Day 33, 2:00 AM

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

— Niccolo Machiavelli

I don’t say a word about The Rickety Stool fiasco. I don’t need to. All the words she hissed at me, all the mistakes she thought I made so far, she made them and they had the opposite effect of when I did things. They exploded in her face. So much so that cops showed up at our doorstep.

“I said open up.” The man bangs on the door of our room for the fifth time. “We know you are in there. We have the building surrounded. Surrender for inspection.”

I wonder who sold us out? Was it Varren? Didn’t seem like the type, but I could be wrong. Someone from The Rickety Stool? That seems more probable. More people. More desperate people.

They aren’t desperate enough. If they were really desperate, they would have started a rebellion. They are cowed. I don’t mind their cowardice. I understand it to a certain degree. They are afraid not just because they saw the terrors of war. But if that was enough, then professional warrior castes wouldn’t exist, and men would not pick up arms more than once.

They are afraid because they have much to lose and little to gain. They are comfortable. I thought this town was a great start, but not enough. We need a place that was rich, and which is now a wasteland.

I pause, realizing there should be a perfect place.

“How far is Eaglegord?” I whisper, and Manuella stares at me.

“Twelve days by foot. Maybe ten if we hustle?”

“Open up!” The cops smash their bodies against the door, but the heavy wood barely shudders. I have already pushed our massive, wooden cots against the only entrance to our room. Gotta love this era’s furnishing.

“What would you like us to do now? Fight or flee?” I ask.

I knew her answer even before she voiced it.

“Flee.”

She opens the curtain, and I hear a twang. Luckily, I’m merely a step away. I grab her in a bear hug and spin while embracing her. I feel a warm electric prick in my left kidney, but there’s nothing I can do. A moment later, the electric warmth blooms into a steel pyre and an arrow digs into my side.

The mostly transparent BSD informs me I have been wounded, and I close the curtain.

“Bad choice,” I grit my teeth, and read my level up notice.

“Sorry,” she says. She’s pale, about to cry, but we have no time for that nonsense.

“Pull it out.” She does, and I gasp.

“It stings,” I mutter as warmth slithers out of me, but I focus on my choices.

[You have leveled up.

Select a skill within sixty seconds or a random one will be assigned to you.

Watcher - You are able to recognize immediate danger to your principal.

Escapist - You are able to recognize the immediate safest escape point.]

Wow. Both are good. Immediate is the key word here. I may recognize immediate danger and push Manuella into a bigger mess, and the immediate safest escape point may lead to unsafe or downright deadly places later down the line.

I bite my lip, and tighten the grip on my black staff, as the guards’ thuds against the door fall into a rhythm and the cots screech away from the door inch by inch.

I guess it’s more important to know when someone’s about to stab Manuella in the back or maybe if her drink is poisoned? Hopefully? The second one works without principal, though?

These are the kind of skills I wouldn’t mind getting at random.

“Watcher,” I grumble.

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“Watch whom?” Manuella asks, too close to me.

“Watch out. Step away a bit, this is about to get bloody.”

The cots slide, screeching, the door smashes into the wall as an armored guard stumbles into the room and falls down. His friend runs in, ready to strike the door that’s no longer there. I swing my staff like a baseball bat. The ironwood screams through the air before smashing into the man’s bascinet.

The metal folds around the black staff, and his skull turns into a rotten tomato. His forward momentum and my strike spin him in the air, and he’s dead five times over before the meaty-metallic crash announces his landing.

His friend is still standing up. I grab his neck and snap it before he regains his bearings. The guard slumps right back down, and I stretch my hand towards Manuella, bidding her to follow.

She stares.

“Come on.”

There’s no reproach in my voice, only urgency. “They are dead, they can’t hurt you.”

She nods and takes my hand, but I don’t move. Instead, I pause a second, but I don’t hear anyone else rushing up the stairs.

“How many guards does a city this size have?” I ask, since I expected an army on our ass.

“Fifteen, twenty, thirty at most,” she says, and I smile.

This will be easy. There’s a Robbin’ Hood outside, though, but if I can sense immediate threats to myself and Manuella, escaping shouldn’t be too hard. I hope.

“Stay a step or two behind me. I don’t want to hit you by accident.”

