bookworm

After a clash of blades, a man stood frozen in shock. Who the hell is this kid? He wouldn’t have been surprised to see his attack parried—it had been a weak swing meant to test a new recruit’s mettle. He hadn’t wanted to hurt a boy that was years and years younger than him.

The man knew all too well that little boys were prone to big egos. Much to his embarrassment, he himself had run his mouth back in his childhood. In the world of combat, where competition was directly linked to injury, hubris got the better of many upcoming warriors. Knowing this, the man had taken it upon himself to teach his junior the harsh reality of the world: an adult’s strength far eclipsed that of any child, and the gap only grew when facing a demihuman or demonfolk opponent.

Yet somehow the man’s sword, once firmly gripped, now twirled through the air, his opponent’s blade leveled at his neck. Despite the fancy trick that had taken place before his eyes, the man was left with an uncomfortable lack of tactile feedback in his hand. It was as if he’d been hexed. The creeping feeling that he’d been deceived by something lurking in the darkness spread throughout his mind.

“Satisfied?” the boy asked.

The man stared. Their bout had been so ungrounded in reality that the skinny lad in front of him seemed like he wasn’t quite human. On the battlefield, this would have been curtains. The arteries in his neck would have been sliced open, leaving him to drown in a fountain of his own blood. At best, a neck guard or chainmail cowl could stall for a few seconds, but it would be an easy matter to poke through such defenses when one had such a massive advantage.

“...Let’s go again.”

However, the man was unable to accept his loss and asked to spar once more. He couldn’t believe that his sword had slipped through his fingers like the powdery snow of early spring. The boy nodded nonchalantly. He’s real, the man assured himself. He’s not some shadowy, unknown horror—he’s just a farmer’s kid.

The man readjusted his grip twice, then three times, as if to say that his sword’s dance through the air had been some passing illusion. In spite of all his doubts, he couldn’t deny the weight of the sword in his hands. He used the certainty of his fastening grip to expel the uneasiness from his mind and postured himself for the duel. The boy mirrored his form: it was a generic stance where one held the blade loosely with both hands and pointed it at their opponent. Their unremarkable postures were the basis for the Hybrid Sword Arts that the two of them studied.

The man looked his composed opponent over and could only see a child full of openings. The boy’s gaze was lofty and unfocused, and his undeveloped body showed little vigor. Still, the disquieting effect rolling off of him was as strong as ever. Despite looking straight at him, the man couldn’t see him. The strange way the boy failed to stick in his mind caused the man’s anxiety to run wild.

The man dispelled his agitation by striking. Though his overhead swing was basic, countless hours of practice had left him confident in his form. But the blade did not connect: bafflingly, the boy had begun moving in the middle of the man’s strike, yet again robbing him of his weapon with a touch so gentle that it felt unreal. With the opening act out of the way, the boy thrust his sword forward until it was a hair away from splitting the man’s skull. Considering how precise the young one’s swordplay was, it was uncertain if a helmet would have saved him. The blow would either concuss him or blind him with a splatter of blood; either way, he was sure to be an easy kill.

I would have died, the man finally realized. With a heavy gulp, he internalized his defeat. However, his initial disbelief only grew stronger. Who the hell is this kid?

The man was not the type to pride himself as an undefeated warrior. He had yet to take a point off his mentor Lambert in the seven years he’d studied under him. When he teamed up with two other students only to lose terribly to their master, he accepted that he was—and would always be—no more than an average soldier.

Even so, the boy was an enigma. The man had trained for seven years, survived countless battles against those who threatened the canton, and had been drafted by the lord of the region twice. His experience was nothing to scoff at. When their village had been assaulted by armed raiders, he had been able to face several at once and come out unscathed, so how had he lost to an eleven-year-old brat?

On top of that, the man’s intuition told him that the boy’s technique was extraordinary. Is it even possible to rob a man of his sword without so much as grazing his fingertips? But no matter how many times he contemplated the situation, the reality remained that his opponent’s blade was at his throat, while his own had tumbled onto the ground behind him.

“I-I concede.”

Whereas the boy hadn’t broken a sweat, an indescribable fright caused a cold droplet to run down the man’s back. Erich, fourth son of Johannes. The man finally understood why Lambert had taken this boy under his wing, and why he’d forbidden anyone else from sparring with young Erich. Lambert had wanted to preserve the watchman’s pride that he’d spent seven years cultivating. But the man’s luck had run dry when he decided to interrupt the boy’s practice. He had trampled over his mentor’s kindness with his own two hands.

What if we had shields? What about spears instead of swords? The man desperately imagined a variety of potential scenarios, but his spirit was so thoroughly broken that he couldn’t visualize himself winning in any of them. He would likely never think to tutor a new recruit again. He turned his back to the boy and bitterly voiced one last frustration.

“...You’re a monster.”

