Date: June 29th 1924. 10 years after rebirth.
I woke up to a loud banging on my door. "Ugh. What is it this time?" I walked towards the door without even minding what I was wearing. I opened it's and mother began yelling at me about what happened last night. Well. I can't keep it a secret forever. Eh why not tell em?
"Don't worry you worry wart. I'm fine." Then she punched my arm. "But last night I heard you encountered a nest of goblins, and you also entered the contractor guild nearby. Why did you enter the guild! You know it's dangerous!" Well news travel fast doesn't it? I sighed, and told her. "Mom. I'm fine. Don't be such a worry wart. Plus I got money from the gig." I then opened my pocket, and let her see 20 silver pieces. "Plus I hate it when you guys make fun of me about my feminine looking face, and petite body even though I'm a boy. I can finally have my own job to buy myself a house so I can have peace, and quiet from all of the constant teasing. I'm sick of it."
I stated. I then got my trench gun, and let mom saw it. I then told her. "Don't worry. I'm an expert marksman! Trust me. I'm even gonna give demonstrations on how to hold you're firearms correctly, and the 4 rules of firearm safety. Heck I'm gonna let you see how good I am at marksmanship." We went outside. Everyone including the workers looked bewildered at why their youngest master is holding a gun.
I brought my trench gun, and checked if it's loaded using the mechanism in its pump that lets you see the inside of the gun aka the slide when cocking the pump. I checked and saw no slugs were inside. I then loaded it using the bird shot slugs I had in my trench coat. Then I put on the sling on the trench gun, and arranged the target's. "Here is the 4 golden rules on handling guns. Never point at something you don't want to destroy, treat every gun as if it's loaded, check the chamber using the slides, and keep you're finger off the trigger put it in the trigger guard for a ready stance if you are in danger." I then aim at my targets 50 meters, 100 meters, and a 125 meters away from me. I hit the first one perfectly on center mass, while the next following shots got farther, and farther than in the middle but still hit the target's.
"You see that? That's my marksmanship skills. You didn't think that I couldn't aim? We'll I'm good at it! Well except for the bow, and arrow marksmanship." Everyone was shocked at how I just shot something that far away. "So you're a sharp shooter son? You have a talent for marksmanship. That's great!"
Ehhhh! I thought they would over react. But hey it's fine. But hey if this was a normal. It made me uneasy. If this is what they are acting like when I let them see my true self it's gonna make me uneasy considering how much teasing I get from my looks. Oh god. Do they want me to become some crossdressing gun bunny? Fuck that. Well time to bleach my mind with cats tonight.
I sighed. "Welp. What do I say. I have a natural nack for marksmanship with guns." Well technically it's not natural considering this was self protection training in xenobiology school in my past life because you can never be too cautious. You need a gun to protect yourself from threats even if it looks cute. Even things that are bright and colorful will kill you.
I then re-arranged the target's back to place, and shot them again. Owww.... My ears hurt. My goddamn ears are ringing. Goddamn. I need to make noise canceling headphones. I should task people to make noise cancelling headphones.
After the demo I asked them something. "Can I pursue this path of my life? Or are you gonna refuse it?" My family laughed. "Of course you can pursue it! It's a good thing you are serving the king and country rather than stay home. Plus your brother here is gonna inherit the title of baron. We know you aren't interested in politics from the tutor we hired. You preferred history, and the study of life around us. We can't force you to be something you don't want to. Plus your brother here is far more interested in ruling our land. While you didn't even care. It's a blessing."
What the fuck...? I thought I would've been shot down. Well... That was unexpected. Well time to pursue my dreams of learning about biology. Eh plus this world is ripe with life that is just waiting to be researched! I smiled at them. They looked away as the smile made them uncomfortable.
"Thanks for the consideration. Mom, dad, and brother. Can i leave now? I need to do some errands in the guild. I probably need to file an incident report about last night." I asked. They nodded their heads. I smiled. I then left with my trench gun. I probably need to buy a sling for the shotgun huh? I'm gonna buy it later. Although I'm afraid that I might accidentally pulled the trigger if I continue this without a sling for the shotgun. I continued walking. Then I noticed more, and more people began to going into the guild hall. Huh? What the hell is going on? Is it because of what happened last night?
