by Charles Dean
“I mean, am I wrong? Have you slept with a single girl since you’ve gotten here? Stop acting like I’m wrong. We both know how this plays out,” Jade insisted. She took a few more deep breaths, closed her eyes and looked over at Lee. “Alright. I suppose we must do proper introductions. I am Jade, the Herald of Mary, Goddess of Blood, who I think is sleeping with your god, Augustus, as we speak. I keep hearing that jerk in the background when she talks to me, not that--”
“Wait, what? Huh? You keep hearing Augustus?” Lee couldn’t let that detail slide without interrupting and asking. “Do you hear that annoying troll-like voice that grates on your ears when you talk to your own divinity? And . . . Does yours kinda sound like”--Lee paused and then did his best impression of the girl he had heard in the background when he last talked to Augustus--“that? Does she talk like that?” He was both ashamed and proud at how accurate the voice was.
“That’s her! That’s her to a T! Oh, man, so you’ve heard her too? Ugh. Thank God! Or Goddess . . . or Mary, or whatever! Anyway, it stinks that I ended up being the side character. I had a whole harem of potential men chasing me that all just conveniently happened to die as soon as you showed up,” Jade sighed.
“Oh.” Lee frowned, looking around at all the dead bodies. “I’m sorry for your loss. Do you want to, you know, take a moment?” he asked. He understood how difficult it would be for someone who had just lost so many people close to her.
“For them?” Jade tilted her head. “They’re just NPCs, man. They’re like the background characters in every anime that die anyway. They’re not real. This whole world isn’t real. So, it’s no big deal. They were destined to take a dirt nap here, not to mention I couldn’t have won if they didn’t.”
“Huh?” Lee didn’t exactly know how to unpack what Jade was saying. So, like, the computer system that talks to me . . . She thinks none of this is real. They have personalities, families, react just like people, but to her they’re just . . . NPCs. That would explain why she doesn’t seem at all phased by the fact that so many people with her died.
“What ‘huh’? I said I couldn’t have won if they didn’t die. This was a tough fight, but thankfully”--Jade extended a hand, blood from the ground rising up and forming a perfect katana shape in her hand--“with their noble sacrifice, I was able to gain the materials needed to”--she paused and made a slash with the now-hardened blood katana--“slice through my enemies and achieve victory!”
“So . . .” Lee looked over at the golem.
“Yup! Took like forty dead bodies to make that big ol’ guy. I mean, it was hard keeping him alive at the start. He begins as nothing more than a waist-high little one, but once I get enough material, he really shines. Not to mention, nothing feels greater than making a giant, undead, flesh-monster and using it to rip trees out of the ground and hit people with them,” Jade said proudly. “If video games have taught me anything, it’s that the necromancer is the perfect class so long as you have enough bodies to throw at a problem.”
“You’re a little insane. You know that, right?” Lee chuckled softly, not because he found the situation funny, but because it was disturbing and uncomfortable enough that he didn’t know what else to do.
“Well, I am imagining myself stuck in a fictional anime world where I’ve been tasked with spreading a stupid religion and where I’ve been given only three powers to perform miracles and do it with.”
“If manipulating blood and making . . . blood golems? Undead thingies? Whatever you call that . . . If those are two of your powers, then what is the other? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s just sooooo useless. It’s like the worst power you could ever give a girl,” Jade said with a frown.
“Which is?” Lee pushed, very curious what type of useless power she was complaining about.
“Pregnant,” Jade harrumphed.
“Your third power is . . . that you’re pregnant?” Lee still had no idea what she was talking about.
“No, it’s . . .” Jade turned away for a second. “I have the power to make sure that a copulating couple gets pregnant and even has twins or triplets. Apparently, my power also speeds up the process, like halves the amount of time it takes. It’s so annoying and useless and awful. Why couldn’t it be the opposite? Why couldn’t I have the power to make it so that a woman couldn’t get pregnant? That would have been helpful. Then I could have used that reverse harem of mine for a lot of fun without constantly being afraid that I’d end up with thirty babies after one night in the sack.”
