Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Autumn of the Seventeenth Year

Putting the Scenario on Hold

Sometimes a scenario cannot be contained in a day’s session. GMs are known to put the story on temporary hold with a midsized battle or the like. This sort of decision often comes up in urbancrawl adventures that offer a bit more for players to chew on and mull over compared to simple hack-and-slash fare. The GM is as much a director as they are a writer, and so a good GM must keep one eye on the clock so that their players can get home to their beds safely and rise ready to face the new day.

With the arrival of fall came a little birthday celebration from those close to me. It wasn’t worth dwelling on; my impatience with the whole Kykeon affair left the day feeling tainted.

While it was true that the Fellowship of the Blade was coming along nicely, we were still far from averting Marsheim’s sputtering, sickly end. What small headway we’d made had told us nothing about the mastermind behind the Kykeon industry; we didn’t even know where they were operating from.

It nagged at the back of my mind, a faint ember burning in a cranny of my brain, never winking out. I preferred to tick jobs off my list well ahead of their deadlines; sitting with a problem this severe festering in the corner of my vision was starting to take its toll.

We’d eliminated a few other bases since that first raid. All we had to show for it was solid proof that all the Kykeon in Marsheim was manufactured elsewhere. That was it. A manufacturing base wasn’t something you could up and move with ease; if it or the chief distributors’ hideout had been in town, we would have flushed it out by now.

It was a similar sensation to being finally certain that your house key was definitely not in your pocket or your bag after checking a hundred times. Eliminating one possibility meant that infinite other possibilities were still waiting out there for you. My knees felt weak contemplating all the places we’d turned over just today looking for one faint lead.

Ende Erde was, to put it bluntly, a big place. The Mauser and a plethora of lesser rivers ran through it; the plains were wide and plentiful. There were countless hidey-holes that our crooks could crawl into without fear of ever being found. Even Margrave Marsheim couldn’t realistically comb the whole land for our quarry.

Given how serious they were about their operation, it would figure they’d situate themselves somewhere well out of the way of prying eyes.

We couldn’t count on the local guards catching the stuff at the points of entry at the city gates—Kykeon came in thin slivers, making it trivial to smuggle. Running thorough checks on everyone that came in would bring the city’s trade to a standstill; at best, it would drive the dealers to more creative methods for concealing their stashes.

Getting hold of even a loose thread of intel was proving to be a logistical nightmare, never mind hunting down the culprits themselves. GM, you didn’t write this story in a frenzied all-nighter, did you? I wasn’t against big mysteries, but no one enjoys an escape room that they can’t get out of, do they?

I let out a beaten and deflating groan.

“Hey, we got a job today. Try and cheer up a bit, man,” said Siegfried.

“You’re mostly sighs lately, Erich,” said Margit.

“And you’re puffing on your pipe an awful lot... You’re running through your herbs faster than usual,” Kaya added.

I had to snap myself out of my funk—we were on a big job with the Fellowship today.

“Yeah... Sorry, guys. Just agonizing over the usual. I guess with summer ending, I just realized how much we’ve stalled out...”

I needed to shift gears—it was fine to have multiple jobs running at once. I could only justify moping around so much. We weren’t Marsheim’s sole protectors. There was the local administration, the Baldur Clan, Clan Laurentius, the Heilbronn Familie—a whole range of people making sure this city didn’t turn into a scene from some zombie flick. We just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I could air my complaints over a cup of something hard once this was all wrapped up.

“Though,” Siegfried said, “it’s kinda weird to go about town fully equipped...”

“Quite,” Margit replied. “I must say it’s odd, feeling so many eyes on me in my scouting gear.”

It was as they’d said. We’d hit the streets of Marsheim loaded for bear, fit to stand out to the whole world as representatives of the Fellowship. It felt weird to stand out this much, and not in a fun way. We were on our way to the Snowy Silverwolf to meet with the other Fellows, who were similarly equipped. I expected that if anyone saw us from afar they would think we were going to stir up trouble with another clan or on some serious business from the government.

“Ha ha, sorry, Dee. Looks like I’m the only one who’s dressed like a normal person, as always.”

“Come on, call me Siegfried... But don’t worry, Kaya. It makes sense that you only need your staff.”

My comrade’s observation was astute—Kaya barely looked any different. The only difference was that she’d changed out her usual boots for something a bit sturdier. It would be dangerous to assume that she wasn’t prepared—she was just as ready as the rest of us to bring out the fight at the drop of a hat.

Her staff wasn’t quite the same as it had been when we first met. The one she now held was crafted from the undying sacred cedar branches and roots that we had found at the end of our adventure last winter. It was composed of a tangle of branches and roots, and parts of it were coated in a symbiotic lichen-like fungus. Somehow she’d managed to integrate these miraculously still-living components into her old staff. The end result was something entirely unique.

It was slightly taller than Kaya herself, and with its new crescent-shaped end, it looked like a far more powerful beast. It didn’t just improve Kaya’s mana output—it was a piece of equipment specially designed to fit her concoction-based skill set, vastly improving her command over her materials. It required delicate care, but used with skill, she could pluck roots from the ground with ease, dry herbs in an instant, and even dissolve rock as easily as sugar.

With her improved equipment, Kaya had crafted a whole new selection of drafts that were literal lifesavers. Most recently she had concocted an unbelievable potion that could fix a broken bone in two weeks. I was flabbergasted, but she told me that she was still far from her goals.

“And you’ve got your potions, and you’re in your best gear,” Siegfried added. “You, uh... You look great...”

“R-Really? Hehe, thank you.”

Nice one, Sieg! Your voice kind of trailed off at the end there, but you complimented her!

“I feel a bit more confident now,” Kaya went on with a smile.

The outfit that Siegfried had complimented was a chartreuse silk robe decorated with embroidery. She had redyed the whopping five-drachmae fabric that Siegfried had accidentally splashed out on and fashioned it into something suitable to her tastes. It wasn’t a gaudy piece at all; it suited her well.

