Strength: 0.4 (I'm Working On It)

[MoonyNebulous]

Hey everyone, and welcome to Strength: 0.4 (I'm Working On It)!

Before we dive into the story, a quick and very important note.

I have a massive, epic-scale story planned for Aldric. We're talking multiple continents, huge power progression, kingdom building, the whole nine yards. This isn't a short story; it's a marathon. But a marathon is pointless without a finish line, and honestly, it wouldn't make sense for me to continue writing this epic if there isn't an audience for it.

That's where you come in. Your feedback in these early days will literally decide if this story has a future. If you're enjoying the ride (and even if you're not), please let me know!

If you vibe with the story, please do watch the thread and join the discussion.

Above all, no matter where you're reading, please leave a comment! Tell me what you liked, what you laughed at, or what you're excited to see next. It's the most direct way for me to know you're out there and engaged.

Now, for those of you who get hooked and want more right now...

My Patreon is currently 6 chapters ahead of the public release, and that number will grow to a permanent 10-chapter buffer as we move forward. It's the best way to binge ahead and support the story at the same time.

I know Patreon's interface isn't always the best for reading, but the early access is there if you want it! And if you do decide to read ahead over there, please consider leaving a Follow and Favorite here on the public sites too. Those visibility numbers are crucial for helping new readers find us!

Here's the link: patreon.com/MoonyNebulous

To kick things off, I'm posting the first 5 chapters today! After that, you'll get one new chapter every single day for the first few weeks. But of course, if people are especially into it, I'll drop bonus chapters on weekends.

After the first month, the release schedule will settle down and will depend heavily on the story's reception and the support it receives.

Alright, that's the intro spiel done. I'm incredibly excited to share this adventure with you all. It's been on my mind for a while now, and I'm so happy to finally put pen to paper. I truly hope you enjoy it.

Now, let's get started.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The world was a slurry of mud and blood.

It was a symphony of screams played on an orchestra of screaming steel; a chaotic, desperate ballet where a single misstep meant a final, ragged bow. The banners, what was left of them, were tattered things of deep azure and onyx black, both so caked in filth they were nearly indistinguishable.

But everyone knew who was winning.

The Black banners, representing the iron-fisted Blackwings, advanced like a creeping tide of death. The Blue, the defenders of the last shred of value left of the South, were little more than crumbling sandcastles against the surf. For every black-clad soldier that fell, two more seemed to take his place, their grim faces set in the cold certainty of victory.

Amidst this maelstrom of professional butchery was a man who clearly did not belong.

He was frail, with a gaunt frame that seemed better suited for a library than a battlefield. His jet-black hair was plastered to his pale forehead with sweat and grime, and his eyes – a startling, luminous violet – were wide with a terror he was desperately trying to master. He moved with a clumsy, stumbling grace that had, through some miracle of dumb luck, kept him alive thus far. He'd trip over a corpse and avoid a decapitating swing; he'd slip in the mud and a crossbow bolt would whistle over his head.

Yet, he fought on. He held a short, simple dagger, its hilt slick with things he didn't want to identify, and he used it with the grim determination of a man defending his home. Because this was his home. These screaming, dying men and women in blue were his people. Duty, a concept he'd heard so much about from his father and read about in books, was now a leaden weight in his stomach and a fire in his veins.

His name was Aldric Aerhart, and he was in way over his head.

A hulking brute in black armor, face hidden behind a snarling iron-visored helmet, charged him with a roar. Aldric, mustering every ounce of courage he possessed, did the only thing he could; he dropped. The brute's massive axe swung through the space where his neck had been, the force of it carrying the soldier a step too far.

Aldric scrambled in the mud, pushing off a fallen comrade's shield, and surged up under the soldier's guard. He wasn't strong enough to pierce the man's armor, but the neck was exposed. He plunged his dagger into the soft flesh beneath the helmet's rim. The man gurgled, a wet, horrifying sound, and a hot spray of blood erupted over Aldric's hand and face. The giant crumpled, his axe falling with a heavy thud.

Aldric tore his dagger free and staggered forward, his body trembling, his stomach heaving. He'd survived another one. He just had to keep moving, keep fighting, keep–

A sudden, sharp, impossible cold bloomed in his chest.

He looked down. The point of a longsword, crimson and wet, protruded a good six inches from his sternum. It looked so surreal, so utterly out of place. He felt no pain, only a profound sense of confusion, a disconnect from his own body.

He turned his head slowly, the world already starting to blur at the edges. Behind him stood another soldier in black, his face unremarkable, grim, and utterly devoid of emotion. He was already looking past Aldric, scanning for his next target. With a grunt of effort, the soldier yanked the sword free.

The world vanished. The strength left Aldric's limbs, the light fled his violet eyes, and he collapsed into the bloody mud. Everything went black.

…

…before it didn't.

What the fuck!??

One moment, I was… well, I wasn't. It was just a void, a complete and total absence of everything. The next, I was here. And 'here' was absolutely, unequivocally, the last place any sane person would ever want to be.

My hand was wrapped around the hilt of a dagger, a dagger that was currently buried to the hilt in some poor bastard's throat. I felt the sickening grind of steel on vertebrae and then the gush. A torrent of hot, sticky liquid sprayed across my face. It tasted like old pennies. Blood. That was definitely blood.

My blood? No. It was coming from the mountain of a man in front of me, whose eyes were rolling back into his head as he made a sound like a drowning badger. He collapsed, and I stumbled back, my mind a screaming vortex of pure, unadulterated panic.

