Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 7 - Chapter 5

Late Summer of the Fifteenth Year

Urbancrawl

If the average adventurer is an expert in violence, then it is only natural that their clients bring violent jobs. At times, quests stray from respectable missing-person searches and bodyguard gigs to the realm of intimidation, robbery, and even wet work.

The honest must be ever vigilant, not resigning themselves to complacency—for the city is a living beast, its mouth forever gaping to swallow the innocent into its horrors.

As the jingling in my coin purse grew louder, so too did the voices who knew my name. Sometimes, it was the lively ladies working the Association’s front desk; at others it was the day laborers I’d toiled alongside. But no matter who it was, it felt good to get a wave and a hello when passing a familiar face on the street.

“Here’s your pay for the day.”

“Thank you very much.”

Miss Coralie placed three large copper pieces onto a tray and slid it over to my side of the counter. Each of the coins was a reward for its own job, and they totaled seventy-five assarii together. Though the early days had been a struggle, I’d learned the ropes and the lay of the land enough to plan out more optimal quest selections.

As I wrote my name on the payment confirmation sheet that had been laid alongside the coins, Miss Coralie fiddled with a piece of wood and said, “You sure work hard, young man.”

“Do you think so?”

On the side of the wood was an emblem and a six-digit number: it was the proof of a job well done. Generally speaking, the Adventurer’s Association received payment for any task upfront—though I’d heard some exceptions involving contracts did exist—and gave clients a wooden check in exchange. That was ultimately given to adventurers as a statement that they’d completed the work that had been asked of them. The system prevented fraudsters from extracting free labor and running off without paying.

For us adventurers, our usual routine was to go to the client, do our job, and then receive the wooden ticket that corresponded to the task at hand. Upon returning to the Association, they would skim twenty percent off the top and then give us the rest of what the client had deposited.

Having an organized system of what was basically temp workers ate away at the fantasy of it all, but it was effective enough that I was willing to bite my tongue. Without it, we would be at risk of not only scammers who didn’t pay up, but also unscrupulous clients who wanted to squabble over rates after seeing what kind of work was done; everyone knew that adventurers were about the last people you’d want directly haggling with their clients.

Rather, if the Association didn’t do this much, what point would there be in having them? It wasn’t just one giant bulletin board: it was an organization that oversaw our actions in order to produce a reliable image from which all of us could benefit.

Clients won because they were less likely to be abused by thuggish adventurers; we won because we were less likely to be abused by shady clients. This win-win paradigm was the only thing keeping the tedium of bureaucratic overhead alive in this day and age. Otherwise, no one would choose to give up such a large cut of the total pay.

Adventurers were rootless grass. Poor conditions were more than enough reason to shift careers, and most had no savings to speak of. It wasn’t as if we inhabited a world where nuclear arms were bought and sold without reserve—no one was sending our tax forms to some fixed address in the mail.

Naturally, then, taxes had to be paid in advance if the government wanted to get its share. Just like how office workers on Earth had let their companies deduct taxes straight from their pay, the Association was in charge of pulling taxes out of ours.

“You only rest once every three days, you group up a bunch of quests in the same area to do them all at once, and you don’t do a half-hearted job.”

I thought that made me pretty normal. Most of our work amounted to little more than fetch quests, so bundling up multiple gigs to increase efficiency was standard practice in both games and work. We unfortunately didn’t have the ability to tap on any point on a map to instantaneously travel to that location, and our low rates demanded that we find better ways of earning coin.

“Besides,” Miss Coralie added, “you haven’t slipped up once.”

“But I’ve been denied the completion ticket twice, you know?”

“Oh, please. That doesn’t count as slipping up.”

It wasn’t as if everything had gone perfectly. As flagrant as I felt it had been, I’d gotten proof of completion withheld by the client on two occasions for poor work. The first had been for mishandling cargo on a luggage-carrying job, and the second had been for being too slow when helping repair the city’s outer walls.

Both times, the Association had paid out upon explanation, but I felt that my inability to convince the clients themselves made those failures in TRPG terms.

That said, the world was full of scrooges trying to cut costs with false accusations, and the Association was well aware of that. Even without the wooden plaque, we were to report that the job was done. From there, the Association would investigate our performance at a later date; if it deemed we’d done well enough, we received our pay.

Although we would never see the inner workings of the system, I suspected that clients were internally rated just as adventurers were. I’d thought the place looked like a primitive bank when I’d first seen it, but I hadn’t realized it was like one systemically too.

“With how well-liked you are, I’m sure you’ll shake the soot off sooner than later.”

“Wait, really?”

“I can’t say when, obviously, but I’d get my hopes up if I were you. You and your pretty partner both.”

Wow, that’s great news!

To “shake off soot” was a fancy way of saying that I’d be promoted out of the soot-black tier. It was probably also a metaphor for cleaning off the mud of beginner chores and coming out the other side with a shiny red tag.

Looks like I’ll have to keep giving it my all.

I thanked Miss Coralie and left the front desk. We’d finished off three jobs today, so I figured this was a good stopping point, even though the sun was still up.

Margit had taken our belongings and gone ahead to the inn; maybe I’d grab a bite to eat before rejoining her. Despite being a legal adult, my body was still stuck in its growth spurt; my hollow leg had yet to fill in.

Such was blue-collar life, I supposed. Having been in a nonsports club in school, I’d always wondered how my athlete friends had fit in candy and beef bowls on their way home without stuffing themselves too much to eat dinner. But now, a lifetime later, I had my answer: the extra large cup noodles they’d slurped down had been little more than a light snack.

Man, could I go for that grease right now.

Alas, no amount of wishful thinking would bring the fatty oils to my mouth. I’d have to make do with something I could actually find: maybe some boiled wurst, since I’d found a good street vendor for those recently.

I strolled outside, daydreaming of food, until my path through the clearing across from the Association was suddenly blocked. Three men stood before me: a mensch, a werewolf, and a jenkin. Each of them was wearing tattered rags and had a face full of grime.

Bluntly put, they were the stereotype of low-level adventurers come to life.

“You. Give back wallets.”

Before I could ask why they’d gotten in my way, the werewolf leading the pack pointed at me and made his demand in broken Rhinian.

“Wallets? I’m terribly sorry, but I have no idea what you might be referring to.”

“No idea, no. My friends, all by you, gotten wallets.”

I tilted my head in genuine confusion, but upon second thought that did ring a bell. He was probably talking about how I’d given the idiots trying to pickpocket me a taste of their own medicine.

It wasn’t anything to celebrate, but I’d swiped my thirtieth purse just the other day. The occurrences had begun to ramp up, and this confirmed my suspicions that it hadn’t just been my tidy appearance: I’d been marked. Now it made sense why some of the more recent friskers had come at me with nothing to steal back in retribution.

Just to defend myself, my actions were standard practice in this land where the law did not permeate to the lowest layers of society. If people weren’t allowed to stand up for themselves, then the dishonest would simply trample over the innocent; no one would fault me for what I’d done. That these cretins had the gall to complain after instigating things to begin with betrayed an intense stupidity.

“I’m sorry, but I can only repeat myself: I have no idea what you’re referring to. Do you have any sort of proof? You could take me by the heels and shake me and all that’d come loose is my own wallet.”

I had no qualms about using what few legalities existed in this region to my advantage. With an angel’s smile and polite palatial speech, I played the part of a purehearted boy who’d never done any harm in his whole life.

“Shut mouth, kid.” The werewolf’s nose crinkled up in frustration. “No estimate the Exilrat.”

His thinly veiled threat was as boring as it was trite. Also, I was fairly sure he meant to say “underestimate,” but whatever.

The Exilrat were one of those clans that Kevin had told us about. That was the one made up of wandering immigrants who’d set up tents and shacks outside the city walls. If I recalled, they took a large cut from the work of their members.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine what a bunch of poor wayfarers would do when in need of money—evidently, the shoddily dressed pickpockets wandering the city were part of their crew. My guess was that the organization acted as a full-blown crime syndicate, pocketing a share of the illicit gains made in their territory.

“Give back money by tomorrow. All is one gold piece.”

Ha, what a sum! I almost failed to hold in my laughter.

One gold piece? Who did they think they were? They were really pushing their luck with this. I could add up all the money I’d received and double it only to still be half a drachma short of that.

But their lack of ethics was no invitation for me to stoop to their level. I’d just been told that promotion was on the horizon, and I didn’t want to blow it now—infighting between adventurers was a big no-no.

At the very least, I wasn’t going to start a fight in broad daylight.

“Let me say this one more time: I know nothing about your friends’ wallets.”

Instead, I took the diplomatic approach. Sure, I could let it get to my head and cuss them out or beat them silly, but the temporary satisfaction would come with a slight on my reputation.

Honestly? These clowns weren’t worth my time.

“If you absolutely insist that their money was stolen, then you’re free to file a proper complaint. Fortunately for you, the Association is right there. I don’t see a ‘Closed’ sign on the door—do you?”

I gestured toward the building with a bit of exaggeration, and the men grew visibly angrier. They knew as well as I did that reporting the issue was an impossibility.

Crimes first became crimes only upon the discovery of evidence. I was the neatly dressed, well-liked newbie; they were the two-bit hoodlums. Who was going to believe that I had frisked them? True, I had technically engaged in criminal behavior...but however were these gentlemen ever going to prove that?

Nobody here was going to interrogate me with a mystic lie detector, and I’d tossed every coin pouch the day I’d gotten them. It wasn’t as though the coins had their names written on them, so those would amount to nothing. These weren’t serialized bills tracked by a central reserve, but chunks of metal minted by molds. At most, any given coin had a few quirks of production—hardly enough to identify.

You’re free to report me. Good luck getting them to listen, though.

I was free to act as righteously as I wished. That I’d fought fire with fire was a detail best left unspoken.

I know I fell back on this phrase a lot, but these dependable words came straight from the avatar of an evil god who probably had at least eighteen APP: it isn’t a crime if you aren’t caught. It wouldn’t be fair if I was always on the receiving end of that saying, now would it?

“Well, then. If you’ll excuse me. I’m hungry after a day’s work, and my partner is waiting for me.” I turned in the direction of the nearest city guard; engaging with these fools would earn me no honor or experience.

“No look down us, kid.”

“Who know what happen to your girl.”

...But some things just shouldn’t be said.

I’d stopped in my tracks before I knew it, and my hand was halfway toward reaching for the fey knife. If I hadn’t left Schutzwolfe at home on account of the day’s peaceful itinerary, I surely would have reached for her instead.

A creaking chorus of love echoed in the back of my mind as the Craving Blade sang her merry song. If I needed a weapon, the cacophony whispered, she was ready anytime.

I took a deep breath. Calm down—this is no place for bloodshed. Not only would it hurt my reputation to slice up a bunch of forgettable crooks, but I’d just decided that they weren’t worth my time.

Besides, you’re not so easy that these chumps could sate your craving, are you?

Haah... Okay, I’m calm. I wanted to take a puff to cool my head further, but I’d make do for now.

This was a small-time spat. It wasn’t enough to get the whole of their clan on my back—I doubted the fools had even reported it to their superiors. No pickpocket wanted to go to their boss and admit they’d gotten their own wallets swiped by some amateur; that was grounds enough for punishment, and they wouldn’t so much as mention me until they’d won back their pride.

So this was a petty provocation. So very petty...

“Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention.” It only made sense for me to respond in kind. “I think there might be something wrong with your shoelaces.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I walked off. They naturally tried to follow, but all I heard was the sound of three dominoes toppling.

There had been a few onlookers who’d been waiting to see how things would pan out, but I doubted any had expected for the three buffoons to have their shoelaces tied to one another’s.

That was my parting gift to them, courtesy of a few Unseen Hands. I hoped they appreciated the knots; I’d picked the most secure ones I knew.

I’d figured they were due for a lesson: you can’t take back your words, and some things just aren’t meant to be said. I knew that Margit wasn’t just a pretty damsel waiting to be thrown into distress—if they tried anything, she’d reduce them to three lost lambs. Yet the likelihood of danger was irrelevant; the intent alone had gotten to me.

It looked like the situation was only going to get more convoluted. But I maintained that quietly letting them make passes at my own wallet wouldn’t have been a smart move either, so perhaps this had been unavoidable. Even if it hadn’t, I couldn’t turn back the clock to redo things now.

Despite only just having mentioned how nice it was to be known, I supposed making a name for oneself was a double-edged sword. Not everyone who remembered my face was someone I wanted to interact with.

I decided to take a break before heading back to the inn. A cup of tea and a puff of smoke were in order; I didn’t want to deliver disheartening news in a bad mood, after all.

[Tips] Imperial law highly values material evidence, and disputes between commoners tend to place the burden of proof on the accuser. The accused is therefore considered innocent by default and has no need to preemptively plead their defense.

I gulped down a lungful of morning air. Heralding the impending end of summer, the cool breath purified me from the inside out.

I drew Schutzwolfe as if in ritualistic prayer and picked up the shield Lady Agrippina had given me. Cheating to the right, I covered my upper half with the circle of wood, making sure to steady my blade behind the cover of my frame. Perfect for both offense and defense, mine was a textbook form polished to mastery.

