Arne woke up, as he did every day (as do we all), and sighed. He swung his legs out of bed and made his way to the hot bath that had been set up for him.

He didn’t even bother washing straight away. Enjoying the feeling of the heat as it soothed his old bones was one of the few creature comforts he afforded himself. By the time he’d dried, brushed, and oiled his hair and beard, his proper uniform was laid out on his bed.

Dagfinn, Arne’s butler, played his position perfectly. As per his Mistress’ instructions, he brushed Arne’s dress uniform clean of imaginary lint. And as per his Master’s requests, he waited until Siv left the house and Arne had finished taking a bath, then laid out his uniform of choice on the bed.

Arne took no time getting ready, his muscle memory taking over. Undershirt, overshirt, trousers, belt, boots. He pulled his laces taut with enough force to throttle a small animal and made sure they didn’t lose slack as he tied them.

Over to the side of his dress uniform, his most expensive piece of equipment sat on a stand, staring him down. Arne thought about what he had planned for the day, weighed his chances of being run through with an enchanted lance, and left the Gold-rank [Adamantine Skin]-enchanted chain shirt behind.

It’s not that he didn’t value it. Having something so valuable gifted to you just for doing your job felt wrong to him. Like parents rewarding their child with its weight in sweets for defecating in the privy and not around it. That’s what it’s supposed to do , you invalids.

Arne walked into his kitchen, somehow got ushered out by his own staff, and obligingly sat alone at the dining table. He wasn’t stupid enough to argue with the women who made his meals.

It was worth acquiescing, he thought as a large plate was placed down in front of him. A heel of fresh bread, crispy bacon and eggs dripping with fat, and bean soup. He thanked his housekeeper and dug in.

Good hearty food. It had taken many nights of haute cuisine and fine dining before he’d had the courage to bring it up with the [Cook], but the fruits of his labour that he’d been enjoying ever since made it all worth it.

A short while later Arne was on his way to work.

Through no fault of their own, people in the street subconsciously moved out of his way as he walked the wide streets of Iskan Road. The large axe strapped to his back, surprisingly, had little to do with it.

When he last levelled, the day after being awarded the damned chainmail, he’d felt an aura about himself. Something that he couldn’t control, it didn’t seem to influence his wife and household, or even the people he worked with. But people new recruits, people who hadn’t seen him in years, and even his own parents when he’d gone to visit, they all felt it.

He remembered his wife’s advice and tried to flex a muscle he didn’t know he had, practicing to internalise the aura that being highly levelled had imbued him with. It was annoying, like willing your ears to move after seeing someone else do it for the first time.

He knew he had to get better at it though. The Adventurer’s Guild had sent him a letter congratulating him on qualifying for the Gold Standard.

The cheeky gits had been keeping an eye on him.

The Gold Standard. The test that officially made you a Gold-rank [Adventurer]. Arne wanted none of it. If he could give up on his power and go back to being able to blend into crowds unnoticed, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

He sighed and carried on walking, as large private homes became guilds and expensive inns. Small local shops that sold fresh food became expansive showrooms for expensive alchemical ingredients. The quiet roads that warded off anyone who didn’t belong just by their imposing presence alone became grand thoroughfares with people from all walks of life hustling bustling about their business.

Arguments and haggling abounded, his old instincts flaring up and telling him to find out what was happening at each instance of altercation between buyer and seller. He was about to walk past the shopfront of a [Blacksmith] where every kind of weapon ever conceived hung from the rafters or poked out of open barrels, when he overheard a particularly rowdy [Adventurer] having it out with a nervous looking apprentice.

The short spikes that crowned his head stood taller a little as he carried on shouting.

Arne loitered around outside, his well-developed sense for impending danger flaring. He saw the [Adventurer] poke the poor lad in the chest with enough force to make him stumble backwards a few steps.

Arne grinned and headed inside.

“OI! What’s going on in here?”

“Mind your business,” sneered the [Adventurer] after turning around and looking down at him.

Arne took a second to look at the idiot who moonlit as an [Adventurer].

Thin clothes covered a slim frame, both taking shelter in the warmth of a thick fur coat, and the slightly lighter hue of his scales gave him away as a traveller from the deserts out to the East. A selection of bone knives were strapped to his vest, and a curved sabre hung from his waist.

