“Fall back on me! Rache, work around the edges, high speed attack runs only! Rikka, get around behind them and attack from behind. Rakim, stick with me. Keep ‘em off me! Miyuki, shoot to pin them down, but keep them alive for now. Shoot whoever is closest. Versai- Get them!”

I have gotten used to shouting my orders very fast. There is still room for improvement.

The demons came in all shapes and sizes, from prowling cats the size of a cougar to half bright meatballs with meteor hammers on their shoulders, clocking in at seven feet and three hundred eighty pounds. These guys hadn’t missed any meals.

Made you wonder what they were eating.

Miyuki seemed curious too- she shot one of the ugly things right in the foot. The screams from the arrow were literally deafening. It sounded horrible. Like every bad thing was about to happen, all at once. I knew it was on my side, and I still wanted to run. The monstrous humanoid shared my opinion and tried to take off.

The results were… ugly. It turns out that the monsters weren’t concerned about hurting their fellows. He fell sideways, screaming, thrashing wildly around him with the Meteor Hammer. The whirring block of spiky iron scythed through the tall grass on its long chain, smashing the legs of the demons trying to run. He took the legs of three out. Leaving them pray for the fast moving Rache.

Rache was in her element here. Her ghostly motorcycle raced through the tall grass, her saber pointing the way. Then it skewered, withdrew, and hit the next victim with a trailing cut across the back of the neck. She directly beheaded a cat demon. It was trying to crawl away from the screaming arrows, the effect of two together was more than it could take. Its back legs looked broken by the meteor hammer.

It took Rache one pass to put the horror out of its misery. One swing, and the cat was off to see Lord Welcome about reformation.

Rikka was a little more primal about it. When she saw a downed enemy, she pounced. Literally pounced. Jumped on their back and got in with the kunai. I once heard that a kunai is, essentially, an evolved form of a medieval Japanese trowel. The small form factor and diamond shape works a treat for opening small holes.

Watching Rikka at work, I could see the thinking. Some broke mountain peasant getting all his crops stolen and his fields burned by some passing Samurai and thinking how easy it would be for his little trowel to get planted in an eye or throat. And afterward? Who would suspect a peasant? Especially since the honorable Samurai have confiscated all the weapons in the village.

She dug her fingers into the trapezius of some murderous half-human thing. Really wrapped her fingers around the tendons and thin muscles. She then leaned back, wrenching the neck open for the savage thrust. God, the blood! She had even calculated the angle of the arterial spray, keeping herself clean and the grass wet.

Rakim was her usual composed self, for all that her new civvies were throwing me off. Her carbine was pressed to her cheek, her finger squeezing quick shots off. She had a surprisingly difficult time picking targets. Since she was on bodyguard duty, her instinct was to kill the closest threat. Since she was partnered with Versai, the closest threat didn’t tend to live very long.

Versai…

I really need to talk to Versai. Maybe find her some comfy socks or cool jelly desserts or whatever relationship buffing thing I could find, because she is not okay. And I’m not really sure why. I know she isn’t, though. Not when she rips through the monsters like this.

The speed hack- abusing attack speed for maximum violence. And these monsters weren’t Versai’s match in the first place. Step, swing, step, swing, each move accelerating. Whether she hit anything was irrelevant. What mattered was that it was an attack. She was just a little off on her distance. Moving faster and faster. Until her flashing white sword bit into a monster’s neck.

The overhead chop was the wrong angle for a clean beheading. The backhand blow that followed it up sent the head flying into the bushes. Then it was a whirling chop at something with three arms and no head six yards away. She was just a little off on her range. For now.

Which was all fine, of course. It’s what I wanted her to be doing. It was just… the expression on her face. There was something there, something that had been growing since Gradden March. And I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.

Her mouth compressed into a thin line. Her jaw was clenched tight. Her posture, her every move radiated fury. It hadn’t before. Before, she was competent, deadly, and doing a job. Now? Now something had shifted and she was venting her hate.

Versai had been tortured to death by monsters so often, the number had become meaningless. She had a lot of hate to vent. But why now?

The look in her eyes… I don’t know. I never wanted to be that close to other humans. I never wanted to see that kind of look on anyone’s face. Not ever.

It was like watching a stick blender massacre a crowd of aliens. She would step, then sweep low to hack into the back of a leg. Not going for the joint or trying to chop through the bone, just deep enough to cut tendons and blood vessels. Then as she rose, she would twist the blade and snap her body around in a slash across a hollow gut. A near-invisible step to their back, and the long blade would punch through their chest.

I thought she would twist the blade on the extraction, but she didn’t. It took me a few dead demons to figure it out. She was making sure her sword didn’t get wedged by bones. Sure, she could break the bone and yank the sword out, but she was running a high speed operation. No delays permitted, and certainly no shut-downs, on this murder assembly line.

