“I’ve heard odd things about you,” the stall man said.

Ezra stopped himself from munching down on his pseudo-burger and looked up at the stall man. It was early morning, and the sun had yet to poke over the horizon. The air was cool and the roads were illuminated mostly by the light of torches and lanterns.

Ezra shrugged. “The rumor mill’s been working overtime for me, unfortunately.”

The man grunted and flipped a burger.

“Keep an eye out,” he said.

Ezra nodded. His attention turned to the man’s right, where a cast-iron pan sat, unused. It’d been there before, but Ezra hadn’t noticed it.

“What’s with the pan?” Ezra said.

“It’s for special occasions.”

“What kind of special occasions?”

“Special ones.”

And that was the end of the conversation. Ezra made an excuse and wandered over to the guild, finishing up his burger—Chulcalf sandwich—and entering through the front door.

Quiet murmurs echoed out and there was only a handful of people inside. One woman with a stack of papers walked past Ezra with her head down. Ezra stepped up to the quest board and searched over it for anything interesting. Nothing at all. He sighed—how long before he would get a decent quest?

“Pardon, but I believe you’re looking for this?” someone said.

He turned around. Villscha was standing behind him, holding a piece of paper. Ezra pulled it out of Villscha’s hand and read it over. It was a D-rank quest to kill a cave troll of some sort. Ezra couldn’t help but think back to yesterday. Kind of odd for the guy to be so friendly after Ezra had publically challenged his authority in front of a subordinate.

So, this was a trap of some sort, wasn’t it?

“Yes, I do believe you’re right,” Filamenta whispered in his mind. “I would be very surprised if he isn’t fed up with you, especially if Dumrivil was telling the truth about this man.”

Ezra hadn’t even considered that, but Filamenta made a good point. If Villscha was corrupt, perhaps he didn’t take kindly to Ezra rapidly gaining power, given that Ezra hadn’t made his allegiance clear.

“I’ll accept it,” Ezra said.

Villscha’s grin widened. Filamenta sighed.

“Excellent!” Villscha said. “Alright, I’ll go ahead and personally sign off on it.”

Villscha went to a desk and wrote something on the paper. Filamenta hissed in his mind.

“What were you thinking? This is a trap!” she said.

“Do you think anything he throws at me is going to be able to take me down?” Ezra said. “Seriously? There are only a handful of B-rank adventurers, and I don’t think it would be easy to mobilize them that easily, especially for an assassination.”

Filamenta was silent.

“Just be careful,” she said.

Ezra nodded. Villscha approached them and handed over the piece of paper to Ezra. Instantly, his minimap flashed and a cursor pointed out the direction he needed to go. He walked out of the guild hall.

----------------------------------------

Ezra walked for about an hour and a half, out past the farm where those weird rock turtle dinosaur things had attacked. He came across a forest shaded with mist despite the rising sun. After a moment of indecision, he headed in without a complaint. The air was cold and chilly. The sound of ghostly calls and cries seemed to echo from every direction.

Now and then, a random monster would swing out of the fog and strike at Ezra. They were taken down with ease, of course, but it was beginning to wear on him. They weren’t supposed to be that aggressive, were they?

Eventually, he approached the supposed location of the troll. He walked up to the area, fog thick enough so that he could barely see in front of him.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“I don’t hear anything,” he muttered.

Filamenta flickered in his hand. “A quiet cave troll?”

An odd idea—but then again, this world, as similar as it was to the fantasy worlds of his youth, was substantially different in many ways. He narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the fog.

“Screw this,” he whispered. “Why am I even relying on my normal sight?”

He flicked on [Mana Perception]

His vision changed, revealing the faint blue outlines of trees and grass.

He stiffened.

The clear figure of a human was approaching him with a weapon in their hand. Another one to the left, another one to the right. Ezra turned around and saw one behind him. The person stopped and stiffened.

“Shit,” he said. “He sees us!”

“What? But what about the fog!?” another figure said.

“Forget the fog, he must have some way around it! Get him, now!”

The five rushed him.

Ezra was at a bit of a disadvantage, given that he could only tell that they had weapons, not what kind of weapons they had. There was no way to judge melee distance, except, perhaps, by trial and error. Ezra didn’t feel like doing that when his life was on the line.

