The last vestiges of the sun kissed the edge of the horizon as a silver-shaded twilight turned to black. In the far distance, a series of tall flames lit up the night, and a still running Artyom turned course towards them.


    He’d been running for two hours. Thanks to magical assistance, he’d reached speeds that could beat out even the swiftest race horse without slowing down for the entire trip. But as he approached the fires and surrounding camp, the man from Earth eased into a silent trot and took his place at the outskirts.


    Artyom channeled magical energy and focused it on a quick series of spells centered around his sensory organs. Detect Life and Eagle’s Sight highlighted a massive crowd scattered throughout the camp that he was able to pick out individually in detail. Forty three. That was how many Artyom counted.


    Just about all of them were gathered at the center, around a series of bonfires, talking and moving around animatedly. Some were even dancing, or at least giving it their best attempt. The ones who were sitting had plates full of food they evidently enjoyed while sipping on bottles of what Artyom recognized was Freeacres’ cherry sparkle.


    The sight made goosebumps erupt across Artyom’s flesh, but he didn’t react. Instead he looked towards a nearby tent, a particularly fancy one that stood out from the others, that presently housed four people.


    Sneaking over to it, Artyom activated another sensory spell; this time Bat’s Hearing.


    Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum.


    The sound of Artyom’s blaring heartbeat almost deafened him before he tuned his spell to filter it out. He almost never had to deal with that, only when he was under extreme duress. Usually a few breathing exercises would calm him down and make him feel better, but the man from Earth didn’t want that.


    “…luck that you found that defenseless town! We’re feasting well tonight, and a lot of the troops are going to go up a level! Have yourselves a drink,” said a gruff voice from inside.


    “Uh, thanks commander!” said a much more familiar one, before the glowing Detect Life silhouettes of him and two other figures made a drinking motion. They immediately began to bend over slightly to cough.


    “Woah, this stuff’s strong!” said a third voice, this one also familiar. “Is this alcohol?”


    “How’d you get yourself a bottle, commander?” asked the final person in the tent. That made all three of the scouts present and accounted for. “And can I have one too?”


    “This bottle is mine, you can earn one for yourself by finding us more targets! Now leave me to my paperwork.”


    The three familiar silhouettes filed out of the tent, and Artyom was able to get a look at them. His heartbeat became audible again as he drank in their faces before he once more tuned it out.


    “Throwing a party over slaughtering some defenseless villagers?” thought Artyom to himself. “Are they that undisciplined, or do they really see it as such a big achievement?”


    Turning back to the tent, the silhouette of the apparent commander could be seen pouring himself another drink and slowly downing it, before refilling his cup.


    “Seeing as how you’re getting drunk, especially when alcohol is supposed to be incredibly expensive in this world, I’m judging the latter. Vulnerability to Poison, Painless Suffering,” Artyom cast the pair of spells, and the commander didn’t react, save for beginning to lightly slump as he took another sip. “You’re the one keeping this rowdy bunch together, so I’ll just keep you out of the game until we can talk in private.”


    Artyom then turned towards the three scouts and raised his hand to cast another spell. “Purge Toxins.”


    The trio immediately froze in place before hunching over and grabbing their stomachs.


    “I don’t feel so good, I heard this is what happens when you drink too much,” said the one on the left.


    “We just had one cup! That makes no sense!” exclaimed the leader.


    “Well I’m about to hurl!” said the one on the right, who took off for a corner in the outskirts of the camp.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The other two quickly followed, along with the man from Earth just behind.


    In the dimly lit back of the camp were the latrines, as Artyom could tell from the scent. And bent over a wide hole were the three scouts, adding the contents of their stomachs to the night soil.


    “Maybe we just have to get used to it? I bet we won’t puke like this next time.”


    “I feel like it’s going to take a lot of next times, this was pretty bad.”


    “And there’ll be plenty of next times! Especially if everyone we meet is as big of a rube as that one guy.”


    “Yeah, what an idiot. ‘We promise we won’t hurt anyone ever again!’ Imagine that we merely had to lie to him to get out of our promise, that’s what makes us so great at our jobs.”


    “There’s a lot of things you can do if you just lie and use force, like getting a girl! I’m going to try that on our next raid.”


