(Continuing from Chapter 40 of Book 1 (Finally))

The message’s contents were simple, but they still rubbed the first and currently only Lyrhean the wrong way. The message was, in her eyes, an insult and a jab at her being what she was, almost like it was mocking her for being a certain gender and demanding that she use that ‘as nature intended’.

New Tutorial Quest:

Life Finds a Way

The previous Administration was too harsh on those like you, and so the utterly broken and downright suicidal Tutorial Questline has been altered. Let’s get into that, shall we?

Ahem….

You are the first of your race, and therefore it is imperative that you increase your numbers by any means that you can. Use your biology and gifts to your advantage, and show that your new existence isn’t just a one-off. Each Monster Race has its own way of increasing its numbers, though some are similar or identical to others. Use that, along with whatever traits your body has besides that, to make sure that you are no longer alone in a world that seeks your head.

Objective: Increase the Number of Lyrheans (aside from yourself) to 10 (Current is 0/10)

Reward: Settlement Token

HINT: Talk to your Patron God for guidance!

Or maybe she was reading too heavily into it. After all, it never specified how she was to increase the numbers of those who shared her species. Well, it did kind of say she could use her body, but maybe that was just her already irritated and stressed mind playing tricks on her.

She dismissed the message and thought about a potential course of action. Sure, she could try and ask the big snake in the void to give a bit of advice, but if that big snake god told her to spread her legs and that such a course of action was the only way to make more of her kind, she kinda wanted to just die and not be beholden to such a degradation.

What, was she just supposed to be nothing more than a glorified baby-maker? No, she never wanted that fate to befall her, both before she was transformed into what she was now and even back when she was human. If there was one thing that she always, even from a young age found to be insulting to the entire human species it was the archaic and backward belief that women were in every possible way inferior and thus existed only to be good little slaves and breeders for their male counterparts.

If that Snake God of hers had the same disgusting opinion, then she would kill herself and deprive that snake of its agent before lowering herself to such a degree. If that meant that she would suffer eternally, then she would go on her own terms and not lose her pride.

But, while the thought of potentially being told to do all of that did sicken her, she honestly had no other idea of how she could make more Lyrheans. Her only experience with procreation had been with pre-Fog Fall Earth, and while some animals did replicate by.. other means, most reproduction was sexual in nature.

She had never done the deed herself, of course, and she didn’t want to be forced into it until she herself was ready and willing. Thus, with no real other option aside from randomly trying things to find out what worked, Lyrhea phoned her God and asked for help.

…

After a brief and stressful chat with the Primordial Serpent, Lyrhea now had a grasp on how to make more of her kind without engaging in that. And, as she had somewhat expected, the process of making more Lyrheans without engaging in intercourse was, ultimately, something she never would have been able to guess.

Thankfully, she was somewhere where the average power rating of the lifeforms around her was substantially lesser than her own. Plus, the variety of life here was leagues better than the other places she’d been to, and, if her Patron was to be believed, the tools she would need to make more Lyrheans would be nearby as well.

Slowly, stealthily, and carefully, Lyrhea stalked through the undergrowth that ran throughout the ruined and utterly overgrown wreck of a massive city that she had been dropped into. Her gaze and senses were constantly shifting to try and find the first tool that she needed, and she would need several of them to make the process work even once.

As she moved deeper in, though, she felt the gaze of someone or something watching her, and she froze for a moment before leaping to the side just as an arrow shaft embedded itself into the ground where she would have been had she kept moving forward.

“Son of a bitch!” Lyrhea cursed loudly as she pulled herself up and through a few ruined buildings on a mad dash to somewhere higher and, hopefully, safer. “Can’t I have just five minutes where I’m not being attacked?!”

She just got those words out of her mouth when she heard something that made her blood run cold. Just a few feet away from her current position came a near-whisper that made her jump away and in a completely new direction upon hearing it.

“No.”

It was but one, singular word, and while that alone might have been scary, combining that with the low decibel level of it, the positioning of it, and the familiarity of the voice caused mild PTSD to flare up within Lyrhea and she scrambled to make an escape.

She ducked under a table and flipped it up and into the air as another three arrows came towards her, which thankfully got caught in the table itself. However, a fourth, seemingly undetectable arrow that she had not seen or heard slammed into Lyrhea’s right calf ad caused her to tumble across the floor, eventually skidding to the point where she was just barely on the edge of one of the skyscraper’s tilted upper floors before a sheer drop into some foggy depths.

“Can’t we… talk this OW!” Lyrhea tried to make a case but the pain from the arrow being yanked out of her leg by her assailant stopped her.

“Fucking hell!” she yelled. “What the fuck is it with you people?!” She looked up at the Ranger that had hunted her alongside the other four people back when she first woke up.

“No more life.” the Ranger said softly, pulling a knife not too dissimilar from Lyrhea’s out of a sheathe and drawing in closer.

“Your words, bitch, not mine.” Lyrhea had already burned enough fuel, so what was the harm in burning more to heal her wound faster than normal? She pulled the Ranger girl close and held her in a nasty, almost serpentine hold and then twisted herself again, releasing the Ranger and launching her out of the broken window and down into the fog. As she caught her breath, Lyrhea stood up and gave a line fit for a B-movie Action hero. “Have a nice trip. See you next fall.”

She should have known that wouldn’t be enough to put her soon-to-be ultimate rival and nemesis down, though.