Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 34: Knight Alaric’s Troubled Heart

After they had slept the worst of the road out of their bones, Joji led them back into the clang and coal stink of the blacksmith.

Walter tested the weight of steel shields with both hands, turning each one until the balance spoke true.

He settled on a kite shield with scuffed edges and a few old bites in the rim, used, but honest.

Joji and Alaric had told him to choose by feel, not shine.

If he could not bring it up in time, it was no shield at all.

Walter hefted it once more, gave it a short, sharp swing, and nodded. The fit was right, and for once that was enough.

Kobluk picked up one machete, then another, weighing them the way he weighed lies.

He had lost both blades in the fight with the lizardman, and now his hand kept drifting toward the same cheap make he always bought, the sort that felt fine until it met bone.

Joji saw it and cuffed him on the back of the head, not hard enough to start a brawl, hard enough to make a point.

"Still buying like you plan to die," Joji said.

Kobluk opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. He put the bargain blade back and reached for something better, relenting with a sour little look that said he hated being righted, but hated the idea of dying even more.

"It’s just money. Don’t bother with it," Alaric said, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

Kobluk stared at the new machete, a clear notch above what he had carried before. The edge caught the forge light and held it.

"Should I have broken my flute too?" he murmured.

"Don’t even think about it," Joji said from behind the kobold’s dog ears.

A shiver walked up Kobluk’s spine. He did not turn around.

Joji paid without haggling, and bought a map besides.

It was the map that soured the day.

They could not take the main road to the County of Fellbarrow. Not with Walter in their midst.

All of them were certain someone waited out there, bandits at best, assassins at worst, and either way hunting his life.

So they followed the detour instead, a thin inked line that slid south into the green smear of swamp country.

Lost Boy’s Marsh.

Alaric’s fingers paused on the paper. He and Joji both knew the old stories, and the stories were never about small children wandering off and drowning in the reeds.

The name was a joke told with a straight face, the kind meant to make a mother pinch her son’s ear and steer him away from ever asking the wrong questions.

The marsh did not steal boys. It stole the boy within them.

The Fae Folks lived there, polite as priests until the lanterns were put out.

They only invited young men, the ones who had not yet learned what desire could do to a man’s will.

Lustful parties, the tale went, music that never ended, bodies slick with fragrant oils, sweat, and a sweetness in the air that made you forget the taste of bread.

Men went looking for it and found only mud and mosquitoes.

Men who were chosen, who were taken, came back changed.

A few came back hard as iron, heroes in songs. Most came back hungry, and spent years trying to find the lantern light again, and died with their hands empty.

The marsh itself did not help. It sprawled wider than any sane man wanted to walk, five hundred square kilometers by Earth measure.

Roads sank. Wheels broke. Even armies had tried to tame it and failed.

No one conquered Lost Boy’s Marsh, not then, not ever, not in any tale worth repeating.

They left the Town of Lacrosse on foot.

Above them, a shadow crossed once, circling lazy on the morning air.

Mary Cathryn Lacrosse watched from high up, small as a mote against the clouds. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

She followed for a long while, long enough to make boots feel loud and every glance backward feel guilty.

After an hour she climbed higher, then turned away toward the town walls and the work that was hers.

"Was the Everhart Duchy stretched so thin they send out young men for one mission after another?" her voice carried down, thin as a thread, more for herself than for them.

Then she was gone.

Joji and his cohort did not take a cart this time. A wagon would have sunk to its axles in the first bad stretch, and horses hated the smell of rot.

Still, it was not the swamp that pulled Alaric’s mouth into a hard line. It was his own thoughts.

He had been useless in the last fight. That was the word his mind kept returning to.

Useless.

His opponent had read him as if his sword arm wrote its intentions in the air.

Once, men had praised him as the best knight of his age, bright, talented, and quick.

He had believed them only a little, and trained hard anyway, because praise did not keep you alive.

Eleonor Sins of Crossroad had found him with nothing but a name and a stubborn heartbeat.

Joji’s mother had given him a place at her table as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

He had not been treated like a stray, not once. He had been treated like a son.

He remembered himself small, missing teeth, snot on his lip, a mangy dog sprawled across his bare feet with foam at its mouth.

He had raised a wooden sword like it was steel.

"Once you become a duke, I, Alaric shall be your sword," he had sworn, loud enough that the old knights laughed.

"Good. Good. Good," Joji had said, copying their gruff voices, his head shaved bald even then because he liked the cold air on his scalp.

"This young one has grand aspirations. Very well then. I will allow it."

Now the memory tasted like ash.

’Who was I protecting.’ The thought came sharp, then broke. ’No one again. Just like before.’

His eyes stung. He blinked hard, angry at himself for it. If he could go back, he would train until his arms shook and his lungs burned.

He would do it gladly, if it meant he would not feel this helplessness again.

He had seen Hedrick, Joji’s father, run toward the falling meteors like a man sprinting into the mouth of a beast, and he had felt the other knights drag him and Joji back, their grips iron, their orders swallowed by the sky’s roar.

It had been the same sickness in his gut. Wanting to act. Being forced to watch.

The rage needed somewhere to go.

Alaric turned on the nearest tree and drove his fist into the bark. Pain cracked up his knuckles.

The tree shuddered. A strip of bark tore free and fell.

Joji’s footsteps slowed behind him.

"What’s the matter?" Joji asked, as if he had not been watching Alaric’s shoulders for the last mile.

"It’s just," Alaric said. His voice caught. He hated that too. "I was so useless back then."

Joji’s face tightened. For a heartbeat Alaric thought he had truly offended him.

"So what you are saying is that I was useless too?" Joji said, scowling.

"No. That’s not it," Alaric said at once, too fast. He swallowed. "That’s not what I meant."

Joji let the scowl sit a moment longer, then leaned in as if the anger was a tool he could set down when he pleased.

"What I’m seeing is you looking for an excuse to sulk," Joji said. "We take losses, we take wins. It’s done."

"If you wanna make it useful, then run it back in your head till it hurts."

"Ask yourself what you do different next time you run into that kind of man. Do that. Not this."

Alaric stared at his swollen knuckles and the torn bark, breathing through the sting, and tried to take the words like medicine instead of a slap.