The next morning, everyone got up early, packed up the carts and hitched the beasts of burden, and set off down the highway toward the frontier.

Captain Kestrel seemed a little distracted. “I really wish we could have found some other guards!” He muttered. “Only two, only two guards! What if that isn’t enough?”

Achilles, walking close by, frowned. “Well, if Medea and I had enjoined at the last minute, would you have just gone on without any guards?”

“We would’ve waited a few more days. I did the economic calculations, and determined that in this case, we are best off if we set off right now with just the two of you.” Captain kestrel stuck out his lip like a petulant child. “That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it! That doesn’t mean I’m not worried. The mathematical calculations simply work out the best in this circumstance.”

Achilles knew very little about math, but he shrugged and kept walking.

said Virgil.

Achilles left to himself. “That seems like the most useless thing in the world to spend eyes on,” he said. “I’ve been thinking, though. I keep asking you for darkvision. How much would it cost to get it permanently?”

“When am I going to hit 2nd Level, anyway?” Achilles thought. “I’ve been in a few fights now and still no sign of leveling!”

Achilles thought about this for a while. A few hours later, they stopped for lunch by the side of the highway. Achilles realized that the trees and plants here were very different from those around the village where he’d grown up.

Though he’d heard that there were exotic faraway places with strange trees and animals, he hadn’t realized that such a short amount of traveling would reveal new life so quickly. This put Achilles in a good mood. It made him feel like there were 1 million things in the world to discover.

While they were resting and eating rations, Achilles approached Medea. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your friend. You know, who died during your mission. If I fought him, I’d have tried to knock him out like I did you.”

Medea’s eyes hardened. “You got extremely lucky to defeat me. Or, I guess, I made a few stupid mistakes. I couldn’t imagine that it was possible you could see me in the dark. If you’d fought… him… It’s entirely possible he would’ve killed you. You can only get lucky so many times in one night.”

She gave Achilles a thin smile that had no happiness in it. “He was not my friend. My ally, yes, since we were both Imperial spies. Aside from our shared allegiance, I hated him. He was a cruel person who took advantage of the fact he worked for the Emperor to do whatever he wished to whomever he wished.

“That person—I don’t think his name is worthy of being spoken — decided that he was in love with me and that no one else could have me. We were actually together on that mission because he had contrived a situation that he thought would bring us close together. I can’t say that I’m very sad that he’s dead.”

Hearing this made Achilles angry. That was almost exactly the opposite of how an Imperial Knight treated people. The opposite of how Achilles aspired to act. Power existed to protect people, not to force them to do what you wished.

Virgil seems to find this thought extremely funny, but he made no comment except to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” said Achilles.

“I told you, I don’t care that he died.”

“No, I’m sorry that he treated you like that and that you had to work with him because of it. Basically, he forced you to go on a mission where he worked against the Empire, if you look at it from a certain point of view.”

Medea laughed, and this time, there was genuine humor in it. “Oh, I’m afraid that’s simply what spies have to do. If I wasn’t working directly with him, I’d have been doing some other mission which might’ve had me do something similar. That’s sweet of you to say, Achilles, but please don’t worry about it. This is the life I have chosen for myself.”

Achilles nodded. “You know that I’m trying to become an Imperial Knight because my father was one. But I remember you saying that you didn’t want to rely on your mother’s reputation to get by in life. That seems like a difficult philosophy to have when you’re in the same business as her. Why are you a spy, then?”

Medea looked thoughtful. “At a certain point in her life, my mother was more of a politician than a spy. And she didn’t do it because of any desire to serve the Empire — or the Emperor. She was a spy because it was fun and it made good money.

“She became spymaster, which was more a position in court than anything, because she stopped finding spy work fun and there was more money in the new job. So many people in the Empire admire her even to this day, and they think she was some kind of saint who selflessly serves the Empire.”

Medea shook her head. “I’m a spy because that’s how my mother raised me. She gave me no other choice. It’s just another job, like being a blacksmith or a teacher or a farmer. It’s a job that few people can do. I guess you could say Fate placed me here, and I’ll keep at it until it seems like Fate’s pointing in a different direction.”

Achilles nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.”

Still, it troubled him that Medea seemed perfectly happy to go through life without a dream or aspiration.

In fact, when she had spoken about how she lived this life because her mother had forced her to, it appeared Medea was hiding something from Achilles. He wondered if she had some dream that was different from being a spy, but refused to even acknowledge it to herself.

said Virgil.

Achilles was troubled by this, but he knew it would be pointless to press any further at the moment.

They traveled for the rest of the day down the highway, which was lined by forest. Achilles saw more than a half-dozen new kinds of birds and felt a sense of wonder toward the summer day around him.

