"So," I said. It was breakfast the next day. "Ever felt like you were born special, despite your humble origins?"

Rose took a bite out of jerky. "Nope."

"Ever felt your blood was more pure, of a perhaps superior bloodline stretching back to the founding of the kingdom?"

"Not really."

"Ever felt an innate sense that you were meant to be a leader of men?"

"That one may be more true."

"Oh?"

"Paladins need to assist with leading their flock, after all."

Drat.

I glanced over to Hilda. She had gotten out of her tent a good number of minutes after us, looking especially sweaty and content. I could only assume she was happy to be a part of a tight-knit group of companions who didn't hide anything from each other, even if it meant sleeping in hot tents.

"What's your read on this, Hilda? Think Rose might have a mysterious past waiting to be uncovered?"

Hilda jumped at being addressed. "N-No? Maybe? I don't know."

"Exactly," Rose said. "That's the attitude I like to see. Really, Malcador, you should be careful about throwing stones in glass houses. Do you see me asking about your mysterious past? The one you are pointedly avoiding describing? I didn't think so."

Oh, was that what this was about? A kind of tit-for-tat deal, where she was fucking with me about her past because I wasn't telling her about my past? Fair, honestly.

"Okay, I tell you one secret, you tell me one of yours. How about it?" I asked.

"Deal."

"The truth is, I don't even really like meditating."

"I see. The truth is, I do actually like hitting you with a sword."

"Hot. Just what I like to see in a woman."

Love Point Gained! Rosalyn +1

Ignoring the fact that Hilda was giving me a pointed, thoughtful look... That was two data points for these so-called love points. For obvious reasons, I wasn't taking them too seriously. How could one even hope to numerically quantify something like love in the first place? Were we humans really so simple? But regardless, with two data points, I could kind of see a trend here. Both points have happened when I praised Rose's... militant lifestyle, more or less. Hmmm. But, again, no change in expression. Not even so much as a flicker of the eyebrow.

"Good to know. Shall I hit you harder during practice, then?"

"No please."

She smirked. It was hard not to stare at her lips when she did that, but the smirks were always brief, so in the end it was just a brief moment of watching those luscious lips curve upwards. Nothing too noticeable.

"W-Want to practice Cursed magic?" Hilda asked out of nowhere.

"What, like later tod—" The Darkness Ball hit me on the side. "Ow!"

I looked over to see her leaning forward and smiling excitedly. The dots connected in my head. I glanced at Rose and saw her absent-mindedly biting away at more jerky.

"I would be more excited to practice Cursed magic in the sense of you showing me the rest of the spells you know, Hilda," I eventually said.

"O-Oh. Nevermind."

Why? Why was she hiding her spells from me? Please, let me meet another Cursed mage I can consult.

We soon finished breakfast and got back to riding. Despite there being room for like four horses to ride side-by-side, Hilda elected to remain a full horse length behind Rose and I, either out of shyness or because she was roleplaying as my literal shadow. I felt her eyes staring holes into my back, but whenever I glanced back she had her head turned to the side, as if she were simply enjoying the scenery and not at all paying attention to us.

It was a bit of an uneventful ride; Rose and I chatted about training methods, Hilda squeaked when addressed, the grass got increasingly green as we progressed... All in all, the trip in general was somewhat more mundane than I thought. It never really came across to me just how much time it took to travel between places in adventures, but now that I was living it, I could feel every hour. Not that I disliked it.

At noon-ish we stopped for sparring and lunch. Sparring came first, with Hilda once again watching. My One-Handed Blades skill was going up pretty steadily thanks to Rose being so immensely skilled, but I noticed Dodging and Light Armor lagging behind. If I had to guess, Dodging was going slow since I was focusing on parrying with my sword rather than dodging, on top of her swings being slower than normal. Light Armor, likewise, was likely being held back by her not going all the way with her blows. Or something. Point being, we were focusing on swordplay, so the not-sword skills were going slower.

By the way, I didn't ask for her to swing harder because I figured the strength of the armor probably came into play. I had on, let's be real, some shitty hard leather armor. There was a limit to how good it could be. If I wanted real deal light armor skills, I would need at least chainmail or something to be a step up from this.

Speaking of which, the real ideal would probably be for me to wear Heavy Armor, but Rose was the tanky paladin here. I didn't want to encroach on her turf. Given my skill set, it seemed best for me to focus more on agility to make use of my skills in both swordplay and magic. Really, the most OP part of being a hero as it were was the combination of physical and magical strength. There is value in being a specialist, for sure, but when it came down to a real-deal scrap, the bigger your toolset was the better. And at max level I would probably be as strong as a specialist in each field, if not as informed, so the only realistic option was for me to become a spellsword... Wait, isn't that generic? I guess tropes happen for a reason. At least I'm not a sneaky archer. (Yet.)

