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Chapter Text

First Exploit: New Game Plus

I am going to go ahead and gloss over the boring stuff and get to the fun bits, okay? It’s rarely interesting to read about the whole… showing up in another world thing, but it’s important to know. Acclimating is probably hard for many, it wasn’t especially easy for me, and I would rather not dwell on it.

Suffice it to say I got away without needing to experience the toddler years, in all their dubious glory, became the lucky firstborn son and heir to a backwoods landed knight—and therefore, by default, his squire, and was guaranteed access to the lower levels of the Academy, and am only a few years out from becoming a proper member of high-class society in its attendance.

My name is Alan Fou Varez the Second, squire to Alan Fou Varez the Greater, and I well and truly look forward to making this new world my bitch, when and however possible. (If possible.) Thankfully, even the most well balanced game has some manner of exploits to it, and a world first imagined as such a thing should too. It can’t be too hard, right?

To focus on the important background—I read the books, and so had an idea of just how shitty the Holfort Kingdom was, and all the trash on the horizon. So ever since I had awakened at the age of seven to my new reality, with shady memories of my personal life and all that I’d lost, but clear memories of this and other properties of dubious literary value, I got to work.

You see, I’m lazy by nature, but I was the son of a knight. Our only source of respect from both the commoners, (the only ones in society that we outranked,) and the true nobility above us, (the ones who got to tell us where and how to die,) was our ability in battle. Some knights specialized in Armor piloting, others in the commanding of Airship frigates, or swarms of smaller craft, and a few even practiced magic, but all derived every last bit of their power and respect from their capacity to commit violence.

So at the tender age of seven, I demanded that my father start training me in swordsmanship, and belligerently petitioned him, again and again, to hire a magic tutor.

After he beat me black and blue in the training yard a few times to shut me up, and after I kept coming back for more, my father and namesake realized that I was serious. He started drinking less, and spending time with me more. It might also have something to do with the fact that as I grew older, I started to more greatly resemble him, rather than mother’s… concubine, that she kept in the house until I was nine, and she moved to the capital. He had no intentions of spending our sparse money on a tutor though, so he just bought a few battered tomes from some probable scammers, until we found two or three that actually had some info on how to use magic.

So by the time I was twelve, I was competent with a sword—hardly skilled, but capable of using it without killing myself, and more importantly continue using it without getting exhausted for more than a few minutes—and able to do more with magic than just standard body-reinforcement for a few key seconds at a time.

I could go a full minute. Which doesn’t sound impressive, but being able to match a grown man’s strength and speed was pretty neat for a pre-teen, especially when it came to a fight. But more outwardly impressive than that were the fire and force spells that I had all-but tamed. As long as I had a bit of time to focus, the magic didn’t get out of control—no more broken windows, walls, or floors for me, and no more flash-fried carpets or drapes!

And again, more importantly, if ninety percent of my deadly spell hit its target, chances were it would still die.

But it was at about the age of twelve that my luck ran out—by which I mean, my mom got pregnant again, and had a beautiful second baby boy. A full year after she had left our small floating island, with not a single visit of my father to the capital, or her to our household. A baby that she was pushing as the new heir, and due to Holfort society’s fucked up design, a new heir that my father could not dismiss outright for illegitimacy, unless he wanted to ruin his own reputation as a husband, knight, and a man of Holfort.

Probably unsurprising to hear, but he started drinking again, and I made myself scarce before Mother came back to our property. I wanted to avoid… Whatever would come next. And if I was going to end up disinherited one way or the other, I’d rather be proactive about it.

So I washed my hands of the situation, took a small sky sloop with a pair of servants who similarly wanted to get out of dodge before our house imploded, and set off with a sword—that was so basic and cookie-cutter that it would be straight off of an assembly line, if they were more common—in one hand, and my own scribbled notes on magic—gleaned from half a dozen half-assed texts, which barely constituted the bare bones of basic magical theory—in the other, and a sky ship that wouldn’t survive too strong a wind under my feet.

And we set out, us three brave companions, me, my elderly butler Jacob, and his definitely not a woman, they both swear apprentice-slash-niece… er, nephew… Thane. Thany.

Bethany. Her name was Bethany. But I wasn’t about to tell them I wasn’t as stupid as they thought I was. Better to focus on actually living life long enough, and establishing myself well enough, that I would make it to my entrance to the Academy, and begin forging the political and social alliances that would let me figure out how I’d survive the rest of my life.

“Now, Jacob, Beth—”

They both cleared their throats, one sounding quite a bit higher pitched and younger than the other.

“I… Sorry. Jacob. Thane. We have some work to do if we’re going to survive long enough that I can get us a few years’ free rent and respite. And keep paying you. The simplest thing to do, I think, is to find the nearest dungeon that we can that hasn’t been completely delved, and take things as slowly and carefully as we can, and hopefully get enough to tide us over until the next dungeon. Lost Items are probably out of the question, but maybe we can get more than just magic stones and ores.”

“If I may, sir.” Jacob’s voice was thin, and reedy, and held a refined accent that all of the lesser nobility and fellow members of the Knight Caste that I had met utterly lacked. How he had found his way into the service of such a minor, insignificant house as mine was a mystery, but not one I was going to question too hard. Lest reality realize its mistake, and correct it. The man was good at what he did. “Young Thane and I are hardly built or trained for such… rugged activities, and your own capabilities in combat, while impressive for one so young, are…”

“Untested,” Thane cut in, with her—his, and it bothered me a little that I couldn’t imagine why someone would try to pass as a man in this society… though I supposed most of the wildly matriarchal aspects of our society hadn’t trickled so far down as to infect anyone that wasn’t noble. Be it that he was trans, or attracted to women and attempting to survive in this less than accepting kingdom, or even just committing some elaborate form of fraud, I didn’t especially care. She—He—wasn’t as good at his job as Jacob, but he wasn’t bad either. More importantly, he knew enough about Mother’s less than ideal personality, wanted out before her return, and I wasn’t a big enough dick to tell him no.

“Sure,” I allowed. “But we aren’t important enough to ask for another house to take us in as a favor, I’m not old enough or skilled enough to swear to the nobility under my own name rather than my father’s, and as it is, it’s doubtful that my mother will actually let my father properly knight me, and certainly not before I leave to attend the academy. Our only choice left is Adventuring.”

Adventuring in Holfort was an honored, even revered livelihood amongst the nobility. Seeing as the founders of the kingdom were all adventurers themselves, it made sense, what with how much the nobility loved to suck their own—how the honored nobles of the grand Holfort Kingdom enjoyed reminiscing on their ancestors’ past achievements.

“Not if you find a job,” Thane challenged.

“How am I supposed to pay you two with a normal salary?” I demanded the older g… boy. I’m gonna have trouble with this for a while, aren’t I?

“We can get our own jobs,” he replied, with a dismissive snort. “We just need to make sure that you won’t get yourself killed first, then we can go our own way with a clear conscience.”

“Thane,” Jacob reprimanded. “Until such a time as we are released from our duty, we are to serve our master with utmost respect and our best efforts, in all things.”

“He just said he can’t pay us—!”

“Unless,” I stressed, “I can’t pay you unless I become an Adventurer—”

“We won’t be hired if you go and get yourself killed on our watch!”

“Thane! Treat the young master with—”

I got my way eventually. They were paid through to the end of the month, and would follow my direction until then. It was a bit upsetting to hear that Thane was already planning for their next employment opportunities, it made sense that he’d start on that. We touched down on a floating island with a known dungeon, one discovered earlier that year that had yet to be completely mapped. And for some reason that I couldn’t fathom, Thane had elected to join me in my excursions, while Jacob managed the small shack we rented with our earnings, and did… whatever he did, day to day, when it didn’t come to wrangling us two idiots, or making sure we survived after we made it home.

The first time down in the dungeon was… an experience, to be sure.

The two of us had followed after a larger group of about twelve people—two obviously noble, the rest their retainers or soldiers or something. We didn’t have the numbers or the proper gear to be near so bold as them, what with one weapon between us and a collective half-trained idiot in sorcery, if you smooshed us together.

Thane knew a thing or two about ice magic that he had picked up over the years—and he was a good six years older than me, at eighteen. The problem was, he was used to using it just to cool drinks and occasionally cause an annoying idiot to slip and fall with a sudden patch of ice.

As one would imagine, these skills did not a battle mage make.

Thane’s job was more to be a spotter for me than to actually engage any monsters that we came across, and delay and throw them off balance if needed. And he had made it very clear that he held no ambitions beyond that.

The closest to an actual offensive spell that he had managed, in the week that we had spent making our way to this island, and the following week we practiced for our expedition in our new rented cabin, was a snowball he’d chucked at my head for making fun of him for tripping as he got off the sloop. I’d caught him practicing magic a bit more in that last week, yes, but it was usually better to listen to what someone said they’d do than make assumptions, especially when you weren’t very close.

In my case, I’d practiced my Force magic while we flew, and managed some weak telekinesis and the next best thing to a long-distance punch. Fire magic was still a good deal easier and stronger for me, but I wasn’t about to practice that in our wooden flying ship… not after Jacob took me to task for it, anyways. And with the last week, I’d had Thane play the unwilling role of practice dummy. By which I mean I’d pulled my punches, so to speak, as much as I could in practicing my swordsmanship with a pair of practice blades.

He was pretty terrible, but just having someone swinging back, even if they weren’t any good, helped me, and teaching him what little I knew helped me remember and master what I’d been taught. It helped that Thane was pretty douchey to me, most of the time. I pulled my strikes, but I couldn’t totally avoid leaving bruises. And the bruises Thane gave me helped me stay focused, and kept him interested in the training sessions.

So with Thane in the role of lookout, I was in the role of… everything else. Damage, tanking, magic, control—whatever you could think up, I was the one doing it. So we went ahead in following that much larger group of twelve.

We found them all dead sixty feet into the dungeon, guts torn out here, throats pierced there, and blood thick and sticky enough that it pulled at our shoes before we realized what we were stepping in.

Thane puked. I froze.

The giant spider currently winding up one of the noblemen in its silk hissed, dropped its prey, and charged, skittering along the walls, accelerating like an airbike without the roar of an engine to explain how it was moving so fast!

I screamed like a little girl. I could hear the footfalls as Thane sprinted in the opposite direction, rather smartly, I thought, as my chill fingers raised my trembling sword—no, I was trembling, it was just following suit.

It was almost on me, then. And then its hiss got louder, sharper, and more… confused? Its eight legs went out from under it, it fell with a crash to the floor in front of me, skidded to a stop, and drunkenly tried to reclaim its feet.

There was a patch of ice on the wall, and there was a sword in the spider’s abdomen. It wriggled, writhed, its massive chitinous legs slapped me aside, I rolled to my feet as it began to stagger towards me—

“FIRE!” I shrieked, and the element spewed from my hand in a stream of unfocused, blazing orange that swept over the spider, and the corpses, and the silk on the walls—

I passed out after I saw that it was charred to a crisp and curled up like a dead bug.

Thane slapped me awake about five minutes later, according to him. And then we, shaken and properly freaked the hell out, got to work doing the grim work expected of adventurers.

We collected signet rings from the nobles, and the identifying necklaces, not unlike dog tags, from their retainers. Thane and I were wearing rather similar ones—round, steel, and with our names and next of kin printed cleanly on one side. Standard procedure for all registered adventurers.

I grabbed the bag of ores, common and rare, that the group had harvested from the walls. Dungeons were a rather convenient source of metals, and their harvesting had nearly wiped out mining as a suitable trade for anything but precious metals and stones.

And I nearly broke my back trying to lift the damn thing. Thane, who had been grabbing coin purses and anything valuable with a queasy look on his face, managed a laugh at my expense, and shove the better-made swords of the dead party into the bag as well.

We needed to take a lot of breaks on our way out. Thane couldn’t lift the ores, and it stretched my short-term body enhancement magic to the limit to get the damn thing off the ground. But we made it back to the guild, turned in the rings and tags, got our meager pay for the service, and went home with our windfall of money and magically produced metals registered as ours, under the laws that protected adventurers so carefully.

I tried not to think too hard about how we robbed dead men to keep ourselves living with a roof above our heads, and bread in our hands. But laying awake at night, staring at the ceiling of our small, but comfortable shared cabin, it was hard not to dwell.

“Life here blows.”

But… it beat death, at least. Poor bastards.

“We need to come up with a better plan,” I told Thane after her uncle had retired for the night.

He looked at me like I was crazy. What, too obvious?

“We need a new plan! Going back down there after a dozen men who were bigger, stronger, more skilled, and… more importantly, A DOZEN of them, died, and we only survived by dumb luck!? What are you thinking, wanting to go back down there?”

I grunted.

“You don’t need to come down with me if you don’t want,” I allowed, rather graciously I thought, “but we still need to make some money. What we got will last us a while, but without an active income, the pocket change from a couple noble brats will only take us so far. Maybe through the year?”

Again, he looked at me like I was insane. “That much will last us until you go to the academy, Alan. If we spend carefully, anyway. They were very rich.”

“Really?” I didn’t deflate. I didn’t.

“Why in the Hell are you disappointed!?”

Okay, maybe I did. A little bit.

“I… I wanted to get stronger.”

“...”

“You do too Thane, don’t you?”

“... Shut up.”

Chapter Text

Thane, understandably, wanted to learn how to use a weapon before he set foot in a dungeon again. Seeing as we’d yet to sell off the fancy new swords that we’d grabbed… taken… Fine, Looted from the dead Adventurers we stumbled across, he had his pick of the lot.

He chose a long, slender blade, with some silver filigree along its length in the shape of grasping branches, shining brightly against the unnatural, dark blue steel. The sword even had a name written in gold along the crossguard. Oakthorn.

I gave him relentless amounts of shit for choosing the most expensive, most pretentious one to keep. We were on a budget, and selling that one would have netted us three times as much as any of the others.

As for me… Well, I kept my basic, simple sword.

It… was a gift from my dad. From when he hadn’t been drinking, and had actually taken an interest in me. When Mother was distant, away in the Capital with her shitty beau.

It was nothing special. No name, nothing distinguishing about it, but it worked well. It had already saved my life against the spider monster.

… Ahem. Anyway. It didn’t feel right to own a nameless sword when my nominal follower had a named blade of some incredible quality, so… I named it. A perfectly normal name, too. For sure.

Inheritance. Because it was what my dad gave me, before Mother came back to take the rest, and everything I got with it would be like… like the inheritance I never got. Couldn’t get, because of this messed up system. I would never rule our modest island or be the master of our manor, so whatever I managed to win for myself with my sword would have to do.

I… Shut up. Thane wouldn’t let me live it down either.

“You and Thane have performed admirably, Master Alan. I dare say that even your father would have been put to the test to attain such riches so quickly.”

Jacob was very kind not to point out how, messed up as dad was, that at least he wouldn’t have had to grave rob to do it. Wish I could blame Thane for telling him all that, but it was the first time I’d seen… so many dead bodies together. Sure, I’d seen… a few, at funerals and in hospitals to say goodbye, but a dozen strangers had been torn to shreds by a monster, and I’d stumbled on the aftermath.

I’d kind of needed somebody to talk to, and Jacob asked, and I kind of couldn’t shut up once I’d started, and… there we were.

“We need more though,” I said simply. But Jacob cocked his head to the side, and gave me a troubled, confused look, so maybe it was too simple. “If I’m going to pay your and Thane’s salaries, and if we’re going to break even, I’ll need to go back down into that dungeon. Maybe we can earn enough to last us a while, and make a move for a newer, less mapped-out one, and get a bigger payday, and—”

“Master Alan,” Jacob interrupted, serene, looking confident and understanding once more. “Why do you believe that you still need to pay Thane and myself a salary?”

My brain stalled. I tried the ignition a few times, but it wouldn’t turn over. The engine was flooded. Maybe there was something wrong with a spark plug, but nothing was kicking on.

My fingers twitched limply in my lap as I struggled to understand.

“... What?”

“Master Alan,” Jacob said simply, rising from his seat, taking four swift steps around the rough-hewn coffee table to kneel in front of me, and place two calming hands securely on my shoulders. He looked up at me from behind his glasses with a calm, warm smile. “Thane spoke out of turn, and I must take some responsibility for not correcting him, and you, earlier. But we did not come to line our pockets with the fruits of your labors. We cast our lots alongside yours not to take advantage of you, or to play some strange game of chance to win your favor, should you ever inherit. We came because it was the best option to keep Thane safe, and because your mother’s return would ruin the house. We all set sail on that small raft of yours knowing that we would need to work together to survive, so please Master Alan. Don’t think of paying us.”

“So…” This didn’t make sense. Well, parts of it did. But there was no way it was easier to just drop everything and leave, was there? “So the money… You need money too, and…”

“How should I put this…? Ah. Think of it like we three are an adventuring party. You are forging onward into the dungeons, with Thane to watch your back. In the meantime, I will manage the home front, hold down the fort and all that, and ensure that you two have somewhere safe to return to, and that you are protected upon your arrival. Keeping watch is rather important for the party, as I understand it.”

“So… Three way shares,” I thought aloud, slowly catching up. “Well, four—party funds are important, and we need to budget for necessities… maybe a double share for party funds and we all… Hm… Budgeting isn’t my strong suit. Should we split household needs and dungeon-delving supplies, or…?”

Jacob’s eyes just about twinkled behind his modest, refined glasses. “We can have a, ah, a Party Meeting to discuss such matters, and how much must be allocated to all involved. For now Master Alan, I would suggest that you rest. You have another day ahead of you tomorrow.” He patted my right shoulder, rose gracefully from his knee, and made his way out of the room, stopping for just a moment at the doorway. “In my experience, they tend to keep coming. Better to deal with them as they do, rather then let them pile up and surprise you, hm?”

Thane and I were properly outfitted, and a week and a half later, we were ready to delve back down into the local dungeon of the town called Pallen.

We’d needed the week to get actual armor smithed for us. That might sound like a short turn around, even if the two of us were only looking for breast plates, arm and leg guards, and some leathers to go under it, but Pallen was a Holfort Dungeon Town. Basically a Boom Town from back home—people found a place with the chance to strike it rich, picked up their lives, and gambled it all on the chance that they could strike it big with a lost item or rare materials in the depths of the sky island’s cavernous guts.

Except the Boom Towns in Holfort never lost their Bang. Dungeons endlessly generated resources, even if it wasn’t at incredibly rapid speeds, and the dozens of adventurers that waded their ways into the newfound dungeons provided a hearty and constant customer base for the supporting economy that sprung up around them—not looking to gamble with their lives and livelihoods for money, but a hell of a lot more confident in convincing the lucky winners of those gambles to patronize their establishments in their down times.

Smiths, merchants of all stripes, simple restaurants and rowdy bars, and more than a few women of the night flocked to Dungeon Towns to help ease the heavy burden of a successful adventurer’s wallet, and with how simple our order was, how accessible the people trying to make and sell them were in a Dungeon Town, and the fact that a good deal of people who would otherwise be demanding new gear or repairs for old things in town was… recently lessened, our orders only took a single week.

We took that time to practice our swordsmanship and magic. I went from shoddy to less shoddy at both, while Thane was still trash with a sword, though my questionable lessons were beginning to get through to him.

He knew how to hold it, at least, and we were starting him on swinging it!