Naturally, she’d done some tinkering with the dye; the charming green color wasn’t the only thing it’d contributed—the fabric repelled water, dirt, and the occasional edged weapon. It didn’t play nicely with anything metal, but Kaya didn’t carry anything like that in the first place. Then there was her necklace. She’d gone for glass rather than a gemstone; despite its simple outward appearance, I could tell she’d made a tactical decision including it.

With her cutting such a prepared figure, I doubted that anyone could say that she was less prepared than Siegfried and I with our weapons at the ready or Margit with her camouflage cloak.

Character sheet item additions aside, our job today was to lead the rest of our clan to the Adventurer’s Association. Not to raid them, of course; today, we were the Association’s display pieces.

A mediator from the government had dropped through bearing word from on high; to stimulate the Empire’s economic health, they’d put in a request to circulate our stock of ore and fuel around the borderlands. Of course, Marsheim’s Adventurer’s Association had jumped at the chance to serve.

Trade had stagnated lately thanks to a brutal ambush that’d befallen a caravan owned by a certain well-connected merchant family. Even with every assurance that their future ventures would be well guarded, they’d grown wary of any large-scale job beyond the city limits.

The convoy in question had been headed by this family, and twelve others much like it had agreed to hitch their wagons. Each had brought their own personal guards and day laborers, with fifty hired adventurers bulking up their fighting force to a massive hundred fifty warm bodies.

The expedition had attracted a few wandering priests and mages, and the leaders’ preparations had been thorough—picking the safest roads, hiring the best scouts their money could buy—everyone had been certain it would turn out fine. However, in early autumn, when they’d been expected to arrive home...not a single soul had turned up.

All the smaller merchants who’d done business with the Association were stunned into inaction. Jonas Baltlinden was gone; the trade routes were supposed to be safe! Anyone would be nervous about hitting the roads again when such a stunningly outfitted convoy could just vanish into thin air. Caravans were large-scale operations; they attracted attention. All manner of paranoid rumors abounded: Ende Erde had been cursed by the heavens, or Baltlinden had risen from the grave, et cetera, et cetera. Folks were getting unruly about it all.

This was where the Fellowship of the Blade came in.

As of now, our current roster numbered sixteen Fellows. Despite having looted all of our gear, I had made sure that everyone was decently equipped, and my training had left them head and shoulders above your average cut-rate mercenary.

Expecting that one of these days we might have to dirty our hands on the mass combat rules, I’d trained them all in close quarters fighting as a unit. Whether it was to fall into a testudo formation or create a spear wall, I was certain that they could change formation faster than most of our competition.

We held together well; I trusted them to perform swimmingly if we ended up running defense for someone. We’d left a strong impression on the local government; convinced that we were a reliable bunch, they’d begged the caravans to form up again on the grounds that the Fellowship would have their back. And so, we found ourselves armed to the teeth and laden with the public’s trust. The merchants were scared. Nobody wanted to settle for the sort of cheap, unmotivated, disloyal muscle fifty assarii could buy; at the same time, they had their doubts as to whether even a top-dollar group could hold their own. Our job today was to put on such a good show of things that it’d convince our clients to return to business as usual.

Each of us was being paid ten librae just to stand around.

Showing off your fancy new toys was part of the point now. The prospective caravans needed to eye us up and see if the government had picked out a group of adventurers that could really pull their weight and protect them out on the road. No one wanted to drop a lot of money on a dark horse candidate.

Fortunately the lingering heat of the summer was dissipating, and it wasn’t too uncomfortable to be dressed in armor. I would happily put up with a little bit of sweat if it meant protecting Ende Erde’s trade routes.

These caravans were always carrying stock—they would journey out to sell their goods and then restock as they traveled back. If they stopped working then Marsheim would lose out materially and economically. The government could fix prices as a stopgap measure, but this would affect regular trade. Black markets would prosper, creating hyperinflationary bidding wars. It would result in an economic collapse; we had to step up to the plate so the good people of Marsheim could have food on theirs.

Yesterday I ordered the whole clan to polish their weapons and armor to a mirror sheen before dragging them all to the baths to make sure they were clean and their beards (if applicable) were trimmed. We all had to scrub up to give the best possible impression.

I knew that looking good and marching well weren’t signs of capable bodyguards, but as I had told the rookies before, looking the part instilled confidence in the client. You could only prove you had the right stuff in a real battle, so this was the best we could do beforehand. Even the most amazing confectioners would have difficulty attracting a crowd if their presentation was awful.

“We’re adventurers, man... I ain’t a fan of strutting around like I’m onstage.”

“Come now, Sieg! I’m surprised to hear you say that; the way you used to moon over Heavy Tusk Gattie, you’d think he was some big-name actor.”

“Yeah, but that was Gattie! Anyone woulda lost their head! His mane was so cool, and he was built like a damn draft horse!”

“That’s exactly why we’re doing this today,” I said, gesturing at our appearances. “It’s the reason I keep telling the clan that we should present ourselves as ideal adventurers. That means every once in a while we’ve got to indulge in a little showmanship.”

If an adventurer was so deliriously ambitious as to aspire to the heights of heroes sung of for centuries, then they needed charisma well beyond any legend of the stage. It wouldn’t do for the real thing to pale in comparison to their fictionalized counterpart.

As I struck a dramatic and heroic pose, Siegfried grunted as he tilted his head back, then looked down at the ground and ground his teeth. He almost spat out the next words.

“Yeah, yeah, you got me. I hate the fact that I agree with ya.”

“Nice! Erich one, Sieg zero.”

“Must you two always be such children?” Margit said.

“I don’t mind,” Kaya chipped in. “I like it when Dee gets competitive.”

Our companions could only smirk at the scene in front of them. Here we were, two young men strapped head-to-toe in gleaming armor and deadly weapons, making merry like the boys we’d barely ceased to be. It was okay—as long as Sieg got the picture, all was good.

No one else was to know this, but back in my TRPG days we called our PCs the “cast”—all the world was a stage, and I was used to being but an actor upon it. So what if I leaned in a little now? I was well within an adventurer’s remit.

