3

I placed it down and smiled as I saw a small green bar showed up on the edge of my vision to show my ownership.

Done!

Ping!

[Construction has lvled up.]

Nice.

Well, I'm hungry, so I needed to fish for my breakfast.

I turned around and opened the door.

And paused.

Standing at the edge of the riverbank were six men, half of whom were armed with spears, one with a bow, and two with farming tools.

"... hi, neighbors!"

-VB-

Derrick looked around the place after the stranger came out of the house and began talking with father.

It was now obvious that there were no bandits, just someone younger than him trying to turn this place into something worthwhile.

But why build on the riverbank?

The house looked sturdy enough if not properly insulated for the winter to come. There were logs neatly stacked within a few steps of the house, but there wasn't much else.

"Derrick, get over here!" father singled him out as he always did.

He came over to the six men, who were smiling and joking. Father pulled him to the stranger.

The guy looked his age, but he stood tall and muscular.

"This here is Hans. He came from Ourzcvelt! He's two years your junior but definitely your senior in bravery. The mad lad came all of the way over here to build himself a farm!"

Hans pulled up an open hand towards him. "Nice to meet you Derrick."

He shook the stranger's hand. "Likewise."

"So why here?" Gustav asked with a quirked eyebrow. "Wouldn't it be easier to make a farm over where your parents live?"

Derrick knew not much of the world beyond the valley just like most people here.

Hans shrugged. "Because I could."

A weird man.

Invitations for Hans to visit the village came out and their business was done.

-VB-

After the locals left, I checked my fish traps. I smiled at the common dace I found in the traps.

"I am eating well this morning."

With no spices, I made do with over-the-fire roasting and some herbs I found in the forest that I knew were good like garlic and peppermint!

After breakfast, I decided that the next thing I wanted was a proper bathroom, bathtub included.

I knew some plumbing, but at the very least, I needed some metals for it.

... I guessed that I was going to be mining. Where should I start, though? Across the river? On this side?

Straight down?

… Well, M*necrafters would have some strong words with me about that, but they weren't here, were they? I wasn't interested in making a giant mine in the side of a mountain that anyone could enter; I wanted something private, and a small vertical shaft mine was that for me.

But I had no pickaxe.

…

Well, shit.

-VB-

[Character Status]

Name: Hans, son of Louis of Ourzcvelt, of Travaos

Age: 18

Title: N/A

LvL: 22

HP: 480

MP: 200

ST: 240

STR: 39

END: 48

AGI: 35

DEX: 44

INT: 20

CHA: 8

Current Objective: Set Up Home [1/?]

Current Quest: N/A

Chapter 2

-VB-

I made a pickaxe!

[Wooden Pickaxe]

The most primitive mining tool. Go get some flint, bro.

Grade: Bad

*+1 Damage

As its description will tell you, I could do better. When my own system dissed me, I don't exactly stand by and do nothing, you know?

Grade of an item was how good an item was, and had effects of their own. Though I have not seen it, the highest quality an item can be was Deific. Like the name suggested, "only gods can make it." From there, it went Legendary, Artifact, High, Moderate, Common, Ubiquitous, Bad, Junk, and finally Useless. Useless was a -50% in stat efficiency; i.e., using a Useless pickaxe would not allow me to use all of my strength and endurance to chunk away at rocks. Junk was -30%, Bad was -20%, Ubiquitous was -10%, and Common was +0%. From there, Moderate gave +10%, High gave +15%, Artifact gave +25%, Legendary gave +50%, and Deific gave a x2 multiplier.

This was on top of whatever the item did.

So I made another one.

[Flint-tipped Pickaxe]

Better pickaxe than a wooden pickaxe.

Grade: Ubiquitous

*+2 Damage

Better.

Now, I wanted a private mine, so I built a different kind of shack. Instead of using triangular foundations, I used eight square foundations arranged into a square with the center foundation missing. Instead of walls, I added slanted roofs to all but one foundation so that there was only one entrance and exit. Oh, and yes, I added a Deed and a door with a lock. Can't forget those.

"Ah," I muttered as I turned back around to my house. "I need ladders."

Once I got my hands on ladders and came back to the hole, I started digging.

