“Distract me not, ma’am. I have business here, and business comes before pleasure,” Pechorin said, guns drawn.

“We’re headed back to town if you want to join us,” Shuixing replied.

“I am afraid I cannot go back with the woman who dishonored me. We must settle this with a duel,” he said, wiping his exceedingly pale chin with his thumb. Pechorin was as pale as his overly-dark clothes were black, like an edgy yin-yang.

“I’m not fighting you, Pech. Why can’t you just say hi like a normal person?” Natsuko said.

Sofiane looked confused. “Uhh, who is this guy?”

Shuixing said, “our old—”

“Don’t speak of our past!” Pechorin said. “Those ties have long been severed. What you did that day can never be undone.”

Natsuko rolled her eyes. Sofiane looked concerned.

“What did you do?” Sofiane asked.

“I told him I wasn’t gonna—”

Pechorin fired into the air. The shot caused Sofiane to duck and Natsuko to wince in annoyance.

“Enough! Your irreverence is—”

“Dude can you not!?” Natsuko shouted.

“Not do what?”

“Fire your damn guns!”

Pechorin cleared his throat. “Shuixi— your Medico-Mage is able to cure tinnitus. But she cannot cure—”

“I swear to the gods, Pech, I will send you straight through the ground where no one will have to see your stupid sickly face and your stupid greasy hair and your ugly ass trench coat and your obnoxiously loud guns and your—”

Shuixing leaned over to Sofiane and whispered. “He asked her out when we used to go adventuring together. Natsuko turned him down and he swore that he would become a hermit who would never fall in love with a woman again.”

“I hear you!” he said. “Shui you are lying to this poor girl! I never—”

“Boy,” Sofiane corrected.

“Oh, you’re the new femboy?”

Sofiane grimaced. “Was.”

“Ah, my condolences, I— Natsuko, this is not finished! We duel for my honor, and the honor of my dead clan. Right here, right now!”

“You know what? Fine,” Natsuko said, setting her bottle down and leaning on it. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

Leaves fluttered to the ground. The path in the woods became still, save a blustery autumn gale howling through the maple trees. The leaves stained the ground the color of freshly-drawn blood. Pechorin’s guns stayed frozen at his sides.

“I refuse to shoot a woman,” he said.

“So why the hell did you even bother then!?”

“For my honor, and my clan’s hon—”

Sofiane, Shuixing, and Natsuko walked around him blocking the path.

“This has not been settled! I will hunt you to the ends of the earth, emanating my aura of bloodthirst wherever I go until this slight has been rectified. Mark my words.”

As they continued their journey back to Vermögenburgh, Sofiane asked, “so… he’s another 1st-gen Hero, right?”

Shuixing nodded. “He was one of the most popular back in the day. Only Natsuko had a better Use-Number.”

“Makes sense,” Sofiane replied. “He’s like an early version of Baphomet or Yoshihide, I guess. The silent yet sensitive loner with a dark backstory to match their dark color palette? Bit of an anti-hero?”

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“Precisely. His Use-Numbers plummeted right around when Yoshihide was first summoned.”

“Shame,” Sofiane said. “Hey Natsuko, maybe you should suck up to him and squeeze him for some free money and booze.”

Natsuko elbowed Sofiane in the stomach.

“Ow! What was that for!?”

By then it was lunchtime, so they reconvened at Vermögenburgh’s most famous restaurant, Bier-und-Brot, which served both solid and liquid forms of grain. Their specialty was an open-faced rye sandwich with whatever the head chef, Alva, felt like cooking. On that day it was pickled herring, onions, and dill, the same as it had been every day for as long as Natsuko could remember.

“Mm. It’s been a while since I’ve had Vermögenburgher food,” Sofiane said, munching on a tail of crusty bread to go along with his softer, buttered slice. He washed it down with a sip of wheat beer.

No hero got out of skipping Vermögenburgh entirely. Even the new summons had to complete a questline in the town before they could continue on to the Tianzhou region. However, the base stats of new summons were so high now that the giant, evil dragon Völsunga that had taken Natsuko and Shuixing’s adventuring party almost a month of careful preparation and grinding was basically just a chew toy for the new Heroes. An efficient new summon could complete Vermögenburgh’s questline in 24 hours. Natsuko wondered if Völsunga was as annoyed with stat inflation as she was.

“So, now that we have some calories on the brain, and a little bit of golden lubricant,” Sofiane said, shaking his beer stein. “Let’s talk about ways to get our Use-Numbers up. Any ideas to start off with?”