But it was in magic that Thane had started to shine. By necessity, we had taken to sparring with actual weaponry to get him used to the weight and balance of his weapon. We’d taken spars at half speed, per my command as his noble and enigmatic swordsmanship instructor—it helped with learning the movements, fixing mistakes before they became habit, and more importantly, muscle building. Swords were light by design, but nobody told your muscles that. Holding a sword up and in a readied position for an extended period of time, and moving through stances and forms, and through a live-blade exercise so slowly, was incredibly rough on your muscles.

Thane needed the conditioning. He was years older than me, but his physique was not one used to hard labor or martial practice.

I… Didn’t want him dead, when we went back down. So I took his training seriously.

But the problem with a live-sword spar, even slowed down, was that people got cut. We kept the cuts light, but it was only a matter of time until training became too dangerous to consider.

That’s when Thane flexed his big brain, and started working with his ice magic a little harder. And he frosted blunted edges on the blades! With a funky application of his ‘icing the floor’ trick to build a few layers on top of each other, in a clinging, rounded shape around the edges and tip of the blades, we suddenly had swords we could swing at each other without fear of instant, mortal wounds.

Bruises were a hell of a lot easier to live through than cuts, and meant that we could add some weight to the swords we were training with. It took some practice, to ice the pommel and cross-guards properly, so the balance wouldn’t be totally thrown off, and we didn’t throw our backs out swinging the things around, but we—he, really—got it eventually.

And this success spurred Thane to push himself harder. He used the days after we’d gotten our armor (and added it to our training to get used to the weight, and make ourselves even less likely to kill ourselves during sparring,) to play with his magic some more.

He discovered first, the unfortunate truth that here in Holfort, and the world that held it, Magic… was of a far harder bent than many would like it to be.

A lot of people will tell you that magic is will. Magic is energy, tied to the rock that is your willpower, and thrown in the lake of reality to throw ripples. They were right. With enough power and will, you could do anything with magic. The issue was, nobody had enough power to do anything.

This is where the hard, rather than soft, style of magic came in. Because to maximize your capacity to effect changes on reality through magic, you needed to understand reality and how it worked. The closer you cleaved to how reality wanted things to work, the easier of a time you would have making the impossible happen.

If I was the world’s strongest man, seven feet tall and four hundred pounds of pure muscle, I still wouldn’t be able to push thirty tons of rock for a mile. There was a limit to how much power a human could bring to bear, in the physical as well as the magical.

But if you added in a slope in my favor, say that I was pushing the tons downhill so that inertia did most of the work once it got sliding? Say you gave me a long, sturdy lever to get it started? Perhaps some wheels to place beneath it, to facilitate its movement?

It became much more doable, even if I was just me, a scrawny, somewhat muscular twelve year old.

The math of magic was figuring out not how to get more power and throw it where you needed, but to hone how you channeled that power. To find the most precise way of exercising the power you held, and adding as many levers, wheels, slopes, and other cheats that you could to force physics and metaphysics alike to comply. If I wanted to throw a fire spell, I could just focus a bunch of energy into heat until I had a continuous combustion, and chuck it somewhere.

Or, if I wanted the same effect with a tenth of the energy cost, I could spend a half-second to weave a few tiny supporting spells into my main one—gathering excess oxygen to the ignition point so it would only take a spark to start in earnest, designing the spell to pull on ambient heat and magic to fuel itself after I threw it, wrapping it in a small, fragile globe of force to keep the spell’s cohesion with minimal continuous focus required, and attaching a small guidance cantrip to ensure it found its target…

Magic was physics, and it defied physics. It was rad, and confusing, and hard, but most importantly, it required precision, and despite what many noblewomen and bards might profess, it was a lot closer in nature to coding than it was poetry.

Brute forcing any spell with magical power and enough willpower was technically an option, but a good magic user was one who performed all the small spells to ease the larger spell, and did so precisely enough that they didn’t tangle up in each other, or blow up in their face. After all, too much oxygen at ignition and it’d blow. Too strong a containment spell for the fireball and it wouldn’t burst. Too much ambient heat and magic for sustaining itself and your firebolt or fireball would become a firestorm, that killed you as well as your target.

There was always a better number to use in your calculations, always that one more small supporting spell that amplified the desired output, or lessened the mana strain. In good spellcasting, precision was paramount.

Thane, it turned out, was rather good at precision.

The first spell he busted out on me in a full-speed spar was the very same day we’d gotten our armor.

“Slowing down again!” I chastised. I was breathing a bit harder than normal, but I wasn’t desperate for breath.

Thane, on the other hand, was gasping and gulping down air. He kept his stance though, sloppy as it was in his exhaustion. We’d been practicing for nearly an hour by then, alternating between a few things. I was glad he was keeping his stance—I didn’t want to make him run anymore suicide sprints for screwing that up, and I certainly didn’t want to do them with him, as I’d cultivated the habit of doing.

I needed conditioning too, unfortunately. But being your own physical trainer brought with it the issue of motivation.

He had enough energy to lift a shaky, leather-gloved hand from his sword, and flip me off, though. So I took it as time to finish the fight and knock him on his ass.

I swung my blade for his arm—maybe a little harder than I needed to—to disarm him. Thane yelped, and moved sluggishly to avoid. He wasn’t going to make it.

Then a wall of ice sprang up between us. It shattered under my swing, showering Thane with shards of his shield, and his yelp became pained as a chunk hit him under the eye.

I stopped my blade before the follow-through could hit him, though it wanted to pull through and land. The momentum was hard to counter, with the added weight of the ice blunting the weapons, and no body reinforcement spells active to lend me more strength. Conditioning worked best when you weren’t supercharging yourself to greater than human levels, believe it or not.

I needn’t have bothered, though. By the time the dazzling refraction of light off of the shattering ice, and the cloud of ice particles that swarmed my vision cleared, I saw an exhausted Thane on his back, groaning.

“Too thin,” I critiqued the spell to the horizontal, gasping butler-turned-adventurer. What little of the wall that still stood couldn’t have been even half an inch thick, the spell more an idea than a plan, it seemed. “I’m not even running my usual battle reinforcement right now. A burst of that and I wouldn’t have even felt this. It’s a good idea, but it needs a hell of a lot more refinement.”

Thane whined from the ground, and coughed, and again flipped me off. Then he made a cupping, twisting, lifting gesture with his hand, mana was flowing—

An icicle shot out of the wall and towards my junk. It was slow though, at least to my eye now that I was running full body-reinforcement, and I dodged it easily, battering it into shards with my blade for good measure.

I was wearing a wicked grin. “You should have told me you wanted to do thirty more pushups, Thane, it would have been easier!”

He sobbed. We both dropped and started pumping our arms.

To his credit, he managed twelve before he collapsed, crying frozen tears.

We added magic practice to our daily routines after that. Call it a cooldown, between conditioning and sword forms. And we opened magic up for use in half of our spars, to refine using it in conjunction with our weapons, which we both still sucked at… but we were making progress.

I’m not sure that I managed to hide my pleasure after our training that day, in my exhaustion. Thane was learning quickly, at least in magic, and had enough determination to succeed with the sword to make up for a deficiency in natural talent. Battle Butler, here we come!

As both Thane and Jacob had told me, what we’d retrieved that day was enough to last us to my Academy days, on a shoestring budget. If we hadn’t kept Oakthorn. If we hadn’t invested in armor and begun to get slightly finer foods—mostly going for shoulder and flank cuts, rather than the shins, and other questionable cuts of beef and other, more fantastical animals that Holfort apparently had domesticated.

Pigs and snakes were never meant to combine, and whatever teleporter accident sort of bullshit had created the mermaid-style hybrid of pork and reptile was a crime against nature. Slitherswine were horrible to look at… but they tasted alright, I guess.

So while we were still better off than we’d started, and had a reasonable cushion of money, adventuring supplies weren’t cheap. We were going to need to get back into the dungeon, and this time we’d need to do the retrieval of ores and magic stones ourselves. Without the morally dubious windfall of some noblemen and their retainers’ fine gear and jewelry, we wouldn’t get nearly that level of cash again.

But we were on track to turn a profit, and a steady income beat a small windfall nine times out of ten. As long as we didn’t die getting it, anyway.

Our first serious dungeon dive, we walked in with our new armor, packs filled with enough food and water for five days, and with every intention of making our way back out before sunset.

Preparation was the best way to survive disaster. If we ended up trapped down there without clear evidence of our deaths, any other adventurers that came down into the dungeon would keep an eye out for us. Better to be ready to survive a disaster like that than die of thirst waiting for rescue.

For another example, we each had a few quick-light torches hanging at our hips. Dungeons held their own light, sure, but it varied, and it couldn’t be trusted. Much better to have your own hold-out light source, if you found yourself trapped in a dark room with something that wanted to eat your intestines. But as best as we could tell, and that our probing questions to the older—and somewhat amused with our ‘youthful vigor’—adventurers could account for, we were as prepared as it was reasonably possible to be.

Thane’s primarily black leathers and armor reminded me a little too much of his standard butler attire, which he and Jacob felt the need to continue wearing despite the three of us nominally being equals now. My own armor was about as basic as it got—simple blue steel and silvery iron, with gray and black leathers beneath.

I looked about as much like a stock character as it could get, but the coloring cost extra. Thane’s tastes were starting to run more towards the expensive than my own, but if we were going to be splitting the loot evenly between the three of us with some on the side for our collective expenses, he could do what he liked with his money.

As long as I could fulfill the idiotic edict of the Crown and pay to attend the Academy, and figure out a livelihood afterwards, I didn’t see any issue with Thane liking his things to look nice.

But the dungeon was quiet, upon entering its first long, sloping hall.

The walls glittered with magically-charged precious stones and roughly-formed impure ores. The exact sort of thing actual nobility ignored in search of conflict, treasure chests, and lost items—and that we of lesser pedigrees tripped all over ourselves gathering, because we had bills to pay, mouths to feed, and gear to maintain.

“Thane, get to excavating,” I grunted, passing off our shared pick to him. “I’m going to check the shadows for any surprises, and man the doorway. Call me over to trade off if you get tired.”

Thane mumbled something not so kind under his breath, I went ahead and ignored him, and we did as I said. Truly, we were the epitome of teamwork.

The pinging sound of the pickaxe striking stone and metal was, if the career adventurers of Pallen were to be believed, a surefire way to get monsters to come running. But as I poked through the shadows and crevices of the dungeon, the structure halfway between a collapsed subterranean compound and an ancient, glittering natural cavern, nothing leapt out.

According to what we’d heard, the giant spider, the Arexnid—’King Spider,’ dumbass name, could just as easily mean a scorpion—was not native to the upper floors. Either a freak accident had drawn it up, or it had been pursuing other prey when it stumbled across the unprepared party. But even the upper floors were dangerous to the unwary.

The first hallway remained empty though, small rooms dotting the left, uncollapsed half of the hall empty of anything interesting, so I advanced towards the doorway ahead of us, leading into the first proper room—a huge space dotted with crystal clusters growing up from the floor, and with holes dug into the walls and ceiling. As large as a highschool gym, it was colloquially called ‘The Hornet’s Nest.’

The entire room seemed bare of monsters, flush with precious minerals… and filled with a low, droning buzz that grew in intensity, spiking in sync with Thane’s every ringing strike of the pickaxe. It had been dealt with before we ever walked into the dungeon last time—the only thing that had saved our dumb, unprepared asses from dying an ignoble death on our first dungeon dive.

But we had a plan for it this time. The benefits of a well-known dungeon were straightforward—you knew what dangers, generally, to anticipate. And you could prepare for what you could anticipate. If you were smart enough to ask around first.

“Thane,” I started quietly. “Maybe you should—”

“I know,” he called back. Loudly. Another ringing strike of the pick-axe. “I can do one thing at a time, damnit! I’ll be there in a second, so just—”

The sound of the buzzing spiked, and like grasping tendrils the hornets burst from their holes in a frothing wave, combining into a massive ball of death. Swirling like anchovies, their carapaces were a gold and silver that dazzled the eye, and their seething mass of chitin burst towards me on some unseen, unheard signal.

“Damnit Thane!”

“Fuck you too!”

Each one was the size of my fist, and there were far too many to count. For all I knew, there were literal tons of the damned things screaming towards me, and a sword wasn’t very useful for a swarm.

On the other hand, a flamethrower…

“Fry!” I commanded, and a loose stream of flame burst from my hand as I backed away, the gout of fire covering the entirety of the doorway, and destroying each of the weak monsters that came into contact with it.

It was not an easy spell to maintain. I hadn’t refined and ideated upon it yet, as I had my simple fire bolt spell, and so I hadn’t altered it to suit my needs just yet. There were no strain-lessening edits in the spell’s structure—the ignition, the heat, all of the energy involved came straight from my mana reserves, and I could already feel myself tiring.

I kept it up though. I kept blasting the doorway, and a good deal of the room beyond it, with a stream of unfocused fire, at least until the buzzing of the Hell Hornets couldn’t be heard over the crackling of the flames.

When I let it lapse, either the entirety of the anchovy-ball of hornets had screamed headlong into my impromptu defense, or they had retreated back into their nests, because the center of the room was empty.

I glared at Thane over my labored breathing.

He glared back. “Next time our plan revolves around me, don’t make me the miner, you ass!”

I coughed, spit on the ground, and flipped him off.

He went into the gym-sized space to ice over the nest-access holes one by one, with a more refined version of his ice wall spell. Like we planned.

I was tired… but I went and finished mining our opening area haul, and placing it in a color-coded bag that showed it was our loot. The adventuring guilds gave them out to any registered members. It wasn’t impossible that someone would steal it, but adventurers were also mercenaries, and so lived and died on their reputations. If somebody took our haul, and we came back out of the dungeon asking about it, things would get awkward for them very quickly.

So what if I was tired? I hadn’t done much physically, and magic exhaustion and regular exhaustion were cousins, not the same thing. I could power through, and no way was I going to leave money on the table.

We were walking down into the third floor of the dungeon, a full four hours later, when we finally slowed our pace.

Our haul thus far had been modest, but it would go a long way towards making up for our investments in better gear. We had taken turns on mining, of course, and thankfully none of the other countermeasures we’d prepared for the common pitfalls of this dungeon—literal and metaphorical—had been especially magically intensive. But we hadn’t been willing to take more than fifteen minute breaks at a time, as waiting too long would see the magic of the dungeon spew out more monsters on floors above us, leaving us to fight our way back out of the dungeon, this time with monsters potentially chasing us down and surrounding us on all sides as we did.

And the monsters had been getting bigger all the time. After the Hell Hornets had come the Vampire Rats, each the size of a modest cat. After the Vampire Rats had come the Carnivoroaches, and of course they could fly—despite being the size of a labrador retriever.

And they had teeth. I don’t mean mandibled, I don’t mean pincer-looking mouths, or the weird baleen-looking shit that crabs had, I mean fangs. Fangs that looked like they belonged on a fucking jaguar.

Finally, about halfway through the second floor, and after narrowly avoiding a guillotine-style trap cutting Thane in half, we’d mostly stopped having to deal with swarms of monsters. No, instead they were solitary, but much bigger.

Nothing as big as the Arexnid yet, but they were supposed to lair on the third floor, and theoretically there were plenty of Carnivoroaches that they fed on—the rules of monsters evaporating into black dust apparently not applying when preyed on by other monsters, for some reason. In addition, there would be the other solitary monsters we’d begun to encounter. We’d need to contend with more speedy Scythasaurs, bear-sized versions of an ankylosaur with rows of blades rather than defensive spiked plating, and more of the gorilla-lite looking Tangeritangs, with fists as big as my head. At least they weren’t as big as an actual gorilla—just built like fucking bodybuilders.

And why yes, I was aware of how fucking dumb all the monster names were. But I didn’t name them, and going against the grain and coming up with our own names for them would only cause confusion that might get somebody killed. Better to just stick with the dumbass nomenclature in place, and not die while arguing what to call bugs with teeth.

Despite being physically imposing though, all of the monsters had been manageable, between the element of surprise, teamwork, the longer reach of our swords than their limbs, and the occasional usage of a spell here or there.

None of those advantages, save that of magic, would help if we came across another Arexnid. And we were all but spent on the magic front.

“We should turn back.” Our armor was largely untested, but I had a pretty serious dent where a Tangeritang had gotten the jump on me, and Thane had some cuts about his face from a Vampire Rat that went for the head. As far as wounds went, we hadn’t gotten much more than bumps and bruises.

But challenging more and bigger monsters when we were at anything less than our best rubbed me the wrong way. It felt stupid. Like we were testing fate.

“We could hole up in a room,” Thane pointed out. “Rest up, maybe sleep a few hours, and see if our magic reserves are doing any better.”

“I don’t want to deal with more monsters spawning above us,” I disagreed. “I’d rather not fight our way out.”

“We’ll need to fight our way out anyway. Most of what we’ve been killing is vermin, and oversized or not, vermin are quite literally made to hide. I guarantee we’ve missed some already. Add into that the hours that have passed, amd there’s a good chance more monsters already spawned. We’ll literally be fighting an uphill battle while low on magic and energy, and there’s no guarantee that going back up now will save us any trouble.”

I frowned. He was making good points, but—

“Add to that the Hell Hornets…” he went on, leadingly.

“What about them?” I asked, curious. “They’re holed up, and reduced in number besides.”

“Not if more spawned,” he countered. “And I guarantee at least one of those blocks I built has been melted or broken by a few dozen of those little bastards.”

“And,” I said tiredly, “You don’t have enough magic in reserve to make new blocks, let alone enough for all those holes if they’ve all been breached. And,” I grumbled, glaring down at my gauntleted hand, flickering pathetically as I tried to summon up the last hints of magic I could feel in my heart… or to go by feel, sloshing around somewhere at the bottom of my boots. I felt just about empty of the volatile, effervescent, and elusive energy. I had enough to run my body reinforcement spells for a minute or two, maximum, but any outward expressions of magic were well beyond me.

I looked up to Thane, who looked down at me placidly, as if hiding his foul tongue and rude outlook for the moment. Or maybe he was just too tired to do his usual song and dance.

“Fine,” I sighed. “You’ve got a point. But not here. We’re heading back up to the second floor—one of the rooms we’ve already cleared. We sweep it again for monsters, then take… a two hour rest each. Sound good?”

“Scared of another Arexnid?” he asked, his teasing voice worn out as we made our way back up the stairs, him watching ahead, and my eyes planted firmly on the floor we were departing.

I squinted into the darkness. I tightened my grip on my sword.

I thought I saw a… rather lustrous limb of chitin, reflecting the small amounts of light from Thane’s torch.

“Scared of fighting my way out alone,” I grumbled back.

Chapter Text

Leaving the dungeon after we’d finished up sucked.

First and least of the complaints was that we were climbing up the long flights of stairs between floors rather than down, and doing so pulling our growing sacks of ores and simple treasures behind us as we went and grabbed the goods that we’d left behind to make fighting any surprise encounters smoother. The much bigger complaints…

Have you ever carried a sack full of rocks before? It doesn’t get easier just because you know you’ll get paid for it. Well, it does, but not enough to make the experience actually rewarding. I had much sympathy for the construction workers of the world—they dealt with the same crap, plus shitty foremen at the job sites telling them off for any little thing that went wrong.