A lack of enchanted items and no reaction to Arne’s aura told him that he could probably subdue him if he needed to. [Adventurers] like that were either too powerful to notice, or just really dense.

He really hoped it was the latter.

“Listen, son,” said Arne levelly, trying to keep his temper in check, “we keep it civil inside the walls of the city, yeah? You have anything you want to settle you can take it outside the city walls.”

“Wait you can’t just let him—”

“Shut it,” snarled the lizardman. Arne did feel a little bad for letting the poor kid think he was about to be butchered. Honestly, he did.

“And who do you think you are, telling a fully licenced Silver-rank [Adventurer] what to do?” he asked as he turned to size Arne up.

Arne just breathed an internal sigh of relief.

“Ahh, I don’t know why I was worrying so much,” he said to himself. The change in his demeanour must have been apparent, as the lizardman seemingly took his lack of alarm to heart.

“Do you have a death wish or something old man?”

“What? Ohh no, it’s okay don’t worry,” explained Arne. “See, I was worried you might have been Gold-rank or something. Then I might have had to fight a little dirty.”

He stood up straight, and like a [Teacher] scolding a child, he beckoned towards the door.

“Come on now, off with you.”

Embarrassed in front of the apprentice, the [Adventurer] drew his sabre and somehow managed to brandish it without knocking into any of the weapons on sale.

“I’ve had it with this shithole! First the damn apprentice was taking the piss and now I’ve some old hammer midget thinking he can—”

A short-lived conversation between the three brothers ‘bang’, ‘crash’ and ‘wallop’ shut the now very unconscious [Adventurer] up post-haste.

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

“Go and get someone from the Watch up here, will you?” asked Arne as he adjusted his belt, “and when you get back, tell that spud Yofr to stop fleecing foreigners.”

“Y-yes Captain.”

***

Arne hated very little.

People in general, of course. But apart from that, and cheap beer, he hated very little.

One of the few things he definitely hated was being anywhere near the building he was in at this very moment, the Seat of the Sentinel.

Another entry on his very short list of hate was being anywhere near the Caretaker, Halvardson. The man whose office he was waiting outside of.

Just as he was about to get comfortable, already accustomed to Halvardson’s usual technique of making yourself sweat before a meeting with him, the door opened and the man himself welcomed him.

“Ah, Kindlausang!” he enthused without somehow letting the joy in his voice show on his face. The dwarf was probably the only person in Upartesk that he’d suffer calling him by his family name.

Everyone else made it sound like they were insulting him, but Halvardson made it sound like he was being insulted. Like the man expected you to just know what he wanted you to do without having to go through all the trouble of actually telling you.

“I’m glad you managed to make it today.”

“Apologies, Caretaker,” replied Arne. He knew better than to speak too freely.

“Sadly you missed the time for our meeting. But don’t worry, I’ve just had a guest arrive with some news that concerns you too. Mind joining us?”

“Oh no need to—”

“Sorry, Captain?”

“Sure,” sighed Arne. It was a futile, the man had a knack for getting things to go his way.

The pair walked into his office. At one end, expensive windows framed the perfect view of the rest of the grounds. Halvardson’s desk was as far from the windows as could be considered proper, a large pedestal affair, all hewn from one piece of timber by some famous [Carpenter] centuries ago.

One wall was covered from floor to ceiling in spotless bookshelves. Back when he had first met the dwarf, Arne had thought it was purely for show. As if. The man despised anything wasteful. He knew that even the decanter at the table between two chesterfield sofas was filled with perfectly average whiskey.

At one of said sofas sat a grey man.

He wasn’t actually grey, of course. It was just an easy way for Arne to categorise the countless, nameless, and faceless that had jobs with ambiguous titles. They seemed to come out of the woodwork whenever he came to the Seat.

“This here is Mr. Stult. He’s from the Iskan Adventurer’s Guild. Mr Stult, this is my [Watch Captain].”

“Pleased to meet you, Captain.”

Arne replied with a stiff nod before turning back to Halvardson.

“How exactly does this involve me?”

Halvardson opened his mouth to reply, but the Adventurer’s Guild man started talking before him, briefly adjusting his spectacles as he spoke. Arne made sure to keep his joy internalised as he saw Halvardson’s eye twitch a little. Now he knew why Halvardson had invited him into their meeting.

