The days that followed that initial reaction from the city regarding the ongoing war were spent pretty peacefully. Kary would wake up early in the morning, jogging for a little while on the manor grounds before eating a hearty breakfast while chatting with the very unprofessional (but very fun to be around) maid. After that, she would leave for the guild, getting as much done during the day as she was able to, though it wasn’t uncommon for some particularly annoying quests that took many days to complete, just because they were requests for absurd amounts of various stuff. Even things that normally wouldn’t take her even a few minutes to get done once she was in the right area, like killing that weird little monster she had encountered while foraging for mushrooms, had grown to become just one more annoying task after it was revealed that she was required to bring back fifty of those little creatures to the guild. Now, it was true that she had been told explicitly that there was no need to get it all done in one go, as doing as such would only bring unnecessary trouble both to her and the guild, since they would have to go through all of them instead of presenting their polite smiles and useful information to whatever adventurers happened to be inside the hall. Why exactly were the clerks the ones responsible for that task, Kary didn’t know, nor had she any desire to find out at the moment, for the hell they had thrusted upon her were more than enough to occupy whatever little time she would have been using to ponder about such useless things.

  There was nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy about her routine, at least nothing that involved her, so most of the time she simply slipped into a trance, slaughtering defenseless (not really) creatures or doing physical labor in exchange for pennies, in a weird boundary between the physical world and her mind, just out of reach that she didn’t need to process the world around her, and just close enough that she could return to full control once she needed to. To do menial things like those in such a mechanical manner, it was an useful skill she had picked up from doing exactly that. Cramming useless concepts inside her head day in and day out, she somehow managed to stay at the top of her school year, even if it meant that she wouldn’t retain a single thing from those long, dreadful hours of studying, except, of course, the subjects that actually interest her, in which case she wouldn’t exactly study in the more traditional manner, rather choosing to watch videos and read Wikipedia late at night when no one would be awake to bother her. It was… an unsatisfying few months, to say the least, and, in a way, she was glad they were over. On the other, these few boring days she had been having inevitably made her think that she had somehow only retained the bad habits from her previous life, still doing things she didn’t want to just because she had been told it would be the best for her. At least this time it seemed to be true. Different from her first life, the people around her seemed to actually care for her, encouraging her and pointing out things that she could be doing better. It was such a breath of fresh air compared to how she was treated during her time on Earth, so much so that she didn’t even mind doing these odd jobs if it meant that they would be happy. That was just how much she had grown attached to Asteria, to Marta, to that guild clerk whose name she had already forgotten, to everyone who tried to treat her somewhat good.

  Although some might argue that she had grown too close to them too fast, Kary didn’t care a single bit. As she worked her way through the daunting tasks separating her from a rookie to an actual adventurer, her mind still went for those who had allowed her to be there in the first place. Heck, if not for Asteria, she would’ve been dead on the same day she had arrived in this world! In her mind, if someone were to experience everything she had gone through after arriving in this fantasy land and still choose to distance themselves from the nice people they had met along the way, Kary would only be able to wonder what in the world was wrong with them. After all the hell she had gone through on both of her lives, it was refreshing to see things finally change, though it did seem like the deity of misfortune wasn’t willing to let her leave its grasps just yet. After all, as much as she wanted to simply ignore everything and focus solely on adventuring, it was undeniable that there was a very real war going on right at this moment, while she was leisurely walking around the now deserted city. Having seen how the streets, the plaza, the market, everything was supposed to look like, it was nothing short of eerie to see everything as deserted as it was now, with only women and knights walking through the cobble ground, their proportions horribly tilted to the side of the men covered in metal. It had been a bizarre experience to see in real time the number of knights patrolling the streets increase from only a few scattered through what Kary would assume would be the most needed points in the city, be it because of a high crime frequency or simply to keep those who might harbor ill intentions at bay, to the only thing she saw when going out. It seemed unnecessary and wasteful and, frankly, quite scary to see those towering figures with sharp swords dangling from their sides at every corner, their eyes hidden by their helmets, their semblance a cold mask of militaristic cruelty. While going to and from the guild, the question about their purpose naturally arose, but, without anyone willing to share a factual reason, there was no amount of speculation that had satisfied her creative and curious mind.

