Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 9 - Chapter 4

Late Summer of the Sixteenth Year

Public Enemies

In sword and sorcery fantasy settings, there are many known threats to the world, not limited to ancient cave-dwelling dragons, evil gods plotting doomsday, and furious races wanting to bring annihilation to all of humankind. Localized versions of these threats are known as “public enemies”—foes that affect the lives of villages, towns, or small settlements. These enemies need to be cleared out first if adventurers wish to have a clean, safe place of residence.

There was a stereotype back in my old world that dogs care about their owners, whereas cats only care about their homes.

“Got the reports for you, boss.”

“Thank you kindly, Mathieu.”

Technically Mathieu was a werewolf, not a dog, but he fit the idiom to a tee. When I saw his tail swish in absolute joy at being praised—I heard that werewolves were bad at masking their emotions through their tails—I couldn’t help but smile.

It had been a little while since I had shown the world what would come of trying to play silly buggers with my name and face; the dry summer season was just about drawing to a close. We had slowly solidified our places here at the Snowy Silverwolf, but for some reason people still found it hard to approach our little table at the back of the room. I would have been happier if another group of our peers had come to say hello, to be honest.

“So, how was the job?” I asked my clanmate.

“They weren’t expecting real adventurers to show up, so the assholes scattered like bugs when you turn their rock over.”

Moving on from my less than sociable showing with that asshole, our little clan had actually seen an influx of new blood; we had more than ten members in our official roster now. Considering that this number was only a fourth of total sign-ups who’d passed the background checks but washed out during training, our current lineup was pretty well honed.

With our larger roster and Schnee’s information gathering, we were pulling in a wider variety of jobs while avoiding the duds. We were making a name for ourselves as a clan of upright, capable adventurers.

Mathieu, who was still laughing at the memory, had gone with some of our other members to kick out a group of layabouts from a tavern they were haunting. The gig was simple in concept, difficult in execution.

The group in question was a pack of local lowlifes. Their rep carried them in their little corner, but no further—not quite an actual criminal organization, but more than nuisances. All the same, they must have had an idiot with ambitions calling the shots. They’d ended up recruiting the son of a local well-off family and were using him to squeeze them for cash. It was a timeworn tactic. The son in question was the ideal mark. The kid had a pretty direct line to the family’s collective purse, but he wasn’t in line to take up the reins and didn’t have the backbone to push back when his buddies decided to lean on him for a handout.

Although the family had decided that their idiot son wouldn’t be taking over the family, they were too fond of him to cut off relations completely. And so his father—a hardworking tavern owner—came to us to help get these thugs off his son’s back.

It had played out just as simply as Mathieu had summed it up. I’d put together a little team—him, Etan, and our other two scariest-looking Fellows—to push back a little, and that idiot son’s “friends” ran off without even trying to put up a fight. I’d warned my guys to play it safe, but it seemed like my worries had been completely unfounded.

“It’s because of your rep and your own glory, boss! They ran for the hills as soon as they saw our emblem.”

“It’s because you guys have worked to become worthy warriors. Be proud of yourselves first, got it?”

“Thank ya, boss!”

Mathieu tapped the burnished wood of the clasp on his cloak, gleaming with an equally radiant smile. Looking at him now, I doubted that most people would believe me if I told them what he’d looked like just a few months ago.

With a developed bathhouse routine, his fur had taken on a healthy sheen. His shirt, which could barely contain his rippling muscles, was clean and free of frays or holes. He had started taking occasional trips to the barber, and his mane was well taken care of. His appearance wasn’t the only thing he’d brushed up on; although he hadn’t picked up any palatial speech, his basic enunciation and etiquette had improved by an order of magnitude. He had the powerful aura of someone whose livelihood was dictated by battle, but it wasn’t overbearing. He might have been rough around the edges, but he had a good heart within.

The clasp that he had fondly patted just now was the one we had made back in that countryside canton—the symbol of our clan: a wolf with a sword in its jaws. It was a simple thing—a piece of wood that hooked shut to keep your cloak firmly affixed. I only gave them to the members of my clan that I deemed worthy of heading into a real battle. They only gleamed gold due to the choice of wood and the varnish I’d used, but I felt an awkward kind of happiness seeing Mathieu prize it so highly.

“Oh, right. Did you remember to warn them?” I asked.

“Course I did! Told them that if any of them turned up within two blocks of that house or anyone dared talk to the young master again, I’d ask them to show me what they’re really made of. They learned their lesson, boss.”

Great work, Mathieu. This wasn’t just a spat between kids. We needed to make sure our little thugs didn’t dare make the same mistakes again.

Everyone had been briefed on the gang’s roster, so our presence would be deterrent enough. That went doubly when they knew that we had their addresses, hideouts, names of their family, et cetera. Well, I honestly hoped that they would. It would be fine, right? Surely? Ugh, now I’m getting worried. The problem with idiots was that they had an uncanny way of surpassing your expectations. They enjoyed picking fights they couldn’t win or making ploys that only put them into the red. When I saw some of the news reports about rebellious kids in my old world, I often wondered if we really were the same species or not.

I was considering that it might do them good if I put in a little overtime to pay them a little midnight visit. Unless I really drove the point home, those goons might pop up again like resilient weeds. Everyone could have been better off if they’d been driven out of town... This was why I preferred bandits over thugs; you could destroy your average bandit operation root and branch, but these folks were technically members of civil society. You couldn’t just put them in the ground and take some comfort in the certainty they wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again. I made a mental note to at least go check in on them periodically to see if they’d made any progress reforming.

“But man... The world’s a pretty confusing place,” Mathieu said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I just don’t get why he did it. That kid’s so lucky! He’s got a good family. They paid to send him to private school. So why’s he messin’ around with some local punks? Yeah, maybe he ain’t gonna be the new family head, but he coulda gotten a job anywhere in Marsheim.”

The kid was your textbook spoiled brat who couldn’t recognize the silver spoon in his mouth. Mathieu came from a pack of roaming hunters. He’d never had a fixed address or the kind of stability society’s mid-to-upper crust had, so his confusion was warranted. The world wasn’t so simple. Everyone had their own way of viewing things, and there was always going to be at least one person who would raise an eyebrow at your way of life.

We were the ones people couldn’t fathom. We picked up swords and rushed into the fray, not for the glory of battle, but for the thrill of it. It would be dangerous for any of us to forget that we were a motley crew of fools chasing our next adrenaline high—stuck in a waking dream. The moment we lost sight of the utter craziness of what it was we did would be the moment we’d be lost adrift forever, untethered entirely from consensus reality.

“Well, everyone’s different,” I simply said. “Don’t you think so too, Schnee?”

“Hee hee! Spotted me again...”

“What in the—?!”

From Mathieu’s shadow came a slinking white-furred bubastisian. Her pink nose was glistening. Clearly she was in a good mood.

I was a real cat lover. Their noses in particular always charmed me. It was something to do with how cold the skin of a cat’s nose was relative to its fur, and the faint suction you could feel from each breath in when you held a finger to it. It was a really unique sensation. It made me think of my old cat at my parents’ place. I loved tickling his nose and getting finger licks in retaliation.

“When’d you get here?” Mathieu said, nonplussed.

“She’s been here for a bit now,” I replied. “She followed you in, actually. She was just hiding in your shadow, staying out of sight.”

“Spotted me since I came in, did ya? Can’t get one over on you, that’s for sure...”

I was impressed as ever at her ability to pass without trace. That she had fooled a werewolf’s sense of smell, all while silently shadowing him, was quite the feat.

Schnee must have been out sleuthing somewhere because she wasn’t in her usual clothes. No, tonight she was in a maid outfit.

You heard me. Cat girl. Maid outfit.

What was up with her and her calculating mind? Had she come to explode my brain? Had she done some elite-level digging and found out that I liked this kind of stuff? I’d never told a single soul since coming to this world. How would she have found out? I’d never gone down the super perverted route of buying clothes for Margit and asking her to try them on “come on, just once” for me. Between the critical hit to my composure and my total bafflement, I was left fighting to keep a straight face.

“Grh, bubastisians have really faint scents,” Mathieu grumbled.

“Nee hee, that there’s a trade secret, Mr. Werewolf.”

And with a cute accent to boot, I thought as Schnee walked around Mathieu and sat down—it was clear she had something to discuss.

