Steve’s follow-up punch sent Lorelei soaring up the stairs and across the road like a wayward frisbee on a particularly windy day. As she sailed twenty feet through the air, Lorelei had just enough presence of mind to reflect that the laws of physics had apparently taken an impromptu holiday. Surely, any impact that propelled her this far should have killed her stone dead?
A status screen flashed in her vision as if in response to her thoughts, all swirling lights and glittering stars, like a particularly festive migraine.
You have received blunt force trauma.
Damage Received: 30 HP. Ouch! Your dignity takes an additional 5 points of damage.
Status Effect: Seeing Stars. Your vision is sparkly like a disco ball for 10 seconds.
Well, there was that.
Of course, whether this was good or bad news kind of depended on how many HP she actually possessed. HP . . . She sifted through her teenage memories, dredging up the phrase from the depths of her early gaming days. Health Points? Hit Points? Something like that. Whatever. At least she wasn’t trailing a bloody comet of teeth.
Then, with the same suddenness as at the beginning of her unplanned flight, her aerial tour of the city-centre abruptly ended as she collided with a shop window. Like a good British pensioner, the glass protested loudly but refused to break easily, leaving Lorelei to bounce off it and land face-first on the pavement.
You have just performed an impromptu 'Window Smash Waltz'!
Damage Received: 15 HP. Surprisingly, the window held up better than expected.
As she lay on the concrete, Lorelei became painfully aware of three fundamental truths at the exact same time. First, concrete was indeed an excellent exfoliant, though not one she would be recommending to any of her gal pals. Second, no matter how many HP she had, losing 45 of the buggers in quick succession felt like absolute hell. And thirdly, judging by the screams, shouts, and general chaos surrounding her, everyone else in downtown Birmingham was also having a pretty rubbish day.
She groaned, trying to ignore the flashing status effects in her peripheral vision. As much as the Seeing Stars condition reminded her of every party she regretted the morning after, it wasn’t exactly conducive to survival right now. Especially considering the fourth thing that finally registered: a massive, pissed-off Orc was striding her way, and he looked like someone had just told him she had immigrant blood.
"Snooty bitch!" The Orc—because that was the only thing she could see him as now—was closing the distance with long, loping strides. His arms swung like twin hams on steroids, knocking terrified bystanders out of the way as if they were mere skittles in his personal bowling alley of rage. Summoning every ounce of her willpower to drag herself onto one knee, Lorelei winced at the feel of her gritted teeth scraping against each other. Teeth. She touched a hand to her jaw, half-expecting to find a handful of pearly whites rattling around like dice in a cup. Yet, miraculously, her jaw was still intact. Sore, but not shattered.
Steve’s shadow loomed over her, still grinning. "Bitch!"
The electrician’s transformation was wholly grotesque but also pretty impressive, in a “body horror meets makeover show from hell” way. His skin had taken on a shade of green that was positively radioactive: a fetching hue, if one were into the whole “Hulk’s angry cousin” aesthetic, but otherwise somewhat disquieting.
Furthermore, what she had initially noted in the man as a physique which was a humble display of late-night kebab indulgence, had transformed. Gone was the white hoodie, replaced by a tight leather loincloth that looked like it had been carved from a cow with a grudge. Oh, and the tusks. Best not to forget those. A modest set of yellowed human teeth had been replaced by two ivory spikes that any self-respecting wild boar would kill for. Dental hygiene just got a whole lot more complicated for Steve.
"Bitch!" he roared again as if his vocabulary had regressed along with his humanity.
"Look, I can't help but think this is all a bit—"
But it appeared that Steve wasn’t in the mood for dialogue. He pulled back his fist - muscles bulging and tendons straining - and smashed it forward, aiming to marmalise her head.
Lorelei’s survival instincts finally kicked in—barely. She ducked and rolled to the left, feeling the wind of his punch as it blurred over her, smashing through the shop window she had so recently tested with her own body. This time, the window shattered, glass shards flying everywhere. Steve, his momentum wholly unchecked, stumbled forward, disappearing arse over tit into Jim’s Nail Salon.
Lorelei scrambled to her feet, blood pounding in her ears, and looked around for help. What she saw, however, was far from comforting. All around her, the city centre had descended into utter pandemonium. The ‘System Integration’ - whatever that was - seemed to have flipped a switch in everyone’s heads, turning a peaceful afternoon into a scene from a particularly twisted end-of-the-world shitfest.
Men were fighting men. Women were fighting women. A Centaur was trying to stomp a snake the size of a double-decker bus. It was chaos, carnage, and insanity all rolled into one, and it was enough to make Lorelei briefly consider if maybe she should’ve stayed in bed this morning. Her attention was drawn to a particularly gruesome scene: a hench woman in a fur bikini—a Barbarian? Really? —had just grabbed a lizardy-looking motherfucker and was proceeding to tear him in half like an oversized wishbone. The sound of his insides hitting the pavement was disturbingly reminiscent of someone upending a bucket of KFC gravy.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Lorelei was pulled out of her horrified trance by a loud ding from inside the shop and a bellow of delight from Steve. At least, she thought it was delight. It was hard to gauge the emotional range of a creature that seemed to be permanently set to “enraged.”
"Gonna chop you up. Bitch!" Steve’s voice, like a death metal vocalist gargling gravel, rumbled through the shattered window. And with that somewhat concerning declaration, Steve emerged from the shop carrying the most enormous axe Lorelei had ever seen. It gleamed in the sunlight, an obscene parody of a lumberjack’s tool, though she suspected no tree was ever in this weapon’s future. Hefting it with both hands, he lumbered towards her, and Lorelei couldn’t help but notice that his loincloth was riding up uncomfortably. Freud would’ve had a field day.