  What was undeniable was the fact that the capital city of a presumably important country had transformed from a bustling center of commerce and knowledge to a military base overnight. The streets had been emptied, remaining only the metallic noise of the patrolling knights. Carriages had stopped appearing altogether, the influx and efflux of both people and merchandise coming to a dead stop as a natural consequence of this. It was as if the capital had been anchored in time and space, forced to remain locked away from the rest of the world in some sort of stasis, where no one dared to leave and no one was allowed to enter. For anyone who wasn’t a registered adventurer and hadn’t yet been drafted to the military, it was nigh impossible to go outside the city, the hulking masses of metal blocking the passage for anyone who would even dare to think of leaving. It all seemed… excessive, in Kary’s opinion, but it wasn’t her job to judge the way the country was run. In the end, she was nothing more than a random adventurer affiliated with it, her opinion mattering the exact same as the peasants hiding in their houses out of fear, though of what she had yet to discover. So far the most that the knights roaming around the streets had done to her was stare menacingly, but even then they didn’t approach her, allowing Kary to go about with her day undeterred. Maybe they did that because adventurers were the only people making the economy run these past few days, since nobody dared to leave the safety of their houses if they didn’t need to, or maybe they simply didn’t care enough about her to be bothered with doing anything. Whatever the case, it seemed like they wouldn’t be doing anything to her anytime soon, letting her roam free and do her easy, albeit extremely annoying, tasks.

  By the end of it all, once she had completed all ‘trial’ quests she was required to do before being officially recognized as a guild member, she could understand perfectly why these menial quests were pushed towards the rookies, as no sane adventurer that had even an ounce of self-respect would desire to go anywhere near them. Some were time-consuming, others were annoying to get done, and others were simply easy enough that even a kid capable of understanding basic instructions would be able to get it done in no time at all. And then there were the ones who were all that cranked up to eleven. Ugh, how despicable. But now those days of suffering in the sadistic hands of the guild employees was over, and she could finally start doing actual quests, and not the city-beautifying requests cleverly disguised as tasks she had been forced to for all week. This newfound feeling was freeing, it was liberating, and it was extremely brief. In hindsight, she should have seen it coming from a mile away, but alas, she hadn’t, and now she was swamped with more menial tasks despite her rank being upgraded from F to E. After a little bit of arguing and butting heads with the guild clerks, she eventually found out that there was currently an ongoing adventurer shortage, as most of the men who were doing their job for the guild had been dragged into training grounds and stuffed inside heavy metal suits, from where they would never leave. Well, hopefully that was not the case, but, considering Kary never once saw a knight taking off their helmet, she was beginning to believe in her own conspiracy theory.

  It was annoying, the fact that even though she made sure to stay as far away as she reasonably could from the fires of war, it had still managed to burn her, even if it was barely a first-degree burn. If she, an adventurer who boasted more liberty than most of the citizens living in the capital, still felt the effects of the faraway war progressing right as we speak, then it was only fair that the folks who had spent their entire lives in a sort of awkward peace and were suddenly thrown into a full-blown war would be terrified. Heck, Kary feared for her life every time she left the city. Even inside the walls that were supposed to protect and comfort, a sense of dread still lingered, the men of steel always watching, their eyes never letting her presence go unnoticed. Somehow, the atmosphere felt even more restricting than the one in her old world, where security cameras were everywhere and every little movement one did would be stored and watched by a being unseen. At least back then she knew that those very being still had a heart in them. As for the ones staring at her from the corners of the slits on their helmets, she wasn’t so sure anymore. They never spoke, not even to each other, and they seemed to have enough stamina to endure an entire day under the sun inside their bulky armor without rest, a fact that Kary had dedicated an entire day to uncover. Although it would be foolish to even attempt to track down their patterns and routines in order to be prepared should the worst happen, the least she could do was try to get a grasp on their physical abilities, though perhaps she would be better blissfully unaware. Now, every time she walked past either a single or a pair of knights patrolling the streets, her mind inadvertently went right back to their bizarre, almost unnatural prowess.

