“Attacking me is just stupid. Following me here was worse than stupid. It’s downright braindead.”

  Vic stabbed down the basketball sized wasp through the chest up to its head, her thrust being carried by the downward impact of her jump. “You stupid little things. If only you were sentient huh?? How does it feel to be that unthinking, huh??? Well you don’t know and can’t know, BAHAhahA!”

  Vic took a step to the side, feeling a wasp brushing against her left ear, so close that its wings nearly whipped her cheek. Yet it was so weak. Another flew by and she grabbed it in her gauntlet before throwing it down so hard on the ground that the sound of its shell cracking echoed in the gorge. Vic stomped down on the bug with both feet. Repeatedly.

  “I don’t even have any more room for your loot. You’re useless. How does it feel to have a meaningless life? Huh?? How does it feel to be so pointless and meaningless you sticky fucking cockroaches you useless tiny pointless living trash- you meaningless forgettable insufferably boring and tedious insects” she spat the last word with so much more venom than they deserved. “Mindless. Insufferable. Die. Die. DIE.”

  She squashed another wasp right as it flew towards its fellow squashed down sister. Another one. Another one crushed and stomped beneath her heel.

  “You could have just given up. You’re all that’s left, you fucking goons”, she spat. “Couldn’t have just enjoyed the rest of your short lives, huh? Nooooo. You had to be annoying. You had to follow me.”

  A wasp hit her on the shoulder, but its dart got stuck on her enchanted shoulder pad. Fucker.

  Its head separated from its body as her blade when through its neck. Vic got a good grip on the wasp and pulled it off fully with a plopping sound. The last remaining wasp died when she cut it in half as it dived on her. Pathetic. She didn’t even need to use magic abilities to get rid of those pests.

  She ignored the notifications informing her of an even more pathetic amount of xp gained. Honestly, what a chore. And all of that because she’d grabbed their queen for a quick last minute monster gem before getting to a big town she’d heard of in passing.

  She sighed. Oh well! Time to get going before the sun set. She had a little way to go. She smiled a little. She should reach it in the afternoon. She cleaned her blade in a piece of fabric that was now far too marred with insect juice to be good for anything else but kindling. Vic hummed a little while she stepped away from the crime scene, leaving an irregular trail of a hundred corpses behind. Hm. Her sword needed a new scabbard. The leather was kind of ruined. Well! What a coincidence! She had so many goodies to sell. She’d be quickly back on track in no time after her visit to that city, bouncing off again to some place else.

  Vic tried to shake off the grime and dust that had accumulated itself on the grey tatters serving her as a thick coat. Good impressions still mattered, even in a harsh dark medieval world where people more than often got a hard bargain just for living. And she loved oh so much discounts.

  Her sore feet made her cringe a little bit. She was glad that she’d have a few days to rest since once within this small kingdom’s borders she’d be relatively safer than the rest of the time.

  It was still another thirty minutes of tippy tapping from big flat rocks to other big flat boring rocks across the jagged landscape. The mountainous scarp at least made for an interesting trek. That wouldn’t stop her from finding an excuse to do little funny jumps when she could from rock to rock. The pale red and yellow mineral tones the plants took did put her in a happier mood than usual. It’d been a while since she’d seen a somewhat colourful landscape, even if there was something slightly… off about it.

  Ah, yes, good old memories from planet earth were always there to remind her how depressing this world was.

  That was not enough of a big reason to dampen her mood though!

  From where she was coming from, straight from a hidden passage buried high in the mountains, she could see little wooden houses there and there across vast, large ripe fields before high fortified walls that stood beneath a high mountain where a castle looked over them all. A sign of civilisation as good as any!

  [Elkroth: Capital of Imperial Embryo], the title appeared next to the landscape. As always, the game interface lightly soothed her nerves as soon as a new important region was discovered. Knowing where she was heading felt better than the alternative, which was knowing fuck all.

