Ryuji returned to North Ridge the next day. The ruins weren't all that far from the town. In fact, that was one of the many reasons they accepted the seemingly easy job. He needed to turn in their findings to get the reward. And he also needed to drop off his deceased member's adventure cards. As he walked through the muddy streets, he was reminded of how much he despised this smelly backwater place. He had only been in the town for the last year or so, but with the deep-seated hatred he felt, you would have guessed he had been here all his life.

He finally arrived at the local guildhall. The building was small and looked way more like a western-style saloon than any kind of guildhall. Ryuji approached the door and reluctantly opened it. Fierce smells bombarded him as soon as the door flew open. His nose recoiled while he instinctively gagged.

"Ah, great! Smells as good as always. Beer, beer, sweat, more beer, and ah with just a small hint of piss, fantastic."

After entering the establishment, he beelined it straight for the guild counter, which also happened to be the beer counter. He heard small tidbits of conversation along the way.

"I hear North Kevic finally won that civil war. I wonder how they pulled it off?"

"I hear it's cause they have guns that don't need magic to work!"

Ryuji froze upon hearing this frightening piece of news. 'The rapid industrialization of this world frightens me to no end.'

"Hey, I saw the legendary Sword Saint around here the other day!"

"Yeah? And last week, you saw Freiheit cultists doing a circus act in the graveyard! I just ain't buying it, Phil."

"Yall hear about that strange shit going down near Bear Root? Apparently, some god is gathering up kids. Thank Illumine that that bastard ain't up here instead!"

"Cheers to that, man!"

Ryuji finally made it through the drunkards and to the guild master drunkard behind the counter. Ryuji took out a pouch and dumped its contents out. A single jewel fell and clanked against the wood.

"Here's what we promised. Now about the reward?" He just wanted this done as fast as possible before the drunk assholes around got wind of what was happening.

The bartender/active guild rep took out three bills, each of which read 100,000 ISH, and handed them to Ryuji.

"I need you to take these too." Ryuji passed the five adventurer cards whose owners no longer needed them. The cards would be taken, deactivated, and their names would be put on a memorial in the capital.

The owner took the cards and put them in a bin. After doing all that he had come here to do, Ryuji swiftly turned around and left. New rumors floated around as he made his way out.

"Oh, the infamous black cat strikes again!"

"How many dead parties does that make? Four?"

"No one will ever be stupid enough to let him join their party ever again."

"I told Elizabeth he was trouble, but that dumbass just had to invite him."

Ryuji's brow twitched, and he clenched his fist.

'Good person thoughts. Good person thoughts. A good person wouldn't turn around and beat the ever-living shit out of that guy. Yeah, that's what a bad person does. Oooooo, but it's so tempting!'

He exited the piss bar and went towards the local inn. He was still way too exhausted, and he didn't really know what to do next. After all, as the great philosophers of the bar pointed out, no one would want to adventure with him anymore.

'Do I really need to be an adventurer? I could just as easily become a farmer or something and still be a good person. Ah, but if I become a farmer, I'll never find this Raeg piece of shit.'

The injustice of life, known as the truth, came bearing down on him. He wanted to find the man who sent an assassin after him but adventuring alone was suicide, especially for him, who seemed to always find himself in terrible situations.

"Ahhh! I just don't know what to do!"

As he shouted into the sky, everyone on the streets looked at him.

'And now I'm part of the local crazy people list, great.'

Ryuji paid for a room and made his way up, gear in tow. He laid down on the bed and quickly fell asleep.

In his dream, he saw fire. He saw bodies; he saw death. He saw his own death. Vivid images burned into his mind. Then he saw Elizabeth's face. Her glassed over eyes, the blood spilling from her chest. Fear and guilt tormented him. He was drowning in these feelings just as he did every night until he heard a voice.

"Hello there! Sorry to interrupt your lovely dream time!" It reminded Ryuji of plane attendants and shocked him out of his stupor.

Instinctively Ryuji thought-

'That's not the voice... wait, what voice am I even talking about?'

Ryuji found himself in an infinitely expanding room. It was as if he was sitting in the middle of outer space. His ass was firmly put in a chair made of golden wood, and sitting opposite from him was a woman in an identical golden chair.

