Chapter Two, version 3
'Well, at least the tea is good,' Tanya thought as she sipped from the cup in front of her. There was no coffee or chocolate this far out from civilization, but she could work with what she got. Though she probably could have twisted the arm of the old man to give her some alcohol if she wanted to, alas she was a creature of habit and she would follow the law. Yes, this place may be lawless, but the last laws she had lived under said she needed to wait a few more years so she would abstain out of respect for that system. Hell, according to the thin man she apparently now had a life span of centuries as long as she was not outright killed, so waiting two or three years was no great loss.
After the very public fight on the street, she had pumped the thin man, or Haruri as he went by, for a lot of info, quite a bit more than she would figure country bandits would know, but surprise surprise - Haruri used to live in the more civilized safer districts, which explained where he got functioning prescription glasses. How he got out here in the edges of the civilized world, she hadn't pressed on. She assumed it involved punishment for crimes of a grievous nature. Sipping her tea, she looked out the window of the decaying shop she had taken residence in for the last four days. Being X had cheaped out on her reincarnation and dumped her in what amounted to purgatory instead of what the locals called the world of the living.
This of course meant she was not truly reincarnated, but dead, and better yet, if she did die in this afterlife, goodbye Tanya, goodbye salaryman. Her memories would be gone as her soul would be reincarnated without them. Granted this self-guided reincarnation seemed to be a slightly more efficient system than what X had been running, but she really did not want to cease to exist. Which meant she had to go on living in this world; not an impossible task from what she heard. From what she understood, most of the population of this world did not need to eat except for pleasure, which meant food pricing was at rock bottom.
A gift of the low Reiryoku that most of the denizens of this world had. Reiryoku of course being that power she used the day of her arrival. Which meant she classed above that standard and did need to eat. Unfortunately, the economy seemed to be based on the basic bartering of one good for another, which meant there was no place for a reliable human resource officer like herself. White-collar jobs were pretty much not a thing this far out from core districts, so she was left with few economic opportunities. Supposedly, there might be some professions similar to her preferred line of work towards the inner rings of these districts, but that could be a month or more of travel away. It was a road trip that would require capital and better weapons than she had now to accomplish.
Thankfully, Gojou, the old man who ran this fine shop, was feeding her for free in thanks for beating up Haruri and his bandit friends. Allegedly they tended to make a ruckus and drive off customers. Oh, and yes, they were bandits. She knew that now for sure after the interrogation. According to Haruri, the edges of civilization were also the edges of the known world, and there were four districts called the 80s encircling the others, lawless lands where the strong ruled the weak. Not the kind of place you wanted to live in, but she was currently in 80 east. The boss Haruri worked for, from his description, was nothing but a warlord who demanded tribute from villages like this one to support his campaign against other warlords. Hopefully, she would be out of town before he decided to come collecting that tribute himself.
Sure, she had not killed any of the three idiots who had attacked her and even gave aid to the one she cut up, but she doubted he would be very happy she beat down his crew. Banditry required reputation and signaling an air of unbeatable fighting ability. Take that away from them and you become a problem that needs to be dealt with. But, to leave the town she now found herself in would require finding a job that paid real money, and right now, those were few and far between. Finishing her tea, she got up from her seat and nodded to the old man behind the bar as she walked by.
"Great tea Mister Gojou, your skill continues to outshine the establishment. I'll see if I can get some extra firewood tonight." She said as headed for the door.
"Thanks, von Degurechaff, try to be careful out there, wouldn't want to lose you to a monster attack.
Tanya chuckled at Gojou's joke as she stepped outside, putting her cap on her head smartly. Monster attack, what a ridiculous thought! She expected bandits to attack long before monsters. Though she wondered why he always bothered to put 'von' on her name, did he once serve royalty? She would have to ask him one of these days.
Looking around, she observed the coming and going of the town for a moment. Noting that even though these people here were living in what she would class as poverty, they seemed happy, even a bit happier than four days ago. Thinking about their situation, she decided that she was being a bit too modern in her thinking. They had homes, even if most seemed ancient, food was no issue, and besides being rowdy, the bandits seemed controllable. Their hierarchy of needs were met, she was just used to a higher standard than them. Maybe this town was a nice and quiet place to stay awhile; the eastern front had been hell on her nerves and she could use vacation time to decompress from the fighting.