Where am I? What is this? Was I dreaming? It felt too real. The stench of mud, sweat, and spilled guts filled my nostrils. The screams and the clang of metal were deafening. My heart was trying to hammer its way out of my ribcage like a trapped bird.

I looked at my hands. They were pale, slender, and covered in blood. Not my hands. My hands were… well, they had more callouses from a keyboard than a knife. These were the hands of a stranger.

Then, as if the situation wasn't already certifiably insane, a translucent blue box flickered into existence in the corner of my vision. It just floated there, gentle light pulsing from its edges, completely oblivious to the abject horror unfolding around it.

It looked like something straight out of a video game.

[Name: Aldric Aerhart]
Strength: 0.4
Wisdom: 1
Charisma: 1.5
Luck: 1

[Points: 0]

[Skills: Sense Novice I]

My brain, already overloaded, decided to short-circuit. Aldric Aerhart? That sounded like a name someone would give their D&D character if they weren't very creative. Strength: 0.4? What kind of scale was this? If a normal person was a 1, then I was apparently made of wet tissue paper and snot-filled handkerchief. I mean, seriously? 0.4? I'd lose an arm-wrestle to a toddler. My Charisma was 1.5, though. So I was a noodle-armed pretty boy. Great. Just what you need in a medieval-looking slaughterhouse.

While I was busy having a numerical identity crisis, a sudden, sharp prickle crawled up the back of my neck. It wasn't a sound or a sight; it was a feeling, an instinctual alarm bell screaming WRONGNESS directly into my brain. It was a cold, pure shot of adrenaline that bypassed all the panicked confusion.

Sense Novice I, the blue box had said. Was this it?

I didn't wait to find out. I threw myself forward, a clumsy, desperate lurch that was more of a fall than a step. I landed on my hands and knees in the mud, just as a whoosh of displaced air whispered past the exact spot my heart had been a second ago.

I scrambled around, my new, weak body protesting. A man in black armor stood there, his longsword finishing its deadly arc through empty space. His face was a mask of grim professionalism. He gave no sign of surprise, simply recalibrating his stance to face me, his new target. This was the guy. The one who…

A phantom pain flared in my chest. A memory that wasn't mine. This guy had killed me. Or, he'd killed the guy whose body I was currently borrowing. The frail dude with the 0.4 Strength. Aldric.

The grim soldier didn't waste time on banter. There were no villainous monologues, no declarations of allegiance. He just raised his sword and came at me.

All my video game knowledge, all the fantasy novels I'd ever read, evaporated in the face of sheer, mortal terror. This wasn't a game. There was no respawn button… probably. The rewind thing had been a one-off, right? A glitch in the isekai matrix? I wasn't about to test that theory.

He lunged. It wasn't a wild swing, but a precise, efficient thrust aimed right for my gut. I tried to bring my little dagger up to parry, but the muscle memory of this body, flimsy as it was, seemed to know better. It twisted, pulling me slightly to the side. The point of his sword scraped along my ribs, tearing through the thin leather jerkin I wore. A line of fire erupted along my side. It wasn't deep, but holy shit, it hurt.

"Gah! Son of a bitch!" I yelped, scrambling backward.

The soldier's expression didn't change. He just flowed into his next attack, a downward slash. I lifted my dagger to block, a purely instinctual move. The impact was jarring. His strength was immense; my 0.4 was no match. The shock traveled up my arm, making my teeth rattle and my wrist scream in protest. The dagger was nearly torn from my grasp. I saw stars for a second, my arm going numb.

This was bad. This was monumentally, catastrophically bad. I was out-muscled, out-skilled, and out-reached. My only advantage was a weird spidey-sense that had saved me once, but it wasn't a "win the fight" button. It was a "delay the inevitable" button.

He pressed his advantage. His sword became a blur of steel, forcing me back step by stumbling step. I was a cornered rat facing a well-fed cat. Parry, dodge, stumble. A clang of steel that sent shivers down my spine. A desperate twist that barely avoided losing a foot. A clumsy roll in the mud that left me covered in filth but, miraculously, still in one piece.

My lungs burned. My borrowed body was already at its limit. The pathetic 0.4 Strength wasn't just about lifting things; it was about endurance, about the sheer physical capacity to continue. And I was fresh out. My arm felt like a lead weight, and the gash on my side was sending waves of agony through my torso with every ragged breath.

The grim soldier saw it. A flicker of something – not satisfaction, just observation – crossed his eyes. He saw his opening.

He feinted a low sweep, and like an idiot, my eyes followed the tip of his blade. It was the oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. As I instinctively moved to block low, his blade changed direction with fluid grace, flicking upward.

My dagger was in the wrong place. My body was off-balance. My mind was screaming, but my exhausted limbs refused to obey.

I saw the sword coming, arcing through the gray, smoky air. It was almost beautiful in its deadly efficiency. Time seemed to slow, the screams of the dying battle fading into a dull roar. All I could see was that sliver of sharpened steel, catching the dim light as it descended directly toward my neck.

There was no escape. No lucky stumble. No last-second save.

This was it. My second death in less than five minutes. I wondered if I'd set some kind of record.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

This was it. Death number two in under five minutes. My short, brutal, and frankly confusing tenure in the land of Mud and Blood was coming to a swift and pointy conclusion. The grim soldier's sword was a descending guillotine, and my neck was on the chopping block. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. All I could do was stare at the approaching steel and wonder if the universe had some kind of punch card. "Get reincarnated ten times, the eleventh is free!"

