Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 8 - Chapter 3

Winter of the Sixteenth Year

No Hard Feelings, But...

Dice tell no lies, and it is the GM’s responsibility to dispense nothing but the truth to their players.

However, just because you can’t lie doesn’t mean you can’t omit. It’s not the GM’s fault if their PCs don’t pry too deeply into what the narration only touches on. After all, the GM needs to listen to the devil on their shoulder and lead their PCs as close to the jaws of death as possible for the sake of an enjoyable campaign.

When the dust has settled, one of the most rewarding parts of the session is coming up with a hard-won prize for their players.

Parts of the mountain of advice that our senior adventurer, the incredible Mister Fidelio, gave us came back to me at that moment.

“Hey, Erich! Are you even listening? You feelin’ beat or something?”

“Hm? Ah, sorry, Siegfried. Yeah, more tired than I thought. What were you saying?”

With the gates of hell behind us, my comrade in arms Siegfried and I (now more than ever, folks were convinced we were a no-foolin’ adventuring party) had settled in at the Buck’s Antlers. This was Siegfried’s chosen haunt; we found ourselves in a corner of the tavern, keeping our conversation quiet.

“Come on, man. We were talking about how to split the bounty. Jeez, are you seriously okay?”

“Yeah, totally fine. Just a bit worn down to the nubs, that’s all.”

Fall was over, and as the laws of the world demanded, winter was here. After our triumph over Jonas Baltlinden and his bandit army, we’d been raised up as the heroes of the hour.

His head alone was worth a whopping fifty drachmae, and we had managed to cart him back into Marsheim still breathing. Word had started to spread as soon as we reached the outskirts of the city, and so by the time we got back, quite the celebration was awaiting us.

Technically speaking, I supposed the one who received the “warmest” welcome was the man himself, Jonas.

Good grief was it difficult to bring a man so intent on killing himself back safely. We’d bound him as tightly as we could, gagged him, and quite literally forced him to drink water. To top it off, in order to strip him of any way to fight back or even escape, the tendons in his legs had been sliced to ribbons.

Someone had been keeping an eye out for us; a shout had rung out, and the adventurers stationed at the west gate parted to welcome us into the city proper. The guards were less focused on checking our papers as we entered, instead pouring their efforts into dragging out an open carriage. They ordered us to set Jonas in it and take him to the Adventurer’s Association.

We hadn’t come straight back to Marsheim. We had finished off our bodyguard duties, and that had left ample time for word to make its way back here. I wasn’t totally surprised to see that the local administration and the Association had thought up a little welcome present for our quarry. They wanted to let the whole region know that adventurers of Marsheim had purged its blight. It was to be a public display that this treasonous human stain had finally been given his just deserts. Still, I’d been surprised that the local administration had already committed so much to our reception with only rumors of our deeds to go on.

Yes, strapped to his open carriage, Jonas’s parade had begun. With us pulling him along, every pair of eyes that fell on him fell on us too. However, Jonas received a special present that we didn’t—rocks and filth slung his way.

Such was Jonas’s infamy. His reign of terror had caused vast and indiscriminate suffering, and the crowds were out in full force to vent their fury—those who had come to the region to seek their fortune, adventurers like Siegfried who had come to make a name for themselves, and those who had no choice but to move to Marsheim after their hometowns had been torched by the Infernal Knight.

It was quite the sight. If the margrave’s knights hadn’t come down from his manor to line the streets, I think the crowds would have stormed the carriage and killed Jonas with their bare hands before he even got the chance to have his public execution.

After we handed him over, Jonas’s official hearing convened for a few hours; by the time we were let out, afternoon had given way to night.

We were told that discussions regarding our reward would come later and so the only things that awaited were rest and the satisfaction of a job well done... No, of course not! We threw an absolute blowout of a party on par with Coronation Day in Berylin. The margrave had realized he needed to appease his people; what better lubricant for the societal machinery was there than free booze? Folks were practically swimming in the stuff.

Naturally some of the local bigwigs had eyed up this opportunity to get in the people’s good books, and so the nobles and all the big names had joined in on the bacchanal, potluck-style. Even some hardworking merchants thought, Ahh, screw it, and had contributed for a citywide celebration.

We weren’t new faces in town by any stretch, so we received many personal congratulations from those who knew us. As soon as we came out from questioning, some fellow adventurers had pulled us into the party with claps on the back; obviously we had no choice but to take part.

The Association building was chiefly used for meetings between nobles and adventurers; I don’t know whose idea it was, but it had been opened up as its own party space, which meant that there was no way for us to escape. We’d been roped into the revels with all the vigor of a mugging. Our clothes eventually grew soaked as people forced drinks into our hands and merrily clashed their tankards into our own.

Margit had anticipated that the whole affair was going to pop off like this and clambered up into the rafters to hide herself; it would be a good while before she came to save me.

I felt bad for not finding a way to spare Siegfried and Kaya from the chaos of the spotlight. Sorry guys, I’d thought, I’m barely hanging on myself. But I couldn’t get too broken up about it, because Siegfried had chosen to lean all the way in, getting progressively more plastered as he merrily recounted everything that had gone down. He hadn’t chewed me out over it, so I was sure he didn’t mind. It was as I’d crawled back to the Snoozing Kitten that I’d found that my own tribulations were only just beginning.

Pushing both Shymar and Mister Fidelio aside, Fidelio’s old “Catchpenny Scribbler” friend sank his claws into me. My hearing before the Association seemed cute compared to his barrage of prying questions.

“What happened?” “What went through your head?” “What did you do?” I found myself sitting with the poet until dawn under his onslaught; more than anything, I just wanted to scream I’m not going to remember every last detail, dammit! Still, I had to give credit where it was due: this same passion and persistence of his had earned him personal requests from the Emperor himself to perform at court fetes. For the moment, my desperate need for a little time alone hardly outweighed his career’s bottomless hunger for material.

If that wasn’t enough I had to deal with his incessant revisionist mumbling. “Shame, it would’ve been a bit more exciting if Gattie’d died here. Yeah, let’s change it. We can rewrite it so that you’re clearing up the bandits,” or “Cutting down the hammer in one fell swoop is cool, but we need to think about the music. Okay, how about you trade a few epic blows so I can fit it to a piece with some staying power,” he’d mutter as he scribbled in his notes. It was the height of brazenness.

Come on, am I supposed to just bend over and take it if Gattie chews me out for letting you kill him off to smooth out the plot arc?

And sure, I’m not the tallest guy in the biz; I get that he thought the story needed a little mustard on it to really sell it to the people who knew my deal, but wouldn’t it be a bit over the top for me to leap from my saddle to unhorse Jonas with a flying kick?

I mean, I could do it if he asked, but I didn’t think I had the acrobatic finesse to pull it off in the heat of battle.

I finally got why Mister Fidelio had stuck him with such cruel nicknames. If my fellow victim of the Catchpenny Scribbler hadn’t come in saying, “I think he needs to rest,” I’d still be stuck in that chair as we speak. I could see where the bard was coming from, but you can only put up with so much workshop talk and idle harp-jamming.

In the end, I ended up okaying a lot of his decisions, and the end product was markedly divergent from the facts.

Apparently the celebrations had lasted two days, and if that weren’t enough, Jonas Baltlinden had been carted off to various different plazas for a day each for the next two weeks, but during all this time I kept safe and secluded in the Snoozing Kitten. All the same, I received many visitors—in addition to the faux poet and a cadre of muckrakers, Miss Laurentius and Hansel’s group came to see me—and I grew so bored of reciting the same chain of events over and over again with a mug of ale forced into my hand that by the end of it I was spent in both body and in mind.

Margit ditched me, saying that she would check the bulletin boards for jobs, so it was a pretty rough time. No, I shouldn’t be coy about it—it was exhausting. I could finally see why some famous adventurers chose to disappear from the public eye.

But I was looking forward to being able to commiserate with Siegfried. Unlike me, his digs were common knowledge; I was certain the poets had been brawling on his doorstep for a shot at penning his side of the tale.

“But seriously man, you really think we’re gonna make two hundred drachmae?”

“Ah, yeah, probably. He had quite the bounty on him, and we handed him in alive. I’d expect more, to be honest.”

We spoke in secret—well, everyone in Marsheim knew our faces so we had to just whisper as quietly as we could—so that no one heard us talk about our imminent incredible payday.

A little while ago, a messenger from the Association had asked me to come visit, and when I’d arrived, I’d been told that the government had approved our reward.

I wanted to throw my arms up in the air and shout, “Woo-hoo, quadruple payout!” but working with Lady Agrippina had thrown any financial sense I might have had royally out of whack. Only four times more for all the work of keeping him alive? The government usually tacked on as much as an extra zero to the going rate for normal bandits on a live capture—you’ve got to keep the deterrent displays on the roads stocked somehow, after all—and it left me with a little twinge in my heart to see the state tighten its purse strings now.

Come on, two hundred drachmae wouldn’t cover a fraction of Lady Leizniz’s annual cosplay budget.

I supposed that the original going price for Jonas was a lot higher than your run-of-the-mill bandit’s, so expecting to receive ten times that might have been a bit greedy. All the same, it irked me.

Margit and Kaya had their own reasons for sitting our meeting out this time. Kaya had all but fainted at the sound of our new sum, and so my partner was elsewhere taking care of her.

I could tell that Margit wasn’t too satisfied. Less so with the material reward, but more so with what the price indicated about the scale of her prey. A hunter with her level of prestige could reasonably ask a hundred drachmae for a kill, never mind a live capture. Our target today was an Imperial turncoat with an actual army, but the fact that Jonas had earned us only two hundred drachmae indicated that he was merely a big fish in a tiny pond.

I should note that, whatever any of us thought of the bounty, we’d also received a letter from a branch family of Baron Jotzheim’s—pretty distant, in all honesty—thanking us for allowing for their successful appointment as the baron’s successors. I knew I had won vengeance for the Jotzheim family, but I wasn’t totally bothered to be honest. I mean, it was an appointment that came with the death of pretty much the entire Jotzheim family. There was no family wealth, and the property they had back in the Imperial capital was most likely just some tiny house. The only thing they would get out of this would probably be a path to serve a magistrate in some tiny canton somewhere.

Being honest, I’d kind of been hoping to receive direct thanks from the margrave. It would’ve boosted my name in an instant and quashed my petty squabbles with the riffraff clans in one fell swoop.

I should temper my expectations. Some deeds go unrewarded, huh.

It’s not like I disliked these little covert operations, but I didn’t sign up for the whole adventuring biz to get tangled in a bunch of interclan power struggles. If the setting was different I might have been interested, but come on, a world of sword and sorcery should only have so much room for this kind of petty politicking!

“Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could split it in thirds,” I said.

“Huh? In three?” Siegfried replied.

“Yeah. One-third to you guys, one-third to us, and the final third to the families of the adventurers who died during the battle.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,” Siegfried muttered as his hand clasped tighter around his tankard of ale. The beer that I’d bought to merely secure a seat in the tavern bubbled quietly.

“Are you not happy with that?”

“Of course not,” he said.

Arguing over how to split the loot was typical adventurer fare. We’d been overdue for some proper haggling. I wanted to distribute the money differently, not just for more heroic brownie points, but also to patch up any lingering feelings of jealousy between us. Apparently I was going to have to put us back on the same page.

“One-third is way too much for us!” Siegfried exclaimed.

“Oh, that’s what you meant.”

“Wait, what?”

Hold on, me. Now it looks like I’m underestimating him. Maybe I could give him all the cash instead? No, no, that won’t solve things.

“I think we should give more to both the survivors and to the families of those who died. We made it back alive with fame and glory. That’s a damn good enough reward if you ask me.”

It was clear to me now that Siegfried wasn’t just some kid being dragged along by bigger dreams than he could handle. Sure, Siegfried yearned to be a hero. But, even if he didn’t know it himself, he had a natural noble streak that pointed him in the right direction to truly follow through on that desire to walk in his heroes’ footsteps.

I had this nagging feeling that’s been growing since we met, I thought, but I’m certain now that you’re no mere beginner adventurer.

If he’d been in my position, I suspect he’d have done just the same, turning down knighthood and full-time study at the College so he could follow the allure of adventure and live as a true first-level PC.

“Yeah, you’re totally right. They have a right to a share too. It wasn’t just us four that toppled the Infernal Knight and his army—we weren’t the ones who cut down a hundred of his men. We have an obligation to share.”

I was fully aware that our victory on that battlefield wasn’t brought about by us four. It was a victory won by Gattie and every last person standing out there. Hmm, what’s that? The knight hired from the local strongarm who was there too? I’m sure he got a hearty pat on the back, so that’s something we don’t need to involve ourselves in, yup.

Warriors who put their lives on the line deserved worthy payment for their valor. That wasn’t all; I needed to actually make a show of my respect, or else some unsavory rumors might start to fly behind my back. Before people started muttering things like, “That brat just happened to be there and stole the glory all for himself, the bastard,” I needed to illustrate that I wasn’t just a greedy so-and-so: that I, as we all did, had a code to keep.

Unlike Siegfried, I wasn’t saying any of this to be cool or heroic. I was just letting years of Machiavellian conditioning from my days in indenture to the witch-queen herself call the shots.

Just like fathers back home threw big parties to try and make everyone forget that his family would reap the better part of the reward for their efforts, we needed to make a show of our big hearts so that the families of the deceased felt vindicated and the attitude toward us didn’t sour. Envy was a human constant, even in cases where our hard-earned money was a result of a battle that flirted with death itself.

It was a simple thing to manage once you disabused yourself of your more naive reflexes. Dealing with these little disagreements that even GMs were prone to skip over was a small price to pay so long as it smoothed out the path to the next adventure.

Meanwhile my sweet, pure, innocent hero in the making had arrived at a similar conclusion on the grounds of pure virtue ethics; his heroes had done it, so it must have been the right thing. Ah, his good heart was practically blinding.

Maybe I’d gotten jaded in my old age.

“Anyway, come on, man. I think it’s unfair for me and Kaya to get the same amount as you and Margit. All I did was steal the flag; you’re the one who took down Baltlinden.”

“Hey, capturing the enemy banner is a real achievement. I know they’re not your usual taste, but how about listening to some war epics sometime?”

“Ugh, I can never get into those—all the lists of super long noble names for the completionists’ sake. Although the battle scenes are pretty cool.”

“Just take notes, it’ll help. Anyway, that final push is really crucial, Sieg. The reason our losses during the all-out clash were so low was because you snapped the enemy’s morale in half.”

“Yeah, but again, I didn’t do it on my own. I borrowed your horse, Margit led the way, and we only distracted the flag bearer long enough to pull the whole thing off thanks to Kaya’s potion. I’m really not that skilled.”

“Aha, straight into my trap, comrade. You are quite right—Kaya’s potions were crucial, whether in avoiding arrow fire or stealing the flag. It was a victory aided by both your efforts! I won’t advise you on how the married couple should split their share, but her work is proof that as a team, you deserve your portion of the prize.”

“Wh-Wh-Who said we were married?!”

My young friend slammed both palms on the table as he stood up, his face beet red.

Oh ho, still loitering on the first level of this love-dungeon, are you?

“You’re not? You seem like a good match to me. A real couple of lovebirds.”

“Oh shut your trap... Kaya deserves way better than me. Don’t talk about her like she’s some kind of bonus for me to collect. I ain’t been to school, but I’ve heard enough poems and stories to know where you’re steering.”

“My apologies—I take it back.”

These two had a more complex relationship than I gave them credit for. If they weren’t simple chums who had happily strolled out of their canton hand in hand like Margit and I had, then I assumed that they had some issues that were not your average fare.

Whatever the case, I wanted them to have their reward.

I ushered Siegfried back down and we sat face-to-face once again. Whispering would change the register of what I had to say. I needed to prove to Siegfried that he and Kaya didn’t just deserve their money—they needed it.

“Look around you, Siegfried. What do you see?”

“Nothing, really. We’re in a grimy tavern full of drunks and layabouts. Upstairs ain’t great either.”

It was still daytime, but the Buck’s Antlers was renowned for cheap booze and beds, so it was full of adventurers throwing back mugs of beer that I didn’t dare to touch.

Winter was a dry season for your average murderhobo.

“Yeah. That’s why you need to take the money and fix your own circumstances, get me?”

The only people running caravans in this much snow either really loved their jobs or were transporting goods that needed to be delivered now or else. The cold wasn’t enough to drive bandits off, so most merchants preferred to take the time off until the roads were clear and less dangerous again.

Farmers and merchants alike obeyed the changing of the seasons—they worked their asses off during spring to fall, and during the winter they would tackle all the little things that piled up. As a result, the need for adventurers dropped as well.

Of course odd jobs that were dressed-up chores were still available, but these were limited, and so many adventurers wasted away the hours, drowning their boredom in drink.

“You’re still sleeping in the group dorm, aren’t you, Siegfried?”

“Yeah, we haven’t been paid for the bounty yet, so...”

“And that’s exactly why you’re still breathing right now. Come on, think about it. What would be easier: taking down a terror worth fifty drachmae, or preying on someone who’s got it in their pockets? Which would sound like an easier and more appealing target to an exhausted fool whose heroic dreams have dried up?”

“Ah...!”

I had pulled the wool from his eyes. Siegfried’s face gradually grew more and more pale.

Adventurers were split into two major groups: foolish kids like us who were pulled in by the allure of glory and the terminally unemployable. It was the latter group who were wasting their time drinking in this dirt-cheap inn right now. Adventurers did any old job for money, but for the sad lot here, they would let the devil creep into their hearts for a chance at turning their lives around.

Siegfried was safe for now because he hadn’t received his big blowout yet, but going to bed with a stack of drachmae under your pillow was like wearing a great big neon sign reading “WORLD-CLASS SUCKER.” Sure, Kaya would have the relative security of her own room, but mere doors and locks would hardly be a sufficient deterrent for a bunch of claim jumpers.

“So take the money and find somewhere you can hunker down without worrying about this stuff. If you don’t, your stinginess is going to get you a knife in the throat one day or another.”

“D-Damn man, you’re completely right. How could I not see that? I’ve watched those clowns fight over scraps in the dorms a hundred times by now.”

Siegfried had realized that he was not exempt from such a stupid fate. Yup, you’ve gone up in my books, young lad. He had realized the fragility of life—that even the most noble of heroes would die if their throat was slit while they slept. I admired his maturity.

Then again, maybe he’d made the connection so quickly because of all those sagas knocking around in his skull. Plenty of heroic tales closed on a down note with a surreptitious poisoning at dinner or a new bedmate pulling a shiv in the dark. He probably had a whole catalog of disturbing endings on tap.

“It’s no surprise. You leave your valuables with Kaya in her room, so you probably just lost sense that you could be a target too.”

And so I pushed my plan to its final stage and made him take sixty-six drachmae, a rough third of the bounty, for himself.

In a way it was fortunate we didn’t actually have the money yet. The news I’d received today simply said that a figure had been calculated and that we would receive it on their decided date—it would take the authorities a little while to process everything, after all. This gave me an ample window to convince Siegfried of the meaning behind such a sum.