Body enhancement magic was literally the only reason I could carry my share of the magic stones and metals at my still rather unimpressive height, plus the parts of Thane’s share that he needed to shed as we neared the first floor. He needed to work on his strength training more—thankfully, the embarrassment of needing to hand off parts of his share was enough chastisement, it seemed. I wouldn’t need to hound him to put in extra work on being more diligent with his strength training.

Then there were the monsters. There weren’t too many of them for us to handle, even as we hunted for a decent room to relax in, and wait for our magic to regenerate enough that we could seal the Hell Hornets back up and walk out smelling like roses. Grimy, dusty roses.

Most of the monsters we even managed to take by surprise—they seemed to instinctually be on the lookout for Adventurers coming in from the entrance, rather than sneaking up behind them, so getting the drop on them was much easier than it probably should have been. But offloading all of our loot of dubious value, taking up arms against the creatures—with or without the element of surprise—and picking it all up again to continue the slog was way more exhausting than the initial dive into the dungeon. Add to that the fact we kept grabbing more of our pre-gathered crap, it was literally getting harder with every step.

“I’m going to sleep for a week,” I panted, arms full with a sack, a bigger one lashed to my back, and barely managing to lift my feet high enough to make it up the stairs.

“Quite whining,” Thane wheezed back.

“When you manage your own share,” I growled, coughing on my dry, hurting throat, “You can tell me what to do.”

And it was halfway up the staircase that a Killbug rolled down the stairs from above, bowled into us, and sent us careening back to the bottom of the very last staircase up to the top level of the dungeon.

My screams of rage lasted far longer than the oversized, spiked roly-poly bug did, once I gathered my wits. And my sword.

It was just one more staircase, really. Just the one. But when I got to the top, I needed an hour’s break.

“Come on,” Thane grumbled again. “Let’s get the hell out of here already.”

“Do you… have enough… magic?” I panted.

“Yes! So let’s get moving, seal the hornet room—”

“Do you… have… the muscle?”

“What? What ‘muscle’ are you—?”

“For… your share. Not… carrying it… asshole.”

“Fuck you.”

“Get… bent.”

Thane eventually got the message that I was tapped, and he was on his fucking own for his share of the mats. He was a lot less eager to get moving when he put that together.

“Okay… time to move out,” I grumbled, rolled to my gut, and slowly, achingly, shoved myself to my knees, then my feet. And, because Thane hadn’t done it in protest or whatever, I started pulling the clinking metals, ores, and magical stones from my Santa-sized sack to his.

Thane muttered curses, and curled further in on himself where he sat against the wall.

I turned an unapologetic glare at him. “I will double your conditioning,” I hissed. “We will start sparring with stone swords until you get your body-reinforcement spells down. I am not a goddamn pack mule, so quit expecting me to lug your share too.”

Thane’s returning look was icy. I think he was expecting me to turn away first, but I was being trained to be nobility. Minor nobility, sure, but nobility nonetheless. If I couldn’t deal with people looking at me like I was scum, I never would have had a chance as an heir. Much less as a marriage prospect.

He looked away with a dismissive grunt. I graciously ignored his uncomfortable fidgeting.

Maybe I gave him too much of the ‘dead to the world’ look.

Thane shouldered his burden, I got mine up, and it felt just as heavy as it had before.

If Thane snuck the extra back into my bag, I’ll kill him, I decided. And we started making our way through the remainder of the dungeon, keeping an eye out for the top floor monsters. They shouldn’t be too threatening at this point, but we were tired, and Thane needed to save his magic to keep the hornets from murdering us.

We’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.

Inheritance was heavy in my hand as I looked at the small group of Vampire Rats as they squabbled with an oversized Carnivoroach, about as large as a great dane as opposed to a labrador. They moved like a wolf pack, slowly harrying and harassing the larget creature into exhaustion, until finally it committed to bowling one of their number into a wall with where a mammal would have a shoulder, and it just had more of its sickly looking thin leg. Another took the opportunity to leap on its back, dig its small clawed rodent hands into a gap in the chitin, and bite down with its oversized upper fangs, injecting its venom.

“Didn’t know they ate each other,” I mumbled.

“Same,” Thane gasped, hefting Oakthorn in shaking hands.

The death throes of the roach managed to kill one Vampire Rat outright, and further wounded the one it had tossed into a wall. We waited for the Vampire Rats to hone in on the slowing, then twitching, then still insect, tearing at it and consuming bits and pieces even as it evaporated into nothing.

Each of the rats got bigger as they did. I gave Thane a Look, dropped my sack with a deep, heaving THUNK, and charged before they got any bigger. Cursing, Thane was a heartbeat behind me.

The monsters were surprised, but we were exhausted. I managed to get two, and Thane speared one before they could react, but that left two more. One locked its teeth around my ankle and bit through the leathers, and I howled as I forwent the sword and stomped the bastard’s skull in. I had enough presence of mind to slice the last one trying to jump for Thane in half mid-air, but then the venom took.

The world was spinning, my insides were heaving, and my leg, numb, gave out under me. It wasn’t bleeding terribly—it wasn’t meant to. Vampire Rats killed you after their venom immobilized you, and if they tore a bloody hole in you, a lot of the venom would spill out instead of doing its job.

“Thane… Fucking… Hornets,” I gurgled out, before my muscles locked up and I lost consciousness.

I woke back up in a side corridor of the dungeon.

Still alive, but still in here… net loss, all in all.

“Thane… Marked our… loot?”

“Yes. Reused the claiming tabards from below. Take watch. I’m passing out.”

Muscles still stiff, and half-numb, and every last inch of feeling that made it through the paralytic venom was a throbbing, aching soreness, I levered myself up, clumsily grabbed my sword, and faced towards the only opening into the room.

I don’t know who I was kidding. When the curious, angry Carnivoroach blundered its way into the room, I just fried it with fire magic, and a limp grunt of “Flare…” Like hell was I able to swing my sword, much less actually stand to fight.

I managed to stay awake until Thane woke up, two or three eternities later, then passed right back out.

Last real obstacle. Last one. The Hell Hornets’ room was immediately ahead, all the rest of the dumb fucking roaches and rats and apes and other goddamn monsters were behind and below, and we were going to taste sunlight, water that hasn’t been in a canteen for two days, and Not. Fucking. Jerky.

“Enough gas in the tank to freeze them?” I asked, levering my pack down in case we needed to kill some of the monsters before we sealed them in.

Thane was twitching, gazing longingly at the hallway beyond the Hell Hornet nesting grounds, faintly lit by a yellow, diffuse light.

“Thane. If you run without freezing those things, I’ll murder you before the hornets can.”

He nodded, morose, and started preparing his ice spell. I did the same with my fire spell, in case I needed to plug a hole with corpses instead of ice.

We were out, we were free, and we were in some motherfucking sunlight, baby!

“Let’s get paid at the stupid guild, and then I’m going to sleep in my fucking BED!”

The guild rep looked down at us uncertainly, the young man—maybe twenty something? God, I miss being an adult—concerned, and clearly confused.

“You… hauled the stuff out yourself? You know why we give you those sacks, right? They’re enchanted to work with the chute in the dungeon.”

Chute?

“It’s kinda like a magnet. It gets hauled up for you, no matter what floor, so you can focus on keeping yourself alive down there instead of hauling rocks around. Makes it a lot easier to keep trips short, and to conserve your energy for the monsters.”

“And,” I said conversationally, a wide, brittle smile on my face. “It’s not a part of, say, the welcome package, to tell people all of that? The brand new adventurers, going down into this dungeon for the first time, don’t get a little introduction on that?”

“Uh… yeah, they do. The person who welcomed you into the local guild should have let you know.”

I waited a moment. My cheeks hurt. My eye twitched.

“You introduced us to the guild, friend.”

His eyes widened. Inheritance clicked, and I could feel how eager it was to pop back out for a bit more… light exercise.

“LET ME GO THANE!” I screamed from the Full Nelson he’d put me in, my sword swinging wildly for the guild rep’s throat as he cowered away from me, behind the counter. “I’LL ONLY KILL HIM A LITTLE!”

For our next dungeon dive, at least, we’d be a bit more educated, and get much better mileage on our stamina. No thanks to Marty The Guild Rep, who sadly managed to go home safe and sound to his family today.

Chapter Text

I wasn’t allowed back into the Adventurer’s Guild local office for two weeks, after my… outburst.

My completely reasonable outburst. Anyway.

Twice we’d gone down into the dungeon, and twice we’d come back breathing and only lightly bruised.

Also with a growing arachnophobia building somewhere in my gut, dangerously close to where my spaghetti went, but that wasn’t supposed to be talked about in the Adventurer community—bury your fear, pretend there’s nothing wrong, all that healthy stuff was the way of the fearless, heroic Holfort adventurer.

But the big thing was that we’d lived, and we’d gotten richer—the Holfortian Dream.

We were getting used to dungeon-delving, somewhat, but we couldn’t pretend that luck hadn’t been a factor. So our answer was the ever-interesting one of: train harder. Get stronger, faster, exercise our magic as hard as our minds and bodies, and above all—ensure that we were ready for the next time we dove down into the depths. Now that we knew about the CHUTE…

I’m fine. I’m Fine. Everything. Is. FINE.

We should be able to make much faster progress, and exhaust ourselves much less. The same profit, but faster and easier.

And yes, theoretically we could delve deeper and get back safe, what with how much mental and physical energy not having to worry as much about collecting and carrying our drops would save us, but… I didn’t like the look of those Arexnids. From what I’d heard from my… ahem, brief time in the Adventurer’s Guild Building, most deaths that occurred in this dungeon could be blamed on them.

The Third Floor was what separated the strong from the weak, and the rich from the poor. The money we’d made on our last dungeon circuit was a drop in the bucket next to what we’d lucked into on our first day. That had been enough to feed and house us for a week rather than the three years that grave-robbing those rich, if unimportant, nobles had netted us. But the Third Floor of this particular dungeon, and the deeper levels, were said to have magic stones far purer, ores more refined, and even some precious metals and gems that grew from the walls alongside them.

But we were still too new. Too green to risk going any deeper, with our mediocre kit and debatable skill. We were stronger every day, but I wanted to work our way up over months of effort, not days.

Thane disagreed. I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes every time he talked about going down into the dungeon, but I couldn’t agree. The blood and corpses of those older and stronger than us was still a bit too fresh in my nightmares.

So I tried to come up with a compromise—I wasn’t really his boss, at this point, so I couldn’t just tell him what to do. But if he went off and got himself killed, Adventuring would get a lot harder for me to do solo. Plus, Jacob would be sad.

… And I guess I would too. I’d probably miss him being his a-holish self. Though, not as much as I would if he quit bitching during conditioning sessions—he needed to build muscle mass and stamina if we were going to be cutting through chitin and fur for a living. The one pushing for the harder job should be the one preparing most for the work, and yet Thane still avoided conditioning whenever possible, the annoying bastard. But we needed to talk it out, whatever we decided. A compromise was probably the only way forward—and a good one would leave us equally pissed.

“Does that sound alright?” I asked, breath heaving. I’d taken to trying to hold a conversation with Thane while we sparred. My own conditioning was still well ahead of his, so it gave me the advantage of learning to better manage my breathing and giving him enough of a leg up so that we both got a more-equal sparring partner out of it. Thane, of course, waited until the end of the round—his win, he’d managed to sneak a strike past my guard while I spiraled off on a tangent—to respond.

The bastard. Just because it was my idea, didn’t mean I had to like that it kept making me lose.

“I still think you’re giving those spiders too much credit,” Thane said with a mulish look in his eye.

“And I think if you were left to make our decisions alone, we’d already be bug food. Have you already forgotten exactly how we got our first windfall?”

Thane didn’t have a response to that, presumably, because he just glared at me.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I sighed. “We’ll sprinkle some soft dungeon runs into our training regimen—after our morning practice so we’re sharp, before our conditioning so we aren’t dead on our feet, and just after lunch so we don’t want to kill ourselves. More, shorter runs will be good for us. Keep us sharp, and help us make a bit of money here and there instead of relying on the weekend trip to keep us in the green.”

We were set for money… no longer quite until I’d attend the Academy, but certainly for half that time and some change. A year and a half of food and lodging was nothing to sneeze at. But I wanted to build our savings, not run them out—like any good RPG player, I wanted to see my numbers go up, not down, damnit!

“I haven’t agreed to that yet,” Thane protested, trying to sound harsh. Failing, too, if you were wondering.

“You also lit up like a Christmas tree when I mentioned it cutting into our conditioning for the days we do this. You’re not all that subtle, man.”

“... The hell’s a Christmas tree?”

“A secret code just for badasses who can swing a sword half-decent. Get that blade up, we’re going again.”

“Only if you still need to talk. I’m not looking to get my ass beat, you little gremlin.”

“You–! I’m not that sh—! Fine. Fine.” I took up my sword, waited for Thane to raise his, and we clanged the weighted practice blades together in our ritual for starting. “The Fitness Gram Pacer Test is—”

Battle was joined, and Fitness Grams were paced.

I won that time. Thane genuinely hated when I recited that monologue—to him, utter nonsense in a made up language—in perfect monotone. I didn’t mind the glaring though. He acted moody no matter what I did.

Three days later, sweat dried from our morning sword drills, last bites of my sandwich still in hand as we walked, we saw royalty.

Well, not literally. Almost literally, but not quite. We saw the scion of one of the most powerful families in the Holfort Kingdom, a boy that could say a word and uproot entire noble houses.

When talks of powerful families came up, there were some worth mentioning. The Redgraves, for one. The Atlees, if you were being a bit generous. But there were five names that never went unspoken.

The Holforts were a given, being the very peak of our medieval system, the family for which our very nation was named. Inextricably bound to that family, intertwined so tightly as to be an extension of the Holforts’ will above all else, was the Marmoria family, the Royal Family’s shadows, confidants, spies, and assassins. Despite holding little in the way of direct power through land or military might, their economic assets, closeness to the Crown, and unsavory habits and rumors kept them well-placed in the highest echelons of the Kingdom, garnering fear and respect just as much for what people knew about them, as what they didn’t.

The Fields, afforded the dual titles of Marquesses and Dukes of the Kingdom—occasionally split between heirs, but often both afforded to the same member of the family—held similar political sway to the Redgraves if one looked only to their titles, and the amount of land they controlled. But in truth, despite their somewhat declining financial and political stature of late, they were one of the lynchpins to the entire military might of the Kingdom. They were the bulwark against the Principality of Fanoss and their history of border skirmishes, raids, revolutions, and rage at their mother kingdom of Holfort, and the Fields’ capability as strategists, commanders, warriors, and above all, mages, had earned them their place at the peak of society—whatever happened, no matter their family’s hardships… so long as the Kingdom persisted, so too would the Field family.

Much the same could be said of the Arclights. Though mere Earls as compared to the ducal title the Fields held, their rich history and distinguished military service—not to mention their habit of turning out the strongest swordsmen in the world—continued to grant them clout and respect often reserved for third Princes or renowned Dukes. Though lesser in scope, their lands and people were meticulously maintained, to the point that it was said that their holdings were utterly alien to those stepping into them from beyond, such was the change in quality of life. The honor of the people, the maintenance of the land, and even the air quality were said to be of the highest quality in all ways.

Their honor was well known through the land, and beyond question by even their superiors in the Kingdom’s rigid hierarchy. The rich history and familial honor of the Arclight Name had quelled quarrels and silenced dissent by dint of their noble bearing alone.

And finally… there was the issue of who we were faced with that very day. The scion of the Seberg House. Greg Fou Seberg, first in line for the Earldom of Seberg, and son of Georg Fou Seberg, the Iron Handed, Lord General of the Armed Forces of Holfort.

Also… a twelve year old dweeb, surrounded by armored nannies looking to escort him into the Dungeon. Fresh off the half-docked, still-emptying grand affair of an airship that his family presumably owned, he looked a little like a lost puppy, searching all his family’s hired hands for someone to go kill monsters with him. Lines and ropes were scattered everywhere, people shouted and clamored at one another, as slowly, slowly, a small tent village was constructed, presumably so all on the ship that had come to attend to the Severg heir’s needs that preferred solid ground could stay there.

“I swear to every spirit and god out there Thane,” I muttered, mutiny and murder in my soft voice, “if he takes all the good loot, I am going to prison for attacking someone above my rank. I will tear this island out of the sky so fast, I will burn the clouds themselves, and I will jump off of this forsaken rock just to feel something—”

“If you tear it out of the sky, you won’t be jumping off much. Save me the trouble and just jump off first, okay short-stuff?”

“You should’ve just said you wanted to double our conditioning tomorrow, Thane!” My smile was as wide as it was fake. “You’re right, just because it’s an off-Dungeon day, we should treat ourselves to some extra long wind-sprints, full armor and all! What use is being able to run if you can’t do it in armor? Why Thane, you’re so smart!”

“Tch.” Thane glared at a rock, and booted it off the side of the island, the Dungeon’s entrance near enough to the edge to make the more centralized town… safe-ish from escaped and roaming monsters. They struggled to keep a cogent form outside of dungeons—at least, those spawned from within them did, ‘free’ or ‘wild’ monsters showing no such issues as they merrily harassed supply lines and airship merchants—so unless one was particularly sturdily constructed, they’d never see a non-Adventurer up close.

It was a petty button to push to win arguments. So obviously, I’d keep pushing it until it broke.

We had settled down to wait—it was considered good manners just as much as good sense to let the Adventuring Party ahead of you get some distance. It was more likely that more ores or stones had grown in the meanwhile—not likely, mind, but more likely. Not to mention, Adventurers could be a twitchy sort. It generally did well for one’s lifespan not to breathe down their neck, sneak up on them, or otherwise give them the idea that you were there to kill them and take their loot.

“If they sit there any longer I’m gonna lose it Thane…!”

But they weren’t effin’ moving!

“Relax, just enjoy the break—”

“You’re the one who wants to hit the Third Floor! You should want to train harder than I do!”

“Yeah? Well I’m not some maniac who looks at his sword and thinks I’m going to beat on the world until it gives me it’s lunch money! We’re never going to be like the Founders, or the Pillars, or—!”

“Those are the same families!”

“Well how would I know That!? We weren’t all raised noble, you little brat!”

“That’s it. Back to the house, we’re settling this like men—one round, no holds barred, full-contact—!”

“Oi!” Called Greg Fou Seberg, friend to the Prince and scion of a house as old and storied as our nation. “Can you quiet down? Some of us are trying to focus!” Greg Fou Seberg, Heir of the Seberg Earldom, and member of the Fourth Rank of the Nobility… as compared to my tenuous grasp of the Eighth or Ninth as an heir to a knighthood, depending on who you asked, and a completely unranked commoner by some standards, if Mother got her way.

Him speaking to me was like the King himself speaking to Seberg—I either needed to become a yes-man, or come to peace with the fact that my head and body might soon occupy different area codes. I had no more power to tell Lord Seberg what to do than a rat did a man, and half the chance of surviving a fight with him—even if I won, I would likely be put to death for my impertinence and to discourage other lesser nobles from rumbling with their superiors.

So naturally, when I instinctively whipped around and screamed right back, it meant that I wasn’t really thinking things through.

“In a MINUTE, asshole, we’re in the MIDDLE OF SOMETHING!”

