Vic woke up with an awful headache, shackles on her wrist and legs, all chained down in a dimly lit cell. She blinked a few times and saw a rush of notifications from the game interface automatically open before her.

  [Warning: Foreign magic attempted and failed to invade user’s mind during Rest]

  [Warning: Foreign divinity attempted and failed to subdue user’s mind during Rest]

  [Warning: Demonic arcane energies attempted and failed to invade user’s mind during Rest]

  [Warning: Hypnosis of Crowned Serpentine Blue Cocoon attempted and failed to put user under state of [Mind Control] during Rest]

  [Warning: Foreign Spirit energy attempted and failed to corrupt [game system]’s influence during Rest]

  [Warning: Foreign divinity attempted and failed to consume user’s magic during Rest]

  [Warning: Foreign divinity attempted and critically failed to consume [Game System] during Rest]

  Well three cheers to that. Three cheers to those losers. They’d probably lost their minds about their pathetic failures that happened over and over again no matter what they tried.

  Vic nearly let out a laugh if not for her headache that was killing her. She felt stinky.

  Another blur of notifications soon followed.

  [Congratulations! You have gained [150 exp] for surviving a fight with [Bloodcursed Emperor] and its minions!]

  Aw come on, she’d done more than survive. It was really the opposite. The Bloodcursed Emperor had barely survived her.

  Another notification popped up before she could complain more.

  [Congratulations! You have gained [500 exp] for overcoming external forces during Rest!]

  [15/15 external forces repelled during Rest: You have gained the title: [Nightmares’ nightmare]

  [New passive skill obtained with new title during Rest! [Passive shadow armour]]

  Vic blinked.

  Well wasn’t that a rush of serotonin rushing straight into her brain.

  She clicked on [passive shadow armour] to see what it did.

  It did not quite disappoint.

  [[Shadow armour] will passively activate itself when User is incapacitated. {level 1}]

  Hm. That changed things… It gave her more tools to defend herself from monsters and monsters in human skin while sleeping. She wouldn’t stop trapping her surroundings before resting, though. It was better to have many fail-saves in case one of them failed.

  And hmm… Levelling this skill up could have potential… Especially if it was able to automatically spread out when she got attacked while awake… Aw… How sweet that’d be. What a sweet dream. That would allow her to get into such fun trouble without having to think too hard about it.

  [Congratulations! You have killed [Crowned Serpentine Blue Cocoon] during Rest with [Passive shadow armour]! You have gained [50 exp].]

  Vic blinked.

  Vic stared.

  [Congratulations! You have levelled up!]

  She gagged on a muted laugh. Oh joy.

  Oh those losers had to have lost their mind about that one, ow, oh~

  Vic licked her lips like the famished gluttonous troll that she was.

  She smiled and stared down at the next notification.

  Her smile withdrew a little.

  [[Advanced Sleep Inducing Poison] has been digested. Its effect has been rendered null. You have gained [2 exp].]

  Well, well, well… It looked like the cultists had tried to extend their little time of experimentation on her. It hadn’t borne any fruits, though, it seemed. And they most likely expected her to still be under its influence for a few more days, perhaps…

  Ah… They didn’t know she was awake yet.

  Her smirk ever so slightly widened.

  The last notifications opened.

  [Congratulations! You have survived another week. You have gained [5 exp].]

  [You have woken up from a six days long Slumber.]

  That was a lot.

  Your [lazy ass] title has evolved to [Sleeping Poisoned Beauty] title.

  Well fuck you too, game system.

  [Rest: User has regained 30% of mana reserves.]

  She glared at the game interface. Honestly, she shouldn’t be too mad. She’d expected worse from having used all of it. She wasn’t even puking. She’d really expected worse. Perhaps… that could have happened in her sleep? It’d been someone else’s problem then, heheh. Oh, she couldn’t know. It’s not like she should care about that then. Heheheheheh.

  [User had fainted in extraordinary circumstances from fully exhausting its mana reserves.]

  [User has been in the close vicinity of a near [Divine] threat for [seven days].]

  [User’s mana capacity has increased momentarily until User is far enough away from near [Divine] threat.]

  Vic’s eyes widened as she saw her mana bar expand an extra glowing third of its previous size. The amount of mana increased until it reached 30% of the new mana bar, pulsating of a sweet purple glow.

  Oh well. She really needed to complain more to her game system.

  Any other juicy notifications perhaps? Pretty please, game system?

  Vic waited, and nothing happened.

  Fuck you, game system? You are the worst, game system?

  Vic waited, and nothing happened.

  She sighed, as the flurry of notifications was truly over. She was left to her own devices in her dim cell. What a sad little fate.

  There seemed to be a breathing guard somewhere far away, beyond the metal bars intertwined with dark green vines, both softly glowing ever so slightly in the thick darkness. The guard couldn’t see her from where he was. Good, good.