“When Kaya’s gathered herself, I suggest you find a good place to move to right away. Let’s see... The Snowy Silverwolf is probably your cheapest option. If you could spare a bit more, I’d suggest getting a private room at the Golden Mane. At any rate, you want some distance from this wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

“S-Sure, I hear ya loud and clear. We’ve been paid for the bodyguard job, after all... The Golden Mane’s a good shout for an adventurer worth his salt, isn’t it? How much is it to stay for one night?”

“A one-person room with no meals is fifty assarii a day.”

“Fifty?! Without food?!”

“You get real good quality for the price and the clientele are all trustworthy. The inn’s well guarded too. One piece of silver for your guaranteed safety is a bargain, no?”

“Y-Yeah, but still... Maybe I should wait to move until we get paid... Fifty assarii, man, it’s daylight robbery.”

“They clean the rooms every other day. I think it’s a steal to be honest. It’s a respectable inn, so you won’t get the sort of riffraff who drink until they vomit or pass out that you get here. I wouldn’t be so quick to say no.”

The good thing about respectable inns was that their owners had the power to tell the Association manager to demote particularly unruly or belligerent customers. Their private rooms weren’t for sale to folks from the nastier clans who’d inevitably put the space to unwelcome (and costly) use.

All the same, I was impressed that, just as I’d imagined, he had been keeping his purse strings tight. I’d been prepared to lend him some cash, but Siegfried had been saving up for the sake of fixing his equipment.

He was an exemplary specimen of our sort of animal—people who would survive on cheap booze and food so that we had enough to spare for our more specialized needs. We would curl up in hay beside our horses to leave room in the budget for the kit we’d need on the next adventure.

Yes, he and I were alike. All the same, now that he had the means, the guy deserved to splurge a little. I wanted to grab his character sheet and scribble down some nice weapons, and maybe some magic items to boot—really give him the whole “Monty Haul” special. But in the meantime, he would have to stay alive so that he could get there on his own.

“I’d advise moving today if you can. If rumor gets out about when you’re being paid, the moment you come here to grab your things might be your last moment alive.”

“Okay, I get it. It’s not as if I’ve got a lot of stuff, so we can move soon. Tch... I feel gross. Like I’m receiving your charity.”

“Hey, hey, it’s a reward we all earned fairly. Just accept it already.”

“Grah, fine, fine! You better not beg for it back in a few days.”

“You couldn’t force me to. When I’m out on epic adventures every other day, today’s reward will seem like chump change!”

I was aware that any head for money I’d once possessed had been chewed up and spat out by Lady Agrippina and Lady Leizniz, but that isn’t to say I’d forgotten what it could do for you.

This was enough money to buy a house—a simple one, but bought-and-paid-for real estate, for cryin’ out loud—so I advised him that it might be worth seeing if any cheap but well-maintained places were up for sale.

“A h-house?! Seriously?”

“Yeah. You get the occasional real winner amid the dross. Come on, you haven’t forgotten what your partner does, do you?”

“Oh yeah, right... I...I’ve always wanted to get Kaya her own workshop. If we hadn’t left Illfurth, she was set to inherit one back home.”

Kaya was a mage and an herbalist. I’d truck on fine so long as I had my catalyst and a weapon, but she needed all sorts of tools and equipment. I was almost suspicious at how she had managed to concoct so much holed up in that squalid private room of hers.

“Ugh, you’re right... I need to pay her back, if only a little bit.”

“You said it. It’s a big task to do right away, so I’d recommend seeing if the Association can help. They might have some properties you can look at.”

“Gotcha. I’ll ask the gals at reception for help.”

Yeah, those three really were pretty damn good at helping us out. I was a bit curious about his use of “gals,” though. Maybe they’d chewed him out for treating them like they were older than they would like to think they were.

At any rate, we had neatly tied up all the chaos the world’s GM had sprung on us. Jonas Baltlinden’s public execution was to be held soon, but I honestly didn’t care to go. I’d already done enough to kill the man already. I wasn’t the sort of person so paranoid they’d wait at their front window to make sure the garbage truck takes away their trash in the morning.

One thing that I was holding out on was a little bonus. Jonas was an infamous name, and I’d heard that we might have a little special promotion waiting for us, but the fact that we hadn’t heard anything today meant that it was probably off the table.

I wondered if they were holding back because we’d reached ruby-red so quickly already?

Oh well, you can’t rush these things.

“By the way, Siegfried.”

“What now?”

“Two hundred doesn’t divide by three, so we can’t split it evenly.”

“What? I’m no good with figures.”

“Oh yeah? Well, here’s a piece of advice from me: make time to learn. You must have noticed by now that a lot of the sagas would’ve ended a lot sooner if the heroes didn’t have the sense to riddle that stuff out.”

I wondered what kind of life Siegfried had trained him to always respond, “Oh yeah, you’re right!” when I packaged advice in hero lore. Yes, he was proud at times, but he always stuck at things he wished to learn with the utmost gumption. It was a tough trick to pick up.

What can I say, you just can’t help liking a guy who knows he’s as dumb as a sack of hammers and still wants to learn.

“Anyway, you’re the one who complained you were receiving too big a share, so I’ll take the extra, okay?”

“Right... And how much is that?”

“Let me pay for the drinks today!”

“That’s as good as nothing!”

As my comrade in arms shouted at me, I laughed back at him and gave a few silent words of thanks to the Powers That Be for the gift of an irreplaceable friend.

[Tips] In the countryside, where outlets for entertainment are few, it isn’t just the common folk who find enjoyment in any form of lively commotion.

“You look a bit calmer now.”

“I-I’m really sorry.”

While Erich and Siegfried were downstairs talking, Margit was tending to Kaya in her small room upstairs in the Buck’s Antlers, aware that Kaya would prefer another girl’s support. Margit loosened the snug bits of Kaya’s outfit, took off her boots, and laid a damp cloth on her forehead to bring her temperature down.

“Is it really such a big concern?”

“O-Of course, it’s two hundred whole drachmae! It’s an incredible amount even after you split it. Even one drachma would be a heavy weight in my purse.”

“It’s more than enough to kill for, that’s for sure.”

As Margit let out a cheeky snicker, Kaya wanted to point out that this wasn’t a laughing matter.

Kaya had been overcome with worry about what had taken Siegfried a whole conversation with Erich to realize. People’s lives were cheap; especially so if you were a poor soul who wasn’t listed in a family register. The authorities wouldn’t bother investigating a dead body lying in a pool of mud in a back alley; what was going to make it worth their time and effort? Only the smell of hard cash or clout could move them to meaningful action.

Why wouldn’t Kaya have nearly fainted with worry? Every fledgling adventurer dreamed of the day they would be a household name with a panoply of awesome gear to boot, but these dreams were often cut short by creeping avarice—whether it was your own or someone else’s hardly mattered.

Money management was a crucial but arduous job in itself—who should hold it, where to put it, how to store it safely.

Paper money got heavy when enough of it stacked up, but that was nothing compared to carrying a bag full of bronze coins. If word got out about what treasures lay within, unsavory clans could come knocking, hungry for your hard-earned windfall. Even a single grubby assarius was cause enough for its unprepared holder to take a dagger in the back; the world was hardly short of folk who’d trade a fellow’s lifeblood for a round of cheap swill. Such monsters far outnumbered any other kind.

However, there were many who went about their lives blissfully unaware of this reality. Even though Kaya hated the fact that her best friend slept alone in that group dorm, she sated herself with at least having his belongings here in this room with her. She did what she could to keep the creeping hands of evil away from Siegfried, whether that be giving him a ward to hold while he slept or sneaking antitoxin into his stimulant potions.

If Siegfried didn’t mind, Kaya would have been happy to sleep huddled together in this tiny room, like birds seeking shelter from the rain.

Margit chuckled.

“What is it?” Kaya asked.

“Nothing. I was just thinking that you, too, are very fond of your childhood friend.”

Kaya had thought that Margit’s chuckling was at her own timidity, so this response came like a left hook out of the blue. The comment sent her pulse quickening again after she had worked so hard to lower it.

“So then, how did you two meet?”

“I, uh, well, it’s nothing special really.”

“Oh no, I highly doubt there are any tales of romance in this world that aren’t interesting!”

Margit went straight to the point, leaving Kaya no room to hide in euphemism. Still, Kaya struggled to square the potent feeling that Siegfried stirred up within her with a word as cute as “romance.”

The closest word that she could find would be “resolve.”

“Well, I suppose it’s rude for the person asking not to share as well.”

Seeing the mage fall into a troubled silence, the huntress decided that she would take a leaf out of her closest friend’s book and open her heart first. Not only that, Margit was only just realizing that Kaya was the first woman her own age that she’d gotten to know in Marsheim. She found herself wanting to just talk to someone about the simple things in life as she’d done back home in Konigstuhl.

“If Erich hadn’t been there, I imagine I would never have found a place of my own.”

“What do you mean?”

“Back in our canton—well, this is a story from when we were kids, really—a lot of our peers loved playing outside. One of the most popular games was fox and geese and, well, you don’t need me to tell you what it’s like when someone like me is involved, do you?”

Margit gave an awkward smile and leaped up onto the wooden bars over the window they had opened earlier for air. Seeing her take to the air so effortlessly, Kaya recognized what Margit meant immediately. Arachne were skilled at passing undetected, and this was compounded by Margit’s small stature. If she was a goose, the game would never end no matter how much time the foxes spent hunting for her.

“I think I would’ve starved if it hadn’t been for him.”

“Starved?”

“I was never satisfied with my hunts. It was so dull. But he managed to catch me; he managed to get away from me. In the end, he actually came up with schemes for everyone to work together and continue playing the game. Can you believe it? The boy reinvented every hunter’s trick I’d ever learned from first principles, just for fox and geese!”

Margit proudly spoke of her partner’s feats.

Kaya was impressed in all honesty. To think that a mensch, the most imperceptive specimens of all humankind, managed to train himself to catch an arachne while he was still only a child.

Even with his martial training, Siegfried could never ferret out Margit if she didn’t want to be found, let alone Kaya. She had lost track of the number of times her best friend had leaped out of his skin and dropped whatever he was holding—so much tea, wasted—all because Margit had sprung up on him from behind to get his attention.

“We’re only from a small canton. I doubt there was anyone there who could have hoped to become stronger than Erich. That’s why I think that in another life, unless there’d been some kind of happy accident, I would never have felt so fulfilled. I would have made do on what scraps of prosaic joy I could gather day-to-day, starved of real satisfaction.”

“You mean...hunting, right?”

“Hee hee, of course. I can see now why my mother was an adventurer once herself. And why she had dropped everything to capture my father when she realized that his skill was a match for hers.”

Margit’s mother’s retirement came as a shock to everyone, and her allies had berated her heavily for it. Margit laughed that when seasonal letters came from them, they were still full of disdain for her mother’s choices.

“Yes, I suppose their wedding must have been a real bolt from the blue.”

“If I said, ‘Okay guys, I’ve got enough money now, so I’m going back to Konigstuhl to marry Erich, bye!’ I think a lot of people would be shocked that I was giving all this up. I’d hardly be any different from her.”

Kaya knew Margit was joking, but a shiver ran down her back.

Siegfried had caught a few “lucky” breaks, and it had made him a figure of note in Marsheim. He had acquired a sum that set smaller clans drooling, and on top of that he had a mage with him that aided his grand efforts. Kaya imagined that if Siegfried hadn’t been a “party member” with Goldilocks—an adventurer who pushed aside all of the clans and treated them like dirt by the roadside—they would be up to their ears in slavering, gold-crazed recruiters by now. Without their allies, Kaya imagined that all her worst fears would turn to reality.

“But don’t you worry, I’m not quite sated just yet.”

Margit pulled at the loop of string around her neck to reveal a large fang. It was a simple necklace that seemed far removed from the usual flashy fare Kaya expected from an arachne.

This was Margit’s trophy from the second-most difficult hunt after Erich—the wolves who’d plagued her canton.

But it still hadn’t been enough. Even the great wolf the fang had come from, which she had cornered as it threatened the children of the canton, hadn’t sated the huntress. The thrill of it came and went in the span of two days.

When they were playing around, it was easy to get one over on Erich. But what if it were a real hunt? What if she were to hunt Erich when his bloodlust was at its peak and he cut down everyone in his way? If she was being honest, Margit didn’t feel like she would be so lucky as to walk away with her head still on her shoulders.

She was playing the long game. Erich was a quarry that would only grow stronger, larger, more deadly. What greater prize was there than prey hard and trusty as a whetstone, always close, always demanding you find a way to be that little bit faster, smarter, fiercer?

He was her beloved target, the one whose presence—barring some utter disaster—could always whet her appetite when it surged.

After all, even after everything they had been through, she still couldn’t see how deep Erich’s strength lay. Not even Margit knew how much this gold-furred wolf would grow after besting yet stronger enemies and yet more difficult hurdles. Perhaps he would become even stronger than the Ashen King—a beast of the highest caliber that she might never meet again. Margit had chosen a path to fend off any who would brazenly attempt to cut this wolf cub’s journey short before he came into his own.

Staying close to Goldilocks was like chasing mist; he was impossible to get hold of and buffeted about by cryptic winds of fate.

The errant course he cut was like that of a villain’s die—an ingenious hundred-sided thing, proof of an artisan’s mastery of their medium and prone to wandering like a loose marble, its prevailing face changing in the merest gust. A hundred fates in motion, each the more interesting for the others in the balance.

Margit found a kind of irony in the fact that Erich never tried his hand at games where only the biggest bets would result in the biggest payouts, in which the roll of the dice could decide all...

“Now then, time for your story.”

“Yes, well... You see, Dee, sorry, Dirk saved me.”

Having heard Margit’s tale for herself, there was no way another young woman could hide her own tale of love.

Kaya pushed her face into her lumpy pillow to at least hide something of her as she laid bare her hated past.

Kaya admitted, begrudgingly, that her family was famous. Kaya’s full name was Kaya Asclepia Nyx. Although the Nyx family hadn’t received the noble marker of “von,” they were a seventeen-generation-long family of herbalists who treated knights and lesser nobles.

The Nyx family, now in charge of the public sanitation and health of the neighboring twelve cantons, started as a small lakeside hermitage and supposedly traced its origins to a child raised by alfar. Kaya’s mother showed her the heirloom containing her family tree, but Kaya didn’t quite know what to make of it. After all, she didn’t float in the air or pass through walls like a changeling would.

What she could do, however, was concoct potions—that and read faces.

From a young age, Kaya was too clever by half. It didn’t take long for her to work out why she was so valued and what it was people wanted from her. She was to be the cornerstone of the next era of the Nyx family—to draw them higher from their valued status and to carry on the bloodline so that the cantons in the region could continue to leave their mark on history. It was an important role, but a simple one. The love Kaya received came with the expectation that she would do her part to preserve the public good.

Kaya was certain that the love from her mother was genuine, but a part of her thought matters would be different if she had any siblings. There would be no other children; the wolves had claimed her father as he was gathering herbs for her mother. Perhaps this love was more an obsession—a fierce refusal to allow the family to end with her generation.

And so the talented Kaya acted as those around her wished—she didn’t complain when made to study; she learned how to treat and grow the herbs that stung her hands; she always put on a kind front for those she met.

“My mother always told me, ‘A doctor’s smile is their most valuable asset,’” Kaya said. “A patient’s hope lives and dies depending on that medicine.”

Kaya was surrounded by expectations and obsessive desires. And yet, she felt a complete apathy toward both. After all, no one cared about Kaya’s own cultivated talents. At the end of the day, all people wanted was for her to carry on the bloodline.

This stunted upbringing meant that, as much as she might have learned, she was still naive to matters of her own heart. Kaya merely acted in a manner that she felt everyone wanted from her, and so she grew despondent with the world itself. Her soul went unmoved at the bounty of spring’s blooming spread out before her in the fields; she felt no twinge of heartache to see the blossoms die with season’s end. As day passed to night passed to dawn, every human feeling in her remained placid, still, muted.

Smiling, Kaya explained to Margit that she had accepted that her fate was merely to heal when healing was needed—to do just as everyone wanted her to.

Then Dirk came into her life, full of swagger, demanding to be called a name he hadn’t earned—wholly unlike anyone around him.

“The hell are you doing? That look doesn’t suit you at all.”

These were the first words he ever spoke to her.

Kaya would never forget that night. She had been staring into the lake that her family took its name from, practicing her smiles in its moonlit reflection. She had never once smiled from the heart; it bothered her that she couldn’t produce something that looked natural. So here she came, night after night once her mother had gone to sleep, to practice.

Dirk hadn’t been able to sleep. His brothers had eaten every last scrap of food before he could get a hand in, and so he’d wandered the night to stave off his growling stomach and his terrible boredom.

Under the full moon that night, Kaya realized that this young boy was the only one who had seen her smile for what it was—how she moved her muscles but didn’t move her heart.

His honesty had saved her in that moment. It had made her realize: There is someone in this world that can understand me. It was as if all the color in the world had rushed in at once—rather, it had always been there, but never in focus. It dawned on her that being needed mattered far, far less to her than being recognized.

As Kaya explained her situation to him, Dirk didn’t laugh. Weighed against her abundant blessings, he seemed to her to have far more real problems—nothing to eat, nowhere warm left to sleep. But to her amazement, the boy merely nodded and accepted every word she said.

Dirk knew what it was like to refuse the expectations put upon you.

He was the third son of a poor farming family. His life was defined by the simple expectations that he wouldn’t waste the family’s meager money, would help in the fields, and would go off to find work elsewhere once he had come of age. Dirk saw how his own circumstances mirrored hers; he told Kaya about how his father had struck him after he had sneaked out to join a practice session with the Watch, complaining that he was merely wasting time that could be spent in the fields.

That’s not who we are! The two were bonded that night by the desire to reject their circumstances.

“He said I didn’t need to force myself to smile, but when I said that if I didn’t, everyone around me would be disappointed, he just said that I should picture myself sticking my tongue out at them instead.”

The most painful thing that could happen when sharing your worries was having them rejected—being told that they were pointless or insubstantial, or that other people had it worse. Someone else, someone who didn’t get it, would have told Kaya that she just needed to stop smiling, to “be herself.” All it would have done was drive her back toward the pain.

Dirk didn’t force her to do that. He nodded and said, “Sometimes we can’t escape from our pain.” He then told Kaya his favorite ways of staving off the blues. After all, Dirk knew how much it mattered to keep people satisfied, such that the fragile homeostasis that kept him alive remained intact. He’d learned the hard way.

The boy had then gone on to give his most important piece of advice: the single most important moment to truly be yourself is right at the closing moment of one’s life, when you know the end is coming, and if you’re going to live your truth, it has to be now or never again. This was no metaphor—Dirk knew kids who had lost their usefulness and had “never come back from playing outside.”

Of course, Kaya’s family wouldn’t do such a thing, but it was evident that if she did do a one-eighty and became an unruly child, those around her would treat her differently in turn. And so the boy told her to give as little attention as possible to those people who she didn’t like or value.

