The national assembly had also announced that the seven electorate houses had unanimously agreed to see the decision through.

Authority in the Trialist Empire of Rhine may have ultimately rested with the Emperor, but the checks held by a small number of voters meant the monarchy was less absolute and more constitutional. Having the Emperor give up his seat in the middle of a term was plenty plausible: a noteworthy political gaffe or hidden scandal on the verge of coming to light had caused several rulers to relinquish their hold on the Empire for “health-related reasons,” as written here.

For example, seven emperors ago, Remus II the Lenient had tarnished the Baden name by letting several historical satellites and allies escape imperial orbit. Mocked in hushed whispers as the Flippant Emperor, he eventually retreated into the shadows to treat his sickness and handed the reins to the Emperor of Restoration, German I of House Graufrock. For those who had been our one and only Emperor, such tactics were the state’s way of protecting their legacy, even if only in name.

However, this didn’t seem like a fall from grace.

August IV, the Dragon Rider, was a national hero famed for breaking through the feudal lords who’d blockaded the Eastern Passage. A stern leader in matters of war and state, he was highly regarded by all. I hadn’t heard of any recent scandals either. Bastard children and spats with their successors were par for the course in the upper crust, but no such rumors arose; none of his diplomatic mistakes had even been notable enough to circulate around town.

In fact, I would say he was one of the most popular emperors to date. Most country nobodies living in rural cantons would be hard-pressed to recall the name of their local lord, let alone the Emperor. Yet almost everyone knew of the Dragon Rider. While the Second Eastern Conquest had all but finished by the time I’d first come to my senses, those older than me could remember how all sorts of stories came flooding back from the front lines.

But most importantly of all, soldiers had been levied to fight from practically every canton. His Majesty had led the dragon knights to strike at the perfect moment, turning the tides of battle and grasping victory with his mastery of strategy; those who owed their safe return home to the Emperor were sure to extol his virtues. Plus, a victory abroad came with abundant booty, and those who fought had been amply rewarded.

The current Emperor’s achievements listed in the paper were as impressive as one might expect. He’d taken the drakes available to him and bred those with the most docile temperaments, giving rise to a new breed that was obedient enough to be used even for nonmilitary purposes. Furthermore, he’d overturned the entirety of the outdated dragon knight doctrine and expanded their scope to dominate the skies; the air superiority afforded by his reforms led to easier victories when it came to battles of counterspells. Not only that, but he established drake stables across the country and coordinated their maintenance by local lords, creating a system that could deploy a dragon knight unit to any location in the Empire in mere days.

Looking at his long list of military accomplishments, one might be tempted to assume he’d come from House Graufrock. But that wasn’t to say he left softer matters out to dry: he had a strong record of servicing canals and elongating trade routes to strengthen internal trade. Abroad, he’d won over a handful of satellites to the west, and after showing his military prowess, he’d marched to the small federation near the inland sea to the south—though admittedly, they were imperial vassals in all but name—to negotiate tariff rates that undercut those given to their official most favored nations.

The Emperor had displayed his proficiency as both a general and a statesman. He’d had the support of the politicians working under him, of course, but it took brains to select which issues to tackle when they came to his desk; he was undoubtedly a genius. While I still had my suspicions about the Emperor of Creation being a kindred spirit, perhaps the Baden bloodline was simply prone to producing all-rounders.

But you know, all these exploits painted a larger-than-life figure. If technological revolution one day brought this world’s entertainment up to par with what I’d seen on Earth, he was almost guaranteed to be genderbent in a gacha game. A stern yet beautiful general saddled atop a dragon... What a sight.

My insolent depiction of the sitting Emperor was followed by an unfounded worry for the poor gamers having their wallets sapped dry centuries from now as I entered the atelier. Independent Processing was enough to keep my legs moving while I read, so I wasn’t going to run late just because something had caught my eye.

Not that I could concentrate on several unrelated trains of thought like Lady Agrippina, of course. I’d tried once, but it felt disgusting. Imagine having your brain run by a council composed entirely of yourselves that sometimes contradicted one another; those one-man arguments had thrown me for such a loop that I’d nearly hurled. It had been the peak of abnegation, like I was subjecting myself to a cultic session of psychological torture. Knowing that it couldn’t be good for my mental health, I’d given up instantly—it was hardly any different from looking in the mirror and asking, “Who are you?”

Honestly, it was a wonder that methuselah could bear living this way naturally. I supposed that was what made them a superior species, but it also seemed like the reason why so many of them were so deranged.

“I’ve returned, madam...ugh.”

“Ah, welcome back. An errand well done.”

“May I ask where your clothes have gone?”

As I stepped off the elevator with the groceries in hand, I found my master loitering around in an unpresentable state again. Having finished her morning lecture, it seemed she’d partaken in a midday bath; her stark-naked frame was still dripping wet, and her hair especially was tracking water everywhere she walked.

“I wanted to savor a chilled cup of lemonade directly after rising from the tub. What point would there be if I didn’t bathe first?”

Casual as ever, she was doing the equivalent of stepping out to the convenience store to look for something that had appeared in a movie. While I understood where she was coming from, being sent on shopping trips like these was seriously disheartening. I wished she’d keep it to a minimum.

That wasn’t my only gripe: I had hit puberty, and here she was flaunting a body that put the magna opera of the finest sculptors to shame, complete with her own set of golden ratios. Yet it didn’t have any effect on me—I was genuinely beginning to worry about my own condition.

My sense of beauty felt like it had been thrown completely out of whack. My old chum’s elegance when not masculine hardly needed to be stated, and my capacity for cuteness had capped out with Margit and my angelic little sister. At this point, when I saw an objectively pretty woman, the best I could muster was an indifferent, “Meh.”

As sad as it was to live with sore eyes, overexposure to the appealing came with its own host of problems.

“Interested in the news, are you?”

I’d just come back with a towel to help her put herself back together when the madam pointed out the newspaper sticking out of my pocket. After explaining to her that the we were due for a change in emperors, she curtly remarked that little would change, no matter who wore the imperial crown.

Yes, the bureaucrats of this country held considerable power, and true, she was somewhat involved herself...but would it have been so much to ask that she mince her words the tiniest bit?

“More importantly,” Lady Agrippina said, “I’d like you to prepare the drink before the heat of my bath fades. Oh, and is that ice candy you have there?”

“Er, yes, I bought this for Elisa... Will you have some?”

“Hmm. Ice candy is particularly delectable after a bath, so perhaps I shall. Bring it over to me along with the lemonade.”

Thank goodness I’d seen this coming and picked up a little extra. Just as I started toward the kitchen to prepare her order, the sound of a bell filled the room.

“What’s that?” I asked. I’d never heard this sound before. It had a different timbre from the doorbell, and I had no clue what it might signify, but anything that rang clearly through the entire lab had to mean something.

My answer came in the form of the sound of leaking air and screeching metal. I turned to the tea table we sometimes used in the corner of the room, and looking closely, noticed a pipe running along the wall that had been painted an unassuming color; it had ejected a small brass can.

Ohh, a pneumatic tube. This was a delivery system that ferried specially made containers across pipes utilizing condensed air and vacuums. On Earth, the British had laid kilometer after kilometer of these pipes in the eighteenth century to facilitate communication between various buildings. Though the invention of telecommunication had put the final nail in its coffin, the technology was alive and well in the Empire.

Fair enough, I supposed. We may have had thaumograms, voice transfers, and even telepathy, but not everyone could use those means. The most confidential exchanges continued to be put into writing, so this seemed like the perfect solution to deliver a letter to a magus’s atelier, especially when so many magia disliked allowing others into their domains.

I tried to fetch the message, but for once, Lady Agrippina summoned her own Unseen Hand to pick the can up herself and quickly opened it to scan the letter. I didn’t know this at the time, but these tubes were reserved for official College paperwork—any letter delivered this way was of the utmost importance.

“...I’ve received a summons from Lady Leizniz,” she said.

“A grand invitation indeed,” I said. “When will it be?”

“Prepare my clothes.”

“What? Right now?”

“As quickly as possible. Tedious chores are best completed with haste. Make it formal, will you?”

“As you will. I will prepare the lemonade at a later time.”

“Leave the ice candy here—I’d like to enjoy something while I wait, at least. No need to prepare a plate.”

I obediently handed her the frozen treats and a spoon, then headed to her bedroom to rifle through her wardrobe. This was a peculiar solicitation. While it wasn’t particularly strange for the dean of a cadre to call for one of her members, I didn’t see why she’d forgo her usual messenger birds for this overdone method of correspondence.

To convolute matters more, Lady Leizniz actually enjoyed maintaining an atmosphere of highborn conduct: her summons usually came days in advance of the date in question. This was a bizarre departure for a woman who always bothered to give a commoner like me three days to adjust my schedule before a fitting. What could possibly be so urgent?

The only thing that came to mind was the imperial succession...but it wasn’t as if Lady Agrippina were in a position to visit the palace and support the new Emperor, nor was she well-connected enough to be called upon for her opinion. Considering her misanthropic bent, I couldn’t imagine her having ties to anyone in His Majesty’s inner ring.

But then what in the world would justify the dean’s breakaway from traditional etiquette?

Although my head remained tilted in confusion, I prepared the madam’s clothes and turned the sad waste of beauty back into a perfect noble lady.

“I shan’t need an escort, and you are free for the afternoon. Tell Elisa that lecture is canceled.”

“Understood. Shall I prepare your supper?”

“I’m unconvinced I’ll return by evening. You two may eat without me.”

Wow. Not only was she dressed to the nines, but she’d even prepared her staff. This was anything but ordinary. The letter that had kicked this matter off had already disappeared—not that I would have dared read it had it been laying around—and I had no ways of seeing through the true intentions of a magus-politician as brilliant as Lady Leizniz, as perverse as she may have been.

As I watched my employer head out, the best I could do was pray: I really hope this doesn’t turn into another mess.

[Tips] Pneumatic tubes are a system of infrastructure made to facilitate rapid written communication. They allow important documents to reach their destination without once coming into contact with a third party, making them popular for official orders or summons. Even between two private parties, letters that double as official documents are reproduced, with the copies preserved by the sender and several governmental oversight institutions—they serve the same purpose as certified mail on Earth.

Time winds backward a spell, to a day before the national assembly announced the Emperor’s abdication.

While the Empire had yet to officially change hands, the process was all but complete; the former Emperor had moved out his personal effects to allow His Imperial Majesty to move in. The imperial office was ever so slightly different from the last time these three men had convened here.

The first was August IV. Soon, his title would change to that of a grand duke, and a month after that, rulership of House Baden-Stuttgart would be transferred to his son, leaving him free to retire in peace.

The second was David McConnla von Graufrock. Leader of his house, the duke had been little more than a passive observer in this whole fiasco.

The last of the lot was Martin Werner von Erstreich. He had no scruples about sharing his opinion on the comfort of the opulent chair he occupied—after all, this would be his official seat in a few days’ time, when he would be sworn in for his fourth term as the Bloodless Emperor.

“Welp,” David said, “everything turned out well. Well done all around.”

“We had the electorates’ approval,” August pointed out. “There was no room for trouble.”

Having completed the paperwork to officiate the proceedings, the pair pulled out a couple of chairs at random and casually took their seats. Truth be told, dealings of emperorship were wholly decided by the imperials and electorates; the privy council and national assembly gave their consent, but only as a formality. So long as the core parties were on the same page, this sort of internal affair would sort itself out eventually.

