And then the restraints are released, and the prisoners inside the plane are dropped out of the sky.

There's no obvious unifying theme to the falling convicts. Most look terrified.

Some have distinctive pink hair, tilting their bodies to direct their falls with purpose. 

Where they get the chance, they immediately start murdering the others in mid-air with their bare hands, before anyone can even hit the ground. 

The first thing Tanya notices is the man was speaking english. This is obviously not a mission for imperial high command. Then as she falls she instinctively tries to run a flight spell, she is missing her flight boot and orb and her magic feels wrong. Her body flashes with an almost painful heat when she tries to access her magic. Then the murders start.

Is this part of the mission? Is fighting to the death part of this? Should she also be taking out the competition before they land? No. Not until she has more information.

Tanya is going to angle herself away from the pack and the murders. Hopefully whoever threw them out of this plane had a plan for landing and this wasn’t an elaborate execution, because she doesn’t feel a parachute on her back.

If this was Being X this was strange and elaborate even for him. He hasn’t even come to gloat and offer her a way out by praying to him. Still probably his fault though. Damn you Being X.

A panicking teenager from Kansas would struggle just to orient themselves in mid-air and control their fall, let alone notice anything more than the ground rushing towards them. 

An experienced aerial mage and artillery spotter would be able to observe the following:

- The approximate landing area being a small settlement in the middle of former farmland at the intersection of two roads, with patches of taller buildings at one end and a cluster of close-packed low-rise ones at the other. 

- Something like a gas station, except with pillars of dark jagged crystal where the pumps would be. 

- Something like a mechanics or car dealership, with multiple damaged vehicles in the lot and more scattered around the nearby roads.

- Several towers or grain silos, with glowing glyphs hovering in the air above them. 

And, as the landing nears:

- A puddle of parachute fabric in a color that almost matches the field it landed in, fallen on top of what is presumably an air-dropped crate. Several of the pink-haired killers are aiming their descent towards it. 

- A large number of figures already on the ground, roaming with the aimless shamble of walking wounded returning from the front lines of trench warfare. They don't wear uniforms or carry weapons, and some look up with pinpricks of red light in their eyes. 

She can have her pick of landing destinations. The killers seem to be leaving her alone.

Red eyed shamblers.... Zombies? She was culture aware enough in her first life to know what zombies looked like. DID BEING X REALLY HAVE HER AIR DROPPED INTO ZOMBIES?!?

Whatever, rage wont help. Tanya aims for the gas station lookalike. SInce the murder squad seems busy gearing up she needs somwhere to scavenge too and the mechanics shop feels too obvious.

A short distance off the ground, a marking on Tanya's hand that she hadn't noticed before flares into a bright glow and her fall decelerates to a gentle enough speed to land without injury. It's not the same experience as a parachute, the force seems to be applied evenly across her whole body.

The gas station is made of cheap cinder blocks and corrugated metal, with clear barrels stacked outside and fading adverts for fresh frongal legs on the walls. The cars outside it look more like those of Tanya's second world than her first, with the bonnets oddly swollen. Two of the windows are broken, shards of glass scattered around them.

Inside, the shelves are almost bare, and a scent of rot permeates the building. It looks like it has been repeatedly looted of anything edible or wearable or usable as a weapon. Broken down coolers stand in the back.

The feet of a prone body are visible poking out from behind one of the shelves.

She has vague memories of the first Few Resident Evil games. That's definitely a Zombie playing dead. It's even in a gas station like in Resident Evil 2. Can Being X be more original for once? Now he's just ripping off famous games.

Anything even remotely wieldable as a club? A fire extunguisher? A particularly sturdy piece of timber? Anything to increase her (sadly tiny) reach and to add wieght to her blows.

There's a greetings card rack?

The handle of some kind of weapon is visible beneath the body. Some of the shards of glass from the broken windows are large enough to be usable as improvised knives, and some of the bare shelves look like reasonably sturdy pieces of wood but might make a noise to remove. There are also a few empty glass bottles from where some previous scavenger appears to have decided to get drunk instead of trying to escape.

Card rack it is, its long enough. She will lift it with some difficulty. She hates being so small and not being able to run her ususal enhancement suite.

She uses it to poke the corpse that is definitely going to wake up and prove that Being X is an unoriginal hack.

In defiance of originality, the corpse rises! Its eyes glow a baleful red, and it unsteadily gets to its feet then lunges towards her with outstretched hands.

DIE YOU RUSSY BASTARD! She bashes away at the Zombie with the feral strength of a child soldier. Now it's moved away from where it was laying, is that weapon that was under it any better than a card rack?

The card rack gives way before the risen corpse does, though her blows do help to keep her out of its reach for the moment.

How does a rusted and bloodstained machete sound?

Fucking Perfect.

She dives for it then hacks at the zombies ankle, severing the tendons. 

Decaying sinews are cut through by the blade, and the body topples to the floor. Even so, it is already awkwardly twisting around to try and grab her. It'll crawl after her if it has to. 

Resident Evil has trained her to go for head attacks. Tanya calmy hacks off the head from the neck as it crawls. Honestly this is less gross than half the stuff she saw in the trenches.

It's at least less bloody, the bodily fluids have half-congealed inside the corpse and its circulation has stopped so there's no messy arterial spray. Getting a clean cut through the neck is harder, because the corpse keeps struggling to grab at her in defiance of physiology and genre convention even after she gets the knife between two vertebra.

Cutting the head off entirely extinguishes the light in the eyes, but the rest of the body continues its now-blind flailing and grasping.  

"Sheisse" Don't these things ever give up? She proceeds to hack off its hands too. Rendering it harmless.

*Authors note: (Tanya thinks in German, there is no Harmless Armless homophone pun here. But harmless in german does sound like arm loss in english.)

It is somewhat more manageable without hands to get a hold on her with, though it's swinging the stumps with enough force to break a bone if she got hit. 

"Try stabbing the heart," a voice behind her says. It's an ordinary-looking teenager, out of breath, in dark civilian clothing. He looks simultaneously disgusted and fascinated by the spectacle. 

She comes in behind it and gets the blade in under the shoulder blade and stabs it in the heart. The zombie finally slumps. She replies in perfect, if german accented, english. "Thank you. Are zombies not supposed to die if you cut off their heads?" Tanya never played that many zombie games in her first life or watched any horror movies, but she was very sure about the head thing.

(Psst, if you had to put a number on it, how loyal would you say you feel towards this guy right now?)

(Out of what scale? She feels gratitude for the assist but she doesn't know the man. Or owe him any real loyalty. Barely more loyalty than a stranger. 1?) Is what counterfactual Tanya would reply if she had actually been asked this question. But she has not.

Noted.

The teen looks aside for a moment, distracted by an errant thought or something. 

"So far, I've seen at least three things that seem to come from games I've run, stories I've created. The red-eyed zombies killed by a strike to the heart are one of them. Are you from around here? Do you know anything about what's going on?"

"What do you mean games you've run? Did you make games? You aren't from here?" He is either delusional, or.... wich would be just Being X's style, another Isekai? Maybe she isn't the only one hes abused. Maybe he brought in some videogame designer.

She points her machete at him. "If god spoke to you, right now, and told you to kill me, would you?" She has to make sure he's not actually a pawn of Being X. Not another weapon pointed at her like that monster from the unified states.

"What? No! Of course not!"

That's his instinctive response, but Joon being Joon he can't help but think of the caveats immediately after he says it.

Just how good of an argument would the voice of god, or the text in the boxes appearing in his field of vision, have to make to persuade him?

Introspection can wait until he no longer has a machete being pointed in his face. 

"I'm no believer. The last person to tell me 'god has a plan', I beat the shit out of him. Juniper Smith, formerly of Bumblefuck, Kansas, but you can call me Joon."

(Whatever would be wanting information on loyalty might notice that her loyalty points went up several steps.)

She lowers the machete and smiles.

"Tanya Degurechaff, I wish I had also had the liberty to punish those that sing gods praises." Kansas was a state in both the united states of her earth, and the unified states of her second life. She needed to find out if he was from her original world or not. "Wich Kansas? What was the name of the Nation it was in? What started the Great War in your world?" Great War is capitalized by Tanya even when spoken. You can just tell.

"Kansas, in the United States of America. World War One got kicked off by the Franz Ferdinand assassination, right?" He only remembers the name because of the band. 

(If Tiff or Arthur were here they'd immediately start an argument over whether it was actually the structural causes like the web of alliances or the economic factors, and now he's reminded of their absence again.)

There are more of the risen dead outside the gas station, and they've been drawn in by the sounds of violence inside from the first one before it was dispatched. They're slow-moving, but there's not time for more conversation if Joon and Tanya want to outpace them.

There is enough time for Joon to stare at his character sheet's updates briefly.

Tanya Degurechaff, Loyalty lvl 6

Tanya Degurechaff, of unknown parentage, was plucked from an Anglecynn orphanage to serve as a test subject for illegal research from an early age at a black site operated by the maverick scientist Schugel. After a catastrophic accident gave her severe burns across her body and unlocked her fire magic, she was healed and inducted into the Fuchsia Coterie as a child soldier. She was sent into the Risen Lands exclusion zone on one of her first combat missions when all her thoughts and memories of Aerb were suddenly erased, replaced with those of an alternate existence on a planet called 'Earth'. Now Tanya finds herself a newcomer to the world that has known her whole life. 

"Ferdinand's death was the cause on our original earth. Not on other earths. This isn't my first time being... do you have an english word for Isekai? Taken to another world. My second world had the Great War later on, and also magic. It is good to meet someone from home." She uses the machete to bash a plank free from a display. So at least this boy will have something to wield. "Take the board, we must move before the exits are blocked by the zombies."

The boy accepts the plank and is not exactly impressed by his new improvised weapon, but his practice swings do get noticeably smoother after the first few attempts.

More undead have been drawn in from the surrounding fields, and it takes at least a jog to stay ahead of their group.

Joon hits his stride (with game layer assistance in the form of an Athletics level-up) after they've covered a few hundred yards.

He wants to ask about so many different things, about the second world she came from and how she went from one to the next and about magic, whether she has a game layer too or has any clues to her past here to back up the stat screen's biography of her, but one question is probably the most important right now.

"Uh, you've got a destination in mind, right?"

