The universe, I had decided, operated on a fundamental law of comedic opposition. For every action towards peace, there was an equal and opposite reaction of pure, unadulterated hassle. My life had become a perfect case study. I had my cottage. Therefore, I had Leon as a neighbor. I had my sourdough. Therefore, the fabric of reality itself was threatening war. It was a cosmic balancing act, and I was the hapless tightrope walker.
After the Dungeon Core Debacle, I had entered a new phase of my retirement: hyper-vigilant mediocrity. I didn't just avoid quests; I actively sought out opportunities to demonstrate my profound lack of potential. I spent a full day "mending" a fishing net for Old Man Hemlock, a task I completed with painstaking slowness, using [Mirage Crafting] to make my clumsy, deliberately inefficient stitches look passable. I took a quest to whitewash a fence and made it last four days, ensuring I always had a visible smear of paint on my tunic. I was not just a background character; I was a masterclass in underwhelming performance.
It was during one of these meticulously orchestrated displays of incompetence that the universe decided to throw a new variable into my carefully balanced equation.
I needed lumber. Not for anything important, but because a background character with a dilapidated cottage would logically need to perform minor, futile repairs. It was part of the aesthetic. I couldn't just [Mirage Craft] it; that would be too perfect. I had to acquire it the hard way—the visible way.
I went to the lumberyard on the edge of town, a sprawling, chaotic place filled with the scent of fresh-cut pine and the shouts of burly workers. I haggled pathetically with the foreman for ten minutes over the price of a stack of scrap lumber—warped planks and off-cuts that were destined for the firewood pile. I finally secured the pile for a pittance, the foreman looking at me with a mixture of pity and impatience.
Now for the performance. The stack was large and ungainly. For a normal man, it would be a two-person carry, or require a cart. For me, with [Physical Apex], it was less than a feather pillow. But I had to make it look difficult. I had to make it look heroic in its mundanity.
I arranged the lumber into a teetering pile that looked impossibly heavy. I made a show of grunting and straining as I lifted it, using my power not to make it light, but to precisely control its movement, making it sway and wobble dangerously. I adjusted my grip multiple times, my face a mask of exaggerated effort. I was method-acting my way into obscurity.
This, of course, was the exact moment Leon chose to emerge from the stable-loft.
He looked even worse than usual. His hair was a mess, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his posture was that of a man who had been personally defeated by gravity. He was probably on his way to another day of futilely staring at the quest board, hoping for a miracle.
His gaze, dull and unfocused, swept across the yard and landed on me.
I saw the exact moment the calculation happened in his head. His eyes, which had been glazed with despair, sharpened. They took in the massive, wobbling pile of lumber. They took in my stance. I wasn't just carrying it; I was carrying it with what appeared to be perfect, stable, unyielding posture. My back was straight, my knees were firm. The illusion of effort was flawless, but the underlying physical reality—the perfect biomechanical alignment of [Physical Apex]—was unmistakable to someone desperate for any sign of competence.
His jaw dropped.
I froze, a deer in the headlights of his newfound, and entirely misplaced, admiration. This was not part of the script. The script called for him to shuffle past, dejected and unnoticed.
He didn't shuffle. He strode over, a new, terrifying light in his eyes.
"Bob!" he said, his voice cracking with a fervor I hadn't heard since his first day in the tavern. "By the flowing rivers of destiny! I had no idea!"
I adjusted my grip, making the lumber wobble more violently. "No idea about what?" I grunted, hoping to convey 'I am very busy and also about to drop this on my foot.'
"Your form!" he declared, gesturing wildly at my body. "Look at you! The stack is immense! It defies the very laws of physics! And yet, your posture! It's... it's impeccable! Your spine is a pillar of resolve! Your legs, the unshakable foundations of a mountain! This is no mere laborer's carry! This is a testament to the power of discipline! Of focus!"
I stared at him over the top of the lumber pile. He was genuinely awestruck. He was seeing a masterpiece of mundane physicality and interpreting it as a lost chapter of the 'Hero's Training Manual.'
"It's... just lumber, Leon," I said, my voice flat. "I'm taking it home."
"Just lumber?" he repeated, his voice trembling with emotion. "No, Bob! It is a crucible! A trial you set for yourself each day! While I seek glory in grand quests and fail, you find perfection in the simple, honest toil of a common man! This... this is the true path! I have been blind!"
