I ran. With death at my back and the merchant's screams filling my ears, I ran. Harder than I had run for years.

I had wanted to make it to the cabin at least, but I’d barely made it to my bean patch when—

Boom!

Thunder cracked, so loud that it was on the verge of being deafening. And as the sound hit me, I felt the ground shake as everything in front of me lit up like it was day. Well, at least what would have been day if sunlight was red.

I turned around, squinting. Where the merchant had fallen there was now a pillar of crimson flame shooting out from my yard. Tall enough to reach above the trees and wide enough that it almost touched them.

It didn’t last long. Only burned for a little more than half the time it had taken to light before a rapid disappearance. In less than half a second, embers on the grass and a giant crater in my yard were all that was left of it.

I squatted down and let go of my breath. What a nightmare.

Climbing up and down a giant beanstalk three times had seemed like a chore to me, but looking back on it now, I wouldn’t have minded doing that if it meant I didn’t have to do this two more times. At this point, I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be Jack and the Beanstalk or a summer blockbuster.

But putting my subverted expectations aside, the bean merchant showing up again was definitely something I had predicted. Honestly, I find it odd that in some versions of Jack and the Beanstalk, the guy who sells Jack the beans never appears again. He sold Jack magic beans that could outgrow skyscrapers. You’d think the author would have thought that their readers would wonder what happened to him in the end.

I was wondering at least, even back before this story had become my life. Shouldn’t characters like that show up more than once in a story? Shouldn’t characters like Jack go looking for them?

Anyways, I knew that he was going to show up again, but I also knew that he was going to betray me. Okay well, not really, but with my life being a story now and all, I had it on a short list of possible twists. Him being my fairy mentor initiating me into an order of bean warriors gathered to fight the giants was higher on the list than betrayal, but him getting blown up in a huge explosion pretty much put that possibility to rest.

I looked at the dark purple bean sitting in my palm. When I had run myself into the bean patch to deter that psycho, I ended up touching one. It was still sending my brain the ‘let me swim in giant’s blood’ message, but there was a second, weaker message that was coming along with it. It about translated to ‘let me at him’ or throw this bean at that guy.

Unlike with the merchant’s advice, I followed the instructions this time and with how well that turned out, I was considering actually giving the beans what they wanted. But…

Not tonight, I thought, putting the bean back in my pocket. It was way too late at night for me to be giving these crazy beans what they wanted before I was almost blown up and it was definitely still too late after.

That being said, I still wasn’t sure if it was too late for another fight. I thought that it was very likely that the bean merchant had died in the explosion, but I was currently living in a magical world where beans function as bombs and really tall people people kicked normal-sized people like soccer balls. The man had four types of magic beans. For all I know, this could have just been a trick to get me to relax and he used one of his beans to avoid death. That probably wasn’t the case since he was advising me to plant the kind of beans that would allow him to do that for him, but I needed to approach these sorts of situations with caution.

In consideration of that, I stood up and pocketed a few more of the beans from their stalks before starting towards the giant hole the merchant left in my yard. Still looking out for trouble as I approached, I arrived at the crater’s lip without incident. I don’t know how many beans it took blowing up to make the crater as big as it was, but it looked like it was big enough to bury three elephants in.

As for all the dirt it had displaced, that was missing. There wasn’t any debris littering the yard around the crater. Whatever magic powered the explosion must have obliterated it. If it weren’t for all the surrounding burnt grass, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this and a hole someone dug.

From where I was standing, the only thing I could see down in the crater was a peculiar pouch sitting at the crater's center. Of course, I wanted to go down and inspect it, but considering that I didn’t know whether it had somehow survived the explosion or if it had been placed there after the fact as bait, I was feeling quite hesitant.

First thing I did to test my situation was pick some grass from the yard and throw it into the crater. The grass floated down gently to the ground and didn’t set on fire on contact with it. That meant I could probably assume the crater was safe to walk on.

The next thing I tried checking was the forest, the keyword being tried. With how late it was, I couldn’t see very far in and if the merchant was alive, that was going to be very bad for me.

If he is still alive, then I was probably dead if I went back into the forest. I’d just end up getting ambushed in the dark. The house wasn’t safe either, he’d just blow it up once I went inside.

Waiting out the night in the bean patch seemed like the safest idea, but even then that was only as long as I could stay awake. And even if I could stay awake, once I was tired I’d make mistakes. As for the possibility of getting Agatha to take shifts with me, I don’t think I could trust her to have a life or death battle while I was taking a nap.

In the end, I decided that going back to the bean patch for the night was the right call. The plan was to wait until morning and hope that the beanstalks I hadn’t coated with giant’s blood had finished growing in by then. I’d either wait for Agatha to come out after that or call her out and ask her to bring out the compass.

Next, I’d pick all the beans and ask her to test the dimension jumping beans first. If they didn’t work the way that they were supposed to, I’d have her run west into the forest with me and try to take a roundabout way back to the hamlet. Hopefully, the madman hadn’t blown up the hamlet by then. Hopefully, he hadn’t blown up the house by the morning. Hopefully, he had actually been blown up and all of this was just me being overly cautious.