A stab hidden by my shield; a shield bash that let into a cut; a fake opening baiting out the opportunity for a sideways slash—the angles of attack were limitless, but my stance was singular, a precise posture that could transition into an infinite web of possibilities as the need arose. I continued striking without pause, my legs constantly moving in a flowing dance.

Most of my work around town had been physical, but I’d thankfully never run into the need to solve things with force. These early hours when the Snoozing Kitten’s courtyard was empty were my chance to keep my skills sharp; so long as I didn’t make too much noise, I was allowed to train here before the other guests awoke.

Unfortunately, that offer hadn’t included any training sessions with Mister Fidelio. The sad reality he’d brought up was that we practiced totally different styles; simple training wouldn’t benefit both parties.

I slowed my breathing, concentrating on keeping a steady pulse. Every facet of my body was the basis of attack, of defense. Undue exhaustion or exhilaration served only to muddy the arc of my blade.

I had to remain tranquil—like ice upon a lake, or the still waters beneath.

As I swung my sword, I felt a gaze upon my back. It wasn’t an unwelcome one: intense as it was, I felt no hostility, but only a sense of curiosity.

That, and a level of observation that spoke to the onlooker’s keenness. I felt the watchful eye shift from my knees to my shoulders to my elbows, dialing in on every joint. I could try to obscure my intentions with a clever flick of the eyes, but these three fulcrums could not lie. My movements were being read straight from the source. There were ways of using that to produce even trickier feints, but that was an arms race as infinitely futile as radar and its counters.

I continued my routine until I was satisfied, and my audience of one clapped. Turning around, I found a large, bald man leaning against the door back into the building. Sporting as menacing a smile as ever, Mister Hansel waved me over.

“Good morning, Mister Hansel.”

“Heya. Sure are diligent, ain’tcha, Goldilocks?”

My morning’s greeting was met with a peculiar response.

“‘Goldilocks’? I mean...that’s true, I suppose, but why call me that?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard. That’s you, kid. Been hearing word about ‘Goldilocks Erich’ around town lately.”

Apparently, the unimaginative nickname wasn’t a product of Mister Hansel’s personal sensibilities, but the collective sentiment of the people of Marsheim.

“Word of you and ‘Margit the Silent’ has been making the rounds between adventurers, y’see. You don’t think I just go to pubs to drink, do you?”

Without my knowing, the both of us had gained a reputation—and with it, epithets. It wasn’t like we’d done anything special: our schedule consisted of the usual odd jobs and two exceptional occasions on which Clan Laurentius had invited us to fill up spots on a security detail. Soot-blacks like us ordinarily wouldn’t be able to accept those sorts of requests, but the story was different if a higher-ranked adventurer invited us; we’d taken the opportunity to follow along.

Even then, it had been easy work without any excitement to note. If nothing else, I saw no reason we would become the object of rumors around town.

“Heh, don’t get it? Earnest work’s the fastest way to get yourself out there. Be proud that you’re getting attention without causing a big fuss—no bigger honor than earning people’s trust without crutching on someone else.”

“Um...thanks. It doesn’t feel very real, though. I might be able to understand if we’d rounded up ten or twenty bandits, but we haven’t done anything of note.”

“You’ve been listening to too many poets, kid. The world ain’t as dramatic as they make it out to be.”

The man’s giant chest bounced up and down with laughter, but his dismissal wasn’t very convincing when a full campaign’s worth of travel gear rested by his feet. He had a backpack stuffed to the brim, with two extra sacks tied up to be slung over his shoulders. That wasn’t even touching on his hulking armor and weapon, ready to be wielded.

He’d arrived ready for a tussle, and there was only one thing that could mean.

“And? When are you gonna introduce us to Fidelio’s new charge?”

“Whoops,” Mister Hansel said. “Almost forgot about that. C’mere kiddo, lemme acquaintcha with the good folks of our saintly party.”

A young stuart hopped out from behind the luggage. He was roughly the same size as a goblin—or a mensch child—with mouselike ears and a pointed nose. I pegged him as a scout on account of the many pouches on his belt and how his clothes clung close to his body.

That, and I hadn’t suspected his presence until the moment he’d unveiled himself. Perhaps I might’ve caught on had he exerted any hostility, but I would have been totally unaware if he were simply stalking me.

He’s the real deal.

“This little stuart’s our vanguard, Rotaru the Windreader.”

“Nice to meet you, Mister Rotaru.”

“Likewise. But don’t let Hansel fool ya—I don’t show up in the sagas no matter how much he goes around using my fancy nickname. Scouts aren’t supposed to show up, see, but I might’ve been too good at my job.”

“Too late to complain when you’re the one who slinks off every time the poets come to ask about our stories,” Hansel scoffed. “If you wanna have them sing your name, why don’tcha learn to butter up the writer-types?”

“If that was enough to make it, I wouldn’t be working this job, ya balding thumb.”

“Balding? I shaved my head, punk.”

The scout coolly waved off Mister Hansel’s retorts and called into the kitchen. A moment later, a head came poking out from just outside the door frame.

“What?”

For the first time since leaving Berylin, I laid my eyes on a methuselah. If that alone wasn’t rare enough, her skin was a solid brown color. Although she looked the part of a traditional fantasy dark elf, the pigmentation of her skin was just a byproduct of wherever she’d been born; just like mensch, methuselah were methuselah regardless of these minor exterior differences.

On top of that, her flowing, inky hair and sharp, slender eyes came together to form an exotic beauty scarcely seen around these parts...but one that was quickly foiled by the whole fish tail sticking out of her mouth.

“What the...” Mister Hansel groaned. “Don’t you ‘What?’ us, Zenab. You’re the one peeking out with a full mouth.”

Upon having her social faux pas pointed out, the woman quickly wriggled the rest of the fish into her mouth. It didn’t do much to help her image, though, because there was still a bit of leek stuck to her cheek.

“There is none helping it. Once leave, we are far from Shymar’s cooking for much time.”

“I get that, but...”

Her disembodied head popped back inside for a moment, probably as she rose from her seat. The tall methuselah reappeared as a whole person a moment later, though she’d decided not to unhand the plate of pickles she’d been enjoying.

“Burp. I am Zaynab, second daughter of Bassam, son of Qasim—helper of Fidelio in magic. May I be of your knowing.”

Setting aside the audacious belch for a second, the woman’s speech had a peculiar intonation and rhythm to it—perhaps she hailed from the Southern Continent. Rhinian conjugation was rather complicated, and her limited willingness to engage with its rules made her seem strikingly foreign.

“Zenab, how many times do I have to tell you not to bring those pickles near me? That stuff’s too strong for my nose.”

“Why say you that? Stuarts can be eating even the rotten. What is a smell of vinegar to that?”

“Can eat is different from will eat, dammit! This is why every stinking idiot goes around offering cheese as soon as they see me...”

Although she had a refined air about her, her mannerisms and verbiage were that of a lowborn person. More notably, the name “Zaynab” was easy to mispronounce in Rhinian, but she seemed not to care: when the other two referred to her as “Zenab,” she showed no intention of correcting them. I doubted a noble of any make would put up with having their name mangled, let alone walk around nibbling on food—maybe she was a regular person after all.

Her voice was clear but deep, and my impression of her was that she seemed more like a fighter than a mage. Dressed in the traditional garb of a more equatorial region, her legs and chest were largely exposed; she didn’t look the part of someone ready to set off on a long campaign, but I supposed that was yet more proof that she was an exceptional mage. I’d just have to get over the fact that she looked the part of a literal sword dancer more than anyone else I’d seen.

“This here’s a weirdo who came drifting into the Empire ’cause she wanted to eat the weirdest things she could find,” Mister Hansel explained. “Only reason she sticks with Fidelio’s to sink her teeth into the things he hunts down.”

“I come to search for the limbless drake, but too late,” she explained. “A shame.”

“If you ever come across an interesting kill, drop by and share some with her. She’ll pay whatever it takes to try out a new flavor.”

As it turned out, she was an eccentric. Though, in fairness, that should have been expected. If she was strong enough to not be dead weight in the Saint Fidelio’s party, then she was a genius; anyone who stood near the top of the adventuring world was bound to have a screw or two loose.

Most people totally lost their marbles well before they set foot into the realm of inhuman power. That her brand of oddness was merely an epicurean diet was quaint in comparison.

That said...a limbless drake? Following a rumor all the way into the Empire just to try and eat a dragon definitely placed her firmly within the classification of a weirdo. Were those things even, well, edible?

“Guys. Don’t cause a scene in the courtyard. You’ll wake the guests.”

Mister Fidelio came out, his bulky frame producing a mind-bending lack of noise. He was in a set of well-loved but quality travel wear, and his luggage was in hand. Behind him, the missus followed along carrying another bag.

“Ah, our bad, our bad,” Mister Hansel said. “Just couldn’t help myself when I thought about how the kids I brought in turned into celebrities.”

“Can’t skip on checking out the new competition,” Mister Rotaru added. “Too bad the Silent isn’t around though—I’ve been curious about the rumors.”

“I don’t want to be mean, but how many times do I have to warn you two that the way you deal with beginners is in bad taste?”

“Don’t say that, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. Seeing the youngsters shine is a great thing, don’tcha think? C’mon, tell me: have you given ’em a lesson here or there yet?”

“I’m busier than you make me out to be. Preparing for this trip has been a lot of trouble.”

Though the saint’s words were admonishing, his tone was friendly; the atmosphere between the four veterans was perfectly amicable. It felt less like he’d given up on reining them in and more like he’d come to accept each of them for who they were.

This is great. I loved seeing their party dynamic, forged through countless experiences. There was a depth to their bond that couldn’t be found in the arm’s-length politeness of newly formed groups.

Plus, their team composition was incredible: an impenetrable divine frontliner, an offensive vanguard, a scout who looked to be able to pick up slack in the middle of a formation, and a mage to handle the back line. Not only were the four of them entirely self-sufficient, but their arrangement was enough to make me feel nostalgic.

Then again, perhaps that was to do more with their numbers than their composition. I had plenty of memories of starting a new campaign only to ask, “Wait... Who’s the sage? Don’t we need to pass monster-knowledge checks? Who on this team can actually roll for initiative?” Perhaps the organizational part wasn’t all that vital in drawing out my memories.

As I watched the four of them with wonder in my eyes, I realized that it wasn’t just the party itself that was making me nostalgic.

“True, this one took a while,” the stuart said. “Had to scout the location, gather intel, prep the gear... The hell? Why am I the only one doing all the work? You guys better pick up some slack.”

“You have then my share of money. In exchange, I wish the best cut.”

“Whoa, wait, you ain’t already thinking about eating...whatever comes up, right?” Mister Hansel asked. “It’s an ichor maze—we don’t even know what’s in there yet.”

“Zenab,” the saint pleaded. “All I ask is that you keep it within reason. I will stop you if our foes have two arms and two legs.”

“Sirs,” the methuselah said, hurt. “How do you make of me?”

“An omnivorous sinkhole.”

“The personification of hunger.”

“The tipping point from curiosity into plain hubris, barely crammed into a person’s skin.”

“Very rude.” Despite her protests, the woman remained wholly unconvincing as she swiped the empty plate with a finger for the last of the pickle juices.

“Today’s finally the day, isn’t it?” As much as this preadventure small talk reminded me of my fondest memories, they couldn’t stand around forever; I figured I’d give them the little push they needed to get going.

I’d known that Mister Fidelio was setting off today well in advance. The only reason I’d woken up early on a break day was so I could make sure to see them off.

“It is,” the hero said. “I’ll be gone for a while. I’m leaving the chores around here to you.”

“Of course. Please enjoy your trip to your heart’s content. I’ll be waiting to hear a new epic about your travels.”

My comment came straight from the heart, but it put a troubled expression on Mister Fidelio’s face—and a smile on each of his companions’.

“Sorry kid, he’s not a show-off by heart! But you’ve got my word: we’ll drag back a good story for you!”

“You better not dramatize this one to the poets, Hansel. Half of the absurd tales in my name are your fault.”

The pair elbowed at one another’s sides as they bantered back and forth, but a palpable excitement filled the air; giddiness simply radiated off them.

In contrast, the missus watched over them with the smile of a mother seeing her children off to school. Just how many times had she watched her husband set off on another faraway journey?

Suddenly, I noticed a presence at her feet: it was Margit, carrying a bag big enough for her to hug. She’d been sound asleep when I’d first gotten up, but here she was helping the missus with her chores. Maybe I should’ve done the same instead of training out in the yard.

When our eyes met, she teased me with a giggle: You still have a long way to go, it felt like she was saying.

“Ooh, I thought I noticed someone. So that’s where you were. Mm... Hm... Not bad.”

“Save it for later, Rotaru. Time won’t wait for us... Isn’t that right?”

Unlike me, Mister Rotaru had noticed Margit from the beginning. Maybe this was a sign to dip deeper into presence-detection skills...but the opportunity cost of investing in combat was steep. I was content with my magic for the meantime, but I still had room to grow as a fighter, and I definitely needed another boost to negotiations.

Pushing my internal struggle aside, our farewells took place at the kitchen door. They didn’t want to march to the city gates with a big group and garner too much attention, so we were to stay here.

I could only dream that one day I would be the one setting off on a journey as thrilling as theirs.

“Mmkay then. Be careful, darling.”

“I will. I promise to come home safe.”

