bookworm

[Tips] The Schools of Daybreak and First Light are each other’s greatest rivals.

As we finished up our lunch, we prepared to head home so as not to return too late. This time, Mika took Castor’s reins to prevent me from letting him run wild again. My experience on the way here made me hesitate before I grabbed hold of his waist, but the classic “You were a girl this whole time?!” trope was nowhere to be found.
His waistline and the set of his hips were markedly unfeminine. No matter how tomboyish a girl might be, this wasn’t the sort of thing someone could fake. I could dress up in my best drag, but one look at my collar, waist, or knees would get me clocked. Greatly relieved, I made some small talk about how obnoxious sweat became as the weather warmed.
“By the way, Erich, do you plan on growing out your hair?” Mika asked, looking at the relatively long strands clinging to my damp skin.
I’d stopped cutting it for extra brownie points with my alfish companions, and I was still powering through despite how obnoxious it was. It was growing extremely fast—though I wasn’t sure if that was natural or the product of fey interference—and the short cut I’d left Konigstuhl with now flowed down past my shoulders. I’d once heard that hair growth rates correlated with sexual perversion, but...I wanted to believe otherwise. I mean, I’d never even let my campaigns dip into that sort of thing. Seriously!
“Yeah,” I answered. “There’s some kinda mystic thing to it too, right?”
“Yup,” Mika said. “Long hair is second only to mana stones when it comes to catalyzing spells and storing magical power. Apparently it’s not as effective for men, but that’s why you see female mages walking around with really long hair.”
Come to think of it, all of the busted characters I knew of had grown out their hair. Lady Agrippina needed magic just to keep hers in order; although Lady Leizniz’s appearance was frozen at her time of death, her impressive brunette locks went down past her hips.
Does that mean I have to grow mine out that long? Seems like a pain...
Unseen Hands made braiding trivial, but a hairstyle like that would be a bit much in a bathhouse. Letting it all float freely atop the water was out of the question, and bundling it all up on my head would be heavy.
“How long are you thinking?” Mika asked.
“Maybe halfway down my back at most,” I said.
“That sounds great. I’m sure it’ll suit you with how smooth your hair is. In fact, you already looked like a heartthrob when you worked up a sweat today.”
...This might be an unwarranted concern, but I was beginning to worry about this young man’s future. What was buttering me up going to accomplish? And why did he have to go out of his way to use such romantic language? Had I been a girl, I would’ve been on track to be the leading lady of his story.
Man, that’s scary... It’s just not fair how good hot people’ve got it.
“Your hair is pretty remarkable too,” I said, hoping to deflect embarrassment back at my handsome friend. “Hardly anyone can boast a shade of black as lustrous as yours. How do you take care of it?”
“I wash up in the bath like anyone else.” I could tell from the faint blush on the back of his neck that I’d managed to turn the tables. “I can’t afford hair oils, but I do put down a bit of cash for some soap. And what about you?”
“Me?” I said. “All I do is rinse my hair at public bathhouses and let it air dry.”
“...You better not say that in front of a woman.” Mika’s final, strangely genuine warning made me realize that we’d never gone to bathe together before.
Berylin was home to seven whole public bathhouses! Of them, two were totally free to enter on account of being a gift to the populace from the imperial crown. Another charged a mere five assarii for entry to a large and relaxing bath. I could even splurge twenty assarii to enjoy a whole array of different tubs; the city certainly catered to my bath-loving tendencies.
The remaining three establishments served members of the upper crust, so the closest I’d gotten to experiencing what they offered was gazing at the buildings from afar. Two were closer to high-end spa resorts than bathhouses, requiring large silver pieces just to get in, and I swore that I’d knock on their gates to experience their epicurean luxury firsthand should I ever make it big. The last enterprise was a tad specialized, so it was far too early for me to go. But, well, I couldn’t deny having any interest in it.
“Hey, Mika,” I said. “Want to head to the baths when we get back? We worked up a good sweat, and it just isn’t the same to clean ourselves off with magic alone.”
“Huh?” he said. “Oh, a bath? Sorry...I’m not really a fan of bathing in groups.”
Unfortunately, my invitation to naked brotherhood spurred on by brilliant epiphany was shot down. According to Mika, he liked to spend his time alone, steeping in the hot water with outstretched legs and a meditative mind. Much like the lonely old men who preferred to sample gourmet dishes solo, this dashing young boy preferred to partake in his hot springs in the comfort of privacy.
Frankly, that sounded like a perfectly relaxing time, and I wasn’t in the business of gatekeeping another’s tastes. Further, if we went in separately and only conversed after leaving the bath, there wasn’t any point to going together to begin with.