Rose landed a solid blow on my side. We had been sparring for like twenty minutes. "You're monologuing during a battle. Did your parents never warn you about that?"

"Nice question. You know they didn't, so you're trying to gauge something about my mysterious past by whatever answer I give. Might I suggest you learn some new tricks?" I went for another thrust, which was not an allegory for repressed sexual lust being unleashed.

She batted it aside (with her sword rather than her hand this time, which was maybe a step up from before) and immediately swung it back in a sideways slice. "I don't think you're ready for me to pull out new tricks."

I parried the slice. She was speaking both about the conversation and the sword-fighting, no doubt. "I dunno, I think I'm getting pretty good." I was about to hit level 30 in One-Handed blades, which had me feeling a bit cocky. 1/3rd of the way to the top was a nice milestone.

Rose gave me an impassive look, then took some steps back. "Think fast," she said, and if she hadn't I probably wouldn't have been ready for what happened next.

She dashed my way, then vanished in a blur. Had I not been thinking fast, I would have kept staring ahead of me like an idiot, but thanks to being on guard I instinctively looked up after a pause. There she was in the air, mid-flip, head face-down, legs pointed straight at the sky as she twirled. Before I could even say "What the fuck," her blade had hit the back of my head, and I was sent sprawling onto the ground face-forward.

As I lay on the ground, my mind raced. HIRU-NO-TSUKI! THE MIDDAY MOON! She had used an ancient sword technique, one so unfathomably difficult to execute that most swordsmen spoke of it only in feared whispers; it was a ma'ken, a "magic blade," developed by an eastern blademaster after decades of constant, revenge-fueled training. He had been obsessed with developing and mastering a technique of defeating even the most genius of swordsmen, and in the end he had succeeded, at the cost of his humanity and the art of swordplay in its entirety.

Swordplay could be considered something like a game of rock paper scissors. You could either sense your opponent was about to strike and strike first, sense the start of their attack and respond with an immediate attack of your own (wherein the fastest move would often win), or wait for them to execute their attack to dodge it and follow it up with a counter. The right move was all but impossible to know; perhaps you would sense their upcoming strike and launch a thrust of your own, only for the opponent to elect to counter. Or perhaps they were not planning a counter, but to match your attack, such that your sudden and fast attack catches them off guard. In the former case you die, in the latter case they die. More or less.

The Midday Moon spat on this and spat on swordplay. By dashing at the opponent, you forced them to either prepare to match your speed with an immediate counterattack, or focus on dodging the blow to prepare for a counter. If they did the former, you leapt into the air and hit them with a blow they could not dodge, predict, or counter in time. If they did the latter, you tactically maintained the dash and struck with immense speed; a dash attack afforded the attacker speed and reach over any potential dodge, so all the attacker needed to do was execute the correct attack. It took a mastery of the blade to understand in those moments what to do, but when that mastery was achieved, the game of rock paper scissors was abandoned entirely. Even if the defender caught on fast, there was no easy counter to such an aerial attack, and attempting to dodge the dash attack was certain death. It was a safe move in a one-on-one duel; you either landed the blow or, at worst, landed safely on the ground. There was almost no risk in a traditional sword fight, and the little there was all but required the opposing swordsman to expect the move ahead of time and be a master themselves. There was more to its complexity than that, but you would have to read a textbook on swordplay to really understand just how high the execution level and why all the immediate avenues of countering it just weren't enough. All swordsmen in the world fell before this technique, regardless of skill level. If someone knew the Midday Moon, you only had one chance of winning: Kill them before they draw their sword.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

And Rose had just used it to hit me in the back of the head during a sparring session.

I stood up, feeling slightly groggy before using Heal on my head and turning around. I saw Rose leaning on her sword behind me, face impassive.

"How did you like my trick?" she asked.

"It was alright," I replied.

"Let's call it a day and talk over lunch," she suggested, the sheen of sweat on her lightly tanned skin indicating we had been sparring for a good while already.

"G-Guys," Hilda interrupted. "I think lunch may have to wait."

Rose and I turned, and saw Hilda pointing to the side. There in the distance we saw the somewhat distant silhouette of... a bunch of hyenas, it looked like? The three of us crouched down and moved to get a better look, Hilda stayed a bit behind (as a mage, not as my shadow) while Rose and I crouched next to each other behind some nearby bushes. Some trees and larger plantlife had been popping up along the plains.

"Do you recognize them?" Rose asked, leaning forward. We were close, close enough for me to smell her sweat and body. It was an oddly sweet smell, and kind of addicting. I knew something about how the smell of one's body was originally meant to help attract mates, and while I hadn't been able to empathize with that as someone who lived around the constant use of factory-made soap, now I got it. Rose's natural body smell (perhaps enhanced by the sweat?) was flowery all on its own, sharply sweet and addictive. I couldn't help but stealthily lean a bit over and sniff a bit, before caving in and inhaling deeply. It was heaven.

