Somehow, I woke up perfectly refreshed, and I even had a plan for everything. At least that was what it felt like. Boundless energy filled me, and I was raring to go … that wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. I’d slept terribly, so why was I feeling so good?

“System, can you show me everything that’s influencing me?” I asked. There should be something like that available, right? Urgh, this was going to be another “throw out a thousand phrases until I find the right one”, wasn’t it?

“Active Effects?”

“Active Effects tab?”

“Current status overview?”

“Status Effects?”

Okay, that last one worked.

Status Effects:

Well Rested (product of [Optimized Palace])

Blessing of Innovation (product of [Imperial Renaissance])

Both of those had to be our host’s Skills, that last one especially screamed Karl der Große.

I got up and dressed myself in some of the stuff we’d bought in Ravenna.

We’d really have to get some more clothing. My Skills could make up for a lot, cleaning worn stuff or transforming new stuff into something that looked appropriate, but they weren’t omnipotent.

I certainly knew that I was using swim trunks as underwear by now, and the others were likely in the same boat. A trip to the nearest town to find something suitable was in order. There had to be stuff for tourists who’d forgotten something, to panic-buy at a jacked-up price, right? Granted, it would probably be all sports clothing, meant to be worn when hiking and the like, but even that would be much better than to continue to wear what I was currently clothed in.

There was a knock at the door just as I was finished, and I opened it to reveal Dietrich, dressed the same as I was. In tourist clothing many regular people wouldn’t have been caught dead in, let alone a king staying in the home of an emperor, so it was clear what he wanted.

[Modern Makeover] to the rescue.

A single thought was all it took, and he was suddenly wearing modern business casual. A white shirt that looked high-end, black pants of similar quality, and a sturdy leather belt that I’d left unchanged from his original outfit, with Mimmung, Eckesachs, and a utility knife dangling from it, though only the first weapon was placed in a way he could easily draw it.

Then, I cast the same Skill on myself, giving myself a darker but similar outfit, with Nagelring also attached to my belt. [Innate Etiquette] told me that, in this particular set of circumstances, showing up armed to breakfast was fine.

And yes, breakfast was waiting for me, er, us, I could smell it in the air. Hmm, I wondered who cooked. I sincerely doubted Karl der Große was responsible for it, Ogier and Dietrich hadn’t struck me as particularly domestic either, and Mia wasn’t someone who liked to cook breakfast. Cereal and milk alongside a glass of orange juice was all she needed. No big effort early in the morning, there was other stuff she wanted to get to.

Me, on the other hand? I loved sitting down with a nice hearty omelet or something, alongside a little bacon, and tea, and spend half the morning eating while reading a good book, but the only thing I could be one hundred percent certain of was the fact that I wasn’t responsible for the food.

Had the Mandln come back?

Ah, who cared, we should find out soon.

“What happened last night?” I asked.

“We killed monsters, and then, we had the world’s tiniest feast,” Dietrich said.

“Did the Mandln come back, or did you cook?”

“One’s here right now, the one who contacted you, I think,” he said.

“And what about the monsters?” I asked. “How many were there?”

“Eleven, all mutated local animals.”

That cinched my earlier idea, now all I needed to do was go check how things had been elsewhere … once I’d eaten something. As if to agree with me, my stomach growled loudly. Yep, food first, definitely.

Also, if both kings were there, I could take full advantage of [Knowledge Transfer’s] first upgrade to teach them simultaneously.

Mia showed up at one point, likewise looking like Ravenna’s number one fan … or a tourist who’d managed to lose her suitcase while in said city. Like me and Dietrich, she had her sword strapped to her belt.

I reverted her old clothes, which had to still be in her room, to free up a slot in [Modern Makeover], and gave her the outfit she usually wore for competitions. Dark blue shirt and cargo pants, with pockets that were usually stuffed with all sorts of knick-knacks. Somehow, the effect even extended to her hair, which was suddenly in a bun. That was how she usually wore it along with that outfit, but it caught us both by surprise.

She flashed me a look that both conveyed gratitude and promised dire retribution if I used the Skill to actually mess with her hair.

We soon reached the main room, and found the other two there, sitting at the same table I’d been at when expounding the virtues of “modern” literature.