-VB-

Diggy diggy hole~!

I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole!

Diggy diggy hole!

Digging a hole!

God, I missed the internet.

-VB-

I got bills~

I gotta pay!

So I gotta work work work everyday!

I got mouths!

I gotta feeeeed~!

So I'm gonna make sure everybody eats!

God, I missed the music!

-VB-

I coughed like a asthmatic patient as I climbed out of my newly made mining hole.

My entire surface of my body was covered in dirt and dust, my face and body were sweaty, and my character status had a very distinct debuff for me.

[Miner's Dust Lung: -25% Stamina]. I needed to be breathing fresh air for a full hour before it would disappear.

"Hans!"

I looked up and blinked. Why was Derrick here?

"Hey yo!" I greeted the son of the Travaos village chief. "What are you doing here?"

The man looked nervous. "You have to come quick! The baron's called for levies!"

"... Uh fuck," I muttered.

I could say no, but that would make me an enemy of the village. After all, refusing to join the levy was tantamount to treason, but more importantly, I would be foisting off my burden as someone who lived in these valleys. Whomever was the lord of the area could take my refusal to help as a reason to punish them.

But war…? I came all the way over here to avoid war, because I knew that historically, my hometown was part of Uri, which would become one of the founding members of the Old Swiss Confederacy, or as the Germans and Swiss would call it, Corpus Helveticum.

"Is it a general call to arms? Is someone invading us?" I asked hurriedly while moving towards my house. I opened the door, closed it behind me, and quickly dumped my mining bag's inventory of everything I'd just mined over the course of a whole day.

"I heard from dad that the baron is having some kind of dispute with the prince-bishop over land. I think he means to go to war over it. We're gathering the men to choose who'll be picked to go as our promised levy of fifty."

"Fifty? Doesn't you village only have seventy-three able men? He wants to take two-thirds of the working men population?" During this era, women were rarely counted in such a thing, which was both good - because their population didn't count towards required levies - and bad - because discrimination.

Derrick grimaced. "What else are we supposed to do?"

I gulped.

Truth be told, I also didn't know what to do. A lowly baron up here in the alps the Baron of Vaz may be, but he still had knights in his employee, and I was honestly nervous about fighting knights despite my near superhuman stat.

Yes, I had four times the strength and five times the endurance of a normal average man, but I didn't have proper weapons nor armor while knights did along with years of training.

"... Okay, let's go then."

There were, as I heard before, seventy-four of us, including me, at the center of the village by the well.

Standing there was someone I hadn't met before, and he carried the banner for some noble house. With him were two people who I had to assume were men-at-arms, if the armor and weapons said anything about them. All of them were color-coordinated, or rather they wore the colors of their lord's house: white and red, with a black eagle on the red side. The men-at-arms had mail armor on top of their gambeson, and just like the herald, had tabards on top of the mail.

"I am a messenger of the Honorable Free Baron Fredrick IV of the House of Tommentak of Vas!" the man shouted. "Our lord is wary of the tyranny of the Prince-Bishop of Chur, and has called out to his people in case a conflict breaks out! This village of Travaos owes its lord, the Baron of Vas, a total of fifty able-bodied men to join the fight! I am here today to ascertain whether or not this village is capable of fielding such a number!"

He looked over us.

"And it seems that you are. I will have the fifty levies show themselves to me now."

The chief made his way to the front and had a bundle of straws, and the men formed a line. I got in somewhere in the middle, and the line slowly moved along.

And then it was my turn.

I wasn't afraid of war.

Was I?

I reached out, hoping for some reason that my hand and arm were steady, and then plucked out a straw too fast for my liking, as if I was afraid.

Blank.

I wouldn't be going to war today.

Pity.

… Did I want to get picked?

Did I want to go to war?

As the crowd dispersed after the last pick, I left and got back home that afternoon. Feeling safe within the perimeter of my home, I thought.

What did I want?

I wanted a house to call my home, a variety of smaller things like my new mine and fishing traps to call my own, and … a few women, if I was honest. I knew that I could use magic, so maybe I'll build a tower for myself or something.

I also wanted to fight. I didn't train for eight years, spending all of my free time swinging practice swords I made on my own and exercising physically, to not use any of it. However, I was not keen on using my skills for the sake of some nobles fighting over land in petty squabbles.