“Hey, Mathieu? You can go out drinking in other places every now and then, you know? Might be good to make some new connections and see a bit more of Marsheim.”

I thanked my clan member for his hard work and gave him a little purse. Our client hadn’t settled up yet, but payment in my clan was given in advance, and no, I did not take a cut. I took in all of our earnings, settled the various expenses we had, and paid everyone an equal amount. Like I said before, I might have been acting like the boss of a temp agency, but I was an adventurer first and foremost.

“You sure?”

“Of course. I got the reports from you, so I’ll make sure everything is settled moneywise. You’re happy with a forward payment, right?”

“Yeah! Thanks, boss!”

Mathieu took the money and headed out with a skip in his step. I imagined he was heading straight to his other Fellows on the job, ready to invite them out for a congratulatory drink.

Your typical adventurer had a bawdy streak, and the Snowy Silverwolf had its share of barmaids who were easy on the eye, but it wasn’t the sort of rowdy place where Mister John allowed his customers to hit on his staff. This came partially from his desire, as a veteran in the business, to defer rookies from foolishly wasting their money; there were plenty of other places in Marsheim to pursue more carnal pleasures, and he’d happily point his customers to them if they insisted. He also knew that no good came of adventurers trying to make a move on fellow adventurers. Who knew whose clan you might accidentally offend? It was all too easy to start interclan strife and so this decision was ultimately a way of maintaining the peace.

“Whew, town’s gonna be a little bit safer after today,” Schnee said as she watched the werewolf walk off. Her tail was stick straight—clearly she was enjoying herself.

“Are you sure you’re happy with the price?” I asked.

“Don’tcha worry about it. That tavern’s been around since I was but a kitten. They don’t water down their booze, so it helps me out to have it all sorted out.”

Despite the fact that this job required a gentle touch I couldn’t trust my rookies to bring to it and the fact that it was helping keep Marsheim safe, fifty librae wasn’t all that big of a payout. If you always splashed out on intel for every job like this, your clan would quickly find itself deep in the red. Schnee kindly offered to do her part for a mere five librae out of the goodness of her heart.

This gig didn’t deal with real dyed-in-the-wool crooks, and so if it had been my decision and my fee, I wouldn’t be happy with less than ten librae. But Schnee had her own personal rulebook when it came to her work, and so she often cut her fees substantially for the really prosocial gigs. I almost wanted to raise an eyebrow in suspicion at her kindness.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Oh! You spottin’ me?”

“Well, we’re sitting at a drinking establishment. You need to buy something while you’re out, or Mister John’ll paint a target on both our backs.”

“Then gladly.”

I ordered Schnee a mug of sheep’s milk and wine for me. Something must have been on her mind, because she didn’t make small talk with me or ask me why I wasn’t trying to strike up my own. Before long, slumped over the table, she twitched her ears twice and began to mutter, more to some imagined audience than to me.

“I’m the sorta person who can’t get to sleep unless I’m somewhere that’s taken my fancy. I got a few places that tick all the boxes. I love sleepin’ in the same place more than once, and high places really do it fer me. There ain’t nothin’ better than hearin’ the pitter-patter of the rain up from the tower of the Night Goddess’s church.”

Her tastes were catlike too. Most humanfolk preferred beds, but most furred demihumans could sleep anywhere. I supposed it was mensch who were the odd ones out for not liking to sleep up in trees despite once doing so in the distant past of our simian evolution.

Similar to cats, bubastisians enjoyed frequent light naps. I would sometimes see Shymar snoozing on the roof and such, and I always wondered how she didn’t wake up with just brutal aches and pains.

“That’s why I like it here. No one can sleep if their bedroom’s full of clutter and rabble, ya get me? I wanna clean up where I live so I can sleep in peace.”

Schnee’s head rested on her front paws; her golden eyes gazed off into the middle distance. As she spoke, a satisfied expression came over her. With a quick yawn and a stretch of her lower body, I felt an almost irrepressible urge to give her a scratch behind the ears.

“Heh. I just can’t reckon why some folks wander all their days. How can anyone not just find a coupla good hidey-holes for their forty winks and hunker down for good? I love Marsheim. I figure, when my time comes to change coats, I’ll come right back.”

I felt the same pang of sympathetic joy I’d had with Mathieu all over again. So this was how Schnee could justify charging such magnanimous rates. These two really were perfect exemplars of that idiom from my old world.

“So don’t you be worryin’ about it. We both chose Marsheim, so let’s get along, y’hear?”

“All right, I understand. I’m more than happy with the arrangement.”

The waitress placed our drinks in front of us. My wine was served as I liked it—not watered down, as was the trend among some people, and with a drop of honey. Schnee’s milk was served in a shallow bowl to make it easier for her to drink.

As I held out my cup to celebrate the discovery of our shared interest, Schnee met it with her own; they made a satisfying clunk. After a sip, she handed over two slips of paper.

“I picked up a coupla fishy soundin’ scraps, if it suits ya. I sniffed ’em out on a stroll lookin’ for a nice nap spot, so I’ll give ya a good price!”

“Two new rumors, eh... How’s twenty-five sound?”

“Ya serious? Forty would be nice...”

“Forty, then.”

I wouldn’t try and haggle for decent intel. I handed over a purse of silver, but Schnee just looked at it with a bewildered expression.

“Ya got no vim when it comes to barterin’, do ya...?”

“I’ve always been of the opinion that I should buy a product based on the merchant’s honest valuation.”

Kansai natives were known for loving a good bit of haggling, but I never liked painting a whole group with a single brush. I might have been Kansai-born and bred in a previous life, but one thing that I took with me into this life was a trust in the people I bought from to offer the price that was most reasonable to them. If I paid too little I felt an anxiety I couldn’t tamp down that I was ripping them off and causing them trouble when I could feasibly pay more.

“You’re a real... Fine, fine, let’s do thirty.”

“Sure? All right then.”

I took the purse, removed ten librae, and handed it back to her. I then turned my attention to the papers. As I read through the first sheet, I couldn’t help but furrow my brow in confusion. It detailed one of the Kykeon dealers’ meeting places.

“Quite the stroll you had...” I murmured.

“It’s a big job to find a good roster of nappin’ spots.”

Schnee brushed it off as if it were nothing, but in all honesty it was quite the feat to sniff out a base that supplied over thirty dealers. If it could just be found by chance on a walk, then I doubted the Baldur Clan would be stressing as much as they were right now. They had apprehended and tried to interrogate a few of the less subtle dealers, to little effect.

The hideout that Schnee had pointed out to me was a building situated on a corner of the sewage network in the south of Marsheim, near the city walls. It was an area of the network that hadn’t yet been converted into an underground system, earning it a charming moniker: the Great Stink Heap. Despite housing some of the city’s least wanted, the infrastructure was shockingly sound. In short, it was the perfect spot to carry out your dirty work without the fuzz bearing down on you.

Despite the note’s dearth of details on the building’s interior, I was impressed by her sketches of not only the building’s layout and position, but also its full breakdown of all the windows and formal entrances and exits. The scribbled shorthand laid out exactly how many crates had been brought in, how many people had come and gone, and even descriptions of the bodyguards she had seen in the moments that the door had opened. She had outdone herself, really.

The head honcho behind all this had a talent for illicit trade. They changed their base with relative speed, so we needed to make our raid in two, three, or absolute latest, four days from now. We hadn’t had the most practice in indoor battles, but with Kaya’s tear gas and flash-bang potions leading the charge, I was sure it wouldn’t be too tricky a job. The only issue was the fact that it was a three-story building. We would need to make sure we had subdued everyone inside.

Siegfried was due to show up at the Snowy Silverwolf before long; I would discuss the matter with him, Kaya, and Margit. We needed to put everything else on temporary hold and crush this base with all our might.

As I pushed down my growing desire for the fight, I looked at the second paper. My heart skipped a beat. It was a tally of “business expenses” accrued by a few of my clan members elsewhere.

“Those idiots...” I grumbled.

Three of my clan members had racked up quite the tab at various establishments around Marsheim. I didn’t mind that they were having fun and blowing off steam. Sure, the Fellowship had set them up with a decent stream of gigs that buoyed them financially where your average soot-black adventurer would be barely scraping by, but they still weren’t flush with cash; it was natural to owe one or two tabs. The problem came in the scale of the matter.

