The dust slowly settled over the ruins of the tower. Far, far off in the distance (like a couple hundred feet), the king could be heard crying in surprise and anger as the top of the tower squished his throne room; but from the ruins of the tower, not a sound could be heard.
Connor lay on the grass just away from the tower, staring up into the heavens. Every part of his body hurt. First the building fell on him… then he was hit by an explosion… then he fell off a building… in a way, it was a good thing his Systems didn’t show him many hit points he had left. The sight would doubtless have been depressing.
Speaking of Systems… he hadn’t had time to check in the heat of combat, but he was fairly certain he had received at least one notification from his Systems. With a weary sigh, half heard on the wind, he opened the screen.
[Ding! Congratulations to the Host for having defeated the Otome Game Villainess. You receive the following rewards:]
[Rugby +2]
[Pole Vault +2]
[Lacrosse +1]
[Master of Exorcism +1]
[Ding! The Host is reminded to practise his cultivation… Debuffs on Bark, Heartwood will persist until such time as his limbs are regenerated.]
Connor blinked in pleasant surprise. Now that was a stat boost, even if it was a little annoying that he still had to cultivate normally to get his limbs back.
[Ding! The Host is reminded that the System is not meant to destroy his enjoyment of the Journey.]
Enjoying the journey… right… uttering a mighty groan, Connor climbed back onto his feet, wiping the dust off his clothes, and examined his vanquished foe.
The witch lay there, quiet. In contradistinction to her earlier rage, and her yet earlier haughty arrogance, she seemed at peace now, blinking feebly in the moonlight.
“Is… is it over… and where am I?”
Connor said nothing, only holding out a hand for her. She took it gratefully, and he hauled her to her feet as she moaned and held her head. “Oh, my skull.”
“Phone-kun!” Death cried, her shout weirdly loud in the silence. Her face radiated a profound sense of relief as she finished descending from the sky, touching down on the ground beside them. Connor jumped at the sound of her calling his name, then gave her a small nod of acknowledgement, keeping his overall attention on the still struggling witch.
The latter was shaking her head as if trying to remove cobwebs, her eyes haunted, flickering about nervously. “Oh, that was a nightmare, a nightmare. One minute I… I was at home, deep in the woods, making a poultice for some rich prick of a prince. Then I whacked something, and the next thing I knew I was in… well, I don’t know how to describe it. All the houses were like mausoleums, but lit with a hideous and repugnant glow, and clawing their way up into the heavens as if from the transmigrator legend of Babel.”
Connor shivered. Wherever her soul had gone, it sounded like a horrible place. He felt a brief pang of gratitude and sympathy as he realised that he could have been so unlucky as to have gone there too, when he transmigrated.
“I was the girlfriend of this wheedly, whiny guy, who was obsessed with picture books, and I was well off but, kind of, well, horrible. I spent most of them hiding in my room, desperately reciting my prayers, hoping to return, and doing my utmost to ignore my ‘boyfriend’s’ tales of my past, which all seemed to involve being a snake and a cheating jackoff.”
She shivered. “It was awful. Near the end I met this wonderful, if plain, lady who was the embodiment of propriety and generosity, and I told myself, Agnes, if you ever go back to your home, you will strive to be like her - kind, modest, self-controlled. The gods must have heard my prayers, for one second I was sipping my margarita, and the next there was a boom and I found myself hurled against the wall… then there was darkness, until I found myself back here.”
And she broke down crying.
Death did her utmost to materialise, and patted her on the head. “There there… it’s all over now. You won’t be going back there.”
***
Terry rose out of the ruins of the wall, groaning, her crappy martial arts screaming as they did their utmost to hold her body together. There was a great deal of muttering and murmuring and shushing and gossiping, oddly enough… the nobles of the Kingdom of Yore had always gossiped, but not this obviously.
She looked around and gasped.