“Come, sit,” Karl waved us over, gesturing towards a vast spread that sat before him.

Oh, definitely, the Mandln were back. No person here could have been responsible for something like that.

Of course, we all took him up on the invitation, and for what had to be the billionth time, I reflected on how downright bizarre the entire situation was.

For one, Karl had very obviously not slept, something that I felt entirely comfortable blaming on the laptop.

“I feel like it would be a good idea to introduce coffee,” Mia suggested. “Or maybe energy drinks for emergencies.”

“Let’s stick with coffee,” I said. “Energy drinks can take so weird that someone will probably assume they’re poison.”

Not to mention that they were hella bad for you and I had vague memories of Charlemagne not being able to give up red meat for his health during his later years despite his doctors’ insistence, and that was just food. Him resisting energy drinks was not something I’d bet on.

“Are they really that bad?” Ogier commented from the table, and for the first time, I really took in his appearance. Instead of being clad in full, face-concealing armor, he was wearing normal clothing. Normal for his original time, that was. Close-cropped blond hair and a well-cared-for beard that would not have looked out of place on a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and piercing green eyes that probably looked damn intimidating when flashing someone a death glare. His huge size probably helped too.

“I’ll get a can of Red Bull the next time I get supplies,” Mia promised. Though that should probably have been considered a threat instead. I certainly would have considered it to be one.

“Are you two ready for another round of [Knowledge Transfer]?” I asked, addressing Dietrich and Karl. The former nodded, while the latter asked “What topic did you choose today?”

“Modern political systems,” I said. “I was thinking that this afternoon, I’d go with culture, and this evening, maybe the current economy?”

“When you’re talking about culture, are you referring to the cultural Zeitgeist or things like music and literature?” Charlemagne asked.

“I was thinking about something called ‘pop culture’, which is short for ‘popular culture’. The kind of thing that most people will know about through cultural osmosis even if they’re not familiar with the topic itself,” I explained.

“Go ahead,” Dietrich told me, so I triggered the Skill. Two ancient rulers blinked owlishly at me for a couple of seconds then stared at each other.

“Is democracy as much of a mess as it sounds like?” Karl asked.

“My favorite quote of all time is ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ It’s a mess, but it’s a reliable one.”

Actually, my favorite quote was a different one, also from Winston Churchill, “diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions” because it was plain funny. But the one on democracy was the one that I was confronted with more often in my life.

“I don’t think I’d have been able to achieve half the things I did if I had a term limit,” Charlemagne pointed out.

“And yet, would you have been able to guarantee that all your descendants would be good rulers, including the ones who weren’t even born yet?” Dietrich asked, shrugging. “I’ve seen plenty of disgraces with crowns on their brow, who only became the leaders of men due to their birth. Ungrateful, backstabbing, traitorous, guest-murdering disgraces.”

With each statement, I was pretty sure I knew who he was talking about. King Emmerich, King Gunther, Sibbich, Hagen, Krimhild. So much of the shit he’d been through in his life had been because of people who should never have been within a mile of any kind of power.

But not having that context, Charlemagne seemed to be gearing up for an argument.

“Still, I think everyone present is more than qualified for their positions,” I pointed out, prompting the king to nod and the emperor to shrug.

“What kind of music do you have nowadays?” Ogier threw in, changing the topic.

“Modern music is all over the place. Personally, I prefer metal,” I told them.

“And that’s a kind of music?” Dietrich asked, sounding more than a little perplexed.

“Yeah, I have a bunch on my phone,” I said, pulling out of my pants pocket. “My favorite is Power Metal. It’s very epic, melodic, and really gets the blood pumping.”

“Can you give me an example?” Ogier pressed and I obviously agreed. I couldn’t have asked for a better distraction than the pounding beat of my preferred kind of music.

The question of what song to play was simple. My Sabaton playlist. Epic songs about ancient battles and legendary warriors, and even a few like “Carolingian Prayer” and “Carolus Rex” which should go over very well with our host.