    “Too true, just don’t get stabbed like Bega. And besides, what’s that fool or anyone else going to do about it? Is he going to appear right behind us and get mad?”


    “Yes.”


    The three immediately turned their heads to the voice. The man in the back who’d asked the last question got halfway there before Artyom grabbed his head and helped him turn it all the way, a full 180 degree snap.


    He stared at Artyom with surprise before the lifelessness set in and he fell to the side.


    The other two immediately went white as a sheet as they pulled out a sword and small flame respectively.


    “Oh, that must’ve been the one with the mace,” whispered Artyom. “He would’ve killed himself with brain damage eventually, so I thought I’d speed things up. Death comes for us all, but too bad for you, I got here first.”


    The others charged. Or at least tried to.


    Artyom snapped his finger before they could take a step and the enemy spellcaster’s fire went out. He began to choke, before quickly realizing that this was the same anti-magic field as before, and opted to pull out a dagger.


    The swordsman was a step ahead, but tripped on the corpse of his fallen comrade, causing his first swing to go wide.


    Artyom didn’t bother to even lean out of the way of the errant slash.


    As the enemy spellcaster charged in, the man from Earth lifted his hand and channeled magic into a single point in his palm. Space itself began to warp around the spot, even seemingly moving out of sync with the rest of the world as Artyom lifted it to his attacker’s chest.


    “Let me show you a proper combat spell: Gravity Blender.”


    The enemy spellcaster felt a literal gut-wrenching pull inside his chest that caused his entire torso to heave as if squeezed by a hydraulic press, followed by blood and chunks of viscera spurting out of his mouth. He immediately collapsed to the floor, dead before he even reached it.


    “M-mercy! Please, have mercy!” sputtered the remaining scout, the group’s leader. “I promise I’ll-”


    “You people sure are an interesting case,” said Artyom, turning to face the man. “You’ve got the morals of Gilded world scum, but with the simplicity of a naive child! No wonder the techies at headquarters thought this was a Fairytale world.”


    The swordsman stood for a moment in confusion, before taking a swing at Artyom while he looked away in thought.


    “Will giving you a chance at redemption make me feel better?” said the man from Earth as he deftly caught the sword, and pulled it out of his attacker’s grip. “Not that you deserve it.”


    “P-please, have mercy!”


    “My god, do you really think I’m that dumb? You’re like a little kid who just learned how to lie, and haven’t realized that the grown ups have been surrounded by better liars all our lives.” He took a step forward.


    “What are you going to do?”


    “What I wanted to do the first time: carry out frontier justice. Can’t risk any of you tricking the hero like you did me, after all. That greenhorn only needs to be fooled once to end up dead.”


    Artyom gathered magic into a single point in his hand and threw it at the scout leader. “Gravity Lance.”


    The soldier felt a sudden pain in his chest and attempted to clutch his heart, but instead found a half-foot wide hole in its place. He fell to the ground, dead.


    The man from Earth stared at the dead bodies around him. The three tricksters, the three prideful fools, the three bringers of death. Now all tricked, humbled, and dead themselves. Yet that changed nothing for the victims of the massacre of Freeacres, who still remained dead, and Artyom’s budding innocence shared that same grave.


    He let out a sigh. “Why did I think that was going to make me feel better?”


    He forcefully kicked one of the bodies in the head, and the dull thud that echoed from its helmet rang hollow.


    A shock arced up his foot and through his spine, but he only blinked, not even flinching as each pulse of pain screamed as loudly as he himself wanted to at that moment. But it at least woke him up to the world around him.


    Artyom blinked. His heart rate began to speed up, and he blinked again. Two more times, then three, as his heart caught in his chest.


    “One, just one, please…” he whispered. He kept blinking, trying to coax out even a single teardrop to fall. His mind was overwhelmed with a flood of emotions, ones he’d kept bottled up for so long, that were finally demanding to be set free.


    But he couldn’t.


    Hitting something couldn’t make it go away, screaming would just alert the enemy soldiers, and the tears wouldn’t fall.


    Having no release, the man from Earth just did what he always did. He took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and let himself go cold.


    “Even on a so-called vacation I can’t escape reality. This is how the world works, and a kid from Earth is once again caught in the crossfire. Time to get back to work.”