  She had to climb down some difficult enough stone walls but it was easy enough with the right ever so slightly rusty equipment. She hoped it wouldn’t be weird for people to see her come from here, but it was likely that nobody would spot her. Grey on grey made most people blind… if they weren’t magical, and if they were, well that was another screwed can of worms.

  It wasn’t her fault this was the most direct route she could figure out. It led her nearly straight to one of the gates to the main city, one that wasn’t busy and didn’t have people waiting in line nor rows of hazardously built wooden buildings. That was all she wanted right now, with those heavy bags of hers filled with some loot to be sold off to alchemists or priests, depending on the city’s innerworkings.

  She giddily dusted off her coat again as her climbing came to a stop. Being so close to civilisation did things to her. Gosh, the midsts had really done a number on this coat. It was all threadbare around her sleeves and hood. Thank goodness it wasn’t the only layer she had or she’d have caught a cold.

  Maybe she could replace that cloak in this city’s market. This one had done a good job but it was time to let go of it. She patted its side a little.

  …It had been her very first cloak, still. Maybe she’d make a small burial ceremony for it.

  Heheh. A nice idea for later. She hit the side of her left foot with her right heel. She’d reached the fortifications and there were soldiers standing straight at the gates.

  Apparently it was safe enough for the gates to remain open most of the time. Good to know. Peaceful times in this region, it seemed.

  “Who goes there?” the bulkier soldier called out, his dark armour having an off vibration coursing through it as light bounced back from it. Was that enchanted armour? Huh. Maybe this guy wasn’t a simple soldier.

  Vic removed her hood, but instead of relaxing at the sight of her appearance, the soldier tensed.

  That was weird. She knew she still had some baby fat. They were human too, right? That’s what she heard of this place. She could see they were breathing. Those really weren’t undead guarding a forlorn castle.

  “Hi!” she said, forcing herself to take a relaxed stance. “I’m a… traveller from the Wastes. I was hoping to take refuge here for a few days before heading ba-”

  “Where did you come from?” the rude guard rudely interrupted.

  Vic blinked two times before letting her smile drop.

  “From the wastes, ser”, she said, swallowing down the words: “are you deaf by any chance?” as that wouldn’t be wise, and she was feeling wise today.

  “No”, said the other, bringing up his halberd, “no watchers signalled a lone traveller coming through. What did you hide yourself for, demon?”

  She realised a tad blandly that there was a bell in the wall right next to the second guard.

  Oh no. She had been off to such a great start.

  “I came from the cliffs over there”, she quickly replied, motioning at the mountain she had descended from. It looked harder to climb down from below. “It was the shortest route and I was low on rations”, she explained.

  The guard stared at her suspiciously. The fatter one advanced.

  “No one ever comes from there. You make yourself look too young to survive alone in those desolate lands of the west” that guard said, giving her an unforgiving, cold look. “Show your true face. Now. You’re fooling no one.”

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  The other one had his hand on the rope tied to the bell.

  Vic groaned in frustration.

  “I’m a mage! Holy shit, you’re fucking stupid!” she cried out, stomping on the ground. “Go ahead! Ring the bell! Look stupid, like you are! Being stupid! Sound the alarm for a little girl that’s exhausted and tired of that shitty land where there’s nothing but dust and dust and dust and fucking dust storms!! Do you have any idea how much I’ve wanted to rest in a proper bed since I’ve been in the middle of fucking nowhere! Do you have any idea how much I wanted to return to civilisation? Do you REALISE that you’re making me regret it?! REGRET IT ALL?!”

  The bulkier guard looked taken aback. He did flinch.

  The other guard was frozen in place.

  Vic stared at one then the other. Oh. Had the outburst helped make her look more human?

  “Her clothes do look like the ones worn by those merchants of the great wastes. Same shade of grey dust”, the one holding the rope to the bell that would alarm all the guardwatch on the fortifications that there was a monster at its gates said.

  …She had dusted her cloak a few times in the early morning. How could they notice that shade? She’d worked hard on clearing that up. It’d been for nothing. She internally groaned. Great. She had to look filthy. Hopefully she wouldn’t get denied the entrances to inns, if there were any here.

