bookworm

Tips] The rank of count palatine is one of the most prestigious offices one can hold, and is reserved for cabinet ministers who report directly to the Emperor. Experts from every field are entrusted with the duty of advising the monarch on their realm of knowledge. Although modern Emperors employ an average of twenty, this number—and even the scope of their authority—has changed drastically over the course of imperial history.

Some few days had passed since my master had returned tinged with madness, reducing herself to a machine whose sole purpose was to write words on parchment.
Lady Agrippina had said she was busy: lecture was canceled, and I was to do whatever I wished so long as I didn’t bother her. At our master’s order, my sister and I dared not be in her presence, let alone speak in it.
Honestly, anyone willing to ask the madam about what had happened after seeing her like that would have to be just as insane as her. After pulling out prewritten work from suspicious pockets of space, she’d begun working with enough zeal to make her usual slothfulness seem like an act. To say that watching her forgo even the shortest break for sleep or tea in favor of writing was bloodcurdling did the ghastly nature of her endeavor a disservice.
That demon of scholarship made her message with actions, and it rang clear: she would kill anyone who dared obstruct her, including the gods Themselves. A fragile mortal soul like me didn’t stand a chance. Instead, we made our best effort every day to not bother her, going so far as to tremble in fear at the thought of our clothes rustling.
“Um... What about...here?”
“Well, Elisa, I don’t think it’s a bad move, but in situations like these—”
“Mika, wait. Wouldn’t you say you’re being a bit tactless? A player has given it her best attempt to make her move; the path of virtue is to answer not with words, but over the board.”
Sorry, I lied. We were taking it easy.
Having left our beloved Konigstuhl behind for reasons wholly outside our control, we siblings had come to learn a lesson about the truth of this world: sometimes you just can’t win, so you might as well look for the next best thing.
We weren’t going to roll the dice on poking that live demon core with a screwdriver. Following our master’s order to just not get in the way without subjecting ourselves to undue grief was the much better option. What could we have done after seeing her like that? The risk of derailing her train of thought and drawing her ire meant there wasn’t a single argument that could convince us to not live happily estranged from her.
Besides, my employer was the type of person who could fell an elder dragon on her lonesome, but she had looked utterly distressed. Sooner or later, I was certain that she was going to drag me into something absurd.
I figured I might as well make the most of this precious, fleeting moment of peace—so much so that I’d look back on these days in my darkest hour and refuse to die in the name of experiencing such happiness again. This was the best possible course for both my mind and heart.
“But Elisa just learned how all the pieces move. Don’t you think we should show her some of the standard tactics and positions first? Being beaten to a pulp by an experienced player without any idea of what’s happening is a pretty rough time, you know.”
“Yet traditional wisdom dictates that painless lessons are first to be forgotten. Tactics are best learned in the humility of crushing defeat. When I was young, the older pupils at my monastery trained me by first dismantling my play time and time again.”
“Uh, I think that speaks more to the people around—er, sorry. Never mind.”
So, while Lady Agrippina was busy reclassing herself into a human typewriter, I’d begun inviting my friends to my home in the low quarter more frequently. Look, I refused to be stuck spending my days next to a room radiating an aura of pure evil. How anyone could exude such intensity just by writing words was beyond me; I couldn’t so much as read a book in the parlor in peace. It would’ve been easier to believe that she was preparing a Great Work hex by herself to curse someone to death.
As such, I found myself savoring a moment worth its weight in gold: time spent playing a game with my sister and friends.
The familiar twelve-by-twelve grid of an ehrengarde board sat between us on the table, and our homemade pieces littered what little space we had left to paint a fun and busy scene. I’d sculpted all of them, and Mika had added a coat of metal and paint on each one; if you ignored everything but our masterpieces, it was almost as if we were in an aristocrat’s game room.
“Umm... Was my move really that bad?”
“No, no! It wasn’t bad, Elisa. It’s just that with this situation here—”
“Mika! The analysis can wait for the postmortem!”
“Like I said earlier, Celia, most people can’t memorize the exact state of the board across dozens of turns like you and Erich. It wouldn’t hurt to be a bit softer on her.”
Everyone chatted away like schoolgirls—though my old chum was currently a boy—as we engaged in a board game-esque variant of the traditional game which allowed four players to take part at once. Each player was allowed a mere ten pieces placed in the first three ranks of their side, save for the two files on the left and right ends, and the objective of the game was to keep the emperor safe in a free-for-all scramble.
Though it was most frequently played when several people had to share a single ehrengarde set, making it seem like a reduction of the main variation like hasami shogi was for shogi, or gomoku for go, it actually contained substantial depth. Having double the players meant there were twice as many moves being made, and the possible lines of resulting play were exponentially greater than that.
