酷视tv

-VB-

Crafting an item took time. The product didn\'t just magically appear in my inventory. This was true in life and marginally true in-game.

My Gamer system took a middle approach. While my crafting system was definitely quicker than real life, the skill required me to go through the motions of making the item. Thankfully, I didn\'t require sleep, and so when morning came the next day, I looked down at the result of my work.

[Kettle Hat with leather face cover]

No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Moderate

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the head and is below 10 Damage is negated.

*-20% to damage received

Durability: 20/20

[Bloodstained Bear Fur Cloak]

It smells. No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the back and is below 5 Damage is negated.

*-30% to damage received

Durability: 30/36

[Rough Iron Chestplate]

It looks awful but it does its job.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the chest and stomach and is below 15 Damage is negated.

*-20% to damage received

Durability: 40/40

[Layered Fur Tasset]

No arrow is getting through this.

Grade: Common

*Any penetrating damage aimed at the legs and is below 10 Damage is negated.

*-10% to damage received

Durability: 20/20

[Iron Longsword]

Weighing in at 5 kg and at 1.5 m, anyone who can wield this beast for the duration of an entire battle is a monster.

Grade: Moderate

*+50 Damage *-20% attack speed

Durability: 30/30

[Heavy Iron Dagger]

made from a single piece of iron, it is top heavy and heavy overall.

*+10 Damage

*+50% attack speed

Durability: 15/15

Today, the men of Travaos would set out to join the baron\'s army.

I looked to the side.

[Smoked Common Bream] x20

Tastes pretty bad. Do you have some pepper, bro?

Grade: Bad

[Assortment of Herbs] x20

USed to improve a dish\'s taste

Grade: Common

These should be enough. I mean, the baron was going to feed the soldiers, right?

"God, I\'m an idiot," I muttered to myself as I sat up.

As one, all of those items in front of me and on the table disappeared and equipped themselves on me as I pressed a single [Equip All] function that appeared when I had all of the armors and weapons in front of me.

Then I left my new home.

-VB-

"Oh, you are volunteering to fight?"

The herald was still here in the village to my surprise, so I had gone straight to him. We were away from the rest of the villagers right now, talking behind one of the houses where the herald had his horse kept. Unlike yesterday, he did not wear the tabard representing his lord\'s house but a gambeson.

"Yes," I grunted while holding my armor to my side. "But I want some guarantees in loot. Consider it a pay for me. Instead of paying this mercenary with gold, you give him scrap."

The herald seemed to think about it for a moment before smiling. "I am sure that His Excellency will accept such an offer. Of course, I have to ascertain exactly how good of a fighter you are first."

I raised an eyebrow. "What would you have me do?" I asked.

"Alex here is a man-at-arms of the baron," he spoke as he stepped aside and a blonde-haired and squared jawed man, obviously the man-at-arms, stepped up. "Don\'t lose to him for two minutes. While our good man here is better as a cavalryman than a footsoldier, he is still an adept fighter."

"... alright."

"Excellent!"

"I want that promise in writing in German."

Alex and I stepped away from the house and off the road onto a grassy patch of unused land.

By this time, some of the villagers had gathered to see what was going on.

Dressed in red and white gambeson, Alex brought out a one-handed warhammer and a buckler.

I inspected the man briefly.

[Alexander von Lantsch]

Title: Man-at-arms of Baron of Vaz

LvL.17

Age: 28

HP: 150

MP: 0

ST: 75

STR: 15

END: 15

AGI: 12

DEX: 11

INT: 9

CHA: 12

So… was he strong? I couldn\'t tell just from those stats. He was definitely above average, but not that much above most people. He must have some combat skills.

"Start fighting in 3…!" the herald counted us off. "2-!" Alright, let\'s try not to stand out too much. "1-!" I\'m here to keep the chief alive. "Fight!"

He approached me first before going for a strike with his buckler.

I dodged it before dodging again as he tried to guide me into the range of his warhammer. Skipping back after dodging, I stopped and charged in.

Alex waited for me, and when I struck horizontally, he parried.

But I brought it right back towards him.

My ability to reassert momentum through sheer strength caught him off guard and he arrived again, but I could see him wincing.

Of course, he would be. My sword was 5 kg in weight, which was double that of most swords.

He timed his parry and struck forward with his warhammer.

This time, I d-.

"Stop!"

Both of us stopped, and Alex saw the tip of my blade in front of him. When he had attacked forward, I had jumped back and brought my blade towards him and stopped. My longsword being longer had put him at my mercy.

"It\'s clear that you are skilled and strong. I will be glad to speak on your behalf."

