“Good people!”
Erwin settled back at his table, taking his time over the strange food in front of him, while Willem planted himself in the center of the hall and clapped his hands for quiet.
“Before you sits a Great Lord’s son from a kingdom far to the east, Lord Erwin Augustus!
A man who loves adventure enough to cross half the world to reach Westeros, and who, through no fault of his own, has lost contact with the men who traveled with him.
He has need of soldiers and servants to see to his safety!”
“You’ve already seen for yourselves how generous a lord he is.
Any man who wants work under him, come find me shortly to put your name down.
Lord Erwin’s named me his aide for the time being!”
As Willem spoke, he kept glancing sideways at Erwin, looking for some sign of approval.
Erwin gave him a nod, and the look on Willem’s face said that had been worth more to him than coin.
Most of the room was still caught up in the same excitement as before, rubbing their hands together, eager to put themselves forward.
Only Griff and his two men traded a look, faces souring with a mix of resentment and regret, muttering under their breath about arse-kissers and how the bastard had gone and beaten them to it.
“Who’s got paper and ink?” Willem was already settling into the part.
Erwin rose and turned to the innkeep.
“A clean room.
Don’t trouble me unless it can’t wait.”
“At once, m’lord, at once!
I’ll see to it myself!”
The innkeep glanced at the plate Erwin left behind and felt his spirits lift.
A pampered lord through and through, he thought, to leave a meal like that after only a bite or two.
Waste, plain waste.
But the coin was already counted against his bill, and no lord was owed a refund for a meal he chose not to finish.
There’d be good eating in this house tonight.
Bowing and scraping, the innkeep signaled his wife with a look and led Erwin toward the stairs.
She had the plate and the cup cleared from the table before anyone else in the room had the chance to so much as ask for a taste.
Wanted the good food?
That cost extra.
As Erwin passed Willem, he said only, “I want to see the men I asked for by morning.”
“It will be done, m’lord.” Willem bowed again.
The innkeep showed him up to the best room the house had, and once the door was shut behind him and he was alone at last, Erwin let out a long breath.
Holding himself stiff and lordly for an audience the whole evening had worn him down more than he’d expected.
The room itself was little better than bare, a faint mildew smell hanging in the air.
Erwin’s mouth pulled into a frown.
Whatever passed for comfort in this world, it fell well short of what he was used to.
Even the specialty dish the innkeep had been so proud of tasted like chewed wax to a man used to modern food.
Erwin had no doubt that if he’d actually swallowed much of it, between the unfamiliar water and whatever passed for kitchen hygiene here, his stomach would have made him pay for it before the night was through.
He sat down, and a steaming bowl of potatoes and meat appeared in his hand out of nothing, set down on the table in front of him.
It was food out of his pack, the kind his character had once cooked up back in the game he’d played for years.
Since crossing over, Erwin had found that anything sitting in that pack could still be pulled out whenever he liked, and whatever state it had been in when he stored it, it stayed in exactly that state no matter how much time passed.
So the food he’d once cooked purely for the health and mana it restored, and the buffs that came with it, could now feed him like any ordinary meal.
Along with the stew, he pulled out a full bowl of mint honey tea too, a drop from some monster he’d killed months ago, and now easily the finest drink this world had to offer him.
Small mercies of being where he was.
Erwin turned his attention inward, to the crude interface waiting there, something half transparent and not unlike the one from his old game.
He’d already tested what it could do.
There was no helpful spirit or guide built into it, nothing like that.
Whatever this was, it was a broken, badly rebuilt copy of the game’s system, and a poor one at that.
Down in the corner, only three things could be opened: Character, Collection, and Bag.
Character was simple enough, his own personal panel.
It brought up a small model of himself in three dimensions, his gear laid out beside it.
Every stat on that gear had gone grey, though, offering him nothing at all anymore.
Beside the model sat his status.
Character: Erwin (Erwin Augustus) Level: 2 Class: Warrior Strength: 14.2 Speed: 11.9 Stamina: 15 Mana: 0 Health: 95/100 Mana: 0/0 Skill: [Heavy Strike] Lv.
2
None of it matched the character sheet from his old game.
That version had never tracked anything beyond strength, stamina, armor, and crit chance, nothing resembling these four numbers now sitting in front of him.
And Mana, of nowhere…
Mana 0 out of 0?
Warriors in his old game had never touched mana at all.
Rage had been their resource, not magic.
So where had mana and magic come from, sitting there plain as anything on his sheet?
It left him with one guess: maybe in this world, even a warrior could learn to cast.
How he’d manage that, though, was a question with no answer yet.
Then there was the skill list, which held exactly one entry, the warrior’s starting move.
Heavy Strike: A blow struck with all the weight behind it, its force bound to the strength behind the arm that swings it.
Both that skill and his own level had started out at the bare minimum, level one across the board.
That went back to the moment he’d crossed over.
Right before it happened, Erwin had just won the reins to Onyxia, the mount he’d been chasing for months, and climbed onto her back for the first time.
He’d barely had time to enjoy it, grinning like a fool, before his vision went black and the world dropped away.
When he came to again, he was already in this world, wearing his character’s body, carrying a broken version of the system, and stripped back down to level one.
Waking alone in a dense wood he’d never seen before, still dressed in his character’s gear, though transmogged now into something plainer, his first thought had been that he’d somehow ended up in his old game’s own world.
Not long after, three strangers crossed his path.
Not knowing yet how little mercy this world had in it, he’d walked straight up to ask them where he was.
What came out of his mouth was a language close enough to English, and he found he understood their answer just as clearly.
What he learned from it nearly knocked him flat: he’d landed in Westeros.
The world from the show.
Worse news came right behind it.
The moment those three realized he was a stranger to these parts, their true nature showed itself fast.
They weren’t farmers or hunters out working the land.
They were outlaws holed up in the kingswood, and one look at Erwin’s soft hands and fine clothes told them exactly what he was.
Easy prey, ripe for killing and burying, with a fine set of clothes and a weapon worth taking off the body after.
Erwin’s very first native of this new world turned out to be men looking to rob and murder him.
So it came to a fight, right there, with his life on the line.
Trouble was, before any of this, Erwin had been nothing but an office worker.
He had no business anywhere near a blade, let alone three men who meant to use theirs on him.
Against three hardened outlaws, he was a rank amateur without a day of real fighting behind him.
It went about as well as anyone could have guessed.
Three men with beat-up longswords had him stumbling and reeling within moments, and the fight was slipping away from him fast.
Then, with barely a heartbeat left to spare, his luck turned.
In the scramble to avoid a blade coming for his throat, his hand caught the summon icon on his quick bar without meaning to, the one bound to Onyxia.
Unlike in the game, this time she actually came.
The instant the dragon appeared, everything changed.