  “If it’s true, we’ll need to report this”, the bulky captain said, frowning. Vic decided he had to be a captain, because of how the other soldier treated him back.

  “If you need to bring anyone to verify that I’m human, I can wait all day long”, Vic said confidently.

  The soldier tilted his head, and she didn’t know then that she would be biting on those words later.

  __

  “Ughhh”, Vic said, in an enclosed room, sitting in front of a sorceress disguised in the garbs of the local cult. At least she wasn’t shackled. Following quietly the guards had done wonders for the lack of knives held under her throat. But maybe this long wait had been worse than everything.

  The priestess nodded after finally finishing her last bloody detection spell.

  “You truly weren’t lying, young one, there is no undead curse or demonic influence within you”, the priestess solemnly said. “It is most curious that one so young would journey alone in this cruel world.”

  “I’m fifteen, not a child”, she groaned. She wasn’t that much of a midget. Just a bit, maybe, but not that much. “Looks can be deceiving, I guess.” Perhaps the people of the wastes were harsher than the ones living in a city like this one, too. She’d seen kids that should be in kindergarten walk within ruins to fetch scraps to sell. And she was pretty sure that that specific place had to be haunted. Or trapped. Or maybe someone had fooled people into thinking it was haunted to get all the treasures to themselves. Anyway, back to child labour. Maybe the standards were different, here. That did give it a good vibe.

  The priestess simply nodded after a bit of silence.

  “Your story does have good foundations. The loot we’ve gone through your bags should indeed be answer enough.”

  “And all of it better still be in it when you give it back to me”, Vic bit back. She couldn’t wait to get out of here.

  “The honourable representatives of His Eminence would never stoop so low. They are good, hard-working people who would never do wrongs to stain His Image and warrant deserving to be hanged and quartered by the morrow”, the priestess passionately intoned.

  Oh so they were the cultist kind. Of course. It would be too good to be true. She would be seeing no people mentally resembling anything close to her normal.

  “I’ve heard you were a… welcoming bunch, to merchants at least”, she diplomatically replied, trying to stir the conversation away from cultish subjects. She knew how it started. She didn’t want to be stuck listening to the rabid praise and icky attempts at conversion that those people often tried on her when they figured out she had some useful tricks up her sleeves. People tended to see her as awfully naive.

  “His Eminence has indeed been intending to steer commerce in his lands”, the priestess replied, joining her hands together, and oh golly Vic’s attempt at dragging the conversation away from this “holy” topic had failed.

  “Glad to hear that I won’t have trouble selling some wares”, Vic said with a tight smile.

  And there was her opening to leave. She quickly continued.

  “Maybe it won’t be too late to sell a few-”

  “Our churches are always happy to reward brave adventurers for their deeds, young one”, the priestess interrupted, trying to grab Vic’s hands. Vic retracted them back quickly enough to escape that grip in time, which left the priestess in a bit of an awkward position. This had stank of an incoming preaching speech. The priestess gracefully retracted her hands and jointed them together. Wow, how seamless.

  “Reward, as in, exchange the parts of monsters for money, right?” Vic interrupted.

  “Yes”, she nodded, and there went that odd moment of stillness again.

  Vic choked another groan. This had taken the entire afternoon. Now she was going to have trouble finding a suitable place to sleep. All because of those miserable security measures. She hadn’t looked that bad, they were just exaggerating.

  “Well that’s great but I’d like to go since you’ve cleared up the situation. I’m not sure I’ll manage to find an inn in the dark, and I would like to be able to have a roof above my head and a bed under me for the first time in months, if you please”, she said, getting up quickly.

  The priestess at least looked apologetic enough.

  “Oh, I can give you directions to a suitable one”, the priestess said.

  Vic widened her eyes. Oh? Finally something useful?

  She smiled back.

  “That’d be appreciated”, she replied.