The beer fizzed and popped in its stein. The stove clanged as Alva scooped another loaf out of the oven. No one had any ideas.

“Alright, I’ll get us rolling. As you know, one of the metrics that has shown a strong correlation to increased Use-Number is the quantity of Ero-Art. Now—”

“No,” Natsuko said.

“My suggestion is nothing salacious. I mean—”

“Whatever it is, no.”

“Even if it’s—”

Shuixing coughed. “Natsu… prefers not to go that route. Neither do I, in fact.”

Natsuko set her chin and tried to make that the final word, though the effect wasn’t quite as strong with a beer foam mustache melting on her upper lip.

“I understand. Believe me, I’m not too happy with that statistic either,” Sofiane said. “But I feel I should at least offer up an insider’s take on what the top performing Heroes are doing to get ahead, since they’re the ones we’re trying to overcome. Fair?”

Natsuko snorted. “Fine.”

“Okay, hear me out: Toes.”

“What?”

“Toes! If you want to compete for a good Ero-Art number nowadays, it’s open-toed shoes, all the way,” he said.

Natsuko folded her arms. “I don’t even wanna know why. The Celestials can screw themselves.”

“I believe that’s the point.”

“Either way, not happening. No toes.”

“Why haven’t you adopted the trend, Sofiane?” Shuixing asked, nibbling on pickled fish.

Sofiane shrugged. “Different rules for different archetypes. Doesn’t really work for male heroes. Even femboys. Maybe because we have to ditch our stockings to make it work which ruins the femboy aesthetic.”

“Hmm, let’s think of something else then,” Shuixing said. “What if we… well, we could always try a new outfit. I remember seasonal-themed outfits worked well.”

Sofiane shook his head. “That’s a one-time boost if you’re already being summoned. Only the Celestials that are hardcore fans will care, and they’re already the ones summoning you. If you’re already stuck with a low Use-Number, it doesn't do much.”

Natsuko grumbled. The one mug of beer wasn’t even giving her a buzz, it was just making her thoughts all mushy and fragmented. “We’re not supposed to be able to claw back up, that’s why.”

“What do you mean?” Sofiane asked. Her comment made him feel cold all of a sudden.

“The Yishang must have some kind of reason, or… or incentive or something for wanting the Celestials to move on to new Heroes all the time. They say we’re needed to save the universe, but if that’s the case, why this giant turnover?”

“Because the challenges get harder year over year, so we need Heroes with stronger… um… you know…” Sofiane’s own thoughts ground to a halt.

“Yeah, and if that’s the case, what the hell is the point in trying to catch up? We’re leftovers. We’re junk. We’re unnecessary. We have nothing to contribute to saving the universe. That’s the message,” Natsuko said.

Shuixing put her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Natsuko…”

“I’m gonna go take a nap. I didn’t sleep well,” Natsuko said, standing up from the table.

“Hey, neither did I,” Sofiane said.

That didn’t stop her from stomping up the street towards the college. Shuixing sighed. This wasn’t the first brainstorming session they’d had to figure out how to boost their Use-Numbers. It wasn’t even the tenth, although it could've been the hundredth. Something about Sofiane’s optimism had infected them, but they were right back around to the same conclusions they had drawn years ago.

“You gotta play the game to win the game,” Sofiane said, taking another swig of beer. “Walking away and throwing in the towel doesn’t accomplish anything.”

Shuixing rested her head in her hands. “Hmm, I wonder if that’s really the bargain. Sell yourself out, or fade into obscurity.”

“There is always karma,” Pechorin said, startling Sofiane by standing directly behind him.

“Gods man! Clear your throat or something first,” Sofiane said, slapping Pechorin in the chest.

“What do you mean, Pech?” Shuixing asked.

“Causes and conditions. If the conditions are not ripe, your causes will be for naught. Sometimes you must simply bide your time, nurse your grudges, keep your vendettas on ice so they can be served chilled,” Pechorin said, idly thumbing the flintlock of his pepperbox pistol.

Shuixing chuckled softly. “We’ve certainly been doing a lot of biding, that’s for sure. How have you been, Pechorin?”

He held up his hand. “Let us skip the pleasantries, mage, for I am the embodiment of these conditions. I come bearing news of the Cursed Demon’s Eye, an ancient artifact that offers a bargain far more demented, far more befouling, yet far more powerful than mere open-toed footwear.”

“Hey! Cheers to that,” Sofiane said, raising his stein and hiccuping.