But there was no way in hell I’d let my phone out of my hands before I had a chance to delete some stuff. Specifically, my playlist for my favorites from the band “Powerwolf”, because that was more than a little … sacrilegious.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Deus Vult” would probably be appreciated, but “We Don’t Wanna Be No Saints” wouldn’t, and “Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend” would be an unmitigated disaster. And if, God forbid, he stumbled across “Resurrection by Errection” … I mean, the song was funny as hell, but I sincerely doubted that a legendarily pious Christian emperor would see the humor in it.

Which still left me with a question about what song specifically to pick, so I settled on Primo Victoria. An iconic song about the first true victory achieved against the Nazis on D-Day.

Eventually, it ended, and I shut the song off and asked a question that really should have come up earlier, pulling up the relevant screen as I did so. When the System had appeared, it had warned of the danger escalating in five days from that point, to the second, and this was the morning of the third day of the System.

“What are everyone’s plans to combat the Second Challenge?”

The current Challenge, The Beasts of Legend, has concluded its initial mass-spawning phase and transitioned into regular operations.

The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], will begin in three days.

Time remaining: 3:03:17:59

The first forty-five hours of the System had been insane, but now that things had calmed down, we could make preparations. Should make preparations.

“Outfit this fortress with everything it needs, gather the best and brightest in the nation, and weather the initial storm. Accept whatever help the current government is willing to offer. Then crush whatever shows up with an optimally equipped and trained army,” Charlemagne explained.

Dietrich shrugged. “Find somewhere to whether the initial storm, keep you and Mia out of the line of fire, and see where we go from there.”

“Why don’t you stay here?” Charlemagne offered.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose,” Dietrich responded. “And I haven’t explored nearly enough of this new world just yet.”

In other words, he wasn’t entirely certain about making such a gesture just yet, since it could indicate that he was open to subordinating him to the emperor.

“Can I make a suggestion?” I asked.

Dietrich gestured for me to continue.

“I think the monsters might be attracted to you. All of you.”

I glanced over to Mia. “How many monsters did we run into on the road, even if we ignore the wolfpack?”

“Six,” she said slowly. “But if we count what we ran into outside last night, twenty.”

“But most people haven’t even seen one, according to the internet,” I added. “Either we’ve got the world’s worst luck, or monsters like to go after the ancients. When on the road, only Dietrich was in the car with us, and we saw more than normal. But here, with three ancients, you fought more monsters in a few hours than we saw in the last one and a half days.”

“Are you suggesting we draw monsters here?” Charlemagne asked. “Perhaps find other ‘ancients’ to increase the draw?”

Dietrich just started laughing, though when I gave him a hurt look, he immediately tried to get himself under control, which he managed … eventually.

“I’m sorry, I just thought about what Hildebrand would have said about a plan like that. He’d have loved it.”

“Thank you,” I dipped my head. “But I still need to do a little more research to see how strong the effect is.”

“Are you sure you the local library will have what you …” Charlemagne trailed off, then sighed and corrected himself as he remembered the information I’d imparted upon him yesterday. “Does your phone have internet access in here?”

And Ogier, he just grinned, his fingers twitching towards the blade at his side.

“If this plan works, we’ll need to create a fortress in this mountain,” Charlemagne offered. “Find me some books on modern fortifications while doing research, would you?”

I slowly shook my head. “Modern fortifications won’t work here. With the creation of modern artillery, all strong walls are going to do is trap the guards inside for the explosive projectiles to tear apart. However, we’re not going up against today’s armies, but a bunch of monsters. And we do have some older ideas we can pull from.

“It all depends on how easily the mountain can be reshaped.”

Pulling up a drawing app on my phone, I began to sketch out the basics of a star fortress, this one having seven points to avoid any religious connotations, the way one with five or six could have had.

The basic principle was, well, basic. A star fortress had a central area and a bunch of protruding spikes that one could walk on and while it might be tricky to target the base of the wall one was standing on, the next spike over could easily hit that point. And anything that wasn’t at the base of a wall could be targeted from both points.

“Reshaping the mountain is easy, the Mandln are exceedingly capable stonemasons,” Charlemagne said. “But we don’t have the time to reshape the entire mountain or the people to man the resulting fortress.”

I nodded. The Untersberg was an immense mountain massif with multiple peaks almost two kilometers in height, and it covered seventy square kilometers. That was larger than many cities. But I’d planned for that as well. Another stolen idea, this one taken from a bunker in the Maginot Line that had been turned into a museum.

