If you’ve been paying attention so far, you can just about put together the rest of what happened yourself. Jack the Psycho decided to hire three day laborers and a child to help him convince the next Jack he targeted—me—that he was about to be scooped up by the inquisition. He also used their help to gather information in a way that would make it harder for people to connect him to my disappearance.

Other than me not planting what he told me to, everything was going his way right up until my cat got involved in his story and he somehow managed to blow himself up.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

If Jack had time to think, he would have questioned how he had gotten himself into such a predicament. No, he would have questioned why he had even bothered to do all of this in the first place.

Money, power, and peace—those were all the things that he had needed. After betraying his fellows and robbing the merchant, he’d had the first. After planting the beans, he’d had the second. The third came once he’d left the war torn east and made his way west past the mountains and he could have kept them all if he had just stopped there.

So why had he continued? Why did he choose to hunt when he could have chosen to rest? Why, after all this time, had that become the easier option?

I couldn’t say, he thought. Or at least that’s what he would have thought if he’d had the time, if he had had just one moment, a frozen moment before that final bomb went off.

Boom!

The bomber’s farewell.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

A lovely closing monologue to abruptly end his story and confirm his death. And when I say abrupt, I mean abrupt. I read the whole thing, but there wasn’t a hint of foreshadowing leading up to his downfall. Yes, I had ordered the page to summarize the whole thing—I wasn’t about to spend my time reading his full biography—but I did end up expanding the parts where I got involved.

I’d have honestly been surprised if it weren’t for the fact that I knew how it ended. From my perspective, that was pretty much confirmation that I—and/or my cat—were the reason for his story’s retcon. Knowing that didn’t bring me any closer to understanding what the consequences of that were, however.

But speaking more on things that weren’t readily made apparent by the text, none of the names this guy had listed in his Also Know As were even mentioned in his story. He probably got the Jack the Highwayman from his fellow bandits and I’m sure even if it was just limited to me and the guys he hired, there were people who had thought of him as The Inquisitor or The Bean Merchant before. As for A Jack of the Beanstalk, I wouldn’t doubt that he thought of himself as that.

That still left The Bomber titles and The Jack Killer unaccounted for though. The man didn’t even know what a bomb was. When I said the word in the middle of our fight, he even questioned my use of it in his thoughts according to his story. Which made him naming his exploding beans Erupting Fire Beans make a lot more sense now looking back on their listing. Were the titles something he’d gain or learn in the future or were they just something the author of his story referred to him as?

Moving onto to things that I was actually getting an explanation for at the moment, there were the two stories listed in the description of the Bomber’s story. I’ll keep my description of them brief and say that they were duds. King Jack’s telling of Jack and the Beanstalk was the same story Mr. Edward had given me and when I tried opening that After the Beanstalk story, nothing happened.

More specifically, nothing happened on the page, but I felt something akin to resistance in my mind. I assumed that meant reading it would be beyond my authority for the time being.

With nothing left to be done with the stories, it was time for me to milk what information I could gain from the rest of the Bomber’s page. Having now confirmed that he didn’t have any secret ability to come back from death, I decided I would test a new ability of my own before checking what treasures awaited me amongst his Possessions.

With the Bomber’s relations fully expanded before me, I searched for Steven’s listing. Before my eyes had even fully rested on the entry the Bomber’s page was already expanding a well-drawn illustration of my captured neighbor for me. Yep, I thought, That’s our Steven.

It looked like I was going to have to rescue him come tomorrow, but putting that thought aside for now, I picked up my own page and I tried the same with Steven’s entry there. I had tried it before, but it had never worked. Low and behold, this time it did, producing the same image as the one I’d seen on the Bomber’s page.

Since I wasn’t sure if that meant my page was taking the illustrations from the Bomber’s page or if my ability to control it had expanded, I tried conjuring an image of Agatha. Then I tried Hailee, then Ben & Matthew, then the rest of their family, and then the rest of my family. Worked every time. Even with Grant, Andrew, Jane, and Timothy—four faces I had no memory of—it worked.

I smiled. Seeing their portraits lined up together next Agatha’s made me happier than I would have thought. If they had just been random people walking out on the street, I think I probably would have recognized them right away.