“Hm?”

As we neared the Snowy Silverwolf, I heard mewling from a nearby alley. It was a cat.

“Oh! It’s you. The runaway cat!”

Back in our soot-black days, the cat lord had tasked us with capturing this tortoiseshell cat after he had stolen from the shops of Marsheim. What a surprise to see him again. As I glanced over, he raised a fresh ruckus plainly directed at me.

“Sorry, buddy. We’re on our way to an important job.”

I imagined he was making such a fuss because he either recognized me or just wanted a bite. Our gig today wouldn’t take us out of the city, so I wasn’t carrying anything the little fella would enjoy. It wasn’t Rhinian of me to neglect a cat in need, but it also wasn’t terribly Rhinian of me to fob off work about it.

Yet he wouldn’t stop meowing.

“Hey now, what’s all this fuss about then?”

As we started to walk again, the cat leaped from the alleyway and stood in front of us; he sounded increasingly distraught. This wasn’t a demand for a simple scratch behind the ears; he wasn’t rubbing his body against our legs; he just stood in front of us, raising hell.

An old Imperial superstition held that you ignored a tortoiseshell cat’s warning at your own peril. They were the third most respected class of cat after black cats and white cats. The cat lord had tasked us with punishing him individually, so it looked like his ranking in Marsheim’s cat society wasn’t all that low.

“Hey, Siegfried? How does the old saying go about cats and demands?”

“Hmm. Back in Illfurth they said when you build a new house, you should let the cat be the first one to cross over the threshold.”

“I’m not sure if it’s the one you are thinking of, Erich,” Margit said, “but ignoring a cat’s message will result in seven years of bad luck, or so they say.”

It was clear to me that this cat hadn’t crossed our path just for a few scritches.

“We left in good time, didn’t we?” I said.

“We did, but it wouldn’t be good for the boss to be late,” Siegfried replied. “I figure we’ve got thirty minutes or so?”

That would have to do.

The cat must have sensed our changing hearts; he dashed right back into the alley as if to say, “Follow me.”

“Look at him bolt!” Siegfried said. “I can’t keep up with four legs!”

The cat showed no indication of slowing down for us. Domestic cats couldn’t sustain a sprint for too long, but they could reach speeds of fifty kilometers per hour. This creature could clear a hundred meter dash two whole seconds faster than the fastest man on Earth.

“Grah, I’ve got armor and a spear weighing me down!”

That went extra when we were hauling all our equipment. Fortunately it had noticed how slow us mensch were and stopped every now and then to check if we were keeping up. It was clearer than ever that this is what it wanted from us.

“A dead end?!” Siegfried shouted. I’d had a bad feeling about this from the jump, and now it seemed like I’d been right.

We could only watch as the cat hopped up on a few barrels and leaped up and out of sight.

The wall wasn’t particularly high—perhaps a head and a half taller than me—but it was a big ask when we were as weighed down as we were. Still, I felt that we couldn’t waste time finding another way. This was no feline prank. Danger awaited; it was time for a couple of Fitness checks.

“Sieg, I’ll give you a boost!”

“R-Right, gotcha!”

I dashed ahead of the group, catching the wall and turning on a heel so I came to a stop facing my crew. I squatted down, placed my hands on top of each other and held them at knee height.

Siegfried passed his spear to Kaya before planting his left foot on my hands to spring upward. We’d practiced all over the city, driving the target number for this particular trick into the dirt. I could never have done it with someone like Etan, but with my similarly wiry comrade, it was a breeze.

“How difficult it must be to only have two legs,” Margit said as she gave Siegfried a hand up. This was very much her wheelhouse. She’d scaled the wall effortlessly; she could walk on ceilings provided they could bear her weight. I imagined that in her eyes us two-legger groundlings were perpetually bringing up the rear.

Stupid armor, I thought. If I wasn’t wearing it, I could totally triple jump onto this. Unfortunately, I couldn’t show off today. My Agility wasn’t bad, but not high enough to reclass into a ninja.

“You’re next, Kaya!” I said.

“O-Okay! Apologies in advance!”

After passing her staff and spear to Margit, she leaped off of my hands and scaled the wall with a bit of help from Siegfried. As for me, I distanced myself from the wall, did a run up and leaped into the air to grab my comrade’s arm.

“You’re...damn heavy!”

“Shut it! I’m light for my size, you know?!”

“Yeah, but your armor and sword’re a load and a half!”

Scaling a wall was almost a full action for us mensch, but it barely even registered as an obstacle for our feline guide. He was waiting farther down the path atop the wall, clearly impatient with us.

Ugh, I thought, and I scrubbed up before leaving today and everything! If I don’t cast Clean before the meet, I’m going to be the scruffiest one there...

Finally, we came upon the first trace of something genuinely wrong. Blood. And a lot of it.

“Whoever’s blood this is, they’re pretty badly hurt.”

“It doesn’t look to be an injured animal. It’s a humanfolk’s, I’m certain.”

The cat carried on, not sparing us a second look. As she spoke, Margit dipped her finger in the blood and sniffed it, not dropping her pace either. “Smells demihuman. A bestial race, most likely. If I had to guess...probably a bubastisian.”

I was always amazed at how much Margit’s nose seemed to tell her; it was only fitting for such a talented huntress, I suppose. She could track a person in the field just by letting the wind carry their scent to her.

“Around the next corner there’s an open space. Someone’s there; they’re moving,” I said.

The wall that we were running along functioned as nothing more than a boundary between residences. They weren’t roads and weren’t meant to be traveled, but you could technically cut across them if you were just desperate for a shortcut. The buildings in Marsheim were squished together and so we had to make our way forward in single file. The path split in two about twenty paces ahead—the cat juked left.

My mental map of this neighborhood wasn’t completely accurate, but from what I could remember, the buildings had sprung up here without much rhyme or reason, leaving an open lot bordered by houses on all sides; there was no way in without taking to the walls. It was about sixty paces across, but no one knew who held the lease to the land; it’d been abandoned and become a dumping ground for the locals’ garbage. Here stood Marsheim’s administration in miniature.

