In the captain and his lieutenant's tent, June took off his helmet, and placed it onto his cot. Sitting onto the hard board of wood he would be sleeping in, he balled one hand into a fist, covering it with his other, and rested his upper lip on them.

Inhaling as he did so, a wave of exhaustion, both physical, and mental, washed over him.

He wanted nothing else but to close his eyes and finally rest for the first time in ten years.

A decade of freezing rain, of not having a warm place to sleep for the night, of watching everyone he knew be killed or go mad; it was an eternity. His once handsome face had faded, replaced by a haunting visage of a man one foot in the grave. Having grown up in Frosthelm, where the winds blew cold, but the men’s blood ran colder, he certainly wasn’t a stranger to death or suffering. He could definitively say the number of people he had personally killed before the war likely numbered in the hundreds.

The toll the war took on his mind was horrible. Previously, to waste the little free time he was granted every blue moon, he would engage in frivolous hobbies. While he certainly wasn't a master artist fit to paint the royal family, he was partial to drawing, and while what he knitted very often came out lumpy and irregularly shaped, he still took pride in what he made, as it calmed him.

Now, if his sword wasn't in arm's reach, an impossible fear would engulf his mind, to the point where he couldn't function.

Reduced to his most primal instincts, he would sit down, frantically bouncing his knee up and down, seeing, hearing, smelling things that weren't there, his only solace, his sense of security, his blade.

It was caused in part by the sheer scale of the whole war, but mostly from his prior belonging to the 3rd border army.

He knew the people dying on a deeply personal level. He had met their wives and children on new years, knew what motivated them to take on extra patrols in the coldest weather for just one bronze coin, what dreams they dreamt that caused them to wake up the next day in an extra cheerful mood, and what caused them to lay awake in the middle of the night, blankly staring up into the air. He’d congratulated them as they cheered, comforted them when they cried; despite the lack of blood relation, they were his brothers, his family.

And just like that, in the span of a decade, he had lost them too.

He looked back on better times, of when he was still a child. How, after a long day at the blacksmith's, he would come home to the smell of a freshly made mince pie, and he, his sister, his father, and his mother, would crowd around the table.

The food itself was completely disgusting, their family being incredibly poor and thus unable to afford quality produce, but he didn't care. The company was what he valued most.

But every time he recalled those moments, quietly smiling and reminiscing on better times, he would always remember the way in which those happy years ended, with the disappearance of his mother.

He remembered how their mother had kissed he and his sister on the forehead before leaving to sell trinkets on the side of the street, just like any other day.

Only she never came back.

He couldn't even clearly recall her face anymore, but June could still remember her parting touch, and the way she waved as she stepped through their door. Oh how he wished he could go back to that moment, to lie, and say that he was sick so that she would stay home and take care of him.

After losing his wife, June remembered how his father reacted. So determined to find the mother of his children, he left the house every single day, from morning to night. But as time passed, and weeks became months, his father's hope transformed into a crippling grief, that left him seeking solace in the bottom of the bottle.

At first, a drink every once in a while, whenever the pain of separation became intolerable, and he needed relief. But the pain only seemed to grow with time, and his self medication became akin to a man with a life-threatening fever buying a bucket to vomit in and refusing to acknowledge the horrible virus turning his insides into mush. His drinking increased in intensity and frequency, going from a once a month rarity, then to an every other week occurrence, then to spending the entire day in a drunken stupor while his daughter cries from hunger, and his son scrounges through garbage for scraps.

As time passed, the siblings reached the age where they were old enough to know about the evils of liquor, yet still young and naive enough to believe they could change their father for the better, to the point where they would block their home’s door with their tiny little bodies and beg him to stay,.

At best, he would play lip service, tell them it would be the last time and tomorrow, they would come to meet a new man. The two would reluctantly give in, allowing him one last day of indulgence before a life time of sobriety, only for him to repeat the same words the next day.

At worst, when confronted with his children's pleas, he would only wordlessly beat one of them bloody, forcing his son or daughter to relent, and with tears in their eyes, drag the bruised, unconscious body of the other out of the way.

