The Contender tried to lash out with his remaining blade, but Kaldalis wasn’t having it. His weapon scraped against the black wooden shield harmlessly. Once the blow was safely deflected, Kaldalis slammed the Contender right in the face with his free hand. The attack only stunned the Contender briefly, but as the priest recovered to try and lash out again, he pulled against the weapon pinning his arm to the wall, drawing a hiss of pain.

Kaldalis smashed the side of his shield into the Contender’s free arm, knocking the weapon from his grip and pinning his arm to the wall.

“Garyung,” Kaldalis called, “get over here. It’s time for this to end, one way or the other.”

The Contender tried to spit in Kaldalis’s face, but the motion made his arm move against the weapon impaling the limb. This time the pain seemed to take the fight out of him. His slit-pupiled eyes seemed to clear a bit, as if the man was realizing that the path he’d chosen was reaching its conclusion.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Garyung said firmly, though he did push his way past the line of guards to stand behind Kaldalis.

“If that’s what he chooses, I’ll do it,” Kaldalis said firmly. “But he’s not going to go that way. He’d rather his story have another chapter after this, right?”

Kaldalis didn’t want to admit it, but a very large part of him wanted the Contender to keep fighting.

He couldn’t get the image of the priest’s grinning face hanging above Helua with blades to her throat.

It seemed to Kaldalis that he should have been more upset about all the other bullshit. The smug looks, the threats, the obstruction… even the whole scheme to lie about the investigation to undermine and eventually destroy Cotanaku. And he had wanted revenge for that. Pinning the Contender to the wall like a butterfly in a display case sated those angers. Humiliating him here in front of everyone did wonders for his feelings on those counts.

But the threat against Heluna had been a step too far.

Kaldalis wanted to murder him for it. And he wanted it to hurt. He wanted to close his hands around the Contender’s throat and slowly choke him to death right here and now. Slowly. Painfully.

“This is not the end,” the Contender said, though his tone sounded suddenly very tired. “But I yield. You can take your town back. It’s only a matter of time before it fails in your hands, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kaldalis snapped, trying to hide his frustration. “Merely a setback, we’ve all heard the bit.” He pointed at Garyung with his free hand. “Now give it back.”

The Contender’s eyes went distant as he started to navigate his menus.

“Everyone else stand back,” Garyung said. Even without having actual authority yet, the tone of his voice caused everyone to take a big step back. “Handing it over has a range, and I don’t want him giving it to some guard in a last-ditch effort to hose us.”

Kaldalis nodded at that. It made sense. If the Contender had any agents remaining, them getting control of the town was going to be just as bad as him keeping it. And while Kaldalis trusted Brother Gnider, there was a chance that one or more of the temple guards with him might be a plant. Or, perhaps, one of the town guards might be devout enough in the church to take the Contender’s side if he lost power.

This way, the Contender was only presented with two options. He could give command back to Garyung, or Kaldalis would kill him. It was a pretty good feeling for Kaldalis to finally have a win-win situation. It had taken a lot of work to get here, but after spending so long scraping by on the barest margin of luck, getting a single definitive and unquestionable win was-

Why was the Contender suddenly smiling?

There was a strange chiming sound in Kaldalis’s head.

“Oops,” the Contender said, his grin only growing wider.

“What just happened?” Kaldalis asked.

Instinctively, he opened his menu.

The usual options were there. His status screen, his inventory, his system menu… But at the end of it, there was a new menu option on his UI.

Town

Somehow, Kaldalis hadn’t considered that the Contender could find a way to spoil this victory.

“The menu can be very fickle,” the Contender said, voice full of satisfied malice. “Though I’m sure you have plenty of experience with fickleness.”

“What happened?” Garyung mirrored Kaldalis’s question.

Instead of answering, Kaldalis opened the new town option in his UI.

A wall of menus and bars appeared, nearly blinding him. There were damage reports on the walls, progress reports on the town upgrades, and an enormous checklist for upgrading the town to the next size of settlement. There was another menu which listed the available new services and upgrades that could be started. Bars showed the population, food stores, material stockpiles, and the town’s treasury. There was a country sub-menu as well, but it was minimized and Kaldalis hoped he’d never have to appraise himself of the contents.

