Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 8 - Chapter 5

The tale that follows is not from the time line we know—but it might have been, had the dice fallen differently...

One Full Henderson ver0.7

1.0 Hendersons

A derailment significant enough to prevent the party from reaching the intended ending.

The low autumn sun cast long shadows over the incipient battlefield. The two armies sized each other up: on one side a white-clad army of spear-wielding soldiers and on the other a motley crew gathered up into shield walls.

Upon the simple white surcoats of the Imperial side were orange circles, indicating at a single glance that they were under the jurisdiction of Margrave Marsheim. Their gloves, chain mail, and helmets were all simply designed fare, and each bore a four-meter-long spear—their astounding reach announcing that the force didn’t imagine a close-quarters battle to be on the table. This formation and weapon choice was favored by Imperial armies—a way of turning a regular footman into a soldier in a short period of time.

However, perhaps this army had too many new recruits; the eight-hundred-strong force lacked much cohesion at all. The opposing side stood at the ready in a strategic formation, but the Imperial side’s had managed naught more than a semblance of order—the soldiers merely waiting in straight lines. It was the choice of a fighting force without the discipline to form up into fish scales or Vs, let alone squares, and as such denied all its most suitable stratagems.

The stick-straight line quivered, their spears pointed to the heavens seeming like grass in the breeze. Hardly any were suited to skirmish conditions, so here they were, their density and number a stumbling block for the enemy. It had simply not been possible to raise them all into war-ready soldiers.

As for the other side, they were well defended and organized. The tortoise formations moved as slow as their namesake, but none showed any trace of disorder. Spears poked out from the gaps in between their round shields, killing intent seeping out along with them, as the troops advanced, wholly unshaken.

A countermeasure against long-range attacks had also been implemented. Upon their shields were sigils to ward away arrows and soak up the worst Imperial artillery spells had to offer. The footmen’s formation would never falter—honed to the perfection of a true showman.

It wasn’t long before they reached the Imperial army. Five formations with one hundred soldiers apiece, the only thing stopping them from shredding through the larger Imperial side was time. It was a simple strategy—divide and conquer.

The Imperial side had prioritized speed when forming their army, but the local powerhouse leading the enemy’s side knew that he would never win the numbers game. Thus, he employed this old approach to allow his smaller but better-trained force to cut into and wear down the larger Imperial side.

It hadn’t been a difficult task, but it had taken time. He had gradually given military training, under the guise of training against bandits, to the people of his canton so as not to arouse unnecessary attention. Over a season or two, he drilled the basics into them before training up another group. Every few years he would enforce training sessions to reinforce the education he’d given them. In a matter of years, he had amassed his own private army. Other local lords took a page out of his book, and they had brought their armies together to secure a guaranteed victory.

A drum pounded out a rhythm over the crowd to keep the soldiers apace. Between the five formations, knights atop their horses barked cries to maintain order, pounding footsteps threatening to drown out the drum they marched to.

From afar, the Imperial side wondered what sort of training could have produced such finely tuned battle instinct. Each unit was spaced perfectly apart and moved in time, despite the distance between them. Each step wore at the hastily assembled army’s morale.

They had been at work but a season prior, tilling the fields and cutting the trees, and war had been the furthest thing from their minds. When they had received the call, they had imagined the enemy force to be nothing more than angry peasants. As they prepared themselves, each thought they would take the head of an enemy soldier and return home with a big enough bounty to build a new house. Yet, the enemy was far more vicious than they had envisioned—any will to fight was lost in an instant. It was uncertain if they would be able to keep a hold of their weapons when the order to move out was announced.

The drum and fife grew louder and louder until the time to engage the enemy arrived. In this battle, no knights came forward to give one last chance to surrender. No words were to be shared before they fought. The army had abandoned any etiquette from the old days, only wishing for victory.

“Honor before death!” one of the enemy soldiers cried out.

“For honor!” five hundred voices roared out in unison.

This might have been a relatively small battle, without even two thousand troops upon the field, but the local lords were propelled by the need to win. This was their first step toward reclaiming power and independence. First, they would quash Marsheim and receive the support of their neighbors abroad. If things went well, other satellite states would feel encouraged to join their cause, and the flames of revolt would become a blazing wildfire. Their forces would be united, and a fearsome new nation would be born.

For the local strongmen, this was their only route to victory.

The older generation had realized that they couldn’t attain independence while they were still young and strong. They sowed the seeds of their hate among the younger generation with fervor and prayed that through local customs and festivities they could keep the flame of their hatred alive. This had culminated in the uprising today and others like it elsewhere in the region.

Fortunately for them, the current Emperor viewed uprisings in distant regions like this without much interest. After all, a local army stood no chance in the face of an immense force like the one that had won the Second Eastern Conquest. Survivors still could be found across the Empire proper—old but powerful warriors who had returned home from the Eastern Passage with their lives and glory. Then there were the two hundred-odd drakes who could be deployed at a moment’s notice. The Empire’s forces, when amassed all together, numbered over two hundred thousand souls. If the Empire unleashed its full muster, they could easily suppress any local uprising.

Naturally, the Empire did not. Directing an army of that size to one end would be like a mensch trying to brandish an ogre’s blade. Not only that, it would draw the Empire’s economy to a standstill. Soldiers who weren’t in active service weren’t simply retired; they were productive members of society. If they had to drop their labors in order to fight, then the economy would naturally stagnate. Then the situation after the war needed to be considered. What would happen to the fields if thousands of healthy men never returned, unable to spend the next decades tending to the crops? To send all these young men to unnecessary deaths was as foolish as razing a field where the seeds had only just sprouted.

The Trialist Empire of Rhine had a nigh unmatched martial might, but it could only be used sparingly. The greater the force, the greater the consequences.

And so Rhine spent the long years after the last conflict laying the foundation for a great war that would render all of their enemies impotent in one fell swoop. Smaller independent bodies of power in the Empire’s outer regions would not take this lying down. They sent their forces into smaller skirmishes to slowly seize the upper hand. Through a multitude of schemes, they had taken hold of this small thread that would lead them to victory. It was almost too fine a thread to grasp, but the winnings at stake in the matter demanded all of one’s strength.

Their plan was to usurp Margrave Marsheim. While the margrave was busy with affairs abroad, they would make use of the chaos and reinstate themselves as the region’s masters.

