The next morning, Ryo woke up to find Elena sitting at his kitchen table with a pot of coffee and a hand-drawn map spread out in front of her. She looked like she'd been up for hours, and judging by the notes scrawled around the edges of the map, she'd been busy.
"Please tell me you didn't break into someone's house to make coffee," Ryo said, stumbling toward the pot.
"I brought my own supplies," Elena replied without looking up. "Figured if we're going to be planning a small war, we might as well be properly caffeinated for it."
Ryo poured himself a mug and looked over her shoulder at the map. It showed the area around Millhaven in detail, with several locations marked in red ink.
"Gareth's operation," Elena explained, pointing to the marks. "Three main camps, plus at least four smaller hideouts they use for storing stolen goods. The largest camp is here, about six miles north of town. That's where he keeps most of his men and does his planning."
"How many men are we talking about?"
"Best guess? Twenty to twenty-five regulars, plus whatever new recruits he can pick up. Not all of them will be fighters worth worrying about, but enough of them are experienced to make this dangerous."
Ryo studied the map, noting the positions of the camps relative to the main roads. "How'd you get all this information?"
"I've been keeping tabs on Gareth for months," Elena said. "Part of my job as town security. I know his patrol routes, his supply lines, and most of his regular contacts. What I didn't know was that he was planning to make a move against Millhaven until yesterday."
"And now?"
"Now I know he's been building up his forces for weeks. The grain merchant who sold to you yesterday? He's been supplying Gareth's camps with food and equipment. That's probably how Gareth knew you had money to spend."
"Son of a bitch," Ryo muttered. "So this whole thing was a setup?"
"Not exactly," Elena said. "The merchant's just playing all sides to maximize profit. He sells to the village, he sells to the bandits, and he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he gets paid. But when word got out that someone had dropped two hundred gold on grain without batting an eye, he definitely passed that information along."
Ryo took a long drink of coffee and tried to process this. In his old world, the worst betrayal he'd had to deal with was a coworker stealing credit for his ideas. This kind of casual treachery was going to take some getting used to.
"So what's the plan?" he asked.
"First, we need to know exactly what we're dealing with," Elena said. "I'm going to take a scouting trip to Gareth's main camp today. Get a count of his men, see what kind of weapons they have, check their defenses."
"I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not," Elena said firmly. "You're staying here and working on your tavern like a normal person. If anyone asks, you're too busy cleaning and planning renovations to worry about local politics."
"Why?"
"Because if Gareth has spies in town—which he does—I want them reporting that you're not taking his threat seriously. Let him think you're naive and unprepared. Meanwhile, I gather intelligence and we plan our actual response."
It made sense, but Ryo didn't like the idea of sitting around while Elena took all the risks. "What if something goes wrong? What if you get caught?"
"Then you'll know because I won't come back," Elena said bluntly. "In which case, you pack up and get the fuck out of Millhaven before Gareth comes for you."
"That's not happening."
"If I'm dead, you don't get a vote," Elena said. "Look, I appreciate the solidarity, but this is what I do. I've been scouting enemy positions since before you knew what a sword looked like. Trust me to handle this part."
[TRUST] - Level 1
Experience gained for learning to rely on allies
New skill acquired:
[DELEGATION] - Level 1
Passive ability gained: Enhanced team coordination
Ryo blinked at the system message. Apparently, even accepting that someone else was better qualified for a job counted as character development.
"Fine," he said. "But I want regular check-ins. If you're not back by sunset, I'm coming after you."
"Fair enough." Elena rolled up the map and tucked it inside her jacket. "While I'm gone, you should actually work on the tavern. Make it look like you're settling in for the long haul."
After Elena left, Ryo spent the morning cleaning the main room and trying to figure out what furniture he was going to need. The place had potential, but it was going to take weeks of work to get it ready for customers. He was scrubbing years of grime off the bar when Marcus showed up with a cart full of supplies.
"Heard you had some excitement yesterday," the innkeeper said, hauling a bag of flour through the door.
"Word travels fast."
"It does when Gareth and his boys come stomping through town looking for trouble," Marcus said. "Elena told me what happened. Also told me you might need some help getting this place functional."
Ryo looked at the supplies Marcus was unloading—flour, salt, cooking oil, a selection of basic tools, and what looked like enough hardware to fix half the problems in the building.
"I can't afford to pay for all this right now," Ryo said.
"Consider it an investment," Marcus replied. "Gareth's been sniffing around Millhaven for months, looking for an excuse to muscle in. If you and Elena can run him off, that's worth more to me than a few gold pieces."
"And if we can't?"
Marcus was quiet for a moment. "Then at least we'll go down swinging instead of rolling over for that bastard."
They spent the next few hours working together, Marcus proving to be surprisingly handy with repairs. He fixed the pump mechanism on the well while Ryo cleaned the chimney, and by mid-afternoon they had the kitchen functional enough to actually cook in.
"You know," Marcus said, testing the water flow from the newly repaired pump, "if you can actually cook like you claim, this place could do real business. We get merchant caravans through here maybe once a week, and they're always complaining about the lack of decent food."
"That's the plan," Ryo said. "Assuming I live long enough to implement it."
"You will," Marcus said with surprising confidence. "Elena's good at what she does, and if half the stories about yesterday are true, you're not exactly helpless yourself."
"What stories?"
"The version I heard had you fighting six men at once while blindfolded and juggling," Marcus said with a grin. "Small towns love to exaggerate, but the basic facts seem solid. You and Elena sent Gareth packing, and that's more than anyone else has managed in years."
Ryo was about to respond when Elena appeared in the doorway, looking grim.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"Worse than I thought," Elena said, accepting the mug of water Marcus offered her. "Gareth's got thirty men now, not twenty-five. And he's been hiring sellswords from outside the area—professional fighters, not just local toughs looking for easy money."
"Shit," Marcus said. "That changes things."
"It gets worse," Elena continued. "He's not planning to hit the village directly. He's going to cut off our trade routes, starve us out economically. Block the roads, intimidate the merchants, make it impossible for Millhaven to do business with the outside world."
Ryo felt a cold knot form in his stomach. "How long before that starts to hurt?"
"We'll notice it within a week," Marcus said. "People will start going hungry within a month. And once the food situation gets desperate, someone's going to suggest that maybe we should just hand you over to Gareth and end the problem."
"They wouldn't actually do that," Ryo said, but he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice.
"They would if their kids were starving," Elena said bluntly. "That's the whole point of Gareth's strategy. He doesn't have to fight the whole village—he just has to make the villagers decide you're not worth protecting."
"So what do we do?"
Elena spread her map on the bar, pointing to a location marked in fresh red ink. "We hit his supply depot. It's lightly defended, and destroying it will force him to either give up the siege or come at us directly. Either way, it breaks his current strategy."
"When do we move?"
"Tonight," Elena said. "New moon, so we'll have good darkness to work with. But Ryo, I need you to understand something—this isn't going to be like yesterday. We're not defending ourselves anymore. We're going on the offensive, and that means killing people who might not deserve it."
Ryo thought about the villagers who'd welcomed him, about Marcus helping him repair his tavern, about the quiet life he'd hoped to build here.
"They made their choice when they decided to threaten innocent people," he said. "I can live with the consequences."
"All right then," Elena said.