Freshly loaded up with supplies, we once more walked into the wilderness in search of fame and glory. The countryside was picturesque, a stark contrast to the heavily urbanized city of Blackwake. Tall trees towered above us through winding country paths, the sun beaming between the branches and leaves. It reminded me of images of Scotland - thanks to the fog on the horizon and the deep, dark waters of the surrounding lake.

Moments like these made me glad to be a traveller. They tended to be few and far between.

This huge, wild expanse was the perfect place for criminals to hide. They were robbing passing traders for food, money and clothes. Sometimes the powerful merchant guilds would contribute to the prize pool for claiming their heads, but only when the damage to their income was so great that they couldn’t write it off as a business expense.

It didn’t take us long to reach the alleged location of the camp in question. With little reason to fear organized retaliation and confident in their safety, they had a lit fire. I could see the smoke rising above the treeline. The first step of attacking any camp was checking for lookouts. The heavy foliage made it easy for a runner to hide and spot incoming threats.

After an hour of carefully circling the perimeter, I hadn’t seen any evidence of them.

I knew that something was wrong. With Cali in tow, I pushed through the brush and entered the clearing to get a better view. There was a good reason for the lack of lookouts. Someone had already come through and slaughtered the lot of them. Bodies were littered around the clearing, torn limb from limb. Some had been cut down where they stood, eating or sleeping. Tents and stolen goods lay where they were left. It had happened so quickly that they hadn’t even put up a fight.

“Stigma, are any of these guys still warm?”

The ghostly presence beside me nodded, “They died recently. Their souls are still consumable.” I quickly hurried over and double-tapped all of them, stabbing into their already ruined bodies and consuming what I could. The savagery by which they had been felled was hard for me to imagine. Some of them looked to have been mauled by some kind of beast, while others were finished with clean cuts to their necks.

I consumed seven souls, around fourteen more days of life. The last body I found was that of my main target. Though strangely, his head was still attached. If someone wanted to claim the bounty for killing him, they’d have needed to take it with them. Cali seemed unmoved by the whole thing. I was more worried about who did it than the fate of these killers.

They were still nearby.

“I can sense something,” Stigma frowned, “Something hiding in these woods.”

“What? Another cursed weapon?”

“No. Something else. It’s different to the feeling that my sister gave me. I can’t place it, or describe it.”

Cali knelt down by one of the bisected bodies and studied his wounds, “His limbs have suffered extreme stress, like they were pulled apart from both sides.” Her eyes travelled down the length of the dead bandit until they stopped at his feet, which had become entangled with thick, brown roots emerging from the ground. Curious, Cali reached out and tried to free his leg, with little success.

“This is a magical root,” she concluded, “I can feel the energy emanating from it. It would have been impossible to trap his foot like this otherwise.”

“What does that mean? Is that a common type of magic?”

“For a master druid, perhaps, the roots of the stoic trees do not move for anyone less.”

My hair stood on end. Somebody was watching us. I drew Stigma and pointed her into the shadowed grove, “Hey! Who’s out there?”

I heard a squeak, not unlike that of a mouse, before a young girl with straight bangs and a pair of rounded spectacles emerged from behind one of the trees. Clutched tight to her chest was a sword that glowed with green energy. A twisted handle coiled up the side of the metal blade like a branch. I lowered my weapon, she didn’t seem like much of a threat.

She bowed her head, “My name is Sakura.”

What are the odds of meeting two in such short succession? There was only one group of people with names like that. My eyes narrowed, “Another Japanese outworlder huh? What are you doing out here? You trying to claim the bounty on these guys?”

She held a hand over her mouth like she was about to throw up, “B-Bounty?”

“…Yeah, the bounty. Blackwake’s offering a lot of cash for proof of these guys being gone.” I pointed to the leader’s still intact corpse, “He’s your kill, why don’t you claim it?”

Her face paled, “I-I don’t want to cut his head off…” That didn’t match up with the carnage she’d unleashed on the camp, blood and limbs had been thrown everywhere. Perhaps the prospect of doing so and carrying it with her upset her stomach. “How did you know I was Japanese?”

I pointed to myself, “Where the hell do you think I came from?”

“Oh! Then… can we be friends?”

I titled my head, “Friends?”

She nodded happily, “I’ve never met another outworlder before!”

I decided to make some introductions and pry more info out of her, “Sure. I’m Ren, this is Cali, and this is Stigma.”

“Stigma?”

I held her out for Sakura to see, “It’s a rare sword, they all have names. And from the looks of it you have one too.”

“I guess you could call this my cheat item,” she smiled, “She called it the Chaotic Green, or the Emerald Blade. But I call it Veritas.”

Shy and well versed in the ‘genre.’ Was she really the one who did all of this? Was this all an act just to make me drop my guard? I couldn’t disconnect myself from the way I’d operated until that moment. This was a fantasy world, but that couldn’t change human nature. Everyone had an agenda, and nobody did anything for free.

