Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

Encrid,

I heard that you’ve been dispatched to the Wall.

And guess who I heard it from?

A man who delivered grain contracts to the southern borders.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that my own brother had been sent so far north, only to learn about it from a merchant. Not from Father. Not from the house. Not even from you.

I know most people don’t consider me the Duke’s daughter yet. I’ve grown used to that.

But I had hoped you would at least consider me as a sister and write to me.

I wanted to run to you the moment I heard. I wanted to know whether you were safe, whether you had arrived properly, whether you had been given a decent room, whether you were eating properly.

Instead, I was sitting here wondering why my own family thought I didn’t deserve to know.

I’m very angry as I write this.

I don’t know whether I’m angry at Father, at you, or at myself for being so helpless.

Father has given me new orders. I’m heading east now.

The barbarian attacks are still continuing, but reinforcements from the capital have finally arrived, so I’m no longer needed in the south.

Once I finish the work in the east, I’ll come to the Wall.

I will.

And since I’m already writing, let me give you some advice.

You’re living in a fortification built against the greatest threat the Empire has ever faced. So learn it.

Learn where the water is.

Learn which stair you use every day, and which one you should take if there is a fire. Learn the names of the men at the gates. All of them. Use their names.

Eat what they eat.

Don’t make the mistake of having anything sent up from the south. A garrison will forgive almost anything except a man who eats better than it does.

And Encrid, I know you’re probably furious with Father.

Perhaps with the whole family.

But don’t let that anger make you careless.

Whatever happened before you reached the Wall, you’re there now. So learn it. Survive it. Come back from it.

I’ll get to your side as soon as I can.

Just write to me.

Even one line is enough. I don’t need a proper letter.

Just tell me you’re alive.

And doing well.

Happy birthday, by the way.

I don’t know if it was yesterday, today, or tomorrow by the time this reaches you. The roads have been terrible lately.

I’ve been thinking about buying you a communication crystal.

That way, I can talk to you whenever I want, and you won’t have the excuse of being too busy to write.

I haven’t forgotten your birthday once in the sixteen years since I first saw you.

That’s sixteen to nothing.

So don’t think being sent to the other end of the Empire is going to change that.

When all of this is over, we’re going to Selvara’s.

You don’t get to refuse.

Your dearest sister,

Zuri

✧ ✧ ✧

Jin read the letter twice.

Then he put it down on the desk, placed both hands flat on either side of it, and sat there while the brazier ticked and the office continued around him.

’Sixteen to nothing,’ he thought.

His eyes had gone hot.

He blamed Encrid’s plumbing for it.

Across the room, Gus had stopped writing. He had probably noticed the change in Encrid’s expression, but he didn’t say anything.

He simply got up, filled Encrid’s cup from the pot on the stove, placed it beside his hand, and returned to his letters.

Encrid didn’t trust himself to say thank you and remain composed.

He picked up the cup instead and drank from it.

Gus seemed to understand perfectly.

As Encrid drank, a single question began forming in his mind.

’Who are you?’

It wasn’t an insult directed at Zuri.

It was a genuine question that started to bug him.

He knew House Gannon from the novel.

The great house that ruled as the overlord of the North - a Dukedom powerful enough to shake the dynamics of the Empire.

He knew Duke Aegis Von Gannon, one of the four pillars of the Empire, a figure so powerful that he was always brought up when they discussed the most influential people in the empire.

He knew about his four children too.

At least, he thought he did.

Jin could recite their names.

There was Encrid, the disgrace mentioned only in passing.

There were his two brothers, both born to different mothers.

And there was the eldest daughter.

Except her name wasn’t Zuri.

Jin turned the letter over in his hands.

A Duke’s daughter.

A Master of the Water Element before thirty.

A commander with her own knights and her own campaigns.

She had held the southern border against the barbarians for six months.

That was in no way a background detail.

The novel had given entire Chapters to men who had accomplished half as much.

’So why don’t I know your name?’

He sat with the question.

Then, because it was late, the candle was burning low, and he still had four hundred tons of grain to account for, he did what he had done at the estate.

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind and gave himself an answer.

’The novel didn’t mention everyone.’

It didn’t mention Gus. It didn’t mention Merta, Tobb, or Fennick. It didn’t mention the Commander of the Wall. The author wrote about the people who mattered to the plot. Everyone else simply lived off the page, where he wasn’t looking.

It was a good answer.

It might even be true.

But he refused to finish the thought - to wonder whether the same could possibly be true for the Duke’s daughter. He also considered the possibility of her being dead in the future but even if she had died, it still didn’t make sense as to why she wasn’t mentioned.

Jin folded the letter along its creases and placed it in the strongbox beneath the floor, beside the salvage gold and the other things that mattered.

Then he blew out the candle.

✦ ✦ ✦