Knowing that overstepping my bounds would do me no good, I dropped the conversation and moved on to getting Mika used to handling a horse. We sped up to a brisk trot, and the lurching sun was finally at our backs by the time Castor’s hooves touched down on the streets of Berylin.
Our steed was content after a full day of exercise, and we dropped him off at the stables before heading to Krahenschanze with the plants we’d fetched. We found the College halls filled with a chattering crowd of students who were there to turn in their work for the day, just like us.
“Nice and lively,” I said. “What do you think our herbs are going to be used for?”
“Well,” Mika mused, “I’d prefer they further our understanding of the depths of magic, instead of setting off some brewer’s flash of genius.”
We killed time in line joking around until it was our turn to hand over our request sheet and the corresponding goods to the receptionist. The clerk collected our bounty with a smile and went so far as to give us each a piece of candy filled with honey. These small drops were surely a vital part of the receptionists’ preparations to keep their voices from dying on the job, and having finished a long day of work myself, the sweet flavor soaked into my tired body.
Getting back on track, one began a quest by bringing a request to this counter and ended it much in the same way. The appraisal of our goods and subsequent payment were also handled by the receptionists to dissuade senior students from coercing young kids to run around as their gofers. This preventative means was no theoretical countermeasure: a past incident had gotten to the brink of dean-on-dean combat before the then-emperor stepped in to mediate. Not even the Kamakura samurai had been honor bound enough for the leaders of factions to prepare for war over a literal children’s squabble.
Further evidence for the natural barbarism of all thinking beings aside, the clerk handed us a wooden check; our haul’s appraisal was pending and we were to come back to receive our reward in a day or so. Still rolling our honey drops on our tongues, we thanked the receptionist and made our leave.
“All right,” I said, “I’m off to take a bath before my nightly duties.”
“Sounds good,” Mika said. “I’m going to hit the books to review all the stuff you taught me today. See you again.”
Thus, Mika and I went our separate ways in front of the College. It was already evening, though the lateness of the summer sunset made it difficult to believe. My night shift was approaching, and cleaning up before work was more than manners: it was a mark of civility as a human being.
What was more, two weeks of life here had given me insight into what Lady Agrippina had meant when she’d called Krahenschanze a vain castle in the capital of vanity. Knowing what I knew now, I was neither stupid nor self-defeating enough to turn a blind eye to the important task of playing along.
I stopped by home to grab a towel, bucket, and scrubber (basically a metal stick) and headed for the bathhouse. My walk there was more than illustrative as to why this city had been built: Berylin was just too clean.
Of course, the smaller urban centers we’d visited on the trek here had been plenty sanitary. The Trialist Empire enforced nationwide mandates for the creation of sewer systems and aqueducts in its cities. On top of this, there were even imperially maintained public restrooms (though admittedly their upkeep consisted of shovelers who manually cleaned out the things). Rhine was a far cry from what I’d imagined a city of Dark Ages Europe to look like.
Yet all that could not hold a candle to the capital. No other city could boast of wells and drinking fountains at every turn, and only metropolises with more than twenty thousand citizens were granted a public bath that ran on the emperor’s dime. Smaller cities had plenty of smelly residents who refused to cough up the pennies it took to regularly wash up.
However, Berylin had none of these problems. The streets were kept clean by magia for whom city sanitation was their full-time job, and there were two public baths that the crown offered free of charge. The message was as clear as it was entirely founded on vanity: those who refused to bathe were not worthy of dwelling in the capital.
Lady Agrippina had explained that this metroplex had been built for diplomatic purposes. Naturally, it followed that the airs weaponized in the battlefield of social etiquette would be used to their fullest. To flaunt its ability to indulge in luxuries was a state’s greatest show of power.
Who could ever bow down to a small ruler in a pathetic palace overlooking a filthy capital? What looked to be an excess of embellishment, an overly shaggy carpet, or grossly overdone hospitality at first glance were all calculated political plays. The capital burned the glory of its leader into the minds of its subjects and asked all those beyond its realm, “Do you dare make an enemy of a nation that can afford this?”
Ostentation was a splendid weapon on the world stage, and Rhine knew this well. A country that could no longer keep up its image was easy pickings, and today’s Berylin reflected this principle by putting its absurd level of sanitation on full display just as it always did.
I was more than happy to take advantage of it. The closest bathhouse to the Mages’ Corridor was on a low street and catered to local manual laborers. Had I come a bit later, the place would have been flooded with people clocking out for the day, so I’d come just in time to enjoy a near-empty bath without any time limits for how long I could soak. Even the most soothing water couldn’t heal the soul if I were to be packed into the bath like a sacked potato.
I flashed a wooden slate to the guard to prove my Berylinian citizenship—the perpetual jangle in my pocket from all the slabs they gave out for every little thing was this city’s one downfall—and he handed me a key to a locker. Being an unpaid establishment, the expectation was for one to guard their own valuables.
