“What’s wrong, Gunner? Are you giving up already?”

“You haven’t seen my full power yet, human.”

“Hurry up and show me what you’ve got. You’re going down in a minute.”

“A minute? I’ll destroy you in seconds.”

Eleanor and Gunner—a broad-shouldered, strapping highlander with four battleaxes on his back—were locked in an intense arm-wrestling match, and Vance was watching from among the dense crowds on the sidelines.

Gunner gripped Eleanor’s hand as if he were trying to crush it into a pulp, and his three other hands remained clenched, although they were raised high and didn’t participate in the contest. Meanwhile, Eleanor had burrowed with her elbow into the stone surface of the table, and her forearm muscles were as taut as her bowstring. Although her opponent belonged to one of the most physically gifted races, she showed no sign of giving up. And it seemed that she had a chance to win: the rerebrace, vambrace, and gauntlet that she had taken off revealed substantial muscle—the stellar output of many years of training.

The interlocked hands swayed right and left, like a faulty tower on the brink of collapse. One moment, it seemed as though Eleanor was winning. The next, Gunner was pushing her back and applying pressure against her wrist. The crowds cheered with excessive zest. No one could predict the outcome. No one could call one side stronger than the other. And it was only after five more minutes of calculated pushing and yielding that a winner was finally on the horizon. Eleanor seemed to be running out of Stamina, and the self-possessed highlander began the final push for victory. She pushed back a little. He pushed harder. And only millimeters separated them from the match’s conclusion.

That’s it. She lost her chance; she can’t win anymore. Vance watched as Eleanor struggled to protect the last few millimeters that kept her in the tough match. Highlanders are just built differently. They have higher base Stamina and larger Stamina increments. No human can beat them at a contest of power without a significant difference in level. And it’s now clear that there’s no such difference here. Biology wins, Eleanor.

Eleanor, however, didn’t seem to care much about level, stats, or biology. She continued to hold her ground for a full minute. Even as a large part of the crowd were telling her to surrender, she continued to cling to the hope of a comeback. Another long minute passed without a winner. Another wasted in stagnation. Then it became apparent that something was odd. Vance realized it first, then the crowd, then the highlander. Eleanor should’ve lost by now if she had been out of Stamina; she shouldn’t have been able to stay in the match, especially with her arm bent so painfully on the verge of defeat.

“You didn’t …” Gunner said, as sweat slid down his biceps.

“Oh, I did,” Eleanor said gloatingly.

“You tricked me into using more Stamina.”

“You’re the one who made wrong assumptions, sweetheart.” Eleanor’s hand suddenly tightened. “You underestimated me. Is it because I’m a human or a woman or both?” She pushed her hand back up until it reached the midpoint between victory and defeat. “Whatever. This’ll teach you to think twice before you belittle me again.” In the absence of any noteworthy resistance, she swung her forearm and toppled her opponent’s hand, with one fast motion that ended in a humiliating thud. “You’re a highlander no more, ’cause you went down! Dee oh double-u en! Down! Welcome to the lowlands!”

Welcome to the lowlands? Vance chuckled.

As the highlander struggled to accept defeat, Eleanor stood up on the stone table and shouted, “Woo-hoo! Who’s your new champion, Turncoats?” And the crowd cheered and called her name in a moment of pure madness and frenzy. Even the Headbound sprawling on the ground—the first-timers who had used Vermeil Activator—raised themselves with drunken dizziness and shouted a series of unintelligible words as if to share in the joy. Then they fell back on the ground and started to move their arms and legs as if to draw sand angels on an invisible beach.

“This is the third time she’s beaten a highlander, I believe.” Himilco Magus appeared next to Vance, who wasn’t very enthusiastic to join the boisterous celebrations. “She’s built a nice reputation around here. Everyone knows her name, and some even call themselves her fans.”

“I don’t understand why everyone’s so excited about arm-wrestling.”

