Strength: 0.4 (I'm Working On It)

[MoonyNebulous]

Hey everyone, and welcome to Strength: 0.4 (I'm Working On It)!

Before we dive into the story, a quick and very important note.

I have a massive, epic-scale story planned for Aldric. We're talking multiple continents, huge power progression, kingdom building, the whole nine yards. This isn't a short story; it's a marathon. But a marathon is pointless without a finish line, and honestly, it wouldn't make sense for me to continue writing this epic if there isn't an audience for it.

That's where you come in. Your feedback in these early days will literally decide if this story has a future. If you're enjoying the ride (and even if you're not), please let me know!

If you vibe with the story, please do watch the thread and join the discussion.

Above all, no matter where you're reading, please leave a comment! Tell me what you liked, what you laughed at, or what you're excited to see next. It's the most direct way for me to know you're out there and engaged.

Now, for those of you who get hooked and want more right now...

My Patreon is currently 6 chapters ahead of the public release, and that number will grow to a permanent 10-chapter buffer as we move forward. It's the best way to binge ahead and support the story at the same time.

I know Patreon's interface isn't always the best for reading, but the early access is there if you want it! And if you do decide to read ahead over there, please consider leaving a Follow and Favorite here on the public sites too. Those visibility numbers are crucial for helping new readers find us!

Here's the link: patreon.com/MoonyNebulous

To kick things off, I'm posting the first 5 chapters today! After that, you'll get one new chapter every single day for the first few weeks. But of course, if people are especially into it, I'll drop bonus chapters on weekends.

After the first month, the release schedule will settle down and will depend heavily on the story's reception and the support it receives.

Alright, that's the intro spiel done. I'm incredibly excited to share this adventure with you all. It's been on my mind for a while now, and I'm so happy to finally put pen to paper. I truly hope you enjoy it.

Now, let's get started.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The world was a slurry of mud and blood.

It was a symphony of screams played on an orchestra of screaming steel; a chaotic, desperate ballet where a single misstep meant a final, ragged bow. The banners, what was left of them, were tattered things of deep azure and onyx black, both so caked in filth they were nearly indistinguishable.

But everyone knew who was winning.

The Black banners, representing the iron-fisted Blackwings, advanced like a creeping tide of death. The Blue, the defenders of the last shred of value left of the South, were little more than crumbling sandcastles against the surf. For every black-clad soldier that fell, two more seemed to take his place, their grim faces set in the cold certainty of victory.

Amidst this maelstrom of professional butchery was a man who clearly did not belong.

He was frail, with a gaunt frame that seemed better suited for a library than a battlefield. His jet-black hair was plastered to his pale forehead with sweat and grime, and his eyes – a startling, luminous violet – were wide with a terror he was desperately trying to master. He moved with a clumsy, stumbling grace that had, through some miracle of dumb luck, kept him alive thus far. He'd trip over a corpse and avoid a decapitating swing; he'd slip in the mud and a crossbow bolt would whistle over his head.

Yet, he fought on. He held a short, simple dagger, its hilt slick with things he didn't want to identify, and he used it with the grim determination of a man defending his home. Because this was his home. These screaming, dying men and women in blue were his people. Duty, a concept he'd heard so much about from his father and read about in books, was now a leaden weight in his stomach and a fire in his veins.

His name was Aldric Aerhart, and he was in way over his head.

A hulking brute in black armor, face hidden behind a snarling iron-visored helmet, charged him with a roar. Aldric, mustering every ounce of courage he possessed, did the only thing he could; he dropped. The brute's massive axe swung through the space where his neck had been, the force of it carrying the soldier a step too far.

Aldric scrambled in the mud, pushing off a fallen comrade's shield, and surged up under the soldier's guard. He wasn't strong enough to pierce the man's armor, but the neck was exposed. He plunged his dagger into the soft flesh beneath the helmet's rim. The man gurgled, a wet, horrifying sound, and a hot spray of blood erupted over Aldric's hand and face. The giant crumpled, his axe falling with a heavy thud.

Aldric tore his dagger free and staggered forward, his body trembling, his stomach heaving. He'd survived another one. He just had to keep moving, keep fighting, keep–

A sudden, sharp, impossible cold bloomed in his chest.

He looked down. The point of a longsword, crimson and wet, protruded a good six inches from his sternum. It looked so surreal, so utterly out of place. He felt no pain, only a profound sense of confusion, a disconnect from his own body.

He turned his head slowly, the world already starting to blur at the edges. Behind him stood another soldier in black, his face unremarkable, grim, and utterly devoid of emotion. He was already looking past Aldric, scanning for his next target. With a grunt of effort, the soldier yanked the sword free.

The world vanished. The strength left Aldric's limbs, the light fled his violet eyes, and he collapsed into the bloody mud. Everything went black.

…

…before it didn't.

What the fuck!??

One moment, I was… well, I wasn't. It was just a void, a complete and total absence of everything. The next, I was here. And 'here' was absolutely, unequivocally, the last place any sane person would ever want to be.

My hand was wrapped around the hilt of a dagger, a dagger that was currently buried to the hilt in some poor bastard's throat. I felt the sickening grind of steel on vertebrae and then the gush. A torrent of hot, sticky liquid sprayed across my face. It tasted like old pennies. Blood. That was definitely blood.

My blood? No. It was coming from the mountain of a man in front of me, whose eyes were rolling back into his head as he made a sound like a drowning badger. He collapsed, and I stumbled back, my mind a screaming vortex of pure, unadulterated panic.

Where am I? What is this? Was I dreaming? It felt too real. The stench of mud, sweat, and spilled guts filled my nostrils. The screams and the clang of metal were deafening. My heart was trying to hammer its way out of my ribcage like a trapped bird.

I looked at my hands. They were pale, slender, and covered in blood. Not my hands. My hands were… well, they had more callouses from a keyboard than a knife. These were the hands of a stranger.

Then, as if the situation wasn't already certifiably insane, a translucent blue box flickered into existence in the corner of my vision. It just floated there, gentle light pulsing from its edges, completely oblivious to the abject horror unfolding around it.

It looked like something straight out of a video game.

[Name: Aldric Aerhart]
Strength: 0.4
Wisdom: 1
Charisma: 1.5
Luck: 1

[Points: 0]

[Skills: Sense Novice I]

My brain, already overloaded, decided to short-circuit. Aldric Aerhart? That sounded like a name someone would give their D&D character if they weren't very creative. Strength: 0.4? What kind of scale was this? If a normal person was a 1, then I was apparently made of wet tissue paper and snot-filled handkerchief. I mean, seriously? 0.4? I'd lose an arm-wrestle to a toddler. My Charisma was 1.5, though. So I was a noodle-armed pretty boy. Great. Just what you need in a medieval-looking slaughterhouse.

While I was busy having a numerical identity crisis, a sudden, sharp prickle crawled up the back of my neck. It wasn't a sound or a sight; it was a feeling, an instinctual alarm bell screaming WRONGNESS directly into my brain. It was a cold, pure shot of adrenaline that bypassed all the panicked confusion.

Sense Novice I, the blue box had said. Was this it?

I didn't wait to find out. I threw myself forward, a clumsy, desperate lurch that was more of a fall than a step. I landed on my hands and knees in the mud, just as a whoosh of displaced air whispered past the exact spot my heart had been a second ago.

I scrambled around, my new, weak body protesting. A man in black armor stood there, his longsword finishing its deadly arc through empty space. His face was a mask of grim professionalism. He gave no sign of surprise, simply recalibrating his stance to face me, his new target. This was the guy. The one who…

A phantom pain flared in my chest. A memory that wasn't mine. This guy had killed me. Or, he'd killed the guy whose body I was currently borrowing. The frail dude with the 0.4 Strength. Aldric.

The grim soldier didn't waste time on banter. There were no villainous monologues, no declarations of allegiance. He just raised his sword and came at me.

All my video game knowledge, all the fantasy novels I'd ever read, evaporated in the face of sheer, mortal terror. This wasn't a game. There was no respawn button… probably. The rewind thing had been a one-off, right? A glitch in the isekai matrix? I wasn't about to test that theory.

He lunged. It wasn't a wild swing, but a precise, efficient thrust aimed right for my gut. I tried to bring my little dagger up to parry, but the muscle memory of this body, flimsy as it was, seemed to know better. It twisted, pulling me slightly to the side. The point of his sword scraped along my ribs, tearing through the thin leather jerkin I wore. A line of fire erupted along my side. It wasn't deep, but holy shit, it hurt.

"Gah! Son of a bitch!" I yelped, scrambling backward.

The soldier's expression didn't change. He just flowed into his next attack, a downward slash. I lifted my dagger to block, a purely instinctual move. The impact was jarring. His strength was immense; my 0.4 was no match. The shock traveled up my arm, making my teeth rattle and my wrist scream in protest. The dagger was nearly torn from my grasp. I saw stars for a second, my arm going numb.