I pulled my sword back and sheathed it into its scabbard, and then nodded to the herald. "My thanks."

"Hans!"

I looked over my shoulder and saw Derrick along with his father, and then I saw two women with them. One woman was old as the chief, and had to be his wife. The other was younger than Derrick. She had some pock marks that I was familiar with; they were scars from small pox infection. It was something most people had, whether it was on their face or other parts of their body.

Even so, the little scars she had didn\'t take away from her overall prettiness.

Turning back to Derrick, I frowned as I pulled my leather facemask down. "What, you annoying bug?" I grumbled.

"I thought -. I thought-?"

Great, he\'s confused.

"I\'m just here to earn myself some money and iron. Don\'t mistake this for anything. I ain\'t doing you any favor," I drawled. "I didn\'t get picked for the levy, which means that if they want someone like me to fight, then they should pay me. Besides, I only arrived at the edge of the valley like a week ago, so I shouldn\'t even be part of the village yet, right? I still got in line, though, and drew the lot, so the baron can\'t make too much fuss about it," I said before pulling out my sword and showing them all a little trick.

I spun it.

I spun it faster than any normal human could. Spun it so fast that I began to generate a small gust.

The herald and the men-at-arms looked at me with wide eyes, but they schooled their features rather well.

The villagers looked at me in awe.

I stopped and twirled the sword.

"This thing is twice the weight of most swords out there," I added. "Imagine what a knight would look like after I hit them with it."

"May I…?" Alex asked me.

I nodded and handed him the sword.

He held it up, and I saw a trickle of a sweat running down the side of his face before he gave it back to me.

"... You must be a veteran of many battlefields."

I chuckled. "Only a few skirmishes."

I did have to fight off a trio of bandits on my way here from Ourzcvelt, so I wasn\'t lying despite the fact that they died so easily. They were the people who generously donated all of their leather goods that I used to make the furnace bellow.

The man snorted as he returned the sword. "... Let me reintroduce myself. I am the Master-At-Arms under the employ of Baron Fredrick IV of Vaz."

I blinked just as the rest of the villagers murmured in surprise.

A master-at-arms was basically the trainer and leader of all of the men-at-arms. This guy was basically a local bigwig.

I sheathed the sword and gave him a more respectful nod. "Well met, then."

He grinned as he extended a hand. I shook it.

"Would you like to come and work for the baron?"

My answer was quick and absolute.

"No."

Alex laughed as our hands parted. "I had a feeling," he said with clear disappointment in the loss of opportunity in his voice. "Still, you have offered yourself to fight in the coming conflict, so we will work together. Who knows? I might be able to convince you otherwise."

"Fat chance of that. I got a home of my own to build in that valley over there," I gestured.

A lot of the people present turned to look.

"... Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah."

"That\'s the Fluela Valley where it goes to meet the Fluela Pass. Bandits are known to come from there…" the chief replied.

I raised an eyebrow. I hadn\'t known about that.

I glanced back towards the valley I had decided to call my home.

I turned back and smiled. It was a smile filled with teeth.

"I\'m sure I could take care of them."

After that, those of us called to war left Travaos.

To Vaz.

-VB-

When "European conflicts" come up in conversation, a normal person might think of the likes of World War I, World War II, Napoleonic Wars, or even Hundred Years War. People memorialized those wars, and the stories of huge armies fighting one another across a theater of war spanning entire nations certainly possessed a morbid romanticism to them.

However, the reality of the average European conflict carried none of those characteristics.

It was petty, small, and almost universally forgotten except by those who lost something in it.

This "war" was a good example of such.

The master-at-arms Alex was very keen on getting on my good side (to hire me), so he shared a lot more details than what the average person knew.

The current Prince-Bishop of Chur was not a greedy man, according to many of the men I travelled with, but he was a staunch ardent believer in the power of the church and that it was his duty as one of the principal shepherds of the Alps to consolidate the power of the church and take power away from the nobles who cared less about the people.

When one puts the situation like that, the prince-bishop certainly sounded like a good guy.

But the Baron of Vaz wasn\'t a bad guy either. In fact, he sounded like the guy in the right in this conflict. The cause of the conflict was a land owned by a free noble between the barony and the prince-bishopric. The said noble died in some conflict in the Lowlands up north and left not a single heir or relative to inherit.

By de jure, the land belonged to the baron under the Barony of Vaz. However, the prince-bishop was proclaiming that since many of the serfs and freeman living and renting the land, respectively, are parishioners of the Prince-Bishopric of Chur - because a church under said prince-bishop was closer to said land under both the Diocese of Chur, which was under the Bishop of Chur, which was different from the civil authority of the Prince-Bishopric of Chur, which was also under the Bishop of Chur, that had no civil authority to demand that the land be added to the Prince-Bishopric of Chur.

