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

"Your Majesty, may I correct your stance? You’ll lose your shoulder before the duel."

The palace’s weapon master was named Bren Olvar. He was sixty-one years old, missing half an ear from the southern war, and possessed the patience of a secular saint.

He’d been training me every dawn for a week, ever since I decided that a body that knew how to fight deserved an owner who did too.

"My shoulder is where it should be."

"Your shoulder is where the former you kept it, Your Majesty. " He struck my elbow with his staff, a sharp thwack, without asking permission or apologizing.

"Your body remembers swordsmanship from ten years ago. Your head fights with inkwells and bookshelves, according to the whispers in the halls. Pick a school and stop getting in your own way."

Bren Olvar was the first man in the palace who corrected me without asking permission. That’s why I came back every dawn.

"Can I ask you something, Master?"

"You may, Your Majesty. Answering is a separate contract."

"Why did you agree to train me? Half the garrison thinks I’m still the man I used to be. The other half hates me just in case."

Bren lowered his staff, wiped the back of his neck with his usual cloth, and took his time, which was his way of taking the question seriously.

"I’ve served two emperors, Your Majesty. I learned not to judge crowns. I judge feet." He pointed at mine with his staff. "The former stepped to dominate the ground. You step so you don’t fall over. A man who knows he can fall... that man can still be taught."

"And if I start stepping like I used to?"

"Then this old man will have wasted his dawns." He shrugged. "You wouldn’t be the first emperor to waste them on me. En garde."

We went back to the staffs, and for half an hour the world shrank to shoulder, hip, foot, the rare, clean feeling of learning something with your body, far away from poisons and chancellors.

It lasted until the blue window.

And that’s why the blue window that morning hit me worse than the strike to the elbow.

[DING]

[New Main Mission: Defeat the Dark Lord’s General!]

[Target located: Bren OLVAR]

[Reward: S-rank. Execution Bonus: ×10]

I lowered my staff.

"Your Majesty?"

"A cramp. Let’s keep going."

We kept going, and I fought worse than ever, because half my head was dodging staff strikes and the other half was rereading the window floating above the man teaching me how not to die.

The Dark Lord’s General. Bren Olvar.

A veteran who patched the recruits’ boots with his own hands because the quartermaster stole the leather.

My System wanted me to kill him. With a bonus.

"I reject the mission," I muttered when Bren went for water.

[Main missions cannot be rejected.]

"Watch me."

[Rejecting a main mission has consequences.]

"Like what?"

[...]

[Calculating consequences...]

[...]

[No precedent found. No hero has ever said no.]

"There’s a first time for everything. Cancel."

What happened next wasn’t a cancellation. It was a stutter.

The blue window flickered, folded in on itself, spat out symbols that weren’t letters, and went blank for a solid minute.

When it came back, the text arrived differently, almost carefully.

[Mission... recalculated.]

[New Mission: Understand the General.]

[Reward for rejecting the incorrect path: dispensing...]

[Skill received: Appraiser’s Eye (C). You see the true value of things. Sometimes.]

[Integrity: 38% ▼ 37%]

[Thank you for saying no.]

I reread the last line until I wore it out.

First a please. Now a thank you?

My broken System had better manners than half the court, and every one of its pleasantries cost me a point on a ticking clock no one bothered to explain to me.

"Understand the General," I murmured. "Understand what?"

I tested the Appraiser’s Eye that very afternoon in court, to calibrate the new gift.

On the Countess of Vayle’s necklace: [True value: glass. The countess knows.]

On the minister’s harvest report: [True value: two-thirds. The rest got lost on the way to his pockets.]

On the chancellor’s smile when our eyes met in the hallway: [True value: ...]

[Calculating...]

[Calculation abandoned. There are some things not even I can appraise, HERO.]

A system with declared limits.

Every day I understood it less, and every day the more I wondered what kind of factory error apologizes, says thank you for rejections, and gives up entirely when faced with an old man’s smile.

The answer about Bren Olvar arrived on its own three nights later.

I was coming back from the archives past midnight, taking the armory corridor, when I saw light beneath Bren Olvar’s door.

A small, single-candle light.

I stopped where the hallway wouldn’t betray me.

Through the crack in the door, the weapon master was holding a letter over the candle flame.

He held it until the fire touched his fingers, and even then, he didn’t let go quickly.

The paper fell to the bronze plate as ash. Except for one corner.

On the surviving corner, half a wax seal managed to gleam before it curled.

A tower. Crowned with stars.

The seal of the Magic Towers. Saoirse’s house.

Bren Olvar, veteran of three wars, patcher of other people’s boots, was burning secret correspondence from the Towers in the dead of night... and my broken System had called him the Dark Lord’s General.

The Towers.

The house that sealed its pact with the empire by marrying off a eighteen-year-old prodigy to a tyrant she’d never seen smile.

Saoirse’s house.

I reviewed what I knew about the weapon master, and the list got uncomfortable by the second line.

Bren return to the palace six years ago, one year before the wedding with Saoirse.

Bren had access to every weapon in the armory, every guard routine, and every early-rising emperor who wanted to learn swordplay in private.

And Bren, in a week of hitting me with a stick, never once asked why the tyrant suddenly wanted to learn how to fight again.

Men without curiosity don’t exist. Only men who already have the answers do.

The next dawn I went back to the training courtyard anyway.

"You’re early, Your Majesty."

"I didn’t sleep much. Shall we start with the shoulder?"

"We start with the feet, as always." Bren tossed me the staff and adopted his stone-like stance. "The feet first. Everything else is just consequences."

We sparred for half an hour, and neither his staff nor his face gave anything away, which was exactly the lesson of the day: the best actors in the palace weren’t in the court.

I returned to my bedroom without making a sound, the new Appraiser’s Eye buzzing behind my eyes, and asked myself the question that wouldn’t let me sleep.

’What if the System hadn’t gotten the target wrong? What if it had just gotten the name wrong?’