This was bad. This was monumentally, catastrophically bad. I was out-muscled, out-skilled, and out-reached. My only advantage was a weird spidey-sense that had saved me once, but it wasn't a "win the fight" button. It was a "delay the inevitable" button.

He pressed his advantage. His sword became a blur of steel, forcing me back step by stumbling step. I was a cornered rat facing a well-fed cat. Parry, dodge, stumble. A clang of steel that sent shivers down my spine. A desperate twist that barely avoided losing a foot. A clumsy roll in the mud that left me covered in filth but, miraculously, still in one piece.

My lungs burned. My borrowed body was already at its limit. The pathetic 0.4 Strength wasn't just about lifting things; it was about endurance, about the sheer physical capacity to continue. And I was fresh out. My arm felt like a lead weight, and the gash on my side was sending waves of agony through my torso with every ragged breath.

The grim soldier saw it. A flicker of something – not satisfaction, just observation – crossed his eyes. He saw his opening.

He feinted a low sweep, and like an idiot, my eyes followed the tip of his blade. It was the oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. As I instinctively moved to block low, his blade changed direction with fluid grace, flicking upward.

My dagger was in the wrong place. My body was off-balance. My mind was screaming, but my exhausted limbs refused to obey.

I saw the sword coming, arcing through the gray, smoky air. It was almost beautiful in its deadly efficiency. Time seemed to slow, the screams of the dying battle fading into a dull roar. All I could see was that sliver of sharpened steel, catching the dim light as it descended directly toward my neck.

There was no escape. No lucky stumble. No last-second save.

This was it. My second death in less than five minutes. I wondered if I'd set some kind of record.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

This was it. Death number two in under five minutes. My short, brutal, and frankly confusing tenure in the land of Mud and Blood was coming to a swift and pointy conclusion. The grim soldier's sword was a descending guillotine, and my neck was on the chopping block. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. All I could do was stare at the approaching steel and wonder if the universe had some kind of punch card. "Get reincarnated ten times, the eleventh is free!"

CLAAAAANG!

The sound wasn't the wet thud of steel cleaving flesh and bone I'd expected. It was a deafening, resonant peel, like a cathedral bell struck by lightning. The grim soldier's sword, which had seemed just moments ago like an unstoppable force of nature, was flung sideways as if it were a child's toy made of cheap plastic. It spun through the air and embedded itself in the mud a dozen feet away.

The grim soldier stood frozen, his arm vibrating from the shock, his eyes wide with disbelief. He had just enough time to register his fatal error before a shadow fell over him.

A new figure had appeared, a veritable mountain of a man clad in the finest plate armor I'd ever seen, all gleaming steel and cobalt-blue accents. He stood at least six and a half feet tall, with shoulders so broad he seemed to block out the miserable grey sky. In one massive, gauntleted hand, he held a longsword that looked, in his grip, like a normal person's shortsword. This was the weapon that had just saved my life.

The giant in blue didn't pause. He stepped forward, his armored boots sinking deep into the mire, and swung his longsword in a horizontal arc. He did it with the casual, almost lazy grace of a man swatting a fly.

The grim soldier didn't even have time to scream. The blade connected with his midsection. There was a hideous shearing sound of metal grinding against metal, and then a wet, sickening tear. The soldier's torso separated from his legs in a spray of gore. The top half flew one way, the bottom half stood for a comical, gruesome second before collapsing.

The blue giant flicked his blade clean with a practiced motion, splattering viscera onto a nearby corpse. Then, he turned to me. The helmet he wore was open-faced, revealing a strong jawline covered in dark stubble and a pair of surprisingly gentle, sky-blue eyes.

"Al, be careful," he said, his voice a low, rumbling baritone that seemed to vibrate in my bones.

As he spoke the name, "Al," a jolt went through me, another flicker of a memory that wasn't mine. A name surfaced from the depths of my new consciousness, fully formed and familiar. Sir Aster Kell. My… Aldric's… friend. Guardian. The kingdom's strongest sword.

My mouth opened, a thousand questions trying to force their way out at once. Who are you? How do you know me? What the hell is going on? Did you see that guy fly apart? But there was no time. The tide of battle, which had momentarily parted for this dramatic rescue, came crashing back in. Two black-clad soldiers, seeing their comrade turned into a party sub, charged at Aster with vengeful roars.

Aster didn't even seem concerned. He met their charge like a cliff meeting a wave. With two impossibly swift movements – a parry that sent one soldier stumbling and a thrust that went straight through the other's chest plate like it was butter – the threat was neutralized. He pulled his sword free and moved on, a one-man wrecking crew in a sea of chaos.

He glanced back at me, a silent order in his eyes: Keep up.

My brain finally rebooted. Standing still was a death sentence. Following the human-shaped blender seemed like a marginally better option. I scrambled to my feet, my legs trembling, the gash on my side throbbing in protest. I clutched my pathetically small dagger and scurried after him.

What followed was the most terrifying and awe-inspiring thing I'd ever witnessed. Sir Aster Kell wasn't just fighting; he was a natural disaster. He moved with a purpose I couldn't fathom, carving a deliberate path through the enemy ranks. His longsword was a whirlwind of silver death. Men in black armor, who had seemed like unstoppable juggernauts to me, were little more than wheat before his scythe. He shattered shields, sundered helmets, and cleaved through bodies with an efficiency that was both beautiful and utterly horrifying.

My role in this bloody ballet was… less glamorous. I was the remora to his great white shark, the pilot fish to his whale. I was Sir Badass's Personal Janitor.

Aster would dispatch a group of three soldiers, but in the chaos, one might be merely wounded, or knocked off balance. As Aster moved forward, that straggler would try to get up, perhaps to stab the giant in the back. And that's where I came in.

A soldier, his arm bleeding from a shallow cut from Aster's blade, pushed himself to his knees, his eyes wild with desperation as he raised his own sword. Before he could, I was there, plunging my dagger into the gap between his helmet and cuirass. It was messy, clumsy, and terrifying. I felt the life drain out of him, his body going limp against mine before I shoved him away, gagging.

I didn't have time to process it. Another one was trying to hamstring Aster. I kicked out, my 0.4 Strength leg connecting with his helmet with a dull thunk. It didn't hurt him so much as it surprised him, making him look at me. The distraction was all Aster needed. Without even turning his head fully, he performed a reverse-grip stab that took the man through the eye-slit of his helm.

"Thanks, Al," Aster grunted, already moving on to the next foe.

My stomach churned. "No problem," I wheezed to myself, my voice barely a whisper. This was my life now. Support class to a guy who clearly didn't need any support. I felt less like a hero and more like a glorified tripwire.

We continued our relentless advance. Aster was a maelstrom of blue and steel at the center, and I was the debris getting thrown around in his wake. I tripped over bodies, slipped in pools of blood, and stabbed desperately at anyone in black who got too close. I was operating on pure adrenaline, my mind a blank slate of fear and instinct.

Strangely, it started to feel… manageable. Not easy, God no. But I could see the path Aster was clearing. The sheer pressure of his assault was forcing the Black soldiers to give ground. A pocket of relative safety was forming around him. I began to wonder, in a dazed, blood-spattered sort of way, if we were actually winning. Was this the turning point? Was Sir Aster Kell the secret weapon that was about to single-handedly win the war for the Blues?

Then I made the mistake of looking past him, at the wider battlefield.

My fragile hope shattered.

We weren't winning. We were being annihilated. What I had thought was a clearing was just a tiny, temporary dent in a vast, advancing wall of black. The blue banners were falling everywhere. The lines had broken, and what was left of the Aeridorian army was scattered into small, desperate pockets of resistance, being systematically surrounded and exterminated. We weren't turning the tide; we were just a single, defiant eddy in a flood that was washing everything away.

So what was Aster doing? This wasn't a counter-attack. It was too focused, too linear. This was… an escape. He wasn't trying to win the battle. He was trying to get somewhere. Or get someone somewhere.

He was trying to get me somewhere.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. Why me? Why was the most powerful warrior on the field dedicating all his efforts to escorting a noodle-armed pretty boy with a 0.4 Strength stat?

We reached what looked like the edge of the main melee, near a ruined section of a stone wall. The fighting was thinner here. It seemed we were through the worst of it.

Then I heard it. The thunder of hooves on wet earth.

A black horse, armored and massive as its rider, burst from around the corner of the wall. The man on its back was a knight, his armor onyx black and spiked, a wicked-looking flail clutched in his hand. He lowered his lance-like weapon, aiming its jagged head directly at Aster's chest, the horse charging at full tilt.

This had to be it. An enemy of Aster's caliber. A mini-boss. This was where my bodyguard would finally have a real challenge.

Aster didn't even brace himself. He just planted his feet.

As the horse was about to trample him, he did something that broke my brain. He sidestepped the lance with impossible agility and, as the horse thundered past, he balled his free hand into a fist and swung it upward in a brutal uppercut.