"Hey, you the shrimp that beat up Somei and his henchmen?"
Looking toward the voice, she saw a dark-haired man with a polearm and ragged, bandit style clothing walking away from some kids who were pointing in her direction. His face reminded her of that one action movie guy from her first life - what was his name? - ah, Rambo. He was still looking her way, and that weapon gave him a rather large reach advantage. She would rather not fight him, hell she would rather be in the air with a gun, but we can't have everything we want, yet.
"Yes, that was probably me, never bothered to get the leader's name since he never bothered to ask mine. You'd think getting beaten up by a smaller person would be taken as a sign to quit or not talk about it at all," she said back, watching him closely, her hand moving under her overcoat to her recently acquired dagger just in case.
Polearm Rambo grounded the weapon so that he could lean against it and then said, "The name's Kudo - and they did refuse to talk about it. The boss man made them talk, and now he wants to talk to you." Tanya looked at the polearm user, wondering if this was the trap it looked like, then shrugged. If they wanted her dead she doubted they would send one person to talk to her. As much as she made nice with town folk she doubted she could raise them into a force to fight off full bandit attack.
"Hello, Kudo. I am Lt. Colonel Tanya von Degurechaff. If he is trying to offer me a job, I'm afraid I cannot morally abide by thievery and the senseless violence banditry begets. If his offer does not have me doing something along those lines, I'm willing to listen. Tell him that and that I would be willing to meet outside of town tomorrow around midday."
"Just like that?" Polearm Kudo asked, sounding rather confused.
"I assume your boss would have a good reason to reach out to a new arrival such as myself, and considering you are not laying siege to the town in vengeance for me beating those three up a few days ago I see no reason to prolong things. Although I will say now I have no interest in a long-term contract. I'm willing to hear him out if it is a short-term contract, and if it aligns with my own goals I may be willing to work with your boss." She smiled.
Kudo nodded and walked off, giving her an odd look. 'I wonder what that was about' she wondered as he moved away. Shaking her head in confusion, she walked toward the other side of town. As much as she was interested in this possible job interview, she had rent to pay.
On the edges of town, at what amounted to a large lumberyard, Tanya picked up an ax and began running an enhancement formula on her body while using what power she had left to add a mage blade effect to the ax head, then began cutting wood. She was not a fan of manual labor like this, but she needed to pay for the room at the inn she'd acquired, and this also allowed her to work on her control over her spiritual pressure.
Tanya's process of experimentation with Reiryoku or spiritual pressure was slow and steady. Haruri had known she'd been using it a few moments into the fight. Under friendly interrogation, he had told her the basics: Reiryoku was this world's closest analogue to magic. And most likely her best and easiest way out of these poor uncivilized outer districts. Like magic, it was a power that came from within a person, though unlike magic it was not a fixed value. You were not born F and stuck there your entire life. It was more like a muscle: the more and harder you used it, the bigger it grew.
That's why she was out here cutting wood while using magic, or well, spiritual pressure. It may not be glamorous but it was helping her improve her chances of survival and it created a stable path out of poverty for her. There was also a caveat that apparently if you almost died it grew much faster but she was not interested in the accelerated course as it were.
The problem she was facing was that the formulas she had painstakingly memorized in her last life were not giving the same results here. In her past life, magic had been a known quantity; it was not very mysterious and you could teach a formula for one thing to a person easily. Take for instance the simple shield spell: you put the requisite power into a certain formula and you got out a protective barrier of the required size. However, she kept getting messed-up results. If she put in what she thought was about the right amount, she got an understrength shield. If she pushed more in hopes of strengthening it, she would instead get a larger shield.
It was a similar situation with all the spells she was willing to attempt to use while still having very little idea of how spiritual pressure worked. With how ineffective or inaccurate the power felt, she was not in a hurry to try something like a flight spell because there was a good chance she would just fall out of the sky. An artillery spell was just asking to be blown up, never mind that she did not have a gun and ammo to carry the spell. She could attach it to something like a bow and arrow, but she had no training with that type of weapon and she had no way to acquire one. She could theoretically lower the power of the spell and attach it to a rock that could be thrown like an improvised grenade but she was not in a real hurry to find out if you could regrow limbs in this afterlife.
