[Null POV] Year 0, Day 4-25 (Three weeks in Borderwatch Village)

  The airship arrived the same night.

  Null was sitting by the window, keeping her usual watch while Void slept, when she heard it. A distant sound growing rapidly closer. Then closer still.

  BOOM.

  A sonic boom that rattled the windows. Then another. And another.

  She looked up and saw it cutting through the night sky—a massive vessel shaped like a zeppelin, but moving far faster than anything that size should be capable of. Enchantments blazing along its hull, propulsion magic pushing it at speeds that broke the sound barrier.

  It descended toward the guild house with precision, slowing only at the last moment to avoid destroying the building with its wake.

  "That's... impressive," Null observed.

  "Fast response. They want that shield breaker NOW. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now."

  The airship hovered above the guild house for perhaps ten minutes. Figures moving on its deck. Something being transferred.

  Then it rose again, turned, and accelerated back the way it came.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  The sonic booms faded into the distance, heading toward whoever needed to examine that device urgently.

  By morning, the shield breaker was gone. In the hands of people who would use it to unravel how the Blood Cult had compromised guild security.

  And Null and Void's part in that scandal had begun.

  The first week was chaos.

  Not for them. For everyone else.

  News spread through Borderwatch like wildfire, then radiated outward to other settlements, other guilds, other regions. The shield breaker had contained security codes. Multiple codes. Not just the local guild's frequency but fifteen other organizations across the Republic.

  The scandal was massive.

  Guild halls locked down. Security overhauls initiated. Investigations launched into how the codes had leaked. Some officials were arrested immediately—corruption, bribery, selling secrets. Others fled before they could be questioned.

  The Blood Cult found itself under attack from every direction. Guild raids on their known locations. Republic authorities issuing warrants. Asset seizures. Member arrests.

  Even the Church State sent inquisitors—not to help the Republic, but because the cult had apparently been operating in Church territories too, and the Church wanted them gone for their own reasons.

  The organization that had seemed untouchable was suddenly fighting for survival.

  And in all that chaos, two people were mostly forgotten.

  The elf and his maid. The ones who'd actually killed the cult members. The ones who'd started this whole mess.

  Nobody cared about them. The scandal was too big. The implications too serious. Two random travelers were irrelevant compared to the systemic security failure that had been exposed.

  Null and Void continued their quiet routine.

  Wake up. Breakfast. Walk around the village. Buy food from every stall. Return to inn. Rest. Repeat.

  The signature device problem haunted them, though.

  "We should understand how these work," Void had suggested after the first few days. "If we know the mechanism, maybe we can figure out how to fool them."

  They'd bought two more devices from traveling merchants over the following week. Cost them another sixteen hundred gold, but solving one of their biggest problems was worth the attempt.

  Void attempted to disassemble one carefully. Took it apart piece by piece, examining the components.

  And found himself completely lost.

  "I... Mistress, I don't even know what I'm looking at. I can identify this is crystal. This might be some kind of rune structure. This could be an enchantment matrix. But how they interact? What each component actually does? I have no idea."

  "The magical engineering is completely beyond my expertise. I'd need to study for years—maybe decades—just to understand the basics of how these devices function, let alone how to replicate or fool them."

  They tested anyway. Void's signature showed normally on all three devices. Consistent. Standard.

  Null's showed nothing. Blank on all three.

  Void even tried to fake a signature for her using his magic. Created patterns, tried to mimic the energy flows he'd seen from his own tests.

  The devices detected the fake immediately. Stayed dark. Refused to be fooled.

  "They're designed to catch falsification. Very sensitive to artificial patterns. Whatever technique exists for faking signatures, it's far more sophisticated than anything I can improvise."

  "So we're stuck," Spy concluded.

  "For now, yes. Without access to the actual technique—the specific method, the proper spell structures—we can't proceed."

  "Where would we even find that?"

  "Forbidden archives. Criminal networks. Black market spell-sellers. The kind of resources that don't exist in a border village. We'd need a major city. Real underground contacts. People who traffic in illegal magic."

