My hair still felt a little damp as I entered the castle gates proper, puffing a little as I realized just how many stairs existed on my way in. The stones beneath my feet still felt unfamiliar to someone used to the pavement of the city, and I did reflect with a wry grin that running up stairs like this would’ve wiped my pre-transported self. I was certainly out of breath, but I was jogging up large, wide stairs that would’ve left me just as out of breath at a slow walking pace before. Not exactly a certificate of six-pack abs, but hey, it still felt nice.

  I was still grateful when I’d entered the castle proper and the nice, absurdly long rugs were more common underfoot than the harsh marble. I’d been a little worried about someone telling me off for my pace, but the guards apparently recognized me as a hero and were either very indulgent of my shenanigans or assumed correctly that I had someplace to be. By the time I’d reached the keep proper, popping back into town for the second time today, it had gotten to mid-evening, and I was hoping to get back before it became night time.

  Honestly, over the run, it did seem rather neglectful of the king to summon me to show off my powers so late at night and so insistently. At least, it seemed the sort of thing you’d send a horse over, or maybe… Could Ionos teleport me? He’d never mentioned teleportation, but if it was urgent, couldn’t he have sent a court magician?

  I didn’t want to tell the king how to do his job, but as I ran through the halls, and really thought about it, this kinda bugged me. By the time I came to my quarters, I thought about asking King Cesar if we could potentially avoid doing it this way as I came to the door to my very neglected room, realized I could really use a lock on the oaken door, and opened it…

  A figure was standing directly in the darkness and walked out of my own room with a grin hatched from my recent nightmares.

  “Well, if it isn’t my good friend. It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Noah?”

  I had managed to avoid hearing that voice for quite some time now, but I still had no trouble recognizing Victor’s sly tones. His voice had all the quality of a leopard I’d seen at the local zoo. Stealthy, intelligent, and very, very dangerous. I didn’t do much more than blink before he was a few inches from my face, and I instinctively backed away a few paces

  “Gotta say, I’m relieved you came when I called. I’ve been getting worried I pissed you off or something!” Vic told me with a happy grin across his face.

  For all that he was a mage, and for all that Vic was a wiry blonde, he still towered over me when he walked forward, staring down at me in a fashion that made me feel like I’d shrunk. He’d traded out the more ragged wizard garb for something that looked more like the best bathrobe I’d ever seen, dark blacks and reds for his robes. They didn’t appear to be particularly restrictive to his ability to move and I noticed he’d attached a couple belts to whatever this outfit was to keep it from flopping around. I didn’t notice all of this because I love fashion - I noticed it because it made it very easy for him to keep pace and put a strong hand on my shoulder to prevent me from moving further so easily. His hands were a little cold… I couldn’t tell if this was some threatening pulse of magic or just a case of Vic washing his hands frequently.

  “I-I came because I heard the king called me back here. He wanted to see my powers…”

  Victor stopped for a second, miming a look of exaggerated confusion before giving a laugh, placing a hand to his forehead with a natural motion to communicate playful exasperation.

  “The king…? Oh, geez, how’d the message get that garbled!” Victor loosened his grip, chuckling like it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “That’s my mistake, friend. I was talking to Calia a little earlier about how your little date went, and since you hadn’t come to see me, I was worried you’d forgotten, so I sent her to tell that old man Ionos - he’s your magic trainer, right? - that I’d like to talk to you whenever you had time!”

  My frown deepened as Victor kept his grip on me. “You know how games of telephone are, right? Or did you get to play in those, back in school?” He asked.

  “I wasn’t that unpopular!” I snapped back. “...I don’t believe you.”

  Victor cocked his head, letting me go as he took his hand off my shoulder and put it back in his pocket. “Oh, geez, Noah… why all this aggression? I guess we really aren’t getting along as well as I thought.”

  “I… listen, I need to get back to…” I trailed off nervously.