Amongst all the townbuilding and resource management garbage, Kaldalis found the options menu he was looking for. There were a few buttons to adjust his menu layouts and how the data was presented to him, but the option he wanted was at the bottom.

The button said “Abdicate?”

It was grayed out.

Regardless, Kaldalis mentally stabbed it with his attention several times. When nothing happened, he flailed his hand at it.

Charges expended. Refresh in 13 days.

“Fuck,” Kaldalis snapped.

He turned and punched the Contender in the face again.

The impact, and the accompanying grunt of pain was satisfying, but when his head bounced back, he was laughing. A gleeful cackle that grated on Kaldalis’s last nerve.

“What happened?” Garyung demanded.

“I gave the town back,” the Contender said. “I just did you the favor of cutting out the middleman.”

Kaldalis ripped the sword out of the Contender’s arm, twisting it slightly as it went. The yowl of pain he drew with the petty act was more satisfying than he wanted to admit, but it didn’t do anything about the problem.

“Take him away,” Kaldalis snapped. “Lock him up until we can negotiate a long-term solution with Zara.”

Guards leaped to obey, and Kaldalis winced at how prompt the response was. He looked for a menu for the town’s justice system, and saw his own arrest warrant. It did indeed look like the Contender had checked every box for every crime. Even ones that didn’t make any sense. How could he be guilty of arson against Cotanaku when Cotanaku had never had a fire? Was there even a law for jaywalking in a town with dirt roads?

With a thought, he wiped his record clean, though he hesitated for a second before clearing the murder charge.

Eyeing the Contender’s back as he was hauled away, he acknowledged that the night was still young.

He flagged the Contender (the menu revealed his real name as Vosk) for treason, assault, and - just for fun - jaywalking. Considering how much the man bullied his way around the towns like he owned the place, it was probably true.

“Why is no one talking to me,” Garyung snapped. He stepped forward and put a hand on Kaldalis’s shoulder. “What happened?”

“I’m the leader now,” Kaldalis grumbled. He bent down to take both the War Weapon daggers that the Contender had been forced to drop. “He abdicated, and handed the position to me instead of you.”

“Shit,” Garyung cursed.

“I can give it back to you in thirteen days, but that’s ten days longer than I have to get the Lataxinans back here,” Kaldalis said.

He started fumbling with the menus. There was a lot of information and options here.

Garyung’s decision paralysis made a lot more sense in the face of all the garbage he was seeing. At the very least, it looked like one or more of Monsoon’s patches since that first night had made the menus a little more presentable.

As fast as he could, he found the Contender’s new curfew and deleted it, and then returned to the justice system menu and removed all of the curfew charges. The guards at the jail cell should have been instantly notified that the adventurers kept there were to be released at once.

“This had to be a backup plan,” Brother Gnider said as he approached from behind Garyung. “One last parting shot at you.”

“I don’t believe that,” Kaldalis said, shaking his head. “He didn’t have to plan anything for this one. I fucked up. I should have gotten away from him when he opened the menu. I could have escaped and left him with only Garyung to hand it to.”

“I, uh,” Garyung began, rubbing the back of his head. “I hope you don’t mind if I let out a big sigh of relief. I’ve needed a vacation and I burnt all my hours on the trip to Baimer.”

“It’s fine,” Kaldalis snapped. “I just need… I need to do the raid. I need to bring the Lataxinans back.”

“The town needs you,” Garyung said. As he spoke, the rest of the council was pushing through the guards now. They probably knew Kaldalis was the new leader already. “Without your attention, things are going to start to fall apart.”

“I’m not trying to evade responsibility,” Kaldalis said with a heavy sigh. “I can’t do that when I was so hard on you for trying the first time. I’m trying not to abandon my other obligations.”

“We don’t have much time,” Ikzoz said as the council approached. “Without fund allocations being completed before the end of the day, the wall repairs are going to start to degrade. Unfortunately, the Contender’s stunt cost us four hours of work time.”

Kaldalis inhaled deeply and blew out a heavy sigh.

“I’ll get to that now,” he said, feeling more exhausted than he ever had before. “But call a meeting. I need to talk to the council. And I want my friends there to help plan their end of things.”

He turned on Garyung with a glare. “And you’re going to be there, too. You didn’t turn your whole personality around and overcome all challenges just to slink off into the night now!”