For the first time in what seemed like forever, I woke up with a raging headache and hangover. The shield offered no relief from this pain, probably because it was focused on the wound on my stomach. I should have asked Jerry for the necklace before I came here and passed out. To relieve the pain, I found the bottle of wine on the side of my bed and gave it a quick swig. Nothing like the burn of good alcohol to help with a hangover and it actually made me feel better.

Every other time I had tried this advice to drink when hungover to feel better, it had always made me feel worse. Never stopped me from trying and finally, it did some good. There was also some food leftover in the bowl that I ate to help myself wake up and fill my stomach. With that all done, it was time to start the day and I lifted myself up only to feel my entire body recoil.

Rather than pain, it was more like being sore and having a cramp in the same spot. It took me a few minutes just to let the pain pass and then I finally got up and walked towards the door, bringing the wine with me. I would need it to get through this day, a lot of it.

Once I managed to drag myself downstairs, Tom came up to me and wrapped my arm around his neck, half carrying half dragging me to the counter, which was once again trashed. A large helping of food was placed in front of my face. I had already eaten but the smell of hot food got to me and I started eating. After all, I didn’t have to eat it all and any leftovers would be put into the pot for dinner.

Where was the pot anyway? It was usually right behind the counter for Tom’s convenience when he tossed any leftovers in it. I looked around a bit and found it lying on its side in the back corner with two holes in it, likely caused by a sword or ax stabbing into it. Those bastards messed with Tom again.

“Let me see your wound. I know you’re hurt. You limped in here last night and had a hard time coming down the stairs this morning. Whether or not you can heal an arm doesn’t make the wound any less serious in my eyes,” said Tom while wiping the counter slowly. The entire counter was filthy and the rag wasn’t helping too much.

I wanted to say that it was nothing or that it was fine but decided to just lift up my shirt and show the wound. It was fairly serious without the necklace and Tom was seriously worried. The piece of cloth that I placed against it was still stuck there and drenched with red, either from blood or the wine, or a combination of the two. Then again, blood turns brownish after aging a bit, so this was probably from the wine. To test it I wiped my finger on it, sniffed it, and then licked it to be sure and it indeed did taste like wine, but a bit saltier than usual.

Tom was confused about what I did and then looked at the wound closely and even had me peel back the rags to reveal the hole beneath. He let out a sigh of relief after taking a look at the wound. It was deep but not that serious and already starting to heal and close up. The most annoying part is that it was very wide as I had to cut so much around to get the damn stinger out.

“I thought that this new knight order had put a blade into you, but this is more of a maim or injury from the dungeon, am I right?” asked Tom. So the reason why he was so set on seeing the wound is because he thought it was very deep or hit a vital and was caused by the knights.

“Yes, I got hit by an attack that got stuck in me like an arrow that I had to cut out as it couldn’t be pulled out. I’ll be all right in a few days. I’m just limping because it strains the area around the wound less,” I said to Tom honestly to get him to stop worrying about it.

“Jerry came over earlier this morning and said to meet up at Matt’s family house when you get up. I saw what happened to the barn and I wish I could have helped. Seemed urgent so you should get over there soon, but don’t strain yourself. Jeff was also looking for you and is apparently leaving town. Which is a pity as it was a boon to the town not having to buy new tools every time something broke and not having to travel all the way to the city with his blacksmith shop here,” said Tom.

The thing with Jerry was probably about the barn or headquarters burning down and what to do next. So, I pushed that back in my priorities and focused on Jeff leaving town. It was a move to avoid the knight order and save himself from continued harassment. A move I might just have to do myself. I decided it would be best to visit Jeff first then go over to Matt’s family to see the others, but first I had one last thing to say to Tom.

“Would you blame me if I left town as well? The knight order is here because of me and yet I want to run away and leave you and everyone else in town to deal with this mess. And it won’t end just like that if I go,” I explained the full truth of the situation to Tom to see his reaction.

“I would prefer if you paid your debts before leaving town. However, I wouldn’t blame you one bit. After all, what could you even do if you stayed? Don’t blame yourself for anything that happens. Also, keep that dagger of yours hidden, some people might take offense to it,” said Tom. Since I had pulled up my shirt, he had seen the dark dagger I usually kept hidden. However, it was fine since it was Tom.

