As soon as the heavy oak door of the office creaked shut behind them, Arthur and William headed down the dimly lit corridor. Arthur walked with his typical, measured pace, his hands clasped behind his back as he processed the logistical nightmare of managing Nightingale as a "watched ally." William, however, vibrated with a contained, manic excitement, his eyes fixed on a blue interface that only he could see.
— "Art, you're going to freak out," — whispered William, leaning forward with a smile that threatened to split his face. — "I just did it. I spent the 280 credits."
Arthur stopped abruptly in the middle of the stone corridor. He turned slowly, his forehead creased in total, horrified incomprehension. He had already spent hours mentally allocating those credits to the "Knowledge" tab—calculating how they could accelerate the metallurgy requirements for the Steam Engine Mark II.
— "Spent? What do you mean, spent?" — Arthur's voice was heavy with a growing, icy suspicion. — "I was in the middle of a cost-benefit analysis to unlock 'Industrial Chemistry.' Please tell me you're joking."
— "Dude, listen! If you mentally drag the credit icon in the Dimensional System, a secret submenu opens. You can buy raw attributes!" — explained William, gesturing frantically. — "It's 40 credits for a +1 increase in physical capacity. I didn't even hesitate, man. I spent all my 280. I just bought seven points of raw Strength!"
Arthur stood paralyzed for three whole seconds, his eyes fixed on nothing as his brain processed the pure, absolute stupidity of what he had just heard.
— "Are you... are you actually mentally deranged?" — Arthur finally hissed. He didn't shout, but the intensity of his tone made William flinch. — "YOU SPENT ALMOST ALL OUR STRATEGIC RESERVES ON ATTRIBUTES? AND YOU INVESTED THEM IN STRENGTH? I can't believe I'm standing here listening to this. For what sensible purpose would you do that?"
William burst out laughing, the sound echoing off the cold stone walls. He found a genuine, boyish humor in Arthur's exasperation. — "Relax, bro! It's called an 'investment'! How am I supposed to carry the team if I'm as weak as a peasant? Besides, every strength-focused anime character is an absolute badass. I'm building a 'Juggernaut' character!"
— "We are building an industrial civilization, William! We'll have rifled muskets and 12-pounder cannons!" — Arthur retorted, feeling a sharp pang of mental exhaustion. — "In a world of gunpowder and chemical engineering, 'Strength' is the most useless attribute there is! Have you forgotten the story? Carter Lannis defeats Ashes—a literal superhuman—using only a revolver and accuracy! Furthermore, we are not frontline soldiers. Our role is to provide information to convince the Association not to commit suicide in the mountains!"
William stopped laughing. His expression instantly shifted from amusement to a hard, defiant seriousness.
— "And do you really think Cara is just going to sit there and listen to a PowerPoint presentation?" — William countered, referring to the extremist and fanatical founder of the Witch Cooperation Association. — "That woman is a zealot, Art. She has spent decades feeding these girls a diet of martyrdom. If Nightingale couldn't convince them in the original book, what makes you think two 'scholars' in fancy tunics will? We're going to have to go out there. We're going to have to face the demons. And when the steel starts flying, I need to be able to hit harder than anything they've ever seen to prove that we can protect them!"
Arthur shook his head, his pragmatic coldness resurfacing like winter frost. — "You've lost your mind. This isn't a game, William. It's not a shonen anime where you win with 'willpower' and 'big muscles.' I am not going to risk my life or our future for a bunch of side characters and extras. Our role is to warn them, provide the data, and retreat to the safety of the wall."
— "Extras?" — William exploded, invading Arthur's personal space. His eyes burned with a genuine, righteous anger. — "Is that all they are to you? Anna is just a 'unit'? Nana is just a 'healer'? They aren't characters, Art! They are people! They feel the cold! They feel pain! If I have the power to stop them from dying in the snow, I'm going to use it, regardless of what your 'meta-strategy' says!"
The argument was reaching its boiling point. Carter Lannis, who was patrolling the adjacent corridor, turned the corner with his hand resting, as usual, on the hilt of his sword. He sensed the palpable tension between the prince's two most trusted advisors.
— "Is there a problem, gentlemen?" — Carter asked, his eyes darting between the two. — "The walls of this castle are thin, and the two of you are... quite agitated."
Arthur completely ignored the Knight, shooting one last icy glare at William. A look that signaled a fundamental fracture in their brotherhood.
