Long Live the Emperor: Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Despite no longer being the baron in charge, Alvin found there was no end of work for him to do. The first thing Alvin did was check his library for fiction and held his breath in hope. He wasn’t sure if he’d find what he was looking for, but Aldrich hadn’t wasted all his money on books little better than infomercials.

There were a few romance novels tucked away on the bottom of his shelves. From the dust on them, they hadn’t been read in many years, but they would have to do.

He needed to learn how a man in this world might court a woman, and he had to learn it fast. His entire future depended on Mabel liking him, so Alvin would have to play his cards right with her. He’d avoid her for a few days until he had a plan to avoid ruining things.

“Aldrich, I’ve been going through your collection of training swords. You’ve got quite a little armory for yourself! And your training yard is far better equipped than I expected. I was hoping you could run me through some of your drills if you have the time?” Mabel wrung her fingers hopefully.

“I’d love to,” Alvin said, eyes darting up from his copy of the Lusty Argonian Maid. “But I can’t right now. Terribly busy.”

Alvin didn’t have the slightest idea what Alvin’s training swords looked like, nor what running Mabel through a training drill would involve.

“Oh... maybe some other time then...” Mabel’s shoulders slumped, and she turned away, casting one last curious glance at the spine of the book Alvin was reading.

Alvin realized he’d also need to find an explanation for never practicing in the training yard. Aldrich apparently went to the training yard religiously. People would note his absence. Maybe he could claim he was busy helping reorganize things after the change in management? But that would only be so long. Perhaps it would be better to fake an injury? He could fall down the stairs or something and wrap his sword arm in some bandages. That would buy him a few weeks.

Alvin planned to try both in that order. After that, he’d either need to fake another injury or devise a more permanent solution.

In the meantime, there was a lot of work to do.

While Alvin was hard at work doing research, the barony was changing daily. Count Grandhill brought his own people to administrate the barony and get things in order after the hectic chaos of being invaded and conquered. There were a few families who’d lost family members in the fighting or had their fields burned and livestock slaughtered for food, and all those claims had to be met. Fortunately, Count Grandhill was quite wealthy. It was simple enough to bribe the local peasantry into letting bygones be bygones and accept their new ruler with an open heart.

The merchants, on the other hand, were far more difficult to win over. They’d grown rather fond of Aldrich’s tax policy, which was to say they didn’t have to pay anything regardless of what they made. As a result, East Water had been populated with some rather impressive merchant guilds running their revenues through Aldrich’s tax haven to save on expenses in the other baronies, counties, and duchies they did business in.

Alvin was only vaguely paying attention to what was happening, but he was surprised to find they didn’t all pack up and leave when Count Grandhill’s men rounded them up and told them at swordpoint what tribute they would need to pay to their lord going forward. The rate must have still been reasonable since, after a few threats, only two of the large merchant guilds decided to leave altogether.

Count Grandhill also put up tolls on roads that had previously been free. He reclaimed a lot of the abandoned land around the barony that tenants hadn’t paid rent on in years. Aldrich had been lax on collecting that money, and gradually word had gotten around among them that they could just not pay him. The farmers who lived there were just as frustrated as the merchants, especially when Count Grandhill’s men demanded back rent for several years of payments missed.

Alvin didn’t envy Count Grandhill. Even he didn’t have the coin to bribe everyone into liking him, and there would always be those who remembered the good days under Aldrich with longing. But Count Grandhill must have sensed trouble brewing on that front because he kept his men patrolling the barony on a daily basis keeping an eye on any trouble from the town’s wealthier residents, especially those of the yeomen and the tenants now paying rent again.

He’d even gone so far as to have his people tear through the incoming goods of several of the larger merchant guilds. One in the business of selling weapons had an entire ship’s worth of goods seized, which caused the guild to withdraw from both Alvin’s barony and Count Grandhill’s county. Alvin wasn’t sure that was the wisest of moves, since a weapons merchant guild seemed like a good ally to have on hand. Still, Count Grandhill seemed like he knew what he was doing, and perhaps he could use one ship’s load of weapons more than a longer-term relationship with a weapon’s guild.

