I struck like an asteroid. The moment I hit the surprisingly-soft exterior of the lead man-at-arms... he exploded. I felt slick, warm liquid splat over me as I connected and rolled in the mud. He'd popped like a zit—or, rather, he'd popped like a garbage sack filled with blood and cottage cheese. The smell was revolting.

I didn't really know how physics worked, especially in this world. Still, I was reasonably sure that it should have been a lot harder to water balloon the man than it was. It was super fucked up.

I expected to die right afterward. But I didn't, for some reason. Instead, while keeping my eyes closed, I continued to roll at break-neck speed, barreling into something hard. I heard a loud snap and the exceedingly awful scream of what must have been a Redmark soldier as his legs were broken. Big yikes. But, I kept going, unable to stop, the entire time trying to make myself as hard to perceive as possible.

Try to get out of this alive, you big, fat fuckstick.

I needed to remain calm, but I was tumbling at such a high velocity that there was no way I was going to survive. Still, with eyes closed, I continued. I couldn't help it—the mud and rain increased my movement as I spun on through the throng of soldiers. It seemed to last forever, with men and women calling out angrily, searching for me, I think. I must have been buzzing through at quite the clip since it seemed they hadn't had the privilege of observing my dramatic reenactment of the Cretaceous period as I flew ass-first into their marching party.

I started to slow and opened my eyes a little—immediately wishing that I had not. I smashed myself face-down in the muck as dozens of soldiers crested a rise in the hill and surrounded me.

I laid still.

Nothing to see here, folks. You know, just your average, gigantic orc-shaped bottle rocket.

My entire face was pressed deep into the wet earth, and I could feel my heartbeat pounding hard in my chest as my body demanded oxygen. My ears were exposed, so I tried quieting my own desperate need for air and listening to the boots stamping in the sludge around me. They continued stepping past as if they didn't even notice me, all of them talking excitedly about something—or someone—called 'Esther.' I didn't care. As long as they kept moving along, not paying me any mind, they were free to discuss whatever they wanted.

It seemed to be working.

Huzzah! Whiff my orc sharts, dumbshits!

However, a dragging foot caught on my pack, and I turned my head to the side to watch a soldier tumble over me and land in the mud. Her eyes flashed back to mine. She'd spotted me. I was in the precise middle of a fucking dog pile of jarheads, and I'd been discovered. I put a finger up to my lips and shook my head in a vain attempt to shush her, but of course, that was fucking stupid. The soldier—unsurprisingly—didn't follow my direction. She opened her mouth, staring right at me and...

...then there was a boom.

There were shouts and screams all around. Every head snapped up toward the bluffs and hills in the direction I'd just Power Ranger Zeo'd from as the rainy night sky ignited. Off above the cliffs' rise were huge plumes of smoke and the voluminous curl of a fireball. It was fucking monstrous. Something had gone wrong, somewhere, and if I'd had to guess, I would have said it had originated from the Redmark camp.

Guess they won't be following me now.

The soldier had yelled something akin to "orc." But, since the big explodening had overshadowed her performance, she was left huffing in the mud, staring daggers at me while trying to stand up. Since everyone else was noticeably distracted, I decided to help myself out. I slammed a fist into the back of the soldier's knee just as she was starting to regain her balance and watched her dive back to the mud. She tried to lift herself, but I grabbed her leg and yanked it out, so she fell flat. Then I jumped up and ran, sending her deeper into the mud as I stomped on her back.

As far as attacks go, it was pretty mild, but I figured she'd be too busy trying to survive mudpocalypse to tell people a large, sorta-out-of-shape green-gray goon was running through their ranks. As I dusted off into the mix, I noticed that the formerly pristine lines of soldiers had been broken, and all of the Redmarks were in various stages of confusion and excitement with the sudden chaos that had erupted around them.