As soon as we found ourselves there, we would be open to attack from all angles.

“Let’s go. I’ll lead the way. You’ve got my back, right, comrade?”

“Tch... I don’t like this one bit.”

Siegfried kept pace, his spear at the ready, and although he was plainly disgruntled, he seemed on board with the plan. He’d been an adventurer for just over a year at this point, but his prowess had earned him a promotion to amber-orange—my friend knew that this situation stank to high heaven. I felt a surge of confidence that he would have my back as we headed into the unknown.

“Margit, maintain your height. No sense giving up a terrain advantage.”

“Understood. What are you doing down there?”

“Whoever’s there, we pacify and restrain. Focus on backing us up.”

“Very good. On my life, none will walk in your shadow.”

Much as I liked to complain about my luck, I had to admit I’d hit the jackpot with Margit—an unfaltering teammate, a lifelong friend, and nowadays a remarkable companion in bed.

“Kaya, you stay up here,” Siegfried said. “Chuck a potion if it looks like we’ll need it.”

“G-Gotcha. Stay safe, Dee.”

“Call me Siegfried. I’m gonna make sure I don’t dishonor that name.”

Siegfried and I—both blessed with someone who always had our back—nodded at each other, then moved into action.

The cat meowed in impatience. We turned the corner at full speed. Margit scuttled up and out of sight, and we dashed on trusting that she had our backs.

Siegfried was two and a half paces behind me. We were in a close formation to shield us from any sudden attacks, and to make sure that our first move wasn’t spotted until the last moment.

The space opened up onto a heap of trash that had been evacuated out of the neighboring windows, and piles of scraps of clothes and other detritus that had wound up here on the wind. Amid it all, something quite horrible was happening before us.

It was Schnee, hobbling away from her pursuer. There was a deep gash near her left ear, and both of her hands clasped her stomach; blood poured between her fingers. This was a dire wound; if her organs had been perforated, she had little hope for survival.

Naturally, I laid the blame on the bastard with the knife in hot pursuit. I couldn’t make out the person’s race or gender through their garb, but they were small—probably too small to be mensch. What I could tell was that they’d made a dire mistake. Whoever they were, they’d sorely miscalculated the risk of drawing the ire of Schnee’s friends.

I leaped down from the wall and drew Schutzwolfe, keen to fell my favorite informant’s attacker. As I drew near, I felt a change in the air. Someone else was primed to strike at me. Although I had the height advantage over Schnee’s mysterious assassin, this other person was situated even higher than me.

Dammit! I was speeding forward with no way to change my trajectory. The moment you followed through on your resolve to strike was always the moment that left you most vulnerable. I had come into this expecting the unexpected, but to think they’d been this prepared for us!

I racked my brains in the few spare moments my Lightning Reflexes had bought me. I had two options ahead of me. I could twist my body as I fell and receive the incoming attack, or I could finally loose my magic and use my Unseen Hands to act as a platform to take another leap and evade it. No, bad idea. Both of these protected me but did nothing to stop the assailant going for Schnee. While I acted, she would be struck down.

“Keep going!”

It was Margit. I scrapped those other thoughts and focused on reaching Schnee as quickly as I could. If she had my back, then I needed to play my part too.

I heard the thud of one body crashing into another. Half a breath later came the clamor of metal on metal.

They blocked me! I’d gone in with the upper hand and all my focus poured into the blow—how had they done that?

Margit’s warning must have given Schnee’s attacker just enough time to register that they were being targeted. They had immediately shifted their attention from their prey to protecting themselves.

The attacker clutched their dagger in both hands; it was a thin but robust piece. They wore a dark robe with long, wide-mouthed sleeves. It was difficult for me to make out anything from their appearance.

This was annoying. I knew that situational advantage wasn’t everything, but I had a gravity assist. How could they have stopped me with just a dagger? As I put more strength into my attack, they used my force to drag their blade forward to escape from our push. They must have picked up a decent parrying or damage-reduction skill somewhere. I could sense that they would have preferred to have simply countered my attack, but had decided that falling back for a moment was the more prudent strategy.

I rode the impact into a somersault. It wasn’t pleasant to land in garbage, but I preferred it to cracking my spine on bare pavement. My Parallel Processing made note of Margit, who was at the corner of my peripheral vision.

I was surprised—she was grappling with someone in midair. It was odd to see her using her dagger instead of her usual shortbow—usually that was reserved for breaking down kills for parts. Their descent was a lot slower than I expected, and not because of my reflexes—whoever it was Margit was fighting, they were using their wings to keep them airborne.

Their upper body was sort of spearhead-shaped, and they had more limbs than I was expecting. They wore the same anonymizing low hood and assassin’s gear as their compatriot. However, from their pale green exoskeleton, their insectile body plan, and the long, scythe-like forelimbs lashing from their long sleeves, I could tell that they were a kaggen—a mantis-like class of demihuman.

You didn’t see kaggen often if at all in the Empire. Their populations were mostly constrained to the Kingdom of Seine and the southern continent. What was this person doing all the way out in Marsheim?

“Grah! Stupid narrow alley!”

Siegfried finally entered the fray. He propelled himself from the wall with his spear in a leaping thrust...that struck thin air.

The assassin had ducked clear of the blow and, with a speed unthinkable for an average mensch, they sprung forward. In the next moment, they leaped again and again, springing about at blinding speed. It would take an entire turn just to stop the assassin’s movement.

“Siegfried, stay there and watch my back!”

“Got it!”

I wasn’t asking my comrade to remain on standby; I needed him to deal with the sudden looming presence I felt behind me.

“Hmm...”

“Whoa, you’re goddamn massive!”

From underneath a trash pile came a huge arachne who had been lying in wait. Siegfried readied his spear to take their charge. Even laid out flat, she was at least five feet around. Her sturdy legs told me she was some bigger sort of spider than an orb-weaver. A huntsman, maybe?