Even when they gave up, making peace with the fact they would bury their father in an early grave, when they actually did, they still wept. But the ground was frozen, and their tears became ice in the cold winter wind.

Over his father's interred ashes, June made a vow; to make the world a better, more peaceful place. To take up the sword to protect the weak, change the city for the better so that what happened to his own family wouldn't happen to others.

Having scrounged up whatever money he could to purchase a dirty, sword cultivation manual, he quickly became a Level 1 swordsman, and the city guard recruited him. He was overwhelmed with joy at the prospect of finally being able to begin his journey of helping others, but so blinded by the euphoria he felt, he ignored how the city guard were a disorganized rabble that helped no one but themselves; that instead of working to elevate the city, the guard acted more as a parasitic leech that sucked the teat of the commoner, causing nothing but pain in the end.

But he believed he could bring about fundamental change. Older than when his father was still alive, yet still just as naive, he believed that he was different from all those that came before him, that only a few rotten apples needed to be gotten rid of to save the bushel.

And so, he worked to make the city safer. Thieves hands would be cut off, rapists would castrated, murderers would be put down like dogs; some called him a zealot, a mad man completely incapable of feeling, but June believed that what he was doing was not only right, but necessary, so he continued on his single minded crusade.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Reaching Level 4 at the same time he became 40 years of age, with his newfound power at his disposal, he formed the belief that he had a greater responsibility for the safety of the city, and he formed a faction in the guard, comprised of others just as idealistic and fanatical as him to dispense justice unto those who were truly making the city horrid, the worst of the rotten fruit. The drug dispensers.

Whenever word reached them of anyone dealing in narcotics, his group would kidnap them. Cut out their tongues, so that their false words would no longer deceive wayward souls longing for salvation; skin them, to remind them that no matter how monstrous they presented themselves as, they were still human beneath it all; torture them, so that their screams would serve as a song from which their victims in the afterlife may draw some solace.

And when they reached the point where they no longer begged for life, but death, they would watch.

They would watch as the skinless, tongueless, dogs would slowly bleed to death, their last words unintelligible wails of pain.

When morning came the following day, the people of the city would wake up to the smell of freshly spilt blood, another skinned corpse hanging from one of Frosthelm's bridges over the rivers.

June could no longer remember the faces of those he had killed save for one. An old merchant.

With a rapidly failing business, the old codger grew more and more desperate to preserve what little he had left, beginning to openly produce and sell narcotics. So desperate in fact, that he not only started whoring out and enslaving those who had become addicted to his product, but their children as well. And inevitably, June's group set their sights upon dispensing justice unto the old merchant.

June remembered precisely where they lived, a modest one story house constructed from pristine white brick. But unlike the house itself, the estate it sat on was opulent, containing a fountain, a beautiful garden, and a hedge maze, but both house and yard had fallen into a state of disrepair. The house was covered with cold vine that only grew in the summer, and the grass was overgrown to the point where they reached his knees. The others too busy with their own targets, after slitting the throats of the few guards on the compound and sneaking to a window overlooking the dining room, June remembered spying through a window by himself, as the old man, surrounded by his family, ate dinner, a modest meal of bean stew.

A meal fit for the lowliest of commoners.

With their plates clean, their hunger satiated, and their bellies full, the parents left for bed, while the old man and his grandchildren moved to the study, where the young ones played. The atmosphere was warm, despite the absence of a fire in the fireplace. With only a lantern for light, the children cheered, and whooped, as they jumped on and ran around the old man. Sitting in a large cushioned chair, with quilted blanket on lap, the old merchant quietly watched them with a smile, only speaking and moving if a child was going to hurt themself.

And when the children had tuckered out, fully exhausted themselves from their reverie, June watched from outside as the old man carried them to their bedrooms to sleep, where he tucked them in, kissed each of their foreheads good night, and went back to his study.

When the old man returned to his study, he was met with June, sitting in his chair in quiet contemplation.