How could I get everything that I want?

The answer didn't come to me.

Undeterred by the lack of an answer, I got up and continued my home improvement.

Next project: a furnace.

-VB-

By the start of my second week, I had a house, a vertical mine, and now a smithy. To be blunt about it, it was just a small furnace, no more than twice my volume, and a rock anvil.

With it, I began to smelt the copper and iron I got out from my mine.

[Construction] went up by another level and a new skill, [Blacksmithing], got made.

[Blacksmithing] LvL.1

Reduces cost of materials and speed of crafting while increasing quality.

*0.5% reduction in material cost per LvL

*0.5% reduction in crafting speed per LvL

*1.0% increase in quality per LvL

*At LvL 50, handless crafting for Blacksmithing may be engaged.

Inexperienced as I was, I was at the very least enthusiastic about it. It was something new that I was learning, so I put my back into it as I pounded on the crudely heated ores to remove the impurities.

By the end of the day, [Blacksmithing] was level 4 and I managed to create a very crude cast iron slab for future crafting. I would need to refine it later.

"You're a blacksmith, too?"

I jolted and whirled around.

Standing there was Derrick.

Why was he here again?

He looked upset.

"What happened?" I asked him as I set my wooden mallet down. Unfortunately, metal was hard to get, and so instead of an iron hammer to hammer down on the ore, I had to make do with a wooden mallet. For the record, this was the fourth hammer I made for the beating; the other three broke and burned.

"My father is going to fight."

"..." What did the man want me to say? Sorry your dad is going to war and might not return? I turned back to my forge. I still had some more ores to melt down today. "I see."

"I need to know."

"Know what?"

"You're a warrior, aren't you?"

I paused before hammering away. "No," I lied as I moved the ores by hand and dropped them into the bloomery furnace. Once I had coal or charcoal production, I might be able to make something like a mini-blast furnace. I also needed a lot of materials I didn't have now to make such a thing. For now, this would have to do.

"But your hands. My father said you had to be a warrior. No common peasant like us -" he hissed the word as if it was a curse, because it honestly was. "- have callouses like yours. I need to know -"

"I'm not going to go and replace your father in the levy call. I need to get my own home set up," I grunted as I grabbed the bellow handle and started pumping air at an even pace.

I waited for the ore to be heated within the furnace. The Gamer system told me that it would be fifteen minutes.

"I just need to know if I can replace pops on the roll!" he shouted desperately.

I paused.

I turned around.

I looked at him up and down. He was older than me by a few years, but he wasn't anywhere close to being a warrior or a soldier.

"No. If this isn't the first time he went to war, then he'll have a better chance of living than you," I replied honestly before turning around again.

"... What do you know about war?"

I glanced over my shoulder before sighing. Derrick was that kind of guy, huh? He needed to smash himself into a problem at least once before he gave up.

"Wait here."

I walked into my house, closed the door so that he couldn't see, and pulled out two wooden spear shafts from the wooden locker. I walked back out and tossed one to him. He caught it deftly.

"Three hits. If you can land nine hits before ten minutes, then I will say that you have a better chance. But if I make you fall, then I will tell you what I thin-."

He had the balls to strike first. He dashed forward and thrust the tip of the pole towards me.

I parried it and let him back off.

"... Good. Fighting is not fair. You understand that at least."

Then I struck.

-VB-

Derrick tried to dodge. He really did.

But Hans was too fast. The man, barely a man, moved like lightning and struck faster than torrential rain.

He tumbled backward as he took … how many times did he get hit? He couldn't tell.

His chest, arms, shoulders, stomach, and legs all throbbed from being struck, but that told him the minimum he must have been struck in … two seconds?

His hands dropped the pole and then he dropped to his knees.

He gasped as his pain-wrecked body shuddered from an agony he's only felt the likes of which he's only experienced once before.

"You."

He looked up wearily at the hidden warrior.

"Are not prepared."

The brutally honest words of the warrior stung.