“He said to me, ‘I’m gonna get big and strong and leave this backwater canton. Then I can leave my good-for-nothing dad behind, my mom who’s hardly ever around, and my greedy-ass brothers. I never feel hungry when I’m thinking of the day I get to laugh ’em off and tell ’em they underestimated me!’”

“Yes, that seems very like him.”

“Which is why I want to help him.”

“Even if he doesn’t wish for you to?”

“It’s what I want.”

Margit’s read of the situation had been dead-on. Dirk might have understood Kaya’s circumstances, but he didn’t think that she should have left the safety of their canton with him. He’d wanted her to find her own way out, to eventually have the latitude to learn as she wished and not as others needed of her, but in his mind there was no reason for Kaya to sink to his level and coat herself in soot. She should’ve looked for a place of her own to rest easy, where she could spend her days using the skills she had and pinning down what she really wanted.

On that night where Dirk resolved to become Siegfried, although he had been uncertain for a moment, he had chosen not to go to Kaya’s house to ask her to follow.

“I had a feeling that night.”

As Kaya had been getting ready for bed that evening, she had a formless worry in the pit of her stomach. She had an inkling that the day of Dirk’s departure was near; he’d been restless lately, and she’d seen him carrying gear whose provenance was beyond her, but she had no firm evidence to be certain.

Kaya wasn’t sure if it was a sixth sense of her own or divine intervention that led her to sneak out. Whatever the case, who else did she find but Dirk, kicking the sign to Illfurth as recompense for the unhappy years he had spent there.

“Dee was ready to leave all on his own. When I found him, he said I shouldn’t do something stupid. In that moment, I didn’t know exactly what it was I wanted myself. It was possible for me to go get the things I needed and head out with him then and there, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s not an easy decision to make. What did he say?”

“He saw me hemming and hawing and...asked me to come with him.”

The huntress let out a squeal at this romantic gesture. It was the type of lovely scene worth dreaming about.

Kaya had labeled her emotions as “resolve,” but anyone in love was tenacious. Margit thought that maybe Kaya had simply seen her own weakness in the moment where the boy she looked up to shined so brightly, but, well, no one wanted to have their flaws pointed out; she kept her observation to herself.

They weren’t doing anything stupid like running circles around each other; they were just two young fools who each thought their love was one-sided. It was more enjoyable to simply watch the scene and let it play out. Margit decided that she would devote her energy (secondary to her own partner, of course) to protecting these two from the shadows that loomed over them. After all, she was sure that her own special someone wanted to see them full of happiness too.

Erich hadn’t spoken in detail about what had happened in the Imperial capital, but Margit could tell that he had come back somewhat jaded by the world at large. Having these two allies, with their untainted lives, would be a panacea for his soul. Her partner had chosen the rough life of an adventurer instead of the glamor and glitz of Berylin; she was sure he would be thrilled at having these fresh-faced youths alongside them.

Despite getting in her first real girl talk in a long while, something was bugging Margit. Kaya obviously looked up to Siegfried and viewed him more highly than she did herself. The love between them was evident, but all the same something didn’t sit right.

“By the way...why do you choose not to call him Siegfried?”

Kaya had never once called him by his chosen name, despite his furious protestations. The young man might have changed his name for auspicious purposes, but it was evident that it was backed up by a deep love for the legendary hero.

The Siegfried of legend was an exemplary hero, a valiant man who helped the weak with monstrous might and an honest heart. He had used Windslaught to slay the Foul Drake Fafnir, who had terrorized countries far and wide. Then, at the end of this quest, he had used his bounty not for his own ends, but to help those whose homes and countries had been destroyed.

“Do you know the origins of The Adventures of Siegfried?”

“Sorry, my home wasn’t so grand as to have many books.”

“The stories of Siegfried are based on ‘The Song of Sigurd,’ about an adventurer who lived during the Age of Gods. We had a copy at home written in the Orisons.”

“Siegfried” was a modern corruption of the original pronunciation. As this new naming found its way into common parlance, his stories had evolved with the passing ages.

“Sigurd’s story...doesn’t end well.”

“I thought Siegfried’s story was your typical ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ fare, no?”

The tale of Siegfried that Erich knew from his old world, that of the Nibelungenlied, was quite different from the one of this world, despite the commonalities between the names.

After all, in this world the Foul Drake Fafnir had, in fact, existed. As for Siegfried, he had simply been a noble young lad who had received a divine message from the Tidal Goddess. The drake’s blood had conferred no tainted immortality upon him.

According to the stories, Siegfried’s talents had been acknowledged by the Tidal Goddess. The goddess’s own child, the Goddess of Calm Tides, had thus sent Her apostle, the Maiden of Babbling Brooks, to deliver Siegfried a message to lead him down the path of justice. At the end of the tale, Siegfried’s work is lauded by the gods and he marries the apostle, who had chosen to renounce her divinity. It was the happiest of happy endings.

Siegfried’s tale had been the inspiration for so many offshoots that it almost seemed hackneyed at this point, but Kaya wasn’t a literature-obsessed girl of that ilk. Neither was she the sort of sadist who enjoyed seeing the characters meet increasingly worse fates.

“The Adventures of Siegfried had been heavily altered for widespread appeal. Especially the end.”

“How does the original version end?”

“The Goddess of Calm Tides and Sigurd have an illicit affair, but thrown into despair that Sigurd didn’t choose Her, She kills him. In the end, the Maiden of Babbling Brooks kills herself too.”

“Wow.”

The huntress could see why Kaya didn’t want her friend to borrow the man’s name.

It was truly an awful tale—two immortals and a man whose strength had put him on their level, all noble in their deeds, sacrificed on the altar of the one among them who should have been wisest’s petty, childish envy. Selfishness consumed righteousness and grief, in turn, drowned an apostle of sweet waters in the very same river that took her love. Most any poet would want to make it more palatable to the masses. The only tragedies that received higher renown than the classics were from literature lovers who wanted something that broke the mold a bit, or those prone to more than a little bit of schadenfreude.

Seeing that this was how the hero they’d spent the whole tale cheering on ended up would be enough to cast a funereal pall over the audience, and more importantly, leave a lightness in the poet’s pockets.

What’s more it was clear that the church wouldn’t have minded—or rather, had preferred—if the details were changed. The Goddess of Calm Tides had sent Her own apostle to this awful fate, so it was obvious that they would prefer for these less-than-savory details to remain untold. The truth, of course, would remain in their holy texts, but they would happily permit a change in the version the masses received. The almost blasphemous act of altering the story was preferable to leaving such a stain on their patron deity’s reputation.

“Not only that, Sigurd himself wasn’t always the best person. The Maiden of Babbling Brooks isn’t painted in the best light either. She gives the men who try to woo her impossible tasks and sends them to their deaths. Standard fare for a deity, huh?”

“Yes, I agree with you on that one.”

Margit gave a thought to Kaya’s reasoning. If Margit’s own partner said that his name “Goldilocks” was a little too on the nose and that he wanted to change it to the “Golden Wolf” in homage to the Ashen King, she wouldn’t hesitate to smack him round the head in annoyance. After all, the legendary wolf had been felled in the same hunt that had claimed his mate as a hostage. It was not auspicious for Margit in the slightest. If he ended up completely losing his mind and forcing the matter, she would stop him, even if it resulted in a couple of broken bones.

As a mercy to the boy, Kaya had never told Siegfried what she really thought about his name’s ill omens. If such an honest young man found out the original story of his beloved hero had ended differently, well, it might shatter his heart. It was the height of kindness to let aspirations stay aspirations and dreams remain dreams.

The pair didn’t speak for a moment as they vowed to keep this secret between them. Goldilocks would probably never find out, and even if he did, he wasn’t so brutish a man as to break Siegfried’s heart like that. He would probably smile and say that he preferred The Adventures of Siegfried to Sigurd’s story anyway.

All they had to do was be careful in case they happened to meet a noble with a penchant for the old tales. Neither Kaya nor Margit had any idea that “The Song of Sigurd” was among the most popular of the classic myths in aristocratic circles—regarded by a fair few among them as a bleak but gut-busting comedy.

“And...”

“And...?”

As the huntress awaited the mage’s next words, she was unaware they would make her squeal once again.

“The one who taught me how to smile wasn’t Siegfried...it was Dirk of Illfurth.”

This is a story that won’t be told here, but upon hearing this episode for himself, Erich merely muttered, “So...wholesome...” before collapsing to the ground.

[Tips] Stories enjoyed in the present age might find their origins in terrible real events where blood flowed like water. It isn’t rare for a tale’s hero to be nothing like their original namesake.

Our security clearance was suddenly elevated, to my considerable shock. As we stood on the cusp of a brutal winter, we found ourselves escaping from Infrared and making our way to Orange.

It seemed that the Association manager was a real conniving so-and-so... Ah, apologies, I should say that Friend Computer did what it must to manage such an illogical adventuring ecosystem. The manager had gone against her usual rulebook and made exceptions for me and Margit, all for the sake of lighting a fire under our fellow adventurers.

Endless threats still flourished in the realm of Marsheim. That meant an abundance of jobs where the dangers heavily outweighed the rewards. They might not have been legitimate suicide missions, but they were still gigs that warranted a moment’s pause to consider the consequences before recklessly signing up. Therein lay threats just like Jonas Baltlinden, who had finally met a grisly end after his long and painful public execution.

The manager wanted to send a clear message to the layabouts under her who dared to call themselves adventurers: great deeds would be rewarded appropriately. In other words, if her subordinates threw themselves into the fiery pit of hell itself, they could land an expedited ticket to a higher rank.

Even if the payout was barely worth it, the real reward lay in receiving both the Adventurer’s Association and the artisan union’s stamped, legitimate approval.

Above amber-orange was topaz-yellow, and above that was copper-green. At that level, despite being an adventurer, you were regarded as a proper, registered citizen. If I told you that the artisan’s union would fund you instead of merely acting as a pawn shop, would that make the scale of this clearer?

At any rate, in her book, it didn’t matter if a few hotheaded newbie adventurers bit off more than they could chew and choked in the hopes of rising through the ranks. After all, adventurers were nothing more than day laborers—surplus to population. If a party got some decent work done and never returned, then that was money and paperwork saved. I’d have bet good money that was how the Association reasoned it out, anyway.

You see, just as they weren’t able with Jonas Baltlinden, Marsheim couldn’t just round up its biggest names and send them off to pry thorns like Edward the Canton-Crusher and the Femme Fatale (scourge of all caravans) from the government’s side. That they’d eluded capture this long proved that conventional methods weren’t going to cut it.

Their new approach, then, was to use me as their golden boy to rouse the whole adventuring populace to action and thus tighten the noose around their targets’ necks with overwhelming numbers.

In the same vein to how I’d landed the Baltlinden job based on the rumor that a ruby-red adventurer like myself could do essentially the work of an amber-orange without much difference, if nobles continued to hire adventurers on the cheap, said adventurers could probably use that reasoning to beg for promotions. You see, if word got out that important jobs were getting foisted upon what amounted to no-name lackeys, I was sure that it’d cause a stir among our client base. “Oh really? Are you sure you don’t have enough money or resources to see my request through?” was the everyday refrain among blue-blooded clients who wanted to keep their purse strings tight. The most hard-bargaining, penny-pinching Kyoto local paled in comparison to a noble’s borderline demonic parsimony. Lady Agrippina was living proof.

Maybe I was just letting my pessimistic side win, but I couldn’t let myself smile and nod at the promotion when I couldn’t allay the nagging feeling that the Association was using me as a lever in the ongoing economic exploitation of my fellow adventurers.

Not only that, the Association manager had links to the margrave, so it wasn’t difficult for them to do a little digging and see that I had served the count thaumapalatine herself, Count Ubiorum. I have to admit, I was sorely tempted to poke my nose in where it didn’t belong and see how His Imperial Majesty’s faithful servants were acting behind the scenes.

“Right. Let’s talk business,” I said after taking a sip of Kaya’s fragrant, homemade black tea.

We were in Kaya’s workshop up in the north quarter of the city. It wasn’t a particularly pastoral spot or anything, but it was safe and cushy relative to the rest of the city—not exactly regal digs, but the sort of place where a uniquely worldly sort of upper-class type might find some comfort. It was an old, small, two-story building. The walls on the first floor had all been knocked down—raising some doubts about the building’s life span in the long term—and had been converted into an herbalist’s lab. The pair hadn’t yet bought all the equipment they needed, so it was a bit barren. The medicine cabinets and the strainer for drying herbs looked a bit lonely, but I was positive it wouldn’t be long before it became fully equipped.

The second floor was made up of three rooms—two bedrooms and a storeroom. My honest thought was, Man, these two sure have come a long way.

Maybe this whole house situation was the reason Siegfried looked so deflated in his spot across from me. No, deflated wasn’t quite the phrasing—he looked like a lifeless husk.

“Hey, hey, could you perk up just a little bit? And some advice: I won’t think any less of you, but if anyone asks if you want to do some speculative trading, say no, got it?”

“Oh quit your nagging. My gramps’s already chewed my ear off telling me not to make stupid investments. The whole reason we’re penniless farmers is ’cause the landlord sweet-talked my great-gramps into doing some speculation himself.”

Yep, Siegfried had gotten a bit carried away wanting to provide the best for Kaya. He had somehow found himself hemorrhaging cash; Kaya had ended up breaking her usual calm facade and blew a gasket. It was no surprise, really. He could’ve picked somewhere a little bit smaller; it made me want to ask if he was ready to settle down, to be quite honest. While it was true that there was nothing wrong with having more supplies, it didn’t amount to much if you didn’t have any money left for basic necessities in the following months.

I knew Siegfried wanted to show off in front of his partner, but I couldn’t help but think, Come on dude, couples need to talk this kinda stuff through!

Siegfried’s foolhardy spending had led me and Margit here. There was a request we would’ve usually avoided if it were just the two of us that I thought might be good to bring to the table for our penniless comrade.

“You know it; I know it,” I said. “The snow’s getting heavier and adventuring jobs are drying up. But, much to my surprise, a mediator has delivered me a request from the Association.”

“A mediator?”

“Yeah. You don’t expect nobles to head to the Association and fill in forms themselves, do you? They use go-betweens when they’re dealing with the peasants and burghers and such.”

The Association building had a reception room where society’s upper crust could deign to show themselves, but it was rarely used. No matter the age or the world, it seemed that the truly rich never directly made purchases with the money they themselves owned. Merchants came to their doors to ask what they needed and if they could help out, and it was the help’s job to do the grunt work of receiving and processing it all.

Nobles could send their own people to the Association, but in the interests of anonymity it was far more common for them to hire third-party mediators. It could prove detrimental for a noble if word of their specific needs got out. It was like spies slipping each other written messages so that there was zero chance of being overheard. I had firsthand experience in Berylin’s own Adventurer’s Association when I worked for Lady Agrippina.

Today’s request was no different. We weren’t told who the client was, but it was possible to surmise who it might be from the destination.

“We’re headed to the furthest reaches of the Empire—Zeufar canton. It’s under the jurisdiction of Lorrach Stronghold in the Frombach Viscounty.”

I wasn’t certain, but we were being hired by either an Imperial noble dealing with a rowdy local strongarm, or, conversely, a local strongarm who wanted to cull the numbers of Empire-friendly adventurers.

“That ain’t the sticks, that’s practically another country!”

“Now, now, Dee. They’re still Imperial subjects.”

“Yeah, but the one with the real power’s the local bigwig.”

Kaya and Siegfried grew up relatively near here, so I’d been hoping that maybe they might have some distant relations in Zeufar, but sadly not. A little nepotism would grease the wheels considerably, but life wasn’t so easy.

It was as Siegfried said, though. The Frombach Viscounty was almost as far out as you could go and beyond rural. If our client hadn’t been so generous as to hold a few spots for us on a ship that sailed up and down the Mauser, we probably wouldn’t have arrived until the spring.

“The pay’s good though, bud. Even if we split the money four ways, we’ll get at least one drachma apiece.”

“Seriously?! A-And what do we gotta do?”

“He wants us to look into some unidentified threats plaguing his canton, maybe do some extermination work, and give his people a little latitude to rest easy at night. I don’t think he knows exactly what to expect—hence the big payout.”

“Oh yeah, what kinda threats?”

The request went as follows:

During the heavy rains that fell during this past autumn, a landslide had occurred up on the mountain, revealing the entrance to some ruins.

A few locals and servants of the magistrate had gone to investigate, but none had returned. Reports had started circulating that merchants and travelers passing through the area had never reached their destination. Our client wanted us to make sure there weren’t any monsters or the like threatening the peace of the people of Zeufar.

If there was, in fact, nothing, then the margrave could assuage his people’s minds by announcing that there was no danger. If there was something, then we were expected to quell it if it was within our capabilities. Part of the request was to investigate the cave, which brought with it its own dangers—translation: hazard pay, baby. If we found that what lurked within was truly terrible—say, for example, a cursed labyrinth that had grown up around a black blade hungry for blood and souls, left to fester and starve for centuries—they’d be happy to have us simply investigate and report back.

We’d been left with some leeway to negotiate further payment depending on what we found. We’d have to foot the bill for travel, but they were offering an advance of ten librae to put toward any preparations.

If the down payment had been half or even full price, it’d have been obvious this was one of those dangerous “No hard feelings, but...” requests that could be thrown straight into the trash. However, Mister Fidelio had kindly taught me that for direct requests, a down payment of about ten percent was standard.

The rule of adventuring society was that no matter how lauded or highly ranked you were, an adventurer could only take one request at a time. For Laurentius’s operation, the fact that only one of her existed meant that they could only take their full power on one mission, or they could spread themselves a bit thinner and go for two or three at a time. Simply put, even clans had a limit to what they could do, so it wasn’t rare to see clients try and raise the priority of their requests and lure in people with a higher down payment.

“Ten librae’s more than enough for preparations,” Siegfried muttered.

“Siegfried,” I asked, “did you really use up all that money?”

“Dee got a bit excited and bought a new spear...and went on a little shopping spree after that too...”

“Oy, Kaya! I told you to keep that between us!”

Kitting yourself out after a big payment was a pretty commonplace bad habit in this trade. Up until now he had been using the spear swiped from back home and the equipment from his bandit kills, but it seemed now that he’d won himself a moniker, he’d decided to treat himself to the best.

I completely understood, mind. Back in my old world, there was one session where I spent practically every last coin I had on a weapon, and then my GM turned to me stone-faced and said, “You do realize that next session’s going to be a few in-world months after this, right? You don’t want your character to starve, do you?” and I ended up begging him to let my Level 7 adventurer do some part-time jobs in the meantime.

“Siegfried, I say this with all the love in the world, but learn to control your wallet.”

“Yeah... I was beginning to think the same thing. When I feel good about myself, I tend to get a bit cocky... Maybe it runs in the family...”

“I totally get the feeling of wanting to get the best. So, what’d you end up getting?”

“Wait right there!”

