[LitF] 4. Of Bathtubs and Buckets (Patreon)

Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Next Chapter 

A month ago, Arthur would've thought poorly of the two-story brick inn. Today, it felt like he was in a palace grander than his father's.

A month ago, he would've felt shocked by the idea of taking a bath in the bedroom. Today, he marveled at being somewhere other than the cruiser carriage or a dungeon.

A month ago, he wouldn't have believed people used bathtubs instead of pools for bathing. Today, he had to hold back the tears of joy as he immersed himself in hot water.

To make things even better, Annie didn't scrub him as hard as the old maids. She was the only one who had come to assist him. It was her first time cleaning him instead of just drying him, and she seemed afraid of hurting him.

Arthur wouldn't have told her to scrub harder even if he could, but he also had the excuse of not being allowed to. Stinson had made it crystal clear that he expected sepulchral silence in the bathroom because contacting anyone might affect the prince's training.

The man obviously never explained how a simple chat could get in the way of increasing his stats, but Arthur didn't even care. He was too excited at stopping to smell like the inn's communal bathroom—which he passed by on his way to the bedroom.

The prince kept his eyes closed most of the time but occasionally opened them to look at Annie. It was good to see a familiar face after a month, even if she looked slightly different.

Her long red hair was kept in a bun like Tamara's. Her white servant clothes had more golden details than before, and he realized it might have to do with her station. Now that he thought about it, Tamara's clothes had the most golden details of all maids, and she was the head maid.

The extra golden colors and the hairstyle highlighted Annie's green eyes—

Oh. That's what his mother meant when she said the blue suit highlighted his golden eyes and hair!

No matter how often he glanced at her, Annie didn't look at him. She focused solely on cleaning him, her eyebrows furrowed. She also bit her lower lip from time to tip.

Arthur closed his eyes again...

...

...

"How long are you going to waste time there, boy?" Stinson suddenly said.

Arthur opened his eyes wide and sat upright. He was in the bathtub, but the water was cold, and Annie was gone.

"You dozed off," the commander informed and pointed at the bed. His formal suit had been there but was gone. It had been replaced with a paper package. "I was planning on giving you time to buy clothes after the bath, but you wasted it sleeping. By all rights, I should've just let you return to your suit as a lesson on effective time management, but Lieutenant Graham convinced me it's in my best interests to let you wear this self-cleaning anti-odor robe. You smelled and looked like a savage."

"Yes, sir," he replied.

Silence ensued, and Stinson raised an eyebrow. "What are you waiting for? A written invitation? Get dressed. You wasted enough time already."

Arthur felt a bit lost. Only the maids had seen him naked, and he felt uncomfortable changing that. He wouldn't have cared about it a few months ago, but his thoughts behaved strangely since his training started. He guessed it had to do with his increased wisdom.

The prince stared at the grand knight for a few moments, but the man just crossed his arms. Arthur gulped and stood up. The man didn't ever stop staring him in the eyes.

Feeling awkward, he walked toward the robe—

"What are you doing?" Stinson asked, and Arthur froze.

"Dressing up, sir?" the boy replied unsurely.

The commander pointed at a few wooden water buckets beside the bathtub. "Rinse the soap off."

A confused Arthur slowly moved toward the buckets. He didn't know people rinsed the soap off their bodies. His maids never did it to him. Was this a servant thing because he was a squire now?

Despite the confusion, he didn't ask for clarification. Stinson had made it clear that servants didn't question their superiors. While he had forgotten about it for a while, and Charlotte had been kind enough to answer his questions, he had learned his place after getting slapped.

Yet, he couldn't stop himself from paling in fear. What if he didn't rinse the soap properly? Would it offend Stinson? Would he get slapped again, or worse?

"Fate," the commander said, exasperated. "I didn't fully believe it when your head maid sent a letter suggesting that you might not know how to take a damn bath. Your bathing pool is enchanted to stop the soap from leaving the water. This bathtub isn't. Pull the bucket of clear water above your head and let the water fall on you. Scrub your body a little. Repeat until there are no buckets left."

