“What war?” he finally asked, pivoting fully to Bjorn, head tilted just enough to study his uncle’s expression.

  Bjorn didn't immediately answer him, but rather he let his eyes travel slowly across Deacon's features, weighing something that looked to be heavy on his mind while his lips remained flush against his teeth as he held in words tight to himself, afraid that they might blurt out on their own.

  Only after several long, silent seconds did he speak.

  "What did you observe while on our way to this place?"

  Deacon blinked. “…Everything looked fine. Nothing out of the norm,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “The only thing that stood out was how tense the City Enforcers were. They were on edge — the exact same way the guards on Floor Seven were when my Party snuck me into the Holy Human Kingdom, and I had to set up a bomb formation in their sewers and poison their wells when there was an ongoing siege happening at their doorstep.”

  “The Enforcers here looked just as bad, in the short time I saw them.”

  “And you’re not saying that just because they tried to Identify

  “No,” Deacon answered immediately, tone sharpening with certainty. “They didn’t even read anything from me.”

  He stepped in closer, eyes steadying on Bjorn’s. “Now tell me what this war is. If you mean a war between you and the other Knight Orders—”

  Suddenly, Deacon stopped himself, his next few words throttled themselves on his tongue before he could finish uttering them into existence.

  Deacon studied Bjorn’s face harder, replaying everything he’d seen today, everything he’d seen, heard, and felt from his uncle for the past month — the tension he always seemed to have, the calls that pulled Bjorn away, the way he was pushing Deacon’s training pace far beyond what was typically normal, but he considered it was due to him asking his uncle to do so since he barely had any time left to reach Tier 2.

  Then he remembered the conversation they had on the day he joined the Knight Order, when his uncle had told him about what had happened all those years ago when both his father and he entered the Tower and their lives they lived.

  Remembering the look his uncle had during his recollection of that time, and comparing it to the reactions he’d seen throughout the month, and the look he was seeing on his uncle’s face right now, he was struck by an explosive realization.

  “…No…” Deacon’s eyes widened, wider than they ever had in his life. “No!”

  “Is that why you told me about — we’re having another Great War?” he all but shouted.

  His uncle pressed his lips together and turned his head away from Deacon, not giving Deacon a verbal response, but the lack of a “Just kidding!” after his big exclamation only confirmed Deacon's realization.

  Deacon's mind wracked itself as thousands of thoughts filled his head, and what he should do and what was- "I need to tell them," Deacon muttered to himself, thinking about his friends and their families, spinning on his heel and heading towards the sealed door of the shop. "We need to rush to reach Tier 2 if we are going to even stand a chance–“

  As he made it halfway towards the door, a massive hand clamped down on his shoulder, holding him in place and keeping him from trying to walk any farther.

  “Calm yourself,” Bjorn said, voice low, steady, and carrying the kind of authority that punched straight through panic. “You do nothing but a disservice to yourself and to those who place their respect in you if you let emotions become your steering wheel.”

  “It is quite admirable,” Sil added from behind the counter, straightening his cuffs calmly, “that you care so much for your friends. Truly. But there is still time before the war breaks out in full.”

  Deacon’s all but gave himself whiplash as he whipped back to look at Sil while his uncle took his hand off of his shoulder.

  “How much time?” he asked.

  “By our estimations, roughly a year before the first major offensive – wars take considerable resources, and I assume the very same is the case when considering a Great War.” Sil said with a soft sigh. “Small skirmishes will begin appearing before then, of course — but you are not out of time yet. You and your friends still have room to grow.”

  Sil pushed the neatly wrapped four-piece Barbarian set closer across the counter, nudging them just enough that Deacon put his focus back onto them.

  “It took considerable skill on my end to keep the minimum level requirement as low as it is while still getting the quality where I wanted it,” Sil said, almost lazily, though the faint pride underneath the words was impossible to miss. “Though if you want much higher rarity and quality stuff for your level, you’re going to need to at least earn your first Racial Trait before I can give them to you.”

  Deacon stared at the bundle of armor for a moment, letting his thoughts finally slow enough to calm down.

  With an audible exhale, Deacon walked back to the desk and began neatly unwrapping the bundle, wanting to Identify

  Item Name:Chestpiece of the Barbarian

  Type:Rarity: Description:

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Effects:Provides:Requirements:

  Item Name:Leggings of the Barbarian

  Type:Rarity:Description:Effects:Provides:Requirements:

  Item Name:Belt of the BarbarianType:Rarity:Description:Effects:Provides:Requirements:

  Item Name:Bracers of the Barbarian

  Type:Rarity:Description:Effects:Provides: Requirements:

  “These are perfect,” Deacon said at last, looking up from the final Identify panel and turning his gaze onto the set in front of him, his mind already shifting gears before he turned toward Sil. “Would you be able to make or get more armor sets of the same quality and level? Specifically, one set for a glaive-wielder, two sets for mages, and one for an undead alchemist.”

  He straightened the pieces subconsciously as he continued, “I’ll pay one-point-five times the rate if you can get them.”