Battle royales forbade the use of a crown prince and limited major pieces to two per army. Four castles were placed in the center squares of the board, and any player who captured one was allowed to use it. While there was more to think about than in the base game, the chaotic nature of the battles meant it was more important to make flexible decisions than to be familiar with established stratagems.
Furthermore, the leading player was prone to being contained by a makeshift alliance that would inevitably crumble at somebody’s betrayal; the human element made it easier to help along inexperienced players like Elisa. After all, I just needed a little ingenuity to turn my sister’s mistake into a sublime tactic.
“Oh, man,” Mika groaned. “See? Erich’s at it again.”
Not wanting to let Elisa’s puzzled anxiety continue any longer—she’d let go of her piece, so it was officially my turn—I had my precious knight advance to push up the front lines. Elisa’s dragon knight maneuver had skipped past brute force into sacrificial territory, but this one move meant it was now controlling a great deal of space instead.
The current position made evaluating who had the edge in this gambit for the castles impossible. At most, it seemed like Mika was slightly worse off because he’d taken defensive pieces that made it difficult to contest the center.
“This is tough,” he said. “I really wanted at least one of the castles. Isn’t this a bit much, old pal?”
“You’re too soft, old chum. The battlefield is a callous place.”
“Talk about double standards. Tell me, General Callous: How much leeway are you planning on giving in this war?”
Enough to fill an attic or two if it means helping Elisa.
“H-How unexpected.” Not even Miss Celia—who, by the way, was in her chestnut-haired mensch form to stave off the midday sun—could keep up her usual blitz pace with the chaos of four players. She placed a hand on her chin and murmured, “Hmm, what am I to do?”
Eventually, a nun modeled after a modest priestess marched forward. Its ability to sacrifice itself in place of the piece in front of it emulated a sort of resurrection; she was probably setting up for a later attack. This piece was liable to put the user in a state of disadvantage without proper precautions, but today Miss Celia had abandoned her unga-bunga playstyle. Prepared to play for the long game, I supposed I should’ve known someone of her skill would find the most vexing spot to set up her nun.
Hrm, it’s hard to find a good move... If we failed to contain her advance, the dragon knight waiting in the wings would swoop out along with the empress—I was shocked that she stood by her favorite piece in this nonstandard game—and emperor to plow through the rest of the board.
“This is so hard,” Mika groaned. “I didn’t realize I was surrounded by tacticians. Ugh, gods...”
But in spite of his grumbling, Mika positioned himself in a way that would let him support Miss Celia’s forces from the side. From the looks of things, he planned on being a neutral third party, only committing to the fight after Elisa and I finished our scrap with Miss Celia so he could pick off whatever remained. He was skirting around battle in an attempt to ride the victor’s coattails... You coward!
“Um, umm... Then maybe I’ll do...this?”
Elisa pinched her adventurer and shoved it straight to the front lines after a few seconds of thought. Wait! Elisa, no! As much potential as that piece represented, it wasn’t very strong on its own. She’d clearly been gunning for the castles in the center, but her defenseless vanguard put me in an awkward spot; now it was my turn to sit and ponder.
“You know, this piece reminds me...”
What’s up, Mika? I know small talk in multiplayer games is a classic strategy to divert attention away from your schemes, but don’t you think you’re being a bit overt?
“Erich will be fourteen this fall. Come winter, I’ll be fourteen and Elisa will be...”
“I’ll be turning nine.”
“Right, nine. And Celia, you were born in spring?”
“Indeed. Many seem to believe my birthday is in the summer, but the truth is I was born in early spring. Why might that be?”
Pure and innocent, yet utterly unstoppable on her quest to live as she pleased, Miss Celia was certainly more reminiscent of the glaring sun of a hot summer day than any other young lady. Frankly, her passions were so fiery that her vampiric weakness to sunlight almost seemed like a mistake.
“We’ll be adults next year,” Mika went on. “Erich said he wants to be an adventurer, so the piece reminded me of that.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what all this work has been for. This isn’t quite how I’d imagined it turning out, though...”
For now, I picked up one of my pieces and moved to support Elisa. Her adventurer was a sitting duck as is, so I defended it to at least threaten a trade if it was taken.
But looking back, I truly had come a long way. My eleven-year-old self earning pocket change and camping in the woods with Margit wouldn’t have believed me if I told him how his life would turn out.
“Are you gonna set up in the capital?” Mika asked.