  “...Oh? You have places to be?” Victor asked. “You know, I was pretty surprised to see you haven’t really been by your quarters, but I suppose you’ve been staying elsewhere. It’d be a lot more polite for me to come to you if I’m going to bother you about having a chat. Why don’t you just show me where you’re staying? You know, so I know?”

  The words froze my blood like ice. I knew where he was going with this, and part of me wanted to tell him to sod off and kick him in the nuts. But I didn’t trust that look in his eyes, or that it’d end there. My brain screamed in anxiety that he’d end up using it as an excuse for self-defense, or to do something later to one of the Sherr family…

  I didn’t want to think about it, I just wanted it not to happen, so I spoke up with a lazy warble of “I… Actually, you know, now I think about it… I have some time!”

  “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear from my dear friend!” Victor replied, clapping his hands together for his accomplishment. “I don’t know if you know, but the rest of us have been practicing in the castle together. I’ve learned some interesting details about our enemies from the King and his guard. Apparently, even if the enemy is to come from without, they’ve actually left a lot of strays in their wake. Have you talked to anyone about monsters, so far?”

  I stifled an agonized sigh. “No, I really haven’t been working on that sort of thing. That really sounds like the enemies of, like, heroes.”

  “But Noah, you are a hero, aren’t you?” Victor asked with a smirk.

  “Four heroes, remember. The prophecy-”

  “Noah.” the elementalist replied with a voice that ran through my ears like silken shards of glass. “Noah, Noah, Noah. If the prophecy was so trustworthy, wouldn’t it have brought you up?”

  “...Maybe I’m not important to it?” I ask, not really wanting to follow the implications he was trying to put down. They left a rather uncomfortable knot in my stomach.

  “Or maybe you have a more minor role and it felt the need to not note the lesser hero.” Victor replied with a smooth reply. “Or perhaps now the summoning’s gone wrong, we need five now. Who knows? Or maybe it just was read wrong, or you’re omitted…”

  “Right, but that doesn’t mean any-”

  “-What I do know is that the hero summoning is real. And that these guys have a lot of monsters hanging about now that are left over from the last big war they had. There’s even a spooky castle out in a wasteland filled with all manner of leftovers! Everyone here in these little kingdoms just sits tight and leaves them alone. Let’s adventurers handle ‘em! Isn’t that interesting?” Victor stepped forward as he talked with passion, poking a finger into my chest.

  “Yep. Really cool.” I reply, making sure to dig my little finger into my ear as I pulled out the wax in reply. “I’m still a trash-tier class, remember? Nothing there’s changed.”

  Victor gave me a wink. “Maybe. But even if you don’t do things well, you sure do figure them out fast. After all, you already had a career plan laid out the day you got here practically, off doing some jobs… in town? Out of town?”

  Victor’s smile hung for a moment as he waited for confirmation that I did not give, folding his arms instead as he scoffed and continued. “...My point, Noah, is that the only things I believe in for this prophecy… is that it lead to us being summoned here, and that there’s a threat coming to suck the lives out of us. And that means it’s not just my curiosity that makes me want to see you grow into an excellent warrior for the party - it’s honestly my duty. Certainly, I don’t want to allow some belief in a prophecy to waste perfectly good resources when your poor life is on the line. If victory was set in stone, so’d be the rest of the thing, right?”

  My brain followed his logic a little… and then I remembered who I was talking to. Victor’s the guy who was willing to threaten people on a word, to bully someone the first day he met them. He was just looking for a lackey, and that meant I didn’t need to trust a word he said!

  “Anyways, Noah, I really did want to ask you about your powers. How’s your shapeshifting going? You did spec into shapeshifting like I asked you, right?”

  “Does it really matter?” I snapped. “You seem way more interested in my heroic abilities than anyone else on the planet.”