  She looked down at her heavy, rune engraved shackles. They had a keyhole. They seemed to be used to block magic users from using their magic. Probably.

  Vic stared at her closed notification and the still active game interface.

  She did a small smile. She motioned to open her inventory, and it opened without issue. Looks like their magic blocking technology was outdated, tsk tsk tsk.

  Well, she knew for a fact that she’d been fed a sleeping poison and that everyone thought that she should be far too gone in dreamland to be an issue for anyone in her vicinity.

  Vic raised her eyebrows and wiggled them at herself.

  Ah, those poor, innocent cultists. They didn’t know a thing, it was almost cute. Waking up shackled in a dungeon wasn’t even the worst way she’d woken up to her senses. Ha ha, ha. Hah.

  She grabbed from a slot of her inventory [an old witch’s trusty lockpicks] with a fond, ever so slightly remorseful smile, and buried all nostalgic sense beneath the light taste of urgency that she now wanted to feel.

  She nearly hummed while lock-picking her shackles open. She stopped herself in time and all was well as the guard outside didn’t make a noisy mess, so the guy probably didn’t know any thing regarding his fellow very awake prisoner.

  After some more extremely quiet rummaging, the shackles around her wrists fell open. It’d been thirty minutes by then. They’d been a wee little hard to open up. Fancy bastard things. Well, now, to the legs.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  It was a little quicker as her hands’ movement wasn’t obstructed like before. The shackles around her legs fell open.

  She put back her lockpicks back in her inventory, hiding away the weapon of her crime.

  And just like that, Vic was free.

  Except for the fact that she was in a cell. But oh well, when had that ever stopped her?

  She examined for a few seconds the metal bars and how the weird glowing vines seemed to intertwine with the widely separated metal bars. Clearly, the one that had designed those cells had in mind that the one imprisoned in them would be stuck to the shackles and opposite wall, while the one observing them had a nice view on them to be able to positively gloat while having the most unobstructed sight possible on their prisoner.

  Vic shook her head slowly, disapproving of the design and method, clearly.

  And she rolled on the ground.

  She phased right through the metal bars, getting out of the cell without even having to spam the rolls as she got out of her cell in one swooping move, leaping back to her feet with the practice of the fine gymnast that she was.

  And like that, Vic was free.

  But not exactly, as usual.

  She disinterestedly dusted off her coat and stared ahead. She’d used that same technique before to find treasures and secret passages, heheh.

  She focused when her eyes found someone else’s.

  A sitting guard, mouth agape, a quill in hand, sat at a table, dropped everything and spilt his ink bottle as his hand suddenly shook.

  Vic smiled back with all her teeth.

  “Cheeryo”, she said, taking an exaggerated accent.

  ___

  She leapt forwards just as the guard threw himself towards what had to be an alarm button or rather a magical bell.

  Her shadow armour turned on just as she grabbed his head with her magical shadow claws and squeezed and threw him to the ground.

  “Hello little worm, worming finely today, aren’t we?” Vic asked while slowly approaching her mouth to the guard’s ear.

  She whispered even if there was no one around to hear them.

  “Now now, where is the fastest way out? I’m feeling merciful. I’ll leave you be, alive, somehow, if you tell me where-”

  He finished his spell with the hand that he’d hidden behind his back and the magical bell shook soundlessly. Her mana sense detected the way the signal went out of it, spreading behind a wall and disappearing far away.

  “Fucking come on!!!”, Vic said, sounding offended. She put a hand against her face, the shadow armour fusing its shapes to allow her hand to get to her face, and she squeezed the place inbetween her eyes, right above her nose.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me”, she finished.

  “You vile beast will not buy me with sweet promises of survival while everyone suffers for my betrayal!” the guard said, like the obstinate, mad cultist that he was.

  “You know, nah, this is all going according to plan. I made you do exactly what I wanted. You bamboozled yourself, you played right into my hands, booh”, she said, pulling her tongue at him while showing teeth.

  “Wh-what” he barely managed to reply. Vic rolled her eyes.

  “Yes yes! And for your grateful cooperation, I’m letting you live! Feel guilty about it, whatever”, she said, and released him, getting up. He scrambled up to his knees, staring at her while taking a hold of his sword.

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  “You look smart. Go ahead. Throw that sword around and hope to do me any damage to me at all”, she said, and turned her back on him, because he wasn’t a threat.

  She could feel it.

  She eyed the door on the side of the desk, and looked at the key holder he had at his waist.

  “Hey, I’m gonna need that”, she said.

  “Over my dead body”, he shot back immediately, holding his sword up.

  Vic blinked.

  She stared at her hands.

  She had a shadow armour on. She had claws.

