The guildhouse was a wooden monstrosity. A maze of corridors and old, dusty specialist rooms that’d likely never been used. All varnished timber and painted-on smiles. Warmly lit and well built, but that was all it was. A guildhouse only in name, created for the pride of a guildmaster only in name. It might’ve been built to hold an army, but it’d never housed more than two people at any point in time, or so the stories went.

It’d burn well.

Be practical. That’d be a waste. It’d be far better to pull the place down. Maybe Mrs Zinthana can make something of all that wood.

As always, my voice of reason was a horrible spoilsport, even if it was right. Actually, especially when it was right. I wasn’t thinking of actually doing it. It was just a nice thing to think about. The guildhouse was a pox. A source of boundless sorrow for all and sundry. Twenty years ago, it’d latched onto the northern edge of the town like a tick and had done its best to drain its host dry, one child at a time. But of course, my reasonable side couldn’t let me have that. No, it was far too responsible.

Usually, I liked to think my ‘reasonable side’ was every side of me, but if there was ever a time or place to be unreasonable, it was now.

Yes, ‘practical’. That was a word I’d always liked. Because burning the one lasting reminder of the last two torturous months, and the symbol of twenty years of terror wasn’t an efficient allocation of resources, yet ENDING A RANK NINE ADVENTURER WITH NOTHING BUT TWENTY CIRCLETS WORTH OF ARCANE SUPPLIES WAS A PERFECTLY FUCKING REASONABLE IDEA FOR AN UNLEVELLED CIVILIAN?!

If it wasn’t clear, I was in what you might call ‘a state’.

Earlier that same afternoon, I’d lain on the ground, beaten and bloody and sure that, if I lost consciousness, I’d never wake up. Then, I’d eaten a kick to the ribs that only didn’t paint the walls with my internal organs because it had instantly reduced me to my component aether. I’d dusted myself off and considered that step of the plan a smashing success.

And now, only hours later, I was free.

At whatever cost, I was free.

I wanted to curl up on the ground and wait for the world to start making sense again. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.

Instead, I paced. Alone with my thoughts, down the empty corridors. It gave my feet something to do, as the manic, terrified energy slowly petered out. My hands weren’t so easily occupied. Twice already, I’d run them through my hair without thinking, heedless of the oil that still stained them. It’d probably be weeks until I stopped smelling like an imp’s armpit.

The once pristine, white uniform the bastard had insisted I wear was ruined. I could burn that, at the very least. Even my past self had no objections to that.

Again, my thoughts returned to the dragon in the room.

I’d just killed someone.

I’d just killed another person.

That was already pretty fucking bad.

Worse, I’d just killed someone important.

Was he really any more important than anyone else—ENOUGH OF YOUR WEIRD FUCKING PHILOSOPHISING, BRAIN, I DON’T NEED THIS RIGHT NOW.

My pace quickened. I refocused on what was immediately in front of me. Deep breaths. Echoing footsteps. Through an open door, I glimpsed a window. In the distance, the sun beat a slow retreat towards the horizon. I’d gone to the kitchen to ostensibly make dinner in the middle of the afternoon, no more than an hour since I’d scraped myself off the chapel floor. It was still nearly impossible to see how he’d walked into that.

Into any of it, really.

The plan wasn’t meant to work. It was too stupid. Too obvious, at least the first part. I’d expected little more than a moral victory at best and a nasty discovery at worst. There’d been so many places he could’ve seen what was going on and said ‘No, I think that’s enough’. It was hard to think of an explanation for why he just sat back and let me kill him.

Aside from his utter casual contempt for me, at least.

The night before last would forever be burnt into my memory. The bastard had taken me aside with a sort of patronising, faux-fatherly tone, and revealed his full stat page to me. His fifteen digit health bar. His list of traits and talents that’d could have probably taken up a short novel.

“Difficult as it might be, try thinking, boy. Think of all that you could accomplish, given the chance and how you’d die of old age before even landing a scratch on me. Even if I were to stand perfectly still, you’d break your knuckles before making me shift. It is something you somehow do not understand, but one day, if you reveal yourself to have some talent, you will look back and remember this as the moment your life truly began.”

Pitch black hatred continued to fume impotently in the back of my mind. The condescension. The reflexive dismissal of any threat. The complete disregard for the worth of anything not pertaining to his own desires. I’d learned to suppress them. I’d grown up in the shadow of the guildhouse, knowing there was nothing I could do. Watched in silence as each year saw my group of peers shrink ever smaller, until only four remained and it was my turn to face the gibbet. Even if I knew he’d be the death of me, I couldn’t help but keep my head down and hope for a miracle.

