"Stay right there! State your business and toss me your identity card!"
The spearpoint gleamed inches from my throat. For a glorious moment, I imagined the guard's surprise if I grabbed the shaft and snapped it over my knee. But no - better to play compliant for now. I flipped my bronze card toward them with practiced nonchalance.
The lead guard snatched it midair, his eyes darting across the engraved surface. When his head snapped up, his glare could have melted iron. "You!" He made a sharp gesture, and suddenly three more spearpoints joined the first.
My pulse quickened. Had the original Aizo been some wanted criminal? Typical. The bastard left me with a body weaker than a tavern drunk's handshake, magic barely fit to light candles, and now this? I should be furious. Instead, I felt... grateful.
Because as the guards closed ranks, their formation flawless, their stances battle-ready, I finally recognized true danger. Not like those subway thugs with their clumsy swings and dime-store knives. These men lived by the spear. The way their knuckles whitened on the shafts, the micro-shifts in their footing - they'd killed before. Often.
My lips curled into an unconscious smile. "Oh Aizo," I whispered to the previous owner of this flesh, "you terrible, wonderful bastard. You've given me exactly what I needed."
The guards misinterpreted my expression. "Think this is funny, maggot?" the leader growled. His companion drew back his spear for a thrust-
Only for both to suddenly burst into laughter.
"Hah! Look at his face!"
"By the Emperor's balls, kid! You looked ready to take us all on!"
My disappointment tasted more bitter than a three-day-old fish. They'd been toying with me. For a single, shining moment, I'd thought...
"O-oh! Of course, sirs!" I forced my shoulders to slump, my voice to waver. "You startled me is all." The act came easily - I'd spent years perfecting false faces in boardrooms.
The lead guard, a grizzled man with a nose like a broken knuckle, handed back my card. "Name's Krieg. You're that mage from the camp by the river, eh? What brings you to Seka?"
Time for my rehearsed lie. "I was making for the capital when bandits took everything but the clothes on my back." I patted my threadbare tunic for effect. "Thought I might find work here to earn passage."
Krieg's eyes narrowed slightly. Testing. Watching. This was no simple guardsman - the man had interrogator's instincts. "A mage begging copper in the streets? Even a C-grade could hire on with any merchant caravan."
I met his gaze without blinking. "What self-respecting caravan would hire a mage who can't cast properly?"
A beat of silence. Then his laugh boomed like a smith's hammer. "Smart lad! Tell you what - there's a dungeon crew looking for spellwork. I'll put in a word." He clapped my shoulder hard enough to stagger my malnourished frame. "Get yourself to the Laughing Boar, in the meantime you'll have to work there. It might take time for me to find them."
The moment I passed through Seka's gates, the world unfolded like one of my own manuscript pages come to life.
Cobblestones worn smooth by generations of footsteps. The metallic tang of a blacksmith's forge blending with the sweetness of baking bread. A flower girl's laughter as she dodged between merchants' carts. I breathed it all in until my lungs ached.
This was what I'd tried to capture in my writing. Not just the sights, but the texture of existence. The way sunlight caught motes of flour above a baker's stall like golden dust. How the rhythm of hammers at the cooper's yard syncopated with children's skipping rhymes.
But beneath the postcard beauty lurked the shadows I'd always known would be there.
In a narrow alley, a shopkeeper pressed coins into a thug's palm with trembling hands. Near the well, children circled a sobbing boy, their taunts sharp as knives. And just beyond the market square...
The slave blocks.
Rows of iron cages held every manner of being - hulking trolls with collars, elven women with dead eyes, even a few humans wearing the brand of debt-bondage. An auctioneer's voice rang out: "-prime field hands, only fifteen solis for the pair!"
I'd written about this. Planned story arcs about abolitionist heroes and underground railroads. But facing the reality...
"First time seeing the pens?"
I turned to find a merchant leaning against his stall. His smile didn't reach his eyes.
"It never gets easier," he continued, polishing a silver bracelet. "But ask yourself - is it crueler to let that starving troll roam free? Or the orphan girl sold to pay her family's debts?" He held up the bracelet, its surface mirror-bright. "The world isn't silver or gold, boy. It's all shades of tarnish."
I walked away without answering. The merchant's words clung like cobwebs.
Because he wasn't wrong. Not entirely. Life had never been about clear-cut morals - not in my world, not in this one. I'd learned that lesson early, back when I was just another starving kid in the slums.
Memories surfaced unbidden:
The way my mother's hands shook counting money for rent. My father working triple shifts until his cough turned bloody. That night I stole a wallet from a drunk businessman - not for the money, but for the power in choosing who to rob.
I'd clawed my way up from nothing. Earned scholarships. Built companies. Not because I wanted riches, but because each victory was a challenge conquered. And when even billion-dollar deals grew dull...
That's when I started writing. Creating worlds where morality was a luxury heroes couldn't afford. Where a slave might stab her master not for freedom, but because she'd grown addicted to the thrill of watching him bleed.
The merchant's voice echoed in my head: All shades of tarnish.
I laughed aloud, drawing stares. Because he'd missed the fundamental truth - tarnish was the beauty. The cracks where light got in. The imperfections that made existence worth enduring.
Eternal peace would bore us. Eternal torment would numb us. Only in the struggle - the endless, glorious struggle - did life find meaning.
And I intended to wring every drop of meaning from this world.
The Laughing Boar Inn.
I figured, I might as well work here for the time being just like that Kreig said. I don't know when they'll come anyways, so in the time of waiting I'll save some money to buy some gears for raiding dungeons. The innkeeper's offer was straightforward: work as a server, earn twenty lumin daily.
"Room's ten per night," he said, tapping a ledger. "Meals five each, but I'll knock it to five total if you scrub pots."
I did the math aloud: "That leaves five lumin profit daily."
The coins were copper, about the size of old British pennies, each stamped with a radiant sun design. Ten lumin could buy a loaf of bread; fifty, a cheap dagger.
Silver solis - bearing a crescent moon and star - were worth one hundred lumin. The slave auction had priced elves at thirty solis apiece.
At my current rate, saving enough for the capital's ten-soli caravan fee would take... "Two hundred days."
By then, his mother would get killed...
One Week Later
Dishwater soaked through my tunic as I wrung out another rag. Seven days of scrubbing, serving, and smiling at drunks had netted me exactly forty-two lumin. Barely enough for a decent knife, let alone travel.
But I'd also learned something, it seems that my mana in my primordial vessel is almost full to the brim. I learned how to replenish my mana from the magic book that taught me how to suck in mana bought from a struggling merchant on the streets.
When Krieg finally arrived with the adventurers, I was ready.
The leader - a mountain of muscle named Mord - looked me up and down. "You're the mage? You look half-starved."
I flicked my wrist.
And fire roared.
"Oho? You seem better than you look! I'll accept you!"
That's all? No questions? Well i guess that's better.