The punch connected squarely with the underside of the Black knight's jaw.

There was a crack of bone and a sickening crunch of metal as the knight's helmet dented inward. The rider, a man who must have weighed three hundred pounds in his armor, was lifted clean out of his saddle. He flew backward through the air, flailing uselessly, before landing in a heap of twisted metal ten feet away. He did not move.

The warhorse, suddenly riderless, galloped a few more strides before Aster grabbed its reins. The beast was a monster, all panicked muscle and crazed eyes, but Aster brought it to a halt with what looked like sheer arm strength, the horse digging furrows in the mud as it fought him.

He calmed it with a few soothing words, his voice a stark contrast to the violence he'd just committed. He then turned to me, his expression urgent.

"Al, get on," he commanded, holding the reins steady.

My mind was still trying to process the fact that he'd just punched a man off a horse. Like, literally. Punched him into the sky.

"What? Why?" I stammered, taking a step toward him. "Where are we going? The fight…"

"There is no fight," Aster cut me off, his voice grim. "There is only the retreat. We have to go. Now."

He was giving up? He, the one-man army, was saying we had to run? It didn't make sense. None of this made any sense.

"But–" I started, my head swimming with confusion and a hundred other questions. Why me? Why abandon the others? What was the plan?

Aster's face softened for a fraction of a second, a flicker of something that might have been pity, or perhaps just frustration. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time for a confused, scared boy who wasn't the battle-hardened noble he was supposed to be.

"There's no time, Al," he said, his voice low.

Then, he took one swift step toward me. His hand, no longer a fist but a rigid, flat blade, moved faster than I could track.

I saw a blur of motion. A sharp, stinging impact against the side of my neck.

A bloom of static filled my vision, and the world tilted on its axis. My legs gave out from under me. The last thing I heard was Aster's gruff, regretful voice.

"Forgive me."

And then, for the second time that day, everything went black.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The world was black for a very long time.

My consciousness returned not as a sudden jolt, but as a slow, creeping thaw. At first, there was only the rhythmic rocking and the leathery scent of horse. I must have been slumped over the saddle, because through the narrow slits of my barely-open eyes, I saw a dizzying, blurry reel of green forests and grey skies passing by. It was a miserable, jarring ride that my body, weak as it was, protested with every jostle.

At some point, the horse stopped. There was talking. Low, urgent voices. I remember the scratchy feel of a wool blanket being draped over me. I tried to make sense of the snippets of conversation that filtered through the fog in my brain – "...not safe… the port at… manifest… low profile…" – but they were just meaningless sounds, dissolving before they could form coherent thoughts.

Then the motion changed. The jarring up-and-down of the horse was replaced by a deeper, swaying roll. The air grew damp and tasted of salt and tar. A boat. We were on a boat. A small, anxious part of my mind, a remnant of my past life, braced for the inevitable wave of nausea. I'd always had terrible motion sickness; even a short ferry ride could leave me green-faced and miserable. But it never came. This new body, for all its noodle-armed flaws, apparently had a stomach of iron. A small mercy, I supposed.

I drifted in that state for… I don't know. Hours? Days? Time was a thick, syrupy thing. I was too exhausted to move, too disoriented to care. My body was healing, knitting itself back together from the battle I could barely remember. I was content to float in the darkness.

What finally woke me was the System.

Even with my eyes closed, the soft blue light of the notification screen materialized in my mind's eye. It was persistent, a gentle but unignorable pulse. With a mental sigh that felt like lifting a mountain, I lazily focused on it.

[Name: Aldric Aerhart]
Strength: 0.4 + 0.1
Wisdom: 1
Charisma: 1.5
Luck: 1

[Points: 0]

[Skills: Sense Novice I]

Yay, I thought, the sarcasm so thick it felt like I could taste it. A whole 0.1 point of strength. I've graduated from wet tissue paper to damp cardboard. Watch out, world.

I was about to let myself slip back into the comforting void of unconsciousness when a new sound reached me. It was low at first, a rhythmic creak that I assumed was just the boat. But then it grew, weaving itself around the groan of the ship's timbers. It was a human sound. A breathy, strained sound.

It took my sleep-addled brain a moment to parse it, to sort through the fog and identify the cadence. And when it did, it hit me with the force of a charging elephant.

It was moaning. Deep, guttural, and undeniably sensual moaning, punctuated by shorter, higher-pitched gasps.

My eyes shot open as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water on my face. The world snapped into sharp, unwelcome focus. I was in a small, cramped cabin, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and salty air. My bed was a pile of rough jute sacks, a coarse wool blanket thrown over me.

I threw the blanket off. My eyes, now fully adjusted to the dim light filtering through a single grimy porthole, locked onto the source of the sound.

And there, not ten feet away, was Sir Aster Kell. The one-man army. My stoic, grim-faced protector. He was propped up against a stack of crates, his breeches around his ankles, absolutely railing a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties.

Without his armor, I could see him properly for the first time. He was easily in his early thirties, his body a roadmap of muscle and sinew, covered in a tapestry of old, faded scars. His face, which had seemed merely grim on the battlefield, was handsome in a rugged, weather-beaten way. He was the very picture of a fantasy hero; tall, powerful, and apparently irresistible. Some people just got dealt a royal flush in the genetic lottery, didn't they? The girl beneath him, her simple dress hiked up to her waist, was clinging to his broad shoulders, her head thrown back in wild abandon.

My brain, which had handled war, death, and interdimensional reincarnation with a sort of panicked resignation, decided that this was the final straw.

"What the fuck!!!" I screamed, my voice cracking from disuse.

The effect was instantaneous and spectacular.

Aster froze mid-thrust, his head snapping towards me. His ruggedly handsome face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated, caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar shame. The girl shrieked, her eyes flying open to lock with mine. For one surreal, horrifying moment, all three of us were just staring at each other, a tableau of supreme awkwardness. Hilariously, the rocking of the boat and the sheer momentum of the act kept them moving for another second, a final, graceless bob that made the situation even more mortifying.

Then reality reasserted itself. Aster, looking utterly abashed, pushed the girl off him. She scrambled away, a mess of flailing limbs and flushed skin, frantically gathering her discarded clothes. I just sat there on my pile of jute, my mouth hanging open, having absolutely no idea what the socially acceptable response to this situation was. Was I supposed to offer them a towel? Congratulate him on his stamina?

The girl, now decently covered, gave me one last terrified look and bolted from the cabin, leaving me and a half-naked Sir Aster Kell in a silence so thick you could have carved it into little embarrassing sculptures.

He finally broke the silence, clearing his throat and refusing to meet my gaze as he pulled up his breeches.

"It's been a hard few days, my lord," he said at last, his deep voice laced with shame.

I'll say, I thought, my mind still reeling.

A little while later, we found ourselves sitting in the ship's galley. It was a small, smoky space, and the ship's cook, a one-eyed man with a beard that had seen better decades, slapped two bowls of thin, fishy-smelling soup and a hunk of hard bread onto the table in front of us. The awkwardness from the cabin still hung between us like a physical presence.

"You were asleep for two full days," Aster said, pushing a bowl towards me. "You needed the rest."

Two days. It felt like both an eternity and no time at all. I took the bowl, my stomach rumbling. The soup was bland and the bread was stale, but it was the best meal I'd ever had.

Aster stared into his bowl, swirling the murky liquid with his spoon. "I miss Aldren. Your father, I mean."

The name, Aldren, was another key. It unlocked a new floodgate of memories in my mind, Aldric's memories, clearer and more detailed this time. It all came rushing in, a torrent of names and places and bitter resentments.

Getting caught fornicating with a wench reminds him of my father? a sarcastic corner of my brain wondered, but the rest of the information was too overwhelming to focus on the joke.

I was Aldric Aerhart, heir to the noble House Aerhart. My father was Lord Aldren Aerhart. We were vassals, but powerful ones; our house served House Verderan, the paramount rulers of the entire southern kingdom. It should have been a simple, privileged life of duty and comfort.

But then came the Empress's tourney in the capital, Aureline. A grand affair that had ended in tragedy. Or, more likely, conspiracy. Both my father, Lord Aldren, and his liege, the paramount Lord Verderan, were killed in a single, highly suspicious jousting 'accident'.

That was where everything went to shit. Lord Verderan had left no male heirs. His only child was his daughter, Lyra. My mother. According to the ancient laws of the south, the principle of 'womb-right' dictated that the titles and lands should pass through the female line to the nearest male descendant. That was me. Aldric Aerhart. At seventeen years old, I was supposed to become the new Lord Paramount of the South.

But the Empress had other ideas. Citing some obscure, long-forgotten imperial decree, she archived the womb-right and installed her own brother, the ruthless Lord Blackwing, as the new paramount lord.

The southern lords had protested. House Aerhart, my house, had led the call for rebellion. And the Sun Lancers, Emperor's iron fist, had responded. That old fool– lending his prized cavalry to put down a rebellion against his hot wife's brother. How thoughtless.

