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

Preface

Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TRPG)

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

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

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

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

Reality tore open. The hole occupied only the bare minimum amount of space, perhaps betraying the fatigue of its creator; it simply hovered above a well-worn hammock in a laboratory belonging to none other than the first heiress to the Stahl barony, Agrippina du Stahl.

The woman herself came slithering through the tear and directly into bed.

“Oh, I’m tired... So tired... What a colossal waste of time...”

The groaning noblewoman had appeared from the shaky portal with all the energy of half-finished pudding: it would fit best to say that she had been excreted out of it. Her tone carried so much palpable fatigue that every word threatened to lift her soul away with it. For someone who avoided social merriment and career advancement alike, her faculty-mandated torture session had been agonizing enough to draw her true feelings into the realm of speech.

Methuselah boasted enough strengths to earn their title as the peak of all humanfolk, to be sure. Their unmatched internals allowed them to forgo food and sleep, and let those who partook in the occasional meal or drink get away without cycling it back out. Making full use of their physical gifts meant that a methuselah was perfectly capable of engaging in high-level debate on magical theory for seasons at a time, much like Agrippina had done.

Alas, the gap between survival and comfort was as profound as it was profoundly callous.

Agrippina liked to sleep several times a week to refresh herself, and even dabbled in the sensory amusement of cuisine when it suited her. Most of all, she loved the luxury of lazily swinging her legs in her hammock.

Unfortunately, her conversational partner had been Duke Martin Werner von Erstreich—he was technically also a great duke, but his continued leadership of House Erstreich made him a duke as well—and the man was the sort of immortal who would happily renounce food and sleep in their entirety for the sake of his research. For a woman whose pastimes consisted of sloth and indolence, he was nothing short of her polar opposite.

Their meeting had illustrated the difference in their priorities perfectly: the scoundrel considered magecraft as a means to further her interests, whereas the duke took it as his interest proper.

For as antisocial and lazy as Agrippina was, she was not stupid enough to allow her lethargy to cause her own ruin. Though her discussion with Duke Martin on the technical details of the aeroship had run on much too long, she hadn’t dared to do him the dishonor of asking for a break or to leave.

Authority was everything in a monarchy. When a sour mood could reduce someone’s life to less than a scrap of paper, interrupting a superior’s amusement was next to unthinkable; doubly so when the man in question had once reigned as Emperor, and remained one of the College’s untouchables to this day.

Had they been in her motherland, Agrippina could have held her own as the first princess to one of the Kingdom’s most influential families; yet in the Empire, she was no more than a foreign researcher of incidental noble birth. No matter how prestigious her background was, it meant nothing in the face of someone whose clout overshadowed her own.

Thus she had held out until this very moment, where she could finally dive into the hammock she had so dearly longed for. The pure joy she felt was nothing short of that felt by a lone vagabond returning home after wandering unwelcome for decades.

“Ahh... My beloved laboratory... I shan’t so much as step foot outside you ever again...or at least, for the next ten years.”

Agrippina’s every remark only served to sully the beautiful dress she’d been given for the aeroship showcase, not to mention how happily she rubbed her face into her soft bedding. Yet even as her brain melted into euphoria, a fleck of lucidity in the back of her mind noticed something was off.

Peeking up with one eye, she surveyed the room. A normal person would have seen only the shining rays of spring sun and been content to say this was closer to a greenhouse meant for tea parties than a magus’s atelier. However, the myriad of invisible lookout spells told a different story.

Every personal lab in the College came with a handful of simple defensive systems already installed. Naturally, Agrippina had torn them all out—there wasn’t a single researcher that left them in place—and replaced them with not ten, not twenty, but eighty-seven different barriers that protected her territory from threats both magical and physical.

The methuselah could see them all, and she noticed something strange.

The only traces of entry present in her laboratory belonged to her servant, who had dutifully kept the place tidy, and her student, who had come in to fetch her homework...but that only covered the laboratory proper.

Exhaling a spell woven into her breath, Agrippina dragged out the records of those who had passed through one of her many wards. She looked over the archive written in light that glowed only for her; after sorting out those who were expected to come and go, she found that two people had been let into her drawing room.

