Still in full sprint—carrying Bran under one arm, the tree under the other, and Mei-Mei on my shoulders—I take my second step into the room.

On the other side, I instantly spot the elevator at the back. Frantic guards stand around it, shouting as they point up towards the ceiling, with many more scattered along my path forward.

We had successfully escaped the Curse Ward moments before it disappeared in an explosion of screeching stone and metal, but that was just the first part. There’s still an entire ninety-nine floors of Surstrom Spire to deal with.

Alerted by both the sound of my arrival and... whatever the hell happened behind me, the guards all turn our way, weapons at the ready. Licking my lips, I think about how best to deal with this situation.

"Fwahaha!" I laugh, slamming my foot firmly on the ground in front of me, causing the floor to crack beneath the impact—my third step. “Guess I’ll just plow through!”

Kicking off the floor with even greater speed, I tilt the bucket side of the tree forward like a lance as I charge straight ahead.

“—Guh?!”

One unlucky guard caught in my path is blown off his feet as the bucket slams into his chest, dragging him along as I continue to tear a path across the room in a direct beeline to the elevator.

“—!?”

“—Oof!”

Two more guards join him at the end of my lance as I plow my way through them as well.

Quickly reaching my destination on the other side of the room, I slam the three pinned guards against the elevator doors in an explosion of dirt. With a creak and a snap, the door crumples inward, pushing it and the three guards through the new opening. The guards manage to squeak out a deflated yelp before they fall through into the elevator and onto the moving platform on the other... side...?

Hm? That’s weird...

I peek my head into the open elevator shaft that the guards had disappeared down along with the broken elevator doors. A dark bottomless pit stretches down further than I can see.

... Fweh? Where’s the elevator? Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of room here with glowing buttons and stuff? I had only meant to knock the guards out and into the elevator room, not knock them out of floor ninety-nine and into the next life...

“Murderer! She just killed three of our men!”

“It’s the Man Eater! I heard she likes to eat her victims alive! Watch her teeth!”

“It’s true! I saw her bite the Warden’s arm the other day! Don’t let your guard down!”

I hear some angry shouts and harsh words pelt me from behind.

“Oh...” I stare down into the shaft once again before turning to face the remaining guards. “My bad.”

I think you could probably count this as self-defense though... Right?

With my back now to the open elevator shaft and nowhere left to run, the remaining guards quickly surround me, weapons pointed in anger as they cautiously edge their way closer.

“W-wait!” Bran suddenly throws his arms up at my side, still tucked underneath mine. “Don’t hurt me! I’m not with this lunatic! I thought she was just some kind of weird fitness freak who got in trouble for touching girls inappropriately! I didn’t know she was— Oof!” I give him a quick squeeze to shut him up.

“Liar!” a guard shouts back at him. “We know about you too, you slimy worm! We know how you tried to assassinate our beloved Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed herself!”

“Yeah!” another chimes in “As her number one fan, I can’t forgive anyone who tries to harm such a kind and beautiful soul as our Lady Kokoro! After everything she’s done for this country!”

“I-it wasn’t me!” Bran complains. “I told you! There’s been some kind of mistake! Why would I even—?!”

“Don’t try to lie your way out of it, scum!” Another guard cuts him off. “Lady Kokoro knows everything! She’s not called the Omniscient Overlord for nothing! Our all-knowing Queen couldn’t have possibly made a mistake!”

“I didn’t—! I wasn’t—!” Bran’s pleading is constantly cut off by a stream of hateful comments against him for his apparent attempt to assassinate a seemingly beloved figure.

“Dammit!” Bran huffs from beneath my arm, poking a finger out in front of him. “Pepper, eat that guy! And that guy too! And especially that guy who called me a slimy worm! I don’t care if you are some kind of man-eating lunatic! Eat all of these guys!”

“Fwahaha! You got it!” I laugh, and ready myself for an attack.