Arthur silently obeyed. The water was much colder than the bathtub's. Three buckets later, a shivering Arthur stepped toward the bed.

However, he froze again when Stinson snorted derisively. When Arthur looked at the man, the commander nodded toward a towel lying on a nearby chair.

Blushing furiously from the shame of not knowing how to bathe by himself, Arthur awkwardly dried himself—some spots were so hard to reach!—then finally got to the package.

He unwrapped it to reveal a martial robe. It was dark gray on the outside and black on the inside, where he could also see countless inscribed white magic runes that proved it was enchanted.

He put it on. The martial robes the knights used in the palace's training grounds made the man look bigger, but while his robe was baggy, the thick fabric was highly malleable and kept close to his skin.

It felt amazingly comfortable.

"Don't forget this," Stinson said, throwing the leeching rope on the bed.

Arthur cringed in disgust but silently put it on.

Lastly, he put his golden leather shoes on. They fit perfectly, as they should; they were enchanted to grow with him.

"Let's go," the commander ordered, and the prince obeyed.

= - = - =

A few weeks later, Arthur was doing pushups when he got a notification.

| Natural Growth: Strength +1 → 4

It was the third time his strength had increased since the training started. His muscles contracted for a moment, and when it was over, they were slightly bigger and considerably more potent.

"Congratulations!" Charlotte cheered.

She always seemed to know when a stat increased. Arthur wondered if his muscles grew more than he thought or if she had the skills to spy on his stats. Maybe it was related to her vampire heritage? Or was it something all grand knights could do? And if they could do it, what was the purpose of hiding one's stats in the first place?

He wished he could ask.

"You now have at least four strength and vitality," she stated. In fact, he had six vitality; the horrible-tasting potions were very effective. "That should make you safe enough if the commander needs to run away with you at high speeds," she stated. "We can start working on your other stats now."

She extended her hand to the side, and it disappeared into the invisible boundary of her spatial storage. When she pulled it back, she was holding a book. Then she pulled another book, and another, and many more until they created a big pile on the floor.

The books were soon followed by all sorts of apparatus that she placed around the room. Closed wooden boxes of all sizes, a short bow, a straw dummy, a bunch of weird small intertwined metal bits, binoculars, a blindfold, small bells, and a glass jar as tall as Arthur, full of tiny wooden balls.

"From now on, you'll train a different stat every day," she declared when she was done. "Except for vitality, of course; you just need to keep drinking your potions to improve it. You can pick whichever stat you want when you wake up, but you'll have to go on a full rotation before repeating a stat."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well? What do you want to start with?"

He didn't have to think for too long to come up with the answer a good squire should give. "I would like to follow whatever order my father deems best, ma'am."

Something passed through her eyes when he said that, but it was too fast for him to recognize it. "His Royal Majesty has ordered you to pick them in the order you feel most comfortable with."

"Oh," he said. "In that case, I would like to start with magic, ma'am."

Everyone knew mages were inferior to knights. However, Arthur was tired of training his body so much. More importantly, if he had to choose between mind and mana specialization, he would pick the same as Charlotte. He would do anything not to become like Stinson.

"Good choice!" she said with a smile. "There are three mana-type stats: absorption, magnitude, and efflux. The higher your absorption, the faster you can pull mana into your body to replenish your reserves. The higher your magnitude, the more mana you can store within yourself. And the higher your efflux, the more of your stored mana you can move at once to cast spells. Pick one."

Arthur frowned. He had questions, but a good squire—

Stinson's harsh voice interrupted his thoughts. "Ask away, boy. From this point onward, you can ask as many questions as you want as long as they're related to your training or anything in your Fate's windows."

Arthur was astonished but happy. He wanted to know about so many things! He even had trouble picking the first question.

A few moments later, he decided to go with a simple but crucial question, considering he would be dealing with stats so much from now on.

