Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 8 - Chapter 2

Late Autumn of the Sixteenth Year

Named Enemies

In the same fashion that monsters generally differ from region to region, certain regions have their own unique brand of powerful foes. Their strength isn’t the only thing of note—sometimes they have a fixed backstory and their own unique histories.

These foes trend two or three times stronger than their unnamed equivalents; every power-hungry munchkin dreams of felling such a remarkable foe.

From a cursory glance, the only real requirement for ruby-red jobs, relative to soot-black, was that they required a bit more trust from you.

We went home from Nanna’s feast with growling stomachs; as there was some time before our mission began, I decided to take on a few more gigs.

With our shiny new rank, there were all manner of new hats for me to wear: delivery boy around the city, courier for personal letters, handyman for home repairs, and other odd jobs. There was even a posting from a merchant in need of an assistant he could trust not to come down with a sudden bout of sticky fingers.

Actual bodyguard jobs—not falsely advertised, trumped-up dishwashing or cleaning gigs—were also on the table now. That being said, it wasn’t as if adventurers at our level would be stationed at the most prestigious establishments around the city. The majority were from canteens, inns, taverns—the sorts of places that adventurers or mercenaries would frequent. Simply put, where fights were likely and brute force required to quell them, there you could find a couple of ruby-red bouncers looking to earn their keep. The most important requirement was to have a commanding presence—the kind of aura that ends a fight before it starts—so it was similar to those old men you see on guard duty back in my old world. A day’s labor didn’t amount to a single assarius, so I wasn’t quite sold, to be honest. Not that it mattered; in case you were wondering, they screened me out of the applicant pool pretty quickly. I just wasn’t an intimidating guy at first glance.

It was really kind of annoying that my achievements in Marsheim so far had been in good faith, shall we say, and no one really knew about the whole grim ’n gritty cloak-and-dagger plot that played out after my show of grandeur against a clan.

Back to the issue of bodyguards—most businesses didn’t directly hire their own guards because they wanted to be able to let them go without any effort should anything undesired occur. In other words, the Association was a dispatch agency of day workers. With the Association handling short-term personnel assignments, businesses wouldn’t have to worry about old-timers who had started to quibble over any old thing or full-time employees bargaining for higher wages.

Finally, one of the biggest changes that came with ruby-red was being able to take on jobs guarding caravans. Yes, as Nanna’s subordinates busied themselves loading the caravans nearby, we were finally just about to set off.

“I, uh, look forward to working with you...”

“And us you. I’ll protect this cargo to the best of my ability.”

The head of the caravan was a mage I’d since crossed paths with several times, though her incredibly stilted bearing spoke to how reticent she’d been with me. The one scrap of personal information I had on her was her name: Uzu.

It was an unfamiliar name; I supposed she must have come from the northern reaches like Nanna. Most likely she had bad memories of her old home. That or she had been targeted for some reason and wanted to keep any details that could point back to her roots under wraps. At any rate, I decided not to probe into the matter.

Uzu was to direct the parade for Nanna, so I figured it would be gentlemanly not to trouble the waters.

“The boss has told me to treat you with proper etiquette, so please let me know should you need anything.”

“Thank you kindly for your concern. I’ll make sure to fend for myself regardless, unless things get truly dire. So please rest easy.”

I patted Schutzwolfe as if to say, “You can trust me and my blade,” but she flinched with a small squeak.

Don’t jump out of your skin at the tiniest thing! Had she forgotten it was Margit who’d sent her crashing into the cold, hard ground that day, not me? Her nose hadn’t even been that damaged, and Nanna had fixed it up for her.

Our group numbered eight carriages, twenty or so merchants, and nineteen bodyguards—a lot to juggle, even without me keeping her on tenterhooks. To be honest, I was pretty surprised to see her when I turned up. I’d thought Nanna had employed me so that she didn’t have to send her key staff out of Marsheim. But as I talked to Uzu, I found out that despite her skill set, her job chiefly involved running about making sales or delivering messages. Her mana wasn’t suited for concocting potions, and so she had been given a role that better suited her talents.

That was no surprise—her ability to fly was quite something. If she had been my subordinate, I would probably use her in a similar way. Her ornithurgy—rare even among the College brainiacs—meant that she was far more suited to jobs where she could stretch her legs, so to speak, rather than spend her whole day cooped up and hunched over an alembic.

Furthermore, if our entire caravan was annihilated, she would be able to fly back alone and give a report. Her assignment here was a sound decision.

“Th-That sword c-cut down the stone lantern, yet I d-don’t sense any mana from it... Oh, b-boss, I’m scared...”

I’ll...choose to ignore her parting, muttered words. It looked like the sobriquet that the Heilbronn Familie had laid on me had sent her knees aquiver.

“Holy crap, look at that horse!”

The hysterical exclamation came as soon as I hopped onto Castor. I’d be bringing the Dioscuri along this time—not as packhorses, I should be clear.

“Hey, Siegfried. Glad to see you could make it!”

Siegfried was busy picking his jaw up off the floor. He was dressed in...not quite armor, but a leather chest plate, and carrying a light load of travel gear, a sword, and a spear.

He had jumped at the chance to accept my request for his team to join the mission. The request hadn’t asked for grunt work, came with food included, was at standard ruby-red rates of fifty assarii a day, and tolls would be paid by the client. Siegfried was still soot-black (obviously I hadn’t asked Nanna to pay him and Kaya as much as Margit and me), so this kind of job was anything but common. It was quite the sight seeing him nod his head so vigorously in agreement.

An invitation from a rival though it might have been, fifty assarii per day bore quite the allure for a poor adventurer. It was the sort of money that came with the rank above his own and even pared away those extra costs that hit you like a left hook during a job.

By the time we returned safely, he would be ten librae richer—an amount that would substantially bolster his everyday situation.

“You even have a set of matching armor, you bastard! A-Are you a noble or some shit?”

“I’m a simple commoner—no noble brand anywhere on me.”

I decided to be patient with my new friend as his surprise overtook what limited tact he knew how to exercise.

I told him that I was born into a farming family and had no shame surrounding that, with written proof if he wanted to see. Certain circumstances had led me to serve a noble, and these old warhorses had been a present from her when I came to the end of my tenure.

What are you looking at? Did I lie?

I was nothing more than Erich of Konigstuhl, son of Johannes—a simple glory-seeking adventurer.

“I spent my childhood saving up my money to buy this armor. My sword is an old blade of my father’s.”

“Y-Yeah, but your kit’s pretty damn decent... That ain’t the kinda crap a kid can buy with his pocket money...”

“I was good with my hands. I made figurines and the like and sold them.”

I patted my beloved horse—who was in a foul mood, since I’d just dismounted him to talk to Siegfried only moments after boarding him—and brought him to Siegfried. I decided it would be rude to talk down to my potential friend.

“This one is Castor. The other one is Polydeukes. We look forward to working with you.”

“Oh gods... They’re massive...and so damn cool... They’re way bigger than the horse that pulled the plow back home... Twice its size, maybe...?”

Siegfried’s partner bowed to me from a little behind him as Siegfried ogled the Dioscuri with a young boy’s glee.

“I’m sorry about Dee; we haven’t even introduced ourselves properly.”

“It’s totally fine. Any man would be happy to see someone so taken with his horses that they forgot to say hello.”

Kaya’s apology spoke to her formal education and etiquette training. I responded in kind while noting the difference in this pair’s social standing. Siegfried had referred to mine and Margit’s palatial speech as “metropolitan speak,” but whatever they taught in the private schools out here in the peripheries didn’t seem all too different.

“If you’d like, I can show you the ropes on how to ride.”

“You serious?! You’re not joking, are you? Me? Learn to ride?!”

Was horsemanship reserved for the upper classes around here? Heaven only knew how the local rules varied. Everywhere I’d been, I’d never personally caught flak for acting above my station for riding my horses.

“It’s hardly like we’re playing at honor guard around here; I’m sure there will be time to teach you.”

There was no better foundation for a friendship than this kind of collaboration. I understood a boy’s impulse to dream of a cavalier’s life all too well. I felt a bit bad for Holter back home, but when I first rode upon these incredible, battle-bred Dioscuri, the difference was palpable enough to fill me with amazement.

I double-checked with the horses themselves; they both let out a short whinny, as if to say, “If we must.”

They had made accommodations for Mika when they were still unused to riding, so I was sure that they would kindly help a new rider learn. It would be for the best if Siegfried got the hang of it, just in case unforeseen circumstances reared their ugly heads. The more of us were equipped to run a message back home if someone needed to stay behind, the better off we were.

In fact, it had played out just so around the table once. Our team of explorers had crawled out of a certain mansion of terror and had whooped for joy upon finding a getaway car. Our jubilation was replaced by desperation as someone said, “Hold on, everyone’s Driving stats are at their default values, aren’t they?”

We ended up tasking the PC with the best odds of success, but alas, the dice gods handed down a fumble to us mere mortals. Our car careened off a cliff, resulting in all of our deaths. Our subsequent rage at our GM for not marking recommended skills on our preliminary handouts and their response that it was common sense for at least one person to be able to drive turned it from a painful memory into a really precious one.

“Oh yeah, one word of warning.”

“Huh? Does he bite?”

“You? Nah. Just behave yourself.”

Siegfried had taken a step back in fear. My Dioscuri would only bother taking their frustrations out on a truly discourteous rider. I wondered if Siegfried had some past horse-induced trauma.

I went on to advise him that his hips and waist would get absolutely exhausted until he got used to riding, and that the friction on your behind was enough to peel the skin. As the blood drained from Siegfried’s face, I held out my hand toward him.

“I know this is a bit late coming, but I look forward to working with you two.”

“Y-Yeah, me too...”

Siegfried’s expression suggested that he thought maybe I wasn’t as bad a guy as he thought. I shook his hand, then pulled him along to introduce him to the rest of the caravan.

[Tips] Equestrianism does not boil down to the simple act of sitting astride a horse. Once a horse gets running at high speeds, it is vital to move in sync with the horse’s own movements. If not, the saddle can end up striking one’s behind and can even cause injury.

The name “Goldilocks Erich” was starting to accrue real renown in the adventuring community, but to Siegfried he remained a complete enigma.

Siegfried had heard rumors of his bravery, yet for some reason they were always vague and short on hard facts—he’d done “something,” or someone had tried to argue with him and had gotten beaten up.

Unfortunately, Siegfried had no connections who could look into the details of these rumors, but more importantly the offender in each case was always too shamefaced to go into detail.

There was a young man from the Heilbronn Familie who had been violent to a waitress; a single glare from Goldilocks had sent him running, the whole affair leaving a black mark on the clan’s reputation. Any rumors that dared to spread were quashed in an instant, and so the witnesses would always skirt around the topic.

Such watered-down rumors wouldn’t reach a lowly soot-black adventurer with no information network of their own, and so Goldilocks, who hadn’t yet made many connections with his fellow newbie adventurers—although it was possible he was already busy with a clan—held a position of vast mystique among the other rookies.

This enigmatic impression only got stronger throughout the day.

“Horses don’t just move up and down—they have a tendency to swing left and right as much as forward and back. Keep your core in mind and move your body in tune with the horse’s own movements.”

“Ngh, this is impossible! And a long way down, dammit! And it sh-shakes! Ow!”

Siegfried had swallowed down his fear and had decided to get on the horse, but his inexperience in the saddle led him to bite his tongue mid complaint.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t advise talking too much while you’re still learning the basics.”

Siegfried still couldn’t get used to Goldilocks’s metropolitan dialect, and despite their proximity, the mysteries surrounding him remained as unsolved as ever.

Goldilocks had said he was the fourth son of a farming family, but his gear was way too fancy. He had a sword with a specially made scabbard, leather armor with a top-of-the-line breastplate, and on top of that, he had this incredible pair of horses. Even the child of a landed farmer or a landowner wouldn’t be able to get a hold of this kind of stuff. This was especially true if you were like Siegfried—the fourth son of a poor family with no chance of inheritance who only knew the ways of his canton.

Here they were, Siegfried on Polydeukes and Goldilocks on Castor, reins in hand, riding alongside the caravans far faster than a riding lesson’s proper pace. To Siegfried, who had a little experience training with the Watch, Erich—Erich of the flowing golden tresses—didn’t even look like the same kind of creature as him. He looked like something different altogether, a higher being who had donned human form and was merely playing the part...

Yet Siegfried couldn’t afford to let someone surpass him at his own dreams of heroism.

A hero was supposed to possess qualities far greater than a mere mortal, even if the first few inches of surface looked the same. Siegfried had already once encountered a being who had given off the same air: Saint Fidelio.

Siegfried had gone to rifle through the available jobs at the Adventurer’s Association when he saw the saint, visiting to sort some forms or the like out; it felt as if he had been struck by lightning. Fidelio had headed into the meeting room in the back, so Siegfried didn’t even get a chance to exchange a single word, but he would never forget the man’s startling impression.

His great stature, his astounding barrel chest, his quiet but commanding demeanor—everything spoke of his sensibility as a warrior. It stood in gestalt as a wordless warning not to start picking a fight you wouldn’t win. Siegfried had no idea how anyone could talk to him normally, let alone nip at his heels.

In a similar vein, even though Goldilocks was younger than Fidelio was now, squaring off with him seemed like a complete absurdity. Who could be so foolish as to enrage him into violence? Siegfried would rather make like the more foolhardy of his peers back home and pick a tree from which to play chicken with the ground than risk angering him.

Goldilocks lay far beyond the domain of humankind. Siegfried had managed to shout at him, but picking a fight? No way. He’d had to wait until he had simply bumped into Goldilocks, and even then hadn’t even been able to pull the courage together to ask to shake his hand.

Siegfried had told Goldilocks that day that he would surpass him and become a living legend, but how could it not ring hollow when every muscle in his body froze in his presence at the sense of a divine will that hung about him?

Whatever the case, his fellow adventurer’s honed skills and innate talent were evident. This boy in the same phase of life, holding his reins as he taught him how to control his horse, was not normal.

Siegfried had good reason for plucking up his courage to accept the request; his circumstances meant he couldn’t refuse.

He was stone broke, and only getting more so.

Even if he and Kaya could take on jobs that were slightly better than the usual soot-black fare, the money was never enough. Siegfried had made contrivances to rent a small corner of a group dorm and skimped on baths to reduce his daily expenses, but he couldn’t ask that of Kaya.

It was completely out of the question to let a young mage in the prime of her youth sleep unprotected in the dorm of the Golden Deer among hooligans and rowdy folk.

Siegfried had put aside a portion of his earnings to put Kaya up in the cheapest private room, but even with a slightly better income than average, it wasn’t enough to put away any savings.

Unfortunately, the two young adventurers hadn’t yet realized that the herbs they would have to make a little journey to collect fetched a higher price in town.

Kaya was a mage, but high-pressure staff-and-formulae casting wasn’t her strong suit. On the other hand, she was blessed with a talent for potions; her results were far more powerful than those of her peers with the same reagents and training. The one snag was that she didn’t have a catalyst—a key item in concocting potions.

Even the drafts that Kaya had concocted for Siegfried to help him overcome the daily exhaustion from physical labor contained an array of ingredients that were easy to obtain in the countryside—e.g., unparasitized horse chestnuts and dried chamomile (roots and all)—however, these were off the market in Marsheim unless you requested someone fetch them.

Kaya needed a potent and specialized catalyst to make the potions and salves that would heal the inevitable wear and tear of their first real adventure. However, catalysts were extremely specific—lake water that had been blessed by direct moonlight for nights on end, for example—and so the simple act of preparing one turned into a colossal money sink.

When Goldilocks’s offer came, Siegfried leaped at the chance.

He was sick of ending every night fighting for sleep in a dorm with his cloak for a blanket. He was tired of forcing his partner, who was kind enough to offer to join him in the dorm, to continue sleeping in a cramped, moldy, barely clean bed—full of fleas and lice, although she had tried to sort them out—any longer.

This would lay the foundations for Siegfried’s own heroic tale—he didn’t so much as hesitate.

After all, he knew nothing of Goldilocks; a chance to talk to him was inestimably valuable. To become a hero, he would one day have to fell embodiments of evil, beyond the reach of negotiation. It was pathetic for him to be scared of this comrade who had been nothing but kind to him.

Siegfried was going to become a hero. He wouldn’t let this break him; if it did it would reduce him to a muttering, reclusive boozehound for the rest of his days. He ignored the pain in his backside and forced himself to learn how to control this horse.

Polydeukes was a kind horse; he controlled his gallop to keep the strain on his untested passenger light. However, the time would eventually come when the rider would need to be able to handle a horse running at full pelt, just like Goldilocks had demonstrated earlier.

After all, horsemanship was essential to chivalry. Siegfried, Slayer of the Foul Drake, had his beloved horse Grani, the Saintly Attendant Ruprecht had his flying reindeer, the impossible half-blood methuselah Hagen had his chariot—in all of Siegfried’s beloved sagas, the hero had a loyal steed to ferry them into legend.

As evidenced by members of the Watch who came back from the Eastern Conquest with medals—grating as their boasts were to Siegfried’s ears—who praised the Dragon Rider’s own brave and reliable steed, Durindana, it was clear that folk still expected a famous steed to go along with the famous rider.

Siegfried fantasized of the day when he would have one of his own, not something borrowed from another...all the while gritting his teeth at the pain from the thrashing his tailbone was taking from the horse’s chaotic gait.

“Erich, I’ve got something to talk to you about.”

“Huh?!”

They were galloping at a speed no person could keep up with, yet a familiar voice suddenly spoke up from over near Goldilocks’s horse.

There was no way that the voice of Goldilocks’s disagreeable partner, the ever-youthful arachne girl, could have just shown up in the middle of the conversation. Well, unless she was so close that her voice wouldn’t be muffled by the pounding of the horses’ hooves.

And yet, there she was.

When the hell did she get there?! Siegfried’s jaw dropped—there she was on Goldilocks’s back like a knapsack, as usual.

Ignoring Siegfried, Margit whispered into Goldilocks’s ear; he let out a tut that was completely at odds with his usual graceful air as he redirected his horse.

“Whoa, what’s going on?!”

“Just keep your grip on the reins. He’s a smart horse, so you won’t need to remind him to follow the caravan. I need to go off and check a little something.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying!”

“I asked Margit to scout up ahead and she saw what looks to be a checkpoint.”