Thus the Black banners marched south: a mix of Heartland troops, a few other 'crown-supporting' kingdoms and the southern factions that had aligned with the Blackwings. That disastrous battle… that was the end of our rebellion. The end of everything.

So that's who I was. A disinherited lordling. A failed rebel leader. The rightful ruler of a kingdom who was now a fugitive on a smelly boat, whose only bodyguard had just been caught turning the cargo hold into a brothel.

The weight of it all settled on me, a crushing, suffocating burden. This wasn't just some random war I'd been dropped into. This was my… Aldric's… mess. And he hadn't even wanted any of it. He'd been a scholar, a quiet boy who preferred books to swords. Now he was dead, and I was left holding the bag. A very large, very bloody, very on-fire bag.

I looked up from my soup, the fishy taste turning to ash in my mouth. I looked at Aster, at the immense, tired warrior who had thrown away his army and his honor just to save me.

"What the fuck are we gonna do?" I asked, the question raw and stripped of all my earlier sarcasm.

Sir Aster Kell met my eyes for the first time since the cabin. The shame was gone, replaced by a deep, profound weariness that seemed to go all the way to his soul.

"I wonder myself, my lord," he said.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

"I wonder myself, my lord."

The words hung in the smoky air of the galley, heavier than the reek of stale fish. It was the worst possible answer. It was the honest answer. I looked at this mountain of a man, this legendary warrior who could punch knights into low orbit, and I saw the same thing I felt in the pit of my own stomach: absolute, bottomless uncertainty. He was a weapon without a hand to wield him, a shield with no one left to protect. And he was looking at me, a guy whose greatest physical achievement in his last life was assembling an IKEA bookshelf without crying (It had been a very near thing), to tell him where to go.

We were so, so screwed.

I pushed my bowl of soup away, the meager warmth doing nothing to chase away the chill that had settled deep in my bones. "Okay. Let's start with the basics, Aster. Where, exactly, are we going? This boat has to have a destination."

Aster finished his last piece of rock-hard bread, chewing it with the grim determination of a man eating his own boot leather. "But this boat is headed to the central continent, Al," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The central continent.

The name sparked another flurry of Aldric's memories, not a coherent narrative this time, but a jumble of fragmented images and academic factoids. It was the kind of knowledge a well-read young noble would have about a distant, slightly disreputable land. The Eastern Continent, our home, was the seat of the House Solmere, a land of ancient houses and rigid hierarchies. The Western Continent was home to the rival Azure Dominion, another empire, but not as grand and supposedly a mercantile-naval power

But the central continent… it was the world's messy, chaotic middle child. A geographical and cultural melting pot. It had no grand empire, only a patchwork of squabbling city-states, minor kingdoms, and vast stretches of untamed wilderness. It was a place where fortunes were made overnight and lives were lost in the blink of an eye. A haven for refugees, criminals, merchants, and mercenaries. A place where your family name meant less than the weight of the coin in your purse or the sharpness of the sword on your hip.

It was, I realized, the perfect place to disappear.

"Okay. The central continent," I said, testing the words. "And what do you propose we do when we get there? We have no money, no allies, and an entire empire that wants my head on a pike. What's the grand strategy?"

Aster had the decency to look uncomfortable. He placed his massive hands on the rough-hewn table, his brow furrowed in thought. Finally, he looked at me, his sky-blue eyes earnest and utterly unhelpful. "I don't know, my lord. I am your sworn sword. My duty is to protect you. I only follow you."

I stared at him. I stared at him so hard I thought my eyes might pop out of their sockets. Him? Following me? The guy who, just a few days ago, thought a CPU bottleneck was a life-or-death crisis? The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of it was staggering.

A sarcastic retort, born of pure disbelief, bubbled up and escaped before I could stop it.

"You followed my wits right into that poor girl's breeches, didn't you?"

Aster choked. He had just taken a swig of water from a wooden cup, and he sprayed it halfway across the table, devolving into a fit of wet, hacking coughs. His face, usually a stoic mask of warrior-like solemnity, turned a shade of crimson that clashed violently with his blue tunic.

"My lord!" he sputtered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "That was… a momentary lapse! The stress of the retreat… I was not myself!"

"You looked pretty much like yourself to me," I shot back, a ghost of a grin tugging at my lips. For the first time since waking up in this nightmare, I felt a flicker of something other than terror. It was good to know that the mighty Sir Aster Kell could be flustered. "Just making sure we're clear on the chain of command here. If your plan is to follow my lead, we're going to need a better plan than 'find the nearest willing barmaid'."

He sagged in his seat, the embarrassment draining out of him, replaced by that familiar weariness. "I know, Al. I know. I have failed you. I failed your father. All I know is battle. Strategy… subterfuge… that was your father's world. I am just a soldier. A soldier with no army."

The moment of levity passed, and the crushing weight of our situation settled back in. He was right. We were two broken pieces of a shattered kingdom. A scholar in a warrior's world and a warrior with no war to fight. What the hell were we going to do? I slumped back, rubbing my temples. We needed money. We needed shelter. We needed a way to live without anyone discovering that I was the most wanted fugitive on the continent.

My mind raced, frantically searching for a solution. What skills did I have? In my old life, I was a programmer. Utterly useless here. Aldric was a scholar. Also pretty useless when you're on the run. I had a 0.5 in Strength, so manual labor was probably out unless I wanted to die of exhaustion lifting a sack of potatoes.

Then my gaze drifted, and I saw it. The faint, translucent shimmer of the blue status screen, still hovering in the periphery of my vision.

The System.

The thought hit me with the force of a physical blow. I'd been so caught up in the horror and the chaos and Aldric's tragic backstory that I had completely missed the most important detail. I wasn't just a random guy thrown into a fantasy world. I was a guy thrown into a fantasy world with a game interface.

This wasn't just a miserable medieval reality. This was a RPG!

My entire perspective shifted in an instant. The despair that had been strangling me was replaced by a sudden, manic surge of hope. This world wasn't a prison; it was a game. A horrifically realistic, full-dive VR game where dying probably hurt like hell and was very permanent, but a game nonetheless. And games had rules. They had mechanics. They had paths to power.

I wasn't Aldric Aerhart, the failed lordling. I was a Player Character. I had stats that could be raised. I had skills that could, presumably, be learned. I was at the very beginning of my progression fantasy journey!

My mind, the mind of a man who had spent thousands of hours optimizing character builds and grinding for epic loot, went into overdrive. What was the number one career choice for any aspiring protagonist in a world of swords and sorcery? What was the one institution that conveniently provided quests, rewards, and a clear path for advancement?

It was so obvious. It was the oldest trope in the book.

"Aster," I said, my voice suddenly sharp and focused. He looked up, surprised by my change in tone.

"Is there… is there such a thing as an Adventurer's Guild on the central continent?"

Aster stared at me as if I'd grown a second head. "An Adventurer's Guild? My lord, what are you talking about? We are nobles of House Aerhart. We don't consort with… sell-swords and dungeon-delvers."

"Just answer the question, Aster," I pressed, leaning forward, my heart hammering with a strange new excitement. "Do they exist there?"

He let out a long, weary sigh, clearly convinced I'd finally lost my mind. The trauma of battle, the escape, the karate chop to the neck… it had all broken poor Lord Aldric's brain.

"You have to be kidding me, my lord," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Of course they exist there. Everyone knows that."

He paused, a strange look crossing his face. It was a look of grudging respect, the kind a stuffy historian might give to a rowdy but historically significant barbarian.

"My lord," he said, his voice lowering with a certain gravitas. "The central continent didn't just have adventurer's guilds."

He leaned in, as if sharing a grand, fundamental truth of the universe.

"They invented adventuring."

A wide, genuine, and probably slightly unhinged grin spread across my face. It was the first time I had smiled since I arrived in this world. The path forward, which seconds ago had been a dark, terrifying void, was now illuminated. It was a stupid, reckless, and insanely dangerous path, but it was a path.

I was going to become an adventurer. I was going to grind my stats, level up my skills, and get ridiculously, absurdly overpowered. And then, maybe, just maybe, I'd go back and introduce the Empress and her brother to the business end of a +15 Sword of Vengeful Ass-Kicking.

It was a perfect plan.

"Well then," I said, slapping the table with a newfound sense of purpose that made the half-empty soup bowls jump. "It seems we have our new career path sorted out."

Aster just stared at me, his mouth slightly agape, the picture of confusion. He had no idea what was going on in my head. He had no idea that the timid, bookish boy he was sworn to protect had just been replaced by a meta-gaming lunatic with dreams of becoming a legendary hero.

And frankly, neither did I. But for the first time, I was excited to find out what happened next.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The unfamiliar sword felt like a lead pipe in my hand. For the thousandth time, I swung it in a clumsy, hacking arc, my arm screaming in protest. Each movement was a testament to my pathetic 0.5 Strength stat. But ahead of me, finally, was the prize: a long, jagged coastline, slowly resolving from a hazy smudge into a vibrant tapestry of green cliffs and white beaches.

