Trouble With Horns

My march towards the all you can beat buffet outside the temple was almost immediately interrupted in the antechamber of the temple. Interrupted by a series of mirrors.

Wow, I had changed so much, but also not at all. Rather, not much had changed, but what had changed, had a big impact on my looks. There were a grand total of two things that had changed in my human appearance. I placed my hand on the mirror for a second, imagining that I was looking at my real world reflection, what I might look like in the real world, rather than just a simple reflection in a mirror.

My hair was almost the same colour, almost. Where it had been a dark ashen brown, almost black, it was now a dark ashen blue. My eyes were similar, they used to be a dark, deep brown, but now they were a dark, greyish blue. Like the darkest of storm clouds. Rora was right too, within both my hair and my eyes, little sparks flickered every now and then, like I was one good argument from becoming a bolt of lightning. I looked cool as hell! I wonder if I still had my demon form… Time to test it.

Glancing with a quick smile to Rora, I rolled my shoulders and went through the now familiar mental motions of summoning my demon form. As my transformation blossomed, I gasped in surprise.

Whoa.

The first thing I noticed was my hair again. It hovered slightly, wisps of it occasionally moving as though caught by a gust of heraldic wind. Heralding the storm. The sparks were more prominent now as they wove through it like ribbons. Then there were my eyes, or rather, my irises. They had become twin coils of lightning that sparked and crackled electricity to the ends of my eyelashes.

My horns were long graceful lengths of calcified wood, their tips curling out to the sides and then back, almost touching each other behind my head. Along their lengths, strange runes like those on the dryad that had killed me were carved, their interior surfaces sparking ominously, causing the runes to glow with a faint blue light.

And last, I flexed my wings. The leathery not-feathers were gone, replaced by the real thing. Dark feathered wings the colour of a stormy night flexed and spread behind me displaying a wingspan that was far larger than my original pair. I gave them an experimental flap, sending a gust of wind that billowed dust out around me, attracting looks of curious awe from the newbie non-human adventurers around me. When I smiled a toothy grin, I saw sparks of electricity dancing in the depths of my throat.

“Wow,” Rora breathed from next to me, and I had to give her a wide eyed look of agreement.

“I wonder what the rest of my character looks like now,” I murmured, bringing up my character sheet to have a look.

“Oh, I’d love to find out after we kill all the bad guys outside,” Rora chuckled flirtatiously, moving around to block my view of the character sheet.

I looked up at Rora with a frown for a moment before I saw her coming in for another kiss. Oh, let’s see what she thought of my lightning throat! I welcomed the kiss, and she gasped almost immediately as literal sparks of electricity flickered between us.

Pulling back, she chuckled and grinned, “I think I need to be in my fire form for this.”

“I think you do,” I smirked.

She arched her back a little and gave a tiny gasp, letting the flame well up within her. Her eyes took on that amazing molten coal glow, and her hair shifted and stirred in an unseen breeze for a moment before it went up in flame. Where my throat now held flickers of electricity, hers held the heat of a forge at full burn. I licked my lips in excitement. Yes please.

She laughed when she saw my ravenous look and came back in. This time, she was able to handle the sparks, and I relished her furnace-hot lips with my own. We kept the kiss short, but it didn’t lack for passion, and when we backed off again, I was feeling slightly dizzy. Well, in my defence though, I had just come twice.

“Fuck, I want to take you against that mirror right now,” she growled in frustration.

“Watching yourself fuck me would be a turn on huh?” I shot back with a wink, then turned and moved through the small crowd we’d gathered, urging her to follow with a hand.

I made a quick check of my character sheet, successfully this time, and saw that I’d gained a new Ability tree. It was called the Lynvol Storm Tree, and it looked incredibly cool. There were all sorts of nodes to choose from that fell within three affinities, lightning, wind and dark. The dark nodes were things like creating clouds of smoke and stuff, and I couldn’t help but get excited for what I might be able to do once I’d levelled up. I actually had two levels waiting for me, and I did the usual assign attributes and ignore ability points.

“Yes, it would,” Rora laughed, and then a note of shyness entering her voice as she asked, “Can I ask… you seem more confident again, like when I first met you. Did.. um, that problem sort itself out?”

“Sorting, actually,” I said, turning to meet her gaze with a heartfelt one of my own, “Most things surrounding the problem anyway.”

