These little power-ups were interesting to me. When I received them, I didn’t feel at all different and I was convinced that there was not effect—at least with any immediacy. This is mostly supported with me still being entirely lost in this god damn maze of a town. You’d think that adding an extra fourth to your intelligence would be a pretty big deal, but I can’t really find any observable difference. I certainly didn’t feel any smarter, that was for sure.

Regardless, I sort of just continued to walk in the vague direction that we had come from, roughly where Gram’s Apothecary was. But, as my feet dragged in the dirt, I started to realise what I had just agreed to.

I had just promised money that I didn’t have, to a down-on-their-luck family for feel good points. Now that I was actually thinking about it, like someone that wasn’t a numbskull, I realised that I was going to have to get money from somewhere—and the only reasonable place that I could get money, was from Mayer.

He might be a rich man, and probably just as powerful, but he was a man of responsibility and accountability—at least that is what the stories say about him. I was inclined to believe them. So, the only real way that I could obtain the money from Mayer—without lessening myself in his eyes, or offending him—was to offer myself, as genuinely as I could, to do some work for him.

Despite all this, I feel like I learned something valuable about myself today.

I always felt that words came easy to me. I was good at English—or anything else essay — but I was even better at talking. I don’t why, but way back when I was just a little kid, I felt like I could just about talk my way out of anything. Obviously, this didn’t last very long. Just because I was a good liar when I was eight years old, doesn’t mean I was any good at fourteen.

Lying becomes far different when you get older. When you’re a kid, you can almost get away with manufacturing things from thin air—but as an adult, or a young adult, a lie that manufactures too much gets pulled apart and gets exposed in ten seconds flat. I was good at making stuff up from thin air, on the spot, but not at meshing it with enough truth that I didn’t sound like an absolute idiot.

But after today, I don’t know if I was really correct about myself— about not being good at lying. Or bullshitting, if you were of the less elegant disposition. I think that I might have just been using the wrong tools on the wrong car.

You see, in this world, you have a little more creative liberty. Back on earth, you couldn’t simply say “Well, in my society we…”, because the next minute people would ask where you were from, and here lies the issue. You couldn’t just say a place that everyone knew, because people would be able to pick up on it—and you couldn’t make a country up altogether, because the internet exists, and you’d be found out in an instant.

But here, you could just be illusive. This world was so underdeveloped and uneducated, that you could probably just make a something up and have it fly as truth. Now, of course limitations apply. You couldn’t exactly just name yourself as the King of an entirely fictional country—because people aren’t idiots, you needed a way to sell it.

So, you do what I did, and give myself a tangible link to Mayer, and say I am going to be trained by him. This gives me leverage without having to sell it too hard. Then I hook into something that they care about—honour and pride—and leverage that to work in my favour while repurposing something into a ‘custom’ that my people follow as an act of pride and honour.

There were still tonnes of limitations to this whole thing, and I may not be a genius, but I wasn’t stupid. I would try my best to keep myself from getting in to deep—and possibly getting into lies that I couldn’t deliver on.

Ethical lying, some might call it.

But just the realisation that I could actually do something of my own accord, even if it was something as morally dubious as lying? It was honestly sort of amazing.

---

It took me what felt like hours of walking to get home, but thoughts of sneaky lies and interesting ruses kept my mind active. It was like finding out you had a superpower and thinking of all the fantastical ways that you could use it. At least this ‘superpower’ was marginally more useful than a massive Soul Hammer.

Before I knew it, I found myself on Mayer’s front porch, a place that I had already started to call home. But as I walked up to the door, I started to become a little nervous. At first it was only a little niggling feeling inside my chest, but it had quickly become more serious than that.

I may be able to lie well to random villagers that know no better—but could I lie to Mayer?

I had already started to consider this place home, and there was no way that I could afford to lose this right now. I don’t know the first thing about surviving in this world, and without the wealth of information that Mayer seemed to have about the Champions—I had very little to gain and everything to lose. I couldn’t afford to lie to him, so I decided that I would take another route.

I quickly opened the door and walked though, as causally as I could be when feeling pretty damn nervous. I walked into the main living area, and there was Mayer, reading a book as he always seemed to be. I looked at him dead on and spoke.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Mayer. I need to be able to make some money. Can I earn some from you?” I looked at him nervously as his eyes rose from his book. He cocked his eyebrow and closed his book over his finger, keeping the page he was reading on preserved for when he would go back to reading right after I finished talking to him.

“You’re back early, things not go as planned?” He said, dodging the question I had asked him with expert grace.

“No, actually I think it went pretty well.” I said, honestly. I definitely didn’t achieve what I had wanted to, but I at least made an impression on Gram. I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the man, though I think I was successful in my own way. But the success of whole day relied on this quick talk with Mayer. Mayer looked thoughtfully into my face and nodded to himself—before returning his attention to me.