I drew my cloak closer and was grateful for my luck in not attracting their attention. I spent the next few minutes skirting the outside of the large force, ducking behind bushes and rolling in the mud more than I would have ever wanted to in my previous life. Well, I guess less than I wanted to in this life as well, but I didn’t think it was super important to split hairs like that. I kept my cloak wrapped around me as I slinked around, feeling very special agent-y as I slipped through the the throng of passersby, all wholly focused on the calamity that was keeping them too distracted to spot me. The group back here was thinning out, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I’d essentially avoided all of them. Eh, well, save for the one I’d treated to my wrecking ball maneuver. And the guy whose legs I’d broken. And the woman I’d forced into being my land bridge. You know what? A large percentage of the brutes still weren’t aware of my presence. Now there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and I could breathe a little easier.

I side-stepped a few more stationary folks wrapped up in the event--including a man silently crying and staring at the flames in the distance--and was just able to make it past the bulk of the gawking men and women when I came over the rise of another hill and froze.

At least fifty more soldiers were assembled below the swell, and they looked angry.

God damn bitch-sucking fuck balls!

They were armed more heavily than the forward unit, and all of these G.I. Schmoes seemed as though they had been dyed-in-the-bloody-wool of combat many times over. You can really tell when someone is a cold and hardened battle-murderer, and each one of these Redmarks looked like they would shiv first and ask questions never.

They were moving up the hill in careful, disciplined double-file, their eyes scanning the surrounding area, with only a few of them seeming to be distracted by the explosion. I had nowhere to hide, so I just didn't move, hoping the mud and the boost from my Trespasser's Veil would rescue me.

One Redmark near the front called out a command in a leathery crack.

"Don't be staring doe-eyed at that fire," he hissed. "As sure as Larem's mother is a harbor whore, that's a distraction! Keep your eyes on the woods and hills, boys. I imagine we will have company before too long."

"Me ma's not a harbor whore," a young man missing part of his nose said. "She were a ship's hand. Me da were the whore."

There was some laughter, but then their leader cleared his throat.

"Keep 'em peeled, y'fucking reprobates. I don't need any of you getting your guts stabbed out just because Larem finally had a joke that landed. And stay quiet. Enough of them mudheels in the vanguard are hooting and hollering to cover up the sound of an ambush. We don't need you lot adding to it."

The men grew silent, their faces snapping into a display of communal no-nonsense and scanning even harder than they were before. Apparently, keeping a lookout for infiltrators, though, didn't involve looking directly ahead.

Which was, you know, where I was at.

No one had seemed to notice me huddled against my cloak and squatting behind the single bit of vegetation in the area: a very shabby bush. Was the cloak doing this, or were these guys just this fucking inept? I’d decided to compromise with myself and landed on: they were terrible, and I was great.

I took a gander downhill at their approach, and that set my teeth on edge. It was very steep. Which made it all the more impressive that the soldiers had as little difficulty ascending the incline as they did.

More mountain goats than men, I thought, watching the group tiptoe along in the slick. The man with the leathery voice had an air of harshness, and I noticed his outfit was a little more rustic than the others. It was something of a hodgepodge gathered from different armor sets and lashed together with a few belts. It gave the man a mismatched, angular appearance, as one side stuck out a bit more than the other. He was gray-haired with plenty of age lines on his face and had the look of someone who'd lived long in a world full of battle. As he moved forward in the wan torchlight, I could see now that his ears had a point to them.

Does that make him an elf?

It was very Legolas-like from what I recalled, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I'd learned ass-all about this world, so for all I knew he could have just been French.

I decided to save my musings for a time when I wasn’t a beetle’s dick away from being skewered upon a hundred blades and tried to take a slow, silent breath. I kept quiet while they continued up the slope. The noise of the faraway camp had reached a fever pitch, and most of the soldiers in the other group were no longer even bothering with any pretense of respectability. There was clearly some confusion moving through the rank, and I reasoned it was chiefly because the Redmark camp was where they'd just been headed and now it was a smoking hole of carnage and dead idiots. Hopefully.