"What does each stat do exactly, ma'am?"

Her answer surprised him. "You couldn't start with an easier question, could you?"

His surprise quickly turned into fear. Had he messed up? Would Stinson punish him for asking a complicated question? He hadn't known it was a tricky question!

"Sorry, ma'am!" he said quickly.

She smiled while shaking her head. "It's alright. We would need to broach the subject eventually." She took a deep breath. "Different people believe stats are responsible for all kinds of different things. Sages much wiser than me have researched the subject and never found a definite answer. What everyone agrees with is that each stat does at least two things, and most people also agree on what those effects are—for most stats, at least. We call them primary and auxiliary effects because the auxiliary effect is often there just to stop the primary effect from harming us."

She raised a finger. "The first stat is strength. It primarily affects your muscles to let you lift heavier objects. However, without a resistant body, your bones would break. Your very muscles could break them! So its auxiliary effect is making your bones more resistant."

"The entire body, not just bones," Stinson corrected. "The bones just benefit more from it."

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "I was getting to that. The rest of your body also becomes more resistant but to a much lesser extent. My eyelids are more resistant than an unawakened's calloused foot, but it's still just skin. High strength will never replace proper armor, so all knights improve their strength until they can easily wield their weapons and bear the weight of their armor. After that, it's primarily defensive fighters who invest in the stat.

"Any questions?"

Arthur nodded. "Ma'am, you said four strength and vitality will make me safe if Commander Stinson has to run away with me. Is that partly because of the extra resistance strength gives me?"

Charlotte smiled brightly. "Yes! Which takes me to the next stat." She raised a second finger. "Agility makes you faster. However, when you get fast enough, your mind just can't understand everything you're seeing and feeling. So agility's auxiliary effect is improving your reaction speed.

"That's not to be confused with thinking faster! Reaction speed means you unconsciously react faster to anything you see or feel. It requires a lot of training to be useful in combat.

"When two fast knights are fighting, they often must react to each other's actions without being able to think things through. Skills help, but it usually comes to who has more experience and can use counter-techniques better.

"Anyway, the commander can run so fast you could die just from his sudden moves or the air resistance without a minimum resistance threshold. The minimum vitality is there in case you get hurt. We want you to heal instead of just dying—we'll talk about it next.

"Questions about agility?"

Arthur shivered at his life or death being so easily discussed like that but suppressed the fear. Knights don't fear anything. He focused on the subject at hand instead.

"Is that why knights are always training, ma'am?" he asked. The palace's training grounds were always brimming with knights. "So they can use their agility?"

The lieutenant nodded. "That, too. Anything else about agility?"

"No, ma'am."

She raised a third finger. "Vitality primarily improves your regeneration abilities and overall health. Its auxiliary effect is the most disputed among all stats. A higher vitality makes you immune to food poisoning, venom, and harmful substances in general, which many think are part of the auxiliary effect. However, many others argue those things are just side-effects of the primary effect, though they can't tell which the auxiliary effect would be instead. I haven't reached a conclusion about which theory I believe in."

She asked if he had any questions, he said no, and she moved on. "Those three stats are of the body type. The higher they become, the more beautiful—"

"Less imperfect," Stinson interjected.

She paused and looked at her father. "What?"

"High body stats push the body toward physical perfection to make the awakener body use its stats more effectively," he explained while turning to look at his daughter. "Fate doesn't care about how beautiful an awakener is. It just happens that the same process that makes a body more symmetrical also removes blemishes, and most humanoid races consider it a beauty enhancement. Not all; dwarves, for one, find beauty in unsymmetrical faces and moles and drink potions to prevent them from getting 'fixed.'"

"You skipped that explanation when teaching me, sir," Charlotte said sternly.

He smiled slightly. "Your mother told me you were enamored with Lord Mayfair's heir, but he said you were too ugly to become his lady. You had started slacking off on your training at around the same time. I didn't lie to you; I just ensured you would pay utmost attention to the most relevant part."