  She listened to the directions attentively, and soon enough, her bag back in her possession with everything in order within it, three heavy metallic doors out of the way, one more checkpoint passed and finally within the city walls, she was following the trail to a good resting place. She had some money in store to pay for it and she finally felt a bit happy once more. Keeping her spirits up wasn’t hard here. Nuh huh.

  Until she stood before the inn the priestess had given her the address of and realised it was a building connected to a tall standing church.

  ___

  “You have been blessed, blessed, child”, the priest said. “It is now up to you to do the right thing for all of the ones who are ill and under our protection. It is a good price that you’ve been offered.”

  That priest was human, but that was all there was in common with the humans she knew back on her own world.

  She gave a half-lidded stare at the blood contract she’d been given to sell off the wares directly within the church. It was a good price for the horns, magic gems and feathers, probably because of the exotic origins of the latter for the people living here, but it was being greedy for the ground mineral dusts. She knew how much alchemists needed those for high tiered potions.

  “I’ll keep the dusts”, she said, and the priest nodded, scrapping that line, not even changing the price she was being offered for now. She gave him a questioning look but he only tilted his head pleasantly.

  Then Vic stared at the tiny lines focused at the end of the paragraph. It was weird that a blood contract of all things would be required to sell off her loot, but she’d been told by the priest that “this was how things were done here.”

  “Why is there written ‘accepts to enter a neophyte apprenticeship within the Order of the All Enlightened’?”

  The priest smiled and shook his head.

  “My mistake, this is the wrong contract”, he said sweetly. “I’ll bring down the appropriate documents.”

  Vic glared back at him.

  “Forget about it. I’ll sell those elsewhere. Maybe that’ll teach you”, she dryly said.

  The priest simply smiled, squinted eyes staring straight into her own glare.

  That was the moment she decided she needed to get out of town as soon as possible.

  “You are still welcome to use our dormitories, although now… it would be more appropriate for you to take a separate room as those are reserved for the initiated”, he lightly, pleasantly said, like they were sharing words in good humour.

  Vic cringed a little bit. Yeah, nice to know she’d been expected to join those enlightened in the first place. To all hells with cultists. The kind that tried at all costs to assimilate people into their own rank were truly the worst.

  “It will be fifteen copper honours”, the priest smiled. Vic smiled back. Wow, that was cheap. Was it because she was a mage?

  “I don’t have that currency”, she said, taking five common coppers out of pocket and extending them back to him.

  The priest thinly smiled.

  “Please, a copper honour is worth five times more than a simple common copper. We are not barbarians here”, he said, his smile finally leaving his face.

  Vic grimaced.

  She handed the correct amount of money. She was pretty sure she was being scammed in some way. She couldn’t wait for this day to be over.

  The priest did a little motion with his hand, and a young boy came running through a side door.

  “You called, Master Aldric?” he asked with that type of voice that was derailing between high and low pitch in a way that nearly made her smirk in amusement.

  Then the priest talked and she reminded herself that she was tired of this shit, tired enough to sleep for four days straight.

  “Yes, do bring this… honoured guest to her room”, the priest motioned. “Though she may not look the part, she’s an experienced mage, be on your best behaviour.”

  The boy nodded and with a big, wide smile scrambled to get a key. She followed behind, still feeling eyes on her back.

  It was a relief when the boy left her to an unassuming room, but as soon as she sat on the straw mattress, she felt the urge to curl up and sleep for days. Mm. Maybe twelve hours. That would be nice.

  Laying down, she removed one shoe with the other without looking at it, and with her now shoeless foot, pulled down on the other shoe messily enough, and finally gave one big sigh of relief as it fell down with a thud.

  Finally.

  She could relax.

  The tenseness slowly eased. It never disappeared, but it was lighter than before.

  No, the tenseness would never leave. No place was truly safe. Only safer.

  There were horrors beyond words that crawled through this world.

  And with those thoughts in mind, she closed her eyes and immediately fell asleep to an easy, unbothered, happy slumber.