He jumped into the air and away from the four, gaining some distance. He landed into a roll, then tossed out his needle toward one of them. If he was lucky, he might be able to get away with wounding them—

His heart pounded out of nowhere. He instinctively turned to the left just in time to see a person sneaking up on his right. But Ezra was too late. The enemy’s dagger sank into a spot just under Ezra’s armor.

153/300

Filamenta teleported back into Ezra’s hand and grew into the size of a knife. He stabbed out before the person could escape, sinking his needle into the person’s throat.

70/450

Ezra pulled out his needle and stabbed again.

0/450

The person gasped, went limp, and fell to the ground, dagger still stuck in Ezra’s side.

Ezra looked down at the broken body of his opponent. He supposed that he should’ve felt some kind of horror or disgust at what he’d done. After all, he’d never killed a human before. It was always monsters.

He didn’t care.

They’d attacked him.

They deserved what was coming.

He looked back over at the four left who’d fanned out around him. They seemed to be glancing between Ezra and the one who’d died.

Ezra tossed out his needle toward the eye of one of them. There was a clink and the needle fell into the dirt. Ezra recalled it and glanced at them. So that was how they could see through the fog—they had some kind of mask or goggles.

Ezra charged forward. One of the people moved their weapon up to block. Ezra held out his hand. Restrain activated and threw the person onto the ground. The other one was coming for Ezra. [Entangle] kicked in and slammed that person against a tree. A quick needle thrown into one of their necks quickly rendered the enemy useless.

The other two were backing away. After a moment, they fled into the trees.

Ezra watched with a bored expression.

“Well, that was interesting,” he said. “Looks like there’s no cave troll either.”

“Disappointing,” Filamenta said.

Ezra approached the one who was still alive, tied against the tree. “Answers, now.”

“We wanted you dead because we thought you were cheating and because Villscha ordered it!” the man said.

Ezra frowned. He hadn’t even gotten to interrogate the guy and he just gave up.

Still, Villscha wanted him dead, eh? That wasn’t too much of a surprise. He’d already kind of expected that given the suspicious assignment, anyway. It also wasn’t surprising that people thought that he was gaming the system. Prise had said that he was an extremely rare case.

He stabbed the man in the stomach once, then twice, then a third time. The man slumped over.

“You executed a prisoner,” Filamenta said.

“And?”

Filamenta didn’t respond for a few moments, then glowed.

“Well done,” she said.

Ezra started walking out of the forest.

“I thought you were supposed to be the nice one,” Ezra said. “I’m a bit surprised.”

“I don’t approve of how you treat your allies, but enemies should be treated with prejudice. The only mistake you made was letting the other two get away.”

Ezra smirked. Perhaps there was hope for their little partnership after all.

----------------------------------------

The sun was setting by the time Ezra arrived. On his way back, he’d pulled out the dagger and bandaged his wounds. Hopefully, he wouldn’t get infected—that would suck. Long shadows were cast by the entrance of the door, similar to when Ezra had arrived in the morning. He swung open the doors and stepped in. Dozens of people were turning in quests and eating in the cafeteria. A small group in the lounge area by the campfire burst out laughing at something.

Prise was seated at the guild desk, eyes bloodshot and herbal tea leaves scattered over the surface of her table. Her auburn busy hair looked like it did after the Giant Lizard had attacked. Ezra approached her. She looked up at him and gave a weary smile.

“Hi, Nameless,” she said. “Just been a little busy, in case you were interested.”

“I wasn’t interested,” he said. “Also, I wasn’t able to get the cave troll. It wasn’t there. In fact, I was ambushed—“

Someone burst through the door.

“The One-Eyed Merc killed a group of mercenaries!” he said. “I have the evidence to prove it!”

Conversation stopped. Outside, the sun set, taking away the streams of light that had been shining through the windows.

The merc pulled out strips of bloodied cloth—cloth from Ezra’s jacket.

Ezra looked at it.

Ah, well that wasn’t good.

Villscha stepped out of his office and approached the mercenary, his eyes widened.

“My gods!” he said. “To think that our rising star was capable of such things… it’s absurd! There will, of course, be a full investigation. Hopefully, it’s nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

Prise stiffened and glanced at Ezra.

Ezra yawned and leaned against the table.

“You aren’t concerned?” Prise said.

“Worst comes to worst, I’ll just leave,” he muttered. “Not that I’m going to take this lying down.”

Villshca continued to rant and rave about something. Ezra watched his movements. Villscha was so excitable, the way he moved his arms and motioned.

How many stabs would it take to silence those movements?