Siegfried sped upstairs and came clattering back down with a spear. I could tell that he had been wanting to show off his new equipment, but had tamped down his excitement to avoid another chewing-out from Kaya. However, it was fair game for him to show me when asked and save face. I supposed that any boy would want to show off a new toy to his friends.

“Check it out!”

“Ooh, a masterwork weapon, I see.”

As I looked at the gleaming tip of his spear, with its own specially fitted scabbard, I could tell that it was cherried out.

It was a simple, unadorned thing—clearly a function-over-form design—but well crafted. The shaft was of average length, but strangely hefty; with its full weight brought to bear it would pierce through armor. The head measured just over twelve inches, with a double-sided blade. It was thicker in the middle, and the edges were finely engraved with blood grooves for a nastier cut and a cleaner follow-through.

It stood around two meters from tip to bottom. The weighty shaft helped to allay the imbalance that came from its top-heavy head. The metal core had been sheathed in wood composite to further even out the balance, then coated in a blue-black varnish. It felt good to hold.

The weapon was suitable for marching with, and as long as Siegfried didn’t find himself in a tiny box, it was suitable for most conditions.

If I had to nitpick, well-balanced spears like these ran heavier than the cheaper ones on the market.

“What’s the name?”

“Doesn’t have one yet. I wanna think of something cool. I actually got a pretty good deal, y’know? The craftsman said he wanted to surpass his boss one day and had crafted it to prove his stuff to him. ’Cause of that he sold it to me for cheap—said it was a practice piece.”

“I don’t think three drachmae is that cheap...”

“Grah, Kaya! Only soldiers who serve knights get to wield something this good, you know?! Plus he said he was gonna sell it for five drachmae, but said that he’d make a little discount if he could contribute to the great Siegfried’s stories!”

I had to agree with Siegfried here—for a completely mundane weapon, he paid a fair price for good materials and sound craftwork. You could tell that the artisan, despite being early in his career, knew how to handle a spear himself and had made something that you couldn’t really fault.

All the same, it wasn’t the best deal, and I wasn’t completely on board with making such a big purchase after buying a whole freaking workshop. Maybe he had gotten a bit ahead of himself for splurging on something that my family would have to spend a year working to afford.

Still, Kaya had given him more than his fair share of flak for it, so I graciously told him, “Congrats on finding such a good partner.” But it was time to get back to the matter at hand.

“All right, should we set your spear to good use, then? It’s too good for silly jobs in the city, isn’t it?”

“We can’t have amber-orange and ruby-red adventurers wasting their time cleaning gutters, can we?”

It was just as Margit said—there were barely any decent jobs left. Even if we did manage to find ourselves an amber-orange job, a lot of the work in circulation this season wasn’t exactly honest; desperate adventurers made for a predatory job market. Considering the danger and the amount of time they would consume, none were adventures that you would choose to stick at despite the cold.

“Ahh, well, if we gotta, then sure. How long d’you need to prepare, Kaya?”

“I should be able to prepare some potions and rations if I have five days. It would eat through most of our advance, but I think some extra preparations wouldn’t hurt. We’ll need a Bright-Eyes potion and extra rations, just in case. We’ll want some sweet stuff too, to give us an energy boost when we need it—all the bare necessities.”

“Okay, five days it is.”

“Oh, we’ll be on a boat, so maybe I should make some seasickness potions? I think there was a recipe in one of the books I brought from home...”

When it came to Kaya’s preparations, Siegfried nodded along without a single doubt or concern.

“By the way, Kaya, what ingredients do you need for the potions?” I asked.

“Nothing you can really get around here. I picked a few herbs during some previous jobs, but I was planning to buy any surplus from the wholesaler if need be.”

“If you need it, I’ve got a person who can sell you them for cheap.”

Siegfried squinted at me when I gave the name, but he didn’t need to worry. Yes, a villain she might have been, but business was business—her goods were trustworthy. To top it off, she wasn’t a fool in a position to pick a fight with the party who’d purged the lands of the Infernal Knight now, was she?

[Tips] There is no upper limit to a weapon’s price. Mass-produced weapons for wartime can be bought for cheap, but well-made named weapons could set you back years’ worth of wages. The prized swords on a noble’s or knight’s waist could be leveraged against an entire territory.

Locations with good airflow were the ideal environment to dry out herbs and increase their shelf life, and one such warehouse could be found in a newly developed area of Marsheim. Owned by the Baldur Clan, it dealt with various herbal wholesalers whom the clan had laid a claim to and also functioned as a storage spot for their raw materials. Though their goods usually weren’t for sale to the general public, I decided to send a letter saying that I wanted in and received a swift reply saying that I could come to make a purchase whenever I liked.

“Wow, everything here is of such high quality. You can tell that they’ve been taken care of well after picking,” Kaya said.

“Quite right! All of them have been carefully collected by adventurers using our own patented techniques,” one of the warehouse staff explained.

If a pro like Kaya seemed satisfied with the stock on offer, I didn’t have much to worry about. At a huge half-price discount—nearly wholesale—it seemed like a big win right off the bat for our next adventure.

“But my oh my... Color me surprised... To think that a little bodyguard job...could have led to all this...” Nanna said.

“I would’ve preferred it a little later on in my career, if I’m being honest,” I said. Well, as long as she didn’t ask me to do anything too below board, I wasn’t about to complain.

While Kaya was picking over the goods, Nanna and I were talking up on a raised viewing area from which you could observe the whole open warehouse. The letter of approval had come directly from Nanna, and she had been personally waiting for us when we’d arrived. I’d taken the Baldur Clan’s boss aside to talk to her, hoping to keep Kaya from getting too involved with her.

I wasn’t all that worried. Ever since my second “warning,” it looked like Nanna wouldn’t do anything beyond her usual duties as clan leader. The burned scraps in the corner of the room that had once been a delicately painted miniature were proof that my wordless threat had achieved its intended effect.

I had sent a letter to Lady Leizniz a little earlier—just a cute little seasonal greeting that ever so gently hinted that I knew Nanna. A reply came before too long saying that the Queen Pervert Extraordinaire was worried about Nanna and asking me to let her know if I knew where she might be. Along with it came a miniature portrait depicting a gloomy-looking girl linking arms with another girl wearing glasses. The miserable child looked just like Nanna, minus fifteen years and a layer of potion abuse.

In other words, my shot in the dark had hit its mark dead-on: Nanna had been a direct pupil of the head of one of the College’s Five Great Pillars.

The picture might have been burned to tiny scraps, but fortunately for me, so had any possibilities of Nanna luring me on any kind of unwanted errand. In other words, she had received my intent loud and clear: I can expose your weak point at any time, so don’t even dare to involve me in your dirty work again.

I wouldn’t do anything barbaric like ask her to fork over her stock for free; I was more than happy with her generous discount. I was equally happy to help with any of her legit jobs—services rendered for just cause and refused for mindless profit. There was no reason we couldn’t maintain a civil, strictly on the level “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” arrangement.

I didn’t want to use the Baldur Clan as a stepping stone to forge my own giant clan in Marsheim, no way. That was the wheelhouse of a wannabe thug, not an adventurer. Even if I was living that kind of life, going around trying to pull all the gangs together is the sort of thing that gets you assassinated in Van Cortlandt Park in the middle of a summit to kick off some other guys’ story. All I wanted was a little assist with helping some newbie adventurers live upright lives—a message that I had delivered in a gentlemanly, Collegiate style.

And now here we were, standing side by side as we watched an overjoyed herbalist awe at all the wonderful reagents right there at her fingertips.

If our relationship had imploded into tiny bits because of what I’d done, then there would no doubt be a corpse decorating this room right now. Mind you, I wasn’t sure precisely whose it would be. I had planned some safety measures, but despite her emaciated state, Nanna was still a former pupil of Lady Leizniz—there was no ignoring the possibility that she had a deadly ace up her sleeve. I wasn’t confident enough to assume that she hadn’t cobbled together something even more potent than what she threw at us the first time we’d met.

However, here we were talking together, both very much alive—proof enough of what we both wanted from this situation.

Should circumstances call for it, I wouldn’t hesitate to part that head from its emaciated body and discard it in a ditch somewhere. Sometimes to enjoy a campaign, a party’s got to take a real firm “search and destroy” approach. Everyone at my old game table had their own idea of what lines they’d cross to get what they want, and in my case, there was plenty of heartless, amoral behavior I’d decided was worth the payoff. What manga was it where that guy said, “A fight’s not a fight unless both sides are of equal strength?”

“About the task...in Zeufar...”

“Ah, so you’ve heard about it?”

“Let’s just say...this world...is brimming with people...who find simple things like sleeping...difficult.”

I smiled back at her implication that the Baldur Clan had eyes even within the Association. Nanna wasn’t revealing this card because she was trying to threaten me—it was proof of our cooperation.

“It is...awfully shady, though... You see...your mediator...is often used by small-time nobles...on good terms with the Empire.”

“You did your homework in a short amount of time. But surely that would mean that our mediator has given us an upright gig?”

“Viscount Frombach...is in the Imperial capital...on social business, you realize? Very odd...considering that he hardly leaves his territory...due to his usual job...of safeguarding the region.”

Hmm... So the one who would give final approval is absent in Berylin? Not only that, he’s in charge of a viscounty plagued by local strongmen...

Nobles were busy even in winter, and there were always people poised to take advantage of this—mercenaries who set up camp in order to threaten cantons until spring; bandits who took advantage of fewer patrols. For the time being, the viscount would have to appeal to his subordinates in order to crack down on these dangers.

Frombach was based in a region under the margrave’s jurisdiction and therefore not closely involved in the center of politics, so what reason did he have to head to the capital? It would take three whole months to reach Berylin from here—maybe a month by drake, but that would severely limit his options in terms of baggage and passengers. If it was such a bare-bones voyage, then the only real reason I could think of was that he wanted to make sure that the social circles he was involved in remembered what he looked like.

“I would recommend...casting your net...around issues such as these too. It’s difficult...to adventure while completely ignoring the real world...like the saint does.”

“A tricky issue, it seems.”

My own information network was as good as nonexistent. Most of what I heard was secondhand knowledge or pure rumor.

Nanna was basically saying this: if I wanted to be an upright adventurer nowadays in Marsheim, then I needed a means to distance myself from troublesome matters. If I dug deeper, I would probably find that she was trying to say that she would supply this information if I allied myself with the Baldur Clan.

The Baldur Clan had steadily been gaining more prestige since the incident with the Exilrat, and they’d have nowhere to go but up if they managed to incorporate a party with amber-orange adventurers—the one that toppled Jonas Baltlinden to be precise—into their operation. However, I had refused to so easily be subsumed. That was the reason Nanna was extending such a thinly veiled invitation—implying I should form an organization of my own with which she could form an alliance.

It wasn’t a complete impossibility. Margit and I had barely used our funds, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to get started. That wasn’t all—thanks to Limelit and the Catchpenny Scribbler’s work, I had also amassed a bit of spare experience. If I was honest, I wanted to pour it all into sword-related skills, but the fact of the matter was that I was short on allies who could do behind-the-scenes work—gathering intel during the Investigation Phase. Unless I wanted to solve everything with my fists, I needed to get some social skills. I’d reach a dead end before long if I let myself become a meathead who couldn’t pass the regular gamut of simple skill checks.

“Man, settling down somewhere is easier said than done, huh?”

“If you dislike it...then you should’ve...settled down somewhere more rural. Maybe become...a bodyguard in a teeny canton...or somewhere else even more peaceful.”

I wasn’t thinking that I’d made a mistake. Marsheim was an ideal place to become an adventurer. I was blessed with talented seniors and I had found reliable comrades. It was true I had to deal with some annoying people, but they were far more preferable than nobles. Not only that, there was a good range of jobs here when all was said and done.

If I put down roots back home and started my own Adventurer’s Association in Old Town, then I’m sure it would have come with its own set of problems. Wherever you went, people were the same. Trials and tribulations cropped up like weeds no matter the location. I was happy to be content with my current lot and what I had gained.

A clan, huh? It’s not really my cup of tea to be the leader of a big organization. All the same, it’s not out of the question if it means continuing to live a life of adventure. But please. For now—at least for now, let me enjoy the simple life of adventuring.

The type of storyline where the hero saves his country or the world wasn’t completely out of the question, but I wanted that to come further down the line. I’d think about it later—when I became strong enough to get through any problems that could be solved with a sword on my own.

“Thanks for the advice.”

“Right... But take care. The bigwigs...they’re strangely active... But, dearie me... Just when I found a capable bodyguard...you jump right out of an easy pay range.”

The mysterious clan head muttered to herself about finding more cheap labor as swirls of smoke enveloped her. I internally reaffirmed the truth that no matter where you went, it was impossible to avoid trouble.

[Tips] Social etiquette dictates that it is fine to smoke in the presence of others only when they are of the same status as you, with an exception for those who find themselves at the top of the social ladder. It is likely that Erich did not air his qualms during this meeting as a strictly magnanimous gesture.

“I’m never...getting on a boat again... When we’re done, I’m walking back to Marsheim...”

“You’re not serious, are you, Sieg? Spring will be here by the time you get back! You’re lucky Kaya made you a seasickness potion.”

“Y-Yeah, if she hadn’t, I would’ve barfed my guts onto the deck days ago...”

Our three-day excursion on the Mauser River had come to a close. It would have taken a horse an age to cover the distance we’d already traveled. I had to hand it to humanity’s most efficient means of transportation—there was a reason it had never ceded its crown, even during the era of flight.

All the same, it had been quite the mission for an untested soul. I’d put my own semicircular ducts through the wringer from horse riding and non-Euclidian travel, so I was fine, but it always took time to adjust to one’s first time on a boat. That went doubly for mensch like Kaya and Siegfried.

It was true that it didn’t compare to the ocean, but the Mauser was still a great river used as a transport network. The waves and the sound of the water were inescapable, so for those without sea legs, it was probably difficult to even get to sleep. Siegfried looked to be a particularly bad case; I had often spotted him inadvertently “feeding the fish.”

“Ngh... Thank the gods we’re on land. My head’s still spinning.”

“Y-You feeling okay, Dee?”

“I should be asking you that, K-Kaya... Also...call me Siegfried...”

As the pair did their usual routine while they stood on the brink of total exhaustion, I felt a little bad for them. We still had a little ways to go to reach Zeufar canton. It would take around two days on foot, give or take. The river route meant that I’d had no choice but to leave behind my beloved Dioscuri. If I pushed my two new friends a little too hard I imagined our shoes would be covered in vomit before too long.

We had set off to a slow start, and we ended up taking more breaks than we’d planned—the road was harder going than I’d expected. We arrived in Zeufar two days later than scheduled.

The request stated that they wished for us to solve the issue or at least deliver a report during the winter months, so we were pressed for time. People spent more time at home in their canton during the winter, so I imagined they wanted this sorted before the work began to prep the fields as the thaw set in.

“Huh? Adventurers?”

Yet for some reason, our exhausted party didn’t receive the welcome we’d envisioned.

“Yes. We received a report that a cave had been uncovered recently and something had been threatening people nearby.”

“Ahh, right. Yes, we sent a report to the magistrate, but we didn’t appeal for any outside help, really...”

Zeufar translated to “lakeside canton” if you poked around deep enough in the etymology, and in fact many cantons of the same name could be found all throughout the Empire. It’s a bit like how America has a bunch of towns and cities that are all named “Springfield.” True to its namesake, the Zeufar that we had arrived at was a developing canton next to a beautiful lake. It was still a small community of just under two hundred folk. Their chief livelihood came from two areas: farming (sustained by irrigation from the lake) and forestry (from areas that I presumed simply hadn’t yet been converted into farmland). The lake was connected to the river, and so produce was easily delivered to neighboring towns. It was your stereotypical community that probably would be swallowed up by the tides of history and perhaps one day reemerge somewhere down the line.

What was bugging me was that the village head didn’t know we were coming.

“Well, we asked for help dealing with some wolves, and there have been one or two folk who got lost in the woods, but... Achoo!”

The village head apologized as he blew his nose. He went on to tell us that he didn’t know who exactly it was who had brought us here, but he was unable to pay us. Before he left, he summoned one of his men over to show us to the mountain in question.

“Ey up, lads an’ lasses. Young fowk’ve been makin’ a big ol’ fuss ’bout cave, bu’ no one’s really all tha’ bovvered ’bout it. Some fowk were chattin’ ’bout zome kid goin’ off to check it out bu’... Achoo!”

The elderly gentleman who we’d been left with spoke in a form of Imperial speech that was peppered with remnants of a local dialect, making it a bit difficult to parse. He was eyeing us with suspicion too, but still led us to the edge of the forest where the woodcutters worked. The man kept sniffing as he walked, and I began to worry for the people in this community. Everyone here’s dealing with some upper respiratory crud. Are they not keeping warm enough?

“There t’is. Have a gander at tha’ mount’n up there. Zee it? ’Tween tha’ peak an’ tha’ peak.”

The gentleman pointed his mud-stained finger up at a mountain flanking the low mountain that they used for woodcutting. Other than the fact that the trees in the distance were of a darker hue than those that were being felled—I wondered what varieties of tree grew hereabouts—the snow-covered sight was your average rural landscape.

“I don’ min’ you goin’, but watch yerselves, gotcha? Got wolf packs ’round ’ere. Half a year ago had a kid go missin’, weren’t great tell you tha’. Li’l sprout was only four. Not comin’ home means yer as good as dea’, so held the fun’ral already.”

“Wolves? Does this canton not have a hunter?”

“Chuffin’ hell, we got nowt so fancy ’ere. Zome braver fowk’ve been playin’ hunter, but tha’s ’bout it... Wachoo!”

As he finished talking, he let out such a bellowing sneeze that I wanted to scold him for not even bothering to cover his mouth. Margit leaped back less in surprise and more to avoid the spray.

Ugh, seeing everyone sneeze is making my own nose twitch...

“Only get ’em in cantons where the village head’s up to znuff. Won’t get a magistrate-approved hunter ovverwise.”

“We had one in Illfurth, but in some other areas nearby, local people hunt for game.”

“Hah, ain’t got nobles visitin’ to play hunter ’round here. Trust me—ain’t got enough coin for owt like a hired hunter an’ tha’s tha’.”

My own canton was definitely more rural than urban, but all the same it was looked after with enough attention that you would see the magistrate’s knights during festivals. Not only that, Margit’s family expanded their hunting area to help keep the other towns in the area safe. I didn’t see why this man thought that you needed noble hunters looking to kill time or officially sanctioned ones.

In addition to the apparent dearth of hunters, we passed a total of zero guards on the walk down. It was becoming clear to me that the logic I’d spent years amassing didn’t really apply to a small canton which was only viewed with a passing interest by the local authorities. It felt kind of like leafing through a new supplement for a TRPG you’re already quite familiar with.

Unfortunately my excitement was dampened by my own huge sneeze. Sniffing your snot back up went against manners here, so I apologized before quietly wiping my nose with a pocket handkerchief. How low had I sunk to sneeze in the presence of others? I was sure Lady Agrippina wouldn’t ask me to come back if she could see just how tainted I had been by the laid-back nature of common society.