  “Ah, fuck it, why would I need discretion anyway? The alarm’s been rung”, she wondered outloud.

  She turned her back and threw her claws at the metal door like an angry cat. When that failed, she stared at the door.

  “The sun is a deadly laser”, she said, and shot some sunspit at it. The door melted in just five seconds, its magic protection failing to stop lava hot plasma. It might be hotter than lava, actually. The smoke was making a hissing sound.

  She barely registered that the guard behind her had tried to stab her, but the sword hadn’t gone through any layer at all. She grimaced at him.

  “Boo, loser”, she said, shoved him back a little for him to fall on his back, and she walked away.

  The next corridor was, probably, supposed to be just as dimly lit, gloomy and miserable as the prison cells from before. But the remnants of her plasma beam splattered over the ground made it a very well lit dungeon. There were weird vines growing out of the rocky walls. And the closest ones were burning. They felt odd to her mana sense. It was most likely yet another type of dark, forbidden magic-something-bullshit. Whatever.

  She passed through the corridor, a hand trailing over the wall, enjoying its cracks and texture. There was always something nice and gritty about dungeons. It reminded her of chocolate. Good old chocolate, that she hadn’t been able to taste in forever.

  There was another door before her.

  There was another plasma beam from her hands.

  There was thus, a blasted door, because of her plasma beam.

  Vic marched forwards past the blasted door’s threshold, and met corkscrewing stairs that only went up. She started climbing, racing and leaping on all fours. Both because it was fun, and because it was fast. She liked her “creechure aesthetic” very much.

  It took far too long to reach another door, but the stairs still went up. She chose to keep going. There were probably many layers to this dungeon. And each was apparently separated by around ten or fifteen metres between each layer.

  She’d reached the door of a fourth layer by the time she’d started panting a little bit. What was wrong with those people? Who would need so many layers to their prisons? First of, that was a health hazard and most likely a breach of human rights. Probably.

  She shook her head. Gosh darn medieval times.

  She passed a fifth and sixth layer and still hadn’t reached the top. She bit her lips. Was this going to end up being a marathon instead of a race?

  At the seventh layer, she finally found an end to the corkscrewing stairs. She panted and sighed heavily with deep relief. Fucking finally. She was going to blow up the architect who’d figured that this was a sane idea.

  She blew up the door without even giving it a second thought.

  There was another corridor. She stepped on remains of metal and plasma, and kept on walking. It turned left and right, seemingly endless. At the end of it, she finally saw yet another massive, thick metallic door.

  She stopped before the door. Her mana sense told her there were people beyond it. A group.

  She did the only thing she thought of doing.

  She knocked.

  Politely.

  Once and twice.

  Nothing happened.

  She tilted her head, and knocked again.

  Just as politely.

  Nothing happened, but her mana sense told her there was finally some movement behind it.

  Vic breathed deeply in and out. She deactivated her shadow armour. She had an idea. A stupid one. So stupid that it would work.

  And the door was opened with the sound of well-oiled metal.

  Behind it, a couple of soldiers stared owlishly at her.

  Vic smiled.

  “Hello, good sers, I’m just passing by. I’ve been asked to come up there”, she casually said.

  She would have added “whoopsies, dropped my own keys on the way”, but that would have been way too sassy and sussy.

  The first guard before her blinked several times, opened his mouth, closed it.

  “Come on, come on! I don’t have all day!” Vic exclaimed happily, “This is a pressing matter. It’s all a big misunderstanding.”

  She full-heartedly put a hand against her chest, channelling all that she’d learnt in her drama classes.

  “I need to speak to your manager”, she earnestly said, then did big pleading eyes, “Please. It’s a heart-crushing matter of the soul.”

  The first guard seemed to instinctively step back.

  Aw, come on. She didn’t have any of her spells on. She was smiling.

  “Who asked you to come up?” the guard next to him asked. There was a mix of odd terror and the will to understand in his tone of voice.. “What do you mean?”

  Vic blinked. Quick, bullshit something. What had the cult leader lied about? Ah yes.

  “The veil upon my mind was damaged, I barely managed to emerge, but it’s only a matter of time before it reforms” she said, clear and fast, raising her hands up, towards herself. “Your god left me a message. I need an out, and quick. I’ve already explained this before in detail to your colleague down there. We have to be fast.”

  The soldiers stared at each other with both confusion, an understanding, and a greater amount of questioning. Perhaps some of the stuff that she told didn’t make much sense. But she couldn’t let them ask questions or they’d start seeing through the bullshit.

  “I will need to force my way through to meet him anyway if you don’t let me pass in the following thirty seconds”, Vic peacefully said, like she wasn’t threatening them at all.

  “Please”, she added, because her dad hadn’t taught her to be completely impolite. “Let me pass.”