“No way. This place is crawling with the sorts of monsters who take on noble requests—a beginner like me doesn’t belong here. I could try finding a party to take me in, but I’m sure they’d all shoo me away at the door.”
“Uh... I don’t know about that.”
While Berylin did have its own branch of the Adventurer’s Association, those who posted up here were invariably the cream of the crop, ready to take on big jobs from patrician patrons. Overrun by maxed-out PCs, my old tablemates would have laughed that this place was perennially one step shy of turning into the ruins seen in kaiju films.
I’d heard rumors of warriors as strong as any jager; mages who could be magia if they ever bothered to write an essay; virtuous lay priests blessed with incredibly powerful miracles; and scouts clever enough to unearth historical documents without leaving so much as a crease in the paper. Anyone who could make a living here was the kind of person a noble would want to hire for their exclusive use.
On the other hand, there were few to no quests aimed at novices. Dangerous beasts and monsters would never be found around the capital, and the apothecaries of the city weren’t charitable enough to pay someone else to pick herbs in a forest right next door. An entire office full of strong and dependable bodyguards existed for those who needed protection, and lost items or persons could be found by one of the many specialists in the Mages’ Corridor. While not everyone could afford the help of a magus, the capital had an abundance of people willing to work for a bit of change; if one misplaced something or had a pet run away, it was cheapest to find one of the do-it-all handymen that littered the city.
With all this in mind, beginner quests were a scarce resource in Berylin. This was basically a new area in an MMO’s expansion that bumped up the level cap for veteran players. Loitering around as the equivalent of a free-to-play noob would get me told to go home at best; no one was going to bother wasting their time helping me grind up to their level. Rather, this world lacked the convenient ability to get stronger by watching others fight from the sidelines; the requirement to put oneself on the line caused the entire premise to crumble. No one would know hardship if hugging the backs of those who came before could suffice.
All this to say I needed to go somewhere more rural to find work as an adventurer.
“Even if an experienced group is looking for new recruits, I’m sure they’ll still have a baseline for what they’re willing to accept. They won’t even let me carry their bags until I have a bit more to my name.”
“Personally, I think you’d be set if you showed them a flourish of your sword. Undue humility will come off as sarcasm, you know.”
“You’re too kind to me, old chum. I know I’m not weak, but I’m still inexperienced. I’ve already learned my lesson that I still have a ways to go. Remember the ichor maze? The world is full of geniuses who’d beat me in a fair fight.”
The undead adventurer from whom I’d inherited the Craving Blade had been incredibly strong. Even with Mika’s support, I’d barely managed to squeeze out a miraculous victory on the brink of death—and there were plenty more like him to come.
Besides, I was painfully aware of how many people could kill me off on a whim. While my employer and her vitality-glorifying boss topped the list, the crazy masked vampire I’d run into recently had driven home how prevalent people of their strength were. I wanted to start my journey somewhere more realistic.
“You wish to be an adventurer, Erich?” Miss Celia asked. “I’d been under the impression that you planned to continue serving a noble house as a knight or retainer.”
“Adventuring has always been my plan. Servitude and knighthood don’t quite suit me. More importantly, this has been my dream since I was a little boy.”
“Do you have someplace specific in mind to start?” Her follow-up question was accompanied by yet another sickening move. “If you find yourself in the south, my aunt may be able to put in a good word for you. When I last spoke with her, she mentioned that she invited adventurers to her estate now and again to turn their tales into plays.”
“I still haven’t decided on that front. I’d initially planned to start near my hometown, but my situation has changed a great deal.”
I was embarrassed to admit that my plans were still up in the air. The original arrangement Margit and I had come up with had been to set up in the nearby city of Innenstadt to skimp out on expenses. That way, we could go home to rest without paying rent if we needed to, and we’d be able to help out during the harvest. From there, we’d go to town to sell produce and trade for goods used as taxes; we wouldn’t want for work and could still help our families.
However, the more jobs I took from the College’s bulletin board, the less fulfilling that lifestyle began to sound. It was just so...safe—like we had some sort of insurance. I’d begun to feel like it wasn’t adventurous enough.
In more modern terms, it was akin to starting a band while still living at home and working part-time at the family store. Even if things didn’t pan out, the option to give up and inherit the family business was constantly in the background.
Of course, that was a very prudent and highly respectable decision, but it was wrong to do the same when committing to a line of work as fueled by romance as adventuring—or at least, the phantom voices of the characters living on in my heart whispered as much to me.
Margit would understand—probably. She didn’t seem opposed to the idea of a riskier venture; in fact, she’d tersely noted that it wouldn’t “feel as though much would change” when I’d first suggested basing our operations in Innenstadt.
