Aastor spluttered. “What do you mean, why not? Listen, girl, you youngsters clearly don’t value-“

“The sanctity of life? The fact that we’re young? The possibilities that the world has to offer?” Laura cut Aastor of abruptly, leaving the spluttering Magus to just stare at her. “I mean, no, I don’t.”

“Then…Then maybe you shouldn’t be a hero.” Aastor had gathered himself somewhat, and was finally able to speak again. (Perhaps he’d have spluttered there forever, if “Business at Hand” wasn’t active, but he did seem to have recovered from the shock of Laura’s proclamation.)

“Maybe. But I did get Chosen, didn’t I?” Laura turned around, and looked over at Grigori. Even though she had only been around as long as I had, she clearly shared my disdain for the man, judging from the sneer on her face.

“I was chosen, I’m here, and really, there’s not a lot else to it. Why give up? What would that achieve?”

“You might LIVE!” Aastor plowed on. If nothing else, he had determination. “Isn’t being alive worth something?”

She smiled plaintively and shrugged. “Not to me. Whatever Calamity you have going on, it’s going to kill me either way. The only difference is time, right?”

Had I met Suicidal Adventurers before? Yes. But they’d all been battle-scarred veterans, suffering from some form of PTSD and throwing themselves into more and more reckless quests so that they could hasten their death. But nobody ever admitted it. Nobody ever said, “I’m doing this so that I can die.” Mainly, they just drank a lot.

In that sense, Laura was a breath of fresh air. I wasn’t sure if Excelsia had Mind Shamans, or Mental Readjustment services or whatever their local equivalent of a therapist was, but Ms. Fairfax could definitely use some professional help.

Aastor, however, appeared to have been taken aback completely by the way that Laura had spoken to him. Well, he had been in the business of sending children to their death, so it made sense that he wasn’t looking to get personally close to any of them. But the fact that he was quite literally gaping at the Chosen One, who was waving Grigori over, made me think that it was time to step in.

“Sir, if I may? It seems like Lady Fairfax may have made up her mind. It might be more…pertinent to continue the conversation later?”

Aastor gave me an odd look when I finished speaking. I don’t think I’d said anything incorrect. In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that any insolence on my part would have resulted in some amount of nagging from the System, so the odd look was pretty incomprehensible.

“Pertinent? Lady Fairfax? Did a lot of butlering and scraping when you were traipsing about as a Hero, did you, boy? Or do ya just happen to have a natural flair for this sorta thing?”

I smiled as genially as I could. “Ah, apologies Sir. Perhaps I have overstepped my bounds?”

“Damn straight.” Aastor grumbled. “But he ain’t wrong. Listen, girl, Grigori ain’t worth the Spark he was given. Waste of resources, and you’ll need real help.”

“And I expect you’ll be the one to give it to me? What, are you going to stalk my bedroom at night, like some kind of vampiric creep?”

“Nah, climbing up the side of castle kills my back. Castle Butler is a lass called Seraphina. She’ll let me know if you need me.” He gave her a sad smile. “Till then? Good luck.”

***

The countryside was quite charming. Bucolic and all that, with a few cow-like creatures roaming about and some local farmers working as we passed by. Aastor seemed to at least rank a carriage, and as a nice bonus, it ran on magic. No horses, no carriage driver, and above all else, no noise. Just a whisper quiet ride on nicely paved roads, and a day long journey to whatever Castle or Ruin or Magical Cave Aastor called home.

Apparently exhausted, the Magus had put himself into a magical stupor, with clear instructions to protect the carriage and wake him only if he was in mortal danger. Selfish old Magus! You kidnapped me from a different world, the least you can do is make sure I last 24 hours in this one! Moreover, I was a support class! How was I supposed to protect things?

Still, a chance to re-explore the System would be useful. The patch notes had given me very little information, but there was supposed to be a gift attached. I opened up the Patch Notes update, and started to scroll down, until I finally saw the image of a gift wrapped box.

Z-Rarity was reserved for System provided gifts. Normally, any items that I crafted or that I could find could only go up to S-Rarity, though I’d seen a few relics and some monster loot that had hit SS-Rarity.

I could only assume the System was semi-Omniscient. I’d been given Z-Rarity items only twice before, and both times, they had been appropriate to the world and useful in critical situations. The first one was a single-use Resurrection Charge that had allowed me to surprise a Demon Lord who wasn’t expecting a slain adventure to rise from the Dead and stab him in the back.

The second one was a Cloak of Everlasting Heat. I’d been caught in a sudden avalanche, but since I was wrapped in the Cloak, I was mostly fine. My party was not. The cloak was big enough to wrap around two people, but I had been angry about something or the other, and hadn’t offered to share.

I blinked, and my eyes were wet. Huh. Thought I’d gotten over that one.

Back to the System! I looked at the gift box for a few seconds, and a shower of confetti blinded me briefly as a triumphant series of musical notes played. Who asked for animated frills like this? Ridiculous. The musical sting was nice though, it really did give me a bit of a dopamine hit.

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Z-Rarity Gift Obtained!

Item Type: Bonded Pet

Species: Spark (Lvl. 1)

Name: Kel

Type: Unknown

All Excelsians use Sparks as magical conduits. Excelsia has spent centuries conducting research on the kinds of Sparks that exist and what each kind can accomplish, and this research is freely available at Spark Research Centers. There are also Spark Scholars, who dedicate their lives to this research.

Kel is a very sleepy baby Spark! She enjoys pets and walks!

Warning: Spark Limit (1) reached.