Medea was completely unfazed by it all.

That night, the caravan spread out by the side of the road to make camp for the night. After dinner, Achilles began laying out his bedroll, as everyone else was doing.

Medea, a few meters away, frowned at him from her own bedroll. “What are you doing?” she asked.

Achilles stared at her blankly. “Getting ready for bed?”

She pointed at the moon high in the sky. “Well, I got in bed first. That means you have to take the first watch.”

“First watch?”

Medea gave a long sigh. “Yes Achilles. We’re the guards. That means we have to keep watch at all times. Even during the night. I don’t feel like staying up for twenty-four hours at a time, and I doubt you do either, so we’ll have to trade four-hour shifts.”

Achilles’s heart sank. “That means only four hours of sleep each night!”

She shrugged. “That’s what the job calls for. We can take turns napping on one of the lighter carts tomorrow. Tonight, though, do you know what you need to do?”

Achilles sighed and packed up his bedroll. “I assume that if there’s any sign of danger, I wake everybody up. Is that it?”

Medea yawned and pulled an empty sack over her face like it was a sleeping mask. “That’s it. Wake me up in four hours, all right?”

As everyone else went to sleep, Achilles stayed awake.

It was very boring.

Though fires and the moon provided a good amount of light, the only wildlife Achilles could see were bats, which occasionally flitted overhead. Interestingly, his system vision gave him the perfect ability to track time.

For several hours, Achilles looked through his ghostly book of feats, looking for abilities he might want to gain with eyes.

He also had some conversations with Virgil.

One of the most interesting ones was that there were other kinds of vision he said simply darkvision. Achilles could also gain the ability to see heat, useful for tracking enemies crouching behind thin walls, and he could even gain the ability to see things that were invisible and to see through illusions.

These, of course, cost eyes just as darkvision did. Starting with a lower tier of vision and then buying temporary boosts in the other areas was apparently safer than simply buying them outright, though Virgil cannot explain exactly why. He gave a long, rambling explanation about synchronization rates. Achilles simply could not follow it, especially as he grew more and more tired by the moment.

Just as the third hour of the watch passed, and Achilles began counting down the last sixty minutes before he could sleep, all hell broke loose.

Close to a hundred pitch-black forms, much smaller than humans, leaped from the trees and ran on all fours toward the camp.

Achilles was startled.

He drew Virgil and shouted at the top of his voice. “Attack! We’re under attack!”

The forms finally drew close enough that the firelight illuminated them, revealing them to be red-furred monkeys with long teeth and claws, and wielding curved knives with very thin blades!

Medea whirled out of her bedroll, a dagger in each hand, just as Achilles cut the closest monkey in half.

Achilles sprinted toward Captain Kestrel, who was being swarmed by monkeys. Achilles slashed all around him and kept shouting for people to wake up.

The only other people in the caravan were hirelings, aside from the pack animals, which were now waking up and braying in panic as monkeys climbed all over them and stabbed them repeatedly.

In seconds, the animals lay dead on the ground, their blood black in the faint light.

The hirelings were getting themselves up and were grabbing whatever tools and objects surrounded them to fight the monkeys off with.

Achilles could see their stats rising as Captain Kestrel screamed for them to defend him, but the monkeys were so agile that the hirelings rarely got any hits in.

“Darkvision!” Achilles growled.

One of his eyes extinguished, and then he could see everything as though it was the middle of the day. He charged through a group of monkeys, cutting off limbs all around him. They tried to retaliate at first, dealing 2 points of damage, but soon became terrified and fled.

Achilles saw Medea out of the corner of his eye.

She only had one dagger now, but was using her open hand expertly to grab monkeys by the throat so she could stab her dagger through their eye or into their heart. She didn’t seem to have taken a single hit. The monkeys soon fled from her too.

Achilles finally reached Captain Kestrel.

He was surprised to find that, despite the monkeys swarming him, none of them were attacking the man. Instead, they were trying to drag him away, though he was clinging to a nearby tree stump for dear life.

Achilles screamed at the monkeys and tried to find an opening, but could not figure out a way to attack that would not risk killing Captain Kestrel.

One monkey leaped onto the tree stump and pulled the captain’s fingers away, and then suddenly the man was being dragged across the camp toward the forest.

Achilles tried to chase him, but monkeys seemed to find their courage and leaped at him, grabbing his ankles. Achilles slashed at the ground near his feet, terrified he would cut himself.

By the time he was free, the captain was long gone.

A half-dozen hirelings were also being carried away in different directions, all roaring curses.

Then Achilles and Medea stood alone, covered in monkey blood, amid dozens of monkey corpses and the tragic remains of the rest of the hirelings.