Tossing my things into a flimsy container that was one easy Strength check from busting open, I quickly slipped out of my clothes. The cheap make of the security made me think these lockers were meant to gauge capacity more than they were to protect our property.
To be fair, a thief prying open the gate to my things would, at most, win a few copper pieces I’d brought to buy dinner. One look at the sort of clientele this establishment served was enough to know any possible return wasn’t worth the risk of being chained up (the exemplary punishment for this kind of theft was to live one’s life with bound hands and feet).
I ducked through the narrow doorway into a dimly lit world of steam. The imperial crown’s bathhouse was simpler than its magnificent size would lead you to believe. Countless windows cut up to the towering ceiling to flood the space with summer sun, which filtered through the vapors billowing up from the water. Below, the baths themselves were inhabited by a handful of men who had evidently come to let the comfortable pools melt their fatigue and troubles away.
Three separate basins sprawled out before me: cold, lukewarm, and hot water filled each one, respectively. This was an extravagance I could’ve never imagined back in the canton. After scrubbing down my body, I first hopped into the hot bath to loosen up my muscles and skin.
“Hnnng... Ahh.”
Vain purposes aside, the bath was good. In truth, we commoners cared little for the conniving reasons behind the lengths the powers that be went to in order to indulge us. More importantly, I had something on my mind that I’d meant to think about since noon.
I let the warm water envelop me. Any more relaxation and I would inadvertently begin floating. I gazed up at the faraway ceiling and opened up my character sheet to see the day’s progress.
“Now then...what shall I do?”
Three months prior, the end of the winter storm that accompanied my mistake had given me more experience than I’d dared dream of. Serious training begot serious results, but this incident hammered home the notion that life-and-death battles were even bigger paydays.
With my current stock, I was at the precipice of a true peak... I could bring my Dexterity from VII: Exceptional to IX: Divine Favor with change to spare. But on the other hand, I could dump everything into Hybrid Sword Arts to go from VI: Expert to IX: Divine in one fell swoop, and the choice was killing me.
I’d been stunned to the point of falling out of bed when I’d first checked my stats. The numbers I’d likened to a hellish mobile game grind had fallen within reach. I could only guess that my unbreakable resolve to push through countless wounds stacked with bonuses stemming from Helga’s innate difficulty as an encounter, only to filter through Child Prodigy’s disgusting magnification. My gains this time around were clearly too much for me to hope for an encore.
In the past, I would’ve racked my brain over my two Scale IX options...but now my array of choices was wider.
One: I could continue polishing my strengths.
Two: I could shore up my weaknesses.
Three: I could reach out for something new.
Among these, the second and third choices would resolve themselves in two days’ time. I hadn’t been able to focus on my work with Mika since I’d received Lady Leizniz’s letter. Call me a bad friend if you’d like, but only those who had never refused an invitation in the name of playing a newly purchased game have the right to look down on me.
How can a power gamer with a fully loaded bank of experience points ever hope to resist the temptation to throw life to the wayside? With my blood flowing from the hot bath, I could feel my brain kick into gear. I was ready to shrivel into a living prune on my mission to enjoy a delightful bout of planning.

[Tips] Berylinian citizens who emit pungent body odors due to a lack of bathing can be fined for disrupting public morals.

For a munchkin, time spent imagining the ungodly power of a broken character using a near-perfect database of information is time to be celebrated.
At the time of creation, all characters are more or less equal. There are, of course, some exceptions: one can sometimes run a unique subrace to take on debilitating demerits that make it almost impossible to interact with the setting in exchange for unbelievable stats.
However, this sort of localized peak did not suit my ideals. The absolute power afforded by a build backed with completed data sets never risked being turned away at foreign doors; in battle, I refused to be reduced to a mere spectator when the dungeon crawling began. Of course, these sorts of builds were sometimes bailed out by the release of new supplements, but that’s beside the point.
The steamy bath warmed both my body and mind, and as I introduced the lubricant of excitement, my thoughts began to race to the point that my inner monologue was chasing its own tail. Still, I didn’t mind so long as I was having fun.
Regardless, I lived by a certain min-maxing philosophy: a truly broken character ought to be strong in any and every situation—or at least, as many as possible.
Understand that this isn’t to say I didn’t appreciate a frontline warrior whose only weakness was being kited by a maneuverable ranged enemy, and I would never disparage the mages who could dish out immense burst damage and fizzled out immediately after. Even noncombatant characters who shone in the explorative and deductive parts of a campaign could be considered strong in their own right, despite being reduced to reactive rolls in combat.