The couple leaned in and placed kisses on each other’s cheek. Then the missus pulled out a flintstone and struck it a few times, scattering the sparks onto her husband. It was a ritual for safe tidings: fire was the Flame God’s wordly avatar—that is, the Father God’s first son. His embers were said to dispel evil and ensure a traveler’s safety.

Shouldering all manner of emotion and expectation, the adventurers set off, their backs brighter still than the dawn’s first rays.

One day, I thought. One day I’ll set off just like that.

Now if only this unimaginative epithet could be the first stepping stone to that goal...

[Tips] Rituals for safe tidings vary by deity and tend to involve actions pertaining to the chosen god’s divine jurisdiction. Among the better known are Sun God worshippers striking flint, Night Goddess believers drinking water left to sit out under moonlight, and Harvest Goddess adherents sprinkling the grains of one stalk of wheat from the year’s harvest on the traveler.

Ever hushed and perennially hidden in her flashier partner’s shadow, the Silent—as she had come to be known—found herself walking the streets of Marsheim alone.

There wasn’t any special reason as to why she was by herself. Her partner had simply gone off to the stables. Their horses got cranky if he didn’t visit every now and again, so he regularly stopped by to take care of them. But the arachne was too small to be of any help caring for the impressive steeds, and had thus decided to spend her afternoon wandering elsewhere.

She made her way to the marketplace in search of something that might make for a good supper. Every so often, she passed by a stall with imported accessories that she perused to kill time.

Today was shaping up to be a lucky day: she found something she liked. It was a necklace with a teardrop of blue glass hanging off. Apparently, it had been repurposed from a shard of foreign glasswork. Yet despite being relatively inexpensive thanks to its improvised history, it boasted a color hard to come by in the Empire.

One silver piece might be out of reach for a child shopping on their allowance, but the girl had plenty of money. A libra for something like this was a steal.

Still, she was not so easily persuaded. Only after confirming that it was built to last would she reach for her purse; besides, any chips or scratches could be grounds for a discount.

The arachne held it up toward the sun; daylight filtered through, splashing onto her face in an intricate and altogether novel shade of blue. Why, this was the color of her fateful partner’s eyes.

Smitten by the translucent azure, the girl didn’t even bother haggling the price down. She bought it right away. Part of her reasoning was that a giant wolf fang wasn’t exactly fitting whenever she decided to dress up, but the truth was that the color had simply entranced her.

Prettying herself with the boy’s colors had meaning enough to excite her; she pressed a silver piece into the shopkeeper’s palm with great enthusiasm. Wasting no time, she looped the necklace around her neck and walked off in a merry mood.

As busy as the streets were, a little familiarity was all it took for her small frame to become a boon in weaving through crowds. The huntress had spent years navigating dense foliage; now that she grasped how it ticked, a forest of two-legged trees posed no more challenge than an empty plain.

Satisfied with her shopping, the girl wondered what she would do next. Perhaps she’d find a drink and snack to surprise the boy and lift his spirits after enduring the messiness that came with animal care—or perhaps not.

An ominous presence nipped at her senses. This was not the savage ferocity of a wild beast ready to kill, nor the cold edge her partner flashed to his enemies. It was a slimy, oozing malice that could come from no animal but man.

In an instant she switched from maiden to huntress and her honed body sprang into action. Jumping spider arachne were not to be taken lightly on account of their small stature: within their tiny bodies hid the potential for explosive action. In other words, their strength could only last for an instant...but it was tremendous.

Grabbing the daring hand reaching for her shoulder, the arachne twisted its fingers with all her might.

A gruesome scream mixed into the sound of breaking bones and tearing tendons. Using the torque of her turn to twist the hand farther, the huntress extended her retribution to the crook’s wrist and elbow.

Hers was a traditional martial art passed down among the fighters of her people. Though a disparity in height often seemed to be a disadvantage, she could use the natural leverage to her own ends and push back the hand while forcibly contorting it.

Panicked, the man tried to pull away, but it was too late. She was an arachne huntress, famed for taking down foes many times their size with nothing more than a dagger; he was a pitiful mensch, unable to shake her off.

The huntress carefully observed her prey as it writhed and desperately pulled away. He was a mensch wearing tattered rags, sporting a scraggly beard, and missing a few teeth—just a typical lowlife with little to his name. Whether he was a thief or adventurer was hard to gauge, but his off hand had dropped a dagger; he certainly didn’t have any good intentions.

Knowing that her full strength wouldn’t last long—ten seconds, if that—the arachne swiped his dagger and skittered off in a hurry.

“Hey! Wait, brat!”

“Ow! Owww! My hand! It won’t move!”

“Damn! You, stay! We, go!”

Two pursuers chased after the fleeing huntress. Both were dressed similarly to the first man, with the only difference that they wielded rope and a burlap sack, respectively; they’d come to kidnap her.

Considering the crowd, all they would need to do was cover her mouth and melt into the sea of people—not a bad plan by any means. They were experienced, too, judging from the way they gave chase. If anything, their only mistake was that they’d thought of her as nothing more than Goldilocks’s plus-one.

What a mess this has become, the little arachne thought as she ducked under the forest of legs. Shouts of “Move it!” and “Outta the way!” echoed out behind her; her every movement was an insult to the pitiful two-legged oafs bumbling into passersby.

Shaking them off would pose little challenge, but she stood out around these parts. Arachne were surprisingly scarce in Marsheim, and she didn’t want to risk a long test of endurance. If they had more kidnappers lying in wait throughout the city, she could be in real trouble.

But most of all, there wasn’t the slightest reward for all the risk involved.

Hunting down a handful of unbathed ruffians would not improve her social status; the best that awaited was a bothersome investigation. If she went too far, she could even worsen whatever unwarranted grudge had fueled this episode. She was too clever to go on a rampage that would land her in trouble—there were better ways of using the fools.

Weaving in and out of crowds to drown her chasers in people, the arachne enacted the next step of her scheme.

“Please, help! Oh, officer, won’t you save me?!”

Putting on an embarrassingly cutesy voice, the girl ran to an unbusy city gate, squealing for the guards posted there. Combined with her baby face, the act was enough to spur the officers into action; they might not have been keen on working, but the responsibility that came with their post was enough for them to grab their batons.

“Those bad men are chasing me! They’re trying to hurt me with knives!”

Years of palatial speech dissolved in an instant as she played up her image as a poor, helpless child. Shocked into righteous fury, the guards jumped to their feet.

“What?!”

“You, freeze! Stop where you stand!”

The kidnappers tried to turn heel in a panic, but the guards’ whistles were already blaring as both sides dived back into the crowds. Though the Ende Erde Watch weren’t exactly the most enthusiastic, they weren’t heartless enough to abandon an innocent victim in immediate danger.

While pretending to let a worried guard console her, the huntress’s mind drifted to two thoughts.

First was the cynical realization that her appearance was rather useful for the purposes of manipulation. A few crocodile tears and a terrified scream were all she needed to instantly paint someone as the villain—that was quite the nifty trick. Had her partner been here to witness her calculating scheme, he surely would have shivered in fear and muttered something about Sociability bonuses.

Second, the constables’ willingness to help proved that their enemies didn’t have enough grease to put in people’s palms. Had her partner’s musings about having turned an entire clan against them been right, the police would have left her to dry; that was just how Marsheim worked. Whether they witnessed a kidnapping or a stabbing, the guards would do little to impede those who pulled their strings. At the end of the day, a stranger’s life and pride in one’s career meant precious little to them if a silver piece just so happened to fall at their feet.

So while it was vexing to have her pleasant afternoon ruined, this was a useful morsel of information.

She needed to regroup with her partner as soon as possible to deliver the news. And while she was at it, she’d make him fawn over her out of worry. On second thought, considering what she stood to gain...perhaps she ought to work on her fake tears a little more.

[Tips] Bribes are an effective means of getting one’s way in any city—that is, unless the guards are well paid and well honored.

I never thought I would truly know what it meant to see red. The wooden mug in my hand creaked as it struggled not to spill its contents.

I knew I was a bit careless, but this was just too much. I’d gotten complacent, knowing how strong Margit was. Honestly, if it came down to an all-out, life-and-death, one-on-one fight, she was strong enough to kill me if I failed the first reaction.

But hearing that she’d actually been targeted made me so miserable that I wanted to cut myself open on the spot.

No, wait. Not me—at least, not first. I needed to hunt down the thugs who’d ambushed her first and line their heads—

“Calm down. Your bloodlust is flowing out in spades.”

Her small hands held me steady as mine trembled in rage. My gaze had been fixed on the desk in front of me, and she leaned over to force her way into view. The message was clear: Don’t run off and start trouble on your own.

“As you can see, they didn’t hurt a hair on me. As a matter of fact, the guards were kind enough to give me a candy drop. So won’t you calm down, Erich?”

“But...”

“Or do you think I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking?”

She pulled up close, her amber eyes staring into my soul from less than an inch away. I swallowed my breath, unable to say anything back.

Margit might not be the type to weave webs, but I felt utterly ensnared. It was as if she were using my sense of sight to fiddle directly with my brain. Maybe my many hours spent at one table or another offering up my investigator’s life in dutiful service to Atlach-Nacha were heightening my susceptibility to her persuasion.

“Tell me: is there anything to gain from letting anger lead your blade? Is a moment’s relief from fury worth a reputation as a violent and crazed aggressor?”

“No, but—”

“Would you please remind me how many groups have been bothering us as of late? Do you plan to cut down every last one on suspicion alone?”

“U-Um... No, but...”

“And even if they’d laid their hands on me...if you think that revenge would offset that, then I can’t help but laugh.”

The thought alone was enough to make me sick to death, but Margit simply let out an ice-cold scoff. Her smile was that of a woman jaded by the stupidity of men.

“Had they seized me, I should hope you would take care of me from then on. No lady wants the heads of fools lined up before her—do you comprehend?”

To be honest, I didn’t completely understand. But I had at least enough INT to know that admitting as much was a bad idea, and nodded along. I supposed it was fair to say that hurting those who’d hurt her wouldn’t suffice as far as taking responsibility for failing her went.

“Remind me, Erich: whatever did you come to this land at the ends of all earth to be? A petty criminal? A disgraced killer on the run?”

“...An adventurer.”

“That’s right. So what do you say to a smarter approach?”

I surrendered and took a deep breath. Asking for a moment to compose myself, I pulled my pipe out of a pocket for a puff of a tranquilizing herb. A favorite of mine, the drug filled my lungs and reason flowed into the empty pockets of brain space carved out by anger.

Come to think of it, Margit’s report had come with good news too. None of the clans had mustered against us in full just yet. At most, it was a small subgroup—the leader of a minor faction, perhaps.

Then it was time to teach them a lesson: You picked the wrong fight.

“Thank you, Margit. I think I’ve cooled off.”

Drawing my sword was easy. At this point, I could cut down legions of unskilled goons without relying on any hidden aces. I wasn’t blind enough to deny the fruits of my training. But even a mad dog could howl and ravage, driven solely by a lust for blood.

Remember your roots! Whom do you think you studied under? How many years did you spend with that wicked methuselah? What did she teach you?

To wait on a noble was also to witness their every move. I’d seen that scoundrel spew verbal poison with dazzling smiles more times than I could count, pitting her enemies against one another all the while.

I wouldn’t see the same success as her; I didn’t have as many pawns. But I had enough wits not to churn my brain into muscle and reduce every Negotiation to a physical stat check.

“We’ll be smart and spill as little blood as possible,” I said.

“Very good. That’s exactly what I wished to hear.”

To begin with, violence did solve every problem, but it was only to be used as a last resort. Cutting open a tangled knot was quick and satisfying, but the severed rope would never regain its lost form. Taking after Alexander the Great’s temper would win me nothing but ire without the authority to back it up.

Instead, I ought to think like an adventurer: snoop for intel, back my foes into a corner, and use irrefutable evidence to make them bow down in apology. If they still refused to bend the knee then, I’d be happy to rely on the ultimate problem-solver.

A riddler with unsolvable riddles was due an answer in fists. The question was meant to be thrown back at them: did they have a solution to punches?

The first step would be reconnaissance. Unfortunately for us, we had drawn unwanted attention from three different clans thus far, with each of the corresponding incidents limited to minor members of the orgs.

Cunning syndicates spanning a whole city could even try to frame their rivals for any given crime. I’d heard of such tactics in yakuza gangs: when felling one’s enemies was hard work, it could never hurt to use the public authorities as a weapon. I bet similar schemes existed no matter the era.

We also needed a fallback plan in case things went awry—even Lady Agrippina had drafted them. Failure wasn’t ideal, but it needed to be acceptable; any mistake could still be used to stir up trouble for the enemy. In the event they turned out to be simpletons incapable of reading past the surface layer, it was fine to laugh off one’s own safeguards as needless paranoia.

Adventuring was just a verbal boxing match with a sinister GM: no amount of distrust was too much. When every hackneyed story could come with a twist and every convoluted plot could trace the beaten path, it was best to stay sharp.

But to start, we were best off looking into the likeliest of suspects.

“You said they arrested the guys who attacked you?”

“That’s right. The guards managed to capture one of them. They sent me home thinking I was a little girl, but I’m sure I can return and ask for details as the victim in this whole affair.”