Between the kaggen and a huntsman arachne, it wouldn’t be a leap of the imagination to think that the stabby little bastard was a demihuman too. They were lightning fast and light; their weight was clearly the root of the problem. No ordinary mensch was so light. I could get a decent slash in if they weren’t so zippy! By the way they held their blade, I imagined that unlike the kaggen and arachne, they were a beast type.

What a bunch of dicks!

Schism, my ace in the hole, did wonders against armored foes or when I needed a strike that would skip past my opponent’s DEF; it relied on me focusing my strength to a single point, rendering me vulnerable in exchange for a perfectly deadly blow. But with all that windup, I couldn’t use it against someone this speedy unless I had truly seen through their moves.

This assassin was a fencer—they piled on loads of small strikes that they could use to force an opening by deflecting my attacks.

Siegfried traded a few blows with the huntsman before taking a step back to recalibrate, putting us back-to-back now in this suffocatingly constrained battlefield. At almost the same time, the kaggen’s wings must have tired out; they and Margit went crashing into a pile of garbage.

“Margit!” I shouted.

“I’m fine!” she replied. “Kaya! A-2!”

After a breath or two, our backup came like lightning.

We had worked out a range of shorthand signals so that Kaya could easily help us in the heat of battle without placing herself within firing range. From forty paces down the T-shaped walled path, the herbalist used her sling-staff to launch a bottle into the fray.

The crescent shape of Kaya’s staff wasn’t just a cosmetic sign of its power. She’d used its symbiotic fungus to create a pouch that could hold a bottle. In other words, instead of merely throwing her potions as she had done before, she could launch them far greater distances.

The crack unleashed an arrow ward. It was a reworked formula, and Kaya had outdone herself—we didn’t need to rub this one on. She’d done up the spell formula so that her friendlier potions would only activate for those within the area of effect with a Fellow’s badge. We would be safe from incoming projectiles from here on out.

In the next instant, four heavy bolts shot through the air and stuck themselves in a pile of trash a ways off. There weren’t four archers lying in wait; they had all been loosed by the same person. Upon the building on the far side of our impromptu arena stood a lone shadow. Margit must have spotted them just in time.

It was a vierman—a four-armed demihuman. They wore the same garb as their accomplices, but you couldn’t hide certain features that easily.

Come on! This is way too much to take in! It’s been, what, twelve seconds since we came here; how do you expect me to keep up with this much new information in two rounds of combat?!

“What’s...goin’ on?” Schnee muttered as she collapsed to the ground, finally spent.

We had to protect our target against four talented assassins—of course, we couldn’t rule out that even more were to come—and not only were we short on intel, we had to deal with races I knew next to nothing about. What kind of sick joke was this?

“Fancy seeing you here, my feline friend,” I said.

“Erich...”

“Keep pressure on your wound and hold on. We’ll be with you before long.”

I pushed into Siegfried’s back, and he caught on as we slowly shuffled toward Schnee. The small demihuman had moved out; now they circled us like a bird of prey, limiting our movements. We had repositioned somewhere where I could aid Schnee at any moment, but what to do next? I glanced over at Margit, who—had the kaggen’s left-hand scythe stabbed clean through her right hand, and was beating them back regardless?!

Whether it was steel or flesh and blood, a blade couldn’t cut if it couldn’t move; more power to her for locking it down, but that must have hurt like a mother. I was blown away by her resolve. A kaggen’s wrist claws were rugged and serrated; taking a blow from one of those would be like trying to tank a woodshop accident.

We need to make this bout a quick one. My partner had more raw power than a mensch, but her endurance was low; it couldn’t be maintained. She was doing well to hold off the kaggen with her dagger in her dominant hand, but we didn’t have a lot of time.

Schnee would have to grin and bear it just a little longer.

“Siegfried, make sure you don’t take any hits directly to the skin, got it?”

“Poison, huh?”

Fortunately my beloved blade wasn’t chipped or anything, but I’d noticed something foreign mingling with the rust-preventing oil that slicked my blade. It was as Sieg had said: poison. I couldn’t read the pallor of Schnee’s skin under her fur, but her expression gave away an agony that extended beyond the physical damage of the wound; she must have fallen victim to this same poison.

“That arachne uses a weird weapon too... Some kinda string trapped my spear.”

“Garrote wire, I bet... A common assassin’s tool. What a mess... I suppose tortoiseshell cats are as much bad luck as good, but this seems like overkill.”

This would have been an instant total party kill situation for any regular adventuring crew, and to make matters worse, the combat encounter was loaded with grim win and loss conditions. There would be no limping away to fight another day here; if we failed here, we’d die. What’s more, we had no idea how many turns we had left before our ally breathed her last, leaving us with only a few venom-addled parting words to go on.

The GM really had it out for me this time. I couldn’t remember offering a single prayer to the God of Trials! But whatever. It didn’t matter if we’d known this was coming or not; if we were dumped into a sudden battle, then there was only one thing for it: eliminate every last one of them.

“I’m ending this in one strike,” I said.

“Who’re you taking?” Siegfried replied. “I think the arachne’s a woman; something about the voice.”

“Judging from our positions, I’ll take on the small one that I went for first.”

“Gotcha. You don’t wanna cheat on Margit with another arachne, after all...”

“We don’t know she’s a woman!”

We didn’t have long until they came for us again. Just as we were planning our next move, our opponents might change formation or who they’d attack alongside next. They could even choose to pick us off one by one.

A barrage of bolts from the vierman that signaled the start of the next round. From the way the bolts flew, I imagined that we were dealing with an Eastern-style crossbow, which could be loaded much faster than your regular crossbow. It still took a while, but the projectiles flew just as fast and just as deadly.

Our sniper had made a foolish error. The previous bolts hadn’t missed; Kaya had redirected them. It didn’t matter if you changed your target; the results would be the same.

This was one of the drawbacks of a long-distance weapon. You couldn’t communicate with your allies effectively, and if they moved in unexpected ways they could fall victim to your own volleys.