The werewolf had simply been along for the ride, and showed no signs of fatigue. The mensch had seemingly grown younger: his furrowed brow was starting to thaw, and even the wrinkles of age seemed to dissipate. Freedom from the heaviest responsibility known to man had reinvigorated him.

“How liberated you two must feel. When I think of the life of torture that awaits, I feel like the world is folding in on me...” Meanwhile, the vampiric Emperor looked more haggard than an unaging and untiring being had any right to. “The talentless runts at home have already started up a commotion, not to mention my mentors and students—I don’t know how word got to the College already. I haven’t been to my atelier in half a month!”

As his inauguration drew closer, the leeches wriggling near to help themselves to his authority sucked away more and more of his will to go on. He had a mountain of letters numbering closer to four digits than two, all penned by relatives or acquaintances that shamelessly leveraged their nominal ties to justify contact. Unfortunately, a great many of them held status that demanded basic decorum, eating into the time he would have liked to spend ironing out his succession. Woefully overloaded, he was literally being worked to death—or at least, he would have died two or three times over had he not been incapable of it.

“Must suck to have a clan full of aspiring politicians, man. You’ve got my sympathies, Your Majesty.”

“Indeed. Mensch are far from the only ones who lust for power, but those who inherit the riven chalice are particularly ravenous. I shall pray for you from the shadows, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, ‘Your Majesty this,’ ‘Your Majesty that’—how dare you torment me so, you traitors! You bind me to this seat of torture, and for what?! To lackadaisically sip wine in my office?!”

“Treason? You wound me, Your Majesty. And here I visited the yapping electors day in and day out to win them to your side.”

“Verily. I, too, endeavored to fulfill my duty as a loyal retainer, appealing to the national assembly with wholehearted devotion. I forced these old bones of mine to rise so I could march around the neighboring states and bid them not to squabble at your feet. I am even ready to offer my foolish son for your cause—please, claims of treachery are too much for this aging vassal to bear.”

Though the two retainers’ chitchat over drinks had been enough to draw out the Emperor’s fury, the sly foxes were unfazed; they simply equipped masks of fealty and carried on with humility as eloquent as it was ironic. For a moment, Martin thought to himself that he ought to actually hang them for treason if he could think of an excuse.

However, sharpened tongues were a requirement in patrician spheres; if he popped a blood vessel at mockery of this level, then not even his vampiric regeneration would suffice to keep him alive.

The Emperor quelled his anger with a handful of deep breaths, fixed his posture, and moved on to a question regarding the imperial handoff.

“The national assembly is well and good, but a foreign issue still remains. August, how many minor lords did you string along with empty promises?”

“Who knows?” the mensch replied. “Have I not given you all of the confidential briefings to read?”

“What tremendous character you display,” Martin mocked. “Don’t you remember? The details pertaining to the rulers near the Eastern Passage have yet to be set in stone: both the lords whose claims you promised to recognize and the insurrectionists you promised to support. I see that you’ve prepared your spies to do something, but I’ve yet to see the final design of your plan.”

“Ahh, that... Come to think of it, I had forgotten. Had nothing changed, I had planned to settle the matter next year.”

While Martin had been enjoying a carefree life as a magus, he’d retained a general grasp of the current issues and how his predecessor had moved to solve them. However, during the Second Eastern Conquest that the Dragon Rider was so famed for, the vampire had been too occupied with the matter of military logistics to study up on the details.

The Eastern Passage was a massive international trade route paved by the Conqueror of the East roughly two and a half centuries into imperial history. For roughly 150 years, it served as a highway to import herbs and teas that could only be grown in the east; beautiful silks and dyes that imperial craftsmen couldn’t reproduce; and advanced knowledge in fields like medicine and magecraft.

However, the passage lay on an arid belt, and the various tribes that inhabited the stony desert experienced stark disparities in quality of life—between those that were involved in trade and those that weren’t—leading to instability in the region. To make matters worse, the large empire to the east had fallen into economic disarray because of the overwhelming influx of Rhinian goods. Eventually, the eastern power had colluded with several minor lords in the area to put down proimperial factions and close the trade route.

For a century or so, the Empire lamented the closure of one of its few international trade routes, but a mix of domestic issues and foreign threats kept it too busy to reopen it. That is, until the Dragon Rider took the helm of a stable nation and sought to pave the path once more.

But this time, the goal was different.

The Conqueror of the East had begun his war with the aim of acquiring eastern goods for cheap. In those days, the only imports from those faraway lands had come ferried by fearless traders braving the continental roads; the goods they’d offered had been rare and priceless.

However, Rhine had seen advancements in production capabilities and now had new partners with which to trade. Exotic wares were no longer justification enough. Why then, you might ask, did the Empire go out of its way to start a war over the Eastern Passage?

The Empire required customers to whom it could export. International trade blocs had sated domestic consumption, but the nation’s impressive manufacturing capacity was left with no one to sell to. Imperial satellites, trusts, and allies were grossly underqualified to serve as buyers; more importantly, their purpose was to offer goods and services that catered to Rhinian demand while acting as buffer states to shield against major threats. The crown could hardly allow an overabundance of imperial exports to ruin their economies and destabilize them.

As such, the leaders of the country looked far and wide for the prime customer their vigorous producers could sell to. Eventually, they settled on the eastern front: the denizens of the east were rich with the gold and silver used in international trade thanks to the region’s abundant mines—a point of great envy for the Empire. With how eager their artisans were to off-load their surplus stocks, the ravenous entrepreneurs were sure to bring home mountains of precious metals that would let the nation prosper.

Knowledge of metallurgy was scarce in the arid belt, and the desert dwellers were in constant need of high-quality imperial ironware. A few decades prior, the fledgling empire to the east had begun a new era when its last dynasty fell; they were in need of products only available in the west, and were likely struggling to supply all their people demanded.

Admittedly, the New Empire denied the Old Empire at every turn in a bid to establish its legitimacy, and had even turned away Rhinian diplomats in the past on account of their bad blood. Still, if a proper connection was established, the statesmen of the Old Empire were sure their eastern counterparts would gladly participate in trade.

So began the Second Eastern Conquest—but it wasn’t as if the Empire had started with an honest declaration of all-out war. Initially, they’d sneaked spies into the ranks of various desert tribes, promising rewards for a job well done and stirring up chaos in the region.

Promise after promise was made behind the scenes, and countless princes and princesses came to the Empire as hostages, being assimilated into the nation as the grooms and brides of established noble houses.

Now, years after the war, the desert conflict had subsided and trade had begun to flow; demands that the imperial end of the bargain be fulfilled were beginning to mount. But of course, the Empire had never planned to make good on all its promises. Allowing a new power to consolidate strength and oppose imperial hegemony would not do, but leaving only a smattering of feeble tribes would plunge the trade route into lawlessness.

What the Empire truly wanted was to pare away all the excess, leaving only the states that made good puppets but could be culled off the map should the situation call for it—it wanted a map drawn for Rhine.

Presently, the borders on that map were only known by August and a select few nobles specializing in foreign policy. Martin had been too busy maintaining their supply lines and subsequently establishing the newly opened trade route to participate. Although the two men shared the same end goal, the new Emperor didn’t know which allies his predecessor had prioritized and which he’d forsaken.

“Foremost,” August said, “I shall have those involved report to the palace by next week with a more detailed report. The specifics ought to be settled enough that you should need only to give your approval.”

“Thank the gods for that,” Martin said. “My blood ran cold for a moment imagining that I might have to clean up after your mess.”

“Do you truly take me to be that irresponsible? I am not so naive as to let those sand-eaters do as they please.”

“Well enough... Ugh, if only that were the end of it.” Leaving aside how the Emperor reduced the greed-driven wrongdoings of his country to mere paperwork, a gathering of all three imperials was the perfect occasion to clean up yet another chore that Martin had been sitting on. “Oh, and take a look at this, if you would.”

“What’s this? Hm...” David read aloud, “‘Imperial ennoblement of a foreign aristocrat?’”

“Ahh, I recall you asking about this,” August said.

The document Martin had pulled out was exactly as David described: a multicultural nation that placed great emphasis on diplomacy naturally had a long list of exceptional provisions dictating how one might confer peerage on an immigrant noble. In particular, the one the Emperor had selected allowed a highborn woman to join the ranks of the imperial bulwark so long as she had yet to inherit a title abroad.

“It’s been quite some time since this legislation has seen any use, you see. Digging up the paperwork proved onerous. I’d like you both to approve it unless you have any particular exceptions.”

“The hell? Ohh, wait, this isn’t an honorary or unigenerational title, huh? You’re giving out the real deal—full estate and all. No wonder this thing doesn’t get used.”

“This is the first I have seen of it as well. While I signed some writs of property that conferred small parcels of land on foreign kings and the like, not once had this situation arisen.”

“Well, duh. The younger sons of the big houses would start making a fuss if you tried to give a foreigner territory over them. Think about how many properties are under dispute in the Empire. This is a godsdamned luxury.”

Despite serving one and a half terms, this was the former Emperor’s first reading of this law. It was incredibly stringent, requiring all three imperials and over half of the electorate to sign off to make the writing valid. This was a countermeasure against the Emperor selling off imperial land to his friends abroad; though to tell the truth, the rule itself had only been written for posterity’s sake. Over the course of imperial history, every invocation of this legislation could be counted on one hand, and the last occasion had been ages ago.

“I’m not one to talk back if Your Imperial Majesty wills it, but who the hell are you giving it to?”

“A fancied mistress, perhaps? No, never mind. A man so blindly infatuated with his wife and daughter would never bother with another woman... Where do you intend to place this piece?”

“I mentioned previously that I’d need a go-between for my dealings at the College, didn’t I? I figured I could use her there. My original plan was to prop her up as a count palatine, but I can’t exactly justify installing a mere researcher into the position.”

The term “count palatine” referred to a specific role: they were the Emperor’s personal advisors, who offered specialized counsel in their realm of expertise, and were given authority equivalent to that of a count. Originally, the position had been meant to empower trusted confidants; words spoken by an aristocrat invested with befitting authority were sure to carry appropriate weight. It was tradition to add a prefix to the title in line with the expert’s field—in this case, she would be a count thaumapalatine.

Still, even though the original purpose of the position was to legitimize an advisor and keep them by the Emperor’s side, awarding this status to someone who lacked rank and title simply would not do. Thus, His Majesty’s plan was to honor some great achievement or another with a noble title, and then prop her up as a count palatine—just as imperial etiquette demanded.

“In which case,” August thought aloud, “you plan to back her ascension to professorship, using the incredible breakthrough of her research to rationalize ennoblement and imperial employment. Hrm... I suppose this is as painless a plan as any could conjure.”

Meritocratic to their core, the people of Rhine wouldn’t dare question someone’s background if they had skill worthy of their stature; this scheme took full advantage of the national zeitgeist. There was certainly a lot of brute force involved, but the raw talent of those involved made it a likelier bet than trying to convince the rest of high society with tricks of relation and nominal ties.

“I’ve prepared a solid justification as well. She happens to match me in the field of magecraft, if not outstrip me. We discussed the use and development of the aeroship for a spell, and I learned much from her in that time—with this, none will object to seeing her as an imperial aristocrat.”

“Fair enough. Aeronautics are a hot topic right now. So which estate are you handing her?”

“She seems to be very talented, so...I think this may be the perfect opportunity to rid ourselves of a thorn in our side.”

