After escaping the walls of Talmberg, Henry rode along the winding dirt path, taking in the passing landscape.
All around the outer domains of Talmberg lay vast, golden farmlands, their crops ripe and heavy, waiting to be harvested under the quiet evening sky.
As far as his eyes could see, rolling hills of lush greenery stretched out under the cool, open air.
Looking out over the golden fields, Henry could almost forget the pain , For a brief second, it felt like the fantasy he had played through on a screen back in his old life.
Yet, beauty in this world came with a heavy toll.
For all the untamed beauty of the countryside, medieval life was harsh, brutal, and backward in almost every other way.
There was no medicine, no easy travel, and death waited behind every thicket of trees.
As dusk began to settle over the hills, Henry approached the valley leading toward the small settlement of Rovna.
The journey confirmed his growing suspicions.
Having played Kingdom Come: Deliverance back in his past life, he knew the map’s every turn, but seeing it in reality was a stark reminder that this was 15th-century Bohemia, not a condensed digital world.
In reality, Skalitz wasn’t just a tiny cluster of huts—it was a bustling silver-mining town housing anywhere between 1,200 and 1,800 souls.
And Rovna, rather than a mere couple of houses, was a dedicated agricultural parish and mining hamlet that fed the miners of Skalitz.
It consisted of a dozen timber-and-thatch farmhouses, scattered barns, and the prominent stone Church of Saint James, enclosed by a low stone wall and a quiet graveyard.
When Sigismund’s horde swept down from Skalitz, Rovna had taken the full brunt of their senseless terror.
Reining Olena to a halt at the crest of a ridge, Henry’s eyes narrowed.
Thin, gray plumes of smoke were rising into the evening air—not from the scattered chimneys of the village, but directly from the courtyard of Saint James Church.
He immediately steered Olena off the main road into the dense tree line, tethering her securely behind a thick cluster of bushes on high ground where she would remain hidden from sight.
Smoke near the church meant one of two things: either surviving villagers were huddled together in mourning, or scavengers, Cumans, and deserters were roasting looted meat over campfires.
Given that the village had been put to the torch only yesterday, the odds were heavily stacked against the innocent.
Henry couldn’t afford a single mistake.
His life was on the line, and there was no loading screen if a Cuman arrow found his neck.
Henry crouched behind a mossy oak and accessed his system inventory to inspect his gear and weapons.
Stored safely within his inventory space were the spoils and preparations he had gathered:
5 Heavy Crossbows and 2 Hunting Bows
20 Piercing Bolts and 20 Hunting Arrows
2 Steel Daggers
3 Shortswords, alongside Sir Radzig’s Masterwork Longsword
Armor: Padded gambeson, iron chainmail haulberk, and a steel kettle hat helmet for vital protection.
Looking at the five crossbows, a sudden thought struck him.
In the game mechanics, drawn weapons placed into storage doesn’t preserved their physical state.
He took out all five crossbows and a quiver of piercing bolts.
One by one, he spanned the heavy steel limbs, notched a bolt into each groove, and carefully pulled the strings back until the triggers clicked into place.
Holding a fully span and loaded crossbow in his hand, he willed it back into his system inventory.
He opened his inventory display to check—and a wide, quiet grin spread across his face.
He let out a low, breathy laugh.
Thank God…
the inventory system preserved the loaded state.
It was a massive tactical exploit.
Normally, spanning a heavy medieval crossbow required placing a foot in the stirrup, cranking a winch or pulling a lever, and taking ten to fifteen seconds of crucial time—a death sentence in close-quarters combat.
Now, with five loaded crossbows stored in his inventory space, he could instantly summon a fully loaded crossbow into his hands, fire a piercing bolt, store it, and immediately draw another ready to shoot.
Normal hunting bows couldn’t utilize this glitch since their wooden limbs would snap under prolonged tension, but for steel-armed crossbows, it worked perfectly.
With his tactical advantage secured, Henry equipped his dark stealth gear over his chainmail, tucked Sir Radzig’s sword into his waist belt, slid a sharp steel dagger onto his hip, and set his inventory shortcuts to rotate through the five loaded crossbows.