There was silence. Thane pinched his nose in frustration… resignation… fresignation.

Then the Earling’s men tromped over to us, probably to kill us for our impertinence. Well. Me. Kill me for my impertinence.

Um. Um. Um. Ah. Um. Options. Options! Plan! Blame Thane? No, dick move. Everybody saw me do it anyway. No shot. Beg? No way. Run like a coward? Nope, no way that would work, I need options!

It was as Seberg’s bodyguards-slash-adventuring babysitters advanced on me that a particularly fat Carnivoroach broke from the dungeon, identified a distracted Seberg as the nearest and likeliest target, and flew towards him at full speed. As if in slow motion, I watched as he managed to interpose his spear and catch its charge with a perfect, sure thrust, showing off a level of training that was years beyond me…

But also, showing a lack of awareness. Awareness that I’d been forced to cultivate, in my first two trials by fire, and my less-grueling short-term dungeon dives of late. Because as he speared the creature and it, still moving but already dead, slid down the length of his spear, the momentum took him. He stumbled back, out of his picture-perfect thrust, having lashed out rather than prepare himself to absorb the attack, too impatient…

His arms pinwheeled. His spear thrown up and over behind him, desperately trying to cast it away for some forward momentum, anything.

And Greg Fou Seberg, heir to an Earldom, Scion of the Five Founders and the Four Pillars of Holfort, fell backwards off an island, driven to his death by a nameless, low-level monster.

Oh, look. The worst option.

The adrenaline slammed my body into gear before I knew what was happening, my full suite of body-reinforcement magic pumping through my veins, thrumming in my ears along with the whoosh of blood through my body. Full reflex, full speed, full strength, I moved forward, sword leaving my sheathe before I registered I needed it, sprinting full tilt towards the child who’d gone over the edge. The Seberg men advancing on me cried out in alarm, or maybe ordered me to surrender myself, or something. Their words were too fast, their movements too slow, and my mind too distracted.

I deflected a high slash from one, my fist found his stomach, and he reeled back in pained surprise, out of the fight for as long as I’d need him to be. The other was smarter, swung at me in a perfect horizontal strike with his hammer. Too heavy to deflect, too fast to interpose—I ducked, my body reinforcement ensuring that the ringing of hammer on my helm was a distraction and a flash of pain, rather than a crushed skull. Maybe the speed got me out of the way, maybe the sturdiness kept me alive, but I didn’t care. I was already moving, blade cutting for a joint in his armor at the knee.

He screamed in pain, fell back, and blood was flowing.

“WRAP HIS WOUND!” I screamed frantically, charging ahead.

Five bounding leaps, as if I were launching myself forward under the moon’s gravity instead of the Earth’s, and I was at the edge.

Loose rope—looks tied off.

I looked back. Thane was aiming a dumbstruck look my way, down at the bleeding wound he was binding, back up at me—

I scooped up the line and jumped.

Only five seconds had passed. It was a long rope.

Please be enough.

I jumped back and away, praying I wouldn’t grate myself into a bloody smear against the island’s side, hoping that Seberg was alive, and oh god I hope this line is tied off firm—

The lip of the island passed before my eyes, and I was in freefall.

Seberg must have rolled over the rough edge of the island, grasping and clawing at any exposed rock, root, or likely-looking clod of dirt to slow his fall, because when I fell below the cloudbank just beneath the island of Pallenmoore’s altitude, I saw him not far away from me, tumbling, and screaming, and frantically beating at the air as if it had personally wronged him by not bearing his weight.

“FLATTEN YOURSELF! REACH OUT WIDE LIKE A STARFISH!” I screamed, not at all confident in my ‘knowledge’ from my previous life, but I had nothing else that sprang to mind. Keeping myself narrow, diving through the air like an Olympic athlete, was not at all as easy as it looked in television. I would be slow to reach him no matter what, and maybe, maybe the rope would be long enough.

But against every chance, he heard me over the whipping winds, and his own screams. And he listened.

He started slowing. I got the bright idea to bring magic into the occasion, hurriedly cludging together a spell that would drain my reserves far too quickly, but—

“FORCE!”

Keeping my concentration against the force of the wind tearing at my face, ripping at my hair, was difficult. But the better I concentrated, the more the cone I’d imagined in front of me solidified, the lest the wind distracted… and the faster, and more aerodynamic I got.

Of course, the gaps in the conceptual cone I was fixing firm in my mind caught more and more drag, the faster I got, making it harder all over again… But overall, it felt like a win.

And I was beside Seberg. Starting to speed past him, actually, so I cut the cone—got punched in the fucking teeth by a burst of hardened air, but that’s FINE—and was groping madly for the other boys hand, his leg, fuck, I’d even take his stupid fistful of his hair.

Then the rope went taut, and he dropped beyond me.

Seberg’s eyes met mind.

I had one last idea. A horrible one.

Again, I called out one word. The same one.

“FORCE!”

It was not an easy thought. I’d toyed around some, with the idea of a wide, diffuse blast of force that answered when I screamed… not at all inspired by a certain three-word shout of a dov-souled hero.

I’d managed a bone-breaking blast that all-but drained me of all energy I had, once. But it had been outward that time, away from me, rather than pulling towards me as I intended. This was the exact opposite, I was already low on magic, and it was somebody’s life on the line.

The spell worked as I meant it to though. A blast of force rushed up beneath Seberg, throwing him up towards me. I blindly reached out, vision fading, to pull him in, onto the rope, to safety.

Then I was slipping away, hand loosening on the rope. The world was spinning, then faded out for a second, then started spinning again even as it faded to black, and kept going round and round, a feeling in my ears rather than a twisting image in my eyes…

There was a hand the same size as my own on my wrist, and my shoulder was wrenched out of its socket. At least, I hoped there was. If it was a hallucination at the edge of death, maybe as I impacted the sea far below and found just how slowly water gets out of your way… It would be a pretty shitty last thing to feel. And I really didn’t want to wake up in my next life, with my last hopes from the previous being Dear God I hope I didn’t just piss myself…

I didn’t piss myself. My arm was completely inoperable, though—muscles strained to the limit, fractured in a few places from how harsh the entire experience had been on us all, and a few ligaments torn badly. It was bad enough that even with funky magical potions and the prescribing of the Seberg’s family doctor, out with Earling Seberg due to his habit of breaking bones and walking out of dungeons bloody, they thought it likely I’d never be able to fight the same way again. Not without Light magic to help—and that was notoriously rare, and the only two people that I knew of with access to it were well beyond my reach until well after it all would have healed over wrong.

So. In a country where your ability on the battlefield was your only measure of worth, where your marriage prospects were tied only to your status—of which I had none—and your only way of earning status from the bottom of the heap was through Dungeoneering or making war, I had been crippled before even reaching my majority.

But… at least, having saved a Seberg’s life, I probably wouldn’t be put to death for my impertinence in talking back to one. Right?

The door opened, in walked the redheaded rich kid that I had thrown away my future for… and I did my best not to cry, not to show weakness in front of the perfectly healthy boy that had everything I never would.

You’re a grown man, I told myself. You’re better than this! Stronger! You can figure something out!

But in my own head, it all sounded like slander. I should be better, and that was proof that I was worthless. I should have been stronger, smarter, faster, and that was all evidence that I never would have been anything anyway, so why was this some great loss.

I cried in front of one of the most powerful people in the country like I was a little bitch, and tried not to focus on how my stupid, childish dreams, the ones that went unspoken even between me and Thane, my partner in crime, would never be fulfilled. I would never be the strongest. Never be anything special. Not anymore.

Chapter Text

“Um. Dude, are you… alright? Should I, like, come back later? Or… something?”

I swiped at my nose with a sleeve, so I wouldn’t snort all the snot trailing down my face back up into my nose and make one of the most disgusting sounds that a human could make in front of one of the most-powerful-men-to-be in the country.

“Fine. Just… realizing my career as an Adventurer is over before it began.”

Greg Fou Seberg looked at me like I was crazy.

“When you caught me,” I started. “You know. After I caught you. My shoulder… it got pulled. Badly. The bones, and ligaments… It’s all fucked up.”

Seberg looked actually taken aback at that. Like he was concerned or something, like a normal human might be.

“I don’t… mean to sound ungrateful, Lord Seberg,” I said weakly. “I’m… rather happy that you saved me in return. I’d much rather have this problem than that of an empty grave.” I tried to laugh. The noise that came out of me didn’t match the definition. It felt hollow, and so did my stomach, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up if I kept talking, so I shut up and focused on not crying. Not crying again, anyway.

“Are you sure?” He asked. “You can’t just let it heal, and train it back into shape?”

I sucked down a shaky breath and shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to speak just yet, so I let that breath out, and took another one that was a bit less unstable. A bit more sure.

“The doctor said I’d be lucky to get moderate mobility back, and even that will take years. Years of time, and effort, and waiting, and therapy, and all the while I’ll need to spend money without making any, and then I won’t have enough cash to attend the Academy, and then I’ll never be knighted or married, and I’ll just… rot away into nothing. Even after all that, there’s a good chance I’ll still be crippled, and no commoner is going to hire a crippled worker if they can help it, and I’ll never be able to fight like I did so Adventuring is out, and...”

No, wait, that’s about it. I trailed off, face twitching as I sucked in another shaky breath, and killed the tears before they reached my eyes.

Greg looked troubled. And then he didn’t.

“Wait. You said one arm is no good. Which one?”

Wordlessly, I gestured to my left shoulder with my mobile hand.

“Are you a lefty?”

Wordlessly, I shook my head. I saw where he was going with this, but still. I was too small to use a sword one-handed with any real efficacy, conditioning and magical reinforcement or not. Inevitably, I’d run out of mana if I was burning it for every last fight, and I’d have a gaping weak spot, unable to even fend enemies off with magic because I’d be too busy using it to reinforce myself, and my fucked up arm wouldn’t have enough range of motion to properly use the gestures that I’d trained so long, ingrained in my own mind to use my spells—

“Then use a shield. You won’t be able to move it too well, but as long as you can keep it between you and the other guy, you’ll be fine!” He clapped a hand over his bicep, as if he’d solved all the world’s problems, and—

Wait. Wait, why had that not occurred to me!? Just because—

“Remember Alan,” my father had told me on one of his better days. “Using a shield is a sign of weakness. It tells the whole world that you aren’t confident. Not in your strength, or your speed, or your swordsmanship. A shield tells the entire country that you don’t think you’re good enough. That’s why the entire Holfort sword style is built on aggression, speed, and precision—your only defense is your ability to parry, and missing your chance leaves you dead. Just like in a Dungeon.

…

My fingers were digging into my skull hard enough to hurt, and my immobile fist clenched as nearly as it could into an enraged fist.

I dismissed an entire fighting style just because my dad told me it wasn’t FASHIONABLE!?

Sure, I’d still be crippled, and sure, I’d still need to focus on magic reinforcement until my next growth spurt over using Fire or Force magic in combat, or otherwise expanding my repertoire. But that was doable. It was possible. It would work.

But… I’d still need to recover quite a bit first. I couldn’t just leech off of Jacob and Thane all that time, and—

“And of course, I’ll be taking you into my service anyways. It’d be pretty crummy of me not to, after you saved my life an’ all,” he said casually, wrapping his hands behind his head and leaning back in a carefree pose, shoulder against the door frame. “Besides, that way my doctors can keep up the care on you. We don’t have any Light Mages in our employ, and all the known ones out there are aligned to power blocs that the Sebergs don’t particularly get along with, but the doctors that work for us are pretty good at what they do! They’ll have you back to fighting fit in no time!”

…

Did… Did Greg Fou Seberg, future resident meathead of the aptly named ‘Idiot Brigade…’ just think circles around me? And save the entire future trajectory of my life. And show more emotional intelligence than I, a former adult in a preteen body, had shown in the past Month?

…

Heedless of my injury, barely wincing at the pain, I sprang out of the bed and got down on one knee to pledge my loyalty.

And if rather than putting a fist over my heart, I stabilized my throbbing shoulder with my open hand, my new liege lord didn’t say anything about it.

“So we work for you again?” Thane asked, tone cool, unimpressed.

“Uh… I mean. If you want to,” I offered. “I should have enough money to make that happen again, I think…” My arm was in a sling to keep unwanted movement to a minimum. It would be hard to make it any worse, according to the doctors, but I didn’t exactly want to test that, and neither had they. “But… well, I’m going to be working for Lord Seberg. So I won’t exactly be the big man on campus. Mostly I just… wanted to see if you still wanted to adventure with me.”

Jacob hummed softly, just removing the kettle from its flame and pouring himself a cup. Neither Thane nor I really liked tea, but the older man insisted it was rude to brew less than enough for everyone.

“And in your role as his vassal and follower,” Jacob started, slow and considering every word with patient care, “you are permitted servants of your own? I must admit, it has been quite a few years since I served a house with more political capital than your father’s, but I was under the impression that a Lord or Lady’s followers were expected not to show their wealth, so as not to challenge their patron’s positions of primacy.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, more or less. So I was. I mean. That’s why… well, I was thinking.”

“Were you?” Thane asked, a bit less coldly. His brow was cocked upwards, in the way it usually was when he was poking fun as a joke, instead of trying to be mean or get even.

“Shut up,” I grumbled, in what I hoped was a good-natured way. God, communication is hard. Why is just talking so hard? “We could just… not be like that? I told him that you were adventuring with me, and ever since they didn’t notice him fall, he… doesn’t want to adventure with his House Guards. So getting two followers interested in adventuring, and building up a party from scratch…?”

Thane looked at me like I was an idiot.

“What?”

“Did you pitch me… a commoner… as a follower of an Earl’s Son!?”

“... When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.” I mean, I’m not getting Dad’s knighthood at this rate. So unless I make a groundbreaking discovery or conquer Fanoss single-handed, I’m a commoner too—I’m just waiting for the world to realize it. And hoping I get my life together before then.

Within the month, we were in Seberg lands, and Greg was chomping at the bit to get out there and hit the dungeons again. He knew that Thane was a commoner, and that I was too, technically, even if in my case it was a matter of circumstance rather than birth.

In a move that surprised me though, he showed that he was very good at not revealing that fact to his family, and insisted we were vaguely noble from my connection to the Knightly House of Varez, despite the impossibility that I would inherit, and had some people in his household loyal to him above all others to make it so.

Apparently, before she died, and left my dad the last living member of our House, I’d had an aunt who had some kids in the ‘branch family,’ who also had a minor landed holding on the periphery of the Varez territory. Or at least, legally I did, and legally, I would be inheriting that totally real parcel of land. She’d been invented whole-cloth by one of the Seberg scribes, of course, with Thane being penciled in under the Knightly House of Oaks as a commoner squire of my imaginary uncle-by-marriage to my imaginary aunt.

What a beautiful imaginary family they must have been. Such an imaginary tragedy, to be cut down in the prime of their imaginary youth.

With my nonexistent aunt married to a member of the Oaks House—which was conveniently extinct, and incapable of arguing with us on the matter—who was lost in a monster attack on their modest island, and no other apparent heirs coming forward, it was a shoe-in that I would be inheriting this totally real piece of land that for sure existed.

So now Thane was my responsibility, legally speaking, even moreso than when he’d been my servant. When a squire was left without a master due to an unforeseen death, generally either the Knight’s Heir, or their House took over custodianship of their training and education until they were properly elevated to the Nobility. Seeing as I was the (totally legit) only heir of the (totally legit) House of Oaks now, anything Thane did, any crime he committed, and any debt he incurred, was on me.

Which would suck, if he wasn’t probably the more responsible of the two of us. You know, when it came to normal things. Not risking-your-life things, I was usually a bit smarter about those. Avoiding them where possible, and preparing for them when they were the best option instead of rushing into them like a dumbshit. And honestly, I get called the meathead…?

But at the end of the day, we were both officially Nobles in the eyes of the Law. Me resuming my role as a Knight’s Heir, and he a Noble-to-Be, Inherited-Squire-of-House-Oaks. Until my mother said otherwise… if she was attentive enough to notice us, and stupid enough to set herself against a member of House Seberg, neither of which I really thought was true. She was terrible, like a lot of people of whatever gender in this stupid society, but I never got the sense that she was stupid, from our few interactions.

You know. The one time she held me as a child before she decided she didn’t like it, the time she slapped me for spilling some water on her dress, the time she chewed me out for not bowing and scraping for her attention like a good little pet—sorry, good little son.

Of course, I’d never actually inherit. It would last us through the Academy though, after which I’d have the education and training to make my own way as a part of the Kingdom’s slapdash government, or else go back to Adventuring. Either way I’d have some sort of career afterwards, and it would either be one that safeguarded my position in the nobility, or set me on a path that didn’t rely on my station with enough money and resources to hit the ground running.

Until then, I was just going through the motions until the fact that I was a rat in a dog costume became clear to noble society, and polite company very politely asked me and my ‘squire’ to get the hell out of their sight before they fed us to their dogs in rat suits.

… I think that metaphor got away from me a little bit.

But a lot could change at the Academy. Hell, maybe I’d even find a power bloc to join, or a half-decent woman looking for an attack dog adventurer of a husband. You could do worse than being the muscle for a politically savvy lady that didn’t screw the servants behind your back.

Anyway, the whole debacle made it clear how terrifying the right scribe in the wrong place could be. Inventing and erasing people from society at will, no matter the truth of the matter, or what the low-ranking Nobility said to the contrary. Pushing commoners up into the nobility, and the nobility into the dirt, if they had access to the right records. A good bureaucrat could quite literally drive an entire House to extinction without ever spilling a drop of blood, in the labyrinthine records of Holfort society.

Note to Self—make friends with the pencil-pushers.

Thanks to Greg’s casual patronage and unthinking influence—and I don’t mean that negatively, just that he didn’t really think about what his endorsement or disdain meant for people, and that in our case, he’d accidentally elevated the two of us to Very Important People, even if only by proxy—Thane would be attending the academy at the same level that I had been slated for… and Greg had bumped me up to the next level. The playground of the big boys.

That’s right… I was invited into the echelon of scholarship where the women were harpies, the men were desperate, and nobody was happy. The exceptions on both sides being only the highest ranked of either gender, the privilege of birth protecting the most powerful men in society from the social dominance of women, and the expectations of their role demanding classier behavior from the creme de la creme des femmes.

Ugh. That sounds creepy, even in my head. Big mistake, putting it like that. The highest ranked ladies were expected to behave better. Let’s say that instead.

And I’d be there with no accolades, no title, and no power, and seen—rightly so, from most points of view—as a leech who had done a single, great thing in saving Greg, and was milking it for all it was worth… and as a completely unmarriageable fool with no more influence than a commoner, and who would never inherit even a knightly title, or the smallest of holdings.

So that would be neat. Great for my marriage prospects at the Academy, and everybody knew that the unmarriageable Holfortians were treated like pariahs, and all but booted out of any positions of power. My job prospects too, now I think about it—who doesn’t want to hire the country bumpkin of their graduating class, who ‘stole’ one of the coveted spots at the school, and didn’t ‘know his place’ by staying away from the elites of the class?