Augustus, is she . . . Is she trolling me? Lee asked in his head, only to hear raucous laughter echo back at him. Actually, never mind. Don’t answer. I wouldn’t be able to believe you if you did anyway.
“So, you mean,” Brigid began, interrupting them, “that you can half the suffering of expecting mothers, ensure they are with child and double and triple the bountiful yields of their belly? How can you call this a curse?! This would be a godsend in any town! Blessed is such an amazing ability!”
“QUIET, NPC!” Jade yelled at Brigid. “I did not initiate dialogue with you, so will you freaking shut up and throw some random punctuation above your head until you’re spoken to!”
“I am not an NPC!” Brigid shouted back. “I am a person, and I will have you--”
“OH MY GOD, if you don’t stay quiet, I will murder you right now just so that I don’t have to listen to your incessant and useless chatter. I swear, I don’t know who made this anime, or game or whatever it is, but the unprompted dialogue from NPCs has to be the single most annoying part of it. Why couldn’t I have been stuck in an adult literature book?” Jade continued grumbling on, but the threat seemed to silence Brigid, especially since the giant blood-beast turned its head in the middle of Jade’s yelling. “Anyway, since you’re Lee, I’m supposed to kind of give you something . . . but I lost it.”
“You’re supposed to give me something?” Lee was never sure what this woman was going to say next, so at the mention of a gift, he slowly took a step back, just to be on the safe side.
“Yeah, I had a cool present for you. I had stitched together a big, giant stuffed anime waifu pillow. It was amazing. Unfortunately, I left it with Prince Ichigo Lelouch, and he went up and got himself killed ten seconds into the fight. The pillow was wrecked in the process. Now, I’m kinda . . . you know? Without a gift. But it’s cool. I know exactly where to get another. There is supposed to be this angry, cranky, crazy cougar chick up the mountain with a hoard of goodies she’s taken from other villages. She’s even sitting on one of the world stone fragments,” Jade explained. “You wanna go up the mountain and grab it? Get this over with so we can start our epic isekai adventure?”
“Can that thing help us kill her?” Lee glossed over half of what she said, focusing on the most important bit: she was willing to help him with the fight against the Meadhbh.
“Oh, Big Bobby the Blood Bro? Nah. He’s only good for a minute or two more until my spirit can’t sustain his form. He’ll collapse all over the place in a moment and gush blood everywhere like this was the elevator scene in that one movie.”
“What is an elev--”
“I swear, you tsundere harlot, I will murder you if you speak when grown-ups are talking one more time. DON’T THINK I WON’T!” Jade stamped her foot and narrowed her eyes as she scolded the general.
“Can you not?” Lee asked. “She’s kind of supposed to be my diplomatic connection to another town, and I’m not okay with you randomly killing, the uhh . . . NPCs. I need them to win the game, you know? You do understand how that works, right?”
“What? The faith thing?” Jade shrugged. “Psh. Yeah, I got it. I go around and collect faith points while you go around and collect those stupid world stone fragment rocks, and once you have them all, we get to click our heels together and go back home. I got it. Which is great, because I can’t wait to get home finally and see the end of Shi no Enpitsu in a few weeks. I mean, I already know
how it’s going to end: hero gets a power-up, uses emotion, saves day, but . . . I. MUST. SEE IT!” Jade even squeed at the end of the sentence.
“That was . . . That was like . . . That was only two months ago?” Lee’s interest was piqued by the timeline Jade had mentioned. He was surprised that they not only came from Earth, and probably the same country, if he were to judge by her accent, but the points on Earth’s timeline from which they had been pulled were only a couple months apart too. It shocked him a little. Every other Herald he had encountered so far seemed to be from an entirely different era.
“What? Months ago? Don’t tell me . . . you’ve already seen it?!” Jade sounded incredibly excited. “You’ve already seen it?!”
“What are you two--” Brigid began to ask.