Just a few days ago I had given three of my new recruits their clan badges, and they had immediately headed to the pleasure quarter and leveraged our clan’s good name for some free fun. Some of these bills were to the tune of twenty-five librae. This was a whole month of ruby-red bodyguard work—an amount that you just couldn’t reach with regular daily expenses. People who got up to this sort of thing—day laborers who espoused that any next job could be their last and so racked up tabs they didn’t want to pay—tended to go unpunished because by the time they attempted it, their clan was usually already big enough to cover the costs.

I wasn’t sure how ill-intentioned my members were being, but the bills from the establishments they had swindled, accidentally or otherwise, were plain for everyone to see.

“Gods dammit... I thought I drilled it into them to not go around using our clan for clout...”

“Naw, don’t get so hot-headed. It ain’t the squeakiest clean of jobs, and it’s not like they’ve been out gamblin’.”

The names belonged to three honest and hardworking Fellows; in all honesty I doubted that they moseyed on into these places with their clan memberships at the ready. This belief didn’t come from me overestimating my people, nor did it come from a desire to see the best in people—it was what Schnee had written in her report. She had proved plenty trustworthy until now, so this was probably legit too.

It most likely had come of a momentary bout of recklessness. It wasn’t like taking out a loan or anything—just a little verbal agreement between two parties. All the same, I didn’t want favors like this being misused. If someone came by brandishing a gussied-up bill with spurious interest tacked on, or if someone managed to get one over on our clan because of a debt, then no one would be laughing. I would need to make sure this didn’t happen again...

“Oho, scary.”

“My apologies.”

What was wrong with me? I might have been in my familiar haunt, but I had to keep a lid on my emotions in public. Calm down, Erich... My clan was filled with people around the same age as me—youths in the most rash period of their lives. They were bound to make mistakes and spend more than their remit once or twice in their lives.

I should have been glad that all I got was a bill, not a big black stain on the clan’s reputation. It wasn’t a great situation, but it wasn’t the worst.

Perhaps someone was trying to sow the seeds of discord in our clan. I had given our supposed mole free rein since Schnee had first told me about them. Who knew—perhaps they were trying to indicate that our rookies’ shallow pockets were their weakness...

I decided to let myself be satisfied that I had been informed about this bill while it was still an amount that our rookies could pay off with their own hard work. If I allowed myself to spiral into the negatives of the matter, then my mood would only deteriorate.

“Hey, what’re you doin’ barin’ your fangs for everyone to see? Idiot...”

“Oh, hey, Siegfried. Hm? Where’s Kaya?”

“She’s busy workin’ on some potion. She said she needs to concentrate, so I’m buyin’ dinner for the both of us.”

True to his name, Siegfried the Lucky always showed up just when I needed him. Schnee’s report had convinced me that we needed to set some far firmer ground rules for the whole clan to guarantee we were all on the same page. Most of the clan looked up to Siegfried, our second-in-command, and so it would be foolish of me not to include him in whipping up some snappy, meaningful rules.

You might have been wondering why I hadn’t tagged in Margit to help, but she had little interest in the management side of things. When I had asked her about it before, she had told me that I’d chosen to form the clan, so I was obliged to lead and manage it. She helped with some of the more concrete chores and with educating our rookies, of course, but she acted as if she wanted to keep her presence in the Fellowship of the Blade as shallow as possible.

It was therefore a more prudent choice to get “Big Bro Siegfried” (as most of the rookies called him now) to give his insight and opinion.

“Ugh, now look at the face you’re pullin’... I walked into here at just the wrong time, didn’t I?”

“Come on now, Sieg! Take a seat. I’ll pay for the food.”

“What a drag... What is it this time? Etan and Mathieu had another brawl? Karsten flip out at another rookie callin’ him ‘shorty’? How come I’m always the go-between, huh?”

As Siegfried sat down, Schnee stood up with all the smoothness in the world, completely undetected by my comrade. She gave me a cheeky grin and a wave with both hands—she had no interest in this side of business.

I really am grateful for all of your intel, I thought. So don’t worry—I won’t ask this kind of stuff of you. Just let me know when you have something new to tell me.

“C’mon, spill it. We’ve been just doin’ boring jobs around town instead of anything exciting, so I hope it ain’t about people grumblin’ about that.”

“Sorry about that, Sieg. But trouble in Marsheim means trouble for us, so I hope you don’t mind listening to what I’ve got to say.”

Unfortunately we still hadn’t received the kind of jobs that would really get Siegfried’s heart pumping—the type that would put him into the annals of history like recovering the Slayer of the Foul Drake’s legendary sword Windslaught. But making sure our clan was strong and healthy was a necessary paving stone on the path toward such great adventures.

We already had proof of that in Fidelio. He had worked on sorting out various local jobs, and not long after, requests for grand adventures practically piled up at his front door thanks to the public’s certainty that he was the best man for the job. Don’t forget the grind, my friend.

“I think we need some clan rules,” I said.

“And you’re asking me for help?!”

Even if not all of our clan members could read and write easily, I thought it was important for us to have some properly codified rules. Other clans usually ran via the mantra that the boss’s word was law and handed down rulings on a case by case basis. However, I thought it would be simplest and most efficient if we could come to an agreement on a shared goal and the rules we needed to follow to achieve it. Otherwise we weren’t a clan anymore—just a gaggle of rough and ready adventurers.

“Siegfried, you’re putting in the hours to learn to read and write, aren’t you? Kaya complimented you the other day, saying you can write your own name with real finesse, and that you’ve got simple addition and subtraction down too.”

“Huh? Sh-She said that...?”

You can’t hide your embarrassment from me, Sieg! You may put on a spiky front, but I can totally see how happy you are to get a compliment from Kaya. Another wonderful tsundere moment for the memory banks. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—tsunderes are a delightful thing in this world, no matter what your gender may be. It adds a little spice that improves any and all situations.

“Yeah, so come on, man, help me think up something wicked cool for our rookies,” I said. “You must’ve heard over a hundred songs by now; I know you’ve got a good sense for what’s cool.”

“Listenin’ and creatin’ stuff are totally different... Like, I could recite the whole of The Adventures of Siegfried, but I couldn’t sing it...”

“Don’t worry, we’re not writing a whole song. I was thinking we could scribble up three fundamentals or so. Rule one of the Fellowship of the Blade... Um... ‘Stay alert! Trust your Fellows! Keep your weapon handy!’ How about that?”

The original quote was a bit more paranoid, and it felt kind of like stealing to just use the phrase as-written anyway. No one would know I was cribbing off my old world, but I would know, and that made me uneasy.

“And that means...what now?”

Unfortunately it made little sense to my comrade. I couldn’t blame him—the original quote came from a literal world away. And so we spent the next little while putting our heads together to try and come up with some rules that were easy to remember, meaningful, and sounded cool.

[Tips] Clans are usually ad hoc groups of people working together for mutual benefit, so they often don’t have any set of codified rules. When clans gather round a powerful leader, the result is usually that their word is law.

To the members of the Fellowship of the Blade, Erich was someone very much worthy of their respect and someone from whom they enjoyed receiving leadership and tutelage. He would never get angry without good reason, and he would never strike them unless pain now would help them avoid death down the road. He only raised his voice during training too, and none of them had ever seen him truly angry before.

However, today was completely different. He had summoned them all to a large room in the Snowy Silverwolf; his anger seemed to visibly ooze from his body. Trial members and relative veterans alike entered a brutal flop sweat as they watched him puffing at his beloved pipe.

Was this truly the same man who always knew when to call for a water break after an intense round of training, or who patted them on the back with a compliment on how much they’d improved? It was hard for anyone in the room to square these two sides of him.

“Now then, everyone. We have a big gig coming up...but before that, I have something I wish to discuss with you,” said Erich.

He let out a puff of smoke and gave a snap of his fingers. On command, Siegfried and Kaya unfurled a big sheet beside him. Upon the hemp cloth were three lines that almost no one in the room could read. It was obvious to everyone there that they were of utmost importance.

“Since time immemorial, people have used the clout of their employer to threaten others and get ahead in the world.”

The air was filled with smoke. It should have had a fragrant, bittersweet smell to it, but it only conjured scenes of blood and anger in the minds of everyone present.

