Penbrooke stopped and stretched his arms out wide in the air. “This looks like a good place to end today’s session.”

He pressed on his phantom terminal. “I suppose I’ll put the ability point from levelling up into the [Quest Locator] – it’ll be convenient being able to see all the quests in the area without having to go ask around. Besides, I don’t have any use for the [Item Identification] ability right now.”

For a while he was quiet, before restarting his mumbles. “Ah, looks like there’s no quests nearby. I guess I’ll have to reach Fragrant Grove first. Oh well, that can wait till tomorrow.”

Penbrooke removed Rudy’s lightning mask from his face and – to Cal’s annoyance – had it disappear into his dimensional storage unit.

Looks like my plan to throw it away while he’s gone is a no-go.

Worryingly, the knight also had the cudgel disappear, though he resummoned it a moment late. “Actually, the AI might need it in the night, in case there’s wolves or anything in these parts.”

I reckon I’ll need the mask as well, actually. I promise I won’t throw it away.

Cal felt a jolt as Penbrooke departed, and his body returned to his control. He didn’t feel a need to worry about Penbrooke’s parting words as he’d heard nothing of roaming wolf packs from local woodsmen.

Though, they also didn’t mention there being any orcs or goblins in the area looking to mug passersby, and if my last hour or so has taught me anything, it’s that the forest is absolutely teeming with that sort. So can I even trust the woodsmen’s words anymore?

All the same, he was too tired to ponder on it for long, especially with other pressing matters to attend to.

Darkness encroached upon the amber in the skies and signalled the short spell of sunlight remaining in the day; in this duration, he’d have to rush to find a place to settle down for the night; else risk navigating the forest in pitch black, which was likely to end with a sprained ankle or worse.

Yet, Cal felt a need to put his mind at rest before anything else by checking if he’d been hallucinating the most recent events. They’d been too out there – even when compared to the usual Penbrooke experience – for him not to question his grasp of reality afterwards, and as such he set off in the direction Penbrooke had come.

To his relief, there were plenty of markings in the path that recorded the fights: the ground was scuffed where goblins had been launched off their feet; it was bitten and holey like cheese where the mage had gone on a rampage; and there were large trampled patches of grass in the prairie where the eagles had crashed, as well as many inky splodges that was likely blood showered down from arrow wounds.

Having surveyed the ambush sites, Cal retraced his steps to the small glade where he’d first seen the greenskin duo. While they were long gone, remnants of their presence remained: such as the faint print of weave where the hobgoblin had laid on its gingham blanket, or how the earth was soft and fashioned with footprints where the orc had practised its dance.

These tracks put to rest his theory that everything he’d seen had been a work of his imagination, which meant that it really must have happened the way he remembered it…

Not knowing what to make of that, Cal noted distractedly that the forest would soon plunge into total darkness. He pulled himself away from his thoughts, and dug into the backpack to bring out his canvas bedroll.

Given the hour, he no longer had the time to gather up forest debris and make a survival shelter; as for his actual tent – the one Auntie Jane had given him – it was out of reach seeing as Penbrooke had hidden it in his dimensional storage unit. But alas, this was a minor complaint when compared with his other Penbrooke complaints.

Thinking he’d probably be safe spending the night here, Cal sought out a thickset tree in the glade with a particularly chunky trunk (not that it had a weight problem or anything, it was just big-boned, that’s all) and laid out his bedroll beside it. This way the tree would act as a partial barrier against the frigid winds travelling up the prairie.

Crawling into his bedroll, he laid down and cast his woollen blanket over him. Only on stilling did he finally notice his fatigue: of course he’d known he was tired, but not to the extent of bone-weary exhaustion.

He’d always had a large tank of energy going about his daily life, but today’s events had drained even that to the last drop, though at least it meant sleep would come easy tonight.

Some people romanticise the idea of sleeping in the woods, saying such things like how wonderful it feels to return to nature, or how peaceful it is with the wind whispering lullabies in your ears and woody, leafy scents soothing your soul; yet Cal quickly found out it was anything but.

The bipolar winds wailed at times and whinged at others, switching with the frequency a goat fantasizes about coming across someone who’s old and infirm, perfect for getting its daily practice in: after all, look at the way they’re moving so slowly on their shaky, little bones, appearing all fragile and vulnerable; they’re practically asking for a good headbutting to topple them over.

But even if the winds were loud, at least the noisy birds had gone to bed, right?

Wrong! Well, okay, technically it was correct, but figuratively it was wrong for those same noisy birds had invited over their nocturnal cousins to ensure the avian party never stopped: and these just so happened to be loose-beaked delinquents who couldn’t help but indulge in a little hoot-hoot malarkey every other minute.

And so Cal lay, fatigued yet unable to fall asleep. He yawned and shifted onto his side, while his mind pulled up the series of ambushes as if demanding his commentary on them. Yet he hardly had the energy to question them, especially when he knew there’d only be further questions for answers.

