Numbers. That’s what Natsuko needed, more Gods-damned numbers. Cold, hard, Ying coins, stats, Use-Numbers. As much as she could get. No such thing as too much. The whole world revolved around them, above and below.

Five years ago, as far back as she could physically remember… well… existing, she’d been a peppy optimist, ready to save the world of Po-Lin from the evil forces of the Entropic Axis. She'd been a Knight of Innocentus for crying out loud! That was over.

Now she was a day-drinking regular at what used to be the busiest tavern in Vermögenburgh, which five years ago would've made it the busiest bar in Po-Lin, a bar called the Devil’s Cut. At four in the afternoon, it was not busy. It hadn’t been busy in years.

Natsuko’s messy mop of bright-orange hair puddled across the splintery counter. Clutched in her hands was a mug of room-temperature ale. Beside it was a neat little pyramid of shot glasses. Her drinking buddies, Non-Heroes, sat a few stools down, quietly nursing their own mugs. Late afternoon light filtered through dirty shingles at the other end of the bar and gave the whole place a musty look.

“It’s all numbers, ain’t it Klaus?” Natsuko mumbled.

Klaus the bartender grunted. It wasn’t the first time she’d said that. Not even the first time that day.

“You seen any newbies wanderin’ around?” she asked.

“One, a young girl. Was in and out, same day she was summoned,” Klaus said.

“See nowadays—”

“Here she goes again!” said one of her Non-Hero drinking buddies. This prompted a round of laughter from their assembly of alcoholics.

Natsuko scowled. “Shut up, Hans. See, nowadays what they do—”

“Oh! I know!” said Ada the barmaid. She knew the tirade Natsuko was about to launch into by heart.

“You shut up too!” Natsuko said, chuckling softly at the banter. It really was stupid. But she got pleasure out of the full rant, complete with the Non-Hero patrons knowing exactly what she was would say before she said it.

“Nowadays all the new Heroes that get summoned are crazy powerful, right out the gate! Frickin’—” Natsuko stopped to burp. “—frickin’... now when the Yishang dump a newbie on us, they’re all five-stars, their base stats at Level 1 look like mine after I busted my ass for a whole goddamn year! They shoot frickin’ legendary once—”

“Once-in-a-millennia starbeams every five seconds from their ass?” Klaus the bartender interrupted, filling in the next line for her.

Natsuko pounded the counter. “You’re supposed to be my emotional support bartender, not mock me.”

He shrugged with a guilty grin. “Payback for those tabs you keep leaving open.”

“Yeah, yeah. Pay you back when Yishang sends me my money.”

The fun of the rant halted as soon as Natsuko remembered the state of her Ying purse. She'd been paid that week, and it was already running light again after she'd taken another hard dip in her Use-Number. That was the little metric tracking how many Celestials were using her emanation. In other words, how many of these unknowable gods in countless realms had summoned her in the past week for whatever the hell it was that they used her emanation for.

Not many did. Not for years, anyway. There was a time when Natsuko was hot shit when she first came into existence five years ago. When she was at the frontlines of the fight against the Entropic Axis. When she was raking in money hand-over-fist (long since spent dry). She was the big deal the Celestials were all clamoring to summon. Now, she lived in her roommate’s laboratory closet, had a diet of white rice and alcohol, and drowned herself in nostalgia and liquor.

Her rant, though tedious for those that had heard it before, wasn’t wrong. The newbie Heroes that the Yishang summoned were all ever-so-slightly stronger and more powerful than the ones that came before them. Their stats would be tuned slightly higher, their abilities more powerful, their outfits more… well, on that point Natsuko was glad she came early. There was a sub-metric called your Ero-Art number, and while it didn’t earn you any money, it was tied uncomfortably closely with your overall Use-Number. This all meant the newbies were out having legendary fights against demon kings right now, and she was due for…

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“‘Bout that time, Natsuko,” Klaus said, pointing at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was a few minutes to five.

She sighed. “Yeah, guess I oughta.”

