“Please line up in an orderly manner. We’ve brought enough for everyone!” yelled Alissa as she stood near the entrance of the building they borrowed to distribute the supplies they had brought. With the burning of the mayor’s mansion – and the lack of a family register of any sort – it was rather tricky to distribute the food supplies while ensuring that nobody doubled up on their share, so she opted for a simple solution instead.

 

Every person in town was to lead their whole family over to get their share, with young children counting for half a share of food each. The adults would bring their own containers, be it sacks, pots, pans, urns, or whatever else could store the food supplies, and the soldiers left under Alissa’s command would distribute accordingly as per the number of people in a family.

 

Given the rioting and the deaths that took place during it, they likely had enough to share the food that way with more to spare in the end anyway.

 

After the food had been distributed, another soldier would draw a loop around the family’s right wrists using some ink. The ink was not water soluble and thus the mark would remain for a good while before it faded naturally after a couple weeks or so, which made it sufficient for Alissa’s needs, namely to stop people from double-dipping on the rations they were sharing.

 

Because of course some people tried to do exactly that.

 

Other than the five soldiers inside the building who were in charge of handing out the rations, another five soldiers were guarding the other buildings where more rations were stored. Their presence – and obvious flaring of their auras as late third tiers – proved to be enough to deter those who had greedy or evil thoughts so far.

 

The other ten soldiers assigned to Alissa, she had stationed at random locations around the city’s main roads, to look after those who were leaving with their share of food and made sure that they would reach their homes unmolested. There had been a couple cases early on where some people tried to rob others of their share of rations, but the soldiers responded rapidly and with extreme prejudice, the results predictably fatal, and since then no other cases had been reported.

 

Alissa might be a softie at heart compared to the locals who were used to the endless warfare and the compromises such a situation called for, but she was not foolish either. People who kept trying to rob others even when it was made obvious that everyone was about to get their share were unlikely to change their ways.

 

Perhaps if this was in her previous world, she would argue that they might be put behind bars, that there might be hope to reform their character. Ephemera had no such leeway or luxury, however. She had neither the opportunity, the resources, nor the time to do so. As such, she could only make a decision with gritted teeth to stop those people from harming others ever again.

 

To their credit, the soldiers she gave the command to just nodded as if they understood her thoughts. Given that they were all older, it would not be strange for them to have experienced something similar in their past.

 

Other than such early incidents, the food distribution had gone pretty well. Alissa’s group distributed enough food for people to live on for at least two weeks even if they ate normally, easily enough for a month if they rationed it themselves, even more with stricter rationing. Other than grains and flour, they also distributed smaller portions of things like dried meats and vegetables to enrich the diet the people would have to subsist on.

 

Fortunately for her, whoever the culprit was that triggered the rioting in the first place did not seem to have done anything so far, either against her, the soldiers with her, or the stockpile of food supplies they brought with them. That allowed Alissa to at least breathe in relief as the trouble they faced weren’t being compounded further by the unknown culprit.

 

Her team had been working practically non-stop for the past two days, distributing the supplies they brought with them to the local populace, both the original townspeople and the refugees. The additional influx of food supplies did a lot to calm down the populace’s simmering temper and to calm them down, in some ways a promise that things would get better.

 

It was late in the evening of the second day that they finally finished the distribution, and although people in the higher tiers wouldn’t really be affected too much by skipping sleep for a day or two, the entire group still felt tired. There were leftovers from the food supplies they brought, a sizable enough sum that Alissa planned to look for someone trustworthy enough to hand it to before she left with the soldiers in the near future.

 

As she yawned, she made her way out of the house they temporarily commanded to distribute the supplies from. The other soldiers were already resting in the house – they were used to cramped conditions and had no complaints about it – while part of them stood watch, and while Alissa was feeling tired too, she felt obligated to take a look around the city herself that night to make sure that things were going well.

 

Fortunately, the food distribution had the calming effect Alissa hoped for, and most of the people in the city remained at their residences – or makeshift shelters, for the refugees – with steam and smoke rising from many places as they cooked their food. The city entered a deceptive calm that belied the bloody rioting that happened a mere few days ago, which showed just how fast people could change their tune.

 

As Alissa moved around some of the less populated areas of the city, however, she suddenly felt as if someone was watching her. Moreover, whoever was doing it did so openly, not hiding their presence in the slightest. In fact, Alissa could feel that they were approaching towards her, if rather slowly. Curious as to who the other party might be, she took a gamble and moved to an unpopulated block of the city where the buildings had been burned during the rioting earlier.