  When Void tried to reassemble the disassembled device, it refused to work. Something in the process had broken it permanently. The crystal stayed dark, the runes inert.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "I... I broke it. Mistress, I'm sorry. That was eight hundred gold wasted—"

  "We have more gold in the item box. Don't worry about it."

  "But—"

  "Void. We tried. It didn't work. We learned something—that we can't solve this ourselves. That's valuable information. Stop worrying about the cost."

  They sealed the remaining functional devices away carefully. Stored them for when they had better options.

  The problem was tabled. Frustrating, but unsolvable with current resources.

  At least the social implications were manageable.

  "The good news, Mistress, is that most places won't scan you anyway. Battlemaids are seen as property. Less than slaves in most people's eyes. Slaves can still think. Battlemaids are considered mindless. Nobody scans property."

  "Where does it matter?"

  "Adventurer guild registration—everyone in the party needs a card, including servants. Some city gates, though that's rare in the Republic. And the Empire. They scan everyone at the border. All statuses. No exceptions. It's part of how they maintain control."

  "So we can function normally in most of the Republic. Just can't register with guilds or visit the Empire."

  "Correct."

  Limited, but workable. For now.

  Week two brought different rhythms.

  The scandal continued—investigations, arrests, more Blood Cult locations raided—but Borderwatch itself settled back into routine. The excitement faded. Life resumed.

  Null's language learning progressed steadily.

  The merchants had embraced it as a game. A competition. Who could teach the exotic maid the most words? Who could get her to say something new?

  They'd started simple. Food items. She already knew those from association—bread, meat, cheese, fruit. Just needed to learn the actual words.

  "Bread," the baker would say, holding up a loaf. "Bread. Can you say it?"

  "Brrread." Null's pronunciation was off, the accent strange, but recognizable.

  "Yes! Exactly! Here, try this one—honey roll!"

  "Hon... roll."

  "Close enough! Good!"

  The serpent-meat vendor taught her "serpent" and "skewer" and "spicy." The fruit seller taught her various fruit names. The pastry vendor taught her "sweet" and "sugar" and "cinnamon."

  Numbers came next. One through ten. Then twenty. Then fifty. Then "hundred" and "thousand."

  Enough to handle transactions.

  The language felt alien to Null. The sounds didn't come naturally, the grammar made no sense compared to what little she remembered from before. Each word was a struggle, each sentence a puzzle.

  But she kept at it. Practical skill. Useful ability. And somehow... not entirely unpleasant.

  Each new word was like tasting a new food. Small. Novel. A tiny expansion of what she could do.

  By the end of week two, Null could actually order food herself. Void would give a small gesture—permission to speak. Then Null would point at items and name them with her strange accent and beautiful voice.

  "Three... serpent. Two... bread. One... honey roll."

  The vendors loved it. Encouraged it. Corrected her pronunciation gently. Competed to teach her new words.

  And when she got something right, when she managed a new word or used one correctly in context, they'd cheer. Congratulate her. And Void would tip generously.

  Gold flowing freely to reward successful teaching.

  The merchants had actual betting pools now. Who would teach her the most words this week? Who would get her to string together her first full sentence?

  The elf who petted and fed his maid with gold. The strange pair who'd become part of Borderwatch's daily rhythm. Exotic, generous, profitable.

  Life in an adventurer village meant seeing strange things constantly. Tamed monsters walking down streets. High-level magic being practiced openly. Violence erupting and being resolved through sanctioned duels.

  One powerful battlemaid who liked food and was learning to talk? That was interesting. Memorable. Worth gossiping about.

  But not worth fear or excessive caution. Just another curiosity in a town full of them.

  By week three, Borderwatch was transforming.

  The mega-auction preparations began in earnest.

  A massive tent was erected next to the guild house—easily three times the size of the building itself. Canvas and enchanted supports, warded barriers being installed, seating constructed for hundreds. Maybe thousands.

  Merchants stockpiled goods. Inns prepared for overflow crowds. The village expanded overnight, temporary structures appearing to house the expected influx.

