Robert Vlaho
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[DEVILICH] Chapter 30 - Tying Loose Ends and Climbing Up the Rope
🕑 Added 2024-04-24 18:09:01 +0000 UTCI needed to satisfy two requirements if I wanted my story to fly. So, without further ado, I started on the first.
But to satisfy the requirement, the truth wouldn’t be good enough. Thus, I had to openly lie. “I did,” I spat, answering the stern man’s previous question. “I contacted the guards.” I turned to the shortest guard present. “I told him,” I said as I pointed my finger.
“Huh?” the guard asked dumbly. “Who? Me?” he asked. “What? No, that… That never happened,” he insisted.
“Yes, it did!” I shouted angrily. “And you told me that was no reason to call the guards and dismissed it!” I accused.
“What!?” he yelled indignantly. “I don’t remember anything like that happening!”
I scoffed.
“No, I swear on my life!” the man insisted. “The boy is…” His words petered out.
“I’m what?” I asked, taking the small holy gem out of my inventory. It glowed with a soft, white glow, proving my alignment. He couldn’t accuse me of lying. Well, he could, but even if I was, I was doing so for a good reason, and I had irrefutable proof that that was the case.
The man looked at the other guards for a long moment, visibly shrinking with every second that passed. “I…” he started, but— ”I guess I uh… No, I think I… Yeah, I… I remember!” He surrendered. “Sorry, I… I should have taken you more seriously. I apologize.” He bowed slightly. “In my defense, I didn’t know you were good-aligned.”
Gaslighting complete.
With that hurdle overcome, I turned to face the other guards. “I don’t know why,” I started cautiously, “but for some reason, Bruno gave me a horrible feeling,” I said, shrinking a bit. I had to be careful. I kept my tall tale close to an ordinary sense of intuition to ensure they had no reason to conclude that my ability was supernatural. “So I decided to follow him,” I said.
“You what!?” Martin spat, frowning at me. “Why would you do that?”
Now, it was time to satisfy the second requirement. “Well… I… I wanted to tell him what he did was wrong.”
Martin was about to say something but deflated slightly, sighing in exasperation. “How did that result in you attacking him?” he asked me.
“Well…” I started, anxiously avoiding Martin’s gaze. “When I confronted him… not only did he not care in the slightest, he also openly threatened me,” I said. “He told me he’d break my arms and pluck my eyes out,” I exaggerated. “He said he’d kill me,” I sprinkled in a bit of truth and paused for emphasis.
I could see that the guards were cringing slightly. Their thoughts were clear as day. I could tell that they, at least partially, considered the man’s words somewhat of a normal response. And, even from my point of view, it honestly sounded like small-time villain talk you’d hear from your average asshole who was trying to look intimidating.
I was annoying, and the man was trying to scare me away. That was far from enough to take his words seriously.
But how would a sheltered boy like the person I was pretending to be react to something like that?
“Frankly, this upset me,” I said. “I wondered what kind of person would say that,” I mused innocently. “I had already approached the guards once, and I was dismissed. I didn’t know whether a guard would believe me about the threat—after all, I didn’t believe I had any evidence to back me up.”
“You’re good-aligned!” the short guard exclaimed. “Why hadn’t you said that?” he asked.
“Well, I didn’t know that would be enough,” I said openly, sticking to my backstory as a sheltered kid. “My parents were strict, and they limited my freedom. I hadn’t seen the outside much as a kid,” I said with a sad look in my eye. “I’m sure not even they knew just how much common sense eluded me because of their parenting style.”
“I see,” the man said, backing down. “Please continue.”
“So,” the stern guard cut in. “How did this result in you throwing the first punch?” he asked curiously. “Of course, if you wish the reason to remain private, we have no right to ask,” he insisted. “But, depending on what you saw, we could perhaps get a clue about why he vanished.”
True enough, the man was telling the truth. I could say “nunya business” and fuck ‘em off without any consequences. None for now, at least.
But I had a long journey ahead of me. I was confident that, along the way, I’d gather a number of people who would become suspicious of who I was. If I kept getting into conflict with the evil-aligned repeatedly, it would be a matter of time before someone decided to dig into me.
If I didn’t give the guards a satisfying answer here, my actions would remain a complete mystery. An inexplicable assault on a random man could one day become the final piece of an investigative puzzle.