The assassins moved in as the bolts scattered.

The short dagger wielder went for Siegfried and the arachne went for me. The fact that they lunged at us directly indicated that they didn’t care which one of us they hit—a kill was a kill. Even as they came at us from opposite directions, I could tell that they were confident in their ability to coordinate well enough not to hit each other.

It was the best move in this situation. But tackling it wasn’t impossible.

“As expected!” I said.

“Yeah, yeah!”

We were well trained and in sync—we could change formation on a dime and change our targets freely. Back-to-back, we each spun in a half circle, and rushed forward, pushing off from each other.

Our enemies had been taken unawares, but they kept up the attack. Either of them could get behind us and take out Schnee. No, they were really talented. If they were this good, they could easily kidnap her. But why hadn’t one of them swept in to take her while the other three piled it on? If they did, we’d have had little recourse.

I didn’t like this. At this rate Schnee would die eventually, but it looked like they wanted to finish her off themselves here and now. Even if dead men told no tales, their corpses could leave clues. Clearly they wanted to leave as little evidence as possible.

I was impressed by their ability to maneuver across all this rugged terrain. It was a waste. They were skilled and could really do some good; it was such a pity that their talents were put to use in places like this one, that they would never leave alive.

They cleared the gap in almost no time. The small assassin thrust with their envenomed dagger—such an open strike that it seemed like they didn’t care if I parried it or not—and I did something just a little bit sneaky.

“Your greatest weapon is secrecy against your foe” was a saying from the School of First Light—the cadre committed to the containment of magic knowledge above all else. Lady Agrippina had taken a page out of their book when she’d commissioned me to hide my magic. The long and short of it was that I should only reveal my hand when the circumstances called for it.

The assassin grunted as I parried their attack; their voice sounded like a young girl’s. I couldn’t afford to show any mercy; I dropped into my usual relaxed posture before stepping into a long, upward diagonal arc.

They had probably wanted to get their next move in ahead of me, but they’d faltered, and now I could read them like an open book. Another thrust came in the next moment, but I deflected it with my gauntlet before winding up for another slash.

I wasn’t working on pure physical reflexes alone here. I was using my Unseen Hands to guarantee their strikes never hit as I closed the gap between us.

As we moved, I grabbed their leg, making it seem as if they tripped up on something in the trash heap, while keeping my mana waves down to a minimum. Fortunately, the residual mana from Kaya’s potion was still scattered about; only a Collegiate professor could have picked up on the second mage in our party.

I deflected another strike with my gauntlet. I couldn’t go overboard with this—I couldn’t afford to accidentally kill them.

Our assassins here wanted to silence Schnee permanently, but what this told us was that she had information that was worth killing her for. If I wanted this little birdie to sing, then I had to refrain from ending their life. Maybe a lost limb would loosen their lips? As long as they didn’t bleed out, they could tell us as much as we wanted. Maybe it would be better to really put them on the ropes by inflicting a little more physical punishment to really get them to talk. They were a dab hand at working in the shadows—I doubted they would allow themselves the shame of being kept prisoner. Then, maybe...

“Whoa!”

I felt my blade find purchase in flesh. I had easily cut through their cloth armor, chosen to limit their movements as little as possible, and hit their left forearm.

Th-They’re mad! They moved their body just before my hit connected and used their arm as a shield!

My strike landed true—too true. It was trivial to cut through someone’s arm, but they had placed their own blade lengthwise across the arm just in time. They could deflect my strike as soon as it hit. This was a mad strategy; usually it was impossible to pull off through the pain of being cut. Most would flinch or drop their weapon. Unfortunately for me, their resolve was unbending. They took the hit and parried me, and so the battle continued.

The impact of the strike meant that I’d pushed them farther away from Schnee, but they were still difficult to pin down. I didn’t even have the spare presence of mind to ponder whether to use my magic to retaliate.

“Rah!”

I wasn’t sure what was going through their head, but as they jumped back with a gaping wound in their left arm, they launched a dagger at me. They were at the perfect distance. As it spun toward me it would have sliced through my carotid artery unless I moved my head away just in time.

I had been just as ready to lose a limb or two to win this bout, but they evidently had a lot more on the line. A number of my Unseen Hands had formed an invisible wall around Schnee, but I felt my heart pounding heavily with these mad strikes.

This was going nowhere. They had gotten out of range again. I needed to check how my allies were faring too. I didn’t need to crane my neck around; I used Farsight—again I thanked Kaya’s potion for hiding my mana output—and got a bird’s-eye view of the situation. Everything moved in tandem as I took five seconds to survey the scene.

I didn’t know what had happened to Margit, but her hand was still stabbed through. She had used her legs to grab onto the kaggen’s other scythe, pushing her foe into a stalemate. Margit had the advantage, though; she was battering her foe’s exposed face with the pommel of her dagger. Attagirl.

Yet the kaggen wasn’t flinching. Maybe their night-black shawl covering their face was a magic item; each of Margit’s strikes made an awful crunch. Margit’s foe was taking the hits with their jaw. Hell, maybe they were relying on some kind of unique kaggen trait; I’d never met one before. Maybe they had mandibles like sepa did?

Siegfried was grappling with the arachne’s wire, but he’d turned it to his advantage. After letting his spear get caught up in it, he wrangled it around like a fork twirling up some spaghetti in hopes of mangling it beyond use. Anyone who knew the weaknesses of a spear had thought once or twice to throw their jacket or something at it to annoy their foe, but Sieg was skillfully exploiting this “weakness.”

Come on, we just need one more push...

“Kaya!” I shouted. I needed to send a signal to her. “A—”

I wanted to call in a tear gas potion, but before I could, another projectile landed in the small yard. I was the closest. It was a shiny black ball. In the next second it erupted in a cloud of white smoke.

“Smoke screen, huh? Dammit, no good!”

“Watch out! Don’t breathe it in!” Schnee shouted, spitting flecks of blood.