  Sil didn’t look surprised at the request, only rubbed his thumb along the edge of the counter as he did a quick calculation in his head. “For that quantity and quality, it’ll run you about seven hundred and—”

  Before he could finish the number, Deacon reached into his Spatial Sling Bag, grabbed a heavy pouch practically bulging with credits, and dropped it onto the counter with a thud that reverberated across the empty shop.

  “Here is one-point-five million credits,” Deacon said without offering a barter.

  Sil stared at him for a moment — not offended, not startled, but with a faint smile tugging upward like someone recognizing an old pattern resurfacing. He tilted his head toward Bjorn with a knowing glance, then turned his attention back to Deacon.

  “I’ll have them ready for you in just a few minutes.”

  Deacon nodded, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction as he got verbal confirmation that at least one thing today was going according to something resembling a plan. With Bjorn giving him a small nod of his own, Deacon stepped away from the counter, moving to the seating area tucked against the left wall.

  He sank onto one of the cushioned benches, pulling out his manaphone to message his friends about the mission Bjorn intended to give them — and whether they wanted to join. He wasn’t sure how to word it yet without sounding like he was spiraling, but he needed them to know something was coming. Something big.

  Just as he scrolled through the group chat he had with them, Sil’s voice drifted easily across the shop.

  “–like a carbon copy of his father.”

  And those very words Sil said managed to hit Deacon harder than he expected.

  If he had heard that a few hours ago, he probably would’ve smiled — hell, maybe even puffed his chest a little. But now? After that sudden scene that he saw while walking with Bjorn, that felt like he was recalling a memory from long ago…

  His stomach twisted as he lowered his head, the manaphone dimming in his hands as the echo of his uncle’s words to his father lingered in his mind.

  Walking toward the cafeteria entrance inside the Knight Order headquarters, Jass wore the same tired, unimpressed expression she always had after winning yet another arena challenge against cadets who insisted that they were superior to her due to her being a “pathetic human” while they were demons.

  She had finished the match with just over ninety percent of her reserves left and not even a scratch on her.

  But that wasn’t surprising — today was only Tuesday. She’d have to wait until Friday for anything remotely worthwhile, when the inner members rotated down to give “hands-on instruction,” which was really just code for “we beat the cadets until they learn something and you all pretend to be grateful.”

  While she would absolutely lose in pure stat checks due to the instructors being either High Tier 1s or Tier 2s, the gap in raw numbers didn’t matter as much when she could push her skillset as far as it would go.

  And she’d been improving stupidly fast because of it. Fast enough that during her last evaluation, the Grandmaster gave her a Token Fragment and told her that if she kept her current trajectory, he’d be willing to give her hands-on training.

  “Thank the System he’s not a racist douchebag,” Jass muttered to herself as she walked past a trio of demons; an Erinyes flanked by two incubi, while keeping her gaze locked onto the closed cafeteria doors.

  “The fuck did you say?” the Erinyes snapped suddenly, whipping her head around so fast onto Jass’s back.

  Jass didn’t even break stride and was able to take two more steps toward the cafeteria doors before the demon yelled again.

  “Oi! Human bitch! What did you just say to me?”

  Clicking her tongue, Jass let out a long, exhausted sigh before lifting her arm without looking back and raising her middle finger over her shoulder.

  Not a second later, Jass pivoted her head slightly just in time to watch four razor-sharp feathers slice through the air exactly where her head had been a heartbeat ago, the compressed mana around them hissing faintly as they embedded themselves into the brimstone and obsidian pillar down the hall.

  As Jass snapped her head toward the Erinyes who had thrown them with her wing-arm, the demon’s smug grin only widened. Jass’s hand tightened on her collapsed glaive, her thumb already pressing the activation rune as she turned on her heel, feeling it expanding in her grasp, fully prepared to lunge and cut the demon down—

  “What are you four doing?” The voice boomed from the cafeteria entrance, snapping the tension in the air like a taut wire.

  A barbazu demon seemingly emerged from the shadows of the hall, wearing the Demonic Standard Knight Order insignia over his right pectoral — marking him as one of the inner members of the Knight Order, and more importantly, one of the instructors who had full authority to punish anyone who annoyed him.

  “Nothing. We were just leaving,” the Erinyes said immediately, tone switching into a forced prim smirk as she spun around and walked off with her incubi in tow.

  Jass clenched her teeth hard enough that she felt her jaw click, but she forced her fingers to loosen around the glaive’s grip. She let the weapon fold back into its compact form and slid it back into its holder on her back as she continued toward the cafeteria doors, doing her absolute best to shove down the urge to chase the Erinyes down and cut her in two for attacking her with her back turned to them.

  , she reminded herself. J

  Her thoughts were finally beginning to quiet when a sharp noise pinged against the inside of her Spatial Sling Bag.

  Jass pulled out her manaphone, expecting another brainrot meme from Bonehead or a book link Esmerlda had found — only to see that the sender in the group chat was Deacon.

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