He broke into a sweat as he pulled from the sheets, and sat on an unknown bed to stare at the wall.

"Ha... Ha..."

He checked his stomach and his chest, there were massive scars that not even magic had completely healed. His memory jumped back, the only one that could have made scars that deep was that black haired girl, the one he had accepted to confront thinking she couldn't make a dent on his skin.

"Damn..."

Copper skin, it seems it doesn't apply when the one I'm fighting has the strenght of a thousand men.

Thom yawned, and removed the sheet from his legs. He stepped on the lukewarm stone floor, sniffing as he searched trough the desk besides the bed.

"Ahh, this should work."

A cotton shirt, something maybe a bit too warm for his taste. But he wouldn't be picky in a situation that required such haste— no, it would be stupid to think he could choose what to escape with.

He put on the shirt, which at the moment he did not notice had the crest of the Alleeba family embroidered onto the rigid neck. He folded the sleeves to the height of his elbow, and smiled.

I may look good on this.

Finishing to button up the shirt, his eyes scanned the room, and rested upon a table under the window.

He squinted his eyes for a moment.

I was indeed planning to escape... But this? No, whoever did this was planning me to rummage trough the room and try to make up a plan. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise... This is way too suspicious.

Atop the table, a gleaming dark sword was resting. Besides the blade there was a worn-out bag, which he inmediately went to brag and sighed out of relief when he felt it on his shoulder. He took the satcheled belt hanging from the rack on the side, and the sheath that rested while attached to it.

He fully equipped himself, and grabbed the Ring of Honeyed Words as soon as he could. Nobody could have known of the items inside his bag, at least that was what he hoped for, but he still checked the inside of the bag. After confirming all of the contents were in place, he smiled in relief.

When the table was cleared of items, his attention fell on a certain object he had been ignoring out of intuition. Now, after a minute of thought, he was sure what it was.

"Fuck... So that girl was serious about joining the army?"

His fingers pressed around a small metal plaque that had been left at the table. He put his hand around his neck, having confirmed that the translating stone was still there, and suddenly everything fell into place.

"This is a badge like the one on Valta's collar... Am I being recruited for her division or something?"

He smiled bitterly as he thought of the only two encounterws she had with the woman. One, looking like a middle-aged man as he handed a box full of heads to Piston, and the other, when he was half-naked and in a prison cell.

"Oh well..."

He put the badge on his collar, and looked at himself on a mirror by his side.

"I guess I'll just roll with it."

A dark smiled appeared on his face. If there was a useful skill in life that Thom had picked up from his older brother, it would be faking and pretending to be someone he's not.

So if in any case he found himself in a situation strange to the usual, he would power his way trough with lies and doing like everyone else did.

He stepped out of the room, and noticed that he didn't found himself inside anything similar to an infirmary. No, the corridor that he found himself in after closing the door was much more elegant than that.

He saw his door, plain and wooden. But when he turned to the others, noticing they all had a brass slab at the top with etchings of their own. Not like I can read them, anyway... Thom sighed.

As soon as he was about to turn around and go down the corridor, a stupid yet possible idea popped into his mind.

If I tried to read them, wouldn't I at some point be able to?

He got closer to the door in front of his own, and crossed his arm as he was deep in thought.

"Well, it's normal that mine doesn't have a slab. After all, I'm the newbie. But this one seems old enough. Then, it would be easier to make a guess of what is the pronunciation of each letter if I knew who lived here, right?"

He started trying to make a guess for each of the letters, but an uneducated guess was still just a gamble. He had to find something he could recognize, a letter he had seen before—

"Marz."

He smiled when remembering the old man's signature. The man had told him he wasn't comfortable with fancy signings and pedantic poetry, so his sign on every paper was quite literally just the four letters of his name.

Remembering perfectly the second letter on the man's name, he recognized it was written two times on the brass slab's front.

"Something, a, something, something, a. Five words. Ahh, she had been so polite to me that night on the cell, maybe she asked for me to be put in front of her so the rest wouldn't kill me. Could this be Valta's room? Then that would be a 'v' sound, that an 'l' and that other one a 't'. In other words, this is Valta's room. It says Valta on the slab."

「Learning failed. The spell [Comprehend Languages] cannot be learnt by the user. The user cannot use magic components from the divine skill [Skill Master]. From now on, attempts on learning spells shall not be announced.

Learning succesful. The skill [Lexicon] has been acquired. You are now available to read, write, and speak all of the languages inside The Forest's Repertoire. Chance of success in this particular skill was of 0.0072%.」

A myriad of words suddenly flooded inside Thom's head. It felt like someone had shoved a million books trough his ears— not only metaphorically, the pain that would come from such an experience was also ringing inside of his head.

"Aaaaack!"

He held his temples together with enough strenght to crush a watermelon, and banged his head against the door several times. He kneeled down, trying to say something, until finally, the pain started to subside.

As if nothing had ever happened.

"Ha... Ha... Ha..." He observed his trembling hands wide-eyed, as if everything he had ever known had suddenly changed meaning, and know all the knowledge on the world was his, and only his to own.