[Tips] Hybrid Sword Arts is a skill representing a mixed martial art that is based around the use of swords. Refined by real combat, the art encourages familiarity with all forms of weaponry and emphasizes an understanding of grappling, throwing, and off-handed projectiles. Despite being categorized as a swordplay skill, it provides aptitude for all manner of other arms.

The peak moment for any munchkin is when someone looks at what you’ve done with your build and you can see confusion and disgust in their expression.

Two years ago, Lambert had taken me on as a potential recruit and made time in between his official duties to spar with me. I had been shocked to see the tremendous load of experience points that combat provided. This generous income was likely a reflection of the high risk and complexity of the act: attacking, dodging, and defending all took a lot of concentration, and every mistake could be fatal. For example, each and every projectile that came my way had to be parried or blocked with a part of my body that wouldn’t kill me. Combat’s endless battery of decisions and intuitive leaps collapses a lifetime into fractions of a second.

With a new source of income that was leagues better than my old training methods, my surplus of experience mounted...until my bad habit reared its ugly head once more. I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to do in the future, but somehow I had spent so much experience that my Hybrid Sword Arts skill was at its sixth level, Expert.

Um, I, uh... Sorry, me. But it’s always good to have a means of defense in a dangerous world like this! I couldn’t even come up with a convincing excuse.

Putting my lack of willpower aside, I was a fan of the battle-hardened combat style’s simplicity. It placed little value in the aesthetics of form; it was a straightforward study of the most efficient means of cutting someone down and moving on. The basic stance was boring: a sword in the right hand and a shield in the left.

However, it traded flashiness for savage efficiency. The ideal attack was a fast, fatal strike with the blade, but the style employed anything that might lead to success. The fanciest technique we had was holding our sword by the blade (with gloves, of course) and using the hilt to bash through someone’s armor. More frequently, however, we simply slammed our shields into the enemy or looked for an opportunity to sweep them off their feet. When I considered that I’d been taught how to strangle someone in a desperate situation, I wondered how this could be considered swordplay.

Regardless of its categorization, the evolution of the style was very natural. The men I studied under were veterans of hectic melees (unlike traditional peasant armies), so it made sense that they emphasized the value of picking up discarded weapons to strike down foes as quickly as possible. Its practical origins meant that the martial art taught group combat strategies for one-on-many and many-on-many battles, which I greatly appreciated. The lessons on defensive battles and ally coordination were sure to be helpful in the future.

All this training came with a good number of new traits and skills. This was where I truly shined: mixing and matching abilities to stir up all sorts of trouble is a munchkin’s calling. If anyone had any complaints, I’d point them directly to whichever god was crazy enough to let me multiclass.

One ability in particular positively screamed “Abuse me!” Enchanting Artistry was a trait that extended dexterity bonuses to new skills, gave a bonus to dexterity checks, and allowed me to use dexterity in place of other values during rolls. Now, it isn’t uncommon to see a game where one standout stat is used in lieu of another, but this implementation was a bit special. Many combat skills and traits used multiple stats like strength and agility in their calculations, but Enchanting Artistry let me replace all of them with dexterity.

Say, for example, that an overhead swing determines accuracy with dexterity and agility, and the damage is based on strength and dexterity. My new trait let me replace both agility and strength with dexterity, meaning that I could double up on my strongest stat for both calculations. It was almost too efficient.

The reasoning behind this effect was that someone with polished technique would be deft enough to use the bare minimum amount of force or speed required for any given task, like how a judo master could throw someone twice their size. Still, the effect was utterly broken.

I had invested heavily in dexterity to improve my carving capabilities, raising it to VII: Exceptional. There were only two more levels left to aim for, but the resources required to get there were beyond the realm of even the most sadistic gacha game. Not wanting to blow all of the experience I had saved for my future, I’d put my progress on hold for the time being.

There were times in my day-to-day life when I needed to purchase a handy skill or two, so I couldn’t afford to put all my eggs in one basket. It was usually best to use all available experience to level as quickly as possible in these sorts of games, but I didn’t want to run into an unsolvable problem during the quiet moments, so it paid to be patient. If I was to live amidst my peers as a normal human being, I couldn’t turn myself into some kind of walking, talking killing machine. Besides, I wasn’t a fan of that sort of life.

Breathing life into one’s journey with unique skills and looking out for fun moments was the true joy of a TRPG. My life wasn’t a game, which was exactly why I needed to be ready to enjoy it. Mechanically bouncing from one completed adventure to the next would be a massive waste of potential, don’t you think?

Getting back on topic, Enchanting Artistry had one more absurdly powerful effect: it let me take one dexterity-based skill and combine it with a skill from a different category. I had always considered the system of this world to be combo-oriented, but this was far beyond anything I’d imagined. And it was only a matter of course that someone like me who picked up a skill here and a trait there would end up breaking the system at some point. I was a living example of why no one should ever allow their players to build multiclass characters, even as a joke.

