Shin leaned forward, his chin resting on his entwined fingers as he stared at the Player seated across from him. “Is it possible,” the Schemer began, “That you mean you want me to teach you how to fish?”

The young man gasped, sincerity radiating out from him in nearly visible waves. “Oh gosh, I dunno! I don’t know terms! I really need someone smart to teach me all about…” He scrunched his brow together, making a show of marshaling his thoughts. “Fish Harvesting?”

“Fishing,” Shin replied. “It’s called ‘Fishing’.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” the Player insisted. “Fish Findsmanship?”

“Fishing.”

“Fish Get-ery?”

“It’s ‘Fishing’.”

The Player tilted his head. “Fish-Quisition?

Shin flicked his eyes towards the blue light shimmering above the Player’s head. “Why are you Streaming this?”

“Fi–” The Player balked, seemingly thrown off his rhythm by the sudden shift in questions. He recovered with admirable speed, however. “Oh, my friends all want to support me! You know, as I try to better myself!” He clenched his fists, the iron resolve of true dedication etched across his every feature. “I won’t let them down! I will become a master of Fisherdashery!”

Shin stared at the man for another moment, then slowly shifted his ice-hardened gaze towards the kobold who had summoned him. At least he had the good graces to look utterly mortified. “You told me this was important,” Shin noted in something close to accusation. “Didn’t you?”

“Um,” the hapless steward gulped, his ears folded completely flat against his head. “I seem to recall using the word ‘urgent’, actually.”

“Oh yes, that’s right,” Shin confirmed. “And now…?”

The other kobold’s ears somehow managed to flatten a little further. “It seems the situation is, um…maybe a touch less urgent than I was led to–”

“No no, it is!” The Player insisted, a hand pressed to his heart as he rose from his seat. “This is urgent! It’s so urgent! I need fish so bad, but I don’t know how to steal them from the water! You gotta teach me, please!”

Woof. If someone had told Shin mere days earlier that he’d be this annoyed by someone asking him literally anything about fish, he would have never believed it. And yet here he was. Well whatever; he’d know from the moment that the Tribe opted to become citizens rather than monsters there would be days like this. The best option was clearly to just keep his chin up and soldier through.

Second best option? Take a wild swing back towards Monster and leap teeth-first at this guy. Not for nothing, it was on the table.

“Alright then,” Shin sighed, standing up from his cushion as well. “So are you a Novice, then? Or are you…?” He couldn’t resist sighing again when the Player scrunched his face in confusion. “No, right. Of course not. Follow me.”

The Player let out a cheer of outsized glee as Shin breezed past him, skipping after the aloof kobold with all the excitement of a riled-up puppy. “Omigosh hooray! I promise I’ll be, like, the best student you’ve ever had!”

“You’re the first student I’ve ever had,” Shin shot back. “So by a certain way of thinking, yes.”

“OMIGOSH I DID IT~!” The Player jumped up and down, screaming in an entirely disproportionate display of wild triumph over his default victory. The other kobolds in the tower that had been going about their business immediately scattered at the Player’s inappropriate public display, their eyes diverted in secondhand embarrassment for his socially unacceptable outburst. “I’M THE BEST STUDENT, I’M THE–”

Shin couldn’t have kept the growl out of his voice even if he’d wanted to. “Will you control yourself?! You’re being a nuisance!”

“Aw what!” The Player pouted, thrusting out his lower lip as Shin hurried him towards the door leading out into the Plaza. “How can you talk to your best student like that?”

“I guess I’m just strict like that.” If Shin didn’t know better, he’d have suspected that the Player was digging his heels in, trying to remain in a position to make an undignified spectacle of himself as long as possible. The Schemer was close to knocking him to the ground and rolling him out of the door. “And besides, I just remembered I did give one other lesson.”

The Player gasped in wounded affront. “No! To who?!”

“Prince Ceril. And as much as it surprises me to say it, I suspect he’s going to retain the top spot.”

“Hmph!” The Player folded his arms across his chest, shielding himself from the slings and arrows of his master’s disapproval. “Maybe I should find this Ceril guy! Prince or no, there’s no way he’s as genuine as me!”

“Great idea,” Shin enthused, “I’d be thrilled for my students to spend some quality time together. Shall I put you in his cell right now?”

The Player made a show of considering the matter. “Nnnnnnnnnnno. No, just teach me Fish Pilfering, pleeeeee~!” He squealed in surprise as Shin shoved him through the doors, barely managing to stay on his feet as he staggered out into the Garden Plaza. “I say!” He huffed, dusting himself off with more care than was strictly necessary. “Is that any way to treat your second best student?”

Shin was already striding past the man without so much as a second glance. “When they aren’t moving? Absolutely.”

“Well I think that’s…oh hey!”

Goddess, what now. Shin slowed down, but still refused to turn back around. “Yes?”

The Player’s voice trickled light and excited back up to Shin. “Why are we leaving? All the fish are here!”

“.........” Shin clacked his teeth together, his tail very stiff and still as he turned around to find the Player reaching down into one of his koi ponds. “Stop.”

“Eh?” The Player shot Shin a look of confused innocence. “Stop what?”

Shin didn’t move from his spot, his every word clipped and precise. “Get your hand out of that pond.”

The man stuck his lip out again. “But you’re supposed to be showing me Fish-chemy! Show me with these fish!”

“Get your hand,” Shin enunciated, his teeth visible with every syllable, “Out of that pond.”