The Emperor’s words drew out an intrigued, “Oh?” from both of his vassals, who sat upright in their chairs. Spats over inheritance and ownership were genuine problems that dictated the ebbs and flows of the entire country; a slapdash response would not do.

Once upon a time, Richard the Creator had picked out 227 esteemed clans to serve as his shield. Though the annals of history had seen that number balloon to four hundred, those who could trace their lineage back to the beginning numbered one hundred and change; the shifts of society had been merciless.

Some families ended when the last ruler failed to produce an heir; others were swallowed up in political mergers; and not a few were crushed under the weight of dastardly conspiracy. Even the most notable clans were not immune. Of the infamous and revered Five Generals, two survived in name only, headed by unrelated scions; only half of the Thirteen Knights that often appeared in epics of early imperial history had direct descendants today.

The fickle nature of succession made it impossible for property rights to keep up. However, the crown couldn’t just let anyone claim unoccupied land, and real estate was not as easy to divide up as leftover candy; there were a lot of unused noble names and territories that had once belonged to them lying around.

Without fail, plenty of bottom-feeders crept up to argue that they and they alone were the one true successor according to some standard of relation or another, but the Empire wasn’t going to thoughtlessly tip the balance of power in its own borders. Instead, these unowned lands were granted to His Imperial Majesty as property of the crown until things could be sorted out—noble titles and all.

There were tens of examples of such cases littering the Empire, some of which had gone without arbitration for over a century. Many of these were drowning in bloody conflicts of interest that took place in the shadows, reducing the abandoned estates to nothing more than haunted lands. But if Martin’s plan went well, he would be able to have someone else deal with one of them.

“Killing two birds with one stone is great and all,” David said, “but I’d accept someone’s used underwear before one of those shitholes. Don’t you think she’ll run if you try and push one onto her?”

“We’re talking about a woman who is so fond of Rhine and the College that she left her post as the first daughter to one of the greatest houses in Seine. I doubt she’d be willing to flee the Empire. Besides, while I noticed some faults of her character over the course of our conversation, she wasn’t able to hide her underlying responsibility. I have faith that she won’t even attempt an escape.”

“If you say so.” Duke Graufrock put his chin in his hand and went into a deep think, folding in fingers capped with razor-sharp claws as he counted off the possibilities. “In that case, the Ardennes barony, the Jermanus county, or maybe the Lippendrop viscounty...”

“Surely those are too lowly for the cause,” Grand Duke Baden cut in. “A more storied house would be for the best.”

“Okay, then how’s the Stülpnagel barony?”

“I have my reservations about offering a name tied to a treasonous plot... Perhaps things would be different if there were any room for doubt, but appointing her to succeed a baron who was one step shy of regicide will be no more than fodder for the gossips of the inner court.”

“Come the fuck on, Gustus! Fine! How about we make her Count Wernigerode, Viscount Roon, or Count Ubiorum?!”

The Emperor had been listening to his two dukes volley back and forth, but a certain name made him clap and cry, “That’s it!”

And so, the Empire reclaimed one of its long-lost names: Count Ubiorum would rise to the stage once more. The county was a vast western territory close to the Graufrock duchy that oversaw two whole districts, and the convoluted bids made by those who wished to rule it had left it neglected for quite some time.

However, the claims of inheritance were only a step shy of sophistry, meaning the rabble could be swept away with a bit of effort. Happy to have another burden off his shoulders, the Emperor merrily penned in the blanks on the form and asked his loyal vassals to sign on the dotted line.

[Tips] Not all territories come with noble names attached. However, the oldest and most storied properties are practically one and the same as the names of those who rule them.

When picturing a magus’s laboratory, one might be tempted to imagine walls lined with sickening samples and specimens stuffed into glass vials, complete with a bubbling cauldron in the center of the room, filled with a peculiar concoction of indescribable color.

In reality, they were as diverse as they came. Agrippina had no qualms labeling a chic sunlit nap room her “workshop,” and styles of interior decor were as numerous as the magia themselves.

With that in mind, the question arose of how the good Lady Leizniz had chosen to keep her own atelier. After all, her passions were known to be so intense that some regarded her very being avant-garde; surely her living space would reflect that.

But no—the place was built in utilitarian fashion, without a hint of her repulsive nature. The floor was a subdued carpet that paired well with the color of the wallpaper, only broken up by a window that let in bright sunlight: an impossible feat, given its secure location far underground. Shelves dedicated to paperwork, pharmaceuticals, and the like were placed in rows on both sides of the room, and they were even carefully sized so as not to tower imposingly over a visitor.

In the corner of her workshop was a complex workstation used for creating catalysts, but it was ordinarily covered with a cloth to deftly avoid any air of stiffness. Great care had gone into making sure that her arcane instruments were put out of sight as much as possible; an unknowing visitor would see nothing more than the office of a respectable noblewoman. Who would ever believe that this was the lair of a bodiless entity clinging to reality, of the embodiment of fright itself, of a wraith?

Not only were mages and the undead already typecast into dank caverns abundant with dubious herbs, fungi, and corpses, but she was the leader of the efficiency-driven nutjobs that made up the School of Daybreak. This was clearly too nice a home to be hers.

Even more unbelievably—to those who knew her, at least—there wasn’t a single clue pointing to her troublesome “hobby” to be found. The closest thing would be the handful of understated paintings hanging on the walls, but they were run-of-the-mill portraits of people in formal dress. Any noble knew that a room too drab to facilitate an oil work or two was one tactlessly maintained; it was only natural that one of the Five Great Pillars had put together an office to which she could comfortably invite any sort of company.

Yet while the room was a perfect cutout of her persona as a public official, the atmosphere in it was tense as her disciple came to face the master. Theirs was a relationship that went no further than mutual requests for essay revision, but master and pupil they remained.

When the promising young student had first arrived at the Imperial College, she’d already been an expert in the long-forgotten art of space-bending; still, she respected her superior’s position in spite of having learned little directly from her.

“I have arrived at your request, von Leizniz. Whatever might you require from this unworthy student of yours?”

“Now, now, have a seat first. I’m not talented enough a master to let you stand while I sit. Why don’t we take things slow and talk over tea?”

“...Very well. Pardon me.”

Agrippina planted herself in the chair already prepared at Lady Leizniz’s desk, and in turn, the wraith rang a small bell kept by her side. Apparently, she kept at least one student in her apprentices’ quarters at any given time, and the sound summoned a pretty young boy dressed in butler’s clothing and carrying a kettle.

“Excuse me,” he said, setting the table.

The aroma of tea that wafted up from the cup was new to Agrippina. Although she’d seen green or blue leaves used for their novelty before, she’d never encountered this translucent crimson in all her 150 years of life.

“An exotic tea from the east,” the dean explained. “They say the leaves can only be grown there, but that the long journey to deliver them to Rhine causes them to ferment into something new.”

“A result of the Eastern Passage, I see. What terrific color—as though a ruby has been melted into the pot. Well suited to those with a taste for the ornate, I’m sure.”

The methuselah took the cup of what would later be dubbed scarlet tea in a comparison to the popular imperial red tea—though a certain blond child had to constantly swallow back the urge to call it black tea—and the wraith sighed, commenting that it wasn’t poisoned.

Having been born to a family not wanting for enemies, the disciple had magically scanned her drink, and the master had taken note. Agrippina had put real effort into hiding her spell, as she wasn’t foolish enough to do something so offensive in front of her host. Yet being discovered only drew out a tempered, “Force of habit.”

Taking a sip, the researcher added, “A tad bitter—perhaps even offensive to some tongues. I doubt a child would enjoy it.”

“I agree. That’s why I’ve given it to you. The flavor is a touch too mature for the little ones, you see. Oh, and they say it causes them trouble sleeping at night.”

“My, thank you for the extraordinary hospitality. Mm... Indeed, there is something in it that stimulates the brain. Would this not be perfect for young students hounded by the threat of a looming deadline?”

“The price is a pinch too high for them, unfortunately. One small jar cost four drachmae. I purchased one out of consideration for my company, but I can hardly advise anyone else to spend so lavishly.”

The spell constantly monitoring Agrippina’s physical condition alerted her to a chemical stimulus in her brain. Having noticed the effects of caffeine, she instantly surmised that it would spread throughout the country like wildfire if a cheaper means of production were ever discovered. One could expect no less from a woman who had once wished for greater pleasures—this was a phase almost all methuselah went through, much like measles in humans—to the extent that she’d magically synthesized narcotics directly in her brain. Her vast experience and acute sensory perception meant that she was quick to notice any bodily change.

That said, methuselah did not need stimulants to stave off sleep. Agrippina was also not fond of the taste; she quickly decided it wasn’t for her and lost interest in the eastern tea.

“I’ve heard that the flavor changes with milk, cream, or salt, if you’re interested.”

“I’m fine, thank you. Ah, but your magnanimous hospitality has reminded me: thank you kindly for introducing me to Professor Erstreich the other day.”

As Agrippina took a silent sip of tea, she cracked open her uncovered right eye. The deep-blue gaze slicing through squinted eyelids made it clear her words were anything but earnest. A normal researcher looking for worldly success would have been happy to offer their sincere gratitude, of course, but the depraved methuselah saw the opportunity as pure inconvenience.

Naturally so. She had settled down at the College solely as a means of fulfilling her life’s purpose: hedonism. That, and because the location suited the logistical needs of the mystic pet project that she planned to pick away at over the next few centuries. Fame and fortune were not what she wanted out of Rhine.

Even the blindest observer could see that she wouldn’t have left her motherland at all had she been the type of person to covet authority. Being the firstborn daughter to an unshakable titan of royal politics would have made getting her way trivial back home.

“It was time wonderfully spent. After all, commanding the attention of such an esteemed character for months at a time is an occasion that seldom shows itself. We taught one another much, and I shall dare say that we have established a splendid bond.”

The precision of Agrippina’s calculatory ability was a cut above the rabble, even amongst methuselah, allowing her to conduct most arcane experiments in her head. When she did require real-world data, she had no need for the paltry stipend the College offered to its researchers; her family’s fortune made it seem like a child’s allowance, and that wasn’t even touching on the mounds of money she’d earned from the essays and patents that she’d turned in.

A promotion offered no benefits—only the bondage of duty. She had just enough freedom and just enough privilege in her current position, and the job came with access to a library so vast that it remained questionable whether her eternal life would be enough to read everything in it. Agrippina was already living her dream.

And you’ve created another relationship to sully it, the student’s murderous glare conveyed. But the master simply sat back in her chair with good grace, totally ignoring her bloodlust.

“I’m very pleased to hear that. I knew it was a good idea to acquaint you—a pupil’s glory is a master’s greatest joy. We are all at our best when realizing our potential, don’t you think?”

Lady Leizniz wove the tips of her fingers together, placing them on the desk in front of her, and sat with her legs crossed. Her form was elegance incarnate, perfectly chiseled to incite the boiling kettle of rage she called a student into bubbling over.

This was the art of a woman who had navigated the world of high society, sipping on poisoned teas and exchanging barbed pleasantries to win her flock the distinction of being one of the five greatest in College history. What had she to fear from a baby girl who had spent all 150 years of her life cooped up in her own mind, playing with sorcery and fiction? The esteemed Magdalena von Leizniz was one of the most influential voices in the system and commanded wealth that could buy multiple lesser estates outright; in her eyes, she may as well have been looking at a kitten trying its best to stand every hair on end.

