"To strike with a blade is to court karma; to strike with intention is to carve destiny." — The Te of Slacking, Book 3, Verse 18

As formulating plans in the street isn’t really my optimal brainstorming environment, I popped into a pub that had all the charm of a wet sock. The Grimy Gibbon. Its walls leaned at angles that suggested they’d long ago given up on structural integrity, and the air was all spilt beer and overcooked onions.

My dad called this sort of place ‘spit and sawdust’, and on this occasion, he would have been right. Heavy on the spit.

A warped dartboard hung on one wall, though judging by the number of holes in the surrounding wood, it was more of an aspirational feature of the environment than a practical one.

The pub was dimly lit, which was probably a good thing, judging by the patrons nursing drinks in the gloom. It felt like a solid survival strategy to avoid being able to describe any of them too closely.

But the barmaid behind the counter was something else entirely.

Tall, statuesque – I’ve never actually been clear what that word means. Big tits, right? – and with hair that glowed like polished mahogany. Her baby blue eyes locked onto me the moment I stepped inside, and for a brief, wonderful, insane second, I forgot all about the reason I was there.

I forgot I was on Floor 3 of a Tower that was actively trying to kill me.

I forgot about Lia. About Scar. About all the rest of them.

I even forgot that, at best, this babe was most certainly a trap.

I approached the bar, slapping on a grin that had worked a solid thirty per cent of the time back on Earth. Maybe twenty.

“What’ll it be?” she asked.

“A pint of whatever passes for drinkable,” I said, dropping a handful of gold coins onto the counter. They sparkled enticingly, a treasure fit for a pirate’s hoard.

The barmaid glanced at the coins, then at me. Her expression of ‘fuck off and die’ didn’t change. “We don’t take foreign currency.”

I blinked. “It’s gold.”

“It’s still foreign,” she replied. “We only take groats, shillings, or trade tokens.”

“Trade tokens?”

She tilted her head toward a noticeboard near the door. It was covered in scraps of parchment, each one scribbled with offers of labour, requests for goods, or promises of questionable services.

“You earn them,” she said. “By working.”

“Well, that seems unnecessarily complicated considering the vast amount of wealth I’ve just put down on the table,” I said. “You sure it’s a no-go on the gold?”

She didn’t answer. Seemed like time to see what all my extra Luck could do for me.

“What about a charming smile and a bit of banter? Surely that’s worth a drink.”

“Fuck off.”

I’m not going to lie, I’ve actually had worse interactions with members of the fairer sex.

“Okay,” I said, leaning on the counter. “How about a joke? What’s a horse’s least favourite thing about pubs?”

“What?” she asked.

“The long face.”

The silence that followed was so complete it could have sucked the air out of the room. Apparently I was equally as funny here as I was in the real world. The barmaid stared at me like I’d just shat on the floor. Somewhere behind me, a chair scraped as someone shifted uncomfortably.

“You done?”

“Hang on. Let me try that again,” I said. “How about this: what do you call a fish with no eyes?”

She didn’t answer.

“Fsh.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not yet. Hence the drink.”

“Look, friend. If you’re not here to earn your keep, then you’re just wasting my time. Groats or trade tokens, or nothing at all.”

“What if I promise to bring them next time?”

“Sure. I can add it to your tab,” she said.

“Oh good, I—”

“Plus interest,” she added. “At 50% hour.”

I held up my hands. “Point taken. No drink today.”

As I turned to leave, the unmistakable chime of a system notification rang in my ears. I groaned as the message appeared in my peripheral vision:

System Alert: Charm check failure. Deadline for assassination Reduced. New Time Limit: 6 Hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why not?

The barmaid, apparently oblivious to my growing misery, had already returned to wiping the counter. I pushed the door open and stepped back into the damp, coal-stained streets.

The square was busier than I might have expected, considering the increasingly shitty weather. Vendors continued to hawk their wares from rickety carts; children darted between adults like soot-streaked shadows, and all around, the gas lamps burned.

Directly in front of me stood the Grand Hall of Oppression, which was a veritable fortress of dark brick and iron.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The Tower clearly wasn’t pulling any punches with the set design. This place was a lot.

As ‘outside thinking’ appeared to be the only thing on the menu, I leaned casually against one of the lampposts, pretending to be far less invested in the proceedings than I was. The disguise of a scruffy Victorian ragamuffin helped; I blended into the scenery like an unremarkable NPC. No one gave me a second glance.

My key problem here wasn’t going to be getting into the Hall. It was going to be doing so without alerting the Mayor’s guards, who were stationed at every conceivable entrance, armed with what looked like very real halberds and fixed expressions of barely restrained homicidal intent.

I’d played enough Warcraft to recognise that fucking with any of these guys was going to be game over. Escaping from Eldhaven had been hard enough. Somehow, I didn’t think the Tower was going to let me get away if I aggroed them . . .

Kill the Mayor.

Hmmm.

I really wasn’t keen on this. Sure, people had died around me. But walking into someone’s office, looking them in the eye, and ending them… that was something else entirely. And I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

Would it feel like a victory? Or just another thread of myself unravelling?

I glanced around the square the Tower had crafted, all grim caricature of Victorian misery. These people weren’t real, I reminded myself. They were constructs.

Projections.

But here’s the thing. The little boy chasing his sister past the eel cart? The vendor with his hands on his hips, bellowing about stolen goods? The barmaid back there with the come-hither body and fuck-right-off eyes? They all felt real.

“You okay, dude? What’s the hesitation?” The Slacker said. “If it helps, think of your target as just another mark. Think of it as unplugging a faulty toaster.”

“A faulty toaster doesn’t have a wife. Or kids. Or… whatever passes for a conscience in this place,” I said.