"I taught Lucius wrong, sir!" she complained.

Stinson was unfazed. "And whose fault is it not to research a subject before imparting it to others, including the crown prince?" He turned her back to her and looked through the window again.

The lieutenant clenched her jaw, looked furiously at her father's back for a while, then took a deep breath and raised a fourth finger.

"Perception, Your Boyness," she continued, "is the first of the mind-type stats. It primarily improves your five senses. Too much sensory information would confuse instead of helping, so the stat also makes it easier for you to process everything and pay full attention to more senses simultaneously."

She didn't ask if he had any questions this time; she raised a fifth finger and moved on. "Intelligence makes you capable of holding more knowledge without forgetting anything. However, too much information would make you lost, like a lonely boy looking for a scroll in the Golden Library. Thus, its auxiliary effect makes it easier and faster to think of the things you know."

She raised a sixth finger—obviously using another hand for that. "Wisdom makes it easier for you to understand things. Auxiliarily, it improves your logical capabilities. Almost everyone improves intelligence and wisdom together. There are different suggested ratios depending on your goals."

Arthur wanted to ask what "logical capabilities" meant or how the auxiliary effect helped an awakener not get hurt by the primary effect.

However, Stinson spoke before he did, "Many disagree on which is the primary and which is the auxiliary effect."

"As you can see, the commander is once again enlightening us to the failings in my understanding," Charlotte growled. "How intelligent and wise he is! A paragon among mind specialists!" She was so upset that Arthur thought it better to just let go of his questions instead of saying anything. "Now, unless I was taught wrong, raising your mind-type stats improves your willpower. In other words, your conviction won't falter as easily."

She looked pointedly at the commander's back, who said nothing. The lieutenant sighed and raised three fingers at once, for a total of nine.

"The last three are the mana-type stats. I already told you about some of it.

"Absorption is how fast you can take mana from the environment. No one knows what's its auxiliary effect, but only idiots think there is none.

"Magnitude is how much mana you can store in your body. However, mana can be harmful, so it auxiliarily makes you more resistant to mana. Thank Fate, it doesn't make it any harder to absorb or use mana.

"Finally, efflux determines how much space your mana can occupy when you push it out of your body. That would be annoying without the ability to push more mana out of your body, so it auxiliary lets you do that. You'll notice I taught you differently a few moments ago; I said it lets you move more mana and stopped at that. It's just easier and more intuitive to explain it like that. You won't understand your efflux limits until you feel them."

"That should be about it. Questions about mana stats?"

"What do we gain by raising them, ma'am?"

"Oh, right, I forgot. It improves your mana sense, letting you feel each particle of mana more clearly and from further away. You probably can't even feel mana outside your body right now due to your low mana stats. Anything else? No? Good."

She pointed at the floor. "Sit down so we can continue your training." Arthur complied. "You chose to train 'magic,' which isn't a stat. It isn't even the correct terminology; it's mana stats, not magic stats. Magic is what we make with mana instead. Training either of the three mana stats will involve different internal exercises while meditating. Absorption will also involve a breathing exercise. Which one do you want to start with?"

"Magnitude, ma'am," he said. If mana could be harmful, he wanted to improve his resistance to it first.

"Increasing your magnitude is all about increasing your internal mana density. Close your eyes and feel your mana. The last time you felt it, you pushed it out of you. This time, focus on pushing it inwards. Try to pack the mana in your body more tightly, as much as you can..."

Arthur obeyed.

= - = - =

Raising mana stats turned out to be much more enjoyable than Arthur expected.

There was a sense of peace that came with it that he had never felt before. It was as if his thoughts became calmer, silent. He wasn't as distracted by them as usual.

The effect was so pronounced that he barely believed he didn't fall asleep in utter boredom, despite each mana stat having only one invariable training exercise.