"Mechanics shop? Probably an obvious place to go, so might be crawling with the dyed hair fellows that were killing people on the way down. But It's obvious for a reason. Even just getting you a heavy wrench or crowbar would be large upgrade in capability." Despite her short stature, Tanya is fit enough to jog at a decent pace pretty much indefinitely. So she leads, despite Juniper being considerably taller than her with much longer legs.

"I'll take what I can get." This plank is heavy and he has serious doubts about its zombie-slaying potential.

Dyed hair... the 'Fuchsia Coterie' from her backstory (or the backstory of the person whose body she got shoved into)...

"You, uh, you know your hair is dyed pink too?"

"Haaah?" Tanya tugs at a lock of hair to bring it in front of her face. Yup, dyed the same colour the killers had. "But... why would Being X change my hair..." She mumbles to herself.

"That petty bastard is making me look like the group that were killing people. That utter cuntfaced inbred whorebeater." Tanya is a soldier, of course she knows how to curse in a dozen languages. She flips off the sky. "Just sending me to another world, again, wasn't good enough huh?!" Now she will probably be arrested for being in some kind of killing gang or cult or something because of her hair once they reach civilisation. This is definitely some plot by Being X.

Joon has been there. If he had the breath to spare, he might have joined in with her rage against the world.

Before he can question who this 'Being X' is, they reach the main road.

The mechanics' shop is nearby, and further down it three people are crossing the street: Two more men with pink mohawks, and a blonde girl with hair cropped short. One of the Fuchsia Coterie notices Tanya and calls out to her. 

"Burn the thing!"

They are pursued by a giant undead agglomeration, dozens of blackened bodies clumped together into a huge humanoid form dragging itself after them with massive limbs and eyes like headlights.

Ew, that is in fact more disgusting than anything she saw in the trenches. What Tanya wouldn't give for a rifle and an orb right now. An artillery spell would break that thing apart.

The pink hairs think she is their ally... "Do I look like I'm carrying a flame thrower??" How is she supposed to burn that thing? Also does she even want to help the pink hair murder gang? probably not. Better not get any deeper with a criminal organization. She will have to find some way to dye her hair back to normal too.

"We should run."

He should've mentioned the fire magic from her bio already, then maybe she'd be able to save them!

There's no time to explain that now, if she doesn't even know she has the magic then there's slim odds she'd be able to use it, with rationalizations and recriminations like that running through his head he runs for the mechanics.

The 'Cowardice' pop-up taunts him.

There's another of the Fuchsia Coterie waiting for them inside the building's reception.

Sat on a chair, dead, with a perfect cylinder carved out from his forehead.

"Well, someone killed him. Probably not another of the pink hair gang...." No... that would be crazy right? But there's already 2 of them... "Could be another Isekai got dropped and killed him? Rule of three?"

"The traditional party size is four or five." Then again, his D&D group sometimes went up to six or more.

Maybe it's the blow of the Cowardice debuff or the dead body making him want more firepower on his side, maybe he just doesn't want to use 'pink hair gang' when he knows the correct name, but Joon decides now is the time to come clean. 

"I didn't get the chance to mention this before, but I've got some kind of game overlay. Words appear in my field of view. It says that you, uh, the person with your body before you arrived was a child soldier in something called the Fuchsia Coterie."

He points to the matching dye-jobs.

"It also says that you've got fire magic. That might be why you got asked to burn the big zombie Voltron."

"Transmigration? But this feels like my body... except for the hair colour. and I was a child soldier, in the Imperial Army." She checks inside her shirt. There's a lot of scars missing from the time Schugel blew her up. "Huh... No scars. Guess that sanctimonious prick is fine killing whoever was in here before I was." At least she didn't have to go through being a baby again, that was so humiliating. 

"My magic did feel wrong..." Instead of an enhancement spell, she tries just pushing magic to an extremity, like her finger, just in case it goes wrong. The air around her fingertip crackles as little bits of sweat ignite. She can feel the reaction as the hydrogen is split off and burns. She focuses and a little constant flame pops up. "Well. I'd rather have my normal magic, but better than nothing."

"I don't have any wierd words in my vision, or anything videogame like at all, except for the zombie in the gas station. Why would we have different powers." This is strange even for Being X.

"You were a child soldier? What kind of horrible Earth were you from? My freckles are all the same."

Her magic is cool. Too bad it sounds like it takes horrible burns to unlock.

"Hold on, you had magic before too?"

Now that they have a moment of safety, the questions are all coming out. 

“My first Isekai was to an earth where the first world war happened a little later than on our earth. I fought for the Reich because I had no other options to get a career as an orphan. This version of Germany united under pan germanic ideals with Austria earlier on and was a little more inclusive than the one we knew from history class. Also magic was a studied science and I was an aerial mage. Mostly mages were used for artillery spotting and Air support. The only branch that allowed child recruits was the mage corps.” She says disinterestedly, as if this was a normal everyday thing to explain. 

She is ruffling through various containers hoping for something metal and long for Joon to wield.

This room is more of a waiting room than a work area, but there is an old fashioned lug wrench that looks suitable. 

Before she can hand it over, the door to the machine shop in the back slams open. Behind it, a striking red-headed woman is pointing a strange boxy gun at both of them.

"Don't move."

Well who is she pointing at right this second? If the barrel isn’t centred on Tanya she will throw the Lug wrench at the new threat and dive for cover. Otherwise she does not move and swears. “Sheisse”

Tanya's recounting of her military experience has unfortunately made her the primary threat in this newcomer's assessment.

"Each of you name some features of Earth. Something anyone would know. Something that you haven't mentioned, because it would be too obvious to do so."

“America exists? Antartica is ice covered. Russia is the biggest country.” If this is ANOTHER Isekai she will be so annoyed at how unoriginal Being X is, how many people has he done this to??? “Are you also from earth?”

"Uh... There's a north pole that's frozen too? Seven continents and five oceans with how they're usually counted?"

Why is he being quizzed on geography by the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his entire life.

"I overheard your conversation. First, what afflicts you is a known phenomenon, it's called the dream-that-skewers. The Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny studies it. Once we get out of here, they can help you."

(Quest Accepted! Straddling Worlds!)

"Second, please stop using that term for the umbral undead."

“Help me how. Finding employment and an education on local matters? Or to ‘cure’ me to bring back the person who used to inhabit this body. I’d rather not die again, thanks.” One death was already enough. Or maybe twice? Did she die again to get here?

Also she does not trust this person who is still threatening them with some kind of gun. Joon is part of the victims of Being X club. She trusts him well enough for now, but definitely she does not trust random locals.

"The former. The latter is impossible to my knowledge, and if you are a fire mage you won't lack for job opportunities."

She lowers the gun halfway, retreats a step back through the doorframe, and rolls a glass jar and a spike out into their room.

"If we're to escape, we need damned souls to power our way out, at least seven of them. The runes on the spike will draw the soul out of a body that died in the last half-hour, and the jar will store them so they don't dissipate while it's sealed. Trust me, it's a mercy."

"Destroy the heart before three minutes pass, or they'll rise as another of the undead."

"You can call me Cypress. You have questions, I'm sure, and when we're somewhere safe you can have answers. Is there anything you need to know now, if we're to work together?"

“Other than a nebulous promise of future help once we get out of here, and a Question and Answer session. Is there a reason we should help you with… soul collecting. Rather than go our own way in an undead apocalypse? I don’t have much reason to trust you not to shoot me after I come back with your souls either.” Tanya has basically forgotten Joon is his own person, she has already mentally categorised him as a subordinate or minion.

(And since she does get rather protective of her minions, loyalty will go up a tick.)

(Joon is paying close attention to the Companions & Loyalty screen right now.)

"This town has been picked clean by successive Trials, and that means an escape on foot is highly unlikely. To stand a chance, you'd need a vehicle and combat-effective weapons." The machete and lug wrench do not seem to qualify in her eyes. "Bring me the souls, and you'll have them."

She flips her strange pistol around to offer it, as though offering a handshake. 

"Do we have a deal?"

“Bribing me with guns is an excellent start to a relationship. Deal.” She takes it with a smile and holds it with practised ease, sighting it in front of her (and pointed firmly away from anyone with her finger off the trigger, gun safety matters). “So how does this work? Range? Recoil? Ammo? Safety?” She doesn’t see any of the normal gun parts other than sharing the general shape as a gun and having a trigger. And Tanya has trained with even the strangest of firearm designs. For her to be lost when holding a gun this, this has to be some real freaky otherworld design based on alien principles. There are only so many ways you could design a bullet thrower and this resembles none of them.

This is someone she can work with.

"The trigger is part of the handle. Squeeze it and an electric charge will activate the void crystal, directed by the barrel. That erases all matter in front of it until the void effect is exhausted based on the mass removed, after around three hundred feet in air or less than an inch of metal. No recoil, no ammunition, cycling time of approximately seven seconds, and there weren't enough parts here to make a safety in the time since landing."

“The range and rate of fire is less than ideal… but no ammo concerns is a big plus.” She taps her chin. “I might have an idea for a backup… do not be alarmed.”

She focuses her new magic on her fingertip again. Instead of a steady flame can she do a big pop, cause a small explosion that expands air?

BANG!

That worked. She can also feel that that worked really well through her power. She could direct that explosion to expand even more if she wanted to. She can essentially cause her own gunpowder explosion on command. “All I need now is a rifle barrel and something for ammo. You wouldn't happen to have any ball bearings? Conveniently rifle barrel sized pipes?”

"An unconventional use of fire magic, but that could work. Give me a moment."

She returns with a couple of sizes of pipe. In the absence of ball bearings Cypress offers a pouch of nuts and bolts, plus some oilcloth for wadding.

"Not ideal, I know."

"Can I have the pistol if you're not using it?"

“The pipe was meant to be the backup gun… but I suppose if it’s just against zo- undead you should get the practice in. I can keep the pipe and the machete for if some get close.” She tosses him the pistol. “The void gun is silent right?” She asks Cypress.  

“The discount musket blunderbuss will draw the dead like crazy. I’ve seen them react to much less noise. It’s an emergency backup thing. If we are in real danger I want the real gun back. I’ve been shooting since I was 8.”

"Almost silent. There's a distinctive sound from the air rushing in to the vacuum it creates, but that won't be heard from afar."

Cypress gives an approving nod at Tanya's change in wording.

"We don't have much time. Anything else?"

“Pink hairs, hostile? They were killing others on the way down.”