CLAAAAANG!

The sound wasn't the wet thud of steel cleaving flesh and bone I'd expected. It was a deafening, resonant peel, like a cathedral bell struck by lightning. The grim soldier's sword, which had seemed just moments ago like an unstoppable force of nature, was flung sideways as if it were a child's toy made of cheap plastic. It spun through the air and embedded itself in the mud a dozen feet away.

The grim soldier stood frozen, his arm vibrating from the shock, his eyes wide with disbelief. He had just enough time to register his fatal error before a shadow fell over him.

A new figure had appeared, a veritable mountain of a man clad in the finest plate armor I'd ever seen, all gleaming steel and cobalt-blue accents. He stood at least six and a half feet tall, with shoulders so broad he seemed to block out the miserable grey sky. In one massive, gauntleted hand, he held a longsword that looked, in his grip, like a normal person's shortsword. This was the weapon that had just saved my life.

The giant in blue didn't pause. He stepped forward, his armored boots sinking deep into the mire, and swung his longsword in a horizontal arc. He did it with the casual, almost lazy grace of a man swatting a fly.

The grim soldier didn't even have time to scream. The blade connected with his midsection. There was a hideous shearing sound of metal grinding against metal, and then a wet, sickening tear. The soldier's torso separated from his legs in a spray of gore. The top half flew one way, the bottom half stood for a comical, gruesome second before collapsing.

The blue giant flicked his blade clean with a practiced motion, splattering viscera onto a nearby corpse. Then, he turned to me. The helmet he wore was open-faced, revealing a strong jawline covered in dark stubble and a pair of surprisingly gentle, sky-blue eyes.

"Al, be careful," he said, his voice a low, rumbling baritone that seemed to vibrate in my bones.

As he spoke the name, "Al," a jolt went through me, another flicker of a memory that wasn't mine. A name surfaced from the depths of my new consciousness, fully formed and familiar. Sir Aster Kell. My… Aldric's… friend. Guardian. The kingdom's strongest sword.

My mouth opened, a thousand questions trying to force their way out at once. Who are you? How do you know me? What the hell is going on? Did you see that guy fly apart? But there was no time. The tide of battle, which had momentarily parted for this dramatic rescue, came crashing back in. Two black-clad soldiers, seeing their comrade turned into a party sub, charged at Aster with vengeful roars.

Aster didn't even seem concerned. He met their charge like a cliff meeting a wave. With two impossibly swift movements – a parry that sent one soldier stumbling and a thrust that went straight through the other's chest plate like it was butter – the threat was neutralized. He pulled his sword free and moved on, a one-man wrecking crew in a sea of chaos.

He glanced back at me, a silent order in his eyes: Keep up.

My brain finally rebooted. Standing still was a death sentence. Following the human-shaped blender seemed like a marginally better option. I scrambled to my feet, my legs trembling, the gash on my side throbbing in protest. I clutched my pathetically small dagger and scurried after him.

What followed was the most terrifying and awe-inspiring thing I'd ever witnessed. Sir Aster Kell wasn't just fighting; he was a natural disaster. He moved with a purpose I couldn't fathom, carving a deliberate path through the enemy ranks. His longsword was a whirlwind of silver death. Men in black armor, who had seemed like unstoppable juggernauts to me, were little more than wheat before his scythe. He shattered shields, sundered helmets, and cleaved through bodies with an efficiency that was both beautiful and utterly horrifying.

My role in this bloody ballet was… less glamorous. I was the remora to his great white shark, the pilot fish to his whale. I was Sir Badass's Personal Janitor.

Aster would dispatch a group of three soldiers, but in the chaos, one might be merely wounded, or knocked off balance. As Aster moved forward, that straggler would try to get up, perhaps to stab the giant in the back. And that's where I came in.

A soldier, his arm bleeding from a shallow cut from Aster's blade, pushed himself to his knees, his eyes wild with desperation as he raised his own sword. Before he could, I was there, plunging my dagger into the gap between his helmet and cuirass. It was messy, clumsy, and terrifying. I felt the life drain out of him, his body going limp against mine before I shoved him away, gagging.

I didn't have time to process it. Another one was trying to hamstring Aster. I kicked out, my 0.4 Strength leg connecting with his helmet with a dull thunk. It didn't hurt him so much as it surprised him, making him look at me. The distraction was all Aster needed. Without even turning his head fully, he performed a reverse-grip stab that took the man through the eye-slit of his helm.

"Thanks, Al," Aster grunted, already moving on to the next foe.

My stomach churned. "No problem," I wheezed to myself, my voice barely a whisper. This was my life now. Support class to a guy who clearly didn't need any support. I felt less like a hero and more like a glorified tripwire.

We continued our relentless advance. Aster was a maelstrom of blue and steel at the center, and I was the debris getting thrown around in his wake. I tripped over bodies, slipped in pools of blood, and stabbed desperately at anyone in black who got too close. I was operating on pure adrenaline, my mind a blank slate of fear and instinct.

Strangely, it started to feel… manageable. Not easy, God no. But I could see the path Aster was clearing. The sheer pressure of his assault was forcing the Black soldiers to give ground. A pocket of relative safety was forming around him. I began to wonder, in a dazed, blood-spattered sort of way, if we were actually winning. Was this the turning point? Was Sir Aster Kell the secret weapon that was about to single-handedly win the war for the Blues?

Then I made the mistake of looking past him, at the wider battlefield.

My fragile hope shattered.