  “So that’s a no, then.” Victor replied, snapping his fingers. “Honestly, that’s hurtful, Noah. I just wanted you to be at your best. But you keep being dishonest with me. And being dishonest with me… well, it’s just not what should happen between friends. And I’m a lot less nice to people who aren’t my friends.”

  As Victor spoke, he got a little closer with every syllable, every step and statement calculated. With his face within inches of mine, my every sense was alive and on edge . Was he about to hit me? Would he use magic on me? Or had he already…? I was afraid, and I was alert…

  This sudden awareness saved me as I heard a pair of footsteps behind me, and heard a sound akin to when I heard Adam sharpening his knife on a whetstone.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  I jumped to the side. Metal danced across my ribs as I leaped away, pain rippling out like I’d just been kicked in the ribs as I grabbed for my side. The knife hadn’t cut, somehow, but I knew from the feeling of that sharp metal sliding across my body that it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  “HP reduced to 1! Farmer’s Heart activated!” a status window told me, as my body stiffened and I was sent tumbling. A silvery, knife glinted with impossible radiance above me as a robed figure stabbed for my ribs again! The was serrated, and black like a rock, rather than something metal. Just staring at it made me wince, as though I wasn’t meant to look at such a thing.

  Some reflex saved me as my left hand went for the sickle at my belt and caught the dagger a second before it blew a hole through my ribcage, the hook of the blade catching the knife’s edge.

  “A sickle…?” The robed man hissed. “Just stay still and die!”

  I managed to grab the man’s cape, trying to pull him away, but a strong punch to my jaw that gave me the unhelpful message of “hp -5” was all I got for my trouble. Tumbling down on top of me, He held one hand to my throat and flipped the grip on his knife, going for an overhand stab to the heart like I was some Aztec sacrifice. Some part of me, far better in a brawl than my brain was, told me this was my moment to strike, and I swung the flat of my sickle up and into his jaw.

  The iron of my weapon connected with a gross crunch, and I could see the blood behind his teeth as he gave an unsubtle scream. With his hand off my throat, I took the opportunity to throw him off my body and onto the floor, using the Momentum and my grip on his cape.

  Both of us stumbled to the nearest wall, clutching our face. That first knife-blow hadn’t hurt that badly, but it cut me down in hp. The punch to the jaw, on the other hand, was already causing my face to swell. I guessed negative HP was at least kind of like negative MP, but I also didn’t really have time to think about it mid life-or-death struggle.

  The gray-hooded assassin was quick to throw his off-hand forward, a jeweled ring sparking with fire that licked across his hand. “I’ll burn you to ash…!”

  With a sound like christmas bells, the fire sputtered, losing form as ice spread across the ring, and the assassin’s hand started turning from white, to red, to purple fast. I could feel the temperature drop as Victor spoke.

  “What do you think you are doing with my employee? We were having a meeting.” Victor spoke with an almost eager tone. “...Good work staying alive, Noah. You’re not useless after all. Now help me gut this guy.”

  I stumbled back, holding my sickle out towards the gray-cloaked assassin. It was hard to think about what to do next when I was fixated on how different the sickle in my hand looked covered in blood, the slick, crimson pieces of a human being… The thought made my stomach really want to release it’s contents, so I needed to focus on anything else.

  Well, my second thought after a moment was that with how I’d cracked him, I would’ve expected to see a tooth or two fly out. Did this have to do with the whole ‘HP’ thing? I didn’t really understand how fighting worked in this world, and the tension like a cold stone finally hit me as I remembered I was in a fight for my life.

  As our assailant pulled out some kind of flask and chugged the pale white liquid down in a fashion that’d have made some of the bros at the local college pump their fists in recognition, color returned to his body - and his arm. Victor was already halfway to speaking in a language I didn’t understand, holding a hand forward.

  The assassin charged forward, ducking low. Victor cast his hand straight out, and needles of translucent ice sprayed forward from it like an elemental shotgun. Shards stuck into the enemy’s cloak, but he held some kind of wand out and most of it turned to hot, bubbling water… all of which still splashed him in the face and caused him to cry out in pain. “Aghhh! Stop defending him! I’m trying to help you!” He spat at the mage.