"Yes, the Fuchsia Coterie are dangerous. While you might have been one of them before and they'll see you as one of them at first, as a dream-skewered you won't know any of their names or countersigns to maintain that ruse."

“Dangerous how? Gang? Murder Cult? Likely to get me arrested in civilisation for sharing the hair colour?” What she really wants to know Is she socially allowed to kill them. Because if they need souls… But people get upset when you ask things like that outright.

"A paramilitary group, part of the Color Riot, used for deniable mercenary operations. Let's say it wouldn't come as a surprise for this many of them to be condemned to a Trial by Adversity. In civilization, that hair on a girl your age would be seen as a... tasteless, rebellious affectation. Appropriate disguises will only be needed later."

“Understood.” Enemy combatants are perfectly okay to kill. Mercenaries are even more acceptable targets than the Reds were. “Come on Joon, let’s go be Shinigami and collect some souls.”

The comment about a ‘girl her age’ stung a little. Cypress couldn’t be that much older than her at the worst. Tanya just happens to be very short from growing up without proper nutrition. 

Joon cringes at the edgy phrasing but follows her out with the void pistol raised, doing his best impression of how a SWAT team would clear an area. To someone with actual military experience, it's laughably amateurish.

"The game layer says 'Cypress' is slightly less loyal than you were when we first met," he reports. "What's the plan?"

“Plenty of people landed. Most of them probably didn’t make it due to the Fuchsia whatevers, or zombies. The mercenaries have been supplied by airdrop, I saw the crate while landing. We can spike corpses that look fresh and hope. And if the fuchsia weirdos get hostile….”

She honestly just wants to say they should go hunting for colour riot members and head towards the crate. But Joon is essentially a civilian. Most people get judgy about that sort of statement and it is too risky for someone so green.

"There was someone who got caught just after I landed, but she'll have been dead longer than the three minutes. You're thinking we follow the Coterie's trail and find the bodies they left behind? Let's do that."

As it happens, the trio they saw on the way in were running in the rough direction of the crate. Following the swathe of destruction left by Zombie Voltron chasing them through the town will lead to a dead-end alley where their three corpses remain, yet to reanimate.

The downside is that the undead making up Zombie Voltron haven't vanished. They've decohered, splitting back up into individual shamblers without a target in common, but there's a high density of them now spreading back out from that alley.

“You have videogame powers right? Like dragon quest? Do you get experience points? This seems like a good place to…” She searches for the word in english. It’s been a literal lifetime since she’s seen english gaming terms online. “Ground?”

This bloodthirsty child soldier living weapon also has memories of playing video games?

"The boxes say I'm level 1, it's worth a shot. Maybe whatever created this world drew on ideas from both of us."

He'll follow her advice, retreating back to the furthest point with view of a zombie umbral undead and peeking around that corner to shoot with the void pistol.

thwip

He's not very good at it, at first, but quickly familiarizes himself with the awkward grip

thwip

A few of the outermost undead notice the attacks and are drawn over, lumbering towards him. 

thwip

Critical hit!

Lesser umbral undead defeated!

Skill increased: Pistols lvl 1!

Level up!

He rises into the air for a moment, lifted by some unseen force and surrounded by a golden glow. A look of utter pleasure spreads over his face. 

"Whoa."

thwip

That display has drawn the attention of a few more undead, there's now a half-dozen moving towards them and the lead is over halfway there. 

“Was that a level up?” All that is missing is a little level up jingle.

“Run and gun. Don’t let them clump together and combine. Draw them away, the ones with… aggolo?” That sounds right. The memories of being online and playing games with americans as a teenager in her first life are vague though, and as an adult there was no time for childish things like that. And then she had a whole lifetime in a world without even television, much less the internet and online gaming.

 “I always thought videogames were childish, I should have played more of them if god is such a cheap hack that he rips them off for ideas to torture his victims.” She says the word god with such intense disdain and disgust. 

Joon follows her orders. He fires more beams of void at the approaching undead, with growing confidence, and retreats back at a jog when they get close.

"If we meet him we're going to have words," he agrees.

After another level-up, he starts pushing his luck more, waiting for them to get nearer before he retreats to get one or two more short-range shots in. 

“Don’t over extend.” She chastises Joon for getting cocky.

”Hmm you are getting better at aiming rather quickly… videogame powers? This seems entirely unfair that I do not also level. All I got was the power to make my sweat react like nitroglycerin.” First she gets stuck in the body of what feels like the tiniest girl in the world in a world of strong men. Now she doesn’t even have her mage powers and the other Isekai gets to level up. Is Being X trying to torture her with jelousy instead of fear? She isn’t nearly that petty.

”Speaking of speaking to god, I’d have expected him to come gloat by now…” Tanya mumbles to herself. Time hasn't stopped and Being X hasn’t talked to her through a zombie yet, he normally would have come gloat about what a dangerous situation he’s put her in by now and how praying to him is the one way to survive.

Joon looks like he wants to push back but follows her advice. 

Shortly after, she hears more sounds of movement, these coming from the level of the rooftops.

It's another member of the Fuchsia Coterie with a rifle, repositioning to a firing position on one of the taller buildings that would overlook the main road.

“Joon, gun, now.” She holds her hand open for him to hand it to her.

"Okay?" 

He hands it over without hesitation at the urgency in her voice, but he's unaware of why she needs it.

There is now one dead Fuschia sniper with a voided eye falling from an open window.

From when she is handed the gun it takes her barely a split second to bring the gun to bear, aim, and fire. It’s all over before Joon can even pull his hand away from handing her the gun.

“Huh. The accuracy isn’t bad. Hit almost exactly where I aimed it.”

Fuchsia Coterie Minion defeated!

Level up!

"What? You killed him!"

The shock of her shooting to kill without hesitation is drowned out by the rush of pleasure from the level up. That in itself is unsettling.

"...and I got XP for it."

He can feel the bile rising in his throat from the noise the body made on impact with the sidewalk.

"You keep the pistol for now. I'll bottle his soul."

She walks over and bends down to grab the Fuschia dudes rifle that fell down with him. After Joon is done sucking the soul out with the spike, she searches the body for ammunition with practised proficiency. “This was lucky. This is much better than a shitty pipe musket.”

She seems utterly unperturbed by the recent murder she committed or the fact she is manhandling a corpse to look for loot.

It's like she's a character being played by Reimer.

(He'd be the type to minmax a character by giving them an affiliation to some horrible black ops group so they can afford fire magic, too.)

Joon shuts his eyes for a long moment, but that just makes his character sheet show up again. He collects the dead man's soul instead.

The undead have not stopped approaching while this took place. They're starting to group closer together as well.

Oh no you do not get to merge like horrible Sentai Squad vehicles made of meat. They have picked off a lot of zombies near the edges of what used to be the combiner, but she does not actually know how many a group needs to have alive to be able to combine. She starts picking off the ones in the center with the void gun. Knowing the real rifle should only be used for emergencies. Gunshots would just draw more of them. “I don’t think we are going to clear enough of them to get to the bodies in the alley in time. Their timer might already be up. We should move.”

Joon agrees with that assessment. He'll borrow the machete if he can instead.

"Where else would people have died recently? The obvious places to go looting?"

Killing the Fuchsia Coterie may be the logical approach, but it's not one he's going to suggest just yet.

She actually hands him back the pistol for more practice. Plus, she has a real gun now. She checks it while they move. Its design has oddly unfamiliar lines to it but there really are only so many ways to design a gun that uses proper bullets. She figures out how to clear the chamber and gives it a brief inspection while they move.

 “The supply crate seems like a good place to start, I’ll lead you there.” Maybe there are still supplies. Or Fuchsia members who could become supplies.

There will be another rooftop rifleman, and two more with swords at ground level on the way. If they see Tanya first, they'll nod in recognition rather than attacking.

“Hmmm you wait down here. I’ll go ‘talk’ with rootop guy? Once the ranged threat is down the sword wielders can be mopped up.” She says casually to Joon. Not wanting to draw the Coterie’s attention.

She hands him the Machete. “Just in case. Plus my pipe will work fine against the living if I need to go into melee.”

"Okay." He'll duck into cover and stare at his character sheet, figuring out how to spend his stat points as a distraction from thinking about the murder she has planned.

She tries her best to casually go up to the roof with rifle guy. They are all part of the same mercenary company, nothing to see here. She also has a rifle so the roof makes total sense for her to also be on. Nothing to be suspicious of here.

She will try to approach the rooftop rifle guy with an acknowledging nod, as if she has something to talk to him about.

"Did you tumble in the fall? You were supposed to land by the crate and clear the area around it. We lost Ralf before we could get the weapons out. Where did you get that gun?"

He recognizes her, and he's not happy. 

“Oh, you know, got hit by the dream that skewers.” She says casually as she draws her rifle and shoots him.

She wouldn’t have known what to say to keep the conversation going long enough to get close for a silent kill.

”Joon!” She yells down into the street as a warning. Though the gunshot should be warning enough. But you never know with civilians.

The two with swords at ground level look up. 

"Have you spotted her?" One of them calls up. He sees that his buddy has fallen out of sight and Tanya is there instead. "Huh? Tanya? What are you doing up there?"

Meanwhile Joon is leaning around the corner, aiming the void pistol carefully, either waiting for her or hesitating to kill a living person.

“Joon you have a gun you idiot. They only have swords!” Fucking civilians. She takes aim and shoots one of the ones on the ground. If she has to kill all three by herself without Joon putting any effort in, she will be annoyed.

Killing all three by herself wouldn’t be hard, but it’s rude to leave all the work to one person in a group project, even civilians learn that at school.

The other turns and runs. 

"Turncoat!" He shouts.

thwip

At that, Joon shoots. It catches the minion in the lower back, not anywhere vital enough to kill but he's now leaving a trail of blood as he runs for the cover of a wrecked car.

“His aim was definitely better against the zombies…”

She will shoot the fleeing guy in the leg to slow him down for Joon. “They were killing everyone else who dropped. That includes you Joon! They would kill you if they could! Shoot him!” She yells down. 

She is being so kind to have him do his first kill in such a low stakes environment. Not even a single artillery explosion is happening around him. This is so much easier a first kill situation than the men she trained in her old unit got for their first time.

He takes the shot. 

Fuchsia Coterie Minion defeated!

No level up this time.

Three more of the Coterie have their attention drawn to the scene by the gunfire and shouts, each on the rooftops and armed with rifles.

