Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

Autumn of the Fifteenth Year

Player Agency

Unlike video games, TRPGs allow the player infinite agency so long as the GM permits it. One can graciously forgive a long-standing villain, impose harsh retribution for the most trivial wrongdoing, or just kill everyone as a joke. However, the consequences are then decided by the GM: control over one’s actions must never be conflated with control over their outcomes.

With experience under my belt, I’d come to the conclusion that riding solo was more exhausting than I’d realized. How did that Finnish troll’s best friend make it look so fun and easy?

I couldn’t even relieve myself in peace without someone else to watch my stuff, not to mention how I had to fetch water, start fires, and cook meals all on my own. Once night fell, an attack could come at any time; I hadn’t gotten any deep sleep as of late.

For as well policed as the Empire was, its lands were not the same as a serene campsite in Japanese woods. My life was mine alone to defend, and as much as this went without saying, that made it significantly harder to get along.

Magic could make things easier for me, but I didn’t have the technical mastery to use loud spells like Farsight without leaving a mystic trail everywhere—clearly a breach of my master’s final assignment—and the perpetual barriers employed by College professors were too mana-hungry for me to justify the purchase.

All in all, I didn’t feel like I’d gotten any rest in the five days since leaving the caravan. It hadn’t even been a week yet, and I was already sick and tired of traveling alone.

“I wish you two could talk. Then we could take turns keeping watch...”

I petted my horses, and the brothers snorted like they were laughing along with my ridiculous complaint.

With sunset approaching, I’d broken off the highway onto a smaller road and begun setting up camp in a clearing a ways down. The imperial highway network only served to connect linchpin cities to one another, but local lords and magistrates funded the construction of roads that served more local interests. The one I was on now was a country trail that cut through the forest to connect a canton to an urban center. It was a simple dirt path without so much as grooves for a carriage’s wheels, and the inns alongside it were sparse, each a few days out from the last.

In place of proper lodgings was a clearing by the river. Construction workers had once used this area as a site to store their building material, and it had been left vacant to serve as a campground for travelers and merchants.

I was joined by three other groups tonight. Fall was notable for how many caravans packed the roads, but it was also a popular season for personal travel. Over the past five days, I hadn’t set up my tent in pure solitude even a single time.

All the more reason to stay on my toes.

Cynical as it was to say, crime was only possible where people were there to do it. Wild animals tended to avoid developed roadways, especially when big trains of merchants or tax couriers tended to pass by; the more pressing threat was ever bandits and fellow travelers.

If all the world were full of saints, we wouldn’t need soldiers or guards at all. Working backward, the continued existence of these roles was proof that danger was present, and that the crooks who saw lives as profit to be harvested were still about.

As a god in one of my favorite TRPGs—or at least, an alternate version of that god—once said, it’s not a crime if you don’t get caught. Here in Rhine, those words hung heavy over my head.

Ethics were such a fickle thing when easy treasure dangled before one’s eyes. When the quick cure to a cold night was usually a cup of liquor, it was simple to see how the bonds of virtue might shatter.

With that in mind, here was a helpless young kid leading two horses for a solo journey; I was the perfect mark, at least on the surface. I wished people would find some distinction between picking up a quarter on the side of the road and leaving a mangled corpse to the wolves, but alas.

The constant alertness required to protect my belongings and the worry over intruders in the night made it difficult to get any rest. Upholding one’s property might be a foundational requirement of life, but it was one based on a tremendous deal of effort.

If only I were alone. At least then my only enemies would be the animals of the forest.

Setting up camp in the presence of strangers who could, at any moment and for any reason, morph into burglars weighed heavy on my mind. As little as it did to allay my fears, I tied up my horses a ways away from the rest of the travelers and quickly propped up my tent. I’d already filled my waterskin by the river, and the Dioscuri had gotten their fill of both food and drink. Yet even with all my preparation, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that a denizen of this cruel world might succumb to temptation and interrupt my sleep.

After all, it had already happened. Twice.

What fate had befallen those unwanted guests was, well—suffice it to say, they would not be making the same mistake again. Both times, they’d displayed signs of being repeat offenders; I’d turned them in to the nearest imperial patrol without any hesitation.

Having no one but myself to rely on was so draining that I’d even begun to think it might’ve been worth enduring that onslaught of job offers just to stay with the caravan. The odds of trouble and bloodshed seemed about on par anyway.

“Agh, oh well. I better at least make time for some shut-eye.”

I still needed to start a fire and eat supper, but I was turning in as soon as that was done.

I kneaded together lightly seasoned barley with a bit of water and tossed some dried rations into a boiling pot to rehydrate them. After adding chopped jerky for a bit of savoriness, I had a soup that wasn’t particularly great, but was perfectly edible. My bread was tough enough to shrug off teeth, but after steeping it in the stew for a little while, it offered some small solace amidst my high-strung lifestyle.

Once I was done, I sipped on a cup of red tea and took a drag of my pipe to cap off my day. I could only relax at the level where my Presence Detection would still trigger, but now was my chance to give my body a break.

I would have liked to find a new caravan to tag along with as soon as I came to know my plight, but my terrible luck had once again reared its ugly head. Sure, I’d come across a band of merchants in one of the cantons I’d dropped by, but they’d been so shady that I had to pass them by. I didn’t know how else to put this, but they seemed like the very types I was currently on the lookout for. Look, I wasn’t spoiled enough to wish for an imperial patrol to accompany me; all I was asking for was a camping buddy who looked like they’d at least criticize an injustice occurring before their eyes.

I crawled into the tent, jammed my lower half into my sleeping bag—I had to be ready to jump out at a moment’s notice—and threw on a blanket. Even after dusk, it was remarkably noisy outside.

There were a few voices going back and forth, none in very amicable tones. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a fight, it was clear these people weren’t laughing over drunken jokes.

With how far out they were, the thick tarp of my tent muffled the contents of their discussion; still, it wasn’t pleasant to hear a dispute. I would’ve liked to think it was just a few friends who were close enough to be rough with their language, but the stern voices told a different story.

Some people don’t have any consideration for those around them...

“If they don’t stop within the hour, I’ll go cool them off myself.”

A short while after grumbling to myself, I managed to fall into a light nap.

Birds began to chirp as daybreak approached, and everyday rhythm roused my consciousness from slumber. I let out a huge yawn; that I couldn’t stop myself was proof of my fatigue. Five days without deep sleep was starvation for the brain. I’d need to find some companions soon, or I’d have to take a pit stop at an inn somewhere. At this rate, I was going to break down.

My body cried out in protest as I dragged it out of its warm cocoon and crawled out of the tent. I took a swig from my waterskin and was rinsing out my mouth when I noticed something strange: there were fewer tents than when I had turned in for the night.

The three other groups at the campground had pitched eight tents in total. My closest neighbors had owned three of them, along with two mules; nothing but the largest tent remained.

Come to think of it, I’d woken up once in the night because I heard movement outside. It hadn’t seemed like any of the presences were headed my way, though, so I’d just gone back to sleep. Had something happened that forced them to relocate in a hurry?

I cautiously scanned the campgrounds but came up with nothing; the other groups were still around too, so it was probably a personal matter. All right, looks like it’s none of my business.

After brushing my teeth, I got a few swings in to dispel the haze of drowsiness; nice and warmed up, I started a fire and had a light breakfast. Once I finished with my morning routine, I started preparing to leave.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaa?!”

Just as I was stuffing my folded tent into a knapsack, my neighbor finally awoke—made apparent to everyone by a hysterical scream. Wondering who was causing such a ruckus at this early hour, I looked over to see a zentaur.

Zentaurs were strikingly similar to the mythical kentauroi that appeared in legends. The primary difference was that those spoken of in stories had a reputation for intellect ill matching their brutality; modern zentaurs were better known for a similar penchant for violence improbably wedded to common geniality. Infamous for nearly bringing the Blessed Kingdom to its knees in the Age of Gods, this equestrian(?) people had once been feared as the Living Scourge, enslaving their felled enemies and marching them across a massive nomadic empire—but nowadays, they’d melted into society like everyone else.

They were demihumans who boasted equine frames that turned into mensch-like torsos from the waist up. Like arachne, there was variety to their builds, but none were particularly uncommon in the Empire. Those who prided themselves on sustained speed could be seen running about as couriers, the stronger among them worked as farmers or builders, and many used the huge frames and martial power inherited from their forefathers to become knights.

We’d had one zentaur family back in Konigstuhl. Though they didn’t own any land of their own, they were built like workhorses; they used their ability to pull heavy plows to clear out farmland and make their living. Back before we’d bought Holter, they’d helped out at our farm every now and again too.

The person losing her marbles outside her tent was obviously no workhorse: she was a warrior. Her dapple-gray lower half was tremendous, packed with an overwhelming might that wasn’t present in those who specialized in speed. Her muscles were so girthy that it made her overall outline somewhat stumpy; geared for battle, her build was no less impressive than the two warhorses I’d ridden here.

Not only that, but her mensch side had not been neglected. The contour of every muscle from the tips of her long arms to the bottom of her abs was clearly defined and unhidden; she wore only a single article of underclothes that lifted and loudly announced a prodigious contour in its own right. Her shoulders and arms were broad—especially her left, no doubt the marker of many shots with a heavy bow. Tiny scars crisscrossed the surface of her skin, painting a long history of battle.

Yet for how magnificent her physique was, she had an incredibly jarring case of baby face. Her round nose was small, as was her mouth, and to cap it all off, the gentle slant of her eyes housed chocolate irises paired with the rest of her features to evoke the image of a bratty kitten. A glossy gray, her hair was the same color as her mane; the short cut she was sporting added to her juvenile image. That said, one part of her head violently clashed with the rest: of her two sets of ears, the left horselike one had been torn off from the base, leaving only a painful-looking wound.

My first impression of her was that she was a really big kid. It was hard to decide whether to refer to her as a woman or a girl: while she was certainly young, it was hard to think of someone so brawny as being my age. Ah, but her face was really babyish, so maybe? Hrm...

“Where the hell’d they go?!”

The zentaur’s shrill cry as she frantically looked around was better suited to her face than body. She bolted off in a panic, only to return moments later, only to then run off again in another direction; it was easy enough to see she was the restless type, unaccustomed to thinking before acting.

Aha—your pals ran off on you. Judging from her readiness for combat, she was either a mercenary, an adventurer, or a roaming knight. In any case, she hadn’t gotten along with her travel mates and they’d sneaked off without her.

“Dammit! They took everything?! You have to be kidding! What am I supposed to do?!”

The circumstances of last night’s squabble were now clear. At the end of their argument, the rest of her party must’ve been fed up enough that they’d steeled themselves for the perils of lightless travel. It seemed like a prudent decision: from the looks of things, she wielded great capacity for violence, and a peaceful farewell seemed unlikely.

It was a familiar tale, and I quickly lost all interest. Vague as the memories were, I recalled that parties of adventures kicking a member out like this had practically been an everyday affair. Er, I guess those developments had usually ended with the exile secretly having been an important member of the team, and they’d end up leading a new life elsewhere, so...maybe not.

“Shit... Seriously? What am I gonna do? Who do they think took care of them this whole time? Those ungrateful little— Huh? No way, my bag too?!”

A few minutes of observing from afar had been enough for me to determine that she was likely not an easy character to work under. I didn’t know whether genuine skill had fed her arrogance or whether some other factor was at play, but instinct told me she wasn’t a pleasant boss or team member.

Everyone but her was already preparing to leave, and none of us wanted to get involved; the other campers quickly scurried off while she was busy pacing to and fro. I tried to make after them, but it seemed I was a bit too late.

She’d been running around the clearing to search for any trace of her missing companions, but suddenly stopped and angrily slammed her front legs into the ground. Then, kicking off, she zoomed straight toward me.

Wow, zentaurs sure are fast. Common wisdom held that they were the fastest race outside those who could take flight, and I believed it.

“Hey, you.”

“May I help you?”

Now, I wasn’t going to ask that she use palatial speech or anything, but I would’ve expected an attempt at being polite.

“Did you see where they went—my followers? There were two mensch, a goblin, and a pygmy—uh, a—what was it in Rhinian again? Uh... Whatever, those and a pygmy.”

Ohh. Though her speech was distinctly lower class, it was fluent enough that I’d assumed she was native to the Empire; yet a mix-up in racial terms showed she was from abroad. I was impressed: she had a few quirks of pronunciation, but nothing that couldn’t be written off as a regional accent.

Sifting through my memory, I recalled that “pygmies” were what people in the polar north called floresiensis. Mika spoke both the northern archipelagic and northern mainland languages on top of Rhinian, and they’d taught me a few words here and there.

“Who can say? I heard a bit of movement late at night, but I couldn’t tell you which way they were headed.”

But regardless of whether her words came across clearly, her attitude was not that of someone asking a stranger for help. In truth, I had a read on which way they’d gone based on the direction of the sounds, but I didn’t feel like helping someone who only saw me as a free font of information. Besides, if this was how she carried herself, I couldn’t blame her subordinates for wanting to get away.

“Ugh, jeez...”

She scratched her head and began cussing the deserters out in the archipelagic tongue—it was some kind of comment about their mothers’ heritage—while glancing toward her tent. It was a grand pavilion that could house her massive frame, but the front had been left open to reveal it was nearly empty.