That’s a terrifying trick... I’d never thought of it, but she had the innate ability to convince practically anyone who didn’t know her that anyone else of her choosing was a downright villain. Come to think of it, some tabletop systems did include negotiation skills that touched on horrifying tactics like this.

Well then, we’d do well to make like the denizens of a haunted Tokyo and narrow down our suspects, starting from the most dubious, collecting every morsel of evidence we could on the way. Boy, I knew the ends of all earth were meant to be exciting, but I’d never anticipated that I’d have an urbancrawl show up practically at my doorstep.

“Then let’s take this slow and steady. We’ll make them pay.”

“Let’s, indeed. For the sake of working in peace.”

The timing was a bit unfortunate: our font of interadventurer affairs, Miss Laurentius, was out on a large-scale bodyguard operation requested by one of her most important backers; our veteran teacher Mister Fidelio was likewise absent. We’d practically lost contact with our most powerful connections.

But hey, this was just fate’s way of scolding me for trying to get my seniors to baby me. Even if they were around to help, it would be positively shameful to go and beg when I couldn’t so much as name my enemy yet.

If I wanted to be a cool adventurer, then I couldn’t exhibit such disgraceful behavior. Running the numbers on the coins in my wallet and the experience in my bank, my lips curled into a sinister sneer.

[Tips] Money can buy action, and not only from friends. At times, coin is enough to buy one’s enemies.

Crime was to be carried out under the veil of darkness, by hooded figures, only in locations fit for foul play—or at least, that was how it went in fiction.

Two men sat at a table as drunkards livened up the bar around them. They were positioned face-to-face along a wall, each enjoying a drink and some snacks like any other customer.

The pair looked almost to belong in those seats. The one sitting closer to the entrance—and therefore in a lower social position—was an entirely average mensch wearing clothes that were a bit frayed, but not shabby enough to call rags. His company looked to be more of a gentleman, with clothes that had been tailored to his size.

If one were to note any peculiarities about the two, then perhaps the only detail that would arise would be that the second man was a vampire; few of his kind inhabited the lower classes of Rhine. Yet many noble immortals in the annals of history had lost their privileges or cast them away, and a common vampire was barely worth mentioning in a large imperial city.

Had a certain blond boy been present, he would have likened the odds to seeing an Eastern European person in a major metropolitan train station. The man’s long fangs and bloodred eyes were enough for passersby to think to themselves, Huh, but nothing more.

“Gods, it sure sounds like that last trip was a tough one.”

“Y-Yes, well... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble...”

Their conversation, like them, seemed ordinary. That the mensch shrunk away in a nervous sweat was as normal as the vampire acting in a deliberately good-natured fashion; to anyone around them, they were merchants sharing a drink after putting a job behind them.

Indeed, one would have to be truly ill of mind to suspect anything in their exchange. Say, for example, that someone from the next table over had excused themselves, leaving only one person with nothing to do but eavesdrop; even then, the bored listener surely would have found nothing of interest to pay attention to in the pair’s everyday discussion.

Yet in truth, theirs was a conversation overflowing with evil.

“Oh, no, it was hardly any trouble at all. That said, while I understand wanting to take responsibility for your own matters, when the losses are so heavy... Well.”

“I-I’m terribly sorry, sir. I’d figured that it wouldn’t be right to bother you with all the trouble of—”

“When things go so wrong that we’ve failed both the client and the shipping company, it’d be poor manners if I didn’t step in to speak on our behalf. Please, if this happens again, don’t be afraid to report your mistakes.”

On the surface, the back-and-forth was that of a senior merchant bullying a junior merchandise-stocker over drinks; beneath the facade, though, was a far more malicious business. Who could possibly guess that these two were part of an organization unfit to operate in the light of day?

The trick to crime was, in truth, to never appear criminal in the first place. Those ignorant to their dealings reported nothing—carrying secrets posed little danger if nobody bothered to check the pockets they were stored in. Banality was their daily disguise, and those who managed gangs of petty thugs knew that looking anything but the part was the first priority in their line of work.

“The losses were substantial, after all,” the vampire went on. “It pained me to see, as the one keeping our accounts. From now on, I’ll be overseeing this matter personally.”

“Um... Y-Yes, sir. I... I understand.”

The underling wriggled in his chair as he attempted to hide his fears from the zero people bothering to pay him any mind. He felt his back dampen with beads of sweat; blood beaded in little half-moons across his palms as his fists balled and his nails bit deep.

The shame of failure was that unbearable.

Reputation in the underworld was worth as much as in noble spheres: to be underestimated was a matter of literal life and death. At best, one could hope to be used up and stripped to the bone; at worst, they would be a plaything until their corpse suddenly appeared in a forgotten gutter.

Whereas aristocrats did not engage in senseless violence—save for those who had particularly unsavory hobbies—the same could not be said for the denizens of the shadows. Moving up the social ladder was easier here, and one misstep could be all it took to turn the world against someone; any who stumbled would find themselves begging for mercy at the feet of yesterday’s lackeys.

Not only had the man failed, but he’d tried to cover for his own mistakes and failed again—his situation was dire. It didn’t help that the news had been spilled to his superior by one of his disgruntled men trying to get back at him for sullying their reputation. Fessing up on his own after making up for a slipup could have been settled with a fist to the face and no more; but how could he possibly atone now?

Whatever awaited, it was too terrible for him to dare imagining.

“That said, I’m sure our client won’t be very pleased to hear from me, considering all that’s happened.”

“Uh... I guess not.”

“But come to think of it, our new customer has relations with other merchants, don’t they?” Though the vampire neatly packaged his words in the guise of business talk, they were thinly veiled threats; he knew the truth, and he enjoyed hinting at that fact to his hapless subordinate. “Then perhaps we should introduce them to a new deal. I’m sure talks will be much smoother once we’ve earned back some trust with a job well done.”

“A-Are you sure? Can we really let that stuck—ahem. I mean, shouldn’t we win that trust back ourselves?”

“All that matters in business is the final result. Remember that.”

Free from the bondage of ethics, the criminal world was one where swords could be shields and odd numbers could turn even—so long as the circumstances lined up. They could pick and choose how to resolve the situation.

Unlike the government, they didn’t care to take credit for the hanging of their enemies. All they needed was for their foe to draw someone’s ire and end up floating down the sewers—the gossipmongers would do the rest.

“Well then, let’s pass along some work.”

The job was simple. A mere spark was enough to set off the excitable fools they were dealing with—all the more true when the embers of discord were already glowing. They didn’t even need to provide a flame; it would suffice to add a bit of fuel to the smoldering logs already present.

Alas, the men had forgotten something.

Their threats could ignite conflict, but a roaring flame could not be contained by human hands alone. Many knew this simple truth, but were quick to forget it until the fires they’d started began to burn at their own heels.

[Tips] Many people treat adventuring as a part-time job to tide them over during the off-seasons for their main occupation.

The rot of wood exposed to moisture; mud constantly stirred without a moment to dry; rankness radiating off unbathed paupers; unclean waste dumped at random—frankly speaking, the air hanging over this collection of tents beyond Marsheim’s walls was enough to kill a genteel girl with one breath.

Be this the ends of all earth as it may, Marsheim was still the capital of an imperial administrative state; rent was not cheap. No matter how disorderly the city got, the Empire’s most remote lookout would always be home to a powerful margrave.

From my research, the cheapest inns—offering quality fit for the prices—still charged a libra per month for a bed in their commons. While one silver was small change to most, some could hardly be asked to part with it. Putting the bare minimum of food in one’s mouth was always the foremost priority, and rent was one of the first expenses to be cut to that end, second only to perhaps clothing.

This flock of tents was home to migrants, vagabonds, and failed entrepreneurs. Those who lacked the money to stay inside the city but had nothing else to cling to came here as a last resort.

As a collection of squatters lacked access to public services, the packed, congested landscape was home to conditions horrible beyond words. It was difficult to say whether the people here were dressed in clothes or scraps, and many were so awfully filthy that it was hard to tell their gender—for some, I couldn’t even guess at their species. Forget bathing, these people must not have seen running water in years. I could hardly believe my eyes with my Berylinian sensibilities.

Of course, the capital of vanity was carefully manicured to prune off slums to the point that an unbathed citizen would be considered no citizen at all. Comparing this remote region to that was a mistake to begin with.

Even so, I couldn’t wrap my head around why the local authorities permitted this lawless wasteland to sit right by its walls. This went for the neglected districts within city limits as well, but I couldn’t help but feel that this posed a massive security risk. While I acknowledged that I knew nothing of the margrave’s financial situation, I would have razed this place to the ground long ago had I been in the seat of power. My inner El Presidente told me that the slums were a breeding ground for crime, and draconian taxes were a price worth paying to stamp them out in favor of real housing.

I continued pondering what could possibly be keeping this place afloat as Margit and I wandered around the tent grounds, as the locals called it.

“No luck, huh?”

“No luck indeed.”

But, as luck would have it, all we had to show for half a day’s walking was sweat and a noxious odor clinging to our clothes.

“I guess we really weren’t dressed the part.”

“Perhaps we should have scoured the Trash Heap for some tattered rags.”

We’d gone around asking the people here if they knew anything about the Exilrat with the vague hope that we might even run into its members, but they weren’t exactly taking visitors. Knowing that we couldn’t wait for them at the Association building because they didn’t have any identifying marks, we’d hoped that touring their stamping grounds would lead to a confrontation eventually—unfortunately, that had been a bust.

At this point, coming all the way out had just been a waste of time. We would’ve been better off loitering in town and catching one of the pickpockets as they came my way.

“So we’re going to need disguises... This isn’t really my specialty.”

“That makes two of us. Preparing camouflage for the forest is one thing, but blending into a city is completely foreign to me.”

I could see why a favorite game of mine had so clearly delineated between rangers and scouts: for as unbeatable and acute as the master huntress was in her element, Margit remained a country bumpkin who was only just beginning to learn how to get along in the big city.

Naturally, that went for me too. My stint of servitude had been spent under the assumption that any enemy would come to me as opposed to the other way around; I didn’t know the first thing about searching for people. I was confident I could sniff out ill intent if it ever came my way, but proactively tracking a target down was not my forte.

I’d tried the tricks I’d used for tabletop campaigns, but it hadn’t worked as well as I’d hoped. My guess that the destitute would respond better to goods than to money had been spot on, but I’d underestimated the depravity of this land. We’d encountered beggars who’d told us they had the intel we needed, but after giving them food, they’d inhaled our payment whole and tried to bolt off. When we’d hunted them down and threatened them with a light walloping, the scamps had the gall to cough up that they hadn’t known anything to begin with.

Worse still, those who saw we had stuff on us had flocked around, and the crowd had brought thoughtless hands reaching for our pockets—that was no environment in which to conduct an investigation. Skills involving shady exchanges usually ended up gathering dust, but now I could see their true value.

The most important thing in asking questions was finding the right person to field them. This was the Exilrat’s home turf, yes, but obviously not everyone here would know about their dealings. I missed the convenience of starting every campaign with a group of three to five adventurers from every walk of life. Most of the time, the party would have one orphan or former gangster or the like who could bear the burden of shantytown dealings—if the GM was feeling up to it, they’d even know a guy in the area.

“But I really don’t want to roll around in filth on purpose,” I sighed. “Would it even be worth it anyway?”

“Surely we could simply wash ourselves off after the fact.”

“Public bathhouses in the city will turn you away if you’re too filthy, and throwing a bit of dirt on ourselves isn’t going to cut it if we want to look the part.”

Claiming to be an unemployed vagrant with a long, straight head of hair was a bit of a stretch, and cutting it was sure to bring a fey protest with it. Even if I stuffed my fingernails with dirt and put on some smelly rags, the luster of daily scalp care wasn’t going to fade in a day.

The same went for our skin. Both of us placed emphasis on regular hygiene, and those with keen eyes would see through any surface layer of grime we applied. Maybe there was such a thing as being too clean.

“It looks like we’ll have to go with Plan B.”

“I agree. Or rather, I don’t see any other option for us at this point.”

Wanting to avoid a confused discussion on-site, we’d already hashed out our fallback plan.

This was enemy territory, after all. We’d known from the start that aimlessly walking around might not yield anything: it was only natural for their members to restrict the flow of information among their own people.

To begin with, our initial strategy required a great deal of luck. We’d simply been hoping for the improbable event that we’d run into a loose-lipped member or someone feeling cast aside by the group; an expected failure wasn’t enough to deter us.

Quite the contrary: our asking around was simply bait for the more likely phase of our plan. As nice as it would’ve been to do things peacefully, we adventurers were always quick to resort to violence if it opened up the quickest path forward.

“I’ll take the ones in front. I count...six?”

“So close. One of the ones ahead isn’t part of their group—so five. Leave the two behind us to me.”

“Gotcha. Let’s make it quick.”

After a short chat, the two of us made our moves.

I leaped forward, kicking a tent down whole as I aimed for the shadow inside; Margit crouched low and sprinted off, vanishing from my field of view.

The unarmed bonuses from Hybrid Sword Arts were my only boost to my martial arts, but while I wasn’t going to wow any master practitioners, the violence of fixed values spoke for itself. I’d have to face a truly inhuman opponent to be challenged now.

My upward roundhouse slammed straight into the figure hiding behind the tattered tarp. I could feel the brutal sensation of the tip of my foot sinking into flesh and then snapping something hard; the visceral tactile feedback sent satisfied signals to my brain.