  “We’ll escort you to His Eminence”, a young guard suddenly said.

  “Meryl!” a guy said reproachingly. That guy seemed to be the leader, huh. The Meryl guy seemed to be a little insubordinate. She liked him a tiny little. Props to him, it wasn’t easy to keep the fire of defiance burning when indoctrinated in a cult.

  “Thank you”, Vic said, like everyone had accepted that they were letting her through. She began walking forwards and reached the door’s threshold, and the first guard who had opened it simply let her through. He’d tensed however.

  No one stepped forwards to stop her as she marched through the room, reaching the next door.

  “Quick”, she said, “Open the door.”

  The leader gulped. He stared at her for about two seconds before reaching her, taking out his wide ring of keys, and opening the door with a click.

  “Alek, stay back. The others, with me”, the leader said. A total of five guards followed her.

  She marched again, followed by her merry band of guards. Her pace was fast. They reached the end of another corridor, another pair of stairs, and at long last, a door cursedly wrapped with glowing vines, which was opened by the guard’s leader with an odd looking wicked key. And behind it, at long last, there was sunlight.

  That was another corridor, but it had windows, its stainglasses spreading wide and richly, showing how rich and fancy the guy that owned this castle was. The sunlight was nice. The windows… Oh, the windows were nice.

  Vic hid her evil little smile. If there were windows, her way out was extremely simple. It was called jumping through said window.

  She turned her head and spotted two tall guards, cumbersomely dressed in heavy armour with that enchanted tint, each at the side of the door. She saw their helmets turn to her.

  She pacifically raised her arms, showing empty palms. The guards surrounded her, forming a precious layer of normal conformity around her. Yes, yes… She was perfectly normal too. Nothing to see here.

  Their little group stepped away with no problem.

  They went through some other fancily decorated corridors while meeting some other surprised guards going through their rounds before Vic decided it was better to break off from her group now.

  She dramatically stopped, and felt the guard walking behind her stop barely before hitting her.

  She bent over a little and clutched her stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” the leader asked, very alarmed.

  Vic raised a single open hand, still clutching her sides.

  “Go. Go away”, she said. “An escort isn’t necessary… if the veil reforms, it’s best if no one is around me when that happens”, she said.

  The leader of the squad frowned at her.

  “We will stand guard, no matter the threa-

  “No”, Vic interrupted, staring straight into the guard’s eyes. “If it reforms, you can’t stop it, those walls back there can’t stop it, and the only one who can stop me is him. It’s best to avoid unneeded casualties.”

  The leader of his little squad stared at her with wide eyes. There was the slowing growing understanding of a fear, there. Yesss, yesss, fall for it.

  “Do you understand?” Vic asked. “Go back to your station, you’ve done as best as you can. It’s not in your hands anymore.”

  “We do not stand down from duty when faced wi…” he said. She interrupted him again before he could end the sentence.

  “You did good. Thank you.” she said, painfully, and put a hand on his shoulder, which she nearly failed to do because he was unfairly taller than her.

  That left him baffled.

  “The alarm had already been rung when I left my cell”, she reassured. “He knows, and he’s coming. It’s fine. Don’t follow me.”

  She removed her hand and walked away like she knew where she was going, passing through the ranks of her escort. If it was because of confusion, bafflement, or the belief in her lies, she didn’t care, because it worked.

  They let her walk away and she paced forwards.

  “Guards, we head back”, the leader said, a little far behind..

  She smiled a little without looking back.

  She randomly picked another corridor, and did not ask directions to any soldier doing rounds around, because even if they perhaps gawked a little when spotting her walking freely around, no one questioned it because she looked like she knew where she was going. Confidence really made a world of difference.

  There was a moment where the only guard making a round before her took a turn, and she was left alone with the stainglasses. She stopped before one that depicted the local cult leader propping himself up as the herald of some new era, with dozens of tiny, puny looking elves and humans kneeling before him. It was all symbolical, rich and shit. She took a few steps back, and activated her shadow amour to not get injured by the future glass shards.

  “Victorya”, she heard, deadly cold. She knew that naggingly confidence-oozing voice. There was a wicked and wild wind in the corridor.

  She turned her head towards it and smiled relaxedly.

  “Cursedblood Emperor”, she replied.

  And there he stood right around the corner where the last patrolling guard had disappeared. Roots swirling around him retracted into the ground, disappearing below slipping tiles and leaving the ground just as it had been before. There he stood, with his arrogant fancy robes, his masked stupid tree face, and his ability to annoy her on sight.

  Perhaps acknowledging his greeting had been far too kind from her. He’d have seethed more at being ignored.

  “Nice day, isn’t it?” she asked, looking back at the sunlight piercing through the stain glass.

  Oh, but to jump through a window or not to do so. Such was the question.