“I don’t think it’s about the game itself.” Himilco giggled. “She taught that highlander a bitter lesson, didn’t she? She reminded him that we’re no prey, that we’re Adventurer Slayers too.”

“Are Turncoats treated unfairly by the other races?”

“No, no. We’re all Headbound, and we’re equals in Middlerift. But …”

“But what?”

“But Turncoats are also humans, and humans are the prey of an Adventurer Slayer. Sometimes, we need to remind the other races that we are as strong and as gifted as they are. At other times, we need to remind ourselves of that.”

“Eleanor does both.”

“Yes, and in a fun way,” Himilco smiled. “But the celebrations do get out of hand sometimes, and I don’t want her to break another one of my precious tables with her ridiculous stunts.” He noticed that Eleanor was stamping on the stone table. “Oh no. No. Not again, Eleanor.” He left Vance and hurried toward her through the crowds, never shouting, although it would’ve been better to shout in this situation.

Vance laughed a little at the entire scene. Then he found himself a chair and sat at a safe distance from all the clamor. He rested and relaxed and watched. Himilco grabbed Eleanor’s shin and seemed to be telling her to come down, but she refused and stamped with her free foot. The crowds called Himilco names, and a few Turncoats tried to get him to leave; but he remained as stubborn as a schoolteacher and refused to let the wild celebrations continue. In the end, a compromise was reached when he suggested that more arm-wrestling matches be held. Eleanor began to accept challengers—humans this time—and Himilco stayed by the table, acting as an unbiased judge for the contests and ensuring that the merry-making wouldn’t damage any furniture.

***

By the time the fifth challenger stepped forward, Vance had lost interest in the games, and his Mental Eye was wandering across the room. There’s nothing for me to do here. He began to tap on his table. Boredom is a good sign, though … Maybe I should leave now and go find a healer. He stood up. The rooms here are free, but sleeping will leave me vulnerable. It’s a risk I’m not willing to take. He made up his mind. Eleanor seemed to have already forgotten about him, so he decided to leave without any sentimental goodbyes. As he walked to the exit, however, he looked back one last time. He meant to catch one last glimpse of her, but his Mental Eye was suddenly distracted by a familiar sight—a blue book with an unmistakable cover.

It was The Church of Murderers by Albert Nietzsche—a recent publication that was only two months old and that the Church of Amirani had raced to outlaw. Suddenly, Vance remembered the speech that the Cardinal of Cromsville had given, the fiery pit where the blue books had been burned, and the column of smoke that had towered above Townheart Square on the morning of Benedict’s murder. He couldn’t believe that a copy had survived the burning or that it was this close to him. Without the slightest hint of hesitation, he gave up on his original plans, turned away from the exit, and headed to the table where the book had made its bedazzling appearance.

On his way there, however, a woman approached him from the left. He didn’t notice her at first, because he was preoccupied with his literary pursuit, but her image continued to grow in the corner of his vision until it had asserted itself as an obstacle in his path. He couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t there. He first saw her Flame of Revival, burning, like his, with the strength of a distant deadline, and then there was a flowing purple dress decorated with the shiny brown scales of Bogborn Cobras. She was short but also bosomy. And caught between her shapely breasts was a Tectonic Medallion—an item doubling the power of geo-magic and a symbol of her status as a Geomancer.

“Excuse me, um … I, um … Do you …” she fumbled for words, speaking in a weird way as Vance drew close. “Do you … have a minute?”

“No, make it later,” Vance said curtly, and he passed by with frigid disregard.

Two more steps toward the coveted book, however, he found yet another woman in his path. This one was tall and scrawny, with widthless arms and almost sticklike legs—perhaps signs of malabsorption or some dietary disorder. She wore black-dyed light armor and had a belt of throwing knives around her non-existent waist. Unlike the timid Geomancer, she didn’t start with a polite excuse-me or pause to choose her words—in fact, it seemed she had nothing to say. She continued to approach Vance, with an inexplicable muteness and with a veritable blindness, until she bumped into him, head-on and with culpable premeditation.