In response to his statement about the debts, I pulled out all the silver coins I had on me and the ore I fetched from the dungeon and placed it in front of Tom. As I didn’t fully know the value of the ore, I wasn’t sure if it paid the whole debt, but it was all that had. By paying off the debt at this moment, or a good part of it, it was the same as saying I would be leaving town. I’d like to think that the decision wasn’t set in stone as I hadn’t consulted the others yet, but I knew what they would say.

As Tom said, what could we do by staying. Staying or leaving changed nothing. The knights would trash the town while injuring or killing anyone who resisted and we couldn’t stop them. They went as far as arson when we defied their words. If we left town, there might not be any town by the time we come back. Just like how there was no home when we got back from the dungeon.

I walked out of the bar and headed towards Jeff’s blacksmith shop. Hopefully, he hadn’t left yet so I could talk with him about his decision. Maybe his reason for leaving could reassure me in some way that it was the right thing to do. When I reached the shop, I found it completely barren. The doors and windows were all wide open while the shelves and walls were cleaned out. It was jarring to see it so empty and cold. How had he cleaned it out so quickly?

A hand landed on my shoulder while I was staring at the shop. Jeff’s hand, blackened by coal and coated in layers of callous, was pulling me away from the shop and to a carriage. This carriage was completely loaded with everything from the blacksmith shop. He really was leaving and was ready to go anytime. The only reason he hadn’t was that he wanted to talk with me first.

“I’m leaving. I’m a smith, not a fighter. The town is in your hands now,” said Jeff, intending to push all the responsibility of stopping the knights to me. Yet, I couldn’t do it either and he should know that.

“I might be leaving as well, Jeff. While I’m a fighter, this isn’t a fight that I can win nor one I truly want to start,” I said to him. He seemed taken aback by this and looked at the ground for a few moments.

“A temporary retreat to prepare for a proper fight in the future. I have every confidence that this town will be saved one day by your hands,” said Jeff as he climbed into the carriage and got the horses going.

His carriage rode off away from town, towards the South. He had far more confidence in me than I had. Of course, if I had the strength to face these knights I would, but that would take years of hard work to achieve. They had nine well armed and trained members with who knew how many enchanted and divine items on their person. To fight them, we’d need at least nine of our own, possibly more since their god probably granted them offensive options on their divine items. Double or triple their numbers and just as well armed or more armed should work.

Perhaps in the city, we could find the necessary numbers and build towards the equipment necessary to fend these knights off. Like Jeff said, this was a temporary retreat, not a full surrender. Then again, it’d be nice if these knights had already moved on by the time we mustered enough forces to fight them. Moved on without destroying the town or hurting anyone of course.

The family home that Matt moved into after he got kicked out of the headquarters wasn’t too far off. It was towards the outskirts of the town and was surrounded by steadily growing fields of crop. The residents here were farmers and if not for becoming an adventurer, Matt may have become a farmer himself. At this point, it seemed like he’d have to go back to being a farmer if he decided not to leave town.

Just outside of the front door of the house was a puddle of blood. The knights couldn’t have killed them. There was no way they could justify cutting down some innocent farmers. Was this why Jerry wanted me to come here, to see what had happened? Or was I overthinking things and no one actually died?

I pushed through the door and found Jerry, Chris, Matt, a whole group of people I didn’t recognize, and Stephen in a pool of his own blood all huddled together in the middle of the room. Stephen was missing a limb, his left leg and was currently wearing the necklace I had given Jerry.

“Thank goodness you’re here. Quick give Stephen the shield so his leg can regrow,” said Jerry.

While I disliked Stephen, I didn’t wish for death or disability upon him and obediently passed over the shield. Immediately, I felt an ache in my stomach and sat down while lifting up my shirt in a way that showed the hole but didn’t reveal the dagger. Blood started flowing from the wound again, so I pulled out the wine and tore off a rag, once again pressing against the wound with a wine-soaked rag to try and stem the bleeding while keeping things clean.

The others panicked seeing me in this situation and Jerry even tried passing the shield back to me. I refused it as Stephen honestly needed it more than me at the moment. With that out of the way, ten people at once tried explaining the situation to me and it was a pain to understand it all. Basically, after Stephen found out about the barn burning down he came after the knights and tried attacking them. In response, they chopped off his leg and taunted him about how he would bleed out and no one could help him.