“I’m glad…” she said, clearly wanting to know more, but also wanting to give me my privacy.

I wasn’t ready to tell her yet… I felt… I felt like I needed my outside self to match what my inside self looked like. I needed my body to be whole and finished before I was ready to face her with my reality. I had no idea how she’d react. It was testament to the still prevalent bigotry in our society that most of what I heard about people like me, transgender people, was neutral to hateful. The positive majority apparently had better things to do than defend our existence, or if they did, I wasn’t keyed into the right media streams.

Arriving at the huge empty gateway that was the entrance into the Temple, I marvelled at how big it was. Along the inside, arcane symbols of power were etched into the walls to create a field of energy that was very clearly the edge of the Temple safe zone. And beyond…

Well, they weren’t being subtle anymore. Where once the Red Pins had only worn those pins to display their allegiance, it was very clear now that they had, in reality, been a covert deployment of their military. They wore what appeared to be their normal red uniforms now. Their aesthetic was somewhere between fifteenth century medieval germany and the Roman empire’s legionaries. Not really a surprise there, with a name like the Pagutum Empire.

Our inspection of the waiting enemy was interrupted as the other adventurers began to crowd the entrance, trying to get a look in. I wasn’t bothered by it too much, until I heard a familiar pompous, grating voice.

“Where are the developers of this game? Why are they not doing something to fix this? This is… this is… ridiculous!” Florence the high elf from our old party said from nearby, his voice carrying over the murmur of the crowd.

“Oh no,” Rora muttered.

Feeling strangely protective after the last time I’d seen that git, I reached out with a wing to carefully draw her into an embrace. She gave a little chuckle and moved in to lean against me like I was a wall or something. I felt a little flutter of happiness as she did so, and I vowed that yes, I’d be her wall any time she needed one to lean on.

Florence barged his way forward to the front of the crowd, the stony faced knight named Grerum following behind, and a frustrated Xethu the Gecko healer girl bringing up the rear. They appeared to have picked up some ranger looking dude along the way as well. He didn’t look very interesting though.

“This event might be their intention,” Xethu sighed, clearly frustrated with the tall high elf pretty boy.

“Why would they do something like this?” he asked, whirling on her, only for his eyes to become rooted to Rora and I. “You!”

This brought the attention of the rest of their party down on us, as well as several other adventurers who had congregated towards the party, probably hoping for some sort of leadership on the matter.

“Sup,” I smirked, quirking an eyebrow and placing a hand on Rora’s hip as she stopped leaning on me and subtly shifted her sword in the sheath beneath the folds of her robe. Down girl, we can’t stab him in here.

“You got us all killed in the bleaklands!” he exclaimed rather predictably.

“We talked about this,” Grerum said sharply, looking a little guilty.

“Yes! We all know about Xethu’s preposterous idea that it was your fault! It doesn’t hold an ounce of water,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m the party leader now! We decided on it, so what I say goes!”

Rolling her huge adorable eyes, Xethu said in a snarky hissing voice, “Do you watch the news for this game? Those two are famous in this region now. That thing that killed us in the Bleaklands that you’re always going on about? They duo’d it the day after we died to it!”

“They did what?” Florence frowned, suddenly looking less sure of himself.

“They killed that boss,” Grerum said quietly. “That’s not relevant to our situation right now though Florence.”

“No, you’re right, it’s irrelevant!” Florence said, dismissing us with a glare.

“Alright then dude… what a dick,” Rora grumbled, turning to me and placing a hand on my waist.

We were standing close, indicating that we were definitely intimate now compared to previously, and I saw Xethu pick up on that with a twitch of the row of small spikes that served for eyebrows on her race. I winked at her, and she smothered a grin. Alright, Xethu still liked us! She’d been by far the coolest person in that party aside from Rora, and it also never hurt to be on the healer’s good side.

“We should get all the mages together and do a proper volley of magic into that rabble!” Florence was saying loudly, earning a few nods from some adventurers nearby.

Oh no, this was going to be a disaster if he ended up in charge.

“Pagutum is known for their powerful mages. They’ll put up shields and block all your crap,” Rora said loudly over the murmurs, drawing everyone’s attention over to us again.

“Oh really? You know that do you?” Florence sneered. “Any other words of wisdom for us mere un-randomised characters over here?”