Rose looked at me and arched an eyebrow.

"Uh... Er, sorry. I was just... smelling the roses?"

She rolled her eyes. Oops. Hopefully that wasn't too creepy, and—

Love Point Gained! Rosalyn +1

Milestone Reached! Budding Crush has become Crush!

The growing strength of your relationship has formed a bond between your souls. It is weak now, but may grow if it is given care.

What the fuck?

The hyena-things could wait a second. The fuck was going on here? I wasn't being a suave master of socializing here. I wasn't trying to manipulate her, or even to only say "the right things," but the points were still going up. Regardless of the fact that I was being, by all accounts, a bit awkward. If these were choices in a visual novel, I would be selecting all the joke options, yet still earning points. So many points she was now apparently crushing on me. I couldn't understand it.

It hurt to admit, but maybe this was proof that the way I thought about the world was too narrow-minded. I fit everything into a box and parsed myself as trying to manipulate people by saying the right things, since I myself didn't feel anything, and just logically said what seemed like people would like the most. But here reality was flying in the face of my "logic." Regardless of what I thought about the situation, Rose had her own thoughts and feelings, which went beyond my self-centered claims of "manipulation" or "saying the right thing." The choice that was the "right thing" from my perspective wasn't necessarily right from hers, in reality, and the choice that was the "wrong thing" from my perspective wasn't necessarily wrong from hers. If I had been thinking straight, I would never have leaned over and sniffed a sweaty girl loud enough for her to hear. It was obviously wrong. But something about it, Rose liked, and I never would have guessed that with my own head up my ass. Or without a GUI notification popping up in my vision to inform me about it.

I thought things over. I knew Rose a little better than before, but not a whole lot. I couldn't guess what she liked about it. It would be presumptuous to try, maybe. Projecting my own thoughts onto her. If I wanted to know, the only fair thing to do was ask, and trust whatever answer she gave. But naturally I wasn't about to mention the love point popups for fear of her closing up like a clam, which kind of limited my options. For now I would just have to rely on the simplest possible explanation, which was that maybe Rose wasn't used to male attention for whatever reason. Flipping the gender chessboard made things more clear: How would a sweaty nerd feel about a hot girl deeply inhaling his scent and basically getting wet on the spot? I cannot speak for all men, but in my own case, I would cum buckets, and so I had to at least empathize with Rose potentially feeling similarly with me. It wasn't the full answer, or maybe even the right one, but it would have to do for now.

"Well?" Rose asked.

"I just don't know. It's complicated."

"I am talking about the creatures. Do you recognize them?"

"Oh," I replied. "No."

"They are Plain Hyenas. Given their distance, they have almost caught wind of us, and will likely be attacking at night if left on their own."

"Ah. So what's the plan?"

Rose shrugged. "They are annoying little things, but easily manipulated, and not especially dangerous if one is aware of them. The three of us can defeat them easily. A classic strategy is to wait until night and ambush them during their own ambush, but we can finish this faster with a little bait."

"Yeah?"

"All you need to do is walk a bit away from these bushes, lay down, and pretend to be dead. Plain Hyenas eat anything they can get, even random carcasses. Hilda and I will leap out from the bushes and kill them. They won't run; they are constantly hungry, to my knowledge, and would not leave potential food behind."

"Wait... I'm the bait? You want me, the mighty Heir of the World, to lie down and be bait for hyenas?"

She shrugged again. "It needs to be one of us, considering that Hilda is a mage, and I imagined you would valiantly volunteer to take my place if I tried to do it. All I have done is skip that step."

"That seems like a pretty cocky assumption."

"Very well. I will serve as bait."

"Perish the thought, my fair lady. My honor would never allow it. I shall handle this."

"How surprising," she said with a smile.

And so it came to pass that I was laying down in the middle of a plain with my limbs sprawled out. Watching the clouds move slowly across the sky was pretty relaxing, if a bit marred by the fact that a pack of hyenas was slowly creeping up on me out of sight. You shouldn't let the little stuff get to you, though. Choosing to be happy was important; choosing to appreciate what you had without just looking for excuses to be unhappy. It was never hard to find excuses to be unhappy, as the parable of the princess and the pea warned us, and that was basically my situation. I was a metaphorical prince on a bunch of mattresses (grassy plains) running the risk of complaining about a pea (a pack of monstrous hyenas).

The rustling of grass being stepped on made me snap to attention. No word from Hilda or Rose yet. I didn't want to jump up too early and ruin the whole thing, not that they would run if I did, apparently. I waited, stifling any fear I might have felt and putting my trust into Rose's judgment.

