A/N: Finally, the POV of the leading lady of the series. Enjoy!***Today was the 3rd day I woke up as a matched woman. Wow….I was surprised at how excited I still was about this. After all, the man I would be spending the rest of my life with was a complete stranger to me mere days ago. Instead of feeling nervous about this whole affair, I felt free- as if a world of possibilities suddenly opened up to me. It was love at first shot- my heart skipped a few beats when I saw him executing that shitty rapist in cold blood. No courtesy, no apology, no mercy- that was how a real man should deal with such filth. The fact that he looted his corpse like he was some mana-beast in the Wilds was a very nice touch. I would’ve loved it had he torched the corpse for good measure, but nobody’s perfect.When I first learned magecraft, the first thing I wanted to do with > was to burn all the disgusting criminals hiding behind their noble titles, dicks first. Let the fires of justice
Before I could blink, spring had arrived. The 3 months since my trip to the Narrows have been busy, to say the least. And the ever-growing to-do list showed no sign of slowing down. Between upgrading my gear, designing armored carts, managing my forge-smithy, training new apprentices, raising a wolf mana-beast puppy on the down low, hunting for mana crystals, and inventing a knockoff of the MG-42, I hardly have any time left to sleep. Natalia had 239 employees of the Galahad Trading Company. However, only a few dozen of them were able-bodied men. At this point, it was more accurate to call the Company a battered women’s shelter slash temporary orphanage than an actual company. After the company meeting, only 184 of the employees had expressed interest in “moving out of the city” with Natalia. The rest of them (mostly men) wanted to strike out elsewhere in Carnwennan, perhaps thinking that this city was the best they could ever realistically hope for. I suspected that once she told the
Just like that, another month and a half sailed by. So many things were happening and developing in a flurry. For starters, my hastily-trained apprentices began work on the armored carts. They were still a little raw, but for the little training they’d received, they had acquitted themselves quite well. Heck, the vast majority of the casings and bullets they’d produced thus far were good enough to shoot with. However, things were less sunny when it came to the cart- it was a far more complicated build, so their collective struggle was to be expected. However, with enough supervision and feedback, they were starting to get it. Loki recently reached the size of a typical wolf mana-beast (over 1 meter in length). But his growth spurt seemed to have stalled (though the voracious scamp still ate everything in sight, including Beginner-level ice mana crystals). I suppose I should be glad that he had no appetite for the other elements, otherwise my cartridge production might really be in tr
I was abruptly awakened by the sound of my bedroom door bursting open. Loki instantly jumped out of my bed and growled like a good boy that he is, but then relaxed a bit when he saw that it was Emma who suddenly entered.“Rummy! Wake up! Something terrible has happened!” Emma urgently shouted. I had no fucking idea what was happening, but my Ranger training instantly took over. “Alright, tell me what happened while I get ready.” I calmly replied as I began to gear up for battle. Within a minute, I was fully dressed for battle. Unfortunately, one minute was all Emma needed to tell me how badly I fucked up. The supply run convoy that I told Nairi and Prompto to take part of got attacked by those Yellow Shirt morons. “Why?!? Do these idiots know what they’ve done?” I loudly complained. What could they possibly gain from this!? Is this some 4D chess move I didn’t understand? Thanks to this dumb stunt, their allies in the negotiating room would either have to give up outrageous concessi
A/N: Finally, Skera gets her day in the sun!***All men are pigs. Prideful, hypocritical pigs at that. That was the truth that was seared into my soul ever since I took the path of Chivalry. Whenever a man would hear of my dream, he’d follow a dreadfully familiar script. First, the mask of politeness dropped and was replaced with snide derision. Second, he’d lose a duel he initiated. Third, he’d launch some underhanded reprisal in a pathetic attempt to sate his wounded pride. Rinse and repeat. That was how I lost my childhood friend, my father, and every man in my family. At some point, I looked up to all of them as Knights who upheld the virtues of Chivalry. There was a time that I was proud to be part of a family that served as protectors of the realm and defenders of justice. I was disappointed to find out the ugliness that lay beneath all that honor and glory. All of them followed that damned script. All of them broke my heart.I learned the hard way that the virtues of Chival
*BOOM!*Another prototype violently exploded. Nairi yelped in fright as the broken pieces of the prototype scattered all over the testing ground. I sighed in defeat. “Well, let’s clean this up and take a quick break…I need to think...” It’d been almost a full day, and zero progress had been made. All of the prototype firing mechanisms I’d tried so far had resulted in the cartridge eventually getting stuck outside the chamber. And when the firing pin struck it outside of the chamber… boom. This was a natural result of having a machine gun with such a high rate of fire- eventually a jam would result in the gun catastrophically blowing up. If it weren’t for the fact that I only put a quarter of the usual amount of the elemental dust in the test ammunition, my eyebrows would’ve been burned clean off by now. Damn, this was frustrating! Based on the results so far, the rate of fire was simply too high for the receiver to handle and the firing pin failed to stop when the gun was jammed.Na
“Well, fuck...” I looked outside the window of the company building and saw that we were surrounded by about 100 Galahad men-at-arms. Judging by the cohesion and gear, they were probably the A-team. Whatever they wanted from us, they were serious about getting it.Either way, this much was certain: we had a major rat problem. They knew too much too quickly for it to be a spontaneous discovery. This show of force was them basically telling us, “Yeah, we have somebody on the inside. What’re you gonna do about it?”“Forge-Master Rummy, please join me outside? It appears my brother and Ser Gaius want to talk.”“Sure thing.” I turned to Loki and Emma. “Look after the supplies and the passengers. I believe the rats will make a move soon enough.”I put on my cloak, hiding Severance Pay. I took a regular bow and a quiver with a few arrows and followed Skera and Natalia outside. After we arrived at the already-barricaded gate (a practice we’ve started every night after business hours ever sinc
Our convoy, which consisted of 6 armored carts and 3 regular carts (that we borrowed from the enemy), quickly made its way to the eastern city gate. Fortunately, the guards were too busy dealing with the fallout from the city-wide sandstorm and we easily slipped through. The travel plan was similar to the path we walked on our last exploration- exit the city through the east via Clarent Road and loop around the city through goblin country. We didn’t need to pick a fight with the Rangers in the west and we didn't want to.After we left the city, we noticed that a pursuit force of about 120 men was patiently stalking us from behind on the flat country road. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were waiting for the men from Clarent to sandwich us for a pincer attack. We could lose them in the woods, but the sun was almost setting. Traveling in the Wild with this many people in the night with only half the amount of armored carts was a recipe for disaster. So while I would rea