  Victor’s response was simply to step forward, raise a fairly ornate cane I could have sworn he wasn’t holding a second ago, and send a wall of ice forward that smashed the assassin back, slamming the assassin into the wall and leaving me in awe. It didn’t hit me until now, still subconsciously thinking of Victor and I as equal since both of us had our own special powers…

  But no, Victor was in a class of his own. Well, because he was an elementalist, he was in a class of his own. Because no one else had that class. But in terms of abilities… I wondered if Calia and the rest were just as impressive? Watching Victor stride forward as the ice shattered against the wall, and the assassin was pulverized behind it, made me feel a lot more confident in my initial call. I was not going to be useful compared to the man who turned the absence of heat into his absolute bitch by summoning pretty ferns or swinging a sickle.

  I… thought, as the ice struck the stone and shattered, that it would have been pulverizing the guy behind it. Either this place really relied on video game logic, and his body’d disappeared, or something was wrong.

  “For the Leofric Commonwealth!” I heard the assassin’s voice behind me, filling my lungs with ice water, and I swung my sickle blindly behind me. Turning with an agility I’d never known in my life, The scythe in my hand met his dagger, and slapped it out of his hands. Adrenaline and blind instinct pushed me as I kept pressing him.

  “Hahh! Eahh! Yahh!” I screamed with every slash, advancing a step at a time as I pushed him back with rapid swings. I hadn’t so much as thrown a proper punch in my life before, but somehow I understood how to fight with this weapon, or rather, my body did. I recalled that this experience with farming had apparently given me a lot of skill with this weapon, and it was making up for my real inexperience as my body just fluidly moved through motions.

  My curved blade only reached air, though, my opponent dodging and weaving past every swing. He couldn’t get past my guard, and I wasn’t giving him enough time to cast anything, but all I was doing was pushing him back - and I could feel my breath starting to get heavy, my body filling with fire as my limbs screamed from the stress.

  “Damnit!” The knife-wielding lunatic yelled. “This isn’t how a druid’s supposed to fight!”

  “Raaagh!” I roared in impatience, throwing myself forward into a lunge, slashing for his neck, trying to get some kind of hit, some way out of this nightmare of a battle.

  The cloak tore instead, ripped off when my sickle’s tip caught on the neckline of the fabric. The face of my enemy was revealed - Red hair and pale skin on full display, and a familiar Crow stitched across his clothing.

  “You…!” I stuttered, as the world grew eerily familiar. I had seen him before - not in front of the stairs down to the basement floor of the castle, but back at the bakery, when I was talking to Calia earlier. The weird guy that left when I recognized him.

  There was no sign of bashfulness across his harsh features now, his face screwed up and distorted with rage “Me. The noble that’s going to save the world - from you!”

  My surprise slowed me down, as I dropped my sickle arm for a second, and the familiar assassin slipped a new and equally painful dagger he’d concealed right in between my ribs.

  This time, there was no numbing of the pain, and I somehow intuitively knew that my HP had just hit a very bad negative number. Whatever supernatural force was shielding me from previous attacks hadn’t helped me with this one, as I stumbled forward almost by surprise. Everything hurt with this piece of metal dug into my chest, and now every nerve was telling me to crumple and fall.

  A pair of words flashed before me, ones I’d seen before:

  You Are In Mortal Peril

  That meant I was probably dead, if I remembered how videogames worked. It had all been a few days worth of nothing before I was shanked. How… stupid. I wobbled on my legs as I thought of all these people I met, investing their time in me. Kings and heroes that had little time for me, a wizard who’d seen more, a simple group of commoners that had taken me in like I was their own.