“A checkpoint? But we only just left Marsheim! There shouldn’t be one yet!”

“I trust everything my partner sees. And we knew ahead of time that they’d been putting up more without Imperial approval lately.”

Siegfried could do nothing but watch his fellow adventurer pull himself into a strange raised position as he galloped off. Most likely he had gone off to give a report to the mage leading the caravans and then scout ahead himself to find a way around.

He’s getting ahead of me again. A scout was their caravan’s first line of defense. This wasn’t something you could assign to an adventurer who had applied on a whim. No, this was something to ask of a trustworthy adventurer—an amber-orange at least—or a career caravan guard.

“Well, bring it on...”

Unlike Siegfried, whose ungainly riding hurt his backside, the sublime movements of horse and Goldilocks as one seemed to say Try and follow me.

The young adventurer wouldn’t just catch up; he’d overtake him. The name Siegfried of Illfurth would become synonymous with the word “adventurer” not only in Marsheim, but all over Ende Erde.

“I’ll outstrip you and leave you in my dust...”

No one but the horse between his legs heard the young adventurer’s muttering as he watched his peculiar comrade ride away.

But Polydeukes had heard him loud and clear.

In a few seconds the horse would rocket off, as if to say, Hey, I was looking forward to picking up the pace! as his poor newbie rider clung on for dear life.

[Tips] Most adventurers have a mount of some sort. Less scrupulous dealers in horses are sure to trot out hackneyed legendary pedigrees for their merchandise. Such unverifiable claims are a poor basis for comparison shopping; a wise buyer knows to judge a horse on its own merits.

From atop a hill a ways from the main road, I peered through my spyglass to see a shabbily built shack not far off.

It was no ordinary shack, mind you. Judging by the crew of unsavory types and the horses nearby, my guess was that this was the site of the local strongmen’s latest shakedown operation.

Imperial checkpoints were placed between various regions and administrative states and chiefly functioned as a way to collect customs taxes, mitigate epidemics, and uphold public safety. Tolls were taken, but they were never too expensive, as fees for customs and circulation of goods were extremely cheap; care was taken so as not to discourage the steady flow of coin.

Adventurers traveling on the job received discounted fees at checkpoints within the jurisdiction of their Adventurer’s Association. The costs were usually paid for with the clients’ fees as managed by the Association, so simply passing through never risked breaking the bank.

However, this particular scrappily built blockade over the road was not a checkpoint of the make seen anywhere in the Trialist Empire. This was something made without permission by someone who held sway over power in the region—in Earthly terms a local lord, a caudillo, a yeoman samurai, or, if you wanted to keep things simple, a fief-holding, rent-seeking, underregulated, overweening, dyed-in-the-wool sonuvabitch landlord.

If this was an officially sanctioned checkpoint, then it would be a watch station to keep the peace and ward off suspicious types from the towns. Patrolling guards would use it as a base or a rest stop. I had never heard of a checkpoint being placed so close to a town before.

In short, it was the opposite of what was good and proper—an illicit facility conceived and staffed by hoodlums to scam people out of their toll money or to seize a caravan’s “illegal cargo” through civil forfeiture on shaky grounds.

Now, where the hand of the government was present, such methods would never fly, but we found ourselves quite literally at the ends of the earth. The margraves didn’t have power over everything, so it was impossible to fully stamp out the upstarts behind these petty crimes.

Ah well; the fact that clans (who, let’s be honest, were just another mob in their own right) brazenly committed misdeeds quite literally on the margrave’s doorstep probably told you enough about the state of affairs around here. Should the margrave tighten the reins a bit too tightly, it was more than likely that they would come together in act of defiance, so I suppose the peacekeepers tactfully turned a blind eye toward more minor inconveniences.

All the same, it was a bit much that they were doing this a stone’s throw from the city, and I wondered if Margrave Marsheim was being particularly negligent here. It’s us hardworking folk who’ve got to deal with them, so come on, tighten the reins just a little more, will you?

“What d’you wanna do about it?” I said.

“It’s quite the bother, isn’t it?”

Margit had struck off quite a distance ahead of the caravan to verify the safety of the route, and so I had come with her to see what she’d found for myself. I trusted her implicitly; I wasn’t here to double-check her work, but to gauge whether this was something I could deal with solo.

“Three horses. And they’re not underfed either.”

“Yes, when I scouted earlier I saw at least fifteen people. I saw a few others in the periphery; I think they’re the advance guard, to make sure nobody tries to skip past the checkpoint.”

“And they are...?”

“Knocked out and tied up.”

Nice one, Margit. I knew you wouldn’t leave me any loose ends.

As a taxpayer, I would have preferred it if the local administration had put the work in to sort out people like this instead of leaving it to adventurers to put them in their place, but I supposed it was natural for them to have a more medieval approach in terms of politics and morals. Not only that, I imagined they had more than enough on their plates handling hostile foreign relations right across the border. Who knew; maybe acknowledging the problem at the state level would make you look like an easy target to the neighbors. Considering all the difficulties that cropped up in every direction, it was probably impossible to constantly maintain widespread safety.

I started to understand the reasoning behind all the rumors about the Baden family’s predisposition toward going gray or outright bald too early.

“They’re well armed too. I see pikes, bows... They’re all fully armored too. Someone’s private army, maybe?”

“It’s not about numbers, you know.”

“Yeah, but...”

“Not worth the effort, huh.”

We could drive off the enemy with the sort of assault that you’d see in the chronicles of the Genpei War, but it was worth remembering that some of these types did wield sizable power. They had wealth and influence that no mere adventurer could hope to compare to; in all honesty there was nothing to be gained from making enemies among their number.

In the worst-case scenario, they could nail us with bounties for some invented infraction, putting us at odds with our own fellow adventurers.

I could call in a certain busy noble in the Imperial capital—she had contacted me to say that she was bored and hoping I’d hand over a rare book before too long—but that would be a bit overkill. It was best to simply take the pacifist route and avoid them.

Although the Baldur Clan did have ties with certain local strongmen, it wouldn’t be good for those not in the know to pick a fight with us. If there was little to gain from our labor, then it would just be a pain to deal with a mob who was standing right in the middle of the road waiting for people to be caught.

Caravans didn’t have to deliver their goods on fixed delivery days like postal services in my old world, so the smart thing to do at this point was play things the adventurer way: slow, cautious to the point of paranoia, undetected, and with an iron grip on our purse strings. We could take some small comfort in the likelihood that this particular brand of human garbage was probably keeping the even more unsavory types at bay.

I didn’t want to fall right into their trap and lose all of our cargo, so I swallowed my white-hot rage at the vagaries of late feudalism and made other arrangements.

“Let’s take the long way round. Margit, would you mind finding a way through that I could propose to the caravan?”

“Of course; leave it to me, Erich. There is one thing, though...”

We were riding together, and upon hearing the joy in Margit’s tone, I looked down to see her with that expression that said You are incorrigible.

“You seem to be having fun despite our trouble, aren’t you?”

“You think?”

“I do. You’re always like this, you know.”

Margit leaped from the saddle with all the levity of her words and smiled at me.

“The harder the road, the more fun you seem to have.”

I felt a sudden burst of anxiety. “Sorry... You didn’t find it disagreeable, did you?”

Her smile simply grew wider as she replied. “Not at all. I was merely remarking on how entirely like yourself you’re being.”

My partner disappeared off onto her scouting mission, humming all the while, and all I could do was watch in complete bewilderment. There was nothing in the world like having a childhood friend who understood you.

[Tips] The local powerhouses are citizens who possess influence and power within their local area. In Marsheim they serve magistrates and knights, but their authority is founded solely on brute force, entrenchment, and charisma. It is rare for any of them to wield influence or sway beyond the scope of their reputation. Struggles for power continue in the shadows between this class of de facto petty rulers and the titled aristocracy.

Once the checkpoint was safely behind us, we arrived at our destination with no further complaints. I was happy with how smoothly the journey had gone, of course, but that familiar anxiety set in as I wondered whether that only meant this world’s GM still had something a little spicy in store for us.

The first stop on our itinerary was a developing canton about a month’s journey from the border.

The Empire had begun a recruitment drive for those seeking a new life to start new cantons in out-of-the-way spots like this and reap nature’s bounty at the land’s fringes. It was a quiet place with only a few buildings and no crops just yet—the fields were still being prepped.

However, the ulterior political motive for building a canton from scratch a little ways from the main road was clear to me.

Advice from my seniors and my own lived experience told me that almost every local strongman was used to throwing their weight around without consequence. The Empire had propped up all these new centers of activity to spread the power-drunk bastards’ efforts thin and keep their attention away from larger targets.

Second-born sons and onward didn’t have the best prospects in this world, as I knew very well myself, and with little chance to inherit their family’s home, they were encouraged to start a new life with their own property in this noble-funded new canton. It was true that the land was owned by rich farmers with dollar signs in their eyes as they dreamed of the long-term profits tenant farming would bring, but that didn’t mean that the new communities were all simple manservants. They had respectable manpower to begin with, and their number could be bulked up by the Watch in times of need.

More numbers equaled more power, yes, but it only counted if you could mobilize those numbers quickly. We were out in the sticks here, and so the long march to those rural areas in need would leave the poor villagers thrashing in the water until they arrived. I imagine this had been taken into consideration, and so this community of makeshift soldiers had most likely been gathered out of necessity rather than from their own individual dreams of making it big.

The nobles that had funded this canton must have had quite a sizable sum in their coffers, given that they’d bought medical goods from the Baldur Clan well before any of it was called for.

Throughout fall and into winter, the injured and sick were a common sight on a farm. It was easy to get sloppy and have an accident when everyone pushed themselves from sunup to sundown, and sickness spread in the cooler days as winter crept in. Steep as the investment might have been, I had to hand it to whichever magistrate thought to make preparations this early; wait to order any of this stuff until you really needed it and you’d be too late.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t calling the magistrate kind. He was most likely keeping his makeshift army well taken care of in case the powerhouse next door got a bit too big for his britches.

“Hey. Are we really good to not bother helping unload?”

“Yeah. Leave the heavy work to the people who live here. Our job is to stand by with our weapons at the ready.”

Siegfried, who was standing awkwardly by my side, had bemoaned my default metropolitan diction, so I toned it down a bit.

Memories of backbreaking peasant life back home must have still flowed through his veins, because standing still while people busied themselves around him made him visibly uncomfortable.

Mm-hmm, been there, buddy. When I was working with Lady Agrippina, I’d felt bad for the underpaid lot who had to haul all the cargo, but decorum always forced me to bite my tongue.

Our job today was simply to make sure that the goods delivered by the caravan were safely delivered while always ready to act if the situation required.

“Other clients might request we help as part of our wages, yes, but for this gig something else is being expected of us.”

“Which is?”

“This, for example... Hey, you!”

To set a good example for my troubled comrade, I glared at one of the farmers as I shouted at him. He flinched at the sound of my voice. The local lord had ordered them to help with unloading, but no one said that they needed to open any of our stock.

“Hands off the lid! Unless you want to be branded a thief!”

“I-I’m sorry, sir! I was simply...”

“Watch how you hold yourself, that’s all!”

The man who had been reaching for the box of infusions—medicines to take during the onset of a cold—apologized before carrying it off to the storehouse with tottering steps.

“You never know what sort of underhanded person is going to swipe some of the goods as ‘compensation’ for helping to carry it. Part of the job is making sure that this is understood among everyone present.”

“G-Gotcha...”

To be frank, I didn’t get a bad vibe from that farmer; I bet he just wanted to check what was inside. However, the contents of a delivery were not something a farmer needed to worry himself with—that was a job for the lord or a house servant to do later. All the same, making my intent clear early on would snuff out any rebellious spark in the rest of the people present, so he got to be my unfortunate target for today.

It was human nature, really. Everyone wanted to have just one free dose of medicine on the off chance someone in their family fell ill.

“Not only that, the job has gone through the proper channels with the Association, meaning that everyone has been paid already. If the caravan were to make some extra sales at a canton we’d only stopped at to pick up supplies, then the later clients who would get less stock for the same coin would start to complain. And then...”

“We wouldn’t be able to cover our backsides if it was someone savvy making the complaints.”

“Exactly.”

A bodyguard’s job was deterrence. If we made it clear that no good would come of anyone crossing our paths, then potential ne’er-do-wells would behave. Danger on the road isn’t the only thing we needed to keep an eye out for.

“You want to stay especially wary of people who try to open the lids by a crack or take their goods in a different direction to the storehouse. The merchants are keeping their eyes peeled too, of course, but the more eyes the better, really. There are greedy lords who’ll ask their people to nab a couple samples from what we off-load so they can ‘double-check’ the stock in their storehouse later and come back to us complaining that they’re short.”

“Oh, I get it. I’ve seen some big bosses try and pick a fight with a merchant before; so that was their game, huh. Tch, guess you get bastards like that wherever you go. Pisses me off seeing people do underhanded shit like that.”

“The easiest ploy is to say you didn’t get what you paid for. It’s quicker to just cough up the extra stock instead of wasting time looking for whoever had sticky fingers. That goes especially so during fall when everyone’s so busy.”

Business picking up and getting harder as the cold sets in was universal among both farmers and merchants. All the travel and sleeping rough got taxing—unlike the warm summer months when you could lay under the stars with your cloak over you without fear of freezing to death, unless you did something particularly stupid. Caravans which hadn’t prepared proper tents and gear could often find themselves at a standstill. Therefore, they often had to compromise by asking for more time in their deliveries.

We needed to keep our eyes sharp so that we wouldn’t succumb to the same fate.

Hansel was my primary source for much of this advice. You wouldn’t realize unless you travel the world and see other places, but common knowledge and general attitudes in a canton are always characterized by the nearest larger settlement. In the case of my canton, we were influenced by the nearby city, for better or worse. When you compared it to how things were around here, my little canton was almost like a city in itself. I was shocked when he first told me.

These were my preconceptions talking again, but I was surprised that there were people who’d be willing to play these kinds of high-risk games of trust for a little quick coin.

I supposed rumors couldn’t spread that wide here. The information network was small and very few cantons were all that prosperous, meaning people traffic was slow and superficial. There wasn’t much risk to run from pissing off a couple of small-potatoes merchants every season. This had probably resulted in more people realizing that you had nothing to lose and plenty to gain from a little petty theft.

Again, such behavior was unthinkable where I was from. Caravans were our prime source of supplies and entertainment—small though they might be—so cheating them was out of the question. If merchant caravans began to avoid the canton because it had fallen into disrepute, then the local people would be the first to suffer.

“Man, adventurers really do gotta learn a lot,” Siegfried said with a frown and his hand on his chin after I passed Hansel’s tips along.

I supposed that for Siegfried, who chose the path of adventurer with dreams of one day becoming a hero, this crude, mercantile job wasn’t to his liking.

All the same, for us greenhorns without the CVs to start getting jobs handed down from the literal heavens, such groundwork was crucial to our development. Only the truly desperate would trust a rank amateur with anything really important.

All told, while we had a job to do, it was pretty light work, and we were relatively free to do as we pleased. I realized that talking about work all day would be mentally exhausting, so in between giving Siegfried pointers—such as being wary of anyone with particularly baggy sleeves—we made a little small talk.

“I was born east and south of here, so I’m not really familiar with life in these parts; what’s winter like?”

“Winter? Well, by the time the harvest’s up it’s pretty damn cold. We get blizzards once every, I dunno, few years or so, but it isn’t weird to see enough snow pile up to lock down carriage travel.”

As Siegfried grumbled about how it sucked to have buckets of water freeze, I smiled inwardly at our friendship’s apparent development. I mean, he was my first-ever adventurer buddy after all. I’d have liked to share with him what I’d learned.

“So I guess the caravans will be stopping business soon, then? This is about the time when farmers start to work on other things that aren’t farming.”

“Nah, there are some who avoid working in the snow, but lots of people do stuff like woodcutting during the winter, so it’s pretty busy for the whole year. The cold’s not gonna stop a tree from falling, if you get me.”

Ahh, yeah, that totally makes sense. Even if the cold hard ground of winter meant that you couldn’t easily uproot trees, they could still be cut down, and the rest of the work could be left until it got warmer.

“I see. I also noticed that the carriages’ wheels are a lot wider than what I’m used to seeing. Is that another measure against the snow?”

“Huh? Isn’t that just what wheels look like?”

“No, they’re far bigger than the wheels you see in Berylin. Not only that, the shapes of the roofs and the way stone walls are constructed here are different. It’s interesting see how things differ in other parts of the same country.”

“Did you say Berylin?! The hell were you there for?”

“I was just a mere servant. I was working to pay off my little sister’s educational expenses.”

“You didn’t go to a private school but you worked so much to pay for your sister to go? Isn’t that...weird?”

It took around half an hour for the unloading to finish as me and my new friend shot the breeze. Uzu said we’d stay for two nights to let the horses rest and so with that our work was done until we set off again.

Adventurers and merchants alike were scheduled to camp out, but the canton showed their kind favor in opening their baths to us.

Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. I had been using a cloth soaked in warm water to wipe myself down, but nothing beat a good old bath. For someone who got used to soaking in an imperial bath once every other day—aside from the days when it would be so late that they were filthy—long journeys were pretty brutal. Maybe I had pampered myself just a little too much in the Imperial capital.

People had broken off into smaller groups to rest and set about with cleanup; I had been talking with some others when Uzu came up to me with a personal request.

“Um, excuse me. I have a few things of importance in my room, so I was hoping I could ask you to keep watch, Sir Erich.”

“Of course. Would you like me to bring some others to help?”

“No, just you will be fine.”

The canton was still developing, so the local lord’s mansion was kind of shoddy—ahem, pardon, modest, but fortunately it seemed they had at least set aside a room for our VIP mage. I was the only one who had been told about this arrangement. This whole thing had been funded by the Baldur Clan, so on paper Nanna was staying with us in the tents. Being a subcontractor’s unfair in any world, huh.

“Will you be going to the baths when the women’s shift comes?” I asked.

“N-No, I’ll be quite fine. I’ve got my magic to help with that.”

Yeah, I suppose it was natural for a mage who can literally fly to learn a simple spell like Clean. Obviously I could cast it too, but it wouldn’t fit the image of a traveling adventurer if I was too well-kept, so I’d held myself in check. Ugh, I wish I didn’t have to.

“I-I imagine I’ll be sleeping for a r-rather long time tonight.”