I chose to take the Disarm skill from the Martial Arts category and slapped it onto my basic attacks, allowing me to render my foes helpless. Among the myriad of unarmed self-defense skills, Disarm was one of the cheapest. It was a much easier purchase than an expensive counterattack that I might not land consistently. Furthermore, its only drawback was its low base success rate, which Enchanting Artistry let me boost to ludicrous heights.

A highly capable opponent would likely be able to resist it, but the potential reward of creating an unarmed target was intoxicating. If they didn’t have any hand-to-hand combat experience, my new attack would leave them as helpless as a plated fish waiting to be minced.

I should look into getting more skills that inflict debuffs on—my train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a tingling in my spine. A faint odor carried by the breeze put my senses on full alert, and I shifted my body half a step to the side to dodge an incoming attack...only to realize one beat too late that it had been a feint. She’d let me notice her on purpose to make me commit to an evasive maneuver, and now was her chance to pounce.

“How do you do?” Margit said, swinging across me with her hands around my neck. I didn’t feel any pain as she clung to me; I couldn’t tell if it was her superb control over her grip or her masterful dispersion of momentum, but she came to a comfortable stop right in front of my chest. Her smile slid right into view, as adorable and brilliant as it was two years ago.

“Please come over normally...” I said.

“But this is our routine,” she protested. “Today makes 134 wins and 140 losses, so I’m slowly gaining on you.” My living necklace buried her face into my developing pecs like a friendly kitten.

Our relationship had changed as little as her appearance. The romantic flag that I had picked up at some point was alive and well, perhaps thanks to our long history together. Although I suppose I’d known every child in the canton for just as long, so that might not have had anything to do with it.

With around forty years of life experience under my belt, I’d had my share of romantic episodes and knew the signs of affection when I saw them. I wasn’t so clueless that I couldn’t tell what Margit was thinking. I was the only person she leapt onto, and she wouldn’t let anyone else walk around wearing her as a backpack. She may have had a habit of teasing me, but she wasn’t a devilish playgirl that toyed with the hearts of men.

Still, her childish appearance and the paradoxical allure of her actions left me in a state of confusion. How am I meant to view her? How am I meant to feel?

Completely ignoring my inner dilemma, Margit happily advanced the conversation in the elegant palatial speech she’d spent years perfecting. “Have you heard the news?”

“What news?” I asked.

“It would seem your eldest brother is slated to marry soon,” she announced.

The sudden development caused me to choke and do a spit take.

“Ew! Gross!” Margit shrieked, reverting back to the commoner’s tongue. Her face was positioned right in front of mine and her hands were busy clinging to my neck, so I’d landed a direct hit. I felt too guilty to complain when she wiped herself off by nuzzling my shirt.

“S-Sorr—no, wait! Heinz is getting married?!” I had been completely caught off guard. Of course, it was common for parents to arrange marriages for their children when they were close to adulthood in order to form bonds with other families in our small canton. I was eleven, which made Heinz fourteen; he was only one year out from legal adulthood, so it wasn’t a stretch to begin the wedding process now. But why did Margit know about this before me? I’m literally his brother!

“Mmhmm,” Margit said. “I heard that he’s been engaged to Mina.”

Mina used to be one of our usual playmates when we were younger. She’d stopped coming to the forest last year to learn housework by helping her mother, so I hadn’t seen her for a while, but she and my brother didn’t have that sort of relationship last I remembered. I guess the parents were the ones who set it all up...

“I guess this sort of thing spreads faster between girls,” I noted.

“I suppose so,” Margit replied. “But I think the true reason word spread so quickly is due to Heinz being a favorite among the local maidens.”

Oh? This was the first I’d ever heard of my brother’s popularity. However, now that I thought of it, he had inherited my father’s rugged good looks. I was a little biased, considering that he was my family and all, but his sturdy build gave off an aura of reliability. I guess it’s not too far-fetched for him to step into the realm of dating while I wasn’t looking...

“He’s the heir to a solid house with healthy savings, after all.”

Oh. I felt like I was about to tumble over with Margit still hanging from my neck. The harshness of pragmatic reality had taken the wind out of my sails.

To be fair, our house was on the upper end as far as independent farmers went. It had taken some time, but my parents had saved the funds to send my second brother Michael to school as well. In fact, my father had pulled me aside and told me that he could squeeze out just enough money to send me along too. I’d used Margit’s tutoring as an excuse to decline, but the fact that we’d had that option at all was proof of our incredibly high standard of living.

The fields we’d expanded six years ago were now stable, our workhorse remained in good health, and we had a handful of olive trees that were mature enough to bear fruit. On the same note, my side gig making board game pieces and wooden idols had apparently earned a pretty penny when my father had sold them. His offer to send me to school may have been an attempt at compensating me for my work.