“It’s a cheap scare tactic. I’m sure many of you have met similar crooks—the sort of guy who goes, ‘Do you know who I work for?’ the second things get hairy.”

As their boss said, they were cheap, dirty words to use, but incredibly easy to find yourself saying. The threat of a scary backer coming in to get revenge for their underlings meant that such words could be used without much fear of consequence. It didn’t matter if justice was served. It was merely an effective deterrent.

“But did any of the heroes you look up to use words like these?”

No one had the guts to actually answer Erich’s rhetorical question. There were heroes of all sorts, but no one could think of one who did anything that uncool. After all, if you couldn’t make a threat without the need to use someone else’s might, then what did you really amount to?

Yes, the heroes they looked up to, who claimed their feats with their own hands, and those who used the name of their master to get a free lunch were leagues apart. It wasn’t completely shameful to state the name of your master; no one could fault you if you faced the task ahead wearing your pride in the teachings you’d received on your sleeve. If you just used your superiors as a bludgeon, however, then you were no different from any other brute with a club.

“I have decided to announce our clan’s ground rules. Through them I wish for you all to understand the importance of what it means to function as an individual within a greater whole.”

Erich slowly stood up, and with an almost imperceptibly quick motion, singled out the first line with his sheathed sword.

“Don’t look so scared! They’re three simple tenets. First! Ever enjoyable, ever heroic!”

Even though few could read the sentence Erich was pointing at, its importance wasn’t lost on anyone.

“This one is a warning. If adventures ever seem dull, if they lose their romance, or if any of you give up on acting heroic like the legends we look up to—then I want you to lay down your sword and quit being an adventurer.”

Schutzwolfe struck the second line.

“Second! Show your might through your own merit! This one’s super simple. I don’t want anyone using the name of the Fellowship to threaten people or borrow money! None of the heroes we look up to did such a thing!”

A few in the room started shaking, realizing that this tenet was directed at them. However, everyone was so focused on their leader’s words that the culprits remained undetected. Erich had intensified his aura to prevent people from pointing fingers. He didn’t care about punishment. He wanted to make sure no one made this mistake ever again.

“Third! Cast no shame upon your blade! Do not cut down someone you’ll later regret; do not draw your blade and let it gnaw at your mind in the days following. Be ever aware of its weight on your waist and always be conscious of why you use it. That is the philosophy of the blade! If you cannot remember this, then you’re no better than a well-trained bandit!”

This final tenet was the keystone of any career as a butcher of men. A sword was merely a tool. Although it was an extension of one’s body, one had to be ever vigilant about the damage it could cause, else one risked all sorts of irreversible regrets. Merely drawing a blade could enrage a foe into action and unintended consequences. If you took on the responsibility of wearing a sword, then you needed to realize the destruction it inherently brought with it.

“That’s all. Three simple rules. As of today, if I find anyone breaking these rules, then I will expel them from the clan. You will never be allowed to tell a soul that you are, were, or ever have been part of the Fellowship of the Blade. That’s a kinder punishment than asking you to slit your stomachs open, no?”

No one in the room knew about the vicious form of suicide known as “seppuku” in Erich’s old world, but they could visualize just how gruesome it would be.

“I won’t criticize any of you if you decide that my clan isn’t a good fit for you.”

Those who decided to stay despite this warning knew that breaking these rules would result in a shame that was as painful as a real death.

“Everyone who understands what being in the Fellowship means, I ask you to repeat the tenets after me. Should you choose to remain silent, I accept that as your implicit decision to leave our clan behind.”

It was easy to become an adventurer, but difficult to achieve great feats as one. Erich believed that those who didn’t understand this or couldn’t shoulder the responsibilities of his views of adventuring were better suited looking for different company.

“First! Ever enjoyable, ever heroic!” Erich said.

“First! Ever enjoyable, ever heroic!” came the reply.

“Second! Show your might through your own merit!”

“Second! Show your might through your own merit!”

“Third! Cast no shame upon your blade!”

“Third! Cast no shame upon your blade!”

This was yet another layer of the clan’s screening process; not the kind practiced in its brutal training gauntlet, but a trial of the soul and one’s own sentiment, one that conformed each applicant’s mindset to the clan’s values. Those who were ready to be part of the clan repeated the words without hesitation. Around half of the new recruits, some overwhelmed but well spirited, joined in the cry too.

Although most adventurers went into the business with some knowledge of the unconventional path they were taking, it was quite the scary act to reaffirm it like this. Just how unhinged were they to tread the path taken by adventurers in the Age of Gods, of figures reserved for children’s bedtime stories?

“Very good! We are the Fellowship of the Blade, and as of today these are our tenets. Follow them if you wish to remain among us. Trust that I mean to follow them as closely as any of you!”

No one in the room was merely going along with the flow. Each of those who had decided to follow Erich knew that they would continue to chase their fleeting dreams of glory well into their waking hours. They had found meaning for their slowly dissipating lives in the form of adventure and this was the moment that they would put their dreams to work.

“Very good! Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about that big job. This one’s got the government’s seal of approval, so ready your hearts. We’re going on a stash raid! No doubt you’ve heard about the creeps who’ve been lining their pockets peddling brain poison to all of Marsheim lately. Today we’re razing one of their warehouses!”

Erich announced their clan’s biggest job thus far without giving the excitement in the room a moment to settle. This would be their first step toward ridding Marsheim of the dreaded Kykeon.

Erich’s preparations had gone smoothly, and with some convincing from the Baldur Clan, the administration in Marsheim gave its approval to go through with it. In return for services rendered, the clan would collect five drachmae, with extra rewards for crooks brought in alive and actionable intelligence on Kykeon itself and its distribution.

Failure would not be tolerated. The groundwork had been laid; all that remained now was to bring the team up to speed on the operation’s parameters and execute.

First, Margit and the other Fellows better suited to espionage than frontline fighting would maintain a surveillance perimeter in plainclothes, giving the signal when it was safe to begin the assault. Any hostiles would be pacified, and once the coast was clear, the others stationed in nearby houses would enter via the front and back entrances.

Once the first floor had been neutralized, they would work their way up, quickly suppressing each floor. It would be a swift operation, allowing their enemies no time to flee or even hide any incriminating evidence. It was a simple job in concept, but keeping everyone up to speed about the fine details and how they added up into the desired outcome was tricky.

“Those left unscathed by our work today will have cause regardless to take heed: we will not tolerate their efforts to hollow out the spirit of our home and break our wills! Today we earn our keep as citizens!”

“YEAH!”

Always, Erich laid plans within plans. He’d told the clan about the raid the day before not only to make sure everyone was suitably prepared, but also to find the leak in his operation; any earlier, and the mole would have had time to slip past him.

Of course, he had already tasked Schnee with keeping an eye out, but with this extra layer of preparation, he could do more than catch the mole in the act—he could rake them over the coals.

“All right, let’s show them our stuff! Do me proud!”

“YEAAAH!”

Despite his cool exterior, Erich had a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t wrong, but his scheme had a dash of dishonesty to it. After all, things couldn’t always go as smoothly as they did in the stories...

[Tips] “Ever enjoyable, ever heroic” is the first tenet of the Fellowship of the Blade. It is meant to instill among the clan’s ranks the belief that adventurers must always be as heroic as their forebears.

Siegfried was surprised that he had so little to do for once. It was the day after the bloody raid, and Erich, along with the other rookies, had begged him to take some time off. The request hadn’t come due to some kind of foolish injury from the hero-hopeful’s place on the front lines, charging half-cocked into the fray. He stood intact and unbruised in sunlight pregnant with the latent colors of early autumn.

Siegfried had swapped out his usual spear for the sword to better suit the battle’s close quarters, but it hadn’t worsened his performance one jot. He had cut down three and apprehended four—a respectable result.

If you asked Siegfried, he was uncertain it was worth calling the raid a battle. They were so prepared that they didn’t once find themselves at a disadvantage. Kaya’s flash-bang and tear gas potions had been thrown inside, and so the clan were able to safely enter the building—usually the most exposed moment—without issue.

Not only that, most of the people stationed inside weren’t fighters. This was only natural, considering the work they were hired to do. Of course, Siegfried refused to turn himself into a cold-blooded killer—he held back and inflicted only enough damage to immobilize. Still, it was impossible to know how a battle would go, and so he had no choice but to cut down three crooks during the raid.