“Understood. I’ll stay on guard until you wake. Take as long as you need.”

Uzu still stammered when she talked to me, but it seemed she trusted me enough to guard her while she slept. She placed a hand into her breast pocket and was visibly relieved to see that her chartula was still present. Dark circles showed under her eyes. I think she hadn’t slept for days. She had been holding off on taking her medicine in case of an emergency and had only been able to catch catnaps. I had seen her jolt awake every time the carriage shook on the way down.

Real rest would come for her quickly now that she had finished her work, found a roof over her head, and still had Nanna’s disturbing “sleep aid.”

“Is it not dangerous?”

“I-Is what dangerous?”

“The drugs you take. You seemed to be in quite some pain that time I deprived you of a hit for a few days. Aren’t they a bit dangerous to take on a regular basis?”

Perhaps I’d triggered some trauma. The memories of me locking her up and making her go cold turkey must have zapped through her brain; she leaped up with a squeal.

“W-Well, ph-physically speaking...I’m not addicted, o-of course. B-But maybe it’s t-tough on my l-liver and k-kidneys, so the boss advised me to t-take other medications w-with it...”

Uzu started babbling on about how other members in the clan didn’t follow Nanna’s advice when they dosed.

Alongside the legal medicines, such as the ones we were delivering now, the Baldur Clan dealt in three variants of illicit drugs. I was a bit curious about their business, so I’d asked Kaya about it, as she was a bit of a potions expert herself. She was only going by hearsay, but apparently Nanna’s goods produced fewer physical problems than opiates or other cheap narcotic potions. Before Nanna had seized her turf, the drugs in circulation were badly regulated—they were addictive and caused painful withdrawal symptoms: by all accounts, it felt like having a whole anthill bloom, hungry and furious, under your skin. I couldn’t really condone what she did, but compared to how things were before? Well.

The first of Nanna’s potions was Sweet Dreams, an addictive sleep aid and Uzu’s research chemical of choice; it caused insomnia if you chose to cut it out. If that wasn’t rough enough, going back to your usual REM-fueled nightly hallucinations felt like a biblical fall from grace.

The second was the Patent Hedonizer, which deadened the neurological signals for pain response and heightened pleasure. Under the effects of the Hedonizer, even the most meager bowl of gruel would taste like haute cuisine. Even passing urine would bring about unsurpassable pleasure. On the other hand, you could shatter every bone in your body and not even notice. A real piece of work, that one.

The last drug on Nanna’s menu was called Liquid Insight—a potent mood stabilizer that instilled a mental state comparable to actual enlightenment. I had to wonder what the Buddhists back home would make of trying to dope your way to Nirvana. For those nobles wishing to seek a temporary respite from interpersonal business, one hit of this stuff provided a real place of refuge.

These last two were similar to other combat drugs I’d seen, but all three were custom-tailored to one goal: changing the pain of living into pleasure. They were all false starts and dead ends in Nanna’s pursuit of her panacea against the false world of the senses and all its agonies—the very same pursuit that led to her expulsion from the College.

“I-It r-really doesn’t affect m-my body all too much... I-I mean I c-could sleep without it i-if I wanted to...b-but the quality of sleep...i-is just incomparable.”

I almost couldn’t believe that there were no physical side effects despite seeing her clear addiction to the damn thing. In my opinion, the drug’s “withdrawal symptoms”—in other words, the inability to not sleep for three whole days after going without long enough—seemed to be a far craftier way of destroying someone’s mental faculties than a more direct method.

Of course, broken brain cells and neurons could be fixed with miracles or high-level iatrurgy, but memories couldn’t be so easily changed. Unless you forcibly erased memories and reset someone’s brain to factory settings, there was no plausible way of getting rid of the hunger or the deep-set despair toward the mortal world that the drug had originally awakened in them.

Talk about troublesome—both Nanna’s unbearable worldly struggles and the “failed” potions that had come of them.

“I-If you like...w-would you like to sample s-some?”

Uzu held out the chartula with a coaxing smile. I abstained.

“I’m fine, thank you. I prefer to bend reality to my whims by my own means. If I wish to achieve glory with my blade, then I can’t waste my time with something that isn’t the real thing while I’m asleep, can I?”

I had no need of any of Nanna’s drugs. I didn’t need that kind of crutch now, nor did I plan on sinking low enough to need it in the future. The dreams I had were right here before my eyes. All my struggles, all my mind-numbing busywork, had piled into a mountain, and from my place at the top I could see my fantasy of adventure glittering right here in front of me.

“W-Wow... Y-You really are something else...”

Yeah, I dunno what else you would say to someone who so flatly turned down your proposal while criticizing it.

In ways, I stood above my peers. I was lucky in that the future Buddha gave me a way to turn my hard work and efforts into a very palpable result. As long as I put in the work, even if it was inefficient, I would start to collect experience that I could bend to my own purposes tomorrow and onward. And then with one simple tap I could dump that all into a very real change in my being.

Only when someone’s will breaks does the effort they spent so long pooling turn to a waste.

I might have had no way of guaranteeing a secure lifestyle, but I was almost guaranteed to grow proficient at something as long as I put the work in. It was a miracle that was far, far more valuable than having been born into a wealthy household. After all, this was a gift from the gods that existed far above our mortal plane.

“I won’t stop you doing as you will. Please, enjoy a well-deserved rest.”

I ushered Uzu inside, closed the door, then leaned on the wall next to it in a relaxed yet vigilant position.

Necessary evils, huh... I wasn’t particularly fond of the concept, but it was true that Nanna’s concoctions were preferable to trash that melted your stomach or brought about a madness so deep you didn’t realize death had come to you. Nanna had run her monopoly with real savvy, and I had to admit that her clan was at least more upright than the previous overlords.

That was probably a reason why moral folk in Marsheim like Mister Fidelio hadn’t gotten rid of her, despite the troubles she was inarguably causing.

Don’t start something you won’t be able to take care of—now or in the future. This was an ironclad rule for everyone, not just adventurers. Any hero worth a damn couldn’t just pat themselves on the back for a job well done for slapping down a few scoundrels and creating a transitory moment of quiet around town. Some other pack of bastards would want their own share of the pie, and there was no guarantee that they would be more ethically minded than their predecessors. One single person didn’t have the power it took to fully purge evil right down to the root.

So, I needed to content myself with the notion that this was not the worst possible scenario.

All the same, I was fully aware addiction—even if it didn’t result in physical symptoms—was nothing to sneeze at. Some people went mad from sugar withdrawal; some people couldn’t stomach a normal BBQ place after sampling high-quality meat. There was just no getting around the inherent trouble of living. It was enough to leave a fellow feeling real Gnostic about it all. If some supreme being had the power to create a kind world where everyone was promised a happy ending, then why hadn’t they? The gods that managed this world—and in the case of my old world too—must have had their reasons.

Whatever the case, I’ve vowed to live this life to the fullest. Right until the day where Erich of Konigstuhl is satisfied with a life well adventured.

[Tips] The drugs peddled by the Baldur Clan amount to nothing more than the failures from their master’s pursuit of a way to abolish the physical pains of this world. Though they incur no unintended physical side effects, the withdrawal symptoms are severe. Some unfortunate souls beg for death if they are parted from their crutch. They are nothing more than the last respite for those whose hearts the world has broken beyond repair.

The work was filthy at times, and life could get him down powerfully, but for Siegfried the reasons to keep chasing after his dreams of heroism still firmly outnumbered the reasons to abandon them.

He’d stormed out of his home after a big fight with his family. He’d pilfered his spear and sword from the Watch’s storehouse. His childhood friend, whose prospects were far brighter than his, came along with him out of concern and never complained.

He knew full well that this amounted to nothing more than idle vanity, but Dirk of Illfurth had propped himself up on such reasons through every exhausting day of idle labor.

It was true that Kaya’s influence elevated him from dirt in the gutter to something marginally more tolerable, but for this young man who had gone as far to change his name to that of his revered hero, the work was still a far cry from anything heroic. A poem written about him now would amount to little more than a gussied-up list of his complaints.

Kaya’s help weighed heavily on him—almost as much as how little his efforts to keep her protected amounted to. The onslaught of clan invitations had lessened recently, but Siegfried still felt it bear down on him. A hero needed to hold his own—to be self-sufficient.

Maybe that’s why he had flared up so angrily at his peer.

And why...

“Whoooa! I think it hit me! D-Do I still have an ear?!”

“Cool it, Sieg! You’ll make me go deaf!”

...he had allowed himself to squeeze close to this same guy on the back of a bucking horse as he squealed in terror.

He’d abandoned a life empty of prospects for a future of wealth, glory, and renown that would draw the curious to his gravesite for ages to come. So what happened? He had been on a relatively mindless job alongside a gaggle of bodyguards doing very little actual guard work. Despite the good pay of fifty assarii per day, the gig was a dull one: hang around the caravans, discourage bandits, and keep an eye out for pickpockets.

And yet here he was now—barely holding on to a horse as an organized mob of bandits followed behind, baying for their blood.

This is what he got for trying to overtake his overachieving comrade. For some reason Goldilocks had taken a liking to him and offered him this well-paying gig, but it seemed like his luck had run its course. Now he was barely hanging on under a literal storm of arrows.

“They’re well equipped! Think they’re a local lord’s own little private army?!”

“Gwaaah, don’t ask me! Oh crap—that was close!”

Yes, it had been tedious work. The caravans had five of their own personal bodyguards and a dozen or so hired adventurers to pad out the count. With such a large group of bodyguards and eight mule-led caravans, a number of travelers had joined the group, bringing the overall procession to over fifty people. The chances of such a group being attacked were incredibly small. Siegfried had been certain they wouldn’t be attacked. Unless the charge was led by a legion of skilled and well-trained soldiers or a platoon clad in high-quality armor, it was the opposing side that was sure to end up feeling the hurt. Any regular bandit wouldn’t even think to attack such a huge group.

However, the problem lay in the fact that the group attacking them with all the fervor in the world were anything but your run-of-the-mill bandits.

The night had begun with Siegfried watching over the caravans setting up camp. Kaya was applying her skills to a few travel-sick members of their party. Erich had announced that he was going to scout the area on horseback. The knapsack arachne had been asleep, making sure she’d be set for her late-night shift.

It would be a lie to say that Siegfried hadn’t started to drop his guard now that their twenty-day excursion was drawing to a close.

Who could have envisioned that the twilit quiet of the scene would be broken by the keening whistle of a signal arrow just as the mob began its assault.

Even if their surprise attack had failed, the bandits seemed not to care so long as they got the same end result; their incursion began with taking down Siegfried, who was nearest to their group. The bandit rulebook dictated that they leave no survivors.

In all honesty, Siegfried was ready to die in that moment. After all, what could a soot-black adventurer armed only with a sword and short spear do against a wall of polearms?

A disciplined, close-formation march with spears at the ready was the ideal way to maneuver while maintaining a firm defense. Siegfried recalled that this was the first formation the Watch back home had taught to protect their canton.

Fearing that swords glinting in the last vestiges of the setting sun would be the last sight he would ever see, with shaking knees Siegfried clasped his spear, uncertain if it would even reach the incomers.

As his rational mind battered him with reminders that his last stand would be meager and ineffectual, the bandits scattered as a horse galloped through, light as fabric on the wind. With one swing, the enemy formation was broken, and Erich sheathed his sword, having come back in the nick of time.

“Get on!”

Siegfried grabbed his outstretched hand and was swung up onto the saddle—he felt something else touching him as his body was lifted up into the air, but maybe it was his imagination—and was filled with relief.

However, the second surprise hit in the next instant. After all, Goldilocks, whom Siegfried still wouldn’t let himself like, placed himself at the backs of the fleeing merchants.

Come on man, this is a job to leave to the more experienced bodyguards!

A life just wasn’t worth fifty assarii. What could a newbie and someone who’d just shaken off his soot do in this situation?

“Don’t worry, Sieg—they value their lives too! They won’t keep hounding a caravan if it means no one is around to enjoy the spoils. If we can take out five or six of them, then I bet we’ll break their formation!”

Siegfried couldn’t voice his complaint that his issue lay elsewhere. A case could be made that it was a matter of willpower; more likely it was because he was being shaken so violently he couldn’t form a coherent syllable. At any rate, his mind was elsewhere—his hands were full with mounting a counteroffensive with a crossbow that he’d just been given and didn’t know how to use.

Siegfried didn’t have his head on straight enough to even take in Erich’s own marksmanship, nor his ability to swipe arrows out of the sky with his sword. The confident adventurer was hotdogging now, egging the bandits on while maintaining a position just shy of the enemy’s marks and deftly deferring them from a clean path forward.

“You all right there, Sieg? Run out of bolts? Keep those hands moving!”

“Sh-Shut the hell up, I’ve never touched a crossbow before!”

“Then you better get used to it quick! Stay focused—you want to keep people safe, you’d better learn how to play rear guard! If we make it back alive, it might not be enough work to be penned as a tale, but it’s sure to be a badge of honor to share!”

As tears streamed from his eyes and spit trickled from his mouth, Siegfried realized something. Erich of Konigstuhl, with his beaming smile and glittering eyes as he swung his sword, wasn’t just suspicious—no, he was downright strange.

But it could wait. It might have only been one of the lesser parts of valor, but if he was being relied upon, Siegfried would do his absolute best to live up to the task.

“D...Don’t order me around! I was just loading the next bolt! I’m gonna be a hero! A way better and more renowned hero than you’ll ever be!”

A man didn’t need a deep reason to put his life on the line—he might do so because leaving at that time would be uncool; because it would be pathetic to run away; because the other man sitting in front of him was fighting with eye-opening splendor.

And because any self-deprecating thoughts, any fear, was something his comrade would never see if he simply kept them hidden. The only truth that would remain is that two young adventurers put their lives on the line to protect their charge.

[Tips] Those in power are as aware as the lowest guttersnipe of the universal fact that a crime is not a crime unless it is found out.

I had an inkling about it, but I was faced with the truth of the matter—I’d gotten rusty.

There were two days left until we got back to Marsheim. The journey had been uneventful—no one had tried to argue about prices and no foolish canton youngsters had tried to pick a fight. We had come this far, and the end of the journey was in sight, so it was probably my fault for acting sloppy.

All the same, you need to understand—no one would expect a local mover and shaker to put this much money into an assault on our little parade. I suppose that the preconception was a holdover from my previous life. Not even the poorest or most pathetic merchants would bother trying to steal from their fellows in their own lands, short of something crazy like burning everything to the ground and scouring the wreckage for something of value.

Marsheim was a melting pot of goods from various foreign countries, and so caravans traveled in and out no matter the season. The wide Mauser River was used to transport goods, and so the number of merchants taking their stock both east and west was unimaginable.

Some even postulated that traveling merchants outnumbered farmers.

In other words, if you dispatched your target and didn’t leave a single trace, then one or two missing merchants would be chalked up to bad luck on the road. As long as the perp didn’t get too greedy, their misdeed would remain buried in the darkness forever.

It wasn’t too surprising, then, that a few greed-stricken folks would be up for a deeply stupid move in the name of a short-term profit. After all, a caravan passing through your land is only worthless if you choose to ignore it.

But good grief, you didn’t have to go this far out of your way to attack a caravan that had purposefully avoided your fake-ass checkpoint.

It seemed like Lady Luck hated me as much as ever. It pained me that my constitutionally bad luck had roped in my beginner friend too.

The thing was, Nanna and I had made a deal that I would lend a hand in an emergency if someone should shout, “Help us out, boss!” and she was paying me enough that I would happily oblige and watch the rear in the event of an attack.

But Siegfried—whom I had invited—wasn’t privy to this deal.

My affection for the guy was one-sided, and he had only taken the job after comparing it to his usual lot despite his suspicions about me. It had been the size of the payout that pushed him over the edge—most people, barring a few notable exceptions, needed to eat in order to live.

But come on God of Trials, capping off his first-ever excursion out of the city with a climax on this scale? Give the poor guy a break! I know on paper we were both Level 1 Fighters, but this was gonna be way too much for a newbie when he was just learning the ropes at playing bodyguard.

I had seen promise in the kid. He’d gotten good at horse riding pretty quickly and he knew his way around a couple of weapons. Despite this journey being sprung on him, he had packed accordingly and he had decided whether to come based on his friend’s condition. I was impressed, to be honest. I didn’t altogether expect him to account for his partner’s “monthly status effect.”

I wanted my first-ever joint mission with Siegfried and Kaya to end in a fun way.

So naturally, there was a seething heap of brigands waiting for me when I went out scouting.

On top of that, they were good fighters. I mentally filed another complaint with my old friend the Goddess of Dice.

I had tried to seize the initiative and drop them swiftly, but they successfully repelled my horseback assault. I wanted to have a little chat with them, so naturally I hadn’t put my absolute all into my attack, but I was still impressed that they had managed to swipe back despite my taking the lead.

Still, I managed to thrust my eastern crossbow—they were damn useful, as I could use one in either hand—into one of their stomachs to throw them off me and stay in the game, but it had been a long time since I’d had this feeling of a not-so-easy win.

I was no pushover. I didn’t yet have Horseback Combat, so I needed to rely on my usual plan of brute-forcing my way through with twinked-out Dexterity-based swordsmanship. I was confident that I could land blows that would knock your average bandit out cold without going the extra mile to kill them—but riding a horse put me at a disadvantage. My assault hadn’t ended in a quick and easy win.

I wasn’t dealing with your average bandit. These were hired pros with intimate knowledge of mounted, armored guerrilla combat.

What’s wrong with you, GM? This is not the kind of boss you throw a squishy beginner at!

I had sensed danger and fired off a warning arrow. Other members of the caravan had still been getting started with the night’s preparations, so I needed to let them know they needed to run.

To no one’s surprise, I ended up engaging the bandits just as they were almost at our campsite. I passed along a quick summary of my appraisal of their combat ability. Even the least well equipped were clad in thin armor. Their weapons weren’t the rusted, inconsistent fare a gaggle of bandits would have, but spears polished to a gleaming point and composite bows loaded with cast-iron arrowheads.

You’re not fooling anyone if you say you “just happened” to be here, I wanted to scream.

They had been in a horizontal formation when I first came on the scene and made my attack, but they were only a handful of paces away from Siegfried, who I imagined had put himself at the head of their assault.