"They would give you a month at best to train you, but depending on the situation, you might not even get a single week of training. Even if they do, they will drill you into being a meat shield for them. I could train you, but proper training takes time. You could train for a full year under me, but I still wouldn't let you go to war. You would act, know, and fight just well enough to become a target and not strong enough to be an asset." He picked up his pole and walked back to the small smithy. "Go home, Derrick of Travaos. You don't belong on the battlefield. You certainly don't want to leave your parents to dig a grave for you."

Derrick knelt there for … he wasn't sure. Everything - body, soul, and mind - hurt.

When it was clear that Hans had no time for him as the man went back to pumping air into his furnace with that bellow, Derrick stood up and limped away.

-VB-

I felt bad.

I took out my frustration on a poor man just trying his best to watch out for his dad.

I frowned as I dipped the hot metal into a bucket of water, causing the water to sizzle and pop and the iron to cool down.

Pulling out the iron bar, I inspected it.

[Cast Iron Bar]

A block of high grade purity iron.

Resource

Grade: Common

I set it down. This made it the tenth iron bar I've made today.

I looked up to the sky and saw the sun just barely hanging over the mountain peaks to the west. I still had time.

I got back to work.

'I was harsh but not wrong.'

But the echoes of the sound of my hammer striking the iron ringing in this mountain valley felt lonely.

What would be a solution to all this?

Stomp.

I paused and looked over my shoulder.

Back and shoulders nearly reaching up to my chest, a creature that I have never encountered in my life stood on four paws. With a mass that outweighed horses and claws that could rend anything but plate and mail armor to asunder, it was a creature that a single person would dare not face.

It was a bear.

It wasn't looking at me.

It was looking towards where Derrick left.

I dropped everything and stood up immediately.

"Oi."

The bear jolted and turned towards me. Its fur bristled as it quickly turned itself towards me before rising up threateningly.

"If you are even thinking about going after my neighbor, you aren't leaving here."

It roared at me.

I pulled out my only iron tool from my Inventory: the axe.

And charged.

-VB-

Derrick jolted when he heard the roar and whirled around.

That… That came from Hans's house!

Limping as he was, he was no coward. He ran straight towards the camp.

But stopped before leaving the forest.

He watched with wide eyes. Hans was nearly flying with how fast he moved and jumped.

The bear backpedaled.

Strikes.

Blood flew everywhere.

The bear roared as it tried to strike back but it wasn't the fearsome roar but of desperation and pain. Its strikes missed Hans, whose leisurely dodges left the bear for more retaliation.

And then-.

Derrick winced when he saw the hatchet in Hans's hand come down in a blur and cracked the bear's skull open.

The majestic beast slumped onto the gravel ground and stilled.

Hans merely scoffed at the bear before grabbing the scruff of its neck with one hand and dragged it away.

With only one hand.

Derrick gulped while he tried to keep his hands from shaking.

That was a bear that men in the village would be scared to fight. It would take a lot of people to take it down.

But Hans did it by himself.

And how strong was he that he dragged a fully grown bear by himself with only one hand?

Hans truly was a warrior, which made his words even worse.

'A liability on the battlefield at worst. A meat shield at best,' his mind repeated after Hans.

So was Derrick left to helplessly let his father go to a battlefield and die?

He hung his head and left, his footsteps even heavier than before.

'If someone like him goes to war, then he'll definitely survive,' he thought. And then his mind went back home to his dad and the limp he tried so hard each day to conceal.

The world was unfair.

Chapter 3

-VB-

Crafting an item took time. The product didn't just magically appear in my inventory. This was true in life and marginally true in-game.

My Gamer system took a middle approach. While my crafting system was definitely quicker than real life, the skill required me to go through the motions of making the item. Thankfully, I didn't require sleep, and so when morning came the next day, I looked down at the result of my work.

[Kettle Hat with leather face cover]

No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Moderate

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the head and is below 10 Damage is negated.

*-20% to damage received

Durability: 20/20

[Bloodstained Bear Fur Cloak]

It smells. No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the back and is below 5 Damage is negated.

*-30% to damage received

Durability: 30/36

[Rough Iron Chestplate]

It looks awful but it does its job.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the chest and stomach and is below 15 Damage is negated.

*-20% to damage received

Durability: 40/40

[Layered Fur Tasset]

No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the legs and is below 10 Damage is negated.