“Righto, here we are. Was told to take you lot to edge of canton.”

“Thank you very much. Prithee give our regards to the village head.”

I gave my thanks so that our evidently chilly guide could head back, but he stood still for a moment, as if to ask what the hell a “prithee” was. Maybe I should learn a bit more country speak... Don’t want to be seen as a stuck-up city boy.

“What’s the plan?” Siegfried asked.

“Let’s see. It’s still early in the day, so why don’t we get a bit closer before pitching up for the night? I’d like to get our investigation done quickly tomorrow and be back in Zeufar before dark.”

“Yeah, but we haven’t asked the locals about what’s happening! The heroes in the stories always begin with a bit of interviewing.”

“You saw him, right? I don’t think anyone here would be able to give us anything useful even if we asked.”

“Right... Which means it’d be quicker for us to see it for ourselves, gotcha.”

Neither the village head nor our guide—whose opinion most likely was closer to that of the average person here—seemed all too interested in the rumors that brought us here. I doubted there would be much point in wasting time with interviews. Having your son or daughter go missing wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in the countryside, so if we went around from house to house I expected that the most we’d pick up is bits of gossip and idle complaints. I didn’t want to waste time anyway. I doubted a rural canton like this had anything that resembled an inn, and the village head wouldn’t be lending us a room with the way he looked at us.

That left us with one ideal plan of action: to set up camp near the cave tonight and get our investigation over and done with by sundown tomorrow. Getting things done lickety-split, no distractions allowed, helped your GM make the last train home. Jokes aside, such optimism was predicated on there not being something else at play.

“Saying that, don’t drop your guard, Siegfried.”

“Huh, why? Seems like just some average cave if you ask me.”

“You didn’t forget, did you? At the end of the day, this request was given by a noble looking to make his people feel safe. I doubt we managed to end up in the wrong canton, so I don’t think we should get too comfortable.”

“Ah, right. They were pretty indifferent, huh? That probably means something...”

“You can drop out now, you know?”

I said this only half joking, but Siegfried rebuffed me immediately.

“You outpaced me again with your rank. What pisses me off is that I know you ain’t pulling anything underhanded. Dealing with this stupid cave is all part of catching up with you. No way I’m gonna let the client leave a black mark on my name because I came back from the job without even doing it properly.”

“Then let’s do this.”

Yet again I saw the qualities of a main character in him.

If I were an explorer instead of an adventurer, I probably would have started heading home right about now; the whole affair was just too fishy. Then again, I expected my poor luck would find its way to force me into the investigation somehow, like a relative vanishing or something.

“If we don’t find anything, we can do a little wolf hunting and go home.”

“Don’t look down on wolf hunting, if you wouldn’t mind,” Margit chimed in.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s only because we have such a capable scout with us that I was.”

I placed a hand on Margit’s shoulder as if to say, “You’ve got our backs, right?” She shook her head in exasperation and grinned as she led the way for our pack of slow two-legged adventurers.

[Tips] Even jobs issued by statesmen might go unnoticed by the populace they are meant to serve.

“Hey, Erich?”

“Yeah, Siegfried?”

Siegfried was sitting at the campfire on the first watch. The party had set up camp on a nearby mountain and Erich was just setting up his bedding.

“I hate bringing up my stupid, boring past, but I helped my gramps with forestry stuff.”

“Really? I didn’t realize farming families also did woodcutting.”

“The landlord wanted to increase the size of his fields; he tapped us to clear the land. We didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Anyway, it ain’t a lot, but I know a bit about trees.”

Siegfried’s grandfather was old enough to have retired, but the poverty that haunted the family had killed off any possibility of spending his twilight years in rest and relaxation. With no sizable income for himself, the thin old man had no choice but to accept the request to clear land for fields that didn’t even belong to him. Siegfried had dutifully taken up a share of the task.

The experience had left him with more than a passing knowledge of Marsheim’s trees, but also with lumber brought in from afar, and to top it off, Kaya sometimes showed him some of her illustrated books when they hung out together.

“What I’m getting at is that I’ve never seen trees like the ones in that forest before.”

“Now that you mention it...neither have I.”

The party had chosen a space with a good view of the forested mountain where the cave was located. Not only were the trees foreign to Siegfried, strangely enough, they only covered this one mountain. The neighboring mountains were full of the same trees that surrounded their campsite, yet their destination was covered in a perfect coat of these strange specimens—it looked as if someone had imported a whole forest worth of foreign imports, all carefully cared for over generations to make it perfectly uniform.

Mountains host to a strict arboreal monoculture did exist, but these were contingent on factors like unique soil or human intervention. This canton’s woodcutters had only reached as far as the forest near the actual settlement, so it made no sense for them to have set up a lumber plantation all the way out here first.

“Ain’t it weird? Not only that, I can’t see any trace of a landslide from here.”

“Yeah, I had a look with a spyglass, but I couldn’t make out anything either.”

“So who’s the one who made a fuss saying they’d found some suspicious cave? Our guide and the village head didn’t seem to give a toss about it, but it was a big enough story to go around among the younger lot, right?”

“Yeah... More and more questions.”

Siegfried had a bad feeling about this—just as Erich had realized in Zeufar, the whole situation was at odds with the info they had received before. It was evident that Erich hadn’t lied to him. Kaya had read the letter too, and she didn’t have any reason to take the penniless Siegfried on a wild goose chase. No, Goldilocks was an enigmatic sort, but Siegfried no longer had any reason to think that his fellow adventurer was a devious, underhanded character.

Which meant that this was like many of his favorite stories where the heroes were tricked by a false request... But who had anything to gain from tricking the four of them? Siegfried couldn’t think of a single sound explanation. There was nothing to gain from teasing some fledgling adventurers with a reward after already giving them a down payment of ten librae. If the person behind the scenes had merely wished to support some adventurers out of the kindness of their heart, then they could have just given them the money without this rigmarole of a fake quest.

If, on the other hand, they were being steered into the waiting jaws of some horror on the mountain in need of a sacrifice, then there was a whole settlement right there down at the foothills. There was no reason to call a measly pack of adventurers from afar and create suspicion with the Association after they went missing.

Siegfried just couldn’t wrap his head around the situation. He had no clue what the client wanted in bringing them here. Did they need this party specifically, or would anyone have sufficed?

Erich had said that maybe the authorities wanted someone to just come back with the announcement that they’d investigated, but his postulations remained just that—an answer would only come with a firsthand investigation.

“There are two types of adventurers when a situation like this arises,” Erich said.

“What’re you on about?”

“First: those who sense something’s afoot and turn back. They investigate the client and give him a good beating after they find it was a trap all along.”

“Jeez, talk about barbaric.”

“Second: those who emerge safely from the trap due to their own abilities. They then return to the client with words of thanks and a few fists of recompense.”

“They’re the same!”

Erich laughed at Siegfried’s apposite remark. The corners of his lips then raised to form an even more devilish smile.

“An adventurer isn’t someone who cowers in the face of fear. Neither do they let someone look down on them. See the difference between the two types now?”

“Yeah, yeah. I ain’t gonna split hairs over that logic.”

An adventurer ventured into the unknown and used their strength and wit to emerge from the other side. It didn’t matter whether human agency played a part in compelling the adventure—what needed to be done remained unchanged. The difference lay in the result—the valiant who saw their mission through to the end would find their names lining the pages of a saga.

A hero sallied forth into dangers unknown. Only those who lived safe, coddled lives could find time to worry about their safety.

“Well, there actually is a way to find out if this whole thing is dangerous or not.”

“You can do that?! Come on man, mention that earlier!”

“Sorry, but it wouldn’t be possible right now even if I could.”

Goldilocks looked up. The waxing gibbous moon and the stars that followed in its wake scudded across the clear night sky. It was a good night. There was no danger of snow flurries and no sign that the weather would suddenly change. There were no clouds in the distance; the wind was calm.

Those blessed with magic would be able to see that the False Moon was waning and the alfar, usually so busy with their mischief, were quiet.

“You an astrologist as well?”

“No way. Plus, the gods don’t deliver Their divine messages through the stars. I was just thinking that I don’t feel fully up to snuff when the full moon is close.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Erich let out a cryptic laugh and simply said, “Every adventurer has a few tricks that he keeps hidden even from his allies,” to which Siegfried had no rebuttal. It was a common trope since the Age of Gods for the hero to say, “I’d been saving this in case of something like this,” before whipping out a new move or weapon to save their allies right in the nick of time. Siegfried didn’t yet have something he could call an ace up his sleeve, but he dreamed of one day doing so, and so he held back from forcing Goldilocks’s hand. It would be the height of boorishness.

If actively hiding something were to mess up the coordination of the party, then it would be fine to punch the answer out of an ally, but in all other cases sleeping dogs were best left to lie. Once the dust had settled and the adventurers were safely home, the surprise save would be a particularly large pearl to adorn the story with.

“You better not take any secrets to your grave, got it?”

“Of course. I doubt the scales would weigh up my secrets over my comrades’ lives...I think. Yeah.”

“Say it with some more conviction, man! Please?!”

The hero-hopeful threw another piece of wood on the fire while reaffirming to himself the spine-chilling truth that Goldilocks was truly an unfathomable beast.

[Tips] Choosing to take on a request or not is completely at your behest. However, do not forget that it is the GM who decides what experience points should be scribbled down. It is those who lose sight of the true aim of adventure who miss chances to grow.

“The forest is too quiet,” Margit murmured to herself as we reached the wooded foothills of our target mountain. She turned to the rest of us. “I’m not seeing any sign of wolves. It’s strange... The bears should all be hibernating by now, but the deer and boar are still giving the whole area a wide berth.”

The next day had come, and we were beginning our search for the cave just as the sunlight began to filter through the trees. Any traces of the supposed landslide couldn’t be seen from our camp, so we had decided to comb the mountain on the off chance it just wasn’t visible from where we had been.

“Ugh, I just don’t see it... Do you, Kaya?”

“Sorry, me neither.”

“Come on,” Margit said. “The quality of the grass is completely different.”

Sad to say, I was just as hopelessly outclassed as Siegfried and Kaya. We needed the obvious signs like hoofprints or broken branches to even have a chance of working out the movements of the local fauna, while Margit could see what animals had passed by simply by looking at the leaves and sticks on the ground. This was no natural arachne gift at work—this was a skill honed to near instinct. My partner was truly something else.

The proficiency of a party’s scout can decide the chances of their survival. Talented scouts have an eye for even the smallest bits of information; someone of Margit’s caliber wouldn’t let us get ambushed even from behind. A common piece of advice in the adventuring community was that every party needed at least one scout.

I remember me and my friends had an absolutely terrible time of it when we started a fresh session without any party planning beforehand, leaving us without a ranger. Every encounter had begun with us on the back foot, and we had to brute force our way through every trap as our hit points dwindled. Before our second session I decided to forgo my class’s recommended build and focus on creating a character that would keep us alive.

It bore repeating that we were well and truly blessed to have Margit with us.

“Anyway, the tracks are relatively fresh. The animals here began to avoid this forest only recently.”

“Something made them want to avoid the area so much that they abandoned their territory?”

“More animals than you think vary up their hunting routes, but such a marked change suggests that something happened. Think about us—we might not take the same path to the Association building every day, but we would only take the long way round if there was a real reason to, right?”

Margit had a point. When the weather was nice we would take the shortest route, which was chiefly a dirt track, but when it was raining we would take the longer but more well-maintained way there. Animals followed the same logic. Of course, there were some animals who didn’t stick to fixed patterns so much or took their time as they went, but these were apparently fringe cases.

“That’s not all, look over there—the trees thin out. That’s most likely where the landslide hit.”

Margit pointed up at a spot where the mountain looked slightly barer. It didn’t look to be that large of a landslide, from the number of felled trees. I imagined that it would have made a fair clamor, but definitely nothing so cataclysmic as to drive every last animal from the forest.

“Well, well, well, looks like we’ve finally got something to go on,” Siegfried said. “To top it off, the trees here are massive...”

It was as Siegfried had said. We’d been able to tell from a distance that the whole mountain’s trees looked like nothing we’d seen anywhere else, but it was only up close that it registered just how huge they were. Multiple trunks sprouted from their bases, and the bark was an eerie black. Even if we linked arms, we wouldn’t reach around even the thinnest of the lot.

“Crap...!”

“What is it?!” I said, looking over at Siegfried.

“I wanted to learn more about the tree by cutting into it, but it chipped my damn dagger! That ain’t normal! I picked this up in the last battle and made sure it wasn’t a crap one or anything!”

It was a difficult task to fell a tree with a dagger, but for the bark to remain completely undamaged was not normal.

“Hmm, it’d be good to have a sample of the wood to take back in case we need to back up our story.”

“H-Hey, I’m not risking ruining my sword or spear on these things!”

“Yeah, agreed. My father would cry if his beloved blade broke from me playing lumberjack.”

I placed a hand upon a tree, but it didn’t seem abnormal to the touch. Even if they weren’t completely invincible, I had the feeling we were better off leaving the trees alone for the time being.

In truth, the Craving Blade wouldn’t break even in a little experiment like this, but I heard its horrible, plaintive song telling me that it did not want to be used as an axe. More importantly, I didn’t want Siegfried to see my secret, horrid friend. I had worked so hard in getting Siegfried to like me, but he might totally bail if he found out I was cursed by such an evil-looking thing. The Craving Blade was an absolute end-of-the-road measure to be brought out when the only other option was running away with my tail between my legs.

“This is proof enough that something weird is going on here. A strangely quiet mountain and trees that can break a decent dagger. We’ll need one or two more pieces of evidence before we can go back to the client and say that this was out of our hands.”

“Let’s head up. I mean, we’ll be safe from wolves and stuff, right?”

“Yes, I don’t sense any foes ahead, and...”

Margit’s words were interrupted by a sneeze; she wiped her nose, her hood hiding her embarrassment.

“Everyone’s been sneezing a lot since yesterday,” I murmured.

“Well yeah, ’cause it’s cold as all hell out here.”

“I know, but...”

But Margit sneezing while on the job? Her hunter’s training drilled the importance of mastering every source of involuntary noise that could alert her quarry into her very soul. In my case, I’d also done my fair share of training in self-control to make sure I was a presentable servant; this was just...weird.

I started to wonder if the trees were to blame. I’d read somewhere that hay fever was a malaise of the modern age, but maybe it was just so commonplace that no one in the past had bothered to write about it... But then again, it was the middle of winter. Even cedar trees, which were particularly early pollinators, only began to shed when the coldest part of winter was over. I racked my brains to puzzle out what exact mischief was being played on us.

We had begun our ascent of the mountain to find an answer to these mysteries. Just as it was dawning on me how easy the mountain was to climb—there were few bushes or roots—Margit, about twenty paces ahead, lifted her hand. The sign was clear: stop. We had all agreed on nonverbal signals if necessary, and so we obeyed.

“There’s a path that way. It’s old.”

“A path? All the way out here?”

“Like I said, it’s quite old. What’s weird is that it doesn’t seem like someone cut through the trees to make it...”

The trail was too small for a carriage, but more than wide enough for a horse. Margit’s words echoed in my head—it seemed almost like the trees had formed a deliberate corridor. The question then was, were these trees always like this? Or had they been moved recently?

“The path leads to the landslide site,” I said.

“Ooh, then we’re getting somewhere.”

Siegfried’s voice was quavering...but I chalked it up to excitement, not nervousness. After all, a shiver went through me too, given the veritable smorgasbord of anomalies laid out before us.

I wondered if we might have walked into a scenario that was on the level of Mister Fidelio and his ilk. One of those ones that begins with bored veterans sitting in a pub and the barkeep calls out, “I’ve got something that might interest ya, a task that requires some skill...”

I pushed down the lingering sense of unease in my stomach as we continued our ascent. Eventually we came upon the source of the landslide. The thing waiting for us there wasn’t exactly a cave. Instead of a simple opening into the face of the mountain, we found an incomprehensible tangle of tree roots forming an entryway. The dirt and debris that had fallen away to reveal it had partially buried a small hut nearby.

“Yeah, this won’t do. Let’s burn it all down.”

“Whoa, hold it, man! What’re you chattin’ about?!”

A suspicious atmosphere oozed from the hole; the air was thick with mana. I was certain it was an ichor maze or something of the sort. Whatever lay at its core was going to be bad news for anyone. Why was I so sure? This wasn’t my first rodeo—the bothersome blade nagging at the corners of my thoughts for just a crumb of slaughter had passed into my hands the last time I’d run headlong into such an obvious portal of evil.

We couldn’t have been sure that this was an ichor maze until we stood right by it because it either wasn’t trying to expand or was doing a damn good job of hiding itself. Whatever the case, both this ichor maze and all the trees on this damn mountain were better off gone.

Don’t think I’m just gonna head home and leave you here, nuh-uh!

I pulled out a certain catalyst—it was time to let the Daisy Petal bloom.

It was no longer viable for me to hide the fact that I could use magic from my new comrades. It would be best to immolate the maze in one go. If I threw my mystic thermite right in there, I assumed it would be more than sufficient to do the job.

My thoughts were cut off the next moment. The forest must have sensed the imminent danger; it felt as if the mountain itself was shaking. Like a beast shaking off dew, a whole flurry of powder snow erupted around us.

Next came a symphony of sneezing.

“Achoo! What the... Wachoo!”

“Crap... Achoo! The pollen!”

I could almost see the GM smirking as they doled out a punishment for not solving the problem the intended way. Every tree in the vicinity must have known what I was about to do, and so they had expelled a haze of pollen despite the natural order. No, that wasn’t quite right—they had always been shedding pollen, but now they were getting serious.

Dammit! We were wandering through the maze’s territory without even realizing it!

“L-Let’s first... Achoo! Head over there!”

Kaya was pointing at the hut. It was half buried, but there was no time to think about whether it was safe or not. It was evident this pollen would get through my Insulating Barrier. It’d wring every duct and gland in every orifice in our faces dry; our throats would feel like they were being raked with thousands of needles. There’d be no way we could make it down the mountain at this rate. Our airways would be ruined by the pollen, or we’d suffer from oxygen deprivation from coughing fits before we made it even halfway down. Not only that, it was already taking a toll on our vision—we would lose each other in no time at all. In the absolute best-case scenario, we would be reduced to a pathetic party of scrubs in need of a more experienced party to clean up our mess.

I inwardly swore as I dashed into the hut with my party, our faces streaked with tears and mucus. We were lucky. The hut retained its integrity despite us all rushing in and slamming the door shut behind us. Not only that, the windows had been boarded up; between that and the dirt piled up around the outside, the storm of pollen outside had no way in.

Once inside, it took us some minutes to catch our breaths and calm our teary eyes and runny noses. Our handkerchiefs were all soaked by the time we were done, our nostrils and eyes rubbed red.

“Tch, typical. It’s too dark to see a thing,” I heard Siegfried say.

“M-Margit, can you get the Bright-Eyes salve from my knapsack? It’s in a yellow pack.”

“G-Got it... It’s too dark for me to make out colors. Any other identifying features?”