The foes they’d faced were an odd bunch. Getting high off their own supply, there were many who had driven their own bodies into utter ruin. Their senses dulled by the drug, they no longer felt pain, rising again and again despite their grievous wounds. The three Siegfried had been forced to kill were zombified soldiers. Nothing but swift, merciful oblivion could save them or stop them.

Although the battle itself went without much issue, Siegfried had wound up on the receiving end of a chemical attack. One of the dealers had slung some powder—Siegfried presumed it’d been pretreated Kykeon—all over him. He wasn’t sure whether they had done it purposefully or if they were just grabbing at anything nearby, but it was entirely possible that they had meant to weaponize it by letting the crystals get into his eyes or nose—a more hazardous metabolic pathway than typical oral application. It would have ruined him, had it played out in the junk peddlers’ favor.

Luckily, Siegfried had returned from the fray without suffering any side effects. Everyone in the operation had applied salves to protect themselves from the tear gas. This precautionary measure had probably helped shield Siegfried from any damage. It’d been the very same powerful concoction that saved him from the assault on his airways in Zeufar. The same principle, it seemed, had applied here.

Despite his clean bill of health, all the same the rest of the clan were terribly worried. It was no surprise—all of them had seen how Kykeon had ruined the lives of people around Marsheim. Siegfried had kept brushing them off—he was perfectly all right, for heaven’s sake—but his coworkers had been unanimous: he had no choice but to kick back. So here he was, totally free and woefully bored.

“Tch, I feel fine,” Siegfried muttered to himself. He wasn’t acting tough—he honestly felt right as rain. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with himself.

Kaya had given him a bucketful of water—impossible to finish in a single sitting—and Goldilocks, remembering that sweating in a sauna was a good way to purge toxins from the body, had dragged him to the baths. He didn’t mind doing as they asked, but he just felt awkward being treated like a patient on death’s doorstep. The boredom of staying at home had eventually gotten to him, and so he had told Kaya he was going to the baths and slipped out.

“I don’t feel like ice is in my veins, and I slept a ton last night. Why won’t they accept that I’m fine?”

Kykeon affected the brain and made you feel more energetic than you were; in truth, it dulled any receptors that sensed exhaustion in the body. It filled you with an ecstasy that felt like a gentle full-body chill, and it reduced your need to sleep or eliminate waste. Siegfried felt none of these symptoms, and he was sick of lying in bed counting the knots in the planks on the ceiling.

Siegfried didn’t have any particular destination in mind. When he left the house earlier, Kaya had scowled at him, and although she’d let him go, she busied herself with her mortar and pestle—striking with such force that Siegfried had wondered if she was imagining her worst enemy instead of herbs—in order to concoct a decent antidote.

It was as he wandered the streets of Marsheim that Siegfried realized he didn’t really have any hobbies. He often spent time at the Snowy Silverwolf now, but he couldn’t go today; Erich had ordered that he stay put for three days. He spent the rest of his time on gigs or training, but those were off the table for today. His options were also limited by the fact that Kaya had seized his purse strings—it wasn’t easy for him to stroll about with a nice drink in hand anymore.

Compared to Goldilocks, who often struck off on constitutionals around Marsheim to “widen his world,” Siegfried was rather pedestrian in where he chose to spend his time. He so often stayed at the Snowy Silverwolf in part due to a sense of obligation to the connections he had made there, but also because it was a bit frightening to stroll into a random tavern for the first time.

“What to do... What to do...”

In his wallet he had one libra and a few bronze coins. Kaya had given him a bit of extra change to visit the baths on top of his three-day allowance, but Siegfried was still at a loss as to what to do. He didn’t want to spend half the day at the bath—he wasn’t some bored old coot languishing in his retirement. He enjoyed going to the bathhouse with his friends—not just sitting there in silence as he sweated.

One pastime of his was finding one of the bards in town and seeing what song they had prepared. Unfortunately, when he heard himself being sung about in his role in felling Jonas Baltlinden, he had run away from the plaza in sheer embarrassment. The fear that they might be singing about him again somewhere put him off the idea of coming back anytime soon.

Siegfried wasn’t used to people looking up to him or even receiving scant praise. He was the youngest of three brothers, from a dirt-poor farming family. His father never showed him any kindness and his mother had never even so much as hugged him. The only positive family memories from his childhood he had were of his stick-thin grandfather gently stroking his hair. To go from that to being lauded in song was just too much for the lad.

“Oh crap... Do I really have nowhere to go?”

The baths wouldn’t be fun; the bard might sing about him; all taverns were off-limits. Siegfried was shocked that without a sword and a job to do, he didn’t have anything else.

Back in Illfurth, every day was packed with work, with not so much as a spare moment to himself. When he did have a moment’s spare time, he used to head straight to the Watch to ready himself for a life of adventuring. The rare few pockets of time left over were spent pooling together any loose change he could get for the day he left his canton. The long and short of it was that Siegfried barely had a personality of any kind outside of his working life.

All the same, he wasn’t terribly exceptional in this regard. There were few pastimes available to the masses in the era he lived in. Although he wasn’t to know, it was Erich’s previous world that was the strange one, with games and activities vying for the masses’ limited attention.

Here Siegfried was—books cost a small fortune, there were no shows on, and he couldn’t even go for a jog as he was told to take it easy.

The hero-hopeful was stumped as he realized he had nothing to do. He had been so focused on chasing his dreams that he’d never thought this would ever be a possibility!

“Ugh, I’m bored! What do I do? I’m getting antsy...”

The young man continued to wander Marsheim like a bear that had forgotten to hibernate. With time on their hands, most people would find less salubrious ways to spend their time or simply let sloth take over and laze around, but fortunately the young adventurer had a stout heart.

“Oh, the folk market...”

Lost in thought, Siegfried had been wandering aimlessly. Now he’d found himself on a small street lined with stalls. Marsheim was home to more than its single large-scale, year-round market. It also had areas where you could pay to set up a stall for the day—similar to the open-air market in the capital. There you could find all manner of miscellany, from peddlers of homemade trinkets, junk dealers, and aspiring merchants.

“Huh... Margit said one of her favorite ways of killin’ time was to wander the folk market... Said somethin’ about finding good deals...”

Siegfried was from the countryside. He wasn’t used to seeing so many stores in one place. It had been a while since he’d first arrived in Marsheim, but he’d spent his early days there hounded by his daily expenses, and since meeting Goldilocks he had focused his efforts on surpassing his fellow adventurer. The days had flown by. He’d never really made the time to truly see what the city had to offer.

“All right, a little window shopping never hurt anyone...”

This was the perfect opportunity for the hero-hopeful to actually get acquainted with his home. Suddenly excited by the prospect of occupying himself with something so novel, he became engrossed in every little thing he passed by.

“This really pure silver?” he asked a stuart merchant.

“Yoo bet it is, my friend! From the peninsoola!”

The stuart sat before a rush mat and gestured at his wares, his accent clearly some flavor of foreign. Siegfried could tell that all the silverware was far cheaper than it should have been—most likely some sort of tin alloy. The lad had never set eyes upon silver cutlery before and had no way of knowing what the stock before him was made of, but he’d been kicking around for long enough to feel out that something was off.

The piece that had caught his eye was a simply engraved metal locket—perfect for a miniature portrait or a lock of hair; he’d thought that it would suit his dear friend, but he reasoned that he didn’t want to get chewed out for overspending again. He moved on. Even if it was a cheap gewgaw on markdown, fifteen librae was still far out of Siegfried’s remit. It wasn’t worth haggling or writing IOUs for. He shook his head and moved on.

“They ain’t even got decent gear here...” he grumbled as he passed another stall.

“If you’re gonna complain, bucko, then shoo! Go away!” the merchant barked.

Some equipment looked decent from afar, but up close they were all dull, shoddy things. They had evidently been sold on from some locals who had acquired them after some adventurers had saved them from bandits. Ever since Erich had picked out his sword, anything subpar failed to impress.

“Yeah, but, c’mon, mister,” Siegfried retorted. “Look at the blade! It’s totally chipped. It’d hurt, yeah, but I’d fare better cuttin’ logs than flesh with this.”