 

The area used to be the city’s upper class district, where rich merchants and minor landlords had their residences, but they were the worst off as the raging mobs looted and burned the whole place down during the rioting. Alissa stood in the middle of a patch of burned ruins that had enough walls left standing to shield her from prying eyes and waited.

 

Sure enough, the watcher caught on to her intent and arrived before long.

 

While Alissa almost jumped in surprise when she saw how some indistinct ooze suddenly rose up from the floor, recognition dawned upon her features the next moment as she recalled just who amongst the people she knew was a shapeshifter these days. Sure enough, the amorphous shape settled down into Esperanza’s distinct features after a moment.

 

“Heya, Zaza. I guess I don’t need to look for whoever was the culprit that robbed the temple and set off the rioting anymore, huh?” greeted Alissa with a bit of a tease. The capabilities of whoever robbed the temple’s stock had to be on the high end, given how they managed to empty the storehouse without alerting the priests and the guards that lived there. If Esperanza was the culprit, that would add up to what Alissa knew about her old friend, who she assumed was even stronger than herself at this point, given that she was close to the fourth tier now.

 

“Guilty as charged, officer,” replied Esperanza, returning the jest with a grin back at her. “What, are you going to arrest me and read my rights so I could be judged at the court of law next?”

 

“As if,” replied Alissa with a somewhat amused scoff. “Can’t say I’m a fan of mob justice, but then again, even if you didn’t do what you did, chances are good that some of the people I came here with would’ve found out the shit that was going on and strung up those people all the same, anyway, so all you really did was expedite things some.”

 

“Oh, really? That’s an unexpected one,” replied Esperanza with some curiosity at the people Alissa mentioned.

 

“The older knights I travel with are very much of the sort that swore to protect the people, and not the institution, if you get my drift. They also got rank to pull so the mayor would’ve been fucked had he still been alive when we came here,” explained Alissa with a slight chuckle and a bit of fondness at the straightforward ways of those old knights. “There was also a rather unusual Mother from the temple guards who’s very straight-laced, if you get what I mean.”

 

“How straight-laced are we talking about here? Mother superiors from sitcom level straight-laced?” asked Esperanza with some interest.

 

“Take that and turn the dial up to eleven. She’d literally string the priests in charge of the local temple herself if they were still alive, I’m pretty sure,” said Alissa with a shake of her head. “I don’t think you’d be able to get along with her. She’s clearly as devout as it gets, but in some ways, also pretty respectable as a person, if you know what I mean?”

 

“I get your drift. Enemies can be respectable people too, depending on the situation,” said Esperanza with a nod. “So then, I assume you came here as part of the army moving about? The fighting’s further south from here, last I heard.”

 

“Yeah, I figured that I need power of my own to be able to truly decide my own path here in this world, and for now working with the Kingdom’s army would get me that power the fastest,” admitted Alissa openly. “Say… before we departed from Fort Abernal I remembered that one of the groups of priests and temple guards supposed to join us was late and had yet to arrive. Did you happen to have anything to do with that?”

 

“I did kill off a bunch of them, yeah. Burned down one of their monasteries too, though you might have been too far to have heard the news before you left,” said Esperanza nonchalantly. “I think you can understand that from my point of view everyone associated with the temple will end up as my enemies, so I’m just cutting down on the numbers a little when I have an opportunity.”

 

“Yeah, not going to blame you on that when the temple folk would want nothing more than to burn you up at the stake if they ever knew of your existence,” replied Alissa with a sigh. “I tried probing a little bit about situations like yours, people like the ones you told me about, and the only response I got was along the lines of ‘heretics needing purification by fire’, so I can’t argue with you on this.”

 

“You sure it’s safe to do that? Some of the temple’s higher-ups might get uppity and try to keep you quiet if you ask around too much,” replied Esperanza with a chuckle. “Don’t they always do that in those stories we loved to read back then?”

 

“I know what you mean, yeah. I’ve always played off the asking around as being inquisitive since I arrived here, though. If they wanted to keep me from asking questions, they’ve long lost the best chance to do that, and hopefully soon they’ll lose any chance to do that at all,” replied Alissa with a bout of amused laughter of her own. The reminder of the novels they liked to read tickled her somewhat. It felt like those days were so far behind them, at times.

 

“So, then, let’s get to the more serious question, Zaza. What do you plan to do here, or after you leave this place?”