I was too close and couldn’t react in time. By the time the message had entered my head, I’d taken in a mouthful of the stuff. Immediately my vision started to sway. The colors blended into one another, and I felt as if icy needles were coursing through me.

I fucked up.

This wasn’t your regular smoke screen. This was aerosolized Kykeon.

With my color perception thrown out of whack and my proprioception busted, I felt my consciousness daring to slip away. I clenched my teeth and steeled my focus, forcing myself to keep my stance no matter what.

I felt it seeping through my Insulating Barrier. The white smoke was chewing away at it as the safe zone around me grew smaller. I hadn’t foreseen a battle today, and so I hadn’t applied any of Kaya’s miasma-warding potion. I was regretting it now. Sure, there hadn’t been any time to prep it, but I still cursed my folly.

Thankfully my allies had the benefit of distance and had responded to Schnee’s warning quickly. Siegfried stopped trying to wrench the wire from his foe and covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve; Margit gritted her teeth and pulled her hand free before climbing to higher ground.

Our scout had chosen to retreat because she had realized that whoever had thrown the Kykeon bomb was a new enemy; she sped off to protect Kaya.

That left me with one thing to do.

I poured all my efforts into oozing out a killing intent, a threat to cut down any who would dare approach. I usually made an effort to keep my claws retracted, as it helped make my strength difficult to read. Even if I wasn’t going to lash out, I forced out all the furious killing intent I could—indicating that I would cut down any who stood in my way.

I was in no mental state to use magic, but my Divine-level hybrid sword arts, honed to be almost instinctual, combined with Overwhelming Grin—something I had decided was worth getting last year—made me seem about as deadly as I could possibly be.

It was sad to say, but I was bluffing hardcore; hopefully it was enough to give the impression that I wouldn’t let the smoke affect me.

“Your parlor tricks won’t work on me. If you want to keep brawling, then I’ll take you on. Run home. Lick your wounds. Unless you’d rather...?”

I controlled my ragged breathing to avoid taking in any more of the smoke than I should. Forcing my base reactions down like this sent pain through my muscles, and the hallucinations were threatening to make me lose any sense of ordered space, but I refused to let my posture waver. I needed to show them I could fight at any second.

As long as they ran off, then we could save Schnee and pick up the scraps of a victory. You can do this, adventurer.

It felt like an eternity, but in a second we no longer had to worry about the Kykeon. A sudden hurricane came blasting through the spaces between the buildings, sending the smoke away—away from the yard and out from my body too.

“UGH! I hate hate HATE this!”

It was the wailing voice of an angry girl. Lottie had come to the rescue. Only I could hear her, but everyone else could feel the manifestation of her anger.

Lottie was a sylphid. She must have sensed that I’d caught a lungful of Kykeon and gotten rightly furious that the element she so favored had been tainted in this way. It was evident that she didn’t like the drug all too much.

“It stinks; it reeks; it’s just super yucky! Go away! Go awaaay!”

With a roaring gale that would have blown off my helmet if I hadn’t tightened the straps, she cleared the air of any last trace of the drug. The trash was lifted up into the air, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep the dross out of them.

“Why’re you doing this?! Autumn is when the air’s fresh and feels the best! DON’T ruin it!”

It was a pure, unfettered rage. An alf’s anger peaked not when they sought it out, but when their sphere of authority was infringed upon.

Lottie had been captured and put in a special cage, all for the sake of “research.” She spent decades forgotten in a secret room which stank of mold and decay, with only the energy to sleep. All the same, she hadn’t held all too much anger toward this. Lottie knew that wind was omnipresent and sometimes settled—it was probably just tiring. That was why she had described her imprisonment as “nap time,” despite Ursula’s chagrin. She’d never uttered a single complaint about her time spent locked away.

This was nothing like back then. Her power was incredible. Although Lottie usually flitted around, as capricious as the air itself, she lived on a different plane of existence from us humanfolk—the strength she wielded was mind-blowing. If it were only our enemies here, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could lift up the entire block with this power.

“And how dare you do this to our Beloved One!”

An alf’s power was stronger the more abstract their domain was. Wind was something that blew over everything, that resided everywhere. I made a mental note to never be fooled by her cute demeanor ever again.

“Grr! I’m so mad! I won’t ever forget this!”

Lottie kept the wind stirred up as she carried on with her adorable tirade. By the time it settled, the only people left were four very dazed adventurers—harmed but not beaten—and one barely breathing informant.

We hadn’t managed to kill our enemies, but we had prevented them from achieving their goal and severely injured one of their own. This must have been a good opportunity for them to make a run for it. Or maybe Lottie’s wind had blown them away. Whatever the case, they were gone.

“H-Hold on a second...”

I had seen this kind of scenario at the table. The GM was putting this long campaign on hold! We had clashed with some tough foes, they had suffered quite some damage, and the GM was like, “Okay, let’s wrap things up for today and return to this story later!”

“No way... This was just part of the setup...?”

I wasn’t sure if that Kykeon bomb had been thrown to buy their allies time to escape or to help them take us down, but man, who throws something so deadly you need to get an alf involved at your average Level 1 Fighter?

“Erich, are you quite okay?!” Margit said as she dashed toward me. She must have assumed my daze was due to the drug. Only I had been able to hear Lottie, so I guessed my companions all must have assumed a sudden spot of bad weather had saved us.

“I don’t know where all that wind came from, but if you inhaled that smoke then we should get you to Kaya right away...”

“Ah, no, it’s okay,” I said. “It didn’t reach my lungs.”

I was more worried about my partner. She had taken on a foe three times her size. It looked like she hadn’t suffered any wounds aside from the one in her hand, but that wasn’t much cause for celebration. The scythe had gone through her palm between her forefinger and middle finger. It was a more gruesome wound than I had expected, and I almost felt I could see through to the other side...

“But Margit! Look at you! Oh man...”

“I’m all right, Erich. Kaya will patch me up. More importantly...”