At those words, the guards nervously back away in fear—all except for one, who holds his ground and steps out in front of the crowd by himself. Donned in more impressive armour than the rest, this gruff-looking guard shows no signs of nervousness as he pulls the massive sword from his back and holds it in front of him. From the way he carries himself, there’s no doubt that he’s the one in charge here.

“I thought I told you to rot inside your cage, freak,” he says, looking directly at me. “Looks like I will get to spill your guts across this floor after all.”

Hm? Oh! I think I've met this guy before. He was... the guard with the big sword who called me a ‘sick freak’ as he shoved me through the Curse Ward doors when I first arrived here. I almost forgot about that. Almost...

The guard readies his sword, gripping the handle with both hands and pointing the tip of the massive blade towards my chest. He’s standing several paces away from me, but I’m sure a skilled swordsman could close that distance in an instant with a single thrust. Considering this guy carries a sword and not a spear like most other guards, he’s either gotta be really good with that sword, or really bad with a spear. I’m hoping for the one that sounds more fun to fight!

“Pepper, just a reminder...” Mei-Mei taps the top of my head from above. “Keep in mind I am still sitting on your shoulders, so I’d rather you didn’t duck out of the way. Being impaled would be somewhat inconvenient for me.”

“Mm!” I give a sharp nod. “Eat this guy without ducking! Got it!”

“Y-you don’t actually have to eat them...” Bran murmurs from my side.

The guard with the big sword narrows his eyes, knuckles turning white as he tightens his grip on the handle.

“Ah, and just to sate my curiosity before you get impaled and I don’t get the chance to ask...” Mei-Mei continues. “Were you truly sent here for something as stupid as sexual harassment? Was that all just a lie you told us?”

“Nope! Not a lie!” I answer. “Sexual harassment—”

—The guard lunges. Seeing my focus on Mei-Mei as an opening to attack, he thrusts forward with his sword pointed toward my heart. The blade emits a shrill whistle and a flash of light as it punctures the air between us with ferocious speed. In the same moment, I lunge forward too, taking the challenge head-on. As the tip of the blade meets with my chest, I tighten my pectoral muscles, flexing them as hard as they’ll go. Unable to pierce through the hardened muscle, the blade is forced upwards, cutting a line up my chest and lightly grazing my cheek as it slides harmlessly over my shoulder.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The guard’s eyes widen as the realization sinks in and he finds himself standing face to face with the woman he just failed to kill. Desperate eyes flick pleadingly over to mine, and he opens his mouth to speak—but it’s too late. I dig my teeth deep into his neck, puncturing through his armour and tearing out his throat. Blood spurts out over my face and body as I swallow the chunk of flesh with an audible gulp.

“—and cannibalism!” I finish, with a satisfied nod. “That one was just a misunderstanding though. I never did that.”

Dropping the sword to the floor, the guard stumbles forward with wide eyes, holding his neck as it continues to spray blood across the room. I step to the side to let him stumble past me as he slowly hobbles his way over to the elevator doors. Stepping through them, he lets out one last pained gurgle, before toppling in and disappearing down into the bottomless shaft like the others before him.

The room falls quiet. Aside from the loud whistling of wind tearing through the gaping hole on the other side of the room, the constant creaking and crumbling of this entire floor, and the sounds of some kind of commotion happening on one of the levels below us, there isn’t a single peep from any of the other bewildered guards...

“How is that a misunderstanding?!” Bran complains from beneath my arm, breaking apart the awkward silence—his purple head now dyed in blotchy shades of bloody crimson. “You just ate that guy’s throat! There’s no misunderstanding there! You were definitely sent here for cannibalism!”

“You told me to!” I complain right back. “He did tell me to eat that guy, right, Mei-Mei?”

Looking to Mei-Mei for backup, I nudge her leg lightly with the side of my head. To my surprise, the leg slides off my shoulder and falls onto the floor with a soft plop.

“... Fweh?”

“Bran...” Mei-Mei sighs. “Do you mind grabbing that and passing it up to me?”