That was a clean hit—a crit, even.

“Haugh!”

A pained gasp followed my foot as I pulled it back, and the person collapsed backward, tearing the tent down with them.

Oh? You’re not as filthy as I would’ve thought. But if you’re not the owner of this tent, then who are you?

“You little shit!”

Ah well, who cares. These weren’t neutral observers: they’d surrounded us with clearly nefarious intentions. Our line had gotten a bite, and it was only fair that we scoop up our catch to see what we’d fished up.

Rapidly retracting my leg, I closed the distance with another foe who was shocked into stillness that their ambush had gone awry. He was a stout mensch man sporting a bald head and surprisingly decent clothes. Close shaves were popular with soldiers and adventurers alike for being easy to do and keep clean, but this man was much too boorish to be a public servant; I had no reason to hold back as I jammed my elbow into his solar plexus.

I wove my fingers together to put the whole of my weight behind the strike. Every bit of my momentum was concentrated into the hardest point in my whole body.

“Groooah?!”

I ended up boring him out from below due to the disparity in our heights, and he let out an indescribably guttural scream. The impact reverberated through my arms, and I could feel something squishy crumple behind his outer muscles—this, too, was a clean strike.

“Whoa, now.”

The timbre of his gurgling gave me a bad feeling, so I stepped aside. Not a moment later was I followed by a disgusting shower: he buckled over, folding in half at the point of contact and puking out his guts along the way.

“Ah... Ahhh!”

And the last one tried to run! Evidently, seeing his two comrades beaten down in the blink of an eye had proved too much.

What a heartless fellow. I plucked a knife off the back of the hurling man and twirled it a few times in my hand. Once I had the weight down, I held it by the blade and prepared to throw.

At this distance, I was, say...three and a quarter revolutions away? I tossed the dagger with a slapdash guesstimate and it spun through the air, eventually claiming the runaway’s hamstring as its new sheath.

Wait, shoot... Considering the spot I hit him in, I might’ve completely severed a major ligament. I’d meant to avoid leaving any irreversible wounds, but... Well, I supposed this was what I got for getting lazy.

As I scratched the back of my head over my oopsie, horrific noises rang out behind me, followed shortly after by screaming. Looking over my shoulder, I saw two more men planted face down in the dirt.

“Goodness, people with only one pair of eyes are so simple to deal with.”

Naturally, Margit had been the one to place them there. She’d probably jumped from a nearby shack’s roof—I was impressed she’d managed to climb any of them without collapsing it—and leaped onto them from above like a hooded assassin. Her poor victims were stuck sharing a passionate kiss with the ground.

Not only had she landed an aerial assassination, but it was a double kill at that—big points. Clearly, our ambushers hadn’t expected to be attacked from behind when they’d supposedly surrounded us; they’d hit the earth without breaking their falls in the slightest. That had to hurt: even without wrist blades, this could definitely have been a lethal blow if she hadn’t held back.

As with any good assassin build, Margit had landed her surprise attack out of stealth. I’d always been skeptical about using a minor action to enter the state, but it was blatantly unfair when paired with a racial bonus that applied it during setup.

“Boy, you’re brutal... You probably broke all their front teeth.”

“Please, Erich. Yours is going to bleed out if you don’t tend to the wound soon.”

In one quick round, we’d reduced five men to groaning props. The uninvolved parties nearby frantically scuttled off, not wanting to be wrapped up in the fighting.

One was wrapped in a fallen tent with a few broken ribs; another had coughed up everything in his guts and balled up. The other three were flat on the ground, sullying the dirt with blood: the man I’d daggered down kept trying and failing to remove the weapon—he was best off not touching the thing—and the other two were struggling to breathe through their broken noses.

Though it pained me to beat down people I didn’t even know, they must’ve understood it was only fair considering their own intentions.

“It’s not like he’ll die on the spot—he’ll be fine. More importantly, how about we introduce ourselves to our new friends?”

We’d caused a scene, and we were going to get something out of it. To that end, we were going to drag one of these lowlifes—whoever seemed like they could actually talk—to an empty tent for a little icebreaker.

Greetings were very important, after all. Now that we’d gotten the pregreeting ambush out of the way, it would be horribly rude of us not to say hello.

I grabbed the man dribbling bile by the dome and forced him to look up to meet my grin. Remember, a good introduction is the first step to any relationship, and a good smile is the foundation of trust.

“Hey there, pal. What do you say we go have a little chat?”

[Tips] The tent grounds are a slum populated by all sorts of poor travelers trying to make Marsheim home. Estimates figure that over one thousand people cling to the outer walls of the city.

The local government tolerates it only because displacement could drive the denizens past the brink of desperation and cause pandemonium. Still, the unregulated nature of the area has led to it becoming a hotbed of criminal activity anyway.

Adventurers were well-known for their seamless transitions between interrogation and torture, but the latter wasn’t necessary if one had other means. The silver-tongued needed only to run verbal circles around their captive; the rich could simply whack them with a sack full of coins; mind-reading mages could bypass everything with a spell.

Some liked to take advantage of the flexibility an analog god of fate offered. Even lacking the most basic Sociability skills, a PC could always attempt a more physical approach: brandishing a tightened fist and threatening to force it into uninvited places could count as a negotiation attempt, so long as the GM approved.

In other words, it all came down to the interrogator’s ingenuity. The sole goal was to extract information, and everything else was a means to that end.

In my case, a face-to-face confrontation enabled me to use my Overwhelming Smile, which let my mastery in Hybrid Sword Arts determine how Intimidating I was. Violence was wholly unnecessary to bully a lowly goon into cooperating—especially a goon who’d just experienced my might firsthand.

“I-I won’t snitch! You don’t understand what’d happen to me if I did!”

We’d dragged the man down a small, isolated road. At first, he seemed reluctant to cough up anything more than the contents of his stomach, but he became a lot easier to work with once I told him to choose between betting on his comrades’ goodwill or mine while brandishing the fey karambit.

Seeing him break in a shamelessly pragmatic display of self-interest was rather pleasant—refreshing, even. It was so very easy to work with someone who valued the forgettable token that was his own life.

Had he known something of loyalty or had a cause to fight for, this would have been so much more painful. I’d run into many of those sorts while working for Lady Agrippina, and they had been unforgettable chores to break: neither nail nor tooth sufficed to get the gums flapping, and beating them with sacks of gold did little more than cave in their skulls. I wouldn’t be surprised if people like them could witness their family’s heads lined up on a table while their newborn was put to the blade and still retain their silence—that was how alien they’d felt.

In comparison, a pragmatic and selfish captive was a walk in the park. The fear of losing one’s life or fortune was enough to deprive them of most of their long-term thinking.

Boy, what a stroke of luck. While I wasn’t all that opposed to more gruesome methods, I didn’t want to resort to them. If I could get away without playing dentist or helping others appreciate the beauty of fresh air, I was all for it.

I mean, yes, I had done those things when it’d been my literal job, but I hadn’t slept well after the fact. Screams and desperate pleading were terrible for the psyche, even when they came from one’s mortal enemies.

“I-I don’t know nothing! A-All I know is I got a bit of cash to scare you—just to rough you up a bit!”

His response was as trite as they came. It was hard not to feel offended at how hard I’d been looked down upon, but adventuring was a crass field in which it was my own damn fault for looking like I could be taken in a fight. All I could do was make sure the idiots who tried to capitalize would never so much as look in my direction again.

“Yes, yes, that’s lovely,” I said. “It sounds like both your life and mine go for cheap, hanging in balance with only some spare change on the other side. But what I really want to know is who placed those coins on the scale.”

“Th-The Heilbronn Familie! I’m a Heilbronn member! And we’ll still call it even if you let me go now, but if you don’t—”

“But will this impressive clan of yours be able to tell that you’re you when they find a faceless corpse floating down the sewers? I don’t mean to scare you, but I have plenty of ways to make it so that not even your own mother would recognize you.”

I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spook him a little. Margit made a face that had, What did they teach this boy in the capital? written all over it, but I’d excuse myself later. Dropping the act now would cause all the fear I’d carefully built up to dissipate.

As an aside, I’d just been throwing out threats, but that particular one hadn’t been empty. Sealing his mouth might save me some trouble if the alternative was having him go home to report more than I wanted him to. Between dealing with a handful of chumps and taking on a crime syndicate feared throughout the region, I would prefer to engage in unauthorized waste disposal any day.

Still, tossing five people into a river or sneaking them to the slimes really would hang heavy on my mental health. I’d appreciate it if he just worked with me.

“O-Okay, I’ll talk—I’ll talk! Gods, just don’t kill me!”

“Attaboy. And? Who’s got the money?”

Thankfully, my combo of skills worked its magic and caused the man to further soil himself, though not with vomit this time. It seemed my slender face didn’t have any adverse effects in this regard: I’d successfully intimidated a hulking man into spilling the beans without reserve.

“It’s those Baldur crooks! I got the money from some shady weirdos in robes that stank of dope—it’s gotta be them! They came knocking at ours and told us they had a cocky kid they wanted us to toss around!”

Hm? I knew that the Baldur Clan had their eyes on me, and it seemed reasonable enough that they’d make an attempt on my life...but would they outsource something like that? And not to some Heilbronn officer, but to this random goon who looked like he could hardly handle himself in a bar fight?

This was a group that shamelessly walked the streets despite the believable rumors of illicit narcotics that floated around them. If they actually wanted to get someone out of their hair, surely they had someone in-house to deal with it. Would they really be so sloppy? Maybe it was plausible for a smaller operation, but I was doubtful that the rulers of a drug empire would stoop so low.

For the answer to one mystery to lead into the next was a staple of TRPG writing, but I couldn’t shake off my suspicions.

This had to be one of those moments where the GM refused to voice an NPC’s words in definite terms. I could hear the world adding “he claims” and “he seems to believe” on top of the bald man’s statements; the character might consider this the truth, but whether that was the truth of the setting was an entirely separate matter.

The stewing spiral in my brain made me nostalgic for the whodunits and urban mysteries I’d played through long ago—especially in the worlds of cosmic horrors and that scheming sword. Expert psychoanalysis and the Sense Lies spell could only ever tell if the target thought what they were saying was true; uncovering if they knew what they were talking about was left as an exercise for the players. I closed my eyes, only to see the GM’s shit-eating grin burned into the back of my eyelids.

We’d gained a lead, but one of dubious quality. The pants-wetting fear on display told me that this man was either telling the truth or destined for a career in the capital’s theaters—I felt it was safe to assume the former.

But it was just that...leads this obvious never amounted to anything.

If only this had been my old meatheaded table, surgically modified to fit more muscle per skull than there was space for, we would have gone around wreaking havoc under the assumption that “If we beat the crap out of everyone, we’ll get the mastermind eventually too!” That way, all we would have to do to avoid all the convoluted games of intrigue would be to slaughter anyone even slightly suspicious.

But while I cherished the memories of using Lord Mace to “bridge the gap” for any and every verbal disagreement, I couldn’t exactly pull that off here when I was just getting my footing as an adventurer.

“Hmm... What to do...”

“Ack?!”

I looped around to choke the man out while cocking my head to think about more important things. Letting him live was perfectly fine: it’d help to have him spread the word that we were bad news if trifled with. But more pertinently...

“This is really suspicious, huh?”

“Is it?” Margit asked. “I’m afraid I’m not as well versed in urban affairs. Though, now that you mention it, this does seem rather clumsy for a supposedly powerful clan.”

At the end of the day, all we’d gotten was one lead of dubious value. I couldn’t think of any slipups on my part that would’ve made a GM snarkily comment on how my interrogation skills needed brushing up, so the man probably hadn’t known all that much to begin with. Still, it was hard to decide what to do with this intel.

The lead was as blunt as having a fat middle-aged noble for a villain. Nowadays, no one would ever— Oh, wait. Actually, come to think of it, Viscount Liplar had fit the bill perfectly.

Okay, barring one exception, but the point still stood: it would probably be better to withhold judgment. While I did want to get this whole affair over with, it was still too early to seek an answer in the raw, abrupt, and terribly permanent form of a STR check.

Gathering more information wouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t like we could just go to the kingpin’s office and ask, “Excuse me, but would you happen to be trying to murder us?” and expect a straight response anyway.

“Pretty much nothing gained today,” I sighed. “All that sweat for nothing.”

“Not only the sweat,” Margit added, “but this hideous odor on our clothes.”

Our confrontation with the Exilrat had been a bust, and our only lead was anything but reliable. I’d been ready to raise my fists if need be, but at this point, I was just confused: whom was I to bring them down upon?

[Tips] Equating affiliation with agreement is the most dangerous of assumptions. For one may see a mark of membership and lash out in a fit of temper, only to find themselves with many, many unnecessary enemies.

As badly as I wanted to settle the score, wandering around town every day to bait out another attack was inefficient.

We’d decided instead to see how things played out for now and focus on looking for new leads in the meantime...but that wasn’t going so well. You could even say we’d hit a dead end.

We’d gone to the guards with a little gift of thanks, so to speak, for their work in saving Margit. Along with my gratitude, I’d mentioned that I wanted to speak to the person who’d tried to lay a hand on my partner, but the officer on duty had averted his eyes and looked sorry as he broke the news.