*-10% to damage received

Durability: 20/20

[Iron Longsword]

Weighing in at 5 kg and at 1.5 m, anyone who can wield this beast for the duration of an entire battle is a monster.

Grade: Moderate

*+50 Damage *-20% attack speed

Durability: 30/30

[Heavy Iron Dagger]

made from a single piece of iron, it is top heavy and heavy overall.

*+10 Damage

*+50% attack speed

Durability: 15/15

Today, the men of Travaos would set out to join the baron's army.

I looked to the side.

[Smoked Common Bream] x20

Tastes pretty bad. Do you have some pepper, bro?

Grade: Bad

[Assortment of Herbs] x20

USed to improve a dish's taste

Grade: Common

These should be enough. I mean, the baron was going to feed the soldiers, right?

"God, I'm an idiot," I muttered to myself as I sat up.

As one, all of those items in front of me and on the table disappeared and equipped themselves on me as I pressed a single [Equip All] function that appeared when I had all of the armors and weapons in front of me.

Then I left my new home.

-VB-

"Oh, you are volunteering to fight?"

The herald was still here in the village to my surprise, so I had gone straight to him. We were away from the rest of the villagers right now, talking behind one of the houses where the herald had his horse kept. Unlike yesterday, he did not wear the tabard representing his lord's house but a gambeson.

"Yes," I grunted while holding my armor to my side. "But I want some guarantees in loot. Consider it a pay for me. Instead of paying this mercenary with gold, you give him scrap."

The herald seemed to think about it for a moment before smiling. "I am sure that His Excellency will accept such an offer. Of course, I have to ascertain exactly how good of a fighter you are first."

I raised an eyebrow. "What would you have me do?" I asked.

"Alex here is a man-at-arms of the baron," he spoke as he stepped aside and a blonde-haired and squared jawed man, obviously the man-at-arms, stepped up. "Don't lose to him for two minutes. While our good man here is better as a cavalryman than a footsoldier, he is still an adept fighter."

"... alright."

"Excellent!"

"I want that promise in writing in German."

Alex and I stepped away from the house and off the road onto a grassy patch of unused land.

By this time, some of the villagers had gathered to see what was going on.

Dressed in red and white gambeson, Alex brought out a one-handed warhammer and a buckler.

I inspected the man briefly.

[Alexander von Lantsch]

Title: Man-at-arms of Baron of Vaz

LvL.17

Age: 28

HP: 150

MP: 0

ST: 75

STR: 15

END: 15

AGI: 12

DEX: 11

INT: 9

CHA: 12

So… was he strong? I couldn't tell just from those stats. He was definitely above average, but not that much above most people. He must have some combat skills.

"Start fighting in 3…!" the herald counted us off. "2-!" Alright, let's try not to stand out too much. "1-!" I'm here to keep the chief alive. "Fight!"

He approached me first before going for a strike with his buckler.

I dodged it before dodging again as he tried to guide me into the range of his warhammer. Skipping back after dodging, I stopped and charged in.

Alex waited for me, and when I struck horizontally, he parried.

But I brought it right back towards him.

My ability to reassert momentum through sheer strength caught him off guard and he arrived again, but I could see him wincing.

Of course, he would be. My sword was 5 kg in weight, which was double that of most swords.

He timed his parry and struck forward with his warhammer.

This time, I d-.

"Stop!"

Both of us stopped, and Alex saw the tip of my blade in front of him. When he had attacked forward, I had jumped back and brought my blade towards him and stopped. My longsword being longer had put him at my mercy.

"It's clear that you are skilled and strong. I will be glad to speak on your behalf."

I pulled my sword back and sheathed it into its scabbard, and then nodded to the herald. "My thanks."

"Hans!"

I looked over my shoulder and saw Derrick along with his father, and then I saw two women with them. One woman was old as the chief, and had to be his wife. The other was younger than Derrick. She had some pock marks that I was familiar with; they were scars from small pox infection. It was something most people had, whether it was on their face or other parts of their body.

Even so, the little scars she had didn't take away from her overall prettiness.

Turning back to Derrick, I frowned as I pulled my leather facemask down. "What, you annoying bug?" I grumbled.

"I thought -. I thought-?"