  Laying down on her bed after another day of running around, Kary found herself unable to sleep, everything that was going on within viewing distance and far, far away finally catching up to her, thoughts on the current state of affairs preventing her eyes to close. It was inevitable and, in a way, it was impressive that it had taken over a week for everything to come crashing down on her. Staring at the gaudy ceiling that decorated her room, feeling the soft mattress covering her body like a warm hug, the comfy bed she was laying on, as still as a corpse, her semblance half obscured by the night seeping in through the closed window morphed between various expressions, her face muscles contorting and combining to convey her deepest worries to nobody in particular. With the door and windows closed, alone in the simple room she had claimed as hers, she finally allowed herself to slip out of the mask she had grown so used to wearing, the arched eyes, the slight smile, the face of someone unbothered by the world around her that she had carefully crafted over years and years of shelving her own emotion deep within her, knowing full well that she would never have the opportunity to take them out of their metaphorical shelf again, everything that allowed her to go day by day without going insane giving way to something she didn’t quite understand yet. It was uncomfortable and unsettling, like an itch that seemed to have no cause, and yet existed precisely on a spot untouchable by one’s own hand, tauting them, mocking from a safe distance. It was the understanding that there was something going on, a feeling still unexplored by the youngling, a new sensation to which she wasn’t accustomed to. She didn’t even know what to name it, even less what to make of it.

  For now, though, she could only sigh and overthink these little things, these little distractions from everything that was going on around her. No matter how much she tried to convince her that life would be a-okay, that everything would turn out alright, there was a limit to how deluded she could make herself, and, well, the constant frustration of being forced on lower rank quest, the eeriness of the barely alive city, the fear on the faces of the non-knights she did encounter… it was pretty impressive that Kary had even managed to last this long, when most people had already holed up in their homes from rumors alone. Not that the girl was particularly brave or courageous or anything like that, it was just that she didn’t yet knew the magnitude of the dumpster fire that had begun to burn right in her backyard. The realization tarded, but when it came, oh boy, it arrived with the intensity of a pack of bricks hitting her square in the gut. She wasn’t in her world anymore, where wars happened far away from her, in countries she most of the time didn’t even bother to remember, the only knowledge about them that she had being the occasional news broadcast being suddenly recommended to her despite her having nothing to do with them, It was worrying, sure, but it was impossible for her, in her immense disinterest, to properly understand the dimensions of what she was seeing from the tiny screen of her old mobile phone. Now, though? If before she had been allowed to ignore these ongoing conflicts around the world, in her current state there was no way she could afford to do that. Sure, she wasn’t in the front lines themselves, but she was in the dead center of this conflict. She had seen with her very eyes the fear and misery that came with the war, and she was on the capital of the country! For all intents and purposes, she was in the epicenter, the economical and cultural sinkhole of this country, which should be relatively unaffected by the armed skirmishes. But no. People were afraid to even leave their houses, knights littered the streets, their shiny plate armors blinding Kary at every turn she made, their quantity bigger than the amount of specks of dust she lifted up every time she had to circumvent one of the emotionless beings.

