Optimizing Your Isekai - Progression Fantasy w/ Slice-of-Life and Biz Building Elements

Romie quickly loosed another arrow but their shot sailed suddenly wide as the rushing Elson's skill emitted a softly-glowing orange forcefield around them.

Elson pulled two wicked looking axes with incredible adornments, veering towards me. The gorgeous weapons started to glow, one red and one white.

"Watch that one, they've got [Celestial Fire] on their axes!" Pavel called out. "That can slice through mundane weapons and armor pretty easily!" He rushed out to engage Livia who had the very common shield and sword combination, though her sword was exceptionally jagged for ripping rather than slashing and thrusting.

"I'll protect the backline!" Vidas called.

The hooded Elson rushed me and I tried to get a read on them. It was hard to nail anything down about them other than pissed off and dangerous.

With a plan that could go terribly, I pulled my backup shield from my ring, the one that had already taken a beating in the dungeon.

Elson swung their white-tinged axe at me while I brought the shield up as though to deflect it to the side. Instead, I twisted at the last moment to let the blade strike directly against the metal.

To both of our surprise, it simply bounced off.

"Maybe they suck at [Celestial Fire]," Vidas bellowed to an enraged hiss from Elson.

Their hood fell back further and I saw a stark androgynous face covered with multiple tattoos and eyes sporting white irises with pink pupils. They also had an awful haircut from what little I could see, all jagged lines that looked bizarre.

Another arrow harmlessly pinged off the glowing orange armor skill but it noticeably dimmed.

"Try this you cretin!" they screamed and brought the shafts of both axes together as one, making a rather awkward two-handed swing, barely able to grip the two weapons together.

Still expecting it to do something, I tried the exact same maneuver and trusted I had my angles right.

Where the axes struck, a smell of brimstone mixed with vanilla and burnt hair burst out, almost catching me off guard with the absolutely strange and truly disgusting mix. The axes penetrated through like a hot knife through butter.

And stuck.

Perfect.

I had made sure to aim so there was nothing but open air behind where the axes would strike, meaning they carved through but hit nothing.

At their shocked look, I knew I had made the right call. In one motion, I twisted the shield as hard as I could away from me, swinging it like opening a door to leave me unprotected but leaving them barely able to hold onto their weapons, and then used that momentum for a sweeping strike at Elson's legs.

The still-glowing forcefield around them tried to redirect the blow but it only made a token resistance before winking out.

My morningstar crunched through their poorly made armor, the greaves on their legs crumpling as easy as tin foil. Elson screamed and let go of their axes as the shield skittered away.

The cacophony of sound around me was reaching a crescendo and I knew I needed to help my teammates.

As Elson slumped, I watched for a sudden dagger pull as I brought up my morningstar to crush their skull. Instead of the determination to fight, all I saw was fear and regret.

Trust me, I don't want to do this. You left us no choice.

I brought the weapon down with a disgusting squelch, lodging multiple spikes through their skull.

The rush of essence made me sick to my stomach, and for once not due to the affinity.

I turned to see Inara fighting with the extremely quick Elica and Vidas standing guard over Romie, who was tending to a rather nasty gash on their arm.

Suddenly, Elica disappeared from sight.

"Invisible again!" Vidas yelled. "Watch your back, she's a coward but she's quick!"

Pavel came to stand by Romie as well, raising his shield; his opponent laid dead, eyes staring lifelessly at the sky and bleeding profusely from where he'd cut her arm off and two deep gashes on her neck.

I spotted a splash in a puddle off to right that said Elica was likely retreating to the horses. I took out three throwing daggers and flung them in quick succession, finally hearing a slight 'oomf' on the last.

Wow, I was way off on my aim. Won't tell Jasna about that…

I was going for mid back. Instead, the woman reappeared suddenly as she fell face first into the mud, her right leg pierced to the bone through her calf.

Before I could say to stop to hold her as a prisoner for questioning, Romie shot a barbed arrow that pierced the base of her neck.

I turned to our non-binary archer with a conflicted look but they just shrugged. Ever laconic.

Realizing we hadn't been attacked by the noble, I glanced up and could barely make out a fleeing horse rounding the bend back towards the main road to Pitola.

***

Lady Hilda Petrov, House of the Rising Fist; fifth daughter of Councilor Tibor Petrov

Watching – mostly hearing – the erupting chaos, Lady Hilda could do nothing but stare.

This was supposed to be an easy job. Swoop in, collect or kill the tall one, get out.

But as her team disappeared into the array, she could do nothing but watch in horror as their AAI connections winked out, one by one.

In just one minute of fighting, all that was left was Elica.