Maybe the best place to start would be somewhere far away, in a land rife with conflict and brimming with odd jobs.
“Settling down in one place to make a name for myself might be nice, but wandering across borders to find prestigious work is appealing too—just like in the sagas.”
“You truly are infatuated with adventure, aren’t you?” Miss Celia’s giggle was as genteel as ever, but it clashed too heavily with her ruthless play to appreciate. “Then perhaps I might be the wayfaring priestess to help you along the way. Dedicating myself to faith without the support of a church piques my interest, and I’m sure you would supply me plenty of opportunities to help the needy.”
“Ha ha, then maybe I’ll join Erich too when I go on my tour of the land. The School of First Light has a tradition of sorts where I’m supposed to experience the greater world, so why not take part in your adventure while I’m at it? No saga can be complete without the friendly mage to open the hero’s path: whether you face a broken bridge or a towering cliff, I shall fashion thee a road of flowers upon which to walk.”
Boy, that sounds like fun. A well-to-do young lady like Miss Celia becoming a lay priestess was as dubious as someone of Mika’s promise having enough time to fit in a whole adventure on his scholastic trips; but if it ever did come true, we would certainly have a wonderful time.
Best of all, our party composition would rock.
I was a vanguard who could use magic; Margit was a scout who could come up to the front line as a dodge tank if push came to shove; Mika was a magus who excelled at both supporting and debuffing; and Miss Celia was a nun equipped with healing miracles whose blue blood and noble mannerisms would be a lifesaver in negotiations. Put together, our party would be a wonderful one.
Admittedly, I would’ve liked a beefy tank or a glass-cannon mage to round things out. I was the only primary damage dealer in our current setup, and I lacked both all-purpose firepower and the ability to take hits for my back line. Although I was confident about initiating, closing out fights was another story.
“M-Me too! I’m going too, Dear Brother! I’ll get so strong that Master will let me go—promise!”
Our merry fantasy of a future that would probably never come got Elisa excited as well. She leapt to her feet with a raised hand—I picked up the board with an Unseen Hand so the pieces wouldn’t fall over—and frantically grabbed our attention so we wouldn’t forget her.
“Sure,” I said, “you can come too, Elisa. Everyone will feel extra secure with two magia by our side.”
“Hey now,” Mika said. “Not counting your own magic, Erich? This party of ours is going to be the height of luxury.”
“Please. My spells are basically just party tricks.”
“You sure go to some brutal parties...”
We continued the fun chitchat about what might be to come until just before evening, when our battle royale ended in Elisa’s victory. At the very end, I’d been left with only an emperor to three of Elisa’s pieces—a close battle by any metric.
“Augh, I actually started to sweat from thinking so hard,” Mika said. “Gods, Erich, how overprotective can you get?”
“What are you on about? Frankly, I’m moved by the discovery that my sister had been a strategic genius all this time.”
“Well then, shall we begin the postmortem?”
“No, hold on, Miss Celia.” Analysis was well and good, but my old chum and baby sister had worked up decent sweats from the early summer heat. Not wanting them to risk a heat rash, I instead invited everyone to the baths.
“Hmm,” Miss Celia grumbled. “But this is such a wonderful chance to discuss the match...”
“That’s fair,” Mika said, “but we can always save that for next time. Right?”
“Yeah. Plus, the baths should be empty around this time, and we’ll get to be the first ones to enjoy the water. I’m sure it’ll feel great.”
“That sounds nice, Dear Brother. Master’s tub is lovely, but the larger baths feel wonderful every so often.”
Though Miss Celia remained a bit hung up on the postmortem, she recognized that she was alone and deferred to group opinion. Off the four of us went, perfectly split with two boys and two girls.

[Tips] Ehrengarde battle royales—simply dubbed off-games in some regions—are an unorthodox way of playing the popular board game. Four players participate, each with ten pieces; a player loses when their emperor is captured.
Other than these basic points, there are plenty of extra rules that change by region—the first player being decided by age or by dice, and the like—and the game is therefore infamous for causing fights between people whose hometowns are far apart.

Nothing could quite describe the joy brought by a cool glass of citrus water after a long, steamy bath.
“Ahh... That hits the spot.”
If only we could have a bit of ice clinking in the cup, I thought as I returned my emptied glass to the vendor. We didn’t have refrigerators, let alone ice makers; floating ice cubes in one’s drink was an unimaginable luxury. Magecraft offered a possible solution, but no one wanted to waste that much mana on something like this.
“It sure does.” After gulping down his drink, Mika wiped his mouth with his bare forearm and returned the cup, just like me.