He’d almost succeeded in shooting them down, when all of a sudden he recalled a few details that had stuck out even amongst the general peculiarity.

For one, he was certain the orc and hobgoblin duo had been mercenaries.

Based off this, he was convinced the other groups, though not professionals, had also been hired for the same job as all three groups had displayed the same pattern of behaviour: engaging Penbrooke in combat, sure, but with guardrails up on the experience the entire time.

This hypothesis was best proven, contrarily, by the few examples where it broke down, such as when the mage got angry, or when the archer ordered Penbrooke to return to the start line. But if not to mug him, what then had been their purpose in ambushing him?

It was like they’d wanted to give him a taste of combat without causing actual harm, almost like a tutorial to combat as Penbrooke had mentioned...

But this meant…

It meant…

Cal’s eyelids felt heavy, shutters sliding down his eyes. His mind wanted to keep chasing these elusive questions as though it were a hound that’d caught scent of its quarry, especially since he’d yet to consider the most important detail.

Nevertheless, he was too tired to think any longer: curiosity blazing, mind fading…

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Cal arose in a panic. At once he sat up, and regarded his surroundings through bleary eyes, subconsciously biting down at the pain he felt from all over. The details of last night came slowly, and with them the realisation he was indeed meant to be in a forest and hadn’t been kidnapped.

Pulling the blanket tighter about himself, he lay down and stared at the scraggly, dew-dripped branches above with their swaying leaves, beyond which lay the blue sky with its early morning glow-up. Although he had changed locations, his avian neighbours were the same as back home, up at the crack of dawn with their early-morning mating caws.

Eventually, prompted by his rumbling stomach, he slithered out of his bedroll and onto his feet. He blinked away tears as the body-wide aches introduced themselves to him in bombastic fashion, especially those in his legs which blared louder than the rest.

That bloody spirit, doing me dirty like this.

Realising it was going to be a slow morning, Cal addressed his yapping hunger first and had some jerky and nuts for breakfast, helped down by raspberries he found in the forest.

Once he’d packed up, he practised his aim for a bit but found it wanting as the robins and wrens dodged his pebbles with ease and continued to toot their tunes.

Seeing as there was not much else to do, he started towards Fragrant Grove. Although he winced every dozen steps, at least he could be grateful it was muscle aches that plagued him instead of blistered feet.

With a steady release of endorphins to ease his pain, his mind began to drift and soon found itself back where it’d abruptly cut last night. The strange string of ambushes made a lot more sense if considered under the context of introductions to combat, even if that in itself was an odd thing to wish to experience.

Though maybe not if you’re a knight errant, Cal supposed, recalling how Penbrooke had indeed been seeking out a fight before it all happened. In fact, when looking at it from that perspective, it almost seemed like someone had hired those greenskins to give Penbrooke his desired combat encounters.

But why, though?

The situation only became more perplexing when introducing the last, most important element: the hobgoblin’s pocket watch.

Cal had heard of cities wealthy enough to build clock towers, which provided the locals there the ability to accurately tell the time. It was a mighty useful invention, even if it required tremendous investment upfront to pay for the groundbreaking mechanical designs.

As a general rule, nobles want little to do with plebs; so naturally, there were many of them uneasy at the idea of sharing their time with the common man. Consequently, owning a pocket watch became one of the greatest status indicators within noble circles.

This lay in the fact that mechanical designs had yet to figure out how to shrink timepieces to this scale, meaning the only way to have a functional pocket watch was to have a mage enchant it; and given temporal magic was widely reputed as being the most difficult type to learn, the going rates for those with sufficient skill in it were said to be exorbitant, far worse than even those specialising in dimensional magic.

This all went to say a single pocket watch signalled to others that you possessed wealth rivalling those of city-states. Of course, Cal – having no links to the nobility – had heard these factoids through hearsay and rumours, hence there was a good chance they were less than accurate.

All the same, he knew for certain that timepieces were a big deal, increasingly so the smaller they got.

So to see the hobgoblin casually using one, well, Cal hadn’t believed his eyes.

He thought he’d seen wrong, especially with how brief the moment had been: after all, this was his first time seeing a clock in real life. He only knew how to read the time due to his textbooks, which had recently introduced the topic into the curriculum following national pride at the clock tower erected in Felsia’s capital.

But if everything else he’d seen had actually happened, then the pocket watch had to be real as well.

(Added to the fact the greenskins certainly seemed late to something. Having such technology must have gone to their heads as they’d cast aside the ol’ dependable sun, and relied solely on their newfangled gizmo for timekeeping. And look where that’d got them: to Latesville and Tardytown, that’s where.)

Naturally, there was no chance the hobgoblin owned the pocket watch, for no one with the wealth to rival a city-state would take on odd-jobs mercenary work. Hence, the hobgoblin must have received the stopwatch from its employer to use for this mission.