Siegfried’s comments weren’t simply hot air. His friend’s Schutzwolfe was a well-crafted piece by a talented blacksmith—despite it having been forged in an era where there wasn’t much call for bespoke work—and the store that had sold him his spear was filled with glittering new weapons, so much so that he wondered if something so beautiful should be used for wounding others. Over these past few months in Marsheim, the hero-hopeful had developed quite the eye for decent equipment.

“Ya sharpen it yourself, kid! Hey, I’ll throw you a bone. How’s thirty librae sound?”

“Thirty?! For this piece of trash? Come on, at least try and be convincing!”

“Gah, pipe down, will ya?! Better it’s used than melted down, no? By the looks of ya, you’re a rookie, right? This should be more than good enough for you.”

As Siegfried grumbled that this was an awful sales tactic, he received a gobful of spit in return; he decided to move along, out of the horrid salesman’s range.

As expected for a folk market, nothing quite lived up to the standards of the fare you’d turn up at the main market, but Siegfried found himself enjoying the simple act of seeing what was on offer. Wondering what drove a merchant to sell that bit of kit or considering what circumstances led to them deciding to part with this little oddity was a fun thought experiment. When he had rushed about the city in his early days to make a mental map of the place, he hadn’t made the small discoveries of what the city had to offer; he almost regretted neglecting it for so long.

“Ooh... Now that’s a pretty piece,” he murmured.

“Oho, you have a good eye, good sir!”

A stall run by a mensch woman who looked to have only just come of age had caught Siegfried’s eye. It was lined with all sorts of handmade trinkets.

Although most average citizens didn’t have all too much spending power, they had just about enough to give a little unique touch to their appearances. It was therefore a natural result that craftspeople with a delicate hand would make jewelry using pretty stones found on the river shore, glass pieces from abroad, or even seashells. These had a folksy charm to them and were popular for their simplicity.

“It’s made using a lake mermaid’s tear!” she went on.

“Huh? Mermaids live in lakes?”

The piece that had caught Siegfried’s eye was a necklace decorated with an emerald-stained glass rondure. It caught the light beautifully, making for a modest and fashionable piece.

“Some of them, yes. It’s just a figure of speech, though—this is just a little glass ball, hardly a gemstone plucked straight out of legend!”

“Well, yeah. In the stories it was a pearl, right?”

“Sure was! We figured we’d move more of ’em if they had a catchy name. Anyway, it might be glass, but it sure is pretty.”

Siegfried nodded in agreement. This piece had evidently broken off from some sort of glasswork in transit. “Mermaid’s tear” was far more appealing than “reworked piece of debris.” Most importantly, it was in a wonderful shade of verdant green—Kaya’s favorite color.

“How much?”

“You gifting it to a special someone? Then I’ll part with it for fifty assarii!” The merchant added with a cheeky smile, “If this were a real pearl, it would set you back fifty drachmae!”

Siegfried didn’t mind the jovial banter and gladly paid a sum that would have amounted to half a day’s work back in his soot-black days. He didn’t care what the “original” price was. He was enjoying this new hobby of strolling about Marsheim, and it wouldn’t set him back so much as to annoy Kaya.

After the whole incident with Acronym, Kaya had fashioned the pricey fabric into some clothes. Despite her initial anger, it had become one of her favorite outfits; she maintained it fastidiously. As long as he didn’t go overboard, buying little trinkets for his precious partner promised to make his newfound preoccupation that much more of a treat.

“Hmm... Who was it that mentioned that sometimes you get merchants sellin’ off furniture and gems without knowing what they’re really worth?”

Siegfried had picked up many a juicy rumor in his time, but it was only since he started partnering with Goldilocks that he realized these nuggets could be put to work. His friend had a whole wealth of strange factoids.

Siegfried understood well enough that your average merchant lived by the law of “buy cheap, sell dear.” Like adventurers, they would make safe sales in safe conditions, but put their lives on the line when it truly mattered. Siegfried could recall the cool expression of his friend as he unpacked all this. If Goldilocks were here now, he probably wouldn’t hesitate to tell Siegfried exactly what metal alloy that “silverware” had been made of.

Siegfried continued his stroll, but a warrior was still a warrior even on his days off—his body reacted as someone stood in his shadow.

“Hmph!”

Siegfried slipped a short dagger from his sleeve as he drew his head safely away. He made a half spin on his left foot and grabbed his would-be assailant.

His attacker was a mensch woman; she looked around thirty years old. Her clothes made her seem like just another neighborhood local, but he knew that she hadn’t just stumbled into the ideal position for an assassin. He’d been enjoying his little constitutional, but Siegfried wasn’t fool enough to let his guard down. He had spotted the same face over and over throughout the day—even the most witless mark would grow suspicious.

The hero-hopeful was almost exasperated with what a boneheaded play this was. Not only had she stopped and moved as he did, she had come right up behind him. If she were a regular civilian, he would be able to just apologize and move on with his day, but obviously that wasn’t the case with this woman.

“Scream and I’ll slice your throat,” he hissed. “You’re the one who was tailin’ me—can’t fault me for self-defense now, can ya?”

Siegfried’s left hand clasped her lapels; his right held his dagger to her throat. The fact that she wasn’t screaming bloody murder was more evidence that she was dangerous.

“I-I’m here with a little proposal. S-Surely the drug must have worn off by now?” she said.

“Y’what? The drug?”

“The one you were covered with yesterday...”

Can’t I catch a damn break from this whole drug business?

Siegfried could feel his dormant frustrations stirring to life, but he mulled over her words with a cool head. Internally, he lamented that ever since he’d become an adventurer everyone around him seemed to talk in riddles. Positioning himself behind her now, he pulled her into a nearby alley.

“Sorry, but I ain’t had any side effects since your lot chucked that powder on me,” he said.

“Huh?! N-No, that’s impossible... A-At any rate, you and Goldilocks...you’re on bad terms, yes?!”

“I said keep your voice down—unless you want a hole in your throat.”

“Ngh...”

This had all but clarified that this woman was with the group seeking to despoil Marsheim.

What Siegfried needed to be vigilant about was whether she was acting alone or as part of a group. If the one who had approached him to make a deal were kidnapped, then they would probably start to panic soon enough. He drew the blade a measure tighter to her throat—close enough that a bead of blood formed on her skin.

“Sorry, but next time, if you so much as sneeze, you’ll be bleeding out on the street. You better watch yourself.”

“O-Our information network is broad and wide! We’ve dug up the dirt on your relationships!”

Letting the woman talk, Siegfried counted in his head as he half listened. How long would it take for someone to come and find her? Surely they would have had someone within sniping range in case the situation got hairy, at least?

“We’ve waited a while now, and no one’s come to save you,” Siegfried said. “So, which is it? Were you abandoned, or are you just a decoy?”

“H-Hold on a second! The drug must have worked! Why else would you suddenly take time off...?”

“I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

No reinforcements were coming; no one was here to interfere. Either they didn’t care about her, or she had foolishly come alone thinking that he would be enfeebled from their last encounter. Siegfried didn’t feel good about it, but decided to put more pressure into his hold—not to push the blade in, but to knock her out cold.

“You think Erich and I hate each other? We just piss about because we know we’ve got each other’s back. If we were actually at each other’s throats, then why the hell would I be doing this to you?”

With her carotid artery practically clamped shut, the woman passed out. Siegfried made sure not to let up until he was absolutely sure that her limp body wouldn’t be moving again anytime soon.

This whole process could have been sped up if Kaya were here. One of her potions could black you out for four hours straight with a whiff. Obviously, he had the situation handled on his own, but the hero-hopeful felt a pang of unease from being without a partner at his side and a friend to banter with. Seeing this woman limp in his arms, he couldn’t help but see himself in her failure to stick the landing on a solo mission.

Siegfried stood at the ready for a little while longer to make absolutely sure that no backup was coming, but there was no thug trying to take her back, nor an assassin aiming to silence him. It seemed she had approached him alone.

“They don’t rate me highly, do they...” the young adventurer grumbled to himself.

Adventuring invited unwanted visitors to one’s doorstep at all hours of the day, meaning you had to be ready to move to action even when you were “off duty.” Ever since that day in the Golden Deer, just before his big blowout from the gig where Jonas Baltlinden had shown up, when Goldilocks had warned him that he could be killed for a handful of coins, Siegfried had decided to stay permanently vigilant. He carried a small dagger up his sleeve and always carried hemp bags and rope—and if they came in handy with the shopping now and again, so much the better.