We weren't winning. We were being annihilated. What I had thought was a clearing was just a tiny, temporary dent in a vast, advancing wall of black. The blue banners were falling everywhere. The lines had broken, and what was left of the Aeridorian army was scattered into small, desperate pockets of resistance, being systematically surrounded and exterminated. We weren't turning the tide; we were just a single, defiant eddy in a flood that was washing everything away.

So what was Aster doing? This wasn't a counter-attack. It was too focused, too linear. This was… an escape. He wasn't trying to win the battle. He was trying to get somewhere. Or get someone somewhere.

He was trying to get me somewhere.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. Why me? Why was the most powerful warrior on the field dedicating all his efforts to escorting a noodle-armed pretty boy with a 0.4 Strength stat?

We reached what looked like the edge of the main melee, near a ruined section of a stone wall. The fighting was thinner here. It seemed we were through the worst of it.

Then I heard it. The thunder of hooves on wet earth.

A black horse, armored and massive as its rider, burst from around the corner of the wall. The man on its back was a knight, his armor onyx black and spiked, a wicked-looking flail clutched in his hand. He lowered his lance-like weapon, aiming its jagged head directly at Aster's chest, the horse charging at full tilt.

This had to be it. An enemy of Aster's caliber. A mini-boss. This was where my bodyguard would finally have a real challenge.

Aster didn't even brace himself. He just planted his feet.

As the horse was about to trample him, he did something that broke my brain. He sidestepped the lance with impossible agility and, as the horse thundered past, he balled his free hand into a fist and swung it upward in a brutal uppercut.

The punch connected squarely with the underside of the Black knight's jaw.

There was a crack of bone and a sickening crunch of metal as the knight's helmet dented inward. The rider, a man who must have weighed three hundred pounds in his armor, was lifted clean out of his saddle. He flew backward through the air, flailing uselessly, before landing in a heap of twisted metal ten feet away. He did not move.

The warhorse, suddenly riderless, galloped a few more strides before Aster grabbed its reins. The beast was a monster, all panicked muscle and crazed eyes, but Aster brought it to a halt with what looked like sheer arm strength, the horse digging furrows in the mud as it fought him.

He calmed it with a few soothing words, his voice a stark contrast to the violence he'd just committed. He then turned to me, his expression urgent.

"Al, get on," he commanded, holding the reins steady.

My mind was still trying to process the fact that he'd just punched a man off a horse. Like, literally. Punched him into the sky.

"What? Why?" I stammered, taking a step toward him. "Where are we going? The fight…"

"There is no fight," Aster cut me off, his voice grim. "There is only the retreat. We have to go. Now."

He was giving up? He, the one-man army, was saying we had to run? It didn't make sense. None of this made any sense.

"But–" I started, my head swimming with confusion and a hundred other questions. Why me? Why abandon the others? What was the plan?

Aster's face softened for a fraction of a second, a flicker of something that might have been pity, or perhaps just frustration. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time for a confused, scared boy who wasn't the battle-hardened noble he was supposed to be.

"There's no time, Al," he said, his voice low.

Then, he took one swift step toward me. His hand, no longer a fist but a rigid, flat blade, moved faster than I could track.

I saw a blur of motion. A sharp, stinging impact against the side of my neck.

A bloom of static filled my vision, and the world tilted on its axis. My legs gave out from under me. The last thing I heard was Aster's gruff, regretful voice.

"Forgive me."

And then, for the second time that day, everything went black.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The world was black for a very long time.

My consciousness returned not as a sudden jolt, but as a slow, creeping thaw. At first, there was only the rhythmic rocking and the leathery scent of horse. I must have been slumped over the saddle, because through the narrow slits of my barely-open eyes, I saw a dizzying, blurry reel of green forests and grey skies passing by. It was a miserable, jarring ride that my body, weak as it was, protested with every jostle.

At some point, the horse stopped. There was talking. Low, urgent voices. I remember the scratchy feel of a wool blanket being draped over me. I tried to make sense of the snippets of conversation that filtered through the fog in my brain – "...not safe… the port at… manifest… low profile…" – but they were just meaningless sounds, dissolving before they could form coherent thoughts.

Then the motion changed. The jarring up-and-down of the horse was replaced by a deeper, swaying roll. The air grew damp and tasted of salt and tar. A boat. We were on a boat. A small, anxious part of my mind, a remnant of my past life, braced for the inevitable wave of nausea. I'd always had terrible motion sickness; even a short ferry ride could leave me green-faced and miserable. But it never came. This new body, for all its noodle-armed flaws, apparently had a stomach of iron. A small mercy, I supposed.

I drifted in that state for… I don't know. Hours? Days? Time was a thick, syrupy thing. I was too exhausted to move, too disoriented to care. My body was healing, knitting itself back together from the battle I could barely remember. I was content to float in the darkness.

What finally woke me was the System.

Even with my eyes closed, the soft blue light of the notification screen materialized in my mind's eye. It was persistent, a gentle but unignorable pulse. With a mental sigh that felt like lifting a mountain, I lazily focused on it.

[Name: Aldric Aerhart]
Strength: 0.4 + 0.1
Wisdom: 1
Charisma: 1.5
Luck: 1

[Points: 0]

[Skills: Sense Novice I]

Yay, I thought, the sarcasm so thick it felt like I could taste it. A whole 0.1 point of strength. I've graduated from wet tissue paper to damp cardboard. Watch out, world.

I was about to let myself slip back into the comforting void of unconsciousness when a new sound reached me. It was low at first, a rhythmic creak that I assumed was just the boat. But then it grew, weaving itself around the groan of the ship's timbers. It was a human sound. A breathy, strained sound.