Between keeping up to date with all the changes and reading every romance novel he could get his hands on as he prepared to woo Mabel, Alvin also spent a considerable amount of time with Clover. He needed more help Dreamwalking. That had gotten him into this mess in the first place, and while there was a lot to do here to fix his life in Aldrich’s barony, he still wanted his original body back. He’d only signed up for a temporary deal as a noble lord, and as far as Alvin was concerned, his real life was still waiting for him. All he had to do was pry his original body out of Aldrich’s grasp.

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you there,” Clover said.

“What is it?”

“Aldrich has hidden the natural tether that connected your two souls. He doesn’t want you to find him and has taken precautions to make it more difficult for you to find your original body.”

Alvin sighed. Of course, he’d prepare countermeasures. There had been a moment there when Alvin thought he’d gotten the upper hand on the noble lord. If he had a second chance and a bit more training from Clover, maybe he could pull off a win next confrontation. But Aldrich had cut that plan short.

“There’s no way to get back to my original body?” Alvin asked.

“I didn’t say that. If you were good enough, you could find your way through the dream realm on your own. But that will take time, practice, and strengthening your existence within the dreamscape.”

“Aldrich had a spirit with him, something like you, that let him change other metals into gold. Could I learn to do the same?” Alvin thought having a spirit like that with him would be useful. After all, gold seemed to be valuable in this world, though not quite as much so as in his old world.

“I will help you find the perfect, most adorable spirit, Master!” Clover promised. “But first, we have to train your soul, so you’re strong enough to handle her!”

“Her?”

Clover flashed Alvin a knowing smile, but said no more on the subject. So what time Alvin didn’t spend reading ended up being spent in his bed with his eyes closed, exploring the Dreamscape with Clover. Together, the two of them toured the broken-down old castle in the realm she called home.

There were a few demons to hunt nearby, and Clover killed them for him one by one. None were as powerful or as impressive as the snake she’d killed before, but Alvin ate them nonetheless on the promise that Clover said they would help his spirit adapt to spending time in the Dreamrealm and eventually taking on a spirit companion of his own just like Aldrich had.

Eventually, they came across a massive, terrifying rat with six arms. Clover killed it with a wave of her hand, and when it died, it shank down just like the snake did into an ordinary rat.

“Do I really have to eat it, though?” Alvin asked, eyeing a raw rat skewered by one of Clover’s giant thorns.

“Yep!” Clover said. “Just take a bite and grrr! It’s good!”

Her pretty lips mimicked tearing flesh off the rodent and eating it whole.

Just a few minutes ago, it had been as big as a bull and looked hungry enough to eat him. But now Alvin was going to eat it.

Alvin took a bite, shuddering as he got a mouthful of fur.

“And just how many of these things do I have to eat?” Alvin asked as he spat the fur out of his mouth. Some of it was sticking between his teeth.

“As many as you can! I remember we used to do this all the time!” Clover said happily. “Although usually, you enjoyed it a lot more. You had your favorite box of spices that you used for every meal.”

“Wait, spices?”

“Yeah, you’d roast those things over a fire in a pan with oil or butter and lots of funny spices I grew for you! I remember it smelled delicious...” Clover rubbed her belly.

Alvin dropped the rat.

“You mean to say I could have been cooking these things the whole time!?”

Note:

A bit of a cute little timeskip chapter.

I picked up this timeskip technique for Paladin 2 and have been using it a quite a bit more often since then, since I think it increases a book's pacing. I basically just show a few key scenes and then have exposition between them instead of going through how the characters got to where they are. It feels a little like putting the story on fast forward for a bit, which I think can be a good thing if you want to keep timescales realistic and have long periods where nothing happens. I may trim this down to just two days though or add stuff in this timeskip if the story feels too fast. Right now this is a bit of a break chapter between this and whatever is coming next.

I actually have to spend some time doing a bit of outlining on the next section, since I didn't plan to make it this far when I originally started testing the waters with this story. I'm not going to go as in depth as I would with my real novels, so there is a bit of danger that we get a sagging middle (a common problem with novels that aren't that tightly plotted). We'll see what happens though. I think I have a decent plot cooked up, at least something fun enough to explore the setting a bit more than we have.