The town of Rest’s Remorse was on full alert. Unfortunately, that really didn’t mean as much as it should have, seeing that its mayor and standing army were both away in the wastes.

Officially, the reason was that a minor monster wave might attack the town. Normally, this wasn’t much of an issue. But with the incomplete repairs of the town’s wall? Potentially deadly.

Hence, the mercenaries.

Unofficially? Every single mouth in town was gossiping about the messenger who had rushed into the settlement and then stumbled her way over to the mayor’s mansion. The messenger who brought news of another epic tier demon driving their army towards Rest’s Remorse.

An attack they couldn’t possibly survive.

The town had almost as many mercenaries as when they faced the original threat. They even had two different epic tiers, the hero’s mother-in-law and the brave Mercenary King. What they didn’t have was an army to man the defenses, or the defenses themselves.

This meant that the very first wave of monsters would be enough to form cracks in the perimeter and then the slaughter would start.

Every single soul that could afford to so tried to buy or organize passage out of town the second they found out. At the gates, they were met with a heavy rebuff and ordered to stay, ‘for their own safety.’

There was even grumbling and whispering among mercenaries that they should abandon the job and just flee. Surprisingly, it was the big three who stepped forward and announced that the citizens would have their protection, and that battle would be done no matter what.

The Mercenary King’s response was expected. He and his would fight to the last, no matter the odds, once they accepted a request. The other two mercenary companies raised a lot of eyebrows with their newfound resolution.

After all, the Blood Reaver was known for abandoning all but the wealthiest and most influential of his clients if things went bad. The mage didn’t have a much better reputation.

Camilla Sutton, of course, had expected that reaction.

“The spies we posted next to their headquarters report that there’s been no changes, my lady,” Henry, ever efficient and loyal, delivered the news.

“I expected as much. What about the underground guilds and companies we have discovered?” Camilla’s eyes were busy scanning over the town map in front of her, briefly pausing over the areas marked in red.

“They’ve accepted more deliveries in the last two days than they had in the last three weeks. You and the hero were right. They’re not choosing to flee. Our spies have also noticed a number of them setting up inside the sewers, most of them here, here and here.” The chamberlain deftly pointed on the map.

The baroness scoffed. “Really? How is it that supposed professionals are so pitifully predictable?”

“They expect us to be on high alert and fully focused on our defenses. You even declared you would take to the field yourself if need be.”

“Still… this feels… too easy. Are you sure they haven’t managed to get to the officer? Reyne, was it?”

“She’s currently in the former mayor’s own secret chamber. No one but me knows where it is located.” The chamberlain looked proud of that.

“For now, I’ll content myself with being thankful for such a room existing at all,” Camilla said. “But we do have a problem.”

The chamberlain nodded gravely.

When the baroness first heard about the hero’s plan, she ran a simple test. She put out an official notice and left the ‘details of the real situation’ sitting on a scroll in her study.

When she went to meet with the mercenary leaders the next day, everyone but the Mercenary King seemed to know what she was going to tell them ahead of time. They did their best to feign shock, and Tamara was almost passable at the charade. But Camilla saw through them. She didn’t survive as a duchess for decades to be lain low by the paltry acting skills of two ambitious idiots.

While there was no direct threat to her life, Camilla was still uncomfortable with the notion that they could spy on her private quarters in some way. She knew that the greatest dams started with a single leak. Even if she was one of the strongest people in the town, the situation could quickly spiral out of control.

“We need to do something about it,” Camilla stated. It wasn’t a question. Where Kayden often joked about Olivia’s obsession with potions and research, Camilla was the same way. Except she focused on ferreting out secrets that could threaten her family. It was a wonder that she wasn’t blessed by Zarina.

“We should consider training up some classes that can counter such interference, my lady. I will share the suggestion with Lord Rowan, but he might find the process a tad distasteful.”

The baroness grimaced, knowing that the man was right. Even her own husband preferred to rely on artifacts, wards, and enchantments for security. Classes that could counter spies, infiltrators and worse were exceedingly difficult to acquire. The worthwhile class upgrades were even more hellishly difficult to unlock.

“I don’t think he would forgive either of us if we recruited twelve-year-olds just so we could mold their classes into that. And that might impact his relationship with my daughter. What I’m trying to say, Henry, is to do nothing of the like without permission,” Camilla said.

“Which I am unlikely to get, Lady Sutton.”

Camilla refocused on the task at hand. “Be that as it may, it’s not like the potential recruits would become immediately useful. We’d need months, years perhaps, before we could rely on them.”

The old chamberlain inclined his head, conceding the point.