We found ourselves in a public bathhouse that was a smidge more expensive than the average establishment, complete with cleaner and overall better facilities. The baths themselves were notably larger than the cheapest places in town, and the large steam bath got hot enough to suit my tastes; there was even an interior garden to relax or exercise in, so the satisfaction was well worth the price. We could never have dragged Miss Celia out to the crown’s free-to-enter locations, and had chosen a more suitable location with more respectable patrons.
Rhine lacked any culture of mixed bathing, so naturally the other two had gone over to the women’s bath. Truth be told, children under the age of ten were permitted to follow their guardians to either side; Elisa had wanted to come with us, but it wouldn’t do to leave Miss Celia all by herself, so I had my sister join her.
On our end, Mika and I were taking a quick break after our third round of bouncing between the steam and cold water baths. Having recently gotten over his public bathing fears, my old chum had begun to join me—except when feminine, obviously—and we found that our tastes in bathing matched up nicely.
That said, he did sometimes mutter about how it “could be hotter” even when I was feeling comfortable. The sauna had been hot enough for an average Berylin native to think twice about entering; how hot did the people of the north make their baths?
Hidden only by a towel around his waist, Mika’s shoulders were broader and his pecs manlier than when agender. Something about his mannerisms made his bare frame strangely captivating, even as a fellow guy. He stared off at some of the other customers wrestling out in the yard and ran his fingers through the strong curls of his raven hair with a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he seemed to be savoring the blissful feeling of his drink soaking into every corner of his body to quench his thirst.
The courtyard bench was built in the style of stairs, and the faint red of sunset trickled down on us through the leaves of the tree above. This moment was one we could only enjoy as two children free from the chain of midday work; we took in the clear summer day in all its glory.
“And?” Mika asked with a sideways glance. “Tell me the truth. How’s it going?”
“...You know, it really isn’t all that bad.”
My employer, still a waste of beauty, now also doubled as a typewriter in what I could only describe as a terrifying evolution, but I was convinced she was just paying her dues for all the trouble she’d caused. Bluntly put, it served her right, and I was here to laugh at her; I wouldn’t even mind slinging my sides into orbit.
Not that I had the nerve to say that to her, of course.
Schadenfreude aside, I’d spoken to Lady Agrippina before her descent into madness: I was to be freed from my position as servant as soon as Elisa officially enrolled as a College student. Now that Elisa had a patron to cover her expenses, I no longer had any need to toil to earn them.
Ours had been a logical partnership that arose out of necessity. Though the contract never specified my term, it wasn’t indefinite either, and had clearly laid out what the value of my work would be in relation to my sister’s tuition. With an alternate means of supplying that money, the excuse for my servitude crumbled away, and our agreement naturally came to an end.
However, Elisa would not be able to leave Lady Agrippina’s side until the risk of accidental catastrophe dropped to zero—that is, until the College deemed that she was perfectly in control of her powers. This barrier was set in stone, and proved a high hurdle at that. According to the madam, enrollment was an unrealistic stopping point: she would need to be an ordained researcher before she could win her freedom.
No matter how brilliant Elisa was, the Imperial College of Magic did not offer easy paths of promotion. This wasn’t a sword school of Edo Japan where a monetary initiation was enough to sell a samurai’s name; while not as bad as the path to professorship, the process of going from student to magus was strenuous. Plenty of people dropped out of the institution, unable to rise to the occasion, and I’d heard of fifty-year-olds who’d stuck it out and only just attained the title.
Assuming Elisa matched the youngest mensch to ever become a magus, she would still be fifteen. Lady Agrippina had told me to expect another seven years before she was independent.
But there was something that scared me.
The day I’d awoken from that night of sheer chaos, Elisa had begun bawling as soon as we were alone together. She’d clung to me in a fit of tears, but it had been so sudden that I hadn’t understood what was going on.
Carefully deciphering the words heaved in between sobs, I made out that she had seen the wounds fixed by the power of the Goddess—that she understood how much pain I had experienced. While we’d been with Mika and Miss Celia, she’d done her best to hold it in, and the joy of seeing me safe had managed to win out. But she’d seen a nightmare: one of a world in which I didn’t come home.
And so, she began to speak.
“I know that I can’t stop you from doing dangerous things. I know that no matter how much I beg and beg and beg, you’ll go anyway. So I’ll do my best too. I’ll learn more magic. I’ll become so strong that I can stand by your side and make sure nothing hurts you again. Then you won’t ever be in danger. Isn’t that right, Dear Brother?”