She had long flowing golden hair that housed numerous jewels and other treasures. Her dress was just as gold as everything else and held as many gems, if not more, than her hair. Her eyes were bright and shiny like gemstones, but the actual color didn't stay the same for very long. They shifted to every color in the rainbow.

"Um, who are you?" Ryuji asked calmly, but his mind was anything but calm. He was definitely experiencing some kind of event, and he was positive we wanted nothing of it.

"I am, drumroll, please!"

She pointed past him, but when the confused Ryuji turned around, he saw nothing. Despite this, to Ryuji's dismay, he could hear drums being played in the back of his mind. As they crescendoed, they were cut off by a hand motion from the mystery woman.

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"Ishtar! One of the seven lights and holy protector of Illumine also The God of Fortune, among other things!"

She stepped up in her chair and began proclaiming her titles loudly. Ryuji was reminded of how middle schoolers acted when they had too much sugar. He pushed the thought to the deep back of his mind just in case she could read it.

"Uh....huh. So why are you in my dream?"

He remained skeptical, and rightly so. Most gods wouldn't take the time of day to speak to some random guy, much less a god with so many impressive titles.

"Well, I wanted to apologize to you. It seems that some cruel, unjust punishment has been given out to you by....me."

Her sentence trailed off as she began twirling her hair in her hands. Ishtars eyes wandered off as if she felt too guilty to look Ryuji in the eye. His mind went a million miles per minute as he tallied every shitty thing that had ever happened to him.

"What the hell did you do to me!?"

"Well, do you know about blessings and curses?"

Her remorseful tone made Ryuji assume the worst, but he wanted to make sure, so he played along.

"Yes, blessings are gifts given by the gods, and curses are ill intentions given to people the gods don't like, right? Don't tell me you gave me the critical blessing."

He considered the blessing to be pretty useless. You had to be half-dead to even get anything out of it, so he would definitely see why someone who gave that under the guise of a blessing would feel guilty.

A look of annoyance and displeasure spread across Ishtar's face at the question. "Uh, no. My blessings would never be as crude and crude as that. It's just that I kinda....cursed you." Her hateful demeanor fell away as she twiddled her thumbs innocently.

"WHAT!? WHY!?" Ryuji had definitely never done anything that would constitute a reason for him being cursed.

"Well, ya see, you didn't use to be ya know, you, and I kinda didn't like that kid, so I put a curse on him. But now you aren't him anymore, so it's really confusing for me, and I kinda feel bad." She held up her fingers in a way to measure just how bad she felt about it.

"Then take the curse off!"

"I can't do that! Curses can't be removed, and only certain blessings can be removed. After a god decides to do this sort of thing, they can't take it back." She spoke matter of factly, and Ryuji wondered how this made up for in any way what she had done to him.

"Then at least tell me what this curse is all about."

"Right! Well, I'm the goddess of fortune, so it's a curse of extremely terrible luck. A kind of bad luck that will always lead you to tragedy. Say, for example, you were a farmer. Your harvests would always come up short, or there would always be a famine around you. If you were, say, a merchant, every shipment you bought would be flawed, and you would never make a profit."

A welling of emotion came up from Ryuji. If this was how the curse worked then, what if? If it was true... Ryuji started to feel sick to his stomach, but he still managed to ask the question.

"....And if I was an adventurer?"

"There would always be an enemy stronger than you. Someone or something you can't beat. Of course, the curse doesn't take your blessing into account, so you've managed to scrape by so far, but that won't always work, you know." Ishtars words hammered home the truth that he feared. He was a walking magnet for tragedy, and anyone around him would end up like Elizabeth.

"So... it was my fault then. If I wasn't there, they wouldn't have... So I guess this means my adventures are over, huh?"

"I wouldn't say that!" Ishtars peppy voice made Ryuji confused.

"Huh?"

"The curse only really affects you. It doesn't take into account your allies literally at all. All you have to do is find people way stronger than you, and you'll never be in trouble ever again."

The light tone she used didn't make him feel better about it at all.

"How the hell am I supposed to do that?"

"Well, that's why I'm here tonight. I said I feel bad, and since I can't reverse it, I figured I would at least try to help."

"Help how?"