Margit was the only one who could see in the dark, so she brought out the salve that Kaya had prepared for the rest of us. As we applied her salve, our vision returned despite the dark.

As I’d expected, we were a terrible sight. Siegfried’s upper lip had been rubbed raw—though it was hard to tell whether that was from the pollen or an allergic reaction to the salve.

“A mix of Bright-Eyes leaves, bilberries, and bergamot. They’re all pretty expensive, but I’m really glad I chose to prepare them.”

“W-Wow, this is quite something. It’s like someone’s turned the lights on.”

I knew of Kaya’s concocting talents, but I was astounded as I saw the effects firsthand. Not even the College brainiacs had an easy time whipping up a potion that allowed you to see color in total darkness. This was a full-time pursuit even for dedicated potion specialists, and it would take a research position’s time and resources to actually cook up enough to use. A friend in my old life who was a bit of a military nut had let me try his night vision goggles once; this made them seem like a piece of junk.

“Kaya, when we make it back alive, I want to let you know that you could make a killing selling this stuff. The local guard would probably pawn off their own wives and children for a bottle.”

“R-Really? I, um, well, it takes a lot of mana to make, and you need high-quality ingredients so I’m not sure if I could make quite enough...”

“I’m just kidding, I know you didn’t come to Marsheim to start a potion business. But all the same, this is incredible.”

Now we had to think about how to cross the pollen barrier. Each grain of pollen was full of the ichor maze’s mana, and it rendered my magic useless—I tried to use Farsight, but it was erased by the literal cloud of mana. This was bad. My whole magic schtick had been based around the idea that I would be able to get around mana blocking by just kind of spamming my spells until something stuck. With this much interference, I wouldn’t even be able to use my space-bending magic to send a letter to ask for help.

“We woke up something pretty damn dangerous. With how intense the pollen is out there, it might end up reaching Zeufar.”

Siegfried’s voice was shaking again... No, not out of fear! It was the voice of a man filled with a fiery passion to see his responsibility through to the end.

It was just as he said. In the worst-case scenario, the pollen storm might reach other cantons aside from Zeufar too. It was bad enough as it was, but it could cause some serious harm to anyone who suffered from hay fever or other breathing issues.

We needed to do something. But that was predicated on our ability to even reach the maze. We were stuck in a hut and pinned down on the mountain...

“Kaya, you brought that other salve, right? The one that stops tears and stuff!”

“Ah, yeah, I did, Dee.”

“Cool, pass it here!”

Kaya handed Siegfried the salve that she had primarily designed against tear gas and began rubbing it on his face.

“Hold it, Sieg! You’re gonna just walk out and try it?!” I said.

“It’s a medicine that stops tears caused by magic, right? Then it should work!”

“Y-Yes, it prevents magic that attacks your eyes, nose, and mouth, but...”

“I’m gonna see if it works! If it does, follow my lead!”

Without leaving a moment to stop him, Siegfried rushed out of the hut. The door had only been open a second, but sneezes erupted all around. However, we weren’t hearing any screaming or coughing from my comrade outside, and he hadn’t come clattering back in either.

“All right! Kaya, you’re a freaking genius!”

Instead we heard our friend’s triumphant shout.

“Ha ha, this is incredible. You two are awesome,” I muttered. To think that a potion I had taught Kaya by chance had led to her developing exactly the sort of counterpotion we needed. She’d come through in the clutch and made an unachievable mission seem suddenly doable.

Try Not to Pump My Fist in Joy Challenge (Impossible). Dated memes aside, I couldn’t believe our luck. It was true that I’d sown the seeds to this (albeit by chance), and Kaya’s own capabilities were to thank, but man, what a miracle. Talent, technique, and timing had all come together in a beautiful alchemical moment. It was almost as if the GM had given us the breadcrumbs for the development that was sure to come!

“We can do this thing!”

“Um, Erich? Come look, something’s odd.”

“Yeah?”

I was pulled out of my victory pose by Margit tugging on my sleeve. As she brought me out of my thoughts, I realized that the stress of the whole affair meant that we hadn’t actually looked around this hut we’d happened to find ourselves in.

“It’s...not a hunter’s hut,” I said, looking around. It was a small hundred-square-foot shack with a row of rotting bed frames. They were bunk beds, clearly chosen to make use of what limited space there was, so I doubted a local hunter would use a place like this for a pit stop. From the trays and stacks of rotting spare bedding, it looked to me like a medical station. I looked closer at the stains on the sheets.

“Blood...” I said.

“Indeed,” Margit replied. “It’s old, but I don’t know how old. But I can say for certain that it’s mensch blood.”

“Seriously?” Kaya squeaked.

We didn’t turn up any corpses in the beds, but the state of the room suggested that some kind of foul fate had befallen whoever had been here. The old bedding, which had practically lost all trace of its original color due to age, was stained black with old blood.

“I’d say that at least six people died...no, were killed here,” I said.

“You don’t flinch in the slightest, do you?” Margit said.

I heard Kaya’s voice catch in her throat as she stifled another small scream. Unlike us, she wasn’t yet used to death.

“Hey, guys, come on! We just gotta beat the beast in the labyrinth and we’re all good, right? So let’s get this show on the road! The pollen ain’t lookin’ like it’s letting up!”

We had stepped into something quite nasty. It didn’t matter what the client had intended anymore. We had to roll up our sleeves and solve this thing ourselves. After all, I doubted we would be let off easy if we ran off now. We had made our bed; now it was time to lie in it.

[Tips] It is said that the gods only hand down trials that They think can be overcome, but impossible tasks are all too common.

It was less a cave and more an opening made by a whorl of roots.

Inside, the intricate skein of the tree roots revealed a network of tunnels. As the party entered, an indescribable feeling of smallness assailed them. Root and earth merged into an indistinguishable mess and the tunnel—more a haphazard opening created by this indiscriminate growth—seemed to stretch right into the belly of the earth.

The party encountered trouble before long. Shambling things—almost man-shaped, their bodies woven from hard branches and sinewy taproots—shuffled out of the dark; as Erich engaged the enemy, the shape of their heads dredged up a memory of something called “sugidama” in his old world. Sugidama were balls of cedar leaves that decorated sake breweries in Japan and were used to signal the arrival of a new sake season. Although this practice had fallen out of common usage in modern times, sugidama could still be found decorating older breweries. Erich could never forget the pleasant fragrance that wafted over whenever he walked by one such brewery in the downtown area near his old home.

“They’re tough,” Erich muttered. The creature collapsed the moment Erich lopped its head off. It seemed that these creatures died no differently than the humans they crudely resembled.

“Well yeah, they are wood!”

Siegfried stood behind Erich in a defensive formation as he stabbed through another sugidama-thing in one deft spear blow. He swung his weapon round and knocked the creature back with a forceful strike with the butt end.

Thankfully, the horrors broke under the party’s assault with relative ease.

“Phew, more normal than I thought.”

“Normal?! Man, I almost screamed my pants off...”

The pair took a closer look at one of the creatures they had felled. If a poet were with them, he might croon that it was a crooked mirror of the folly of mankind, a manifestation of nature’s anger toward humanity. However, the party felt no such awe. All they felt was malice—rage to purge these interlopers from where the pollen did not reach.

“Hmm,” Erich said. “I’d expect a plant-based monster to be able to regenerate. You know, like in The Song of the Headless Tree.”

“Dunno, never heard of that one.”

“It’s the one where the hero Janos explores a giant tree that extends high above the clouds. What’s with that face? Is it really not that famous? You must’ve heard of the two-headed wood drake?”

“I literally said I’d never heard of it!”

Erich was shocked that his ally didn’t know one of his favorite sagas, but even Siegfried knew where Erich was coming from about expecting them to regenerate. Even among plantlike humanfolk, there was no such thing as a truly permanent loss of limb, though the process of recovery took a long time by mensch standards. A cycle of decay and rebirth kept dryads alive as long as their host tree remained safe.

It was an easy assumption for Erich to make that as long as these creatures weren’t utterly pulverized, they would most likely rise again. He had seen something similar fighting the undead in the ichor maze created by the Craving Blade—tireless foes that would return to assault you eternally unless you reduced them to a head and torso. Compared to them, these plant creatures were positively easy to defeat. All it took was a powerful strike to their heavily telegraphed leafy weak point.

“You’re really missing out, Sieg. It’s a tale full of bravery and wit. We should ask a poet next time to—”

“Hey, Erich?”

From behind, Erich heard the sound of an arrow whistling through the air and then the thud of it hitting its mark. Margit carefully nocked another arrow in her short bow and let off another shot just in case the felled creature would suddenly attack again. Even if they appeared dead, Margit wanted to make sure they were well and truly finished off. In this case, a surprising sight had triggered her hunter’s instincts...

“Blood,” Erich said after seeing what Margit had.

“Yes, it doesn’t appear to be sap.”

Margit tapped on the arrow a few times; once she had confirmed the kill, she started to pull out the tangle of leaves from the creature’s head. A disgusting splattering sound came with one of the handfuls. Amid a tangle of leaves was an eye.

“Ha ha, so that’s the secret, eh?”

As Kaya clapped her hands to her mouth, Erich surveyed the insides of the ichor maze once more. It was just like the one he had been through—a labyrinth that grew more intricate and powerful as it incorporated unfortunate souls who happened to wander nearby. It was evident why the enemies took on a human form—they were reanimated corpses.

“Yeah, it makes sense that the animals would steer clear.”

A rustling sound echoed through the chamber. Down the path deeper into the ichor maze, a whole host of monsters loomed in the darkness. Some dashed on all fours while others flew in the air. The ichor maze made no distinction between its prey; even the woodland creatures that had met their fate in the forest were not exempt.

“What a welcome.”

“This ain’t the time for jokes!”

The four adventurers moved into battle against this horde of foes. Margit leaped into the air and loosed a shot, claiming first blood. A messy bundle of foliage crashed out of the air, its wing pierced. With no time or need to confirm the kill, one more arrow went whistling into another flying beast.

“They have the same weak points as their living counterparts! Don’t hesitate!”

“Nice!”

Goldilocks lunged forward as his partner slipped behind him. He met something that had been a boar once midcharge; as soon as he closed the gap, he lopped its head off. His sharp blade and IX: Divine skills rendered the beast’s flesh and thick, leafy mane as weak as paper.

“Coming your way, Siegfried!”

An assimilated deer—its antlers now far more grand and deadly than they had originally been—lowered its head and broke into a charge, baying for Erich’s blood. However, a simple Shield Bash sent it flying toward Siegfried. It was a fluid move that nullified the enemy’s attack and would provide his ally an easy opening.

“Hey, think a little before you pass this crap to me!”

Siegfried knew that most people wouldn’t have been able to react quickly enough. He struck down with his heavy spear with enough force and bloodlust to smash through a helmet, easily piercing the beast’s bark-covered hide.

“I-I’m ready! Watch your feet, everyone!”

Kaya launched an earthen bottle right into the oncoming horde. The throw was not all too graceful, but the only thing that mattered was that the powerful concoction reached its target. The maze’s dense mana patterns disrupted spells before they could finish forming, but Kaya had done all her actual spellcasting ages ago; here, she could simply fire, forget, and let the chaos unfold. The group charging toward Erich fell like dominoes.

The potion was a mixture of sticky aloe juice and western grated yam, ground into a paste and accented with oil to create a slippery substance that would cling to any surface, spread prodigiously, and hold for ages. If you found yourself unlucky enough to fall over in the stuff, even holding on to your weapon would become an impossibility. Only a literal wave of water or Kaya’s anti-slip salve slathered onto your shoes beforehand would restore your footing.

The battle proceeded smoothly, and the adventurers counterattacked with grace after their foes had wasted their precious first round. Unfortunately, Kaya’s concoction limited the harm one could do with an edged weapon, so Erich smacked the foes with his shield to allow Siegfried to pierce them through with his spear. The huntress nocked and fired countless arrows, each hitting their mark, while the mage prepared her next potion in case another unexpected attack came.

All that remained for the party was to go through the motions. Their foes had lost the advantage, and by the time Kaya’s potion had worn off (quicker than usual, due to the ichor maze’s dampening effects), the only enemies left were worn out and on the brink of death. As the party set to cleaning up the remainder, the gold-haired one murmured, “Strange, this was way easier than I thought it would go.”

With the end of the battle, the party found themselves without a scratch, let alone any losses. They’d used only a single potion, and outside the heat of battle the mage could always concoct more from the plentiful stock in her knapsack. Even Margit’s arrows could mostly be recovered.

“I had totally envisaged swarms of enemies sprouting out from the walls, or for a different part of their bodies to get infested and attack us.”

“You for real? Who the hell could beat a labyrinth like that?”

“The eponymous hero of The Adventures of Siegfried, probably.”

“Do I look like I’m carryin’ a magic sword anywhere?! I’m not getting paid nearly enough or have anything like the seniority I oughta if I’m doing the kind of work you need Windslaught for!”

Goldilocks agreed—Windslaught was a mystic blade of the highest caliber. The avatar of the God of Metals—emissary of the oldest child of the Sun God, the God of Heat and Sparks—gave an ember from His very body to forge Windslaught, imbuing it with the power to undo any act of tyranny; magic and miracles, as expressions of the caster’s absolute will made manifest, shattered at the blade’s touch. Such an unparalleled blade was the only answer to the highest class of foe and the deadliest of ichor mazes.

The felling of the Foul Drake Fafnir was an exemplary case of the sword’s power. Overwhelming might was to be expected of a drake, but Fafnir was a cut above the rest. Fafnir could soar high into the air at speeds that easily broke the sound barrier, rendering any arrow useless. A foe on foot had no choice but to turn and run against the manifold horrors of its breath. A true dragon like Fafnir could only be taken on with a weapon that turned the very rules of battle on their heads. The idea of taking on such a beast was nonsense in itself, but the fact that Siegfried managed to slay Fafnir all on his own was proof enough that he had acquired an immense strength that surpassed any mortal being. In Erich’s words, it was the perfect weapon for a brooding, solitary type.

Fafnir was a monster that would only appear in the absolute end content of Erich’s beloved TRPG supplements. It was true that the party lived on the fringes of the Empire, but it was highly unlikely that a beast from the Age of Gods would still be alive and kicking today, more than ready to slaughter this small crew of relative novices. If such a beast had survived until this mystically dilute modern age, surely the gods in Their heavens would have enacted some machinations of Their own by now.

“Anyway, our foes might be easy to put down, but they’re pretty damn annoying. It’s a shame you can’t cast spells in here.”

“Huh? Kaya literally just used her magic, man.”

Erich’s face twisted into an uncharacteristic expression of surprise. Siegfried had no way of knowing that Erich had just attempted to use his Unseen Hands, only for the spell to strain against the waves of mana in the air, manifesting slowly and feebly.

It would be possible, in theory, to find a backdoor method to bypass the antimana field or batter it apart with a formula of overwhelming power, but Erich didn’t have the experience to spare to ratchet up his magical prowess that high. Erich’s usual strategy of seeking an easy win by launching off high-level magic without a care had once again come back to bite him.

Lingering memories from a past life came back to him; a friend at the table had mowed down everything in his way with high-level magic, all for the GM to flatly state that they had wandered into an antimagic field. The two of them had argued for hours; Erich kicked himself for not taking this lesson to heart.

“Oh, well, you see, I’ve got a magic tool that lets me talk to Margit from far away. But I couldn’t use it.”

“Seriously? Didn’t realize you had a cool piece of kit like that. Hmph, the village head back home paid a handful of drachmae for a tool that could light up at night and went parading around the canton with it. Where’d you get it from?”

Erich’s luck with the dice must have made a rare concession in his favor, for his thinly veiled lie of “I snatched it off my old boss when I quit,” went unquestioned.

All the same, it was an issue. Even if the phase of the moon were different and he could communicate with his alfar allies, they wouldn’t have been able to use their power here either. He was stripped of half of his arsenal; it wouldn’t be a completely brazen lie for Erich to consider himself a pure and unfettered Fighter right now. He cast his mind back to the credit cards of his old world—this situation was like being turned down from a store that only accepted cash.

Per the Kabbalah: “Heed that shouldst thou affect thyself as a spirit, thou wilt become a spirit.” After endless proclamations that he was a Fighter at heart, here Goldilocks found himself finally well and truly taking on the role.

[Tips] Certain spells used by high-level mages and clerics have the power to render a dungeon completely powerless, so many chambers and labyrinths are imbued with the capacity to nullify all forms of magic.

All the same, it is rare to see locations which prevent low-level mages from even casting their spells. Perhaps the GM has some lingering resentment from a previous session.

Ever since I first awoke to magic at the age of twelve, I had become just a wee little bit overly reliant on it.

“Ugh, my scalp’s so freaking itchy...”

“Well, yeah, look how long your hair is.”

I wanted to stop walking right then and there and frantically scratch at my head. The thing was, I had always taken care of my hair. I cast Clean on it at the drop of a hat, and if I really felt the need for a wash, I would extract water from the air and scrub it clean the old-fashioned way. After all, my magic box of tricks had the simple necessities inside it too, like soap, oil, and pomade. However, we were truly in the trenches right now. We refilled our flasks from tree roots that had absorbed the groundwater. We cooked using roots which smoked horribly, most likely as a preventative measure against precisely this sort of treatment. Simply put, my life of simple luxuries was put on hold.

I wanted to shout at my past self right now. I had totally imagined that I could pull a little, “Hey guys, just getting something from my knapsack,” while performing a bit of surreptitious space-time magic, and so I had brought only the bare minimum with me on the trip. How could I be so stupid? I’d pretended my knapsack was heavier than everyone else’s so I could go through with my ingenious plan, and this is what I had to show for it?!

“Fine, fine, I’ll comb it for you, so calm down, okay?”

“It would be nice to get some more water to wash, but this process takes a long while.”

Margit pulled out a comb and began to untie my hair, and Kaya gave a gentle grin at me while she watched the water collecting in the pan. The two women kindly listened to my moaning, but I could tell that they couldn’t wait until they could go home and have a nice bath too. No one told me this would be such a long expedition...

“All right, let’s update the map.”

Although our first battle in this labyrinth had gone rather well, our actual exploration wasn’t going so swimmingly. I wasn’t sure just how many pages of maps the GM had prepared in some kind of feverish creative fugue, but there seemed to be no end to the maze. Compared to this, Mika’s and my trip through the realm of the Craving Blade had a pretty straightforward route, despite the riddles, traps, and endless hordes of the undead.

We were following the old adage that down is good, but we still encountered dead ends or routes where the only way was up. To combat getting completely and utterly lost, we managed to create a three-dimensional map as we went along, but no matter how much we filled in, the maze seemed to go on forever. I didn’t know what was going on outside, but if the forest had continued spewing out pollen at the rate it had when we entered, then there might not be anyone left waiting for us. We could only pray that the maze was too focused on us.

“Oy, Erich. You’re missing a line.”

“Ah, thanks, Sieg. ...Hold on just a damn second.”