The one I liked the least. At least Janko was nice if stubborn.

Suddenly, she saw the woman reappear, a knife sticking from her leg. Hilda went to call out but an arrow burrowed into the back of the woman's neck, creating a shower of gore.

The arrow is poking through the other side.

Elica's AAI signal disappeared from her vision.

Everyone is gone. They dispatched them that easily. Yes, not a crack team but father wouldn't send me on a suicide mission. They had a Tier advantage and each had powerful skills!

Realizing she was alone, she turned her horse around and began off in the direction of Pitola at a full gallop.

Jebbie this!

***

Jasna Zupan

As the first arrow flew – great shot by Romie, they are amazing – Jasna was taking notes while watching through her AAI. She had Tiesa watching and recording Terry while the guards were taking Inara and Romie respectively with no one was watching Vidas specifically. Tiesa won their rock-paper-scissors match over who got Terry.

At least I won for who got to hold Steve.

From their vantage point, they could each see most of the battle, at least as it started, but it was always good to concentrate recording for later dissection.

As Elica disappeared, Vidas ran off to protect Inara and Romie.

"Ugh, why is Inara being protected instead of ranging out? Sure, Elica is a Tier 2 but she's a weak Tier 2, probably not even past 2.3, and everything indicates she's terrible," Jasna complained.

Still, Jasna's battle to watch over was proving to be far more interesting as the woman – Livia – rushing Pavel drew a wicked-looking curved sword in her left hand, decorated with deep red stains across its jagged, serrated edge.

"Wait, is that paint or does she just not clean it properly?" Jasna asked to no one. She was willing to bet, based on the woman's poor form and worse hygiene, that it was the latter.

The opening exchange was fascinating as the woman used her curved sword to get leverage onto Pavel's shield through catching a serration on the edge, which held firmly rather than bouncing off, momentarily upsetting his balance from his surprise at the mildly novel tactic. Livia tried to use that to swing her sword-wielding elbow at Pavel and Jasna realized there was a blade sticking out from the cowter she was wearing on her sword arm.

Pretty ingenious if awkward as hell to wield.

Pavel saw it coming and easily dodged though giving up more leverage on his shield for a second. Livia couldn't take advantage from the awkward angle of her arm and they quickly took a step back to readjust and reengage.

Seeing a right-hander versus left-hander weapon and sword fight was odd as it meant the shields and weapons were clashing more directly.

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Livia tried to use her superior cultivation but, like Elica, she was at best midway through the second Tier and seemed to have damaged essence channels from her skills.

"This is… strange…" Jasna said out loud.

Pavel would have landed a significant blow but it hit his opponents armor skill which managed to redirect his spear to only scrape along her vambrace.

Jasna heard a scream from Romie as it seemed Elica had landed a strike with her dagger. "Tee-Tee, keep an eye out if that is poison. I'll take the heat and intervene if it is."

"Confirmed. We didn't see her pour poison on so I am doubting they were that prepared."

"Agreed," Jasna said, turning back to watch Pavel.

Unsurprisingly, Livia was all strength and no finesse. Against someone trained purely to delve, that might work. But it was obvious Vidas had his team train to fight people.

Which was probably one reason both Gabor and Tiesa chose them.

Pavel baited Livia into a gangly overhead swing by leaving his arm extended after she parried his weak-wristed strike. A look of manic glee and bloodlust on her face, she swung with all her might.

That left her open to a thrusting jab deep into her left armpit area, almost causing her to drop her sword.

I think he hit the artery.

Livia screamed and started slashing wildly, spraying blood around her in wide arcs and quickly losing her strength as Pavel continued to bait her and then easily parry with her shield.

Pavel used another feint, pretending to trip and she swung for his neck, trying to decapitate him in one blow. Instead, he ducked and then leapt upward with his spear out scraping along her side, a glowing orange light emitting from his boots while a sinister black coated the tip of his spear.

Pavel launched upwards six feet (2m) into the air, landing far more gracefully than Livia's arm, which plopped to the ground, disgorging her sword. The crazed look in her eye turned to manic and she shield rushed Pavel.

The man easily took two quick bashes against his own shield as the woman quickly tired from blood loss. He managed to sweep her legs out from under her and completed two quick slashes to either side of her throat as she lay on her back, simply hastening her death in a show of mercy.

That done, Pavel rushed to his brother's side to protect Romie as Inara had finally started ranging around, engaging Elica.

Seeing the fight was wrapping up, Jasna started to compile her notes.

B+ Pavel, good job. But we're going to have so much training to do.