Putting the nostalgia for a family I never met aside, I suppose I should explain how I discovered I could pull up their pictures. I had already tried getting my page to do something like this within my first day of being here, but that was a request it never responded to. It wasn’t even something that I had even thought of when I picked up the Bomber’s page. A life or death situation has a way of putting a hold on your penitent for testing out all the options, you know?

That’s why, when I did end up summoning an image while reading the Bomber’s story, I hadn’t even really been trying to do so. It was just that I had thought a picture of the Bomber’s bean merchant would have been nice. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d been interested in the versions of the story I’d read, after all.

Now even with me not providing it with a request, the Bomber’s page still reacted, delivering me a detailed portrait of his bean merchant. It was a portrait showing him only from the neck down, but it showed him wearing clothes similar to what I’d seen the Bomber in.

Heads being cutoff from the illustration appeared to be the standard for people the old Jack and I hadn’t seen from his story, with the king being an exception to the rule. For him, I got an illustration that looked like one you’d see for a king in a deck of cards. The Bomber had probably seen it here and there during his travels.

As for other illustrations I could get his page to summon, it definitely didn’t end at portraits. Among the more useful things I could summon were the maps he had seen as he crossed the kingdom and the supplies held within his cart. But even that wasn’t the limit of information I could steal from the deadman’s life. My vision went beyond what he had ever been capable of seeing.

To be more exact... As long as it was in the story, I could see an illustration of any scene that had been mentioned and it didn’t even have to be taken directly from the Bomber’s line of sight. I didn’t get to choose the angle of what the picture showed me, but I can’t think of one that I had a serious complaint about. The people I hadn’t seen before still followed the rules from the portrait though. All their faces had to be cropped out, erased, or hidden in interesting ways. Still, all of this was far more than I could have asked for.

But enough of that. Time for treasure.

I took a deep, comforting breath before before putting my page away and picking the Bomber’s back up. His page cleared and then refilled itself with only his Possessions section being present.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Possessions (of Note):

Bag of Bean Holding (+)

A Wagon (+)

A Horse

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

I opened the description of his horse first along with its picture.

Horse: A horse with no name. It’s hard of hearing, but otherwise, it’s in good condition and doesn’t spook easily.

The picture confirmed that it was the horse I’d seen at the market earlier. Considering how often the guy was dealing with explosives, he’d probably chosen it since it was less likely to get spooked. That or he had trained it to be that way. I wouldn’t put it past him.

With the horse out of the way, it’s time to move onto the Bag of Bean Holding that I picked up from the crater.

Bag of Bean Holding: A bag for the containment of magical beans. It is immune to the negative effects of magical beans related to it and neutralizes their effects while they are within the bag. No matter what happens to the bag, as long as it is not too damaged, its contents will not be affected.

The wielder of the bag can turn any bean descending from its original beans into base beans. Other than this, the bag has no way to directly change the nature of the beans it holds. The bag can not create beans.

The bag’s wielder, Jack or not, can grow any type of bean descendant from the original beans using any type of bean descendant from those base beans as well.

It would have been nice for the Bomber if he could have fit all his beans in there, but the bag didn’t appear to be experiencing a case of bigger on the inside.

The base beans were probably the same type of bean the Bomber was given in his story, but there was no need for me to guess. I requested that the page show me all the bean types related to the bag and it formed me a list below the bag’s description.

Each bean type had a name, image, description, and a count of how many of that type were currently in the bag. With six types listed, the horse and wagon were knocked off the page and even with those two gone, I still needed to get rid of the bag’s description to fit everything on the page at once.

Base Bean: A dark and dull green bean. It has no effect on its own, but when it or one of its descendant bean types is planted by a certain type of Jack, it will grow into a new type of magical beanstalk.

Once a Jack has successfully grown their beanstalk, unless they wield the Bag of Bean Holding, they will only be able to grow that type of bean from the base bean and its descendant type of beans. If a Jack’s bean type is planted by another Jack, then that bean will act as if it was a base bean in their hands.

Erupting Fire Bean: A darker red bean—

I immediately decided I was going to change the name of this one. I had already tested nicknaming my axe using the page before and renaming some beans that I owned wasn't going to be a big step up from that.

Bomb Bean: A darker red bean that sparkles with crimson stars. When the bean is pressed with enough force, it will begin to emit a red aura. After a short time, the bean will explode with consuming flames. If other bomb beans are consumed by the flames, the explosion will become much greater.