It took my sleep-addled brain a moment to parse it, to sort through the fog and identify the cadence. And when it did, it hit me with the force of a charging elephant.

It was moaning. Deep, guttural, and undeniably sensual moaning, punctuated by shorter, higher-pitched gasps.

My eyes shot open as if someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water on my face. The world snapped into sharp, unwelcome focus. I was in a small, cramped cabin, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and salty air. My bed was a pile of rough jute sacks, a coarse wool blanket thrown over me.

I threw the blanket off. My eyes, now fully adjusted to the dim light filtering through a single grimy porthole, locked onto the source of the sound.

And there, not ten feet away, was Sir Aster Kell. The one-man army. My stoic, grim-faced protector. He was propped up against a stack of crates, his breeches around his ankles, absolutely railing a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties.

Without his armor, I could see him properly for the first time. He was easily in his early thirties, his body a roadmap of muscle and sinew, covered in a tapestry of old, faded scars. His face, which had seemed merely grim on the battlefield, was handsome in a rugged, weather-beaten way. He was the very picture of a fantasy hero; tall, powerful, and apparently irresistible. Some people just got dealt a royal flush in the genetic lottery, didn't they? The girl beneath him, her simple dress hiked up to her waist, was clinging to his broad shoulders, her head thrown back in wild abandon.

My brain, which had handled war, death, and interdimensional reincarnation with a sort of panicked resignation, decided that this was the final straw.

"What the fuck!!!" I screamed, my voice cracking from disuse.

The effect was instantaneous and spectacular.

Aster froze mid-thrust, his head snapping towards me. His ruggedly handsome face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated, caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar shame. The girl shrieked, her eyes flying open to lock with mine. For one surreal, horrifying moment, all three of us were just staring at each other, a tableau of supreme awkwardness. Hilariously, the rocking of the boat and the sheer momentum of the act kept them moving for another second, a final, graceless bob that made the situation even more mortifying.

Then reality reasserted itself. Aster, looking utterly abashed, pushed the girl off him. She scrambled away, a mess of flailing limbs and flushed skin, frantically gathering her discarded clothes. I just sat there on my pile of jute, my mouth hanging open, having absolutely no idea what the socially acceptable response to this situation was. Was I supposed to offer them a towel? Congratulate him on his stamina?

The girl, now decently covered, gave me one last terrified look and bolted from the cabin, leaving me and a half-naked Sir Aster Kell in a silence so thick you could have carved it into little embarrassing sculptures.

He finally broke the silence, clearing his throat and refusing to meet my gaze as he pulled up his breeches.

"It's been a hard few days, my lord," he said at last, his deep voice laced with shame.

I'll say, I thought, my mind still reeling.

A little while later, we found ourselves sitting in the ship's galley. It was a small, smoky space, and the ship's cook, a one-eyed man with a beard that had seen better decades, slapped two bowls of thin, fishy-smelling soup and a hunk of hard bread onto the table in front of us. The awkwardness from the cabin still hung between us like a physical presence.

"You were asleep for two full days," Aster said, pushing a bowl towards me. "You needed the rest."

Two days. It felt like both an eternity and no time at all. I took the bowl, my stomach rumbling. The soup was bland and the bread was stale, but it was the best meal I'd ever had.

Aster stared into his bowl, swirling the murky liquid with his spoon. "I miss Aldren. Your father, I mean."

The name, Aldren, was another key. It unlocked a new floodgate of memories in my mind, Aldric's memories, clearer and more detailed this time. It all came rushing in, a torrent of names and places and bitter resentments.

Getting caught fornicating with a wench reminds him of my father? a sarcastic corner of my brain wondered, but the rest of the information was too overwhelming to focus on the joke.

I was Aldric Aerhart, heir to the noble House Aerhart. My father was Lord Aldren Aerhart. We were vassals, but powerful ones; our house served House Verderan, the paramount rulers of the entire southern kingdom. It should have been a simple, privileged life of duty and comfort.

But then came the Empress's tourney in the capital, Aureline. A grand affair that had ended in tragedy. Or, more likely, conspiracy. Both my father, Lord Aldren, and his liege, the paramount Lord Verderan, were killed in a single, highly suspicious jousting 'accident'.

That was where everything went to shit. Lord Verderan had left no male heirs. His only child was his daughter, Lyra. My mother. According to the ancient laws of the south, the principle of 'womb-right' dictated that the titles and lands should pass through the female line to the nearest male descendant. That was me. Aldric Aerhart. At seventeen years old, I was supposed to become the new Lord Paramount of the South.

But the Empress had other ideas. Citing some obscure, long-forgotten imperial decree, she archived the womb-right and installed her own brother, the ruthless Lord Blackwing, as the new paramount lord.

The southern lords had protested. House Aerhart, my house, had led the call for rebellion. And the Sun Lancers, Emperor's iron fist, had responded. That old fool– lending his prized cavalry to put down a rebellion against his hot wife's brother. How thoughtless.

Thus the Black banners marched south: a mix of Heartland troops, a few other 'crown-supporting' kingdoms and the southern factions that had aligned with the Blackwings. That disastrous battle… that was the end of our rebellion. The end of everything.

So that's who I was. A disinherited lordling. A failed rebel leader. The rightful ruler of a kingdom who was now a fugitive on a smelly boat, whose only bodyguard had just been caught turning the cargo hold into a brothel.