Oh no. Oh no, no, no. This was a catastrophic miscalculation. My performance of mediocrity had been too convincing. I had embodied the "quiet, humble worker" so perfectly that I had accidentally become an aspirational figure to the one person I needed to ignore me the most.
"I'm really not," I tried, taking a step towards the path that led home. "I'm just cheap. This was the scrap pile."
But he was already falling into step beside me, his previous despair completely forgotten, replaced by the zeal of the newly converted.
"Precisely! You find strength in scarcity! You turn disadvantage into virtue! Bob, I have been a fool. I have been seeking teachers in grand swordsmasters and noble patrons, when the true master was right here all along, hidden in plain sight, carrying lumber with the grace of a dancing master!"
I walked faster. He matched my pace effortlessly, his long legs easily keeping up with my deliberately plodding steps.
"Leon," I said, putting as much 'go away' energy into my voice as possible. "I am not a master. I am a guy who bought a dump and needs to fix it. That's it."
"Your humility only proves your mastery further!" he insisted. "A true master does not boast! He simply is! Please, Bob! You must teach me!"
I stopped dead in my tracks, the lumber pile settling with a soft crunch. We were on the outskirts of town, not far from our respective... residences. This had to end. Now.
"Teach you what?" I asked, my patience, which was legendary in its capacity, wearing thinner than the plot of a bad light novel. "How to carry wood?"
"Everything!" he pleaded, his blue eyes wide and earnest. "Your work ethic! Your focus! Your... your phenomenal postural alignment! I must learn the secret of how a background character can possess such quiet, unshakable power!"
This was it. The moment of truth. I could continue to deny it, and he would likely just persist, a golden-haired barnacle on the hull of my peaceful life. Or I could do what I should have done from the beginning. I could give him exactly what he asked for, in the most brutally discouraging way possible.
A grim smile touched my lips. It was time for a demonstration. Not of power, but of the absolute, uncrossable chasm that lay between us.
"Alright," I said, my voice losing all its feigned warmth.
Leon's face lit up like the sun. "You... you will? You accept me as your pupil?"
"I didn't say that," I said, cutting him off. "You want a lesson? One lesson. Right here. Right now. And when it's over, you will never, ever ask me again. Do you understand?"
He nodded vigorously, his expression so full of hope it was physically painful to look at. "Yes, Master Bob! I understand!"
"Don't call me that." I looked around. We were in a small clearing near the path. It would do. "Draw your sword."
He fumbled for a moment, then drew his longsword, holding it in a passable, if slightly shaky, beginner's stance.
"The lesson is simple," I said, setting the lumber pile down with a casualness that made his eyes widen further. I stood in the center of the clearing, my hands at my sides. "Your goal is to touch me. Just once. With your sword, your hand, your big toe, I don't care. You have one hour. If you can touch me, I'll consider training you. If you can't, you leave me alone. Forever."
Leon's face fell slightly. "But... that's not a lesson in work ethic or—"
"Those are my terms," I interrupted, my voice like iron. "Take it or leave it."
He swallowed hard, then nodded, a determined glint returning to his eyes. "Very well! I accept your challenge, Bob! I will not disappoint you!"
Oh, you will, I thought. You absolutely will.
He let out a battle cry that was about 20% more dramatic than the situation warranted and charged.
I didn't move. I didn't even tense. I simply activated [Physical Apex] to a fraction of its potential, slowing my perception of time until his heroic charge became a languid, clumsy stumble.
As his sword swung in a wide, telegraphed arc towards my shoulder, I shifted my weight. It wasn't a step. It was a micro-movement, a tilt of my torso less than an inch. The blade passed through the air where I had been, the wind of its passage rustling my tunic.
Leon stumbled past, off-balance. He turned, confusion on his face. "How did you—?"
"Again," I said, my voice a monotone.
He came at me with a thrust. I leaned back, the tip of his sword missing my chest by a hair's breadth. He tried a horizontal slash. I dropped into a crouch so fast it was a blur, then straightened up before he even finished his swing.
For the next hour, the clearing became a stage for the most one-sided, soul-crushing demonstration of power imbalance imaginable.