But wow... Marriage?

“Is there something wrong?” Margit asked, peering up at me as I hung my head in deliberation.

I was unsure of how to respond, but knowing it wouldn’t help to brood silently, I answered her as truthfully as I could. With a heavy feeling of responsibility weighing on me, I said, “I was thinking about how I need to figure out what I want to do with my life.”

[Tips] In the Trialist Empire of Rhine, official inheritance, employment, and appointment are rights reserved for legal adults. There are some loopholes to begin working before the age of fifteen, such as becoming a steward or apprentice.

There exists a period of moratorium in every person’s life. A relaxing length of time where responsibilities are few and far between. For me, it was the college days where my friends and I would hole up in a room to roll dice over rulebooks for hours on end. This age where one has the rights of an adult but the leeway of a child is the most liberating part of a Japanese person’s life if used to its fullest extent.

However, this period has more to it than leisure. It is a crossroads at which one must decide what path they wish to take in life, and at this very moment, I found myself at a fork in the road once again.

Truth be told, making plans for the future was difficult in this new world. The child of a farmer was to be a farmer. The child of a huntsman was to be a huntsman. The child of a blacksmith was to be a blacksmith. The unwritten rules of my previous life were such a given here that it had been codified in imperial law.

The logic was reasonable. Without advanced technology, manpower was a necessity for all sorts of things. The state needed its citizens to work in certain fields, or the whole system would collapse.

On Earth, it was evident from the perpetually understaffed agricultural and construction industries and the overwhelming number of office workers that it was less enticing to earn a living through physically intensive work. No matter how much technology developed, that would never change.

It wasn’t difficult to foresee that Rhine’s encouragement of literacy among the lower class could lead to some sort of social upheaval. Since the majority of people never had a chance to receive an education, demand for skilled labor never ceased. Sir Grant, the local scribe for our backwater canton, made ends meet just by writing a handful of letters and petitions a month. But without a means of importing vast quantities of food, the country couldn’t afford to allow its farmers and construction workers to leave their posts. The imperial regulations on viable careers were a fail-safe to prevent total societal collapse.

Some interdisciplinary mobility existed via marriage or registered stewardship, but these opportunities were much like part-time jobs in the Japanese countryside: you could only get in if you had connections. I only had a few real options to my name.

Under imperial law, a farmhand could become an adventurer, mercenary, soldier, or watchman without restriction. The only other choices were to work as a day laborer or coal miner, or to simply continue farming in another region that needed more manpower.

Without any sort of recruitment drive in the area, it would be impossible for me to be a career soldier, and despite my training with Lambert, I was unfortunately stuck at the position of watchman prospect. Lukas’s empty spot had been filled quickly, and it was unlikely that I’d be considered for full-time employment unless another watchman retired. At most, the Empire was willing to employ five percent of its population as part of its standing army, and without the threat of war, it had no place for me.

I could consider being a farmer, but establishing a crop field from scratch required huge sums of capital. Moving to a distant canton to start a farm was akin to signing oneself into serfdom, so it wasn’t a legitimate option in my mind. On top of that, I’d heard that underage workers were usually turned away, even as day laborers. Besides, if I were to stoop to the level of working for a daily wage, it would have been better for me to go to school and inherit my family’s farm to begin with.

That left me with the sad fact that adventuring was the only choice that gave me any hope at all. Technically, I could also marry a girl and take up her family trade, but that wasn’t very helpful in our tiny canton. It wasn’t as if that would expand my list of opportunities by much.

What a bind. I also considered joining the ranks of authors, playwrights, and unsponsored artists like traveling bards and theater troupes. However, I wasn’t carefree enough to be like these sorts who were employed in little more than name, and I didn’t have any passion for performance to begin with. I could spend my experience points to become a skilled artist, but I doubted that I’d be able to stomach it for long.

“...I guess I’ll try adventuring,” I mumbled. I slowly digested the words as they left my mouth, and a curious feeling sank into the corner of my heart. The statement was little more than the common drivel uttered by the many children weary of their quaint hometowns. I was no better than a university student hellbent on quitting school and paying the bills through music.

However, I now came to understand that this desire had always been with me. The future Buddha had blessed me with this wonderful power and urged me to live according to my own wishes. I hadn’t been brought here to do something that had to be done, but to do what I willed.

Was there any shame in letting myself indulge in the same story I so dearly loved in my past life? It wasn’t as though I’d played the role of an adventurer in every story: I’d been a student that got roped into a supernatural mystery just as often as I’d saved the world.

But, I thought, no matter what sort of setting I’m tossed into, I’m sure I would seek out this kind of journey.

It was a comically simple story: adventuring wasn’t the only option left, but the only option for me. I couldn’t believe this was the conclusion I’d come to with forty years of wisdom under my belt. From figuring out the details to convincing my parents, a mountain of issues still remained untouched.

