Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 5 - Chapter 9

Postface

Ending

A conversation spoken in blades will no doubt bring much ruin; yet destruction is at times the fertile bed from which new connections blossom. Whether the relationship is that of mortal enemies or something less easily put to words is for fate to decide.

Facing the rising sun, I looked out at the mountain of rubble, popped the cork out of an expensive-looking wine bottle, and got to chugging.

The situation demanded a drink, okay?

The sudden shock wave had sent me straight into the annex wall, knocking me out cold. Only awoken by the Craving Blade’s piercing wails, I opened my eyes to see some kind of terrible monster painting the place with blood.

Obviously, I ran. I refused to spend even one second in the presence of a Ragnarok-worthy monstrosity. I’d put in my hours as an Investigator, and freaks of supernature like that had left me with nothing but trauma. In this case, I hadn’t even accidentally peered into a mirror that let me see the future or whatever, so I was not letting myself become a victim of collateral damage.

I fled the scene in a rush, though I made sure to pick up Schutzwolfe before I did—the Craving Blade could find her own way to me, so I left her there. Once I was out of range of any stray projectiles, I decided to run over to the stables: I couldn’t predict what might happen next and wanted to make sure the Dioscuri were safe. There, I began to feel sorry for the other horses. Letting them get swept up in our human struggles was too much; I decided to free them all, leading them up to this removed hill overlooking the manor.

I’d come across a storehouse on my way out, and swiped the wine from there. Despite my dehydration from the long skirmish, I’d made my escape without stopping for any of my luggage. Eager for something to quench my thirst, I’d figured I deserved this much with all the shit I’d gone through.

In any case, the signs of battle had faded for quite some time, and I began wondering what had happened to Lady Agrippina. I hadn’t seen anyone else this whole while, so I was confident she hadn’t lost: had the viscount or marquis come out on top, things wouldn’t be so quiet. Although there were some Liplar guards and citizens gathered near the front gate, the knights stationed around the premises were surely on strict orders not to let anyone in.

Hrm, what to do... Should I go look for the madam? But there’s a chance that beast is still lingering around, so I don’t really want to...

Knowing I wouldn’t stand a chance against that thing, I was of the opinion that not pushing myself was for the best. Besides, I didn’t exactly have the courage to willingly challenge a foe when it could shrug off attacks just because they were based in physical reality.

As my mind wandered and my hand reached for a second bottle, I saw a shadow stir near the mansion. Though it was too far to make out in detail, the outline was definitely person-shaped.

Until now, I’d refrained from using Farsight out of fear that I might catch the monster’s attention; a person, however, was fair game. If someone was still alive down there, then the creature must have been subjugated. Upon extending my vision, I saw—as expected—one Lady Agrippina in sound condition.

Uh-oh, she noticed me. My spell had evidently given me away, because she was looking straight at it and motioning with her finger for me to come.

Hurrying onto Castor with Polydeukes in tow, I made my way over. I arrived to find my boss in a terrible mood, smelling thickly of sweet smoke.

“Uh... I am most pleased to see your safe return, my liege.”

“Is that so? I’m pleased myself to see how blessed I am with help: you certainly seemed to be enjoying a nice break for yourself from afar.”

“I had my own problems to deal with, okay?!”

The madam was one puffed cheek away from a full-on pout, but I had to put in an objection. Ignoring me, she took a seat on a nearby bit of rubble and held out her hand.

“I’m thirsty.”

“Erp—yes, ma’am.”

How very keen of her to spot the bottle of wine still nestled into Castor’s saddle pouch. Taking it in hand, she spent a moment reading the label and eventually decided it was good enough to put up with. She popped the cork off with an offhand spell and drank straight from the bottle, just as I had with the first.

“Terrible maintenance. All the flavor is gone.”

“By the way,” I piped up, “I can see that you’re safe and sound, but what have you been doing all this time? The fighting stopped quite a while back.”

“Hm? I was collecting intelligence and doing a touch of groundwork. That, and tonight has been rather exhausting, so I’ve been smoking to recover the mana I spent.”

You?! Tired?!

The uncharacteristic claim caught me off guard, but it seemed last night’s brawl had been an ordeal great enough to drain even the madam; that freakish monster must have been the root of her fatigue. She herself claimed to be killable, so tiring out every once in a while seemed plausible. Probably. Okay, maybe.

“So what do you plan on doing next?” I asked.

