She careened into the next corridor, momentarily surprised that the area beyond the boss looked much the same as the one before it.

Corpses littered the floor. They were all hellhounds and carnage demons, just like the ones she’d been fighting. Most of them were missing huge chunks of their heads and had bloody wounds on their bodies as well.

She reached a fork in the path, listened for a second, heard the sound of the gun once more, and set out in its direction.

A living human! she thought. One who survived the higher-leveled monsters!

What would they be like? Would they want to team up? How was she going to introduce herself?

She rounded a corner and saw him: a singular man with his back turned to her, aiming down his sights and blasting a leaping carnage demon from the air. The demon fell, writhing and clutching its chest, and he fired over it, two shots that sent a demon behind it to the ground as well.

He paused, held out a hand, coalesced two rounds—shells?—and then loaded them into the gun with calm, precise movements.

Then he blasted off the head of the nearest demon, took a few steps forward, and repeated this process with its fellow. His shoulders slumped as he heaved out a sigh.

“Hi!” Ashtoreth said. “I’m a good guy! Don’t be—”

The man wheeled, bringing his shotgun up to point it at her. “Freeze!” he cried.

Ashtoreth gasped. She recognized the human man with graying hair before her. It was the police officer, Frost, the man she’d let arrest her before the system initialized.

She’d helped him by shooting him in the head. He’d probably made it into the same tutorial as her because the undead race augment she’d earned him put him in the upper echelon of initial power.

After all, the trail of dead hellhounds and carnage demons made it clear that he’d killed quite a few already.

Now that he was facing her, she could more clearly see a sword belted to his waist, probably his starter weapon. He’d most likely gotten the gun from the [Armament] aspect.

Her favorite aspect. She could already tell that they were going to be friends.

“Drop the weapon!” he shouted.

“Uh, okay,” she said, unshouldering Luftschloss and letting the sword crash to the ground beside her. Frost’s eyes darted to it, wide and disbelieving.

“Don’t shoot, all right?” Ashtoreth said. “We’re on the same side.”

Sir Frost blinked. Realization dawned on his face a second later.

“You,” he hissed. “You again.”

Dazel spoke from where he was hiding behind her legs. “Wait—you know this human?”

“Mhmm!” she said, nodding. “I met him right before I came here. He’s a police officer, so I bet he won’t just be happy to join up with us—he’ll be useful, too.”

“You uh, you sure about that?” Dazel asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “He’s a police officer. They’re sort of like Earth’s paladins.”

“Uh—sorry, what?” Dazel asked. “Were we watching the same humanity?”

Frost was just staring at them. Ashtoreth realized he really had no idea what to do. After all, it wasn’t like he could arrest her again. Where would he take her? How would he hold her?

“You don’t have to point that at me,” Ashtoreth said. “Like I said, I’m on your side.”

“Yeah,” Dazel added. “We look trustworthy, right?”

“Stop it,” she hissed at her familiar. To Frost, she added: “I’m Ashtoreth. I know how I look, but I’m here to fight Hell. I’m a good archfiend.”

“Good?” Frost shouted. “You shot me!”

“You shot him?” Dazel asked.

“You… you killed me!” Frost said, his eyes wild. “You killed me and put me here.”

“Woah woah,” Ashtoreth said, holding her hands out in a placating gesture. “I didn’t kill you.”

“You shot me in the head!”

“Okay, yes,” she conceded. “That much is true. But I didn’t kill you or put you here. Instead I made you….” she trailed off, squinting at him. He looked mostly human, but she could see that his eyes were red, now. “Looks like you picked vampire.”

“Vampires are dead!”

“Um, actually, they’re undead,” Ashtoreth corrected, raising a finger. “There’s a pretty big difference between being undead and being dead—one makes you stronger, the other unmakes you. Now, to be completely fair, it’s technically true that I did get you put here, because without your vampire augment you wouldn’t be strong enough to get into this tutorial. But this isn’t the afterlife, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“This is Hell!” he said.

“That’s right!” Ashtoreth said. “And while that’s no cause for celebration, I hope we can agree that I’m the expert on Hell, between the two of us.” She drew her tail in a sinuous motion from one side to the other to emphasize her point. “There’s definitely some misconceptions I ought to clear up.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You’re a demon,” Frost breathed, his eyes seeming to grow even more wild.

“Okay well excuse me, but no—no, no, no. I’m an archfiend.”

“Trust me, man,” Dazel added. “You don’t want to call an archfiend a demon. We’re way less precious than them.”

Frost just looked between them, hands still holding the gun steady. Something in his face seemed ready to break.

“Look, it was an honest mistake,” said Ashtoreth. “You don’t know any better! I’m not offended.” She paused, then added. “Anyway, the key takeaway here is that you’re not dead. You’re undead! And you can go back to Earth and help all of the people there.”

This seemed to get through to him more than anything else she’d said. He shut his eyes, shook his head as if to clear bad thoughts, then opened them again and resumed aiming down his sights.

“Those portals,” he said. “Those… things coming out of them.”

“Everything that I already told you was going to happen!” she said. “Hell has invaded Earth. Right now we’re all stuck in our own private time, but as soon as the tutorial is done we’ll be returned to Earth in the very moment that we left.”

“That’s not possible!” he insisted. “This can’t be real—no-one can freeze time!”