The only things that remained were an armor chest, a large wrapping that likely housed a weapon, and a singular bow. I surmised that the others had swiped the rest of her belongings as a severance fee, and that the armaments only remained on account of their size and weight.

How careless can you be? At least take responsibility for your own stuff.

“...Hey, you. Which way are you headed?”

“West, to my hometown. Why?”

I was curious to see what she’d do, but hadn’t expected this. Instead of packing up or grabbing what she could carry to chase after her missing team, she decided to extend her conversation with me.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

“Your hometown, huh? Which way’s that?”

“Pardon me for asking, but is that any of your concern?”

The zentaur looked me over in what was, frankly, an impudent appraisal. She scanned me up and down with cocky eyes and then shifted to my horses with a smirk.

“Hey, want me to be your bodyguard? It’s dangerous out here for someone who talks so fancy to be alone, especially with two horses.”

“Excuse me?”

“And in exchange, you’ll be my attendant until we get to where you’re going—but don’t worry, I’ll make it cheap. Let’s say around ten librae a day. Oh, but you’ll have to put up for the cost of travel, and I think a gold piece or two would be good once I finish the order.”

What the hell is this moron saying? was written all over my face, but you’ll have to forgive my ill manners. I was genuinely caught off guard.

She had no gear and no money, and she had the audacity to basically extort me? Worse still, she’d gleaned that I had some wealth from my belongings—at least, that’s what her outrageous rates told me. My research told me that an average adventurer would be expected to work for half that pay at most, and that was with their paying for their own travels, taking care of their damn selves, and not begging for a bonus.

“And if I decline your offer?”

“...Do you really want to do that?”

As soon as I hinted at being uninterested, she unabashedly turned up the pressure. She’d been all smiles when I was cooperating, but this forceful coercion was the hallmark of a typical villain. She seemed unwilling to just kill me and take my belongings by force, making her almost seem innocent in comparison to the lowlifes hanging on the sides of the highway, but I wasn’t going to simply ignore the depravity of her protection racket.

Something about her pissed me off. Now that she was closer, her skill was palpable in the way she carried her well-trained body—to use it for this?

“You talk fancy and wear nice clothes. I bet you’re some rich kid who listened to a bunch of sagas and got excited about seeing the world, right? But it’s dangerous out here. If you don’t keep within your means, you’ll end up rotting on the side of a road somewhere.”

She was polished: her natural stance had no openings, and the aura shrouding her told the tale of an unyielding dedication to growing stronger. While I wouldn’t ever lose to her, she was strong enough to impress me; so what was this utter farce? She was no better than the drunkards at the pub.

A healthy mind in a healthy body was truly a thing to wish for. Yet here was an example that spat on Juvenal’s grave as he rolled below.

“You want me to hire a bodyguard weaker than myself? Please. At most, I might consider you as a porter.”

It was such a terrible shame. Had she possessed a character befitting of her wonderful skill, she would have been a beautiful person. She was like the cheap candies handed out at Bon festivals: the colorful exterior was but a veneer to hide the bland, boring sugar underneath. I was as disappointed now as I had been biting into those treats during my first childhood.

Perhaps that was why I snapped back. Taunt and get taunted; it wasn’t my fault that was the way of things.

“Huh? Hey, runt. What’d you just say?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Rhinian must be difficult for you. Let me make it easier for you to make out. You. Weaker. Than—”

Before I could finish, her front legs came crashing down on me—not just one, but both of them. Just like the angry buck of a horse, her kick could flatten plate armor, crack a rib cage, and splatter the heart all in one go.

Too bad I’d seen it coming.

Taunt and get taunted wasn’t the end of the rule: it went on with the unwritten law of talk shit and get hit. I’d already primed myself for a scrap, and Lightning Reflexes slowed down the interaction dozens of times over.

In tantalizing slow motion, her legs shot forward to crush the skull of an annoying brat; meanwhile, I dropped low and slipped under her hooves. Her right leg had gone up half a beat before her left; the double-hit attack whizzed by, each only missing by a fist’s width. But no matter how impressive her might, it meant nothing if it didn’t land.

Further, she’d opted for an overwhelming strike—surely out of rage—which did her no favors at this range. Sure, a clean hit would send this cocky runt flying ten meters into the air and splattering into a satisfying pulp on a nearby tree, but what kind of fighter didn’t plan ahead to the possibility of the opponent dodging?

The saddest part of all was that despite the lack of thought, her form was immaculate. Anyone with a normal reaction time wouldn’t have been able to dodge in time, even if they knew it was coming. She wasn’t just swinging around her natural-born might; practice and effort had gone into honing this technique. It came from the deep understanding a true warrior had of her every muscle and nerve...which just made it all the more wasteful.

Had this kick not been the snap response to a simple provocation, she would have been beautiful.

Using my leverage to get underneath, I slammed the whole of my weight into her before she could regain her footing.

“Eek?!”

Posted only on half her legs, the zentaur easily rolled over. Er, well, that was too cute a description: she crashed to earth with such violence that the dirt, underbrush, and anything else under her was obliterated and scattered in every direction.

Perhaps this went without saying, but I hadn’t just dumbly tackled her. Kicking introduced imbalances in posture, and I had gotten a read on where to press in order to tip over her center of mass—with several Unseen Hands pushing me forward.

Obviously, a sub-sixty-kilogram mensch wasn’t going to overpower a zentaur. Most horses clocked in at over five hundred kilos, war horses more than that, and the demihuman zentaurs had a mensch’s upper half adding to that weight. This was a people known to cleave through formations of shield bearers several layers strong; I needed a dirty trick or two if I wanted to keep the upper hand.

But with my crafty technique, it was impossible for her or any hypothetical onlooker to tell that I’d used magic. Without a particularly gifted set of eyes, it would either seem like I’d put out more power than what my build let on, or that this was some bizarre stroke of luck.

Knocked onto her side, the zentaur blankly lay there, unable to wrap her mind around what had happened. She looked up at me with an expression that betrayed pure disbelief.

I couldn’t blame her. Getting flipped over by a tiny—gods, did it hurt to say that—opponent like me was sure to reduce any warrior’s prized pride and honor to dust.

“Let me say this again. I don’t need a bodyguard weaker than myself.”

“You—you little—”

“I will never best you in a contest of speed or strength, but you will never best me in an exchange of lives.” Truthfully, I wasn’t sure I’d win every single time without the overt use of magic, but I figured making a bigger claim would be more intimidating. And when she glanced toward her tent, I astutely added, “Do you think things would be different if you had your weapon? Fine, then. Go fetch it. And don’t worry—I’ll go easy enough not to kill you.”

“You—grr! You little shit!”

What followed were a handful of insults that were indecipherable with my limited archipelagic knowledge, but I think she’d made a comment on the size of my genitals and said something about the characteristics of my anus. And, well, I supposed both would be rather small for someone whose physique had great equine inspiration.

These silly thoughts bounced around my head as I unsheathed Schutzwolfe and tried to ignore the cursed whispers suggesting I needed a bigger weapon for my cavalryesque foe. Looking over, the zentaur was scrambling inside her tent to bring out her weapon; she must’ve been really anxious to fight, because she tore the binding right off instead of unwrapping it.

The gargantuan war axe was so ominous that it converted the refreshing rays of morning sunshine into a perilous gleam. Fitted for a zentaur, the long handle was akin to a mensch spear’s; the broad head would have looked like a caricature on anything shorter. A clump of steel shaped into a meat tenderizer balanced out the back half of the blade, but its bumps were far sharper than anything used for culinary purposes. Forget softening flesh, that thing would shred it along with any armor it came packaged in.

Just for good measure, the thing had a metal point on the other end. Even so, I had qualms about classifying it as a halberd—the axe portion was that big.

The terrifying weapon was a good fit for its huge owner; in fact, it was a weapon only a zentaur could make full use of. A jockey on horseback was limited by the unavoidable weakness of their steed’s neck. Without that, she was free to swing to her heart’s desire.

In both reach and weight, she was malice incarnate. Paired with the leverage of cavalry, she had the means to plow through ten normal soldiers with every attack.

“This is your own fault for letting me draw my weapon! It’s too late to back down now!”

Although the axe itself seemed like a monstrosity unusable by mortals, the zentaur swung it around with the ease of handling a tree branch. At first, she held the far end to make the most of its lopsided weight; but suddenly, she shifted her grip to the center of the shaft and began twirling it like a spear.

Oh, I see. The cartoonishly uneven distribution of mass was to guarantee force behind every hit without needing to rely on centrifugal momentum. While positioning the fulcrum of motion farther out increased power, it decreased precision in direct proportion. Instead of necessitating a full rotation for any follow-up swing, this design allowed the wielder to treat it like a polearm.

The head of the axe could split helmet and skull alike; the spiky hammer could crush any shield; the tip could thrust forward like a spear. I’d never seen this foreign design in the Empire. Despite its savage appearance—or rather, in perfect sync with it—the tool was perfectly polished for the art of violence.

“Name yourself! I’ll show you here and now that I’m the stronger one!”

Alas, it wasn’t enough. This wasn’t even close to being intimidating. When it came to big opponents wielding long arms, Miss Nakeisha had her beat; those weight-and-chain polearms had been an ordeal to work around.

“I have no name to give to a mere wench! If you want mine, then prove yourself worthy in battle!”

“Grgh! Fine!”

Presumably, most of her opponents shrank in fear when she flourished her deadly weapon. Unfortunately for her, she’d need to lift a building with her bare hands to spook me; I’d been through too much to fear somebody who was only scary by mensch standards.

“Graaaaah!”

With a shout that scattered the birds nearby from their morning perches, the zentaur sprinted toward me. She rocked her axe back and forth, making sure not to reveal the course of her attack until the final moment.

Even then, she was too forthright with her intentions. Her eyes remained fixed on my own, and I could plainly see that she wanted to stab me through the chest. A few paces before contact—a distance cleared in fractions of a second—she quit swinging and locked the polearm into a lancelike position.

Had I not seen this coming, I would probably have struggled to react. Sheer technique melded a stable stride and untold power to create an attack that was nothing short of masterful.

Ahh, what a terrible, terrible waste.

Alas, her axe did not pierce my heart, nor did she manage to hoist my dead body toward the heavens. I waited until she was too close to divert her course and stepped in, turning the act of dodging into the first step of a counterattack.

“Whoa?!”

Schutzwolfe raced toward her without mercy: the broad side of my sword slammed straight into her stomach.

“Augh! Ouuugh...”

“Had I used the blade, you would be spilling your guts across the ground by now.”

The zentaur had kept going after missing her mark; when she came to a stop a short distance away, she put a hand over the left side of her horse torso. Her arms were disproportionately long in comparison to mensch, and it seemed the connection at her hips was surprisingly flexible. Still, rubbing the bruise wasn’t going to make the pain go away; I hadn’t cracked any ribs, but she’d be aching with every movement for the foreseeable future.

“Grr... No, I wouldn’t! I was too fast! Your sword woulda gone flying if you’d tried to cut me!”

“Do you truly think I don’t have the skill to put a blade to a quick opponent? Fine, then! Come at me again!”

“Dammit! Argh, dammit!”

Though she seemed proficient in Rhinian, that evidently didn’t extend to her insults: she once again chose to use her mother tongue for that. This time, she skipped my immediate family to insinuate heinous somethings about my forefathers as she approached again, swinging her axe in a wide arc.

The control she displayed in the face of her weapon’s ludicrously awkward make betrayed the blood, sweat, and tears that had fueled it. So why are you like this?

Steel death came down on me from the right, but I evaded it by cheating further in the same direction. I pressed my blade against her, carefully gliding the edge across her skin as I passed; a thin streak remained in its wake. Though it wasn’t deep enough to call a score, it outlined how I could easily have rent open her humanoid midsection to destroy the massive lungs housed behind her abs.

“There go your lungs! You’re drowning in your own blood!”

“I-I would’ve been fine if I was wearing armor!”

“Really, now? Then come at me again! I’ll show you that the result won’t change, armor or not!”

Though her curiously deep pool of insults had begun to amuse me, I showed no mercy in countering the subsequent flurry of deadly strikes.

I dodged an overhead swing by shifting my weight to one side, bringing my sword up to meet her armpit as it came down. Joints were a constant weakness in armor, and I certainly would have severed her tendon with her added momentum had I not intentionally stopped short.

Even though it was obvious I’d let her get away, she doggedly tried to reverse course for an uppercut. I pressed toward her, curling into a ball; as I rolled through her follow-up offensive, I put out a roundhouse swing and lightly tapped her defenseless front leg. One leg gone—now you can’t even stand.

Next, she tried to trample me underfoot, so I slid in between her legs and let Schutzwolfe gently caress the bottom of her frame on the way. Ah, wait—this time, I was in the wrong. Had I actually broken skin there, I would have come out covered in blood, guts, and feces.

At this point, she was on a mad rampage. Rolling out from underneath, I jumped to my feet and slapped her butt as hard as I could. Part of her rear was covered in a loincloth—her front wasn’t covered, so this was presumably the business end—but there was enough open flesh for me to leave a blossoming red hand mark, just like the ones disobedient kids got when they were in trouble.

“Eep?!”