However, just as Steve reached chopping range, the sky darkened, and they both looked up to see a gigantic flying beast descending upon them, its jaws wide open, revealing row upon row of razor-sharp teeth that gleamed with the promise of imminent dismemberment. And that's when Lorelei’s ancient survival instincts—those long-buried, genetically encoded responses that had seen her ancestors flee sabretooth tigers and other predatory horrors—decided to wake up.
The Dragon’s mouth yawned wider, and for a moment, the world narrowed to just that terrible, gaping horror. All the sound around her, the screaming, the chaos, the crunch of Steve’s boots on shattered glass, faded away until all that was left was the inevitability of her fate.
She wasn’t going to outrun this thing, and fighting was laughable. All that was left was to freeze in terror, the third, often overlooked option in the “fight or flight” trifecta. She could manage that. She could be a deer in the headlights—especially when those headlights were attached to a dragon the size of a fucking football field.
And then, just as the Dragon filled her entire field of vision, she heard a voice in the back of her mind. Soft, almost bemused, like a distant relative trying to remember her name at a family reunion.
I know I am not supposed to interfere, but you might want to consider—I don't know—doing something?
The world slowed to a crawl. The Dragon’s mouth still approached, but it was like watching a slow-motion replay of her impending doom. The voice in her head continued, sounding a bit more exasperated now.
Did you hear me?
“What?”
Pardon?
"Huh?" Lorelei’s response was as eloquent as ever.
That’s hardly better. What are they teaching their young on these planets? The voice, neither male nor female, seemed to sigh.
"What is going on?" Lorelei asked, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and irritation.
What's going on is that I am breaking about five hundred different rules and conventions by even interacting with you, let alone actively messing around with time, the voice said, with the kind of exasperation usually reserved for someone interrupted during their tea break. If any of the Others sense what I'm doing . . . well, I’m sure there would be quite the hissy fit. But as this seems to be the backend of nowhere on a planet, which is the definition of low priority, I'm probably okay with tarrying for a few moments.
Lorelei stared up at the Dragon, now close enough to see each tooth glistening with saliva thick enough to lube an oil tanker. Even in slow motion, it was still approaching, and the part of her brain that handled terror was having a full-on meltdown.
"Is there anything you can do to help me?" she asked, desperation edging her voice.
No, absolutely not, the voice replied cheerfully. I’m only here on your piddly little planet because it has been so long since anyone chose to be my Herald at integration that you piqued my curiosity. I usually have nothing to do for at least a couple of millennia on these newer integrations. I was hoping to witness the birth of a true powerhouse. Imagine my disappointment at finding you and realising you will not even surviventil the official Welcome message.
Lorelei was at a loss for words. Somehow, this mysterious voice’s dry derision as to her survivability weighed more heavily on her than the giant Dragon about to chew her into a fine paste. "I'm sorry?!"
No, it’s quite alright, my dear. Not really sure what I was expecting, to be honest. All things being equal, you shouldn’t even really have been able to select the Class. But that’s the point, you know? Randomly unlikely acts are pretty much my bag. It’s just easy to forget how pathetically squishy you all are right at the start. Hey ho, never mind. You win some, you lose some. On occasion, both at the same time.
The voice began to fade away, and time started to speed back up. Lorelei could practically feel the Dragon’s breath now: a hot, humid wind that smelled of sulphur and charred flesh. She was pretty sure this was the end, and all she could think about was how much she regretted that last piece of toast she had eaten. Was gooseberry jam really the way she wanted to go out? Raspberry had been right there.
"Wait!" she shouted, panic overriding all sense of decorum. "You said I should do something. What?"
There was a pause, and then, just at the edge of her hearing, she made out the voice’s amused reply. If I were about to be eaten by a dragon, I might consider that the downsides of triggering
Trigger
Time snapped back to full speed, and the Dragon hit.
First of all, let’s be clear: Steve was chow. The Dragon’s mouth closed over him like a Venus flytrap on a particularly juicy fly. It bit down with a sickening crunch, snipping off his limbs like stems of wilting flowers. Steve’s scream was cut short as the Dragon jerked its head back, tossing his body into the air. It snapped its jaws shut around the torso, chewing for a moment before swallowing him whole with a wet gulp.
Lorelei felt a notification ding in her vision, but she was far too busy being struck by a side swipe of the Dragon, her body sailing through the window Steve had so obligingly broken earlier. Her body flew through the shattered frame, smashing into the back wall of Jim’s Nail Salon with enough force to crack the plaster. She slid down to the floor, faceplanting for the second time that day, her senses bravely holding on to consciousness.
Critical Impact Detected! You’ve been struck by a [Junior Dragon], Level 3
Status Effect: Near-death experience. 1 HP remaining.
Through the fog of pain and disorientation, Lorelei managed to take stock of her situation. She was alive, technically. She was also pretty sure that several parts of her body were no longer attached in quite the way nature intended. Every nerve ending screamed in protest, and the taste of blood—her own—filled her mouth. But she was alive. Which felt pretty damn lucky in the circumstances.
Just as darkness began to close in on her vision, she heard that soft, smug voice again, barely more than a whisper in the back of her mind.
1 HP left. Who would have thought it? What a fortunate outcome.
And with that, Lorelei’s consciousness finally gave up the ghost, leaving her to the tender mercies of whatever future was about to come to pass.