“Ah, morals. Not great timing, mate.”

“Go to hell.”

“Already there, dude. Already there. And, just in case you’re interested, once the apocalypse arrives and the Maker is in total charge, so will everyone else be.”

I sighed, scrubbing a hand down my face. “Okay. Okay. No need to belabour the point,” I said quietly. “Right. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

The first step, obviously, would be reconnaissance. That’s what the Rogue of Eldhaven would do, wasn’t it?

I circled around the square, sticking to the shadows and doing my best to make a mental map of the Hall’s layout.

As far as I could tell, there were four entrances: a grand front door guarded by two burly sentries, a smaller side door with a single guard, a back entrance that opened onto an alley filled with suspiciously large rats, and an upper balcony accessible only by a precarious-looking rope ladder.

Although the number of options for ingress suggested to me that someone needed to have a long talk with the Mayor’s Head of Security, none of them screamed out that they would be an especially “easy” or “safe” way in.

“Okay,” I said, crouching behind a barrel that reeked of something halfway between spoiled fish. And despair. Definitely despair. “Here’s how this is going to go. Plan A: distraction. Plan B: distraction, but louder.”

“Why not go with Plan C?” the Slacker asked. “Trust to your Luck and just walk in, hoping no one notices. Classic slacker move.”

“Yeah, not so much. Plan C is how people get impaled.”

“Ye of little faith.”

Ignoring him, I surveyed the square again. A commotion was already brewing at a nearby vendor’s stall, where an argument over the price of whelks had escalated into a full-blown shouting match. An idea began to take shape.

I rifled through my inventory. Most of my supplies were gone, sacrificed to the chaos of Floor 2, but I still had a few tricks left. A smoke bomb, some loose change, and a mysterious vial labelled “Essence of Fermented Despair.”

I had absolutely no memory of where I’d picked that up. Which, now I think about it, feels a touch ominous . . .

“Right,” I said. “Time for a little light anarchy.”

***

My plan unfolded with a certain chaotic elegance if I do say so myself.

First of all, I slipped the vial of Essence into the eel barrel while the vendor was distracted. The contents reacted immediately, the eels thrashing wildly as the liquid bubbled and smoked.

Within seconds, the barrel tipped over, and a tide of enraged, possibly intoxicated eels poured into the square, scattering pedestrians and livestock alike.

As the ensuing panic drew the guards away from their posts – come on guys, this is guarding 101. Ignore the obvious distraction. It’s almost like they were programmed to abandon their post – I lobbed the smoke bomb toward the back entrance of the Hall. The alley filled with a choking cloud, obscuring the already weak light and sending the rats scurrying into the open.

More screams followed.

Then, while everyone’s attention was elsewhere, I darted toward the rope ladder, my Luck stat obviously doing gangbusters to ensure I wasn’t spotted.

The ladder swayed precariously as I climbed, every creak and groan threatening to announce my presence to the entire square.

But somehow, I made it to the balcony without incident, pulling myself over the edge just as the first eel-induced fight broke out below.

“Textbook,” I said, brushing soot off my hands. Although what particular textbook I was reading from was a moot point. “Now for the hard part.”

***

The interior of the Grand Hall was every bit as ‘oppressive’ as its name suggested.

I moved cautiously, keeping to the shadows and relying on my Lazy Aura to discourage any would-be observers.

The Mayor’s office was easy enough to find—a set of double doors at the end of a long corridor, flanked by yet more guards. These ones had particularly brutal Resting-Will-Fuck-You-Up faces

I glanced at the notification hovering in the corner of my vision:

Optional Objective: Infiltrate the Mayor’s Office Without Alerting the Guards.

Reward: +1,000 XP, +5% Stealth Skill Progression.

“Well, when you put it like that…”

Drawing on every ounce of stealth I’d managed to scrape together, I crept forward, slipping into a nearby alcove as the guards’ conversation drifted toward me.

“…bloody eels everywhere,” one of them was saying. “Never seen anything like it.”

“You think it’s another one of the Mayor’s schemes?” the other replied. “Wouldn’t put it past him. Always stirring up trouble to keep folks too scared to complain.”

“Maybe, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Feels… off.”

“You’re just jumpy because of what happened to Jenkins last week. Poor sod never even saw it coming.”

I filed that tidbit away for later as I slipped past them, keeping low. The door was closer with each step, and my heart hammered against my ribs as I reached for the handle.

The Mayor’s office was… not what I expected.

Instead of the gaudy, overdecorated space I’d imagined, it was sparsely furnished, with a single desk, a few chairs, and shelves lined with ledgers and maps.

The only sign of ostentation was the massive portrait of Mayor Barnabas P. Fettle hanging on the wall behind the desk, depicting a man with a walrus-like moustache and an expression of perpetual disdain.

And there, sitting at the desk, was the man himself, scribbling furiously in a ledger. He didn’t look up as I entered, too engrossed in whatever drudgery occupied his attention.

“Excuse me,” I said, unable to help myself. “Do you have a moment to talk about your impending assassination?”

The Mayor froze, his pen hovering mid-stroke. Slowly, he looked up, his eyes narrowing as they met mine.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded.

“James Brook,” I said with a shrug. “Professional freeloader and part-time chaos enthusiast. Pleased to meet you.”

His hand darted toward a bell on the desk, but my Luck stat kicked in, and the clapper snapped off just as he tried to ring it. The Mayor’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said, stepping closer. “I’m just here to deliver a message from the Tower. Something about you overstaying your welcome.”

He lunged for a drawer, presumably for a weapon, but I was faster. Before he could react, I slammed the drawer shut, pinning his hand in place.

“Now,” I said, leaning in. “Let’s talk about your resignation.”