  Unable to simply fall asleep, she wondered where everything would lead her. She wanted to travel around the world, that had been her objective ever since she had been dropped into this world, but it had taken her this long to realize that it wouldn’t be that easy. Of course it wouldn’t. When was life ever easy for her? Sure, from a purely materialistic standpoint, she had had everything she could ever want. On Earth, she had a house to go back to, food to keep her fed, a decent enough school to get her education out of, even an ancient phone she had gotten from her dad, before he disappeared into the wild to never come back. Objectively, there was nothing missing in her life, not even friends, even though it was just one and to this day she still failed to understand what had possessed the girl to approach her, not that she would complain. In the dark and frankly pathetic life she had led up until that point, Liz had been a ray of sunlight that, albeit not strong enough to fully disperse the shadows that clogged Kary’s vision, was more than enough to provide her with much needed respite. Still, life was rough, to the point where she had been kind of excited to get transported to another world, where no one knew her, and she knew no one. A blank slate, so to speak, with which she could fill with whatever she liked, with whatever grand adventure she wanted to embark on. For how weird Limo had been during their postmortem talk, he seemed to have given her an actual opportunity to fulfill all her dreams that had gone unrealized in her old world, to the point where she didn’t even know what those were until she dedicated time on the comfort and familiarity of the expedition group she had come to know in order to find out. Staring at the ceiling, Kary couldn’t help snort at the idea that she genuinely thought that Limo was a benevolent god, behind that mask of madness, a being who honestly wanted to see her doing better… before throwing her in the jaws of death somewhere far from civilization in a country itching to go to war. Well, as they say, life finds a way… she just hoped she would find hers before something killed her. With a sleepy sigh, she decided to just go to sleep, after all, too much thinking couldn’t be good for her health, right?

  That’s the cycle she repeated for the following weeks: wake up, eat, go to the guild, get a low ranking mission that could be completed within a reasonable time span, work to try and complete it in the same day if at all possible, get back to the manor, eat again, and lay awake on her bed, thinking about the constant worsening of the situation, something she hadn’t really thought would happen, given the already exaggerated militarization of the city. Somehow, someone in power had decided that bumping into lumps of metal with frying people inside whenever one decided to take a walk through the city (not that doing such a thing was particularly common) still wasn’t enough to sate their… well… whatever it was that they were trying to accomplish. Kary wasn’t so sure herself, so she could only speculate, discarding the already proven false theories, such that they were doing that to impress the population or to coerce the few remaining hiding men to come out and join the military. Heck, she didn’t even know where in the world they were taking all this metal from or why they were using it to such a seemingly wasteful purpose. She had even thought about these men of metal being golems, automatons moved by some weird and probably complicated magic, emotionless and brutal, ready for anything and everything a dissident might throw at it, its mechanical body hidden by the bulky armor. It was… more plausible than some of the other theories she had crafted in her bedroom, but that still wouldn’t explain the absolute terror in the people’s expression, or why they insisted on being holed in their homes. Perhaps she had missed a memo somewhere, and now she was the weird one, walking around almost like there wasn’t anything wrong going on, or perhaps some sort of information had been making its rounds around the city, yet somehow never quite reaching her ears. Not that her lack of information-gathering ability was anything particularly new, but by this point she should probably have heard something, right? And yet, the only think she could hear whenever she went outside were the dull steps of the knights on the dirt and the clinking of their armor parts colliding together.

  For a while, she even entertained the idea that everything would be back to normal, that she would be able to see Asteria again, even though she knew that such thoughts were foolish at best, since, by this point, it was likely that the knight hadn’t even reached the border where the conflict was happening yet. But still, while doing her dull chores issued by the guild, she still held on to that hope, that this was but a period of turbulence that would soon be over. Foolish indeed. Naive, perhaps. Most definitely delusional. After all, somehow, despite the continuously building tension the city, she completely failed to predict the knights next move. Even if she could be excused by her lack of knowledge on the cultural norms and country history, there should have been some pretty obvious tells, and yet somehow all of them went right over her head, the thick, almost sticky air of the city only mildly bothering her at best, a small hindrance that didn’t really affect much of her day to day life. Sure, it was creepy and it was scary and it was nerve-wrecking to go anywhere at all with all the knights roaming around and no normal people to be seen on the streets apart from other oddballs like her and beggars who had nowhere else to go, but she kind of just delegated all this to a remote corner of her mind in order to carry on with her day without breaking down in the middle of the heavily fortified streets, even the theory-crafting with a sprinkle of existential dread before each night would be mostly a diluted versions of whatever had happened during the day, and not a proper, serious, in depth questioning of the motives of the knights of the nobles. Of course, she would go on nonsensical trains of thought, jumping from absurd questions to even more absurd conclusions, consistently reaching nowhere at all.

