“I hate you, you know that? I’ve always disliked you, even when we were on a team together. But looking at you now, I hate you,” Cunegonde said.

“Sorry, I guess,” Daisy said.

That was all Daisy could offer after Boulanger had bound her hand and foot and left Cunegonde to keep watch over her at the Heroes’ camp. Mortified as she was to be captured so easily and taken out of the fight, Daisy found it at least a little amusing to witness the behind the scenes bickering between Xians. Boulanger and Windwalker had a pissing match about who got to be the Hero who led the frontal charge and who had to be the one flanking through the sewers. The argument almost came to blows before Boulanger got the other high-ranking Heroes on his side by pointing out he had already managed to kill Natsuko and capture Daisy by himself, and that therefore he’d earned the right to lead the battle.

What was at stake, Daisy realized, was their popularity in the new game the Yishang were building. A lot of the same Celestials would migrate over, so the glory gained in this Special Event translated into success in whatever world came after Po-Lin. This made it no less strange to hear bickering over Use-Numbers again after the competition had collapsed, but she supposed it was precisely these eight who still had something to compete over.

“Do ya hate me cuz Boulanger left ya to behind guard me?” Daisy asked. “You could always just let me go, y’know.”

“Yes to the first,” Cunegonde said and then kicked Daisy in the side, “No to the second.”

Daisy bit her lip and grunted. She hadn’t received any medical attention since her and Natsuko’s crash landing and even Cunegonde’s occasional prodding was enough to make her eyes water. She was lucky her former teammate hadn’t noticed her tears or it would have been added to the list of things to mock her for.

“It’s not too late, Cunegonde, please,” Daisy said.

Cunegonde rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, let’s join forces, together we can rule this land, all that shit. I’ve heard it from the Entropic Axis bosses a billion times. It’s not any less cliche out of your mouth, bestie.”

“Just listen to me, dammit! If Boulanger is doing this to you now, just think what he’ll do when there’s no one else to bully. You’re at the bottom of the totem pole, everyone knows you only got your spot because Natsuko bailed. As soon as the Yishang move the Xians over, you’re gonna be where we are,” Daisy said.

Boulanger had pressed the same button when Cunegonde had insisted she join the fight instead of sitting around watching Daisy. Not only had she been shut down, but Koyon and Ailing ganged up to tell her the same thing. Team Windwalker remained silent, but even Daisy could tell they were in agreement that the last minute substitute was the least important of the eight of them. Not only that, Cunegonde was also the only one who’d been bested by a non-Xian Hero when Natsuko and Kane escaped from her. But Daisy wisely declined to press both buttons at once.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely, one-hundred percent, without a shadow of a doubt right, Daisy. Just like always,” Cunegonde said, reaching down to cup Daisy’s chin. “But that doesn’t mean I wanna march off to my own death like Natsuko did. And like you did, honestly. You probably would’ve been the back-up instead of me if you stayed. You always had more appeal with the Celestials. I worked harder, I had better stats, more Celestials used me, but you had more of them making fucking pornography of you and that’s what the Yishang care about.”

Cunegonde punctuated her declaration by gripping Daisy’s chin in a vice until she felt her former teammate was going to rip it out of her mouth. Recalling Natsuko’s severed finger, a bolt of fear ran through Daisy. Had it not been for Alice Imperia giving Cunegonde a shove, her jaw might have been the next victim of Cunegonde’s ‘permanent destruction’ ability.

“Knock it off, idiot! You’re gonna ruin our emanations by acting like a psychopath,” Alice said.

Cunegonde glared at her. “Our emanations!? You’re not—”

Daisy watched wide-eyed as Cunegonde almost gave away that the eight Xian were the only ones being saved. In the short time since being captured, Daisy learned that the Yishang had told the Top 30 the same story about moving them to a new world, and none of it was true. Before the other took off to fight, Daisy debated blowing the whistle on it, but all that would accomplish would be Cunegonde killing her and then claiming she was a liar. But if Daisy could keep herself alive, she might turn Cunegonde against the others. And live to tell the tale.

“H-Hey! We shouldn’t be fighting each other, we should be fighting the Yishang,” Daisy said.

“Shut up,” Alice said without looking at Daisy.

Cunegonde laughed. “You know, there was a time when you were stronger than me, Alice. A couple weeks ago, if I recall. Unfairly, given your preferential treatment and quest importance. If I’d had your base stats with my work ethic I could’ve been Top 10, easy.”

Alice Imperia scoffed. “Keep telling yourself that like you didn’t luck your way into your special class because Natsuko didn’t want it. Hmm, I wonder why? Did Boulanger make you sleep with him for it? That’s gotta be it, right?”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Cunegonde didn’t reply. Instead, she went looking through a bag of weapons a Hero had brought to the little camp set up a mile or so from Vermögenburgh. Each one had a different set of useful stats, all rendered useless with the spread of force dimension-jumping. But Daisy had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t the stats her former teammate was after.

“What are you doing? Hey! Blonde bimbo, I’m talking to you, what are you doing!?” Alice said.