Magnitude training was only pushing his mana inwards to make it tighter. Absorption required him to breathe in a set way while focusing on pulling mana from around him. And efflux was about pushing mana out of his body.

The mind stat exercises were more varied.

Well, intelligence training wasn't that diverse. Improving it meant reading books or hearing the lieutenant talk about history, law, general knowledge, ethics, and the League of Fated Races. He had to do his best to memorize everything, then answer questions. Sometimes, he had to answer questions about things he had learned days ago.

Perception training was much more engaging. It was separated into five categories, and Arthur never knew what would come next.

Vision training would have him look through the window and name everything he saw and where it was. The more things he noticed, the better. When he didn't pay attention to a bug or something, he would be given binoculars and had to find it.

Hearing, smelling, tasting, and tact training were all done blindfolded.

For hearing, he had to identify different sounds of different loudness, point their direction, and guess how far from him the source was. The bells he had seen before produced many different sounds, from animals to objects hitting each other, and they could be as quiet as a whisper or as loud as someone screaming beside his ears, even when the bell was far from him.

Smelling had him identify things by the smell, sometimes even different substances mixed together. Food, earth, perfumes, everything was used.

Training his tongue was weird. His sense of smell would get blocked with magic, and he had to say how sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or umami a food was. He had been introduced to the concept of percentages just to give more precise answers.

Finally, tact training sometimes used enchanted metal balls placed around him that released coldness or warmth. He then had to say how many and how far they were. Other times, he felt faint breezes in different parts of his body and had to estimate the wind speed and where it came from.

Wisdom was the final mind stat. Its exercises didn't vary as much as perception but were not as dull as intelligence, either.

Wisdom's second most boring exercise was solving puzzles that required him to place tiny painted wooden pieces together in the right way to form larger pictures. Yet, it wasn't as tedious as the actual worst exercise forced upon him at other times: math.

Yes.

Arthur was doing math.

It was as horrendous as he recalled.

Fortunately, more often than not, he was ordered to solve logical puzzles in some books. Things like guessing the finishing order of people eating apples based on tips of who ate after who. He got the answer wrong most of the time but hearing the solution was often pleasurably enlightening.

Then came the body stats.

Vitality training remained the same, drinking potions.

Strength training became harder. Charlotte would make Arthur's body heavier every time his strength grew, supposedly making the training more effective. Sometimes she even did that as he moved about on non-strength days.

Finally, there was agility, which he hadn't trained before.

Almost always, he was ordered to sprint as fast as he could from one side to the other of the torture chamber. He often also had to move his limbs quickly. The third most common exercise was dodging the wooden balls that Charlotte magically shot at him from all sides. That last one also helped with perception.

Very, very seldom, Arthur was told to shoot the straw dummies with the short bow. He had never done it before and found it fun. It wasn't a sword, but it was a weapon all the same. It made him feel like a real knight in training.

Whenever he was too tired to train agility any other way, he was told to build the tallest structures he could using tiny intertwined small metal pieces. The pieces were so fragile that they sometimes snapped as he moved them around, and having them stay in a set position required patience, a soft touch, and—as he later found out—setting up solid foundations. Even breathing hard might cause the structures he built to fall down if it wasn't stable enough.

The first time Arthur was ordered to do it, he asked what it had to do with speed.

"Nothing, but some people believe agility is also related to fine movements," Charlotte explained. "Even archery usually helps more with strength, but this bow's string is enchanted to be easy to draw and have a different balance point every time it's used, so you need to be dexterous to use it."

To her credit, his agility did increase steadily.

Arthur just kept doing as told.

= - = - =

Weeks after Arthur's training expanded to include all stats, he received the first of the various achievements which all those exercises were supposed to net him.

「 Achievement: Natural Grower

Tier: B

Reward: +48 free stat points

You naturally grew all your stats by at least three points!

Many tread the easy path to greater power. Not you. Hard work shall be rewarded, and every point matters. You don't shy away from doing your best to reach for a grand fate. 」

It all came and went with little fanfare other than Charlotte's congratulating words. The prince didn't feel as empty as when he couldn't ask questions, but he was still too tired to find any joy in his accomplishments.