I took another long, deep breath and eyed a particularly friendly-looking man to my left. I almost gasped. The man seemed as though he'd just barely won a fight against a meat grinder. His armor was banged up and wrenched open in various directions as if by some massive, wonky can opener. Dried blood covered the man's face, chest, and exposed forearms. There was other miscellaneous sludge caked to his figure that hinted to a more nefarious origin. While I didn't know what the goop was, I could definitely smell it—which gave me a good enough idea. It was rancid. It smelled like a zombified butthole that had been boiled in a bucket of pus and left out in the sun for fifty years. At least, that was the closest thing I could imagine to whatever foul demon shit he'd stopped to roll around in.

The smell was overpowering, and though I was still—as of yet—unknown to my new friends, I suddenly heaved as I felt a deep and dangerous lurch in the pit of my stomach.

Oh, no.

The stench hit me again, and I felt my mouth water—and not in a good way. If there is a good way? Yes, definitely—anyways! Yeah, bad news.

I doubled over, and for the second time in less than an hour, I vomited. I tried so hard not to, but that's the thing about puking, isn't it? You can be the most ornery, tough, or willful person in the steakhouse of life, but even David Goggins would get hobbled by a ham sandwich just a bit beyond its expiration date.

I couldn't even be quiet about it. It was a Saturday-night-college-town-behind-the-dumpster, power-vom.

I would have been embarrassed had I not been so frightened of the consequences. After a solid five seconds of once again hurling up just liquid—since there was no food in my stomach—I looked up, wiping my mouth.

The dozens of soldiers were all staring at me.

Goddamn ass hell fuck.

Some looked frightened, some looked shocked, but none of them looked happy. They were frozen in place, and I'll admit, it was probably not the most beautiful first-impression I could have made. Sorry for not being perfect.

A man near the front shouted, which seemed to snap a large portion of them out of their trance.

"Enemy!"

Then, like a chain reaction, everything got wild.

The Redmarks, no longer surprised by the appearance of the belly-sick behemoth standing before them, unsheathed their weapons and tightened the two-column formation. Several stepped aside from the leading group and drew back the bowstrings of their ranged weapons.

"Shi—"

There was a bright flash of light behind me that turned the dark and rainy world into midafternoon. This was followed a half-second later by a terrific and ear-splitting boom.

...which launched me forward.

Fortunately, my Dark Vision seemed to automatically mitigate the worst of the sudden switch from night to day as I vaulted forward and landed hard on the repulsive mother fucker that had made me wretch. The rest of the Redmarks, however, were not so lucky. They had all been looking right at me, and the flash and roar forced them to throw their arms up defensively, covering their eyes. There were screams, but they were drowned out by the eruption-like sound paired with the bright light. In the back of my mind, I considered that they had all probably been at least momentarily blinded, which was just fine with me.

Eat fire light, sluts!

Me and Stinky landed hard in the mud and slid. Fast.

Once again, I was rocketing right towards my combatants and there weren't nothin' they could do about it. The hill was an unforgiving son of a bitch, steep as shit and full of rocks. We blasted down the slant at top-speed, propelled by the force of the blast. I tried to aim the wailing soldier toward an empty spot as the openly-armed men and women of the Redmark contingency began moving around. I could see that far beyond them, the bottom of the hill led to another line of thick forestation and—potentially—my shield of freedom. But it was a long, deadly way down through the soldiers and their receiving line from the bottom of hell's diaper. Plus, I was currently utilizing a Redmark to break my fall.

So, I did what any self-respecting person would do in that situation: I closed my eyes and rode this dumbass down the slope like a toboggan.

I roared as my human boogie board and I blasted right between the two flinching queues of Redmark soldiers. At least, I had to assume that's what happened because there was no way in daffodil fuck I was going to open my eyes and ruin my own night. Ignorance was bliss. I could feel Stinky struggling to extricate himself from the gruesome-twosome best-friend-forever tangle we'd become wrapped in—but I think I was much too heavy for him to do more than groan as he slid on his back in the mud.

Then, I heard another sound like rushing water or a heavy blizzard-wind whipping through the trees.

Uh-oh.

“Heat! Big heat!”

Those were the words my primitive, dented caveman brain was able to conjure up in my moment of panic. But that wasn't it. My mind bubbled with recent information, however difficult it was for the six remaining brain cells I had. Well, semi-recent.

