Remember that guild members enjoy subsidised prices as long as they use the purchased tools and resources to produce something they planned to sell through the guild.

  — Excerpt from the Overview of Imperial Guilds

  Day 106, 3:20 PM

  Again, the first thing I noticed about Hailstown upon return was how much the place stank. I remembered the summer months as marginally worse, since the temperature remained relatively high. When I first reincarnated, I wondered about the town’s sanitary condition, thinking it a wider issue, but after seeing a bit of the world, I realized it was the townspeople themselves who didn’t want to bother with the sewers.

  Thunderbluff, for example, had proper waste disposal. In part, that was because it was an imperial city, and the imperial family might visit from time to time. In part, it was the sheer number of people and the awakened’s unwillingness to tolerate such nonsense, even if non-awakened didn’t mind it, which I kind of doubted.

  Still, there was a kind of homeliness to the smelly place. I had spent several years there. I had a library to lurk in, an activity I realized I enjoyed quite a bit. Sadly, I wouldn’t be secluding myself from the world and surrounding myself with books for a while, and definitely not in Hailstown. And finally, there was Ruby.

  One might think our relationship shallow, which it was. She was someone I debated with for the sake of advancing a class, and she was an enjoyable partner in bed, which posed the question of why I was so against Longshanks’ business proposal. I asked myself that more than once, but the best thing I got was that getting paid for stud work felt dirty. Which is odd, since I saw nothing wrong with hiring prostitutes.

  Given all those considerations, the first thing I did upon return was visiting the library and arranging a date with Ruby for that evening before heading to the apothecary’s. There I bought all of her equipment and some of her supplies for seven hundred gold coins, twice their original value if brand new, plus the money for keeping her out of business for two months until she restocked.

  Marigold was good to me, even if she didn’t remember her lessons. She was a kind and patient teacher, and a kind and patient person in general.

  Marigold seemed torn when I left, though. She told me with no small amount of suppressed anger that she wouldn’t have done that for anyone else, but at the same time, she seemed happy. She was a busy person, working long hours, and she really needed some time off to recover. That knowledge was one reason I didn’t just buy the equipment at Thunderbluff, the other was that running fifty miles per hour with a sack of fragile glassware led to only one possible outcome.

  Since I had decided to let history sick, I put Marigold’s equipment to good use, applying it to the trade she taught me. I had already reached apothecary level five inside two loops, and reaching it again took merely ten days. Other than advancing my healing, the class gave me a slight resistance to toxins, an uncanny ability to estimate minuscule weights, advanced my Steady Hand, and gave me a basic understanding of toxins. All neat, none earth-shattering skills.

  The next level up condition was tough, though - find an undiscovered medicinal use for a toxin. It had stopped my leveling inside the loops, as I didn’t bother with it, but I decided to give it a go. I could test various concoctions on scuttlers, diminutive saurians, which filled the obviously mandatory role of rats all ecosystems had.

  They were easy to capture, as the weather was getting colder, and saurians were turning sluggish. My butler, Hammer, fetched half a dozen for me to start with, and promised to bring more. The old man was helpful, and I once more made a mental note I had to reward him before I left. I would have done so already, but I was afraid I’d forget if I redid that loop for some reason. So, the man’s reward would wait for my final departure from Hailstown.

  I worked well into the night, like usual, when someone suddenly broke my door. I turned around, reflexively checking Redo just in case before dismissing the screen the next moment.

  I’m safe, I thought with an embarrassing amount of relief, when I realized it wasn’t a high realm mageknight that had come to dissect me. The one standing at the door was a scrawny kid with red hair, holding a bastard sword in one hand. Definitely a knight, based on his figure and the way he held the blade. I stared at his drunken face in confusion when the world blurred as Visionary invaded my mind.

  ***

  The man sat cross-legged, floating thousands of feet above the ground, as the blue sky rippled all around him from the impossible heat. The only reason I knew the blazing humanoid with lava for skin was a man was because the vision was centered on him, and the youth who had stood before me in my study a moment ago had triggered it.

  His skin was like the body of a star, molten and flowing, shining so brightly he dimmed the sun and muffled the sound of battle raging all around him. Down on the ground, tendrils of lava wrapped themselves around three indescribable entities, whose multi-limbed forms shifted and changed. A pincer of water surged from one of the lumps struggling to escape its bindings, but fire roared, and water turned to steam. Another creature was made of quartz or some other glassy-rock, trying to shatter its bindings. Each of them fought, and with each change they made, the lava bit harder, digging deeper into their unnatural forms.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  A distance away, a dragon, whose blazing scales mimicked the man’s lava skin, brought inferno upon the world. Its titanic body spanned miles as it stood alongside an army of men and monsters besieged by yet another army countless times larger, made entirely of humans. Every moment one of the defenders fell, exchanging their lives for those of their opponents’, but they remained adamant. One look at the scene told me the reality of it. They all endeavored to protect the living star as he surrounded a familiar-looking golden crack in the air with a halo of flames so hot they burned reality itself.