"Well, I am the goddess of fortune! I can see every lucky path your life might go down. I obviously can't see everything super clearly, but I can sort of make out the feelings of each branch of possibility. So basically, I can nudge you down the best path."

"You can!?"

He was beyond excited. If all of his life was going to be stalked by a dreadful shadow of bad luck, then going down this lucky path would be his only of avoiding that.

"Go to the city of Carcim and request an audience with the local king. When you meet him, tell him you are the fortunes hero. If you do, you will start down the best path of your life. But be warned, all I can do is get you started. Your actions will determine whether you walk it or whether you stray from it."

"Thank you." Ryuji shot from his seat and bowed the deepest he had ever done in his life. "Thank you so much!"

Tears rolled down his face before falling into the void below him. He didn't know if he should trust the words given to him in a hyper-realistic dream, but it was a far cry from the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him. Even if this was all his mind playing tricks on him, he would rather believe in the lie than continue on the way he was.

"One last thing."

Ryuji looked up from his bow and noticed that the space they were standing in was fading to static. Ishtar looked at him and waved goodbye.

"Safe travels!" Her smile burned into his mind, and he thought about how the next time he passed a shrine, he would definitely offer her a prayer.

He awoke and felt like a new man. He had a newfound purpose, and that was to make way to Carcim, which was a city about a week away from where he was.

Ryuji went to the caravans heading down toward the capital. They would leave for their yearly trip soon. And for a nice change of pace, he had found himself with some good luck. If he had waited even a day to leave, he would have missed the caravan and had to walk. Upon making it to the band, he bought a place on one of the wagons and sat down.

There were about fifty wagons in total. Some carrying goods, some carrying people. He paid quite a bit of money so that he would only have to share this wagon with one other person. Since Ryuji was super anti-social, this was a must.

'God, I hope whoever gets on this thing is at least a tolerable being.'

He heard the clanking of metal as his wagon compatriot stepped up to their ride. Ryuji's eyes almost popped out of his head as he looked at the beauty stroll up to his carriage.

She had a full armor suit, excluding the helmet, which she held in her left hand. The armor itself looked to be of the highest quality imaginable and shone a dark scarlet color. She could probably take a missile head-on without so much as getting a dent. Ryuji took notice that emblazoned on the chest was a phoenix, the symbol of Dengal.

'Someone important as hell, I suppose.'

At her hips were two longswords, one on each side. The one on her left was very expensive-looking with more adornments than he had ever seen in his life. The one on her right was sheathed in something sinister-looking. At the hilt was a skull, and the glyphs down the side of the sheathe read "Reaper." The vibe it gave off sent chills down the spine of Ryuji, and he found that he didn't like looking at it too much.

'Oh, well, that's not ominous at all.'

Though he did find, he couldn't help but look at the woman. He knew that staring was rude, but there was something about how she exuded complete confidence and power that made him unable to peel his eyes away. Her amber eyes gave off waves of maturity, and her crimson hair added a kind of heat to every face she made. Maybe it was the aura she exuded, or maybe, it was because she was a whole head taller than him, but Ryuji got the feeling that by just being in her presence, he was a lot safer. By the time he finally managed to not stare so hard, she had already taken a seat directly across from him. The wagon began to lurch as they started their journey forward. Now he could feel her eyes on him. He wanted to say hi or something, but his super virgin mentality wouldn't allow him to make such a comment first.

'Oh, God.'

Her gaze was full of intelligence and power, enough so to make him crack under the scrutiny of it. It looked as if she was concentrating on something, or perhaps her eyes just naturally looked that frightening. He couldn't help but look down at her gaze. He heard her shuffle herself, and when he looked back up, she had turned around, facing the opposite way. Her fingers rhythmically tapped her armor.

"Ahem."

Ryuji cleared his throat because of an itch. As he looked back up, the woman was staring at him expectantly. When he never made another sound, she jerked her head to the open frame and looked out of it.

'This trip is bad for my health already! Please, someone, teach me how to talk to a stranger!'

He was too busy stressing in his own head to notice the hint of blush creeping up her cheeks or how her tapping was starting to seem more erratic. All he knew was that this ride was already in his top ten most awkward moments, and it was probably going to get a lot worse.