— "Do whatever you want to satisfy your 'protagonist syndrome,' William. But when your 'Strength' fails against a demon's spear and you realize you could have bought the knowledge to build a better defense... don't count on me to fix it."
— "I expected this kind of cowardice from you, Art," — William replied, his voice heavy with a quiet, lethal contempt. — "Don't worry. I'll handle the heavy lifting. You can stay in the library, where it's safe."
The two men turned on their heels and headed in opposite directions down the dark corridor. Carter Lannis remained standing there under the flickering torchlight, watching them walk away. He didn't understand a thing about "credits" or "attributes," but he understood the look of two friends who had become strangers.
Carter let out a heavy sigh, his breath condensing in the frigid air of Border Town. As Chief Knight, he routinely dealt with the intrigues of nobles and assassins in the shadows, but the dynamic between those two outsiders — whom Prince Roland had suddenly brought into his innermost circle — was a mystery his sword could not cut. Shaking his head in resignation, he resumed his patrol through the dark corridors.
.
.
.
Far from there, in the training courtyard covered by a thin layer of snow, William stopped. The wind cut at his face, but his blood boiled with a newfound adrenaline. He needed to know. He needed to physically feel what those 280 credits had bought.
He walked with firm steps to the guards' weapon rack. He ignored the standard short swords and went straight for a training greatsword — a massive, blunt, and brutal steel weapon, easily weighing twice as much as a real combat sword, used only by the most robust soldiers to build endurance. Before the insane "investment" in the System, William would have needed both hands, planted legs, and a lot of breath just to lift it off the ground.
He wrapped his right fist around the worn leather hilt. Took a deep breath. And pulled.
The enormous steel sword rose as if it were made of pine twigs.
William widened his eyes, his heart hammering against his ribs. The weight was undeniably still there, the inertia of gravity still existed, but his muscles, tendons, and bones now responded with an ease that bordered on terrifying. He twisted his wrist and delivered a horizontal strike in the air. The sharp whistle of metal tearing through the night wind echoed across the silent courtyard, followed by the crack of his own shoulders adjusting to the explosive new strength.
He didn't have Carter's fluid technique, let alone Ashes' superhuman reflexes, but the pure, overwhelming kinetic energy behind that rustic movement would be capable of splitting a boar in half.
— "I won't let you die..." — William whispered to the cold night, images of the witches from the Witches' Cooperative Association being killed by demons flashing through his mind. The power vibrating in his hands only solidified his conviction. Arthur could call him an idiot all he wanted, but cold logic didn't warm anyone in the Months of Demons.
Meanwhile, in the eastern wing of the castle, Arthur slammed the door to his quarters with enough force to make dust fall from the stone frame. Anger still throbbed heavily in his temples.
He walked to the modest oak desk, lit the oil lamp with rigid, mechanical movements, and opened his own Dimensional System display. Just the thought of the counter in the upper right corner displaying a painful and insulting "20" would infuriate Arthur. He had spent months meticulously planning, advising William not to waste his own credits on nonsense. To avoid trouble with Nightingale. And to avoid the bottlenecks of the Industrial Revolution. But all of that was completely decimated by an impulsive hero complex.
— "Brute force," — Arthur muttered, his voice dripping with venom in the empty room. — "In a world where demonic beasts cross the skies and are the size of carriages. Stupid. Completely stupid."
He closed the blue interface with a sharp wave of his hand. If the System would no longer help him provide the exact diagrams, he would have to extract every drop of memory from his own brain. He pulled out a blank scroll of parchment, dipped his quill in ink, and began to trace, from memory, the complex schematics of blast furnaces and the rudiments of nitric acid synthesis.
His strokes were aggressive, the tip of the quill almost tearing the rough sheet. William wanted to save the witches by stepping onto the front lines with his bare fists? So be it. Arthur would save all of humanity by building an inexorable, steam-powered meat grinder, where demons, beasts, and Church fanatics would be shredded by the fury of standardized artillery.
He didn't need bravery or passionate speeches. He needed coal, iron ore, and sulfur.
Dawn advanced, silent and merciless over Border Town, sheltering under the same stone roof two worldviews that now collided irrevocably. And while the two outsiders charted their diametrically opposed paths, the white mist began to accumulate imperceptibly in the Impassable Mountain Range, indifferent to both heroic magic and human science. The true test was just beginning.