“Okay,” Ashtoreth said, unsure of what to say. “But, um, actually, the same thing that filled your mind with video game menus and teleported you to hell after turning you into a vampire can definitely freeze time.” She gestured vaguely. “You kind of just have to take the whole bag, here.”

Frost’s face seemed to grow desperate. “This can’t be happening,” he said.

“Okay,” Ashtoreth said. “But actually yeah, though.” An awkward pause hung in the air between them for a moment, and then she spoke again. “Listen: come with me. We’ll beat the tutorial together, then help stop Hell’s invasion of Earth!”

Frost’s eyes hardened. “You’re one of them.”

“You’ve noticed,” Dazel said dryly. “Sharp eyes on that one.”

“Shush, you,” Ashtoreth hissed.

She looked back at Frost. “I’m not like the other archfiends!” she said. “But now we’re just talking in circles.”

“Okay then,” Sir Frost said. “Tell me: why’d you turn against your own kind?” he asked.

“Well,” she said. “To prepare for an invasion, Hell takes a whole bunch of devils, demons, and fiends—fiends are hybrids of the first two—and has us spend our whole lives training. We also study the culture of the place we’re invading so that we can think like our enemies for the purpose of destroying them. And with Earth, that was easy: humans have the internet, and television, and books. We just got unlimited access to all of those.”

“In retrospect,” Dazel added. “It might not have been the best approach.”

Ashtoreth ignored him, carrying on: “But the more I did my invasion research, the more I realized that I wanted to protect Earth, not invade it! Humans have fun! And not just sadistic fun—they have birthday parties and new year’s parties and baby showers! They go to the cinema and the mall and the arcade! They eat ice cream and bubble gum and peanut butter—sometimes even peanut butter with chocolate! They watch unboxings and movie trailers and video essays! And they have memes! O such memes as my heart has longed for since I was just a little girl!”

As she spoke, her voice became exuberant… then began to fray, grow more desperate. “And we’re going to take it all,” she said. “We’re just going to turn it into more Hell. Infernals and slaves, everywhere. The only thing to eat will be the flesh of the unworthy and the only thing to watch will be their suffering.”

Frost regarded her for a while before speaking. “You’re crazy, aren’t you?”

“Definitely,” said Dazel.

“Just a little!” Ashtoreth said defensively.

Frost considered her. Briefly, he closed his eyes and hung his head. “If I shoot you, it won’t hurt you at all, will it?”

“Well, your gun isn’t loaded,” Ashtoreth said. “So no. But even if you did….” She tried to look apologetic.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” asked Frost. “If I don’t trust you, I’m not going to get back to Earth.”

“Probably not,” she said. “I don’t think most of the humans who landed here are doing too well, to be honest.”

Slowly, he lowered the weapon. “You really did think that you were doing me a favor when you shot me.” It was more a resigned realization than a question.

“I was! I was.”

“Don’t do me any more favors without asking first.”

Ashtoreth grinned. “Sure thing, Sir Frost!”

Frost lowered his weapon, then warily approached, seemingly waiting for Ashtoreth to spring an attack. When none came, he said: “Okay then. We’ve spent enough time here—we should get moving and look for survivors.”

“Right!” said Ashtoreth, overjoyed to have made contact with—and recruited—her very first human. “We should start looking for a way outside this complex, since that’s probably what any survivors are doing. It’ll be easier to spot distant humans from out in the open, anyway.”

Frost considered this, then nodded. “There were some stairs leading upward back that way,” he said.

They set out in the direction he’d indicated.

“So just to get this straight,” Dazel said, falling in behind them. “She killed you so that you could become an undead? Took advantage of the old ‘interstitial soul state’ loophole?”

Frost looked down at the talking cat with a tired expression.

“He’s my familiar,” Ashtoreth explained. “So far, he’s pretty useless. His name’s Dazel.”

Frost took this in, his expression not changing. “Right. Great. Well, Dazel—yes. She shot me.”

“Okay,” said Ashtoreth. “To be fair, I did shoot him. But it wasn’t murder—it was, I don’t know, whatever you call it when you suicide someone else, but—”

“—so murder,” Dazel said.

“No, you didn’t let me finish!”

“It’s murder, though,” Dazel said.

“I only killed him a little bit!” she protested. “You said it yourself: since his soul was in a transitional space when the system came, it’s only technically death.”

“So you murdered him, but with unusual consequences.”

“How about: surprisicide.”

Officer Frost looked over. “It was murder.”

“Okay okay,” said Ashtoreth. “But what about: friendicide.”

“Listen, kid,” Frost said. “If I’ve got all this right, a whole lot of people are dying right now because of your kind, and the only reason I’m in this place—which is Hell—is because of you. Right now, people are being hunted like animals. The whole world has changed forever, and for the worse.”

Frost shook his head. “Now as far as I know, you haven’t lied to me once. So if you say you’re going to help people, I’ll go along with you.” His jaw stiffened, and his eyes hardened as he looked at her. “But make no mistake: we are not friends. I’m not even sure you really know that even means.”

Before she could answer, he had turned away and proceeded down the hallway.

“Okay, okay,” said Ashtoreth, falling in behind him. “So we won’t call it friendicide.”

She smiled. She wouldn’t let this deter her—they just needed to get to know each other.

Quietly, she added: “Yet.”