The wet eyes buried in my stomach peeked up, staring at me not with our father’s deep amber, but with a perilous golden glow that clung fast to my mind. Two dreadful moons had appeared on her lovable, cherubic face, and it filled me with an unspeakable uncertainty that brought me to the cusp of crying out.
I squeezed her tight. Was I trying to keep the trembling little girl in my arms the way she was? Or was I simply denying a terrible delusion of my own concoction? Unable to explain my ridiculous emotions, I just held Elisa as tightly as I could.
“I’ll get stronger,” she whispered. “So don’t leave me behind, Dear Brother.”
Her words resounded in my head like the bells of a cathedral, their echoes refusing to leave well after she fell asleep in my arms.
Elisa had steadily been growing up, but the next day, I felt as though she had matured overnight. Where until now her psyche had barely managed to catch up to her body, she suddenly seemed developed for her age. Her mannerisms were more refined, and her palatial speech was approaching the precision of a true aristocrat.
But most of all, her little “game” of making scented pouches leaked out enough mana that even I could tell with my untrained eyes: she had incomparably more power than me. Yes, she was a changeling, destined to dance with ambiguous magical concepts on a level more intimate than anything we mensch would ever know. Yes, I had known from the start that she would one day eclipse the bounds of her mensch frame with capacity for mana beyond the strongest among us... But by this much?
Although she was still far from the ludicrous heights of Ladies Agrippina or Leizniz, she had already surpassed my limits with ease. Thinking about what the future had in store made me nauseous enough to feel my legs melt into a sea of nothingness.
And so, I’d decided to stay. Elisa had told me I could go on ahead, but I’d made up my mind to remain as Lady Agrippina’s servant until she was officially enrolled.
Some said the heart was weakest when it appeared most unwavering. Emotional distress beyond a certain point could very well manifest in physical ways. I was merely fulfilling my wish as an older brother. I would stay until the day Lady Agrippina recognized her fundamental schooling and deemed her worthy of taking the first step toward becoming a magus—until I could be sure that she would be okay without me.
“And? How about on your end?”
“Me? Uhh...”
But I couldn’t bring myself to talk about all this. Instead, I turned the question back on Mika, who groaned in contemplation for a moment before placing his head on my shoulder.
“Tired?” I asked.
“...Yeah. Working every day while studying is every bit as hard as everyone makes it out to be. Sir Feige’s reward and the ehrengarde pieces helped out a lot, but it’s still tough.”
Despite having the support of his local magistrate, it sounded like my old chum was barely scraping by. His scholarship came with lodging in the low quarter, so he didn’t have to worry about rent or tuition, but every other expense was on him.
Neither food nor clothing were cheap, not to mention the catalysts he had to procure each and every time he had an experiment to run. I tried my best to lend a hand on that front, but synthesizing your own was orders of magnitude more work than simply buying them. But considering how much arcane ingredients cost, his only means of affording them was to work on job-bulletin tasks anyway.
The more time he spent earning coin, the less he had to keep up with his studies. That his efforts to get by only pushed away his final goal of becoming a magus was the sad reality of a self-supporting student. He’d have a workshop and stipend as soon as he became a researcher, but the road ahead was treacherous.
On average, a College student took five years to graduate. However, after correcting for outliers based on racial affinity for magecraft and taking the median instead, most ended up needing seven years, give or take.
In terms of climbing a famous mountain, Mika wasn’t even at the fifth station on the trail yet—the depths of scholarship that sorcery offered were readily apparent. Seeing my friend’s struggle, I could understand why some magia described their craft as the lofty pursuit of approaching divinity.
I’d invited him today hoping that this might be a nice change of pace, and thank the gods I had with how fatigued he looked. Our piece-making business had netted more profit than some of the odd jobs on the bulletin too—a bit more than the sewer rounds, even—so I was happy that I could lessen the load on his plate.
“I think it’s because my master noted my growth, but my homework has gotten really hard lately.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah. He said now that I have a good grasp of the theory, I need to pick up the pace and focus on practical skills. I’m on a completely different routine now... I mean, I knew our line of work took a ton of practice, but still.”
Born in the arctic north, my old chum’s skin was always tantalizingly fair, but today it seemed paler than usual. While he’d had a healthy flush after warming up in the sauna, it had dissipated during our extended break to reveal skin white enough to betray his dearth of mana.
“Make a thing, break it, and repeat. It’s draining, and not just in the magical sense either. It’s really getting to my head... There’s this sense of pointlessness to it all, you know?”
I asked him to elaborate, and discovered that his training boiled down to digging a hole so that he could fill it with dirt—he was just shy of participating in campsite activities, and certainly not of the fun variety.