The clashes unfolding across the region were too small to ever decorate a picture scroll of the story that would be sure to follow, but they were all essential to making this decisive battle a success.

The gap between the two armies finally closed, and weapons drew first blood. The formation was swallowed up by the encroaching force in an instant as the calm descended into all-out chaos.

In a situation like this, a dense formation was weak. The impromptu army had only been taught how to use their spears to stab at a distant enemy or thrust a foe back—they hadn’t been taught how to swing a sword when you were shoulder to shoulder with both your ally and your target.

The Imperial knights, who were used to winning battles thanks to the numbers game, had started to worry. They were unsure how long their formation would last.

The other side, on the other hand, had all but won in their minds. The knights giving orders at the back of the formation smiled at their imminent victory. All that remained to be done was for the twenty cavalry units stationed in the hills to come charging in from the sides, and absolute chaos would reign. When it was all done with, they’d mop up the stragglers and pick over the dead for loot.

On this early fall evening, these troops who had been taken from their harvest would squeeze out the last drops of life before reaching their end. The stage was set; it was almost time for the show to begin.

Aha, the knights thought, there comes our backup now.

Cries came from both sides as the cavalry charged in, ready to finish the battle.

The sound of a horn—in legends and in the present day, the end was announced with fanfare.

Yes, the shadows coming down from the hill would end this battle. However, not in the way that the enemy army had envisioned.

Flapping in the breeze was a war flag bearing the profile of a wolf, crushing a die in its jaws. There were twenty-five of them in total, clad in light armor and bearing lances and crossbows.

Heading the group was a slender lad whose face seemed positively gaunt compared to his muscular fellows. He was clad in full-body armor, but he removed his helm, and a raucous cheer came from the Imperial side as they saw that it was him in the flesh. His long golden hair, flowing in the breeze; his beautiful face, unfitting for a warrior. The Imperial side’s morale was refreshed in an instant while their opponents’ crumbled.

“It’s the hit squadron!”

“It’s the Shield of Marsheim! It’s Sir Wolf! Sir Wolf has come to save us!”

The appearance of such a piece at this point in the game transformed the powerhouses’ sure win into a dire tragedy. Their troops in the hills never arrived, and in their place was an infamous hero and his unit of elite soldiers. This was the worst possible outcome. Even the most dim-witted soldier there knew what had become of their allies—the blades of the Imperial cavalry up on that hill were already stained with blood. The enemy didn’t have time to be astounded by the sight.

The battle unfolded as fate demanded. Tales of this sort were rare even upon picture scrolls or the opera stage.

Responding to the flapping of von Wolf’s flag, another horn erupted from the forested hill on the other side. It was the fanfare announcing a second attack.

The powerhouses’ side panicked. It was almost as if these untrained Imperial soldiers had been placed as bait for this ambush. The tides of battle had turned in an instant.

Their fangs had sunk too deep. Drawn in by the intoxicating fumes of victory, the local army had broken deep into the Imperial battle lines, certain that this would be as easy as mowing down wheat. None could reposition their shield formation in time. Their fear paralyzed them. Only a few pressed their assault or reformed their shield wall to face their rear; the rest could see the inevitable loss to come and tried to push their way out of the crowd to escape with their lives.

What had once been a nervous line of soldiers had become a wall that blocked off any who dared flee the battle. With the hit squadron coming in from both sides, the panicked soldiers fled in the only direction left to them. By all appearances they’d passed over a forward escape, the last resort of a truly wild fighting force.

“Victory! Victory or slaughter!” the Imperial side roared.

“Victory!” came the reply.

This rallying cry was bestowed upon new knights when they received peerage from Margrave Marsheim. It seemed rather banal, but there were few who knew the bloody truth behind this euphemism: if you stood in battle as a soldier, then you would either seize victory or you would cut down as many foes as you could before you breathed your last.

“For the Empire!” came another bellow as the forces from the hills arrived. Lances met with spears, glinting in the fading autumn glow.

The knights rushed to force their fleeing subordinates back into battle, barking orders with lances leveled at their necks, but it was too little, too late. As the fleeing soldiers froze, spears pierced these still targets from behind. Where the fray was tight, a single spear could skewer two bodies in one thrust. Those who survived were crushed under trampling hooves, pulverized into a muddy pulp.

Lances heavy with corpses were thrown to the ground and the squadron drew their swords and crossbows, ready to charge at another enemy group.

No one sought glory in collecting heads to bring back as bounty. It didn’t matter whether they cut down someone in high-quality armor or cloth rags—in the chaos, what mattered was claiming as much blood as possible. Glory would come later, no matter one’s actual performance. Kill for its own sweet sake, and let the heads fall where they may—this was the efficient and thorough strategy employed by those who fought under the wolf banner.

With half of the separatists gone, it didn’t take long for chaos to turn into utter pandemonium.

Meanwhile, no one had the wherewithal to notice that there were no troops coming from the other hill. The horn had sounded, yes, but no one had come.

All the Imperial troops had to do was run—to put their faith in their legs as they avoided spears and incoming fire. With their morale and formation in tatters, the enemy troops weren’t troops anymore—they were scattered prey running for their lives.

As he watched the revitalized Rhinian army chase down the enemy, the gold-haired warrior sighed, his helmet still off in a show of his bravery amid the chaos.

“Well, that’s that.”

One of the members of the hit squadron approached, wiping blood from his face. “Four injured! None dead!”

The vice-captain had suffered an arrow to the shoulder, but it hadn’t reached skin thanks to his armor. This man hadn’t suffered a real “injury,” and those who had were still capable of fighting atop their horses. It was essentially a clean win.

“We still have energy to spare, so I propose we cut down the remainder while they flee! We could manage another battle just fine.”

The hit squadron gathered. Below their helms, their eyes were glittering—wolves begging their leader for more blood. Only an immense strength of spirit that held them in check. There was a common saying in the Empire: “A hunting dog only barks at its master’s order.”

“Very well. However, the injured should fall back. We’ve done enough to fire them up; let them secure the victory that they deserve.”

The squadron, realizing the truth of his words, refrained from reentering the fray.

Baron Strasbourg—who hadn’t even been able to assemble all of his troops for this skirmish—and Sir Venstaden—who had rallied the forces—had been suffering a spate of losses recently. Unless they secured a victory in battle, their subordinates would look down on their lord as an impotent fool.