A row of spear wielders was certain death for a solo warrior. Polearms were a simple tool and their reach could cause total chaos in a melee, but when they came together to form a spear wall like this, they were incredibly deadly. I mean, if a mercenary like Sir Lambert were here, he could keep himself safe in thick full-body armor and swipe away any foolish attacks before smashing through their spears like twigs with a huge two-hander to break through their formation without even breaking a sweat. However, for a newbie whose experience was thin on the ground, chances were he’d walk away looking like a human pincushion.

I couldn’t leave my coworker to the wolves, so I took a gamble and rushed into the fray. I was fully prepared to use my magic, should the situation call for it.

As martial techniques advanced and turtle formations became a fundamental tactic, the position of a singular mounted knight as the center of battle grew less common, but they still had shock and awe value. Imagine a horse suddenly crashing into battle—a beast that weighed hundreds of kilos and could gallop faster than your average moped. The trampling of its hooves was far more deadly than being caught under someone’s wheels—being crushed underfoot would leave the average person with severe injuries if they were lucky.

I spurred Castor on as I swung my sword through their flank to try and force the formation to scatter. A number of them went flying with cartoonish force before crashing to the ground with a satisfying crunch. All the while I raced to save my friend, who was growing ever more surrounded.

It was quite the dramatic save, I guess, but our job wasn’t done. The offensive had already begun—they wouldn’t turn tail due to a little hiccup like this. Chances were that this attack had never been planned from just one direction. Approaching in a pincer movement was Surprise Assault 101. There was a less than zero chance that such a well-organized group would fail to employ the basics.

If it came to it, I would have to get my ally out of here, staving off the enemies from the front or the flanks as he made his escape. My warning arrow had already sent the announcement of enemy assault, so the other bodyguards and my napping partner would respond before long.

The most important thing right now was thinning out the numbers approaching from our rear as much as we could.

I estimated the enemy’s headcount, including those who had yet to arrive, at around twenty. This was a little more than two boys on a horse should have to deal with, but when compared with, I dunno, the Genpei War, I was confident that we had this in the bag. It wasn’t like we had to shoot down fans while on a rocking boat or fire a cannon to sink a distant battleship.

My crossbow let me pull off a perfect Parthian shot—a technique where you fire behind you while riding—and I also had another passenger atop Castor’s behind for double the firepower. All I had to do was keep my distance from their spears as I intercepted their fire while egging them on with a “Hey, bud? How’s it feel? How’s it feel?!” Fleeing like this would be way easier than doing it on foot. No sweat.

Siegfried was screaming and cursing now, but, well, he’d get used to it. My first time in battle had been pants-soakingly frightful and I legitimately thought I might die. To be honest, the bigger the foe, the quicker you adjust to future battles. Take it from a guy with firsthand experience.

Despite our opponents’ training and experience, at the end of the day they were bandits in search of a quick payday. They weren’t patriotic souls riding high on adrenaline as they fought to the death for their homeland. Take down four or five and they’d realize the losses outweighed any possible gains and run on home.

Hmm, come to think of it, there’s an awfully long gap between their shots. Maybe they’re unused to attacking a fleeing foe from afar?

No huge surprise there. For a while, fighters were expected to have some proficiency in projectile weapons, but bows and crossbows were the wheelhouse of archers. Regular old fighters could use them, yes, but not like an expert.

I had been trying to light a fire under Siegfried, and finally I’d gotten a hearty, if quavering, response. Good, good; nicely said, my young adventurer.

The bandits stuck at it until seven of their number had fallen. On our way back to the caravan, we ended up encountering a hastily built anticavalry palisade, so I ended up having to slam my sword into the guts of another eight bandits to neutralize them.

As a result, not only had we managed to make a successful escape, we’d administered a savage beatdown in the process. In any case, I was only trying to keep the caravan safe, so, uh, kudos to me!

Another little piece of good fortune was that in immobilizing the enemy, I managed to snag some pretty sweet loot off the chumps, which was a nice surprise.

I shared with Siegfried, naturally.

Our little escapade resulted in a comparable boost to our fame—more than likely Nanna had done a little PR on our behalf—and Siegfried, depending on who you asked, was now either Siegfried the Lucky or Siegfried the Hapless.

He really had done a good job; I kind of wished something with a nicer ring to it had stuck, but alas.

[Tips] An alias is given by those who hear of the person’s feats, but penned stories are not always an accurate representation of reality.

It was a disgusting smell: the foul reek of blood and excrement seeping from intestines bared to the open air.

Siegfried shook as the reality of battle belatedly sank in.

He had been totally preoccupied during the fight itself, but the realization had come to him after their enemies had fled: battle did not end as beautifully as the songs would have you believe. Routed foes left a foul stench.

Before Siegfried’s eyes a man let out a pathetic groan. A bolt stuck from his stomach as the life trickled from his carcass.

He was a mensch, just like Siegfried, no older than his father.

The man had chosen a cruel and unjust line of work, it was true, but Siegfried couldn’t pair him with the image of the evil foes that always came out beaten at the end in his beloved tales.

He looked like a normal man—nothing more, nothing less. He wasn’t ugly like the wicked men in the stories. If he had been dressed normally, you couldn’t have told him apart from any other guy on the street. Blood ran from his mouth, and the sight of him clutching his stomach sent pity racing through the heart of the young adventurer.

The bandits had attacked with the suddenness of a rushing stream; now that the dust had settled his memories were hazy.

Had I fired that bolt? Siegfried couldn’t remember how many shots he’d fired, or at whom.

“Help...me...”

“Siegfried. Looks like we got a survivor, huh?”

Erich approached with light steps from the site of battle as Siegfried struggled with a vaster consternation than he had ever known in the face of the man’s request. All the while, Erich cleaned his dagger of filth.

“What’s gotten into you? You need to finish the job.”

“F-Finish the job...?”

“Yeah. There’s no saving him.”

Goldilocks uttered this statement as if he were talking about a pig at market as he assessed the man’s wounds.

The heavy crossbow’s firepower had earned it a nickname—the knight-killer. At a close enough distance, it could easily pierce right through cloth armor. The bolt had penetrated the man’s bowels as it spun, churning his guts into a slurry that slopped from the wound.

His own excrement would infect his damaged internal organs. Only the most brilliant iatrurgy, conjured in that very moment, would save him. If he didn’t die soon, it would draw out over the next few days. The garbage that everyone holds within them is a fatal poison if it escapes from where it belongs.

All the while the open wound would be a breeding ground for new infections. Even with a high pain threshold, no one could prevent themselves from bleeding out.

There was no avoiding the end now, no chance for last-minute mercy—save the bitterest kind.

“So you need to end his life swiftly. A prolonged death is a painful one.”

“W-Wait, you say that, but I...”

“...Am an adventurer. Right?”

Siegfried instinctively caught whatever it was that Erich had thrown his way.

It was a sword. Goldilocks had taken it from another corpse, almost as if he were accepting an apology for their assault. It was well-made, nothing like Siegfried’s own shoddy iron stick.

It might have been a nameless sword, churned out with a hundred like it, but all the same someone had crafted it and its blade had been sharpened. It glinted keenly in the evening sun as if to let Siegfried know that although it hadn’t fulfilled its original purpose, it wouldn’t mind who swung it at whom so long as it was swung.

“Use it. I saw you caring for your sword, but I’m afraid it isn’t very good. You deserve something better.”

“H-Hold on... K-Kaya can fix him up...”

“And then what? His condition’s beyond what even a talented mage can fix, and even if they did, having a live hostage wouldn’t solve anything. If we took him along with us, that won’t change the fact that he’s a bandit. It doesn’t matter if he was hired by someone upright, they don’t care. Both his employer and the government would treat him as a deserter. The result would be the same.”

As Erich told him this, Siegfried recalled something. Back in his canton, the heads of convicted felons were preserved and put on display as a warning. He had seen more bodies than he could count similarly strang up on the roads. Although they had been preserved to slow their decay, carrion birds and the ravages of the weather wore away at them regardless. They were gruesome to look at; the sight had made Siegfried burst into tears as a young boy.

“Did you also forget that they were all too ready to kill us during their assault? Surely their morals would dictate that their own lives were fair game.”

“P-Please... Help me... I don’t...wanna die... I got...a wife...and a son...”

Despite standing on the cusp of certain death and knowing that he had no future, still the man begged.

“You realize that we have families too, don’t you? You tried to kill me, but I, too, have a father, mother, brothers, a sister, and friends who would mourn if they never heard from me again. I’m in the same position as you. Enough sniveling. If you really picked a fight with such weak resolve, then you deserve to make amends through your death.”

However, Erich’s callousness in the face of this dying man was far more terrifying to Siegfried than the lifeless heads from his past.

He’s used to all of this, he thought.

Goldilocks sighed as he watched Siegfried clutch the sword in his hands with no intent to draw it.

“If you can’t do it, shall I? I only need his head to collect the bounty. Shame; he would have fetched a better price alive.”

“A better price?! You heartless bastard, does someone’s life mean so little to you?”

“And what kind of fucking game do you think this is, y’brat?!”

Siegfried was taken aback by Erich’s statement. All the rough countryside manner he’d reserved solely for jokes before came out at once. Although he hadn’t raised his voice, it carried such a vicious sentiment that he might as well have been shouting.

“Adventurers are violent creatures; we kill until we’re killed in turn! If you can’t hack it, head on back home! Don’t waste your days agonizing! If this ain’t the job for you, then put down the sword, pick up a sickle, and get back to the fields instead!”

Erich drew Schutzwolfe—the sword that he had proudly said he had inherited from his father. When Siegfried had heard the story that night as they sat around the bonfire, a familiar jealousy had reared its ugly head, thinking that Erich was blessed to have received such a beautiful sword. Now he understood.

A sword was naught but a tool for stealing other folk’s lives. The only variation came in who it was pointed at and the cause that theft served. Whoever the wielder, whatever the purpose, blood and blood alone would follow.

Heroic tales were written in the stuff. The story was embellished and toned down in places, all for the sake of pleasing the audience, but they ended in death, without exception.

If the hero did not take the life of the evil tyrant, then the criminal would end up being publicly executed as an example. In all honesty, stories which ended with blood on the hero’s hands proved far more cathartic.

Hero or criminal, for both sorts blood was their trade, their art, and their reward.

Yes, the tyrants and crooks arrayed against a hero were most often worse folk with fouler intentions—to what end but stopping a greater evil could anyone excuse (worse yet, praise) a killer? It was a bitter calculus, best reserved for those rare few who already had the appetite for such faint praise: Thank you for doing what we needed but could not want for ourselves.

“Come on. Out of the way. I’ll do it.”

Receiving Goldilocks’s cruel gaze, Siegfried finally understood his situation.

This was reality. It bore no resemblance to life back home, crammed into a tiny bed with his brothers, where he had dreams of slicing the bad guy to pieces without a drop of blood shed. So it would be for any adventurer.

As he took in the foul, stinging stench, Siegfried considered a very real possibility.

If I make even one wrong move, it’ll be me here, groaning on the ground.

An even worse fate could be in store. He pictured the hateful, bloodcurdling fate that might await his own best friend, all because she happened to be a woman following the same path.

Another thought came upon him. If they hadn’t stopped the men here, what might they have done to someone else?

A hero was someone who protected the people.

“Worked up your nerve? Okay, do it.”

Goldilocks lowered his sword. He had noticed that something in Siegfried’s eyes had changed. He pointed at the man, who still pleaded for his life.

“He’s wearing armor, so you need to strike somewhere unprotected.”

“H-His...neck...?”

“Yeah. We can collect the head later. First you need to put him out of his misery.”

“Wait! Stop, plea—”

Maybe the man’s heart now beat at a slow, dull pace, for the spurt of blood that shone in the twilight was small. Yet the boy found himself with blood dirtying his face, throwing the old scar on his cheek into relief.

“Oof, that’s not pleasant. If you strike at the wrong angle you can end up dirtying yourself.”

In that moment, Siegfried had taken one step closer to the life he’d sought. One step closer to the legend he dreamed of becoming. One step further from everything else. It didn’t feel like killing a fellow mensch. Maybe it was the quality of the sword that Erich had picked out as worthy spoils, but the dead man’s flesh hardly pushed back against its edge.

It felt unreal, more a thing taken straight from the tales than forged from crude matter.

“Anyway, congrats on your first kill. I take back what I said—Siegfried, you’ve got the right stuff.”

Erich went on to talk about how trepidation over a kill didn’t mean you were incapable, his voice filled with remorse for his past self. But his words barely reached Siegfried’s ears, as if he were speaking to someone else entirely.

All the same, Siegfried had walked away with no small profit:

A high-quality sword, a set of armor that would fit him once he’d grown a bit or paid for some adjustments, and the sense that he was finally initiated into this grand and storied line of butchers.

[Tips] True mercy requires an awareness of the possibilities of a job left undone. If a spared foe causes problems elsewhere, the one who chose not to make the kill bears some part of the blame.

“You need to make the cut in between the cervical vertebrae. Otherwise you’ll hit bone, you won’t make a clean cut, and you might chip your blade if you’re not careful. You got all that?”

As I gave Siegfried a rundown of how best to deal with a body, I wondered if I was being a bit too harsh on the guy. But be that as it may, he needed to internalize this stuff if he was going to have any future as a fellow career killer.

In my case, when it came to the genuine bastards I’d had to fight, I’d only left them alive (if not wholly intact; try disarming a guy without at least mangling his fingers before you start giving me a hard time) for practical purposes—better intel or a bigger bounty. Of course, if I genuinely pitied the poor soul I was fighting, I felt comfortable leaving them with a sound but nonlethal beatdown; usually that was cause enough for a fellow to reevaluate their life choices. But the thing about Rhinian society was that what awaited a criminal, whether it was their first offense or their hundredth, was a sentence akin to death. For many, it boiled down to a cut-and-dried public execution; the lucky ones, if you could really call it “luck,” were consigned to spend the remainder of their days spent literally shackled in brutal indentured servitude.

Even if I didn’t man the guillotine myself, turning in a live bounty amounted to little more than delayed murder. No adventurer could last long without taking the lesson to heart.

I’d taken pity on Dietrich because she had only known death through ritual combat or war. I hadn’t turned in those dipshit “fellow adventurers”—no fellows of mine, mind you—on the same trip home because I didn’t want to frighten the caravan too much. Not that there was anywhere I would have been able to hand them in in the first place; I supposed that had played a part in saving their bacon. And again, I didn’t take any lives during my scuffles with the brutish clans of Marsheim because I didn’t want to propel a small conflict into all-out anarchy.

Today’s pack of murderous devils were an altogether different bunch. Their work was well honed and effective. Piles of corpses lay in their wake, even if we’d never had a chance to see them. Simple roadside thugs they were not.

That prick’s parting words had irked me more than they should have. Was he serious with that “I have a wife and kids” spiel? We all had people we cared about who would shed tears if our lives were cut short on the road.

As it stood, we lived in a world that sustained a class of truly vicious scumbags that made certain literal bloodsucking nobles I could name look morally complex or outright saintly by comparison—and in dealings with that class, “preemptive violence” and “preventive care” start to look very much alike. There’s a statistically inevitable human cost proportional to how long they’re even allowed to remain in captivity; let just one make a jailbreak and they’ll take out their thirst for vengeance on everyone in reach. Sure, you could chalk it up to the GM’s desire to establish tone and keep the gameplay loop rolling, but at the end of the day, I still figured it was better to shoulder the trauma of snuffing out the candle of a two-time offender than let however many innocent bystanders catch all the heat. I know how that moral calculus simplifies down; I can afford the bad dreams.

Spitting in the face of that pathetic creep as he begged for his life without compunction was far simpler than letting the shapeless guilt over his potential future crimes gnaw at me. No bounty, no matter how generous, could buy back a human life, regardless of how cheap the exchange was in the other direction. Ah. Well, let’s ignore those rare cases where people do come back from the dead, albeit...changed.

An adventurer cannot falter when it comes to hunting down the crooked. A mountain of heads was a small price to pay if it saved at least as many lives. Just as these criminals put the value of their lives above others, I could stand firm in my assertion that the lives of those I protected were worth more. Can’t fault that logic, can they?

I was impressed that Siegfried had managed to steel his own nerves. The way of the murderhobo came easy to a time-tested player character, but that was hardly the only way to get by in a world like this. There was room here for gore-shy peaceniks—just not in our line of work. Every adventurer gets their moment where their mettle is truly tested; his was upon him now. If he could keep his resolve up like this to the end, I’d be sure that that strength could carry him as far as he wanted to go.

I hadn’t lied earlier when I’d said that the bandit was beyond saving. No good would come of us failing to see him through to the end. The bolt had hit him in a nasty spot—too bad, better luck next life. I’m not sure if it was Siegfried or me who had taken the shot, but from the stench of his bowels seeping out into the open air I could tell that no amount of medical aid would help him. Even slicing open his stomach, stitching his guts back together, and then cleaning it all up was a task that would only be possible at the best-equipped hospitals of my old world.

Before I’d found Siegfried, I myself had brought a swift end to two others and taken their heads. One had wound up with a trampled sternum from falling under a horse’s hooves; the shattered bone had pierced his lungs, and he’d been drowning in his own blood. The other had received a stray arrow just shy of his liver; he hadn’t been long for this world either.

We had neither the duty nor the means to call in an emergency iatrurge to save their lives.

Phew, talk about dangerous. Sure, I’d had close calls with more than my fair share of contract killers and oath-bound assassins in my time with the madam after she’d received her new title, but it hadn’t totally inured me to the simpler and more abundant perils of overland adventure.

The path to being a hero was a long one, paved with thorns.

“Chin up, Siegfried. No shame in claiming a bounty. So get a good grip on that head and treat it well.”

I gave Siegfried a hearty pat on the back as I said this. He was holding the head as far as he could from his body, having made a bundle out of some clothes that had outlived their usefulness otherwise; no point keeping a corpse warm.

“It’s proof that you prevented an otherwise inevitable tragedy. Be proud. At least give him the honor of the villain’s role in your heroic tale.”

If the dice had fallen differently it would be us decorating their banquet table. We would practically be doing the fools a service, casting them in their minor parts as we recalled our doings later. Even as he glared at me with his empty eyes from between the gaps in the cloth bundle, I wouldn’t change my tune.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention of proclaiming that what we were doing was right or just, but I do want to say that I was sure it wasn’t wrong.

“Right, let’s head back before they start worrying about us. We still need to find somewhere to camp out for the night.”