“Watch it.”

“You watch it!”

Vance had no time to waste on nonsense. Fearing that Nietzsche’s new book would disappear, he continued walking as if nothing had happened. But then the same scrawny woman bumped into him again, only this time from behind.

“What’s your problem?” he shouted.

Turning around, he found her laughing provocatively. And the Geomancer was also there, but she wasn’t laughing in the slightest; she seemed to be stuck in a tottery daze.

“Why are … you doing this, Hollie?” the Geomancer said. “I didn’t ask you to do this. Les … Les … Les just leave him alone.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Vance said, losing his patience.

“I want you to get off your high horse, fuckface,” Hollie said. “Shannon said she wanted a minute of your time, so give her a damn minute. It won’t fucking kill you, or is your flame that weak already?”

“Look, I’m in a hurry,” Vance said. “I don’t have time for this.”

“You do now.”

“No, I fucking don’t. I have a priceless book to buy. If the Geomancer wants something, she can come talk to me later. But you can go fuck yourself.”

Vance turned and walked away, sighing in anger. Here I am minding my own business, and she just tackles me like a wrestler. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. Dealing with Eleanor and Himilco made me think everyone around here was a decent person. Hell, I was wrong.

Vance arrived at the table he sought. There, alone on a stone chair, a young man was sitting with The Church of Murderers in his ringed hand. He wore plain clothes and had no weapons on him at the moment, but he exuded an attractive aura of strength, confidence, and sophistication. His slender legs were crossed under the table, and the golden string of a pocket watch dangled from his pants’ pocket. Every few seconds, his free hand would feel for this string and play with it a little before letting go again. It seemed that he was lost in a distant world of his own—in thoughts and investigations, in theories and introspections.

Vance found it difficult to start a conversation, especially because he was still irritable after his unpleasant interaction with the rude scraggy woman. He felt that his words would come out as shouts if he tried to speak now, so he stood silently for a while, watching the pensive reader, who didn’t even notice the conspicuous but reticent shadow overhanging the tabletop. Eventually, Vance regained some of his usual composure, and encouraged by this forward step, he finally said, “The Church of Murderers. You’re lucky you found an undamaged copy. I only got my hand on clippings.”

The young man looked up at Vance. Then he lowered the book onto the table, as if he couldn’t continue reading in another person’s presence, and said with a tone of slight annoyance, “There are a few hundred copies in circulation, but not in the big cities. The towns near the borders are a good place to start if you want to purchase one.”

“I’m interested in buying yours,” Vance said. “I have the coin, or if you want, we can trade in hours, the way Fly Merchants do.”

“I’m Oswald. What’s your name?”

“Vance.”

“Listen, Vance, I don’t sell my books, no matter the price.”

“I’m sure we can reach some form of agreement.”

“Not gonna happen,” Oswald said. “I got this copy from the famous Thomas Adler himself, and I’m not willing to let go of it.”

“Not even for a good compensation?”

“Not for the head of the Pope.”

“Is there any chance you’d change your mind?”

“No means no. I’m taking this book with me to the grave.”

“I understand … That’s a shame.”

There’s not much I can do if he’s not willing to sell. Vance turned away from the table. It was worth the try, though. At least now I know that the illegal books are circulating in the towns near the borders. With a bit of positive self-talk, Vance tried to resign himself to the frustratingly disappointing outcome, but then a new thought popped up in his mind. I could still steal it. He paused. No … No, it might put me in trouble with Himilco, and that elephant-head doesn’t seem the least bit lenient. I guess I’ll just leave.

As he walked away, however, he heard his name being called—on a whim or perhaps because of an afterthought.

“Hey, Vance! Wait a second!” Oswald said, with a sudden change in his tone. “I’m sorry if I sounded rude. I still can’t sell you the book, but I can give you a quick summary of its contents. What do you say? Better than nothing, right?”

