Etsuko An’Yu was participating in her first sortie. As least as far as she remembered, she had been killed before before they had left the city and had to largely restart her day again. This time was the furthest that she’d achieved outside of the city but thankfully her presence appeared to do little to change events which had occurred almost exactly as she thought.

A calloused hand came to rest near her shoulder before pulling back and the rough voice of the man currently her working partner rang out.

Estuko knew more about the man than he likely knew about himself but she kept quiet and let him talk. She’d heard plenty of talk of the famous Sergeant Reinhard.

‘We need to head back. The signal has been given, leave the markers on the ground. Good job, I mean I thought you were a baker but you have talent. I’m impressed. Maybe you’d like to come back to my place for dinner? No, not that. I mean my wife taught me how to cook and she likes to show it off. My girls would be happy to meet a new face from work. Right, off we go. Good work Etsuko. Uh, I’m bothering you. Sorry, I talk too much when I’m nervous.’ said the older man.

And then the King-Consort asks the other two scouts for their reports and receives similar information. Bandits killed in exactly the same manner with a single one of them corrupted and burnt entirely on a makeshift fire. All with the same emblem of the Goddess. He’s meant to think it’s the reclaimer movement but it isn’t.

‘We, uh. Sorry, you’re obviously thinking. Sorry. I’ll give you a bit of time. We’re in no rush. The King just wants us back safe first. Sorry.’ said Sergeant Reinhard as Etsuko walked ahead of the man.

Despite being behind her and his hand on the sword at his belt he showed no signs of betrayal, he was a simple enough man, as he walked he kept turning his head right to left and occasionally back over his shoulder to check.

If the young woman in front of him wanted time to think then he’d shut up. His wife would want him to invite her back for dinner though. Or he’d face a tongue-lashing for telling her that someone who kept him from harm was left alone.

First time is always hardest for the new ones. Not that many choose to stay. I best leave her alone but I’ll watch her back at least. Any lower than that would have my wife leaving me.

Etsuko lived long enough in one lifetime to even encounter survivors from this sortie who had faced more difficulties than they had been expecting. The King-Consort had come back safely as had the old noble and his twin bodyguards but the Sergeant whom she was walking back to meet the others with had died on that occasion as had a number of the private soldiers and bodyguards.

Sergeant Reinhard picked up the courage to address the young woman. Perhaps he’d simply been too informal. For all he knew she could be the hidden daughter of one of the Six Lords and Ladies or another High Noble. They tended to protect their progeny and give them decent training to keep them safe.

‘Madam En’Yu. We will wait for the King-Consort to contact us. Good job finding those hidden traps. Saves me a few trips to a healer and we’ve barely got enough extra script on hand to keep paying for injuries. Take a quick breather and we’ll be back to the main group soon. And thank you again for saving my life, I appreciate it and I know my wife back home would too. Are you really a baker?’

Nodding her head she carried on walking at a slow pace, she’d gained his trust easily and the fact that he’d also been ordered to guard her and keep her safe was an added benefit.

‘I was a baker before I died. Multiple time. Then I burned it down eventually. The fire was well-planned and didn’t spread though. Flour makes such a nice explosive device when kept in an enclosed space’ said Etsuko.

The look on the older man’s face was uncertain but he took her words in his stride literally as he carried on keeping a careful watch for any immediate threats.

Etsuko reflected on exactly what she knew was likely going to happen and the fastest and most efficient way to expose those who were presently hiding. Take Sergeant Reinhard for example, a simple man with pure loyalty for the sortie.

He wouldn’t betray anyone but he remained a creature of habit and the same repetitive actions had made him easy to predict, even easier to set traps for which could incapacitate him and waste a guard sending him back to the city for healing.

And he likes to talk. Loves his wife and daughters but likes to talk.

There had been an ambush of sorts involving clever tricks. She had needed to spend a lot of coin in the taverns and even flirt with both the men and women who were familiar with the standing private armed guards of the King-Consort to piece the entire picture.