Once upon a time, a young, still-living Magdalena had been lowborn—subject to insult and mockery under the guise of civility time and time again, especially after becoming the youngest mensch professor in College history. No matter how meritocratic the Empire was, the envy of the mediocre was a potent force; a genius of her caliber was used to shouldering the hatred of others.

That also happened to be the root of her current condition, but that is a story for another time.

Every so often, Lady Leizniz’s self-made history shined through in a spartan ideology that clashed with her gentle, motherly appearance. She believed in holding nothing back, utilizing one’s gifts to their absolute limits to earn fitting prestige and rewards, and contributing to a greater community through that work. Seeing Agrippina champion indolence and only put in real effort when it came to squandering her remarkable talent was too much for the wraith to bear.

Here the dean had hoped that twenty years spent battered by the harsh reality of the world would soften the girl up; the past year since her student’s return had proved beyond any doubt that her hopes had been optimistic. Ancient wisdom spoke that the kitten which catches mice shall be the cat which does the same, but Agrippina’s impregnable commitment to lethargy almost looped back around to being impressive.

Admitting as much, though, would be a slight on her pride. Instead, Lady Leizniz elected to offer her formal signature on a certain document that would put her troubles out of mind.

“From all that you’ve said,” the dean said, “I’m positively sure that you’ll be overjoyed to see this, my darling disciple.”

“The true matter at hand, I take it? Let me...see?!”

The professor’s smile was the peak of grace as she slid a slip of paper across the table; the researcher’s standoffish expression nearly plunged into madness when she registered the words written on the front.

It was a letter of recommendation for College professorship.

Professorship at the Imperial College of Magic was not something that one could attain by following a prescribed curriculum. Unlike doctoral certificates, a handful of peer-reviewed dissertations approved by an educational institution were not enough to join the ranks of the most exemplary magia.

Then what was the process, you may ask. Simply put, one needed a recommendation from three professors just to be given the chance to present their findings to a professoriat that made abattoirs seem merciful: if and only if these elitists accepted the research to be “in service of the pursuit of magecraft” could a magus ascend to join their ranks.

There were thousands of students—both those officially enrolled and those personally apprenticing under magia—across the nation, and the number of ordained researchers surpassed one thousand. But those permitted to don the title of “professor” were capped at two hundred, and the number had not changed in quite some time. Magistrates across the land funded the education of promising subjects with the hope that one might win the prestigious position, and private mages infatuated with the idea of greatness knocked on the gates constantly; yet the final door was a narrow one, opening only for these privileged few.

Ironically, the severe difficulty of the task drove challengers to prayer. Those steeling themselves for the peer review often half-jokingly invoked the scripture of a foreign land: abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Every year, a handful of bright hopefuls took the podium, only to be beaten down by the razored criticism of the vilest tongues known to man; these were public executions. Despite being only a single sheet of parchment, the invitation felt heavy in Agrippina’s hands.

The first backer listed on the page was one Duke Martin Werner von Erstreich. He had once led a subfaction of the largest cadre in the School of Midday, and he had made a career off his eccentric fixation on running along the cutting edge of arcane biology.

Worse, the professor’s name occupied another blank on the form, signed on a date that had yet to come...on the section reserved for His Majesty’s confirmation. This was a silent order: failure would not be tolerated. The consequences of betraying the Emperor’s expectations within the borders of his Empire needed no further expounding upon.

I’ve been had! Agrippina immediately pieced together the puzzle that had been put into place without her knowing, and her face drained of all color.

The lack of commotion following her appointment had convinced her that a separate power struggle had diverted attention away from herself; how wrong she had been. They’d been biding their time, tying a net in a place where she couldn’t stop them, all to ensnare her before she had a chance to escape.

Holding back the urge to bite her lip, Agrippina snarled in her mind, How could I have been so stupid as to miss this?!

Struggling to keep the tempests of her soul from leaking out, she diverted most of her lines of thought to unrelated arithmetic to stifle her emotions. But the flames of fury continued to burn, so she clenched her fist as hard as she could, just out of the wraith’s sight.

If Agrippina could’ve gotten away with it, she would have screamed and tore up her own hair. Rather, her true wish was to wipe the satisfied grin off her boss’s face with a swift and perfunctory little murder and pretend like none of this ever happened.

Alas, that was an impossible fantasy.

Agrippina had an impartial understanding of her own strength. Twenty years ago, she’d chosen an indefinite exile over no-holds-barred combat, and for good reason. While she was sure she wouldn’t lose—in fact, she was confident the wraith would die—she wouldn’t have been able to win cleanly.

Although Lady Leizniz’s crafty leadership was undeniable, the reason behind her continued reign was rooted in something simpler: her profound thaumaturgical ability. The depths of her power were unknowable, but it was obvious that she could easily wipe an average city away by herself. If she committed herself to destroying the capital for whatever reason, she would be able to demolish half of it, palace and all, killing countless inhuman magia, knights, and imperial guards in the process.

Agrippina was not arrogant enough to think she would walk away in full health after attacking an opponent who could bind her eternal and impregnable barriers in an ice age’s worth of frost. Methuselah were prudent sorts prone to predicting the worst possible scenario before committing to action; her analysis told her that, at minimum, she would sustain irreversible damage to several limbs and vital organs.

So instead, she settled for simulating her vengeance in her mind—but that alone could not quell her rage. Letting out a deep breath, she asked, “May I be permitted a smoke?”

“Oh, feel free. In fact, take your time and enjoy two, or even three.”

“Allow me to graciously take you up on your offer.”

Stuffing a particularly potent sedative into her pipe, Agrippina took a drag and forcefully muffled her rioting mind. Placidity was key for thought, and she quickly realized that nothing she said now could change the outcome.

The circumstances were perfectly valid. Though Lady Leizniz had promised her a period of reprieve, not even the dean could uphold her oath when given an order from above; attempting to claim that this violated their agreement wouldn’t work. This was doubly true because a recommendation to join the professoriat was an honor by most metrics: losing her temper after being recognized would win her no public support.

“The conference at which I’m to present a dissertation is this fall... Am I mistaken in thinking this sort of undertaking ordinarily comes with two to three years of preparation?”

“I would be more than happy to permit you to reuse the treatise you turned in to me on the fundamentals of space-bending magic. Considering how few people in the entire College can make use of the art in daily life, I suspect it will be more than enough.”

And besides, the wraith hinted with a sideways glance, I’m sure you have something tucked away for an emergency like this, don’t you?

Agrippina had nothing to say in response. She’d been out for twenty years. No matter how twisted, she was a magus at heart: she would sooner die than claim she hadn’t penned a single essay worth showing the world in that time. She could hear a mocking, “Oh? Were you just playing around that whole time?” in her mind, and her pride would not allow for those words to be spoken.

“Yes, indeed... Very well. I shall satisfy your every expectation, O Master of mine.”

“Is that so? I’m overjoyed to hear such a spirited answer, and to see my pupil so motivated.”

There was only one thing left for her to do. If she couldn’t turn back, then she had to press forward, trampling over anything in her path and cutting open her own escape route to freedom.

“Pardon me. I will be taking my leave immediately to begin working on my paper. And the deadline?”

“Let me see... This is a rather urgent matter, so perhaps the end of summer... No, I shall labor to allow you until the beginning of autumn. The others will moan about not having enough time to read your treatise, but the backing of His Imperial Majesty will settle things, I’m sure.”

“Understood. I swear to finish by then.”

Agrippina smiled, swearing that she would claim a head or two on her way out and make them rue the day they picked this fight. On the surface, her grin was that of a picture-perfect young lady; deep down, her thirst for bloodshed was on the level of the gamblers of Kyushu swinging guns from the ceiling. Whether Lady Leizniz gleaned the truth or not, gods only knew.

“But Master, may I ask you one last thing?”

“...Whatever might it be?”

“This is quite the sudden assignment—some might claim you are asking the impossible. May I take this as your word that you will support me until the very end? For the presentation, and for the correspondence that will follow?”

The adage about desperate times and desperate measures was bandied about to the point of being trite, but it was the truth. Deciding to work those who had placed her in this situation to the bone, Agrippina made her request, pleading for some kind of recompense.

Unspoken yet clear, the girl’s will made Lady Leizniz hesitate for a moment, but she couldn’t refuse her now; she nodded. Having used her position as the master, she was bound by the obligation to see the part through. Authority was not an almighty trump card devoid of costs: it was a pitch spell that demanded responsibility if it was to be played.

“Thank you very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, time is wasting away.”

“Do your best. I wish you good fortune, and I’m sure His Majesty will provide...a fitting reward if you manage to impress.”

The methuselah got up, thanked her master for the tea, and left the atelier. As soon as the elevator began to move, the wraith crumpled in her chair with a massive sigh.

“Ugh, that was so tiring... I can only hope this will settle things. I wouldn’t want to leave her to her own devices and let her build another burrow in the library—I refuse to deal with those mountains of complaints ever again.”

Another adage assured that idle hands were the devil’s workshop. If even the most insignificant wretch could stir up mischief if given the time, then who was to say what sort of calamity a person of Agrippina’s misguided talents could cause?

Optimistically hoping that a truckload of work would keep the troublemaker pinned down, Lady Leizniz decided she deserved a reward for cleaning up such a massive problem. Merrily wondering whom she ought to doll up next, the wraith put the painful issue out of her mind, blissfully unaware of the enormous land mine buried under her feet.

[Tips] While talent in magic is exceptionally rare, across the Empire’s massive population the sum total of those who show promise is sizable.

Ill omen had already gripped Agrippina by the time the canned letter arrived. Of course, she was a hardened pragmatist who staunchly refuted the oracular foresight of those spiritual kooks of Shimmering Dawn. Any sense of premonition was merely cognitive recognition of patterns seen before—or at least, such was her conclusion as one of the most logical-minded individuals even amidst the School of Daybreak. Experience planted in the mind inserted itself into the present, giving rise to hallucinations woefully wanting for accuracy.

But this foreboding had been enough for Agrippina to begin the audience with her master with some sense of what might come. Yet not even she could have imagined this worst-of-all-possible-worlds scenario would come to fruition.

“Oh, you’re early, madam.”

Having said in advance that the meeting might take considerable time, the master of the house returned in two hours to a confused servant in the middle of serving tea. Since his afternoon had completely freed up, he must have planned on enjoying some tea with his sister: he was carrying a tray with the cheap cup he customarily used and the expensive teaware the girl used in her lessons.

“Welcome home, Master. Um, is something the matter?”

The apprentice’s tone was no longer mistakable for something self-taught, and she’d been sitting on the sofa while reading a book. Yet neither the student’s question nor the servant’s subsequent invitation to tea could compel their master to speak: Agrippina quietly walked into the center of the room, where she stood lifeless.

Having been ignored by their master despite her continued presence, the siblings eyed her worriedly for a moment, but eventually decided that it was fine so long as she wasn’t saying anything. They turned their attention back to their respective activities, when...

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”

...a sudden outburst nearly caused them to drop a set of china worth more than their lives and a rare tome more expensive than several years of tuition.

“What the— Whoa?!”

Taking this unforeseen opportunity, the extravagant teacup attempted to liberate itself from the confines of the serving tray. Leaping through the air, its scheme to metamorphose from a valuable piece of craftsmanship into a smattering of shards that had once been valuable was foiled at the last moment by a rapidly assembled Unseen Hand.

At the same time, the boy had sent another invisible appendage to catch the book. It was reinforced at the corners with steel plates and weighed down further by a precious gem; he couldn’t let it crush his baby sister’s foot.