“Is there something on your mind?” Margit asked from below my chin.

As always, the timbre of her voice sent a jolt across my back. I looked down to see that the little arachne had been hanging from my neck during my entire soul-searching journey. Why is it that these hazel eyes and their companions in her hair always stop my mind in its tracks? On second thought, as of late, her eyes had begun to shift from a standard hazel to a deeper color. A faint brown seeped into her irises, shifting them to amber—no, to a profound gold.

“You see,” she whispered with a pause, “as the eldest daughter of my house...I’ve been thinking quite a bit myself.”

An uneasy sweat streaked across my skin. It felt as though my Presence Detection skill was trying to alert me to something, but the gears of my brain refused to turn. I can’t turn away from these eyes.

Margit’s gaze took a corporeal form and caressed my eyeballs, slipping past them into the depths of my skull. I had no idea what caused this hallucination, but it felt unusually grounded in reality. It almost seemed as if we’d made contact mind-to-mind, and this fantasy was my distorted brain’s attempt at processing her embrace.

“So do feel free to rely on me,” she sighed. The eight limbs wrapping around my back tightened. These were not to secure her position, but to secure mine.

Suddenly, I remembered that certain species of spider engaged in sexual cannibalism. Margit was a spider—a jumping spider. I couldn’t recall whether or not they were part of that list, but a burst of terror knocked at the depths of my heart, only for—

“I’m sure I can be of some help,” Margit whispered into my ear. “Don’t you think?”

All at once, the oppressive tension I’d felt vanished into thin air and she released me.

“Whatever is the matter?” she asked with a giggle, hopping to the ground. “Why, you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.” She looked up at me from the ground with the same mischievous smile that I’d seen over and over. Sunlight glimmered on her gentle eyes, which were once again a quiet hazel.

Was I daydreaming?

“Shall we go?” Margit cooed playfully in her usual refined dialect. Taking my hand, she added, “I believe you trained with Sir Lambert today. It won’t do to have you roaming around covered in sweat. You don’t want to catch a cold, do you?”

My sister Elisa had recently started wandering around the house, but holding her hand was totally different from holding Margit’s. The spidery fingers coiled around my own were small, soft, and colder to the touch than any mensch’s. The refreshing chill of her hand helped soothe my panicked heart.

It felt like the anxiety from a moment ago had been pure delusion. The speed at which it turned from palpable reality to utter fancy baffled me. Well, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about... My family was ready to let me stay with them, at least until I came of age. I’d need to be careful not to intrude on the newlyweds’ alone time, but surely my parents had a solution for that.

We would either build an annex or a shed—or we could even splurge to build a whole other house. At least one of my brothers would stay at home for the foreseeable future, so it certainly wouldn’t go to waste.

As I held onto the tiny hand that guided me forward, my worries slowly faded away.

[Tips] Many families will allow their second or third son to remain at home in case the eldest falls ill or passes away. Once the eldest brother has a son of his own, the younger brother is expected to marry into a different household somewhere in the area.

Margit’s mother always maintained that every prey had a surefire means of capture. The two of them were unlike the patient orb-weaving arachne, the giant tarantula arachne, or the powerful huntsman spider arachne. Those who traced their lineage to jumping spiders approached silently and extinguished lives with a single, deft strike.

First, they snuck into their mark’s blind spot with bated breath. Then, they leapt with a dagger or bow, aiming for a vital spot that would instantly kill the unsuspecting creature. Without venom or a web, their kind had to end things instantly. The subrace had survived despite its small stature and feathery weight thanks to their evolutionary bias toward the first strike.

Margit’s mother built on this by forcing her daughter to study her game. Where are they weak? There were very few points where a dagger or arrow could instantly kill an animal. While many injuries would cause the creature to bleed out, seldom were the locations that could cause immediate fatality. Where are they blind? Small as these arachne were, a moving mass with a little more than a meter of height was sure to stand out. Tracking all five senses and where they were least active was a necessity for success. Where are they dangerous? Knowing the enemy’s strength meant knowing their openings. A swordsman relied on his sword; a bowman relied on his arrows.

Margit had received this lecture countless times on an untold number of hunting expeditions. But one day, her mother concluded in a different manner. “All of this applies to men, as well. Men, too, have weaknesses. Not the bloodstained kind of throats and arteries, but things that will make them weak.”

Unfortunately for Margit, jumping spider arachne were complete strangers to the mature, voluptuous bodies that were popular amongst the humanfolk races. Unable to support any dead weight, their physique was perfectly tailored to a childish stature. If a female arachne happened to have a bountiful chest, it would cause her to struggle with her balance for the rest of her life. For better or for worse, age never touched their looks.