"Now!" came a cry, and I leapt up. There were four Hyenas circling me, why had she waited until they did that?! I spun around to face the two on the opposite side from the bushes and launched a Fireball to the left one (making sure to say the chant hinotama ike first) while thrusting my sword to the right. The Fireball was pretty weak, since my Elemental skill was so low, but it made the hyena yelp and gave it enough pause for me to finish stabbing the right one. I was surprised that they didn't leap at me or anything; it seemed like they were frozen in place, even, with their legs caught in the ground. I blasted the other one with a larger fireball to finish it off (trying to grind my Elemental up a bit), then spun around to face the rest.

Aaand... They were dead. Rose had cleanly cut through the other while my back was turned. Blood dripped from her sword, but she whipped it in the air, flinging much of it off. Whew.

"Why'd you wait until they had circled me?" I asked, attempting to flick the blood off my sword in the same way. It was surprisingly successful.

"Plain Hyenas never attack until they finish the circle, and Shadow Stitch works best when they are spread out so their shadows aren't touching." She pointed up; it was still noonish, and the sun was directly above us.

"Shadow Stitch?" I asked.

"Hilda asked me not to explain it to you. I'm sure you can use context clues to figure it out yourself, though."

"Why would she...?"

Hilda's secrecy with her spells was getting maddening. Was it one or all of them that she wanted kept secret? If all of them, why Shadow Stitch in particular, which sounds mostly like just sticking somebody to their shadow so they can't move? Why would she want... Oh. Hm.

We met up with Hilda by the bushes and got to eating lunch. We talked about the Hyenas, with Hilda pointedly refusing to say anything whenever Shadow Stitch was brought up. I felt like it had to be mostly obstinance at this point, like, I was going to need Curse Magic lessons from her eventually. Shadow Stitch had some nefarious uses, but all Cursed spells had nefarious usages, that was the point. Maybe... Maybe this was like a process of elimination thing? Maybe she wanted to hide one or two specific spells, but if she told me all the spells except those two, I could use the holes in my knowledge to determine what she wanted hidden specifically. Her only option for maximum security was to blanket all her spells in secrecy and use security through obscurity.

Sadly for her, that couldn't last forever. Did she want it to, or was she just delaying the inevitable? Mysteries upon mysteries.

As for the rest of the day, it was pretty uneventful. I kept eyeing Rose on the road to see if her mask would crack and any signs of her newfound crush would show, but nothing. I was honestly getting the impression that the love stat in general was bunk. I couldn't see any changes at all. It was like night and day compared to Hilda, though maybe ever comparing Hilda to daytime was a mistake.

We settled down for the day and split out our watch the same as last night. I surveyed the area; we were nestled behind a hill again, with Rose's and my tents being across from each other, while Hilda's was positioned behind mine and slightly to the left so the entrance to hers wasn't blocked by the back of mine. It was a bit of a misaligned camp, really. I was starting to feel that the tents were a bit unnecessary overall; I wouldn't have minded just sleeping facing the stars, but Rose insisted. Something about how tents were going to be important sooner or later, and better we get in the habit now. I wasn't really sure what she was predicting there, but I was by no means a camping expert. I bowed to her wisdom.

But first was dinner, and as we sat across from each other, I asked a question that had been lingering in my mind.

"Do either of you know a guy named Jeffrey Smith?"

Rose and Hilda glanced at each other.

"No," Rose answered first. "Not really. The name sounds familiar, as if I've heard it once, but whoever it was, I've clearly forgotten.

Hilda stared at the ground, then looked at me. Or beside me, anyway. Avoiding eye contact by staring into space beside me. "I remember him. H-He died, I think. In the skirmish. An orc got him with a dagger to the head. He was always a dick to me, though. Most of them were. Because of Cursed magic. Soldiers just don't get it! They think you'll eat their soul just because you know Curse magic. It's not like I ate parts of everyone's souls. N-Not everyone's. It's supposed to be a special act. Romantic!" she declared, then wilted. "B-But anyway. That's all I know."

"Cool. Thanks."

"Was he somebody important?" Rose asked.

"No. But... Maybe? Kinda? Not to any of this, though. It's nothing." I left it at that, and the girls obliged.

He was a dick, eh? But not in a special way. He was just an average dick. Rose didn't even remember him, and probably nobody else would, given enough time. Did that make me feel better? Did I feel bad in the first place? I didn't feel bad at the time. I didn't even care about accidentally killing him, because I thought at the time it would end up as a failed grinding loop. I thought he'd be back soon enough, but in the end, I approached the loop as if I would win despite the impossible odds, and somehow I did end up winning, sooner than I thought possible. The stars aligned for me, but not for him.

I wondered if I would forget him too.

Night fell, with Hilda and Rose going to bed with me staying up for watch. This time I resolved to actually stay awake through Rose's watch, but when the time came, I ended up passing out the second my head hit the bundle I used for a pillow anyway.