I recalled reactions known as "flashovers" when buildings had exploded or had otherwise managed to light themselves on fire, and the flames would spread. Don’t be too impressed--I'd learned about them as part of the scolding I'd been subjected to when Uncle Luke and Aunt Ella brought in one of their firefighter friends to talk to me about how badly my 'stunt with the trash cans' could have gone. The presence of a 'professional' was infuriating, and despite how nice he'd seemed—if not a little dim-witted—I'd been entirely in control of the situation I had created in those bathrooms… until I wasn't. But I'd never let some pudgy, mustachioed know-it-all like Fireman Thoms have the satisfaction of knowing that. I'd made sure to excuse myself to the bathroom and use my cell phone to call in a fire, forcing him to have to leave before I'd even flushed the toilet.

Checkmate, Handlebar.

That made me miss my phone. Not for any reason other than that I had over a hundred and fifty gigs of prostate-thumping jams on it. I knew the device was somewhere beneath the flaming wreckage of the train, and that made me sad. This experience would have been greatly improved if I’d have been able to blast some He Is Legend while stumbling all over this butt-turd of a world. Which reminded me...

Extreme fucking heat.

I knew it had to be really bad considering that Stinky started frantically thrashing around beneath my bulk, and I heard his voice for the first time.

"Get off me!"

Stinky had the same sort of rough tone as the others, but he had the curious trait of sounding scared as fuck by the prospect of whatever was billowing up behind us. I finally risked opening my eyes and saw the look of horror on his face. For the first time, oddly, I was able to see him more clearly and realized he was, in fact, not a human. He was… something, but not human. He had yellowish skin that was crisscrossed with what looked like scars, but resembled deep, natural fissures in the skin. His angry blue pupils were slit horizontally, and that wasn’t even the weirdest part. He had what looked like an extra, tiny mouth on each side of his jaw. They were closed, but it really gave me the jeebies.

I wasn't sure why I cared so much, honestly. I wasn't a human anymore, so looking for familiarity should have been the last thing on my mind. If anything, I should have been hoping to run into more orcs.

Or perhaps not. From what Fawn had indicated, they were likely not to be my number one pals. Maybe I'd just have to stumble upon some and find out for myself? It could all be human propaganda.

I looked behind me and finally saw the source of the intense warmth. A huge… well, not cloud, but something like it, chasing us down the hill. It was essentially a humongous swath of blank space that distorted the air around it, like baking asphalt on a hot day. During my light peeping, I noticed that the horde of Redmarks we'd just blazed by had been thrown askew, and the area was literally crawling with soldiers. Some were screaming, some were on fire, all of them looked too far up shit creek without even a canoe as they tried desperately to cling to life.

Uh-oh, times two.

It was impossible to tell exactly how badly they'd been decimated. Still, I did not want to have a personal demonstration, so I looked back ahead of me and pressed down on Stinky's shoulders, hoping I could add some speed to our rapid descent. That’s when I realized something: my hands weren’t bound anymore. When the hell had that happened? The shackles were still around my wrists, but the chain connecting them looked as though it had been sliced cleanly in two. I think if I try to figure this out right now, I’ll end up immediately turning into orc jerky. There will be time after the Ugly Bastard Bobsled ride comes to a stop.

I pushed further forward to adjust our descent. It seemed to work. We picked up our hitch a little, and I heard the man below me grunt in a lack of appreciation for my instinctual and accidental saving of his life.

Of course, that was when Stinky decided it would be keen to stab me.

I felt a sharp pain in my side and looked down at my ribs. A pewter-colored knife handle was sticking out at a crooked angle with Stinky's gloved fist wrapped tight around it. I grimaced and glared at my unwilling vehicle.

Poison Damage mitigated!

Condition: Fatigued

Fatigue I

Abilities and Skills suffer -5% efficiency while under the Fatigue I condition effect.

"Ah! What the fuck, man!?"

Stinky bared his teeth. They were sharp.

"Fuck you, ya great nasty orc! Get off me!"