At the corner of the first page of our map—it had just expanded into a sixth—I had been keeping a tally of the days. It was a rough approximation based on how hungry or sleepy we felt, but after counting them again I noticed something.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I think the end of the year has gone and passed us by.”

It had been easily a month or more since we had entered the maze. I didn’t have the luxury of bringing something so fragile as a timepiece into a dungeon, so I expected I was off by a handful of days, but even taking that into consideration, I was pretty certain that the New Year had come and gone.

“No bloody way... Ugh, that means we missed the winter solstice festival! Back home the church of the Night Goddess ran it; their food was always so good...”

“I’m sorry, Dee. I was looking forward to seeing what kind of food the church in Marsheim would offer too...”

“Grah! And all the end of year sweets I missed out on! This royally sucks!”

The Trialist Empire utilized a calendar similar to the Gregorian calendar for simplicity’s sake, but nobody really bothered to celebrate the New Year here. I supposed this was due to the polytheistic nature of things—the gods all had specific days over the year set aside for the public to celebrate them. In the countryside the two most celebrated festivals were the spring festival and the harvest festival in fall, both of which the Harvest Goddess presided over. From what I could gather, other regions of the Empire made huge events out of the summer solstice (the Sun God’s domain) and the winter solstice (the Night Goddess’s signature holiday, naturally).

Large churches with a whole legion of devout followers had the leeway to spend weeks preparing, but us common folk simply had one big bash and were done with it. We didn’t have the time to hold a bunch of festivities anyway, and we mostly showed our devotion to the Harvest Goddess through laboring in the fields. Maybe because of this, other holidays felt like a world apart from what I knew.

“To make up for missing out on all that good, free grub, let’s go nuts with the good booze and sweets when we get home. Then we can fall into comfy beds with full bellies and smiles on our faces. We’ll have earned at least that much!”

“Agreed,” Margit replied. “Though a bath will come before all that.”

It was important to keep morale up with silly talk like this during breaks. When you were right at the end of your tether, right at the brink, pushing out that last drop of energy, that desire to return home and seize what was rightfully yours could give you the push you needed.

Losing your will to fight meant losing your life. We had our rations; the plant-beasts had meat under the roots and leaves; the maze had subsumed edible vegetation within it. The fact that we kept going in these circumstances was proof enough of our will to see this thing through to the end.

Whichever bastard dragged us into this, boy do we have a present just for you... This underlying bloodlust kept us strong. We would win this and treat ourselves silly once we made it home alive.

For an Imperial subject, more than a fortnight without a bath was akin to physical torture. What we’d gone through was cause all on its own to bring whoever was responsible for the maze to court for breaches of our human rights. Jokes aside—this world didn’t have much room for concepts like human rights—we had fair grounds for our anger and frustration. I was sure there was some kind of harrowing, tragic backstory behind this whole miserable dungeon, but my patience had run bone-dry.

Whoever you are that set this ball rolling, I’ll kill you. I will invent a way for you to die if I have to. I’ll bring you back and kill you again, just for good measure.

A grudge? Me? Perish the thought! They’re the one who prepared this godsforsaken long-ass winding dog-water maze with an ambush around every other corner! We were hungry, we were tired, our rations were dwindling, but more than anything we were short on mercy.

[Tips] Ichor mazes do not form around nothing.

“Man... I’m getting flashbacks to helping gramps in the woods...”

“Yeah, kinda feels like a gardening job to me.”

After clearing what seemed like the millionth pack of mooks, Siegfried and I couldn’t help but air our grievances. Each foe’s woody outer coating made them tougher than your average mortal enemy, but they still paled in comparison to a well-equipped bandit. Their large numbers also made them vulnerable to Kaya’s potions—a real lifesaver, as we had a total of zero AOE attacks.

What had surprised me was the sheer number of humanoid minions. We had peeled back the bark and the leaves from more of our enemies and found people in all sorts of different clothing and armor. Evidently we were not the first to wander in here under similar circumstances.

There were three categories of person-turned-plant.

First were the people with simple clothing, who I presumed had been passersby or who had been ensnared by the ichor maze after it had been unleashed by the landslide.

Second were, like us, people in a mishmash of equipment whose tags immediately told me they had been fellow adventurers. The names and ID numbers on their tags gave no indication of when they had been alive, but the fact that many of their corpses were relatively fresh made me wonder if our mediator had a hand in their fates too. I gave a silent prayer for our fallen fellows.

Finally there were the old corpses wearing matching army equipment. Again these were easy to identify. Their simple gear and weapons differed from the Imperial style; they had round shields and long-handled axes that were rarely seen here. Only armies with a locus of control had matching equipment, and their markedly non-Imperial gear left me betting they’d been some kind of local private army.

It took a potent blend of lingering regret and hate to form an ichor maze. Local strongmen who vied to expand their sphere of dominion against the Empire would go to any lengths. I couldn’t imagine what sort of sordid plot had sown this maze...

“Hey, Erich? What’s this?”

“Nicely spotted, Siegfried. Looks like we’ve finally caught a lucky break.”

Beyond the bend of a tunnel that had been blocked by a squadron of corpses lay a door concealed behind an array of roots.

It was a simple door that most people wouldn’t have ever noticed. Just as the Craving Blade’s maze expanded by simply copying and pasting adventurers’ hideouts, I surmised that the core of any maze created its surroundings based on a place that had some significance to it.

At long last we had found a break in the labyrinth’s monomaniacal architectural fixation. If we hoped for answers, then the odds were that they could be found on the other side of that door.

“Margit, would you mind having a look?”

“Opening locks and indoor scouting are both out of my usual scope, but sure.”

All the same, my partner rose to the task and pulled out a listening instrument—a piece of metal that looked like a trumpet bell—and placed it against the door. She had said that lockpicking was out of her ken, but I knew that she had the tools and had been expanding her skill set. I’d personally seen Mister Rotaru, Mister Fidelio’s personal scout, giving Margit lessons—the basics on how to pick locks, as well as extra tips on how to go about it surreptitiously. Margit knew I could use my Unseen Hands to open locks, but Mister Rotaru had let her know that there were enchanted locks that would explode if they were opened by magical means. With this in mind, she had set upon the task of mastering the art of the lockpick with gusto.

Maybe it was a self-conscious thing because she was older than me, but Margit hated being watched while she learned or practiced something new. Naturally I had refrained from teasing her—I knew it would be repaid dozens of times in kind—preferring to quietly watch her improve her skills. I trusted her absolutely.

“Oh! It’s not locked.”

“Ah.”

“It doesn’t look to be booby-trapped either.”

Among her lockpicking tools was a series of metal sheets which could be used as dowsers to identify if something had been enchanted or not. You placed a number of them by the door, and if one or more reacted even slightly, it was a near certainty that a magical trap lay there.

None of her sheets had reacted; we were in the clear.

“But just as a precaution, can I ask you all to stand back?”

It looked like the tools and skills inherited from Mister Rotaru would get their chance in the spotlight another day. This wasn’t uncommon at the table—false traps like this were a way for the GM to school their PCs in what to look out for in the future.

Margit placed her hand upon the handle and the door opened easily, as if to welcome us in.

“A greenhouse?”

Margit murmured to herself. She had carefully placed her pocket mirror in the crack in the door to make sure that an ambush wasn’t waiting and motioned to us that it was all clear.

It was just as she’d said inside. The glass-paneled room was half buried in the dirt, but it had definitely once been a greenhouse. The plants in the pots lining the shelves had all withered, but a desk and various gardening tools were still in decent enough condition.

“Huh, you had a place like this back home, didn’t you, Kaya?”

“Y-Yeah... The Sixth Generation Head... Oh, one of my ancestors had learned how to build one from a friend at the Imperial College of Magic.”

It wasn’t yet a widespread practice to build temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms to grow plants out of season, but the technology did exist in the Empire. The College’s Major Seven, in a strange moment of friendship—especially considering the persistent bad blood between their cadres—had pooled together their talents in order to realize the preposterous notion of cultivating the herbs from their hometowns in the forests near Berylin.

Greenhouses let you break the laws of seasonal availability over your knee—I was sure most people in my old world had at least once enjoyed juicy strawberries even in the dead of winter. The desire to eat certain foods all year round was evidently a universal one, and easy enough to achieve if you had the College’s power and resources behind you. Far-fetched ideas were but a handful of experiments away, and the College of today had a giant underground herb garden maintained with artificial lighting.

It was true that magia were bullish, obstinate creatures, but they showed a surprisingly soft side to those they took a shine to. They enjoyed building factions and having a grand old time within them, so it wasn’t a huge jump in logic to assume they would impart knowledge to compatriots outside the College.

“But these aren’t herbs. They look like...shrubs?”

“I think they were seedlings,” Kaya offered. “Although they’re so withered it’s impossible to tell for sure.”

It was a surprise to learn that this greenhouse was for trees, not herbs. It wasn’t all too uncommon to safely grow seedlings in pots and replant them elsewhere once they had grown large enough. But to use a greenhouse? Were they trying to make some kind of magical tree or something?

“We got a book here.”

“As we should. Show it here, Sieg.”

The dusty tome laid out on an abandoned desk reeked of a GM’s painstakingly prepared handout, begging for a player to crack it open and read it in halting tones to an increasingly horrified party. I wasn’t the kind of guy to say no, was I?

I had shared the table with a number of battle-hungry players for whom lore took a hard backseat to mechanical crunch. They prided themselves on the efficiency of their kills; second-rate players might be seen by their targets, but first-rate players would get their kill before the victim could even get a word in edgewise. The ethos of these bloodthirsty munchkins boiled down to: what was the point of learning the backstory of someone you were just gonna kill?

I always preferred to take the deep dive into the lore our GM spent sleepless nights drawing up; part of the fun back then was not knowing what the next roll would bring. So if the GM of this world had given us a diary, then boy was I going to read it. This made it all the more satisfying, you see, when the GM started crying that the god-level boss they spent hours creating, making sure it had zero weaknesses, was felled by OP players who didn’t end up with even a scratch. It was their fault for their overconfidence—they’re the ones who said, with a cheeky smirk, that we could use anything they’d supplied us with.

After checking that there were no magical traps here either, I realized something.

“I can’t read this!”

“Seriously, man?”

“Look, it’s written in some ancient local dialect. I can get the basics, but nothing that’ll actually help.”

The diary must have been pretty old, because it wasn’t written in Imperial Standard. It wasn’t even written in the Orisons—a language you couldn’t learn outside of academe anymore. It must have been written in an age when the Trialist Empire of Rhine hadn’t yet begun its cultural and linguistic expansion this far west.

“Oh, I can read it,” Kaya said as she looked over at the book. “Although the handwriting is terrible...”

I was filled with a rush of relief at the boon our newly expanded party had given us. After all, there was a limit to the number of languages even a sage could learn. Thank goodness... Nothing stung quite so badly as working up the courage to brave some new dungeon, only to hit a wall because there was no way forward without puzzling out a riddle in a language nobody wanted to spend a proficiency on.

The GM had a responsibility to prepare around a party’s niche abilities or lack thereof in advance, but all the same we needed to think of a safety measure if we were going to regions with their own dialects, jurisdictions which favored cursive writing styles, or even leaving our country entirely...

But, come on... Why do they have to be so damn pricey? The further the distance from my mother tongue, the higher the required experience climbed. I would have to break the bank to even get to a conversational level, but I felt myself breaking out in a cold sweat when I thought of how much it would cost to get good enough to read, say, a foreign grimoire. Yeah, this was best left to the pros.

“It’s a little bit diary and a little bit research log, or thereabouts. This might take a while; I’m already feeling a headache coming on looking at it. Would you mind?”

“Lucky for us there’s some chairs, and it looks like we won’t be attacked in here, so let’s take a break while we’re at it.”

“Aha, this lamp’s still got oil in it,” Siegfried said as he busied himself to help Kaya.

“And there are candles too. This will help save your potions,” Margit added.

“Thank you all,” Kaya replied. “The handwriting is atrocious... I think they didn’t mind as long as they themselves could read it.”

I was totally used to people like that. I remember borrowing my friend’s notes for a class only to open it to find a near-illegible scrawl—the kind where words would only make sense if you squinted and looked at the sentence as a whole.

As Kaya set to work, we cleared away anything flammable and made use of the withered saplings to build a small campfire to brew some tea. Cups of black of tea in hand, we enjoyed the taste of civilization. We’d roughed it for a month like this—one or two days of research made no difference.

While Margit combed my hair to rid me of the infernal itching, Siegfried pulled out a dagger and haphazardly began to hack away at his own. It made for good tinder, so he gathered it together in a small pouch and was done in a matter of minutes. I was pretty jealous as I watched, to be honest. After all, I had two very loud friends who would cook up something unthinkable if I dared to cut off more than the absolute bare minimum. They had saved my life countless times by now, but it sure was suffocating to risk a chewing-out for something as straightforward as trimming my bangs. It got stuffy under a helmet; in all honesty, a short cut like Sieg’s seemed perfect.

“Oh yeah... I just remembered something.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I was just lookin’ at my split ends and it reminded me of something my gramps taught me. It was when I was just a little kid, so I’d pretty much forgotten it.”

Ah, is it going to turn out that the advice of a learned elder from his backstory is going to be the rosetta stone to this whole mystery, right on the heels of us learning about that backstory in the first place? We do like our tropes here.

“He was really great. When I said I was gonna be an adventurer, he was the only one in my family who didn’t laugh at me. We had a real cold winter when I was twelve and he...was gone.”

“Yeah, sounds like he meant a great deal to you. What was it that you remembered?”

“Well, I thought that maybe these trees might be a type of cedar. Remember the mushrooms growing on a bunch?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, gramps told me that cedars work with mushrooms and fungi so that they can become bigger and tougher than other trees. The biggest mushrooms can be found near the roots; they’re supposed to be pretty powerful reagents.”

Kaya had evidently been listening; she jolted up with a face that screamed Eureka! She ignored the chair she had knocked over and furiously read a portion of the diary. In the next moment, she shouted, “Cedrus sancta!” as she pointed right at us—or rather, at the saplings which were burning merrily on the campfire.

“Cedrus sancta is the binomen of a sacred ancient cedar! The herbalist who worked here was trying to resurrect this long-lost tree!”

Our own herbalist dashed to the fire and fell to her knees as she realized we were using precious specimens to make tea.

The phrase “ancient, sacred cedar” rang a bell somewhere. If I recalled correctly, I read somewhere about a tragedy in a distant country that was tied up in the fate of a cedar forest there. The small nation venerated their forest, and although the cedars made ideal lumber for houses or ships, they engaged in mindful forestry. However, the smaller nation was laid to ruin when a larger nation set their greedy sights on this precious lumber. Their avarice progressed unchecked until the forest was all but razed to the ground, spawning a curse that would haunt the nation—a divine malediction which caused the nation to decay as their martial victories piled higher and higher. Just like Rome after the Punic Wars, this nation collapsed before the Age of Gods even drew to a close, its only legacy being a few dozen small and insignificant nations.

Kaya theorized that the old owner of this greenhouse had wanted to revive this ancient tree that had been driven to near extinction.

“Man,” I said. “We boiled our tea with quite the kindling...”

“We won’t be struck down by some divine power, will we?” Margit asked.

“Nah, I bet we’d totally be fine,” Siegfried offered. “Come on, it was literally ages ago.”

“No, no, no... More importantly...how could we...?! Such valuable specimens...burned away...”

Kaya was absolutely heartbroken at our unintended savagery; we didn’t have any words of comfort to give, as the very perpetrators of the incident. Part of me was thinking that the saplings had already withered away, but even in that state they might have had value to a professional...

Oops is the only word for it... Sorry, Kaya.

After calming down thanks to Siegfried’s encouragement, Kaya told us more about the book and what she had learned.

Apparently, the herbalist had come up with a method to try and revive this Cedrus sancta that only existed now in a poor and withered state. Her solution had been to revitalize the withered samples by partnering them with the symbiotic fungi of a local sister species.

It would take a bit more parsing of the diary to identify whether this was a gods-given task or if the herbalist had taken it on as her own personal project, but the goal was clear: to save an entire species from the brink of extinction and the ravages of empire. She had spent her entire life helping others, and she poured all of those savings into the greenhouse and her new project.

Yet time alone cannot exorcise the spirit of endless consumption. Someone had set their eyes upon the sacred cedars—someone powerful, wealthy, and like the original cedar raiders, hungry to expand and defend their operation. Say, for example, the fellow who’d bankrolled all those dead soldiers.

“I know, if I can obtain the lumber from those legendary trees, then I can build the foundations of an impregnable fortress, just as they did in Marsheim!” was probably the gist of whatever went through his head. Many of the later pages in the herbalist’s diary were full of passages airing her grievances that said kingpin’s subordinates kept dropping by to ask for the mature cedars.

Within a few pages, her entries became stained with fear.

Selective breeding was an exceedingly difficult task—more a gamble than anything—that would take years, if not decades. This was especially true when trying to restore a species barely hanging on to a genuinely robust state. Even if she sped the process up with magic—directly altering the fungi as opposed to simply implanting them—there was no way she could finish on the timescale the kingpin demanded.

Without the time or the patience, the horrible fool had brought everything to a bloody end. The hut outside had once been a nursing station, and we had seen enough to put two and two together—it didn’t take a genius to work out who had done what to whom. That clown, whoever he’d been, had realized all too late that pleading and begging wouldn’t make the trees grow any faster. When his patience ran dry, he’d lashed out on what was closest.

But his rampage hadn’t ended there. One of the last crimes he committed was to bring an end to the herbalist by his own hand.

The herbalist’s despair and anger seeped into the cedars through the fungi she had sought to complete. It wasn’t too surprising—the divine cedars themselves had their own will and wanted the herbalist’s plan to succeed. However, their last and final hope for their kind had been mercilessly slaughtered. A cruel irony, then, that the resultant ichor maze bent them into such strong and fecund shapes.

By all that’s good and holy... All these damned bigwigs can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care.

I supposed it was a small mercy that this ever-growing maze had been uncovered before it became completely irreparable. It was still a shame how many sacrifices it’d claimed before our arrival. Whatever the case, this room would provide valuable evidence for when we went to complain to our client, so we set about taking what we needed.

[Tips] Magia use all sorts of techniques to conduct selective breeding, so there had been nothing peculiar nor taboo about the herbalist’s actions. That the ichor maze formed at all was merely an unlucky confluence of a plant’s desperate will to live and the agony of a human dream deferred.

I had to thank Kaya and Siegfried’s ingenuity back in the greenhouse, because things progressed far more smoothly and a lot quicker once we had worked out the hints to indicate which way to go. As we headed deeper, the increasingly vicious mob attacks told me that we were headed in the right direction. The maze had upped the ante by finally subjecting us to assimilated bears, giant boars, and soldiers who still retained some faint memory of formation fighting. They were a cut above the prior fare, that was for sure.

Most people who’ve gone to Tokyo have experienced the despair of trying to find your way from one side of Shinjuku Station to the other. Our adventure up until now had been a task made infinitely more difficult by the lack of any sort of map, compass, or guide. However, the fact that the herbalist had been breeding fungi practically gave us the answer—the core of the maze would be where the fungal growth was densest. Any four- or five-forked crossroads could be breezed through without needing to put down our weapons. The feeling that we were nearing the end of this quest propelled us onward.