In contrast to her cutesy squeal, the zentaur reflexively kicked back her hind legs—only after I’d taken my leave, though. I knew too well that the space just behind a horse was the most dangerous: Holter had carved that lesson deep into my bones very early in life. Had our family beast of burden not been kind enough to go easy on me, I probably wouldn’t have ever been able to eat solids again.

“What’s wrong? Naughty children deserve a spanking!”

“You! Argh! You little shiiit!”

Out of colorful language at last, she spat at me in Rhinian while landing a frighteningly dexterous one-eighty turn. Kicking off her back legs, she twirled around like the needle of a compass—no doubt a maneuver she’d spent untold hours perfecting in the hopes of hedging against her kind’s natural weakness to fighting enemies positioned behind her. With her front half came the war axe, hovering parallel to the ground at a troublesome waist level.

The attack itself was gorgeous. It was as smart as it was strong, and the pure bloodlust it carried could not have been the product of half-hearted training. This was the shining brilliance of a honed warrior—a jewel, enchanting to all who seek the pinnacle of strength.

But it wasn’t quite there.

I made a read based on the way she’d tightened up that she wasn’t going to go past me with a parting shot, but that she instead had some means of reaping me from behind without giving up her position. Deciding it was time for a game of jump rope, I hopped straight into the air.

Though this game would see me losing my legs if my timing was any bit off, the feat turned out to be easier than I’d hoped on account of my not being weighed down by armor. The danger ripped past me in an instant, and I pressed the point of my blade against her neck upon landing.

In lieu of a verbal inquiry, I asked whether she was satisfied yet by slapping her cheek with Schutzwolfe’s tip.

“Urp! Grgh... Hngh...”

“The arteries in your neck, gone. In fact, I could’ve taken off your whole head had I swung while you were still moving. You’re not undead, are you? Don’t tell me you’d be able to survive that too.”

Her pride as a warrior had been too much for the zentaur to give up. No matter how many times I’d held back a lethal blow, she hadn’t stopped—she couldn’t have stopped. But now, she finally froze.

I could sympathize. Seeing all that she’d worked for amount to nothing against an opponent who was just playing—though in truth, I’d had to remain alert the whole while—was sure to draw out a passionate response. It wasn’t mere stubbornness: this martial prowess was the cornerstone of her confidence. As it fell apart around her, all she could do was desperately cling to the diminishing foundation of her ego.

It only made her situation sadder. She had the heart not to ask the world for power, but rather to earn that strength herself and use it as a pillar of her identity...so why had dignity left her behind? That was the key to a beautiful warrior: as hard as it was to come by, it was the most precious element. With it, she would have been truly stunning.

“Still want to fight?” I asked.

For a moment, she stood perfectly still...until eventually, she unhanded her axe. It crashed into the dirt with enough force to make me flinch; now that the fight was over, an awful chill ran down my spine. Was the thing enchanted to multiply its weight or something? I swear that it shouldn’t have made a noise that loud, even if it was solid steel.

“Waaaaaaaaah! Waaaaaaaaaah!”

I’d been waiting to see what kind of excuse she’d come up with next, but in a bewildering twist, the zentaur began bawling.

Most of her upper body was dedicated to housing her heart and lungs, and it showed in her deafening cries. It was the kind of sound that could incapacitate a rioting crowd; I’d covered my ears with Hands before I could think twice.

Tears and snot dribbled down her upturned face unchecked—she was no different from a toddler. Her arms dangled lifeless by her sides, but each fist was wound so tightly that her nails had broken skin.

Huh... I didn’t see that coming.

As you might have already realized, I didn’t intend to kill her.

Rather, the longer we fought, the more one intrusive thought came to dominate my mind: It’d be such a waste to let a fighter so skilled walk the path of an unprincipled vagabond.

When she was fully present in the art of combat, she had truly been glowing. We shared the same desire to grow stronger, and that overflowing ambition had enchanted me. Her love, her hunger, her longing for the peak was so pure that it made me wonder whether others saw me as I did her.

Partway through, I’d begun treating our bout like a lesson in the hopes that I might be able to beat some virtue into her. I hadn’t thought I’d make her cry.

“Um, hey. You, uh, weren’t weak or anything—”

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Crap, I made it worse. Maybe it was one of those times where trying to console her as the person who’d beaten her in the first place would just rub salt in the wound. I guess my only choice is to wait it out like any other kid’s tantrum.

I awkwardly scratched my head, put Schutzwolfe back in her sheath, and took a seat on the ground. The Dioscuri looked on at their distant, distant cousin’s tirade with little interest and huffed at me impatiently.

Sorry, boys. Give me another minute.

Figuring I’d patiently wait it out, I pulled out my pipe to pass the time.

[Tips] Zentaurs are a demihuman people originating somewhere from the Central Continent’s center to its eastern reach, and were once feared throughout the land as the Living Scourge. In modern times, generations of intermarriage have given rise to some whose upper halves more closely resemble the peoples west of the desert; still, the majority of zentaurs are not native to the Rhinian region.

Though their massive builds and superhuman strength make them terrific in battle, they are incredibly clumsy with their hands. Furthermore, their size makes it difficult to design suitable architecture for them, and in an age of cultural advancement, they have been reduced to just another of the many kinds of people that walk the planet.

From the moment the zentaur began crying to when she finally managed to flush out her entangled emotions, half an hour had to have passed—it had been long enough that I’d burned through all the leaves in the magically stretched bowl of my pipe.

I wordlessly offered her a handkerchief, and she began wiping down her slushy face without reserve; at the end of it all, she loudly blew her nose into it. Now, I wasn’t going to demand that she wash it or anything, but wouldn’t a normal person at least be a bit embarrassed to hand off their oozing snot?

Leaving me to pinch a dripping rag, the zentaur sniffled her red nose once more and arrogantly proclaimed, “With how strong you are, you might even be worthy of being my husband... I bet everyone’d welcome me back if I brought someone like you home.”

You sure are a creative sore loser.

Still, I was once more reminded that she had the makings of a warrior: no matter how thoroughly their pride was shattered, a champion had to collect the pieces and rise to the next occasion with a newly cast heart.

I couldn’t count how many times Sir Lambert had pummeled the ego out of me. If that man saw someone as a fighter, he pulled no punches—even at age seven. Overwhelming pain had nearly caused me to give up on melee combat entirely on many occasions; on many more, he’d tweaked his handicaps just as I was starting to find my footing so as to nip any budding seeds of confidence. It was in part thanks to him that I never lost perspective on my incomplete nature, even as I’d gotten stronger over the years.

“Sorry, but a wife who can’t even threaten my life sounds even worse than a weak bodyguard.”

“Urk...”

The groveling zentaur had scrounged up all her will to fire back with a cheeky one-liner; when I sent it right back her way, her voice caught in her throat and her eyes began to mist up again. Her horse ear was slanted to the side. If they worked in the same way as normal horses’, it was either a sign of total relaxation or a foul mood—I could guess which.

“But,” I said, “I’ll take care of you for a little while.”

“Bwha?”

“If I leave right now, how do you plan to survive?”

“Er, well...” She folded her arms, fidgeted with her front feet, and averted her gaze.

Friendless and penniless, all this zentaur had left was her skill in battle. Naturally, her options were limited. The most normal route would be to ask a fellow traveler or a merchant crew to take care of her, offering to work in exchange for an honest meal—but if she’d been the sort of commendable soul to do that, we wouldn’t be here at all.

No, she would most likely end up finding some other poor schmuck to bully into a bad deal.

If I didn’t want to kill her, then I believed that I was obligated to not let my choice cause trouble for those around me. Both to not let her starve and to not let her wreak more havoc, I felt it was best to take her with me.

Truthfully, it had all been over the moment I’d internalized her waste of talent: something in my recycled soul was aching to fix her. Come on, the image of her as a proud beacon of chivalry was exciting, wasn’t it? Even though I was fully aware that I was simply pushing my own ideals onto someone else, I couldn’t help but wish to see her at her most beautiful.

“Letting someone with your skill walk the lands without any sense of the dignity that power requires would be to let a scourge plague the world. If you want me to watch you slip into the path of robbery before my eyes, then this time, I won’t be using the blunt of my blade.”

“B-But I’m a warrior—a proud member of the Hildebrand tribe! After all the honors I’ve won on the battlefield, I’m not gonna tag along with some mensch who—”

“If you want to call yourself a warrior, then act like one! Is grumbling after a defeat what you call pride?!” As soon as I raised my voice, she recoiled. Regardless of where she came from or how she was brought up, my argument was too sound for her to talk back. “Get yourself together and pack your things. I’ll teach you what true valor is.”

“...You sure talk big. How much of a warrior are you, then?”

“Enough of one that I’d never lose to you.”

Speak in terms of victor and loser, and anyone who walks this path has no choice but to fall silent. Her frustration was written plainly on her face, but it seemed that for all the swirling thoughts in her head, she was earnestly contemplating what to do. As vexing as it was to listen to someone who’d just beaten her silly, there was no getting around the reality that her stomach would run empty eventually; she didn’t even have money or proper equipment to survive on the road. With the balance of power firmly decided by our duel, refusing here would be to abandon the last shred of her dignity as a combatant.

Most of all, she seemed to have a hunch for what I’d do if she tried to flee.

Adventurers were no strangers to courses of action that would make more ethical persons balk, and I personally had no qualms about fighting dirtier than sin if my opponents deserved it. Yet I believed that we were subject to a bare minimum standard of decency, and letting my fleeting sympathy turn into someone else’s tragedy crossed it.

Light pranksters could get off with a thumb; repeat offenders necessitated a wrist or two; those who still didn’t learn had no choice but to offer up their necks. But in the case of a zentaur, her whole body was a weapon. Even if she could no longer hold an axe, her hooves would be enough to threaten any traveler ill equipped for battle. To cut off her legs, though, would be the same as death—it would be more humane to just end things quickly.

Choose. I rested my left hand on the edge of Schutzwolfe’s sheath, and she finally hung her head in defeat.

“Fine, fine, jeez... I’ll go and pack up my stuff.”

“Very good.”

Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to draw blood today.

I was sure that some would call me arrogant for my self-centered, self-righteous decision. But I was too honest to lie to myself, and I didn’t want to see this zentaur waste her potential.

This wasn’t to say that I had anything against the wet workers who made a living off shady murder; my career path involved doing the same if the price was right. The zombified adventurer who, even in death, had refused to unhand his beloved blade in a disgus—terrifying display of loyalty had possessed beautiful skill, perfectly suited for his weapon of choice. Miss Nakeisha’s artistry was confined to unseen shadows, yet she carried herself with respect and threw the whole of her heart behind a beautiful lust for victory.

I sought purity in both technique and philosophy. The zentaur was an aging oil work of a dragon whose eye had been lost to decaying paint; the thought that a little retouching could show me something more than the everyday knaves in my path had me giddy. Those childhood days I’d spent arguing which epic hero would have been the strongest left me unwilling to abandon the prospect of adding another to the list.

Sure, she’d started off by going for a lethal kick, but I’d been taunting her to that end—we’ll call it even.

No matter what anyone else said, I would ride and die by this feeling.

“Once you’ve gotten your baggage sorted out, you’ll be carrying it yourself. My horses have enough to handle already.”

“Whaaat?! Why?! But you have two of them!”

“Don’t you ‘why’ me! What kind of warrior can’t take care of their own belongings?! You better not forget that this is how you ended up penniless in the first place!” I slapped her rear forward and shouted, “Go!”

Oh so begrudgingly, the zentaur began reorganizing the tent she’d made a mess of. The adroit handling she’d displayed with her weapon was nowhere to be found, to the point where I was shocked she’d managed to make her way out of her homeland at all.

“Oh... How do I fold this again? Dammit, when was the last time I did this?”

Although she continued to grumble the whole while, she looked like she at least had known how to use her gear at one point. From the way she had to stop and remember, though, it seemed that she’d been leaving it to others for a while. Both the way she folded cloth and the way she tied string would leave uncertainty in the final product’s stability, so I’d likely have to double-check her work.

“Ah?! Where’d the tent bag go?! Those bastards!”

“A big sack is always useful, so I can see why they’d take it. What I’m more curious about is how you managed not to wake up if they were hauling out everything.”

“I mean... I would’ve woken up if they’d bumped into me.”

That wasn’t even close to an excuse. She must’ve seen her traveling mates as pure servants. While I didn’t jump out of bed at the slightest sound when I was sleeping next to Elisa, Mika, or Margit, I’d still notice if someone came into my tent. Frankly, she was just lucky they hadn’t decided to kill her over pent-up grudges.

Sensing she was stuck, I cut a length from the rope I’d packed so that she could tie up her tarp and support beam. Her rewrapped weapon—though the blade poked through from where she’d ripped the veil—and armor chest went with it, and I oriented everything as best I could so that it sat evenly on her back.

“I’m supposed to be a warrior,” she moped with a heavy sigh. “Why am I being treated like a dumb packhorse?”

“Have you not considered that maybe your party left you because you never helped carry anything?”

“Shut up. I bought them donkeys—that was my contribution.”

“Donkeys? Those looked like mules to me.”

“Huh? Wait, what?! Those weren’t donkeys?! Did I get them mixed up in Rhinian?”

“Or maybe you learned the words correctly, but someone swindled you. Just to clarify, mules are mixes of donkeys and horses.”

“Wha—those cheats!”

