Once more, Kenji was chewed out by Flanigan in front of the guild because he kept sticking his nose into places it didn’t belong, but to him that was bullshit. Linette’s family was being robbed and cheated, and to just look the other way as if nothing was wrong was how a coward would act. He knew better than to let bad people walk all over the helpless, because eventually that walking turned to outright stomping, into puddles of blood and tears. However, since there was no word from Septic Eel yet, no direct confrontation between the guilds themselves, Kenji was not punished, but simply reprimanded. He’d also received an attitude adjustment from Sapphire, who told him to consider his actions more now that he belonged to a guild.

Their lives continued as normal, and during a long three days of training with his party in the Spire and on random jobs, he regularly stared into nowhere, lost in a daze. That man at the bakery—who was he? And why did he forgive the debt after hearing another guild’s name? Was there some kind of history between him and Rat’s Ass? The whole situation put a knot in Kenji’s stomach, and he couldn’t help sense but a storm on the horizon.

Misumi must have noticed this, because as they roamed an old dungeon in Whitevale, she walked beside him and mentioned his behavior, only for Amelia to do the same thing, stating that it was unsafe for him to lose focus inside the Spire. That kind of thing got Adventurers killed. And even though they played it safe, staying in districts appropriate for their levels, they had learned to never get comfortable, to never underestimate the power of fate, for it might swoop in when they weren’t looking and take their lives. Kenji nodded along in agreement, but he just couldn’t shake the uneasy feelings left behind by Septic Eel. What the hell were they up to?

At one point, after his party had accepted a job from the Expedition Hall, they were in a blizzard beyond the Lost Wanderers, searching for a hidden underground stash of rare and exotic spices that were only grown in the Spire half a century prior, and they were even provided a cart to haul the goods back—assuming they found anything, of course. After searching the general location marked on their map for three hours, it was Cleo who stumbled on hollow ground, a trap door beneath the snow, and like foxes building a den, they worked together to unbury it and grant themselves access, discovering an old cellar below.

Rotting wooden rafters. A set of stairs that was more like an angled ladder. Being the last to climb down, Kenji grabbed the lantern from Amelia’s pack and lit a flame, providing them with just enough light to see as snowflakes flurried down through the entrance, which he promptly shut behind them. Then, he removed his winter hood and prowled an elongated cellar less than ten meters in length with the rest of his party.

There were shelves to the left and right, all covered in small barrels even a child could comfortably hold, along with glass jars of powder, dried herbs, and unknown liquids that resembled honey with a silver tint. Lit up by the lanterns dim glow, everything cast a grim shadow as Kenji perused the chamber.

“I believe we have succeeded,” Amelia observed. Her breath came out in puffs of mist. “Though it will be a task to bring this back to the Expedition Hall. There is much to carry.”

Kenji sighed out a tired reply, “Yeah, well I’m not making two trips through the storm, so we’ll have to suck it up and put on our big boy pants.”

“But I am not a boy.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” he added.

They continued searching every corner of the cellar, and when finished, Misumi stopped them all from ascending back to the snowstorm to prepare the cart.

“Wait a second…” she uttered, turning to Kenji by the stairs. “About Linette—are you guys worried about her like I am? The whole Septic Eel thing smells fishy to me.”

An exchange of glances followed, and it was Cleo who spoke first:

“They don’t seem like people who forgive and forget. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were planning something, and I have no doubt they’ll try to screw with Linette’s family and the guild. I think they’re waiting.”

“As do I,” stated Amelia. “That man…I asked Sapphire about him, and she said he might be Darkfire—an Illusionist who impersonates an Assassin. Next to Argus, he’s Septic Eel’s most famous Adventurer. Level 78, I think.”

Cleo nodded. “I’ve also heard the name. If that was him, then getting in his way was even stupider than we thought. He practices illusion magic, but still solos in the Spire. Good job, Kenji.”

Everyone stared at him with faces wrought with accusation.

“How the hell was I supposed to know he was the number two bad mama jama?” he screeched, letting the lantern jostle in his grip as the light teetered back and forth. “It’s not like these people wear nametags!”

It was Cleo who berated him. “Yes, but you have a tendency to leap without looking because you’re an idiot.”

He tried desperately to defend his actions, saying that it wasn’t right to let guilds like Septic Eel run the show when they had no idea how to treat the actors. They would drive Linette’s family into ruin. However, Cleo insisted it would have been best to let the matter work itself out, because now there might be even greater consequences than before. Even so, Kenji believed hindsight was twenty-twenty, and that he made the right decision based on the knowledge he had at the time.