The crime was light, so he’d been released.

The two of us had been stunned into silence.

The Empire’s penal code was tightly under wraps: we commoners knew nothing of it, and I hadn’t even seen the official rules as a member of the madam’s entourage. But while I didn’t know the specifics, attempted kidnapping could not be a misdemeanor. If stealing a person was a “light” crime, then why in the world would the crown bother with outlawing slavery?

Unfortunately, we were up against real authorities this time. Mere adventurers like us couldn’t expect to receive anything substantive just for our persistence, and bringing out the Ubiorum ring here would just bring more unwanted attention. I didn’t even want to think about what kind of hateful correspondence I’d receive if rumor got out that the count thaumapalatine was up to something in Ende Erde.

The seal was a wild card, through and through—I would not use it unless I absolutely had to. Pulling it out while we still had other options on the table would bring more side effects than cures; as such, we’d withdrawn from the jail without causing a fuss.

Damn. I’d thought that the city guards would need a few days to file away their paperwork and had deliberately decided to wait a few days; that had backfired spectacularly. Never had I imagined that our enemy had ears so quick to pick up rumors or tendrils so long to grease official palms.

Wasn’t this all a bit much for what was essentially a gang of adventurers? Any other would-be kidnapper caught in city limits wouldn’t have been released on the highest bail. Even someone with highborn connections would have remained stuck if their master didn’t have an in with the noble overseeing the guards who’d arrested them.

I wasn’t expecting Berylinian levels of strictness, but what had the world come to for an apprehended criminal to walk free without serving any time?

...Wait a second. There was also the possibility that he had only been “let free” on the surface; maybe he’d been taken care of to tie up loose ends. If someone wanted him to keep a secret, it would be easiest for them if his mouth never opened again.

How could I have forgotten when I’d threatened to do the same? A chunk of flesh floating downstream would be impossible to identify even if we happened to see it.

“Goodness, I’m at a loss.”

“Honestly.”

“On another note, what about this one?”

“Mm... Meh.”

Yet in spite of wanting to know the truth, it wouldn’t be worth it to break into the guards’ barracks—on to Plan C we went. Margit could easily sneak in, I’m sure, but government property was government property, even on the frontier. If they had some sort of mystic surveillance system, it would all be over: there wasn’t any point in going through all this trouble to avoid criminal violence if we ended up being criminals in a different way anyway, so we agreed to play it safe.

“Is that so? I think it smells rather nice.”

“It’s too viscous. Something’s been mixed in.”

Instead, we were walking around Marsheim and perusing the wares at every stall dealing in arcane goods.

The Baldur Clan used these businesses as fronts to push narcotics. If they truly were planning on either recruiting or eliminating me, then hitting up every store offering dubious potions was a sure way of getting them to act.

“Excuse me, young man. If you’re not looking to buy, can I ask that you take yourself elsewhere?”

“But mister,” I answered, “I can’t overlook these wares. You really should put in a complaint with the mage you order these from. I mean, this skincare ointment could potentially harm someone’s skin.”

Rare as they were, mystic potions did circulate through open markets—though, as one might expect, the quality control was all over the place. Mages did not have the same respect for their craft as magia, nor did they have the same overseeing body. This was about as bad as letting doctors self-certify, and led to some genuinely awful products hitting shelves.

The talented mages were those who understood the potential dangers their pharmaceuticals posed, and who thus concocted their solutions to order. Those less savvy were liable to flood the market with mass-produced junk, figuring that no one would care about receiving mediocre salves and drinkables—these were almost invariably worthless.

Sadly, the grift was impossible to spot without specialized knowledge, and that was hard to come by in the borderlands. I’d popped open the lid to a so-called skincare ointment only to find a mixture so dubious that I hesitated to test it on the back of my palm; letting it ruin my partner’s springy skin was out of the question. Despite its pleasant smell—carefully designed to trick laypeople—it did not work as advertised. In fact, the overinclusion of perfumes could ironically trigger a rash.

To begin with, had a mage really made this thing? While the aromatic herbs were admittedly kind on the nose, I could pick up notes of plants that should not be anywhere near a person’s body. Having worked all those gathering requests at the College, I knew my stuff when it came to greens.

“You think I’m running this shop ’cause I want advice, kid?”

Alas, my sincere warning had fallen on deaf ears. The shopkeeper’s brow twitched in anger.

“No, but I suspect any lady who buys one of these won’t be coming back.”

“Shut up! If anyone’s driving business away, it’s you! Now scram!”

The man shooed us off with his hands as one does a puppy, so I shrugged, returned the potion to its place, and got up. Regardless of whether he knew it was a fake or not, there was no point in arguing if he didn’t care to run an honest business.

“Boy, it sure is hard to find anything aboveboard.”

“Truly. I’m glad to have someone with a discerning eye with me—though I have to say, it won’t be easy to show my face around that street again anytime soon.”

We spent half a day heckling various open-air stalls. Just as I grew totally disillusioned with how unscrupulous these snake-oil salesmen were, our cast line finally twitched.

Figuring that we could look for one last place to browse, we were headed toward another large market street. Small unnamed paths snaked through the city like an ant colony, and we were cutting through one such alleyway when a faint bloodlust lapped at my back.

Margit had sensed it too: she tugged gently on my sleeve, and her nimble legs were faintly bent and ready to pounce.

“According to plan,” I whispered.

“Yes, I know.”

“Oh, and—”

“I know,” she giggled.

Her dependable laughter was followed by a countdown from three. As the more perceptive one, Margit was tracking the enemy for the both of us.

The word “zero” came out of her mouth with an infinitesimal fleck of spit. This wasn’t some metaphor: as my mind shifted for impending combat, my Lightning Reflexes let me take in every detail in the frozen world around me.

What had begun as a nonchalant step turned into the kickoff of a full-speed sprint as I closed in on the figures lying in wait beyond the alley’s mouth.

“Heya,” I said.

“Wha— Huh?!”

Anyone trying to jump an unsuspecting foe was almost always not on full alert themselves, and nothing could be easier than dealing with them once the tables were turned. Even an experienced party could risk half wiping off a failed reaction, and any more bad luck was more than enough to cause total annihilation.

I could hardly believe this was already the second time this had happened since coming here; thank goodness I had Margit with me. The really incompetent ones aside, I’d surely have walked into an ambush at some point.

Around the corner, I was met with a man in a shady robe flanked by what seemed to be two bodyguards—he must have been a mage.

In which case, I needed to neutralize him before he could cast anything scary. I grabbed him by the face and slammed the back of his head straight into the nearest wall.

“Grah?!”

The gratifying sensation of bone yielding to crushing force zipped through my arm as a spurt from the mage’s nose dyed my sleeve red. His eyes peeked through my fingers at unaligned angles, confirming that his consciousness had clocked out to go on holiday.

Now this was how you dealt with a mage. The great limitation of magic was that it couldn’t act on anything beyond the caster’s awareness. It was best to leave them unaware of everything before they could duck out of sight and start meddling from the shadows.

Though the strategy wasn’t quite as simple when running up against someone with a perennial barrier or retaliatory hex, they were still usually immutable and standardized enough to break through. Setting aside things like Lady Agrippina’s monstrous automatic counterattack spell, most defensive magic would fail to trigger so long as the caster was knocked out before their effects could activate.

It hadn’t felt like I’d shattered a force field, so it didn’t look like we were up against anyone special...or so I thought.

“Whoa.”

I slammed my eyes shut and put a hand over my mouth; fractions of a moment later, I heard something snap. The mage must’ve channeled his mana into a palmed catalyst before I could bash in his head. He’d been ready to cast, but lost control upon being knocked out, causing the spell to violently burst.

“Ack! Gah!”

“What the— Agh! Arck, hngh!”

The bodyguards’ screams followed me as I leaped backward to get out of the danger zone and waved at the air. Upon opening my eyes, I found the men encircled by a haze, scratching at their eyes and necks. The unconscious mage was frothing at the mouth too; he must’ve summoned some kind of tear-gas cloud.

Holy shit, that’s horrifying. I might have used horseradish for similar purposes once, but the mystic version was on a completely different level. By starting with a potent irritant for a catalyst and tweaking it with mutative magic, the mage had amplified its effects and controlled its reach.

Judging from how the fumes refused to venture beyond a certain point, they were probably bound to a fixed radius—he might even have been able to lock onto a target. An overflow of mana had made it backfire, leaving only the powerful blinding effect.

Poor them, I thought, but was interrupted by a piercing shriek from above.

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!”

A robed woman came raining down from above and landed with a noise somewhere between a splat and a crunch.

This was my first “Boss! A girl came falling from the sky!” moment in years—speaking of, I wondered how Miss Celia was doing—but unfortunately, this time around had too much red in its color scheme to put me in the mood for heroics.

Her scream had grown louder à la the Doppler effect as she’d approached; she’d fallen from considerably higher up than the rooftops, and at tremendous speeds. Once she’d gone from flying to falling, inertia and potential energy had done the rest. Unable to slow her descent, she’d planted her face straight into the unpaved street.

“My, you’re as quick as ever.”

“Same to you.”

Clinging to the woman’s back, Margit looked up at me with an unaffected expression. Her hands were still tightly wound around her mark’s neck from her initial greeting. She continued to squeeze the flow of oxygen shut, just in case—a terrifying thought, considering arachne could draw ridiculous bows that would make grown mensch men buckle. The brain was where every mage began their spells, and even the most perfectly automated formulae could not churn on without its functions.

I’d spotted Margit scurrying up the wall just as I’d bolted forward, so she must’ve jumped from there onto the airborne mage to spring a surprise attack from below. Living up to the jumping spider name, I supposed.

“Ah, no wonder they knew to set up in such a good spot. She must’ve been keeping watch from above.”

“Along with one of those magical devices that throws one’s voice, I’m sure.”

“Huh.” I thought for a moment. “Flying is supposed to be one of the hardest things a mage can do. I wonder why she’s running around as somebody’s gofer.”

“Everyone has their own business, you know.”

Squeezed and squeezed until the very last drops of consciousness faded, the poor mage was a practitioner of an art few magia could claim to have mastered. To phantasmal creatures it was their birthright, but flight magic was a lofty peak for us mortals.

As much as I wanted to joke about how it was clearly because it would ruin too many campaigns from the word go, the truth was that every step of the process from generating lift to resisting gravity involved complex webs of stacking spells to make work. Even those with the mana pools to fuel such endeavors usually ran up against walls only cleared by raw talent.

Put in a more tangible way, there was no single Flight Magic spell that would let the caster freely navigate in three dimensions.

One had to finely tune spells to get off the ground without misaligning their position with the planet below, all while protecting themselves from the wind and anything else that might impede their movement. It was like trying to ride a bicycle while playing the harmonica, solving a Rubik’s cube in one hand, and untangling a ring puzzle in the other—no wonder there were so few mages who could fly.

That this singular feat was enough to earn the bombastic title of ornithurge and receive a mind-boggling salary—in exchange for being run ragged across the Empire at all times, to be fair—made it all the more difficult to comprehend what this woman was doing out here. I literally could not understand. Even if she’d lacked the brains to graduate as a magus, there was sure to be a place for her with the imperial mage corps.

“Lemme see... Aha, that settles it.”

With Margit pinning her down, I poked around in her pockets for a clear marker of identity. Her amber-orange adventurer’s tag was hung around her neck on the same rope as another accessory: an emblem depicting a crow with an eyeball in its mouth.

I’d heard of this symbol while learning about the clans: it was the Baldur Clan’s insignia. Like nobles, clans had a habit of branding themselves with a crest, tattooing it on their members to strengthen solidarity or raising flags on friendly shopfronts to section off their own turf.

To have such a definite article pointed to the flying witch’s role as an officer in the organization.

I kept digging in hopes of finding anything else, and also to make sure she was totally disarmed, only to stumble upon a handful of peculiar packets. They were oiled papers designed to keep the powders within from drying, and each had enough mystic power to tell they were some kind of alchemic compound at a glance.

This is potent stuff. I raised it up to the sunlight, and the faint blue of the powder came filtering through.

“Ohhh. So they’re literally high on their own supply. I knew they were sketchy, but I didn’t think it’d be this bad.”

Looking more closely, I noticed that our attackers’ complexion was awful—even accounting for the beatdown. The woman Margit had pounced on had pitch-black bags under her eyes that contrasted sharply with the papery white of her skin, the seizing bodyguards had a noticeable case of jaundice, and the white-eyed mage was totally yellow in the face. If they were having liver issues, then that was all the more reason to suspect some form of substance abuse.

If I recalled correctly, it was opium that placed great strain on the kidneys and liver. Poppies had been used since ancient times for their thaumaturgic properties, but they were also a tightly restricted substance in the Trialist Empire on account of their recreational uses. Even at the College, one had to become a researcher before handling the plant.

The delicacy of the ingredient was amplified by the possibility of compounding error: if an alchemist accidentally got high due to mishandling, they were liable to make even more mistakes while not right of mind. I’d heard that substandard mages would struggle to form any kind of stable compound using poppies.

“This has to be something bad, right?”

“Don’t you dare open that packet, even by mistake.”

“Don’t worry, I know.”

If the powder scattered and got into our lungs, we’d be in real trouble. Margit was especially vulnerable on account of her small size making any dose relatively more potent; even a small amount could cause severe effects.