“Hm? Ah, let me see... First, we shall head to Kolnia, where we will dispatch a messenger to the palace to sort this incident out. Goodness, there’s an awful lot to do. Oh, but quelling the chaos here comes first—I’ll need to stop by the city’s main office.”

Yeah, I imagine you’d be busy. After all, the manor didn’t look like a very hospitable spot to find survivors in, and this chaos would leave the viscount’s seat vacant. I wondered how she was going to deal with that.

“Say, Erich. I’ve just had a passing thought.”

“What might that be?”

“Instead of leaving next year, how about I ordain you as my personal knight?”

“Excuse me?!”

What the hell was this witch saying? Why were all her ideas so overblown and ridiculous?

“My problems are only going to grow more numerous, and I’m not sure I’ll ever stumble across another retainer as useful as you.”

“I understand, but that isn’t something to offer so casually.”

“But I really do want you around going forward. Won’t you stay? Spend a few more years with me, and I would be happy to adopt you so that you can inherit the Ubiorum title. Act now, and I’ll even set aside the Liplar viscounty for free!”

I see your endgame.

And of course she’d try: being Count Ubiorum was nothing but trouble for her, but it was too great a responsibility to haphazardly toss aside. Now that she’d gotten a bitter, firsthand taste of the burden she’d been saddled with, her first thought had been to conjure up ways to legally off-load her position. I was just the closest sacrifice in reach.

Mhmm, yup. I get it. I really do...but you aren’t the only one who’s sick of this.

Sporting the brightest smile I’d ever had in all my life, I gave my answer: “Not a chance in hell.”

[Tips] Commoners can be ennobled if they accomplish tremendous feats for the Empire. In this particular case, a boy who has assisted in righting the course of a county time and time again, contributing greatly to its continued peace, can easily be adopted to honor his achievements. From there, inheriting the title would be a matter of course.

Otherwise—though this is a serious stretch—one could attempt to win a title by insisting that they descend from noble blood unbeknownst to the public record.

Having long resisted the call to give up their snowy mantles, a lofty range of mountains was finally letting their outer coats melt away. Nestled among them was one of the leading recuperation facilities in the Empire, and in it, a small cabin.

This was the home of a College professor who, in spite of their qualifications as an iatrurge, had grown tired of the less than peaceful cases he’d been saddled with in the palace. Having retreated to live a more hermetic life, he was retired from his official position in all but name.

Being located directly on a hot-spring resort for the gentry, the clinic’s clientele naturally came with very mundane issues. Nobles strained by the bureaucratic system came to him with stiff shoulders or back pain more intimate than a spouse, and some—though very quietly—stopped by to get help with embarrassing matters such as hemorrhoids.

Alas, every now and again, a nuisance came along.

Yet the iatrurge did not deny them—nay, he couldn’t. Receding from the tedium that bubbled at the heart of the Empire was not as simple as throwing up one’s hands and shouting, “I’m done!” and the doctor’s successful escape had been the product of a powerful backer. Duty demanded he treat injuries suffered in the shady power struggles he had so loathed, and the state-supervised art of limb regeneration was just another item on the menu.

Sectioned off in a personal room, one patient slowly unwrapped the bandages covering her arms. The intricate formulae woven on made them look like never-ending talismans, but at last they fell away to unveil a restored surface of olive skin.

Gentle rays of sun filtered through the window and onto her arms. Cautiously, oh so gingerly, she wiggled her fingers. Though a touch of numbness and a light funniness of feeling remained, her calloused digits moved to her whim.

One by one, she carefully bent them down until they formed a fist. After confirming that, she went on to test a few more shapes. Satisfied with the movement of her hand, she reached to touch her own arm and was shocked: she could feel.

The sensation in her arm was stifled, as though a thin layer of cloth were impeding the contact of her fingertips; yet when she pressed harder, she could certainly feel that her arm was being held. Gliding up her arms, she at last came to the scar: a ring of lightened skin left a trail all the way around the circumference like a crawling worm—on her left arm and both of her upper ones.

Of her two sets of two, she had lost more than half. But despite being completely severed, the iatrurge had managed to put them back with a literally reality-defying level of skill. Her bones, arteries, and even nerves were exactly as they had been. While she would need some time to accustom herself to the oddities in sensation, disciplined practice would solve that issue. In fact, the doctor had noted that the precision of the cuts had left her arms in good condition; she would be back to full health sooner than most.

“Does it feel right? Oh, thank goodness you can move.”

