Time had a way of stretching and yanking like a poorly tied rope. Ten minutes of swinging, hacking, and cursing later, I—Sir Henry Hildebraud of Mostenstein, last of the Knights of Saint Merin—stood over the remains of what the dungeon guidebook had grandiosely titled The Common Slime King of Tier I Slimes.
A king, it seemed, was little more than a slightly larger pile of gelatinous disappointment. It didn't even have a unique name! Its 'royal crown' was just a few bubbles trapped near the top, yet they were hard to slash off all the same. My gauntlets were slick with goo, and my armor rang hollow with exhaustion every time I inhaled.
The corpse, or whatever remained of it, quivered one last pathetic time before dissolving into a puddle smaller than a basin in the barracks. I lowered my sword and fell to one knee, letting the slime seep under the edge of my armor, and panted. Each breath felt like it cost an extra coin in stamina.
I forced myself upright, dragging the sword from the puddle of slime. "By the blessed light of Saint Merin, let it be known across all kingdoms, from the sunlit spires of Valerion to the shadowed halls of Drethmoor, that Sir Henry Hildebraud of Mostenstein, scion of the venerable Knighthood, has faced the abyss and struck true! No foul beast, no—" The gooey substance dripped from my gauntlets and boots like some grotesque parade. "... no common—"
My words seized themselves in my throat. Do you even hear yourself, Henry? A grand speech after killing a slime? By the holy ballsacks of the Saints; is this how far knights have fallen? What would the great forebears think? 'Sir Henry, Destroyer of Common Slimes? Well done?' Bah.
The thought stung harder than the slime burns. There was a time when 'knight' meant something—when we rode beneath banners that weren't tattered laundry, when the world still believed in the Order of Saint Merin. Now it was just me. Me and a half-starved horse picking through old dungeons for copper and dignity.
Tomorrow. I'll start rebuilding the Order tomorrow.
But today? Actually earning enough for a hot meal first.
I forced myself up again and limped over to the treasure chest that squatted in the corner. The thing creaked as I lifted the lid, and a slime-scented shimmer rolled out. My nose wrinkled.
Inside was the usual Tier I fare: slime-infused trinkets meant for people who could use magic. A pendant for goo-based healing, a vial for low-light perception, and an amulet that supposedly warded against acidic slimes.
On me, they would do nothing except smell like dungeon. Altogether, they'd fetch about 500 Kohns. That was their only benefit.
That had been the life of a Knight ever since magic found its way into the Kingdom of Raslan: grinding bottom-of-the-barrel dungeons that were too tedious, too slimy, and too grindy for magi to bother with. Swinging steel against a creature that barely qualified as sentient, hacking away for what amounted to a few hundred Kohns a week, just enough to feed ourselves and our horses.
"Maybe I should just sell my armor and call it a day..." I muttered to myself as I trudged out, but I immediately dismissed the ridiculous notion the moment I saw my steed, Silvermane, Great Mare of Mostenstein. She moved her head and flared her nostrils, but didn't move until I approached. My mare—smart, stubborn, and far more capable than any mage on wings—knew to stay low, to keep hidden if bandits or worse, wandered too close. To my luck, not many magi had tried to take her from me. A flying mage didn't need a horse. They could just flit around and ruin your day from above.
I stared at my gauntlet and muttered to no one in particular, "I have sworn to uphold the Knighthood. To protect, to endure, and to carry its name." If not for anyone, then for Silvermane.
My stomach rumbled like a distant drum rolling through the dungeon tunnels. Ah, indeed. To uphold the Knighthood, I must first eat.
Silvermane, ever perceptive, lowered her head to the grass at the edge of the path. She nibbled delicately, ears fluttering toward me, eyes half-lidded in that smug, knowing way horses do when they see a human suffering. She only ever ate when she knew I was starving, like this was some private joke between us. She found it funny. I didn't.
I groaned. "I should've just become a damn horse," I muttered, watching her chew. "Maybe one day, if I starve long enough, the grass will start looking appetizing."