  My lips curled up partway into a smile at the ridiculous anti-climax of it all. I felt bad for not leaving something behind to let the Sherrs know how to take care of Luster. But they didn’t know how. The thought buzzed in my head like flies as I realized no one here was going to take care of her. She was a friggin’ Giganotosaurus, something that was probably going to be treated as a monster without me by her side. And she’d just bonded with me today - I was in every way her father, and I was about to die on her.

  The smile died as I clenched my teeth hard - so hard blood spurted out. Somehow, this let me grab my footing - and grab my assassin by the shirt!

  “What the…?! Just die!” He snapped, but I pushed forward with every bit of muscle I’d earned from my recent work at the farm, every ounce of determination I’d built, and grabbed his shirt by the collar as I ran forward with a wordless cry of rage. There was a strength in my limbs I’d never felt before as things grew eerily clear, and I couldn’t feel the stab wound anymore. He was forced back, almost straight off his feet, and when he tried to grab the wall nearby to ground himself I just kicked one leg out from under him. I didn’t have a fancy plan, but I’d noticed one detail that might save me - or at least, end this absolute asshole - that he’d clearly missed.

  The Ravencroft noble in front of me hissed in frustration, pulling the blade he’d used to wound me to tear away his shirt from my arms, leaving me holding fabric. There was a panic that wasn’t there as he opted to turn around, trying to get away from me. I didn’t ask why, but I knew why he stopped as I planted my feet and charged him in a bull rush - tackling him with an anguished scream, I sent my assassin and myself careening down the stairs with every last bit of my energy.

  I couldn’t tell exactly how I landed - when my brain seemed to turn on a few seconds later, the only thing I was certain of is that the assassin’s arm wasn’t supposed to be bent that way, and for the first time since the start of this fight to the death, my enemy was in a lot more pain than I was.

  He spat his next words through bloodied teeth, getting it all over my face as I winced. “I’m… not going out… alone. They’ll remember… me…”

  The words passed through my brain but didn’t process. I didn’t have the ability to think about that, so I just continued what I was already doing, once I knew he was moving, and threw a hard punch for his temple, then another. Every single time, I felt like I had just one more whack in me. Every time, it felt that much harder just to raise my hand. Every time, I reared back for another blow. Hitting… this guy. Because he threatened me. Because he threatened my family!

  I was broken out of the cycle when he pulled something else out of his pocket, his hand seeming to stutter like it was lagging with every blow I’d hammered into him. It was missing the pin, and seemed to have a button that functioned like a jewel, but the strange, pineapple shape of it reminded me a lot of a modern grenade…

  “No!” Victor’s voice rang out, savage, and light briefly encased the world around me, enough sound to bust my ability to hear, enough light to leave me blind for a second. All I saw for a moment was the brightest mirror I’d ever seen, reflected all around me…

  I’d failed my one responsibility in the world, so I felt the need to apologize to Luster in that last moment, and yet, as I closed my eyes, waited for the pain and the end, it hadn’t come. Just a lot of… cold.

  And more unfortunately, as my ears turned back on, I heard a lot of screaming.

  “My arm! My gods-damned arm!”

  “Yes yes, blown to pieces. Good grief, after you got so dramatic about your death, just losing your arm makes you a snivelling wreck! You’re a disgustingly incompetent assassin, lucky for me.”

  That was the assassin’s voice, and then Victor’s familiar mocking tone I heard, and the latter made me realize I was cold for a reason. Cracks ran all across it, but somehow I’d been encased in a protective cocoon of ice, along with… most of my assassin. Whatever shell that had encased the both of us had stopped halfway along his arm, and it seemed to disappear under the rubble that was formed from the car-sized hole in the nearby castle wall

  “Hadn’t expected I’d ever need this for a bomb threat, but you’re welcome, Noah.” Victor replied.

  “I’d thank you… proper but… stuck…” I murmured, as my eyes started to get heavier, and I realized that the floor beneath me was still starting to get pretty scarlet.

  “Noah? Druid? Hey, wake up!”