Chương 39: Chapter 31: Max - The Fifth Badge (Part 1)

Several miles passed before Alina spoke again. By then, Crestwood Farm had disappeared behind the hills, though a faint smear of smoke still marked the sky when Max looked back. The sun hung pale overhead, offering little warmth, though the frost had begun giving way to damp earth wherever the road left the shade. Alina walked between Cass and Elias, her bow across her back and her stride steady despite the exhaustion dragging at her. Max brought up the rear a few paces behind. He didn't try to fill the silence.

He simply stayed close enough that she wouldn't feel alone and far enough not to crowd her. Borin led them toward Brindleford while Elias's staff clicked against the hardened ruts. They kept moving, pulled onward by fatigue and the promise of walls, food, and somewhere safe to rest. Eventually, Alina slowed to a stop. She drew out a purse with both hands and held it toward Max without meeting his eyes.

"This is yours," she said.

"The posting. The payment I promised." Max stared at it for a moment, then shook his head with a quiet laugh.

"No." Alina's fingers tightened around the drawstring.

"You did the job."

"We did," Cass said, her voice dry.

"And we're not taking coin from someone who just lost everything."

"But then you get nothing." Alina looked between them.

"After all that work. After nearly dying." Elias turned to her and shrugged slightly.

"Sometimes a job goes wrong and the payment disappears with it. That's part of being an adventurer."

"It doesn't make the work worthless," Max added.

"It only means the reward isn't always coin."

"It's all I have left from…" Alina's voice caught, but she forced the words through.

"From the farm." Borin stepped closer.

"Exactly why we want you to keep it," he said gently.

"You'll need the coin now more than we do. We won't take the last of your home and call it wages." Alina swallowed and lowered the purse, the movement stiff. They began walking again. For a while, there was only the rhythm of boots and the wind moving across the fields. Then Alina spoke, quietly enough that it almost seemed meant only for herself.

"The System offered me a Class Change." Borin glanced at her.

"What did it offer you?"

"Ranger," she said. Her eyes stayed forward.

"It said my actions qualified. It came up last night, after… after." She hesitated, then admitted, "I didn't take it. Not then. I couldn't think straight." Borin nodded once, as if that made sense in a way the others might not yet understand.

"I've done a Class Change," he said plainly.

"Not long ago, actually." Alina looked at him at last, surprise cutting through the numbness. Borin's gaze stayed on the road.

"It is a heavy choice," he continued.

"Not because the System makes it difficult, but because it changes what you become. It tells the world what you intend. It isn't something you do unless you're certain of the path you want to walk." Alina breathed in, slow and shaky.

"I feel certain," she said, and there was a hard edge under the grief.

"I don't want to be anything else. I want to hunt them all down. I want to track them. I want to put arrows in the ones that did this. I want to become strong enough that the next farm doesn't have to burn." Borin gave a slow nod, pride and sorrow mingling in his expression.

"Then choose." Alina's eyes unfocused for a moment, fixed on something only she could see. Her lips parted as if reading. Then she blinked, and the moment passed.

"It's done," she said softly. No one asked her what she'd seen. They didn't need to. The way she straightened, just a fraction, told them enough. By late afternoon, Brindleford rose over the next rise, smoke curling from chimneys, rooftops wet with thaw. The closer they came, the more the world brightened, but the five of them stayed subdued. They looked like they had crawled out of a battlefield, covered nearly head to toe in blood, gore, and ash as they were. And Brindleford noticed.

Heads turned as they crossed the bridge and made for the market square. A butcher paused mid chop to stare at them. A pair of guards straightened, interest obvious on their faces. Merchants leaned out from stalls to watch them walk by. People whispered when they thought the party was out of earshot. The Adventurers Guild appeared through the crowd on the far side of Market Square, its big double doors pushed open wide.

The moment they stepped inside, the warmth and smells hit them in a wave, fire and wet wool and cooking stew and too many bodies crammed into one large, noisy hall. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The noise stuttered as the people within began noticing them. Max ignored the stares and walked slowly to the counter. Mara, the head clerk, looked up from her ledger, ready with a greeting that died the moment she really saw them.

Max unshouldered the sack and set it down on the counter with a heavy, meaty thud. Blood dried leather slapped wood. Conversations died. Tankards stopped halfway to mouths. A card game in the corner froze. Someone near the hearth muttered something under his breath and stood. In the sudden quiet, Mara swallowed.

"Max," she said carefully.

"What is that?"

"One hundred goblin ears," Max said, exhaustion dragging at every word.

"From Crestwood Farm. We killed fifty of them before we were forced to retreat. They burned the farm and killed Garret Crestwood." The words rippled out through the room. One hundred ears. Too many anywhere in Valdarin. Far too many for a single farm.

"Saints preserve us," somebody said.

"Thought goblins around here were small bands, not war parties." Mara looked at the sack like it might bite her.

"We will need time to count and log," she said, voice a little too tight.

"And the Guildmaster will want to hear about this himself."

"We'll wait," Max said. He and the others stepped aside while Mara snapped quick orders at a junior clerk, who bolted for the stairs. The Hall slowly remembered how to breathe, conversation creeping back in, but softer. Glances kept cutting toward them. Alina stood slightly behind the others, shoulders rounded, fingers knotted together. Anyone who looked could see what she had lost, even if they didn't know the full story.