“Brigid.” Lee stopped his ‘NPC’ tsundere character, as Jade called her, from talking. “You need to not do that. This is a talk between Heralds. You’re not going to understand any of it. Accept that fact and stay quiet. Okay? We’re about to team up and go kill that other Herald you hate, so just be happy with that fact.” He wasn’t a fan of talking down to someone like that, especially someone he still felt he owed, but he didn’t doubt for a minute that this new woman would actually murder Brigid if given the chance.
Brigid glared at Lee but then nodded.
“So, have you seen it?” Jade asked again.
“Yeah, I have. And . . . the ending would surprise you. You see--”
“NO! NO SPOILERS!” Jade cried, trying to hush Lee as quickly as possible. “Don’t say a word! NO SPOILERS AT ALL!”
“Okay, okay. I can avoid spoilers . . . but only if we get moving and go kill the Herald. The sooner this Phouka is dead, the better.”
“Meh. She killed my harem, so I’m game for murdering her. You have no idea how long it took to build a league of doting men in this world where they all kind of treated me like some sort of foreigner who didn’t understand anything,” Jade complained.
But . . . that’s exactly what you are . . . Lee thought, but just kept his mouth shut and bit his tongue.
“Shouldn’t we wait for our reinforceme--” Brigid started, but Jade quickly cut her off.
“BRIGID!” she yelled as she formed another blood blade, and Brigid backed down immediately.
Brigid’s suggestion that they wait for reinforcements was valid, but Lee wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to. These Phoukas had a habit of killing his men with every encounter, and this woman seemed like she might even speed the process along just so that she could use their dead bodies to summon up more of those blood golems. The goddess of blood indeed, Lee mused.
So, with that train of thought and reasoning in mind, Lee decided to just keep the group condensed to the three of them. He tried sending the golems back to notify the group, but they wouldn’t go. They just kept speeding to him at full pace. They ignored his commands and pressed on with a will he didn’t know they actually had until just then. Then he remembered that he was still in a group with Miller and Ling.
Wait, system, I got two questions for you. First, can I name any animal I want? Like, if I name a dog RoffleCopter, then will that be its registered name, even if I haven’t tamed the dog? And, second, can I add someone to the group, even though I wasn’t the one who started the group?
To answer the first question, you may only change the names of creatures that aren’t domesticated and owned by someone else. For example, such is the case with this world’s variation of what you might call squirrels. To answer the second question, you have been the assigned party leader since the addition of Amber. As such, you may add or remove players and NPCs as you please. Miller transferred the party leader status over to you a long time ago.
And you didn’t tell me? Never mind, never mind. Of course it’s because I didn’t ask. Okay, so if I find a random creature, I’m able to let you know what name I would like it to have, and if I kill it, it’ll have that name on the death notice?
Yes. That is the case. A very worthy and ruthless thought, as expected of my Diligent Despot.
I’m not a des-- Never mind. Lee didn’t even bother with that argument as he looked around him. He wasn’t able to find any creature specifically worthwhile, as most of the mobs and creatures in the area had likely been killed off by the two parties coming to murder each other, but after they traveled a little way up the mountain, they started running into random animals and monsters. The first such creatures, a pair of pointy-toothed wild rabbits, took only a few minutes to find. When Lee saw them, he started talking to the system again immediately. I need you to name this creature ‘MillerI’mFineAddingNewPlayerJadeThenWe’reKillingHerald,’ Lee said. Then, name the one next to it ‘PSBrigidIsOkayToo.’
It’s done. You may proceed to kill these cute and harmless forest creatures for the sake of abusing the system and ferrying your message to the rest of the party, Mr. Diligent Despot.
Lee hated the name Despot, but he had long since admitted defeat on being able to control what the system called him. He killed the two creatures, sending the message, and then added Jade to the party. At first, Jade was surprised to find out that the party was two guys and one girl. She said it threw her whole anime assumption off but didn’t further explain as the three of them continued on, climbing the mountain and leveling at the same time. Lee had to admit that, as awesome as Jade’s blood sword looked, and as stylish and skillful the way she danced around with her sanguine katana appeared, she was really ineffective at killing. Her weapon might have had great damage stats, but it was clear that she had spent very little time actually learning how to use it.