The way a war is won is just as important as the victory. Cracks would form if you didn’t allow some of the glory to go to your allies. This was especially true when the hit squadron was involved. Their leader was allowed greater latitude in his doings than even the lower nobles. Ideally, he would go as and when he pleased to save his allies no matter where they might be, but some grumbled that he tended to wander the land to the beat of his own drum. The rumors irked him; they, like his newest moniker, the Shield of Marsheim, had seemingly sprung up from nowhere.

“Provide support to our allies. Put any abandoned foes out of their misery. I’ll accept slightly rough measures if it means saving lives.”

“Yes, sir!”

The squadron split into groups of three and four and scattered over the battlefield. The battle was as good as won—their work amounted to nothing more than splashing water over embers.

“Sir Wolf, what about your protection?”

“Unnecessary. You join them.”

“Understood!”

Such a command would sound ridiculous from anyone else, but the captain’s soldiers readily agreed. It would take more than a regular bodyguard to actually be of any worth to their leader. After all, they wondered if they could so much as scratch him, even pitting their full complement against him all in one go. And so, without a retinue, Erich wandered the ghastly battlefield.

The full name of this Imperial knight was Erich von Wolf.

Erich had been knighted by Margrave Marsheim after foiling various underhanded schemes plotted by the unruly lords of the region. His youthful looks hadn’t changed much in the years since his knighthood, and, true to his origins as an adventurer, Erich had held fast to his independence. People had lost count of the number of times he had swooped onto the battlefield, golden locks trailing behind him, to secure victory. The margrave’s over-eagerness had led to innumerable uprisings from various powerhouses across the region, and as he led his squadron, crossing the region from east to west and back again to valiantly quash them all, eventually the “Shield of Marsheim” title stuck.

All the same, skirmishes still broke out as the region’s grasping landlords nipped at the heels of the powers that be, waiting for the moment when the Empire’s grip would falter. Cantons burned, schemes were ruined—day after day after day, Erich fought without an end in sight.

Making his way to the hilltop where the horn had blared out a while earlier, Erich got off his horse. From the shadows a number of his followers appeared—retainers of Sir Wolf and warriors in a mishmash of equipment. The group numbered fewer than ten, half of whom were adventurers.

“Won, did we?”

“Yeah. Was a bit touch and go, though.”

It was this specialized unit that had cut the five-hundred-strong force’s morale at the root. It was evident that the battle couldn’t be won if they had done things the traditional way on the front lines, and so they had come up with another plan.

It was an ambitious scheme that only Erich could have received permission for. It was as everyone had seen—to crush the cavalry stationed separately and ruin their formation. To top it off, a small number had been given horns to blow in order to trick the army into believing that it was surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned.

Wars are not fought with swords and spears alone—robbing an army of its will to fight was an utterly viable method. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t back up the initial shock; it was an attack on their spirit. If the enemy acted in the worst possible way for them, then all greater the victory for the Imperial side.

“Gotta say, I was on the edge of my damn seat. If they kept their cool, then we would’ve been in hot water.”

The man talking to Erich as he threw down his horn had earned similar fame in the region: Siegfried the Lucky and Hapless. He didn’t have a leading role in many songs, but he was a warrior of high renown. Siegfried was still an adventurer and a close friend of the Shield of Marsheim—although many mistook him for a retainer—and they had entered the battlefield together many times.

Yet again, Siegfried had managed to perform a supporting role that those more cowardly or incapable could never stomach, with flying colors. It might have seemed like an easy task on paper, but any fool who knew the heft of a blade in the hand and the panic of the battlefield would know that it was anything but. Depending on how the horn was blown, the enemy might become aggravated. In the worst-case scenario, a brave unit would set out in search of the source of the noise, foiling the plan and dooming its executors.

Siegfried could have easily dealt with fifty or sixty soldiers alone, despite the difficult terrain, but that didn’t go for the rest of the unit. His skill allowed him to do the work of five people, but without his wife and her own unique talents, it was unfortunate to say that half of the unit would have been wiped out.

Everyone who worked under Erich knew that, whether in war or adventure, you put your life on the line. Where most mortals would die screaming for their mothers or their lovers, these grim few would leave this world without regret.

All the same, Siegfried was bothered by jobs like this one—jobs where his team’s lives were at risk, but not his own. All the same, he had never been able to get over his habit of agreeing to jobs from one patron in particular: a man whose depths still remained an utter enigma. All he could do was hope that when the dice fell, they would look kindly upon him.

“I left this job to you because I knew you could do it. A hundred of these men will return home with honors.”

Erich took the horn from his friend and handed it over to another member of Siegfried’s unit. Erich pulled out a small box that he kept with him at all times, even in full armor. He lit up his rolled tobacco—an ignoble indulgence, unfit for most titled folk, as anything so practical might make one resemble a commoner for a moment.

“We put down a lot of petty landlords today,” Erich went on. “This conflict has marked a real turning point. Even though the region might be firmly under Imperial rule now, the economy’s going to take a brutal hit. Maybe about half of what it was? Dispelling the corrupt doesn’t always pay off in the way you think.”

“We killed a lot of people today,” Siegfried said with a solemn look on his face. “Most of them don’t know it yet.”

The stench of battle had reached them. Erich doubted he could bear the stink of blood and disembowelment without the arcanely enriched funk of his cigarettes to drown it all out.

“I’ve zero clue what the Emperor and the margrave are thinking... This region is a buffer zone against our big neighbor to the west. What good’s going to come of all this fighting? You’ve heard about the new glass products coming in, right? I still haven’t even seen them.”

The revolts had continued for far too long. The Empire hadn’t put their back into solving the issue; the revolts had started when Erich was seventeen and had continued for the past five years. Erich had spent almost a quarter of his life cleaning up after the margrave.

Caravans avoided Marsheim now. Traveling merchants, stocked with all sorts of rarities from abroad, no longer trekked up the Mauser to visit. The most recent Emperor was known for his love of domestic affairs, so what possible benefit did he have in mind as this all unfurled?

“Hold on... This whole thing hinged on an ambush, so...”

“All right, enough, Erich.”