And Greg wouldn’t hear a word of putting me back in the lower level classes. As he’d said, laughing, ‘If I need to go through all those crummy etiquette classes, you do too!’ Completely missing why I wanted the ‘less respectable’ Academy ExperienceTM, and just excited to have one more friend that he could run into between classes at school, or delve through the Capital Dungeon near the Academy with.

Not at all regretting working for you, Lord Seberg, certainly not, Lord Seberg.

But compared to the fact that I’d get enough use back in my arm to make sure everyday life wasn’t a hassle, and to hold a shield and get back to dungeoneering, after some physical therapy and getting it back into shape…

Well, social suicide was probably a small price to pay. According to the Seberg doctors, I’d be okay to train it properly again in a few more weeks, and Greg wasn’t so insistent that he wanted to make me get back to delving through dungeons until I was as close to one hundred percent as I could be. So I had time to get used to holding my sword in a purely one-handed manner, and train out the reflex to defend with it in preparation for armoring up.

Which I’d been working on while my arm healed. I could train one arm up while the other recovered, after all, and despite the twinges of pain as my muscle memory kicked in, and I tried to grab for the sword with my injured arm despite its sling, the Pavlov-ing of pain was helping me get it through my thick skull to stop trying to use two hands, idiot!

Relearning verbal and physical casting-aids for my spells, and learning-learning how to effectively make use of a shield would be rough, though. I wasn’t looking forward to that, or the conditioning that would go into making it happen. But I was game for the challenge—after all, Greg wasn’t the only one excited to get back to the dungeons, and far be it from me to let him down. I was pretty damn excited to feel like I was actually contributing again, and the doctors were close to giving me the green light.

Add to it all the fact that he’d basically waved off all of my financial concerns as barely being pocket change, with his influence and the allowance he threw to me and Thane for helping him train and to keep us around… the guy was doing right by me. So what if I’d have to put up with some horrible people in a couple of years? I was no stranger to being disliked, and I could keep my head down and keep moving forward with the best of them.

So what if I’d taken on the hated role of conditioning coach—to teach the strength-training obsessed Greg that yes, raw power and fighting skill were both good, but running out of steam was death, and neither the dungeons nor the battlefield had time-outs—and that the job was testing my patience? I could handle the grumbling and complaining about wind-sprints, and he was a lot less prone to bitching and moaning when I did them right alongside him and Thane.

So what if I needed to relearn the art of the sword? I would get back up to snuff sooner or later, and I’d be a lot harder to deal with thanks to the Holfortian derision of shield-use, because just about nobody here had any experience fighting enemies who used one, and already I was getting… passable at holding it one handed, and building the muscle to do it effectively without body-reinforcement.

I mean, it didn’t feel good to essentially be paid to be the guy’s friend… but I decided to look at it backwards. We were friends, and it was just incidental that he paid us to train with him, help him diversify his regimen, and go gank monsters with him. It was more of an allowance so we could get better monster-slaying equipment.

It made me feel a little less icky.

And hey, who knew? Maybe Greg, Thane and I would find a Lost Item, or discover an island big enough to raise us into the nobility proper… or at least get me the knighthood my Mother had denied me, and raise Thane up right along with me. Might even make the women willing to touch me with a ten foot pole, at the Academy.

“Earl Seberg… I don’t understand!” The latest idiot cried. Greg had just finished mopping the floor with one of his friends. Thane had managed to utterly embarrass one of the others. And I—with my one functional hand, heavy reliance on my old and no-longer-viable instincts for two-handing a weapon, and faking my way through actually managing it by pumping the reinforcement magic to maximum to make up for the fact I was one-handing a weapon through a two-handed style of fighting—had just finished beating the one talking black, blue, and bloody.

“What’s there to understand?” The Seberg heir asked coolly, leaning on his spear and subtly deepening his breathing. He wasn’t good at hiding how out-of-breath he was, but he was good enough that these amatuers couldn’t see it. “You said… what was it again? ‘Why do you keep that cripple around when we’re better in every way?’” Greg nodded to me without taking his eyes off of the gasping, emotional boy. “You’re not the first that Varez has heard that from. Not the first he’s beaten down, either… though I think you might be the one of the worst-off afterwards.”

With a reddening face and sucking down breaths, the yokel and his lackeys retreated, trying hard not to lose any more face in front of an Earl’s heir.

Er… maybe not yokel. They were all baron’s sons, meaning they were a solid two rungs above where Thane and I theoretically were in the nobility ladder, as Heritage Knights to-be. You know, if you didn’t look too closely at reality, instead of the paper trail. They could gut us in the streets for any imagined slight, and the worst they’d get would be a timeout and a small fine. You know… if we weren’t in good with someone as far above them as they were us.

“When are these soft idiots going to learn?” He asked. Probably rhetorically. I answered anyway.

“When you make a bigger deal about it,” I sighed, rolling first my healthy, exhausted arm from how hard I’d had to work it to keep up with a healthy—if unskilled and poorly conditioned—fighter. I’d had to maximize how much I moved around our dueling ring, making him chase me to wear him out, all while trying to make it look like I wasn’t running away to avoid losing face or embarrassing Greg, so I had to initiate a bunch of engagements and throw away my advantage over and over, and then claw it back again and again, tiring myself out too the whole damn time, just to force the other idiot to a point of muscle failure…

It was getting annoying, having to defend my place as one of Greg’s henchmen. Draining, mentally as much as physically. Keeping my job as a goon shouldn’t be this hard.

Sure, nobody called us that, but that’s basically what we were. ‘Go here,’ ‘do this,’ ‘get that,’ and ‘don’t make me look bad’ were the core of our daily doings, when we weren’t training to get back into shape—or in Thane’s case, in better shape—to take on dungeons. Or in today’s case, defending our position as Grade A Lackeys for House Seberg.

“Have some of your people circulate a story,” I chimed in. “Something about how the next people who want to become one of your followers need to kill a B-Class or higher monster solo, or something equally dumb and dangerous. Either they’ll be strong enough to make it and be worth keeping around, they’ll be dumb enough to try to fake it and either get hurt or need to be bailed out and shame themselves, or they’ll be smart enough not to put their life on the line, and do something worthwhile for the Kingdom instead of bothering us. No matter how it happens, either we win, or the Kingdom does, with no loss for us.”

Greg snorted. “You know that sort of thing would get me reprimanded by the Prime Minister, or the King or whatever. ‘Sides, when’d you get so coldblooded?”

“By the Prime Minister? Not your father?” Thane questioned Greg before I could respond to another rhetorical question, his eyebrow arched high. “I would have thought that he’d be worried about your reputation, or that of the House?”

“Eh, as long as he gets to keep playing with his army men, he won’t be fussed.”

Hell of a way to talk about a General, but alright, Greg… “Fine by me. Besides, it’s not that cold-blooded. We’re planning on clearing out that dungeon soon anyway, right? Arexnids are B-Class. I wouldn’t set the bar higher than we’re going to be clearing.”

Despite my recommendations that we go to a less dangerous and more lucrative dungeon, of course, but Greg wanted to get a symbolic victory, for our first dungeon run as a party once we were all up to standards. Once I was up to standards, really, and after he and Thane were better than they’d been previously.

It wasn’t a terrible idea, either—a morale win. Prove to himself that he wasn’t scared of facing where he’d nearly died, prove to me that I was as good as I’d been before the injury, and could actually do this. Prove to Thane that we actually wanted him with us, and that we were happy to help him build the skills and physical ability that would guarantee him, even in the worst case, a career if something happened to the both of us.

“But if we’re going to do that, I’ve to get back to my P.T.” Greg nodded, goodnatured. Thane, for his part, could read where I was going with my line of thought. I could actually see it in his eyes, when he started desperately looking for an excuse. “I’m thinking I’ll sprinkle in a workout in-between, too. Whipping that dumbass should not have worn me out so much. You two down to join me for conditioning between rounds?”

Greg grumbled something vaguely affirmative. Thane struggled to find a suitable excuse, but not having any tasks to complete in his newfound position of low-ranking nobility, staying at the home and under the protection of a much more powerful House, acquiesced with a groan.

“What’s on the agenda, Coach?” Seberg asked, already sounding tired.

I smiled.

I pulled my attention away from my throbbing arm, a grimace on my face. It had been weeks since the last ‘challenge’ for my spot as Goon Number One, thankfully—rumors spreading, I guess, along with how ‘dishonorable’ and ‘cowardly’ I was to be using a shield, now I actually had some idea of how to, but I was getting into better shape all the time for the next inevitable challenge to come my way. With the fact that the Academy wasn’t too far off—just under a year left before we had to go—I expected the numbers to absolutely spike, either just before, or just after we started there. Maybe both.

“Next round!” I called, interrupting the practice bout between Seberg and Thane. “Weapons down, let’s run!”

Thane whined, slender fingers slipping from their grip on the lead-weighted training sword, and Greg did the same as he coughed up a loogie, the training having made his breathing utterly ragged after we’d stepped the intensity up again. They got to running around the track in the Seberg Family’s training yard—an Earl’s mansion wasn’t just rich, it was rich rich—and after gritting my teeth against the coming pain, I followed, pumping my arms in as close to normal a way as I could manage, and trying to ignore the hitch to my shoulder joint as it rolled through its positions, and the stabbing pain that came with it.

I’m not crying, damn it! I’m sweating from my eyes!

“So Master Varez,” Jacob asked, pouring the both of us a cup of an herbal tea, “have things been progressing as you assumed they would?”

I grunted, forcing myself to use my left hand, despite the throbbing pain pulsing out from my shoulder. It was mostly muscle soreness from how hard I’d been working it, as opposed to exacerbation of the pre-existing damage, thankfully, but the only times the shoulder didn’t hurt was when I kept it perfectly still. Either way though, I still had some room to work on it that day before the doctors would start whapping me with a rolled up newspaper and screaming ‘NO!’

My muscles and range of motion were a lot better than they had been, but my fine motor controls were still iffy. Jacob was kind enough to allow me to use his tea-parties as an excuse to work on that finer control, as well as forcing me to work on my off-handed writing skills and a few other odds and ends to shore up that weakness.

I only spilled a bit of the searing hot tea in my lap as I raised it to my lips in shaking hands.

“Better than I’d feared, I guess,” I said, clamping down on the urge to wince. More at the flavor than the heat, if I’m being honest, not that I’d tell Jacob that. He had pride in his tea-brewing, and I wasn’t about to insult the man that had been my closest confidant and biggest supporter since Mom’s… reappearance? Return? Revengeance?

Well. The letter she had sent my way was still heavy in my jacket pocket. It had only shown up the week prior, and was clearly an afterthought at best, based on the ratty sky-skiff it had been sent on, but it had been a shock nonetheless, and one that I had no idea how to feel about. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to open it, with how little she clearly thought of me, but… Hell, it could be good news, right? It could mean that she gave a shit.

“Training’s going well,” I allowed. “Thane’s finally catching up on the physical end, much as he hates it. And his magic’s doing better every day, even if he has trouble with anything but the Ice Element. Give him some time and the battlefield’s his.”

Jacob hummed and nodded, gesturing for me to go on.

“Greg’s had the best training money can buy,” I went on, “and he’s been keeping up pretty well when it comes to the fitness stuff, these last few weeks, but he refuses to get better gear, which is driving me up the goddamn wall, seeing as he’s the one that wants to go dungeon-diving most of all. But I’m hoping that once I get my ass back in shape, I can kick his across the yard until he wises up.”

“Language, Master Varez,” Jacob corrected, tone mild but eyes sharp. The teacup suddenly seemed to lose all warmth in my hand, and I carefully maneuvered it back into the waiting dish before my hand started shaking too badly again.

The nerves could be… a little fucky.

“Sorry. Uh… where was I? Greg. He also doesn’t want to learn magic, like, at all, so the dream of teaching him proper body-reinforcement technique is a pipe dream too. He’s damn lucky his family gets so big naturally, and they seem to have some sort of unconscious grasp of reinforcement magic, or else he’d be in serious trouble against anyone who was capable of that sort of spell. But try to tell him that, and how much stronger he’d be actually mastering that ability…” I let out an exasperated sigh.

Jacob nodded again, more slowly this time. “It sounds as if your party is nearly ready to get back to the Adventuring lifestyle, Alan,” he said with a small smile. He reached up a gloved hand, adjusted his monocle, and nodded. “I understand that I’m not currently under your employ, Master Varez, but please forgive an old man his worries. I am quite pleased that Master Seberg and Young Thane have improved so much, but I have been speaking with them as well, when time permits. Mostly, I was interested in using our talk to learn how you are doing.”

I didn’t quite keep the grimace off of my face. “I’m… uh, I’m alright. I’m good. Arm’s… a lot better.” I raised my arm up so that my elbow was even with my shoulder, and extended the arm out like I was doing half of a T-pose. “Can’t lift it much higher than this, but the pain’s been a lot better lately, even when I move it.” I wiggled the arm up and down a bit, barely getting another ten degrees up before a sharp pain started. I managed not to wince, though—I’d been expecting that particular hitch of pain, like a steel pin being slowly, carefully driven through my shoulder to keep the humerus stapled to where it needed to be.

It came in short, sharp pulses, until I dropped it back to a more comfortable range. The pain was still worse than it had been, but it was the dull, aching sensation I’d gotten used to. Just worse than the normal background hurt I’d gotten used to. “The doctors actually say it’s been healing better than they expected—I might get another few degrees of motion out of it, and the pain could even fade a bit more. Something about using body-reinforcement spells while its healing making the joints stronger, or something.”

“That is wonderful news, Master Varez,” Jacob said warmly. And then he did something that nobody else did, when talking about my fucking… worthless shoulder. He moved the fuck on with the conversation.

It felt good… to have someone else actually excited about my recovery, instead of just sad, or guilty, or angry about the injury. I got enough of all of that whenever I was alone with my thoughts, or putting up with all the pain through conditioning, or physical therapy. It made me feel like I was normal or something. Like maybe I could actually be as good as anyone else.

I was able to hold things in my hand again. I’d gone through enough conditioning to make me puke my brains out, after the doctors had cleared me, and the weight of a shield wasn’t totally unfamiliar. I was still slow with it, the movements not-quite instinctual, like those with my sword had become. Thankfully, even one-handed, I was competent, though my spars with Thane had evened out a lot in the win-loss department, after my injury.

And the three of us were ready to get our revenge back on the Pallen Town Dungeon.

“Remember the plan, everyone?” I asked, a bit nervously. Sure, in the training yard I’d been doing fine, but…

“Duh,” Thane mumbled.

“Sure, sure,” Greg laughed. “Just don’t piss your pants if we come across an Arexnid, yeah Varez?”

“Bite me, Seberg… Alright. Let’s go. Heads on a swivel, people.”

“Sure thing, Mom.”

The Vampire Rats weren’t an issue. The Carnivoroaches were easy enough to kill. For three floors, we were a well oiled machine, and with the tactics we employed, and the semi-practiced teamwork we had between the three of us, the Dungeon wasn’t an issue.

Then we got to the Fourth Floor. And on that floor, we didn’t come across an Arexnid. We came across five.

The first was frozen fast in a wave of jagged ice by Thane, and shattered by a swift jab from Greg’s spear. The second I managed to bathe in a stream of fire—thank God I’d been practicing casting through my sword, even if it was generally less effective than straight from your hands—so it screamed, what fluid there was in its frame boiled, and it skittered away, half on and half off a wall, before writhing, flipping over, and curling in on itself.

That left three more though, and they were already on top of us. A pair of spindly, bladed limbs came for my neck, and I barely managed to duck behind my shield in time.

My arm screamed in pained protest. Greg could hit hard in sparring practice, but we were barely teenagers. We couldn’t hope to hit as hard as monsters that size. But with reinforcement magic, my arm held, and so did my shield. The blow sent me sliding back, shoulder locked up, and the monster reared back with a high-pitched screech.

Thane was dodging like his life—well, because his life depended on it, and Greg was keeping his at a distance with the reach his spear afforded him.

“Thane!” I barked. “Ice wall! Stall it, and I’ll help when I can!”

“What, we’re not all taking one?” Greg heckled, “should I just handle them all, if you’re going to be so—!”

His Arexnid took the moment of distraction as the opening it was, and rushed him. He moved his spear, got it back into position—almost, not quite. It pierced its abdomen right near the base of where its massive, alternating chitinous and furred legs met its body. It roared, legs pumping as it scuttled closer, forced the spear deeper, and ran up the length of its shaft until it was bearing down on Greg.

I didn’t think. If I had, I wouldn’t have been so damn stupid. But Thane was already doing as I’d told him, reliant on me for help with his. Greg was in no shape to do anything but twist his spear, pale-faced and white-knuckled as he desperately fought for leverage, to work the spear to an angle that the monster would struggle to approach on.

So I threw my sword. Like a complete dipshit. It spun, end over end, and nailed the monster in the abdomen.

Hilt first, of course. Doing no damage whatsoever.

At least that got its attention.

I threw a flare of flame at the Arexnid rushing to finish the job on me, driving it back for a key moment, and forced every speck of mana I had into the least efficient Magic Reinforcement spell I had ever cast. But Hell, you didn’t buy a monster truck for efficiency, you got it for power, and at that moment, power was all I was after.

My boots slammed the stone floor, my arms pumped, my shoulder felt like it was fucking squeaking with every motion, if that made any sort of sense, and I hit the massive fuck-off huge spider shoulder-first. My good shoulder. I drove myself up and off of the rock as I met it, and tackled it up, away, and off of Seberg’s spear.

Seberg managed to keep hold of his weapon, some-fucking-how, and speared the enraged Arexnid chasing me down in its face as I wrestled with mine, warding off its bladed legs, and how did they bend like that!?

“Help Thane!” I screamed, not at all like a schoolgirl, trying to keep control of its two frontmost legs from my perch on its thorax, trying not to get sliced, diced, stabbed, jabbed, or skewered. “I’ve got this!” I lied, throwing my weight to the side and swinging a boot forward, towards its face, aiming for an eye.

I kicked one of its oversized mandibles instead, and some of its acidic bile started burning through my iron-toed leather boot.

One of its arms wrenched free of where I’d pinned it to my shoulder by an unbladed joint, and the sudden change in forces threw me off-balance. Its other leg yanked free of where I held it, but pulled me along with it. The shock of its clawed foot hitting the ground jolted me free, broke my grip, and I was on the floor, rolling, dodging its massive stomps.

Somehow I fought to my knees in time to put my shield between its claws and me, surged up under it. It stumbled, and I screamed, pulled my arms back over my head, and stabbed the point of my kite shield up into its abdomen.

It stilled, then collapsed on me. I wriggled free with screams of profanity and rage, picked up my sword, and slammed the blade into its body, even as it faded into mist.

“Uh.” I stopped, pulled my sword free with a jerk, and turned. Greg took a step back at the look in my eye. “... Sorry.”

Greg learned to pay attention in a dungeon after that. It only took a few more near-death experiences for him, and everybody else. All two of us, who had hitched our wagons to his, and couldn’t just find a new adventuring party because the nominal leader could be an airhead.

But hell, if being his glorified body-guards in dungeons didn’t make Thane and I damned dangerous people.

The spear hit my shield with enough force to drive me back a step, but the banded wood—weighed down with lead to make it heavier, better for training—held firm. More importantly, and less certain before the skirmish, my arm held.