And yet.

His words weren’t meant to be kind nor convincing. Not a threat, nor some twisted encouragement. They were meant to haunt me. Words I would come back to whenever my attempts at defiance fell short. It was in his tone. The offhand certainty. He spoke as though the facts were as plain as the colour of the sky. No caveats, no qualifications. I could believe he truly thought I posed no threat, even with his guard aggressively down.

He doesn’t know.

Something at the edge of memory stirred.

It was a stubborn anger that was only half familiar. Steelier and icier than what I’d felt before, it cut through the hesitance. The doubt that masked itself as caution, that ‘there has to be something I’m missing, was pierced.

You’re wrong, it said. I know the facts, and you’re one hundred percent wrong.

If you’re just going to stand by and let me, I’m going to kill you.

By the next morning, the anger had started to diffuse, but I pressed on. Though I had the broad strokes instantly, the details of the plan came together throughout the day, first as I picked up the scroll, Imp’s Spades and brimstone from the Arcana, then as I gathered the necessary weeds. He wouldn’t just stand still for that, but that much solved itself...In theory.

The interaction between the Cumulative Susceptibility of different status effects would be key. Resist a status, suffer more severe status effects in the future, with an increased chance, stacking additively. When administered via ingested poison, the effects were magnified.

It wouldn’t do much for a damaging poison, or even something as similar as Sleep, but Paralysis was a different story. Status resistance double dipped against paralysis, with both a chance to ignore and a shortened duration, but conversely, negative resistance extended its duration as did Severity.

He’d shown me exactly what numbers I was working with. With no Vitality beyond his natural growth, the bastard topped out at 168% status resistance. A dire sounding number on the surface, but also one that’d work in my favour. It’d ensure he’d resist the weaker poisons, even when already debuffed. With three stacks, I’d have just a shade over twenty two minutes. It was perfect, besides all the places I knew it was definitely going to fall apart in.

By the morning of, I’d resigned myself to a moral victory at best and a complete failure at worst. Either he’d stop me, or I’d run into a hitherto unknown mechanic that’d completely unravel my plotting. The fears continued, even as each step passed by. Even as I watched the spell circle creep across the ground, I dreaded I had made a horrible error. Something. Anything.

It had no business working.

Once more, I could only ask myself what the hell I’d been thinking.

You’re being stupid. You knew that this is what you should’ve done, given the chance. Horrible as it was, it was necessary and it is done.

I knew that. Fucking hell, I knew that.

I can accept that.

There was a certain something to the sigh I let out; a finality to it. Like the terror and dread that’d built over the past two months, that’d been driving me until that point were finally rolling to a stop.

I was calm.

I was calm enough, at least.

I needed to go home. I needed to go see my dad.

* * * * * * * *

It wasn’t quite evening by the time I left, but the town was already dead. The street vendors and grocers all closed up by late afternoon. That was just how things worked out in The Shores, or so I’d been told. Close up shop and be home before dark, lest you attract monsters. From what I’d read, that sounded like a myth, but it wasn’t easy to disprove. Monsters had little interest in approaching the guild house.

Each evening, the sun set on a silent main street, lined with haphazardly spaced, haphazardly built wooden houses, all alike. The scene always struck an odd chord with me. Like something wasn’t right with it.

Our workshop didn’t look too different on the outside. Two unsightly boxes joined together, with old weatherboard walls that hadn’t seen maintenance since before my father had taken it. It's only distinguishing feature was the sign; pig-iron painted black, in the shape of stylized Alchemist’s Flask. A relic of my father’s past.

The door pushed open and I stumbled into the front room. That was the official name for it. It was the closest thing we had to a ‘shop’. It was a wide open room that’d been added, bare except for three piteous chairs in one corner, for the rare occasion when a customer needed to wait. It looked in need of a clean.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here...I’m still here,“ echoed a voice from inside the workshop itself. Absent of the ill-tempered grumble that usually preceded him, my father emerged from the back.

Haggard. That was the word that came to mind. It was clear to see, but another might not have understood the extent. My father was by no means a vain man—as fond of rich food and as often loathe to shave as he was—but there was a certain level of care he took of himself out of habit. The scraggliness of his beard was the most obvious sign, but the most damning was the slight hunch, the way he carried himself. It screamed of a weariness I’d never seen in him before.

We both froze.