The only true happiness he felt was in the monthly baths.

Annie grew more comfortable with the task and started humming while on the job, and she also started massaging his sore muscles.

It soothed Arthur so much that he always had to be awakened by Stinson.

= - = - =

"You can take the leeching rope off," the commander said one day as soon as Arthur finished his efflux training.

The prince couldn't believe it at first. He just froze, unsure of what he was hearing.

Charlotte chuckled. "Don't look like a rabbit caught by a snake. Go on, take it off."

Arthur obeyed. Removing it felt unnatural. For a while, he just kept the thin metal raised before him and silently stared at it.

"Whenever your mana pool is full, use ten percent of it, then wait for your mana to naturally refill," the commander broke the silence while magically making the string float to him. "Never train your mana stats alone. If you get the wrong achievement at the wrong time, everything we're doing will be for naught."

"Yes, sir."

He would only notice how freeing it felt to not be constantly harassed by the tiny prickles a few days later.

= - = - =

About four months into the training, they started visiting some dungeons without outposts. Not that they were unprotected, despite the lack of civilized structures. Each dungeon was guarded by a squad of royal guards.

Stinson and Charlotte were extra careful in those dungeons because the info about their power might be wrong, or the kingdom's enemies might use the opportunity to ambush them. Outposts were safer due to defensive enchantments. So, Charlotte always brought her shield out before leaving the carriage, and Stinson kept a hand on Arthur's shoulder from the moment they left it to when they returned.

"Why are there no outposts here, ma'am?" Arthur asked the first time.

"Dungeons appear randomly throughout the world," she replied. "This one appeared recently. If you want to know more, I'll let you read the relevant books in your intelligence training."

Arthur later checked the books and found them quite interesting.

Dungeons actually existed in separate dimensions; the only thing they shared with this world was the entrance. Yet, just looking at a dungeon entrance wouldn't reveal its mystical nature. They always appeared merged with the natural environment as simple openings into underground areas, usually on mountains or hills. Historically, many people had entered unassuming openings and died in what was later revealed as dungeons.

As a safety measure, the Golden Kingdom excavated around every dungeon entrance it found. That magically caused entrance archways to appear. One side became a stone wall, while the other led to a corridor that obviously shouldn't exist. That way, no one confused the archways for anything else, and it also made it easier to protect the dungeon entrance.

All dungeons without an outpost that Arthur visited had archways, but there were often mere inches between the entrance and the natural area around it. The kingdom hadn't had time to remove the hills or mountains from behind most of them.

Everything went well until they visited a dungeon in a big stone mountain full of cave openings.

That day, Stinson stiffened as soon as they left the carriage. "I don't like this," he said, clenching his hand more firmly on Arthur's shoulder.

"Me neither," Charlotte said. She had stopped walking ten steps after leaving the carriage, her black tower shield raised before her.

The prince detected nothing wrong. The royal knights were close to the archway and had certainly cleared the area. There was nothing around the carriage either, only that mountain and endless plains. It actually looked safer than many places surrounded by forests that they had visited before.

"We're leaving," the commander declared.

It only took that single sentence for all hell to break loose.

Lightning bolts, fireballs, ice and metal spikes, arrows, bolts, javelins, and stone and metal balls of varied sizes came hurling from the caves as dozens of mages became visible. At the same moment, the illusion of royal knights faded, replaced with dozens of corpses and hundreds of people in black leather armor running toward the carriage.

The magic lightning bolts were so fast they instantly struck the carriage—or would have if they didn't meet an invisible shield that nullified the attack. Still, the impact and thunder made the world shake.

Arthur tried to step back, but Stinson's hand held him firmly in place.

"This attack is too weak," the man said calmly, yet his voice was heard over the thunder. "Either they want us to underestimate them and attack, thus walking into a trap, or this is intended to separate me and the crown prince from the group, as protocol dictates."