Thankfully, Jerry had heard the commotion because he followed Stephen when he stormed off, hoping to stop him from doing anything stupid. He failed to do so but managed to keep Stephen from dying to his wounds. Then he dragged Stephen back towards the burning headquarters where Matt offered to bring him back here to get him treated. Meanwhile, Chris finally made it out of the dungeon and helped out.

Once Stephen was safely here, Jerry went to Tom’s bar to see if I had come back and found out that I had made it back and passed out. Rather than waking me, he decided it was best to just leave a message for the morning and was just happy I didn’t die in the dungeon. He probably would’ve reacted badly if he knew that I saw him at the burning headquarters and purposely avoided them. On the other hand, if I saw them dragging a bloodied Stephen, I would have stepped in to help no matter how tired or injured I was.

Stephen was one of the knights in our makeshift order, one of my allies or subordinates or what not. It was my duty to make sure that he was okay and accomplished that job for now by giving up the shield. He owed me for that and would surely pay it back since he was now forced to be a follower of Sanae Patil to heal his leg.

“We need to leave town,” said Chris, being the first one to bring up the inevitable.

“How can we leave with both the captain and Stephen injured?” asked Matt.

“Chris is right. We need to leave before anyone else ends up like Stephen. Then there’s also that,” said Jerry.

“That? What is that?” I asked Jerry, confused about what he was talking about. Was there another reason to leave that popped up since we last talked?

“It’ll bring us nothing but trouble. We should just get rid of it. Maybe even give it over to them in exchange for them leaving us alone,” said Matt. Was it something related to the knight order, something valuable, or something else?

Jerry pulled out something from his pocket, it was a bracelet with a divine sheen to it and a symbol upon it. The symbol was Mans Tontrau’s symbol. It was something that those knights would stop at nothing to get if they knew about it. Perhaps they already knew about it before we even got it and this was the entire reason that they came here. That or Stephen managed to swipe it during the fight when he got his leg chopped off somehow.

“Shut up Matt. We can trade this away for another divine artifact of Sanae Patil or a decent sum of cash. In fact, it might even buy us multiple divine artifacts. It’ll find its way into their hands, but if we sell it we can at least have something in return and sleep easy knowing they’d get fleeced out of a small fortune to get it. If we just pass it over to them, we won’t get anything from it,” said Chris. This made a lot of sense. There’d be plenty of merchants in the city and a ton of various divine items to sift through. There would be one or two Sanae Patil ones for sure.

“Alright fine, but can I hold onto it? I want to make sure it’s safe by my own hands since I was the one to find it. It’s my first major loot from the dungeon,” said Matt, revealing where it came from.

“No, the captain or vice-captain need to keep a hold of it. We wouldn’t want someone accidentally putting it on, do we?” asked Chris while glaring at Matt.

Chris was implying that Matt wanted to defect to Mans Tontrau. It was suspicious how eager he was to just pass on the bracelet or to hold onto it.

“I’ll hold onto it for now. Chris is partially right as I’m a believer of Sanae Patil I cannot wear the bracelet. It’s best for me or the captain to hold onto it. However, once we trade it in for the right kind of divine item, Matt will be the one to get it after we use it to help speed up Stephen’s healing. He earned it,” said Jerry, mediating the situation surprisingly well.

Matt seemed a bit dissatisfied with the results but had no choice but to accept it. And it seemed like we had all decided to leave. After all, we’d have to go to the city to trade in the divine item. We’ve established that we wanted to trade it in and skirted around the entire conversation about whether or not to go.

“We can’t wait the full week or so for Stephen’s leg to heal so we have to go fairly soon. Preferably this afternoon to minimize the chances of us bumping into the knights. The only reason we aren’t leaving now is because of the captain’s bleeding and the fact that none of us have eaten a proper meal nor slept properly. Let’s all eat and take a short nap to get our strength back,” said Jerry. I was the only one who had gotten a good night’s sleep and food I suppose. Then again, I needed plenty of booze to do that.

While the others started to eat or take naps, I sat there keeping pressure on the wound while Matt’s family went around helping everyone out. They replaced my rags with something cleaner with a poultice to help with the healing process and offered me some food that I refused. Since the new bandage went around my entire chest, I didn’t have to keep pressure anymore and was able to rest. It took some effort to make sure they wouldn't see the dagger when they helped put it on. Before long, I started to rest my eyes and passed out for a time.