Siegfried clasped his hand over his former adventuring buddy in an instant. Whenever Erich aired his bad premonitions, they almost always had a way of turning to reality. Simply being present when they were voiced meant that Siegfried, too, was guaranteed to end up on some ghastly battlefield somewhere to sort out the chaos that had subsequently unfurled.

“I don’t wanna die before my daughter gets married or my son heads into battle for the first time. So quit it with your predictions!”

Erich squirmed until his mouth was finally free. “The twins are going to be three this coming winter, huh? The years really do fly by.”

Erich let out a puff of smoke, weariness evident on his face in the twilight. The man annoyed Siegfried to no end, but there was some melancholic beauty in the scene before him.

“Yeah, they get cuter every day. Bundles of endless energy, I swear. So c’mon man, don’t drag me into any unnecessary wars. This ain’t adventuring anymore.”

“Gotcha. You’re my friend, Sieg. I’d hate to keep you away from home for so long that your kids forget what you look like.”

“Grah, why does it sound so convincing when you say it?!”

Siegfried held himself back from leaping in and paying back Erich for his gallows humor with a sound beating, thinking instead of his wife back home. Kaya had turned to full-time herbalist work for a while, but after Nanna’s lethal overdose, she’d taken up running the old Baldur operation. He could almost hear her telling him off for acting like a child.

Kaya had gotten stronger in the years since they had met Erich—even more so after their children were born. Despite the fact that people in Marsheim and old acquaintances from Illfurth called him Siegfried, she insisted on still calling him Dirk. Even after all his protestations over the years, he could never make her budge.

Siegfried felt guilty for being out on work as his kids only got more rambunctious and difficult to handle.

“If no one steps up to the plate, Marsheim will be in trouble. You can do this, ‘dad.’”

Siegfried could only cluck his tongue in reply. However, it was clear to all that it took capable warriors like him to keep the peace. Kaya had never forbidden him from going, and his fellow adventurers helped out, despite their comments that they didn’t approve of Siegfried getting so tangled up in the war effort.

“Hell, when’s all this fighting gonna end? Wouldn’t it be faster to just bum-rush the manor of the guy in charge and take his head?”

“The person with the most power is a renowned warrior who’s got a lot of influence in the area. He doesn’t stay in one location either. If we took him on now, I guess we’d lose...half of our number?”

“Isn’t that all the more reason to take him out?”

“I see your point, but we’ll lose half of us and the remainder will be out of commission for the foreseeable future. The losses aren’t worth a bit of momentary chaos. You haven’t forgotten, have you? Their ‘high king’ is just a figurehead; his only power comes in his role in meetings and the like.”

Another thing that ticked Siegfried off about Erich was that everything he said made logical sense, even the crazy things he was asked to do. Of course it would be possible to rid the region of some of its powerful figures, but even an adventurer like Siegfried understood that losing most of Erich’s trusted people was a cost too heavy to bear.

He and his fellow adventurers’ work was the only reason the region hadn’t fallen into complete anarchy. Erich’s squadron also worked hard suppressing large-scale bandit organizations—nipping the birth of any wannabe Jonas Baltlindens in the bud.

“Come on, Sieg. Imagine what would happen if I made Kaya into a widow? She’d be far scarier than any soldier I’ve ever met, I’ll tell you that much. I don’t want the wives and husbands of my subordinates finding the corpses of their beloveds, bloated with the decay of death.”

“Fair point... If we end up having to hold your funeral, then I bet Margit wouldn’t even need a day to land me and Kaya face down in the dirt.”

“You know she wouldn’t wait for the funeral.”

“Who cares when! I don’t want an old friend cutting my throat in the night, period!”

As the pair made these dark jokes amid the cigarette smoke, war cries could be heard in the distance. Most likely Baron Strasbourg’s subordinates had taken the head of the enemy leader. It would do a lot for their reputation.

“All right, I’m not a fan of picking up chaff. Let’s get moving, shall we?”

“Ugh, I’m beat. I’m not trained for horse riding, but I keep going back and forth, back and forth... And all this work isn’t doing squat for our adventuring careers! I’ve been copper-green for the last two years!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get the margrave to pull some strings with the Association manager. The pay’s good though, right?”

“Yeah, but you can never have enough with two sprouts running about the place. My boy’s getting really into herbs and stuff, and my girl’s found my practice weapons. I’ll have to buy her some gear when she grows up.”

“Runs in the family, huh?”

“Yeah. I ain’t gonna stop her from being a sword fighter just ’cause she’s a girl.”

“Agreed with you there, bud, but weren’t you the one saying how you wanted your boy to pick up the sword? You were talking about his first battle just a minute ago!”

“Who cares, man? As long as I get to show one of them the ropes. Hopefully they don’t take after me and can master the sword over the spear.”

Despite their adventuring careers being put on hold, the pair were as easy with each other as ever.

[Tips] The Marsheim revolts are a protracted string of uprisings in the Rhinian periphery. Although the Empire favors striking down their foes in one quick battle to avoid any further skirmishes, due to various missteps and political pressures, the revolts have lasted far longer than intended.

I would hate for the locals here to follow in Oshio Heihachiro’s footsteps and have the city be put to flame after a successful rebellion. Neither did I want things to go the way of the Upheaval of Onin with a protracted rebellion that went on for a decade.

Blowing out some smoke as I watched the victorious soldiers, I pondered on what it was the Empire truly wanted.

It was coming up on six years since the incident with the cursed cedar, but it didn’t feel like it. I had royally screwed up the aftermath of that... I had posited that I shouldn’t bother Lady Agrippina with local matters—partially because I was petrified of being any deeper in debt with the (figurative) harpy—and gone straight to the Association manager to complain about the local strongman who’d stirred up all this shit in the first place. That, I figured, was where everything had gone so permanently wrong.

Sometime during that conversation, the Association head must have decided that I’d make a useful pawn. Before I knew it, I was swept up in Marsheim’s affairs, gifted a knighthood, and press-ganged into helping out.

Don’t get me wrong, I kicked and I squirmed. I always knew that the life of a knight was not for me. Come on—dirt wages on top of constant fees that I had to foot, and a position where I couldn’t so much as pick my nose unsupervised? I had no aspirations to be called “Sir Erich” or “von Whatever;” I’d never made the slightest effort to pursue such airy and insubstantial heights.