***

Welp, add 'killed someone' to my list of shit to think about…

We were resting while Romie patched their wound far better than the quick wrapping around the bicep they'd done during the fight.

"Is that going to impact your ability to shoot?" I asked them.

"Nope," was all they said.

"Ugh, they'll heal pretty quickly. It wasn't deep, wasn't poisoned, and wasn't particularly well aimed," Inara added, rolling her eyes at our teammate.

"Okay, good job everyone. We had a witness but not sure how much she witnessed given the array." Tiesa moved into what Jasna called 'mother mode', getting everyone arranged and cleaned up while taking stock.

"I get we want to be on our way but I doubt they sent two teams, right? There wasn't any evidence of that and also, it was probably a rush job if these people were that… unprepared. We have the time to rummage around here first and then skedaddle on to Velez? Maybe we want to pick a different route in case they did call for backup?" I wanted to get everyone's thoughts but I was extremely curious why I was the only one who could see through the array.

As Inara went to open a door, I called out. "Wait, it might be trapped. If they set up this array, presumably an expensive endeavor, then they are likely pretty focused on people not discovering this place or what they were doing. Let's be cautious and go slowly to not take on any undue risk."

At a yell, I turned to see the carriage driver pelting out of the large building where he had taken refuge. At a cocked eyebrow, he yelled incredulously, "You just said it might be trapped! I don't want to die to a trap! I drive a fancy carriage in town instead of fighting or delving for a reason!"

That broke the tension enough that we all relaxed and laughed while we calmed down and prepared for a deeper search.

The first two buildings were duds, a mess hall where all the food was gone or looked to be either completely rotted away or supporting new life in the form of mice, insects, and various molds and other fungi. It stank to high heaven but Jasna made me grab all the silverware.

"What? I bet it's decent metal and your bag can take it easily. Selling all that might get you half off your new weapon." She looked utterly unashamed at the low-level pilfering.

The second building was a residence hall of sorts to house maybe ten that was similarly abandoned. We found a family of cats living in there and while Inara wanted to take them and Steve wanted to fight them, we left them unperturbed.

As we explored the third building, it went from interesting to sinister. Inara and Jasna, as the best scouts we had, inspected the entrance door for traps but found none; however, they couldn't open it.

As I approached, I felt a familiar tug on my cores and, even more weirdly, my arm. Suddenly, the door opened of its own volition.

At a one second peek in, I immediately turned around, retching.

It was a prison-like holding facility – a long hallway with tiny barred cells – filled with dead bodies that stank worse than anything I had ever experienced.

Jasna entered and returned five minutes later. "The good news is it looks like they were killed. Yes, that's good. They are decomposed enough they've been here for weeks to months. Hard to say. Rather than starving or dying of thirst, at least they were put out of their misery." She looked stoic but I could tell she was shaken.

"I'll go investigate further," Tiesa said, pulling out a mask to cover her mouth and nose. At the scandalized glare from Jasna, she chuckled darkly. "You didn't ask Jazzy. I also didn't think you'd do more than a quick duck in, duck out."

"Fair," Jasna said, and signaled for The Order to follow her.

The next building was less awful on the surface but far more underneath, eliciting the same feeling from my cores and arm at the entrance. A lot of the equipment was gone but the idiots left the paper records. Some of it was in a cypher but most wasn't.

A few filing cabinets opened as I approached them but refused to open for the others.

We found a cache of some heavily enchanted items that were deemed 'too not useful for further experimentation' but not any notes specifically on what they were.

After about fifteen minutes of skimming the documents, we decided to just take all the papers and items and move on to the last building.

"So they were experimenting on extracting essence from people? And ripping out essence-filled spells and skills. Is that even possible?" Pavel asked.

"Well honey, it appears so, since they did some of it." Inara put her hand on her fiancé's arm. While it was a somewhat lighthearted comment, it did little to improve the mood.

Tiesa approached. "Didn't find anything new from further investigating. We don't have the storage capacity to bring back all the bodies so I buried them. Best I can do."

"That was very nice of you Tiesa, thanks," I said, giving her a warm smile instead of a hug as she still had some decomposing body material on her shirt. She looked down, shuddered slightly and turned around to use her ring, replacing her shirt.

I guess this place really doesn't care much about modesty.

As we approached the fifth and final building, I focused on the feeling of it seeming to pull on me to unlock. It wasn't from my arm in general, it was specific to my right hand. As the feeling faded, I looked at my hand to see if I could figure out why and saw my storage ring glow slightly.

Even more curious…

What we found made the dead prisoners look tame. It was like a medieval torture chamber mixed with the most disgusting sci-fi experimentation room. There were jagged, bloody metallic tools as well as what seemed like a few remaining futuristic lasers or something similar in gleaming green coating splayed across the floor.