The first was a friend of her manservant, Erich of Konigstuhl. She recalled having met them once following the gut-bustingly hilarious tome-purchasing episode: they were a College student who had cast their lot with the gloomy hermits.

This was, well, fine. Had the boy brought over a professor belonging to another cadre without hesitation, he would be due for much worse than a spanking, but the methuselah felt like she may or may not have given him permission to invite his friends into the parlor, at least. She could have put in the effort to remember the exact date and time at which she’d said that, of course, but this memory was serviceable enough as was.

No, the problem lay with the other guest. Though Agrippina was unacquainted with whom it represented, the family name dancing along at the end was very familiar—troublingly so.

The spell that had recorded the entrants was one that exposed their true names unless they explicitly took steps to hide them. Furthermore, this wasn’t something flimsy enough to be prevented by an average counterspell or miracle; the formula belonged to Agrippina’s father, whose influence invited proportionate animosity. Its readings were certain: after all, even the woman who’d cast the spell had taken 130 years to find an answer to it.

This was psychosorcery that scanned the soul for what it considered its true name. Leaving aside the fact that the caster had waded shoulder-deep in the swamp of forbidden magicks to set up an approximation of a lock, Agrippina had to read and reread the name over and over again to make sure she was sane.

“Constance Cecilia Valeria Katrine von Erstreich... What?”

Alas, no matter how many times she looked the name over, it never changed. It was no fake: a foolish imitator who considered themselves an Erstreich for enough time to believe their fiction at the very crux of their being would not be allowed to draw breath for long.

“What has he done?”

Come to think of it, the warning signs had been there. Duke Martin had practically imprisoned her in a single room for months, and she’d sensed people coming to the door on many occasions. Then, at the important showcase, he’d suddenly vanished.

Agrippina had noticed the Emperor’s lividity under his guise of normalcy, suggesting that the duke’s disappearance had not been planned. In fact, the only reason she was here in her room to begin with was because the man had skipped out on his promise to show her around the ship following the terrace banquet.

Some unforeseen emergency must have occurred, and her servant and the girl he’d invited were the cause.

Hauling her dreary body out of bed, Agrippina plodded along to the drawing room. With every step, she cast aside ornaments that could buy common families whole, stripping off her pinching boots and untying her heavy hair to make herself comfortable. By the time she reached the parlor, she’d torn off her tight nightgown to shamelessly lay her body bare.

The room proved its keeper’s commitment to orderliness; without prior knowledge that someone had entered, she would have been none the wiser. Both the low coffee table and the sofa were immaculately kept by her exemplary servant.

Whereas a detective would struggle to find damning evidence, the magus only grew more certain. Divinations like this were at their most precise when physically at the site of the search, and she didn’t need to find a loose strand of hair to be sure that someone had made an extended stay in this room.

“Oh? What’s this?”

Agrippina came across a wineglass in the corner of the room, seemingly forgotten by her dependable housekeeper. Though it looked like any other chalice, she immediately brought it up to her nose to smell the faint scent left behind.

“Blood,” she murmured. “I’m beginning to see the full picture.”

Duke Martin had hurried off despite his important role at the banquet, his kin had then appeared in this room for mysterious reasons, and Erich was unresponsive to her telepathic messages. The boy was the kind of model lackey to reply even in the dead of night, and there were only two times he failed to respond after a successfully transmitted thought: when he was too exhausted for telepathy to wake him, or when he was backed into a corner and couldn’t spare any focus.

As vast as the Empire was, few in it could kill that monster as he was now. An average College researcher would struggle to flee unless they specialized in combat; if Erich chose to run away, then even fewer could catch him.

There was only one conclusion: he was caught up in some ridiculous nonsense that had nearly gotten him killed again.

Truly, could she ask for a more entertaining servant?

“Well,” Agrippina said, “it at least is apparent that he wasn’t fooling around with some boring girl. Perhaps I shall forgive him.”

That said, she couldn’t wait to see how he’d try to worm his way out of this one.

Pleased to discover that she was not alone in her fatigue, the lady put the parlor behind her, ready to enjoy a nice bath and a good sleep.

[Tips] Spells that probe into people’s souls are terrifyingly accurate, and some can expose a target’s name or appearance with frightening detail.