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Isekai Terry TOD: Chapter 24 – Meeting People You Don’t Want to Meet, Part 1
🕑 Added 2024-06-16 05:47:55 +0000 UTCTerry slipped out of the back of the Adventurer’s Guild and made his way out to the street. He pulled his rice hat down a bit to obscure his face and merged into the foot traffic. He didn’t try to push his way through, despite his intense desire to be literally anywhere else at the moment. He figured the best way to avoid drawing attention to himself was by acting like everyone else. So, he matched their speed and did his best not to make eye contact. That’s right you otherworld people. Nothing to see here. Nothing special going on. Just a guy walking and minding his own business on his way to whatever normal people here do. A tiny little light of hope was starting to emerge in his heart when someone stepped directly into his path.
He had no choice but to stop or bump into them. He gave a moment of serious consideration to just plowing right over them like an oafish buffoon, but he didn’t see a way that would help him. So, he stopped. He lifted his head just enough that he could their face from under the rice hat. She had a narrow face with high cheekbones. Her skin was pale save for a light smattering of freckles. Long, dark hair fell around her face and down to her shoulders in gentle waves. Ice blue eyes did their best to bore a hole in his soul and the smile she gave him was friendly-ish but had a decidedly predatory cast to it. Well, it doesn’t take a genius to see that this woman is trouble, thought Terry. Don’t even engage with her.
“So, I saw that monster head you just—” she started.
Terry stepped around her and kept walking like she didn’t exist. He heard her spluttering behind him like she just couldn’t believe anyone would ignore her that way. Someone had a high opinion of herself, thought Terry. She’s attractive enough, but I’ve been face-to-face with the stupidly pretty people. After that, it’s hard to get worked up by just plain old attractive. He kept moving, hoping that she’d get his incredibly unsubtle message and leave him alone. He didn’t really think it would work, but it seemed like he should at least try to avoid making a spectacle. It seemed that the woman didn’t agree. He could almost feel her angry footsteps closing on him.
“You’re very rude,” she said.
Terry said nothing, once more adopting his stoic warrior persona under the working theory that he couldn’t be held accountable for the things he didn’t say. After all, no one could misrepresent words that didn’t come out of his mouth.
“Well?” she demanded, almost hissing the word in his ear.
Terry honestly didn’t know what she expected that to do. He’d already ignored her twice. Did she somehow think that the third time would make him explode into speech? He kept walking, right up until she grabbed his shoulder and tried to spin him to face her. It didn’t work. While Terry wasn’t sure exactly how getting stronger in this world worked, yet, he knew he had gotten stronger from those cores he’d absorbed and the spirit beast meat he’d eaten. What her action did do was make him pause. He turned his head a little. Not enough so that she could see his face, just a bit of profile, and then he channeled every fed-up gunslinger from every spaghetti western he’d ever seen. He did his level best to embody a man who was about to murder everyone who even thought about annoying him.
“Remove your hand,” said Terry in a low, angry growl.
He didn’t actually say, or I’ll take it at the wrist, but it seemed the message got through all the same. The hand was snatched back. Terry gave it a few heartbeats. He tried to exude an impression that he was debating with himself if he should do something very violent about this bothersome woman before he twitched his shoulders in something that might have been a shrug and started moving again. He half-expected the woman to chase after him and issue threats or maybe say, You dare! He was almost disappointed that she didn’t live into that trope. He’d never actually heard anyone say you dare and kind of wanted to, if only once. At least, he was pretty sure she didn’t follow him. He couldn’t look back without shattering the hyperconfident image he meant to project, so he had to just trust his intuition.
Man, I can’t believe that actually worked, thought Terry. It pained him a little to realize that if he stacked up every moment of cool he’d ever had in his old world that it wouldn’t come close to equaling the volume of cool points that one encounter had generated. For a few seconds there, I was actually kind of badass. Then, he remembered that he wasn’t badass at all. And none of those actors he’d been mimicking had been badass either. Whoever they knew that they had been emulating had been badass. Does that mean my moment of badassery was third-hand? That notion took the wind right out of Terry’s sails. It didn’t slow him down, though. He’d bought himself a little peace and meant to make good use of it. He was going to stop and buy food if he literally stepped into a market between where he was and the gate. Beyond that, though, he wasn’t stopping for anything.