The weight of it all settled on me, a crushing, suffocating burden. This wasn't just some random war I'd been dropped into. This was my… Aldric's… mess. And he hadn't even wanted any of it. He'd been a scholar, a quiet boy who preferred books to swords. Now he was dead, and I was left holding the bag. A very large, very bloody, very on-fire bag.

I looked up from my soup, the fishy taste turning to ash in my mouth. I looked at Aster, at the immense, tired warrior who had thrown away his army and his honor just to save me.

"What the fuck are we gonna do?" I asked, the question raw and stripped of all my earlier sarcasm.

Sir Aster Kell met my eyes for the first time since the cabin. The shame was gone, replaced by a deep, profound weariness that seemed to go all the way to his soul.

"I wonder myself, my lord," he said.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

"I wonder myself, my lord."

The words hung in the smoky air of the galley, heavier than the reek of stale fish. It was the worst possible answer. It was the honest answer. I looked at this mountain of a man, this legendary warrior who could punch knights into low orbit, and I saw the same thing I felt in the pit of my own stomach: absolute, bottomless uncertainty. He was a weapon without a hand to wield him, a shield with no one left to protect. And he was looking at me, a guy whose greatest physical achievement in his last life was assembling an IKEA bookshelf without crying (It had been a very near thing), to tell him where to go.

We were so, so screwed.

I pushed my bowl of soup away, the meager warmth doing nothing to chase away the chill that had settled deep in my bones. "Okay. Let's start with the basics, Aster. Where, exactly, are we going? This boat has to have a destination."

Aster finished his last piece of rock-hard bread, chewing it with the grim determination of a man eating his own boot leather. "But this boat is headed to the central continent, Al," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The central continent.

The name sparked another flurry of Aldric's memories, not a coherent narrative this time, but a jumble of fragmented images and academic factoids. It was the kind of knowledge a well-read young noble would have about a distant, slightly disreputable land. The Eastern Continent, our home, was the seat of the House Solmere, a land of ancient houses and rigid hierarchies. The Western Continent was home to the rival Azure Dominion, another empire, but not as grand and supposedly a mercantile-naval power

But the central continent… it was the world's messy, chaotic middle child. A geographical and cultural melting pot. It had no grand empire, only a patchwork of squabbling city-states, minor kingdoms, and vast stretches of untamed wilderness. It was a place where fortunes were made overnight and lives were lost in the blink of an eye. A haven for refugees, criminals, merchants, and mercenaries. A place where your family name meant less than the weight of the coin in your purse or the sharpness of the sword on your hip.

It was, I realized, the perfect place to disappear.

"Okay. The central continent," I said, testing the words. "And what do you propose we do when we get there? We have no money, no allies, and an entire empire that wants my head on a pike. What's the grand strategy?"

Aster had the decency to look uncomfortable. He placed his massive hands on the rough-hewn table, his brow furrowed in thought. Finally, he looked at me, his sky-blue eyes earnest and utterly unhelpful. "I don't know, my lord. I am your sworn sword. My duty is to protect you. I only follow you."

I stared at him. I stared at him so hard I thought my eyes might pop out of their sockets. Him? Following me? The guy who, just a few days ago, thought a CPU bottleneck was a life-or-death crisis? The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of it was staggering.

A sarcastic retort, born of pure disbelief, bubbled up and escaped before I could stop it.

"You followed my wits right into that poor girl's breeches, didn't you?"

Aster choked. He had just taken a swig of water from a wooden cup, and he sprayed it halfway across the table, devolving into a fit of wet, hacking coughs. His face, usually a stoic mask of warrior-like solemnity, turned a shade of crimson that clashed violently with his blue tunic.

"My lord!" he sputtered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "That was… a momentary lapse! The stress of the retreat… I was not myself!"

"You looked pretty much like yourself to me," I shot back, a ghost of a grin tugging at my lips. For the first time since waking up in this nightmare, I felt a flicker of something other than terror. It was good to know that the mighty Sir Aster Kell could be flustered. "Just making sure we're clear on the chain of command here. If your plan is to follow my lead, we're going to need a better plan than 'find the nearest willing barmaid'."

He sagged in his seat, the embarrassment draining out of him, replaced by that familiar weariness. "I know, Al. I know. I have failed you. I failed your father. All I know is battle. Strategy… subterfuge… that was your father's world. I am just a soldier. A soldier with no army."

The moment of levity passed, and the crushing weight of our situation settled back in. He was right. We were two broken pieces of a shattered kingdom. A scholar in a warrior's world and a warrior with no war to fight. What the hell were we going to do? I slumped back, rubbing my temples. We needed money. We needed shelter. We needed a way to live without anyone discovering that I was the most wanted fugitive on the continent.

My mind raced, frantically searching for a solution. What skills did I have? In my old life, I was a programmer. Utterly useless here. Aldric was a scholar. Also pretty useless when you're on the run. I had a 0.5 in Strength, so manual labor was probably out unless I wanted to die of exhaustion lifting a sack of potatoes.

Then my gaze drifted, and I saw it. The faint, translucent shimmer of the blue status screen, still hovering in the periphery of my vision.

The System.

The thought hit me with the force of a physical blow. I'd been so caught up in the horror and the chaos and Aldric's tragic backstory that I had completely missed the most important detail. I wasn't just a random guy thrown into a fantasy world. I was a guy thrown into a fantasy world with a game interface.

This wasn't just a miserable medieval reality. This was a RPG!