When she had most of the information and lacked pieces to make it complete, she had taken kitchen knife from her bakery, gone to the rougher areas of the city and picked fights with gangs until they had killed her and she had woken up to begin her day again.

Etsuko had repeated the cycle enough times until she had a clue of what was happening. Granted that she had originally started her time as a baker when her parents had vanished in the middle of the night, taken their personal possessions and left her a note begging her not to look for them and to consider that her great-grandmother would have done.

She wasn’t quite clear if they died, were kidnapped or had planned it for years but realistically it didn’t matter. Strange things happened in her family and being abandoned at the age of twenty when she had the skills, experience and knowledge to run a small side bakery by herself wasn’t the worse.

Working her way up the gang hierarchy had been an interesting experience but not one that she wanted to repeat. Becoming a minor gang boss and getting her revenge on the two who had extorted money from her bakery and nearly killed her a dozen times over was purely a fantasy.

After she had began to break apart the stories behind the fiction it turned out that organised crime within the capital city of Nurburg was in fact that. The entire structure was in fact run by one of the Six Lords and Ladies in return for the Queen turning a blind eye and accepting a minor degree of corruption and taking a percentage of the revenue to fund the Church of Purity and Light and public services.

The Monarch was the head of the crime organisation for a Kingdom. Makes me wonder if the stories my parents told me about my great-grandfather were true after all. Still, the fact that he fell in love with my great-grandmother made a lot of sense.

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A few times she’d had to do things she didn’t favour, such as cutting the throat of an opposing gang member to prove her loyalty to the fabric of the underworld and then hanging up the body outside of a rival gangs headquarters.

She’d been glad that her body, mind and soul increased in power incrementally each time she died in a combat or fighting situation. It made fighting off the twenty of so thugs a great deal easier when they had found her struggling with the rope trying to lift a dead body of one of their gang members off the ground.

They’d still killed her with arrows but she’d learn enough that by that point restarting her day on a different time was satisfying enough. Etsuko did wonder why the strange man who had offered her a bowl of hot noodles when she had been nursing a bruised face and fixing up a broken stop had chosen her.

He had said something about the end of the world and multiple variables keeping it interesting. She was effectively immortal as each time she died in specific combat situations she came back stronger.

The only issue was that it didn’t work every single time and dying and the experiences she had were beginning to affect her mental judgement a few times. The man with the talking sack had told her that she was on the path to becoming a god through trial and error but it would take her dying around a million times or so to reach that level and bring around the destruction of the planet.

Yeah. Likely he simply dumped a load of mushrooms into that bowl of noodles and I’ve simply gone insane. Just like my Auntie did when she thought she could build an underwater kingdom. I mean, she did but all of her subjects killed each other from enclosed madness and lack of sunshine.

After what she experienced of weeks of infiltrator, digging out information and all sorts of methods including working as a contracted street-level spy for the third most dangerous woman in the city. The one who everyone said had no face because she could change herself to be anyone.

Estuko thought the rumours were simply exaggerated and she probably funded them herself or used lookalikes. But then again, the same rumours called Lady Joanne Dee Mawr a Sorceress of some power. She wasn’t as deadly as the Queen or her bodyguard but her network and reach was long and she was willing to trade coin for information or vice versa.

Come on older man. Shut up about keeping everyone safe and finally give me a chance to speak my piece. Then I grab a sword and take action and you see the truth that’s being faked right in front of your eyes.

Etsuko as a relative newcomer was keeping a distance from the King after he received reports from his few scouts and then discussed the next steps with the old noble with a kind heart and twin bodyguards, his personal guards and the priestess who just looked plain tired.

All that magic stuff must make her tired. Make magic signals for me on request he says and doesn’t even offer her a drink of water. A nice enough man but pretty stupid in some ways. Too naive.

Outside foreign forces, well-equipped, trained and acting with the support of those inside the Kingdom of Nurburg were planning for a hostile takeover and a massive disruption of the economy.