“Are there any new orders I should relay to our new agents?”

“No, and I don’t expect any to be needed. Now, we simply wait. They should be here any day now.” Camilla’s voice betrayed her eagerness, and the two of them exchanged an excited grin.

—

After finishing his fight with the epic tier monster, a fight that was significantly easier than expected, Rowan received word from Camilla about her plans.

Rowan had fun with it. Marching on his own town and faking the impression of a monster wave, was a nice break from fighting and almost dying to an epic tier monster.

Rowan pointed at a tree.

“Marcus, I think that tree is looking at you funny,” Rowan said.

“On it,” Marcus laughed. He charged straight into the tree with his shield in front of him and leveled the plant.

The two of them laughed at the destruction while soldiers around them all generally made noise and destruction of the jungle that had given them so much trouble just a few days ago.

“I can’t believe you’re wasting energy on things like this,” Olivia grumbled, looking away from the havoc the hero and his army were inflicting on the nearby scenery.

Rowan kept laughing until he chocked on a combination of dust, leaves, and splinters.

“Oh come on, you know why we’re doing this. It’s not my fault that you can’t contribute because it would be too obvious,” Rowan teased.

Pretending that an epic tier was advancing on the city was relatively easy when most of the scouts that could potentially see through the ruse were on your side and the mercenaries were too busy gearing up their defenses for thoughtful probes. It also helped that Rowan had a couple of the scouts setting up a perimeter and stopping anyone from seeing that it was a human army marching on the town, not a monster one.

For that reason, all the strength-based classes in the army, and even a few others with particularly destructive abilities, joined in on the fun.

Some of the destruction was intention. They had to make a path for the massive body of the epic monster, which was being transported on a cobbled together from the remains of the barricades and more thorn vines.

After making sure that Rowan was alright, Olivia began the process of chewing out both him and Milena. Rowan for destroying some of the creature’s teeth, and Milena for literally boiling its blood away. As it turned out, the thing’s proper name was [Corrupted Dragon-blooded Bird of Zearnash], and while the name didn’t mean much to Rowan, Olivia practically had stars in her eyes at the potential of getting her hands on any creature with the remnant blood of dragons running in its veins.

The fact that said blood was missing was a point of great anger for her, but she eventually contented herself with its body. She assured them it would be more than worth hauling it back to the town and even threatened bodily harm to Rowan who suggested just eating it. So, there they were.

Rowan’s good mood couldn’t keep his worries at bay forever though.

“Just a couple more hours,” Rowan muttered, worrying at his lower lip.

The plan was sound. The baroness riled the town up with news of a supposed epic demon driving an army towards the town. Then, if any of the mercenaries or underground guilds took the bait and attempted to backstab the defenders, purge them from the city.

This was going to be the best shot of rooting out Rowan’s strange enemies and figuring out their intentions. Rowan seriously doubted they would choose to skip out on such a good opportunity when they tried to publicly assassinate him already. After all, with the demons as the excuse, they couldn’t even be blamed for any deaths in the town. As long as no survivors made it out, they could brush the whole thing under the rug.

“You’re not getting worried now, are you?” Olivia asked quietly, doing her best to keep any such discussion out of the ears of nearby soldiers. “This was your plan as much as mother’s.”

She was referring to what he had told Reyne. In a fit of overconfidence, Rowan had sent her back with word that he was sure to defeat the monster and that the news could be used as an opportunity to root out their lurking enemies.

“I know, I know. It’s just… we’re bringing the fight to the town. The people there don’t deserve to get caught up in pointless political conflicts or whatever’s actually going on. We killed an epic without losses and now there’s a decent chance my army will die fighting other humans?” Rowan did his best not to sound bitter, but there was no keeping the anger and disgust out of his tone. If only he could get his hands on whoever was responsible for the mess and stop all this from being necessary.

“They’ll be fine. You helped them advance and they’ve got levels backing them up now. A ton of the recruits levelled up to rare on our way back too,” Olivia said.

She was right, of course. In spite of the hero party hogging most of the rare enemies, when recruits slowly maxing out their uncommon tier levels, they helped them advance.

The hero party was also growing at a rate all three of Rowan’s party members praised as prodigious thanks to taking down the dinosaur monster. Rowan himself had already passed level fifty.

Stolen story; please report.

“They can still die to a stupid mistake or a lucky shot,” Rowan sighed, giving voice to his worries once more.

Olivia said nothing more on the subject, choosing to just grab his hand in a silent show of support.

Rowan chose to walk the rest of the way with her, his appetite for wanton destruction thoroughly soured.

