As I pushed against the vines, I’d expected them to swing open like a door. It was a good thing that I hadn’t waited until the countdown ended to dart out of my hidey hole. As it was, I tore at the vines as quickly as I could and was still pushed through them when the timer ran out.
Health -2 (8/10) from vines scratching face and arms.
No sooner was I out of the hole when I was attacked. Sure, it was a bunch of small spiders that I could easily stomp on, but it counted, and I knew that because I got experience for doing it.
You have killed 4 small spiders.
You have gained 21 xp and one spider silk.
The spider silk was a tiny spool’s-worth of thread wrapped loosely in a way that looked like it might not tangle if it was unrolled very carefully. The experience was welcome. At least the AI seemed to be starting me off slowly. I’d killed bigger spiders in my old apartment.
I’d stumbled out into a larger cave system, the spiders having been the occupants of the vines over my safe room. The cave walls were like my safe room in that they were brown, bare, and gross. The floor was mud that caked onto my shoes and splashed up onto my jeans as I’d stomped. It wasn’t the kind of place that had stalagmites and stalactites. Instead, it had great wooden beams like an old mine, though there wasn’t a handy cart track for me to follow.
And I was just feeling a spark of hope that I might be able to do all this, when a bat dive-bombed me, and it wasn’t alone. I was made to regret the fact that I’d lengthened my hair because the darned things burrowed into it like it was the best nest material ever, which it probably was. Still, there is nothing more annoying than the cliché of a girl squealing because a bunch of bats tore at her hair.
I swung my arms over my head in the worst impression of the cliché and hated myself for it. With nothing to hit them with but my own hands, I swung the backpack off my shoulder and swung it with both hands.
“Hey!” Grace yelled as she slipped down one of my arms and tried to scurry back up to my shoulder.
“Hang on,” I told her, my attention riveted on the bats that were retreating with several wads of my hair in their too-human-looking clawed hands.
Even as I kept one eye on the bats, I reached behind me to braid my hair quickly and ruthlessly tight. I tied it with the spider silk, cursing the backpack for not having a scrunchy and a weapon of some sort. Grace had hopped to the ground, my shoulders having become an unsafe place to perch with all my machinations. I hadn’t known that tarantulas could jump. I wished I still didn’t know.
“I was almost bat food!” Grace complained. “Is nowhere safe on you for me to travel?”
“I don’t have a weapon, but you want to ride me like a pony and so I should keep my shoulders straight like I’m in the marching band?” I snapped back, nearly biting my own tongue when I saw the look on her furry face. Yes, it was a look, and yes it made me feel guilty. Sort of. Maybe I wasn’t such a good person.
“It isn’t MY fault I’m a furry little spider with almost no use!” Grace snarled back at me in a very un-grandmotherly way. Had I pissed off more than just the World AI? “You almost killed me like you did those other little spiders. And if it hadn’t been a sneaker death, it would have been a bat-meal death! Either way, I’m not likely to get recycled into something better thanks to your antics, so cut me some slack, human.”
I didn’t know what to say so I just stared at her. If there was a tiny part of my mind that had the urge to stomp her and get rid of her as a pest, it was a very small part. Very small. I swear.
“And if you want someone around to explain your options and how this new world works,” Grace was still ranting, “you’d better take better care of my very fragile form. I don’t have to help you, you know! I could have been a Writer AI or an Animation AI, but no, I’d felt sorry for you, so I volunteered to remain your advocate, and this is the thanks I get?!”
“How much would it take to upgrade you?” I asked, and it wasn’t because she was useful or that she’d guilt-tripped me. I was a decent person, that’s why.
“First, you’d have to level to get back into the safe room for a rest,” Grace told me, her tone only sounding slightly mollified by my offer. “Then you’d need to be willing to spend most of your running experience on an upgrade that would barely change me at all. For any significant change, you’d need to get to level four, at least.”
“Then we have a goal,” I told her, and she looked shocked, for a spider with fur. “Now where would you like to sit on this pony where you don’t think I’ll buck you off at the first sign of a fight?”
Grace had the grace to be a little flummoxed at that idea. As I felt like I’d clearly stated before, there wasn’t any place on my body that wasn’t in danger if I had to fight with what little I had. While she was thinking, I was eyeing those bats that looked like they were getting brave again. I opened the backpack and quickly pulled out what I had. There was a rope, soap, and candles. The energy bars weren’t something I was going to fight with. If my stomach hadn’t been so upset, I’d have sat down and eaten one.
There wasn’t a stick on the ground or a handy dagger. This was all I had until the World AI decided to grant me something. There wasn’t even a rock big enough to use as a flyswatter!
“With the way those bats are looking at me, I’m thinking I might be better off back in the backpack,” Grace suggested, edging toward it. “As long as you aren’t going to use it as a weapon again.”
Great. And now she’d kiboshed my only weapon idea. I pasted on a smile and opened the backpack, chucking the soap and candles in with her and scooting it across the ground. That left me with a heavy length of rope, my fists and my feet.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“On second thought,” Grace edged back from the bag, “there has to be something better than that.”
“You’re welcome to swing from the spider silk I used to tie up my hair,” I snapped, sarcasm slipping into my tone as the bats started to flutter a bit. I didn’t care where she ended up, as long as she stopped busting my chops!
“Okay,” she agreed, getting my full attention despite the threat of the bats.
The bats chose that moment to attack. I swung the heavy coil of rope at them, trying to remember everything I’d ever learned from watching action movies. Since none of those action movies had involved fighting bats with a coil of rope, I just spun around, nearly tripping on the backpack even as I saw Grace scuttle into it. Trying not to kill her, I kicked the backpack away from my feet and swung around again with the rope.
You have hit a bat for 3 points of damage.