Considering this world is quite literally is a kill or be killed world even the military would be here by now, and destroy them surely? Isn't supposed to be the military's main purpose? To protect civies? But this is a world where my timelines rules of reality is gone, now the rules are only to survive or die all bets are off, and you're free to fight dirty. So maybe there is more of a pressing matters than a small town getting attacked by a goblin horde. But why the hell would you want to open up another front to defend with if the locals get defeated by the enemies?
Like how irresponsible of a military commander of you to let a town that is strategically in the goddamn country that you are fighting for to get captured? Wouldn't that create an opening for the enemies to exploit? Or is this a world where the art of war didn't get written? Then I remembered the British empire never cared about who does but only wants their power to hold strong so probably this town would be screwed over by British high command considering what happened in Arabia after WW1 sewing a few hundred years of geo political conflict.
I sighed and continued walking. As I walked I see people holding bows, spears, shields, and swords. Guessing they are here to protect this town for money isn't it? But I paid no heed about it, and continued walking. The streets were busy as people came and go towards or leave the guild hall. I guess the guys who are leaving are some scared adventurers or civies. Then a man bumped into me and said sorry. I continued walking, and forgave the man. In the distance while walking I saw people holding guns lienfield Mk 2's, and colt .45 browning 1911's. I guess they are also some high ranking guild members or some local soldiers.
As I entered the guild hall people were overflowing from the inside applying for the quest that needs us to protect this town. I then got shoved into some poor soul's back by some older boy probably 6 years older than me. "What the fuck was that for?" I asked the older kid. "Oh I didn't noticed you there kid. You must be a child separated from your parents. Don't worry I'm going to bring you back to your parents." He said smugly. I then aimed my shotgun at his smug face. "I'm a contractor shit face. I may be young but I ain't some push over. If you don't respect me as a peer I'm gonna shove a 12 gauge slug down your ass. Trust me I'm willing." He laughed.
"What's so funny?" I asked "that's only a toy. That isn't a real gun." That's it. I'm gonna shoot his ass and shove a 12 gauge down his throat. "Your just a newbie. You're not my equal. You're just a pretentious kid. I'm your senior kid. Respect me or I will whop your ass." Now I'm even more pissed. I then shot at the floor near him. "Becarefull of what you say asshole. I'm gonna smoke you're goddamn ass with a gun if you want to act like an asshole." I said while smiling.
The guild hall went awfully quiet after the shot was fired. Then a few guild members backed away. "Say shit again and I'm gonna fire a 12 gauge or a 12x70 mm slug into that mouth of your's." Then the men with guns approached me. "What's going on?!" Asked one of them. Probably a captain. The Captain's face looked familiar. He looked horrifically similar to sir Adrian carton de wiart the eye patch and all. "Well he shoved me into the ground, and started shit talking in front of my face. Saying "Your just a newbie. You're not my equal. You're just a pretentious kid. I'm your senior kid. Respect me or I will whop your ass." in front of my face."
Then the guy who shoved me tried to weather the allegations and denied "It was his fault! He shot at me first! I just told him what I thought." The captain of the team with the guns considered, and asked the witnesses and all of them agreed with me about him being an asshole. Turns out he does this all the time with the younger folk but people just shrugged it because they didn't want to get hurt. The 16 year old then got brought into the brig at the basement of the guild hall.
"I'm so sorry about the comuppets. Im sorry sir." I said bowing my head. The captain of the group shrugged, and looked at me smiling. "Nah kid. It's fine. It's just hormones doing that to your body. I've miss being your age boy. You know there are better jobs than being a contractor kid." I disagreed. "I don't want some job as pencil pusher. I crave adventure. I crave studying the world around me. That's why I became a contractor to go to other places and get away from my deranged family." The captain nodded.