“There is indeed a way for you to make money.” He said, not elaborating. I waited a moment before I was sure that he wasn’t going to say anything more, and then decided this was probably where I needed to talk about what it was that I wanted. I decided that it was better to be ballsy then be demure in this situation. I doubt Mayer cares too much for snivelling.

“I don’t really mind what kind of work that I end up doing, but it would be good to earn a fair amount of money for it. I would like to be able to earn a little bit more that what a provider of a household would bring in for honest labour work. I wouldn’t mind doing book work either, for whatever the fair pay for that would be.” I said plainly as I could. My hands were sweaty now, and my brain continued to tell me that they were in the wrong place and needed to be moved. I didn’t give in, and stalwartly rested them at my sides. Mayer shot me an amused glance, shifting in his chair a little, angling himself towards me ever so slightly. If anything was a good sign, then it was that.

“What makes you think you are worth anything near that much?” But to this, I had an answer.

“Well, I don’t tire, at least not in the same way that everyone else does. I can do long hours without rest, food or drink. I am educated from another world, and although I may not be as smart as my peers, I would consider myself at least smarter or more educated than average, at least here.” I said smoothly. He tapped the arm of his chair with his fingers, thinking with a grin of his face. It was like he was playing chess, and he was having a particularly interesting game.

“True, but even still, you are inexperienced. You could be a great liability, even if you were ready to work as hard as you can. You aren’t worth nearly that much money as a worker, all things considered.” He smiled at me goadingly. He had just checked my king and he knew it. But what he didn’t know was that my queen was sitting in the back, ready to trap him in his own game of social chess.

“But that isn’t my true value to you,” I said, a smile growing on my face as I spoke, my nerves calming and my head becoming clear.

“Oh?” Mayer said, genuine interest passing over his solid features.

“My true worth to you, is that I give you a reason to help others—no questions asked.” Mayer’s eyebrows shot up. His eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but it made me feel a shot of panic for a moment, before collecting myself.

“I can do any job, for anyone—put in hours of hard work doing whatever needed to be done, and all you have to do is pay me a large sum of money that is effectively nothing at all to you. But what you gain is the ability to lend help to anyone in this town under the guise of them doing you a favour. You’ve already done as much with the farmer that you told me to plough the fields for yesterday. If you allow me this, you can kill two birds with one stone. You can allow me to train my strength or whatever else needs to be trained—you can also help those that needs to be helped under the guise of being done a favour.” It was a long speech, but I think it hit all the right spots for me to convince the man.

Mayer looked at me expressionlessly for a moment and then shrugged and re-opened his book. I stood there, waiting for acknowledgement of this deal. He definitely wasn’t actually reading; his eyes weren’t moving at all. He was thinking.

Mayer was an interesting man. He gave the overall impression of being a hardboiled soldier, stubborn and stalwart, but I felt that he had a certain youth to him—a mischievousness that was entirely undetectable until the moment that he showed it. His wide grins were testament to that. He seemed to be a genuinely good man, but he seemed so isolated from everyone else in this town. He was a mystery.

Mayer chuckled briefly before stopping and looking back up at me.

“Alright kid, you have me. I’ll pay you well and good for whatever work you do. I’ll decide what the work you did was worth, and make sure to add on a little extra on the top. Most likely you will be doing gruelling work that you will hate to your bones—but I will cater the work to what you need to grow.” Mayer nodded to himself and started to read his book again.

“Thanks Mayer.” I said, genuinely grateful.

“I don’t know if you will be saying that in a few days, but no worries kid.”

It was only early evening, not even passed five o’clock, and I definitely didn’t feel tired. Not even a little bit. But I decided that I’d had enough for the day and just went to sleep to pass the time.

---

3rd day since Maximilian’s arrival.

Today Maximilian decided to go out and about. I don’t know what he wanted to go see, but I assume that he would be naturally curious—being in a new world and all. But it was only a few hours when he came back to my home. He was all nervous, but he managed to hold himself together well enough.

He asked me about doing work for me, for money of course. I thought that maybe he had lost the money that I had given him on gambling, or something equally as ridiculous—but no. I humoured him and he told me that he wanted a wage of a bread winner, plus some. Nothing that was too outlandish, especially for me—but I rebuked, saying that he wasn’t worth that much. Of course he wasn’t.

But the boy convinced me, and I mean truly convinced me. I swear he could read my mind at that moment. Maybe he had heard stories that the townsfolk tell of me, but nonetheless he wormed his way into my mind, convincing me that I should hire him at that price, that it would be worth it.

I swear on my soul that there was no shifting involved, and he wasn’t lying or being deceitful. I don’t know what it was about his words, but he spoke directly to me, to my thoughts. There is something else to him that I haven’t grasped yet… and I need to, soon.

For a moment I was seriously entertaining the thought that Maximilian may be pretending that he is not as smart as he truly is. That he is one of those Champions, so psychopathic that they actually seem human. But no, he just isn’t.

But maybe he is smart, just in ways that even the God that brought him here didn’t realise.

For now, we will wait and see.