The central continent.

It had taken a god-awful three months to get here. Three months trapped on a creaking, smelly tub with nothing but the endless sea, stale bread, and my own spiraling thoughts for company. At one point, around the seven-week mark, I'd developed a full-blown conspiracy theory that the central continent didn't exist, and Aster was kidnapping me to some remote island to sell me to pirates. The mind goes to strange places when all you have is time to think.

It goes there even faster when your only companion is a sexual dynamo who treats the ship like his personal, rotating harem.

I'm not exaggerating. I think Sir Aster Kell had at least three women on a retainer basis. There was Mari, the fiery redhead who worked in the galley; Elara, the quiet, dark-haired weaver; and Sela, a giggly blonde deckhand. He seemed to work his way through them on a cyclic schedule, and I'd developed an unfortunate knack for walking in on them at the most inopportune moments. Him and Mari in a lifeboat. Him and Elara in the linen closet. Him and Sela behind my bed of jute sacks.

Now, I hadn't exactly been a Chad in my old life, but I'd gotten around. Maybe once every six months? That's respectable, right? It was a pace I was comfortable with. But Aster was setting an impossible standard. The man was a machine. I was starting to feel deeply, personally inadequate.

Driven by this newfound insecurity, I'd even braved a look in a small, cracked mirror we had in the cabin. The face staring back wasn't bad. In fact, it was… distressingly good. Aldric had won the genetic lottery. The jet-black hair and luminous violet eyes were a killer combination, and his facial structure was delicate and refined. It was, for lack of a better word, beautiful.

And that was the problem. I was cute. I wasn't handsome or rugged; I was a pretty boy with zero muscle mass to back it up. The game system said I was seventeen. There were other seventeen-year-old boys on this ship, hauling ropes and swabbing decks. They were wiry and strong, with the beginnings of beards. They did not look like me. I looked like I'd been raised in a velvet-lined box and fed nothing but milk and honey. Clearly, some sort of growth deficiency was at play here.

Which brought me back to the sword.

I kept swinging it, the motion becoming a mindless, burning repetition. It wasn't like I wanted to. I wanted proper training. And that's exactly what I'd asked Aster for, right after my grand adventurer epiphany.

Filled with protagonist-level determination, the very first thing I did was stride over to his magnificent longsword, which was propped against a crate. "Teach me to use this," I'd declared with what I hoped was heroic gravitas.

I could not lift it off the ground.

I mean that literally. I wrapped both hands around the hilt, planted my feet, and pulled. Nothing. I grunted, I strained, I put my back into it like I was trying to pull Excalibur from the stone. The tip of the blade did not leave the wooden deck. Not by a millimeter. Meanwhile, this was the weapon Aster casually swung around single-handedly.

To make matters worse, Elara had been with us at the time. She'd watched my entire pathetic display, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a giggle. The look on her face said it all. I am ninety-nine percent sure that by dinnertime, the entire crew knew that the pretty boy 'Arden' couldn't even lift his guardian's sword. I had never been so thoroughly, profoundly humiliated.

Later, Aster had come to me with a smaller, standard-issue arming sword. "My lord," he'd said, trying and failing to sound diplomatic, "one cannot learn the intricacies of swordplay until one's body can perform the most basic of movements. You must first grow the muscles required to handle the weapon."

His prescription? Swing this sword. Just… swing it around. Every day. For hours. Until I could do it without wanting to cry. Only then would he deign to teach me a basic stance.

I swore on my non-existent honor that one day, I would master his ridiculously oversized toothpick and then use it to knock him down a peg. It might take a few years. It might take a decade. But it was coming.

"Land ho!" The call from the crow's nest was unnecessary; we could all see it now. The docks of a bustling port city grew larger with every passing minute. Aster emerged from the cabin, looking refreshed and annoyingly smug, and came to stand beside me at the rail.

"A new beginning, my lord," he said, taking in the view.

I just grunted and kept swinging the sword, my arm a single, unified muscle of agony and spite. I was mid-swing when my eyes caught something on the docks below. A dockworker, directing the mooring of another vessel. He was short, stout, with large, hairy feet stuffed into simple leather sandals. He had a pipe clenched in his teeth and an air of cheerful competence.

"Bilbo Baggins?" I blurted out, the name escaping my lips before I could think.

Aster shot me a look of pure confusion. "What? My lord, you know that hobbit?"

My brain screeched to a halt. Hobbit. He'd said hobbit. I mean, it wasn't actually Bilbo Baggins. I'm pretty sure The Lord of the Rings never mentioned a sprawling empire on the Eastern Continent, and Bilbo certainly wasn't a longshoreman. But it was a hobbit. A real, non-litigious, fantasy-staple hobbit. What the hell? I thought this was a human-only world.

Just like before, the new context triggered another violent download of Aldric's dormant knowledge. It slammed into my consciousness like a tidal wave of lore. Why couldn't this have come in the first package deal!? It would have been useful information!

My understanding of this world was, it turned out, woefully incomplete. Humanity was just one of the major races. There were others. Hobbits, with their quiet lives and love of good food. Stern, stoic Dwarves, masters of stone and metal. The graceful, long-lived Elves of the ancient forests. The brutish, tribal Orcs of the wastelands.

And, my blood ran cold at the last one, Demons. Actual, literal demons.

"What the fuck," I whispered, stumbling back from the rail, the sword suddenly feeling ten times heavier. "There are demons here?"

"Well of course there are, my lord," Aster said, looking at me with growing concern. "They mostly keep to their kingdom, but you'll find the odd tiefling or cambion in the bigger cities. Most certainly in the Elven kingdom– fast friends those lot are. Are you feeling alright?"

I wasn't. My mind was reeling, spiraling through the implications. My grand plan to become an OP adventurer suddenly seemed a lot more complicated. I hadn't factored in Orcs. I definitely had not factored in goddamn demons.

Just then, Mari, the redhead from the galley, sauntered over, wiping her hands on an apron. She playfully nudged Aster. "Excited to be off this tub, Kellan?" she asked, giving him a wink.

Kellan. Right. Our aliases. I was Arden, a minor noble's son. He was Kellan, my sworn shield. Simple. Believable.

"More than you know," Aster rumbled, a small smile on his face.

Mari then turned her attention to me. "And you, Arden? Ready for a taste of real food? I hear the spiced boar in this city is to die for." She glanced at the hobbit on the dock. "Though you might have to fight one of the little folk for it."

The casual racism was noted and filed away. "I… yes, I suppose so," I managed to say, my brain still trying to reboot. Orcs. Elves. Dwarves. Demons. Hobbits. It was a full house. This wasn't just a gritty medieval world with a game system slapped on. This was a full-blown, high-fantasy kitchen sink.

The possibilities, the dangers, the sheer scope of it all was overwhelming. My plan seemed so naive now. How was I supposed to grind levels when a demon could just pop out of an alleyway and decide to eat my soul for a light snack? This was bad. This was very, very bad. My adventurer career was over before it even began. I was going to die here, probably eaten by something with horns.

My thoughts continued their downward spiral, a frantic pinball of panic bouncing between the different fantasy races. Dwarves are tough. Orcs are scary. Demons are terrifying. Hobbits are… hungry? Elves are…

Wait.

My train of thought slammed on the brakes, did a screeching 180-degree turn, and floored it in the opposite direction.

Elves.

Graceful, long-lived elves. Pointy-eared elves. Legolas-style elves. Arwen-style elves.

The fear, the panic, the existential dread – it all evaporated in an instant, replaced by a single, glorious, all-consuming realization that eclipsed everything else. It was a thought so pure, so powerful, so fundamentally important that it became my new guiding star.

There are elves here.

Cute, pointy-eared elves.

I can get an elf waifu!

 

[Aureus]

At least he has his priorities straight.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

At least he has his priorities straight.

Click to shrink...

Lol, thanks for reading

 

[MoonyNebulous]

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the hobbit.

As my feet touched the solid, non-swaying wood of the dock for the first time in three months, my head was still spinning, but not from the sea. It was him. A real, live hobbit. This wasn't a movie, this wasn't a book; this was a short, slightly stout fellow with a cheerful face and feet so profoundly hairy they looked like they were wearing their own permanent set of furry slippers. He was my first contact with a species that was, well… not human. It was like seeing a unicorn, if a unicorn's job was to yell at sailors about proper mooring techniques.

I must have been staring with the subtlety of a house fire, because he suddenly looked up, caught my eye, and a slightly bewildered expression crossed his face. Then, noticing my open-mouthed fascination, he offered a small, kindly smile and a little nod before turning back to his work.