The young adventurer tied the rope once around her ribs and once around her arms. This way she wouldn’t be able to escape even if she removed her joints from their sockets. He rifled through her pockets and found a blade, a wallet, and a few glittering scraps.

“She did say the effects were just about wearin’ off... Did she wanna turn me against the others by gettin’ me hooked on this stuff?”

Although he’d never felt the effects firsthand, Siegfried was very aware that the drug flung at him yesterday was extremely addictive and caused painful withdrawal symptoms. Someone must have watched the scene and reported to the enemy side that Siegfried was a few steps shy of self-annihilation. She must have brought these scraps in hopes of luring him over to their side in a fit of overconfidence. Unfortunately it meant nothing to someone who was in perfect health.

“Now, what to do with her... I’d cause a scene if I just carried her back...”

Siegfried had by chance—or perhaps due to his good luck—managed to bump into and wrangle a perfect stool pigeon. He folded his arms as he pondered his next move. It was still the middle of the day; he wanted to avoid the guards cornering him and asking—justifiably—why he was carrying a bound woman.

“Oh yeah! I did a job at a place near here before. Maybe I can borrow a cart or something from them...”

Another stroke of good luck meant that the alley Siegfried was in wasn’t too far from a store he had helped out before. With a cart and a mat, no one would suspect he was pushing around a person. There weren’t any noble-run events going on, and so the guards were on low alert. No one was likely to ask to see what was under the mat.

Siegfried patted himself on the back with thoughts that today was going swimmingly—the store owner had been so impressed with Siegfried’s earlier work and never asked why he needed the cart—as he pushed the loaded cart out from the alley.

“Oh crap... They’re totally gonna ask why I was out...”

As the Snowy Silverwolf came into view a new problem arose. He could already see himself getting chewed out by his clan for ignoring their advice to stay put. It wasn’t the most appealing of situations, but Siegfried had chosen his lot; he steeled himself for the extended apology to come.

[Tips] More than any of the more specific and more obvious adverse side effects, perhaps the largest threat posed by a drug habit is the habit itself. Those who go toe-to-toe with their chemical dependencies swiftly learn that “willpower” is largely an illusion; even the firmest moral code can collapse when you need your next hit as badly as you need food, water, or sleep.

Siegfried’s surprise present was the perfect way for me to turn up the heat under our little internal issue just that little bit more. The man of the hour had knelt on the floor to apologize for not detoxing at the baths or resting at home, but I forgave him and told him that it was time to do something that I’d been sort of sitting on.

The Snowy Silverwolf...was not where we were today. We were in a room of an abandoned house, away from anywhere we would cause any trouble. It was owned by the Baldur Clan, and I had received their permission to make use of it a while ago in the event that I might need to do a little dirty work. To think the day had finally come! It was a little small for our group, but we would be fine.

“Now then, people,” I said. “What do you think is worse than dying in battle?”

“Huh? Worse than dying?” Etan replied. Clearly the lad was too honest to have picked up on my intentions with our day were. He wasn’t wrong to be such a boy scout. Having your character sheet taken away amounted to having the curtains drawn on your adventure. The world may as well not exist if you no longer have any way of participating in it.

However, if death truly was the worst thing, then we wouldn’t have the phrase “living hell.”

“The one thing worse than dying...is not being allowed to die,” I said.

In the center of the room was the woman that had tried to strike a little bargain with Siegfried. She was going to illustrate my case; more’s the pity for her.

“From certain angles, death is a release. When we die and receive our judgment from the gods, we are freed from all the pain of the world of the living.”

Our sensory systems allowed us to interact with the world. Without them, pain hardly entered the picture. Which meant that if you couldn’t die, then there would be nothing to stop the pain.

“You must have heard similar stories in myths. There are tons about someone who was cursed to never die and punished with endless ordeals; about someone who was strung up and forced to suffer through eternal hunger.”

The worst of these were stories where one’s physical body decayed, but the soul was still locked in suffering. We had seen a perfect example of this last winter—the herbalist-turned-geist in the ichor maze. There were those whose suffering continued despite their deaths dating back to the Age of Gods.

Powerful wraiths like Lady Leizniz could purge themselves of their suffering by getting revenge after their deaths—though to tell you the truth, it was weird to me to call it a death when she still was very much present in this world—and could live out their afterlife in joy, but if you asked me, I would have preferred cutting ties with this mortal coil without lingering regrets.

I often claimed that death was the end of everything—that went for both us and our enemies.

“Of course, we don’t have the gods’ powers, but there are ways of punishing people without permitting them the sweet release of death.”

The military code of the Imperial Japanese Army included a line that stated that soldiers should not suffer the disgrace of becoming a live prisoner. Despite being a world away, this same way of thinking was present in townsfolk and soldiers here too.

Hostages from the knightly and noble classes were treated well—you made more money ransoming an intact one, after all—but this was a different story for regular folk. If you were taken captive by bandits, you would be lucky if they just killed you. At worst, you’d be sold off under the table for pocket change. Some people thought it was better to just end your own life before you were captured, because if your captors took a liking to you, you could find yourself being tortured or abused with no end in sight.

“It’s a world that I cannot understand. But I want you all to know that there are freaks out there who find pleasure in watching others suffer. Extracting information comes second to these assholes—the torture is the main appeal. Don’t forget, okay?”

If someone like this caught you and you knew there was no one coming to save you, then the only thing that lay ahead was utter despair. The more I thought about this awful possibility, the more I realized the importance of a clan—a group of allies who would seek you out, should you go missing.

It went without saying that if one of our Fellows had vanished one day, we would have put all our resources into finding them.

As my Fellows gulped, I returned to the matter at hand.

“Today, unfortunately, we risk becoming some of those freaks. Siegfried? What comes to mind when I say ‘torture’?”

My comrade put on a sour expression and cogitated audibly for a little while.

“Nails, I guess? Like someone pullin’ them out,” he said. “That form of punishment comes up in some of the stories I’ve heard, I think.”

“A good, traditional answer. Incredibly painful, difficult to endure, and not fatal. Most people have them too. Imagine this for me—someone thrusting a needle in between your finger and nail.”

Everyone took a step away from Siegfried.

“H-Hey, c’mon! Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t come up with it!”

“That’s not all, Sieg, what you said—”

“Stop it! I was just talking about nail removal! This crap about needles is making my fingers twitch! The hell kinda life do you have to live to think of that?!”

This image had been in my brain since who knew when. It was a good question—what kind of mental state would lead you to cook up something like that?

“No one can put up with that kind of pain, so my advice for you is to give as much nonessential information as you can and avoid getting in that position in the first place. Our fingers are an adventurer’s lifeblood, after all.”

There were many cutthroat clans that would blacklist a member for giving up even a scrap of information, but I wasn’t like them. If you returned alive from a humiliating defeat, then it was better for your own mental state to make amends by your own hand.

“Anyway,” I continued, “we won’t be pulling any nails today. It’s messy, for one.”

“You’re worried about the cleaning...?” Siegfried muttered.

“Oh, and also, if you do anything too gruesome you might frighten your captive into surrender or wanting to die. You might think that you’re not causing physical damage and push them into wanting to bite their tongue or something—so I’d advise you use a method that’s pretty idiotproof.”

I picked up what I had prepared.

It was a delicious plate of sushi. No, of course not—we weren’t using starvation tactics here. Such methods might have been interesting in their own twisted way, but I didn’t want to wait days until our captive got ravenous. What I had was a simple wooden bucket. Inside it was fresh well water. Next to it were five others just like it.

“This is why I prepared this couch.”

I woke her up with a faceful of chilly water. She woke with a spluttering start.

“Good morning! Or should I say good day? Now then, mind telling me your name?”

The woman was clearly shocked at waking up in an unknown room with her head covered in a sack and drenched in cold water.

“Wh-Who are you?! What is this?! Do you know who I am?!” she shrieked.

“Now, now. All I want from you are the answers to my questions.”

I ignored her spirited and foulmouthed insults and got the next bucket ready. I slowly poured the water over her covered face and let the water soak into the cloth of the sack. As it drank in the water, it got heavier and lay close upon her face. She was lying down with her face up, and so the water gradually pushed out any available air as the sack clung to her mouth and nose. Her body reacted instinctively by trying to breathe in, but it only resulted in her sucking the wet sack to her mouth, the sudden intake of water causing her to splutter. The result was that I could create at will a sensation akin to drowning.