Honestly, it would have all been much simpler if I had some confirmation that he was actually dead. It was nice not having to see his charred, mangled body laid out in the crater, but it would have also been nice not to have to worry about him appearing out of nowhere.

While I was in the middle of thinking that, something landed on my head. Immediately, I jumped up and clenched my fists, accidentally squeezing the bean that was in my hand.

Vines rushed out from in between my fingers and shot straight towards my head and towards whatever was attacking me. They wrapped themselves around my skull, pulling it closer to my hand, and blinding me with it.

As I fell to the ground, having lost my balance, I heard something crumbling. Still blinded, I got up and darted off stumbling.

Was that ten seconds? I asked myself.

I was expecting an explosion, but ten seconds had to have passed already. I couldn’t have fumbled around for so long without the time having passed. It was hard to tell what was going on when I had my fist stuck in front of my face just one foot away.

If there was any silver lining to getting attacked by my own beans, it was that I’d figured out that they wouldn’t eat me at least. They probably only had a thing for giant's blood. Or maybe magic blood in general?

Whatever the case, I needed to get this thing off me. The vines had my fist stuck in a pose, but I was able to squeeze the bean harder with a bit of effort. Once I did that, the vines released my head and became like wet noodles. It was nice to know there was a way to deactivate these things.

I threw the bean’s remains away and they started to shrivel as soon as they touched the ground. After taking a look around, I confirmed that there was no merchant or crimson star in sight. So what the heck hit me then?

I took out another vine shooter from my pocket and headed back to the pit to try to find what landed on my head. Sure enough, when I looked into the crater, there was now a piece of paper sitting atop the peculiar pouch in the middle. That explained the feeling on my head and the sound, but again, there was no explanation for the unscathed items appearing in the blast zone.

Wait. I did a double-take looking at the paper in the crater. It stood out so clearly from the darkness surrounding it that it looked like it was lit by the sun rather than moon. I’d gotten so used to seeing the effect on my own page that I didn’t even notice at first.

At that point, I threw caution to the wind and went down into the crater. I doubted I was going to be attacked. Considering that psycho merchant’s aim, he’d have probably already killed me in the middle of that clown show I was just performing if he was still alive.

I picked up the page and flipped it over. Just as one would suspect, it was a profile for the merchant. His name? Jack, of course.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Jack

Also Known As: The Bomber, Jack the Bomber, The Bean Merchant, The Bean Bomber, The Jack Killer, The Inquisitor, Jack the Highwayman, A Jack of the Beanstalk

Stories (of Note)

Traits (of Note)

Abilities (of Note)

Possessions (of Note)

Relations (of Note)

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Shady men have many names they go by, I thought. It looked like Ben was right, every main character around here was named Jack. Heck, even the villains were.

Like the other important Jacks, this merchant Jack had a title to go along with his name. He was supposed to be Jack the Bomber. Very fitting. He also had quite a few more listings under his Also Known As than me.

Following my thoughts like it was my own page, the Bomber’s page contracted everything above its Traits section. More than anything at the moment, I wanted to confirm that he didn’t have some trait or ability that allowed him to come back from the dead or fake his death.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Traits (of Note): Serial Killer, Lacking Sympathy, What’s Yours is Mine

Abilities (of Note): Cunning, Hand Dexterity, Luck with Giants, Reading & Writing, Short Weapon Experience

Possessions (of Note): Bag of Bean Holding (+), A Wagon (+), A Horse

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Though I was focused on finding death avoidance skills, I did feel some relief seeing that the Bomber wasn’t a Transferred Soul like I was. Him having a page created the very real possibility of my earth exporting psychopaths to this place and I very much wasn’t looking forward to having to deal with them.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case and the Bomber was in fact a native. He seemed to be a normal native too. There wasn’t anything related to magically avoiding death printed in his traits or his abilities sections. What’s Yours is Mine sounded like it could be a name for an ability that steals life force from others, though, so I expanded the definition just to make sure.

What’s Yours is Mine: Has little respect for the idea of property rights, only recognizing it to protect what they have and for their own gain in general.

Nope, nothing magical there, it was just the trait of a thief.

I expanded his wagon’s listing to see if he had anything in there that might have helped him out, but instead of only the notable items being displayed the page showed me everything he had in there. It wasn’t something that I had tried with my own page, but with a thought I commanded the Bomber’s page to filter the items based on whether they were mundane or magical.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Mundane Items (+)

Magical Items:

Merchant’s Garments

Bag of Bean Holding

Base Beans

Erupting Fire Beans

Food Beans

Water Beans

Jumping Beans

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Merchant’s Garments: Clothes covered in a great number of charms to ward against the fey. Helps hide the wearer from detection by fey, dissuades fey from going in the direction of the wearer, and has the potential to disrupt fey magic to an extent causing it to bend around the user.