And that was the kicker: that someone of tremendous wealth – and therefore power – had used their resources to… well, to have Penbrooke entertained, Cal supposed.

So no longer could Cal think of Penbrooke as a simple ghost, nor some common demon that had taken possession of him. Rather, if Penbrooke was a ghost, he had to be a royal ghost in direct succession or something else of similar status in order to have powerful entities paying attention to him.

Yet, instead of feeling joy at the fact that such an esteemed person of high pedigree had deigned themselves to takeover his plebian body, Cal felt terrible. He’d read enough stories to know that possessing too good a thing as a commoner only served to invite disaster from those who had the power to take it from you.

In his case, there was nothing to take, only favour to curry or uncurry; but this didn’t change the underlying dynamic.

He knew enough about nobles’ lives (again, through story books) to understand how complex and cutthroat power politics could be at this elevation. So if there were powerful entities that wanted to win over Penbrooke’s goodwill, then it followed there also existed powerful entities that wanted to ruin him, or at the very least compromise him in a manner they could take advantage of.

In such a scenario, Penbrooke could always leave the mortal realm, but what could Cal do should a Duchess order her standing army to capture him? She’d make him her little pet, feed him and house him, then take advantage of his youthful vigour to satisfy her hedonistic desires…

His heart fluttered, and he blushed slightly. You know what, it doesn’t sound all that bad, actually.

Then the scene changed and swapped the matronly Duchess – who was strict, cruel even, to others but kind to her pet, indulging all his wishes just to see him smile; who was undeniably a beauty with an appearance that captured the heart of all who laid eyes on her, only her own heart had been broken in her youth and caused her to close up to the world, by now having lived for so long in this cold, lonely prison of her making that she couldn’t imagine any other way of living; changing seemed impossible now, or at least it did until a certain common-born hunk entered her life and warmed her to the core…

Anyway, the matronly Duchess in this hypothetical scenario in his head was swapped—

Through an effort of will, Cal immediately stopped his thought track from proceeding: nope, nope, nope; I refuse to go onto the bad comparison until I’m done imagining my rosy, bittersweet life under the Duchess. Take it or leave it, hmph.

Unfortunately, his hunger strike of thought wasn’t very effective against the invasive thoughts which plainly ignored his resistance.

The scenario was identical: being captured and taken as a pet, only now the Frozen Matron was swapped out for an old, hairy Duke with grubby fingers and a rapacious appetite… for boytoys. Cal’s heart sunk and only kept sinking at the series of mental images that followed, showing his life under The Right Honourable Gluteus Annihilator (known to friends as Goofin’ Gabe).

Frightened out of his wits at the potential threat Penbrooke represented to his body, Cal urgently re-assessed his goals. Until now he had been content to wander around aimlessly, but no longer.

His greatest priorities were now to find out more about Penbrooke, in particular who his powerful benefactors and rivals were, and to get powerful enough to protect himself against any potential Lords who came for his booty.

Additionally, if he could work out a way to get Penbrooke on his side, then all the better for who knew what kind of benefits he’d be able to extract from a princeling, ghost or otherwise.

Speaking of the devil, Cal felt a pinprick of pain against the backdrop of his sore body, and found himself pushed out of control.

“What is this pain…” Penbrooke groaned. “Don’t tell me this is from yesterday? Oh god, this is unbearable. I need to unlock the increased regen ability ASAP.”

He scanned his phantom terminal. “Looks like I’ll reach Fragrant Grove within a few hours. As if a walking simulator couldn’t get worse, they just had to add realistic pain feedback… Ah, whatever, I’ll just let the AI handle this one and come back later.”

Thrust back into the front seat, Cal squeezed his eyes shut and pressed finger and thumb against them. He then moved his hand up and massaged his temples, attempting to knead the irritation out of his head.

This bloody spirit! Not only does he get into a fight with goddamn greenskins, he wrecks my body in the process with his imaginative acrobatics, and now wants me alone to deal with the consequences… The gall of him!

Cal thought of changing direction away from Fragrant Grove to get back at Penbrooke, but swiftly decided against it. Seeing as he was almost halfway between Riversdale and Fragrant Grove, it made more sense to keep pushing ahead instead of backtracking and having to redo the trek.

Also, once he got there, he’d be able to buy herbs to relieve the pain; in fact, Cal was inwardly cursing himself for having forgotten to pack any medicinal herbs in his backpack. Auntie Jane most likely had packed some, but evidently Penbrooke didn’t know or had forgotten about it as he hadn’t taken it out of his dimensional storage.

Cal’s other reason for deciding against his treacherous notion was that he didn’t want to go against Penbrooke’s orders too early, at least not before he knew where to place the knight, and therefore potential repercussions of defying him.

And so, Cal could do little except suck up the pain and waddle onwards to Fragrant Grove, all the while entertaining ideas on how to get back at the spirit.