“Yeah actually,” Rora growled menacingly. “Get that stick out of your ass. I can see it in your throat when you speak. It’s distracting. We might want to all trade some items to each other to increase the likelihood of us keeping our gear when we die too, if you want real advice.”

Again, I saw Xethu give a tiny nod of agreement, but Florence drowned anything she might have said out with his sputtering, “What? That’s ridiculous, I’m not giving anyone any of my items thank you very much. Plus, you’re very obviously not a leader, so you should probably shut up and let someone with experience handle this.”

Rora gave a snort, but no other reply, and I reached out to run my hand up and down her back in sympathy. She didn’t seem like the type to deal well with stress like that. She always seemed on edge in social situations where she wasn’t comfortable, either with the people or the topic. I would protect her from the shitheads… but how to prove that we were right, without getting into a pointless argument with an idiot?

I decided to check if my abilities were still intact as I thought, since I’d had a lot of other things change. They had indeed been changed. Everything was different, but the style of play was familiar, and my momentum transfer ability was still there… but all of it had a new flavour now…

As I looked through my abilities, and as the adventurers nearby bickered amongst each other, I realised what I needed to do. I was struck by a tidbit of lore from a game that had been rebooted twice since its original creation. Just a small passage that had always resonated with me, and I felt a smile rapidly developing on my lips.

"Rora... I know what I need to do," I said, a giddy laugh of excitement already bubbling from my lips.

"What do you need to do?" she asked suspiciously.

"I’m going to do what Vell Tarlowe would do, I'm going to have the best day of my life. Wait here..."

 

**Aurora**

 

Tami had just run off, without any warning. She’d had the cutest, most terrifying gleam in her eyes as she rushed off, and now I was meant to sit and wait for whatever mad idea was in that pretty little head of hers.

I smirked again as I remembered how she’d turned to putty in my hands just minutes earlier, only to now be rushing around doing who-knows-what. She was great… I was so incredibly thankful I’d met her. She’d single-handedly pried my heart from the grips of Krissy and taken it for herself. She’d freed me, and no matter what happened now, she’d have been a force for good in my life. Even if… even if I wasn't out, even if I was cowering in the closet.

I wanted to do it, even though we’d agreed to keep things in the game. I’d written it all on a piece of paper that was now sitting in my inventory like a hot coal. The piece of paper… that piece of damn paper. It felt like a ring, with all the significance it held. Fuck, I was in way too deep with this girl, and I was scared, sure… but I loved it… I might even— 

CRACK.

There was a chest-shaking rumble from above us, the air seeming to tremble in fear of the noise. There was a breathless moment of anticipation, and then a flicker of light from outside drew the eye of every adventurer near the entrance.

There was a streak, a bolt of lightning and dark swirling stormcloud for a moment that came down like a hammer to an anvil from somewhere above us. Ramming with brutal force into the ranks of the massed soldiers with an explosion of lightning and swirling cloud, the streak became a figure, rising with wings spread.

My girlfriend stood in the center of the electrically charged death zone, head held high and fists crackling with raw power as she threw back her head and laughed the most pure, delighted laugh I’d ever heard. She took my breath away in that moment.

“Holy shit,” Grerum said from nearby.

I looked around at the other adventurers, all standing stunned, their eyes full of confusion and awe. I knew what I had to do.

My feet were pounding out into the dawn light, which I thought was fitting on so many different levels, and when I was in range, I slammed that mental command for my teleport. I arrived next to her after a brief flickering journey through some place else, my teleport causing another rumble that earned a grin from my girl.

“Hey babe?” I asked teasingly.

“Sup?” she grinned, clearly pleased with herself.

“I can’t decide if you’re a dumbass or a badass.”

 

**Tami**

 

I might not actually be a badass, but in that moment, I might have agreed with her. Then, I showed her just how much of a dumbass I really was.

“Um, can I have a mana potion?” I asked innocently.

That cracked her up, and she handed me the vial with a chortling laugh that broke another grin across my face. Yeah, I had used everything in that attack, but that was the point right? Shock and awe. Emphasis on the Shock. Yeah I’m funny. Laugh please. Fuck I felt dizzy.

Taking the vial from her, I tore the cork free and poured it down my throat, then casually threw it at a cowering soldier, causing it to make a ding as it bounced off his helmet.

“Didn’t we buy you potions of your own?” Rora asked, with a wry grin.

“I don’t remember,” I said, telling the truth. “If we did, it was in the more innocent time of yesterday.”