“Just when I think you’re back,” he grumbled. “What in the world are...”

Shaking off a cold sweat and setting the teaware aside on stable ground, the boy was ready to file a complaint...but trailed off when seeing the state of his employer’s frenzy.

“Why?!” she cried. “How could this happen?! Do you have any idea how much care I put into keeping this contained?!”

Beauty handcrafted by the gods gnarled as Agrippina clawed at her hair, wrecking the magically set do woven in silver.

The boy feared for his life. Until now, the question of how this methuselah might ever die had been one of the great mysteries of the world; had she ever appeared this distraught before? Her stoic expression warped into one that betrayed world-ending cataclysm, and her limber frame writhed around as if it bore the burden of all the world’s injustice.

Forget talking to her—even being around her in this unhinged state was terrifying; the servant abandoned any thought of trying to pacify her instantly. As far as he was concerned, this was verifiably not an occasion in which he had such a luxury. Sticking his nose in would be the last thing he’d ever do: he’d meet a terrible fate if he gave her any excuse to lash out.

“...Hey Elisa, why don’t we go for a walk? It’s getting warmer out, and the fountain in the plaza has a beautiful flower bed.”

“...That sounds lovely, Dear Brother.”

In a moment of sagacious wisdom, the boy took his sister and prepared to evacuate. Though the girl had undergone great mental change that made her slightly less childish—something a more naive onlooker might call “growth”—as of late, she was frightened enough to squeeze her brother’s hand tight as they fled. They knew they might get in trouble later along the line, but who cared? Any amount of scolding was much, much more appealing than being burned alive in the flames of their master’s rage. Recognizing that it was sometimes best to live to fight another day, the siblings put the laboratory behind them.

Driven to delirium by this turn of misfortune as she was, it wasn’t as if Agrippina had failed to account for a potential sponsorship. In her months of excruciating confinement, Professor Erstreich had noted how odd it was that she was still a researcher on several occasions, and remarked about what a shame it was each time. Anticipating a letter of recommendation partnered with someone else at the College had been child’s play, and she’d been prepared for the possibility both professionally and emotionally.

The professoriat was the embodiment of concentrated lunacy, formed by distilling a vat of eccentrics to pare away all but the most potent toxins. To join their ranks, one had to earn their approval; a superb treatise had to be paired with impressive practical ability in one of the most difficult exams ever fashioned.

Broken in more ways than one, the members of the crowd conducted their cross-examinations with a rain of questions more pointed than daggered hail. They piled on euphemistic disclaimers of “I apologize for the elementary question, but...” or “As unfamiliar as I am with this field...” More than a few researchers bore unforgettable trauma that stemmed from their sardonicism.

Perhaps the only factor that wasn’t actively harmful to the examinee was that repute and character went unquestioned. Admittedly, that was probably also why the body of professors was so rife with people missing the screws, stoppers, and breaks that helped coordinate an average mind, but that was neither here nor there.

More to the point, several people attempted to etch their names into history every year, with the overwhelming majority failing; Agrippina had prepared a means to number among them with a soft landing. If she turned in something that affirmed her capabilities while being just a touch too unpolished, a little over half of the crowd would turn her down with hopes that she might study up and try again in the future—a plan only conceivable by a woman who’d managed to keep the professors of her cadre at bay for years despite flaunting her debauchery for all to see.

If all went well, she would not be made light of, but she would also avoid shouldering undue expectations. From there, she would do the bare minimum to scrape by and put the whole of her efforts into enjoying whatever could keep her interest; that was what it meant to live happily.

Alas, her dream had been brought to the brink of ruin.

To attempt the trial with the backing of the Emperor left no room for failure. The petition to apply for a chance to ascend ordinarily took two to three years and enough paper to fill out several volumes of the phone book; all of that had been skipped with the power of the monarch. Even better, the professoriat would be in a most hospitable mood from having their customs disrupted: they would welcome Agrippina with dazzling smiles and overnice comments on her work. Forget splitting hairs; they would begin dissecting the particles of dust on the page.

What more could one expect when some professors were so heinous in character that their annual opportunity to bully wide-eyed researchers trying to prove themselves was the highlight of their whole year? There were so many of these heathens that they had their own little club wherein they merrily discussed across cadre lines to see how they would dismantle the next batch of hopefuls and the work they prided themselves on. It was plainly apparent why the Emperor might look at such antics and lose his temper: why was this the only time they could get along?

Regardless, the crown was an entity that fought to rein in the College at every turn. If a researcher bearing His Majesty’s favor appeared, there was no question that she would be accommodated with the grandest of receptions.

As the cherry on top, she carried the heavy weight of the Emperor’s expectations. If she “slipped up” here, she would directly damage the authority of the crown.

Now, the aristocracy of the Trialist Empire were tolerant folk. Foreign gentry were at times prone to cutting off common tongues at the slightest offense, fully subscribing to the notion that nothing happened for anyone save by the will of the privileged. On the other hand, Rhinian style dictated that one only came into their own when the masses sang insolent tunes in their name.

But this lenience was finite. If Agrippina failed the Emperor after he’d avowed her talents to this degree...

Fear zipped through her body, turning blood to liquid nitrogen. Her nigh infallible mind churned out a nearly prophetic estimation of the worst-case scenario, and it was so unfathomably terrible that her stomach began to churn. Had she not abandoned the line of thought with haste, she would have shared a heartfelt reunion with the scarlet tea she’d sampled earlier.

Common sense decried the thought of thrusting confidence upon someone and growing angry at their failure; unfortunately, such reason would not prevail. This was a monarchy, and His Majesty’s honor was far more valuable than a mere life.

And that damned master of hers—the despicable Lady Leizniz—had mentioned some kind of “reward” that registered as the most disquieting detail of all. Agrippina was sure it was some kind of position, or perhaps even a true noble name greater than the unigenerational titles traditionally awarded to professors.

Peerage in the Trialist Empire was a hereditary government post that primarily defined feudal ownership of estates. However, while these titles were tied to their respective clans, they were also intrinsically linked to the land being ruled. This was why one could sometimes find a Count Something-or-Another of House Whatever lording over an area as Viscount Something-Else. Strange as it was, it boiled down to the idea that these names served the dual purposes of links to esteemed families and validation of rulership.

Perhaps it was easiest to see with the professors of the Imperial College. They received a noble name and title as part of their honors: those who lacked a family name were either given one by a trusted mentor or had one lost to imperial history revived for them, but they weren’t granted an estate despite their noble status. As such, the Empire was awash with noble bureaucrats who held no land at all. For these people, their titles were a symbol of their high rank among public servants.

Furthermore, ties of blood in the Empire were important, but ultimately secondary to sheer skill. With the backing of the Emperor and a few others commanding considerable sway, purity of heritage ceased to be a matter of importance. Whether the recipient was originally lowborn or simply came from abroad, one would have to be the kind of idiot to turn felon or traitor to be refused a place in high society under these circumstances.

The Emperor of Creation had belabored the point that even the most celebrated families traced their origins to dust; so went the national policy. It followed, then, that someone like Agrippina whose potential had been unearthed—though she hadn’t desired to be found—would catch the Emperor’s eye as a potential pawn.

In all likelihood, she would likely be given possession of a title embroiled in political strife, and then planted in a position supporting His Majesty on Collegiate matters. Though the former matter had too many possibilities to count, the latter was easy enough to ascertain. The most powerful position she could think of—and ergo the one that would make the most use of her—was that of a count palatine: equipped with the privilege of offering counsel in the palace, she would be required to have a better grasp on her field of expertise than the Emperor so that she could make accurate reports to the throne.

“Fine, then.”

Agrippina pulled up her disheveled hair and haphazardly pinned it in place with a nearby comb. She pulled out the chair at her forsaken desk and fell into it, yanking out a sheet of parchment and popping the lid on a bottle of ink.

Truthfully, she would have liked to artificially dampen her metabolism and drink herself into a stupor over several bottles of wine. But if her enemies were going to act quickly, then she had to act quicker still; wherever could she find the spare time to waste it drunk, and at what cost?

Agrippina had no interest in making a name for herself, but there was one thing that she could not stand: to be underestimated. Hatred was well and good, disinterest could be reciprocated, and affection was fine so long as it wasn’t overbearing—she might even do them the honor of stringing them along to suit her interests. But to be made light of? No, that was intolerable. Belittlement would invariably come back to bite her. People were cruel creatures, and she knew all too well that this was truer still when someone believed themselves superior.

Agrippina refused to let anyone think that she would be a helpful piece in their game. While she wasn’t pretentious enough to presume that she ought to be the exploiter in every relationship, she would not stand to be moved around with the ease of a player pushing an ehrengarde piece across a board.

The world was built on the survival of the fittest, and the glorious gilding of culture and morality did nothing to change society at its core. The upper class had no qualms about using others: the Emperor would happily crush someone else under political stress to move issues off his own plate, and the dean of her cadre was thrilled to offer up a sacrifice from her own flock in a long-awaited act of vengeance that came with social clout. Rather, the noble sphere would commend them as beacons of imperial class.

But when the predator pounced, no law forbade the prey from striking back.

So long as she could shock them to their core while reveling in the last laugh, Agrippina was ready to abandon her slothful ways for the time being. When push came to shove, the only person who could answer for the issues of her own life was herself.

Those who manipulate must always be prepared for the tides of influence to switch course; Agrippina reworked her entire plan for the future, primed to squeeze every last drop of worth out of this “reward” she was to receive. She would use them to cross an item or two off her bucket list—anything less, and her lust for vengeance would not be sated.

As her pen hit the paper, she filled the silent room with a ferocious scribbling: the sound of pure hatred.

[Tips] The rank of count palatine is one of the most prestigious offices one can hold, and is reserved for cabinet ministers who report directly to the Emperor. Experts from every field are entrusted with the duty of advising the monarch on their realm of knowledge. Although modern Emperors employ an average of twenty, this number—and even the scope of their authority—has changed drastically over the course of imperial history.

Some few days had passed since my master had returned tinged with madness, reducing herself to a machine whose sole purpose was to write words on parchment.

Lady Agrippina had said she was busy: lecture was canceled, and I was to do whatever I wished so long as I didn’t bother her. At our master’s order, my sister and I dared not be in her presence, let alone speak in it.

Honestly, anyone willing to ask the madam about what had happened after seeing her like that would have to be just as insane as her. After pulling out prewritten work from suspicious pockets of space, she’d begun working with enough zeal to make her usual slothfulness seem like an act. To say that watching her forgo even the shortest break for sleep or tea in favor of writing was bloodcurdling did the ghastly nature of her endeavor a disservice.

That demon of scholarship made her message with actions, and it rang clear: she would kill anyone who dared obstruct her, including the gods Themselves. A fragile mortal soul like me didn’t stand a chance. Instead, we made our best effort every day to not bother her, going so far as to tremble in fear at the thought of our clothes rustling.

“Um... What about...here?”

“Well, Elisa, I don’t think it’s a bad move, but in situations like these—”

“Mika, wait. Wouldn’t you say you’re being a bit tactless? A player has given it her best attempt to make her move; the path of virtue is to answer not with words, but over the board.”

Sorry, I lied. We were taking it easy.

Having left our beloved Konigstuhl behind for reasons wholly outside our control, we siblings had come to learn a lesson about the truth of this world: sometimes you just can’t win, so you might as well look for the next best thing.