—

“Go ahead. Make sure you don’t run straight into the monster wave, though.” Rowan gave the order, earning a wan smile from the young scout before the scout launched himself ahead.

Rowan couldn’t remember the man’s name, and would take steps to remedy that, especially since he had made amazing contributions in the fight against the epic, saving the lives of several other scouts in the process. Right then, however, the scout looked more like a beggar than a rising star of the hero’s army. His clothes were stained, ripped, and even bloody.

In other words, they were perfect for putting on a show of warning the town of an approaching beast horde that’s supposedly fleeing a demonic army.

The irony of the situation was that the beast horde was actually real. The wanton destruction of the jungle had flushed out hundreds of monsters that called the wastes their home. But instead of being a serious threat, the wave was a harmless flood of weak enemies that the baroness alone could slaughter to the last.

The scout was dispatched and the monsters were driven out, and finally, only one last stretch of trees separated Rowan from what would soon, hopefully, be a town cleansed of internal enemies. When the final tree fell, Rowan looked at Rest’s Remorse with anticipation.

Of all the things Rowan had imagined, his plan working too well was not on his bingo list.

The town was on fire, multiple plumes of smoke grasping for the skies.

“Shit,” Rowan cursed. “Leave two parties to guard the corpse. The rest of you, with me, charge!” Rowan paused only for long enough to sneak his arm around Olivia’s waist before he broke into a sprint.

The alchemist gave a squeak of surprise, but didn’t protest. She wasn’t fast enough to keep up, and Rowan could tell just by the way her body had stiffened that she wasn’t about to be left behind.

His dexterity was thankfully enough to eat up the distance quickly enough, past the blood-soaked dirt and the bodies of the uncommon monsters, beyond the crumbling walls, and right into the bedlam the town had turned into.

Already, groups of mercenaries were fighting on the streets, people were screaming, and the fires were growing.

Thankfully, some of the men had the blue ribbon tied around their upper arms, just like he’d arranged with the baroness.

“Can you do something about the fires?” Rowan asked.

“Yes, but—”

He didn’t wait to hear more and left Olivia behind, out of harms way. Then, Rowan let his body move the way it wanted to.

In an instant, he was in the middle of the first melee. He twisted around the blow of his ally, swept aside an attack that would have landed on the same ally’s back, and buried his spear right through the throat of an enemy.

Rowan didn’t let himself hesitate, didn’t let the realization that he was no longer fighting monsters take root.

Out of the five enemies in the skirmish, he claimed the lives of four, and then he was moving on again. Running. Picking out target.

Up ahead, there was a swordsman with a large cleaver-like sword who was capable of sending energy slashes through enemy and ally alike. Rowan managed to sneak up on the man, poured a bit of his regenerated energy into Blood of Blood and took care of the enemy.

It was utter chaos.

Rowan’s next target was a skilled whip user, demolishing a whole line of houses on his own when his glowing weapon simply passed through stone like a knife through butter. He met Rowan’s charge head on and Rowan had to push his dexterity to the utmost. Rowan slipped right and sacrificed a couple fingers to redirect the whip before he was close enough to skewer the man.

An arrow pierced through Rowan’s thigh. He looked up to see a female archer on the roof of a nearby house. Another arrow went through his left shoulder before he closed the distance. The final present from the archer was taking Rowan’s ear off before he made sure she couldn’t shoot ever again.

Those were just the most notable of his enemies. The most dangerous ones. Rowan lost track of the fighting soon afterward. He had no idea how many mercenaries he came across and dispatched when moving from one skilled enemy combatant to another.

He didn’t want to count anyways.

The town was in complete chaos and the mercenaries were much tougher fighters than Rowan expected. Almost every encounter left him with a new wound that Natural Renewal struggled to heal. However, by and large, they wore the insignia’s of the Blood Reaver’s company.

Tamara’s men were nowhere to be seen, and that filled Rowan’s stomach with more than a little dread.

The attackers were also not exceptionally well armed. Their equipment was of high quality, but it came nowhere near the level of what the slaughtered underground guild had in their possession, let alone the enchanted blades of his would be assassin.

“Out of my way,” Rowan roared. As he got closer to the mayor’s manor, the fighting thickened. And in the frenzy, no one listened to him. In spite of knowing just how deadly the baroness was, a part of Rowan feared for her safety. Gritting his teeth, Rowan charged forward with his spear.

Before Rowan could get far, a body was launched through a wall just to the right of him, and a mercenary with a blue armband tumbled to the ground, broken and unmoving. Out of the hole stepped Florin, looking worse for wear but still very much alive.