“Dad…”

No more words were spoken. No sobbing, despite the tears. Just the silence of the empty workshop. The hug was fierce and desperate, like he was afraid I’d disappear if he didn’t hold as tightly as he could.

We remained as we were for some time.

Eventually, my father found it in him to loosen his grip, convinced well enough for the time being that I was real.

“Mind if I go get something to dry my eyes? I—” I raised my oil stained hands and sleeves, “Well, I’d rather not, y’know…”

In my head, I could hear him snap at me for being so cavalier with the chemicals. That he responded only with a mute nod...It felt wrong.

I took the opportunity to scrub my hands of the gunk as well. As soon as my mind was no longer preoccupied with more pressing matters, it’d become apparent just how gross the oil felt to the touch. Sticky yet faintly slimey, and always warmer than was natural. I’d scraped most of it off, but the residue nagged me all the way home. Running water...it was one of those things easy to take for granted. As was proper soap. The Drench and Scald crystals were both fully charged with ambient magic and I took full advantage of them. In the mirror, I caught a glimpse of a gaunt mess, though I didn’t dwell on it. I did remind myself to get a haircut.

When I returned sans oil, my father had sat himself down, expression grim.

“You—” he started again, “You can’t stay here. This’ll be the first place—There’s no way to outrun him, you’ll have t—”

“Dad—”

“—o find somewhere to hide. I’ll stay behind and—”

“Dad, stop.”

I punctuated it by taking him by the arm.

“It’s over, dad. The beast is dead.”’

He stared at me, as though I’d suddenly swapped to speaking Low Elvish. Perhaps that’d been a touch overdramatic.

“Son, Leo, he’s—” my father stuttered, suddenly choked with fear, “I don’t know what you did, but it won’t be enough. You have to know the man’s an adventurer. He’ll be—”

“Dad, no. He’s dead. Proper dead. He—” I paused. Only now, on the cusp of vocalisation, could I hear my own words for what they would sound like. The death of Sumiroma Kamei was easy enough to recount, but to explain it was another matter. It was hard enough to even think of him as that; a man with a name. When I was young, we’d always called him the monster or the demon. Those older...well, they usually called him ‘the Guildmaster’.

Flaws seemed to slide off the image he’d accrued in the town. He was this untouchable, effortlessly lethal being. To even call him arrogant invited the rebuttal of ‘is it arrogance if it’s deserved?’. To call him foolish seemed ridiculous; he was a centuries old adventurer of the highest caliber. And yet...

Sumiroma Kamei was not the monster, nor the demon. He was not ‘the Guildmaster’. He was arrogant, cruel, foolish and flawed in likely a hundred other ways that hadn't revealed themselves as part of his downfall. Yet even now, I would’ve still been looking over my shoulder, sure he’d survived, if not for two pieces of undeniable proof.

“—He’s definitely gone. The guild disbanded,” I smiled wanly, “The rumours were all wrong; it really was just him.”

Emotions warred across my father’s face as he processed the news. Eventually, he settled on something between relief, joy and bewilderment. He shook his head, as if still unable to believe it.

We remained in awkward silence for a time.

“...Well, I hadn’t intended on making dinner today, but—”

“It’s fine,dad, I think—I think I’d just like to go to bed and leave...everything to the morning,” I said, “My bedroom isn’t a store room now, is it?”

He smiled at my barely-a-joke. After another hug, this time one of sincere joy, I trudged the well-worn path to my room.

Then, moments before disaster, I remembered my hair was still in desperate need of a wash.

Half an hour later, fully dry and certain I was completely clean of the oil, I lay in bed for the first time in what felt like forever. For a moment, I could almost pretend the past two months had happened. Tomorrow, I’d re-bind myself to the shrine in the centre of town and that’d almost be it.

Once again, I would plain old Leo Proust, apprentice chemist and level 1 nobody...

...Well, almost.

I had still yet to dismiss the other piece of incontrovertible evidence of the bastard’s demise and maybe the only tangible souvenir of the nightmare I cared to keep. It reappeared as soon as I addressed the system.

SYSTEM MESSAGE! Leonard Proust, for your impeccable skill in slaying Sumiroma Kamei [Samurai lvl.860] in cold blood, the gods have awarded you the class of Knave and the title of Novice Adventurer.

May your deeds be worthy of an enduring legacy.

Finally, I closed the message, still unsure of how I felt about it. Though the phrase ‘What now?’ didn’t specifically cross my mind, I can’t deny the sentiment crossed my mind.

I lay there in the gloom and silence, until I eventually dozed off.