“Yeah, got it,” Siegfried replied after a pause.

I slung my arm over my fellow adventurer—no, my comrade in arms—and we made our triumphant return.

I won’t really get into the fine details here—it’s too petty an affair—but I found out later that Uzu had sped off like a jet at the first sign of danger, and for her, I had concocted a little revenge plot.

[Tips] It’s easy to wrap up a story with the line “And then the defeated hoodlums gave up their evil ways and headed back home,” but reality is not so kind. Staining your hands red with blood is only difficult the first time. Certain doors, once unlocked, will never shut so tightly again—regardless of one’s efforts.

The boy who dreamed of being a hero sighed as he pushed down the urge to punch Goldilocks’s face, inwardly vowing never to go on another job with the wretch.

“Heya, Siegfried. Fancy seeing you here.”

Fancy seeing me here? They were both in the Association building—luck had nothing to do with it.

It had been a little while since returning to Marsheim from Siegfried’s near-death experience. The report of his valiant efforts in helping to drive off the bandits had been filed a little late, but it had earned him an increase in rank. Unfortunately, it had also meant he was that much more likely to bump into his fellow newly minted ruby-red cohort.

A lingering memory of the events of that job came back to Siegfried, and he scrunched up his face in disgust—as if he’d bit down on an insect and felt it wriggle down the wrong pipe.

That twilit evening had terrified him—the arrows that had barely grazed him; the spears that had shredded his shirt sleeve; the warm splatter of blood. Above all else, he recalled gentle parting of flesh, the rasp of metal on bone, the heavy thud as the head of a man still clinging to life by a nail’s hold fell to the ground.

All of these moments haunted his dreams. He would jolt awake in the night, while his closest friend could only look on in concern.

As time passed, Siegfried found his stride again, or something like it. But the memory of those silver coins in his hand, slick and shiny and cool like pooling blood in the moonlight—that would stay with him for good. He’d only been paid his fee for the contract; the bandit’s bounty was still being processed.

“Hello, Erich, Margit.”

“Hello to you too, Kaya.”

Yet here Kaya was greeting both Goldilocks and the arachne girl. Siegfried couldn’t stand the fact that his best friend had taken a liking to Goldilocks and his treacherous smile.

According to her, Erich had been awfully kind to her; he’d told her about all sorts of herbal concoctions that she’d never heard of. Seeing her talk about him with such high spirits made his blood boil. Ever since, the hot-blooded youth had made more efforts to prove himself before her and aimed to be even more chivalrous than before. Well, he had been carrying her things and whatnot beforehand, but a fire had been lit under him nonetheless. Siegfried wondered what the hell Goldilocks wanted.

A voice deep in his soul whispered to him that no good would come of associating with this aberration any longer.

All Siegfried wanted for the moment was to wrap up this pointless conversation and get back to finding his next gig—he still needed money.

If you were to ask Siegfried whether his new rank had brought with it an escape from abject poverty, he would answer with a firm and solemn no. He was still so poor that he needed to pad out the two portions of gruel that made up his three daily meals with wheat chaff. The caravan job had paid well, but its payment had been put aside for emergencies and wasn’t something he’d dip into so easily.

After paying for the pair’s lodging, their daily expenses, and the preparations needed for their jobs, his wallet contained nothing more than chump change.

And of course just the other day the handle of his beloved short spear would go and break.

The screwup had happened on a job a few days prior. Standing guard in a canteen, Siegfried had spotted a drunk customer about to take a dangerous tumble. He had jumped in to help out, but...things don’t always go to plan. Unable to bear the customer’s weight, he’d rolled into the wall along with them. As Siegfried the Lucky would have it, the shaft of the short spear held under his armpit had found its way into a gap between the floor and the wall. Physics was not on his side; the spear he had owned ever since he had fled from his canton snapped in two.

Fortunately, Siegfried hadn’t been utterly hapless; the head was fine. The shaft could be replaced quite easily, but for a young adventurer between paydays, it was quite the problem. He had quickly taken it to an equipment repair shop and been told that the fix would cost him twenty-five librae—an eye-watering sum that even the bandit’s bounty and the caravan gig combined wouldn’t cover.

Siegfried had felt the ground open up underneath his feet.

Yet his shock was little more than a reality check—such a price was to be expected to whittle a sturdy and high-quality shaft for his beloved spear.

There was a world of difference between him picking up some old stick and affixing it to the spear head and a professional’s craftwork. Thinking it over, he realized the artisan had most likely deliberately lowballed his quote out of concern for a greenhorn adventurer.

A short spear was an essential for an adventurer climbing the ranks. Whether fighting in formation with other adventurers with a respect for the fundamentals or engaging with wild beasts, a weapon with some real reach proved indispensable.

In all honesty, it was far weirder to see people like Goldilocks go about with nothing but a sword and board.

Siegfried didn’t want to bet his life on a fragile homemade shaft; he could accept no substitutions for real artisan work. Unfortunately, even at ruby-rank, the boring jobs would only net him one or two librae at best. Subtracting his basic cost of living, he didn’t know how many months it would take to stock up enough cash to fix his spear. He was already testing the outer bounds of how long he could go between baths in the name of scraping together a few more coins.

He could have sold the spoils of his nightmare gig, but Siegfried didn’t want to part with either the sword or the armor. They would prove essential for any bodyguard jobs in the future, after all.

So naturally Erich’s proposal was sweet as poison to Siegfried.

“Hear me out. I actually got a personal request to take on a bodyguard gig. You remember our little run-in with the bandits on that job we did together, right? Well, the story’s made the rounds with a bunch of convoys, and now I’m sitting on a little job that pays one libra and fifty assarii per day. They were wondering if Siegfried the Lucky would also like to lend his aid.”

One libra and fifty assarii?! Siegfried almost jumped back in surprise at the sum. Regular bodyguard jobs for a ruby-red adventurer averaged out to about fifty assarii per day—hardly ideal. And that was before food and other costs had been factored in.

Yet this proposition was three times the going rate—about what you would expect from the next rank up, with all the expectations of skill that that would imply. Siegfried supposed that Goldilocks had received the offer because his prospective employers had realized that an amber-orange adventurer with some leverage could negotiate the asking price up to two or three librae, and so had settled for an easily placated ruby-red who could punch above their weight class, so to speak.

It was an alluring proposition. Each day would pay out what would usually take three days to earn. Not only that, he wouldn’t have to pay for lodgings while out on the road; depending on the schedule, he could actually save some money.

“H-How long’s it for and where would it be going?”

He could scarcely think for all the alarm bells going off inside his head, but the money—his lips were already moving faster than his brain.

At the name of a nearby satellite state and the news that they would be out until the end of autumn, logic and reason, already barely hanging on, were given a bullish shove out of the spotlight by greed and expedience. Before he even knew what he was doing, Siegfried found himself shaking Erich’s outstretched hand.

“Amazing. It’s reassuring to have you along for the ride.”

Siegfried easily put aside this disingenuous comment and tamped down his reticence. He literally couldn’t afford to say no. Siegfried put on an unconvincing smile in return.

“Don’t worry too much—it’s a big operation this time: seven carriages and ten of the caravan’s private bodyguards. They’re hiring a few other self-employed folk, so the operation might even reach three figures! I’m certain that we won’t have to do any real work while we’re on the road.”

Hearing these figures put Siegfried’s heart at ease. Ten professional bodyguards meant that the caravan must have been pretty well equipped. It wasn’t a ragtag group of scrubs who’d only earned the job title with the swords dangling from their waists. What’s more, they’d have real numbers and more Association muscle on their side.

Now, the promise of safety in numbers had left Siegfried with a false sense of security last time—he could admit this. But this was way bigger; what was there to worry about? Only the vocally suicidal would dare attack a caravan troupe of that size.

It would take the most audacious and fearsome of marauders, backed by a literal army of brigands, to dare the approach.

“You don’t need to worry at all, Sieg. At this time of year, the roads will be busy with carriages delivering land taxes; tax payments in transit means big patrols; big patrols mean all the bandits go to ground for the season. Plus, we’re a capable team, so there’s nothing to fear.”

With the announcement that they would be departing next week, Siegfried made his preparations to hit the road. The journey would span the end of autumn and early winter, so he would need more supplies than usual. Blizzards were rare in these parts, but it still got awfully cold; he would need warm blankets.

Siegfried envisioned that he probably wouldn’t need his short spear on a ruby-red job; he decided to send it in for repairs once they were back. The new sword on his belt would be enough to play the part.

“What good timing, huh, Dee?” said Kaya.

Siegfried couldn’t help but reciprocate her smile—after taking the time to give her hell for not calling him Siegfried, of course.

When they were back he would have enough money to get his spear fixed—no, he could afford to get something a bit better, with an iron core, maybe! Hmm, he thought, although Kaya’s robe is getting a bit worse for wear, so how about I buy her some new cloth? Kaya had a talent for needlework; she could work something out if she had the materials. Siegfried made a mental note to buy her something in her favorite shade of chartreuse.

Siegfried set to avidly counting his unhatched chickens—completely ignorant that the hand he’d shaken dripped pure venom. Yes, he was still unaware, and all the better for it. The time would come soon enough when his blissful ignorance would crumble under a storm of sword edges, arrow tips, and streaming tears.

Consider for a moment an adventurer’s lot—locked in a mutual death grip with your own misfortunes like the worst of lovers, driven back to your lowest lows to keep food on the table, good gear at your side, and your rank on an upward trajectory, all to build a résumé that meant nothing outside the business. To the average civilian you amounted to little more than a hired hand, a thug, a gangster. And should you quit—what more would be left for you?

Between protracted abjection and a moment’s brush with death for the sake of a grand task, any adventurer would choose the latter.

And so Siegfried smiled, envisioning his lavish reward.

And so Siegfried would scream and wail that this wasn’t what he wanted.

But through it all, Siegfried wouldn’t break. His silly pride, the childish dreams he kept in a death grip—they would keep him intact.

The world was not so kind a place that everyone could live with a broad smile across their face every day of their lives.

[Tips] The price of weapons is decided by the market. Therefore, trying to procure one on the front lines of a battle through honest means comes at a steep cost.

Selling a sword that one has acquired to the Artisans’ Guild requires formal proof of its legal provenance. However, weapons stripped from a bandit or taken as spoils of war are exempt from this rule.

As the harvest wrapped up and the end of autumn crept closer, the roads bustled with carriages. Tax season was upon us—not just in the Empire, but all over.

I remember back in Japan, the historical dramas never ran short of scenes of starving commoners slinging heavy bales of rice on their shoulders to offer up to the shogunate, but here in Rhine all of the annual tribute was shipped off in one go, for efficiency’s sake.

In the larger administrative states, huge convoys carrying the land tax over miles and miles were just part of the autumn tableau.

But in the distant reaches of Marsheim, thanks to a lack of administrative cohesion and a lack of manpower—this wasn’t a numbers problem, it was more the difficulty of finding people that could be trusted—the carriages delivering the land tax were accompanied by patrol knights, high-level adventurers, and trustworthy mercenaries.

“All righty then, let’s get this show on the road! You guys have a trustworthy rep to ya, after all!”

Thanks to Nanna’s information network, word had spread that we were capable adventurers as good as any amber-orange but for a fraction of the price. This was the busiest time of year and everyone was short on hands; it was all but inevitable that we’d find ourselves part of a bodyguard entourage.

The purpose of this trip around the peripheries was to sell excess crops and goods to the cantons who’d requested it. We had gathered around the planner of this entire operation, but the one talking to the crowd was a huge adventurer—a nemea.

He had bronze skin, a chestnut mane, a muscular figure, and the severe resting expression of your typical nemea. Many mensch couldn’t tell them apart, but I didn’t have too much trouble distinguishing this handsome gentleman from his kin.

“Are you kidding me?! That’s Gattie from Mwenemutapa! It’s the Heavy Tusk Gattie! And his freakin’ concubines too!”

“I-I g-get it, Siegfried. I c-can see him, so stop moving so much!”

Young Siegfried, usually so angry to be seen as a party member of mine of late, sat atop my shoulders, rocking violently. He was quite literally starstruck.

Heavy Tusk Gattie was a famous hero around these parts and a copper-green adventurer.

He’d earned his sobriquet for the tusk of a mankwa—a type of demihuman that had evolved separately from elephants in the Southern Continent—that hung from his neck. I was impressed with his PR skills. We only had our names to get us ahead in this business, after all. It was important to have something stand out about your appearance so anyone would know it was you even from afar.

Gattie had earned fame for single-handedly quashing the incursion of the mankwa people from the southern continent, who had set their sights on the prosperous Trialist Empire of Rhine.

Nemea were famed even among humanfolk for their toughness, but the mankwa put even them to shame. They were the southern continent’s equivalent to ogres, boasting heights of over three meters, allowing them to go toe-to-toe with callistians in a wrestling match. By and large they were mild-mannered folk, but those few mankwa with a taste for new enemies to flatten and greater feats of strength to boast of had a way of finding each other and organizing.

Gattie had followed this particular crew of mankwa bullies out of the southern continent with his party—the five women who formed his entourage.

Nemean family structures paralleled those of actual lions; the women outnumbered their men and handled most of the day-to-day labor of keeping the family fed and intact. You couldn’t underestimate a nemea woman just because the man might cut a more dramatic profile to human eyes. They refined their individual skills to fine and lethal points. At any moment, a nemea woman was expected to fight on the behalf of her whole pride and commit to deadly tasks with the dread certainty of a trusted executioner.

Gattie’s party was a group of honed fighters centered around this frontliner.

I wondered about Leopold of the Bloody Manes. Had he been the only nemea in his party because he simply couldn’t get any, especially with hunks like Gattie on the market? I decided not to dwell on this too much longer...

“Anyway, you can leave everything to us. As long as we’re around, you can strip off your armor and throw your spears to the ground!”

Gattie’s party had just happened to bump into our parade on the road, and as he’d quite literally roared out, it seemed he was happy to join our group. His party had a similar role to ours, but with more importance—the land tax they were guarding was to be sent to the government. The knight who was nominally in charge of that procession stood by his side, but it was evident that Gattie had all the power here.

Jeez, it really is like the Wild West out here.

“Erich, ERICH! You think I can go ask to shake his hand?! He’s a living legend and we just happen to be on the same job as him? What are the odds?!”

“All right, all right, just calm down already. You’re gonna make me bite my tongue. You can do what you like. If this is revenge for something, then I’m sorry, okay?”

I hadn’t realized Siegfried was such a fanboy. Well, I’d surmised from his choice of borrowed name that he loved hero stories and sagas, but seeing him lose his composure so completely around the newest big name in the industry spoke to a deeper fascination.

Personally I couldn’t help but feel my own excitement at this whole team-up wither away. It wasn’t any particular fault of Gattie’s. I’m sure he was plenty strong. You couldn’t luck your way to copper-green, and I could tell he could pop off if he wanted. As my senior in the adventuring biz, I respected him, sure.

The thing that bothered me was the knight next to Gattie. The emblem on the banner he was holding was markedly off from the Imperial house style. This operation was being run by a strongman looking to avoid any local strife and safely huddle under the power of the Empire. This put a damper on my ability to fully trust him. Not only that, the knight’s active choice not to stand out bugged me.

On top of that, the fact that the bodyguard complement had been padded out so overwhelmingly with adventurers made me think that if they were so keen on keeping their purse strings tight, they should have just plonked a bunch of mannequins around the caravans and been done with it.

If you tried to assemble such a shabby procession in Ubiorum, I was sure the person responsible would have their territory seized before they were executed.

Come on, keep it together, Margrave Marsheim... Welcoming enemies into the fold while suppressing any personal ambition? Ugh, it reminds me of poor ol’ Tokugawa... One could only hope that the knight’s sponsor would fare better than the mankwa invaders had.

But still... But still... As someone who worked for an Imperial noble, even if only for a little while, it made me sad, man.

You call yourself a knight of Rhine?! Pull up those bootstraps! Fix that eyesore of a banner! At least put some effort into coming up with a more apt motto of your own! Don’t just recycle an old one!

Wow, where did all this righteous anger come from? I kind of wanted to whip out my signet ring right here and now. Was the situation really that desperate? Not in the slightest. But the whole situation wound me up all the same.

Calm yourself, Erich, I thought. Nothing will come of spilling unnecessary intel and causing a big old fuss. If rumors start spreading that the tentacles of a certain magus in a high place have reached the peripheries, then what kind of bone-chilling complaint do you think you’ll get from Lady Agrippina? The thought was enough to make my stomach churn. Push down that anger and keep a cool expression. There we go.

The difficulties of life out here in the western reaches of the Empire helped the people here make a living, in a perverse kind of way. Let’s just let it slide.

A hero whose name lined the pages of sagas had announced that he would lead the charge, and all we needed to do was stick close to the caravans and let him do his job. Our eighty-head convoy had quadrupled in size now that we were playing remora to this shark. With the Imperial flag above us and Gattie’s heroic name, we had the sort of immense might that would halt any suicidal fool in their tracks.

Rhine was a big place, but I doubted there were many who would dare launch an attack on such a gargantuan operation.

Good luck, assholes! I’m behind seven proxies!

I wasn’t sure why my memories of ancient internet tough guy memes decided to pick now of all times to resurface. I couldn’t help feeling that I’d raised some kind of flag. No. Must be my imagination. Right? Yeah. Surely.

Come on, Erich, you gotta be more optimistic about life! Look—you’ve made enough of a name for yourself as an adventurer that you’ve earned the trust and respect of both the Association manager and the noble community! It’s the whole reason you got this job! This is a great way to boost your name even more. Talk about a great opportunity. Yeah?

Siegfried came bouncing back after shaking hands with a real-life hero in the flesh; now with our new convoy, the carriages finally started to move.

Whether the elites were positioned at the front or back, you could always be sure on these bodyguard jobs that somebody—usually a lot of somebodies—would fill the role of “expendable mook.” So in the one in a hundred—no, one in a million—chance that we were attacked, our assigned carriage would take up the front of the line. In the worst-case scenario, we could buy some time until the main unit could come and bail us out.

“He was massive! Not just tall, he was so beefy! Man, Kaya, you totally should’ve come to say hi too!”

“I was fine not seeing him. But lucky you, Dee, he even gave you a hug around the shoulders!”

“Yeah! Talk about awesome!”