More of the undead at ground level are also attracted to the noise.

She starts firing at the other rooftop riflemen. Just her luck that there’s more of them. She is shooting to kill, but even if they manage to get in cover that will still keep them from firing on Joon who is exposed down there. “Drag a body into cover and collect the soul! I’ll cover!”

That he can do.

For the moment, their focus is on Tanya instead. Through the rifle's sights she can see the angry twist on their faces from her apparent betrayal. With three of them firing on her from different directions, she's in a difficult position. Bullets are whistling past or ricocheting off the rooftop, and it's a matter of moments before she's hit.

The closest is only one rooftop away from her. The others are separated by the wider expanse of the main road. 

The undead are starting to clump together as they leap at the walls as well, trying to reach the sources of noise. It looks like the Coterie held off on using their firearms before for good reason.

What she would not give for the ability to run an enhancement spell right now. She would be able to duck out and shoot all of them before they had time to react if she was running her usual suite of enhancement spells. Instead she has to take potshots and duck back into cover using her normal human limits. Yuck.

She has her gun, the dead guys gun, and his ammo too. She can probably maintain this state of affairs for a while at least.

Can she get a clean shot on any of them? They don’t need to be out of cover long, just have to be out of cover to fire at her at the same time as she leans out to take a shot. You only need to get lucky with timing once per enemy if you are as good a shot as she is.

Joon better hurry up before the zombies surround the buildings.

The one nearest her? Yes, she can manage that.

"Got the soul! And I have an idea, bunker down and stop shooting for a minute!"

He runs past the undead massing at the base of her building, shoots one with the void pistol and slashes another in the back with the machete, then carries on running.

Her shooting at them is the only thing keeping the riflemen busy and not shooting at Joon! Is he an idiot? But at least she has more effective cover with one of the shooters dead. This had better be a good plan, if he gets himself killed, she will kill him.

Hey, according to the game layer he's 50% smarter than he was before!

(So far he's put a point into each of the primary stats, to test how much of an effect they each have)

He skids around the corner and out of the line of sight of the riflemen across the street before they can switch targets, drawing off around half of the undead that were trying to climb up and reach her. She can hear the thwip of the void pistol as he continues thinning their numbers on the way.

Across the field, the continued fire of the fuchsia gunmen gives their own pursuers a shared intent. The bodies clamber over each other and rise into the air, taking on larger humanoid forms. Amalgamated hands with each finger made up of a corpse's limb reach onto the edges of the buildings, pulling the greater umbral undead up.

Fuchsia Coterie minion defeated!

Fuchsia Coterie minion defeated!

THAT STUPID FUCKING IDIOT! THE COMBINER ZOMBIES ARE WAY WORSE THAN TWO GUYS WITH GUNS AND LOOSE ZOMBIES! The only thing keeping her from yelling at Joon is not wanting to get the zombies attention. Hell, if gunshots weren’t a noise problem she would shoot next to his head just to truly display how annoyed she is!

She drags roof guys corpse, with difficulty due to her small size, with her so they can grab its soul as she goes back down to street level. She hopes the zombie megazords stay busy with those two corpses that JOON WASTED. Can’t collect their souls now!

Down at street level she'll find him fighting off the remaining undead he drew away from her, void pistol in one hand and machete in the other. His movements are noticeably smoother than they were before. That he's using the machete at all is a clear sign that he's not just trying to eliminate them with as much safety and caution as possible.

Moron, moron moron moron moron. Once they get out of here she is beating discipline into him. He will be getting the full 203rd mage battalion treatment. In fact her men from the 203rd if they saw the training she will put that moron through they would count themselves lucky she was so gentle with them in comparison!

”Joon! Soul jar!” She shout-whispers at him, pointing at the corpse she is dragging.

"I hate to say it, but you could've pushed the body off the roof instead of dragging him. It's not like he's going to get any more dead."

He stabs another undead, then hurries over to spike the body and extract the soul. 

"The one you shot with the void pistol, the one on the street I bottled, and this guy makes three. There's the one on the rooftop opposite, and the other one on the street back there for another two. If we can find the bodies across the main road, that's all the souls we need to complete A- Cypress' quest."

“Just one problem you blithering idiot! Now there are two mega zombies! Should we just ask politely for them to let us near the bodies? Were you dropped as a child? Had a fondness for licking lead off the walls? Was your father a literal rock and you inherited all your intelligence from him? That was your idea? To increase the threat!” She swears if gunshots wouldn't attract the mega zombies she would shoot right by his stupid fucking head. Scare some sense into him.

"Sorry I panicked because people were shooting at us and I didn't want you to die!"

Joon shoots another undead to punctuate the point but it doesn't go down. Perhaps with the help of a point in SOC, he adds:

"Would you have been able to take out all three of them? I didn't know that. What should I have done?"

He manages to only sound a little petulant. The next thwip hits the heart.

“Probably yes I could have! You know what I definitely can’t kill?” She gestures to the buildings with the voltron zombies on them. “Those! If they ever notice us, we die way more certainly than facing any number of goons with guns.”

She rubs her face in exasperation. “I at least expect you to not make things more dangerous for us! If we survive I will beat some tactical thinking into you.” Tanya is being very literal about the beating.

”This isn’t my first time being sent to a new world, so trust me when I tell you that dealing with Gods petty vengeance requires you to think! So if we get out of here I am cramming everything I learned at the war college into your empty empty head whether you like it or not.” 

"Fine! Gunmen are easy, big zombies are hard. Maybe I'll get a skill from your lessons." If they're any good, he leaves unsaid.

Despite their interpersonal friction, collecting the other three souls on this side of the street goes smoothly, as does reaching the airdropped crate.

The parachute fabric has already been lifted aside and the side of the crate opened. It's been emptied of firearms and ammunition, but a sword and a knife remain uncollected. 

And there's one other part of the delivery, useless to anyone else in the Coterie...

Ahhhh so that’s why the Coterie people expected her to take care of the zombies for them. Bottles of ethanol, of diluted sulfuric acid, and of compressed hydrogen gas. All able to be slotted into a contraption with a nozzle on it. With just the amount of control she had over igniting small explosions on her finger, she can tell much bigger flames and reactions being controlled would be very effective against crowds of undead.

It’s no mage rifle, but this is also nice.

After looting the bodies and the crate they have a rifle each for Tanya and Joon and one to bring back to Cypress or to use for parts. Tanya gets the chemical sprayer and knife, and Joon gets the void pistol and the sword to replace the beat up machete.

That is a decent loadout for each of them even by Tanya standards.

"The rifle is a different skill so I'm not going to be as good with it to start with." Despite having actually used a rifle before all this, out on hunting trips. "Training it will have to wait until we're somewhere with fewer enemies around. Do you think you could take out one of the mega zombies with that kit?"

“No, moron. Terrible idea. If you want to farm exp stick to trash mobs like regular zombies. Don’t tempt trouble when you don’t need to. Even if that wasn’t the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard and I could take a mega zombie, the rooftop bodies have probably been raised by now. Why would we even go in that direction? We are taking the long way around back to the mechanics shop and staying faaaaaaar away from those things.”

They do still need two more souls, and he would really like to have them in hand before they get back to the mechanic's where the three of them would each be faced with the temptation of killing the other two to complete the set. 

In the meantime, he follows Tanya's instructions obediently and promptly, doing his best to convince her that he's worth more as backup than as fuel.

But then, on the circuitous route back, they find the trail of another mega zombie. It's gone, but it has left behind two corpses of ordinary convicts who must have crossed its path.

The bodies are fresh. Fresh enough not to have risen yet. Fresh enough that touching the spike to them draws out their souls, not yet dispersed to wherever they go. 

"...I put a point into each of my stats, to see what they do. This must be what LUK does."

Quest Complete: Seven Bells for Seven Hells!

“Huh, useful.”

"You have the souls? All seven of them?"

"Two scavenged, five from... the Fuchsia Coterie? And here's a rifle for you."

"The gunfire was audible from here. What happened?"

She reveals the soulcycle, a red motorbike with a similarly bulbous engine to the cars outside, and transfers the jar of glowing souls to its tank.

"Give me your report, and help me bolt a sidecar on."

“First hostile rifleman was taken by stealth, these void guns are great for that. Tried getting close enough to another rifleman for a silent takedown by deception but he got suspicious, so had to shoot him using the rifle taken from the first. Two of his sword wielding friends on the ground were easy to take out. Joon took out one of them himself.” She leaves out how she had to hand him practically gift wrapped to Joon and how Joon had to be pushed to finish him. She doesn’t need Cypress to think they are less useful to her. “The gunfire brought the attention of 3 more riflemen on the rooftops, I took out one and two undead conglomerations attracted by the gunfire took out the other two.” She also leaves out that the mega zombies were Joons fault too. Though she gives him a look when she says it. “We made our way to the Fuchsia Coteries supply crate that I spotted while dropping. Looted a chemical sprayer that I assume was for the previous inhabitant of this body and some better melee options. We scavenged two more souls from non Fuchsia dead found along the way.”

Tanya has to resist the urge to stand at attention while giving a report.

"When I sent you out there, I'd been expecting at least one of you to die. You've greatly exceeded my expectations."

"With seven souls for power, the weapons you procured, and the disruption you've made to the Coterie's cohesion, we can punch through Comfort along the main road. Driving in shifts, we could reach Silmar City in under two days."

She turns to Tanya.

"The alternative, which I mention only because of your military experience, is to follow the rules of the Trial by Adversity and head for where the Host awaits us instead. A stint in their service would earn a legal amnesty, provided you survive the 'accidents' that would be arranged if another of the Coterie survives to report on your apparent betrayal."

“How highly do you rate the chances of survival for your plan of heading to Silmar city.  Is there a way out there? I’m not afraid of ‘accidents’ but I also have to take Joons chances into account. ” Honestly a stint in another military wouldn’t bother her. But she has Joon to keep alive now. Whatever being X plans to do with him she will foil it. Plus she finally has someone else she can talk to about this. Not being able to tell anyone or else be thought crazy was very stressful in her second life.

(A loyalty tracker might notice a tick upwards)

"Silmar City was the target of the attack that formed the Risen Lands, it’s awash with the walking dead, and there was once a secret facility there dedicated to the study of necrotic field effect, which I believe contains a key we can use to teleport ourselves to safety. With the equipment you've acquired, I give us... seventy-five percent odds of escape, assuming no further outside opposition."