Now that we had a cartel serious about chasing us, we needed to get intel out of these guys fast—even if that meant resorting to some less-than-gentle means. I refused to live a life where I had to carefully watch where I breathed, let alone worrying whether my next meal in public would be poisoned. The mage I’d incapacitated had summoned tear gas; surely they were capable of doing the same with toxins.

If the airborne pathogen was odorless and unstimulating, I would struggle to detect it. At the bare minimum, this would come to a question of their life or mine the moment the enemy decided that no method was off the table.

That meant the key was to get a singular message across: “Oh. I can’t pick a fight with him.”

One was always sure to consider the possibility of failure when ridding oneself of a nuisance. If the price of a mistake or two was trivial, then their hand would reach for their weapon without reserve.

But if the opponent were a true threat, capable of ensuring their demise if they missed their chance...the grip on their blade would loosen.

So now that things had shaped out this way, I only had one path forward. They needed to know that I was plainly not to be fucked with.

[Tips] While it is the pinnacle of difficulty to achieve self-sustaining mystic flight, group efforts to surmount those challenges alongside technological advancements have given rise to the aeroship.

For all my griping about the lawlessness of this unkempt frontier, it sure was nice when we were the ones taking advantage.

Despite having my face fully concealed by the most blatantly shady hood ever, a little extra cash had been all it took to borrow a secluded room with suspiciously human-sized wriggling sacks in tow. The innkeeper hadn’t even batted an eye.

“Wooow,” I said. “A bit old, but that’s a grand sight.”

“A stately mansion indeed,” Margit said. “How many hundreds does one need to kill to afford a home like this?”

“None. The trick is to slowly suck the life out of thousands until they run dry.”

“Why thank you for the unpleasant image.”

And, no matter how hard a person kicked or screamed, no one would ever come to check on them so long as they weren’t making enough noise to bother the other guests—easily handled by a deafening spell. Honestly, the experience just drove home why cartels were so careful to keep their members off their own product...

“Well, don’t worry about it. Everyone knows a palace built with blood money may as well be standing on pillars of sand.”

...because the ambushers had been suffering from serious withdrawals, and dangling one tiny packet in front of them had been enough to get them to spill their guts. Our captives had given up all they knew in a mere three days: everything from the structure of their organization to the contents of the packets.

It seemed that they’d enjoyed success thus far thanks to their strength on the offensive; at all other times, they simply holed up in their magic fortress. The group had fallen into a trap of being too self-sufficient: loyalty was absolute when the members were hooked on a proprietary narcotic, but sometimes it was best not to send out one’s own if they were such a sorry bunch when pressed. I supposed this was about as much as I could expect from a clan who, at most, had only ever scrapped with remote nobles.

At any rate, our attackers had been part of the Baldur Clan, as expected. According to them, the reason they’d jumped us was because of a tip-off from the old-fashioned gangsters of the Heilbronn Familie: two adventurers had been going around and causing trouble on their turf.

Of course, it wasn’t particularly strange for large clans to have territorial agreements that both sides respected. Since any violation could theoretically escalate into an all-out street war, being open with information about troublemakers wasn’t that strange either...but this one was.

The Familie had been so kind as to give the two of us a warm welcome just the other day. While the Heilbronn thugs had been small fry who were now absolutely terrified of us, they’d pounce at the chance of reporting to their superiors if they heard that we’d done something that could justify retaliation—especially if we were trampling over an interclan agreement. Surely even the rank and file had at least heard rumors.

In which case, things didn’t add up: both clans had a reason to deal with us, so why had one outsourced their problem to the other, who’d then accepted the job?

But having captured a high-ranking officer, we’d decided to forgo all the circular deduction and found ourselves paying their headquarters a visit.

I had an inkling that maybe my brain was slowly turning into just another muscle, but I couldn’t help it: it was the one organ where using it less often made it brawnier. Besides, every scenario was written to lead into a climactic fight at the end; the only times a session ended without a final boss was when the Henderson readings were so high that the GM gave up halfway through. I was just playing along with fate’s designs, see?

Jokes aside, we were too far into this mess to solve it without a confrontation with someone at the top. Trying to fend off wave after wave of attacks like some kind of tower-defense game until all our enemies were dead was a stupid idea. Turning off one’s brain was bad, but getting too lost in thought to continue the story was just as bad from the GM’s perspective. At the end of the day, dice meant nothing if they stayed in the palm of a hand.

“Go on, show us the way.”

“O-Okay, okay! I will, so please... Please, give it to me! I can’t wait any longer!”

I unhanded the airworthy witch’s collar and kicked her knees to push her forward, and she responded with a plea that sounded criminal to print in anything that could sit in an all-ages bookstore.

Do note that I hadn’t done anything unethical to her. Her face remained redder than an autumn leaf, sure—but that had been Margit’s doing, and I maintained that she’d been in the right to defend herself. In fact, we were oh so kindly helping her in a sobriety intervention; it was almost like we were doing a good thing!

Okay, I might have dangled a packet of snuff in front of her like a carrot to a horse, only to then burn it before her very eyes, but let’s just agree not to count that one. This was a righteous affair, and I was not in the wrong—it was very important to tell myself that. Someone had once said it was in a person’s interest to climb onto the highest horse they could find, after all.

I’d been bracing myself for guards as we pulled up to the gate flanked by steep walls, but it opened up for us of its own volition. The yard that greeted us was set with a dry fountain, flower beds populated with nothing but nameless weeds, and a crumbling cobblestone path. Combined with the unmanned entrance, the dilapidation of it all reminded me of a corny horror film.

“Here we are,” I said. “Are you ready?”

“Do you even need to ask?”

“Of course not.”

The two of us exchanged smiles as we walked up to the front door. I was inclined to kick it down just to put a little mustard on my entrance, but this door decided to open itself too.

As I mused to myself about how the owner of the residence liked their pomp and circumstance, we were confronted with a dimly lit entrance hall with a lone figure standing within.

“Oh, oh! M-Master!”

As soon as she laid eyes on the figure, the witch forgot all about the packet I was ostensibly holding over her head—not wanting to run into legal trouble, I’d actually burned it all—and rushed over to cling to the shadow’s feet.

“There, there... Ohh, it must have been so scary... Good girl... Good girl...”

Lit only by candlesticks more broken than whole and a chandelier hanging at a dismaying angle was a woman who looked like death.

I happened to be acquainted with a few undead souls, but the woman before me looked like a genuine corpse. Her hands, peeking out from the sleeves of a dark-gray robe, were thinner than wilted branches; her neck could fit easily within a single hand.

But most of all, her cheekbones drew the eye to her emaciated face, where two black bags ran deep below her eyes, as if tattooed on. So sickly was her pallor that her skin seemed blue; though most of her face was covered by a flood of greasy hair, it parted enough to leave room for one goggling eye in the shape of a near perfect circle. Had someone told me she’d just been dug out of her grave, I would’ve had no choice but to believe them.

Yet there was a strange balance to her features, a dreadful allure that only made her more horrific. For a deathly monster to be hideous was cheap—the ugliness would chip at the sense of dread. That she retained some semblance of beauty as a collection of skin and bones let her better embody the terror of death.

“Nice to meet... I see that you’ve been...taking care of my own...”

This was the head of the Baldur Clan: Nanna Baldur Snorrison.

She was a talented mage—who else could build a thriving business on the sort of recreational hard drugs the Empire despised? “It seems I owe you a warm reception...”

“We’re fine, thank you. Rather, we’re neither fatigued nor depressed enough for your offer to spark any joy.”

“Ohhh?”

Potent mystic fumes billowed around her, filling her lungs—an airborne narcotic that could whisk someone away to a land where all their dreams came true with just one breath.

If nothing else, it was a horrific substance to casually mix into the air, hoping we’d inhale it.

“You don’t like nice dreams? How strange... We see the same mirage every day in this thin cage of bones... Don’t you think a nice one would be better?”

“Ahh... Ahh! Agh!”

The witch below collapsed, spit dribbling at her master’s feet as her expression warped into one of ecstasy. Her eyes shut as her three days of withdrawal-induced insomnia gave way to peaceful slumber. As the sedative carried her to the land of dreams, it set course for a fantasy of pure rapture.

“Ahhh... You came prepared...”

Her lifeless eyes locked onto Margit’s and my collars, which were each adorned with a matching ornament. They were arcane tools—or at least, that’s what they seemed to be. In reality, they were catalysts from which I could cast a barrier to filter the air immediately around us.

It was a natural precaution, considering what we’d found on the persons of her subordinates. I’d taken a wary lick of their product to see whether I could reverse engineer its alchemical makeup, and a potent drowsiness had immediately come over me. Paired with the knowledge that her flock could aerosolize potions for crowd control, walking in without a counter would have been grounds for the GM to tear down the fourth wall and ask, “What did you think all that foreshadowing was for?!”

The necklaces were my way of hiding my capacity for magic while still avoiding her version of death at first sight. Upon seeing our equipment, the woman ran a hand through her slick hair in genuine confusion.

“Honestly... I don’t understand... This, too, is all a dream...conjured up by a gory sack of meat...”

Shaking her head in pity, she took a hit of the very same substance that she’d just tried to force upon us. One breath was enough to put a person to sleep and show them a dream so pleasant that they would lose all desire to wake up.

Sleep Cloud was a classically basic beginner spell, but adding a major debuff that checked for mental resistance was downright immoral. Being put into a shallow nap that would be interrupted after a single hit—never mind that a single unblocked hit could very well mean death—was one thing, but the psychological horror of making the user want to stay asleep forever was enough to see why it was illegal.

I should expect nothing less from a former Daybreak student.

“And to think... Your charms even remind me of my old haunt...”

“Nothing is scarier to a nonmage than magic that affects the mind, you see. I think the protection was well worth the price.”

According to our captives’ testimonies, the Baldur boss was around thirty years old, and had once been a promising magus hopeful until some scandal had forced her out of the College. I hadn’t been sure how much stock to put in that rumor, but her last statement practically confirmed it.

“Goodness... Why does every last person insist on ‘reality’?”

The vapors rolling from her drooping pipe served both to knock her subordinate unconscious and to deafen her own mind.

Once upon a time, a young Nanna had been like so many others before her: a mage set on unlocking the secrets to a methuselah-like body free from aging and disease. I didn’t know what, but something must’ve happened to turn her into the nihilist she was today, so disillusioned with the world that she claimed it to be nothing more than a personal illusion conjured by the brain.

The end result of her philosophy was a drug that showed its user a dream that came from the deepest recesses of their heart, dependencies be damned. Not only was her work in the deep end of forbidden teachings, but it contributed little to society at large. The powers that be had warned her to stop, but she’d been too stubborn to quit; eventually, the College had been left with no choice but to expel her.

I thought it was only fair. This wasn’t some hopped-up sleeping pill: it offered rest so blissful that normal slumber became too much to bear. What was that if not a societal ailment? No matter how minimal the physical effects, letting her concoction run free was enough to bring the world order to its knees.

Rather, it was a show of genuine mercy that she’d only been expelled. Her master must have truly adored her not to put such a ticking time bomb down where she’d stood.

As was the case for practitioners of any technical line of work, mages posed tremendous risk in that their ability to cause harm was entirely contained within their own skulls. That much was plain to see from how she was using her College experience to further her illicit research and business now.

“Well then... What to do? We could settle this with force...but I’d really rather not...”

What made her operation really nefarious was that she provided cheap birth control to the red-light district of the city, taking on an unofficial position as a public service provider and thus keeping the local nobles off her case. I knew she must’ve studied politics as a magus-in-training, but it was incredible how brilliantly she was applying them in all the wrong ways.

“That makes three of us. We didn’t come here to pick a fight.”

I was roughly twenty paces away from Nanna. Two breaths would be all it’d take to sever her head, especially since her defensive spells didn’t seem too impressive. At this point, the only barriers I couldn’t cut through were those stronger than the masked nobleman’s. She would need to blast me from a field away with a frontline damage-dealer to keep me still, or have the speed to kite me around to pose a threat.

Although she looked more undead than Lady Leizniz, she was still a mensch, prone to dying and losing control of all spells as soon as her head left her body. I couldn’t completely rule out the possibility of a death-defying magic trinket, but she didn’t seem the type to trade her own life for an enemy’s.

Similarly, the smattering of presences lurking just out of view didn’t pose any real danger. I suspected they’d been strengthened either through arcane doping or bodily modification, but I didn’t detect any ungodly freak shows like the Setting Sun lunatics I’d seen around the College. At most, they were modestly enhanced foot soldiers. While I wouldn’t want to go up against someone of my own level powered up by their boosters, I didn’t see any reason to fear them when the drugs were all they had.

Margit and I could easily wipe the floor with them in an all-out fight, but the problem was what came after that. I didn’t want to earn a name for myself by crushing some giant clan, and I certainly didn’t want to steal their place for myself.

“All we came to do is to leave you a little tip. It would seem that there’s somebody going around using your name to stir up trouble.”

“Ohhh?”

To begin with, I saw nothing enjoyable about creating a massive power vacuum. This wasn’t an Asian Punk RPG, and I was no mobster trying to rule Osaka. My dream was the classic path of an honest adventurer, and I was content to leave the irony and self-scorn of yakuza life in the realm of role-play.