Margit’s mother had borne a number of children and yet still looked like a child on the outside. Those who could guess her age just from her upper body were few and far between. When paired with her mensch husband, the two looked closer to grandfather and granddaughter than married couple. There were rumors that some abnormal mensch were actively drawn to this dissonance, causing arachne to become the targets of a perverse objectification.

Fortunately for Margit, her chosen mark was a kind, agreeable boy. It may have been the fact that he was younger than her, or it may have been that she had yet to grow old enough for her appearance to seem out of place. Either way, her advances were working, especially when she aimed for his weakest point: Erich couldn’t handle a whisper in his ear. Each soft-spoken word caused him to squirm, and hiding it was beyond him when she was glued to his body.

Love was but an extension of the hunt, and this was all the more true for an arachne, whose sensibilities were closer to that of demonfolk than demihumans; a tinge of madness was inherent to her blood.

So she pounced on him to show the world: This one is mine. She loved that his skin was warm to the touch, and she enjoyed the way his blue eyes flashed when he was surprised, but more than anything else, she loved the feeling of satisfaction and security he provided.

Seeing Erich stuck in his own mind, the little spider wanted to lend him a hand. As the fourth son, he was too far down the ladder to remain at home, but it wasn’t as if they lived in a land of opportunity. The Watch wouldn’t have an open slot for some time (even if it did, there were others waiting in line for the position) and Erich wasn’t the type of person that could push others aside for the sake of a job.

However, he was well received by the people around him. He’d memorized nearly all of the hymns and psalms that they’d sung at church, and he always prayed earnestly during mass, so the church would be overjoyed to take him. Furthermore, his ability to read and write combined with his good manners and understanding of the palatial tongue gave him a shot at working for the magistrate. Margit would need to borrow someone else’s fingers to count the number of adults who would vouch for his ability.

If all else failed, he could always marry into another family and inherit their business. In fact, this was his easiest path to success. Truthfully, Heinz wasn’t the only member of his family that drew the attention of local girls. Erich was talented with both the pen and the blade, worked hard, crafted marketable wood carvings, and had a slender build, blond hair, and blue eyes—all popular with Rhinian women. That was more than enough reason for him to be the target of passionate stares from young girls, fresh adults, and even widows who had lost their husband early. Margit could already see the bloodbath that he’d cause when he neared fifteen.

The arachne suddenly considered making a treehouse in the forest canopy where she could lock him away. The fantasy caused her heart to skip a beat, and she felt a fire in the pit of her stomach.

Oh, I recall that he was considering adventuring. Margit knew very well what the reality of such work entailed—her mother had been a globe-trotting adventurer herself until she fell in love at first sight with a local huntsman. Among the tales of her travels across the world as her party’s scout, there were certainly some that kept the little spider girl up at night.

And those stories were exactly why she was determined to follow her beloved warrior if he were to set off on his own. A scout with a keen eye and a sensitive ear was always in need on the road. No matter how acute Erich’s senses were, he was bound by the physical limitations of a mensch.

The young yet mature arachne peered up at the boy as he walked along with her on his back, and a thin smile crept onto her face. Would she pin him down, or would he show her a true dance? Margit could hardly wait to see how he would come along.

[Tips] The cultural values of any given canton or village are prone to being influenced by the values of whatever race is most influential in the area.

Autumn of the Twelfth Year

Session

Best thought of as a single chapter of a campaign. Each session is a time for all the players and the GM to meet and advance the story.

* * *

Let only those whose pride is unswayed by the sweet praise of others cast a stone upon me.

“By the Goddess, this is something else.”

“Do you really mean that?” I found myself shyly scratching at my cheek as the dvergar (I had to stop myself from calling him a dwarf on more than a few occasions) master of the only smithy in the canton marveled at my work.

“I knew you had a good pair of hands, but I never would’ve thought you’d finish a whole set this fast,” he said, stroking his thick beard in awe. A set of wooden carvings lined the countertop in front of him. The twenty-five different types of figures each represented a distinct piece from a board game popular in Rhine and her neighboring countries.

Ehrengarde was a shogi-like game played on a twelve-by-twelve grid wherein each player attempted to rout the enemy emperor and prince. The unique rules dictating each piece’s movement and attacks were reminiscent of classic shogi, but not all the rules were so familiar. Out of the twenty-five types of pieces, only the emperor and prince pieces were mandatory for both players: the players then filled the first four ranks of their board with twenty-eight more pieces of their choosing to begin the game with a total of thirty units.

The abundance of things on the board evoked the image of a trading card game, and the intricacies during play complicated things in a similar fashion. While the game owed its staying power to its complexity and depth, a new player could fend for themselves with a cheat sheet briefly summarizing the more particular rules. The country’s relatively high literacy rate made the game a mainstay in Rhine and the neighboring satellite states.