  Truth be told, she was afraid. She might not have been aware of this yet, but she was terrified of the prospects that would come with the continuation of the war and perhaps something more. The future scared her, so she simply chose to not think too deeply about it, instead shifting her focus to meaningless thing with which she could spend her time. What should she even do right now? She was had been caught in the middle of a war she didn’t want to have anything to do with, in a country she couldn’t care less about even if she tried, in a world she knew almost nothing about as of right now. Things were progressing fast and she had no idea about what was happening, in what state were the frontiers, if there was any threat to her life or to the capital, if Asteria was safe, if she would be able to move around with more freedom any time soon. If, if, if, nothing but if’s and yet there was no one there to answer her. The only person she had grown to trust over the months she had spent in this new reality was now gone, with no certainty that she would ever be back. How could a sensible person be able to react to all this without breaking down in despair? Of course they couldn’t. To expect anything more would be to expect the person in question to not be ordinary, after all. It’s only human to cower when staring right in front of the unknown, especially if that unknown in question could very well lead to her own death. So, if a normal person, from a normal household, with relatively normal problems and concerns, would be at the very least uneasy about this situation and everything it entailed, then one could only imagine everything Kary kept suppressed deep within her mind, exerting every last bit of her unconsciousness to keep it that way. But deluding herself could only take her so far, and, with the steady progression of tension, things were bound to go south sooner or later. Of course, with Kary’s luck, the escalation of the conflict that she had been so worried about happened not even a month into the war, a month since the city had gone into lock down and most of its men had been whisked away by the military, either shipped to the border or kept in the city itself for reasons that had finally made themselves clear.

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  It was a seemingly random night, like any other that had gone by before. Nothing particularly special about it, nothing that made it stand out, with whoever had the courage to spend their afternoon walking around the barren city by this point having either already gone to sleep or simply spending the last minutes of their day before meeting with Morpheus. The streets remained vacant, its only inhabitants the knights still diligently patrolling around, raising clouds of dust as they loudly marched from one intersection to the other, their steps presenting no sign of the exhaustion one would expect from someone who had spent the entire day walking around under the sun with a bulky armor like that, whatever expressions they wore hidden behind the unchanging mask that was their helmet, a protection both physical and psychological. A watching bystander might feel inclined to whisper about everything unnatural that was going on right in front of their eyes, but there was no one there to tell the tale, not a single soul that had not been dragged and fused into the armor itself, not one peasant, merchant, or noble remained in the limelight to see what was coming to fruition, the puppeteer at last revealing its grand plan to the audience, who, after weeks and weeks of building tension, already felt like their hearts were about to burst, their curiosity about to crash into the ceiling, their worse fears at the verge of seeing the light of day. And they were right to be afraid, for when the clock at the central plaza stroke midnight, what once was nothing more than a night at random, another unimportant moment in the lives of many (well, only if one were to disregard the extreme distress under which they were), suddenly turned into something else, something sinister, and macabre, a terribly putrid atmosphere settling down on the capital city with terrifying speed. From one moment to the other, separated only by the toll of the bells under the silent veil of the night, the scattered knight, with no prompting or communication that might facilitate any explaining, started congregating at the plaza, their movements robotic and unnatural, following the same set path as the iron behemoths in front of them, a perfectly orderly line perfectly in sync with each other, from the pace with which they walked to the height their shoulder reached at the peak of their movement, their heavy steps reverberating through the empty night, letting everyone still awake that something was happening, and that they better remain quietly in their houses.