Our stamina had long since reached rock bottom. We hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in two months. We’d been deprived of any means to clean ourselves. Our rations had been eaten to their last crumb and nothing we ate could be described as anything more than sustenance—I couldn’t remember the last time I actually felt full. Our tea bags had been overbrewed to the point that they left us with naught more than slightly brown water.

Our strength was nowhere near sufficient to see us out of here alive. And yet, our blazing desire to return home pushed our bodily limits aside, if only temporarily.

Our thoughts were clear—our bodies obeyed.

It was as we reached a stretch where the ground beneath our feet became more root than dirt and everything was coated in a sprawling network of mycelium that I knew we were close.

“All right gang, one final push.”

The path opened up before us. Where we had been walking single file for a while, all of a sudden we could stand shoulder to shoulder. The air was thick with spores; I would’ve worried about our lungs getting wrecked if not for Kaya’s antidote.

“You all ready for this?”

“Yeah.”

Siegfried drew his spear and packed its sheath into his knapsack. Despite being newly procured, a gauntlet of battles that outclassed any regular training had quickly removed the gleam from the spearhead. His plundered equipment was as tattered as mine—we would need to get them repaired when we got home—but the damage was proof that we had done our job protecting our rear line.

“Let’s leave our knapsacks. We want to prioritize freedom of movement.”

The maze was being peculiarly kind to allow us time to prepare when we were right before its core—that, or it had run out of troops to send our way. Whatever the case, it was a favorable situation. We all hydrated and unburdened ourselves of anything that wouldn’t help in the battle.

I pulled out Schutzwolfe—its blade a little worn from continued use and no smiths to take care of it—and stood at the front line of the party.

“We move as we agreed. Be ready to think on your feet, okay?”

“If things don’t go as planned again you’re buying the first meal back.”

“Sure thing, Sieg. But if things do go as I envisioned, then we’re upgrading to the fanciest bath in Marsheim. You’re paying for my massage, and I intend to splurge. I have your word, don’t I?”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m gonna drink your damn wallet dry with the best booze I can get!”

We weren’t talking about sappy crap about how we were happy we were to have met each other—screw that, we were talking about every grubby material indulgence waiting for us back home. What better way to pump ourselves up with enough morale to secure that win?

Siegfried and I crossed our weapons—gently enough not to harm them—in a show of our alliance. After all, it was likely that we wouldn’t have time to talk once we were in the heat of it.

“Let’s show them what we’ve got, shall we? Be careful out there, Kaya; I might not be able to cover for you all the time.”

“Sad to say I’ve used up almost all of my potions, so that goes for you too, Margit. Please take care.”

Only time would tell whether we could win this, but we’d prepared to the best of our abilities. All that was left was to believe in them.

“Let’s do this!”

At my call, we dashed into the room. It was a spacious chamber, probably the same size as a gymnasium. It was circular and sloped down toward the middle—the shape reminded me of a mortar. Right in the center of the recessed space was a giant root and a mass of fungi that seemed to pulse slowly—a gruesome amalgamation of her forcefully aborted experiment. Standing between us and the maze’s beating heart were two plant-bears and a see-through woman.

It was a geist—not quite a wraith, but only barely.

The herbalist’s insatiable need for vengeance galvanized her spirit where her body had failed, binding her for good to the core of the maze. Her blue, hazy form held the general shape of a person, but the boundary between her and the air was unclear. I couldn’t make out any facial features, but I could see two gaping spaces where her eyes would be, out of which trailed a constant stream of ghostly blood. It spoke well enough of how gruesome her death had been.

Just as I expected—one boss, two lackeys!

She noticed our party charging toward her and let out an ear-piercing wail. Her words fell on empty ears. Even if we understood her antiquated tongue, it was impossible to distinguish any words through the distortion of undeath, her grief, and ages of isolation; her voice was like a set of rusted blades scraping edge to edge.

The geist’s nightmare would never end so long as she remained bound here. We would deliver her from her suffering.

All right, time for the climax, baby! I haven’t forgotten the hell you put us through—it doesn’t matter what kind of tragedy you’ve experienced, this ends here and now! No questions, no sympathy—your ass is busted!

I had sped ahead of my three teammates, but two objects went whistling past me. The first was an arrow loosed by Margit. The second was a bolt fired from a crossbow that Kaya had borrowed from her. It didn’t matter that Kaya wasn’t as sharp a shot as Margit—the potion that she had affixed to her own missile would do its job even if it didn’t hit a bull’s-eye.

Margit’s arrow thudded into one of the bears and Kaya’s bolt shied off its mark, crashing into the floor. That was more than enough. The bottle cracked open in a puff of white haze imbued with a smattering of evil-banishing silver. It was Kaya’s very own antimana force field.

This was something that I really, really didn’t want to admit, but I had filed just a few small shavings from the silver hairpiece Cecilia had given me when I left Berylin and gave them to Kaya in order to create this evil-quelling catalyst. You see, I had a few inklings what kind of boss was waiting for us; I had a hard time believing the herbalist wouldn’t be hanging around as a geist or a wraith, under the circumstances. A supposition needed a countermeasure—no matter how merciless the decision.

Come on, you didn’t expect me of all people to not have a few measures against the undead up my sleeve, did you? During all those harrowing cosplay sessions, every single moment I had time to so much as catch my breath, I racked my brains thinking of how best to destroy the foul vitality glorifier who had ensnared me in her silly games. It should come as no surprise that I had spent hours in the College’s library researching how to kill something that was already dead. Sad to say, the quickest measure I had found was to bring her enough joy to allow her to pass on—I tried my best to push down images of me and Mika putting on a little all-singing, all-dancing revue for her, and the dozens of humiliating costume changes it would have to entail. All the same, I had learned a lot about these creatures.

Geists and wraiths were born from an intense, lingering regret tied to this world. All the mana that they would have spent over the remainder of their lives then crystallized in an instant to create their incorporeal form. Not only did regular physical attacks pass right through them, but they were also blessed with magical talents that far surpassed whatever they once had in life. You couldn’t underestimate how much power someone might have had under the hood waiting for undeath to catalyze it; I recalled the case of a noble’s daughter with no reputation for any aptitude with magic who, after her assassination, managed to channel the lingering grief around her passing into a rampage that left her family’s entire estate a smoking ruin.

Geists, unlike wraiths, couldn’t interact with the physical world, were locked into the emotional state of the moment of their deaths, and steadily “lost fidelity” over time, their mental faculties wearing down to bare nubs. What united the two was that they were damned difficult to kill.

Though they were laughable in comparison to a unique figure like Lady Leizniz, geists were a nightmare for any beginner adventurer. It was a tale as old as time that a newbie party would face one with physical weapons—only magical weapons would even begin to affect them—lose their backliners to a magical assault, and swiftly find themselves reduced to a fine red mist.

Our success hung entirely on our ability to fight smarter. The ichor maze’s antimana field was potent enough to render even the Craving Blade inaccessible to me. Fortunately, with enough time, resources, and ingenuity, we could use Kaya’s incredible talents to cook up an ideal countermeasure.

The geist’s two bears responded to her incomprehensible command and lunged at us, but we had the numbers advantage. It didn’t take long to nullify them—a thrusting blow into the first bear’s open jaw let Siegfried sever its spine, and I was able to cut down the other in a moment while it was still fazed by Margit’s supporting fire.

While I was preoccupied, an attack came from below—a fusillade of sharp tree roots wreathed in ice. I reacted in time to cut some down and deflect the others with my armor.

Good—if this was what the geist was packing, we weren’t dealing with the worst-case scenario. Her attacks were ice-cold, but I wouldn’t stop in the face of dull magic that my blade could slice right through. It didn’t help that the gal couldn’t aim worth a damn. Her attacks needed to land a direct blow to do me any harm, so I didn’t even need any magical countermeasures—I could just rely on my own reflexes.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, if you want to kill a frontliner tanking for the whole party solo, then you need to burn the whole shop down, or at least throw something at me I can’t dodge or block. I was as good as an undead knight myself—resolved to stand in her way despite the incoming blows, all for the sake of keeping my allies unscathed. It was too late in the game for her to stand a chance of killing me.

“I’m sure you’re bored of this endless dream by now! This is your wake-up call!”

She had no greater magic in store. Her flailing roots and the subzero chill that enveloped them were the last measures the geist had. All I had to do was buy time. Just a little would do; enough for Siegfried to sneak past the blockade and destroy the core while she was busy with me.

“Gyaaaaah! Screw thiiiiis!”

As I clashed with her haphazard assault, my comrade rushed past my side. As long as I was here, she wouldn’t have the leeway to even attempt to stop Siegfried.

I was sure she could feel her body being pushed back by my relentless blows and her soul being drawn to the afterlife as the rules of the world stated.

Remembered, have you? What it was that robbed those last moments of your life? Do you recall now just how scary a sword can be?

Her outstretched fingers weren’t pushing me back—they were pushing back her murderer in the moments before her tragic death.

Don’t worry—it’ll only hurt a little while longer.

“Waaaagh! Something’s climbing up my leg!”

“Ignore it! You’ll be fine unless it enters your mouth! I think!”

“What do you mean, ‘I think’?!”

From Siegfried’s wailing, I assumed he was dealing with the mycelium I’d noticed earlier. It had begun to crawl up his leg and envelop his clothes. At this stage it’d just be bothersome, but even I didn’t know what would happen if it touched bare skin.

It was a stage gimmick—one of those “rout the enemy in X turns or it’s game over” kind of deals. But we had taken the initiative. This enemy was trying to burn our hit points down in as few rounds as possible, so I doubted this was one of those tactics where she was biding time to unleash her ultimate move.

“All right... It’s closing time!”

An arrow went whistling underneath my armpit and beautifully found its target in the forehead of the geist. The arrowhead hadn’t been consecrated, nor was she using a magic weapon, yet it struck true. Kaya’s antimana concoction had done its job, disrupting the delicate mana dynamics that kept a disembodied spirit intact and immaterial.

Siegfried had just reached his target and Margit’s attack had weakened the wall of roots that had formed to protect the fungal core for a second. He slipped through to engage with the maze’s heart.

“Ngh... GRAAAAH!”

We were being assaulted by constant point-blank root attacks, but injuries were a necessary trade-off to get close enough to fulfill the mission—as long as we didn’t die.

“Just die, you piece of crap!”

Siegfried viciously fought his way through, hacking away with his spear at the roots that sought to protect the core from him. The moment he saw an opening, he plunged a length of metal into the fungal mess.

This was no mere loose scrap of iron, though—this was a revision of my mystic thermite. Although my own skill rendered me unable to use my tools without all the mana immediately dispersing, our talented herbalist had managed to rework it into a very special form.

Put into TRPG terms, my theory was that this labyrinth reduced the level of usable magic, which meant my cheap, easy approach to spellcraft amounted to bubkes. But in the hands of our mage—let’s be real, our alchemist—my materials could be reworked into usable magic so long as we had sufficient prep time. Of course, this was topped off by the beautiful boon that even someone who hadn’t awoken to magic could use them.

“Yeow, that’s hot!”

The catalyst-potion was designed to explode as soon as it hit the fuse; it began to emit an incredible heat and light as soon as Siegfried had placed it. It was a creation that far outshone the jury-rigged thing I had come up with—it was nanothermite of a far higher efficiency than I could have ever imagined. As it reacted, it burned with the heat of multiple suns, absolutely immolating the fungus.

Siegfried, you idiot, I told you to hoof it as soon as you were done!

Siegfried’s scream (it seemed like he’d gotten off with only a burn; any longer and he would’ve lost his hand) was drowned out by a pair of ear-piercing cries. The roots around the core were all writhing in pain, and the geist was quivering as if she had been set ablaze as well.

Yes—just as I planned! She and the core of the maze complete one another!

This was evidently not one of those dreadful cases where you had to defeat both the core and the host at the same time—they shared the same health bar. Even if you whaled on only the one, the other would receive damage too, and for that I was extremely grateful.

I had handed Sieg one more nanothermite, so I prayed that my comrade in arms would burn it all to the ground.

I focused on my own job at hand.

I crossed over the wall of ice and roots that the geist had erected. I stood before her and took in a deep breath. My body was covered in wounds; I focused my entire being. For this moment only, I drove all energy away from my reactions and my minor traits, and poured them all into my major trait—everything was going into my upcoming attack.

I was channeling all of the praise, awe, and goodwill and every ounce of hate that Erich of Konigstuhl had ever earned and Limelit had gathered together. All that experience it had brought me—it was time to see the peak that it had brought me to. Despite cashing it all in, I had only managed to reach II: Novice in a move that could one day fell a god, and I needed to put my absolute entire focus into unleashing it.

Its name was Schism.

Skills like this aren’t all too uncommon—ones that dropped your mobility to zero and caused you to forfeit any EVA or DEF all for the sake of one blowout attack. A weaker attack might have done the job, but my heart was still set on that all-purpose ideal state where I could destroy everything within my blade’s reach. There was no way I was gonna be screwed over in the last moment by an asspull of “I use my magic and miracles to evade everything.”

Which is why I couldn’t compromise. If I reached peaks higher than this, then I could evade while attacking; no, in theory I could continue to combo my regular attacks with Schism, and I wouldn’t need my beloved sword or my foul mystic blade. A blunt butter knife would do the job.

Focus, Erich. Ignore the pain, the cold—everything unnecessary to this one swing.

I held my sword at my waist, the blade facing behind me. The instant I dropped my guard, frost rained all over me and roots struck into my flesh—but everything was incidental. My comrade had managed to thrust the catalyst into the jaws of death despite the relentless pressure and his burning hands.

I could never show my face to him again if I screwed up here.

“YAAAAAAGH!”

As I let out the mightiest war cry I could wring from my body and slashed with my blade, I felt no resistance whatsoever.

Not because I missed.

This was one of only a few times in my life where the strike landed exactly as I had wanted, where I felt the shiver of joy from a hit that had struck true—a critical hit.

An impossible sight lay before me: the geist’s head soared through the air, clad in a ghastly aura.

Kaya’s initial potion had merely been insurance. If I hadn’t found a chance to bust out Schism, then the potion’s effects would have let me knock her clear into the afterlife with just Schutzwolfe. Hell, it had shut down any hope of her resorting to more deadly measures or striking at any of my party members directly.

But man, ain’t it nice when the dice fall perfectly in your favor right in the clutch.

“Ah... Gyaaaagh!”

As the geist faded from existence, her face—previously hazy and indistinct—became clear for a fleeting moment. It was the face of a gaunt, middle-aged woman, and it vanished on the wave of heat that rolled out from the second explosion off in Siegfried’s direction.

It wasn’t the most peaceful of send-offs, but I hoped the freedom from her nightmare was justice enough. As the dream burned to ashes, the lingering vestiges of its resentful victims—unfortunate souls, casualties of political subterfuge, who wouldn’t line any page in history—disappeared.

The sensation of the ichor maze warping was a strange one indeed. Old memories of clearing that foul labyrinth with Mika raced through my brain—that same sensation of the world crushing in on itself as the maze had lost all power to uphold its existence.

“Whoa, talk about a squeeze.”

“Ow, ow, OW! Erich! Move your damned leg! You’re crushing my balls!”

“D-Dee, your hand! It’s—!”

“S-Sorry, Kaya! Wh-Whoa!”

The conclusion to our battle was neither dramatic nor heartfelt.

We found ourselves squashed together in a tree hollow. It was hard to believe that the sweeping maze we had spent weeks in was shrunk down to the size of a rotten old tree.

As I peered over at the mash of bodies, I saw that apparently Siegfried the Lucky had landed in a position worthy of his title; his hand found itself right on Kaya’s chest. My own good luck had obviously run dry; I received an elbow to the jaw as Siegfried twisted his body to save Kaya from the awkward situation. I was happy that Margit had managed to avoid the crush, but jeez, the last thing my battered old body needed was one last little taste of blunt force trauma.

“Gods above, Sieg, that’s probably the most painful hit I’ve received all day.”

“Sorry, man... Collateral damage...”

As we pulled ourselves free of the hollow with much moaning and complaining, the sight that awaited us was a lonely scene of a mountain wreathed in dead trees—or, thinking on it now, mere bare branches, all stemming from that one sapling buried in the deep.

It was a small blessing that, despite the last-minute tag-team fight with a demon mushroom, we’d been spared the trouble of burning the whole mycelium out of the mountain.

Looking around, I saw that along with our party, the equipment we had left in front of the chamber and a number of items were strewn about. I supposed now was as good a time as any to bust out the loot tables.

“Hey, Kaya? Do you mind having a look at that stuff to see if there’s anything of worth? I dunno, like a valuable branch or something...”

“I-Incredible!” Kaya squeaked almost immediately. “You were right—there’s a sacred cedar branch! A-And it’s healthy, right down to the leaves! I can’t even fathom how much this would be worth as a staff! And...look, another research log! This wasn’t in the greenhouse!”

“Now, now; Erich? Siegfried? You’re both covered in injuries. We should patch those up first.”

Margit was right—we were a mess. We had done everything we could as frontliners to take on blow after blow to protect our back line while also fulfilling our respective missions. I was covered in cuts, dampening my clothes in blood. I was alive and nothing was beyond repair, but my next few bath visits were going to sting.

I was more concerned about the cleanup that this mountain would need. It was horrendously quiet—it seemed as if even all the insects for miles around were dead too. I wasn’t sure whether to weep that the maze had snuffed out an entire mountain’s ecosystem or to be relieved that it hadn’t swept any further.

I couldn’t see any armies or groups of adventurers approaching or encamped nearby, so it was safe to assume that we had fulfilled the mission in time. Zeufar in the distance seemed okay too, so the pollen storm had probably calmed down before too long. What a relief... No one deserved to be harmed—as foolhardy adventurers, it was our whole job to suffer the physical cost of our work on their behalf.

“Phew, right, I’m taking off my armor at least.”

As I fiddled with the straps, something fell out of my waist pouch. A rip had formed during the battle, and as I looked down, I noticed that the acorn from the job the cat lord had given us all that time ago had slipped out.

I had been carrying it around as a charm, as it seemed like it might do something to protect me, but I could only watch as it rolled away and into a hole in the ground—almost as if it was predestined to. Then in the next moment, despite the chill in the air, a sprout popped out of the ground.

“Wait, what? This isn’t some kind of foreshadowing, is it? Oh, man...”

I wanted to stick my middle finger up at the heavens and all the gods who lived on high and scream that I had no clue how to even gauge what had just happened. I clasped my head in both hands as my allies looked on in puzzlement.

Whatever the case, we had survived, and it looked like this mountain would find new life in the not too distant future as well.

And so we began the long journey back home.

[Tips] Nothing is set in stone. Sometimes an event just happens to an adventurer by pure chance. However, there is no erasing the possibility that it might be something set in motion by the GM’s pure whimsy after perusing various character sheets...