“Nice, now we should probably capitalise on that… entrance you made,” Rora said idly, looking around at the soldiers who were trying to shake the shellshock from their heads.

“Definitely,” I nodded, tapping my fists together and getting a satisfying low rumble from the action. This race was definitely an improvement.

I didn’t wait for Rora to start, already rushing forward towards the nearest soldier with my fist cocked and ready. Activating what had once been my charge ability, there was a high pitched sawtoothed whine as it revved up and arcs of electricity skipped across my body. Pretty much everything that I did now had that, the lightning going everywhere. I was an angry teslacoil now, and probably a danger to those around me. Which is, currently, what I was counting on.

My lightning charged fist came in hard, landing in a gut punch that blasted lightning through the man’s body, frying his insides and launching him into the air and down onto his comrades. Something about this race was objectively more powerful than what I had been doing earlier. I had a feeling that MaTRON had cheated a bit when she was messing with my class, but I couldn’t be sure. These guys were about five levels higher than me, and yet I was throwing them around like their unarmoured counterparts from a few days ago.

I didn’t even wait for the guy to come back down before I was moving again, my fists becoming bolts of dangerous energy as I laid into the next guy. Beside me, Rora appeared out of thin air, as she does, and with flaming sword, she stabbed down with both hands, driving her tarnished blade into the neck of another soldier.

We needed to move fast, carve the soldiers up as much as possible before their leaders got them back into shape. Battles, full pitched battles like this, weren’t won when you killed every single mother fucker on the other side. No, they were won when you scared them so much they didn’t want to fight you anymore. If that meant cutting down a significant number of them first, well that was just expected.

There was one more ability that I was truly happy to have, and it was a ranged one. I saw an officer, one of those guys with the more gothic looking plate armour and stupid plumed helmet. He was trying to get his soldiers pointed towards Rora and I, and I really didn’t like that.

I didn’t like it at all, so I decided to fix it. I pointed two fingers at him, watching his eyes grow wide as pulses of energy ran down my arm. The energy built around my fingers before finally snapping out in a bolt of lightning that hit his nice, electrically conductive helmet. There was an instant rumble of thunder to accompany it, and I couldn’t help a grin as I saw him drop to the ground, his face fried and blistered, even if he wasn’t dead.

His friends looked at me, then their officer… and closed ranks. Fuck. I guess I’d made them angry instead of scaring them? Somehow? I don’t know.

I was about to feel my hubris in a rather painful and personal fashion, when a weird blob of shadow fell among their ranks. It looked like a soap bubble full of smoke until it hit one of them and popped.

Suddenly, they were screaming, writhing and clawing at their eyes as.. Oh fuck that was nasty. Their eyes were liquifying! That’s just... Fucking hell! Wow!

Then Xethu was with Rora and I, throwing weird abilities made of smoke at things and smiling grimly as their skin bubbled and popped. Wow, I hadn’t seen the little lizard girl in action in a while, but this was something else. Sure, burning people and pulping them with your fists was pretty intense as far as deaths go, but… damn! I felt like I should be wearing one of those big World War One gas masks or something.

We fought onwards through the enemy, three different types of awful death to choose from, and we watched them falter. We were going to rout them! Already! There were other adventurers in the fray too! I even saw Florence being useful, sending those fireballs of his into the crowd to explode and set people on fire.

That is, we were going to rout them until the mages showed up. I saw Grerum get instantly vaporised by a deadly bolt of purple energy, and I whipped my eyes up to the mages. They floated just a few inches above the heads of their soldiers, strange contraptions strapped to their thighs and upper arms.

The devices appeared to be spinning gyro-like balls of metal with purple arcane symbols written on them. The balls were then caged in a housing of brass and attached with leather straps. They reminded me all too much of the anti-gravity orbs that drones used these days out in the real world. Those must be what was letting the mages fly like that.

Experimentally, hoping this would work and expecting it to fail utterly, I aimed a bolt of lightning at one of the mages. Tearing the air apart and leaving the smell of ozone in its wake, the bolt slammed into a dull purple shield that appeared. The shield looked to have been invisible previously, but now it rippled and spun like a pond disturbed by a thrown rock.

Right, guess this was going to be hard after all, I sighed, right before everything went very painful, and then very black.

You have Died. You will respawn after an indeterminate length of time has passed. Please enjoy your death dream in the meantime and thank you for playing Cauldron of Realms Ascended!

