Slightly surprisingly, Tear was the first to break the silence. It only took long enough for us to get to the kitchen floor and started cutting vegetables before she spoke- Steven and I sombrely reminiscing or excitedly planning respectively, so maybe she just couldn’t bear the silence.

  “Why do you do that accent thing anyway? Everyone can tell it’s fake,” she asked, not turning from where she was methodically chopping.

  I paused in my own slicing to listen in; I had often wondered the same thing but hadn’t wanted to overstep the bounds of tactfulness. Tear didn’t feel so bound, obviously.

  For a moment there was a pause, then Steven laughed. “For some reason I feel like I can trust you two to keep quiet if I tell you. Maybe it’s because I’ve not heard a word about you Tear, despite how Lyte’s so honest and terrible at keeping his own secrets!”

  “I’m not terrible at keeping secrets,” I protested. Steven just laughed harder and gestured around himself.

  “You really think so? There’s only 3 ways you could have these kind of resources; one-“ he counted off, raising a finger “you’re a powerful adventurer who’s retired but I ain’t heard of someone like you so that’s out. Two- you’re a deserter from another country, but again I ain’t heard of you so you’d have to be special ops devision… ‘cept you’re too naive so that’s out. Three- you’re an otherworlder.”

  This time it was my turn to be silent. Tear gave me a look halfway between concern and I-told-you-so. “I see I was right!” Steven laughed at my expression and clapped me on my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t tell anyone; never got why the Church has issues with y’all anyway. I’m pretty sure Gavin will already know though.”

  “Wha- how?!”

  “He has his secrets, and they are not mine to tell.” A smile broke out on his face again. “But one I can reveal is the accent thing. It’s simple- I don’t want anyone to recognise me through my native accent, and I don’t want truth spells to activate every time I open my mouth!”

  Tear leaned forward, obviously intrigued. “How does that work?”

  “I never know who has truth verification abilities; though it’s rare-“

  “I have a Title which does that.”

  “Of course you do,” Steven continued without a beat, “-so I just make my accents so obviously fake they don’t count as a falsehood.” By the particular brand of smile on his face I got the distinct feeling that he had figured this out himself and had been dying to tell someone about it. “It also means that spells that piggyback off truth spells to ascertain the actual truth fail to activate,” he continued and I realised that he was completely right- Deceiver of Fools had never activated around him.

  “Hey Lyte, you mentioned you had a truth-telling Title, mind if I ask what it is?”

  “Oh, it’s Deceiver of Fools.”

  “Deceiver…” Steven rocked back on his heels, waving his knife kinda dangerously, “that’s a rare one even among those kinds of Titles. I knew someone in the capital with that one. Powerful effect. So-” his voice took on a gently lilting accent “-if I do this, it should have just triggered for you shouldn’t it?”

  And exactly as he’d said, DoF had pinged.

  “Huh, you’re right.”

  “That was a Bardilian accent,” Tear noted, referring to the neighbouring Bardilys Kingdom. Steven and I both gave her surprised looks. “What?” she demanded. “I have to be the street-wise one in this tower because Lyte’s hopeless. Speaking of which, shouldn’t we get dinner finished?”

  “Yes boss!” “Yes ma’am!”

  Tear gave the two of us an annoyed look then huffed and went back to chopping.

  “It should only be a few minutes more,” I reassured the obviously hungry teenager, “just toss everything in here when I say and I’ll stir-fry it up.” We were making a spicy Thai-style dish my mother used to make… and a smaller parallel one for Tear who had a cat’s spice tolerance. It used barley kernels instead of rice, which was one isekai staple I had yet to find, unfortunately.

  Dinner was a bit more relaxed, Tear seemingly having warmed up a bit to having someone else in her space. Afterwards I mentioned that I’d be heading down to the bath- and suddenly realised I hadn’t shown Steven where it was on the short tour earlier. I let him know that it was the teleporter platform (he muttered something under his breath) opposite the main door.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  A few minutes later, while I was relaxing in the warm water, I heard the teleporter activate, and shortly after-

  “Yo, mind if I join you?” Steven called as he entered.

  “Sure,” I replied languidly.

  “Well ain't that nice,” he said from behind me; from the sound he was hanging something on one of the hooks in the wall, “you’ve got a mana spring down here. I were wondering where all the mana in the air was coming from.”

  I looked round as he slid gracefully into the water opposite me with a not-insignificant wave and settled back against the step.

  Gods! I knew he was big, but I wasn’t expecting him to be built like Sid Curtis and Major Armstrong had a kid! Compared to my slimmer form, he was more like a strongman, with bulging muscles and a midriff clad in a sheath of fat.

  After a few moments soaking in the heat he sighed contentedly and stretched, his arms over his head, twisting his back one way and then the other, briefly revealing a massive scar running down the left side. He noticed the direction of my gaze and turned to show me properly. A huge hand-width scar descended jaggedly from his shoulder to taper off at his waist.

  “Ouch,” I said in sympathy, leaning forward to show off my own back scar.

  “Quite,” he remarked.

  We were silent again for a little while.