Taking out a living Goddess who was otherwise preoccupied fighting back the magical corruption magic of some dead old man was completely out of her league. Even if Etsuko could apparently obtain some massive world-breaking levels of divinity in her own right she doubted that she’d be able to make it that far without going completely insane or entirely losing her humanity.

I just realised. I have no idea how the gods were created, they simply are. Did they also get offered bowls of fresh noodles? Or, I think I’m getting a little bit crazy myself.

‘Excuse me Madam En’yu. We’ve arrived. I follow my orders as the King himself commands and the blessed Goddess Aliza provides. I think we have a situation ourselves, to be honest with you the last few sorties have been a little strange. Why during the last one we found traces of a campfire where by all rights nobody should have been. I think it’s the Reclaimer Movement, bunch of ex-priest and farmers getting too big for their muddy boots an-’ said Sergeant Reinhard as he carried on talking as Etsuko did her best to appear interested in his conversation.

He really does like to talk. Calms his nerves. Funny how he cooks when he gets stressed. The tavern rumours and intelligence gathered was worth it after all. Worth my fifth death. Or was it the ninth? I’m beginning to lose track. No wonder great-grandma vanished by herself. Strangeness really does run in our family. Thanks for abandoning your only daughter mum and dad.

The King-Consort had ordered everyone back, apparently the man had been doing it for so long that when the priestess with him flared a magical ball of light into the air for several seconds before it dissipated everyone paused or finished their duties and returned to the pre-agree meeting point.

Etsuko and Sergeant Reinhard were back at the pre-arranged meeting point for the King and his sortie. He had been talking to to one of his three mounted scouts, listening to her report explaining some strangeness and then blah, blah, blah.

If he wasn’t forced to wear that golden armour by his wife as protection then I’d call him a pompous show-off but he does actually seem like a nice guy. Huh. Not that I’d flirt with him. The Queen is a scary, scary woman with a living Goddess flooding her bones with power. Nope.

And this time she had managed to actually make it in person and overcome the previous hurdles of either being refused, killed on her way there or simply arriving too late and watching the entire sortie leave through the main city-gates for most of the day before they returned with injured.

Almost time. Almost. There, do it Etsuko. Take the plunge. Not like they can do worse than kill me. I’d just have to ignore my way through the boring bits like the Sergeant talking. There, take the lull in the conversation and say it. Say the words to make them see the truth.

The King-Consort was finally finishing off his speech about the value of the sortie and the hard work which he appreciated so much. Granted that everyone here except her had likely heard it repeated weekly over a number of years but the shining looks of pride on their faces made it clear that he had charisma. And a wife who was both Queen, Head of the Church and filled with enough power to break down city walls with her bare hands.

Unless she could fly as well with angelic wings but that’d be overkill. Oh no. Don’t tell me she can see me. Damn it. Time to try it out.

‘….I believe that we are blessed, all of us and your work holds value. Protection of your families, your kingdom and mine and all we hold dear. First we need to establish a clear position to fall back to, then we ca-’ said King-Consort Ulrich before the baker woman strode up closer to him and two swords from his bodyguards were immediately drawn at her exposed throat.

‘Your Majesty. Oh wait, I need to do the knee thing. Or is it a bow? Nah, a knee thing it is. Give me a second…..there we go. Your Majesty I know how to find the truth. We just need to do one thing, and I volunteer myself to go first.’ said Etsuko.

The moment of silence dragged out before the confused King-Consort made a hand signal and his two personal guards pulled back their sword edges away from the neck of the strange baker that had joined them.

He knew that he was too trusting, but if she had truly meant him harm then his blessed and boosted golden armour would give her a surprise if she did try to hurt him.

Taking a leaf from her book, the King-Consort imitated the young woman and went on his knees before he looked at her and smiled.

Etsuko knew that the King-Consort was a normal man, but as he aged he craved the excitement and passion of his youth.

‘To everyone in the sortie! We need to make the ground bleed. Trust me. I’ll go first.’ said Etsuko.