An ass can’t spot a jackass, I guess. I wasn’t being totally precise with my language here, but I felt the joke fit; for whatever reason, donkeys were considered to be symbols of slow wits on this half of the continent.

The zentaur must’ve been used to traveling completely empty-handed, because her meager belongings were enough to warrant an impromptu jog to check her balance. Meanwhile, I went to go fetch the Dioscuri—they’d gotten so bored that they’d wandered off to snack on some underbrush—so we could leave.

“By the way,” she suddenly said as I rode up, “you still haven’t given me your name.”

I squinted at her for a bit, and she shrugged in resignation. Trying to coax out a superior’s name before giving one’s own wasn’t just an affront to some chivalric code—it was an affront to standard manners. I penciled in some etiquette training in the back of my mind: if she was going to stay in the Empire, then she would need to learn how to do as the imperials did. Upholding one’s own values was fine, but if she wanted me to respect her way of doing things, she’d need to show some respect for mine first; trying to force things without establishing any attempt at effort was the work of a small child.

“My name is Dietrich. Dietrich of the Hildebrand tribe.”

Setting aside her people’s name, “Dietrich” had me a bit confused. Perhaps she meant Deedlit, but that name would be much better suited for a methuselah—er, more importantly, she’d given a Rhinian name.

“But Dietrich is a man’s name, and an imperial one, at that. Aren’t you from the northern islands?”

“Ugh, you’re so picky. Back home, centaurs—er, zentaurs don’t have ‘man’ names or ‘woman’ names. Having to sort out which is which all the time is such a waste of time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, my name was Derek, but I figured people here wouldn’t be used to it or know how to say it, so I changed it to Dietrich, okay?!”

As strange as I thought her choice of name was, I didn’t comment on it out loud. Not making fun of foreign customs was beyond common sense. That said, I was intrigued: I’d read once that long ago, gender distinctions had been virtually nonexistent because boys and girls were raised similarly for the purpose of war. To those early militaristic groups, the only difference had been that one of the two sexes gave birth; if the Hildebrand tribe had traditions linked to this Living Scourge mindset, then they must have been a storied people.

Still, if I ever met a burly zentaur sharing a name with the Virgin Mary or Pope Joan, for example, I’d need to make a Strength check to keep my cheek muscles from turning up.

“And? May I ask the name of the oh-so-great warrior who beat me in battle?”

“Sure. My name is Erich, fourth son to Johannes of Konigstuhl. I don’t know how long our paths will cross for, but let’s get along.”

And so, my solo journey came to an end.

Unfortunately, the addition of a traveling buddy wasn’t going to mean I could kick back and relax. She was only trailing along because I’d won the duel, and there wasn’t any telling if or when she’d try to attack in my sleep.

Yet the hope that I might be able to turn her into a venerable warrior was worth it to me.

Earlier, Dietrich had mentioned that “everyone” would welcome her back if she brought home a strong groom. Either she’d been bullied to the point where she’d run away, or the authorities around her had thrown her out in the hopes that independence would make her grow up—that was my best guess as to why she was all the way out in the imperial countryside.

In essence, I wasn’t alone: there was a chance her tribe wanted her to learn some dignity too. Helping her realize why she’d been chased out and what made for a true warrior didn’t sound like a bad time at all. The streets would see one less highwayman, she would return home a matured hero, and I would get to polish off a gem otherwise left buried in dirt.

Of course, this all hinged on an assumption—if the Hildebrand tribe was full of ruthless savages, I’d be doing them a real disservice...but hey, the other points stood true no matter what. It’d be fine, right?

[Tips] The northern archipelago is centered around a massive island directly north of the continent’s western reach. Although it is technically ruled by a royal family with a supporting parliamentary system, the area’s instability causes the throne to change hands at a breakneck pace. Sometimes, the crown is even worn by foreign invaders—suffice it to say, the people of the Empire regard the region as a land of brutes and barbarians.

After three days, it’s easy to get a read on a person’s strengths and weaknesses: both their limits as a person and the physical limits of their build.

“You sure are clumsy...”

“Shut! Up!”

My days on the road with Dietrich thus far had gone without incident, but it was hard to say that things were progressing smoothly.

I found myself face-to-face with a campfire that didn’t seem all too wieldy to use. Er, perhaps that was short-selling it: the only reason my brain could process the haphazard pile of rocks as a “campfire” and not the work of a five-year-old trying to build a castle was because it had resulted from me specifically asking for a campfire.

“You can’t put up your tent properly. You can’t wash your clothes. You can’t even set up a fire... How in the world did you survive this long?”

“All zentaurs are like this! That’s why we always keep a bunch of servants and staff!”

Red in the face, the zentaur angrily shook her hopelessly clumsy fists. Where had the astonishing poise and agility she’d shown in battle gone?

In fairness, Dietrich was huge. She remained as tall as an average mensch when squatting at her lowest, and that build lent her to handling massive axes or drawing great bows that a smaller person would have trouble making budge; her bumbling touch when it came to the finer things was the price for that power.

Sadly for her, an ineptitude for sitting down and working made her practically useless at every kind of productive skill. She could just barely get her tent up because it had been specifically designed with zentaurs in mind; everything else wasn’t even worth asking about. At most, she could be counted on to simply carry things from place to place or to use her marksmanship to hunt game. While it was nice to let someone stronger do the exacting task of hauling water back to our campsite, it wasn’t like we were filling a bath out on the road—I didn’t ever need her to bring a zentaur’s full load worth of water. If this were a micromanageable empire-building sim, she would be the overspecialized combat unit that takes up more resources than she’s worth in the early stages of the game.

I could see how the rise of civilization had linked to the Living Scourge’s decline. They could eke out acceptable results for basic tasks if they had custom tools, but complex endeavors like architecture and metallurgy were impossible like this. No wonder the zentaur family in Konigstuhl had gone around helping out their neighbors instead of buying their own farm: they would have surely struggled to keep it afloat.

“You were the one who told me to leave it to you when I asked. All you had to do was tell me you couldn’t do it.”

“But...”

“But what? Is it that embarrassing to admit to a lowly mensch that you can’t do something?”

“I... I just don’t want anyone to look down on me.”

I reoriented the stones into a proper rim, tossed the firewood I’d foraged into the center, and lit it ablaze. I’d learned on day one that Dietrich wasn’t built to pick things off the ground either, and the daily tasks of life had all quickly fallen to me. It was clearer now why she’d skipped the option of robbery to try and force me to be her servant. Despite how strong she was, she couldn’t get by without someone else’s help.

“Admitting to your own limits isn’t something to be ashamed of. In fact, I’d say it’s orders of magnitude more embarrassing to claim that you can do something only to come up short—being underestimated is nothing compared to that. It’s not as if you don’t have redeeming qualities, so why not be honest about your strengths and weaknesses from the very beginning?”

Yet for all my nagging, there were parts of zentaur culture that were downright ingenious.

First, they were comfortable handling blades in spite of their overall clumsiness, and Dietrich could take apart a fresh catch in half the time it would take me. Better yet, her work was clean, and she preserved the pelts and guts in pristine condition. Yesterday, I’d inadvertently begun applauding when I saw her skin a deer; as someone who brute-forced my skill in this field with Enchanting Artistry, watching her masterfully peel hide from meat had left me awestruck.

And as simple as they were, I’d kicked myself for not doing the same when I’d seen her midnight bells.

On the first night, Dietrich had pulled out a set of bells lying around in her armor chest, all strung up on a series of thin wires. The design was well thought out, with each metal ringer too heavy to make a clamor in a gentle breeze. Apparently, she’d stopped using them some time ago, since she had enough lackeys to keep watch, but I welcomed the traditional zentaur warning system with open arms since there were only two of us. In fact, I would want to buy a set off her if she had any to spare.

All this to say, Dietrich did have things to contribute. I didn’t see why we couldn’t split up the tasks to our own strengths.

“Oh, yeah, yeah—fine. I get it.”

“One ‘yeah’ is enough. It’s impolite to repeat yourself.”

“Yes, Mr. Erich. There, is that good enough for you?”

“Very good.”

I ignored her sarcasm and began preparing dinner. Dietrich was always grumpy from all the scolding, but she perked up around suppertime. The way she paced back and forth behind me—she told me that zentaurs preferred to stand than sit—whenever I started cooking felt like she was looking for an opening, but I’d figured out by the second night that she was just excited to eat.

It had come as quite a surprise that she was so fond of simple porridge only broken up with a bit of venison. That night, she’d exclaimed, “Wow, this is amazing!” and wolfed down the whole pot in seconds. I yelled at her for not being considerate enough to leave me my share, but after that, I’d begun tripling our portion sizes and burning through a whole loaf of black bread a day.

Looking back, I supposed it was only natural for someone of her size. Horses ate about twenty kilograms of roughage a day, and a zentaur with similar physique was obviously going to need a lot of fuel. While Dietrich’s ability to eat more nutritious foods meant she didn’t have to ingest the same volume as Castor or Polydeukes, she still required three times as much as a mensch.

Even so, I hadn’t expected her to be so keen on my simple Campfire Cooking. I had a hunch that no one from her previous crew possessed any experience preparing meals.

“All right, I’m done. You can start eating without me, but remember—”

“‘Quietly and with good manners.’ I know. Jeez, not even my mom says stuff like that.”

“I only say it because you’ll stay fuller longer if you slow down.”

The way she chowed down as soon as I handed her a bowl and spoon was the spitting image of a little kid. It boggled my mind that she was older than me—at first, she’d even held her spoon backhanded in a balled-up fist, and shockingly, begun loudly slurping straight from the bowl after the porridge had cooled off.

Compared to that, watching her continue to clink tableware together now almost seemed like good etiquette.

“Yum! How’d you get bird meat not to smell like this?! Ahh, and the pluck really fills me up!”

“For one, you brought back a great catch. On my end, I soaked the pheasant in liquor and vinegar to pull out the gamey stink. Oh, and I put in some herbs while I was boiling it. Glad to hear that it suits your palate.”

“Wow, I already thought the food here was better than back home, but your cooking’s even better than the restaurants’! Gimme more!”

“Here you go. But you know, I’m a bit disappointed it wasn’t ready for lunch instead.”

Dietrich had sniped this pheasant just before we’d taken our midday break. Although she’d been eager to eat it straight away, I’d convinced her to let it sit in the simple marinade until dinner.

However, imperial custom was to eat a hearty lunch to fuel the busiest part of the day, with sparser breakfasts and suppers. Straying off my usual rhythm didn’t sit the best with my stomach, but we didn’t have the luxury of cooler bags or refrigerators. Even preserved in liquor and vinegar, it wouldn’t be safe to keep meat for more than a day...but man, did I wish I could’ve had roasted pheasant for lunch.

“I don’t get why you’d say that,” Dietrich said. “Back home, it was normal to make dinner the biggest meal of the day.”

“Don’t you feel bloated at night if you do that, though?”

“Not really?”

My foreign companion seemed confused at the question but went back to nibbling a piece of black bread that would shatter my teeth. This was a prime example of a culture gap, I suppose. Despite being proud of how well the dish had turned out, I decided to keep my portion on the smaller side; besides, I didn’t have to worry about wasting food with Dietrich around.

“Whew, I’m full! It might actually be worth taking you back home if I get to eat this all the time.”

“Like I said, I don’t need—”

“‘A wife or bodyguard weaker than me.’ I know. That’s why we’re gonna spar to work off the food, right?”

Dietrich stretched out her arms, tossing the empty bowl to the side. She may have been the older one, but I felt like I’d suddenly been burdened with a disobedient little sister. I’d need to teach her to clean up after herself once the meal was done, but that could wait for another time; I’d just sour her mood if I pointed out everything all at once. For now, I’d give her a passing grade for paying her respects in the form of a compliment. I would have added dish washing to her responsibilities, but I held off knowing I’d blow a fuse if she ended up bending my cutlery.

We’d settled into a routine of light exercise following the last meal of the day, and squared up to spar; yet long after the sun had sunk, we noticed someone on the road heading toward us. The faraway sounds of carriages were supplemented by a smattering of footsteps.

At this time of day? The two of us stopped and cast our eyes toward the sound. Eventually, the dim, floating glow of a torch showed up in the distance. Slowly but surely, a scout emerged from the darkness, followed by three buggies and a handful of guards. Neither did the canopies bear an imperial crest nor did the crew fly a tax-collector’s flag; they were probably average merchants who’d hit a snag on the road and missed their chance to find an inn.

No illicit trader would be marching along with the lights on at this hour, after all. Those dealing in insidious markets simply hired crews with night vision to navigate off the beaten path; these people were almost certainly just unlucky civilians.

“Ugh, finally.”

“Gods, all this extra work, and for what?”

“I’m terribly sorry—I really am. But the straight path is so poorly maintained, and I feared the wheels wouldn’t be able to handle—”

“We get it already! How many times do you have to repeat yourself before you’ll shut up?!”

Yet just as I eased up thinking they wouldn’t be a threat, a tense set of voices came into earshot. Though the middle-aged man speaking to the bodyguards seemed like the owner of the convoy, the conversation did not follow the pattern of employer and employee.