We weren’t going to roll the dice on poking that live demon core with a screwdriver. Following our master’s order to just not get in the way without subjecting ourselves to undue grief was the much better option. What could we have done after seeing her like that? The risk of derailing her train of thought and drawing her ire meant there wasn’t a single argument that could convince us to not live happily estranged from her.

Besides, my employer was the type of person who could fell an elder dragon on her lonesome, but she had looked utterly distressed. Sooner or later, I was certain that she was going to drag me into something absurd.

I figured I might as well make the most of this precious, fleeting moment of peace—so much so that I’d look back on these days in my darkest hour and refuse to die in the name of experiencing such happiness again. This was the best possible course for both my mind and heart.

“But Elisa just learned how all the pieces move. Don’t you think we should show her some of the standard tactics and positions first? Being beaten to a pulp by an experienced player without any idea of what’s happening is a pretty rough time, you know.”

“Yet traditional wisdom dictates that painless lessons are first to be forgotten. Tactics are best learned in the humility of crushing defeat. When I was young, the older pupils at my monastery trained me by first dismantling my play time and time again.”

“Uh, I think that speaks more to the people around—er, sorry. Never mind.”

So, while Lady Agrippina was busy reclassing herself into a human typewriter, I’d begun inviting my friends to my home in the low quarter more frequently. Look, I refused to be stuck spending my days next to a room radiating an aura of pure evil. How anyone could exude such intensity just by writing words was beyond me; I couldn’t so much as read a book in the parlor in peace. It would’ve been easier to believe that she was preparing a Great Work hex by herself to curse someone to death.

As such, I found myself savoring a moment worth its weight in gold: time spent playing a game with my sister and friends.

The familiar twelve-by-twelve grid of an ehrengarde board sat between us on the table, and our homemade pieces littered what little space we had left to paint a fun and busy scene. I’d sculpted all of them, and Mika had added a coat of metal and paint on each one; if you ignored everything but our masterpieces, it was almost as if we were in an aristocrat’s game room.

“Umm... Was my move really that bad?”

“No, no! It wasn’t bad, Elisa. It’s just that with this situation here—”

“Mika! The analysis can wait for the postmortem!”

“Like I said earlier, Celia, most people can’t memorize the exact state of the board across dozens of turns like you and Erich. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit softer on her.”

Everyone chatted away like schoolgirls—though my old chum was currently a boy—as we engaged in a board game-esque variant of the traditional game which allowed four players to take part at once. Each player was allowed a mere ten pieces placed in the first three ranks of their side, save for the two files on the left and right ends, and the objective of the game was to keep the emperor safe in a free-for-all scramble.

Though it was most frequently played when several people had to share a single ehrengarde set, making it seem like a reduction of the main variation like hasami shogi was for shogi, or gomoku for go, it actually contained substantial depth. Having double the players meant there were twice as many moves being made, and the possible lines of resulting play were exponentially greater than that.

Battle royales forbade the use of a crown prince and limited major pieces to two per army. Four castles were placed in the center squares of the board, and any player who captured one was allowed to use it. While there was more to think about than in the base game, the chaotic nature of the battles meant it was more important to make flexible decisions than to be familiar with established stratagems.

Furthermore, the leading player was prone to being contained by a makeshift alliance that would inevitably crumble at somebody’s betrayal; the human element made it easier to help along inexperienced players like Elisa. After all, I just needed a little ingenuity to turn my sister’s mistake into a sublime tactic.

“Oh, man,” Mika groaned. “See? Erich’s at it again.”

Not wanting to let Elisa’s puzzled anxiety continue any longer—she’d let go of her piece, so it was officially my turn—I had my precious knight advance to push up the front lines. Elisa’s dragon knight maneuver had skipped past brute force into sacrificial territory, but this one move meant it was now controlling a great deal of space instead.

The current position made evaluating who had the edge in this gambit for the castles impossible. At most, it seemed like Mika was slightly worse off because he’d taken defensive pieces that made it difficult to contest the center.

“This is tough,” he said. “I really wanted at least one of the castles. Isn’t this a bit much, old pal?”

“You’re too soft, old chum. The battlefield is a callous place.”

“Talk about double standards. Tell me, General Callous: How much leeway are you planning on giving in this war?”

Enough to fill an attic or two if it means helping Elisa.

“H-How unexpected.” Not even Miss Celia—who, by the way, was in her chestnut-haired mensch form to stave off the midday sun—could keep up her usual blitz pace with the chaos of four players. She placed a hand on her chin and murmured, “Hmm, what am I to do?”

Eventually, a nun modeled after a modest priestess marched forward. Its ability to sacrifice itself in place of the piece in front of it emulated a sort of resurrection; she was probably setting up for a later attack. This piece was liable to put the user in a state of disadvantage without proper precautions, but today Miss Celia had abandoned her unga-bunga playstyle. Prepared to play for the long game, I supposed I should’ve known someone of her skill would find the most vexing spot to set up her nun.

Hrm, it’s hard to find a good move... If we failed to contain her advance, the dragon knight waiting in the wings would swoop out along with the empress—I was shocked that she stood by her favorite piece in this nonstandard game—and emperor to plow through the rest of the board.

“This is so hard,” Mika groaned. “I didn’t realize I was surrounded by tacticians. Ugh, gods...”

But in spite of his grumbling, Mika positioned himself in a way that would let him support Miss Celia’s forces from the side. From the looks of things, he planned on being a neutral third party, only committing to the fight after Elisa and I finished our scrap with Miss Celia so he could pick off whatever remained. He was skirting around battle in an attempt to ride the victor’s coattails... You coward!

“Um, umm... Then maybe I’ll do...this?”

Elisa pinched her adventurer and shoved it straight to the front lines after a few seconds of thought. Wait! Elisa, no! As much potential as that piece represented, it wasn’t very strong on its own. She’d clearly been gunning for the castles in the center, but her defenseless vanguard put me in an awkward spot; now it was my turn to sit and ponder.

“You know, this piece reminds me...”

What’s up, Mika? I know small talk in multiplayer games is a classic strategy to divert attention away from your schemes, but don’t you think you’re being a bit overt?

“Erich will be fourteen this fall. Come winter, I’ll be fourteen and Elisa will be...”

“I’ll be turning nine.”

“Right, nine. And Celia, you were born in spring?”

“Indeed. Many seem to believe my birthday is in the summer, but the truth is I was born in early spring. Why might that be?”

Pure and innocent, yet utterly unstoppable on her quest to live as she pleased, Miss Celia was certainly more reminiscent of the glaring sun of a hot summer day than any other young lady. Frankly, her passions were so fiery that her vampiric weakness to sunlight almost seemed like a mistake.

“We’ll be adults next year,” Mika went on. “Erich said he wants to be an adventurer, so the piece reminded me of that.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what all this work has been for. This isn’t quite how I’d imagined it turning out, though...”

For now, I picked up one of my pieces and moved to support Elisa. Her adventurer was a sitting duck as is, so I defended it to at least threaten a trade if it was taken.

But looking back, I truly had come a long way. My eleven-year-old self earning pocket change and camping in the woods with Margit wouldn’t have believed me if I told him how his life would turn out.

“Are you gonna set up in the capital?” Mika asked.

“No way. This place is crawling with the sorts of monsters who take on noble requests—a beginner like me doesn’t belong here. I could try finding a party to take me in, but I’m sure they’d all shoo me away at the door.”

“Uh... I don’t know about that.”

While Berylin did have its own branch of the Adventurer’s Association, those who posted up here were invariably the cream of the crop, ready to take on big jobs from patrician patrons. Overrun by maxed-out PCs, my old tablemates would have laughed that this place was perennially one step shy of turning into the ruins seen in kaiju films.

I’d heard rumors of warriors as strong as any jager; mages who could be magia if they ever bothered to write an essay; virtuous lay priests blessed with incredibly powerful miracles; and scouts clever enough to unearth historical documents without leaving so much as a crease in the paper. Anyone who could make a living here was the kind of person a noble would want to hire for their exclusive use.

On the other hand, there were few to no quests aimed at novices. Dangerous beasts and monsters would never be found around the capital, and the apothecaries of the city weren’t charitable enough to pay someone else to pick herbs in a forest right next door. An entire office full of strong and dependable bodyguards existed for those who needed protection, and lost items or persons could be found by one of the many specialists in the Mages’ Corridor. While not everyone could afford the help of a magus, the capital had an abundance of people willing to work for a bit of change; if one misplaced something or had a pet run away, it was cheapest to find one of the do-it-all handymen that littered the city.

With all this in mind, beginner quests were a scarce resource in Berylin. This was basically a new area in an MMO’s expansion that bumped up the level cap for veteran players. Loitering around as the equivalent of a free-to-play noob would get me told to go home at best; no one was going to bother wasting their time helping me grind up to their level. Rather, this world lacked the convenient ability to get stronger by watching others fight from the sidelines; the requirement to put oneself on the line caused the entire premise to crumble. No one would know hardship if hugging the backs of those who came before could suffice.

All this to say I needed to go somewhere more rural to find work as an adventurer.

“Even if an experienced group is looking for new recruits, I’m sure they’ll still have a baseline for what they’re willing to accept. They won’t even let me carry their bags until I have a bit more to my name.”

“Personally, I think you’d be set if you showed them a flourish of your sword. Undue humility will come off as sarcasm, you know.”

“You’re too kind to me, old chum. I know I’m not weak, but I’m still inexperienced. I’ve already learned my lesson that I still have a ways to go. Remember the ichor maze? The world is full of geniuses who’d beat me in a fair fight.”

The undead adventurer from whom I’d inherited the Craving Blade had been incredibly strong. Even with Mika’s support, I’d barely managed to squeeze out a miraculous victory on the brink of death—and there were plenty more like him to come.

Besides, I was painfully aware of how many people could kill me off on a whim. While my employer and her vitality-glorifying boss topped the list, the crazy masked vampire I’d run into recently had driven home how prevalent people of their strength were. I wanted to start my journey somewhere more realistic.

“You wish to be an adventurer, Erich?” Miss Celia asked. “I’d been under the impression that you planned to continue serving a noble house as a knight or retainer.”

“Adventuring has always been my plan. Servitude and knighthood don’t quite suit me. More importantly, this has been my dream since I was a little boy.”

“Do you have someplace specific in mind to start?” Her follow-up question was accompanied by yet another sickening move. “If you find yourself in the south, my aunt may be able to put in a good word for you. When I last spoke with her, she mentioned that she invited adventurers to her estate now and again to turn their tales into plays.”

“I still haven’t decided on that front. I’d initially planned to start near my hometown, but my situation has changed a great deal.”

I was embarrassed to admit that my plans were still up in the air. The original arrangement Margit and I had come up with had been to set up in the nearby city of Innenstadt to skimp out on expenses. That way, we could go home to rest without paying rent if we needed to, and we’d be able to help out during the harvest. From there, we’d go to town to sell produce and trade for goods used as taxes; we wouldn’t want for work and could still help our families.

However, the more jobs I took from the College’s bulletin board, the less fulfilling that lifestyle began to sound. It was just so...safe—like we had some sort of insurance. I’d begun to feel like it wasn’t adventurous enough.

In more modern terms, it was akin to starting a band while still living at home and working part-time at the family store. Even if things didn’t pan out, the option to give up and inherit the family business was constantly in the background.

