The silence following my "demonstration" was profound, but it was the wrong kind of silence. It wasn't the peaceful hum of a world left alone; it was the held breath before a scream. Leon had kept his word. The thwack-thwack-thwack and the desperate mantras had ceased. He was still in his stable-loft, but his presence was now a silent, focused pressure, like a bowstring drawn taut in the dark. He'd leave at odd hours and return covered in different kinds of grime—forest loam, river mud, quarry dust. He wasn't training in the open anymore. He was… foraging. For what, I didn't know, and I used every ounce of my willpower not to appraise him and find out. Some mysteries were best left unexamined.
Lily, too, was a new kind of quiet. When I went to the guild, her green eyes would find me, but her usual cheerful probing was gone. Instead, I was met with a thoughtful, almost wary observation. She'd seen something in that clearing she couldn't explain, and it had shifted her curiosity from a puzzle to a potential hazard. She was keeping her distance, but she was watching. Always watching.
For three days, I existed in this strange, pressurized bubble. I performed my F-Rank duties with robotic precision. I visited Elara, who chatted brightly about the town's relief and her booming business now that "that nasty business" was over. I ate my sourdough. I sat in my perfect cottage. And I waited for the other shoe to drop.
It dropped on the fourth day, not with a whisper, but with the thunder of hooves.
I was in the market, buying some utterly mundane nails (to reinforce the illusion of my cottage's dilapidation), when a sound cut through the usual murmur—a frantic, rhythmic drumming growing rapidly closer. A rider on a lathered horse, its sides heaving, burst into the square. The man wasn't a royal courier in polished livery. He was a militiaman from a border village, his leathers stained, his face etched with pure terror.
"The border!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "The Demon Lord's host! They're moving! Scouts at the Serpent's Pass! They… they slaughtered the watchtower garrison! Left the heads on pikes!"
The words landed like a physical blow. The market's cheerful chaos froze, then shattered into a cacophony of panic. A woman dropped her basket of eggs. A merchant abandoned his stall. The air, which a moment before had smelled of fresh bread and spices, now stank of sudden, cold fear.
My [Ultimate Appraisal] flickered on against my will, scanning the rider.
[Appraisal Target: Roderick, Border Militia]
Emotional State:Terror (90%), Trauma (85%), Exhaustion (70%)
Memory Imprint:Images of black-clad figures moving with unnatural silence. The wet sound of steel. The vacant eyes of his cousin staring from a spike. The smell of blood and wrongness, a scent like ozone and rotting meat.
The data was clinical, but the visceral horror behind it seeped through. This wasn't a rumor. This wasn't a bard's tale. This was a ragged man breathing the stink of a real, advancing evil.
Captain Miles was there in moments, his face granite. He grabbed the rider's arm, steadying him. "How many? What direction?"
"Scouts… dozens," the man panted. "But the dust… the dust on the horizon behind them… it covered the sun. The whole pass is moving."
A wave of nausea, unfamiliar and unwelcome, rolled through me. This was it. The "background event" I was supposed to die in. The bandit attack that was my scripted fate. But this was no bandit attack. This was the main plot, barreling towards Maplewood like a freight train, and my quiet little sidestreet was directly on the tracks.
The news spread through the town with the speed of plague. The festive atmosphere from Scribehold's fall evaporated, replaced by a grim, bustling urgency. The blacksmith's hammer rang non-stop. Farmers drove wagons laden with supplies towards the town storehouse. Parents called their children inside with voices tight with fear. The Adventurer's Guild became a war room; the easy-going quest board was stripped bare, replaced by hastily nailed notices about patrols, fortification, and militia recruitment.
I stood in the square, the forgotten nails heavy in my hand, as the world I had carefully built my irrelevance within transformed around me. My dream of a quiet farm—a fantasy I'd nurtured through herb-gathering and cottage repair—suddenly felt as fragile and distant as a childhood wish. You couldn't retire to a farm in the middle of a warzone. You couldn't enjoy sourdough when the wheat fields were burning.
I saw Leon push through the crowd towards Captain Miles. His face was pale, but the new, hard light in his eyes was burning bright. "Captain! I am Leon, the—"
"I know who you are, boy," Miles cut him off, his eyes not leaving a map a subordinate was holding. "And I've seen what you can't do. Right now, I need men who can hold a line, not trip over it. Report to the quartermaster for labor detail. We need the palisades reinforced."
The dismissal was brutal and efficient. Leon flinched as if struck, his heroic introduction dying on his lips. He was being consigned to the role he'd been trying to escape: background labor. He stood there for a moment, humiliation warring with that terrifying resolve, before turning and melting into the stream of people heading to the walls.
I should have felt vindicated. I should have felt safe, knowing the "Hero" was being safely sidelined. Instead, I felt a cold, hollow certainty. This wouldn't contain him. It would only add fuel to that inner flame.
I made my way to The Crusty Loaf, moving against the current of panicked townsfolk. I needed an anchor. I needed the smell of bread.
The bell chimed, but the sound was lonely in the empty shop. Elara was there, but she wasn't baking. She was methodically packing loaves into a large basket, her movements slow, her face aged a decade in a few hours.
"Elara?"
She looked up, and her eyes, usually so warm, were shadowed with a fear deeper than any tax collector could inspire. "Bob. I was… I was packing some for you. To take home. It might be a while before I can bake again."
"Take home? Why?" Though I already knew.
"They're saying we should evacuate," she said softly, wiping her hands on her apron. "The women, the children, the old… to Stonehaven Keep, up north. Captain Miles thinks the town might be a target. A symbol." She tried to smile, but it trembled and failed. "My little shop, a symbol. Isn't that something?"