I’d never have full mobility again. There was a hitch in the joint if I ever turned it wrong, it ached like hell in the rain, and I had to stretch it every morning before feeling in it returned after I slept, and every night before I went to bed to try to keep it from clenching to hell in the night. But the Seberg doctors were good. They, primarily being recruited from the Holfort Army and having treated all kinds of wounds, knew their way around even a joint that had been wrenched so badly as mine. It was lucky that I was young, they said, and the tissues more elastic… lucky that I had the wherewithal to train it to be stronger, firmer, every day/

It would never be the same, but I could use it. I’d proved that against those damn spiders, and a half-dozen times since, on our dungeon runs.

Greg came again, spinning his spear like a bo-staff, before lashing out.

I stepped forward, closer to his end of the weapon to rob the strike of force and avoid the heavy, armor-piercing metal tip, and bulled into him, shield-first. He stumbled back, but didn’t quite lose his footing like I’d hoped, but he raised a hand, calling the bout short.

“I keep forgetting to respect the shield,” he laughed, not quite hiding his cough in the sound. “That fancy twirling doesn’t distract you like it does some, and I just can’t remember to treat it like it’s another weapon.” He wiped some sweat off his brow while I nodded. “Any notes, Coach?”

I snorted. “The spinning doesn’t do you any favors,” I agreed. “Unless you’re stalling before a fight, or to charge some magic, I’d ditch the move altogether.” I ignored the disgusted face he made at the idea of charging up a spell, instead of ‘fighting like a man,’ but we still had time to cure him of that dumb bias of his, before he had to take any real leadership role after the Academy. “Against one enemy, with one sword, it might leave them off-kilter, or make them hesitate to engage, but what if it’s an archer? What if he’s got a heavy axe, and thinks he can break through your spear if you try to intercept? What if there’s more than one of them, or they’ve seen that little flourish before?”

Greg sighed. “So you’re saying, again—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a broken record,” I groused. “Bad habits that are tailor-made to help you beat the best are still bad habits. You need to learn to fight anyone, not learn to fight specific people. Let me guess—that helped you against Arclight?”

“Julius, actually,” Greg said. “Throwing Chris off-kilter is the best move, usually, but glasses or not, he’s got sharp eyes. That’s why I either go for an all out attack with him or fight real tricky—he’d find a hole in a defense meant to divert his sword, rather than stop it cold.”

And he’d make a hole even then, I silently added. Sure, I’d still been getting back up to snuff when I’d had my friendly duel with the heir to the frickin Sword Saint months back. But he’d still made me look like a dumbshit for using a shield, and doing such a piis-poor job with it. He’d even handicapped himself, and held his sword one-handed to account for my injury.

That kid was scary. Nice enough, though. And… well, after all my training, catching back up with Thane, and then working to catch up to Greg’s advanced training, maybe we were a bit scary, too. Wonder if he’d be up for a rematch?

“Julius is almost on the same level as me and Chris, but he doesn’t have the same instincts. He could be just as good if he applied himself, but I guess being the prince doesn’t leave as much time for training.”

“Or being an Earl’s Son, I guess,” I teased. “Is that the only reason I win, now and then?”

“Oi, are you denying you get more time training than I do?”

“Of course! I actually sleep, unlike some. You heard of it, Seberg? Usually happens at night? You know, when you’re sneaking out to watch Armor Fights?”

“Will you two meatheads shut it!?” Thane, with his usual scowl, fingered his blade as he approached the training field we occupied on the expansive Seberg island. Clearly, meathead number three wanted in on the action, if he’d come all that way from where he was planning our next excursion in the map room.

“Sure, sure. You find us another dungeon?” He glared at me.

“Of course I did. With no help from either of you—”

“Oi, Alan,” Greg interrupted, hands laced behind his head, training spear leaning on his shoulder. “Who was it that told us he’d… what was it, ‘boil our teeth…?’ You know, if we didn’t go away, so he could hear himself think?”

“Probably the same one who threatened to filet us with a rusty spoon before he let us choose the dungeon again,” I said, hand on my chin. “But for some reason, the name’s just not coming to me. Do you have any guesses, Thane?”

He ground his teeth, opened his mouth to say something suitably scathing—

“Masters Seberg, Varez, Oaks, your tea is ready,” Jacob offered with all the grace and dignity of what the nobility should be, instead of us three idiots, as he bowed. He was the perfect picture of a butler, and as always, a masterful defuser of tension.

Thane deflated, we had some tea—Thane and Seberg insisted it was great, but I’d never gone to tea for the tea, it was all about the snacks and sandwiches—and got to talking about what we’d encounter in the dungeon, falling back on familiar routine.

It was… nice. Nice to have a routine again, to be an active participant in my life again instead of just practicing for it.

Shame the Academy was two weeks out, and these calm days would need to end. Hopefully, I could keep Greg away from any malnourished, long-haired, debt-riddled brats. You know. Not to name names.

I’d rather not lose a friend to complete idiocy, if I could avoid it.

The gates loomed before us, the maw of a monster ready to tear us apart and spit out the scraps.

“Why are you so nervous?” Greg asked. “It’s not a spider.”

“It isn’t spiders that get me, it’s spiders bigger than my hand.”

“That’s it?” Thane huffed. “Just bigger than your hand? I thought better of you. If that’s all it takes, then—”

“Shut up, Thane, I’ve seen you with rodents!”

He very carefully looked away.

“I don’t get why you’re so worried,” Seberg said, lacing his hands behind his head in his usual, carefree way. “We’re all equal in the school. I’d have thought you’d be thrilled to be somewhere you’re on the same footing as everyone else.”

“Greg… You realize that’s all bullshit, right? Literally everybody’s status in the Academy depends on what they’ve done or who they’re related to before they walk in.”

“You’re so paranoid,” He laughed, clapped me on the shoulder with a shake of his head, and strode forward, through the Academy’s gates, and casually struck up a bickering back and forth with the blue haired Arclight heir.

“Oh my God you don’t,” I muttered to myself. “Greg… Greg! Hold on, I need to talk to you—!”

This would be a long four years if Seberg didn’t get a clue. Hopefully, either I’d get a chance to educate the dumbass, or keep an eye out for my patron and friend before he did something incredibly fucking stupid.

Chapter Text

The first lesson of the Academy was not in any classroom. It was for the apt students, those with eyes open and heads on a swivel, ready to learn at all times—for those who cared to pay attention to the world that they lived in. Or rather, the country.

“Look, it’s the prince and his friends!”

“So handsome… I wish they weren’t all engaged.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard? Chris Fia Arclight’s engagement isn’t official, there are rumors it won’t happen. There’s still a chance!”

“I heard that Fields and Seberg both aren’t too close to their fiance’s, maybe they’d be open to having a mistress…?”

“Are you serious? A woman, the mistress for a man? Shouldn’t YOU be the one with slaves, or a paramour?”

“Are you joking? The rules are different, that high in the social order!”

You couldn’t go anywhere in the courtyard without hearing the gossip, and the thirsting, and the debates on how many slaves some of the most powerful families in the country would allow their heirs’ intended to take as lovers.

Not to be crass, but half the women were openly discussing how much they’d like to cuck their future king with people they own. The rest were the reasonable sorts, who would only cheat openly and flagrantly on their future husbands if he were less prestigious than an Earl.

An Earl.

And it only got worse from there. For context, the Royal Family was considered to be within the first realm of the nobility—colloquially and disrespectfully called ‘ranks’ or ‘levels.’ The King was the first within the highest realm—obviously—while the Queen was second. The Crown Prince, Heir to the Kingdom, was at the peak of the second order of the nobility, and just beneath him in the Second Realm were second and third children of the royal family, and Dukes and Duchesses of the Kingdom.

Earls and Counts like Seberg and Arclight’s fathers were in the Fourth Realm. Technically Chris and Greg should be at the top of the fifth realm, but seeing as everyone knew they would inherit, they were treated as if they were already within the fourth. In every way save for direct political power and total control of the pursestrings, they already enjoyed the benefits of the Earldom and Counthood that would one day be theirs, and the same could be said of all the Prince’s retinue.

By rights, I should be in the Eighth level of the Nobility, and thanks to my mother’s meddling, I was barely at the top of the Ninth—the final rung of nobility before the realms of the peerage ceased, and the ‘unranked,’ the common folk, began. Without Greg’s patronage, I’d be bottom of the barrel, a commoner in everything but name until and unless I pledged and executed a lifetime of valuable service to the Crown—and even then, only until my half-brother took my father’s title.

I was a guppy, and I had been yanked out of my nothing, nowhere puddle, and got stuck swimming with whales.

Thanks again, Greg.

Or, judging by the vicious words and dismissive acts of so many of the girls in the academy, I was more like a particularly hideous remora that had attached itself to the Shark of Seberg… with far too many piranhas eyeing me up, and sea monsters looking to eat up whatever bones they left behind.

…

Piranhas are freshwater. Aren’t they.

… I refuse to adjust my metaphor!

Especially when the Academy girls were acting like piranhas—eyeing up every piece of meat, and tearing everything in front of them to shreds with vicious glee.

“Look at him, how dare he speak to Earl Seberg like that!”

“I hear he’s a snake, who just attached himself to the Seberg House because it was his only chance at finding a woman.”

“You’ve heard of him? All I heard is that one of Lord Seberg’s bootstains got up and started walking one day. What’s his name, anyway? Ver-lice? Vermin?”

“Whatever, not like his name matters. The most worth someone could get out of him would be to send him off to die in a war and collect his pension.”

“How unsightly! Look at those blemishes! If you’re going to be poor and worthless, at least have the good sense to be beautiful!”

“Greg Seberg is a member of the prince’s group! Why would he ever need to keep the company of such a useless man like that!?”

“Supposedly he saved Earl Seberg’s life, but that can’t be right. More likely he nearly got himself killed, and Greg saved that fool’s life. Greg probably just felt too bad for the pathetic adventurer, that he couldn’t leave him to die. If I manage to catch Seberg’s eye, that… wart will be the first thing to get cut!”

… They talked badly about more than just me, I was sure. But it was just about all I seemed to hear. So that was neat.

…

And my freckles are not ‘blemishes,’ damn it!

Checking in was… fine. The woman at the desk gave me my dorm number and key without issue. Sure, it was five floors up in the male dorms, and elevators hadn’t been figured out by this weird, ass-backwards magi-tech society, but… Hell, nobody insulted me on the walk up, so it was an improvement over just about everywhere else in the school.

The quarters were a bit cramped, but I didn’t have much to fill them with, so unpacking went quickly enough. Clothes there—two changes of the academy uniform for a grand total of three was plenty, I’d just need to remember to do laundry regularly, and a couple of outfits for casual outings—armor and sword over there, still freshly cared for…

Leathers and blade oiled, plate and studs shined, and shield… well, Holfort wasn’t happy with a shield unless it was on a damn wannabe Gundam. I was lucky I got an actual kite shield, banded wood instead of full steel or not. It beat the hell out of the dinky buckler I’d been using until then—that damn thing could barely take a love tap from a Dire Ant. As it was, I’d still need to be careful what blows I blocked rather than parry or dodge, but unless I found a smith willing to help his customers ‘dishonor’ themselves, a pure metal shield wouldn’t be feasible—not without a price-tag attached that was well beyond what I felt comfortable asking Greg about.

I’d be more likely to find decent wood and a craftsman willing to carve and bind it together.

And… I was done. Unpacked.

… I have absolutely nothing.

I… need to start making money. Looking at this empty-ass room is just depressing.

“I thought it was a pretty simple question,” I said, slowly, trying to find where the Academy functionary got lost along the way.

The man wore a baffled look.

“Young man, today is check-in day!”

“Yes.” I took my time—where exactly was the problem? “And I’m already… checked-in. So. Am I allowed… to go into… the dungeon?”

The Holfort Academy had the great fortune to be situated right atop one of the most consistently-respawning Dungeon in the country—perfect for a few students looking to make a few bucks here or there harvesting mana crystals or semi-precious ores, seeing as they all but leaked from the walls.

Also for students looking to practice their combat capabilities, but I wasn’t especially worried about that. If Thane wasn’t badgering me to practice with him so we could get rich, it would be Greg demanding another go at me to get a leg-up in his off and on competition with Arclight.

“I… well, young man, there is no embargo on students entering or leaving the Dungeon, but it is traditional for students to wait for their first Dungeoneering class to—!”

“Great, that’s all I needed to hear!”

I’d need to go get my armor and shield ready—I’d gotten away with wearing my sword around, because all the other men seemed to be doing the same, but I don’t think that will be allowed once classes begin in earnest.

Should I get Thane? If I just keep to the First Floor where it’s safer, chances are the gains won’t be enough to be worth splitting, but on the other hand…

Thane can be a real bastard. So…

I went to tell him, and settled on emphasizing just how marginal the money we made would be.

Didn’t matter. Per usual, the asshole had dollar signs in his eyes… also he made the point that only idiots or total badasses went down into Dungeons alone, and that I for sure wasn’t the second one.

At least Greg went off to play with Julius and his group, so maybe we’ll manage to stay on task?

The monsters were… Well.

“Icicle slash!”

Thane’s sword—enlarged and reinforced with ice—crushed through a trio of Dire Ants with the weight and momentum of the buster-sword sized blade more than its cutting edge. Which also wasn’t anything to sneeze at in terms of its ability to ruin your day, but wasn’t quite as good as the metal inside of the magically-conjured frost was, when it came to chopping and slicing.

Sure, they were tougher than their less-spiky, skinnier cousins the Giant Ants… But seriously? Were they the toughest monsters here? We hadn’t gone past the first floor—we always made a point of taking dungeons one floor at a time these days, and generally didn’t go any deeper than the topmost floor or two if we were down a man, but… This was a little pathetic, for the Capital Dungeon we were all supposed to be so afraid of, wasn’t it?

“Points off for yelling your attack name,” I said, using a similar technique on the pair of ants that had moved on me while I was woolgazing. Fire coated the blade, and my focus kept the spell active—draw in the oxygen, light the spark, keep drawing, contain the heat, tight around the blade, amp up the mana!—and the Dire Ants were cleanly disposed of, their frames falling apart into smoke and dust as all monsters did when killed.

As Thane’s empowered attack had, the magically-enhanced strike helped to speed the process of dispatching the monsters, rather than facilitate it. My sword could cut through the monster’s chitin just fine, but why work harder when extreme temperatures made their armor easy as butter to shear through when superheated, or brittle to the point of shattering like glass when cooled?

The flames winked out around the sword, and I unsealed the top of the semi-containment spell, venting the air safely away from me. When I’d first tried the spell, I’d let it all go at once, and lit myself on fire. Only a little bit, but Greg still hadn’t let me live that down. The second time, I dropped the whole containment spell around the blade after I starved the fire of Oxygen… and burned the hell out of my hand as the superheated air escaped in all directions—including right at me. But finally, I’d managed to get the spell working right, and without any friendly fire.

… If the pun can be forgiven.

“So, why’d you want to go to the Dungeon?” Thane asked without looking away from the crystals he was breaking from the walls. As was habit by this point, I kept an eye out while he gathered—though I needed to remind myself it was only the pair of us, and to check both directions of the passage rather than leave the work to Greg.

“Why else? Cash money, bay-beeeeee!”

“You’re unbearable to be around, you know that?”

“I know,” I sniffed, theatrically. “When you burn so brightly… It’s inevitable that some people will get burned, or feel outshone.” I raised the back of my wrist to my forehead, and faux-swooned… After another check down both of the hall openings.

I’m young, but I’m not an amateur. Anymore, I mean. Like hell was I going to let oversized insects get the best of me.

I opened my mouth to continue my idiot tirade—hell if I knew where it was going, but I was having fun, but the fun was cut short as I hit a stumbling block.

“Outshone?” I asked, not moving from my ‘post-swoon’ stance. “Does that sound right to you?”

“Shut up Alan, I am begging you to shut up.”

“Outshone? Outshined? What works in that…”

“You are such—”

“Outshone-ded-ed,” I proclaimed with a decisive, inarguable nod.

“An idiot,” Thane seethed, “I was going to say idiot, before you interrupted me, like you always do, and—”

“When have I EVER!?” I interrupted with an offended cry. “INTERRUPTED you!?”

“You’re so damn Loud, you—!”

“Hold!” I barked out, voice as sharp as I could make it without shouting. In an instant, the levity left my tone, and the tension of the hallway ratcheted up about ten notches.

Something was coming down the hallway. Alone, with a slow, steady gait. From deeper within the Dungeon.

Now, the Capital Dungeon was big. It was long, and wide, and sprawling, and looping, and expansive. There were no less than seven known and mapped routes that bridged the first floor with the second, and a further six that connected to the third and fourth floor, three each.

It was possible it was just another Adventurer, making their way back to the entrance, and the Academy only a hop, skip, and a quad-killing staircase away. Possibly some local Capital City Adventurer was returning from his sojourn into the Dungeon, or some other student had the bright idea to go looking for valuables as we had, and the dim-as-bricks thought that they could do it without someone watching their backs.

Like a certain handsome lad had thought earlier that same day—who shall remain just as nameless as he is gorgeous!

… Gorgeous, and unblemished, damn it!

Possible. All of it was a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, a perfectly normal thing to have happen to you. An Adventurer randomly happening upon a party because they took a wrong turn, or after a deep dive, or because they’d lost their rations in a fight and couldn’t press deeper without supplies to ensure they survived, those things happened. They could be happening then, too.

Except. It was late afternoon—and adventurers were as regular as someone who mainlined prune juice. They almost always came back from the Dungeons at sun-up, a meal hour, or sun-down. The only exceptions were newbies, and those returning from a deep dive that had stopped giving a shit about where the sun was.

Except. If it was a fellow student, their steps wouldn’t be so certain, so relaxed, in a Dungeon—even on the first floor. Almost none of the students had been in a dungeon before in their lives, and ninety-nine-point-nine of those sorts were smart enough to gather a group and wait for the initiation of the Academy’s Dungeoneering Class, while the remainder who had been in a Dungeon before were smart enough to not go into a Dungeon without at least one person watching their backs, or to do it while constantly on high-alert. None of this slow, lackadaisical crap, walking like they were taking a casual stroll through the gardens.

Except. All the local adventurers, native to the Capital, had been barred from all legal, known entryways to the Dungeon—all of which were either on Academy grounds, or else utterly closed off to the public until most of us noble brats had our fill of potentially-deadly, gruesome, violent, tiring work, leaving only the desperate, the skilled, or the highest echelons who thought they were hot shit, and begging the world to prove them wrong, so that there weren’t too many Adventurers for the respawning drops. So no local commoner adventurers were killed for daring to speak improperly to someone important, and so no noble fools who thought they could earn a laugh beating on a mere commoner were murdered by someone who fought and bled every day for their living.

Except. The figure that stepped around the last corner wore no dogtag around his neck. Unmarked. Unregistered. Adventuring was what Holfort was founded on. The country’s pecking order went the King, the Church, the Adventurer’s Guild, and then God. Anyone who entered into a known, documented Dungeon without being registered, down to the damn rats, was subject to life in prison if the nobility got their hands on the perpetrator, and a shallow grave if the Guild did. The only way for you to have your claim respected if you found an unknown Dungeon before you registered was to apply for membership right-a-fucking-way, and pray that nobody saw you walk out of the damn thing.