But I had underestimated those around me—those people who came to me with silver tongues, spinning tales of my secret noble origins.

In all honesty, I thought all this crap was way above my station. Loads of people had probably complained about hooligans like Jonas Baltlinden, so I thought I could just file a complaint, get the government to pull up their breeches, and be done with it. Can you blame me for not figuring otherwise?

My dreams had always been to be an adventurer worthy of the sagas, not a knight in some war epic. I had gotten an inkling that the margrave wouldn’t mind bending a dozen-odd rules to make use of me, and I empathized with their difficulties compounded by their manpower problem, but—but! I never said I wanted any part of this!

To top it off, Lady Agrippina really kicked me when I was down. You see, she dragged me all the way back to her office—yep, she didn’t even bother to pay me the visit—with all the ease of snapping her fingers. She spent the whole time dressing me down, pipe in hand.

“Oh? You refute my invitation, but gladly help Margrave Marsheim?”

“I’m racking my brains—remind me, who was it who told me they didn’t want to be a knight?”

“And they’re asking you to do some solo work for them! Not even a noble, not even someone that far up the adventuring ladder—who better to dirty their hands clearing their mountain of political trash!”

Not a day’d gone by without some barb of hers floating back to the surface of my mind. All I could do was sit there like a fool as I took my licks in silence. Needless to say, I was out of options to bail out; all that remained for me was one long, dark, narrow path forward. In simple terms, I was just one more dunce who’d bit off more than he could chew.

Looking back on it now, I should’ve expected this sort of treachery from a bunch of true blue-blooded nobles; they were practically bred to scheme. My time working for a noble so close to the political games in Berylin had blinded me to the low cunning of her equivalents in Marsheim.

I had assumed that Margrave Marsheim was a pushover because he had been appointed to a border holding, but it was obvious to me now that he hadn’t been foisted away—he had been trusted with the front lines to various foreign lands. There was no way someone like me could have foreseen his plans.

“That’s why I told you that if there’s a task you’re not suited to, you should leave it to someone capable—even if you end up owing them a favor.”

“Your previous teachings are painfully clear to me now.”

“Or did you really not want to put anything on my plate? We both know you’re not the sort of person to do something out of respect for me due to my age. I think you got too big for your boots, my little Erich.”

Lady Agrippina pushed her pipe into my chin, pushing my head away from hers. Her expression was one of utter disbelief—to my own surprise, I noticed that she wasn’t smiling for once. Lady Agrippina only stopped smiling when she was disappointed. Her face might as well have been cut from granite.

In the past, Lady Agrippina had mocked me more times than I could count, a smirk always playing on those lips of hers, but this was the first time I’d truly fallen short of her expectations.

Both Lady Agrippina and I realized that there was no easy way out for me, and so I had followed her advice, proposing the novel idea of a “hit squadron”—an idea that conveniently left me far greater leeway.

It became clear to me that although she liked to watch me writhe and squirm, she’d never wanted to see me fail. Call it familiarity, call it a matter of her pride in herself—I don’t think she even knew herself—but at any rate I could tell that her mood had been fouled enough to put her off work for a while.

Lady Agrippina knew the workings of the noble world well enough. She realized eventually that I couldn’t avoid receiving a peerage from the margrave, and so she’d pivoted from mocking me to helping me make the best of my situation.

I presumed that in the time since I had left Berylin, Lady Agrippina had—as count thaumapalatine and as Count Ubiorum—been involved in the various plots around Marsheim. Why else had she pulled strings with the margrave to make my situation more favorable? That was the only plausible reason an idea as patently ridiculous and the hit squadron had gained any traction, despite its infringement on Marsheim’s military chain of command. I was obliged to not slip up again.

But I still didn’t understand what the brass wanted. My orders had been to make sure that the revolts didn’t end in the next five years while preserving Marsheim’s hegemony. I needed to make sure that the region, full of weak and untrained soldiers, given how far we were from the battlefield of the Second Eastern Conquest, didn’t fall apart. What was it all for?

Something that had stuck with me was that Lady Agrippina hadn’t told me to “win.” She had simply said, “Don’t lose.” The warning had been crystal clear: don’t try to play the hero and bring an end to the rebellions. Lady Agrippina knew more than anyone that I could achieve it, if I really put my mind to it, and so I was forbidden from letting my short fuse bring a swift end to all the fighting.

Something about the scene today had reminded me of something—something Siegfried had convinced me to keep to myself. Making your own forces seem weak before employing a deadly ambush was one favored by those barbarians in the south—sorry, sorry—by those samurai from Satsuma when they sought to overthrow the shogunate.

To top it off, when I had delivered my status report a little while ago, Lady Agrippina was all smiles. She had said, “The war has done great things for my budget and my overall operational latitude,” and had shown me a model of an aeroship. That’s not quite right—this was far, far beyond the realm of those plastic model maniacs back in my old world. This was the real thing—she had shrunk down an aeroship. She was the chief planner for the Empire’s air force to come; what she’d shown me was all but a working prototype, kept away from prying eyes with a bit of ingenious spellcraft.

When I had received my peerage, she had told me that it would take two decades to mass-produce aeroships, but she—demon that she was—had used the war to leverage the government into pouring money and manpower into the scheme. I imagined that test pilots were just finishing their final checks.

It was easy to surmise that despite the two- or three-year development time, the Empire had forked over a massive sum to commission five or six more, to be completed much sooner.

You couldn’t brush this off as some spate of megalomania. Lady Agrippina was a bibliophile; she found the greatest joy in stories—there was no way she would show off the fruits of her labor to me out of some desire to show off. I was certain that she hadn’t worked her ass off out of some patriotic desire to see the Empire reign supreme. No, she wanted to just get her role over and done with. Once the behemoth could be mass-produced, she could let the rest of the project handle itself.

There seemed to be no low to which Lady Agrippina would not stoop, no feat of devilry she would not consider, to the end of a net gain in free time. She felt no fear or trepidation to aid a scheme that could kill tens of thousands if it meant she could have her days surrounded by her beloved books in the library back. If it meant that no one underestimated her, even with her position and all its epicurean delights, she would do just enough for it, then happily throw work that anyone could do to her underlings before taking a bow.

That was how that thing abided.