***

After sitting down at the table, Vance learned a few things about Oswald. The poised young man wasn’t in a bad mood because Vance interrupted his reading but because his mount had been killed earlier on the same day. In fact, he loved to discuss philosophical works, and it was only for the sake of such prospective discussions that he spent time here in the House of Turncoats.

He had read The Church of Murderers three times, and he was rereading it to mull over its contents and to draw the inferences that were impossible to make unless he had smeared the pages with his thumbs and left them yellowed and dog-eared. Such was his dedication to philosophical investigation in general, but he was an especially avid fan of Albert Nietzsche. He favored him over other philosophers, whom he called “dogmatic, antiquated, and utterly inane.”

“But let’s not go there,” Oswald said. “The works of other philosophers don’t matter right now. Let’s focus on our book.”

“You said you’d give me a summary or an overview.”

“Yes, let’s cut to the chase. The work is divided into three parts: Human in a Box, Tribalistic Morality, and The Murderous God. Are you familiar with any?”

“Not really,” Vance said. “The clippings I read were fragmented passages.”

“Hmm, I see.” Oswald turned the pages of his book to the beginning before he lay it open on the stone table. His left hand rested against Vance’s back as if to tell him to lean closer, while his right pointed at the chapter headings, which served as the bullet points for his makeshift presentation. He began, “Human in a Box is the familiar attention-grabber that philosophers utilize to hook their audience. Nietzsche asks us to look at the world we live in. Look at the rule of the Council of the Ten Princes. Look at the Federation of Free Cities. Is it a prosperous nation that fulfills the dreams of humanity? Or is it a mere box that is trapping us all?”

“A box?” Vance chuckled.

“Yes, a continental box,” Oswald said. “Our nation is isolated from the world. Look at our borders. You have mountains to the north and west, an ocean to the east, and a desert to the south. These natural barriers limit our contact with the outside world and the other races. We never interact with foreigners, and the Church fills us with enmity toward them. Even the dwarves and ifrits who have permission to live among us must worship Amirani and act like humans. There you go, a box. Humanity lives in a box.”

“You’re oversimplifying things,” Vance rejoined. “The Church didn’t force us to settle these lands. Our ancestors made this choice. The natural barriers prevent high-level monsters from attacking and offer us protection. Solar and lunar elves fought us over this land, and that’s proof of its inherent value.”

“You’re right. The Church didn’t force us to settle here,” Oswald said, “but it’s keeping us here. Nietzsche lists all the policies that make us prisoners in our own nation. You have the Chaos Factor, for example. It’s supposed to be a measure of how ‘good’ or ‘evil’ you are, but it puts an upper limit on how much you can level up. Past level 100, you’re called a sinner and a criminal for no clear reason. This forces you to remain weak in comparison to the rest of the world, and it becomes impossible for you to venture outside the Federation.”

“Well … I can’t argue against that.”

“Albert Nietzsche also reminds us that the borders of the human world aren’t guarded by the humans themselves but by an army of servile orcs. You’re from Engelsburg, right? In the north.”

“Yes,” Vance said, “my clothes are a dead giveaway, aren’t they?”

“Haven’t you heard the Engelian priests boasting in their sermons? They talk about how we’ve domesticated the unintelligent orcs, about how we made them depend on our crops and cattle for food, about how we take the sons of their chiefs hostage for ‘educational purposes.’ ”

“I’ve heard this more often than I’d want to admit.”

“The Church says that the orcs are there so that no human would have to fight in a war again, but these are blatant lies. The borders are guarded by orcs to prevent humans from having a glimpse of the outside world. The high-level orcs are there to murder any human who tries to escape the theocracy. And one day, they will turn against us. One day, they will rebel and crush the human box in their fists. The farmer can’t enslave the soldier.”

“That’s … an interesting hypothesis,” Vance said. “So, the first part of the book argues that we’re living in a large box because of geography, because of the Church’s policies that weaken humans, and because we aren’t in control of our own borders. Did I get this right?”