God she was fast. It got to the point where I was struggling to keep up with her movements.

The battle ended before it could even really begin. Versai was just too overpowered against a scattered group of unarmored, fleshy creatures.

“Moving even faster than before.” I said, trying to keep it light.

“Yes. I realized I was holding back. No more of that.” Versai nodded. A touch cooly, or maybe I was just imagining that.

I looked at her, puzzled. Versai was not, in my experience, one for holding back anything. I ordered the battlefield cleaned up while I was thinking it over.

“No loot worth mentioning, My Lord.” Rikka reported. She handed over sixteen Runed Bones. My money had taken a big hit after my big shopping spree with the Gnomes, but she was right. Sixteen Runed Bones were nothing.

“I am looking at a decent stack of weapons, Rikka.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“None of them usable by us. They are all trash anyhow.”

I tried to pick up a club. It popped out of my hands like it had been greased. I guess that hadn’t changed. There was a trident on the ground. I nearly brained myself with it as it fumbled from my fingers. Then, as I was dodging out of the way of the heavy tines, I managed to kick it with my shin.

It hurt.

A lot.

I am certain that my rocking back and forth taking deep hissing breaths while cradling my shin was very impressive. Regal, and reassuring.

I heard a noise coming from behind me. Yoko was looking down at me. Literally and metaphorically.

“Not very impressive, are you?”

“Did you miss the bit where you said we would definitely die, and now everyone that tried to kill us is very, very dead? And we are…” I hesitated to say ‘alive’ or ‘not dead’ but decided to bluff my way out. “We are victorious.”

Insert wiping forehead meme here.

“Did I say you would definitely die?” She tilted her head to one side, finger at the corner of her mouth in a classic airhead pose. “Hmm. I only remember saying that you would die. And everybody dies eventually. And that is definite.”

“Almost immediately” were your exact words. And then demons popped up behind us.”

She tilted her head the other way, putting the opposite hand’s index finger at the opposite corner of her mouth. “But then, what is time on the mountain? “Almost immediately” could be any time at all from the perspective of the mountain.”

I just looked at her a bit longer. She didn’t shift her pose. It went on uncomfortably long.

“Is there some reason you need to be right?” I asked.

“No. What’s important is that I’m not wrong.”

“That’s the important thing, huh?”

“Mmmhmm. Well. Until your inevitable, impending, any-moment-now death, you might as well come in.”

“Thank you. Could you introduce us to your mother? We met, but were never formally introduced.”

“Okay.” She nodded. Her bangs irrationally reminded me of some kind of industrial chopping machine. Like the nodding was turning the word “Okay” into four equal chunks.

She pushed open the gate and we walked up to the cottage. Mrs. Hungry hadn’t shifted this whole time. Apparently, there had been nothing worth moving for.

“Mother, this is someone. Someone, this is Mother.”

Deep breath, deep breath. La la la all is happiness and little capybaras of serenity, la la la.

“Liam. I’m the Tower Master these” don’t say girls, don’t say girls “women work for.” Nailed it!

That got me a long sniff from behind the silver curtain of hair.

“What women?” The voice was quiet, with a little rasp to it. It wasn’t just for telling stories, it seems. That was just how she talked all the time.

“These ones? The ones who chopped up all the monsters?” Could she not see through the hair? It couldn’t be easy, it was like a wall in front of her face.

That got another long sniff. “Sure. Women.”

Yoko coughed. “Mother, you are being rude.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t know, you just told me to say that if people started giving you strange looks.”

“Oh. Thank you dear.” Mrs. Hungry nodded towards Yoko. Affectionately. Maybe.

“Can we come in?”

“Absolutely not.” Her voice was so icy, I swear I felt frost forming over my eyeballs.

But what did I say wrong?

“When you told the story of the pigs and the hunters, you mentioned Heartless Clearing. We are hoping to find that clearing and explore it.”

Mrs. Hungry didn’t respond.

“Would you kindly tell us where the clearing is?”

“I will.” Somehow I had the impression of a terrifying smile under that curtain of hair. “One hundred heads.”

“Pardon?”

“One hundred heads. Demons or Hollow People. Deliver them to me, and I will show you the way to the Heartless Clearing. End the mountain’s hunger, Tower Master, claim this place as your own, and my daughter and I will join your service. But first, deliver me those heads.”

Mrs. Hungry was straightforward, but her request was not. “Scouts, did you find one hundred demons and… Hollow People, whatever they are, scattered over the mountain?”

“Yep.” Rache nodded.

“Easily four times that number with a casual look, My Lord.” Rikka didn’t nod. She was doing the One-Knee Down, One Fist on the Ground pose as she reported. Both had their charms.

“Are they clumped together, scattered around?”

“Both.” Rache tapped her saber thoughtfully.