She was at the Witz - the finest hotel in town, and home to her favourite restaurant. Somehow, she had ended up smashing through a wall, and now crowds of rich and wealthy in two rooms were staring at her in shock, talking to themselves about scandalous sights and how the nouveau riche of today weren’t like the nouveau riche of their own time, and all sorts of other, highly offensive, rumours.
She tried to rise and fell back, her blasted muscles not responding to her call. She saw Hank, that absolute moron, standing dumbly in the corner, and angrily called out to him. “Oi, you blithering jackanape, what are you doing standing there? Help me out of this!”
Hank began hurrying over, but before he could reach her another patron did. This one was dressed stylishly, if a little oddly, wearing a pair of sunglasses at night indoors. She removed them, and Terry uttered an audible gasp in pure shock as she recognised the woman.
“Joanne?!”
Joanne smiled sweetly. “Oh, so you do remember me.”
“But- but what are you doing here? This restaurant is for high class ladies only.”
“And I see you’re back to your old personality,” Joanne observed cheerily. “A shame - I preferred the other you. She was a lady I could see myself being friends with.”
“Please, as if someone like me would ever be friends with you,” Terry snarled.
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Joanne smiled thinly, the expression strangely fitting on her drab and unremarkable face. “Indeed. As I’ve told you before, Bertha dear, and as I’ll tell you again, nobility is a virtue of the soul… one the nobility of money merely apes.”
Terry’s mouth wrinkled in an expression of abject disgust. “You b----, how dare you call me that name! God, you’re just like your brother - he didn’t know how to treat his betters either.”
Joanne’s thin smile became even thinner. “Perhaps it’s simply the trauma of being thrown through a wall that’s causing you to speak so uncouthly… yet I can’t help but think that you have not yet learned your lesson.”
“What do you mea-” Terry started to ask, but before she could finish she went flying through another wall.
Joanne wiped her glove off, her paper thin smile not reaching her eyes.
***
The trio had just begun to relax, secure in the knowledge that the curse of the Otome Game Villainess had been undone, when all of a sudden Agnes began to foam at the mouth. Her eyes rolled back into her skull, and she collapsed, falling on the floor in a heap.
Connor swore violently, desperately searching through his pockets for some kind of band-aids or healing artefacts. Death also swore, but unlike him she did nothing - and not merely because she didn’t have the ability to do anything.
“Darn it. I’ve heard of this - sometimes the exorcism doesn’t work the first time.”
“The exorcism doesn’t…?” Connor had started, when the witch woke up with a start. She looked about, her expression disgusted.
“Eww, why am I back here? At least the Witz had class. Still, at least I can-” and then she saw Connor. “Ugh, you. Of course you’re still he-”
And before she could say anymore, Connor had body slammed her, pinning her to the ground. Amid a torrent of curses, oaths, and invectives, he activated his [Master of Exorcism] skill. This time, prepared, he managed to awkwardly catch the bell and book with his feet and, still holding the witch down in a hold, started incanting the exorcistic hymn.
***
Agnes fell backward, foaming at the mouth, and blacked out even as she fell onto the ground. It was no more than a momentary blackout, and when she awoke it was to the one place she had least wanted to see.
She was lying in the remnants of another wall, her body sticky with blood. A gathered crowd of rich people gazed on, horrified, as a half dozen private security guards - all in the employ of Hank and his firm, Big Corp - tried in vain to hold back a very familiar looking woman.
No more was this the smiling figure of unobtrusive politeness. She was moving slowly, methodically, carefully, deliberately, towards Agnes, the stun guns and batons of all the guards combined insufficient even to delay her progress.
Conventionally, this would be when the main protagonist’s rich benefactor showed up and dabbed on all the less rich rich kids, thereby allowing the main protagonist to do what he (or, in this case, she) wanted, but Joanne had skipped that part of the plot. But she’d had no need to fulfil it - money counted for little when you could bulldoze anyone in your way.
(Money, and the perception of money - the staff of the Witz had taken one look at her singlehandedly trouncing the guards and concluded that she must be somebody important, because otherwise how could she be so strong? The management, of course, wouldn’t have been quite convinced; but the Witz had been cutting costs for years, and there were no managers yet on the premises.)