I began to think that the Empire’s inner circle had actively laid the foundations for the ambush today. They had sown the idea amid the enemy that it was the perfect time to take Marsheim and waited until the anti-Imperial loci of power banded together to strike at its heart. Then, when they did, they would make use of us in the peripheries to fend them off. Then, while Marsheim bought time, they would amass their forces and fly in thousands upon thousands of troops in no time flat—seamlessly transitioning from a war of attrition with the least of their forces to a flood of their best, in perfect fighting shape.

With no need to worry about difficult terrain, and the hypothetical capacity to move as many as five hundred troops in one go, if the fastest horse from Marsheim reached the capital and asked for aid, I figured it would only take a month for thousands of troops to reach the front lines.

These forces would be drawn from veterans from the Eastern Conquest, elite warriors who had been trained under them, the previous emperor August IV’s beloved dragon knights, the freaks from the College—you name it, they would be ready and waiting.

If this were a game, people would chuck their controller at the wall claiming how unfair it was. Imagine you’re out near Marsheim on the anti-Imperial side. You hear that they’re not well defended, so you decide it’s time to take those blue-blooded fools out of the picture. Then on the opponent’s next turn, they summon a literal army—that should have been nice and safe far away in the capital, mind—covering hundreds of tiles in one turn, all ready to battle. If it were me, I would be mashing the Escape key or Alt+F4 just to get out of there. This development was just as epoch-defining as if you had just witnessed the first train barreling down upon you.

But I was on the side with all the might, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

The enemy had no way of knowing about these new advancements unless they were quite literally in the pocket of the Empire’s most inner circle. You see, the Empire hadn’t made any open displays of aviation since their little diplomatic demonstration some years back now. The fact that rumors were going around that maybe it was an empty display, or that the aeroship could only fly a short distance at best, was evidence that the Empire’s intelligence network was watertight.

It would be beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations that these small clashes could bloom into all-out war within a month or two. I didn’t want to envision the future... Marsheim and everything around it would drown in blood.

A chorus of heavy thuds shook me out of my thoughts. Probably heads, from the way I felt one of them tumble. I looked up—it was a bearded man, his face twisted into a horrid scowl even in death, and one that I knew well. He had been one of the knights in charge of the cavalry units who had prioritized fleeing, and one of the few survivors.

What was his name again? I was sure he’d announced it, but I’d completely forgotten.

“I caught a runner. A cavalry leader is one we don’t want to leave untethered now, do we?”

In the light of a few campfires and bonfires, Margit and her scouts returned with a number of the army’s VIPs. She and the others had seemingly appeared out of thin air, and the crowd of Baron Strasbourg’s soldiers had been stunned speechless. It was no surprise that their blood ran cold at the sudden appearance of these covert elites.

“Welcome back, Margit. Sorry for leaving you with the leftovers.”

“You should be; it was hardly a meal. Most cavalry only really have their names going for them. If you stripped them of their horses, I imagine a gang of peasant kids could take them down.”

I was sure the guards would catch hell from their superiors after this. It was fine—they were our allies, after all—but if a hostile group of this size had sneaked in? We could have lost every drunk fool here in one swift stroke, and Baron Strasbourg with them.

All the same, it was a lot to ask of some regular old guards to even catch a glimpse of Margit von Wolf—my wife, who had joined me on my descent into hell—and her own elite scout team under the light of the moon.

Margit jumped around my neck as I joyfully received her, and my squadron welcomed her four fellows—all dressed in the same black-blue uniform—to the feast. I knew more than anyone that no one in the squadron could find them if they chose to truly hide themselves.

The group shook their heads at Margit’s display of affection as they removed their jackets. Around half of the team were floresiensis, capable and agile warriors. They were only kept from the front line because they’d make too much of a mess. It didn’t pay to write such folk off just because they bore a passing resemblance to those other, more pastoral little guys with hairy feet.

“Now then, my beloved husband, what are you going to reward me with today?”

“Anything you wish.”

Margit was as lovely as ever, her preciousness most at odds with her ferocity in battle, and I meant every word of what I’d said. I took one of her pigtails in my hand as I had since long ago and kissed her on the lips. Excited squeals came from the female soldiers and scouts.

No one expected Margit to placate herself with the role of a knight’s stay-at-home wife, doing stitchwork until her husband returned. To watch over my eighty-nine strong legion—twenty-five of them cavalry, myself included—Margit had formed her own band of hardened killers. Sticking with her was probably one of the few right choices I’d ever made. I doubted there were many in this world who would stick with someone through thick and thin to support them like she had.

Thankfully, I knew that she would have no complaints when, once things had calmed down, I’d inevitably decide to adopt some random person to take on the Wolf name and run off to lands anew. Just as I still didn’t like being called “Sir Wolf,” I think the position of a knight’s wife chafed at her. It would be fun for us to run off, change our names, and start adventuring again somewhere new. It might be a bit rough starting fresh from soot-black as a couple of middle-aged farts, but we’d manage.

I had longed for so many years to become an adventurer, and this had to happen so early in my career. O Sun God, sleepest Thou, even now? Well, I guess it is nighttime...

“Indeed. If I could pick my reward, then I would like a long vacation.”

She didn’t say “just the two of us,” but I could read it on her raised lips. I would love to acquiesce to her demands right now immediately, but that was a bit beyond my grasp.

I could move as and when I wished, but by the same token, I was obliged to drop everything to move into action when called for. Seeing as I was little more than a phone-a-friend mercenary, it was impossible for me to leave my post for a romantic lakeside getaway.

Man, I wanted time off more than anyone. I wasn’t greedy—I realized that half a year off would be a big ask, but I was desperate for someone to give me a month off, just a month, so I could hole myself up in a hot spring and soak until the smell of blood went away. I made sure my subordinates took turns taking their leave, but there was only one frontline leader.

“Would a hundred more heads buy us some R and R, I wonder?”

“Who knows. Maybe a thousand wouldn’t be enough. The enemy made its move today because they knew the Empire’s forces would thin out with harvest time bearing down. If we’re unlucky, we’ll be seeing frays like these until spring...”

The Empire didn’t have the economic power to fund a standing army. Of course, they had a number of mainstay personnel who honed their skills through many conflicts, but these main forces were small and precious. With most of their troops conscripted from regular folk, their numbers swelled and shrunk with the seasons.