Pieces could be drafted anywhere from one to twelve times—naturally, powerful rook-style pieces could only be taken once, while twelve pawns were allowed on either side. This balancing led to a handful of archetypal compositions, but none of them were blatantly overpowered enough to ruin the game. The game was so popular in the region that I’d heard stories of methuselah dedicating centuries to studying the mind sport.

One might think that 144 tiles containing sixty pieces would lead to a prolonged playtime, but the asymmetry that arises when strong and weak pieces intermix causes the game to end quickly once one player hems in the other’s prince and emperor. It has quick rounds for a game of its scale.

Of course, pieces for a board game as popular as ehrengarde were in high demand. The price varied wildly depending on quality, but every set was guaranteed to find a buyer. As the seller, this was as simple as it came. With each set requiring a total of 140 pieces, I certainly didn’t want for work, and the distinctness of the markets I could cater to was a great help. After all, there weren’t many other commodities that could be sold to patricians and plebeians both.

A set of wooden chunks with words written on them was dirt cheap, but a collection of statuesque pieces tailored for nobility could fetch a pretty penny depending on the quality of its make. Apparently, some sets were such masterpieces that they could rival the price of an entire manor. I’d dedicated the whole summer of my eleventh year to polish off a batch of pieces ready to be used as the basis for a mold.

“I can’t believe this only took you one summer,” the blacksmith said with a contemplative pause. “If I had an apprentice like you, I’m sure the other smiths would slam their chisels into the counter for not finding you first.”

“Oh please,” I said, “you’re just flattering me.”

“...Hm, yeah, well, be glad you’re a country kid. Things get hard in this neck of the woods for folks who can’t take a hint.”

Huh? Is it just me or did he insult me to my face? I set the rude comment aside as the waist-high smith picked up the emperor piece with a grunt. It depicted a middle-aged man hoisting a flag up high: the motif was the heroic emperor who, with his son, had repelled a joint invasion of Rhine over 120 years ago. Knowing that dvergar prized their beards, it was a good sign that the smith was stroking his as he gazed at the flag fluttering in an invisible wind.

“I’m really proud of that one,” I told him. “I based it off a portrait of the Black Flag I saw at church.”

“Sure, he’s a famous emperor. Him and the Silver Prince make a good father-son duo, so I’d bet they’ll sell well as emperor and prince pieces.”

Although they didn’t always retail for a full manor, well made pieces could still trade for significant coin. I’d been told that since many patrons elected to only buy single pieces that caught their fancy, the ever-present emperor and prince pieces were extra marketable, especially when they depicted popular monarchs, and as such I’d spent the most time and effort refining those two into works of art.

The major pieces were the height of an index finger and the minor ones the height of a pinky. It had been a daunting endeavor to carve out glorious poses that could fit into the pedestal at our town’s meeting hall.

“So, what do you think, sir?” I asked cautiously after the man had inspected each piece.

“Hrmm... All right, fine,” he said, crossing his arms. With a hefty nod, he sealed the deal and declared, “I’ll hammer you a set of armor.”

“Thank you so very much!!!”

“I didn’t think you had it in you to make it—and even if you did, I thought it’d take at least half a year. You did well, kiddo.”

I let out a shy chuckle. It was a wondrous feeling to have the fruits of my labor accepted, and all the better when I could trade it for what I really wanted.

“All right, let’s get you measured out. You mensch keep growing, don’tcha? I’ll make sure to build a set you can have tweaked.” The man hopped down from the counter stool and led me into the back of his workshop, swinging his shoulders to invigorate himself. The thought that a month of hard work was finally paying off sent shivers of joy down my spine.

It had all started this summer as I approached my twelfth birthday: I’d needed money. A set of equipment and a weapon was the bare minimum for an adventurer. Unfortunately for me, equipment and weaponry was mind-bogglingly expensive. Generally speaking, a set of chainmail paired with hard leather underneath would cost what my family spent to eat for an entire month.

There was no getting around it, as the requisite leather and metal alone was already pricey. I may have been operating on a TRPG system, but that didn’t extend to the finances of those around me. The world wasn’t so kind to adventurers that skipping out on a few nights at the inn could buy an entire armor set. In the nostalgic settings of days gone by where the entire universe was built around the concept of adventure, weapons were well within the price range of a child’s allowance, but here a mere bronze sword cost a small fortune.

As the fourth son, it went without saying that I was in no position to beg for scraps. Further, our family had recently built a cottage in preparation for my brother’s wedding, so our purse had taken a swift turn into the land of austerity. With betrothal fees, ceremony fees, and an officially wed bride on the way...no amount of parental love could justify a spare coin for me.

The only choice I had was to earn it myself. I was not as brainless as a certain hunter who’d ventured into the depths of ruins in search of tanks—or rather, weapons in general. I also could see the costs of raw materials coming, so I refused to take smithing skills as a stopgap.