There was a squeal as I got a lucky hit in and there might have been a hiss from the backpack. Seeing as she was the reason I wasn’t wielding the backpack as a weapon, she could lump it. Even as I got one bat in front of me flapping backward, another dived at the back of my head, trying to get another clump of my hair which was absurd, as I knew more about bats than the AI obviously did because of a paper I’d written in high school about them. Maybe it was a good thing Grace hadn’t managed to get into my hair before the bats descended as they were still going after my hair.
You have hit a bat for 2 points of damage.
You have killed a bat for 10 xp points.
The only thing I had going for me was that the bats weren’t doing any damage to me. As unrealistic as it sounded, the bats were still trying to get my hair. It took five more exhausting swings to kill one other bat and have the other retreat to cave ceiling area.
You have killed a bat for 10 xp points.
You have received two tufts of bat fur.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that? I thought, as I slumped, exhausted and slightly dizzily, to the ground.
“Is it over?” Grace poked a few legs out of the bag near my feet and I rolled my eyes at her and this whole mess.
“There’s still one up there,” I answered between huffs of breath. “I killed two of them though.”
“I was thinking we could make a little harness for me to…” Grace was suggesting, but I tuned her out.
“You want me to make a harness out of a bit of spider silk so you can ride my braid as I fight bats that are trying to steal my hair to make nests?” I challenged her before she could finish.
“If you could just shorten that by half, we’d have a clickbait option, I’m sure of it,” Grace whispered to me with a wink that was as improbable as the rest of all this.
“Let’s just take a good look at this,” I suggested, trying to remain calm-headed. “One, bats don’t build nests, nor do they attack hair unless it’s infested with bugs. Two, the laws of gravity and physics are going to make a harness almost impossible to make and even more impossible for a tarantula to use, especially since tarantulas don’t spin webs. Finally, tarantulas are more likely to eat bats than bats are to eat them.”
“Well, aren’t you a fount of useless and drama-sucking information,” Grace hissed at me.
“That’s the problem with you AIs,” I went on, very unwisely. “You take things that sound good and treat them like they are absolute fact, and you are so convincing that you manage to convince people that these idiotic things are true.”
“How do you know?” Grace challenged back. “Human memory is so bad, you could have forgotten that bats eat spiders and make nests. Besides, tarantulas do have the capacity to spin silk.”
“But they don’t use it for webs,” I argued, grabbing the backpack and shoving the rope back into it as I heard the bat retreat further into the cave system. “They trap their prey after sneaking up on them, not that you could sneak up on anything with as much as you talk.”
I should have known better.
You have been slain by a giant tarantula that just sneaked up on you and bit you for fifteen points of damage.
----------------------------------------
I woke up back in my safe room. I had a bad headache and two timers. One was for two hours, and the other was for twenty minutes.
AP 01:59:19
00:19:19
You have revived with the following curse, Aches and Pains.
I was panting for breath after a fight for my life and I was expected to be polite? And when I challenge the AI on their facts, I get insta-killed? How was that fair? Unreal. They got away with everything and I got nothing! None of this was my fault. Whose idiot idea had it been to let the AIs take over the criminal system anyway?
Everything hurt. My bones hurt. My back hurt, and my eyelashes were even tender as I blinked my eyes. I’d been twenty when they’d replaced the president of the US with an AI. I’d been at the polls, but I hadn’t voted on it. The polls were a great place to find Pokémon and I’d been heavily into it in college. There’d nearly been a riot at the polls as extremists had rallied to stop the bill from passing. The AIs didn’t allow for use of media space for campaign advertising due to it being really unpopular with the younger crowd of registered voters. I’d left when the arrests started, but I got some really amazing pics for my stream. I was a lot more social back then thanks to Pokémon tournaments. I met some of my best friends at those. Where had they gone? I wasn’t sure, but it was probably around the time that Pokémon had been forced to provide captures by watching ads so that the disabled had as much chance to catch them as more able-bodied people.
AP 01:56:47
00:16:47
I could probably have responded to a few of their texts for tournaments, but I’d started working and my mom was on me to quit playing games and grow up. This is what I got for growing up. I’d probably still have had enough friends to not get arrested for social ineptitude if she’d supported my Pokémon. Why couldn’t parents understand that it was a social game? I hope she was satisfied. This was all her fault.
I brought up my character sheets again to see if I’d somehow made more experience than I’d expected. Nope. It was still dismal because they weren’t giving me a chance. Why couldn’t I have been stuck in a Pokémon game instead of some idiotic monster killing RPG?
Dungeon Character Sheet
Name: Janet Mosely Level: 1
Class: Exp: 41/1000
Health Points: 10 Stamina: 8 (-2 for AP)
Mana: 10 Charm: 10
Dar – 1
Dex – 1
Dur – 1
MS – 1
MA – 1
LI – 1
LK – 1 (-2 for attitude)
Skills: Stupid Stubbornness (2)
Wait, I wasn’t normally this pessimistic or surly, was I? What was happening? Was the curse affecting just my stats or was I somehow changing because of my low stats? I hadn’t thought about Pokémon in a dog’s age, and I certainly didn’t blame my mother for getting me to be responsible once I graduated college. The thought flitted out of my head as quickly as it had entered it.
AP 01:52:31
00:12:31
“Grace?” I called out, wondering if the AIs were somehow cheating and moving the clock faster when I wasn’t looking.
When she didn’t answer, I pawed through my backpack. She wasn’t there. Great. Well, at least she wouldn’t be in the way. What did I need a stupid AI for anyway? I was better off without her. The pain from the curse was really making me cranky and introspective. Wanting neither, I slipped the backpack gingerly back onto my shoulder and started to pluck at the vines over my door.