The muster yard of Falken Tower was a testament to faded nobility—a rectangle of churned mud and forgotten ambition within timber walls that sagged like tired shoulders. House Falken may have held the title of Counts, but standing here, breathing air thick with the scent of wet wool and despair, Kaelen understood the truth. They were counts of mud, of crumbling stone, of a name that rang hollow in the Iron Realm's halls of power.
A dozen men—a pitiful mix of threadbare house guards and sullen conscripted villagers—hacked at straw dummies with the enthusiasm of men digging their own graves. These were the forces of a Count. These were the tools with which Kaelen was supposed to become… a general? The irony was so sharp it almost made him smile.
His brother, Ser Jannik Falken, stood at the yard's center. He was everything a count's heir should be: broad, strong, armored in confidence and chainmail. He watched Kaelen with the dismissive scrutiny one gave to a rusted hinge on a war chest—a minor flaw to be ignored or hammered out.
[ SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TARGET - SER JANNIK FALKEN ]
STR: 12 | AGI: 9 | SKL: 11 | IQ: 7 | SOC: 8
[ COMBAT PREDICTION MODULE ACTIVE ]
87% Probability: Aggressive opening. Overhead chop to establish dominance.
WARNING: Parry or block impossible with STR: 4. Outcome: CATASTROPHIC STAGGER.
The data scrolled, clean and clinical. This was his battlefield now. Not strength against strength, but calculation against brute force. The greatest general, he thought with a inner sneer, starts by not getting his skull cracked by his own brother in a muddy yard.
"Let's see if the fever burned out the weakness, or just left the husk," Jannik called, his voice carrying the bored authority of a man used to being obeyed. The training circle formed, the men's faces etched with the flat disinterest of those forced to witness a foregone conclusion.
[ QUEST ACTIVE: Do Not Die Immediately - TIMER: 4:59 ]
Jannik moved. It was the predicted overhead chop, a waterfall of oak and malice meant to end the farce quickly. Kaelen's body, with its AGI: 5, was a sluggish puppet. But his mind, firing on IQ: 14, had already commanded it: Step right. Not back. Right.
He shuffled. The heavy blade thudded into the mud where his shoulder had been, spraying filth.
[ AGI CHECK PASSED ]
[ SKILL PROGRESS: Footwork +0.2% ]
"Stop dancing, coward!" Jannik spat, swinging a wide horizontal slash. Textbook. Predictable. Kaelen's knees gave out, dropping him into the muck. The blade passed over his head with a hollow woosh.
[ UNCONVENTIONAL TACTIC LOGGED: 'Controlled Collapse']
[ VALERIUS'S NOTE: "UNGRACEFUL. BUT EFFICIENT." ]
Jannik's face darkened with irritation. He was a knight, trained for honorable exchanges, not this… this evasion. His next attack was a thrust, direct and powerful. The prediction flashed: UNPARRYABLE.
Kaelen's options vanished. So he created a new one.
As the wooden point sped toward his chest, he didn't try to avoid it completely. He turned his body, presenting his shoulder, and leaned into the blow. At the same moment, he opened his hand, letting his own practice sword fall.
THUD. Pain, bright and hot, exploded in his shoulder. But the force was glancing, robbed of its clean power.
His now-empty hand didn't strike back. It shot downward, not at Jannik, but at the leather strap on his brother's hip where his real, family-crested dagger hung. A single finger hooked under the guard.
He pulled.
The finely-made dagger slid free and plopped into the mud with a profoundly undignified sound.
Silence.
Jannik stood frozen, his practice sword still touching Kaelen's shoulder, his side suddenly, visibly lighter. The watching men stared, their disinterest shattered. A Count's heir had just been disarmed—not in a clash of steel, but by a desperate, dirty finger-flick from his unarmed, "sickly" brother.
[ QUEST COMPLETE: Do Not Die Immediately ]
[ REWARD: 100 XP | +1 Attribute Point | Skill Tree UNLOCKED ]
[ BONUS: Title Earned - [ Pragmatic Survivor] ]
Effect: +5% success chance for unconventional tactics when stat deficit > 50%.
[ THE LEDGER OF GLORY ]
ACTION: Survived a direct engagement through tactical humiliation.
VALERIUS'S VERDICT: "A GENERAL WINS THE WAR, NOT THE DUEL. THIS WAS A VICTORY. OF A SORT."
GLORY: +15
Jannik's expression cycled from shock, to confusion, to molten humiliation. This wasn't a defeat in combat. It was a collapse of protocol. A count's son did not lose his dagger to a trick.
"You… you gutter rat," Jannik hissed, the words venomous and low. "You have no honor."
Kaelen bent, the movement sending fresh pain through his shoulder, and retrieved the dagger from the mud. He wiped the blade clean on his tunic—a slow, deliberate insult—and offered it back, hilt first. His voice was flat, carrying in the hush.
"A general needs to keep hold of his weapons, brother. The enemy won't give them back."
A choked sound—half-laugh, half-cough—escaped one of the grizzled guards. The seed of a new reputation was planted in the mud of that yard: The younger Falken is strange. He fights wrong. But he doesn't lose.
[ REPUTATION SHIFT ]
Falken Household Guards: Cautious Curiosity (Formerly: Contempt).
Ser Jannik Falken: Relations → VENOMOUS RIVALRY.
Jannik snatched the dagger, his pride lying in the filth beside it. "This means nothing," he snarled. "When we march for Count Vollmar, when it's steel and blood, your cleverness will die in the first charge. You will never be a general. You are a stain on our name."
He turned and strode away, his exit meant to be grand, but undercut by the memory of his fallen dagger.
Kaelen stood alone, the phantom screens of the Vigil Protocol his only company. Pain throbbed in his shoulder. Mud soaked his clothes. But in his mind, a cold, clear space had opened.
He had 100 XP. He had a point to assign. He had a Skill Tree to explore—the first toolbox for building something impossible.
He was the son of a count. A worthless, disgraced count of a dung-heap fiefdom. And a war-god had just bet that he could become the greatest general this world had ever seen.
As the men slowly returned to their drills, casting sideways glances at the boy who fought like a cornered clerk, Kaelen accessed his new menu.
[ SKILL TREE: PATH OF THE STUBBORN - UNLOCKED ]
Available Branches: Combat, Survival, Knowledge, Influence.
Skill Points: 0 (100 XP required for 1st point)
[ ATTRIBUTE POINT AVAILABLE ]
A general, he knew, was not born on a bloody field. A general was built. Decision by decision. Stat by stat. He looked at his pitiful matrix: STR: 4, AGI: 5, SKL: 3, IQ: 14, SOC: 2.
He didn't need strength. Not yet. He needed to survive long enough to learn.
His finger, still caked in mud, hovered in his mind's eye. Then he made his first command decision.
[ ATTRIBUTE INCREASED: AGILITY: 5 → 6 ]
Speed. Evasion. The ability to stay alive one moment longer. It was the foundation of his first, pathetic army of one.
Somewhere, in a realm of brass and thunder, Valerius, The Gilded Fist, watched his underdog invest in the power to run away. And the god of war smiled. The campaign had begun.