Ryan woke with a start. An almost damp chill crept up his spine, spreading across most of his skin, but it was the person standing in front of him that had jolted him awake so sharply. He didn’t recognize her. She was a middle-aged woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a Nordic look so stereotypical it was almost jarring.

  “I’m sorry, what?” Ryan asked, trying to get his bearings—where he was, and why he was being woken up by random villager number twenty-four.

  The woman gave him a polite smile. “A messenger came in from the capital a few minutes ago. He’s meeting with the steward now. I was sent to inform you.”

  “Um… okay,” Ryan replied, racking his brain as to why it mattered that he be informed of the arrival of someone from the capital.

  She smiled again, just as pleasantly, then turned and went about her business.

  Ryan squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to will the headache away. It didn’t work. He reached for his cup of broth and found it cold, but he didn’t really give a shit. Forcing his eyes open, he realized he was still sitting beside the fire pit, leaned up against a couple of crates that had been dragged out for the sole purpose of sitting on. Half the reason he was cold was probably because the ground was leeching heat from his body, and the fire had, by this point, mostly gone out. The sun was up, birds chirped beneath a blue sky that looked far too cheerful given the night before.

  He closed his eyes again to fight back the pain of the brightness, then focused on the small blinking icon in the corner of his vision, finally pulling up the notifications he’d ignored the night before out of sheer exhaustion.

  You’ve reached Level 2 in Déjà Vu.

  +0.2% increase in useful insights gained from Déjà Vu.

  “How the fuck is Déjà Vu a skill?” Ryan asked nobody in particular. Thankfully, no one answered. His next notification was just as perplexing, though with far more troubling implications.

  You’ve reached Level 12 in Warleader.

  +1.2% morale to all allies who can see or hear you on the field of battle.

  Ryan just stared at the notification. Three months to crawl his way toward level twenty in Smithing—and he’d pushed Warleader to twelve in the span of two hours. That was some kind of bullshit.

  Ryan dismissed the notification with a shake of his head, bringing up the next one in line.

  You have reached Level 2.

  You have one unassigned attribute point.

  Would you like to assign the attribute point now?

  Ryan dismissed that notification as well and brought his attention back to the real world. There were three places a man could take care of the most basic call of nature. One was his own home, which was far too far away from where Ryan was sitting. Another was any number of the drainage ditches that crisscrossed the village. It wasn’t a terribly unsanitary way to deal with liquid bodily waste, but it did give the village a faint odor of piss and required a man to step aside, bare himself, and stand there for a moment while relieving himself. The third option was any of the latrines scattered around the village, which—possibly because they were used by everyone—were actually rather nice, with cedar-lined interiors that lent the space an almost pleasant scent, at least on cold days.

  The sanitary conditions of the village had been one of Ryan’s more pleasant surprises. He’d originally been worried about the whole business of people emptying chamber pots into the streets. At this point, he was fairly certain anyone who tried that would be lynched. Apart from the urine in the drainage ditches, the place was remarkably clean—and, more importantly, the people clearly understood disease.

  With a belly full of cold broth and his bladder empty, Ryan felt considerably better. The cheerful sunlight filtering through the village did its best to dispel the dark weight of the previous night. He wondered whether he should go find Ping to see if she’d made breakfast, or head to the smithy to speak with Haroan. The decision was made for him when the bell rang out, calling a village meeting. Ryan changed course and headed toward the town square, joining the growing throng of people.

  It took a long time for the villagers to gather around the stage in the center of the town square. To be fair, several people were injured—some carried in by family members—and others wore the hollow, stunned expressions of those who had just lost loved ones. Ryan found himself wondering how many they had actually lost, and how many the priestess’s magic had managed to save. He took up a position next to Haroan, who gave him a nod and a grunt by way of greeting. Ryan scanned the crowd, searching for Ping, but finding a short Asian woman in a sea of tall Nordic villagers proved unfruitful.

  The steward—looking as wise and professionally bureaucratic as ever—waited patiently for the crowd to gather. Once he determined that everyone who was going to show up had done so, he took in a long breath and began.