"Hey, man!" I shouted into his face. "I'm trying to save our lives here, and you’re trying to fucking poison me? There's a—GRAGH!"

He'd stabbed me again.

"Oh, fuck the hell out of this."

I switched my grip from Stinky's shoulders, placed one hand on his neck, and reared back with my now uninhibited right fist. Then I delivered a crushing blow to his face.

Though I had connected with his stupid head, I didn't account for our speed. Instead of knocking him unconscious, my motion sent me too far forward.

I flipped.

I bashed my shoulder in the mud and somersaulted twice, taking Stinky with me. We tumbled in a tangle, smashing into one another as we spiraled down the hill.

It was pretty romantic.

The slope turned steeper, and rather than slide, we both fell from the sheer drop about twenty feet onto hard ground. I was just able to see the massive colorless column of heat blow by above us, sending a shockwave into the tops of the trees that obliterated some of the branches. I watched as leaves caught fire, but the rain calmed the worst of it.

I lie on my back, hardly able to move. The ground here seemed like solid rock, and I wanted to inspect it, but I could not find the strength to lift myself. So I just resigned myself to remaining exposed like a turtle.

My immediate surroundings were quiet, but I could still hear the clamor from above—and beyond—where the most insane series of events I'd ever taken part in had just transpired. There were still the distant screams, and I was sure I heard another explosion, but I was comforted in the fact that, despite my inability to make a single movement, I was better off here than there.

I saw blinking notifications in my vision, so I decided that there was no time like the present to go over what I may have missed.

Boy, oh boy, was I right. There were numerous descriptions of my misdeeds, but before I could even delve into their depths, one, in particular, stood out. It was the notification that had minimized as I fell. It appeared right at the top, so it was easy to spot, but I had a feeling that the blood-red color of its font would have caused me to single it out anyway.

You have been granted an Aegis!

Zeol's Falling Star

You can refuse the effects that gravity might deign upon you and instead mitigate some of the harm that might otherwise befall you. Chasms and caldera are nothing in the wake of this Aegis. Once per day, you can nullify 100% of the impact of force from falls at a depth or height of up to 100 meters. You may also transfer this Force Damage to an appropriate object within five seconds of impact--like slow moving pedestrians or people taking too long at the ATM.

+2% Force Damage resistance

100% Force Damage resistance once per day

10% Force Damage transference once per day

The fuck?

That sneaky little asshole had put some sort of charm on me! What a creep. Whatever 'Aegis' was, I didn't want it.

That's how I was able to hit the ground without immediately turning into a new kind of pudding. Huh. Good to know.

I didn't have the full spectrum of understanding to decide how to approach gifts from men that I had only met once. I felt like I had a vague sense of what it must have been like to be some of the girls in my high school.

For instance, I'd seen Abbie rebuff numerous dudes after they'd bought her some token of their affection or another, not realizing how supremely unwholesome it was to do so unsolicitedly.

I'd always felt as though I was somehow better than them, with their desperate attempts at wearing their hearts on their sleeves. It was cringey, and I was glad to be the sullen and cranky kid sitting in the back of the class, simmering with rage beneath my Pop-n-Fresh exterior.

Yeah, at least I hadn't been a loser like those idiots. ...right?

Thinking about that filled me with a sense of shame. It was compounded by the fact that Abbie was almost definitely smashed into a red-haired stain under the Hennepin Avenue overpass. I tried to conjure up her face, but my efforts were wasted considering the last time I'd seen her, she'd been screaming and clinging on to a seat for dear life as our train car upended.

To distract myself, I focused again on the notifications. It was like a timeline of the ridiculous events I'd been engaging in for the last half-hour, but with a play-by-play that I found to be interesting, if not exhaustive.

You have killed a Level 5 Human Cook!

Gained 120 Experience!

You have killed a Level 13 Human Batallionaire!

Gained 1,150 Experience!

Congratulations! You have reached LEVEL THREE!

You grow stronger and receive the benefit of [3] additional Attribute Points. 10% Health and Arcana restored. Combat conditions healed.