Leon lunged, stabbed, slashed, and swung. He tried feints, he tried wild, unpredictable attacks, he even tried a desperate, leaping strike. I didn't block. I didn't parry. I didn't even move my feet from the two small depressions they had made in the grass. I simply… wasn't there when his attacks arrived.
I swayed, I leaned, I bent, I twisted. My body became a fluid, impossible contradiction, always just out of reach. It was like watching a man try to swat a ghost with a piece of rebar. My expression never changed. I didn't smirk, I didn't frown. I just watched him with the detached interest of a scientist observing a particularly uncoordinated lab rat.
Sweat poured down Leon's face, staining his tunic. His breath came in ragged, painful gasps. His arms trembled from the effort of swinging the heavy sword over and over. His hope, which had burned so brightly, slowly guttered and died, replaced by a dawning, horrific understanding.
He wasn't just failing. He was being shown the absolute limits of his own existence. He was a mouse trying to catch a thunderstorm.
After what felt like an eternity, his sword slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the ground. He fell to his knees, chest heaving, his head bowed. The hour was up.
I stood in the same spot, not a hair out of place, not a single drop of sweat on my brow.
"See?" I said, my voice cutting through the silence like a shard of ice. "You can't even touch a background character."
He looked up at me, and the look in his eyes was worse than any humiliation Valus Hawkwind could have inflicted. It was the look of a man who had seen the summit of the mountain he was trying to climb, only to realize it was on another planet.
"You…" he whispered, his voice raw. "What are you?"
"I'm Bob," I said, the words final and absolute. "I'm the guy who wants to be left alone. You gave me your word. Now, keep it."
I turned my back on him, picked up my lumber pile with one hand as if it were a basket of laundry, and walked the remaining distance to my cottage. I didn't look back.
I went inside, closed the door, and leaned against it, listening. I heard no sounds of crying or raging. I heard only the sound of a single pair of footsteps, slow and heavy, trudging back towards the stable.
I had done it. I had successfully defended my peace. I had crushed his spirit so thoroughly that he would never bother me again. It was a total victory.
So why did I feel like I'd just kicked a puppy that had followed me home?
I shook the feeling off. It was sentimentality. It was the same weakness that had made me save the adventurers in the dungeon and get Elara a cup of tea. I couldn't afford it. The path of a background character was paved with necessary ruthlessness.
I spent the rest of the day puttering around my cottage, but the usual satisfaction was gone. The silence felt heavier. I kept replaying the look on his face in my mind. The hope, the effort, the crushing defeat.
As evening fell, I found myself standing at my window, looking towards the stable. A light was on in the loft. I saw his shadow moving against the wall. He wasn't moping. He was… practicing. His shadow was repeating the basic sword stances, over and over. The movements were clumsy, exhausted, but they were relentless.
My [Ultimate Appraisal] flickered on without my consent.
[Appraisal Target: Leon]
Emotional State:Despair(40%), Determination (55%), Confusion (5%)
Current Thoughts:'I couldn't touch him.I couldn't even come close. He didn't even try. What is that kind of power? It's not fair. It's not… No. No excuses. He said it himself. I'm too weak. Weakness is a choice. If I cannot touch a background character, then I am less than a background character. I have to be better. I have to be more. I will train until my bones break. I will not stop.'
I stared, utterly baffled. This wasn't the reaction I had intended. I had given him the ultimate, incontrovertible proof of his own inadequacy. I had given him a reason to give up.
Instead, I had given him a benchmark. An impossible, infuriating, unreachable goal. And in doing so, I had, against all odds and my every intention, sparked a new, more dangerous fire within him. It wasn't the bright, naive flame of destiny anymore. It was the cold, hard ember of sheer, stubborn, spiteful will.
I had tried to demoralize him. I had, instead, given him a reason to become strong.
I sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to come from the very foundation of my cottage. This was worse. So much worse. A hopeless Hero was a manageable nuisance. A determined, relentlessly self-improving Hero was a narrative black hole, and I was now inextricably tied to his gravitational pull.
My peaceful retirement was safe for now. But I had a sinking feeling that in my efforts to secure it, I had just created a monster. And I was the only one who knew how terrifying that monster's potential truly was.
I turned away from the window. There was only one thing that could possibly make me feel better after a catastrophe of this magnitude.
It was time for a visit to the bakery.