Furthermore, tabletop games were meant to be a team endeavor. I loved seeing a whole party synergize into a singular entity to dish out stupidly high damage numbers with a combo. To that effect, I’d played the role of a supportive unit that could only contribute to a battle by buffing my allies more times than I could count.
Yet my favorite kind of strength was the kind without flaws—the kind where we could say, “Just throw him in and it’ll probably sort itself out.” Obviously, this style of play required me to choose my tables carefully, but I saw no reason to hold myself back in this world.
With all that said, my major physical stats had changed little from the time I’d left the canton. Dexterity and Endurance were the highest at Scale VII, only two tiers away from the top. Following them, Stamina, Agility, and Memory were at VI: Superb. The remaining Strength, Immunity, Intelligence, Mana Capacity, and Mana Output all hovered at V: Good, for an excellent basis to work off of.
When you considered that even my lowest physical attributes all trumped the average mensch in every way, my spread was impressive. This satisfying setup was five straight years of diligent effort—sans my propensity for poorly planned purchases—given numerical form.
What lay ahead in this respect hardly needed any consideration. I’d long hoped to attain IX: Divine Favor in one or two of these stats, and I had a chance to achieve that with my Dexterity. Combined with Enchanting Artistry, I could refine my fixed damage build to cut down anything in my path.
On the other hand, I could invest in my main attacking skill by bringing Hybrid Sword Arts to IX: Divine to solidify my strength specifically in combat. Weaponry represented my main mode of damage, and heightening my precision and power would translate to more reliable hits—a persuasive proposition, seeing as I professed faith in the almighty fixed value. Perhaps this was a tad arrogant of me, but I could only wonder if the “Divine” title meant mastery would let me point my blade toward the heavens.
The second choice I mentioned earlier was to shore up my weaknesses. That begged the question, what were my weaknesses? I believed the answer lay in how squishy I was.
Despite my commitment to Endurance, I couldn’t overcome my mensch frame: no amount of leveling could give me the tenacity of a dragon. An overwhelming mass swung with force could reduce me to a red stain, and even the hooves of a horse were enough to trample me. It was harder to find an attack that wouldn’t hurt a mensch like myself. The fragility necessary to burn skin from just being in the sunlight was a cut above the other races.
Some might say that comparing mensch to beings with alloyed bones, metallic skin, boiling blood, or magic-deflecting scales was a fool’s errand. While not an unfair criticism, the fact that I could kick the bucket from a single hit was terrifying. Nobody enjoyed being one mistake away from death at all times.
I could realistically blow all my savings to mix and match a number of defensive traits to become an impenetrable fortress that rivaled the sturdier races. However, my frequent solo missions meant that too little firepower carried the legitimate risk that I couldn’t take down an enemy.
In an extreme case, someone who truly wanted me dead could hit me with something physically unavoidable. A few attacks without opportunity for a saving throw, and I was sure to be down for the count. I might even croak after one blow, depending on where it hit me.
There were probably dozens of ways this could happen to me—in fact, having seen someone like Lady Agrippina, I knew there were. Frankly, someone of her level would be overkill in my current state; a band of trained warriors would suffice to do me in. Facing off with a line of spears at the ready and winning was a herculean task. I would need to have an extending blade, be able to cut the very space we inhabited, or otherwise attack in every direction at once.
So what was the answer to overwhelming violence by numbers?
I could forgo evasion in favor of raw defense. With high-enough damage resistance I could soak the better part of each hit, but no amount of skill would let me overcome the inherent weakness of my physical form—I clearly wasn’t surviving a meteor strike, for example—so the most realistic way to pursue this idea would be with spells.
Magic had all sorts of variations on this idea. My physical makeshift shield of Unseen Hands was one example, but one could even erect force fields that overwrote physical phenomena, or barriers that were the very notion of protection given form (though at present I was far from being able to comprehend how these worked).
I suspected that Lady Leizniz would be happy to teach me if I asked, and Lady Agrippina usually offered helpful advice in this field. Dipping my toes into defensive magic was certainly an attainable goal.
However, there existed another possible solution: kill everyone with AoE before they could kill me. This didn’t fundamentally solve anything, as sneak attacks would still spell doom, but this was easy to wrap my mind around as an arcane power move... The problem was that my Mana Output couldn’t keep up.
Helga’s gemstone had bolstered my lunar ring to performance on par with a mediocre staff, but that wasn’t nearly enough to line up with a true mystic powerhouse. If I ignored the karmic and legal consequences of my actions, I could develop a mutation spell to fill a battlefield with toxic gas for an easy wipe, but unfortunately this sort of war crime was prone to friendly fire, so I shelved the idea. Dragging in innocent bystanders was more than a little iffy, and I wasn’t so immoral as to claim that it was every man for himself.
“And that is where we come in, o Beloved One.”
“...This is the men’s bath, you know.”