  And so, in the dead of the night, the mechanical humanoids disguised as righteous knights of the kingdom marched, perfectly organizing themselves in the spacious plaza in flanks that would make even a seasoned war general jealous, such was their perfection. Once they had all left their posts and were all occupying the space in the center and the adjacent streets, they all started their synchronous march, making pebbles fly from the rumbling floors and confused citizens wake up in a panic. But, despite being employed as protectors of the kingdom, these men under the suits of iron couldn’t care less about the well being about the general populace, their thoughts one and only, shared across them all in an unspoken manner, for it needed not to be said aloud. They all knew what needed to be done, and they were all ready to give their lives to achieve it, the knowledge that their companions might finish the job their started fueling their death march towards the noble district through the spacious road that lead directly to the castle. They cared not for the frightened women and children carefully peeking through their doors, watching with wide eyes as a procession of knight passed right through them, too afraid to open their doors even a little bit more, as their wants were more… grand, ambitious, more centered in a cause that, should it be explained to the citizens, they would only look even more confused then they already were. It was impossible to explain to the average citizen, who barely even knew the alphabet to begin with, the inner workings of the fruit they had worked so hard to obtain, the prize that had for so long been tauting them, just out of reach from their grubby hands, a singular concept, so ingrained into their minds that they couldn’t see themselves pursuing anything else. That had become their lives’ objective, and they wouldn’t let anyone say otherwise. Not that there should be anyone willing to contradict their words after tonight.

  With a unified sense of purpose, they marched on, slowly going up the streets, passing through empty stalls gathering dust by the side of the stone road, their feet mercilessly trampling on anything and everything that still had the gall to block their path, be it an inanimate object or a small creature of the night who had simply been caught in the sudden confusion. The death match continued all the way until the procession reached the lavish mansions inhabited by the capital’s richest men and women, the residence of both prominent merchants and nobles alike, a breeding ground for connections and the easiest way for these folks to show the world their power and opulence, their shamelessness second to none when it came to make very clear the difference in status that separated them from the normal folk working at whatever it was theta the common rabble used to occupy their worthless time. For too long these gaudy people had hogged all the power to themselves, unilaterally making decisions not for the betterment of the country, but for the aggrandizement of their own vaults, neglecting anything that came from those whom they had deemed below them, be it the knights, who worked tirelessly to prevent the conflict with the empire from blowing over despite being constantly shunned by their lower hierarchical status within the nobility pyramid, or the men and women who actually made the country work when the nobles incompetence reached its peak. They had been warned, time and time again, that the way they were doing things would eventually backfire when the population grew tired of being milked to their last coin, that holding an exclusively defensive line against the monster that was the neighboring empire, of which they themselves had been part of not even three generations ago, would only lead to a large number of casualties on their side. And yet, despite these concerns raised by the best scholars within the capital and the most experiences military men that still remembered the fight for independence, backed by years worth of studies and analysis and simulation run through using the combination of the unique magic abilities held by the cream of the top, nothing was done to mitigate the impending doom.

  They simply let it happen. And so it happened. All it took were some high-ranking officials getting shut down by the high nobility one to many times, and for one of them to have certain connections that allowed their influence to reach far and wide, from the most rural town to the very center of their country, a coup ordained out of hate and distaste for the passivity of the current administration, a systematic dislike bred in the interior of the training institutions and amplified tenfold by the work of that one very crucial connection, through the works of whom this revolution had finally come to fruition. The plan was quite simple, despite the logistical complication that they had encountered on the way. Simply remove the nobles from their seats of power in the quickest way possible, whatever it may be, no matter how much violence might be involved. Of course, some would receive more gruesome treatments than others, like having their entire bloodline massacred, but that didn’t mean the rest of the nobles would be exempt from punishment either. After all, each closed mouth, each side glance, each head turn was a wordless compliance to everything that was happening, and so these people all needed to go. Any resistance would be rendered moot and their assets would all be seized, their bodies displayed on the central plaza as a warning to anyone who might think of anything funny. The country was currently at the start of a war, and the last thing they needed were unnecessary internal conflicts born by the unrest of the population.