“Sometimes, you have to bite back even if you’re outmatched,” he told them. “If something happens to Linette’s family, we’ll deal with it. If Septic Eel steps up to the plate, we’ll strike them out. That’s how it’s gonna work. I’ve been kicked and spat on too many times in my life, and I’ll be damned if I let the same thing happen to a good person here!”

His last comment brought silence to Cleo, and all of them, in fact, while the blizzard outside wailed against the trapdoor, causing it to rattle and make an awful racket. The lanterns frail glow hunched through the darkness like a cripple, barely delivering light to their faces.

“I can’t get this out of my brain,” Kenji persisted. “If something happens to Linette, it’s my fault. I get that. But I swear if Argus or Darkfire or anyone lays a hand on her family, they’ll wish they’d never been born. I’ll tear them apart.” He looked Cleo, then let his gaze fall onto Amelia, until finally his eyes locked with Misumi’s. “Now we have a job to do, so let’s do it. Once we get back to the guild, we can talk it over with Flanigan and try to figure something out.”

And with energy, he stomped up the cellar stairs and pushed through the trapdoor, climbing into the winter wasteland a moment after. Yes, he was angry. He was worried, too. But at the same time, he beckoned the bullies of Duncaster to screw with him, because—just like Yuuto and Hanako back in Japan—he’d find the upper hand in the end.

 

******

 

Kenji lay awake that night, thinking of home. His high school life came to mind, as did the godforsaken pit of prostitution his mother had burrowed into, how she brought home guy after guy that treated her like meat, like something not worth more than dirty talk and a homemade porn video. Assholes like them were trash. Utterly worthless trash. And if he had his way, they’d all be put behind bars where they belonged.

But life wasn’t that simple. Abusive people got away with their crimes more often than not, and like teenage bullies back at school, they took advantage of the weak and lonely in this world too. Evil was evil no matter where he ran. Be that as it may, he had reincarnated in Duncaster for a reason, and though he didn’t know what it was, he couldn’t complain. Living came with basic tribulations, and he was already on round two—a privilege that, as far as he knew, nobody else had.

With the bedroom candle out and the city quiet that night, Kenji leaned over the edge of his bunk and whispered to Misumi, asking if she was awake. When he received no answer, he climbed down from the bed, put on his coat, and wandered down to the tavern with a chamberstick to light his way. Naturally, the bar, tables, and open floor were vacant and dipped in moonlit shadows, creating an abode for long-lost memories to be pondered, and they gathered there, filling out the tavern as if it were packed with guild members. He wandered behind the bar and poured himself a drink, feeling melancholic and disappointed simultaneously. Ale—he couldn’t legal drink that back home, and he swilled half a tankard in the first few seconds.

“I guess it isn’t all bad,” he muttered behind the candle’s glow.

As he consumed the remainder of his drink, Kenji expected to hike back upstairs and stumble back into bed, now full of the perfect catalyst for sleep, but to his surprise, a hard knock on the tavern door startled him and made him blow out the candle on instinct.

“What the…” he said. “Who would be here this late at night? The guildhall’s closed.”

In darkness, Kenji wandered toward the door, waiting for the knock to come again, and instead of opening the front door, he shuffled to a window and peeked outside. Nobody was there. At least, nobody that he could see. And once he moved back to the door to poke his head outside, he found nothing but an empty city street, cold air that fogged upon greeting his breath, and a starry heaven overhead. And yet something lay on the ground: an envelope.

Kenji promptly grabbed and opened it, pulling out a short message from within.

“Crow’s Watch?” he read aloud. “Where the heck is that?”

He cast his eyes back down the street in both directions, searching the night for shadows that didn’t belong, but again…nothing. Whoever left that message at the door didn’t stay for long. However, as he lingered in the cold, his ears noticed a commotion in the distance, in some other district of the city, and he could swear there was shouting.

“That sounds pretty serious…”

In a hurry, Kenji went back inside and rushed upstairs to the dorms, where he climbed out the common room window and hoisted himself up to the roof. He could at least get a better view from up there. And upon climbing that arched blanket of tile, which shuffled beneath his feet, he stood at the apex and gazed into the city, shivering from a cold wind. However, alongside the cold whispered the odor of smoke, and he soon figured out why; in the distance, a building had gone up in roaring flames that danced and made plumes of smoke. But what haunted him the most was its location.

“Wait a second, that’s near Linette’s bakery…” he murmured.