While the vehicles were somewhat old, they were well kept and roofed with tarps free of holes. I caught a glimpse of the interior, and the neatly tied cargo in the back spoke to honest work—not to mention how the owner seemed to know the lay of the land and had had the wherewithal to take a detour when the situation called. For my money, the merchant seemed like a dependable employer. If the shortest path could risk a broken wheel or axle, then it was a smart move to prioritize the sure success of the trip. In the worst case, they could’ve wasted half a day trying to fashion spare parts out of nearby trees, only to make replacements incapable of carrying their goods to the destination.

My issue lay with the bodyguards who were bellyaching over a few extra hours and a night on the road.

Put bluntly, they had no idea what they were doing; if I really tried to be polite, they were unendowed with professionalism. The Bloody Manes had at least cleared the bar for the bare minimum amount of structure needed to keep a band of soldiers-for-hire in line; not only did these amateurs not have that, but their gear was significantly worse.

Judging from the lack of a banner, they weren’t mercenaries; however, they didn’t exactly look like a gang of local lads who’d just picked up their first spears for tonight’s job. By process of elimination, they were probably adventurers.

Adventurers had their roots in the Age of Gods, where the powers that be had tasked the bravest of heroes with surmounting every challenge...but nowadays, they were just cheap labor to inflict dirty work upon. In exchange for being less specialized in combat than the average merc, the hollow label of “adventure” could justify pretty much anything, and society had long since accepted this versatility.

But of course, that flexibility came hand in hand with degrading quality. Epic heroes who upheld the glory of those who came before them were few and far between: both virtue and skill were woefully scarce.

As someone who planned on joining their ranks, seeing the deterioration of my peers-to-be in such vivid detail had me feeling ill at ease. I wasn’t going to start spouting some teenage ideal about how the world ought only to be good, but this was just sad.

“Gods, it’s bullshit all the way down. Everything you ask for is a pain in the ass.”

“I’m sorry—I’m so terribly sorry. I’ll be sure to increase your pay for the extra days we spend—”

“Of course you will! But what I’m saying is that that ain’t enough! I’d need double the pay to put up with this shit anymore!”

“D-Double?! No, I can’t! In any case, the Association should have explained to you before taking the job that carrying cargo would be part of your responsibilities, and what’s more...”

That said, the merchant’s timidity wasn’t helping. Haughtily pushing around one’s bodyguards was obviously one way to get abandoned on the road, but he shouldn’t have had anything to fear if he’d hired these men through the Adventurer’s Association. Being an intermediary organization, the Association went beyond connecting workers to jobs: it oversaw the quality of the work being performed; it wouldn’t hurt for him to hold his ground more firmly.

“They sure are going at it,” Dietrich said. “If that guy’s the one paying, then why doesn’t he tell them off harder?”

“He probably isn’t used to dealing with rougher sorts. Bad luck for him—those goons look really lowbrow.”

“That’s lowbrow? He wouldn’t last a second in the slums up north. I’m shocked he can run a business like that.”

“When you live your life with four walls at your side, being nice can be a weapon of its own. Negotiating business is a whole different matter from shouting down your opponent before a battle.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Lame. I guess I’m never starting a business.”

Dietrich sure did like to concern herself with putting on airs. On top of grumbling about not wanting to be looked down upon, she also constantly complained that tying things up on her back wasn’t the proper look for a warrior.

Yet for all her fussing over appearances, she lacked the critical conception of her ideal self. Did she want to become a legendary fighter, remembered through the ages? Did she want to find a worthy opponent and best them in battle?

I saw myself in her: a greener version of me whom I’d left behind in a faraway world, buried underneath the years. She wanted to become so great and mighty that none would make light of her, but she didn’t know how to truly achieve greatness—she didn’t even know how to look the part.

Ugh, just watching her makes my stomach hurt. Despite believing in herself, she couldn’t win the approval of others, and on closer inspection, the basis for that confidence was missing in action. Unable to even begin imagining what life might be like a decade out, she was plagued by the questions of identity that, at worst, led young souls down the dark pathway of wishing for harm—for themselves or for others.

Argh... Seeing it in someone else was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. My diagnosis was that she suffered from the sequelae of middle-school syndrome, and there was no cure. The only medicine that offered temporary reprieve was a pillow and blanket.

Putting that aside, I decided to call off our sparring for the night. Swinging our weapons near a bunch of bodyguards with short fuses was just asking for a fight.

It seemed the rule of thumb about public order getting worse and worse the farther one was from a major city was true. Lady Agrippina liked to laugh at the “capital of vanity,” but I felt like some veneer of civility was necessary. Without it, people were creatures too wicked for their own good.

“Let’s just pour some tea and call it a night. You can go to bed first, since you took the first watch last night.”

“Yay. Let me sleep until morning, will you?”

“You better be joking, or I’ll cut your hair even shorter than it is now.”

Dietrich put her hands on her head at my empty threat and hoofed it into her tent. We’d been talking about how zentaurs shave their heads after losing in a duel, and she’d mentioned that her hair had only just gotten long enough not to embarrass her. I hadn’t expected her to take me seriously... Did I actually look mean enough to do that?

On a separate note, I’d been meaning to replenish our rapidly depleting stock of food—today’s huge supper hadn’t helped—if we ever came across a caravan, but I made up my mind to wait for morning. They seemed to have their hands full with setting up camp in the dark, and I had a bad feeling about the situation. I hadn’t not felt a bad feeling in days, to be fair, but the one creeping on me now was worse than usual. The adventurers seemed remarkably upset, and it was looking doubtful the merchant would be able to calm them down.

Ugh, there had to be something wrong here—was the world actually this turbulent? Was I the one in the wrong for expecting any semblance of peace on my journey?

I’m just trying to get home, man...

[Tips] The Adventurer’s Association is an international organization originally conceived to connect capable heroes with the dire tasks of extinguishing giant specters, quelling rampaging beasts, and slaying vicious dragons. Once upon a time, gods of varying nations set aside their differences to found the institution; nowadays, all that remains is its scope. Though the Association covers the whole of the continent’s western reach, it has been reduced to a one-stop-shop of dispatch labor.

Anger is the most explosive of human emotions; it is also the shortest-lasting. That was why I’d been hoping that things would sort themselves out by morning, but I’d been dead wrong.

I rose in the early morning to fit in the practice swings I’d been denied last night, and knocked back a quick breakfast after I was nicely warmed up. After all that, the caravan company emerged, and was still going at it. The bodyguards were once again arguing for double the pay, all done outside the Association’s bounds.

An average adventurer earned about five librae for security detail, and someone with little to no experience would bottom out at around fifty assarii. However, that wasn’t reflective of the cost: the buyer paid an extra twenty percent in Association fees and imperial taxes. The crown knew free-spirited adventurers weren’t going to report their revenue properly, and this was its way of ensuring its cut.

As should have been obvious from the safeguards in place, it was illegal for an adventurer to directly rack their employer for extra pay. Not only did it put the hiring party in a bind, but neither the Association nor the Empire were fond of losing out on their income. One could argue for extra compensation if the work didn’t match up to the conditions initially laid out, but that still involved official mediation.

Trying to get an extra tip for a job well done was one thing, but asking for twice the money was pure nonsense.

“You pay us double right now or we walk!”

“What?! Then you won’t be getting paid at all! Any disputes should be settled through the—”

“Shut your trap, you scrawny peddler! You already forced all your shit work onto us—now we’ve gotta pick up the slack on money too?! Maybe I oughta teach you a thing or two about making a damn living!”

Dietrich was leisurely brushing her teeth with a wooden brush, but I was on high alert as I watched the exchange across a simmering pot of red tea. I didn’t know what had set this whole ordeal off, but it no longer seemed like something that could be neatly tidied up with words alone.

“I’ve had enough! We’ve let you speak your piece, and all that comes out is drivel! Don’t look down on us! You don’t know a damn thing about business! If you wanna play bodyguard, you should go home to your mothers and learn some manners first!”

A middle-aged man stepped out of one of the carriages and shouted down the adventurer in an attempt to defend the caravan leader. He’d been packing up to depart until now, but as his face entered the light it became easy to see the resemblance between him and the first merchant.

It had already been clear that they were family on account of the convoy’s small size; they were probably brothers or cousins, or maybe uncle and nephew. He had a traveler’s final friend dangling from his waist, but sadly, I didn’t get the sense that he knew how to wield that dagger any more than a country bumpkin looking to show off.

“The fuck d’you say?! You wanna go?! You better watch your mouth if you know what’s good for you!”

“No, you watch your mouth, punk! There’s a reason you thugs are cheaper than a cart of apples! If you want twice the pay, then work your asses off to earn it!”

“B-Ben! That’s enough!”

“Let me go, Uncle Rolf! Why the hell should I have to sit silent as these lowlifes talk us down?!”

I agreed on principle, but buying into the fight being sold was ill advised. From a swordsman’s perspective, the five adventurers lacked even the slightest semblance of leadership or unity; I could’ve wiped the floor with them at age ten. But as an honest merchant leading a peaceful life, they seemed more than the man could chew.

“You asking to die, dumbass?! I ain’t here to get talked down to by a penny-pinching merchant!”

“Wah?!”

Look, see? I knew this would happen. The adventurer gestured with his hand on his sword—I couldn’t let this go on any longer. This had escaped the bounds of mere negotiation.

“Hm? Erich?”

“Just wait here. I’ll be back in a second.”

After preaching my lofty morals to Dietrich, it wouldn’t do to sit idly by in the face of reckless violence. On a more personal note, it would weigh on me if I so blatantly ignored the opportunity to stop needless bloodshed when it arose.

“Excuse me. May I have a moment?”

“The hell you want, brat?! Fuck off—this ain’t none of your business!”

“My business or not, I can’t simply ignore this ruckus being made first thing in the morning. How can I enjoy my tea with this chaos?”

“Who the fuck cares about your tea?! How ’bout you walk your little ass back to Miss Bodyguard over there and suck on her tits like the baby you are before I suck on ’em for you?!”

The man was so cartoonishly vulgar that my will to put up any front of courtesy rapidly depleted. Dietrich may have been just as crass in her language, but at least she had the decency to turn it off in normal conversation.

“Don’t let your big escort get to your head, kid. That piece of crap around your hips won’t do anything for you if you keep sticking your dumb neck where it don’t belong—now scram!”

“P-Please calm down! He’s just a boy!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

The peace was broken: the caravan director tried to cover for me, immediately prompting the adventurer to wind up a punch. Then again, I wouldn’t have been here at all had the situation been resolvable by peaceful means. I stepped between the two, rerouting the aggressor’s arm by the elbow.

“Whoa?!”

He’d committed his weight backward in preparation for a full swing, and a light shove was all it took to tip him over. Being manhandled by a young kid hadn’t been part of his calculations: he painfully crashed onto his rear without breaking his fall.

Pathetic. This man was the leader of his party—he was the only one with a sword holstered as a daily carry—and yet he couldn’t even catch himself. If I’d swept his legs instead, he would’ve gone down face first.

“The merchant is right. You need to calm down. What kind of guard harms the object of his protection? Let’s talk this over rationally. To begin, this area isn’t the sort of dangerous region that would justify a doubled—”

“Kill him!”

Yeah, figures. As soon as the groaning adventurer gave the order, I kicked in his jaw to shut him up. I might’ve broken a few teeth in the process, but I was honestly sick of playing nice with him.

“Want any heeelp?” Dietrich called over.

“No need! Just watch the tea for me.” With a casual answer, I rolled my neck and sauntered toward the angry pack of adventurers. There were four, all mensch, and each armed with a spear, club, or axe; no magic, no horses, no priests.

“Y-Young man!”

“Ah, please stand back. I’ll make sure to keep things from moving toward you, but it won’t hurt to be safe.”

In a tabletop setting, the GM would have stayed my hand from reaching for the dice. “Ahem, you beat up the thugs in whatever way you think is coolest. Do you guys want me to narrate the fight, or...?”

And that was exactly how it went.

Each foe went down in a single hit. I jammed the heel of my palm into their fleshy chins, necks, and stomachs until they were all out cold. Frankly, they were much too squishy: they literally hadn’t trained enough to bulk up with hardened muscle. If they didn’t go home and start exercising, they’d never withstand a punch.

I hadn’t expected an engaging fight, but this was just...soft. Back home, Sir Lambert wouldn’t have even let these chumps hold steel. They would’ve been under his personal care, swinging fake wooden swords a hundred times a day—now there was an actual challenge. The Konigstuhl watch captain refused to count any imperfection in technique as a real swing, inflating the total count severalfold; that had been the breaking point for many of my peers.

“Incredible... With your bare hands too!”

“Unlike these feral mutts, my fangs choose their marks.” I clapped off the dust on my hands and turned to the merchant. Seeing someone my age take out five adults had impressed him, so I took the opportunity to say, “These five fools won’t even look the part of proper guards. You’d be much better off hiring the two of us. In fact, we’ll do the job for whatever price you were offering them as an apology for disabling your security detail.”

Three carriages made for a pretty big single-family company; they’d be a tantalizing mark for anyone whose path they crossed without an escort. Offering to solve a problem I’d helped cause felt a bit scammy, but hey, it wasn’t my fault the adventurers were idiots.

If the deal fell apart on the part of the adventurers, the merchant would probably get his money back—with the difference in fees billed to these goons—so my proposition didn’t come with any real drawbacks. At most, they’d lose out on raw manpower, but I didn’t intend to be outdone by five nitwits who half-assed their jobs.