The little blood golem, on the other hand, appeared the second something died, and she was deadly with that. The smaller blood golem was made from the two dead pointy-toothed rabbit corpses, and as inept and useless looking as it might have been, it was able to jump the third such monster they encountered and destroy it instantaneously. Every part of its body acted as a weapon, and even its bones jutted out and stabbed into its victim no matter how the rabbit blocked or tried to defend itself. Within seconds, the third beast had died, and the golem had gotten bigger, stronger and generally more grotesque and scary looking. It was like the most disgusting version of a broken and flayed man Lee had ever seen.
“You can’t be comfortable with the way that thing looks,” Lee remarked after watching it eat a fourth, fifth and sixth pointy-toothed rabbit. The blood golem was really starting to snowball out of control. Even if he thought it was ugly and gruesome to watch, at the very least, he began to understand why her sword skills were so horrible. If his clay golems were half as deadly as her blood golems, he would never have to level up combat skills. He’d be able to simply let Miller kill one creature, and then kill the rest with the subsequently-cobbled-together demon spawn.
“What? I think little Bobby is cute. Don’t make fun of him. He’s my adorable little Bloody Bobby,” Jade retorted as she went over and petted the now-six-and-a-half-foot-tall golem. “You’re just so adorable, aren’t you?”
Lee’s own golem trio finally caught up just as night set, and Lee and the two women made camp. He was surprised to find that while he had used his inventory to store a simple tent with basic provisions, Jade had packed an entire resort-level yurt. The difference in their expectations was like the difference in a wilderness survival tent and a full-on outdoor luxury resort camp for a millionaire who wanted to say he was camping but didn’t actually want to suffer for it. Lee practically drooled as he stared at the accommodations.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said when Jade first brought out the pre-built, ready-to-go structure. “How in the heck did you manage that?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the Herald for the god of crafting? Why don’t you have your own? I mean, we’ve been stuck in this stupid anime world for months, why have you not--”
“Weeks. At best,” Lee corrected her.
“What?” Jade looked startled. “You’ve only been here for weeks? I mean, th
ree weeks? Four weeks?”
“Uhhh . . . about two, maybe three at most?” Lee had trouble keeping track of his time in this world since he was always bouncing between it and his real world. “I’m told every other Herald in this competition had a two-month head start on me.”
“Really?” Brigid asked as she came up behind Lee with firewood. “You mean the Herald you killed in Kirshtein? He had two more months than you, and you only had a week or two to prepare?”
Lee shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the sum of it. Although, I only had a few days’ preparation before I killed my first Herald.”
“Holy crap, how did you manage that? How did you get any levels at all in the first day or two? It took me a week just to figure out my power and get a few followers. It took me nearly a month to convince an entire town that I was the rightfully-chosen princess of this anime.” Jade seemed thoroughly astonished with Lee, and then she noticed where Lee was staring, and she smiled from ear to ear. “You can sleep in here with me if you like,” she added. “This giant, amazing and luxurious tent . . . it does feel a little lonely sometimes.”
“You’re not playing your role right. Blue hair is supposed to be cooler and collected,” Lee said, trying his best to shut her down. But the offer was tempting. Sleeping in that tent with what looked like a queen-sized, fully-furnished bed would be a heck of a lot better than sleeping on a roll-out mat laid over a sorry excuse for a medieval tarp.
“Hmph! I have to break the mold, or my life will be full of failures! Stupid harems . . .” Jade pouted.
Lee decided to go with a different approach. “Really? Still on that harem talk? Because, if I come into that room, and we fool around at all . . . won’t your power leave you pregnant? Wait, is that what you want? How many kids are you after?” He didn’t actually want to do anything, but he figured that she might back off if he mentioned her implication earlier that every round of fun would lead to pregnancy. It was a gamble--since she was clearly crazy--but some part of him told him that the gamble would be worth it.