“Eh? A-ah, sure...”

“Thanks.”

With a wince, Bran scoops the leg off the floor and passes it up to Mei-Mei. Taking it from him, she places it back on my shoulder, pulls something from her pocket, and immediately begins fixing the leg back in place.

"Hm? How did your leg—?" I start to ask before the sharp feeling of needles poking into my scalp cuts me off.

“I told you not to duck!” she complains, stabbing at my head in frustration.

“I didn’t duck!”

“The sword still went over your head, moron! It doesn’t matter if I still get hit by it! Now I have to sew this damn thing back on...”

“Fweh... Can you fix my sailor outfit while you’re at it?” I ask. “There’s a big cut down the middle and now my boob is sticking out—”

Suddenly interrupted, I skilfully catch the tip of a thrust spear between my teeth. Much like the one before him, another guard had mistaken my talking for an opening to strike. Also much like the one before him, it didn’t work.

Tearing the spear away from his hands with my teeth, I spit it to the side and lunge back at him. Not wanting to meet the same fate as the last guard, he quickly covers his neck as I dive towards him. A wet crunch fills the air as I unite the man’s nose with the back of his skull using the full force of my forehead. He immediately reels back, crumpling to the floor from the fatal headbutt.

“Two. Behind,” Mei-Mei warns, tugging at my hair.

I nod, tilting the bottom of the tree up in my arm and spinning around to meet the attackers. As I spin, the branches of the tree whip across the floor behind me, sweeping the approaching guards off their feet.

Not giving them a chance to recover, I slap a foot down on the breastplate of the nearest guard and quickly drag it to the side. The guard screams in desperation as he slides helplessly across the floor and through the open doors of the elevator.

Scrambling on the floor after falling on his back, the second guard manages to get a grip on the spear he dropped—before promptly having his face stamped into a chunky red paste against the concrete.

I quickly spin back around to face the remaining guards, licking my lips in anticipation. Five left. Meanwhile, Bran takes a moment to throw up all over the floor at my feet.

“Ah, my bad,” I apologize, giving the frail human underneath my arm a friendly little squeeze. “Was it the spinning? I’ll try not to spin around so much.”

“That’s not... Ah, sure. Whatever...” he replies weakly, looking a little paler than usual. I think. It’s hard to tell with all the blood and little pink chunks flecked across his face.

Exchanging glances with one another, the remaining guards flick their eyes back and forth between me and their peers. They seem uncertain about what they want to do and I can see the fear on each one of their faces. All except...

Towards the back of the room, a taller guard paces back and forth behind the others, clutching a spear in one of his clawed hands. A scaly blue tail flicks from side to side at his back while a forked tongue slips out from between his thin lips, licking up at the nostrils on the end of his reptilian snout.

Fwah! It’s a lizardman! This is my first time seeing one! I didn’t notice him before, but it looks like he’s been keeping a watchful distance all this time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

“Don’t be stupid,” he hisses at the other guards. “Stop rushing in one at a time. Don’t let fear cloud your mind. You outnumber her. It’s one woman, nursing a weakling and a sickly child. It’s Lust you’re afraid of, not this one.”

The others seem to perk up at his words, steeling themselves as they grunt in agreement.

“Y-yeah, you’re right! She looks like a total weakling compared to Lust!”

“Damn right! I’m not scared of some runt who’s shorter than I am!”

“Her breasts aren’t even that big either! Maybe B-cup at best! At least Lust has massive—!”

Shuffling my grip on the log beneath my arm, I grab hold of the branches near the top and swing the entire length of the tree in a cone in front of me. The three guards nearest to me instantly disappear into a shower of red chunks and bloodied limbs.

Pulling the tree back towards me and tucking it securely under my arm again, I’m suddenly caught off-guard by a spear hurtling toward me through the blinding red mist. I quickly hop to the side to avoid it, only to feel something wrap around my leg, pinning me in place.