Moving low to the ground, keeping his silhouette hidden against the darkened tree line, Henry began his silent stalk down toward the smoking ruins of Saint James Church.
==
Henry crouched low behind a crumbling section of the churchyard’s outer stone wall, his breath coming slow and measured.
The evening mist had begun to roll over the valley, but the smell of burnt thatch and roasted meat hung thick in the cold air.
Inside the courtyard of Saint James Church, five men were gathered around a crude campfire built over a shattered tombstone.
They were mercenary scavengers—deserters and opportunistic scum who had swept in behind Sigismund’s main force.
None of them wore full plate armor.
Instead, they wore a patchwork of looted gear: a guard’s iron vambrace here, a dead militia targe there, stained padded gambesons, and rusted brigandines.
They were careless, intoxicated, and utterly convinced they were safe in the dead village.
One scavenger was sitting on an overturned ale barrel near the church porch, gnawing greedily on a piece of half-cooked salt pork with his helmet off.
Another sat in the mud nearby, rifling through a small iron-bound wooden chest, counting stacks of silver coins.
“So, how was the haul today?” the man on the barrel asked, wiping grease onto his sleeve.
“The Cumans took the big stuff, but if we scour every cellar in Rovna, we’ll walk away rich.
I looted three houses today and found where the villagers hid their stashes.” He looked over his shoulder.
“Manuel!
How much coin total?”
A third man, leaning against the church door, grunted.
“Four hundred groschen so far.
A heavy sum for a day’s light work.”
“What about rations?”
“Enough salted meat and flour to last us a month or two,” Manuel replied with a smirk.
“So, boss…
are we staying here?”
The leader—a heavy-set mercenary with a scarred jaw and a dark leather doublet—shook his head as he sharpened a hunting knife on a whetstone.
“No.
Word from a contact in the woods is that Sigismund took the bulk of his army toward Khutenberg.
He only left a few bands of Cumans behind to harass the local lords.
Once Sir Radzig confirms Sigismund’s main force is gone, he’ll try to reclaim Skalitz.
We pack up and move before the nobles wake up.”
“Move where, boss?”
“There’s a man assembling a host near the Ledetchko woods,” the leader said smoothly.
“Collecting deserters, smugglers, and free lances.
He’s offering coin, weapons, and good plunder.
We join his banner.”
“Sounds like a plan, boss!” the youngest scavenger cackled, taking a long swig from an iron flask and spitting into the fire.
“Proper sport, it was!
When we hit the farmsteads down by the creek, the fools were still on their knees praying to their wooden saints.”
He leaned forward, his face twisted in a ugly grin.
“I dragged the miller’s girl out into the barn by her hair.
Her father begged on his knees, offering us three silver coins to spare her.
So I took his silver…
then I made him watch while two of us took turns on her.
Once we were done, I slit the old man’s throat across his own grain sacks and kicked the girl into the cellar before we set the straw ablaze.
You could hear her screaming through the floorboards for ten minutes before the roof fell in.”
The men around the fire burst into loud, filthy laughter, one of them slapping his thigh with a greasy hand.
“Ah, sweet salvation!
May Sigismund raid Bohemia every year!”
A round of coarse, vulgar laughter echoed off the stone walls of the holy church.
Behind the stone wall, Henry’s knuckles turned white around the grip of his dagger.
Henry’s pulse hammered in his ears, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth throbbed.
In a storybook, the hero would leap over the wall, shout a righteous battle cry, and challenge them all to an honorable fight.
But in reality?
Challenging five armed men single-handed was suicide.
Henry waited.
He let the night settle in completely, slipping into his dark stealth gear as the fire burned down to glowing embers.
He uncorked a Nighthawk potion and downed it.
The dark world instantly transformed into a sharp, silvery-green landscape of crisp outlines.
By midnight, three of the scavengers were slumped against the church wall, snoring in a deep, ale-soaked stupor.
Only two remained somewhat conscious: a sentry leaning lazily against the wooden church gate without a helmet, and the group’s boss, who sat near the dying embers, alert but drowsy.