It appears that the only things magical about this man were his beans, the bag that he kept them in, and the clothes that he had on his back. With none of the beans listed being the ‘save you from massive explosion’ kind, I was finally able to accept that the Bomber really was dead.

That or he had consumed the one and only bean he had that could save him which meant it probably wouldn’t get a listing. I was really having a hard time trusting a magical world not to pull some sort of trick on me and get me killed. For now, though, I was going to move on and handled things like the Bomber was actually dead.

Since he was dead, that meant it was time to move onto his relations and make sure that there wasn’t anybody who was about to exact revenge on me for his sake.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Relations:

Mother (Deceased)

Jericho (Mentor) (Boss) (Murdered by Jack)

The Bean Merchant (Deceased)

King Jack (Childhood Hero)

Band of Thieves (Disbanded) (+)

Jacks (Deceased) (+)

Hirelings (+)

…

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The list ran off the page. “Just the ones he thinks are in the area, please,” I said.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Relations:

Hirelings (+)

Trevor (Host while in Milaway)

Milaway

Lumber Jack (Notable Target)

Steven (Captured Villager)

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Crap. I picked up the pouch that had appeared down there, then made sure that no one was watching me from the crater’s edge. Gave the whole clearing a look around too once I was up high enough to poke my head out of the bowl. As far as I could tell, I was the only one there.

I darted back over to the bean patch and sat myself down. Without any knowledge on the nature of hirelings’ relationship with the Bomber, the bean patch was still the safest place to be at the moment. I expanded their entry.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Hirelings:

Muscle: Tall, Short, Middling

Scout

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Just like I had done with the versions of Jack and the Beanstalk in my story’s description, I tried ordering the page to give me a detailed summary of the Bomber and the Muscle’s relationship. I hadn’t been able to get my page to give me any information on my relations beyond their nature, but I wondered if there was a chance the Bomber’s page would.

The page understood my intent and accepted it. Before my eyes, the key interactions between employer and employee were expanded.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Looking for work?” he asked the trio.

…

“Depends on the business,” the short one said.

…

“It’s the business of the crown,” Jack said.

…

“So you’re one of those inquisitors?”

…

“I just need some extra muscle…”

…

“Your name.”

“Steven. May I have yours.”

…

“You will give me direction to this young man’s dwelling or both you and your family shall be punished for defying the king’s decree.”

…

“You take the road into the forest and then you take a right at the split in the road. It’s a straight path to his family’s property from there.”

…

“Keep him here until I return,” Jack addressed his men…

“Yes, Sir,” they responded.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Well, that explained how he found me. That also explained his ‘The Inquisitor’ alias that I’d seen in his Also Known As. But still an inquisitor, huh? I wanted to believe that this country wasn’t hiring Serial Killers for such a job, so I decided to assume he was lying about that for his own benefit.

Judging from the page’s recollection of events, it seemed that I wouldn’t have to worry about the trio running in the forest ready to shoot me down or blow me up. But what about the scout?

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Are you hungry,” Jack asked the boy.

…

“Are you willing to work?” he asked.

…

Jack took out a sparkling green bean from his pocket and gave it to the boy.

…

“I want you to watch my stand from further down the market,” he told the boy.

…

“He took the road going west out of the village,”

…

“Good job,” … “Me and the others will go find him.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I finally loosened up some after reading about their relationship. There wasn’t any need to worry about the scout since he was just some orphaned kid. Maybe thinking that was writing him off too much, but as far as the Bomber knew, the kid was still back in Milaway waiting for him.

Reviewing the rest of his relations, it could be seen that the man had some friends in the past. The key word being had. As expected from the Serial Killer, there were a whole lot of dead people amongst his notable relations. Though there were still a few members of a disbanded Band of Thieves he was a part of that were still left alive—he’d murdered a good chunk of the ones that were dead—it appear that he had maintained a relationship with any of them. I was probably safe.

For the time being, I rolled up the Bomber’s page and pocketed it. I picked up the Bag of Bean Holding, as it was called on the Bomber’s page, and decided to give it a quick inspection. As expected, it was filled to the brim with those sparkling beans. Red, blue, green, yellow—every color of sparkling bean I’d seen at the Bomber’s stall was present. No doubt I could match their colors to the names for them I had seen on his page.

I tightened the pouch’s strings back up and tied it to my belt. After that, I got myself out of my bean patch and over to the house’s porch for a more comfortable seat. Before I even unrolled the Bomber’s page again, I had already given it the message that it should show me the descriptions of the Bomber’s stories. Apparently, he only had one.

Jack the Bomber: A companion story running within the overarching story of After the Beanstalk. Influenced by King Jack's telling of Jack and the Beanstalk. [Retconned][Completed]

Retconned?

Retconned: Previously established progression of this story has been overwritten.

No doubt that had to do with me, I thought.

With three new stories listed within his one story entry, there was a lot I was going to need to unpack. I tried opening the Jack the Bomber story and unlike when I tried doing the same with my own story, that actually worked. Seeing the serial killer’s biography laid out in front of me, I shrugged my shoulders, then said, “Let’s see how a murderer is made.”