Suddenly, his confusion turned to ire as he realized what was happening, and he hurried down from the roof, bursting through the halls of the dorm until reaching his bunkroom, where he awakened Misumi. Her groggy-eyed sleep wore off immediately as he told her what was happening, and without even getting dressed, she scampered up from the bed as he went to get Amelia and Cleo. Septic Eel—they had finally made a move. And if his intuition served him well, then the consequences were far from over, because in his mind, they had just instigated a war, one he was more than willing to fight until the end.

 

******

 

It was total chaos when Misumi and her party arrived at the bakery. Since every building on the street was connected, they were all evacuated, leaving dozens of families in horror on the road, while at least a hundred other people were working to extinguish the flames or retrieve people who hadn’t left their homes. She sifted through crowds in a panic, heart beating fast, eyes wide with fear—not because of the fire, but because of Linette. Where was she? Where was her father? As the flames roared high and shattered the glass of an upstairs window, their came an explosion of heat and screams from everyone nearby.

“Linette!” Misumi called out. “Linette! Where are you?”

She couldn’t bear to lose another friend. One was difficult enough. And as she fumbled through the hordes of terrified people, Kenji, Amelia, and Cleo followed.

“Linette, please!” she cried, darting her tear-stained eyes to everyone she saw.

Meanwhile, the fire worsened and consumed the bakery entirely, now crumbling a portion of the roof and spreading to another home. Guilds from all over were arriving to help out, some bringing Warlocks with them to use water magic, while others just grabbed buckets and started gathering water from a fountain one street over. She frantically surveyed the area, twisting and abruptly turning, but again, found neither Linette or Vincent.

At that point, her friends were able to catch up with her, and even Flanigan, along with others from the guild, had come to help with the disaster. She swallowed and gasped for breath, exhausted from running all the way there.

Kenji was the first to reach her, and Misumi wiped her eyes, saying, “I-I don’t see her anywhere. Where is she?”

“We’ll find her,” he said. “Just keep looking.”

Despite her intense fear, Misumi nodded along and kept running, pushing, squeezing through the crowds, hoping that Linette was out there somewhere. She had to still be alive somewhere. There’s no way she and her father could have died together…

It wasn’t long before she finally exhausted herself and started to cry, and she stumbled into an alley, scarcely able to breathe as she fell against the wall of a brick building and slid down, completely broken. If Linette wasn’t outside, then there was only one place she could be—in the building. And at that point it was bursting with flames from every window and ingress, meaning there was no way should could have survived.

“She can’t be…” Misumi cried as her friends came close to her. “She can’t be dead.”

Kenji remained standing, and looked over the crowds toward the fire. He pondered momentarily. “I don’t think she is.”

“How can you say that? She’s not here, so where else could she be?”

He uncrumpled a slip of paper from his hand, then extended it toward her, only for Cleo to take it instead. “Someone left it at the guildhall just before I noticed the commotion. It’s those bastards from Septic Eel—they did this. And I’d bet a million buckles they’ve taken Linette and her father and they’re expecting us to follow.”

“Crow’s Watch?” asked Cleo. “I’ve heard of this place. It’s a fort in the Rupture. Goblins used to run it, but Septic Eel took it over and uses it as a safe zone for their members in the Spire. They’re strict about not letting strangers in, though…”

“More like selfish, if you ask me,” Kenji said with an angry growl. “Adventurers could use that place to rest or heal, but they keep it to themselves. Screw them. And if they’ve taken Linette, I say they should be freaking ruined.”

“And who’s gonna do that?” Misumi cried.

“We are. They straight up gave us an invitation, burned down our friend’s home, and threatened our guild on more than one occasion. Enough is enough. If they wanna play dirty, we’ll roll through the mud with them.” He prowled a stare over the fire that showed how intensely he burned with hatred on the inside. “If our guild doesn’t want to help, then fine. But I’m not letting Septic Eel get away with their bullshit anymore.”

As the idea of Linette and Vincent still being alive clicked inside her brain, Misumi lifted herself up and accepted the possibility. Hope was all she had. And her friends, though just as scared, all had a look of determination about them as they too watched the fire blaze on, quelled slightly by the mages and of buckets of water constantly bombarding it. Crow’s Watch was a place she’d never been before, a place she had no idea how to reach, but like Kenji said, if Linette was being held captive, she couldn’t just look the other way. With that in mind, she continued watching the fire, having no compunctions for what came next. Septic Eel was going to pay—that’s what she decided—and she’d do everything in her power to make sure Linette and her father came back safely.