"If life is but a fleeting dream, then murder is merely rearranging the furniture. Do it quietly, do it efficiently, and remember—only fools wake themselves sweating over the decor." — The Te of Slacking, Book 4, Verse 13
It struck me as somewhat ironic—in a “black fly in my Chardonnay” kind of way—that the Tower had just done its best to Truck-Kun me again. Carriage-Kun? Whatever. Either way, I wasn’t here for it.
Groaning, I pushed myself up from the wet cobblestones, which, incidentally, seemed to have absorbed every miserable drop of rainwater in the vicinity and brushed myself off.
My ragamuffin costume was absolutely soaked through. All that extra luck seemed to have been used up keeping me alive. No so much with the ‘dry.’
Brushing aside the indignity, I squinted down the street where Carriage-Kun had disappeared. It seemed to have stopped outside a big building that just screamed ‘this is your next destination’. Seriously, it might has well have had a glowing arrow marker above it.
Having few better ideas, with a resigned sigh, I set off after it.
WELCOME TO THE THIRD FLOOR: THE DREARY DEPOT
The words materialised in glowing letters in the cobblestones in front of me, the font dripping with, to my mind, unnecessary melodrama. Beneath them was the cheerful subheading:
Where Fortune Favors the Ruthless and Misery Finds a Home!
Excellent. A tagline straight out of the Dickensian Tourist Board.
For some reason, this whole vibe reminded me of slogging through Oliver Twist in school, when my English teacher tried to sell Dickens as a literary genius while the rest of us just wondered how stacked Nancy was. Every time that character showed up, one wag or another would innocently comment about her “servicing Bill’s emotional needs,” and Ms. Sheppard—a lady of a certain age—would turn an alarming shade of pink and tell us to “focus on the themes.” Naturally, this only encouraged us to discuss her “very hands-on approach to charity work.”
By the time we reached her death scene, tensions were high. The line about Bill “raising his hand” was met with a stage-whispered “not the only thing he raised,” and the whole class dissolved into chaos. Now, standing in this Tower-crafted Dickensian nightmare, I couldn’t help but think Nancy wouldn’t have put up with this crap for a second. At least, not without negotiating a better rate.
NEW QUEST: A MOST UNFORTUNATE TURN OF EVENTS
Objective: Assassinate the Mayor of Dreary Depot.
Description: The good Mayor Barnabas P. Fettle has clung to power far too long, his greedy hands choking the life from this town. Liberate Dreary Depot by ensuring he meets an untimely end.
Reward: 10,000 XP, 1 Random Epic Item, Access to Floor 4.
Failure: A fate worse than public schooling.
Time Limit: 12 Hours.
I stopped mid-step, blinking at the message as it hung portentously in the air.
“Assassinate a mayor?” I said aloud. “That’s not even subtle. What happened to good old-fashioned fetch quests?”
The Tower, naturally, didn’t respond. Instead, another message popped up:
HINT: The Mayor resides in the Grand Hall of Oppression at the town square. Proceed carefully, as his guards are ever watchful, and his paranoia knows no bounds.
“Fuck’s sake. Grand Hall of Oppression. What, was ‘Building of Moderate Tyranny’ already taken?”
The cobblestones glistened wetly under the flickering gas lamps as I trudged forward, my footsteps hollow against the wet stone. Ahead, the crooked houses loomed like a jury of Victorian ghosts. “Assassinate a mayor,” I said, adjusting my cap as I stepped over a puddle. “Sure. That seems reasonable. After all, I am the Rogue of Eldhaven, right?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The Rogue of Eldhaven.
The title sounded like something you’d whisper before spinning a tale of daring heists, shadowy assassinations, and bodies piling up in dark alleys. The problem was, it didn’t exactly fit. Sure, I’d been in dark alleys—frequently while trying not to die—but leaving bodies there? Not so much.
I’d been death-adjacent plenty.
Monsters had died. Enemies had fallen. Traps had sprung, floors had collapsed, and walls had crumbled with what you might generously call “perfectly timed convenience.” People, creatures, things—they’d all died . . . while trying to kill me.
But that was survival. Cause and effect. Not premeditated. Not… murder.
Straight-up killing a dude? That was a different level of grim entirely, and I wasn’t sure it was a level I wanted to unlock.