“Florin!” Rowan screamed. The mercenary leader looked dazed, absent-minded even. He stepped forward and buried one of his twin sabers into the man he had downed. The weapon pulsed, and blood streamed out of the corpse before settling on the blade, making its red color a tad richer.

Rowan screamed again, this time to express his anger. He went at the [Blood Reaver] from the side, and made use of his dexterity to slide right into range, his spear’s tip trained at the man’s throat.

The spear was batted to the side. Then, with a smidgen of life returning to his eyes, Florin looked at Rowan.

“The hero. Of course. Let me guess, there’s no epic demon coming our way at all?” the man laughed, and stopped abruptly. “Abandoned. Me. Think they can just use me and discard me, do they? I’ll shit on their little cult once I’m through with slaughtering them all.”

As unstable as the man looked, Rowan couldn’t let that pass. He paused. “What cult? What’s going on.”

“Failed? Piss you. I’ll piss on all of you. I’m going to become an epic today, you hear me? I’m going to rip the power out of that bitch’s chest, and then I’m coming for all of them,” Florin yelled.

A slash passed right by Rowan’s nose. Rowan couldn’t even see the strike and was saved by an instinctual flinch. He tried to retreat but the Blood Reaver pressed on the assault, sticking close to the hero.

Flash after flash of Florin’s blades lashed out, and Rowan was only barely keeping up, stopping the wounds from becoming cuts that could cripple him. He didn’t want to admit it, but Florin was both faster and more skilled than him.

The dance the Blood Reaver weaved with his sabers should have left him open to assault. Wielding two blades with such proficiency went well past the human limits. And yet, his arms moved completely independently of each other and could both attack and defend at the same time.

Rowan realized, even as he earned another nick on his cheek, that Florin was using two different types of swordsmanship at once.

Rowan was starting to pant, his chest heaving in air. His feet landed on something slick, and he had to commit to a dash to the side just to avoid falling. The maneuver cost him when Florin’s blade sank deep into his thigh, sliding right through the muscles and weakening his left leg to the point he could barely stand.

Of course, the flash of pain made another thing become painfully apparent.

He was bleeding, and not just a little.

A wide-eyed glance around showed that his clothing was absolutely bathed in blood, and that he’d painted the area they fought in red.

His cuts weren’t healing.

Rowan didn’t even feel them.

“How are you standing?” Florin asked, sounding genuinely confused. “You’ve lost enough blood to kill three people. I know. Trust me.”

Rowan refused to rise to his bait, taking the chance as the man idly twirled his weapons to run his mana actively through his body.

It was hard. The mana that typically flowed easily through the ethereal channels within him stuttered and dragged, like invisible obstacles were in its way. Obstacles that Rowan couldn’t even detect without serious effort. Pushing his mana a step further, he forced it through the blocks, only for each of them to resolve into a wound.

It was only then that his regeneration card latched onto the injuries, quickly remedying the issue.

Until that point, it was only struggling along to replenish his blood.

The Blood Reaver blinked, eyebrows climbing as he watched the wounds seal up and disappear, leaving unblemished skin behind. “Well, I’ll be. Guess heroes aren’t for show after all! Wish I could keep that card once I’m done ripping it out of your heart, but eh. Not worth dying for. Can you heal from this?”

Florin twirled his right blade one last time, then gripped it tightly, raising it above his head.

All of the blood in the vicinity, be it on the ground, on their clothing, or even inside of Rowan’s body, trembled. Then, all of the red fluid lifted off and floated right into the Blood Reaver’s saber.

There was a rumble in the distance too, and with a start, Rowan realized that a tidal wave of blood was rapidly approaching them from every side.

The Reaver’s weapon rapidly increased in size and volume, and that was just from the blood immediately around them. If the rest of the blood tide reached the man, Rowan wasn’t sure how he could win.

There was only one chance for victory. A slim and dangerous one, but a chance none the less.

One of Florin’s swords was busy accumulating blood, leaving only a single blade for the mercenary leader to use. Rowan swiped aside the man’s first blow and waited. Although Florin used two different sword styles, he never switched styles between arms. As expected, the man’s next move was a vicious stab, threatening to skewer the hero.

Rowan didn’t even try to dodge the attack.

He shifted his hold on his spear, gripping it close to the tip with both hands and allowed the saber to slide right into his rib cage. Once there, Rowan immediately trapped the blade with his elbow and drove the tip of his spear into the underside of the Reaver’s jaw.

Florin didn’t even get to look surprised. He experienced a brief moment of pain, and then the power inside of the spear blew the entire front of his face off.