I had to tie all loose ends.
But how?
This was the most difficult part. There were only a few scenarios in which I could have done what I did and still get away with it without losing my alignment. One was if I knew that the man was evil. The other was if I wasn’t trying to hurt him.
“It was a fake punch,” I said, sighing. I raised my hand and fired a magic missile at a piece of wood, causing it to explode into splinters. The projectile was tiny, and although some of the guards were surprised, they were more confused about what I was trying to say.
“I believed myself to be safe,” I declared with a crooked smile. “I thought that if I provoked the man a bit, he might show his true colors in front of the crowd. A calculated risk, I guess.” I shrank with every word I said. “Too bad I suck at math.”
“You idiot!” Martin yelled. “What were you thinking!?”
“I—” I started. “That man was clearly not a good person,” I said with a bit more confidence, looking Martin in the eye. “If he was truly someone who would do what he threatened to, I felt an obligation to let the world know—to give the guards a good reason to act and deliver justice. Perhaps he’d change or repent after getting punished.”
Martin scowled at me openly. “That is the stupidest reasoning I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah,” I surrendered. I was okay with the guards thinking I was just a dumb, naive kid. “In hindsight, my actions were rash. But I don’t regret them. I believed myself to be doing the right thing, and I have the will of the gods standing by my side,” I declared as I raised the holy gem, my favorite object in this new world. There probably wasn’t a single better way to enforce an argument than to flash this bad boy.
Martin sighed and facepalmed lightly. “All right,” he said, shaking his head. “But don’t think that just because you did a good deed that you necessarily did the right thing,” the guard declared.
Although that sounded like a strange thing to say, the man wasn’t wrong. I put myself in harm’s way when there was likely no need to do so.
“The boy has quite the noble spirit,” the stern guard came, surprisingly complimenting me. Then, he looked me in the eye. “Say, are you interested in becoming a guardsman?”
Martin whipped around to face the stern man. “What are you saying, Petran?” he shouted.
“Quiet,” the man spat, looking at Martin and then back at me. “It isn’t a bad offer. We can recommend the boy to the baron. The last batch of trainees started their training only a week ago, and it isn’t too late to get him in.”
But Martin wasn’t convinced. “James told he’ll only stay in this town temporarily,” he argued.
“No offense, Martin,” the stern guard, Petran, said, “but I’d like to hear the boy speak for himself.” He turned to face me again. “You are of age and free to make your own decisions. What do you say?”
I paused under the man’s gaze. It was a good offer. A great one, actually. Ever since I heard of the adventurer’s guild in this town, I’d wanted to join and become an adventurer at some point. But, thinking about it further, wasn’t this even better?
If the idea of “adventurers” tracked with the concepts I was familiar with, then I would be independent, yes, but I would also be forced to figure everything out on my own.
As a guard, I was guaranteed training. Not only that, but maybe even education, too. It would be akin to getting a tutorial on how this world worked and working as a guard for a while was an easy way to put myself in a position to deal with criminals.
But… I had a few reasons to be hesitant. First, how much power could I realistically display without raising any eyebrows? How long would it take for me to be forced to act on an evil-aligned without any objective evidence that person was a criminal?
These were problems that I needed to explore further, and I didn’t have enough time to comb through every single possible scenario with my blessing.
But, to be honest, only one thing was dictating my decision. “If I sign up,” I started, “will I have to sign a contract that forces me to serve for a certain period?”
This was the most important detail. If I ever encountered a downside I couldn’t find a way around, I wanted to reserve the right to fuck off before it was too late.
“Obviously,” the stern guard said. “However, you don’t need to worry about that. As long as you’re good-aligned, such contracts can not be enforced against you.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because that would mean you have a good reason to leave, obviously,” the man said, shrugging. “The good-aligned never desert their station for selfish reasons—not without losing their alignment,” he specified. “Don’t think that is an easy ticket out of service, though,” the man said, scoffing. “Good reasons to abandon your duties are few and far between.”
What the man was saying was likely true. But I was, if anything, a special case. And I was certain it would be no sin to aim to prevent myself from exploding. The blessing seemed to think so, at least.
“Deal,” I said, grinning widely. “I accept.”
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