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

Every fortress grows a town, the way a ship grows barnacles.

The Wall’s town was called the Shambles.

It was filled with sheltered ground behind the central bastions - cookshops, bathhouses, menders, money-changers, and forty-one licensed taverns. When the Wall’s men came off watch, they flowed through the streets in grey tides.

The Wall had banned noble crests.

But it had never been stupid enough to ban drinking.

Encrid had walked through the Shambles a dozen times on Quartermastery business.

He had also, without ever making it obvious, appraised its tavern keepers one by one.

The novel had been very specific about three things.

Blue Moon houses stood where three roads met.

Their signs always had a lantern.

And the keeper was never what he appeared to be.

There was exactly one tavern in the Shambles that matched all three.

The Crooked Lantern stood where the mess road, the stair road, and the gate road came together.

It was a low, warm, well-kept establishment with a blue glass lantern hanging above the door.

An ordinary tavern lantern.

It meant nothing to anyone who hadn’t spent six years reading a novel where that exact details were descriptively explained.

Encrid pushed open the door on a snowy evening.

Inside, it was hot and loud. The place smelled of mutton, spilled ale, and wet wool. Off-watch soldiers filled the benches, shouting over one another while a young woman carried jugs between the tables.

Behind the long counter stood the keeper.

A thin, unhurried man of about fifty, with a towel over his shoulder and the sort of pleasant, forgettable face that most people would forget the moment they looked away.

[ Name: Odd ]

[ Age: 51 ]

[ Realm: Apex ]

[ Star Level: Two ]

[ Talent: Uncommon ]

A tavern keeper at the edge of the world with two stars and at apex realm.

’Found you.’

He took a seat at the end of the counter where it met the wall.

”Mulled wine.”

The keeper poured it.

Encrid drank slowly.

One unremarkable clerk among hundreds.

He waited.

Eventually, the crowd thickened around the far end of the counter. The keeper moved away from the noise and came back within speaking distance, quietly racking cups.

Encrid’s heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it in his throat but he showed none of it on his face.

He forced himself to finish the cup first - more to get a bit of courage for what he was about to do than for the sake of drinking.

After all, a man with shaking hands did not get a second chance at a first impression.

”Another, my lord?”

”Please.”

Encrid turned the empty cup slowly between his fingers.

”But pour it under the second moon.”

The keeper’s hand paused for the smallest fraction of a second.

”The first was never full.”

His hands started moving again.

That was the part Encrid would remember afterward. The hands kept racking cups as smoothly as before.

But everything behind the man’s face had changed.

The pleasant, forgettable eyes lifted and settled on Encrid.

They were no longer the eyes of a tavern keeper.

For two full seconds, the noise of the room seemed to belong to another building.

”We’re out of the good spice, my lord,” the keeper said in exactly the same tone as before.

”There is a cask in the back that might do.”

He smiled politely.

”Would my lord care to judge it himself?”

”I’d be delighted.”

Encrid stood and followed him.

They passed through the gap behind the counter, down a narrow passage beside the kitchen, and into a storeroom that smelled of hops and tallow.

At the far end stood a plain wooden door.

The keeper unlocked it with a key hanging around his neck.

Stone steps descended into darkness beyond it.

He took a lamp from the wall and gestured politely.

Encrid went first.

He counted the steps out of habit.

He also noticed where the keeper walked.

Behind him, slightly to the left.

Just outside his blind spot.

His weight was balanced.

In the novel, the code gets you through the door.

But it doesn’t get you back out.

Encrid kept his expression calm and continued down the stairs.

Encrid couldn’t remember a single person who had walked into a Blue Moon house using that phrase without an introduction and lived long enough to describe what was inside.

The stairs finally ended.

Encrid stepped onto a smooth stone floor.

It wasn’t a cellar.

The room below was dry, warm, and carefully maintained, completely unlike the damp storage spaces he had expected. Wooden panels covered the walls, polished enough to catch the warm light from the lamps mounted between them. A brazier burned quietly inside an iron basket, taking the bite out of the cold that had followed them down the stairs.

One entire wall was covered with racks of message tubes.

Hundreds of them.

Each tube was carefully labelled and arranged in rows, stretching from one end of the wall to the other.

It was a dedicated structure built for paper birds.

There were three people in the room.

Two men stood near the far wall.

Neither of them looked at Encrid.

They didn’t need to.

Their posture was relaxed, but there was nothing casual about them. Both men were completely, professionally aware of his presence. Encrid could feel their attention following every movement he made without either of them turning their heads.

The third person sat behind a heavy wooden table covered with letters.

It was a woman in her forties.

She had dark hair, with streaks of grey beginning to show through.

She was dressed like a well-off mender, wearing simple but expensive clothing without a single unnecessary ornament.

Unlike the two men, she wasn’t pretending not to watch him.

She was simply sitting there.

Her pen rested beside an unfinished letter as Encrid’s eyes settled on her.

’Appraise.’

The system responded.

[ Name: ▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

[ Age: 44 ]

[ Realm: ?? ]

[ Star Level: ?? ]

[ Talent: ▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]

’Thank you,’ Encrid thought.

The woman put down her pen.

She carefully squared the letter she had been writing against the edge of the table.

Only then did she look up.

Her eyes were the colour of a winter river.

Behind Encrid, the door at the top of the stairs closed.

He heard the key turn in the lock.

”Sit,” the woman said.

Encrid sat.

”And before anything else...”

Her gaze never left his.

”Would you tell me where a son of Duke Gannon learned the passphrase of the Blue Moon, my lord?”

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✧ I’m taking a little space inside this Chapter to make a humble request -> Please read the Author’s Thoughts below ✧