Siegfried couldn’t keep a lid on his excitement as he chatted on about Gattie to Kaya, but it was clear that she wasn’t a fan of guys with such rustic charm. Or maybe this is just how girls behaved when a boy their age got overexcited.

“So that’s a copper-green adventurer, eh,” Margit said.

“Mm, adventurer rank is decided not just by your work, but also your own personal qualities.”

“You say that, but I don’t think you would even need Mister Fidelio to take them all on. I bet even Miss Laurentius could easily—”

“Margit, shh!”

Dude, if they heard you, they would not be happy!

I mean, I get it, everyone loves playing a little “let’s you and him fight” in their head. As a lover of the sagas, I was hardly in any position to judge.

Just like my brother Hans, my personal fave was the wandering Sir Carsten. Sir Carsten had incurred the wrath of a god—the details vary, but the traditionally accepted common point is that he fell in love with an apostle at first sight and made some moves—and went on a journey of penance that took him far abroad. When he finally received his atonement, he had become unstoppable.

Sir Carsten had innumerable tales written about him, and they were all classics. Even putting aside my favoritism toward perfectly self-sufficient adventurers, in my book he still stood head and shoulders above the rest.

It was, uh, pretty obvious who Siegfried’s favorite hero was, so whenever we bantered about heroes and legends, I avoided the usual “who’d beat who” discourse.

It was not unlike having a favorite baseball team. I dare you to go to my hometown of Osaka and tell everyone there that your favorite team is the Giants. Find a particularly patriotic Kansai person and you might come away bruised and swimming with the fishes in Dotonbori canal before sundown.

Jokes aside, when you started to compare living adventurers, you risked genuinely raising some hackles. Nemea weren’t famed for their hearing, but if anyone who worked under Gattie heard us we’d be branded as ungracious newbies.

I had felt what Margit had felt too. Even if Gattie’s entire party came together and made their best showing, Miss Laurentius alone was far stronger. And if I took them on? Well, even without all of my gear and magic, I think I could just about come out on top.

I’m sure everyone has met an actor who looked way more handsome in photos and been like, “Huh, you’re...not as good-looking in person.” This was a similar thing.

Cutting the guy some slack, there were people whose entire demeanor did a one-eighty when things got hairy, and I fit under that umbrella too. In fact, nearly every person who’d ever truly scared the bejeezus out of me didn’t look the part at first glance; who could say—maybe Gattie had hidden depths.

Whatever, I thought. Let’s just be grateful that his strength is on our side. Oughta be a piece of cake.

[Tips] As an adventurer climbs the ranks, it becomes more difficult to quantify their strength. Some adventurers might have earned their rank for a single overwhelming talent; others might have no redeeming qualities of their own. Personal merit is hardly the only factor at play in an adventurer’s promotion. For example, some adventurers find themselves quickly pushed up the ladder for their impeccable behavior when dealing with noble clients.

On the other hand, there are also heartless adventurers who have soared up the rankings based on the indomitable power to crush all in their way.

Hey, Erich? You know how you were totally not worried? Yeah, I’ve got some bad news for you.

In the three days since we joined up with the caravan carrying the land tax, we had been keeping watch in a six-division system—four hours each, in other words—with a lot of sleep and rests. I’d really appreciated the convenience of moving in such a big group. But now we were dealing with an issue in direct proportion to the scale of our operation.

We had reached a particularly hilly region—the bumps and occasional rising and falling of the land looked almost like an egg carton—where a snaking road carved its way through the hills at their base. It was far easier to build and cross a road like this than a straight one that went up and down in line with the hills.

I could understand the thought process of those who built it and those who were traveling down it, but man this kind of terrain was hell for a bodyguard. The top of a hill provided a great view, but down here on the road you could barely see a thing. Not only that, the number of bends meant that our caravans wouldn’t be able to turn around easily in the event of an attack, and trying to escape up any of the hillsides would prove quite difficult.

An area like this was akin to a deathtrap for a large-scale caravan operation like ours. Once we were halfway through and our pace had slowed due to the winding nature of the road, it would be easy to block us off at both ends. If we found ourselves in a pincer, we would be more helpless than a caged bird—ready to sing for the enemy or be crushed.

Our stratagem was to send scouts ahead, maintaining constant vigilance for bandits in the gaps in the terrain. It was a bodyguard’s duty to map out what lay in front of the client’s course and develop countermeasures accordingly.

Our group was too big to keep constantly in full view. At this size, inevitably the left hand would struggle to know what the right was up to.

“Holy moly...” I said.

“Seeing them be so brazen is almost a breath of fresh air,” Margit replied.

Yes, as my sterling luck would have it, we had bumped into a group who had blocked off our narrow strip of road.

A number of abatises had been laid out with just enough space to fit a horse between them. At the far end, soldiers lay in wait with spears raised, while the rest of the complement was stationed in the hills. And finally, there was a whole squadron of cavalry posted a bit farther up the sides to lead a surprise charge at a moment’s notice.

This was no mere bandit gang. This was a bona fide army—a hundred fighters, minimum.

“Margit, go report back. I’ll stay here and keep watch. And if anything happens...”

“You’ll use magic to let me know, right? Understood, I’ll get going.”

I watched my partner, who had been observing the scene by my side, head off before I sank into the earth with a heavy sigh.

This was not good. I already didn’t like the sheer size of this crew, but the banner they were flying was even worse news.

“The Infernal Knight, Jonas Baltlinden.”

Upon the bloodstained war flag that these bandits had raised was an emblem depicting the heads of two wyverns holding up a single shield.

It was the flag of Jonas Baltlinden, infamous around these parts as the Infernal Knight, the Reprobate, the Traitor.

The emblem originally belonged to Jonas’s master’s house of Mars-Baden—in other words, it belonged to a Baden, a distant relative of the Rhinian imperial house. One of them had most likely seen promise in Jonas’s abilities and had sent him to quell the unruly peripheries.

However, this troop did not belong to his house, that of Baron Jotzheim. After all, the family had been slain by Jonas himself—the very knight they had appointed.

Jonas had slaughtered his own master in a fit of rage over having been scolded for his behavior. The baron had discovered that Jonas had been ruling his appointed canton with an iron fist and had flown into a rage at his tyranny. However, this only made whatever emotions Jonas had been holding in check snap.

Jonas drew his sword there and then and cut down Baron Jotzheim and his entourage in cold blood. Unsatisfied with this, he killed the baron’s wife, his three sons, his two daughters, and all of his servants. Evidently still unsatisfied, he then went to the baron’s other home and murdered his favorite concubine and their children.

Over two nights, he murdered forty-five people.

This was naught more than the beginning of his blood-soaked, traitorous path. Afterward, along with his seven most loyal underlings, he diminished his former house’s remaining military might and expanded his own sphere of influence. The army that stood before me was the fruits of his labor.

There was no counting the cantons he’d raided, no imagining the great heap of corpses to his name. He was a fiend of the worst sort, happy to drown the highways and byways of Rhine in blood to slake his greed.

How had such a heinous figure managed to do as he pleased for so long? It wasn’t because people were turning a blind eye, like with the Baldur Clan or the Heilbronn Familie. The Empire had, in fact, moved into action; they wouldn’t endure having mud—no, shit was more appropriate—slung in their faces. A whopping fifty-drachma bounty had been put up for Jonas if he was brought in dead. Naturally many adventurers and mercenaries had tried to claim it and even a margrave or two had mobilized their private forces against him.

Their prey was still here after all this time for a single reason.

None had returned from the attempt alive. Just like Baron Jotzheim, not a single person had encountered Jonas and survived.

Jonas was one of the top three most deadly figures in these parts. I had no clue why this living calamity had put himself in our path. Maybe he’d settled here because the land was suitable. Maybe his base was nearby. Or maybe he’d heard rumors about caravans stocked to the rafters with land tax.

Whatever the reason, we were in hot water.

The true strength of a large convoy lies in its ability to ward off attackers. However, that strength means nothing in the face of someone with the cojones to ignore it. In an actual combat situation, our baggage and our noncombatants put us at a firm disadvantage.

With our numbers, if we attempted a retreat, we’d risk a fatal crowd collapse. Not only that, our bodyguards were spread out, which meant that if our enemies came at us all at once our numbers would be no help at all. We would be picked off one by one like teeth from a comb.

The overwhelming aura coming from our opponents was giving me shivers. It wasn’t just the size of their force; I could sense that their morale was running high.

I thought back to my home’s Watch. Sir Lambert’s capable leadership meant that even the most lowly gaggle of foot soldiers gave off a vigor that outstripped their ability and they could draw out their latent strength. I’d been one of them; I knew what it felt like firsthand.

But the morale that I could sense from this bunch wasn’t that feeling of “We can win because our leader is strong.”

It was tainted with fear. This was an army that had had the fear of god prodding at their backs. They were too petrified by the shapeless, nameless horror awaiting them if they screwed up to flinch or retreat. Such was the might of Jonas Baltlinden.

What to do... We’d come too far to make a detour now. Even I had gotten lax under the safety net of our perceived numerical advantage. We should’ve sent scouts hours or days ahead, not mere minutes out.

If we had, the pointed failure of the scouting party to return would have sent the message loud and clear.

I could try and do this solo and clear the way in front, I thought. Gah, but I can’t let anyone see me use magic... No, no, that’s not important right now—if I don’t do something everybody’s going to die!

Time is ticking away while I worry. Just as the thought came into mind, I heard screams coming from the other side of the hill.

Oh you absolute pieces of shit... Of course they’d had a detachment come up behind us. They had waited until the scouts went ahead, then sent their people to target our rear.

Other scouts who had spread out in the surrounding area used bonfires to keep an eye on the caravan, but they were too small and too weak. Of course I couldn’t have been the only one who’d slacked off a little on the assumption that this was going to be a milk run.

My luck had really bottomed out. I was certain Margit would have spotted any bandits lying in wait; I must have gone to the one spot where they weren’t hiding.

A clash had already broken out behind me. At this rate, the horses would start to panic, bolt off with their carriages in tow, and crash into the carefully laid trap here.

I knew I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t want something to actually happen!

I gave Castor a kick, and we dashed off at full speed. I needed to get back to the head of the procession and make sure they didn’t fall straight into the enemy’s jaws...

[Tips] Jonas Baltlinden is a mensch from Marsheim who serves no master. Once upon a time, his overwhelming martial might earned him a knighthood, but he was unable to quell his violent nature. Climbing to the heights of infamy as the Infernal Knight, he commits such devastation that many have come to fear him as a calamity personified.

Siegfried favored the sword, as it was his heroic namesake’s weapon of choice. Countless adventures and stalwart allies under his belt, the original Siegfried had eventually come up against the devourer of corpses, the blood guzzler, the Foul Drake Fafnir. To slay this horrid beast, Siegfried had obtained Windslaught, a mystic blade and sacred treasure. The young adventurer was completely in awe at how it could cut down all evil that stood in the great hero’s way.

However, Siegfried had started to think recently that the sword wasn’t well suited to him.

“Hrah!”

The incoming blood-drenched spearhead glistened in the midday sun.

“Dammit!”

The target was his lower stomach. The waist was an exposed spot for a well-aimed frontal attack, even with the safety of armor—the smallest of gaps could be used to strike at the soft flesh underneath.

This was something he had learned while training with the Watch: a thrust will almost always be for the stomach, so twist out of the way. This knowledge and his training saved Siegfried’s life in that moment.

Siegfried struck at the incoming spear and managed to swipe it out of the way before it made contact. Siegfried’s strike hit true, but the resounding clack and the painful feedback that ran through his arm told him that the spear hadn’t snapped. The foe’s weapon didn’t have a solid iron core, but Siegfried had failed to break it. He had been too absorbed in saving his skin to strike at the right angle.

Siegfried chided himself. His swordplay absolutely paled in comparison to how Goldilocks had performed during their training.

Complaining that the Watch didn’t force its recruits to perform all-out combat or that they didn’t teach him enough about swordplay hadn’t been on the cards earlier this morning, but in an actual skirmish it was evident that his experience with the sword was lacking. The sword wasn’t to blame, of course. Even this dime-a-dozen blade was leagues above the last one, a piece of steel so chipped and ragged it would have been better suited to sawing logs.

I’m just not good enough!

Siegfried gritted his teeth and forced his body to move how it had been trained. He followed through on his swipe and twisted the sword around to grab the blade in his gauntleted left hand in a half-sword stance. His foe was dazed at having his weapon deflected, and so Siegfried charged right at him.

This was the biggest weakness of spears. They could strike, swipe, and smack from a safe distance, but you needed to control their weight and balance. If you were caught unawares and had your weapon smacked out of its trajectory, it could take precious moments to recover.

As his foe flailed helplessly, Siegfried flung himself at the bandit with enough ready force to send both of them tumbling to the ground.

This wasn’t something he had learned with the Watch. This was something Goldilocks had taught him in a one-on-one training session.

The enemy bandit was clad in a shocking amount of armor, from head to foot. He had a sturdy breastplate, tough cloth armor, a helmet, and leg guards. Although none of his armor was particularly sturdy, it would take a talented warrior to cut through right to the flesh.

That’s why Siegfried was going for the brute force method. The bandit still needed to see; his helmet, in concession to this fundamental need, had a nice wide-open gap right in the middle. Rushing forward, Siegfried put all of his strength into planting his sword into the bandit’s face.

“Bweh...”

What came out of the poor fool’s mouth wasn’t a shout of pain; rather, Siegfried’s strike had forced all the air from his lungs. As the bandit dropped his spear and collapsed to the floor, the young adventurer didn’t hesitate to drive his sword right into the bandit’s exposed nether regions.

“Gweep?!”

This time he let out a scream. It was no surprise—after all, his crown jewels and the many blood vessels that supplied it had been neatly separated.

The space between the legs was another guaranteed thin point in a suit of armor. As the man fell to the ground, Siegfried struck the killing blow. The stories of the Eastern Conquest told by the veterans back in Illfurth must have settled into his heart, for their echoes were present in his fighting style.

Come on, man...This is not easy to handle! Talk about difficult balance!

Siegfried, in no position to rest on his laurels now, had still chosen to sheathe his relatively new partner and was weighing up the dead man’s long spear. He gave it a quick, gliding practice jab—right at the back of the skull of a bandit about to strike down an innocent merchant.

That was a satisfying sound—the heavy thud of iron giving way to steel.

Spears were famed for their piercing abilities, but there were times when the heavy butt was the more preferable end to use when the spearhead wouldn’t be able to strike true. A helmet does its best, but a firm, solid strike with the blunt end of the spear can deal quite the shock. It might not have the power to kill, but it has enough strength to neutralize for a moment.

As the bandit fell to his knees, Siegfried took no time in stabbing the fool’s exposed waist.

“Urgh...!”

The usual groan came out as the spear found its target. Siegfried felt the push of chain mail underneath the cloth armor, but the spear still ruptured the man’s insides before he pulled his weapon free.

His second kill of the day.

“D...Dee!”

“Oy, Kaya! Get back in the carriage! Hide yourself before a stray arrow finds you!”

Siegfried’s personal victory was quite handsome, but around him it was an absolute mess.

Three rounds of indiscriminate arrow rain had come from the foothills. If the extent of the attack was enough to wreak havoc on the bodyguards who had expected an easy job due to safety in numbers, the onslaught that came afterward sealed the deal.

No one around Siegfried had an ounce of fight left in them. They were being mowed down by a wall of thirty enemy bandits. Siegfried wasn’t fighting back because of an organized front against his foes, but because simple dumb luck had left him entirely untouched.

That, and because he knew now just how easy it is for people to die.

“Surround ’im! He ain’t complete a waster—keep your guards up!”

“Gah ha ha! You can piss your pants and run off home to mommy if ya like, stinkin’ brat!”

“Yeah, yer back just paints us a bigger target!”

The bandits had initially gone for any old target near them, but with the caravan’s numbers thinning, they all approached Siegfried.

There weren’t enough of them to make a spear wall, but three spears against one wasn’t good odds. Not only that, these dirty bastards had experience working as a team. Siegfried could tell that they wouldn’t all strike at once; they would time their thrusts to get that surefire kill. The first hit could be blocked or evaded. However, the other two spears held at the ready would be waiting to skewer him as soon as he stopped moving.

There were two ways out of this hell of spears: the strongarm method, where you swiped away multiple attacks at once, or the light-footed method, where you dipped and dived out of harm’s way.

Siegfried knew overexerting himself would lead to death, and so he gripped his spear and readied himself to defend. He struck at the first spear—the man in the center’s—to send it clashing into the spear to his left, then steeled himself to receive the spear that came from his right. It glided off his gauntlet—had Kaya not tweaked the length it covered, the blow would have been agonizing.

And so he was gifted the next moment to breathe.

However, his foes were still there. He had survived a moment longer, but...

“GROAAAAAR!”

All of a sudden an earsplitting war cry, so loud that Siegfried wanted to toss down his weapon and cover his ears, came thundering across the battlefield. The bandits froze for a moment too, seemingly worried that their eardrums had burst...before being rent into mincemeat in the next moment.

A giant battle-axe wheeled through the air like a tornado, heaving the bandit spearmen off their feet.

“Stay calm and form up around me! Any who can’t fight, flee to safety!”

Siegfried had only managed to prolong his life for a few seconds, but this was long enough to save it—hearing the sound of battle, Gattie and his party had rushed onto the scene.

The valiant nemea had come through for the newbie adventurer who had asked him earlier for a handshake. As he let out another war cry, his axe pulled itself out of a pile of stinking meat that had once been a bandit and flew back into his hand.

The axe’s enchantment bound it to the bracelet on Gattie’s wrist, such that it would come and fly forth at his clangorous beck and call.

Of course, whoever had done the enchanting hadn’t been able to turn it into a remote-controlled death machine; it simply followed the inexorable pull of the nemea’s great well of power. All the same, it soared gracefully back into his huge hand.

In the next moment, a boom like the earth itself had shattered rattled the sky. With huge claws drawn, Gattie bounded across the battlefield in a flash of true leonine prowess, pouncing into the fray.

“Eep?!”

“Fragile thing!”

The bandit’s spear, raised in weak defiance, shattered into pieces under the nemea’s battle-axe, the follow-through striking the poor fool’s helmet, then smashing into the bandit’s shoulder plate down into his chest.

The bandits’ one-sided assault was turned completely on its head as Gattie and his party ripped through them. Gattie’s war cry had planted the seed of fear into all their hearts and dulled their movements.