My entire perspective shifted in an instant. The despair that had been strangling me was replaced by a sudden, manic surge of hope. This world wasn't a prison; it was a game. A horrifically realistic, full-dive VR game where dying probably hurt like hell and was very permanent, but a game nonetheless. And games had rules. They had mechanics. They had paths to power.

I wasn't Aldric Aerhart, the failed lordling. I was a Player Character. I had stats that could be raised. I had skills that could, presumably, be learned. I was at the very beginning of my progression fantasy journey!

My mind, the mind of a man who had spent thousands of hours optimizing character builds and grinding for epic loot, went into overdrive. What was the number one career choice for any aspiring protagonist in a world of swords and sorcery? What was the one institution that conveniently provided quests, rewards, and a clear path for advancement?

It was so obvious. It was the oldest trope in the book.

"Aster," I said, my voice suddenly sharp and focused. He looked up, surprised by my change in tone.

"Is there… is there such a thing as an Adventurer's Guild on the central continent?"

Aster stared at me as if I'd grown a second head. "An Adventurer's Guild? My lord, what are you talking about? We are nobles of House Aerhart. We don't consort with… sell-swords and dungeon-delvers."

"Just answer the question, Aster," I pressed, leaning forward, my heart hammering with a strange new excitement. "Do they exist there?"

He let out a long, weary sigh, clearly convinced I'd finally lost my mind. The trauma of battle, the escape, the karate chop to the neck… it had all broken poor Lord Aldric's brain.

"You have to be kidding me, my lord," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Of course they exist there. Everyone knows that."

He paused, a strange look crossing his face. It was a look of grudging respect, the kind a stuffy historian might give to a rowdy but historically significant barbarian.

"My lord," he said, his voice lowering with a certain gravitas. "The central continent didn't just have adventurer's guilds."

He leaned in, as if sharing a grand, fundamental truth of the universe.

"They invented adventuring."

A wide, genuine, and probably slightly unhinged grin spread across my face. It was the first time I had smiled since I arrived in this world. The path forward, which seconds ago had been a dark, terrifying void, was now illuminated. It was a stupid, reckless, and insanely dangerous path, but it was a path.

I was going to become an adventurer. I was going to grind my stats, level up my skills, and get ridiculously, absurdly overpowered. And then, maybe, just maybe, I'd go back and introduce the Empress and her brother to the business end of a +15 Sword of Vengeful Ass-Kicking.

It was a perfect plan.

"Well then," I said, slapping the table with a newfound sense of purpose that made the half-empty soup bowls jump. "It seems we have our new career path sorted out."

Aster just stared at me, his mouth slightly agape, the picture of confusion. He had no idea what was going on in my head. He had no idea that the timid, bookish boy he was sworn to protect had just been replaced by a meta-gaming lunatic with dreams of becoming a legendary hero.

And frankly, neither did I. But for the first time, I was excited to find out what happened next.

 

[MoonyNebulous]

The unfamiliar sword felt like a lead pipe in my hand. For the thousandth time, I swung it in a clumsy, hacking arc, my arm screaming in protest. Each movement was a testament to my pathetic 0.5 Strength stat. But ahead of me, finally, was the prize: a long, jagged coastline, slowly resolving from a hazy smudge into a vibrant tapestry of green cliffs and white beaches.

The central continent.

It had taken a god-awful three months to get here. Three months trapped on a creaking, smelly tub with nothing but the endless sea, stale bread, and my own spiraling thoughts for company. At one point, around the seven-week mark, I'd developed a full-blown conspiracy theory that the central continent didn't exist, and Aster was kidnapping me to some remote island to sell me to pirates. The mind goes to strange places when all you have is time to think.

It goes there even faster when your only companion is a sexual dynamo who treats the ship like his personal, rotating harem.

I'm not exaggerating. I think Sir Aster Kell had at least three women on a retainer basis. There was Mari, the fiery redhead who worked in the galley; Elara, the quiet, dark-haired weaver; and Sela, a giggly blonde deckhand. He seemed to work his way through them on a cyclic schedule, and I'd developed an unfortunate knack for walking in on them at the most inopportune moments. Him and Mari in a lifeboat. Him and Elara in the linen closet. Him and Sela behind my bed of jute sacks.

Now, I hadn't exactly been a Chad in my old life, but I'd gotten around. Maybe once every six months? That's respectable, right? It was a pace I was comfortable with. But Aster was setting an impossible standard. The man was a machine. I was starting to feel deeply, personally inadequate.

Driven by this newfound insecurity, I'd even braved a look in a small, cracked mirror we had in the cabin. The face staring back wasn't bad. In fact, it was… distressingly good. Aldric had won the genetic lottery. The jet-black hair and luminous violet eyes were a killer combination, and his facial structure was delicate and refined. It was, for lack of a better word, beautiful.

And that was the problem. I was cute. I wasn't handsome or rugged; I was a pretty boy with zero muscle mass to back it up. The game system said I was seventeen. There were other seventeen-year-old boys on this ship, hauling ropes and swabbing decks. They were wiry and strong, with the beginnings of beards. They did not look like me. I looked like I'd been raised in a velvet-lined box and fed nothing but milk and honey. Clearly, some sort of growth deficiency was at play here.

Which brought me back to the sword.

I kept swinging it, the motion becoming a mindless, burning repetition. It wasn't like I wanted to. I wanted proper training. And that's exactly what I'd asked Aster for, right after my grand adventurer epiphany.

Filled with protagonist-level determination, the very first thing I did was stride over to his magnificent longsword, which was propped against a crate. "Teach me to use this," I'd declared with what I hoped was heroic gravitas.