Cunegonde turned around with a glowing blue sword and rammed it through Alice’s stomach. Her victim released a puff of air that sounded like the daintiest cough in the world before blood started to foam and froth at her mouth, dribbling out in a thick paste. Cunegonde turned the blade like a water spigot, increasing the flow.

“I’m sorry, Alice, I didn’t hear what you said. Would you like to repeat it? No? Cat got your tongue?”

Adrenaline dumped wave after wave of fear and energy into Daisy’s muscles which rebounded against the harsh reality of the ropes around her wrists and ankles. She wriggled like a worm towards the same bag of weapons but stopped when Cunegonde stomped on the leg still broken from the crash landing. Daisy screamed in pain.

“I’ll get to you in a second, sweetie. I have to put someone else in their place first,” Cunegonde said.

Slick with red blood and visceral grease, Alice’s hands fumbled for purchase on the blade in her abdomen. Horror filled her eyes in proportion to the glee filling Cunegonde’s. The latter looked around to see if any other Heroes were still in the camp and, finding it empty, Cunegonde brought Alice in as though for a hug, pressing her bleeding stomach against the wispy folds and bare skin of her Xian outfit.

“You’re not going to a new world, Alice. Only the Xian are. All you’re going to do is die here, same as the rest who didn’t make the cut,” she whispered to Alice.

Daisy was short on options and short on time. In the next thirty seconds, she needed either an FDJ weapon or her compass. Either one would do, and she didn’t dare wish for reinforcements who weren’t coming. But even if she knew where either item was, it did her no good tied up with a broken leg. Truthfully, she needed a miracle.

And then she got one.

If her senses weren’t heightened by the fear of imminent mutilation, Daisy might not have even noticed the glint somewhere in the dark among the shade of the pine trees off the path the camp was on. At first she thought it was a weapon or something someone had dropped in their haste to go fight the rebels, but upon focusing, she noticed the piece of metal was protruding from a lumpen pile of leaves. Daisy’s observation was cut short by Cunegonde withdrawing the blade from Alice’s stomach as she allowed her victim to flop around among the leaves trying to hold her organs in. She turned to Daisy.

“Okay! Now that’s out of the way, I believe we had an interrogation to get back to. I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about telling me where Shuixing is? If you tell me, I’ll let you off the hook quicker than I let her,” Cunegonde said, gesturing at Alice burbling and gasping like a dying fish.

“K-Kill me however you like, y-you won’t get a damn thing from me!” Daisy replied, her plan to rehabilitate Cunegonde thrown out the window.

Her former teammate grinned and wiped her lips, adding more blood to their cherry red.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have another chance to tell me after I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fun.”

A shot rang through the forest, sending birds flying. The complex package of shapes and colors which formed Cunegonde unraveled into the flashing, thumping polygons of a dimension-jump victim. A moment later she was gone. The pile of leaves out in the forest shifted and from it sprung one of Sofiane’s committee members, the Tianzhounese bandit he put in charge of recruiting and information. Despite the pain and fear coursing through her, Daisy felt guilty she couldn’t remember his name.

The bandit sprinted out into the camp, stomping on tents and bags as he moved to cut Daisy free.

“Th-thank ya kindly!” Daisy said as he cut through her ropes with a Tianzhounese short sword. “And I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what in the heck were you doing all the way out here!?”

“Recreational hunting,” he replied.

“I’m sure glad ya were!” Daisy said, shuffling herself to a sitting position with her broken leg off to the side. “I hate to ask another favor from ya, but I need to get back to town and have someone fix me up. If you can find a brass compass lying somewhere, that’d help tremendously. Oh! And how rude of me, I don’t even know my savior’s name!”

“Zicheng,” he replied. “I can spare a moment to look for your compass.”

“Well, Zicheng, I wish I could repay ya, but I don’t know if we’ll have time,” Daisy said.

“Getting us out of this hell world is enough,” he said.

After Zicheng put Alice out of her misery, the two of them—mostly Zicheng—searched for Daisy’s weapon. Daisy had a brief moment of panic as she thought Cunegonde had pocketed it before being dimension-jumped, but Zicheng promptly found it inside a chest belonging to Boulanger. He handed it to her.

“I can’t guarantee it’ll be a smooth ride, and you might hear me whining the whole way, but if ya like I can take ya back to town,” Daisy said.

Zicheng shook his head. “I’ll do more good in my current role.”

Daisy put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Well, ya popped a Xian and a top-ranked Hero, so I can’t argue with that. Now I guess I oughta—”

Cunegonde appeared behind Zicheng, blinking into existence like someone or something had dimension-jumped her to the surface. Daisy’s throat was half full of a scream before Cunegonde cut his head off with her sword and his head rolled to a stop at Daisy’s feet. Her former teammate’s mouth twisted into an open-mouthed, toothy smile and she shot finger guns at Daisy.

“Bullseye! Hehehe. If I were you, I’d start running. If you can, that is. I’m not interested in answers or numbers or any of that,” Cunegonde said, licking the blood-soaked blade. “I’m just having fun now.”