A voice interrupted the patient’s thorough self-examination. The speaker had been waiting silently in the corner of the room for her to finish unbinding her arms, but now he reached out. As his fingers traced the painful tracks of discolored skin, he bit his lip—surely a shocking display of emotion for those who only knew his genial smile.

Who could ever expect to see Marquis Donnersmarck, of all people, let his bitter feelings show? And in the presence of a mere sepa girl, hailing from a people unrepresented in imperial high society, at that.

“Oh, my darling Nakeisha. Wit couldn’t so much as sleep for the fear that your arms might not heal.”

“My sincerest apologies for worrying you, Marquis Donnersmarck.”

“Don’t apologize. Please, Nakeisha, it’s fine. More importantly, there isn’t anyone else here. Won’t you please—”

As he nuzzled his forehead against her hand, the man was cut off by a knock at the door. He answered, somewhat irritably, and was met with the voice of his elderly retainer.

“Marquis, as thorough as our counterintelligence may be, I bid you to take more care in your remarks.”

An old sepa walked in carrying a tray with hot water and tea leaves. His limbs, like Nakeisha’s, were completely sheathed in enchanted dressing; though his head was uncovered, the horrific burns on display were enough to make an onlooker wince. All of his graying hair had been shaved off, leaving only battle scars too deep for iatrurgy to eliminate. Upon closer inspection, his stern amethyst eyes were gone, replaced with the showy yellow of arcane implants.

Though his scars would eventually fade with proper treatment and his eyes would regain their original luster with time, seeing him as he was now induced secondhand pain. Yet the marquis’s expression upon turning to him was closer to a pout.

“Don’t be so petty, Rashid. Everyone knows. They know our relationship too, O Father-in-Law. If Wit can’t relax at a remote hot spring, then where will Wit ever?”

“You have nothing but my gratitude for the love you have shown my daughter, and her daughter after her. But our clan has an image and honor to uphold. So long as this resort is publicly open to guests, I must ask that you show prudence in restraint.”

“What a nagging old man you are—is this what age does to a person? Wit should hope Wit never turn out this way.”

“If I’m not mistaken, Marquis—are you not centuries my senior?”

The old sepa’s face scrunched into a frown, but the methuselah brazenly waved him off, commenting that he could pass for the man’s grandson. Perhaps the irony was most palpable when considering that not only was the methuselah older, but he’d sponsored this clan since they first arrived in the Empire.

The sepa whom Marquis Donnersmarck so prized as his best agents could trace their lineage back to a line of retainers once tasked with serving royalty of the Southern Continent. At the end of a long struggle for the throne, the new king had held reservations about keeping around a clan of spies who’d failed to protect their own monarch; resolving to leave before they could be forcibly removed, the sepa had abandoned their homeland in search of a new one.

Eventually, their journey had led them to the Trialist Empire, whereupon they found themselves at the behest of a then-young Marquis Donnersmarck. Through the twists and turns of fate, the methuselah had helped restore them to their glory, and now they served him—not in any officially recognized capacity, of course—as his most trusted retainers.

The depths of his love were perhaps best seen in the treatment of his mistress: a sepa agent he’d fallen for. He fawned on her as lavishly as any other would a lawful wife, and she enjoyed a life of safety and luxury. Meanwhile, the pair’s daughter had received the thoroughest of educations, and was well on her way to becoming the next head of the clan.

“Marquis Donnersmarck.” Though she couldn’t call him as such, the girl cut into her father’s pointless argument with her grandfather with a question. “May I ask you for one selfish wish, as your daughter?”

A doting father to his core, the marquis excitedly answered that he would give her anything she wished for. Despite sending her on perilous missions in the name of rearing a strong successor to the clan, his affection for his daughter was indisputable.

This time, she’d suffered terrible injuries at his command, but he couldn’t justify rewarding her for an incomplete mission; he’d been hoping to make it up to her with a more personal request from the very start. After all, she hadn’t been the only one to fail: this whole debacle could be traced back to his own error in calculation.

“You said before that I am free to choose with whom I bear my successor, yes?”

“Of course, my darling—Wit shall get you any man you please. Wit can’t offer you the comfort of a lawful daughter, but that comes with freedom in marriage at the very least.”

“In that case...I would like that servant of Count Ubiorum’s.”

“...Huh?”