Of course, that was a very prudent and highly respectable decision, but it was wrong to do the same when committing to a line of work as fueled by romance as adventuring—or at least, the phantom voices of the characters living on in my heart whispered as much to me.

Margit would understand—probably. She didn’t seem opposed to the idea of a riskier venture; in fact, she’d tersely noted that it wouldn’t “feel as though much would change” when I’d first suggested basing our operations in Innenstadt.

Maybe the best place to start would be somewhere far away, in a land rife with conflict and brimming with odd jobs.

“Settling down in one place to make a name for myself might be nice, but wandering across borders to find prestigious work is appealing too—just like in the sagas.”

“You truly are infatuated with adventure, aren’t you?” Miss Celia’s giggle was as genteel as ever, but it clashed too heavily with her ruthless play to appreciate. “Then perhaps I might be the wayfaring priestess to help you along the way. Dedicating myself to faith without the support of a church piques my interest, and I’m sure you would supply me plenty of opportunities to help the needy.”

“Ha ha, then maybe I’ll join Erich too when I go on my tour of the land. The School of First Light has a tradition of sorts where I’m supposed to experience the greater world, so why not take part in your adventure while I’m at it? No saga can be complete without the friendly mage to open the hero’s path: whether you face a broken bridge or a towering cliff, I shall fashion thee a road of flowers upon which to walk.”

Boy, that sounds like fun. A well-to-do young lady like Miss Celia becoming a lay priestess was as dubious as someone of Mika’s promise having enough time to fit in a whole adventure on his scholastic trips; but if it ever did come true, we would certainly have a wonderful time.

Best of all, our party composition would rock.

I was a vanguard who could use magic; Margit was a scout who could come up to the front line as a dodge tank if push came to shove; Mika was a magus who excelled at both supporting and debuffing; and Miss Celia was a nun equipped with healing miracles whose blue blood and noble mannerisms would be a lifesaver in negotiations. Put together, our party would be a wonderful one.

Admittedly, I would’ve liked a beefy tank or a glass-cannon mage to round things out. I was the only primary damage dealer in our current setup, and I lacked both all-purpose firepower and the ability to take hits for my back line. Although I was confident about initiating, closing out fights was another story.

“M-Me too! I’m going too, Dear Brother! I’ll get so strong that Master will let me go—promise!”

Our merry fantasy of a future that would probably never come got Elisa excited as well. She leapt to her feet with a raised hand—I picked up the board with an Unseen Hand so the pieces wouldn’t fall over—and frantically grabbed our attention so we wouldn’t forget her.

“Sure,” I said, “you can come too, Elisa. Everyone will feel extra secure with two magia by our side.”

“Hey now,” Mika said. “Not counting your own magic, Erich? This party of ours is going to be the height of luxury.”

“Please. My spells are basically just party tricks.”

“You sure go to some brutal parties...”

We continued the fun chitchat about what might be to come until just before evening, when our battle royale ended in Elisa’s victory. At the very end, I’d been left with only an emperor to three of Elisa’s pieces—a close battle by any metric.

“Augh, I actually started to sweat from thinking so hard,” Mika said. “Gods, Erich, how overprotective can you get?”

“What are you on about? Frankly, I’m moved by the discovery that my sister had been a strategic genius all this time.”

“Well then, shall we begin the postmortem?”

“No, hold on, Miss Celia.” Analysis was well and good, but my old chum and baby sister had worked up decent sweats from the early summer heat. Not wanting them to risk a heat rash, I instead invited everyone to the baths.

“Hmm,” Miss Celia grumbled. “But this is such a wonderful chance to discuss the match...”

“That’s fair,” Mika said, “but we can always save that for next time. Right?”

“Yeah. Plus, the baths should be empty around this time, and we’ll get to be the first ones to enjoy the water. I’m sure it’ll feel great.”

“That sounds nice, Dear Brother. Master’s tub is lovely, but the larger baths feel wonderful every so often.”

Though Miss Celia remained a bit hung up on the postmortem, she recognized that she was alone and deferred to group opinion. Off the four of us went, perfectly split with two boys and two girls.

[Tips] Ehrengarde battle royales—simply dubbed off-games in some regions—are an unorthodox way of playing the popular board game. Four players participate, each with ten pieces; a player loses when their emperor is captured.

Other than these basic points, there are plenty of extra rules that change by region—the first player being decided by age or by dice, and the like—and the game is therefore infamous for causing fights between people whose hometowns are far apart.

Nothing could quite describe the joy brought by a cool glass of citrus water after a long, steamy bath.

“Ahh... That hits the spot.”

If only we could have a bit of ice clinking in the cup, I thought as I returned my emptied glass to the vendor. We didn’t have refrigerators, let alone ice makers; floating ice cubes in one’s drink was an unimaginable luxury. Magecraft offered a possible solution, but no one wanted to waste that much mana on something like this.

“It sure does.” After gulping down his drink, Mika wiped his mouth with his bare forearm and returned the cup, just like me.

We found ourselves in a public bathhouse that was a smidge more expensive than the average establishment, complete with cleaner and overall better facilities. The baths themselves were notably larger than the cheapest places in town, and the large steam bath got hot enough to suit my tastes; there was even an interior garden to relax or exercise in, so the satisfaction was well worth the price. We could never have dragged Miss Celia out to the crown’s free-to-enter locations, and had chosen a more suitable location with more respectable patrons.

Rhine lacked any culture of mixed bathing, so naturally the other two had gone over to the women’s bath. Truth be told, children under the age of ten were permitted to follow their guardians to either side; Elisa had wanted to come with us, but it wouldn’t do to leave Miss Celia all by herself, so I had my sister join her.

On our end, Mika and I were taking a quick break after our third round of bouncing between the steam and cold water baths. Having recently gotten over his public bathing fears, my old chum had begun to join me—except when feminine, obviously—and we found that our tastes in bathing matched up nicely.

That said, he did sometimes mutter about how it “could be hotter” even when I was feeling comfortable. The sauna had been hot enough for an average Berylin native to think twice about entering; how hot did the people of the north make their baths?

Hidden only by a towel around his waist, Mika’s shoulders were broader and his pecs manlier than when agender. Something about his mannerisms made his bare frame strangely captivating, even as a fellow guy. He stared off at some of the other customers wrestling out in the yard and ran his fingers through the strong curls of his raven hair with a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he seemed to be savoring the blissful feeling of his drink soaking into every corner of his body to quench his thirst.

The courtyard bench was built in the style of stairs, and the faint red of sunset trickled down on us through the leaves of the tree above. This moment was one we could only enjoy as two children free from the chain of midday work; we took in the clear summer day in all its glory.

“And?” Mika asked with a sideways glance. “Tell me the truth. How’s it going?”

“...You know, it really isn’t all that bad.”

My employer, still a waste of beauty, now also doubled as a typewriter in what I could only describe as a terrifying evolution, but I was convinced she was just paying her dues for all the trouble she’d caused. Bluntly put, it served her right, and I was here to laugh at her; I wouldn’t even mind slinging my sides into orbit.

Not that I had the nerve to say that to her, of course.

Schadenfreude aside, I’d spoken to Lady Agrippina before her descent into madness: I was to be freed from my position as servant as soon as Elisa officially enrolled as a College student. Now that Elisa had a patron to cover her expenses, I no longer had any need to toil to earn them.

Ours had been a logical partnership that arose out of necessity. Though the contract never specified my term, it wasn’t indefinite either, and had clearly laid out what the value of my work would be in relation to my sister’s tuition. With an alternate means of supplying that money, the excuse for my servitude crumbled away, and our agreement naturally came to an end.

However, Elisa would not be able to leave Lady Agrippina’s side until the risk of accidental catastrophe dropped to zero—that is, until the College deemed that she was perfectly in control of her powers. This barrier was set in stone, and proved a high hurdle at that. According to the madam, enrollment was an unrealistic stopping point: she would need to be an ordained researcher before she could win her freedom.

No matter how brilliant Elisa was, the Imperial College of Magic did not offer easy paths of promotion. This wasn’t a sword school of Edo Japan where a monetary initiation was enough to sell a samurai’s name; while not as bad as the path to professorship, the process of going from student to magus was strenuous. Plenty of people dropped out of the institution, unable to rise to the occasion, and I’d heard of fifty-year-olds who’d stuck it out and only just attained the title.

Assuming Elisa matched the youngest mensch to ever become a magus, she would still be fifteen. Lady Agrippina had told me to expect another seven years before she was independent.

But there was something that scared me.

The day I’d awoken from that night of sheer chaos, Elisa had begun bawling as soon as we were alone together. She’d clung to me in a fit of tears, but it had been so sudden that I hadn’t understood what was going on.

Carefully deciphering the words heaved in between sobs, I made out that she had seen the wounds fixed by the power of the Goddess—that she understood how much pain I had experienced. While we’d been with Mika and Miss Celia, she’d done her best to hold it in, and the joy of seeing me safe had managed to win out. But she’d seen a nightmare: one of a world in which I didn’t come home.

And so, she began to speak.

“I know that I can’t stop you from doing dangerous things. I know that no matter how much I beg and beg and beg, you’ll go anyway. So I’ll do my best too. I’ll learn more magic. I’ll become so strong that I can stand by your side and make sure nothing hurts you again. Then you won’t ever be in danger. Isn’t that right, Dear Brother?”

The wet eyes buried in my stomach peeked up, staring at me not with our father’s deep amber, but with a perilous golden glow that clung fast to my mind. Two dreadful moons had appeared on her lovable, cherubic face, and it filled me with an unspeakable uncertainty that brought me to the cusp of crying out.

I squeezed her tight. Was I trying to keep the trembling little girl in my arms the way she was? Or was I simply denying a terrible delusion of my own concoction? Unable to explain my ridiculous emotions, I just held Elisa as tightly as I could.

“I’ll get stronger,” she whispered. “So don’t leave me behind, Dear Brother.”

Her words resounded in my head like the bells of a cathedral, their echoes refusing to leave well after she fell asleep in my arms.

Elisa had steadily been growing up, but the next day, I felt as though she had matured overnight. Where until now her psyche had barely managed to catch up to her body, she suddenly seemed developed for her age. Her mannerisms were more refined, and her palatial speech was approaching the precision of a true aristocrat.

But most of all, her little “game” of making scented pouches leaked out enough mana that even I could tell with my untrained eyes: she had incomparably more power than me. Yes, she was a changeling, destined to dance with ambiguous magical concepts on a level more intimate than anything we mensch would ever know. Yes, I had known from the start that she would one day eclipse the bounds of her mensch frame with capacity for mana beyond the strongest among us... But by this much?

Although she was still far from the ludicrous heights of Ladies Agrippina or Leizniz, she had already surpassed my limits with ease. Thinking about what the future had in store made me nauseous enough to feel my legs melt into a sea of nothingness.

And so, I’d decided to stay. Elisa had told me I could go on ahead, but I’d made up my mind to remain as Lady Agrippina’s servant until she was officially enrolled.

Some said the heart was weakest when it appeared most unwavering. Emotional distress beyond a certain point could very well manifest in physical ways. I was merely fulfilling my wish as an older brother. I would stay until the day Lady Agrippina recognized her fundamental schooling and deemed her worthy of taking the first step toward becoming a magus—until I could be sure that she would be okay without me.

“And? How about on your end?”

“Me? Uhh...”

But I couldn’t bring myself to talk about all this. Instead, I turned the question back on Mika, who groaned in contemplation for a moment before placing his head on my shoulder.

“Tired?” I asked.