Without so much as flinching at her battle wound, Margit went to Schnee. Margit put her finger up to Schnee’s nose and sighed in relief—she was breathing.

“She’s alive, but only just. We need to prioritize her above all.”

Th-Thank goodness—she’s alive! She’s just slumped there, so I feared the worst.

“Kaya, hurry down! I’ll catch you,” Siegfried said.

“Okay!” came a reply from a short ways off. Our resident healer had sensed that something was off from our little localized freak windstorm and come closer. It looked like she could tend to Schnee right away.

As Kaya looked at the wounded informant, my thoughts drifted to the enemy. The four of them had been tough, but who had the fifth person been?

I wanted to grab my head in despair. What a mess this whole thing was becoming. I didn’t need more puzzles and mysteries to ponder over. The eventual goal was the same—cut them all down—but the journey there was getting awfully convoluted.

At any rate, we were a mess, and it was looking like it would be difficult to stick to our original schedule like this. I hated to change plans at such short notice, but I would have to get Etan to lead the Fellows and apologize on our behalf.

I would have to give a report too. Schnee hadn’t just been poking around at empty rumors. Weaponized Kykeon had been powerful enough to draw a forced end to our battle. She had been digging on our behalf to bring a solution to this situation, and that had probably put a target on her back.

Today the blood-covered bubastisian was wearing a simple maid’s outfit. It was slightly different from the one she wore before, so I imagined she must have been undercover at a different manor this time.

“Kaya, will she live?”

“Her wounds are deep and her pulse is racing. I think she might have been poisoned,” Kaya replied. “I hope my new formula will work.”

The herbalist cut off the patch of clothes around Schnee’s wound with an obsidian knife and examined the wound as she searched for something in her waist bag. She pulled out a potion bottle and poured a gelatinous light-green substance onto Schnee’s wound; it looked like it crawled in. I took a step back. If this hadn’t been one of Kaya’s concoctions, I would have totally thought it was some kind of combat magic.

“Wh-What was that?” I asked.

“Dee told me once that if your intestines are ruptured, you’ll die even if you stop the blood. He was completely right, so I decided to make a potion that can clean you up on the inside. I thought if I used an algae that could move on its own, that would speed up the process.”

A moving algae? Like euglena?

During our time on the battlefield I had told my comrade about wounds—ones that were fatal and ones that were not. I was impressed that my little tidbit had come in handy now. These two were always so damn creative. Who decides to make a cure that moves on its own, just hearing that?

“It should help close the internal wounds too.”

The College had undertaken a similar avenue of research into battlefield medicine; their results were a lot more rough-and-tumble. You would use your Unseen Hands to enter the body via the wound and cast low-yield Clean spells to eliminate pathogens while preserving the microbiome. It required multiple simultaneous spells and a delicate touch; it wasn’t the sort of thing you could trust students with.

This was a far more elegant solution—using the flagellum-based movement of algae to perform a similar function to slimes. I was ready to be the first person to applaud her if Schnee survived this, but I couldn’t help thinking how noisy the line of potential customers begging for a sample would be if word got out.

“I haven’t had a chance to test it, but it should at least stop the bleeding. It’s better than the bandages or tourniquets we have right now,” Kaya added.

“Ah, then you should be able to patch this up nicely too,” Margit said, waving her right hand—please stop that, your hand’s barely held together by a thread... Kaya looked at it and furrowed her brow.

“I can stop the bleeding right away, but I’ll have to stitch this up. Um, Margit? Can you feel your fingers?”

“All five of them. I’ll do anything if it means patching this up.”

“All right, I’ll bandage it up for you for now. What a terrible wound... Let’s work on stopping the bleeding.”

As she fussed over the wound, Margit merely laughed.

“Better this than what you mensch women go through the first time you get penetrated,” she said with a snicker.

I had heard that women were far more frank than men when it came to dirty jokes, but we had just survived a battle where a single misstep could have killed us—this was not the right time for that. No... Maybe it was the release of the stress and the joy at having survived that had brought out this side of her.

“Hey, Kaya? Should I move Schnee?” Siegfried said.

“H-Huh? U-Um, j-just a second!”

See, instead of showing how well you are, you’ve just made the poor girl awkward.

“I th-think we should l-leave her there f-for now! She’s got w-wounds aside from the one on h-her stomach! A-And I’ll check for p-poison!”

“Gotcha,” Siegfried replied. “Think we should wrap some bandages ’round her stomach too?”

“Y-Yes please! Th-Thanks!”

And look, Siegfried didn’t even hear you! You’ve just flustered Kaya so hard she looks like she’ll burst into flame...

“Margit?” I said.

“Hee hee, yes, yes, I apologize. I think I was riding high on the knowledge that I came out the other side of today alive; my words got away from me.”

Margit was wearing a mask that covered all but her eyes, but I could see a red flush at their corners. It looked like she wasn’t lying about the excitement of survival.

“My opponent was quite the hunter too,” Margit went on. “I couldn’t sense them at all until the moment they attacked me.”

“Even you?”

“Once you reach a certain point, you can reduce your presence to that of a rock or a plant. As soon as you strike, that’s when the illusion is broken. Mother called it ‘becoming a tree.’”

I shivered as Margit told me how Corale had perfected her ability to hide her killing instinct. Judging from how none of us could sense or see the person who’d thrown the smoke bomb, that person must have been of a similar level. I had my own moves that let me shut down my enemy’s reactions, but it was disheartening to think about being on the receiving end. And they had five trained assassins? Give me a break... I can’t get a second to catch my breath.

We needed to either wrap up our eventual second bout with them quickly or create a situation that made killing us not worth their while. It was a tortoiseshell cat that brought us into this mess, but it was up to us to sort it out.

“Hey, what does the cat lord want from us?” I asked the cat. He had disappeared for the duration of the battle, but here he was again next to Schnee. As he sniffed at her, all I got in response was a golden-eyed stare.

[Tips] Cats are always watching. It is a cat’s responsibility to keep an eye on the sort of evil that cannot be overlooked.