Spearplay that had been trained to a deadly level was rendered useless, their points unable to strike through flesh, before the battle-axe’s return strike shattered life after life with all the ease in the world.

One blow apiece sent bandit after bandit flying into their graves, without care for kith or the weapon they held—even the daunting callistian leading the rear guard, heavy war hammer in hand, was felled in moments. The finishing blow came not long after.

“Holy hell... He’s incredible.”

“Show some nerve, you bags of meat!”

Siegfried’s murmur and Gattie’s cry couldn’t be more at odds with one another. Siegfried was in utter shock at the sight of a legend in the flesh; Gattie just bemoaned the shameful lack of challenge.

Perhaps these bandits’ allies had cottoned on from the screams and cries that their fellows had been all but decimated. Another volley of arrows rained down, but this was of no concern to Gattie—he simply hauled the huge callistian above him and used the corpse as a shield.

“So...that’s how a true hero fights...”

Siegfried, anticipating the imminent rain of death, had sneaked under a carriage for safety. His fear turned into admiration.

He’s strong. He’s so damn strong.

A fire had been kindled in Siegfried’s heart. He was encouraged—if he’s around I’ll survive this thing! What was more, he wished to one day become like him. No, more than a wish—he promised himself he would become that strong. As the volley drew to an end, Siegfried pulled himself out from under the carriage.

Perhaps five rounds of arrows had been enough, or maybe they had simply grown tired, for the archers on the hillside didn’t strike again.

“They’re lacking... Something’s off. These aren’t the numbers you’d expect to attack a convoy of our size.”

Gattie muttered to himself as he tossed the callistian pincushion to the ground. His five concubines, who had just about finished off dispatching the other foot soldiers, concurred.

Their numbers, their equipment, and their skill far outclassed your average roadside robber, but it definitely wasn’t the level you would expect from a group who were so ready to attack such a large parade.

“Which means we set our sights on what’s ahead, huh...”

Just as Gattie was organizing his thoughts, Goldilocks burst onto the scene, shouting at the top of his lungs: “Stop the caravan! There’s a trap a...head...?”

Perhaps it was because he had galloped here at full speed screaming the whole way, but his voice deflated as soon as he saw the pools of blood all around. He looked almost disappointed that the battle was already over.

“Aha, the bodyguard boy from the other caravan! Tell me—what’s ahead?”

“Yes, sir! It’s a death trap! Infantry and cavalry are hiding in the hills, and the road ahead is blocked off with an abatis and even more foot soldiers!”

“Hmm, then the best course of action would be to turn around...”

“I’ve alerted the knight in charge of your squad and he is giving out the order already!”

“Indeed. No, wait a second, boy.”

Gattie held out a hand to stop Erich as he stroked his mane with the other, deep in thought.

If we turn around now, he thought, then the enemy will immediately know that the forces sent to stop us here have been defeated. After all, if we never show up, then they would naturally assume they had lost. Not only that, the archers on the hill are probably rushing off to tell their boss that the ambush failed.

If we try to turn around here—slowed down by our reduced numbers and the injured—then we’ll just be ripped to shreds. It won’t take more than ten minutes for them to either realize something is wrong or for their allies to safely deliver a report. 

In that case, a safe escape with the injured and the corpses will be impossible, and even if we were to abandon anyone, it wouldn’t make much difference. To top that off, I expect that their cavalry will come and rush us. This would only buy them time for their foot soldiers to close the gap while we’re wasting ours.

Not only that, it’s not as if this is some war epic. Leaving a few dozen of our bravest to fight off the pursuers as the caravan journeys off toward safety simply isn’t an option.

Gattie couldn’t justify leaving so many to die; three librae for a finished job was hardly worth the sacrifice. If this had been a true mercenary crew bought and paid for to crush this enemy specifically, they could rationalize holing up here to buy time, but everyone here was a volunteer trying to make a living.

“All right. We’ve got one option—move forward and crush them all!”

“Hold on, Sir Gattie! I saw their flag—it bears the crest of a shield and two wyverns!”

“Oho?”

Siegfried could only cock his head in confusion at this description, but it seemed that Gattie knew exactly what Goldilocks was talking about.

There could be no doubt; the crest of Baron Jotzheim, immortalized as a symbol of treason itself, was a flag none would dare appropriate for their own ends. Who would dare invoke such infamy? Who would risk the ire of Jonas himself, who had already slain so many for daring to falsely swindle or pillage in his name?

Jonas viewed everyone else as mere prey. If he did not, then he would not have amassed an army of this size or have the gall to attack caravans laden with land tax secured for the Empire.

“So our enemy today is the Infernal Knight, eh? That’s all the more reason we can’t turn tail. His men have killed enough of our own, and his hands are stained with the blood of countless others. He must be made to atone.”

“...Are we forming an assault unit?”

“Quite right! We will gather those here ahead who can still move! How many are we arrayed against?”

“I reckon a hundred and fifty! It won’t be an easy fight—they have the terrain advantage, and there’s more archers still lying in wait in the hills.”

“We’ve got a few with shields, but I doubt we can count on a shield wall.”

The shield formation, also known as testudo or tortoise formation, involves many soldiers gathering together to form a literal wall with their shields in order to protect the unit from incoming arrows. Due to its mobility and the speed at which it could be assembled, the Trialist Empire of Rhine favored the spear wall over its shielded counterpart, leading it to fall out of favor in official military settings. However, it was still in use among small groups, such as adventuring parties who wanted to protect their flanks while sustaining a forward assault.

Obviously one shield wasn’t enough to protect your entire body, but creating a patchwork of shields and marching in unison was a little too difficult for an impromptu unit. Unless everyone was in sync, people would start to march out of order. It would be almost preferable to simply rush across the battlefield instead.

“E-Excuse me!” Siegfried raised a trembling voice. “M-My friend Kaya—she can use magic.”

“O-Oh! Yes, I have magic that can...block arrows.”

“You do, eh?”

Kaya was a mage, yes, but her wheelhouse wasn’t in the reality-altering craft. To make up for this, she had worked hard at perfecting potions that could replicate and sustain spell effects. She had seen her friend-turned-adventurer jolt awake from nightmares enough times to convince her that she needed to expand her portfolio into combat potions as well.

When she’d told Erich of her worries, the gold-haired adventurer had given her a few tips—recipes that would shine on the battlefield, and how best to use them. He had given a gentlemanly smile as he broke down the details of these ghastly concoctions, and Kaya had chosen to accept his aid without regret or hesitation. She would have done anything to save the one person in this world that she wanted to be with forever.

“This potion redirects arrows. Simply apply it to yourself and any arrows fired with ill intent will miss their mark.”

“It doesn’t use wind, eh?”

Gattie was caught off guard by the potion’s mechanism. He had stood on many a battlefield with mage cohorts who had fought in the thick of things; he thought he’d seen every trick in the book when it came to enchanting an ally’s missiles and abjuring the enemy’s. Such spells had always indirectly controlled their targets’ trajectories by manipulating the air; this was on a completely different level. He doubted that even most battle-hardened mages would think to create something like it.

“It contains scale insects, parasites that live in deer innards, and a bit of rust, and the rendering process uses a great deal of steam. By using components that arrows ‘dislike,’ it can create a barrier from them.”

There was a reason Goldilocks had given the advice he had.

In truth, it was Kaya’s fault. From the fragrance—well, magia called them mana waves—of Goldilocks’s moisturizer that he had applied to stop the bonfire from drying out his skin, Kaya had surmised that Goldilocks had a gift for magic.

And so, what had begun as mere small talk to get her through the long night had left her brimming with ideas for how to help Siegfried. Erich had spoken at length of a polemurgical codex he’d “paid dearly” to read (he hadn’t gone into details, but from the way he nervously played with his shirt it had been clear that some deep trauma lay there), full of spells at the bleeding edge of magical innovation.

Goldilocks gave a mysterious smile as he raised a finger to his lips after parting with this valuable intel. You know what’ll happen if you tell, right? it seemed to say. Kaya didn’t mind. She was happy to push her proficiency in potions, something that she had always cursed herself for, to its limits.

Although Kaya couldn’t execute such complex spells directly in the heat of the moment, with potions, she had all the time in the world to get the execution right. It cost down payments of time, catalysts, and a brief “metabolic gap” between use and activation, but with sufficient preparation, they performed admirably.

And so she concocted. And concocted and concocted and concocted.

“Are these the real deal?”

“Gattie, I sense potent magic from them. You can trust her,” one of Gattie’s magic-savvy concubines said, appraising the young herbalist’s flask closely.

“How long do they work?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Radius?”

“Everyone who has had it sprayed on them.”

Gattie let out a whistle; it sounded wholly unlike a mensch’s. It was clear what the signal meant—only one thing was left to be done.

“Move into action! We have little time! Take up your arms!”

He would bring the battle to the enemy and decide things there. Gattie wiped the entrails from his battle-axe as Erich came up to the fired-up nemea.

“I doubt the knight in charge will be very happy.”

“He can do what he likes! We’ll need people to care for the wounded and load up the deceased. If his troops can’t fight, they can make themselves useful somehow!”

The knight might have been a cowardly mess, but Goldilocks was amazed at the nemea’s gall. Goldilocks rushed to the center of the procession to deliver the news to the person in charge—at least on paper.

“Now everyone, let us set off! Today we will serve justice! Blood shall be repaid in blood!”

“Raaah!”

At Gattie’s speech the entire caravan let out a hearty cheer. Those who were ready to fight took the weapons from their fallen comrades and slain enemies and stood at Gattie’s rear.

Of course, Siegfried was among them. He wanted to be part of this tale. He didn’t care that he wouldn’t be named—in this one at least. All that he wanted was for his courage to stay with him to the end, to see an honorable battle through without running home.

[Tips] Arrow-deflecting magic is more popular than combat magic and is somewhat akin to a prebattle ritual. It confers a tactical advantage on ground troops by neutralizing their vulnerability to a ranged assault.

Most forms of this magic rely on manipulating air currents to create a protective barrier, but the formulae crafted by the Imperial College’s magia are a cut or two above that.

It might have paled a little in comparison to scenes of thousands of arrows raining down that I’d seen on the silver screen, but even a volley numbering in the dozens was a sight to behold midflight. As was seeing them waver like candles in the breeze as they all sped off in a completely different direction at once.

“Whoa!”

“Awesome!”

“We can do this! Yeah, we can DO THIS!”

Our makeshift army consisted of brave adventurers and caravan workers who had taken up any available arms and equipment, our numbers reaching just over seventy.

As we made our way through the narrow passage, we spotted no infantry. We were a ragtag group, so our reactions at this turn of good fortune was to be expected.

“Wow, she’s quite something. A College student might have written up the recipe, yeah, but I doubt there are many who could use it to create something this effective.”

Atop Castor, I couldn’t help muttering to myself. Kaya was talented, that was for sure. She might have struggled with using combat or healing spells with a tool like her staff, especially in the heat of the moment, but if the circumstances were right she was a force that even a wall of demons would part for.

Sure, that arrow-warding potion took a pretty serious investment of time and resources, and the conceptual barrier wouldn’t defend against anything other than arrows, but I doubted that many could create something this potent. It was like receiving power in exchange for an oath—for a very specific target, she could punch way above her weight class. Siegfried was a truly lucky guy to have someone like Kaya by his side. That gal’s alchemical talents were on par with my own partner’s unparalleled scouting—real gifts from the gods, those two.

Thanks to Kaya, we bought ourselves a precious five minutes.

Jonas’s forces had been lying in wait, confident they would win, when all of a sudden our group emerged unscathed from their arrow rain and ready to cause some havoc. Their morale, pumped up solely by their fear of their leader, deflated the moment they were faced with an equivalent threat.

Infantry in this situation were sitting ducks. Now that their precious ranged support had been countered, they could do nothing but prepare for the worst. All that was left was for both sides to clash in all-out war. That or...

“Jonas Baltlinden! Come out from your hole, worm!”

By announcing a one-on-one battle with their leader, we could instantly crush their morale in one fell swoop.

By Rhinian standards of martial law, challenging an enemy general to single combat was a laughably primitive approach. But we weren’t an army—we were adventurers. Among our ilk, Genpei War-era ethics still abounded.

Whether you’re a legitimate adventurer or a shameless bandit, your way of life hinges on the power of your name. A simple loss or victory can do anything for your reputation. And if you were someone who ruled your forces with fear, if you were mocked with a line you wouldn’t repeat to your own mother—you know the stuff, about the size of the thing between your legs, mocking your ancestors, blah blah blah—then you couldn’t let the person in question get away with it, could you?

Of course, it was possible to be the bigger man and dole out punishment later, but that wouldn’t do. We were talking about a man who had killed his former master—the man who’d knighted him—and then butchered his entire family afterward, all because of a little spat. Jonas was a human bomb, waiting for the faintest spark to set him off. There was no way he would bear Gattie’s remarks in silence.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, you jumped-up tomcat?! An overfed gutter cleaner like you, playing warrior? Go back to chasing rats!”

Ahh, you fell right for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

But something was wrong.

“Erich...”

“Yeah, I know, Margit.”

It was said that there were no mortals in the world less consistent than mensch; no one else ran a greater range between fame and infamy. I could tell even from afar that Jonas, charging hell-for-leather atop his unbroken, chestnut horse—twice Castor’s size—possessed an unreal strength.

He measured over two meters tall, and his impressive frame was covered in bespoke plate armor that left him utterly impregnable. It stood without embellishment, save that it had been painted a deep, rich black, the subdued tones bringing to mind all the blood spilled under the might of his war hammer.

He had left his visor open; his face bore a monstrous expression. He had high cheekbones, sallow cheeks, small, deep-set eyes, and an untamed beard; he was the picture of traditional villainy. Back in Konigstuhl, it was one of Sir Lambert’s perennial sources of grief that his face made children cry; here, I thought, was a man whose one good deed in this world was making my old mentor look positively cuddly by comparison.

Not only that, he had the physical strength to back it up. That’s no exaggeration.

Despite his massive stature and burdensome armor, he carried himself with an almost impossible lightness; even in his state, he could mount his charger unaided. Then there was his gigantic war hammer. It was of a laughable size, yet he had it slung on his shoulder without showing a trace of effort.

Gods above, why did you have to give such a twisted SOB this much power?! Hey! I’m talking to you, God of Trials! Are you asleep?!

Jonas hadn’t gotten to where he was simply for an evil disposition, a lack of hesitation toward violence, and his fearsome bearing. No, he was a martial master, confident that his inherent strength gave him the means to make an enemy of every living thing.

Just as I had tried to cover all my bases by maxing out my DEX, this meathead had decided that he would conquer everything with pure STR. If we were to use my own abilities as a comparison, he had taken Utter Power, the opposite of my Enchanting Artistry, and brute forced his way through life by making all physical checks require STR.

Even if he was a retired pro, there was no rational explanation for his sheer physical power that would make me go, “Yeah, that makes sense,” short of some kind of divine favor.

Anyway, I know these were all my own silly suppositions, but I doubt I was far off the mark. The specific loadout of skills might not have been as I expected, but whatever build he was using, it was busted. He might not have had the ability to pick and choose his assets like I did, but like me, he wasn’t drowning in power; rather, he’d carefully leveraged each of his talents to their fullest potential in service to each other so that he could do as he willed. He didn’t have Mister Fidelio’s complete lack of an upper limit on his potential strength, and I wasn’t about to say he even outclassed me just yet, but he was clearly the kind of guy whose wrong side you wanted to stay well clear of. More’s the pity he didn’t have a right side.

Of course, there was no way that this went unnoticed by a seasoned fighter like Gattie. I peered from my position and could see beads of sweat on his jaw from where he stood in front of us all. Fortunately his mane hid it from most everyone else, but I could tell that he was panicked by Jonas’s power. I could tell that he had weighed his and Jonas’s strength and found that his was lesser. All the same, he knew he couldn’t back down.

Right now, Gattie was the backbone of this whole caravan’s morale. Losing his nerve now would be akin to cutting our will to live at the root. And when that monster came charging in with his massive horse and giant hammer, it would turn into all-out chaos, and his foot soldiers would pick off the stragglers.

Which meant that I needed to formulate a plan.

I needed to make sure I didn’t break my promise with the madam—I really needed to train myself out of calling her that in my own train of thought—and minimize our side’s potential losses.

All right, got a plan.

I suppressed my presence, dismounted, and made my way to Siegfried, whose heart was dancing at the prospect of seeing a hero take on a villain.

[Tips] Single combat between leaders is the quickest route to turning the tables in a struggle between fighting forces. However, if such a gambit should fail, then utter defeat is practically guaranteed.

It is often practiced in battles between noble houses in order to lessen both sides’ losses, but it has fallen out of favor in wars with foreign nations due to its high-risk nature.

An ear-piercing screech signaled the beginning of the battle.

Gattie had flung his axe in a preemptive attack, but it had been slammed out of the sky by Jonas’s war hammer and let out a piercing cry. Enchanted as it was, its force paled in comparison to the head of that maul, wide enough to swallow a grown mensch in its shadow.

And so, the blade of Gattie’s battle-axe yielded.

“Grah!”

“Foolish boy! Out of options, adventurer?”

The axe felt different in Gattie’s hand as it returned. Beads of sweat erupted all over his body. His beloved weapon, blessed by the maledictors of his homeland, was an object of vast power. Yet now it was twisted and broken. Gattie had been using this weapon for years now; just feeling its weight in his hand told him all he needed to know.

Just as this villain was not your average bandit, so too was his weapon not your average implement of murder. Its name, unknown to all but Jonas’s subordinates, was Beleidigung.

Once upon a time, Baron Jotzheim had spent a fortune to bring his family mausoleum with him after he was stationed; within it stood an epitaph venerating the ancestors of the Jotzheim family, cast from unaging steel. After he’d slain the baron, Jonas had sneaked into the mausoleum, tore down the epitaph, and recast it into his monstrous bludgeon.

The epitaph bore no small magical potential of its own, and so this weapon, steeped in callous betrayal, became a cruel and deadly tool. As its name implied, it was imbued with the anger of the Jotzheim family—not just the ones Jonas murdered, but also every ancestor leading right back up to the Empire’s founding whom Jonas’s disgusting act disgraced.

Beleidigung was their shame incarnate.

The weapon’s anger toward its wielder manifested as a terrible weight; even in an ogre’s hands, it would threaten to kill its master in the attempt to lift it. Ironically, this had become a great boon to the inhuman knight.