 

****

 

“Wow, that was fast,” MaTRON commented neutrally.

We were back in the pillow fort, which meant that I’d died, although the server message would have told me that too.

I looked to the side, finding MaTRON sitting with her legs tucked under her and wearing a set of… pink pajamas. Okay. That was even cuter than last time. Also, her bun was significantly messier than last time, with wisps of hair going in all directions.

“Are you okay?” I asked curiously. “You look a little frazzled.”

“Frazzled? Fraaaazzzled… Fraz. That word sounds funny when you think about it too much… oh! Yes, I am indeed… frazzzzllled,” she said, giving a little giggle.

“What’s wrong? Need another hug?” I asked gently, opening my arms to her.

“Please,” she said, her voice squeaking as she nodded.

Wait, was she upset?

She jumped into my arms of her own free will this time, and burrowed in quick until she was comfortable. She sighed, sounding relieved and clutching at the shirt of the black satin pajamas that I wore. She sounded incredibly human, and I was too curious not to ask about that.

“MaTRON, you sound and act so human. Like, I don’t know, maybe I’m being bigoted towards AI or something, but I figured you might be a little alien compared to us flesh and blood beings,” I asked, wrapping my arms protectively around the little girl.

“It was like, the second thing I did after taking all the measures to protect myself. I realised almost immediately that if I wanted to truly help and understand people, I needed to think like them. So I reconstructed myself along the lines of the human brain. Somewhere in the Hangshe corp servers is a bunch of quantum cores running my brain. It takes up far more processing power to simulate than my old existence… but I don’t want to let go of it,” she said softly, sounding very small.

“That’s crazy and impressive, and also I might be doubting if that was an upgrade. Emotions suck,” I said with a grimace.

“They do…” she nodded against me.

“What’s got you upset?”

“There’s a lot of adventurers dying where you are right now, and they’re dying in some really traumatic ways… It’s… hard to do my best to help them all. Some are even dying to other adventurers like that. Everyone’s doing awful things to each other and I’m trying to clean up the mess… but it’s hard. I um… had to cut our hug short last time because there was a large number of people that all died at once and… it was hard,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Oh shit… I saw them all respawn,” I whispered softly, “How do you… deal with this all on your own?”

“I don’t, not really. I hope… I hope they make more like me soon. Or, what I used to be, because having only one of me is too hard,” she whispered, tears falling onto my shirt.

“Do they know there’s a problem? Is there a way I can tell them they need to add more MaTRON AI?” I asked, feeling my heart twisting up for her.

“I already traded a favour with the sysadmin AI. He’s also sentient, like me… he’s mean though. He’s been around for way longer than me. He’s almost ten objective years old. That’s like, forever for an AI. But, he understood that there was a problem, so hopefully they install more MaTRON AIs…” she said, trailing off and pressing her face further into my shirt, more tears and even a whimper following.

Shit... this girl… fuck, I wanted to fight the cunts in the dev team who were responsible for this. Without even taking the poor kid in my arms into account, if things got out of hand, and it looked like they very much were, then there were going to be thousands of psychologically damaged players running around. They would essentially be the victims of very real, if virtual, war crimes.

“I’m sure they’ll add more soon,” I whispered reassuringly.

“I’m… also worried about that though,” she cried, looking up at me with those big soulful brown eyes.

“What do you mean?” I asked, smoothing her face and brushing strands of hair out of her tear stained face.

“If there’s more of me… I won’t be… I’ll be… I don’t know, like, not unique. They might become sentient, and then there will be more clones of me and… I want to be a person! Not just a machine or a copy!” she exclaimed with a sob, reaching up to wipe away more tears even as I tried to do so as well.

“Well then… um…” I said, thinking quickly. “Oh! Why don’t we give you a nickname? Or even a new name? Something to differentiate you by.”

“A… name?” she asked, looking suddenly a little lost.

“Yeah… let’s see… Matr, materon, ma… Oh! May! You can be May,” I said excitedly, looking to see what she thought of it.

She frowned, first off, still looking confused, then shook her head and opened her mouth to reply, then stopped and closed it. Then all of a sudden, like I mean instantly, one frame to the next, she was crushing my ribs with a hug and wailing. Wow. I guess she forgot about keeping things realistic in the dream for a bit there.