The local strongmen must have had their own difficult reasons for making such a big push now. From time to time I let myself speculate that they needed a couple wins to keep their prospective foreign backers watching the game with one hand on their wallets, so to speak.

Rumor had it that the plundered goods and weapons their supply officers had gathered were looted from burial sites outside the Empire. Clearly somebody with power to sling around had something to gain from stoking the fires of revolt and seeing the Empire suffer.

The Empire was hardly innocent of such boorish methods. There was an abundance of satellite states that the Empire had finessed and then forced into submission to its hegemony. Its logic was the logic of all empires—its every act of charity part of a larger, profitable political calculus. It chose its client states for their value as levers against their larger, less friendly neighbors, and its support never lasted longer than their utility to that end.

Looking at it from that angle, I could hardly blame the local lords for playing their power games and stirring the pot as they had—it was, from their position, the logical response to the hand they’d been dealt.

It was all a question of how long it would take for their patrons’ patience to wear thin...

“Our enemies today were pretty serious. Who knows, next time the ones in charge might decide to leave their troops as distractions and make their getaway.”

“My dear, surely it would be better to refrain from such troubling predictions while we’re in front of everyone else?”

“‘Troubling’? We’d have an easier time if the enemy didn’t make us chase after them for once, no?”

Unfortunately, I mostly received murmurs of discontent from those around me. The only ones who gave an encouraging cheer belonged to my retinue, and they could easily go another round and take to the field on their own if they had to.

Come on, Baron Strasbourg, your people have no fight in them at all. What Empire can stand long if it can’t give its people—its foundation—cause enough to die for their homeland?

The fact that I couldn’t make idle comments like these even after a victory spoke to the lack of diligence here—the same failure of discipline that had skewed things so badly against this bunch in the first place, despite their numerical advantage. The margrave was in his own spot of trouble if he had this many people under him that needed babysitting—from adventurers, no less. If he had a few more heavy hitters working for him, then that would make a world of difference for me. It pissed me off that Miss Laurentius had decided not to help, complaining that she didn’t want to go to battle against a local lord’s forces. If her clan had been around to rip up the battlefield from time to time, my life would be so much easier.

“Sorry for always working you so hard, Margit.”

“I thought we promised you wouldn’t say that, my dear.”

I took some small relief through our silly conversation; it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a samurai drama. I needed to take comfort in the smallest things for my foreseeable future—how else could the Shield of Marsheim keep its gleam under all the grime and gore?

[Tips] Erich von Wolf is an Imperial knight known to many as the Shield of Marsheim. With a force of fewer than one hundred, he travels the region quashing evil and supporting towns and cantons that have fallen on hard times.

The leader of his own hit squadron, Erich occupies a unique position. Others who work under Margrave Marsheim look down upon him for his unchecked liberties, but many soldiers and citizens hold him in high esteem. Despite putting his adventuring career to the side, his name still lines many heroic sagas.

Siegfried looked away from the von Wolf couple, flirting as only they could, and set his empty cup on the ground. He always had a knack for finding himself in difficult situations—whether by his own design or Erich’s—but the past few years had been particularly dreadful.

It had become a common task for him to stir up trouble among the enemy when the Imperial forces needed help, and he had almost become essential to his allies’ rear guard. Though a subordinate occasionally was injured enough to force their retreat, in all the battles that Siegfried had fought in, not once had he let someone die out there. Poets had borrowed snippets from the man’s life to use in their own stories, so dazzling were his results.

On battlefields awash with the reek of death, Siegfried had often rushed into a mob of enemy soldiers seeking to run down one of his allies. His unending stamina was otherworldly, and some suspected that he must have been taking something to keep going.

In ideal circumstances, the hit squadron could take on an army several dozen times their size, but Siegfried knew that Erich wanted nothing less than to be lauded as the hero of a war epic. From his comparable position, Siegfried felt no pity for the other man.

Normally, an adventurer had no business involving themselves with squabbles between nations. The pact had been tested severely in the past few years, but the gods’ ancient pledge still held—heroes would not involve themselves in people’s wars, but instead fight the monsters and blights which plagued the gods’ believers.

In other words, Siegfried’s position was tenuous. He was dancing a line between hero and Imperial soldier, and newbie adventurers spoke ill of him behind his back. He’d only avoided censure from the Association manager because Sir Wolf had told her that it wasn’t Siegfried’s fault; his poor luck meant he had just happened to be hired on the same bandit-quelling job as Erich, had happened to get involved in a battle at the destination, had happened to be unable to run away, and had happened to be forced into the fray. The excuse barely stood on its own two feet, but the manager had swallowed it nonetheless.

As for his wife Kaya, many thought that she shouldn’t have involved herself so deeply with Erich either. What they didn’t know was that Erich had prostrated himself in front of her and begged her to do her part for the safety of Marsheim. Siegfried knew most of all that only one’s own self had anything approaching a complete grasp of their own situation.

After Nanna had passed without ever fulfilling her life’s ambition, the Baldur Clan had fallen apart. Kaya had picked up the pieces and cleaned up shop—transforming it into something far more upright than it had ever been. The members had been reshuffled so that any with ill intent were ousted permanently. In other words, Kaya had her hands full.

In all honesty, Siegfried had done far more than any would expect of him for Erich. Sure, they had enjoyed many thrilling adventures and entrusted each other with their lives, but a more rational man would have washed his hands of the matter completely. Regardless, bowing out wasn’t Siegfried’s style. He couldn’t and didn’t allow himself the option. He had a wife and two lovely children, but what about Goldilocks, his friend, who had once thrown himself into each adventure with the devil’s own grin? Now he was forced into a war he didn’t care about, and the smile no longer reached his eyes. Siegfried couldn’t bear to see it.

He felt no pity and he gave no consolation. His role in this was to stand by his comrade’s side on the battlefield. The revolts were long, yes, but they wouldn’t last forever. One day, he would shed his heavy plate—a source of endless praise and cheer for everyone around him—don his old leathers that had been kept safely away, and return to a life of adventure. Siegfried intended to join him again in a journey into the unknown just once more; the dream of that day sent him back into battle again and again.

After all, he knew what agony would come of hearing that the Goldilocks had fallen on the field of battle, instead of at a quest’s end.

“Tch, stupid emotions...”

