Brilliant sunlight poured over the horizon as expected, flooding everything across the land. A new day had arrived.
The sky was unusually clear of clouds. It looked like it was going to be a bright, beautiful day.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a beautiful morning for Ryan — he woke from sleep with a start, just as he had the night before.
The bad news: that sensation of every cell in his body descending into chaos had returned, along with a faint ache in his arm that set him on edge. The good news: the symptoms were noticeably milder than the night before — nothing approaching the heart-pounding, unbearable intensity of then. The new development: this time there was an indistinct voice murmuring in his ear, repeating over and over, never clear enough to make out.
All of it left him profoundly irritable, with a reckless urge to smash something.
Fortunately, it passed quickly. Ryan didn't act on the impulse.
Good news, I suppose. At least it didn't kill me. He rubbed his temples and waited out the headache that felt like it might split his skull.
Perhaps the potion's enhancement of his constitution helped, because the physical discomfort faded quickly. But the irritability, nausea, and low-grade dread lingered, refusing to lift.
Looking out at the cheerful sunlight, Ryan pocketed the 7 sous and 3 pence that were the big idiot's only remaining funds, shut the door, and walked out into the sun. The window? In a run-down building like this, on the near-abandoned city outskirts, the window was barely more than a large hole in the wall — too narrow even for a child to squeeze through. Other than being cheap and isolated, this place had no redeeming qualities.
Sous and pence were the currencies of the Ruen Kingdom. One sou equaled twelve pence. What baffled Ryan was that the larger unit — one pound — equaled twenty sous. And there were also half-pence and quarter-pence denominations.
Wait, haven't I seen this somewhere before?
A broken currency system, was his assessment.
But even in any world, warm sunlight was inherently pleasant, and the weight in his chest lifted a little as he walked into it. If not for that ache from earlier, he'd have been tempted to just stand here for a while. But he had someone to meet — and that person wouldn't be available until after noon. He ran the underground market for supernatural materials, and that market didn't open until afternoon.
Of course, being hungry was also, more immediately, a very important reason to get moving.
As he walked, Ryan reviewed what he knew of the city.
Moen City — a mid-sized, ordinary city in the western part of Ahowa County, in the northern reaches of the Ruen Kingdom. Situated near the Tasok River, the kingdom's largest waterway, but far from the more prosperous central and southern regions and subject to a colder climate. Less affluent, accordingly, than the counties to its south.
The Ruen Kingdom's second city after the capital Beklund — the university city of Tingen — lay in the southern part of Ahowa County.
Given that one of the Ruen Kingdom's two great faiths was the Lord of Storms — the "King of the Sky, Emperor of the Sea, Master of Calamity, God of Storms" — his followers were everywhere. And with the Tasok River, originating in the Mirmsk Mountains to the northwest and emptying into the sea at Pritz Harbor to the southeast, running through the region, river transport was naturally widespread in the Ruen Kingdom. Moen City owed its status as a non-negligible town largely to that river.
One of the Assassin potion's primary ingredients — root tendrils of the Shadow Poisonflower — had been sourced by the big idiot from the city's underground market.
Unlike the Ruen Kingdom's overall east-south-rich, west-north-poor distribution, Moen's wealthier districts were to the north. That was because the Evernight Goddess Church's headquarters — the Tranquil Cathedral — was further north, in the Coldwinter County. More specifically: the northwest district was home to upper-middle-class Storm faithful, given the Tasok River's proximity to the west. The northeast belonged to followers of the Evernight Goddess. The southwest was commonly called the Docklands. The southeast was predominantly working-class.
The room Ryan rented was on the eastern outskirts. Apparently the area had once been slated for eastward expansion — several buildings had been constructed that weren't the standard row-house type typical for lower-income renters. But the plans fell through, and now the area was severely underserved in terms of infrastructure, with uneven, potholed roads. Many of the buildings had been cobbled together from half-finished construction, making some standalone units worse than the cheapest row houses. The whole district shared a single public washroom facility. As a result, only people with specific needs — like Ryan — or families on the verge of bankruptcy would choose to rent there.
Lost in thought, Ryan suddenly heard a set of wheels on the road surface. Unlike the horse-drawn carriages common in this world, the sound came from two wheels positioned front to back — accompanied by the noise of gears and a chain.
He looked up: a bicycle, ridden by a middle-aged police officer with a slight paunch, was coming toward him.
They have bicycles? He was mildly surprised.
Digging through his memory confirmed it. They did — called "pedal-vehicles" here, and still a fairly new form of transportation. They'd only become popular in the last year or two. Unlike steam-powered vehicles — the large, lumbering machines you only ever saw in newspapers — the pedal-vehicle had spread from the capital Beklund to Moen in under three years of existence, thanks to being affordable, practical, compact, and not particularly road-sensitive. If not for the war breaking out, the timeline would have been even shorter.
Apparently police departments in southern cities had already begun issuing them to officers to improve response efficiency. This one, though, was probably the officer's personal property — Moen City had only started floating that idea in the first half of this year, and it was currently only October.