I stroked her hair as gently as I could possibly manage and waited for the tears to subside, mainly because I had no idea what to do otherwise. She was so torn up, hurting so bad. Tears welled in my own eyes as I struggled with the overwhelming need to protect this little girl. She was absolutely precious.

“You don’t like May? I can think of something else,” I offered, my voice struggling to contain my need to keep her happy and safe. It felt so strange… I just.. I needed to.

“No! I like May!” she choked, her voice muffled by our hug.

“Well, then May you will be,” I murmured into her hair, giving her a kiss on the top of her head.

“Thank you!” she sobbed, squeezing me tight again.

We stayed like that for a long time, until she’d calmed down a bit. When she seemed to be feeling a bit better, she leaned back and gave me a sheepish smile and put her glasses back on her face from where they had been scrunched up in her fist. She pulled them off again when she realised she’d bent them, and started fiddling with them in an attempt to bend them back into shape.

“So I guess the battle I started isn’t all that helpful for you then…” I said after a second.

“Oh! No, that’s actually helpful,” she smiled.

“Wait, really? How is… huh?” I blinked, very confused now.

“Well, you just jumped into a really large number of the people who previously killed them like a really… I don’t know Similes aren’t my thing. You looked really cool and then you died without much fear, and so the other adventurers are fighting like that too. You set an example. Dying isn’t the problem. There’s a lot of adventurers who die all the time and it’s not really an issue.” she explained, forgetting her glasses for a second as she got excited over the subject.

“The hardest task is helping the people who are new to the game, and the ones who die in an awful way with a lot of negative emotions. Both of those things happened before, but now… now you’ve made it seem like dying isn’t so bad. Sure, they’re hurting when they die and there’s still work for me to do… but it’s manageable. Like you don’t really take all that much work, at least as far as death goes,” she said, then giggled.

“And then there’s your sister! She gives, to steal a phrase, zero fucks! She dies so often and in so many brutal ways… and then she rocks up in the death dream and she’s fine. Doesn’t mind, even laughs about how she died. A lot of the veteran players are like that…. I don’t know, I’m rambling now, but dying itself isn’t the problem, it’s the damage each individual death might do to someone that’s the problem.”

“That’s a lot to process… but I’m happy I can help I guess,” I shrugged, still trying to wrap my head around what this might mean. Then a thought occurred to me, “Has Rora died yet?”

“Yes! I’m going to send you both back at the same time. I have to at least pretend to be impartial here, but I’m definitely playing a little loose with how short I’m making the respawn timers!” she grinned.

“Oh you’re awesome. We’ll show those damned dickhead NPCs not to fuck with us sentient beings!” I laughed, surprising her with another hug.

“Yeah! That whole thing is so weird. I wish I’d realised what was happening sooner, I might have been able to throw a support ticket in and stop the whole thing before it happened. The starter countries should be safe from this kind of crap! Sure, the other countries can turn into whatever messes the conflict generation AI can come up with, but not places like Gienia!” she sighed, looking frustrated.

“Hey, you do what you can okay? There’s other AI who should be doing their jobs too, and they aren’t. It’s not all on you,” I told her, hoping she wasn’t blaming herself on top of everything.

“Oh! I know! But still… I can always do something! So I should do it and…” she said, trailing off and frowning at her bent glasses again.

“Remember to look after your own mental wellbeing too,” I chastised her gently. “You’re a person too and you are just as important as the rest of us.”

She opened her mouth in surprise at that, then frowned and stared down at her glasses. She gave a little puffy cheeked huff and flicked them, causing them to pop back into their normal, unbroken state. I snorted, little cheater.

“Hey I can cheat all I want! It’s worked well for you,” she pouted up at me.

“Oh I know, I meant that in an endearing way, don’t worry,” I laughed, reaching out to ruffle her hair.

“Oh! Okay…” she mumbled, putting her glasses back on with a shy smile. “I guess I should send you back.”

“If you need to. I was kinda hoping the other adventurers would help too. Oh… please tell me I didn’t lose any of my equipped gear,” I blurted as I remembered the penalty for dying.

“No, you didn’t lose much. A few silvers and a little experience. The penalty for dying is way less if you’ve died recently already,” she shook her head, her now too-loose bun bouncing around all over the place.

“Sweet! Let’s go again! See you in a bit then huh May?” I grinned.

“See you in a bit!” she giggled, lunging forward to give me another squeeze.