  Without the need for neither words nor gestures, the clunky metal figures separated into perfect formations, storming the gates of the various mansions in systematic fashion, leaving the bunk of its forces to fight the inevitable resistance they would encounter at the palace. With the force of ten men inhibited by their fragile sense of self, the weakest of the gates quickly fell, the metal bars made to prevent pesky peasants from getting to close flattening the grass below with a sonorous thud, its ornamented iron, never made to properly protect as much as it was made to scare and amaze, reduced to muddy scraps under the armored boots. Under the watchful gaze of the moon, they barged into the homes, swords at the ready, their blood lust just as oppressive as the central plaza’s atmosphere was just minutes prior. They moved fast, scouring the manor, searching room by room with no reason nor rhyme, not even a semblance of quietude to be seen in their tactics, a quite unpleasant wake-up alarm for the nobles who peacefully slept the night away, now brought back to the sound of clanking armor and slamming doors, nervous sweat dripping down their fancy night gowns as they gathered their thoughts. Under the threat of losing their lives, there was nothing they wouldn’t be willing to do in order to salvage everything they had built up leading up to this point, even if it meant some collateral damage might occur, even if it meant that their houses, their pride and joy and the clearest symbol of their status would end up destroyed. With the single-minded desire for survival, these desperate men, who had gone to the very best academies and training regiments their families could afford, prepared their deadliest weapons, using the fact that they had not yet been discovered to prepare everything they could until the inevitable clash. Despite not having any swords around, as it would be quite frankly bizarre to sleep anywhere close to such a mortal weapon, the nobles still had their magic, the legacies from their families, the power that ran through their veins, intensified by generation after generation of inbreeding and associating with other equally-strong houses. And thus, when all the pieces fell into place, with the rhythmic sound of the iron boots compressing the ground as the knights continued their march up the streets, barging into more manors and getting closer and closer to the royal palace, that was when the fireworks exploded.

  In quick succession, windows broke, walls became intertwined with roots, ceilings and walls fell to the ground in large chunks, small tornadoes formed, bright, blue fire illuminated the night,. Darkness covered a certain house just in time for the intruders not to notice the earth itself moving unnaturally on the neighboring house. Thanks to their initial success on the more remote areas of the country, the people in charge had grown confident, certain that they would be able to take down the greedy nobility that for too long had shunted down their plans in the name of making a larger profit or increasing their own regional power, neglecting in their glee the specificities that had allowed them to secure such easy victories. When the mood was joyous and the men were plenty, that was when they decided to attack, betting on getting everything done quickly through the use of large numbers. To put it simply, it was hell for both sides. The knights, unfeeling and uncaring, weren’t particularly hard to deal with on their on, for they were mostly just normal people who had been taken into knighthood, their ability and experience lacking in every sense of the word. When the enemy is only able to charge forward with no plan or love for their own lives, there were many ways to deter them. Drowning, piercing their feet and legs, constricting them, putting them under illusions, heating the metal, yup name it there should be at least one noble who had been taught how to kill someone that way. But for the invading forces? They didn’t care if a few of their men died, if some more had become permanently damaged by the magic attacks, their only care was to reach the nobles attacking them by any means necessary. Picking up a falling comrade and seeing their body as a shield? Perfectly valid. Use a dying knight as a stepping stone to reach a mage casting air spells high up in the air? There was nothing wrong with it, now was there?

  Killing machines, all of them. Efficient killing machines. Monsters with no soul or feelings to deter them, only the pragmatism instilled into them. Why should they be bound by their humanity if going without it worked so much better? Why would anyone fight with fear, terror and apprehension, when they could just… not. Just go forward, no matter the cost, no matter the amount of lives lost, no matter the number of innocent souls forever gone, delivered into the hands of the gods to live perhaps a better life in the paradise. If it worked, then there was no reason to stop now, right? They would put to rest this corrupt land, bring an end to the era of nobility and kings and aristocracy, even if it meant the general discontent of their populace. That was okay. They were prepared for it. And so they continued to march forward, uncaring for their companions being killed left and right, uncaring for their friends who returned injured, with armor dented and scratched and pierced. They marched forwards, always onwards. On the name of the greater good.