“Based on the direction you arrived from, I suspect we’ll be taking the same path forward. We’d be willing to accompany you until you can hire more permanent replacements, if that sounds good to you.”

“I—we would be happy to have you! Having someone as strong as you would be so very reassuring!”

“Then we’ll begin preparing to leave—but do feel free to take your time. And please, leave these men to me. I’ll be sure to give them a thorough warning.”

With matters settled, my first order of business was to leave my seniors in the adventuring field a little threat. I didn’t want them getting any vengeful ideas when they woke up, after all.

After a bit, I finished up and headed back to our camp. I planned on apologizing to Dietrich for accepting work without her permission, but when I returned, she was busy thrusting her arms this way and that with a puzzled expression, mumbling, “Like this? No, it was more like...hah!”

“What are you doing?”

“You were doing some really fancy stuff with your hands, and I wanted to see if I could do it too. Is this stronger than punching someone with a closed fist or something?”

“Well, my fists are more likely to get hurt than their skulls with a normal punch. Instead, I tighten up my hands and arm to make a solid rod; from there, I can push out all the strength of my shoulder or elbow and can break jaws barehanded.”

“Oh... Mensch sure are weak. If that’s why you were doing it, I guess I don’t need to learn this. I can crush a skull with one hand if I get a good grip.”

She stretched her hands out toward me. They were riddled with calluses and, just as she’d claimed, big enough to cover my whole head—I guessed their disproportionately long arms were matched up with extra large hands. Trying to process that these were attached to her baby face caused my brain to glitch out.

“Crush?” I asked. “What kind of crazy grip strength do you have?”

“Well, I can’t do this yet, but there’s one warrior from my clan whose hands are so strong that he keeps breaking all his weapons in battle. So he usually ends up fighting unarmed, and I saw him pulverize a skull one time: it didn’t really shatter so much as it just started leaking from the weak bits. Like a smush kind of feeling? Or maybe more like squelch—”

“I’ll pass on the details, thank you. I won’t be able to enjoy my tea if I keep listening to—”

I was going to tell Dietrich that this sort of discussion wasn’t suitable right after a meal, when I noticed the pot of red tea was totally boiling over. I’d used a coarse enough tea bag to keep the insides from scattering, but at this rate, the flavor would go to waste!

“Hey?! I thought I told you to watch the tea!”

“I am watching it.”

“Don’t just watch it! All the fragrance will evaporate if you let it boil!”

“I’m telling you it’ll be the same!”

I didn’t know why I had to scold this older zentaur like a parent explaining things to a grade-schooler, but the road ahead was long.

I drank my share to not let it go to waste, and it was just as bitter as I’d expected. Dietrich took one sip, made a face, and said she didn’t want any more—as if I’d let her get away with that. In the end, I sat her down and we each suffered through half the terrible pot.

[Tips] As a general rule, adventurers must go through the Association both to accept work and be paid for it. While they can take urgent quests directly from a client on the spot, they must report the details and pay taxes after the fact if they wish to raise their internal evaluation.

The middle-aged man’s name was Gerulf, and he was the leader of a small family-owned caravan of five people. With him were his wife Ella, his nephew Benhardt—the one who’d put up a fight against the adventurers—his eldest son Rudiger, and his eldest daughter Klara. Rudiger was a few months into adulthood, whereas Klara was still a little ways off.

Not only was the entire party made up of noncombatants, but it included Mr. Gerulf’s unwed daughter; once introductions were finished, the reason he’d been deferential to a fault was obvious. While imperial culture didn’t place much stock in male chastity, the same could not be said of women, especially among mensch. A farm girl could get away with a history of romp and play, so to speak, but a merchant’s child would have trouble tying the knot with any respectable business partner.

Incredulous, I asked why they’d set off with so few people, and without the company of any other merchants at that. The answer was simple: they were understaffed.

Mr. Gerulf was to be the next director of a small but venerable sundries store in the nearest town. His family business revolved around shipping goods to the rural villages in the region. Specifically, they mainly dealt in the tools and materials that enabled country folk to pick up side gigs while they were cooped up for the winter months—which meant they had to be pretty well off.

The story went that, one day, they’d gotten an urgent order. Many regions lacked the means to cheaply produce the requisite goods to pay their national taxes, and calling out wholesalers to buy up the difference was a regular affair. This time, a regular patron village had realized at the last minute that they didn’t have what they needed, and the chief had requested that Mr. Gerulf’s company head over with some textiles and threads.

According to the details of the plea, they were working off time the local magistrate had given them in an act of mercy; they needed the goods in ten days.

Unfortunately, the timing couldn’t have been worse for Mr. Gerulf. The proprietors of the business—that is, his mother and father—were out of town on other business; since the store was family run, there were hardly enough people to go around. Alas, unable to leave a longtime customer out to dry, he’d mustered as many hands as he could, left his brother behind to hold the fort, and set off.

However, the short notice meant he hadn’t had time to put together a proper set of bodyguards—what with the privately employed ones accompanying his parents—and so he’d turned to day-laboring adventurers. Throwing what he needed into a few carriages, he’d made his way out onto the road, only for this to be how things turned out.

Mr. Gerulf was an unlucky fellow, just like me. Had he not been so crunched for time, he could’ve asked around his business partners for dependable help, or at least vetted the adventurers he hired through an interview.

At least now they’d left the lawless frauds behind and picked us up to replace them. They welcomed us with roaring applause: I’d shown off my skills, and Dietrich was so blatantly strong that she’d ward off danger just by standing around in armor.

“Hey, c’mere,” Dietrich whispered.

“Hm?”

We quickly found ourselves leading the convoy. Scouting ahead to spot traps and ambushes was essential, so we left the rear to Mr. Benhardt, who was trailing the buggies on foot.

Dietrich was clad in a set of scalemail she’d pulled out of her armor chest—and no, she hadn’t been able to put it on by herself—and she leaned over to tug on my leather-and-chain sleeve.

“I know we’re working for five people’s wages, but don’t you think we could’ve gone for ten? The last time I guarded a merchant, I got paid thirty librae a day.”

“Thirty?! Wow, that’s good money.”

“I mean, that isn’t all I’ve done. One time, I worked for some magistrate in place of his usual in-house duelist at an open challenge, and another time, I joined up with some feuding mercenaries and led my side to victory. I wasn’t upcharging you back when we first met, you know?”

“Huh, you really have been around. Now I can see why you’d been so insistent on your innocence back when you first upcharged me. How’d you convince your past employers to pay so well?”

“Jeez, it was a fair price... And all I have to do is sink an arrow from a hundred and fifty paces out. You know those corpses on the sides of the road? Just hit one in the neck from that far, and most people are happy to pay. Er, wait, that’s not the point—why are we working for so little, again?”

Dietrich continued to pester me for my reasoning, so I simply answered, “Only the coward turns a blind eye to justice ripe at hand.”

Mr. Gerulf was not in the wrong. The fault lay with the impatient adventurers, especially with how accommodating the merchant had offered to be in paying for any extra days of labor. At most, one could nitpick about how overly timid he’d been. Yet without trustworthy defenders and joined by his young daughter, it was hard not to understand why. There was no justification good enough to let him suffer right before my eyes; what kind of hypocrite would that have made me after all my moralizing to Dietrich?

“Ignore the plight of those around you and live in constant comfort—that is the quickest path to becoming a simple brute. I won’t tell you to serve others in pure charity, of course. But I think it’s important to keep in mind how the world at large will view your actions.”

“The world at large, huh?”

“Maybe the reason your clan chief sent you away without permanently exiling you was in hopes that you’d learn that.”

My last comment made Dietrich’s ear twitch: mostly missing as it was, the motion of her left ear was noticeable.

On the first day we’d begun traveling together, I’d asked her why she was out here away from home. If I was going to pay the expenses and take care of her day to day, I’d figured it was only fair to learn about what kind of person was in my company. After a long, deep think, she had laid out the story of how she’d ended up in the Empire.

Dietrich’s tribe, the Hildebrands, were the housecarls to a prominent noble up on the northern islands. She was the firstborn child to one of the most important families among her people; since archipelagic zentaurs treated boys and girls as equals, that made her first in line to eventually inherit a place at the clan council.

Around a year before we met, she’d set off to fight in what would become the first battle of a war for irrigation control. Spotting a crack in the enemy’s formation, she took off alone and managed to take the opposing general’s head.

That, in turn, went to her own head. Inflated with pride, she’d challenged the strongest warrior of her clan—the hero of her people—to a duel. Her reasoning was that she had been the one to slay the enemy’s frontline general, so it was wrong that he’d been the one to be most honored.

As you can see, she lost. One of the equine ears zentaurs prided themselves on was torn straight off in combat. Worse still, her people had a custom of growing out their hair until suffering a decisive defeat, and she had to bear the shame of a shaved head.

The clan chief called her into his tent after the loss to give her a lecture so brutal that Dietrich’s face had scrunched up while recalling it.

“There is no shame in seeking to outdo your peers and earn glory in battle, but what you’ve done is barbaric. Worse still, you contested a joint decision made by the council and our lord to offer merits as they did. You dare throw mud across them by drunkenly picking a fight with the hero of our tribe?”

Yeah...that had been a rough episode to listen to. All I’d been able to do for her was pat her on the shoulder and offer hollow words of comfort.

Hearing out the details of the battle, Dietrich’s advance had been nothing short of reckless. The original plan had been for an initial force of zentaurs to whittle down the enemy lines with a series of Parthian shots, with the armored cavalry swooping in to break up a weakened formation. Yet she’d ignored the whole stratagem, instead charging in before the opposing army was sufficiently thinned out.

Hungry for prestige, her fellow youths had quickly followed suit. The nonzentaur forces, confused by their allies’ untimely advance charge, second-guessed their better judgment and pressed forward to create a chaotic melee. Thanks in part to the hero who would later pummel Dietrich in a fight, a coordinated reinforcement of heavy cavalry was enough to secure victory. Yet from their lord’s perspective, they’d lost far more men than they had planned to.

Dietrich’s target was just as bad as her timing. The general leading the front lines had been the enemy’s first son: her noble master’s strategy had been to either capture him as a hostage or to break his spirit so thoroughly that he’d never want to fight again. As important as irrigation rights were, there was always the looming threat of an invasion coming in from the mainland or an ambitious lord gunning for the position of high king. No source of water was worth losing important soldiers over.

Putting the regular rank and file aside, Dietrich’s lord knew that the zentaurs were capable of spectacular things in battle, and had explicitly ordered them to capture the enemy prince alive. Apparently, Dietrich had forgotten that in the heat of battle and, in the critical moment, fallen back on the simple equation of “kill important person equals glory.”

From the perspective of someone who’d dabbled in military planning, this was very much a palm-to-face situation—I was honestly impressed she hadn’t been executed for what was effectively insubordination. While she’d done a great service on the surface, the overall drawbacks to her scheme were so great that her total accomplishments dipped past neutral into negative territory.

After all, the enemy lord couldn’t back down if his first son was killed in battle. There was even a realistic possibility that he’d claim the killing was illegal on the basis that his son had been on a mere reconnaissance mission or what have you.

Yet despite it all, Dietrich hadn’t been executed or exiled, never to return—she had just been sent out on a journey alone.

I suspected that her clan council had thought her just as much of a waste as I had. She was incredibly strong in battle for her age, and with a bit of experience, she’d become a fine general; why else would she have been guaranteed a spot at the council? It was obvious they didn’t just accept anyone: when I’d asked her whether a simpleton would be allowed to join their ranks if they drew blood from a current council member, she’d angrily spat that a cripple—the most vicious slur in all zentaur culture—would be left out in the cold even if they were the chief’s own.

Yet it turned out that she needed good sense more than experience.

Alas, prudence was a skill hard to come by in the comfort of routine. Thus, they’d sent her away: not forever, but as a means to reflect and return home wiser.

From there, Dietrich had found it too awkward to stick around and drifted to the Empire of her own volition. Coincidence had brought our paths together, and I’d figured it was some kind of fate: I accepted my post and had decided to drill some sense into her. It was the best thing I could do for the world, for the people she would come across, and most of all, for Dietrich herself.

“But what’s the point of giving someone else a good deal for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing. We’re getting paid, and more importantly, they were nice enough to offer us free food. You know, I had half a month of rations packed until a certain someone couldn’t help themselves and ate half of it in three days.”

“Mrgh... B-But I’m bigger, and I’m faster, and I’ve got way more muscles too! So of course I eat more. See, I’m faster!”

Unable to contest the point that she ate ludicrous amounts, the zentaur’s reasoning flew off in yet another strange vector. Upon reminding herself of her physical superiority, she galloped on ahead and began bragging from afar.

She wasn’t wrong: even the fastest mensch needed double-digit seconds to sprint a hundred meters, and the most powerful of us could only lift half of what she could. Just looking at our raw physical stats, we truly were at the bottom of the pyramid.

“And yet,” I said, “I’m stronger.”

Silenced by the unwavering truth, Dietrich slowed down and dejectedly returned to match my pace.

Knowing that she’d been tossed out on account of her big ego, I’d need to teach her some discretion before we parted ways. Though, to be honest, maybe I wasn’t one to talk in that regard...