“...Yeah. Working every day while studying is every bit as hard as everyone makes it out to be. Sir Feige’s reward and the ehrengarde pieces helped out a lot, but it’s still tough.”

Despite having the support of his local magistrate, it sounded like my old chum was barely scraping by. His scholarship came with lodging in the low quarter, so he didn’t have to worry about rent or tuition, but every other expense was on him.

Neither food nor clothing were cheap, not to mention the catalysts he had to procure each and every time he had an experiment to run. I tried my best to lend a hand on that front, but synthesizing your own was orders of magnitude more work than simply buying them. But considering how much arcane ingredients cost, his only means of affording them was to work on job-bulletin tasks anyway.

The more time he spent earning coin, the less he had to keep up with his studies. That his efforts to get by only pushed away his final goal of becoming a magus was the sad reality of a self-supporting student. He’d have a workshop and stipend as soon as he became a researcher, but the road ahead was treacherous.

On average, a College student took five years to graduate. However, after correcting for outliers based on racial affinity for magecraft and taking the median instead, most ended up needing seven years, give or take.

In terms of climbing a famous mountain, Mika wasn’t even at the fifth station on the trail yet—the depths of scholarship that sorcery offered were readily apparent. Seeing my friend’s struggle, I could understand why some magia described their craft as the lofty pursuit of approaching divinity.

I’d invited him today hoping that this might be a nice change of pace, and thank the gods I had with how fatigued he looked. Our piece-making business had netted more profit than some of the odd jobs on the bulletin too—a bit more than the sewer rounds, even—so I was happy that I could lessen the load on his plate.

“I think it’s because my master noted my growth, but my homework has gotten really hard lately.”

“That bad?”

“Yeah. He said now that I have a good grasp of the theory, I need to pick up the pace and focus on practical skills. I’m on a completely different routine now... I mean, I knew our line of work took a ton of practice, but still.”

Born in the arctic north, my old chum’s skin was always tantalizingly fair, but today it seemed paler than usual. While he’d had a healthy flush after warming up in the sauna, it had dissipated during our extended break to reveal skin white enough to betray his dearth of mana.

“Make a thing, break it, and repeat. It’s draining, and not just in the magical sense either. It’s really getting to my head... There’s this sense of pointlessness to it all, you know?”

I asked him to elaborate, and discovered that his training boiled down to digging a hole so that he could fill it with dirt—he was just shy of participating in campsite activities, and certainly not of the fun variety.

The hole digging was a bit of a hyperbole, but he was tasked with crafting precise miniature buildings, only to have to witness them being blown away by similarly scaled-down disasters. I was willing to bet the mental strain was similar.

Alas, it came with the territory. Monotony was an oikodomurge’s lifelong companion: buildings could not stand without solid foundations, and no great feat of architecture could be made while neglecting the fundamentals. Mika’s master had doled out an exceptionally boring and exhausting task in order to mold him into a great magus, but judging from his awful complexion, the triple burden of mana depletion, work, and daily chores was seriously weighing on him.

“Day in and day out I build a thing and break it. It’s so depressing. When I mess up during construction, he tears the thing down right then and there—and if that wasn’t enough, he’ll tell me how many people would have died because of my mistake too...”

Mika let out a weary sigh. His eyes had been positively twinkling while playing ehrengarde, but now the light there had gone on holiday.

“I mean, I know he’s not doing it to be mean. People will live in the buildings I make and walk across the roads I pave, and I know he’s just trying to drill in the lesson that I can’t ever mess up.” Nestling into my shoulder, he sadly said, “But it hurts.”

Far from home and with few people to rely on, maybe he was unconsciously acting spoiled around me. Figuring that a little skinship amongst boys wouldn’t hurt, I put my hand on his head, and he happily nuzzled up against my palm. I ran my fingers through his hair and rubbed his forehead; when my palm slid onto his cheek, he let out a gratified sigh.

This was, well... He was just as aesthetically blessed now as when he was agender, and my heart was starting to pound. This was bad—as accepting as I was of these sorts of inclinations, I didn’t recall taking any such traits myself.

“You’re so nice,” Mika whispered.

Trying to divert the course of his emotional comment, I proposed an idea. If I let this atmosphere linger any longer, I risked lapsing into a gruesome social fatality.

“Then maybe my new hobby might come in handy. Want to come over to my place for dinner from now on?”

“Huh?”

Driven by desperation as it was, my proposal was a consequence of my continued growth. Completing the Miss Celia’s Family Troubles Campaign—why yes, I did make that up—had come with a massive reward of experience, and the litany of possible ways to spend it all had given me a lot to think about.

My first purchases ended up realizing my longtime dream of Divine Favor in Dexterity and Divine Hybrid Sword Arts. The pinnacle of mastery, Scale IX was said to only be achievable by those born blessed by the gods, requiring long years of dedication to bring that talent to fruition.

My reasoning for maxing out my Dexterity was its wide array of use cases, and that it was my best avenue to continue abusing Enchanting Artistry combos. Swordplay was heavily reliant on skill, and no other trait offered the same level of absurd synergy as this. Where an ordinary accuracy check would be based on both Agility and Dexterity, I could trim the fat to base my hit rate off two instances of my Scale IX Dexterity instead. And whenever I landed a hit, I could swap out my Strength bonuses too; I was effectively reaping the rewards of having three maxed-out stats instead of one.

Of course, I still needed enough Strength to swing my sword and enough Agility to keep up with my enemies, but the resulting damage output made it obvious that this was the most efficient way I could spend my experience. Fixed values were king; nothing could be more important than bumping up my damage floor. These freebies were my guardian angels that would protect me from any misfortune, barring a fumble. All hail fixed values!

My unyielding faith in Lord Mace had me clasping my hands in a peculiar act of prayer for a moment, but my commitment to consistency was perfectly normal. I was the personification of lucklessness, and as far as I could tell, it seemed like the world rolled dice based on my stats to determine how I fared; if that held true, fixed values were the path of righteousness.

With two long-dreamt-of goals completed, I was one step closer to my ideal form. However, I still had experience to spare; I bumped up my Mana Capacity by one from plain Good to VI: Superb in order to augment my staying power. Throwing out spells at every turn both offensively and defensively made me prone to running out of gas, meaning campaigns with plenty of hallway fights—like the adventurer’s ichor maze—posed a serious threat. Knowing that I’d go on extended trips and might even use magic in the city once I set off on my own, I figured shoring up this weakness was a good choice.

As an aside, I held off on touching Mana Output, since I didn’t plan on using big, expensive spells anytime soon. I’d have to dip into it eventually if I ever wanted to ferry around cargo or people with space-bending magic, but that was a problem for another time.

Even after that, I still had more to spare—a testament to how unbelievably strong that masked weirdo had been—so I racked my brain and finally settled on picking up a handful of camping skills.

I took cheap abilities like Campfire Cooking, Culinary Knowledge, and Portioned Seasoning at an III: Apprentice level. Despite being inexpensive enough that I could pay off the costs through my daily routine, activating all of them at once arguably produced better results than any one of them could with more investment.

This was a trick I’d used plenty of times in my beloved tabletop games, but it was pretty difficult to pull off. Systems that encouraged the player to find synergistic combinations of skills and traits oftentimes made it cheaper to level up a preacquired skill than to spec into a new one.

My blessing was no different, and looking at the cost of picking up a skill alone would suggest that more dedicated investment was the better choice. That said, there was inevitably a boundary at which greater gains were achieved by spending experience points to diversify one’s build, and that boundary was especially clear when higher levels cost more than their earlier counterparts. The gap between a player who kept this concept in mind and one who didn’t would be immediately noticeable in their characters’ strength; navigating the optimal path was what separated the novices from the veterans.

I calculated things out with that in mind to come up with the ideal build for making simple yet tasty dishes. So long as I could get my hands on a few ingredients, I was confident I could whip up meals on the road that outstripped even the ready-to-eat rations provided by the US Army.

And so my shopping spree ended with these wayfaring skills.

For those curious, my pubescent body almost convinced me to waste a great deal of precious experience on worthless skills, but I mobilized my rationality in time to counter it. Youth is such a terrifying thing.

...Though I was willing to reconsider down the line if my purse was feeling heavy.

To get back to the matter at hand, my recent acquisition of cooking skills had really gotten me hooked on the culinary arts. Even after “learning” a skill, I still had to go through the motions to get a hang of it; I’d been buying up cheap ingredients at the local market to experiment with all sorts of recipes.

As a result, the Ashen Fraulein was in a bit of a sour mood, and she took it out on my hair every single morning. Today, I’d awoken to find it tightly set in a chignon and had struggled to undo it—I was not going to walk around matching with the madam—but the daily new discoveries and trickling influx of experience points made cooking fun and rewarding.

One such discovery was that cooking for one was really inefficient; so why not make a bit more for my friend and help him with his chores?

“Are you sure?” Mika asked.

“Of course I’m sure. In fact, I was planning on inviting all of you after we got out of the bath. I can help you with your laundry and cleaning if you want too. I’ve been getting into that sort of thing lately.”

I puffed up my chest to seem as dependable as I could. My old chum stammered a bit, trying to find the right words, but he was failing his speech check hard. Eventually, he missed a mental saving throw and gave in with a quiet, “Please.”

“Leave it to me. Let’s stop by the market after we leave. Allow me to serve you a supper made with only the freshest of ingredients.”

“...I was this close to accidentally calling you ‘mom.’”

“Come on, at least make it ‘dad’ instead.”

“Mmm,” he mumbled. “But seeing you from behind makes it kind of hard to...”

“Huh? What?”

“No, forget I said anything. What are you planning on making, anyway?”

I won’t pretend I wasn’t curious about why he suddenly changed the topic, but I didn’t want to be the kind of friend who pushed harder after being told not to prod. We weren’t playing a board game built around picking apart lies or anything, so I joined him in talking about dinner.

But what would I make? It all depended on whatever was cheapest at the market, but the cost of spices really limited my options. I could finally empathize with my mother’s struggle; back in Konigstuhl, she would sing little verses about spending time and effort in lieu of money whenever she prepared our meals in the kitchen. I had a few extra herbs that I’d picked while I was out on a College mission, so hopefully that would be enough to make one solid dish.

Thrilled by the thought of a homemade meal, Mika perked up and we went for another two rounds each of the steam and cold water baths. After rinsing off our sweat, we headed out to find that we’d kept the ladies waiting for quite a while.

I offered to treat them to dinner as an apology, and Elisa happily jumped up for a hug. However, while Miss Celia initially smiled with excitement, her expression quickly dampened to the point where even an outside observer could flag her disappointment. Drooping at the shoulders, the priestess explained that she volunteered with the rest of her cloister at a soup kitchen in the evenings.

Come to think of it, she’d mentioned the other day that her aunt was leaving for Lipzi, and that she’d moved into the Great Chapel. Being just one among many nuns, it wouldn’t do to just skip out on her charitable service.

We saw Miss Celia off as she turned back to wave again and again, and all three of us shared the same thought: Let’s all have dinner together again soon.

Next time, I swore, I’ll make sure she’s free to join us.

[Tips] Although the capital does not have slums, the presence of low-income persons is unavoidable. Those who work laborious, physical jobs, and those whose income is sporadic and irregular often rely on soup kitchens run by various religious institutions around town. They primarily offer frugal meals of porridge and black bread broken up by the occasional donation of pickled foods; still, a free meal is something that most are incredibly thankful to have.