I could not lift it off the ground.

I mean that literally. I wrapped both hands around the hilt, planted my feet, and pulled. Nothing. I grunted, I strained, I put my back into it like I was trying to pull Excalibur from the stone. The tip of the blade did not leave the wooden deck. Not by a millimeter. Meanwhile, this was the weapon Aster casually swung around single-handedly.

To make matters worse, Elara had been with us at the time. She'd watched my entire pathetic display, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a giggle. The look on her face said it all. I am ninety-nine percent sure that by dinnertime, the entire crew knew that the pretty boy 'Arden' couldn't even lift his guardian's sword. I had never been so thoroughly, profoundly humiliated.

Later, Aster had come to me with a smaller, standard-issue arming sword. "My lord," he'd said, trying and failing to sound diplomatic, "one cannot learn the intricacies of swordplay until one's body can perform the most basic of movements. You must first grow the muscles required to handle the weapon."

His prescription? Swing this sword. Just… swing it around. Every day. For hours. Until I could do it without wanting to cry. Only then would he deign to teach me a basic stance.

I swore on my non-existent honor that one day, I would master his ridiculously oversized toothpick and then use it to knock him down a peg. It might take a few years. It might take a decade. But it was coming.

"Land ho!" The call from the crow's nest was unnecessary; we could all see it now. The docks of a bustling port city grew larger with every passing minute. Aster emerged from the cabin, looking refreshed and annoyingly smug, and came to stand beside me at the rail.

"A new beginning, my lord," he said, taking in the view.

I just grunted and kept swinging the sword, my arm a single, unified muscle of agony and spite. I was mid-swing when my eyes caught something on the docks below. A dockworker, directing the mooring of another vessel. He was short, stout, with large, hairy feet stuffed into simple leather sandals. He had a pipe clenched in his teeth and an air of cheerful competence.

"Bilbo Baggins?" I blurted out, the name escaping my lips before I could think.

Aster shot me a look of pure confusion. "What? My lord, you know that hobbit?"

My brain screeched to a halt. Hobbit. He'd said hobbit. I mean, it wasn't actually Bilbo Baggins. I'm pretty sure The Lord of the Rings never mentioned a sprawling empire on the Eastern Continent, and Bilbo certainly wasn't a longshoreman. But it was a hobbit. A real, non-litigious, fantasy-staple hobbit. What the hell? I thought this was a human-only world.

Just like before, the new context triggered another violent download of Aldric's dormant knowledge. It slammed into my consciousness like a tidal wave of lore. Why couldn't this have come in the first package deal!? It would have been useful information!

My understanding of this world was, it turned out, woefully incomplete. Humanity was just one of the major races. There were others. Hobbits, with their quiet lives and love of good food. Stern, stoic Dwarves, masters of stone and metal. The graceful, long-lived Elves of the ancient forests. The brutish, tribal Orcs of the wastelands.

And, my blood ran cold at the last one, Demons. Actual, literal demons.

"What the fuck," I whispered, stumbling back from the rail, the sword suddenly feeling ten times heavier. "There are demons here?"

"Well of course there are, my lord," Aster said, looking at me with growing concern. "They mostly keep to their kingdom, but you'll find the odd tiefling or cambion in the bigger cities. Most certainly in the Elven kingdom– fast friends those lot are. Are you feeling alright?"

I wasn't. My mind was reeling, spiraling through the implications. My grand plan to become an OP adventurer suddenly seemed a lot more complicated. I hadn't factored in Orcs. I definitely had not factored in goddamn demons.

Just then, Mari, the redhead from the galley, sauntered over, wiping her hands on an apron. She playfully nudged Aster. "Excited to be off this tub, Kellan?" she asked, giving him a wink.

Kellan. Right. Our aliases. I was Arden, a minor noble's son. He was Kellan, my sworn shield. Simple. Believable.

"More than you know," Aster rumbled, a small smile on his face.

Mari then turned her attention to me. "And you, Arden? Ready for a taste of real food? I hear the spiced boar in this city is to die for." She glanced at the hobbit on the dock. "Though you might have to fight one of the little folk for it."

The casual racism was noted and filed away. "I… yes, I suppose so," I managed to say, my brain still trying to reboot. Orcs. Elves. Dwarves. Demons. Hobbits. It was a full house. This wasn't just a gritty medieval world with a game system slapped on. This was a full-blown, high-fantasy kitchen sink.

The possibilities, the dangers, the sheer scope of it all was overwhelming. My plan seemed so naive now. How was I supposed to grind levels when a demon could just pop out of an alleyway and decide to eat my soul for a light snack? This was bad. This was very, very bad. My adventurer career was over before it even began. I was going to die here, probably eaten by something with horns.

My thoughts continued their downward spiral, a frantic pinball of panic bouncing between the different fantasy races. Dwarves are tough. Orcs are scary. Demons are terrifying. Hobbits are… hungry? Elves are…

Wait.

My train of thought slammed on the brakes, did a screeching 180-degree turn, and floored it in the opposite direction.

Elves.

Graceful, long-lived elves. Pointy-eared elves. Legolas-style elves. Arwen-style elves.

The fear, the panic, the existential dread – it all evaporated in an instant, replaced by a single, glorious, all-consuming realization that eclipsed everything else. It was a thought so pure, so powerful, so fundamentally important that it became my new guiding star.

There are elves here.

Cute, pointy-eared elves.

I can get an elf waifu!