Oh, bless his heart. How sweet. I desperately hoped that 'kindly and sweet' wasn't some sort of patronizing stereotype for hobbits. Or worse, I hoped he wasn't propositioning me. Both would be very bad; one significantly more so, considering this body was still technically seventeen. My brain really needed to stop going to weird places.

I finally managed to wrench my gaze away and take in the port city proper. It was a chaotic, beautiful mess. The architecture was a wild hodgepodge of styles I couldn't begin to name, and the air was thick with the scent of foreign spices, salt, tar, and something that smelled vaguely like fried mystery meat. Aster had gone to ask a burly man with a truly impressive beard for directions, leaving me to my own devices. The port city was a chaotic, vibrant explosion of sight and sound. And species.

Oh god, the species.

Some ways down the dock, was an orc. He was massive, with grayish-green skin and small tusks jutting from his lower jaw, but he wasn't a monster from a nightmare. He was just… a guy. A very large, very strong guy, helping unload heavy-looking crates from a ship's hold with practiced ease. Check.

I saw a few more hobbits bustling in and out of a waterfront tavern that had a sign shaped like a leering fish. They seemed to be running the place. Check.

Then I saw him. An elf. My heart gave a little flutter of anticipation before immediately deflating. Sadly, he was neither ethereally beautiful nor female. He was just a tall, slender man with mildly pointed ears and an expression of deep boredom on his face, walking along the pier checking items off a list on a scroll. He was an elven logistician, apparently. Still, an elf was an elf. Check.

All that was left on my bingo card was a demon, and frankly, I was happy to leave that box unchecked for the foreseeable future.

My thoughts were interrupted by Aster's return. He had that familiar, stoic look on his face, the one that meant he had a plan, however simple.

"I have confirmed our location, my lord. This is the Port of Skane. As you hoped, there is an Adventurer's Guild, though it's a small outpost. It is not here in the port, however. We must travel an hour's ride inland to the town of Oakhaven."

"An hour's ride? Perfect," I said, already buzzing with the thought of getting my hands on an adventurer license. "Let's go." I started walking with a newfound sense of purpose, ready to begin my epic quest.

I made it about three steps before a massive hand clamped down on the scruff of my neck, holding me fast like a misbehaving kitten.

"Not so fast, my lord," Aster rumbled from behind me. "We must procure horses first."

"Horses? Where do we get horses?" I exclaimed, twisting around to look at him.

He gave me a look that was dripping with condescension. The kind of look you give a child who asks why they can't just flap their arms to fly. "In the port, of course, my lord. Where else?"

I bristled. This man, my sworn protector, was losing every ounce of respect he'd ever had for his lord. And I did not like it one bit. "Well, forgive me for not being an expert in the commerce of every backwater port on the continent! I don't see a sign that says 'Ye Olde Equine Emporium,' do you?"

"One simply asks, Al," he said, his tone infuriatingly calm.

And so, we asked. We asked the stern woman with the clipboard, who just grunted and pointed vaguely inland. We asked a fishmonger, who tried to sell us a bucket of eels instead. We asked a weaver, who looked at us like we were insane. We spent the better part of an hour wandering the docks, looking as hard as we could for a horse seller, with absolutely no one in sight.

Finally, in a moment of combined frustration and curiosity, I walked up to the orc I'd seen earlier, who was now taking a break, wiping his brow with a forearm the size of my thigh.

"Excuse me," I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. "We're looking to buy a couple of horses?"

The orc, whose name I learned was Grak, looked down at me from his considerable height. He blinked his small, surprisingly intelligent eyes and let out a short, gruff laugh that sounded like rocks grinding together. "Horses? Here?" He shook his head. "Nah, friend. You won't find any for sale here. Think about it. Why would a merchant haul horses all the way here on a ship when the town's a day's walk that way?" He pointed inland with a thick finger. "You either wait for one of the big cargo carriages to take you back with them, or you walk."

He took a swig of whatever was in his waterskin, then muttered to himself, "Who even sells horses at a port…"

I turned slowly, a viciously triumphant smile spreading across my face, and leveled my best side-eye at Aster. He was trying his absolute hardest to look anywhere but at me, his gaze suddenly fascinated by a particularly interesting seagull on a nearby rooftop. He was a mountain of muscle and a master of the battlefield, but at that moment, he just looked like a big, dumb, embarrassed kid.

Just as I was about to really lay into him, a voice oozed into the air beside us. "I hear you're looking for horses, my friends?"

We turned. It was the elf logistician from earlier. But now, without his scroll, he looked completely different. His expression of boredom had been replaced by the slimiest, greasiest smile I had ever seen on any living creature. It was a smile that promised cheap goods and a long-term infection. His voice was just as bad, a slick, oily tone that made my skin crawl. Every beautiful, noble, pointy-eared image I'd ever built up in my head about elves shattered into a million greasy pieces.

"I know exactly where you can find some," he said, his smile widening.

"Arden," I told the orc, shaking his hand. I got a gruff "Grak" in return as I turned to follow the slimy git.

He led us away from the main thoroughfare, down a narrow, refuse-strewn alley behind the leering fish tavern. There, tied to a rickety post, stood two of the saddest-looking animals I had ever seen. The elf had only two. As if he'd been waiting specifically for a party of two desperate idiots.

One of the horses was… okay. A bit sway-backed and tired-looking, but it was recognizably a horse that could probably walk in a straight line. The other one, however, was a tragedy on four legs. It was skeletal, its ribs a prominent xylophone beneath a dull, patchy coat. One of its eyes was cloudy, and it was wheezing with a sound like a rusty bellows. It looked like it had already lost a debate with a glue factory and was just waiting for the paperwork to clear.

"The finest horses you'll find this side of the continent," the greasy elf said, completely unashamed, spreading his hands in a grand gesture.

Aster stared at the sickly horse. "This animal looks like it's about to die."

"Nonsense! He has spirit! A fire in his belly!" the elf countered. The horse chose that moment to let out a long, wet, rattling cough that sounded distinctly final.

"We can just take a carriage," I said, sounding more hopeful than I felt.

The elf's greasy smile never faltered. "Ah, a shame. All the big cargo carriages are still loading. None will be leaving for Oakhaven until midday tomorrow."

"We can walk," Aster said, his jaw tight. "It can't be that bad."

"A few hours, at least," the elf chirped. "Through the Whisperwood. Gets awfully dark in there once the sun sets." He gestured to the sky, where the sun was already beginning its slow, orange descent. "Not many travelers fancy spending a night in the Whisperwood. Goblins, you know."

I was still reeling at the 'Goblins' bit while Aster looked at the setting sun, then at the dying horse, then at me. His face was a mask of grim resignation. We were trapped.

With no choice, we bought the horses. I obviously got the sick one; Sir Aster's hundred-plus kilos of pure muscle would have snapped its spine like a twig. As Aster went to pay the man, I saw him open his coin pouch. He gasped, a tiny, sharp intake of breath that he immediately tried to control, but I saw it. Our funds were dangerously low. The elf had fleeced us completely. He counted out the coins, his movements stiff with anger, and we set off.

Of course, I had no idea how to ride a horse.

I tried to mount the creature, missed the stirrup completely, and ended up half-hugging its ribcage like an idiot. Aster had to come over, his face a thundercloud of frustration, and practically lift me into the saddle.

"You were always a poor rider, my lord," he grumbled as he adjusted my feet in the stirrups, "but not this bad. Did you forget everything?"

It was a small mercy that the original Aldric had also been a useless equestrian, but the comment still stung my fragile pride. We set off, leaving the port behind and following a track that could barely be called a path, winding its way into the deepening twilight of the woods. My new horse, whom I had mentally named 'Cockroach,' plodded along with all the enthusiasm of a man on his way to his own execution.

We rode in silence for a while, the only sounds the clop of hooves and Wheezy's worrying death rattle. The easy banter was gone, replaced by a heavy, oppressive mood. We were in a new land, nearly broke, and riding into goblin-infested woods on a horse that was actively trying to decompose beneath me. My grand adventure was off to a spectacular start.

After a few minutes, Aster guided his horse alongside mine. His expression was serious, the frustration gone, replaced by a grave solemnity that sent a shiver down my spine.

"I have something for you, my lord."

 

[MoonyNebulous]

Aster reined his horse closer to mine, the animal's steady gait a stark contrast to the rattling death-march of my own skeletal mount. The silence on the path had stretched, filled only by the chirping of insects and the wheezing of my horse's lungs. Aster's face, usually a mask of stoic duty or flustered embarrassment, was now etched with a profound solemnity in the fading light.

"My lord," he said, his voice low and heavy, a boulder rolling through the quiet evening. "There is something I must give you."

He reached into the same small leather pouch he'd paid the greasy elf from. I watched, my curiosity piqued. What could it be?

For a moment, he fumbled, his large, calloused fingers clumsy with a task more delicate than cutting a man in two. Then he took it out.

It was a ring.

