Congratulations, Kyle! Someone Wrote a Second Volume!

Kyle Wheatsman was exhausted. His back hurt, his hips ached, and he’d been guzzling fluids for the better part of an hour.

He’d been at it non-stop all day, every day, for the past month. Ever since the defeat of Prince Demerius, the peasants of the region had been left to their own devices. They had been furiously trying to determine what their path forward was now that their ties to their liege lord had been shattered.

Did you think he had been doing something else non-stop for the past month?

No, Kyle had thrown all of his attention into this matter. Because he believed his life depended on it. The existence of this second volume seemed proof enough.

Kyle took a seat beneath a tree and wiped the sweat off his brow and tried to make sense of his predicament. In a previous life, he’d been an office worker. But after winning a game of bar trivia, he’d won a prize. He still remembered what it said:

This card entitles the owner to one (1) conditional rebirth, to be redeemed in the event of owner’s untimely demise. Original memories, traumas, and preferences will be restored upon reaching the rebirth’s eighteenth birthday.

Of course it seemed like a bit of a joke prize. Only it wasn’t.

From the moment he regained his memories, Kyle knew he had been ‘isekai’d’ – taken from his previous life and world and put into another. From there it seemed clear what kind of world he’d been put in and what to expect. He was a lowly peasant, the local prince was going to destroy his home, and bringing his soon-to-be fiancé to him was the surest way to secure it all.

If only it had been so simple.

He rested under the tree for a bit longer to recuperate. If he could just close his eyes and take a little nap…

----

Abagail Wentworth was getting annoyed at how things had gone.

Her life had been flipped upside down ever since Kyle had come into her life. She’d lost her home, nearly been murdered by bandits, nearly murdered by orcs, nearly murdered by soldiers of the realm… a lot of nearly being murdered.

All because she’d been conning clients who didn’t know any better. True blessings were expensive. It was cheaper to use a different spell instead and act like any good luck was her doing. It wasn’t until later she realized the spell she’d kept casting was the Isekai Ritual – a sort of lesser resurrection spell. It was a spell designed to appeal to the gods, but it was intended to spare the life of someone who was dying.

That Kyle was not dying at the time had led to its own series of headaches.

She looked at herself in the mirror she’d placed in Kyle’s home. Her wire-framed glasses were straightened, locks of raven hair running down both sides of her face and otherwise tied back.

Abagail had made some alterations to clothes she’d acquired from the locals. She had started wearing something a bit closer to what the women of the village did, an ankle-length skirt with a plain blouse and a laced corset on top of it. It was the alterations she’d made that she was trying to make sure would be noticed.

There were strategic cuts to the fabric to expose her cleavage and have her chest held in place by the corset.

All of the near-murder and property destruction wasn’t what had annoyed her. It was all of the other women who’d found their way into this.

Her eyes lingered on the kitchen area she’d magicked into being where Problem Number One was stirring together a stew. Princess Kari Iwakura, an elf who’d journeyed across the sea to be married off to Prince Demerius.

That blue-haired noblewoman was still in one of her more traditional outfits. Abagail was torn on her. She had nothing but sympathy for her desire to get out of what would’ve been a loveless marriage, especially when Demerius had lied about sparing Kyle’s village. And she had to admit it was nice having someone she could talk about her dirty romance novellas with.

But at the end of the day, she was competition. One that she could easily crush if she had to. From the twitch in Kari’s eyebrow, Abagail could tell the feeling was mutual.

It could only be that simple if it was the two of them. On cue, the front door flew open. The carcass of a great beast was on the shoulder of a woman who was a lot taller than Abagail. The leather armor she was wearing was covered in something else’s blood, which was a deeper shade of red than her natural skin.

Fiona threw the beast onto the table with such a clatter that it made Kari jump and spill a bit of the brewing stew on herself. After yelling in shock and pain, Kari glared at the new arrival. “Really! Do you have no more subtle way of announcing your appearance?!”

The red-skinned woman shrugged, then pulled out a large knife. It was a wide enough blade that the sun reflected off of it and the single horn on her head that strands of white hair had stuck to. “I got us meat for the stew.”

That was when she lunged at the carcass to start carving it up.

Abagail stared at the bloody display while Kari averted her eyes. Fiona was a blunt instrument, ready to whack you over the head without care for the consequences. She was also very good at using a club.

The woman had made her intentions clear to anyone who would ask. Thanks to some insane rules about touching the horns of an oni, Fiona considered herself engaged to Kyle. And openly admitted she was in love with him. To both Abagail and Kari.

Trying to win this without Fiona busting through a wall would be hard enough job.

A door in the rear of the house swung open. Ascending up a flight of stairs that seemed to lead to nowhere was the exact opposite of Fiona. A short woman with hair that seemed to change color depending on which angle you looked at it arrived. “Well, well! I see everyone’s finally back.”

And then there was this moron.

Meredith Stormsborough. Abagail’s mother only by technicality; she’d grown Abagail in a test tube from someone else’s ova. She was a hermit who’d spent the past however many years living in a swamp on her own.

She was also a self-declared magical genius, having claimed responsibility for the creation of the Isekai Ritual and also claiming she was three hundred years old and also claiming she was a hundred percent human.

There were a great many lies Abagail knew Meredith had told over the years, but that was one she could never firmly put her finger on. The few times she’d asked, Meredith had pooh-poohed her for asking questions she wouldn’t want the answer to.

Meredith waddled over and scooped some of the excess blood Fiona was spilling into a half dozen vials. “Oooh, I was running short on this. Now I don’t have to worry about getting it myself.”

Abagail could see Fiona’s eye twitch.

The four women had shared a delicate cease-fire ever since Kyle had won out over the Prince. All four of them had an axe to grind with him, all four were willing not to go to the mat while he was involved. They were even prepared to try to act more peacefully in the aftermath and work together.

But Kyle’s insistence on spending every waking moment out of the house and working something or other was wearing thin. He wasn’t going to make a move.

If he wouldn’t make a move, one of them would.

Abagail looked at the other three women in the room. Kari gingerly put slabs of meat onto a plate as Fiona sliced different cuts off, all while Meredith pulled out some organs and began dropping them into a bag that seemed to have no bottom.

Then the peace would be over. And the war would begin again.