This meant her spells were limited to the shield spell, mental and physical enhancement spells, illusion spells, and the mage blade; those spells were working to a general degree depending on spiritual pressure, but she couldn't use them all at the same time. On one hand, she didn't believe she had the Reiryoku reserves to pull it off, on the other, she was too used to her orb being there to keep a spell going while she did something else. Without an orb, she could only really keep one complex spell going constantly, like the enhancements or an illusion formula. Thankfully mage blade, while attached to something like a dagger, had a much simpler formula and the shield spell was simple and quick as well, so they fell out of the problem category, and thus her magic was not completely useless.
With an annoyed sigh of discontentment, she stopped cutting wood like an automated machine to stretch her back and look around the camp. She had cut a lot of wood since her arrival a few days ago and would not be surprised if she'd made a bit of a dent in the value of its barter locally, but that was a sacrifice she was willing to make. She wondered why no one else worked out here alone as she did. The townsfolk always came out here in groups when she saw them. 'Maybe there are wolves in the woods,' she thought as she shrugged and got back to work.
"Kudo! How is the new arrival? I hope he is as dangerous as Somei promised," Hisakage, the warlord of the eastern 80th, called out from where he sat on his throne with a bemused smile. Kudo entered the once-abandoned hotel that Hisakage had turned into his castle over the years with a sigh of agitation. Hisakage waved over a couple of his wenches to serve them some delicacy he had imported from 79th; he seemed to be in a good mood at least.
"They are possibly more dangerous than he said. She has the eyes of the killer, and her uniform and bearing are definitively military." He walked over to his favorite position in the corner of the square lobby the warlord called a throne room and placed his polearm against the wall before taking a seat. This building had once been a gated hotel of some kind, long since abandoned and left to rot as a monument to some bygone era when the 80th districts were not as terrible as they are now. However, it was still a functional building and was semi defensible so it made an okay option to base out of. It did have a great central location in 80 east which helped Hisakage maintain control of his little kingdom.
"Wait 'she'? I thought Somei said the new arrival was a he?" The warlord asked, sitting up from his spot, several gold chains around his neck clinking against each other.
"He was mistaken, and he is lucky to be alive, though I have no idea where or when she comes from for sure. If I had to put money down I would guess she is a product of a German super-soldier program. She is too young to have been in many fights and yet her mind is driven by the instinct to fight. She believes you were ready to attack the town in vengeance for Somei's beating."
"Huh, weird take. Why would I piss off a possible windfall of a person with high spiritual pressure over that low-level idiot? Ah well, it doesn't matter too much. Do you think she could serve the purpose I have in mind?" The warlord asked as he sat back in his chair taking a grape from a plate a servant girl brought him.
"She said she doesn't like unnecessary violence, but the townsfolk I talked to said she had been working in the lumberyard, spilling spiritual pressure in great quantities, just daring the rogue Hollow that's been making a home in the forest to come out and play. The Hollow in question seems to have decided it does not like its odds and either moved on or gone into hiding. As a result, the town's lumber trade is booming, which is helping them get back on their feet. She has gone out of her way to help that town for just a little food, so yeah I think if we can make it clear that what we do will help people she would help us clear out the Den." Kudo said, laying out the best course of action.
"Excellent, once we have her aboard, we should have the desired numbers to take those monsters down and set about improving this district, and Gotei 13 won't have any issue to complain about since we're just making things better where they don't bother to help." Hisakage said, clapping his hands together.
Kudo personally doubted that last bit, but getting rid of the worst of trouble makers for 80th east would make things better in the long run. He just hoped Gotei 13 would leave them alone and not care that they were consolidating power out here.
"To victory," Hisakage offered, taking up a cup and raising a toast.
"To victory," Kudo responded, reciprocating the toast.
Author's note
Chapter 2 was a problem child during the pilot run on rec thread. I rushed it to posting and going through it I see some glaring issues that I'm surprised no one called me out on like there were at least 2 areas where it was obvious I had circled the subject and messed it up. The other issue is its chapter 2 is too much tell don't show. I have tried to improve on it I've even place a few more Tanya misunderstandings and but the flaw in the chapter remains by its nature.
Betaed by RefugeInAbsrdity, FinalFan