The bucket wasn’t large, so there wasn’t any danger of her actually drowning, but it pushed her to her limit. It was a crude and rudimentary form of torture—only needing a cloth (or sack in our case), restraints, and some water. There were older forms of this that existed on Earth that required gallons of running water, or a way of hanging your captive upside down with their head submerged, or even ones that didn’t restrain them properly, but this was a far more efficient format.

A certain intelligence agency whose base was in Langley favored this method—waterboarding, as it was known in my old world—but apparently they found it so efficient that even the ones applying the torture were frightened by it. I was honestly surprised that it was never banned in their court of law.

Unlike the older forms where you dunked your detainee in water, this method resulted in less water entering the lungs, making it less likely to accidentally kill the person you were torturing. Even if they went into respiratory arrest, you could use the same methods as resuscitating someone who had fallen into a river.

“Ugh... That’s sick...”

“W-Won’t she drown?”

My clan members murmured among themselves as I calmly repeated the procedure, making sure she was breathing again as I did so.

This wasn’t some kind of sick fetish of mine. Painful torture could lead the person you were torturing to admit to things they hadn’t even done just to escape, and so it made more sense to put her under prolonged questioning. That was in usual cases. We didn’t have somewhere we could leave someone chained up for a long time, nor did we have someone skilled in the art of information extraction. It was the fact of the matter that this nonlethal form of torture was the most efficient course of action to us at the moment.

It would have made my life so much easier if I had some grasp of psychosorcery, but that stuff was hard. Although it wasn’t forbidden at the College, novices weren’t permitted to use it, since it could cause negative effects to their own psyche. I was still a relative beginner with magic—I was almost guaranteed to screw it up.

The woman panted as I allowed her to breathe.

“Your name?” I asked again.

“D-Don’t think...you’ll get off lightly for this!”

“Okaaay, understood! More water!”

Evidently she was spunky enough to keep yapping at me after one bucketful. All I would need to do is go at it a second or third time until her lips were feeling a little bit looser.

I gave my clan members a fixed stare as I worked. This was a form of training for them, as well as a warning from their senior in the business.

In my time working for Lady Agrippina on life-or-death missions, I wasn’t just risking my life crossing blades with her would-be assassins. I had been a target for more covert forms of incapacitation—to be drugged and captured before having every last drop of information extracted from me.

It wasn’t just one’s enemies that you had to worry about. It was a deplorable fact of the world that some people did this for fun. It wasn’t rare to find mutilated corpses, discarded after some bandit had finished having their fun with them.

If my clan were to face up against villains and crooks, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for them to know the lengths our enemies were willing to go to take us down.

“If you’re working for a noble, someone out there might try to get information out of you just like this. If you choose to surrender, try and suss out what kind of person your enemy is. And if you do end up getting caught, I advise you to give any information that’s fine to give. Like your name, for example.”

If you know torture is coming, then you can prepare for it mentally, at least to a certain extent, and also try and come up with some countermeasures. We living beings, weak to pain as we were, had every reason to act prudently while we still had our wits about us.

Being cooperative, while sidestepping anything truly important, also worked reasonably well buying time. If you were good enough at that kind of stalling you could even potentially wring a little actionable intel out of your captors or ferret out an escape route, but whatever the case, it was always a good idea to buy time for any imaginable rescue. It increased your chances of emerging from the encounter in one piece.

“If that doesn’t work and you have information that you would never part with, then...I suggest you fight like a cornered animal. Don’t ever give in. Believe in the skills you honed and see the thing to the end fighting tooth and nail.”

I wanted to give my rookies as much advice and warning as I could, but it was a sad fact of life that something unexpected could befall them at any time. That was why I wanted them to choose to fight as best they could and leave the world without any lingering regrets. I would never order any of them to die.

“Don’t do anything you can’t personally live with. It’s not easy to carry on with your heart full of regrets.”

If your resolve was set, then that was all that mattered. If you ever found things were too much, then you could go adventuring or retire somewhere else. I could show my clan members the possibilities that lay before them and lead them forward, but I could not and would not drag them there.

One of the more important things to remember when going into our line of work was that a hero was, to some people, a nuisance—someone who would be better off out of the picture.

After her sixth brush with asphyxiation, she finally coughed up some information. Unfortunately it wasn’t anything all too helpful, just the fact that she was part of a new organization formed to disseminate Kykeon.

The woman had tried to bluff her way out of the situation at first, claiming that it was in fact the Baldur Clan who were working behind the scenes, and that I would be subject to Nanna’s fury.

Whoever it was we were fighting against was playing it safe. They had cloaked what needed hiding and made sure that no individual would have enough information to give any indication as to who was working at the heart of the operation.

Even going through Marsheim and beating up every suspect one by one would still take more time than Kykeon needed to permeate through Ende Erde. Their warehouses, too, were widely distributed and almost entirely decentralized. I had asked my alfar companions for some help, but they were only able to point me to the warehouse we had raided.

The deeper we got into this, the more I started to think that although Marsheim was the unfortunate target of their debilitating attack, they were probably working from a base at a considerable remove. The manufacturer might not even have been in Marsheim.

After our short but intense meeting, I let the woman go, reasoning that she had no more information to give. As I stood by the window and watched her dash off, Siegfried came up to me with a sigh.

“Hey, Erich? We got a few rookies who, although they’re not properly initiated, they...”

“...Wanna quit?”

“Yeah. I think this was a bit much for them. But...y’know, I was probably a few steps shy of endin’ up in a similar situation to her...”

My comrade had a good head on his shoulders. Sieg could see the possible alternate path where he was spoon-fed the drug, rendered a junk-sick wreck, and then tortured to give up everything he knew about us before finally being “rewarded” with another hit. I was almost jealous of this guy’s luck stat.

“Think about it this way, Sieg. That means that the ones who chose to stay have the resolve to be great adventurers. We should be happy that they’ve got good backbones.”

“Yeah... Guess you’re right.”

I didn’t let myself get too jealous, though—his luck was my luck. Our enemy had the false impression that Siegfried was more sick than he was, and this had allowed me to get a reading on the affiliation of the possible spy in our ranks. Whoever they were working for, it wasn’t our mysterious drug-dealing enemy. If they really had the inside scoop on our clan, they would have known that Siegfried hadn’t been affected by Kykeon. He hadn’t shown symptoms all through yesterday, and the fact that they hadn’t waited long to reach out to him meant that they hadn’t reworked it for a delayed onset.

Nanna had already confirmed that a Kykeon high only lasted about four to six hours. One of the major draws of it was that it kicked in almost immediately. This was reassuring information in the event it was used against us.

“If this is enough to get their stomachs turning, they’re not cut out to be heroes. Right?”

Siegfried had seemed pretty stone-faced through it all; I figured he could ground me, but he just sighed again.

“For me...I guess it’s made my resolve a bit more solid. Made me think that I’m gonna find who’s doing this and make sure they never come back to Ende Erde.”

“Great! Great. A half-baked resolve is going to get you killed. I’m not faulting those who left—it takes a certain type of bravery to quit before it gets dangerous. I don’t mind if people leave the Fellowship. But the people who remain need to know that we’ve started a real conflict.”

“I ain’t got a single urge to run away, but, ugh, it doesn’t feel good to know that I can’t.”

“I wasn’t testing you, comrade. Sorry if this whole thing’s upset you.”

Resolve was, ultimately, calcified sentimentality. If I had accidentally offended my friend, then I wanted to apologize to him. He brushed off my apology, saying that I wasn’t at fault—he just needed to work through and accept the situation in his own head.

“However,” I went on, “I think the higher-ups in their organization are going to be on high alert, Sieg. I’d advise you not to go about alone. And it might be best to either eat at places you trust or bring your own food and drink. Kykeon’s taken through the mouth, after all.”

“What a pain in the... Ugh, but, yeah, who knows how many heroes got done in by poison, so fair enough...” Siegfried grumbled.

I slapped my disgruntled companion on the back and suggested that he hurry on home.

I had seen Kaya earlier. She had been silent and fuming...

[Tips] Darker parts of society are home to more people who are aware that prolonged suffering is the ideal way of wearing down someone’s soul.