Unfortunately, hunting forest animals on horseback with a sword was a bad idea, and I had no desire to eat slimes.
I gave Silvermane a gentle pat on the neck, and she nudged my shoulder with her muzzle. Cheeky little thing that she was, Silvermane was still my only companion, the closest thing to family, after my actual family abandoned me the moment they realized I had absolutely zero resonance with the aether. No. I was not bitter about it. A knight knows not of bitterness, only valor.
"Let's get to... whichever town we could find," I murmured.
I urged Silvermane to stick to the main path, the one lined with scrub and the occasional crooked signpost, hoping that sheer luck—or divine pity—would put a living soul within sight. Bandits, yes. Magi, possibly. Helpful travelers, improbably. But what a knight does best is cling to the improbable.
We had been moving for a while, the sun inching across the sky, when I finally had a moment to test the quartz properly. I knew now with absolute certainty that the quartz was the cause of the apparition, for every time I rotated or shook it with intent, the same phenomenon returned with absolute precision: letters, bright and impossibly crisp, hovering before my eyes like words painted in sunlight.
I had never seen anything like it. The letters weren't floating on paper or carved into stone. They seemed to be something else entirely, occupying space somewhere between thought and matter.
I gave my rock a shake, and the apparition appeared before my eyes again.
[STAT SCREEN – Henry Hildebraud of Mostenstein]
Class: Knight
Level: 4
EXP: 1430/1950
HP (Health Points): 55/55
AP (Aetheric Points): 1/1
Stamina: 32%
STR (Strength): 10
DEX (Dexterity): 22
RES (Resonance): 0
INT (Intimidation): 104
PER (Perception): 27
RNG (Ranged Accuracy): 5
END (Endurance): 19
RIDE (Mounted Riding Skill): 66
Status: Healthy, Fatigued, Starving
I knew I'd always been below par for a knight. It wasn't just the bruises that took longer to heal, or the way my arms shook after swinging a sword for more than a few minutes. It was everything. The footwork, the endurance, the sheer ability to survive the dungeons that younger, stronger men treated as a warm-up. I wasn't exceptional, and I'd never pretend to be.
The reason I'd become a knight at all was because I was the only one there when Sir Roland died; his only squire. The last truly venerable Knight of Saint Merin, he lay feverish and gray, hands shaking on my shoulders as he said, "If the Knighthood is to live, it must live through you. I knight you, Henry Hildebraud of Mostenstein."
Then the old fart promptly died.
He didn't even bother staying long enough to make sure I knew how to swing a sword. Instead, he spent his final years as a deadbeat drunk, teaching me little beyond riding at breakneck speed and stealing bread from village carts.
But surely I had more than 10 STR?
If nothing else, Ceralis seemed... honest. It didn't lie about my RNG or DEX, and in my own experience, horse riding was definitely the one skill I was most proud of. It felt as though this thing was giving me numbers I could trust.
"Now, what did I miss out on?" After some trial and error, I had learned to mentally command the parts of the vision to appear before me with clarity. I squinted at the hovering letters again, curiosity gnawing at me like a rat in a granary. Maybe, just maybe, the quartz could tell me what I would've gotten if I'd picked one of the other boons. I shook it experimentally, and a new set of words glimmered into existence before my eyes:
Fleetborn's Favor → +50 STR, +50 DEX
Giantblood's Vigor → +40 RES, +30 PER, +30 END
The corner of my mouth twitched. I really should have picked anything but Ravenlord's Command.
Fleetborn's Favor? +50 STR and DEX? I could swing a sword for hours, run like the wind, and actually keep up with any mage trying to zip overhead.
And Giantblood's Vigor... Saints above, just looking at those numbers made my knees weak. +40 RES, +30 PER, +30 END? I knew what RES meant; that was Resonance with the Aether. The only thing I possessed none of whatsoever. If I could use magical artifacts, my life would've been so much easier.