Rowan wasn’t in much better state himself.

He coughed, and flecks of blood landed on the ground before he stumbled back, the motion and the dead man’s grip on the saber ripping it out of his chest. Rowan glanced down and grimaced at the sight.

Florin’s blows were clearly empowered in some manner. The area around the wound he was ravaged in an odd, concentric pattern that had sliced through the nearby flesh. In a way, it reminded Rowan of a flower. But the odd beauty of the wound wasn’t enough to distract Rowan’s body from the fact that his organs had almost been turned into mush, and he collapsed to his knees.

The wound, again, wasn’t healing on its own.

With a snarl of anger on his lips, Rowan fumbled at his belt, grabbing the healing potion there and quickly swallowing it down while trying to marshal his mana into breaking the card effect messing with his regeneration.

The potion barely kept aware for long enough to succeed.

It did work though, and with one final disgusted glance at Florin, Rowan began making his way forward again. He was just a few streets away from the mayor’s manor, and the explosions he was hearing from that direction weren’t very encouraging. Thankfully, he only ran into another two groups of enemies on the way there. Both were surprisingly powerful and well-trained, but still nothing compared to Florin.

And then, finally, Rowan laid eyes on the place that was slowly becoming home. The building was a mess.

The entire front façade was charred, and the majestic doors were nowhere to be seen. The source of the explosions also quickly became apparent.

A man wielding a massive great sword was currently engaged in combat with the baroness, the Mercenary King, and, of all people, Tamara.

The baroness flitted between the massive mana slashes the man was launching, while the Mercenary King calmly and methodically dismantled them using his sword and shield combo. Tamara, meanwhile, was pelting the stranger with blue-colored fireballs that were wreaking absolute havoc on the street.

The battle had already extracted a grisly cost. Corpses were strewn all over the street, most of them ripped to shreds like someone had patiently cut them apart slice by slice. Some, however, were charred black or even lay dead with no easily discernible wounds.

As Rowan took in the scene, the combatants also noticed him.

The stranger immediately pivoted, sword lighting up brighter still as he triggered some sort of movement card. His impressive bulk came barreling right in Rowan’s direction, and his feet were ripping apart the street with every step.

The trio reacted just as quickly.

The Mercenary King blinked right in front of Rowan, a dome of energy erupting out of him and inserting itself into the path of the stranger’s sword. The two forces clashed and cracks developed on the barrier before someone else broke the deadlock.

A blood-red bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, the heat and force of it collapsing the barrier entirely while also turning the ground into glass.

The stranger, on the other hand, took the lightning bolt head on. He locked into place, muscles steaming and spasming.

Finally, the baroness appeared behind the enemy, and her hands became a blur Rowan couldn’t follow. A second later, a cloud of blood erupted from the man, and the energy haloing his blade guttered out. He slumped down to the ground like a doll.

“Could you learn to actually aim that bloody thing?” the Mercenary King bellowed at the top of his lungs, eyes firmly fixed on the mage.

“I was just making an opening for dear Camilla,” Tamara said huskily, sending the baroness a wink that was answered by a glare. “Not my fault you were just standing there.”

“I swear I’ll drag you down and —”

“Enough. We need to check on our troops and make sure all the enemies are down. You can argue later. You know where to go,” the baroness snapped, stopping the arguments before it could devolve into actual combat.

And Rowan could tell it would have happened too. The Mercenary King was obviously angry, and Tamara had a look in her eyes that reminded Rowan of a dangerous cat looking for her next prey.

The two obeyed, both moving quickly in different directions. That left Rowan with the opportunity to finally voice his confusion.

“Why isn’t she dead?” Rowan asked.

“Trust me, I’m wondering that myself. Tamara struck at the traitors before even we could,” Camilla said, relaxing her shoulders now that the stranger was dead. “She’s why you’re not coming back to an empty town.”

“I’m really going to need to ask you to elaborate.”

“We knew where they were massing. Or, well, where most of them were massing. The second the monster wave showed up following the warning from your messengers, they were poised to strike. Tamara ambushed them first, before they even made their move.”

Rowan just shook his head and grimaced. “Why?”

“I have my guesses, but I’m currently more thankful than annoyed. They had two epic tier fighters, Rowan. And more troops than we could ever have guessed. If she hadn’t sided with us, things could have been much worse.”

“We won?”

Camilla nodded. “We were winning even before you came. But that was the final nail. We’ve won.”

Rowan glanced down the street, where people were dead or dying.

They’d won, but was his scheme actually worth it?