“Joon? Thoughts? Teleportation means freedom, but I’m fine with a few years in the military if you think that is safer.” It is his his life being risked here. She likes those odds for Silmar but maybe the game powers change the calculus for him.

If this was a game he was running...

"How do you know about the key? Is it connected to the mission that brought the Fuchsia Coterie here?"

"Cypress was a pseudonym. I am Princess Amaryllis Penndraig, tenth of her name, Special Liaison on Existential Emergencies for the Kingdom of Anglecynn, long may it stand."

"My position gave me clearance to learn of the secret facility. Political enemies had me sent here, with the Fuchsia Coterie dispatched to ensure my death. They've made the crucial mistake of underestimating a Penndraig."

"Once we get out of here, I will continue to need competent and reliable allies, and I will have access to more resources to reward you with." 

This could be a shortcut to the top! To safety! To a political position! She’d pick helping a princess even with way worse odds. Tanya is sick of being stuck with frontline duty as a soldier! “Ally of a princess beats being a military grunt. I vote Silmar.”

Yeah, this is clearly the intended route.

"Silmar City it is."

They depart a few minutes later, the soulcycle crackling into motion as the mechanism to harvest the energy of the souls reaches ignition and sets the wheels turning. 

"That tank is the best place for them," Amaryllis says, noticing Joon's discomfort with the concept. "A soul that disperses naturally instead of evaporating in a bottle goes to the hells. There are nine thousand of them, each more unpleasant than the last."

Tanya is the lightest of the trio and also the best shot, so she gets the sidecar. It's a rattling ride, with no suspension beyond the limited cushioning of the old tires themselves. Joon is stuck on the back, clinging to Amaryllis, which makes an even worse position to try firing from.

"I'll take your word from it," he says, then mutters something about 'grimdark' under his breath.

With the chaos sown in the ranks of the Fuchsia Coterie, a couple of the foot soldiers sighted along the way but neither ready to do more than snap off a few inaccurate shots in their direction as they pass, their exit from Comfort proceeds smoothly.

Up to a point. 

With the addition of the sidecar, the soulcycle is loud on the cracked surfacing of the unmaintained roads, and only a little faster than a sprinter would be. They attract a growing train of undead behind them, and as the chase continues those undead begin to flow together into larger and faster forms.

"Tanya -" Amaryllis begins, voice tense.

She is taking shots at component zombies of the big one with her rifle, hitting hearts more often than not. But she is holding off on the chemical sprayer until the zombie conglomeration gets big enough, and close enough, that she can properly end the threat in one go. “Wait for it….”

"It's getting close!" Joon says, not very helpfully.

He's using the void pistol, easier to shoot behind them while keeping a secure grip, and looking back at the road ahead to lean into Amaryllis' turns in the seconds it takes to recharge. 

Soon, the combined shape is visibly humanoid, racing after them in something between a crawl and a low run, tossing aside the wrecked cars that they have to steer the bike around. It's closing fast.

"Void bombs are in the sidecar if your chemicals don't work. I'll tell you when to arm and throw so we can put some cover between us and the blast. If you're going to burn it, do it while we have the lead to spare."

She waits until it is dangerously close. “Verbrennen” She commands it to burn in Imperial, yanking the trigger on her sprayer and dousing behind them with a thick mist of ethanol. She commands the oxygen to ignite and there is a loud ‘fwwwoomth!’ From the initial ignition and then a much louder explosion as she uses her new magic to drive the reaction to burn faster and hotter and bigger. The rush of magical sensory feedback from feeling the fire grow so quickly sends her cackling madly, in the same way dipping into the mana from Being X’s cursed orb once did. “Oh this is a much better power than I thought it was! Burn!”

The flames burn hot and fast and practically core the zombie voltron before very suddenly burning through the whole cloud of fuel and going out.

Cohesion disrupted, the greater umbral undead collapses. The undead whose hearts weren't burned to ash are now just a wave of individual bodies, flung tumbling across the road in a wave of flaming flesh from the lingering momentum.

Greater Umbral Undead Defeated!

Quest Complete: Comfort Zone!

Level Up!

Amaryllis had been looking over her shoulder to judge the effectiveness of Tanya's magic, and had been giving her an approving nod when Joon rises halfway out of his seat wreathed in a golden glow.

"We're going to figure out what you are. Both of you."

“He does that. Happened during the soul hunt too. Unfair that I don’t get that power. Wonder what gods scheme is for giving it to only him.”

"God, singular? There are five gods of Aerb, none of which have domains that would cover what you've described. Is the situation on Earth different?"

For now she's humoring them about their impression of Earth being real rather than a shared delusion. It seems like a more productive approach. 

Joon would prefer not to talk religion right now and so starts infodumping about the game layer instead.

"It matches up with the kinds of games I'd play with my friends back on Earth. The level-ups for defeating enemies or completing quests, allowing me to become more powerful. There's three superstats made up of three substats each, plus luck, and putting points into them makes me better at the things they cover. Then there's skills, which level up separately with use up to a cap based on the stats, and I can also see how loyal you are to me. For Tanya, that screen gave me a biography of her too, maybe because her score is higher."

"This world... A lot of it is taken from my games. My having the game layer is probably for the same reason, whatever that reason is."

“I don’t seem to have anything like that, or any connection to this world other than the backstory for the previous inhabitant Joon described being slightly familiar. Like being a child soldier. 

The thing pretending to be the ‘god’ of earth claims to be singular.” She makes heavy airquotes around the word god. “This might be Joons first time changing worlds, but it isn’t mine. I met and angered something claiming to be the singular god of earths major religions, he sent me to another, much more dangerous earth. Though from what I can tell me and Joon share our original earth, the history we talked about matches.” She looks over to Joon to make sure. “Did 9/11 happen in your world?”

"Sorry, you met God?"

“Something pretending to be him.” She makes it very clear she doesn’t buy Being X’s claims.

”I used to work in HR at a big company and an angry employee I fired pushed me off a train platform. When I died, time stopped and ‘god’ came to complain about how nobody believed in him anymore. I kind of assumed it was a hallucination brought on by blood loss and oxygen deprivation as I died, so I called him the devil, couldn’t be god because problem of evil, then berated him for doing such a bad job and designing such a bad system that he couldn’t meet his workplace goals.It felt silly that a all supposedly all powerful god would fail at basic HR problems. I said something like ‘what do people need god for? All their basic needs are met, and there is no magic or miracles to show you exist, how can you blame them’. So ‘god’ said if threats to survival and magic and miracles are what brought on faith, I would be reincarnated somewhere were I would need to rely on god, and this was to teach me piety. Something like that anyway. So I wake up as a baby in a 1910’s version of germany where magic is real. I join the army. Get constantly taunted and threatened by this ‘god’ who I called… I guess the translation with be Being X, just to deny him the satisfaction.” She flips off the sky again.

”Then he manipulates things so I’m ordered to test this dangerous experimental magical orb that only works when I pray to him, So if I didn’t want it to explode during use I’d have to kiss his ass verbally. Then he manipulated fate to throw bigger and bigger threats at me that forced me to pray and use the orb to survive. He’d show up to gloat most of the times he did it too. I am honestly surprised Being X hasn’t shown up to be all ‘blah blah blah do you see how great I am, how you should worship me and then you shall be saved’. I went through the great war without giving in, being taken to a new world a second time certainly won’t be enough to make me give into that bastard.” Telling someone finally is such a load off her chest. And it’s no crazier than Joons Isekai and videogame powers. So she won’t be locked up in an asylum like she worried would happen in her second life if she told anyone. 

"I thought you were being figurative this whole time... I'm with you on the problem of evil. If God's an asshole, that would explain so much."

"If your deity does present himself here, tell me immediately. I'd say that qualifies as an existential emergency."

Something like a malevolent Pathist that can also send people to different worlds? It sounds like a horrifying foe, but Uther defeated worse. If it's had decades to work on breaking Tanya and yet to succeed, that implies limits on its ability to understand or influence people.

(And if it exists, its transfer of people to other worlds on death can be scaled, and it can be negotiated with by someone more diplomatic than Tanya? Almost everyone on Aerb would gladly offer worship to any entity that could promise an alternative to oblivion or the hells. Not that she'll share any of those plans while she needs the volatile dream-skewered child soldier on her side.)

“The fact this world has 9000 hells doesn’t even surprise me. He craves to be called good and all powerful, and yet, all those hells. It’s in character for him at least.” She turns to Joon. “So how do you think you pissed Being X off enough to get sent here? The thing about punching that guy for talking about something being in gods plan? He probably is that petty.”

"...Maybe unlike you, I was raised to believe there was a god. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent."

He looks to Amaryllis to see if she needs those defined. She nods in comprehension.

"I was ten when I realized the incompatibility. Lying awake in bed, having my crisis of faith," listening to Mom and Dad yelling at each other and hearing only silence when I was praying about it, "thinking about all every shitty thing happening in the world, all the pain that you could experience firsthand or watch on TV or read about without end, and the platitudes that god 'has a plan' or 'works in mysterious ways'. I was convinced there was a god, and the part that seemed weakest was the goodness because someone had to create the world."

"I grew up, and stopped believing. My best friend -- died, a stupid pointless accident and a drawn-out anticlimactic end, and all those same platitudes came out again. I... didn't deal with it well."

“Well, I’ve dealt with him before. If Being X wants to mess with either of us, I’ll make sure to foil his stupid little manipulations of fate. And for some reason you have videogame powers. I didn’t play all that many games growing up but in some of them the final boss you killed was a god. And we are working for Amaryllis, a princess, instead of the germans who were destined to lose the great war. This situation could be muuuuch worse. We can deal with this.“

Honestly, for a plot by Being X, this isn’t even that terrible. Sure losing her entire career and reputation as a soldier, her men in the 203rd, and mage powers is a setback, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being reborn as a baby again. Plus this time she has a fellow victim with his own powers.

(Loyalty will tick up again with tanya realising this.)

Weird, how Loyalty for Tanya ticks up more easily and more when she's talking. Amaryllis' increases have been fewer and in response to things he's said. Is it a bidirectional measure? He doesn't feel three times as loyal to Tanya. 

Game mechanics and their implications are a welcome distraction. He'll expound on them all the way to Silmar City.