The hole digging was a bit of a hyperbole, but he was tasked with crafting precise miniature buildings, only to have to witness them being blown away by similarly scaled-down disasters. I was willing to bet the mental strain was similar.
Alas, it came with the territory. Monotony was an oikodomurge’s lifelong companion: buildings could not stand without solid foundations, and no great feat of architecture could be made while neglecting the fundamentals. Mika’s master had doled out an exceptionally boring and exhausting task in order to mold him into a great magus, but judging from his awful complexion, the triple burden of mana depletion, work, and daily chores was seriously weighing on him.
“Day in and day out I build a thing and break it. It’s so depressing. When I mess up during construction, he tears the thing down right then and there—and if that wasn’t enough, he’ll tell me how many people would have died because of my mistake too...”
Mika let out a weary sigh. His eyes had been positively twinkling while playing ehrengarde, but now the light there had gone on holiday.
“I mean, I know he’s not doing it to be mean. People will live in the buildings I make and walk across the roads I pave, and I know he’s just trying to drill in the lesson that I can’t ever mess up.” Nestling into my shoulder, he sadly said, “But it hurts.”
Far from home and with few people to rely on, maybe he was unconsciously acting spoiled around me. Figuring that a little skinship amongst boys wouldn’t hurt, I put my hand on his head, and he happily nuzzled up against my palm. I ran my fingers through his hair and rubbed his forehead; when my palm slid onto his cheek, he let out a gratified sigh.
This was, well... He was just as aesthetically blessed now as when he was agender, and my heart was starting to pound. This was bad—as accepting as I was of these sorts of inclinations, I didn’t recall taking any such traits myself.
“You’re so nice,” Mika whispered.
Trying to divert the course of his emotional comment, I proposed an idea. If I let this atmosphere linger any longer, I risked lapsing into a gruesome social fatality.
“Then maybe my new hobby might come in handy. Want to come over to my place for dinner from now on?”
“Huh?”
Driven by desperation as it was, my proposal was a consequence of my continued growth. Completing the Miss Celia’s Family Troubles Campaign—why yes, I did make that up—had come with a massive reward of experience, and the litany of possible ways to spend it all had given me a lot to think about.
My first purchases ended up realizing my longtime dream of Divine Favor in Dexterity and Divine Hybrid Sword Arts. The pinnacle of mastery, Scale IX was said to only be achievable by those born blessed by the gods, requiring long years of dedication to bring that talent to fruition.
My reasoning for maxing out my Dexterity was its wide array of use cases, and that it was my best avenue to continue abusing Enchanting Artistry combos. Swordplay was heavily reliant on skill, and no other trait offered the same level of absurd synergy as this. Where an ordinary accuracy check would be based on both Agility and Dexterity, I could trim the fat to base my hit rate off two instances of my Scale IX Dexterity instead. And whenever I landed a hit, I could swap out my Strength bonuses too; I was effectively reaping the rewards of having three maxed-out stats instead of one.
Of course, I still needed enough Strength to swing my sword and enough Agility to keep up with my enemies, but the resulting damage output made it obvious that this was the most efficient way I could spend my experience. Fixed values were king; nothing could be more important than bumping up my damage floor. These freebies were my guardian angels that would protect me from any misfortune, barring a fumble. All hail fixed values!
My unyielding faith in Lord Mace had me clasping my hands in a peculiar act of prayer for a moment, but my commitment to consistency was perfectly normal. I was the personification of lucklessness, and as far as I could tell, it seemed like the world rolled dice based on my stats to determine how I fared; if that held true, fixed values were the path of righteousness.
With two long-dreamt-of goals completed, I was one step closer to my ideal form. However, I still had experience to spare; I bumped up my Mana Capacity by one from plain Good to VI: Superb in order to augment my staying power. Throwing out spells at every turn both offensively and defensively made me prone to running out of gas, meaning campaigns with plenty of hallway fights—like the adventurer’s ichor maze—posed a serious threat. Knowing that I’d go on extended trips and might even use magic in the city once I set off on my own, I figured shoring up this weakness was a good choice.
As an aside, I held off on touching Mana Output, since I didn’t plan on using big, expensive spells anytime soon. I’d have to dip into it eventually if I ever wanted to ferry around cargo or people with space-bending magic, but that was a problem for another time.
Even after that, I still had more to spare—a testament to how unbelievably strong that masked weirdo had been—so I racked my brain and finally settled on picking up a handful of camping skills.
I took cheap abilities like Campfire Cooking, Culinary Knowledge, and Portioned Seasoning at an III: Apprentice level. Despite being inexpensive enough that I could pay off the costs through my daily routine, activating all of them at once arguably produced better results than any one of them could with more investment.