“Got you,” the lizardman hisses into my ear, yanking my hair backwards with one claw as he clasps the other firmly around my neck. I look down at my legs to see his tail wrapped tightly around one of them, locking me in place.

Fweh. He really did.

I lean forward to bite him but he jerks my head backwards by the hair, digging his claws harder into my neck. He’s too close to swing the tree at, but too far away to let me tear his throat out. What’s a girl supposed to do without arms, huh?

“Tch.” Struggling to dig his claws further in, he turns to his last remaining guard-mate. “Hurry up and kill this one!” he hisses back at him.

“R-right!” the startled man responds, coming to his senses.

Spear raised, the guard rushes towards us, shouting a not-so-intimidating battle cry. The battle cry quickly becomes a regular cry as he slips on, what looks like, somebody’s lower jaw. We all watch on in silence as fights to regain his footing, tripping on various other body parts strewn across the room before finally taking his final slide off a pool of vomit and tumbling out through the elevator doors.

“Fwah! Nice vomit!” I tell Bran with genuine praise, admiring his slick use of strategically placed traps. “You totally killed that guy just now! That one was all you!”

Before Bran has a chance to complain about something I said for some reason—which I can tell he really wants to—the lizardman hisses in annoyance.

“Idiot!” he spits, before moving both claws to my neck and digging them in.

This is awkward... I doubt this guy has the strength to pierce through my hardened neck muscles, but there’s not much I can really do in this situation without any hands...

“Bran, I, uh, need to drop you for a second, okay? I need a free hand to punch a hole in this guy real quick.”

“W-wait a second! Don’t drop me here!” Bran protests. “The floor’s really gross! There’s a thumb and half an eyeball directly beneath me. I don’t want to touch it! Actually, it might be a nose, not a thumb... I can’t tell. But I don’t want to look at it anymore, it’s gross!”

“Okay... Well, uh...” I squirm around in mild discomfort as the lizardman keeps up his fruitless attack. “Can you get him off me somehow then?”

“H-how? I tried pulling his tail off your leg just now but it didn’t budge.”

“I dunno. Maybe, like, twist his dick or something?”

“No!” Bran complains.

“Why?!” I complain right back.

“It’s just weird! I don’t want to touch another man’s dick!”

“It’s not weird! You have one too! I’ve seen it! And I always see you touching yours! Why is it weird to touch somebody else’s?! It’s the same thing!”

“It’s not the same thing! Touching another— Wait, when?! When are you seeing me touching mine?! D-don’t make up weird lies! I’ve never done that! And stop looking into my cell in the middle of the night! That’s an invasion of privacy! You can’t just—!”

“Both of you, shut up!” the lizardman hisses loudly through clenched teeth as he struggles in vain to dig his claws any further in.

It’s a good thing I make sure to train my neck muscles every day! Everybody wants a bigger chest, huge calves, and massive biceps—but nobody ever pays attention to the neck. Pepper Black is a woman who always pays attention to the neck!

“Alright, finally fixed. Good as new.” Mei-Mei slaps her thigh and gives her freshly reattached leg a little wiggle against my shoulder. Looking up, she finally notices the strained lizardman struggling away in front of her. “Hm? Oh. One second...”

“You shut up too!” he hisses at her as she rummages around in one of her pockets. “Once I tear out this one’s throat, both you and the weakling are nex—!”

BANG!

A loud noise rings out next to my ear. I blink in surprise, and when I open my eyes, I see the lizardman’s head droop lifelessly in front of him, his clawed hands dropping away from my neck and falling to his sides. He takes a short half-step backwards before crumpling to the floor. A pool of blood quickly forms underneath him, gushing out from a gaping red hole where one of his eyes used to be.

“Fweh? What was that?” I ask, blinking up at Mei-Mei.

There’s a clicking sound above me and then something warm and metallic taps me lightly on the cheek.

“Gun,” she replies flatly—before stuffing the metal thing back into her coat pocket.