For defeating an opponent more than TEN levels above your own, you have received a Sapphire Esper Node!

Accept [1] Esper Nodes?

Yes / No

I, of course, accepted. If these things were valuable enough for Fawn to attempt to kill me over--which is what I was now starting to believe--then, I should be happy to get as many in my inventory as possible. Even if I had no fucking clue what benefit they served me. That was still a mystery to me. Fawn had completely morphed into something else when she knew what I was packing. Why, though? What was so important about these little flickering fuck-off lights. I’m sure I’d figure it out. Probably.

I reread the sequence of two kills, then scowled. I felt bad now that I could see I’d killed a Cook. That must have been the poor idiot I’d tossed into his friends back at the camp. And the Batallionaire… whatever that was must have been the chap who’d been blood-rocketed into fairy dust. I was also starting to notice a very uncomfortable pattern to my arsenal of kills, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Sure, they were dead--but why didn’t I feel weird about that? In the old life I’d actually been pretty squeamish over the idea of killing someone. Fighting was one thing, but actual death? Wigged me out.

I mean, I apologized to my aunt’s cat for a week after I accidentally stepped on its tail once--so what had changed? Maybe there was still some part of me that didn’t fully register this as a new world? Or maybe Regaia had a way of changing the way you thought about death? It made sense, in a way: if they could modify every aspect of your physical body and force brand new knowledge into your gray matter, they could almost definitely tinker with your feelings about killing.

There I was, getting philosophical again. At least I think that was what it would be referred to. I shook it out of my head and refocused on the messages. At this rate, I’d never get through the whole thing if I kept going off on tangents.

Congratulations! You have raised an Ability!

*Natural Resilience [F-Rank Level 2]

+5% Resistance to Insects

+1% Resistance to Weather Conditions [Heat]

Congratulations! You have gained a new Ability!

Uncommon Consumption [F-Rank Level 1]

Barbarians are not bound by the usual appetites of many races to survive. Now you can glean necessary vitamins from uncommon animals, insects, plants, and miscellaneous. Try it out and see what tastes you can derive from the world around you.

+8% Hunger reduction from unconventional food sources

Congratulations! You have raised a Skill!

Unarmed Fighting [F-Rank Level 3]

I could see the damage administered by myself during my asteroid cosplay, but I glossed over that. However, the next notification was split into two separate sections—likely from both instances it had occurred—and actually made me pause as I read it. I imagine had there been a onesie-twosie situation, whatever system was in place for this sort of thing would have rattled off each and every movement. But this one was different.

There was math.

Utilized Sneaking Skill success versus:

[x 13] Level 1 beings

[x 4] Level 2 beings

[x 8] Level 3 beings

[x 11] Level 4 beings

[x 3] Level 5 beings

[x 6] Level 10 beings

[x 1] Level 11 beings

[x 9] Level 15 beings

+10% Skill Experience gain [Speed Difficulty Bonus]

The second set was even more impressive, and I was left thinking about how insane and unlikely it had been.

Utilized Sneaking Skill success versus:

[x 3] Level 15 beings

[x 47] Level 20 beings

[x 3] Level 21 beings

[x 1] Level 23 beings

[x 1] Level 24 beings

[x 2] Level 25 beings

[x 1] Level 50 beings

+10% Skill Experience gain [Speed Difficulty Bonus]

+15% Skill Experience gain [Mounted Difficulty Bonus]

+20% Skill Experience gain [Trained Opposition Difficulty Bonus]

However, my eyes fell over my next notification and I froze.

While the number of foes I'd managed to circumvent was notable and, if I was being humble, extremely cool—it wasn't the thing that had stopped me in my tracks. No, what had caused my heart rate to increase and my breath to feel as though it wouldn't stay in my lungs was the subsequent message that filled the screen, flashing with golden light as if I'd hit the jackpot on a slot machine.

You have raised a Skill!

Sneaking

I looked closer at the message, trying to mentally tabulate the likelihood of this chain of events, but just satisfied myself with reading the message again.

[B-Rank Level 4]