He held it out to me on his open palm. It was a simple band of what looked like polished silver, but it had a strange quality, seeming to drink the twilight rather than reflect it. There was no gaudy gem, only a delicate, deeply etched motif that wound around its circumference: a green river, twisting and turning, intertwined with the branches of a mighty oak tree.

The sigils of House Verderan.

"House Verderan's artifact, my lord," he said, his voice thick with reverence.

I reached out and took it from him. The metal was cool and impossibly smooth, heavier than it looked. I had no idea what metal it was.

As my fingers closed around it, a wave of sarcastic relief washed over me; a complete opposite to the atmosphere that had settled around.

"Ah," I said, a dry smirk on my lips. "So when you gasped at your money pouch earlier, you weren't having a sudden realization about our poor financial straits after being swindled by a wannabe loan shark?"

Aster's solemn expression shattered, replaced by a sputtering indignation. "What!? No, no, my lord! We have quite a bit of money. The pouch I paid from was just for travel expenses. I have quite a few gold coins hidden away. House Aerhart may have fallen, but our coffers were deep, our resources considerable. Your father was a man of great foresight, he ensured…"

And he was off. The man launched into a full-blown spiel about the glory, honor, and surprisingly robust financial planning of my ancestral house. It was the perfect cover. As his voice droned on, a comforting, predictable lecture on family pride, I focused my complete attention on the ring in my hand.

And, as if it had been waiting for just this moment, the next package of Aldric's knowledge was delivered directly to my brain.

The Artifacts.

They were legends – well not quite so since I was holding one in my hand – heirlooms of immense power and mystery. Only the great houses, the seven Paramounts who ruled the major regions of the empire, possessed one. They were relics from a bygone era, remnants of a great dynasty that had risen and fallen long before the eastern empire– the 'Solar Empire' had stamped its iron boot on the world. They had the power to grant their wielders incredible abilities, to turn the tide of battles, to shape the very fabric of the world.

Or at least that's what people said.

Because there was a catch, a massive one. For all their legendary power, not a single one of the current paramount lords knew how to use them. Over the millenia, the knowledge had been lost. The artifacts were little more than shiny symbols of authority, ceremonial trinkets brought out for coronations and parades.

They clearly required some sort of catalyst, a key to unlock their potential, but it was all lost now. The people of this age were like monkeys trying to operate a supercomputer.

Except, the lore-dump noted with a grim certainty, for one. The royal family themselves, House Solmere. Theirs was a scepter of obsidian and starlight, sounds all fancy, yes, but they knew exactly how to use it. It was the foundation of their power, the unspoken threat that kept their squabbling, powerful vassals in line.

My fingers trembled slightly as I slid the Ring of the River and Oak onto the ring finger of my right hand. It was a perfect fit. The moment the cool metal settled against my skin, I felt it. A subtle pull in my entire being. Something was trying to pull me apart, but not violently so, and it was certainly not uncomfortable.

Simultaneously, the translucent blue screen of the System flickered in my vision. A new line of text appeared below my stats.

[Equipped: ??? Ring]

And that was it. No item description. No stat bonuses. No pop-up proclaiming 'You have equipped the Legendary Ring of Friendship and Teamwork! +10 to Coolness!' Just three god damn question marks. The System could recognize that it was something, but whatever ancient power resided within the ring was beyond its ability to identify.

Seriously? I thought, my frustration bubbling over. Aren't isekai protagonists supposed to get an 'Observe' skill or something? A cheat that lets them see what everything is? What kind of budget-rate, bargain-bin System did I get stuck with? This is such bullshit!

"…and your father, Aldren, he was such a close friend, too!"

I blinked, pulled from my internal rant. Aster was still going, his voice now softer, filled with a wistful, nostalgic ache.

"I loved him so much," he continued, his gaze distant. "We practically grew up together, played together all the time as boys…"

He was doing it again. He made these kinds of comments all the time, these deeply emotional, borderline romantic declarations about my father. It was getting… suspicious. I sometimes wondered if there had been something more going on between the cheerful, but duty-bound Lord Aldren Aerhart and his fiercely loyal sworn shield.

It was a bizarre and taboo thought, and one I immediately felt disgusted for having. I'll have to ask Mom about this someday, I mused, before the full weight of that thought hit me.

Mom.

My Mom.

The realization was a physical blow, a punch to the gut that knocked the air from my lungs. How? How had I gone all this time – the escape, the boat, the planning, the sheer, selfish focus on my own survival and my new 'adventurer' career – without once properly thinking about her?

While I was here, on a trans-continental vacation from reality, she was still back there. Trapped. Alone. Maybe worse.

She wasn't really my mother, not in the life I remembered, but she was Aldric's. And this was my life now. Her fate was tied to mine. The sudden, crushing guilt was immense.

"Did my mom give it to you?" I asked, my voice quiet, cutting straight through his rambling speech.

The question seemed to kill his nostalgic mood instantly. The wistful light in his eyes vanished, replaced by a somber shadow. He nodded, his jaw tight.

"Yes, my lord. My lady Maelis… she caught me right before our final stand, as the Blackwing's lines were about to crash against our own." He looked down at his hands, which were clenched tightly on his reins. "She was the one who made me swear the oath. That if things… if the day was lost, I had to save you above all else. To get you away, no matter the cost."

He took a deep breath, the sound ragged in the quiet air. "She was supposed to escape, too. She had made arrangements. Lord Oren has been in correspondence, House Marinth had agreed to host her at Stormcoast. Lord Arden had been on very good terms with the westerners." He finally looked at me, his blue eyes filled with a desperate, painful hope. "I can only pray she was able to make it there safely."

My thoughts, my entire being, focused on her. Aldric's memories, once a jumble of facts and faces, now coalesced around a single, luminous image, bringing her to the forefront of my mind.

Lady Maelis Aerhart, nee Verderan.

She was– is– beautiful. Not in the delicate, pretty way that I apparently was, but with a fierce, noble beauty. She had the dark hair of the Verderan line, but her eyes were a warm, gentle brown. I remembered her smile, the way it could light up a room. I remembered the scent of dried herbs and old books that always clung to her robes.

Aldric's memories supplied my parents' story, an otherworldly fairy tale.

My father, Aldren, had courted her while he was squiring under Lord Verderan in his youth. Her father, the old Lord Paramount, had grown quite fond of the earnest, honorable young man from his most loyal vassal house. He saw the love between them, and despite the fact that his only daughter and heir could have secured a far grander political alliance, he'd given them his blessing.

It had been a beautiful marriage, one of the rare ones in their world – or any world really – born not of politics or duty, but of genuine, deep-seated love. They were partners in every sense of the word. They ruled the Aerhart lands together, they raised their son together, and they faced the world together. A perfect, happy family.

And the Empress had ruined it all. And for what? Ambition? Greed?

She had murdered Maelis's father, stolen her son's birthright, and killed her husband.

All of Aldric's grief, all his pain and loss, which had been a distant, academic thing to me until now, crashed down on me with the force of a tidal wave. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a story. This was a tragedy. My new mother was a fugitive, her fate unknown. My new father was dead. And I was all that was left of their love, a pale, weak imitation of a boy, clutching a magic ring I didn't know how to use, riding a dying horse into a strange land.

The weight of the silver band on my finger felt immense. It was no longer just an unidentified item in my inventory. It was my mother's last hope. My grandfather's legacy. My stolen birthright.

The grand, fantasy adventure I had planned, full of leveling up and chasing elf girls, suddenly felt childish and hollow. There was a real quest now, a real purpose.

Find my mother. Avenge my father. Take back what was stolen from us.

But first, I had to survive. I had to get stronger. Stronger than the boy who couldn't even lift a single longsword.

I looked at Aster, at the immense, guilt-ridden warrior beside me. We were two broken remnants of a fallen house, bound by duty, honour and life to a woman we both prayed was still alive.

"Stormcoast," I said, the name feeling like a prayer on my lips. "We'll get strong enough, Aster. And then we'll go find her."

He nodded, a single, grim affirmation. A new resolve settled between us, silent and unbreakable, as we rode on into the darkening evening.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The world was painted in shades of purple and orange as the sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows from the trees of the Whisperwood. It all looked ominous, and thankfully we hadn't run into any goblins. Although, I had to admit – I was intrigued. Real, honest-to-god goblins. Who wouldn't be? But in any case, we made it. Somehow, against all odds and medical science, we had made it.

My horse, my noble, wheezing Cockroach, had carried me all the way to the town limits of Oakhaven with the grim, rattling determination of a true hero. He had coughed, he had stumbled, he had nearly given up the ghost a half-dozen times, but he had not fallen. I was starting to like the pathetic creature.

He was a kindred spirit; frail, out of his depth, but too stubborn to die.

We passed a rough-hewn wooden sign that read 'Welcome to Oakhaven.' It was here, at the threshold of our new beginning, that Cockroach finally decided his work was done. He took one last, shuddering step onto the town's muddy main street, let out a final, mournful sigh that sounded suspiciously like the word 'finally', and collapsed in a heap of skin and bone.