“No,” the Player proclaimed, stomping his foot. “I want to learn Fishsmithing right here!”

Shin’s tail lifted higher, though he didn’t bother to raise his voice. “Banken?” The Player yelped as a pair of guards appeared at either side of him, the inch of drawn steel they exposed in sharp contrast with Shin’s conversational tone. “If you try to touch those fish,” Shin promised, “You will feed those fish.”

“Heh.” The Player’s eyes briefly darted up towards the Streaming icon above his head as he muttered under his breath, his voice softer than someone without Enhanced Sensed could have heard. “He doesn’t like you messing with his special fish, I guess.”

He guessed right, though Shin knew he had nothing to gain by outright confirming the issue. So instead, the kobold simply spun back around. “Follow me.”

Maybe he wouldn’t follow, Shin intently hoped. Maybe he’d try to press the matter further at the pond, and Shin’s obligation to teach him a profession could merrily transform into an obligation to turn him into fish food. No such luck. The Player had fallen in step with his gang-pressed teacher, peppering Shin with questions of truly astounding inanity as they made their way through Shinki Itten’s main thoroughfare.

Goddess, if Shin didn’t get this done with quickly, his body would probably stage a coup against his brain and shut down all his organs just to escape this damn chatter. He may well have pulled the trigger on forcing himself into a self-defense coma, if trickles of an interesting commotion hadn’t trickled out of a building they were passing.

“I told you, you can’t just write scribbles! You have to use the actual letters!”

“The actual what?”

“The letters. You know, for reading?”

“Oh wait, so now I have to know how to read to do this?!”

Shin carefully resisted tilting his head as he lingered, his pace slowing down so he might observe the scene inside the scrivener’s office. Hm. It seemed as if the Inscription Trainer was also having issues with a student.

Curious.

Catching the scent of a pattern on the wind, Shin readjusted his route towards the river so that he might pass by the workplaces of a few other Shinki Itten trainers. And sure enough, similar problems abounded. The Alchemist whose student kept trying to grind anything he could get his hands on with the mortar and pestle. The Leatherworker whose student kept managing to glue hides to his own face. Even Shita, who looked particularly bewildered by her student’s righteous insistence that Blacksmithing was racist, and that he needed to learn Whitesmithing.

And for each suspiciously inept Player, there was a blue Streaming icon shimmering about their head. Again: Curious.

Whatever he might have gleaned from his observations, Shin had his own Player to deal with. Fortunately, a Fishing Node was readily available as they approached the banks of the river. “Okay,” Shin instructed, “Do you have a rod?”

“What!” The Player gasped, shifting into a bow-legged stance as he bobbed his head down to look at his own crotch. “You can’t just ask people if they have rods or not! That is super rude.”

If Shin clacked his teeth together any harder, he was going to shatter his jaw. “I don’t mean that, I’m asking if you have a p–”

Aw Goddess he almost asked if the Player had a pole.

“...Look, just use this.”

The Player gratefully accepted the fishing rod Shin produced, holding it with all the reverence one might show a priceless heirloom. “Omigosh woooow, this is such an honor!”

“Uh-huh.” Shin jerked his thumb towards the nearby fishing node. “So listen. You need to aim for that. And before you do anything, I’ll specify that you don’t need to throw the–”

The Schemer allowed that final thought to dissolve into a whine deep in his throat as he watched the Player throw the entire fishing pole into the Node. He could only bristle as he watched it sink into the river, the Player’s chipper voice only making his hair stand all the more on end. “Okay, now what?”

Shin huffed out a gout of incensed air, silently forcing himself to calm down before responding. “You know, I don’t believe you actually want to learn this. I think you’re just putting on a show.”

Predictably, the Player stuck out his lip. “Aw, no! I’m super serious about Fishomancy! You gotta believe me!”

“Fine then,” Shin pulled up a prompt, already turning to leave, “Then I’ll save us all a bunch of pain and just advance you right now. Congratulations, you’re–?!” The kobold cut himself off with a furious growl, the words on the error message that appeared before him burning straight into his soul. “You’re already a Grandmaster in Fishing?!”

“Yeah I’m already great at Fishing. Oh you’re the Fishing Trainer? You really should have said something!” The Player scoffed, giving Shin a playful shove as he either missed or ignored that the kobold was rage-shaking with such intensity that he might have very well drilled himself straight down into the ground. “This is really embarrassing for you. You sorta suck as a teacher; I’m deffo reporting you.”

Dear Tasan Okaa, Great Goddess, Mother to All Kobolds. Please hear this most fervent of prayers, from this most devoted of children, and fill this Player with divine bees.

By the time Shin had composed himself enough to turn away, the Player had already produced an immaculate fishing rod of his own and expertly reeled in a number of fish, cackling madly with every new catch. Alright, whatever. He’d had his fun, and Shin wasn’t so fragile that being the butt of the joke was going to kill him.

Though, he recalled, it wasn’t just him. All of the craftsmen of Shinki Itten had seemingly been descended upon by a stream of willfully ignorant Players, like some plague from a peculiar yet deeply sadistic God. There was no way it was all a coincidence, was there? But why? What could the purpose be?

The question clawed at Shin, demanding he produce some sort of answer. He was so preoccupied with the issue that it took him a few moments to realize that the world had fallen away around him, leaving the kobold floating in the inexplicable realm that existed between his and that of the System.

Well shit. Whatever the Players’ purpose had been, there was no reason to speculate. Because unless Shin was very much mistaken, they’d already achieved it,