The Hero System Glitched And Now It Pays Me to Love My Assassin Wives

"The emperor requests the exhibition duel. Today at noon in the training courtyard."

The herald read it twice because the room did not process it the first time.

Roderic Alden stood up from his bench at the back of the hall with the face of a man who just had his wallet stolen with white gloves.

"Your Majesty we talked about this the day before yesterday. I told you myself that I was going to refuse."

"I remember. That is why I am the one asking for it."

There was the part his teachers had not taught him.

A man can refuse an invitation.

Refusing a public request from the throne is another thing entirely and the whole court reads it the same way.

Roderic took three seconds to understand it. Then he bowed his head and he did it without holding a grudge which was the most annoying thing about him.

"As you wish Your Majesty. With blunted blades if you will allow it."

"With blunted blades."

Decimus did not move a muscle from the high table. But he wrote something down in his folder and the chancellor does not write down things he expects.

Saoirse caught up to me in the corridor hugging the large instrument against her chest with two constructs behind her carrying the boxes.

"Explain yourself," she said. "That man is going to step on your neck in front of the city."

"I already know that."

"Then the suicide hypothesis goes back on the list."

"You told me yourself during the attack on the palace." I lowered my voice. "My System in combat produces triple the data it does at rest. Does it work for his too?"

Saoirse stopped in the middle of the hallway.

I saw the exact moment the scientist beat the wife because her face lit up just like a child being promised fire.

"It works," she said. "With both signatures in the same courtyard and both systems active it works a lot." She squeezed the instrument. "I am going to need the north gallery and for nobody to talk to me."

"Tornillo can clear it."

"Tornillo is already clearing it." She started walking faster than me. "And Vaelion. Generate data."

The training courtyard filled up by mid morning.

Nobles in the gallery and troops on the wall and the lower city squeezed against the gates.

And on the consorts’ balcony were four women who had not agreed on anything for three days and today they were sharing a railing once again.

Lunara was not with them.

Lunara was down below right at the edge of the circle with her arms crossed and the face of someone who is going to count every mistake I make.

"Back foot," she told me as I walked by. "And do not look at his sword. Look at his hips."

"Any advice that will help me win?"

"No."

Roderic greeted the crowd before greeting me and the crowd returned the greeting with a noise this palace had not made in twenty years.

Then he stepped closer and lowered his voice.

"Your Majesty I do not know what you are doing. But if it is a trap I ask that it be quick. I hate long acts."

"It is not a trap. It is a measurement."

"Of what?"

"Of you."

And I got into a fighting stance.

[Chess Emperor: active]

The courtyard filled with lines.

This is the part that never got comfortable for me.

Stopping seeing a man and starting to see trajectories with each one having two or three futures drawn over it.

The entirety of Roderic was reduced to a bundle of possible movements.

And then I saw it in the first second before either of us attacked.

I knew those lines.

I had seen them five hundred times from the inside every dawn in this exact same courtyard when the tyrant’s body moved without permission and I followed behind trying to catch up to it.

Roderic Alden got into a stance exactly the way my body got into a stance when I left it alone.

He attacked. I lost the first round in four moves.

I lost the second one in three and took a hit to the ribs that the blunted blade did not entirely forgive.

By the third round I stopped trying to win and started working.

I threw a feint at him.

Not just any feint.

The feint to the right shoulder with the weight shifted forward that Bren Olvar had corrected for me three days ago in this exact same courtyard at five in the morning with two witnesses and neither of them from the north.

A piece of garbage feint belonging to me as a beginner and a man learning fencing at thirty years old in someone else’s borrowed body.

Roderic responded to it without thinking.

He blocked low and twisted his wrist inward and knocked the weapon out of my hand with the exact correction Bren had taught me to fear.

A move he could not possibly know against a mistake I had invented this week.

"Your Majesty." Roderic lowered his blade seeing that I wasn’t moving. "Are you alright? I swear I did not calculate the force..."

"Where did you learn that?"

"Excuse me?"

"The low block with a twist. Who taught you that?"

Roderic opened his mouth.

He closed it.

And for the second time since I met him the man who had an answer for everything stood in the middle of a courtyard with two thousand people watching him and nothing to say.

"I do not know," he finally said very quietly just for me. "There are things my body knows and I do not. I have gone five years without asking why because when I ask they tell me it is the prophecy."

He offered me his hand. I took it. He lifted me off the ground with a farmer’s strength and the court roared for him and he had the decency to be uncomfortable about it.

[Map of Debts: active]

And right there coming out of the chest of the man who owed nothing to anyone was a thread.

Just one. Thin and new from this week.

It was coming toward me.

[Debt of: Roderic Alden.]

[Creditor: Vaelion Ironveil.]

[Nature: ...the first question anyone ever asked him.]

Saoirse was waiting for me at the bottom of the north stairs.

She did not have the instrument. Brizna was carrying it behind her and she was walking with both hands empty which was something I had never seen her do.

"I need you to say if you are sure you want to hear it," she said.

"Say it."

"I measured both mana signatures during the third round. His and the second one living inside your System." She looked up. "Spike by spike. Valley by valley. They are the same."

"We already knew that from the archive."

"We knew they matched. That is different from what I just saw." She closed her eyes for a second putting things in order. "Vaelion that man’s signature is incomplete. He is missing a piece. A clean cut and not wear and tear."

"And where is the piece?"

Saoirse looked at my right hand.

"Inside you," she said.

[Investment Detected: you asked the hero the first question of his life.]

[Evaluation: ... unranked.]

[Reward: under review.]

[Integrity: 32%. No changes.]

[System Query: how much do you plan to find out today?]

"All of it."

[...]

[Understood.]

[Then keep this in mind. I was not the one who cut it.]