[Tips] The northern archipelago abides by a similar feudal social structure to Rhine, but the constant wars and the lack of control exerted by any given high king skew things toward a more pragmatic paradigm. Unlike in the Empire, knight households are given equal importance to standard nobility: those who employ them honor them not as mere soldiers, but as housecarls.

A man stood, heaving heavy breaths. Another man lay dead at his feet.

Some time had passed since the caravan left this campsite behind, and the sole member of the adventurers’ party who had been left unrestrained had untied the ropes binding his friends. This man had been let off easy, then woken up early to relay a message: “I’ll turn the other way this time, so put yourselves together and lead an honest life.” Having been outskilled and overwhelmed, the messenger asked his leader to let them go home.

The leader snapped.

The boss of these hooligans had eaten a kick to the face and lost two front teeth for his trouble. Teeth were an important social marker in the Empire: losing front teeth in particular was proof of eating a blow straight in the kisser. Although some regions saw a missing tooth or two as a telltale sign of a manly history of battle, the local consensus was that it was the mark of a loser.

Fake teeth existed, but they weren’t very good: at most, they could be used to look the part. The clumsiness in his mouth was here to stay forever. Unless he wanted to put the life of swords behind him, he’d at least need to avenge himself if he wanted to have a foot to stand on as a fighter—and oh, did he intend to get even.

One look at the man’s face was enough to tell as much, and yet his spineless subordinate had begged to go home without a second thought. So he’d stabbed him.

Well, that wasn’t the only reason he’d stabbed him.

The leader thought he needed to show those who remained that he was still strong, lest he become mere prey to be torn apart. His order was “No survivors.” Unable to challenge his decision, the crew set out on their twisted quest for revenge.

Luckily enough, they were going after a caravan—one led by a man who opted for detours in the name of safety. A handful of able men packing light could easily overtake them.

The leader spoke: he knew a guy who could help in the next canton over. You see, bandits were not groups of filthy cretins constantly huddled up in the woods as they waited for their next victims. The Empire’s vendetta against brigandry meant that the majority of criminals only worked part-time. Only in the remotest of locations could one find outlaws hiding in an abandoned castle or fortress; that kind of overt headquarters was a prime target for the imperial patrol to clear out in one-sided slaughter.

Most were dutiful workers weak to depraved temptations. Evading the merciless eyes of patrolmen, these everyday citizens only bared their robbers’ hides when an easy mark presented itself. No matter how ruthlessly the law was upheld, the leering eyes on the road and the criminals they belonged to, hungry for ill-gotten gains, were infinite. The man’s contact was just another one of those people.

Once their wounds had been treated, the adventurers set off swiftly. Soon, they’d punt that blond brat’s head into the clouds, tear through everything that moronic merchant owned, and be free of this stinging slight on their pride.

[Tips] Very few bandits can make a living solely through crime. Most repeat offenders are simple country folk or mercenaries who seize illicit opportunities when they arise.

Three days had passed since we’d joined up with Mr. Gerulf and company; three days remained until we reached their destination.

Man, was this nice. Sleeping with someone else on lookout did wonders for my fatigue, and I could feel the fog in my brain dissipating. Better yet, we could indulge in the luxury of boiling water to properly wipe ourselves clean.

I know I’d talked about how cool it’d be to travel solo when first departing, but let me make things clear: journeying alone sucked. My preconceived notions had all been formed in a safe world with scientifically engineered gear everywhere. Here, I didn’t have an insulated sleeping bag vetted for subzero temperatures, nor was I surrounded by the kind of infrastructure that let me drive to a hot spring on my way home from a long trip.

But even as I swore in my heart to never venture off by myself again, I couldn’t exactly say that my current situation was all too cozy.

“Would you like some red tea, Sir Erich?”

“Ah, Miss Klara. Thank you very much.”

After finishing the final watch shift leading into sunrise, I was waiting for breakfast to be made when Mr. Gerulf’s daughter came to serve me tea. Miss Klara was a nice and cheerful mensch girl whose mannerisms made her relaxing to be around. Among all the people I’d associated with lately, she was the most normal—so normal that she wrapped back around to being unique.

Whether friend or not, my contacts since leaving Konigstuhl had all been strong characters. I knew I’d crossed paths with enough lookers to break my sense of beauty, and—as rude as it was to say—Miss Klara’s artless charm was a breath of fresh air. She had a few freckles, but they only brought her closer to the idyllic archetype of a country girl. Interacting with someone as innocent as her was new and heartwarming.

That said, having her wait on me as “Sir” Erich was not comfortable.

Just like with the Michael Company, I’d set up my backstory as a noble’s soldier returning home; this time, that had been a mistake. At present, the girl gazed at me like I was a prince on a white horse. Even worse, her parents were all smiles as they watched her.

To them, I was of tolerable stature and seemed to have a steady stream of income, but they’d better not be hoping for anything to happen. Please.

“She your type?”

As I sucked on a smoldering pipe and pondered what to do, Dietrich came over and jabbed me with her elbow. I knew she was trying to tease, but she’d put way too much force into it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re all nice and careful around her. Shouldn’t you be doing the same for me?”

“Maybe I would if you couldn’t lift an axe heavier than me with one hand.”

I puffed out a cloud of smoke and waved off my traveling partner’s drivel. To be honest, though, I hadn’t meant to come off so sarcastically: my statement was fueled by envy. When we’d been helping unload cargo, I’d struggled to lift one box of goods while Dietrich had casually picked up three.

...I know, I know—I should’ve invested more in Strength. But doing so now wouldn’t help me all that much in combat, and my analytical side would throw down the veto before my dumb soul could even make an argument about looking manly. That didn’t mean I couldn’t wish I were big and buff, though.

“But anyone can do that...”

Like hell they can, is what I would’ve liked to say, but that wouldn’t get through to a zentaur. I let her comment go, and she sulked by grinding her front hooves into the dirt. I wonder what that translates to in mensch terms.

Troubles aside, I could see a billowing pillar of smoke rising up from the triangle of carriages; once the stewpot at the bottom was filled and then emptied, we’d be off. We were slated to reach a small canton by the end of the day where we could rest our horses, and our destination awaited tomorrow. Mr. Gerulf wouldn’t have any need to rush on the way back, meaning he could take his time finding replacement bodyguards. Soon, this awkward atmosphere would end.

Peaceful thoughts swam around in my mind as we hit the road, and time flew by. I’d lost the coin flip today, so I stayed a few dozen paces ahead as the vanguard.

Nothing notable happened in the morning, save for the fact that we forwent a midday break in the hopes of catching the last bits of sunlight when we hit the canton ahead. Yet later in the day, when the canton in question was a straight shot away, an ill omen tickled the tip of my neck.

I was no Margit, but my Presence Detection and Permanent Battlefield perks made me a better scout than most. My instincts told me something was wrong.

This road was a simple stretch of flattened dirt, and unlike the highways, had no borders to mark its edges. Slanting slightly downward from left to right, I felt like something was off on the lower side. The forest here wasn’t a well-kept preserve full of mild-mannered logs to be harvested: these were unfettered wilds teeming with only the most vivacious life, impassable to anyone on horseback.

Yet a hundred paces out, there were unnatural holes in the greenery.

The openings weren’t large enough to be minor streets branching off the path, and though they could be the work of a local huntsman who needed access to the forest, it didn’t make sense that they’d bother making so many in the same direction. If I had to go hunting, I’d much rather walk an extra twenty paces or so than cut through dense foliage.

Pulling Castor to a halt, I raised my left fist to signal those behind me to do the same. Once the whole convoy stopped, I pulled my steed back around in natural fashion: I “checked an empty waterskin” to give me reason to do so.

“Is something the matter, sir?”

“Quiet, please. All of you stay seated. The road ahead looks strange.”

“Strange?”

“I suspect an ambush.”

Mr. Gerulf nearly stood up out of fear, but I beckoned him back down. Then I went to lay the situation out to Dietrich, who’d been holding up as the caboose.

There was only one rule to attacking a caravan: leave no survivors. Catching a horse at full speed was a tall order, and the first step in any ambush was to cut off the road. So long as the steeds couldn’t get through, neither could the carriages they drew or the scouts who rode them. From there, it became a simple process of pelting the pitiful victims with a deluge of arrows or stones until they were too disoriented to fight off an assault. One or two stragglers might make it away into the woods, but the odds were slim that they’d outmaneuver an overwhelming number of bandits in an unfamiliar forest.

“Raiders?” Dietrich asked.

“I haven’t actually noticed anyone yet,” I explained, “but the groundwork for an ambush is there. I spotted a few gaps in the greenery that I think they’ll use to shoot at us.”

“Want me to go check?”

“I appreciate the offer, but with your size, this job is a better fit for a runt like me.”

The zentaur pouted for a moment, but her gaze followed my finger toward the woods and she begrudgingly nodded—she knew the loss of mobility in dense thickets was a death sentence for cavalry. Instead, she spoke with her actions: placing her axe on the ground, she pulled out her bow.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll leave the caravan to you.”

Dietrich’s bow was massive. Hunters used shortbows; soldiers used longbows; but the zentaur specialty was as large as a traditional Japanese yumi. Her ancestors had carved their names into history as a devastating force of “light” cavalry, and the design of her weapon proved that little had changed in the generations since. Eight mensch would struggle to draw the damn thing; if she could wield that, then I was perfectly comfortable leaving the defense to her.

Hopping off Castor and silencing my advance, I sneaked into the forest. I crouched low and tiptoed around every stray branch and dry leaf, going up and down the natural contour of the land. After a short while, the gentle slopes gave way to a man-made mound that was a level higher up. Wooden stakes outlined packed dirt to provide a platform for a handful of men, and I could see a few more identical structures down the line. Their plan must’ve been to hit everything from the front to the back of the convoy at once—and they had log roadblocks ready to cut off a section just about three carriages long.

They’re experienced.

Nine were in plain sight: four on the artificial hill next to me, and five on the next. They likely had more posted on the other side, though, meaning it was best to assume anywhere from twice to thrice as many.

They were only a few hundred paces out, but silently creeping on them took five times longer than usual. If only my childhood partner had been here in my stead, she could’ve sprinted this distance making less noise than I was now.

“Dammit, why the hell aren’t they moving?”

“Refilling a flask shouldn’t take this long. You think they caught on?”

“Who cares? No way they can turn on a road this narrow. Let’s just cut the cord blocking the front.”

Oh, crap! Without an escape route, we’d be in for a world of hurt if anything went wrong. Speed was our greatest defensive asset—you can’t hit a target that’s already out of range—and I wasn’t willing to give it up.

Sadly, it appeared I didn’t have the time to come up with a clever plan or quietly take them out one group at a time. I shot to my feet and bolted toward them.

“Whoa—mrgh?!”

Closing the distance in an instant, I slammed the edge of my shield into the closest man’s face. The chopping motion of my left arm had coincided with him turning around in response to my footsteps: my shield caved in his nose, and the sensation of shattering bone fed back through the strap in my hand.

“You—wah!”

“Where the—gragh?!”

Swiping with the fey karambit in my main hand, I cut up another two. The first lost both his eyes in a deep vertical cut, and I sliced through the other’s armpit using the momentum from the first swing.

The final member of the group was in such shock that his mind couldn’t keep up: he stood dumbfounded without putting up any guard. I kicked him hard right in the manhood to end him.

Four down. Disabled eyes or arms meant I wouldn’t need to worry about these guys rejoining the fight—I could take them out of the equation.

“The hell’s going on?!”

“Wait, over there! I think we’re under attack!”

“Shit! Cut the ropes!”

Alas, my fun little romp was already over. I’d made a ruckus, and even the faraway bandits took notice. A ways off, a man raised his axe to cut through the thick rope holding a stack of logs in place; they were primed to roll down the hill until they crashed into the trees on the other side, totally blocking the road.

“O Great Bodhisattva Hachiman, may my arrow fly true...”

Taking a page out of myth, I muttered a prayer as I readied my crossbow, not knowing if it would be heard. I didn’t really want to ask for the God of Trials’ blessing: if He ended up taking a liking to me, I might literally find myself blessed. The heavens already seemed to have Their eyes on me, and I didn’t want to chance it.

The Shortbow Marksmanship I’d taken as a child wouldn’t help here, but aiming was a Dexterous activity—I could make it work with raw stats. This was a much farther shot than my experiences at the Liplar manor, but...

“Raaa—aaagh, ow?!”

I got him! The wind blew the projectile off course from his midsection to his right arm, but it did the job. With a crossbow bolt wedged into his bones, the man unhanded his axe, and it promptly slid down the hill.

This was perfect. The rope holding the logs in place was thick and double-knotted. It’d take much longer to cut with a knife or sword. I’d bought some time.

In the time it took my priceless arrow to find its mark, I’d begun hearing screams out on the road. I glanced back midrun to see that some poor schmuck had eaten one of Dietrich’s arrows and gotten himself pinned to a tree.

Oh my gods. About a third of the shaft had sunk straight through him. If she could pierce a person’s torso like that, one shot could probably tear an arm straight off. That thing wasn’t a bow—it was a damn cannon.

More than a hundred paces out, the bandits weren’t on a battlefield, but a shooting gallery. Even if they had their own archers, I’d heard that the average trained bowman could only reliably hit within double-digit paces, so any counterattack seemed unlikely.