It’s them or me, Henry told himself, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Henry crept along the perimeter wall until he was fifteen paces from the sentry at the gate.
He drew his first span-and-loaded heavy crossbow from his system inventory.
The iron limb was steady in his hands.
THWACK.
The bolt released with a sharp, lethal whip of iron and string.
The heavy piercing bolt tore through the sentry’s ear canal and drove straight into his brain stem.
The man’s eyes rolled back; his knees buckled, and he dropped like a sack of grain without uttering a single sound.
Henry didn’t freeze.
The element of surprise was a fleeting gift.
Slipping forward behind an ale barrel inside the courtyard, Henry instantly summoned his second loaded crossbow from his inventory.
He aimed straight at the sleeping man beside the fire.
THWACK.
The bolt struck the second man directly through the eye socket, pinning his head against the wooden bench behind him.
“Ambush!
Ambush!” the boss roared, leaping to his feet as he saw his man drop.
“Wake up, you fools!
To arms!”
The two remaining scavengers scrambled in panic, blind in the pitch darkness, groping through the mud for their shields and swords.
Before they could find their weapons, Henry cycled rapidly through his remaining three loaded crossbows in a flurry of lethal precision:
THWACK—THWACK—THWACK!
Bolts tore through the dark.
One struck a scavenger through the thigh; another buried itself deep into the third man’s stomach.
A third bolt grazed the boss’s forearm, shattering his blade hand’s grip.
“Die, you bastard!” the boss screamed, catching sight of Henry’s dark silhouette near the barrel.
Driven by frantic survival instinct, he lunged forward with a wild, one-handed overhead slash of his arming sword.
Henry drew Sir Radzig’s longsword with his right hand, stepping into the blow and parrying the heavy steel blade with a deafening CLANG of sparks.
As the boss’s weapon slid off his guard, Henry willed a secondary shortsword directly into his left hand from his system inventory.
Without a moment’s pause, he thrust the shortblade straight upward under the boss’s ribcage, driving six inches of steel into his gut.
The boss froze, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief as he stared down at the sword that had appeared out of thin air.
“W-Where…?” the leader choked.
The man choked, a heavy spray of dark blood coughing out over Henry’s face and chest.
The mercenary collapsed onto his knees, then fell limp into the dirt, pooling red over the cold grass.
Henry stood frozen over the body.
The hot, metallic taste of fresh blood ran down his lips and cheek.
A sudden, violent wave of dizziness hit him like a physical blow.
His stomach churned violently, his knees trembling as the reality of close-quarters slaughter hit his senses.
He sank to one knee, clutching his stomach, fighting the urge to heave.
“Don’t kill us!
Please, mercy!”
The remaining two wounded scavengers were crawling backward toward the church altar in absolute terror, one sobbing in crude German, the other begging in broken Bohemian.
Henry forced himself back up.
His hands were shaking, but his mind remained ruthless.
Leaving witnesses behind meant an alarm would be raised before he ever reached Skalitz.
He walked up to the crawling men.
He drew his hunting bow, notched a final arrow, and put a shaft through the first man’s chest.
Turning to the last scavenger, Henry raised Sir Radzig’s heavy longsword and drove the blade down through his collarbone, ending the noise once and for all.
Silence returned to the Church of Saint James.
Henry stood alone amid five corpses.
The thick, sickening stench of iron, bile, and voided bowels filled his nostrils.
He looked down at his blood-stained hands, then wiped his face—only to smear the warm gore across his cheek.
The nauseating feeling overflowed.
Henry dropped his sword, fell to his hands and knees in the mud, and puked violently.
He retched until his throat burned, emptying his stomach of every drop of water and bile until he was dry-heaving against the cold grass.
He lay there for minutes, his chest heaving, taking in ragged gasps of the cold night air to drown out the smell of death.
Slowly, Henry wiped his mouth with the back of his clean sleeve.
He stood up on shaky legs, retrieved his sword, and began checking the bodies to ensure no one was left breathing.
The monsters of Rovna were dead.