In service of that goal, I needed to get these clans to recategorize me from “a kid to keep an eye on” to “a threat not to trifle with,” and I’d come up with a clever ploy or two to get my way.

Removing a major kingpin here would send Marsheim tumbling into discord, and I was not going to pick up the slack; I wanted to skip all-out violence in favor of a minor political scuffle. To that end, all I had to do was redirect their attention.

It wasn’t me that was making light of them. Oh, no. It was someone else. And, if my scheming ended up setting off a full-fledged gang war...well, that was it, I guessed. At least I’d say sorry?

[Tips] Although it would appear at first glance that research at the College abounds unrestricted, projects deemed to be too criminal, hazardous, or otherwise harmful to society are ruthlessly pruned. 

This has resulted in a peculiar way of thought: carry yourself with enough grace to mask your wrongdoings. Because while the Trialist Empire does not tout freedom of thought as a national ideal, none will judge what is left unsaid.

Getting someone to listen to you was hard work if you seemed too insignificant to sway their life. With that in mind, successfully turning the tables on the Baldur officer who’d ambushed us turned out to be a great thing for our relations with the clan, in spite of the obvious problems involved with that—it was funny how things worked out.

Nanna, for her part, clearly hadn’t spent her College days dawdling. She’d sensed Daybreak construction off our necklaces—hard to avoid, considering who’d taught me—and quickly realized that a violent confrontation would be unfavorable.

One look at her betrayed that she was more of a scholar than a fighter, and she’d no doubt relied heavily on the magus specialty of death at first sight to handle her opponents until now. But even though she wasn’t exactly a boots-on-the-ground type, whatever trials she’d faced on her way to establishing her own illicit kingdom had left her with a keen sense for danger.

Honed through experience, her sixth sense told her that I was trouble: otherwise, I saw no reason for her to offer us a seat when my initial greeting had been so suspicious and hostile.

“I see it now...” Pipe bubbling, the clan master reclined on the sofa of her drawing room. She blew out a dense cloud of mana, her lightless eyes staring off into space as though someone had cut chunks out of the void and placed them in her irises. “Yes... I see the picture... So much of it is clear...”

We’d been served red tea and some snacks as a show of hospitality, perhaps, but the idea of accepting was impossible to entertain when seated across from someone whose mind had wandered off to Kadath. Her every exhalation threatened to scramble my neurochemistry if I were to breathe it in unfiltered; what kind of demons did she have up there to necessitate such escapism?

I had to admit that I’d occasionally let a bit of smoke fill my head when it would otherwise have gone empty back in my past life, but what sort of vast lacuna was she filling with her mix? Despite knowing that true comprehension would mean that my life and dreams had come to an end, a morbid curiosity still tickled at my heart.

It was the call of the void, akin to the urge I’d felt when delivering that accursed tome to my former employer. That which led to ruin ever had an enchantment to it, always inviting you to the edge in hushed whispers. For a moment, I felt like I could see why weary souls tired of life had gathered here under her.

“Let me see... Personally, I could always make it...so that none of this ever happened...”

An especially dense cloud left her mouth and swirled into an impossible shape. It coiled around her like a snake, refusing to dissipate—rather, it grew thicker and thicker by the second. That had to be set up for some sort of powerful spell.

Furthermore, both the cinders smoldering on the ashtray and the water in her pipe—something ordinarily meant to filter smoke—were packed with arcane drugs to worsen the effect of the sentient cloud, no doubt a terrible toxin to the healthy body. It was as potent an offensive tool as it was soothing to her, sure to worm around defensive magic, but to brandish her weapon so brazenly was an affront to College protocol, even for a dropout.

The move was an obvious bluff. No matter the type, criminal overlords couldn’t afford to look weak in front of their own: even though she knew Margit and I could end her before she could so much as lift a finger, she had to put on a tough front. She was assuming the dignity of a leader, stating through her actions that she was letting us have our way even though the truth was that her life was in our hands. Her position was so pitiful that it almost elicited sympathy.

Not wanting to put myself in the way of any more conflicts than I already had, I saw no reason to humble her.

All I wanted was to enjoy my adventures in peace. So long as she could do that for me, I was content to let her scheme her little schemes in the shadows.

I wasn’t enough of a Goody Two-shoes to right every wrong I came across. I hadn’t been born yesterday: I knew there was only so much one person could do, and that shortsighted “justice” could cause untold harm later down the road. Eliminating the Baldur Clan’s monopoly on illicit narcotics would just let the dormant market spring back to life, flooding it with smaller peddlers doing the same. The other major players in the city, meanwhile, would fight to take the newly vacated territories, leading to gods-knew how many deaths.

Though I would kill a villain espousing “necessary” evils on the spot, I had to accept that bringing the Baldur Clan down wouldn’t solve any problems and that I could only take on so much responsibility.

There was no such thing as a flawless hero, and I didn’t want to tip the balance of power just to kneel over the lifeless bodies of those I cared about once all was said and done.

Life was an easy thing to live so long as I kept the big picture in mind. And if I decided that the clans dividing up the city among themselves didn’t fit in that image...then I would need to burn the whole system down and amass the power to remake it from scratch. The only thing I could build up with my sword was a trail of bodies, after all.

So for now, I would focus on my own benefit. I’d much rather demean myself than bring misfortune upon others over something as intangible as image.

“I’m sure we can offer you something much better than two heads on a platter,” I said. “I know that every salesman promises this, but ours is a deal too good to refuse.”

“Hmmm...”

I could practically feel the taut skin of her neck—she was in the palm of my hand. The two bodyguards waiting behind us would hardly have time to take a step. We hadn’t planned anything out, but I could tell that Margit would handle them if I lunged for their leader with the fey knife.

And Nanna knew that as well as I.

“In that case...perhaps it’s time to do some shopping...”

The College was a place where students sat shoulder to shoulder with people who could delete them from existence with a flick of the pinky if so inclined. Having devoted herself to the magus’s path until her expulsion, she had to be familiar with the jittery sensation of facing a mortal threat head-on.

I had to commend her ability to maintain a cool facade; she’d clearly come by it honestly. I had no qualms swallowing my pride as a show of respect.

Besides, I was happy to oblige. Nobody wanted a bloody end—save for perhaps the cursed sword screaming into my mind...

[Tips] Power politics tend not to change no matter where you go.

A complaint is best served with company. Where a lone actor screaming in the streets is a deranged conspiracy theorist, an organized group becomes a protest. Just put a reputable figurehead up front to lead, and the whole thing can be taken as a justified movement.

Following that logic, the current situation should have been fine, but...

“You rats! You’ve got gall to show up without any notice—and even more to open the gates without invitation! What kind of barbarians do you think you are?!”

...Honestly? I didn’t see why I needed to be here. I wished they would’ve handled things without me.

“Oh, I’m sorry... Nobody was around to stop us, so I thought we were free to enter... Besides...don’t you think it’s only manners to be ready for guests anytime?”

“You better check your eyes if you think this is some fancy tea parlor, junkie. Who the hell do you think you are to march on in with a gang of lackeys in tow?!”

We’d cleared the board to set up a new scene at the Heilbronn mansion. We were in the south of the city, in a somewhat rural area where there was enough space to plop down a gargantuan estate. Compared to the quiet residential district in the north where the Baldur headquarters was located, the ostentatious display was its exact opposite.

The gates stood high with lavish gilded pillars on either side, and a gaudy gold statue rose up from the rooftop, of all places. Along the stone path from the main gate to the building’s front door was a menagerie of statues and monuments that screamed nouveau riche.

That the complex stood untarnished in spite of being an architectural middle finger to the know-thy-place customs of Rhine was proof that the Familie’s authority was the real deal. Having survived multiple generations of succession, the group was too big even for the margrave to wipe out—or at least, too big to make it worth the hassle.

Looking up at the garish building before me, I felt ridiculous for having followed Nanna here with her twenty-odd underlings.

Truth be told, I wanted her to handle things between her and the Heilbronn higher-ups and had prepared as much evidence as possible to save me the trip. Unfortunately, the former Daybreak student had yet to forget the pragmatism of her School, and the utility of having living proof with her did not go unnoticed.

In less than a couple of hours, she’d finished her preparations and marched us into rival territory. For someone who looked so dead, she was shockingly quick to act. She still looked awfully frail, what with her sickly skin and the need for an attendant to hold her parasol, but that she held her ground against the zentaur warrior who’d come in response to her intrusion drove home how bold she truly was.

Wait a second. Considering how her natural beauty was still somewhat visible even in her atrophied condition...she wasn’t one of Lady Leizniz’s, was she?

“And not a single guard in sight... Don’t you think that’s the true offense? You know, when Stef came to visit the other day...we had fifty people’s worth of tea all laid out for him...”

“Tch. Down to skin and bones, but you’ve still got lip.” Speaking of the zentaur warrior, though, it was apparent that the top clans weren’t just big groups with nothing else to show; I hadn’t expected to run into a celebrity here. “I don’t care what you did—there’s a process to this kind of thing! Have the decency to send some prior notice, dammit!”

The man blocking the front door with a giant spear in hand was a famous adventurer around these parts: Manfred the Tongue-Splitter.

Before ever coming to Marsheim, I’d considered myself familiar enough with zentaurs after traveling on the road with Dietrich. Yet Manfred shattered my preconceptions whole—he was huge. He was taller than two of me stacked head to toe, and his human trunk was thicker than mine by a similar factor.

His was a build that could only work on the solid equine foundation that propped it up. The two halves of his body matched perfectly in both function and form: the chestnut coat of his lower half gave way to deep olive skin. Unlike Dietrich, his pigmentation wasn’t the result of a suntan, suggesting that he hailed from one of the zentaur tribes east of the Empire.

Yet his reputation hadn’t come from his massive frame, but from the precision of his spear. Once, a foe had belittled him on the battlefield; he’d responded by cutting straight through the man’s tongue, and only his tongue. His epithet was as literal as it was impressive.

Deftness and size were such an unfair combination. Zentaurs were supposed to make up for their clumsy hands with raw frontline power, and it was utterly depraved that he got to overcome his people’s greatest weakness. If only I could see his character sheet...

“All I have to serve to a sudden intruder is the tip of my spear! You can come back if your damned voodoo ever reveals the secret to decent manners to you!”

The men of the east prided themselves on their thick beards, and his suited his virile features well. But in spite of how impressive his scowl was as he barked us away, rumor had it that he wasn’t even a Heilbronn member. Word on the street said that he was currying favor with the Familie’s boss to earn coin, as much as that clashed with his seemingly earnest show of loyalty. Personally, I didn’t think the passion to jump into action, weapon in hand, as soon as the lookouts called for him was something that could be bought.

I’d originally thought that these clans were populated solely with good-for-nothings, but maybe there was more to be seen if I gave them a chance. But then again, going from “Huh, they aren’t so bad!” to joining their midst was kind of a trope when it came to organized crime, so I was probably better off just steering clear as best I could.

“You know... Maybe the idea of prior notice would mean something...if this weren’t coming from the same group whose notice wasn’t even prior enough to boil a kettle of water...”

As cool as the zentaur looked guarding the entrance, he was both a nuisance and a symbol of past grudges to the woman trying to get inside. The pipe that had thus far dangled unused from Nanna’s fingers suddenly blazed, and she took in a breath without letting anything out. Undyed by rouge, her crackly lips were colored only by a thin, perilous vapor—realizing that things were falling apart, I decided to take action.

Both parties had lost their tempers, and with them the chance to return to the topic of why we were here at all. They were too far gone to stop with just words; as much as I wanted to avoid sticking out here, I needed to reset their trains of thought.

“Going to cause another scene, are we?” Margit teased.

“I’m just going to help them cool off.”

I don’t think shouting or drawing my sword will do the trick... Oh, I know. How about this ugly stone statue?

The ornaments decorating the path to the doorway were a random mishmash of debatably valuable kitsch. Nearest to me was a piece of stonework in the shape of a lantern—the kind that was meant to be lit in graveyards to soothe bygone souls. Judging from the lack of soot in the candle-tray, it seemed like this one had never been used for any real purpose.

Then the least you can do is help stop a fight.

I’d been carrying Schutzwolfe this whole time just in case I needed her, and now was the time to tear the bag off her sheath. Bending slightly, I gripped the handle. Longswords didn’t have the same curve as katanas, but that could be worked around with a little know-how—I could still strike from the hilt.

A light sound rang out, like a pebble bouncing off a wall; the indescribably pleasant sensation of slicing through something hard and solid ran through my body; and finally, the stone lantern remembered that it had been cut, and slid across the diagonal incision toward the ground.

It landed in a thunderous cloud of dust.

“Might I suggest that you both compose yourselves? Getting so heated you failed to see me coming cannot be good for you.”

Dusting the bits of stone off my blade, I returned Schutzwolfe to her sheath with a scoff. I’d gotten good enough to cut through stone, but not good enough to avoid the debris. I was still a long ways off from the top—one day, if I was lucky, my target might never realize they’d been cut at all.

[Tips] Peculiarly enough, people in positions of power tend to mimic the practices of the nobility even in realms outside politics—including in organized crime. Though the details differ, the elite of any system will develop rituals and shibboleths to signal their in-group status, and seemingly, announcing one’s intent to visit is a universal fixation.