“Hey, Boss?”

The booze had gone to his head and his group wasn’t needed on watch duty. Siegfried was about to settle down for sleep when one of his subordinates called out to him.

He was a newly promoted amber-orange adventurer whom Siegfried had taken under his wing. He was an audhumbla blessed with a huge stature, but his own martial code meant that he never relied on it in battle—all in the name of an honorable scrap. He was an odd sort, but Siegfried had learned to trust in that oddness.

“What’s up?”

“I-I couldn’t help but overhear what Sir Wolf was saying... Is it true this is going to last until spring?”

“You ask me, the man’s two-thirds a prophet. I’d prepare for the worst.”

The young man—well, it was hard for a mensch to gauge the age of an audhumbla—had been entrusted into Siegfried’s care from the head of the Heilbronn Familie, who wanted at least his youngest to become an upright adventurer. Like his father, he wasn’t the best-looking guy, but he had his head on straight.

Siegfried viewed himself as a normal guy, but the adventurers who followed him viewed him with puzzled interest. To them, it was a fact of the world that Siegfried the Lucky and Hapless saw the world through a deeply warped lens. If Siegfried had been your run-of-the-mill adventurer, then he would have bailed on this relationship with Erich ages ago. The battles that the hit squadron were called to were at best even affairs, and at worst a borderline slaughter in the making. Any regular person would have looked at these matchups and said, “We’re not mercenaries,” before tendering their resignation.

And yet, here Siegfried was, coolly walking into yet another bloodbath, completely used to the sort of struggles that veteran adventurers quaked at. It was an absurdity that he’d managed to grow used to this life.

“Seriously?! This will last another six months at least?!”

“Enough of that, moaning just because it’s got another turn of the seasons left in it. You’re no babe in the woods! You’re blooded! You’ve lived a bit!”

“I’ve killed, sure, I’ll grant you that. Can’t say for sure if I’ve lived yet. I’ve never slept with a girl before. I don’t have much luck with my looks...”

“Huh? Seriously? You’re amber-orange! I’d have sworn someone would’ve dragged you down to the pleasure quarter by now.”

Siegfried scratched the back of his head awkwardly. He had Kaya, and he’d never really been interested in paying for those kinds of services; he had let some of the other adventurers back in Marsheim show the newbies that side of life. Somehow, though, his protégé had slipped through the cracks.

It was a pity he had no chance of getting lucky out on patrol with the hit squadron; Siegfried needed to make sure he made it back to Marsheim alive. That or find a stouthearted widow or kindhearted soul who wouldn’t mind how he looked during a supply trip to the next canton over.

“Well, that’s a reason not to die then, eh? I once spent a whole winter stuck inside an ichor maze as our supplies gradually ran dry. Compared to that, this war’s paradise.”

“I wondered when one of Dee’s famous bragging sessions would begin.”

“Oh, shut it! And call me Siegfried!”

In this regard, even his raised voice could compel nothing but a weary “Yeah, yeah,” from his own most trusted subordinate.

Just like Erich, Siegfried was nowhere near where he wanted to be. Sure, he had accrued some small degree of fame and returned to Illfurth. Poems had been written about him, even if they weren’t going to be classics. But his homecoming had been a lot more subdued than he had thought. Because the stories detailed the adventures of “Siegfried” and not “Dirk,” everyone back home had thought Kaya had dumped him for someone markedly cooler. His reputation had managed to depreciate in his absence.

It had taken a while to convince people in Illfurth that yes, he was the Siegfried from the stories, and no, he wasn’t a penniless fool whom Kaya had simply taken pity on. All the same, the damage had been done. Whenever he did find the time to go back, it was never to any sort of festive reception—just another round of the usual jibes.

His family had come to him with a few requests, and he had fulfilled them—to give his grandfather a more grand gravestone and to buy the land back from the landlord to give to his good-for-nothing father and brothers—but still they looked down on him. The tipping point had been learning where the money he’d sent home had gone: keeping his family flush with booze on the same land, with the same rusting horse plow. After that, he saw no point in staying in touch.

Kaya’s family treated him the same as ever. It was no real surprise. Not only had he forced their one and only daughter to cover herself in soot, he had led her into the jaws of death over and over. Kaya’s mother wouldn’t let him call her “mother”; she focused instead on pestering him to hand over one of his kids to take on the family business.

Even though Kaya had mostly given up adventuring, she’d never once gone back to Illfurth.

Siegfried never gave into Kaya’s mother’s demands. He and Kaya had decided that no one was allowed to force their twins into any future they didn’t want. The whole reason that Siegfried and Kaya had run away from Illfurth was to escape from the pressures of futures that they had never asked for—it would go against everything they stood for to do the same thing to their own children. Whether his daughter tried to put on his armor or his son went out picking herbs, Siegfried would allow his children to do as they wished. A parent often dies before their children, but Siegfried wanted to go out knowing he’d given them the means to pick their own direction and hold to it until they hit upon a better idea.

Kaya’s heir-hungry family meant that he barely went back to Illfurth anymore. It upset him that he hadn’t been able to become a gallant adventurer whose stories mothers told their little boys before bed, without even so much as a plaque in the village square.

As the night deepened, both Siegfried and Erich’s thoughts were with the dreams that were still so distant.

“Man... I wanna go on an adventure...”

“I bet a story will be written about your performance today!”

“But I don’t want that kinda stuff... War epics just ain’t my thing...”

It was late, and Siegfried could no longer be bothered to set up his bedding. He spread out on the ground, ignoring the party that was still in full swing, and stared up at the moon.

It had been a long time since he had started out as an adventurer. He was no longer the weedy young kid huddled right next to the bonfire, shivering in an overcoat.

As Siegfried pondered on when the next real adventure would be, he slowly closed his eyes and let sleep come.

[Tips] In the distant past, the gods decided that nothing good would come of a legendary hero joining battle and mowing down the enemy line like wheat in the field. Because of this, They created a pact that would forbid adventurers from participating in wars between nations.

However, there were cases where the gods turned a blind eye—situations that slipped past Them, friendly adventurers who got the benefit of the doubt, or those rare and extreme cases where the outcome without an adventurer’s hand in things is too dire for even the gods to contemplate. Otherwise, the gods do not permit adventurers to lend their aid in matters of war.