It had had several turrets that were far from the main bunker, connected by singular corridors that could be collapsed even if someone managed to break in via one of said turrets.

So I sketched something like that. Except instead of turrets, which would have required specific components that no one would sell to us, they’d be smaller “half-fortresses” set into the side of the mountain, with a final set of gun- or arrow-slits set into the sides of the mountain itself, meaning there’d be a clear line of fire at the base of any point of the wall.

In addition, there’d be a handful of individual star fortresses on the top of the massif, which would prevent monsters from gathering up there and digging down.

However, both of these would only be connected to the core of the mountain, where we were, through corridors that were designed to easily seal off.

That design would ensure that anyone inside the fortress would be able to find a place to target any spot outside from.

In addition, I proposed redesigning the front door to mirror that of the original bunker I’d seen, creating a roof that extended out ten meters from the door, as well as walls on either side, that likewise extended that far, and with murder holes/arrowslits in all three. The approach to the door would be a kill box.

And by using [Restoration of the Old] on the armory last night, I’d turned rotten bows and rusted blades into freshly oiled and gleaming weapons that wouldn’t look out of place in the hands of the shining hero in an action movie. All that needed to happen now was for the people Charlemagne claimed were coming to actually, you know, come.

“Tristan, why don’t you find somewhere you have reception, while I go train with Mia?” Dietrich offered.

I nodded, and turned around to the Mandl who’d been looking over my shoulder to observe the plans. I wasn’t sure which one, or even if there was a difference between them, though. They all looked the same and as far as I could tell, they were literally just numbered, with their names being the Latin words for first, second, and so on. Primus, Secundus, etc.

“Is there an easier way to get out of the mountain than the main door?”

“I’ll take you,” he offered. “Follow me please.”

So I did that, leaving behind the others. Dietrich and Mia were moving off towards a training room, and the other two were currently deep in discussion about something I was already too far away to understand.

The Mandl showed me a door set into the stone just outside the entrance to the throne room, almost invisible if you didn’t know to look for it, and the spiraling staircase beyond. It was tiny, claustrophobic, and the fact that this entire fortress was lit by magic had never been more obvious. In the bigger rooms, I could imagine that they had torches or lightbulbs, they were just not in my field of view.

In this tiny, practically claustrophobic space, it was more than obvious that the light was magically emanating from the stone itself, which was just as magical as the rest of the fortress, including the creatures that “crewed” it.

After ascending so many stairs that I felt like I’d been on that endless stairs machine in the gym, I was let out onto a large ledge that no doubt looked natural from the outside, but standing on it, I could clearly see that it served as a balcony of sorts. A balcony so high above the main area that the first thing I did when I reached it was flop down onto the ground and suck in huge gasps of air, but a balcony nonetheless.

Next time, I’d open the main door, its ridiculous weight be damned. Anything was better than those damn stairs.

A couple of minutes spent recovering later, I pulled my phone out and searched for “monster sighting map”. There were a bunch of results, some belonging to video games, others to fantasy novels, and others still I couldn’t quite place. But there were a few, most of them centered on the US. Someone, or, more likely, a metric ton of someones, had been busy creating thorough maps of where monsters had been located, with differentiations made between confirmed sightings and unconfirmed ones, level, type, etc.

But none of those advanced features were what I was looking for. All I needed was a general overview of where they were located and it was telling. Very telling.

I distinctly remembered that something like two-thirds of the US population lived within a hundred miles of the border from a YouTube video explaining how the border patrol could ignore many regular rights in the border zone … which was everything within 100 miles of the border and, well, held the vast majority of the population.

And that was where the monsters were, with the concentration of beasts further rising in several locations, many of which I could mentally correlate with the locations of major cities such as New York or Chicago.

Granted, there were likely factors skewing the results, starting with the fact that a monster was more likely to be seen strolling through Central Park than if they passed through one of those little “one gas station, five houses, and a water tower along the highway” towns in the nation’s center. City populations also tended to skew more towards embracing technology, boosting the chance of someone who did encounter a monster actually posting about it, and so on.