Essentially, the baron demanded what was rightfully his, and the prince-bishop wanted what he thought was best for the people in the disputed area.

"So…"

"Hmm?"

"Who has the lower tax rate?"

The herald looked offended by the question while Alex chuckled.

"Typical mercenary. Everything in your head is about money," the herald spat.

I shrugged. "I mean, what\'s land if not an indirect revenue of money?" I replied irreverently. "Rights and deeds are all about protecting that source of revenue."

Ding!

Huh?

[Your words have rung true with your audience(33) and earned yourself a +1 CHA]

… Thirty-three people are listening in on us?

I looked around. Heads quickly turned away.

… Could I farm some charisma like this? I mean, this was the first quest-independent stat gain I\'ve had in … three years.

I doubted it. I have tried it before in similar circumstances, and it never repeated. Having a system that\'s actually balanced itself sucked as a Player, let me tell you.

"Ah, there\'s Vaz."

I turned to look ahead of the troops and saw the seat of the barony\'s namesake.

It was a small walled city. It was bigger than any of the farming villages that I have been in and lived in, but compared to even the smallest cities from modernity, it was a pathetic city.

"I assume there\'s about… a thousand or two people living in that town?" I asked Alex.

"Yes. You have a good head on you," he hummed approvingly. "A good head, combat experiences, and good weapons. What don\'t you have?" he asked jokingly.

I responded to that seriously. "A harem of women."

He laughed.

It took us two hours to reach the town on foot, but we got there just as the sun started to set. The village levies and I were all led to barracks deeper inside the town, which was right next to a small hill that a small keep had been built on.

Just as I was about to settle in for the night (because training any skills in a populated city throughout the night was not going to happen to prevent standing out too much), Alex found me first I could tuck in for the night.

"The baron wants to see you."

Well, there goes not standing out.

-VB-

Fredrick looked across the table at the would-be mercenary.

When Alex, Fredrick\'s cousin twice removed, returned with the herald from the farthest villages for his levies, he met with Fredrick and spoke very adamantly about trying his best to employ Hans into the service of the barony.

Normally, such a minor affair would be left to Alex, but his cousin insisted that he should be the one to make a favorable deal with this mercenary.

And after what he had seen from this Hans just half an hour ago at the training grounds outside, he knew that Alex had been right to advise him as he had.

How many knight\'s could claim to beat back five men-at-arms by themselves while fighting with the same equipment?

Fredrick, too, had been mesmerized by the fluidity and the grace of the faints, parry, dodges, and strikes. Some happened too quickly. Others dragged on like a dance before ending with a flash of wood and a slap of wood on leather. At times, Hans used the numbers against his men.

Hans was a knight, a warrior, unknown and without peer. If he had him in his service…

"You only desire what would have already been your right to loot as your payment?" he asked incredulously. "\'As much as you can carry\'?" he read the contract.

"Yes, Your Excellency. While coins would be nice, my home in the Fluela Valley is far enough and I am self-sufficient enough that coins would rot in my home for years to come," the supposedly peasant man explained himself fluently. "While I imagine that I would eventually gain iron and steel on my own, this conflict, should it come to pass, presents a faster and easier method of obtaining iron for myself in bulk."

"And what do you plan to use those irons for?"

"Components for my tinkering projects, Your Excellency."

Fredrick blinked.

"You are a very odd man."

Hans merely sent him a goofy smile. "I am a little odd, yes."

"Are you sure you won\'t join my retinue? I can offer everything here in this contract and more! I am sure that my daughter\'s would be eager to meet you, too. And a plot of land closer to the heart of the barony and even Chur would help you as well."

"I am fine with my home in the gorges, Your Excellency. Perhaps I might sell my service again as a mercenary, but I wish to return home after this war to further cement my place there."

The man refused again and again.

… he would have to bide his time. Perhaps Hans would encounter a problem in the future that would be too much for him. He would step in then and earn the man\'s gratitude. Then he wouldn\'t be able to refuse.

Sighing, Fredrick picked up the dove feather pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and signed off with a flourish.

Hans did something else. He wetted flat of his thumb and then pressed down on the contract where the signature should be.

"Why do you not sign?"

Hans smiled and pointed at his inked thumb. "Because no one can copy this, Your Excellency."

And that\'s how Fredrick learned more than he ever wanted to know about fingerprints.