This was a trick I’d used plenty of times in my beloved tabletop games, but it was pretty difficult to pull off. Systems that encouraged the player to find synergistic combinations of skills and traits oftentimes made it cheaper to level up a preacquired skill than to spec into a new one.
My blessing was no different, and looking at the cost of picking up a skill alone would suggest that more dedicated investment was the better choice. That said, there was inevitably a boundary at which greater gains were achieved by spending experience points to diversify one’s build, and that boundary was especially clear when higher levels cost more than their earlier counterparts. The gap between a player who kept this concept in mind and one who didn’t would be immediately noticeable in their characters’ strength; navigating the optimal path was what separated the novices from the veterans.
I calculated things out with that in mind to come up with the ideal build for making simple yet tasty dishes. So long as I could get my hands on a few ingredients, I was confident I could whip up meals on the road that outstripped even the ready-to-eat rations provided by the US Army.
And so my shopping spree ended with these wayfaring skills.
For those curious, my pubescent body almost convinced me to waste a great deal of precious experience on worthless skills, but I mobilized my rationality in time to counter it. Youth is such a terrifying thing.
...Though I was willing to reconsider down the line if my purse was feeling heavy.
To get back to the matter at hand, my recent acquisition of cooking skills had really gotten me hooked on the culinary arts. Even after “learning” a skill, I still had to go through the motions to get a hang of it; I’d been buying up cheap ingredients at the local market to experiment with all sorts of recipes.
As a result, the Ashen Fraulein was in a bit of a sour mood, and she took it out on my hair every single morning. Today, I’d awoken to find it tightly set in a chignon and had struggled to undo it—I was not going to walk around matching with the madam—but the daily new discoveries and trickling influx of experience points made cooking fun and rewarding.
One such discovery was that cooking for one was really inefficient; so why not make a bit more for my friend and help him with his chores?
“Are you sure?” Mika asked.
“Of course I’m sure. In fact, I was planning on inviting all of you after we got out of the bath. I can help you with your laundry and cleaning if you want too. I’ve been getting into that sort of thing lately.”
I puffed up my chest to seem as dependable as I could. My old chum stammered a bit, trying to find the right words, but he was failing his speech check hard. Eventually, he missed a mental saving throw and gave in with a quiet, “Please.”
“Leave it to me. Let’s stop by the market after we leave. Allow me to serve you a supper made with only the freshest of ingredients.”
“...I was this close to accidentally calling you ‘mom.’”
“Come on, at least make it ‘dad’ instead.”
“Mmm,” he mumbled. “But seeing you from behind makes it kind of hard to...”
“Huh? What?”
“No, forget I said anything. What are you planning on making, anyway?”
I won’t pretend I wasn’t curious about why he suddenly changed the topic, but I didn’t want to be the kind of friend who pushed harder after being told not to prod. We weren’t playing a board game built around picking apart lies or anything, so I joined him in talking about dinner.
But what would I make? It all depended on whatever was cheapest at the market, but the cost of spices really limited my options. I could finally empathize with my mother’s struggle; back in Konigstuhl, she would sing little verses about spending time and effort in lieu of money whenever she prepared our meals in the kitchen. I had a few extra herbs that I’d picked while I was out on a College mission, so hopefully that would be enough to make one solid dish.
Thrilled by the thought of a homemade meal, Mika perked up and we went for another two rounds each of the steam and cold water baths. After rinsing off our sweat, we headed out to find that we’d kept the ladies waiting for quite a while.
I offered to treat them to dinner as an apology, and Elisa happily jumped up for a hug. However, while Miss Celia initially smiled with excitement, her expression quickly dampened to the point where even an outside observer could flag her disappointment. Drooping at the shoulders, the priestess explained that she volunteered with the rest of her cloister at a soup kitchen in the evenings.
Come to think of it, she’d mentioned the other day that her aunt was leaving for Lipzi, and that she’d moved into the Great Chapel. Being just one among many nuns, it wouldn’t do to just skip out on her charitable service.
We saw Miss Celia off as she turned back to wave again and again, and all three of us shared the same thought: Let’s all have dinner together again soon.
Next time, I swore, I’ll make sure she’s free to join us.

[Tips] Although the capital does not have slums, the presence of low-income persons is unavoidable. Those who work laborious, physical jobs, and those whose income is sporadic and irregular often rely on soup kitchens run by various religious institutions around town. They primarily offer frugal meals of porridge and black bread broken up by the occasional donation of pickled foods; still, a free meal is something that most are incredibly thankful to have.