But there was no way this was all just statistical variance and bias-introducing factors. The sample size was just too great.

So, what did that mean?

Monsters didn’t get randomly distributed, they had targets. Based on my experience, they went after ancients, but if there were no ancients around, at least I assumed there were no American ancients based on a lack of relevant news alerts, they went after population centers. That wasn’t good. That really wasn’t good. But it also proved how much of an outlier all the monsters around here were.

That just left one question, just how far did the “monster attraction field” spread?

I might not have had access to any comparable German maps, but I did have a business card and a promise of support from a certain Polizeidirektor. So I … I barely managed to throw myself to the side to avoid a swooping monstrous bird, having barely caught sight of its shadow on the ground.

Its claws slammed into the stone next to my head, digging deeply into the stone before a single beat of its wings ripped them free before it hurled itself at me. Oh fuck …

Hand fumbling for my sword’s hilt, I cast [Modern Makeover], suddenly very glad I’d spent so much time messing around with it. Admittedly, part of that had been trying out various cosplays that didn’t require any makeup or hair dye, but overall, I could zap any outfit I wanted onto myself. Including wildly impractical ones that completely hid my body like the giant T-rex costume I used now. It was one of those inflatable ones where the wearer looked out through a clear plastic pane in the costume’s chest to look out through because that was where their head would be.

Large birds like this mutated eagle usually went either for the neck or skull, depending on how hard they could hit, so when it tried that, it missed entirely, ripping apart the fabric mere centimeters from my skull and I reverted the Skill, hand already resting on Nagelring’s pommel, it was just that the costume had been in the way right at that moment.

So when the cloth vanished, leaving me in a ragged shirt, I could pull out the sword and swing it at the bird before scrambling to my feet.

Now, I’d be the first to admit that I wasn’t the best in an actual fight, but birds were also kinda fragile. So even only having managed to smack its wings with the flat of my blade, I’d apparently managed to ground it.

Now here I was, facing down this thing on a reasonably equal footing, finally able to catch a glimpse of its nameplate.

Gluttonous Eagle Lv. 2 (evolved stone eagle)

Not equal footing, an advantage, at least going by raw Levels. But I also had a noncombat Class, making this whole thing ever so slightly fairer. I still didn’t like the look of that beak …

The bird tried to bite me so I smacked it with my sword, still not having gotten the edge pointed quite the right way, but I took that as my cue to turn it slightly, just as it lunged again and I chopped at its head, cleaving clean through.

“Fuck,” I muttered as it collapsed to the ground, head cleanly split down the center. My sword was deadly as hell … when I managed to hit with its edge.

But before I did anything, I needed to go back down, because I wasn’t setting foot outside alone again anytime soon. Maybe Mia and Dietrich would be willing to move their training session outside?

As I walked down the stairs, I could hear the grinding of stone and the shifting of rocks, something I sincerely hoped was just the mountain being reshaped by the Mandln, though I was afraid that if it wasn’t, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I ran into Ogier as I entered the main hallway, and he raised an eyebrow at the state of my clothing.

“Giant eagle,” I said by way of explanation.

“Do you want me to bandage that?” he asked, gesturing towards my left shoulder.

“Bandage wha- …” I started to ask as I looked at it, finding several shallow scratches there, which promptly began to sting. “Ah, those. I think Mia has a first aid package.”

Now, I was fully aware of the fact that the modern idea of the Middle Ages was a collection of historical low points and misconceptions, but that didn’t mean I’d take his offer of medieval first aid over sterile bandages and Neosporin.

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “Anything else up there?”

“Not that I saw, but we might have to clear out the local area before anyone else arrives,” I suggested.

He nodded and headed towards the door while I went off to find Mia.

[Legend’s Guide Lv. 8 -> Legend’s Guide Lv. 9]

[Skill gained: Polite Rebuke]

I looked around for a few more seconds before pulling up the description.

Retaliate against attacks or rudeness by knocking the offender away, force scales with level of offense. Cooldown increases with power used.

Oh, now I get a combat Skill. At least that was what it sounded like. After all, I didn’t know about anyone else, but personally, I considered someone trying to kill me to be very rude. And how hard would a [Polite Rebuke] powered by righteous fury hit?