This... This much information, words I never knew the meaning of! The probabilities, the use of these many objects! Even the truth of divinity has been opened to me, this...! This!

Slurp

Thom quickly stood up and rearranged his clothes. He coughed lightly, looking to a side, where he saw Valta staring at him judgingly. She didn't seem to be thinking of anything in particular as she simply kept the coffee close to her mouth, and her hawk-like eyes praying on Thom. He resolved himself to say something, anything, and opened his mouth.

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"Heyy, I see you're... Drinking coffee. That's always a good thing... You know. The overdose and all that... Fun stuff."

Valta walked slowly towards him, and took out a pair of keys from her pocket. She opened the door, pushed it slightly so they both could pass, and signaled Thom to go inside.

"...?"

"You seemed... Like you wanted to get in."

Thom's face inmediately flushed red. Had she seen the spectacle of a grown up man banging his head on a door while holding his temples as if the world was going to end? If she had, he could have died at that same moment, and he would have passed onto a better life with a lot less remorse than at the moment.

"I'm sorry Valta, it was a misunderstanding." He stepped away, and laughed at his own stupidity. "But of course, if you want to invite me to a cup of coffee, I could not complain under any circumstance."

The woman nodded, and entered her room as she dropped her keys on a desk besides the door. Thom followed her uncomfortably, and reminded himself the most essential of all rules: just roll with it.

Her room was more or less the same size as the one Thom had woken up to, but her's gave off a completely different vibe. In contrast to the former, the latter had a small bar at a side of the room with slightly more than too many baskets filled with grains of coffee. Behind said bar were a small array of drawers and racks, places to put mops, brooms, and weapons.

A single-person bed rested at the left side of the room, besides a mirror in the same style of his own. The main difference was, however, the weapon holder above the bed, which carried an extremely ornate bow plated in gold and brass.

He shut the door with a weary smile upon seeing the weapon, and brought it up as she went for the counter.

"I hadn't figured you for an archer."

She nodded, and looked towards the bow on her wall. She picked up another cup from the drawer, and took a small amount of water from the barrel besides the sink. She washed the cup, placed it on the counter, adn grabbed another bowl where she placed the coffee beans. Then, she grabbed a bunch.

"Wait, don't you need a—"

Crunch

"?"

She started crushing the grains with her fingers. The curious eyes that stared at him told Thom this was just something she had done out of habit.

"Nothing." He smiled.

Thom sneakily grabbed a bottle of milk from his bag, which he had kept ever since the assasination of Piston, and placed it on the counter. The woman nodded as she grabbed it. One thing that Thom had discovered was that food did not spoil while inside the bag, as if time had stopped inside it. He had also discovered, however, that putting living things inside it would also stop most of their systems from working, something he did not wish to remember.

Thom sighed trough his nose and looked back. If he was to drink some coffee, surely he wouldn't like to do it while standing in the middle of a room. The lack of chairs was a bothersome thing in that regard, but a few thoughts crossed his mind as soon as he saw the bed on a corner.

"Do you mind if I take a seat?" Thom pointed towards the bed. Valta looked back from the fire for a second to shake her head, and then accommodated the small cauldron with milk to stand above the flames.

Thom sat down on the edge of the bed, and a sudden pleasant smell entered his nose. At first he thought it could have been the coffee, but it was way too sweet for that. He hadn't been paying attention to it, but every person had their own proper smell. Was the reason for Valta's smell to be so calming yet sweet related to her rather unhealthy obsession for coffee?

Ha... What a nice smell. Wether it's the coffee or the sheets, it doesn't really matter. It smells so... Tse, what kind of thoughts are you letting go to your head, Thom?

He sneered at himself for a moment. He noticed he was grabbing onto the sheets way too firmly. The smell was alluring— the woman preparing the coffee had the appearance of a fair noble. No man would feel completely undistracted by such thing.

Yeah...

Then, his face turned serious and grim.

Of course. Am I stupid? Shit, she hasn't even subtly demonstrated those kinds of intentions, yet here I am fantasizing like a moron. Well, had my mind gone further and this did happen to be a trap of sorts, I would have lost. I admit I can't win against the smell of good coffee... I remember some good coffee. Was it at at farm?

He placed his leg on top of another, and watched the woman from afar. She carefully added the pulverized coffee into the mix, and occasionally threw inside her mouth the bigger chunks. Thom was for a moment adverted from his thoughts. Is that healthy? He thought with an uncomfortable smile.

Come to think of it, there's no reason to trap me. There's no information they could obtain, and if I've joined the army involuntarily, then they wouldn't kill me either. They could not have checked the bag, so they can't be after something inside it, and about my sword, I'm sure the black-haired girl had one similar. So...?

"I'm sorry, Valta."

Thom called out for her out of impulse. It didn't feel like there was a problem with doing so, but he regretted it quite fast.