The various attacks struck the invisible shield at the end of his words. The world was covered by the sound of explosions. The barrier held, but cracks appeared in thin air, showing it might break at any moment.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people still run toward them. The royal knights around the carriage rushed to stand beside Charlotte with shields raised. They looked like small pebbles on the way of a broken dam.

And Stinson said that attack was weak?!

"Squad One, protect the carriage," he commanded.

"Yes, sir!" a chorus of voices came from above.

"Squad Two, guard the door."

"Yes, sir!" the knights beside Charlotte exclaimed while stepping back to get closer to the door.

"Lieutenant Graham, secure the perimeter. After you do, you and I will hunker down in the dungeon and await reinforcements. It's the less risky option."

"Yes, sir!" she said with her sinister grand knight voice while dropping her shield.

Then, she ran so fast that all Arthur could see was a black and golden blur—her armor and cape—two white lines—her eyes—and another thicker white and golden streak—her mythril sword with golden symbols.

She reached the center of the incoming enemy lines and went through the people there. Yes, that was it. Their bodies just exploded as she met them head-on and kept going without meeting resistance.

The scene made Arthur ill.

The leather-armored people kept coming, but Charlotte didn't turn back to deal with them. She ran straight to the caves. Spells stopped coming to the carriage and targeted her instead, but she dodged them by seemingly blinking out of existence and reappearing, still running, a few yards to the side.

The caves were far enough that Arthur couldn't see anything precisely when she reached them, but he saw a head roll when Charlotte passed by a mage there. Then, she disappeared inside.

A moment later, the mages were running away from the caves. The prince saw one of them jump from a high height, but an invisible force held him in place just before his blood exploded into a red mist that swiftly flowed into the cave opening he had come from.

Charlotte's blur appeared a few seconds later and hunted down four stragglers. Three were too far, and one exploded into red mist. The others were left alone.

Then, she came running back to the enemy front lines, who were still midway through the carriage.

"They are lucky the lieutenant isn't very good against organized warfare," Stinson said. "She should've realized they sacrificed the few she killed on her way to the caves so she would be distracted and underestimate their defenses. Now, she'll have to deal with their stalling tactics."

As if on cue, half the incoming enemies stopped running and turned to face her. They all had had round shields behind their backs but now raised them against her. At the same time, a dozen thick blue energy barriers appeared on Charlotte's way.

Stinson snickered. "Lucky her, tactics don't matter in the face of overwhelming power."

One of the men in the stalling line exploded into red mist. Everyone nearby screamed in pain as whatever the mist touched melted down, including their bodies. When they died, they also exploded into mists.

The energy shields disappeared as everyone ran away for their lives.

Charlotte went through the mist unhindered.

Arthur didn't know whether to feel awed by the display or sick at seeing so many people die like that. Some of them just... popped. All others lost their heads. They could do nothing but run desperately and die when the blur reached them.

Their screams of despair made him shiver.

Moments later, every enemy was dead except the few she had allowed escaping. Only a woman remained in the field. Her black and golden armor had been tainted red.

Arthur could hear her labored breath over the overwhelming silence.

Then, all he heard was the sound of his own retching. He had nothing in his stomach, but his body was resolute in trying to make him vomit anyway. It only stopped almost a full minute later.

Stinson waited for Arthur to stop before saying, "And that, boy, is why you need a grand knight to fight another, even one as weak as the lieutenant." He raised his voice and ordered her, "Clean yourself and come. We're leaving."

"Yes, sir," Charlotte said. She started walking back at an average speed while the blood and gore on her armor floated away.

"Sir?" Arthur asked, surprised, when his stomach let him. "You said we would go to the dungeon?"

"So I did," the commander replied while pulling Arthur deeper into the carriage. "Let's hope our enemies get as confused by the conflicting orders as you."

Soon after, they were traveling away.

Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Next Chapter