Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 19: Walter’s Luck Turning Sweet

Walter clenched every muscle he had. He would not be the merchant who pissed himself in front of knights. Not tonight.

Joji stepped in close and set a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Great job. Being a man doesn’t really rely on aura or brawns, but this," he said, and rapped his knuckles against his metal chest with a hollow ring.

Alaric nodded at that, earnest as prayer.

"He’s right. If I didn’t train aura, then I just ought to run away."

Walter lifted his face to the sky, to the three moons hanging like cold coins above them. Those were not just words.

They landed in him like a verdict, like proof. A true man. Pride in his bones. His throat worked once, twice, and then the dam broke.

Tears cut bright lines down his cheeks, and the fat merchant bellowed, loud enough to scare the night birds from the branches.

Alaric flinched and reached to clamp a hand over Walter’s mouth, but Joji caught his wrist with a small shake of the head.

’Let it out. Let him have it.’ Walter’s shout tore through him until it turned to ragged panting.

Joji eased a waterskin into his hands and rubbed slow circles on his back, feeling the tremor under all that soft flesh.

"Now that you found a part of yourself, how do you feel?" he asked.

Walter stared at the ground as if the answer might be written in the dirt. The release was real. He saw it clear as the cave ogre’s corpse in his mind, how he had run, how fast his feet had chosen life.

He was not brave the way songs demanded. He wanted careful. Methodical. He loved what could be proven, what could be made safe.

He avoided risk, and he had trusted blood to stay loyal because that was the only world that ever made sense to him.

He closed his eyes. Dim white flecks kindled across his skin, faint as frost in moonlight.

"Jo. Joji. He. He is awakening," Alaric stammered.

He rubbed his eyes hard and leaned in anyway, as if disbelief could be chased off by getting closer.

Joji only chuckled, low in his throat. Not everyone had aura, that was what the stories said. Or maybe most people did, and they simply never worked the part of themselves that could carry it.

In a world that still called itself medieval, his Earth knowledge was a knife kept under the cloak.

He had never planned to hand it out like blessings and act like a saint.

"Congratulations, Walter. You’ll be a knight from now on," Joji said.

Alaric leaned into it at once.

"Yeah, come with us. Better you become a knight than a lowly merchant. You’d bring honor to your house. What’s more, no one would disrespect you anymore."

Walter’s smile faltered. The offer hit him in the soft part of his chest where pride lived, and it tangled there with fear.

Being a knight was not only a matter of aura and a straight back.

It was the proper arts, the etiquette, the names you had to know and the tables you had to sit at without looking like you were begging for scraps.

The Cutlers were merchants. A family that counted coin faster than draw swords.

But they did have steel.

Like most families, even the ones packed into slums, the Cutlers put weapons in young hands.

Swords, bows, spears. Not because they dreamed of glory, but because every father dreamed his son might claw a rung higher than him.

History was full of filthy men who became kings once they had the right moment and the right violence.

Walter had heard those stories the way other boys heard prayers.

Deep inside, excitement flared. It hurt, almost. Then reality leaned close and whispered numbers.

Gold had been his pursuit since the day he failed to awaken aura. Coin did not care if you were laughed at. Coin did not care if you were lowborn. Coin only cared if you were clever and alive.

Now he was thirty. Just young and vigorous in the way a man tells himself in the mirror.

Joji and Alaric watched his expression shift and did not need him to speak.

Alaric’s gaze held him.

"Walter, it’s not too late to be a knight," he said, and the smile he wore was real enough.

Then he pointed past Walter’s shoulder.

"Those leathers won’t process themselves, no?"

It was not the time to talk about aspirations. They needed costumes for the mission, and talk did not turn into leather on its own.

Alaric handed Walter the knife. Walter set the edge to the ogre’s hide and went to work like he was back in a shop, calm and practiced.

The blade slid under the skin in long, sure strokes. Blood ran out in purple steady lines, dark in the moonlight, and Walter never once flinched.

He had done this hundreds of times. Maybe more.

"I feel like it’s easier to work," Walter said, surprised at himself.

"Best you keep the aura for yourself for now," Alaric replied, sincere and low. "Don’t show it off."

Joji’s gaze moved over the treeline as he spoke, measuring shadows.

"Assume a weak identity and a strong identity. Two masks. One you can afford to lose, one you protect."

That put a spark in Walter’s mind, a neat little click of logic meeting opportunity. He kept cutting, but his eyes sharpened, and so did his breathing.

They traded ideas in short bursts, and each time their heads turned, they scanned the dark again, as if the night might be listening.

Off to the side, the elder kobold rubbed his hands until the calloused paws rasped. His eyes darted left and right.

Three slabs of ogre meat lay there, and the smell of them was almost enough to shred what little restraint the tribe carried.

Joji reached out and thumped the old dog on the back of the head, not hard, just sharp enough to snap him back.

"Don’t be too anxious. A deal is a deal. With just the three of us, do you think we’ll run with the meat?"

The elder kobold’s pug face stretched into an ugly smile, like a dog caught sneaking from a bowl. His tail tucked even as it tried to wag.

"I. I am sorry, hooman. I was just carried away by the meat’s scent," the old dog reasoned.

"It’s not just you." Joji flicked his hand toward the rest. "Look."

Three small kobolds had their teeth sunk into ogre flesh already, and their faces twisted at once, sour with the effort and the taste.

The meat was tough, all cord and stubborn muscle, nothing like the easy chew of lesser prey. The others ignored it entirely.

They crowded Walter instead, nosing him, licking at him with greedy little tongues, more interested in the salt and softness of a living, juicy man than in the stubborn slabs of ogre.

The elder kobold’s eyes went wide, wrinkles bunching tighter as if he had seen a ghost step out of the trees.

He barked something sharp in his own yapping tongue and dashed forward, little sword up.

The flat of the blade cracked down on the heads of the pups and the younger ones fussing over Walter, quick taps that made them yelp and scatter.

"Hey. Don’t bother him. This is our benefactor," the elder growled, the words ugly but the meaning plain.

Under the moonlight, Walter’s sweat shone on his skin as he worked, carving the ogre hide with slow, careful cuts.

His breathing came heavy. His hands did not shake. He was trying very hard to look like a man who belonged here.

The elder watched the sweat bead and run, lustrous as oil. His tongue slipped out.

He leaned down and licked at a small patch of dirt near Walter, quick little swipes of tongue.

The elder’s face smoothed after, satisfied, almost dreamy. Then the feeling changed. His eyes snapped open wider.

Joji stood right there. Too close. Close enough that the elder could taste irritation riding on the man’s breath.

"I. I. I was grooming out the dirt. I swear."

Joji’s gaze flicked over Walter, then back to the kobold. No bite marks. No torn cloth. Just slobber and nerves.

He let it pass, but he did not make it gentle. He lifted two fingers in a V, touched them to his own eyes, then pointed them at the elder in a silent warning that said he was watching. Always.