He did find a market. He didn’t walk straight through it, but it was adjacent to the street he was walking on as he made his way to the gate. He decided that was close enough. Unlike the last time he went to a market, he didn’t investigate. He bought some vegetables and dried meat from the first people he found who were selling it and got right back on his way to the gate. He hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he wanted to be gone from this place as fast as possible. There had been something about that woman that made him feel edgy. Then again, everything makes me edgy these days. I might be overthinking it. As he approached the gate and several heavily armed men blocked his path, he mentally punted that last mildly gracious thought.
“You need to come with us,” said one of the men. “The baronet wants to meet you.”
Terry didn’t say anything for several seconds as he tried to decide how best to play the situation. He really didn’t want to deal with nobility in any form. He already had the Church to deal with. The last thing he needed was a noble house hounding him as well. The question was how best to go about that. Not meeting them felt like the best way to avoid the worst possible outcome. Given how corrupt the Church was, it seemed entirely likely that the nobility was corrupt too. Unless, of course, this was that shining gem of true nobility that seemed to show up in every story somewhere. That lone house shining like a beacon of truth in the long, dark night of moral decay.
Given his luck recently, though, it was much more likely that these nobles were the other kind. The kind that hid murderous intent and rampant perversion behind a thin veneer of civility. The image of a grotesque old man licking some teenage girl’s cheek lodged itself in his mind and refused to leave. It was one of those things that he’d seen in a lot of anime shows and films that always struck him as particularly creepy. He understood that was the point, but it had always left him with a particularly visceral feeling of ickness. Since he had no desire to see that or even inadvertently provide support for it, he decided that leaving was the better part of valor. With that choice made, Terry knew what he had to do. He just didn’t like it very much. Grinding his teeth a little, he met the eyes of the man who had spoken.
“No.”
“I don’t think you understand how this works. You are going to come with us. Take him into custody. Remove his weapons.”
One of the men walked over to Terry and reached for one of his jian. Terry’s hand shot out and clamped down on the man’s armored forearm. The bracer creaked under the pressure before the metal started to crumple. The man cried out and tried in vain to dislodge Terry’s hand. As the pressure mounted, the man fell to his knees.
“Trying to take an adventurer’s weapons? Do you have a death wish?” asked Terry. “I only wish to leave. Let me pass.”
The leader looked from Terry’s face to the man who’d dropped to his knees. Terry let his own eyes flick to the man. The look of pain on his face had been replaced by one of abject terror. The bracer was increasingly deformed and Terry suspected that he was on the verge of shattering the bones in the man’s arm. Terry and the leader locked eyes again.
“I can’t do that,” said the leader. “Crippling that man won’t get you what you want.”
Just go with them, said other-Terry, breaking the long silence since he last spoke. The fight isn’t worth it. But don’t let them take your weapons. Regular-Terry was so startled by the suggestion that he let go of the man’s forearm. The injured man scrambled away even as he cradled the injured limb to his chest.
“Fine,” said Terry. “But the next person who tries to take my weapons dies.”
“You cannot meet the baronet armed,” said the leader.
“Trying to take my weapons won’t get you what you want,” said Terry, very intentionally mimicking the other man’s words.
The leader took in Terry’s expression and then glanced at the injured man who had retreated to the safety of the group. He seemed to decide that this problem wasn’t his problem. Someone else could try to take the angry adventurer’s weapons.
“Very well. If you’ll come with us,” said the leader.
The men tried to surround Terry until he gave them a look so hard that they flinched. He just wished he knew what that expression looked like so he could use it again in the future. There was a decided dearth of reflective surfaces in Chinese Period Drama Hell. Wishing like hell that he didn’t have to deal with any of this, Terry followed the men up to the biggest building in town. It wasn’t quite a small castle, but it gave off that kind of a vibe to him. This is going to be a pain in my ass, thought Terry. I can just feel it.