Instead, I'd been given a murderous mouth I couldn't even control. But you play the hand you're dealt with. The Saints had seen fit to give me this edge, not a drawback. I shall find a way to turn my tongue into a weapon.
I spot movement from afar, and what luck! A villager. I straightened, practiced the look of a tired but harmless knight, and nudged Silvermane forward so we approached from the sunny side of the road. This was easy work: a cordial tone, a friendly smile, a question about bread and beds and which road led to actual food. People always answered when you asked like a neighbor.
The man fidgeted even before I opened my mouth, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, fingers picking at the leather strap of his satchel. It must be the side effect of my INT, but I could still disarm the situation with the right phrasing.
In my head the line was neat and ordinary: Nice day for fishing, innit? Say, can you tell me the way to the nearest town?
I said, "Point me to the nearest town, or your head will roll in three seconds."
Ceralis flashed me a notification.
[Intimidation Successful]
Of course. My mouth was a separate entity from me altogether.
The villager's face went ashen. "P‑please! I have a wife and three sons—" He fumbled his pockets, and the coins clinked as they hit the road. "Take them! Take them all, please, spare me—"
I flailed for sense. You misunderstood. I don't want your coins. I forced the thought into my head. Get it right this one time, will you! The last thing a knight needed for his reputation was coercion of innocent people.
My lips moved anyway. "I don't want your coins." Good; good. Follow my script. "Your coins are useless." No, wait. You're straying from the script! "And do you know what I do with the useless? I trample them like the pathetic insects they are." No! I didn't even want to say that! Why did you have to add that bit?
[Intimidation Successful]
I don't want intimidation! I want persuasion!
The villager yelped, a terrified sound. He dropped the last coin and bolted, tripping over his own feet as he fled, leaving a scattering of copper glinting in the sun.
I dove, because the coins glinted like a dare on the road and the idea of leaving a man's money strewn about felt wrong on a level deeper than embarrassment. I snatched at them, palms slick with slime and guilt, stuffing copper into my gauntlets as if my clumsy fingers could stitch the moment back together.
"Stand still!" I barked, half to the villager and half to myself. "I'll—"
Silvermane, as per usual, didn't wait for my finish. I vaulted into the saddle, yanked the reins, and kicked her flanks. She surged forward with the impatience of a creature who had been promised oats and instead handed a man a public meltdown. Dirt and pebbles sprayed behind us; my armor clanged; the world narrowed to a blur of road and the fleeing figure.
Only when we were almost within arm's reach did the villager do something that made me stop in a motion older than shame: he dove off the road into a ditch to the right. One second, he'd been stumbling backwards, and the next, he was belly-down in murky water, frantically thrashing toward the far bank, splashing as if convinced the river itself could hide him from me.
Silvermane braked so hard, my knees nearly knocked my helmet. I sat there with my boots caked in mud and my chest kicking, staring at the villager who'd rather drown in a ditch than let me return his hard-earned coins to him. I had charged to return money and only succeeded in engineering a small aquatic evacuation.
I thought about following the man to the town he lived in, but the thought of terrorizing some poor sod into believing he'd led a mass murderer into his village did not sit well with me. So I did the only sensible, knightly thing I could fathom: I shoved a handful of the coins back into my pouch. "You absolutely dreadful whore of a throat," I slapped my Adam's apple, and we rode off, with a rumbling stomach and the next town nowhere in sight.
Then I saw something moving beneath the surface that was not riverweed and not the villager.
For a breath it was only a darker ripple, like a bruise, then two yellow eyes surfaced, as if a pair of coins had come alive and fixed their gaze on the human in the water. A long, glistening neck arced up, revealing a lean, armored throat ringed with membranous frills. The thing's mouth split open in a smile full of crooked teeth that smelled of mud and old iron.
A bogmaw. Or whatever the road‑sellers called it when they wanted extra Kohns from frightened farmers. Six feet long at least, all muscle and slime and a willingness to make a man's day much, much worse.
This creature could kill.