Chapter 182: Wrong Side

Arthur woke up sore as hell. His back and legs were stiff, and his shoulder complained the moment he started pulling on his shirt. Morwenna had put him on the mat enough times yesterday that his body was still keeping count even if he wasn’t.

When he reached for Whisperwind, the Necrotic Dagger was still sitting right beside it, exactly where he had left it last night.

Arthur looked at the two weapons for a second. He grabbed the dagger, clipped the sheath onto his belt, and immediately ran into a practical problem.

The sheath sat wrong.

When he reached back over his shoulder to pull Whisperwind into a carrying position, his forearm bumped the dagger’s hilt.

Arthur adjusted the angle.

He drew the bow again. It still caught slightly.

He unclipped the sheath and moved it farther around his hip. That cleared his arm, but now sitting down pushed the stiff leather directly into his side.

Arthur stared at the dagger hanging from his belt.

Apparently carrying two weapons involved more planning than simply owning two weapons.

He kept it on anyway, grabbed his bag, and headed for the dining hall.

The usual group was already eating. Emily noticed the new hardware on his belt before Arthur even sat down, eyeing it while she stole a piece of bacon off his plate.

"You’re carrying that now?" she asked.

"Apparently."

Emily looked at where he had mounted it on his hip. "Wrong side."

Arthur looked down at it. "I spent ten minutes deciding that."

"You spent ten minutes being wrong." Emily swallowed the bacon. "If you get tackled and driven onto your right side, your own body weight is going to trap the hilt against the ground. You won’t be able to draw it."

Arthur sighed and unclipped the sheath, sliding it around to the opposite side of his belt.

Chloe arrived from her morning infirmary prep a few minutes later and sat down normally. She tugged his sleeve back far enough to check the healing crawler scratches, gave him a quick kiss, and pulled a plate toward herself.

Felix leaned over to look at Arthur’s waist. "Does carrying the dagger regularly mean I need to add it to the squad equipment-loss calculations?"

"Absolutely not," Arthur said.

Felix was already pulling a small ledger out of his bag and writing it down.

Their first class was Dungeon Strategy with Professor Vale.

The students walked in expecting another tactical lecture, but Vale already had thick municipal maps rolled out across the front table and a stack of assignment sheets in his hand.

That immediately got the room’s attention.

Vale didn’t waste time. He told them the current practical rotation was shifting back into live environments.

"The Old South Aqueduct," Vale announced, tapping the map. "It’s an abandoned underground water network beneath the southern edge of Lornfell. Parts of it were sealed decades ago when the city expanded. Recent maintenance crews reopened one of the primary branches and discovered monsters had moved into the unused system."

Vale classified the assigned branches as D-rank. Nothing unusual for the academy’s current practical rotation, but the city had only surveyed the accessible sections.

He listed off narrow tunnels, flooded water channels, vertical maintenance shafts, and broken stone walkways. The creatures were reportedly using the walls and old drainage openings to move, and sound carried strangely through the underground pipes. There were almost no long firing lanes.

Arthur read the assignment sheet Vale handed out and immediately hated it.

He wasn’t scared of the dungeon. He hated it because this place was apparently designed by a city planner who personally disliked archers.

Vale walked past his desk. "Vance, try not to look so offended."

Arthur looked up from the map. "There are three straight corridors on this entire sheet."

"Then treasure them," Vale said.

Vale explained that multiple academy teams would enter different branches of the aqueduct over the next few days. He posted the squad assignments on the board.

Arthur read his name.

Arthur, Emily, Felix, Chloe.

It had been weeks since the four of them had gone underground together. Arthur looked back at the miserable map and felt slightly better about it.

"Your group gets Sector C," Vale told them. "It hasn’t been properly mapped beyond the first maintenance gate. Clear the section, update the map, identify what moved in, and recover usable cores where it’s safe to do so."

He tapped a heavy red line drawn across the parchment.

"Do not wander into the sealed municipal branches," Vale warned the class. "The city gets very angry when academy students destroy century-old infrastructure."

Emily immediately looked disappointed.

Felix raised a hand. "Who pays if municipal property is damaged during combat?"

Vale looked directly at Emily. "Your squad does."

Emily stopped smiling.

Vale didn’t dismiss the class early. He made the squads spend the rest of the hour planning their approaches based on the partial maps.

Arthur studied Sector C. His first instinct was his usual Phantom Sniper routine: figure out where Felix could establish a hard front line, then find a clean lane behind him to work from.

Then he looked at the scale of the map. Several sections of the aqueduct were barely wide enough for Felix’s heavy shield and one additional person.

It was Bracken all over again. Except this time, he knew it before he walked into the dark.

Emily leaned over his shoulder, looking at the parchment. "You have that face again."

"What face?"

"The one where a corridor personally insulted you."

Arthur pointed at a section of the map where the tunnel hooked sharply around a large, circular cistern chamber. There was absolutely no way to maintain range there. Instead of complaining, he started mapping out weapon transitions in his head.

He’d keep Whisperwind out while he actually had a lane. If the tunnel closed up, the bow needed to go away early instead of him wasting time fighting for space. Dagger out. Shadow Step only if there was somewhere useful to land.

Felix looked over from his own map. "I can’t just stop in a narrow water channel every time you need to switch weapons."

"If you keep moving while I’m swapping, you’ll leave a gap," Arthur pointed out.