Natsuko’s legs wobbled under her and everything felt fuzzy. Her ale-to-whiskey pace had been a little off and now she was feeling bloated and sluggish. More than anything else, she wanted a nap. But she had a job to do first. Hefting her three foot tall, empty wine bottle over her shoulder, she went outside.

The cobbled lanes of Vermögenburgh were quiet. The windows shuttered. The Non-Heroes all knew the drill by now. Five o’clock on a Monday meant another special event where the same ice wyvern attacked the city. She had the event start time down to the second her foot touched the grass outside the city gate. A scream like nails on piano wires filled the mid-autumn air. From over the peaks of snow-capped mountains, a blue, crystalline wyvern sailed, honing in on the city. Natsuko squatted down and rested her chin on her oversized wine bottle and waited. The guards at the gate yawned and leaned against their pikes.

Natsuko wondered idly whether it was the same wyvern every time, or if the Entropic Axis summoned new ones to throw at her. Either way, the little city no one remembered after they completed their intro quests relied on her to clear out the stupid wyvern every Monday. Technically, the townsfolk would all be resurrected by the Yishang the next morning if she decided not to do her job on a given Monday, but the last time Natsuko allowed that to happen because of a wicked hangover, she watched the Non-Heroes frozen alive next to their loved ones. Suffering was possible even if death wasn't.

So, the wyvern ended up part of her Monday afternoon schedule, penciled right in between drinking and more drinking.

Natsuko exhaled in annoyance. “Hurry up, ya little shit."

The ice wyvern let out another screech and dipped its neck towards Natsuko. Frosty air billowed through bared icicle-teeth. Natsuko cocked her wine bottle back and stood like a baseball batter. Just as it was about to crash into her, Natsuko swung and clipped the wyvern's talons with the wine bottle’s punt. The wyvern’s look of surprise was the same every iteration.

First, it ground to a halt. Then, it had about a split second to realize something was wrong before the dimensions of its body flared wildly in every direction like a jagged, misshapen lump of pyrite. This was accompanied by a chunking sound like someone slapping a piece of wood thirty times a second. Finally, it shunted directly through the ground, leaving no hole, never to be heard from again. After that, it stopped existing. At least until next Monday.

“Thanks Natsuko,” one of the guards said with the tone you thank someone for holding a door.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied.

And that was the end of the Vermögenburgh Wyvern Attack Weekly Special Event. She returned to The Devil’s Cut..

“Dead yet?” Hans asked.

“Made a daring escape,” Natsuko said, retaking her seat at the bar.

Klaus set down the mug he was rinsing and walked over to her. “Free drink for our town hero. Anything on tap.”

That was an inside joke. There was one tap, and it was for “ale.”

“Bartender’s choice.”

“Coming right up.”

Well, that one wasn’t going to add to her mounting tab, at least.

“We appreciate what you do, sugar,” Ada the barmaid said, rubbing Natsuko’s back.

“Thanks.”

Problem was, killing the same wyvern over and over didn't get her anywhere. It wasn’t bumping her Use-Number, it wasn’t making her stats better because her special technique didn't “slay” anything, so it didn’t give experience points, and it certainly wasn’t making her any gods-damned Ying besides a free pint of ale. But what was she going to do, let them die over and over? The Heroes at the top of the Use-Chart didn’t give a shit about what happened to the little town, so it was up to her and her alone.

Natsuko's head slumped back down onto the table and she covered it with her hands. What the hell was she going to do? Numbers, that’s what Natsuko needed. It didn't matter what the number was, just that it went up. But everything she tried—

The tavern door swung open.

“Natsuko! Did you forget something?”

Natsuko turned to face her. The bespectacled girl in blue scholar robes in front of her had her hands on her hips with a rod clasped in the left and a pile of papers in the right. This was her best friend and former teammate Shuixing, and on Shuixing’s face, emerging from under indigo-colored bangs, was something she probably wanted to look like a frown, but hewed closer to a pout.

Natsuko’s face burned and it was only partly because of the booze. “Oh! Ahaha, right, the research. Oops!”