“Damn brat!”

Coming up against five, I had just unsheathed Schutzwolfe to make things easier when I noticed that the first man running to intercept me looked familiar.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“You little—argh!”

He struck from overhead with all his might; I answered with a one-handed overhead of my own. His footing was stable, and his strength flowed into the blade from head to toe to reveal the grit fueling the attack. Yet when we clashed, I redirected his sword to the left to show who had the right of way.

Following my successful parry, the adventurer-turned-outlaw—why was he here, anyway? Did the GM get lazy?—ended up cutting through air as Schutzwolfe’s tip sliced into his forehead and came out his jaw.

I may have taken a small chunk out of his forebrain, but he probably wouldn’t die. Of course, I didn’t have to keep my enemies alive for questioning anymore, so I wasn’t all too concerned about his well-being...except he was a bandit.

I wasn’t fighting ordinary purse snatchers: these guys were living bounties. Bring them to the local magistrate, and they’d turn into money—alive, they’d turn into more money. I didn’t care to dig up why these lowlifes had chosen murder as their living, but I was happy to let them enjoy a few extra hours of life if it meant my purse would jingle with a satisfying heft.

Whether their luck ran out when they’d picked a fight with me or when they’d entered Dietrich’s line of sight was a tough call, but I’d leave that decision to them. After all, that was basically the only privilege they had left.

What remained of the attacking bandits fell to earth, cleaned up in not two breaths’ time.

[Tips] Let every penalty atone for one hundred sins.

—Trialist Empire of Rhine penal code, opening preamble.

Extra thick strands of orb-weaving arachne silk buzzed under the terrific weight of a curving bow, but the sound failed to pull Dietrich out of her memories—that was just how dull this battle was.

At home, her name was Derek. First child to one of the most renowned houses in the Hildebrand tribe, her life thus far had been one of dissatisfaction.

She had been blessed with more general talent than anyone else. She was strong, fast, and so gifted in martial pursuits that she had been called Mavors’s Chosen, after their god of war. When ranking herself among the warriors around her, it had always been fastest to count down from the top. The bow, in particular, was a favorite of hers: she never once failed to make it to the final rounds in the usual last-man-standing sniping contests. Her legs, the pride of any centaur, were also remarkable: whether near or far, grasslands or rocky cliffside, she always left crowds of people in her dust.

Yet it was merely faster to count down from the top; she merely made it to the final rounds; she was merely one of the fingers that came up when discussing the best in any field.

That last finger, standing all alone, never referred to her.

She was stronger in battle, better with a polearm, more skilled as a marksman, and faster on her feet than nearly anyone...but she wasn’t better than everyone at anything.

Of course, she understood. The Hildebrand tribe numbered one hundred eighty-seven; of them, eighty-two were warriors. Only one could be the best at any given thing, and then came second, then third, and so on. Most would never be the greatest at any.

She knew, but she longed for it. The best was the coolest, after all.

That had probably been where her ambitions began.

Look at me. Praise me. Not them; not anyone else; me.

Recognize me.

Dietrich’s hand let go of the bowstring, and the arrow launched by her superhuman strength left sound behind as it soared off. An enemy marksman who’d peeked out to return fire lost everything from the neck up. The arrow went straight through his forehead, and the bits connecting his head to the rest of his body gave out, turning the decapitated corpse into a macabre sandbag.

The zentaur’s bow was all but a ballista. Each and every arrow fired snuffed out another life. Those who stood their ground dwindled, replaced by those who fled deeper into the trees—either way, the result was the same. Perhaps things would have been different had the forest been too dense to move through, but Dietrich could thread an arrow through the holes in a fortress wall; so long as she could see through the foliage, her marks may as well have been hiding on an empty plain.

So easy, she thought. So, so easy.

At this rate, she’d never become the best.

“Wait...” ...Why did I want to be the best, again?

The uncertainty lasted only a fleeting moment, scattering as another arrow pinned a man’s back to the ground.

To be the best was cool. The tribe’s hero, whom she’d so admired in her youth, had been the coolest of them all. He overcame whatever challenges crossed his path, always surrounded by comrades as he made any and every strategy work out.

Dietrich had looked up to that valor and wanted to replicate it. She had pushed herself beyond her limits and into enemy lines, thinking that glory in battle would bring her closer to the top.

But come to think of it, she didn’t know why she’d wanted to be the best in the first place. She hadn’t ever given it any thought. Most of what she did was fueled by on-the-spot emotions like anger or frustration, or the vague desire not to be looked down on; looking back, there hadn’t been much substance there.

Thinking about these kinds of things usually made a nasty feeling bubble up in her chest, so she usually never dwelt on them; if there was a reason she did so now, it was probably because of all the lectures she’d gotten from that little mensch running amok in the forest.

When he started moralizing about the responsibility that came with strength or whatever, it felt different from when her parents or the clan chief used to tell her similar things. There was direction to it—passion, maybe. His words didn’t feel like they were just theoretical ideals, but more like a tangible measuring stick that he, too, compared himself against.

Dietrich felt spirit in those words: an alien zeal, or perhaps one she’d left behind long ago...

“Wow! You’re amazing!”

“Wha—hey! I thought I told you to stay put so you don’t get hurt.”

Why was I trying so hard, anyway? The bubbling stew of the zentaur’s mind stood in contrast with her ice-cold marksmanship as she made her final shot. Scarce few arrows remained in her quiver, but it wouldn’t matter if there weren’t any more targets to fire at. That last shot had drawn out a cry of awe from the merchant’s son, who was supposed to be hiding away in the wagon.

If that kid were an enemy, he might’ve killed me while I wasn’t paying attention. Even facing boring opponents, letting herself get so wrapped up in her thoughts that she’d reverted to autopilot was downright embarrassing—she didn’t need a scolding from Erich to feel bad about that.

Yet when she turned toward the boy, his eyes were positively gleaming. He must have grown up totally estranged from violence. Barely of age, the young man didn’t have a single scar on his face; though he’d surely been helping at the family business until now, his hands were free of calluses.

What came through in his gaze was something more primal, coded into every organism: fear and respect for the strong. That, and the beaming wonder of a child witnessing a mythical hero.

“Besides, this wasn’t all that impressive. It’s basically the same as hunting rabbits.”

As Dietrich brushed off the embarrassment that came with adoration, she felt like she’d found something that she’d lost many years ago.

As a child, she had cried about never being the best, and her hero had come to wipe away her tears. Kind and respected by all—wasn’t that the kind of hero she’d wanted to become?

[Tips] What makes a “hero” varies by region, but courage and righteousness are indispensable no matter where one goes.

What a massive pain.

After tying up what remained of the raiders and marching them to the canton, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that they were citizens of said canton. This wasn’t exactly an unheard-of turn of events, but I hadn’t thought we’d bring them in to their place of residence.

The silver lining was that these hooligans were the nose-pickers of the village: they were already halfway to being pariahs, and we didn’t have to worry about the whole town turning on us.

Still, having criminals emerge from their midst was a patently bad look. How bad, you ask? Well, forget the village chief—the magistrate in charge could expect to lose his head, and in no figurative manner. Naturally, the canton chief swore to handle the enforcement of justice, groveling on his hands and knees for us to look the other way.

At first, I’d had my fears that the locals would sic their watchmen on us to cover up the scandal whether we agreed to stay silent or not. However, the presence of a towering zentaur with decapitated heads dangling at her waist—meant to be traded in for a bounty—took care of that. That, paired with the undeniable fact that the two of us had cut down ten times our number of robbers and the sorry state of the living captives, was enough to kill any will to fight.

Although I initially wasn’t too keen on what seemed like a deal made at our expense, the reparations offered weren’t too shabby. They didn’t put out as much as we’d get from the Empire for a live capture, but the sum more than compensated by virtue of cutting out the long wait times the crown imposed to verify a job well done.

Above all else, I could tell from the public reaction that they’d genuinely had no idea these men were living a life of crime. I could accuse them of a lack of oversight and they would have no defense, yet any group of sentient beings was sure to produce a few idiots eventually. Seeing the twelve born here join hands with wayward adventurers and crooks from out of town to make a party forty strong didn’t make me angry—it just made me sad about how hard the world was to live in.

There were three hundred people in the whole canton. Hanging a handful of innocents and subjecting the rest to huge fines or hard labor all for the work of five percent was a depressing prospect. On top of that, the remuneration they were offering had been scrounged up from every corner of the canton in a moment of panic; with taxes recently paid and the winter fast approaching, this kind of expenditure would see them giving up next year’s spring festival. Even if they stripped these crooks’ houses down and sold everything in sight, the deficit would be unsurmountable.

Since the leader of our party was technically Mr. Gerulf, I left the final decision to him; he answered that he’d like to take the most peaceful course of action we could.

Personally, the “peacefulness” of the decision rang hollow against the backdrop of the countless forgotten victims these bandits had tormented over the years...but I couldn’t blame the merchant for prioritizing his business. He’d continue to serve this region in the future, and throwing it into chaos would make it hard to find customers; not to mention how his reputation would tank if he litigated knowing the damage it’d cause to the local people.

But if they wanted a peaceful conclusion, I wanted a one-on-one with the village chief. He would need to promise me two things before I let this go.

First, once the offenders were taken care of, he would have to take the corpses of the adventurers and criminals of unknown origins to the magistrate and ask for an official investigation. That way, when the officials eventually found the bandits’ tracks, they’d have a chance to wipe away anything that could incriminate the magistrate and canton, while still finding the remains of the victims to give any grieving families closure.

Second, I handed half the money back. I ordered him to combine it with the reward the magistrate would inevitably give them for “catching” the bandits to build a grave honoring those who had been wronged. We couldn’t change the past, and the victims were all well on their way to the gods’ laps; yet it would be hard to sleep soundly in the heavens with worldly regret lingering in their souls. This was my way of compromising between serving justice and letting the living continue living their ordinary lives.

I flashed my noble connections—an implicit threat that I could check on things at any time—so I doubted the chief would go back on his word. All that remained was for him to build the grave and make sure his people would forever know it as a warning against those who might follow the same path.

“So is this the right way to do things?” Dietrich asked.

“Right and wrong are conclusions that flip back and forth once things are settled. In the end, the only ‘right’ way to do things is to find a solution that you yourself can live with.” After a second, I added, “For me, that doesn’t always mean following the law or doing what everyone accepts as being ‘good.’”

To strictly adhere to the code of law, I would have had to skip the village chief and magistrate to knock on the door of whichever noble oversaw this region; there, I would have had to report the incident from beginning to end, hiding nothing about the bandits or their origins.

But who among the living would be any happier for it?

The village chief would be put to death, and the canton he led thrown into disarray; the fines, meanwhile, would probably mean a handful of households would fail to survive the harsh winter. No matter how his business partners reacted on the surface, Mr. Gerulf’s contacts would slowly cut ties with what they could only see as a heartless man. Once the magistrate was executed, other cantons would be thrown into pandemonium too; the whole region would become unstable. Eventually, the neighboring towns would start searching for the source of this madness and persecute the people here—how would I ever sleep knowing I’d caused all that trouble?

“Sometimes, the ‘right’ decision you make on the spot can turn out to be a terrible mistake. I’m not some all-knowing genius, and I know it: I think it’s better to use the brain I’ve got to come up with something that fits my personal moral code.”

Dietrich’s face scrunched up and her tail began to wag. After a moment, she said, “Then I guess I’ll think about what I would’ve done.”

I figured that was for the best. On this occasion, Mr. Gerulf had all but passed the ball straight back to me: I had made the real choice almost entirely on my own. Plenty of people would disagree with the way I’d handled things, and I had no mind to say they were wrong. Some would argue that ignorance was no excuse for shirking responsibility; others would say that playing along and asking “What bandits?” was the true path of a good heart.

However, as a potential victim and a working bodyguard, this was my best answer. While I couldn’t guarantee that I’d never come to regret it, with what I knew now, this was my way of minimizing the suffering of everyone involved.

Of course, I couldn’t deny that this was a tepid solution that had only been possible because Mr. Gerulf and crew were safe and Dietrich and I had gotten away unscathed...but these kinds of decisions only ever came after the events, anyhow. Had the outcome been any different, my choices would have obviously changed too.

Yet with that matter settled, a new issue came to take its place: Mr. Gerulf had taken a liking to us, and recruitment hell had begun again.

Though Dietrich didn’t receive a proposal to marry Rudiger on account of their bodily mismatch, she did get asked whether she wanted to be a salaried bodyguard; on the other hand, I was given an offer to be taken into the family. More than my physical strength, my witful manners, obvious education, and presumed ability to deal with nobility had apparently caught Mr. Gerulf’s eye during the journey. He claimed that my verdict on the bandit case had been the final push he’d needed...but frankly, I had my suspicions that Miss Klara had put in a word.

Her advances had already been quite overt, but when she ended up knocking on my tent the next night—whatever happened to modesty, anyway?—Dietrich and I knew it was time to go.

To begin with, I was trying to get home and set off on an adventure; Dietrich had never planned to live in the Empire forever. Neither of us needed to utter a word to be on the exact same page: as soon as we reached our destination, we were gone.

I can’t believe I’ve had to run away from merchant caravans...twice.

[Tips] GMs may dish out the issues, but it is up to the players to resolve them.