—————————————————————————————————————

A small, fuzzy thing had manifested in my palm. I’d never actually had a pet in the System before. I’m not sure if the entire Pet mechanic was new or not, but I wasn’t complaining. I knew better than to complain about a Z-Rarity gift, and while I wasn’t sure how common Sparks were, the info-dump at least was useful.

Kel looked like a baby hedgehog, spotted brown bristles and all, but with large, floppy ears. She looked up at me with red eyes and blinked once. Then, either deciding I wasn’t a threat or perhaps deciding that if I was a threat, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it, she stretched, yawned and curled up.

Sleepy indeed! Maybe Bonded Pets instinctively knew to trust their Owners? In the same way that Butlers just naturally buffed their Employers?

Wait, dammit, bad comparison! I wasn’t a pet. BAD COMPARISON!

Not knowing what else to do, I tucked Kel into a breastpocket and made a mental note to check out a Spark Research Center whenever I had time. Or maybe Aastor would know something? Clearly the old man liked showing off, maybe he’d give me some ideas about what kind of Spark Kel was, and how I could use her?

Putting that to the back of my mind, I looked back at the System. I knew I had a mystery skill of some kind, and I didn’t want it to remain a mystery much longer.

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ISEKAI HERO V2.0 Beta by XXXXXX

Name: Blanc

Level: 1

Class: Butler to a Disgraced Archmage

Employer: Magus Emeritus Aastor VII

Title: N/A

Fame: N/A

Abilities:

As You Command (Lvl 1)

Business at Hand (Lvl 1)

Equipment:

1x Chunk of Living Stone

Pets:

Kel, ????? Spark (Lvl 1)

—————————————————————————————————————

I wanted to know what the Chunk of Living Stone was, exactly, but there were more important things at hand. Knowing your skills was often the difference between life and death, and I really liked being on the life side of the equation.

I started to read the description for As You Command. The name made me wary, but clearly whoever was in charge of naming System Skills was a rank amateur. Maybe it would be really good, just like Business at Hand was.

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Class Ability: As You Command (Lvl. 1) (Conditional Activation)

Diligence! A Butler must be diligent in carrying out the letter of a command, if not the spirit. The Butler gains buffs when carrying out an Employer’s orders, and debuffs when sabotaging them.

20% Increase to all Quest Rewards for quests assigned by the Employer.

50% Quest Reward penalty for failing quests assigned by the Employer.

20% Increase to all Stats when carrying out quests assigned by the Employer.

50% Decrease to all Stats when sabotaging a quest assigned by the Employer.

Activation Condition: Butler has an Employer Entity.

—————————————————————————————————————

Maybe I was, in fact, a glorified pet after all. This skill basically made it impossible to go against Aastor’s orders. If I did, I’d be ridiculously weak, and while I hadn’t had a look at Stats yet, I wasn’t feeling the Strength or Dexterity that I used to have. Granted, it seemed like Aastor wasn’t the worst sort of Employer, but the System had basically turned me into an automaton of some kind. Whatever happened to free will?

Reading it over again though…The Butler class got debuffs when trying to sabotage an Employer assigned quest, but that presumed quest assignments in the first place. Moreover, I still could sabotage Aastor if it came to it, it would just be exponentially harder. And on the plus side, if he turned out not to be a complete tool, the bonuses were really good, even at Level 1! A 20% All Stats Up was nothing to sneer at!

I wondered if I could just…break my employment contract. A lot of my class skills seem to rely on an Employer being around, so in any kind of dungeon crawling situation, I’d be pretty useless without Aastor or some other “Employer Entity”. Support classes were often like that though, giving single targets strong buffs but unable to withstand a blow themselves.

No, it was too early to make rash decisions. As a low level support class, it was in my best interest to stick to someone strong for the time being. And right now, the strongest person around me was Aastor. Hopefully I could gather enough knowledge about the way things worked in Excelsia that I wouldn’t be in any danger, and then maybe I could quit this Butler gig and just live out my time in this world until I got Isekai’d into the next one.

I was about to pull up my Stats screen, and take a look at the damage that Isekai Hero V2.0 had done to my hard-earned Stats, when the carriage screeched to a halt.

I'd been too busy with the System to pay attention to the outside, but the bright countryside was drenched in a dim, orange glow. The sun was setting, but thankfully, the carriage didn't seem to need light to navigate.

It did need an open road though. I stuck my head out of the window, and a mustache twirling gentleman waved his cap at me. He carried a rapier, and was dressed in what seemed to be yellow silk shirt and red silk pants. Terribly distasteful and I didn’t need to be an aristocratic Butler to know it.

“I say, Good Afternoon!” The man had a pompous, airy voice. It was so jovial, it almost felt put on, but I rather suspected that someone who seriously dressed in silken clothes just spoke like that naturally.

“Good Afternoon to you as well, Sir. My Employer is asleep, but is there anything I could do for you?”

“Indeed! It is with great regret that I must inform you that you are currently being waylaid by the fearsome Baldric, famed Buccaneer, noted Cutthroat, and suave rapscallion.” He winked rakishly at me. “If you would exit the vehicle, one of my associates will commandeer it in your stead. I thank you for your cooperation!”

Baldric bowed down low, crossing one leg over the other and sweeping his hat in exaggerated courtesy. Oh great, a clown. I prepared to leave the carriage, when a notification popped up.

————————————————————————————————————

Quest Activated: Highway Robbery! No, Seriously!

Main Objectives:

- Protect the Carriage! (Employer Assigned)

Sub Objectives:

- Ensure your Employer is not awoken. (Employer Assigned)

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