Sure, I’d been around death—a lot—but this felt different. Intentional. Personal. I stopped walking for a moment, staring down at the cobblestones like they might have an opinion.
“I don’t even know how to assassinate someone,” I said. “Is there a manual? A checklist? Or do I just… stab and hope for the best?” This kind of felt like the sort of thing I had Lia for. Or Dema. Or Scar.
Or basically anyone else that wasn’t me. This was going to be hard . . .
Yeah. that’s kind of the point of the quest, you wanker. This is a trial.
I blinked at the notification for a few moments. “Fair point,” I said finally. “Well made.”
I walked onwards, and the puddles splashed spitefully underfoot, my boots kicking up faint echoes in the gloom.
When all was said and done, though, was this Mayor even real? I mean, sure, he probably felt real. He probably had a voice, opinions, a deeply misguided belief in the importance of local governance, and a waistcoat collection that could start a museum. But he wasn’t like a living, breathing person was he? He was a Tower construct designed to mess with me in the most theatrical, Dickensian way possible.
I pictured him sitting in some over-decorated office, surrounded by ledgers, quill pens, and an unnecessary number of potted ferns. Probably barking orders at underpaid clerks while twirling a moustache—or worse, no moustache but a lot of confidence. Maybe he had a monocle, too.
And when I turned up, he would deliver some long-winded speech about power and responsibility, only to keel over dramatically after one stab? Like a mid-level video game boss who exists solely to drop loot and let you feel briefly competent?
If he wasn’t real, then killing him was like deleting a file—right?
But, on the other hand, if he was real, even in some weird, Tower-defined way, then… well, that was a line I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross. That sort of thing wasn’t heroism; it was homicide with a better PR team.
If the Mayor wasn’t real, would killing him actually be murder? Or just... rebooting a particularly annoying bit of code? Like hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del on a stubborn file?
And if he wasn’t real—if this whole Dickensian cosplay was just some elaborate simulation—then what did that make me right now?
That thought hit me like a sack of coal to the gut, knocking the wind out of my stride.
Was I real? Not James Brook, unemployed slacker from Birmingham. But this version of me? The Rogue of Eldhaven. Master of Lazytown.
Or was I now just another cog in whatever fucking system was running this place?
Right now, this Tower was making a game out of my existence. I’d been dropped into this bizarre isekai purgatory like some underqualified protagonist, fumbling my way from one near-death experience to another.
But what metric was I supposed to use to judge reality here? The smell of coal smoke? The sting of a blade? The fact that my patched trousers never seemed to fit quite right? All of it felt real enough—but wasn’t that the point of a good simulation?
To make you forget the wires and mirrors?
And if I wasn’t real, what about Lia? That thought twisted in my chest, sharp and immediate. Was she real by any terms that really mattered? Or was she just another figment of the Tower’s imagination, designed to tug at the one remaining thread of humanity I hadn’t stuffed into a metaphorical locker?
Lia had laughed, cried, bled—hell, she’d saved me more times than I could count. Bt was all of that just some algorithm doing a particularly convincing impression of someone who mattered?
Fucking hell. There were some threads here I didn’t want to pull at.
Zhuang Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly once, or so one of my ex-girlfriends—Kat, maybe?—had tried to explain to me. The butterfly dreamt it was a man, or the man dreamt he was a butterfly. Something deep and philosophical. I hadn’t been paying attention at the time, because she’d had a butterfly tattoo somewhere… intimate. It's hard to take metaphysics seriously when you’re staring at a butterfly that’s not dreaming, but bending over to grab her jeans.
But the thought lingered now, more intrusive than her predilection for obscure tea blends.
Was I a person dreaming of this Tower life? Or just part of some cosmic butterfly’s fever dream?
I shook my head, snapping back to the present. “Great,” I said. “Now I’m debating the morality of murder, querying the nature of existence and thinking about my ex’s arse. Thanks for that, brain.”
Ahead, the outlines of the town square began to take shape, its gas lamps glowing faintly against the oppressive gloom.
Somewhere in there, Mayor Barnabas P. Fettle was waiting. Real or not, the Tower had made it clear: I had twelve hours to kill him—or figure out if I could live with myself for trying.