Gasping in ignoble bewilderment, the marquis’s jaw went slack. He understood the words she was saying. He knew whom she was referring to as well. But the blond tyke that the count kept on her person like a concealed dagger was the very target he’d tasked his daughter with killing. Having heard the reports of his skill and knowing the boy might have had a means of emergency communication, the marquis had sent an entire unit of his best men to assassinate the little beast; no matter how he twisted his mind, the methuselah simply couldn’t understand why she’d choose that gremlin.

Paying her befuddled father no mind, the girl raised her three wounded arms and gazed at them with a longing sigh.

“I lost... I was decisively beaten, like I’d never been before. It was almost as if he was even holding back.”

The girl’s awestruck gaze remained fixed on the patchwork scars. Each slash had been fiery and intense, and yet cold and precise; she hadn’t stood a chance. In all her training and work since coming into her own, this marked her first major injury—no, her first real loss.

When she closed her eyes, she could see it again in vivid detail: those sparkling blue eyes gleaming from within his helmet; his small frame, nimbly dancing about; the dreadful storm of swords, each threatening a fatal blow. They resurrected the chill in her spine and the long-forgotten, burning excitement that came with teetering on the edge of death. Even now, she could feel his bloodlust wash over him.

And the heat of battle resonating from her pounding heart burned on in the pit of her gut. Her reason had returned to her when the war-fires dimmed; she knew that this was a mere biological reaction. It was a warning system of sorts, built into every organism to incite the passing of genes when death approached.

Yet even so, even knowing that, even after telling herself it was but a trick of the mind, the flame of yearning would not go out.

One thought commanded her head: if she could sow the seed of his talent, what kind of ungodly monster would their child become? She didn’t care whether they were mensch or sepa, boy or girl—so long as they were born healthy, she was sure they’d be a warrior like no other.

But if she had to choose, she would’ve liked for them to inherit those moonlit colors that clung to the core of her soul.

“One day, I should like to have my revenge and offer a toast with his skull. But at the same time, a part of me desires to hold that same head close, still attached to its neck. Do you understand?”

“Uh... Th-That is a very...nuanced set of emotions. How about it, Rashid? Can you elaborate on your granddaughter’s feelings?”

“Please do not pass this matter to me. How can a grandfather hope to comprehend what the father cannot?”

As they watched their child’s wistful gaze, the two men struggled to process her incomprehensible emotions. They were happy to let her experience love, but...that thing? And that her first awakening to love had come in such...instinctual ways was another point worthy of pause.

Alas, the girl cared not about her family’s deep discomfort and hugged herself, covering each scar with a hand.

“I swear to grow strong enough that you will understand. When that day comes, I will go and make him bend his knee by my own hand. Father, please give me even greater challenges—I require more opportunities to polish my skills.”

“...Very well. If that is what you want, Nakeisha, Wit will do my best to answer.”

“Besides, father,” she added, “you haven’t given up either, have you?”

Marquis Donnersmarck was genuinely surprised by his daughter’s comment. He had made no public comment, but it seemed like he was withdrawing from the county based on how he’d reassigned personnel; those working under him were all convinced the affair had put him off fighting for the Ubiorum name.

But his daughter knew the truth—she knew him: this seemingly friendly methuselah was the sorest loser in all the land. For the first time in ages, he had come across a player who could totally dismantle him and force checkmate; in no universe would he ever give up on her, and his daughter alone had understood that.

Although he would pull out of the territory for the time being, this was only a temporary maneuver to begin weaving a new web. This time it would be larger and sturdier, completely entangling her. He didn’t care that she had tamed the manifestation of violence itself as her pet; absolutes did not exist, and a perfect plan could very well ensnare her.

Now was the time to sleep on a bed of cold logs, lapping at his wounded pride so that he could conjure up yet greater schemes. He knew now that half measures carried along by inertia would not suffice to win the Ubiorum county. In that case, he would build up a grand conspiracy over the next few centuries, until his victory was a forgone conclusion.

“That’s right. Wit want to place a ring on that finger of hers like nothing else. Taming a foul and beautiful beast is a man’s truest joy.”

“...Is that why you raped mother?”

His daughter’s abrupt riposte caused the marquis to choke on his own spit, and for once, the sepa elder’s poker face crumbled.

Turning away from her father’s frenzied excuses, the young assassin clenched her fist.

When would they next meet? Though the golden wolf evaded her reach even in her daydreams, the girl let her mind wander to fantasies of their next encounter.

[Tips] Demihumans who trace their lineage back to aggressive insect species tend to prize strength above all else when selecting a suitable partner.