  “Firstly, to all the men who stood on the walls to defend us against the goblin hordes—thank you.” The steward bowed, the gesture almost Asian-inspired and oddly out of place. But really, what was the man supposed to do, standing on a stage? Shake everyone’s hand? “Secondly, to all the women, the elderly, and even some of the children who helped serve and tend to the men working the walls—thank you.” He bowed again. “And thirdly, to our lovely and talented priestess, whom we are blessed to have, and whose magic has single-handedly brought many men back from the brink of death—I thank you as well.” For the third time, he bowed.

  He then straightened, scanned the crowd, and seemed to weigh how best to deliver the next piece of news. “As you may know, a courier from the capital arrived this morning. Lord Jarl Haldric sends his condolences for the loss of our lord and assures us that he will appoint a suitable replacement when he is able. However, due to ongoing hostilities in the west, this is expected to take longer than he would prefer.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “He wishes that we continue to operate with whoever is currently in charge. This does, however, raise an issue. With the oncoming goblin horde, we never formally placed anyone in charge of the village. The greatest command authority fell to Reeve Branson, as he is already responsible for the village’s defense. And so here is my proposal. At the end of this meeting—which will conclude in just a moment—I will be setting up a station. Please form a line and come to me. Give a single suggestion for who you believe would be an adequate interim leader for the village, and I will tally the names once complete. If there is an obvious choice, that person will take charge. If several names are close, we will hold another town meeting to further discuss our course of action… That is all.”

  With that, the steward bowed once more and stepped aside to prepare his materials. Ryan abstained from suggesting a name for interim leader. He didn’t have the slightest idea who would do an adequate job, and the village seemed close?knit enough that, in most situations, they could simply come together and fix whatever problem existed—the goblin horde being a perfect example. Instead, he set off to find something to eat for breakfast before returning to the smithy to work with Haroan, smelting the pile of goblin daggers down into ingots they could use to forge whatever the village needed next.

  It was nearly noon when a runner came to tell Ryan that the steward had requested his presence. Ryan cleaned himself up and spent the entire walk to the Lord’s Hall wondering why the steward would want to see him instead of Haroan. Anything that didn’t require the smith’s actual presence could have been handled by a runner. Ryan himself had practically no command authority in the smithy, and nothing he could think of made any sense.

  The Lord’s Hall was probably the largest building in the village. It served not only as the lord’s home, but also as a guesthouse, the lord’s office and meeting place, and the steward’s office, which occupied a much smaller side room.

  The older man sat at a well-made desk, natural light streaming in through a window fitted with actual glass. Without his customary robe, he looked more like a shop clerk, wearing black cuff-like bands that some random part of Ryan’s brain insisted existed so people couldn't see ink smudges.

  “Ryan, son of Lars,” the steward said as Ryan entered.

  Ryan froze, confused, suddenly wondering if the man had summoned the wrong Ryan. Larson. Son of Lars. Ha! Apparently surnames didn’t translate particularly well to a low-magic fantasy world. The steward held out his hand to shake. Ryan reached to grab the wrist and was startled when the older man instead clasped his hand—unlike nearly everyone else he’d dealt with over the last three months.

  “Bjorn, son of Herod, steward of Ern.”

  “Urn?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes. It’s the name of the village.”

  Ryan blinked at him. “Like a burial urn?”

  “No. Ern, as in E?R?N.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. It’s not a very widely used name outside of official documents. Please, have a seat.”

  Ryan took the seat, feeling uncomfortably like he was in an insurance office, sitting across the desk from an agent—still unsure why he was here at all.

  “You’re not particularly well known, are you?” Bjorn said… The man with what might have been the most stereotypically Nordic name Ryan could imagine.

  “Um… what?” Ryan asked, not entirely coherently.

  Bjorn smiled, clearly finding Ryan’s reaction amusing. “For the interim leader of our little village, the most recommended person was Reeve Branson. That, of course, makes sense. However, the man declined the responsibility. I personally think he’s a bit upset over his hesitation during the defense of the town… Second on that list was myself. Presumably because I manage the village. But leadership doesn’t actually make my job any easier. I would need a replacement, and I’m not aware of anyone with the required skills.”

  “Third on the list was the blacksmith’s apprentice.” Bjorn glanced up at Ryan. “That’s you. Fourth was the carpenter. Fifth was Ryan, and you are the only Ryan in this village that I’m aware of. After that, the mason. And after him was ‘the new guy’. Again, I believe that is you.”

  Bjorn folded his hands. “When I tallied all three of your entries together, you actually beat me out.”