I thought it through. I flat out refuse to send my troops out solo. I’m not some dim anime protagonist. This crew strictly jumps people. Based on what we had seen so far, the demons here were weaker than a comparable number of monsters from the Tower, so there was that. But I was concerned about these “Hollow People.” Humans with nothing inside of them? That sounds like monster shenanigans.

Why was the mountain hungry? Why were all their stories about hunger and predation? Why was Mrs. Hungry called Mrs. Hungry?

I reviewed the ‘cast list’ for recruitable characters- Miyuki, the Ninja Sniper. Which, when you think about it, is a kind of hunter. Rikka the very-explicitly-a-hunter. Of game both bi- and quadrupedal. Then Mrs. Hungry, who felt like an old, chatty, Sadako. Fingers crossed I didn’t have just seven days to live until she crawled out of my ear and killed me. And last but hopefully not least, Yoko.

Yoko seemed… quirky but normal? Normal ish? My definition of normal is, admittedly, not universally accepted. She made incense and it was important to her that she not be wrong. Which was an interesting distinction.

“Do you think you can lure them into an ambush?”

“Dunno, Boss.”

“They won't pursue forever, and they are used to both hunting and being hunted.” Rikka shrugged.

“So there is no chance of luring a bunch together and annihilating them all at once?”

Rikka shook her head. “If it were that easy, what would there be to fear from demons?”

Valid. Irritating, but valid. Alright, hard way it is then. Irritation management. You don’t want to micro a hundred battle encounters, do you? Why not just order your troops to go out and hunt for you. The mortality rate might be a smidge high, but if you buy our VIP 4 Tier Crystal Chest of Souls, you can get twenty free draws with a guaranteed Six Star every thirty draws!

The funnel is always the same. Get ‘em hooked with generous starting goodies, get them used to the time mechanic, then start rapidly scaling up how long things take and forbidding them from doing two things at once without paying real money for the privilege. It was a core piece of the freemium loop.

“Moo hoo ha ha.”

“Tower Master?”

“It’s an evil laugh, Versai. Suitable for one doing devious deeds.

“No, I have heard a lot of evil laughs. That sounds more like some kind of cultist chant.”

“It’s the definitional evil laugh! Watch- Moo hoo HA HA!”

Versai sighed and shook her head. “Could it be a curse? Are you feeling entirely well, Tower Master?”

“I do feel a stomach ache coming. Probably due to the flagrant disrespect of core cultural tropes. Why have you heard so many evil laughs?”

“I can’t bodyguard you from mind altering curses. Remember who I worked for?”

“Are you saying the Queen was evil?”

She waggled an elegant hand. “Evil is situational. She was a… strong woman. Which was lucky, given that most of the people she had me fight really were evil. I fought one Knight who destroyed his fief. He killed anyone who tried to farm on his fields.”

“Why?”

“Because his even-more-evil son had just died falling off his horse and after the funeral, people celebrated. So everyone had to leave, or starve.”

“Even more evil?”

“There were a significant number of unwed mothers amongst the peasants in that fife. All of whom have children that could pass as siblings.”

“Ah.”

“Mmm.”

“So what did his laugh sound like?”

“Happy. Innocent. They were his fields, after all. What could be wrong about leaving them fallow for a while?” Versai sounded creeped out.

“Nasty.”

“Yeah. Then there was the Baron with the oubliette, the Dame who fed her grandchildren ground glass because they reminded her of a boy who rejected her fifty years before, ah… there was the Second Deputy Secretary of the Chamber of Correspondence who the Queen ordered me to behead as a favor to the Secretary.”

“The Secretary wanted his deputy beheaded?”

“He wanted his son to have a quick, dignified death instead of death by flaying and drowning in brine that he deserved. It wasn’t made public, but he conspired with some merchants to steal money and supplies that were supposed to go to refugee resettlement. More than six thousand died in the first month. He laughed like an asthmatic horse screaming.”

There’s an image I didn’t need. “Well. Good that he’s dead. And speaking of expendable people dying-”

I looked over my summons. “None of you are expendable. So none of you are allowed to die.” No more Kim’s. No more. “So we are going to do this the most savage and ruthless way imaginable.”

I looked across the dark mountain, looked at the inky blackness under the pine trees, looked at this demon-haunted world. “We are going to be the hateful demon the developers fear the most- people who play all the content but don’t buy anything, sign up for anything or watch any ads.”

Versai gave me a ‘patient’ look. I smiled up at her.

“Rikka, Rache, lead us to the nearest monster. We are going to take them down one at a time. We will look at the terrain, their characteristics, who or what might be nearby. We will do it right. And then we will do it ninety-nine more times. Because there is one thing we do have. All the time in the world.”

I stood, dusting myself off and grinning. “Let’s get to it.”