There was no way that a simple magic axe could hold up against the anger and hatred of forty-eight generations and five centuries housed within Jonas’s hammer.

Repelling this sudden attack, Jonas charged forward, propelled by pure rage. His fury was infectious, and quickly metabolized into fear—his horse, barely able to hold Jonas’s weight, intuited its master’s intention and dashed ahead like a rocket. Jonas brandished the hammer—a load a team of packhorses would balk at—and swept it in an arc from left to right, gracefully avoiding his mount.

Jonas was toying with Gattie. The nemea had no idea which direction to dodge. The hammer swung at such a tempo that it was impossible to gauge where the next blow would end, and the giant horse’s approach was terrifying in itself.

Gattie couldn’t stand down. He’d broken mankwa at full charge; how could he retreat from an oversized mensch? However, he knew that if the warhorse sustained its pace, he’d be trampled into a pulp.

“Ancestors, give me strength!”

Though his prayers here in the Empire would never reach the spirits of his pride and the nemea god of the southern continent, the great Progenitor Lion, Gattie still chose to hold his ground.

From Jonas’s grip, his dominant hand was probably his right. Gattie reasoned, then, that a juke to the left would make him a more difficult target and spare him a trampling.

All that remained was to strike at the horse’s legs with power enough to bend his axe even further.

Forgive me, my beloved! I cannot pull back, no matter the cost!

However, his resolve was batted away with an almost disappointing ease.

“What?!”

“Gah ha ha!”

Jonas switched to his left hand with a terrifying ease to make certain he caught Gattie in a brutal sweep. He wasn’t doing anything particularly difficult; after all, he was innately ambidextrous—it didn’t matter to him which hand he led with.

Gattie changed his stance—his axe moved to receive Jonas’s charge. Again that horrible shriek rang out, more pained than before. The head of the nemea’s battle-axe split in twain. The first strike had already done sizable damage, but Jonas’s charge had enough momentum to shatter it completely.

The duel was as good as decided. A victorious cry erupted from Jonas’s side and wails of despair came from the adventurers.

“Take that! Now, let’s see how much you’ve got left in you!”

“Grr... GROAAAR!”

Jonas wheeled his horse about on a dime before charging at Gattie once more.

Axe and hammer clashed for a third time. Gattie’s axe mustered the last of its efforts in its master’s service, but this time the blade was cleaved cleanly from the handle. Gattie’s war cry in the face of death didn’t faze the Infernal Knight in the slightest, who had left behind any trace of fear in the womb; it did nothing to slow the incoming charge.

Gattie had no way of blocking this attack. Even if he tried to dodge, it was good as over.

“Ngh... Fine then, DO YOUR WORST!”

“End of the road, you stuck-up furball!”

Gattie tossed aside the stripped and bent shaft and put everything on the line for what looked to be the final clash as Jonas approached, dragging his hammer along the ground. It was a gamble...no, it was a last stand, a suicidal taunt.

...And yet, the blow never came.

The hammer had instead struck down a spear that had soared through the air with an incredible velocity.

“Who goes there?!”

“Apologies for interrupting the duel!”

A single figure had emerged from the caravan’s force—who were on the verge of despair, clinging to the last dregs of their fighting spirit—putting the force of his horse’s full gallop behind his throw.

“Foolish brat! How dare you interrupt! Very well—name yourself!”

Gattie, on the verge of a certain death, was dazed. Jonas, on the other hand, was consumed with rage—a fury that pushed his strength to its highest boundary—at having his killing blow cut short.

An answer came ringing over the battlefield as the boy drew his sword.

“My name is Erich, fourth son to Johannes of Konigstuhl! I accept the full weight of my deed—now, to arms!”

“Hah, very well! Have at you! I’ll rive your head from your shoulders and deliver the rotten thing to your family’s doorstep!”

It was a brazen disruption, yet no one raised a complaint.

The Infernal Knight’s underlings merely laughed, thinking that the child was just one more corpse waiting to be added to the pile, while the bodyguards were plunged into a deeper fear at the sight of a newbie throwing himself into the jaws of hell.

The two horses drew overlapping circles in the dirt. None had presumed this would turn into a clash on horseback.

Then to everyone’s surprise, the one named Erich removed his helmet to let down his namesake—he had realized a helmet would do nothing if one of Jonas’s attacks actually landed—and readied his sword in a charge, a mere sliver of steel compared to Gattie’s axe.

There came a fourth clash of metal on metal, wholly unlike the three that came before. It was a clean sound, like two tankards of ale clashing together.

“Wh-What’s this?!”

“Yes!”

The square war hammer should have pulverized the little adventurer and his puny sword along with him, but now a chunk of it had cleanly calved away, the striking side cut down to a triangle.

Erich had managed to slice right through—a single full-force strike that cut through steel and the weapon’s soul-crushing shame alike.

Unable to control the hammer midswing at its reduced weight, Jonas toppled from his horse.

Erich’s read on the situation had been right. His foe had looked down on his small build and chosen a vertical strike to crush him like a bug. And so the swordsman had made a wager on where and how to strike back.

Erich’s Insight had allowed him to judge the start of Jonas’s attack, his Lightning Reflexes had slowed time to an almost unbearable speed, and from there, his Scale IX DEX-powered Hybrid Sword Arts let him strike not at Jonas, but his hammer. To top it off, he had sent out Unseen Hands to form a protective wall between the shrapnel and his beloved horse.

Goldilocks had not entered the battle with the intent to go all out and take Jonas’s life; no, he had chosen self-preservation instead. Inertia was key to Erich’s strategy—his foe was astride a horse and thus couldn’t make minute dodges. The path to victory had hinged on the combined force of both their charges. Goldilocks had angled his blade with nigh impossible precision and found the sweet spot.

In that moment, the vengeance of generations of Jotzheims lifted.

The Infernal Knight had hit the ground with an incredible force, and although the impact hadn’t killed him, Erich raised his sword.

“Victory is mine!”

Erich galloped to his allies and raised his wondrous blade, carving an arc through the air to raise their spirits once more.

“It is too early to yield! The battle is just beginning! Think of your families back home—our victory today will shield them and others like them from these demons’ future misdeeds! From catastrophes that could befall your wives, your children! So stand, my comrades in arms! All who can fight—follow me and my sword!”

“Y...Yeah! Everyone, chaaarge!”

“RAAAH! Blood for blood!”

“Follow the gleam of his sword!”

Erich’s words had set the hearts of his cohort ablaze as they came upon the bandits like a rising tide.

“Ngh... I’m...still alive?”

Gattie finally came to his senses. He registered his concubines, who had stood aside for the duel, running to his side. The first thing he felt was shame.

For all that big talk, I got completely wrecked. And topped by that newbie too. Do I have one single thing to be proud of?

“My dear, you’re sa—”

“A weapon! Hand me a weapon! Anything will do!”

Gattie practically wrested the axe from one of his concubines’ outstretched hands, then dashed into the charge.

He was no longer the hero that roused his comrades—that position had fallen to Erich. His gleaming blade had turned them back into eager warriors. How else could he assuage his shame? Only a baptism in the blood of every mook he could reach would satisfy Gattie; he would open the way so that the hero of the day could land the killing blow. Otherwise, his pride as a warrior would never let him stand in battle again. He would take a dagger to his throat—a route that would protect his honor as a warrior but bar him from joining the pride of his ancestors.

Only a fool would envy his own savior.

If they won, if they could draw victory from this clash, then a tale would surely be written about this day. After defeating the Infernal Knight, the valiant adventurers returned home scuffed, but not scarred, and resplendent in their hard-won honor. There was no foe Gattie would not challenge, no wound he would not bear, if it meant the story could end on that line. Nemea men let out their war cry not to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, but to draw attention away from the wives and children that they are sworn to protect.

If they won this, if they could turn this situation around, then Gattie wouldn’t mind only amounting to a minor part in Erich’s tale.

“You fuckin’ brat! You’re too big for your shittin’ breeches!”

“Enough of that. Your existence itself is an eyesore.”

Jonas stood up as he tossed aside his helmet, dented from the fall. Blood oozed from where his head had struck the ground.

He rose to uneasy footing. Before he could even draw the blood-soaked sword that had taken his master’s life, Erich dashed forward from the vanguard and leaped from atop his horse before parting the king of traitors from his murderous hand with a plunging strike.

“GRAAAAAAAGH!”

“Huh, funny. Didn’t expect the blood of such a despicable man to run red. Well, it’ll turn black eventually, same as anyone’s. You should know all too well. Why don’t I speed it along?”

“You...BRAT! How dare you! My...my hand! What can a little brigade like yours do? I still have a whole legion of men!”

“You mean those bandits struggling over there?”

Goldilocks must have thought it too much effort to raise his hand, settling instead on jabbing his chin over at the chaos unfolding. The battle had only just begun, and Jonas’s men were already being slaughtered.

“They don’t look very motivated to me.”

“Wh-What’s happening?!”

“Their boss got put down by me, and I’m just a little guy. Who wouldn’t panic? On top of that, look—your standard-bearer is running off into the distance.”

The fluttering banner of Jonas Baltlinden’s bloody reign was never supposed to move unless the man himself had ordered it. And yet there it was, disappearing out of sight, far from the battlefield.

[Tips] Destroying a weapon or disarming your foe is a well-loved frontline tactic. Once separated from their weapon, a warrior’s pride in their skill is rendered meaningless.

“Listen, Sieg. Do you want to be the star of a heroic saga, not just a no-name bit part?”

Goldilocks, that bastard of bastards, was offering the most intoxicating poison Siegfried had witnessed yet.

The proposition made Siegfried consider giving up on the incredible chance to watch a hero take on a top-rate villain. No, Siegfried couldn’t lie to himself. Shaking Gattie’s hand had been oil to the fire. Siegfried had taken part thinking that he was content with a minor role in the tale to be woven from these events, but his adventurer’s heart pounded at Goldilocks’s proposition.

Yet now, Siegfried found himself once again cursing his lips’ ability to outpace his brain.

In the war sagas with a lick of artistic license, a supporting hero’s best shot at the spotlight was supporting the lead with a surprise attack on the enemy’s rear. Sometimes the hero was saved in the nick of time, sometimes the supporting actor lent their aid during the final clash—they were scenes that the fans enjoyed for their own muted glory. But Siegfried only listened to these parts with subdued interest; he understood why a powerful main character would want to achieve fame, but what could a lowly side character hope to achieve?

He wanted to smack himself with his spear like he had done to the bandit earlier.

The view from the far side of the enemy camp was like a window into hell itself. Siegfried had seen Margit’s inhuman ability to mask her presence countless times, but even as she led him in relative safety, he regretted ever saying yes. The task at hand wasn’t a simple matter of raising his voice to divert everyone’s attention, no; this was an underhanded ploy meant to turn the momentary upset of Jonas’s defeat into a guaranteed victory for the caravan crew. Come on man, he thought, don’t make it sound so easy!

Not only that, Goldilocks had said Margit would know the signal, but the scene unfolding before his eyes was not what had been discussed beforehand!

“You towheaded viper! You said—”

“I know! Keep it down and keep going!”

They had passed unnoticed by Jonas’s minions and had just slipped through a blind spot under a detachment camped out on the hill—who were completely distracted by their boss’s single combat—when they saw the battle play out.

Siegfried had zero knowledge of what possibly could have happened to make Heavy Tusk Gattie lose, but were his eyes deceiving him, or was that Goldilocks Erich invading the sacred space of single combat?

With his head befuddled by the chaotic direction the battle had taken, he was forced to concentrate on the matter at hand as Margit goaded Polydeukes into a full gallop.

Right now Siegfried was totally unarmed. He hadn’t brought the spear he’d taken from his foe, and he’d left his sword, as he knew he wouldn’t be able to use it well on horseback. More importantly, the suicidal idiot presently fighting the Jonas Baltlinden had told him that he wouldn’t need a close-range weapon.

Margit scuttled ahead (she couldn’t ride, as her legs couldn’t get a good hold on the horse) as Siegfried drove Polydeukes after her.

Their target? To steal the Infernal Knight’s war banner.

An army’s flag acted as the physical and symbolic heart of their forces. The role of standard-bearer was entrusted only to an elite among elites, as stealing this precious figurehead amounts to nothing less than the collapse of a force’s morale. Siegfried was unaware of the skilled defense that awaited him; he was just happy to contribute.

“Graaaagh!”

“Who is that fool?!”

Despite his fear, his bow hand was steady—he had fired a shot right at the feet of the flag bearer and his entourage. And in the next moment, the smoke bottle attached to the arrowhead shattered. The contents reacted as soon as they touched the open air, exploding into a cloud of white smoke.

“What...koff...is this?!”

“I... Gragh!”

“M-My eyes! My nose!”

Siegfried’s targets clawed at their faces in agony. They couldn’t suppress their coughing, their sneezing, and the tears running down their faces. The pain was enough to make a normal person collapse. This was one of Kaya’s newly developed “merciful potions,” a riff on the same tear gas the Baldur Clan had once turned on Erich (to considerably less effect).

Erich had relayed the tale to Kaya, explaining that in the end, it was a “merciful” potion in that it didn’t actually kill anyone or cause permanent damage. Naturally, his roundabout but pointed way of retelling the story had caused Kaya to cook up her own original variant.

If you didn’t apply a salve with the requisite catalysts (lemon juice was a reliable option) to your face, the smoke would cause incapacitating agony.

It would figure that he’d teach Kaya how to make shit this evil, Siegfried thought, but there was no reason to stop the horse’s advance. In the past Siegfried had once pulled Polydeukes to a jarring halt, but this had ended in a painful meeting with the ground; he knew that only one path lay ahead for him.

In any case, he’d come this far—he was going to see this through.

Siegfried didn’t stop, even when he heard a strange noise ring through the air from the battlefield. All the tales had told him that a hero never lost his nerve when it really mattered. All his fear turned to ashes in the heat of his desire for a grand and illustrious name.

“RAAAAH!”

The flag could still be seen amid the smoke. The flag bearer had probably been threatened with death on the spot if he ever gave up his position, and so he held fast despite the tears and snot streaming down his pain-stricken face.

His valor was to go unrewarded and unnoticed. He was a lackey of the Infernal Knight. All that awaited him was death in anonymity—all that Siegfried dreaded. What would persist of the man was only the simple fact that a young adventurer had stolen his charge and brought the battle to a decisive close.

“Good job, now keep going! We need to reach that hill. The archers have noticed us!”

“Gyaaaah! Heeelp! K-Kaya’s potion works, right?!”

At the dull thudding of arrows into earth behind him, the young adventurer’s bravery reached its last dregs. Kaya’s arrow ward was designed for long-distance fire, but up close, its efficacy came into question. If Siegfried hadn’t been through hell once already, he was certain that he would have soiled both his trousers and the saddle. All he could do was ride like hell itself was at his back and follow the scout so that he didn’t cross paths with any fleeing bandits.

By the time the adventure’s second MVP had found his allies again, the battle was over. To be fair, it was hardly a battle; butchery, once again, fit the bill better.

It was no surprise, really. With Baltlinden and his banner gone, the bandits’ resolve had shattered. There was no hero or valiant soul brave enough to fight with their souls so completely broken—any warrior with such mettle had chosen death over joining Jonas’s infernal army.

And so the army of the great evil known as the Reprobate had been slain by Gattie—his shame erased by his wounds—his gallant concubines, and a young hero whose name had not yet appeared in the tales.

“Erich, you dick! This was not what you said would happen!”

“Hey, Sieg, chill! It’s pretty much what I said. We won. You completed your own mission. Everyone’s happy!”

Erich had no intention of lying at this late stage. He wouldn’t have minded if Gattie had beaten Jonas. He’d have apologized in his internal monologue for underestimating his ally and joined the battle as one of many, happy to applaud the hero and Siegfried’s hard work in the background.

You see, even if the big boss had been defeated in single combat, his underlings would have stormed into battle, driven by the desire to avoid the hanging that would await if they were captured. Goldilocks knew that they would need that extra push to see them through the second phase of the battle.

Goldilocks had simply remained on the battlefield while his trustworthy allies commenced their mission. That he’d been served up the opportunity to claim the glory for himself had no doubt been a little present from the God of Trials, who wanted to see the boy squirm.

Erich didn’t crave the spotlight to the exclusion of everyone else. After all, he had happily taken on the supporting role, or even the role that supported the supporting role, in many of his old campaigns.

“I thought I was gonna die! I almost shit my pants! I could’ve been stabbed! That flag was stupid heavy! I had cavalry chasing me!”

“Well, I dealt with them for you,” chimed Margit.

“And I can’t believe you made Kaya cook up anything that dangerous!”

Siegfried had stuck the flag in the ground nearby and taken hold of Erich’s lapels as he roared at him. His vision was spinning; the terror and confusion of the fray had entirely quashed his feeling of a job well done. It was all too much for a normal mensch brain to process.

“D-Dee, he didn’t make me! I asked him what I could do to help you when you went out to fight...”

It seemed as if Siegfried couldn’t hear the placating voice of his friend, who was tending to the injured a ways off; Erich could only smile at his raging ally.

Deep down, Erich had longed for the company of someone like Siegfried, who exuded this wonderful main-character energy.

The young adventurer’s hands were pried away from Erich’s armor—but not to stop Siegfried’s one-sided assault. Gattie dropped to one knee between the two young heroes and lifted them high upon each shoulder.

“All right!”

“Wh-What’s going on?!”

“Lend me your ears, friends! The day is ours! We have given the bandits their just deserts for the innocents they’ve slaughtered! We have captured the Infernal Knight alive and broken his army! I might have lost, but you! All of you...have won!”

The attack squad, who had just returned from cleaning up the stragglers, and the bodyguards, who had remained behind until the fighting was over, all fixed their gazes on Gattie and the two young men upon his shoulders.

“Praise their names! When you return home, tell everyone what you witnessed here today! Of the battle you all brought an end to! Carve these names into your hearts! Goldilocks Erich, who saved my life! And Siegfried, who parted the enemy from their banner and saved us all! Do not forget them!”

And so, the nemean hero, beaten but alive, roared their names over again on the hill-lined road.

This was the first page of their heroic sagas—the tales that would tell the world of the valor of Goldilocks Erich and Siegfried the Lucky and Hapless.

[Tips] A story is only a story if someone lives to tell it.