  Ryan just stared at the man, his mouth and brain utterly incapable of forming the question that needed to be asked. The older gentleman across the table gave a knowing smirk and asked it for him. “Why would people choose you as the interim leader?”

  “Uh… yeah,” Ryan said, latching onto the words and leaning hard into their absurdity.

  “Well,” Bjorn continued, “the people of Jarl Haldric’s hold will, of course, follow hierarchy. However, in the absence of hierarchy, they prefer competence. People who give the orders in a battle that is won. Or take on responsibility that allows others to get food and rest.” He gave a small shrug. “I had to verify this myself. But it seems most people believe you are responsible for our victory against the goblin horde.”

  Bjorn gave Ryan a few moments to process and come to terms with the reality being laid out in front of him. “Anyway, an interim leader isn’t exactly a permanent position. I give it a month, at most. And for the most part, you’ll be working with the Reeve to make sure we’re not wiped out by another round of goblins—which, unfortunately, is expected.” He leaned back slightly. “So, essentially, your job is to do the Reeve’s job, minus the rushing into combat. Though we certainly appreciate that part as well.”

  “So… what am I supposed to do today?” Ryan asked, still half-lost in his own head.

  “My guess?” Bjorn said. “You go back to the smithy and keep working on whatever you were already doing. You can come back here tomorrow morning, and we’ll go over a list of issues and the things we can possibly do to prevent certain death from overtaking us if another goblin horde shows up.”

  Ryan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hey, I’ve got a question about the goblins.”

  “Of course,” Bjorn replied. “What is it?”

  “Why do they turn to ash?” Ryan asked.

  The older man stared at him, clearly weighing whether the question was genuine. After a moment, he sighed.

  “Well. They’re dungeon-born.”

  At Ryan’s blank look, Bjorn’s mouth pulled into a small frown. “There is a goblin dungeon on the lands of Jarl Narkuf. Unfortunately, that dungeon faces Jarl Haldric’s hold and sits on a downhill slope. When the dungeon overproduces unharvested monsters, they spill down the slope into our lands and attack the villages along the eastern side of the hold. This happens yearly. Jarl Narkuf does not manage the dungeon as he should, and anyone who enters his lands to stem the tide is branded a trespasser and attacked. This essentially allows Jarl Narkuf to attack Jarl Haldric every year without cost to himself, all while hiding behind the excuse that it’s just the dungeon—not his doing.”

  “Well, that sounds horrible,” Ryan said, the words sounding hollow even to his own ears. It actually was horrible—he just hadn’t fully put the pieces together yet. He needed time to chew on it, along with the fact that he was now in charge of a frickin’ village.

  Bjorn nodded. “It is.”

  “Okay, but why do most of them turn to ash, and the others don’t?”

  The older man shrugged. “More mana invested in them, I suppose. Something along those lines. I can’t really be certain.”

  “All right. So… what do I do now?”

  Bjorn made a shooing motion. “Back to work, I suppose. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  And just like that, Ryan found himself wandering back toward the smithy in a daze. Haroan was going to have a very good laugh about this.

  A short, slightly chubby woman with vibrant red hair and wearing tight blue jeans and a tank top comes out onto the stage to start sweeping. She looks up in mild surprise.

  “Oh, you’re still here. Um.”

  She straightens and scratches the back of her head.

  “Well, I guess if you want to support the author and get more of… well, that.”

  She points to the text box above her.

  “You can support us on Patreon and Ream. Ream kind of works like a mix of Patreon and Royal Road, so the free chapters come out at the same time as they do here. Links are… down there.”

  She points down below.

  “Anyway the $3 tier gets you the next three chapters. The $5 tier gets you bonus material but the only thing there right now are River Commentaries.”

  She looks around as though checking if anyone is watching, then puts her hand by her mouth and stage whispers.

  “Probably not worth it. Nobody likes River Commentary anyway.”

  She returns to sweeping.

  “Someone said I should do the commentary, but that would end up on the 18+ list so it’s a pretty low priority. Anyway, see you next week I guess.”

  Patreon: Ream:

  “If you’re gonna stick around, at least ask some questions. I’ve got plenty of behind the scenes info, and spoilers. Oh, right. I’m Lucy. Everyone calls me Red, because, you know.”

  She points at her red hair.