And yet, despite knowing what he was here to do, the old man did not beg, as many others killed by June did. He only requested one thing.

Even now, the old man’s words rang clear,

“I only ask that you not wake the children.”

Doing what he went there to do, June slit his throat where he stood. The old man died with dignity, with nary a sound nor movement, save for the closing of his eyes, and his kneeling on the ground, as if in prayer to the old goddess.

Leaving through the window he used to enter June was midway through, when something caught his eye.

A locked shed, illuminated only by the moonlight.

Not an uncommon sight in wealthy estates, such buildings stored gardening tools meant to be used in the short periods where life blossomed in the North.

A lock for a shed on a property covered in vegetation though, was uncommon.

Grabbing the lantern in the study and moving towards the shed, June could clearly recall the unnerving quiet of the moment.

Striking the lock with his sword, he opened the door, only to be met with darkness.

Illuminating the shed, large, brown cotton sacks took up the entirety of the inside. Further inspecting the exterior of the sacks, he noted the lack of dust. As if they were constantly being moved, or only just recently did they begin to be stored in the shed.

Opening the brown bags, each and every one of them were filled to the brim with Naira Lilies. Flowers native to the Kyriena Kingdom in the South, they were colored a maddening blue that brought about severe hallucinations, both visual and auditory in nature, nausea, and a slight blissful feeling in those below Level 1.

When processed by an alchemist, Naira Lilies could become Ocean Blue, an incredibly potent hallucinogen addictive to the point it was said consuming a fingernail of the blue tar like substance was enough to make it so one would be willing to kill their own children for a bit more.

The amount of Ocean Blue that could theoretically be synthesized from the amount of lilies in the bags would be enough to theoretically hook an entire district of the city.

Losing strength in his legs, June dropped his lantern and sword, before collapsing onto the ground.

Staring up at the wooden ceiling of the shed, June laughed.

At first a breathy noise as if he was straining to get it out of his chest,

It morphed into an uproarious sound,

Before finally, crescendoing into repressed sobs.

So intense was his desire to rid the city of monsters that by the time he slowed, he realized he himself had become one as well. He had long made peace with this fact, after all, as long as he was making the world a better place, he didn’t mind what he became. He would continue crushing those rotten fruits to save the rest of the harvest.

But he could see now, the crop itself was the problem, a festering wound in the world from which nothing good could come out of.

Only evil existed in Frosthelm. Any any good that could've existed was long snuffed out, by Baron Elef, by the guards, by the people themselves.

Realizing the futility of his mission, he gave up. He enlisted in the border armies, where there was an obvious, present evil he could defend against, where he didn't need to think, and could just act mindlessly.

And so, he lived on, reaching level 5 on his fifth year as a border guard. Eventually failing to fully form his 6th magic circle, he readied the resources to attempt ascension again, until he heard news of his sister’s death in childbirth. Maintaining regular contact with her even well into his career as a border soldier, he wept for her, and held her cold hands until the very last moment before she was thrown into the fire to be cremated.

The first time he laid eyes on his niece, June felt a white hot rage.

He had no prejudice for those born out of wedlock. Bastards had to have made up 20% of the soldiers at the border, but she had taken his beloved sister from him, his last of his direct blood, and for that, he hated her with every bone in his grieving body.

June remembered walking to her crib, a pitch black, detestable anger growing in his chest, the idea of smothering her with a pillow until she no longer drew breath entered his mind. Holding a lumpy, dirty cushion in his hands, he raised it into the air, until he looked into her mirthful eyes, still so pure, devoid of malice.

His hatred melted like snow in spring time, and he wept, realizing just what he was about to do.

Holding her up to the air, he cradled her until she fell asleep in his arms, and he lowered her back into the crib.

He had failed in protecting the city. But for his niece, he would give her the world; as long as he lived, that girl would remain safe.

Breaking out of his reverie, June stood up to take off the rest of his armor and rest.

Just one more day.

One more day before the war would be over.