“This magical signature matches the roots,” Cali explained, “That sword is a [relic.]”

‘Sakura’ has the body language of a total amateur. Her legs were in a narrowed stance, her head was looking down to the ground, reducing her situational awareness. The clothes she wore were expensive, green silk gilded with golden thread. A shawl over her shoulders that covered her chest and back. They were also free from dirt, tears and marks. Either she kept very good care of them, or she had a wardrobe of similar clothes ready to use. The big, round glasses she wore weren’t as fancy, but even basic glasswork was an extreme expense for most. Many people had to do without.

Either she was a trading, crafting and looting prodigy, or she’d been adopted into a house with some money behind it. The latter was more likely, she looked much younger than I. The circumstances between each rebirth as an outworlder were radically different. I didn’t remember my youngest years in the orphanage at all, but some people arrived at the same age they left. Some had their appearances altered, or they were born into an already existing family as a son or daughter.

I really drew the short straw.

“Do you even need the money?”

“Not really…” she mumbled.

My decision was made, “Cali, bag him.”

Cali nodded and dragged his corpse into a nearby tent to keep the horrible part out of sight. Younger me would have gagged at the sound alone. Now I’d done it dozens of times myself. After removing his head from his neck and covering it in a thick, leak resistant bag, she remerged with it clipped to her belt. We needed to get it to the bailiffs before it started to smell.

“So why did you come here and kill them anyway?”

“He had something I wanted. T-They robbed a caravan passing through and stole this.” She reached into her cloak and revealed a small, ornate dagger. There were runes etched into the blade. It was affixed. “I’m trying to get stronger, and I heard that this dagger has an amazing ability inside it.”

“Why would a girl like you be trying to get stronger?”

“…Why would you?” she responded, pocketing it again.

“Because I’m dirt poor and I need to fight to live.”

Her face dropped, “Oh, I’m sorry. That was rude of me… When I was reborn here and given this sword, I thought that maybe there was a bigger reason than chance. Just like in a novel! I could be a hero who helps the needy.”

“I’m feeling a but here.”

She grimaced, “This world isn’t like one of my novels. Even though I can level up and learn all these amazing skills. Fantastical beasts are few and far between, so is effective equipment. And a lot of people’s problems can’t be solved by a powerful weapon like this.”

I pushed aside one of the corpses and sat down on a log by the fire, “True. That was something I learned when I was younger. Born straight into an orphanage, nothing special about me. No greater destiny, no real hopes for the future.”

“But how did you find that relic?”

I shrugged, “What do you mean? I picked it up; some mercenary brought it to a battle in Exarch’s Bend before he died. I had to grab it to protect myself from some inquisitors.”

“My… benefactor, she told me that there are seven legendary swords. Veritas is one of them, and the one you’re holding now…”

“Stigma.”

“-Stigma is one of them. The others were only to be handed out by her command.”

I shook my head, “Listen, I’ve learned a little about where this thing came from and I can say with some confidence that there’s nothing so admirable about it. This is a cursed weapon, it’s killing me just using it.” Sakura looked like she was on the verge of bursting into tears.

“If I may interject, Ren,” Cali said, “I may have an explanation.”

I looked away from her quivering bottom lip, “That is?”

“Perhaps Stigma was already considered a [relic] before one of the daughters was entombed within it. A King of the Isles would conceivably have access to such a valuable sword.”

“Why would they waste a legendary weapon like that?”

“I do not know. History and legend is a fine line to walk. Again, this is only a theory. If this benefactor Sakura speaks of sought to reclaim it, she may have thought better of placing her hands upon it and enacting the curse onto herself.”

I didn’t even know who this ‘benefactor’ was. Was she the reason outworlders were being born here? Or was she merely taking advantage of the situation, filling a girl’s head with high minded fantasies of saving this planet from itself? I knew her guarded response meant that I wouldn’t get so much as a name out of her.

“A-Are you going to Blackwake?”

“Sure, we have to turn this guy in before he starts to smell.”

She bowed again, “I live there! Allow me to come with you.”

“I’m in your care,” I said, switching back to Japanese. Cali seemed intrigued by the foreign language. The mousy girl smiled and followed us back onto the main road. “Do you have a house?”

“Yes. My family owns a building in the town. N-Not in the estates, of course! We have a spare room. I could offer you both a place to stay, at least until my parents return home.”

“We wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“It’s fine,” she smiled, “I’m happy to finally meet someone from Japan again. I can’t help but feel like this is fate. Two legendary sword wielders meeting like this.”

“Fate and luck are the same thing. Have you ever met another?”

“She told me that all of the swords had been handed out to people like myself. I’ve never seen another in person before.”

Stigma appeared on my left, “This girl smells like bad news.”

“You say that about everyone,” I whispered back.

“Don’t get sucked in by her shy façade. I thought you prided yourself on following your principles?”

“They’re my principles, I can change them any time I like.”

“If you say so.”