She looks at the pool of blood spreading on the floor.

“Two steps.” She gulps, and I’m off.

I take a guard’s sword, just in case I need a discardable weapon. I jump out into the hallway, and, against all expectations, there are no heads peeking through half-open doors.

I bet other patrons barricaded their doors too, and they don’t plan on moving until everything is quiet.

Good plan. I hope I get the privilege to use it one day.

I rush down the stairs and spot the skinny innkeeper wearing a light gray sleeping gown. He flees into a dark room, fearing my wrath, but I’m not that petty. Unless he’s the one who sold us out?

But I have no time to waste on searching for the traitor. I rush out of the inn, and after a moment feel a prick in my chest. My arm moves in a blur, and I block a freaking arrow with a two-inch-wide staff.

I look up and see I’m not the only one impressed with me being the god of kung fu. The archer stares at me for a moment, then notches another arrow. He looses, and I hurl my disposable sword at him while moving the staff I’m holding in my right. I block the arrow to the head he shot from twenty yards away, and he screams. The sword failed to pierce the mail links, instead it stabbed them into the poor man.

Manuella walks out the door to see the screaming man roll down a thatched roof and smash onto solid stone from ten feet up.

“Get them!”

“They are out in the streets!”

Slapping of leather against stone echoes and six more armored men run into the street, blocking us from both sides.

“Go back in,” I hiss, but she fled even before I told her.

The guards draw their swords, and I’m a lone man wielding a thick stick against six armed and armored men. The good thing is my stick is long, sturdy, and blunt. The bad thing is… Well, everything else.

I think fast and slam the butt of my staff against the cobblestones. Two stones come loose, and I duck to grab one.

The guards are still coming at me slowly, spreading out for some tactical reason, which must exist. I don’t care about their training, and pitch a fist-sized stone cube. Before anyone knows what happened, a guard’s open-faced helmet is flying through the air, his body squirting blood, a head short.

The sight and the spraying blood are so gruesome my stomach churns. A guard screams as blood splashes him, and they all stop. Stupid thing to do, really.

I ignore my roiling insides and charge the guard furthest from the one I killed. I swing, and he raises his sword. I don’t know what he expected, but what he gets is the same thing you get when blocking a baseball bat with a butter knife.

His arm buckles, the sword flies away, and the rest of him follows. I strike him in the shoulder. He bends bonelessly before tumbling to the ground, rolling like a broken doll.

He’s probably still alive. I’m fairly certain. He just suffered broken bones, maybe spinal injury, as well as a series of concussions.

The blow threw me off balance, and I thought they would jump me, but two guards turned around and ran, while the other two stared at me with wide eyes.

“Boo!” I shout and stomp forth, and they are tripping over each other, running down the street.

I look at the empty street. The man I smashed is groaning on the ground, the headless one ain’t saying anything.

That’s it? I draw a deep breath and realize my heart is pounding like crazy. I don’t know what to do, so I trot over to the inn.

“Hey, Manny,” I’m not really sure what to say, “they are gone? What now? Do I chase them and kill them? Do we escape? We could kill the viscount, since it seems we probably can? I think we should redo this, but going back before day twenty-nine seems like a waste when I can sniff out other dangers now.”

“Do not even think about it,” she screams, shuddering. “Do not leave me alone like that. Even if you can go back, I will be stuck here, handling the aftermath.”

She prefers that theory, the one in which the universe doesn’t simply roll back fourteen days for my convenience.

“Don’t worry. I won’t. What do we do?” I ask again.

She bites her lip, breathing hard. Making important decisions on the spot is a horrible thing. That’s why I leave it to her. That’s her part of the partnership for now. Mine is to see her choices through.

“We are done for if we flee, yet Warfare says one should never chase defeated enemies, nor fight cornered ones. Maybe we could try to kill the viscount?”

I hand her my sacks, following a contingency we agreed to previously. She gets everything I don’t need whenever I go to do something insane.

“There are four or five hours before dawn. I should be done well before that. You hide near the gate and escape if I don’t show up two hours after dawn.”

She nods and pecks me on the lips, and I freeze.

“Stay safe,” she says and disappears into an alley.

Was it the arrow? I shake my head and focus on my target, the well lit mansion at the center of the town.