"I was like you once kid. Until I lost my eye, and fingers fighting a Fenrir in the forest of Norway. My name is George Orwell." What the fuck..... Is this the same guy who wrote 1984. I looked at him with a shocked face. "Why did you make that face?" Orwell asked. "Well. I know someone who has that name. He's a writer. I just thought maybe he was you." I told him a sliver of truth. It's more like my timeline version of you was a writer. Well. He did have combat experience in the Spanish civil war but what the hell.
I thought Orwell would just be another unknown writer until he writes something that's popular like 1984. But this is totally unexpected. What was his goal to fight here? I get that there's civilians dying but from what I remember he fights for ideological reasons. If I remember correctly he fought there because of the facists. He was a part of the english labor union, and for him the facists were his main enemies and to him they needed to be killed. Heck he even wrote about animal farm for satirical reasons. He thought that the socialist revolution of the USSR went sour, turned into another form of repression, and wrote a satire about it called animal farm.
His friend was even interrogated by the NKVD by one point because of his involvement of POUM or the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista. One of the socialist factions of the Spanish civil war. Maybe he just want to fight the monsters for some reason. Maybe he hated them because he has a reason. After all why would Orwell want to risk his life for something he doesn't believe in. Maybe something tragic happened that's why he decided to pursue this job.
"Why did you pursue this kind of lifestyle George?" I asked. "Well. I decided to join the contractor work in india the British affiliated warlord state after my family was murdered by those despicable things. A horde attacked the town I lived in and killed everyone who wasn't hiding. I hid while my family died by the hands of orcs. In this bitter world. One thing I learned about is those who are strong or witty survive while those who aren't strong but dumb die. It doesn't matter if you're physically, and magically strong. As long as your smart you survive while those who are dumb die in the thousands. That's why I entered the business. I'm 21 by the way. So what's your name kid?" He asked.
"George Anderson but you can call me Andy." I told. He smiled. "Why did you join the business?" He asked. "Nothing. I just wanted to study life around me like a scientist would do." He looked at me perplexed. "What does scientists mean?" I face palmed. I forgot that this world doesn't have science because in this world there are literally godlike beings in nature like the leviathan in the middle of the Atlantic (People worshiped the leviathan as the god of the seas. It is the literal manifestation of the god of the seas at least from what the church that worships it said. Conveniently there is a branch of the church that worships the leviathan here and considered as a legit religion.) and trying to disprove gods would just be a waste of time.
"Well. What I meant is to study the organisms around us. To study what life around us came from. To learn the secrets of everything." He nodded. "Ah yes. A soul with an adventurer's spirit, and a kindred spirit. Haven't seen people like you in a while. Specially people in your age. People are usually pessimistic. Alchemists are the only exception. Well time for the guild meeting let's see what's happening." Then the guild hall quieted down as the guild master was entering the building. A person with a lot of scars walked into the lobby. He looked threatening but had a smug smile with him. "So is everyone here. If so good. Last night someone reported a goblin nest nearby. We need to destroy the nest before they could gather enough goblins to overwhelm everyone. Everyone needs to participate to make our chances of destroying the nest higher. At high noon we will ride with horses towards the nest of the horde."
"Everyone needs a weapon so go buy yourselves some weapons on the armory. Quickly before the time of the rally begin." Then he pointed at an area of a map stuck into the posting wall and used chalk to circle the area. "It's two kilometers north from here. The rally point is at the stables a couple hundred meters from here. Everyone better be ready before the time allotted expires. Now go." Everyone started to leave to gather equipment from the armory. Except for Orwell and his team. "So kid would you like to join us?" He asked. "Huh?" I looked at him with confusion. "What do you mean?" I asked. "I mean would you like to join our party. Plus we need another marksman. From what I heard from the guys last night someone with your name earned the highest marks in the marksmanship exam. That's impressive even for a man with my experience. I know it was you. So its better to be in our party than other parties considering some even send newbies to their deaths before the veterans. We don't do that. Plus it's better to cooperate with a party than alone or risk being harassed for others for your loot that you get from the bodies of enemies." He told me.
I nodded. "Fine." I trusted Orwell and joined his party. I then got to the armory, and bought a sling and ear plugs.
To be continued....