  “I wasn’t expecting the silver hair,” Steven commented.

  I could feel my face twitch. “Everyone says that.”

  He chuckled softly, then we sat in silence for a while longer. It wasn’t awkward, it was just silent.

  “So, how’d you get the scar,” I asked at length.

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

  “Deal. It was an accident on the world I came from; a collision between two vehicles; like carriages but faster. I nearly couldn’t walk again.”

  Steven sucked a breath in at my last words. “No magic there?” he guessed.

  “Mmm,” I nodded.

  “As for mine- I took a blow for someone else-“

  “Oh sure,” I interrupted with faux-annoyance, “just one-up me like that.”

  His laugh boomed out across the water, then faded into a sigh.

  “I don’t know if I’d do it again… I’m not really sure why I did it in the first place; she had enough defensive accessories she probably would have been fine.”

  “Oho~ tell me about this mysterious lady you felt so compelled to take a blow for~” I insinuated teasingly.

  Steven lazily splashed some water in my face with pinpoint accuracy despite not turning his head. “We weren’t like that,” he demurred, and for the first time since meeting Steven I felt Deceiver give a muted response to his words. Not a full falsehood, but maybe half of one…

  “I had to do the treatment myself, which would be why it healed so badly. Look, I can’t move my arm past here,” he lifted his thickly biceped arm horizontally to slightly below level with his shoulder, where it began to tremble violently, “or past here, or forward beyond here. My health cap is nearly 50 points lower, too. Bloody cursed weaponry, healers can’t do a thing! Not so good for a spearman ey?” he grinned slightly regretfully.

  I didn’t recall any cursed weapons from the game, but… “Want me to have a go?” I asked.

  “You’re a healer?”

  “No, but I have a bunch of stuff. Healing gear included.”

  He grinned. “Sure, why not?”

  I pulled a Lesser Healing Potion out of my inventory and handed it over. “Try drinking this,” I told him. He did so, but nothing happened.

  “Nothing happened,” he said.

  “Hmm. Give it a minute and we’ll try a stronger one. I’m interested to see what grade healing potion will affect the curse.”

  This wait- almost exactly one minute- was to allow the healing energies carried by his lifeforce to consume themselves to heal damage and the unabsorbed or unabsorbable remnants to dissipate into a neutral state. If you were to take another health potion before the remnants were completely gone, the two potions would conflict and potentially cause more damage than both could heal combined.

  I had tested it with some low level ones I’d bought from Durell, and they did indeed inflict the Potion Sickness debuff, just like the potions from Terraria. Incidentally, the reason why the Philosopher’s Stone and Charm of Myths allow faster potion consumption is because they accelerate this dissipation of the remnant energies.

  We sat in silence for the minute, broken only by the quiet clink of Steven placing the empty glass bottle on the marble step above us, then I passed him a Healing Potion. Again nothing happened, as with the Greater Healing Potion.

  However, when he drank the Super Healing Potion a dark smoke erupted angrily out of the scar, boiling turbulently in the air. It hovered around his shoulders, as though waiting to reinvade once the immense surge of vitality that had forced it out had faded, but I didn’t get a chance to find it if it could. I felt the tower’s mana shift in a sudden rush as though locking onto a mortal enemy, lightning blasting out of the walls and slamming into the smoke, tearing it apart, the shredded wisps simply vanishing into nothingness. A moment later the puckered and pitted ridge of scar tissue shifted and became smooth white-silver skin, standing out in shiny contrast to his otherwise tanned back, the chunks taken out of the muscles beneath visibly regenerating, bulging up to mirror their counterpoints across his spine.

  Stevens’s face broke into a grin and he grabbed me and pulled me into a hug while waving his newly fully functional arm.

  “Haha!” he bellowed. “Not even the royal court healer would be able fix this! I don’t know how to thank you!”

  “Start by not crushing me please,” I begged as I struggled to escape.

  “Ah sorry,” he released me. “Guess I was just a bit too happy.”

  “So is your arm fully capable now?” I asked.

  “Yup! Good as new! Health cap restored too! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go test myself out!” So saying, he leapt out of the water with a splash, threw on a bathrobe before the droplets had even finished falling, and headed for the teleporter at speed.

  “Well, it’s good he’s so happy.” My expression turned serious. Still, it took a Super Healing Potion... that’s some strong curse there.

  I’ll just have to avoid curses in the future, though they probably wouldn’t... work... on... me...

  “Dammit!” I jolted upright, splashing water everywhere. “I could have just used the Nazar!”

  fascinating consequences, and the opening and ending are integrated so smoothly and so hype I didn’t mind just bopping along to them.

  tumblr post where you can download all eps, hydrahd com (ep12 unsubbed, ep 24 missing), or animehub (only ep 24 is Chinese sub). Quite why the internet is allergic to the Chinese dub I am uncertain; it’s the best version so I just despair. If anyone finds ep12 somewhere you don't need to download it, let me know!

  link), in the hero ranking tournament X sent Smile to the moon. Fun fact 3: his power is to outsource the animation! Try and spot his snaps throw out the series- he’s the reason why the flashbacks are all in 2d!