And so it was that the woman walked straight through the guards, pushing them aside as if they were paper mache figures, only stopping once to thump an exceptionally annoying one.
“Who- who are you again?” Agnes asked, terrified, as the woman reached her.
“Oh dear. You can’t pretend you don’t know this time, Bertha,” the pleasant woman - Brianne? - said.
“Ple- please, have mercy,” Agnes begged.
Briane just gave her the sweetest of sweet smiles. “This one is for my brother.”
And with that, she leapt into the air, arms raised in a hammer blow.
Agnes screamed.
***
“Caseum, caseum, caseum,” Connor declaimed, waving his foot about in a rough approximation of the instructions, as he finished the exorcism. The witch gave a great groan, head arching back unnaturally, then suffered a violent seizure, oscillating with ever more frequent and ever more violent. Connor released his hold, so as not to do the witch’s original host an accidental injury.
Suddenly the seizing ceased, and the witch raised her head slowly. Her face was a mixture of torment and fear, agony and relief.
“Oh, by the gods and goddesses. I… I went back there,” she said, and sobbed. Connor pat her on the head.
“Have no worries - this time, it must have worked.”
***
Terry groaned, shifting her body. To her surprise there were a pile of crushed tiles on top of her, and it was only with difficulty that she was able to get them off. When at last she moved the last of the tile to the side, slowly beginning to raise herself out of the hole she’d somehow ended up in, she was horrified to see Joanne gazing down at her, only a couple feet above her.
The other woman’s smile had broadened, growing bigger until it was practically glowing. She leaned in close until their faces were mere inches apart, her face serene. “I’m glad to see you’re awake. I was worried we had lost you to Slumberland.”
Terry gave her a shove. “You hag! How dare you-”
And then Joanne slapped her again.
***
No sooner had Connor finished assuring Agnes that nothing further would happen to her then she collapsed, once more frothing at the mouth. He sighed, and turned to Death. The latter cocked an eyebrow. “An expert exorcist, are we?”
Connor coughed in embarrassment, then raised one finger hopefully. “Third time’s the charm?”
***
When Agnes awoke, she was delighted to find that she was not in that hellish restaurant, but upon blessed, cool grey stone. She was in some sort of artificial cavern complex, with only a person-shaped opening above offering any light.
She could have whooped in relief and delight. At last, she thought to herself, she had incarnated into a world other than that of the restaurant and the grey tombstone buildings and the blinding lights and the weird boyfriends.
And then a figure jumped down through the hole.
Brianne walked casually towards the terrorstruck Agnes, swinging her purse as she strolled. She gave an idle look about the cave, and raised one eyebrow. “Well what do you know - there really was an anomaly here.”
Then she turned to Agnes, who was frozen in fear. “Now, to finish our discussion.”
Agnes screamed.
***
Connor lay on the ground, panting, drained after his repeated exertions and exorcisms. Death lay on the ground beside him, not because she was tired - she didn’t sleep - but because it seemed like the companionable thing to do.
“Do you think-” Connor heaved- “that worked?”
Before Death could answer, a notification popped up from his System.
[Ding! Congratulations to the Host for a successful exorcism.]
[Master of Exorcism +1]
Connor’s Stats:
Name: Connor Crinkle (formerly known as uPhone 12 model MX0169)
Age: 22
Race: Ghost of a Demon
Occupation: Exorcist
Physiological Stats:
[Leaves] 0 [Fruit] 0
[Xylem] 1 [Phloem] 1 (0)
[Bark] 3 (2) [Heartwood] 3 (2)
[Roots] 5
Physical Stats:
[Geocaching] 0 [Lacrosse] 2
[Pole Vaulting] 3 [Rugby] 2
Other sports to be unlocked later
Master of the Leifu Exorcistic Arts:
[Master of Exorcism] 3
[Master of the Storm] 0
[Yang Eyes] 0