Silmar City is a large settlement next to the river Sarkan, appearing matte and dull when viewed from a distance. Its skyline is dominated by the half-dozen stone corporate castles, with the twenty-foot high stone walls that are typical of cities built during troubled times on Aerb.

Wide roads lead into the city, but they meet thick metal gates glowing with sigils.

"Those will block most forms of force," Amaryllis says. "Shit. If all of them are closed, we'll need another way in. And the millions of undead inside won't have had the chance to diffuse out into the fields around us."

“If I still had my mage powers I’d be able to fly each of you over the wall. Fire magic seems a poor replacement.”

She might be a little bitter.

"Could we get through the gates with void weapons, if those don't count as force? Does the sigil protect against chemical reactions?"

Fire magic covering chemical reactions in general feels like the kind of worldbuilding he'd do, a name that stuck from when the magic was discovered back when burning was the main type of reaction anyone knew about. Then again, it's the kind of misleading name that would be unhelpful for his players. Maybe he'd translation convention it, have the word for 'chemistry' in the fantasy language literally mean 'fire' because fire magic determined the bounds of what they considered chemistry. 

"A quarter-inch of metal per cycle, several seconds to cycle, these gates are usually at least half a foot thick... We'd be standing here for several minutes just to make a single hole all the way through. The sigil is anchored to the whole structure so we couldn't break it any easier that way."

"But could we reach the hinges that way? That's how my players always did it. Ended up carting away the adamantium doors as the best loot in the dungeon."

"Those hinges will be heavy-duty. Tanya, do you have enough chemicals left for corroding something like that? Are you able to steer a reaction while it's beyond your line of sight?"

“I have some diluted sulphuric acid, but not enough for anything like this. I feel like I could make it melt faster with the magic but I’d probably still need a lot of acid at higher concentrations to get through something like this. I made the ethanol burn hotter and faster but I still did require fuel for effects that large. Also my range doesn’t feel all that big. I get stronger feedback and control the closer it is.”

Tanya’s fire magic powers are pretty new, to her at least, maybe not to the previous inhabitant, but melting through giant doors or walls doesn’t seem like something she could do. Just based one what it’s felt like using it so far.

"You wouldn't have to melt the whole gate, just the hinges keeping it attached to the wall and in our way. Or even just the parts of the hinges that hold the pin in, so the pin drops out."

"Then again, it could be a different design to the one I'm thinking of... It doesn't cost us much to try one hole, to see what the situation is, though."

Amaryllis gets to work, repositioning the bike so she can stand on the saddle for the height to reach the presumed location of the hinge and starts punching through with the void pistol.

thwip

"We do have some void bombs unused, since your fire magic took out the greater umbral undead effectively. Another option would be to push one of those through a hole to detonate on the other side. More of a gamble as we'd have less feedback on the results."

thwip

"Something you should understand for when we are back in civilization is that void effects are banned across the Empire. Each use draws the Void Beast slightly closer. During the peak of industrial use, the arrival timescales by some estimates were down to a century."

thwip

(Quest Accepted: Tragedy of the Commons - Following the discovery of the Void Beast, void weapons and tools were made illegal under international law, usable only with expensive permits or in situations that called for it. For a time, this was sufficient. Now the Void Beast stirs once again, and imperial regulatory schemes won’t be enough.)

“Make me some handholds so I can climb closer up to the hinge. Feedback and control is stronger the closer I am.”

So collective action problems trouble Joon but not Tanya. Good to know. She gets to work.

Soon there are two sets of shallow handholds in place, cut out of the slightly less dense stone of the gate housing to save on shots.

Tanya climbs up relatively easily and drips the bottle of acid around the pins holding the hinges in place. The feedback isn’t as much of rush as when sensing fire, but being able to sense the metal corrode as the acid gets to work is interesting. She tries to make it melt faster and more efficiently by willing it to just react with the metal, and not get wasted reacting to the air. It sorta works. Soon you can hear the metal fatigue groaning.

She throws a thumbs up down to Joon and Amaryllis.

"It worked? Now for the difficult part. We need to knock the gate down somehow, and when we do we'll have to either punch through the undead on the other side to a part of the city with a lower concentration before more are drawn in by the noise, or else retreat and wait for the natural dispersion to spread them out again. The first option risks immediate injury, the second lowers our odds of success for later from hunger if we can't find anything edible outside the walls."

She climbs back down. “I feel like the pins are as worn as they will get, they were making rather distressed groaning noises so I think if they are making stress sounds that should be weak enough. Now to pop the door…. Shaped charge?” The explosion that took out the mega zombie felt great through the magical feedback. She wants to do that again.

“If we had fuel we could burn all the ones that rushed through the door…. Doesn't have to be alcohol, just anything flammable would do.” Now the calculation is if wasting time and calories getting fuel for a big fire is worse than wasting time and calories waiting for the horde to disperse. Or if they should just push through.

"That would be an advanced application of fire magic, from what I've read on the subject. You're confident you could accomplish it?"

"There's little to burn around here, other than the long grasses, and we don't have a way to confine particulate for a dust explosion."

"There's all the ammunition we picked up, that's got gunpowder in it. Disassemble the cartridges and get it all packed in one place for the shaped charge, save your fuel for the undead?"

Like in Tintin!

“I’ve got two bottles of hydrogen gas and one and a bit of ethanol. Shaped would be a relative thing, I wouldn’t want to stand right next to it. But definitely I can make a big enough explosion to rock the door rather strongly. You underestimate how strong hydrogen explosions can be when you can manipulate perfect air to fuel ratios using magic. The worn pins should snap and the door should fall right out.”

She knew demo men in her unit who would give their right hand for the amount of control she just instinctually now has over stuff while it burns. And she has just enough chemistry knowledge and training with demolitions to make use of it properly.

“But then I would be mostly out of fuel, so not as useful if we run into the undead conglomerations.”

She turns to Joon. “I’d rather save most of the ammo. We should still use the hydrogen mostly.”

They get to work. Joon's share of the casings are opened, the gunpowder collected in case the hydrogen isn't sufficient, and his rifle left behind. 

"The guns will likely be a liability inside, with how the sound carries," Amaryllis cautions.

Joon considers suggesting that they use the sound of gunfire outside to deliberately provoke a greater undead into forming and punching down the gates for them from the inside. He decides against voicing that idea, given how vehement Tanya was the last time. 

The void bombs are also redistributed, one each, with strict instructions on their use.

Amaryllis and Joon are ready on the soulcycle. As soon as Tanya knocks the door down and burns the undead immediately inside, they'll ride by for her to jump in the sidecar and then punch through into the city towards Sorian's Castle.

Tanya gets serious as she rigs up the bottles to release the gas along with a decent amount of the collected gunpowder Joon donated. Better safe than sorry. If the first explosion fails, then a smaller explosion wont do anything, so better to just gamble it all on one combined boom.

She sets the gas to release then runs like hell towards a bend in the wall, still close-by the door, but with some cover, just in case. Safety first.

Once the Gas and air should have mixed to an ideal amount, she shoots at the bottle with the rifle. It hits the metal container and sparks.

And with Tanya using her magic to contain the explosion in mostly one direction, and pushing the oxygen and hydrogen to burn as efficiently as possible. It sounds and feels like gods hand just smacked the earth. Even around a corner it makes Tanya's ears ring and she can feel a pressure wave pass over her.

The hinge pins instantly snap and the door is blown inward with an insanely loud crash.

That worked way better than Tanya expected! Though thankfully she was in cover because she controlled the direction less well than she would have liked. She would probably have gotten hurt standing much closer.

So, shes good at exciting big explosions to be stronger, not so good at control at those scales. Noted.

She clips the full bottle of ethanol into her sprayer and waits for the first wave of zombies.

She doesn't need to wait very long!

They surge towards the now-opened gate and almost immediately start to amalgamate as they squeeze in towards the gap.

“Burn!” The first wave gets doused in Ethanol mist and ignited. She dumps most of the bottle onto the horde. She actually tries to slow down the reaction this time so they burn longer and the zombies massing behind them might catch fire by coming in contact with the burning mass.

She runs to intercept the soulcycle. 

They bowl over multiple undead as she hops in the sidecar, Joon swinging his sword to cut through limbs that might jam the wheels, losing momentum with each impact. For a moment it looks like they might get stuck and have to abandon the vehicle, but then the bike tilts, the wheels make contact again, and they shoot forward.

The sidecar has taken several impacts, from scraping against the edge of the gate and slamming into bodies, and now the joints connecting it to the rest of the bike are creaking and bending as they rattle down the streets of the city.

Well, that is worrying. She prepares to jump onto the bike proper if the sidecar detaches.

It lurches, one of the struts breaking as they hit a pothole. A moment later, the giant hand of another greater undead slams out from an adjoining street, splashing individual bodies in their direction.

"Unanimity - that must be a permanent one!"

"Ive got maybe three quarters of a bottle of ethanol left split amongst two bottles!" She tries to snipe supporting zombie bodies from the legs of the conglomerate zombie. HItting hearts on individual zombies on the conglomeration while it runs are some of the hardest shots shes ever taken while unaided by enhancement spells. She misses her Norden made SMG. Spray and pray seems much more likely to randomly hit hearts than having to aim for moving hearts in a mega zombie.

It's not enough. The main body is too far for a void bomb to be thrown or her sprayer to reach it. One of the flung bodies lands in their path, jolting the bike, getting tangled in the wheels.

And then thousands of arrows shower down from above. 

2048 of them, to be precise.

Some of the undead are pierced through the heart, but even those that are not are impeded by the sudden impalement.

"Over here!"

Tanya won't look a gifthorse in the mouth (Well, she would actually check a gifted horses teeth. But that is not relevant to the meaning of the saying). "Let's go that way!"

"Joon, make room!" She gets ready to jump from the sidecar, It feels like it will detach at any moment.

Joon hacks down at the undead messing up the wheels with the moment's respite the volley brings. There's very little space behind him, and clinging on is more like a piggyback.

The sidecar breaks off a moment later, continuing on without them on its own wheels to bump harmlessly into an undead while Amaryllis turns the bike towards their rescuer.

"Ditch it! Through here!"

Their rescuer is running away from the biggun on foot, and darts down an alleyway and then through an unlocked door into one of the buildings.

"If she wanted us dead she could have let the combiner get us!" Tanya races after the blonde without hesitiation. Snapping off occasional shots behind her as she runs. to keep the zombies at the head of the pack off of the team.