Great, he's confused.

"I'm just here to earn myself some money and iron. Don't mistake this for anything. I ain't doing you any favor," I drawled. "I didn't get picked for the levy, which means that if they want someone like me to fight, then they should pay me. Besides, I only arrived at the edge of the valley like a week ago, so I shouldn't even be part of the village yet, right? I still got in line, though, and drew the lot, so the baron can't make too much fuss about it," I said before pulling out my sword and showing them all a little trick.

I spun it.

I spun it faster than any normal human could. Spun it so fast that I began to generate a small gust.

The herald and the men-at-arms looked at me with wide eyes, but they schooled their features rather well.

The villagers looked at me in awe.

I stopped and twirled the sword.

"This thing is twice the weight of most swords out there," I added. "Imagine what a knight would look like after I hit them with it."

"May I…?" Alex asked me.

I nodded and handed him the sword.

He held it up, and I saw a trickle of a sweat running down the side of his face before he gave it back to me.

"... You must be a veteran of many battlefields."

I chuckled. "Only a few skirmishes."

I did have to fight off a trio of bandits on my way here from Ourzcvelt, so I wasn't lying despite the fact that they died so easily. They were the people who generously donated all of their leather goods that I used to make the furnace bellow.

The man snorted as he returned the sword. "... Let me reintroduce myself. I am the Master-At-Arms under the employ of Baron Fredrick IV of Vaz."

I blinked just as the rest of the villagers murmured in surprise.

A master-at-arms was basically the trainer and leader of all of the men-at-arms. This guy was basically a local bigwig.

I sheathed the sword and gave him a more respectful nod. "Well met, then."

He grinned as he extended a hand. I shook it.

"Would you like to come and work for the baron?"

My answer was quick and absolute.

"No."

Alex laughed as our hands parted. "I had a feeling," he said with clear disappointment in the loss of opportunity in his voice. "Still, you have offered yourself to fight in the coming conflict, so we will work together. Who knows? I might be able to convince you otherwise."

"Fat chance of that. I got a home of my own to build in that valley over there," I gestured.

A lot of the people present turned to look.

"... Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah."

"That's the Fluela Valley where it goes to meet the Fluela Pass. Bandits are known to come from there…" the chief replied.

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn't known about that.

I glanced back towards the valley I had decided to call my home.

I turned back and smiled. It was a smile filled with teeth.

"I'm sure I could take care of them."

After that, those of us called to war left Travaos.

To Vaz.

-VB-

When "European conflicts" come up in conversation, a normal person might think of the likes of World War I, World War II, Napoleonic Wars, or even Hundred Years War. People memorialized those wars, and the stories of huge armies fighting one another across a theater of war spanning entire nations certainly possessed a morbid romanticism to them.

However, the reality of the average European conflict carried none of those characteristics.

It was petty, small, and almost universally forgotten except by those who lost something in it.

This "war" was a good example of such.

The master-at-arms Alex was very keen on getting on my good side (to hire me), so he shared a lot more details than what the average person knew.

The current Prince-Bishop of Chur was not a greedy man, according to many of the men I travelled with, but he was a staunch ardent believer in the power of the church and that it was his duty as one of the principal shepherds of the Alps to consolidate the power of the church and take power away from the nobles who cared less about the people.

When one puts the situation like that, the prince-bishop certainly sounded like a good guy.

But the Baron of Vaz wasn't a bad guy either. In fact, he sounded like the guy in the right in this conflict. The cause of the conflict was a land owned by a free noble between the barony and the prince-bishopric. The said noble died in some conflict in the Lowlands up north and left not a single heir or relative to inherit.

By de jure, the land belonged to the baron under the Barony of Vaz. However, the prince-bishop was proclaiming that since many of the serfs and freeman living and renting the land, respectively, are parishioners of the Prince-Bishopric of Chur - because a church under said prince-bishop was closer to said land under both the Diocese of Chur, which was under the Bishop of Chur, which was different from the civil authority of the Prince-Bishopric of Chur, which was also under the Bishop of Chur, that had no civil authority to demand that the land be added to the Prince-Bishopric of Chur.

Essentially, the baron demanded what was rightfully his, and the prince-bishop wanted what he thought was best for the people in the disputed area.