"Yeah, this seems like where they actually performed all the awful things they were doing. Why don't Tiesa, Jasna, and I look around while the rest of you take Steve and head back to the carriage? Please do make sure to clean off before you get in, Katarina will not be pleased if it's badly soiled," I said, handing my bond to a suddenly elated Inara. She started tearing up at his shriek of betrayal but he quieted immediately at being pet.

"Okay, I think this has something to do with my ring… And me," I said quietly to my two friends once the others cleared out. "The equipment here and even just the layout look oddly similar to where I first appeared, that strange facility. I think this place has something to do with Barry."

"That explains the <BB> we found on a lot of the documents," Tiesa said thoughtfully; even if the initials weren't English script, they still were the same character or letter twice. "Okay, that means we should be careful who we share information about this place. And if we let Ratmir anywhere near it, he has to give an incredibly strong guarantee…"

"Agreed. But I do actually want to take some of this equipment back with us so we can figure out more about me and them." I released a large sigh that seemed to somehow take away all my tension, only for it to redouble.

"I am obviously pretty disgusted by how many people Barry killed here. I thought maybe I was merely an accident or something he was messing around with but didn't know what he was doing. This seems far more sinister, like someone who simply didn't care about collateral damage. I don't know much about ripping essence from people but I imagine it's not a pleasant experience."

"You're right. Everything I've heard is that at best it cripples the body. Usually, it cripples the mind too from the pain, so you are just a blathering mess. That might be more of kindness given the persistent pain after. I don't get how someone could be this… just evil. I'm sorry if you think this has anything to do with you Terry," Tiesa said, laying a hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, yet another thing to process," I said, trying to inject a joking tone but from Tiesa's wince, failing rather miserably. "I know this isn't my fault. It's not like he's my dad, it's more like I'm an experiment too. Just one that fared better than these poor souls."

Am I just a hotter Frankenstein's Monster?

"Well, let's grab stuff and go. This place is creepy and smells," Jasna said, starting to make things disappear into her bag.

***

The trip back to Velez was a quiet and somber one. Jasna went over the battle recordings with each of us to help us better understand what we did well, where we could do better, what had gone wrong, and how she'd be torturing us via training with her and Risto over the next few weeks to make sure we shored up our weaknesses.

Seeing the recording of me executing someone, even if they had been trying to kill me, was still pretty jarring. I couldn't figure out what I wanted to feel, only that I wasn't feeling it,

Per agreement with Katarina, we pressed the horses more than we probably should have but she sent a contingent of horses to meet about halfway between the obscured research outpost and Velez to take over and let the ones we'd been using rest. Plus, with the four horses from the dead adventurers, scouting was much easier and the carriage load was usually lighter.

At my request, Katarina sent a missive explaining more about noble contracts as Tiesa and Jasna had little idea and the Planet Web was even less help beyond trying to make them sound reasonable and totally socially acceptable.

The basic overview was that nobles needed a way to get rid of nuisances that hadn't technically broken any laws but the nobles still needed to operate within the Kingdom rules and norms. Prior to noble contracts, the rich essentially had free rein – if not legally – to have whoever they wanted killed, often sending Tier 5s and 6s to kill Tier 1s and even unignited people.

In general, punching down – attacking someone more than one Tier lower than you other than in defense or from 'presumed defense' if someone was threatening you – was heavily frowned on and usually illegal.

Even attacking down one Tier was seen as bad if not illegal, especially as trying to sense another person's Tier could be hit or miss. AAI chips were automatically programmed to record information and send it to authorities if someone was exposed to essence greater than one Tier lower than them as it might be from an illegal killing. That was one reason why AAI disruptors were highly regulated as well.

So, prior to noble contracts but after punching down laws started to actually be enforced, some of the people the nobles used to do their dirty work were caught and summarily executed for violating said laws. A few groups of high-Tier delvers also went on killing sprees, assassinating many nobles in retaliation for the killings they paid for. Meanwhile, the general populace was afraid they'd be killed over any slight.

Basically, it devolved into a clusterfuck.

Something had to give. So noble contracts were born: officially sanctioned and approved agreements to follow the punching down rules and pay exorbitant fees for the chance to kill off or capture those causing them stress. The fees were supposedly used to pay for constant monitoring by the Planetary AAI of the contracted team but really, Katarina said it was to discourage overuse by pissy nobles. The high costs meant they were rarely worth it.

It all sounded terrible to me but it was at least better than wanton slaughter by the rich.

Something more to change I guess…