Guildmaster Corwin Halbrecht descended the stairs a few minutes later, his coat fastened tightly and his expression unreadable. Max had seen him before, but never from this close. Curiosity got the better of him. He focused on the Guildmaster and activated Identify. Name: Corwin Halbrecht Race: Human Level:??? Class:??? Health:? /? | Stamina:? /? | Mana:? /? A tired huff escaped him. With Identify only at Level 5, he shouldn't have expected much from someone who'd likely been fighting and advancing for decades.

The remaining murmurs faded as Halbrecht crossed the hall. He went directly to the counter, opened the sack, and looked inside once before tying it closed again with steady hands.

"Upstairs. All of you." He turned and started up the steps without looking back. They followed him up to his office. The room was cramped, its walls cluttered with maps, bounty notices, and shelves full of ledgers that looked older than Max. A single window overlooked the square below. Halbrecht closed the door himself and leaned his hand against it for a heartbeat, as if pushing the noise of the Guild Hall away.

"Tell me," Halbrecht said, moving behind his desk without sitting.

"Start at the beginning. Leave nothing out." Max began with the first night. He told Halbrecht how the goblins had gone straight for the storehouse instead of attacking blindly, then fled once they saw the fight was lost. He described their return in greater numbers, less easily frightened and more willing to press the attack. Then he reached the final assault.

He told Halbrecht of the torches moving through the hedgerows, the fence collapsing beneath the rush, and the barn catching fire before the goblins turned on the farmhouse. He explained how the hobgoblin had taken command, driving them against the doorway in waves until Garret ordered them through the pantry hatch. Then Max reached the part he'd been avoiding.

"Garret stayed at the door," he said, staring at a knot in the floorboards.

"He held them there while we got Alina and ourselves out." He took a breath, then continued, "When we returned, he was dead. Ten goblins were lying around him." Alina's hands closed into fists against her knees.

"He hated seeing anything wasted," she said. Her voice caught, but she kept going.

"If grain spilled, he'd kneel in the dirt and gather every piece he could find. Said the soil had worked too hard for us to throw its gifts away." She looked down at her hands.

"He gave that farm everything he had." Her next breath shuddered.

"They burned it all anyway." Borin nodded once, jaw clenched.

"Without him, we'd be five more corpses in that ash." Cass's tone remained flat.

"And the goblins didn't act like the usual gutter trash tribes we see around Brindleford. They came back after taking losses. Twice. They didn't break. They swarmed like they were being driven." Elias folded his arms, his knuckles whitening where they gripped his sleeves.

"It wasn't just hunger either," he said.

"Hunger makes them bold, but stupid. This had direction. A pattern." Halbrecht listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable. When they finished, he turned away and walked to the window. He stood there for a long moment, watching the square below. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.

"Garret Crestwood," he said.

"I know the name. He sold grain and dried goods to caravans through this city for twenty years. Never missed a delivery that crossed this threshold." He turned back to Alina.

"I am sorry beyond measure for your loss, Miss Crestwood," he said. He inclined his head.

"Your father died doing what needed to be done, and I will see that his name is written in the Guild record. Not as a farmer, but as a man who held the line." Alina swallowed. Her eyes shone, but she did not look away.

"Thank you Guildmaster," she said.

"Please. Don't let them forget."

"I won't," Halbrecht said.

"It's the least I can do." He looked to the others.

"You did the right thing," he went on.

"All of you. I want that understood. You could not have held the farm against those numbers. Not with your strength. Staying would've meant dying beside him, and then there would've been no one to speak for what happened there." Max's shoulders tensed.

"I keep thinking," he said slowly, "if we had just done something different…" Halbrecht shook his head once, sharp and final.

"The mind is cruel that way, young man," he said.

"It will run every road back and convince you there was a better turn somewhere. I've buried enough companions to know this intimately. Listen carefully, all of you. There is a difference between abandoning a fight for selfish reasons and recognizing when a stand becomes suicide. You chose the latter. It hurts, I know. Believe me, I know. And it will continue to hurt for a long time. But it means there are five of you here to warn the rest of us." His gaze shifted from face to face.

"The Guild cannot afford heroes who waste their lives," he said.

"We need heroes who survive and live to fight again." Silence settled again, but it felt different this time. Halbrecht returned to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a small wooden stamp and a narrow slip of parchment. He wrote quickly, signed his name, dropped wax on the parchment, and pressed the seal into it.

"This is authorization for full goblin bounty on fifty confirmed kills," he said, sliding the slip across the desk to Max.

"Plus a Guild bonus. Present this to Mara downstairs. She will disperse the payment." He hesitated as he straightened in his chair, eyes returning to Alina.

"Do you plan to remain in Brindleford, Miss Crestwood, or return to Brookhollow?" Alina's jaw worked. She looked down at her hands, then up at him.

"There's nothing for me to go back to. My home is ash. The storehouse is gone, the barn is gone, the fields are burned. All that is left is a hill and a grave." Her shoulders squared, just a bit.

"I will stay," she said.

"I will join the Guild. I will hunt, and I will kill goblins until they all stop breathing or I do." Borin watched her with a thoughtful, sad kind of approval. Halbrecht nodded once.

"Then Brindleford will be stronger for it," he said.

"You may go. Eat. Rest. Spend your coin." His nose wrinkled as he looked them over.

"And wash. There will be more work soon enough, and I'd rather not smell you coming before I see you." Max accepted the sealed slip with a small bow of his head.

"Thank you, Guildmaster," he said.

"We will not waste what he bought us." Halbrecht's voice softened just a fraction.

"See that you don't," he said.

"Now go. I have a lot to think about." He walked over to the door and opened it before ushering them out.