There was nothing particularly astonishing about any of this. Even the big idiot, whose grasp of history was minimal at best, knew that nearly two hundred years ago, the Republic of Intis to the west of the Ruen Kingdom had undergone an industrial revolution comparable to early modern Britain — kicked off by the then-Consul Rosselle, later known as Rosselle the Great, a figure whose legacy remained a touchstone of fascination across nations. Other countries had followed suit only about twenty years behind.
So bicycles, in this context, made sense — probably. Ryan wasn't confident enough in his own historical knowledge to say for certain. His accurate recall of specific dates was limited to a handful of major events.
He stepped off the path as the officer drew near. Police in this era weren't necessarily civil or restrained — especially toward the poor. Out here, there was only one reason for police to visit: to drive out the homeless who couldn't afford rent. Even public parks saw officers chasing away vagrants. This was private land, technically, and the Moen city government still held ownership despite the area's near-abandonment.
He wasn't afraid of trouble — he didn't exactly look approachable right now — but avoiding unnecessary complications was sensible.
Because in this world, the churches exercised extremely strict control over anything connected to the supernatural.
How strict? The big idiot's own experience offered a concrete example. The formula had been in his hands for roughly three years. Yet for about the first year, he'd made zero progress on sourcing the supernatural ingredients. He'd come close to abandoning the whole thing — and if a war hadn't broken out during that period to occupy his mind with something other than gambling, he probably never would have gathered everything.
The war: in October of Year 1350, the Forsaken Empire to the north had launched an airship bombing raid on the Ruen Kingdom's capital, Beklund. The Ruen Kingdom had declared war immediately. Over time, it escalated into a continent-wide conflict drawing in all four major powers of the Northern Continent and several smaller nations — only to end abruptly in September of 1351, so suddenly that even the Ruen Kingdom initially had no idea why they'd won.
The churches' loosening grip on supernatural-related matters wasn't solely because the war had diverted their attention. It was also because the war itself had, for what seemed to be the first time since the Fifth Era — the Iron Age — produced mass, witnessed supernatural phenomena in front of ordinary soldiers. After the war ended, reports of strange and disturbing occurrences continued to surface across the continent. The churches' official explanation: this had been a divine war; the inexplicable events during the conflict were manifestations of divine power; the abrupt end was the result of one side prevailing over the other in a contest between gods.
This explanation didn't hold water for anyone who already knew the supernatural existed — nor for those who'd come into contact with it during the war. But it was more than sufficient to reassure the general population. And the big idiot had indeed been galvanized by the war's strangeness enough to keep chasing his materials, eventually gathering everything in the year since the war ended.
"And then dying on the spot," Ryan mentally added.
One more detail worth noting: in a world where the undead, water spirits, and centuries-old popes were simply accepted facts of life, most people still believed the supernatural was the stuff of legend. The reason followed the same logic — the bad was always attributed to evil gods, demons, or other malevolent beings, while the good was divine providence. The undead, for instance, were widely believed to result from the fall of the Death God — a malevolent deity whose collapse at the end of the Fourth Era, the Era of Gods, had also ended the Pale Calamity that had swept the Northern Continent. His fall and the calamity's end marked the transition from the Era of Gods to the Iron Age.
An Extraordinary discovered by the churches would almost certainly be flagged as an unstable element. Best case: placed under surveillance, barred from leaving the city without permission. Disappearances were not uncommon. Rumors about churches conducting grim experiments on captured Extraordinaries appeared in over a dozen non-overlapping versions in the big idiot's memories alone.
It had only been a year since the war ended, and already the streets held almost no whisper of those strange events. The churches' reach was unmistakable.
Besides — it was now October of Year 1352 of the Iron Age. Throughout the Iron Age's entire history, though conflicts and occasional wars had flared between the Northern Continent's major powers, and though each nation had its own internal turbulence, there had never been a total collapse of order or regime change. The churches' stability was self-evident.
Even if Ryan felt genuinely capable right now, he intended to stay low and careful. Only a fool would take on risks that were potentially catastrophic for gains that weren't guaranteed.
But then — if the risks were more manageable, would his calculus change?
He thought about it. …Probably not much.
Broadly speaking, maintaining stability and peace was almost always a net positive. He had trouble imagining what level of dysfunction would outweigh the damage of open conflict to ordinary people. And yes, when too many competing interests were at stake, violence had a way of becoming unavoidable — but he didn't think every use of force was wrong. Sometimes the short, sharp solution was better than the prolonged one.
On a smaller scale, picking on someone weaker than you had always struck him as one of life's most pointless activities. He wasn't the type who thought dying in a fight with someone stronger would be worth it — that kind of thinking struck him as unhinged — but a fight where both sides were evenly matched? Now that was interesting. PvP was only fun when the skill gap was close enough to show off.
Author's Note (this chapter):An Extraordinary discovered by the churches would almost certainly be flagged as an unstable element. Best case: placed under surveillance, barred from leaving the city without permission. Disappearances were not uncommon. Rumors about churches conducting grim experiments on captured Extraordinaries appeared in over a dozen non-overlapping versions in the big idiot's memories alone.
核善的执政官 · Shandong Not that charitable.