Joon takes a bad hit from another flung undead, bone breaking with a crack before he can run down the alleyway, only for another level-up from Tanya's kills to heal him moments later.

They're not just led through one building. The woman, blonde with pointed ears and unmarked fatigues, leads them vaulting over desks and through corridors, around corners and through more doors that she pulls open or slams through on the first try each time. She must know this place like the back of her hand, or else she's incredibly lucky.

Their narrow winding path is working to escape the biggun, the pursuing undead limited by the tight confines, their ability to form up confounded by the short sight lines.

For once (with the exception of flying) Tanya's small size is to her advantage. Ducking through doorways, making sharp turns, and jumping over furniture is much easier for her than for tall and more muscular Joon and the Princess. 

She actually deliberately slows down in places to shoot or stab zombies that catch up to the group. Fire while indoors is so many levels of bad idea she does not even try it.

A few turns later, she abruptly slows to a relaxed stroll, stretching with her bow. 

"You're welcome."

"Thanks for the assist. Nice trick with the arrows." That arrow barrage was good enough to almost match an artillery spell. Fire magic has been useful but she wants something ranged like that.

"Yes, you have our gratitude."

Unmarked fatigues, entad bow (invested?), no allies visible, no immediate sign of recognition...

"What brings you to Silmar City?"

"Looting! Violation of imperial law, that, but if the empire is going to just let all this stuff go to rot, then I don’t consider it the worst crime a person can commit to steal some of it away. You three look well-resourced, did you have the same idea?"

An actual looter would show more concern about competition over the limited non-perishable valuables left in the city. Out here, there's nothing to stop a dispute over spoils turning violent. Is her elf luck guiding her through the conversation? She wishes she had some idea of how heritable that is.

"As it happens, we are. There's a specific item we're seeking in Sorian's Castle. If you were willing to guide us, anything else we come across would be yours."

"Well, there it gets a little complicated. I'm already signed on with another crew of smugglers, you see, and while we may have our differences in opinion they'd be very upset if I were to leave them in the lurch in the middle of a job. Worse, I suspect they might be looking for that mystery item of yours as well."

She tilts her head, inspecting Tanya's roots to see if the pink color is natural. While her tone is regretful, her posture suggests she's angling for a better offer.

Blonde roots! If not for the rounded human ears, Tanya might also have a bit of a fae look to her. Her callsign was Fairy for a reason.

Tanya is politely pretending not to look at the elves ears. This world is suddenly a lot more fantasy themed than she thought, if it has elves as well as zombies.

"Hmmm, unfortunate." unfortunate for the other team that is. If her opponents are anything near the same level as the Fuchsia Coterie. They shouldn't be too much trouble.

"Their target, is it something that we could split or share?"

Tanya is far from the first human to be awkward about the whole half-elf situation.

"Who knows? They do, of course, but they've been awfully vague about the whole thing. One of the points of contention between us."

Hint hint.

"We're only a few blocks away from where our group agreed to rendezvous, so you'll be able to ask them yourself if you like. See if they're any more candid with you."

Tanya turns to Amaryllis. "Cypress. You think they have anything to do with..." She points at her hair colour.
Wouldn't do to reveal things to this stranger, even if she saved them. Tanya hopes that is vague enough to obfuscate things. She doesn't doubt at all that Amaryllis will get what shes talking about though.

"It would be surprising if they didn't. Exclusion zones like this shouldn't see much activity under normal circumstances."

She turns to the half-elf. Thinking about killing her to deny her team knowledge of their arrival and the key's location in Sorian's Castle would be counterproductive if her luck would give her enough forewarning to escape and report back to them. 

"The item they're after is likely a teleportation key. Instant transportation to a touchstone or any location previously visited by the bearer, with a two-hour cooldown and a maximum of four other passengers."

"That must be our exit plan. There's five of us in total, so that limit wouldn't be a problem, except they've also been complaining about a new side mission involving picking someone up from here..."

"And they have been keeping the mission info from you... Bad intel should be a criminal offence as it is. So you can probably guess who they would leave behind..." The implications are pretty clear for elf girl, and what would you know, their team still has space for another 2 to teleport. The incentives for elf girl to turn to their side are very obvious if the offer is made. Amaryllis is the Princess and the paymaster though. So staffing decisions should be up to her.

"You know, I think you'd get along with Tova, she has very similar opinions about not getting the information you need. Not that she saw fit to share any with me. She's a bone mage, there to heal up Carter, the tank. He's soul-linked to take hits for her, as well as Quills the bladebound and Leonold the tattoo mage. No such link for me."

"Now, the place we're supposed to meet is between here and your corporate castle. Since they didn't bother to tell me who or what exactly they're looking for, I say it's their own fault if I decide to take the scenic route and show you to your destination first."

"Maybe once we've got the key I'll shoot them a message arrow to let them know I've made my own exit arrangements." She evidently relishes the thought of that petty payback.

Tanya shoots Amaryllis a look. Still up to her.

"To Sorian's Castle, then."

The corporate castle's first line of defense is a large gatehouse with a portcullis, but it has been broken through in one corner to allow passage. On the other side, there is a courtyard before the tower itself, infested with undead that have not exited through that gap.

"I'd suggest making a loud distraction to lead them away, but that might just end up drawing enough from surrounding areas to cause big ones to form."

"Another barrage into the courtyard would thin them out, but it would need to be an arcing shot to make enough arrows and that would be visible to my old colleagues. They're the ones you need to be worried about, in my opinion."

"If we had rope I could climb to one of the windows and lower it down for you. As it is, we may have to cut our way through. How does the interior compare?"

"No better than the outside, and my bow won't be much help inside. There's a reason I'm expecting the good loot to be left here."

"Probably a terrible Idea to start a fire indoors. should I use up all my fuel here?" Tanya's fire magic seems even less useful than magical bow skills when indoors. Being in a burning building sucks. Not something she is eager to experience yet again.

"Good thinking, assuming we won't need it when we get out of here." He's thinking of the vials of chemicals like spell slots, and his group was always averse to spending the last of those.

"Do we have time for a quick swordplay lesson? It could make a difference."

"Is that supposed to be innuendo, or is he really enough of a rank amateur that he'd benefit?"

"Juniper is a very fast learner."

"Look, you don't need to help or spectate, you can snipe some z- undead through the portcullis for a few minutes, we'd probably ask you to do that before we enter anyway."

"I'm not bad with a cavalry saber, It was part of the ceremonial uniform. I'm sure some lessons transfer over despite the difference in sword types." It's always good when subordinates take the initiative to pick up new skills.

"Thank you! Am-" He cuts himself off before giving away her identity, the couple of points he'd just put in INS to raise his skill caps alerting him to her tension. "Um, any objections, Cypress, if you join our new friend at the portcullis? Once the undead get too dense you can call for Tanya to clear them out."

'Cypress' nods and borrows the void pistol back.

"Fenn Greenglass, reporting for duty." She gives a sloppy salute, mostly to see if that annoys the apparently-military Tanya, then draws her bow to aim through the gaps in the portculls at the undead inside.

Well, if Fenn was under her command she would be annoyed. But insubordination is Amaryllis' problem. She takes Joons sword and shows him some basic forms.  Some from what the imperial academy taught her and from the Kendo lessons of a childhood LONG past in her first life. Then she hands it back to him to copy those actions.

As promised, he swiftly improves. It's not as quick as what she's seen of his development in combat, but after a few tries he's copying her movements well.

"That's fifteen to eight now. Do try to keep up, Cypress," can be heard from the portcullis.

... Gets better faster in real combat huh. "Defend yoursefl Joon!" She pulls out her knife and lunges at him, as if she really is about to stab him.

He's taken by surprise, immediately put on the defensive, but both his dodges and parries become noticeably more proficient within moments of trying to stop her attacks. He could just be recovering from the abruptness of her assault, or she could be right about how he gains skill.

Tanya is not going very easy on him, she nicks him with her knife across the cheek. "Don't wanna get cut? Then do better!" He will heal on the next level up anyway. Not that some healable wounds are something she wouldnt inflict on a trainee if it made them better. 

"That's a real knife! You could kill me!"

Skill increased: Dodge lvl 4!

Skill increased: Parry lvl 3!

She is definitely right about his skills developing faster with harsh training. The evidence is apparent to both of them. Joon does not look happy about the discovery.

'Cypress' seems entirely unconcerned. Perhaps she's seen training of a similar intensity before. 

"Tanya, we'll need your fire within a minute. They're starting to cohere."

"Oh don't be such a baby, I won't kill you unless I mean to. You'll heal. Now what does your game screen say?" She puts her knife away and checks the sprayer, slotting in one of the half empty bottles of ethanol.

They're halfway to a horde, arms reaching through. Amaryllis and Fenn are standing on the opposite side to the broken part of the portcullis and targeting undead whose movement might block or take them through that passage. The courtyard is littered with bodies shot through the heart.

"It did work," he grudgingly admits. "One-handed weapons 7, Parry 3, Dodge 4."

Tanya calmly walks up to where Amaryllis and Fenn are keeping the undead at bay. She waits for the zombies to get a little more horde shaped without risking a combiner. She dumps whats left of one of the ethanol bottles onto the zombies and Ignites them.

Fwooooosh! And then the crackle of popping fats as the zombies burn. The magical feedback is such a rush.

Just a quarter bottle left now.

Once the lead bodies burn out, the party advances, Joon and Amaryllis clearing a path through any of the undead that survived the flames with stabs to the heart. Amaryllis has some proficiency with the sword, but it looks like Joon is overtaking her in skill already. 

Once they're through to the reception at the base of the tower, Fenn fires a few more arrows down the corridors to buy them a moment to breathe. 

"I got a bad feeling the moment we crossed the threshold into the castle. Leonold, he's got a few of those, what are they called?"

"Pseudo perimeters?" Amaryllis supplies. Fenn nods.

"Then they're likely on their way, an elf or half-elf's luck sense can pick up on all sorts of things like that," she exposits for the benefit of the dream-skewered. "We need to reach the facility on the twenty-first floor, what are our options?"

"The central stairs, unless you feel like a long climb up an elevator shaft, but I have another proposal first. A castle like this, the courtyard is designed as a killing field. Why don't we use it for its intended purpose and ambush them?"