Besides, I had a different means of earning money. In order to secure an easier path to independence (though that sounded unconvincing coming from me) I made wood carvings until my Wood Whittling skill was all the way to VII: Virtuoso. I picked up an Artistry skill to improve the finer details on the board game pieces, and with that at V: Adept, I took an add-on called Realistic Depiction to round out my money making abilities.

Thinly veiled excuses aside, when I first had brought a pawn to the blacksmith as a sample, he’d been so impressed that he offered to make me a set of armor in exchange for a full ehrengarde set. My initial hope had been for him to buy it off me and then to use the earnings to commission armor, so this was beyond my wildest expectations. I’d leapt at the opportunity without a second thought.

Admittedly, the process of designing and carving twenty-five different pieces had been back-breaking work, but the tantalizing thought of my own personal armor kept me working at a rapid pace. I’d lessened my usual craftwork without hesitation and spent all of my free time creating these instead. My shoulders had grown stiff, no doubt entirely due to the extra weight of Margit dangling on my back begging for attention, but she repaid me with a massage (of the completely wholesome variety, I might add) so we’ll call it even.

Any fantasy lover’s heart would light ablaze at the prospect of having their own personal armor. That enthusiasm, coupled with the restless feeling that I was only some two years and change away from leaving home, spurred me to work at a pace I had never before achieved. And now, my work was being recognized as I stood still to be measured.

“Hmph, you’ll grow another head or two on you,” the smith said with a measuring tape in one hand and my shoulder in the other. I had committed a sizable sum of experience to my future growth, so I was meant to be somewhere in the ballpark of 180 centimeters at full size.

“You can tell?” I asked.

“Back in the day, I handled a lotta adventurers and soldiers when I worked at the Innenstadt smithy,” he explained, jotting down the measurements of my arms and shoulders. “When you’ve seen as many tots turn into full-grown men as I have, a good rub is enough to tell.”

Innenstadt was a major city that lay on a river to the west of Konigstuhl. Tens of thousands of people called it home, and my father often went there to sell crops wholesale in order to pay our liquid taxes. My brothers had also once hitched a ride with a caravan to learn a trade in the city, but I had never gone, unfortunately. But that made me wonder: why would someone go from a smithy in the big city to this tiny village?

“You’ve got a good swordsman’s body,” he said. Then, after a short pause, he wondered aloud, “But there’s a bit more muscle on one side of your back and chest here... This from a shortbow or something?”

“Wow, you’re spot-on.” I was amazed that he could tell from a single touch. Swordplay was my main mode of combat, but I’d been learning how to handle a bow from Margit on the side. Despite my phenomenal run-in with the old wizard who’d given me the ring, I had yet to encounter my second episode with magic, and wanted for a long-range attack option.

I’d been contemplating how my situation wasn’t very ideal when I remembered that my childhood friend was a huntsman. I’d worried that she’d refuse considering that it was a family trade, but my fears proved baseless and she’d instantly accepted my request. When the two of us had free time, she would often instruct me in some light training with the bow.

Thanks to Margit, I’d unlocked archery skills and a whole host of sneaking and tracking skills as we stalked the wooded mountains. These would never gather dust as an adventurer always on the move—nope, never. Never ever. I was absolutely not just telling myself this to avert my eyes from my dwindling stockpile of experience. Besides, my training was a fantastic source of income, I swear.

“A bow, eh... Well, bows are outta my jurisdiction. It’s a shame, but I can’t make you one no matter what you bring me.”

“Really?”

“I’m allowed to make any kinda non-plate armor, swords, and spear tips. Bows are no good. Just ’cause I run the smithy doesn’t mean I can make whatever I want.”

In my mind, a local blacksmith was an all-rounder that made everything from weapons to armor to even grappling hooks, but the occupation had its limitations here. As he took my measurements, the dvergar man explained how he was a member of an artisan union—a guild, so to speak—that issued licenses allowing blacksmiths to open their shops.

In order to prevent advancements in smelting or casting from leaking to other nations, all smithing workshops were required to register with an artisan union. They were the ones who determined who was permitted to create what; this all sounded rather strict, but an information leak could have serious military implications, so I supposed it was fair enough.

In essence, blacksmiths required national qualification... The people making nails or hoops for buckets and barrels in small cantons suddenly appeared much more impressive to me. For the longest time, I’d considered the smith here to be the proprietor of some kind of nail-and-kitchen-knife store. I would still have been looking aimlessly for a place to find armor had Sir Lambert not pointed me here.

“But you can make swords?”

“All the ones hanging off of the watchmen’s belts were hammered out by yours truly. If you want one for yourself, bring another set of these,” he said, referring to the wooden pieces. The price was mildly shocking, but the lord of our region had imposed a minimum price on martial arms for the sake of public safety. Whenever the smith made weapons for anybody other than the lord, he was forced to sell it for an absurd price.