“Well, actually,” he explained, “I was just telling Mr Halvardson about the lack of yield from our mines on the coast. Normally we have enough to supply my region, that is, the Eyosvett Desert, with enough that we only need import a few tonnes of various metals into the region each year. This year however, due to a range of factors, we’ve only been able to secure a fraction of our usual yield. My branch of the Guild, after analysing past trends, instructed me to travel to Upartesk and request that you allow all of our members entry for the tools that they most definitely will require.”

“So,” volunteered Arne, looking between the two men in confusion, “you want us to, what, sell you weapons? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just send a [Message] Spell?”

“The Guild wouldn’t dream of doing the Caretaker such a disservice. They convened with [Lord] Vos and agreed that they would honour the longstanding good faith between Upartesk and the Iskan Empire by sending a delegation. While our mines have underperformed, we have, as usual, seen great strides in our numbers of [Glassblowers] and [Glaziers]; the Guild and [Lord] Vos have arranged a caravan of such artisans to make their way to Upartesk in the coming weeks.”

Again, Halvardson was about to speak, and again, the Guild man cut him off.

“Oh yes and of course, the Guild have... arranged finances. No need for you to be overburdened by our [Adventurers], you know how they get,” he said, waving off the issue as if it was all a done deal. “I will make sure to send our people over to your offices later on to make the deposits necessary.”

Arne checked out of the conversation mentally as the grey man started talking about his own Guild’s requests for weapons. Halvardson brought him into the meeting so he wouldn’t have to deal with the man on his own, he assumed, but it was also a punishment for Arne missing his meeting.

“Yes, well, we can speak more about that later after I exchange a few [Messages] with [Lord] Vos and your Guild’s [Director]. I believe the Captain here has already had an issue arise with an Iskan [Adventurer] just this morning, isn’t that so Captain?”

Arne was not the least bit surprised that Halvardson already knew.

“Yes, well, as our man here said, you know how it gets. S ir.” he said with a blank face.

Halvardson was very unimpressed. He raised a bushy eyebrow at Arne while the other guy helped himself to some whiskey.

Arne and Halvardson both watched as the man tried to down the sliver of perfectly average dwarfish whiskey. The poor lad nearly coughed his lungs out.

“Well,” said Halvardson, “if that’s all, do make sure to let your people know where to go. The Seat closes its offices on the sixth bell.”

Eager-to-Impress got up off the sofa, his cheeks tinted with embarrassment.

“Uh, yes, Mr. Halvardson, o-of course.” The drink must have knocked the vocabulary out of him.

They both saw him awkwardly shuffle out. The two dwarfs sat down onto the sofas with stifled sighs, the true indicator of when one advanced a little too far in age. Arne shuffled onto the edge of his sofa and poured out two drinks.

Both men sat back and sipped at their drinks. Halvardson put his drink back down after the first sip, while Arne downed his and smacked his lips out of habit. Free drinks were free drinks, after all.

“Still not used to office life, [Watch Captain]?”

“Would you rather I just let some jumped up deser—”

“ Arne .”

Arne sighed as he deflated a little. One hand rose and began slowly stroking his beard.

“What would you have me do then, sit around all day and sign off on reports?”

“As I recall it, Siv was over the moon when you got the promotion. And yet somehow you still manage to dig out lawlessness wherever you go. At this rate by the time you get onto the Seat yourself, there’ll be no crime left in the city. Shall we just skip the all the promotions I’ve got planned for you and get you up here today?”

“Respectfully, sir? There’s not enough money in Upartesk.”

“You meeting Siv really did scupper my plans for you,” said Halvardson after taking another sip of his drink.

“I know sir. It’s one of the reasons I love her as much as I do.”

“Anyway,” he said, ignoring Arne’s comment completely, “the main reason I wanted to speak with you is because of the Iskans we’ve got coming in. It’s a long way off, but it seems a lot of the auction houses in the city have got wind of it as well.”

“And as my [Watch Captain], I’m sure you know what that means,” he said as he got back up. Arne understood he was being dismissed and got up too.

“Yes sir. Not to worry, I’ll have the Watch ready for the occasion. As long as your [Guards] do their job, we won’t have to worry too much about anything leaving the city. From then it’s just a matter of time until I—we, until we get them.”

“A pleasure as always, Kindlausang,” said Halvardson over his shoulder as he walked towards his desk.

“Yes sir.”

Git .