He didn't die. He just… gave up. He folded his legs neatly beneath him and lay down, his one good eye blinking at me with an expression of profound finality. As if daring me to say anything. I slid off his back without complaints, landing awkwardly in the mud.

Aster dismounted from his own, much healthier horse and stared down at the collapsed animal. "Well," he said, his voice utterly flat. "He had spirit."

"He did," I agreed, patting Cockroach's bony neck. "He really did." I wasn't even mad. The little guy had earned his rest.

We unburdened the poor beast of our saddlebags, leaving him to his well-deserved retirement in the middle of the street, and took our first proper look at Oakhaven. If Cockroach decided to run off into the woods for retirement, I say he deserves it.

The town was exactly as I'd pictured it; a place born of necessity, not artistry. There were no grand stone facades or elegant spires. The buildings were sturdy, timber-framed structures, none rising above two stories, their wooden walls weathered grey by sun and rain. Muddy streets were crisscrossed by raised wooden planks that served as sidewalks. As dusk deepened, a man with a long pole was making his way down the street, lighting the oil lamps that hung from iron hooks on the street corners, their warm, flickering glow pushing back the encroaching darkness. It was a quiet, functional, profoundly unremarkable place.

"It's too late for the guild now," Aster said, his voice a low rumble beside me. He had slung both sets of saddlebags over his shoulder, looking more like a porter than a legendary knight. "They will be closed until the morning. We should find an inn."

That part was easy enough. There weren't many options. We passed a blacksmith's shop, its forge now dark, and a general store with its windows shuttered. Halfway down the main street, we found what we were looking for: a large, two-story building with light and the low murmur of conversation spilling from its front door. A simple, unpainted wooden sign hanging above it depicted a single, muddy boot. Originality, it seemed, was not Oakhaven's strong suit.

We pushed open the door to 'The Muddy Boot' I suppose, and stepped inside. The common room was warm and smelled of woodsmoke, spilled ale, and a rich, meaty stew. A handful of patrons were scattered around the room; a pair of human trappers quietly nursing their drinks, a dour-looking dwarf staring into the fire, and a couple of locals who looked like farmers. It was a quiet, weary atmosphere.

Behind the long wooden bar, a woman was wiping down a tankard with a damp cloth. She was middle-aged, with a stern face, grey-streaked hair pulled back in a severe bun, and thick arms. She looked up as we entered, her eyes giving us a quick, professional once-over that seemed to assess our net worth, our capacity for troublemaking, and our personal hygiene all in a single, unimpressed glance.

"Looking for a room?" she asked, her voice as flat and sturdy as the oak bar she stood behind.

"Yes, ma'am," Aster replied, his deep voice drawing the attention of the other patrons for a moment before they dismissed us and returned to their drinks. "One room, for the night."

"Five coppers. Pay now. No breakfast," she said, not missing a beat in her wiping.

Aster placed the coins on the bar. She swept them into a wooden box without even looking, then jerked her head towards the staircase. "Second door on the right. Don't bring no mud upstairs."

"We'd also like to eat," I chimed in, my stomach rumbling at the smell of the stew. Thinking back to Mari's recommendation, a small sliver of hope for a decent meal bloomed. "Do you have any spiced boar?"

The matron stopped wiping. She slowly raised her head and fixed me with a dead-eyed stare. "Do I look like a woman who has spiced boar?"

I suddenly felt very small. "Uh… no?"

"Then I don't," she said, and went back to her tankard. "Stew's three coppers. It's got rabbit in it. You want it or not?"

"Two bowls of stew," Aster said quickly, giving me a subtle nudge to shut my mouth.

We took a table in a corner, and a few minutes later the woman brought over two steaming bowls of thick, brown stew and two hunks of dark bread. It wasn't spiced boar, but it was hot and filling, and after the last three months, it tasted like the finest meal I'd ever had. The weight of the journey, the constant fear, the heavy burden of my parents' fate – it all seemed to lift just a little in the simple warmth of the tavern.

We were halfway through our meal when the tavern door opened again, letting in a gust of cool night air. A hobbit bustled in, a wicker basket filled with plucked chickens slung over his shoulder. He was younger than the one I'd seen at the port, with a mop of unruly brown curls and a bright, cheerful face that seemed entirely out of place in the somber tavern.

"Marta, my love! Your poultry has arrived!" he chirped, setting the basket down on the bar with a flourish.

The stern matron, Marta, didn't even look up. "You're late, Tillo."

"Ah, but perfection takes time! Old Man Hemlock's chickens are the plumpest in the valley, and they do not surrender their feathers easily," he said, his voice full of theatrical drama. He leaned conspiratorially over the bar. "Did I ever tell you about the time one of his prize roosters…"

He was cut short by the appearance of a man from a doorway behind the bar, presumably leading to a basement. He was huge, even taller than Aster, with a great, bushy beard and a gentle, placid face. He was wiping his hands on an apron.

"Quickwick," the giant rumbled, his voice deep but without any real heat. "What did I tell you about chatting up my wife, you little rascal?"

The hobbit, Tillo Quickwick, just beamed at him. "Borin, my good man! I can't help it. Your wife is the most charming woman in Oakhaven. Her wit is as sharp as her ale is strong!"

Marta, the supposedly charming woman, grunted without cracking a single muscle in her face. Tillo's eyes then scanned the room and landed on us. Newcomers. His eyes lit up like a pair of lanterns.

Before I knew it, he had abandoned his delivery and was standing by our table.

"Well now, this is a surprise!" he said, practically vibrating with excitement. "We don't get many new faces in Oakhaven. Especially not ones as… mismatched as you two." He gestured between me and Aster. "One of you looks like he could wrestle a bear, and the other looks like the bear would apologize after accidentally bumping into him."

I choked on a piece of bread. "Excuse me?"

Aster just raised an eyebrow.

"No offense meant, none at all!" the hobbit said quickly, waving his hands. "Just an observation. I'm Tillo Quickwick, by the way. Purveyor of fine goods and town gossip, at your service."

"Arden," I said, deciding to play along. "And this is my friend, Kellan."

"A pleasure!" Tillo said, pulling up a spare stool and plopping himself down without invitation. "So, what brings a man of means and his… friend… to a quiet little place like Oakhaven? You're not tax collectors, are you? Because if you are, Borin's been hiding his best brandy in the third barrel from the left in the cellar."

"We're not tax collectors," Aster said, his tone making it clear that the conversation was nearing its end.

Tillo was undeterred. He turned his full attention to me, his bright, inquisitive eyes seeming to peer right through my carefully constructed alias. "You don't look like a merchant's son. Too clean. And you definitely don't look like a soldier. Too… well, you know." He gestured vaguely at my noodle-like arms.

I sighed. "We're here to join the Adventurer's Guild."

The reaction was instantaneous. Tillo's jaw dropped. His eyes went wide with a mixture of shock and something that looked like pure, unadulterated envy. "The guild? You're going to be… adventurers?" he whispered the word like it was a holy secret.

"That's the plan," I said.

"Sweet stars and savory pies," he breathed. "I knew it. I knew you were different." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping. "You're just like me."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"

"Yes!" he insisted. "Stuck in a place you don't belong. You've got that look in your eye. You're meant for more than this place, more than hauling chickens and haggling over the price of turnips. You're meant for… adventure! Danger! Excitement!" He sighed dramatically, slumping in his stool. "The most exciting thing that's happened here all year was when a cow fell in the well. It took them three days to get it out. The water tasted of beef for a month."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. This dude was hilarious!

"You have to let me show you the way," Tillo said, his energy increasing even more. "The guild hall isn't much to look at, but the Guildmaster, a dwarf named Borin is the best you could ask for." My head snapped up, "The guy behind the counter?" I asked, because there was no way that guy was a dwarf.

There was a beat as we both just stared at each other, he was the first one to laugh. "No, no… another one… Borin Balin. He is a piece of work. I'll take you there myself! Tomorrow, at noon. I'll meet you right here."

"We'd appreciate that, Tillo," I said, smiling.

"TILLO QUICKWICK, YOU GET YOUR HAIRY-FOOTED ARSE BACK HOME RIGHT NOW!"

The shriek came from the tavern doorway. A young hobbit girl, with the same unruly brown curls as Tillo and a furious expression on her face, stood with her hands on her hips.

Tillo jumped as if he'd been struck by lightning. "Lily! I was just… conducting business!"

"Business my foot! Mom says if you're not home in five minutes, she's using your best pipe for kindling!" she yelled, before disappearing back into the night.

Tillo shot to his feet, a look of sheer panic on his face. "A man's pipe is sacred!" he squeaked. "I have to go! Noon tomorrow! Don't be late!"

And with that, he was gone, a whirlwind of apologies and promises, leaving the tavern to its previous, quiet state. Borin chuckled from behind the bar, and even Marta's stern face seemed to soften, just a fraction of an inch.