"One problem, there's more undead inside here, aren't there? If we don't reveal ourselves keeping them off our backs, we'll have a fight on two fronts when the sound of the ambush draws them in."

Tanya lifts the last bit of ethanol left in the bottle. “If we are ambushing. Traps?”

"Three void bombs left. I'd need at minimum some wire to detonate them from afar instead of throwing them."

Joon turns to Tanya. "The issue with the last time we let the greater undead form deliberately was the risk that we'd have to cross paths with them without a good counter, right? If we did draw a horde into the courtyard, that wouldn't be a problem for us."

"You'd have to spend one void bomb on destroying the portcullis so that enough undead could be drawn in through the gap from the outside, and the fireteam could get here before we gather the numbers to impede them."

Amaryllis makes a note to mention the popular aversion to exploiting exclusion zones after the necrolaborem reveal, the same story can serve double-duty for explaining the z-word taboo in their lessons on hiding their dream-skewered status. 

"We should climb to the fourth floor while we plan, we'll use the windows there for an ambush or want a head-start on ascending whatever we decide."

The old walk and talk.

“Do we… have to do that? If they bunch up near the gap isn’t that already impeding them? Do they have a way past the wall that isn’t the gap? All we need to do is slow them enough to beat them to the key right?”

It would be satisfying to set explosive traps and ambush an enemy force, but the keeping the plan to achieve your tactical goals simple is something she drilled into her men repeatedly.

And Juniper is an idiot, she didn’t tell Amaryllis about the mega zombie incident and yet here Joon spills it. Now Tanya seems like she was hiding something! That is the last time she does him a favour for his reputation, if he just spills all his mistakes later.

"A bladebound's bonded weapon becomes pseudomagically sharp, cutting through lesser threats will be Quills' purpose in the fireteam."

Whereas she has to half-sword to line up a stab at the heart, drive it in with enough force to succeed even if it glances off a rib, and then boot the undead in the chest to withdraw the weapon for the next one. As she demonstrates, with the undead they encounter climbing the stairs.

"You're right that it would provide some impediment. Feel free to create an appropriate noise to attract them to the entrance if you can figure out how."

"Fenn... would you be willing to use your enchanted bow on them?"

Asking her if she'll shoot her old comrades feels risky, not exactly an auspicious start to joining a new party. To his surprise, it's rewarded with a loyalty increase.

"It would be my pleasure. Quills can parry arrows, Carter can tank them, but I can think of no better way to tender my resignation."

“A noise is easy enough.” She finds a broken window. Pops the lid on the ethanol bottle so it is spraying pressurised alcohol mist, chucks it down near the gap, and shoots it with her rifle. Too far away to control the explosion or enjoy the fire magic feedback but it does make a pretty loud bang.

“Might even draw some undead from inside the building outwards toward the gap.”

Well, she is officially out of fuel, and her rifle would draw zombies away from the explosion. So she draws her knife. She can disable zombie limbs to make heart kills easier for Amaryllis and Joon. 

It works on the undead outside, drawing them in like ants from the surrounding city. They cluster up outside the gatehouse, only a couple managing to squeeze through to the courtyard with their uncoordinated movements.

With Joon and Amaryllis piercing hearts and Tanya harrying, they manage almost ten floors. Ten stories of stairs climbed, with at least a few undead to cut through every other landing. 

The effect on Joon's skills is apparent, this constant combat driving him up to his caps at the performance of a professional swordsman. The effect on their fatigue is also apparent, sweat dripping and muscles burning.

Then there's a bang from outside.

A humanoid porcupine can be seen on the interior side of the gatehouse, having sliced through the clot of undead there, followed by three more figures as they start to cross the courtyard.

“Do I start shooting? Or are they too far behind for it to matter?” Tanya turns to Amaryllis.

"Now." Voice clipped, short statements between inhales. "Best opportunity. Stairs cleared below."

She smashes the nearest window with a rifle butt. 

"Joon. Cover our rear."

Fenn is already there, serendipity puttiing her in a position where all she has to do is turn, nock, draw, aim -

- and loose.

Quills can parry individual arrows, but not the cloud that descends on them from ten stories up. Carter's plate mail applies to hits received through the soul link, but the warbow has the draw to defeat armor and Fenn selected a bodkin point. In the aftermath of the barrage, they're surrounded by hundreds of arrows and their tank has fallen to his knees, blood leaking from everywhere an arrow or its soul-linked impact on someone else has pierced through.

Immediately, Quills steps into a better position to parry the next attack while Leonold picks his way through the arrows to circle the fireteam with a blue glow spreading from his palm down his arm, growing in intensity. 

Well obviously blue glow person is trying to do something important, so she tries to shoot him first. Tanya is a little tired but honestly a shot like this from high up is literally what she trained for.

Amaryllis has the same idea. 

Quills can parry Amaryllis' bullet but not be in two places at once. Tanya's shot strikes him just under his Kenner's Eye tattoo. It appears to have no effect on him, but Carter collapses.

A moment later, the fireteam vanishes into a ten-foot globe of darkness.

An instant later, they reappear and scatter. Quills rushes the base of the tower, Tova and Leonold spreading out far enough to either side to not all be caught in another barrage, Carter kneeling with his tower shield propped up ahead of him to hide most of his body. Half of the bones on Tova's bandolier have vanished.

“Which one is the priority target!” So many kinds of magic bullshit she is not familiar with. In war your target the officers, but nobody has a fancy hat or uniform. In an mmo you always target the healer, but nobody is dressed in conveniently obvious  white robes. She shoots at Tattoo guy again until she hears an answer.

That turns out to be a good choice. This time Leonold staggers when her bullet strikes him in the upper arm. The three of them move back together as they near the cover of the entrance, putting them close enough for Tova to try and drag Leonold the rest of the way with remarkable strength when he takes another bullet in the thigh. 

Fenn's next arrow hits Carter and he slumps over, already dead.

"They must've propped him up during the time-out, like Bernard's Weekend."

Joon is busy stabbing the undead drawn from the rest of this floor by the gunfire. "My messages say 'defeated' not whether they're dead, sorry!"

"Tova, robes, bone magi are healers," she answers Tanya.

Amaryllis is a worse shot with the awkward downward angle. Instead, she takes out a violet crystal, presses a button on the electronics wired to the side of it, and drops it out the window.

Well, she is trusting Amaryllis’s tactical opinion. Robes guy it is. She pops off a few shots aiming for upper body and neck rather than actual headshots. Tanya is very good at what she does, but she is still aiming for shots she is more likely to hit than the head.

If she could fire faster she would be fine wasting shots aiming for head, but the rifle’s rate of fire isn’t the best. Better to be conservative with aiming.

Tanya definitely needs to visit a gunsmith when they get out of here with the princess’s level of budget to get some custom work done, get a real rifle made.

Quills parries one then spots the falling void bomb. With a leap, he slices the triggering electronics off the side of it before it can detonate.

That leaves Tova undefended. Her shoulder is shattered by another of Tanya's shots, forcing her to drop Leonold and limp inside.

Fenn finishes the tattoo mage off with another arrow, leaning halfway out the window to do so.

"Good shooting. With Leonold dead, they have no more time-out tattoos available. Tova's healing is slow, we can afford to press on. Fenn, alert us if your luck says otherwise."

Tanya doesn’t like leaving jobs half finished. But she clamps down on those instincts telling her to leap out the window and shoot them all on the way down. She isn’t a mage anymore. She has no barriers, no flight spell, no more feelings of invincibility and power from rushing at the ground knowing she can pull up faster than any other mage alive.

“Understood. Joon, void pistol, now.” No more time to let him grind, they need to move.

He hands it over without looking, keeping his sword out and facing the doors that the next wave of undead could come through. There's a fresh rip and bloodstain in his clothing but no wound, he must have levelled up again during the fighting.

Things move a lot faster with Tanya’s marksmanship assisting the zombie murder. She is totally dialled in with the added pressure of intelligent enemies enhanced by magic coming up from below.

It's hard going, another ten-floor climb with more undead to fight through. Joon splits his stat points between PHY and INS to raise his caps again. With his level-ups he's the freshest of the group, Tanya and Amaryllis running on what little food they could find on the road to Silmar City. Even he is flagging by the time they approach the top.

"Incoming," Fenn whispers as they reach the next landing. "From below."

“Ambush or rush for it?” She asks while trying not to gasp for air.

Damn her stupid tiny body. It feels like she had to take three steps for each one of everyone else’s. She is basically wilpowering trough the exhaustion, because her stamina without enhancement spells to boost her is much lower than what she is used to. Maybe the previous inhabitant was also less fit than her old body.

"Rush for it." Even Amaryllis' composure is suffering. 

"Joon, void bomb."

She lets the others pass, tinkers with the void bomb for a moment, then activates it and sets it down on her current step. 

"Should have a dozen seconds on the timer," she says, rushing to catch up and put as much matter between them and the blast as possible.

"No 'defeated' message," Joon reports.

"Not the point. You can't parry a missing flight of stairs cutting you off from the next floor."

Even their current flight is feeling unstable underfoot from the matter carved out from its underside.

(Well, maybe with Parry 100 and a couple of extra degrees of reasonableness... Good thing Quills has neither.)

“Keep moving, they still might have brought rope.” If she ever gets her hands on him, she swears to rip Being X’s dick off for putting her in such a tiny body. For the millionth time.

Fuck she misses being 6 feet tall and muscular. She definitely took her first body for granted.

"Do you, uh, want me to carry you?" Joon asks awkwardly. He can pick up on her annoyance with his higher INS, even if he's not sure how best to address it, and has the PHY to pick her up too.

“I can handle it!” She is not a child. She will not be carried! Thats so demeaning.

(Depending on if the age of majority is the same as the US, she might, in fact, still be a minor in this body.)

(If loyalty worked like that, it would have gone down.)

"We made it," Amaryllis says, as they reach the top floor. With Joon's rise in skill the undead here pose no challenge. "Tanya, shoot out the locks on these cabinets with the void pistol. Use an angle that won't damage the contents."

God, she could use some non moving targets and time to catch her breath. If she wasn’t forcing herself to stay composed, she would be stumbling towards the lockers.

fwip fwip there go the locks.

Amaryllis follows her, opening the drawers and collecting any valuables. Fenn joins in the looting, using her knife to prise open other containers. 

"Found it." A couple of minutes in, Amaryllis presents a small golden disc with a glowing green center. "Everyone join hands."