"So…"

"Hmm?"

"Who has the lower tax rate?"

The herald looked offended by the question while Alex chuckled.

"Typical mercenary. Everything in your head is about money," the herald spat.

I shrugged. "I mean, what's land if not an indirect revenue of money?" I replied irreverently. "Rights and deeds are all about protecting that source of revenue."

Ding!

Huh?

[Your words have rung true with your audience(33) and earned yourself a +1 CHA]

… Thirty-three people are listening in on us?

I looked around. Heads quickly turned away.

… Could I farm some charisma like this? I mean, this was the first quest-independent stat gain I've had in … three years.

I doubted it. I have tried it before in similar circumstances, and it never repeated. Having a system that's actually balanced itself sucked as a Player, let me tell you.

"Ah, there's Vaz."

I turned to look ahead of the troops and saw the seat of the barony's namesake.

It was a small walled city. It was bigger than any of the farming villages that I have been in and lived in, but compared to even the smallest cities from modernity, it was a pathetic city.

"I assume there's about… a thousand or two people living in that town?" I asked Alex.

"Yes. You have a good head on you," he hummed approvingly. "A good head, combat experiences, and good weapons. What don't you have?" he asked jokingly.

I responded to that seriously. "A harem of women."

He laughed.

It took us two hours to reach the town on foot, but we got there just as the sun started to set. The village levies and I were all led to barracks deeper inside the town, which was right next to a small hill that a small keep had been built on.

Just as I was about to settle in for the night (because training any skills in a populated city throughout the night was not going to happen to prevent standing out too much), Alex found me first I could tuck in for the night.

"The baron wants to see you."

Well, there goes not standing out.

-VB-

Fredrick looked across the table at the would-be mercenary.

When Alex, Fredrick's cousin twice removed, returned with the herald from the farthest villages for his levies, he met with Fredrick and spoke very adamantly about trying his best to employ Hans into the service of the barony.

Normally, such a minor affair would be left to Alex, but his cousin insisted that he should be the one to make a favorable deal with this mercenary.

And after what he had seen from this Hans just half an hour ago at the training grounds outside, he knew that Alex had been right to advise him as he had.

How many knight's could claim to beat back five men-at-arms by themselves while fighting with the same equipment?

Fredrick, too, had been mesmerized by the fluidity and the grace of the faints, parry, dodges, and strikes. Some happened too quickly. Others dragged on like a dance before ending with a flash of wood and a slap of wood on leather. At times, Hans used the numbers against his men.

Hans was a knight, a warrior, unknown and without peer. If he had him in his service…

"You only desire what would have already been your right to loot as your payment?" he asked incredulously. "'As much as you can carry'?" he read the contract.

"Yes, Your Excellency. While coins would be nice, my home in the Fluela Valley is far enough and I am self-sufficient enough that coins would rot in my home for years to come," the supposedly peasant man explained himself fluently. "While I imagine that I would eventually gain iron and steel on my own, this conflict, should it come to pass, presents a faster and easier method of obtaining iron for myself in bulk."

"And what do you plan to use those irons for?"

"Components for my tinkering projects, Your Excellency."

Fredrick blinked.

"You are a very odd man."

Hans merely sent him a goofy smile. "I am a little odd, yes."

"Are you sure you won't join my retinue? I can offer everything here in this contract and more! I am sure that my daughter's would be eager to meet you, too. And a plot of land closer to the heart of the barony and even Chur would help you as well."

"I am fine with my home in the gorges, Your Excellency. Perhaps I might sell my service again as a mercenary, but I wish to return home after this war to further cement my place there."

The man refused again and again.

… he would have to bide his time. Perhaps Hans would encounter a problem in the future that would be too much for him. He would step in then and earn the man's gratitude. Then he wouldn't be able to refuse.

Sighing, Fredrick picked up the dove feather pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and signed off with a flourish.

Hans did something else. He wetted flat of his thumb and then pressed down on the contract where the signature should be.

"Why do you not sign?"

Hans smiled and pointed at his inked thumb. "Because no one can copy this, Your Excellency."

And that's how Fredrick learned more than he ever wanted to know about fingerprints.