Which meant that the man in front of us—deep hood, shaggy beard, bigger than us, older than us, skilled? Clothes dark but fine, leather oiled, armor maintained—sword pommel, jeweled, air humming, magic weapon!?—old-hand at this, and business is good.

“Tag?” I demanded, all heat, no hope.

“Tag?” He asked without stopping his slow, steady saunter. “Hm. Let’s see…” He rummaged around in a back at the small of his back, blindly groping for something while his hand drummed on the sword hilt. With a small, sedate hum, his fingers searched, before he suddenly stopped.

“Ah, yes.” He pulled his hand out, the circular tag in his palm. “Here it is.”

I almost relaxed. I wanted to relax. Wanted him to be legit. But people wore their tags for a reason, they didn’t hide them away. My skin was buzzing, and my sword-hand was clenched tight around Inheritance’s hilt.

“Great,” Thane said, equally wary. He’d drawn his sword when I got his attention, and made a show of lowering it then. Not putting it away, and certainly not slackening his grip—just shifted into a less aggressive guard. “In that case we’ll just get out of your way—”

The circle dropped from his palm, caught by the thin chain on the curve of his thumb, swinging left and right. A hypnotic pendulum.

Behind it, in his palm, was another tag. Fire-blackened and part-melted, but the stone lettering inset on its metal face was undamaged, despite the violence that its body told of.

“And here,” he said. With a sound like a bell’s high, spritely chime, this too fell, and struck the first as it swung, revealing a third. “And here.” r-ring! “And here.” d-la-ling! “And here.”

Ring!

His palm was empty. Spellbound, we stood perfectly still, not even breathing, as the signs of deaths—the signs of murders, because he would have no reason to gather them, no way to turn them in, without a membership, and he would have been wearing one if he had a membership—

His sword rasped free. Thane’s rose, and we both flinched back. The man stood still, watching from beneath his dark hood.

I didn’t bother with my sword. My shield was strapped in place, and my right hand was free. That was good. Perfect, even. It might even mean we survived.

My heart was doing a damn tap-dance on the inside of my ribs, pounding in my ears, but the silence was killing me. His tone—slow, friendly, casual—was worse.

“I didn’t really think I’d get so lucky,” he said, the twist of the facial hair, the slight turn and twitch of his beard, showing a smile. “Sure, I hoped that the timing would work out, but when you go ten floors deep, you don’t expect to keep to a schedule. But here you are—a pair of noble brats, fresh as daisies, and begging like dogs.”

Idly, he ran his thumb up the length of his blade—fully glowing, now that it had been pulled from its scabbard, a diffuse blue glow finally revealing his eyes, if only by the blade’s luminescence.

The sword’s light was the only light within those black voids.

“Begging for what?” Thane asked, all bravado, and I could have put him on my shoulder and paraded the beautiful bastard all through town. The dead eyes darted over to him, distracted for a key moment that I prayed would make the difference.

“Why… To slum it with us lowly commoners. To be treated like real adventurers. To die, covered in blood, and shit—just like us nobodies.”

I made my move. My shield arm jutted forward—“Force!”—condense-air-bind-together-second-layer-separate-out-drop-first-heartbeat-DROP-SECOND—! And my latest trick barreled towards the man.

Tighten the air on one side, create a vacuum gap, let the compressed air fill the gap and remove the second wall—and you had a pressure wave. Short range, only useful against soft targets and those not expecting it, but it was a good trick. One I was proud of, and ecstatic that it worked as I had hoped, as I had practiced.

A wave of near-solid air bore down on him. With contemptuous ease and a flare of the blue light—showcasing the sweat-matted hair beneath his hood, the long-dried blood-flecks around his temples and in his facial hair, the sneer deep beneath his beard—he cut the pressure wave bearing down on him in half, the magic fizzling into nothingness with an odd, hollow sensation in my stomach, an emptying of mana from my veins. The magic keeping the explosion of air together, and moving in the right direction, was stopped cold.

He couldn’t stop physics though. The sword nullified my spell itself, but it had already done what it needed to. A deafening thunderclap rang out at us—and we were only getting the leftovers—and the man staggered forward, hands flying for his ears, sword pointed away for a key moment.

Blood dribbled from his ears, staining his face beside that of his victims.

Thane took a step forward, an ice spell on the tip of his tongue. Good instincts. Good idea. Exactly how an Adventurer was meant to respond—take the advantage, leverage it for all it was worth, and press the attack until victory was yours.

Fit to get us killed here, though. This guy killed Adventurers—clearly made a sport out of it, got some sick pleasure from it all. The only thing for us to do was to not be Adventurers.

I grabbed Thane’s arm with my left hand, dropping the hand-hold of my shield’s handle and trusting the strap to hold it more or less in place, and threw my other hand forward.

“Burn!” I commanded the air, and this spell was nothing smart, nothing special. Fire blasted out of my hand, and I put all of my focus into hotter, more, wider, Hotter!

I was lucky that the spell I went for was one that didn’t matter if it was canceled out after being cast. I meant to follow that trend with exactly what I’d been avoiding. Superheated air between us and a wall of fire besides to delay the man was about the best wall we could ask for, as I dragged Thane away at a dead sprint.

“Tell me you remember the shortest way out!” I screamed when he’d gotten his legs under him.

Ten steps later, my stomach did a backflip. I glanced behind us, to see the flames parting around an angry blue sword, and wild blue-painted eyes following behind. The fire guttered and died without fuel, without me feeding it magic or pumping it full of oxygen. The air parted around him, the cinders still suspended a visual guide for where the lung-scorching air whorled and danced as he muttered under his breath.

He raised the sword, and air flowed towards us far faster than our feet could carry us.

“Barrier,” Thane spat, and the temperature plummeted as the air hit his conjured wall of ice, burned through it in seconds, filled the air with a chill mist. Thane kept conjuring ice, his last expression before the wave of fog hit us one of intense concentration, even as cinders and errant sparks continued, the man having added magic of his own to the spell he’d repurposed.

“Don’t let go,” Thane whispered as we neared a junction, one of the wider rooms of the upper, labyrinthine levels of the Dungeon, rather than the cave-systems below. “We can lose him with this cover—double back. The nearest staircase is back the way he—”

A sword sang through the air, and I pushed him away. The only sign that we’d nearly died was a spark struck against the floor and an eddy of the mist licking out, the air between us clear for a moment.

“I can hear you, brats,” the man giggled. “I can hear you just fine, but you can’t see me, can you?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck, SHIT—

“What do you mean?” Thane laughed. His voice was rough, and high, and he tried desperately not to let his words crack as they came out of his throat, but he managed it better than I could have. “Who needs to see you when we can smell you so—Grk!”

A flash of air, and the man stood ten paces in front of Thane, in the newly clear air. His sword was held casually in one hand, and Thane was crumpled around his abdomen, stumbling back a step before he fell. He still had Oakthorn in one hand, but his other held a quickly-growing spot of red in his gut, and the throwing-knife that had placed itself expertly between the plates of his armor.

“What do I smell like, your lordship?” He sneered, striding forward. “Do I smell like blood? Like fire? Do I smell like Fanoss, you little BASTARD!?”

His sword met mine before I had realized I moved. One-two-three his sword met mine, chipping inheritance as I desperately tried to get a proper grip on my shield again, Flames, tight, beam! He cut the spell in half and I grunted at the pain, as his sword leeched more magic from me than I could give at once, and the air hadn’t had time to properly heat up, he figured out my only trick for this, we’re so screwed!

But Thane was on his feet again, and had his sword in hand—a flicker of the man’s eye, and it was clear he was waiting to pounce, and—

“Thane, GO, get help!”

“None of that,” the man whined, flicking a knife out of his sleeve, bashing aside my rushed overhand strike with the glowing blue weapon, and reared back, ready to throw—

Got it, MOVE!

I got my shield up, between me and the knife while I got between it and Thane. I heard his limping steps as he rushed away, the labored breathing, but he was making distance—

The man flowed around my shield like it wasn’t there. One-handed, like the Holfort style, but fast, and using off-hand weapons, tools, the man wasn’t Holfortian, clearly, duh, he just ranted about Fanoss, of course he isn’t—!

A slash, parry, thrust, twist, I could barely follow it all, and my sword was across the junction. His blade came up, so did my shield—

The sword bit deep into the wood. He stared. I stared. He yanked, nearly pulled me off my feet, I twisted, and suddenly we were both disarmed.

He punched my in the face, really, really hard, and before I knew it he had my sword in-hand, and I’d thrown my shield—too heavy, too unwieldy with the added weight of a sword hanging off of it—and then he came at me with Inheritance, ready to take my damn head off.

A bolt of lightning took the weapon from his hand, and magnetized it, clinching it tightly to the wall. He stared at it, looked to me, and to the empty air where it had come from. He squinted, and moved, ducking under a second blast of electricity, and a third, as a machine-like whine could be heard.

He glared at me with hate. “I’ll see you again soon, brat.” And then he was gone, his own weapon—still stuck fast to my shield—in hand.

I looked at the empty air. I could have sworn that I saw a glint of red, a flash of blue charging.

“Um. Thanks?” Slowly, I gave the empty air a thumb’s up. “Appreciate it…?”

Sure, I probably knew who did it, and it probably wasn’t something that he actually wanted to do… but being polite never hurt anybody, when dealing with a country-buster of an AI-slash-spaceship.

As I probably should have expected, despite being invited, Greg whined about missing the fight when he arrived. Completely glossing over how close we’d come to dying, and the fact that Thane was going to miss the welcome ceremony and the first week of classes on bed rest.

But hey—he didn’t mention meeting ‘the most wonderful girl,’ or go all dreamy-eyed when I asked how his day went. So at least that bullshit probably hadn’t started yet.

Chapter Text

“How did he fight? What move did you use to scare him off? Come on Alan, spill it!”

“Greg, I…” Damn it. How do you explain to someone that you nearly died?

Wait. He nearly died. I saved him from dying, and then he saved me. How on Earth is he so chill about all of this? Did he ever realize how close all that was? Does he have any concept of trauma?

“Greg, I’d really rather not think about that right now.”

At his insistence, we were sparring only an hour after my brush with death at the hands of the Poacher. I was working on my form without a shield, mixing in distance-casting of my favored Force and Flame magics. My style had become a mite too defensive, due to all my training—even without a shield, my impulse was to use fire to ward the enemy off, and deny area to them, while most of my Force spells tended towards creating temporary walls, or panes of force to redirect strikes. Good spells, intelligent uses of the magic that I had, but too conservative, too slow, too careful, to have helped against the man that had tried to kill me.

It was only natural, I guess; when people went out to plunder riches from monster-filled dungeons, some would die. Equally natural that people would profit off of those deaths, like Thane and I had back when I was twelve.

But when the biggest windfalls and the most quick cash could be made by stabbing fellow adventurers in the back after they’d done all the hard work, and leaving the evidence to be eaten by the next wave of monsters coming into being… some of the worst sorts would do exactly that. It was part of why the etiquette was so strong, in Holfort—you leave plenty of space between yourself and another group, or else they might just attack you in pre-emptive self-defence.

The only reason Thane and I were never suspected, we’d found out after learning all about Poachers, was that we were too young and far too outnumbered to effectively murder such a large party of more experienced Adventurers. And besides, if we were dumb enough to do it on the top floor of a Dungeon with a thriving Dungeon Town, we’d end up caught sooner or later anyway, and so there was no rush.

Even the top floor of such an expansive labyrinth as the Capital Dungeon, which was quite a bit easier to get lost in, or to hide dirty deeds in, was a rare sight for active Poachers. If it weren’t for the clear and completely unhinged insanity of the bastard that tried to kill us, I’d have said he was smart enough to Poach on such a high floor only when the Dungeon was legally enforced to be empty of adventurers who hadn’t started a deep dive before the ban went into effect.

And being so early in the ban, and before most of the rich kids had their servants unpack their undies, nobody would be around to hear him pick off the stragglers. To kill a pair of nothing, nobody knights, and make off with their gear to exchange for gold, and to take their tags for trophies.

“Come on,” he said with a swipe of his bladed spear. “I just want to know what fighting him is like! How else am I supposed to hunt the bastard down?”

I almost froze at that, giving him the perfect opening to end the match, but my instincts kicked in before I made a total fool of myself. Sore, and tired, and after the crash of a terrified adrenaline rush, my body still knew how to fight.

Even though I just wanted to scream. That man, that Poacher, had made a point to try to run into Academy students, despite the staggeringly low probability that he’d meet any before even the induction ceremony—and the fact that he had a magic-canceling, no, a magic-stealing sword, spoke to the fact he’d been killing adventurers for a long time. If that blade wasn’t a Lost Item, I’d eat anybody’s hat, name the owner.

We were his preferred prey. Monsters he fought, minerals and magic stones he excavated, they were bonuses, side-hustles at best. Killing adventurers, killing us, was what he did. He made his living killing us. Or maybe worse, he lived for killing us.

I took two quick steps back. My sword deflected his high swipe away from anything vital—sure we were armored, but accidents happened all the time in training, if you didn’t take it seriously… sometimes, especially when you took it seriously—and jabbed forward while he recovered. He raised his right hand, lowered his left, and sparks flew as the steel shaft of the spear threw my sword wide. He continued the motion, stepped in, trying to jab me with the spear’s butt, and again I stepped away, back and to the side, footwork footwork footwork, come on…!

Damn it. Damn it.

He moved to attack, and with a sweep of my arm—and a sharp twinge of pain in my shoulder, a pin driven deep with a hammer-blow, straight through the joint—a stream of flame roared forward, driving him back for a second, but there he was again, and… Damn it!

Come on! You can do better! We’d declared body-reinforcement magic off-limits, for this spar—a penalty that only messed with my fighting style, naturally as Greg did it unconsciously, and would never hear a word about how it wasn’t just his muscles, but you didn’t get better by making things easy. I needed the training.

But even with the most universal style of magic among adventurers off the table, other types were still on the table. I didn’t just need to be that distant, ephemeral stronger, I needed to be good enough. I needed to be fast enough, smart enough, quick enough, that if that man came back, I’d survive him without help I had no right expecting, and that certainly wouldn’t come a second time.

I pressed the attack. Defense was important, central to my style these days, but you didn’t win just by blocking. Greg’s spear afforded him range that my sword lacked, but I was being stupid, I had magic, Greg refused to make use of it, so press the advantage, take the initiative! If the other guy has a knife, bring a gun, damn it!

I stepped forward, firm, bold, and Greg jabbed forward to take me in the gut, or else ward me away. “Force!” I commanded, raising a hand flat in front of me—he aborted the movement, turning it into a probing swipe, expecting a wall to kill his momentum if he continued his all-out strike, or an angled one to send him to the side and past me, off balance and easy pickings.

It was neither. A baseball-sized sphere of imperturbable magic gathered in my hand, barely visible in how it refracted the orange glow of the setting sun. I raised it, deflected the spear away with a precise motion and another flash of greater pain in my abused shoulder.

Greg’s eyes widened, and then his head rocked back as I reared back and chucked… Well, a DIY rock at his head.

“Sonnuva—! Alan, you—!”

He stumbled back a step. I feinted forward, and he set his feet, raised his spear—

“Flame!” A stream shot from my hands, down, striking the ground and diverting like a stream of water, a tide of orange and blue rushing forwards, blanketing the ground in all directions before me. He stumbled back and away, cursing as some of the leather and cloth of his armored boots caught fire. The flames persisted for a long moment, draining my already-stressed reserves quickly, but leaving Greg with no options as he backpedaled, trying to keep himself from burning, keep anything else from going up in the weak field of flame, groaning in pain as he tried to come up with a plan, a technique, something in his shallow bag of tricks to take back the momentum.

I rushed forward as he twitched, as the flames died. He reached down as he reset his footing, ready to slap out the fire or else tear away what was burning. Greg aborted the motion, readied his spear, and cursed as the flames licked at his flesh under the boots. I slammed the spear away with my weapon in his distraction, closed the distance before he could slug me, and shoulder-checked him—

Pain

I managed not to cry out as I did the stupid, idiot, anime thing of stressing a chronic injury just to make a point… but it put Greg on his ass. With a headache-inducing flash and the rest of my mana, I seized the flames on Greg’s training armor and snuffed them out all at once.

“That’s what it was like,” I huffed, out of breath, eye twitching as my shoulder throbbed, the pain sharp and thin and hot in the fucked up joint. He looked at me, glare softening under the weight of his curiosity, his confusion. “Like I was fighting one battle, and he was fighting another. Like I tried to match what he was doing… like I managed it for a second…” I sucked down a breath, damn it my should was throbbing—! “And then he changed the fight, over, and over, and over.”

I sheathed my sword, and offered Greg a hand. His expression was dark, but contemplative.

After a long moment, he took it, and I helped him to his feet.

“Then I’ll just need to get good enough that no tricks will work on me.” His voice was resolute. Certain.

I grunted, but didn’t give him my usual spiel. Even as I looked away, I could feel his surprise.

“What, no lecture today?”

“What would be the point?” My voice was more hollow than I would have liked. I pretended it was just exhaustion, not dread for my friend’s apparent death-wish, not frustrated rage at his unwillingness, his inability to change his mind, to do what was best not just for him, but for everyone. “When have you listened when I had something important to say?”

I ignored his protests as I walked away, the way he got more frustrated and angry as he followed me, and I said nothing. The sweeping darkness as the sun finally gave up its fight brought blessed quiet with it, as Seberg quit hounding me.

I needed some sleep before I was ready to deal with Greg again. If he felt some sort of way about it, he could bite me. He wasn’t the one who nearly died today. I catered enough to him… I was going to do what was best for me, until I felt like I was over the whole thing.

And… tomorrow’s still the first day of school… Hurray.

It had been a long goddamn day.

“... What the fuck.”

My voice was flat, even. I wish I could say it was because I had a badass poker face, or because I was cool as a cucumber, but the truth was that I was just too tired to put the emotion into it.

The emotion in question… was anger.

Somebody had trashed my room. My spare pair of uniforms were on the ground in heaps, smeared with what looked like red and black paint, and smelled… questionable enough that I just burned them into cinders on the spot. The walls were coated with half-a-dozen different styles of handwriting, all of it abuse about me, my low birth, my worthlessness, my snake-like nature, insults on everything and anything about me that the Academy-goers could have seen at a glance, or else that had cycled around the nobility’s gossip-chain in the months leading up to the school year’s beginning. My mattress was missing, my sheets were hanging on the walls as a pair of more or less matching flags talking about how much I sucked—one of which managed to misspell my last name, which irked me more than most of the rest of it—and the comforter had been torn to shreds, its fine downy filling tossed around into the various puddles of paint, mud, and if I wasn’t mistaken, piss.

“Hm,” I murmured, eye twitching.

I left the room as it was. I could burn it all out later, when I had the energy and patience to do it right.

Maybe Thane would lend me a slice of floor, if I asked nicely. Or more likely, if I let him have my vote the next time we were making a dungeoneering choice between cash and safety. Gambling with my life was one of my least favorite things to do, but it still came in as much more bearable than a shitty night’s sleep.

Thane had lent me a slice of floor, and even done it for free, so long as I swore to him—in an oath that felt far too serious for the occasion, but it was his space to lease out as he pleased—that I wouldn’t use his bathroom, toilet, shower, anything, and that I’d leave before he had to wake up and ‘see my stupid face.’