The woman, who was touching an entire coffee bean with her tongue, hastily threw it into the milk. She immediately noticed she had thrown into the cauldron something she had already licked, and fished it out with her fingers. Then, she noticed she touched the milk with her fingers, and panicked once more. She looked like a flustered mess although her face never changed even once.

"Hey, it's okay! You pulverized the beans with your hands, no? You washed them too. Don't worry." Thom for some reason felt the absolute need to comfort her. "Besides, even if you had left that bean inside, I wouldn't have drank that coffee even slightly less enthusiastically."

Valta slapped her forehead with one hand, and dropped the rest of the coffee inside the cauldron after secretly throwing the bean inside her mouth. She washed her hands again, and sighed.

As the coffee started to boil, Thom found himself staring at the woman's neck. Her collar, more specifically, as he noticed the same badge decorating her garments as the one he had obtained. More importantly, the words written on them.

"Captain" it read, above a castle etched into the small metal plaque.

Thom opened his eyes in surprise. He hadn't thought about it, but certainly, he could have read his own plaque from the moment that he had obtained [Lexicon] as well. Thinking about this, he inmediately went to check his own. He took it off from his shirt, and read it out loud, with a certain tone that carried disbelief onto Valta's ears.

"lieutnant... Is it?" He smiled, but it wasn't a victorious smile. No, he was quite confused, and felt like falling into pieces for a second.

"I have been appointed as your superior." As if waiting for the young man to notice, Valta rested her arms on the counter with her usual cold, straight face.

"I... Well, that wouldn't be weird, of course I need a superior... But a lieutenant? I think your man in charge is a little bad in the head to have appointed a nobody who just killed a fucking knight as a lieutenant to his army. Miel, was it? Ahh, good, now I know not to look at him too highly!"

Thom stood up and threw the badge against the bed. Unreasonably angry, he placed his hands on his hips, and waited in silence for some kind of retort. He wasn't acting, the anger he felt coming up his throat had been real.

He placed his right hand below his nose, and sighed as he looked at the signings once more. Lieutenant? What a ridiculous title. A farmer with no talent for fighting, that had only ever risen his sword to do as he pleased. Follow orders, and hand them? He could hardly follow a schedule in the farm.

"...Why?" Valta asked after some silence.

"It... It just comes down to him time and time again, doesn't it? Yeah... The universe really fucking hated that man. He surely was the unluckiest person I have ever met. Do you get it?"

Thom turned around, asking the woman a question she couldn't know the answer of.

"?" She tilted her head.

"My dad. Yes. Father! It all comes boiling down to him over and over again, and it just seems like I'm following trough his shit now. Listen... No, you know what... Don't listen."

Thom sat down on the bed, and scratched his head in thought. A cosmic joke wouldn't grant him with such an opportunity just to further rub the mud onto the face of someone who was long-dead. No, this wasn't something marked by fate, it had been his merit that had brought him thus far.

"You know, my captain..."

Thom grabbed the badge, his eyelids trying to join at a squint that brandished his judgement. He sighed heavily while rubbing his fingers on it's surface, like trying to scrap away dirt that had never been there to begin with. A memory struck by like lighting, pulled by that same saddened motion, but in a much more rainy day, with a much more bloodstained badge.

"I am but a simple farmer with a really bad temper. And the only reason I killed Piston, well, it was for a very dumb and... Not-even-mine petty vengeance. I kind of have a... thing, against nobility. And, well, you could say I didn't fight badly that day. But that was just the rush of it, I guess, and a little bit of luck. That much I can do... But commanding troupes is not something I'm good at. And if you put me in front of the duke, with a sword on my hand, cap..."

His breath fell heavy on the coffee-tainted air:

"I'll probably die just like my father did." He said trough a sorrowful smile.

Valta moved to the side of the bed, and stared down at him. She sat at his side, and took off the vested collar she had carried with her, to where the medal was attached.

Her neck and shoulders were now visible, and a more normal attire as well.

"Don't call me captain. I'm Valta. I presented myself as such." She said.

"..."

"I don't like my father either. I can understand that. So, do you hate me too?"

She asked such a question, which left Thom completely dumbfounded. He was sure of it now, the smell coming from the sour coffee could not compare to the sweetness of her own. He felt like melting for a second, but centered in the question once more, and could only halfly part his lips before the cauldron started to bubble up and move.

Valta quickly stood up, and grabbed it with her hands. She started serving her cup, and spoke up with a somber tone.

"I am Valta Arlen Louran Lockhart. Daughter of Paulrn Lockhart, duke of Allicia, who resides in Alici." She finished serving both cups, and handed one to Thom. "I am a noble. So, do you hate me too?"

He silently grabbed it, pondering over the words coming out of her mouth. He took the cup, blew on it for a minute, thinking about an answer. And then, when he had finished cooling it down, and he drank his first sip, feeling the sour but energizing boiling sensation go down his throat, he came up with his answer:

"Ha... This was the cup you were drinking from before, wasn't it?"

Valta's eyes twitched slightly and she looked down at her cup, noticing she had grabbed the wrong one.

"Ah."

She exclaimed, and Thom broke into laughter.