The thought of this warm, flour-dusted sanctuary empty, cold, and vulnerable to whatever those… things from the rider's memory were… it ignited something in me. A protective fury even sharper than when Scribehold's thugs had threatened her.
"They won't touch it," I heard myself say, the words coming out low and harder than I intended.
Elara looked at me, really looked at me. She saw past the bland facade, past the "good boy" persona, and for a fleeting second, I think she saw the cold, endless depth of power beneath. The fear in her eyes didn't vanish, but it was joined by a sliver of wonder, and a profound, aching sadness.
"Oh, Bob," she whispered. "What kind of storm have you been hiding from?"
I had no answer for that. I took the basket of bread—enough to feed a small army, or one very anxious demigod for a week—and left the coins on the counter. "Don't go to Stonehaven," I said at the door. "The roads won't be safe. Your cellar is deep. Stay there. I'll… make sure you have what you need."
I didn't wait for her response. I walked out, the basket in my arms, and headed not for my cottage, but for the town's northern gate, where the walls were being frantically reinforced.
I needed to see. I needed to appraise.
From a shadowed alcice, I watched the labor. Men and women, their faces set in grim determination, hauled logs, hammered spikes, filled barrels with pitch. The air rang with the sound of imminent siege. And there, among them, was Leon. He wasn't leading. He wasn't even talking. He was simply working. Hauling a log twice his weight with a silent, dogged persistence that made the other laborers give him a wide berth. He worked with a raw, physical intensity that had nothing to do with heroics and everything to do with pure, channeled rage. Every splinter, every strained muscle, was a message to the universe, to me, to himself: I will be more.
I activated [Ultimate Appraisal], not on him, but on the horizon. I pushed the skill, stretching its perception beyond the town, beyond the forest, towards the distant mountain pass.
The information that returned was a flood of terrifying clarity.
[Regional Threat Assessment: Northern Serpent's Pass]
Forces Identified:Advanced Scouting Party (x4).
Composition:Orc Berserkers (Level 15-20), Dark Elf Archers (Level 12-18), War Troll (Level 25) (Single sighting).
Movement Vector:South-southeast. Probable target: Maplewood (Strategic river crossing, grain stores).
Eta Advanced Scouts:36-48 hours.
Eta Main Host:5-7 days.
Threat Level to Maplewood Defenses:Certain Annihilation.
My blood turned to ice water. Certain Annihilation. The town guard, the militia, even every adventurer in the guild… they were insects before a boot. A War Troll alone could likely smash through the gates. And that was just the scouts. The "dust that covered the sun" was the main army.
This wasn't a fight Maplewood could win. This was a massacre waiting to happen. My cottage, my bakery, this entire quiet life—it was all about to be erased in a tide of blood and black steel.
The weight of the basket in my arms, full of Elara's perfect, vulnerable bread, felt like the weight of the world. I had spent all this time, all this power, building walls of obscurity around myself. I had hidden from destiny, from the Hero, from responsibility.
But destiny wasn't a person you could avoid. It was a geography. And it was moving. It was coming here, to the only place in two worlds that had ever felt like a home.
I could leave. Right now. [Instant Transmission] could take me to the other side of the continent, to a tropical island, to the moon. I could take Elara with me. We could vanish. My peace could be preserved, elsewhere.
I looked at the people on the walls. Old Man Hemlock, struggling with a bucket of pitch. The fruit seller, passing up bundles of arrows. Lily, directing traffic with calm authority, her red hair a banner of defiant order. I saw the stable-master giving Leon a waterskin, a rough nod of respect passing between them.
These weren't NPCs on a script. They were people. They were my neighbors. They were the background I had tried to become a part of.
And the Demon Lord's army was coming to burn it all down.
A quiet, terrible realization settled in my gut, colder and more final than any fear. Running wasn't an option. Not anymore. Not because of prophecy or Celian's pleas, but because of sourdough bread and a kind old woman's smile. Because of a noisy, hopeless boy who refused to give up. Because the quiet life I wanted wasn't a location; it was the people and the peace within it. And that was worth defending.
I turned away from the wall and walked back to my cottage, my steps heavy with a new kind of purpose. The dream of a quiet farm was over. It had been a childish fantasy.
A new dream was taking its place. A darker, simpler, more desperate one.
The dream of a quiet farm after the war.
And to have that, I would first have to ensure there was a here left after the war. The background character could no longer just observe the plot. He would have to edit it. Severely.
I entered my cottage, placed the basket of bread on the table, and sat in my chair. I closed my eyes, but I wasn't seeing the cozy room. I was seeing a topographical map of the region, lit with the glowing red dots of advancing hostile forces. I was seeing supply lines, chokepoints, the structural weaknesses in the town's pathetic wooden palisade.
I had spent my power making a comfortable chair and a hidden garden. I had used it for pest control and petty revenge.
It was time to use it for what it was, perhaps, always meant for. Not to be a hero. But to be a solution. A final, absolute, and utterly discreet solution to the problem threatening my home.
The war had come to Maplewood. And Bob, the background character, the system error, was going to war.
But he wouldn't be fighting on the walls. He'd be fighting in the shadows, in the supply trains, in the enemy's camp. He would be the ghost in their machine, the bad luck in their rations, the unexpected collapse of their bridge, the silent, inexplicable disappearance of their commanders in the dead of night.
The Demon Lord's army thought it was marching to conquer a sleepy town.
It was marching into the meticulously organized, infinitely resourceful, and now very motivated inventory of a man who just wanted to be left alone with his bread.
I opened my eyes. The first target, the advanced scouting party, was 36 hours out.
I had time for one last, perfect loaf of sourdough. And then, the Ghost of the Treasury would have to learn a new set of skills. The skills of a ghost in a war.
The quiet was over. The planning had begun.