  It didn’t take them long to reach Asteria’s manor, its gates offering no more resistance than the surrounding houses did, perhaps even less than that. It didn’t matter. They would get in one way or another, it was just that entering from the front was easier and more efficient, a method tried and true and one that was simply just… so easy to perform! It just required enough people to push and pull at the same time for the entire thing, built to be a little more sturdy than a hedge fence, to come crashing down. Without caring for the well-trimmed grass or the neatly arranged flowers along the path to the mansion, the knights simply trampled over all of it, leaving on the well-watered dirt the impression of their boots. Soon they were inside the house, searching, scanning the surrounding rooms and corridors, looking for someone that might look like a noble, just waiting for their opportunity to arise, the right moment for them to attack the person in charge of this quite opulent place, trying their very best to keep innocents out of it. Depending on how the nobles sleeping here reacted, they might even be able to survive the bloodshed! How great would that be? But, for that to even come into question, they needed to find the owner of the mansion, and fast, for the main group storming the palace would need all the help they could get. Of course, Kary wasn’t stupid, and, although she was kind of a heavy sleeper, it wasn’t really possible to remain snoring peacefully in her comfy bed when all hell seemed to have broken loose just outside the house. Things had progressed fast, and it didn’t take long for the first nobles to meet their bloody end, some cut down with sharp swords, others with a stone to the head, but they all fell down, and, from what she had seen from the window in her room, it wouldn’t be long until she herself would be among the causalities. And so she ran.

  Still in her pajamas, she grabbed the sword she had been leaving beneath her bed everyday, perhaps out of some unfounded fear that she might for some reason need it in the middle of the night, perhaps simply because she had gotten attached to it, or perhaps she simply felt safer near the weapon. Whatever reason it may be, it was clear that Kary was prepared for such a bizarre event to happen, though it is doubtful whether she could even had thought of the wide-scale attacks that were happening all around her right now. In the end, regardless of whether she had some sort of psychic ability that wasn’t listed in her list of skills or if her paranoia had simply paid off, it meant that she was ready for confrontation, though she would try her very best to avoid it. She had had her fair share of training with other humans, especially during her time in between being found by Asteria and arriving at her estate, but she would be the first to admit that she had zero confidence when it came to fighting with other people. Heck, she hadn’t even learned how to use her skills reflectively, rendering all the boosts provided by Limo when he allowed her to choose her starting race meaningless! It had been all too sudden, too out of the left field, too quickly for her to prepare in any way, though, thinking about it, that might have been the reason why this attack had been staged to take place at such a late hour, as a way to catch the nobility peacefully sleeping in their bedrooms out of guard. Well, if that had been the objective all along, then they had almost succeeded to catch Kary as well. Were it not for her light sleep and their apparent lack of care for noise, she would probably have either died on her sleep or fallen after a valiant battle for her life, just like many of the nobles had already. But that hadn’t happened, which meant that there was still a chance that she would survive, and this chance, this small, probably tinier than she could ever imagine, she grabbed it with all her might, afraid of what would happen to her should she let it go.

  She didn’t want to die didn’t want this adventure to be over, this life she had been granted in spite of this misery… it was simply too precious to simply throw it away, She had received another opportunity at life, an opportunity to make something actually worth it, and to have that thrown away simply because she was at the wrong place at the wrong time simply didn’t sit well with her. To let her fate be decided by such destiny would be akin to asking for disaster to strike, and, sure enough, here was the disaster, looking for her inside her newfound home, just waiting to find a single clue that could point them in her direction, and her desperation when fleeing was all that they needed. Sound. It’s something thats is very hard to control when one is trying to save their own life. In the heat of the moment, everything becomes blurry, every sensation becomes heightened as one thought, and only one, takes over the rational mind: survive. And so, it was only natural that, on her desperation, Kary couldn’t care less for the amount of noise she was making, the loudness of her footsteps, the sound of her haggard breathing, there was no way to take all that into account when her entire mind was preoccupied trying to maintain her alive and as far away from the dangerous threats lurking in the estate as it possibly could. That was the clue the knight inside the mansion were waiting for, the singular piece that was missing for them to effectively start tracking Kary down. It didn’t matter where she ran to, it didn’t matter where she hid, as long as there was anything to point the hunks of metal in her direction, they would be going after her, though, of course, she had no idea of that just yet. It would be a long night.