Food Bean: A shining green bean. Eating one will provide the consumer all the nutrition needed for a day. If the consumer is suffering from hunger or malnutrition, they will be relieved of said conditions. Eating more than one in a day will have effects similar to overeating. This bean is not a replacement for drinking water.

Water Bean: A bean with the color of the sky. Those who consume this bean will temporarily grow gills and be able to breathe water like air. The burden of moving under water and the pressure experienced shall be greatly reduced. It will also be up to the consumer, how much the water affects them.

Jumping Bean: A bean with a soft yellow color. It shines like it’s been polished. Those who consume this bean will become much lighter while maintaining their strength for a short time. Eating multiple of this bean increases the effect.

[Unnamed] Bean: A purple bean of a darker shade. It sparkles with violet stars. When the bean is pressed with enough force, it will rapidly sprout vines to wrap around a target. The vines will react more aggressively towards giants and are strengthened by giant’s blood.

After reading all of the beans’ descriptions, it was time for me to commence with the great renaming. I changed the name of the Food Bean to the Full-feeling Bean, the Water Bean to the Diver’s Bean, the Jumping Bean to the Featherweight Bean, and then I named my unnamed original type the Constrictor Bean. Once that was done, I took a constrictor bean from my pocket and put it in the bean bag. The count for that bean type on the page ticked from zero to one.

With that being the extent I had planned to test the beans for the moment, I minimized the bean list, the bean bag, and unnamed horse, then moved on to the wagon.

Wagon: A wagon of moderate size in acceptable condition. It appears to have a standard build, but it contains a large hidden compartment under the floorboards.

Reading the words ‘hidden compartment,’ I put the page down, rubbed my hands together, and then did a little dance where I was sitting before picking it back up. With a single thought and a tilt of my chin, I had the page listing all the items held within the cart into a list for what was in the compartment and what was out in the open.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Rest of the Cart (+)

Hidden Compartment (Items of Notes):

Bomb Bean Cache

Coin Cache

Bomber’s Notes

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Above the hidden compartment, the Bomber had all the normal things you’d expect for a cart like a spare wheel, food rations, clothes, sheets, etc. The only thing that people probably would have found a little odd were the large pots he had that were filled with soil. No doubt he was using them to grow his beans on the go.

As for the hidden compartment, the three entries listed were all things I’d be interested in getting my hands on.

Bomber’s Notes: Notes recording the results of various tests the Bean Bomber conducted on his magical beans.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was what I’d been hoping for when I saw his Reading & Writing ability. I’m sure there were plenty of details left out by the short descriptions the page gave me that the Bomber had figured out with hands-on experience and I was eager to see what they were.

Pulling up illustrations from the Bomber’s point-of-view to figure out where he had placed the wagon, I lit up a rushlight, got up from the porch, then started on my way there. Once I arrived, I lit up one of the lanterns that had been listed on his page. I had the page display me some images of the steps the Bomber took to open the hidden compartment and used it as a visual instruction manual.

Click! The lock on the floorboard released and I was in. I placed my lamp inside and looked around.

It was pretty, I can’t remember if I had been feeling tired leading up to that point, but I sure was wide awake after I saw how many jars of bomb beans the Bomber had down there. He wasn’t kidding when he threatened to blow up the whole hamlet. With how much he had down there, the man could have blown up the whole of Milaway down the road too if he wanted.

Thankfully, the Bomber was of a sound enough mind to implement some safety measures for the stuff he had down there. The jars were all tied to each other tight and every one of them had a cover with a twist lock on it. It should have been enough to protect from a normal bumpy road. All bets were off once a giant rammed into this thing, though.

I turned my attention to the other side of the compartment to the coin cache. The Bomber’s retirement fund was looking no less impressive than the weapons deal he had sitting across from it. There was at least enough coin down there to rebuild the property in full and buy replacements for all the animals a few times over if we had actually been planning to stay after all of this.

Between the pile of money and the pile of death, there laid the Bomber’s Notes. There wasn’t a see in the dark feature for them like the page, so I had to set the lantern I had down at a good angle to read them.

Considering all the unethical human testing the Bomber was willing to do, his notes proved to be a much better guide than the page to the capabilities of the beans. It was just a shame that I couldn’t change the names for the beans on them, though.

After skimming some of the Bomber’s notes I took out one of those sparkling green beans from the Bag of Bean Holding and ate it. There was too much left for me to do that night and I was going to need the energy.