Swiss Arms 85.5 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 85.5

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Before I left Fluelaberg on my tour around the entirety of the Compact and not just Chur, I wanted to do a little bit of skill grinding for all of the skills that I probably won’t be using. The skill at the top of this list was actually a new skill that I’ve developed lately.

[Disguise] LvL.3
I’m a woman. Honest!

Hides identity and reduces discovery

*1% reduction in disguise failure per level.

This was different from Stealth, which was a skill I’ve obtained that I’ve obtained around the same time that I obtained Orator skill.

[Stealth] LvL.17
Sneaky Beaky Like.

Reduces discovery
*0.75% reduction in discovery chance per level.
*Keep reduction when moving silently outside of enemy’s close vision

I haven’t had to use Stealth, so it’s level was very low, at least in comparison to my other skills. What was I going to do around Flelualberg that needed Stealth? Have quieter sex in my own personal castle? Well, I could, but I didn’t want to.

Speaking of sex, my skill for that … went up quite a lot.

[Sex] LvL 45
Wow. That felt good…! Now, let’s feel even better, because there is nothing better than nature’s own heroin.
*+1% pleasure felt for you and your partner per level.
*+0.025% chance of causing random orgasm in partner per thrust per level

At level 45, I was about to make Isabella cum her brains out thrice in ten minutes on average, twice from natural orgasm and once from random orgasm triggered by my Sex skill. This passive skill got a lot of use, but Stealth wasn’t something I used often. The last time I used it was when I had a midnight snack and didn’t want to get caught by Isabella.

But both Disguise and Stealth could be very useful skills in the future, so I wanted to train them up. Being so low level, I was certain that I could pump some levels into them before Isabella and I left for the tour.

How was I going to do it, though? Everyone recognized me, so my disguise wouldn’t work and I needed the disguise to work for me to gain experience! It also didn’t help that I was big even when I compared myself to well-fed and trained knights.

… Well, there was something that would work. Unlike many towns and cities of similar size, the influx of migrants was not canceled out by deaths due to poor hygiene, crime, and living standard. In fact, the natural baby boom from abundant wealth available even to newcomers saw that children under fourteen made up a good fifth of my city’s population.

That’s a lot of babies.

And babies and children don’t know my face as well as their parents do. On top of this, I had set up a service that finds and pays people to do communal babysitting. Sure, they wouldn’t be paid as much as most other jobs in the city but it was an “easier” job that many elderly can partake in. Of course, I also knew that some of those elderly were doing those jobs anyway before I set up the jobs, so they got paid.

It was not a medieval model of how communities and cities worked. I knew that. However, it was a popular job that ensured that the elderly did not overly burden their children and grandchildren. Even they have their own pride and being able to work even minutely made them feel better about themselves, especially if it was a job they would have done for their community anyway.

And who paid for this?

I did.

Or rather, since while I did collect tax from the less well-off folks, I just redistributed back into the community so that the community won’t frail and fall apart should something unexpected happen. Sure, humans and their societies were strong, but societies and communities still fell apart because of unexpected problems. Mitigating weak points so that such unexpected problems don’t cause a cascading collapse was what I did as a ruler.

So where was I going with this?

… Right.

If I disguised myself to the best of my ability and then introduced myself to one of the … non-Christian sub-communities as a helper sent by the baron, then I can work on both my disguise and gain more understanding about some of the least understood people within my town.

It’ll have to be quick, though, because I was leaving for the tour within the month.

---

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, don’t pull on the moustache-!” I hissed but the baby I was taking care of didn’t understand and pulled. The glue-attached moustache pulled at my skin and gave me an eye-watering pain.

And then the baby pulled harder.

“Ow ow ow ow -!”

---

I ducked underneath the rocks the horde of kids threw at me.

“Brats-!” I hissed as I got back up before ducking back down when someone threw a poop pot at me.

---

“I see, so there’s just not a lot of space for kids to play around in safely,” I hummed as I listened to a trio of mothers talking about what they felt about the state of their section of the city. This area, the non-Christian sector of the city, grew organically after the initial set-up. Because of this and a lack of zoning and infrastructure laws, people did what they do best and improvised.

A lot of the houses here were more ramshackle than the rest of the city and there were even tunnels being dug out by more enterprising miners looking to sell hollowed-out tunnels as homes for new families. Others chose to cut down trees and build by the steep valley walls without the actual engineering or construction know-how to ensure long-term stability of their buildings.

In essence, this place was slowly becoming a ticking time bomb. One bad fire will see not just here but the rest of the city burn.

And considering that this place was filled to the brim with my non-Christians, they were most likely going to be persecuted for something like a fire even if none of them were the ones to start it, intentionally or accidentally.

“Okay. I know the baron, and I’ll make sure to tell him what you women think. That’s a promise.”

The three mothers giggled.

… What did I say?

---

On the seventh day, I rested and looked at my skills.

[Disguise] LvL.11

[Stealth] LvL.20

… it wasn’t a great leap in skill level, but I’ll take it regardless.

-VB-

A/N: a more lighthearted chapter with a bit of citybuilding.