“Yes, you have the gist of it,” Oswald said. “And this takes us to the second part: Tribalistic Morality. Nietzsche argues that our persistent isolation—our life inside the box—has moulded our brains into a pathological form. We have been conditioned to despise everything foreign, to condemn everything different, to shun everything unhuman. We even started calling the monsters, which act on pure instinct, evil and loathsome.”

“Humans and monsters are competing for finite resources,” Vance said. “It’s natural that they would call each other evil or loathsome.”

“You said finite resources,” Oswald quipped. “Who made them finite? Isn’t it the Church? By trapping us in the box?”

“If humans and monsters left the box, they would still fight to death. You can’t convince me that monsters are innocent.”

“That’s not my goal at all, Vance. I just want you to understand that they’re not evil. ‘Evil’ is a value-judgment that we humans make. We say they’re evil because they hurt us, but they only hurt us because they’re built differently. If monsters are evil when they kill us, we are evil when we kill them.”

“All right, Oswald, let’s assume you’re right. Continue.”

“After his comment about monsters, Nietzsche points out that the Church treats strong humans in the same way. Can’t you see it, Vance? Humans with a high Chaos Factor are called evil, like monsters. They are persecuted out of their homes, like monsters. They are killed, like monsters. The Church has managed to perfect a tribalistic morality. If you’re not a weak, meek follower of Amirani, you’re a monster that should be killed. You’re not human anymore. You’re a goblin or an elf. You’re an Agent of Chaos.”

“I’ve been called all these things,” Vance laughed.

“And you’re not the only one,” Oswald said. “I was also called all these things even before I killed a single human. When the priests checked my Chaos Factor and found it above the accepted range, I had to flee for my life. I was no longer a human. I was a monster.”

“So, this is what Nietzsche means by tribalistic morality.”

“Yes, the Church is like a prehistoric tribe. If you threaten its power, if you try to escape from its control, you become a sinner, a foreigner, a monster. But most common folks are too blind to see this. They’re busy building new towns or clearing goblin nests or drinking in the lewd taverns. Daily life is the greatest distraction from truth.”

“I can’t say you’re wrong.”

Oswald seemed satisfied. Then he said, “Once we accept tribalistic morality as the reality of the Church, there is only one inference to make. The last part of the book, The Murderous God, makes the claim that the Church and Amirani are murderers. They are guilty. They murdered every innocent monster—every monster that had been minding its own business, every monster that had hurt no one. By ‘monster,’ of course, Nietzsche means not only normal monsters but also the other races and the unlucky humans whose Chaos Factor exceeded the acceptable range. For Nietzsche, ‘monster’ means any enemy of the Church.”

“I see,” Vance said.

“And there you have it—a summary of the 300 pages.”

“I really appreciate that you took the time to explain all this to me.”

“No need to thank me. I told you I love philosophical discussions. They take my mind off things … and I’ve been feeling really down all day long. I don’t know why. It’s not the first time I lost my mount.” Oswald closed the book. “You know what? I’ve developed a theory based on this title. It relates to Turncoats and their position in the world. Could you hear me out and give me feedback? I think that’ll help me feel a tiny bit better.”

Vance was about to answer, but then he felt an anomalous shiver running through his body. His ten fingers started twitching as if with a nervous tic, and his knees trembled like those of a newborn foal. Seconds later, white dots of light appeared at randomized locations in the air. They floated like the magical lanterns that he had seen in the guild’s underground archives, shining like the beacons of unseeable lighthouses.

“What’s wrong with me? I feel … dizzy.”

At that moment, as he finally strung the words into an intelligible question, he received the belated system message that was supposed to explain what was happening. It echoed inside his head to demystify the strange symptoms that he had, but it confused him even more.

Status Alert

Your body has finished absorbing Vermeil Activator.

Bane Added: Redspine High

You receive ?^)^) enter a state of complete @*&^%@#~&@^* /~+-!? <> /!*&~ @*=&~. The !((!#&= wear off ~(&!+ 8 hours.