Fair enough, really. I wasn’t feeling all that smart at night, and while I was far from a morning person, I was a far sight better at rolling out of bed than Thane was.

So I dressed myself in my same dirty uniform, stale with the scent of sweat, accumulated during the dungeon delve and training session.

Not that I’d worn it while running around in armor, fighting for my life. But if you didn’t wash the sweat away, even dried, it tended to grime up whatever you were wearing. So while I didn’t stink like an old gym sock, I definitely wasn’t fresh as a daisy.

I won’t be making any decent first-impressions, so that’s neat. As if my reputation wasn’t already shitty enough, now I’d get to start the school year off as the guy who stunk.

“Good golly gosh,” I breathed, slouching my way out of Thane’s room, “I just love the culture here, Your Majesty. What a wonderful Academy you’ve founded, Your Majesty. Maybe if I’m lucky, one of the ten dozen actual SLAVES on the grounds will off me when I’m not looking, wouldn’t that be swell, YOUR MAJESTY!?”

The gardener looked at me like I was crazy, as I left the more-distant dorms for the lower-ranking class, but nobody else was around to hear.

“As if he weren’t bad enough, he has the gall to show up looking so unkempt…!?” Not my fault somebody made my room into a biohazard.

“What sort of vassal drags his liege’s name through the mud with such shoddy looks? My slaves are better dressed than him!” Lady, your slaves are walking around like goddamn chippendale dancers, have some self respect.

“What is that… stench? Is that how you smell, when you’re basically already a commoner…?” Hey shithead, I am literally heading to the public showers, do you think you could mind your own business?

“Who do you think you are, walking around the Academy like that? How dare you drag Lord Seberg’s name through the mud, you…!?”

I think I’m Alan, nice to meet—I stopped short, and turned my head. That one was a lot closer…

In front of me was a smaller guy, maybe 5’3”, glaring up at me like I’d personally slapped him with the short-stick. He’d clearly made up for it though, judging by how he filled out his uniform, and the chest-out, shoulders-back way he walked around like he owned the place.

“I think I’m Alan,” I said, voice bland. “Could be wrong though. Coin-flip, really. Can I help you?”

“You can help yourself,” he growled, taking a pair of steps closer, as if threatening to punch me in the gut with his pecs. “Right off a damn cliff, Varez.” Demonstratively, he jammed a finger towards the nearest edge of the island.

“Oh, so you do know who I am. That’s handy. I’ll have to remember that for the next self-important snot-stain that asks.” I stretched my injured shoulder, trying to act as casual about it as possible, so as not to show any weakness. It was feeling a bit tighter than normal, and I didn’t know if it was from sleeping on the floor or stressing it as badly as I had the previous day, but I didn’t want it to lock up on me if he started swinging. “So was there something you wanted? I was going to take a shower before classes started.”

“You—What!?”

“I’m taking a shower,” I told him again, slower. “There’s plenty of time, when I don’t get accosted by random people I’ve never met.”

“But—the prince is giving a welcoming speech! What kind of low-down bastard—!?”

“The kind that doesn’t enjoy standing around answering stupid questions,” I snapped, annoyance bleeding through my air of aloof nonchalance. “The kind who’s walking away, right now, so you don’t derail the rest of my day.”

I went to leave, and managed three steps before I heard the rushed steps, turned back, arm raised, and got punched in the face hard enough to send me reeling.

“That’ll teach you to talk to your betters like that, you bottom feeding—!”

I tackled him, and before he could say anything else stupid, I got on top of him, managing to pin one of his arms under my bulk. The other swung wildly for me, flailing more than punching or striking, but with enough body-reinforcement magic, I managed to get a hold of his wrist and pin that to the earth, the magic enough to help even my weaker arm hold him fast, shocked and shitty with body-reinforcement as he apparently was.

Then I started swinging on his face, and I didn’t stop swinging until he stopped moving.

Then, knuckles bloody, and patience gone, I scooped up some loose dirt, yanked open his mouth, and packed it in around the shards of his busted molars.

After I got off of him, I took the time to drag my heel through the dirt nearby, writing in thick letters exactly what I thought of the nameless fucker, with an arrow pointing sharply to his fat head.

‘← BOTTOM FEEDER!’

Maybe ‘I know you are but what am I???’ probably wasn’t my best choice here, but damn it, I was too tired to be a mature adult about this bullshit!

This is exactly why I didn’t want to be in this stupid class, Greg!

Chapter Text

Eighth Exploit: Fields Route-Opening Cut

One thing that dying doesn’t iron out of you is the ADHD.

Or maybe it does, and I just came up short on the dopamine lottery twice in a row. A sample size of one isn’t the most convincing, but somehow, it makes more sense to me that it’s the same brain issue, and it just managed to follow me between lifetimes, rather than being two different appearances of the same neurodivergent crap presenting in two completely different brains.

It should be clarified, that I didn’t actually miss any of the opening ceremony, regardless of what the Bottom Feeder said or implied. Not that I wasn’t late . I was something to the tune of twenty minutes late, actually. Late enough that, by all rights, I should have missed literally everything but the closing ‘Good luck with the school year, nerds!’ from either the Prince or the Principal—er, the Headmaster —and a not-so-fond farewell.

In actuality, the Prince strolled up onto the podium about ten minutes after I shouldered my way into the crowd, flanked by his entourage—Greg included. They all made their way up onto the pre-fab stage as a unit, the other heirs lurking behind the Prince like the members of a boy band that had bumbled their way into a criminal line-up, but were still trying to give the arresting officers their best sexy-poses.

Those ten minutes were a serious pain in the ass, though, is what I’m getting at. Boredom and a brain that hated a lack of stimulation were not friends, and I had nobody to blame but the Prince for the annoying time spent foot-tapping, head-turning, doing my darndest to find anything worth paying attention to in a crowd of people who weren’t only patiently waiting, but excited to lay eyes on their eventual-autocrat.

All that said, Prince Julius Rapha Holfort’s speech was far worse to endure than the wait. Not made less so by the lack of anything else to distract from his beautifully phrased, eloquently woven, naive idiocy . After I’d made the mistake of showing up, there was no good reason that I could contrive to make an escape—much less from the middle of the crowd, where I’d stupidly gone to avoid any suspicion or mean looks for my belated appearance.

And my social standing, it need not be said, was poor enough that I couldn’t risk acting poorly towards the Prince in front of the entire class—much less potentially alienating Greg, or his other friends, who at best tolerated me at the moment. No matter what the Prince thought, no matter what he said in that speech of his, we were not all equals here, and even if the consequences enforced by the Academy as an institution treated everyone equally—and they wouldn’t—there was a lot more to worry about than who got expelled, or demerits, or given labor for poor behavior.

The social ramifications in such a closed system of hoighty-toighty rich kids, all judging each other by how rich the others were, and the brand recognition of their families, couldn’t be understated. One false move and the sharks would close in. Take it a step further, and the movers and shakers in the nobility would hear about what occurred here from their children, and censure you, your family, your family’s family, your cow—everything and everyone within five degrees of knowing you. If you talked to the wrong people in a tone they didn’t like, your life as a knight, or baronet, or whatever you might be, was over before it started.

There was more to it—a lot more, at more layers and intensities across the board—but it was pretty simple for me.

Everybody held more power than me here, unless we were talking about a straight fight, in which case I was somewhere near the upper-middle point of competence. I was a knight’s heir without any land or family-head to back me up. If Greg ever got mad enough at me, or if the words of the masses about how dumb, stupid, useless, conniving, yadda-yadda-yadda I was ever got to him, I would lose what little standing in the Academy I had. So I just had to not be shitty to a friend of mine, or else my life as a noble would be over.

… Not that that was the worst thing in the world for me, anymore. I was competent—not great, not terrible—as a fighter and an adventurer. I could make a tidy living for myself as a random commoner, and I’d imagine that even if they didn’t leave Greg’s service, Thane and Jacob would be willing to help me out here and there.

Huh. I’m… actually better off than I was before Mom came back, aren’t I? I have a back-up plan and everything.

Oh, look, the Prince is done talking! Sweet, I can finally burn my stupid room clean!

…

Should I be worried that I was only capable of introspection when there was literally nothing better to do?

… I’m sure it’s fine.

*****

Four days later, and my room was clean—despite a mild lingering funk that I was still working on—one of my sets of clothes had proven recoverable, and school had started up in earnest.

I was pleasantly surprised that the only actual academic classes were mathematics, literature, and history. And while history was boring even in Fantasy-land—because it was more interested in servicing certain big names in the nobility as heroes of their time and champions of the people than it was actually covering anything interesting—the math proved low-level and easy enough that even with my rusty skills and the minimal tutoring I’d sat in on for Greg, I didn’t need to worry about it. I’d even been roped into helping Greg and Thane with their studies, in the absence of an actual paid tutor.

Not that I did it for free. I was paid well, in coffee, and in how they groveled at the foot of my Mathematical Majesty! Did I remember integrals, derivatives, or quadratics? Hell no, but aside from actual magi-tech engineers and high-level mages, nobody really needed math that complex, and the nobility (and thus the academy) were far more likely to sponsor other people to learn those things than trouble themselves with the ink stains and papercuts that lie therein.

Reasonably enough, the Academy’s Math classes were geared more towards accounting, taxation, and all numbers-related chicanery that would be necessary to manage one’s lands and vassals effectively. Much easier than deriving and integrating. I didn’t even want to try re-learning all of that stuff.

Although, it might be useful for sorting out future iterations of my spell formulae…

Hm. Self-study to rediscover integrations and derivatives, or risk magical stagnation and eventual death-by-monster? Truly, a ‘would-you-rather’ for the ages.

…

Death it is!

And while the literature we studied wasn’t great , it at least brought a bit of escapism from the day-to-day, with the promise of a whole huge library to trawl through, and find actual interesting pieces, rather than just examples of courtly poetry and letters sent to woo fair maidens.

The rest of the classes were jokes, aside from Magical Theory. Can’t allow the peasants to get an edge, doncha know. The nearest equivalent to PE were the classes on dancing, which went horribly for me, and the occasional combat-training or dungeoneering class that was all stuff I already knew. Ten foot poles exist for a reason, keeping a shovel handy never hurts, never use all of your strength getting in when you need to get back out , etc. etc., yadda yadda yadda.

All told, the academics of the Academy weren’t too terrible.

It was the social aspects that sucked.

*****

“Greg. Drop it.”

“All I’m saying is that if Thane can manage to get some pretty girls going to his tea-party, there’s no excuse! He’s in the Commoner’s track, and he managed to talk three baronets’ daughters into it!”

Are my teeth creaking, or is that just my imagination?

“Greg. Nobody wants me in this track, aside from you. It’s a good day for me when people don’t spit when I walk by. I am not hosting a tea party. ” Besides , I thought, Thane, for all his efforts, is pretty. Some girls go for that. Some girls love pretty boys, some dig handsome men, others the rugged, ripped type… but ‘average’ isn’t anybody’s favorite.

“Come on, come on! If you host one, I promise I’ll bring some pretty girls…!”

“Tempting as I find the offer to be looked down on, all on my dime , I don’t really care enough about schmoozing with girls that hate me to give you an out from Field’s party.”

Greg slugged me in my good shoulder—and thank God he actually listened now and again, when I told him not to fuck with my bad arm. “You’re a pretty shit friend, Varez, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah, but I’m a great coach, ain’t I?”

“Only reason I keep you around!” He laughed. “Fine, fine, I’ll go spend time with some delicate flowers… Oh, and the girls Brad invited too, I guess. I hear the scholarship student will be there. Maybe she’ll know something about… I don’t know, farming or whatever. Gotta be more interesting than listening to Field talk about how great he is for the thousandth time.”

“Greg, you know not all commoners are farm—? And he’s gone.”

I sighed. I should probably put more work into wrangling my idiot… but, I mean… He can handle one party on his own, right?

… Fuck.

“Greg, wait up! Where’d you go!?”

*****

I did not find Greg. In point of fact, I found the only person other than Brad that I might deem the exact opposite of Greg.

She was blonde, and trembling, and barely holding back her tears under the verbal assault of a trio of harpies, backed up by a gang of less-involved students ringing the stuttering, crying girl. They stood over her like they were sentencing her for thirty-to-life, and she seemed about as devastated as an innocent defendant suffering exactly that fate.

Fuck. I knew exactly what was going on.

I should leave it. I should leave it, and let what happens happen, and—I’m going to be stupid, aren’t I?

“Hey, score! Nobody told me there were monsters to slay inside the academy!” I shouted, stepping forward. “That’s so convenient. And me without my sword!”

The one in front drew herself up, thin face and severe eyebrows suddenly aimed at me. “What are you talking about, you—?”

The key in these situations—to appearing witty, and not losing steam, even when confrontation was a pain in the ass, and made your gut twist a little—is to go in with a plan. So I was ready to cut her off with my next wonderfully planned insult.

“Look at what we have, a harpy,” I said, pointing at her, “a slime,” I continued, pointing to the one in back with the weak chin, “and a vampire rat!” That one, of course, was the girl with massive buck teeth.

I felt a little bad for insulting girls like that… but bullying bullies was okay, right?

“Who do you think you are, you low-life?” The lead-girl demanded. “My father could have your hide within the day!? What’s your name? I’ll see you expelled from the Academy and on the front-lines of the military before you can push a thought through that thick skull of yours!”

“My name is Michael, Michael Hawk. Go tell your father ‘Mike Hawk is bothering me!’ ”

“I-I will! You will rue the day you were so hard-headed in the face of your betters, Mike Hawk! My name is Mariella Fou LeBarre, and I will see to it that all you hick Hawks are ruined! ”

One of the girls towards the back failed to suppress a chuckle—she seemed to be the only one who got the joke, and quickly retreated under the glares of the other girls for not showing a united front. Olivia— the damn protagonist , what am I doing—lit up red as a stop-light, and buried her face in her hands to hide from the shame of understanding my juvenile joke, I guess.

“Great, great. Can you complain about that somewhere else, though?” I gestured to the blonde on her knees, still largely ringed by the girls sycophants. “There’s a lady present, and speaking of such things is hardly polite.”

Flustered and confused—either such dumb jokes were beneath the nobility, or I’d just brought Bart Simpson’s favorite crank-calling bit to life on this world for the first time ever—she pulled away, leading her posse to greener pastures and easier targets.

I turned to the blonde, the embarrassed blush fading from her face. “There we are. I’m no knight in shining armor, but how much your kit gleams isn’t the best sign of ability anyway.” I offered her a hand. “Alan Fou Varez, heir to the Knightly House of Oaks. At your service, ma’am. Are you hurt?” And then she looked up at me with brilliant blue eyes that put me in mind of tropical waters, and that round, heart-shaped face that had my own face heating up.

Looking to the floor, she accepted my hand up, and I tried my best to ignore the jittery energy in my elbows and knees. You nearly died the other day, I told myself, a pretty girl is not going to be what makes you shake in your boots!

It didn’t help much, but I managed not to shiver like a leaf as she got an adorable, confused look on her face. “Varez?” She asked, head cocking to the side. “I thought your family name was Hawk?”

Oh. She hadn’t gotten that joke. Had she just been upset I stepped in, or about how mean I was? Um. Hm. What do I—

“O-oh, I. I just didn’t want to give her a real name. I’m… low enough on the totem pole here that I can’t risk somebody’s dad wanting me expelled, or killed, or what have you. My patron has enough problems without needing to keep me out of trouble.”

“Oh. That makes sense. I wish I could do the same thing, but… e-everybody already knows that I’m the commoner. And now that you know…” She huddled in further on herself.

“Hey, come on now. Us low class weirdos stick together. Now let me help you up, my arm’s getting tired.”

She looked up at me again, and my heart felt like it stopped at the sheer look of relief, gratitude, and tentative joy on her face. It only started again when her hand hit mine, and I almost forgot to help her to her feet when that small source of warmth flooded up my arm and made me feel like a lovesick teenager.

No. Bad. Down boy, do not take advantage of the emotionally-fragile girl. I let go of her hand before I got any more ideas.

“S-so, um. What… what are you doing in the middle of the halls here?”

She flushed, embarrassed about something. “I got ahead of myself. Lord Fields invited me to his tea party, a-and I… I thought it was a real invitation. Then those girls came and made fun of me for… for being so stupid, and ripped up my invite. I should have known he was just being polite…”

I was pretty sure Fields wouldn’t have invited anyone he didn’t want around—and more importantly, anyone he wasn’t close friends with, or wanting to get into the pants of.

“Well, don’t worry about it. You seem like a good person, and that’s something very few of the people here at the Academy can claim. You’ll find your crowd sooner or later.”

“Th-thank you, Mister Varez!” She gave me an earnest bow, and I found myself scratching the back of my neck. “You’ve been so kind to me. I’ll find a way to pay you back for sticking up for me, I promise!”

I coughed into my fist. Hold firm, knees! No shaking, none of that, look at least sort of cool in front of the pretty girl! “Don’t worry about it, I mean it. I’m just treating you like a person, and a nice one at that. That should be the bare minimum. Anyways, seeing as you don’t have a tea party to get to, maybe we could… w-walk around the Academy, explore a little bit? I haven’t—”

“Oi! What’s going on out here?” Came the belligerent, interrupting call from a doorway nearby.

Ah. Leon.

“No tea party invite? That won’t do, you should come join me! It’ll be nice to have some halfway-respectful company!”

I should have known, he’d never let anyone but the ‘capture targets’ ask Olivia out on anything approaching a date.

“Well. Problem solved itself,” I said to Olivia, trying not to sound broken up about the missed chance to get to know her better. Not—not that I had any real chance, or serious intentions of dating her. My chances were pretty much nil. But having one more friend couldn’t hurt things, right? It sucked to see girls cry like that, and making the day a little brighter for somebody so obviously kind would have made me feel like not-so-crappy of a person. “Enjoy your tea party with… Baron Bartfort, right?”

“Not a Baron yet,” he groused, eyeing me like a science project. “Not until graduation.”

“U-um. Mister— Baron Bartfort,” Olivia said, quiet, meek. “W-w-would it be alright if… Mister Varez joined us? He’s been so kind to me, a-and I don’t want to just… leave him!”

“There’s no need for that,” I assured her. “Please, enjoy the tea party. I’ll see you around—”

“No, that’s probably for the best,” Bartfort said. “After all, I heard some pretty interesting stories about you, Varez. I wouldn’t mind picking the brain of a fellow adventurer, and I have some of the nicest pastries in the capital. Only the best for my guests, after all.”

Oh yeah. Luxion probably wants to kill me as a security breach, or something. This should be fun.

I pasted a fake smile on my face and nodded. “Thank you for the invitation, Lord Bartfort,” I said instead of complaining, or declining like I’d wanted. I inclined my head, in a vague relation to a bow. “I look forward to your hospitality.”

*****

AN: Did I work way too hard on the dick joke? Yes. Yes I did. Did it work as well as I’d hoped…? Probably not. It stays in though, as I am an immature fool.
I meant to get Alan into the tea party proper, and have a bit of a powwow with Leon and Luxion by the end of this chapter, but the scene with Olivia got away from me. Hope this was enjoyable, comments and criticism always welcome!