  The crack between the worlds shrank, melting before the inferno, the attackers and struggling outer gods growing more frenzied, but the flaming man kept working, cupping the tiny remnants of the crack between his searing hands.

  The vision rippled, about to end, and seemingly sensing the intrusion, the living star looked me straight in the eye. His flames flickered, then with great effort he kept burning the crack with one hand while grabbing towards me with the other. I didn’t exist on that battlefield. I had no physical form, and yet, I could feel the danger that hand posed to me. Death had its sights locked onto me.

  The clenched hand stopped its motion, seemingly holding something, and the deaths and battles beyond blurred as the vision tried to escape the fiery man’s grasp.

  “Big Brother,” the force of nature said, the scorching fury of its eyes melting into a gentle, life-nurturing warmth. “It’s good to see you after all these ages.”

  The living star smiled, its flames extinguishing as it turned back into a human. The man was pale. He appeared to be in his forties, still stick thin, his dark-red hair sporting a white here and there. His eyes were sunken, and it was clear he was exhausted, yet, despite his circumstances, he looked at me with tenderness which I had rarely witnessed, something parents reserved for their children.

  He released the golden crack, and it was gone, the man changing in a way I couldn’t understand, becoming more real and less man.

  “Yes, I see how you started, and how it got us all where we are now. I have used your gift well, thank you. Now, please accept mine.”

  The hand holding the vision tightened, reality cracking; the man flared with so much energy the world around him turned into black emptiness, but then he shook his head. “It says only an elder god can influence your anarchist class, while my dominion extends to this world alone. In that case, this is all I can do for you.”

  Agony beyond my ability to understand burned the core of my being, right where the heart should be. “You can handle it, and I promise you it will be worth the pain and effort. Fare well in this and future lives, and know I never blamed you for leaving me, despite whatever you may think.”

  ***

  My head spun, my vision black from the sudden pain assaulting my body. It was a dozen times worse than while I was witnessing the vision. I struggled for breath and took stock of the room when I realized the youth was running straight at me.

  The pain in my chest weakened and a blue screen flashed into existence, but I focused on the young man. He had taken advantage of my trance. His sword stabbed towards my chest, and I lacked the time to dodge. Helpless, I gasped, staring at the same familiar face as blue screens kept flooding my vision.

  “That’s for my mother!” he shouted, confusing me further.

  “Please don’t,” I barely managed before we exploded together.

  [Name - Dandelion Blackfist

  Class - apothecary level 5

  Health 25/25, Strength - 25, Agility - 25, Physique - 25, Wisdom - 25, Intellect - 25, Willpower - 25, Presence - 25, Charisma - 25, Composure - 25

  Abilities - See Abilities for more information.

  Attribute points remaining - 19

  To level up, find an undiscovered medicinal use for a toxin

  Statuses - none]

  [Abilities - Expert Appraisal, Initial Forest Ambush, Advanced Looting, Literate, Flawless Heartcore, Initial Mana Gathering, Initial Mana Circulation, Initial Black Fist Arts, Advanced Body Reinforcement, Master Rider, Initial Fast Reader, Initial Reference Checker, Master Calligraphy, Initial Arithmetics, Initial Persuasion, Initial Photographic Memory, Initial Time Optimization, Initial Logical Deduction, Advanced Steady Hand, Initial Eye For Detail, Initial Seal Deconstruction, Initial Seal Prototyping, Expert Staffmanship, Expert Swordsmanship, Expert Spearmanship, Initial Clubmanship, Initial Flailmanship, Advanced Knifemanship, Initial Axmanship, Initial Macemanship, Initial Slingmanship, Advanced Bowmanship, Piercing Weapons Master, Battlefield Mastery, Always Ready, Initial Sense of Danger, Initial Hammer Proficiency, Initial Find Structural Weakness, Initial Rhythm, Initial Endurance, Advanced Herbalism, Advanced Healing, Initial Focus, Initial Woodland Sense, Initial Poison Lore, Initial Precise Hand, Initial Poison Tolerance]

  [Anarchist Level 7

  Abilities - Rage, Redo, Blunt, Heavy Handed, Direct, Insightful, Precise, Amicable, Visionary, Godly ??, Gate Sealer ??, Vengeful ?, Grandmaster Rider ?

  To level up, force the authorities to impose justice upon a party they had previously ignored.]