  And people started arriving.

  At first, just a trickle. Wealthy merchants from other Republic cities. Adventurer parties from across the region. Collectors and brokers looking for specific items.

  Then more. And more. By the end of week three, Borderwatch's population had tripled. Maybe quadrupled. The streets were packed. The inns were full. People were camping outside the village in organized tent cities.

  All for the chance to bid on two Legend-class items and whatever else the Blood Cult leader had been hoarding.

  The rumors about the total value ranged wildly. Some said two hundred thousand gold. Others claimed millions. The truth was probably somewhere between, but nobody knew for certain until the guild finished their inventory.

  What everyone did know: this was the auction of the decade. Maybe the century. Legend-class items almost never came to market. When they did, kingdoms went to war over them.

  Having two in one auction? Unprecedented.

  And through it all, one small detail became local legend.

  The flower girl. The orphan who'd given Null the Phantom Bloom.

  Over fifty adoption applications had been submitted for her. Nobles, wealthy merchants, guild officials—everyone suddenly wanted to adopt the brave little girl who'd found the champion who'd saved them all. The gifted child whose luck had changed everything.

  In the end, the auctioneer himself—a man named Garrett who'd run Borderwatch auctions for over a century—had adopted her officially. Made her his daughter legally. Something that almost never happened to orphans.

  The flower girl—Null had learned her name was Lily, though whether that was original or given by Garrett she didn't know—sometimes waved when she saw them in the plaza. Shy but genuine. Happy.

  Null didn't know how to respond to that. Just gave small nods. Acknowledgment without understanding.

  The girl seemed satisfied with that.

  The other orphans had their stipends. Their security. Their futures.

  All because Null had accepted a flower without knowing what it meant.

  "The children are safe," Void had observed during one of their walks. "Because of you, Mistress. Accidentally, yes. But still because of you."

  "I didn't do anything. Just took a flower and killed some people who deserved it."

  "That's more than most would have done."

  Null had no response to that. Just continued walking, continued her language practice, continued her slow integration into this strange world's rhythms.

  By the end of week three, she knew perhaps a hundred and fifty words. The language had felt completely alien at first—sounds that didn't come naturally, grammar that made no sense. But somewhere during the third week, something had clicked. Words started connecting. Patterns emerged. She began picking up new vocabulary faster, understanding simple sentences even without Void's help.

  Could order food, count money, exchange basic greetings. Handle simple transactions.

  Not fluent. Not even close. But functional. Enough to navigate daily life with Void's support.

  "Good morning" she could manage. "Thank you." "How much?" "Three bread, please." "Very good."

  Her accent remained strange. Her voice remained beautiful and captivating. But people got used to it. Expected it. Some of the merchants even found it charming.

  The elf and his maid. Borderwatch's most generous customers. The pair who'd accidentally saved the orphans and inadvertently triggered the Republic's biggest scandal in decades.

  They'd become part of the village's identity. Part of its stories.

  And as the mega-auction approached, as the tent filled with seating and the crowd swelled to unprecedented numbers, Null and Void watched from their window at the Wayward Traveler.

  "Should we attend?" Void asked.

  "Probably. See what Legend-class items actually go for. Observe the important people who come. Maybe learn something useful."

  "Or just watch rich people spend fortunes on things they don't need."

  "That too."

  "The flower girl will be there," Spy noted. "Helping her new father. You should see how that turned out."

  "The orphans are safe. That's what matters."

  "You care about them."

  "I don't care about anything. It's just... preferable that children don't get sacrificed for blood magic. Logically preferable."

  "Sure, Host. Logically."

  Null didn't argue. Just watched the village prepare for its biggest event in living memory.

  Three weeks of quiet. Three weeks of routine. Three weeks of learning and adapting and existing in this world.

  It had been... nice. In a way she didn't fully understand.

  But tomorrow, the crowds would arrive in force. The auction would begin. And quiet would end.

  Time to see what this world considered valuable enough to spend fortunes on.