"If I stop moving, whatever is in front of me gets leverage," Felix argued.

Chloe ignored the friction and kept reading the incident notes attached to the assignment.

"The reports didn’t mention venom or contamination," Chloe said. "The workers had heard clicking, seen pale shapes disappearing into the drainage holes, and gotten the hell out."

That was about as useful as maintenance reports usually were.

After class, Arthur and Emily spent twenty minutes in one of the open practice spaces near the combat halls.

Vale’s planning exercise had gotten Arthur thinking about the sheath again.

Arthur put a practice arrow into the target, let Whisperwind fall onto the shoulder retention strap, drew the Necrotic Dagger, moved two steps, resheathed it, and brought the bow back up.

The first attempt sucked. The dagger hilt caught the hem of his jacket on the way out.

He fixed his jacket and tried again. On the second attempt, Whisperwind’s lower limb clipped the leather sheath when he rotated his hips.

The third attempt worked perfectly, right up until Emily stepped directly into his space and jammed his bow arm hard against his chest.

Arthur tried to reach across his body for the dagger. He couldn’t get the angle.

Emily looked down at him. "Dead."

"That’s becoming a very negative teaching style."

"Move the sheath," Emily told him.

Emily crowded him again from the other side. Arthur shifted the sheath, tried the draw, then moved it again when her hip blocked his hand. They repeated it from a few different angles until he could reach the dagger without tangling himself in Whisperwind.

Eventually, they settled on a slightly angled position on his left hip that allowed a clean cross-draw even if someone was pressing into him.

It worked reasonably well, but Emily pointed out that the standard leather loop securing it to his belt was too loose for running or grappling. The sheath kept sliding an inch in either direction.

Arthur grabbed his bag and headed into the city.

The Iron Anvil was busy. Arthur walked through the open double doors and caught the familiar wave of forge heat and heavy hammering.

Brokk was working at one of the massive anvils near the back. Two thick-shouldered apprentices were hauling crates of refined ore across the floor.

Arthur walked up to the front counter and placed the Necrotic Dagger and its sheath on the scarred wood.

Brunhilda came out of the inventory room, saw Arthur at the counter, and looked down at the dagger.

"What did you break this time?"

"Nothing."

She picked up the sheath. "That’s usually what you say before I find it."

Brunhilda drew the dagger, checked the blade, then examined the sheath itself. The dark iron was fine.

The problem was the leather suspension holding it to Arthur’s belt. It had been fitted for an ordinary side draw, not for him running, twisting, cross-drawing, and occasionally getting slammed into walls.

Brokk overheard them from the anvil and yelled across the shop.

"Of course it moves! I fitted the bloody thing to hang at your side. I didn’t expect you to start rolling around with monsters while wearing it."

"Nobody included a usage restriction," Arthur called back.

"Common sense was the restriction!" Brokk hammered a glowing piece of steel. "Clearly a manufacturing oversight on my part."

Brunhilda rolled her eyes, grabbed a measuring tape, and walked around the counter. She pulled Arthur’s jacket back and held the sheath against his hip to measure exactly where the new mounting straps needed to sit.

She stepped close to buckle a piece of testing leather around his belt.

Arthur looked down her shirt while she bent over the buckle.

Brunhilda noticed and yanked the strap tight enough to bite into his hip.

"Ow."

"Look somewhere else."

Brokk’s hammer slammed down behind them.

Arthur looked anyway.

While Arthur waited for her to rivet the new loops, one of the apprentices came up to the counter and dropped a thick stack of repair tickets into a wooden bin.

Brokk wiped sweat off his forehead with a rag and glared at the paper. "That damned Obsidian Hand started sending shield repairs in faster than we can clear them."

Arthur looked at the top tag.

Obsidian Hand.

He checked the next one. Same crest.

"We’ve had several of yours through here lately," Brunhilda said, bringing the adjusted mount back over.

Arthur glanced through the top few slips. Cracked shield rim. Leather reinforcement. Replacement short sword.

"What kind of rate would you give them if the guild started sending repairs in bulk rather than individually?" Arthur asked.

Brokk stopped wiping his face and gave Arthur a long look.

"Can’t you buy one fucking belt without trying to own a piece of the shop?" Brokk grumbled.

"Apparently not," Arthur said.

Brokk threw the rag over his shoulder. "Tell Sylvia to come back with actual numbers if she wants a contract."

Arthur took the adjusted sheath from Brunhilda and clipped it onto his belt. He tested it right there in the shop.

Draw. Turn. Resheath.

Whisperwind came off his shoulder without catching on the hilt. The dagger stayed locked tightly against his hip when he moved.

Perfect.

"If you come back with a chip in that blade because you stabbed a wall again, I’m charging you double," Brunhilda warned him.

"Does that include the guild discount?" Arthur asked.

"There is no guild discount yet."

"We’ll discuss it."

Arthur paid for the leatherwork and walked back out into the street.

While he waited for the city transport back to the academy, he pulled his phone out and opened the assignment sheet Vale had sent them.

Old South Aqueduct — Sector C.Departure: Saturday morning.

Arthur zoomed in on the map. He stared at the large cistern chamber, the narrow water branches, and the endless series of blind corners.

He dropped his hand to his side, his fingers brushing the new, secure leather of the dagger sheath.

At least this time, he wasn’t going underground pretending the bow would solve everything.

The transport pulled up to the curb, and Arthur stepped inside.